Smells like running

Yesterday I found out there was gonna be a Gahr two-mile race for cross country. Today I ran it.

Have you ever REALLY didn't want to do something? WAIT lemme finish - you REALLY didn't wanna do it, but you know that it would probably do you good? WAIT HOLD ON - you REALLY didn't wanna do it, but you know that it would do you good, and you'd regret not doing it if you didn't do it, but you just REALLY didn't wanna do it?! YEAH?! Yeah. That's how I felt today.

The Gahr two-miler was today and I was incredibly adverse to participating! I said that weirdly. Reword: I DIDN'T WANNA RUN IT! I haven't been to XC practice in maybe two centuries, give or take a couple centuries, and I was sure that I was not ready. But it's the FIRST xc meet... and I would go to cheer ANYWAY...

I sat on my fart producer (HAHA THAT MEANS BUTT) for a while, just debating on whether or not I will run. Reason for not running? I was not ready. BUT THEN. It struck me. Like a bat. Well not like a bat. I mean like a stick. Because bats don't strike. They fly around. HAH you thought that was a baseball reference. Anyway. BUT THEN it struck me! If I were to not run because I wasn't "ready", that would be the complete opposite of my general feelings about running! Whenever people ask me whether or not they should run, I almost always say "you bettah!", more or less (I only say no if they're injured). I know running can suck, but it would be VERY hypocritical if I chicken out of a race because I'm scared of getting owned by 1 footed asian kids. (HAHA yeah I didn't run against him unfortunately.)


So, today I ran the race! I ALSO DID SOMETHING REALLY COOL! I turned all my anxiety into excitement! It was really weird. Like some super power of sorts.

...And now to talk about the race!

It was killer. No, it wasn't just "tiring", it was literally KILLER. I think I lost two years on my life span. That means I die at 98. Our plan as SENIOR MEN was for me, Jaydee, Jan, and Zach to stay together in a pack and pick off the runners one by one. Running with them felt like that one Japanese game show where you have to run over hurdles on a treadmill. It's like, "Yes I can KEEP UP, but I'll probably end up falling into a pool of flour."

But it was fun.

Time: 13:06

JAYDEE THAT TIME GIVEN WAS WRONG! See, it says you got 3:17 and I got 3:11, but I know we were like 1 second apart, and I was right next to that other guy at the finish line. SO, on the sheet there were three times close to each other: 13:06, 13:06, 13:06. That's us, Jaydee. That's us.

So after the random race (it's not official XC race btw), we ate at Avenue 3 where my hand got really greasy! YAY GODFATHER!

QUAKE OF EARTH

HAHA did you feel that?! 11:44am, CRAZY earthquake here! My room just started shaking and I was swaying back and forth in my seat. Pretty scary/exciting. When was the last time we had one of these? I'll think twice next time I have my Onyx attack with "earthquake". Poor opponent Pokemon must be scared to death.

Things in my room that fell:
My blue anime antenna ball
My deodorant

...and that's about it. HAH imagine if my room hadn't been cleaned last Saturday. Freakin' avalanche.

Running Ragged

As you are half aware of, I run in the mornings because I can't run in the afternoon with XC. Today I ran The Marquardt 7 Mile... and IT WAS SO LONG! (that's what she said) It took me 62.34 minutes to run that nonstop!! (except for two lights) But WHAT DA EFF! Yknow what that calculates to?! 9 MINUTES A MILE!

AH!

Well actually I should've seen that coming, I've lost a bunch of endurance running all alone, wussing out at 3 miles. But seriously, I have to... run more! MUAHAHHA. Seriously, one thing I learned from XC and Track is that the only cure for any running problem is usually more running. How silly sounding! BUT IT'S TRUE...

Comicon '08

Well. My week was nothing short of awesome.

It started off nice and happy, my The Art of Kung Fu Panda came in the mail on Monday. I've never bought this kind of "Art of" book, and it's quite interesting! Some of the drawings and paintings are really incredible. I kinda want the Ratatouille book now...

