Under the bridge

I'm in LA now. My brother and I have been wandering around town for the past couple of days.

6/21




On Thursday night when I arrived we got sushi in Little Tokyo and walked around the civic center district. The area is apparently undergoing a rebirth, and the best evidence of that I saw was the heavy LAPD presence and some shiny new buildings like the Disney theater. A lot of the old hotels have been gutted and are being remodeled as apartments, and money seems to be pouring in. I had my new camera shipped to Mike's place, so I was playing with it as we walked. Most of the pictures didn't turn out very well (I hadn't figured out to change the ISO settings to shoot at night), but it was fun. When we went back to his place, we passed over the LA river and saw a rubble sorting facility. The air inside was filled with dust lit by flood lights, and pieces of heavy machinery were plucking tattered bits of plastic and broken stone from a big pile and moving them to smaller ones. There were people standing along a conveyor belt sorting things by hand. They also had guys spraying misters over the heaps to try to control the dust, and these huge sheets were dangling from the ceiling, supposedly to keep some of the floating particles contained. It was really surreal at first glance, so we walked back over after parking at Mikes (it was only 2 blocks away) and watched for a while.

6/22




On Friday I went for a run. Mike's apartment is in a warehouse in an industrial part of town (in case the heavy machinery didn't give it away), and for some reason I decided that running around the area was a good idea. Of course I went around noon, so the sun directly overhead meant everything was bleached and white and there was no shade to hide in. I knew that the temperature might be an issue, but when I left it was under 80 and I didn't really take relentless, brutal sunshine into account. Running around near a highway was new for me, and not very pleasant, but I'm glad I did it. I saw a lot of wholesalers and factories at work, loading trucks and operating machines and such. An awful lot of these buildings seem to be open to the street, so I peeked in as I went. I had mapped out my route online, but at some point 8th St. enters a giant factory complex with barbed wire and 'No Trespassing' signs. I want to know how big a company you have to be (or as my brother said, how long you have to have been there) before you get a portion of 8th street inside your facility. As far as I know the road resumes as normal when you leave the other side of their fence, but I didn't check it out.

After my run Mike and I went to lunch at a Vietnamese place that he knew of. The food was good and the noodles were cold, which was perfect in the heat. We ate outside (actually cooler than the inside), and the neighbor's cat spent the meal trying to climb my leg and swat bits of food off of the table. It should have been annoying, but the cat seemed smart and was very pretty, so it got away with being a sort of charming nuisance. There were also these guys in purple shirts who I'd started to notice during my run. They're some sort of public safety types, maybe city-funded rent-a-cops or something. They're unarmed, but they have radios and badges and ride around on bikes. I assume their job is to tell the Skid Row types to move along. Anyway, I had mentioned them to my brother, who didn't know what their job was, and then over lunch we saw a lanky white guy in full pimp regalia getting right up in one's face and yelling, "Fuck you!" repeatedly and with varying inflection. He ran off after shouting a few times. Then, later in the meal, a guy walking down the sidewalk carrying some sort of protest sign with only the words "Skid Row" visible yelled something about the "God damned purple-shirted pixies". Thankless job, I guess. There were two guys sitting at the table next to us. At one point I overheard one say, "So, have you read the script yet?" Only in LA, people.

When we finished lunch and got back to where we'd parked the car it was gone. A street sign, which of course we hadn't seen, prohibited parking from 3-7. My brother wanted to walk home and deal with it from there, but I convinced him to wander around to try to find the tow company's number on a sign. We didn't find it, and he went into a store to ask if they knew. The lady didn't, but she wondered why we hadn't asked the parking enforcement car that was visible through the window around the corner, where we'd just come from. It hadn't been there a moment ago, of course, but Mike sprinted out to catch it. He got a card from them with a phone number, then his call led to an address, and we started hiking. It was maybe a 20 minute walk away, which wasn't too bad, but combined with the rest of my day outside I ended up with a sunburn. Retrieving the car meant Mike had to pay a $100 towing fee and a $50 'administration fee', or rather LA's cut of the spoils. To add to the injury there was a $70 ticket on the windshield. The funny thing is that we had almost parked in a lot across the street from the meter for a $4 flat rate, and by the time we had put an hour's worth of quarters in the meter at a quarter per 10 minutes we barely would have saved anything. I'm usually pretty obsessive about checking signs, and my brother says he's the same, but our being lax this time cost him a ton of money.

