Well, the venue was neat

The matching little riding hoods were the first things to tip me off: this was going to be an ostentatious show.

There were also some hints in the Walt Disney Concert Hall's lobby, though. Urban Outfitters models in black-framed glasses, unnecessary scarfs, flat ballerina shoes, American Apparel t-shirts, skinny jeans with zippers leading to no where, plaid button-ups, and swooping hair cuts milled passed Theodore and me as we drank our $14 half-bottle of water. The most embarrassing part is that we blended right in.

We found our seats in one of the curves of the building. (This place turned out to be the sexiest structure I have ever seen. If you have a chance, buy tickets for one of the events just to see this building. And before you go, read "The Fountainhead," for good measure. Crazy architecture kind of blows my mind.) Most of the people in the crowd were of the hip kind, ergo in their 20s, ergo showing up 20 minutes late, ergo not knowing how to hold themselves while the L.A. Philharmonic opened for the Dirty Projectors. Eventually everyone learned to watch the conductor's hands for the appropriate moment to applause.

The Philharmonic was obviously marvelous, but truthfully my attention was wandering toward the sexy ceiling and sexy walls. (Really, you have to see this place.) Then, since the seats are circled around the stage, I was able to look at all the hip kids while they enjoyed the music. These are some of the thought bubbles I put over their heads: "Hm, this is cool. I really should come to the symphony more. It would make a great status update." and "Wow, this is boring. But I have to say I like it because if I don't, my friends won't think I'm groovy."

After intermission came the riding hoods: grey, blue, yellow, and red. How cute. How old are those little girls any way? They look 12 to me. The band played an entire album with some of the Philharmonic; it was an album that only sold something like 10 copies. Now, I'm not a music person by any means. I don't get it, and most of the time music just annoys me. But I know what I like and I know what I don't like; and I know what people are supposed to like because it's just too damn cool to stand up in a big concert hall singing about kangaroos while matching your three best buds: "Ooooooo, ahhhhh, oooooo, oh, oh, ahhhh."

The sad thing is that I like the Dirty Projectors. But I have only heard their Bitte Orca album, which is still bizarre. Yes, he sings about Gatorade hittin the spot oh yeah; but those songs have an actual melody that I can follow. When the music stops in the echoing concert hall and the 20 people on stage are trying to clap at the same time in a slow rhythm, and the audience can't stand up to try to get into the music because the seats were hugging the sexy walls, I start to look over at Theodore and nod my head while he imitates a kangaroo dancing to the music--that would have saved the show.

What I like to think about when going to shows is, who are these people that got suckered into doing this on stage? Not the leads. But the backup. Who is this first-string violinist who said, "Sure, I'll play with you guys."

As she is running out the door in the morning she yells up to her husband, "Honey, I'm going to be late tonight. I have a show, then I'm playing with some kids who want to include some of the best musicians in the world to do their backup!"

He peeks his head down, "Was that that crazy rock jiggy you were playing last night?"

"Yes. But at least I'm not the French Horn. Those guys have to blow in bottles."

It's true. Some of the wind instruments picked up glass bottles and blue into them during one of the songs.

"Hey the show is about to start. Can you finish drinking my instrument?"

It really was such a pleasure to watch two grown men bend over to their shared microphone, their back fat showing through nicely chosen shirts for the occasion. That part was worth it.

After this stressful (hour? 2 hours? I don't know) of dissonant chords and overused percussion, Theodore and I bolted out of there. Luckily we waited toward the back to see if we knew any of their songs in their encore. Finally, 2 songs that I've heard of! That part was actually enjoyable, I'll have you know. Dave Longstreth really has a magnificent voice, and is a damned good guitarist. (He's even a lefty: unique.) Those two songs were completely worth that lovely amount of money I don't want to think about right now. We could understand his lyrics and could kind of sing a long to it. People still weren't moving though. The seats were pretty restricting, so watching the band up there was still a bit awkward. At least we walked out of there with a familiar tune in our heads.

I think Theodore summed it up best while we were driving home: "Call me crazy, but people like music they can relate to."

