end of something

DEAD!

2009-08-11T20:18:00.000-07:00

I want you to know that this blog is officially dead. As always I am around.

iron and wine - naked as we came

2009-07-12T10:46:00.000-07:00

48hr contest: free to be me

2009-07-11T17:46:00.000-07:00

Written by me. The required line of dialogue was "I believe anyone can change," the required character was Claude or Claudette, a guitarist, and the required prop was a hat. So, I wrote the whole thing to culminate in the 'change' line.

We won the audience award for our screening group!

potato salad contortionists

2009-06-14T18:17:00.001-07:00

shutterbug

2009-05-12T18:13:00.000-07:00

shutterbug from andy orin on Vimeo.

script

2009-05-10T21:35:00.001-07:00

Would you like to read the short screenplay I wrote under the sceptered-isle-eyes of instructor Julie Oxendale this quarter? Because you can, at http://drop.io/mrskeleton

where da nuts?

2009-04-27T20:34:00.001-07:00

blu-ray evangelist

2009-03-27T21:18:00.000-07:00

I generally no longer purchase DVDs, in favor of HD content. I also don't download HD content, because it's just high res low bitrate stuff. Quite decent but not tops. Blu-ray is the ticket. Physical media will be around for a while, me thinks: http://www.flickr.com/photos/mr_skeleton/tags/bluray/

View the largest image size available, which is actually about 75 percent actual resolution, to see why blu-ray is cool.

The medium is the message

2009-03-19T23:31:00.000-07:00

The popular assumption that the brevity and rapidity of twitter necessitates mundanity seems arbitrary and obtuse.

and I called it Ricki Tiki

2009-02-16T19:47:00.000-08:00

I'm writing this down in hopes that my thoughts will be sorted. I'm developing a short script, something ten minutes long or so. But I need a decent idea before I develop it.

First I wanted to do something centered around a conflict between a young couple, with loaded and witty conversation. I want to shoot it to look like Mad Men, implicitly set in the late fifties or so, but only by the exclusion of modern references, and perhaps the wardrobe. The problem is that if the film includes only this conversation, it will be limited in scope and it will be difficult to sustain interest for ten minutes. It's also hard to conform it to a traditional protagonist v antagonist three act arc, a hero's journey, which the school strongly advocates. There could be an arc to their conversation but not to either character, which is the real problem.

Then I thought of a story about a young woman who works in marketing and wants to gain the attention of some guy. I ran with this for a while; she'd use her knowledge of marketing strategies to get the guy to ask her out, except she'd fail of course. Then Something happens. I also wanted cupcakes to play a central role in the story-- either the marketing firm is doing work around cupcakes, or, I don't know. I have a few variations of what could happen, but I couldn't figure out who the guy is and why he is so hard to get to. I wanted a female protagonist because men are pretty dumb, more instinctual. I even wrote a rough outline to pitch to my instructor, but I knew it was a crappy story because there's nothing at stake, there's nothing to make the man really worth her investment, and there's nothing to keep them apart.

Instead, literally on the way to class, I wrote an outline in which a young woman wants to become a bartender at a famous tiki bar, and spends a week devotedly researching tiki culture and trying to perfect her drinks. She's completely drunk the entire time because she samples her own recipes. She finally has an interview, and it goes horribly of course, but she pours the perfect mai tai. She passes out and wakes up the next morning in bed with her arm around an inflatable palm tree. I pitched this in class.

That's a nice, silly story, but there's no pay off at the end. I don't want to write it because there's little to write.

The problem is that I still have the idea about the arguing couple stuck in my head. I've thought of a dozen things they could be fighting about but haven't figured how to make it worth ten minutes of time. It could be about the man's addiction to an online game, like World of Warcraft, but I'd hate to make it so topical and silly. It would then become too lighthearted and would limit it's universality. I don't want it to be about Now.

I have to write a detailed outline by Friday.

understanding humor

2009-02-15T22:25:00.000-08:00

They say that deconstructing humor is like watching sausage being made. I don't agree with that, because at the end of the day, deconstructed humor isn't edible.

I'm taking a class on sound design, about how to record and edit decent audio. The instructor mentioned that he had some audio samples of Brian Eno and we were going to practice listening closely.

"Pardon?" one student asked. "You should listen more closely," I said. I was surprised how much everyone laughed at that. It was such an obvious thing to say. I remember waiting half a second for someone else to preempt me.

I've thought a lot about what makes people laugh. There's a large variety of distinct things that people laugh at, but one of the most common is when you make a logical conclusion that is completely ridiculous. For example, let's say Joe the plumber sees the Oscar Mayer Wienermobile driving down the street. Joe asks, do you think they use cooking oil in there instead of motor oil?

That's not particularly funny but that's off the top of my head. You see, cars have oil in them, food is cooked in oil, so it makes sense for a giant hotdog car to have cooking oil in its engine. It's logic followed to a point of absurdity.

Months ago, I was presenting a story about a professional blogger who, when the power goes out, devolves into a caveman-like state, but still must find a way to make coffee. The instructor casually and humorously mentioned that it would make a great commercial for Foldgers. Then a fellow student presented an abstract story about a woman who, when full of loneliness, falls in love with her furniture and eventually becomes a chair, literally transmogrifying. I said that it would make a great commercial for Ikea.

The humor there was in the repetition of a pre-established notion, again drawn out to a logical discordant extreme. Without the preexisting idea of stories-as-advertisements established by the instructor when I pitched my story, my comment would then just be weak semi-relevant sarcasm. The Ikea comment is only funny when the logical idea already exists but is followed illogically in a logical direction. Like a flea circus.

Those sorts of jokes must make complete sense but must be completely absurd. Of course, there's no time in normal conversation to construct a joke. You simply speak and hope the words you're saying aren't too dumb.

Unnecessary thoughts

2009-02-14T12:52:00.000-08:00

A friend texted me the other day "Do you believe humans can ruin the Earth?" What a question for a text message. I replied that there's no right or wrong way for the Earth to be, but humans act in parasitic way. Then we die and the Earth changes again. Even if we raise the temperature of the atmosphere to the detriment of many other species, we'll eventually die off and things will return to pre-human levels. What a nice thought.

Humans have existed for such a short period of time that we only want the Earth to exist as it has for the past 50,000 years or so, when in fact it is an always changing place, but on a time scale such that we're oblivious to it. Not factually oblivious, we know what happened when, we know the numbers, but devoid of practical knowledge.

It's an interesting thought, I think. I know, of course it is bad to pump chemicals from our factories into nature, but people talk about human pollution as if we are not of this planet, that we are not of the nature we are harming. I've never truly understood the notion of natural versus artificial, because anything artificial is create from ingredients initially harvested from nature. I realize that's as an effectual argument as saying, well heck, it's all atoms anyway!

People love all-natural food, of course. Locally grown, all that. I think giant factory farms are probably a dozen times more efficient, in terms of output and the use of energy, than any hand-grown vegetable. That is why they make money, that is why they are scaled so large. Humanity has evolved based on the efficiency of its farms, but now people are embracing less-efficient food production under the theory that its actually better for the environment or better for you or might be better tasting. I really don't buy it.

[Small update: I am aware this is a very complex issue. I also want you to know I couldn't be more ignorant about food production. But in terms of output efficiency, I believe giant robot farms are inherently more productive].

Some people look at the bread aisle in a grocery store and scoff at the dozen different varieties of plain white bread, as if its all so impersonal, so unnatural, as if to lament the good old days when you'd go the bakery to buy a single hand-kneaded loaf. I know that sounds nice. It is. But the efficiency of our production abilities allows us to have hundreds of identical loaves always in stock, always free of mold, always ready to be eaten. THAT is progress and some people perceive it as regression. Natural foods are a LUXURY because they are ineffecient; that is what I want to say.

My real point is that humans are just mean monkeys and that I'm enjoying Atlas Shrugged.

hunting mastadons

2009-02-14T10:00:00.000-08:00

This had been included in the following post but I'm giving it its own post for organization's sake. So don't be confused, dear reader (my mom).

Why do men like fast, sleek, aesthetically compelling cars? Not that there aren't ladyfolk who ogle fancy autos, but it's a primarily masculine proclivity. I suppose it's true of most gadgets and gizmos.

I do not think it is, at its core, the result of societal or cultural values. I like to think there's an deeply embedded evolutionary basis to that, just as stockpiles of stone hand-axes and arrowheads used to be stockpiled in unnecessary amounts by our ancestors. The physical differences between the sexes-- I forget the term for that-- was probably more significant (i.e. the size difference between a female and male gorilla is larger than the difference between human guys and dolls), lending masculine and feminine rolls to have more disparity than in today's society, as we have become a mentally-driven race rather than physical, but we nonetheless maintain inclinations from our more primitive days.

Which is why men like fancy cars, and women like, well, men can never know what women like because we spent all our time hunting mastadons.

Behind

2009-02-02T00:39:00.001-08:00

I've just realized that I take a lot of pictures of people when they're not looking, from behind. See?

An email from my mother

2009-02-01T12:10:00.001-08:00

Hi there,
So last week I was modeling how to write a letter to the kids [she's a school teacher]. I was inviting Barack Obama to come to Chula Vista. I was webbing the ideas and I asked the kids, "what can I tell him about Chula Vista that will be enticing enough for him to come?" They said we have Plaza Bonita [a shopping mall] and he can take his daughters shopping there. Then several kids yelled, "we know, we have the SWAPMEET!" "It is really nice," they said. I chuckled and said, "I don't think he does swapmeets."
Love,
Mom

I don't know why I ever left. Oh Chula Vista, the tart nectar of your once burgeoning lemon industry has left only livable suburbia in its acidic wake. It is a good place for living, unless your ambition requires more than sustainable contentedness. I hope I've offended no one.

2009-01-18T00:03:00.000-08:00

You will be happy to learn that I located the leak on my short-lived inflatable chair, and successfully patched it, though only time will tell if the regal throne will last under the burden of its king. It is too oft tragical that newborn inflatables wheeze and pucker upon their first inflation, leaving their Pee Wee Hermanesque purveyors slouched atop a pile of industrial rubber, a silent tear falling into the squeaky folds of imagined luxury. Nothing but hot air! And even then, the air escapes.

UPDATE: Alas! The ill-fated rare chair of rubber and air is not meant to be; one leak, effectively sealed, means little upon the sprout of another. With due haste I will suppress such seepings of precious gas as completely as possible, but the immediate onset of novel leaks is ominous, to say the least.

nottuB fo dnE ehT

2009-01-13T15:20:00.000-08:00

I can see from my space age statistical information that people keep coming this site by searching Google for "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button ending." What's up with that? Why are people searching for the denouement of a film, whether they have or haven't seen it?

People who have seen the film might be trying to find an explanation, except it isn't a particularly ambiguous ending. Benjamin Button ages in reverse. Guess what happens towards the end of his life. It's more tragical than whimsical. I suppose there is a degree of ambiguity to it-- it's not like we see him as a fetus-- but hey fellas, when you see that hummingbird, you know what happened.

People who have not seen the film, well, why search for the ending? The ending is presumable enough if you know the gist of the story, and if you don't know the story, well hey kid, what's the point?

I HAVE A THEORY! People are Googling the ending because they had to run to the bathroom in film's last minutes; it's a 168 minute movie. Did Benjamin ride off into the sunset on the back of a unicorn? Did he enroll in the army as an infant, partaking in a buddy comedy with, I don't know, Eddie Murphy? This is the place to find out!

Behind the Scenes at The Enchanted Tiki Room

2009-01-09T23:52:00.000-08:00

Uncle Walt explains that the space-age parrots are run by secret rooms full of giant bleep-blooping computers. What's not to love?

"I (claim to have) felt a great sense of awe, wonderment, and reverence while sitting in the synthetic, fabricated instant-Polynesian Tiki Room at Disneyland, as I have experienced in some of the great cathedrals… Chartres, Rheims, and Notre Dame… as near to beauty or art as faradic current applied to the vocal chords of Galli-Curci…" - Stanford professor Don Jackson

snowman

2009-01-07T23:44:00.000-08:00

Frosty the Chemical Snowman from andy orin on Vimeo.

Mini Review: Doubt

2009-01-03T22:31:00.000-08:00

'Doubt' is a movie rife with stunningly skilled actors demonstrating their prowess (Phillip Seymour Hoffman, Amy Adams, Meryl Streep), and is a strong film, but is ultimately unable to distinguish itself from its theater source; it is merely a play on film, rather than on stage. You almost expect a curtain to draw over the last scene, only to open to the main trio taking a bow, accepting bouquets.

It is worth seeing, but the film will never be remembered as a separate entity from the play.

Amy Adams makes for an adorable nun. Does not everyone have a little crush on her?

peanut butter and jelly

2009-01-02T22:54:00.000-08:00

When I was a child, I used to accompany my mother to the grocery store on her weekly trips. It was just something to do, I suppose, and the store never failed to be a fascinating place. But I was not the sort of child to beg for superfluous goodies and sweets; I knew my mother would say no to any whines and protestations, as she always bought the cheapest and healthiest food that was reasonable, not counting the weekly carton of ice cream (bless her soul).

But, of course, I pined for junk food.

I remember seeing the Lunchables--- those mesmerizing, manufactured, bite-sized miniatures of food, circles of ham, crackers delight, perfect postage stamp sized cheese squares--- and always wanting them. They taste like a foreign observer’s idea of what Earth food might be, recreated in a far-off Martian lab, but man, those little snacks looked appealing.

I remembering seeing tubs of Cool Whip, cans of whipped cream, and thinking, blessed he is the man who can spoon Whip straight from the tub that giveth the Whip. Spray cheese had a similar appeal.

I remember, especially, the special jars of peanut butter that contained both peanut butter AND jelly, in a single jar.

I never asked for any of these things because I knew my mother to be too practical. But now, dear reader, at two point three decades of age, I can buy whichever peanut butter I like. I only realized this quite recently.

The call it Smuckers Goober, and it contains peanut butter striped with jelly in a zebra-like pattern. The visual splendor of striped condiments makes up for any lackluster taste. In fact, it would probably taste better to buy the individual condiments, but the gimmick itself, TWO things in ONE jar, is worth the expenditure.

I think it’s a modern marvel.

The Curious Case of Benjamin Button

2008-12-30T20:53:00.000-08:00

Watching The Curious Case of Benjamin Button feels like sipping a warm cup of tea in the cold, early morning, warming your hands while you review the night’s dreams--- one of those dreams so oft had and never remembered, stored in that part of your memory where you can’t reach what had just played out in your mind’s eye.

David Fincher and writer Eric Roth, with source material by F. Scott Fitzgerald, took it upon themselves to convey one of those dreams. Fitzgerald wrote over a hundred twenty short stories and only a handful of them, maybe two or three, had any sort of magical element. Benjamin Button is of course one of those. In short, the protagonist ages in reverse: Benjamin is born old and becomes younger as the years go by.

I think the studio wanted it to be perceived as a straight sentimental romance movie, and viewers expecting that, expecting some kind of nice comfortable love story, will be disappointed. It isn’t one of those. It is instead a biography about death and aging, loss and longing, and living life. There’s something commendable in this: the story just happens, life just happens to Benjamin, without a by-the-book Hollywood plot. Not one of those hard three-act hook, line, and sinker plots.

Some will criticize the film for this. It just is. It just happens. The love story between Benjamin and Daisy threads the movie together but is not always the conflict at hand. It is more a meandering bildungsroman novel, following a character though life as he develops, than it is a short story about a central conflict. The 2 hour 48 minute running time seems necessary; to tell the truth, I don’t recall a single scene that could easily be cut. Some people will disagree. In fact a few people left the theater before the film finished. It boggles the mind.

Well, the framing could have been cut--- the story is told by Daisy on her deathbed, with her daughter reading through Benjamin’s diary. That in itself works fine, but they are sitting in a hospital while Hurricane Katrina approaches. Why? Placing the story in New Orleans added a compelling, tone-appropriate layer of history and fantasy, but the impending shadow of Katrina is nebulous in its purpose. The name distracts from the story at hand--- Benjamin’s story.

Nonetheless, the magical realism of the film uniquely treads upon the universality of human experience: we are all young and learning, we are all old and dying, and in between you better appreciate your minutes, regardless of which direction you might be going.

