It’s been tough watching this World Series wanting the Dodgers to win it. What most of America billed as the “Best World Series Game Ever” I had to turn off in the seventh inning on Sunday because it was going to give me a heart attack. Or hemorrhoids.
The Dodgers won a close game tonight 3-1 over the Astros to give us a Game 7. A motherfucking Game 7.
I’ll probably have to leave work early and head home so no one will see me ugly cry when the Dodgers win it.
For years and years I have wanted exposed brains as a costume, and I finally got to do it! Dreams do come true.
It’s a Thursday night and I’m dead tired. After work yesterday, I went to see Front 242 at the Regent Theater in DTLA. Holy motherfucking shit they played quite the set. The beats drive you to move your body, and the next thing you know you can’t stop. You’ve fallen under their spell. This should give you a hint even though this live bit was from nine years ago.
Big kudos to the sound folks at the Regent. The sound was top notch, I didn’t need to put in ear plugs. Well, I probably should have, but all of the levels worked well together.
One thing that was funny was seeing how many old folks there were at the show. It was so bad I could read the texts from people all the way across the theater from me.
I got home around 1 a.m. after which we had a department outing at work. It involved a booze cruise, a three hour tour around Marina Del Rey, booze and the idea of an afterparty which overwhelmed me so much I opted to go brave Westside traffic at 5 pm on a Thursday.
I’m dead tired now. And just think, I have one more day of work left this week. Good night.
I didn’t realize it had been so long, but the last Dodger game I went to was back on April 4, 2014. It was the Dodgers home opener against the Giants where Hyun Jin Ryu got lit up for eight runs in the first two innings. I still can’t believe that was the last Dodger game I had been to.
Well on Sunday, my coworker Rogelio (aka RoRo) got invited by Virgin America to sit in the Emirates Lounge at the Ravine. He invited me, so we went.
It was really nice. The Dodgers won 3-1 behind eight solid innings from Clayton Kershaw. But most of what I remembered was having to schmooze throughout most of the game. There was the sales rep from Virgin America. Then the sales rep from Alaska Air. Then the someone else from Alaska Air. Then the someone else from Emirates Airline. Then more people. One after another after another. It made me thankful I had an endless supply of Sapphire Tonics.
It was exhausting. By the time I got home, I took an hour-long nap.
Considering what my more recent weekends have comprised of, at least I got out of the house.
Fucking Mother! This all started with the Blair Witch Project for me, the fucking excessive use of handheld cameras making the movie viewing experience a nauseous one. I’ve been good about it so far: Nine Songs, Cloverfield, 24 Hour Party People. I managed to avoid having to throw up at a theater.
Well at the Saturday morning matinee of Mother!, I finally got to check something off my proverbial bucket list. About 90 minutes into the film, about where an impromptu book release party happens to a very pregnant Jennifer Lawrence’s chagrin, I ran towards the restroom and started hurling my morning coffee out.
I actually thought about going back after the yakking stopped since the movie was intriguing. But fucking hell. There should be a fucking warning if there is excessive handheld cameras in a film. At the very least let me get some fucking Dramamine.
I guess I’ll watch the final bit of the film once it’s out on VOD.
Usually when I plan a trip, things go smoothly. Reservations aren’t lost. Flights aren’t missed. Everything works. When I got to Denver to pick up my rental car for this Mount Rushmore Labor Day Road Trip Extravaganza, things took a very wrong turn.
Since I don’t have a credit card, apparently you have to drop off the car back at the place you picked it up from if you use a debit card. No matter what I did, it wouldn’t have worked from Cheapo Car Rental, so I just took a Lyft to my hotel and assessed things. I figured if I booked a flight out of Denver, I could make it work with Enterprise. I did. The only catch was they didn’t have anything available until today. So I wound up with an extra day in Denver.
I bought a ticket to the Rockies game and figured I would have to kill time there. Because it was over 90 (but unlike Los Angeles there was no humidity so it was bearable,) I decided to go to the Denver Art Museum. While the architecture was neat:
I was disappointed with the offerings. They had two great exhibits though. The first was “Common Ground: Photographs by Fazal Sheikh, 1989-2013.” He took pictures from refugee camps around the world during this time with a majority focus on women.
