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glowingstar71
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Name: Tommy
Location: Hollywood, California, United States
Gender: Male
Interests: photography, yo! especially of the fetishy kind. :)
Expertise: Watching Welcome to the Dollhouse, Freeway, Blue Velvet, Slums of Beverly Hills, Sixteen Candles, Pecker, Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas, Groove (for sentimental reasons), Natural Born Killers, John Waters movies, Almodovar movies, John Hughes movies over and over again.
Occupation: photographer/corporate slave
Message: message me
Website: visit my website
Member Since:
10/17/2004
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| I went to watch the special 20th anniversary (though it's only been 18 years) showing of Pulp Fiction at Universal Studios City Walk last Thursday with my girlfriend. It was amazingly fun!We arrived there a bit late, but apparently they were showing about half an hour of old movie trailers that seemed to be for films that inspired Tarantino (The Killer, Scarface, and a bunch of others). Even though I have a projector and the DVD and could watch it on a big screen (er, wall) at home, it was still totally worth it to pay the $15 ticket price (yeah, steep for some reason) for this special one-off showing. I could tell that some of the others in the theater were in a state of anticipation while the film played, waiting abnormally quietly or sometimes giggling knowingly whenever some iconic line was about to be uttered or some famous scene was about to be shown. We were all there, waiting for the punchlines I'm sure most of us knew very well, and it was just very cool to be there, watching that classic movie in a theater all together. After the film ended and we applauded and headed out, I suddenly remembered the first time I watched it. I went to a second-run movie house either in South San Francisco or maybe it was Daly City, I can't remember. I think it was just $2.50 or $3 to watch it since it had been out for a few months by that time (this was in the days when movies could take many months or sometimes years to go from cinema to VHS to HBO). I was there with friends I'd made while at Laney College in Oakland. And then it struck me... I have no idea where those people are now. And then it was like my life was flashing before my eyes and I relieved various moments in my life from that time period on. It was almost like watching your life in the third person, only you're not really sure if that was your life or some false memory because so much of it felt so foreign and in no way reflected who you currently were. Even that theater isn't there any more (as far as I know). Entire phases and chunks of my life that are no longer in my life raced through my mind (when I had a scooter, my time at Berkeley, IRC and people associated with it, dialing up to the internet from home on my old Apple //c, things that I thought were sooo important but are now meaningless, etc.) I thought about the friends who were there who meant so much to me at that time and even girls I dated around that time who now consist of just a few vivid moments of joy or pain, but mostly fuzzy, echoey snippets of faded memory, like when you turn off old TVs and the picture gets distorted before imploding into some singularity. 1994 was sooooo long ago... Life just...happens. Sometimes I can't tell if it's going quickly or slowly or reversing. Or maybe the scenes are playing out in some other order like in Pulp Fiction. As some of you may have noticed, I said "girlfriend" in that first sentence. Yes, even my relationship status changed from the last time I truly posted to Xanga. I'll update my long-time readers in a future update. But anyway...I guess sometimes we just meet people for a fixed amount of time and then as we close chapters of our lives and open other ones, some people/characters just don't make it (luckily, none of my friends have been "killed off" ;). And in some people's books, we're the ones who only stick around for a chapter or two before fading away. And you know what? It's ok! It's just...life. The only person we can reliably say is in every chapter of our personal book is ourselves. Train of thought over. ;) | | |
| i'm feeling nostalgic, so i'll be updating xanga and probably friendster from this point forward. stay tuuuuned...!
edit: wait, so friendster is now, like, a site for hooking up and playing games? hmm...
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| ??!
screw YOU, JETs who are in japan now!
from the associated press:
"The dollar, which on Thursday
fell below 100 Japanese yen for the first time since late 1995, again
dipped as low as 98.88 yen Friday. It clawed back some ground and
traded at 99.21 yen, compared with the 102.04 yen it traded Thursday."
when i started on JET, it was 107 yen to the dollar. the next year it was 114. when i left, it was 121. blah!!! the only thing i feel lucky about is that part one of my pension refund came recently and part two should be here soon.
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| Seven months later....
thanks everyone who commented on my "pulse"! i haven't been on here in hella days, and yet i can't seem to just quit this blog.
it's been jussssssst about seven months since i moved back here to the san francisco bay area. life has been pretty good! but...there have been some blah things that have happened too.
i'll make a little list of the good and the bad that have happened....now:
the dark side
- had the seat stolen off my bike at the bart station
- had the front tire stolen off my bike at the same bart station (carrying your bike home reallllllllly sucks! i hope that asshole who took it gets what he/she deserves!)
- instead of making more money than before i left for japan, i had to settle for about 20% less
- rent for my apartment is a little over double what i was paying before i left for japan
- no car
the bright side
- got my japanese pension refund back already!!
- just got my state tax refund (and did my taxes already)!
- i can once again see the golden gate bridge, pacific ocean, alcatraz, and the bay bridge from my office window
- credit card debt is about 2/3 gone
- my wifey has a job she really likes and is able to contribute to our rent (muah!)
- i seem to have unlimited PTO (paid time off) at work and can take pretty much whenever i want off (though i don't abuse it)
- everywhere i go, people can understand exactly what i'm saying!
- taco trucks!!! with completely awesome tacos!!!!
- thick, cheesy pizza!!! with proper pepperoni and everything else!!!! (sadly, no mayo-corn here....)
the brightest side
got a photo i took published on the cover of a magazine in boston!!!!!!
also got two photos in the Gaijin Eye issue of Japanzine again this past January!
because there is a japantown here, i can still get stuff like this at the supermarket:
and on a final happy note, due to positive reception of my photographic style, my nikon has now paid for itself! i now have regular clients who i shoot for on a regular basis. good times!
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| greetings from california! i had such a fun time this past weekend with my wifey out in san fran. we biked from bart to fisherman's wharf like a couple of tourists, then made our way up columbus to north beach where we stumbled upon a reading of excerpts from jack kerouac's "on the road" (this being the 50th anniversary and all). then we went down to cafe zoetrope and had a cheap pitcher of great wine from francis ford coppola's vineyard. the cool thing was that there's a roped off booth JUST for the coppolas and their guests right there in his cafe. all-in-all it was just a relaxing evening. it felt amazing to be back.... | | |
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