Review | All's Well That Ends

I didn't get Los Campesinos! at first. When they were making a mark around 2008, all I heard were catchy pop punk riffs, pretty violin tunes to contrast the brashness of it all, and a lot of excited incoherent shouting that would probably have made a fun concert. "Hold on Now, Youngster," their first full album, was in and out of my brainosphere within a month.

One thing did bother me, though. I don't know if this is a convention of the twee genre or what, but they wrote with such an honest, pedestrian perspective that eschewed any higher meaning or higher culture, and I wasn't sure I liked that. What I mean is, their lyrics would make reference to scenesters, drunk dialing, LiveJournal as an emotional outlet, and all these very normal things that bands usually aim above. It's a weird thing to articulate now that I try to. I just know that it felt like they embraced hipsterish irony and snarling youth culture wholeheartedly, and that turned me off.

I was so used to my songwriters being like Will Sheff of Okkervil River, who crafts literary allusions and writes anthems about obscure pop figures, or Sufjan Stevens, who hates television and has to research civic history before making an album. They were above even thinking about LiveJournal, let alone mentioning it into a song's emotional climax. I could probably never sit down and have a normal conversation with Sheff and Stevens because they worked at a higher frequency, but that was okay, the music was heavy and important. Los Campesinos! wrote about being afraid to dance at concerts. How could they be a credible band if they sing about shit I know, from perspectives so pedestrian they're actually rare?

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Essay | Things That Were Cool

Oh, man, after you read this, you aren't going to be my friend anymore.

First, I think I need to explain a little bit about professional wrestling.

Back in the early 1990s, my cousins got me into watching WWF pro-wrestling. We had toys, we watched tapes, we talked, and, yes, threw each other around the room. As with most kids our age, pro-wrestling was one of the things. It was WWF and Power Rangers and Ninja Turtles and it was all a sparkling, shimmering spectacle to young eyes.

Now, those other things I listed still have a modicum of respect among fans as they get older. At some point, there's this weird retrospective part of the brain that starts to mythologize what we liked in our childhood. Transformers and GI Joe are prime examples - we liked them as children and then we liked them as adults. Nostalgia makes things that were uncool, cool again.

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Decade in Decibels

Here we are! Look upon this new decade! The Tens are upon us, and all else is old! With that, here are the 10 albums from 2000 to 2009 that rocked my rocker, which in truth isn't all that notable, since I only started seriously listening to music in 2000 anyway. I mean, I was 12 years old. It's hard to develop any specific affinity for types of music before then.

Included is a handy, inaccurate metaphor that I haphazardly wrote up without a second thought. So if you're looking for an experience to correlate with listening to this hour of emotionally engaging music, maybe this add to your experience! Or maybe it will make no sense, and you will be weirded out, but then you look it up anyway because you have to know, that's just the type of person you are, always seeking, always curious.

I count a decade as '00 to '09, and save '10 through '19 for the next decade. I know years didn't start with zero, thus the first decade was 1 through 10. But 1970 was part of the 70's, not the 60's.

Whatever. List:

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Essay | Chrissmash

You wouldn't know it from my pretentious attempts at being a curmudgeon, but Christmas is actually one of my favorite times of the year. The grain & I go the same way when it comes to this. Fans of the holiday season are often predictable, sheep-like, and fans of kitschy sweaters. But the season has a universal appeal to it, and that's a basic truth.

The first virtue of Christmas is the mood. Despite the rampant consumerism and materialism, there lies at its heart the inclination to do nice things just because. People let you into traffic with a smile, lend you some coins to complete your change or hold the door for you just cause they believe in this one baby born a long time ago.

"But Justin!" you say. "These are basic acts of kindness that should fill our lives regardless of the mandated birth date of a special baby!"

And to that, I would agree. But it's not the way things are. The human mind is an ugly, greedy thing of darkness and we have to take what we can get. While it would be great if the Christmas spirit was the default, having a couple weeks of positive inclinations is good 'nuff for the creatures that invented the Chia pet shaped like Barack Obama's head.

"Good point!" you then say. "How could I have let my cynicism dismiss this season of selflessness?"

Well, don't worry about it. It happens to the best of us.

