Drift Reality

When it comes to Iranian restaurants, I’m a discriminating bastard because the quality of my Mom’s cooking is such that it has completely ruined me from enjoying anything but the best Iranian food. So when I go to an Iranian restaurant and I say that the food is “decent,” it should be taKarl to mean that the food is out of this world, it’s just that in comparison to my Mom’s cooking, anything short of perfection is average.

Anyway, there are basically two Iranian restaurants in San Diego: Sadaf and Bandar. Of the two, Sadaf has better food. Recently, I was pleasantly surprised to find the Caspian Corner, a small Iranian restaurant/cafe in University Heights, located at 4646 Park Blvd (619-298-2801).

It is a family-run restaurant that caters to a more new-age/vegan/tree-hugging group. This means the Kebob Kubideh that I know and love is absent from their menu. On the other hand, they have delicious Lubia Polo and Ghormeh Sabze, at mind-bogglingly low prices. The ambience is intimate and cozy and you will feel like you are eating in someone’s house. The family who owns the restaurant are extremely warm and friendly and you are destined to have an enjoyable experience if you go there. They also have an extensive menu of various teas from around the world.

It already is one of my favorite places in San Diego. If only they would make Kebob and get rid of the hippies, it would be my single-most favorite place in San Diego.

I’ve started work on incorporating Miguk into this site. The film is intended to be shown in one shot, but due to technical constraints, I’ve had to split it up into different chapters.

I really put a lot of my soul into these so I hope you all enjoy. This is really the first thing I’ve created which I’m truly proud of and which I think somehow whispers something bigger. Miguk has given me a foundation upon which I’m thinking about creating more short films that somehow incorporate aspects of music, poetry, and of course the visual medium. It is interesting because part of the reason for this format is the technological confines that I have had to work with, but somehow in the midst of existing in leeway, I think I’ve found something that I can become attached to.

I saw Waking Life last night and it completely blew me away. There was something organic about the film, which was a refreshing break from the endless stream of manufactured vomit that comes out of Hollywood on a daily basis.

The film director Luis Bunuel once spoke of a disturbing trend that he had observed in cinema, in which film audiences would enter a zombie-like trance state during a film and become passive entities. Waking Life departs from this phenomenon and enters into a territory in which the audience must constantly focus and re-focus its gaze in order to follow the stream of thought on the screen.

Linklater (the film’s director) somehow manages to pull of the seemingly impossible feat of creating a feature-length film that is an amalgamation of various theories and philosophies on the subject of the human condition. There is a slight whisper of narrative structure in the film, but it is more of a secondary device than anything else. Like the concept of the Gesamtkunstwerk, the soul of the film emanates through as something beyond the sum of its individual parts. That something is a comprehension of the vastness of the universe, but not in a manner that might lead one to dwell on his or her lack of presence, rather, it is a comprehension of some unspeakable binding-force that connects us as phenomenon and subsequently legitimizes our existence as human beings.

When I think about sushi, I want to imagine the following: a wide array of flavors on my taste buds, the feeling of wasabi wafting through my sinuses, and cute Japanese girls. At Ichiban, I can get all these things at ridiculously cheap rates. On Tuesday, they have a half-price special from 3:30 until 9:30. I go there every Tuesday, and eat sixteen rolls there, and take sixteen roles home with me to eat for dinner. The sushi is very fresh, the rice somehow manages to retain its fluffiness, and the girls are cute and have Japanese accents which is also very cute. Ichiban is the Bronx Pizza of sushi places in San Diego. There really is no reason to go anywhere else.

I’ve written another article for SLAMM, although I must say I had trouble recognizing it after it had been edited. The article is on Zero-7, which is a great band. FYI - they are coming to ‘Canes Bar & Grill on April 29.

The site is mostly functional, although I’m still trying to work out some kinks here and there. If anyone sees any dead links or anything else that is screwy, it would be much appreciated if it were reported to me. One new video in the film section so check it out. Incidentally, I want to expand the site to include other people’s work also so if you have something you want me to post, feel free to contact me via e-mail.

A friend of a friend recently perused my site and here is what she had to say:

I checked out Jiyan’s website and if he didn’t look so straight-laced one would think that he was a gay snorter-trendmeister with all his concert crap and talk of Karl. Every other sentence had Karl’s name in it and of course with his Ross Gellar V-neck banana republic garb it accentuates his gaieties. It’s so confusing as he wants to maintain his goody-two-shoes/momma’s boy front but then has this hard time choosing between raving or being a hippy-all with borderline gen-x trend left-over IKEA yuppie idealisms.

That’s pretty funny stuff.

I needed to change this site. I got sick and tired of hearing “Jiyan, your website is so narcissistic,” or “Jiyan, why are there so many pictures of yourself all over your website?” or “Jiyan, get your head out of your arse.” Anyway, I made some changes and I hope that everyone will be happy now god damnit.

After spending about twenty minutes on the prowl for a parking space, my friend and I began our night at Dick’s Last Resort Restaurant (619-231-9100, 345 4th Ave.). We were greeted at the door by a bouncer that looked like a Sasquatch with no hair and whose feet were the size of cinder blocks.

As I walked in the door, I was immediately assaulted by a barrage of sensations, not all of them pleasant. The place holds true to it’s namesake by providing customers with a large interior that looks like a honky-tonk bar that has been simultaneously hit by a tornado and a tidal wave of beer. The floor was decorated with an assortment of flyers, napkins, and ambiguous organic objects and through a crowd of drunKarl customers, I could see a stage with a rowdy band that includes scantily clad female singers that looked more like go-go dancers.

I walked to the bar and waited patiently for the bartender to ask me what I wanted. After a few minutes of trying to beckon to her telepathically, I was startled when a young man stumbled up next to me and shouted “Red Bull.” The waitress immediately handed him several cans of Red Bull. I turned to him and asked, “Does that really work?”

His response: “It does if you work here.”

With that, he turned and walked away. I decided to try this tactic, turning to the bartender and shouting “Red Bull,” and to my surprise, she immediately approached me and I ordered my drinks.

My companion and I soon found a vacated table facing the stage, and we sat down and began to sip our drinks. I noticed that the band was doing an excellent job of covering the theme song to “Moulan Rouge,” and amused myself by watching the drunKarl gyrations on the dance floor for a few minutes.

My reverie was interrupted by a middle-aged gentleman who had a ponytail that looked like a raccoon. He was wearing a faded paisley short-sleeve button down that was tucked into khaki pants and he was leaning over, talking with a young Asian girl.

They stood up and I watched as they began to dance together in a manner in which I imagined giraffes might if they were capable of standing on two legs for a prolonged amount of time. Gradually, his hands descended from her waist to her bottom, where they clamped shut around her cheeks. And here I was thinking that they only did that in the movies.

I feel that this was pretty much indicative of the spirit that resided within Dick’s Last Resort. We finished our drinks and it was time to go. The bartender sent me off with an amiable “you want to settle your tab and go? Well, get the hell out of here!”

3/6/02 - HAPPY BIRTHDAY MOM! It is my Mom’s Birthday today and I want to wish her all the best. She has put up with my antics for all these years, God bless her.

Currently, I’ve been working on a narrative based on my trip to Korea as well as a fun little video with Karl about how much it sucks to get fired. Anyway, the video should be done in the next few weeks.

Until next time. . .