OakMonster’s Den

Welcome aboard the most patriotic bus in the region!

Wishing everyone a safe and happy ID4!

Me? Not doing much. Just chillin’ here with the hubby for the day. The biggest plan of the evening is me cooking up a couple of filet mignon for dinner.

However, you can see from my Twitter history that last night at Master Greg was quite fun.

I went to the party with Aurora. Poor thing, Dresden was a little brat all day apparently. Well, until we were leaving the house when he was in an absolute bliss, laughing and cooing all over the place. So it was a good few hours off for mommy.

But of course, Mommy got tired so we had to go. But then Shane and Tamara showed up, so I stayed behind and hitched a ride home with them instead. I haven’t been up until 2 and feeling buzzed for a long, long, LONG time.

Rum + Orange juice + 7up = My new favorite drink. Hmm. Rum.

Oh and so many gay boys to gawk at at Greg’s party. And even a few straight ones! At some point, Tamara and I were on rooftop, being introduced to someone’s straight guy friend as “the other token straights”. Now that guy was soooo good to stare at. LOL.

And speaking of hot, as we were telling Greg about being the token straights, he started to tell us that one of his friend wanted to know who the “straight hot bear in a hat with a goatee” was. Then he kind of squealed.

“Oh my GOD! Shane! He was talking about YOU!!”

The hot bear in a hat. He’s NEVER going to live this one down.

George Michael. 25 Live.

Amazing.

Master Greg and I went on our “first date” last night at the Honda Center. We arrived a little early, grabbed a few drinks and headed for our seats. The seats weren’t bad at all for something you’ve won from a contest. And our neighbors were all very cool.

It’s the first time I’ve ever realized how powerful some of his lyrics are. I mean, seriously. I haven’t really paid attention. Suddenly, George has become my songwriting hero. And inspiration.

He sounds exactly like his records. His voice is amazing. Sometime during “Roxanne”, I turned to Greg.

“I want to put him in a gilded cage so he can sing for me everyday.”

“I want to put him in my bed and make him sing a totally different tune,” he replied.

Oh yes.  Gay or straight, the man is still pretty hot.  He still sounds like he does back in the days.  Still shakes his booty the same good way we all remember too.

Oh, how we both loved the concert.

I took a few videos but they were all grainy. So I’m going to borrow some clips from another concert goer just to share the joy.

Why, good morning to you too, David.

Well, San Francisco is THE place to be, really.

Oh yeah. It so totally is. ;-D

(Thank you the firefighters at Hope for Firefighters event in Downtown LA yesterday.  You guys were awesome!)

You know with the whole region on fire, I didn’t get to point out two biggest news in my universe.

The casting is completed for the new reincarnation of Star Trek in the hands of J.J. Abrams.  The Enterprise might as well renamed itself to the Dreamboat already.  Chris Pine, the hunky aristocrat from Princess Diary II, is the new Kirk.  Zachary Quinto aka Syler from Heroes is the new Spock, naturally.  The hotty Rohan horseman of the Lord of the Rings Karl Urban is Dr. McCoy.  And finally, a living proof that sense of humor is hot, cutie pie Asian brother John Cho takes on the role of Sulu, and Simon Pegg aka Shaun of the Dead aka Nick Angel will “give you all she’s got” as Scotty.

Beam. Me. Up. J.J.!  I’m all over this boat even if you make an entire different movie.  As long as this cast stays the same, I don’t care if you’re making Mission: Impossible 4.

…and…

DUMBLEDORE IS GAY!  Rowling outs him.  And there are many clues we have come to overlook.  I KNEW it!

A surprise gift in the mail.
* Olaina sent me Steve Irwin’s Wildlife Warrior band that was just a wee little bit too big.

A REALLY big plastic bag.
* Not as much fun as a really big box though.

A cake you successfully baked and prepped the night before and frosted at 5:30 a.m.
* Giada rules! And before y’all think I’m crazy, this cake was for my company potluck. I can’t frost it overnight because the hazelnut brittles would’ve melted into the frosting and it won’t be any good.

Jason Chambers, my newest “celebrity” crush.
* Well, he’s not a big time celebrity yet. He’s a host of History Channel’s Human Weapons which we have become addicted to. Brandon may have gotten us watching the show as a martial arts education for both of us, but now it’s become like an occasional soft core baw-chi-ca-baw-wow for me. Heh. (And this delicious picture is borrowed from his website.)

And finally, Reggie escapes AGAIN.
* Well, he did got caught eventually and put back in his new “home”. Has anyone checked to see if he’s not Houdini reincarnated? The t-shirt here borrowed from LosAnJealous.com.

