aric with an a

(from Alonso - anyone who knows him should not be suprised)

 Hi everyone!

Thanks to those who RVSPed. (For those who haven’t, please make sure you do the $25 on PayPal before Monday–cheers.)

ok, so God sent me a txt this morning. She says Jesus doesn’t suspect anything at all (yay!), so we’re good to go.

The place and time remain the same…

Barn under the star, Nazareth, The Promised Land.
Dec 25, 12AM

(I know! Jesus’ bday is in April, but the Pagans were already booked and we needed cater waiters–besides there’s nothing going on on the 25 anyways.)

Please be punctual as we don’t want anyone ruining the surprise.

Now. reminders and updates:

-Please don’t mention Herod, Jezebel or Judas–JC gets touchy on the subject.

-Also, no mention of Mary’s weight gain–I mean, i guess she wants to remain a virgin forever. wotevs.

-Also, we didn’t invite Jonah. He’s weird, plus there might be seafood on the menu–again, touchy.

-If you’re in table 4–which I don’t think many of you are– bring shades. The Holly Ghost gets all shiny when its drunk. [read: UV, not safe]

-Rudolph can’t make it. [off the record: rehab. Turns out ruddy's red nose was the product of too much white xmas]

-Feel free to bring a gift. However, there’s some blokes from the East (i’m thinking Village?) that already bought gold, frankincense and myrrh, so if you want to just cheap in on that and put your name on the card, that’s cool too.

-Finally, apologies to those who had pre-ordered the pork chops. I spoke to Mary Magdalene and she says that Jesus only eats Kosher now. So that means no pork (sorry!). [I know! Who knew Jesus was Jewish, right? crazy]

ok, then. Everything’s settled.

See you tomorrow!

cheers,
-alonso

PS it’s actually Peter’s bday on the 26, so please send him an email (peter@thegatesofheaven.blogspot.com)– JC always steals the thunder.

In The States, we call it ‘Murphy’s Law’, in England, it’s ‘Sod’s Law’, other places it’s ‘Chaos Theory’ - call it what you want, it’s a pain in the ass. See, a few years ago, I planned spending Christmas/NYE with my then-girlfriend, and, of course, a few weeks before we split up. 3 years later and I plan on spending it alone and of course I meet someone. And of course I’m gone for 3-4 weeks. 3 weeks after we meet. Is it a good thing that it was full-on for the first part and then time away to evaluate? I’m trying to focus on the good bit - but it sucks. I’m quite sure Scrooge was a pretty nice guy who’s ex was spending the hols in Bali.

At least we photograph really well.

I’m not even going to spend time on a catchy title or interesting prose - I will simply state the facts.

I have, for a long time, been a huge fan of sandwiches. One of my favorite kinds of food (behind Mexican and Ethiopian), in fact.

Phillipe’s, in L.A., serves the best damn sandwich I’ve ever had. Hands down. No bullshit. They’re in every magazine that has to do with L.A., and might just be the inventors of French Dip, so I won’t list the thousands of reviews, but any stop in Hollywoodland needs to come complete with this - especially if you’re coming in via train, it’s right near Union Station.

Get the beef. With cheese. And a lemonade.

I’ll go ahead and say ‘you’re very welcome’ in advance.

More about Cali in a few days - loads happening. I’m sticking around Shanghai for a little while longer - thru some of the strangest circumstances ever.

So - I wake up this morning and grab the paper and there’s a huge full-page piece on me…don’t get me wrong, I think I’m nice and not ugly and I have hobbies that make me money, but ‘feature’ worthy? I don’t know - nor do I know how this all happened. When it happened. I was talking with my friend Emily who informed me that ‘most people find out about my life before I do here’ and it’s true. But, and this is the same thing I asked her, what is so interesting? I mean, Ben, who I’ve blogged about, is talk-worthy, this is an interesting guy! But a podcast producer? I’m not seeing it. Don’t get me wrong, it’s flattering (the article, not that gossiping - that’s annoying), but I just don’t understand it all.

