To Sleep

O soft embalmer of the still midnight,
Shutting, with careful fingers and benign,
Our gloom-pleas'd eyes, embower'd from the light,
Enshaded in forgetfulness divine:
O soothest Sleep! if so it please thee, close
In midst of this thine hymn my willing eyes,
Or wait the "Amen," ere thy poppy throws
Around my bed its lulling charities.
Then save me, or the passed day will shine
Upon my pillow, breeding many woes,--
Save me from curious Conscience, that still lords
Its strength for darkness, burrowing like a mole;
Turn the key deftly in the oiled wards,
And seal the hushed Casket of my Soul.

--John Keats

Well, some people say when I get into a sleep it's as though I'm dead. They call it the "Mummy's Curse"; I can't be awakened by anything short of actual physical pain and even then it's a toss up. I really wish I could get into that mode more often as I didn't get a whole lot of sleep this weekend. Friday night was quite fun, but I sure as hell regretted it the next day.

Because of President Bush shutting down the government in honor of Reagan's departure from this Earth, my workplace shut down nice and early. I was outta there by 1:30, so after sitting in some terrible traffic, I still managed to get home by 2:30. The plan was to meet up with Newjen and Moodsquad and head on over to Angel Stadium of Anaheim(that's the new title; I just got used to calling it Edison Field and they went ahead and changed it again)and have a nice tailgating session before the game. Newjen brought his cool little portable grill and we went and picked up a whole bunch of food and drink. Once we picked up Moody and got into the stadium parking lot, we wasted no time with the drink. Because you're not supposed to drink alcoholic beverages, we brought some cups in order to pour our alcohol into...sort of like a wino, I guess. Even with that, I almost got caught by a cop driving around looking for people drinking...you know, as opposed to actually patrolling Santa Ana and actually helping people. Due to my suave and skillful manuevering of popping open a beer right in front of his face, he decided I was too stupid to give a ticket to just yet so just told us that it was against the law and if he saw anything public, he'd have to do something about it. We managed to stay out of trouble for the rest of the time there while getting riotously drunk. Let me just say that a Rockstar energy drink with some Jack Daniels is a good way to ensure a bad morning. We were having such a good time we forgot to go into the game on time. Once we did get in, we somehow ended up messing with these two 10 year old kids in front of us...they were wearing Cubs hats so we had to mock them for a while. They took a liking to Moody so they started telling us all about their season in Little League...I'm gonna have to start calling Moody Michael Jackson pretty soon. The kids almost followed us out to our car by the end of the game. I was planning on going hiking the next day at 6:30 in the morning, so in my drunken wisdom I decided to stay up until about 2 in the morning hanging out with friends.

Liquor before beer, never fear. Beer before liquor you've never been sicker. Guess which one I chose? Since I spent part of the next morning praying to the porcelain gods, that would be the latter. I somehow managed to get moving on time and met up with the folks I was going hiking with at around 6:50. I was a little late, but so was everyone else, plus I had to pick up my friend Jack. He's even more idiotic; he got talked into coming over to my place the night before even though he was going to get a good night's sleep, but once he was there he didn't go home until 5:30. He pretty much decided to go hiking on no sleep whatsoever. The group consisted of Ben, his buddy Simon, Jack the lego maniac, Joan and her friends Christine and...it's pronounced Hen Vu. I don't know how to spell that, but I do know she was called Chicken Vu back in high school...damn that's funny, I wish I had thought of it. "But you're not a man, you're a chicken boo!" It actually turned out to be a fairly easy hike; about 6 miles or so without too much of an incline...I still managed to tweak my ankle and burn the hell out of my arms. My mind wasn't functioning completely that morning, so I guess I forgot the sunblock for the arms...now I have two red sleeves. We spent most of the day talking about movies and vacations; Joan asked what my favorite teenager movie of the 80's was and I really couldn't focus so I said Sixteen Candles. I should have said Better Off Dead with John Cusack; it doesn't get any better than skiing advice like,"Go that way really fast...if something gets in your way...turn." We somehow had a huge conversation about Robotech which involved the girls trying to sing a Minmei song...try is probably the apt definition...or mangle. I'll be nice and stick with try. Her friend Christina did her best impression of Donkey from Shrek and somehow managed to creatively ask the same question over and over..."Are we there yet?" She was wearing this visor that she was horribly embarrassed by and repeatedly called "gay" yet she went on about how she wanted to buy one of those weird opaque visors that covers the entire face sort of like a steel welder's mask. You can see through it while you're wearing it but those outside can't see into it; it's all the rave right now with the asian population. I don't see how she'd rather look like Darth Vader than a member of a girl's softball team, but maybe it's an asian thing. Or maybe it's just a Christina thing. Before the hike was over, Joan managed to go off on a man hating rant which made me wonder if I'd stepped into the Vagina Monologues or something. It seems she just broke up with her boyfriend and is a big liberal, so of course she now hates all men. I love feminists; they're so much fun to be around!

