Taeyang: Yo man, why do you get the Diamond Badge of Badassery and I don't?
T.O.P.: Patience, young grasshopper. Thou must first master The Photoshoot Pose of Badassery.
Figured it's been a while since my last post about the Badass One and his Extraordinary League of Kickassery.
I don't know if I'm bucking the trend or not, but I greatly enjoy reading translated magazines interviews with Big Bang. Why? These interviews actually reveal a lot of things about the members that you wouldn't necessarily catch otherwise.
For instance, just today I was reading the English translation of a Japanese TV Weekly magazine interview of Big Bang, aka our revered Extraordinary League of Kickassery. In one section of the interview, the interviewers posed three "Date Night" themed questions to each of the members, one of which was:
"The greatest memories you have had at night?"
I don't know about you, but off the top of my head, my greatest memory is curling up on my bed at home on a summer night and drifting off to sleep with the sound of music playing. Oh wait, I've been doing this for the last three weeks. HA-HA!
I'm sure if I had some chick flick worthy story about meeting Prince Charming at a party, then maybe I'll have some juicier memory to share, but I think it's been mentioned several times on here that my life plays to the tune of snore.
But never mind about me. Let's see what the cohorts of Kickassery have to say:
Seungri: In the past, I have watched the sky which was wholly covered with stars. I felt so touched since I had witnessed the beauty of the universe.
Goodness. The maknae is so Romantic. (Capital R for romanticism, but I guess romantic could work too.) Now that I think about it, I definitely have seen a starry night. In fact, my father even woke me up in the wee hours of the night once so that I could see a meteor shower. Yes, it was pretty magnificent. But apparently not touching enough for me to remember off the top of my head....
Taeyang: The episode at night... I don't know... hmm...
Oh sunshine, I understand you completely. It's a well-known fact that you have never had a girl -- you even wrote a song broadcasting your need for a female companion. You and I, we ain't got no vespertine episodes worthy of the title of Greatest Night of All Time.Daesung: The night that I can go on a tour.
I'm not sure how accurate the translation is for this one. Tour as in a performance tour, or tour as in a travel tour? Probably the first, but what does that even mean? So cryptic. But Daesung -- in light of your recent turmoil, I won't attempt to pry any further.
Okay, so we've got the three singers. (Yah yah, I know GD sings too, but he also raps and composes and writes lyrics and does just about everything. He's like the freaking wild card in Uno.) We've got the lyrically romantic, the truthfully snoozeworthy, and the what-the-heck-does-that-mean. Now let's see what our two rappers have to say...
G-Dragon: No comment! (laugh)
T.O.P.: Hahaha...
...
o______________O
blink blink.
Eeeeeenteresting...
And it gets even better. The other date related question that was asked was: "What is your ideal date at night?" Not too surprisingly, you get pretty similar, harmless answers from most of the members. GD wants to take his girl out for a drive. Daesung wants to see the nightview. Taeyang says, Screw you both -- I'll take her out for a drive AND see the nightview. Seungri, meanwhile, just wants a normal date like any other civilian.
Oh, but what about the Badass One?
T.O.P.: Hahaha...
Ho ho ho. Someone's mind is clearly wandering near the gutter...
I didn't even realize the MTV Movie Awards happened yesterday until I checked my homepage and saw a bunch of hooplah about Kristen Stewart's safety pin dress (Sophelia-approved) and the fact that JT and Mila Kunis platonically groped each other on stage (not Sophelia-approved. Call me what you want, but that's not really not my type of humor, and I don't think it gets rid of any of those JTxMK hook-up rumors at all. But I'll concede that it was a great publicity stunt because I've just spent like two sentences talking about them, so OKAY I'M DONE.)
But besides the usual fashion round-up and tidbits of odd news, here's something exciting for us to chew on...
OMFG!!!!!11111
Wait. I did not do the trailer proper justice in conveying just how exciting this is. I'm going to have to enlist the help of Tangled's Flynn Rider.
YAY!!!!!!
You know what this means, guys? Only two more movies left, and the circus is over!! I'm not even going to try to pretend I'm going to be sad due to the void of Twilight jokes that will imminently arise, because (1) the jokes were getting old anyways and (2) OMG IT'S ALMOST OVER!!!
So whatchu waiting for? Press play!
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0:00-0:24 - Oh I forgot to mention... I've never actually read the fourth book. So why does the Volturi dude get an invitation? Didn't they try to kill our young (well, one relatively so) lovers? Was that in the second book? And why would he be so happy to get one anyway? He doesn't strike me as the type who'd keep cut-outs of bridal magazines and be all, "ZOMG GUYS, I LOVE WEDDINGS!"
