the madness of mj

it was paparazzi madness but this time no one protested. fans, lovers of michael jackson's music clustered and held vigil near the king of pop's star in the walk of fame in the days after his untimely death.

flowers, cards, and posters almost completely covered mj's star; his name could barely be seen through the presents from adoring fans. trying to catch a glimpse of the star involved wrestling and pushing because everyone - local, tourist, fan - wanted to be close to it.


and in downtown LA, by the nokia theatre, crowds clustered to watch videos showcasing mj's life. the night before his memorial, hawkers were trying to sell tshirts with mj's face on them, his music was blasting from every car that passed by, and people were already lining up to be first in line for his memorial.

tastes like hawaii

loco moco and spam musubi...it's like a hawaiian party in my mouth! my friends and i decided to have a hawaiian dinner...just because we felt like it. my roommate made loco moco, which is like a big hamburger patty covered with gracy and topped with an egg. and while lots of people dislike spam because of the various animal parts that go into it, spam musubi makes one forget about what one is actually eating! the stickiness of the rice and saltiness of the seaweed and spam do quite a delectable dance in the mouth.

protests on the other side of the atlantic

this summer, revolutionary protests overflowed in iran. after results of an election announced mahmoud ahmadinejad had been re-elected president, voters didn't buy it...and they began to do something about it. they've brought their protests to the streets, called for a re-election, and tried to make their voices heard. citizens have been trying to inject democracy into the authoritarian state.

and on this side of the atlantic, iranian americans have been listening and supporting them. the pictures below are examples of the protests that have been happening in LA of iranian americans supporting their fellow iranians:

this picture was taken on wilshire boulevard east of the 405. protestors demonstrated consistently for about two weeks after the election, from the mid-afternoon into the evening. this particular picture was taken near midnight on a saturday night. protestors held signs on the sidewalk and when the light turned red, walked across the intersection egging on cars to honk.

this picture was taken outside the nokia theatre in downtown LA. protestors believe nokia provided the iranian government with surveillance technology that allows them to censor what iranians are desperately trying to tell the world. they believe the government is trying to withhold citizens' pictures, videos, and texts about what the revolution looks like and what is happening to those protestors.

meet george

he's my bamboo plant. i bought him in chinatown and i think he's grown a lot since i brought him back to LA. i've been giving him water and trying to get him in the sun (it's hard because if i put him on the windowsill behind the blinds to get some sun, i forget he's there...). i'm excited to watch him grow. i think it's better for me to have a low-maintenance plant. i still remember the vegetable garden fiasco of 2007.

even with george's low-maintenance, i still wanted to make sure i was taking good care of him, so i looked up how to take care of a bamboo plant on ehow.com:

Step One

Water the bamboo plant with filtered water or rain water to avoid the chemicals in tap water. For an even healthier plant, use soiled water from a fish tank or bowl.

Step Two

Keep the water level in the container high. It should never be less than half-filled. The roots of the plants must be completely submerged.

Step Three

Empty the water, and refill about once a week.

Step Four

Allow the bamboo plants indirect light at a moderate level. Bamboo grows in thick, shady forests. Too much light will kill the plant. The plant will turn yellow if it is too dry.

Step Five

Feed the bamboo plant a few drops of aquarium plant food about once a month. Do this by changing the water.

Step Six If the bamboo plant is kept in a soil pot instead of water, make sure the soil is constantly damp, but not over soaked. If the top inch of soil is dry then it’s time to wate

my first red carpet affair

in the four years i've lived in LA, i've never gone to a red carpet premiere. so what did i do? i went to one: the transformers 2 premiere!




celebrities were going to start coming around 6 pm. when my friends and i got there around 3:30 pm, lots of the prime spots were already filled. so we found a good one right where the celebrities got out of their cars and before they hit the paparazzi line. let me set the scene:

now the only thing that is missing is the celebrities! there were some D-listers...like random playboy bunnies, a couple singers, a couple athletes and then the big names: megan fox, shia labeouf, and josh duhamel.

tyrese actually came up to us and talked to us to get us more pumped.

shia labeouf didn't come over, but i guess he's a pretty big name, he head straight for the photographers.
yeah that's right. josh duhamel was waving to me.

