And with this song, I really do feel old... hahahahaha... I just found a video of one of my favorite singers, Lyn, do a cover for this... it's kinda nostalgic, it's from like 2001-ish??... hahahahahaha >_<

( This is JYP's 난 여자가 있는데 )

Today, I managed to catch an ep of some random kpop live show on TV... I always forget to watch it since it's on at 2:30 am. I occasionally watched them while I was in Korea when I was there last because my adamant aversion to kpop and all this korean pop culture had largely faded. Lately, I've not been keeping up with anything kpop since I haven't been in Korea to hear random new songs I'd like while walking through Seoul...

Anyway, I reallyreally wanted to like the newer kpop coming through these days, but almost everything, musically and lyrically, makes me want to wish I was deaf and unable to understand Korean. >_< And is there still an excuse to have Engrish in the lyrics if one of the group members is fluent in English?!?!

A friend of mine pointed out that the kr record companies struck gold when they tweaked the girl group Golden Ratio to include girls who ranked about a 7 in looks (out of a possible 10) with decent singing abilities instead of the traditional 10 with no singing talent with a 2 with all the talent and a few 7's thrown in for good measure...

And since I drank tea after dinner, I'm unable to sleep... so I'll try my hand at another 5 minute translation... except there's nothing that I can really think to do... hahahahahaha >_< I really haven't listened to anything new in a loooong time.

Okayokay... I'll work on the final installment of my pokemon championship recap. >_>;;;

So after my rather unexpected success at the Pokemon Video Game National Championship, I get a month and a half-ish until the World Championship.

( snip snip )

So, most of my friends know the news by nao… I’m the Third best Pokemon.. wrangler??..something… in the country, and then Fourth best in the World of Pokemon Video Game battling...

( I guess I should properly explain how all this came about. )

Sooo... lots of things have been happening. Though I'm mostly using facebook these days. The weirdest bit of news is that I'm the top 3rd ranked Pokemon battler in the States, and 4th ranked in the World. But before I go into that... I want to share these pictures... I had them done a few days before the World Championships in San Diego this past weekend.

( Moaaaar!! )

Hahahahaha... despite the subject, I don't dislike Ichiro Suzuki, the MLB player, at all. I just happened to see a kr made poster that said "IchiNO" on it, and it was on the big screen right as he walked up to bat the first time. The timing, and the poster itself, was hilarious.

Actually, I was at the final game of the World Baseball Classic and had a really good time, despite the slow start. We were stuck in traffic for a while just driving through Downtown LA and up Sunset, and we arrived in the middle of the first inning. Sharon, Ed, and Susie also got tickets for the game but were stuck in the Reserve section, which is the highest tier. I thought that the tickets J oppa's friends got were similarly situated, but to my surprise, we got really cool seats just behind left field, pretty much right behind one of the out fielders.

I've never actually been to a baseball game evar, even though the new house is only a few blocks from Dodger Stadium and the OC house isn't too far from Edison Field either. My parents were Dodger fans when Chan Ho Park was on the team, but I was too apathetic to want to go to a game. The thought of thundering noise and awful traffic keeps me away from all sporting events. But I was successfully coaxed into venturing out today by the promise of nachos and Dodger Dogs and other junk food items. hahahaha So today, I had my very first Dodger Dog and got stuck for 10 minutes with mustard stains on my face since we forgot to grab napkins and had to wait for a sufficient pause in the game to go back down to grab some.

Game-wise, I felt that despite my actual nationality, I'd fulfilled a lifetime of Kr nationalistic duty by buying/driving a kr car. So as far as I was concerned, I could root or whichever team I wanted, even the jp team. The kr-jp enmity still runs strong in my generation, disgustingly so among Koreans. I even saw "Dok-do is our land" signs and such, which in hindsight were preferable over the topless, pudgy male fans with K-O-R-E-A written across their flabby chests. More amusing was the sizable contingent of fans sitting behind us, rooting for Mexico (with whom we later shared some kr rice cakes with). Armed with ear plugs, I remained calm and sarcastic during most of the game.

