Saturday, December 14, 2002

i'm watching saturday night live right now, and al gore is hosting the show. it's really weird. al gore is impersonating trent lott, and it's fucking hilarious.

i was hangin' out at anthony's earlier. tyree, brian, anthony, amy, and i - nothing much. even though they were mixing some carobolou, i stayed sober the whole night, so nothing great happened -

except, we dressed maurro (anthony's cousin) in a santa clause suit, and told mercedes (anthony's niece) that if she was bad, we'd beat the shit out of santa. it was hysterical when they jumped santa maurro, and anthony's mom got it all on tape.

my friends are a bunch of drunks.
i just found out that the camera we're getting isn't a canon xl1s, which was what rj was hoping we would get. now, this is what we're looking at. since he knows the most about this type of stuff, i'm going to go on rj's judgement, and only get in on this deal if he is too.

ta ns am bo: [it's] not bad of a camera. but if there isn't a movie frame mode, the movies won't look like movies.
ta ns am bo: just professional home video.


we'll just have to wait and see.

i re-did my blogchalk, 'cuz my old one was basically a dead link, and it wasn't generating any hits from search engines, even though you could find my site by typing in sick shit like "sexy hoy shots." go figure. just so that i'll get indexed:

This is my new blogchalk:
United States, Washington, Seattle, Skyway, English, Philippine, Joseph, Male, 16-20, guitar, film. :)

Friday, December 13, 2002

after getting some belated birthday cupcakes from ms. anderson, ms. bevis caught jake and i, and basically made us feel like shitty green team officers.

afterschool, i spent some time working on journalism stuff. we listened to cd's and stuff (amy, thank's for the pearl jam and nirvana!), and did a lot of nothing and everything. i drank an iced tea and chocolate milk, making sure i had all the proper nutritional requirements for a punk-little-kid, 'cuz that's what i am. anthony was on the phone, talking to nick or jumar or someone, and we all found out that they put up their camera for collateral on a loan, and they can't come up with the money to get it back. rj, anthony, and i have all decided to split the payment for the camera, and make it ours.

just yesterday i was talking to brian about getting a les paul for sure in a month or so, but i don't know how that'll work out, now that this camera-issue has come up. if i could have it my way, i'd make equal investments into my rockstar AND film-maker dreams, but for now - it's film-making. i'm sure i'll be getting my beloved les paul later next year, most definitely before summer time arrives.

this camera is super dope - but i don't know much about it. it's just one of those as98dfapos8fduosu8f-model cameras, which are supposed to be really good. it's mini-dv, which is the medium i've been wanting to work with since like, forever, AND we're getting this PROFESSIONAL QUALITY camera for less than half of what it would go for on the marker - plus we get a fish-eye lens as well. rj probably knows how to operate these babies, since he took a film course last summer, and anthony has adobe premier on his computer, so we'll all definitely have to help each other out on personal projects and stuff - and work collaboratively, as well.

after we left the school, rj came over, and we watched his bottle rocket dvd. owen wilson is cool (i stole an issue of premiere from my dentist, last wednesday, just for the cover story on that crooked-nosed son of a gun.). right now, i'm idolizing wilson and wes anderson's ability to write such egnimatic characters; max fisher from rushmore has always been one of my greatest fictional heroes. i love the attention to detail, and the bittersweet endings.

i love it i love it i love it!

brian came over during the last third of the movie, and we put in scratch. it's funny, because today anthony stuck in one of hannah's anticon cd's (deep puddle dynamics), and i couldn't bear to listen to that crap. but when you talk about REAL hip hop, you think about the players in scratch, and how much these motherfuckers actually have talent - and when i say "real hip hop," i know it sounds gay, but you can't get anymore real with afrika bambaataa and the dude who INVENTED the use of a turntable scratch.

i don't know anything about this shit, but it's cool to think that i do.

i like to play the guitar.

please don't judge my ability to write screenplays based on my blogs!

