A blog post from my multiply site

Hey there! I'm trying something new and have signed up for a multiply site. I know another site? But maybe here I can find something else about myself... somehow.

paalam.

i love metaphors

i just watched american idol extra where they interviewed the winner of ai... which just about the most because i have my own reasons for not watching it, aside from not feeling like wanting to jump on bandwagons and for feeling like the show is just capitalizing on art with coca-cola and ford cars.

but i was watching this cuz my sister likes the show and they interviewed david cook and it's just refreshing because of what he said, he joined this show for the right reason - to make a living at something he loves to do. honest answer and much respect!

well, gotta get back to more vid stuff. needed respite from writing, but will be back at it tomorrow :)

:(

no $$ no gas no going anywhere.

i filled up my tank yesterday. $45. hope that lasts me a week.

irritation list

so i was on manang's blog, which i haven't read in forever, when i noticed one of her posts was about irritations. even though i'm at peace now, i'll take a stab at turning on my stink eye. if you want to see her list. and yeah, some of my irritations are hers too... ma-arts!

1. when a cellphone goes off during a performance. dude, turn it off! you're there to have a good time and to shut out the world and tune in to the performance. respect the art man!

2. people who cut in line. nothing irritates me more, especially like when you're in line for a ride or something, and A WHOLE GROUP cuts in line where one or two people are the place holders. UGH! it irritated me when me and a friend had to do that for our other late ass friends when we went to see a certain comedian's concert a long time ago. or that we have to reserve like 15 seats for a full show! wtf? so used!

3. when someone at the market starts a long ass conversation with the checkout person and there's hella people in line! what's up with that? HELLO! there's like a line here and your telling the check out person the story of how your cat's tearing up your couch? oh, no! you are not digging in your big ass bag for loose change too! oh hell no!

4. when you're having a conversation with a person and their favorite word is I. that irritates me. when i feel like i'm doing that, it irritates the hell out of me. there's so much more to life than you... or me. be humble or start using the plural of what you did so that it becomes we... or us. i'm no one. meaning that you don't have to impress me for me to like you. of course, i is a part of english, but use it when necessary, like i'm drowning! that'd would be an appropriate time to use i.

5. when someone doesn't pay their share of a bill at a restaurant. grrrr... nothing chaps my hide more than this. dammit, you ordered the food you sure as hell better pay for it! why the hell do we have to pay for your food?! just fess up and say that that you're short and we'll get your back, just don't say, uhh... who didn't pay? uhhh... i threw in my share... bitch, then when are the times we're short on the bill, it's only when you're with us? bastard!

6. when someone parks in two spaces! who died and made you mayor of parkingville? you and your sorry ass ford festiva with the 22 inch wheels ain't special enough to take over two parking spaces. fuck that, my next car's going to be a tow truck. next time i see your ass taking up two spaces, i'm hitching your ride and parking it in the pacific ocean!

7. preface: i love my mom. irritation: when she tells me to do something at the last minute. why? oh, can you take me to the market. oh by the way, wear something nice, because we're going to a party at the fil-am club and you need to sing a tagalog song... oh yeah, bring the minus one version because they don't have it there? wha? I thought you just needed a ride to Safeway? always like that.

let me end it there. hehe. i was all into peace and being with one with the world, and i'm dropping a whole bunch of f and s bombs in the post :) i'm human.

peace be with you. hanggang sa muli!

ps... sorry, i'm thinking of more things...

8. people who are religiously hypocritical! i hate it when people get on their moral and religious high ground and say how much they love God and that He is their everything, but they do the exact opposite of the Lord's teachings. i've been open about where i stand on my own views and believe me, i'm so not in position to be a "jesus freak" (a real definition) but i'd rather have actions speak louder than words. i wonder if it's a ramification of colonialism that sometimes some people think that since they love God and His Son and worship His name every Sunday that they are automatically forgiven for anything they may say or do against anyone who doesn't share their love. that's stupid.

