Brent in Progress

Smells like cigarettes and poor life choices...

2011-02-16T22:20:00.001-08:00

The lack of blogging is getting worse and worse. I think it's just the lack of motivation and nothing to say.

Started school again. Tough schedule. I'm up at either 7 or 8AM Monday through Thursday. I've NEVER had that kind of school schedule throughout my... 6-7 years of college now? It's a good thing though, it forces me into a normal sleeping schedule.

Tough classes too. Love them though, I'm finally learning nothing but film!
-Film Aesthetics
-Film as Literature
-Photography (Black and White film)
-Greek/Roman Mythology

If you're wondering how mythology relates to film... HUGE relation. The story structure in legends/myths is pretty much the basic story structure for... all stories. Ever. You know, it's the whole: Hero - Wants something/goal - trials and tribulations - resolution: achieves goal/gets girl/learns something, etc. And at the end, lesson learned. No shit, huh?

The photography... LOVE it. I remember doing this in high school and loving it, but this pretty much rekindled my love for black and white photography. I bought myself a camera and plan on going all out with it for the rest of my days. I love the whole process of developing my own film and making my own prints. It's so satisfying and artistically/creatively gratifying. It should sound a bit sexual, I'll continue: It's like the after-glow of sex, only you get to frame it, hang it on a wall, and let people admire it too. "Fuck yeah I took that."

SO...
The Director of Photography on the last film apparently called a few people trying to track down my contact info just to recruit me as a grip on her next film project. I'll take that as a compliment. It's a short film for a UCLA grad student's film school thesis project. I've been working on that in addition to school, so I guess I have an excuse for not blogging. That and nothing profound is really happening in life, or in my head. The house we're shooting in has some weird stuff... and the place smells terribly of cigarettes and poor life choices. It's terrible. But it matches the feel of the scene were shooting there so whatever. But I did find this next to our staging area, it's fucking cool. It's a Buddha statue with a WWII-era British army helmet on it. Conclusion: Weird people sometimes have cool shit.

I can't decide on which picture is better. You can clearly see all the detail here:

The sun is awesome here, but it might take away from the coolness of the helmet and it makes it look like just some chinaman's hat.

My week as a Production Assistant...

2011-01-22T02:52:00.000-08:00

So a friend of mine called me last week asking if I wanted to work on an independent feature film as a PA (Production Assistant). I was like... YES! Because first of all, it's a feature! And second, it's shooting for Sundance (biggest Film Festival), and third, it would be tons of good experience.

It was okay. They've all been shooting for 30 days and I was brought on for the last 4 days of shooting to make up for the loss of the 1st assistant director. The assistant director (AD) literally quit 4 DAYS before the end. So it must've been quite the argument...

PA's are basically very active, jack-of-all-trades, runners, coffee-fetchers, picker-uppers, messengers, gophers. They do everything. They grease the wheels of film sets. It's an entry level job into the industry, but there's TONS of space to move up in the biz from that level.

It was a good experience overall. It should be noted that this production was a low budget, student-feature film project. Most of the crew were very professional and legit, although freshly out of UCLA film grad school. Which is why they were so professional. The director was out of UCLA's film school also. He's won a couple of awards here and there as a student. I was pretty impressed with his directing though. This was most of the crew's first professional gig and they were all stoked. I have to say though, there was quite a bit of politics amongst the assistant director positions. It got quite a bit rag-tag after the 1st AD quit. Work shifts for film crews are normally 11+1 hours. 12 hours total. This was my work schedule this past week:

Sunday: 9AM-9PM
Monday: 9AM-9PM
Tuesday: 4PM-4AM
Wednesday: 8PM-8AM (Wrapped - end of shooting)

12 hour days weren't that bad. There's a lot of stuff to do, and it's actually quite satisfying at the end of the day because there's something to show for it -- a film.

For the first two days they had me as a PA, and then the last two days the production team put in a special request for me to be a grip (special request a good thing?). Grips work with all the shooting equipment and the lighting (big light stands, etc.). It's really physical work, but I liked it WAY better than being a PA. As a PA, I was getting told to do some pretty unnecessary stuff by people who have never worked on a film project, let alone know anything about film before. Like I said, it was pretty rag tag.

One situation: The scripty (Script Supervisor -- also a guy who didn't know what he was doing whatsoever) called out over the radio once, "I need gaffing tape." That was it. No specifying of WHO, WHERE, etc. So the call was ignored. 10 minutes later, he comes out and shouts at me and my friend (also a PA and the one who got me the gig) angrily: "Where were you guys? Did you hear me?" He was clearly shouting at me and my friend, the PA's. Now, it was funny because the guy's brother, the 2nd AD, and only 20 years old with no prior film experience, was sitting next to me. There were Grips hanging outside, and also the 1st AD (He has the most authority besides the director). They all looked at him blankly. I don't usually let stuff like this bother me, and I have no problem with authority or taking orders, but this guy was just clueless. I also didn't like getting yelled at over the following stupid reason in front of everyone like I did something wrong. I schooled him with the following: "We heard someone asking for tape. No one knew who was asking for it nor who they were talking to. Some W's were missing in the 5 W's of info. The grips have gaffing tape hanging on their belts..." I knew the last part would really rake him because he was in the house with a bunch of grips. He just walked away without saying anything and the grips with us outside just started laughing. The 2nd AD started to defend him and try to "correct" me by saying, "No it's the PA's job to make things run smoothly on set...blah fucking blah". I turned and interrupted him, "Dude, no one knew who it was, or who he was talking to. He was in a house full of grips that have tape hanging on their belts".

Anyways, all in all -- I learned a ton. Especially as a grip. I now know tons of equipment and how to use them. I learn fast. I wish I wasn't in school full time so I could do this professionally and make some money.

Here are some pictures from set:

So I thought she was a transsexual...

2011-01-15T03:55:00.000-08:00

So funny story...

I was out at a popular watering hole near West Hollywood last weekend with a friend, and you know, West Hollywood -- "WeHo" as we locals like to call it, is known for being the "gay" part of town. Similar to Castro street in San Francisco. Now, the WHOLE area of what is known as West Hollywood isn't all gay of course, it's simply a section of the city. I'll get to my point, this is just some well needed background. Anyways, the bar was Bar Lubitsch. A regular bar mind you, and also one of my newly favorite bars to hang out at. Really cool front area bar, and a really tightly packed dance area in the back. Me and my friend Pat were hanging out in the back having a conversation by the bar.

Pat got into a conversation with a buxom blonde standing by the bar, and I noticed a very attractive brunette several feet away that kept looking in my direction. A few seconds later, she made eye contact and she sauntered on over to me. I was facing the dance floor, and I kept facing the dance floor even as she walked up next to me facing the bar. Obviously she was waiting for me to "notice". I gave her a hard time by pretending not to. Then she lightly bumps my arm for my attention and says one of the most dumb, but at times common things girls say to guys at bars/clubs: "Hi, will you buy me a Jack and Coke?" --[Pause]-- Now first of all, there are TONS of suckers out there that will turn around with an enthusiastic, "YES. YES I WILL. WOW, HI, I'M ______, AND I'M BEING USED, BUT IT'S OKAY. I'LL TAKE WHATEVER ATTENTION I CAN GET." But I'm not one of them. I'm not a moron. I also, know how to play the game a bit. Game on.
--[Unpause]-- I turned with a slight frown on my face like it's one of the dumbest things I've ever heard (because it is) and said, "No. I'm not a sucker." She turned away a bit flabbergasted. She's probably not used to the rejection. I waited a moment to let my words simmer and then turned to her and said, "I like your hair though -- Is it real?" A slight backhanded compliment always goes a long way with girls such as herself. In my eyes, she sort of deserved the knock since she thought I was some dude she could take advantage of for a free drink. It's only fair right? She turned back to me with mouth slightly agape, and with a slightly surprised/embarrassed smile on her face. It totally got her self analyzing. Her right hand shot up pretty quick to her hair too. She brushed it a little bit, and then said, "Uhh... Yeah, it's real. Of course -- I mean..." I said, "Oh, cool. It looks good. You know, a lot of girls I see with lots of done-up hair like you usually have extensions or something. Good to know you're all-natural". I shot her my smile. She turned to face me, twirled some hair in her right hand and extended it to me to feel "Here, feel". I took it, tugged on it a bit and shot her a satisfied look and said, "I believe you." I gave her my smile again. Her eyes melted a bit. Then I find out she was tipsy when she leaned in to start a conversation and I guess, attempted to impress me with her occupation. This is exactly what I heard: "I'm an event coordinatorer for the Circussss club down the streeeet. I run their gay night and transss night."
The last bit caught my attention. Did she say trans night? Is that lingo for transsexual? Gay night... transsexual night... makes sense right? So I responded plainly, "Oh cool". Then bam, she got pulled back into a group of her "girl" friends. Everyone was suspect now. I turned to Pat and said, "I think I just met a transsexual" He laughed. I continued, "But dude, seriously, it's hard to believe that's a dude. Look at her, I mean him..." We looked. Then we both laughed, really hard. I always like meeting interesting people. THEN SUDDENLY She/He is back, and in my ear. "What's your nameeeeee?" "Brent." "Hiiii Brent". Handshake. Wasn't a manly handshake, cool. "I'm Muhhlissaa" Sure it is. Then she started to get really flirty and pinch my cheeks, and tickled my chin. Then suddenly, she leaned in to my right ear and said, "So, I'm an event coordinatorer fuhr the Circussss club down the streeeet. I run their gay night and tranzzz night." She told me the same thing. She must've been way drunk. So my opportunity to clarify the trans night part came up and I took it. I didn't want to offend her so I treaded lightly with my demeanor and asked, "So... are you a -- transss...?" She/He paused and responded jubilantly, "Yeah, I run the electro-trance night! It's really fun! I just dance all night! You should come one night!"

OHH... She was saying TRANCE, but slurring her words a ton because she was drunk and made it sound like "Transsszzz". Oh I get it. Cool. I'm going to put this in a script.

Oh yeah, and as always, I of course have no problems with anyone that is gay/transgendered, etc. If she was, I still would've had a conversation. Interesting people are interesting.

Sweet Neglect and Snowboarding...

2011-01-10T04:35:00.001-08:00

Ahh... sweet neglect. Leaves you guys wanting more doesn't it? I use the same strategy with the bitches. Just kidding (half true). The real reason: I've been busy, and there hasn't been much profound self-actualizing going on, nor anything interesting I've wanted to take the time to write about. That and laziness.

I've been doing a lot of self-therapy lately -- snowboarding. And my new iPhone (I'm a recent convert from 5 years of Blackberry use) enables me to do... EVERYTHING. It's downright ridiculous the capabilities of the iPhone...

I'm shooting for 15+ days of riding this year. I've got 3 days in already, and I think I need to take a break because I may have badly bruised my lower ribs. They're not broken, a hairline fracture is quite a possibility, but they are extremely sensitive to any pressure. The sharp pain from rolling onto my left side in my sleep wakes me up. I guess I shouldn't go tomorrow like I planned. I'll give it a week.

Here's a photo diary of my current season:

Big Bear, CA day trip with Trav. 12/23/2010

Me

Day old powder.

Mt. Baldy 12/30/2010 - Fucking. Mistake.

Went by myself. Huge mistake to go up here the day before New Year's Eve. Hundreds and hundreds of people drove up to this little mountain town resort (Mt. Baldy is not well known) JUST to play in the snow on the side of the road. These people were double/triple parked everywhere they could sort of fit their cars without blocking traffic. On this tiny two lane mountain road, I was less than a mile away from the resort parking lot but it took me an HOUR to get through all these cars. Traffic literally came to a standstill for a full 10 minutes. I almost had a panic attack from being stuck. But... I snapped these lovely pictures:

Ocean view. iPhone Instagram app.

The camera lens did all that by itself. iPhone Instagram app.

Fucking snow play people.

The view from the peak. I've gotta say, Mt. Baldy has the best views out of all the southern California resorts. That's the ocean, people. On a clearer day, you can see Catalina Island.

In addition, this resort only has one way up from the parking lot to the "actual" base -- a long, slow, two person lift from the 70's. When the resort closed, HUNDREDS of people lined up to take the lift back down. I stood in line for an HOUR as the sun died and temperatures dropped to around 15-20 degrees on top of that mountain. Needless to say, me and hundreds of other people were unhappy and freezing our asses off. Fucking inefficient.

Mt. High - 1/4/2011.

Hipstamatic app - John S Lens

Hipstamatic app - John S Lens

Instagram app

Instagram app

Instagram app

Instagram app

Instagram app - Sun setting over the ridge

Instagram app - 5 seconds before the sun died

The Week before Christmas...

2010-12-20T21:25:00.000-08:00

This.

F'YEAH Picture Friday #4...

2010-12-17T16:59:00.000-08:00

If you don't watch this show, you're mistaken.

Awkward [as fuck] family photo. This reminds me, I need a new pair of jeans.

F'YEAH Picture Friday #3...

2010-12-10T18:30:00.000-08:00

Final exams week. Lame.

I did a final paper for my Film Aesthetics class on Sergio Leone's Once Upon a Time in the West. Fucking awesome and GORGEOUS film by the way. I never saw it, and I was completely blown away by it when I watched it this week. It was basically a 2 hour, 45 minute long, epic action/western/art film. Cinematically, it's gorgeous. It's like porn for filmmakers.

I may have put this clip up already in the past, but here it is again. It's an edited clip of the ending with music from Arcade Fire. Amazing music video too. Warning: it's a spoiler.

Some funny stuff:

Oh you so crazyyy...

2010-12-07T12:58:00.000-08:00

Today's youth is scary.

lol. wtf.

F'YEAH Picture Friday #2...

2010-12-04T07:38:00.001-08:00

Damn, I'm late.

Anyways. Here's a facebook post I found amusing. If you don't know who the guy in the picture is, you really should... The "President" of Iran. Make note of the photo caption in the pic.

Also...

I laughed my ass off when I saw this:

Don't get it? You need to catch up on current events. Catch up HERE and HERE.

Happy Weekend.

Whoa dude...

2010-12-02T04:49:00.000-08:00

To explain what happened regarding the "Monday" part of my last post, yeah... I was hit on by a dude. It was pretty awkward to say the least. I was at a normal bar in Venice beach doing a concert report on a jazz band for a Jazz history class I'm taking this semester (great class by the way). I was sitting at the bar all by my lonesome and having a couple beers. There was nothing unusual going on. By the time the band was ending their set at around 1 am, the bar was pretty sparsely populated. While I was there, I was chatting with another jazz fan that was sitting next to me. He was just a friendly, straight, dude that apparently was a regular. Anyway, he leaves and I was sat there at the bar alone for a minute. This dude a few seats away, drunk... scoots over next to me and starts to softly sing -- to me. Softly and inconspicuously. What did I do? I ignored him, and instead my eyes were glued to the TV watching ESPN's sports highlights for the day. Not many people were around at this point, and he was singing, very subtly... to me, so it wasn't very noticeable or embarrassing. This goes on for about a minute. So I take out my phone and was about to tweet "Holy shit, I'm being serenaded by a dude at the moment", but I was interrupted when he abruptly stops and says, "You are too cute. You are just too cute... And you think I'm a joke. You think I'm a joke."

So after an awkward pause I say, "Uhh... Nah man, I'm just... writing and watching ESPN..."

Long, awkward, fucking, PAUSE.

HE CONTINUES SINGING. LOL.

So I of course, continue to ignore him. I wasn't giving him the time of day. He wasn't like, invading my space or anything, he wasn't embarrassing me, he wasn't bothering me, and I was just finishing up the report and about to leave anyway, so I let it go... UNTIL -- I feel a hand suddenly, disgustingly, and ever-so-fucking-gently squeeze the inner thigh of my left leg. What. The. Fuck. So with my ninja-fast reflexes, I remove his hand and say "No dude. Don't do that." All serious faced, because I was seriously serious. My metaphorical serious pants were now on. Not cool. I got up and left after that. It felt pretty gross. I felt pretty gross. Ladies, I think I've experienced something most girls must have experienced also. I think I now know your pain of going out, looking good, and some gross creeper comes out of fucking nowhere thinking he can just touch you. Ugh. Gross.(I laughed so hard as I typed that) Forget the drink in the face or the slap, just knuckle up and let it rip!

After telling this story to a couple friends, some have remarked, "I woulda hit him. Why didn't you hit him?" Why? Because I didn't expect it at all! The dude was just singing, and frankly, I was unprepared for the possibility of him actually having the audacity to reach over and feel me up. It wasn't even on my mind. I was busy writing in a notebook, and I was in a bar with people who had no idea of what was happening, so it would've come clear out of the blue for me to straight up hit him. Also, I was on a bar stool. Hard to punch whilst sitting on a bar stool. Additionally, I don't think I would've hit him anyway. Mostly because he was drunk, and I prefer to keep cool. AND I am a pretty good looking dude, so... it was understandable. LOL.

Now mind you, I have no problem with homosexuality. I don't hold any prejudice against gays in any way, and in fact, I have gay friends. The issue here would be a universal problem for anyone -- you don't touch someone like that. It's just wrong to invade someone's personal space like that especially if they're not giving you the time of day. If a dude were to do that to a girl, they would get slapped. It's just not welcome.

So yeah, that was interesting and new. Not a good new, just new.

F'YEAH Picture Friday!...

2010-11-26T09:51:00.000-08:00

You know... I have a lot to write about lately, and I'd LOVE to blog it. I just haven't had the time.

No, I lied. I've had SOME time, but I just procrastinate, and get involved with something else. This week has been a weird week too. By no means am I an alcoholic, or feel the need to drink, but by my count, I've gone out (to a bar) every night since last Friday, Saturday, SUNDAY, Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. Six days in a row. I just realized that. There's no way around seeing that and thinking to yourselves, "That's a bit excessive. He MUST be a closet alcoholic". And... it wouldn't be unreasonable to think that considering the past 6 days. Let's just say I've been really bored and restless this week. There must be some sort of itch I'm trying to scratch, I just don't know what it is yet. Here's how my week went down:

Last Friday and Saturday -- regular going-out days. No problem there.

Sunday -- I was bored and there's this bar I absolutely love called "Piano Bar" in Hollywood. They have live music every night and I LOVE live music. Miles Mosley (Look him up!) plays there every Wednesday and Friday night. I even had my 24th birthday here in September. Anyways, Brother Sal was on the piano that night.

Monday -- Had to go to a restaurant/bar called Hal's in Venice Beach to take in a live Jazz band performance to write a concert report for my Jazz history class. (By the FUCKING way, I got hit on and felt up by a DUDE at the end of the night. Let's just say I got myself out of there QUICK immediately after. Like I said, I have a lot to blog about lately haha. I'll save that for the next post)

Tuesday -- No real reason. I went back home in the city to have dinner with my Aunt and didn't feel like going straight home to my place. I was bored. Called up one of my best buds Josh (also the lead singer for Morrownow) and we grabbed a drink at a cool place called The Other Room out by Venice Beach. It's one of my new favorite places to hang out. Caught up a bit because we don't get to hang as much lately, and also talked about the band's immediate future. We're looking for a new bassist. Anybody know any good bass guitarists in LA?

Wednesday -- Was in the city, and my buddy Austin gave me a call. He just got off work and was bored. We grabbed a drink at Piano Bar and took in Miles Mosley and his band. I love that band. F'awesome Wednesday.

The thing is, I don't drink to get drunk. At most, I'll have two drinks throughout the night. I like to be able to drive myself places.

****Back to the original reason for this post. Fridays shall from now on be my picture post day called "F'YEAH Picture Friday". I'll post a random picture I found on the internet that I found funny/interesting, or maybe one of myself or something of that nature, or something like that, and stuff, or stuff like that. And shit like that. Either way, it'll be a picture. How exciting. Enjoy.****

The Daily Bruin article...

2010-11-18T06:52:00.002-08:00

Recently, my band Morrownow was interviewed by UCLA's daily publication, The Daily Bruin. A pretty decent University newspaper. I first contacted them asking if they'd like to cover our show near the UCLA campus at a popular college bar called "Westwood Brewing Company" back in October. They answered back saying they don't do coverage, but would like to interview our band since our lead guitarist Jason is a current UCLA student. So the following week a reporter contacted me and we tried to set up a date and time for a band interview. I suggested 8pm the following Friday night at Barney's Beanery near UCLA. Barney's Beanery is a cool franchise of sports bars out here in LA. It's also pretty mellow at 8pm. Nothing is going on that early. The reporter and I go back and forth through emails a bit and she sort of aggressively insists that we meet at Starbucks across the street instead. I oblige. I just thought a quiet bar would be a more relaxed place for an interview, and more... characteristic of our band. You know, somewhere where we can all get a drink together as friends, relax, and be normal... let loose. It also would've been great since a photographer was going to stop by to snap a picture. A picture of the guys at Barney's would be cooler than a picture at Starbucks... Nah meen? But the photographer never even showed up!
Anyways, we all met up at the Starbucks and she asked us some basic questions. Oddly enough, she didn't really pick our brains much which she should've done since the whole point of the article was to spotlight us as the young, up and coming, performing, "student" band that we are.
If you read the article, there is absolutely nothing that interesting. If anything, it makes us sound like were a silly bunch that's "struggling" to find our identity. The article's content is just really bland. Even more so to me because I feel as if she missed out on some very key points we brought up about ourselves. I was really disappointed. She had the full 45 minutes of interview recorded on tape and there was a lot of "interesting" stuff said that she failed to mention. Oh well. I just hope she doesn't go into entertainment because I doubt publicists and public relations would work with her more than once. It was just a really mediocre effort. Bleh.

Also, she misquoted me. I referenced the Sunset Strip music scene as a "classic area" and that it's a mostly "old school rock, or hard rock scene".