Thursday, December 12, 2002

joseph guanlao: i finally wrote an article
joseph guanlao: it felt good to complete it
joseph guanlao: and then i wrote the horoscopes too
xALiENPRiNCESSx signed off at 8:28:23 PM.

Wednesday, December 11, 2002

while everyone is offline right now, getting their act together and studying/homeworking because their school progress reports came in today, i'm still on the internet, blogging and being gay.

today afterschool, i walked to my dad's van, and found him standing outside the vehicle, helping brandon stowers and daniel dean jump start their car. even though i found a little humor and irony in the situation, i couldn't help but feel a fear to the discussion i would have with my father.

i initiated the conversation, but simply saying "hi dad." it was the only thing i said to him, until we arrived home, but he had plenty to say to me. i knew my grades would come in the mail today, but it still makes me shocked and uneasy to hear what my dad has to say about my grades. he went on into some very depressing stuff, saying that he could see the direction of where my life is taking me, and it's not very good. this is not at all a bleek assessment either, because i know it to be true. it hurts, but it tells my story of underachievement and miscalculated arrogance.

dad says "it's your life, it's not mine," yet he always goes on about what i'm doing, and what i'm not doing. sometimes it makes me write. sometimes, in my own isolation and self-examination, i reflect on the things he says to my young and remote face, like his greatest and most essential statement, "you don't want to end up like me."

one of the biggest reasons i detest the notion of regret is mainly because i see the regret my father harbors in himself everyday. and it's true, he could have become something greater on the social ladder, and our family could have perhaps been better off, financially speaking. and that's why i don't regret anything at all, because i don't want to feel bad about the choices i make.

but maybe the reasons for my own failure is attributed to my lack of regret, my inability to feel guilt and my disposition to make excuses for everything i do - or rather, fail to do.

though it's crazy to think my dad once had obsenely unmanageable anger problems. his temper used to be beyond anything in question, but he found his own personal zen, and most of the time he's calmer than a moonless ocean. now, it's the awkward silences that i find to be more dreadful and terrifying than anything i know, because i don't know if he's just bottling up all his anger and waiting to explode in my face with a baseball bat.

not that my father ever beats me, but the fear still exists.

while urinating in my home bathroom, i began to think, "this is the story of both of our lives - a struggle of personal dissatifaction, of not living up the potential i was blessed with, and dad is only trying to not let this become a cycle in the guanlao blood." it should be noted that we were talking about heredity during biology today, and so some things connected while i was pissing.

i think it pisses my dad off when i make no facial reaction to what he says, at least not when he's in the same room as me.

oh yeah, the rain did nothing to help levitate the mood - in fact, i think it's making me go crazy now.

on a lighter note, i went to the dentist today, and he told me my teeth are yellow, and that i need to whiten my teeth.

i skipped swimming practice today, which was a very unwise choice, considering i still can't swim yet, and it's laughably childish the way i approach dives.

and i forgot to say something yesterday. the most notable thing i did was tri-high, and i saw old friends from renton park who now go to lindbergh h.s. - eric haley, merlin brittenham, and stephanie morris. seeing these people made me think about how much i was affected by them five or six years ago, and how little i give a shit about them now. times change, i guess.

i know this was a terribly disheartening and sad blog entry, so i'll end it with this, just to make everything, everywhere, and everyone happy again: amy is so cute and sexy, and i want to squeeze the warmth out of her body even though she tried to seriously break off my finger today, and her initials spell "ant." cool, huh?

okay, i admit, that only made me happy. sort of. i still want to hang myself.

Monday, December 09, 2002

school sucked. school sucks, in general. you don't want to hear about it.

on a good note, hannah burned me a copy of the moon and antartica by modest mouse. i'm listening to it right now, and it's sooooooo good. it's so weirdly-indie-dope-classical rock, it's hard to explain. thanks a mil, yo!

i need to get all of my freakin' guitars restrung! i need to at least get a practice amp for my electric guitar! i need these things, or a fucking wake up call, because i don't want to disappoint myself and become anything less of a rockstar.