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I Read On The Road

On The Road by Jack Kerouac is one of those books that I know I was supposed to have read by now, but haven't. I'm sure some of you were required to in school or something - I didn't have one of those classes. My English 1C teacher was making us read Wicked instead. I read the beginning, skipped the middle, read the end, and then wrote my paper on it. It was cool. I lent it out to someone, and they never gave it back, whoever that person is. I don't even remember.

The thing about On The Road is that it seemed like something that I would be into. According to the absolute truth of Wikipedia, it has been responsible for influencing a whole host of folks I admire like Bob Dylan or Hunter S. Thompson. Warren Ellis used to read it once a year. It's about road travel and America and emotional yearning and bonding those are all things that I think are swell. This should have been in my head years ago.

Well, I did. And I decided to write about it because my "books" tag only has one entry, and that's for a comic.

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Essay | On Journalism and Majors

Without fail:

"What are you studying?" they ask with sincerity.
"Creative writing," I answer.
"Oh," they say, with a piqued interest. "So are you thinking of doing journalism?"

Not really, no. Maybe back in those primitive, mesozoic freshman days. But in these modern times, I have moved to the less reliable and riskier field of straight-up fiction. And not profitable young adult fiction about teens-morphing-into-animals or thinly veiled projections of vampire romances. Since 11th grade AP English, I've been indoctrinated in the traditions of literary fiction. I've been pointed in the direction of the big theme, and when I'm lucky I even graze them.

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Essay | Godbloggin'

Everyone with a blog has, at one point, written about god, right? How did I go 4 years of blogging without dropping into this tangled web? I find myself today with writer's blog and an urge to type. With these two conflicting feelings, it seems now may be a good a time as any to try and figure out how I feel and have felt about faith.

To start from the beginning: Born Roman Catholic. Still Catholic, I suppose, culturally if not spiritually. It's complicated and perhaps even vague by design. I was as god-fearing as the church tells you to be all the way until the 8th grade, fear being the operative word. Around that time, after a few readings on the internet and a few sleepless nights, I was an athiest, or perhaps in reality, I was just a lonely and scared child.

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Review | Stirs In Us All

I was introduced to Bright Eyes and Cursive at the same time. They were both essential to shaping my high school brain,from  the way I thought and believed in art to the way I colored my life. Bright Eyes was more prolific and critically acclaimed, releasing several albums in the time it took for Cursive to drop one. So I listened to Bright Eyes more and eventually they became the "main" band of these teenage years.

It bothers me when people don't get Cursive. When they like or dislike them because they sound like some derivation of Thrice, it's disappointing. Underneath the alt-rock chord thrashing, there's some deeply raw writing that deserves more credit. Tim Kasher seems to rip into his soul for his audience, even at the cost of alienating them, even at the cost of strange meta commentary about the song he's singing. He gets to you, if you listen closely.

Cursive's last album was Happy Hollow, a concept about a fictional small town and its hypocrisies, its complex social troubles, and most of all its religion. Cursive always does concept albums. Domestica, one of their best, was the image of a young marriage run through the wood chipper of divorce. The Ugly Organ saw a dark, cello-flavored look at the nature of expressive art and sadness exploitation. The thing is, when you sing about the dark recesses of your mind so often, at some point you run out of things to say. Once you've admitted everything, even admitting your admittance, you're empty. A lot of bands run into this, Bright Eyes included, and there are different options: You can start to tell stories about other people, with some detachment, or you can get political/philosophical. Happy Hollow did both, and as Pitchfork said, they became a "words band."

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Review | I Read Jimmy Corrigan

Some day, I'd like to write a comic. It doesn't have to be superhero, though that would be great, it just has to be something with pictures to go with my words, told sequentially, and have dialogue trapped in little bubbles with a funnel pointing at the principal's head. In order to make this pipe dream a little less pipey, I need a wealth of knowledge of the medium. So I decide to make my way through the classics and the acclaimed: Gaiman, Moore, Tomine, Eisner, Hernandez, Satrapi, Spiegelman, Morrison -- There's a lot of them.

Recently, I decided to pick up Jimmy Corrigan: The Smartest Boy on Earth by Chris Ware. You've probably seen it around in stores. It's that odd, long, rectangular book in the graphic novel section with the flat, basic shape art. It exudes differentness, that is, you can tell it's arty and difficult because it doesn't give a shit about fitting nicely on your bookshelf. What follows is my amateur thoughts and ideas, having now finished the thing.

