Friday, March 29, 2002

Orale! What people should realize about Homies is that unlike most stereotype products (the product that immediately comes to mind I saw in a Ralph's on Foothill in one of those .25 machines called "Hillbilly Teeth" which were fake plastic teeth that were malformed yeelow and black. Having been to West Virginia, I can assure you that the rate of tooth decay is the same there as the other 49 states) is that they were lovingly and playfully created by a rather big Latino artist named David Gonzales. He has a website set up at: http://www.homies.tv/ They are fun, I know those guys in those figures, but I prefer my icons to be real. Like Rueb�n Martinez, a barber who loves books so much he started a bookshop next to his barber chair. The bookstore slowly won over. Even tho he still cuts on occasion. He has had the President of Mexico and the Governor of California read to kids there. The literary greats like Carlos Fuentes and Isabel Allende show up to hang. Amazing stuff. And David Soltis interviewed him. http://www.boomtownmag.com Proud to be a citizen of Aztlan. Buck
Well Adrienne and I decided that hamburgers were in our our best interest yesterday sooo.... She toddled of to J&B on Myrtle in Monrovia whilst I kibbitzed with the Conman and got two double cheese burgers, chili on the side, fries and shakes. While she was waiting for the objects of our future colonoscopy she noticed in one of those $.25 vending machines, something unusual. You know the cheap trinkets you can get from those vending machines (plastic bracelets, mini football helmets, temporary tattoos, etc)? Well this one has "Lil Homies". No kidding. "Lil Homies". These are small plastic representations of Chicano life. I'm serious here. Adrienne got me two. One is a gang member looking guy with a stocking cap pulled down to his eyes. The other is an obese police officer eating a donut. No seriously. AND There are 18. I now have to collect them all.

Wednesday, March 27, 2002

We finally got the picture back that were taken by the LA Marathon organizers. Here is a picture of my dad just after he crossed the finish line. Once again pop, you are the silverback.
Create While Here Before and after we are the colors of night, And in between we cast light upon those we may never see. �I have a cello piece he did in 1959 for radio� �She painted as if her life depended on it.� �You hang on every word.� �I saw my life in his stone.� And all these are true- String slip, curving phrase, pushed brush. Users and owners here then gone. But catches in heart they make. Filled eyes, lovers sighs, easy mouths on bodies.
Ok...so you only get opportunities like this every once in a while. Last night was date night for Adrienne and I. After a very average dinner at Rudy's mexican food we walked up the resurgent Myrtle to Coldstone Creamery to get some ice cream (Mint with M&M's and snickers). Well we met this nice couple there with a 1 year old and we started talking. The guy was studying to be a teacher at APU and he was just finishing up a class in teaching young children to read. We started talking about something called phonemic awareness. Adrienne decided to do a search on the internet about the topic and asked the guy how to spell phonemic. To which I replied "Sound it out". Ahem... You live for moments like that.
Got this link from Buck yesterday. Apparently the dump at Fort Bragg was near the ocean (yeah silly huh) and there is all this sea glass on the beach there.

Tuesday, March 26, 2002

Do you ever have one of those moments where you realize as the moment is happening that you will remember it forever... Almost every night around 9:00pm we put a sleepy Conrad in our car and go for a short drive. Conrad will quietly and slowly drift into sleep, at which time we'll turn around and head home. Adrienne and I have this whole ritual surrounding this nightly event. I'm usually driving. When we pull into the driveway Adrienne will reach over and unhook the house keys and head inside to turn off the lights and get the bed ready. I'll get out and as quietly and gently as possible get Conrad out of the seat and transfer him to my shoulder where he will melt into me and go back to sleep. As I was carrying him back in side last night I realized that when I look at him as he gets older, through high school, college, whatever, a piece of me will always see him as this tiny human warm and quiet, asleep on my shoulder with his head turned into me, breathing warm magic onto my neck. I reluctantly put him into the bed next to Adrienne, check the doors, and ready myself for sleep. I'm just so overwhelmed...so overwhelmed...
What do you think the world would be like if everyone's tv's stopped working?

Sunday, March 24, 2002

OK there isn't any yellowing yet, so I thought I might plant some seeds from here instead... Bit of a cross post from a su casa but hey, thought I would share. Now go listen to Che-Fu! Shoo! Be well.

Thursday, March 21, 2002

I think it was Lemmy from Motorhead who said, if I move into your neighborhood, all the grass in the front yards will go brown. A plea for more content? A massive cultural polinization scheme? Someone else to kick around? Well Eric has exercised the "friends" portion of this webpage, and (peer pressured ? :) ) asked me if I wanted to blog on his page. Eric is a brave brave man. Sure. Why not. But I can't guarantee that the grass won't be yellow here in a week. Whilst we watch grass turn color I thought I would mention this interesting article from The Atlantic on Artificial Society Animations. Aloha.

Monday, March 18, 2002

A couple of things this morning: 1. Congratulations to Kelly and Carl. We held a wedding shower for them on Saturday. Good food and fun. They are off to be married on a cruise ship in the Carribean. 2. Conrad said clearly "Hockey Puck" this weekend. 3. This morning he got up at 5:30am. I think he felt bad though because he started singing to me, and kept on singing to me as I carried him around the house. Almost squeezed him it was so damn cool.

Friday, March 15, 2002

Got some new Magelo profiles. Astenar Ikpyl
Huh. My boss gave me this book to read called Assembling California by John McPhee. This is hard geologic science stuff. Of course I love it. This is a description of the Sierra Madre from a geologists point of view: "This is the Sierra Batholith. (One REALLY large rock). The one in California has a surface of about twenty-five thousand square miles.It lies inside the Sierra like a big zeppelin." They think it goes six miles down. "If so the batholith weighs a quadrillion tons, and its volume is at least a hundred and fifty thousand cubic miles." That is a pretty big peice of granite.
I know I've mentioned this before, MIT has been hired by the GOV to make some high tech battle armor. First of all this stuff is cool and it reminds me of a great book Jim turned me on to. Armor. When Steakley was asked about its similiarity to Heinlein's Starship Troopers. He acknowledged that and said if he thought Heinlein could write action he would have never written this book. Heh. It has some of the best action writing I've read.

Thursday, March 14, 2002

Found this article on Ars. This guy dropped his digital camera in a pond and it takes the most surreal beautiful pictures now. You have to see them.

Monday, March 04, 2002

My DAD ran and finished in the LA Marathon this weekend. Way to go POP! Bulletpoints I watched the very beginning, including the Kenyan team warming up, which was impressive. I was scanning 23,000 faces trying to see my dad. It was trance inducing. My mom hugging my dad saying "You did it honey" Kissing my dad on the head at mile 18 and tasting the sweat on my lips as I drove to the finish line to meet him. At mile 18 (where i moved to after the start so I could give my dad some encouragement) I watched literally 1000's of people move by me in varying degrees of pain. These are people that aren't going to win, that had already been decided. But I was completely overwhelmed by the feeling of determination I was getting from this stream of humanity. Each person slogging on with some dream pushing them. Man, I was moved. Still am.