September 11th Five Year Anniversary
As you're probably already aware, today is the fifth anniversary of the September 11th attacks on New York and Washington DC. It being a nice round number, half a century, grants it a little more significance in our hearts, so I'll write about my own experience on 9/11 and what I remember of what it.
My story isn't the most dramatic, but took place in Tysons Corner, VA. That Tuesday morning I awoke before the first plane struck the North tower at the same time as my friend Zach, who was coming to work with me. I had gotten him a job at my office and he stayed at my house the previous night so we could go to the office together for his first day. Listening to the CD in the car and not bothering to turn on the TV or radio, we remained blissfully unaware of what was happening until walking past my boss David's office where he was seated intently in front of a 9" television. Generally the television was reserved as a late-night still-working comfort and not a morning distraction, so I walked inside to see what was going on. He relayed the news that a plane had hit the World Trade Center as I saw on the TV what looked like a smoke stack. The significance of what had happened was evident in David's voice.
And then, while standing there, the second plane was flown into the South tower. I could hear gasps from other offices as I stepped out of the corner office and walked down the halls witnessing a handful of employees experiencing varying levels of denial. Some continued to work and didn't want to hear or talk about what was happening, while others were becoming hysterical. One employee fearing for her safety, Jamie, a recently married marketer in her early 30's, called her husband and quickly formulated an escape plan to rural Maryland. Another employee, the ex-Marine Manny, showed a tender, vulnerable side after years of being the defacto ex-military office brute.
Eventually, all of us who stayed watched TV and read reports on the internet of what was happening while trying to render conclusions from the buzzing rumors. The Capitol had been bombed. The Sears tower had been evacuated. LAX had been attacked. Not five minutes would pass without another indication of the mounting threat, until the Pentagon was struck. Only 15 miles from where we were, this seemed to hit us the closest. Shortly afterwards, a fire alarm went off in the building. I felt a rush through my body as I felt a threat not from fire, but from hysterical people in this building. Zach and I stepped out into the 11th floor lobby to see fifty Merryl Lynch employees milling around amidst the loud fire alarm as one woman loudly screams "There's a bomb in the building" with a quivering lip. Knowing that uncontrollable fear had captured so many peoples minds, this no longer seemed like such a safe place. Moments later the building was evacuated, with the fire alarm still going off. The elevators were crowded to capacity as Zach and I took the fire escape down 10 flights of stairs to the ground floor. The echo of the fire alarm and of our hasty steps down the stairs filled my ears and mind until we arrived at the ground floor to find the door locked. With the insanity fully enveloping us, Zach and I looked at eachother and shared a laugh as we pounded on the door hoping someone would hear us and open the door from the outside. After two minutes of pounding the door is opened, we're released, and we take our final steps out of the building with the fire alarm still buzzing behind us.
I found this video last night. It's a 30-minute unedited capture of the attacks in New York, filmed by local residents. It captures the surreal nature of the unexpected attacks perfectly.
Aftermath of Jackie’s Birthday Party, Abbott Kinney Blvd
just woke up after jackie's birthday party. i think that i drank and smoked way too much last night. first time puking my guts out in a while, but it was still a blast. at the beginning of the night quix wanted to meet at a club in hollywood, and then we'd leave there and come back here to check out this party. i didn't want to go all the way to hollywood and back, so we met in santa monica at zanzibar with jerry and one of quix's ho's (he has a rack). i reluctantly paid $10 to get inside zanzibar, knowing that the house party was going down where i live, but i'm glad i checked that place out. the djs were off the hook. they actually had two hip hop/skratch djs live on 4 decks. pretty awesome to watch. somehow we started drinking profusely, first two red bull & vodkas, then a round of shots, then two bass ale's. i used quix's credit card twice at his request, went to the bar and signed his name while he was on the stage. oh, also. at one point jerry was introducing the djs to quix and we all went on this big stage. so maybe 6 of us are on stage in front of 600 people or so.. then my phone rings, i pick it up, and i realize that i'm standing on stage on my cell phone. i quickly correct my error and end the call with emily.
i figure that we got back here about 1:15 or so, and this place was going off. maybe 100 people in the house, and another 100 outside, in the front, the back, and on the balcony. suffice to say, this place was absolutely trashed this morning.
i met this girl named michelle and talked with her for a long time, but i really don't remember much about it, regretfully. she has a tongue ring and she lives in long beach, that much i remember.
unfortunately some drama went down between jackie and sarah. she saw him with a girl from myspace or something and got jealous and started making accusations. it's interesting how this went down, because my impression is that the way it usually happens is the girlfriend scolds the guy, guy feels bad, woman wins. well, she scolded him, he got upset but after a few minutes told her to leave, and then bagged some other chick who's now sleeping in his room. truly champion form. it's tough to blame him for any kind of infidelity after his girlfriend is ridiculous like that at his own birthday party.
