i'm moving!!!!

i'm pleased to announce my blog is moving to tumblr land starting today (it's the same blogosphere where my bff's special things web log currently resides!! she and i are gonna be living together again, sort of!)

i'm also changing the name of the blog just cus "illuminating strangenesses" is a mouthful and there are so many s's in strangenesses and it kind of bothers me to say it. kind of like how i hate saying words like crisps and breasts. they're like sound effects, not words.

but anyway please come visit me at pizzadanceparty.tumblr.com

goodbye blogspot thank u for being a good listener

yupdate from euro!!!!

great news, im alive and well! despite some major setbacks (robbery, airline strikes, ashcloud fuckery, constipation, etc.) im still in high spirits because i get to go home in 3 days. yes! plus im in berlin and i identify and feel something special towards this city the most. its a great place to be. and to think, i was going to cancel this last bit of the trip when british airways decided to ruin my 25th birthday. (i hate them and i will never fly with them again.) but anyway!

i lost my phone and all the pics i had taken so here are some quick thoughts on my journey so far. you will just have to take my word for it:

- lisbon, in a word, is unremarkable. not in a bad way but not in a good way either. the main attraction is an ugly elevator tower no joke. also the people here act as though theyve never seen an asian person before and ive never gotten so many rude comments and stares. i mean, not completely in a racist way but also in a racist way. lisbon does however have the most slammin weekends in the bairro alto district. crazy shit over there!

- barcelona is where my stuff got stolen. i hate it there and im never going back again!!!!!! their food also sucks

- paris is exactly how i imagined it would be but better. on my last night, we smoked a little, conversed about playwrights and artists and novelists, and watched Charade, the cary grant/audrey hepburn movie set in paris while we sipped tea. it was too perfect. i wish i had a little more time in paris. the desserts were bitchin. the french computer keyboards were not.

- there was a huge trashmen strike happening when we arrived to amsterdam so unfortunately the entire city was covered in garbage. huge mounds of heaping hot refuse covered every corner and it was really disgusting. we did pass through an amazing book fair at one point (the books were not exactly cheap but the fair offered extensive collections in every genre imaginable) and i picked up an old print of The Thurber Carnival which im obsessed with!!!!! i was so happy i felt like poopin my pants. i still do

- euros are currently around 1.2 to a dollar. pounds are around 1.4 to a dollar. i dont know why they insist on using 1 or 2 pound/euro coins. they are so annoying and heavy! also most things cost in increments of five so i also dont get why 1 pence and 2 pence coins exist.

- london!! so chill. except the part where so many people get knifed in the city. its difficult to get guns in london (maybe in all of uk?) and even the police dont carry guns. which is why people are always getting stabbed. my friend was tellin me that this one guy got killed by broken beer bottles from the sidewalk. not meant to bring anyone down, just something i learned that i thought was interesting. in sartorial news, the girls in london all basically wear the same thing: body-con micro minis (verrrrrry short skirts just covering their tooties) with black tights and black boots with some tight top with a denim vest and a twisted silk scarf tied around their head a la amy winehouse. its not a good look ladies! yer butts are hanging out

- big american movies overseas are the back-up plan (the j.lo flick) and date night (the carrel-fey vehicle). in all the countries besides the UK, the movies are called Plan B and crazy night!!! (or el noche loca!)

alrighty thats all for now. sorry about the grammatical errors and stuff im on a weird english pseudo-QWERTY arabic computer right now. see you in a few nights and days!!!!!

eve

It's after 5AM and I'm finally packed for Europe! You know this awful feeling you get when yir brain says ur gonna get screwed. But then the other part is like, don't be retarded u don't wanna bring all that heavy stuff and plus i thought u wanted to shop n stuff. SO okay brain #2, u win and I'm only bringing a pair of jeans, three tees, a sweatshirt, leggings, a fleece vest, and 17 pairs of underwear. That way i leave some room in my backpack for new clothes i plan on thrifting n splurging. I mean, thats the plan. let's hope I can afford some nice things! (pray for me. I literally have nothin to wear/pack. not tru, I just wanna shop a lot)

n U kno that feelin u get when ur so exhausted ur eyes start doing that fireball thing and the voices in ur head become extra chatty? I might just be excited but also i'm sleepy as fuck. Pray for me i have to get up in 3 hrs for a full day of work before i can actually declare vacay. n the sun is rising right now! BYE

