Banana Bandana

Since coming to New York I have done the following: found somewhere to live, walked through Central Park, mastered a few of the subway lines, gone to FAO Schwartz, seen District 9, read Animal Farm, started to read Wind-Up Bird Chronicle, re-finished Lost season 4, re-started Lost season 5, gone to ATP NY, applied to a a handful of restaurants, and eaten some pretty bad food here and there.

My loft is located in Bushwick - a district of Brooklyn. I still need to take pictures of my apartment and neighborhood and, well, the whole city, but I wanted to get my room furnished before any of that. It's sort of a weird set-up here: two rather large pipes go across the outer walls, it's only 5'3" or 5'4" tall so my head has to be tilted when standing, it's separate from the rest of the loft in that my room is sort of built upon stilts above the front door - it's tight tho. I want to buy a loveseat and need to buy a small dresser amongst a lot of other things. There's no front door either, so that needs to be dealt with. My roommates are nice. I don't know them very well, nor do I think I ever will. We all keep to ourselves. I haven't seen one of my roommates in like over a week. He reminds me of Travis King a lot. Anyway, there's him, Mike and Chris. Mike is a 23 year old photographer, but I think he sells weed because random people are always waltzing in our place uninvited and they leave a few minutes later. Yeah, I guess it's pretty much confirmed he deals. I can get some quality shit a few steps away! Chris is also 23, I think, and is a camera operator for some television company. He smokes cigarettes in the house and plays morning radio too loud. That's all I've gathered from everyone so far. Oh, and there's Boots, Mike's cat, though I don't know her real name. Jessica and I call her Boots 'cause she has nice white furry boot-feet. You'll understand when I post pictures.

Central Park was fantastic. Subways are quite easy. FAO Schwartz was a little disappointing. District 9 was good for being another modern sci-fi movie after so many have come out. Animal Farm was a quick, fun and long overdue read. Wind-Up Bird Chronicle is extremely good. Lost Seasons 1-4 were great the second time around. Season 5 has been disappointing up to the 5th episode or so.

ATP was soooo amazing! I saw full sets of these bands in this order: Suicide, Panda Bear, David Cross, Atlas Sound, Deerhunter, Animal Collective, Boredoms, Deerhoof, Boris, Crystal Castles, and The Flaming Lips. I saw partial sets or a few songs from Iron & Wine, Eugene Mirman, Black Dice, Shellac, Caribou, Black Moth Super Rainbow, and Oneida. It was all such a great place to be for three days, seeing band members walking around the hotel and meeting other people. The food sucked, but no more than any other festival. I'd say my favorite set was Boredoms performing Boadrum 9, but a lot of the bands were great. Jessica and I were only supposed to go the second day, but she surprised me -- as an early birthday present -- by buying three day passes, hotel reservations, and bus passes!! The best birthday present I've ever received. I'll expect as much or more from each of you by the time my birthday does come around!

I applied to six different restaurants around the Greenwich Village and West Village area in Manhattan. I'd still like to drop some off in some cool areas of Brooklyn, but it's intimidating walking into a restaurant and just handing it to them when they cost me money to print them out from Kinko's. I feel as if I should keep the resumes for places that might actually hire me. Oh well, we'll see how my job hunt turns out. I need one desperately though.

A huge thing about moving to New York from California is the lack of any Mexican burritos. They just don't exist here. They have Mexican restaurants and can make bean and cheese burritos, but they don't really understand why anyone would ever order a burrito with just beans and cheese. And they don't make them like they do in California. It's actually hard to find any quality meals here that don't cost a fortune. We had Indian food one night that was good and sushi one night, but they were hardly anything to make us want to go back there once a week. I hope in time we can find some keepers! But for now we resort to eating in Jessica's dining hall for NYU which has cereal and really good dessert, but not much else. I miss my Tio Albertos!! :( Someone mail it to me!

