What an awesome weekend.
Thursday – Bookmarks 3 at the MCC, always a good show. Taped it, so DVD in a week. Weird/good night at Zodos/Mercury Lounge…went out inadvertently with an Asian Am professor who will remain nameless. But it’s cool of her to drink and hang out with students and such.

Friday – Closed early at work, lunch with Nicki, Leave it to Chance screening/KP fundraiser in the evening. I was supposed to leave for big bear that night, but ended up staying for Kat’s awesome birthday party at Rey’s. Bad times about the puke in various locations around the apartment.

Saturday – Woke up at 630am, after crashing at Rey’s at about 330, on his sac-o-foam-n-car-batteries. Drove to Redlands to meet up with David to go ride. Rode a half day at Bear Mountain, napped, then rode Snow Summit at night. Full day of boarding. We stopped for dinner at this super shaddy looking place in Big Bear called China Buffet. It was actually half decent and was only $12. The waitresses were more than happy to practice their English on David and I, but David took offense when one waitress responded with “Terrible!” after finding out that David was half white, not 100%. Drove back down to Redlands for the night to stay at Wes’s. By the time we got in, it was midnight.

Sunday – Drove back up the mountain to Big Bear and went to Snow Summit. Rode basically the whole mountain…the double black diamond would barely be a black diamond in Tahoe. It was funny. Started biting it progressively harder toward the end of the day. Had a good head knocker…the kind where you slam your head into the ground and your goggles get knocked off and you have to climb back up to get them. Definitely sore now. Drove back down to Redlands, got lost for a 30 minutes looking for a sushi place. Finally found it. You wouldn’t expect anything good from a place called “Hello Sushi” in Redlands, but we both thought it pretty good. Maybe the private tatami mat room helped. We split a (love) boat of sushi and sashimi. Mmmmmm. Headed back to SB, but the -itis was making my vision blurry and making me dream of my bed, so I napped once in calabasas and another time in Camarillo. Got in at 230am…and I’m spent.

Didn’t take a single picture all weekend. Not sure if that’s good or bad…

It’s in my nature to make my life too big. Everyday I think this. My life is too big, too many things. I wish there was a day when I could just sit down in front of the TV and zone out…because I have absolutely nothing to do.

But no…there’s work and school. Then at home there’s photography, video and film stuff…experiemnts, selling stuff on ebay, watching all these movies I’ve netflixed (they’re good ones, 2046 is coming soon), Reel Loud dvd, learn CSS, learn javascript, ARC talent DVD, cataloging my photos, reorganizing the terabyte of crap on my computer, digg.com, migrating current site to gregtakayama.com, a photography portfolio, a show reel, clean up room (seriously…messiest room I’ve seen). I think of places in California I’d like to photograph, the spots in the carpet I could steam clean, the mail on my desk I need to go through.

Right now it’s the essay for Asian Am I need to write, and the staff meeting at 8am tomorrow morning.

Tomorrow it’s bookmarks 3, and downtown. This weekend it’s snowboarding.

I mean it’s almost out of control. I work at a bike shop, and I don’t even make time to ride. Just too many other things I’d like to do.

Speaking of which…the alien bee strobes came, so of course they took precedence over the paper due tomorrow. I ordered them for an upcoming prom photo type gig.

Went to the air museum at MCAS, Miramar. Nothing too interesting. It is, however, free. The San Diego Zoo is $32 for admission. I didn’t go there.

It needs to rain in Santa Barbara more often.

PS. Mike, totally sorry about drawing all over you when you were passed out.

Headed to SD to visit newly cohabitating friends, Jake and David.

Cows in Cambodia.

The blue LED guy. That bubble toes guy. Paltrow. Cockeyed.com. A several Nobel laureates. A famous lawyer or two. Brian Shaw. The founder of Kinkos. The yellowcake whistle blower guy.

What do they all have in common? They’re UCSB people. I wonder if I can add myself, since it’s wikipedia?

Experimentations with film. Can you tell?

I attended the closing awards/world premiere of “Thank You for Smoking” tonight at the Arlington. Once again, thanks to Emily Lu for hooking up the volunteer pass, and letting me sit in the $5000 donor seats.

The movie was eh. It dealt with tobacco lobbying and the government in a sort of shallow satirical manner. The movie wasn’t challenging. It was straight foward, it said here are my jokes, here are my characters, there’s nothing more to see. Not impressed.

Shout out to Mike Tu. Seeing all those movies this past week was awesome. Sundance next year.

I’ve been shooting some film (as opposed to digital). After scanning the negs, I haven’t really been that happy w/ what came out…not filmy enough for me. So here’s the filmiest shot I took. Lens flare, weird composition, dust, 35mm frame…could be a shot from an old album…in actuality, that’s what I wanted.

One time Kat said,”Yeah…slow kids made a movie–I went to elementary school with one of them.” For several months I envisioned a bunch of mentally challenged college aged kids running around with really expensive equipment making a movie. It sounded like an interesting premise. She actually meant SLO like San Luis Obispo.

Well, I saw their movie, Leave It To Chance (www.leaveittochance.info), at the SB Film Fest this past week. Whoa. Good job. On a shoe string budget, with a cast and crew that had very little film experience, they created quite an awesome piece of work.

Ilford XP2 Super 400. Matt Freund said something along the lines of, “I think your photography will automatically improve if you shoot film.” We’ll see how this goes. (Guess I should clean the dust off of the negatives before I scan. I’m learning.)