2008-12-29T23:54:00.000-08:00

Gotta wonder what Scott Fitzgerald would think about new Benjamin Button film (which is based on a Fitzgerald story). Fitzgerald famously fizzled out trying to write for Hollywood—he thought the medium of film would surpass novels. He was right, at least in terms of numbers. But he was wrong in thinking he could just transfer his talents in stories and novels to screenplays, as if words are words and that is all. Obviously screenwriting then is different than it is now, but the thought that writing is writing regardless of the end medium, and that a novelist could write for the pictures just fine, was flawed. Writing for film is---it seems to me--- a scene to scene, sentence to sentence, word to word outline, a skeleton on which all other parts hang, but only a skeleton. The skeleton, the storyline, comes from the writers and the guts come from everyone else. Writing novels is different because you have to play god entirely and you have to know what the reader would think about every word and sentence, but the storyline is actually less important because novels don’t have to hold you for 120 sequential minutes. Fitzgerald didn’t seem to perceive that films don’t hang on the words themselves.

Anyway, I’ll write up a quick review in a few days. I should watch it before reviewing it.

2008-12-29T23:52:00.000-08:00

I don't have any silly goals for the year 2009, or at least I have no goals to fit in one year's time. But I do need to get back into a rhythm of writing, for school and for other reasons. I have been lazy for the past couple years in this regard. Writing requires free mornings, coffee, much reading, and it eats your thoughts all day long. The old famous writers were drunkards because sometimes writing can whittle you down like the pencil if you really give it everything you got. It's like the caged birds that tear out all their feathers because they feel the need to do something that they aren’t capable of doing in a cage. How's that for melodrama.

The kid sitting next to me on the airplane took off his shoes during the flight.

scene from 'full frontal'

2008-12-20T15:48:00.001-08:00

scene from 'full frontal' from andy orin on Vimeo.

another final project for a class. a brief scene from the script of steven soderbergh's 'full frontal' (written by coleman hough)

thanks veronique, adriane, and tracy ward!

things about zoos

2008-12-18T22:04:00.001-08:00

thing about zoos from andy orin on Vimeo.

sf zoo

2008-12-01T23:21:00.001-08:00

san francisco zoo from andy orin on Vimeo.

garden gnome movie

2008-11-22T18:17:00.000-08:00

Gnomadic Hearts from andy orin on Vimeo.

first 8mm footage

2008-11-08T16:13:00.000-08:00

fun with 8mm from andy orin on Vimeo.

just some test footage edited together. music from bram stoker's dracula.

written for school: Places I’ve Lived.

2008-09-14T15:52:00.000-07:00

San Diego
Forgive my verbosity. I spent my first eighteen years in southern California, specifically in Chula Vista, a city in the county of San Diego, only ten minutes or so from the Mexico border. When I was a toddler we moved from an amusingly small house to a larger condominium, where I spent the majority of my childhood. They were white stucco covered buildings with awkward dark swampy brown wooden trim; our condo was two floors, and I shared a bedroom with my older brother. The interior, at first, was dim with shaggy brown carpet and fake wood paneling on the walls, but my father modernized it, painting the interior a near-white sandy color with corresponding new carpets. When I was about fourteen my parents bought a house a couple miles away, which sat on the top of a hill and overlooked a busy avenue and a strip mall, and the waterfall-like sound of the freeway could always be heard. The backyard has an orange tree and an avocado tree, as well as a dead peach tree and some rose bushes. Here our two cats hunt gnats.

Palo Alto
It might be more accurate to say Stanford, as the school is literally its own city. The school is a place of lush greenery, sandstone-built mission style architecture interspersed with modern buildings, and a lot of bicycles straddled by clumsy students. The experience was more memorable than the place so I don’t have much to say about it. Also, down the street in Palo Alto, just a block from the Facebook offices, there is a small plaza in front of the eatery 'Pizza My Heart' where nihilistic, hedonistic, and angsty high-schoolers congregate, and in this plaza there is a five foot tall Egg made of circuit boards. I like to think the kids are there to worship the egg, or are maybe waiting for something to hatch.

Oxford, England
I spent about six months total studying at Oxford. The place was more memorable than the experience and I could write extensively about it. To go from the brand-new cement constructed cities of California to the millennia-old shire of Oxford is something else. The alleys and the cobble stones and the people and the meadows are all as quaint as you would expect, and more, as are the libraries and their rules and the cafes and bookshops and pubs. The winter was cold and hard for a Californian and the spring revealed the city to be a different character in the sun, when we would go punting (maneuvering a small boat through the rivers and streams) and sit on the grass and feed the ducks and geese. The dormitory deserves its own passage--- it was a number of old buildings cobbled together and modernized, with tight stairways and halls that led up and down and every which way, like an Escher picture. But the wonder does fade as you become accustomed.

San Francisco
The Mission District has many characters. Some are good and some are not. It’s hard to write about it without distance.

Flash Movie Reviews!

2008-07-26T18:50:00.000-07:00

Hellboy II:
Guillermo del Toro has injected his deep and tenacious imagination into the Hellboy world-- but this world-making has a dearth of storytelling. It's strange; the plot points are there, but they simply occur rather than unfold, and you know all along which characters are expendable and which are going to ride away into the sunset.

The Dark Knight:
It is usually hard to justify spending over $150 million on the production of fleeting entertainment memes, but I definitely have no such problem such a budget here. It is art, rather than pulp, executed in a grand way. All the success is deserved.

The Wackness:
A good coming-of-age story. The references to early 90s pop culture are a little much at times, played for unnecessary laughs, but that's okay. Successful universality.

The X-Files: I Want to Believe:
If you like this sort of thing, this is the sort of thing you'll like. This film plays like an extended episode of the series, but doesn't hinge on the murky mythology. A little sluggish at times, and a turn in the third act should have been foreshadowed just a little more, but its an altogether enjoyable return to the characters--- if you enjoyed the characters in the first place.

Bonus Older Movies!!
Eyes Wide Shut:
Stanley Kubrick makes his version of Woody Allen's Husbands and Wives, but with the addition of a mysterious orgy cult. How complicated human sexuality is, especially within the confines of monogamous marriage! says Stanley. Sure. Very interesting but ultimately not fully satisfying, because you become more interested in the cult than Kubrick wanted you to. I really like the lighting though (the blue light bathing the backdrops, contrasting with warmer interiors, and the omnipresent Christmas lights).

Empire of the Sun:
Helluva an epic movie, there's no question about it, but unfortunately it never adds to a satisfying sum. It suffers from the typical problems of big novel adaptions: episodic, in that years occasionally pass in blinks when you don't expect them to, with an ending that is a little surprising, a little unexpected, and not completely satisfying, but likely faithful to the source material. Nonetheless, absolutely worth watching. And 12-year-old Christian Bale is a hell of an actor.

WALL-E as a didactic fable, or not

2008-07-14T21:34:00.000-07:00

Sometimes green is just a color.

There has been a surprising amount of the press regarding Wall-e as a 'green' film with a didactic message of environmentalism. But the film's writer and director, Andrew Stanton, has expressed his reluctance towards making a film with an agenda. Then, does it have a message?

There are, at first, very critical messages towards consumerism, mega-corporations, and globular humans. Wall-e’s world was been literally taken over by a Wal-Mart-like chain of stores, Buy N Large; as a result, the Earth was completely covered in trash and humans fled the planet. Little Wall-e is the first wave of a recovery mission to compact the trash, to prepare the planet for eventual human re-habitation. The film’s protagonist is the last running robot on the planet and pursues his job with complete devotion, unaware of the futility.

Clearly there are strong environmental lessons being taught here, yes? We must limit our consumerist tendencies and save the planet! Wall-e is the new Al Gore! Well, sort of.

Andrew Stanton and Pete Docter’s original idea started with just the last robot on Earth doing a futile job– the little, adorable, lone robot trash-compactor gazing at the stars, longing for more—and the pollution aspect of the story was reverse-engineered to create the scenario. The trash arose as a functional story element, rather than to preach to children about littering. Of course, the origins of a storyline don’t negate the presence of preachiness, but understanding the original intentions is valuable.

Then, what of the fat, round humans who float around on their Jetson-age recliners and exist solely in digital screens? Well that’s a little more poignant, but the original intentions, again, are very compelling. During the film’s first couple years of development, the humans were green jelly blobs (very similar to the alien characters in the short ‘Lifted’ that preceded Ratatouille). Eventually it was to be revealed in a sort of Planet of the Apes fashion that they were human all along (!), and that the microgravity aboard the spaceship caused total bone loss. The kingdom of the space jellies was, as Stanton said, “too silly.”

The human characters were then changed into large, infantile creatures. This clarified and streamlined the story, and perhaps made them more likeable. But what’s important to realize is that it was the microgravity that degenerated the bodies of the humans aboard the spaceship Axiom, rather than increasing sloth. But, ah, it is still more complicated.

The human characters are essentially all good-natured and good-intentioned, but they have completely sacrificed individuality for the sake of convenience. They converse with neighbors via computers, they were what they are told is fashionable, they eat what they are told is good to eat (cupcakes in a cup!). Yes, this is quite satirical towards the way many of us live. I know I personally had more email exchanges than actual conversations today. But who is at fault in such a society? Is Pixar trying to tell us that we’re all hopelessly lazy slobs? Is there, altogether, a ‘message’ in Wall-e?

Why, yes, and has nothing to do with littering or global warming: do not let complacency dampen ambition. The humans have become so comfortable, so complacent, that they don’t even turn their heads to talk to one another. It’s just easier to go online instead. It’s also easy to drink liquid food rather than eat, to sit rather than stand, to die slow rather than live fast. I should heed this advice, and you probably should too.

What of the captain? Why return to the razed planet? He doesn’t want to return to Earth so that he can clean it, or to undo the wrongs of a mega-consumerist society, he wants to return because of the possibilities of what might be and for of the excitement spawned by new challenges. His complacency was rooted in his ignorance, as it was for all the humans. Wall-e’s plant is the catalyst that illuminates the significance of ambition, or the humans’ lack thereof.

Wall-e the robot’s experiences mirror this: he is relatively complacent in his daily work and hobbies but somehow knows there’s more to life. Eve’s arrival enlightens him in just the same way the plant enlightens the captain. For Wall-e, the unknown element he has been longing for is love. It is his purpose in life beyond function. For the humans, it’s purpose in life at all, of which they were previously ignorant of. Complacency has been so easy that they never had to consider why they bother living.

Condensed version of what I had actually wanted to say but didn’t quite articulate: it’s just a robot love story and all of the elements exist in support of the story.

I just really liked it.

Wanted

2008-07-04T12:01:00.000-07:00

After some positive critical reception, my interest crested and broke and I went and saw Wanted. Positive critical reception is probably an overstatement; some reviewers felt, at least, that it is an inventive and intense action movie with a knowingly dumb back-story. A thousand years ago a group of weavers (seriously) founded a secret league of assassins, and now Morgan Freeman as Sloan is directing the deadly order. They work under the belief that their killings are for the greater good.

Indeed, such a plot couldn't take itself less seriously, though it's all delivered stern and straight. And indeed, there are abundant 'holy shit' moments, especially in the first act of the movie. The chase sequence with Angelina Jolie as Fox, driving a Dodge Viper with her legs while she lies on the hood of the car and has a shoot-out with a rogue assassin, I thought, outshone the action in the following two thirds of the movie, despite an increase in scale, until train cars are being thrown about on screen by over-eager digital filmmakers.

Really over-the-top stuff, and I couldn't get caught up in it, as much as I 'Wanted' to... (yay fun with words!). I expected to be impressed the same way I was taken aback when watching 'The Matrix' for the first time. I wanted to ask "how did they do that?" but the intricately carved and curving bullets that Jolie effortlessly sent flying about like little bumblebees out of hell were always so perfect and digital that the visceral wonder was lacking. Ultra-slow-motion blood-spatter in Gaeta-esque bullet-time shots too, were lacking that visceral imperfectness that comes with practical effects. Such is a flaw with many popcorn movies these days: there is no limit to translating imagination into images with the use of modern technology, and we, as viewers, don't really care.

A stage magician can impress because his or her feats seem physically impossible. You saw an empty top hat, and yet, a bunny was pulled from the ether. An assistant was sawed in half. A car disappeared at the wave of a wand. As cynical as we all are, these sorts of practical tricks can impress us because we can't understand how they occur.

But in a movie, when a talking polar bear walks on to screen and starts to breakdance, there is no wonder. We know the bear does not exist, and only skilled storytellers can make us care.

When Keanu Reeves as Neo, in 1999, dodged bullets on a rooftop, with the camera gradually panning around him, I knew it was a physically impossible shot and yet it was not digital. Yes, the set was (though it wasn't evident), but Reeves was not. And so I was amazed. John Gaeta's visual effects team had done something I didn't understand at the time, like a magician convincing you that levitation is possible. The embracing of digital actors, in part, detracted from the sequels. There were no longer any 'how did they do that?' moments.

Jump back to 'Wanted'. In this film, say, perhaps, a train car is sent careening down a preternaturally deep ravine while the world's deadliest assassins battle inside. We know there is no train, there is no ravine, there is no silver bullet whizzing about. How impressed can we be when we know it is all in the mind's eye? Perhaps if we really cared about the characters it would matter.

WALL-E

2008-07-01T12:01:00.000-07:00

In 1995, people were asking if an audience could tolerate a feature-length film of computer-generated images. Members of the press literally asked if it was possible to watch a CG movie without getting motion sickness. I was ten years old and knew it was a dumb question. I saw Toy Story, thoroughly enjoyed it, but didn’t think much of its implications towards the direction of movie animation. 2D was dead; long live 2D.

Rather, after a string of poor and under-performing traditionally animated films, the Powers That Be deemed computer animation to be the way of the future. Of course, CG imagery is just a tool and doesn’t make bad movies good. "Computer generated" is itself a misleading term – as if a few clicks and taps of the space bar conjures up the digital computer god to make a movie from nothing; it takes an army of engineers and artists with computers as their sometimes-tool to make a CGI movie.

I recently watched Toy Story again for the first time in many years, and was surprised by how good it is. The technological limitations of 1995 computers did nothing to limit the story and vision of the film, and most of all, its characters. It holds up to repeated viewings and I can now see the subtle homages that were far over my head in '95. Most of all, Buzz and Woody and their friends have been inducted into the Disney pantheon of heartwarming characters.

The years have gone by, my cynicism has ebbed and flowed, the world has changed, and yet Pixar has virtually owned American feature-length animation for thirteen years. I say that from a critical perspective, rather than with box-office performance in mind. Money has been made by many.

With the studio's newest film, WALL-E, directed by the company's ninth employee and Nemo-helmer Andrew Stanton, not only do they continue to dominate, but they are reinventing what an animated film can be, and, possibly, are changing the perception of animation as a mere child's genre into the film medium that it is.

WALL-E needs to get a nomination for best picture of the year. Not just best animated film. I was just astonished the entire time. In that there is such sparse dialogue is it unique, in that there is such heartfelt emotion is it a success, in that it makes no compromises to mainstream pop-culture animation is it a Pixar film. And, in between a dozen layers of universal appeal, it perfectly captures the difficulty of being a romantic geek in a very big world. Not that I would know anything about geekiness.

Just go watch when you get a chance. It's about robots and love and the faults of consumerist-driven humanity and I don't care to say more or less than that. The opening short Presto alone is worth the ticket.

If you want to hear about the film's faults, its weakness is really any time WALL-E is not central to the narrative – the other characters are never quite as interesting or endearing as he, and so you can't help but wait until he returns to view. But he's never off-screen for too long.

Nonetheless, Pixar has a new badge, Disney has a new character, and the film vaults will long hold this one dear and safe. I, myself, will return to WALL-E repeatedly, in the theater, and over the years.

The Happening

2008-06-25T01:19:00.000-07:00

M. Night Shyamalan isn’t preoccupied with ‘twist endings’, though he has been type-cast as such; he’s preoccupied with stories without explanation. This sense of magical realism can sometimes ruin the believability of the narrative or can sometimes be, ah, magical. The Happening manages to be a little bit ruined and little bit dark magic, like a magician who pulls a dead rabbit out of a hat.

In The Happening, there is no machete-wielding halfhuman around the corner waiting to chop up an unimportant character. Shyamalan finds the narrative in what is not known. I suppose that’s where the tension in most thrillers comes from – when the lurching slasher MIGHT be around the corner, when the music quiets and the hero slows, and you THINK something horrific is going to happen, but you don’t know. You never know in this movie, because no one knows what IT is. It, the event, the happening, the occurrening, is a sort of dementia spreading in a viral fashion, causing people to casually kill themselves. It may or may not be caused by rebellious house plants and their airborne neurotoxins.

The characters flee from nothing, from wind and rustling brush, and from oak trees burdened with the shackles of rope swings, bubbling with years of resentment. Really. There are implications of angry trees in the movie. It all sounds very silly and ridiculous, yes? It is. And yet, the constant suicides are immensely unnerving, and by association, so is the invisible menace from which the characters are fleeing. What is more disturbing than watching someone calmly kill themselves? Watching a few dozen, and then a few more, and not knowing if the protagonists are about to off themselves.