This is hardly enough of what I've been doing but without pictures it's probably really boring. I'm having fun though! As soon as I have a secure job and some furniture and new clothes and some nice restaurants, I'll be as good as cake and ice cream!

I leave California a week from Wednesday. It's distressing thinking of starting a new life on the other side of the country with only one week left to prepare myself. I do not yet have an apartment, though we have a hostel for almost a week after arriving to look around the city some more. It's also distressing knowing my roommates will be unfamiliar and may even turn out to be terrible people, but I read in Slaughterhouse-Five today that no one in the world in all of history is a bad person, so I guess I'll take that to heart and go with the flow. At least I think I read that. I'd like to work my way up to managing tours at the Statue of Liberty, maybe play some chess in Washington Square Park on Sundays, swim the Hudson by night... maybe swing by the old TRL studio from time to time. Possibilities are endless really.

I have nothing much else new to write, so, alas, I say goodbye to my journal for a brief stint until I find my place in a new wyrld. Come visit me you P.O.S.

It looks like my last two posts have been in month-and-a-half intervals. But that's more than I can say for the lot of you! >:0 Not really sure how many people still follow livejournal, so I suppose this will be more for myself than any of you.

So, big news comes first. I'm moving to New York in mid-August. Brooklyn in particular. Right now I'm trying to get my transcripts sent to Borough of Manhattan Community College for a brief semester taking whatever creative English classes I can get into. They have a science fiction class I'm really interested in, but it's probably pretty popular (too many p's here). I'm selling my car in a few weeks and hoping to get over $3,000 to pay for my plane ticket, shipping my stuff over, furniture, rent, and whatever else. Maybe ATP tickets if I play my cards right ;) Then in spring I'll start attending Hunter College and complete my BA in English or Creative Writing in a year.

I guess there isn't much other news at all. I'm really low on funds because I went to Tijuana with Jessica a few days before the 4th. We wanted to light off fireworks in Rosarito, but we arrived too late. We still had a good time though! We got really lost like 5 minutes after crossing the border on foot and had to end up running across multi-lane freeways. Hahaha

I'm seeing Ice Age 3 in an hour...

My internet session is up at coffeebeanz.

I haven't updated in a long time. Maybe my livejournaling days are over...

Just wanted to give myself praise for finishing this very quick semester. My Film & Lit class, which turned out to be a class entirely on James Bond, is finally over! I hated it from the start, but yesterday I posted on my blogger (which was required for the class) my final paper linking neoliberalism and Bond. Neoliberalism is like the new Freud it seems. Everybody's throwing that lame terminology shit around! Anyway, this morning I got an email from this website called Her Majesty's Secret Service saying they thoroughly enjoyed my paper and gave me some credit on their weblog. I have to admit, I got pretty excited. :/

Link to the blog: HMSS

I'm not going to Sasquatch! anymore. :( It ended up being too much of a pain, but Jessica and I are seeing Animal Collective in Oakland and then again the next night in Big Sur, so wtf-ever. Can we stay at your apartment Beth? Or Jonathan? Either would be great!

College sucks.

edit: oh yeah, and I'm seeing Mogwai with Dead Meadow tonight, but Dead Meadow sucks so we're skipping them.

I did shrooms and found out the meaning of life, but I will not share it with any of you. It was the craziest experience of my life.

Reasons I can remember why
I thought my girlfriend turned into an Indian man.
I convinced a poster to turn and look at me, after much convincing. In fact it was this poster.
I pulled the hairs on the top of my head and my face stretched out, like something in Beetlejuice.
I felt the collective conscience of the human race.
I realized humans are so absorbed in emotions and lose track of how we actually exist.
Stared at this poster for an hour and realized the artist has the greatest attention to detail.
Talked to a stuffed animal.
Mogwai, playing on the computer, sounded like Satan singing over the most beautiful music.
I kept popping my tongue on the roof of my mouth and was convinced it was a drum inside my head.
Stared at a picture of myself and the face turned evil.
My girlfriend's little sister's giant head was resting on top of my stomach, her body going through mine.
I felt a cat's purr on my face and I felt like I was melting.
I twisted off my wiener and thought my balls had been cut off.
I disassembled my arm and later my pecks.
I thought I was in a house in the middle of the rainforest.
A cat attacked my arm and I loved it.
A David Bowie poster made a lot of sense in some way.
I felt my legs turn to sand.
I became my girlfriend and went through high school, met her ex boyfriend, and then met myself through her.
I became my Dad.