From Bangkok Post:

Patrician for premier?

ANALYSIS: By Peter Janssen, dpa

Chances of Abhisit Vejjajiva - the Oxford-educated 43-year-old leader of the Democrat Party - becoming Thailand’s next prime minister have risen in recent weeks in tandem with the downfall of his once arch rival - Thaksin Shinawatra.

ETA : I made more edits later on when I got home and actually had time to do research. So, here we go.)

Abhisit–his nickname is Mark, by the way–has been my favorite since he entered Thai political scene as one of the youngest politician ever years ago. He was in his early 30s then and when his face splashed onto television screen, the female population, young and old and me included, went ga-ga over him.

Obviously, he’s a good looking man. This is a lot like why back in the days, folks seem to like Clinton so much. Charisma and good looks go a long way for someone in politics.

But then you learn more about Khun Mark and you continue to swoon…and be impressed. Eton and Oxford graduate who walks the straight and narrow path with a dream to save the country from itself and corruption.

Khun Mark is educated, smart, polite, and an honest man (at least from we know of) who I have been rooting for PM since he’s started. Yes, he’s a pretty boy but it’s also the whole young blood, new wave thing. Out with the corrupted, power grabbing old geezers. In with the newer, highly educated, ethical and forward thinking younguns!

My money has always been on Khun Mark. I *KNEW* this man is going to lead my country someday. Every time there was a turmoil in the country, I kept asking my mom, “When are they going to make Khun Mark a PM?” Her reply has always been, “He’s too young for that still, sweetie. Give him a few more years.”

And here we are!

So, if he gets the seat, it’ll just be fabulous, adding one more to my “I told you so!” list.

I just have a way of predicting certain things. Like, this kid in this movie, he’s going to go on and be big. Or this song I just heard is going to blow up huge on the chart. ETC.

I predicted Amber Tamblyn was going somewhere from that first scene in The Ring. I knew America Ferrera was going to be a big star someday since “Real Women have curves”. I knew Nelly Fertado’s “Promiscuous” single was going to hit the chart the first time I heard it on a cell phone commercial.

And now, my beloved Khun Mark may actually have a chance at the PM seat. If he did get it, my whole prediction since the first year he stepped into the limelight would be true.

Damn, I’m good.

It’s been a quiet and relaxing weekend so far. You know, the 2 days break from the daily grind that feels like a 7 day vacation? One of those.

We spent an hour at a client’s house in the morning. It was half work half social call, so that was fun. I ran all sorts of errands in the early afternoon, much enjoyable and productive alone time. The rest of the afternoon was a mixture of doing laundry, taking a nap, watching TV, and reading my Dresden Files book.

I cooked dinner to Scrubs Season 1 Disc 2 and we sat down to watch it together. Many occasions I almost snorted wine out of my nose.

Who would I choose between Dr. Cox and Dr. House? Dr. House inched out on the fact that he isn’t too goofy looking. Plus the British accent. Heh.

Brandon went to bed early. His stomach was bugging him. So I was up reading blogs and writing one for Thai-Blogs on that silly picture I took with the Spicy Thai potato chips. I also caught my brother Onk online so we chat for a while.

Around midnight, B came out of the bedroom. Apparently, the F-Bombers in the next apartment complex gathered in a circle by their basketball hoop to, well, yell fuck this and fuck that at each other. Last weekend, they were fucking playing basketball at midnight and a few times more at 2 a.m. and 3 a.m. We called the cops on them already. And here we were again. Dumb fucks.

Needless to say, we were up quite late, waiting for the usual neighborhood quietness to return. But then again, we didn’t roll out of bed until 10.

LOVE. QUIET. WEEKEND!

Thank god we don’t do Easter. LOL.

#1 Man Meat.

300. Complete and total meat fest for ladies and gay men everywhere. Delicious from beginning to end. Even when bloodied, decapitated, or one-eyed. Even the bad guy is hot. I mean, Rodrigo Santoro in metal chains and not much else. Let me here you say, fuck yeah!

See? The Spartans are nice and ripped and it looked believable. You know, they’re conditioned that way. It’s not the gigantic beefy juiced up muscles. I can’t stand those.

The lean muscles that looks like you didn’t spent hours at the gym but get them from doing whatever it is that you do. The seemingly effortless ripples. THAT’s the kind of muscles I like on my men.

