December 10th, 2021 @ 2:28 pm

i really thought i invented self-care when i was a teenager.

one afternoon when i was like 16-18 years old, i was in my old bedroom and no one was home.  i decided i needed to relax and wanted to take a bath to chill out.  i thought i was a genius for figuring out the combination of putting on relaxing music, using my bath pearls, lighting my gap dream candle and soaking my dumb little life’s teenage cares away.

the internet didn’t tell you to do these things back then.  it really just dawned on me one day that the collection of these things all at once would really help me mentally.

i thought of this today because i am going to see genesis live tonight (a bucketlist band for me! ♥).  i remember my  playlist consisted of phil, genesis, gloria estefan among other sad, romantic artists.

anyways, i couldn’t help but peek at the setlist for this tour, and for some dumb ass reason, they decided not to include “in too deep” or “hold on my heart”, which breaks my heart.  those are top 5 genesis songs for me.

the only saving grace is that i paid less to see them at the new UBS arena vs. sky high prices at the garden.  while i would have loved to have seen my philly boo under my favorite ceiling, i just couldn’t get through the queue, and even if i did, i couldn’t justify the pricing.

September 9th, 2021 @ 1:22 am

i just updated one of my wordpress installs to the latest version (5.8.1) and when it was done, the latest update headline read “the next stop on the road to full site editing”.

as a web developer, one of my web 101 rules is that clients should NEVER have full site editing privileges.  especially when it comes time to colors and page structure.  this is how we end up with websites that look like a piles of disorganized horseshit OR geocitiesesque looking websites.

you might think i’m being dramatic, but at my first web job, my nerd boss (le swoon) built an editor where we would add tags to specific areas, to give clients editability (headers, divs, p tags, etc.).  even at the most limited areas of editability, part of our job was cleaning up client’s code because they’d hit the bold button or italics button too many times.  they would assign colors the wrong way, and a p tag would have nested several colors within it at once.

FYI: in HTML/websites, the regular/majority website text content (aka the text you’re reading right now) is a “p tag”.

<p>it looks like this in the code</p>.

when we setup websites, we assign style rules to p tags via stylesheets (an external file for all of your style rules in one place).  for my p tag here, i’ve assigned the font-family (verdana font), the size, the line-height, the color (black aka #000000), font weight, etc. using a stylesheet, there’s no need to keep telling the browser what it should be every time there’s a new p tag (you can assign the rules inline on each p tag using the style attribute <p style=”font-family:verdana,sans-serif;”> if you wanted to, but no one does that anymore), with a stylesheet, there is one set of rules and it’s assigned for the entire site and only called once.

for example, within the <p> tag, our clients would have like…

<p><span style=”color:#FF0000;”><span style=”color:#FFFFFF;”><span style=”color:#FFFF00;”><span style=”color:#FF0000;”><span style=”color:#000000;”>some text</span></span></span></span></p>

…etc., this p tag has span tags with a few different colors, because the clients had the ability to change colors.  i’m dumbing it down, i’ve seen where there were like HUNDREDS of lines of that, it was insane sometimes.  i’ll be fair and say while the editor was injecting and not deleting the span tags, the person was still sitting there clicking these things, when they should have stayed within the color palette anyway.

when you have a website, you’re supposed to have a color palette and stick to it, not have all beiges and a highlight color (say, a dark orange and black) or two then stick A BRIGHT BLUE HEADING IN THE MIDDLE OF THE PAGE.  this is why we tend to avoid giving creative access to clients, but i digress…

if in case you don’t know what wordpress is, tl;dr:  wordpress is a free/open source CMS (content management system).  it’s been around since the early 2000s and has been pretty much the same since its inception.  it used to be for bloggers, but then it evolved into this CMS beast, hosting a large amount of the internet’s websites (WordPress is used by 41.4% of the top 10 million websites as of May 2021 – Wikipedia).

in 2018, for some idiotic reason, wordpress head honchos decided they were going to switch up the default content editor.  without any input from the tons of developers that brought wordpress to more of a CMS platform than a blogging platform, just *poof* the new editor was there.  a lot of people were pissed… me being one of those people.

out of sheer anger from reading that stupid ass installation confirmation headline, i decided to look at both plugins pages on wordpress.org to see how many active installs there were for “classic editor” and “gutenberg” to see if my argument against this newest bullshit is still valid.  i usually check in once a year, to see if i’m still not alone in this, and i never am.

i hate gutenberg, and i will die on this hill.  hopefully classic editor will still be supported for the future, because if i have to turn to the dark side, i’d rather chop off a toe and eat it.

anyways, if you’re not completely turned off by my nerd rant, here’s what the stats turned out:

read more…

September 6th, 2021 @ 12:48 am

as a kid growing up in the 90s, physical concert tickets was the default vs. doing will call.  i regret doing any will calls, tbh.  at the time it was like “wow, less to worry about!”, but now i can’t savor in those memories physically in my hands.

it’s crazy to think that i used to buy concert tickets at rite aid (maybe it was eckerd at the time).  my how times have changed, now it’s a free for all with bots, website timeouts and legit having panic attacks, worrying about mere microseconds of fucking up on timing.

i was trying to buy tickets to see genesis this winter, and ticketmaster actually had the balls to post outright before you purchased tickets, that they don’t offer physical box office purchasing the first day of when tickets go on sale anymore.  what in the actual fuck?!  that is the one time you were GUARANTEED to get tickets to whatever you were pining for, bc you got your ass out of bed and down to the box office, unlike the internet slugs.