Oy... Oh well, publicity is publicity.

Oktoberfest...

2010-11-10T03:46:00.000-08:00

Fact: I like seasonal beers.

I should've wrote this last week, but school papers that had to be written prevailed. I like October. It starts to get "cold" here in LA, I think up a last-minute Halloween costume, and I start to anticipate opening day for the local ski resorts. And, most bars have specials on Octoberfest brews. Awesome. New Belgium Brewery, the maker of Fat Tire beer is one of my favorites. They always have awesome seasonal beers. Does anybody find it fun to say the word "brewery"? Brew-urr-ree. It always just comes out like you're saying it drunk and slurred, "brewree".

I didn't think I was going to dress up this year, but I ended up going to that huge West Hollywood Halloween Carnaval event with some friends. There were literally like 600,000 people walking around and I saw some pretty amazing costumes. A friend of mine, Jenzie over at her blog, Jenzie Benzie vs. The World, was a girl from the Shake-Weight commercial. Amazing. I had some good ideas for my Halloween costume, but I didn't have enough time to pull them off. Some of my notable ideas:

-Antoine Dodson
-Rufio from Hook (I forgot how amazing this movie is)
-Data from The Goonies

I ended up copying the character "Manmeet" on the new NBC sitcom Outsourced. It's a pretty entertaining show in my book. He showed up to a Halloween party with a magnet around his neck with rubber chickens stuck on it. A Chick-Magnet! Needless to say, I got this costume done in about 30 minutes.

So I wore that around my neck. It worked out well. I got compliments here and there and took some pictures with random people. The best part was that no one else had my costume which is always a good thing. I saw TONS of Antoine Dodsons though. And I love how it took a while for people to register what I was. They'd stare for a while and then you'd see that lightbulb light up when they got it. "I don't even-is that a magnet? I like your rubber chicke-OH! CHICK MAGNET!"

Down with the sickness...

2010-10-27T23:16:00.001-07:00

I'm sort of a germ-a-phobe. I'm not too crazy, but I have no problem washing my hands before eating and using Purell after filling up my car with gas. So when I do get sick, it's like a loss in my stats book. I caught a fucking cold! So currently, I'm down by three this year. I usually only get sick at the most once or twice a year. So this blows. It's a bad season for this home team.

So what do I do besides sit at home hopped up on multi-vitamin pills and vitamin C tabs? I catch up on TV shows I never keep up with and surf YouTube!

I'm all caught up on Sons of Anarchy, Chuck, How I Met Your Mother, The Big Bang Theory, and Community. I still have to get done with Eastbound and Down and Always Sunny in Philadelphia.

I found this amazing, most-majestic, dumbdiculously ("dumbdiculous" My newly invented word. Feel free to use it and spread the genius into the world. And please refer the roots of it back to my blog.), SEXY video of my future wife, Alison Brie ("Annie" from NBC's Community). The video doesn't have to make much sense when it makes my pants as tight as they become while watching it. Enjoy!

And what else... I watch and browse through a whole bunch of snowboarding stuff. The season is almost here! I can't wait to get some runs in. TJ Schneider's blog is firing back up and he came out with a kick ass, appetite-wetting teaser for this season. He's a pro snowboarder and a VERY talented artist. Take a look at his blog and work HERE.

I need to shake this cold before the weekend. I have drinks to drink with people and places to be!

Man Food #1 - Makin' do... with clams...

2010-10-21T01:04:00.000-07:00

I am a man. I cook for myself. I eat man food.

Now -- I'd like to consider myself a modern man. A man that cooks for himself and eats well. A man that takes care of his own home and himself. It's the ideal now, is it not? Personally, I don't even think the "ideal" should exist. I think being able to take care of yourself completely is what constitutes being a "man" in the first place.

Cooking. I like cooking. I'm even beginning to love it and I want to get better at it. I have a decent palette and some creativity and it usually gets me by. My Men's Health magazine cookbook -- a binder I have filled with recipes accumulated from 5 years worth of subscription, helps out too (Each issue usually has 3-5 recipes). I find that more often than not, I'll open my refrigerator and I'll make do with whatever I have and whip something up... like a fucking man.

I went home last weekend to do laundry like I usually do and my Aunt tells me she bought me a whole bag of clams... Why? No reason. She just said they had a great deal at Costco so she grabbed them. Now when I look into my freezer, I see my two rib-eye steaks, two sea bass filets, a quart of ice cream, 3 frosty beer mugs, and now this ginormous bag of clams.

I put a dent in the bag tonight. Here's what I made:

Clam/Chorizo Hobo Packs:
This particular "hobo pack" (just a tin foil pack of food that you toss on the grill like a fucking man) was a recipe in Men's Health. I just took it and whipped up my own version and made do with what I had -- like a fucking... you get it. I didn't have Chorizo, but I did have Polish Keilbasa sausage that I was going to use to make my friend's recipe for a Hungarian-stew-potato pot thingy, but like a man, I said "Fuck that!" and used it to make this instead.

What I made-do with (Makes 2 packs):
-Ginormous bag of clams. I used 20.
-4 cloves garlic - crushed
-half of a white onion - diced
-2 "stalks"? of green onion - chopped
-2 tbsp of butter
-salt/pepper
-basil flakes
-Rolling Rock beer
-Keilbasa sausage
-tin foil
-lemon
-baby green salad
-mashed potatoes

I did the usual, soaked and cleaned the clams, chopped up the ingredients, and had a beer while I was at it.

Step by step:

Clams.

I fucking chopped these like a man.

As a man, I didn't like chopping the sausage.

Make an aluminum foil pouch and toss in 10 clams - like a man. I'm serious, TOSS, don't daintily place.

Toss in everything else. I tossed in 1 tbsp of butter, 2 cloves of crushed garlic, salt, pepper, the sausage, and the onions. After everything, pour in some beer! Close up the pouch tightly!

Now, like a man, throw the pouches as hard as you can on the grill! No, just kidding. Just gently place them on the grill. Don't let the pouch rip thus letting all the beer leak out -- PARTY FOUL. I left mine on the grill for 10 minutes on high heat with the cover closed. Clams came out perfectly cooked. It probably varies for everyone 10-15 minutes.

The recipe originally calls for the pouch to have cubes of raw potato in there with it all. But I had a container of mashed potatoes from Gelson's market so yeah. As for the baby green salad, I like to do the good ol' olive oil and balsamic toss.

This is what it looks like when it's done and a man is about to eat it. Enjoy with the rest of the beer.

All in all, it was pretty awesome. I do however see why the recipe calls for Chorizo sausage. It was missing a bit of spice, a bit of MANLY kick. Chorizo would've brought it home. Keilbasa is just way too mild and mellow. For the second pouch, I used white wine instead of beer and it actually turned out better. It had a sweeter aftertaste. I'd also recommend squeezing the lemon wedge into the pouch BEFORE cooking. It balances it all out better that way.

No touchy-touchy... BRO...

2010-10-10T03:47:00.000-07:00

I went out to a couple places for drinks this weekend with an old friend. We checked out a couple places in West Hollywood called The Surly Goat and Bar Lubitsch. The Surly Goat is a pretty cool beer bar. I like craft beers so naturally, I liked their selection. It was a good sized crowd too. To me though, it's more of a hang-out bar, like a place to go to on a weekday. I've been meaning to check out Bar Lubitsch forever now, I just never got around to doing it. It's pretty cool. Packed full of people, but a good looking crowd. My circle of friends have all been trying to find new places to hang out lately. Our tastes have gotten a bit more refined I guess. All the usual places just aren't that fun anymore and getting old. I think I'll be coming back to Bar Lubitsch more often though.

The Touchy-Touchy...
I like places with a good amount of people, but when it's way too crowded with people packed into every open space, it blows. And I hate when there's a constant stream of people squeezing through and they get all up in yo personal space and shit yo. The ladies squeezin' through I don't mind all that much for obvious reasons, but when dudes come rambling through all macho-like, it irritates the shit out of me. It's like, "Bro/Dude/D-Bag, just lightly tap me on the shoulder and say 'Excue meh' and I'll make some room for you broski". And guys, please don't do the following:

1. Letting your hand linger on my shoulder longer than necessary
2. The surprisingly thorough shoulder squeeze/massage
3. The lingering two hand squeeze on both sides of my fucking waist.

Don't do the third one -- Ever, actually. It's not cool.

I see your plight ladies. We dudes are fucking gross.

But girls, move #3 is totally okay for you to do to guys, but don't be surprised if we start hitting on you.

New home...

2010-10-03T02:53:00.000-07:00

I moved into my new place in mid-August. It's pretty fuckin' sweet having my own place. You wouldn't think so, but it's a lot less stressful than living at home for some reason. Granted that I was already on my own at home and for the most part, doing my own thing the whole time, but still... There's just something that's refreshing and freeing about having a space to call your own. I'm pretty much settled in and I'm 90% through making the space my own with some posters and snowboards mounted on the walls. I love it.

It's a studio apartment, so there's not much space to work with, but I like it. It's all I really need. Here's a look:

I was actually afraid I might get lonely living out in the valley, away from central Los Angeles, my friends, and being alone. But after these couple of months, I'm totally fine. I actually enjoy the solitude during the week, and the trips down to LA over the weekend to see friends/family. The solitude has actually made me more productive. No distractions. It haven't been lonely at all.. I think me being busy with school and the routine of life in general helps with that too. Life's been good.

More later.

Moving on...

2010-08-03T04:25:00.000-07:00

Not that I'm going to make a habit out of posting only once a month, but I just thought I'd even things up. I'm symmetrical like that.

I'm moving out! And into my own place. Progression. It's what life's about.

I was having drinks with my buddy Jason the other week and we stumbled upon "What's the best way to live life?" I don't know how we came upon that subject but it's not surprising since we are nearing our mid-20's and life is constantly revolving around us and slapping us in the face. I answered Jason's question. I'm going to skip the slurring of words and the thorough, yet round-about explanation I gave him and paraphrase for you guys.

-I think our lives are all about progressing ourselves, and achieving what we want. It's about growing as an individual, as a person, and as a part of society as a whole. I think it should be our goal to grow as much as we can and better one's self throughout the rest of our lives. It's just a matter of how you do it. I think it's a problem when we get too comfortable with how life is lived too. It means we've plateaued. I've said it before and I'll say it again, but now I've got a handle on exactly what I mean by it. It's my criticism of the 9 to 5. There's nothing wrong with the 9 to 5, the day to day living. It's just lame when you stop progressing/growing as a person while you do it. I imagine myself, if I were to have a career, that BEYOND my day job, I'd be out learning, growing, being active, and bettering myself as a person with other activities. Basically, I'd still be progressing. I think that's what life is all about. We shouldn't get too comfortable in a rut. Get out, change it up, do something new. Keep growing.

I've grown comfortable living at home. Too comfortable. I still have an independent lifestyle, but I've had the luxury of having too many things done for me. I didn't like it and the comfort grew terribly uncomfortable. I plateaued. Plateaued fucking hard. So I made a change, and shook things up big time. I'm progressing again.

See you guys when I move into my new place.

I'd walk a HUGE circle...

2010-07-03T05:20:00.000-07:00

I walked a couple miles through an adjacent neighborhood at 1 in the morning the other night. It was nice. I needed to think. Life progression is happening, it's happening fast, and it's happening now.

Throughout the walk, I had several conversations with my inner voice. The first conversation was the realization of how short my left foot's stride was in my walk. The step I take with my left foot is shorter than my right foot's. It's because I broke my left ankle back in 2004 and I guess during the time of recovery I was walking "softly" with my left foot to avoid pain and the habit stuck. Shit. So I guess if I were to ever disappear from this blog after telling you guys I went on a camping/hiking trip out in the desert or something one day, just know that I got lost and to tell the Search and Rescue crew that I'm the guy out in the desert that's probably walking HUGE, 10 mile diameter circles because my left foot's stride is shorter than my right's. Realization: Brent has the inability to walk in a straight line over long distances.
The second conversation I had was of how nice the neighborhood was. It's Hancock Park. It was the Beverly Hills of Los Angeles before Beverly Hills existed. You know in the movies where they establish a setting by showing you the front of a nice, American, middle-class, two story house with a perfect lawn? Yeah well they shoot all of that in this neighborhood. The quintessential middle-class, American home. Needless to say I like the neighborhood. It's so... accessible. If you were to live here you'd step outside and be able to look across the street and wave to your neighbor or flip him off even. In a place like Beverly Hills, everyone's house is behind a 10 foot high wall of concrete, gates, and trees. So isolated. I don't like that. Goal: Be able to afford a house in Hancock Park.
The third conversation was wondering if I'd like the front of my future house to face East or West. I know, absurd. But the more I thought about it, the more important and well thought out it became! The Sun rises in the East and sets in the West. I thought to myself, if my house faced West, I'd walk out the front door of my house in the morning and walk to my car in a shadow. But, you'd think the ideal would be for the sun to shine on the front of your house as you walk out of it in the morning right? Right. I think the same way, you're clearly awesome. ALSO, that means the sun would set on your backyard, which is nice of course. I imagine myself sitting out on a backyard patio or something and watching it go down.

So yeah, I clearly got a lot of important things figured out during that walk (insert sarcasm here). But most importantly, I thought about the fact that I'm moving out and into a place of my own next month. Yup. I said it. I think it's just time, and even though I'm still living at "home" with my Aunt for the purpose of helping her with her business, it's hampering my independence. It's just not good for me to be living at "home" still. I feel like my own life's progression is being slowed. Since school is way out in the valley, I'm going to move out of central LA into the Sherman Oaks or Studio City area. Any closer to the valley than that, I'd shoot myself over the complete immensity of shitty that is -- the valley.

By the way, I found a new musician I've been listening to lately. "Iron and Wine". Acoustic/Folk Rock artist. He has some good stuff. Imagine a Jack Johnson with melodic vocals and a kick ass Jesus beard. Here's one of my favorite songs: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OYUFcxBq1y4

Howdy... Here's a script...

2010-06-17T04:36:00.000-07:00

Hey there. I haven't had much motivation to blog. Obviously. It's not about you guys reading it either, it has a lot to do with sort of not re-living things as I chronicle events that happen. Disappointments happen all the time yes, but some are huge.

Life is still good however. Disappointments only delay or deviate from happiness a little while. These are times I look at the silver lining.

Good things:
1. Band is doing great. Playing at the famous "The Cat Club" on Sunset Blvd. this Friday night. We just got our EP Album "Our Self" CDs made and printed. We're giving away 15 free CDs away to the first 15 fans that come to the show. Things are going well.

2. Film school in August. Primary focus: Screenwriting. FINALLY, I'm going to be learning and DOING what I've been wanting to do for the past 5 years. No more... other stuff. No more MATH. Ugh. Math. For an Asian, I really fucking hate Math.

3. I'm starting to write again. I've been in such a creative slump lately. I haven't written diddly for a LONG time. It's not even writer's block. It's just been a lack of motivation.

4. I'm playing soccer again. I've been physically inactive for several months. Not even hitting the gym. I consider myself a very athletic guy too. Sometimes laziness just takes over. Especially when all the friends you work out with/play soccer with are away in different cities attending school. lol. But what I experience over and over is that being in shape, and physically healthy, really balances me out mentally too. If I'm in shape and exercising, I rarely get anxiety or stress. I learn my lesson every so often, but of course, I'll get lazy sometimes.

More about my writing. I met a girl at a friend's graduation party over the weekend. My friend just graduated from UCLA. I'm really proud of him too. He's a pure example of someone who grew up in the "bad" side of town, kept his nose clean, attended community college and transferred into one of the best schools in town... AND graduated. It's just a good example of determination and FOCUS. Anyway, about this girl. She's the epitome of ambitious, and these are people I like. A LOT. Because ambitious people motivate me. They shoot high and go for these immensely hard goals, but they inevitably succeed. They're so determined, so driven, and it sometimes confirms my own ambitions. This girl graduated UCLA a year ago, is in the Navy, and is about to attend the Navy's aviation school in August to basically be a fighter pilot. An NFO - Navy flight officer. I believe the Navy has only 255 or so female NFOs. How ambitious is that? That's pretty awesome to me. Just by her personality alone, I could tell her goal is totally reachable for her. I guess I could even go to say ambitious girls are sexy. Yeah. She was pretty attractive... Long story short, I was talking to her today and she DEMANDED to read a script of mine. I think the conversation started off like, "Oh, you manage your friend's band AND you're a screenwriter?" I said, "Well, neither are a big deal. The managing doesn't take too much, and I actually haven't wrote for a while. I'm sort of in a creative slump." "Well, let me read one of your scripts that you wrote!" I couldn't let her down... and I couldn't come off like a poser... so I found a short film script that I wrote a while back. I said to her, "Okay. Give me a sec and I'll go find a script that I'd let someone read, get self conscious about it for a bit, re-write it a bit, and then I'll email it to you". But it was all true. I re-read the script, wanted to change a whole bunch of stuff, changed it around, and I sent her a fresh copy about two hours later!

She liked it.

Would you guys like to read it? You can download it HERE.
Some things to note:
1. "(V.O.)" means "Voice Over". It means there is narration over the scene or in this case, the Voice Over is for parts of where Daniel's (the main character) journal is being read in excerpts in between scenes.
2. All speaking parts would be said in Spanish if it were filmed. "In the North" would translate to "en el norte" in Spanish slang, which basically means "America" in this case.
3. The script was written as a shooting script -- for myself. So there are lots of notes for camera shots. I wrote it to make a short film out of it, which I still plan to do. Just haven't ever gotten the time/equipment/opportunity to do it.
4. It's pretty depressing and dramatic. You'd have to imagine seeing it as a film.

Winner, winner, chicken dinner...

2010-05-30T16:25:00.000-07:00

So I think for the first time in my life ever... I won a contest. I've never won anything in my life. Thinking back, even in elementary school, out of a small classroom of 15-20 kids, I don't think I even won a raffle contest. Just to throw in there, out of the two baseball league championships I've played in, never won that either. Not a big deal. Contests are all luck. I got lucky!

In Los Angeles, the main rock music radio station is 106.7 FM KROQ (K-Roq). Needless to say, I mostly listen to them. I found myself on their website looking for tickets to Jack Johnson's free benefit concert that he played on the Santa Monica Beach Pier this past Tuesday. Sadly, the tickets were already given away. There were a few other contests though, one of which were movie premiere tickets to the movie, "Get Him to the Greek", starring Jonah Hill and Russell Brand. So I entered the contest. Tuesday morning comes around and I get a call from an unknown number, but the last 4 digits of the phone number I notice were "1-0-6-7"... which I KNEW was KROQ. I answered and they told me I won the movie premiere tickets! Awesome. It wasn't recorded for the radio or anything, and if they did, my reaction would probably have been the most laid-back response ever. I was just like, "Oh cool, that's awesome. Thanks".

I was definitely excited though. I don't get too star struck or impressed by fame however. I'm just not that kind of person. I think it attributes to being around Hollywood people in general growing up. For example: a lot of my friends on my little league baseball and soccer teams growing up had parents in the entertainment business. It was just the particular neighborhood of Hancock Park I grew up near that allowed this. So yeah, I wasn't giddy with excitement.

They sent me a parking pass and an information packet through email. Basically, I would park, get shuttled with everyone else that was attending the premiere, pick up my ticket at will call, and off I go myself +1 guest to the premiere. I thought I would be taken around/chaperoned by KROQ staff or something, but nope. I was on my own. I took my friend Mark, the friend of mine who moved back to D.C. this past Saturday for law school. While he was here, he worked for Paradigm, the #2 talent agency in Hollywood, so I thought he'd appreciate the invitation. So the Greek Theatre was great, it's a pretty famous venue. We waited outside, and there were tons of actors and famous people roaming around with us. The red carpet was set up and the stars of the movie and other miscellaneous famous people walked it. It was an outdoor venue, so it started to get really cold by the time the movie started at 8:30pm. My legs were freezing. We had really good seats, pretty much centered, it was great. All the actors and stars were seated above us, centered and a bit higher up. The movie was GREAT. I loved it. It was hilarious. I mean, I LOVED "Forgetting Sarah Marshall" and this was a spin-off from that. They had Russell Brand's character "Aldous Snow". Unfortunately, Jonah Hill wasn't the same character as he was in Forgetting Sarah Marshall. You would think he would be... but he was a new character altogether. No worries, I won't spoil the movie for you guys, but just know they all die in the end. Interesting though, I saw Michael Cera. The way he dresses and acts in the movies? You know, the shy, awkward, yet endearing personality he has? Exactly the same in real life. Didn't really get to meet him because he was talking to a group of people, but he did nod to Mark. He probably recognized him from Paradigm (Michael Cera is represented by Paradigm, and one of their, if not THE biggest current client for Paradigm.)

Overall, a really fun night.

Here are some pictures:

Blog?... Oh yeah...

2010-05-19T01:04:00.000-07:00

Missing in action again. Sorry about that. Lots of stuff going on.

1. The show (5/8/10) was a success! We had about 20+ friends show up to support the band at the Old Town Pub show. With that much of a turn out, we made a good chunk of money. It was a great little bar hidden away in the nice part of snazzy old town Pasadena, CA. There's tons of nice restaurants, clean streets, and cool nightlife in that area, and here was this cool, dive bar, music venue in between it all. It was an awesome night. Here are some pictures:

2. The band had another show the following weekend at a small art theatre in Hollywood called the Neon Venus Art Theatre, owned by the band Neon Venus. They asked if we could play last minute because apparently a band canceled on them. The venue is a drama and acting class theatre by day and underground music venue by night. It was a cool place, although small... very small. So small in fact, I took it upon myself to hand out free ear plugs to everyone there before the band played. Good thing I did, the dimensions of the place made the band extra loud. Another paid gig, although it didn't pay as well. We had about 14 people show up.

