My Consumer Debt Cherry

Today I received a check in the mail from my credit card company. It's a balance transfer check in the amount of one-and-a-half month's expenses. I have a zero percent interest rate on this loan until December of 2008. Plenty of time to pay it back, unless of course, I miss a payment, in which case the rate skyrockets to the prevailing APR of upwards of 17%.

This instance represents the first time I have ever assumed credit card debt, and I'm actually kind of thrilled to be popping my consumer debt cherry. It's almost a rite of passage among filmmakers to max out multiple credit cards to finance a film project. So I feel like I'm earning my stripes.

But I come from a particular socioeconomic background, and telling my friends that I am running up a credit card debt to finance a personal sabbatical is akin to telling them that I am aborting the fetus inside my uterus. It doesn't go over so well, needless to say. I get a lot of winces and pained looks. Everyone insists on paying for my meals when I'm visiting, which is very endearing, but an incredible overreaction. I have an unlimited monthly yoga membership AND a gym membership, for crying out loud. Does that sound like poverty by any definition of the word?

While I was in San Francisco, my friend Vij asked me, "What if you can't pay the card off in time?"

"No problem, Vij," I say. And then I serve it raw.

"I'll just liquidate my Roth IRA."

I really think he was about to cry. Poor Vij.

This is a guy who is carrying six figures of debt from medical school. And I'm only going into a measly four figures for hollywood player school!

Everything I Know About Fashion, Part 5

Previously: Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, Part 4

Everything I've written thus far regarding fashion can be boiled down to one question:

Am I more likely to get laid by hypothetical hot strangers while wearing this article of clothing?

Note that this single question eliminates a good ninety percent of the merchandise on offer at the Gap. Poor Gap.

It's an effective criterion, but also a blunt one, mind you. I'm pretty sure this is not the guiding standard of Dutch women, who could easily teach American women a thing or two about how to clothe themselves. Perhaps I will have the opportunity to ask a stylish Dutch woman in the near future, in which case I'll report back.

I add the "hypothetical" qualifier for married folks, because really, washing the dishes without being asked probably goes a lot further than a nice sweater. The supply and demand curves for sex have to be drawn a little differently for wedded people.

Unless, of course, they are in my yoga class. But that's another story.

My Yoga Instructor Leaves

This is how I always think of my instructor: shining and sparkling on Rodeo Drive. Parsvakonasana (side angle pose) is one of her specialties - and now, by extension - one of mine.


One time, my yoga instructor approached me prior to class, and whispered urgently:

"ROBERT! Oh my god! I accidentally put on my pants inside out! I have no pockets! What am I going to do?!"

And then she flapped the fabric of her inverted pockets at me, and I laughed out loud.

That's my instructor for you. She is always - utterly and uniquely - herself. She has a simultaneously funny and intense way of galvanizing an entire room with her presence, inspiring to people to reach, to push, to try.

Her business card says, "Yoga Instructor", but what it really should say is, "Furnace". When she is teaching, she is so enthusiastic and passionate, the entire studio - a room the size of a basketball court - fills with her boundless energy. She stands there and just RADIATES, generating heat for all to absorb. Her students, including myself, are warmed by her presence, and exit the studio ready for the cold.

My yoga instructor left two months ago for a somewhat unexpected hiatus in Arizona. During that time, I've been dutifully practicing, hoping to master crow pose by the time she returned. And just recently, I got the hang of it - meaning that I had mastered the entirety of my instructor's move set.

I had learned just about everything she had to teach me.

And that's precisely when I learned that she would not be return to the studio, hearing the word from the yoga studio employees.

During my last class with her, I suspected that something was up. She was emotional to the point of tears, and made a point of making me demonstrate a handstand for the class, which was an ongoing tradition between the two of us. At the end, she demanded a hug from me, and squeezed me so hard that the buckle of my bag dug deep into my chest, causing me no small amount of pain. All I could think of during the hug was:

"This woman is so strong, she could end my life right now, if she wanted to."

And then:

"That is so hot."

But I was happy that she was moving on, because I knew she would do just fine in whatever life she chose for herself. And I was right; within a month of leaving the studio to go on hiatus, she a) fell in love, b) found a new job, and c) decided to move across the country.

Many words have been written on this blog about seizing one's destiny, but she is one of those who has never needed to read any of them. Indeed, I think she and I are kindred spirits - which is precisely why I found myself taking her class to begin with.

Now I am rotating among several different instructors, many of whom recognize me as my instructor's most devoted pupil and assume that I am in mourning. If I am mourning, I'm not the only one - every classmate of mine whom I've informed of the news has reacted as if someone in their immediate family died. My practice is definitely not the same. If if hadn't been for my instructor, I would never have made it to three hundred yoga classes. Not even close.

So what's next?

My instructor is a member of a particular ninja clan called Anusara Yoga (as opposed to rival clans Hatha and Iyengar and Bikram), and there is another ninja at my studio who was trained by the same master. In fact, the two instructors are good friends, and the other has been patiently keeping an eye on me, waiting for me to step into her dojo. You see, this new instructor is twice as difficult and advanced as my instructor. She subbed a level one class I took once, and it was easily the most difficult level one I've ever taken. The new one returns from HER hiatus in January, ready to introduce me to my new pain threshold.

I'd also like to make a metaphysical point about the departure of my instructor. I believe that when a significant presence in your life departs, it is to make room for a new presence. This has been true time and time again, especially with every figure who has ever taught me a valuable life lesson. Granted, I have a new instructor arriving, but I don't think she's going to play the same role in my life - only one can be the first, after all.

So the question is: who will this new presence be, and what will be their purpose?

The Shame of Reading US Weekly

One of my newest projects, only beginning to gestate, is a movie about Britney Spears. I know very little about Ms. Spears, except a passing familiarity with some of her music. But I have an intriguing idea for an movie with a character based on her public persona.

So I've recently begun reading US Weekly in the supermarket checkout lines, because the periodical has the best Britney Spears coverage, hands down. In the past three weeks, they've run a story on Ms. Spears' geneaology, the "secret fantasy room" in her mansion, and the creepy bodyguard/hanger-on that has been seen escorting her around town here in Los Angeles. All great stuff for the research file.

But it's really kind of embarrassing reading the magazine in public. Carrying a yoga mat around took a bit of getting used to. But carrying a yoga mat and reading US Weekly at the newsstand on Larchmont? Kind of emasculating, quite frankly.

I'd consider subscribing, but US Weekly is really expensive; the publisher clearly prefers the reader to buy on impulse.

Note The Sidebar

New feature added to the sidebar: a list of upcoming topics to be addressed, under the heading "Coming Attractions". I usually work from a queue of topics, so I figured I'd make my process a bit more public. I tend to binge blog, and the sidebar should serve as fair warning.

Keep in mind, though, that the list merely consists of topics under serious consideration. Some posts, such as "A Membership Drive For Lurkers", may never see the light of day, if the post doesn't come together in an insightful manner during the drafting process. "A Crash Course in Women" is not exactly the surest bet either, depending upon what the current state of my life is.

Lists of Things I Sold (And Didn't)

Three Most Valuable Items (Non-Video Games) I Sold

1) Raymond Weil Tango Watch ~ $250
2) Lego Robotics Kit (x2) ~ $200 each
3) Canon Powershot SD200 Camera ~ $100


Five Most Valuable Video Games I Sold

1) Castlevania: Symphony of the Night (Playstation, sealed) ~ $100
2) Lunar 2: Eternal Blue (Playstation, sealed) ~ $100
3) Lunar 1: Silver Star Story Complete (Playstation) ~ $80
4) Metal Gear Solid (Playstation, sealed) ~ $50
5) Suikoden 1 (Playstation) ~ $50


Five Most Valuable Things I Still Own

1) 2001 Honda Accord ~ $11000, can't sell
2) 2004 Apple iBook ~ $500, can't sell
3) Little Nemo's Adventures in Slumberland (1st ed.) ~ $200, won't sell
4) Brother 2070N Laser Printer ~ $100, can't sell
5) Radiant Silvergun (Sega Saturn) ~ $100, won't sell

My Life For Sale

In the book All My Life for Sale, artist John Freyer sells every single last thing he owns on eBay, netting about $5000 in the bargain. I must be wealthier than him, because I've only sold off only a quarter of my belongings, and have made about $3000.

To give you an idea of the magnitude of this purge, I can nearly fit all of my belongings in my car, excluding my furniture. (This is a claim which garnered a "Get the hell out of here!" exclamation from my stylist.) My closets are filled only with things I touch or use or wear on a regular basis. I now own only two kinds of things: stuff I love and stuff I need.

There is something addictive about this kind of simplicity. Once you've experienced it, you want your entire life to be so elegantly sparse. You scrutinize your belongings with a merciless eye, looking for just one more thing you can get rid of, just one more inch of beautiful space you can create in your life. Getting rid of stuff becomes a near-religious ritual of cleansing, like colonics for your apartment. It just feels oh-so-very good.

And it's a pursuit that allows you to connect, in very small ways, with people one would never encounter otherwise. I've sold video games to a poet in rural Mississippi, a soldier in Iraq, a kid in the Ukraine. Every time I've addressed a parcel for delivery, I've marveled that someone in such a distant locale and I had this one thing in common: we are fond of the same obscure Japanese video game.

A mother from Stone Mountain, Georgia, who purchased a Game Boy Player for her children, wrote this about me in her feedback: "He is truly honest." I was kind of touched by that.

