wow. i feel like dumbass jeffrey when he won last season’s project runway.

“(we) diiid it”

yes, we most certainly did. we got a rental and drove the hell down to los angeles to see stephen chow. live. in person. he was a mere 10 feet away from me while i snapped thousands of photos of him like the crazy stalker that i am (here i am in action).

CJ7, despite what some may say, was quite enjoyable. i liked it a lot! tony said it was “weak,” but what does he know? he was asleep during most of the screening (bastard). it was better than anticipated, a thoughtful family movie infused with stephen chow’s trademark flavor: rollicking comedy and brilliantly strange insanity. there was a pivotal moment that exercised my lachrymal glands. the entire time during the screening i was squirming with nervousness, thinking, “wow. that’s stephen chow on the big screen. after this he’s going to walk onto that very stage. he’s here. he’s actually HERE!!!” there’s a scene in the movie that perfectly exemplifies stephen chow’s ridiculous charm. it makes my heart soar with adoration. look for it in the beginning of the trailer (which could be much stronger but we all know how american marketing likes to screw up good foreign films). see if you can find it!

it wasn’t just sharing the same air with “grandmaster sing” that was so exciting. like the old saying, “it’s the journey, not the destination.” *chortle*

the deranged, delirious glee i experienced on this 24 hour adventure is personified in my expression here

tony has a thing for clouds. whatever, they’re just like, boring and $hit

haha, the entire trip down and back consisted of my incessant nagging of tony:
“anthony, put your chair back. aren’t you tired? you must be sleepy. take a nap. c’mon, AREN’T YOU TIRED?! PUT YOUR SEAT BACK I SAID!!! sleep…now! don’t you want to put your seat back and get comfy?”

tony wanted to go to the hat, an LA institution famous for its pastrami. so we ended up at the one in simi valley. the first sign of good chili cheese fries? a daunting amount of heaping cheddar. as enticing as this looks, it was a bit disappointing. the chili was bland and lacked any kick

content to do life-shortening damage to our cardiovascular system. but that’s the last of tony’s concerns since he’s built like bruce lee and healthy as jack lalanne

here it is, the notorious pastrami dip. i’ll be honest — it wasn’t that great. disappointingly flavorless, and almost too much meat. adding horseradish to the package certainly helped, as did the side of jus. even i couldn’t finish all of it, a testament to its intimidating size and heart-stopping content

double fisting. it’s how i roll

afterwards tony showed me westlake village, the idyllic town in which he sprouted into a strapping young man. beautiful spacious homes, manicured lawns, and distinguished schools, all surrounded by big, inviting hills. there was even a picturesque creek that traversed a residential part of westlake village. in other words, this was the perfect place to not only raise children, but pedophiles.

afterwards i insisted on popping anthony’s pinkberry cherry. what’s hilarious is that 1) he was stuffed to the gills and had no interest in filling up on more food stuffs and 2) i hesitated to go in because i thought it was a knockoff pinkberry. since it’s such a heavily branded identity, i didn’t think there was any way a pinkberry would allow a renegade sign. i mean, look at that thing! it reeks of strip mall

after driving around and making a very brief visit with tony’s mom and aunties, we made it to harmony gold on time, around sunset and vine. here’s a blurry photo of the long line

and…

…wait for it…

wheeeeeeeeee

i love his salt & pepper. but dang why’d he have to obscure it with that baseball cap?

that little girl, xu jiao, did a stellar job in CJ7 (and played a boy). she was terrific and showed a wide range. i guess stephen chow prides himself on “discovering” many actresses — “chow’s cuties” — who bust out on their own in due time (including cecilia cheung and karen mok), but none this young and adorable. also featured in the film is newcomer zhang yuqi, perhaps another chow cutie

and here he is alluding to his love of dogs, how he used to raise pekingese, and how this breed had a bit of an influence on the design of the alien canine creature in the movie

sigh. because CJ7 was filmed on the mainland, and all of his costars spoke mandarin (it was filmed in ningbo), stephen spoke mandarin too (usually it’s cantonese)

in the lobby with the cheesy americanized poster

as luck would have it, meltdown comics — the socal destination for geeks and nerds — was right across the street. it felt like home, except not really because comic relief is my forever home. i will concede, however, that meltdown was well organized and super clean

what better way to end the night than with a burrito mojado? how it happened: “anthony, are you hungry?” “not really, no” “oh….so, are you like, craving anything to eat?” “no, i’m pretty full” “okay well why don’t we get something to eat?” and of course he totally loved the burrito. it was delish!

can’t you tell by his face how happy he is? no but seriously we loved it

the ride home was nice, since i got to catch up on some ZZZZZs and came to the startling realization that adrianne curry bears an uncanny resemblance to catherine zeta jones

i wish i could wrap up this report with a photo of stephen and myself, beaming and blushing with girly giddiness. but no, they spirited him and xu jiao away immediately after the Q&A. regardless, it was mindblowing seeing him in the flesh. i moved up to the very front row as soon as he took the stage, and the guy next to me was like, “this is so surreal!” indeed

like i said, the real ultimate joy was in the random hysterical laughs that tony and i shared. some great lines spoken by him:

“no you dumb broad, are you stupid?!”

“are your eardrums punctured like a honeycomb?”

“you’re not a slut, you’re a conqueror”

t: “what’s this song? it’s sexy, i like it.”
me: “it’s fergie”
t: “aww #*!@ that ugly b*#!*. what a $hitty song!’

ps – of all the disturbing things i have or could present on this blog, the following takes the cake. it is vile and nauseating, and horribly offensive. here is stephen on some german talk show where the host is a complete chicken blowhard chode. so blatantly racist, his clueless a$$holeness causes the bile to surge in my throat! now that’s someone who should bite the curb. it’s truly incensing to watch, so if you don’t want to get angry, i wouldn’t click play. observe how stephen tries to navigate his way through this astoundingly stupid absurdity

pps – no but really, how can you not love this man? before him, i had no problem expressing my disdain for “slapstick.” but now i’ll take stephen chow slapstick anyday. and stephen chow anything, for that matter

This entry was posted on Tuesday, February 26th, 2008 at 2:50 am and is filed under film, friends, travel. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.