i can't think of anything

that beats driving through the city of angels at 3am looking for hole in the wall mexican food with the people i love.

2:30am. mike, akanksha and tony jump into the maxima and leave westwood for el tapatio taqueria in glendale. living here all my life, i've always been a side streets kind of guy, taking the freeway only when necessary. having to haul ass across town to satisfy a late night mexican food craving counts as necessary, so we raced onto the 405. i'd much rather have taken the scenic route--sunset (to shout at the inebriated clubbers) to vermont (where the more classy drunks stumble out of the dresden and the derby) to los feliz (where the coyotes hang out) to glendale blvd--but seeing as el tapa closes at 3 on friday the exception had to be made. after a few wrong turns along the 101 through the valley, we finally make it at quarter past 3. we cross our fingers, hoping that they'll still be open--we knock at the window, lo and behold, someone is indeed there. yet he informs us that the kitchen is closed; mike offers him extra money to still make us something, but the cooks have departed for the evening, he tells us.

"is there anything open 24 hours around here?"
"yeah, yoshinoya and jack in the box are around the corner."
"are there any mexican food places open?" we don't want fucking yoshinojack.
uncertain, he responds in the negatory.

we ask the fellows hanging out in the parking lot, one of them getting their car towed.
"dos burritos, on sunset and alvarado. it's 24 hours."




of course. there has to be 24 hour mexican food in echo park. before we got on the freeway, we made a stop at glendale's le sex shoppe. the first and last time i'd been was during senior in high school. akanksha has never been to one, not even in india. so after much convincing, we take a short field trip inside. business as usual,it seemed, with the 4am crowd droping off their videos and swiftly browsing the new arrivals wall.




onward. we take the 2 all the way to the end, and we see this one place that says 24 HOUR MEXICAN FOOD. it wasn't dos burritos, but it satisfied our criteria for hole in the wall mexican cuisine. of every other night this 24 hour establishment could have been closed (technically it should never close, no?), it chose tonight. it's okay, we told ourselves, dos burritos will not disappoint.





so we make our way up alvarado to sunset, passing the american apparel store and a few lavanderias. believe me, dos burritos did not disappoint. it didn't even exist. at the corner we found king burrito, which was what our boys might have been talking about, but it too was closed. defeat never hurt so bad. we drove home, passing a few 24 hour places--more jack in the boxes, a dennys, the uber-hip brite spot--but we wanted nothing to do with all that. we made our way back to westwood, even passing the benito's in santa monica. i guess we were in such low spirits that not even the old standby could cheer us up. only el tapatio's chorizo burrito and tacos al pastor will do. now it's 7am and i'm hungry and tired and need to be up in a few hours. a waste of a night?



hardly. it was worth every closed taco stand, dildo, and ounce of gasoline. i fucking love this city and the people with whom i experience it.

a recurring theme of the past week

seems to be that i am the most unreliable person ever. at least the trend of late has been to tell me so. in the past month i've either missed or been late to a few staff meetings--2, if you must know--, and my boss approached me about this. i don't want to sound like i'm making excuses for myself, but to put a positive spin on the situation, i've been both on time and present to the other 25 meetings, which is a pretty good track record for the year. might i add, these meetings are fucking useless about 75% of the time (they are part of the 'meaningless organizational bullshit' i mentioned a few weeks back). i tried to explain to boss k that there's something called academics that takes up a good portion of my time, and that this being my last quarter the frequency of papers and all-nighters has increased significantly while hours of sleeping and eating have been irregular and scant, if not totally missing from the equation. we basically ended the conversation with the mutual understanding that i need to keep everything together for the next few weeks. believe me, i kept it together after that. and by 'kept it together,' i mean that i missed the end of year staff appreciation dinner on the day after our little chat. not purposely, mind you, i just totally forgot about it. on friday i get an angry email from k berating me for missing the dinner, which i found to be unnecessary and patronizing. you can't dictate when and with whom i'm gonna eat my fucking dinner. i'd understand if i weren't doing my job, but please don't micromanage and get in a hissyfit if i missed a stupid dinner.

that's over with, but here's the punchline. i discussed the whole situation with one of my best mates, to vent more than anything else. two days later, he sends me an email written in frustration, basically telling me that i am the most unreliable person ever. at first i thought it was a joke, but as a i read on i realized it wasn't. i'd be lying if i said he was completely unjustified in saying what he said. but then again, i had no idea he felt this way, and i get the feeling--no, fuck that, i absolutely know that he talked this over with a few other people. all i'm saying is that if this really bothered him, i'd rather him tell me in person rather than via email. because seriously, email was the absolute worst way to vent his frustration, seeing that i received pretty much the same email from my boss the day before. maybe they teamed up to write it together. i don't care. let's look at this again, this is just beautiful:

k makes tony feel shitty via email.
tony vents to m.
m helps tony feel better.
the next day m sends tony email ridiculously similar to k's.
tony feels shitty, yet again.