9. skin-whitening products. why? i just don't understand these products that proliferate the Philippine market. it's such a psychological fucked up thing to do to people and their psyche to make them think that they need to be another color to be beautiful, smart, noticed... whatever. i just don't get it and sad. You are made to be you...

the list grows

10. people who don't say thank you when you open the door for them. true, they didn't ask for the door to be open for them, but it's out of courtesy and a little courtesy in return won't kill ya. i'm armed with a "you're welcome" in the ready, but with no sign of gratitude, i'll be more than happy to turn that reply into a rock aimed at your head. 2 words. that's all.

interesting article

Goodbye yellowface, hello whiteout?
Sandip Roy, Special to The Chronicle
Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Paul Muni and Luise Rainer made a very unlikely Chinese peasant couple in "The Good Earth." But that was 1937 Hollywood. Today, it's hard to imagine, say, Charlize Theron wearing yellowface. Yet there's a different problem. In "21," based on an MIT professor teaching his students to beat the odds in Las Vegas casinos, Jim Sturgess ("Across the Universe") is star student Ben Campbell. The real-life Campbell was an Asian American named Jeff Ma.

Goodbye yellowface, hello whiteout?
Phil Lee, president of Media Action Network for Asian Americans, thinks so. As soon as word got around of the switcheroo, MANAA contacted Sony. But the group says it was rebuffed. Asian hits like "The Ring" and "Infernal Affairs" are routinely Americanized. "But '21' was based on a true story involving a number of Asian Americans," says Lee by phone. "It was a lost opportunity, especially given the lack of strong Asian roles."

More of the same?
For MANAA, it was a sense of deja vu. In the 1970s, pioneering Korean journalist K.W. Lee wrote more than 120 articles that helped free a young Korean American wrongly accused of a gangland murder. That story inspired the 1989 movie "True Believer." But who got to play the heroic crusader? James Woods.

"While '21' is inspired by a true story, the film is fictionalized," stresses Steve Elzer, Sony's senior vice president for media relations. He points out that there are two Asian Americans in the five-member ensemble. "They are prominently featured in the motion picture and they also appear in the trailers, on the posters, billboards," Elzer says in an e-mail. He adds that as a consultant to "21," Ma himself "has vigorously supported the producers' casting choices."

Not everyone buys the colorblind "it's about the best actor for the role" argument. "Are you kidding me? A movie about math, MIT and gambling, and the lead was made white? Have you ever seen the pai gow tables in Vegas?" exclaims Manish on the blog Ultrabrown. "... You can just imagine the studio meeting: 'Asian won't sell. If you want the movie made, we have to re-cast the leads.' "

"This is pretty outrageous, and just as questionable as having Brian Dennehy play Kublai Khan in (Hallmark's) recent 'Marco Polo' movie," writes Alvin on the Hypen Magazine blog.

A two-way street?
But shouldn't colorblindness cut both ways? If Asian Americans want to play Hamlet (Joan Chen's role in "Twin Peaks" was written for an Italian), shouldn't Sturgess have a shot at "21"?

"There are a limited number of Asian roles and plenty of hungry actors," says Arthur Dong, director of the new documentary "Hollywood Chinese." "When a non-Asian gets an Asian role, it's a slap in the face." And when Nicolas Cage parodies Fu Manchu in "Grindhouse" in 2007, it stings even more. "Sure it's satire, that's the excuse," says Dong. "But would anyone dare do that with Amos and Andy?"

Stephen Gong, executive director of the Center for Asian American Media, says stories like "21" don't really surprise him. "Films are constructed to make money," Gong says by phone. "I'm sure the producers were more interested in making a film about cheating Las Vegas rather than the subtleties of the Asian American experience."

But where does that leave Asian American actors?
"I'm working, but not much in Hollywood," says Chen, though she sees more roles around than when she started 25 years ago. Then she was offered plenty of "cartoonish chop-chop action movies." "I turned those down," Chen says by phone. "But I regret it a little now. I thought they were mindless, but they were not meant to be serious. I was being too serious."

Something to prove
"As an ethnic actor, you have to work a million times harder than anyone else just to get your foot in the door," says Kal Penn in a phone conversation. Penn balked at playing a character named Taj Mahal in "National Lampoon's Van Wilder." He vividly remembers how schoolmates in New Jersey avoided him at lunch after seeing Indians wolfing monkey brains in "Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom." But a friend advised him to find a dozen cliched scenes he just couldn't stomach and suggest alternatives instead of rejecting National Lampoon. That film eventually helped him land "Harold & Kumar" and "The Namesake."

In 2008, Sony can say that if there were an Asian American actor with the box-office buzz of Sturgess, Ben Campbell could have stayed Asian. That sounds like the same argument as when Rainer was chosen over Anna May Wong for "The Good Earth."

Dong says it's possible that 1930s Asian American stars like Wong didn't yet have the dramatic chops for a role like "The Good Earth." "But you can argue that she was never given the chance to nurture that talent," he says. "It's a classic catch-22." After all, says Center for Asian American Media's Gong, "I'm sure John Cho could have done '21' in his sleep."