Walking through this exhibit I was on the verge of tears the whole time. The images of the mothers particularly at the Mandrea feeding center in Kenya during the Rwandan civil war in the 90s really grabbed me. Their faces betrayed no emotion as they were trying to get their malnourished babies fed. These women were just doing what they had to to keep their babies alive. Also haunting was the fact the a lot of the babies were being tended to by their sisters. Where had the mothers gone? Were they killed during the violence?
It was all just so haunting.
The other great exhibit was “Mi Tierra: Contemporary Artists Explore Space.” One of the first things you notice when you get in is Ramiro Gomez’s mixed-media on cardboard piece about Lupita:
And here is something very pretty from Gabriel Dawe:
Perhaps the best thing about the museum was that since it was the first Saturday, it was free!
And also right outside was the Taste of Colorado festival on the Capitol Grounds which was pretty terrific.
Then heading to Lodo to get close to Coors Field:
And my good seats at Coors Field:
The Rockies ended up losing to the D-Backs 4-2, but it was still a pretty fun day for me.
I went back to my hotel after that and prepared for my next day:
By the way, I did get my rental car and did make it to Mount Rushmore. More on that later.
The sea was choppy and the weather was moist the last couple of days. Humid. No rain fell in Santa Monica today, but all day it looked like things were churning.
One of my coworkers is a contractor who’s time is up next Friday, so we decided to head out to Malibu and get dinner at Gladstones. She regretted not coming out to the beach more since being at Hulu. I figure I should probably go more often. So there I was.
It’s hard for me sometimes to take a deep breath because I’m always paranoid that I’m going to get fired, that any stability that I might have foreseen will be stripped away from me at any minute, that even though they tell me I’m doing a good job right now that sometime real soon something will turn and they will tell me to get out get out I don’t want to see you ever again you fucking bastard.
I know that’s not the case because I do a good job and they wouldn’t have hired me on full time if they didn’t want me there. But there are always those whispers in the back of my mind.
It’s been a year since The Grandmother died. The year has gone by quickly. I’ve gone from being filled with anxiety about reentering the real world and needing to get a job, to going on an epic road trip through PCH and Vancouver and Montana, to getting a job at a really shitty company that didn’t pay me, to coming back to Hulu full time and actually being able to afford shit.
It’s been quite the year. I wonder what the next year will bring.
10 years ago, a bunch of us Angelenos got together and helped make LAist the best fucking blog about all things Los Angeles. Fate and destiny brought us together, but the work and fun we all had helped forge our relationships despite never being in the same room together.
Back then our editor and lordship Tony Pierce would host bbqs where we would finally see each other face to face and have a great time. All of us oldies decided to get back together yesterday, and it honestly felt like being transported 10 years ago. Seeing and catching up with the folks made me wonder if we all got together on a project just how much fun it would be.
Thanks to Tony who planned this, hosted this and even bought the Trump pinata. There were tons of hot dogs, I brought a Hello Kitty ice cream cake and Madd brought a platter of watermelon. We finally went out to beat on the Trump, and what started looking like this:
ended with a tragic accident:
Madd and I ended by getting some sweet tea in her ‘hood and talking for another couple of hours. It was a good day.
Starting Monday, and nearly 10 years after I first interviewed at some YouTube knockoff, I am once again an official Hulu employee. I guess you can come back home.
Like the last two times I returned to Hulu, I started this tenure as a contractor back in April . Unlike those times I wasn’t disgruntled. Part of that has to do with not having the stress of The Grandmother looming over me. Also, I’m not moonlighting as a sportswriter. Oh, and the fact I can Metro it to work and not have to sit through over an hour of traffic helps the psyche a lot.
I’ll just say it’s nice having steady income again and not have to worry about paying bills. Working at the Korean place the last time was just the pits having to juggle bills and all that nonsense.
And just to add to the excitement, my sex toys I ordered from Fort Troff came in! A vibrating dong, buttplug and magnetic nipple tuggers!!!
Next thing you tell me I won the lottery.
