Yvonne picked the church for their wedding because it was the only Catholic Church without a giant crucifix on the wall. Instead, it had this picture of Jesus, Joseph, and Mary.
I spent the whole ceremony trying to divine the title of the painting. My best guess:
“No, see, that’s not a two-by-four either. Your father specifically asked for a two-by-four.”
So many fascinating Uber drivers on this visit. One had strong opinions on the Mission: Impossible films and the work of the Wachowskis. Another brought his family to Sunnyvale from Kathmandu years before the earthquake.
But my favorite was of Indian extraction from Fiji. He had been a farmer. When the river wasn’t flooding, he’d got to school on the bus. When the river flooded, he’d swim across the river with his backpack over his head. At Fiji’s U.S. embassy, he told his interviewer that “It’s not my fault I was born poor, but it will be my fault if I die poor.”
Best ice cream I’ve ever had in my entire life: créme brûlée at Bi-Rite with Nicia.
Best pizza I’ve ever had in my entire life: pepperoni, mushroom, & garlic sourdough at Goat Hill Pizza with Holly.
Who has two thumbs and can read McDonald’s ads on the sides of San Francisco busses? This guy.
Had dinner at Tommy’s Joynt on Van Ness here in San Francisco (seen here with crazy construction going on across Geary.)
This Hofbräuhaus has been a Young family favorite since before I was born and, if I’m not mistaken, has also been a favorite of local band Metallica as well.
Kurt Loder, feel free to correct me if I’m wrong.
I saw it because reasons.
People are saying that it isn’t smashing box office records because of a shift in zeitgeist.
But I, for one, can’t believe that because it includes a line about “jiggery-pokery” scant weeks after Supreme Court Antonin Scalia popularized the expression.
The salesclerk/interrogator at Macy’s had this to say when I admitted to living in Shanghai: “If you can’t beat ’em, join ’em.”
Touché.
My favorite part of my trip has been reading my friends Martin & Zoya’s daughter Goodnight, Moon in Chinese before bedtime.
She was kind enough not to point out that my tones were terrible.
Haven’t been able to escape this Taylor Swift song since I got here. Which is fine by me because it’s catchy as fuck.
Who needs to go all the way to Xi’an when you can find terracotta warriors right outside of P.F. Chang’s?
The movie we saw, not the evening.
Saw the awesome Apatow/Schumer movie TRAINWRECK with my dearest of USC film school friends, Debbie & Jim.
In my favorite William Gibson novel, PATTERN RECOGNITION, he posits that jet lag is actually one’s soul being “reeled in on some ghostly umbilical down the vanished wake of the plane” because souls “can’t move that quickly, and are left behind, and must be awaited, upon arrival, like lost luggage.”
Thought I was over my jet lag yesterday. Went to bed at a reasonable 11pm. Woke up at 3am. Fell back asleep at 8am. Slept through lunch plans with DWA friends.
I hate making mistakes. But I hate letting people down even more.
Feel like an idiot.
Finally got a chance to see MAD MAX: FURY ROAD. Simply the most insane stunt movie of all time.
Also, took me an hour and a half to finally recognize that the character Nux was played by Nicholas Hoult.
My 老家 (“hometown” or literally “old family”.)
A town so dull that it was named not after semi-famous naturalist Luther Burbank but after not-at-all famous dentist David Burbank.
A town so dull that comedian Taylor Negron once quipped “Burbank makes Glendale look like Berlin in the 30s.”
A town so dull that in high school we used to go to the Holiday Inn at night and ride the elevators for fun. (Seriously. I even wrote that into my first solo screenplay.)
So where in all of L.A. did I decide to spend my week here?
Look at those inexplicable fiberglass doe-eyes does. Just look at them.
But this was the view out my 18th floor window at Golden Hour: 
That’s not a gradient filter. That’s the actual blue sky.
You can even see cross-town rival Burbank High School’s giant “B” emblazoned on the hill.
Fuck those guys.
This was the sticker on the dash of my rental car. Has smoking become so rare in L.A. that people have forgotten how smoke works?
