Man, I love my friends.  They’re always a blast to spend time with.  They’re so great that we all hung out for 12 hours yesterday. 12 hours!

At noon we went to Little Tokyo in downtown Los Angeles for Christmas shopping and managed to find a lot of stuff to buy for other people and for each other. I bought myself a, um, I don’t know, I call it a “karate kid bandana thing” because it reminds me of the bandana (which isn’t really a bandana hence “thing”) worn by the karate kid in the film “Karate Kid”…only not. I don’t think I’m really going to wear it, but everyone’s gotta have a karate kid bandana gotdamnit!  I also bought myself a samurai sword letter opener.  It’s so badass. It looks like a samurai sword, but in miniature barbie size.

Before leaving Little Tokyo, we walked over to the restrooms at their indoor mall.  The ladies room was locked, but I heard a lot of shuffling noises in there.  There was an old beat up paper, with bent corners and a brown-yellowish coloring around the borders, posted up on the ladies room door that read:

THIS RESTROOM IS CLOSED FOR CLEANING

PLEASE USE THE RESTROOM ON THE 3RD FLOOR

YOUR MOM’S NOT HERE TO HELP PICK YOU UP. PLEASE HELP

Which was uh, kinda weird.  There was also a small writing in red that was written at the top corner and it said, “Wat?!” Looks like somebody didn’t get it either.

What I think he wanted to say, originally, was, “YOUR MOM’S NOT HERE TO PICK UP AFTER YOU. SO HELP A BROTHER OUT.” Right?

Afterwards, we drove to Cerritos and ate at a Vietnamese pho restaurant.  It was Tyler’s first time eating pho, but he didn’t eat very much of it, so I helped him finish his bowl.  For desert, we had cha (kind of like jello soup), Tyler didn’t want to taste it.  I guess he doesn’t like Vietnamese food very much haha, but everyone else enjoyed their dishes. I ordered spring rolls, they were deliciousouosus!

We went to Borders and we stayed there for a while, mainly in the graphic novels section.  I think they were checking out Anime/Manga stuff, and I was catching up on my Marvels (of course).

After Borders, we got coffee and chilled and chatted.  We all took out our driver’s license just to see the hilarity of our pictures.  We played hangman and it was, surprisingly, fun.  Because of hangman, I did learn a new geographical location, Botsuana. Yup.

We ended the night around midnight, and I left with a satisfied (and more) feeling…and stomach.

World War Z: An Oral History of the Zombie War by Max Brooks

I’m really bad when it comes to reading books.  98% of the books that is currently on my bookshelf has been read…halfway.  Oh I plan on finishing all of them, pages are still bookmarked and everything, but it’s probably not going to happen in this lifetime.  Actually, I really don’t know why I’m asking for another book, but this one’s about zombies man! And believe it or not, I did read the whole book of The Zombie Survival Guide (safety first!), which is also written by Max Brooks, so I think I’ll get into WWZ without a sweat.

Betseyville or Betsey Johnson bag in studded shiny (or not shiny) black leather

I’m really not into bags.  Whenever I go out, I normally take my cards, keys, and cellphone with me, so there’s not much to carry had I use bags.  But if there’s one bag out there that I’d rock regardless of my lack of shit to put in, it would most certainly be the Betsey bags.  Bags designed by Betsey Johnson/Betseyville are straight up tacky and over the top…but I like it.  And I think carrying bags of gaudiness would perfectly balance everything out whenever I have a normal plain ol’ outfit on.

Disney Pixar Ultimate Movie Collection

I’ve loved every movie Pixar has made for Disney, and I still like watching them whenever I get the chance to, so I’m pretty sure this item was made for me. And remember, this isn’t Disney Pixar Movie Collection, it’s Disney Pixar Ultimate Collection. Ultimate. That’s fucking hardcore, man.

Every gotdamn music soundtrack from movies by Quentin Tarentino

I’m not sure if Mr. Tarentino gets to select his choice of songs for every movie he’s directed, but each and every song I’ve heard from all of his movies brings a sweet feeling of orgasm to my ears.  The songs in Grindhouse Death Proof is at the top of my list of most orgasmic.

Marvel Zombies 1, 2, and 3 in hardcover

Marvel Zombies is one of the most interesting reads to come out of comic books.  The concept of Marvel Zombies is genius.  Just imagine a horde of Marvel comic book characters turned into flesh-eating zombies who are able to retain their humanity.  That’s frightening…and pretty awesome.  I’ve finished the first volume, and and the first two issues of the 2nd volume, and would love more than anything than to finish reading all of it.

I just got back home from one of the most kickass experiences in the world that is the Video Game Awards 2008!

Fuck! It was spectacular I don’t know where to begin! The only bad part was just the long, excruciating hours of waiting out in the cold, but it was definitely worth it.

I invited my friend Hai to the awards show, and we took off around noon to Sony Pictures Studio. We ended up getting there pretty early, and so the wait was pretty long…and awfully freezing. We were stuck in a long line in their parking structure for nearly two hours. I forgot to bring a jacket and the air was so cold that my lips were turning purple, every part of my bone trembled, and pretty sure my goosebumps had goosebumps.

