Want: drum corps, one more full night of sleep, an extraneously large mug of green tea, a hug

Miss: percussion rack/drumline/competitions

Need: finish off academics strong

tiny people, big world

backstage

'41

"don't check off—there are a lot of women who have the boxes. did he go to the right school? what is his income? it was none of that."

push those political agendas and ideologies aside. stop and remember the brothers and sisters, mothers and fathers, uncles and aunts, and friends and lovers that have been lost. a soldier's death is only so much of a statistic until you go from Capitol Hill back to a soldier's home.

thank you, to all the soldiers.

reading about college stirs something inside me that i can't explain.

aaaaaaaaah

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind?

"would you pay $100 more for an iPad if it saved a worker's life?"

Awkward Obama Family Photos

all these memorial weekend and everyday camps..one day, i'll be in them.

one day, somehow. life is gonna steal away my dream career in music, but i won't let it steal away a chance to fully live my youth.

coping with copland on a late saturday morning until then.

"reality is what you can get away with. if you can't get away with it, it aint real."

don't really know why i like this video, but i do. super catchy tune, too.

this guy's amazing though. was going to sign on with the army but stepped down from a contractual agreement because of his disagreement with u.s. policy towards the middle east. oh, and he would've been a hell of an asset given he knows arabic, spanish, korean, and russian. so you know, he left that part of his life and went on to uc berkeley to get a degree in arabic (in two years) and graduate summa cum laude and then release this free album "the human condition" at the age of 19. damn.

also, got drive-by rickroll'd today in front of school. last thing i'd ever expect, ahahah.

"wit beyond measure is a man's greatest treasure"

720, solid. one more chance to top that.

time sure flies when you're in hell (week)

zzzzz

-tuning circa'70s timpani-

"hey, someone give me an F"

"just look at your report card"

ahh, the pit.

saw grandma's face for the first time in three years over video chat tonight.

no such thing as the pacific. i love you, internet.

favorite part of rehearsal today:

when hendo went all..hendo on the dramies, leaving them in the kind of hybrid disbelief/fear/confusion that only hendo can convey and elson telling him "i love you, man" before the next song, in the most brotherly way. best combo ever.

driving home on p.c.h. today after h2$ hell week day 1 and it felt like november

you know what's cool? trying to calm down the night before a quiz you don't know anything about just so you can try to get some sleep. but eh, won't make the sky fall. still don't like this lack of assurance.

straight up.

long road to perfection. need to fix myself up.

listen to those melancholy acoustic tunes and feel the low throbbing of last night's cold sweat nightmares as prickly pear goosebumps raise and krispy kreme glazed eyes close

how to survive hell week without really dying

I'm excited to see how long it'll take me to:

1. Finish John Amaechi's autobiography during tacets
2. Memorize all the words to the tunes cause they're too catchy
3. Learn how to read bass clef
4. Realize I probably won't accomplish #4
5. Have the novelty of horn mutes wear off (hopefully never)

muscle memory

just shot around on the neighborhood court for the first time in forever, now there's nostalgia

"on second thought, asking a stupid question is much better than making a stupid mistake"

it all passed too fast

only four jumps of the short hand ago

did he feel the solar brush of her lips on the side of his cheek

floating a wish of luck and a reassurance of greatness

only two and a half jumps of the short hand ago

did he sprint for the bus down the sidewalk littered with

homes staring helplessly across the road with plywood eyes

and matted yellow newspapers cellophaning the concrete

damp from the tears of god as he was

chopping red onions for a dinner salad

only one and one-quarter jumps of the short hand ago

did he walk through the cobalt-lit, denali white brick hallway to a

courtside concerto of leather and nikes on hardwood

trembling the fundamentals of his soul

- - -

and in the pocket of

one predictable jump

a collision between a pair of

finely refined muscular beasts

one landed erect,

a burj khalifa over the fallen

as he tumbled down and the hardwood

might as well have been diamonds

that was a happy rehearsal. (and i ate garden cafe without getting food poisoning!)

the worst is when you wake up on a saturday morning with nothing to look forward to. or any morning, really.

too many vivid dreams, too many nightmares, too many hd flashbacks, too little quality sleep.

i want a neck massage.

building a list of books to read, movies to watch, and things to learn this summer (one email to myself at a time - love you gmail)

this is looking to be a very alone summer, still don't know how i feel about that. eh, got a month left. probably'll be fine.

boy, my chops have regressed.

absolutely hate my tone quality right now, so frustrated. post-ap rehab..

dixieland, lemonade, twilight-through-closed-blinds-lit room, deep breaths.

conversations have been had and i really don't feel the need for any new ones right now and it feels different. i'm sure i'll wake up tomorrow morning and be dying to talk endlessly with someone until the next sunrise, but i'll fall back down. maybe it's the new low standards i've ratified that put me in such a contentment with the low standards needed for it, but that's what it's all about. relativity, right?

but sometimes i feel like i want to be pulled out and to raise my standards from subterranean to lying in the grass because it feels good and maybe life needs to twist just a little bit in my favor one more time even though i know i'm probably out of universal favors for a couple months or so. so much from the last year that i probably even owe the universe some.