It is what it is

As they say

St. Jimmy

We saw American Idiot on Broadway and it was a lot of fun!! I didn't cry like a baby like I did at Aida and Hair, but still, there were some things that made the back of my throat tingly.

Like when the song "The Last Night On Earth" was performed. It's so pretty especially with all those smooth Broadway voices. I didn't know what the song was called for a few days so I kept calling it "The Heroin Song" because it's at the scene where Johnny and Whatsername shoot up before "doing it."

That part is a little awkward. The sharing of needles is romanticized and things get hot when the young lovers/junkies entangle themselves in a very long rubber band (you know, the kind used to shoot up heroin into your arm). I mean, it gets really sexy.

This is maybe my fav song from the show so far. It makes me melt every time. I can't find the Broadway recording online so I'll upload the Green Day version for now. It's sort of the same. SORT OF. Come over and I'll play the Broadway version for you on iTunes, or I'll just sing it for you in person.

great weekend. sad it's over.

oh MY Danny boy

I miss Daniel. Daniel is my friend from the Indian dosa restaurant that I used to work at. He is so funny and in high spirits all the time, even though he has a really stressful job. He's one of the main cooks. He is barely 5' tall, mischievous, and has an incredibly intelligent sense of humor for someone not from this country. Daniel is originally from Mexico but the point is, I think he's one of the best dosa makers ever. Even the Indian customers that used to come in would be like, wow these are fuckin amazing dosas and I'm from India, I would know! And then I'd be like, Sweet, I'll tell our Mexican cook that he's totally bitchin in the kitchen. But seriously, our Mexican pals are the best cooks running the city. It's not just Daniel, but even when I worked at a Korean restaurant for a hot second, the Mexican cooks there were nailing the Korean cuisine also. They're in every type of kitchen, mastering everything from Asian to Italian to French, blah blah you get the point. 

Anyway, here's my wishful thinking: I hope that years down the road, Daniel will open his very own dosa restaurant and have it blow everyone out of the water because it's so fucking delish and everyone will think, Woah this is so nuts he's not even Indian he's Mexican. But actually, that would totally make sense, and also it would rule so hard.

and other observations

my friend posted a link to this poem on his fb a few days ago. and i love this so much!

in high school, my english class had a really comprehensive poetry curriculum. we even had a class trip to the boring ass Dodge poetry festival at waterloo village in bumblefuck nj. And it sucked cuz analyzing poems was boring and i just didn't get it!!!! i couldn't even pretend that Beat poets were interesting because i didn't like reading their stuff. why were they so long!! 

but the poem above is great. i can appreciate these types of poems a lot more, only cus i can read it and not rip my hair out and still have a life. nowadays when people talk about poetry i pretend to know a lot just because i had to learn so much about it my senior yr, but secretly i hated a lot of it. I always thought the best part about a poem was its title. poems always have slammin titles. here, i'm gonna pretend like i'm well-versed in poetry now just arbitrarily spewing out a few things I know, but actually i barely know much at all: A Rabbit as King of the Ghosts (wallace stevens), Prufrock and The Wasteland (both by TS eliot), dying is fine)but Death (ee cummings), Having a Coke with You (frank o'hara) and The Tyger (william blake).  wowee, those are some slammin titles, right (as they should be, otherwise i would never have tried to read them at all)

anyway here's the other published poem by michael robbins from new yorker a few years ago. why do i think he is so cool? is it only because my friend thinks he is so cool? am i super fake? anyway

okay now im done talking about this. u know i'm all eeeeee about? super excited about the movie Howl to come out. james franco yay

BIG WEEK

rainbow feelings

some schmoke in its eye

The music teacher taught us this song called "What Have They Done To The Rain?" back in elementary school and I remember being so afraid of acid rain* that I refused to drink tap water, eat fish, stand out in the rain, et cetera. Not going into specifics, it took me a very very long time to get over the fear. Thinking back on it now, and re-tapping into my darkest childhood fears, I wonder if they can make the stuff they teach in elementary school any less scary. 

