http://www.myspace.com/petelee
it's titled "whale highway".
all home recordings.
use your imagination for the drums.

Pete

whoa I can't believe it's already 2011.  Remember three years ago when America thought Bush was wrong, and then Bush came back and was like "I was right all along!" and dunked a basketball?  That was a wonderful Easter.

www.myspace.com/enterthehero has more details about some of the instances.  if you actually care.

Anyways, here is a little list of my 10 favorite memories of 2007, I feel like I've talked about most of my favorite experiences of this year already, so I'll focus on the specific moments.

10. Elementary school re-union in Taipei.  I went back to Taiwan for little less than a week and caught up with some of my oldest friends.  One night they made a few calls and got our little gang back together.  It was five boys would became sworn brothers one fateful afternoon and had been hanging out with each other in some capacity once a week, and still addressed to each other as real brothers.  We called up this girl that everyone had a crush on, she came out.  Between good cold Taiwanese beer and cheap and fresh seafood, we each confessed our crush.  She was super funny about it.  Then we called her childhood crush, who was now a dentist, and made him come meet up with us.  He blushed superhard.

9. Lalea kind of invited herself along for the ride to Portland for Thanksgiving.  We were in a car with two much older ladies, one of which was named Cameron who hated us for our youth.  She was like a bitter and slightly large pre-school teacher who didn't seem to love life.  When it was Cameron's turn to play music, she played Scissor Sisters.  Lalea and I just laughed at her in the backseat for 10 hours.  She also shared super-sweet stories about her childhood and her family.

8. My friend Kendall invited me to crash a yum kappur celebration.  We ended up dancing at a Rabbi's girlfriend's house.  I saw a little boy who was all alone so I told him stories about the astrology and astronomy.  Kendall and I left the party, and it was really nice, to just talk about life on the long train ride.  When we got to the city, we decided to jump off the train to catch a dance party in a Chinatown lounge.  Chinatown was entirely silent because everyone was prepping for the autumn-moon weekend.  We danced in a gloriously sweaty basement, with kids who were still new friends at that point.  In between the jams we'd go up to the bar and I got to play my favorite Chinese pop songs on the jukebox.  (actually, my original item on the list for number 8 was the throwing of the cherry tomatoes at the loud citizens outside my house, but that story's been told already.)

7. I went home to Boston for a short weekend.  I kept on missing my boy Vaughn because he was moving that weekend.  Finally I caught him at around midnight before my last day in the city.  Our conversation was interrupted by these naugty pictures a female admirer kept on sending.  Then we bumped into Wayne and his co-worker Sarah, two real honest and upstanding citizens, and Vaughn showed them the naughty pictures too, 'cause, why not?  We had an extended goodbye on the train-ride back.  He had to get off a few stops before me.  I was trying to wrap up the night by showing him something from my backpack, I forgot what.  But somehow the stuff in my backpack just kept on falling out.  Every time I tried to pick something up, more fell out.  A nice, well-off-looking, WASP lady became very helpful and would tell me if more things fell out.  People on the train were laughing.  Her husband, however, just sat there cross-armed, looking like a mix between Chevy Chase and John Goodman, and kept on giving us the dirty eyes through his sunglasses.  He didn't think we could see his eyes but we could.  Vaughn didn't know why a stranger would just sit there and judge us in his polo shirt, but I told him to chill.   Then we started imitating the guy, 'cause he looked like he was in a silent movie or something, looking so over-the-top angry at us for reasons unknown.
Finally Vaughn got off.  I said goodbye to him.  A second later my phone started ringing, I answered and it was Vaughn.  He stood on the platform, right behind where Anger Goodman was sitting.  He was just pointing at the angry guy and laughing.  The whole train was laughing too.  As the train was about to leave, he knocked on the window.  The angry guy jumped up in his seat, and kept on screaming "what was that?!  what was that?!"  His wife, embarassed, whispered something in his ears.  Then he looked at everyone with lightning in his eyes, declaring "okay, okay, I get it!"