i think i took too big a bite from the gates of eden. food poisoning.

little crescent scars

major thanks to jaycros for the mix with all of his stuff.

listened to it in king's room after testing today, over hp7 (which was too emotionally toiling for my state of drowsiness) and pouring rain outside (too cold) and it felt so cozy and it was nice.

i keep throwing it down two-hunded at a time
it's hard to find it when you knew it
when your money's gone
and you're drunk as hell

well i've been twisting to the sun and the moon
i needed to replace
the fountain in the front yard is rusted out
all my love was down
in a frozen ground

copious amounts of english makeup work in between me and making love to wikipedia. so much curiosity, damnit.

until then, adele and bon iver to get me there.

damn, we've grown. not so old photos feeling old.

i want to discover something new. it doesn't have to be the next theory of relativity, it could just be a new extension of something i haven't fully explored, or thought i did and was brutally wrong. in fact, i kinda would prefer the latter, to find an opal in the mud.

koyaanisqatsi

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/04/04/AR2007040401721.html

outside looking in.

just bon iver, green tea, and i.

late sunday morning slow jams and a wavery equilibrium of regression/progress, the year feels so new while it's naturally winding down and it's numbing and i'm kind of lost.

the waking up is the hardest part/

you roll outta bed and down on your knees/

and for a moment you can hardly breathe

do i have to fall asleep with roses in my hand?

damn, that was the most ridiculous and fun night i've had in a long while. didn't really know what to expect, and the night sure didn't unfold how i expected, and it all worked out in the end, and i think i like it that way.

woo, prom '11

"It's been 20 years since we have had an NBA Finals that did not include Michael Jordan, Kobe Bryant, Tim Duncan, Shaquille O'Neal or Hakeem Olajuwon."

2011's a hell of a year. new eras.

last words written on apwh exam:

this is our sputnik moment

done with my first ap season, woo. quick and painless.

sixth period antics still fresh, going to bed chuckling about the buoy and the broken streak of bflats and the field goal downbeat cue and the declaration of an a on a history final

such little motivation to study..intensity of academics have just plummeted, this is foreign

the more silver you get, the more silver you got.

just embarrassing myself now, need to chill..hot shower here i come

tentative revolutions

A huge thank you to the greatest coach in professional sports, for carrying the Lake Show through moments that built my childhood. I'll never forget those championships and how ecstatic it made me as a little kid to watch their three-peat golden days and pretending to dunk just like Kobe and Shaq on my toy hoop. Thank you and farewell to the Zen Master, to the legend.

to my only close and meaningful immediate family member in my life and my first and forever best friend, happy mother's day.

words aren't enough, and i think we both understand that.

knockin' on the door but no one's home/

i just stare at the screen on my phone/

in hopes that one day she won't be so

finally home

and finally some peace

and finally some silence

just finished unpacking from seattle.

"You've claimed publicly that the key to comedy is a staffing mix of Harvard people and Chicago improv people. What's the alchemy there?

It's Spock and Kirk. One's visceral and the other's cerebral. They're asocial, but they mix together nicely."

-tina fey

left behind and this gap will perpetually grow and i can't do anything about it and you don't care and i guess that's how this chapter of my life will close.

fair.

"Apparently, Bin Laden crossed the back boundary too many times."

-J. Miller

funniest man alive

Mid-week celebratory strawberry cheesecake Yogurtland and crappy Taco Bell. One AP and one final down, one of each to go. I can almost see the Promised Land. Power ballads, Phantom Regiment, and hard studying 'til then

final run

"dreams feel real while we're in them. it's only when we wake up that we realize something was actually strange"

this house sure aint a home. can't wait to go back to my mom's after these three weeks. i've fallen into such low standards here.

i can't escape my summer state of mind even though

the winter froze me and the spring has

covered it in daisies because the sun is burning hotter than ever and

i'm overheating and parched with amnesiac nostalgia where i can only

remember everything while feeling everything while

remembering nothing and feeling less and it's almost summer again

but i'm not searching for summer

"why do bad things seem natural but good things don't?"

-nicola, la meglio gioventu

"hey you guys, don't grow up. wait, actually, don't grow old."

i don't regret anything. because that feeling of running off the floor after trying to murder pete sapadin with my eyes and ready to fight anyone who wanted to mess with us and get between us and cao cao was filled with emotion i've never felt in performance before. because the tears that fell during jeremy's debrief was the most poignant and powerful moment i have ever felt with a group of people that two years ago i would have considered strangers, and now there's more than family, and there's more than love. because that in n out run and that 4x3 with animal fries could not have tasted better knowing that we were riding off into the sunset away from adla's penalty bull. because to hear "we won" half an hour into that bus ride as i was half asleep into john legend's evolver was a moment of ecstasy i'll never forget. because i've never been part of this kind of victory. because of b class beginnings to open class champions. because being part of a cinderella story doesn't happen to everyone. because new doors don't open and perspectives don't change this drastically often. because no night has ever impacted me more than last night.

i love you, '11 palisades drumline. and i'll never thank you enough.