it’s unreal what ticketmaster has become.  i wish we could all boycott it, but i digress…

the other night, i was putting away my stub/bracelet from rancid from last weekend in my show tickets storage box, and i decided to organize my tickets by year.  then i thought it might be a rad idea to start posting a pic of the stub, about the show, and add any images that i took from the show associated with the concert mentioned.  i’ll have to keep the images of myself and friends on IG only bc it’s private.  here on my site, i usually don’t add pictures of myself anymore bc of privacy reasons (le sigh).  i think it’d be a cool thing to document, though.

the first like, 5 tickets i have are barely even legible anymore, bc i used to keep them in my plastic sanrio planners in high school and they rubbed together and damaged the front of the tickets.  you can still read them for the most part, whether it be the name of the tour, the venue or the date, so i at least can reference wtf the stub was for…  i also scribbled some notes on them (in my horrendous adolescent handwriting).

without further ado…
my first 10 concert experiences:

read more…

December 28th, 2019 @ 11:05 am

i know i bitch about social media a lot on this site, i’m sorry!  i hate that i am so helplessly stuck with bullshit apps and this new way of online socializing.  it’s just that i really do miss using online social networking!

since the 90s, computers have always been a creative, therapeutic and social escape for me (and clearly, many others since every moron in the world is on shitbook).  the modes in which we’ve switched in the last decade is so depressing.  i feel like not only in technology, but our focus and attention goes just as quickly.  we seem to just adopt and shrug things off now, like the fast fashion everyone seems to be bitching about.

ie: one of my close friends sharpens knives as a side hustle, and he is 1000000% accurate when he says people would rather just buy new knives, than deal with the hassle of sharpening them themselves (which my mother and her boyfriend both did while i was growing up) or finding someone to do it for them.  in the 50s-70s/80s in NYC, there were trucks that drove around for sharpening services!

i digress.

i got an email from flickr saying they’re basically going to shut down if people don’t consider paying for pro-accounts… so i wrote them and told them why i won’t.  when yahoo acquired them years ago, the lady CEO FUCKEDDDDD up flickr so horribly.  it was one of those instances where “if it aint broke, don’t fix it”, but she was trying so hard to make it fetch.

sure, old flickr’s UI was dated (i did not give a fuck, and i’m sure nobody else paying for it did, either), there was pagination (i REALLY did not give a fuck, it was actually helpful UX – why does everyone think infinite scrolling is THE ONLY WAY? FFFFFUUUUUUUU), there were smaller thumbnails (do we REALLY need to see almost the entire picture with mobile-friendly UX?  NO.).  this is an app for photographers that sit at their computers editing photos and then upload them…  WHY WAS THERE A NEED TO PUSH FOR MOBILE-FIRST UX/UI????????

also – having to login through yahoo was REALLY fucking annoying.

the only way that i’m EVER paying for a pro-account again is if it’s rolled back or the UI/UX is changed… and you know nobody does that for their users anymore.  so… #RIPFLICKR it was so much fun while it lasted.  hopefully you’ll be situated between classic myspace and AIM in the internet graveyard.

July 18th, 2019 @ 11:36 am

sooooo social media UX complaint tiiiime…

i mainly use twitter and instagram (yes i am signed up for sites like pinterest and tumblr, etc – but i rarely use them). over the last few years, the UI/UX has changed for many popular websites. change, i have to learn to accept it, i get it… but when websites and services aren’t being responsible about UI/UX because of design trends, i get irritated.

earlier this year, twitter started preview testing a new desktop layout for people…  why? i don’t fucking know. there was nothing wrong with it. i feel like twitter is the least popular of the social media giants, and they’re trying so hard to fit in.

over the years, i’ve made a lot of friends via twitter and i’ve had IRL friends on twitter. often times, the IRL friends are just like “i don’t get it” (re: twitter). i don’t really understand what someone doesn’t understand about using it. you talk, people talk back, you follow brands/news/whatever. if i follow a band, i can see very important merch or tour date updates. i don’t use FB, and instagram’s algorithm is HORRENDOUS, so twitter is handy for me.  for people that “don’t get it”, this layout isn’t going to make people “get it” anymore than they already don’t.

ANYWAYS.

i’ve been avoiding this shithole desktop twitter update like the damn plague. i turned it on when they first offered it and reverted within minutes. it’s fucking awful, but now it’s been rolled out officially, and i can’t get out of it.

from a developer’s standpoint, i can see what they were trying to do. on mobile/responsive/things below a laptop/desktop, it was running on the react JS library, now they’ve applied it to desktop. for me, changes like these are horrible, because i have a very specific workflow and a way to use the internet.  clearly THE CORRECT WAY BECAUSE I AM A FUCKING WEB DEVELOPER AND NOT A LAZY IDIOT.  i don’t do well by sites forcing me to do things their way. ie: in the trending area, i can no longer right click and open things in a new tab, now you’re forced to click it and it opens in the same window. that is VERY bad for user experience and is taking you away from your timeline.

react makes things go faster. i saw a reddit page dedicated to talking about it, and of course the nerds were all “oMg iT’s So MuCh FaStEr, nOw iT iS nOw aMaZiNg”. shit like this irritates me because unless you’re on a 56k modem, how fucking fast do you need something to go exactly? were you having to wait an extra 0.5 seconds for something to load? AKA the trending/who to follow shit that nobody wanted anyway…  these people are absolutely ridiculous and have no patience.