Collaborate and Listen, my glory angels

Everyone needs to stop and think about what makes them feel on top of the world. Think about those moments where you feel like you've been put on this planet for a damn purpose, those small victories that are pretty shallow but still make you king for a day or a week or a month.

These are what I call glory moments.

To be perfectly honest, most of my glory moments are school related. While many people just slide by in a school project, I really remember the hours I spent on a Power Point presentation, all the thought I put into a literary theory website, and the real creativity I put into a presentation on "The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao" where we created a life-sized comic book narrative. Every time I get an A I think, "My goodness, I am amazing."

I have other glory moments, most of them include all eyes on Hannah. Giving a good speech is a quite glorious feeling. And lordy, when I noticed I had 14 followers on this blog I thought I must be a goddess. (Even though half of them I think I forced or cleverly manipulated into following me. "It's easy. Just push the follow button. Everyone's doing it.") But one of my favorite glory moments was actually something I did not want to share with my parents, even though most of everyone else was invited.

Two years ago I did a play called "Stop Kiss" at the community college I was attending. It's about two girls who fall in love with each other. It's a good play, even though pretty cheesy at some points; but I made it work because I was feeling pretty glorious. And I am a very good actor. Everyone says so. Except my parents, because they didn't come. I told them, "Hey guys, I love you. But I kiss a girl in this play. And in one scene I don't wear pants. I don't want you to come." They supported me by not showing up, bless them.

Today I came upon my script for that lesbian play. I do this thing where I like to relive my glory moments. I really hope I'm not the only one who does this, because that would be kind of embarrassing. For instance, I have this paper I wrote that the professor loved. Sometimes I will reread that paper and her glory filled comment at the end. I tell myself I do it because it's good to reassess how you're doing on your writing and see how far you've come, see if you've improved at all. But really it's just because I like the feeling of being approved of. Anyway, today I relived the glory of being the lead in a play (and doing a damn good job, if I may say so) by acting out my lines alone in my room. It was a private 20 minute rendition of "Stop Kiss."

I don't like when I post things like this just to keep this updated and then end up humiliating myself. Why the hell did I feel the need to broadcast my love for Celine Dion or my six-hour obsession with a crossword puzzle?

Although, telling you about my rereading a play that I did two years ago has meaning, and it is two-fold. One, I miss acting and I'd give a kidney to be able to do a play right now. Two, I think people are too humble sometimes. I'm not saying you've got to be haughty and proud and throw yourself a parade for every victory and goal scored. And I'm really not saying you need to brag in a way where you're trying to look subtle but you really just come off as an ass. But maybe sometimes you just need to give yourself a little more credit when you do a good job. Everyone's got their talents. A lot of people are just afraid to vocalize them.

A tic for me, a tac for you

Joseph Heller frustrated me sometimes

with his back and forth contradictions;

but I'd still recommend this book because

I laughed and wanted to be Yossarian's friend.

I only take recommendations of

books seriously if I trust the

person and if they convince me.

Although I love my sister, telling

me to read Twilight because it's

about unquenchable love doesn't cut it.

Apparently, according to chapter 2,

Sedaris took up smoking and it rid

him of his tics for the most part.

I took up smoking for a while, but then

realized I was doing it to be cool.

I stopped after three weeks when

coughing became a regular thing for me.

Catch-22 was interesting. Took me long enough to finish. Funny, contradictory, ingenious, stressful. I'm glad I read it, but even more glad I finished it because now I can move on to the mountain of books that I received for Christmas.

After finishing the first season of Curb Your Enthusiasm (Theodore and I started it only a couple days ago), I began reading David Sedaris' Naked.

(Side note: I don't always do nothing all day. I had plans: picnic in Long Beach with best friend, then work, then hang with Theodore. But then I tried this experiment yesterday. I really hate cashiering. I do. It's probably the worst job for me, besides clothes retail because I can barely dress myself. So I'm trying this new thing to force myself to be happy at work and then trick myself into being happier overall. I heard that the healthiest people are always the happiest ones, to which I said, "Well, of course they're happy. They're healthy for fuck's sake." But apparently it's the other way around. The studies go that they're healthy because they are happy. I started thinking, for instance, about Julia Child. She ate so much rich food all the time and she lived until she was 95 or something like that. From what I can tell from the movie Julie and Julia, she was a pretty happy woman who had passions and was excited about life. I thought maybe that was the solution to a long and healthy life. I did an okay job yesterday at forcing myself to be happy ringing up rude costumers, one in particular that threw things at me, wore sunglasses inside and had the smallest breasts I've ever seen. But my contrived joy did not work. Oddly enough, I woke up sick this morning, the first time since March I think. So today, I played Bananagrams and Scrabble with my mom, finished my book, and started another. And curled up in a ball for an hour. I am not lazy. I am sick. Okay, you didn't have to read that. It was just so you don't think less of me.)

