Thursday, September 1st, 2016 - Long Beach, CA
So Labor Day weekend snuck up on me this year but honestly, if it wasn't for my habitual forward planning and my trusty Google calendar, I'd have no idea what is going on in my life other than when its time to eat. So as surprised as I was that it was a long weekend and I was in town, I was equally not surprised that I crammed a ton of activities in for this long weekend "staycation". So, since this weekend really is a bunch of disjointed activities that have little to no relevance to each other (like lamb and tuna fish - other than its a line from the awesome movie Big Daddy. Did I just ruin the reference by explaining it, like when you have tell someone why your joke is funny which means it wasn't funny.) I've decided to break this post into different sections. Please consult the table of contents, that I'm not going to create, for the sections that you feel are relevant to you, OR you can read the whole damn thing! If you do, I will invite you over for dinner and make you something delicious, like Lumpia (google it white people, lol).
So intern season at work is over, but before it ended, I wanted to take out my intern buddy, Travis, for lunch. However, since he was frantically trying to finish his work, and I was always freaking gone, lunch turned into happy hour which is great because that means we get to drink and more people would want to come. Travis is currently converting his PhD program to a Master's program at UC Davis. We played on the same Long Beach recreational basketball team, the third of three Virgin Galactic teams; we were called the Cosmic Ballers 1, 2, and ... you guessed it - Allstars! Sike, 3. Across all three of these teams, we totaled a super impressive 4 wins over a 10 game season. That's 4 out of 30... and none of those wins came from Cosmic Ballers 3; no fault to Travis, as he was our leading scorer by far. I contribute it to the fact that most of us were brand new to playing organized, competitive, team basketball. In other words, we sucked at basketball. I'm pretty sure a lot of the reason we did it was to get exercise and a cool Cosmic Ballers jersey that makes your status as a "basketball player" super official, the same way getting fro-yo instead of straight up ice cream makes you a healthy eater; not so much.
So how do you write a blog post about a happy hour? I have no effing clue. Really this is just a bunch of candids of people eating and drinking. I'll just jump in and hope that its more interesting than those freaking ads that inevitably come up before any youtube video that you're super excited to show someone, then you gotta say "hold on a second, there's a stupid ad we have to wait for, please try to stay excited for another 15 seconds while we both awkwardly watch an ad for Viagra," or are you supposed to just think the last part?
JUMPING IN. So when you shoot in fully manual mode, you have to set up what's in your shot, what your focus subject is, guess at your camera settings, take some practice shots, make more adjustments, then take the photo. When you're taking photos of your food, it doesn't notice what you're doing. However, when there are people in your frame, they all notice that there's a REAL camera pointed at them and they think that you're taking pictures of them the whole time. So while they are posing their asses off, you are frantically trying to get all your settings to your preference so you don't miss the pose. 'Wait, wait, hold on! I'm still setting up the shot!' So yeah. That's totally what happened here, there are a bunch of awesome shots that were out of focus and mis-framed. Here's what I salvaged.
By the time I got it all right, they were all posed out and disinterested like I was an 8GB iPhone 3. This was the actual shot I was setting up.
Jason and Alexis make a repeat appearance in my blog posts and have a pretty solid set of stock photo that could easily be the next filler photo in your picture frames from Amazon. Pretty people... I should kick you. Hahaha, just kidding, great people. In the third photo, David is the happy one and is an long time intern turned full time employee. To the left is Keenan who is also an intern that was leaving and joined in the festivities. To the right is asian Derek Zoolander doing his signature pose, Bruu Steer (sound it out).
Good job posing everyone!! Daniel is one of the slowest eaters I know which is why I'm not surprised that I caught him with his mouth full.
Steven was on fire tonight. It was story time and Steven was James Earl Jones in the audiobook version of the Bible, narrated by James Earl Jones. He will be performing at the next campfire if you guys want to make reservations. ...Steven, not James Earl Jones, or God.
I have to explain what's going on here. Steven's fobby asian impersonation is pretty damn funny. So he's doing the fobby asian guy trying to hit on a girl by stroking back both of his eyebrows. Try to imagine it, or make a reservation to see it live.
Ocampo is our IT department lead director something guy. He's the one you call when your computer is being retarded and he comes and saves the day with his coveted Administrator privileges. His hair always looks like that, ALWAYS. Ocampo is also on Cosmic Ballers 3, and his hair stays that way while he's crossing up his defender like Stephen Curry, or more like items on a grocery list, cause the latter is way easier.
Winni is also on Cosmic Ballers 3. She's 4'10" (and half). Her Air Jordan's are a size 2. A size TWO! Before the season started, Ocompo was teaching her how to shoot a layup, oh my... But after many, many, many minutes of practice, Winni had improved to Spud Web status, meaning she had the reputation as the shortest player in the league. However, there was a game shortly after this happy hour where Winni. Went. Off. Multiple shots from downtown, a layup, a steal, she beat several of her defenders off the dribble. Every time she did anything, everyone in the stands went ape, all 12 of them. It got louder and louder. It was like Kobe's last game when he went for over 40 points and the Staples Center was erupting with crazed fan's spilling their beer and popcorn as they screamed their faces off. Except, you know, in a middle school gym, and the fans were the friends and family of the players, and didn't have any beer, or popcorn, and kept their faces on.
K-Pow was also in attendance. She, is not on our basketball team, but she IS a fan of Happy Hour. She is also a fan of the Ballast Point Watermelon Dorado beer which I will admit is surprisingly good. I've never been a fan of the fruit beers, but Ballast Point has figured out how to incorporate fruit flavors into their beers without making them taste like fruity ass. I had their pineapple sour, it was big eyes amazing, and I don't like sours either.
This last photo is actually the entrance to the restrooms. The passage is filled with a really cool blue light, so naturally I make Holly go and pose for me. As I try and figure out the shot, I miss many many many awesome photo opps as Holly makes faces at me and pretends to ride a horse. Steven sees this and decides to join in the shenanigans. This is his best 'Oh, I just came out of the bathroom and I'm super surprised that you have a camera pointed at me, Creeper McCreepersen.
AND THERE YOU HAVE IT! How do you blog about a happy hour? You say almost nothing relevant about the photos and instead rattle random stories about the people.(c) Don't steal my ideas people. See the poor man's copyright symbol? That's right, I have a copyright to that, super official.
If you're avoiding what you have to do next, read the next post!
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