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A girl living, loving and writing in Los Angeles.
August Listening
August Reading
Favorite Places
Copyright 2001 - 2008 by Ann, unless otherwise noted.
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Sunday, October 29, 2006
A Review of Marie Antoinette
We wanted to see The Prestige but the showing was sold out and we already trekked it out to the movie theater and parked in the bowels of the shopping center...so we made the mistake of choosing to see Marie Antoinette.
It was horrible. Kirsten Dunst was just vile in it, all the actors completely underutilized, the plot non-existent. It was like a bad high school production of Marie Antoinette. Just because you have the means and connections to make a movie, doesn't mean you should, Sophia Coppola.
Friday, October 27, 2006
Tra-la!
I want this before Christmas: Sufjan Stevens' Christmas collection.
But never fear, I have not already skipped over Halloween. There are red felt hearts all over my apartment right now because, ta-dah!, I've decided to be the Queen of Hearts for Halloween this year. During my lunch hour, I'm going to go scout out a flamingo lawn ornament. And some hot tea and soup, because my head feels like it's on the verge of a cold. In even more exciting news, I don't have just one, but TWO Halloween costumes this year. I made the Queen of Hearts costume by attaching red felt hearts to a rather short black dress, which is perfectly appropriate for the party I'm going to tonight, but not appropriate for actual Halloween day when I'll be among the illustrious kids of 826LA drop-in. For my second costume, I'm going to be The Girl With the Black Ribbon.
And now all my secrets are revealed. It's going to be a busy next two weeks! With a little over a week until my birthday, I'm drafting up a list of goals for my next year.
Monday, October 23, 2006
Vegetarian Gumbo for Lovers
My life is not all blues and office work lately -- on weekends, I cook alot. Friday night, Ryan wanted vegetarian gumbo after I introduced him to the addictive qualities of the vegetarian gumbo at Disneyland last weekend (trust me on this. I used to go to Disneyland JUST for the gumbo for dinner when I was in high school. This was of course, made possible by my aunt who works with Disney). We went to the Gumbo Pot at the Fairfax Farmer's Market, but alas they only had Gumbo Ya Ya and Seafood Gumbo - both a no for him, a strict vegetarian, while I, a pescatarian, indulged in the Seafood Gumbo.
So Sunday, we made a nice big pot of vegetarian gumbo just so he could enjoy the pleasures of creole cookin':
Vegetarian Gumbo for Lovers
- one carton of vegetable stock
- 4 carrots, chopped
- 3 stalks of celery, chopped
- 6 stalks of okra, chopped
- 2 large tomatoes, chopped
- rice (you can use any you want, I used white Calrose rice because it's what I had on hand)
- Zatarain's creole seasoning
Bring vegetable stock, carrots, celery, and okra to a boil. Add 1 tomato. Add creole seasoning, then stir stir stir to taste. Add hot water if it gets too spicy, because if you're like mean, you'll get overzealous about the cajun flavor! Cover and simmer for half an hour. Start rice in rice cooker. Once carrots, celery, and okra are soft, add second tomato. This way you'll have at least some chunks of tomato left in the soup! Let simmer for 15-20 more minutes. Serve over rice and put on some Duke Ellington! Enjoy!
P.S. What are you going to be for Halloween?Labels: domestic goddess
Monday Blues
I've been feeling really stuck lately, especially during the work week. Is this what life is supposed to be like after college? If you don't go to grad school and you majored in something liberal arts-related, you're doomed to a term of administrative limbo? I feel at a loss for next steps, bewildered at the door that's seemingly open yet the world beyond it is fogging under my breath as I press my hands up to the glass that separates us.
I miss my professors, my teachers, my community of people who were constantly opening doors and windows and airing out the musty attic of my head. Often, I refer back to what my ArtsBridge director said to me during my final exit interview: "Try something out for three months, and if you don't like it, then try something else. Don't slink off in the middle of the night, but don't make yourself suffer."
Reading this entry: 10 Ways To Infuse Your Work with Your Personality by artist Keri Smith reminded me of that quote, and of what it feels like to be just a bit hopeful that this isn't all there is.
Maybe it's time for me to get in contact again.Labels: twentysomething
Sunday, October 22, 2006
Sunday Kind of Love
I love Sundays because it means things like:
(a) tacos
(b) making tacos to the Frida soundtrack
(c) Rocket Science workshops
(d) cleaning my apartment (one of my favorite things to do, because I feel so accomplished after)
(e) whittling my time away as I please at such things like watching March of the Penguins, and reading Lolita, and writing in my novella
(f) catching a late flick without the crowds
(g) doing it all with my boyLabels: photolog
Saturday, October 21, 2006
A neighbor.
Friday, October 20, 2006
Wickity wickity wack.
Today feels like the longest day ever. The last three days have been this gorgeous, dry fall weather that I forget about and am reminded of pleasantly each year. Mornings are cold, but the sky is crisp blue and the sun white hot by the afternoon. Rust-colored leaves speckle the trees and rustle in the breeze threatening any day now to turn into the Santa Anas. But these few weeks of calm before it are oh-so-pleasant.