Every person who purchased something from me has directly contributed to the success of this small adventure. And to my surprise, what appeared to be very simple transactions of goods and money are actually something more: a small reminder of the ways in which we are all connected to other people.

My Biggest Worries Ranked By Importance

Here are my biggest concerns at the present moment:

1) Finishing my screenplay, Lobsters vs. Butterflies
2) Stuff I shouldn't be blogging about.
3) Strategizing against my would-be overlords at the movie studio.
4) Will Naruto be able to rescue Sasuke from the clutches of Orochimaru?
5) Putting the finishing touches on my workout mixtape.
6) Should I return that jacket? Will I ever find a jacket that fits?
7) Making a good Croque Monsieur.
8) Figuring out my yoga schedule.

...

21) Update my blog?

...

37) The fact that I am slowly but surely spending every last dollar I have.

First of all, I'm a college freshman again. Second of all, about that number thirty-seven.

At my current rate of spending, assuming I earn no income (which granted, may not be a good assumption), I will be completely broke as of May 1.

And that's very good news.

I was originally supposed to run out of money in November - that is, sometime last week. But I have two screenplays that are rather close to being ready for the next phase of Operation: Hollywood Takeover, tentatively scheduled for early 2008.

So a number of parties (including, but not limited to, my parents) have stepped forward to provide some measure of assistance. And I've undertaken some truly drastic measures to buy myself just a little more time.

All of this should provide for no small amount of vicarious pleasure for readers of this blog, some of whom are the sort who live very certain and stable lives, and make regular contributions to their retirement accounts. These folks tend to project their financial anxieties upon me, as I represent the living incarnation of their worst fiscal nightmare.

What can I tell you? If you want to make dreams come true, this is the cost of doing business.

I am much more concerned about #1 than #37. But I know that writing about #37 is going to make for some very exciting blogging, whereas #1 doesn't.

I do not wish to worry any of my readers, especially my parents, by making it sound like I am having a miserable time going broke. In fact, the opposite is true: I'm having the TIME OF MY LIFE going broke.

And I also don't want to ruin the ending here. But if you think this little adventure is going to conclude like anything other than an Ocean's Eleven movie, complete with a horn section erupting into crescendo, sunglasses being adjusted for proper fit, and a lot of high fives, you're probably reading the wrong blog.

What I am saying is: don't worry.

However, we are definitely moving into the scary part. And I, as a writer, am duty-bound to milk the tension and drama of this act for all it's worth.

Download: All Sewn Up - David Holmes (from the Ocean's Thirteen Original Soundtrack)

THIS IS POST NUMBER TWO HUNDRED

It was not that long ago when I wrote that you only needed to attempt something 200 times in order to acheive the impossible. Well, here I am - a semi-regular blogger, and if that isn't impossible, I don't know what is. It's amazing that I made it this far, considering that this blog is the unloved and forgotten endeavor of all my creative output.

In celebration of this momentous milestone, here is the only blog post from me you will ever need to read, the ONE TRUE UPDATE regarding my life:

After inventing a new productivity technique for writing screenplays with Huili, I was riding my bike down Larchmont. I startled the blackbirds, and then suddenly found myself reminiscing about Stefanie, and the time I urged her to take responsibility for her destiny. I was late for yoga class, but I could afford to be late because I don't work for a living, which is TOTALLY SWEET. I entered the studio, where hot, flexible girls complimented me on the brightly-colored t-shirt I bought on sale at a fancy boutique in Shanghai. I told them how little I paid, and how I had to save my money because of all the worthless stock options I walked away from at my old job, and they were very impressed. Then my yoga instructor showed up and taught us all this awesome new pose involving pillows, and then we had ramen with monkfish liver afterwards, with ice cream and banana pancakes for dessert. It was a great day. And what's more, Judy predicted all of this a year ago!

Jonathan: Dude, I suck.
Me: Yeah, totally.

Download: Some Random Song That Is Only Tangentially Related To This Post [MP3]

You know what the amazing thing is? This is not an inaccurate description of my life. If you had told me two years ago (has it been that long?) that I would write something even remotely resembling the above paragraph regarding my life, I would have looked at you askance.

But much has changed since I began this adventure. I have caused much excitement to happen in my life, and when I couldn't cause any, I have managed to find some in the ordinary and the simple.

And that is as good a description of my blogging process as any.

The most surprising thing about this blog is how powerful it has been in connecting me to all kinds of people: stalkers, well-wishers, strangers, litigators, classmates, acquaintances. I'm pleased that so many of you have spared a moment to enjoy this process with me.

And I'm pleased to inform you that there will be no shortage of material in the near future. The only question is how much of it I can safely include in this blog.

The Rock Star of Astrology

Last weekend, I had a chance to attend a two-hour presentation by astrologer extraordinaire Susan Miller at the local Apple store.

I figured a few folks would show up to talk astrology with Ms. Miller.

What I did not expect was a store packed wall to wall with women jumping and yelling and pleading for Ms. Miller to do their charts, shouting out extremely technical questions regarding astrological minutiae (nodes, planets transiting houses, that sort of thing). Women of every age, ethnictiy and socioeconomic background, no less.

I know chicks love yoga. What I didn't know, apparently, was that chicks L-O-V-E astrology.

What was fascinating about this exercise was that none of these women had any hesitation in standing up in a room full of strangers, giving their actual date of birth, and then asking the most personal of questions regarding their love lives and careers.

(I was also continually awed by my repeated tendency to underestimate the age of a given woman by five, sometimes ten years. Then again, most of them were actresses. A belief in astrology is a prerequisite for the acting profession.)

One lady actually started crying during her reading, and Ms. Miller had to take a time out in order to give her a hug. And because the one lady was crying, you KNOW the other ladies had to start crying too.

It was all very Oprah.

As for myself, Ms. Miller informs me that someone with my birth data (Leo sun, Sagittarius ascendant) should anticipate once-in-a-lifetime events in both personal and professional spheres to commence posthaste. This, of course, is news I have received before. Internal consistency among the league of supernatural middle-aged ladies is definitely a good thing.

I came away from the presentation not entirely convinced by Ms. Miller. She is a very enthusiastic and engaging personality, but I found her prognostications a bit vague for my taste. I am perhaps a bit spoiled by a tarot reader who will gladly open the closet of my current infatuation and pull the skeletons out one by one. (Just ask Stefanie - she's heard the tape - AND IT MADE HER CRY.)

The thing that most unsettled me about Ms. Miller's presentation, however, was not the astrologer herself but her fans. The central question of astrology, at least for these aficionados, is: "When will this event happen to me?" Which is entirely different than the central question of any conversation I have with Judy the tarot reader. That question being, "How can I best cause this event to happen?"

Two fundamentally different questions, implying two fundamentally different views of the universe.

I know which one I like.

Halloween Is A Four Day Weekend

I'm the boss. So what I say goes. I'm off to San Francisco.

Speaking of Halloween, I rececntly had a phone conversation with Miranda, Huili's daughter. She is six now, was born in Los Angeles, but raised in Europe, and now has a slight British accent that makes you feel like you're in an Oliver Twist movie: "Why yes, Miranda, of course you may have more porridge!"

Miranda: I don't want to go to Los Angeles. I only want to go if I can fly on the back of a bird. Birds are my favorite animals.

Me: O rly.

Miranda: Yes. One time I went to the zoo, and we saw dead owl chicks and my dad said they weren't going to feed them to the owls, but they did! So we had to leave.

Me: Hey, Miranda. Do you like... CROWS?

Miranda: ...yes.

Me: Excellent. Let me tell you about my favorite Shinto god...

Miranda will make a perfect convert to my new favorite religion. Yatagarasu demands it.

Yatagarasu Is My New God

A few months ago I converted to the Shinto religion. Dude, it's WAY better than Christianity.

I was writing at my office away from the office: the green at the LA County Museum of Art.

I was working on a difficult scene - the entrance of the villain - and getting frustrated. The sun was setting. It was getting cold. I was ready to give up.

And then something unusual happened.

Crows began to descend upon LACMA. And not just a few - an enormous, angry flock, darkening the sky. They lazily and endlessly swirled around a grove of trees, cawing incessantly. A rondo of discord.

It was scary. So I left.

But I also took it as a sign not to give up. Because my villain - the one I was writing about when the birds arrived - is a crow.

His name is Yatagarasu. Who is he?

1) Three-legged crow.

2) Japanese Shinto deity.

3) Messenger to the sun goddess Amaterasu.

4) Mascot of the National Japanese Football team, proudly adorning the jersey I wear to yoga.

5) The dastardly villain in my screenplay Lobsters vs. Butterflies.

7) A demon who fights on your behalf in my new favorite video game Persona 3. (And yes, he is on my roster. He's got a lethal ice attack.)

As you can see, this bird is a constant companion in my life.



As if that weren't enough, I've been spending the past few weeks attempting to master the Bakasana yoga pose - also known as CROW POSE. You can see my instructor demonstrating Bakasana above (Yes, that's really her, and not some anonymous hot yoga model. She loves her leg warmers.) Every time she asks for requests during class, I'm the first to call out, "Crow!" My classmates HATE ME (when they aren't totally loving me, that is). But the upshot is that I can hold this pose for almost ten seconds.

A substitute instructor of mine said, "Bakasana can be also translated as crane pose, as well as crow pose. I prefer crane. Crows are elegant - but they're also kind of naughty."