today i'm driving to scottsdale to meet cory. while i'm upset to leave LA, and especially venice, and jackie and christian, i'm looking forward to taking it easy in scottsdale where i feel like i have to worry about a lot less. living there is much cheaper, there isn't as much to do so i'm not overwhelmed with options, and it's a bit warmer meaning i can swim and spend some more time outside in the evenings maybe. i'll be there for christmas also, with cory and his boss who supposedly has a giant ranch with dirt bikes and quads which we'll be at. cory can be a real tool sometimes, but i have to hand it to him for setting everything up. the claims he makes always sound ridiculous but he's surprised me more than a few times. looking forward to spending some time on the dirt bike cruising in the desert. he said there's a specific trail which leads to the grand canyon which runs about 30-40 miles. i can hardly imagine how much fun it'll be to embark on a trek like that on a quad or a dirt bike (on a dirt bike it would probably be pretty exhausting).
i tried sending esfand his chronic yesterday but couldn't get to the UPS shipping location quickly enough, and it closed at 7pm. i have everything in my car, ready to go. it being sunday, it can't ship today, so i'll drop it off tomorrow during the day (i think by 1pm it can ship same-day) when i'm in arizona.
i was talking to kevork yesterday and i told him a funny story which i'm now remembering, since i mentioned the previous bit about sendinng the bud to esfand. as a testiment to the power of this herb, i was playing scattergories with wendy and candyce two days ago. the three of us had gotten absolutely ripped, but their tolerance is probably somewhere in the upper atmosphere while mine lingers at about knee level. anyway, it was my first time playing scattergories in a few years at least. i didn't remember how to play, so we figured it out. you roll a 10 sided die with letters on it, and then answer ten questions like "name a movie" that start with the letter that the die landed on. the die landed on "J", but i was so blazed i somehow interepreted that as "D". so i spent the next 3 minutes thinking of answers that started with D while everyone else was working on J. i didn't realize my error until we shared answers. that one will go down in personal history, along with the time i got a girls phone number when i was blazed and wrote down my name instead of hers, only to realize my error the next day.
i'm overjoyed that my laptop is back to me in 100% functional condition, and i really can't wait till esfand mails me a copy of half life 2. oh what joy the laptop brings.
christian and jackie and i are all sitting in the living room taking a break from cleaning. christian is eating breakfast, jackie is lying down on the couch, and door is open and i can hear cars driving by on Abbot Kinney. i wonder if recanting minute details like these are of any use.
Hey Everybody, Free Vaccinations
tomorrow i have to act gay at the gay & lesbian center in west hollywood and i get free hepatitis vaccinations. fuck yes, free vaccinations!
Social Meltdown Catastrophe
full time melt down catastrophe. went to fridays with cory and kate tonight and cory and i really got in it. he knew that i knew he was gay, jim or paul must have told him. we had a really confrontational conversation for about 15 minutes, i was fucking pissed. pretty much ready to throw down and kick the shit out of him if he touched me. long story short, i'm not leaving my car here.
i have 60 hours to find a place to keep my car for at least 3 months. 
Hello 2005.
1st of January, 2005. Still hard for me to really realize that I'm in 2005 now. It feels more futuristic, though.
Went to Together as One last night with Cory, Matt, and Kate. I wasn't really sure what to expect, and I wasn't even really sure that I was going to by there a week ago. I thought about going to Giant. And about accepting an invitation to Tahoe from Kat. I'd never been to anything that size befeore, that was one of the main draws. I had considered doing drugs, and I ended up doing them last night, for the first time in a few years. The four of us all took e, which turned out pretty sweet. I almost didn't take it at the last minute, but just said fuck it, if only for the reason that I'll be in Hong Kong in 7 days. Before going, we decided that we must roll up a ridiculous amount of bud and bring it in, so the the night before, I rolled 8 joint. I downloaded a video tutorial on SA in a joint megathread on how to makea  filtered 2 leaves, so i made 4 of those. Because we knew that they'd be searching people, we had extravagant plans for eluding security. We each made paper compartments for 2 joints, sealed with masking tape that would be taped to the inside of our leg. That was my first time doing that, it was pretty fun.
Pretty much as soon as we step into the place we're thrown into an enormous crowd of people. The main room seemed almost identical to the main room of the DC Armory, but it had colliseum seats lined all around it on second and third tiers which were open to walk around though. We wandered in that place for 15 minutes, looking unsucessfly for the drum & bass area. We actually had to ask people for directions. We finally found it, and it was outside under what looked like a huge bridge. Hive, Keaton, and Gridlok were playing a Violence Recordings tag set which pretty much sucked. Really noisy, not a lot of definition to anything, it sounded very muddy. Left that room to check out Humpty Vission, he was dope. All he seems to be is a Jr. Bad Boy Bill. Doesn't seem to have any really unique characteristics of his own, but he still does what he does well.  At midnight he played a Nirvana remix, and then some other rock remixes. I remember the "woo hoo" song from Starship Troopers, he played a remix of that. At midnight I took my drugz with everybody, smoke a joint, then wandered around, waiting for Photek to get on.
When he steps up, it is true rockstar business. Everyone is cheering and clapping for him. Yeah, this is the part where I start to get pretty fucked up. The next 2 hours were non stop unchained full brock. He was dropping all the new headz tunes, and soon as it'd drop he'd hold up the headz logo sleeve on the air. That makes two times in 2004 that Photek has absolutely destroyed the place. One time I was drunk, the other time I was high and on e. There's definitely a corrolary.