6. I had an awful December.  I was sick for a few weeks and my grandmother died.  I acted out a bit and really indulged in childish moods.  Towards the end of the month, Alejandra sent me a book for Christmas.  It was titled "The God of Small Things."  In it she said some of the nicest things a human being could say to another.  Amongst which is the following:
"I don't know what I'd do without you, so thank you for existing.  much love, Ale."
Opening up that card was a good moment, and a good beginning.

5. On one particularly cold and moody Friday afternoon at work, Alison, Kate, Arthur, and I made a decision to go to Tahoe for a spontaneous weekend trip.  45 minutes after we got off, Arthur packed all of us into his car and we were en route to Tahoe.  The following Sunday we swung by Nevada to drop off Arthur's gracious buddy whom let us crash at his place.  We had breakfast in Carson City, and Kate began talking about her father, who'd passed, and her memories of skiing with him a child, and how this weekend picked up some of those memories.  At the end of it she just smiled and said "I really miss him."  It was one of the most understated and beautiful (not to mention spontaneous) elegies I'd ever witnessed.

4. One Sunday in March I ventured into City of Refuge, a powerful powerful church by downtown.  Unbeknownst to us, it was Youth Sunday, and the service focused on the kids.  My friend Forest and I went over and got down.  After about an hour, a lady pastor got on the pulpit.  She said she couldn't go on without the following testimony, then a father and his little girl went up.  The father was a young and handsome black man, his girl was about 4 or 5 years old, maybe younger.  He first talked, in real vague terms, about how the girl came into his life--he assumed the congregation was familiar with his story, and I supposed they were.  From what I could gather the girl was adopted a while ago, under difficult circumstances, what the circumstances were I was not sure.  Either way, the girl had been going into his bedroom everynight for the past month, because she had been getting nightmares.  Finally, about a week ago, he told her she should maybe pray about her nightmare.  She said how, he said, you know how we'd been praying every night?  You could add your own prayer to it.  Then for the past week she hadn't come to his room.  Last night he asked her what she did, and she prayed this prayer.

3. I finished cutting my movie, Hakuma Hallelujah.  My last week of editing it consisted of less than 4 hours of sleep every night.  I finished it after three days of human-free interaction.  I took a breath, walked out into a lazy dusk, I ordered some food by myself at the Chinese joint down the street from me.  Then I just slumped there, looking directly into the sun for a good 10 minutes.  Now doctors say I'm legally retarded!

2. I convinced my co-worker Alison that I might have a concussion sometime around April.  I kinda scrīpted the progression - when to play the gags and how to top each gag.  I'd been doing things like staring into my hand with utter fascination, stopping myself mid-sentence, repeating the same information or question, falling, dropping things, laughing uncontrollably, and having all my friends in on the gags.
One sunny afternoon we were walking to the Tenderloin elementary school to pick up our students.  I hadn't play any gag on her that day because she came to my naturalization ceremony in the morning after finding out quite last minute.  I was really moved.  We were walking down hill to the Tenderloin that morning, I was still trying to act perplexed but she was cheering me up by singing "God Bless the USA" off the top of her lung.
Finally that afternoon I felt like enough time had passed for me to rid myself of any conscience.  We were en route to picking up our kids and I was just struggling to come up with a gag.  Suddenly, half a block from the school I saw an old lady wearing a bright red sweater.  I then "missed" the turn and just kept on following the old lady.  Alison kept on calling my name.  Finally I turned around.  She said "are you okay, Pete?"  I just said "so red!"