Lady, you have no idea.

Happy Halloween.

Three Pieces of Asian Wisdom

Right before I quit my job, I attended a lecture by a Buddhist monk on the subject of meditation. I was curious because all of my training in meditation is taken from Hindu traditions, and I wanted to know how the Buddhists roll. Buddhist meditation, as it turns out, is complete weaksauce. Buddhists totally suck at meditation. However, I still remember that lecture to this very day, because of a story the monk told about a Buddhist master finding his guru.

The master was supposed to meditate in a cave until the guru appeared, but kept giving up and leaving, only to encounter typically Buddhist moments of inspiration which would draw him back. On one particular occasion, he journeyed from the cave until he encountered an old man rubbing an anvil with a feather. He stopped and asked the old man what he was doing.

"See how the feather leaves a trace on the anvil as I draw the feather against it," said the old man. "If I continue as I have, I will BREAK THIS ANVIL IN HALF."

I love that story. I was reminded of it in the process of researching Lobsters vs. Butterflies, which contains a couple pieces of Japanese wisdom. The first is a Japanese proverb:

Nana korobi, ya oki. Fall down seven times, stand up eight.

Pretty good, eh? I'm still trying to figure out where exactly to insert that nugget of sage advice. The second comprises one of my favorite monologues in the movie, and it's taken from the Hagakure, the book of samurai wisdom that was an inspiration for things like the attack on Pearl Harbor and the rape of Nanking.

"Young men should discipline themselves rigorously in intention and courage. This will be accomplished if only courage is fixed in one's heart. If his hands are cut off, he will strike with his hands. If his hands are cut off, he will press the enemy down with his shoulders. If his shoulders are cut away, he will bite through ten or fifteen enemy necks with his teeth. Courage is such a thing."

Of course, these aren't just proverbs and folk tales I'm putting in the script I'm writing.

They are allegories for my career.

Everything I Know About Fashion: Denim Edition

The buttons on my jeans say: "Denim is dead." I know what they mean. Are we all just really going to wear jeans for the rest of our lives? Pretty much. And so the rivets on the same pair say, "Long live denim."

Here's what I know about denim.

1) Ignore the labels and focus on color and texture. You'll be less likely to make a mistake.

2) The darker the blue the more useful. The lighter, the more casual. However, if the color is so dark it can not be easily discerned as a shade of blue, you've probably gone too dark.

3) The more ornamentation on the jean, the quicker it will go out of style. I personally think that color, texture, and cut are much more important than fancy stitching or distressing.

4) The slim straight leg cut is the one that will last for the foreseeable future. The bootleg cut is diminishing in popularity, and that's too bad, because it flattered everyone - which is precisely why fashionistas have started wearing skinny jeans that normal people can't fit into. My preference: a slim bootleg, with flaring so subtle you barely notice it. See: Crate Denim.

5) Try on multiple pairs of the exact same size. And then try on multiple pairs of the neighboring sizes. Quality control among jeans manufacturers is notoriously lax, even among high-end labels. You're more likely to get the perfect fit by trying on as many pairs as possible.

6) It should be an effort, but not an impossible one, to button the top button. The jeans should feel tight and snug around your hips and waist. Jeans only get looser as they break in - they don't get tighter. So you want a very snug fit.

7) Turn around and check out the rear view. It's actually just as important for guys to do this as it is for girls. Your curves should be discernible. It should not look like a circus tent back there.

8) Have a seat. After all, this is how you'll spend most of your time in these jeans. How do they look? Are they comfortable? Are the legs riding up? Is the seat too low?

9) The break. This is how the fabric hits your ankles. Some people, like me, prefer a clean break, preserving the lines of the jeans. Others like the fabric to scrunch up around the ankles. Whatever you choose, make sure the back of the leg touches the floor when you try them on in your bare feet.

10) Most jeans don't shrink, so don't count on achieving a perfect fit through the laundry. If they do shrink, it'll be length-wise; jeans will never shrink around your waist.

11) Some garments only get better-looking with age and wear. Raw selvage denim is one of them. I'm talking about dark jeans that come with a warning label which cautions you to stay away from light fabrics and upholstery. As you wear these jeans, the indigo slowly rubs off, and they develop unique wear patterns. The downside? You can't wash them. Ever. Please consult Google for ways of mitigating this. The warning label on a pair of Crate Denim jeans says: "Do not wash. But if you wear stinky jeans, your girlfriend may not make out with you. Your call."

12) Know what the new hotness is? Rigid grey denim. Not soft grey denim, mind you. If you can find a pair, you'll know what I'm talking about. Rock 'em. You won't regret it.

13) You simply don't know until you try them on. Words for buying jeans. Words for life.

To be continued in Part 5.

Peeling Off Retail Stickers

I used to suck at peeling off retail stickers - price tags and the like - from things I purchase. I would tear the sticker, or worse, leave a sticky residue. This inept tendency eventually discouraged me from peeling off stickers at all - I would resign myself to the sight of the effluvia of commerce.

But I've since discovered the secret: a stoic equanimity to endure the protracted task of pulling millimeter by millimeter, combined with a forbearing willingness to reverse or change course if necessary.

Apparently, I've become a much more patient person.

Fomenting the Revolution

I was at a social gathering a couple nights ago, trading workplace horror stories with some other folks, and generating quite a bit of laughter, especially from the young ladies.

(You have to wake up pretty early in the AM to beat me at the workplace horror story game, as I used to work for the video game industry. Whose resume is iller than mine is?)

Anyway, as a young woman laughed and lamented her inability to escape her own workplace, I gave her the whole spiel about handing an infant to a stranger, and how her employer was not watching over her best interests.

Her smile immediately vanished, and her expression turned intense.

"You're right," she said.

And I could immediately see the beginnings of a new plan forming in her mind. Now that's what I'm talking about.

Afterwards, another young woman said to me, "You should write a blog."

You don't say.

When A Compromise Is A Betrayal

There is absolutely no shame in showing up to sit at a desk every day, doing what other people tell you to do. It pays the rent. It gives you health insurance. It allows you to plan for a safe and knowable future.

The shame lies in pretending that this course of action is your highest dream, your greatest goal, when in fact, it is a way of deferring precisely these things. It is a terrible betrayal of the self.

Of course, people don't call it a betrayal - they call it a compromise. As if someday, in the ineffable future, the act of betraying your own dreams might actually provide provide the money and time to manifest them.

Your employer is not responsible for your best interests. You are. If you are coasting along in the job, assuming that your boss or company will take care of you in the long run, you are being irresponsible.

You are handing an infant to a stranger.

Beck, The Beach, Stefanie, and My Knee

A long time ago, when I was working for the good old video game company, I used to take long walks on the beach after work. I was miserable - Stefanie had just kicked me out of her life after the kidnapping, and I was working on well-intentioned but mediocre video game under a well-intentioned but mediocre manager. I even got hit by a car while crossing the street coming into work.

On a weekend.

It was a lonely and unfulfilling time, to say the least.

There were only two things I really enjoyed during that era. Beck's album Sea Change on constant repeat (as sampled here, and now you know why I chose that song) and the Santa Monica beach, where my office was located. I remember walking (or limping, as the case may be) up and down the beach, watching a hundred different sunsets, asking when, if ever, my life would truly begin. Each of those walks was a prayer to a dead god - not only did I not have an answer, I wasn't sure one existed.

I often wondered during that time, if and how and when I would be rescued. I had no idea that I would do it myself.

Nowadays, I ask the question, when will my life truly begin? And the answer is always the same: IT BEGINS NOW. And when I answer that question, you can see the angry nine-tailed demon fox that lives inside me, burning behind my eyes.

As for the knee, the doctors said it would never be quite the same - that I would always experience a bit of wobbliness. And they were right, for a time - the knee remained a bit wobbly for over four years - and then I took my first yoga class.

The knee is stronger, more flexible than it ever was. It can do lunges. It can support and balance the weight of my entire body on its own. It can run three miles at a seven minute pace. It serves as a pointed reminder of that time - of the job, the beach, Beck, and Stefanie.

And how I made it through.

And also how - and this is the important part - I cannot and will not go back to any of that.

Why Film School Tuition Is Totally Worth It

One of my classmates recently wrote a movie starring Kate Hudson and Owen Wilson. He's writing another starring Morgan Freeman and William H. Macy.

Another created the hit television show "Criminal Minds" for CBS.

Another is a staff writer on "30 Rock". She just won an Emmy.

And then there's me.

Wait 'til you see what I'm gonna do.

It's taken seven years to get to this point. But still.

We only had thirty students in our class.

That means film school gives you at least a ten percent chance of making it big. It may not sound like much, but in Hollywood, a ten percent chance means you are robbing the house.

Everything I Know About Fashion, Part 3

Previously: Part 1, Part 2

9) Buying sale merchandise is fine. Some women attach a stigma to buying things on sale. These women are stupid and frivolous - do not date them. The fashion industry is a pretty big scam, all things considered - even the most expensive pair of jeans cost what - twenty dollars to make? And ladies, did you know that when you wear Juicy Couture, you're actually wearing Liz Claiborne - the official brand of middle-aged librarians? What I'm saying is, the fashion industry has all sorts of ways of convincing you to pay much more than the clothes are worth - stigmatizing sales is yet another one of their tricks.

10) On the other hand, If you know exactly what you want - and can find it - then go ahead and spend the money to get it. Enjoy your life.

