FAT CAT
there is a fat, fat inky black cat that chills in our backyard. it is HUGE. sometimes it hangs out on the (adult sized!) table (built by papabasco), as below, or sometimes on the porch of the playhouse (which also happens to be made of the exact same wood boards). i took a pic, and included the plants for size comparison.



if you click on the photo, it actually looks like i photoshopped the bottom of the cat 'circle' since for some reason the cat's belly is a different black. yeah, like if i had mad crazy fur photoshop skillz.
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i spent the weekend hanging out with my mom, consuming godiva dark chocolates, and spending lai see from laurie (sucka). my mom reminded me of a ritual we used to do every now and then when we were wee ones - we used to clear the dining table in the living room and have a special candlelight dinner. my parents used the long skinny candles (none of that tea light bullshit) and also real wine glasses from which we drank apple cider. it wasn't for a special occasion, just a way to make a normal dinner special. it was the delight of my young life, those nights, and laur and i would fight to blow out the candles first. now my mom and i drink sparkling wine sometimes from those glasses, and pass out watching tv at 9 pm.

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photos from our hike in marin last weekend. i took the most rad shots in the set:




steve in non-business casual hiking outfit

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happy fourth year of this blog!

SPEAKS FOR ITSELF


i want a mia farrow haircut + chloe dress!

HOW HOTT ARE THESE??



by hellen

get em now, see em at moma later

THIS WEEKEND I SAW A MAN SLAP ANOTHER MAN IN THE FACE
i noticed something while at the outlets this weekend - dido is the music of choice for all outlet stores. i heard a dido song in each store i went into AND in the fresh choice.

the weekend was freakishly warm (high 60s). went with em, mike, and steve to matrix bar in the marina. man, i have not been to the marina in over 2 years, and i have to say - it sucks so much more than it did when i was a marina goer, circa 2003. now everyone there is a dorky rich person, which means they probably work in tech. really really sad place to be.

saturday it was super warm, and steve and i went on a hike in the marin headlands. we came back and had a nice picnic with our shoes off in front of the palace of fine arts. that night we had the best soon doo boo i've ever had at pyung chang in oakland. i burned my tongue off cuz i was stoned and you know how you can't control yourself from eating things? anyways, we then went to a party at a friend of alex's in emeryville in one of those new apt complexes. the feel was as if ikea had designed alcatraz prison. there was a dog running around that had the most human face i had ever seen. also the birthday boy got really fucked up and started re-enacting the 300 trailer (kicking people down a hole) that made ALL THE DUDES crack up no mater how much he did it. and HE SLAPPED A GUY PLAYING WII IN THE FACE TWICE. the look on that guy's face was one of shock and embarrassment. but unlike charlie murphy he could not retaliate, i think cuz it was the slapper's birthday. anyways, that was a life milestone for me.

also, hao helped us realize that asian men from the east coast are way harder than west coast asian men. west coast asian men are essentially wimps - almost all east coast asian men i have ever known have been more "street" than the average west coast asian dude. meaning - they drink and party harder (on average) and can hold their own in a fight. hao says this is because there are so many fewer asians on the east coast, so asian men get picked on by whites/blacks a lot growing up and have to defend themselves. i know this is a huge generalization, but some truth to it?

sunday we had irish breakfast at the bitter end with alex and biff. robot: i had black pudding!! white pudding - yummy. black pudding (aka blood sausages) - OK. that night we went to rye (they now show indie rock videos on the brick wall, very cool), then r bar (hello marina in the tenderloin), and then ended the night dancing at alpha bar (and being only ones on the dancefloor). every time i go out with em, mike, and steve, we always make breakthroughs about the opposite sex. this time, i was stunned to learn that dudes don't know that selena songs (r & b slow jams in general) are great music to make out to.

monday was my granmother's 80th birthday luncheon at tommy toy's (food not that great):

me + granny

me + frootums

and finally some old photos of granny:

WEEK OF CULTURAL PURSUITS
tuesday steve and i saw lily allen at great american music hall! it was an all-ages, mtv-sponsored show. need i say more about that. BUT it was a great show, and she did play my fave song of hers.





i didn't realize until i saw these pics that her necklace was a machine gun. i thought it was a oddly non-holiday inappropriate reindeer. and she had huge door knocker earrings. RAD.


steve says lily is cute but not cutesy and also tough. he says i am also this way. i suspect this is a line, but i will take this compliment. :P

wednesday we had our anniversary dinner at clementine, a french place on clement and 3rd ave. it was good, go for the $25 prix fixe, but you will be surrounded my old folks, FYI. the place is also super-french, as in, the host greets you with a 'BON JOUR MADAME!" with gusto. for some reason i can't keep myself from snickering every time french people get all super-french on me. we did have the escargots, which i thought tasted like grass until steve pointed out that taste was basil. indeed.

thursday em, alex, and i met on the last car of a precisely scheduled bart train from the city to berkeley where we met steve and chris to see a live taping of npr's 'wait wait don't tell me' at zellerbach. we'd been planning this trip since october (huge nerds). i've never been part of a live radio audience - it was so fun! notes: carl kasell is all business - he doesn't even break a smile during the whole show. i also envisioned him to be much heavier, with multiple chins, but he is normal sized. phil bronstein was the guest, and someone from the balcony yelled 'KOMODO DRAGON!' at him as soon as he came out. too funny. lastly, a lot of white people were in the audience - are we surprised? it was npr and berkeley.

