February 02, 2004 - 10:22 PM

A Week in Reverse

My body is failing me. It is exhausted. But that's a good thing; I just had a busy six days of fun. Let's work backwards.

-Tonight was dinner with Tony and his sister Jennifer and their parents and Ridiculous Margaret at a Japanese Restaurant in Santa Monica. It was to celebrate Jenny's birthday. While Margaret and I gave her gifts, Jennifer was merely happy to have us there so that we could deflect some of the brunt of her dad's blunt inquisitions; you know, the kind that are hilarious to others, but mortifying if he's YOUR dad. It seems like tact is something that most first generation Koreans were never taught, god love 'em. After dinner, I watched some TV at Tony and Jenny's apartment, including the South Park episode that features The Tale of Lemmiwinks (I will be forever grateful to Heather for bringing the plight of this poor hamster to my attention).

Earlier in the day, before the rains came, I attended a workshop/seminar on the digital recording program called Pro Tools at the Doly Labs in Burbank. It was actually an educational event coordinated by my alma mater, Berklee College of Music, that was broadcast over ISDN lines to one of the classrooms there in Boston. One of the top Pro Tools engineers working today, Tal Herzberg, took a student's project and showed how he would attack it with critical ears and the tools of the computer program. Tal's a great guy, extremely sweet, and uber-talented; I've been lucky enough to work with him several times and have been witness to some amazing feats of derring-computorial-do.

After the session, I had lunch with Sam, a friend from Berklee who was also in attendance. Not having seen each other since last spring, we got caught up on each other's lives, and I offered him my services at the studio in case he needed to record music for any of the three bands in which he currently performs (he also works at Electronic Arts doing sound design).

-Yesterday, I was up at 9 AM. Margaret had invited me to tag along with her, Tony and a bunch of her co-workers to celebrate one of their birthdays at Magic Mountain. We arrived at the theme park around 10:30 and immediately hopped on Goliath, one of the tallest roller coasters there with a drop of something like 255 feet. Tony isn't into thrill rides, so he spent most of the day sitting around waiting, eating; eventually, he retired to the car to get a little nap time and listen to the Super Bowl on the radio. Margaret, on the other hand, is a coaster junkie like me, so we flung ourselves at each experience with full gusto.

Immediately after our first go on Goliath, we decided to do it again since Margaret's co-workers were already in line for a repeat ride. As we strolled down the empty aisles back to the starting gates, she informed me that some of her friends had spotted Peter Jackson with his children and chauffeur/body man. In fact, one of her friends, when she saw Peter, had gushed to him about how great the Lord of the Rings movies were and how much her husband loved the books and had all the action figures, wishing him good luck with the Oscars in the end. Well, when Margaret and I reached the lines, we spotted Mr. Jackson waiting in the rows towards the back. A few people were glancing at him quizzically, but no one was bothering him. When it came time for him to ride Goliath, his daughter walked off to the side with the chauffeur to wait for them (I guess she was too scared). Our paths didn't cross for the rest of the day, and I'm sure that his life was the poorer for it.

We rode many rides, and Margaret and I discovered that we both like the same types of rides. Give us something that's smooth with a lot of big drops to get our stomachs' floating, and we'll be happy as kittens in sunshine. What doesn't make Margaret as happy as a kitten in sunshine, however, is waiting in line. Since there wasn't a huge passel of people at the park, what with it being off-season and all, many of the rides were only running 1 train, which made the queues move really slowly. Invariably, as we inched forward, Margaret would turn to me and say "this is ridiculous", and we would banter about the inefficiencies of the system. Almost every single line we were in, she said the word "ridiculous" to me at least twice, making me laugh. She has now firmly planted herself directly behind my sister Soph in the catergory of "Big Sister". She can rule my world anytime.

