Matt’s friend Devin has the most fun tattoo ever.

James is doing sound for Zebrahead right now and he called to say hello while he was in town! We went out for a drink at a Fullerton bar and talked a lot.

James and I did everything together for a solid chunk of my pubesence. I’d heard his band Ginger Quail play, but we didn’t officially meet until he recorded my band in his friend’s garage. He moved to Florida to study sound engineering at Full Sail and I moved to California to study journalism and computer science shortly after high school. We lost touch with each other for a while. It was awesome to see him and hear about what he’s been up to. I’m glad he didn’t stop doing what he loves.

James’ Flickr stream functions as a tour diary, so you can check that out. Also, there are two remaining Southern California shows:

June 7 - House of Blues - San Diego, CA — w/ Unwritten Law and Bullets and Octane
June 9 - Hudson Theatre - San Bernardino, CA — w/ Unwritten Law and Bullets and Octane

He has Friday off, so hopefully more hangout time tomorrow!

Cookies melded with Reese’s peanut butter cups… People Pops? Brutal… A Mallow Burger and Mallow Fries to go with it. The Mallow Burger is a full 343 calories—more than an actual burger, but with none of the protein. The fries are just as bad on their own, but come with a packet of red berry “ketchup” for you to smear on them. Oh my.

The Buena Park Michael’s is huge. Much bigger than any of the other ones in Orange County I’ve been to. How did I not know about this earlier? I went to buy some paints for painting and some thread for braceleting, but they had everything. Ev-ry-thing. It was ridiculous.

Mikeh found this très petite flowerpot. He briefly considered buying it to hold a very small plant. A very small flower in a very small flowerpot would look cute in the kittens’ very small clothes hamper, yeah? Unfortunately, the kittens prefer a cleaner, more contemporary style of décor, so we left the mini planter unpurchased.

The twin kittens are getting big. At three and a half weeks, they’ve more than doubled in size. We’d just fed them when these pictures were taken. They get sleepy with warm milk in their tummies. They were falling asleep during the impromptu photoshoot.

I went to a party last Saturday thrown by Sara, a friend of mine from high school. She’d planned a New Orleans-themed menu and wanted to have beignets for desert but was running low on time and asked me to cover it at the last minute. (I was happy to. I’d offered earlier.)

Sara provided the Café du Monde boxed mixes for me to use, but a few people have asked me how to make beignets since, and the mix isn’t at all necessary. It’s just yeast, dried milk, sugar, flour, and salt. So here’s a beignet recipe that doesn’t required the boxed stuff:

1 envelope active dry yeast
1 1/4 cups warm milk
1/2 cup sugar, granulated
2 tablespoons vegetable shortening
1 egg, beaten
4 1/2 cups flour
pinch of salt
vegetable oil, for frying
powdered sugar, for dusting

Combine yeast, sugar, shortening and milk in a bowl. Add the egg. Mix well. Add 4 cups of the flour and salt. Mix until the dough becomes one big lump. (You may need to knead it with your hands to do this.) Form the dough into a ball, then lightly rub oil around it and replace it in a bowl. Cover it with plastic wrap and leave it in a warm, dry place until it doubles in size about two hours later.

Roll out the dough until it’s between 1/8-inch and 1/4-inch thick. Cut the dough into 2 1/2-inch squares with a sharp knife. (If you want to make mini hors d’oeuvre beignets, you can make littler squares!)

Fry the beignets, a few at a time, in an inch or two of vegetable oil. The oil should be hot enough so that the doughy beignets pop up to the surface after 5 to 10 seconds. Flip the beignets over after they rise and puff, cooking on both sides until they’re golden brown. Remove and drain on a few layers of paper towels.

Sprinkle the beignets with powdered sugar and serve while warm with coffee or café au lait (half warmed whole milk, half strong coffee).

Alternatively, you can buy the boxed mix for $2.45 and follow the directions on the back. You’re still going to have to do all of the kneading, rolling, cutting and frying, but the mix does have all of the dry ingredients in one package. If that sort of arrangement appeals to you, by all means, buy the box.

I made mini ones for Sara’s party. I was thinking small ones were more party appropriate. Plus, I had a nightmarish vision of non-New Orleanians attempting to eat regular-sized beignets for the first time and all breathing out powdered sugar all over the place all at once. I rationalized that bite-sized ones would be cleaner.

Sara’s party was fun, and the menu was great. She served shrimp remoulade, jambalaya, red beans and rice, seafood gumbo, muffalattas, hurricanes and, of course, the beignets.

Her place was packed. Apparently even Los Angelinos show up to a house party when Louisiana food is served. Ehren, a friend I hadn’t seen since high school (and who I didn’t realize had moved to Los Angeles), was also in attendance.

The party was a great idea. (Way to go, Sara!) In fact, it was such a great idea, I’m totally copying when I get settled into Roch.

The Nietzsche Family Circus pairs a randomized Family Circus cartoon with a randomized Friedrich Nietzsche quote. The result is hilarious and sometimes startlingly profound.

For anyone who doesn’t know, Bill Keane’s The Family Circus is a strange comic to begin with. I started following after I read an Underbelly zine article by Will Pfeifer in which he explains the genuis of the comic strip.

Pfeifer’s commentary on the strip that ran September 23, 1990 is particularly intriguing. From Underbelly:

Keane skipped his usual Sunday forumlas … and went right for the jugular: Billy and Dolly are standing in a field overrun with weeds. Flies buzz around their heads. The sky is dark. A factory and some nearby houses belch smoke. A pick-up in the distance spews more much and blasts a loud “boom boom boom” music (rap?) as the driver tosses garbage from the window. A sickly green stream sits stagnant before the kids, filled with cans, tires, and rotting fish. A sign that reads “No Shooting” stands riddled with bullet holes.

In the midst of this desolation, there is no clever remark from Billy. No innocently humorous ‘Dolly-isms.’ All Dolly, wearing a world-weary variation of the blasé expression, can ask is this:

“Why do babies leave heaven to come here?”

I have no idea what to make of this strip. Did Jean-Paul Sartre write it? Is it a pro-abortion strip? A pro-birth control strip? …

I do have a theory. Unlike in other strips, the telephone poles in this strip have wires. Maybe Keane is implying that Billy and Dolly have stepped out of their idyllic comic world and entered our own. Maybe he’s saying that what they saw was so horrible it led them to question the existence and/or wisdom of God. Maybe he’s saying comic strip kids like Billy and Dolly would rather never be born than live in our world.

Or maybe I’m just reading too much into The Family Circus.

Here are the final top 20 search strings people typed into search engines to find my blog for May:

1. glow in the dark tattoos
2. tattoos
3. biomechanical tattoos
4. glow in the dark tattoo
5. embedded tattoos
6. biomechanical tattoo
7. strawberry festival garden grove
8. soccer hooligans
9. child beauty pageant
10. fat asses
11. slutty
12. ana georgean
13. bad tattoos
14. dark tattoos
15. love tattoos
16. celeste kidd defreitas
17. hate burberry
18. celeste kidd
19. robot tattoos
20. weird tattoos

I wasn’t expecting strawberry festival garden grove to be in the top ten, but Mike tells me that the official site was down over the weekend. I think I got traffic from people looking for hours and admissions fees. I hope they weren’t too disappointed to get pictures of Mikeh & me instead! Tattoos are ever popular. My current full name is on there for the first time at #16, which is totally exciting.

I really did mean to blog more this month. Next month.