That's all I can remember right now. It lasted maybe 6 hours, I don't know, but it felt like 10 minutes had passed at the end.

I was supposed to have my first midterm in Major English Writers last week, but after all of my half-assed studying, I arrived to a cancelled class. Ecstatic, I went home and didn't think about it until last night. Now I'm in the computer lab at school, almost studying, but more like checking sites I never get to check. This is one of them!

Jessica and I are in the midst of planning a trip to Iceland in June. It's turning out to be more complicated than we had expected. Apparently everything in Iceland is expensive as fuck. The travel books Jessica bought said if we were to cook our own food and not rent a car, it'd be something like $70 a day. I think that accounts for buying food (beers can get up to $12 a bottle!) and lodging (hostels are said to be $50 a night depending on discrepancy!). Plus, renting a car is $70/day if you travel under 47 miles/day, and $120/day for unlimited travel/day. We were gonna shoot for 3 or 4 weeks, but with our budget it might be 1 or 2 weeks. Still, a single day would probably be worth the trip. We're thinking of doing all camping and either renting a car or flying to each part, which is said to be cheaper.

Also in the news of travel, I'm pretty sure I'm going to Sasquatch! with Kenny and Jessica. Road trip! The lineup is ridiculous and getting better each week. Hopefully/probably we'll camp there as well.

Nikole and Kenny cleaned the entire apartment and it's never looked better. Thank you guys! Someone get Kenny a mattress. Oh! and we're looking for a new roommate. If you, or anyone you know (who's chill, duh), is looking for an apartment in LA or more specifically North Hollywood let me know! Rent for one is $600, rent for two to share a room is $350 each. C'mon it'll be so fun I swear.

Alright, back to reading Sir Thomas Malory's Le Morte D'arthur. :(

Today, after a lunch I ended up being late to with Allison, I was driving to CSUN and rear-ended a truck in front of me. My hood is bent up a bit, but it's still drivable. I got out and met him at his car and looked at the back, which is a metal bench for setting tools on typical of a construction truck, and said in a light hearted voice, "Hey, looks like nothing happened! Swayt..." to which he replied "Yeah, you bent up my back a little bit" and pointed to a spot that i don't think was even bent. So I had to hit some fucker who's gonna take advantage of the situation. Shit sucks. Then we got to talking and he said he was also from Paso Robles and moved to LA around 7 years ago. Then as he was leaving he said he wouldn't be too hard on me, which I took two ways. One, he's lightening up because we're from a common place, and two, he's a fuckhead because he shouldn't be doing anything to a small fucking bend in a work truck which is for fucking up anyway.

Then I got to campus and talked to an advisor about my Major English Writers I class which I've missed the last 5 weeks. I wanted to drop, but it's the same thing as an F right now, so she told me to stick it out and it can only benefit me. So I was waiting for class to start and I get an email saying the class was cancelled again. Great, now that's more material I've missed. Our midterm is probably coming up soon and I've only been there to watch Monty Python and read the syllabus.

Now I'm wasting time in a compy lab, expressing my frustration with the world and furioiusly jacking off onto the keyboard. Oh shit, I forgot, how'm I s'posed to send this shit out?

Everyone's getting last.fm's all of a sudden! lovin it gurl.

In minor news I have a girlfriend and she's really funny and hot. I think everyone on here would get along with her very well. And we might be seeing Animal Collective together twice in the next two days! Her birthday's coming up and I'm trying to gather up some badass gifts. Everyone thinks we look cute together. Score.

