The Hollywood Volcano

Today I stepped outside, only to be greeted by what appeared to be a newly active volcano in the Hollywood Hills. Massive brown plumes rose in the north, slightly tinting the sunlight towards evening. It was apocalyptic to say the least. My cousin took this photo from his office.

Anyway, I'm back from San Francisco. A few things I did:

• Took the train(!) from Los Angeles to Oakland. It's about eight hours each way, marginally longer and more costly ($112 round trip) than driving, but you can nap and read.


• Read a novel (Tokyo Cancelled) and about ten back issues of the New Yorker on the ride.


• Ate in the snack car on the train. Mental note: do not eat on a train that does not have a grill unless you like microwaved food.


• Tried Burmese food for the first time at Burma Superstar.


• Biked in city traffic through the Haight and Golden Gate Park, courtesy of my friend Josh.


• Visited the observatory tower at the De Young, and saw nothing but fog.


• Walked around the perimeter of Lake Merritt in Oakland.


• Hiked from the Ferry Building to Golden Gate Bridge - about four scenic miles along the coast.


• Almost got caught by the Bushman in the marina. My friend Vijay says you could watch this guy work all day.


• Convinced Vijay to stay up way past his bedtime talking.


• Watched the sea lions laze on their barges and occasionally push each other into the water. Vijay says that some sea lions like to be on barges with other sea lions, and some like to be alone. If one gets pushed into the water by a bully, he or she will attempt to climb back onto the barge, only to be pushed back by the bully.


• Took pictures of the Union Square area - research for Pillow Crisis.

From here on out, it's WORK WORK WORK GO TO JAPAN AND CHINA COME BACK OH AND NOT TO MENTION THAT OTHER THING YOU'VE BEEN LOOKING FORWARD TO WORK WORK WORK.

I can't believe that I've taken a year off, and all of this stuff has to happen at the same time. Way to go, destiny.

Gone to San Francisco

I took the train to Oakland today, stopped in Modesto and Stockton along the way, and will be visiting old friends this week.

I'm completely aware of this trip's lack of foreshadowing on the blog - that should tell you something about how full my life is these days.

Baby Kidnapper, Torturer, Yoga Classmate

Context is everything.

For the past few months, I've encountered a mysterious woman in the yoga studio who seemed vaguely familiar. She was older, distinctly European, with a piercing gaze. Eye contact with this woman was an unsettling experience because her gaze, intentionally or not, both implores and judges you with an acute sense of dramatic urgency.

As I'd look at her, I'd think: I know this woman from somewhere. And yet, for the life of me, I couldn't think of any context in which I would become acquainted with an older, European woman. What's worse, as we made eye contact, there was a glint of recognition in her eyes, as if she recognized me as well. Quite the conundrum.

Infrequently, I would enter the studio, make eye contact with this woman in the lobby, be slightly haunted and disquieted by the experience, and then promptly forget about her as I entered class. (I never spent any time pondering the mystery of this woman, as my focus in yoga class, is as always, yoga. But of course.)

Finally, it hit me: I knew where I had seen this woman before. The reason why my mind had failed to place her was because she was firmly removed from her proper context: a mysterious jungle island filled with supernatural phenomena.

My classmate was Rousseau. The crazy French lady from the television show Lost. The one who kidnaps infants and tortures people with electrical current. And the reason why I saw the recognition in her eyes was that she knew I had seen her on the show. Even though I myself didn't know that yet.

In my mind, my belief in her character and the universe she inhabited nullified the existence of the actress who portrays said character. And invalidated the possibility of her taking yoga with me.

My mind simply refused to recognize her because the island of Lost was REAL.

And it didn't hesitate to send subtle warnings about this woman, as if I were in danger of being kidnapped and tortured.

Context is everything.

Pillow Crisis, Japan, and My Bathroom

Random ends:

After a few weeks of non-stop conference calls to Huili in London, the final Pillow Crisis revision is complete. Final, of course, doesn't necessarily mean final at all, especially in the case of Pillow Crisis. However, three things - the state of the project, my gut instincts and my growing loss of patience for all things pillow-related -- all tell me that this is indeed the final revision. It's time to write it up, kick it down the street to our overlords at the studio, and see what they think.

Planning a trip to Japan is my second means of employment, apparently. (And we haven't even gotten to China yet!) You can't really wing it in Japan, because of the lack of English speakers, and the fact that it is so goddamn expensive. The exorbitance of your trip calls for a compressed timetable, which in turn calls for very careful planning. I've just spent two hours writing e-mails and making phone calls to various party members, to confirm our plans as we lock ourselves into reservations (hotel, rail, Studio Ghibli!).

Last week, as I spoke with Huili over Skype, workmen renovated my bathroom. According to housing inspectors, cracked linoleum is a health hazard, which means freshly installed tile for me. My first gleeful thought upon hearing this news was, "This is like getting my bathroom floor cleaned for free!" Wrong. The renovation coated everything in a fine veil of dust, and I mopped the floor several times. The good news is that my bathroom looks infinitely more respectable.

A Very Big If: The First Anniversary

Time for a lesson on the Dutch language.

A week ago, I grabbed a meal at the Fairfax Farmer's Market. In the old days, I would never do this for three reasons: traffic, parking, and crowds. But since I don't work during the day, I can just roll up, find plentiful parking, and claim acres of tables all for myself. Contrast this experience with the one experience by nearly everyone on Saturday afternoon.