*Initially the song, originally by Malvina Reynolds and covered countlessly, was a political song campaigning against aboveground nuclear testing and not so much about acid rain (although the theme applies, and was what we were taught about back in school.)

Just a little boy standing in the rain, 
The gentle rain that falls for years. 
And the grass is gone,
The boy disappears, 
And rain keeps falling like helpless tears, 
And what have they done to the rain?

HEY GANG, IT'S FRIDAY!

i stole this pic from EJ it makes me lol

180s

If I got the story correctly, there was this guy at MTV whose sole job was to control the company-owned digital billboard in Times Square. I've never met him but lots of people know who he is because he's been doing that for like almost 20 years. But he recently left to dedicate his full time to his little ice cream company in Long Island that's starting to take off! And I think that's so amazing! I love when discoveries and secret passions like that emerge, seemingly out of nowhere.

The same thing happened when I was an intern at a "hip" "downtown" "fashion" magazine. The receptionist quit suddenly to become a zoologist. Who knew she was even that into animals?

Anyway, point is, here's a thing about getting older: Things that people used to characterize you with in high school are drastically different than the things people characterize you with in college, and beyond that, in the workforce and other realms of reality. Rightfully so. But when in your life did you feel at your truest self? When would others say was your truest self?

Sometimes I hear my mom saying she's going to shave her head and turn into a monk and live in a temple in the mountains. I don't know if she's joking or not. It usually stems from her being frustrated with her grays and wanting to get rid of her hair completely as to not worry about it anymore....so maybe it is a joke (but she's also crazy). Either way, she's someone who has a plan of action still untapped.

One less month

I'm turning 25 years old soon and I'm not looking forward to it! And I was thinking about it.....the only reason why I'm dreading becoming a year older is because I feel very little sense of self-accomplishment. I would love to be able to say I've accomplished xyz by the time I turn 25 years old, or be acknowledged of "outstanding work" for a young person. But the quarter-century mark swiftly approaches and I feel as though I've already missed the boat. I'm feeling like such an old fart lately! Like thinking 21 year old boys are dateable, reading style blogs written by 13 year olds, seeing artwork in museums done by people my age, and reading books by authors who haven't even graduated from college yet. Sick world!

I mean, I'm not trying to get all negative nancy on anyone. And I truly don't mind getting older! In fact, I often fantasize about being a senior citizen who goes to plays every weekend, or at least in the nearer future, being a "lady who lunches" with her really cool professional friends. That all sounds really sweet. But right now, all I'm doing is getting older without any sort of influential mark on this earth as a young person, and that part is disappointing to me. And it's the reason why I'm not looking forward to my next birthday.

But one cool thing I will be doing before my 25th birthday will be backpacking around eastern Europe for a little bit. That's gonna be really cool. Like so cool I don't even know why I'm doing it at all! Lisbon, Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam, London, and Berlin are some the places I'll go. The rest after that (in America) is TBD. :( :( :(

I mean

:) :) :)

Bodily malfunctions

The body is capable of the most amazing things. At the same token, it's a real fragile piece of shit. I've been having bizarre experiences and I don't know if I want to take them as signs, or to tell my body to suck it up.

Currently I'm dealing with a painful left foot. It's really hard for me to walk long distances and I'm walking all crooked because my feet wanna twist in crazy ways to lessen the pain. And the worst part is, I have no idea how this happened. Is it possible to go to bed normal one night and then wake up with a sprained ankle? My brother suggested I rub some Ben Gay or Icy Hot on my foot, but when I went to CVS, they had a generic Muscle Rub cream that I bought since it was cheaper. I'm not really feeling the burning sensation of Muscle Rub that Ben Gay offers and I regret not buying the high-end brand. Tonight I shall go to yoga anyway.