On that level the film works, for me. I didn’t buy Mark Wahlberg’s role as a high school science teacher – you get the sense that he’s only half a chapter ahead of his students in the textbook. I never knew much about Zooey Deschanel’s character – but I like Zooey Deschanel – and never bought the forced tension between their characters.

The Happening is what it needs to be and not quite what it could have been. Shyamalan likes the idea of being an auteur, I think, but he needs a writing partner, someone with older, wiser eyes, to look over his shoulder. So just give me a call, M. I only charge twice minimum wage.

The Quest for the Self in Mystery Doritos

2008-06-19T20:30:00.000-07:00

They say to do what you love. Find what you love to do, and find a way to make it your livelihood. I like smores and sleeping in on the weekends. Though what I do with the most gusto, I think, is trying not to get hit by buses when crossing the street. Can you make a profession of that?

My year in the real world has been as kind of as unkind as can be expected of someone in the pudgy middle class without any distinct talents and yet still unable to acquiesce to mundane work. There is no differentiation between the real and the college world, I learned; it's just an old joke for people who think the height of life is in the oblivion of college-magnitude drinking, or for people who don't know how to save money.

My earliest longterm plan had been to become a paleontologist -- a real dinosaur hunter, with a small pick-axe hanging from my warn leather belt and a pistol in my back pocket, just in case. Not that I ever had in interest in studying dinosaurs. They seem magic and majestic and ethereal and I was going to travel the world to find them; the discovery was the thing. Of course, I was probably five years old and also wanted to be a Ninja Turtle with equal devotion. They were both good plans.

I think there are people to whom work and living are two separate entities, and then there are people who hold work to be identity, one and the same. Unfortunately my parents raised me, unknowingly, with a 1950's puritan worker-bee mindset, and I invariably feel I am of the latter group -- work and life are together; there is no refuge at the end of the day if the work was not worth doing.

Which is why I recently quit a job, like the unappreciative almost-Ivy-League snot I occasionally am. But it has given me free time to soul-search in mysterious black-bagged Doritos.

The front of the bag says Doritos: THE QUEST: Guessing the Flavor is Just the Beginning. It is an attempt to appeal to the tantrum-prone ten year old boys with mothers who are willing to quiet them with dumb chips... demographic, in addition to young bachelors, who, with unbridled freedom, are also drawn towards mysterious Doritos.

Every chip is a journey, in my mouth! Amazing discoveries! Crunchy nirvana!

It's a marketing scheme that pops up every few years, infrequently enough so that you might have forgotten that the experience of not knowing what kind of flavordust is ensconcing your corn chips is moderately disappointing, because it doesn't taste that great. It's usually supposed to taste like pizza or hamburger or something that has no earthly business being an isolated flavor.

'The Quest' continues the tradition. They taste like yellow. Spoiler alert! It's been reported in the snackosphere that the super secret flavor is Mountain Dew. Chips of Dew! Sure, whatever. Are you impressed that I follow such obscure news so to be knowledgeable of contemporary Doritos flavorology? Are you saddened?

Having spent a substantial amount of time perusing job listings, I feel or felt that most jobs I could possibly be hired at are marketing-oriented. That's an over-simplification of many suppositions but it is the gist of my perspective. Do I really want to be perfectly tooling a Google Ad to ferry referrals to an internet startup? Etcetera, Etcetera? Do I really want to be pitching my idea for the next Doritos campaign of mystery chips?

Hey everyone, what about filet mignon flavor? Classy! What about corn flavoring? No one will ever guess!

Naw, I don't really want to be doing that. But I will buy the mystery chips.

Kung Fu Panda

2008-06-14T10:45:00.000-07:00

Kung Fu Panda is refreshingly entertaining. Pixar has more or less owned feature-length animation for the past decade or so, critically speaking, with the animated films from Dreamworks catering more to children who will enjoy 80 minutes of silly gags and songs, as opposed to actual plot, and then move on. Such films can do well financially but have short shelf-lives; the characters are rarely developed enough to be memorable. And the pop-culture parodying and upturned fairytale of Shrek was novel at the time, but still, the story was never that touching and the characters of such films are ultimately forgetten.

I love animation as a medium but I haven't bothered seeing many non-Pixar CG movies lately. I thought Happy Feet was an abomination of plot-points presumably derived in corporate meetings (and a misguided use of motion-capture), and I've been in recovery. There's some great art, great character design, great animation, and amazing technical progressions in many films -- I like the square-edged illustrative whimsy of the Madagascar animals, for example -- but none of it can make up for limp storylines and the easy, cliched, pop culture jokes.

And now there is Kung Fu Panda. I was reticent before the positive reviews surfaced, because it's usually not a good sign when big-name voice actors are used to promote a movie -- as if anyone goes to a film to hear their favorite people -- but heck, I ditched work and went. Jack Black makes a pretty good panda after all, and I especially appreciate the moments when he is off script, inserting ongoing Blackisms ("bring the THUNDAH!").

Anyway, the story is nothing new. An unlikely hero is foretold in the scrolls and the forces of evil are inevitably encroaching, etc, etc. Luckily it's humorous enough, written well-enough, and actiony... enough, not to matter. It's also full of stunningly good animation. For me, that old wobbly turtle steals every scene. The way he shakes with age, and licks his lips and smiles just enough, is wonderful; it's a focused and subtle piece of animation, and I'd like to shake the hands of the guys and gals who handled that character. And the blobby, weighty panda, all flesh rather than skin, is far-removed from the old days when everything in computer animation looked like rigid plastic; both the animators and the R&D team behind them deserve large praise.

I really hope this marks an upward trend for Dreamworks-produced animation. There will inevitably be sequels, and I think they will inevitably be less impressive. But I do hope to be wrong.

‘The Fall’

2008-05-31T12:50:00.001-07:00

In a time when movie-making is more an art of digital collage rather than in-shot cinematography, it is entirely refreshing to see a film primarily devoid of computer graphics, favoring on-location, true-to-lens sights. It is even more refreshing to see a fantasy film executed so exquisitely, so impossibly, in such a way.

'The Fall' tells of a young girl's friendship with a bed-ridden Hollywood stuntman while they both recover in a hospital. But the film itself, really, is in the girl's imagination, and the potent, magical images are actualizations of her mind's eye, working together with the stuntman as he tells her a story.

The story of the film itself is not as strong as its visuals; the emotional investment the audience has in the characters is halfhearted, as endearing as young Alexandria (Catinca Untaru) is. It seems clear that she is not always acting, when she lies alongside Roy (Lee Pace), mumbling and stumbling over her perhaps ad-libbed lines.

Midway through the film I foresaw narrative collapse, as the plot in the 'real' world was stagnating, but the penultimate scenes did provide an emotional peak that nearly elevated the story to something more moving. Critics have said the film could have book of still photographs and worked on the same level; the story of the characters in the hospital could have indeed been better handled by a more balanced director, a storyman like Spielberg, but it would have been at the expense of director Tarsem's images. Nonetheless the story should not be so easily dismissed, and Tarsem, who understands the significance of showing rather than telling and the inherent power of the moving image, deserves all the praise that can be afforded to him by crabby critics.

What it does demonstrate is the gravitas of the real, the exemplary profoundness of reality devoid of green-screen. The sites are astounding, so much more so than something like Star Wars: Revenge of the Sith, where the sprawling, fantastical architecture of an alien planet is 'photorealistic' but still unable to fool the eye. The realities created in such films are illustrations crafted by very devoted and very talented artists, and can be appreciated as such, and often not as more. The filmmakers behind the recent Speedracer movie understood and embraced this to a sometimes-successful effect. And so does Tarsem who, in this film, rejects it as much as he can, as if to remind Hollywood that there is a world outside of the computer, waiting to be filmed.

'The Fall' has been called incredibly indulgent, as it was shot on location in 18 countries and largely self-funded by the director. Such is the 'indulgent' aspect. The truth of the matter is that a young child's imagination, which is the star of the film, could not have been done justice in any other way.

Throughout the picture I kept thinking, how could they afford to film this? Afterwards it was more appropriate to question how anyone could afford not to. I wish imagination was more common these days.

Indy IV: Criticizing the Critics

2008-05-27T17:25:00.000-07:00

It goes without saying that you should not read this if you have not seen it, or if you have no interest in a ranting Andy.

It is easy to be a critic and hard to be a creator. It is even easier to be a critic on the internet, where your audience can be infinite or nonexistent, a factor decided by luck more than talent.

Most professional film critics have described Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull quite aptly as a fluffy, fun, fast-paced feast of a summer movie--- nothing more and nothing less; a traditional blockbuster by the father of summer blockbusters, Steven Spielberg. Alongside that, many amateur critics (i.e. the whole of the internet) have dismissed the movie as a ruinous visitation to their childhood favorites, a blemish on a franchise and an unnecessary reunion.

Where has imagination gone? Where have you left your dreams? With Michael Bay? My god.

Some have proclaimed the movie to be poorly written and poorly directed--- yeah, you'd know. Your tastes are impeccable, dear internet critic. Sure, Lucas and Spielberg have about 75 years of filmmaking and storytelling between them, but YOU know better; your carefully crafted blogpost, your clever twitters, and your monthly forty two cent profit from Google Adwords really justifies your opinion. You're a regular Harold Bloom of the digital age.

Personally, when I saw the grainy old Paramount logo fade onto screen, and then fade into a mole hill, the continuation of the visual echo from the first Jones film told me to relax. Like many I went in with equal parts dread and anticipation. And then the old white understated type-face, along with the wide, beautiful shot of the open countryside, camera panning as the music oriented us, let me know it was indeed a Spielberg film. They had me at hello.

Of course, many fans have been annoyed by the addition of alien-like creatures to the Indiana Jones franchise. It was an inevitably divisive decision. There was even an old rejected screenplay floating around called 'Indiana Jones and the Saucer Men from Mars', which, yes, the new film does borrow from. It's understandable; I was heavily skeptical they could successfully create a Jones storyline with saucer men. But they did and I had no issues with it.

You should understand that to some people the Arc of the Covenant, the magical stones of Indy II, and the Holy Grail are as fantastical as any saucer man. It all could be called supernatural religious mysticism. The Nazca lines were presumably created to communicate with the gods--I don't know much about them-- and Spielberg and Lucas simply provided the gods. Perhaps the Christian roots of the Arc in Raiders makes it easier for some people to believe--- in their heart of hearts they believe there WAS an arc, and it held stone tablets crafted by an omnipotent god, carried by Moses. I take it that a couple billion people feel there is veracity in this bit, even if metaphorical rather than literal. Rooting the story of the Raiders film in what, for many, is fact rather than fiction, then makes it easier to believe the said golden box could also melts Nazis with holy lightening.

The idol of the Temple of Doom is less significant and more magical: glowing, enchanted stones that have something to do with Shiva. Seems, ah, somehow believable enough? I feel this is the weakest McGuffin of the Jones films because the stones mean so little though they do so much--- and they look like glowing potatoes.

And then there is the Holy Grail, a mythological thing popularized by Arthurian legend. I've no clue if there actually is talk of a grail in the Bible, but once more rooting the object in Christianity helped ease people's suspension of disbelief. The "interdimensional beings" of Crystal Skull do not have that advantage, and have little earthly basis besides the hard-to-explain Nazca lines. I appreciate that they never actually refer to them as aliens--only as saucer men, in reference to Roswell. They were 'interdimensional beings'... which is easier for me to swallow, and hopefully easier for physicists and astronomers to swallow too.

Besides, the film is set in 1957--- Cold War Sci-Fi space kitsch was battling Western Howdy Doody cowboys ‘n’ Indians in an epic pop-culture battle of absurdity, optimism, and paranoia. For me, saucer men work fine, in the context of 1957.

Indiana Jones was never high art, and it still is not. But the little touches that separate a Spielberg action movie from one by any other director are present--- the first silhouette of the fedora before Jones is on screen, the fact that he now prefers to be called Henry rather than Indiana in honor of his late father, the final scene with the rolling hat and Mutt’s wide-eyes--- and through it all the real magic of story through cinema, and the escape of the matinee on a work day. I think I’ll skip work and catch it again this week. Anyone coming?

Three Possible Starts

2007-11-03T21:44:00.000-07:00

For Something Longer

1.
After a fire—the soot, the blackened charred brush, turning to powder when stepped on, the dead garden snakes, persistent flesh sticking to the near-naked bone, the dead baby rattlers, the desert tree immune to fire—reliant on fire—with its smooth, polished bark, a small, biblical, knobby tree, short and strong; the bodies of lizards with crackling skin, the footprints left in the soot—and the smell drawn up from feet dragging in the ashes, a spiced smell, organic—it draws upon memories of hearths and winters indoors, and in the dry air over the open, natural destruction of a brush fire, the synaesthetic juxtaposition of sense-remembrance with the immediate situation leaves one spinning and wondering wordlessly.

2.
Farmer’s market—bumbling people of all ages—a dichotomy of ages—the elderly pacing slowly and clumsily through the fruit-gazing crowds, dragging and shuffling in search of the perfect pomegranate or the freshest grapes with that great cloudy sheen on their green or muddy maroon skin, like fogged windows into the fruits’ juices. And there are the young couples, the young women, the young men, young and strong and as fresh as the fruit, some young and free enough to be impressed and compelled by all the small wonders that go unnoticed by those preoccupied, like the full range of colors in the wild tomatoes that go from soft apricot orange to deep bay-water green to the known red, or the joyous hard squeal of an infant in a far stroller.

3.
The saxophone player in the city, the light hitting his golden instrument hard from the low-hanging sun through the cityscape canyon of reflections and panes; his sound rolls and bounces and raises and falls away and up towards the highest windows and offices, and faintly falls back, half of one second later, falling in dispersion and uncertainty, like the skyscraper walls might be chiming in return, repeating each note and every sizzle of sound, every mistake and shimmer, back down to the saxman in the hard yellow afternoon sunlight, until the sound and the light fall and all go towards home and the saxophonist sole packs his bag and counts his tips and trudges along, down through the city canyon with the rest, towards home, towards rest.

The sax is his all—there is no consistency in his life beyond the notes created by the brass workings of his old horn. There is no wife now or family, there is no job to report to, no career to maintain and prune, no mortgage, no income to report, no bills to pay—aside from room and board and some meals and an occasional drink—there is nothing. There are the stars, which are not strong enough for the city light and the coastal fog; there is the sun, which shines as best it can through the clouds, and sometimes directly, hard on the panes; there is the moon, whose schedule the saxman never really understood; there is hunger and difficulty; and there is the reverberation of long, solitary notes from the metal tube that raises and falls with his breath like the tide, and sparks and pops and glows when he gets all the notes right, all the right length and strength, when straight and true music goes flying—there is the reverberation of his life in the saxophone, on the street, in the music.

2007-11-01T23:22:00.001-07:00

P1060093a

2007-10-09T17:07:00.000-07:00

For Old Time's Sake

2007-09-20T10:25:00.000-07:00

2007-09-11T17:44:00.000-07:00

We're on a sort of hiatus around here, if you hadn't noticed.

The Awkwardness of Writing

2007-07-09T10:53:00.001-07:00

Anyone who has taken to writing fiction will attest to the eminent fact that there is no hobby more excruciating, self-divisive, and satisfying. This is because it is, most often, an absolute waste of time, grating on the soul like an obsessive-compulsive quirk, like incessant counting of steps or just-so arrangements of unimportant things, knowingly mattering not at all and yet deeply important to the single devoted person.

It is perhaps primarily a problem of readership: there is no reason to write if it will not be read, aside from the exercise of the fingers and heart that it gives. And there is no readership beyond whoever the writing is forced upon; being published is something that comes later or not at all, making the present writing feel like lonely navel-gazing and no more.

This post itself is a demonstration of the compulsion---readership, near zero, will be mostly people searching the internet for the phrase “lonely navel.” But it is not zero, and that is good enough.

I write down brief notes that may be useful later in a small black book. It is “not a journal,” I tell people. Or, maybe it is a journal with a cutthroat editor, subscribing to a version of the iceberg theory. This is the entirety of the past month:

Jun 5 - “something about gorilla suits’
Jun 10 – “a priest without a god; the depressing grey warmth of early June”
Jun 11 – “I grew a soul”
Jun 15 – “shooting star over senior dinner”
Jun 16 – “packing mementos in purple tissue paper; blackberry pie and white wine, pearish flavor”
Jun 17 – “champagne and donuts”
Jul 8 – “Honda Hill, dead crow; Church of Dawkins: Apotheosis of an Atheist”

Anyway, when you are alone, almost nothing feels awkward because there is no one watching. Writing is an exception. It is always awkward.