11) Think twice about getting something because it's functional and cheap. That money could be spent towards something lethal and durable. Do it enough times, and you get a closet full of functional and cheap, with no room or money left for lethal and durable.

12) The Matrix. When considering a garment, think about how many other garments in your wardrobe this item can be worn with. Also consider if the garment can be layered with other garments in the winter. The idea is to maximize the possible number of permutations in your wardrobe. If something is expensive and can only be worn with only a few other items you own, pass.

13) Wear the damn clothes. Don't buy stylish expensive clothes and put them in the closet for a special occasion. This is called hoarding, and Jesus can't stand hoarders. From now on, only wear your best threads, even to grocery store. Life is too short to wear your scrub clothes.

14) Clothing is inherently ephemeral. Almost nothing stays in fashion for more than two years - and even if it does, a) it'll either wear out, or b) you'll get tired of it. Think of your closet as a project that must be occasionally renewed, and not a museum.

To be continued in (hell yes, I can do this all day) Part 4.

Yukari, Junpei, Mitsuru, and Me

Persona 3 is a game that attempts to model one academic year in the life of a typical Japanese high school student, albeit one who just happens to stumble across a hidden hour between midnight and 12:01 am, during which a hitherto unseen tower rises from his school campus, and disagreeable demons emerge. The game, like high school, is a challenge of time management. Do you study for mid-terms, go on a date with your sweetheart, or save the world from demonic evil?

This is a game which will require, at my current pace, about eighty hours to complete. I'm halfway done.

Do I really have this kind of time? I can justify the allocation by pointing out that Persona 3 serves as research for two upcoming projects: Pillow Crisis 2(!) and another project which serves as my attempt to become The Greatest Final Fantasy Fan Fiction Writer Of All Time.

But ultimately, I admit that you cannot devote eighty hours of your life to something unless you really, really enjoy it. Here are just a few of the reasons why I enrolled at Gekkoukan High:

1) Getting lost on the first days of school because the campus is so big and unfamiliar.

2) Knocking out demons with a baseball bat, and ordering my classmates to go in for an all-out melee. Never gets old.

3) Everybody - the ditz, the jock - is hiding a secret. And they all have serious issues.

4) The hierarchy of demons is based on the tarot deck, with demons being grouped by allegiance to cards (Hermit, Magician, Death) from the Major Arcana. Being a huge fan of the Rider Waite tarot deck and a certain lady who uses it, I adore this detail.

5) Running into my acquaintances at random places (the subway station, the shrine) in town when school lets out.

6) Listening to the girls in my combat unit complain about the lack of fashion sense in the body armor I give to them.

7) Being given the option to fall asleep in class as a means of regaining stamina to fight demons later in the evening.

8) Pop quizzes on the difference between the Paleolithic and Neolithic ages. And actually having to pay attention during lectures when the teacher says, "This will be on the exam."

9) The simplicity and beauty of the allegory of kids with repressed (inner) demons that represent their traumas and their strengths. They have stuff inside, and they just have to get it out.

10) The charmingly Japanese notion that strong academic performance correlates strongly with one's desirability to high school girls, and in turn, one's ability to fight demons.

11) Going on spring break and attempting to mack on (only to get shot down by) college chicks.

12) Casual acquaintances (the neighborhood dog, the friendly grade school kid) reveal their greater significance in your life with time. Just like real life!

13) Going to see the school nurse when I'm not feeling well.

14) The oppressive structure and amount of ennui in my life - I had almost forgotten how simultaneously busy - and how boring - a high schooler's life is.

How To Accomplish The Impossible

Very simple.

You attempt the thing you want to accomplish 243 times. By the time you get to attempt number 200, the end of the tunnel should be in sight.

I say this because I've gotten to the point where there are only a few yoga poses I can't do. I told my instructor the other day:

"I don't think there's anything you can throw at me I can't handle."

"Oh really."

"Yeah. You heard me. YOU HEARD ME."

"Uh, well... that's good!"

You know I've gotten good at something when the smack talk begins. I'm probably the only yoga student on earth that likes to talk shit to his instructor.

Anyway, I remember there were so many times that I thought to myself, "I will never be able to do this pose." I was convinced that it was impossible - that I had reached the limits of my body's strength and flexibility. But every single time, I was wrong.

If you saw me in my first class, you'd never believe what I can do now. I'm so flexible, that if I had a uterus, I'd be ready to start making babies. No drugs necessary. That's how open my hips are. I can throw up a handstand like it ain't no big thang now.

Which led me to the question today: how many classes did it take for me to achieve this level of mastery? I asked the person at the front counter, and he dutifully added up my tally in his head, and said:

"243 classes since April 2006."

"Sweet!"

"Excellent work, Rob."

You know, 243 times isn't even that much. If you attempted to do something impossible every day, it's not even a year.

My point is: most feats thought to be impossible wouldn't even take a year to accomplish.

I think entire lives could change with that small idea.

Everything I Know About Fashion, Part 2

Previously: Part 1

5) Be colorful. It works for peacocks, and I'm pretty sure we humans obey the same evolutionary biology. So many guys are afraid of wearing colors, and wearing them gives you such an edge. Every time I wear lavender or lime or pink, it's inevitable - a female will make a point of stepping forward to compliment me. I was talking about this with Ting, Stefanie's BFF, and she said, "But wait a minute - won't girls think you're gay?" And then she immediately followed up with, "Oh wait - if they stop to think about whether you're gay or not, they're in your back pocket." Smart girl.

6) No article of clothing should ever be pointedly uncomfortable to wear. There are too many clothes out there that look and feel good to waste your time with discomfort.

7) Do your homework. Make a regular habit of entering stores and trying on clothes, especially in expensive places. It's the fastest way to develop good taste - to know what is stylish and looks good on you. Then you can either buy things that aren't as expensive but look the same (girls do this all the time - it's called Forever 21 with their knockoff Diane Von Furstenberg dresses), or wait for things to go on sale (again, girls).

8) Corollary to the previous rule: try on clothes at places you would never normally shop at (because you don't think you're the target demographic). You'll be surprised, and it will inject new blood into your closet. I have things in my closet from all kinds of places, from thrift stores to Barney's Coop. Combine the two, and you'll get a pretty unique outfit.

To be continued in Part 3.

The Best Sunset In The History of LA

Occurred yesterday. It had been raining on and off all day. Driving south on the 101, the sky was filled with an immense rainbow, arcing through the sky, big thick bands of color. The freeway appeared to be headed directly towards the end of rainbow. And if that weren't enough, there was more than one. Everywhere you turned, another massive rainbow curving above the city.

I've lived here quite a while, and I've never seen anything like it.

Everything I Know About Fashion, Part 1

Most men tend to underestimate exactly how tight their clothes need to be in order to get laid.

This is something I've learned as multiple individuals have asked over the past year or so that I go shopping for clothes with them. I don't know why people ask, as my personal fashion philosophy is to do and spend the absolute bare minimum to be stylish.

But for future reference, here is everything I've learned about men's fashion:

1) Don't depend on the opinion of a woman. The cliche is: shop with a woman. PLEASE. The opinion of a woman is valuable, but not THAT valuable. Remember, women are the dummies who are killing themselves trying to fit into skinny tapered jeans that don't flatter anybody, the ones wearing ugly leggings in the winter and hiding their stems from me (who thought this was a good idea?), the ones wearing baby doll dresses that make them look like dowdy infants. That being said, most women have more of a clue than you. Ultimately -- You have to do this by yourself.

2) Practice brand agnosticism. You may discover a particular brand that you love, and decide, in an effort to make shopping easier, to buy from that brand (or store) exclusively. This is a mistake because 1) every brand falls off eventually, and 2) diversity will always be more stylish than monotony. The only loyalty you want to practice is to your own body; things either look good on you or they don't.

3) Proper fit is more important than everything else. A retailer for frat boys and high schoolers makes dress shirts that are pretty cheap and not particularly remarkable. But they are the only dress shirts that are slim enough to fit snugly around my torso and shoulders - and because of this fact, end up looking much more stylish than shirts that cost three times as much. Of course, in a perfect world, I'd spend five times as much to get the cut, color, and pattern right, but the world is not quite that perfect yet. Fit is especially king when it comes to denim - more on this in a bit.

4) Never buy anything that is branded. Unless the logo is extremely small and inconspicuous. Not only because you don't want to be someone else's billboard, but because you want to keep people guessing where you shop. If they have to guess, congratulations: your taste is somewhat unique.

To be continued in Part 2.

This Workout Will Kill You So You Can Live Again

So you want to be a writer. Do you think you can handle the physical demands of the job?

My routine:

Yoga - five days a week
Weights - three days a week
Running - once a week

Do the math. That's more than one workout per day. That's right -- Friday Night Lights, y'all -- I'm a high school football player doing two-a-days.

Why do I do this to myself?

1) Increased Energy. You know that awful feeling you have when you're leaving your office job at the end of the day - that combination of physical and mental fatigue brought on by the copier toner and monitor glare? It's a most mysterious malady, especially considering that the life of an office worker isn't particularly strenuous. It's my suspicion that this feeling is that of your soul expiring. I haven't experienced it in ALMOST TWO YEARS.

2) Method writing. One of the characters in Lobsters vs. Butterflies has endured a particularly grueling physical training regimen her entire life, and spends most of the movie coping with extreme amounts of pain. In order to understand what she's going through, I am attempting to emulate her routine. When people ask me, "Why yoga?" I tell them, "Because there aren't any ninjutsu studios on Larchmont."