The plan is to just play local, small, venues first before jumping into big stage shows at the big venues. We're hoping to build a bigger fan base first so we'll have fans that will support us at the bigger venue shows.

3. Film school is coming around soon. I've been trying to get back in the mode of writing creatively again. Needless to say, I haven't been doing any of that writing for a bit. I've got to get back in the habit of being all... creative again.

Cool story bro-colli...

2010-05-03T01:34:00.000-07:00

So I grabbed a late dinner in the Westwood area of LA (near UCLA) and as I was walking back to my car, a homeless man eating a slice of pizza walked by me and shouted at me "I'm one of the head honchos in Hell! I just wanted to let you know man!" So I said, "Cool story bro" and kept walking. It's safe to say he was pretty schizo. Just wanted to share that. I just thought to myself when he was shouting at me with that mouthful of pizza, "This would only be worth retelling to someone if I respond instead of ignoring him and walking away..." So yeah. Cool story bro.

I'm pretty excited about going back to school in August. Finally. Film school. Finally learning what I've been wanting to go to school for, for all this time. I spent about 4 and a half years in a community college jumping from major to major, practically completing all of the major requirements to transfer with for both English and Sociology on the way. I'm going to need to find a part time job also. I can't imagine myself working a full time job all the while being a full time student. I've done it before during my freshman year, and it was not fun waking up at 4AM to return home at 11PM and repeating it for five days out of seven.

So the band's been making a lot of progress. There's a lot of stuff in the works and I feel good about it all. It's exciting. I got them their first venue gig for the 8th of May and it's a paid gig! Bands usually never get paid to play unless you know, they're a big deal. This one show promoter was so impressed with our demo however, that he offered us one out of two headlining time slots for his "fusion" show. It's on Saturdays, and it's basically a mix of good bands and DJs from different genres. It's $10 at the door but only $5 with a flier, and the band makes $5 for every person that shows up that's there to see us. Awesome. And that money will go directly to printing cards and our EP album CDs. Yep, we have yet to get those printed. It'll be awesome to have those done. Here, take a look at the flier the promoter got made for the upcoming show. Apparently our band was the only one to send him a band logo graphic so our band's name really pops in comparison to the other ones haha.

We invited pretty much everyone we know. Hopefully we'll get quite a few people to show up.

Success...

2010-04-30T02:09:00.000-07:00

I've found moments during the past week or so where I'd have some good food for thought to write in this blog. Then I would proceed to forget them. But, I have just discovered the amazing, awesomeness of EVERNOTE! If you guys can't survive without post-it notes like I do, you're going to love evernote. It's basically a program/app for your computer OR PHONE where you can basically write notes for yourself to look at later. And the great thing about it is that it synchronizes all the notes you save onto everywhere you have the program. So, if I were to save a note on my blackberry like I do, I could start up the ol' laptop computer and there the note will be also. This is perfect for a guy like me. I come up with little tid bits of ideas all the time for a lot of things but never really get around to remembering or saving them all. So if this thing makes your life easier, I have absolutely no problem taking the credit for it, you all owe me GINORMOUS big time.

Meanings...
I've been thinking about life and the future like I always do... it's clearly a recurring theme in this blog I'm sure. I guess it shows how present and looming the thought about life and the future is in my life. It sort of sucks because it's so fucking scary sometimes. Success. Our society's definition of success basically comes down to monetary wealth. Not wealth of friendship or love, or success in the home, but cold, hard, money. But what if you take a guy like me, who thinks being successful is living a good life and doing things that makes you happy, and combine it with all the things that make me happy... being stuff I need money to do? Haha. What a predicament. I mean, it all just comes down to all the stuff I want to do and experience in life, and all of that costing a butt load of money to do. I'll have to simply make some money first. But then I think to myself, "Well poo... I'll have to spend the prime years of my life focused on making money first instead of enjoying my 20's doing the things I already want to do..." Well too bad bro, just going to have to, and do it quick I guess. It's now my goal. Snowboard around the world? That snowboarding trip to New Zealand to ride in Wanaka? Not going to happen unless you reach monetary success broski. And it's not like the focus of making money is all that foreign or far from me. I'm down with it. I'm okay with it. I have no problem. Of course I do, I'm trying to break into Hollywood. It's just the way it is. You need money to do stuff, and to live how you want, so you've got to make le money. Elementary conclusion, but damn. It's still hard to do isn't it?

This just turned out to be a stream of my thought process. But really... success. Is everyone's goal no? Like my friend likes to say over the phone sometimes when he gets busy and needs to hang up, "B-R-B, (be right back) making money." *Click*

You all complete me...

2010-04-19T02:06:00.001-07:00

Ah, it seems I've been keeping to myself lately. Tis' true. I think it's because I've been busy as of late, I've had no time to be as contemplative as I usually am. It may be a bit of laziness too I suppose. Being busy is good for me. It keeps me from over thinking things, and that usually gets me into trouble. It's sort of a tangent, but I see myself, and I'm pretty sure -- seen as a pretty calm person. But in private, I think I can be a pretty anxious person. Especially when it comes to matters of health. I can over think those situations extremely quickly. Just a quirk about me I guess.
Anyway, back on track. I've had some good times over the weekend. There's something that's very subtly satisfying when you're spending time with a friend doing the simplest of activities. I had dinner with a friend from New York that's been living here in LA for the past year and a half. He's never tried pizza in LA because he's heard how bad it is compared to New York. Poppycock/BS. I told him I'd take him to the closest thing to New York pizza in the city, which is "Village Pizzeria" right in the center of Larchmont Village, which is also my favorite part of town in LA. We ordered a 14" pie, one half sausage, the other half with pepperoni, onions, and garlic (obviously the food you order when you're not out to meet girls). What did he think? He LOVED it. "This is ridiculous. I've been here over a year and just when I'm about to leave LA you bring me here? This place is AWESOME" is what he said. You see, he's moving to D.C. to attend law school in the fall. I never hear all that much about D.C., but from what I do hear, it's a pretty "happening" city. I'll be sure to visit him while he's there. So back to the enjoyment of simple moments... So yeah. Dinner with a friend, then subsequent drinks with a friend. After an extremely satisfying pizza and the mass consumption of breath mints after, we grabbed a drink. I guess it's part of life's progress when you and a friend brainstorm on figuring out a bar to go to that is NOT crowded and "happening" on a Saturday night. Neither of us were really in the mood for that sort of scene. We just wanted to relax and talk. We really couldn't think of any bars we knew of to go to so we ended up having a drink on the patio of a quiet restaurant/bar right on the sidewalk of Sunset Blvd. It's moments like those that are so enjoyable in life, yet so simple. Sitting with a friend and having a conversation about whatever. And the fact that you're out. Out of the house, outdoors, around other people, socializing, wherever. We're a social being, and it's just something we need. I'm starting to realize that more and more as time goes on, just how much we need other people around us to really complete our lives.

Morrownow had a show this weekend!
So the band got a spot to perform at Cal State Northridge University's Relay For Life cancer benefit event this past Saturday. It was an outdoor event, and a vast array of students in their respective "Relay for Life" teams were literally camping out in tents in the quad on the campus. The quad was huge, and it sat in front of a massive library. The stage was sort of tiny, but sat right on the edge of the quad below the library's steps. The crowd was... okay. They performed at about 6:30 pm just as the sun was setting and dinner was announced. Everyone got food at the food tent as they were performing so most of the crowd were probably bobbing their heads to the music with a mouthful of food. Several people however, approached the band after their set and expressed how they liked the music and wanted website info. So I guess that was good. We'll have to wait for a reaction at an actual music venue before we can judge how the crowd likes the band. At the moment, I'm working on perfecting and building their press kit to send out to venues.

Me.
Escorting the band groupies... just kidding.
Group photo with friends.

(Because of the way the stage coordinator set up the electronics, Josh(black t-shirt) couldn't hook up his pedals in the center of the stage, which is why he's on the left. Significant only because he's the lead vocalist.)

Left to right: Josh - vocals/guitar, Bryan - drums (behind Josh), Tom - Bass guitar, Jason - guitar.

Snowboarding Trip to Big Bear, CA

2010-04-09T03:50:00.000-07:00

Hey all.

Well, I went on a 3 day trip to good ol' Big Bear, CA for some snowboarding last week. I got back Friday and ended up jumping right in with some friends and hitting the nightlife over the weekend. I'm still a bit sore believe it or not. The top of my left thigh felt destroyed over the weekend. It was a great trip. I went with my brother from another mother, Travis. He's going to school up north so I don't get to see him much and we've missed doing this trip for the past couple of years so this was a nice change. Yeah, it was just good times with a good friend. We got lucky with the scheduling of the trip as it was expected to rain last Wednesday, the day we planned to drive up. So as we drove up that day, it started to snow pretty good on the mountain. We got there a bit late as we took our time leaving so we took it easy and grabbed a nap before dinner. We went to a place I knew for some BBQ and drinks, ate and drank our fill and played some pool at a bar on the same street. For the week of spring break for a lot of students, it was sort of slow and dead up there. It may have been because the main highway to Big Bear was closed for construction leaving only two other ways up, which makes the trip about a half hour longer.
Thursday was a full day of snowboarding. We know Big Bear pretty well, and a couple of decent/good restaurants we knew there weren't around anymore but we found this gem of a restaurant in the village. It was called the Teddy Bear Restaurant. They had good food at a good price and it was just an overall cool little mountain restaurant. We pretty much ate all of our meals there for the next two days. Awesome breakfast food, awesome home-style cooking, awesome everything.
Thursday night was pretty much our quest to find a cool place to hang out at night. There are only a few bars in the city, but we found this one dive bar in a hidden part of the village. It was a real back-corner of the street kind of place. Apparently though, it's very well known to the locals and the only place open until 2AM. Compared to the other bar we played pool at the night before, we walked in and a pretty busy and rowdy karaoke night was ensuing. Awesome. Basically, we covered all of our bases for the next trip! We now know where to eat again, and where to hang out. On Friday, we chose to snowboard for half the day before leaving to go back home. It was a good decision. We were a little tired and were in the recovery stage from snowboarding the day before, but the few hours of riding in perfect blue-bird weather conditions made it all worthwhile. After the snow on Wednesday, the next two days had perfect spring weather.

I don't know what it is. Snowboarding to me just has so many therapeutic qualities. Even the lift ride up is relaxing. The cool, fresh, mountain air slowly breezing by... a nice sunny day with clear, blue skies... (at least in Southern California ski resorts). Yeah. It's just awesome. I think the season is going to last another 4-5 weeks here with some more rain in the forecast for next week, so I'm sure I'll get some more riding in before the season is over.

I cut a short video of the trip and took some pictures (I'm in the Green and wearing the darker of the sweaters):

Big Bear Snowboarding - March 2010 from Morrownow on Vimeo.

Travis is not dressed like a local.

Me.

Travster

Me

I think my car should look like this all the time.

Me.

Me.

Spicy SALSA...

2010-03-31T00:31:00.001-07:00

I had a nice and spicy weekend. It was my buddy Jason's girlfriend's birthday party on Saturday. If you all don't know who Jason is, he's the lead guitarist for the band Morrownow, of which I'm "managing". He called me about a week beforehand and said, "Hey man, are you free next Saturday? We're throwing a salsa dancing party but there aren't enough guys for all of her single friends."

Let's take a moment...

IS THAT NOT THE BEST PARTY INVITE A GUY COULD EVER GET?!

Haha, "not enough guys for all the single girls"... Pffft. I laughed so hard over the phone. I said, "Oh Sorry dude, but I'm going to my friend's salsa dancing party where there are not enough dudes for all the girls!"

One of my best buds, Travis flew down from San Jose last week for spring break. Of course, I brought him along to the party and it was a great time. The party took place at a pool clubhouse so there was a bar, patio, and a game room. Let's just say the ratio of guys to girls more than evened out after, I'm assuming, Jason made a few more calls after he spoke to me. It was still a fun time. I myself, had a female dance partner unlike some other unlucky guys. Nothing really came of it though. She was a nice girl. A pretty entertaining salsa dancing instructor was there and he taught us the basics, some flashy turns, and some sexy moves. It was SO fun. I kind of have a goal now to learn more and get awesome at dancing salsa.

What was funny about the party was that, Jason's girlfriend being 20 years old, most of her friends were around 19-20 years old also. Not much of an age gap whatsoever, but in maturity level? I don't know, there seemed to be a huge difference comparing my circle of friends that were there to her's. Josh, Jason, Travis, and I all hover in the age range of 23-24. Let's just say the younger guys that were there turned the simple game of ping pong into a "LET'S TRY TO HIT THESE PING PONG BALLS AT EACH OTHER AS HARD AS WE CAN!" I was playing a nice game of pool with Josh's girlfriend and then all of a sudden, ping pong balls started to whiz by our heads. Josh, his girlfriend, and I just looked at each other for a moment and then we walked out of the game room in unison. It was just a strange realization of how much more... not necessarily mature we are, I think it's just that we're in a little more progressive life stage I guess you could say. Hmm. Nah, I take that back, it was like we were exponentially more mature than they were even with only a few years of age difference. It was strange, that's all. And another thing was, that they all were attending Santa Monica College, a school that WE ALL went to a few years ago. Hah.

Well since Travis is in town, we are leaving today for our traditional and yearly snowboarding trip up to Big Bear, CA for a few days. The weather report says it should rain lightly today and into the night. That means while we're up there, we might see some fresh snow by Thursday. We could really get lucky and get some quality powder in. I'm excited for it. I'll be back by Friday afternoon and I plan to take tons of pictures and video.

Have a great week everyone.

Manual labor of love...

2010-03-26T04:24:00.000-07:00

Wow another week has gone by. It's surprising how time flies sometimes. I can't even really recall what I did this week. Nothing significant besides slight adjustments and remodeling around the new place. A contractor has been coming everyday for the past two weeks still working on little things here and there. He finished on Tuesday finally. No more early morning wake-ups to hammering and sanding. I helped him sand down and refinish/paint the balcony doors and fireplace mantle. Not a big deal. It's been nice working with my hands and being productive that way. I remember as a kid my uncle taught me how to use tools and ever since, I pride myself on my ability to use a lot of them and fix certain things. It's a good and satisfying feeling when you work with your hands. It's like cooking your own food, it tastes better knowing you made it yourself.

I've made the best addition to my room this past week. Remember how I said the studio lighting was my favorite? This is now my favorite:

I put in some cool snowboard wall mounts that I actually found on a blog. They're from HangTimeUSA.com. I think the boards complete the vibe to my room. It's just a nice, refreshing reminder of something I love and am passionate about every time I look at that wall. I posted the pic on facebook and said, "These are the two girls I wake up to in the morning". I haven't gone riding this season as much as I've wanted to at ALL, but this upcoming week will give me the opportunity to get 3 full days in. One of my best friends is coming back into town on spring break and we're going to Big Bear, CA for a few days. I'm going to take as many pictures and video as I can.

That reminds me, I don't take enough pictures. I remember growing up as a kid, My aunt and I took pictures ALL the time whenever we went somewhere. We have several photo albums dedicated to my trips to Disneyland, little league baseball, etc. But now, I think there's this massive gap of my life that's picture-less from around middle school to... now. I mean yes, I have pictures of myself from the past few years, but I'm just saying I probably won't be able to find anything in physical form that would show what I looked like when I was 14. It's really weird! But now I'm just inspired to record memories and therefore take more pictures. All I have to do now is buy a camera...

OH! Another thing I want to get for my room is a framed poster of my favorite movie, "Swingers":

and maybe this too:

New setting...

2010-03-17T03:01:00.000-07:00

Whoa. I've been MIA it seems. Well, I've been really busy lately. I just moved into a new condo that my Aunt purchased a few months ago. She's been remodeling it for the past few months and everything came out well. It's her first ever home that she's purchased, and at age 65, I'm really happy for her. She deserves it. Since I'll be starting film school in August, I decided to stay in one of the rooms at the condo for the first semester. The school is out in the valley above central Los Angeles so I'll try out commuting for the first semester and see if I want to move closer on my own. It'd be a 22 mile trip one way. 44 miles every school day plus traffic? We'll see how it works out. We moved in last Thursday and I only grabbed a couple hours of sleep the night before so I was exhausted by the end. I think I made up for it with 14 hours of recovery sleep -- AWESOME. It always feel gross to wake up in the afternoon though.

I have yet to hang my snowboards up on my wall or get some pictures framed to put on my walls, but the furniture placement is set up now. It's a lot smaller than my old room, but I love how I was able to customize everything here. I had 3 walls painted with a really light blue, almost a white hue, and the wall with the balcony doors a darker, grey-blue. It's all about calm and tranquility. I also had a 4-spotlight light fixture put into the ceiling. It's probably my favorite part of the room.

My room, currently:

The significance in all of this is that this room here is and will from now on be, "Home". My aunt purchased this condo to possibly retire in. After all the years of raising me by herself and struggling financially, she's done very well for herself these past few years and this is part of her reward. Her other reward will come after I hopefully sell a screenplay to a major studio and buy her something, like a car. Like I said, she deserves it. After I move on and make my own way, this room will always be the place to come back to every so often. It just makes it more special.

My weekend:
What a weekend. Friday night, I had drinks with Josh and Bryan. It was a rare night off on the weekend for them in between work and Morrownow band practices. It was a good time. I should've capped the drinking to that night, but I also ended up going to a party Saturday night. My friend Mark, who used to work at Paradigm (#2 or 3 Talent Agency in Los Angeles), invited me to an industry party in the Hollywood Hills. I mean "industry" as in the Hollywood/film business. It was a really good opportunity to meet industry people and network so I went. Of course, the house was amazing, and the people were good looking. Most of the guests were up and coming actors/actresses. I got to know a few of them. I've noticed over the years that they all usually have the same story: They're from another part of the country, they come here to make it big, but meanwhile they work at whatever job they can find to pay for their acting classes and iPhone service -- in a nutshell. But wow, some of these literally starving people looked great. It was a great party. Lots of free booze, good music, great view (people and the city), and new people. I also made a few contacts.

Here's to a new setting -- Cheers.

And by the way, I made a music video for the band with a compilation of video footage from the past several months of their progress. I guess you can say it's a music video for their EP Album titled, "Our Self". What do you guys think?

Morrownow's "Our Self" EP Album Music Video from Morrownow on Vimeo.

I need a dollar...

2010-03-04T17:44:00.001-08:00

I've been uninspired lately.

There hasn't been much self-analytical/profound thoughts happening, but I have come to a realization for myself. It might just be because I'm at the stage of life (20's) where we basically shape and build the base for our futures, or maybe it's just who I am, but I feel as if I'm meant for something more. I don't even know what the hell that means yet. I just feel like there has to be something more. I've thought lately of how most of us live through our lives being in the safe zone: The steady 9 to 5 job that provides just enough for everything. That's all fine and dandy. Totally honorable, and "correct". I have no problem with that, I just feel as if I need something more than that. That if I were to do the same, I'd be completely unsatisfied. Maybe I'm just ignorant, maybe all those 9 to 5'ers ARE unsatisfied, but they have obligations. That's fine too.

Life's a hustle. I feel like some people are out there that are just plain intelligent and talented in so many things, that they can get by doing whatever. Only time will tell if I'm one of those. I don't really want to be one of those people, I know what I want to do. Write. I'm going to hustle my way until I succeed.

New HBO TV Show called, "How to make it in America". The song in the intro of the show is awesome. Do me a favor, and listen to the song. It's great.
Aloe Blacc - I Need a Dollar

Mid-Week-ism...

2010-02-25T06:03:00.000-08:00

I could've SWORN today was Friday. It's been a weird week. I've been pretty busy, yet the week's been going by super slow. It should go by super fast if you're busy right?

This week's been full and productive, but it was all for work-work: my Aunt's company. But I did however, go out and grab a drink with a couple friends in between it all. That's always fun and relaxing.

As far as girl "J" goes, it's conflicting. I think I'm too sensitive about these things. She texted me yesterday. It was semi-significant only because it's usually me striking up the text conversations. She wanted to know how my week was going. After the past "bleh" Valentine's weekend, I've been in the "whatever" stage of it all. You know, I was going to give it maybe one more date or so to play it by ear. But then this little sliver of light happens (I know, it's really not), and immediately my romantic mode kicked in, thinking up good ideas for another date. I want to shut it off. The idea? Ice skating. She's never been, it's physical/close, and you know, I'm awesome at it. lol. The first sport I actually ever learned was ice hockey at 7 years old (I know, who would've thought that especially in the middle of Los Angeles?). But yeah, I know-I know, stop giving into it. True... true. Must quell the romantic ideas. What I'm going to do is this though: I'll throw her a curveball and not even ask her to hang out this weekend. She's got to have a desire to hang out with me too right? We'll see what happens. At this point I want to be able to say "I couldn't care less", but I do. A little bit.

It's all conflicting. She may actually like me a ton, but she's such a closed off person that it doesn't show and therefore I don't see it going anywhere. What's weird is that most of her close friends that I've met and immediate family all added me on Facebook. Is that supposed to mean something? Or are they just facebook-friend trigger happy? Either way, I'm done with all the thinking.

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Josh's Surprise Party cont'd:

J didn't make it to this party even though it had all of my closest friends that I wanted her to meet. She instead attended an outing with several friends welcoming back an Army friend that returned from Afghanistan. Probably the best reason ever to have if you don't make it to a get together that's important to me.

ANYWAYS, Here are some pics from the past weekend's Surprise Birthday Party we threw for one of my best friend's... Josh. 3 out of the 4 members of the band Morrownow too! By the way, I'm a goof:

-I've known some of these guys since age 4, literally sharing candies and food with each other during lunch breaks every DAY. I'm the guy trying to eat my friend's head, and birthday boy is in white.

