Motivation of the wrong sort

I had a fairly relaxing time this weekend past, probably because I scrapped the idea about a birthday party/house warming. It's more a function of locale and locally available friends than "at-rest" inertial physics that ultimately doomed the endeavor. Friends out of town, friends out of town permanently, friends permanently out of reality (read as: "Steve"), and so on and so forth. That and I didn't have a grill or at least a grilling location that wouldn't involve the Decatur/Atlanta Fire Dept. Plus, I can't honestly say I felt comfortable trying to get people together in honor of my own birthday. Granted, I am an attention-slut, but for some reason I can't do it upfront with "Hey let's party in my name! Uh, I don't drink, but sure, bring your own beer and let's party in my name!".

Earlier on Monday (my actual birthday day 17th), my friend Sara was determined to make my birthday something more than just dinner at a regular haunt. So I suggested a new place I liked, Taqueria Del Sol. Thankfully (yes, thankfully) they were closed on Mondays, and we were forced to find sustenance elsewhere in Decatur. A quick spin and we ended up at Taqueria Del Sol's more creative cousin, Zocalo's. I was happily impressed with the food, and we had the most talkative of servers who told us a deep compounding series of stories that involved revenge pranks. We're talking 20 minutes worth of stories here kids. From his parents' tactics, to his co-workers' demise, we knew everything about him and revenge pranks. Super glued toilet seats, ex-lax margaritas, and the surprise of the night: habenaro sauce on your office chair. The latter is utterly devious. Hot sauce on your office chair will eventually seep into your enemy's skin, providing you with a not so friendly irritation of the most wrong kind. The food was the highlight, but I'll get into that later, as I have yet to learn how to spell anything on that menu correctly.

Afterwards we met up with Shaun and went to go see "Thank you for Smoking". PR Spin at it's best/worst/horrifying/funniest. We saw this movie on the incredible recommendation from my buddy Matt. Matt loved the movie because he IS the spin doctor. The short of it all, go see it.

Friday, I saw the Inside Man with Jodie Foster's legs starring. Oh and Clive Owen, and Denzel Washington, and Willam Dafoe. A thinking flick with humourous dialoge that focuses on the (not-so)-little racial indignities each society as a whole inflects upon itself and others. As for the crime itself, it's rather inexplicable without giving it away.

Saturday, the highlight was the creation of a truckload of mashed potatoes. Though, I'll have to cut back on Mr. Alton Brown's definition of tasty salt since I've switched to using gourmet/kosher salt. It's a bit salty with his recommendation of 2 whole freaking tablespoons. One and 1/4 would have been enough I wager. Taters go great with steak. Yum.

Sunday... I wanted to feed people, but I fed myself. Pot roast! It's fun cooking something as strange as Alton Brown's Pot Roast. Also, Since I was alone this weekend I figured I might as well watch the chick flicks that accumulated on my DVR: Amelie', Wimbledon, the family favorite: An Evening with Kevin Smith (okay so it's not a chick flick, but damn funny).

Quick rundown: Amelie' - HA! + French = the Unpossible come true. I dug it.
Wimbledon - Pure cheese. But I'm in love with Kirsten Dunst. 2/5
An Evening with Kevin Smith - Most fellacio jokes during a series of
interviews....EVER.

-k

Veintisiete Anos; Familia ++ (and obviously late postings)

It's basically impossible to sum up my lifetime in a blog posting, and maybe I'll take on that challenge when I'm 30. I'd need a round number to justify working so hard I guess. In anycase, thank you pre-emptively for your birthday wishes.

One of the more amusing aspects of my birthday (and in correlation my brother's and my cousins') is that for 1 month I'm either the same age as my brother, or the same age as my cousin. My brother Jay is a mere 10 months younger than myself, and my cousin Christopher is 11 months older than me. In fact, the next male cousin in this series (and so far the oldest mentioned) is my cousin Francis. He's only 6 month's older than Christopher. It's no wonder we're all so close.

