Last night the theater was the scene of an Erk Tha Jerk video. I got to be behind the scenes and watch it all unfold. I gotta say I didn't know shooting a video even as simple as this one was so much work.



They shot well into the night. The guys went the extra mile for this one. We were out there til late, 4am late.



Perfectionists.



Keane hit me up a few weeks ago with an idea about shooting a video at our theater and I was all for it.



The idea was to throw a movie night for Erk and his buddies. They brought quite an extensive collection. Everything from The Last Dragon to Reservoir Dogs.



We're probably the only theater cool enough to do this kind of stuff. Makes me proud.



Erk's homie Vell looks about ready to go on a basketball card with this one.



Erk tha Jerk ladies and gentlemen. Be on the lookout for the video. From what I saw it's gonna be another great one.

If there's a dessert that makes me proud to be from the Bay Area it's gotta be the "It's-It." I don't even like vanilla ice cream or oatmeal cookies by themselves but when they're combined they're probably the greatest thing since Twitter or all those Taiwanese animations of the news. They're only sold in California and a couple other places in the US and I'm glad I live in one of them.

I can see the factory with the big metal It's-It on top of it from the freeway every time I go to the city. I've tried to get a tour for the blog but it's not open to the public and they won't budge.



Until I get that tour of the factory I'll have to live enjoying It's-Its without knowing what it looks like when they're made. I'll survive.

I headed out to MikeYo's house Saturday night for his birthday celebration. You guys remember MikeYo right? I got there really early before everyone had the chance to get hammered so I was lucky enough to get everyone to pose for a picture.



Mike and I work together and we're always getting into the craziest shit. He's been working at the old theater longer than me, and he has a million hilarious anecdotes from his career there. Like this one time when he caught a bunch of middle schoolers having an orgy in one of our theaters. I happened to be there for that one and it was as gross and awkward as it sounds.



Spiffy is Mike's cousin and not only is he an up and coming chef but he's a big supporter of the blog. Thanks Spiff.



Sounds about right.



I asked them what they were starting off the night with and Mike pulled this out. Who knows what happened after that.

Takin' it back to a personal favorite of mine. Happy Monday.

I got a phone call Friday night from my boy Louis telling me to come over because our good friend Alex Mang was going far away and he wasn't coming back anytime soon. At first I thought Louis was a filthy liar who was trying to lure me to over to one of his awkward gatherings but I gave him the benefit of the doubt and I drove my behind over there.

When I got there I realized it was really happening, Alex was leaving to start a new chapter of his life in Indonesia.



The get together happened in our friend Rodney's garage. I love that place. I've only been there twice but both times I've gotten two different lasting impressions. There was a screen door sitting right above us, that's not where screen doors go!



Rodney (left) and Alex (right) hugged one last time.



I met a couple who showed me pictures of their beautiful daughter and asked if I would be down to shoot a portrait of her and I told them I'd be glad to.



Farewell Alex, you'll be truly missed by all your buddies out here and good luck in Indonesia, I hope you decide to come back sooner than later. Oh and if you ever pass through Thailand stay away from the Thai Ladyboys. Unless you don't want to stay away from them then by all means dig in.

My car's been acting up so I've been driving "Old Blue" around the past few days. This trucks been in our family forever. I learned to drive in this truck. She was my first.

A thing of beauty she is.







None of us know who Mikey D is and we never got around to taking that off.

Yesterday at the theater we raffled off two tickets for todays A's game. It's a promotion for the movie Moneyball with Jonah Hill and Brad Pitt. I'm actually looking forward to it since they filmed a lot of it in Oakland.



Paul takes special care whenever he handles anything related to baseball.



Sony Pictures provided us with these AWESOME Moneyball shirts that weren't wrinkled at all.



I'm glad to see we had a great turnout. The people were going crazy when we announced the winners. Just kidding.



Moneyball opens in theaters Friday. Come to our theater in Newark and watch it so we can keep this crappy old place open a little longer.

Today a digitally re-dope-afied version of The Lion King opens in theaters and it'll only play for 2 weeks. All the little kids get these cool limited edition Simba 3D glasses. I usually don't blog about this kind of stuff but this movie is near and dear to me because it's the first movie I ever watched in theaters.



These make me wish we had 3D movies like these when I was kid.

I visited my Alma Mater today because Wendy had never seen the ins and outs of James Logan High School and because my sister insisted I take a tour of their new Performing Arts Center.



Not bad Logan, I'm impressed.



The rest of the school is just as I left it 2 years ago.



The school's covered in these really bad murals that make our walls look like the backdrop of a bad 90's movie. I always thought they let the special classes draw these but it turns out they were supposedly drawn by our "best" artists. That makes me feel bad.



Stuffing freshman into their lockers at Logan was always pretty hard. We had to fold them all sorts of ways to get them to fit into those tiny things but believe me they fit.



and for the students of Logan: watch your step when you're crossing the street onto the swimming complex, el barto seems to have marked his territory at your school.

One of the things I've always loved about where I live is the diversity. People from all over the world bringing all these cultures together which means a whole bunch of different kinds of food all in one place.

My boy Nav put me on all these snacks from his motherland, India. (He asked to be referred to as Punjabi, and he insists I point out there is a serious difference between Punjab and the rest of India.)



Where we have Sprite India has Limca. It's a thousand times sweeter and way more carbonated. You gotta mentally prepare yourself before you drink one of these. India doesn't play around when it comes to soda pop.



I recommend the little cookies he gave me called Parle G. They're 10 CENTS a pack and they're good with some nutella on them. Dip these cookies in jam or nutella and you got yourself a little piece of heaven in your mouth. Pause.

You know, working at this little old theater in the middle of nowhere has its perks. I mean that. I get decent pay, the lightest workload you could possibly imagine, all the movie theater food I can eat,



and a pretty cool view that's always changing depending on what new movie we're playing.

Start the week with Wax's "Two Wheels" not only because it's a dope song that'll make you feel like shit's all good but because I'm in the video for the acoustic version of the song. I ended up in there because I went to his show at the Ritch in SF, remember?

It was my kid sis Daisy's birthday this weekend and she asked me to get the cake for her birthday dinner. The only thing I know about cake is how to eat it so I turned to the Yelp app on my phone for advice and it brought me to this cool little bakery in San Francisco's Chinatown. I'm not sure if I was really in Chinatown but it seemed like it because of all the fried ducks hanging upside down everywhere.



I figured I'd get two cakes, a girly one for my sister and a Tiramisu for my Dad and me.



Daisy likes Pandas so I told the lady who was making it to incorporate a Panda into the cake somewhere.

So creative.

I've always thought its crazy how I can get in the car and drive to the store to grab a bag of chips and some rubbing alcohol or something and I'll still find a way to get lost.



Really lost.

When I have nothing to report on here I'm gonna start taking pictures of random stuff and calling it Candid Camera. I guess you can say that's what I always do on here but this is different, somehow.

Candid Camera: Bird with the Runs Edition.



Candid Camera: El Barto Stencil Edition.



By the way stay on the lookout, my crappy little stencil might be closer to you than you think. Like on this elevator.

Candid Camera: I Just Noticed I Always Hold Everything the Same Exact Way Every Time I Take a Picture of it Edition. Abba Zaba you're my only friend! I threw it away as soon as I tried it. It's gross.