After Photek, John B got on and played some really weird shit. I've come to expect him to play psuedo-80's and New Wave, but he played a lot of stuff that was really out there. And now his performance includes a lot of theatrics. He lip syncs on stage, dances, motions to the crowd, all while dressed in a black suit with a white tie.
When we left the place, we drove around for 20 minutes looking for a 7-11, but there are none in downtown LA. Actually the location of this hotel kinda sucks - while it's in downtown, which sounds nice, there's really nothing in downtown but high rise office buildings. We finally get back to the hotel, smoke the last joint that any one of us has (we went through 7 joints of chronic!), then pass out. Apparently Kate couldn't sleep and was walking all over the hotel an hour after the rest of us went to sleep.
Today I'm going to get a nice meal. And then go for a swim, followed by the hot tub I think. I wish my ears would stop ringing.
Lamborghini Dealership with Cory & Jeeves
just got blazed with cory and went to the lamborghini dealership. damn they have some nice automobiles. they had lamborghinis, porsches (the porsche gt!), ferraris, an aero, the ford gt500, and a few others. my favorite is the ferrari 360 modena. after maybe 10 minutes of browsing, a saucy looking salesman in his 50's probably named Jeeves approached us. i asked what the finest automobile was and he said that while the most expensive was the bugatti, at $1.2 million, his preference is the porsche GT (modestly priced at $600,000). i thought about purchasing the 360 modena, except Jeeves said they only had it in ferrari red.
i'm thinking about not selling my car now and storing it here in arizona. i'd like to have it completely off my mind, but then again, the car has been so good to me, it would be great to be able to keep it.
Cowboy Bar
i just got back from THE COWBOY BAR. man, that place kicks ass. i was swimming in the pool and chilling in the hot tub for at least an hour or two at dusk, and after eating dinner we were talking about going to the cowboy bar. i didn't really want to go without acquiring a cowboy hat, and i was fortunate enough to be loaned a real nice 10-gallon beauty that i donned for the evening. i felt so fantastic in the cowboy hat at the cowboy bar too, i asked for a cowboy beer and they served me a coors light. then we listened to country music on the ride back in steve's evo. fucking awesome.
Tour of the Arizona Valley
i drove the sti around today for about an hour. it was pretty sweet. the car is definitely faster than anything i've ever driven (faster than the 2003 hardtop M3). it has a little bit of turbo lag, but once you hit 5k it flies. we raced a neon srt-4 which i think was stock, and smoked it. corys friend has a wrx with apparently $80,000 in it, which has 500hp (400 to the ground). suffice to say, i don't know what can keep up with that besides ferraris and lamborghinis, which you actually see on the streets around here.
tomorrow i'm going to scout out a local clinic and get hepatitis A & B shots, which will probably run me about $100, and then picking up some perscriptions that my pops filled for me. antibiotics that i should be having in china. then i'm going to THE DENT WIZARD which i'm told might be the miracle cure-all for my car. body shops are quoting me at $800 so i'm anxious to find a cheaper alternative.
talked to dad tonight, he's leaving for mexico for a few weeks tomorrow. i think he's doing pretty well, this is his third vacation this year, totalling something in the range of 2 months of vacation. i hope he enjoys it.
i sent mom & gene a large set of prints of my photos for christmas. i ordered them i think from mpix.com and got 3-day delivery. she ended up really enjoying them, and i'm glad. i gave an 8x10 enlargement to cory of a photo i got of him in the desert on his quad. he's poppping a huge wheelie, with the front wheel at least 3 feet off the ground. after all the shit he got, including an xbox, car subwoofer and amp, dell dj (brand x ipod), and a rack of clothes, he said he liked my gift best. far fucking out, man.
i've been playing a lot of half life 2. i'm on the 11th mission out of 13, so i figure i'm pretty close to wrapping it up. i'm playing on the easiest difficulty level also, but it's not really a breeze at all. once i finish it i'll probably go through as much of it as i can at the hardest difficulty setting. most of the major obstacles that i've come across have been the puzzles. i have to say though, half life 2 is among the best pc games i've ever played.
it's 3:30am and i'm gonna listen to the ipod in bed before passing out. this has been daily routine for the last few weeks. every night for the last 4 nights i've had vivid dreams of china and of travelling. i'm anxious to leave, but when i wake i feel like i've already started travelling.
today i met this cat, he said his name was damien, he thinks that we're a lot alike and he wants to be my friend. sounds good to me. fuck it, what i got to lose?
Merry Christmas
christmas was pretty sweet but wasn't without a caveat or two. i got an excellent chess set from jenn which was really generous and cool of her. jim got me a hideaway passport wallet which goes under your shirt. we also went swimming today, on christmas day, and played pool volleyball.
on the downside, i think that i found out today that my friend is gay. 
i found gay pron on his computar.
Half-Life 2
got Half Life 2 yesterday afternoon and its even better than i had expected. it's pretty much stolen my life for the last few days, but hopefully i'll be done with it and have it out of the way soon. i'm enjoying the single player more than anything.