All I want to do right now is stare out my nighttime window and listen to this beautiful band.
Monthly Archives: April 2011
happenings.
I’ve been pretty lucky in my life so far to say that before last week, I could honestly say I could not remember the last time I’ve felt betrayed by a friend. I’ve never been the type to have drama in my life and have always surrounded myself with friends who are good people.
Well last week this all changed. I’ve had a friend for some time now who pretty was someone unhealthy to be around. Now, I wasn’t remotely attracted to her and since she was a flaky person, I kept the friendship pretty casual and never talked about anything personal from my part. I kept her in my life due to me being a nice person, us having fun whenever we hung out and us having a lot of common interests. But this person has proven time and time again to be unreliable, a liar and someone who doesn’t about anything except her side of the conversation. Yet, I believe in forgiveness and would eventually let her disappointing behavior go time and time again. But last week, she finally took it to the next level by insulting and betraying me no less than one hour after I stuck my neck out on the line to help her (and contacting two other good friends to help her as well).
Pretty much we had been working together in a collaboration project in which I had done my part months ago. It wasn’t meant to be rushed, but she then decided to use the project for a school assignment. I was fine with that. But she had never even taken a look at my part of the work (which was writing) until I assume last week, in which she said suddenly out of nowhere that she was having a hard time working with it. Now, I had sent her my part of the work months ago. MONTHS AGO and she never gave me feedback. If she had told me back then, I would have loved to continue working on it. I love it when people criticize my work. It’s the only way to get better. (Ironically, other people who had no part in this project whatsoever, gave me immediate feedback on that particular work when I showed them and they loved the writing. Heck, I needed to get feedback from somewhere.)
So when she called me last week, I told her to go ahead and change whatever she wants. I had mentally just let go of the project since I knew she was a flaker and didn’t mind if she added her own touch to it. She agreed and then mentioned how she was having a hard time finding help. So I said I would contact two other friends to help out. She happily announced that everything was falling into place and I left the conversation immediately contacting my friends.
Less than an hour later, I suddenly noticed a post on Facebook. A post about her being unhappy with the project and that my part was holding back her “artistic freedom.” After she had asked me to use my part in the first place. After she had months to talk to me about it. After I had just told her she can do whatever she wanted with it. After I just contacted two busy friends. I mean WTF?! And honestly, she could have just dropped my part all together and done something else for her school assignment. But why the hell would she post that on Facebook?! She did remove it after I messaged her with a piece of my mind (something similar to this entire post), but wow…this hurt. And not even an apology came from her. Instead it was just another Facebook post, a self-loathing one. Ugh.
So I decided this was it and cut her off for good. I hate being part of drama, especially drama that stems from being online. I never understood how that stuff happened and it just annoys me to be apart of it.
And that’s it. Sorry to go all LiveJournal on here. I really didn’t start this blog to write about things like this, but I just felt like getting it off my chest.
This whole experience did, however, make me appreciate several other friends in my life. Friends who I have worked with on multiple projects. Friends in which we BOTH do our parts on projects and criticize the hell out of each other with immediate feedback after putting in so much effort. It’s beautiful people like them that are the reason that this unfortunate situation is the first one to happen in years. And that is something I am truly thankful for.
the great escape.
Interesting Monday morning. While walking happily to my internship blasting Skull Tape’s new (and debut) album on my iPod, I come across a rather large fellow frantically chasing two dogs. I assume he accidentally left his fence open one second too long and his dogs decided to take their chance for freedom.
While his gray-haired dog escaped the neighborhood and disappeared down Highland Ave, the man focused his energy on trying to catch his brown-haired dog, which had a cone-collar around his neck. Of course he was wearing it for his own good, but everyone knows how much dogs hate those things. So the guy dives down onto the dog, grabbing the cone collar while at the same time completely eating concrete. Hilarious. If only Bob Saget was there to do a voice-over. The cone collar busted and he took off free from the man and the dreaded cone.
