i watched shanghai knights earlier this evening at pacific place downtown. the movie was funny and i liked it. the important thing here isn't how good the movie was/is, but that pacific place is a total rip-off and no one should ever see a movie there ever again. sometime recently, they changed their prices. they no longer have student discounts, or even the "rush hour from 4pm-6pm" special discounted movie ticket price. it cost $7 for a matinee...that's even more expensive than stinkin' regal cinemas. AND, they don't validate parking (well, they never have - but movie tickets used to be cheaper so it wasn't as bad paying for parking), so it cost $13 bucks total to see a matinee at pacific place...crazy, no? i too was flabbergasted by the price jump. it was a big suck. this is so why i'm all about oak tree, and it's not as ghetto as people make it sound - just smaller.

in my break from studying, i just caught some of conan o'brien. wow...too funny. it's st. patrick's day, well, it was... anyway, i think was from last year, but conan was talking about going to find some people who didn't celebrate st. patrick's day and guess where the segment was filmed? haha...chinatown! woohoo! it was hilarious. he visited various stores, mostly full of chinese medicines or what i like to call "weird, smelly stuff" and quizzed them on their knowledge of st. patrick's day. one guy was like, "i know about the green." i think one of the funnier ones was where he went into a store asked a chinese girl to ask the female store owner what she thought about st. patrick's day and the whole exchange was taking place in mandarin and it was just funny.

store owner says like one word or two.
conan: "she just called me an irish bastard, didn't she?
the girl: "oh no, she said you're very handsome."
conan: "she didn't say that..."
the girl starts laughing
conan: "you just lied to me" (laughing)
later
store owner: "i don't know how to say it (i think she means in english), you say it."
the girl is like, "i'll translate for you..."
conan looks confused.
again later
conan: "just ask her if she thinks i'm handsome"
the girl: "do you think he's handsome?"
store owner: (laughs) "yes"
conan cheers in triumph

ok...the other super funny thing is there was this shot of two elderly men playing a violin and what looked like a banjo-type instrument - they're playing chinese-sounding music...old school...think kung-fu film tracks. anyway, then it pans to conan with a hat and bright green sport coat dancing around like a leprechaun. and later he's running down the streets of chinatown yelling "happy st. patrick's day" to random chinese people.

why did i find this sooo funny? it could be because i'm tired, and a bit stressed. but i think it's more that it just brightened my day - hooray for humor.

1 down, 3 to go.

my parents came up to seattle on a whim, apparently. are they weird? yes...yes they are.
back to reviewing/studying.

my last day of classes was thursday. it was a very, very, very long day. my last class of the day was spanish - the drama class. eh. we did class evaluations on the class session before - and i volunteered to take them and drop them off in campus mail. i've never written so many comments about a class or a teacher before. i've had tons and tons of crappy professors in college, more than i should've, and in all my years at UW, this is the first time that i've had to use the back of the page too. i think the final straw was when he told me that i wasn't allowed the option of writing one 6-page essay in place of two 3-page essays. the reason was that my previous grades did not meet the minimum requirement that he'd set. i felt like i could've done the 6-page essay, especially since just one of my "short" essays turned out to be 5 full pages. so on thursday, my attitude became progressively worse and by the end of class, i'd stopped paying attention and participating and sat back with my arms crossed sending him angry vibes. i thought teachers were supposed to encourage students, even the not so great ones. i've never had a teacher make me feel dumb, or rather, incapable of improving. at least i have the wonderful knowledge that i'll never have to take another class with him ever again.

i sound whiny and complainy, but i don't care. i can whine and complain if i want to.

in other news: pollen is out to get me.

as my last winter quarter in college slowly comes to an end, i have to start thinking about post-college plans much more seriously. what a bummer. i honestly have no idea what i want to do or even where i want to be. i keep getting asked about whether or not i'll stay in seattle. well, the answer to where i'll be i think definitely depends on what i'll be doing. if the answer is absolutely nothing, then i'll probably be moving back home. one more quarter and then my whole comfortable world goes nuts.

"Cradle 2 the Grave" will, however, be a box office hit, I imagine, and that will be demographically interesting because it demonstrates that a savvy producer like Silver now believes a white star is completely unnecessary in a mega-budget action picture. At one point, there were only white stars. Then they got to have black buddies. Then they got to have Asian buddies. Then "Rush Hour" proved that black and Asian buddies could haul in the mass audience. Long ago a movie like this used a black character for comic relief. Then an Asian character. Now the white character is the comic relief. May the circle be unbroken.

just last night i was watching jeopardy, and the contestants were 2 white guys and 1 white lady - all middle-aged. the guys were from bellingham, wa and brooklyn, ny and i can't remember where the lady's from. anyway, the point is that there was this category, "Yale Drama School" and they were able to answer most of the questions, where the answer was sigourney weaver or meryl streep, they were stumped on some other ones. one was a visual clue and all they had to do was get the name of the actor - which was david alan grier (think in living color). the other clue was something like "she "got her groove back" studying...blah blah" and it's angela bassett. there was bewildered confusion on the faces of all 3 contestants. and in light of having watched undercover brother just the other day, i found this review by roger ebert amusing. so, may minorities continue to make strides into mainstream america and may the asian kids keep on keepin' on and doing the whole "movin' on up" thing. :D

i'm on the road to recovery, which means my voice no longer sounds like that of a man, and that's always a good thing. :) for the last couple of weeks, classes and homework load have been a bit intense, so that's where i've been slaving away. i'm trying to actually get some good grades these last few quarters and actually learn something useful since the job market is not exactly college-grad friendly these days.

and as if i don't already have enough things to juggle, my mom calls me to tell me that she gave my aunt (my dad's sister in san francisco - the "psycho" matchmaking aunt) my cell phone number. needless to say, i was not happy with my mom. but i told my mom that if i recognize a phone number with an area code from the bay area, that i am NOT picking it up. and not only that, but i will NOT call her back either. i'm done with this crap my aunt and mom are trying to do. was is that saying...take no prisoners? or all's fair in war? well, the point is that i will no longer stand for these lame attempts - not even pretend to indulge. i've gone militant and i will launch a full-out attack if i'm pushed to do it. so aunt cath beware. you're going down. i can admit that it's a funny situation, but it would be sooo much funnier if it wasn't happening to me.

in other news, i was at the uvillage starbucks and i fell in love - with a vespa scooter. it was beautiful! scooters are just so darn cool. they're giving customers chances to win them in some kind of drawing every time you use a starbucks gift card to make a purchase. neat, huh?