Mad Men recaps

"The Suitcase" | Mad Men | TV Club | TV | The A.V. Club:

"Over your life, you will become many different people, and the journey from one person to another is one of discovery and excitement. But there are also moments and places where you'll long to return, memories you'll wish to fold up and place in a bag next to each other. And then someday, you'll find yourself no longer who you were, really, and that bag of what you wished to hold on to will be all you have left. And you, too, will head off into the unknown."

Mad Men recaps are the best part of my Mondays. The A.V. Club's is usually very good; Slant Magazine's blog The House Next Door also puts out a good one, but usually a little later in the week. NYMag's is a crapshoot; this week it was just crap. I couldn't help myself and skimmed it before I had seen the episode and freaked out when I read the commentary (SPOILER ALERT!!!!!!!) about Don and Peggy beginning a romantic relationship. I think they were way off the mark and thank god for that. D/P sex would not only cheapen their friendship...it's also fucking weird.

Sidenote - stumbled on this Sad Don Draper meme before watching the episode tonight and as a result started cracking up when Don Draper burst into tears. Damn you internet. You have to admit this one is pretty damn amazing though.

In California

1:52 - 2:57 is magical.

I am native to it, but I'm overgrown
I am choked
My roots on the earth, as rich as roe
Here, down in California

I gotta say I like her new voice; her little-girl crooning from before was a little freaky. But now I feel bad because apparently the change happened because of "vocal chord nodules" (wtf moment).

NYTimes Fashion Diary: The Tribes of San Francisco

Click here for article

"'It’s a very difficult city to read,' Mr. Lopez said, owing largely to the local distaste for ostentation and hype, a suspicion of anything that requires a high-degree of difficulty to pull off and that people spend a lot of their lives in cars."

Not so sure about the whole athleticism thing being distinctly San Franciscan, but otherwise this article is pretty spot-on about all the things I love about this city. It's hard not to be seduced by the everyday style of New York City, where regardless of the day, time, or place, people on the street strut about like they just walked off the cover of a magazine. When I was there for a few short days this summer, I was enthralled by the glamour - partly because it seems so unattainable - but when it comes down to it, San Francisco is where my closet and my heart belong. Now someone give me a plaid shirt and a Mission burrito.

Screen tests

"For some reason, awful lot of actors come from these kind of peripatetic backgrounds. You'll always find that they've had these itinerant childhoods. And the only thing I can think of, is that it just teaches you that behavior is not concrete. I think a lot of people think that behavior is character. I act this way; therefore I am this way. And one of the things that you learn moving around a lot is that behavior is mutable. And that's something that actors know inherently, that behavior means different things, but that you change it, depending on where you are, who you are, what you want to accomplish."

I love these actor screen tests from the New York Times. I don't know why I find them so fascinating, but some of them I've watched over and over again. My favorites are Penelope Cruz, Javier Bardem, Marion Cotillard, Carey Mulligan, and Seth Rogen.

Peter Sarsgaard's is incredible - especially his description of his character in An Education.

"He kind of becomes a docent for the world for this sixteen-year-old girl. And it's not really about sex; it's about - when you first show someone a butterfly - they've never seen one - you re-experience the butterfly for the first time again."

Bay Area concert wishlist

9/17 - Ratatat @ The Warfield

9/22 - Local Natives @ The Fillmore

9/24 - Band of Horses @ Greek Theater

9/25 - Dirty Projectors @ The Fillmore

9/27 - Passion Pit @ Fox Theater

10/2 - Arcade Fire @ Greek Theater

10/16-17 - Treasure Island Music Festival

10/19 - Jonsi @ Fox Theater (this one I am going to for sure with Jane)

10/26 - Sufjan Stevens @ The Paramout

11/2 - Bloody Beetroots @ The Mezzanine

WHAT THE HELL. The number of amazing shows in the next few months is staggering, and, pathetically, stressing me out because I know I can't see them all given time/budget/buddy constraints, especially since my tried and true concert companions are either saving the world in Michigan or living it up in Glasgow. Let me know if you are interested in any of these, because I sure as hell would love to go to as many as possible.

Some of my favorite concert memories in the last four years:

On the way to Bimbo's to see Voxtrot. It was sophomore year, December - Christmas decorations everywhere. We took pictures with towering Gap ads on Powell of Will Arnett and Amy Poehler wrapped in striped scarves. I miss those days when Union Square was a treat and San Francisco was still so exotic.

God I love this man so much. RAMEEEESH. Ignore the fact that he looks sweaty and disgusting. Voxtrot is from Austin +1. They make amazing music +1. Ramesh was so nice! +5000.