Naked is kind of a memoir of David Sedaris' life. A friend recommended it to me and it's fantastic. I just finished reading the chapter on his "plague of tics" and it got me thinking about my own.

How could such a normal girl like myself have tics, you ask? Oh, you are so presumptuous. Although my tics may have been self-induced for attention seeking reasons, they had been and are currently quite serious and are not to be taken lightly.

I used to have to count ceiling tiles and I thought that was so cool. I thought I was so cool and artistic to have such a tic where I would sit down in a movie theater with friends and I would automatically look up to assess the squares and patterns of right angles. Then I realized that a lot of people have tics like that, counting things and such. And since I'm no rain man, I gave that one up because I didn't want any smart ass to grab me, flash a jar of M&Ms in my face and make me tell him the exact number.

I don't know why I wanted a tic so bad to be honest. I guess it was the same reason I got jealous when a kid broke his arm and came to school in a cast. Everyone would ask him what happened and he'd get to talk about himself all day. I never broke a bone, because I was chicken and didn't climb trees or walls or anything then. Tics seemed like the perfect solution. Just get a weird, unique one and people will think you're special and different and eccentric. All the good artists were eccentric.

I can't remember the other tics I went through until I landed on one that stuck. What is so fantastic about this one is that it wasn't forced at all. It birthed itself on its own, right there. Out of a tragedy came a beautiful, individualistic quality I can call my own.

As many know, I am legally blind in my left eye, which has given to my sometimes cross-eyed appearance and my always lack of depth perception. During the first nine months of having my license, I was in three car accidents, all of which were my fault and all of which were due to my inability to determine the distance between my car and another. They were minor, and the emotional damages were always deeper than physical. I have never been in a car accident since, and I like to think that my safe driving is all thanks to my tic.

Now while driving, I constantly gauge myself with four important checkups: is my gear in drive? (which is weird because I'm driving forward) in my E-break down? (done that one too many times) is my gas tank closed? (even if I haven't gotten gas in a week) and is my rearview mirror in alignment with my rear window? (weird because I'm the only one who drives my car)

I do these things about every 10 minutes. It's not that big of a deal when I'm just driving to school or to work. But up to Erin's, kind of annoying. Down to Elle's, irritating. When I used to drive to LA twice a week, a nightmare.

But now that I have this thing I can't give it up. And not because I can brag about, because I don't, I am slightly more mature than I was in elementary school. I can't give it up because I believe deep down that those regular surveys are what keep me in one piece.

I hate driving. Since I don't like listening to music that much and I can only take so much of Rush's exclamations, I'd rather walk every where. Some day, I shall live in a city where I sit next to strange people on the metro and accidentally sit in gum and complain to my roommate about public transit, but she will be too busy calculating gas prices and car insurance since she doesn't have my tic and just got into an accident because she was driving in reverse for 15 minutes and had no idea.

I know Alias ended up sucking, but that's not the point

A mug Erin bought for me in D.C. The real deal.

I've always wanted to be in the CIA. Sorry, let me rephrase. It just sounded like a good lead, although not entirely accurate.

I've wanted to be in the CIA since I was 16 years old, and for some time I was actually working toward that goal in, I thought, very practical ways.

Erin and I went to Blockbuster to rent a TV series on DVD, something that would make us laugh and have a whole new carton of inside jokes. We had already watched a lot of Friends and Seinfeld and wanted something new, something none of our friends would know the quotes from.

We couldn't find anything.

Then we came across a small show that was currently in its 3rd of 4th season: J.J. Abram's Alias.