Oh well - what I do understand (or…am starting to slowly) is how big Collin and I’s little project shooting bands here can be - I like it, and I like even more that I’m moving farther and farther away from wanting to be on camera as opposed to being behind the camera. I like that, as it means I’m not doing it for the attention, but for the actual quality of the program. Plus, we have a great presenter, Dan Shapiro - made for the screen and he’s my newest project.

One of the best shows I’ve seen in a while, to be honest - might be worth a peek:

So…who knows. The day I question whether I should be a feature piece in the biggest paper here and admit liking producing more than presenting is a day I never thought I’d see.

I rarely get stressed - honestly. But I suppose every once and a while it’s good for ya. I think. Call it my laying (somewhat) low over the past few months, working on my little projects and traveling, or perhaps its just ’cause I put everything off until a week before I fly to L.A., but man… I need a holiday.

Speaking of L.A., I’ve a friend-I’ve-never-met there who has been one of the most supportive people in my career here. He not only keeps up with my shows, but has been pushing me to do a reel for him to give out to his contacts (and they are both many and powerful - wish I could drop a few names, but I won’t) to see about work there. Please don’t laugh - I hate watching myself on cam:

That wasn’t stressful, actually, that was kind of exciting to do.

Stressful things? I need to moan.

A kind-of friend who was kind-of helpful to me in the beginning stages of my little career is claiming I owe him 20+ shows when in fact, his local staff lost the majority of them. Granted, I should keep all shows on file (we do for 30 days), but it wasn’t anything stellar so we dropped them. He’s demanding cash back. I actually exercised the old German Army movement of waiting 48 hours before responding to his email and it helped…at least, I think it helped. At least I stayed away from starting a mini-war. We’ll see.

I had a meeting with a man-of-more-success-in-Web 2.0-than me and theshanghaishow might get a breath of life. Might turn into nothing, but it’s nice to know that a few people are taking notice.

My friend Sarah is leaving and we organized a really-cool night away from Shanghai for her - long story short, I would be 30-minutes late to meeting up to get there and some people are saying the rest should leave without me. I don’t want to come across as a dick, but I’m one of her closest pals and have been going nuts these past few weeks putting it together…ugh.

I’m broke - kind of. Made a shitload of money this year and spent it all on travel…and these past few months of recreation. Don’t get me wrong, went a lot of places this year:

U.K.
Amsterdam
Indonesia
Malaysia
U.S.A.
Australia
Philippines
U.K. (again)

…and all over China, but liked having a little in the bank. I really don’t have much now. Oh well.

O.M.K.O.S. has had a bit of re-doing. P and I really wanted to make this big, but with him starting his own company, he didn’t have the time to make it what we really wanted (and it has very little to do with the programs now - you’ll see what I mean in a few weeks). Despite us having some civil meetings, it came, as business usually does between close friends, to a bad ending. It’ll stay up, but it’s just my show now.

My phone bill was over $300 - which in China is simply amazing.

Collin, one of my closest friends here and I have started shooting all the bands here for his magazines blog - fun, but still one more thing that had to be done this week:

The aforementioned video game VOX job is one of the hardest things I’ve ever done - I like to think I’m pretty good on-mike, but this is a whole new level. I did about 20-30 lines and it took 4 hours…am pretty sure they’re frustrated with me, as I am with myself; although, it’s a cool learning experience…and humbling. But, I was sort of cheeky in that I didn’t tell them on Wed. that I was leaving the next week for The States, hoping that they would keep me on after investing a lot of time in me anyway - have to write that email now. I suppose with L.A. just around the corner, a blow to my ego wasn’t the best thing…

Other work of mine is being re-directed to local staff. I can’t blame the co’s, I’m expensive and you can hire someone to do what I do (well, not as well, ha ha) for about 1/10 less. I know why people hate Wal-Wart now.

Here’s hoping it’s nothing an In N Out burger won’t cure.