0:26-0:28 - Bella's dad doesn't look too thrilled about his teenage daughter's impending nuptials.
0: 29-0:33 - Okay, am I the only one weirded out by the mother's reaction? The way she waves that invitation around in the air, it's like she got the golden ticket to Willy Wonka's factory. Speaking of which, this whole hullabaloo about the wedding invitation is pretty reminiscent of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory.
0:35-0:42 - LOLLL HAHAHAHAHAHA sorry Jacob aka Taylor Lautner, but if every guy reacted in rage by ripping off his shirt and running outside, I think this world might just be a better place.
0:51 - Here we go guys -- this generation's version of the Golden Ticket.
0:56-1:02 - Okay, this is when my creative analyst kicks in and I start wondering why they chose this epic-choir music for this trailer. Really now, this is the kind of epic music you use for heart-pounding, adrenaline-rushing Star Wars lightsaber duels and Lord of the Rings battles that determine the fate of Middle-earth, yeah? Yet from I can tell from this trailer so far, let's see... oh lookie here, we've got a wedding. I dunno, can't some romantic strumming of the guitar or a couple of violins do the trick?
Oh wait. Maybe it's for the impending heart-pounding, adrenaline-rushing wedding night scene where Bella and Edward engage in some rough and violent vampire kinkiness. Ah ouais, je comprends.
1:04 - "The event THAT WILL CHANGE EVERYTHING..." dun dun dun!!
1:07-1:10 - Aw, K-Stew looks gorgeous!!
1:16 - Creative Analyst is back. Okay, what is up with that statue? Was that in the book? A statue of Jesus Christ hovering over the love shack where Bella and Edward are heating things up? Is that supposed to symbolize divine judgment? I am so confused.
1:18-1:20 - HOLY SHIT WAS THAT EDWARD? Or was that Jacob in rage mode again? 'Cause if that were Edward, now I totally understand the need for epic music. He freaking crushed that windowsill like a grape.
1:21 - That should actually read, in dramatic ALL CAPS red letters and a background choir -- "CAN BELLA SURVIVE HER WEDDING NIGHT?"
1:24-1:25 - Oh look, kids -- waterfall sex!!
1:30-1:31 - Once again, this is probably another case of Sophelia-didn't-read-Breaking-Dawn-and-therefore-has-no-idea-what's-going-on, but... Jacob, why are you popping up here? Did you follow them to their secret honeymoon location? Were you secretly lurking behind that waterfall?
1:32-1:35 - R-Patz: YO MAN, WHY YOU CRASHING MY SEXYTIMES?? *megapunchhhhh*
1:37-1:45 - "That's impossible."
What's impossible? That you got pregnant? Bella honey, do you really want me to start getting all pseudoscientific about this?
1:46-1:59 - All together now: YAYYYYYYY!!!!!
I asked my mother about the neighbor. She wasn't too surprised I didn't remember him. He lives about four houses down the street.
I think I may have previously mentioned my mother's Buddhist beliefs, back when I was exploring Christianity during my freshman year while my mother became more invested with Buddhism. Though I only went to temple when I visited relatives in Taiwan (averaging to about once every five years), I've grown up with frequent exposure to the idea of reincarnation. Whenever I see a dead animal, I automatically say the prayer that was taught to me when I was young.
My mother thinks it was fate. The neighbor who came this morning is a Buddhist who volunteers with a group that cares for cancer patients nearing the end of life. We hadn't been expecting him -- in fact, until today he hadn't dropped by our house in about ten years. Moreover, he came exactly at the moment when we had started digging the grave. While I was inside the house, he gave the prayer for Leonardo that they usually say to send off the dead. That coincidence, combined with the fact that we found Leonardo at a location so close to our front door -- which was so atypical of him to do -- strengthens my mother's belief that this was fate.
My mother says that Leonardo "served his time" as a turtle. That's how she likes to think of it. Life as a turtle is difficult, she says. She prays that he will be reincarnated into a better life.
About seven years ago, my brother and I finished tennis practice and went to the parking lot to find our mother. When she greeted us at the car, she told us she had a surprise. In a box, there were two tiny turtles -- a brother and a sister, each about the size of my palm. One with a red mark on his head, and one without. This red mark became his defining feature -- it was how we could tell them apart.
My mom had been hoping that the two turtles would be enough to dissuade the collective begging from my brother, my father, and me asking for a puppy. Unfortunately, the novelty in having a legitimate pet died away when it soon became clear that the turtles did very little but eat, sleep, and sunbathe. Within less than a year, Matisse came into our lives and promptly peed on our kitchen floor.