False Positives

2007-06-28T15:08:00.000-07:00

“How is your day going—so far?”
“Okay.”
“Just okay?”
“Yeah, okay is good enough.”
“Hopefully this will make it better.”

She passes me my overpriced foamy coffee with swirls of caramel and we both laugh insincerely, like awkward fools. I look to the tip box and decide to keep my fifteen cents.

“Okay” is not good enough? I appreciate the positive attitude, I certainly do, but the ubiquitous acceptance of okay to mean something of only marginal adequacy is peculiar—a sign of the false positive attitudes which are, in part, an American thing.

Of course I was supposed to play along. I should have been as chipper as a bowl of frosted rainbows. My day, so far, should have been good, great, spectacular like a sunset in the south Pacific, like newborn sunshine fading to twilight over clear waters and white sand. It was a fine morning, but it wasn’t that. It was okay—because nothing went wrong. That is a lukewarm positive mantra which follows many people in middle America who get bored with themselves, don’t you think? At least nothing went wrong.

My morning of no particular prospects was spent deciding where to go and what to do. It began before morning, in fact: I distinctly dreamt of trying to find an unknown place, and getting lost on a grassy mountain with a dirt bike—those very loud ones with thick treads. And I didn’t know where to go when I awoke, so I drank sour coffee and read the headlines, and sat briefly in the sun with my cat rubbing against my leg. Still I could not decide where to go, but for no clear reason, wanted a book of Chekov’s stories. I was at the bookstore a few days ago, and bought nothing, but now I needed the Chekov collection. $7.95. And there was my place to go. I tell people how difficult it is to have free time, and they never believe me.

Better bring my small pocket notebook, I thought, just in case.

So I got my Chekov book, and another. Woody Allen has a new collection of short stories, or essays, or something—I haven’t read any of it—and though I didn’t really want to pay for a hard cover first edition, I did want to support Woody. It’s one of those imaginary kinships that come to obsessive people who engross themselves in the entire oeuvre of someone’s work. And he seems insecure, you know, so I wanted to help his sales.

I notice now that I’m dressed exactly as he is on the book jacket photo. I suppose he is dressed very young for 72 or I am dressed very old for 21.

My day, so far, was okay. Not burdened by anything—no work to be done. But burdened by nothing—no prospects of work to be done.

The clerk at the bookstore’s register didn’t even ask me how my day was going. To think! But judging from her mechanical voice, her day was only okay and I will overlook her lack of false positivism.

PS
If you think this is unimportant minutiae of an unemployed graduate's free time, well, you are partially correct, but I assure you that this is the important minutiae. I've left out such topics as difficult-to-open shampoo bottles and the tenacity of cheeto dust.

The Last Word

2007-06-09T14:27:00.000-07:00

My last word on Stanford is that it is expensive and has many fountains and I’ve a degree from it.

*
One day I was early for early for class, and sat at a big table in a small room to wait; one other student was there.

“It’s stuffy in the English department,” I said, ratcheting back and forth on a swivel chair.

The girl’s eyes widened. She seemed surprised by this statement, thinking I was criticizing the people of the department, rather than the air circulation. Stuffy. You see, I am simple and am often mistaken for more.

In her face, suddenly taut, I saw the ambiguity of my language. “I mean the air.”

“Oh! I’m not a very good…”
“Rater of climates?”
“Rater of climates.”

Then she asked if I knew some literary term that she was trying to find in the textbook.

“Oh,” I said, “I don’t really know anything.”

“Ohh.” She looked at me like I had just revealed a private handicap. More people came in. The professor was late and apologized, and said his office was filling with smoke, or something like that. “Strange air,” he said. I looked smugly to the girl, as if the professor was corroborating with what I had already said, but she was staring intently at her blank notebook.

This meaningless exchange is the sum of all things—I’ve hardly been able to comment on air conditioning without ruffling feathers, and I’ve hardly been motivated to discuss anything more or less profound than the indoor weather.

*
Once, I was sitting with some Communications professors, who were discussing how new technologies are always criticized for transporting risqué subject matter.

“I remember the telegraph controversy,” I said. “Really lascivious stuff going on.”
“Really?” one professor enthusiastically asked.
“Yes.” And then another professor told him I was kidding, adding that I was “the English major.”

After lying to him about telegraphs, he told me I would “go far.”

*
I overheard, one morning as I ate a completely decent brunch, some kid in Stern talking about how we’re all the future, and he’s damn proud to be part of it. Damn proud, he said. I felt sorry for the girl he was with, who listened voicelessly, and who probably had to brush away specks of chewed tater-tots that landed in her hair during his speech. Then, I thought, this blueberry muffin is surprisingly good.

We are the future! Date your oversized philanthropic checks accordingly. We’re the future. I hardly know what that means. Every person with a thumping heart is “the future.” Having a $180k education means that your own future might be beautiful and filled with neckties and Ikea furniture.

Our future, as I see it now during finals week, is composed of young men with the wooly beginnings of a beard wearing wrinkled pajamas, and young women with JUICY written across their rear in bespangled capitals, wearing space-goggles to block the sun, migrating to the library, to sit at desks, to attempt to be profound, observant, and accurate, or, failing that, to attempt to have that image. Some will use big words and small ideas, and some will say very smart things, and very little of it will matter to anyone.

You could say it’s all about image, as it takes veneered presentation to get into a school, and to get a job, and that the image does not have to run deep. I hardly care about that anymore.

The people who claim to be “the future” will likely be future leaders. The most sheltered people are the ones who will be in charge, because if you can afford to learn about the world, and about the difficult, unending trials of mankind, you can also afford to live away from those trials. The brave curious opt for a balcony view, or an IMAX film.

*
I was talking with a friend at one of the gnarled woodland tables of the Coffee House about who we would give money to, if we were to ever have large amounts of it to give away—the point being that I did not understand why people make large contributions to Stanford, of all places that need money. He said he’d give his wealth to the custodial and kitchen workers. I suggested a ridiculous twenty-story public library rising out of East Palo Alto.

Why do we have any antipathy? I asked. Because it claims to be something it’s not, he said. I suppose that’s true. I don’t know what it means to be. It is a school, and that is all. But to attract people with famous pasts, the university spends graciously on the aesthetics of its property, like a well-credentialed amusement park. If it did not, the people with famous pasts could just go to a prettier school with more comforts. And as a student, if you’re paying forty five thousand dollars for nine months of sitting around, that giant S flowerbed better bloom real nice and the blueberry muffins better be real good. It seems to be the biggest difference between a public and private school: the flowers and trees and the muffins.

*
I can see now that:

-My curiosity’s been blunted—but maybe that’s just age.

-Opportunities have been torrential, surely, and more often than not I’ve waved gaily as they passed by. That much has been my mistake.

-It is pleasant to walk across campus as the sun sets, when no one seems hurried, and the air has a sort of thickness as it cools, thick with the dull color of champagne. Sunday mornings are similar, but the colors of a morning are paler, and fresher. The shelter of Stanford can be appealing in this way.

-I’ve said my one success was my degree—that isn’t true. The degree is part of the big joke. My one success is that someone as curmudgeonly as myself has friends——

To those of you who have read anything I’ve ever written—thank you. Unread writing is like undeveloped film. It may have been fun to look through the lens but there’s hardly a point if no one sees the photos.

Where Ideas Come From

2007-06-03T19:43:00.000-07:00

I must write to raise myself during in-between days, when I am waiting for no replies in the mail or calls to be returned.

I sit self-conscious next to a garbage bin and watch people going into Borders Books, but the view is limited and I’ve little to say for it. The view is limited enough to almost forget where I am, and if the fountain was on, I’d think I was in a small Mediterranean town. Though, truthfully, I can see the Apple computer store from here.

There’s a poster on the wall for some sort of atheist group—they call themselves Humanists. I suppose they gather to have discussions about nothing. To think! Corrupt atheists longing for organized hierarchies and fancy hats.

They were likely sitting outside, drinking wine in the June sunlight—on a Sunday morning no doubt—and one man named Carl or Merton said something like, “You know, we should organize some kind of group of people like us, people who believe as strongly in nothing as ourselves.” And another man agreed. Then they drank their wine and laughed gaily at the pretty church bells.

And then the man named Duke or Jacob said, “We should have some kind of hierarchy, don’t you think? If we organize?” And Carl or Merton agreed, and failing to decide who between them would lead, they played a game of dice, leaving it to random chance. Carl or Merton won. “Besides,” he said, “it was my idea.”

After hanging like sloths in hammocks for a few hours, they rose and designed a flier on a yellow legal pad, announcing a new group for atheists to gather and discuss beliefs. It would be a brief meeting, the flier assured in the last line, which was signed “Grand Presidentor I.”

“It sounds authoritative and respectable,” said Carl or Merton.

The other man proposed a logo. “It’s simple marketing,” he said. Duke or Jacob drew a thin, writhing dragon holding a hammer, on the letterhead of the flier. “It’s symbolic. Of justice, or maybe virtue.”
“Both!”
“Yes!”
And they made several hundred copies for widespread posting.

The first meeting went well enough. Five men stood in the parking lot between a bar and a restaurant. The Grand Presidentor had little to say to the small group.
“Hi guys. I just thought it would be good to organize.”
“I hardly believe it,” someone said.
“Believe what?”
“Anything!”
They laughed. Some went into the bar.

“Did you notice,” asked Duke/Jacob, that there were no women?”
Carl/Merton had noticed. He had not mentioned it as a reason for organizing, or for wanting to be the leader, but he had hoped to meet women who were as passionate about nothing as he was.
“They might’ve been put off by your logo, I think. Women don’t like dragons or hammers,” he said.
“Do you think the dragon should be holding flowers?” asked Duke.
“Why would a dragon have flowers? Is he going to the dragon prom?” The grand presidentor was becoming irritated by his second in command.
“Maybe.”
“That makes no sense. You don’t understand women like I do.”
“Then what should the logo be?”
“Let’s get rid of the logo for now. Let’s focus on a name. Something kind and gentle.”
“The Pillow Huggers,” said number two.
“That’s not bad, but it’s too unclear about our message. What do we believe in? Nothing but ourselves.”
“The Ourselvians. The People Huggers. The Humanazis.”
“Humanazis is pretty good, except for the Hitler thing. The Humanoids.”
“Too sci-fi. The Humanists.”
“Yes!” said number one. “That’s the ticket.”

And so the two atheist men had a name for their group, newly to be drowned in dragon-fearing women.

“We should have uniforms,” said number two, “to establish ourselves as leaders.”
“Women love men in uniforms—they say that in movies.”
“So we should dress like sailors or policemen?”
“Something with buttons, yes, and maybe badges.”

A slow wandering journey through a thrift shop produced a blue boyscout shirt with patches that seemed vaguely militaristic, and a plain white button-up with the name REXCOM embroidered over the breast pocket.

“Who should be the boyscout and who should be Rexcom?” asked number two. Number one was quick to respond.
“It wouldn’t make any sense for the main leader to be a boyscout, right? Logically.”

And so it was decided.

“I’ll be Grand President Rexcom and you’ll be Duke the Scout. Or Duke Duke if you want.”
“Alright. I could sign it Duke squared, with a little two in the corner.”
“Sure!”

And so they had uniforms.

——And so I sit and decide what to do now that my coffee’s gone dry. Do I use my time for nonsense, or—well what else is there?

No Romance in Transit Centers

2007-05-28T22:53:00.000-07:00

Modern train stations are not made with any sense of romance—that is a shame. I have been stranded a few times, for an hour’s time, at the Millbrae Caltrain/Bart station, which, in terms of the Bay area, is in the middle of nowhere.

“Please do not ride your bicycle while on Bart,” says a gritty speaker, somewhere.

Two years ago, maybe more, I was here at night, a reasonably temperatured night, and I was very hungry. I may have had a small dinner, but it had been at least four hours earlier. Knowing I had almost two hours before the next train would come because the late weekend trains are more infrequent, I wandered out into the urban neverness, seeking any kind of quick snack. There was a diner on the corner but I didn’t want to sit—it felt necessary to retrieve something for consumption at the station. Outside the diner and across the street, I saw a gas station with a convenience store, and went to it. The street was wide; it seemed like a dozen lanes in the night, like one of those giant black tracks through the unnatural land that acts as a slow urban artery—not the main vein, not an important one, but a thick one. I crossed it and went into the store and bought a candy bar with a bottled coffee drink. I used their restroom too—that was another motivator which I’ve just now recalled. And I came back to the train station with my candy and drink and unwrapped it, and ate it, quickly and lustfully. That word is a hair from what I mean to say, but in terms of candy and hunger, you understand fine. It was not very satisfying.

The station is all concrete and metal. I suppose all are. A French train station, like Gare du Nord or d’Orsay, which started out as a station, is also concrete and metal, but done right. Of course those kinds of stations are plentiful in America as well, I think, but not here; this is for business and those are for fun. Modern stations, or, transit centers, are made to work—and that is all.

That night at the station was as a little sad and a little lonely. The electric light is unfriendly, and the dead hum of the rails is foreboding. It had been a good day with a good friend in the city, and there was a nice kind of love between us, like we had been childhood companions, but weren’t. The day was over and the sun was down and I was alone eating candy in the cold of the train station with irritable strangers.

It is better today at the station, perhaps because I began the day alone and nothing was lost, and it was still good; the sun is not down and is kind with warmth—not the bad heat the can sometimes come in California, but the gentle sort of warmth of later afternoons. The station is still ugly and dead like a skeleton but I was smart enough, this time, to bring paper and pen for the empty minutes.

A Personal History of Epic Failings and One Success

2007-05-26T13:50:00.000-07:00

“It is youth's felicity as well as its insufficiency that it can never live in the present, but must always be measuring up the day against its own radiantly imagined future—flowers and gold, girls and stars, they are only prefigurations and prophecies of that incomparable, unattainable young dream.” - FSF

I think back to my views of school and college and life, and all that lay ahead, when I was a sixteen year old high school student, sending applications to a few universities with some sort of epic grandeur in mind. I enjoyed the constant flow of brightly colored solicitations in my parent’s mailbox from schools wanting my attendance, or my money, or, from a more egotistical standpoint, my mind. Princeton had an orange coat of arms on their informational packet, like a tiger-skin shield; I liked that, but did not think I had the kind of academic and far-reaching background to be qualified for such a place. Financially—who could know? Middle Americans afforded tuition somehow. My parents reminded me, when choosing schools, that my father might be laid off soon; I ignored that, preferring debts and dreams to grounded realism. But I was bound for a UC school, anyway. It was somehow implicit.

Stanford sent me a postcard. It had a picture of archways and flowers. That’s all I’d seen of the campus—some arches and some flowers. I remember a sort of dimly lit scene that I now think might have been imagined—a scene of a stone balustrade over roses the color of dried blood, foliage deep green like moss on the shore of a freshwater lake. There was a soft mist, and a soft mold growing on the arched pillars; it was sort of Celtic. It must have been imagined because all photos of Stanford are full of sun and sandstone, and, not particularly Celtic. I didn’t really perceive the strange old mission/art nouveau style of architecture that covers the campus until I visited in the spring of ‘03.

I replied to the postcard, and got an application. It had only recently learned that Stanford was in California—in the MTV film ‘Orange County’, Jack Black drives from southern California to the Stanford campus in a matter of hours, and burns down the admission office. I forget why; Tom Hanks’ son is trying to get admitted, and trying to become a writer. And so I learned that Stanford was only a few hours up the Pacific coast. It was only somewhat misleading.

I applied, nearly furtively. I don’t think my parents knew until I asked them for the $75 application fee. There is something embarrassing about ambition when failure is so readily expected.

The mailman incorrectly delivered my admission packet, giving it to a neighbor with big hair. She brought it over and said congratulations. I wonder if the mailman did that intentionally, based on a nearly forgotten but deep-set resentment from thirty years passed.

That’s the short of it. I had no particular academic ambitions. I thought I’d study something with computers, something with animation and design, the neat things that fascinated me. I don’t know why those ideas did not pan out—computers become a pain when you get into real work. But then, most work is a pain. A few years later I had a degree in English. With a creative writing focus! I did that, truthfully, because it was the easiest thing to do. When something is easy, you probably have some talent in the area. Unfortunately I had never written a story, and wrote some pathetic stuff to get decent grades; you really only have to show up to a creative writing class to get a B. Academic papers were the same.