6/23




On Saturday we went to the Getty Museum and drove around Mulholland Drive. I don't have much to say about either, but not because they weren't really cool. The Getty is on a hill and feels very distant from the city around it and the highway below. The art was great and the museum grounds were lush and green. There was a nice breeze and the sound of the fountains made you feel like you were out by a stream somewhere. Mulholland was twisty and peppered with unfathomably big houses and expensive cars, but it was sort of hard to see in the dark. We ended up getting off of it accidently before we'd seen the best of the lights, so hopefully we'll go back.

It's not broken, it's got added character

6/16

Driving from Maryland to Tennessee I saw a lot of deer: 4 dead (including one baby) and 2 alive (soon to be dead? I mean deer that hang out around a highway probably aren't long for this world.) After seeing all of the bodies I thought about what I'd do if I saw one.

"Ok. You see a deer. First establish which way it's going, then gently swerve in the opposite direction while tapping the brakes. You don't have ABS, remember to tap. Should I honk the horn or not? Fuck. The deer has started to turn around and run where you're now inevitably going. Car is about to hit the deer. Will your direction of motion keep you on the road? Good. Close your eyes until any sound of breaking glass is over. Open eyes and look around cracks and blood. Continue to apply brakes. Don't oversteer."

When my dad and I drove to Maine last week we'd just read an article about someone hitting a moose and dying, so of course that's what we worried about the whole time. I wasn't worried about other cars (which maybe I should have been, since Maine has a huge drunk-driving rate and it was late at night) but I was nervous about a moose.

After I stopped in Bristol for a break my car wouldn't start. It didn't turn over or anything, the lights just sort of dimmed, so it was obviously a starter motor problem. I tried to push start it, but failed miserably. I had to try to roll it backwards because of the hill available to me. Actually it was just a shallow incline, but when you're trying to push a car it seems important. I was sort of amazed how easy it actually was to move my car around. Anyway, it's hard to push start a car in reverse because of the gearing; you'd need a lot of speed. In the end I had to get someone to turn the key while I crawled under the car and whacked the starter motor with a socket wrench. It came to life immediately, so I guess that's good.

My car has acquired a great list of quirks.

-It has 3 doors: driver, passenger, and trunk. The left trunk hinge is broken, so when you open the trunk you have to actually hold it open or it'll close at a 45 degree angle and probably break the other hinge. I sometimes use an ice scraper to prop it open. When you close the trunk you sort of have to guide it down. The driver side door lock has recently decided not to unlock from the outside when you turn the key, so the only way into my car is by opening the passenger side door and reaching across to unlock the driver's side from the inside.

-I backed into a firepit in Acadia and killed my muffler, so now the car sounds like a Harley when you're accelerating. I figure people pay good money for that, so I should start a business. $100 and I'll customize your exhaust. I'll call it Firepit Mods and no one will be the wiser. Well, unless they look under the car and realize that their exhaust is now wired to the muffler.

-My tape deck, used to hook up my iPod and so of fundamental import, is broken. You have to give it a good, hard whack on the side in order to get the gears to click into place. That always amuses the passengers, especially when they don't get the whack right and I have to show them how to do it.

-Now my starter motor is officially on the fritz after this second time it hasn't started (the first was in Maine in March). I get to look forward to push starting it or banging on the starter motor a lot, I think.

-My windshield wiper arm springs are rusted out and so the arms don't push against the windshield very hard, so unless there's a lot of rain the wipers don't work well.

-The paint, once red, has faded to a matte pinkish color. When it's wet the color's pretty nice, but on a hot, sunny day it looks pretty ridiculous.

-It crunches when you downshift into 3rd gear. The synchros are sort of shot, and to keep it from being truly awful you have to ever so gently ease it down into gear, and even then it's uncomfortable.

