Today I got to see my Miggs show of the summer. It's crazy that ever since I saw them for the first time over six years ago, I've seen them at least once every summer. I think there was one summer where I missed them completely. It was a sad one, but it was made up for because we had seen them ten times that first summer. Crazy times, for sure. They opened for Matt Nathanson today, which was fun because I downloaded his album on Amazon about a month ago and liked it. I also got to be backstage again, which was kind of legit.

Another reason I was happy about this show? It was Music in the Park, which meant I only had to walk a few blocks to see them. I got there a little after five. I entered on one side of the stage and saw that Don was on the other, so I hopped over several people who seemed like they were otherwise comfortably seated on the grass to say hi to him. We talked for a few minutes, and he told me to go to the other side of the stage and he'd get me in backstage.

Got backstage a little after their sound check. It was so much nicer to be there than out in the crowd. For one, I didn't have to deal with the smell of pot smoke on my suits. I also wasn't out in the crowd. I was also backstage, which is kind of legit.

They had some performances first from some people in some singing contest. They were okay. I can't complain because they all sang circles around anything I can do.

Miggs was up next. They put on a great show. They played a lot of songs that I knew and a lot of songs that I had only heard once or twice before. I don't think I'd heard the second one they played, actually. It was super catchy. I meant to ask Don what the name of the song was, but I forgot to.

The one song they didn't play that I wanted them to play was To Be Wrong. Actually, I wanted them to do Taste too. Oh well. It was a lot of fun. They went through SO MANY covers for Options though. Including Journey. Hella cool.

Between sets, I saw members of the San Jose Earthquakes hang around backstage. Seeing as I'm trying to start getting into soccer, I wanted to go say hi. However, seeing as I have never once seen the Earthquakes play and know nothing of the team, I didn't. Too bad, too. I wanted one of the beach balls they were giving away to everyone in the audience. Actually, scratch my last comment. I think I vaguely remember the Earthquakes coming to SFC once. Maybe I dreamt this. I don't remember.

Matt Nathanson was up next. I sat by the side of the stage for his performance. It was kind of cool because he walked right behind me to get on the stage. I guess he'd have to seeing as that was the entrance of the stage, but whatever.

I was actually very much impressed by his performance. He had some hilarious banter between sets, including making fun of Kevin Richardson of the Backstreet Boys, giving us a rundown of the Hannah Montana movie, and playing part of Lose Yourself by Eminem. He also covered Blister in the Sun, which was kind of legit.

All in all, it was a good show. The train ride back was kind of crazy, though. Most crowded I've ever seen the lightrail and most people had no idea how to actually ride the light rail correctly as most of them realized halfway through that they were on the wrong train. Fail.

Oh, by the way. You know the obnoxious person you see texting backstage during shows? I was totally that person today. I was texting people during Matt Nathanson's performance. I wasn't bored or anything, mostly texting people things about the show or consoling my boyfriend about not being able to go to Blizcon anymore. Wait--why am I defending my actions? Backstage texters are too good for that. I wonder if the crazy Matt Nathanson fans were talking about how evil I am. Like they really cared.

Tomorrow's Friday. Casual day. I also fly to SoCal for the weekend. Will write about my fun exploits there. We're thinking of crashing a Comic Con party. Speaking of which, I need to pack still.

Before I start my post officially, I'd just like to point out how angsty and emo my little brother is. Here is my little brother the last few times I've taken him places:



This was at Bastille Day.



This was at the Inter game.

I have a series more of them. This should be a new feature on the blog. Angsty James pics. I'm sure this is going to be a regular feature on the up and coming Korea blog. (Still deciding whether I want to resurrect the old one or make a new one, by the way.)

Anyway, I wanted to post some pics from the Inter game. Oppa, James, Uncle Brian, Chabba and I went to Stanford Stadium to see Inter Milan play Club America last Sunday. They're touring as part of the World Football Challenge or something like that. I don't know. Mia, Chris, and Kristina saw Inter lose to Chelsea the other day at the Rose Bowl. Milan got their butts handed to them in a game against Club America yesterday too, I think.



Anyway, I assumed that Club America would be some US team. Figured people wouldn't be that into it. Was wrong. Apparently it was a Mexican team. Being that we are in the great state of California, this meant that the Inter Milan fans there were greatly outnumbered by the Club America fans. It was slightly scary, but it also made the game a little more entertaining. Nothing about soccer will frighten me as much as being in Germany for a German game did. Few things in life, actually, are as scary as that was.

