Past 2 weeks: Music, Hollywood, Friends, Wedding, Hospital

Wow... I'm just starting to catch my breath. The past two weeks have been so packed full of fun times. Heres an overview.

Trip 1 to Hollywood. Echobody at the Key Club

10:00 at night - hey guys wanna go to my friends show in Hollywood? Oh yeah and we needed to be in Hollywood about 20 minutes ago.

Mark, Hiroko, Ashley and I all planned on going to the Key Club in Hollywood to see my friend, Andy Moore and his band Echobody play. (They are now on iTUNES so check them out!) However due to a late decision to go and bad traffic we arrived after they had just finished playing. A big bummer, but we did get to see the Knights of Monte Cristo a group of guys that I would deem nothing more than a cruise ship, covers band. We still had a good time and ended the night with some grub from Tommy's.

Who are these guys??? They are the knights of monte cristo


Last wedding of the summer

I went with my family to the wedding of a good family friend of ours wedding in the High Desert. It was of course beautiful, at a club on a golf course with a lot of good friends from high school that I have not seen in 4+ years. Great time with the family and long time friends.

The Rodgers Kids dancing the Wedding


Trip to the River house

Went with the family to the River house for some family fun, boating and good times. Have some great desert rain storms, lots of wakeboarding, and watching the tour di France.

Some pictures I took of a sunset in the backyard and Rain while on the River



2nd Trip to Hollywood - Viper Room to see I O Echo and The Secret Machines

This second trip to Hollywood in two weeks was a much better trip with Andy, Brian and Tim Moore, Jared and Aaron. We drove down to Hollywood the day after a graduation party for Tim to see The Secret Machines. This was my second time seeing them, and I was still impressed. They put on a great show with music that is meant to be seen live. With only 3 members they make so much noise, with great musical and lyrical writing. They have a great way of taking great rock sound from the 70's and mixing it with the intensity and newness of Indy rock today. I O Echo the opener was great as well with a crazy chick as their lead singer, they had high intensity music with a Indy rock/dance feel to it. I also learned my lesson to not buy drinks in Hollywood as I paid 25 bucks for 2 drinks - ouch!

Legendary Viper Room and The Secret Machines



Hospital

I just finished a turn around and double shift for this week. Turn around meaning that I worked until 12 at night and then came back at 6:30 the following morning, and double meaning that I worked two, 8 hour shifts back to back. In 30 hours I was at the hospital for 24 of them. Talk about resident hours. Still love my job and am thankful for the hours to work!

The Fountain

I recently saw one of the weirdest movies I have seen in a long time and it was fantastic! The movie was The Fountain (2006) directed by Darren Aronofsky (the same director of Pi and Requiem for a Dream) and staring Rachel Weisz and Hugh Jackman. I saw the movie with Mark and Hiroko when I went over to their house for dinner the other night. Even thought the movie came out in 2006 I had never heard of it. However this science-fiction/metaphysical, love story made us all stop and think for a while. The premise of the film is a love story between two people in 3 different times, and ones man quest for immortality/a life forever with his love. This movie is packed with themes from Christianity, eastern religions, Aztec mythology, symbolism; just a big pot of science, fiction, religion, philosophy, and the arts. A large part of the film also deals with the concept of time, life and death, enlightenment, and a way to transcend the physical to reach the eternal. The director has been quoted, saying about the plot of the movie, that it is,

"very much like a Rubik's cube, where you can solve it in several different ways, but ultimately there's only one solution at the end".*

Both visually stunning and thought provoking, I thoroughly enjoyed this move. I look forward to seeing Aronofsky's previous films as well now.








* "Director Darren Aronofsky: A 'Fountain' Quest Fulfilled", Washington Post (2006-11-24). Retrieved on 2008 July 10.

the inception

so here it is a start of a new blog. Not that there wasn't enough blogs out there already. I figure this is probably more for me than anyone else but we'll see if i keep up on it.

I am currently at Classic Coffee in Glendora, a great little independent coffee shop downtown. Its currently 92 degrees outside, meaning that it is that hot or hotter in our house - due to lack of air conditioning. I am taking a break from working on my applications for PA school and NP school and hope to have them completed by the end of the week. The plan here is to apply for a couple different options and then see what happens.

So back to figuring this blog out - we'll see how it turns out!