"did you know that there's crap in your blood?" - my brother, john. i don't know if it's true, or if he meant "crap" as in crap like white blood cells, or if he actually meant bile shit waste products. whatever it was, it sounded funny to me.

swim practice was crazy today. i can almost do a flip turn, which is so fucking awesome. it's like doing a somersault/twist, and it's supposed to shave a couple of seconds off of my swim time. i still need to learn how to swim the length of the pool - 25 yards. hah, i'm still the worst swimmer on the team, but that's alright, 'cuz i'm not the least liked!

that title goes to rob morrow.

almost every busride from hazen pool back to renton has this conversation, always initiated by brad: "if you had to fuck either coach or ms. sweet, who would you do?"

the answer almost always invariably ends with "ms. sweet." even ben sweet, ms. sweet's son, chooses to fuck his own mother than to have to fuck coach die.

die!

i worked out a little when i got home, and ate some of that steak that i brought home from saturday (technically it was sunday, but who's counting?). needless to say, i need to work out my shoulders and upper body a lot more, because having this canon-ball resistant abdominal area is just weird.

and of course, i need to go out and run - i actually want to, too, yo!
the last blog entry was technically written on saturday, but that was a recollection of my friday. so to catch up on saturday and sunday, and instead of doing my web design classwork, here i go:

saturday this day was my official birthday. right before i wrote the preceeding blog entry, my dad greeted me at the door with a "happy birthday," and gave me a hug. this was of course at one o'clock in the morning, and i was of course, still funny footed from the dance. after writing the blog, i went to sleep and woke up around 10 o'clock.

my dad took my brother and i to the group health clinic, where we all got flu shots. when it came time to get my shot, i actually didn't put up a fuss, which is quite an achievement, knowing my deep fear of needles.

poke. inject. pullout.

we went to taco time after that, because i looooooove my americanized mexican food. i got a casita burrito, which was good up and 'til the last few bites, when i felt really sick. besides an apple i had eaten before we left for the injections, this was my breakfast.

i got home, and i felt very sluggish and lethargic. with the added effects of the burrito i had just injested, along with the blah-feeling given to me from the previous night of hard liquor and tons of wasted energy, i was feeling gutterish and yucky.

two o'clock rolled along, and i hadn't realized the time. anthony and brian came to get me, and i ran out, fresh out of the shower. we picked up rj, and drove to safeco field, to begin our day of work.

the whole thing was pretty surreal. the catering/busing for other people was something straight out of american beauty and fight club, except the worst thing i did was not wash my hands during my whole time there, even though i handled so much food.

i wonder how many people got sick because of me.

we bussed for microsoft employees: nerds and hippies as tyree would say, and indians, white dudes, and asians, as ryan said. this is the highly paid sector of society that is totally composed of squares.

you should have seen these squares dance and get drunk. it was painful to watch, and just as embarassing.

it was a unique job experience, nonetheless. i don't know if i'll ever be able to work with nine of my friends (tyree, tory, roger, brian, anthony, ryan, cortney, minh-tu, and amy!) for the same employer ever again. also, working in and around the semi-empty safeco baseball field was a nice setting to look at, which never ceased to make me wonder. i also scored tons of food (pounds of turkey and roast beef), not to mention a crazy delicious three-layer pumpkin cake.

and to think, this is how i spent my birthday: working nine and a half hours straight, getting home at one in the morning, my feet and legs absolutely killing me.

but i spent it with friends, and i learned some new things, LIKE HOW MUCH GRUNT WORK FUCKING SUCKS.

i refuse to live a life of servitude, especially to jerk-off losers. the only reason i'd be that poor would be if i chose an artistic lifestyle, and not because i failed to keep my shit together in school.

fuck that.

although, i'll probably end up taking a job like that until i get through college.

sunday churched, and slept for four hours until 7 pm, and then i stayed up until 1:30 am playing the violin, reading the adventures of huckleberry finn, and mostly just sitting around on the floor of my bedroom, listening to music.