I love my car, and I think all of the quirks actually make me more attached to it. Despite the flaws, the thing was doing 90 coming in on I-81 without an issue. It hugs the road, it sips gas, the brakes are... I don't know. Something positive that brakes can be described as doing. The brakes give you pause. They put a stop to doubts. The brakes work... maybe that's enough.

Roadtripping, eventually

6/14

So right now I'm sitting at my grandmother's house killing time. I was supposed to have been on the road right now, but my car's in the shop. I took it in yesterday to get the oil changed, and as we were picking it the mechanic told my dad and me that a CV joint was shot, that the boot had cracked and all of the grease was gone. He recommended getting it replaced, of course. The grease in part keeps it cool, and if it kept running hot it could cause the whole wheel to pop off. Or something. My own knowledge, my dad's experience, and just now my uncle all say that it's much more likely to run (poorly) forever without catastrophic failure. But my dad's paranoid, and mechanic said it'd be an hour and a half, so we had him do it. I said I'd come by in the morning to pick it up. Expected cost, $60-70 for the CV joint, 1.5 hours labor?

I got a call late last night saying that the CV joint was somehow fused to the wheel bearing, and he wanted me to call him back in the morning to tell him whether he should blowtorch them apart. I called at 8:30 (I had to get up at 8:30... Ugh.) and told him to do it. Added cost, ~$30 for the wheel bearing.

He called at 11:30 and said that the CV joint he'd ordered didn't fit and he'd asked for another. I called at 2:40 and he said it'd be half an hour, so I went by at 3:20. My car's still up on the lift without a wheel. Ugh. Turns out the replacement didn't work either, so the original CV joint, which had been rebuilt, was on its way back. That was maybe an hour ago, and I'm waiting to see how much longer it takes and how much it costs. Then I have to put air in my damn tires and power steering fluid in the reservoir, after that hopefully I'll be able to get on the road.

6/15

I'm at a Panera in Maryland now, waiting for Marshall to get off work and commute over here to meet up. I hate Panera, but they have couches, AC, and free wifi, so I guess I'll let them live when the revolution comes.

I finally got the car back at around 6 yesterday. After wiping down the steering wheel and the shifter (the mechanic had driven the thing around while wearing oily gloves) I took it for a test run around town and out onto the highway, taking sharp turns and driving fast and such. This was during rush hour, so the reality is that it took 30 minutes, 20 of which were spent waiting to exit the highway. I'm not quite sure what the idea of my test run was. I guess that if anything failed I'd be close to home and family with cars, but in the event of my wheel bearing or CV joint blowing out I'd probably lose control (and the wheel) and kill people. Not that the idea didn't appeal to me after sitting in stop and go traffic in Burlington, but at heart I truly am a peaceful man. Honest. I just curse a lot. And like guns. No, fuck it, I'm lying.

So I packed the car as quickly as possible, raced my grandmother through her obligatory last-minute photos (seriously, you've spent all week with me and taken photos in Maine and at graduation, how important are a few photos outside of the house?), and sped off. I had to stop to put air in my tires and get gas, which because I was late was a serious drag, but it turned into a minor blessing by the fact that I'd left my suit carrier at the house and my mother brought it downtown to me. Had I been on the highway I'd have had to turn around, and that would have sucked.

Leaving later than planned wasn't fun, but most of the traffic was gone, so I made great time. I was cruising at about 80mph at some point maybe 20 miles after leaving, and I noticed that my hood was starting to pop up and was shaking in the wind. I pulled over (which I've never actually had to do on a highway before) and closed it. Turns out the mechanic hadn't shut it properly, the bastard. I had these wonderful images of my hood popping up and blinding me, or maybe it'd rip off entirely at high speed and I'd be driving with an exposed engine compartment.
This wasn't actually that dramatic, but getting up to speed in the shoulder and back into traffic was interesting. I mean, my grandmother's car has a turbocharger, I think it's only fair that I should have one, too. Speaking of driving my grandmother's car, that's what I've been doing lately. So slowing down at the tollbooth with the music on loud I completely forget that I'm driving a manual and ignore the clutch. I stalled the thing right in front of the toll collector, who must have been laughing at the confused look on my face.