Sidelined in Hollywood, many Asian American actors are eyeing the global market. Bay Area native Daniel Wu is an A-lister in Hong Kong. "He could be the next Jackie Chan," Gong says. "He can speak Mandarin, Cantonese, knows martial arts." And he doesn't have to worry about an accent.

Wu isn't alone. Hawaii native Maggie Q made it in Hong Kong before starring in "Live Free or Die Hard." Lee-Hom Wan of "Lust Caution" was born in Rochester, N.Y.

Asian American actors, once the stepchildren of both Hollywood and Asia, are becoming "bankable" for American productions by pursuing a career in Asia first, writes the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival's Taro Goto. Others like B.D. Wong, Sandra Oh, Vic Chao are popping up regularly on television.

Variety
"It's not just about positive roles, it's about more variety," says Lee of the Media Action Network for Asian Americans. That's where he feels "21" missed the boat. But Dong says he worries more about films like "Juno" than "21." In that indie hit, an Asian is shown picketing an abortion clinic. "She has an accent, I think she's the only Asian in the film, and as I watched it, I thought, 'When that film shows in the Midwest, I'd hate to be the only Asian student in the auditorium,' " says Dong. "That really perpetuates the otherness of Asians. You make sure they are still seen as outsiders."

Yun lang...

yun lang.

...

you ever notice that sometimes the biggest or most profound statements that someone or something can make is the word left unspoken?

the end of an amazing weekend

magandang gabi.

this amazing weekend couldn't have ended any better. i was in total awe of watching the incomparable Grace Nono. i honestly didn't know what to expect and the best experiences are such and this was no different. grace nono is a singer from the philippines who sings chants, meditations, and songs for the soul, ang diwa. i was talking about this with a friend on our bart ride home, but i was telling him that while listening to her voice i felt an immediate closeness to my lineage of the country where my parents, my grandparents, my ancestors came from. one of the songs was a chant from bauan, batangas. my father's city. of course i had goose bumps, but just an amazing amount of pride and oneness somehow. and my feelings were shared by a lot of the audience members of the filled bayanihan center in the soma of the city. "before listening to your voice, i felt so lost, but hearing you, i don't feel as alone anymore." "your singing is universal. i can feel it in the fibers of my being" these were some of the words at the intermission/talk-back session.

there were a lot of different themes discussed or at least brought up during this 2 hour concert. themes of de-colonialization, prayer, thanks to the creator, ofws, re(membering), indigenous cultures, were some of the things brought up.

growing up the way i did and being surrounded by capitalism and living under a mountain of bills and responsibilities, i've really forgotten about what's real and what's debilitating to life. living paycheck to paycheck is such a contradictory belief of what living is supposed to be... but is that reality. fuck yeah, if you got no money to pay off bills! but what i've learned from this show, was that love for everyone and thanks to the creator, the earth, and your ancestors is what is eternal. so a lot of this spiritual connectedness was a major feeling of this crowd. what sucks about living the life i've always thought of, is that part of my brain was calling this stuff... stuff. silly. waste of time. everything my dad would say. everything that american culture would say. everything i'm trying to fight.

for more information, visit her site, http://www.gracenono.com/ you can also hear her music by entering her name in imeem.

bitoy would've loved to be there. and in a way, i'd like to think that he was :)

paalam.

Kularts

this is part 2 of my artistic adventures in the city by the bay. day 2 consisted of going to 2 programs put together by Kularts - the nation's premier presenter of contemporary and tribal Pilipino art (http://www.kularts.org). the two programs were 3rd ANNUAL BRONZE LIT and POMO 2008.

Bronze Lit
this program featured writing by some amazing artists who wrote around the theme of healing. i think what i came away the most with was the content of what was written, stories that were so personal to the writer that the words felt real. that the combination of consonants and vowels spoken from the written page had a heart, memory, and soul within its meaning. recently, i have been constricted in a dramatist world of creating character and conflict. analyze and digging deeper into what makes the characters conflict with each other. what i witnessed and heard went beyond this technical aspect of where i ultimately want to go with my pieces. i remember one day i wrote down what kind of writer i wanted to be. the answer was to share the human condition. somehow, i lost my way and my focus lasered into wanting to be immortal. i wanted my writing to last beyond me. and the only way i thought i could do that was to write for my audience. constantly asking myself, what will make them laugh, what will make them like the character, what will make them remember the play long after the last curtain call. i never gave MYSELF a thought. what would make me happy? what kind of story would do it for me... that it that says i can be proud to say that i wrote it for me. granted, i've subconsciously taken that step with my latest play THE GIFT. i wrote it for me. there's still A LOT of work to do to tighten up the character and plot, but it will get there. but i just have to keep remembering that i'm writing for me and not the audience.