Spring of the same year, Rilo Kiley with Tiff and Katharine. We were little and Asian so everyone let us stand in front of them, and we got right up against the stage. Jenny Lewis is perfect and played all my favorite songs.

SIGUR ROS. Best. show. of. my. life. Jonsi's voice sounds like angels and rainbows and silver unicorns. The Greek was surprisingly packed, and my favorite moment happened when they were playing a particularly eerie song right before the encore. It was the end of the night, everyone was moved by the music (and yes, the weed), the band was silhouetted against the reddest lights, and suddenly it started to rain. Inexplicably, every single person in the audience raised their arms to the sky at the same time. If you've ever heard Sigur Ros you'll understand when I say I felt like I was part of a cult. A cult of awesome. I've been chasing that feeling in every show I've been to since.

Self-diagnosis

Today, shoulders hunched against the chilly San Francisco wind, I looked down at my feet while waiting to cross the street at Mission to my office building waiting on the other side. I was surprised to see that all that melanin acquired in Greece and Turkey has faded to a slight tint, barely noticeable against the lighter stripes imprinted by the shelter of my flip flops.

--

I was inserting a footnote in Excel about the capital expenditures of a hospital. Except, instead of obeying my head and typing hospital, my fingers found their way around the keyboard and out came

H-O-S-T-E-L.

It seems Wanderlust is a chronic condition, and I've got no interest in a cure.

In transit

Things thought on my way back to SF from NYC:

It's odd that you can share a 4-hour conversation and an armrest with someone on an airplane and never learn their name. And what are you supposed to say to him or her while disembarking? I was transferring in Denver and he was home. "Welcome home" seems odd; it isn't my home, after all.

The Denver airport is miserable. I once had a terrible standby experience here and was in the airport for 12 hours. It's just as bad as I remember - the terminal is literally one long strip that takes half an hour just to get through.

Few things make me happier than a jovial BART conductor. At 12:30 PM after 12 hours in transit (Subway + bus + plane + plane + BART), a "Goodnight, and thank you for riding BART" can somehow make my day.

The Bearwalk van is arguably my favorite thing about Berkeley.

Returning to Form, Klose Guides Youthful Germany - NYTimes.com

Returning to Form, Klose Guides Youthful Germany - NYTimes.com: "I don’t know if I’m going to tie Ronaldo or not, but I think it’s a great compliment to have this opportunity,” Klose said. “I thank the team, but I would rather become world champion than tie or beat Ronaldo."

I FUCKING LOVE THIS MAN. Die Mannschaft is taking down Spain tonight. Just wish I didn't have to stay up until 4 AM to see it.

Beijing - edition 2010

This is me studying for the LSAT. If I look unhappy, it's because I am. Silver lining: SAO PEN!

Mom making a traditional Lanzhou salad with tomatoes, onions and green chilies

Dim sum on Saturday --> Engrish at its best. The Chinese roughly translates to "Fish and radish cake"...wtf?!

Green bean pudding

and shrimp dumplings

Single words

Days in Beijing are spent with the LSAT, nights with the World Cup and early morning hours with a used copy of Middlesex from Moe's. Jeffrey Eugenides is a master with words. I'll resist the temptation to expound on the merits of his prose with metaphors that would pale against his own and let his writing speak for itself instead.

'Emotions, in my experience, aren't covered by single words. I don't believe in "sadness," "joy," or "regret." Maybe the best proof that the language is patriarchal is that it oversimplifies feeling. I'd like to have at my disposal complicated hybrid emotions, Germanic train-car constructions like, say, "the happiness that attends disaster." Or: "the disappointment of sleeping with one's fantasy." I'd like to show how "intimations of mortality brought on by aging family members" connects with "the hatred of mirrors that begins in middle age." I'd like to have a word for "the sadness inspired by failing restaurants as well as for "the excitement of getting a room with a minibar." I've never had the right words to describe my life, and now that I've entered my story, I need them more than ever. I can't just sit back and watch from a distance anymore. From here on in, everything I'll tell you is colored by the subjective experience of being part of events. Here's where my story splits, divides, undergoes meiosis. Already the world feels heavier, now I'm a part of it. I'm talking about bandages and sopped cotton, the smell of mildew in movie theaters, and of all the lousy cats and their stinking litter boxes, of rain on city streets when the dust comes up and the old Italian men take their folding chairs inside. Up until now it hasn't been my world. Not my America. But here we are, at last.'

Favorite Turkish Pick-up Lines

Hey lady, where you from? China? I like the Chinese and Japanese girls. You know why? Because the eyes like this (pulls up corners of his eyes).

Hello lady! Can I harass you?

Hello, excuse me! You have Facebook? No, wait! Just for friends!