3) Preparation for child-rearing. This is somewhat tongue-in-cheek. Everyone I know who has kids has pretty serious neck and back problems from lugging their offspring around. I ain't going out like that. (Speaking of children, someone recently offered me a free sonogram of all things, and I said, "Yeah! Let me get someone pregnant, and I'll take you up on that.")

4) Free iPods, shoes, and food. My running group not only lends me the services of a babysitter/pacesetter who keeps an eye on my safety, but also loans me state-of-the-art running shoes and iPods. Not to mention the nutritionally balanced meal afterwards. And the best part: it's all FREE.

Japanese People Are Evil

And I can't stop writing about them.

Progress on my new script, Lobsters vs. Butterflies, has been slowed lately by the entrance of Japanese characters into the scene. (They are Japanese lobsters, you see. Evil Japanese lobsters.)

Progress slows because my familiarity with the Japanese language and culture is limited by what I can glean from video games, and anime (Kage Bunshin No Jutsu!) - hardly a large font of knowledge to draw upon.

So I depend on a great deal of reseach: primary sources and artwork and photography to piece together how things should look and sound and feel. Visiting Japan this past summer was a tremendous help, of course - it's one thing to read about the nightingale floor at Nijo castle, but quite another to hear it in person.

But no amount of research can provide you with the aura of words. There is a dense network of allusion and connotation and history packed in a name of any language, and it all goes right over your head if you're a native speaker. For all I know, my villain's name sounds like Eugene to Japanese audiences - naming Japanese characters is quite the arduous process, and any astute viewer will note that my Japanese names are packed with none-too-subtle nods to video games and anime. (I have a character named after a Sega arcade platform, for crying out loud.)

Despite this difficulty, or perhaps because of it, I have seen fit to include Japanese characters in my next three projects. In fact, each of the three stories prominently feature Japanese villains: Japanese lobsters in Lobsters vs. Butterflies, Japanese real estate magnates and pop culture icons in Pillow Crisis, and (ominously) the Japanese military in Waxahachie Air.

Clearly, I have a preoccupation with Japanese villainy. Perhaps it's a trace memory of my grandparents' experience during the Japanese occupation of Taiwan - my grandparents all speak and read Japanese fluently as a result, and they didn't exactly pick up the language as a hobby. And yet, none of my grandparents seem to bear any grudge against the Japanese at all. My mother and grandmother are vacationing in Hokkaido as I write this; my grandma's all like, "Hey Japan, you guys locked me up in a camp back in the day, but it's cool, I love your beaches."

Oh, and my great-grandmother was a geisha.

When you consider her life, and then consider mine, a writer spinning a yarn about treacherous Japanese crustraceans, it makes you wonder about the story the universe itself is spinning.

How You Know You Have A Full Life

You can't find the time to update your blog.

But also:

You wake up on a Saturday morning to your phone ringing. You pick it up. And someone tells you they're going to pick you up in half an hour.

You have no idea what this person is talking about.

"Uh...what are we doing again?

"We're having dumpings in Arcadia."

"Oh. Awesome."

My weekends are so booked that I am beginning to forget my plans right after I make them. I am beginning to wonder what it would be like to have the weekend to myself inside my apartment. I've done everything from view an amazing exhibition by Ghana artist El Anatsui, to meeting a Japanese Samurai robot who urged me to "improve human/robot relations!", to having barbecue right off the grill at a tailgate party in a grocery mart's parking lot.

And yet I'm busier than ever with my work. Which would suggest that I would keep the weekend adventuring to a minimum, but I've actually made it a top priority to do something interesting every week. So even though I have less time to have fun these days, I'm actually making it a point to have MORE fun.

Funny how this works. I'm a writer knee-deep in a draft of a script about the eternal and bitter rivalry between lobsters and butterflies. I spend a great deal of time alone at a desk, concentrating very deeply upon the choreography of fight sequences between crustaceans and insects. It's difficult, isolating work, and without some form of respite, I will begin to dread it, then hate it, and then rebel against it.

Which is why it's important that I go out and do things that aren't writing. Like the robots and the Ghana art, and the barbecue. To provide balance and normalcy and fun.

Keep Away From Fire

That's what the warning label inside my new jeans says. As if to apprise me that when I wear this garment, there is a significant chance that I may burst into flames.

The jean designers have no idea.

I am on page thirty of my new script, adhering to a breakneck (for me) two-page-a-day pace.

Let me be perfectly clear - I have never, ever written this fast in my life. I feel like I am just barely holding on to a bucking steer, and if you knew what Lobsters vs. Butterflies was about, you'd find the metaphor quite apt. Rodeo cowboys consider eight seconds - the time required to hold onto a bull for a legitimate ride - to be an eternity. I am on schedule to finish this script in nine weeks, and it may as well be ten years.

Writing: Bribery and Ol' Dirty Bastard

Music industry legend has it that when the time came for perenially erstwhile (and sadly deceased) Wu-Tang member Ol' Dirty Bastard to record his second solo studio album, the record company execs had a problem.

They couldn't get ODB to show up in the studio to record. So they took the necessary step of bribing him, everyday, to show up and work. The bribes took the form of envelopes of cash, and some speculate, vials of drugs. The idea was that they would leave a little piece of cheese in the studio each day, and hopefully Dirt McGirt would show up and take the bait.

This actually worked, producing, in all senses of the word, a miracle. One known as the classic album "Nigga Please". Pharrell Williams, one of the producers on the album, once described in an interview how ODB would record a single line of a rap, exit the studio to take a long break, and then return to record the next line. And so on. Compare this work ethic to that of Too $hort, who recorded many, many albums, and famously boasted "I won't leave the studio until the song's done."

Let's put it this way: my work ethic is much more akin to that of Big Baby Jesus than Mr. Short. I bribe myself constantly. I buy myself expensive foods. I buy myself the latest Final Fantasy game. I buy clothes from Barney's New York.

Whatever it takes to get me to the desk. As long as I'm cranking out two pages a day, I'm invincible. I can do as I please, and you can't stop me.

Because I've done my writing for the day.

The Crackhouse

A few nights ago, my apartment building was raided by the police.

Why? Because one of my neighbors was running a METH AND CRACK LAB out of his apartment.

The police cordoned off the building with police tape, and biohazard trucks showed up to remove the chemicals. The dealer had all his windows blacked out, just like in the movies! And apparently, the tipster was the crazy old lady who lives on the third floor, who suspected the dealer of stealing her newspaper and kept him under constant surveillance. (Because meth dealers can't afford to buy their own newspapers, I guess.)

I should have known. Dude spent all hours of the day in the garage, painting his car different colors, one coat after another (and you know that's how meth types roll), and there were all sorts of people showing up in the building at odd hours. (I just assumed he had a lot of indie friends.)

Anyway, no matter how much cred you think you have regarding illicit drugs, I win. FOREVER.

After all, I live IN A CRACKHOUSE.

Writing: Fancy Software Is For Typesetting

No matter what software I use - whether its Final Draft, Movie Magic Screenwriter, or Microsoft Word - I find that it's best used for typesetting - that is, arranging the display of words ALREADY written.

The writing itself is better done in longhand, or in a basic text editor. The fancy software encourages me to aim for final-draft-quality output, which is crippling. And it also leads to a common fallacy of thought: because my words are visually formatted, they must be final. The simple tools, on the other hand, encourage me to sketch and mess around, without the pressure of feeling that my words are being chiseled into stone.

Once I've finished sketching out a scene, I then go to the software and lay out the words, which is small revision in itself, and a visual reward for finishing the work.

Writing: The Samurai Desk

Your desk is a reflection of your state of mind. An empty desk is the product of a mind that has sorted everything - every last scrap of paper, every utensil, every book, into its proper place at the end of the work day.

Therefore, the surface of your desk should always be empty, except when one is actually working at it.

To start the day by facing a cluttered desk is intimidating. You have a mess to clean before you've even started. Better to face an inviting work surface.

Now Comes The Exciting Part

The ironic thing is that I have no problem posting daily when I'm in remote parts of a foreign country with limited internet access, but once I return back to my apartment, I go dark.

Here's the deal: I'm about to run out of money. At my current rate of burn, I'll be done by Christmas, more or less. Remember the character introduction for Captain Jack Sparrow in the first Pirates of the Caribbean movie? He steps off the mast of his dinghy onto the wharf, just as his boat completely sinks into the water. Story of my life.

So I have four months left. By sheer coincidence, that's the amount of time I need to finish a good draft of Lobsters vs. Butterflies, my new and exciting script about the fierce and bitter rivalry between insects and crustaceans. So I am writing as quickly as I can, while as my financial house crumbles around me.

What happens when the money runs out? Will you get to read blog posts about living on the street and turning tricks? Or worse, going back to making video games about killing brown people?

I myself have been provided some insight about what happens next, but there is a difference between knowing something theoretically, and knowing it experientially. I've had this lesson reiterated in recent times: no matter how much one has been told about a person before meeting them, the actual encounter will both corroborate and betray the description in the most interesting ways. I will say that I am excited about what is about to happen, and leave it at that.

Right now, I'm concentrating on my first draft of LvB. Then we'll see. Finishing this draft on schedule should be eminently doable, assuming of course, that life cooperates by remaining free of intrigue and excitement for the duration.

