I know there's one more day left in the month, but I won't be able to have access to the internet tomorrow cause I'm gonna be up in the Antelope Valley for the weekend.
Speaking of that, fate, destiny or whatever you want to call it, picked the wrong time to start wild fires up in the mountains next to Palmdale and Acton yesterday. I really hope this doesn't affect my route going up to Lancaster cause I really, REALLY don't like driving up there via the 14 freeway. Honestly, I'm scared (not that Chuckie Finster scared) of driving on that highway, so thank God there's the Sierra highway as an alternative. They had to evacuate a lot of people living in the West side of Palmdale and moved them to evacuation centers, to get away from the smoke in the mountains next to their homes. Shoutout to the Los Angeles Fire Department for putting out this fire as soon as possible cause temperature will double since the Antelope Valley is in the desert and trust me, it gets VERY hot up there at this time. I say this cause I spent last summer up there working as a security guard for an unfinished Walgreens, which is already done right now when I was up there last week for the first time in a year. That place looks different, with no fences, no dirt and still the same old-ass Kmart next to it.
But other than that, last week was good. Almost great but good.
So last Thursday, I was invited to a taping in Malibu for the Madden NFL Pigskin Pro-Am event, which is a celebrity Flag Football event that will air on the NFL Network and possibly Sunday Night Football on NBC during the season. We had to meet at the Paramount Ranch in Agoura Hills to check in since this was a television taping. There were a lot of people dressed in NFL jerseys which made me think that it was 2004 all over again. I was surprised that there were more females and their kids than males that attended for this. We all had stand in line for 5 hours and it kept growing and growing every 20 minutes. Later the people from EA Sports, who were running and sponsoring the event came, check us in, and gave all of us T-shirts to wear while we're going to be on camera. They gave the first 400 (including myself) blue shirts and they gave the last 400 red shirts. The colors are going to be coordinated for each team during the that we have to "root and cheer" for.
Finally an hour later the buses came. I thought it was gonna be a shuttle since EA Sports and the NFL were sponsoring this, but unfortunately, it was a school bus. Now, I haven't been inside a school bus since April of 2006, when I went on a field trip to the Van Nuys Airport in 12th grade.
I didn't like to be with the people in the bus, since they spent the whole ride debating about which team is gonna have a better season and shit-talking about other people's favorite team.
We finally got there to the location, which is right across the Pacific Coast Highway from Pepperdine University. As we settled, one of the event coordinators gave us free bags of Doritos and said that we have to open them up as soon as one of the cameras pans towards us. That's some thing that Jay Leno should do again instead of hosting The Tonight Show right now, and I haven't even seen one episode of his second tenure.
Back to the event, the coordinator also told us that which ever team won, the fans representing that team gets a free copy of Madden 2011, which is not out yet until the second week of August. I was told before this that the first 800 people that showed up gets the free copy of the game, but we were never told before hand that we were gonna represent the teams and get the free game if whichever one wins. Almost every event lately this year has been doing this type of shit, telling everyone the information at the last fucking minute. Why am I upset about this? Cause our team gave up a lead by a last second touchdown at the end, in which we lost. That shit was staged of course, even though its gonna be on TV.
The best part of the whole thing was getting to see some hall of famers. Alot of Superbowl winning retirees were there, including Jerry Rice, Rod Woodsoon (who I already met two years ago and got an autograph from him), Joe Montana, Kurt Warner, Terrell Owens (who I also met four years ago in Oxnard back when the Cowboys used to have their training camp there), motherfuckin' DEION SANDERS (which I'm still surprised to see him in person) and some other athletes that I can't think for now. Now a Celebrity Flag football event isn't a Celebrity Flag Football event without....celebrities of course. Its mostly people that I've met many times that participated such as Stacey Keibler and Maria Menounos (who spent the whole damn game rushing on Kurt Warner when she's on Defense). Also there were some surprising stars that participated such as Quinton Aaron from The Blind Side, Shannon Elizabeth from the original American Pie, Craig Robinson, who will always be remembered as "the black dude from the Seth Rogen/Judd Apathow movies", James Van Der Beek who I haven't heard from since 2001, and also it was great to see Rich Eisen of the NFL Network as well. I could ask him to see if they can bring the NFL Network accessible to the San Fernando Valley already. Even though we didn't walk away with a video that I would've made a serious fortune out of, I kinda enjoyed the event. I meant, we got free Pizza from Papa Johns, free T-shirts that we can keep and we got to demo the game as well.
On Saturday, I went back to church for the first time in about a month and a half. Didn't stay too long for potluck cause there was an event called REBEL8 that was happening at Melrose. I found about this on Facebook and I decided to check it out since I had to be at the Hollywood Park in Inglewood later that night. It was at this place called De La Barracuda, which is a skate shop that's like Active and Val Surf. At the event, there's was a live graffiti show, free food and a huge trailer with the DJ playing some music. It was mostly a kickback party to me, but it was really a pre-party for an event later inside the store. Plus the members of the band Angels and Airwaves were there. I didn't stay to long cause I met some lady there who about in her early thirties who needed a lift to her place, so I offered her a ride, and the other reason was that there wasn't that much action there. It was just a kick back.
After I gave that lady a ride, I drove to one of my friend's house who lives right next to Inglewood. I haven't seen him in two years, and it felt like I just saw him last week. I stayed for about an hour cause I have to be at the Hollywood Park by 5PM. There was gonna be some Nigerian event there that I was assigned to take photos and video of. This was my first time going inside Hollywood park and that place looks old inside. I only took exterior pictures and not that much interior pictures cause I didn't want security to go on my ass and also, they have a casino inside.
It took three hours for the event to start, and it went on for a long time. It even continued when I left at 2AM. I was glad I got out of Inglewood safely on a Sunday morning. Then following that day, my sisters and I wanted to drive to Camarillo Premium Outlets. We were gonna take the 101 straight to there, but the traffic there was a mess on that freeway when we approached the 101/405 interchange, so I told my sister to continue down the 405 and get off Sunset Blvd. We then went through Brentwood, then Pacific Palisades and finally we got to the Pacific Coast Highway. I told her that we can get to Camarillo from the PCH as an alternative. Now as we got to Malibu on the PCH, there was a BUMPER TO BUMPER TRAFFIC ON A SUNDAY AFTERNOON IN THE PACIFIC COAST HIGHWAY. Very uncommon since that is something you'd see during rush hour. It lasted 45 minutes and then it cleared once we drove past the same area I was at that previous Thursday, right across from Pepperdine University. I've never driven past that point before and I didn't know what to expect on the upcoming road. During the long journey ,we drove by Zuma Beach, which I've never been to before and we also drove by Point Mugu, which looks dope as hell cause they have a little mountain made out of sand on the side of the road, like you're going snow sledding.
After getting lost for like 5 minutes, we finally made it to the outlets thanks to my common sense knowledge of living in Ventura County for the summer 4 years ago. They didn't have anything at the Nike Factory Store and plus the store got more brighter and more people started to come inside than before. I only got two T-shirts from the Nautica store for 25 dollars, probably the only decent store I'll shop at the next time I visit the outlets. Finally, we stopped at In-N-Out cause my little sister wants to get some food there and then we went home, making me miss living in Ventura County more, and I watched one the best Top Gear episodes I've ever, ever seen. It was brilliant.
Then the rest of the week got slow, didn't do that much except washing my American Apparel t-shirts three times by accident. Don't know why, but they're clean. By the way, major shoutout to my friend Stephen for hooking me up with the Thank Me Later Drake album. I had that shit on repeat six times. Enjoy turning 21 man.
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