and one way to do this is by bringing what i learned from bronze lit - to make a piece written for me is to expose me. scary visual? try taking that visual and stripping myself onto a written page. really think about that. now what's scarier? being stripped to reveal skin or stripped naked to reveal your inner secrets, thoughts, fears... soul. Sean San Jose, Aimee Suzara, Jason Magabo Perez, and Oscar Penaranda had done that with what was presented for a packed room at the YBCA Artist's Lounge. for the first time in a while, i stopped thinking about their stories broken down into characters, intentions, and throughline... i just listened to their stories - their soul.

POMO 2008
The Post Modern American Pilipino Performance Project's artists just furthered my belief that the source of creation is beyond technique and is really in what lies within.

THE FIDES ENRIQUEZ DANCE COLLECTIVE
I was excited to see this collective because Lori Abucayan was singing with them :) really cool. and as always, her family is always there to support her. and in general, they're a really nice and supportive family. it's just nice to see that when Leejay has a gig or if Lori has something going on, it's nice to see a family unit together. something i wish i had. but inspiring nonetheless. uh... back to the show. i miss seeing dance. i definitely don't do enough of it as i mostly watch theater, film, and music. so, it was really great to see contemporary dance with amazing filipino inspired music by florante aguilar.

KULINTRONICA
I was blown away by the fusion of beats, octovina, ukele, electic guitar, and kulintangs all put together live by Ron Quesada. beautiful melodies combined with the the tones of the kulintang keeps pushing music further while still respecting the artform. take a listen: http://www.myspace.com/kulintronica i'll definitely be on the lookout for more of his work, which happily can be found on the PAGBABALIK CD which features his music for Aimee Suzara's play, PAGBABLIK. Please come out and support the CD release on June 21st at 8pm at the Manilatown Heritage Center at the I-Hotel. more info can be found on Aimee's site: http://www.aimeesuzara.net/

IRENE FAYE DULLER presents
How to Skywalk with Alitaptap
Great theater piece with very talented actors and dancing... (from the kularts site) a boundless theatrical expression of ancestral home-coming and(mis)communication. This multi-styled suite of awkward comedy reminds us that coming home isn't meant to be romantic most times. The piece is an earth-toned tapestry of performance lit, movement, and sound, where romantic neo-tribal fantasies clash with the realities of the homeland. much props to joedobo! perfect timing and delivery. now i'm all intimidated by him! this was inspiring because the words were sometimes written as a poem, but the acting of the words was very "real".

BROTHER'S KEEPER
4 guys trading filipino play on word jokes e.g. use ... in a sentence. but in between "jokes" lies the bridge to each of their search for their own identity in this time, in this space for who they are as filipino men. jokes strung with spoken work with movement and escrima defines hip-hop theater for the new generation of filipino art. i've been fortunate to work with a couple of them, and expect nothing more from me then to be inspired and to bring my own voice to complement theirs. much props to Gregory Manalo, Jason Mateo, Jay-Ar Isagani Pugao, Jay Jasper Pugao under the direction of Marc Bamuthi Joseph.

paalam!

INSPIRED

magandang umaga!

the last two days have been an amazing! just filled with lessons. lessons about the art of creating shadow theater, story telling, and kulintang electronic music fusion.

Friday, May 16
went to the mission cultural center in the mission to watch an open rehearsal of Ghosts of the River. Here's a short synopsis:

A new shadow theatre work about the lives on the both sides of the US/Mexico Border, directed by Larry Reed with an original script by Octavio Solis, Art Direction by Favianna Rodriguez, and shadow design by I Made Moja

since this was only a rehearsal of a work in progress, only 2 of the 6 stories has been done so far. i think it's the most awesomest thing for them to allow an audience to check this out. plus, i think it was meant to stir up some buzz... which i guess i'm trying to do with this post! anyways, the theater was packed for this first open rehearsal. oh, before i forget, THANK YOU LORNA for the comp tix and for letting me know about this. the first story combined video and "human" shadow puppets. the story was about a ghost of an older woman who had been beaten and left in the el paso desert between the us and mexican border. the woman was seeking revenge for her death, but meet a couple of younger muchachos whom she tells her tale to. my favorite effects where of the narrator changing sides of the shadow, and the transformation of the old to young woman in shadows. incredible. then there was the story of the border patrol woman who befriends a young kid who was a cayote, a person who arranges for people to cross the border.