At the time, the turtles lived in a clear plastic box next to the dishwasher by the bay window. My mother would let them wander around the kitchen counter while she cleaned out their box, refilling it with clean water. As the years passed, they grew bigger and bigger. The plastic log/cave we'd bought from the pet store became too small, and we had to buy bigger and bigger logs until there were no more sizes left that could top the others. In the end, only one turtle could hide under the log or sunbathe on the top at a time. This would become important later.
For years, they had no name. We referred to them as "boy" and "girl" for the longest time, until one day, I arbitrarily decided to give them names. We still usually referred to them as "boy" and "girl", but officially their names were Leonardo and Mona Lisa. Nevertheless, the turtles drifted readily out of my consciousness -- they didn't do much, and it was typically my mother's job to change their water and feed them. Many times, I forgot they even existed.
Leonardo was always the more adventurous one. Whenever my mother let him out to explore, he would immediately scurry off across the kitchen counter, as far away from the box as he could get. We'd find him burrowed behind a vase near the toaster or beneath a stack of envelopes by the telephone. A couple of times, he even fell off the counter, to the great surprise of our dog. Mona Lisa, on the other hand, was much less aggressive. She tended to stay near the bay window and never wandered too far. Whereas Leonardo would aggressively fight his way for a bite of turtle food, she tended to get knocked aside.
Eventually, the clear box by the bay window was too small for the two of them. My mother bought one of those plastic tubs Chinese newborns are usually bathed in and placed the two turtles outside. At the time, the walls of the tub were high enough to keep them inside. They would take turns sunbathing on the log and sleeping underneath it. Then one day, my mother noticed that there were strange scars on Mona Lisa's skin. Thinking maybe it was too cold to leave them outside overnight, my mother would hoist the tub in and out of the house each night and morning.
The answer to the mystery of Mona Lisa's scars finally came months later. After my father bought her a new camcorder, my mother had the brief hobby of videotaping everything -- including what was going on in the backyard. By chance, she was filming the two turtles one morning -- Mona Lisa was sunbathing on the top of the log, when Leonardo suddenly popped his head out of the water, yanked her by the leg and threw her off of the log, and then situated himself where she had once been lounging. Yes, there was a case of domestic abuse happening right under our noses. From then on, the two siblings were kept in separate tubs outside, isolated from each other.
During November of last year, I called my mother while I was at school. We talked for a little bit about who-knows-what, and at some point she relayed to me that Leonardo had escaped. He had gotten big enough that at some point, he managed to climb out of the tub and had scurried off somewhere in the backyard. We were upset, but not distraught -- we hoped for the best, thinking that perhaps he'd be able to survive on his own. I discussed the news with my brother on Facebook, and my cousin cracked a light-hearted joke about Leonardo running off to join the Ninja Turtles.
As fate would have it, Leonardo appeared in our lives again. About two months ago, my mother was washing the dishes when she noticed something moving on the patio near the bushes. Leonardo had survived the winter and was alive. My mother recorded a short video and uploaded it on Facebook, and then she decided that, since he had managed to take care of himself for five months in our backyard, she would let him enjoy his freedom.
Then this morning happens.
We just finished watching the final of the French Open, when my father goes outside to get the Sunday newspaper. When he comes back in, he yells out, "Hey, it's the turtle!" Sure enough, we see Leonardo burrowed by the camellia plant right next to the black metal gate that leads to our house.
We are happy to see him. But the rejoicing begins to dissipate when my brother asks, "Is he dead?" My mother puts on a pair of rubber gloves and pokes him a little. He doesn't move. She picks him up. He does not squirm like he once did. We put him in one of the water-filled tubs my mom left out for him, in case he ever decided to come back. He floats.
My brother goes back into the house. My mother asks my father to get a shovel. My mother picks a spot behind the bushes where she saw him walk past just two months ago. At the same time, I walk over to the red tub where Leonardo floats and crouch down to look at him. I am still holding the camera my mom handed to me -- back when we treated the discovery like a family reunion. Whatever doubts I have about my mother's judgment that Leonardo is dead vanish when I see the way his closed eyes are sunken in.
I barely listen as I hear my mom say something out loud. She says something like, "Well, that's life." Then I hear these gasping noises, and for a second I think she's laughing but then I realize that my mother is crying.
By then, I can't even see anymore. The steam has fogged up my eyes, and I sense the way my body automatically shuts down to prevent my emotions from spilling over whenever I find myself getting emotional. It's how I have managed to almost never cry when I watch or read tragedies. Except this time, I let myself go.
One of our neighbors opens the gate. I don't know why he's here. I don't even know his name. My father and mother say some words to him. My head is locked in place. I can't see, it's all a blur, and yet I can't keep my eyes off of Leonardo. I vaguely sense my mother and the neighbor standing behind me. I don't turn around to look at them. I don't want them to see my telltale face. When the neighbor offers to say a prayer, I move out of the way for him and, ashamed of my tears, I run back into the house. I pass by my brother, who sits emotionlessly at the kitchen table.