The first half of the game was relatively boring, and I couldn't quite get into the flow of the game. I didn't quite know where to look either, so I had no idea what was going on or where the ball was, until the jp team managed to score the first run. The kr team managed to follow it up with a home run; the ball actually went into the seats one row over, less than 10 yards from where we were sitting and I got elbowed in the head accidentally by J oppa's friend, as she jumped up and down while I remained seated. I ended up cheering and making noise, well, mostly feeble whistling noises from a plastic whistle I was given(J oppa remarked it reminded him of New Year's at Ortolan) whenever something exciting happened with the ball, whichever team happened to hit/throw it.

The jp team was leading by 1 run at the bottom of the ninth inning and everyone was standing up to watch the kr team at bat. This was the only time when I joined in for the "de han min kook" cheering, since I enjoy cheering for the underdog. When the kr team managed to tie the score, everyone, including me, went nuts. J oppa's face looked rather scary as he was screaming along with the kr supporters and hugged me hard enough to hurt. By this time, I thought to myself that if the kr team didn't win by the end of the ninth, they'd probably lose. My inkling proved true when Ichiro came around and helped the jp team score 2 more runs. J oppa wondered why I was cheering for Ichiro since he assumed I was pro-kr, but he was the most interesting and exciting player in the entire game with the string of neverending foul balls he managed to hit, with the last hit successful and devastating to the kr side. hahahaha Anyway, the momentum was mostly dead for the kr supporters, and no one in our section was on their feet when kr was at bat at the end of the 10th inning.

As soon as the kr team lost, the majority of the stadium emptied out before they got to the trophy presenting ceremony. J oppa's friends were very disappointed with the loss, and were eager to get out, but considering the alternative plan of getting horribly drunk given a kr win, I think things turned out for the best. J oppa figured that LA businesses probably would have made more money with a kr win since the crowd at the stadium was mostly kr. ahahaha

The lasting impression on my mind at this point isn't about the kr defeat unlike everyone around me, since I didn't have much emotion/anticipation invested into the game anyway. I just remember my amusement at seeing random white people with draped kr or jp flags draped around them like capes, sharing random high fives and fist bumps with the Asian fans, many of whom weren't entirely fluent in English. Oh, and I feel kinda bad for this one presumably kr girl who stood behind us at the concession stand line and complained about being stuck driving in traffic for 3 hours and having paid over $200 in tickets, only to find herself stuck in the middle of a pro-jp crowd. She said it would all be worth it as long as the kr team won. Too bad lady, better luck next time. Maybe the soccer World Cup??

Well, I'm actually procrastinating on my intended entry about Gordon Ramsay, and annoyed that I took out my contacts early when there was still stuff that required clear vision, so I'll post this instead.

I was craving some casker since I missed my cats who aren't at the LA house, I decided to find a live version of their cat song on youtube, and since the casker vocalist did a song with Epikhigh...who performed said song with Younha covering the casker girl part, within a few rambling clicks, I got this:

someone actually made this with my slapdash, done-in-15 minutes-or-less-or-you-can-sue-me-for-missing-pants-for-amounts-upward-of-60-million-dollars, translation!!! oh, and so the rest of you can hear what I had stuck in my head back then:



OH THE ANGST!! GIDARIGO GIDARINUN NA E YOOOOOOOOOOOOOO

Okay, I'm feeling amused and a bit guilty at the same time. Because when I do a "transcribe style" translation, which all of my translations actually are, I go with a mixture of literal(b/c I'm a stubborn kitteh purist) and stylistic(so it's more American, colloquial, not horriblyhorribly awkward english). But seeing that video actually made me cringe since there are now a few changes that I'd make. I'm okay with the kr style clause placement, since it's easier to know the meaning of the actual lyric being sung at the time. And while there are no actual errors in translation, just stylistic preferences, the preferences I actually had back then when I actually worked on it don't sit well with me now. But in standard Gracie style, I'll just talk about that and not actually make any changes. hahahahaaha orz

Sooooo, to that end, nao that everyone and their cat can use virtualduborsimilar, I'll spend more time on a translation from nao on(okay, who are we kidding), that, or make the stupid entry private. ._.

Well, it's not like I not a regular time waster anyway, but I just subjected myself to four hours of boy band torture, watching PV's and live performances of SS501, a kr boy band.

( Rant Rant Rant )

Really, I'm no stranger to time wasting... bt really, I'd like those hours back.