The other night, Kenny, Jordan, Jessica and I went to see of Montreal in Pomona. Kenny drank two Jooses before the show and threw them up right away. It looked like a radioactive-neon slushi. I drank half a Joose and Jessica drank half a Joose resulting in no throwing up.

I crowd surfed during one of the last few encore songs. It was really funny. I'm still cruising picture hosting sites to see if anyone got a shot of me, but so far I'm yielding no results.

I drank a few sips of a Redline last night and got into the most productive mood I've been in since I moved to LA. Kenny and I cleaned the entire living room and bathroom which were pretty much covered in filth. Kenny also tried writing a short story for a zine I'm in the process of trying to make. It's a summary of Space Jam from memory.

SO yeah, I'm trying to get rid of sleep as long as I can without dying. I'm hoping it will spark some kind of creativity and productivity.

School is getting worse. I'm dropping my Major English Writers class. Hopefully they offer summer classes here so I can retake it then. I don't know if I'm going to tell my parents. My shitty James Bond ANALysis class is about to get really bad. My group is presenting next week about masculinity and feminism in the Bond novels, only I haven't met with any of my group members, or talked to them, or know what the fuck is going on with it. I emailed them asking if I could help but I received no response. Now I'll probably fail this class. Creative Writing is going well though. My classmates didn't get my Golden Boy story which I wrote in Las Vegas with the help of Bob and Matt. It was a funny story about a street artist who's painted in gold and walks home, rinses off the paint and kills himself and then wakes up the next morning covered again and goes back to work. It's kind of making fun of those magical realist stories that utilize clockwork. But they don't read anything other than Tupac and As I Lay Dying lyrics. Seriously. So they just kept asking if it was a dream, which I kept replying with "no, he really did die, he just comes back to life...he does this everyday after work...this...is...an... alternate universe?" They didn't get it. It's not worth getting upset about, it wasn't a very good story at all.

I'm really delirious right now so I'll stop typing. Now. Now.

Kenny and I are gonna buy a lamp and table right now. Then maybe I'll do my first homework of the semester.

Last night/this morning I tried writing a poem, sort of. I wrote:

Go dwell in church,
idle run.

which, if you sound it out carefully, says God will eat your children. I also tried writing a story about a slutty, fat guy named Nunchuck Chuck. I should switch majors. Or drop out while I'm ahead.

what is this 25 questions/10 questions thing and why is it so popular on livejournal all of a sudden and why do i care about these things i don't know about you guys. i probably don't know them for a good reason. so i'll just tell you a list of turn ( ons: )

Bobby B's b-day next week in Vegas! Sooo stoked. I'm gonna get so drunk, do so much cocaine, lose so much money on gambling, do so many prostitutes, have such a good time. I feel bad for leaving Kenny on his birthday, but it isn't my fault he was born so close to Bob.

Watercolor Paintings is playing at the Smell tonight and I got invited to go and was going to until I found out they were playing and now I'm not going. I'm blaming it on the ridiculous onslaught of rain outside.

I've needed to do laundry for over a week now and have resorted to wearing my skivvies multiple times. I've actually worn this same outfit I'm wearing now for the last 3 days. Yet, I still find reasons to not go to the laundromat. I just hate sitting there with little Mexican boys and girls running around me trying to take my DS out of my hands so they can play it. They give you free chips when you go, though, which is really cool for some reason. Sergio is on his way over which means I probably still won't do laundry.

I'm trying really hard (maybe too hard?) to get the perfect girl to fall in love with me. More on that as it develops.

Fuuuck school. I hate my classmates so much. The classes are decent; lots of reading and writing, but it doesn't have to be well done. I don't even feel like I go to school. 2 days out of the week I go at night and the rest of the week I forget about everything without consequence (so far) the next week.

I'm gonna make 3 PB&Js. I miss all of my friends. So does Kenny. Oh, and Dylan leaves in a week. Thank you.