I hit about 30 minutes worth of traffic on 95 just outside of New York. Last time I went into NYC I took Merrit Parkway on the advice of someone stuck in traffic on 95 up ahead. It's a really beautiful 2 lane highway with lots of hills and curves, and the bridges that pass overhead are all unique and made of stone. I think what makes it fun to drive, though, is the fact that there are trees on either side, overhanging the road. If I ever make the Boston-NYC commute again I'm definitely going to take it, 95's just a huge drag.

New York was brief. I didn't find parking until like 11:30, and that was only after I'd given up on finding the correct side parking for Friday morning and had resigned myself to waking up at 8 to leave. The New Yorkers went to bed early, so I didn't actually get to do much more than say hi. Ah well.

The drive to Maryland was uneventful, but I was shocked that between the NJ turnpike toll, the George Washington Memorial Bridge toll, the Delaware toll, and a toll in Maryland I hit $13.85 in about 50 miles. Apparently in NJ it's illegal to have self-serve gas stations, too. Gas was still 20 cents cheaper than in Boston, even with the attendant, but full service stations make me uncomfortable.

May you be in heaven a half hour before the devil knows you're dead.

I was trying to come up with a way to talk about the weekend before last without it coming off as drunken debauchery, but I don’t think that’s really possible.

Wednesday

Mik’s birthday. We sat around on the second floor and drank beer. It would have been an unremarkable evening, but at some point we transitioned into the sort of old school No. 6 conversation we haven’t had in a while. It’s not really significant what we talked about, it’s more the depth to which we analyzed and debated things. We derived, for example, the conditions for negative population growth given rates of adoption by gay parents and an imaginary fraction of adopted children 'going gay'. Sapo, Anton, and I lasted until after sunrise, then went to sleep. I skipped all of my classes. Oops.

Thursday

On Thursday night I went to the gym for a couple of hours. I was feeling energetic, so I figured I might as well take advantage of the situation and do something productive. The plan was to go home afterwards and study Chinese. My motives, obviously, were pure and noble. I got back from the gym, a little bit wobbly from 2 hours of picking up heavy things and putting them down again, and as I walked into my hall Anton, Sapo, and Mik informed me that we were going to the Thirsty Ear (the grad student pub just down the street) for karaoke night. Thirsty Thursdays have been a tradition for us for a long time, so I’m not really sure why I thought this one would be any different. I guess usually we send out an email to the list sometime in the afternoon declaring that we’re parched or dehydrated, and that’s taken as a statement of intent. We didn’t do that this time, so I naively thought I’d be doing homework.

The Thirsty is under a grad student dorm. You go down some stairs and into a side door and you’re in. There are no signs; it's all very speakeasy. The Thirsty's appeal lies in the facts that it’s less than a five minute walk door to door, that we know half of the people there, at least in passing, that you can show up in anything from preppy chic to your pajamas, and that a pitcher is $7. The karaoke is incidental, and we don’t usually take advantage of the opportunity until we’re several pitchers in.

On Thursday we closed the place. That’s not uncommon for us, but when I say we closed it I mean that very literally. We bargained with the bartender to give us a couple of free pitchers well after last call in exchange for stacking the chairs and moving the tables to the sides. When we got back to the house we continued to drink, and an inspired someone had the idea that we should go streaking across the soccer field next to the house. The plan appealed to me very much. Streaking seemed like classic collegiate buffoonery that I should at least be able to cross off of the list. So before we could think about it too much we were running downstairs and out the door, removing clothes as we went. Unfortunately my compatriots are not fellow countrymen, and they started bitching about maybe losing their visas if caught. I tried to convince them that it wouldn’t happen, but in the end we settled for running across the field in boxers and boots. Anton and I knocked on the windows of the dorm on the other side, surprising a few people, and then we ran back. The rest of the evening was spent watching scenes from Top Gun and debating which song was the theme. It’s not, as we originally suspected, Danger Zone. I’ve always felt that the iconic song from the movie was Take My Breath Away. Went to bed during sunrise number 2.


Friday


(Most of this is sort of a list. I think I’m writing it too long after the fact to really get into the storytelling, so you get a recitation of events.)