since this is what twitter has now opted for, i’m affected in 837983 different ways, and am seriously considering jumping ship. i’m not going to be frustrated while using something that’s supposed to be a recreational thing. LETTUCE DISCUSS…

read more…

September 28th, 2018 @ 1:00 am

sooooooooooooooooooo there’s going to be a new halloween movie coming out next month (DYING WITH ANTICIPATION), and my sister is actually flying in from LA to watch it with me and my fam.  halloween is kind of… our thing.  we grew up watching it form a young age (nope, i was never deathly scared of mikey as i was freddy or jason), and we passed it onto our cousins upstate.  we can all quote it left and right, my sister and i just “know” the sounds and timing of everything…  etc.  so, that being said, we/i have a halloween obsession.

the new one coming out, if you’re unaware, is a reunion between michael and laurie strode (jamie lee curtis’s character) 37 years later.  we’re supposed to disregard every other halloween film from the series but the original from 1978.  for this film, she’s said that it’s basically her suffering from PTSD and it looks as if she’s turned into sarah connor.  she is on a MISH to kill him this time around.

it’s kind of hard for me to totally get into or wrap my head around this, because i LOVE a lot of the other halloween movies.  i was raised watching 1-5 as a kiddo, and i also grew to love 6 as an adult.  i think i only saw h20 once or twice, but i don’t remember hating it, and i totally disregard everything after h20.  don’t get me started on rob zombie’s piles of shit.

anysways, of course i’m hyped to see a new halloween movie, but looking at how many there were over the years is just criminal.  there are 11 in that list, and we could have lived without a few of them.  there are so many things people could argue about there…  movies they love, hate, the hatred of a michael-free halloween III, etc.  i figured i’d just break down my favorites/most hated.  i just wanted to also touch on my utmost love for halloween II.  spoilers for an almost 40 year old movie ahead? lol.

read more…

August 24th, 2018 @ 12:40 pm

remember how i posted that i got a skateboard a couple of months ago?… well, this summer was too humid and hot to go out and sk8.  that sounds dumb because skateboarding was basically born in hot ass SoCal, lol, but personally – after trying to do it 2/3 times in the heat, i decided to put it off for a while.  i hate summer heat, it makes me super nauseous and miserable.  however, the other day it was like 68° outside and cloudy, so i grabbed my board and went out.

as we do in 2018, i youtube and google searched stuff about and for skateboarding beginners beforehand.  i followed boarders on IG and slowly gained confidence.  i think what really gave me the oomph was watching alexandria’s video on boarding for 30 days.  she made me laugh sooooooo hard, inspired me the most and helped me get realistically ready goal-wise with the help of rachelle vinberg.  i watched that video a couple of months ago and even dm’d her on IG thanking her and we chatted it up.  she’s super sweet and i told her once i’m comfortable enough on my board, i’m going to harass her into going to a skate park with me, lol (which she agreed to!).

watching all of these videos, i retained certain information, but realized when i was finally out on my board that i did not pay attention AT ALL to stance or footing after pushing (duh, the most basic thing you need to know aside from pushing, lol).  luckily for me, my instincts kicked in and i figured it out on my own.

that probably doesn’t seem like an important triumph, but i feel like every little thing you overcome on a board is a triumph.

i remember from the videos i watched, that everyone was basically saying to just set baby goals.  even from other videos of pro-skater dudes, they were just like “just push around for hours, days, weeks”.  i don’t have the luxury of limitless time as a kid doing it, so now i have to as an adult and it’s not easy.  i just want to cruise, not do tricks or anything, but it’s still work to just learn how to do that as second nature.

my first actual triumph was kick turning.  i stood on my board and wanted to find balance before i even started pushing, but my first intended goal was to NOT baby push.

i remember there was a girl who used to skateboard around whitestone and she looked like such a vagina bc she just did these tiny little baby pushes the entire time (and didn’t cruise?).  i never wanted to be that chick.  so my first goal after my first triumph was then to big push.

i sometimes baby push on a start when i hesitate, but if i find myself doing that, i get off the board and start over.  i do notice that while i’m rolling after big pushing i’ll sometimes baby push to keep up speed, and i don’t really mind when i do it then?  i dunno why.

anyways, once i started pushing a little more naturally, i thought there was something wrong with me as to why i wasn’t able to just get my feet into position quickly enough to cruise.  i was working blindly, alone and youtubeless…  but then i realized that i could gain my balance and cruise after simply putting my back foot on the board and then turning my front foot right after, lol.  again, this is blaring common sense and a DUMB little triumph, but still a triumph.

i think when you go out with such confidence, it’s frustrating that it doesn’t just instantly click on how to skateboard.  it’s not like learning to ride a bike.  i mean i don’t remember learning to ride a two wheeler that clearly, but it’s definitely different and less difficult.

being that skateboarding is a big part of my subculture, i’ve always been a little envious watching my dude friends just throw a board down and go.  when you watch people that just know how, you feel like they were born doing it, like they’re natural pros.  i just figured after like two times i’d have it figured out, but it’s something you have to work on.

i also kept in mind that i would fall.  i think going in with confidence, your goal is NOT to fall…  i found myself thinking that way while i started, but that’s stupid.  you are going to fall and it’s normal and okay to.  i got over it and i scraped up my knee and did two split falls on my first session and didn’t feel stupid.  in the end, that left me with more confidence to just keep going.

August 18th, 2018 @ 4:40 pm

star trek has always filled me with deep wisdom.  i’m rewatching TNG and wanted to make note of this very true quote:

“thinking about what you can’t control only wastes energy and creates its own enemy.
it is very difficult for me to depend on anyone for anything.
it is still my enemy.”

– worf (klingon, operations officer)

aka don’t give into mindless bullshit you can’t control.  the enemy needs no fuel, whether it be yourself or another.