Also, the night before my roommate left for vacay, I had some reeeeaally bad episodes of sleep paralyses happening right after another. Sleep paralysis is so scary and my fear of sleep stems from them. Things are much better now and I sleep on a more regular schedule but I don't understand why my brain and body can't work together so I can have peaceful nights. Why does my body keep doing this to me?

And finally, I don't wanna get all girly on everyone but I'm seriously fat and I'm getting really self-conscious. Despite all the yoga I do, and despite me eating healthier than I ever have in my life, my pants are getting tighter. Do you ever buy a pair of slammin jeans that you splurge on and tell yourself it's okay because you'll wear them for the next 10 years? In my case, my totally bitchin pair of skinny black Ksubi's that I bought 2 years ago no longer fit me. And just by looking at them, I know that I'll never fit into them again. Never. AGAIN. Oh my poor jeans, staying forever young while my body morphs to one of a flappy old maid.

my bro: "ugh! why do our parents fail at the internet!"

My dad joined facebook a few months ago but he has nothing written in his profile, no picture, no nothing. I think all he does is log in to confirm friends and that's it. More recently my dad's best friend Bill, who is like my surrogate father, also joined facebook. And now he and my dad are fb friends. I saw this little exchange today on my dad's profile and I loved it so much. I just love Dads doing Dad things, you know?

So I've never met my dad's friend Daniel but he and my dad belong to a Korean hiking group. The group takes a van to various mountains around the New England and Mid-Atlantic area every Sunday to climb some mountains, and every year, they travel to a foreign country to......climb more mountains (last year they went to Patagonia). Anyway, how sad is it that Daniel feels no love from his daughter Rebecca! The comment in Korean says "our daughter, every time i upload a picture of us two she takes it down... hohohoho"

Who denies their father like that? And although my dad does absolutely nothing on facebook, if he were to, I would never be ashamed to have his comments or pics show up on my profile, unlike Rebecca is to Daniel. I love you Dad!!!!!

Scarface School Play

I just saw this vid posted on my fb news feed, and it's really incredible.

Happy Friday

My brain has been hurting so much. I think my glasses are too strong. I don't need to drink because I already feel drunk 24/7. I need to get this checked out ASAP. I'm going insane!!!!!! Check out this pic. My brother found a teeny crab inside the mussel he was eating! The inside of the mussel looks like a vagina sort of, and I don't like that a crab is in it.

is this sexy

if you look real carefully at the opener to the VH1 makeover show TRANSform Me, you will see my sour sally face! you'll also see francesca and her younger sister natalia too. u guys like wut u see????? it was wet and rainy that day

I'm so grateful for all of my friends. I love love love love love love love them so much. Just remember your friends are your family. Remember to hug them and be reminded of the love and trust they share with you. Don't forget the friends you don't get to see or talk to regularly because they are still there for you too. Everyone will be there.

duh

he wrote me a ticket for being a gaylord

wow, snl. what can I say? this past week's episode was soul satisfying. zach galifianakis is such a freak weardo beardo and his opening monologue as an opportunity to basically do a stand up routine. he makes me belly laugh like a drunk old man.

also vampire wkend is like my fav band of all time. that's saying a lot because i'm only 24 and the band's only a few years old.....but they have already transcended throughout all of time and they are my faves. top 10 or something.

AND ALSO THIS

glam goth grunge

genius

SNL post hupdate!!!!

If you're one of those people who thinks SNL's not as funny as it used to be, you're not alone. Michaels says, "[People say,] 'You know what the great period was?' It's almost always when they were in high school." He said that's the time when "people bond with the cast."

http://www.mediabistro.com/fishbowlny/tv/live_from_the_w_its_tuesday_153742.asp

DUHHHH my point exactly!!!!