The Gurly Life

Finally, I get to sit at the cool table

On Saturday night my mom and I attended the Brown Club of Southern California's Lunar New Year dinner. Yeah, it was a bit late, but there were scheduling issues. The dinner was at a restaurant called Shanghai No. 1 Seafood Village, in San Gabriel. That whole area, San Gabriel, Monterey Park, Alhambra, is a huge Chinese area. Hence, Shanghai No. 1 Seafood Village.

Let me begin by shattering the "Asians drive slowly" myth right here and now. The Asian drivers in San Gabriel are rabid crazy people who will flatten you, your car and themselves just so long as they don't have to ever slow down or wait for you to pull over somewhere. When we arrived at the restaurant Brian, the organizer of the event, confirmed that a good day is getting out of the area alive.

The restaurant is completely amazing, and just our room sat about 200 people. Comically, the restaurant owns one water pitcher. The whole restaurant, which probably seats 400-500, owns ONE water pitcher. One. Apparently no one drinks water with their meal there, just hot tea. Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore.

At our table we had a really fun mix of people, and about half of us were young alumni (and by "us" I mean them, not me). We had a couple of dragons at the table, and since I'm a monkey, we figured that if we team up it would give "monkey on your back" a whole 'nother meaning. Not to mention the lethal flaming poo that we could swing our enemies' way!

The great thing about Brown alumni is that we have a baseline of commonality so it doesn't matter at all if we are out of school 1 year or 30 years, we have fun together, discuss important issues of the day, gossip, and make friends on the spot. It's really something to be at a table with several generations of people who are intellectually curious and, let's face it, different.

Ah, it's good to be a snob.

The menu included what felt like 30 courses, but apparently it was less than that. Here's what we had:

*Chef's 8 Item Cold Plate (this was 8 different appetizers)
*Hot and Sour Soup
*Sauteed Green Beans
*House Special Shrimp Fried Rice
*Spicy Chicken
*Cuttlefish and Braised Pork
*Lobster with Ginger and Onions
*Shrimp Two Ways
*Black Pepper Diced Beef
*Beef Chow Fun
*Chinese Sponge Cake

One of the appetizers looked like it could have been brains. I ate it. While I thought it was brains, I made an agreement with the guy sitting next to me that if I turned, he would take me out (double tap to the head, natch). He looked big enough to be able to handle it. It turned out to have been cooked gluten. EEEEK! Brains would have been preferable. Thankfully, I did not start farting at the table. I did get a mild stomach ache this morning, and last night my feet itched, but other than that I'm none the worse for wear.

However, I did notice that all it takes is one big meal for my stomach to expand. It literally felt like a balloon being inflated so that more food could fit. And I've been hungry all day. I think it will take several days for it to shrink back to normal. Damn.

LAKERS!

Tonight I went to my first live Lakers game ever. Even though I'm not a sports nut, I always do enjoy live sporting events. And I must admit, the Lakers are awesome. This was an outing with the Brown Club of So Cal, and we had a blast with wonderful and fun people. It was pouring with rain, so I didn't even bring a purse, nevermind a half-way decent camera. Here are some terrible pics from the evening. I did edit them a tiny bit, but there wasn't much to work with. At least I removed the demonic red-eye.

Here I am in my seat holding my ticket. Like if I don't do this, it's not real, right?

My new friends, Tiffany and Troy. They live downtown. They walked to Staples.

My cell phone camera just couldn't figure out what I was trying to take a picture of. Light? People? What?? But only someone actually at the Lakers game would take and post such a terrible picture. Because it's a memento of the fun we had. And the screaming. Did we ever scream.

Three weddings and a funeral

Yeah. MY funeral.

Ok, I exaggerate, I admit it. But since there is no pictorial representation (stop pressuring me!!!), I have to get creative. More pictorial representations will come soon, but for now there are words, words, WORDS!

As I recently mentioned, I have had a lot going on. A lot. So here's a recap of what went on this weekend.

1. Dating and such, i.e., 3 weddings

A few months ago I made the decision not to blog about specific dates and men much because having the blog as a background made it more interesting for me to be on bad dates than on good ones. Be careful what you ask for and all that.

I am still doing lots of personal growth work in this area, it just never seems to end. That I can talk about in more detail.