the best part of the evening was the chance for the audience to go behind the big paper screen to watch them perform the second story again. it was so cool to see how the story was told by the effort of the whole team: there were the narrators/actors, the AWESOMEST lighting person, and a series of puppeteers and scene changers. just seeing how some of the effects they used kinda pulled the curtain of a magic act. i so want to do something like this one day.

what happened today was so cool too! but i'll talk about that after some shut eye. had a long day :)

paalam!

ang balita ko

as you can see from the title, i've been teaching myself a new language. Filipino, or to be more exact, the Tagalog dialect. i'm using a lot of different resources to learn and i'm getting a little better. i guess it's all the lessons that i've learned from previous stopping and starting sessions of learning that i've developed a game-plan for achieving this goal. and having a solid deadline to learn as much as i can helps - november 2008. when i return back to the homeland :)

so, i'm using internet sites, dictionaries (online at aklat), using tatlong podcasts, watching tfc and gma, and have even started another blog where i post up new words and just somewhere i could practice writing Tagalog, despite being still bad right now. secret url though. extra bonus points if you can find it! oh, i also have a "pen-pal", who hasn't written back in a couple of days! but i'm not counting... 4 :(

but yeah... i've also been busy with acting class. i'm learning SO MUCH not only about acting, but about writing and directing, and about myself as a person as well as a performer. i've acted before, and have taken class, but the facilitator of this workshop put on by Bindlestiff, Allan Manalo, is really making me, and everyone else, work at just getting better. I have such a long way to go, but i at least know where and what it feels like when i get there. it's the point when you get totally lost in a character. when you're on stage and you forget that you're there. this type of experience is followed by the feeling of not knowing where you are after an act... really trippy. and let me say that this is just me. i don't know how other's reach this place, but for me, i know when i come out of it and wonder where i went. i've openly talked about the time when i sang a song for a production i was in, and i was so into the character and, well the history behind the song, that to this day, i don't even remember being on stage performing it. it's like a dream. there was also another time when i was on stage talking to someone, and it just felt like the most natural thing. i became the character and i no longer was speaking memorized lines, i was saying stuff that felt natural and real, like it was the first time i was speaking them. i guess it's like a drug, not that i have ever taken any, truth - to scared to do so - but it's that magical feeling that sometimes feels so fleeting that i want that back. just to get lost in a character/performance that you know that it's you who did it, but don't really remember that you did it. a total out-of-body-experience i guess you can say.

what else, i've been thinking about (re)working some of my written pieces. as i said "thinking" about because i'm just not motivated right now. i don't know why. oh, my play, the gift, will be produced and on stage in late july, early august. i'm stoked that i have a director in place, who'll do awesome with it and we have both agreed that work needs to be done to the script to make it KICK ASS!!! so, i've been working on fleshing out the main character and the supporting characters to make the scene pop. it's only 10 minutes long, but i don't want it any longer! my challenge is to keep it that short, have conflict, and have resolution, yet have a cliff-hanger. not giving too much away, the story line is kinda from my FAVORITE TV show which will hopefully come back to tv soon!!!! but not soon enough! YATA!!! but as i said above, the lessons that i learned from the acting workshop is helping flesh out the characters for this play.

i haven't been up to Sac for a long time it feels. in a way, i kinda need a getaway from there, because in some retrospect, it reminds me of past failures. maybe that's why i disappeared for many years after '95. i don't plan on disappearing again for that long a period. it's still considered my second home. first being marina. second, 916. it's wierd to not list where i'm currently at on that list, but something is telling me that this whole time here is just a stop. i got ideas of where's my next stop going to be, but can't talk about that yet.

busy next couple of days... tonight, gonna watch a play that one of the co-writers for the debut is in; tomorrow, comedy with awesome pinoy comedians; saturday, either bronze lit or seeing some friends do stand-up in jtown for the asian heritage street fair; and sunday, watching grace nono @ bayanihan! whew! hope it won't be too hot!

paalam!

p.s. Congratulations to the newly engaged couple!!! (like they'll read this, but congrats nonetheless)

Trying the Acting thing

So I did my monologue today from Mike's play. I should've told him first, but I needed to know if I was really going to do that. It went... okay. My problem was that I didn't feel as relaxed as I wanted to. There were parts when I wanted to bring the character of Chris down for a particular beat, but it felt like my heart was going to pop out of my chest because it was beating so fast. I tried to use the technique of looking at other people during my monologue to calm my nerves, but it just didn't take. I was still nervous.

