Man in Black: it was REALLY hard, but I was able to find all black clothes to wear.
It was Jesus: went to church (it's a good thing this was on Sunday, otherwise this would have been a little more difficult)
Ball & Chain: broke out the indoor bocce set Andrea won playing white elephant and got her big bad chain to mark the line we had to stand behind. I'm sure our neighbors below us loved that.
Back to the future fun!
Andrea and I have had some great job interviews, cool.
We got a couple pre-screening passes for Monday, double cool!
Tomorrow we're going to be in the audience for Jimmy Kimmel Live, triple cool!!
As the whipped cream AND the cherry on the top WE WON TICKETS TO SEE TIGER ARMY!!!!!! And only a few hours after I entered to win them, quintuple cool!!!!! Added bonus, they're VIP tickets- free shirts, food, backstage benefits and other junk. Come to think of it, the Tiger Army tickets are really the whipped cream, the cherry, sprinkles, hot fudge and the ice cream, plus the steak and potatoes, tall, ice-cold glasses of Dr. Pepper and the tasty rolls with butter. I would have just been happy with getting in to see them play, but I'll gladly take all the crap they want give me too.
Had he stuck around, today would have been Johnny Cash's 80th birthday. I first knew about him because he's my grandma's favorite and like most people I share the same interests as my grandma (all guys love the same things their grandmas do, right?!).
To celebrate the birthday of the pioneering rock star we have a couple of Cash themed activities planned, some of which we've already accomplished. Below is a list of song titles that served as the inspiration. I don't think you'll be able to figure out everything we did, but you could always give it the old college try.
Walk the Line
Ring of Fire
One Piece at a Time
Man in Black
It Was Jesus
Ball & Chain
The last song was actually by Social Distortion but they've kind of taken "Ring of Fire" and made it their own, and if anyone has a problem with me using it there's a picture of Johnny Cash that is very easy to find on google that sums up one response I hypothetically could make :)
When I get around to posting again I'll tell/show you what we did.
I should say thanks to my grandma for being so hip.
Our new flatmate (and I just realized what a huge missed opportunity I had with an "our family just got bigger" post - if only this happened closer to AprilFools!) recently wanted to get herself some wheels to get around. A car or bike would not do for her; a skateboard was going to take her wherever she needed to go. The only problem - she doesn't know how to ride one. I guess that's one of two problems because first she didn't know which kind to get.
The second problem was solved after an evening on the search of a skate shop. Before we decided on needing to buy a skateboard we had to go to the semi-famous fabric store Mood (famous if you're into Project Runway or are really into fabric) which was in an area I'm not overly familiar. Luckily we had some handy dandy "smart" phones ("smart" because I doubt their intelligence from time to time) we could bust out and find a shop close by that April could browse.
We were informed there was an Alva shop close by which I thought could be cool for April so she could either get a cool board if they carried a variety of brands/styles/etc. or at the very least an awesome Alva board. Anywho, we wandered the streets of Los Angeles and walked right past the shop and ended walking through Little Ethiopia, not the prime spot for skateboard shopping.
After we circled back and found the shop and realized we missed it the first time because the windows were covered with Metallica posters because of an art show they were hosting which made the place look abandoned. At this point it was much too late for any real store to stay open, so we went to the one place we could rely on to stay open late - the mall.
The mall we went to is a fabulously ghetto mall but happens to contain within its walls the closest Target to our little abode, so we find ourselves there more often than not. Luckily there were not one but TWO skateboard shops right next to each other. The first shop, which I had never heard of before, was pretty big and pretty pricey. After a little help from the staff we went next door to Vans, which is a big deal as far as skate shoes go if you weren't aware, and to my surprise had much better prices on boards. They were still a little more than April was thinking on dropping that particular evening so I suggested we head over to Target and see if they have any $20 kid's boards.
Bless Target's little soul, they not only kid's boards, they had one on clearance for SIX DOLLARS!!! It sure was someone's lucky day!
Chapter 2: Time to rock and roll
With board in hand we finally got out of the house today around 3 so April could have her first lessons on how to ride a skate board. Needless to say, her proclivity to prove Newton's law of gravity was strong. To her credit, it didn't take her that long to get comfortable enough that she could make it part way down the street without falling off and hurting herself. I was so proud of our little semi-adopted kid! But it didn't come quick or easy.
It took us a while to travel along the sidewalk due to little boards inherent desire to remain stationary and resist rolling anywhere. Slowly but surely we ventured onward and we found a quite little sidewalk where Andrea and I could watch her try to go back and forth in front of us without falling down.
As with any skill perseverance is key and even though it was getting to be a frigid 50° she rode and rode like a little trooper! After a while, however, we were getting hungry and April had to wrap up her first session.
Chapter 3: Pick your teachers wisely
With so many sources of information out there it's good to put a little time and effort into knowing where your information is coming from. A great example comes from a book I recently checked out from the library. After I read "Much of the descriptive material is taken from Wikipedia." I stopped reading. I was a little embarrassed for the author, but then I thought about how much people rely on Wikipedia and how it's used as a source by college students and how this guy got paid for this book and had to start watching something on Netflix to get my mind off the whole matter.
Anyway, I definitely wouldn't consider myself anywhere near a competent skateboarder and wouldn't have minded if my brother could have been the teacher, but there is one thing that I've done that I suppose would allow me the right to teach another. I have ridden a skateboard off a roof a few times in high school, once while the board was en fuego (on fire for those that haven't been to a Mexican restaurant). Why was it on fire? Because that made it more... wait for it... AWESOME!
You may think this is a bit ridiculous, but these "stunts" were for school videos. I don't think I need to explain how much better these videos were than the other students' videos. I didn't realize the repercussions of the "off the roof on a flaming skateboard trick" at first, but without going into details it turned out to become a bit of an urban legend.
The moral of this whole story is if you don't want to be afraid to do something that isn't a very smart thing to do - act before you think. If I actually thought about what I was doing, I might not have done it. This is who April has to teach her how to ride a skateboard. I hope she survives.
