Blog of Magic Cheese

I'm in Southern California for the week, visiting my mother and getting ready for the wedding of two of my best (and at this point, oldest- in September I'll have known the groom for a decade. Where did the years go?) friends.

Having been out of school a number of years and on my own for a while, every time I go back to one of my parents' places and pick through my old things in my former rooms, looking for anything that would be handy to take home, I always feel like I am looting. I guess it's like when you visit a parent, sleep in your old room, and feel like you're sleeping in somebody else's room. Somebody else with an unhealthy obsession with the X-Men.

U2's new single is out- you can listen to it on their site. Bono's voice sounds like it's in a great place this album. I think for a while he was smokin' it up, trying to make his voice gravelly and low, which sort of worked. With the Irish accent, his singing was kind of like being covered in warm gravel and cream. I really like it when his voice is clear though, and the new single at least features a very youthful-sounding set of vocals.

I'm also wondering if the U2 marketing machine has gotten too slick for its own good. I'm a huge U2 fan- I listened to them a lot when I was an undiagnosed adult ADHD headcase rattling around UC Irvine. (Zooropa, incidentally, is a great album if you want to get a feeling of the chaos and confusion that having sky-high brain waves can give you.) But I'm sort of pausing at the multiple CD packages that are offered. $66 for an album, booklet, book, and poster? Very cool stuff no doubt, but steep for somebody who's been working part time since October and whose laptop may well be cooking itself in its own kool-aid, necessitating the use of several hundred dollars for a new one.

Looking forward to the wedding, to the new experience of wearing the traditional Vietnamese costume the ao dai, and seeing old friends. And then, as awesome as seeing my mother and my old friends is, heading back to San Francisco, because I miss the MUNI, I miss my wushu schools, and I miss not getting flipped off by old ladies in expensive cars with handicapped plates because I stopped at a red instead of running it to make a right turn. Seriously. wtf?