Wow. May was pretty crazy. dave took me to hawaii for my birthday, may 9, where we swam with sea turtles, hiked to a 100ft waterfall, and hung out with a bunch of my friends - secksiewolfie, tommEE picklez, keith myers, jose avila, mike merrel, steve dugan, and mike chapman. wolfie lives in hawaii so he introduced us to the local culture and we got him really drunk.

then we threw ninjapenguin 3.0, which was an absolutely spectacular party with a 6ft loooooooooongcat cake, a baby seal pinata with a club, AWESOME DJS, and a million friends. Some people were here from out of town- zsnark flew down from sf, dan kaminsky postponed a taipei trip to hang out, tendency and dana extended a lax layover from hawaii to vegas to come, vissago drove himself and his british gf sallymonster up from san diego, and penguin palace resident artist todd pluciennik also came up from sd with his gf christy. 

the past few weeks also had other notable adventures- prodigy concert at the hollywood palladium was BADASS, we went to a LOST-themed beach party called Shade, we went to a bbq at the Project Dynamite hq where a juggler set his crotch on fire and another juggler punched it out.. saw a magic show at the magic castle where someone got sawed in half, and when an audience member touched him, he grabbed her arm and scurred across the stage on his hands as she screamed and ran off..

also tommEE did a show at magicopolis last saturday, we showed our seattle friends around and introduced them to waffleburgers, my friends from north carolina were in town and i took carrie on the lily belle, and a week later we celebrated dave's bday at disneyland. oh and i did a photoshoot at gene simmon's mansion, and shot damon lindeloff from LOST for a comics on comics event at meltdown.

somewhere in there ive been working on freelance projects- production art stuff for disney via `GoblinQueeen, shirt stuff for 2k by gingham, press kit for anime news network, and an html email for tierzero. 

want to see pictures from the crazy bday event? go here: [link] 

About a year ago, I met a brilliant photographer on a crazy trip with a bunch of my friends, on a cruise to Ensenada.

He's the nicest, awesomest, most fun person I'd ever met, and we started dating. I've mentioned him in my journals a lot- his name is Dave.

So I wanted to make Valentine's Day awesome by putting together an adventure. I had all these plans laid out since Christmas, and then the oddest thing happened.. it rained. So instead, I woke up early and made a special Valentine's Day card. for roadtrip food i made some heartshaped pink riceballs (and cooked the rice in coconut milk).

Then I took him two hours east into the desert, where it wasn't raining, and we went to see the giant dinosaurs from Pee Wee's Big Adventure. There was a museum exhibit with robotic dinosaurs, too, with a weird Christian twist on them. Next, I wanted us to go on a gondola ride that would take us from the desert to the snow, but when we got there, we found tons of people and a two hour wait. So instead, we took off in another direction and drove towards a cute mountain forest town called Idyllwild in search of snow. And snow we found, lots of it, piled up everywhere.



A Valentine's snowball fight ensued; the best one ever, with a snowbank on high ground to use as a fort. We went to a pizza place and ate a really yummy pizza, and we played mew mew tower on my iphone til we beat all of the high scores. and got candy at a candy shop!

we drove back, and just cuddled and caught up on all of our tv shows. dave wanted me to make food, instead of going to a fancy restaurant, so i wanted to at least do fancy food for him. but we ate too much pizza. so the next night i made valentines dinner.

appetizers were lemon stilton stuffed dates wrapped in bacon

fettucine alfredo (with the sauce homemade), bacon wrapped scallops cooked in wine and lime, lemon rosemary salmon fillets, and garlic-lime shrimp. on the side were oven roasted asparagus (supposedly an aphrodisiac)

But the next weekend rolled around and i still wanted to take him on the original adventure. The weather looked clearer, so I set up the reservations. We had to wake up REALLY early to get to Long Beach, and "take a special kind of boat." Dave thought we were going whale watching, when he first started guessing, but he did guess the Catalina Island part of the trip.

I drove us out to the Queen Mary, and we walked up to the Helipad, and got on a helicopter. Neither of us had done anything like this before, and I was prepared to be terrified. It was only scary for 30seconds, then felt like an airplane after that. And it was really really really awesome. We saw dolphins and shared the ride with another couple.