1. The best moment of 2007 was probably the dance party that I'd already detailed before.  Here's the excerpt from the blog, about my long weekend roadtrip down to LA:
Ben invited us to a party up there in LA.  But we broke his heart and said no.  No hip people, no pretty girls, no semi-celebrities.  Tonight we're business.  We crashed a houseparty; it was full of OC dudes and girls, and aspiring film people.  The DJ of the party had a fake british accent, played techno music with a giant british flag draped down from his table booth.  We danced it up.  I haven't crashed a house party like that in a while, just crashing a place with my good friends and seizing the dance floor.  I actually got a little jealous when this random family in a sushi house in tahoe told my friends and I about their ballerina son doing the same thing in Atlanta.  The music was terrible and not very danceable, so we'd form a circle, dance, then break up, every few songs.  Each time we formed the circle, it got a little bigger, and each time we'd up the ante just a little bit.  

Then it kept on getting wilder.  At one point I pretended I was breakdancing, then I started pratfalling all over the place.  Finally I steadied myself, got up, wiped off my sweat, and acted like I was slightly embarrassed.  Jimi came in with some silly Jane Fonda moves, then started breakdancing for real.  He wasn't a real good breaker, but he was strong and it was way funnier to see a goofy kid pulling off some maneuvers.  The crowd was really loving it.  Then Dan came out.  Dan was the most normally dressed of us--he had on clubbing clothes, and the entire night he was doing small talks with girls and drinking, amongst other normal things for normal parties, and I really thought he was just a little bit more self-conscious than the rest of us, maybe it was my own prejudice, anyhow.  He came into the circle and began jig dancing, we were all cheering, then T-Bird came out in solidarity and jig danced face to face with Dan.  T-Bird stretched out his left hand, then his right hand, then put his hands together to make a little step.  A few girls were like "what's he doing?"  and I said to myself, no way, the celing's WAY too low!  But there it was, Dan ran right up to him, into T-Bird's hands, and did a beautiful, low backflip, almost kicked out the ceiling fan, landed right back on his feet, and kept on jigging.  The whole circle threw their hands up and screamed.  It was perfect, it was fun.

Now share with me some of your memories

I bailed out of my weekend of celebration because my lungs rattle when I cough.
I have a robot necklace that I've been trying to give to the last three girls that I liked or whatever.  However, everytime I was sure of the signs (like touching naughty parts or planned getaways) and tried to give it to one, she'll somehow turn cold on the night of the planned gift-giving.  Thursday night was no exception, I asked this girl to see Jonathan Richman with me, she said yes but then got caught up in finals (yeah I'm kinda seeing someone IN COLLEGE).  It was a bummer 'cause I thought I'd be able to spend my birth weekend with her but I ended up not seeing her at all except for a barely glimpse.

Friday night my friends and I went to The Red Elvises.  It was super crowded and we were all sick, so we went out for a breather during the intermission.  My buddy Jimi bailed.  My two other friends offered to buy me a birthday donut at this donut joint down the street.  We asked the lady for a birthday candle, then one guy turned and said "did you say birthday?"  I said, well, technically it's the 9th, but I usually celebrate on the 8th because I was born in Taipei.  He said "I'm on the 8th too!"  And then, this other dude at the bar with his girlfriend turned and said "hey, it's my birthday too!"  He was 36, so I says to him, "that means you can smoke pot now", which is a thing I say to anyone with any birthday.  We gathered around my birthday donut, three of us and all of our friends and the old Chinese guy and his daughter who run the donut shop, made our wishes and blew out the candle.  I was pretty happy so I bought the first birthday guy and his girl their donuts, they gave me two sparklers in exchange.

I came back to my neighborhood, I was supposed to go back out dancing but I was just feeling ill.  I thought maybe I'd get a late dinner and soldier on.  I went to one of the 30 million taquerias in my 'hood and hung out with my buddy Javier.  He's a good guy and I'm basing my next short film on him, so everytime we hang it's like research.  He was telling me this story about how his train got stuck in the underwater tunnel for 40 minutes and everyone thought everyone was doomed for sure. 

