Crickets, Geisha, and Chix
After the PCP show, Toro had a huge group of friends along including Tiramesu82 so we had dinner together. I always wanted to try the Panasian restaurant called Typhoon which is located right under the Hump Sushi restaurant (remember gasping fish and still living lobsters?). Typhoon also has its share of fear factor food, and we tried all of them. Above was the winner. Taiwanese style crickets sauteed in garlic and basil. They were smaller than I expected (I was thinking grasshopers). Tasted pretty good though. Kind of like a little chewy piece of chicken with a slightly crunchy coating.
Next was the Manchurian ants sprinkled on shoe string potatoes. Not that good, just tasted like shoe string potatoes with a sour topping. On the right was the dish billed as Thai style white sea worms, which just turned out to be those little white fish with two tiny black dots (the eyes), at one end, which all asians are used to eating already.
After dinner, the group chilled out at the Beverly Peninsula hotel. It's a cute classy place tucked in behind a wall of trees on little Santa Monica across the street from Trader Vic's. The drinks were great, and had great appetizers of duck/morel slider burgers, and tuna/hamachi lollipops. It was nice getting to know some more of Toro's friends. Also, bumped into a couple of UCLA-Santa Monica family med residents who knew Toro's friend. I had actually attended for one of them at Olive View peds ER, so that was a strange coincidence.
The next day, Jober was still seriously out of comission with what hopefully is just a bad cold, so Mixy Toro and I headed to LACMA to check out the scene. My favorite temporary exhibit of the day was of this way cool urban Asian artist from LA called Gajin Fujita. He's an ex-tagger from East LA (from a crew called K-25, not Sotel XIII). He had two pretty large scale pieces there. He layers these large boards with gold leaf, and then gets his friends to tag over them. Over that he superimposes images from modern city life and traditional japanese Ukiyo-E art. Being a huge fan of Ukiyo-E and growing up in Los Angeles as an Asian, I felt that his work really spoke to me. No, I did not grow up as a tagger in East LA, but I thought it was brilliant nonetheless. The painting above is called Red Light.
This work is called Ride or Die. How bad ass is this?!?!? A Samurai warrior in LA Dodger (or LA Crips) blue, wearing a LA dodgers logo on his hat!!! Very LA, very striking and bold. He described himself as a visual arts DJ, taking bits and pieces of different cultures and blending them together to make a totally new artform, and I think that's a really appropriate analysis of his method. It's on display til February, so you should have no problem checking it out yourself if you're in the area.
Another really pleasant surprise was that in the rotating LACMA Ukiyo-E display area, Hiroshige's Nightsnow at Kambara was in rotation. Famous for also being the cover art for the Weezer Pinkerton album, I find this print just beautiful. I think it was also perfect for the pinkerton album, expressing the quiet cold solitude that Rivers was going through during his first stint at Harvard.
The next day Mixy and I caught the movie of Memoirs of a Geisha. I was originally planning to save it to watch with my parents, but our Narnia movie attempt fell through. Unfortunately the movie sucked. It was filmed in a beautiful way, but as many film critics put it, the way the screenwriters interpreted the source, made the story turn out like Mean Girls wearing Kimono. I didn't really feel any emotion for any of the characters, or understand their motivations beyond a superficial level. It was gorgeously shot which I expected from Rob Marshall, but in the end a huge disappointment. It's especially disappointing because the book was so interesting and well written, and that Mixy, Toro, and I had been to Gion earlier in the summer and seen real Geisha walking the street. I think they need to redo the movie, rename it Sayuri for the American release, and just do better justice to a great book. On a side note, haven't seen Gong Li in much recently, I thought she'd be looking older by now, but in the film anyway she looks pretty good still. Zhang Ziyi (don't try to change the order of your name, you sellout) is pretty overrated in the looks department, although most of her earlier acting is pretty good.
Later that night Mixy and I headed to the Spaceland to check out a couple pop punk bands that we've been listening to for more than a decade now. First up was the Groovie Ghoulies. They put on a consistently fun show with simple pop punk songs and a Munsters-like theme. Not really breaking much new ground though. Also enjoyed talking a bit with Kim Shattuck from the Muffs that night. Hung out as usual with Kristen (Kim's sister), and her husband Greg. I see them so much at all the Muffs and other various punk shows, that it's been good getting to know them and having someone to hang with in between bands. Bagel made a brief appearance, but left for another show that night, two songs into the Ghoulies.
The band I was actually there to see was Chixdiggit from Vancouver. They are one of the few pop punk bands in my opinion that have gotten better with time. Unfortunately thought I still love most of the pop punk bands I started listening to in college, most of them have gone down a gradual musical decline. Greenday is a big exception, and Chixdiggit is another. If you are interested, their last two albums "From Scene to Shining Scene", and "Pnk Razors" were excellent. I haven't seen them in like seven years, so I was really psyched. They always put on a pretty funny and smart alecky show. The show rocked, was real fun, the only downer was that Mixygirl "lost" the shirt I bought her. I'm doing a string of three shifts these days, and the rest of the month looks pretty busy, but hopefully I will have more fun stuff to post about.
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