At the end of high school, on the AP English test, I wrote an essay on Pride and Prejudice and got full marks; I’d only read a third of the book. A couple years ago I wrote an essay on The Sound and the Fury, the Benji part, and did well; I’d only read a third of that book. I found, later, that the remaining two thirds were really good; I never finished P&P. These are two victorious moments in my history of minimal effort. (Rather, my effort is put into unquantifiable things that satisfy and interest me, like this writing). More recently I wrote a paper on Rushdie’s Midnight’s Children, and received the only A+ I would ever get in college. I have no idea what that book is about; something with fireworks and India. When no one understands a particular subject, anyone with confidence can be an authority.

That is my one success—I have a degree in English. As far as the epic failings, well, I have a degree in English, but that is all. What else would there be? Some kind of enlightenment? I really don’t know.

There still exists a scene, on a campus that doesn’t exist, in the shadows of a low fog along the rose bushes and the balustrade, where something cinematic happens. Something like a parting kiss between two lovers in the forties, off to war and death within months. It’s a sort of appreciation for what is and what has been, in knowing the present is as solid as a haze of soon gone cigarette smoke, up and out in bluish wisps, and in knowing the future is only its imagined shadows. It’s some sort of epic grandeur that exists once you acknowledge your failings and reach for something just beyond reason. That's the ticket: something just beyond reason.

The wind-sounds and the coffee make me sentimental, you see.

On the Curve of the Coast

2007-05-23T13:46:00.000-07:00

just a single scene:

“Let’s go on one of those walks—one of those walks around the town led by a village boy.”
“I don’t want to walk around.”
“It’s—it’ll be delightful. Like a real tour.”
“I could walk at home. Too many hills around here. Too hilly.”
“You don’t walk at home. You sit.”

The two sat in the open air dining plaza of the hotel, set far up on the hilled land, and looked out to the curve of the coast and the white-lipped waves scrapping onto the beaches, and at the small houses covered in pastel Mediterranean plaster, houses built with the hill and with each other in organic construction.

“It’s my favorite hobby. Sitting. Let’s just relax for a while.”
“Garçon!” she called. A young man in a clean white linen shirt came to the table.
“Jus d'orange, si vou plait. Garçon,” she added, as he stepped away, “promenade avec moi?” She walked her fingers across the table like little legs and smiled. The waiter looked to her husband and laughed, and stepped away.

“That’s nice,” the husband said.
“He was wearing the same shirt as you. Did you notice? You’re dressed like the help.”
“It’s a good shirt.”
“It’s very white, don’t you think?”
“Let’s not talk for a while. Let’s enjoy the breeze.”
The waiter came with cold orange juice in a thin, tall glass.
“Whiskey, si vou plait,” said the husband, “with a little water and a little ice.”
“This early,” she said with no question mark.
“Let’s enjoy the breeze.”

The large umbrella overhead leaned back, and forth, slowly teetering like a thin palm, and back.
“I was thinking, when we get back, we should hire a gardener.”
“You don’t like doing the gardening yourself?” the wife asked.
“Not really. We can afford it.”
“But I thought you like to do it by yourself. With the electric tools.”
“It’s very hot in the summer months,” he said.
“I don’t think that’s a new development.”
The waiter brought his drink.
“Merci. Some would say it’s annual, the heat. It’s very tiring, you know. I want to hire someone.”

She took a long drink of the orange juice. “Fine. But would the gardening people use your tools or bring their own?”
“They’d probably bring their own.”
“What would you do with the mower and the other stuff?”
He took a drink. “Just keep them, I guess.”
She tipped the glass of juice up fully, to empty it and get at the bottom pulp, her head back and her neck long and exposed, and her eyes closed to the high sun.
“You should give the tools to Arthur,” she said in a soft, reserved way, knowing he would be displeased.
“I’m not going to give away my possessions.”
“Would you sell them?”
“I don’t know. I’d rather not. I’d rather keep them.” He finished his drink and took a long breath, and felt his chest and lungs full and open.
“You don’t need them if you hire someone.”
“I might.”
“For emergency weeds?”
“For whatever. Maybe you’re right about the walk. Let’s go for a walk.”
“Let’s for a swim.”
He placed money on the table from his pocket and sat the empty glass on top.
“All right.”
“All right!”

Rockwell is Dead

2007-05-04T15:44:00.000-07:00

I've been considering, for a writing project, what traits tie together my generation, as I see it. "As I see it" is a very limited view---this I know. But there is a group of people whom I wish to represent. These people are/have:

-the lack of interest in religion
-the desire for fame
-war is now for lower classes to fight
-everyone is treated as if they are above average, as long as you have the money to be treated so
-canned expression through pre-designed online venues
-a new reliance (or disregard?) on moral intuition, in a time when the church has become insignificant to most, and parents teach kids little besides brushing teeth and not having sex---rules that all humans bend when convenient
-culture is invented rather than inherited
-Rockwell is Dead
-the "silent majority" are not silent, they're just vocal about the wrong things; they're voting for American Idol
-rampant self-delusional Oscar Wildeism---by which I mean, we are all charmed by our own wit; everyone is a humorist
-much has been written on the oppressive feeling of stability that comes with living in suburbs; steadfastness, the feeling that nothing will change, is fairly revolting when young, when ambitious, or both
-in fact, the dissastisfied suburbanite is a cliche

For the new generation there is no glory in war, no glory in owning a home or a car, no glory in anything, except perhaps unjustified fame and money and excess. It is a media generation---there is widespread popularity, or, nothing. Everything between luxury and poverty, in twenty first century young America, is the same: a sort of undesirable complacency that ruins us. The good Dr. Thompson was right: the American dream is dead, because the new generation has been taught to dream of all the wrong things.

New dreams are cobbled together from the ash of older fallen suns.

I might sound like a sweater-vested Puritanical soul, but my point is observational, not critical. I'm not irked or calling for change; just trying to get my head around it.

A Failed Experiment in Gonzo Journalism

2007-04-29T00:16:00.000-07:00

We sat on the back porch of Sunnytown America, hazed in the soft smoke of cheap cigars and cloudy clear plastic cups of homemade sangria and Pimms—free sunshine juice of a few gold old boys in a big cooking kettle for all or none.

“Fuck all!” someone said. “It’s all clogged with orange rinds and mint leaves!”

The poor man’s tall glass was stuffed full with a farmer’s market worth of chopped vegetables from the Pimms.

The northeastern woman in her bold northeasternness reached over and smacked the bottom of the upturned glass, as the poor man slanted it up like a dump-truck headed to TJ, through his mouth and down his throat.

“See!” he said to God, or someone else in the sky. He looked cross-eyed at the vegetables crowding the base of the glass.

“Tap it!” the woman shouted to the poor vegetable man at her side, and once more she pounded the bottom of the rear-up glass.

The veggies went forth and the poor man gagged at the fiber.

It was all routine to someone like me—grown men gagging on cupfuls of alcohol-soaked vegetables—because I was a graduate of college and a student of observation.

“A ha ha ah HA!” laughed the Anglo man with the gratis cigarillo. He had wide dark sunglasses like a star-filled night in some national park where the city couldn’t reach in and fuzz it all out, and when he bent towards you with a wolverine grin of small human teeth, and you saw some goddamn imposter of yourself shining flat in his wide shades—you wondered at it all. Was it just a reflection, or was it the damned phantasms summoned again through cheap melted-Legos plastic of polished Wal-Mart sunglasses?

Something like that will give you a quick little stroke. I polished my eyes with the backs of my eyelids for a few seconds. Just got to breathe with a rhythm, always remember that. Always breathe with a good rhythm.

I wasn’t a man who drunk much because I knew I needed it with desperate urgency, the way a slug in a pie-tin full of beer needs it—cheap beer that you leave out for skunks and raccoons. It would be a real natural show. I was dressed like an impoverished Key West pimp and reached for another cup because it was the only thing within reason worth doing.

Secondhand cigar smoke it an acquired taste. The northeastern woman smiled and laughed because she hated it. It reminded her of something vulgar. She thought it smelled like a naked old man dying in a recliner sofa, crusted over with happiness and bubbling inside with cancer and depression. The woman didn’t say as much but a laugh at the wrong thing says more.

I told her it smelled like history and breathed it in.

At some point I remember a dark-haired tattooed woman with a supposed black tongue walking out onto our porch with a novelist. The novelist drank from aluminum cans with retro-futurist lemons painted on them and complained about the cigar smoke by fiercely ignoring it. When the caterpillars started to fall from the sky, he said “dammit!” and blew insects that no one else saw from his arm. That rotten lemon fizz is finally getting to him, I thought.

But he was right. The novelist was just the first to notice because he was lucidly sober—always. I had a similar school of thought but lived by soft rules during hard times, and these were hard goddamn times.

The caterpillars came slowly. Not a blitzkrieg. Pure and sluggish carpet bombing. They came down from the sky on invisible silver threads. I’ve heard that the Chinese make flowing shirts and ties from this caterpillar ass thread but thoughts like that made me more fearful than just the caterpillar invasion. No one knew their intent. All they seemed to want was to descend and explore your body like a teenage lover with their thousand feet and back mustache. If you fought them they’d pop—little kamikaze fuckers fallen directly from heaven with seedy intentions.

We did fight for a time and tried to burn them by thrusting cigars in the air like torches at Frankenstein, but there’s only so much you can do against fallen Chinese angels before submitting. The poor vegetable man grabbed one in the air and threw it like a grenade into the bushes. Goddamn valiant but we were covered over by commie fur slugs within the hour.

——I remembered, just then, being kicked out of a store full of men with ponytails and banjos for having no money to spend or talent to use. Jesus, how many hours ago had that been? Only God and his little dog knew. I was caught by the music store’s rhythm lemons—maracas of agricultural shapes. Peppers. Cucumbers. Colorful little rhythm eggs were in a different cardboard display. I shook one and got glared at by a dozen Woodstock children and casually dressed investment bankers. It was Friday, after all, and they wouldn’t take any of my college-boy shit.

The tall Anglo was depressed by the music store. “Hats!” he said, once we were in the little black hedgehog-shaped car. “We need to get a bucket hat and a cigarette holder. Like we mugged Audrey Hepburn.”

The poor vegetable man was driving—it was his hedgehog—but wasn’t yet vegetable-ridden. He took us to Wal-Mart.

I think there was another. The guitar physicist. He approved of the trip like a calm father teaching his children to drive and pressing an invisible break with the tip of his toes.

We parked in handicap spot and pretended to limp, all four of us. We started in unison but it looked like a Broadway show, and someone might become suspicious, so we ran the rest of the way.

There was a little Wal-Martian holding coupons and giving free salutations at the door. She smiled at us from down there. The small woman was on to us. We had to be fucking quick! We had to find the hats to find the dream! For those of us with no sincere religion it was a search for a new god, and for the others, it was a cheap hat errand.

The hats were so goddamn economical and ugly that we all needed them. But the shirts—Hawaiian, Aloha, Acapulco, or whatever—weren’t gaudy enough for everyone to wear. The Anglo found a blue one with swordfish. He thrust a red shirt at the reluctant vegetable man—who I think is probably Samoan, but knew not to ask about this fact. I grabbed an eggnog yellow shirt covered with sailboats and palm fronds. Not perfect but it would have to do.

We had to look like idiots and were right on our way. The guitar physicist acquiesced only to a blue three dollar Panama Jack hat. Good enough for now.

The little cashier women suspected nothing until the Anglo shouted at us all, “Gummi-Worms ninety-eight cents!”

I grabbed the worms and knew that was it, the last mistake in a series. Security would come falling from the ceiling, hanging by invisible silver threads and would take us in on nameless charges. They knew my name from some online fun I had over the years and wouldn’t be afraid of using all that they knew of me to justify the buzz chair. I knew it—Texas style.

But I played cool and slashed at the electric machine with my credit card until the Wal-Martian woman handed me my bag. Yes! Freedom and the dream!

It was all nearly lost when we were escaping threw the asphalt fields that surrounded the corporate bazaar and the guitar physicist got hit in the face with a Gummi-Worms wrapper. Right when the Anglo went for his worms like the fish on his shirt and let the wrapper fly back, hitting the guitar man’s face, a giant shipment truck accelerated towards us. There was madness in most directions. The black hedgehog driver expected stops where there were no stops and the Federal Express man had deadlines. It was an albino elephant stampeding towards a melatonic rodent and only accelerating with the fear. The dream nearly ended then. The hats would have been for nothing and the Gummi-Worms would be strewn through the car and over the bodies, giving the image of sweet little decomposers doing their thing in a Wal-Mart parking lot around four o’clock in the afternoon. “What’s with the hats?” the coroners would ask each other—and they’d conclude that four men wearing made-in-China hats and Hawaiian shirts while eating Gummi-Worms was a cursed combination.

But somehow the hedgehog scurried through the albino Fedex elephant’s feet and we made it home.

I snapped back to it then—the porch, the sagging sun, caterpillars and cigars. Jesus, maybe I had a stroke, I thought. Maybe a caterpillar had gone into my ear and was humping all the nerve endings. At some point I sat down.

There was a game of shirtless middle-aged volleyball going on in a renovated minefield just across the way and some of us gawked hard at them. One of the players was a Russian bear in little red running shorts that they’d probably imported as a ringer. I understand a clown can train those bears to do most anything with a rubber ball. We watched this bear and discussed Aztec sacrifices.

A small angry woman came from inside the stucco log cabin and complained about the smoke. She was belligerent and spoke fast loud words but that’s what I’d gathered. Then she shut the door and ran away. The poor vegetable man knew it smelled like history and propped the door open again—taking it to be a sort of victory for Feng Shui, I think.

I saw a thin man in lime green and rainbow sunglasses talking on the Sunnytown porch. Likely a spy, I thought. Spies with rainbows are never suspected but I knew better. I was a graduate of college.

No matter! A pleasant girl explained that the free horse bus was arriving imminently! Some of the men ran from the tire swing and sucked the last of the cigars. We all poured cups from the liquor kettle and ran away, as careful as a dime butler not to spill anything. I hadn’t planned on having more but found it was easier to run with an empty cup than a sloshing cup, and so I consumed for the good of my speed. Besides—no cups on the bus! It was against the law!

We sang Jewish folk songs on the bus to throw off any tailing Feds and chewed Gummi-Worms.

I tell you the rest is unclear. Some of us successfully looked like idiots and we went to a cartoon Italian restaurant. There was pizza balanced on empty tin cans and there was a plasticine head of the late pope on the corner booth table. Goddamn it, man! How do you get the pope-head Vatican table? Who do you pass a Hamilton to? Aaron the waiter? No, he had no weight. Who knows what man or woman has pope-head table authority in this town. The only thing within reason worth doing was drinking more wine.

Later I was in a blue car with a giant glowing clock display, going fast down the palm-lined road. It was barricaded totally with the frond trees on both sides, and they could fall inwards at any moment, it seemed. I advised the Seattle girl to drive real fast. We talked about fungi and I ran away to shower it all off—the worms, the caterpillars, the giant cartoon meatballs I had seen somewhere, the spaghetti sauce under my fingernails, and the intrusive cigar smoke.

The smoke had learned to open door handles and was tenacious—it wandered through all the neighborhood houses within a few miles like nuclear wind, and anyone with the right kind of nose could stand in the thickening air and smell it, the history and the Gummi-Worms, and the singed hairs of the dive-bomber caterpillars too impatient to wait for their turn in the air as free brown moths.

Dear Diary

2007-04-19T21:44:00.000-07:00

Dear Diary,

Admit weekend, in which prospective students visit the Stanford campus to evaluate it, is always a little depressing. Cherub-faced girls and lanky sharp-jawed boys walk through campus with a sense of achievement, already, wide-eyed, bright-eyed, wondering at the displays and colonnades, and looking for the liquor. Some come with their parents, gawky and awkward, and some come alone, looking like well-manicured teen drama characters. Or caricatures? I don’t know why it’s depressing to an old fogy like me. I suppose I’m just jealous of their unspent ambitions and undiluted hope. That is not to say that I don’t have hope, but that I have spent some of it. The valedictorians among them have prepared snippy graduation speeches about their collective potential, about being a new generation, about the general and intangible beauty of life, and many things like that. I did that a while back. Recently too. I wrote a graduation speech for that contest which is very nearly the opposite of this, or, the same as this but with some antonyms. That is because there is money involved.