To the point: this weekend I went on 3 dates with 3 different men. One of these guys was Bob, who I've mentioned before. And yes, he's aware of my other dates and being a very cool and generous guy he thinks it's great that I date, thankyouverymuch.

All three men are terrific, and it is the first time in a long time (ever?) that I'm not operating from scarcity. The point being that I recently managed to dislodge yet another crummy belief about me and relationships that had been stuck like a barnacle on the ass of my fabulousness. I know, vivid, right?

The barnacle was that single men my age are not interested in me (and the flip side of that, which is that only unavailable men are interested). What strikes me about this little nugget of joy is that it is VERY specific. Mmh. I have been forced to give up the more generic "men are not interested in me" because it so obviously isn't true as to be bordering on insanity. So I went more specific, this way I got to keep it. Sweet.

I was doing an exercise from Calling In The One (see the What I'm Reading list in the right panel), and I had to look at what I get out of keeping certain beliefs, and being single. This is not the first time I have looked at this question, but I haven't looked at it in a significant amount of time. I've uncovered all kinds of crap since, so it's not too surprising that the inquiry was almost a new one for me. What I saw was that I get to be safe. Because as much as it frustrates me to be constantly circled by unavailable men, and sometimes pains me, there is really no chance that I will really, truly put myself at risk with any of them. Even if I want to (or say that I want to, because really, I don't), they make sure I get shut down. So then I'm all mopey and hurt, but safe.

Even if I find a great guy, I soon find something about him that I cannot possibly put up with so I can continue to complain about how there are no great guys, and the great guys don't like me, blah blah blah. And on it goes.

It's very likely that I've seen this before, and shared it before, but this time it hit me like a ton of bricks. I proceeded to call myself a lot of names, including a fucking liar. Don't worry, it wasn't one of those woe is me kind of things. It was like looking for my keys for hours and they were on the table the whole time, in plain sight, and I wasted all this time being blind. Like that.

I also noticed I do something sneaky to men who are available: just as we get close and all is going well, I drop-kick them. It's not a very obvious thing, because I'm somewhat subtle about it, but that's what I do. That way, I get to push them away first and I get to be right about how I'm not important or unwanted or unlovable, or whatever the self-flagellation of the moment is.

But it's not over. I then got to see how when I'm found out, I have an overwhelming sense that I need to walk from this relationship. I make up excuses like, who is this person to point out that I do such and such? How dare they? Pshaw! What is underneath this is that I'm very invested in looking good and doing it right, and I'm unwilling to be human and imperfect, i.e., look bad. In other words, I'm unwilling to be vulnerable. So rather than simply address the issue, I walk.

Wow, right? I mean, what a fucking racket. I mean, this is like trying to surf the entire internet - it can't be done, you don't get to the end of the internet. You just keep finding interesting stuff and thank goodness for the internet.

And all of a sudden, I get more interest from single and available men in one week than I've had for the past 7 years (I exaggerate, but really, not that much - ask Deirdre, she'll confirm).

We shall see what comes of this.

As an aside, I seem to have an unusual number of people in my life who have no qualms telling me when I'm full of shit and/or when I'm being a jerk. You know who you are. And I want to take this opportunity to tell you that YOU ROCK!! I have very few friends who enable me, thank goodness, they mostly call me on my shit all the time and force me to grow, as uncomfortable as that may be for me.

2. An event, i.e., the funeral

Not really a funeral, not even close. On Saturday I helped out at the Brown Club of Southern California's annual GaLA Bruno, which is our annual membership drive. We had an awesome event, at the home of Matt Miller '83 and his wife Jody Miller. Matt is the host of Left Right And Center on KCRW, one of our local public radios.

We even had a string quartet!

This was the view from their house. I know, right??

Matt said something very interesting: that we can't move forward in politics because special interests on both sides pressure the politicians not to talk about certain things. Thus, the dialog is not honest and open. No open dialogue, no progress. I'm curious to know what these things are that are not being discussed.

A great event, but the temperatures finally dropped (well it IS November, for heaven's sake) so I was freezing for about 5 hours. My feet were so cold I was in pain. I know that in the grand scheme of things it was not very cold. Don't judge me. Needless to say, I was dead at the end of the day - get it? dead? funeral? ha ha. On Sunday I worked out and met a friend for coffee, then basically went back to bed. Och. I slept a lot. And now I'm fine.