To better understand the social dynamic of we the Fantastic 4, it helps to know that our 3 mothers are part of a nuclear sisterhood of six Castor family girls. Francis, Chris, Jay and myself are a tight cluster of a larger bunch of first cousins. Growing up it was like having one brother, and 2 half brothers. As you can imagine, we might have fought constantly, but for the most part we were our own little gang. Many times the cluster of cousins older than us would prop us up and adopt us as two distinct armies. The Layug brothers against the Silva-Atraje Conglomerate. Numerous sports and physical challenges ensued with this pitting of tiny titan vs tiny titan. Football, baseball, basketball, boxing (always a family favorite), wrestling (Greco-roman, and WWF) were but some of the activities that minor bloodshed occurred. I think the only really mental game we played was probably 52-card pickup, and even then it only happened 4 times total. (1 per mark). I have no qualms in saying I had a enriching and thoroughly magnificent childhood that warrants jealousy. For those with limiting circumstances, it's hard to compare, since my childhood came with it's own set of 3 other friends/rivals, of which I'm truly lucky to have. But we're not the only cluster to happen, and certainly not the last within our lineage.

My maternal grandfather, Leon had no sons, so I guess his daughters took it upon themselves to churn out babies like there was no tomorrow. All in all, the Six have created 2.5 kids apiece. The turns out like this:

My aunts/mother listed with baby named in order of appearance.

Edna: First out the gate with Noel
Edna: Repeat Victory with Irwin
Merle: Usurper with Dennis
Merle Follow up with Francis
Nimia: Christopher to steal the thunder
Florida: For the steal with the first girl cousin in the family Jannelle!
Irma: Sneaking in with Yours truly
Irma: Nabbing the award for fastest repeat with my "irish" twin Alexir John (Jay)
Nimia: 2nd Girl Jennifer
Florida: 3rd Girl Jeannete
Irma: 4th Girl My sister Kirsten
Claridad: Bringing it back male side of things with Raymond
Claridad: Mixing it up with Katie
Claridad: A trifecta with Robert!
Florida: Coming back with the last first cousin and a girl to boot, Jackie.


At this point, I didn't have time to go any further the entire week on writing, and frankly the post got bloated past all things, because to describe my family probably requires the same amount of time that the 30 year old post would.

So for the record, I'm 27, I'm grown up, and I come from the finest filipino stock this side of the pacific. And I'm tragically late on posting this by 4 days.

-k

White Rabbit

Oddly enough, I typed in this post's title with the intent of alluding to Alice in Wonderland's tardy lagomorph. But I guess you could also associate it with this coming weekend's sucrose packin', plastic grass dealin', egg shell hidin' fiend himself, the Easter Bunny. So I might as well touch on both my intended and unintented meanings.

I'm always running late it seems. Even when I wake up 2 hours before I need to go to work, I still manage to dilly-dally my way into a few minutes of trouble. Not that work is strict or that I'm paid by the hour. I don't even have a long drive. Funny thing is, it's usually all within the same time frame that this happens, so I'm actually on a schedule, just not in synch with everybody else's. I've even tried to offset my clocks to 10 minutes ahead of time, so as to rush me. Though I've done this for so long I think it's actually counterproductive, because I always compensate for the difference in my head. I think I just need to manage my time better, though I always say that. Or I need a red vest and a pocket-watch.

Did you know that the Easter Bunny should really be an Easter Hare? For the short and quick answer, the main difference in the ear sizes and if the young are born naked or hairy. Don't blame me, blame some German-Americans who made up the story that a buck-toothed mammal laid art deco eggs. My personal vote is for the Australian Easter Bilby. Apparently rabbits and hares are considered to be pests so there was a movement to replace the bunny/hare with a long eared marsupial rat. It's freaking ugly, and I'm not sure people should be eating a chocolate representation of such an animal. Also, considering it's minute size... wouldn't laying an egg 60% of your own volume hurt? Explain that to the kids.

There are all sorts of strange and interesting facts/fiction/myths surrounding Easter, and being a Catholic I can say I'm familiar with most, but today was the first day I actually thought that the Easter Bilby/Bunny/Hare/Turtle didn't make sense, and I decided to look it up. Just goes to show that the older you get the wiser you get, though my personal wisening maybe slightly delayed with regards to most others'.

Tree Pollen and Me. (A Tragedy)

I had so many things I wanted to do this past weekend, but for the most part I ended up sleeping. It's my unscientific conclusion that the pollen is eating away at my soul. For the most part, it's actually not too terrible; I'm not crying, sniffling, coughing or convulsing in ways that would require Catholic priests (young and old). But it does tire me out. I feel a general bodily irritation that might constitute a soon-to-become 27 year old itch, and my body is probably fighting off the yellow invaders. Asian? No... domestic aboreal sperm. The entirety of Atlanta is being inundated with springtime beauty and the associated requirements of tree sex.