Then we took a taxi to the cute little beach town of Avalon, where they were doing a scuba-diver beach cleanup. Some dude found an octopus in a bottle and was showing it off. Then we found the best minigolf course in the world. It was built by hand, by an old couple that rescues cats. It had some of the most ingenious mazes I'd ever seen, along with crazy ramps and turns and tiers.



After that, we hopped into a yellow submarine. It had torpedo buttons that released fish food and we got to see TONS and tons and tons of fish. We walked all over Avalon and took a zillion pictures, and played with this neat little iphone app called Photoswap where you take a picture of something and a random person gets it, and has the ability to reply with another photo. We ate fish and chips and a buffalo burger, and went to an amazing candy store with handmade truffles and saltwater taffy. One of the best candy shops I'd ever been to. Dave got tired and tried to take a nap so I chased seagulls around with my camera for an hour.



Then we took a big ferry back, and it was my turn to take a nap. We drove out to Hollywood and partied at our friend's apartment that overlooks the Oscars, and watched the traffic pile up around Hollywood. And that was our two-part Valentines Adventure.

Dave has his pics up. I am slow and haven't posted mine. http://flickr.com/photos/dmertl/sets

icis_machine  posted an awesome blog entry on maid cafes, and asked me to fill in blanks. i was in japan for the osaka part of the trip too, so we hit a maid cafe first before we went to @home.

i dont remember which one it was, but it was in a grimy little area surrounded by odd little electronics stores and anime shops. i think they said the area was home to 50 maid cafes. the one we went into was crammed and cute, kinda styled like a breakfast nook with little kid style drawings on the walls and photos of the maids. each maid fit a different anime archetype.. the smart girl, the cat girl, the den mother. i think we got the ditzy girl, i forget. it wasn't the cat girl.

we ordered drinks and they came in teeny tiny little glasses. the maid stirred them with a spoon. i was shooting pics but the second i had the flash on she freaked out. i guess normally they charge for photos, and she woulda gotten in trouble if anyone noticed.

some of the special services that you could get were like footrubs and massages. i dont really remember much about that cafe aside from that.

http://flickr.com/photos/pinguino/sets

writeup of ansi adventure (recaps twitters to storyform)


also here are photos if you've missed them on flickr. shot some GOOD ones: http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinguino/sets/72157603719058402/

i got to meet the president on friday

and now i have strep throat

here are pictures from Seattle! i will blog about what we did later. it was 3 parties and a bunch of random places and awesome yummy food. AND dinosaurs. RAWR!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinguino/sets/72157603144975991/




^^ this is what i did at toorcon the whole time

vissago just posted his toorcon pics from a couple weeks ago. im in there a lot. so are barkode, farcall, remorse, and rattus. and a bunch of people i dont remember :P
http://www.flickr.com/photos/vissago/sets/72157603172842431/

lessee..

friday i got a tour of e!/g4 from remy. then we headed to ihop to try the new dr suess menu. which was awesome. they have jello soda.

i made cupcakes and fried rice all night and headed to san diego at early 'oclock for a black belt class. class consisted of my instructor talking bout his house burning down (we all had questions). worked out for 15 mins. then i headed to ramona to hang out with my parents for a bit. after that, i went to is0crazy's house and met up with white rabbit, and we took off to take pictures of fire damage. we stopped at rabbit's house to take a picture of his uprooted tree too.

the damage to the town of ramona was pretty devestating, surreal, and terrible. where houses (up to 3 stories) and barns once stood, was only small piles of rubble. everything melted. fences melted and charred. cars melted. trees charred. animals died. it was really really really sad.

so we took pictures of everything. i havent had a chance to upload them. also, the town didn't have water. it was at a state where you could flush, but couldnt drink/cook/shower. that got lifted the following monday but sucked pretty bad.

is0 and i headed to vissago's (so he got to shower) in RB, and stopped to get a costume. then we boarded a yacht full of pirates. ran into flat eric and tom from stampy. music sucked except for a dj named blue. after that we went to the 23.org party up in aliso viejo. i slept a lot on the way there and home.

ran around more in san diego/oc the next day, ate sushi and clam chowder and saw a movie.

monday monk was in town so we ate very fancy scallops and ran around the beach a bunch. it was pure awesome.