-Had to throw in a normal picture of me (left) with my bud Austin.

-This is my friend Jason almost collapsing from laughing so hard for 2 solid minutes. Why? Because of the picture below...

-And yeah... that's me there creeping in the background. lol.

-And here are all the couples. Everyone had a significant other. Damn couples. But it was okay, me and Austin were just hanging out, and you know, looking cool... being super, awesome bachelors and all... pfft. lol.

In case I don't catch you guys again this week, have a great weekend!

Surprise Birthday Party for a friend...

2010-02-20T18:25:00.000-08:00

I had a good time last night. One of my closest friends - Josh (Also the vocalist/guitarist in the band), had his 24th birthday last night. He was raised to not celebrate birthdays (Jehovah's witness), but ever since high school, you know... all of that changed. His girlfriend told me about throwing him a surprise party about a month ago. Ever since, we've been circulating Facebook messages between 15 people planning it. The plan was for Josh and his girlfriend to go out to dinner at 8pm, and the surpriseriserers were to arrive at her house around 9pm. They came home at around 9:45pm, and of course, his closest and longest friends were there to greet him. During dinner, he actually texted most of us at the house about hanging out that night! LOL. So we all texted back responses like "Eh." "Maybe." "Can't." and my own, "Maybe. I have something to do first." Lol, he took it well though, he didn't want a big deal for his birthday anyway.

So he walks in, and... Take a look for yourselves:

Josh's Surprise 24th Birthday Party from Morrownow on Vimeo.

Recording Studio...

2010-02-03T06:13:00.001-08:00

-Left to right: Bryan, Tom, Josh, Jason-

-Me on the left after only 2 hours of sleep the night before.-

So as you all know, I'm managing a rock band that consists of three of my closest friends. If you're a newcomer and didn't know, you do now. YOU'RE WELCOME. Just kidding. The band is called, Morrownow and I'm most likely going to talk about them every so often as it's a time full of excitement and progress for them and myself. I've known Josh, the "frontman", lead vocalist, and guitarist, since I was 8 or 9 years old. We both can't figure out exactly when we started being friends, so we just say age 8. He's one of my closest friends, and in my small category of "best" friends. The drummer, Bryan, I've known since I was 14, a good 9 years. He's also a best friend. The other vocalist, and lead guitarist, is Jason. I've known him since I was about 15. Also a best friend. So as you can imagine, my motivation to work and "make things happen" for them is pretty high and it just exists by default. It's pretty cool being able to hang out with your best buds and help them try to succeed in the music biz. Tom the bassist, I've only known since June of 2009 when he joined the band. He's a cool guy.
I guess I'm saying all of this just to reiterate a bit of what I'm up to lately. Also to show how unique and fun of a situation it is. It's pretty fun and exciting. We've accomplished so much in three months than most bands do in years. The things we've accomplished don't seem like a big deal, but it actually is in the whole scheme of things. Especially when everyone has their respective personal lives with work, school, girlfriends, family, and etc. We've gotten a lot of things done in a mere few months.

Things accomplished:
1. Two professional photoshoots. For free. How? My smooth talking on Craigslist. lol.
2. Networking on multiple websites.
3. Video blogs.
4. Band blog and website(to be upgraded).
5. This past weekend, recorded their first 3-song EP!

These are all things that are still underway. Not much traffic on the band's blog, but that's because they haven't played their first show as Morrownow yet. But now that they have a 3-song EP that'll be done by FRIDAY, I can actually do band manager stuff and get them shows! I'll have a demo to work with! Finally a chance to try to make stuff happen. So yeah, that's been on my mind lately. Since they're all experienced musicians having been in multiple bands and such already, it's not a big deal performing. It's performing together and for the first time as Morrownow that will be the test. Not really a test, but maybe more on the level of a quiz. Josh, Jason, and Bryan were a band for a solid year/year and a half back in 2004 out of high school, so they already have that history. After the first show, the plan is to continuously perform around Hollywood, build a fan base, and improve their performances. In the meantime, I'll look into getting them some radio playtime starting with local college radios and independent stations. We've got to get some music critics from LA WEEKLY to write about us too. And in the midst of all of that, I'll keep producing videos with them so it'll be more engaging for the fans to see the band behind-the-scenes and being themselves. There's been 7 videos already actually, they're really stacking up. There'll be 8 by the end of next weekend by the way. I'm going to make a music video using one of the tracks from the completed demo which I'll get a hard copy of Friday, and I'll cut in footage from the video taken over the weekend of the band in the recording studio. If you'd like to listen to the music, stay tuned over the weekend! And if you'd like a CD... Let me know and I'll send you one! It'll be a while (maybe a month or so) until we start producing official CDs, but in the meantime I can send you a regular burned CD (Autographed? lol). Maybe I should do some sort of blog contest later on. Or maybe I should just be awesome and send it to you for free anyway...

I'll leave you all with a less-than-2-minutes sneak preview video I made of Morrownow in the recording studio. I make an appearance in it halfway through also -- that's motivation right there to watch!
(Watching Bryan, the guy speaking in the beginning of the video, it makes me laugh everytime because if you've seen him in the photoshoot and all, or just him in general, his style can look very "hood" or like some shady character. But when you listen to him speak and catch his mannerisms, you can just tell he's a nice, sweet, optimistic dude, and he is! Which is why he's one of my best buds.) Enjoy.

Sneak Peek at Morrownow in the Recording Studio from Morrownow on Vimeo.

Josh looking comparatively similar to a bust of James Brown. A sign?

Is the best policy...

2010-01-30T03:45:00.001-08:00

I'll be honest.

Thursday night, I went to record Morrownow's last band practice on video before they head to the recording studio today and tomorrow to record their 3-song EP/demo. After their practice, no one could make it out even though we planned to grab a drink after. One of them could make it though. I'm not going to mention specifically who because of what I want to talk about.

Lately as you know, or maybe it's not even just lately -- maybe it's more like, the early 20's. My early 20's. I'm 23 and I've found myself thinking a TON about my future. Of course, there's the usual ramblings of aspirations and goals, but then there comes that real visceral sensation of wanting something else. More like someone. I've never been in a long term relationship. It sounds odd at first for most people, and it's understandable. If I think about it objectively, it is strange to have gone this long, being a "normal" person that I am, to not have been in a long term relationship, a.k.a. a girlfriend. To be honest, it doesn't bother me. I never even notice it. Of course there are those lonely nights I notice where I wish there was someone there. Those moments where you wish there was someone to spend it with. Normal. But those times are short and forgettable. My friend and I got into a conversation about it. He's recently been in a new relationship -- the best one he's ever been in. I know him well, and there's been quite a few situations where he's been racked with loneliness. Not that he's weak in anyway, just that he was eventually beaten down by the history of the relationships he's been in. But he didn't give up, he just realized he shouldn't let himself be defined by the women he's involved with or that are in his life. Here are some song lyrics I found that defined my friend's predicament:

So the boy was cast out of Eden again.
Left by himself again.
Cursing the gods again.
Deciding for once he was enough.
He built his own world and became a man.

It's actually a Morrownow song. I know, I'm a pretty good band manager to know the lyrics. They're lucky to have me! lol. Well, I feel like I haven't come to the conclusion the person in the lyrics did as of yet. Or maybe just a tiny bit. Because I am comfortable with who I am as a person, and I don't need someone. But of course, I'd prefer to have someone. I feel like I'm on the edge though. Let's talk about why I haven't had a girlfriend for this long. Don't get me wrong either, I've had my flings. I just really... didn't meet anyone that sparked my interest that way. No one really came along, and the few that have, I've never gotten that moment where I said, "Wow. I need her in my life." I have imagined myself being that guy. No, not "that guy" in popular pictures where a random creepy looking guy is in the background of people's pictures, but that guy out there that's in his 30's-50's (of prime relationship/marriage age) that just... happened to stay single the whole time. That bachelor that you always wondered, "I wonder how he's still single at his age". I imagine sometimes that I'd be that guy living in the Lake Tahoe, CA area maybe. You know, with the truck, lumberjack jacket, his trusty Golden Retriever at his side, trusty shotgun (just kiddin'), living alone in a cabin, and snowboards all winter in the local resorts. That is, of course if I'm still single at that age. In fact, I think that's what will happen if I reach that age and have had my successes in film, and I still lack a significant other, I'd bundle all my money up and get a cabin in Lake Tahoe and live out 2/4 seasons there. But I doubt I'll be that guy, but who knows. It sure seems like it at the moment.

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Here's a video of my band, Morrownow at Thursday night's practice. The sound quality is pretty rough because it was in a practice studio room (tiny) and it was recorded on the video camera. It's still worth a look I think, you can still make out the guitar melodies and music. Even with the bad sound quality, tell me what you think of the band/music, and feel free to be honest! It's a song called "Siren", one out of the three they are recording. They're hitting the recording studio today, Saturday the 30th and tomorrow too. Free demos for all my blog followers?! I think SO! Let me know if you want one!

1/28/10 Practice before Demo Recording from Morrownow on Vimeo.

Fears and rain + 1st Sample "Daniel" story...

2010-01-22T17:50:00.000-08:00

Rain...

Hey all,

Hope you guys are having a good week. I've had an "okay" week. Los Angeles is pouring. It's been rainstorm after rainstorm consistently for the past week! Certain neighborhoods are flooding and the hill people are experiencing mudslides. No biggie though. Whenever we do get extreme weather here, it's just something that goes on in the background amongst the hustle of big city life. People continue to strive towards their own pursuit of happiness. All the rain means to me is a free car wash, and fresh snow in the ski resorts. I love it. The local mountains have about 5-7 feet of fresh POWDER snow. I planned to go the past two days, including today, but haven't been able to because of not so ideal weather conditions. Apparently the local resorts are experiencing 50-70 mile an hour winds with "blizzard-like" conditions. So, it wouldn't be so fun. I'm sure I'm going tomorrow though. The storms are supposed to pass by tomorrow night, and I want to try to get some pow turns in.

Picture of some lucky dude that lives locally near the resort (Cue song: "Hey Jealousy" by the Gin Blossoms):

The Road Ahead...

Hmm. The road to life. Like I said above, it's mostly about people striving for their own pursuit of happiness. Nothing else matters to some, and you can get away with that way of living and thinking in our society today. It breeds us all to get materialistic. But what I have just come to notice lately, not that I never knew before, there are people that are completely content with just getting by. There's nothing wrong with that either. They're content with providing for their families, and having "just enough", and it's noble. I'm not trying to knock it, but to me, life gives the opportunity for so much more in my eyes. There should be ambition, there should be roads less taken, that should be... taken more. I'm not trying to describe myself, but I just noticed the lack of "bigger things/goals" in other people's lives ltely. Girl "J" for example. Maybe it's from the lack of thorough, and semi-deep conversations we've had, but when I ask of what she wants to do in life, or of her ambitions, she sticks with the "I don't knows". And to me, I'm attracted to driven, focused, ambitious, strong women. We'll see what happens with her. That brings me to the meat of what's been going on in my head:

Fears...
I've come across another crossroad, that just emphasizes how big of a crossroad the one I was at previously was. lol. I pretty much took away from the previous one about a month or so ago, that I have to get started on my dreams and goals. This most recent crossroads just reiterated that point. I HAVE TO INITIATE. As I was doing one of my daily rituals and reading Men's Health magazine, I came across their listing of "Wishlist" products. You know a list of Cars, electronics, clothes, houses, and etc. I looked through them and thought to myself, "One day, I'll be able to get that." And then the immediate thought following was, "Where is this confidence coming from?" Because it's true, I have this subtle sense of confidence lurking in the background of whatever it is I do. I am well aware of capabilities, and I'm not being delusional, but it really makes me think of my future. I have all these dreams and ambitions of being successful, and it feels so close. I see all these things I want, and I feel they are actually accessible, attainable, and I don't know why I have so much confidence in that. It feels like some destiny, and I don't know what to make of it.
BUT, there are times I feel a sense of urgency and panic like, "You need to do it now! It's getting too late!" Like the Universe is yelling at me. It's like spurts of sudden desperation, and it's un-easing as hell. What the hell am I supposed to make of it? I agree with the stars though, there is an underlying urgency. The days, minutes, and seconds are flying by and I should buckle down and take advantage of every one. I think the pursuit of happiness (defined by ourselves) is the driving force in our lives. Mine is to succeed in telling people stories. Happiness to me is NOT money. But Happiness to me is being able to live freely, unbound by restrictions such as the lack of money. I want to do things, go places, all as I please and to my heart's content. That way, the only thing we fight against in our lives is Time. Ambition, get some.

Here's a chunk of a story I'm working on. I don't know if it's going to just be a short yet, but I'm writing it as I would a novel. It's only a couple of days old and it's not finished in the least. It's completely unedited.:

The beaten and weathered white pickup truck trudged to a squeaky stop on 6th street. The sound of rushing air through the crack of the window slowly silenced and were replaced by the sounds of MacArthur Park. The old man's cracked, sun-baked, farm hands released their grip on the steering wheel and worked the truck's gears. He didn't want to wake the sleeping young man, a mere boy in his eyes, in the passenger seat. Instead, he sat quietly and waited. He fixated his old eyes onto his own worn hands. In his years of experience, life ran by for many, but it walked by slowly for people like him. People who had to live day by day, for the next day. There was nothing else. Nothing but providing for the next day. He had lived his years working, striving to survive and provide for his own. He wasn't sure he succeeded either. After all these years of providing for the next generation, it suddenly felt futile to him as he looked over at the boy in the seat next to him. The silent camaraderie between them reverberated as the old man thought, "This boy. Will struggle."

Due to the sudden calmness, the young man awoke in the surreal, in between dreams. Besides the fog in his mind his conscience fought through, his whole situation was surreal to him. His goal, motivations, everything; was in between dreams.

The sweat from his brow dripped, salting his lips. He opened his eyes, feeling the sickly warmth of the sun and the sweaty shirt that stuck to him. He must've slept all the way from San Diego. He needed it. He looked over to the old man who was staring at his hands. Daniel spoke, "Thank you for the ride." (In Spanish). The old man looked up and nodded. Daniel had made it. He was now in Los Angeles, to try to do what many try to do.

Fingerprints...

2010-01-17T03:34:00.000-08:00

...well, with the down-time I had, it gave me some perspective. Even though J seems great and all, I really want to be careful and go slow. I can't "settle". Settle as in, letting myself fall for someone that's not very "right" for me. Why? Because honestly, I'm in a stage at the moment where I'm lonely. Not a depressed-lonely, No. Just the regular lonely. All my friends at the moment are in relationships, and you know -- I'm at that age and stage of my life where I also want to be with someone. Someone to lean on, relate to, and just to experience that warm, toasty feeling in the chest that you get when someone you care about is there with you. To share the moments and time together with. Another warm body. Someone that leaves their fingerprints on your heart. (That last bit about the fingerprints comes from the lyrics of a Morrownow song called, "Fingerprints" on the "Courting a Fall" album on iTunes... by the way. lol. For real though! Not shameless plugging! I swears it.) I've never had any long-term relationships really, so it'd be a nice change. I'm just going to take it as slow as possible. 'Tis all.

Morrownow Update:
So there's been a lot of progress with the band this past month. Well, we had those two photoshoots done during the month of December, and we got our finished and edited photos from the 1st shoot back. The 2nd is taking a little longer than expected, but it should be pretty awesome. The 1st ones came out great though. I edited a short video of the shoot that includes some of the photos in the video, and some pretty hilarious moments that happened within. Be sure to give the video a watch, and tell me what you think. Feedback on any work I do is you know -- awesome. They're planning to record their first EP album of 3 songs at the end of this month on the 30th, and 31st. It takes about a week of turn around -- to edit the music and put it through production. After that, I'll be finding the guys their very first gigs to play in February. No doubt I'll film that and cut it into video also. Exciting times to come! It feels great to be part of something with my best friends, developing, and progressing as a group in something like the music business. I'll keep you guys posted here for sure, but take a look at the Morrownow Blog too when you get a chance at: Morrownow.com

Have a great week everyone! It's apparently going to rain here in Los Angeles all week, so I have no doubt I'll be snowboarding sometime this week.

Photoshoot with Ryan Guzdzial 12.1.09 from Morrownow on Vimeo.

The New Year...

2010-01-06T01:21:00.000-08:00

The New Year. Wow, we're in the double digits now. It doesn't seem that long ago where I thought it was cool that I was graduating from middle school in the year 2000. Everyone sees this as a fresh start and that's great, but I'm also taking a new notice of things I haven't accomplished in the past year. They're basically all getting copied and pasted onto the list of things to do for 2010. Typing out "2010" is weird. Most of the time, my New Year's Resolutions is just a list of things to accomplish in life, and not just for the year ahead. But the way I'm thinking of it is to actually try to get a start on, and maybe even accomplish them all this year. I mean it's do-able. Depending on your list. My Oscar for best screenplay might have to wait a bit. That may be the only thing on the list where I can say, "Oh, I can do that 10 years from now". And that's getting lucky. Way lucky if I do...
(Um. I literally just forgot how old I was right now. I'm 23, but I thought for a good few seconds that I was 24. How weird is that?)

Strangely motivating isn't it? And funny. I think it'd be funnier if they put a " ! " at the end of where it says, "...you're going to die". Without an exclamation point, it seems sort of dark and emo. The power of grammatical symbols!

Writing...
I talk quite a bit about writing, and I know I haven't posted many samples. I wouldn't really even call them samples either. They're just "writings". But I'm working on a few things right now that I feel confident enough in to show soon. In the meantime, I feel like I have to read for myself, and tell of WHY I like to write. WHY I would like to write for film.

Film is amazing to me. From a societal aspect, media is practically a staple. Film has been that staple for most of the era of mass media. During times of war, and other difficult times, people would flock to the theaters to be informed, and entertained, for a good couple of hours. That's a huge chunk of someone's day if you think about it. To be engaged and dedicated to a character's predicament, their journey, and finally their resolution for two whole hours? Completely forgetting about your own life? Living vicariously through a fictional character's? Cool. I think that's really cool. Writing for all these people hoping to be entertained and intrigued, gives me the ability to tell a story I come up with, and how I want it to be told. That's a cool ability. I can make the audience feel, I can trigger emotions, and most intriguing of all, I can show them meanings and messages. Undoubtedly what we see in films influence us. Think "Schindler's List". And of course it's not to attempt to feel some kind of godly power, No. It's about being able to tell a story and have the audience engage and feel something visceral from what they're watching. It's the best part of story telling.

Merry Christmas 2009...

2009-12-26T19:25:00.000-08:00

Hey, Merry Christmas and Happy Holidays everyone.

There are a lot of things that go through my head when the end of the year comes around. I typically think of all the things I did or accomplished, and want to feel satisfied with how I spent the year. I think I am. I mean, there's nothing significant I can really do until I'm done with school. What I have accomplished however, is grasping the sense of what I want my life to be, and what I want to do. I feel confident in what I want out of life and I feel focused on getting what I want. Life is short and sometimes it doesn't feel like it, but when you think back on certain times the memories start to blur and it all goes by pretty fast. It's Us versus Time. Let's try to make the most of it.

I'm also thankful for a lot. I'm going to take a page out of Oprah's philosophy and do my "List 5 things you are thankful for everyday". No worries, I don't watch Oprah personally, but I always get the re-cap and regurgitated version of her shows from my Aunt.

I'm thankful for:
1. My friends. They're lifetime friends.
2. My Aunt. She raised me since age 4. She made me who I am today and what I will be tomorrow.
3. My resources. Not much money being a student and all, but I have what I need. Especially my car. I love it, and you've got to love what you drive. And also, you really do need a car in LA. Public transportation here just doesn't cut it. Plus, it gets me to the slopes!
4. My capabilities. It's hard to find what you're truly capable of. It takes our whole lives really, but I think I have a good grasp on what I can do. It's good to know.
5. Snowboarding. If there's no snowboarding in Heaven, I'm not going.

The date...
Well, I'm just about to leave for it. I mean, it's really not a big deal. My friend Bryan who's known her for a while has told me she's a flake. We both actually bet each other drinks that she'd cancel. But it's 7:30pm and our 8pm scheduled rendezvous is still on track. We'll see what happens. I'm not expecting much. But I am giving her the benefit of the doubt. That's all a date really is isn't it? A chance to show who you are and if you're more than what you look like?

Prelude to the New Year...?

2009-12-22T18:18:00.000-08:00

Wow. Time goes by so fast in between posts when I'm busy. It's nice, but I think I should post more often.

It's actually sucked having as much free time as I do. But the past week has been full of good times. It feels nice to be out doing things, and getting things done. I've made good use of a weekly planner I bought at Staples. The more I schedule things for the days ahead, the more I feel I have to do, and the more productive I feel when I get them done. Last Wednesday I went snowboarding for the day all by my lonesome. Why by myself? Well, all the buddies are busy with work and simply don't have the money and time to snowboard on a random weekday. Haha, the previous sentence makes me feel guilty. But hey, I took a break from school to be able to do things like this, and so I'm doing it. And no one I know is really as obsessed as I am about it. I had a good time and also made myself look sort of vain as I stood on the summit taking cell phone pictures of myself for facebook. I also took video of myself taking 4 jumps on a run. I probably looked weird holding a cell phone an arm's length away from my face as I flew through the air. But an AWESOME weird, which is in the end, just AWESOME.

I tried to go snowboard today also and try out a new ski resort that's only 45 minutes away from Los Angeles, but when I got there a lift had derailed a mere hour earlier because of high winds. Lame. So I drove back home. It worked out though because I grabbed my laptop and headed to the cafe I'm typing this post in. Happy face.