So that nonsense has been fiddling with my free time, along with that FREE 3D ANIMATION PROGRAM I mentioned in a previous post. I feel pretty nooby booby using such a professional program, so I guess that puts me right at "average". IT'S FUN THOUGH! I'm lovin' it more than McDonalds, and contrary to slogan, I am actually indifferent towards that fast food restaurant. It's alright, but no love. (Sorry Paul.)

And finally, to top everything off better than a blueberry (the new cherry), on Friday I went to the San Diego...

Comic-Con!

The enormous comic convention held every year! And oh man. It was. Spectacular. Have I used that word before? I've said Awesome, Amazing, Incredible, Cool, Mind-boggling, Crazy... I think "Spectacular" is new! Good.

First cosplay encounter!

The Gang: Me, Jan, My Dad, Arthur.

Jan and I just did our own lil thing while my dad and Arthur (my dad's friend) went and frolicked elsewhere. If you're unfamiliar with Comic-Con, there are two main things you can do there: Explore the booths or watch the events. We, of course, did both.

According to Arthur, Mr. 20 year Comic-Con veteran, there were two sides of the main floor: an insane side with free stuff and a calm side with priced stuff. Jan and I thoroughly attacked the insane half of course. It was filled with booths from big companies such as WB, DC, Marvel, Lucasfilm, Mattel, Capcom, Squeenix, NBC, Hasbro, Lego, Pokemon, Cartoon Network, AND THEN SOME!



I think the best part I found about Comic-Con was that as soon as I entered the show floor, everywhere I turned my reaction was... "WOW". It's really just jaw-dropping the amount of crazy stuff there. I've come up with a few words to describe what we saw:

• overblown (in size)
• colorful
• EXTREME
• geeky
• "what the heck"
• uncomfortable
• scary
• free
• daunting
• lotsa-bodies
• puzzling
• memorable
• admirable
• comical

So just throw all those words into a stew and that's how Comic-Con tastes!

Aside from the exhibition floor, we saw two event show things. The first one was a "10th Anniversary Powerpuff Girls / Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends... Panel"... thing. PP Girls? Foster's? THAT'S LIKE PERFECT FOR ME! It was actually awesomely entertaining because most of the voice actors were there and they just discussed behind the scenes of the two shows. I GOT TO SEE THE GUY WHO DOES BLOO'S VOICE! He is African American. Oh, and I also saw Craig McCracken! He's the creator of both shows! He is not African American.

Another show we watched was A LOT smaller with a discussion about teaching comics... yup. Pretty interesting. PREPARE YOURSELF, COMICLUB!

Man, there was this one part where we had to wait in line for an HOUR so I could get my Iron Man Mighty Mugg souvenir, exclusive to Comic-Con 08... that was probably the most fulfilling/rewarding piece of plastic I've ever bought.

A few notable things that you won't really understand because you're not Jan:

• Blue Dragon
• City of Heroes pic
• "exCUSE me!" (angry fanboy)
• haram(?) Toph
• Blue Cobras + 3 dollars
• POKEBALLS

So from 9:00am to 6:00pm, Jan, Dadio, Arthur and I paraded all around the San Diego convention center, soaking in all the nerdy heaven that was Comic-Con. Actually, aside from all the cosplaying, I didn't breathe in a lot of the geekiness aroma. I think this is an event that anyone can join, mainly because every sight was just so awesome.

Normally on such Kanga posts, I would tell you AALLL about my entire day chronologically, but I won't this time. Ysee, while Jan and I were there, we filmed a BUNCH of stuff (30 minutes actually), and we'll show play our little Comic-Con adventure sometime during next school year for COMICLUB! ANTICIPATE IT!

In any case, SO MUCH FUN you should come next year.

YAY


Oh yeah, and the following day (yesterday), I watched the finale of Avatar: The Last Air Bender. IT WAS SPECTACULAR! Oh dangit that word is no longer new.

Batman reviews The Dark Knight

Tomorrow I'm going to the San Diego COMIC CON! Comics! Movies! Games! Famous people! Free stuff! Es gonna be crazay.

And SPEAKING of comics, here's Batman reviewing his latest movie.