this is not exactly a cultural pursuit, but we watched a 'daria' movie on dvd; i didn't know steve was a huge daria fan. saturday night was frank's birthday, so i put on my trench and galoshes (been raining all week) and we all went down to tunnel top. it was oddly super crowded and playing really shitty hip hop (also odd), so we made the usual migration to lucid (aka fluid to steve). lucid, our favorite old standby and site of my birthday, was a bitch - really really hot inside, crowded, playing bad hip hop ALSO, and with an anal guy at the door who said that if we wanted to smoke outside and stay, we had to stay on "the black part" - i.e. the floor right outside the club, of which there was no discernable difference from the sidewalk besides color. SOME BULLSHIT.

the revelation of the night was that people who grew up in socal (and maybe other places as well?) did not grow up with everyone at their school listening to hip hop. this was nuts to em and i - in san frncisco, all school-aged children must listen to hip hop, almost exclusively. we've both went to multiple KMEL summer jams growing up, and just assumed everyone else grew up devoted to hip hop too. CRAZY!! who are you people?!? did anyone else grow up in a place where all your friends and people in your school listened to only hip hop?

today the sun came way out, and we went to moma. the best part, besides an animated video based on the tommy lee-pamela anderson sex tape, was that they had esprit marketing stuff in the 'design' section. man, that esprit logo was THE logo of my childhood fashion. the e, made of three lines? so great. ah memories of little fashionista lisa!

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one more thing: last week we went to the MJ 30th anniversary party.


i almost didn't go, but then i realized, why else did i go into magazines besides to go to cool parties? steve took some pics, and we played spot the non-white person. can you?



as melanie (a pescatarian, who i later forced to eat meat at rosamundes!) sayeth: "all the parties i go to are either at 111 minna or mighty. all the artsy parties are at minna and all the tech parties are at mighty."

COLD BLOODED

an email from the AAJA new york listserv (regarding this letter about blacks being consistently mis-ID'd in captions) - reminds me of berlin!:

>
> From: Vivian Toy
> Subject: Re: [aaja-nyc] "Guess they think we all look alike."
>
> Thanks for sharing.
>
> I know this is a bit off-topic, especially since I'm not a well-known black person and at best a barely-known Asian person, but could I just chime in that in my 12 years at the NYT, I have been constantly misidentified by my own NYT colleagues.
> I've been called Jane Lii, Winnie Hu and Jenny Lee by people ranging from masthead editors to an editor for whom both Winnie and I had worked at different times.
> If they don't bother to keep their fellow journalists straight, why would they care about some random celebrities who just happen to grace our pages?

IN HONOR OF THE ANNIVERSARY
the highly accurate couple's sleeping test, via mcsweeney's - p.s. laurie taught me the knees up trick (blocks the cuddling! and works every time)

Find your own pose!

colin meloy of the decemberists on fresh air - swoon

my former fellow intern and cubicle mate at MJ in 2005 wrote this week's times magazine cover story.

I LIKE WHERE THIS IS GOING

YOU WANT LOW-BROW? YOU GOT IT

you poop-loving masses.

so i've managed to hide away from my nearest and dearest friends my all-consuming obsession with the proenza schouler designed line from target. i've been drooling and staring at the promotional photos at target's PR site (not working as of today) for months, ever since it was first announced. and finally, finally the day was here.

or so i thought. i dragged steve to tanforan mall with me today at 9 am. i had made an actual list that i was too embarrassed to bring, so supplanted it with a mental list of things i wanted to get. i skipped into target and - (record scratch) WHAT? it won't be sold in stores until TUESDAY? WTF?

apparently it was sold online starting at midnight last night, and will be in stores starting tuesday. now you know where i'll be tuesday at 8 am.

BUT this story has a secret happy ending. i found a way (through my obsessively checked fashion blogs) to find the items online before they went on sale through the target site. it's a convoluted and strength-defying trek through the innards of the internet, and i will shield you all from what it really took to get my mitts on these. but yes, frodo, i was able to get the goods.

if you care, i got this, this, this skirt, and this.

finally, continuing with the low-brow theme of this post, we followed our target trip with a totally unsatisfying breakfast at IHOP. i've been having a belgian waffles craving, and it was the only place we could think of. now we know why we stick to our favorite breakfast spots. everywhere else sucks, is expensive, and you have to sit next to noisy little kids. steve ordered the 'rooty tooty fresh n fruity,' and by fruity, they meant blueberries from a can in blueberry syrup.

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ok one more (still low-brow) thing, prompted by the min (or shall i say, DA MIN) - i TOTES agree with you guys - harry potter looks tres hot - or shall i say - perry hotter! - with the horses. and yes, he DID have the best week ever.

also, just remembered this (also low-brow-ish) - i had the worst hangover i've had in months on saturday. what happens when you roll with six dudes is thus: 1) they endlessly buy rounds 2) you are never sure if they are as drunk as you are by the end (steve says they have to keep their cool to zero in on the ladies), so you're trying really hard to keep it together and not be 'that drunk chick' 3) you're totally drunk and YET you still are passed a totally unnecessary margarita (guess who) at 1:15 am, followed by two hefeweizens to 'sober up' 4) they never drink water (WTF) 5) they walk super fast cuz they're not wearing heels. perhaps this marks a return of the mission. by the way, you know you're old when you keep saying 'i knew that bar when it was called...[cama/rawhide/blue triangle].'

FOR YOU POOR NON-TIMES SELECT BASTARDS

Readers Respond With a Library of Ideas
By Naka Nathaniel

Last week, Nick wrote that we should go the classics to find better analogies than Vietnam for the situation in Iraq. This blog asked readers what other classics beyond Moby-Dick or the Aeneid that they thought would be appropriate analogies for President Bush and Iraq.

Almost 400 posts were made, obliterating prior marks for TimesSelect blogs. Macbeth (11) was the most popular suggestion and the Bard’s works (9) were most cited. Rounding out the top five are the Bible, Anabasis, The March to Folly and 1984.

god, how sad. people think we are in a shakespearean play in iraq - but the question is - comedy or drama?