Went on a liquor run and a grocery store run for supplies for Saturday’s Founder’s party, then came back and sat around drinking. I didn’t feel like joining the crowd going to see Fast Times, the local cover 80s cover band whose shows we frequent, so I sat on my bed with Adri and Lizzie drinking and reading old letters written by Sixers in the 40s. Lizzie was working on her speech for Founder’s Day, so she was trying to come up with ways the house had changed. Some of the letters were pretty cool; one written in 1962 or 63 was talking about the formation of the Peace Corps, and all of the problems they thought faced the then-new organization.

The crowd at the bar had met up with the New York Sixers who’d come up for the weekend, so when they came back after closing time a party immediately started downstairs. My evening gets pretty fuzzy from then on, but I know it involved streaking across the field (for real this time) with Anton and Dimitrios. As we started running, having just abandoned our clothes at the fence around the field, I turned to Anton and said, “You know, when we come back those clothes aren’t going to be there.” We made it to the dorm across the field and back, and sure enough we were conspicuously naked and our stuff was gone. As we hunted around the house for our clothes there were an awful lot of cameras and flashes, so I guess running for public office some day is out of the question. I wore a piece of paper and Anton had on a shower curtain until someone took pity on us and gave us our pants back.

More drinking ensued. Sunrise number 3. Sleep.

Saturday

I started my day by making homemade sour mix, which is really simple and tastes awesome. I ran some last minute errands to set up for the Founder’s party, organized the bar, and started mixing drinks. I learned how to make a pretty good Manhattan and an excellent Cosmo, two drinks I’d never served before. It’s a lot more fun to bartend when you have a stocked bar and people want cocktails. The stuff I serve at our open parties is all plastic-handle dreck with coke or juice in a red Solo cup. Even using real glass makes a difference. Whatever… I guess I shouldn’t worry about serving the 17 year olds with fake IDs shitty drinks, they don’t know any better, anyway.

Dinner was prepared by Kenji and was nice, but other than that I spent most of my evening making drinks rather than consuming them. My drinking goal for the evening (yes, I sometimes have those) was to expand my horizons, so I drank gin and tonics until I didn’t hate them quite so much anymore. I’ve found that the secret is a squeeze of lime and drinking it all while it’s still really, really cold.

The night was made a bit weird by a visit by an asshole, powertripping MIT cop and some intra-house conflict. Rui and Conor nearly got into a fight when Rui got pissed off at him for stealing his cigarettes and started shoving him. Conor doesn’t smoke; he was just fucking around. Also, Conor’s a pretty competent judo practitioner (judoist? It should be), and in his defense he didn’t break Rui, he was just sort of keeping him away. Hashem and Evros were fighting about something, too, but I don’t really know what. There are a lot of people living here who don’t like each other, but it almost never results in real anger and certainly not violence. This was also weird because these aren’t people who don’t like each other, they usually get along fine. I’d say that there was something in their drinks, but I probably mixed them. So I’ll blame the food instead.

I went to bed before sunrise. I also got up and went for a run on Sunday, which surprises me.

Anyway, that was my weekend.

Center of the Universe

In addition to all of the more philosophical (pretentious) stuff I just posted, this is also a journal, and one of the things I really wanted to talk about was this past weekend. On Friday I drove down to NYC with a few friends from No. 6, partly to go to the Annex party at the Sixer apartment in the Upper West Side and partly to get out of the house while we hosted prospective freshmen during campus preview weekend. They annoy me with their bright, "We got into MIT!" faces. Also the house is dry while they're around, and my liver demands consistent exercise. It's like walking the dog, only with more slurred speech.

I'm not even entirely sure what to write about. I know that every time I go to NYC I love the place more and more. I grew up as every good kid who likes to think he's from Boston does, hating New York very passionately. It's just that I try to think of myself as a scientist, and this unsubstantiated ideology demanded testing that proved it to be unfounded. I love New York. I love that it's open all night, and that it's huge and busy and chaotic. I can picture myself living in a few places I've been to. Berkeley for sure. Maybe Tuscany. The idea of Vancouver sounds nice, but I've never been. But I feel like I could absolutely live in NYC. One problem is that I have a biased opinion of the place. I tend to go on weekends, with friends, to have a good time. I've never had to work there, for example, so my memories of the place are all happy and fuzzy. Well, the fuzziness is probably more the booze than anything else.