But I doubt life will.

Harry Potter

I'm off to see a screening of Harry Potter at the Warner Brothers lot up in Burbank. I don't often enjoy the perks of the film industry, but when I do, they're nice.

Saw Transformers last night, which led to a strange conversation during yoga class. I was doing bridge pose, which isn't the most comfortable thing, and my instructor wandered over and said, "What'd you think of Transformers?" And I thought, I'd love to have this conversation with you, but what an incredibly strange time to ask me this question - I'm trying to ACCOMPLISH something here!

Still Here

I've been spending all my time procrastinating preparing to write my next screenplay, which means eliminating many possible sources of distraction, including cleaning my apartment, lining up medical appointments, selling things that are taking up room in my closets, visiting my relatives, shopping for household necessities, and getting my computer repaired.

In short, I'm going to war. I'm organizing my resources within the staging ground of my apartment in order to make a sustained offensive charge through the next four months.

I have a screenplay draft to complete and Pillow Crisis negotiations with our friends at the studio. And those are merely the developments I can allude to publicly. The thing I can't mention will be fiercely competing for time with the things I can. It's my job to reconcile them all.

I find it hard to believe that all these things have to happen at the same time. Perhaps it's because I need to learn to balance them.

Coming up is my new weapon in the effort. A new technique from the discipline of productivity judo: the empty desktop.

The Beach Mafia

Just got back from having barbeque at Dockweiler beach, and playing a game of Mafia with several Hollywood types. Mafia is a summer camp favorite in which a handful of individuals among a group of twenty are secretly mafia assassins, and the others must rely on their powers of deduction in order to capture the criminals before everyone is assassinated.

What I learned from this game is that I'm an awful judge of character, having made several false accusations, and ignoring the young woman to my right, who masterfuly played the innocent while slaughtering several of my fellow players. Thankfully, I wasn't the only one; the civilians as a whole voted to execute several innocent people in the pursuit of justice.

I myself was formally accused of being mafia late in the game, and was forced to defend myself before my peers. A girl quietly said to me, "I think you're mafia." Which unleashed a chorus of "Kill him!"

But all was eventually forgiven, as the civilians triumphed - the last mafia member was eating a smores, which led to his downfall: "He's eating! He's mafia!"

And the result was a catharsis of relief and joy as everyone gave each other high fives under the moonlit sky. As we were recounting the game's events, I told someone, "You got killed for completely arbitrary reasons."

Someone said, "Everyone did."

Random Photos of Asia

Jonathan getting his ass handed to him in Street Fighter III: Third Strike in Kyoto


My father, my brother, and I walking through the French Concession in Shanghai


Waiting for the bus to leave the government-mandated tourist trap in Guilin


Mountain biking through Yangshuo. I'm wearing the hat backwards because my neck is getting sunburned. Be quiet.


Don't even ask me to identify which shrine this is in Japan. Wallace climbing up stairs.


Bamboo rafting in Yangshuo.


Brian being emo in Japan.


Dinner at a nightclub/karaoke bar in Yangshuo.

Leaving China

Myself at the top of Moon Hill, after a legendary climb. The view is even better in person.

For all my planning efforts, I could never have planned a trip this fantastic; it was filled with wonder and drama and epiphany. And best of all, I got to hang out with one brother, two parents, three former coworkers, a grad school classmate, an old flame, and an alma mater. That is clearly a record.

I can't wait to do this all over again in - ohmigod - LESS THAN FOUR MONTHS!?

Big thanks to my parents, who made the trip so much easier (and cheaper); between the free housing and meals, my stay in China was a much more pleasant one.

Now I return to meet whatever is waiting for me back in Los Angeles. I'm going to put back all the weight I lost, catch up with all my favorite yoga classmates, eat some barbeque on the beach, and most importantly...

Get back to work.

Actually, I've been told that work is SECOND most important right now.

It's an exciting time.

Last Shanghai Tidbits

A glimpse of my last few days:

• Eating roast duck and pineapple curry on the patio at Simply Thai in Hongqiao. Again. And again. And again. It's that good.


• Taking an hour and a half to have my hair cut, ears cleaned, upper body (including fingers!) massaged. All for the princely sum of $5.


• Getting thrown out of the knockoff mall storefronts for being too aggressive in my haggling. Sometimes the vendors are ACTING like they're really upset about your offer, and sometimes they ARE really upset. Telling the difference is something I'm still working on. Then again, it's probably not a good idea to skimp on luggage. Oh well. This is GREAT practice for Pillow Crisis negotiations.


• Reading books, watching movies, writing.


• Chores.

More Notes on Shanghai

It was raining in this city before Stefanie arrived, and while she was here, we had the most beautiful weather. Now she's gone and the rain is back. Sux.

Here's a brief roundup of my time with Stefanie (read more about her visit here) and her BFF Ting (who is very funny in a vulgar, lack of self-censoring sort of way and speaks Mandarin with a charmingly bizarre accent):

1) Do not even look askance at the zebras at the Shanghai Zoo. A few reasons why this is a bad idea: 1) the Shanghai Zoo has decided to install only the most minimal barriers between the animals, which results in animals being in much closer proximity than one is used to. 2) The zebras at the Shanghai Zoo are NOT. MESSING. AROUND. Ting was just casually talking to one of them, when he approached curiously, and then BUM RUSHED her, only to stop short of the fence and say, "Psych!" "Dude!" I exclaimed to Ting. "Your ass just got CHARGED BY A ZEBRA!"

1a) Another note: the lions at the zoo are quite the show. In the space of five minutes, we got to see: pissing, stretching, roaring, and (so adorable!) cuddling. And as always, red panda > black panda.

2) According to some of Stefanie's buddies from USC who spend a lot of time in nightclubs in Asia, Chinese girls will only hold hands for the first fifty dates, but Japanese girls will give up the anal on day one. Note to Japanese women: call me. Just kidding - before I start getting the hate mail, let me just say that the very amusing individuals in question are not exactly what I would call players, in the strictest (or even loosest) sense of the term, so your mileage may vary. A LOT.

3) Speaking of USC, Stefanie managed to actually drag me to - the horror! - a USC alumni event. "I am not a Trojan!" I said. "Stop saying that!" said Stefanie. To be fair, the event was staged at a nice restaurant, with plenty of decent food on hand; not to mention that my former graduate school gets style points for even holding events in Shanghai. But no matter how good an alumni association USC has, there's simply no compensating for the fact that the University of Texas at Austin has a better football team, and that Matt Leinart is a complete tool. And I can write that because Stefanie is in Xian now and she can't smack me! Yay! (PS. UCLA is really the better school, by the way. I couldn't get in there, so I had to settle.)

4) If you want to get someone pregnant in Shanghai, a good place to start is New Heights on the Bund. It's a stylish rooftop bar/restauarant located on the top floor of an elegant 1920's building on the Huangpu River. There's a gorgeous view of the river and the Shanghai skyline, and you get a nice breeze up there. The food is very decent. The best thing about the place are the elevators, which are shrouded in darkness, with only a slight hint of accent lighting. You can barely see the face of the person across from you, and the elevator is intimate in size to begin with. It is dark, mysterious, and as sexy as elevators can be, which is usually not very.

5) Stefanie had her hair Japanese straightened in Shanghai for the absurdly low price of about $30. And yes, it looks quite lovely. The usual price in the states is in the hundreds, and Stefanie also received treatment from two stylists at the same time. The procedure took a few hours, and Stefanie had to sit very still for all of it, which pretty much guarantees that I will never, ever have my hair Japanese straightened. Oh wait - I'm Asian. I've got Japanese straightened hair FO' LYFE. I get this for free, ninja.

What A Depressing Song :(

Man, that Beck song at the end of the Stefanie post is a serious bummer. We need something to exorcise it from the room RIGHT NOW. Something a little more emblematic of the present moment. Something like:

Download: Get Ready - Ella Fitzgerald (MP3)

That ought to do it. Now back to our regularly scheduled blogging.

The Train To San Diego

Stefanie at the top of the Empire State Building, 2006


So my friend Stefanie is in Shanghai. This is kind of a big deal.

But not for the reasons you might assume when a girl you used to be absolutely crazy about makes the most random and unlikely reappearance in your life, and you suddenly find her walking around your apartment in a towel. No - this is not a story about the rekindling of an extinguished flame.

It's about reckoning with the past.

I don't mean to elevate the story of Stefanie to the level of myth. After all, the story of the girl who broke Stefanie's spell over me is just as significant in my life, if not more so. (That the girl broke Stefanie's spell - and the ease with which she broke it - and that it remains broken - suggest a magic more powerful than Stefanie's.)

But I am writing about Stefanie here. Mainly because she has two things going for her. 1) She and I share a near-legendary anecdote in which I kidnapped her, threw her on a train, and took her to San Diego. 2) She refuses to go away. And believe me, I've tried to get rid of her.

But it's simply not happening. It was six(!) years ago that I kidnapped her. Four years ago that she decided to let me back into her life after that stunt. In total, we've known each other for seven years, a duration that astounds both of us. Our lives have diverged wildly in that time - and here she is knocking on my door, in a city seven thousand air miles from home.

I told Stefanie that receiving a visit from her in Shanghai, of all places, is not unlike receiving a visit from the Ghost of Christmas Past. I kept a wary eye on her, wondering if she'd tell or show me something I didn't know. Something I missed. Something that might reveal an inner purpose to her visit.