Anyway, we got there a little before the game started. Early enough to watch the team members warm up. Also early enough to put on our war paint. Being that it was very hot that day (way hotter than it was today when I was FREEZING at Music in the Park), the face paint had pretty much melted by the time we got there. This gave us a unique challenge.











The game was a lot of fun to watch. I decided about a year ago that I wanted to get into soccer. Part of this came from being in Europe at the time of the European Cup. Ask me why this didn't happen when I was in Italy when they won the World Cup. Seriously, ask me. I won't have an answer. Anyway, I also figure that I need to follow some sport. Why not choose the sport everyone else in the world loves? Anyway, this was a fun start. I don't really know too many soccer players other than the really big ones and a hand full of players on the Italian national team, so I wasn't sure what to expect.



Let's see.

I got a weird picture of Matrix (as Oppa insists I refer to him because I wore his jersey and all).



I got pictures of various players rolling around on the ground in pain.






Oppa says that Balotelli's supposed to be the new hope for the Italian team. I wasn't seeing it today (or at the Chelsea game for that matter), but I hope that this is just because it's pre-season.







I got to see Ibra in one of his last games wearing an Inter jersey. Even though he wasn't really into it, he totally danced circles around the other players.








I got a cool shot of Cordoba after he scored the goal for Inter.



My snotty uncle figured Inter'd lose. They did. It was sad. It was close though. Ended with 1-1 and then Inter lost during the penalty kicks when Viera missed the goal.



It was a fun game though all in all. Glad I set this up. After the game, we decided to get something eat. Seeing as we wanted to escape the gloating Club America fans, we ate at Chevy's.

I'll post the last of the pictures that I liked from the game.

















That's about it. Next, I'll be posting my Miggs post.

Oh yeah, throughout the game I also tried multiple times to text to win a free Inter Milan jersey. I didn't win. I'd be a lot happier if I had.

I was supposed to do some more serious research on firms tonight, but I watched Inter lose to Chelsea tonight instead. TV's not working in this room and this happened to be one of the few nights that I decided to leave my laptop in the office, soooo I couldn't get anything done really while I was streaming the game.

Instead, I'm going to blog. Meant to talk about the weekend my cousins were here. Tyler and Becca got here on Friday. We took them to get yogurt and Pizza My Heart (they have pretty cool new shirts there by the way).

I spent Saturday morning at the Immigration Clinic in Japantown. Good time to be there, too, apparently. They were holding the Odom Festival there. We had lunch there. A lot of good food. We went straight from Japantown to Great America. The last time I was at Great America, this so-called "Flight Deck" was still called Top Gun. You might remember this time. We didn't ride it anyway. Not because of the long lines, but because we had our little cousins with us. Speaking of which, it was not crowded there at all, which is something I did not expect to see on a Saturday during the summer. Dumb economy. Kind of. We actually got quite a few rides in even with our long stop in the games section where everyone spent way more than the $3 I said they could spend on games. Good times. My favorite part of Great America is the little boat racing thing in the children's section. I was delighted to find that it was still there. There's also this new-ish Survivor-themed ride that looked interesting. Probably would have gone on it if we weren't with little kids. Next time maybe. If there is a next time. Disneyland >>>>> Great America any day.

Sunday, we went up to Rohnert Park to help Uncle Brian look for a new place. It was a slightly productive day. We took Bruce with us. There was a lot of traffic on the way back. Stopped by Chabba's house and looked at his India pictures. Then we went to the movies. Umma to the Proposal; Halmony, Tyler and Becca to Transformers 2, and James, and I went to Public Enemies. I really liked the movie. You can't go wrong with a movie starring Johnny Depp, Christian Bale, and Marion Cottliard. If you do, you should be given some sort of award for failing at life.

On Monday, it was back to work. I don't remember much of what we did that day, but I do know that we were sad to find out that the San Quentin tour we were supposed to go on was canceled due to a swine flu break out. Lame. After work, we went on a quick walk and then took Grandpa out to dinner for his birthday.

Tuesday was the first of the three days went spent at court in Palo Alto watching a trial. We watched jury selection, which is a pretty fascinating process to watch. After work I raced through traffic to get back home, sat down for like ten minutes, and then turned around to take James and the cousins out to Santana Row's Bastille Day circus. It was kind of a cute celebration put on by Left Bank.