July 28th, 2018 @ 1:46 am

after i had posted earlier today, i was thinking to myself… “why do i still have a website (/blog)?”  the term seems like it’s almost obsolete in terms of personal websites or blogs.  i’m also going to be 37 this year… but that’s a dumb reason to stop doing this.  i have some weird fixation and anxiety that people need to “grow up” at some point.  like i will just magically give up dying my hair, getting tattoos, dressing like a 13 year old sk8r boy or using this website.  i mean, i don’t want to get married nor have kids, so do i even have a growing up point?  newp.

i’ve been doing this since the late 90s, and i don’t like NOT having one, whether i commit to posting to it or not.  i gained so much inspiration and a bunch of friends bc of these types of websites over the years.  i guess part of me keeps going in case people do the same with me.  random online friends came about that way, so why not?  i can see in my stats that people still come here, even if they’re not interactive (i know, it’s not exactly a wall or an instagram comment, so you clam up), so i guess i just keep going.  it’s also quite therapeutic in a way and helps articulate my thoughts better.

my ex once told me that he thought i was a “public figure” or something of sorts on here.  i kind of find that funny/weird, but i know what he meant.  maybe i’m not relevant in a circle of bloggers or webmasters anymore, but it’s okay.  i like having a site like this available to people just like when i actually find one that still exists.

i love (harmlessly) going through websites.  between seeing other people’s interests and recommendations, and just relating issues to other people’s, so you don’t feel alone in this shitty world, i appreciate these types of websites.  for me, it’s not about making myself seem cool, getting attention, etc. – if you had this type of a website, i’m sure you’d understand that.  it was mostly about the layout/design work, the coding… etc. – the content is the last thing i think we worried about.  i think our mission was just being ourselves and like finding people we can relate to.  we’re not all just narcissists.

i don’t post as much anymore bc i had (or probably still have) an online stalker.  no matter how mild of a stalker she was, i don’t want her to know what i’m doing or where i am, so i no longer post about stuff like that.  it kind of blows, but it’s the reality that comes along with this caca.  it makes me want to use tumblr more (even though i don’t), at least for the images, so i can talk less about myself (although i don’t really talk much about personal shit here anyway).

i don’t design like i used to with extravagant layouts, and i refuse to budge this amazing myspace layout, so i dunno what to do with this anymore.  i know this layout probably just looks like classic myspace to you guys, but it’s customized so much.  the ads at the top, everything in the sidebar, the top friends area is all custom coded on the admin side so i can easily add and not have to code anyone in manually…  it’s way more impressive on the back-end that you’ll never see.  FYI: i had to restructure this entire site solely from classic myspace images via google.  sometimes from really shitty small images.  so yeah, #nerdalert

i really want to finish a project/zine-ish type thing that i started that’s all designed in web 1.0 like back in the day.  maybe in 2019.

i don’t think i really had too much of a point, just blabbering on about nonsense as a blogger does…
thanks for swinging by, i guess.

June 27th, 2018 @ 8:16 pm

i don’t subscribe to that new years resolution nonsense.  i try to pretend the day doesn’t even exist, tbh.  i’ve always LOATHED new years bc it depresses me horribly.  anyways, i’m halfway through the year and seeing what’s happened and what i need to do.  these are the days i try to reflect… the summer days that make me want to die.  summer is the fucking worst thing ever, so i’m currently in air conditioning pondering life.

these are/were the things i wanted to accomplish this year:

• get a skateboard
• go on vacation
• get a new job (thanks, universe… for taking my stable one away and forcing me to be motivated?)
• pay off my credit card
• pay off old tax bill
• grow my hair down to my waist again
• grow my bangs out and leave them for the summer (LOOOOOL, i have but i give it til mid-august before i chop em again)
• lose 20 lbs (down 5/7 depending on the day/bloat, squeeeee?)
• move
• have the balls to dye my hair all black again – maybe if i actually grow it out again i will
• work on UNRULEDclub more/again – FIND A NEW POP-UP SHOP TO BE A PART OF
• see more friends
• remove my fallopian tubes
• go back to the pacific northwest and/or chicago
• new tattoo(s)
• switching over to arctic fox dyes
• buy or have a bat hoodie made (i almost did last year… sigh)

slowly but surely… 🙂

April 23rd, 2018 @ 12:53 pm

my boyfriend keeps frasier-shaming me.  i’ve only rewatched the series fully thrice (okay, okay FINE! i watch it anytime it’s on the hallmark channel at night, but they episodes aren’t in order), but he seems to think i’m on number like, 6.  anyways, i decided to rewatch it again recently bc i finished the show i was binging when i was going to bed.  i figured i’d just watch a couple of episodes just to fall asleep, and then it just turned into a full rewatch.

¯\_(ツ)_/¯

i mean, if i’m not sick of it and it’s still making me LAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAARL, who cares?

i’m currently in the last season, and wendie malick’s character ronnie comes in.  tl;dr (no real spoilers), she’s the brothers crane’s babysitter back in the day and they find her in present day.  frasier ends up trying to cash in on his childhood crush on her, but she ends up dating their father (named martin).

what inspired this post, is that she was also on a show in the 90s that i watched as a youth on HBO called “dream on”.  she played judith tupper, a woman who divorced a schleppy, NYC book publisher named martin tupper, and basically tortured him marrying “Mr. Perfect” aka richard stone.  the entire time you’re watching the show, you’re basically hoping at least 40-60% of the time that they get back together.

i honestly don’t remember how the show ended.  i own seasons 1 & 2 on DVD, but they never released seasons 3-6 on DVD.  i don’t want to look it up how the show ended or if they ever got together in between.  maybe they did reunite, maybe they didn’t.  either way, i bring this up bc on frasier, in one of the episodes, martin finds out she’s going out on a date with another man in addition to newly starting to date him.  she actually ends up going out with a guy named richard, but ends up choosing martin in the end.  i thought it was kind of poetic justice, and i wondered to myself if the writers did that on purpose or not.  i googled it, but i couldn’t find anything concrete.