DATING...
So I haven't dated since I think... last Spring. The last girl was pretty cool actually. She was witty, smart, funny, and an avid skier. She travels, by herself, to a ton of different resorts in California every winter to ski(that's hot). In fact, our date was on the mountain, where we planned to meet for a drink after our respective days on the slopes were over. I knew her through a friend. She was about a year and a half older than me, but that didn't matter. Things were promising, and we continued to hang out and see each other. Things got a little complicated however when she turned out to be a boatload of self-sabotaging, crazy. She was like one of those people that need constant drama in their lives. Things will go smoothly, and that would be the exact point where they would try to add some UNSMOOTH into the mix, you know what I mean? I really have no tolerance or patience for people that can't enjoy life, so I broke it off pretty quick. It was pretty disappointing though, there was a lot of good qualities about her.

Anyway, my friend Bryan(Also the drummer for Morrownow) had a party last-last Saturday on the 12th. He was moving out of an awesome house he was renting a room in, and threw a moving-out party. The moment I walked in, a girl I recognized from one of his facebook photo albums(a very noticeable girl) was sitting on the couch with a friend I knew. I pretty much bee-lined to the couch to say "Hi" to my friend and took the opportunity to lock eyes with "noticeable girl"(let's call her "J"). We shot each other a long smile, and... I turned and left -- for the kitchen. Why did I leave? Well, my mentality was that I'd let our smile/moment marinate for a bit before I introduced myself. I know, I know, it sounds like some kind of ridiculous game. All in all, I think it is. So I saw the rest of my friends, and then worked my way back to that room and introduced myself. We had a little chat, and I told her I remembered her from Bryan's facebook albums. "Oh yeah? How did you remember me?" "You're pretty noticeable". *Giggle* Things went well besides the guy that she came with (that was supposedly platonic) that hovered around her every move. I left things off like that. The next day, I get a facebook add from her, and some back and forth chatting ensued. To fast-forward, we were supposed to have a coffee date tomorrow night at 8pm, but she suggested we reschedule to hang out on Saturday instead. And feel free to chime in with some advice or opinions, but Hmm... shall the coffee date turn into a dinner? Or should it stay a coffee date? The reason I even find myself wondering is because it's Saturday... and Saturdays are for you know, a more significant outing no? Should I suggest we do something more such as dinner and maybe a drink after?

12/23/09 - Update: Okay, so we both rescheduled tonight's date. It was mutual. She had some last minute shopping to do after she gets off work tonight, and I had a family dinner thing to go to. But now she proposed this:
"...it was busy which is good. Hey Bryan wanted to hang out this weekend should we all get together?"
-Bryan being one of my best friends, and both our mutual friend. He has a girlfriend, and his party was actually to celebrate moving out and in with his girlfriend. So I can only assume she means a double date. This suggestion kind of annoyed me honestly. It can either be read as just a simple suggestion, or beating around the bush. It's like if we're going to have a one on one date, let's do it and get to know each other, but now just it feels like hesitation on her end. OR maybe I'm just reading into it too much.

What do you guys think?

Baby steps...

2009-12-12T03:43:00.000-08:00

Well, it seems that I'm on a new road. I think it's going to be filled with the usual potholes, turns, and speed limit signs life usually throws at us, but I think it'll always be heading in the right direction. That's all we can really ask for in life isn't it? To be facing and progressing the right way -- consistently? It's easy to spot certain people that most definitely took the wrong turn, and I don't want to be one of them.

I've taken the first baby steps in changing my life, and all I have to do is stay consistent. I've talked to my close buds about the crossroads I reached last week, and in turn they're supporting me and were also inspired. My most used line with them was, "I just don't want to be that old man that sits there regretting... not having done certain things in life, ya know?". That always hits home for them, and for me every time I hear myself say it. I think I'll write that into a script. It's good to see the people in your close support groups on the same page as you. It gives you confidence. I've written down the main goals and aspirations on a piece of paper and that paper is going to be in my face all the time. Literally, I'm going to tattoo it on my face. Just kidding. But if I did, that would be awesome... for a very short amount of time... like minutes... maybe an hour, at most. Anyway things are looking GREAT. It just FEELS great too. I've been running on my treadmill getting back in shape, which is a huge deal in my book by the way. I grew up an athlete, and for me having been idle for the past year without regular exercise, is as noticeable to me as a tattoo on my face would to you. A year and a half ago I was playing soccer 4 days out of the week at 3 hrs a day! And over the past year... I've done absolutely nothing. I surprised myself on the treadmill though because on my first day - Wednesday, after a 20 minute warm up walk, I pumped out a 10 minute mile no problem. And recently, I got through a whole chapstick without losing it! Clearly, I'm amazing. Clearly. I also have my snowboard waxed and ready to go, I'm going to start going to Sunday night soccer scrimmages again, I'm writing, I'm managing my friend's band, "Morrownow", etc.! There's a lot going on to keep me busy. I just have to ride this wave of activity and keep a focus of consistency... Wish me luck guys, and I wish the same for you.

Recent Progress with the band:
I got them a photo-shoot with a VERY experienced, and professional photographer, Joseph Linaschke. He just got done shooting the singer/artist Seal in Concert in Europe recently. Here's a couple of group photos of all of us together after the photo-shoot was done. Joseph is in the bottom-center holding the camera(of course). Yours truly, is on the far right (I'm the most yellow). If you're interested in the progress of the band, check out their blog (which is mostly written by me) at www.MORROWNOW.com

Crossroads...

2009-12-03T04:12:00.001-08:00

(Long post ahead)

Crossroads...

Nah, I'm not talking about that shitty movie Britney Spears was in, I'm talking about those certain events in life that make you really think about your past, present, and future all at once to the point life itself feels overwhelming. I think the crossroads/curveballs life throws at you once in a while is what makes and shapes us. We've just got to figure out which road to take or whether or not we should swing the bat the way we've been swinging it. It's like life gets really smooth and consistent, and all of a sudden you're hit with some event that flips you upside down. Clearly, I'm at one of those times, or shall I say just now passed the crossroads, onto a... new road?

Life seems to plateau sometimes and that's when you know you need a change. For some people I believe, it plateaus and just stays there. That's sad to me. But when people do reach a crossroads, I think it forces them to reach some sort of epiphany, some sort of realization about themselves and it contributes to which direction they take their lives. I think that's what life is all about, always growing/evolving as a person. I've found the road I'm taking, I think.

A couple of nights ago, when I reached my own metaphorical crossroads, I found myself literally at an intersection on the streets of Los Angeles. It was 2 AM and the streets were empty. A significant and rare thing because it's LA -- there's always cars. I just thought of how common car accidents were for a second and thought, "If I were to die in a car accident... now or like tomorrow, what would people say about me? What would they read at my funeral? What would my friends say about me in the eulogy?" "...Oh Brent was an ambitious guy with lots of asipirations... etc."? Which made me realize -- Ambition and dreams. That's all I have. That's the problem. I would just be one of the few that get into fatal car accidents in big cities everyday. Insignificant. I mean yes, we're all pretty insignificant in this huge universe of ours, but I'd like to be significant to my friends and family, and I guess... leave something behind? A legacy perhaps? And that itself, made me feel insignificant. I have no legacy, no by-product of "Brent's existence", there is no end result of ME. I wouldn't leave anything behind besides the memories my friends and family have of me, and my carbon footprint(Sorry EARTH, I didn't live long enough to make it up to you. I meant to buy a Prius, I swear!). I want to leave something behind.

My epiphany was: I refuse to believe only certain people are talented/gifted in some way. I think every single person has a talent/gift proposed to them at least once in their lifetime that they are capable of. Maybe some people are walking around who would've had this talent of playing the piano, but never pursued the instrument besides that one month of piano lessons when they were a kid. If they had, they'd probably be amazing by now and realized it long ago, but their cards just didn't play out like that in their lives. Maybe they just grew up never realizing their talent because they never had the opportunities to pursue it, or even see the value in it. It could be a million situations. I just know that either way, all people have the ability to do something well. Sometimes people are just out there pursuing the wrong thing (i.e. 99% of American Idol tryouts). I feel lucky to have realized some of my strengths, and that's where my legacy fails. I'm not doing anything with it. I'm not practicing it. I think it's like a sport, you need to train, train, train, practice, practice, practice, until you reach that level where it's... significant? I mean, I guess it doesn't even have to be a talent, it can be anything. It's hard for me to see or hear people talk about how much they hate their 9 to 5's, or how they didn't go for their dreams in one way or another. I realized it's because we're all lazy. And by lazy I also mean scared. We might be the people that just didn't get that extra boost of confidence from some random, past, life event for us to just go for it. We just sat on it, burying it under our couch cushions and never made our move because we were afraid of getting up and failing. All that buried under our couch cushions along with some change. The way life has been zipping by for me, even now I can see how short life can be -- especially if a random car accident can take it away from you. I'm so afraid of being that old man that lives the rest of his days with regrets, but I'm also afraid of failing. But then again, never trying is failure in itself right? So that's like a... Super fail. I think we all just need to grow some huge mental balls/ovaries and just go for whatever we think will make our lives more whole. There are so many things for me and I feel like I'm wasting huge chunks of them. I have plans. I have dreams. I have abilities. I'm not using or acting on them.

I NEED TO. NOW. Do you?

Get crackin'.

Looking up...

2009-11-21T19:39:00.000-08:00

Another busy week for me. It's been great though, I'm loving having something to do each day. It brushes the "monotonous-rust" away that's been building up during this past, uneventful, unproductive, summer.

I feel like I talk tons about my friends in my posts. I guess that just shows how close and how much a part of my life they are. My family for instance, I almost never see any throughout the year. I wish we were like the families in the movies where we would all see each other for the holidays, or at least on some random, consistent basis. But to be honest, and for example, I haven't spoken to my closest-located relative -- my cousin (also named Brent, I know, how original of my mother), since his brother's wedding this past June. I think I posted about the wedding too. He's busy with his growing toddler, wife, and new job. I understand. But that's where lies our family's characteristic of it "being ok" not talking to each other for however many months at a time. I always mean to call him, but simply forget. It's just how it is.

Be right back, steamed crab awaits...

Okay. So as I was saying... Since my family isn't the typical family, well... the bottom line is I appreciate my friends a lot, and I have a good group that I rely on, and can rely on for the rest of my life. We all go through our troubles and hardships, and we've been there for each other. It's just a naturally difficult period of time in our lives at the moment, and I'm glad I have them around. Needless to say, these close friends I'm talking about are also members of the band I am "managing". It just makes the situation all the more fun, exciting, and motivating. I love it. We hang out and do our normal thing, but all of a sudden, we have this major commonality between us to talk and get enthusiastic about together, besides the norm... girls. It's been tons of fun making things happen and setting things up. I got a band photographer, and now we're looking at a small club called the Dragonfly as their first gig in a few weeks. Also in a few weeks, they're going to record a three-song demo in a studio. With that, I can shop it around and get better gigs for them, thus increasing their fan base. That's all it is right now anyway, building up a significant fan base that will actually come out to shows.

We were filming a band interview video and they snapped this picture of me. They said I look very "Mr. Manager".

Not much else going on really. I'm going to get myself up in the mountains soon since it's snowing now, and surf the mountains a bit. The first snowboarding trip of the year will probably motivate a whole post, and will inspire the usage of a camera while I'm there of course.

Honesty Scrap Award #2...

2009-11-13T02:01:00.000-08:00

Herro! Well I've been pretty busy and productive the last few days... and I LOVE IT. It's been a great change from the usual... nothing I've been doing a lot of. The managerial duties of the band has really been coming around full circle, and things are really coming into shape. We have all of our networking up, I shot about 2 hours of video footage last night at their practice, and I'm currently editing it into an Introductory kind of video for the sites/fans. It gives an inside-look to the personalities of the guys, and the group as a whole. The plan now is to make a 3-song demo which will be done in about a few weeks to a month or so, and with a studio we have previous experience with is already lined up and ready to go for that. Since the band's sound is so unique, we're doing our best to search for other bands as similar as possible so we can play a "premier" show with them. Needless to say, it's pretty hard looking for these certain bands. I've been so busy doing all these things in fact, I'm on TWO computers at the moment. I know, I'm pretty amazing. You know what else is amazing? I just recently got through my SECOND chapstick all the way through without losing it! Please, don't hold your applause.

Something else in my world of 2nds...

I've recently received my 2nd Honesty Scrap Award! The first time I received it was last January. What's with the "Scrap" part of the award? I don't get it. Anyway. From the last time I received the award, it was given to people who write honestly in their blogs. But from the rules below, you can see this has upgraded to "brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged you". Cool. I must be the bomb diggity. Anyways, I'd like to thank Jill at her great blog, Life After College for giving me the award. Much appreciated, and I dig the acknowledgment whole-heartedly.

The Rules of the Award
1) Thank the person who gave the award and list their blog and link it.
2) Share "10 Honest Things" about yourself.
3) Present this award to 7 others whose blogs you find brilliant in content and/or design, or those who have encouraged you.
4) Tell those 7 people they've been awarded HONEST SCRAP and inform them of these guidelines in receiving the award.

*My 10 Honest Things About Myself*
(Dude. This is hard. I have to look at my answers from before so I don't write the same answer twice.But a lot has changed from a year...)
1. I'm almost always late. I'm never late to the important things, but usually to the "regular" things. When I say I'll be there at 10:30pm, expect me there 10:45pm. Depending on what we're doing of course. Just know I cut it pretty close.
2. I used to be very insecure about my looks in high school. Wasn't that the time almost everyone was though? I find peace in that, but I never found peace in how I was about 40lbs. overweight. So I lost it all in college. Now I'm sexy.
3. I'm a very competitive person and very team-oriented. I don't like to lose. It all stems from growing up playing team sports all of my life. I'm like... meant to succeed in team-dynamic situations.
4. I like "chick-flick" movies. I LOVE rom-coms(romantic-comedies). "The Proposal"? Watched it. "The Ugly Truth"? Watched it, loved it. I just think they're crazy entertaining. That's what they're meant for, so enjoy.
5. I have a promise to myself to one day perform stand-up comedy and invite all of my friends. They all tell me to do it, so one day, they're going to get a random, surprise invite.
6. I never get enough sleep when I'm in school. I'll stay up even when I'm tired. I feel like... bored or something. Like I'm wasting time, or didn't do enough with my day besides school to justify sleeping and wasting the hours. It's weird and I can't put a finger on the exact reasoning behind it all. But yeah, I'm usually running on only 6 hours of sleep at most when I'm in school. It's terrible.
7. The plan is to go to Cal-State Northridge. But I just can't see myself living out in the valley... Eww. If you guys ever watch the HBO show "Entourage" and they talk about the "valley", it's true. It's just gross out there to me. It's 10 degrees hotter, flatter, boring, and just, eww. I grew up in central Los Angeles all of my life, and can't see myself out in Northridge. Gross.
8. If I wasn't pursuing writing as a career, and screenwriting for my degree, I'd probably pursue something in Marketing. I know what the people want!
9. I can't stand rude people. Assholes, jerks, whatever you want to call them. I have absolutely NO tolerance. We come across people everyday, and you're bound not to like a few, and those are my few. If a person doesn't have the decency to treat people right, they don't deserve any room in anyone's lives. Bottom line.
10. This one is sort of recycled from the last year: My friends = family. I say this because I never grew up with much family around. Everyone was far away. It was usually just my Aunt and I. If you've been around my blog for even a few reads, you'll see how much I mention my friends. It's because they've been around since childhood. The closest friends I hang out with now, are truly the closest friends I've been around since childhood. Two I've known since I was 4 years old. I've known almost all of my closest friends since at LEAST 8 years old. That's a long time. We all consider each other brothers, and I love them all. They'll be around for the rest of my life. Just my friends in general, are good quality people. The weeding process just happens naturally, you know how it is. I surround myself with good people.

The 7 people/blogs I present "The Honest Scrap Award" are in no particular order:
1. Melanie at Melanie's Randomness
2. Jeanette at Cooler Ranch or Nacho Cheese?
3. David at The Rest Is Still Unwritten
4. Match me, please
5. Anne at stream-of-consciousness
6. Priscilla Ahn's brand new blog at Girl In A Tree (A crush on her helped with this choice. Refer to an old post: http://brentthewriter.blogspot.com/2009/01/windows-and-dreams.html)
7. Jen at Welcome to the Jungle - Another aspiring screenwriter in Hollywood. Cool.

Band Progress...

2009-11-10T03:56:00.000-08:00

Wow, it's been a week already?! It only feels like a few days have gone by.

Well let me tell you, I've lived out a pretty exciting and busy past week. I don't have much of a productivity problem at the moment. Lots of free time still, but now I actually need the time. My friend's band that I've been "managing" are taking their first steps to getting their name out there and start gigging soon. We're not brand new at this in the least. Everyone in the band has had years of performance experience, and Josh lead a band himself for over a year. I was along for the ride since the beginning from where he first picked up a guitar, so I actually have an idea of what to do also. The book "All about the music business" the apparent "bible" to all things music business has been pretty helpful the past week too.

The band's name is "Morrownow". I've been setting up about 5 of their networking websites in the past week. It's actually a lot of work trying to keep up and network consistently on them. They also have a blog, under the newly purchased "www.morrownow.com" domain (We're pretty proud of that and giggled like little girls). I've been waiting on some personal bio info from the band members before I update their blog. Hmm what else... Yeah, setting up their facebook page, twitter, myspace, and youtube. The myspace existed for a long time before, but now custom HTML website coding is in the works for it. In fact, there's a whole list of "to-do's" for each of these sites that I had to write it all down. Either way, it's keeping me busy and I love that. This band has a lot of potential, and what motivates me the MOST, besides their blatant talent, is how we're all close friends already. Josh, probably my closest and best friend from childhood, Jason, whom I've known since high school -- also part of my "closest friends" group of buddies, and Bryan, also in that group. We all consider each other brothers. Tom, the bassist, is brand new to our group but is an awesome guy with the personality to match. He fits right in. I think all of us being actual close/best friends with each other makes us unique, and I think that quality will carry us a long way.

They want to start playing gigs in the next few weeks. I have my role to play for that. "Mr. Manager". But like I told them, I want/need to earn that title.

As for regular things, I think that phase of not going out to bars lately is slowly tapering off. I don't think I'll ever get back up to 4-5 nights out a week again, but I definitely will be using my weekends. There's just this "urge/craving" to go out again. I don't know what it was, but the bottom line is I went out both nights this past weekend. A college party on Friday ngiht, and then checked out a cool new bar in Downtown LA called the "Seven Grand" with Josh and another buddy on Saturday night. The place was really cool, and will probably be my default hangout from now on. It's a step up in maturity level too, and I think that's what all of us were looking for.

If you have facebook, myspace, twitter, and of course -- a blog, I hope you'll support Morrownow. We're just trying to get off the ground at the moment and network a bit. Plus, the blog should be interesting as it's a behind-the-scenes look to a fresh new band on the road to "making it".

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Halloween 2009...

2009-11-03T03:40:00.000-08:00

I just went back and read my Halloween 2008 post. Wow. A year already. I love this time of year though. The holidays roll around, the weather gets cooler, and the colors of fall pop. Snow starts falling, and personally for me, it gets me way excited -- an erection of happiness in my brain for a new season of snowboarding.

So Friday night, the night BEFORE Halloween... My friend Josh, the one that subtly looks like Heath Ledger and can do the Joker impersonation, got us to be his bank robbing, clown posse from the movie, "The Dark Knight". Basically, the whole night was for Josh. We joked around with him saying, "Yeah man, you're going to need to buy us all of our drinks tonight because we're nothing but character support for you". Needless to say, we were a HUGE HIT on Cahuenga Blvd. Bar Row in Hollywood. We had plastic guns, and we would "escort" the Joker from bar to bar, clearing the way for him. We wore suits, and one of us was in regular street clothes (the clown that drove the bus into the bank). Yup, we went all out. We must be in 20 different people's facebook albums by now. We were taking pictures with random people everywhere. Josh had a makeup artist friend help him out with his makeup, and he looked the part. He didn't have time to go out shopping for real clothes to match the Joker's, so he just wore the parody costume from a costume shop. But it wasn't a big deal, he looked enough like him anyway. He got all of the attention of course, as we expected.

All of us.

Why so serious?

Josh

On Saturday night, it was slightly more toned down for some reason. I was an 80's Marathon Runner. I forgot to take pictures while I was at the party, but there are pictures below in the pre-party stages. It was a warehouse party in this industrial place in Santa Monica. It was cool. It was outdoors, and it was clearly in an actual warehouse that manufactured carts/bikes I think. It was an open bar for just a $10 admission fee. I came a little late and got in for free, SCORE. Anyway, it was super-crowded and packed and it was a pretty good time. We left at what we thought was 1:30AM only to be fooled by daylight savings time. We headed over to a friend's place right on the Venice Beach boardwalk, and hung out there for a small after party. Cookies, popcorn, and old school hip hop ensued. I called it a night not too long after I got there though. It was so-so. Overall, I had a great weekend. Here I am:

I think I'm going to hit the gym again, try to gain the muscle mass I lost over the past two years and then get additionally, super-buff so I can be a "300" Spartan for Halloween next year. Haha, yeah, not for health or any "real" reasons -- JUST to be a Spartan for next Halloween. That's New Year's Resolution #1.

New stuff...

2009-10-28T22:08:00.000-07:00

As I've said before, I don't have much to do lately. I'm out of school until film school starts up next August, so I'm trying to keep myself busy with work(which isn't much to do), books, and writing as much as I can. I must have like 10 notebooks full of writings, journals, and ideas. Well it's hard to go back and read through all of them because it's all pretty random and disorganized. I took a trip to Staples today and bought some nice, new, notebooks. It's nice, it's like buying new soccer shoes and anticipating breaking them in.

