Karina has arrived. With her coming, the last month of summer begins. It's scary to think that it's August already and i can clearly see the various events that will be occupying my life until September. Angie's house this weekend, possibly a trip home to San Diego, Janet concert...a soiree at Amit's. August will be packed. Strangely enough, i have no view of September whatsoever. I know i'll be in class and Hong will be gone. Anything besides that will be a toss up.



I heard today that another friend is getting married. She's an old friend whom we've known since maybe first or second grade. I heard from George that she's engaged. Craziness. But i'm happy for her. On another note, Jimmy, who recently departed to Brussels, is now stationed in the Bahamas. His job requires him to switch venues every few months and his first assignment is in the Bahamas...how sick is that? Then again, when i talked to him today, he said that he just got run into by a bus so maybe not all is well down there. Either way, good luck to both of them. It's scary and invigorating to watch everyone's lives slowly coalesce and come together.

The Neon One is gone. Deion Sanders, aka "Prime Time" has retired from football. He will go down as one of the greatest players ever. In his prime, he could shut down one whole side of the field and make opposing quarterbacks reluctant to throw towards him. Deion embodied many things but most of all, he was extremely talented. Yes, he did talk alot and was an endless self-promoter but i respected him despite all that because when a man is that good, he can afford to be a little brash. Part of the reason i'm an Atlanta Falcons fan is because i love Deion. When he moved onto the San Francisco 49ers, i was happy to see him win his first Super Bowl. Deion was larger than life. I loved watching him run an interception back into the enemy endzones while dancing and skipping down the sideline.



His skills have slipped with age but he chose to retire only because he could no longer play up to his "Prime Time" heydays. He will continue to play baseball (Deion is a two sport athlete) and i hope he finds some success and fulfillment there. Maybe next year he'll return to the Falcons and help inaugurate the new Michael Vick-Jamal Anderson "Dirty Birds." Forever 21.



(yes, that's right. i'm on deion's jock. believe it.)

"White chicks represent untouchable goods to imported male Asian action heroes -- be they Li, Chan or Fat -- who are welcomed and rewarded so long as they graciously cartwheel for Western audiences and not threaten the latter's sexual supremacy by appearing as sexual beings."

Blew alot of money today. First there was lunch and Jamba Juice and then an excursion into SoHo. Bought a cheap shirt at H&M but then splurged $100 on a pair of shoes. I've been looking for some shoes for weeks now and thanks the confident opinions of Leslie and Peggy, i finally got some. I really can't wear anything but white shoes but with their help, i purchased a pair of Kenneth Cole brown shoes. I don't know exactly how they're gonna go with my wardrobe but i gotta branch out somewhere right? I've never spent $100 on shoes, craziness. Also bought a couple of poetry books by Tupac and Saul Williams. After that we watched Made (which was tremendously funny) and ate at Uno's, making this Sunday a $200 dollar day. Sick.

Avalon had it's luao today and we basically geared our day around getting the free food and drinks and stuff. They had a band (the "Tiny Bubbles Band") and tiki torches and leis and straw hats and junk like that. I guess this is what my exorbitant rent gets me. We put out a blanket on the lawn and basically munched out and watched the band sing...poorly.



After that, i went with Kyle to meet some guy in the parking lot of IKEA to pick up a muffler he was purchasing. I don't know what these kids did but they had some really nice cars. It was like a mini-import showoff. One car was probably the cleanest Accord i've seen in awhile, with a muscular body kit but not overly huge. The black Civic was all tricked out too with nifty lights and guages and all manner of cool things.



Kyle ended up staying the night and me, him and Leslie sat around on the boardwalk and chatted. Mainly about race and the meaning of "asian-american" and stuff like that. By the time we moved inside, we had moved onto relationships and we were joined by Louis and Hong. One funny thing that we had going on was to define, with about three terms, the type of person we would ideally want in a relationship. For example, Leslie's was "Confident, Goofy, Hip Hop." Louis wanted "Sweet" (although i think he is slightly drawn to the wild and crazy). Kyle was basically broken down into, "a girl who can wear wifebeaters, is fashionably versatile and can play in the mud." I ideally would want "Spunky Hip Hop." Good conversation all around for sure.

Well, tonite was definitely a fun night. This was by far my best trip to Exit. We got there decently early so we had time to scope the place out. The hip hop room was actually really really empty so everyone got some room to dance and stuff. I love watching Leslie dance when she's happy and excited to be dancing, it's a beautiful thing. Exit has some really nice rooms (like the top floor which is outdoors) and it's so big that you can easily lose people. It gets a little annoying when you have to go to the bathroom or something but its a nice change of pace. Tonite was a rare night for me in the sense that i was feeling the trance music. Usually, i can only stand trance for 10-15 minutes but tonite it was really fun just bopping around. Alot of it had to do with Exit's style of playing trance music...they would stop songs and then slowly build up to a huge crescendo of excitement for the next song. It was a pretty effective method of getting the crowd hyped and screaming. Not a bad night at all.

I just got this Playstation 2 game a couple of days ago called NBA Street. It's amazing! Not exactly super deep or super hard but you can do all those moves you see on the Nike commercials and stuff.



We're on the verge right now of leaving to go into the city and eventually to Exit. Apparently, Busta, Missy and LL are going to be doing a mini-concert there or something. I'm a little doubtful but we'll see. I think the key to actually enjoying a clubbing experience at this point is to go into it with the attitude of "I will have fun." And to say that over and over. If i stop and think about it, every clubbing experience is basically the same so why bother going out every week? Then again, last weekend wasn't so hot so hopefully this weekend will prove to be redemption.