We Are Up All Night

The only thing I am moved to write about these days is the perplexing limbo of post-graduate life. I'm not wild about the retread either, but do you know what happens if I don't write about it? I listen to slow music and lie down and just think about it for hours. I can't afford to lose that kind of productivity to pent up preoccupation. I'm trying to revamp myself here.

I am trying to map out a path through the rest of my life and they all seem more daunting and unlikely with each second. Some of them even have deadlines. I know I want to write, because I don't want to sell you fax machines for a living, but I don't know what type of equally unsuccessful field I should pursue. In terms of recent developments, I have an alphanumeric filing test tomorrow to qualify for an interview at a decent paying office job, and I have just come off my first stint as a PA on a student film, which I will have to write about at length sometime later. The short version is this: Being a PA is rough, rough work and full of long hours that I could only handle if I was getting paid, which I wasn't. I had second thoughts.

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Review | All I Couldn't Sing

Sufjan Stevens is one of my musical heroes. I don't know when I decided this, but you can tell it's happened when you start making assumptions about an artist based on small inferences. You concoct a fascinating back story and song meanings that only you, the avid fan, understand. It's the reason you never meet your heroes, yet the basis of all hardcore fandom.

This tendency to fill in the blanks of your favorite artists is a little bit creepy, a little bit wrong, but completely within your rights as a fan with nothing better to do. It is part of the price of being a public artist; everyone gets to interpret and participate in art's communal conversation.

Sufjan Stevens is the kind of figure that gives you a lot of blanks. His interviews are rare, his songs are wrapped in mystery or mixed with fiction, and he is overall hard to figure out. We know that he is a writer, from Michigan, a multi-instrumentalist and a Christian. He also released one of the greatest albums in modern independent music, Illinois, which was a sprawling work about the state, past and present, fact and fiction. It won a million awards including album of the decade.

But Illinois was 5 years ago. Since then, he has put out a compilation of b-sides, a mixed-media orchestral suite, and commissioned a remix of one of his earliest electronic albums. In terms of original material, every once in a while we would get a song or two, small morsels at best, usually on charity-based compilations like Dark Was The Night.

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No Key No Plan

Two years ago, when I was still in college, I decided to put graduate school off for a year. I wasn't wild about a master's degree, I wanted a break, but in this economy, another degree seemed increasingly necessary depending on your field.

For me, that meant a Master of Fine Arts Degree, which sounds important as all hell until you found out what it really is. I worked a bit in that interim year, relaxed, took a road trip and basked in the endless vacation and crippling fear of my uncertain future. When application cycles came around in late 2009, I narrowed down my prospects to 4 California schools. Of those 4, I got into one, where the tuition and fees were so high that it was enough to actually buy you love. The Beatles would've freaked.

So I didn't go, I planned to take another year off, work some more, wallow in limbo, etcetera. It's September again, and application holes have been open for a few weeks. Now is the time that I should get serious, re-editing my edits, thinking, printing and feeling bad. But I'm afraid I'm not so sold on graduate school anymore.

I'm not arrogant enough to believe that my writing is good, or at least, good enough. I can recognize that there is a whole different higher plane of quality that I have not attained in order to be publishable or capable of getting into any school on this Top 50 MFA Programs list that came in my latest issue of Poets & Writers. This is not self-deprecation, or false humility, this is just a realistic evaluation that I have grown to comfortably accept.

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Video | The Empirical Highway of Life

Our roadtrip up to Oak Harbor, Washington as well as some excursions to Anacortes and Seattle. Obviously, I'm running out of ways to make footage-from-the-backseat-as-we-drive look interesting. This will probably be the last music video/travelogue i'll attempt until I have the know-how & equipment to do something different. Song: Efterklang - "Modern Drift"

Jetpack Future

I am listening as I write, to poet John Berryman talk about Anna Karenina in a 1967 interview on YouTube. He died by way of horrific, dramatic suicide in 1972 (bridge, missed water) but when I click out of this tab, I can see him in grainy black and white footage in a small box that measures 5 inches by 4 inches. He has a thick, scholarly beard that I wouldn't have imagined on him, and he moves a lot when he talks. When he recites a piece, he fidgets and turns enough to remind me of Michael J. Fox.

He speaks with a incisive forcefulness; not loud, just very sternly. He seems to emphasize every hard sound, even hitting the silence of line breaks with steel stops. It's weird to watch old footage on YouTube, the contrast of the black-speckled film and the clean Web 2.0 layout. Nothing makes me feel like I'm living in the future more than meaningful, old, archival footage easily pulled up and squirted into my brain.

