Monday, August 25, 2003 at 6:15AM my brother came home from korea saturday afternoon and i dutifully went to pick him up at o'hare...the interesting thing about picking someone up who's coming from korea is that you most likely will get stuck waiting as they go through customs, and that you will find yourself in a throng of other asians as they wait for their overseas arrival...considering i don't often find myself amidst a group of people in which the vast majority are of my race, it was an interesting experience...there were people there who were dressed up with camera and bouquet of flowers ready to greet whoever it was they were waiting for...most were there in groups with other family members as they waited...i have to admit that i felt out of place...i mean, i was toting a bag covered in band buttons...bands most asians don't listen to i'd imagine...i know it's silly for me be self-conscious in situations like that, but i find that i often can't help it...i'm not what you'd call the model korean young professional woman, and sometimes it's hard when i'm around other asians...
alright...whatever...it was nice to see my bro again after 7 weeks...he seemed pretty happy and even expressed an interest to go back to korea in the near future for a longer term...that might not be a bad idea for him...he seems to get along just fine with the korean community...and i hear boys who speak english and play the guitar can go pretty far in certain korean circles...my bro & my mom & i hung out for a few hours, and it was probably the best informal time we'd had as a family since my dad died...hmm...that sounds pretty loaded...well, we'll see how this goes...i've been trying to be more communicative w/ my mother, but i'll admit it's like pulling teeth for me...
so i've been having some vivid dreams that often play out like movies...this is worthy of note because normally, i am a very boring dreamer and seldom even remember my dreams...i really need to start writing them down as soon as i wake up though because the details get all mixed up and hazy once the dream leaves the safe surroundings of slumber and enters the world of the awake...i already mentioned the gold paint tinged embossed asian greeting card white heron dream a couple days ago...well, on friday night i had my jd salinger dream...in this dream, it was like i was watching a movie based on a catcher-in-the-rye-esque novel...it felt like i was watching the movie and IN the movie at the same time...and i was a boy in a private prep school somewhere in new york...it was christmas break, and i was on the green hilly grounds of my campus chatting w/ a fellow student...we were talking about going home for the holidays and making plans to meet up downtown in the city during break...all of a sudden, we run into a professor who's considered somewhat of a lunatic by the students but who has taken quite a liking to me...he teaches poetry, and he's taken to singing his poetry to me, and only me...upon this encounter, he agains sings a few lines to me, and although i'm a tad embarrassed by the situation, i am actually fond of the professor and see in him a purity and simplicity and serenity that is absent in most of the humans i'm surrounded by, who, to my personal assessment, seem thoroughly entrenched in their affectations...i don't remember much else from the dream...i think i was wearing a tweed sportscoat...
anyways, the next dream was on saturday night, and i was driving down polk street, where teddy lives, except it was in evanston somehow, and i kept getting green lights (except in my dream they were yellow but they meant green) and when i hit where polk deadends at damen, there was a schlotsky's deli and the person i was with wanted to go in there for some reason...when we went in, there were people there whom we apparently knew...and it wasn't like a real schlotsky's deli...it was more like a sitdown place like cracker barrel...we sat at a table of a multiethnic high school boy's basketball team that had just played at the metro...i have no idea why they played a basketball game at the metro, but in the dream it sounded perfectly natural to me...everyone at my table took a kaiser roll from somewhere and we waited for our sandwiches to be served...when i got my sandwich, it was lettuce and tomato and potato chips in between bread, and i thought to myself, 'i know i don't eat meat, but they could've at least put some cheese in there!' and i gave my sandwich back to the waiter and asked them to put some cheese in it...that's all that's left of that dream...