TREE DEE

I just finished making my first 3D object thing jigger in this new program I downloaded (http://www.blender.org/)! Its name is Toopy:

We all start somewhere.

Metroventures

When you think about the word "metro", what do you think of? The metro train thingy? That's what I think about too! I certainly don't think about a metrosexual. That would be ridiculous.

I thought I'd make a post last Saturday's adventure around LA and places. Elizabeth had a church... field trip... thing, so I tagged along for fun!

Mode of transportation: THE METRO, SILLY! Um, just "Metro", not "Metro Silly".

There was this really weird guy at the start of our adventure, the Norwalk train station... yknow, those guys that are sorta COOCOO IN THE HEAD without any kind of cereal incentive. He came up to me/Liz/Victoria/Alice and he started to direct our attention to a pigeon near the train tracks. We just kinda brushed him off, but then he jumped down, retrieved the bird, and tried to show it to us! I was really ready to shoo fly him like don't bother me, but he got distracted by some other poor victims a couple minutes later.

But anyways.

We made 4 stops.

Downtown LA
Tall buildings. Are so awesome. I haven't actually seen a surplus of tall buildings since... probably Las Vegas 3ish years ago. But it's different because LA buildings don't have lights and naked ladies on them. They have windows. I really enjoyed walking through the streets because it felt so... nitty gritty, so very real, making the experience feel ironically surreal at the same time. It reminded me of New York, even though I've never been there.

On the sidewalk I saw a message near the gutter drain that said "No Dumping Dolphins", which I found quite odd. Where would I get a Dolphin in LA. Well the word "Dolphin" was more of a picture than a word, so maybe that's not what they meant. They could've meant "shark". SPEAKING OF THAT MOMENT, my camera ran out of batteries, so I couldn't take pictures of interesting things like that Dolphin Dumping thing. Sad face. I shall steal the rest of the pictures from Liz's Facebook!

Hollywood
Elizabeth described Hollywood as just a richer version of LA, but I see it more as a meeting place for weirdos and tourists. The bizarre people do creepy stuff, and tourists take pictures! We walked down the street for a good 10 minutes, recognizing about 10% of the stars on the sidewalk. Seriously now, they should put explanations as to how these people got to have their name on the floor - why does Mr. Fleego Flagababa get his name next to Walt Disney?! But in any case, I used the bathroom at Hollywood Starbucks because I really had to go.



Union Station
It's a big train station! Go figure. Although I was confused whether "Union" was the name of the station, or "Union Station" was just kind of an inclusive title. Because if it were a title, wouldn't the correct name for it be "Union Station Station"? It might fall in the same fate as Comiclub Club.

We walked over to Olvera Street to look at all the nice Mexican trinkets. This would've been a big blast from the past of 4th grade field tripness, but I really don't remember my time there as a 10 year old. I think everything was a lot bigger back then. I guess they shrunk all the stores for whatever reason.

Chinatown
More like... HOMETOWN! Haha, get it, because I'm chinese. But honestly, this is the closest I'll ever get to China in like 50 years (because when I retire I might be able to go there..). Even though it lacked a Great Wall, it was still pretty cool to see this little square that celebrates all that is Chinese. After all the kids stared at Alice as she rode some weird machine thing, I bought myself a nice little stamp that stamps "Kevin" in Chinese!



We had dinner at supposedly the best restaurant in China town. It was either the best or the most famous... or both. THE SWEET AND SOUR FISH WAS DELICIOUS, everything else gets a "pretty tasty", although no one really dove for the chicken. Probably because everything already tastes like it.

And so ends our adventures! We literally (but actually figuratively) traveled the ENTIRE globe!: New York, Hollywood, Mexico, China. Technically I should be able to relate to all those places. Except New York.

Yup! I forgot my closing sentence.

Antics from the West

I decided to post this JUST FOR PAULIWAGO.

My First Honk

WANNA SEE A MAGIC TRICK?! Okay hold on. ...and no, it doesn't involve a pen.

Right now I could probably talk about the crazy summer writing workshop last week, my unruly students at work, the very dark knight, my FACE portrait for art class, or my Metro adventure yesterday (Metro, not metro). BUT I WON'T! Instead, I'll tell you about a random tid bit of my life, and you will read it anyway.