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Essay | Childish Things

Before every book fair in elementary school, we were given a little four or five page pamphlet of what paperbacks we could expect to see. It was almost entirely scholastic books, dominated by the popular GOOSEBUMPS, with smatterings of old favorites like BABYSITTER'S CLUB. All of us, little kids with our parent's money in our pockets, flipped through pages, picking out the cool covers and sometimes even stopping to read the blurbs.

Book fairs are designed to socialize kids to do two things: read for fun, and grow into consumerism. I sit at this late hour, some decade and a half later, with an expensive degree in putting words together, as a successful outcome of that project. It worked for us because it was one of our first experiences, outside of juice boxes, to exercise our buying power. Your parents gave you ten dollars and you could buy anything you want - even this book with the scary werewolf on it.

When we were all hyped and ready to spend, we shuffled into the library in a single file line, and were amazed to find that the desks had been rearranged to form a big square, upon which books and book accessories were being sold. Our tiny, one-room library, a shitty public school thing, became a swap meet. It was as exciting as books got at our age.

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Interrobang: Understanding Comic-Con

When she saw me take out my camera, the pretty girl dressed as a Green Lantern held her ring out toward the direction of a giant, plastic model of a Green Lantern battery. I thanked her and took a picture, and turned around to see a small child waddle up dressed as a Lego robot. I had to capture that, too. I made my way down the hall, slowly taking in the overwhelming colorful spectacle, and was cut off by Pacman being chased by 3 ghosts. I almost bumped into Domo-kun.

"Sorry," I said to the giant brown-furred box with gnashing teeth. I don't know if the thing inside could even hear me. I continued on, through the Chun-Lis, through the Iron Men, through the Pikachus, and of course, through the Stormtroopers.

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The Severity of My Issues

I had the weirdest fucking dream a week ago and had to record it, and yes, even publish it, while I still had such vivid detail trapped in my nightmare skull. And this was before I saw INCEPTION. I know dream blogging is not the most creative, original exercise, but we all have to hit the cliches at least once, right? It went something like this:

First, my parent's bedroom had recently become filled with poorly caged animals. As in, they were not being stocked correctly. For whatever reason, they had a cage filled to the brim with snakes, plenty of cages full of cats, mouse cages where the mice were easily walking and out of the grating, and generally chaotic.

Also, there was Marmaduke.

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Essay | Smash Yourself Clean

I looked up and saw a guy dive into me as if I was a swimming pool. I caught the full of his back with my head and forearm, as did the people around me. We crouched under the weight, trying to push him back up, both with enthusiasm and utter hatred for the guy. But any emotion is quick and fleeting. You get over offenses quickly, because you know it's not personal, because this is a concert and you came here to get hurt. It hurts good.

The Pit at a concert, at least an upbeat, wild one that is heavy on the rock-out, is a fascinating place. It is the section directly in front of the stage for those who are not afraid to get an elbow in the rib or a knee in the head. Concert goers ascend the stage, despite the best attempts by security, and fly for half a second into the maelstrom of bodies. Sometimes they will be caught. Other times people will run out of the way and let them fall. This is The Pit. If you want the privilege of being so close to the stage, there is a price to pay, and that is your physical well being.

I wasn't always so enthusiastic at the thought of being physically hurt to live music. It used to be this strange, intimidating obstacle when you just want to fold your arms and stare at the bassist for an hour. I remember a Manu Chao concert and the disappointment my friend expressed that I had not gone in to get tackled by strangers in a concentric circle. I had not even hopped in place like a bunny. I had spent (wasted) that concert simply listening to the music. It made sense to me. What was live music for if not for listening intently and respectfully?

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Why This Stupid Last Airbender Shit Matters

Let me give you some background information so we're all on the same page: Avatar: The Last Airbender was a hugely successful, wildly popular, animated Nickelodeon martial arts fantasy. The show took place in a mythical land, however, much of the architecture, writing, and character designs were based on many cultures, with emphasis on ancient China and Inuit cultures. There's a little Hinduism, a little Buddhism, a little Japan. Hollywood decided to make a live action film about it, and M. Night Shyamalan of The Happening fame was tapped to run the show.

And then they cast all the main characters as white kids.

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I Read Persepolis

In my quest to eat up the best that the comics medium has to offer, I turned my hunger onto PERSEPOLIS, a two volume graphic novel by Marjane Satrapi. It's one of the latest admissions to comics canon, a modern critical darling, and was even most recently animated as a feature film. It's a memoir about her time during her time, first as a child and then as a teenager, during the Islamic revolution in Iran.