life is grand.

in regards to the whole being flakey deal, it's something i'm rarely aware of and that i'm always working on. but i'm not gonna sit here and let people take turns calling me unreliable. i've seriously used that word a hundred fucking times already. i never want to use, hear, or read it again. ever. when people are in trouble or truly need something, i will not hesitate to offer my help, bail em out of a tough situation or do whatever needs to be done, especially for the people i care about, hell even for people i'm not too particularly fond of. but goddammit, don't get mad at me for missing your fancy dinner, and if you have something to say to me, know that there are better fucking ways to do it than through stupid electronic mail. god forbid people actually converse face to face anymore.

happy monday.

one of my most and least favorite places to be

is alone with my thoughts. i think it's important to spend time alone to reflect and mentally organize your life. i get a lot of crap for not hanging out, which everyone seems to take personally rather than as me simply not wanting or needing to be around people. don't get me wrong, i love the people in my life and sometimes go nuts when i'm not around them. but that doesn't mean that there aren't times when i'd rather be sitting under a fucking tree, caffeinated and nicotined, watching the wheels with the magnetic fields providing the soundtrack.

but contemplating things by yourself can also be the most terrifying fucking place in world. like right now. 5 in the morning is the worst time this could possibly happen. everyone's asleep, so there's no one to talk to. the silence is deafening, as is the traffic in my head. i can't get myself to fall asleep, so of course i get to thinking about heavy shit. like aging parents and pets and how everyone you hold dear to you will eventually go away, some without warning, others with fair amounts of. people take it as bad news when they're told that their loved ones have x days or months or years left in them. bad news, yes, but it's good in that at least you know to brace yourself. at least someone is telling you, because really, we should all be reminded that everyone, ourselves included, can go just like that. i can't help but mentally replay the last scene from silverlake life, where tom and peter dance to "i met him on a sunday." definitely the most beautiful yet tragic documentary film moment i've ever seen.

ah, fuck. most depressing post ever.

i'm gonna stop. i never ask to think about these things, i don't think any of us do. but it's better than ignoring or denying the reality that tomorrow--yours, mine, someone else's--is uncertain.

now i will try to end on a positive note.

but isn't this how we know we're alive? yeah, we're all dying, at different rates. but knowing that we're gonna be gone one day is what makes us tick. and i'm not only talking about death--let's say you're relocating for school or work, and that you only have a few months left in your city, the one in which you may have envisioned yourself settling down. knowing that you're leaving makes you appreciate home a million times more. what makes life great and chipper is appreciating today for today simply because you're alive and tomorrow is not a fucking guarantee.



good night.

life is expected to happen during the day--

hours of class, work, stores, restaurants etc are centered around the lives of 7am-7pm people.

i wish either
a) that everything was open 24 hours, or

b) that there will be a mass shift in the societal perception of the 'daily schedule' so that the 10pm to 6am people ('zombies') can be satisfied as well.

i'd much rather go to class/work at night and sleep in the day. an ideal weekday would flow something like this:

4pm-5pm: wake up + breakfast (it wouldn't be called breakfast anymore, we'd come up with something new)
7pm-midnight: class (i don't know what will replace this time when i'm no longer in school)
midnight-1am: 'lunch' break
2am-10am: work
10am-4pm: sweet sweet slumber.

then again that might make me go fucking batty.

and now, one of the most awkward moments ever caught on tape.


matt, this one's for you. cheers.

"if photography is truth,

then cinema is truth twenty-four times a second." (Godard)

that being said, enjoy the sic transit gloria video blog pointless film #1.

austin is full of characters. (click above)

good night.

i got a feelin, it didn't come free,

i got a feelin and then it got to me.

saw spoon at amoeba. what i like about this band is that they've managed to stay away from all of that contrived franzferdinandblocpartykillers 3rd rate wire/gang of four crap and produced yet another quality rock and roll record. solid. i've listened to it maybe 4 times since i got it a few hours ago. standing next to us was a curly-haired redhead who was using a 35mm admist a sea of digital cameras. god forbid that people actually put any work into developing their photos anymore. curly-haired 35mm girl, i salute you.



afterwards matt and i went to carney's (has nothing to do with carnivals or carnival-folk). maybe it's because i haven't been there in a while, but i'm pretty damn sure they increased the size of their burgers. this is a good thing.

speaking of victuals, the night before we made a midnight drive to el tapatio taqueria in glendale. that chorizo and egg burrito was worth every single one of those 20 miles. a suggestion to drive down to san diego for some santana's was entertained fondly for a few minutes. speaking of mexican food, i stumbled upon this blog. i fucking love it.

we took side streets home, in no rush to get back to the lameness that is westwood. we wanted to go ghost-hunting, yet akanksha whined that 3 wasn't a good enough sized group for the task.