We rented the first two discs of the first season and were immediately attached. Sydney Bristow was not only a perfect aspiration, but our best friend.

We watched the both discs, which I believe was just four episodes, in one night and kept talking about it all week at school.

The next weekend, we were prepared. With only kettle corn and Arizona Iced Tea for sustenance, we sat on the couch for 21 hours straight and finished both the first and second seasons.

(A couple embarrassing side notes, although this whole post is probably embarrassing enough: Our only breaks were trips to the restroom. I made Erin accompany me most of the time because some of the scenes were quite terrifying. Also, at the end of the second season, after our marathon was other, the cliff hanger was so appalling that I actually cried for several minutes. Erin was either amused or annoyed.)

After becoming addicted to the show, we began to reveal that each of us was also interested in becoming a clandestine, intelligence seeking agent for our country. We began engaging in secret agent-type activities to prepare us for our future vocation.

We would dress in all black and coordinate fights for a camera sitting on my coffee table. We would run around her neighborhood jumping over fences and climbing up buildings in search of God knows what, again dressed in all black. We planned on putting ourselves through our own personal boot camp, complete with pull-ups, push-ups and doing some fancy footwork with tires on the ground, this time dressed in camo. That plan fell through, probably because I can't do a push up. We would go airsofting in the wilds of Mission Viejo, dressing in camo and surgical masks. We would make up word games and codes in case we got caught and had to transit an important rescue message, dressed in our normal clothes because we would do this in the middle of class or while driving around or while at a restaurant. The most elaborate of emulations involved the two of us plus another friend dressing up, in all black, for a fancy dinner party. Two of us were trapped. One had to decode a message to find the key. Then we shot each other in the backyard in the dark with our airsoft guns. After we realized we didn't have goggles and we could shoot an eye out, we came inside and wiggled around in this weird crawl space I found in my house. Came out from the crawl space because there were nails and spiders. Then went to the attic to find season three of Alias. It was one of the most fun nights in my life, even to this day.

Besides our CIA play, Erin and I actually researched how exactly to get into the Agency. I had the brains and Erin had the brawn. I really wasn't (am not) very athletic so I was jealous when Erin would climb up a tall platform and I would be left on the ground jumping off curbs to try and look as cool as possible. But then I was a little better at solving our codes. So it was all good.

But then I discovered, or at least concluded from certain websites, that you have to have military experience to get into the CIA. I knew I could never get into the military because I am legally blind in my left eye. This didn't really stop me, though.

I remember walking up to Erin who was in line to buy food at school and telling her when I wanted to stop working towards our goal. My youth pastor had just unexpectedly died and it was the first time I had ever experienced the reality of death.

For some reason, this incident was so shaking for me that I was convinced working toward such a goal was useless and a waste of time. I said that I wanted to think about things that really matter, even though I didn't really know what those things were and still don't have a proper inkling.

Even though I still have this weird, strong desire to go into combat and prove myself in challenging undercover situations, I am obviously not trying to be a CIA agent. I still have a lot of goals for myself, so many that they're in the double digits. But working as a Bristow-type agent is no longer one of them.

But I learned so much in this era of mine. I challenged myself physically more in that time than any other, even when I was a cheerleader. (That was said partly sarcastically, but I really did have challenges in conquering the thought of being thrown up in the air and trusting Jr. Highers to catch me.)

I learned how to face fears, as Tyra Banks as that sounds. (Remember when she faced dolphins?)

I used to be scared to be alone, of the dark, of jumping of high things, and of a lot of other things. But whenever I was in those situations I would honestly think to myself, "What would I do if I was in a real life-threatening situation?" and even cheesier, "What would Sydney Bristow do?"

I know this is ridiculous, but I was seriously changed by all this. Just hold a dumb airsoft gun and getting shot in the leg with a tiny plastic bullet made me tougher, I swear.

Because I'm not sure of the point of this post I'm going to encourage my handful of readers. Challenge yourself in some way. Even if it's completely silly.

People sit around so much doing just the bare minimum. You're capable of a lot more than flipping back to the last TV show just in time to escape the commercials.

Lately, Taekwondo has been a challenge. I'm pretty awful at it. But it's fun and so rewarding when I do something right.