There is an issue in the non-fiction genre, particularly with memoirs, about whether the storytelling/craft of writing is actually good or if someone  has just lived through, what my non-fiction professor called, "craaaazy shit." Because anyone can be (un)lucky enough to be born into an absurd, extreme situation (Augustin Burroughs), but not everyone can tell that story well. It is even rarer to find a writer who can make the mundane, ordinary life seem full of universal power.

I kept this in mind in trying to decide which side of the fence Satrapi fell on. While I'm not keen on being one of those reactionary douchebags that likes to hate things that are popular or critically acclaimed, there are some significant annoyances that hindered my enjoyment of the book. The big picture is this: Satrapi has had an interesting life, and tells it well enough. But giving it MAUS status as one of the must read graphic novels might be a little much. She might certainly have the potential to craft a masterpiece, but this seems only an indicator of her potential.

The art is the soul of the comic, and Satrapi uses a flat, stark black & white cartooning style that is passable in terms of ease of comprehension. I don't mind that it doesn't have a lot of flashiness to it; I am, in fact, a big fan of minimalist art styles. But it tends to be flat a lot in Satrapi's work. Too often are characters draped in pitch black forms, whether in Iran or Vienna, and they become difficult to distinguish especially since the writing context doesn't always help and characters will change hairstyles. While there's something to be said about difficulty vs. ease in comics, the way Chaucer is harder than Hemingway but both are good in different ways, this feels like the type of story that would benefit from ease.

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Take Me Home

I write about music because it is easy. At a time when writing is hard, painful and exactly like bleeding, it is easy to write about music. It's a main road into your emotional center, and that is where you find the words in bulk. They may not be sharp, or accurate, or in any way indicative of expertise, but it's easy. This blog is, after all, not a place for shining and insightful music journalism, but a place for me to type.

Let me tell you a little about "All I Want" by LCD Soundsystem and what it does for me.

First, let me explain that James Murphy from LCD Soundsystem is an amazingly talented lyricist when he wants to be. He can write some powerful, moving songs when he wants to. His last album, "Sound of Silver," produced two stellar songs about friendship and loss in the form of "All My Friends" and "Someone Great." But generally, LCD Soundsystem is a dance-punk project with weird, catchy beats and funny, almost non-sequiter lines. They are apparently just improvised lines, repeated ad nauseum, becoming part of the beat itself. So there isn't generally a lot of story telling, except in a rare few songs like this one.

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Essay | The Profane and the Indecent

crap

I was recently told that a co-worker of mine doesn't curse.  I didn't believe it at first.I could have sworn I had heard him use a variety of obscenities, everything from S to F. As I thought about it a little more, searching my mental rolodex for specific memories, I found that I had nothing. Just vague assumptions that he cursed, when, apparently, they were always modified to less offensive, non-sequitur substitutes like the ever popular stuff and fudge.

I use expletives a lot, casually, as often as I use napkins. I also have this handy subconscious mechanism that omits curse words when in the presence of authority, whether it be parents or bosses. I didn't used to dole out the profanities with such reckless abandon. It used to be a bigger deal to me, a top tier sin.

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Bleeding Ink

hyperbole

When I departed my last undergraduate creative writing class, I wrote, with purposeful hyperbole: BOATWITHOUTASAILBOATWITHOUTASAIL!!

Look, I get it. I will have more classes in my (hopeful) graduate career, people don't ever really stop learning anyway, and the last of any class is rarely a milestone. But there was something about the finality of not just the class, but my writing education, that pulled me towards a feeling of exaggerated panic. It was something like losing the training wheels and going off on your own. These days, when I'm not mocking an all-caps panic, I'm learning a lot about the kind of discipline it takes to direct yourself towards a writing career and what it is you need to do.

See, I'm at an age where artists began to be great. Michael Chabon published a book right out of UC Irvine not much older than I am right now. Joyce Carol Oates was 25 with her first book. Conan O'Brien moved to Los Angeles at this age to write for an HBO comedy. I'm already here, a place where people uproot to build their portfolio. Why am I withering into the grooves of my retail job from my parent's home?

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Review | Here Lies Love

The album I want to write about, in pure first impression terms, is not from an artist I know very well or am particularly passionate about. It's the oddball project from David Byrne of Talking Heads/Crazy Solo Musicology fame collaborating with Fatboy Slim of Songs That Were Popular In The 90s. The reason: It's a 2 disc concept album about Imelda Marcos.

Imelda Marcos, the infamous wife of martial law dictator, Ferdinand Marcos, of the Philippines. Best known for being a modern, Southeast Asian Marie Antoinette and for her obscene shoe collection. Joining them is an all-star cast of indie, pop and rock & roll female vocalists. It's one of those projects that's like a paper airplane: when you throw it, it will either be a perfect glide or a crazy, skittish nose dive.

