Fantastic Like Ellen

Today was quite fantastic. See, my friend Natalie from the summer came down to interview with USC and decided to hang out for the weekend. Instead of being the responsible college student that I should be, I skipped my classes today for a day of fun. Things started after we got back from the airport and started playing a little Soul Calibur II. Natalie claimed that she had played a bunch against her brother, on his Xbox, and that she could take any challenge Lance or I could present on our Gamecube. Needless to say, she played well, but I quickly found out that she didn't take advantage of the block button very often, so I, of course, had to use that to my advantage.

Later that afternoon she gave me a birthday present. It's the most fantastic book ever! It's called Schott's Original Miscellany and could quite possibly be one of most essential books I'll ever own. It's got the most random of information in it, and fits my personality to a tee. Let me just open to a few different pages to see what we find...page 31, tells you how to read a palm; page 68, 'q' words with no 'u'; page 106, measuring bra sizes; page 122, 10 CODES!! Ha ha!! See what I mean?? Awesome book.

After Devin got home, we drove out to Burbank, picking up our friend Sameer in Hollywood along the way, to get in line to see the Ellen Degeneras show. Natalie's mom got her tickets to the show for her birthday, and they scheduled the interview visit to be the same weekend as the Ellen show. After fantastic parking maneuvers by yours truly, we got our line passes. Because we didn't have to be back to the line until 5:00, we decided to walk around the NBC studios in hopes of finding a place to eat. After passing by the Jay Leno line - who's audience gets to wear jeans, by the way - we settled into Acapulco's for about an hour and a half to chat over Mexican food and margaritas.

When we got back, we played musical lines for another 90 minutes, until finally getting into the rather chilly, and smaller than expected, studio. Tony, Ellen's DJ, played excellent music and the producers told us they wanted us to dance, which transformed the entire place into a dance party for the next half hour. They filmed us dancing, and then Ellen came out and started the show.

Her guests included Woody Harrelson, the naked chef Jamie Oliver, and Venus Williams, who, unfortunately, had been pre-recorded earlier in the week. The show was high energy and a lot of fun. Woody Harrelson did a fantastic Elvis Prestley impersonation to close the show, and Ellen cooked tuna with Jamie. Also, because Jamie was promoting his new book, they gave everyone in the audience a copy. Let me know if you'd be interested and maybe I'll cook you dinner from its full color photos and highly detailed recipies sometime. I don't know if we were on TV, but the show will air Monday at 3:00 on NBC, so check it out to see if we were or not.

After that we dropped Sameer off and headed back to the apartment. Earlier in the day I thought we were going to get back around midnight or so, I dunno why, so I requested a day off of work. When we got back at 8:30, we realized we had so much more time to chill. We, well I, didn't really feel like going out to party, so we stayed in and watched the fantastic movie Moulin Rouge. Nat and I sang all the songs, cause we're hardcore like that, and just chilled with some of the roomies.

Rizza and Asheem came home from dinner, and the five of us - including Nat and Devin - decided to play Trivial Pursuit. After only a few questions into the game, I got pulled away by the neighbors, only to return after nearly two hours of fantastic conversation to a quiet apartment - everyone gone or asleep, wisely resting before another full day on Friday.