oh, there you are.

if you were looking for me and couldn't find me, i'll give you a hint.

you can always check here.

i think that will help.

engagement post redux!

this tale finishes the long awaited fake proposal from april fool's day. i'd put a catchy link in to that prank, but we have since deleted that post. which is really too bad, because it was filled with so much foolery.

we got people's hopes up then and haven't heard the quiet since.

many of you have already heard the news. but here's the run down anyway.

the night started with dinner at our favorite restaurant: Upstairs (pictured here courtesy of new york magazine).

emily had the halibut. i had the bouley burger. both delicious. as was dessert.

afterwards, we went for a walk down towards the boardwalk along the hudson. as we were getting there, stevey was stealthfully setting up his ninja camera to document the whole thing digitally. which is how we got pictures like this.


anyway. i had a little 2.5 x 3.5 photobook made with pictures spanning from the very first time emily came out to visit, even before we were dating up until this summer. inside, i included some masterful poetry in the form of a proposal. sparing you the sap, i proposed, she said yes and we had a wonderful time at the park: trying on the ring, taking pictures of ourselves, having other people take pictures of us, &c.






you would then think the night was over. you would then be wrong.

for the past week or so, i had been emailing and calling our friends to keep the night open. so while we were at dinner, stevey and our friend emily mitarai were back home setting up and welcoming our friends for our joyous return. earlier in the day, i had procured a cake from chelsea market, some martinellis, and a tall new orchid from this florist in the west village.

so when we came home, emily was a totally surprised and a little shocked to see our friends in revelry awaiting the newly engaged couple. everyone was really happy and the night was really a lot of fun. you can see in one of the pictures, marc is saying something really funny. and its too bad the flash washes out the mood stevey and emily m. set with the soft lighting and well selected music for such a gathering.






all in all it was a really good night.
we look forward to seeing you all soon on the 22nd of november in LA...

a good ride

thanks for your participation...

confused

do you ever wonder, what am i watching?
or what's going on here?
or are they matching or are we?
or where do you get an orange suit like that?


but i guess that its fine if i don't know all the answers. and what's wrong with being trendy? hundreds of people couldn't be wrong though right? like, american idol, (never seen a full episode) but if all these people are watching, it must be good. same with cooking/skating/dancing with stars. which i think is ironic because reality tv got huge because it put regular people in the limelight and made them stars. the gimic allowed regular people to be stars. so explain to me how reality tv with celebrities works? isn't that taking stars and leaving them in the limelight? so maybe i'm a little confused.

budget

by far the best $16 dollars to come out of my budget in a long time. my feet still ache, my ears still ring, and i can't stop seeing images of the mates of state laying it down. any literary, descriptive attempts to capture the essence that is the mates would do them an enormous disservice.

just enjoy the pictures and wish that you were there.

pleather

or should i say, "leather, pleeease."

spring is here in nyc,
strolling home in hanami.
here are days of pleasure,
gone are days of pleather.

with the onset of spring here in washington heights, one thing i'm fo sho gonn miss is those AWESOME leather coats with stitching depicting the most intricate designs. i don't even know where these cats find these coats and how many hamiltons one has to drop to pick one up.

so my buddy bracken and i only had a half day of school today, allowing us the morning to cruise around manhattan a little bit. i let him pick the free location because i have been to 5 or so museums in the last week or so alone. he chose the intrepid (pictured below), which is an old navy ship with all sorts of cool planes and missles and helicopters and such, you know man things of american muscle. anyway, as we were walking back to our subway stop, the thought occurred to me, i'll never be able to pull off one of the awesome stitched leather jackets.



certain things are doable, while others are unobtainble. pleather... unobtainble.

(insert personal beat to taste, (bass as needed))

somethings is doable
others is blueable
sportin it'n prime
gonn get cha erry time
coming at ya quick, gotcha caught up un-slick
whether on the measure
pleather don't mean pleasure

heights

"they will see us waving from such great heights,
"come down now", they'll say
but everything looks perfect from far away,
"come down now", but we'll stay..." --postal

i went climbing today. i've been climbing recently. but today i went climbing with stephen. there something energizing about climbing. looking up at the place you want to be and knowing that all you have to do is climb up to the top. "everything looks perfect from far away." and not the false-perfect of george seurat that falls apart upon minute inspection. but instead today WAS a sunday on la grand jette, and in lieu of umbrellas, we had cameras and instead of blazers we had hoodies. and everything did look clearer from the top as well, almost as if our exertions in reaching the apex justified our clarity.



i felt good to climb today. sometimes the bricks were lose. sometimes the places i wanted to go had no access. no matter how cool i thought it would be, i was blocked as if i had no input. but the floors and rooms i did get to experience were well worth any effort it took to ascend to a new place. and when i got there, i realized that my effort has flavored the view. and the chysler building was beautiful and sophisticated.

such great heights. i love that beat. the opening of this song is distinct and separate, unlike its counterparts. and that's probably why i love it so much. or maybe because i like climbing and i wanna stand on such great heights. except i've never realized how much i liked climbing, until i went climbing today. but i've been climbing recently too. and maybe i've climbed in the past. all in all its gotta be the engulfing feeling of accomplishment. where there was distance and such great heights separating you before there is left a residual thoroughfare paved with your intentions-in-action.

in control

when it happened twice before, you knew it was gonna happen again.