I bought a hard-covered journal notebook, and a medium sized notebook meant for "ideas". I should talk about that one book, "All You Need To Know About The Music Business" by Donald S. Passman too. That book is supposed to be the "bible" for anyone interested in any part of the music business. I bought it because a couple of my best friends have a rock band that actually have talent. My friend Josh, would like me to have the role of band manager for them, and do what band managers do. I was at their last band practice, and he brought it up. I told them all though, that I'd like to "earn" that position and not just be given the role. It wouldn't be fair to them to even ask for that position, especially since I have no real experience. They want to play gigs by the end of November, so I should get reading and figure out exactly what my role is going to be.

Josh

Jason(sitting), Tom(Bass), and Josh

Bryan (Drums)

Like I said, these guys aren't your typical "my friend's band" that usually suck. They're actually very good, and hopefully, I can help them get somewhere. These are guys I grew up with, so there's no real motivation besides them being my best friends, and wanting to see them succeed. I guess that's good for them, I'd actually be a genuine "manager" out for their best interests. We all watch the show "Entourage" too. I guess I'd be best compared to "E" (Eric) on the show.

HALLOWEEN IDEAS:
Well, Josh gets compared to Heath Ledger all the time while we're out. Needless to say, it hogs some attention from the female persuasion for us "other" guys that are with him. He also, can do a pretty dead-on accurate impersonation of "The Joker" from "Batman - The Dark Knight". It's pretty creepy how well he does it too. Well, the masks for the Joker's clown posse in the bank robbery scene in the beginning of the movie, are ordered, and our suits are ready for wear. Josh is going to be the Joker and we're going to be his clown posse.

So imagine... all of us wearing some snazzy suits, pulling up in my black SUV, in front of some club/bar, and we all pour out in our masks with a pretty convincing Joker in tow. Awesome. No worries, pictures galore this weekend.

Phase...

2009-10-18T04:37:00.000-07:00

I'm on the right, and my very handsome, single friend is Travis(that good enough Travis?).

I don't know. I'm pretty sure it's just a phase. For the past 3 months, my friends and I haven't gone out to any bars consistently. And by that I mean, we've all been spending the weekends doing pretty mellow stuff, and for myself, I've been staying home a lot. Its done crazy, magical, wonders for my wallet and checking account though. We've probably gone out to a bar a total of 3 times the past 3 months. The significance of this is that since we all turned 21, my friends and I have gone out pretty much every weekend to bars or parties. That's a solid 2 year block of time. It just feels weird now staying home multiple weekends in a row. Also, back when my friend Josh was working at a trendy bar in Hollywood, and another one in the Silverlake area, we were going out about 4 nights a week consistently for about 8 months. Well, tonight we all thought back on it. Actually, it wasn't all of us. That would be our group of four. Four best friends. I've known them since I was in kindergarten. Crazy huh? Anyway, yeah, just Josh and I were sitting in the 4100 bar tonight, and we walked in at about midnight. We had all of one drink each over the course of 40 minutes, and decided to call it a night. I laugh thinking about it now. We sat there and got into the most profound conversation of how we came to this stage... About how both of our alcohol tolerances are basically at zero because after that one drink each, our heads were already heavy. With mostly blurry nostalgia, we looked back and mapped out our schedule that was -- from several months ago. This is what we came up with:

Monday - nothing.

Tuesday - "$0.25 Chicken Wing Night" at Big Wang's (Trendy Sports bar contrary to the name) in Hollywood. We ate there pretty consistently every Tuesday night and then stuck around for drinks after.

Wednesday - "Hump day" (go out to get over the mid-week hump that is Wednesday) Went out for drinks again.

Thursday - Josh bartending at Ye Rustic Inn bar in Silverlake. We used to drop in on him randomly.

Friday - Mandatory night out in Hollywood.

Saturday - Mandatory night out again.

Sunday - recovery.

That's a pretty consistent drinking schedule held for about a solid 8 months. Not a very good thing now that we look back on it. So what changed?

Well, amongst us four, jobs were lost and gained, ex-girlfriends were taken back, homes were moved, money was short, gym memberships and diets ensued, and most of all... we just got over it. I guess we're all kind of over the whole L.A. bar scene. We were new to it being 21 then 22, and now were 23 and pretty well versed in the whole experience and tiring lifestyle. Many-a-nights have we gone out trying to re-enact the bar scenes from the movie "Swingers" with Vince Vaughn and Jon Fabreau(One of my favorite movies of all time by the way). And many-a-nights have we ended up at the late night taco trucks. We've been doing the same ol' bar night thing for two years. It's not like we don't enjoy it, but I guess we've figured out how tiring and expensive it can be going out EVERY weekend, AND a couple of times during the week. I feel it too. I see myself doing the whole nightlife scene maybe once or twice every two weeks from now on. I think it'll make the times we do go out more enjoyable anyway.

(no worries. his hairstyle has updated as of late.)

I think... we're growing up...

(hahaha, quite the staged picture)

But in all seriousness -- the "growing up" part... is kinda scary.

My Inner Monologue...

2009-10-11T15:05:00.001-07:00

So I used to come to this cafe pretty frequently to write, study, and eat. I haven't been here for quite a while. It's a great cafe in central LA too. Quaint, with nice, mellow decor, and open until almost 2 AM. Lots of writers/creative types hang out here to work. Hence, me. You'll walk in and see the glowing screens of about 15-20 Apple laptops reflecting on blank or concentrated faces. Anyways, it inspired me to write a little of my inner monologue going through my head.

My inner monologue:

"So here I sit. I wonder if I’m a cliché. A walking cliché. Is using the phrase “A walking cliché” a cliché? If it is, I must be such a cliché for using clichés. I think I am a cliché for sure though. If I saw myself sitting here in this café trying to write a screenplay, I’d even call myself a cliché. It’s sad but I do find this, sitting with my latop, this coffee sipping, and blank staring, strangely comfortable and fitting; like a nice pair of corduroys. Yes, I'm pretty sure I am a walking cliché because I’m an aspiring screenwriter sitting in a Los Angeles café with a blank page of script on my laptop screen. I’ve been sitting here for the past forty-five minutes and all I’ve written is “FADE IN:”. That’s not much. Not much at all. This quaint little café is pretty amusing though. I’m sitting around ten other people trying to write the next big movie that will never get made because ninety-nine percent of submitted screenplays are terrible. We’re just a bunch of future failures sitting, drinking overpriced coffee, and leeching off of the free internet here. I wonder how many of us are poor and starving and are actually trying to make a living writing. "Starving artists" as they say. I hope none of us. The coffee is pretty expensive here. So I guess the eleven of us are poor, starving, future failure, walking cliché, caffeine addicts getting our daily fix. And I also guess the attraction of writing in cafés might be the watching of social interactions, and the occasional eavesdropping of conversations. The usual people watching, a free spectator sport. Maybe all of that influences us and goes into our screenplays. Maybe that’s why ninety-nine percent of our screenplays don’t get bought because we put down the usual un-genuine and bland conversations that are common in cafés! Maybe that’s why out of only nine thousand or so current Writer’s Guild members, only half are actually employed at a time! Maybe that’s why most screenwriter’s aren’t famous, or filthy rich! Maybe that’s why people don’t even know the name of the person who wrote the movie their watching! Maybe… My God, I just realized my aspiration of being a successful screenwriter is so extremely far fetched. Selling a screenplay is like winning the fucking lottery after you factor in your competition of waiters/screenwriters, gardeners/screenwriters, janitors/screenwriters, all the graduates of elite film schools around the world that move to Hollywood every year, the former stripper turned successful Oscar winning screenwriter, and etcetera! Am I having a panic attack? What does this all mean? My one dream can go unaccomplished my whole life? No! I have to think positive, practice what that book “The Secret” taught me! Think positive, think positive. I’m not panicking. It must be writer’s block. That’s it. Just some simple writer’s block. What is writer’s block anyways? It’s just a mental obstacle. Just poof it away and climb over it! Think positive! You can do it! That’s right, I’m a writer’s block ninja, baby... Well apparently the caffeine just kicked in."

Finally, I got some writing done. Writing this was pretty fun. And no worries, the despair going on at the end was a bit exaggerated and dramatic. I don't really feel all that worried about my future as a screenwriter. Oh, and I think some of you may have wondered about that "stripper turned successful Oscar winning screenwriter" part. It's true. Diablo Cody - the writer of the movie "Juno".

Re-Introduction...

2009-10-04T23:35:00.001-07:00

Hey inter-webnet. I feel like I should re-introduce myself and give you the low-down-skinny on what I've been up to and what I'm all about now. It really does seem like I lost track of what this blog is supposed to be about. It's gone through some evolutionary stages yes? For a while it was about my nightlife adventures, and then it just got downright depressing after my Lake Tahoe dream trip didn't work out. But no worries though, I've gotten back on track.

Introduction time:

Herro. My name's Brent. I'm 23 years old and I was born and raised here in Los Angeles, CA. I'm sure it's already apparent from my profile picture, but I'm Asian-American. Korean, to be specific. But being raised the way I was and by a single parent (my Aunt) the way she was, I grew up Americanized in every sense of the word. I can barely speak Korean, and can't read or write it. Ordering food in Korean restaurants require a lot of hand signals on my part. Some people tell me it's an unfortunate lack of culture, but I don't see the big deal. It's just natural assimilation to me. Currently, I'm out of school. I should be starting film school in one of the local Cal-States next Fall though. I'm an aspiring screenwriter. I know these days you don't need to go to film school to be a successful screenwriter, but personally, I'd like the official college degree. For myself. Also, I don't think I'm passionate enough about anything else to pursue a degree in it besides writing anyway. So during this whole gap of free time I have until next Fall, I'm sparsely working for my Aunt and her company, and trying to stay productive (and failing) in between. I never grew up with much family, so my friends are for the most part, the most important thing to me.

Well, it's getting kind of scary nowadays with the realization of how I'm 23 years old, a quarter of a century old almost... and of how I don't have much to show for it. Life is looming, and the future seems pretty scary. Everything is in the works, and the process of reach my goals have sort of started, but I have a lot of life to live, and a lot of work cut out for me in this life of mine. I say that because to be successful in a pass/fail kind of industry like Hollywood, is quite an aspiration, and hard to achieve. I'm going to keep up with this however, and chronicle how I grow as a person, my trials and tribulations, and quite possibly, the events leading to success...

Questions?

A picture taken with me getting caught off guard. A good example of how unsure I feel about my future.

heh...

2009-09-16T04:43:00.000-07:00

I keep forgetting what blogs are about sometimes. I keep waiting until I have something that I think is profound to say until I post. I gotta quit that.

Blessings...

2009-09-14T05:19:00.001-07:00

So yesterday was my birthday. 23 feels no different of course. But Saturday night felt different though. It was awesome...

I had about 12 of my closest friends with me hanging out in our own section of the bar, having drinks, talking, telling jokes, and having an all-around awesome time. It makes me feel really blessed to have so many good quality friends. My best friend Josh used to work at the bar we were at. The Well in Hollywood. A very cool, lounge-y type place. He got a whole corner of the bar, and dare I call it what it's actually called, the "VIP Corner". I'm not really the snazzy, Hollywood, vanity type of guy so I almost don't want to call it what it was. But yeah, we had our own little lounge corner with a seperate booth just for us to get drinks. It was nice. And Josh got the reservation for free with hook-ups. It was just great to have a space of our own to be together. I grew up with half those people. One of my friends, I have known since I was 4 years old! How does that happen?! And he's still one of my closest friends. Josh, I've known since the 3rd grade. And Austin, I've known since kindergarten.

I told everyone there in my drunken haze, but honestly, -- that life is so short when it comes down to it, that we don't have time to waste being around fake people. We don't have time for the bullshit. We only have time to surround ourselves with as many genuine, good people, as you can. There's room for nothing else. I mean as people, it defines us, we are a social being, and we depend on each other for almost everything. It's amazing if you think about it. Well, I told them each personally that I appreciate them, and their presence in my life, and how valuable they are to me. I told them I could recite this whole personal message to them even while sober because I was being completely honest. Isn't that funny when you're drunk you tend to think people don't believe you when you tell them things? It's hilarious because you start to repeat yourself and try to reassure them as much as possible. It becomes of circle of slurred guarantees of honesty.

I guess what I'm trying to say is these are the moments that define your life. Not just a birthday, but just a time around friends, and people who love you. It really shows you how much love there is in the world for you, and personally, it almost defines me as a person. I can take a step back, and try to see it from outside the box and surprise myself of how many people care about me, and truly wish me all the best in life. And it's not even about the amount of people, it's the quality. And I try to surround myself with only good quality, intelligent, down to earth, GENUINE people in my life. I have no time or space for anything less. Saturday night made me truly happy, and gave me a wake up call as to what kind of person I must be with all these great people in my life even giving me the time of day. You know what I mean?

On another note, I'm plowing through my anxiety. I'm really trying to take a passenger seat role with these anxious thoughts and worries that trigger the panic attacks, and trying to just observe and befriend them. It's a technique. It's been working too. It keeps me in the rational part of the brain, and most of the fear is just the fear of having a panic attack. Isn't that crazy? You have a panic attack because you fear having a panic attack. What a circle. I'm just saying I was fine Saturday night. The most anxious I got was when I got home and really figured out how drunk I was. I was pretty drunk. Just the fear of being hungover (aka. dehydrated) the next day triggered some anxious sensations, but I powered through it. It's just going to take practice again. I'll be fine.

Well, I think I've got to make the most of this coming year. You're only 23 once.

Box of Chocolates...

2009-08-10T03:26:00.000-07:00

August 10. 2009. It's strange. 10 days from now it'll be one of my closest friend's 23rd birthday. The 13th of next month will be mine. Twenty-three years. That's quite a number. If we lived to a sure age of 100, we could safely say that I have practically lived out a quarter of my life. Yet we can't even say that. I've possibly surpassed the quarter of my life already. Not to be grim though. Just being a little imaginative, and thoughtful of the future and what it holds for me I guess. Life is going by, and I can't stop, pause, or rewind it. It's what I make it for myself, and it feels so big in the scheme of things sometimes. Overwhelming. So much I want to do, want to be, but that damn clock hangs on the wall of our lives ticking away without fail or exhaustion. Am I wasting time? Am I making the most of it? I think this whole world can use a little more. A little more time to accomplish what we need to, to make who we are, to really take our time and never have to wonder if it's too late. Time to just define ourselves in some way or another. I fear sometimes I won't make/leave a mark. People say our children are probably the greatest accomplishments of our lives. That's scary too. As you can see all around us, there are a lot of people that make living harder than it already is.

I think the society we live in makes it inherently hard to live and be happy at the same time. I think the best we can do to leave our mark is to make living a little bit easier for everybody else in our own way. Some people go off to war, die in a foreign land, and are never able to say that they've lived out a quarter of their potential life, just so we can go on living our own and say that we have. The world is so big sometimes, that we never notice these individual tragedies, or think about it often. Isn't that the nature of life though? I mean it's not like we can stop our own because of the tragedy of another. We have to go on don't we? The clock keeps ticking for the rest of us. That's why I think sometimes, that in my choice of work, to potentially spend my life doing, to be a writer, to be creative, --sometimes I fear that I won't be able to do enough, or make a significant mark. But I guess if I can make someone feel/forget/be entertained/be happy/laugh, for about an hour and a half of their life, just sitting there eating popcorn; I've made a small difference. I think that's all we can ever hope to do... make a small difference in making the world, and the people around us, happier.

Suit up!...

2009-07-14T07:05:00.000-07:00

Howdy blog. It's been a busy week. But it's been a good-busy. Busy enough to keep from being bored, but not enough to be stressful or annoying.

The wood shapes fit...
I finally feel like things are set in place. It's like that toy from when we were toddlers, where you put the wooden shapes in the correct places. The past 5 years or so, the triangle piece was crammed in the circle hole. It's now in the correct triangle hole. -"That's what she said!"- . But seriously now, it feels nice. It all begins with my transfer and acceptance to the film writing program at Cal State Northridge. I'm all set to start there and learn my craft. And to be at this point, it feels great. It's like I'm finally on track. The only thing is, I'm also at the point where I want to get my life and goals re-focused -- I want to take a break from school. I want to do this snowboarding trip to Lake Tahoe this winter, for sure this time -- and start the film program next fall instead. That's the plan...

Billy's Wedding...
Tonight, I'll make the drive up the California Coast for my cousin Billy's Saturday wedding near San Luis Obispo in Avila Beach. I love the area up there. He and his brother, also named Brent, grew up in the Pismo Beach area. They grew up in the whole late 80's, early 90's surf, and punk era. Needless to say, they're my kind of guys to hang out with. I never had any siblings growing up, so my friends are extra important to me in replacement and my cousins are the closest thing to brothers I have. Since Brent is now married with a toddler, and Billy is now getting married, I won't have much to do tonight when I go up the coast. I'll be near Avila beach though. So I guess I'll look up some cool nightlife spot there on Yelp.com and have a drink. It's not so bad to go to a bar alone is it? We'll see. I'll be sure to take some pictures at the wedding.

Suit up!
So for the wedding, I bought myself a suit. And I mean a really nice, good quality suit. My first one in fact. I've never owned a suit before. There just never came a need really. This one was pretty expensive though. I'm pretty sensible with finances, but I see the value in buying good quality things, especially clothes. I got myself a Zegna suit. I picked it up yesterday from the tailor, and it looks pretty awesome on me. I should get it altered a little bit more though, there's still room for adjustment to the slim-fitting look I want. I'm pretty proud of the suit. Barney Stinson from the most awesome, legendary, CBS tv show "How I Met Your Mother" would be proud. Barney, I "Suited up!" Barney Stinson in Action

Batting Cages...
In the past two weeks, I've been hitting at the batting cages almost every night. It's been great to get my swing and skills back. One of my top regrets in my short life of 22 years was quitting baseball in high school. If I stuck with it, even in my high school's under-funded, shitty baseball program, I would've played for a college at the least. Oh well. It just feels good to see how even after all these years I've maintained the bulk of skill I used to have. Hitting and doing it with good form is pretty satisfying for the soul. I guess it's like golf in a way. You practice and practice until your swing is perfect, and it turns into a self-satisfying game. Just trying to best your best.

Well after this weekend, next week will be pretty busy. I'll be heading up to San Francisco for 5 days to see a couple friends. Should be a great time. I'll tell you as it happens.

FRESH START...

2009-07-08T03:52:00.001-07:00

Hey blog. Sorry I've ignored you for the past few months, it wasn't anything personal. I should be updating you regularly from now on.
Why was I gone for so long you ask?
Well it's simple really. I've been sort of jaded by the misfortunes and mishappenings of life. No depressing sob stories, but... more like boredom and plain, unhappiness in the "big-picture" scheme of things.
What do I mean by that?
I mean by how I just haven't been happy with what I'm doing. The whole school thing, not actually learning what I want, and well, I guess this should explain things:
I sometimes see certain friends that I haven't seen in a short while, let's say a couple weeks. They then ask me "So Brent, what have you been up too?" My usual answer 9 out of 10 times is, "Oh you know, same shit - different day."
Get it now? Yeah, I know right?

I want to start fresh with everything. And I mean everything. This coming winter, I will, surely this time, uproot myself and plant myself in Lake Tahoe for the winter. I will be taking a break from school, no matter if I have to apply again and wait to attend for a year. After September, I'll be 23. Which means when I go back to school, I will be graduating from college at age 26. If I choose to get a Master's I'll finish that by age 28. Do I really want to use up these years? It's like using up all your quarters for one mediocre game out of a whole arcade. Well that's my inner conflict. Up to this point, I have been totally content with how much time I was taking to get through school. I'm a unique person, I've been through unique life events that have changed my path more than the average person. I was okay with it. Until now. I feel stagnant. -"That's what she said!" Just kidding. Seriously. I'm going to get things going again. This blog even, will be fresh. I have the whole point of the blog pretty focused now. It's about Me. Before, I was a little too self-conscious of what I wrote, and how I wrote. I guess because I knew it was read by a few people I know. I also think it was because I didn't want to sound dumb, or like a bad writer. But I realize I don't need to prove my intelligence and ability to anyone. This is a blog, not a literary sample.
------------

So blog, I've been lonely lately. As you know, I've never been in a long-term relationship in my adult life. Age 22 turning on 23. That too. Socially retarded? Nope. I've just been a work in progress after a few laggy moments in high school with major life events and all. I've made some major transformations in just the past few years, so my friends and I know to cut me some slack about the whole lack-of-relationships deal. But what I have experienced recently was the possibility of a casual, physical relationship and it made me realize something. It didn't work out too well as she was pretty neurotic, insecure, and self-sabotaging. But what it did do for me was give me a taste. You know, a taste of that feeling of someone else sleeping in your bed, keeping you company. Someone you could lean on. It was nice. It filled that loneliness void I usually filled with time spent with friends. And it filled that void a lot nicer than hang time with the guys did. I can see it now. The ongoing cycle of casual sex, and short physical relationships. I'm so close to fitting that description. It's not a bad thing... I think it's just natural when you're single, and alone. You fill the loneliness when and with who you can like a drug until you find one that's different and special. Even as a guy, for me, I don't even think it's about the need for sex, it's just a need to be with someone, to fill that void.

Reflection...

2009-03-20T05:47:00.001-07:00

So I've figured it out. Without going to the extent of calling it "depression" -- and no I'm not talking about America's economy, I'm talking about my "disappointment". I've allowed myself some personal reflection time instead of avoiding it in all this boredom I'm experiencing, and it's come out -- negatively. Just as I thought, and the exact reason I was avoiding it. I've come to realize how disappointed I am with how things in life go. Does it mean I have a totally negative outlook for my future? No. I'm too self-aware and confident for that to happen. I just realize that there are several disappointments in my life that I now have to acknowledge and address accordingly.