If you read the title of the post you might assume that "My First Honk" is some witty way of declaring the first time I ate a goose or something. But oh no. It's all literal. This post is about the first time I honked at someone from my car.

Now, you might still be reading this post thinking "Okay, why is this such a big deal?!", and you'd be perfectly normal if you thought that, you weirdo. But ysee, when I started driving, I always anticipated the day I would honk at someone. As you might've guessed, I'm not an impatient person, so the day when I honk at some car to move is the day that... well is a very notable day indeed.

Continuing my story (or starting it)... I drive up behind this white van. Let's call the van "Embarro", cuz that sounds cool. He and I are stopped at an intersection, Embarro being in front and I second in line. We're in this lane that goes straight, but the lane next to us gets a left green and we stay red. Embarro moves about 5 feet forward until he realizes that it was a different lane that got the green. Now is when I would've yelled "ROFL, NOOOBTASTIC, GG!"... if I used such lingo. lol.

Our lane finally gets the green to go, but Embarro doesn't move. He... well, he just stays there. The cars next to us have already gone and I'm just kinda stuck because this fool in front is oblivious to the light.

Then...

I honk.

Embarro jerks a little and drives on. I have just made my first honk! CHYUH! The reason I called him "Embarro", btw, is because he must've been QUITE embarrassed! Either that, or must've been QUITE drunk. It's just that "Drunko" really doesn't sound as cool.

And that's my story! Okay yknow what, I probably should've talked about my metro trip instead (it has train things!). Although I wouldn't have been able to execute my magic trick... of using up 5 minutes of you day! SHAZAM! Yeah I think I'm losing my wittiness.

Artists Fartists

Too soon for post? No.

IT'S NEVER TOO SOON FOR ANOTHER HELPING OF AWESOME!

I think I've said "awesome" like 6 trillion times these past few years. It's gaining up on "like".

So,

Today in art class, I was happy. For the FIRST TIME in like a bajillion years (or two weeks), I was not in a "THIS IS MORE BORING THAN A DEAD RHINOCEROS" kind of mood, which if you could imagine, would not be very exciting to look at for more than 5 minutes. Kinda morbid actually. But today, I don't know, I just really felt... unburdened by any doubts of the class.

Part of my joy, I'm guessing, stems from the fact that my teacher Mr. DiMichele actually TALKED TO ME! For maybe 10 seconds! That may sound frivilous, but looksee: All this time I was taking the class, I felt like he was avoiding me for whatever reason. He would walk up to people's drawings and say something like "oh, you got the shadows down pretty nicely..." or "maybe you could work on your lines a little more...". But every time he passed by MY desk, I anticipated SOME kind of comment, SOME kind of acknowledgement that my work and I existed... but one never came.

Until today. DUH DUH DUH!

Mr. DiMichele walked over to my desk and just stared at my piece for a good 5 seconds. "...It's upsidedown," I tried to clarify any assumed confusion. "Ohh, haha," he walked around to the other side, "NOW I see it...". He went on to say how charcoal is hard to use because it can be difficult to get a good solid line, but I was doing a good job. SO WOOT WOOT!! YAY FOR CONVO!

Well okay this whole story isn't too big of a deal, but I'm guessing it contributed to my happiness of the night. So... UH(?)

But honestly, I think I was just glad to get some kind of interaction from the 4 hour class. The first few days I was there, I had this weird desire that I rarely ever have: I really wanted a friend. Since SOMEONE DITCHED ME (but es coo, Darren. And I won't mention your name.), I was all alone in that class, so I really wanted someone to talk to or at least say "Hi" to. Now if this were Kevin 4ish years ago, I would've just avoided any kind of communication, and I would've been fine. Present Kevin is a bit different.