It's my goal this year to finish off the rest of the Socal Michelin Guide, since I seem to be stuck going to one particular restaurant on that list, Ortolan, again and again. This isn't really a bad thing, though. The food there is great, and since a friend of mine is closely connected with a lot of the staff there, it adds an interesting twist to things.


( Come to think of it, I was at Providence on Christmas Eve. )

Well, it's a Sunday evening and I'm at the restaurant, trying to get more work done and probably not doing a good job of it. Other than trying to clean off my perpetually messy desk/office, today was a bit of an unusual day - there's a commercial shoot going on outside. When I came into the restaurant this afternoon, 7th St. was dressed up to look like a street in NYC. All this past week, I had been in talks with the location scout/manager about street access during the shoot and nuisance fees, nothing out of the ordinary, I'm not even mildly curious as to what they are filming anymore. We get so many filming notifications about street closures and such for 7th St., that I hardly care, as long as the location manager isn't an ass. But then again, a large majority of them tend to be asses and I HATEHATEHATE it when the "industry" moves through our street. The only difference this time was that the location guy seemed to know what he was doing and was really nice about it.

I don't know why I didn't notice yesterday, but there was a really large number of Asians on site. Even the producer, who I was introduced to, was an Asian woman, named Emi, who I thought was Chinese since one of our old regular customers is a Chinese woman working as a jewelry designer here and is named Emi. It turns out the filming was for a commercial for Shiseido's Tsubaki hair care products and a supposedly popular Jp idol type was to star in it.

Unfortunately, it was no one I had ever heard of: Aoi Yuu, and all of her actual scenes would be shot in a studio in Japan with green screen with the footage from the weekend added in later. I was a bit disappointed, the one I was hoping for was Ryoko Hirosue and all opportunities to gawk at a famous Jp celeb were lost anyway. hahahahahaha So I just spoke with some people on set who recognized me from yesterday and we joked about the overcrowded set, since I'd never seen so many people for a commercial shoot before. Well, maybe I should clarify and note the large numbers of Jp crew, which baffled me since the actual actress was still in Japan and was never in LA at all.

Oh well. I'm hoping that I'll be able to sneak onto the filming of IRIS when they shoot Stateside scenes. Yay for Kim Tae Hi??

Lately, I haven't been doing much that's very interesting, especially since I hide out in the back office of the restaurant more often. One of these days, I'll get my restauranteur blog up and running so Tommy and I can share our random experiences.

There's been a few events I've been meaning to blog about, but I guess I've become even lazier to do so... but a quick rundown would include:

- Little Tokyo Mitsuwa Closing Sale: I thought I was being clever by looking up the posted opening hours to get there earlier, but due to the lagging grandmother and early opening, I ended up standing in line for 3 hours just to get into the store... and then 3 more hours of line standing for the checkout. I think every issei and nissei in Socal was there, with some weabo in between. Aside from stalking old ladies while they explored all levels of the parking structure attempting to locate their car and Tommy wondering if any sukiyaki pots were still available(they were, in abundance), we made it out with over $400 worth of goods, mostly in Botan Rice Candy and Morinaga Milk Caramels, that we only had to pay half price for. J oppa was not a happy camper for being stuck in line for so long and having to miss work, but in the end, I think the stickers in the Rice Candy boxes may have made up for it.

- Gordon Ramsay at the London, Weho: In a word, it was AWFUL!! I'll post a proper entry later about this.

- Lake Arrowhead and Snow Summit: Going snowboarding at Bear makes me miss Droobie a lot. I tagged along with J oppa and his friends, only to have oppa get horribly sick after his second run. By the time I made it up the hill, the rest of them wanted to head back, so I also just had two runs. But on my last run down, I ended up clipping the edge of some girl's board, so I ate it really hard, to the point where I had snow packed into my helmet. Thankfully, Snow Turtle Gracie made it out of there with no other injuries, other than a sore neck.

There's probably more, I just can't remember anything more right now. I'll update again later when I remember.

Anyway, I'm actually 26 years old nao, which is kinda scary to think about as well.

Maybe Paris Hilton isn't so bad after all... Thanks for the endorsement, White-haired dood!!

