Well, I'm going to keep this update very simple for now, as it is late, and a lot happened this weekend, and there are a lot of pictures, and mainly, I want to focus on the pictures.

So really, this is going to be a weekend recap, even though most of the weekend happened in what should have been last weeks update... So on with the weekend recap:

Friday - Sting, baby, Sting!

My Ticket

So. Of course I ditched school again. Decided to you know, do the whole week or whatever. Emi showed up at my place around 3pm, we jumped in my car and drove to Universal Amphitheatre to see Sting.

Well we hit a lot of traffic, we got there around 6:30 or so. We ate at that sausage stand place at City Walk then we walked in to the amphitheatre, where we were met with a big surprise. At the door they handed out this flyer that read:

So I was already thinking... "damn, that's pretty cool. This makes it worth the $60 I paid for the ticket... getting a free live CD of tonight's performance". But little did I know how much better things would get.

First of all.. Sting is a fuckin' sellout. His website is http://sting.compaq.com and before the show, a gigantic Compaq logo was shining on the stage. That being said, Sting is one of the greatest performers in the world. One of the reasons why he is so great is because he fills his set with a lot of old songs. But instead of playing a bunch of his new songs and then getting into his old songs, he mixes them up well.

Sting concerts are like giant parties. Everyone is dancing and happy and stuff. It's great. And he sang "Seven Days" which is like, my favorite Sting song ever. He also played "Mad About You" which is a great song from his The Soul Cages album... an album from which he rarely plays songs. And I'm gonna get a CD with it!? Cool!!

But the best part of all was when during the song "Brand New Day" (from his new album of the same name), a guy with big sunglasses and a bright red jacket walks out on stage... it is none other than Stevie Wonder who came out to play a harmonica solo. I didn't even hear any of the solo because the crowd was cheering so damned loud because it was freakin' Stevie Wonder!! So if the concert wasn't already worth the $60 before, then it sure was then!!

After the concert which included 2 encore performances (including "Every Breath You Take" and "Message In A Bottle"), we (me and Emi) drove around LA a little while, and stopped and had a little food at Johnny Rockets across the street from the Beverly Center. Then we went back to SD. We sang Sting songs in the car all the way back cuz my radio... well that's another story for another day.

Saturday - Disneyland... Alone Again, Naturally

So after waking up late, I drove back up to LA to stay at my parents' house. Sunday, which was Halloween, I am meeting Cami, Helen and some other folks at Disneyland. I wanted to renew my annual pass, but sometimes the line to do that is long. I didn't want everyone to have to wait for me, so instead, I went on Saturday night to disneyland to renew my pass.

The New Annual Passport Card Design

My old pass expired about 6 months ago, so it had been a while since I last went. So I got reaquainted with a couple of old friends, like the Haunted Mansion, Splash Mountain, and the newly refurbished Pirates of the Carribean. I also caught a bit of "Fantasmic!".

A lot of things that didn't used to work on POTC now works, it was great, but from what I've heard, it's still not up to 100% yet, but it will be soon. One thing is for sure, the new cloud effect is awesome.

When I rode Splash Mountain, since nobody was there, I actually got a whole log to myself, which was pretty cool. Since I had my digital camera with me, I took a picture of the screen that shows you the picture of you going down the big drop. Sure it looks crappy, but it beats paying $11 for a picture you wouldn't really want anyway (like one that just shows you riding all by yourself).

All By Myself

Also, instead of sitting all the way back against the backrest, I actually sat in the middle, with nothing in front or behind me to support me. So basically I practically flew out of the log. It was cool.

Sunday - Halloween at Disneyland

So after church, I drove to Disneyland. I got all dressed up in black. Black pants, black shirt, black shoes, black trench coat... and sunglasses. I was dressing up as Neo from The Matrix. Fortunately, it really wasn't that hot today. Cami was dressed up as Mary (who had a little lamb). Helen was dressed up as... I don't know what, but supposedly she was dressed up. And Kirk (Cami's brother) was there but he wasn't really dressed up as anything. Leslie (Cami's sister) was there with he boyfriend and two other people but they pretty much ditched us.

We ate at the Blue Bayou. We ate good food. We wrote on the Haunted Mansion, Pirates of the Carribean, Splash Mountain and Indiana Jones twice each. We also hit Space Mountain (which was the second time for them, but first for me), Big Thunder Mountain and Star Tours. In addition to that, we ran around Tom Sawyer's Island, and rode on Pinochio's Daring Journey and Mr. Toad's Wild Ride. In the line for Mr. Toad there was this guy there with his family who got so excited when he saw me dressed up as Neo. He started talking about what a great movie The Matrix, and asked me what my favorite scene was and all of that. Man he seemed so happy. It must have been a life-changing film for him.

So anyway, I guess I'll throw up some pictures.