that really would make me so happy…  sticking it to dr. richard stone, HHMMPH!  🙂

October 16th, 2015 @ 11:57 am

here’s another picture that i took in south pasadena the other day.  this is the opening scene in haddonfield, from halloween 1.  i could have done better, but this is what i did from memory (not awful).  it’s actually really hard to see the house in the top picture in real life, because it’s now covered by trees.  i sat on the corner for a hot minute trying to make sure i was even hitting the correct angle.  a lot of the houses look the same.  also: it has been 37 years since the movie was filmed, so the trees have flourished, lol.

at the other locations (ie: the street with the “hey jerk, speed kills”), the trees are actually still standing in the same shape.  the same ivy is covering the trees as well.

October 14th, 2015 @ 1:31 pm

steven and i went to anaheim for the duck’s home opener this monday, and also went back to visit the hedge! 🙂  ’tis the season!

i also never got to see the location of the walk the girls took home from haddonfield high, back to their houses… so i ended up on that block as well (the “speed kills” scene‘s street).  none of the locations were decorated for halloween yet, which was a bummer… but when i arrived back at the strode house, there was a real pumpkin there this time!  i really want to get to the damn hospital from 2 (which apparently doesn’t even look like it anymore, and is on private VA hospital property)…  grr!

October 2nd, 2015 @ 11:32 am

upon shopping around for all hallows eve, i’ve realized that (as with most things i actually purchase) i am picky as fuck when it comes time to spooky decor, especially skeletons and skulls.

target, pyrex, pier 1 and spirit halloween focused on, and put out all of this bullshit sugar skull/dia de los muertos stuff this year.  i don’t know why, but i have a hatred of it when it’s not authentic…  i also keep finding (and cringing at) anything that says “drink up witches”, things that say “fright night/oct 31.” on it (wtf?), and anything with skulls with crossbones.  i don’t relate skulls/crossbones to halloween at all, and find them extremely lame to begin with.  they just remind me of pirates, and i never understood the fascination people had with pirates (especially in the mid 2000’s – it was like a thing).

skull and crossbones are only acceptable when they’re on poison bottles, or the crutches version logo for jackass.

back to the matter at hand…  target is the worst offender this year.  so much of their stuff is coloured to dia de los muertos colorways, and that’s not very halloweenie!  target also has skulls covered in spikes and studs (UH… WHUT)?, ugly skulls with TINY jaws and large heads (example 1, example 2), this bowl that just made no sense, bc you can’t see both hands at once, and most of the candles were just fug.

SADS…

i miss target halloween decor circa 2002/2003… thankfully i still have a lot of it.  including my two 3′ tall plaster candy dish dudes (their heads are where you put the candy ♥ …as shown below).

i’m still on the prowl, though.  there is hope yet…  i haven’t hit every store 🙂

lauren and i are decorating the apartment tomorrow, after the mets game (if it doesn’t get rained out). i shall def instagram. 🙂

September 1st, 2015 @ 5:23 pm

a couple of weeks ago, steve and i were in washington and alaska…  he was out there in seattle for work, and i joined him for the few days after he was finished.  while we were out there, i wanted to check out some of the twin peaks filming locations.  they weren’t too far away from seattle, just a bit east.  where we visited was also in a large loop, so we hit the few spots and then went back on the highway to the city.  here are the pics 🙂

the first stop was the (snoqualmie) falls and the great northern…  there were a billion people up on the balcony, so i couldn’t get a shot without complete strangers in it 😐

then we hit the twin peaks sheriff’s dept (which is now a private race track/school).  the mill is across the way from there, and that’s where the drivers race their cars.  when we pulled up, the groundskeeper already knew what we were doing there, and said we could go inside.  there was a girl working the desk, but i didn’t say anything about being lucy, lol.  she called us twin peakers and told us that we could look around, so we did – the wood on the walls was still in tact.  super cool to see…  also: i totally peed in there.

next up was the “welcome to twin peaks” sign (the painted one on the right is actually on the back wall of the cafe, FYI)

and last but not least, the double R diner (twede’s cafe in north bend, WA).  steve got a stomach ache from eating there – and no, we didn’t have the cherry pie OR the coffee.  the inside looks NOTHING like the show!  apparently there was a fire there years ago.  i can’t remember offhand if they actually shot the show there or not, though.  maybe it was a set.

where laura was found was really far away from there, and a lot of other scenes were shot in california, not WA.

either way, i was ecstatic! 🙂

July 1st, 2015 @ 4:12 pm

FFFUUUUU GOOGLE, I DID IT MYSELF!!!1

so two years ago, i posted about this seemingly lost WPIX indiana jones promo (please go read the post, so that i don’t have to write about it again, lol #lazyblogger). i was stumping google so hard, but i found a few people also inquiring about it… so i wrote to them about it as well. nothing ever turned up, so i emailed WPIX directly last november as a last resort.

it’s almost as if it didn’t exist… UNTIL TODAY.

i got an email in my inbox from one of their reps earlier that lead me straight to it!

sooooooooooo, if for some reason you too were looking for the WPIX “Raiders of the Lost Ark” movie promo…  here ya go (a blurb from my email is even in there)!!!1

other sources:
WPIX archives fb
WPIX archives fb post

P.S. sorry i haven’t posted in like, 5 months… i post randomly @ jaejess.com, so check there if you’d like to read my thoughts, and i’m lacking here.

