saturday night me and shali got dinner at the lab and wanted to check out this new promotion action at the shark club. cover’s now $15, and when we were in line some guy gave us “v.i.p.” braclets. we were hoping they’d be for free cover, but it turns out that the old techno room is now the v.i.p. lounge. so we go in there expecting to see beautiful people like ourselves, but it seemed more like some private birthday party, and a weird mix of random people not dancing to 80′s music. we shook our ass then headed to the main floor. the music was medicore, although when they started playing the ditty by paper boy and that one really dirty snoop song that everyone knows i love, we got jumpin’. the music was a lot quieter than usual and the room was too bright. and there were alot of really weird couples there, like this one 250+lb 40year old white woman with this guy that kinda looked like dino, and this really plain looking almost goth white woman in her 30′s that was getting freaked by some guy that was throwin’ his arms around like a monkey all night (they left in a minivan together), and this 50+year old japanese woman gettin’ down with this big black dude. anway it was good, dirty fun, but i miss the shark club of old.

every since msn.com took over mdn news it’s been way less raunchy, but i still read it almost daily. anyway, i really don’t get how the yakuza have so much control and are so relatively open about their businesses in a country as developed as japan. i mean this article is practically a press release for who’s stepping down in power and who’s replacing him:

“The retirement of Yoshinori Watanabe, 64, was made official during a meeting of the gang’s leaders at its headquarters in the western Japanese city of Kobe, according to a local police official who demanded he not be further identified. Dozens of police were deployed around the headquarters and at local train stations. Watanabe will be replaced by the current No. 2 leader, Kenichi Shinoda, who is 63, Japan’s Kyodo News service reported. Watanabe will continue to hold a senior advisory post, it said.”

a “senior advisory post?!” that’s exactly like when a ceo retires but remains on the board or directors. it just seems all too, well, organized, to happen so publicly, and in such a democratic/peaceful nation. although i’m sure that ultimately it’s the balance of the yakuza that make it so.

http://mdn.mainichi-msn.co.jp/national/news/20050729p2a00m0na009000c.html

so yesterday i coughed up the $200 (costin kicked in $50) for a new wakeboard. we’ve gotten pretty good at the skiing gig, so we figured we’d step it up. it was just gonna be me, cosmo and dave but eva called up just as we were leaving, and we picked up carime from shorline village so we had some flag girls :) we were gonna do runs in marine stadium, but when we got down there they were having some kinda music in the park deal where marine stadium was closed to 5mph :( so we decided to man up and do waterskiing in the real ocean =p close to shorline near the beach, the water comes into a bit of a cove and is pretty flat and warm. i got up on the wakeboard my second try and did it for two runs. it’s got the same dynamics as snowboarding, but you’re going a lot faster so movements need to be much quicker. it was pretty rad where we were, because there were no other boats to worry about, and no direction or sharp turns that had to be made, so it was a lot more fun. we took turns until the sunset then we put on the lights, crusied back to the marina and went out for sushi <3

now this is just retarded. first of all, why does he need such a huge tv? sometimes when i go to the arcade, i’ll get beat by the little kid that just pushes all of the buttons and kicks my ass because it’s just a wall of mayhem, but there’s no way this blind kid is going to consistently beat me at mortal kombat or soul caliber. i’m all for handicap people doing normal things and leading normal as possible lives, but seriously, c’mon.

http://www.cnn.com/2005/TECH/fun.games/07/28/blind.gamer.ap/index.html

i played a round of pretty mediocre golf under a rather hot summer sun, but it was nice to be out there again. i’ve got a lot of deep muscle pains from working out/waterskiing so i was changing up my swing to avoid the pain which obviously wasn’t going to end in a record breaking score. my best holes were bogies after missing easy par putts.

later we got margaritas and saw “the island” which was a pretty rad movie about clones that are grown soley to harvest organs for their sponsor if they need them. but damn, that movie had a lot of product placement. every other scene had a closeup of a chevy car or some futuristic aquafina water bottle. but these big-budget movies are all about making lots and lots of money, and i can deal with it. when they start advertising robert mondavi wine in passion of the christ, i’ll start to balk though :)

ooh, and happy birthday ben.

cosmo and the gals in the parking lot

me and costin getting ready for the ride

i think it’s obvious which direction the sun was casting shadows :)

seconds before my balls got shoved up into my stomach

shali and costin sliding

wee!

this is us with phallen prada, heir to the prada fortune, but probably not =p

sorry cosmo, but the japanese have your little webcasting business beat! i’m getting my messages via plants, suckka!

yesterday was another warm day so we spent almost the entire day out on the boat. even with a full boat though, we had no problem pulling skiiers. everyone gave it a shot, some with more success than others, but it seemed that everyone had a good time. me and costin have had it down for a while, dave fucking got up his first run, and was hot-doggin’ after the first turn… him and costin both held on to a full power 180 turn, although i wasn’t as fortunate when costin whipped me around and i did a crazy superman move, i’m still hurtin’ today from that =p takako and my sister and roxana gave it a few good efforts and costin’s sister was able to get up for a few runs.

this is gonna be my wall paper for a while :) that’s costin i’m pulling

i’m still a bit skeptical that this was actually dave’s first time out

flag girl

me and dj dave

costin pulling andrea

i thought it foolish to post the specifics of what i was working on, but for those in the know, i rebuilt the timer circuit, becasue i was having problems with the pot. but with matt’s help i was able to figure out the problem, and i figured i’d build it a helluva lot cleaner too. i’m just waiting on the lighting array and then it should be done? although there’s a bunch of testing to find the right frequency to do.

fuck today was hot. good thing we spent the whole damn day at wild rivers :) there’s lots of pictures of us flying outta tubes and boobs falling out of tops. they’re all on one of those disposable waterproof cameras though, so i gotta go through the hassle of developing and scanning them, i’ll try to do it tomorrow though. damn, it’s 10:30 and it’s still hot as balls. summer time in the lbc.