Of the activities, I really wanted to go to the Atlanta Dogwood Festival, but that would have required waking up early, and finding parking somewhere around 8am. Wasn't going to happen considering my recent trip to Chicago had me up at 4am (EST) every night for a week. So I spent the day napping away the hurt. Thankfully my decision was justified, considering the rains that fell, a small reprieve from the pollenic onslaught of the week.

But, my decision was not so smart on Sunday. The day was amazingly beautiful, and the flora thought it was the most perfect time to amp up their sperm production. Girls, flowers are not overtly feminine, according to my calculations, they're hornier, and less restrained than the men who give them to you, albiet only during a few months a year. Hence, I slept most the entire day. What a freaking pisser. Though, from a portrait photographer's standpoint it was terrible to go out in, not a single cloud in the sky. Diffused lighting is far more flattering to skin than harsh noonish sun. So as far as having fun in great weather I missed out, but blame the sleep-eze brought on by pollen; on the other hand, I wouldn't have been able to do what I wanted to do anyway.

My goal today after I scarf down some of tasty remnants of last nights dinner, is to walk over to Lullwater park here at Emory and see if I can't make something happen with light, nature, a lens and a 8.2 megapixel digital sensor. Oh I should probably do some work too ;-)

In other news, good thing I brought my camera. Home opener for the braves? Badass. Hope we can score some tickets.

A melody softly soaring through my atmosphere

Artist: Death Cab for Cutie
Venue: Tabernacle (Atlanta)
Opening Act: The Cribs

Audience: Myself, M-scribbles, and every girl under the age of 21 in the greater atlanta area, and their respective boy toys + mothers.

Even though I was surrounded by quite possibly the girliest audience seen since a Jack Johnson or a John Mayor concert, I had a great time last night at the Tabernacle. The opening band was the Cribs (an english rock family trio). Simple, but highly energetic and punchy, it almost seemed a strange juxtoposition with the overly contemplative Deathcab. ( Take in mind that most of this tour Franz Ferdinand is the Co-headliner with Deathcab, which helps the relative incongruitity smooth out) I could listen to the Cribs, but I don't think the Deathcab audience was prepped to be rocked hard so early in the evening, though in my eyes they did a good job, but probably went over the heads of the O.C. crowd that seemed to infest the Tabernacle.

When the main event started, I felt so soiled by the blinding ignorant flashes from every single digital camera that emerged from a purse or pocket. Ben Gibbard's so lucky to not be epileptic. I'm a photographer by nature, and if you're listening out there, your shitty little digital camera's flash is quite possibly the most flaccid and annoying thing since Bob Dole's pitch. If you really want pictures of your favorite artist, sneak in a small pocket film camera with iso 1600 film. You'll probably think you're some kinda Liebovitz if you compare the results to your $300 "shit"ital cam. It's just plain rude these days to be part of the stalkerazzi.

Once the flash flood subsided, some actual music could be enjoyed. For the most part, everything sounded immaculate. Majority of the material was plucked from Plans and Transatlanatiscim, along with a smattering of older fan favorites. Bodies were moving, girls were swooning and the house got LOUD. So loud that a few times Ben's mike had to be upped just to cut over the band trying to cut over the crowd. Not to make a new generalization of the fanbase, but there were alot of females there. It's my guess that with the higher ratio of soprano voices, the db levels were on par with a shuttle launch. I was riding in a vehicle powered by girls screams, and it made me dizzy, but I had a great time. Death Cab is a great live band, because they're so spot on. They maintain the sound of the album, but at the same time, it's more energetic, and has a great spontaneous feel to it. The instrumental sections of songs were highlighted and savored, as opposed to just being time filler. A few times Ben broke out into singer/guitarist/percussionist all in the same song, and then blew the crowd away when a second but diminutive drum kit was brought out so he could jam and trade diddles with drummer Jason Mcgerr.

All in all a great show, with the only shortcomings coming from the crowd, I can say that I'll definately catch the next Death Cab show. And I suspect my unwitting victim in all of this ,M-scribbles, would too.

(fo)Cussing out of focus

This is a photo of my cousin Christopher and his wife Imee. It started off as a very out of focus color digital, but the end result tells the story I wanted in the first place. My stylish cousins at a glance with a glance. A little noise, a little black and white, some upping of the contrast, and a little bit of blowout turns it into something I can look at and feel that I've done their images justice.