Except when you're stuck in an office for what could be 2 or 2,000,000 more hours. At least all our walls are windows.
I'm thinking sometime soon, I might want to take up being a substitute teacher for awhile so that I can just write with the rest of my time.
This weekend, so many interesting films are opening and I'm finally receiving Season 1, Disc 1 of Entourage. It will be a FEAST for the eyes! I really want to see Marie Antoinette but I might have to burn my eyes out with acid after seeing that much of Kirsten Dunst. Ugh ugh ugh, why does she ruin everything? I heard a clip from the film on the radio this morning, and it sounded like a bad high school production of Marie Antoinette. When will the world finally wake up and see that she is not only a terrible actress, looking at her causes severe emotional and aesthetic scarring?
I also need to read about 10 books before I reach my goal of the amount of reading I should have done. I'm aiming to finish/start the following:
1. Lolita
2. The Feast of Love
3. The History of Love
4. The Alchemist
5. Timequake
6. Running with Scissors (willreadbeforeseeingfilmwillreadbeforeseeingfilmwillreadbeforeseeingfilm)
7. Fast Food Nation
Wednesday, October 18, 2006
The Science of Self-Obsession
I saw Science of Sleep a few weeks ago. I saw it twice, in fact. Not because it was that good, but because I was that sleepy that I fell asleep the first time I watched it.
Aptly put, it is two hours of Michel Gondry's short film outtakes and personal projects strung along on a dirty shoe string plot helmed by irresistably charming and multilingual Gael Garcia Bernal & Charlotte Gainsbourg (what a happy surprise!).
Love the cinematography, but that alone does not a successful film make. Le snore.
Touching all bases...
21, August 2006
Mixed Media
I don't know if I posted this painting already since I was keeping it under wraps until Gina received it. A mixed media piece I did for her 21st birthday in August.
Shifting focuses...one excellent side effect of graduating is being able to focus what time previously dedicated to scrambling to finish papers the hours beforehand to personal projects. There are wood scrap pieces and new tubes of acrylics waiting to be sanded and mixed, respectively. Also new story ideas percolating inside. Writing goal for this time next year: have completed a second working draft of novel and a collection of short stories. Have submitted short stories to magazines/contests.
Friday, October 13, 2006
This Town.
Thursday, October 12, 2006
Wednesday, October 11, 2006
All Quiet on the Western Front
I really wish I could write that all this quiet around here lately has been because I've been busy writing, but alas it is not. I have been busy doing the 9-5 to make ends meet, and interning approximately 6-10 hours a week on top of that to saturate myself in the writing world of 826LA and McSweeney's, and trying not to continue being sick.
However, that is not the plot of the universe, as Monday night found me curled up on the floor of my bathtub, followed by sitting pathetically wrapped up in a towel on the carpet, at the foot of my bed, wailing like, well, an injured animal. Before the weekend, I discovered another wonderful facet of this mysterious disease: extreme nausea but lack of vomit. The main problem I have with this illness I've had for the past two months is that it produces no outward symptoms. It's like I have a lazy virus/bacteria/plague inside my stomach stirring up trouble, a lackadaisical 9-5er who clocks in on time but spends his days bidding for collector X-Men comic cards from the 1980s on eBay instead of outputting edited translations of Chinese manuals to kitchen appliances. I want to see these poorly translated booklets! I want to know that at least my body is pummeling out this disease!
So I have a doctor's appointment tomorrow. Perhaps all this is showing my age, but what is a 21 year old doing with ulcerous intestines??
Speaking of showing age, I'm turning 22 in 25 days, and I thought that this wishlist would help aid in any of your gift-buying needs to celebrate my birth.
Along with all the above, I'm of course suffering post-undergraduate malaise. It should be better known as: Chapter Three: Where The Heck Do I Go From Here? Daily, there is a battle between the mind-numbing acceptance of an office job to make ends meet, and the idealistic belief that if we just try hard enough and take a risk and you don't know how close you were to success when you gave up blippidyblop, you could actually make a living doing what you like. Right now I'm constantly standing at a crux of new beginnings while digesting the new beginnings of last month. New job, new city, new apartment, new internship, new community, new writers, munch munch. Now on the agenda: new gym (??? when will THIS happen?), new art classes, new goals, so many education programs I want to take a part of (I want an M.A. in Folklore, an M.F.A. in Creative Writing, and an M.F.A. in Design & Illustration), that I'm constantly so contained inside my own whirlwind of thoughts and ambitions that I get nowhere. I don't even know where to start.
And that is the dismal intro to Chapter Three: Where The Heck Do I Go From Here?
Friday, October 06, 2006
Countdown to Halloween: 25 days.