I DID almost get a friend one time, though... or at least I THINK I did... Three days from our first day there, Mr. Dimichelle gave us a new assignment: draw the face of your neighbor in 'complete contour'. Once he said to begin, I turned to the girl next to me, gave her a friendly wave, and scooted over a seat (there was one seat between us and I had to get closer). After she had drawn me like me and I had drawn her look like a freaky fish, I realized "DUDE maybe SHE could be my friend!". This conclusion ruled out my first eligible friend, a girl who ate food outisde like me. But this new girl (her name is Iveta I think) could SO be my friend since she kinda sits next to me! I decided to stay in the scooted seat for the remainder of the period instead of moving back to my old seat. Just because.

The next day as I was walking to class, I thought... should I sit back in my old seat? Or sit next to that girl I nominated as possible friend? Without a verdict, I walked into the room and noticed that she was sitting in the seat next to mine instead of her old seat! "OH SUHNAP!" I thought! "BEST FWENDS!" So I sat next to her for the 4 hours of that night.

...But things didn't work out. It turns out that her chair was missing, so she just sat in the next available spot: the one next to mine. She didn't sit next to me by choice! Then the following day, she moved back to her original spot because there was now some ugly metal chair in between us. In between our friendship... So! I couldn't and didn't make friends with her, but I concluded that no friends is okay. I mean it's only 6 weeks (RIGHT, JAN?!), and I always have friends back here at home!

Yup.

Adventures in art class!

Didn't mean for that story to be that long.

Aw man, I hope this post wasn't boring. Or at least not "dead rhino boring"... but "dead cow boring" would be okay; you can see pictures in their black spots! It's called "Cow Watching".

Word of the Day: Forgetfory

IT'S RAINING RIGHT NOW?!

Actually, it was raining like five minutes ago. I was dilly dallying so I couldn't post this in time for the first sentence to actually be... well, correct.

So letsee, what is up with Kevin...

Yesterday I biked to the beach with my amigos. After making Craig swim with just his boxers and hearing about Paul's fear of Craig's entirety popping out of them, I.... BODY SURFED! Well at least I think it was body surfing. I swam with the wave. Body surf, yeah? And lemme be the first to tell you, IT'S SO AWESOME! I kinda just flailed my arms against the rip tide, and then a giant wave glided (glid?) me all the way to shore. 'so cool, it felt like Little Mermaid on steroids. Except instead of Little Mermaid, maybe more like... Buff Human. Dude, if Disney made a movie about me, it would probably be called something like... Buff Human King and the 101 Dwarfs. YEAH!! It would star me (of course) and it would be about my adventures as a King in the land of Middle Earth. My mission would be to muster up an army of men to fight the forces evil, but the only people who I can convince to join me in my cause would be dwarfs. 101 dwarfs. This movie would also be a comedy.

But as I was saying, Alleged Body Surfing = Fun.

Later that day, XC SCAVENGER HUNT!

We ran from Heritage Park (the rich pronounce it "hair-ih-taj"), to Subway (the rich call it "Peasant Transportation"), to the library (the poor call it "free education house")! I thought the game was quite exciting. Good job, captains! It's probably the closest I'll ever get to hunting something.

Seven Eleven has failed me with their lack of free slurpies. I mean Icees. I mean smoothies. WHAT no, I mean slushees.


Okay I should start updating this more often when stuff happens to me. Like, "DAY OF" updates. I always wait till the end of the week to make a post, thinking I'll remember everything, but my memories end up turning into... forgetries? No, uh... the opposite of a memory. WHAT'S THE OPPOSITE OF A MEMORY?! I'll make up the word now:

forgetfory - the lack of mental capacity aqcuired by the inablity to retain information; the opposite of memory
Example: Yes, I have a horrible memory, but I have an excellent forgetfory.

OH another NEW WORD:

fotographic forgetfory - the ability to instantly forget a memory, leaving the impression that the "memory" did not occur at all; "f" in "fotographic" added for flair
Example: My great great grandmother has fotographic forgetfory; I hope she remembers my name.

Go ahead. Add those two to your stack of SAT vocab cards.

BTW, whatever happened to Kevster's Dictionary? Oh right. It still exists. In my CLASSIC KANGA! So UH!


This post turned out kinda random. Speaking of random, that up there is a picture of the yellowest banana's I've ever seen. Yay for awesomely bordered pictures. Okay GOTTA GO WORK ON MY PERSONAL STATEMENT!