My first exposure to Ware was a curious cover/comic he did for an edition of Voltaire's Candide for Penguin Classics. It was weird and even out of place, but that just made it seem like a daring choice. That's the basic vibe I get from this book too: an overall strangeness that is a little difficult  read, but the investment brings you in closer overall.

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Essay | Every Sound at Once

Ever since I learned of its existence, the goal was to attend the Coachella Valley Music and Arts Festival.

For a long time, I didn't even attend concerts. While I have always loved music, it didn't occur to me that I could see all this lovely music live, and in person, instead of imagining music videos in my head as I walked home. Then once in 2005, I decided to see Bright Eyes and The Faint at the Grand Olympic Auditorium. The seats were awkward, distant, and obstructed by the underside of the mezzanine above, but I've been all about concert hunting ever since.

I've come to believe that any music is made better live, even the ones that don't line up with my taste. It's something to do with the power of loud, the bass resonating with your ribs, and the groupthink adoration of the fans around you. Concerts are brief windows into an upper reality. The best ones have that moving moment where you forget you're in an audience and for a tiny moment a song is an experience.

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PCN Workblog 5: Epilogue

Credit: Nicholas Lee

It is done.

Although the first workblog was written roughly 300 days before PCN, the official PCN day count ended at 348, just short of a year. But if I want to be honest with myself, planning for PCN began in the very back parts of my brainspace two years ago. Back when I was attending script meetings to figure out what PCN 2008 was going to be, ideas kept trickling in that would later become PCN 2009. I wrote them in my notebook. I fleshed them out on the drive home. I transferred them to a notepad file.

Then later it was there, on stage, in costume and awash in a light special. It's a strange process. From incubation to fertilization to the violent birth pangs until eventually and finally, it is done. Something so introverted, so personal, is outside of my heart. It exploded out of my chest like so many alien parasites and has hopefully burrowed into yours.

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Essay | Wander

College has, through its friendships and connections, given me the good fortune to once again take up travel. Travelling used to be a big part of my childhood. It was a point of pride. When the Mrs. Marquez would make each kid stand up and say something about themselves, my interesting fact would always be the amount of the world I had seen.

By elementary and middle school standards, it's an impressive resume: Saudi Arabia, Singapore, the Philippines, London, New York, Vancouver and more. I wasn't old enough to appreciate the sights much, or fully grasp the new worlds I was entering, but I still had a bigger sense of the planet and its diversity. More so than the other 7-year olds sitting cross-legged on a multicolored carpet.

By 22 year-old standards, that resume is not as impressive. The world turned and travel became less and less of a characteristic of my life. My youth was extraordinarily jet set, but my adolescence was spent staying still. The occasional drive to Las Vegas was the closest I would get to road trips, though it's more of a long-distance wander. I wouldn't get to feel that horrible/wonderful rumble of a plane taking off for years.

Years, until college, which gave it back to me in some small part. We weren't going to Europe or even Texas, but we were travelling again. It was always good, even if it was short-lived or not the life-affirming, answer-finding game changer we always expect from the road. But sometimes the little bites are enough to nourish you. Sometimes the little bites feel like a main course.

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Video | One Fall

Longer than it ought to be, but it gets people's attention for 1) the ridiculous utility of Sigur Ros in any trailer and 2) No one has ever attempted to even mimic movie style trailers before. So it's a good feel.

Review | Beyond That Is Anybody's Guess

M. Ward is a remarkably talented musician. I became a fan when I stumbled upon "Hi-Fi," a smooth and lightly breezy tune from his 2005 album, Transistor Radio. I was surprised to find that raspy deep voice belonged to a frazzy-haired opie-faced dude named Matt. I delved deeper into his back catalog and found a well of soulful blues & folk rock, all of it well-written, moving and sincere.

Then I saw him perform a special solo concert. Normally, he has a band backing him up, but on this night, it was just M. Ward, a guitar, and a loop pedal. On that night he had six fingers on each hand, because the shit he was playing was stunning. His finger picking speed and the ease of which he pulled off the complicated layering was astonishing. I often enjoy concerts, but I rarely leave an even bigger fan.

