Hoop Dreams

As always, here is my weekly update for ya'll. (Starting last Friday - 4.10.09)

Weekly Update

Friday... Sutra?! Again?!
Fuk it, why not. Sister's old friend's in town from med school. Actually she has been for the past however many weeks but she's been in super-study mode. They decided to celebrate after she took her exam. Same ol' though. Nothin' interesting. Except we went to the strip club on our way back to the car for free. Dude let us get in cause it was 1:30am already. I'll spare the details.

Saturday... Top Secret Surprise Party?!
I think not. I jus went out to dinner at Benihana's for a "week-later" dinner celebration for a buddy's b-day. After there was nothing special. We kicked it at his house and messed with his '09 Macbook which is pretty sweet. Didn't do much... except fake out a whole bunch of Twitter folks by posting pictures (not me, my homie) from a while back when we partied at the Standard Hotel down in downtown L.A. They thought we were at a secret surprise b-day party, invite only. Neh... We weren't doin' a damn thing. First Saturday that I've been sober in a while. Crazy.

Sunday... Easter. (See: "Eggs-actly")

Monday... Warriors game.
This was the last Warriors game at Oracle Arena. I must say that I've had a great time hittin' up games this season, even though Monte fucked up the first half of the season by being injured from ridin' a freakin' moped. C'mon man. Step it up. At least say u was on a motorcycle or somethin. Actually, he prolly could've been but by saying so, it might've increased whatever penalized actions took place. That's for another discussion. So anyways, I must've hit up like 10 games this season. Doesn't sound like much, but it's at least double the amount I went last season.

Tuesday... Listening party.
Rick Ross' "Deeper Than Rap" officially leaked. At least with the forum that I use to download free music. Had to take a listen to it. I've been waitin' for this joint for a while. Other than that, I watched "Observe and Report." It was coo, but I missed the beginning minutes of it or so. Not super hilarious I guess. Seth is pretty coo, but he didn't have anyone from the crew with him, so it wasn't as funny.

Wednesday... the usual.
Nuthin' too special or extraordinary. Had a good lifting session at the gym, but that's part of my regularly scheduled program.

Thursday... HOOP DREAMS
At around 11am I hit the gym with a buddy to lift weights. We get a good lifting session in and after head on over to this basketball gym that we play at with all our folks. Today seemed dead, our Thursday afternoon consisted of half court 4 on 4 until it became 3 on 3 for about 4 hours. But on Friday's, it seems like every shows up 20 deep and you gotta wait 3 fuckin' games before you can get on. So today seemed pretty dead, only to be livened up by the local straggler. I call him the local straggler because he's the guy from somewhere in the neighborhood that shows up by himself and no one knows. But he's there all the time workin' on his shot. Doesn't really get how to play basketball, only he understands that the underlying concept is to put the ball in the hoop. He's a little strange in the head, and we've accepted it. What made this Thursday even more interesting was that he said he had to leave, so he picked up his things and headed towards the door. 30 minutes later, we see him standing at the front check-in desk. We realize he was trying to hit on the front-desk lady until she shoo'ed him away. He's a writer. He tried to share with her some of his work, but was unsuccessful. So instead, we let ol' boy share it with us. And it went a lil' somethin like this:



- Raw

This is How We Measure Dicks... No Homo

WEEKLY UPDATE

So now I'm back on track. Let me say that shit's been gettin' crazy round here. I kinda' like it, I kinda' don't. But that's life right?