Then my good friend whom I've known almost all my life called me.  He's the most calm and calculated man I've ever known, very intelligent and level-headed about everything.  He was going crazy on the phone because he and his girl took an unofficial break and she was spending the night at some dude's place.  When he talked to me he'd already tracked down the dude's apartment and made a slight scene outside.  I was a little freaked 'cause I'd never seen him like that.  I tried to talk to him but really it seemed like sometimes a man just needs to go crazy.  He said he didn't know what else he could do, and said he was coming back to the city.  I said hey, come hang at my place, I'm sick I can't go out, lets just talk it out.  So he came and he was crashing at my place, the adrenaline wore off and he was sleeping.  But at 4 am he left and went waiting outside the apartment again.

Yesterday my friends Apollo Sunshine was in town and they put me and my friends on the guest list.  I was out in the touristy part of San Fran shooting a fight scene, a paid gig for some website or something small time.  It was fun, we did cool stunts, but my body really wasn't handling it well.  I was coughing all over the place.  I came back and my lungs started rattling with each cough.  That was when I realized I wasn't gonna go anywhere.  I stayed in and took calls from friends.

At around 12 my buddy Jimi called.  He said he was in the neighborhood and was gonna buy me a late dinner.  I wasn't hungry and didn't feel like submitting to the cold weather.  He came over instead.  He looked a little bit out of it.  Turned out there was this old sketchy looking dude with a pitbull that lived in the basement next door to him.  Sketchy people were always coming in and out of his basement with big wads of bills.  We both work with the homeless community in the neglected part of the town but for some reason he's just been unwilling to admit that the junkie-looking folks that come in and out of his apartment might be junkies.  I totally respect that 'cause cops often mistake me for a non-tax payer.  Well, yesterday his suspicion came to a boil and he called his sister who also works in the similar sector and asked for her advice.  The pitbull nearly bit his roommate's face off the other day and the old man was being aggressive and weird (like the old man from Sandlot weird).  She said it's not hard to suspect whats going from the symptoms.  He thought there might be a methlab in his basement, which I doubted, but it sounded sketchy alright.  Anyhow, he somehow failed to realize that the phone chat on his front porch might get picked up by his friendly neighbors.  He was in his room last night, beautiful place four stories up that overlooked a bunch of other quirky backyards.  He heard banging on the stairs and looked down the fire escape.  The old man was walking up and looking right at him.  He kept on shouting "hey, whats going on?"  Before the old man disappeared again.  He got a little freaked and came over to my place.  I didn't feel like, on top of staying in on my own birthday party, letting a dude friend sleeping in my bed (he always claims the bed), good thing ladies like him and he found a lady friend with a bed.

This morning my old girlfriend and her sisters woke me up with a birthday song in Spanish.  I coughed really hard and could barely talk to them.  Then my stunt buddies came over to pick up some costumes for today's shoot, and hooked me up with wal-borne.  That shit is keeping me from coughing right now and I'm about to go drink some tea with a psychic girl who is a little bit older.  That's how you feel young at 26 - you hang out with 30 year olds.

It was my godmother's birthday.  My godmother was an eternally youthful lady and I had no idea how old she was.  I knew she was much much younger than my lucky godfather, but no idea how young.  I decided to call my godfather and to guestimate, I called him and I said "hey, did your wife turn 40 today?"  He screamed "She's not 40!", followed by "Pete Lee YOU SUCK" and hung up the phone.

An hour later I was on the train on my way to work.  There were two lawyers who were loudly discussing their cases.  There was an attractive older lady sitting next to them, playing with her blackberry, and looking as irked as everyone else on the train.  It was two young lawyers, one of them a bit younger and had this bravado in his voice as he casually mentioned "ooh yeah, there was $300,000 at stake" amongst other things that didn't matter but he tried to make them sound like they did.
There was this old gag that my friends and I used to do: we would each take out different objects: a shoe, a tie, a granola bar...etc., and we would talk into them like they were phones and start up "important conversations".
I pulled out my wallet and said "Hello?  Doctor?  Oh no, no worries, it's not a bad time.  Can you please tell me your verdict?  Oh, so it's definitely contagious?  Extremely contagious you say?  Air----airborne contagious?  No, no I'm at home.  Yeah, that's just my TiVO."  The two lawyers' conversation came to a halt, and the older blackberry lady was laughing.  I kept on coughing violently into the lawyers' direction, as I discussed payment plans with my doctor.