Intro: I have become self aware of my abilities. My arsenal of talents/faults. I know what I'm good at and what I'm not. Having this knowledge makes me a confident person, and confident in myself, which is a very good thing.

1. One of my biggest regrets is quitting baseball in my sophomore year of high school. I had natural talent, and I could've gone far in the sport. I would've at least played in college. Where am I now? Nowhere with the sport. But I've accepted it because even if I were able to go back in time, with all the other things going on around me at that specific time period of my life, I wouldn't have been able to succeed. A LOT of things were going on in my life at that particular time, including the death of my father.

2. I wasted too much time, specifically my later teenage years, not being confident in myself. This was due to a lot of things, including issues with self appearance, being about 40-50 pounds overweight -- after quitting baseball. Being down on my self confidence put me in a rut where I didn't do anything to change myself. It took a long time until I recovered to my regular physical self -- and my confidence literally shot back up to the level it should've been. I just regret how much time was wasted with me being so down on myself and insecure.

3. I am disappointed with the failure of my Tahoe trip. The trip meant a ton to me as it would culminate some maturity in my life -- being on my own and such, and initiate some seriousness into my writing. Specifically, it'd be putting me in an environment where there would be nothing else to do but enjoy myself snowboarding, writing, and developing my writing skill.

-Now that I have some of these written down where I can self-examine myself and my predicament, it should help me "overcome" these regrets and feel better about it. The struggle is actually letting myself examine the problems and let myself feel the onslaught of the feelings they trigger. It should help me though.

...That reminds me. I'm thinking about getting my first tattoo. Maybe I should just say "I'm thinking about getting a tattoo", because "getting my first..." sort of implies there will be more to come. I don't know about that. Let's see how the experience goes in the first place and we'll see.
I'm thinking about getting the latin phrase "Luctor et emergo" tattooed on the inside of my left forearm. The phrase roughly means "I struggle/wrestle but I survive/emerge". I saw the phrase in a book once, and I liked it. I looked it up online, and saw it was an extremely common phrase to get tattooed -- which should've been a turn off, but it wasn't. Why? Because the phrase actually has a strong, personal meaning to me. I would have it so if I were to raise my hand in front of my face, I could read the phrase, as in the words would be upright and readable - only to me. It would also on the inside of my forearm -- in place for me to see, and mean only for me to see. I don't care if other people can't read it, for it being upside down for them, the phrase and message would be meant for me. It's also on my weaker hand, the left. The phrase has meaning, simply because I have gone through so much in my life, a lot of negative things, and yet -- here I am, a well-balanced, confident, individual, still alive and breathing, trying to live his life to the fullest.

Help me choose. Which one looks nicer to you? Let's just name them "Top" and "Bottom" accordingly:

A Writing: "How I remember"...

2009-02-22T06:50:00.000-08:00

These are chunks from a short story I wrote in Spring 2008 for a creative writing class. Nothing special, but I just like looking back on what I've written in the past. My writing always evolves and changes. I wrote this short story very straightforward without as much prose, or "creative" prose I guess you could say. Also, you might notice I go from naming my friend to not naming him in some parts -- that's due to different edits and how I seperated the pieces of the story. It's called "How I remember my friend ______" I only posted the most interesting chunks of the story:

...I remember, when we were six years old, my old Irish Uncle used to take us across the street to the park every day. Those days might be the most vivid of memories I have. My Uncle would teach us things I imagined only kids growing up in the country or on farms would be taught. Skills that were rare to learn or even use in metropolitan Los Angeles. Skills such as climbing trees with rope and using the correct climbing knots, making home-made slingshots, home-made bow and arrows, and even home-made fishing poles. They were all made from sticks and things we found in the park. Not to say he only taught us six-year olds how to make home-made weapons, but he taught us the usual All-American things too. All-American things like how to throw a baseball correctly, how to throw a curveball, how to ride a bike, how to use tools, and a lot more. He even taught us to shoot BB-guns. Cary and I were pretty good shots. Now that I think of it, maybe my Uncle did only teach us weaponry. He was a war vet that earned multiple Purple-Heart medals, so maybe that would explain it. He was definitely “old-school”. Back then, the park didn’t have security, so no one bothered us. I’m thinking we just looked like two innocent kids playing with their old six foot-five Grandfather anyway. The funny thing was, I remember people we met at the park would always assume that Cary was his grandson. I can’t really blame them though. If I saw us, we would be one old white man, one six year old white kid, and one six year old Asian kid. Who would have thought the old white man was actually my Uncle, and that I, the Asian kid, was his nephew. I remember the feeling of getting tar stuck on my hands as we stuck sticks into the puddles of tar that bubbled up from the park ground. The park was built around natural tar pits and the tar would sometimes bubble up in random places. I remember how my Uncle would take us to the park’s hot dog stand and buy us each a chili dog with sauerkraut. Every time, like clockwork, after he bought us the hotdogs, he would always say something semi-racist about Germans and how they were good for nothing, but had came up with the delicious food that was sauerkraut. Cary, my Uncle, and I would sit on one of those old-fashioned benches that had about thirty years worth of layers of paint on it, and eat...

...The most vivid of memories I have though, were the conversations he and I would have lying under our favorite climbing tree. The rope we used to climb the tree with would dangle above our heads and we would take turns swapping at it as we talked. The sweet smelling tobacco smoke from my Uncle's smoldering pipe would drift our way with the breeze from the bench he was sitting on. The day's temperature would be perfect. Not too warm, and not too cold. The setting sun would be in our west, shining and warming our youthful, innocent faces, and the slight, cool, breeze would part our messy hair. The grass under us would tickle and make our bare arms itch. We would talk of the differences and the consistencies of certain boogers, such as the sharp, dry ones, that would hurt the inside of your nose, to the gooey soft ones that you could roll into a ball and flick. We talked of which of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were the best, (Leonardo was by the way), of how girls were disgusting and strangely attractive in some foreign and unknown way at the same time, and of course, how stinky farts could be, or not be. We grew up together. We were best friends. We were like brothers...

...His last wish said it all. He wanted his ashes to be poured into the stream of the park we grew up playing in...

...It’s strange now that I think back on it. I’m not sad over his death anymore...

...I just wish sometimes that I went with him. That he needed me to experience what he did with him instead of needing to do it alone. There would then be two sets of footprints in the snow instead of one. When I start to daydream about what could’ve been, I just look back at my six year old son climbing the same tree Cary and I grew up climbing. The tree’s a little darker brown than I remember. The weather’s still perfect. The slight breeze makes the branches above my son’s head sway slowly. The dark, orange, sun is setting and tinting everything in an orange glow. My hot dog wrapper flies away in the breeze and I’m too relaxed to chase it. I’ll get it on the way to the car.

Written Spring 2008.

Comments and Suggestions Welcome.

Dipped my toes...

2009-02-18T08:23:00.000-08:00

So I'm ready to dive in now. After dipping my toes in the pool of snowboarding last Wednesday, I've already been planning to go again this Thursday. A trip every week would be ideal. In fact, I found out a girl I know is going up by herself also on Thursday and we now have plans to meet up.
Last Wednesday was a good day. I took my time getting up there, leaving at about 10 AM. Surprisingly, it only took me about an hour and fifteen minutes to get there. Very fast. For the first run, I took it pretty mellow just to get the muscle memory and the rhythm of the carving back. From then on, I was blazing down the black diamond runs as fast as I could. After only a couple hours though, a storm started to roll in and engulfed the whole top of the mountain with essentially... a cloud. I couldn't see at all, and visibility was diminishing even on the lower parts of the mountain as the storm came in completely. By then it was time to call it a day. So all in all, it was a decent day of riding, and hopefully Thursday will have clear, and blue skies all day.

Here are some pics of last Wednesday's trip taken with my new blackberry(surprisingly very good quality pics for a phone!):

Storm started to roll in...

Couldn't see diddly...

More pics to come from Thursday.

Horizons...

2009-02-10T05:01:00.000-08:00

Remember what Capt. Jack Sparrow said at the end of the film "Pirates of the Carribean: The Curse of the Black Pearl"?

"Bring me that horizon!"

That's a good line. Apparently Johnny Depp was adlibing and improvised that on the spot. It stuck. As it should've.

Well, at the moment, there's not much going on in my horizon. I'm just slowly drifting along in my raft that I'd like to upgrade into a yacht one day after I sell a few major hit movie screenplays.

Things in my horizon:
1. Look for a job (pretty hard at the moment).
2. Spring semester starts Feb. 18th.
3. Snowboarding on Wednesday(tomorrow)?

The snowboarding would be the best off the list. The thing about snowboarding at the moment is that I'm almost turned off by it. Ever since Tahoe was cancelled, I almost have had no urge to go. I almost don't think it's worth going to these local ski resorts if it's not Lake Tahoe. I say that because you have to understand that Lake Tahoe is literally, ski-paradise. The conditions(especially after these storms that came in), the scenery, the city, everything about it is awesome. I mean, have you seen the pictures of Tahoe from my previous posts? Gorgeoussssss place. Here's an analogy to help you understand how I feel:

Analogy of the day: Being promised a brand new Ferrari... and getting a used 1990 Honda Civic instead.

Not bashing on any 1990 Civic owners out there, I'm just saying. You understand... right?

So I guess in a way I'm looking forward to getting up and riding somewhere at least a few times this season. I'm almost forcing myself to go. I think I need a day to myself like this. I have so much passion for it, so why isn't it coming out? Maybe after I dip my toes in the proverbial pool, I'll feel like diving in.

I'll take some pictures.

spare some CHANGE?...

2009-01-26T04:54:00.000-08:00

So I recieved this message on myspace from a friend recently, "i havent been up to much just school and working. what about you, now what since no tahoe?"

What a good question... I have to ask myself the same thing now too. It's been a few weeks, and for the most part, I've been doing the same ol' - same ol' thing. During the same ol' thing though, there are times where I feel extremely disappointed. I was looking forward to the trip for the past year, and it was a very important trip to me personally. I would've be on my own, in a city I didn't know, around people I didn't know, and have a lot of time for myself. All the while -- I would've been in the middle of a snowboarding paradise. Snowboarding is right up there in the top 3 passions and enjoyments in my life. Maybe my being "extremely disappointed" = slightly depressed. I'll get over it soon, but it's just weird how I planned out certain things for the next two months and it's simply not happening.

I've just been working, and hanging out mostly. I need another job.

I also need some CHANGE. Whenever I find myself in a rut like this... doing something new, or changing things around really helps. Tahoe would've done this for me. But now I figure, I need to do these: I need to find another job, start hitting the gym again, play soccer again, and write more. For the e-nerds - I'm basically like a backed-up computer with spyware that's become slow and I need to reformat and start fresh.

I guess this turned into a New Year's Resolution post. Funny how that happened:

1. Start going to the gym again. Build some more muscle.
2. Play soccer again.
3. Find a new job.
4. Write more.
5. Make time to see old friends more often.
6. Make myself happy.

Honesty Scrap Award...

2009-01-10T06:17:00.000-08:00

So a fellow blogger and reader Penpusher has given me the Honesty Scrap Award. Apparently in the blogger world, this is given to people who write honestly in their blogs. Cool beans. I guess it's true if I think about it for a bit. What I write here is pretty honest, even when it makes me look "bad" in a certain way. But no worries, these are my thoughts and personal events, and I don't mind how they are judged.

Since I am awarded this, I have to write 10 very honest things about myself, and then pass on the award to 7 other blogs that are worthy:
1. I am ambitious. I think I can do and have the ability to do whatever I want in this world. There are so many things I want, see, and experience. I'm going to do it all.
2. People underestimate me. Always. But that's okay with me. I always show them what's up in the end.
3. Insecure. Who isn't in ways? Overall I'm very confident with myself, but there are always those lingering doubts.
4. I always need improvement. There are a lot of things I would change about myself. I think that's what life is all about. Trying to improve yourself, conditions, life, every single day. What are we progressing to anyways right? (Life) x (Improvement) = Happiness? Busting out the Asian math wizardry!
5. I suck at Math. Despite my Asian heritage, I utterly despise Mathematics. I can learn it just fine, but do I have the patience to do and learn it? No. Which makes me suck at it. And I'm fine with it.
6. Procrastinator. Big time. I'll put off everything until the last minute. I learned the phrase "Last minute" from my Aunt who mentioned it when I was 10. I've mastered procrastinating during the past 12 years since then.
7. Afraid. Afraid of a lot of things. Not the boogie man, or any of that, just afraid of the unknown. The future that lies ahead for me. The unsure, unstable, unpredictable events of the future. What will I be? Who will I become? What will I do... Maybe that's why I procrastinate. To put off the unknown until it has to be absolutely necessary.
8. Lonely. If I met me, I wouldn't think this of me at all. But yep. I get lonely sometimes. For as much of a social person I am, and having all the great and close friends that I do, and doing all the social things with them that I do, I still feel lonely at times. I can probably attribute this to the lack of a girlfriend.
9. Angry. Another one people wouldn't think of me. But yes, sadly its true. Been through a lot in my life, (people can't really tell that either)a lot of unfair things, so I do have a lot of anger inside. But life isn't very fair is it?
10. Friends = Family. I never grew up around tons of family like other people. No family reunions, no family camaraderie, no real large number of family around. They either live across the country, another country, or 5 hours away. So my friends are my family. I feel like I might be one of the most loyal guys to be friends with. Once you're in my mental list of friends, you don't have much to worry about with me. You'll have a reliable, trustworthy, brother, friend, by your side.

So now my turn to give out the award. I hope whoever I give it to didn't already do it. My list of blogs I read are pretty small to start with...

Honesty Award goes too:

(If you already recieved one, no need to do it. Then the award means... I appreciate reading your honest words)

Lilly Holiday
Naomi
Healthy Lindsay
Twenty-Something
We'll All Float On
Musings(awesome poetry)
ChunksOfReality(I think one of the most honest)

Windows and Dreams...

2009-01-04T06:23:00.001-08:00

It's weird seeing one of your dreams crushed. It's only a dream... something that hasn't happened yet, or never will... But to see it fly out the window, never to happen, is a soul-crushing feeling. Dreams and aspirations are a deep part of your soul, it's what you want. What you desire, and BAM. It's gone.

My Lake Tahoe trip isn't happening.

I've dreamed of and planned this trip for the past year, and it simply won't become a reality. It's very disappointing to say in the extreme least. It's quite crushing actually.

A facebook event named "Brent's going away party" will now be cancelled, temporary depression will ensue, and countless explanations to questioning friends will... be countlessly explained, and an embarrassment-saving fib will be told.

Hmm. I have this blog linked in my facebook profile that I should really take down. The reason being, that I realize now I speak of some personal things that my actual friends don't really need to know about. Well, they should in a way since they are friends, but not in the frequency and in as much detail that I put things in here. I want to be a little more selective with my personal events. But for the intrawebnetters out there, I guess you all are my outlet. For the facebook event I invited 40+ actual friends to... they're going to get a slightly different story of the reasons for the cancellation of the "epic personal snowboarding/fun/snowboarding vacation" I was supposed to be taking. They're going to get the "Things didn't work out with the place I was supposed to stay in" explanation.

In actuality, getting a place wasn't the main problem. Parental-"kid" politics were. And yep at age 22, this shouldn't happen. Parental power plays were made, stubborness ensued on my part, and my aunt's, finances, and sleeping schedules, were brought up. For all the love we have for our parents, we all experience the most heinous bullshit coming from their shovels sometimes. Am I blaming the crushing of one of my top 3 aspirations in life on my Aunt? Of course not, and of course I will get over it. But lot's of PROMISES and things shouldn't have been made or said in the first place.

This reinforces the feeling I've had since the early years of teenage life: Expectations... should be kept at a minimum until it ACTUALLY happens. No matter how much you/people talk about something happening... I never expect much until it does. It saves me from disappointment. Because with all the "life" that happens, a lot of shit happens too.

Wow. The next two months look insanely bleak now since nothing's going to change. All of the thoughts/fantasies/images of what I would be doing for the next two months... simply aren't going to happen. It's almost surreal. Like it's not real, but sadly it is, and what a sad reality that is. It almost makes me feel sick. Like something that drops to the pit of my stomach.

On a happier note in contrast to my totally depressing blog post...

I think I have fallen in love with her:

Airport Blogging

2008-12-28T18:41:00.000-08:00

So I'm sitting in the Reno International Airport Terminal with some free wifi. I decided to blog. So it seems that I have underestimated the forces of nature and the effect it has on the local Tahoe population's economy... as in places for rent. The recent storm that came in and brought fantastic conditions for the ski resorts made all the places that would normally let people rent the places by the month, now try to make the extra buck and rent the places by the night. They can easily make a couple hundred bucks a night just based on the popularity of the time to come to Tahoe at the moment. It's so packed here at the moment.

I took a look at the places I wanted to see, and I wasn't that impressed. The one studio apartment I found was in the perfect location, literally across the street from the Heavenly resort Gondola that takes you right up the mtn., but the studio was also literally a small, tiny, tiny room. Only enough room for a single bed, a small pathway, and not even a full kitchen. No stove or anything. Just a microwave and small refrigerator. It was depressingly small. I filled out an application and they haven't called me back, so I figured they've jumped on the bandwagon and are now trying to rent that place out nightly too now. I have a possible place in North Lake Tahoe through some Craigslist connections, but we'll see how that works out.

SO now the focus is on moving to Big Bear, CA. Which is only about 2 and a half hours from LA. And that way most of my friends can come visit me and snowboard with me. Big Bear has a nice, small, mountain-town quaintness to it. Either way, we'll see what happens. I have a lot of stuff to figure out in the next two weeks.

"Go time" nearing...

2008-12-25T06:31:00.000-08:00

I didn't notice that two weeks had passed by since my last post. It might have a lot to do with how I've been preparing for my upcoming South Lake Tahoe move. I think I'll be leaving January 11th. That's the day I think I'll move up there, but who knows. Nothing's ever for sure. I've been looking online for apartments and places up there for me to live, but it's hard filtering out all of the vacation homes, time shares, vacation cabins, and other such temporary places to live. It's such a vacation hotspot, it's hard to find permanent-ish places to stay there.

Anyways, I found several and I'm flying up to Lake Tahoe today with my Aunt to spend Christmas up there and take a look at some places over the weekend. It'll be my first "White" Christmas! It's the perfect time too, because there's quite a bit of snowfall up there right now. Which reminds me I need to confirm my flight. So I'll be there until Monday the 29th. It should be a fun time up there too. I'm taking my snowboard with me, and Tahoe will have brand new, fresh, powder snow.

Since the time for the move is nearing, it makes me realize how much I'll miss my friends. I'm a very social guy so putting myself into a sort of isolation - in a place where I don't know anyone, will be kind of hard for me. But I also think it'll be a good experience. And hopefully, it'll give me some time to write and focus on that. I'm planning a going away party at a great dive bar that me and my buddies hang out at. That should be an awesome time. I planned it for the 9th, the Friday night of the weekend I leave. I invited about 40 some people, so it should be a good time.

I'm looking forward to blogging while I'm up in Tahoe. It'll be an insightful time I think, because I'll be living on my own, be alone, and on my own. Should be interesting.

Happy Holidays everyone.

Coming of age?

2008-12-12T03:49:00.000-08:00

So I was sitting at my desk cruising facebook and realized almost all of my friends that are my age, the very ones that I graduated high school with... are no longer in school. Back in June, everyone had started to post new photo albums of "Graduation" and etc. Has time gone by that fast? Am I really still in community college? Wow. Am I REALLY 22? Is it really going to be 5 years - half a decade - since I've graduated high school? It makes me a little sad because I haven't done anything significant with my life yet. No "legit" job, no degree, and no real life experience. I'm a little behind... but I always have been in certain ways. Then I realized how I'm okay with it all. Okay with lagging behind the others, because I'm doing things my own way, and my life is really - that unique. From the time I was raised by my Aunt, to my childhood, to a lot of things. I've always been a little different. A good different though. An "Out-of-the-box-view" kind of different. So I realize now that even with the majority of my friends on their way to the dreaded, stereotypical, cadence of society's "model" life - the 9 to 5, and the lack of time... I go on because I know I'm going to make the most of my life and always do things a little differently... A good different.

On another note, I feel like getting more personal about the things I do in my life. I never really remember how I meant for my blog to be a little night-life oriented coupled with my trials and tribulations. Maybe I've kept that blog description honest, but maybe I haven't. I don't feel like I have, but I guess what I'm going to talk about blends the two - Nightlife/Brent's trials and tribulations - together nicely.

Girls...
In the past two weeks, I've been getting some attention. It's been nice. My best friend that I always go out with is a real "player" I guess you can call him. He gets a lot of action too. But of course, I wouldn't associate with a guy like him if he was a total asshole like I just made him sound. Let me explain. He's not a "player" in the traditional douche-bag sense of the word, he's actually a genuine, nice guy. Which is exactly why, he attracts girls. And he doesn't get "action" in the traditional d-bag sense either. He doesn't deceive/manipulate them, and he doesn't give them any false expectations. I guess you can say between him and the girls, it's all mutually casual. And for a guy like him who's not looking for a serious relationship, I guess he's in a great place in his life at the moment.