On a completely useless note, these are her shoes.

So I really like j-rock band, The Brilliant Green, even though, I'll admit, I didn't keep up with Tomoko Kawase's Tommy projects. And I only recently download their latest singles after their longlong hiatus, so I'm just now starting to obsess over them. I've been listening to their three newest singles non stop, but I think Stand By Me is the cutest and thus, the one that gets stuck in my head the most often.

( more rant )

http://totoroforestproject.org/

Mole Boy: well at least it's not the mononoke forest
Gracie: HAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAH
Mole Boy: cuz then i'd just tell them to get the crazy giant tree monster to protect it
Gracie: HAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHAHHA

Someone give me a poke(i.e. CALL MMEEE PLEEEASSSHH) when tickets go on sale for this, yeshyesh?? Even though the years where I never left home without my bouncing totoros are over, the Gracie wants to go!!


Other than that, I've nothing really to report, even though I'm sure that I just did a second ago. I forgets nao.

I was driving around OC this afternoon with J oppa, half listening to NPR while trying to decide what to eat for lunch, when I caught the snippet, "Anime Expo"... Thinking I didn't hear that right, I turned up the volume, and they were doing a feature on AX07. I almost died. AX on NPR?? WHAAA???!? I'm still not quite sure what to think. As I drove into work the fast few days, I saw the ginormous, color explosion eye-sore banner that hung from the LACC that advertised AX as "Pure Family Fun" which I suppose it can be as long as they keep the hairy-ass man Faye off the premises. I suppose girls in skimpy cosplay isn't nearly so offensive. It certainly feels rather strange having been less than a few blocks away, with fanboys and girls swarming all over Downtown, without any intention of stopping in to check out how its doing. I was tempted to run over a few of the fanboys/girls on my way to the restuarant, but luckily, Pasta is three blocks off Fig and didn't attract any of them. I will bug Tommy and Andrew about AX08 later on Monday, I suppose. I'm stuck in the house studying math this weekend.

Though if I think harder about it, I think I planned to at least direct some people there this year, but I doubt it would have panned out. The Mother Network(tm) includes people who are trying to start a new animation stuido in Kr, with a lady who directed Simpsons and other domestic cartoon OEM animation at the helm. She's a really cute/funny lady, but she hasn't been back in the States for a while nao.

Thanks to curse, I've been watching the Sambakza animations nonstop again. I still think Ep 2, Cake Dance, is my favorite, since it features one of my favorite things in life: cake. I found lyrics translations of all of the songs used as BGM at the Sambakza FAQ page, but I haven't decided if I like them yet. The first song wasn't well done at all, mostly b/c they took major liberties and ruined the humor in the song. When I showed my mom the first video, the thing she found most hilarious was the song. So maybe I'll do a 5 minute translation of that this weekend. Good idea/bad idea??

And finally, more Colbert goodness: http://cookiepride.com/
I'm thinking of stocking up on the lapel pins so I can has one for every suit jacket I own. The most shameful part of it is: I don't even sell cookies at the restuarant. This must change!! CHAAANGE!! COOKIE PRIIIIIDE!!

Now that blogging may become a job related thing, I feel even more reluctant to updating entries more than usual. I was planning to write about the movie shoot in the restaurant that happened last month, along with some other interesting developments, but with finals and general laziness, there is nothing to report at this time. Ugh... must get Jiji to work on blog design for me... it'll be at lapastaprimadonna.com When that goes up, I'll probably make this lj a friends only thing.

Jiji's birthday was on Saturday and by some random stroke of luck, I ended up with a dozen free Sprinkles cupcakes!! Yay!! I gave four to Taeyeon and ate two; Jiji ate the remaining 6. Sorry Garland, there are none left for you to sample. Oog... I was about to say, I'll drag you to Sprinkles on Monday anyway, but I just now remembered that class starts on Monday, so I can't. T___T

On Friday, while I was at Beverly Hills to pick up the cupcakes, I saw the new Rene Caovilla boutique. I'm now trying to decide if I should buy two or three pairs... but I'll probably end up with just one pair this season. Instead of icky expensive luxury brand bags... I'll do the icky expensive salon shoe thing, so it seems I'm still living out my kr genetic destiny after all. I'm still kicking myself for not buying the first Rene Caovilla shoe I wanted three years back. siigh...

