shopping in la jolla!

the beautiful, famed, and illustrious la jolla, california. btw, i'm sorta proud of this shot

pops was in rehearsal all day today, so i shopped! 

my first stop was the museum of contemporary art design store... because there is truly nothing better than a good museum shop! 

conventional teddy bears are so in the past... (from left to right) joe the egg, mr. bacon, and mr. toast

this place will always hold a special part in my heart because it is the first store where i was ever exposed to the fabulous ugly dolls! since then, they've gotten some other pretty killer kids' stuffs.... like stuffed bacon, eggs, and toast... and those weird donkey chairs that they have at the continental in philadelphia. 

i know your secrets, steven starr

after the museum, i strolled down prospect street to the cutesy, old fashioned powell's sweet shop. they're no dylan's, but they've got a lot of charm and all of the necessities, like rice paper candy and vintagey gum. 

i hope the actual gum itself isn't vintage... that'd be gross

beech's cute chochkies and things

i then discovered this adorable little boutique called beech on girard street. they had such cute and funky dresses by designers that i've never heard of before. they also had a ton of darling jewelry, as well as a collection of mezuzahs that are fit for the jappiest of all japs. and ohhh how i wanted a skull scarf so badly, but i kept telling myself, "yeh, you have to furnish an apartment!"

who in southern california wears scarves anyways? 

a pretty chair from M.O.S. on girard street that might be perfect in a certain new apartment of mine

of course, i had to hit up warwick's. the best stationary and book store evurrrrrr. it's been around for like a zillion years. this shop, too, will always hold a place in my heart since it is the first store where i ever laid eyes on a moleskine notebook. i must have been 12 or 13 because for some reason i remember wearing a michael stars shirt (those were so the rage in middle school), and i was, as i still am now, on the eternal quest for the perfect diary. at the time i thought i had found it- the elastic closure, the plain black cover, the narrow lines and high quality off white paper, OH, and the little pocket in back for secrets :-). it was nice to revisit this shop of my past, and to see what silly little wonders they had that you can't find at most stationary stores (like bunny shaped scissors, pencil cases that look like slices of pizza, cupcake erasers...)

moleskine, are we in luv?

excuse me, but are you the perfect diary by any chance?

When I walked into LF on girard street, i thought that i was in a thrift shop at first. i was soo wrong. i think that's what they want you to think... when you take a closer look, you realize everything is so beautiful and flowery and pretty and girlie and luscious! it was in fact rather overwhelming how many items were crammed into such a small space... but i did see many a dress that i would have looooved to try on, but the little voice in the back of my head kept screaming, "apartment!!!" 

LF

taschen's new york, as seen at warwick's. in my humble opinion, this is the perfect coffee table book. for a certain new coffee table in a certain new new york apartment, to be certain. not that i'm hinting at anything.. or anything..

what up, in-n-out

the inaugural interview: john yeh (aka DAD)

behold, my pops!! (seen here with the famous and illustrious marianne chen, my makeshift auntie- in the most embarrasing photo i could find of him on facebook)

the basics

full name: john bruce yeh

birthdate: 05.23.1957

hometown: los angeles, ca

occupation: musician, chicago symphony orchestra

my name is yeh: welcome to my blog, paternal unit! did you know that this is what i was fidgeting with on my computer last night when you yelled at me for being anti-social?

john bruce yeh: no i did not! but thank you for explaining such

m: so let's start off easy... what would be your last meal on earth?

j: it would have to be extremely large, bulk food. yes, extremely bulk food. it would have to have a large variety of food items including, but not limited too: paella (my favorite food item), caviar, probably small tastings of molecular gastronomy, and of course charlie trotter would have to be involved... oh and of course (your sister) jenna would have to contribute.

(sister jenna, more commonly known as stoop)

m: was your meal at charlie trotter's the best meal you ever ate?

j: yes. that, or alinea
m: favorite composer?
j: mozart. other favorites include stravinsky and schoenberg.
m: favorite piece of music?
j: that's tough. you're asking such hard questions!
m: if you had to have musical accompaniment to your last meal?
j: either mozart or brahms.. something extended like the gran partita... or... (he gets distracted and has to ask for directions to the freeway. we are, by the way, en route from los angeles to la jolla).
m: favorite daughter?
j: hahahahahahaha.....no.

m: if you weren't a musician, what would your job be?
j: prolly a kind of doctor. but at this point i might have changed. so maybe a chef.
m: what's it like having a 3 year old daughter and a 23 year old daughter?
j: i think it's pretty cool. you guys can learn from each other and have very cool experiences together and for me i'm going through fatherhood twenty years later again and it's really interesting because i learned from experience but at the same time i have less energy. i think it's especially cool for mia because she can learn from such older siblings and i think it helps her to be more mature.
m: you've had the same job for 32 years now, what keeps you excited to go back every day?
j: we play new pieces, we have new colleagues, and we have new performances of the same pieces that we've played time after time and we try to do them to a higher level...and the great masterpieces require many different interpretations.
(john yells at me for the capitalization thing. what gives?).
m: what's the worst part of your job?
j: the stress.
m: the principal clarinet position in the cso has been open for quite some time, and you've auditioned for it twice but haven't won. how does that feel? and what will be different about the third time around?
j: the third time will hopefully be the charm. i've learned so much over the past two years of auditioning and its a process that continues. the audition process is so different from day to day performance preparation.

m: tell us about your audition preparation.
j: you have to imagine how you would sound in an empty hall and still imagine the orchestral context. i always knew that you have to show knowledge of orchestral context, but now i've learned that you also have to sound attractive in an isolated situation. if you play exactly the way you would play in an orchestra during the audition, you might not have as good as results as if you tweeked things so you sound really good by yourself. sometimes i think you have to be more in a box in an audition because if you play with an orchestra, they give you more latitude to do things out of the box. this is sort of ironic actually. but that's been my experience.
m: do you use beta blockers?
j: i don't even know what those are.
m: what do you eat before an audition?
j: a few days before i have a lot of pasta. the morning of, eggs, or something else with protein.
m: caffeine?
j: absolutely not.

m: did you party or go crazy in college?
j: nope. no substances. the craziest thing i did was sneak into carnegie hall on a regular basis.
m: what was dan druckman like in college?
j: what? dan druckman??! he was pretty much like he is now. very serious but at the same time casual and laid back. he was a really really cool, but serious dude.

dan druckman and daughter holly

m: how many girlfriends did you have before my mum?
j: well that depends on what you would consider a girlfriend... when i was in high school, it was carol robinson. when i first got into the cso, it was nina allen. she played the horn and her father invented the allen wrench. at juilliard, i wanted diane barere to be my girlfriend. but she didn't really want to be my girlfriend.
m: ouch. sorry bout that. so that's all of the questions. any final words? no more than ten.
j: live clean, live full, live with your ears and your eyes open. is that ten words?
m: sure. we didn't go to math school.

welcome!!

hello friends and welcome to my new blog! how excited i am to finally be posting, after (what seemed like) hours and hours of finding acceptable layouts, fonts, pictures, etc. Unfortunately, my newness to the blogging community leaves me clueless as to how to use pretty fonts and images like my current fave blogs, the rockstar diaries and the english muse (these blogs also happen to be my inspiration for starting my own!). 

anywho. 

let's get down to business...

this is mia. she's 3 and she's my sister. she knows more about opera than me, and today we went hunting for sharks and mermaids. we're on vacation now visiting our extended family in hermosa beach, ca. my theory on not needing to use sunscreen if i already have a tan failed. oops. 

hello, fishermen!