MONDAY, SEPTEMBER 26, 2005

My trip to Thailand begins in:
0 Days, 0 Hours, 0 Minutes, 0 Seconds (I already left!)
I'll be spending a few days in Bangkok and a few days on the island of Phuket.

My trip to Thailand begins in:
0 Days, 0 Hours, 0 Minutes, 0 Seconds (I already left!)
I'll be spending a few days in Bangkok and a few days on the island of Phuket.

The Dodgers are pretty pathetic. I went to Dodger Stadium tonight to see them lose to Pittsburgh, the worst team in the league. Not that it matters... it's the last week of regular season and both teams have already been eliminated from any playoff hopes. We walked in the gate just as the game was starting and got in line at the Gordon Biersch stand to get some food. By the time we got our food, it was the middle of the 3rd inning. They need to do something about that. The game was fun. Even though the Dodgers played terribly, the crowd found other ways to entertain themselves... like doing the wave and building paper airplanes out of the free calendars that were handed out at the gate. Final score: 8-3. I wonder if the Red Sox are on TV this week?
Last night I finally saw The 40 Year-Old Virgin starring Steve Carell from The Daily Show and The Office. It is really funny. We definitely need more R-rated comedies like this. The 40 Year-Old Virgin and Wedding Crashers are two of the best movies I've seen this year.

Tonight I went to see Bloc Party for the third time in six months. I bought the ticket awhile ago. I'm not sure why... I guess I just figured I would regret it today if I didn't have one. But after work I just wanted to go home. Instead of seeing the opening bands (The Kills and The Noisettes), I went over to the ArcLight and saw Green Street Hooligans, a film about an american (Elijah Wood) who gets kicked out of Harvard and then gets mixed up with soccer hooligans when he goes to England to live with his sister. I thought the movie was great. After the movie, I went over to the Hollywood Palladium, my least favorite concert venue in the city. The place was packed... completely sold out. I found myself a spot in the back hoping to avoid the annoying drunk people that I had to deal with the last time I saw Bloc Party. I was able to avoid the crowd-surfers (yes, people still do this for some reason) and the drink-throwing people (why?), but I still had to deal with a few drunks and the 15-year-olds that spend more time making out than watching the show. The band was good, even though the acoustics in the Palladium are terrible. The played for about 75 minutes and did a new song in their encore. As usual, they didn't play my favorite song, "Staying Fat", but I still enjoyed the show.
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I spent the whole day at the L.A. County Fair in at the Pomona Fairplex with Niki and Christina. It's the largest county fair in North America, and in the seven hours we were there, we covered most of the 500 acres of fairgrounds. It's really a great fair. This was the third year that I went. My favorite part is always the food. I didn't eat any deep-fried Snickers this time, but I did have a steamed artichoke with butter, some corn on the cob with lime and chili, a beef & cheese empanada, honey glazed beef jerky, and some toffee coated nuts. Mmmmm. While we were there, we also attended a horse race, a wine tasting, rode on the Skyride, and did a lot of walking. Here are some pictures.
After the fair, I went straight to the Staples Center to meet Dave for the NHL preseason game between the Los Angeles Kings and the Anaheim Mighty Ducks. The game was free for those who were able to get tickets last month. We scored a pair, but we were in the nosebleeds... the last row of section 321, but we were just happy to be seeing a hockey game. The first period was terrible, the Kings had one or two men in the penalty box for the whole period and the Ducks took a 2-0 lead. The second period was the complete opposite. Anaheim started getting penalties and the Kings scored 3 times in the period. The third period had fewer penalties so the teams were more evenly matched. The Kings mananged to score one more goal (short-handed) after a mistake by the Ducks goalie. The Kings won 4-2.

Last night I went to a free screening of Broken Flowers starring Bill Murray. I enjoyed the movie quite a bit, but I'm glad I didn't pay for it. The music in the film was very good, I might pick up the soundtrack.
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I went to the Oasis concert tonight at the Hollywood Bowl with my friend Aron. It was actually my first time seeing them. We got there late enough to miss Kasabian, but unfortunately we had to listen to a few Jet songs. I don't like them at all. Oasis came on at 9:30pm. The show was great. Their set lasted 90 minutes and included all of their popular songs from their first two albums(Definitely Maybe and (What's The Story) Morning Glory?) as well as some songs from their new album (Don't Believe The Truth). My favorites were the oldies. They dedicated "Live Forever" to the people of New Orleans and "Don't Look Back In Anger" to people from Mexico. The vocals seemed a little scratchy but I'm not sure if it was their voices or the equipment. They closed with a cover of The Who's "My Generation" which, according to Aron, was done much better by Oasis than the last band he saw play at The Bowl: The Who. And in a strange coincidence, Oasis had the same drummer tonight as The Who did that night: Ringo Starr's son, Zak Starkey.
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Tonight, my pal Lisa and I went to the Hollywood Bowl to see A Night at the Copa with Pink Martini and Bebel Gilberto. Both artists were backed by the Los Angeles Philharmonic orchestra. Bebel Gilberto opened up the show and that's who I went to see. She's a Brazilian bossa nova singer and she was great live. Pink Martini was the headlining act. They do an original mix of lounge, swing, latin, jazz, pop, and classical music and every song seemed to be in a different language. They were good, but I wanted more Bebel.
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I spent the day on the other side of town and it was hot over there - about 20 degrees warmer than the beach. I did a little shopping in Glendale, and then went to Montrose for lunch, and then Niki and I went over to Boddy's Backyard Picnic at Descanso Gardens. It was an "Old-Fashioned Celebration" where we got to ride the "Enchanted Railroad", meet and greet the cows, look at lots of flowers, listen to the Verdugo Swing Society band, and drink some rootbeer floats and vanilla phosphates from Soda Jerks.
link to this postThey did today anyways. Maybe it's because their best players were off playing with the US National Team, helping the USA beat Mexico 2-0 and qualifying for the 2006 World Cup in Germany. I got free tickets for the Galaxy game today against the Chicago Fire. The Galaxy actually played better than Chicago, but had a terrible time putting the ball in the net. We ended up losing 2-1.
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Yesterday was our last "summer Friday" at work. Next Friday we'll have to work all day on Friday, but at least we have Monday off. Thursday night was the last pier concert of the summer. I went down and watched Shonen Knife play a few songs. Hopefully the sun will come out and I can spend some time at the beach this weekend. But, the summer is coming to an end. It's not all that bad because I'm going to take some vacation time before the year ends. Right now, I'm planning trips to Thailand (8 days), Brazil (10 days), Arizona (2 days), and Maine (10 days).
This morning my new sofabed was delivered. I designed it myself at The Sofa Company in Culver City and it only took them 2 1/2 weeks to build it. It's a loveseat-sized Archie sofabed. The material is a charcoal-colored suede. It's very comfy and now I have a place to sit other than on my bed. Now I need to find a small coffee table.