"why do we need more people?"
"because i'm most likely to get killed if there's only three of us," she replied. "i'm the minority."

brilliant reasoning. anyway, ghosts supposedly abound in los angeles. if i had to guess, i'd say that any one of the old, abandoned historic hotels in downtown would be the ideal spot for paranormal activity. or any abandoned warehouse. the last couple of times i went home ghostbusters 1 & 2 happened to be on, on separate occasions. so i know what i'm talking about. now all we need is equipment and an abandoned firestation that we can use as headquarters and last but not least, a horn-rimmed glasses-wearing secretary from manhattan.

on a side note, in keeping up with what's new and happening i signed up with the internet archive for free video hosting (found this link on anti's blog). it's been a day and my video is still about number 15 in the queue. yesterday it was number 17. hopefully that will be ready soon so i can share my pointless, low-quality avis with the world.

stayed up all night

working on assignments that i found out weren't even due today and was consequently one hour late to my first class. since it was raining i wouldn't have minded staying home. i hate wet socks and using umbrellas. rain in los angeles should be like snow days in other states, with everyone getting a free day off and what not.

on a work-related note, three co-workers from the building next door were fired. actually, two were fired and one resigned out of frustration. if you ask me they should've all resigned. let me take this opportunity to say how fucking stupid it is that they were all let go--i can't really go into detail, because 1) i'm late for class and 2) i don't want to upset anyone else who might work for the machine who happens to read my blog. there is no consistency in this organization. there are 12 different staffs, all with directors who report to a group of super-directors, which i believe answers to a smaller group of uber-directors. and within and between each staff there is so much hierarchical and organizational bullshit that makes me question why i've been working here for 3 years. all i will say is that if those 2 were let go, then i know at least 100 other people who should be fired as well, including myself. let me put it this way: there are two aspects to this job, the first part has the potential to be incredibly rewarding personally, the second part being absolutely meaningless. they were fired for violating one of the policies meant to satisfy the latter, like so many others who hold that same position.

totally unrelated, i saw eve ensler speak this evening. she was wonderful. afterwards as she signed my copy of the vagina monologues i told her how i wholeheartedly agree with her on how academics are trained to be so tragically disconnected from their bodies and how we should all strive to attain groundless reality. because it is only when we disattach ourselves from the possessions and titles and roles and categories to which we so desperately cling that we can truly be free.

today is one

for the history books.


it's not only election-time over there in the u.k., but here at the university as well. i've never been too big on campus politics, because it seems that the students get fucked regardless of who is in power. so when i voted, i did so less out of agreement with platform/ideology/promises of a campus ski-lift, but more as a personal favor to friends who are running and/or based on personality of the candidates; i've been in classes and have worked with these people, so chances are if i've experienced them to be a douche bag they didn't get my vote. simple.

it being cinco de mayo, i'll celebrate with my choice of mexican beer. on a related note, many lausd parents didn't send their kids to school today thanks to rumors about continued violence between african-american and latino students.


finally--what is considered to be more important by many--, disneyland turned 50. oh joy. disney, i salute you for being perhaps the world's most powerful corporation. continue to brainwash the world's youth with your promotion of capitialism and perpetuation of jaded race and gender stereotypes. yeah, you have produced some excellent films and clever cartoons. but that doesn't change the fact that you are a heartless machine.

why is it that instead of studying

i find myself screwing around with mike and emily at dolores, brainstorming ideas for our private investigation business and wasting money on the love-meter?



on which i scored a whopping 109. according to that score i am 'out of control.' yikes.


i'd be lying if i claimed to be in control. on the contrary it seems that i've been able to exert little or no control at all with regards to getting things done, particularly in the last few weeks. if anything i've been ridiculously lazy. unproductive. unorganized. unhealthy. apathetic. those of you who know me are probably saying, "what else is new?" and to that i say, er, nothing, because you're right. maybe it's because there are only around 50 days of school left in my undergraduate career, give or take a few since i don't have class on friday.

or maybe it's because last week i watched both dig! and end of the century which have contributed to me entertaining the idea of second-grade-teacher-by-day-rocker-n-roller-by-night.

regardless, i have grown weary of the whole school thing. things will be better when this week is over. in the meantime i have to study and fashion a few duct-tape wallets and bags to share for my 120 class; the professor has us share any 'special interests/talents' at the end of class on wednesday. how cool is that.