Of The Week

Song of the week: Train - Soul Sister

Book of the week: Mr. Monk in Trouble I'm a HUGE fan of the show and one of the writers of the show has branched off and started writing novels of the Monk character. This is the 9th book (and I have read them all so far) and the author Lee Goldberg just published the 10th -- you all know how long it takes me to read a book I think my blog said I was reading "Howard Hughes" for about 6 months. I just read 2 books starting my 3rd all within about 3 weeks (all monk books)

Currently Watching: Jon Stewart and his not so sexy new facial hair, it makes him look 60 - not the silver fox i'm in love with, I know its still there though, I haven't given up on him.

Upset of the week: I bought a fleur de lis ring in New Orleans. I remember looking at the rings at the market thinking they would be $5 or $10 and the dealer said $36 so I was like "woah nevermind, bye!" then my dad reminded me "well you don't want a cheap ring" so I went back and bartered down to $26 the ring started turning my finger green and then the day after I got back home, the fleur de lis snapped in half. thats got to be bad karma.

Solution: I found a sterling silver (won't turn my finger green and most likely won't snap in half) fleur de lis ring, almost identical online and purchased it right away with birthday money I had left over from my Aunt JooJoo :)

Annoyance of the week: My computer is in bad shape. Its been in bad shape for awhile ever since my adobe programs wouldnt work or install properly but I can't bare myself to sit on the phone for 5 hours with Adobe to fix it, So I just go across the street to the school campus when I need to work. But now, the internet is ridiculous, at some points I can't even open my email! I'm talking with a friend who works with computers to see what he thinks I should do. I've already ran every possible disk cleanup, optimization, defragment, virus scanner etc. I possibly can. they all come back with "no malicious files" "no corrupted files" its horrible. Its like having a child who is sick and you don't know what to do. haha.

Quote of the week: from the book "Mr. Monk in Trouble" it was just such a great line and way to describe a person "He looked like a peach that had been granted its wish to become human" it reminds me of that line that Jo found "she looked like she had spent her whole life waiting in lines" or something to that affect.

Movies of the week: I just watched 'Amelie' again, its such an amazing movie, it makes you feel so happy after you watch it, its the kind of movie you wish didn't end. I have a full review of it on my movie blog from when I first watched it not too long ago.

new project at school: designing John Mayers tour bus! its a pretty exciting project its me and my good friend, Fanny working on it together. Its actually becoming pretty hard because the research is so different and the regulations and we have to find out how tall it can be, what expand, weight limits all these things that you don't worry about in a building or that we have ever had to know before. not to mention standard codes really don't apply so when you normally know that you need 18" from the back of a chair to a wall you know you can make the distance shorter but what is too small? thats the hard part.

Simple Pleasures: Cracking my neck, I don't know how I do it but I can almost always crack my neck, I have several ways of doing it but most of the time if I cock my neck in the right way, it will crack and its a very satisfying thrill

The Big Easy, It Ain't So Easy

pictures: this on the left is my uncle troy and myself my dad said "look like lovers" and this is what came of it haha we were on a balcony in some bar. below from left to right: my dad and i dancing at the blues club, my mom, dad and i eating our first lucky dogs of the night, and then me with my first hurricane at pat obriens on the first night.

The big trip to Naw'lins. one of the best trips I've ever been on! It was so great that so many people ended up coming with, we had about 20 people in our group and about 5 of them flew in from other states (not including us)

everyone kept asking me "is it what you expected?" but I really didn't know what to expect, but it definitley wasnt anything I could have imagined. for one, heres what amazed me though

1. I thoguht it was really just one street, just bourbon street and all the others were just plain in comparison I never would have realized that the entire french quarter was just as crazy all the way through.

2. the girls and the sex, not just pictures of naked girls outside the strip clubs but the girls practically naked standing right outside wearing pasties, that was the one aspect I didn't like.

3. almost everywhere was cash only, which we never do here in seattle because then you'll get robbed (but one of the locals told me its so they fudge the numbers on what they make)

4. walking around the streets with drinks is always unusual, although everyone told me about that one, but i didnt expect that they would have plastic to go cups ready for when you wanted to leave with your drink

5. they start playing music at 9 in the morning and its not just once you walk in the bar you hear the music, you hear a new song and a new band playing every block

6. their are no codes (building wise) in this town. as a designer i kept noticing all that. there are o ventilation fans in the bathrooms, there are no occupancy loads, i even saw a lot of department of health codes, people making food with bare hands and such (not that its a dirty town i think people just arent as paranoid)

7. they hire people to stand outside their bar just to try and get people walking by to come inside

8. the people in new orleans are scared of the rain. haha.

9. everyone was incredibly nice, i woud have thought at some point i would have ran into someone bitchy but I never did. it was amazing.

10. there is obviously no rules in new orleans, even places that post rules no one abdies by like "one drink minimum" "bathrooms for customers only" "no outside drinks" no one ever said anything to us when we didnt follow these rules.

Freegan or Friggin Gross

I just read one of the latest Monk books (written by Lee Goldberg, one of the former writers for the show. This particular book was “Mr. Monk is Miserable” and is set in Paris, the books are great they are just like the show and whenever I have lent them to friends who haven’t watched the show they enjoyed the books just as much. There’s quite a few of the books I believe he just published the 9th)

Anyways, in this particular book that is set in France a very interesting concept of life is brought about and that is “Freegan” Freegan refers to a particular person who chooses to live their life in a certain way. I’m not sure if this is a real thing, if it’s not, HUGE props to Lee Goldberg because it’s one of the most amazing concepts I’ve ever heard of. Surely, it really only could happen in Paris. Supposively it’s a movement, currently only in Paris but trying to branch out to America and around the world.