So this trip had a few high points for me. The first was on Friday night. We went to a bar in the Upper West, and then a few people expressed interest in dancing, so we went downtown to a place called Home. Three of us taxied down with Conor, who as we got out of the taxi told us to have $20 ready and to only talk to the transvestite, but not really anything besides that. So we walked straight past the winding line and Conor palmed the be-lipsticked and fur-hatted man a $20. I guess he was more of a doorman than a bouncer, he wasn't very intimidating. But he said, "4 people is an awful lot for $20", all the while looking with disapprovingly-pursed lips and a frown at my jeans and t-shirt. So I wordlessly hand him my $20 and walk past him. Now, the other two guys with us could have followed me right in, but since Conor had told them to be ready with $20 they each handed him the bills they were holding as they walked in. I think they thought they were paying a cover, the idea of bribery hadn't quite sunken in. Ah well. The inside of the club was really upscale. The people were all attractive and rich, the decor was red and leather and decadent, and the place was packed and bouncing. The DJ was playing 80s music layered with hip-hop beats, think Sweet Child of Mine meets Mos Def. This was also the first place I've ever been to (anywhere) that ignored the public smoking ban. I don't really dance much, so I decided to justify the cover with the fact that Conor was buying the drinks and that I had an opportunity to play anthropologist. I spent a long time watching guys with popped collars get shot down by girls with short skirts. There was everything shy of actual intercourse happening on the couches and against the pillars around the room. My favorite, though, was watching the other wall flowers. I feel like I was having a lot more fun than they were. They seemed to want to be dancing or flirting or whatever, but for some reason weren't. I, on the other hand, knew that I was completely and utterly out of place, and that somehow freed me from feeling uncomfortable, which was pretty cool. After the club we got pizza at the Pizza Bar, outside of which a homeless(?) guy hit me up for a contribution to the Rockefeller Negro Pizza Fund, which is apparently a common line, but it worked on me for a buck. I have a lot easier time giving money to people who make me smile than to people who try to make me feel pity or guilt. Anyway, that night was great.

We followed it up the next day with a an Irish pub brunch that started at 2 and lasted until 6. We rolled into the pub 9 deep, so they opened up the glass doors for us and we basically owned the place for a few hours. We lingered after the meal and had a few pints. I don't normally drink during the day, but there was something so appealing about sitting around after eating, watching people pass on the street, and chatting with friends that justified an exception for me.

We left the pub and I split up with the group to see Ting Qi, a girl I'd met at a party in Cambridge the previous week. She's four degrees of separation from me, a friend of a friend of a friend of a friend, from Taiwan to Costa Rica to Wellesley. Her friend (3 degrees) hooked up with Anton when they were at the house last week, and Ting Qi and I spent the time while she was waiting chatting in Chinese. She goes to NYU, and I mentioned that I would be going down the next weekend, so we decided to get dinner.

I had some time to kill after the pub and before meeting her, which I managed by wandering around Chinatown. That was the farthest south I'd ever been in NYC; I tend to stay more uptown. It was awesome; the feel is completely different. I'm amazed by how quickly the neighborhoods change. You cross an avenue and all of a sudden all of the signs are in Chinese. You cross a street and you're in Little Italy and the restaurant window decorations are signs for cappuccino rather than roasted chickens.

The Grand Street subway station in Chinatown comes up in a park. I saw a big crowd watching people playing handball (which I'd never seen before), so I stuck around. I figured out by watching that this was a grudge match, as far as I could tell between members of gangs. The people on one side of the court all seemed to be wearing blue hats of different types and people standing on the other side all had clothing with hearts on them. There was lots of shouting, some of it angry, and a lot of the spectators seemed to be from the neighborhood but not directly connected to the players. I wish I'd asked someone to tell me what exactly was going on that made this game so important, but I felt like too much of a voyeur and a tourist. So I just watched. I don't know anything about handball; I was trying to figure out the rules as I went, but everyone else seemed to think that it was a really well-played and close game. Only when one team finally won did it occur to me that maybe I didn't want to be around to see the fallout. Nothing dramatic happened. I watched a lot of side bets resolved; big wads of money changed hands. One of the losing players, the guy who missed the last play, walked off quickly, to my mind trying to avoid eye contact with his 2 little children following him out of the court. That handball game is my archetype of New York. There was a tight, local community that I didn't quite understand, a subsection of this huge city that I didn't even know existed. It was a street event that I just stumbled on while wandering around. It was diverse and urban and maybe a bit seedy. I loved it.

