http://kolinateng.com

Yesterday was Friday the 13th. And as luck would have it, my Friday-the-13th’s are generally good days, and indeed yesterday was a good day. Why? Well, it was the first day of my 5-day weekend/vacation/getaway. And let me tell ya, there are good things lined up this weekend: I’m going to Vegas!

Okay, so let me start by saying that Vegas seems generally kind of over-the-top and tacky to me. In Ocean’s 11, you don’t see the stumbling drunk people, the seedy strip bars XXX GIRLS GIRLS GIRLS XXX, the people lined up on the side of the streets trying to hand you “censored” “escort” calling cards. And who actually goes to Vegas to get married? I’m painting such a picture that suddenly I’m getting un-excited about my trip, so I’ll stop right there. Let me start over.

I’m going to Vegas! It will be a college apartment-mate reunion—whew, that’s a recipe for disaster, isn’t it? No tagging in Facebook photos, guys. Just kidding; the movie Hangover makes me wary of drinks (or friends that would accidentally roofie your drinks) lest Mike Tyson’s tiger ends up in my bathroom.

Anyway, as most girls know, a trip to Vegas doesn’t really start with Las Vegas, NV itself. It starts with a prior week of I-don’t-have-anything-to-wear, since we work at an engineering firm and not, say, Sephora at the mall. So Linda and I have been shopping around and yesterday, we got our nails did.

I’m still getting around to the point of this blog entry, which is not about, as you might have guessed, Vegas. Yesterday, oh yesterday, to kick off this awesome mini-vacation, Reid and I drove up to Walnut Creek to see the Reduced Shakespeare Company’s performance of The Complete Works of William Shakespeare (abridged) [revised!]. Now, I watched a video of this performance back in high school in the 12th grade. On occasion, I’ve been Googling (how is “Googling” not a word accepted in Wordpress’s spellchecker?) about their tours. Finally, 4 months ago I introduced Reid to some of their work and it just so happened that I found that they were going to perform in the Bay Area for 3 days, and tickets would be sold in a month!

I called the first day that tickets were available and landed us some 6th row seats to the show. Let me tell you: it was possibly the best $45 I have ever spent. Sure, most of the script was verbatim from their taped performance, but it was amazing live. They engaged the audience (with audience participation!) and delivered clever lines and witty puns with incredible comedic timing. The fact that I knew what to expect didn’t matter; I laughed so hard that I cried! I find it hilarious that so many, as I once did, consider Shakespeare to be irrelevant and stuffy. Only some people realize that these Shakespearean plays were written for the common folk and were riddled with slapstick comedy and sexual innuendo. These guys captured the spirit of Shakespeare wholly.

You’ll just have to watch it yourself! This is their Romeo and Juliet. Watch it and try to tell me it’s not hilarious!

Before our show, we went to Va de Vi Bistro and Wine Bar for dinner. I think the restaurant is described as an Asian California fusion tapas bar. Basically, what my mom makes like this, wonderful in taste and familiarity:

…Va de vi interprets into this:

Delicious! Okay, now I’m off to Vegas!

In the fashion of visiting SF over two consecutive weekends, I spent the last two weekends in Berkeley, CA. Now, I had (and have) plenty of friends who attended Cal in the past few years, but I’ve generally avoided the city like the plague in the same way that I’ve avoided San Francisco. It is unlike the suburbs (San Ramon, Fremont, Davis, and now Sunnyvale) in all senses: parking is horrendous, streets feel dingy and cramped, and one-way streets are like one-way tickets to an overdue accident. Only rarely is there some occasion worthwhile enough to venture into Berkeley, like the annual CMAT held at Haas Pavilion.

But I think I’ve finally found a reason, and that reason is the Cheeseboard Collective. Apparently this place makes only vegetarian pizzas, and only one kind of pizza a day.