Now I don’t know if the guy was just a bad dog owner or if I should have felt bad for him, but I did laugh. I laughed at the situation and at him. And the brown-haired dog running free, obviously looking happy is a sight that gave me an even bigger smile. Like I said, interesting start to a Monday and a good start for the upcoming week.
summer stuff & comics.
Ahhhhhh! June 15th. Matt & Kim. Returning to the Music Box in Hollywood. YEEEHAW!!!!
Usually I don’t care much for concerts scheduled months into the future, but considering how their show in October automatically become one of the top five shows ever in my life so far I’ve ever attended, I just need to start counting down the days now.
It’s going to be sick. Sick. Sick. Sick. SIIIIIIIICK!
What a kick off to summer 2011.
:::takes deep breath:::
Ahem. Okay back to the present. My most recent online discovery was found last week while browsing through Deviant Art stuff and I came across the online comic strip Loading Artist by Gregor Czaykowski. I blogged up one of his other comics exactly three blog posts below this one (the hilarious dark-unfulfilled-romance-one) and have been visiting his website constantly lately just enjoying all his previous strips. His work is definitely something to check out for yourself.
This one convinced me to get pizza for dinner tomorrow.
another night, another show.
What’s a weekend in my life without going to a show? And of course it was at The Smell. Sunday’s line-up opened with Charlyne Yi’s band Fatty Dearest, but thanks to L.A.’s metro completely lagging it, I missed their set as my friend texted me, “FATTY DEAREST IS PLAYING!!!” Ah shoot. I’ll catch them again next time.
Fortunately, I did get to catch a band I had yet to see before. It was Black Elephant and they were just awesome. They music just emitted energy and everyone breaking out into fun dancing was just a precursor of what was yet to come in the night.
Following them was one of my favorite current bands, the spin-off of Moses Campbell, the wilder Heller Keller. Remember that precursor I mentioned? Our energy let loose here. My gosh. It was their most intense pit of out of the three times I had seen them. It was too intense for my healing arm, but I jumped back in for the song where she screams, “ICE-CREAM! ICE-CREAM!” I think the song may be called Ice-cream.
And ending the night was Pangea.
Their set was just one of the best musical sets I had heard in months. They had songs to dance to. They had songs to mosh to! It was everything good in the world and then some! Just listen to the greatness.
brida (a book called).
Clever title, eh? Thanks goes out to A Tribe Called Quest for suddenly helping me out with blog posts. Earlier today when I was bored, I randomly started listening to old hip hop songs I used to nod to back in the music phase known as the “jazz-influenced-socially conscious-hip hop era” of my life (music taste circa 2005-2006). The song I’m referring to is the amazing Jazz (We Got), but the song that really made me miss my old hip hop days was Digable Planets’ Rebirth of the Slick (Cool Like Dat).
Music Video Here. (No straight embed available. Thanks EMI. -_-)
Siiiick. My gosh, that is just beyond cool. C’mon contemporary rappers, what happened do you guys? Why do you suck so much now? Honestly, I could go on and on about all those jazz-influenced groups I used to listen to. Guru’s Jazzmatazz albums, The Pharcyde, The Roots (their album Do You Want More?!!!??!) and of course the already mentioned and my favorite, A Tribe Called Quest. But that’s for another post and another time.
In my reading life, I’m taking a short break from finishing the Scott Pilgrim series with Scott Pilgrim’s Finest Hour and returning to the writings of Paulo Coelho. He wrote one of my favorite novels of all time, The Alchemist, which is an amazing book full of adventure/telling you the meaning of life/being inspirational/desert tales/helping you find your purpose/just being an awesome story. A few years ago, I picked up another novel of his, The Devil & Miss Prym. It was definitely not as hard-hitting as The Alchemist, but it was a good read nonetheless.
Well lately, I’ve started reading Coelho’s blog and suddenly found the urge to pick up one of his books again. This time, I’m going with Brida, another novel about self-discovery. So far the plot is as follows: an Irish girl, who is trying to figure out who she is, undertakes the teachings of a Mage in order to learn the secrets of magic. Magic! It is has to be good, right? Can’t go wrong with that. Here’s hoping it’s another great read from Coelho.