January 22nd, 2015 @ 11:28 am

i often whine about missbehave magazine no longer existing…  mainly because it was a MASSIVE inspiration to/for me back in the mid 2000’s.  that time in my life was like a 2nd coming of age for me.  i found my comfort zone in my adult life, creative life and career.  i started working on graphic design and web design again, i met jes, i got really big into graff, i broke up with andrew, i loved working on myspace contact tables, i found new music, i got pierced and started getting tattoos, i bought jewelry and clothing i wanted…  i basically evolved into the stu i am today…  it was just a very creative, colourful, inspiring time…  and missbehave happened to be HUGE at that time.

while my ex had subscriptions to mass appeal and juxtapoz, missbehave was thrown into the mix.  he would go through them, and then i would steal them and cut them into pieces.  i was big into collaging back then.  my bedroom walls, canvases, graphic design, etc. – unfortunately, that’s where all of my missbehave mags went… i cut them to pieces to use for art (RIP).  i regret doing this now, because i can’t lay around in my bed reading them, and looking at all of the rad/kitschy fonts and graphic design that would inspire me to start doing graphic design and making more t-shirts.  i can however (CREEEEEEEEEEP) refer to the waybackmachine to read old posts.  one in particular SUUUUUUUUUUUUUPER bummed me out.

clicky click here, then continue reading.

while missbehave is continually missed, even in the year 2014 (just look at how many pins exist), between all the (PACKED) events that took place, and the famous people that they had on their covers, and all of the radness that they brought into peoples lives… that article existed.

despite what i thought they were raking in with the print mag $$$, the deeper i dug into their old website, the crazier it seemed that their posts only averaged 15-30 comments (i’m being generous with the 30).

that is AWFUL.  so fucking sad, awful, lazy and what the fuckish.  how lazy and weird are we as website visitors/readers (i’m guilty of this as well), that we don’t regularly interact in comments?!  even on my websites, it’s a rarity that i get comments – but i still get hits, so people are in fact reading.  i’ve had personal websites and blogs since the 90’s, and the only time i had a high number of regular comments was when i had a static webcam to bring in hits (no, i was never nude) or when my little community of fellow cam folks existed.

so there’s a massive group of ladies that REALLY want missbehave to return, but it seems like we didn’t know what we had until it was gone.  open your mouths and be online friends, people.

nowadays, my instagram is the same shit.  i rarely post selfies, and when i do… 100+ likes.  if i post a picture my jewelry or something that is edited nicely and artsy fartsy, i average 20-40 likes.

especially when it comes time to my jewelry, that shit is deflating.

I HAVE OVER 570 FOLLOWERS – MOSTLY PEOPLE THAT I KNOW IN REAL LIFE.
man, people are fucking weird.

January 16th, 2015 @ 5:39 pm

so i just got back from california again, and i got to hit up a few more halloween filming locations while i was out there. all of these locations were around the same area in south pasadena, so it was easy to kill a few birds with one stone.

halloween (1978):

the myers house. (1000 mission street)
this house was originally located a block or so away from where it is now. there are condos where the house used to be (across from the elrod house). i think it’s pretty insane that you can move a house, but i’m glad they kept it in tact and didn’t just tear it down.

the house is now home to offices, and on the front door they asked that we didn’t go up on the porch and what not. i took a couple of quickies, and kept on truckin’.

read more…

January 6th, 2015 @ 2:31 pm

i don’t know how or why it took me almost an entire year to post these pictures, but last march i went to california. i flew in with steve and our friend joe for a pens/ducks game, and then i ended up staying the rest of the week with bee. while i was out there, to carry on my forced tradition of finding filming locations with bee (lol), i had her bring me to a few special spots. los angeles is fucking huge, and really annoying to navigate, so i picked a few that were close in proximity. it was harder to achieve than when we were scouting filming spots in salt lake city.

i know it’s super nerdy, but i really want to get to see most of the halloween filming locations from 1, 2, 4, and 5. since i had covered a lot of 4/5 in utah, the california locations are up next. my sister and i always talked about doing this together, so i decided to wait for the milestone spots.  those spots weren’t close to where bee lives (van nuys), nor was it super close to central los angeles anyway, so i didn’t go to any with bee.

HOWEVER. my sister ended up flying into LA the last night that i was there, so we setup a trip to the houses where annie and laurie were babysitting in halloween 1 when she landed…

while i was with bee, these were the other places i got to snap pics of.

1. zuma beach – baywatch was filmed here… maybe that little lifeguard station was in the show?
2. the old cobra kai dojo… apparently it was turned into a bank, but it was nothing when i got there.
3/4. the apartment complex that daniel lived in, in the karate kid.
5. the poltergeist house!
6. the liquor store from clueless where cher gets robbed after the party in the valley.

this time around in cali, steve said he’d be willing to go to pasadena with me – which means i could end up going to see the actual myers house, laurie’s house, the elrod’s house, THE HEDGE, the school where tommy went and possibly the hospital from 2 (but from a distance, since it’s a private VA hospital now, womp womp).

also in south pasadena, and very close to the halloween locations: THE MY SO CALLED LIFE HOUSE.
i WILLLLLLLLLLLL get that night shot.  oh yes, i WILL.