At the nonprofit where I work, we sometimes receive free groceries that are nearing their expiration date.  Wednesday night as I was about to leave I was told to pack in as many baby cherry tomatoes as I can fit, 'cause apparently nobody else wanted to eat them.  As a decent cook I still had no idea what to do with them.
My buddy Ethan came over later that night to work on sound for my film Hakuma Hallelujah, which apparently is a masterpiece that nobody else understands.  Anyways, while we were chilling, there was a group of hipsters outside my house, chatting loudly.  My house faced the rough and tumble streets of the West Coast, perhaps the roughest street on the entire Coast, peppered with one gun store, one liquor store, and countless authentic restaurants and hipster bars.  Nas would flee.  However, this particular group of upstanding taxpayers really irked me for some reason, as they stood in front of my door and screamed their conversations for the 'hood to decipher.  It wasn't even late, but it was very irritating, as they were there for about 45 minutes, loud non-stop.  Ethan left my house, and as I walked him out, we acted like we were mid-conversation and I said something like "so yeah, you should try pooping on her face next time as well", the young folks just looked at us and continued their pointless privleged noise.
I came back to my room, ready to watch a Christopher Doyle film which I hadn't seen, when I saw my bag of baby cherry tomatoes.  I instantly reminisced all the times when my buddies Ben, N'jeri, Nick and I would sneak onto the rooftop of the VFW next to their house and hurl bananas at drunken loudness.
I had three windows in my room, for some God-decided reason, the screen in my middle window fell off, leaving just a window pane between myself and the rough and tumble streets of the West Coast.  I turned off my lights, pulled up the window and the venetian blinds, and began hurling.  This was a much harder task because the targets were at an angle and there was a giant Gun Store sign between the targets and me.  I tried a few methods and failed to deter their interesting lively discussions about how pointless their lives must be.
I then suddenly recalled the other portions of my flashback, when Nick and Ben always proved to be better hurlers of objects than me, and I was always more of an enabler/ cheerleader than a cohort.  I was saddened by their absences and tried getting my roommate in on this, he was not home.  I sat in front of my computer, as I am right now, a tiny bit deflated but mostly irritated.
Then the girl from the gang shrieked again.  I then remembered (these flashbacks are absolutely true by the way and they are in the orders which I am writing right now) the one time that I'd successfully landed my target: I was on the back porch of their apartment and I threw half a banana that hit a girl coming out of the bar and she screamed "I don't even like bananas!" into the vast dark void that was the streets of Boston.  I got your message girl, loud and clear.
That scream outside my door had to go, I have to sleep, my children have to learn, and my cherry tomatoes were about to expire.  I recalled the basic mechanics of a shotgun (from that movie "No Country for Old Men" that I'd just seen) and packed in fistuls of cherry tomatoes at a time.  I'd lean back for leverage, and adjusted my projectiles each time.  Their loud and private conversation had been going on for an hour now, there were hardworking immigrants in my hood who had to serve coffee to these ironic soundbite jukeboxes in the morning, I told myself.  I threw a few more and then I heard a very familiar and satisfying "what the f--!?" outside my window. 
I stood still for a second, but they could kinda see my silhoutte though no really.  I tried to smoothly close the window and the blinds next to me, but it became as obvious as Rudolf's nose (or that movie Crash's biased moral) as the blinds got stuck and wouldn't come down in one pull. 
The four of them just stared at my dark room for a second, and then the girl said to one of the boys "don't be nervouce, just go up and lay your hands on him."  The guy never "laid his hand" on me. They said bye to each other and peaced outta my street.