It was actually a lot more fun and well done than I might have thought it was going to be. There was dancing, and body contortions and beat box juggling (which is pretty much as awesome as it sounds). They pretty much used like 3 French songs and the Moulin Rouge soundtrack though. I don't know how legit that is, but I like the Moulin Rouge soundtrack, so it shouldn't matter.





Oh and there was a guy spinning a cube around with his body. That was kind of amazing.

(this scene does not translate well as a photo, but I have to give you something to visualize the sheer awesomeness of the moment)

After the performance, we got more Pizza My Heart and yogurt, and then went home. They left the next morning. It was a fun, but busy weekend, for sure. I would post about this past weekend, but my eyes are about to fall out of my brain, so I should probably going to sleep.

The last few weekends were jam packed, making the weekends seem extremely short. I'm sure next weekend will be the same as I am flying down to SoCal for Kristina's birthday. I'm trying to figure out how this OCI thing works. Mainly, whether I can hold off on sending in my bids until after I found out whether I got onto a journal or if that's going to severely hurt my chances. If I have to turn in that stuff as soon as possible, the next few days are going to have to be severe crunch time as I have not even researched all of the firms that interested me. Nor have I narrowed everything down to the 35 bids. Nor have I written a gazillion cover letters. I haven't even fixed up my resume. Got a lot of work to do.

If it makes anyone feel better, I did forego any Monkey Island this weekend to put whatever computer time I had towards OCI research.

I should do some right now but being in the sun all day for pool cleaning, swimming and soccer game has wiped me out and I'm going to bed in a little bit.

So I liked this Harry potter movie except they seemed to have sucked out essentially all of the half blood prince storyline

I meant to post something longer on the trip to Disneyland. We went for Chris's birthday and it was surprisingly not as crowded as you would have expected for a summer day in Disneyland. That's all right though. Definitely not complaining about that. We got most of the rides done, including two attempts to get the flower from Alice on the Alice in Wonderland ride. Not successful. Apparently that one doesn't come out. Good to know.

(look at that pure angst on my little brother's face)

(this may or may not be the most romantic Disneyland picture you'll ever see)

Anyway, because we got through most of the rides by four or five, we left relatively early. We grabbed carne asada fries from Alertos on the way back and also got stuff to bake Chris a cake. Mia and I did a lot of the work on it and I think we should give up and of our past career goals and open a bakery.





Actually, despite the unappealing exterior, it was very good and Chris enjoyed it.



I was going to combine this with other stuff, but I've got pictures to sort through and probably should do some OCI research tonight.

Oh, also, if you didn't know. Today everyone got to experience 12:34:56 on 7/8/9 whether they realized it or not. I was going to Tweet as close as possible to that moment as I could get, but I was at a brown bag lunch at Superior Court.

I am not playing Monkey Island like I said I was going to. I decided that I should finally watch and return my Netflix movies, so I put in Frost/Nixon. It's not really the type of movie to play Monkey Island to, so I've been doing other Internet-related things. One of which will be blogging.

This movie is actually very interesting by the way. I spent the first forty minutes confused because I wasn't really sure what was going on, but it's pretty intense now that I'm into it.

In other exciting news, Sondre Lerche also announced his tour dates. So, so excited. I missed him the last time he came to SF because it was during orientation. I have to go this time.

Until then, I am going to do a short thing on the Tallest Man on Earth/John Vanderslice show I went to a week ago. Because it was over a week ago, I don't remember a lot of details, but I still wanted to post pictures. All in all, it was a good show to go to because the last one I went to was that terrible Third Eye Blind show. Ew.

I was also excited about the show because after being back in the Bay Area for a year, I kind of missed the Troubadour and the Hollywood shows. Unfortunately, we did not follow this one with the usual trip to Pinks, but we had Kogi Tacos a couple of days before so I thinnk that fills my quota of unhealthy LA hipster food.

Mia and I drove out to LA to Churro's house. We met her there and she drove us out to the Troubadour. She had to get cash along the way and I have no idea where banks are in LA.

Anyway, we got there pretty late and pretty close to the start of the show. It was surprisingly empty. Probably the emptiest that I had seen it in a while. It filled up by the time that the Tallest Man on Earth started and it was definitely pretty crowded by the time John Vanderslice was up, but it was still not as crowded as the other shows I've been to there.