The rest of the movie? The action was fine. Whatever. It gets old after a while. And it dragged here and there. But I must commend the action sequence when King Leonidas, the super tasty Gerald Butler…well, not as yummy as when he was in Tomb Raider II, charged the Persian army for the first time. That scene was super neat. Too damn long a sequence, but neat. Another point that almost redeems the movie for me is a spoiler. Highlight the next paragraph to see what I say:

I don’t know about your theater, but mine exploded into applause–and a few woohoo–when the Queen grabbed the sword and stabbed that mother fucking Senator. Oh, how the ladies in the theater rejoice in that victory!

#2 St. Patrick’s Day Impromptu Party

And then there was St. Patty’s at home which I blogged while alcoholized. A mere dinner for 6 turned into a full blown party of 10. I was lucky to have enough food, booze, and dessert to feed everyone who turned up! It was fun quoting Princess Bride while drunk, by the way.

We played Scrabbles and then later used those tiles for poker chips in a never ending game of poker. As in, “Oh hey look I’m out of chips”. “Here, have some of mine.” “Sweet!”

#3 Recovery Sunday

Sunday I slept in. Essentially the same gang minus Erik went to lunch with even more people at Chen’s. At $11 each total we stuffed ourselves silly and for those of us who happened to crave grease the morning after got our wishes.

Now that you mentioned it, I still have the same headache since I woke up on Sunday. I thought it was a hangover, but after loads of water, an afternoon nap, and a full good night sleep, it just hadn’t really completely gone away.

When I had time to think about it, I felt that little alien hatching in my brain, slowly eating my right eyeball from inside out. Speaking of which…here it goes again.
Anyways. It’s been a fantastic weekend.

Just got back from my optometrist. I am wearing my new astigmatism-corrected contact lenses.

EVERYTHING looks bigger than before.

I mean, my computer screen looks like font size 14 instead of 12. Well, fuck. The monitor itself even looks bigger than last night! The Vitamin Water bottles in the store, the same size as what I have at home, look huge. My judgment on dimension is a little off right now so I keep banging into things…which makes me feel like the things ARE bigger.

Even myself looks bigger. Thicker, I should say.

Good lord.

I get to walk around wearing these for 4 hours today. Tomorrow, I suppose to wear them all day to see how they do.

I guess, this literally opens my eyes to an entire new world this morning.

My first stop was at the Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf to pick up a tin of English Breakfast tea and a caramel latte for me. That was when I first noticed things were bigger than before.

The tins for the tea looked HUGE and I thought to myself, huh…they’re making everything bigger these days. Once I picked it up, I realized it’s the same size it has ever been! LOL.

Now, behind me there was a guy sitting by himself with a deck of cards. I don’t know if he was playing anything or was just there practicing his magic tricks. But every few minutes you’d hear that “ssshhhhhhhffff” noise. If you’d look up it time, you’d catch this guy shooting the cards from one hand to the other. Nifty.

As I waited for my coffee, I was thinking of just going over there, sit down at his table and just say, “Hit me!” and then walk away. But my Mohawk donning barista was swamped so by the time I got my latte, the Magician was gone.

Oh yes. My barista has a Asian Mohawk. I don’t even want to ask how he got the uniform viser to go over that.

After the coffee, I finally stopped into a Famima!! store, a Japaneses style 7-11 type store that is fully stocked with food and Japanese food and products. I have heard so much about it and our bus goes past one in Downtown everyday–actually we also past the soon-to-open one on the way home as well.

OMG, guys. So. Much. Fun! LOADS of fresh food. Friendly staff. Clean, comfy, and uncluttered space. I will write about it on Hmm…Food…Good once we’re done eating our lunch later today. But so far, their danish pastries kick ass.

We are awaiting the verdict from the Andersons in San Diego. We may head down this afternoon, or they may come up. Justin has said he wanted to visit his mom solo. So we suggested that we can have a “Borrow Olaina” while he visits with his mom. Hehehe.

After all, I just got The Devil Wears Prada from Netflix and Brandon’s WoW friends are probably missing him now that he’s been playing Final Fantasy XII for a few days. Girls Day In! Woohoo.

But if we head south, it’ll be just as fun. The weather is gorgeous. And the Adams Avenue Grill’s fantastic food and wine awaits.

We’ll see how today goes.

*Update* Devil Wears Prada was cute. I wouldn’t say the best movie ever. Meryl is fantastic and Ann Hathaway is gorgeous. Simon Baker? Deeeelish! And we ended up in San Diego for dinner with the Andersons. Lots of fun. Will blog on Monday about that, and a review of the ever so fantastic food at Adams Avenue Grill.