this is the best one i could get of megan fox. EVERYONE was all over her.

shawn johnson, the US olympic gymnast. she was really sweet and signed autographs and let people take lots of pictures of her.

michael bay, the director of transformers. he actually went all the way around the red carpet and then came back around!

an SC representative: reggie bush! we screamed "fight on" to him but he didn't acknolwedge his fellow trojans. oh yeah, kim kardashian is beside him too.

chester bennington, leader singer of linkin park. i saw the rest of the band but wasn't fast enough to grab a picture of them.ciara coming over to where we were to sign autographs. she was pretty cool, she stepped over the barrier to come over to us.

the premiere was pretty awesome. it was a lot of waiting, a lot of being pushed and shoved around when celebrities came over. but i mean, i don't really do this kind of thing often so it was really cool. i didn't get great pictures of the celebrities but this is probably the closest i'll ever get to some of them. and even though i'm not a super movie person or celebrity know-it-all, i still got a little starstruck. i think everybody, no matter what they say, gets starstruck.

the LA film festival

i've always wanted to go to the LA film festival so i decided this summer to volunteer there so i could experience the festival. the movie business is definitely not my industry but i've always been curious about it. it's like learning a whole new world.

my volunteer shifts have been very uneventful. i spent one shift taking tickets at a theatre from movie watchers and then collecting ballots for the viewer's choice award. i spent another shift at the movie lounge where filmmakers and producers and high up movie business gurus get to chill. the lounge has live music and art on the wall...it's a very artsy environment where people can mingle (and enjoy an open bar).

basically there were too many volunteers and not enough things to do so i ended up meeting some pretty cool people. there was the security guard who has "secured" some pretty high up celebrities and worked lots of premieres. there was the irish woman who is a screenwriter who i ended up having one of the best and most stimulating conversations with - we talked about art, movies, school, and personal life stuff. and then there was the korean producer who offered me free tickets to the screening of "my dear enemy", a korean movie opening at the festival.

i think it's the people who make any type of festival interesting. and i think especially in the entertainment/movie business, there are lots of interesting people. these people are very different from most of the friends i've made at school because they are in the arts and humanities. with arts and humanities people, you can end up talking to them about almost anything (world issues, art, films, culture)...and i love it! i feel like i've been so mentally stimulated these past few days because of the interesting people i've met who are so passionate about the festival and because of the films i've seen and will be going to see.

the stoning of soraya m

i saw a free screening of this movie at usc the other day. now i know i'm pretty dramatic so i use the word "intense" a lot...but THIS movie was really intense.

i don't mean intense like, omigosh look at that car crash or dude look at all the fire and bombs. it was mentally intense. the movie, based on a true story, is about this woman named soraya whose husband wants to divorce her. she doesn't want to because she doesn't want her kids to end up on the streets. so in the end, he concocts this false story about how she is having an affair with another man. he manages to convince the religious leaders of their town that this lie is actually true. he even gets the accused man to go along with his story.

after she is tried and found guilty of having an affair, she gets tied up and placed in a hole, buried up to her waist. and she is stoned.

the last 10 minutes of this movie are of her stoning. and the director doesn't hold back. it's 10 minutes of very uncomfortable moments. you can see the stoning from her point of view as rocks are thrown in her face and blood drips down her face. you can see the stoning from the men, including her father and sons, who are throwing the rocks at her and how fast the stones are going.

it was difficult for me to watch. it was very, very uncomfortable because you could see her pain and her helplessness.

there were so many thoughts that ran through my head: people shouldn't be able to get away with this, some people take their religion to an irrational extreme, women have no rights or freedoms (the movie was set in iran). these were just a couple of my thoughts.

then i started to wonder, i was so impacted by this movie because soraya's death was so graphic. but what about the types of execution the US does? just because a man dies by lethal injection doesn't make the way he died any less heinous than a stoning.

the US always turns the looking glass on other countries, other people, other religions and points fingers at what they are doing wrong. but in this country, there are so many problems: healthcare, the economy, homelessness...the US needs to stop looking around and just look into a mirror to see what it is doing wrong to its own people.