The mother has returned from kr with lots of new clothes for fatty Gracie.

Right now, I'm trying to decide if I should stay open during the Fourth of July weekend since AX is in town. My restaurant is just a few blocks away. I popped onto #a! to ask channel doods what they thought, and they mostly convinved me that the otakus aren't going to be worth it. Maybe I should rope in Darold to convert the place into a maid/butler cafe for the weekend?? hahahahahahaha Most likely, I'll just hang out with out of town people during that weekend. It'll be interesting to see what Downtown is like during convention weekends and I'll get a better idea of what foot traffic is like, so I can stay open during non-otaku occupied cons.

And then, stolen from Kurt, you get this:

-6 As a 1930s wife, I am Very Poor (Failure) Take the test!

I FAIL... but I want a cute 1930's housewife style apron. Where do I get one of those?? Stella, do you know??

Today was a rather crazy day at work; unexpected friends dropped by and I went Speed Racer crazy. Other than the fact that I spent an evening with Tommy Yune at a sushi restaurant with the group I tagged along with at ComicCon and I saw him doing an awesome sketch for Emily afterwards, that's the only actual connection I had with the franchise. I'm not quite old enough to have seen the cartoon on TV. But today, I found out that Bi/Rain is in the movie?!??!!!!11! While I'm not a huge k-pop fan, or a Bi fan, for that matter, I did see him in the k-drama Full House and liked it a lot. Needless to say, I'm pretty excited to see him in the movie tomorrow.

While browsing some KR news sites to find out more about his current activities, I came across the name, 스티븐 콜버트... huh??!?! Did I read that right... Su..Ti..Bun...Col...Buh... Te... STEVEN COLBERT??!?! huh?? Other than being annoyed that they left the "t" sound intact in his name, I found out about his Time Magazine Rivalry. Yeshyesh, it's a bit outdated, but I doesn't has cable TV and as much as I love Colbeerrrrrr's brilliance, I don't watch his show all that often. So I spent the last hour neglecting my closing duties and watching his videos. The man is comedic genius incarnate.

Anyway, I was horribly dismayed to learn about the KR response and the ignorant KR media outcry regarding the Bi vs Colbert thing. Gosh, how embarassing for the KR media, yet again. They paint Colbert as malicious racist, blatantly ridiculing Bi and Korean culture in his mind-blowingly awesome parody music video. Apparently, the throwing of the magazine out the window, which is a direct copy of Bi's throwing a picture out the window, is symbolic of KR Hate. =_=;; The Anti-fan club created yet more articles about cultural hating. They all report about the outrage of the KR netizen for belittling and ridiculing their most golden of all idols, which somehow directly amounts to belittling Krs and KR culture, right?? Though, funny enough, there were posted responses to the article where people mostly told the writer how idiotic the article was because obviously, had the writer done their job properly, they would realize the whole thing was a joke. Instead of fueling the misunderstanding, they could have done their research and done something decent with their lives by spreading knowledge about the awsumness that is Colbert. And encouragingly, enough commenters spelled is name right in hangul... Colbert with silent T!!

A blurb about the MV: Damn, White Boy Steeve can dance!! hahahahaha But yeah, I'd be Colbert's yuh-ja anyday; I'd ride in his Hyundai and eat some kim-chee with him!!

Anyway, so now that the Dance Off has passed, with perfect timing to the release of his movie debut, the KR media is taking a different view of things. They had to be hit with a 100 tons of bricks it seems to realize the whole thing was supposed to be humorous. The TV shows are airing clips of the video with detailed analysis; something they enjoy doing on KR tv: reiterate the obvious by dubbing over it. But it's still a bit irksome to me because of their self-satisfied, self righteous tone. Oh hohoho... the idiot, racist, bad-man Colbert finally realized the dazzling talent of Bi and of course would lose!! Oh, our KR Superstar.. let's feel better as a nation!! Pats on the back for everyone!! =_=;;

Granted, all cultures and countries, especially with the media involved, have had serious bouts of misunderstanding with many issues, like the Dubai ports controversy, for example. But if the laugh track didn't clue them in, I dunno what it's going to take.