July 19th, 2014 @ 1:16 pm

i have always been a (neurotic) virgo and always backed up certain things on my computer at all times…  apparently, my bookmarks are one of them.  i was looking for something in my bookmarks about an hour ago, and i came across a folder that said “From Internet Explorer”.  i sifted through the folders, and i think i must have organized a lot of them into my current browser. there aren’t that many still lingering, but one of them was a folder of my friend’s online journals.  going through them was very nostalgic, funny and sad all at the same time (they’re journals, duh).

the first one i came across was my exgf caryn’s.  i don’t know if we were even really speaking at the time that she had it (2004ish)…  i had broken up with her (a million times, 😐 sigh) and dated jeff right afterwards.  jeff and i had dated for almost 4 years, and that’s when her journal existed.  some things didn’t seem familiar to me, like one of her exgf’s, and when she started hanging out with this one girl meg…  i hate that there were times that weren’t good between us, aside from being my ex, she’s been a good friend and in my life for a very long time.

when i was reading through her journal a little bit, i was laughing because there were so many of those surveys that we used to take back in the AOL days.  like your full name, fave colour, things about your current bf/gf, future kids names, favorite bands, etc. –  those were fun.  i remember in the AOL raver reply all list surveys, we used to do them all in different colours and add 1-line ascii art to them…  so good.

back when i had my first website, that shit was so beyond invasive. i don’t know who reads this now, but i still get a decent amount of hits (:::blinks:::), but back then, it was dramarama bitches that i hated skimming my posts.  i couldn’t always say what i wanted bc it would spark an uproar between friends, or for myself.  so corny.

caryn, along with other friends that used to have journals, just wrote WHATEVER. which goes back to the post i had the other day (or was it over a week…? lazy blogger)… i was talking about consistent blogging, and not to totally repeat myself (which i feel that i often do, especially while complaining about being a lazy blogger) but i want to try to keep up with posting.  if anything ever happened to me, it’d be amusing for the ones i love to go through this, i’m sure.  i used to get lost in ryan’s journal after he died, so i imagine someone would want to go through mine.

i feel like twitter/instagram make me lazy and not post here, tbh.

July 9th, 2014 @ 11:52 am

i have no idea how or why, but there are so many times where i’m listening to a song and i visually see the word/words i’m listening to on ads, signs or store awnings. i always take it as synchronicity, and that i’m in the right place at the right time in my life. i am a true believer in a set path, no matter how nonreligious i’ve been over the last few years, so i love when that happens.

this morning when i was on the M train going to work, i was underground, and the train stopped at 14th st/6th ave and my phone started ringing (i get service at that one stop for some odd reason). my ringtone is set to “nowhere fast” by head automatica, and the ringtone cuts off where daryl is singing just that. after the call i didn’t pick up hung up, cue in the song i was listening to, and it was the academy is… “skeptics and true believers”. when it came back on from the phone call’s interruption, it was at the lyric that says “nowhere fast, nowhere fast, nowhere fast… would you believe me if i said i didn’t need you…”. then i looked up, and a train ad read “get out of there, fast.”

O_____O

WHAT DOES IT ALL MEAN???!!!

June 12th, 2014 @ 12:35 pm

at one point in our 20’s, sophie and i used to go to holiday cocktail lounge every (or at least every other) friday, so we became regulars there.  we got friendly with the bartenders, and sat up at the bar vs. hogging a table for ourselves in the back booth-filled area.  one night, we were sitting at the bar and some guy that looked suuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuper familiar to me came bouncing in.  i had mentioned to sophie that i thought i knew who he was, but i figured the odds were pretty slim.  i was thinking he was famous/well known here in NYC, so i didn’t want to bother him.  i figured no one else in the bar knew who he was, because no one else was gravitating towards him aside from the people he showed up with.

at one point, he came up to me and complimented my hair and nails.  he grabbed my hand and inspected them.  we were joking around and having random convos and i had mentioned that i really wanted to buy a flask.  home dude went upstairs (apparently he lived in the building), and returned with a flask for me! 🙂

i didn’t keep it because it was all sorts of fug, but i do love the story.  he didn’t stay very long after he brought the flask down for me, and the only other person who knew who he was the bartender, lou.  lou only knew who he was because he lived upstairs, and he got to know him via the bar.

aside from being an inspiration via the fashion world, i’ve always loved the fact that he was one of those club kids.  i was a teenage raver that hung out over by the cube/astor place, so that always hits home for me.

i started a new category (NYC gems) for things that have fortunately happened to me over the years, just because i was here in this city.  i love how weird/small-world NYC is (sometimes), and i seem to have stumbled upon some really cool/weird situations over the years.

man, i love being a native new yorker.

June 6th, 2014 @ 12:06 pm

i am not even one of those people that enjoys karaoke.  i loathe and dread it, actually.  however, my coworkers put together an K outing and i went along with it.  i figured i’d just sit and watch from a dark corner, probably point and laugh…  it didn’t happen that way though.  in fact, i sang one of the first songs – but from the “sofa” in the room…  the only reason that i did, was because it was sublime – santeria and i already knew all of the words by heart already.  i thought maybe that would ease my anxiety of sounding horrible in front of everyone.

it hath not eased. #NEVERAGAIN

i let everyone sing a whole lot more before i got up again, and the only reason i had even sang again was because my sneaky co-worker told me he’d do salt n pepa – shoop with me.  i thought i knew all of the words to it, but not hearing it since (probably) the 90’s, did not work in my favor.  also: that song is DAMN fast.  i got a lot of it, though.

next up was no doubt – just a girl, because my coworker chose it for herself, and then bailed on me to make a LIRR train…  i sat down and belted it out with my coworker bryan quite successfully.

my next/last song was fuel – shimmer.  i figured no one would know/appreciate it but the entire room was singing along with me.  i love that people love that song so much, it’s so fucking good.  hearing it in unison sort of gave me the chills like hockey triumphs/milestones.  the only time i’ve ever heard it like that, is when my cousin marie and i have the windows down in the car, while screaming it as we drive around aimlessly.  forever good memories.