This so called way of life is a way of freeing yourself (hence the name) for consumerism. Everyone (according to the story by Goldberg) that is now a Freegan was previously a big corporate snob, addicted to the consumer world and wasting as much as they could. These Freegan live for free. They live in the catacombs below France (an entire world lays beneath the city of sewer tunnels (which is the cleanest sewer in the world by the way) and passageways for the catacombs. (Some of them are squatters and live in houses and apartments that aren’t being occupied “everyone has right to shelter, an empty building is a wasted resource.” But basically they are classy dumpster divers. Technically they could be described as “homeless who live in the sewers and eat trash.” However, this is Paris. These Freegan “shop” in the most expensive neighborhoods where people not only buy good food but have no problem wasting it. they throw away an apple from one bruise, they throw away anything that is past its expiration date (that to them is a consumer parade just to make us buy more food, which let’s face it, expiration dates are not 100% you can certainly eat food that is slight past its marking, some products more than others.) people throw away electronics for things that are newer and prettier. These Freegan have complete living rooms, televisions, computers (they do hack into the cities electric grid and get free cable and electricity, that part isn’t so honorable) but they are clean, they are healthy. They live their life not stealing, but using waste. They are essentially recyclers.

They were described in the book as looking like “an ivy league debate team.” They were all high intellectuals at one point and freed themselves of the shackles of a consumer-society. They do grow mushrooms (a delicacy in France, and sells for a good price) for real necessities in life that they can’t obtain “legally through bargain or trade” like prescription medication or the manure to fertilize their mushroom crops. It’s an anti-materialistic lifestyle, in the book, the “leader” of the Freegan said it was not intended to be a movement, a political statement or a cult (none of which it is) but it can be perceived that way, he made this chose of lifestyle on his own and he was passionate about it and anytime you’re passionate about something, you share it with others and if you can speak well your ideas can sound like brilliance and that’s how the “following” became.

Although I would never actually want to be Freegan, I like having a real home and my own personal possessions and safety and security. It’s a real a great idea and I can see how it attracted so many followers. It’s a romantic idea and if I didn’t describe it well enough read the book because Lee Goldberg explains it wonderfully. It’s such a cool idea because it’s not a political movement, they don’t do protests and riot and such, they are simply living their life on our waste, which recycles it and in a sub-minded way it helps save our environment. We should be able to waste less, I am always inspired by this thought, however I’m horrible at maintaining it.

F.R.I.E.N.D.S.

why Friends, was and only is one of the best sitcoms on television ever.

1. everyone could relate with at least one of the characters, everyone could refer to themselves as a "rachel" or a "monica" or "i'm a mix of rachel and phoebe" few shows have this oppurtunity

2. and thats because most shows and sitcoms don't have 6 main characters, more often than not the cast is a family (king of queens, according to jim, grounded for life, george lopez, yes dear) occasionally an office (spin city, the drew carrey show, the office) but the show is just about 6 friends and they are such completely different characters that it really reaches audiences

3. there was so much reality to the show, there were scenes when the cast was just watching tv, something that real people really do, and most shows the tv is an after thought its what the actor turns off when someone else walks in the room. They were eating breakfast, not as a scene but just because the scene was taking place in the morning and thats what people would be doing.

4. they approached many different topics, I always loved that they could talk about sex in a funny way, in a way that was appropriate for kids (apart from sex and the city or any other HBO or cable show) i remember some adult made a comment once about how friends is a dirty show because they have pre-marital sex, as a kid, i never even noticed it.

5. they fought, theres two parts about this that i love the first part is that they would have real fights and they wouldnt talk and they would be over issues that real people would fight over whether it was a valid reason or something ridiculous. and the second is that they could say real and almost hurtful things to each other and they could laugh it off, something that REAL friends can do, when they are close enough.

6. it wasnt the kind of show that was against change (for instance gilmore girls could never seem to marry off Lorelai, they coudnt change the theme of the show) they put two of their main characters together and it exploded into a marriage (and theres always someone who ends up getting together or getting married in a group, no group of friends stays single forever) they married outside (phoebe, ross) but they also didnt think "of they all need to be married off, and joey stays single by the last episode)

7. they had great special apperances from julia roberts, bruce willis, paul rudd, robin williams, christina applegate, brad pitt, resse witherspoon, billy crystal, and more. most shows get lucky if they can even get a special apperance and if they do its no where near as good as the ones friends was able to achieve

8. they don't play a laugh track after every sentence, the new shows drive me crazy with that. friends is shot in front of a live audience, sometimes its a real laugh but sometimes the crowd laughs too hard and they have to edit it and put in a fake shorter laugh (but that means they are putting in laugh tracks when its not funny.)

9. they always had more than one thing going on in the show. joey has a story happening and ross and rachel have a story and monica has a story, theres some episodes that i dont really care for the story that involves chandler but the story with phoebe is hilarious and i think thats a really smart way to always keep everyone interest, they really have 6 chances for you to like a story.

10. their characters grew. from promotions, to children, to marriage, its pretty complicated. Rachel started with no job, worked at the coffee shop, got a job at a horrible fashion place, bloomingdales, ralph lauren and then had a toss up between gucci and louis vuitton. ross worked at the museum, went on sabatical, started teaching. none of them stayed with the exact same job for the whole 10 years and that was the smartest thing because most people don't stay in the same job for 10 years.