CLICK HERE NOW!

if you're not outta control, then you're not in control.

and y'all know where to find me on june 16!

aspirations

when i grow up, i want to be left-handed.

invasion

yesterday i woke up to look out the window, saw this, and i thought, when did the north koreans get here?!

zombie

so i woke up yesterday morning with the absolute best song in my head.  zombie. by the cranberries.  at least 8 degrees of awesome strung into that song.  just think of the lyrics, in your head, in your hee-a-d-d, in you he-e-ea-d-d, again and again.  but as you wail these notes, remember that you have to punch yourself in the throat at the right beat to simulate the perfect tone and syncopation.  but sitting there eating my costco peach yogurt watching stephen get ready for work, i thought, "maybe they have something here." 


how much of what we deem reality is really real?  for example, take stephen and his latest post please pass. google doesn't define the reality of his blog. it's there. but yet in his head, he wants greater recognition (and maybe i'm putting motive where is doesn't exist) and for the grand wizard of the world wide web to dub him sir deltar, ruler of the dominion.


sometime when it's cold outside all it takes is one good shiver to shake off the annoyance. sometimes when you're nervous you just have to stop thinking nervous. i remember this time when i was walking with my buddies back from the beach heading to the eki outside of fujisawa, just a little ways from tokyo, and i was trying to be poetical with the statement, "don't worry, i have an innate abitlity to be where i've been before." but other times i think that we define ourselves through diversity, which can be unifying or dividing. and sometimes i can't remember how i dress in the summer when it's winter cause its so cold and can't conceptualize the idea of leaving the house in shorts, flip-flops, and awesome t-shirts. sometimes i think i'm the same. sometimes i think i'm different, and i'm speaking chronologically. sometimes your ahead, but if everybody turns around, you're in the back.


either way:

resilience requires
redefining reality.

exit strategy

do you think the way we exit matters? for real, is the exit more important than the entrance. this weekend sitting at dinner, eating some sushi, having some conversations japanese, i thought about exit strategies. strangely connected with a conversation i imposed on stevey last weekend at the cemetary. sometimes i think the exit is more important than the entrance. samurai believed this. that is why hari-kiri (seppuku) was practiced. since they honored the idea of reincarnation, they believed the way you exit life was an important step to continue the way you fought in life and basically lived your life. so if you had somehow dishonored your clan, it was redeemable by an honorable death. interesting practice.

relationships can be the same way. i almost think that it's more important to have an appropriate conclusion to courting than a romantic beginning. you can even salvage a horrible relationship with the right exit strategy. however, the antagonistic approach is just as potent because much of the rush of fun in the beginning will eventually regress, the words/phrases you use during that all-too-painful break-up conversation will linger in the mind of the opposite party for times to come. those critical moments may be etched permanently with potential to taint all other elements of an otherwise good relationship. exits can be telling.


i think there's something to be said about exit strategies. ok so let's consider the spasmodic utterances i forced on stevey as we sauntered through the jfk memorial site last weekend in the district. similar to the way our generation will recall 911, the prior generations can all relate when/where/how they heard about the assassination of jfk. jonny kennedy had roughly 3 years in office and dealt with some historic events like the bay of pigs and the cuban missile crisis. but how much could a president really accomplish in three years that would memoralize him for generations to follow. now, i wasn't alive during that period in history, but did the american people love jfk that much prior to his assassination? or was it the subsequent love affair with jackie and a feeling of societal vulnerability?

take another martyr, the reverend doctor martin luther king jr. i do not want to take away from his legacy at all, but consider this point, what if goerge bush sr. instead of mlk? yeah, he conducted the gulf war and raised a son that would follow his lead, but still went down a rare one-term defeated incumbent. and will his grave sit on a bluff in the nation's most prestigious cemetary and overlook the hill with its glowing momuments of other national heroes? if the first george dubya was brutually murdered would there be middle schools in every neighborhood bearing his name? maybe, maybe not. my point is this. yes, great men. and great men in prominent, conspicuous positions were killed for the cause. but they didn't give their lives, their lives were taken. don't you think its more noble to put your life on the line, like the numerable causalties from all of our nations wars? and yet how many of these men get more than a flag delivered by uniformed men to their doorsteps? i guess my question is this, why does involuntary assassination merit more history honor points than voluntary sacrifice to a cause? but maybe it's true that an ignoble act can and will be redeemed by an approriate exit strategy.