but still…

#NEVERAGAIN

March 17th, 2014 @ 3:04 pm

♡ sooooooooo while i was in california last week, i got a judge judy tattoo! ♡
(thanks, kelly!)

i was toying with the idea of a judge judy tattoo for years, and i came up with this one night, in late decemeber. i didn’t want to get a JJ portrait, so i thought this was perfect. kelly did such a good job – especially with the wood grain and the colouring. i love love love it! i’m glad it’s also something that i came up with, even though she put her special touch on it! 🙂

[based upon the popular “WWJD“]

November 25th, 2013 @ 10:45 am

soooooooooo back in the late 90’s/early 2000’s(?) i used to use this shampoo/conditioner oasis line from vo5.  the interwebz says that it’s lavender and chamomile, iiiii just always say “the purple one”, AND IT SMELLED SO DAMN SCRUMPTIOUS.  i used to just leave it on my arms to marinate for a few minutes and then rinse it off so i smelled like it, i had always wished there was a body wash to go along with it…  it was that good.

of course vo5 discontinued this item for whatever reason, so i thought i could no longer smell my favorite smell again like, ever…  UNTIL NOW.

i was browsing CVS for my favorite drugstore body wash the other day, but instead of just grabbing the one that i always use, i sniffed around…  i lived a little.  i then found this.  it smells JUST LIKE the oasis purple jammy, even if the bottle says “tea rose blossom and almond essence”, TRUST ME…  it’s the purple vo5 smell!

this seems like a super random/strange post, but i hope it helps some other lady out there someday.  there are some smells that are just too good to let go of, lol.

August 31st, 2013 @ 11:27 pm

i’m not gonna lie, i did NOT think of this gem on my own.  i was cruising around the interwebz and landed on kreayshawn’s tumblr and was like #UNF at her theme.  so i hand coded this entire thang to function as closely to classic myspace as possible (so much went into it, i was surprised how long it actually took).

if you know me, you know that i loathe facebook.  mainly because it was the downfall of my beloved myspace.  i used to have a heavily/worldly supported website for contact tables and it was my creative outlet for years.  once it was gone, my creative flow was just like… KAPUT!

i had my website on hiatus for years, then i started messing with photoshop/coding again once i got my job doing website development full time back in 2008.  i appreciate people’s websites and the effort that goes into building layouts from the ground up.  when i decided to make this layout, it wasn’t as easy as i had anticipated, lol.  i always remember the myspace layout being mainly tables, but i forgot just now nested/terribly they were laid out (that was sort of nerd talk, sorry.  tables are a bunch of invisible boxes where all of the content lives in cells).

so i’m rambling about bullshit nonsense…  i only wanted to say it was via some themeing site that kreayshawn used, and not my own bright idea.

ANDDD… that i’m psyched to have my old profile functional, sort of, lol.

August 8th, 2013 @ 4:51 pm

while i don’t have it in t-shirt form to purchase anymore, i reworked it a little bit and you can make it a mobile wallpaper.

August 2nd, 2013 @ 5:03 pm

i am soooooooooooo hyped about my unintentional new collection of vintage items! the image to the left with the illustrated leopard cub on it is a little tiny t-shirt… that was mine from 1981 when i was less than a year old (i’m so glad that my mother kept it!)!!! i’ve always kept it in this little “LIFE” box that i have, holding more cute little-stu stuff (including another mini-stu shirt that reads “mommy’s little angel”).

aaaaanyways! so i was a vendor at the ridgewood market again last weekend, and there was a girl there selling vintage pyrex/cookware and mugs. as soon as i saw her put down that gorilla, i had to have it. i bought it on the spot.

when i got home that night, i checked ebay and lo and behold, there was the little coin purse (how cute is that happy little sloth?!)!!! FATE!

i’m so excited and hope there are other pieces out there in the world ♥
i’ve been trying to google/hunt stuff down, but i’m not really seeing anything as of yet.

you ever see anything, let me know! 🙂

July 5th, 2013 @ 2:16 am

soooooooooooo i was deep into tag surfing #neckface on instagram one day, when i came across the most magical tattoo artist EVARRRR lauren winzer ♥♥♥

of course when i found her, and wanted to book her ASAPPPP, i realized quickly that she was based in australia 🙁  so i asked her when she’d be back, and she told me june 2013.  that was like a year or so ago, so i waited and waited and kept my love for her a selfish secret!  i thought since i hadn’t heard of her before, that not a lot of ppl knew about her, and that i could probably score an appointment from her while she visited next…  then i realized she was a hit on tumblr, so i thought i had to keep her even more of a secret 😡  if i couldn’t get an appointment with her, i’d simply just DIE! (jk, but seriously, i wanted one soooooooo baddddddly!)

one day a few months ago, my favorite blogger lovie pie sheena had posted about LW… and i almost had a heart attack.  i made her take down the post ASAP, lol.  as soon as i knew LW was booking appointments for NYC, i hollered at sheebs.  we dun did it last week ♥♥♥ 😀

i got oscy on my right leg! bzzzzzzzzz

sheebs got an amazing all seeing eye/pyramid.

i can’t wait until she comes back!  we had a blast with her, she was funny and sweet 🙂  not that i expected any less!

January 23rd, 2013 @ 9:25 pm

THINGS I MOFO WAAAAAAANNNNTTTTTT:

so the artist/etsy seller that made this cross-stitch has nothing in her shop, so i didn’t link from this post.  i must figure out how to make this mine.<333

next up: joseph senior’s hello kitty illustration AKA vinyl dream toys! [flickr]
(i’m a little late on this, he’s been illustrating them for years now, but how amazing are they?)