And lately I've been running a lot, which I used to hate. I used to be able to run only half a mile. Now I'm running over three almost every day.

And this damn newspaper has certainly showed me what I'm capable of, if not only that I can pull all nighters every other weekend.

If you happened to read this whole post with getting bored, congratulations.

Now go jump off a roof.

Make sure you land in grass though. It hurts like hell to land on the cement.

Mystics and Graveyards and Beautiful Music

I had such an eventful weekend. Sexual harassment in Long Beach. Worst rendition of A Midsummer Night's Dream at a Tarrot/Palm-reading, spiritual-healing, Wicca and Reiki retail, energy and mystic shop. All-nighter at the Hollywood Forever Cemetery to see Bon Iver at sunrise. Donald Miller talk in Irvine...I like that man.

I could go on about the Shakespeare play, but I won't. Just know that we left at intermission. And that the girls were all a little slutty, and the actress who played Titania seemed kind of drunk.

The Bon Iver concert was the coolest event I've ever been to. We got there at midnight. Hundreds of us spread out blankets with drinks and food and weed smoke wafting over us every ten minutes. Personally, I just ate too many Twizzlers and Carmel Apple Pops. We watched Bottle Rocket, some of Planet Earth, listened to some good random music. Free coffee served all morning. A half hour before the show started Buddhist monks blessed the stage through chanting and offering. Then 6 a.m., Bon Iver played. It was amazing.

You know when you're at an event like this and everyone knows it's the coolest thing but no one wants to say it out loud? While everyone was standing in line, people whispered to their friends "this is so cool." But not too loudly of course, because it's cool to not comment about what's cool. Act like it's the norm.

But the first to say it was Justin Vernon himself:

"Thanks for making this the coolest thing ever."

Bon Iver is one of the only bands that are even better live than on their CD. I knew almost every song but they were all a little bit different than the recorded versions. All a little revamped in some way. It was a great show.

Girl With a Patch

If you are standing to the left side of me I probably will not notice your pretty face. Keep in mind that I do care, for I do not wish to ignore you, my dear reader. I do not wish to shun you. The fault is not mine; it is not my mother’s; it is not my father’s; it is not my father’s parents’, who died before I was born; it is not my mother’s legalistic parents’ on a farm in South Bend, Indiana. The fault is no one’s, in fact. Just a pure genetic coincidence, if you believe in coincidence and chance and the like. Just a sometimes noticeable, always laughable, never lived-without-it kind of handicap: my legally blind left eye.

My mother did have this physical fault, but I do not blame her. It would be like blaming her for my tiny mouth, which takes about three bites of a sandwich to equal any person’s one chomp. My sweet mother did what she could for my baby self. I went to an optical therapist, something you probably did not know existed. What I remember of the office lobby was like any unimportant and forgotten doctor’s office: impeccably clean yet un-matching furniture, corners cluttered with Highlights magazines, a seemingly ubiquitous toy with winding rods and imprisoned beads. In the examination room, the kind, fat lady asked me to tell her which was better, one or two. I swung my five-year-old legs, whacking her expensive equipment. And in return I was given a patch. A black, pirate-looking patch.

Cool. My mother and I wondered how making me the kid with the patch, the kid you did not make fun of because she is just too pitiful and suffers enough humiliation within the first five minutes of leaving her house, would help reverse my lazy eyeball. Of course, without the patch, if I looked you in the eyes, in your perfectly straight, forward-looking eyes, you would notice my left eye veering towards my nose. That’s humiliating enough. But the patch does not cover it up; it draws much more attention to it. Fortunately, the optical therapist did not insist on any public wearing of the patch. I was only meant to wear the thing over my right eye for a couple hours a day playing Legos in the privacy of my own home. Relief.

This, however, did not suffice. We kept at my patch-wearing Lego-play for about a year to no avail. My blind eye remained. I wore glasses for most of my life; so I was the kid with glasses, not at all a unique characteristic. But if I removed said glasses, my left eye would throw his hands in the air, give up, and become so lazy he just had to check out what my right eye was doing, which was diligently fulfilling his innate duties of seeing whatever my brain told him to see. At times my fellow conversationalist, out of honest sincerity, would look over his or her shoulder and ask to whom I was talking or at what was I looking. And of course there were the snickers. One year a jr. high boy circled my yearbook picture and wrote “Cross Eyed Girl.” How lovely of him. But the handful of rude remarks has not been the downside.