Anyways, I met two girls in one week, and both within the nightlife scene. I don't see myself as a player like my friend, because honestly, I don't think I could hack all the attention. Whenever he mentions a girl nowadays, I literally don't know which one he's talking about anymore. I'm a pretty confident guy, and I've got some charm, but I don't go around the whole bar trying to talk "game" or hit on girls all night. I just have a good time with friends, and if someone comes along, nice. And that's what happened. The first girl was on Tuesday night at a bar. We'll call her "N". She was the friend of a girl Josh was meeting with, and of course I got dragged along. N turned out to be a very pretty redhead that was actually a couple years older than me. When we danced a little bit, it turned out she was a couple inches taller than me also. Although I think she was wearing heels. (To fast forward), by the end of the night, we were making out in my car. I got the vibe that she wanted to keep things casual, (as did I) so we exchanged phone numbers. It was a confidence booster also, since she was older, taller, and also a different race(white). Race doesn't matter to me at all, and I mention it only because it was just nice to know that it's the same with others.
A week later, I met the other girl which I'll call "R", at a party. Now I've met her two previous times at two previous parties, so apparently we're part of the same circle of friends. And everytime she sees me, she seems completely smitten by me. I don't mind at all of course, but it never escalated beyond that until that party. We were having a good time, and having a conversation outside of the party until she kissed me. Making out ensued. So by this time I had confidence pouring out of my pores (still do at the moment) because both girls now have come on to me first. From R - I got the vibe that this was just a "friendly", "casual" kiss. I totally agreed with the vibe too.

So finally the point of all this... Since I've been experiencing so much "play" lately, and seeing my friend be a "player", I feel like I'm getting sucked into "the game". I don't think I want to play it though. I feel like I'm in the position where I totally could, and be "good" at it, and turn out to be THAT GUY. You know? But I honestly think I may be too sensitive. Not trying to sound sensitive or anything, but really. It may just all be too casual. It just makes things a little less... real.

"Go Time"...

2008-12-06T05:02:00.000-08:00

So it's 5 AM Saturday morning. And yes, it's the usual. I have just come home from a late night out on the town on a Friday night. I'm feeling a little reflective tonight and self-actualizing because when you're out on the town in LA, hanging out at certain spots as I do, it's inevitabababable that you meet someone in the "biz", the "industry". The film industry that is. It just makes me want it more. The "success".
Success in Hollywood is - Consistency. A few weeks ago, I hung out with A.J.-from the Backstreet Boys with a few of his girl-friends. He gained weight and was kind of living in the past. He went out of his way reminding me and Josh who he was because we didn't acknowledge his "celebrity" when we first started a conversation with his friends. We treated him like every other person we meet... normal. -Which you tend to do when you meet celebrities in Los Angeles. Anyways, it made me realize how success in "the biz" doesn't last. It didn't for him, even when his band was like... the HUGEST Boy-Band for a few YEARS. That's pretty huge.
What does "success" as a screenwriter comprise of? Not much in reality. Hypothetically, let's say I sell an "indy" script. A script for an independent movie. Maybe something that won't be seen in theaters, but straight to DVD and maybe a showing at some obscure film festival... in let's say... Jacksonville, Florida(No offense to Jacksonville-ians). I would earn a paycheck of something in the tens of thousands. Something like $10-30,000. That's not much if you think about it. Especially in an expensive city such as Los Angeles. That would last me about 6 months if I live modestly, and lease a decent car.
Let's say I sell a major studio film that would be in theaters... I would make something in the hundreds of thousands. Something like around $90,000-300,000 - typically. Still not enough in LA-terms. A modest 2-3 bedroom, 1 story house in a NICE area here can cost up to $1-3 million. The major motion picture script would pay my bills for a nice apartment/condo/loft for a couple years. That'd be nice, but I would have to be one CONSISTENT writer pumping out scripts that are marketable... consistently to continue that lifestyle. Hard thing to do.

Anyways, what I'm trying to say is that Lake Tahoe - my "Dream Trip" is happening VERY soon. It's coming. I can feel it. Especially in my pocket... because I just spent $355 on a brand new snowboard. The "SkiDazzle" Ski/Snowboard Expo came into town at the Los Angeles Convention Center and tons of ski/snowboard stores sell off product at bargain prices. I got a brand new, 2009 model K2 - Podium - snowboard that retails for $400+tax for only $329. Pretty good deal considering the stores still sell it for $400+tax currently. About $80 off retail price. Good deal to me.

I got sidetracked there. Let me attempt to make the point again: It means that "Go Time" means more than snowboarding for 2-3 months straight. The whole point of the trip is to throw myself into independence, isolation, and most important of all... WRITING. I want to be taken seriously as a writer. And the only way to do that, is to have something "serious" to read. I have samples of course, but nothing that shows my true potential. I want to be Successful in Hollywood. 99% of screenplays out there are terrible, and it's a fact. I NEED to be in the 1% that write good scripts just to be able to have them READ. I truly believe and KNOW that I have talent, and can write well. But I need proof. And this purposeful isolation and loneliness I'm going to put myself in Lake Tahoe... I need to take that time to really write. Pump out some scripts, and some real well-written, REFLECTIVE, INSIGHTFUL writing...

It's GO TIME.

2008-12-01T05:36:00.000-08:00

So I've been kind of preoccupied with thoughts about the Lake Tahoe trip on here, but as "Go time" nears, thoughts about it get kind of boring. I think it's because in about a month, it'll become reality, so there's not much anticipation anymore. So no more salivating for the fresh snow, I'll be in it soon. And hopefully a lot of it - if Mother Nature decides to be a little generous this season.

Back to the LA nightlife chronicles of Brent. And a little more about the places...

So I talk about Beauty Bar a lot, and I frequent the place almost every weekend with one of my best buds, Josh. This is where we usually hang out Friday/Saturday nights:

-The long haired bartender in white is Vince. Former Mighty Ducks Trilogy alumni. But don't mention it to him, he's shy about it.

So yeah, the place is very trendy, and very popular. That little room gets packed full of people, and has barely any room to dance. But people pull it off somehow. The music is great, they play pop-y, alternative, dance-y stuff. For example: MGMT - Electric Feel.
Great song by the way. Me and a couple friends were there on Friday night, had a couple drinks and hung out. When it hit about 12:30AM, we decided to hop over to the 4100 Bar in Echo Park.

Now the 4100 is a whole different scene and feel from Beauty Bar. 4100 is way more relaxed, "mature", and lounge-y. Very lounge-y. But it's the perfect place to hang out with a group of friends. They have seats, tables, and sofa benches all along the edge of the place, so it's great for large groups of friends. Here's the 4100. It's on Sunset, and kind of hidden away except for a neon sign saying "Cocktails". The cool places are always low-key:

I feel like I'm portraying myself as a bar bum or alcoholic with this post. But nah. I'm not. Just having fun with the guys at age 22 and hanging out at some cool places.

Other than that, I'm deciding whether to post about a girl I met last Tuesday...

Dreams and avalanches...

2008-11-21T05:42:00.000-08:00

So funny thing. I was thinking about all of my dreams and aspirations today, and I thought about death. Not in a grim, depressing way, just in a true, thoughtful way. Here's a short list of what I want to do in life:
1. Snowboard everywhere (Andes, Argentina - Wanaka, New Zealand, The Alps, Alaska, etc.)
2. Skydive.
3. Write a complete Bucket List...

-Then I thought of, "What if I were to die doing one of these things?"

That has to be one of the most profound questions I have ever come up with simply because of the complexity. "Yeah! What if..." I truly, have no idea. Snowboarding is in the top 3 of what I'm most passionate about. People can say how much they enjoy it, but they probably won't have as much passion about it as I do. I would drop certain responsibilities to spend every winter somewhere doing it. Back to the complexity. Yes. It's a Catch-22 in all forms. If I don't do certain things, my aspirations won't be fulfilled, and experiences won't be experienced. But if I do, I risk losing it all, and not being able to finish the other things. A total "Damned if you do, damned if you don't". I remember using that quoted phrase in a high school essay once, and it got graded down for "offensive language". Random, I know. I just remembered thinking that was bullshit.

I got to thinking about death because of the high occurance of avalanches in backcountry-snowboarding. Actually, in backcountry-anything. Relevant because backcountry snowboarding is what I'm going to be doing the most in Lake Tahoe. The backcountry is great because it's untouched powder, and natural terrain, but of course, all of that can bury you alive. It's a scary thought. I think if that were to happen to me in Tahoe on one particularly powder day, I'd probably be really angry, or really happy if that run was the best I ever had. No but seriously, if I were buried alive under snow, I'd panic. They say not to panic, but how can you not? I don't think I'd be able to accept death either. I have too much ahead of me, and things to experience. Living in Lake Tahoe is only step one towards my snowboarding goals too, so I've really got to stay alive! No worries though, I'm a careful guy.

I should be posting a lot about Tahoe in about a month and a half when I get there. And I'll have a helmet cam too! Nice. They're great for filming last words... Haha. Just kidding.

Plans...

2008-11-19T18:40:00.000-08:00

School Plan Update:
Okay. So I sold out. I sold out to my college counselor's well-balanced, and sensible advice to stick with Sociology as my major for the sake of transferring. The plan is to get to the college, and then change my major to Film while I'm there. At the moment, all I need is one Math class to be finished. And that's the class I just dropped. I wasn't doing well anyways, so no worries. I will apply this month, and be pretty much guaranteed to get into a Cal-State college of my choice, but ONLY if I finish that math class by Spring semester. There lies the predicament. My Lake Tahoe trip - will have to be cut short in a way, because I will have to come back to LA in time for the Spring Semester. And this is a trip I have been looking forward to for the past year... But I don't think I'll sell out on the trip. I'm going to stay as long as I want. I've been going to this school for the past 4 years, floating through with mediocrity, and even though I haven't tried hard, the fact lies that I've been attending and doing this whole school thing for the past FOUR years. That's a long time, and I'm burned out. I have to decide whether or not now to take a year off from school and apply next fall instead. I think I will take a year off though...

LAKE TAHOE!
So I've been planning this Lake Tahoe trip for the past year. Well, maybe just dreaming about it. But it's about to become reality in about a month and a half. The main reason for literally moving to this snowy heaven, is for the snow. To ride it, surf it, and be knee deep in it. Snowboarding. I imagine waking up regularly at the crack of dawn (never thought I'd ever say that) for the first time ever in my life, just to get first-powder. To get that first run in on the slopes, through fresh, untouched powder. Just thinking about it makes me squirm.

The second reason for going up there, is to sort of isolate myself. I think it'll be very therapeutic and refreshing. I'm a very social guy, don't get me wrong; but I think it'll be nice for me to be on my own, away from home, and just... alone. With the cut down of distractions, I'll also be able to Really work on my writing. Maybe pump out a script or two, and some short stories. God knows I'll have the time for it up there. I'll probably need a job up there, but I'm sure I can bum through it with some "whatever" job. I'll be fine. As long as I have my season pass to Heavenly ski resort, I'll be fine.

Being from LA, and having lived no place else, save for Las Vegas for a couple years, I've never experienced "weather"; as in all four seasons for any long period of time. I'm going to love waking up, and not wanting to leave my bed because of the cold. I'm going to love making myself a fresh cup of coffee in the morning, throwing on a jacket, and stepping outside to drink it in the cold. I'm going to love breathing in that fresh, un-polluted air, and smell that comforting smell of wood smoke coming from someone else's cabin chimney. God, I love that smell. Mix it with cold, fresh, winter air, and you have yourself a cocktail for your nose. I don't know if you guys know where Lake Tahoe is, (Yes, I have become increasingly aware that people are ACTUALLY reading this blog and now I'm addressing you. It's amazing) or what Lake Tahoe is all about, but it's absolutely awesome.

Lake Tahoe is on the border between California and Nevada, way up north from Los Angeles. About a 6-7 hour drive. It's right by Reno, Nevada. Anyways, the lake itself is huge, and it's been described by many as a piece of heaven, because the land around it is so gorgeous. I agree, even though I've never even been there. But I've seen pictures. Porn for snowboarders really. South Lake Tahoe (the area I will live in) even has a Casino strip. So there's like a main street full of Hotel Casino's and nightlife. A little sliver of Vegas basically. A lot of the city is a tourist village area too. With shops, restaraunts, etc. So the nightlife there is awesome, a lot of tourists, and just a lot going on. So it's practically the perfect place for me to spend a winter, aside from let's say Park City, Utah, or Aspen, Colorado. Maybe I'll do those next year... or better yet, I may just move to all the best ski resorts around the world every winter for the rest of my life...

Some pictures:
-I'll be in South Lake Tahoe, on the bottom right hand corner. In the 'Heavenly' ski resort village area.
Heavenly Ski Resort... Snowboarder's porn.

Look at that water...
Emerald Bay
The Casino Strip. Harrah's.

Letter to my College Counselor

2008-11-14T03:11:00.000-08:00

I should be talking about me moving to Lake Tahoe for the winter, but I have to put that off for now. I guess this leads into that anyways:

So it's 3:12 in the wee hours of the morning and I'm sitting here in front of my fairly brand new laptop that freezes at least several times a week. I'm supposed to be studying for a killer Statistics exam I have in about 5 hours(8AM class). The class is pointless since I've decided to make a big change tonight. I've decided to change my major and start over if I have too. As it says in my profile, I have been attending a community college for the past 4 years...

Letter to my College Counselor
Dear College Counselor:

Wow. I am coming to you in pretty bad shape. As you can see, I have had trouble passing certain classes, and my GPA hovers over a 2.7. Nice right? Well, I have to tell you. I have had almost absolutely no motivation for the first 3 of the past 4 years I have been attending your fine institution. Sure, your college is the best community college in California, boasting the #1 transfer rate in the state. Kudos. I'm sorry to be such a disappointment. You could've spit me out as a successful transfer student in less than two years if I was on track right? It's true. I'd just like to say for the record, that my GPA does not truly represent my academic abilities. It's just that... I didn't know what I wanted to do for so long. Add 'Life' onto that plate, and that's where you'll see the low motivation come in.
I'm frustrated too. I know you don't want to look through my record that's twice as long as everyone else's and be expected to know what exact advice to give me. Yes Counselor, I want to do film. And yes, I know that my current major is Sociology. Why you ask? Well, I guess I was kidding myself last year when I decided to stick with Sociology for the sake of finishing school faster. I guess I'm burned out from going to school for so long, and with my heart and effort not being in it in addition. I thought I'd just power through Sociology, finish it, and finally transfer to a University with that major. But now that the time has come(this month) to apply for transfer, I have come to the realization that spending two more years completing a major that I have no real interest or use for... is stupid. It would make two more years that much more miserable. And yes! I know my passion is film, and writing, so why am I doing Sociology?! It's crazy I know.
I guess all the time I've spent floating through your school made me just reach for the proverbial pistol and take the easy way out of choosing "any" major to finish instead of starting all over to complete film.
Good news though dear College Counselor. I have decided to switch over to the major that I would actually enjoy finishing. Film/Screenwriting. I figure, why waste two more years getting a Sociology degree I have no use for and being unhappy while doing it? Even though changing to film will take extra time, it's fine with me. I'll be extremely motivated in doing well in it because it's what I want to do.
So I guess what I'm asking is, let's throw away all of those education plans we wrote up these past four years, and write up a totally new one. Sorry I know.
And also... We're going to plan this stuff around my Lake Tahoe trip. Yeah about that, I'm moving up there for the winter. Yeah, I know, that'll take up the Winter and Spring semesters. But I need this time. For me. You understand don't you? Of course. So yeah, we'll need to write up those ed-plans for the time I come back.

Thanks,
-Brent

Booze and Cigarettes... Life.

2008-11-08T03:16:00.000-08:00

I'm always inspired to write after a night out on the town. Maybe it's the booze and cigarettes, or maybe it's me channeling Bukowski. Either way, it's a bad habit. I should resist writing only when I have gone out and had a few drinks and smoked some cancer sticks. I'm not a smoker, just "on the weekends". Doesn't that sound lame? It does... but people use it, and I do also.

So I went out on the town in Manhattan Beach. Several miles south of Santa Monica Beach. It was only about a 15 minute drive, but far away nonetheless. Dios mio! I forgot what I was going to post about. I spent about a thought and a half figuring out that Bukowski bit above and I completely lost track of my main point... Shit. I'm still trying to figure it out...

Oh yeah! This deserves a completely new paragraph simply because it took me about a minute to get back on track. My life:

My life consists of events that I'd like to think contribute to who I am and who I become. Maybe not even "what I think". It's simply true. All I'm trying to say is that my goals in life are too:

1. Experience everything I can.
2. See everything I can.
3. Be completely Genuine and "Me" while doing it.
4. Be happy.

I have said this line so many times in writings and in my journal, but it's worth saying again because it's a tasty tidbit grouping of words: "I want to be THAT old man. You know, THAT GUY in the room, on his death bed, surrounded by loved ones, and younger people. THAT GUY in the room who is totally content with how he spent his life, and how he lived it. THAT GUY who is totally HAPPY with himself, and his life, and what it meant. THAT GUY who knows he influenced other people and affected their lives in a positive way somehow. THAT GUY who changed society for the better somehow, even in the most miniscule way... and THAT GUY who is ultimately happy - On his death bed." THAT is the guy I want to be.

...So I guess what I'm saying is, or getting to, are two Charles Bukowski quotes that I agree with wholeheartedly:

"The nine-to-five is one of the greatest atrocities sprung upon mankind. You give your life away to a function that doesn't interest you. This situation so repelled me that I was driven to drink, starvation, and mad females, simply as an alternative."
-Charles Bukowski

"This is a world where everybody’s gotta do something. Ya know, somebody laid down this rule that everybody’s gotta do something, they gotta be something. You know, a dentist, a glider pilot, a narc, a janitor, a preacher, all that... Sometimes I just get tired of thinking of all the things that I don’t wanna do. All the things that I don’t wanna be. Places I don’t wanna go, like India, like getting my teeth cleaned. Save the whale, all that, I don’t understand that..."
-Charles Bukowski

-Two of his more famous quotes. What these quotes mean to me is simply this: Yes, really. Who is to say that we are supposed to follow some pre-determined structure and format in our lives? In American society, we are expected to get good grades in high school - Get into a 'Good' College - Graduate and Get a 'Good' job - Make lots of money - and be "Happy". Who says you have to do it that way? What about all of your little dreams and aspirations? Surely your 'Work' can't be it. When are you ever going to have time to do all the things you want with a 9 to 5 right out of College? Experience/See the things you want? While you're still young? In your prime? You can't! Pretty soon a family will come about, and responsibilites will be stacked on top of each other. I don't think life should be played out that way.

I'm going to do things my way, and take my time doing it. Because in that time I take, I will be experiencing LIFE itself. And seeing LIFE as it happens. Not while driving by it on my way to my 9 to 5. Not witnessing things behind a windshield and strapped down by a seatbelt while stuck in LA traffic. But in it. Living it. Because I have Complete confidence in the End, that I will be successful in what I want to do, and I will be "fine". I will have lived life the way I wanted to, and feel good that I did it in my own way. Self-satisfaction. Satisfied with how I spent my life.

-This leads me to my next post about me moving to Lake Tahoe, California for the winter. All by my lonesome.

Indifference

2008-10-28T07:05:00.000-07:00

So I was listening to Pearl Jam - Indifference

It almost made me cry. Listen to it, buy it/steal it, whatever. This is going to be my emo post. Just a warning.

So I got to thinking about myself a bit. Some self-therapy if you will. There are tons of negative things that happened in my life - more than the average person that really shaped who I am today. I feel like it makes me that much more insightful to human emotion though. I think that's great for creativity and writing. Maybe that's why I can see right through people.

So to the issue I was thinking about specifically. When I was 4 years old, a mother-figure abandoned me. Just poof. Gone. Left me with my Aunt to raise me. That turned out great in fact, my Aunt raised me right. And she did it alone too. Total props to her, seriously. I think in spite of that, and other events that happened in my life, I turned out to be a pretty balanced, great individual. My Aunt is basically my mother and she always has been for the past 18 years. But it still doesn't take away the fact that I was a young kid who saw his own Mother everyday and all of a sudden realizes she isn't coming back. What does that do to a kid? It definately messes with him. And the thing is, I don't know if I have abandonment issues. I've never experienced anything in my life that will confirm/deny the existence of the issue. Hah, I sounded like the government there. But seriously, I have no idea until it happens or never does. I personally feel like I don't, but who knows. I have no problem meeting people, and then losing contact with them. Or being friends and having relationships with people, and then "losing" them in some way. It doesn't mess with me at all. It's normal.
- I feel like I should be getting to a point or something, but really there isn't a specific point. I don't think. The blog is really supposed to be kind of a therapeutic outlet anyways. Oh yeah, the whole point had to do with the Pearl Jam song. Right... Well "Indifference". It's all about taking what life dishes out, and moving on, stronger than ever. And really, what difference does all of that stuff make? Not much, because it shapes and changes you, but makes you stronger at the same time. I love who I am now, because I'm a terribly balanced, open-minded, genuine individual. I think I have an ideal attitude to handle this world we live in. The shit that happens doesn't make a difference if you yourself are a strong individual and know who EXACTLY you are. And that's me. Nothing will change that.

"Indifference" is really what I feel about my actual Mother too. She's not in my life, and never has been. I actually don't even think about her for literally YEARS at a time, simply because she never comes up. Only when I talk to a new person or whatever and for some reason it comes up I guess. It may sound cold in a way, but seriously, I don't know her. She's just a person living in who knows where, doing who know's what. And the only reason we lost contact, was on her part. So it's not on me. It's all on her. The last time I cried or felt sad about her not being around was when I was less than 10 years old. So that's that. Indifference.

- My father on the other hand... is another story in itself, so I don't think I'll write about that.

Anyways, major "Kudos", and "Props" to my Aunt. We have a great relationship for her being only my Aunt. I call her that, but I might as well call her Mom. I love that woman so much, it's retarded.