I am not really a curmudgeon. I like puppy dogs and kitty cats and pretty things. My jadedness is within reason and influenced by the weather, and so it would be better to wait for sun to write anything. But to be among the pre-college post-high school youths, with money, is to be at the height of something—of faith and carelessness and confidence. Not the god-and-devil kind of faith, but the sincere belief in the importance of CV bullet points, and in all that lies ahead. It’s a good age for most, 17ish years old. You might have a nice used car and a nice girl or boy with whom you’ll be tragically separated; it seems real Shakespearean at the time. Most have lived within such a small scope of the world that their achievements—spelling bees and canned food drives—are absolutely real and consequential. I remember it. I did Academic League. I wasn’t very good but I sure wrote down that I did it. My personal statement was about volunteer work in which I fed jellyfish and cleaned estuaries. The English teacher read it to the class. It got me all the ladies.

Whenever someone asks me about Stanford, or more often just the English department, I say, “You know, I think people really like it.” That’s the best advice or retelling of my educational experiences that I can give someone. I think people really like it. The truth of it is that all schools are pretty good, especially the expensive ones with famous people, and that personal ambition and motivation are more important than the university resources with which you can put your ambition to use. That sentence is thick as sin so read it again if you’re a prospective student.

I like to pretend I know great truths, but the real truth is that no one knows much more than anyone else, so you can just say something like you know it and most people believe you. It’s kind of a trade secret of smarmy jerks.

Love,
Andrew Philip Orin

Little Excerpt From A Story About Fish and Love and Death

2007-04-19T12:58:00.000-07:00

real fresh from this morning's coffee:

Then Willy came in with a pair of lobsters. Crustaceans are another kind of creature that are hard to sympathize with. Real ugly I thought. It was kind of funny. The tank was near the entrance to the aquarium and it looked like we were running a high-class sea food restaurant. Exotic food too—you could get some sand rays, morays, a few little gobies, maybe some tartar sauce. I even made Willy laugh with a bad French accent I did when we were trying to get the lobsters in their tank.

“Magnifique!” I said. “Willy—get me zeh buttar!”

They were a real pain though, the lobsters. The two of them were in a five gallon
bucket and I had to get them out with a small net on a pole. They were wild lobsters, as lobsters tend to be, and they’d snap at me if I tried to grab them.

Getting them out of the bucket wasn’t hard, but getting them untangled from the net and into their tank was the tricky bit. They were prickly-shelled with delicate antennas, and all that would get caught up in the net, and I couldn’t thrash it too much without hurting them, and I couldn’t reach in and untangle them without hurting myself. So I stirred them about in the big tank like it was a boiling pot and the net was a ladle, until they fell loose, and we laughed about their ugly faces. Willy seemed to be in a good mood, warm despite the cold outside.

The same day, one of my last days there, I found another horn shark egg, same brown corkscrew drill-bit, but different. It was thick and ripe and full. It was clear that it was a real egg with a real shark in there—a beautiful little spotted fish, full-futured. Willy held it up to the light the way you’d hold an envelope with a letter you weren’t supposed to read, or maybe a vegetable you were sizing up at the grocer’s, and he smiled, all of him, and his mustache danced I swear it, and his pea-soup green eyes flashed, and we both laughed the way you might laugh when you get some real good news, or you see a precious old face of a friend from long ago, and you just laugh because what else is there to do, and because it’s the purest happiness you’ve known.

I’ve been meaning to go back and count how many horn sharks they’ve got now, because I strung up the egg just right.

Currently

2007-04-14T16:37:00.000-07:00

Currently reading: manuscript of I Quit My Job for This?, a collection of essays from a tired stay-at-home mom; manuscript called Nineteen-foot Tide, about an Alaskan fishing village, and Without Papers, about a Mexican-American woman; Spring issue of Zyzzyva, as well as the most recent 'Onward!' rejection letter from Howard Junker tacked to the side of my bookshelf; Spring issue of Zoetrope, even though I only bought it for the Woody Allen bit; craigslist job ads; The Love of the Last Tycoon when it arrives in the mail; Till We Have Faces, except not really because I got bored.

CoHo currently full of: prospective law school students?

Currently feeling: full, from discounted rabbit-shaped chocolate.

Currently listening to: clicky keyboard and strangers' conversations.

Current productivity: lacking.

Awkward Blog

2007-04-11T13:28:00.000-07:00

On the topic of awkwardness. When one blog just isn't enough.

The Mechanical Man of Meyer Library

2007-03-20T13:41:00.000-07:00

Why are there surveillance cameras in the 24 hour Meyer study room? And why are there so many Asian people in the said Meyer room? Not American people of distant Asian ancestry, but people distinctly from the place. Numerous cultures of that continent are represented in this study room, in proportions not representative of the university's overall makeup. It's true, it is! If you find offense in this, you are clearly choosing the wrong things to be offended about.

It’s an absurd room--- the intentional grouping of wood slats on the walls, bleak rectangles of soulless balsa lines, look like the result of misread blueprints. The tables are a random, incohesive assortment of misused surplus, the hand-me-downs of better furnished buildings. And that damn red light tickertape display mounted high on the wall--- so high that it acquires a sort of divinity when you gaze upwards at it. WELCOME--- TO THE--- **24 HOUR**--- STUDY ROOM

I suppose it is to remind people who have passed out, and have reawakened in confused dazes, where they are and what they are meant to be doing.

It is here that I see the Mechanical Man. I know a man who is a robot. Secretly, a robot. Others have agreed with my assertion, perhaps only to placate me, but I am quite confident about it.

He moves like a robot--- it’s very hard to accurately describe. Not particularly like the robot dance, you see, which is based on an outdated robot model, but in a still preprogrammed, predictable way. He walks with an unfortunate bounce, hands in his pockets, face forward and stern. It’s the bounce that gives away his roboticism, the consistency of it. No mortal man is so amazingly unfailing in his placement of foot and rhythm of step. Only a purely mechanical man can do that, with his gears and motors and gyroscopes measuring and calculating the length of each gait.

He even stretches his arms like a robot. He sets down his mechanical pencil--- of all writing instruments! aha! he finds its mechanical nature soothing---- he sets down his pencil and fully extends his arms--- slowly, as the gears ratchet into place--- and in perfectly mirrored unison, reaches and pulls at invisible targets. I do not know if it is only to further embellish his image of humanity or if his synthetic mecha-tendons require stretching. Either way, he does not fool me.

He speaks like a robot. I used to work alongside the machine man, you see, and that is how I know these things. His voice is quite comparable to Stephen Hawking’s; I suspect it relies on the same, but more advanced, inner workings. The technology is impressive--- most people really don’t notice that they’re conversing with a robot, despites his un-emotive, halting way of speaking. I believe it’s a system based primarily on pronouncing syllables instead of whole words; he occasionally stresses the wrong ones, you see, but what he can do is still quite a feat of engineering.

I bare no ill will towards the mechanized man, but I am suspicious of his purpose and his origins. Where has he come from and why is he here? Perhaps he is from another planet. Robots are better suited for the dangerous, long space journeys; his super intelligent creators knew this and sent him to be an undergraduate, to study our technologies and social dances. They’ve tried before but underestimated the acuteness of our perceptive abilities. The prototypes have ridiculous silver skin and kazoo voice boxes, and can be seen atop milk crates along the waterfront of the city, dancing for nickels, and gorging themselves upon the precious metal coins at night.

I will continue to watch the mechanical man as best I can, waiting for the opportunity to expose his true nature. I think if he is forced to do something that requires thought beyond the logical realm, like writing a poem, his inner gyros and processors will overheat, resulting in a quiet end or a surprising bang, depending on the volatility of his mysterious power source. In due time.

P1050232a

2007-03-19T20:23:00.001-07:00

P1050232a, originally uploaded by mr.skeleton.

2007-03-17T19:35:00.001-07:00

Twice I've been told by street dwellers to avoid "booze and women." It's a constant in the advice I get from men who are loosely subscribed to reality. Booze and women. The lack of both in my life predicts a future of substantial success. As Woody Allen said, "There are two types of people in this world, good and bad. The good sleep better, but the bad seem to enjoy the waking hours much more."

Problems of Young Writers

2007-03-12T20:44:00.000-07:00

This is not the venue for this sort of thing, but no matter. It is a brief essay directed towards young writers, with problems.

I have seemingly been critical of my peers in the past, saying that their writing has often failed to impress or compel me, and that they bring a great amount of seriousness to it, not in content, but in attitude, that they cannot yet justify. I’ve had a deal of trouble articulating what it is that I take issue with and will try to write out, which I suppose is distantly ironic. What validity or significance does my opinion have? Only what you choose to give it.

The simplest problem with a young writer is that they have no sense of what is good and what is bad art, in a very general artistic sense; general by necessity of the trade. Writing workshops are based on this premise, that no one really knows what they’re doing and that good fiction can only emerge once a group of peers read it and critique it. This is a process done at all levels of creative writing, at all institutions with such a program. The highest levels of the department will tell you how necessary it is, and how writing is inherently a social, communal activity. I can disagree with them easily because I am a self-important, opinionated jerk, or something to that effect.

The amendment to their claim towards cooperative writing needs only be that the communal nature of it is essential to new, young writers who don’t have much to build on, and who are trying to understand how the form works, but not to the experienced writer who wants to go beyond what that process offers. The process of understanding can take years, decades, depending on dedication and other more uncontrollable, intrinsic factors. That’s part of why workshops are considered necessary at all levels; the process can be so long that it is not clear when the workshops are no longer needed. Understand that a writer is never finished learning from his work and from the work of others, and that the workshops are training-wheels, essential for only as long as the individual feels they are, and are eventually a limitation.

In workshops, if you do not know, a work in-progress is given to the other writers to read and critique; they make recommendations on how to strengthen the story. This experience is necessary to the young writer because you learn from the stories that don’t work and the ones that do and it’s really quite pleasant. Once you get into it, after a few years, you must learn which advice is good and which advice is bad, and if you don’t learn when to ignore advice, your piece will lose its sense of authorship. Or I suppose you’ll lose your sense of authorship over your piece. Ignoring the wrong advice is essential, and I’ve personally found at the undergraduate level, where writing for many is an occasional, cathartic hobby, that the creative judgment of my peers cannot always be trusted. I will expound on this in a moment.

There’s a fairly specific form of the short story that we are taught to obey, in dealing with orienting the reader’s expectations and guiding them to a specific, surprising peak, at which point they are made to sigh. But it is only an abstract necessity rather than a needed, practical form, and often workshop can force a story into a methodic form, superficially pleasing and pleasing the ‘graders’ of the story. (I certainly don’t mean to downplay the instructors; they are usually very talented, but talent cannot be taught). It is like baking cookies, and holding the notion that all good cookies are circular. Your squiggly-shaped cookie can work just as well, and can perhaps work better if the crevices allow for more chocolate chips, but for practical reasons you are taught that circular cookies are the ‘correct’ cookies. This is not the first time I’ve thought of writing in terms of cookies and professors have never really embraced this mode of discourse.

Occasionally I have seen some very talented people understand that the structure only needs to function on an implicit level, and write some darn good stories. Unfortunately I cannot articulate what the ‘form’ or structure that I’m purporting is advocated in workshops really is, not because we have a code of silence, but because it cannot be generalized and discussed outside the context of each individual story, unless you get into a Hollywood-esque discussion of plot points. The form is useful for inexperienced writers but becomes limiting later on.

Consider Hemingway’s Hills Like White Elephants, which is essentially devoid of plot and so potent in all other inarticulatable things. It fits nowhere into the realm of story-telling that I’ve been taught. I’m no good with the mechanics of it but know that story to be something that succeeds greatly and could not come from a workshop. If it was workshopped, people would make all the wrong recommendations and ruin it, if the writer didn’t know to ignore it, because you cannot just trust the creative of judgment of people willy nilly. I think later on when you’ve invested much of your energy into your writing, and you still like to workshop, like so many published writers do, it might be to elucidate what the weak points of the piece are, to yourself. But because of the nature of our undergraduate workshops, in which we, the inexperienced, make recommendations in order to get credit for the class and to fill the space of a page, the critiques are done haphazardly and excessively. In the Hemingway story, young workshoppers would read it and ask, who are these people? What is their contextual situation? Where are they coming from and where are they going and why are they the way they are? What matters is answered in the story with precise ambiguity and what doesn’t matter is left for you to fill in. I’m half joking, as the story would probably be appreciated for what it is, but I thought I would mention a famous story so as to have an air of class.

Another problem with the young writer’s indecisiveness or ignorance of what is good or bad art, in the context of short stories, is that they do not know whether their own writing is of any sharable quality. This splits the young writers into two groups, not including those who simply don’t care about this sort of thing: those who assume their writing to be of worldly importance, containing profound truths, because no one tells them otherwise, and those who assume nothing of their own writing. The worldly group enjoys sharing their writing and often travels in flocks, and does public readings and that sort of thing, regardless of the quality of what is written. The second, more reserved group shares their writing only when they feel they’ve hit a good note, when the quality might be there. They are both perfectly good groups of people, you understand; the first group just doesn’t know better. A bit of self-advertisement is necessary no matter how humble you are, because a writer has no reason to keep going without readers. It’s a difficult paradox; you need long bouts of solitude to write, and yet afterwards, you desire the largest audience you can acquire for your work.

Trying to produce some good writing can be close to a full-time job, which means that college is a rather unfortunate time to try to make a lasting arrangement of words. You rarely have the opportunity to write because there are too many other deadlines to be concerned with. Of course outside of school, there’s virtually no way, financially, to pursue it as more than an after-hours hobby. I suppose you just have to manage work and play quite well, or consider prison, which would allow for the necessary time and solitude. But then I’ve read some limp manuscripts from incarcerated men as well.

I suspect an additional common flaw among young writers is our ignorance of past writing. This can be considered a flaw of the creative writing focus of this specific university. While reading published material occurs in the workshops, it isn’t much, and it’s usually contemporary stuff. There is a single class in the major devoted to reading short stories. Outside of that, there is no time for most young college student writers to read classic stories, and so we are often, in terms of past writing, blind mice with pens, monkeys with typewriters working at an invisible something. Some people do read a fair amount of modern writers, but using the contemporaries as the sole ingredient in the foundation is the same as walking through a modern art museum and then saying you know the history of art. It depends on what you want to do next, but there’s a bit more to it and it’s best to understand the past before moving on to something new.

In simpler, sparser words, if you are a young writer, read as much as you can and write as much as you can, and only share a bit of it.

If you choose to scoff at the thought I give to these sorts of things, then this essay does not concern you; if you wish to know about me and my own writing, well, I’ve not much to yet share with you, but I’ve some free time coming up.

P1050223a

2007-03-11T11:59:00.001-07:00

P1050223a, originally uploaded by mr.skeleton.

P1010463a

2007-03-07T00:24:00.000-08:00

pano_a

2007-03-03T13:24:00.001-08:00

pano_a, originally uploaded by mr.skeleton.

The Illusion of Happiness, or, The Pursuit of Happenstance

2007-03-01T21:40:00.001-08:00

Stanford has been reported to be, in those college review guides that dreaming high school juniors read, one of the happiest college campuses in existence. I’m not sure if that means the library is smiling or the quad is grinning, but happiness is reportedly around.

As a freshman, you might squint in the glare of the warm sun, your Stanford hoodie thrown across your shoulder like an emblazoned pelt after your volleyball game at the Oval, and say, Yeah! Happiness! College! As a sophomore, you might squint from the glare off an impeding golf cart as you return from the lonely stacks of the library and say with great conviction, I suppose it’s alright! As a junior… I wouldn’t know; I left the country for most of that time, and it was good. As a senior, you might glare into the face of your advisor and say, either, please sign this so I can go! or, please sign this so I can stay! There are people who enjoy the challenge of this sort of work and there are people who tire of it.

Indeed, the rating of collective happiness among thousands of individuals is a peculiar thing. It is, more specifically, a rating of how many students self-report to be happy, rather than a rating of how happy they are. Stanford kids love to rate themselves as being absolutely chipper. But that’s a general truth in this culture; if you ask someone how they’re doing, how they’re getting along, the usual and expected response would be, good! It’s sort of an agreement of brevity during insubstantial but polite communication. We’re all good. And we are all pretty good, living in the top percents of society with little right to complain. Then there’s that duck idiom, saying that Stanford kids are flapping their feet like mad under the surface, and yet placid on top like shiny little goslings. That’s not always the case but it’s a good bit to mention. Whoever said it deserves an honorary degree.