There was a point in which she settled down into my couch, and talked with me for a couple hours when she was supposed to be sleeping. Stefanie's extreme sleep-deprivation lowered her guard just a touch, and we began to have a conversation. And even as we eased into that talk, I knew that this was the moment I had been waiting for.

Stefanie and I tend to cover a lot of ground when we talk, mainly concerning the fine contrast in our ultimately similar approaches to life and everything. And it was a good conversation - one that makes me happy, because it confirms that I was not an idiot for liking this girl, and any confirmation of my lack of historical idiocy is always a plus. But it wasn't so much the content of our conversation, but rather the subtext.

The subtext was: whom are we kidding, we're only going to be friends, and we know it. And this is not the newest realization for either of us, but it was the first time we could sit down with the idea and be fairly comfortable with it. To be near it and not feel its emotional charge, to see it without the fog of the past.

That's not to say there aren't still lingering questions that will never be answered, or old feelings which miraculously and briefly resuscitate themselves for a flash, or regrets over missed opportunities. To this day, I still do not know what happened in Stefanie's head and heart in the scant two weeks between her kidnapping and her decision to eject me from her life. And I also don't have an answer for the question, "What if we had...?" And I might never. But those are questions asked when one is about to get back on the horse and ride after that girl again. And at this point, the only thing I wanted to sit on was the easy chair in my living room. So I didn't ask.

As we talked, I realized that this conversation would most likely be the very last time we would ever speak seriously about the past. We would never go there again, would never revisit that old place. After all, how much more could we say about events that were receding and shrinking into the past so quickly? This was it.

So I told Stefanie something Judy had said about her long ago, something to the effect of: "What this girl wants to do is put you on a pedestal and then run away from that pedestal as fast as she can." And I don't know if Stefanie agreed with that or not - there was a significant silence in the air at that moment. All I can do is note that Stefanie is ever so quick to intensely verbalize her disagreement, and her silence is always telling. She says so much more with quiet than she could possibly know.

I had expected Stefanie to tell me or show me something, but in the end, it was the silence I had been waiting for. And it was a necessary silence; on some level, both of us had travelled around the globe to have this talk, to share that silence, and finally - to get on with the rest of it. On some level, my life had paused for this moment, and now, having seen it, could resume at full velocity.

Pausing was sad, but speeding away is thrilling. I know that Stefanie and I will never again set foot in Union Station together, will never again sit side by side on the Pacific Surfliner, will never again visit San Diego in each other's company. But I am on a new train, sleek and fast, charging towards a new destination at a mile a minute.

As is Stefanie.

Download: Judy On Stefanie's Signficance (2004) MP3

Download: Ship In A Bottle - Beck (from the Japanese release of Sea Change) MP3

On Travel

There is a seductive falsehood advanced by Hollywood that an entire life is decided in a single moment. A moment in which a stand is made, a course of action decided, all things thrown to the fates. This is the moment everyone in the audience is waiting for, because it's precisely the moment we all wish we had the courage to manifest in our own lives. It's a moment in which a movie character feels - if only briefly - free.

But a movie is at best a rough compression of a life's story, and earning a sense of freedom outside of a movie theater is difficult at best. You might very well enact a dramatic moment of your own - quitting your job, kissing that girl. You might then experience a brief moment of creative and revelatory power in which you feel the boundaries of your existence slightly redrawn. But then what?

You get bored, and you call upon yourself to do it all over again. And repeating yourself is too easy, so you have to do something more new, more difficult.

What I'm saying is that quitting your job is not enough. It's, as I've learned, only the first step of a very long job. Geoff Dyer writes in Out of Sheer Rage: "To be free is not the result of a moment's decisive action but a project to be constantly renewed."

The most important thing I've learned from this trip is that the process of confrontation can never end. By confrontation I mean directly facing that which scares you, that which discomforts you, that which you do not know. In a sense, I must summon the same nerve required to quit a day job, and deploy it again and again and again.

There were so many times on this trip when I was one word away from missing some of the most intensely new experiences of my life. That word would be one of the most common: no. I could have turned away from the peak at Moon Hill. I could have declared it too hot to go biking in Yangshuo. I could have shunned the inherent cheesiness of a bamboo raft ride down the Li River.

The simplest example I can give of a necessary confrontation is my willingness to make a complete fool of myself in a foreign culture, by slaughtering the local language and customs. How simple it is to buy a pair of shorts in Los Angeles. To buy them in Yangshuo, however, requires one to question every assumption one has about nature of transactions and one's relationship to them. I have to get a receipt stamped somewhere else, and I leave the shorts here, and huh?

This is a confrontation one can easily avoid: just buy all shorts in Los Angeles. But there is something valuable I discovered about buying shorts in Yangshuo, something I find valuable in all my traveling experiences: the recovery of senses and faculties that are all too rarely called into action. Foremost among them: a willingness to get lost, to screw up, to stumble into something new and unknown. But also: the ability to constantly head into confrontation, and feel stronger for it.

For me, travel is ultimately a series of small adventures that beckons, awaiting your answer to its repeated call. I have invoked Hayao Miyzaki repeatedly on this trip, and it's because his films proclaim a simple truth that bears repeating: we are all children wandering into the woods, hoping to find something new.

China: Chilling In Full Effect

For the past couple of days, we've been chilling around Hongqiao, the expat section of Shanghai, and we might as well be back on Larchmont. We're running into American high school kids everywhere, eating in yuppie Thai places, and catching up on Entourage by means of completely legitimate DVDs we purchased at full price from the local video store. Yesterday, we hit the local Japanese gaming lounge and rented an hour in a room with leather-cushioned walls, enjoying some four-player Wii.

The era of daily posts has come to an end, as the moving around and doing exciting stuff all the time portion of this trip has clearly concluded. That being said, I'm still in China for about two more weeks. Here's what to expect:

1) A thoughtful post or two about any semblance of meaning I've gleaned from this trip. Also some nice photos I missed the first time around.

2) My family members and friends depart in a few days. Wallace and Brian are currently visiting West Lake / Hangzhou, so we'll see what they have to report when they return to Shanghai.

3) Then a brief visit from a Very Special Guest Star (who was way down on my list of people most likely to come to Shanghai, and yet here she is). I don't know how much time I will actually spend with her, given her, uh, ambitious expectations regarding how many things and people she can see in four days, but we'll see. We may both have our hair did simultaneously at the same salon, so stay tuned.

4) Work resumes on Lobsters vs. Butterflies. I have my laptop, I have my notes. I'd better have at least two action sequences blocked out by the time I go home to LA. And then I finish this thing by the time I run out of money.

5) Hardcore cocooning: Heroes season 1, a season or two of Naruto, and six books: Dance Dance Dance by Haruki Murakami, The Half-Mammals of Dixie by George Singleton, The History of Love by Nicole Krauss, North by Frederick Busch, The Facts Behind the Helsinki Roccamatios by Yann Martel, and Out of Sheer Rage by Geoff Dyer.

6) Lots of meditation and contemplation regarding various aspects of my existence. Some of the things Judy said a month ago to me weigh heavily on my mind, and let me tell you, I am going to be watching the next six months of my life with great interest.

China Day 9: Billionaires, Bamboo Rafts, Banana Pancakes

Our original plan was to go mountain biking again, but our plans were stalled by the first real rainfall of the trip.

Since any given activity in Yangshuo is weather-dependent, we were grounded. I spent some time in a cafe, reading Geoff Dyer's Out Of Sheer Rage while one of the restaurant workers dozed at a nearby table. Later, the others joined me at the restaurant and I had a one dollar grilled cheese sandwich, and Wallace had banana pancakes. (More about the pancakes in a bit.)

Finally, the weather cleared up, and we hired some bikes and a guide to take us bamboo rafting down the Li River; she took us down an easy bike ride, and deposited us at the wharf for the bamboo rafts. The boatmen threw our bikes on the back of the rafts, and we were off. The boatmen navigated by pushing long rods into the water - the Li is shallow and clear, and you can often see the bottom from the raft.

A short raft ride down the Li River lasts about an hour, and is extremely pleasant experience, assuming the weather is nice. We saw the scenery that China is legendary for: limestone rock formations shrouded by wisps of fog. Meanwhile, the raft hit some occasional rapids, and we would have to raise our legs to avoid getting our feet wet.

The amazing thing about the relatively underwhelming rapids of the Li River is that stationed at every fall is a photography raft, outfitted with a working PC and photo printer. That's right - we saw Dell workstations floating on the Li River. And we could even hear the Windows alert noise as we floated downstream. Wallace asked his boatman how they managed to get electricity on the river, and the answer was simple but unsettling: very long extension cables run from the nearby villages into the river.

After the boats dropped us off, our guide met us and led us to the site of the 1000 year old Banyan tree. There was some internal debate about whether paying $2 US to see a tree was actually worth it, but we were there, so why not. Unfortunately, all four of us got lost looking for the tree, which caused our guide to loudly question our intelligence in Mandarin.

The Banyan tree, you see, is quite big. It has a tremendously large canopy, shielding its enormous limb structure from the elements. Stepping inside its leaves is like stepping inside a cave. Legend has it that if you visit the Banyan tree once in your life, you will become precisely 20,000 times wealthier. Also, if you walk once around it, you will live to be 99 years old. Our longevity and financial security is now assured.