tuesday i went to lucha va voom. i cant watch wrestling without hilarious commentary now. joel from mst3k and a simpsons producer were providing it. some crazy chickens, a goat, and a chupacabra were all fighting. and there was burlesque dancing between all the acts. detoured for a ramen adventure afterwards. then watched naruto (the new one).

halloween i ended up at the west hollywood parade, urth cafe, and the trashy party. devida was super happy i made it to trashy. took a zillion pics of superheroes all night. ran into lots of random people. ate halloween riceballs and found more of my favorite energy drink ever (lolli's cherry pop) (yay famina!)

last night i caught up on sleep and slept 11hrs. missed a meeting i was supposed to have at 1a with a nocturnal client on the east coast. :(

i bought a new camera (olympus 790sw) and got a memory card for it at frys yesterday for $70. i checked on bestbuy.com this morning and theres a similar one for 40. so im just gonna order that one. this is why i like ordering online better. guh. im glad i was too sleepy to mess w/ camera.

got invited to a baby shower the sunday im back from seattle and gonna try really really hard to make it over there. bought presents online & sent directly there just in case.


edit: wow. the pic in the local paper of someone looking for a necklace in some rubble was my sister's high school ex's house.

I wanted a random adventure so I got up early on Saturday and called a cab. It was raining in LA, and I slipped on some tiles outside my complex trying to dodge raindrops. Skinned my knee :( Got to Burbank Airport and hopped on a plane to Seattle.

Sitting next to me was an anime voice actress named Kari Wahlgren. We talked a bunch, which made the flight pretty fun. I arrived in Seattle and Adriano Santi came to pick me up. Adriano is a friend who I've known for years on a mailing list for graphic designers. By this time my schedule was derailed. Got to see some Seattle landmarks on the way to downtown. We stopped at a fancy grocery store, then headed over to his loft.

Adriano's loft was pretty awesome. He's got a really pretty (but shy) cat named Pixel. He made a mozerella shrimp salad which rocked, then after text-tagging Bunnygirl a bit, we drove over to the Fish Ladder.

I love salmon, but I don't know too much about them. We got to see some gigantic fish swimming upstream, and I took way too many pictures. Then we went to check out some ducks, and met up with Bunny and her dog. I hadn't seen Bunny since she moved, so it was sooo awesome meeting up with her. She walked with us over to Archie Mcphees, but had to leave cuz she knew I'd be in there for ages and she cant bring her dog in. While we were there, we met up with another designer named Al Abut. He flew up from SF.

Archie Mcphees is a random stuff store. We took many goofy pictures, and Al wanted to buy some disturbing plastic rabbit masks. We got like 5 of them. We also took some pics in a pirate photo booth.

Our next stop was the Troll at Fremont, where we had random people wearing rabbit masks with us. The troll is a huge art instillation under a bridge. We climbed around, and another designer from the list, Jay, met up with us.

We tried to go to the Science Fiction museum. After being sidetracked by photo shoots at some cool sculptures, we got to the museum. They told us they were closing soon, so we wandered around a bit. We took some pictures wearing bunny masks on the Merry Go Round of the Fun Forest, a permenant super-ghetto-looking carnival.

Carl dodgeballed that he was there, so we cut through a park and met up with him a few blocks away. I know Carl from Defcon, through Chris -- they used to work together at Universal. Our group decided to get a snack at a nearby burger place called Dicks, which had a sparce In-n-out style menu.

We walked to the front of the Science center to wait for Octalpussy. She arrived shortly via bus and we headed to the Space Needle. The elevator ride freaked me out a little. When we got to the top, after checking out the view, Octal busted out the scented bubbles. We all blew bubbles off the space needle. It was an amazing experience, seeing the bubbles spiral about in the wind. A security guard came by and said "I don't think this is the best place to be doing that." Al's reply was "Actually, I think it is." We stopped though.

Our group split up to head out to a divey bar called Five Point Cafe. We loaded the jukebox up and ate some deep fried macaroni and cheese. Hikari (Toorcon founder) showed up and said hi, and Drake and his gf found us as well. Drake is another designer and was the artist who did the painted blocks at NinjaPenguin. Tprophet also showed up (old hackerscene/raver friend of mine).