The end [curtsies].

KPCC

Here in the Southland, we have an extraordinary public radio station, Southern California Public Radio KPCC 89.3. It is talk radio, to be distinguished from KCRW 89.9 out of Santa Monica, which focuses a lot more on new and exciting music. KPCC has grown over the last decade and recently has moved into a new, super green building in Pasadena. The news are in-depth and cover both sides of issues, and there are all sorts of interesting programs that air daily or weekly.

The building cost $27 million, most of which was raised from private donors. It is a super green building with some sort of fancy green certification, which is very impressive for a broadcast building because of the amount of power they need.

We got to see the broadcast studios, and met Shirley Jahad, host of the local Weekend Edition, who was very gracious and charming and answered all our questions. She also let me take a couple of pictures of her in her studio.

Shirley told us about a job she had at KNX (an AM news station) where she was a writer for the newscasters. It sounded hairraising. They basically have a news story every 30 seconds to a minute, and the writers sit at their stations for 7 out of the 8 hours they work (one hour for lunch at the end of the day) and write constantly as the news come through on the wires. She said she had to write faster than she could think. Wow! I need to develop that skill, too, it's gotta come in useful somehow.

This is the bullpen, or the newsroom. On one side is Patt Morrison's cube (yes, she sits in a cubicle) and on the other is Larry Mantel's cube. Amazing people just sitting in a cubicle and doing their amazing stuff.
This is the wall of donors. The bigger the circle, the bigger the donor. Note that there is one empty big white circle on the end there, so you, too, can be enshrined on the wall of awesomeness if you have a dozen million bucks or so. Me, I content myself with sending them a monthly membership fee. Somehow, I don't think that will get me on the wall.

Our big annual event

Once a year, our So Cal alumni association puts on a big event to kick off the year, including raffle prizes free alcohol. We call it GaLA Bruno. This is a Pictorial Representation of the welcome table, with the happy alumni lining up to go in and schmooze and have fun.

More Brown stuff! And people!

As regular readers of this blog are aware, I do a lot of volunteer work for my alma mater, Brown University. Just recently I was informed that I am to receive an award for my volunteer work, specifically having to do with the Brown Alumni Schools Committee, the people whose job it is to get applicants an alumni interview. I already blogged about this in a very serious and professional post called seriously and professionally "World domination is one step closer," so I will not repeat myself here.

Obviously, it takes more than one person to win an award. The people who I credit for this award (will it be a plaque? a certificate? a bookmark? a paperweight? dried buffalo pucky covered in gold paint?) are all the area coordinators and area chairs all over the west coast, Hawaii and Alaska, and they are the ones who truly do all the work of rustling up up interviewers every season, assigning interviews, fielding questions and complaints, dealing with website glitches and so on.

The area coordinator for the LA area organized a lunch for the chairs in LA and Orange counties, and today we all got to hang out, eat good grub at the Mulholland Tennis Club (which is at the top of the Hollywood hills, so you know that once a ball goes over the net, it ain't stopping until it hits Sunset Boulevard). We laughed, we shared stories, we commiserated (only a little bit), we were optimistic about the upcoming season and the new website, and we probably freaked out the new area chairs just a tiny bit. But only a little.

It was suggested during the lunch that I should take a red-eye on Friday night and make a dramatic surprise entrance on Saturday at Brown to accept my award. Except after being on a plane all night at the end of the work week might make my entrance surprising not in a good way. When I'm really tired I am that much more likely to use the word fuck in public, and somehow I don't think that would be the most gracious way to accept my award. If I'm tired enough, I just look dead inside, which may actually be worse than swearing in public.

Point is, these are some of the people that caused the award. They are amazing and brilliant. That's all. This is a pictorial representation of how I feel when I'm around fellow Brown alumni:

The hair isn't quite right, but I think it gets the point across.

Not everyone from today's lunch is in this picture, but if you want to see everyone, you can do that here.

World domination is one step closer

As you know, I have a plan to take over the world. Well, it's not a plan so much as something stupid I say every now and again. My platform, in case you were thinking of assisting me by voting for me as your overlord or perhaps as your overlady, is that once I am supreme leader of the world I will make afternoon naps mandatory. As a side note, I'd like to see the imbecilic and Mormon Bible thumper Glenn Beck (yeah, I said that) do one of his idiotic charts linking mandatory naps to the terrorists. Or the socialists. Or both.

