Today’s soundtrack: I know they don’t sound the way I planned them to be
Today at 9:02pm: having a plate of banh cuon and some laughs


How can I be thirty-two? This doesn’t make any sense.

People came over for dinner and it was fun. My crowd would bore you though. Out of the fifteen of us, none of us is really into loud music or booze. We’re into chatter and chow. We order take out en masse and can talk for hours about television, storytelling, horrifically embarassing childhood experiences and pop culture.

I like getting my film snob friends all riled up about how I think Michael Bay is a genius. “Fucking face it,” I say. “The Italians had Fellini, the French had Truffaut, the Japanese, Kurosawa. We’ve got Michael Bay.”

I don’t really think Michael Bay is a genius, of course, but I enjoy his movies immensely. Most stories these days suck anyway and at least he gives you the visuals. I saw Bad Boys II and while the “story” is horrible, the set pieces were worth every penny of my ten bucks.

We have Michael Bay for the same reason the Romans had gladiators: For the spectacle. If I want the meaning of life I’ll find it my fucking self, outside of a movie theater.

They got me an awesome cake. There were no candles though because I’ve reached the age where you can’t put a candle for every year or it would be a confectionary conflagration. I think we tried that shit up until around 26 and the birthday “boy” almost lost his eyebrows.

Dressing up, or well is not very high on my list of priorities--I’m trying to be a writer, for chrissakes--but today I had on the standard Asian outfit: A black button-down shirt and grey slacks. Everyone’s used to seeing me wear the same old tired clothes so several commented that I looked nice today. I felt kind of funny telling them I was dressed this way because I was at a wake in the afternoon.

In the middle of the party or dinner or whatever you wanna call it, my roommate and his girlfriend came back from ten days in Norway. They were super-tan. For part of their journey they stayed in a village so far north that the sun never sets, it just keeps going around and around the horizon. Cool, right?

Cia got me this picture book of Cuba and Tony got me this awesome fucking cleaver. This wickedly sharp Chinese cooking knife, the type of thing you grab when you’re getting a drink of water at 3am but you hear a noise on the fire escape. Henry a/k/a Smokedpanda got me that Po Bronson book (I’d been dying for this bitch) and Ed got me Jonathan Lethem’s “Motherless Brooklyn.” I spent eight years in Brooklyn so Ed said the book would have special relevance for me, I look forward to reading it. It’s about a mob detective with Tourette’s.

They all just left and I just finished the dishes. My roommate and his girlfriend went out to get some chow with Mike and Yuka. They tried to get me to go but I’m tired and I need some A-time. Looking forward to sleep. Tomorrow’s a Sunday but I have to get up early to work on a project.

I started off writing this journal entry thinking it would be about something else but it hasn’t turned out that way so I’m gonna just roll with the punches and go to sleep.