Our group (minus Hikari) split into various cars and headed out to Chinooks, which was an AWESOME and chill seafood resteraunt overlooking fishing ships on the harbor. A bunch of us had yummy (but weak) huckleberry vodka drinks. I had a locally harvested Salmon that was cooked on an Alder plank, and it was insanely good. My camera stopped working though, it won't turn on. Gotta figure that out :(

Me, Tprophet, Adriano, Carl, and Al headed out to a club called Zig Zag. We saw some people fighting in a back street on the way there. The crowd was kinda weird and it was packed, so we changed plans and went to a bar called En instead. Jay met us there.

I can't really describe En too well, but it's awesome. The owner is super friendly and fun. Chris had told me we should go, and try the cucumber martini, so we did. It was suprisingly yummy. There was a DJ in there. We danced a bit and did some impromptu karate class. There was a girl there freaking out rudely about our masks though, so we made fun of her all night.

When En closed up for the night, we decided to follow up party info that had started to come in. A homeless guy kinda creeped us out so we left pretty quick. Our first stop was to see an experimental musician in a hotel. However, our car got lost and we ended up at a different seedly motel. Some russians were out there asking bout our masks, and calling their friends saying there were people at the door. Our quote for the night was from one of them asking "why are you having rabbit on your head?" We realized we had the wrong place (i think we were at a brothel maybe), so we drove around and found it. It turned out to be a pretty thrashed house with art all over the walls, and what looked like cracked out gutterpunks everywhere. We went down into the tiny basement, where the musicians were doing tagteam live PA of very dark glitchy experimental music. Probably IDM but super dark, and using instruments.

I was kinda worried my friends (not ravers) would hate it, but they actually found the music to be interesting (but too loud). We were all standing around texting at each other to have a conversation, and decided that we'd like to check the other party out. We left the crackhouse (seriously, probably was one) and headed to the bridge party.

That party was found easily enough, and we parked and snacked on bread from the back of Tprophet's car that came from a dumpster. It was a dumpster of a gourmet bakery. :P Also stocked up on energy drinks and water.

So the bridge party ended up being under the Interstate 5 freeway, which has like at least 4 lanes of traffic in each direction and a carpool lane. Seattle's freeways (and everything in general) seems a lot cleaner than what you'd see in Southern Califnornia. The bridge party had kind of an amphitheater feel to it, in an urban sort of way. Someone had built a wooden multilevel deck on the side of the hill for DJs and dancers and hanging out. There was also two rooms of music inside an art studio. The music was awesome, the people were awesome, and this definately was a surreal and beautiful way to end the evening. It seemed like mostly Seattle burners at this event. Adriano took Al to the airport, and TP had to leave too, so Carl and I hung out til the event ended and Adriano returned. Then we all headed back to Adriano's loft to look at lolcats and stuffonmycat then crash out.

I flew back with a 2hr layover in Vegas, sitting on the first leg of the flight with a glamour photographer. She was interesting to talk to. The second half I immediately feel asleep (I had a cheeseburger at the Vegas airport and had crazy post-food-sleepiness). The plane on the second leg was the tiniest I had ever been in, and kinda run down, so it was probably good I slept through it.

My Seattle adventure was completely awesome. We did so much stuff in a 24hr period of time, and I absolutely adored the city. The architecture was amazing, and the downtown area felt like San Diego, but bigger, and more/cooler stuff to do. I loved being around the waterfront too. And the party scene there seems awesome. I'm definately going back soon.

crazy adventure night. got a text msg to bring my camera, and went to buy a battery for it. ended up getting a heavy, crazy super battery that lasts 5x longer than a normal one (tradeoff is weight). then went to emmett's house to charge it and meet his brother. we headed over to Bang theater. I never saw a improv show before, and it was super awesome. Taylor was up on stage and his group was super funny. We went to Nova Express with a bunch of his friends, and Micheal showed up with a couple of his. I met some random Barcamp people too. I had a black dot and some pizza and ran around all hyper and took pictures. We analyzed the Picture of Everything in the Universe for like an hour. Then me, emmett, and micheal went over to keith (dj cmos)'s house for a party. A dude there named Joseph recognized me from Universal (just wandering around the backlot) and he's a magic castle magician too. We got to know the substandard crew better. Then we left and now i'm at home eating spaghetti with Binary.

ive been bad at actual blogging, even though ive been doin a lot of cool stuff lately. just overwhealmingly tired/busy at the same time i guess.