In the evening, we had dinner at an obnoxious nightclub/cafe, trying to eat while a group of Chinese tourists sang karaoke to histrionic Chinese love songs. Brian and I felt like having banana pancakes, but we wanted them with ice cream. So we went back to the site of Wallace's pancakes, and had Wallace instruct the waitresses to make the pancakes and top them with ice cream. This simple request BLEW THE WAITRESSES' MINDS. "Have you ever had this before?" they wanted to know. "Banana pancakes with ice cream! This is crazy!" they exclaimed. But they dutifully went into the kitchen, and returned with two banana pancakes: crepe-like desserts made with thin banana slices. And topped with vanilla and strawberry ice cream. The ice cream was a perfect complement to the pancake, and we congratulated ourselves on our culinary genius.

China Day 8: Rock Climbing At Moon Hill

Someone out there really, really wanted me to climb this mountain. I nearly gave up a few times. But I received much unexpected assistance from a host of unlikely helpers. And I made it. Insert meaningful life lesson here.

After yesterday's incredible mountain biking adventure, all of us thought we were putting the bikes on hiatus. "No way we're going back out there the next day," we said. "Nope." This lasted until about three in the afternoon the next day, when we said, "Maybe we'll just go out for a little spin..."

We biked to Moon Hill, about three and a half miles from Yangshuo. When we got there, we were greeted by a retinue of elderly Chinese women farmers carrying cold drinks on their backs. We paid the admission fee and entered the site, thinking that the old women would stay at the gate.

They didn't.

Instead, they started the CLIMBING THE MOUNTAIN WITH US. At first, we started joking. "We have an entourage!" "My posse rolls deep!" We kept climbing, thinking to ourselves that there was no way that these elderly Chinese women could possibly keep up with us.

Cut to twenty minutes later, when we were perched on a stoop about two-thirds of the way up. The women were fanning us. I felt like turning back, there was nothing but an endless series of steps, with no visible end in sight. The old women noticed my reluctance, and shouted at me:

"You can do it!" "Ten more minutes to top!"

Ten minutes? Sounded reasonable. We kept climbing. The elderly women took shortcuts and surprised us, emerging from hidden paths: "Ha ha! Hello!" They kept shouting at us: "Three more minutes to top!"

We reached the bottom of the donut hole. I sat on a bench and rested, glad to have finally made it to the top. Wallace engaged the old women in conversation. It turned out that the women were local farmers, and they took shifts climbing Moon Hill once a week, selling beverages to the tourists.

"So they're like vultures," I said. "Waiting for us to drop."

"More like St. Bernards," Wallace said. "Bringing refreshment as we climb the Alps."

"Wait a minute," I said. "I just realized that these women climb this mountain multiple times a day."

"Yeah," said Wallace. A brief silence. We both confronted our own weaksauce.

The women told Wallace that their rice fields were visible below, several hundred feet below us. I told them that their fields were pretty in Chinese, as "pretty" is one of the few words I remember in Mandarin. They laughed.

Then they told Wallace that we weren't done climbing yet.

"They say you can reach the top of the donut on a ten minute path," said Wallace.

"Ten minutes," the women repeated.

So we got up and started climbing again. This time, the women stayed behind. A very inauspicious omen.

I led the way. We were literally rock climbing, negotiating overgrown paths and sharp rocks. The buzzing of angry insects was in my ears. I heard things rustling in the foliage. Then I hit an incline that was pure ascent: rocks piled on top of rocks, straight up.

"I've got a bad feeling about this," I said.

"Me too," said Jonathan.

"We came all the way out here," said Wallace. "Might as well."

We kept climbing. We ran into an Australian lady. Australians are everywhere in China - they can't get enough of the place.

"How much further?" asked Jonathan.

"Not too much," said the lady. "You're fine," she added soothingly.

Finally, we poked our heads up through the foliage, and saw an endless landscape of karst limestone formations, rice paddies, and rivers. We stayed up there a bit, took some pictures, and then came back down, where the old ladies met us.

Then they tried to sell us Cokes at ten times their market value. We bought them. And then we all climbed back down together.

And took the picture you see below.

China Day 7: Mountain Biking in Yangshuo

When you take a trip, you're always hoping for at least one transcendant moment - that instance in which you realize why you had to go on the journey to begin with.

Today was that moment.

It started innocently enough. We walked over to the local mountain bike rental place to inquire about rates and routes through the local countryside. At first, the idea was that we'd just take the bikes for a spin, get acquainted to biking. Somehow we ended up on a five hour, fourteen mile bike ride through some of the most stunning landscapes I've ever seen.

That's my friend Brian walking his bike because the rest of us were stupid enough to cross that bridge on our bikes. He asked me, "Is this bike ride Hayao Miyazaki enough for you?" If you know who that is, then you know what he's talking about.

Anyway, we rolled through rice paddies, small villages, rocky paths. Past water buffalo, startling flocks of ducks (they'd waddle away and honk at us), trailed by tiny Chinese children yelling at the top of their lungs, "Hello! Hello! Hello!" (they'd run away and laugh every time we pulled out our cameras). Meanwhile, elderly Chinese people smoking cigarettes cycled laps around us, as we struggled to complete the trail along the Dragon river.

We kept crossing paths with one particular gentlemen, who would offer helpful directions, and then bike away, only to cross our paths at another critical junction. He eventually just led us to the bridge over the Dragon river, and finally, showing his hand, attempted to sell us a bamboo raft trip down the river.

I often had to focus on the rocks in my path in order to prevent a fall, but every time I looked up, I saw something stunningly beautiful. Quite possibly the favorite bike ride of my life.

Eggs, Bacon, Toast, Hash Browns, and OJ

Three dollars and change. For real. And the OJ is fresh squeezed.

China Day 6: Cruising Down the Li River

We took a four hour cruise down the Li River, down to Yangshuo. The boat served food cooked on the rear balcony of the boat, and I didn't risk eating it. The landscape on the river itself was beautiful, but it was so hot that you could only spend a few moments on the observation deck before retreating back into the cabin.

The first thing you notice about Yangshuo is how friendly the town is. The touts smile even when you reject them, and the entirety of the city seems to cater to the whims of foreign tourists. There are many Western restaurants, and plenty of nightclubs. It reminds me of Prague in a way: small, touristy, but very charming.

The second thing you notice about Yangshuo is how many backpackers all over the place. There's something that draws them here, and I suppose we'll find out soon enough.

China Day 5: How To Eat Live Animals

Tonight, we found ourselves on the restaurant row on Nanhuan Lu in Guilin, trying to locate a restaurant recommended by Frommer's. On the way there, we overheard a piercing squawk, and turned to see a local restauranteer beheading a chicken on the street, allowing the blood to run down the sidewalk. Wallace took a picture, and then wished he hadn't.

We couldn't locate the restaurant by name, so we entered a place that was our best guess.

"At least this place doesn't have any cages outside," I said.

"Yeah it does," said Wallace. "It even has those small furry things."

"Small furry things," I said. "Mmmm."

The small furry things slept in their cages, unperturbed. We sat down and ordered the local specialty - beer fish; the fish isn't fried in beer batter, but merely cooked with beer. After the waitress left the table, Wallace got up and announced that it was time to pick our fish.

We went outside with the waitress, who gestured at a particular fish. She pulled it out of a tank with a net and plopped it down onto the sidewalk for our inspection.

"How about NOT putting our food on the ground?" I asked, but she was oblivious to my concerns. She and Wallace entered into a involved discussion (in Mandarin) regarding the fish.

"The fish was swimming upside down," said Wallace to me as an aside. "I'm not down with that."

"I'm not down with putting our meal on the concrete," I said.

The waitress tried to upsell Wallace on a monster fish, but Wallace refused. Too much food. He pointed at a catfish, but apparently you can't make beer fish with a catfish, so we were at an impasse.

Then some guy, who may or may not have been affiliated with the eatery, walked up to the restaurant with two fish in a net, and dumped them in the tank. One of them successfully manages to swim upright. Wallace and I gave the waitress the thumbs up. She pulled it out of the the tank.

"Make sure she doesn't let it touch the ground..." I said.

As if she had heard me, the waitress kept the fish well above the sidewalk. I breathed a sigh of relief.

Then, without warning, the waitress raised the fish above her head, and VIOLENTLY SMACKED IT AGAINST THE GROUND. The fish was completely motionless.

WHAT THE HELL PEOPLE.

Wallace told me that the waitress needed to stun the fish so they could weigh it. The fisherman came over with a scale - a simple rod with a weight hanging from it; he picked up the fish and announced the weight.

We went back inside the restaurant, they cooked the fish, we ate it.

And it was very, very good.

Other highlights of the day: Jon and I visited a dim sum cafeteria with a simple ordering system. Point at the dish you want, and then make a gesture indicating how many you want.

Several walks along the pretty path that runs along the length of the lakes in Guilin, both during the day and night. The Chinese care so much about landscaping that it's almost obsessive. Hey China, how about taking some of that love for landscape, and transferring it to say, architecture?

Walking near the rear entrance of a restaurant, and watching the manager lead thirty employees in calisthenics. Calisthenics in this case being dancing really badly to awful Chinese techno music.

Buying shorts and sneakers (it's too hot for jeans) at a Chinese department store, and generally embarrassing the employees with my complete failure to understand how a transaction is completed in China. By the way, I bought two pairs of shorts and a pair of sneakers for less than $30. And no, I will not wear them in the states.