So I waited a bit longer, then met Ting Qi and a couple of her friends at the subway station. We walked a few blocks to a Cantonese restaurant, where there was a long wait for a table, during which I recognized several faces from the crowd at the handball game. Dinner was good, and apparently authentic, and my Chinese is definitely getting better, even if we did spend almost all of the time speaking English. After dinner Ting Qi and I went uptown to the No. 6 Annex party, which was fun if unremarkable. Ting Qi went home to Brooklyn (which I've still never been to) at 3 or 4 just as the party began to die down and it started to rain (which hasn't stopped since). The Annex Sixers managed to fit 10 guests on the couches and a small blowup mattress, we watched some Aliens on TV, and all fell asleep.

So that, and a long drive back in the pouring rain and heavy traffic and the dark, was my weekend.

Blog, Round 2:

The last time I posted regularly on a website predated common use of the term 'blog'. I hate the word, if not the idea.

So I'm finally starting up again for two reasons. First, I'm about to graduate, and I feel like it might be smart to write down some of my thoughts and perspectives at this point in case they decide to change quickly and radically, as I they do. Second, I'm about to leave the warm, nurturing embrace (which is the polite way of saying cruel, vice-like grip) of the United States to seek my fortune in far away lands. There may be some of you out there who care about me, maybe even some who will miss me, and this 'web log', if you will, is for you misled fools as much as it is for me.

So, to begin.

Recently I've been thinking a lot about how people's perceptions of me affect who I am. It's very Heisenberg; the fact that you're watching me changes what you're seeing. I was thinking about it from the perspective of fashion, the idea that the clothes that I wear and the way I look have a very immediate impact on my behavior. I think a part of that is because of the differences in the way other people see me and interact with me, which seems common enough. I sort of like having to fight harder for respect when my hair is pink, and I like the surprised look that old people have when the kid with the funny hair is actually pretty fucking smart. I think people perceiving me as rebellious encourages me, at least a little bit, to actually be rebellious in the same way that dressing off the shelf at Wal Mart for a couple of years led me to shut the hell up and be boring. Another, maybe equal part of the change in my behavior is probably driven by personally feeling different. During my stint in theater it was always amazing to me how changed the first rehearsal with costumes was from the one immediately prior.

I haven't decided quite what content I'm going to include here, and for that reason my name has been left off the site and I won't be giving the url to my parents any time soon. The title, "Lei Nuo", is my Chinese name, which translates roughly to "Portends Thunder". I've always been a fan of Native American names, or names that contain meaning from other cultures. Sure, they pop up from time to time in English, but broadly speaking any meaning has been lost in depths of translation. Adam, for example, is Hebrew for 'man', which makes perfect sense, but no one thinks of it. Albert is from the German Adalbrecht, from 'adal', noble, and 'beraht', bright (or 'bright nobility'). A quick Google search told me that our names do indeed have meaning, but they've been convolved and forgotten. In Chinese the modern day language goes straight into the names. You are Bright Flower, or Strong Hero. I didn't choose my Chinese name, but I'm happy and I'm keeping it.

I've recently realized that I don't like a lot of the ways that I've changed since I got to college. A lot of them have been positive. Mellowing, if you will. But the mellowing means that the sharp edges that I look back on and smile about have been ground down. I'm not proposing that I become who I was in high school, just that I might be able to learn something from who I was and maybe regain some of what I miss. With my impending graduation and 7000 mile move I feel like I have a golden opportunity to reinvent myself, and so I'm taking it. I bought cherry red Doc Marten's. I pierced my eyebrow. It's superficial, but it's a start. And, to go along with the new person there's a new name, too. One that, if you will, suggests that just maybe a storm's a comin'.