Later my mother calls out that they are about to bury him. The four of us stand around the grave. My mother places him inside. We take turns filling the grave with the shovel. My mother pats the dirt and places a large stone next to it -- a marker of his grave. This time, my brother starts crying.
A melancholy permeates our house. The lingering question remains suspended in the air -- should we have captured him again when we saw him two months ago? Leonardo might still be alive if we had. But is that what he would have wanted? Or were those last seven months of freedom the most blissful months of his life?
Seeing him floating in that red tub made things so clear to me. I hardly cared about him when he was alive. Maybe when he was still a baby, and he would eagerly eat all the food I threw into the box. After Matisse entered our lives, the two turtles were mainly forgotten. They don't beg for attention like a dog. They cower inside their shells when you come close and startle them.
Leonardo won't be the last. From time to time, I am haunted by dreams of when Matisse's time will come. Mona Lisa's life expectancy is between 25-50 years, but look what happened to Leonardo. My parents are getting older too. My father has had more health problems in the last year than I can remember.
Someday, my time will come too.
My mother thinks Leonardo purposely chose to rest so conspicuously by the front gate, where anybody could see him. She thinks he knew.
Nine.
That's the number of journals I managed to fill up during those pre-teen to early-teen years when I wrote my daily musings by hand. It's a little under six years' worth of material.
Let me tell you, they are oh so painful to read through. I've read through about four of them since Wednesday, when I had the idea of rereading my old journals to see what kind of entries I'd written about my fights with my mother. (We'd gotten into another argument this week that led to a prolonged silent treatment, but that's another matter.) But nevertheless, I am eternally thankful to my younger self for documenting my life so methodically. For one thing, I don't think I would have been nearly as good at writing if I hadn't been constantly writing over the course of those six years.
It shows. I started off with the very first one, which I received the winter of the fourth grade as a Christmas present from my first piano teacher. Diction and syntax were unbearable, but hey -- I was only nine years old. I don't remember much about that time, but from reading that first journal, I can tell you:
- I was Pokemon and Cardcaptors-obsessed
- The things I cared most about were grades and tennis. (In one entry, I moaned on and on about how I'd just had the worst day of my life. Reason? I'd gotten a B+ on a test.)
- I was disgusted (though probably harbored a crush on, considering how many entries were dedicated to him) by a certain boy in my class, who will remain nameless because I'm quite ashamed of this memory, actually. (By the way, I decided to look him up on Facebook afterwards because I realized I haven't thought about this person in years. Turns out he has a girlfriend now!)
I chose not to read chronologically, because trust me -- it takes quite a lot of will power to chug through a year's worth of entries written by a nine/ten-year-old. I decided to skip a few years ahead, and let me tell you -- these were also rather painful to read, but for a different reason. I was actually impressed with my thirteen-year-old self's entries, despite their melodrama, because I could already begin to see my current writing style taking form. It's actually quite interesting to see how one's style develops over time.
But anyways. The reason these were so painful to read is because I was sooooo obsessed with the Prince. Literally. It's sort of fascinating, in the same grotesque way that I would be fascinated if I could cut myself open and poke around inside a little. If any shred of conversation occurred between me and the Prince, or even if I overheard somebody else having a conversation about the Prince, BAM -- there it goes in the journal, where I'd analyze the silly thing for pages. If I could take my lecture notes with such detail, I'd probably raise my GPA.
Oh, and while the Prince infatuation was happening, I would also entertain myself with "side-dishes" I'd keep my eye on. So shameless, Sophelia. I'd nearly forgotten about the one in eighth grade, and now that I think back it is entirely laughable, in that WHAT-WERE-YOU-THINKING?? sort of way.
Rereading has also made me very much aware of my selective memory. Apparently, my brain had conveniently forgotten all of the lecherous things teenage boys do/say, in particular a certain character who popped back into my consciousness like a ghost two years ago.
On a serious note, revisiting those old journals really made me see just how much I internalized everything. Thinking back, I probably didn't know who to trust. Middle school was around the time when social circles started changing -- SL, who had been one of my best friends in elementary school, drifted away while new friends entered my life. With such chaotic middle school drama, it's no wonder I didn't really find my place.
I don't think I internalize so much anymore. Though my friendships with my high school friends have decayed to an extent (we barely talk during most of the year), I can think of three very good friends I have at school whom I share a lot of my problems with. I'm still a very private person, but I think I've become much better at opening up now.
Taeyang: Yo man, why do you get the Diamond Badge of Badassery and I don't?