But that is the thing. The presentation of happiness or stability is habitually more important within the context of the university than actual happiness or stability. It is not a simple matter of money or expectations, but then it is not a simple matter at all. Tuition is as high as they come, and surely some want to present that their money is being well-spent. More generally it is a conflict between the dedicated, foundational work that garnered admission, and the expectations of grand satisfaction. People worked hard to be selected, and worked hard once they arrived to justify and legitimize themselves, and anything less than achieving pure and total success would be equivocal to failing. Flawlessness is an absolute. And so the repression of dissatisfaction becomes a way for many self-demanding people to continue forward. Mind you, I understand that many and most enjoy the process of education, and that is why they are here, but I’m certain you can read the same books at the public library and write the same papers without being graded; albeit an independent education of that nature would not have infinite resources and amazing experts within reach. Also, I am catering towards studies of the humanities in my thoughts, for it is what I know. Nonetheless, it is not all about loving to learn. Neither is it a trade school, though some would compare the more technical focuses to ‘trades’ and that may be justifiable.

It is about commitment. A college degree is a demonstration of your capability to commit to something for a significant length of time, and to continuously work at it until the bells toll at graduation. I will never again need to articulate how Shakespeare does this that and the other in a text, but I have done it, however haphazardly, and I have done it with many authors over four years. It is not a pursuit of happy dreams and immediate success while young; it’s a simple display of long term dedication through tiring work. I do not at all intend to be acerbic; I only intend to be real and honest, which I have not seen as much as I would have liked to. It is rare for people to be completely truthful about themselves, to themselves, and especially to others. To ‘keep it real’ as my homeboys say.

Then why weren’t the other stone-built campuses rated on top of the happiness scale? I don’t know anything about them and cannot generalize more than I already have. Stanford, in particular, has a legacy of carefree-sunshine-summercamp-love to maintain. Maybe it’s just the well-maintained foliage. Maybe little Leland was just a carefree sort of kid, with a lollypop and a toy train.

Personally, I have had good times with great people and have not hoped for more. I have read good stories and written bad stories and hope to get to work rather soon, if I am lucky. Luck always plays a large, lumbering part. It has always been a matter of happenstance and these glitzy college degrees are ways to wrangle that luck for future use, towards the coincidences that build lives.

I’d really like to give a graduation speech.

photo_bball_a

2007-02-28T21:42:00.001-08:00

photo_bball_a, originally uploaded by mr.skeleton.

photo_mirror1_a

2007-02-23T11:10:00.001-08:00

photo_mirror1_a, originally uploaded by mr.skeleton.

Eggs, Envelopes, Et Cetera

2007-02-10T14:20:00.000-08:00

I am not in the clear state of mind that is required of focused, topical writing, but I am in many states of mind, and so I will provide you with a list of which the only cohesive factor is me.

1. I hate when someone sitting next to you, or in front of you, yawns and stretches, stretching so fully and satisfyingly that their limbs contort and their toes curl, and they grow nearly an inch; you see, they wave their arms about and smack me in the face. If you are quick, you might be able to dodge the stretching arms, but I am not quick in that way. And when you have been slapped, it is best to pretend that you really don't mind at all, if they offer apology. It isn't a big deal, it isn't. If anything you should have smacked my forehead harder. I was going to anyway, later today I think, so it's good that we got it taken care of.

2. Carrying a tiny umbrella makes me feel effeminate. The kind of mini mini compact umbrellas that are NASA-engineered to fold away into almost nothing, the kind that women carry in their purse. The kind that's in my man purse right now. It's a laptop bag, really, but it rarely carries my laptop.

I imagine real men--- lumber jacks and army rangers--- carry old fashioned three footers, or beach umbrellas, or just trudge through the rain, because it's the closest thing they'll get to a shower. There are easy phallic jokes for you to make. I've set them up for you; giggle with your friends as you please.

But I love toothpick umbrellas. This should not surprise you if you know me well. It should not surprise you if you don't know me well either, because it is not an interesting fact to begin with.

3. I was pointlessly licking a self-adhesive envelope the other day, the kind that has a peel-away sticker across the flap. I hadn't realized; it seemed to me that the glue had aged. I licked furiously. I made out with the envelope to no avail. But just as I was going to ask someone in the office for glue to seal the ancient parcel, or maybe a hot wax stamp, I realized the error of my ways and peeled the tongue-slathered wax paper off the sticker and closed the envelope. All's well that ends well, so long as you don't get a paper cut on your tongue.

4. I don't much like large sunglasses, because they so obscure a person's face that they impede upon vital nonverbal communication. The eyes say so much, but behind excessive designer-brand space goggles, I can't tell if you're scowling at me or just scowling in my general direction.

5. I find it difficult to order eggs at breakfast, or brunch, or whenever you might order eggs. There is an assumption made that you are well-versed in cooked-egg nomenclature, despite the inevitable fact that no one ever teaches you about the different ways to prepare an egg. Poached? I really have no clue what it means to poach something. I though poachers hunt tigers and rhinos; I don't think poached eggs are hunted and sold on the black market. I am not aware of the difference between hard boiling and soft boiling; I did not realize there were different ways to boil. Sunny-side up? What the hell does that mean? Is this what I missed by attending public schools? I suppose the yolk is the "sun," in a sprightly culinary metaphor, and I can picture what 'sunny-side up' might mean. Can you get an egg sunny-side down? Is that a nighttime egg? Can you get an eclipsed egg? A supernova egg? Or is there a limit to the functionality of the metaphor?

It's such nonsense to me that I don't order eggs for the inherent difficulty in it. But I have never been a large fan of eggs. I'm tired of the pro-egg agenda of the breakfascist Denny-stapo and their purported grand slams.

I will leave you with these thoughts, knowing that you face considerable difficulties in your time, and knowing that my head will pop if I don't transcribe my own.

photo_stocktonellis2_a

2007-02-05T23:29:00.001-08:00

photo_stocktonellis2_a, originally uploaded by mr.skeleton.

photo_wchair_a

2007-02-04T12:21:00.001-08:00

photo_wchair_a
Originally uploaded by mr.skeleton.

photo_neworleans2_a

2007-02-01T12:28:00.001-08:00

photo_neworleans2_a, originally uploaded by mr.skeleton.

Cold Pop Tarts and Flannel

2007-01-31T00:14:00.000-08:00

I have an inadvertent adeptness for attracting the attention of fringe thinkers. When I walk down a street, people with pamphlets and alternative theologies flock to me, selling their gods and conspiracies like Chiclets. They can tell from something in my eyes that I will listen to what they have to say, and I often travel alone, making me more approachable than most flocks. And I do listen to what they have to say.

Yesterday I spoke with a homeless man who grew up in New Orleans and now is just “trying to survive” in the city. When he was younger he wasn’t concerned with his health, drinking carelessly and spending many nights with many women. “It was probably the women that did it!” he said and chuckled, holding onto his walker.

In Berkeley, a man without a shirt approached me and, knowing that I would understand his dilemma, sighed and said, “Man, I don’t have a shirt.” I realize that the normal thing to do would be to ignore him and move on, but I stopped, and advised him to get a shirt. He asked where, and I didn’t know; he was eyeing mine, so I left it at that. I also understand that Berkeley is some kind of epicenter for these sorts of people. I imagine they hold annual get-togethers.

So, my willingness to listen is easily perceived. I enjoy the conversations in a sort of arrogant way, like a physics professor enjoying a child’s explanation of why the sky is blue.

I speak of it now because a man in flannel just sat with me and, as I was reading, told me that Middle Eastern people are illiterate, on the whole, and that I will soon be drafted into a nuclear war. I won’t describe his whole outlook and strategic plans because I’ve already forgotten, and besides, it’s not like a nuclear war would require that many troops anyway, right? He also said it was “Hitler all over again.” I didn’t fully comprehend the analogy, it was just over my head, you know, but I nodded as he stepped away, and with a false sincerity that comes to me naturally, said, “Yeah, really.” Yes, brother man friend, I understand. I understand you and all of your problems. It is… Hitler, all over again. Eloquent, man.

I was caught by what a sad man he may have been, alone in his stained white undershirt and warm flannel, his bookbag holding some grocery store paperback. He flipped through a small notepad while I tried to read, and he tried to make a phone call. When no one answered, he chuckled and nodded his head. How typical of her, he thought.

He is always eager for conversation. I’ve seen him before. I suppose he works at one of the Tressider Union businesses---I can’t really tell. He doesn’t look or sound like an academic, and he is not a physical laborer. He likely sits in a small office from nine in the morning until the late evening hours tracking photocopy transactions at Kinko’s, and when he finally gets off from work, he passes through the coffee house for a brief, warm cup, and a conversation with today’s up and coming academics. “I guess I sat with the reading club,” he said to me, watching everyone with their noses between pages.

I think he lives alone or with someone he doesn’t love and who doesn’t love him. When he gets home from work he complains that there is nothing in the refrigerator. Warm food would be a godsend and he realistically doesn’t expect it. She tells him, as she watches Deal or No Deal, that it isn’t her job and she didn’t have time anyway. He inhales deeply to raise his voice, but it’s been a long day and there’s no point to yelling anymore. He grabs a silver foil package of Pop Tarts and joins her on the couch, watching Howie Mandel and thinking back on the university kids he met earlier in the day. “I don’t know how you can eat those things cold,” she says. He doesn’t respond and wishes they were strawberry instead of cinnamon. They don’t speak to each other until the next night when she tells him that there is half a cheese pizza in the fridge, and that tomorrow is trash day so he better not forget to move the cans to the curb. They agreed he would take care of the garbage as they divvyed up the domestic responsibilities early on, but neither of them ever followed the so-called ‘rules’ with any consistency. In recent years he has become obedient to most of her demands; she really doesn’t ask for much but he doesn’t realize it. He does know she is a good woman and that the woman he married is somewhere there, still. She works early hours at a hospital with no room for promotions or aspirations and has grown weary of the daily routine, and the dreadful complacency of the lower middle class. She still loves the man he once was; memories of happiness, really, as well as financial convenience, are why they are still together. He is a red-faced, balding man with desperate grey eyes and yellow teeth; she is fearing her rapid age, worrying that her best years are past, and that ‘this is all there is’. She has been wearing thicker make up everyday and tries to emulate black and white photos of 1920s flappers by using bright red lipstick. They both know they will not be better off apart.

Tomorrow will be like tying old shoelaces, unconsciously simple, and at the end he will have to look at the calendar in his small notepad to see if another day has actually passed. It is Hitler all over again.

The Importance of Preening and Balancing

2007-01-28T21:59:00.000-08:00

I’m nearly complete with my college education. All that really stands between me and my degree is a couple exams on high-minded literary nonsense. I must now reflect upon what I have and have not learned.

I have not learned how to cook and clean, or to balance a checkbook. I can’t imagine balancing a checkbook is a difficult task, unless you are supposed to balance the checkbook on its side. It’s a slender, narrow book; its natural balancing position would be to lay flat on a table. I also imagine that cooking is not a difficult thing. Cooking good food may be, but cooking is just heat and meat, and I could do that. I’m not a big meat-eater though. I do know how to make a mean cookie, chocolate chip.

I have not learned any particularly marketable skills. I have not been going to a trade school, I don’t think. But I can read things. There was no single class that taught me to read, but it’s something that I have found myself doing frequently. It becomes a greater matter than comprehending words and sentences, for someone studying literature. That would be like eating a piece of bread and digesting each grain separately. Instead I’ve learned to swallow the loaf whole, and once the loaf is gone, to respect it as the loaf it represented, truer than any real loaf could have been. In the aesthetic breaded tradition, all preceding works of bread reverberated in its ingredients, from Shakespeare’s kaiser rolls to Joyce’s baguettes. I’m kind of hungry. They don’t teach you to read though. You have to learn yourself.

I have not learned how to write a good essay. Mediocrity will get you adequate grades. They don’t force those sorts of tiresome academic aspirations upon you if you’re not feeling the groove. I did learn to write an essay quickly, though. I had to teach myself that too.

I did learn that you should wear your resume across your chest, and that you should be carefully preened before going to an interview. I am making some assumptions, because I haven’t been interviewed during my 3-and-some years here. It is best to mold your hair solidly, like a bronze statue. With such hair and an ironed sweater, and a refined manner of self-importance, you can impress your interviewers. You should be intentionally measured and angled in the image of a young academic, or a young whatever you are. Schedule off a good amount of time for costuming and preening. Each spike of gelled hair will be a sharp proclamation of success. You should be a well-chosen postcard, a shallow representation of what someone who is qualified, as you are, might look like. You’ll unfortunately look silly when you ride on your bicycle wearing a business suit, and your tie goes flying back like a ponytail, but it’ll be worth it.

I have not learned why any woman would ever try to ride a bike while wearing a skirt. I think your choice of attire that day sort of dictates walking, but I understand that you are probably in a hurry and have an interview to get to.

I have learned that many university students are high strung.

I have learned that a good university is one that is always under construction, like the Winchester House, and should be designed like an amusement park, with tall trees obscuring the outside world and rose patches growing in the shape of the school’s giant emblem. It will impress donors. I have learned that alumni are wealthy, and that philanthropic donations amount to biiillions, with a goddamn capital B.

I have learned that you should raise awareness about issues, regardless of what the issue is. You can even raise money and awareness by dancing the night away. Actually I don’t know what the Dance Marathon’s cause is. I suppose raising awareness about itself is its primary cause. Some students held a ‘filibuster for the filibuster’ about two years ago. They stood in a dark, empty plaza, talking to no one, to raise awareness. They wore suits and felt happy. It worked, too!

I have learned that the price of admission is an unrealistic list of expectations and exaggerations, and its competitive nature makes it necessary that only the self-aggrandizing victors of K through 12 apply. Unreasonable aspirations are simply a prerequisite. I have learned that it attracts many great people, some with the unjustified arrogance that garnered entry, others justified, and many like myself, doing well enough with no purpose or direction or great aspiration who sold ourselves effectively at the beginning and didn’t know what to do after that. That sounds a bit dramatic, doesn’t it?

photo-wall_a

2007-01-27T15:21:00.001-08:00

photo-wall_a
Originally uploaded by mr.skeleton.

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2007-01-26T13:18:00.001-08:00

photo_crosses_a
Originally uploaded by mr.skeleton.

It’s like a month away

2007-01-23T00:42:00.000-08:00

There are two things that I often write about in this venue. Holidays and espresso. But the Coffee House is as uncomfortable as ever, and there are no major holidays coming up.

Oh but there is! Anyone who’s been to a Starbucks within the past few weeks may have noticed the Valentine’s Day themed mugs and bears and things that are available for your convenient purchase. Valentine’s Day! It’s like a month away.

I don’t think anyone would disagree that it is perhaps the least meritable of themed days, invented for commercial reasons. Well, it’s been around forever really, since Romans and all that, but there’s certainly been a commercial push behind it. Sure, all major holidays have corporate backings, but Valentine’s Day as we know it was nearly invented by a mystical gathering of CEOs in crisp suits with bright patterned ties holding tight at their double chins. Balding, gray-haired, round-bellied corporate executives are the most romantic of people, and appropriately thought that love itself deserved a day of celebration. Not that peace-on-earth, Full House kind of love either--- it’s a day for purely freaky love, the kind that happens somewhere between dark alleyways and Parisian boulevards. Arguably the two defining characteristics of humanity are true love and true hate--- Hate Day will come soon enough, I guess.

But I am besides myself and besides my points to be made. The best Valentine’s Days, I think, were in grade school, when everyone exchanged candy and cards with everyone else. The cards, coming in those perforated sheets of nine thin cardboard cards, with little envelopes, were always an immense decision. They came in all kinds of cartoon or movie character themes, and you simply had to find the correct cards to capture the true essence of your personality. I can’t remember what I specifically chose, but I think there were Looney Tunes one year, and probably Ninja Turtles before that. We decorated paper bag mailboxes and passed out sweets and notes, and at the end of the day we all had weighty bags of mutual appreciation. Those were thaaa days.

In second grade, a girl gave me an entire box of chocolates. Specifically, they were those chocolate-covered syrupy cherries, which I now forever associate with that grade and time. In truth, I don’t remember if those chocolates came on Valentine’s Day or on a more arbitrary date, but that doesn’t matter. I was astounded--- a free box of chocolates, all to myself! She must have been smitten by my seven year old witticisms and academic prowess. You have no idea how many times I was Super Citizen of the Week.

The long and short of it is that it’s all been down hill from there. You knew I was going to say that!

In many regards we are all after the simple and pure joy that only the worriless, unfettered, underexposed and over-dependent childhood mind gave us, and the freedom which complete dependence allowed us, through chalky heart-shaped candy and pink teddy bears and white chocolate cupids. Oy vey.

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2007-01-21T22:36:00.001-08:00

Originally uploaded by mr.skeleton.

2007-01-15T15:44:00.000-08:00

According to my viewer statistics, someone recently got to this blog by searching on google for "feminine pee."

I'm really sorry for not meeting your expectations, pee-searching person. But I did in fact use the words 'feminine pee' here, so hopefully yo weren't entirely disappointed.