Two hours later, our line (there were about five separate long lines) finally started moving first and we were transferred into a large empty warehouse where there was even more waiting. As the minutes started to pass by, more of the people from the previous lines eventually started to come in.

The wait was very long and the weather was still chilly, but during that time, Hai and I met a group who was standing behind us and surely, they were an awesome bunch to interact with. Their names were Leejay, Mike and his girlfriend (I forgot her name!). From time to time, I would turn around and butt in to add in my comments to them every time I overhear something interesting or funny, but eventually the butting in comments turned into an entertaining extended conversation on video games, board games, the brilliant idea of putting donuts in our jackets and discreetly selling them to the audience while they were warm due to our body heat (we were hungry! Hunger causes delirium), how absurdly slow and primitive we are at telling time from a numberless watch, and we talked about a flashy dress a girl, standing next to us, was wearing; it was laden with silver sequence and other silver shiny stuff and we thought it would be cool to point a laser at her dress.

After about a few hours of talking and laughter, we were finally transferred to the actual studio where the awards show took place. In the studio, there were three different sections in the room: the stage, the lounge/sofas surrounding the stage (where the big guns and celebrities are seated), and the behind the lounge were a cluster of transparent chairs for the regular audience. The casting directors did not tell us where to sit so me, Hai, and our new gang of friends took the next best seats in the section for the regular audience. It wasn’t close to the stage, but it was good enough.

It was cool at first. As we were waiting for the show to start, we ate bread sticks that were the size of straws, and ordered drinks for free. But a few minutes later, we noticed that people in our line were starting to get kicked out from their seats, and were replaced by other people. Nerves start to kick in.

A new group of people, who we also made friends with, sat next to us and told us how they were initially kicked out because they were sitting in somebody else’s assigned seats. One by one, people are getting kicked out from their seats, and from there on out, I finally realized that we’re seat fillers, and the good seats we’re sitting at the moment are not going to be ours very soon.

Honestly, I was fucking pissed. This meant that we can only sit in the seats that were not purchased (we got in for free, huge HUGE thanks to Brooke for hooking us up). Those seats are probably at a very shitty way-in-the-back spot, and our group will probably be separated from each other had we sat somewhere else.

I wasn’t going to downgrade and settle for a much shittier spot, I wasn’t. So I came up with an idea. A fucking brilliant idea if I might add. It is possibly the best idea I had ever thought of, because everyone else followed, and that idea lead us to the very front of the room that we could literally touch the stage with our own bare hands and probably watch the sweat roll off of Jack Black’s head.

“The pit,” I thought to myself. Remember how I mentioned about the separate lines we had in the parking structure? Well one of those lines was a “special” line, or a line we’d like to call, “The Beautiful People”, because that particular line were composed of theoretically good looking people who were handpicked by the casting directors to stand at the pit whenever a music artist or a band performs on stage.

I guess we were not beautiful enough to have made it to said line, but after getting kicked out from our original seats, I told Hai and LeeJay that we should join “The Beautiful People” up in the very front and “if they kick us out of there too, then oh well, we tried.” Having said that, I casually walked toward the stage, passed the maze of the lounge, and to the pit, followed by seven other people, and no one seems to notice.

“Look beautiful guys,” said Leejay. Laughter ensues. We made it!

We were only at the front of the stage, or the pit, whenever there was a performance. And when there wasn’t, we were all moved by the casting directors to the side of the room, which wasn’t bad at all.

When the show started, we were first shown a hilarious introduction video of Jack Black (the host) having a hot and steamy “threesome” with a PS3 and an Xbox, only to get caught by his wife, the Wii, along with his son, the Nintendo DS. The sex was actually rather gross (and funny) because it was pretty convincing.  He was caressing them, taking out PS3′s wire and inserting into the Xbox, and then boning them in the end…yes boning.

We watched LL Cool J, The All American Rejects, 50 Cent and his G-unit crew, and Weezer perform, all within meter stick distance. Ah, I couldn’t ask for a better place to sneak to.

Other celebrities I saw and had me in uber starstruck were Megan Fox (I called her name and she waved at me, OMG!), Kiefer Sutherland (photo above, see we were THAT close to the stage!!!!), Mike Tyson, Kristin Kreuk, Eliza Dushku, Doogie Howser, Chris Evans, Marisa Miller, Ben Stiller’s dad, and other celebrities I can’t think of at the top of my head.

It was a very good night. I met six other people there who are seriously awesome in my book. I got to be in a room with people who all have one thing in common: our love for videogames. People saw us on TV.  I got the best seats in the house. And to top it all off, Left 4 Dead won Best PC Game and Best Multiplayer Game. It’s definitely a great way to end the year with. I couldn’t ask for a better night.

PS- Cameras and phones were not allowed, so I was not able to take any pictures during the show. Hmph! So I managed to get a few pictures before the event (photo at the top), and after…which isn’t that exciting since none of it was DURING the show.