Only 25 days left until Halloween and I can't think of a good costume idea yet! I love Halloween, and I have the past two to make up for -- since one year I didn't get to dress up or go out because I had a job interview the next day, and last year I couldn't think of anything and there wasn't a momentous event, so I just let it pass me by. But this year, there will be a party to be attended and many art students to impress. I also really want to go to Disneyland, Knotts, or Universal Studios Halloween events. Halloween is the best holiday ever, complete with dressing up and candy and not having to sit through family obligations under careful scrutiny (three of my favorite things!)
Today, however, is the Harvest Moon Festival (aka Mid-Autumn Festival), and my mother had already guilted me before 9AM about going back to my parents' house. Oh the Asian Guilt knows no bounds. No wonder I have ulcers before 22. Though out of sheer laziness, I probably will not be motivated enough to drive back to Orange County. But I might be moved enough to head over to the Chinese boroughs of LA to indulge in some mooncakes...
Despite being woken up in the middle of the night due to intense nausea, my heart still resides in my stomach.
Wednesday, October 04, 2006
"He went computer chip surfing."
I'm enjoying my time at 826LA immensely; of course there are days and times when I don't want to go in, I don't feel like going in, I'm too tired to go in because I've already worked 8 hours at a tedious office job and want to go home and sleep and eat and slum it in front of America's Next Top Model all night. But I go because (a) my curse in life will always be incurable Asian guilt, (b) all the people I work with are genuine and hilarious, (c) America's Next Top Model sucks this season, and (d) the kids never cease to surprise me, and I love working on their writing with them. Today the prompt was "What do robots dream about?" and the student I was working with finally started writing after pouting all afternoon, and he wrote this incredible story of which is yet to go into second draft, but it does include a solid gold line: "He went computer chip surfing." The student explained to me that after all, if a robot went into water he would die.
I always leave the writing lab feeling more awake than I had been all day.
That aside, I actually need to start working on my own writing again. I've been moved to draw a lot lately, which makes me happy tha I'm actually finishing up my sketchbook that I've honestly had since I was in middle school. And like drawing, I know I need to write to get better, and to get better to get into grad school. And I need to get cracking on getting into grad school since I want to get two Masters.
I received a really sweet letter in the mail today from a friend who knows me and my writing well. And that, fortunately, is enough to move me to words.
Monday, October 02, 2006
Queueing
Psst I also joined Netflix, so please recommend a huuuge comprehensive list of films that will change my life. Thanks!
Sunday, October 01, 2006
An Entry Comprised Mostly of Lists
Things have been busy, which is usually good because it usually means I'm living my life, which is fortunately what is happening lately. I'm nesting, I'm discovering, I'm driving, I'm uncovering all those mysterious blacked out parts of LA as I pass through them, creating my own map. I'm still feeling sick, though most nights are much much better. Maybe this will remind me to stop taking my health for granted. I'm carving out a space here, and my friends have been so helpful -- from the ones who call me here, to the ones who call me just to say hello and catch up on the phone.
This weekend was the first in LA: I finally got a really comfortable futon, saw The Science of Sleep and ironically slept through it as I became unexpectedly cranky and ill on Friday night, experienced my first 826LA workshop at the Hammer, reunited with Urth Caffe and visited the Thinkspace gallery. Audrey Kawasaki's work inspires me so so much. And with my boyfriend being an incredible artist and spending time drawing drawing drawing because of art school, I'm moved to draw and paint again. I love that inspiration. P.S. Did I mention awhile ago, that 4 out of 5 students whom I worked with last Spring had their photographs selected for the Close Ups: San Diego Neighborhoods exhibit at MOPA? I am a proud mama.
The thing I miss most about San Diego, besides my friends and the amazing job of being a teaching artist, are the best kept secrets that took 4 years to discover. I wish there was a list I could trust in LA, two restaurants that I've gone to in the past weekends have been very bad.
Here is a list of best places to eat, see, be, do in San Diego:
- Extraordinary Desserts (besides the exquisite desserts, surprisingly amazing scones)
- Sipz (try the banana cake!)
- Mandarin Dynasty in Hillcrest/North Park
- Lestat's for coffeehouse shows, though it has sort of sold out and become ridiculous
- Belly Up Tavern
- 976 Cafe
- World Curry
- Kabuki Sushi
- Buffalo Exchange
- Wahrenbrock's (used books, has it reopened?)
- cheap tip: when parking in Gaslamp, get your ticket validated at Tower for free or buy a stick of gum at Long's
- Paul Mitchell School
- Croutons
- Balboa Park
- Rancho's (the restaurant)
- Cilantro Live!
- Dick Blick & Nelson's in Little Italy
- The Grove (on UCSD campus)
- Cotixan's
- Rebecca's (amazing, HUGE scones in fresh combinations such as ginger pear, orange chocolate chip)
Now for another list, of Long Term Goals for the Year:
- find and start yoga classes
- take life drawing classes
- learn to sew
- study for the GREs
- take the GREs by September 2007
- write a story a month
- read 22 books, after 22nd birthday
- take care of health
- draw draw draw, paint paint paint
- read the NY Times, BBC, and Pitchfork regularly
- learn graphic design
- start writing group
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