sunday morning, teddy & his bro dave & i went to the wilson sk8te park at like 7:30 in the morning...there were a lot more people there than i expected...matt r. who went to loyola w/ dave & whom i'd met through michael g was there, and matt's good friend tony & tony's wife...i didn't really talk to them though cuz i stayed in the car so i could listen to tunes and continue reading my brothers k. which i'm deeply engrossed in lately...OH! i made a mix cd of some good old punk bands for the occassion...32 songs on one cd...bands like ALL, bad religion, bad brains, descendents, adolescents, 7 seconds, fugazi, gang of four...it was a fun mix...anyways, i wasn't really watching the boys this time, but i did peek every now and then, and i saw teddy doing the big bowl, and he was skating pretty good...
after the boys were done skating, we went to corona's on irving park for breakfast...that was dave's first place of employment back in the day...dave & i dropped teddy off for work @ trader joe's and then i dropped off dave and went home...i should've done laundry, but i thought i had enough clean underwear to last me a few more days, so i abandoned that idea and immersed myself in figuring out how to create a new format for my photo pages...for months now, i've been wanting to display a type of gallery made up of thumbnails and one big image that would change based on the thumbnail you clicked on...i didn't know how to do this using simple html (none of which is really all that simple to me anyway)...i finally figured it out by looking at the source code for one of my friend jesse's photo pages...i knew that there had to be a way of coding "if-somebody-clicks-on-this-thumbnail-change-the-source-of-the-big-image-to-display-the-bigger-version-of-the-thumbnail" into html...
so i have succeeded in creating my first photo page using this new format...check it out! it's my panda panda page....
in other random stream-of-consciousness news, yesterday was exactly one year since the watchers/duvall show @ empty bottle where i first laid eyes on teddy as he was setting up his drum kit...i still remember that moment when i first saw him and i thought to myself, 'oh my god he's so hot how'm i ever gonna talk to him?' if michael (watchers frontman) hadn't come up to me that night to ask me about the photos i took, i don't know how teddy & i would've ever met...i still remember standing outside the bottle that night, talking to michael, and secretly wishing to myself that the drummer, whose name i didn't even know at the time, would come out and talk to me too...
anyways, i cooked teddy dinner to commemorate the occassion...or rather, i picked the recipe, bought all the ingredients, and supervised as teddy cooked the dinner...it was a really great recipe too...it was for a creole mexican catfish, but i used tilapia instead, and it came out really juicy and with a kick! i did add some chili powder at the end...but it wasn't so spicy that we were crying and miserable or anything like that...but we did sneeze a lot while cooking cuz of the cayenne, which i accidentally spilled a bunch of on the kitchen table...so we had the tilapia, some brown rice, and green beans from teddy's mom's garden, white wine from new zealand, and espresso gelato that was absolutely divine...we hadn't cooked a real meal in a long time, and it felt good to make something yummy that's not pasta or pizza...
alrighty...i'm tired of typing now...
been listening to--
sk8te punk mix
troubleman sampler
time (the revelator)--gillian welch
no depression--uncle tupelo
still feel gone--uncle tupelo
Friday, August 22, 2003 at 2:29PM 
so i went to see panda panda last night @ the fireside bowl...my cuzin kris and and our friend joseph,whom i hadn't seen since i crashed his xmas party last year, met us there...i think they felt kinda out of place...and maybe a tad old...the average age there that night was probably 17 or so...we weren't allowed to bring drinks out of the bar cuz there were so many young'uns running around...
panda panda is a 2-piece chicago band made up of miss mia (of kim and host of chic-a-go-go) on drums/vox and sarah c. (of the georges) on guitar/vox...i've been listening to their new cd for the past week, and the songs are a lot of fun! mia and sarah played pretty much all the songs off their album, and a bunch of kids were up front dancing up a storm...miss mia is really fun to watch on the drums...teddy & i watched her from the side of the stage for the whole set, and we were impressed with her head bobbing and stick twirling abilities! photos from the show are here.
after the panda panda set, teddy & i went into the bar to play a game of pool...we ran into mia on our way out and we had a nice chat...she's really friendly and very sweet...it's really great seeing an asian girl rocker like her...
tonight, i'm picking up teddy from trader joe's and going to the detholz! lair for a party...it'll be good to see them again...and derek & linda too...
