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January 31, 2005Sake, Taiko, and my NoHo nightingale floors...
Tonight was fun—vegetable curry and sake-bombs at Curry House in Little Tokyo with members of the UCR Taiko Club, followed by the mad Taiko skillz of Kodo. And, as good as Kodo is, getting a chance to catch up a bit with the folks in the Taiko Club before and after the show was as much fun for me as the actual performance itself.
I’m thrilled with my current situation, but I’d be lying if I said it didn’t make me just the slightest bit sad to hear folks discussing upcoming rehearsals and club chitchat after the performance. We’re still friends, and I’m thankful for it, but it’s not the same with my not being there to take part in the experiential minutiae that binds people together. Really, having to put the kibosh on my Taiko involvement is the only downside to having moved out to North Hollywood. As many folks have told me, I could easily find a Taiko group out here with which to align myself. But it wouldn’t be the same. I enjoyed the drumming, but I enjoyed the specific personalities in the club just as much, if not more.
Oh well. It sounds like I made a positive impression during my brief time in the club, and it’ll be fun (if a little bittersweet) to watch everybody kick some Taiko ass in their concert in April.
In other news, there’s going to be a kabuki performance at the Cerritos Center for the Performing Arts in late June. There’s nothing about it on the CCPA site, but they were giving out fliers about it at Kodo tonight, urging the Japanese American Cultural and Community Center members to get in on the priority ticket sales before they become available to the general public on April 18.
The tickets are steep, the cheapest seat being $65, but it’s money I’ll be happy to spend. Cheapskate though I may be, I’ll cough up whatever amount I have to in the name of kabuki. I researched it as a theatrical genre a few quarters back and was absolutely enthralled by it—to the point where I e-mailed Professor Samuel Leiter in New York and thanked him for writing such an interesting and informative encyclopedia on the subject, and received a very nice reply in return.
And speaking of feudal Japan, I’ve decided to regard my squeaky floorboards in a more historically favorable light and think of them as sections of my very own nightingale floor—which served as a sort of home-security system, squeaking when trod upon to betray the presence of otherwise undetected burglars or assassins. I don’t know what’ll eventually do me in, or when, but so long as I live in this apartment, I needn’t fear ninja attack.
(My thanks to the ancient "Sword of the Samurai" PC game, which first alerted me to the existence of such things way back when; it was bundled with the OG "Pirates," and is similarly deserving of a remake.)
My windows are ninja-proof, too, it would seem. A few nights ago, just as I was going to sleep, the wind picked up for the first time since I’ve lived here. I’m dozing off, and life is good. Suddenly, the windows start that buzzing rattle that I’ve always associated with earthquakes—and I hate earthquakes. In an instant, I’m wide awake, my reptilian brain having dumped the “Crap—impending racial death!” adrenaline into my bloodstream. My heart is pounding like a cardiac John Henry, and all I want is to leap into a doorway and hold on for dear life. But nothing’s shaking—curious.
This happened two more times before I figured out the wind was to blame, not that my reptilian brain was convinced. It was very diligent about snapping me to attention whenever the windows rattled. Luckily, the wind died down the next day and I didn’t have to weather a repeat performance. And if ninjas eschew crossing through my living room in favor of creeping in through my bedroom window, their first traitorous breath against my windowpane will send it a-buzzin’.
I haven’t found a way to Pollyanna my brown tap water or the cacophonous neighbor children into something interesting or positive, but the week is young yet…
Posted by patrick at 12:22 AM | Comments (3)
January 20, 2005
Various stuff...
First things first: Congratulations to my cousins--my cousins and not each other's, that is to say--Darren and Becky on the birth of their first son and second child, Ethan Daniel Seitz, who weighed in at seven pounds, four ounces.
Birth weights are a curious thing to me. I always wonder what they're supposed to portend in the long run. I was born at a measly three pounds, three ounces--a 66th of my current weight. Meanwhile, you could have a baby born at seven or eight pounds who ends up as a rather petite woman--somebody for whom their birth weight was perhaps a 15th or 18th of their eventual total. Heck, if Ethan were to hold to my growth ratio, we'd be looking at 478 pounds of Seitz.
And that, my friends, is a lot of Seitz.
Between school and work, I've been pretty busy this last half a week. I find myself falling into a behavioral quirk of my father's (or so my mom told me)--namely, going long stretches of time without eating. Luckily, I had my first full-fledged grocery run in the new place today, so I stocked up on yogurt (and apropos of nothing, I just recently learned that Boysenberry yogurt is supposed to be gray--I just always thought it'd gone bad), bananas, pepperoni, paper towels, and other essentials of life. When I finally break the fast, I won't have to rely on 7-11 Spicy Bite hot dogs for all of my nutrients (just the fat, sodium, and nitrates).