Cheeseboard’s mushroom, onion, goat cheese, and mozzarella pizza

Now I wish I had more opportunities to live in Berkeley (and S.F.) and experience its unique culture. Sure, Davis has been named one of the friendliest cities in the U.S. and “America’s Best Biking City” and I learned to ride from one end of campus through to the other end with no handlebars (what up?!), but does it have a Cheeseboard Collective? Nope. Zachary’s Pizza? Nope.

Zachary’s mushroom and spinach Chicago-style deep dish pizza, atop Berkeley at Lawrence Hall of Science

Food aside, Berkeley is now awesome also because Reid took me to the John Legend EVOLVER tour concert at the Greek Theater. He had gotten tickets back in June for my birthday :)With the given name “John Stephens”, the singer later adopted the stage name John Legend, so you can only expect a certain level of showmanship and self adulation - like referring to himself in the third person or stepping onto the top of the Yamaha grand piano during his finale. /Cringe. It was a bit over-the-top, and at the end he introduced all his musicians by name and concluded with “…and I am John Legend!”—the crowd swelled with applause and cheers, and admittedly, yes, I did too.

What else can you expect from a man that sings, “You can’t say that I don’t love you, just because I cheat on you”?

It was an unexpectedly nice treat that India.Arie opened the set for John Legend. I actually hadn’t heard of her before but easily recognized her music. Right off the bat you could see the stark contrast between India.Arie and John Legend. She was down-to-earth, casual, and personal, and her back-up singers were curvy women with beautiful, rounded voices. Flashing lights and glamor surrounded John Legend and his backup dancers called “The Tasties”—you can make your assumptions of what they looked like. Regardless, John Legend can sure play that piano and sing those love songs :) Perhaps too many in the audience took the “PDA” song too literally—sometimes it’s better when it’s publicly…we just don’t care, we just don’t care!

We have one week of summer left, but I’m already celebrating the hints of the fall season. It rained yesterday and the everything smells fresh and cool. I’ve got my boots and my black and brown wardrobe ready for cooler days, and I grabbed a Pumpkin Spice Latte from Starbucks today. Yep, it definitely feels like fall. Hip hip hooray!

Things to look forward to:

To celebrate Anthony’s 27th birthday yesterday, we went to the California Academy of Sciences Nightlife event in SF’s Golden Gate Park, catered to a 21+ crowd. Perusing science/animal/environment exhibits with a couple of beers and cocktails in hand is a pretty good combination of “hip” and nerdy, which is exactly how I would describe Anthony, albeit much more of the latter than the former. Now, I had visited the Academy when it first opened last year and spent a Saturday afternoon avoiding kids and tripping over strollers; yesterday, I spent the evening avoiding A-Z-N ricer boys and tripping over drunk wannabe-hipsters. I can’t tell which one is worse.

It’s pretty difficult to see any of the exhibits while navigating your way through so many people; at least with kids you can just punt them out of the way (just half-kidding; chill out). Additionally, mingling with new people isn’t really an option because it’s such a large venue and not designed to facilitate that sort of interaction. So, it’s probably the worst of both worlds, whether you’re trying to meet new people in a bar/club-like setting or trying to see the all the exhibitis. Luckily, I wasn’t trying to do either, so I had a really good time with old friends in an awesome venue.

Although I haven’t made time to read lately, I consider myself a bookworm—typically for fictional literature. Sci-fi, fantasy, historical fiction, drama, suspense, the classics—pretty much anything goes, save romance and horror. But more than anything else, I love the books that I grew up reading. I’m excited and a little conflicted that some of my favorite books are going to have on-screen adaptations soon!

• Where the Wild Things Are - As much as I love this book and how excited I am for this film, I can’t help thinking that I REALLY want to make and wear Max’s costume for Halloween and/or winter pajamas. 

• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs - I kind of wish this wasn’t an animated film. While it seems kind of awesome that I could eat food out of the sky, can you imagine the stench of molding food in the gutters, the terrifying horror of having a GIANT PANCAKE crash down on your roof and slather your windows with butter and syrup? Okay, that last part still sounds like of appetizing. But just imagine the potential of a movie with real actors and realistic scenes!