The longest wait of the day was for the ride Xtreme, which we left off until the end (around 4:30). We may have been in line for an hour, I'm not sure, since neither Margaret nor I had a watch, and we had secured our cell phones with Tony. But I do have to say that the ride was well worth the wait. It was unlike any roller coaster I have ever ridden; part of the time you are going backwards, sometimes you are suspended below the track, sometimes you are held above it, and occasionally you are lying with your back parallel to the ground. Almost the entire time that you are flying around, though, you have no idea where you are going or what will happen next. What came out of my mouth from the very first drop to the very last screech at the station was "Oh shit shit shit, what the fuck?! Aaaaaaah SHIT, fucking shit, hell shit! What. The. Fuuuuuuck!" over and over again, nonstop. Based on my profane litany alone, I'd say that X was the most exciting ride.

We left the park a little after 6, listening to the second half of the game on the ride home, and watched the final minutes on TV at Tony's apartment (go pats!) while eating pizza. After catching the last half of Ocean's Eleven on HBO, I hauled my sore and stiff carcass (rigor mortis had set in from sitting in the car and on the sofa without moving following a full day of constant walking and running at the park) back home for some rejuvenation.

-Saturday had me waking up at 1:30 PM, playing tennis with Nick, LDBL, and Mer again until 4; challenging LDBL to a FIFA match on the playstation; and then going out with Tony, Margaret, and a few of their friends for a night on the town, down-low style. We had dinner at The Standard, a "hip" hotel on the Sunset Strip with diner attached and "cool" art stuff going on around the lobby (like a girl in a recessed shelf-area, lying on her side, reading a book. She was just lying there, on display. What the hell? I felt a strong urge to break something.) Feh. A quick scoot up the street, and we were at the Whisky to see Margaret's coworker's band, Elle 3, followed by one of her and Tony's acquaintances, Steven Kim.

Elle 3 is 3 sisters, with their dad playing lead guitar, and a drummer and a bassist. The sisters are super-duper beautiful. Holy-crap gorgeous. But I found them to be fairly bland. They have pleasant voices, good voices, but none of them stands out as a "lead" type voice. Good as backup singers, but not enough character or charisma for lead vocals. Their music is a combination of Bonnie Raitt rhythm and blues, Patsy Cline honkytonk country, and Jann Arden polished pop. Only, not as interesting. If I were to give them some advice, it would be to a) work on giving the vocals a more unique personality, b) craft better lyrics, c) get a better drummer (I rarely felt the groove settle into a comfortable place), and d) spice up the songs, make them hookier. I guess I shoulda prefaced all that with a "In My Humble Opinion" warning. Ahh, whatever, you should know by now that all of this is always just my opinion.

As for Steven, he was, well, ok. Nothing to write home about. His backup band was good, though. The drummer was a monster. What was strange to me was that they were all asian, and they actually looked more like the group that would play music at a Folk Mass at church. Even more freaky was seeing a packed house with at least half the audience being asian. That NEVER happens at concerts that I go to. Fairly disconcerting. I was bugged by the fact that, while all of these Koreans were there to see Steven, during his entire set, many of them insisted on talking. Again, the tactlessness of Koreans springs forth in full fury.

-Friday I recorded drums for a fellow Berklee-ite named Adrianne, who has really blossomed as a singer-songwriter in the 4 years that she's been in L.A. She plays around town a lot and will be playing with Kyler at the Hotel Cafe on the 16th. The session went well, we got nice drum sounds, and we're going to record bass and vocals on Wednesday. Maybe.

-Thursday, I saw Garrison Starr's show at Room 5. Interesting coincidence, Adrianne was also at that show, and she even sang harmonies on a couple songs for Garrison. Excellent stuff.

Tomorrow, I'm scheduled to work with Method Man and Busta Rhymes, although we still don't have a start time. It's supposed to be for only one day, but it could get extended, which means my session with Adrianne would have to be postponed.

Oh, you know what? My cousins Sharon and Matt are back from New Zealand, where they were vacationing for a full month! Welcome back, you crazy kids. Now show us those pictures!

Now Listening To : Susan James-Fantastic Voyage
Random Thought : You've got chocolate in my peanut butter. You've got peanut butter in my chocolate. Together they taste like crap.

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