UPDATE: For those of you looking for "kids reenacting frogger," Google has decided that this website will satisfy your curiosity. In fact it's one of the only ways to get this site as the first result.

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2007-01-10T19:02:00.000-08:00

pop

2007-01-07T20:52:00.000-08:00

Promise Fulfilled, High Five

2007-01-01T17:52:00.000-08:00

A few nights ago a friend turned to me and said, “Promise me something.”

“For you, anything,” I said, wiping the sarcasm from my lips.

“Write about this night.”

So I am writing about that night. Which is unfortunate because nothing of a particularly mentionable nature occurred. Different people have different measures of what is mentionable and what is not. Writing is editing the world down into a few mentionable sentences. I guess bad writing is the same, but the wrong sentences. There are many to choose from.

When I visited the restroom of the restaurant, a young man slammed the door open from within just as I reached for the handle. “Sorry,” he said. Alright. I guess he was talking to the door, or apologizing to the restaurant in general. Like when the Incredible Hulk throws a school bus at a liquor store because he got a parking ticket, and just can’t control his raging green self. He was apologizing because he couldn’t control his rage against the door. He must have run into some problems at the toilet.

I talked to a friend from a while back who was recently hit by a car. She was not in a car, you understand, but was hit by one regardless. Like Wile E. Coyote. She broke a couple of legs and a few other things, I think. You must respect someone who laughs at broken legs and slight brain damage. But the brain damage was probably why she was laughing. It’s temporary damage.

There are two possible reactions to getting hit by a car. You can depress yourself at the absurd lack of luck in it, and harvest pity like ears of corn, or you can laugh, and once you are no longer comatose, joke. You can react with the blunt and simple realization that reenacting Frogger does not benefit anyone, but is sort of funny. And while it is an unfortunate occurrence, it is only one occurrence among many, ending nothing and starting others, as long as you are still living. That’s a small detail. She will be forever plagued by metal detectors bleeping at gears and widgets within her leg, but that is all.

There is no new year moral here, but happy new year.

Oh, I remembered something relevant to that night. My lack of respect for the ‘high five’ gesture. I’ll be brief so as to not unconsciously quote Seinfeld.

A victorious slapping of hands? Like cooperative applause for oneself? Okay. No thanks. Worse than any single high five is a repeated five soon after the first, for whatever reason. For scoring that three pointer or getting to level 99 on your electrogame. It has a diminishing value. It’s barely a high one if you’ve already high fived in the previous 24 hours.

Once, when saying goodbye to an acquaintance at the end of a quarter, I was high fived as the culmination of ten weeks of extensive work. It was as if to say, I don’t know you well enough to hug you, but I do wish you the best, so swiftly feel my hand. Fast like a sniper handshake.

Another time, working late in a bookstore, my coworkers and I were done cleaning early and ready to close shop. The manager wanted to do some midair chest bumps to celebrate our efficiency, and proceeded to. I did not participate in that. It is essentially a full body high five. Though I wanted to maintain a haughty dignity about myself, I also feared that my glasses would go flying and shatter into dangerous shards of Lenscrafters plastic. I don’t remember what I said, but I surely glared at them with a proud evil eye, assuring them that I was far too civilized, nearly royal in a delusional way, to voluntarily collide.

The only real appropriate use of the high five is to anyone who is less than five years old, as they may very well find value in the five. Sarcastic high fiving is also an allowable usage. High five.

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2007-01-01T17:08:00.000-08:00

P1050020a
Originally uploaded by mr.skeleton.

Electric Ice in The Christmas Light

2006-12-23T21:33:00.000-08:00

I love Christmastime. Animatronic penguins sing carols to me while I purchase sweet chocolate effigies of St. Nick. Oversized inflatable snowglobes whir on my neighbor's lawn under the off-white glow of electric icicles. It is cold outside, so cold that trees are carried indoors for the season, decorated and doted upon. People complain that the holiday season starts too early, and that gaudy winter decorations should not be seen in the month of November. I don't know what's wrong with these people. Although the swift post-turkey tinsel ornamentation of all your favorite department stores is always a surprise, some people want to limit the early emergence. I guess there's nobility in delaying that special Christmas spice, which is probably just cinnamon, until the days actually leading up to the 25th, but it is also a terribly grinchy notion, made by grinchy people.

Christmastime is a season which extends precisely from the day after Thanksgiving to New Years, and even that's a concession on my part. Ideally it starts mid-November. Thanksgiving doesn't have any mascots besides Pilgrims and dead turkeys, thus allowing Santa to participate in any seasonal branding that he wants. People complain about the commercialization of Christmas. These people are either religionistas, adamant about celebrating their ancient Roman feast in quiet peace, or they are rather normal people who do not enjoy loud robotic Santa Clausitrons ho ho hoing with infrared accuracy as they pay for their groceries. Everyone is entitled to an opinion, even if it's the wrong opinion. Santa Clausitron, I salute you.

It's the season of giving and twinkle lights. Family visits and nonsensical arguments. You wonder why old ladies, old relatives, enjoy pinching the cheeks of youths. This sounds like a fictional cliche, but I have had pinched cheeks. I imagine they're testing the stringiness of the children for some cannibalistic stew, like gently squeezing a tomato, or sniffing a melon. How quickly I move from Christmas to cannibalism.

But I can tie it back together. Snapping the neck of my chocolate Santa, which is disappointingly hollow, I eat the little man's head and crumple the foil into the smallest ball that I can, and in a sudden proud burst of innovation, flick it at my brother. I plan on eating many more Santas.

Merry Christmas.

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2006-12-20T13:32:00.001-08:00

P1040894a, originally uploaded by mr.skeleton.

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2006-12-17T15:06:00.001-08:00

P1040875a, originally uploaded by mr.skeleton.

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2006-12-15T11:42:00.001-08:00

P1040868a, originally uploaded by mr.skeleton.

hootow1a

2006-12-12T13:24:00.001-08:00

hootow1a
Originally uploaded by mr.skeleton.

Christmas Donuts

2006-12-10T00:37:00.000-08:00

I’ve always associated church with donuts because of Christmas, especially donuts in those pink boxes. Holy donuts! It’s almost a Pavlovian association I have between religion and pastries.

My family’s never been religious, but my mom was raised as a strict Catholic and felt some kind of obligation to instill that into my brother and me. So we literally went to church once a year. I don’t remember if it was exactly on Christmas day, or Eve, or when, but it was for Christmas. We stopped going while I was still single digits in age, so I can only remember it in the sugarhaze of youth.

Oh, there were identical twin nuns at that church. I do remember that. They weren’t very friendly. Maybe they were, I don’t know, but you can’t be five years old and not be afraid of twin nuns. The church was in a strip mall, which I now realize to be somewhat peculiar. And convenient! There was a McDonald’s just across the way.

In addition to consistent religion, my childhood also lacked donuts. I’m not sure why, my parents were not overly health-conscious, but I seriously considered Christmas Mass to be the one time of the year to get donuts. DOUGHHH NUUUTS! Freakin’ ambrosia to a clueless little kid. Almost literally food of the gods. They would have a table of the pink pastry boxes laid out in front of the church. I assume we indulged after mass, because you don’t want your congregation getting sticky fingers all over your pews, y’know.

I definitely assumed that all churches, if not all religious institutions, laid out boxes of pastries at appropriate times. That’s not a belief that held but I know I believed it. Why else would anyone go to church if not for the donuts? Christmas donuts.

A Brief Word On Bathroom Activities

2006-12-09T15:01:00.001-08:00

I’ve observed an interesting behavior in the men’s restroom and I would love to share it with you. It’s the pee and brush. The pee and brush! A guy will start brushing his teeth, only to wander over to the urinal and suspend brushing, holding the brush in his mouth, to pursue other endeavors. Gentlemen, you are noble multi-taskers, but I am not fond of this. It isn’t even an issue of sanitation. I don’t care what people put in their mouth; I’m liberal like that. But each act is deserving of its own full attention, and you are haphazardly combining bathroom activities. I do not know why I care. What’s next, the shit’n’shave? Floss and shampoo? Please. It’s terrible. Are people really that busy?

The noncommittal nature of the urinal surely makes men more prone to this particular combination of activities than women. But I do not doubt the presence of feminine pee’n’brushers. Frankly, there are many activities which hold potential for combinations, but I will leave the frightening permutations to your silent imagination.

Can you believe that the campus literary journals reject me?

And I really enjoy any bathroom mechanisms that function on motion detectors, especially when the sensors are a little faulty. It's not just the post-future George Jetson Flushotron appeal, it's because I get to give them a friendly wave. Hello Mr. Paper Towel Dispenser! I say as I wave hello. Goodbye Monsieur Urinal! It’s like befriending porcelain robots.

Dickens, War, and Mexico

2006-12-06T20:25:00.000-08:00

America, I can assure you, your international borders are secure against the illiterate. Or, at least against travelers who know nothing of Victorian literature.

Explain? Yes, I will explain. That's why I'm here.

I was visiting family south of the border, in Rosarito, Mexico, one Saturday evening. (Mexican? I did not know he was Mexican, you say to yourself. Clearly you’ve never seen my sombrero or my agile janitorial skills). As most family gatherings are, it was thrilling. Cake was served, leis were provided. Excuse me for forgoing the specific details of those proceedings, for it is not my focus here.

Jump to midnight or so, when I was in a car with my mother and brother, waiting at the border crossing for quite a while. We reached the crossing, where you are briefly questioned by a police-like agent. Our agent was a nice gentleman, wholly dedicated to his job and his moustache. Have you ever watched a comedy show called Reno 911? No matter. I love that show.

So the agent asked for our passports, which we didn't have because were just popping into Meh-hee-ko for a day. Whatever. We gave him our IDs.

He proceeded to ask me where I was born. "San Diegoooo," I bragged, for some reason. And he asked my brother who the first president was. Were we bringing anything back with us?, he asked. Yes, my mother told him. We had some leftover food from the party in the trunk. So we popped the trunk. I don't know what he did back there, but I assume he tested our chicken leg for avian flu and terrorism. And he apparently saw the Stanford sticker on the rear windshield, meticulous inspector that he was.

"Which one of you goes to Stanford?"
"That's me."
"What's your major?"
I wasn't sure if this was some kind of test to verify my authentic American flavor, or if it was just idle chitchat. "English."
"Who's your favorite author?"

Jesus. He wore a very stern face. He seemed to think that studying at Stanford was a guise to sneak fried chicken into his beautiful country. I wasn't sure who to say. I said Charles Dickens because at the time, I was versed in Dickens like a muthafucka. As they say.

"What do you think of Bleak House?"

Well. I still didn't understand his goal with these questions, but I wasn't annoyed. "It's pretty good." I hesitated when I answered, because I wanted to explain that actually, it's good and complex and all that, but when you study Dickens for ten weeks, his books become methodic. Bleak House is like a second draft of Oliver Twist. But don't quote me on that. Anyway, he wasn't done with his literary quiz.

"What about Great Expectations?"
He was smug with that question, as if it would stump me. Great whatspectations? Come on. Many more people read Great Expectations than Bleak House. His questions were declining in difficulty.
"It's also very good. But I think I prefer Bleak House." He was satisfied with that.

"Next time, bring your passports."
"Is that the law?" my mother asked.
"There's a war going on. That CHANGES EVERYTHING."
Oki dokie smokey. That's means it's not the law. Which war, anyway? On terror? On drugs? On family values? On Christmas? Not sure.

Anyway, you don't need to carry your passport if you know your Dickens.

cows and flaming helmets

2006-12-02T23:26:00.000-08:00

you know, these are my two most-viewed photos? one:

and two:

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2006-12-02T12:52:00.000-08:00

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2006-11-29T14:40:00.000-08:00

the fountains flow with kool aid

I have a problem.

2006-11-27T22:53:00.000-08:00

It isn’t a large problem. It’s sort of a caffeine problem. I don’t even drink coffee, not really, and that would be preferable, because coffee is cheap and available. Unfortunately I only consume the more foo foo drinks, as they say. Foo foo is shorthand, I believe, for fooking fooking expensive. Three earth dollars doesn’t seem like much for your caffe mocha, your sweet sweet mocha, but when it becomes a necessary habit, a habit that repeats everyday, and multiple times per day, you begin to remember that there are starving orphans who would kill smaller orphans for a sip of a latte. Orphans love lattes. I’ve spent one billion dollars on espresso-based drinks this quarter. That is a verifiable, wikiable fact. I drank more money than John Hennessy raised for, you know, whatever he was raising money for.

In recent times, far removed from campus, I was presented with the significant realization that my parents’ house does not host a Moonbean’s or a Peet’s. There is a nearby Starbucks… and I went twice that week, but there was no immediate source of cardboard-held warm drinks. But, I had Mountain Dew. The hardest of the soft drinks. Besides the sugar and caffeine, I love bright colors. Like a bumblebee, or a certain kind of stoner.

Every morning I would pour a glass of the Dew. I held the glass of uranium-green juice and sipped it with the withdrawn satisfaction of an old man, rattling the ice in his liquor and watching a dying fire, trying to remember when he felt that warmth naturally. So sweet, but that is all.

Anyway, I’m thirsty.

Oh, also, rain screws with me because I can’t sit and drink my Moonbean’s. Damn rain. Too wet for its own good. I don't like its attitude.

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2006-11-26T23:02:00.001-08:00

IMGP1970b
Originally uploaded by mr.skeleton.

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2006-11-21T23:50:00.000-08:00

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2006-11-13T18:59:00.001-08:00

red cups

2006-11-13T16:10:00.000-08:00

They have red cups at Starbucks now. That didn't make my day, not at all. My day hasn't been made and I await its being made. But, red cups, that's nice.

The Fall of Man

2006-11-11T18:45:00.000-08:00

Roughly a week ago I awoke with a stifling sense of dread. The day held possibilities of something terrible happening in the cold sunshine and it took me some time to rise from bed. Gee, I thought. Gee golly. Gee golly whiz.

I looked out the window at Hoover Tower as I checked my email and thought of the earthquakes and lightening strikes that could bring it down before the end of the day. The bells would be ringing as it fell. People would grab the bricks and stones as souvenirs and mount them on commemorative plaques to be displayed on their mantel at the world’s end.

But the morning went off without a hitch. Totally hitchless. My pre-lecture mocha was satisfying and sweet, class was adequately stimulating, and the sun kept shining. I didn’t trip and fall down the three flights of cement stairs that I skip down every morning, and I didn’t get hit by a wayward Marguerite, and I did not cross paths with any disgruntled postal workers. But something was going to happen.

I ran into a friend at lunch and warned her. “Something is in the air,” I said. “Something bad.”
“This black bean sauce isn’t very good,” she said.
“It is very dark.”
“Would you think less of me if I went back and got a different salad?” she asked.
“No. Exchange your salad freely.” It may be the last salad you eat for some time, I thought, after the bombs fall and nuclear winter sets in. They don’t have salad in the mine shafts. Not even black bean salad.

I survived the brief walk to my dorm, and with no more classes to go to, decided to do some laundry. Mondays are good days for laundry. With my various sartorial haberdasheries and whatnots gathered up and ready for a wash, I descended down, down into the cold hollows of the dormitorium, to the rumbling machinery of mountain fresh scents and forgotten socks. Into the wide mouth of a washer I loaded my belongings and shut it forcefully. I stepped over to seek out my detergent---the blue jug clearly labeled ‘ANDY!’--- and grabbed the smooth plastic. To my horror, the bottle was empty. Oh! Empty! Emptied like my soul!

I ran as quickly as my legs would allow. I ran out of the dormitorium, into the air, into the light, and collapsed upon the dirt with that horrendous building to my back, with that horridly empty bottle mocking my laundry. I lay there for some time; I cannot offer estimates. My very bones struggled to maintain solidity and my soul was all but razed from the unending chugguda chugguda of the washing-ma-trons and drier-ma-jigs. And, slowly, gradually, the sound fell to a creep, and ceased. But still I could not rise.

Oh cursed man! I had left the bottle nearly full. Earlier it had been slightly diminished by minor public usage, but I had placed my trust in humanity not to use the ‘ANDY!’ bottle to excess. A single week alone in the laundry room left my detergent dead. A single empty bottle and my faith in humanity is gone, along with a fresh pine scent.

I now warn you, detergent stealers, beware of things to come. In a pinch, I would have contributed my detergent freely, but you were not in a pinch. Now I have a little village of voodoo dolls and witchy spells that I learned from the Pizza My Heart high school kids, the circuit egg worshippers, which I will imminently put to use. So beware.

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2006-11-08T20:53:00.001-08:00