Byrne, to his credit, isn't just haphazardly choosing an oddball topic. He's done his research, spent time on the islands, and I get the sense that he at least has a good hold of the context of what he's making an album about. Whether that comes through in the music is a separate story. Byrne says he's chosen this topic because the "conflation of fantasy, personal pain and politics that runs through history and that played itself out [in the Philippines] in a dramatically obvious way." For those seeking insight into the madness behind this project, I highly recommend that link. It's a long article written by Byrne himself about his time researching.

So, here is that album at long last, Here Lies Love, complete with awkward, dated portrait of Imelda Marcos as the cover art. I guess the fear is that the album might be embarassing; Perhaps it makes a caricature of the history or the country or the culture. Perhaps it might be terribly whitewashed and romanticize a dark period of Philippine history.

But what if was a totally fun, interesting, educational and, above all, sonically beautiful two disc album? That's the best we could hope for.

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Blogging Too Hard

What year is it? 2010? Holy shit. I've been on this blog for four years.

In just over four years, I've written nearly 100 long essay-style posts, 111 posts in total including videos and early bullshit, and have drastically changed the layout/graphics of the site at least 5 times. It all started because I wanted a place to type.

I feel like I should explain something about this blog, first. It is narcissistic, but not because I want all eyes on me and my words and lookathowmuchIcantype. No. It is narcissistic because it purely serves me, my needs and whims. It is my brain dump and mindpressure valve. Sure, I could just keep all this in a secret text file on my flash drive. But then I wouldn't have the fear.

The fear is that someone might read these 100 post I've written up at late hours of the night in different years of my life. But that fear also forces me to put some quality control on these posts. I write better knowing that someone out there, likely someone I know, is watching. Make no mistake: everything posted here is a first draft. But I think these writing exercises have made my first drafts better.

Additionally, hearing from people in real life that they read this blog is both gratifying and terrifying.

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A Crash

It was just a few minutes past 10:00 PM on Tuesday, March 2, 2010. I was driving down the 91 west, back from a boring day at work. I was listening to the radio show, "This American Life," episode #81 entitled, "Guns." In it, a man was describing his near-death experience of being shot, several times, at point-blank range.

An ambient music interlude had just taken over the vocals and then, out of the darkness, a red car appeared, completely still and unmoving. I brake hard, but not hard enough, not fast enough, and I crush its trunk with a terrible clang of metal and glass. The glove compartment explodes outward at me as the airbag seems to form from nothing.

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Reason, Gone Mad

You know, for all my talk about how much I love comedy, I've never been to a real stand-up show. I have a feeling that's common among people just coming into their adult lives. I don't know why. I imagine it's the same reason I didn't see a concert until Bright Eyes at the Grand Olympic Auditorium in 2005. It just never occurred to me that the people I like seeing on the hollowed tube of my television, I could also see in 3D. You hear about tour dates and visits, you see posters, but you never actually envision yourself there, lining up, sitting with other fans, and enjoying the live presence of a famous funny person. The difference is that most people come to accept concerts as part of their lives and possibilities for the night. Not enough of us realize the value and availability of solid jokes in every major city.

That, at last, changed a couple of nights ago when I was in Pasadena with Jimmy and Ray -- You know Jimmy and Ray -- with nothing to do. On a fluke, we stumbled upon a listing for Comedy Death Ray, a weekly night of high quality stand-up at the Upright Citizens Brigade theater that I had always heard about but never investigated. Much like all stand-up. I looked at the flier and recognized names worth the $5 and more.

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Best Last Hopes

I finally did it. I finished my last two writing samples, got my statements together, wrote a check or two, threw them into a couple of big manila envelopes and sent them off to my last two MFA writing programs.

Pursuing an MFA has been stabbing my brain parts.

I started with 7 schools. I took out Austin because I didn't think I had enough time to deal with their deadline and the GRE scores. Then I took out SDSU because it was the only school on my list that needed a GRE score, and that means paying $150 just for a school that wasn't even one of my top choices. Then, I took out University of San Francisco because the deadline snuck up on me, and I rationalized that the living expenses, plus the expenses of USF, plus the fact that it's a Jesuit school (no I don't know why that matters but it made sense when I was trying to explain away not applying there.)

So that four schools in Southern California. Oh, a couple of days ago I got rejected from UC San Diego. So that leaves three schools.

Of those, UC Irvine is my school of choice, what with it being one of the top creative writing schools in the nation, but after re-reading what I sent, I can't believe they would give it more than a moment's consideration. Plus, if my writing was bad enough to be rejected from UCSD, then it must be a spilled coffee rag for UCI.

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