After the monologue, I went through an exercise with Allan, that kinda helped. I understand where he was going now, a couple of hours later, but then, i didn't have a clue. I was really looking at the exercise as an improve lesson. And into my overanalytical head, I just kept thinking about "how the hell am I going to make a story out of this situation?" Honestly, I was thinking as a writer. I'm not a very good one yet, but damnit I'm trying! The exercise was to pretend that I was taking a shower when some Awesome mormons knocked on the door. I answer the door and they were going to barge in. Then their boss came in. Then a vacuum sales man... then his wife... then the Landlord... then the pizza delivery person... and then the landlord's lover! holy crap! Of course, I got out of it the only way my crazy ass thought how, I made it a party!

But no matter what I did, I kept thinking about other ways to redo my audition piece. What I did get out of it though was... well, aside from finding the "correct" beats, was picking what is the character going through at the time. I need to work on my miming skills, Acting 101 with Toni at Sac State! I'm trying to remember those exercises :) If anything, what I wound up doing during my little story, was that I made a connection with my audience. I really really tried to establish eye-contact with each of them to tell this guy's story. My emphasized beats were probably in the wrong places, but I was zoning in getting my goal of connecting and telling this story to them. I'm glad that most of them appreciated that.

Need to write

I feel my self actually feeling ill because I haven't written in a while. It's a thirst that really needs to be tended to. I can't explain it really. The quote, "If you wake up and there's nothing else you can do but write. Then you're a writer." keeps playing over and over in my head. I know that this is from Sister Act II, but it's real. But this feeling is just so strong. Also one of my beliefs is that if I write 100 pieces... only 1 will be something that I like, and hopefully others will like.

I've pretty much conceded that I'm not the best producer or anything cuz I couldn't even get my play done, which is still a very sore subject, that i don't want to confront... whoa! no, i do want to confront it. i need to confront it. i wanted to have my play done, but it didn't happen. so many things felt like it didn't want to happen. just a feeling, but all those obstacles were meant to be, and i was honestly trying to ignore them. but ignoring them just made things worse for me.

but maybe what it made realize was that maybe i'm just supposed to be a writer. actually, that's what i want more than anything. to be a writer.

it's 1:39am and i don't know where i'm going with this, but i do know where i am going... and the only way to get there is to write!

Finally learning

forgive me for not writing in here for what really seems for ever! but i've gotten caught up in rediscovering the wonderful world of acting. i'm taking a workshop with bindlestiff and i'm learning and rediscovering a lot of the the things i've learned from acting classes at Sac State and a lot that I've learned just from being on stage in general. this is gonna be a short entry, because i needed to get this story out of the way. so last night in class, we were broken up into 2 groups. one as the audience, the other as a group of liars. as part of the group of liars, there is one of us who's telling the truth and the audience was to guess who's real story it was. i was lucky enough to convince the others of my story of tripping over a step at a hotel in Baguio.

story: on vacation to the philippines, i went with my cousins and their friends to Baguio. The whole trip, they made fun of me because I wasn't married yet, especially my cousin Dayo. Anyways, he was trying to hook me up with the front desk girl at the hotel that we were staying at. The next day when we were going to check out Mine's View, as we were going down some steps at the hotel he saw the girl at the front desk and started teasing me again, until he tripped over a step. I hecka laughed at him because that was hella Karma. And as I'm laughing at him, I tripped over the same step. I looked up and saw the cutey at the front-desk laugh at me too. Hella moded. I never got her name either.

so i lied! that's good right? no. the instructor, allan manalo, knew that i was making it up because as he put it, my story was too cute. he knew that i'm a playwright and that my story was wrapped up too well with a beginning, middle, and end. daymn him! daymn me for thinking up this story on the spot. at one point, i was happy that my acting skills convinced a whole group of SIX people to believe my story, but at the same time, i was in a way, more happy to know that a person recognizes that i'm a storyteller. that i knew the structure of a story and as a writer was recognized as such. that was cool! i didn't convince him, but i thought i told a good believable story.