- gave damphyr and realitysquared a tour of LA that mostly involved comic book stores
- made an excellent shrimp dinner from scratch for remy, based on a recipe from a cruise ship
- went to the deviantART bbq at angelo's mom's house (i think thats whose house it was)
- had lunch w/ strider and got a bunch of labyrinth flyers to pass around
- went to the BEST ART SHOW EVER http://www.flickr.com/photos/pinguino/sets/72157600407014800/
- remy came up to LA and we went to marc guggenheim's signing at cat's
- did karaoke on stage really badly at emmett's bday party in koreatown. scary scary scary
- visited sheri's pirate bday party and met a dude who likes to pretend he is a tutu-wearing pirate named susan
- helped out at a 48hr film entry that nancy (old co-worker and karate student) was making. i had a tiny 1-line part and i stood in for a dead person. and took a zillion pictures
- tagteamed with redpenguin to do intermixi.com
- rebranded hotfuzz.com for dvd
- doing random art for various defcon projects. if you're going, you'll see it. ninja party badge and something in the program guide.
- got lots and lots of everquest 2 furniture from remy's character, so i can have a super badass virtual house
- failed at getting a geisha dunny (a kidrobot toy)
- doctor who episodes have been awesome lately
- surfs up is now my favorite movie ever
- evan almighty was actually pretty cute. i met those elephants!
- crunched my wacom intuos3 pen with my KNEE. now being held together by the rubber grip
- being bribed with a new pen to do a corporate site for a friend
- went to a black belt class after 2 yrs of not going and remembered how to spar

i think thats about it. i think there was more stuff too but i cant remember right now.

In Hollywood there is a mysterious building, a mansion set into the hill that was converted many years ago into a private club for magicians. Known around the world as the "Magic Castle," this was the setting for a very magical night. My friend Chi is a magician and he got us into the castle, being kind enough to guide us into the world of magic, both present and past. Our group consisted of Remy, Chris Nelson, Nathan and Carrie, and Dane, and Chi brought his friend Pinky. There were different shows happening in different rooms, and we got to see just about everything, including a rabbit being pulled out of a hat. Though the hat was bouncing around a little bit earlier in the act.

The first room we actually went into, they pulled Carrie up on stage. The guy (who has performed for the White House a few times) "screwed up" and drew an ace on a piece of paper. then he said it was actually a bo x of cards and drew that, and drew where the right card was. THEN the card looked drawn but slid up from a slit from the deck he drew! But a second later it looked like it was drawn there! Carrie got to keep the drawing too.

My favorite parts were the stage magic shows- the elaborate sleight of hand type tricks. There was a guy who everyone in the magicians circles kept talking about, who won pretty much the Olympics of magic. He's my age. When he popped up on stage, the room went dark and techno started up, then he did some crazy stuff with lasers and a glownecklace that basically made him look like a raver jedi. It was insane. Imagine someone who had full control of light, who could bend it, stop it, make it stand on end, and hang clothes on it. Seriously cool stuff.

Another guy was a master of doves. The guy himself (from eastern europe) seemed creepy mannikiny but he was setting things on fire and it would turn into a dove, which would fly over to the audience and go back.. stuff like that. That show was really upbeat and cool.

There was a room called the Closeup room that only seats like 20 people. The guy in there did cartoon character impressions and did a lot of sleight of hand. I liked his show a whole lot too. I noticed that overall, a lot of magicians seem to incorporate comedy into their acts. They'd screw up on purpose, and when you didn't expect it, would "fix" it by pulling the card or whatever out of somewhere real random..

We had dinner there too, and it was really yummy. Salmon and creme brulee and suuuper yummy salad!!!! *drooool*

Even most theatrical performances and upscale resteraunts in LA, people aren't required to dress up so they don't. Magic Castle has a strict dress code. I was dressed up more for this than any dinner or even wedding i've ever attended. And Remy was soo incredibly dashing that i could have gazed at him all night. It was really cool just being in an environment like that because it feels so different than everyday life.

I'd wanted to come to the Castle for years, and the night was soo exciting just being there, sharing the experience, and being amazed by magic tricks I thought i'd only ever see on TV. Being only a few feet away from an illusion definately makes you believe in magic. =)

http://www.magiccastle.com/