Anywayyy...

Back to the plan to take over the world. It's a loosy goosy plan, and I'm not exactly committed to it, I honestly think I sleep way too much to be an effective world dominator. But every now and again, a little something happens that inches me forward in my goal.

Today I got a letter from Brown University, my alma mater, announcing that I have been selected for a leadership award [and hello people who peruse the 'net for mentions of Brown]. I don't think I'll be able to go to accept the award in person -- I know, some plot to world domination this is -- it would be my fourth trip to the east coast in a 6 month period. I don't know about you, but I currently do not have another $1000 lying around for a weekend in Providence, RI. Again, quite a poor showing for a future supreme ruler, I should grab any and all ego-aggrandazing opportunities. Thus it is that plans of great hue and resolution their currents turn awry and lose the name of action* -- a true power hungry tyrant-to-be would certainly not blow her traveling budget on sentimental nonsense such as friends' weddings.

Of course, it's quite likely that after this post, the award will be withdrawn because really do I have to embarrass them EVERY TIME? At the very least, I expect a gently worded email.

In the immortal words of Pinky and The Brain: "What are we going to do tomorrow night, Brain?" "Same thing we do every night, Pinky: try to take over the world!"

 

*My apologies to the late great William Shakespeare for the butchered paraphrase.

I could have danced all night...

...but then I probably would have needed another hip surgery, so it's a good thing that I did not.

For anyone just now tuning in (and if you are, welcome to whatever the heck this is), I was at my 20th college reunion at Brown over Memorial Day weekend. Ok, now you're caught up, and if you want more (who wouldn't?), you can just scroll down to the posts from the last few days.

And now, back to the continuing saga.

On Saturday evening, we had our 20th reunion class dinner. It began under a downpour, one of those summer storms that takes the daylight away, almost, and drops the temperature uncomfortably low. That did not stop us from being silly and having fun, and it gave me an opportunity to wear my new Brown sweatshirt, the first I've bought in 20 years, which Liza says has good karma.

Here we are, from left to right, Brenna, Liza, John and myself, doing the evil thing (One Million Dollars!!). Brenna is Liza's 13 year old daughter, who tagged along with us and may have been close to dying of boredom. As for me, I'm not sure what I'm doing with my face, but I look quite evil.

Thankfully it all took place under tents, and it stopped raining long enough for us to get our class photo taken. It was an awesome class photo, spouses and children were in it too - if one person in your family went to Brown, you are all part of the Brown family. Period. I look forward to getting a copy of the photo and posting it here. Getting us to pose for it was a lot like herding cats. The photographer had a megaphone, through which he gave us instructions, and which we mostly ignored because everyone was chatting and commenting and saying hello to friends and introducing family members. How it got done, I do not know, but as is often the case with Brown people, it was organized chaos and it all worked out just fine.

We squidged over the soggy grass back to the appetizers tent, and soon after, we moved over to the dinner tent. Natch, there was practically nothing I could eat. Lucky for me, they had an Italian hors d'oevres table (olives, cheese, prosciutto, caponatina, artichokes, roast peppers in olive oil, etc.) so I filled up on that. For dessert they had these awesome mini ice cream cones, and no, I couldn't eat those either, but I could take pictures of professional people looking silly eating them. Like Sig here, who is a great sport. Or maybe the ice cream cone is regular size and he's a giant. Who knows!

After dinner, there was dancing. A few words about dancing. When we were at Brown, every Thursday night we had Funk Night. The best and hippest dance music of the time would be played, often it was a mix of house music and other stuff, and we would dance for 3 to 4 hours, until they sent us home. The summer I spent at Brown, my friend Angela and I would wear ourselves out every Thursday. There weren't many people there during the summer, but even if it was just the two of us, we would dance till we dropped. All of us miss Funk Night.

So when the music started, it didn't take long for us to get up and out of our seats, and go dancing. And dance we did. Like crazy people.

In short, we had a ball. We even got Brenna to dance with us for a little bit, and while she put us to shame with her moves, that didn't deter us one bit. When we were done dancing at the dinner (and you could tell it was over when they started playing sappy boring songs), we moved to the House Party at the IPC. There we danced some more, and my friend Joan even tried to teach me the steps of a dance that the whole room can do together. I almost got it. Someone video taped the lesson, and ensuing goofiness, so I hope to be able to embarrass myself publicly by posting it here when I get it. Ah, the digital age!