Friday, the 3rd.
I'm still resting from the little turn-around trip to Reno which blew a S*!TLOAD of my money. Friday night I had USF practice.
**USF has a club called Hui O' Hawaii (i think that's right... don't quote me) and they put on a Lu'au every year. It's basically their Hawaiian club. In the past 5 years (with the exception of Spring '07), I've been helpin' them out with putting on their show, alongside my teacher of course (He's been helpin' em out for like 9-10+ years). It's like a workshop.. sorta. Every year my teacher gets brought in as an instructor. We train the guys and girls for their lu'au and put together routines and what not. In the actual lu'au we get to lay back as musicians and provide the music and drumming for the club while they dance. So we usually only seem 'em any time during or after January up until their lu'au which usually falls end of April.**
Later that night was probably one of the most emotional/hilarious nights I've had goin' out to the club. It was the eve of my homie Alex's bday. We hit up Sutra. Did our thang. Ended up having a weird hour long conversation with my cousin's previous significant other about why things didn't work out. Left the club pretty faded. Seen certain folks who we have bad ties with for certain reasons. 5-0 was there, so I guess somebody's night was saved. I end up in front of my boy's car with a $44 pizza tryna' explain to my homies new girlfriend that we act the way we act and do the things we do and there's nothing wrong with it. Should I even have to explain?
Thus, I learned a new term.
"Measuring Dicks" (no homo) - this is coming from her of course.
When guys act like guys in a physical sense. Like horseplay.
... or that period right before guys get into a fight ...
Or if they actually do get into a fight, it's referred to (by her) as, "Measuring Dicks"
So in the event of learning this new term, "Measuring Dicks" I decided to celebrate by doing none other than, "Measuring Dicks." I can't explain to you the exact process, but I basically took a fully cemented parking meter and removed it from the ground.
Later that night I end up meeting the guys over at my boy's spot. We were all drunk and faded. Somehow I ended up shooting craps until 5:30 in the morning. I came there with $10 in my pocket. I think I left with about $80.

Saturday night was the real celebration of my boy Alex's bday. We go to Bruno's, a spot on 20th and Mission. Super packed... Crackin'... Just a little different crowd then we were used to. But the guy to girl ratio was really good so that wins points with me. No one remembers half of the night, and a whole bunch of people threw up. I knew at least three people did. Not gona' name who. But three different people yuked. So you know FOR SURE, it went down.

Sunday marked our 8th basketball game of our season. Team Go. 3-5.
We won. Smash House. Only we started out playing 5 on 4 cause half their team no-showed.
Sad story. But fuck it. We ended up playin' 5-5 later on after the 2nd half, but it was too late.
SMASH HOUSE. We'll be headin' into single elimination playoffs the week after Easter Sunday.

Monday, back to training. Hustle.. on the grind, all the time.

Tuesday... OPENING DAY!
Giants won. Shit was fun. Lower reserve right behind the Giants dugout. Never been that close at a baseball game. Makes me wana' cop tickets there all the time. We were 5 rows behind Peter Magowan. Garlic Fries were screaaaaamin'.

Wednesday... My uncle gets sick. Fak!
So I gotta cover for him (lead our practice in our Santa Clara branch). Everything was all gravy, only I missed out on a free ticket to the Giants game. A few rows behind home base. Where the shit's not numbered, it's lettered. Damn. DAMN! I coulda' went to back to back games. I end up headin' to Skylark that night after practice. Met up with some of the fellas. Too bad it was dumb crackin' and stupid packed.

Thursday... Academy of Science. Siiiiick.
So my sister's fiance's b-day recently passed and she decides to plan a surprise shindig for him today. We hit up the Academy of Science in the city. Every Thursday from 6pm-10pm, they're open to adults 21+ for only $10 admission. What's sick is that generally, it's $25 for adults at any other time of the day. AND they serve alcohol, which makes science a little more interesting in my opinion. So me and the fam tour the newly remodeled museum. It's super crowded cause everyone goes. FYI, they sell out online way in advance, so if you want tickets, get em. Otherwise, you have to wait in line. At about 5:30pm the line is about 100 yards long and it's not a guarantee you'll get in, unless of course you're towards the front. After our little expedition, we hit up Marnee Thai on Irving. Food was great. I would blog it, but I didn't take pictures.

Pretty busy week. Didn't go to Reno or anything, like last week. But still. Eventfull nonetheless.

Stay safe over the weekend folks.

- Raw

Twitter Day 5... plus the weekly biz.

Twitter Day 5:

My twitter usage has gone down tremendously. That's all I have to say. Ha!

Weekly Update

So I'm back from another crazy week, primarily due to the fact that I had a competition today. If you wana' know more, ask me. I'm still on the go. Headin' to a b-day celebration and if you're not into the Polynesian performance realm, I don't want to bore you with it.

Some highlights for this week:

I joined Twitter.
I had BBQ 4 times this week (different kinds of course).
I figured out how to blog with my mobile phone.
Practiced alllllll week.
Had competition in Merced.