• Ender’s Game, Orson Scott Card (???)- I am SO STOKED for this movie. Card’s written a few revisions of the script, and if he is heavily involved with the film’s direction, I am sure I will love it. I love stories of child psychology in situations where they are left to fend for themselves, i.e. William Golding’s Lord of the Flies and Koushun Takami’s Battle Royale. Throw in space adventures and a thematic heroic journey a la Aristotle, and I am game.

• The Giver, Lois Lowry (2011?!) - Why hasn’t there been a movie made for this yet?! I can’t get enough of stories of dytopic universes.George Orwell’s 1984, Aldous Huxley’s Brave New World, Kurt Vonnegut’s Harrison Bergeron come immediately to mind. Add child psychology, and again, I’m sold. This would be such an interesting film to direct—specifically using color, music (or lack thereof), and lighting to juxtapose utopian ideals against the flaws reflected in the dystopic society.

Of course, the downside of these adaptations is that I’ve developed my own interpretation of the stories, the settings, and the characters, and very rarely do the films accurately reflect what I think the story should look and feel like. The ability to develop my own interpretation and derive my own conclusions is the reason I enjoy the original stories significantly moreso than their adaptations; regardless, I rarely watch a film before I read the book and thus my own interpretation usually remains unbudged. Plus, seeing someone else’s intepretation often offers a whole new point of view.

Where the Wild Things Are is slated for release on October 16, 2009. That gives me 5 months to get my Halloween costume ready, conveniently in time for the opening night of the movie. SO… who wants to go with and be embarassed to be seen with me? :)

 

---

 Update:

Dude he’s wearing chucks, too. So money you don’t even know it.

It’s no big news that I’m a devout fan of a certain mid-sized Scranton, PA paper company and what must be the most dedicated and/or bored camera crew ever that films the employees through their everyday awkward moments and the hilarity that ensues at Dunder Mifflin.  Last Monday, I was able to see B.J. Novak a.k.a. “Ryan Howard” a.k.a. writer and producer of The Office when he visited Santa Clara University for his stand-up comedy act. Apparently he’s been making some rounds, as he was at Stanford last week, and had quite a few of us in the auditorium! Anyway, he’s a really good comedian with a lot of subtle, witty lines and great timing—exactly my type of humor! 

At one point, Novak went through a stack of cards of pre-meditated/written jokes and one-liners to gauge audience reaction, supposedly for his future routines. He threw some of the “bad” ones away, and one of the girls in my group was able to grab one for me (Thanks Beah & Sandy!). A group of girls bum-rushed Novak at the end of his routine for signatures and pictures. But not I. No, I would never sink to that level of fangirl-dom. 

Or would I?!

Yea, I would. :(

---

I know of only a handful of individuals one individual that hasn’t watched The Office (and he actually DOES work at a mid-sized paper company!), but if you haven’t seen it, I highly recommend it, especially if you like dry, awkward humor and a lot of WTF?! moments. Below are a few of my favorite quotes, mostly from the first 3 seasons!

Dwight Schrute: Whenever I’m about to do something, I think, ‘would an idiot do that?’ And if they would, I do not do that thing. (Ep 3.16)

Michael Scott: A boss’s salary isn’t just about money. It is about perks. It- for example, every year I get a one hundred dollar gas card. Can’t put a price tag on that. (Ep 3.18)

Jim Halpert: Question. What kind of bear is best?
Dwight Schrute: That’s a ridiculous question.
Jim Halpert: False. Black bear.
Dwight Schrute: That’s debatable. There are basically two schools of thought–
Jim Halpert: Fact. Bears eat beets. Bears. Beets. Battlestar Galactica.
Dwight Schrute: Bears do not… What is going on?! What are you doing?! (Ep 3.20)

Kevin [on pizza]: It’s bad. It’s real bad. It’s like eating a hot circle of garbage. (Ep 4.3)

Andy Bernard: Beer me that CD
Jim Halpert: Lord, beer me strength. (Ep 3.20)