Happy Fifth of July!

Today is not July 4th. It is July 5th. But would that stop me from making a Kanga post? Would the idea of posting on a somewhat insignificant day deter me from delivering my thoughts to yours? DON'T BE PREPOSTEROUS! Be awesome.

This week felt like my first REAL week of summer because this is how most of my weeks will go. Here is my lovely sheh-jool:

Mon-Thurs Days

7:30am-9:30am = Run!
Yes, I love to run, WHAT OF IT?! I run here and there around the places near my house. Although running by my lonesome Kevin is a lot harder and boring than it looks (I think), but at least I get to do fun post-workouts with Elizabeth... which consists of 10 minutes of exercise and 20 minutes of lazy. I thrive on the lazy.

1:00pm-2:00pm = Work
Yknow the problem with teaching at Quest Learning Center is that I don't have to take roll, so I can't really learn the students' names. I've resorted to identifying the children with just general descriptions such as "kid with the glasses", or "girl with the pencil". I've even called someone "boy with the hair" one time, but he didn't respond to that alias.

4:30pm-5:00pm = Nap...

5:45pm-10:00pm = Art class
I never really had time to talk about my art class! Partly because there's nothing really of interest to talk about. The class is basically goes like this: "Here are some random art pieces via computer projector! Now here's what we're gonna draw. Here's how to draw it. Now draw it." My teacher, Mr. Dimichelle, is a very normal, nice middle-aged teacher. But MAN, what is it with teachers and being nooby booby with computers?? Like one time Mr. Dimichelle searched for pictures using google, and every time he wanted to start a new search, he would close the window and open up a new one! Instead of just, I don't know, PRESSING THE "BACK" BUTTON...

So that's all the excitement my summer will hold!

Every.

Single.

Week.

I am quite the busy bee! I go from runner to teacher to artist! My mind hasn't worked this hard since I tried to understand that third Pirates of the Caribbean movie. Freakin' weird Jamaican voodoo lady...

But to fill in my free time, I've been doing various stimulating activities, such as... ANIMATING! It's so fun. I just spent the last two weeks (about one hour a day) animating this Batman animation! This means I probably won't make a whole movie out of him. (click on GO!)

IT'S NOT WHO I AM UNDERNEATH... BUT WHAT I DO, THAT DEFINES ME.

I don't think those are the exact words he used in the movie, but close enough!

The last thing I want to talk about is my Fourth of July day, but I dunno how to make a divider to change topics, so I'll just...

uuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhhh

There ya go.

FUN OF JULY!

Friday? PARTY DAY! Fourth of July? DOUBLE PARTY DAY! Party, as in go to cross country practice and run. YAY...

For XC, we ran to the mall to eat at Yogurtland and OH MAN WAS IT GOOD. Sure, I've had "frozen" yogurt before, but frozen yogurt after a 3 MILE RUN? 10x the deliciousness! Actually maybe like 3 times the deliciousness. I even named my combo of fruity yogurt and ingredients: "Fruit Surprise!" (Okay, yeah my naming abilities were a bit low at the time.) The concoction consisted of everything at Yogurtland that was fruity. PLUS MOCHI. Mochi sounds like a Pokemon. Special attack? Fatty Delicious Beam.
After a nice 4th of July dinner (I ate shish (no kabob)), I went out to watch fireworks with friends HOORAY FRIENDS! The fireworks show at the library was really a bit disappointing... some parts were pretty fantastical, but the middle was kinda eehhh, and there was pretty much no finale! WHAT DA FIREWORKS I say! The show should end like "WOW! That was amazing! I like the part where... the end! Yeah I liked the end!" It shouldn't be like "Oh. It's over? It's over! Well that was interesting." And just to mock us, they fired some works AFTER the prerecorded announcer thanked us for watching. Freakin' disembodied voices. But es coo, fireworks are always nice to watch in general.

Afterward we went a la casa de Shelley and watched the first half of Robots. Ewan McGregor sure does a lot of voice work.

And that was my week!

TADA!

the end!

...Dadadada!

What more do you want.