Gona' end this shindig by partying tonite for my boy's bday.

Short and sweet. And I'm too lazy to give you the details.



I wana' party. PAYCE!

- Raw

Time Flies

Weekly Update

This week went by way too fast... in a good and bad way I guess.
It's been a week since my last post, so I've decided to give you a weekly update on shit that's been goin on surrounding me. In between these weekly posts, I'll continue the random spectacle of Lunchbox madness: food, places, events, interent clips... the original intention of starting this blog.

Last Friday I left home for Oxnard, CA. It's about an hour closer to the Bay Area than L.A. is. It's in the Ventura County area, somewhat close to Santa Barbara. Spent the weekend there. It gave me a new perspective on kids and parenting. I'd rather not speak on it though, I think I have more bad things to say than good. So I get back Sunday evening and was lucky enough to spend some good quality time with the fam. I had to KO for an exorbitant amount of time - the weekend was too hectic. Monday night I had a tough practice. Tuesday night, practice again... Tough. My cousin then tells me he wants to hit the slopes on Wednesday cause he got the day off. That night I ended up at this bar/lounge called Koko's for a homegirl's bday. Considering I didn't see the crew the whole weekend, it was coo to see some folks even if it was a Tuesday night. Drank up. Ran into a whole random plethora of folks. Return to the homefront around 2 am, knowing that I'm leaving for Tahoe at around 4:30am (or so I thought). It didn't take too long to get my things together, but I had to take a shower to sober up, so I ended up gettin to my cuzzo's house in Union City around 3:30ish. So of course he's KO'ed and doesn't hear my calls, so I'm stuck with sleeping in my car until departure. Fool wakes up late and we don't hit the road 'til like 6am. This was the 2nd time that happened this season (with someone else though at least). We had fun though, I slept almost the whole way there and back. A lil' fucked up to the driver, but I did have to sleep outside his house for a few hours. I ain't trippen tho, anything to go snowboarding. That makes my 7th run this season, startin' mid January up until now. Good times.

**speaking of which, for you shred heads, it's spring snow right now, a lotta ice and packed powder and groomed madness. but there's a 60% chance of precipitation this weekend. EeuGh!**

So the run was coo. Got a little freeriding in at Sierra. So yea, that was Wednesday. I ended up missing my sister's bday dinner that she had that night that she notified me about that morning which is weird because her birthday was March 4. It's all good though, I went to her other bday events so I'm not totally glum about it. Thursday was another sleep-in day. Pretty tired from Wednesday's run. Ran a few errands, then back to training at night. Shit was intense. And now it's Friday. I'm ready to KO and enjoy Friday. Get it in. Carpe Diem. All that good stuff. (Now I'm thinking of that movie quote, "...time to suck today's dick!..." what fuckin movie was that from?)

Anyways, I gotta end this post with a "thank you Jesus!" cause I dont think Catholics do that enough. "Put the Lord first, then go hard." - Rick Ross. Don't let this quick religious splurt fool you, I don't even go to Church on Sundays which is not the greatest thing to mention, but I do wana say that the shit crosses my mind. So yes, Thank You Lord for a wonderful week. I also gotta say I miss my Grandmother. Folks, please visit your passed relatives, I'm sure they miss you even if you don't think about them all the time. The crazy thing is, I think about her all the time. I think my absence in music makes her upset or disappointed in me, like I'm not doing what I'm supposed to do. But that's a whole different story.

Before this gets too mushy...

Peace. Love. God Bless.

- Raw

p.s. If you got a good job, stop bein lazy!

(This of course applies to those who are...)

The recession is here. Even if it hasn't hit you, it's probably hit the ones around you. Someone very close to me just got laid off. Of course it's due to budget and all that good economic mess. And although he's somewhat well off, he still has a wife and two kids to take care of. I'm not really worried about his situation, it just brought me to think that people are gettin' cut no matter who you are. Whether or not you have dependents. It used to be the shitty worker who got cut, but now it's the higher paid hard worker that gets the boot. This marks the 8th or 9th person I personally know who got laid off within the span of these last couple months. So if you got a job, hold on to it and be happy that you got one.