Speaking of feminists, I somehow ended up at an Aimee Mann concert that night. I can honestly say I could have gone the rest of my life never attending an Aimee Mann concert, but sometimes fate intervenes. Mr. T had asked me to take his place as he was getting prepared to travel to Japan on a business trip; personally, I think he just realized he was about to see Aimee Mann and got the hell out while the getting was good. I went because at the time I had no other plans and I had managed to miss the last two concerts I was supposed to go see. She hardly made up for the Strokes or Franz Ferdinand, but at least it was a live performance. I hitched a ride with Chow and we headed on down to the House of Blues in Downtown Disney to meet up with Linh the Villian and Carol...and more interestingly Carol's date for evening. His name was Eddie...no wait, he introduced himself as Edward and he was a rather tall fellow for being an asian, thin and with a characteristic that disturbed me but I couldn't quite place. Chow pointed it out later; he had curly hair. How many asian guys do you know have curly hair? Either it was a perm or his genes have a more mysterious past I don't know. Either way, he was from Canada, eh, spent some years in Tawain and then settled here in Irvine. He was a nice enough person, although it seems Carol related to Linh later that she could do better. You gotta love the arrogance behind a statement like that; he was seemingly a successful decent looking guy. Then again, I'm sure all women are like that. Luckily, their standards drop a little more each year they're still available. I guess it's like depreciation; us guys only get more refined, successful and confident. I think someone should write a book Women are like cars, men are like houses...I guess we meet in the middle of expectations at some point. Oh yeah, back to the concert; well, if you like Aimee Mann, you'd like the concert. Me, I like that one song Save Me that was on the Magnolia soundtrack. Well, she did play that, and a whole lot of other songs that sounded exactly the same. Let's just say her range is equivalent to Brad Pitt's acting. From A-B. On a good day. By her third song in the encore, I was more then ready to get the hell out of there.

Afterwards, Chow and I ended up meeting with Mr. T for a drink and some fries at Tokyo Plaza. It's a hangout for the asian set with food and a book store that's open pretty much all night long. We had a nice bull session and wished Mr. T good luck on his trip to Japan. I keep trying to convince him to go to a kareoke bar just like in Lost in Translation, but he seemed unmoved so far. I guess we'll just have to see. By the time I got home, it was about 2 in the morning, which is too bad as I was supposed to stop by my other friend Jonathan's place as he was having a party. Being I hadn't slept in the past two days, I figured the last thing I needed was to be driving 30 miles away in the middle of the night. I've fallen asleep driving once before and it pretty much killed a sapling tree and scared me senseless. I've vowed since to not drive while I'm really tired.

Hehe...the Lakers lost today. I can't say as I'm surprised; Malone is literally playing on one leg and the rest of them just look tired. The East was bound to win a championship at some point and it might as well be this year. Even though I don't like either team, at least Ben Wallace will get a championship...I like him...and his hair.