November 05, 2004 - 3:33 PM

The Unexpurgated Bio Page

I am paulkim. I was born in Baltimore, Maryland. When I was two, my family moved to a house in Aberdeen, MD, which we would call home for the next 25 years. Aberdeen, by the way, is the hometown for Cal Ripken, Jr., baseball legend. How 'bout them apples? I have an older sister, Sophia (soph) who has 3 years on me; I also have an older brother, Philip (phil), who mocks me from his two year advantage. They both now live in the Boston area. I seem to have written a fair amount about my dear departed cat, Newt.

12 years of Catholic grade school in Bel Air, MD, shaped me, during which time I became good friends with Nick, Mark, and Y. My college years were first spent at Amherst College in Massachusetts ('95-'97), then at Berklee College of Music in Boston ('98-'00). I originally had aspirations of being an English Teacher, but that fell by the wayside when i left Amherst; in struggling to figure out who I was and what I wanted to do with my life, I came to the field of music recording. Finding a near perfect fit, I breezed through 6 semesters in two years at Berklee (taking Fall, Spring, and Summer semesters with no breaks).

After a 6 month breather in which I temped at the Brigham and Women's Hospital in Boston to save up money (and also worked at Fort Apache Recording Studios in Sommerville), I moved to Los Angeles at the beginning of June, 2001. Interestingly, Nick had graduated from Swarthmore and migrated to L.A. the year before, and my new abode was merely 15 minutes from his apartment, which he shared with a Swatty buddy named Lance (LDBL). LDBL is engaged to a feisty girl named Merilee (mer). These three are the friends with whom I hang out the most.

Another stroke of good fortune involving my move to the West Coast was the number of relatives on my mother's side who resided out here. One of my mother's brothers, Uncle Chris, lives north of me, and he's lovably insane. His wife, Aunt Sue, is my surrogate mother out here. Their son, Tony, has taken me under his wing, introducing me to the sickness that is Fantasy Baseball. His sister, Jennifer, is a 1st grade teacher who is hip and cool without being snooty about it. And then we come to Tony's girlfriend, the wondrous Margaret, who I adore and who I adorn with various gaudy nicknames such as Beloved, She Who Lights Up My LIfe, and Supremely Excellent With a Fantastic New Haircut Margaret. We like the Margaret. A lot. As far as we're concerned, compared to Margaret, Tony just sucks it. Never mind the fact that he always pays for dinner. He sucks it, hard.

A co-conspirator with Tony in watching out for me has been my cousin Sharon (her mom, who lives in Vegas, is my mom's older sister) and her husband Matt. Sharon has had more than her share of physical mishaps since I've been out here. Matt is white. We don't hold that against him because we think he's super sexy and super fun. And rather than refer to him as "my cousin Sharon's husband", I just call him "my cousin Matt." I hope he doesn't mind.

I've worked in recording studios, I became a substitute teacher (thanks to LDBL), and I've worked in live theater. I started this diary so that I wouldn't have to write/call my friends and family everytime I had news; I could just write it here and tell them to check it out. It hasn't quite worked out the way I planned, but I do have a few regular readers, and it's also quite interesting to see what Google searches bring strangers to my site.

Interests: Baseball (god how I love this sport), music (check out the music link to see where my tastes lie), television (Homicide: Life on the Streets, NewsRadio, Joss Whedon's work, Aaron Sorkin's shows, Nick's got me hooked on Good Eats on the Food Net, and he and Mark are swaying me towards Adult Swim on the Cartoon Network), movies (there's a list of favorite movies somewhere around here), group games (thank you Sharon, Matt, and Tony for introducing me to the thrill of game nights).

Two last things: I love fruit. Fruit is the best food. And, I'm always on the lookout for potential girlfriends. So send 'em over here, ok?

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