"My name is Neo" on Tom Sawyer's Island across the river from New Orleans Square

Helen and Cami in line at Splash Mountain

Kirk and Cami on Splash Mountain

The Splash Mountain big drop, just us on the left, and with some strangers on the right.

So after a riding Splash Mountain a couple of times, we decided to start heading out... when we saw Winnie the Pooh taking pictures with people. Well heck, why can't Neo take a picture with Winnie the Pooh?

You know, kids say the darndest things. While we were waiting in line to get our picture taken with Pooh bear, behind us there seemed to be a Tigger... with no line... so a bunch of kids ran over there... only to discover that it was just some kid who came to Disneyland dressed up as Tigger on Halloween. When the kids returned to the parents (who waited patiently in line for them), they said "awww, it wasn't really Tigger, it was just a costume..." -- as opposed to the Winnie The Pooh we were about to get our picture taken with, who is in actuality a 6 foot tall yellow bear with a red shirt on and not a guy in a costume.

Helen (her eyes are open!?) with a real live six foot tall yellow bear with a taste for honey, not just a guy in a costume

"Guns... lots of Guns" or "Pooh and Floating Head"

Pooh looks terrified because I just told him that "hunny" does not really exist, and in fact, his whole life, every time he ate hunny it was just the Matrix telling his brain that hunny is juicy and delicious...

Ignorance is bliss.

And now... I need to worry about my midterm on Wednesday.

Monday -- I Actually Went To School Today

Yup. I went to school. On my way home I ran into Jasmine. She told me to go visit Jason (formerly of CAPE) at his new office on Miramar Road. He's doing well. He builds and sells protein skimmers for tropical aquariums. His own design. Check out his company, AquaC on the web. I hung out there for an hour or so, we caught up on a lot of stuff, it was cool.

When I got home I saw that a new shipment of blank MiniDiscs came in. Awww yeah. MD's from Japan are way better than the boring stuff that we get here in the states. They are all different colors, some of them are clear. Very Matrix-y, high tech spy movie optical disc looking things. Just what I was looking for.

Hi Space minidiscs

Actually, these come from France, not Japan. The blue one on the left is actually 80 minutes. Aww yeah. And it looks a lot better in person than it does in this picture.

So yeah. This past weekend was like a vacation or something for me. I feel invigorated, even though I woke up an hour earlier than I planned to because, although I set all the clocks at my parents' house in LA back, I didn't set mine back here in San Diego. Grrrrrrr.

I may very soon be the owner of a MiniDisc head unit for my car. I can't wait.

Yup. So nothing particularly exciting happened today. I can't get those Sting songs out of my head. Even the ones that I don't really like.

Saturday -- Stuff... and Being John Malkovich

First... I just got back from seeing Being John Malkovich and it was really cool. John Cusack was awesome and so was John Malkovich. This movie was really weird, mindbending, and entertaining at the same time. I wanna say it's very innovative, but some dramaturg or something will probably try to tell me about some playwright that wrote something like this back in 1682 or something, so I won't. But it will be new to most modern American audiences, I am sure. Very worth seeing!!

Also, when it got to this part at the end where it mentioned Gary Sinise... a lot of people were really confused, they thought it was totally random, and some people even said out loud, "Gary Sinise!?". Well, for those of you who don't know, Gary Sinise and John Malkovich did a lot of work together at Steppenwolf in Chicago, most notably, they starred together in their 1982 production of Sam Shepard's True West with Malkovich as Lee and Sinise as Austin. It moved later on that year to Broadway where it stayed for a number of years. This production was also aired by PBS and was also released on video. Anyway, my point is that these guys have known each other for a long time, so the mentioning of Gary Sinise is not really all that random :) So when you see it, you can know where the reference comes from and be a real theatre snob or something.

This image on the right is Steppenwolf's poster from 1982. I ripped it off from some site. Of course, I feel a special connection to True West due to my involvement in last summer's Sledgehammer Theatre production of... True West.

I am sure that this movie is just totally filled with inside jokes and stuff. And it was really cool to see John Malkovich portray himself... well sort of himself... and himself. Sometimes. I don't know. It's weird. This movie is crazy. But it kicks ass.

Anyway. So earlier today I went out to lunch with Cami. We went to Chopstix. She has been going there a lot lately. Then we went to UTC and walked around. Supposedly she was listening to what people were saying and collecting words to use in some VA project. Or something like that.

We were going to go to the park and hit a wiffle ball but we didn't.

Yesterday, which was Friday I think, me and Helen went out to dinner. We went to Old Spaghetti factory. I think I saw Jess Dyrenforth's car parked at 8th and K street. If you know who he is you probably know what I'm talking about.

The food was good. It was fun hanging out with Helen.

I don't really remember much else off the top of my head about what has happened this week since monday. So I guess this is it for this week!