Ever since, I've never been hesitant to put M. Ward's music somewhere in my top ten, even five. His most recent album, "Post-War," solidified it with his best songs yet in "Chinese Translation," "To Go Home," and the heart-bursting "Poison Cup." He had reached a mountaintop in his last album. How do you keep the momentum going in Hold Time? This album was also the first since his success with Zoey Deschanel as the other side of the ampersand in She & Him. But he doesn't get to sing in that band. So for that wondrous bluesy croon, we go to Hold Time.

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PCN Workblog 4: Sleepless

I am, you might say, in the thick of things. I'm at the part where the work starts to drain you, just a little bit. Most of the drain comes from keeping all the work in mind. What you still need to do, what you need to prepare, what you need to buy: these are the things that dominate my head in a vicious cycle. The actual act of directing and deconstructing? That's fine. Sometimes, doing it for four hours straight is a bit mentally exhausting, but I've survived so far. The weight of everything else, well, I'm starting to get sick of that.

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Essay | We Had Courts

It's hard to tell now, but basketball used to be a defining part of my life. When I was a child, it was more than just a hobby and sport of choice, but my goal in life. Back when Michael Jordan and the Chicago Bulls defined the league, when Dennis Rodman was more than just obscure pop culture trivia, when Nick Van Exel was the coolest guy on the Lakers. Today, it's a faint lingering taste. It's a source of brief nostalgia.

Charles Barkley, Dennis Scott, Shawn Kemp, Grant Hill, Tony Kukoc, David Robinson: these guys were my NBA. They was my cast of characters that I had grown to know from stats on the back of Upper Deck trading cards and blurbs in SLAM magazine. Now, these guys are either all retired as color commentators or analysts. A few are still playing, but as backups to backups, veterans with limited minutes in free agent limbo whose sole purpose is provide mentorship or act as maturing influences on the locker room.

The prime example of this fall was Penny Hardaway, who could be described as my basketball idol. I had the shoes, jersey, even sent him a letter (all I got back was an application for his fan club.) It's not uncommon: Penny Hardaway's work with Nike & Chris Rock on the Li'l Penny shoe commercials made him a household name and a piece of 90's pop culture. It endeared him as the cool new star that young kids could latch onto, many of which still latch onto today. It's a rare quality for sports stars: not just a following, but a cult following.

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Essay | Wretched

As a child, when I found out that the Philippines was a former colony of the United States, my first thought was, "Cool." They don't teach you what colony means or what colonialism is in school. Your frame of reference is the American Revolution - you think it means a distant governorship, maybe some taxes charged, but otherwise, everything remains unmolested. Colonialism doesn't mean violence, it doesn't mean the manipulation and systematic molding of people. In school, "colony" is just an empty term meaning, "part of."

So it was "cool." Cool, because it meant I wasn't really an Other anymore. It meant that I didn't have to represent this strange, foreign outside image and that I fit in to the mainstream like everyone else. That I should be accepted as one of them. I was glad. I felt normal.

This was the outcome of a one hundred year plan. The stage is set like this: There was a random smattering of islands in Southeast Asia. Seven thousand, give or take, populated with different peoples, different ethnic groups, different languages and tribes and religions. Spanish explorer Magellan tries to sail across the world, but crashes into one of the islands and gets a dagger the liver for his trouble. Trade goes through with the Chinese, with Muslims, with their neighbors, and various parts of the island show the influence.

Fast forward. A guy (well, a king) named Philip sees thousands of islands and over 70 different languages and decides to draw a border around all of them and call them his own. With no regard for their own ethnic borders and unique culture, the Spanish forced the creation of a single nation out of many. King Philip decides to name the nation, and thus the people, after himself. Their message was Catholicism. The fever caught on everywhere except in the very north and the very south.

Fast forward, again, this time roughly 500 years. The people have taken the name Pilipino, or Filipino, derived from Philip, or Felipe. They finally fight off the colonizers. A revolutionary and polymath named Jose Rizal uses the term Pilipino as a personal identity, to much controversy. In some ways, it's an inspiring call to unity, a call for one people with the singular purpose of fighting off their oppressors. In other ways, it's an acceptance of the colonialist structure forced upon them.

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Essay | Requiescat

There were some amazing artists on this planet. There's the common saying that artists suffer for their art, because that's one of the most common routes for passion and ideas. But some suffer more than others. Some suffer for their art until they just stop suffering. And making art. And breathing.

Is that an enticing enough introduction yet? I'm here to write about three awesome artists in three different fields that all up and died unexpectedly.

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