Tallest Man on Earth's set was pretty great. I was more familiar with his music this time around, which was good. Still maybe not familiar enough to make the fact that I was pretty front and center not awkward, but it'd have to do. I think one of the most entertaining moments of the show was definitely watching him stare down some girls who were talking very loudly during the performance. Owned. There was also some pretty obnoxious drunk guy in the audience. According to Mia, he was very upset that Kristian Matsson was not literally the tallest man on earth. He was also comparing his music to Glen Hansard, which really didn't make much sense to me.





I also neglected to mention that during this set, the Troubadour was unbearably hot. I was dying. There was a breeze as soon as the set was over too. I don't know. I thought I was going to pass out. Not really though. That would have been a problem.

The set up between that set and John Vanderslice's set was not that long beacuse most of the instruments were already up. I did forget how shallow people in LA can be. As they were setting up, some pair of hipsters next to me were very distressed that he looked old, so they left. Their loss. The last time I saw John Vanderslice at the Rickshaw Stop was kind of weird. I mostly went to see the Morning Benders and actually did not know much of his music apart from the little snippet I heard on MySpace. He put on an incredibly good show that time (hence the reason I went to LA to see him again). It was, however, a lot more enjoyable watching the show knowing at least some of his music and not having the question of whether "Pleasant Inc" infringed on "Rick Broadway's" trademark (for the law journal writing competition, if you don't know what I'm talking about).

Where was I? I don't know. He, once again, put on a very fun set. They are amazing to watch live and put on a very fun show. When I saw him about a month ago, I believe he was kickstarting his tour. When I saw him last week, he was doing one of the last shows on the tour. It was kind of cool that we were book ending this. I eventually need to get more or his music, though. I totally recommend seeing him live if you get the chance though. It's a lot of fun.





For the last song, the entire band came out and played in the audience. It was kind of a party. The only thing that would have made it more awesome would have been if he (or anyone else) started break dancing as soon as it was over. Unfortunately my iPhone (forgot real camera) could not take good pictures of it.



Anyway, so after the show was over Mia pointed to some guy and asked if he was Heroes. I didn't believe her at first because she has a tendency to think random people are celebrities and then shout their name (like when she saw "Alan Cumming" in Italy). Then I looked over and, yeah, the person she was pointing to looked a lot like Nicholas D'Agosto, who played Claire's flying boyfriend in the second season of Heroes. Not many people remember hiim because, like Claire's gay friend from season one, he inexplicably disappared by the start of the next season. I'm sure the guy who can breathe underwater will face the same fate. Apparently Claire is going to have a lesbian romance next season. Perhaps she will have more staying power than the guys.

Where was I? Oh yeah, he's also been on the Office (Jan's assistant) and in a couple of movies (Election, Rocket Science). I actually saw both Election and Rocket Science in the same week when I got them Netflix. I didn't know he was in both films, so that was kind of weird.

Anyay, the three of us stood around creepily for the next ten minutes or so as the Troubadour completely emptied out trying to decide whether we should approach him and take a picture with him. Seriously, I'm sure he and his friends thought we were creeps because it totally outdid whatever creepy we did to BJ Novak (speaking of which, I finally have the picture from that). This is okay though. We eventually found a good time to cut in and ask if he was on Heroes. He said yes and we got pictures with him. When the first picture didn't come out, he moved us over to the restaurant where the lighting was much better. He was super nice. I also told him that I liked him in Rocket Science, so we could mention something in his resume more legit than season 2 of heroes. He was probably my favorite part of that movie, too.





Anyway, after spending all of that time with that stuff, we were too pooped to stop by the merch table, so we headed off. Churro also had to wake up at some ungodly hour to surf the next morning. Drove to Churro's house, got into our car and headed back.

Because we didn't get our late night unhealthy food fix in LA, Mia and I stopped by Fountain Valley on the way back to get carne asada fries at Alerto's, which Mia assured me is pretty much open all the time. Except at like 12:30 on that Monday night. This was extremely upsetting and we were pretty hungry. We decided to stop by Del Taco instead and had probably one of the weirdest Del Taco experiences ever. This included a discussion about whether we liked Del Taco or Taco Bell better. Good times. That's it for now. I want to get some MI in.