in sad news in the rock'n'roll world, we've lost a chicago icon...wesley willis...read this for more info...
upcoming events:
sat. aug 23: paperback (david bazan of pedro the lion) @ gunther murphy's 10pm
fri. sept. 5th: afropunk encore presentation @ the gene siskel film center...this film sold out its final chicago screening last week during the black harvest film festival, and another show was added that night...it was chosen as the best film by the attenders of the festival, and it's being shown again in two weeks...if you missed it the first round, don't miss your next chance to see it for yourself...
sun. sept. 28th: bill mallonee & the tiny silver hearts @ schuba's 9pm...y'all know how much i love this man and his music...he's got a new album out called perfemed letter and it's a gem...he's getting some good promotion work done thanks to the folks at paste records, and he's finally getting some radio exposure...he got a really nice review in magnet magazine, which has one of his songs in the #2 spot on their monthly sampler cd (for subscribers only unfortunately)...i can't wait to see them again!
Thursday, August 21, 2003 at 2:36PM so tuesday night i had this dream...i think i was looking out the window or something...and i saw what looked to me like a heron...i'm like, 'oh, look! a heron!' and then all of a sudden the bird's in my apartment...i see my cat abby trying to chase it...it's flying in my living room, and it's really weird, but it looks like a bird from one of them asian new years greeting cards...you know...beautiful heron/crane type of bird flying, embossed, and outlined in gold paint...i mean, this bird was about the size it would be on a card, and it was almost 2 dimentional, and it had that gold outline, and it seemed to be embossed and everything...i thought that was really fascinating...i was totally enchanted by this bird in my dream...it was still flying around my room, and i put out my hand, and it landed on my finger...except it didn't feel like what i'd expect a bird on a finger to feel like...it felt all tingly and soft and warm all around my hand...it was so magical...so beautiful...i can't describe it...the feeling of the bird on my hand was so PHYSICAL and REAL in the dream...i'm like, 'look at this bird!' but no one else could see it...even abby seemed to be unable to see the bird...and i couldn't really see the bird either...not exactly...i could definitely FEEL it, and i saw what was like the essence of the bird...you know how neo sees things in the matrix? kinda like that...it was weird...it was like i was seeing in another dimension...that reminds me of the ray bradbury story from 'i sing the body electric' about the baby who's born in the fifth dimension and looks like an odd blue shape and his parents eventually exchange life in their dimension for life in the fifth so that they could see their son as he was, as a baby boy instead of a blue thing...anyways...i can't express how beautiful that bird was...
the kicker was the next morning, i was in my boss's office, and she's got this window that overlooks some prairie in our office park, and all of a sudden, while i'm in midsentence, i see a blue heron go into flight from that patch of prairie! i gasped and started stammering something about the heron...i had to explain to my boss about the dream i'd had...she probably thinks i'm nuts...and even though in my dream, it was a white heron that i saw (i think), still you have to understand how i'd flip out seeing even a blue heron the very next morning...
i told teddy about the dream, and he emailed me something he'd found on the web about herons...so it turns out that the white heron is one of the symbols of my homeland...that being korea...what could this dream mean?? it felt good though, whatever it was...
so teddy & his sister lauren & i went to see matrix reloaded @ the imax theatre on navy pier...made up for the 1st time we saw it on a puny screen...it was $14 though, which is pretty pricey for a movie...oh well...
the only other big news is that my friend caleb is ENGAGED!!!!! he proposed to his girlfriend kathy on the lovely shores of california...caleb is the best of the best of men i've ever known...his girl is totally lucky to have him! i got an email from him w/ the subject line "we're off the market" and i knew exactly what that meant! ha ha ha! i wish them all the happiness that i know is in store for them, and then some...
gonna go see panda panda tonight...miss mia ROCKS...
if anyone wants drum lessons, my teddy is going to start giving lessons for $18/half hour...he's a really good teacher...a natural...
dat's it folks!