Speaking of essentials, I encountered the following headline on Yahoo! News a few minutes ago:
"Diet deemed problem for tsunami survivors"
I must be turning into an Angelino; my knee-jerk reaction in that first fraction of a second before actual thought occurs was, "Shouldn't they drop the diet until their villages are in better shapes?" I certainly don't mean to make light of that tragedy, but you have to admit, the choice of wording in the headline has a bit of the gallows humor to it.
I cleared out the last of my stuff from my old apartment last Saturday, gave it the cleaning it had wept for during most of my tenure there, and turned in my keys. Between turning in my TA keys and my old apartment keys, my keychain is getting mighty sparse. If I take off that weird belt-loop hook-thing that I never use and jettison the Tasmanian Devil figure, it'll be too light for comfort. I need ballast, lest I lose track of them in my pocket and not notice their having slipped out. Maybe I could solder the main loop to an old railroad spike, or something.
The first volume of "Rumiko Takahashi Anthology" came out a week ago yesterday, although it took me until Sunday night to get my hands on a copy. I did the script adaptation for the first and third episodes, and it was still a real shot in the arm to hear my words being acted. It was odd how the background music popped back into my head after just a few notes of each different ditty--or not so odd, I guess, given how many times I heard them looping, looping, looping, looping as I adapted the dialogue.
Not much else to report. I've treated myself to a little "Arc the Lad" in my downtime, although I'm reaching that point where I wonder if I want to dedicate X number of hours into finishing it. They're tossing those "win 100 battles in a row for a bitchin' weapon"-type side-quests at me, and I don't want to find out down the line that I needed said bracelet or shield to take out the Final Boss trash. What I really hanker for is the new Sid Meier's "Pirates!", which I probably won't even bother to buy until I've finished the MFA program.
And then I'll play it for three days solid. Y'arrrr.
Posted by patrick at 01:15 AM | Comments (6)
January 08, 2005
My first post of 2005...
Today was a real red-letter day for my new apartment in North Hollywood. Not only did the onsite manager swing by and wire my ceiling fan/light fixture combo to allow for circulation and light, but the gas company sent by their representative to check out (and subsequently light) my heater, stove burners, and oven. My new place has never been so well-lit, or so warm, as it was today.
I hadn’t planned on doing a journal update this evening, but a certain somebody (named Jon) left a comment in the most recent entry before this, gently suggesting that it was high time for one. If I were the petty, tit-for tat sort, I might point out the fact that Jon’s own blog (which far eclipses mine in both importance and caliber of writing) is in need of some new ammo, having lain dormant since December 8th.
But I’m not the petty, tit-for-tat sort, so I won’t mention it. : )
I’m almost completely moved in now. In retrospect, it’s a good thing I wasn’t able to put in my 30 days’ notice at my old place any sooner than I did, as this non-stop rain we’ve been having in both North Hollywood and Riverside has slightly hampered my efforts to get my stuff schlepped over. I have until the 16th to be totally out of my Riverside apartment, which is good since the weather looks like it’ll be putting the kibosh on my plans to move that final carload tomorrow afternoon.
The acclimation is coming right along. I’ve located the nearest Ralph’s, the nearest library (whose used book sale shelf is nothing to write home about, compared to the A.K. Smiley in Redlands, or even the Riverside Main Branch--yeah, like I need more used books), the nearest movie theater, and all the pertinent freeway on-ramps. I’m mourning the loss of University Village, which was my one-stop destination for movies, games, boba, coffee, cheap used VHS tapes, Chinese food, Chinese food, and Chinese food (no typo, that—there’s a profusion of Chinese restaurants in there). Hunting down replacement locations for myself in the vast consumer rainforests of Los Angeles will be fun, but until I’ve found them, I can’t help but long for UV’s expediency.
Other perks/discoveries:
The neighbors’ penchant for loud music means I won’t be weathering any complaints when I start rehearsing my arias for voice class. I see your American Top 40 and raise you Verdi at the top of my lungs.
Even though this incessant rain has flooded the building’s parking area to the point of uselessness, we could hold one hell of a Rubber Duck Regatta.
I’ll never want for a panderia (which sell bread, and not pandas, for my fellow gringos).
The heat-lamp in the bathroom waited a full ten seconds after I walked into my bedroom to have one of its three UV bulbs explode. I’m considering that a warning shot, the announcement of a now-formal duel between it and myself, the luxury of which it didn’t have to grant me.
All good-natured kvetching aside, though, this apartment is a pretty good deal—comparable in size and rent to what I had in Riverside, which I hadn’t expected on being able to find. It’s no verdant wonderland like my last place, but you can’t have everything. Another thing I won’t have is the huge commute out to L.A. for voiceover work—I’m now a stone’s throw away from two of the three recording studios at which I work.
The website changes I predicted will be happening—it’s just a question of when. I’ll be reconfiguring my blog in Movable Type, and dumping all my old entries and comments into it. I need to get some quick answers from Mike Barre on how to make some of these changes, though. Maybe I’ll call him tomorrow afternoon…
And, apropos of nothing, Happy New Year.
Posted by patrick at 11:31 PM | Comments (5)