Finally, around midnight, my feet hurt too much to continue, and I headed back to the dorm to flop on my unbelievably uncomfortable dorm mattress. It was so nasty and hard, by the way, that both my hips hurt after two nights on that contraption. OMG. I would have confessed to just about anything after "sleeping" on that thing. People came back noisily until about 4am, or so I'm told because I really had no sense of time, I just know that I kept sorta waking up whenever partiers went by.

The next day was Commencement (and if you haven't already, you can read about the walk through the Van Wickle Gates here), which included some standing around time, which did nothing to alleviate the soreness. By the time Liza and Brenna and I got in Liza's car to head back, I was so sore I swear I thought I'd just undone 2 years of healing. Both my hips hurt, my ankles were swollen (hello, cankles!), my quads were screaming at me. The best part was trying to get out of the car. Unfolding was slow and painful each time and accompanied by "OwowowowowoOWOWOWOW!!" Not in the least bit embarrassing, or old. By Monday I was ok, but that was after 10 hours of sleep on a real bed.

But in the end, an amazing time was had by all, and it was worth every sore joint and muscle in my body. Funk Night lives!

A reunion

Nothing is quite so restorative as spending a weekend with old friends and celebrating your accomplishments.

That is exactly what I got to do.

This past weekend was my 20th college reunion. My college is Brown University. 20 years ago this past Sunday, my friends and I donned black gowns and caps and walked through the Van Wickle Gates (and how much do you love that that links to the Encyclopedia Brunoniana?) and down college hill. Those gates are open only three times a year: when the incoming freshmen walk up the hill and on to campus, and when the graduating seniors do the reverse, let loose on the world.

So that's where I begin: Commencement. The ceremony is like a sock, and then the sock inverts. What I mean is that the oldest alumni lead the procession through the gates, and they stop at the top of the hill. Behind them are progressively younger classes, which walk through the gates, in between the older classes, and then they take their places further down the hill, to watch classes below them walk past. When all the alumni have taken their spots, then the med school grads and graduate students walk through, and finally the graduating seniors walk through, all 1,500 or so of them. 

Once they have gone by, all the faculty walk through, followed by the oldest alumni for the inversion. Now the oldest walk down the hill through the younger alumni all the way through the current graduates.

So what it amounts to is that every class gets to walk down the hill past everyone else. Everyone who is on the sidelines claps and cheers for the classes walking through them. It’s a lot of fun.

What was very obvious to both me and Liza, who was there with me, was the changing colors of the classes as the walked through. The 75th reunion were the oldest alumni there (to spare you the math, they graduated in 1935), only three of them, and everyone was white all the way to 1970.

The class of 1970, which honestly is the best class ever, walked through wearing tie-die t-shirts, flashing the peace sign, and probably stoned. 

The class of ’70 always shows up in force at the reunions, and they are by far the most party class. Last reunion I had to walk by the dorm where the class of ’70 was housed, and at any time of the day or night, music was blasting, people were out on the patio, and it was just one long party. Then I’d get to class of ’90, my class, and it was crickets. They just don’t make ‘em like they used to!

Where was I? Oh yeah, class of ’70. In that class was a sprinkling of non-white faces. By the class of ’75, the next reunion, there were more faces of color (and some of those guys were out dancing the night before, and they certainly knew their steps), and each reunion class got more and more interesting, more and more diverse. Until the class of 2010 walked through, and then you couldn’t tell who was what anymore, there were all colors, physiognomies, hair, eyes, mixes you have never seen before and everything in between. Real diversity. It was amazing and inspiring to watch.

Once the graduating seniors walk through, then the oldest classes came down the hill through all the younger classes. The first were the class of 1935, the 75th reunion

and then on down. Finally it became our turn, we filed down the hill and past the graduating seniors in their caps and gowns. Walking through those amazing young people, who all clapped and cheered for the classes gone before them, was incredible. There was screaming, and laughing, and high fives to as many people as we could, and an amazing bonding that will be reinforced every five years.

The funny aspect to walking through the graduates was that they reeked of alcohol so much that we totally got a contact buzz!

Brown 20th in photos

I'll be blogging soon, but meanwhile you can see photos here if you like.