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• favorite memories of 2007

  Monday, Jan 7, 2008 10:59AM / Standard Entry / Members only
  

  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.

  The father then took out a sheet of paper, and they read together.  The father would start "our father", and the girl would go "our father who art in heaven, God protect me", "Hallowed" and the girl would continue "Hallowed be thy name, God protect me."  People in the congregation began sobbing, and I'd never seen anything like this.  The girl earnestly went through her prayer, adding "God protect me" after every thought, and the congregation just began breaking down.  The father could barely talk, he was so choked up.  I knew I was in the presence of something at that point.
  
  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