This handicap has actually rid me of any depth perception. Team sports were always out of the question. I was stuck with things like gymnastics, cheerleading, piano, and kickboxing. The one year I tried playing on a soccer team, I was so bad the team mom had to run alongside me in games to help me out. For future reference, do not try and toss me something most people can catch, things like keys, pens, or remote controls. I also had to take a separate and more complicated driving test to get my license, although I sometimes think I should not be allowed to drive at all based on previous minor but very annoying car accidents that I do not wish to discuss.

I am the girl with the blind eye. If anything happens to my good eye, I would be the girl with the cane and seeing-eye dog. I had fright a year ago when my right eye was infected and I was quite blind for three days. Although reading books is such a big part of my life, I do not think it would be the end of the world if I became blind; thank the Lord for Louis Braille. I just hope no one would ever try to pull a Wait Until Dark. Never mess with a blind Audrey Hepburn or Hannah Petrak.

Bek

This is my website you won't understand because it's a class project, unless you happen to study the French literary theorist Jacques Derrida....

However, you should still check it out cause it's awesome and I worked hard on it.

gracias to dustin lemos

The 80 Theory

I hate blogging when I have nothing to say. I also hate the word blogging. Or blogger.

But yes. I have nothing much to say right now. Roommates are watching Flashdance in the other room, which I have never seen, the movie I mean; I've seen the room plenty of times.

Oh. I thought of something mildly entertaining to talk about. And mild entertainment can sometimes be such a nice refreshment from all those really intense bachelor breakups and engagements and whatnot that I know we all watch with exceptional devotion. Well, I am going to the dentist tomorrow and Tuesday. A fun activity for spring break I'd say. I have to get fillings. A lot of fillings. I think ten or so. I hope I get laughing gas. Okay I was very wrong about this. Bad topic idea. Oh, how exciting this is...metablogging.

No no. I have something to relay to you all. It's an exciting new theory. The theory was actually created in 2006, but it's never been published before. And since blogger.com calls this stuff publishing, I can call this theory published after I tell you about it right now...

Summer of 2006, my friend and I go on a road trip to Colorado. We wanted to make the trip exciting, something like that Extreme Days movie where everything that could possibly happen does and we meet people and get into romantic relationships and we have car trouble and we do something really epic like jumping off of something....or something. So. We brought our video camera, my video camera, and filmed everything little thing. Turns out, the only exciting thing that actually happened was washing our hair with tomato juice because it had turned green from swimming in the rundown motel pool while creepy men came out of their rooms to stare at us. (We heard tomato juice would help...and it did.) Anyway, since we were filming every little thing, we took our camera along when we stopped the car and stepped out to go look at a view....that turned out to be very disappointing. It was very windy and she was filming me walking (exciting, I know). The wind was so intense I was falling over myself. I turned around toward the camera and in a fit of passion screamed "IT'S LIKE 80!" We halted in our tracks and laughed at my random phrase that actually seemed to make some sense, once we teased it out a bit. What I meant was, the wind felt like it was going 80 miles per hour. I don't actually know the general speed of wind. But it gave a good impression of what I was experiencing: very fast wind. 80 mph is pretty fast. In some sense at least. So here comes the theory part...After this road trip, that Like 80 exclamation being one of the highlights by the way, we began to notice how often we said "Like 80" in whatever situation. "He was going like 80." "I think I got like 80." Then we told a few friends about our theory. They began noticing themselves saying it. And here's the weirdest part: everyone says it! We noticed that not only do we ourselves use this phrase in the oddest situations. But so many other people do, too. If there is a type of situation that calls for a number under 100, especially when referring to speed, percentages, amount of people, or prices, people tend to use the number 80 if they are unable to be precise. Look around you. It's everywhere.

I'm glad I found something interesting to talk about. I think it's interesting at least. Then again, I also thought using tomato juice as shampoo was exciting.