So I walked to the Gumbo Pot, ordered a catfish po' boy, and didn't have to hunt for a table. The market was quiet, the sun was setting, the air was pleasant, and the sandwich was perfect. And I thought to myself, this is pretty much everything that I had hoped for.

That moment - the moment in which I recognize exactly how good my life can be - occurs to me frequently these days.

It's the first anniversary of A Very Big If, and I naturally do some thinking about exactly what kinds of changes have occurred in my life. The first one I could mention is the appearance of these moments of recognition and thankfulness - moments that were fleeting and rare when I was working a day job. The Dutch have a word for the quality of these instances - gezellig. The Dutch are proud of this word because it is uniquely Dutch, having no easy translation in any other language. Having a po'boy at a slow farmer's market on a perfect day is gezellig; being fed cold burritos from Baja Fresh at the office during overtime - not so much.

These are simple moments. After I finished my meal, I stopped in the book store and perused the remainder stacks. That would be another one. Here are some others:

• Walking down Larchmont on my way to yoga class.


• Grating parmesan cheese to sprinkle on my pasta.


• Buying cookies from girl scouts and hearing the latest neighborhood gossip.


• Sending and receiving long e-mails with old friends.


• Rarely, if ever, being in a hurry; as a corrollary, rarely using an alarm clock.


• Grocery shopping when the store is practically empty.


• Thinking of a book I'd like to read, checking it out from the library, and reading it. All in the same day.


• Subjugating the travel section at Borders each weekend with friends to plan a trip to Asia. (Sumo wrestling! Tiger cubs! Bamboo forests!)


• Writing without anyone looking over my shoulder.


• Having unusually friendly conversations with strangers, because that's what civilized people do.

I originally undertook this endeavor to actualize some important moments in my life and work. And slowly but surely, those moments are manifesting. But life is ultimately comprised not of these big moments - which flare briefly and quickly fade - but of a sustained series of smaller ones. You spend a lot more time with your toothbrush than with the trophies on the shelf.

What I have come to enjoy is the change in the quality of my life's smaller moments. They are the ones that the determine the shape of my life as I live it.

Wynton Marsalis Loves Glow In The Dark Stars

Another post about getting back on the horse.

Wynton Marsalis was interviewed on NPR recently to promote his new album. Having always borne a grudge against him for his strident criticism of hip-hop, I was surprised to hear him sounding cheerful and friendly, as opposed to the stentorian and imperious presence I have always imagined.

During the interview, he leads the reporter into the former childhood bedroom of his sons; the reporter notes that the walls and ceiling - painted a "celestial blue" - are covered with several thousand glow-in-the-dark stars, and wonders aloud of the time and labor involved.

Marsalis relates the story of the stars: he told his sons that they would together cover the wall with stars, and they replied, "No way." But Marsalis insisted. Each evening, they applied a handful of stars together, the father and his sons. Time passes, and one evening, the last star is affixed.

From the beginning, Marsalis intended this activity to pose a lesson - about doing something again and again, one step at a time - until it is complete. He's didactic and moralistic like that. But as lessons go, it's not a bad one.

There's a big difference between covering a ceiling in thousands of stars, and just putting up a few stars every night. And there is also no difference.

Remembering that has made all the difference in my life and work.

Quitting The Internet

Speaking of getting back on the horse, one of the evergreen challenges of my life right now is limiting the amount of time I waste on the internet.

I make it sound like I spend hours in front of my computer. I don't, actually. My life doesn't really allow it - I probably spend more time exercising than I do browsing the web each day. The problem is that my day has become so full that I need to cut weight wherever I can. The internet is the easiest cut to make.

I do have some experience at quitting the habit. A year ago, I made a competitive bet with someone; the terms were that both of us would go without frivolous browsing for a month - whoever committed the most transgressions would owe the winner fifty dollars.

Unfortunately, this was not a successful experiment. For reasons I won't go into, I had a vested interest in LOSING the competition. So each time my competitor would record a failure of willpower, I would offer up one or two of own. Some were legitimate, some were falsified. And since I knew I was going to lose, I figured I might as well get some browsing out of it. Things went downhill from there. In any case, I was out fifty bucks at the end of the month.

For the handful of days in which I managed to avoid the internet, though, my quality of life improved. My mind was clearer, I suffered from less hurry sickness, I opened books and read them. But I discovered that quitting cold turkey wasn't a good approach.

Quitting the internet is difficult primarily because the barrier to entry - a single mouseclick - is so low. Also because there is often a never-ending supply of new things to be clicked, even on a single site. And because other activities you engage in while seated at your computer - e-mail, shopping, blogging - transition naturally to a hazy and perpetual wasted state (see my first reason). If you work a job that involves a pc, it's even worse. There are many slow periods throughout the day, which encourages you to kill time, which slackens your browsing discipline (if it ever existed) considerably.

My new approach two managing internet time consists of several new techniques.

One, designate a block of time to engage in internet frivolity, and firewall it. No stupid internet stuff outside of that block.

Two, conscious clicking. Ask yourself before you click whether this is really necessary.

Three, don't leave the computer on throughout the day. Shut it down. This increases the barrier to entry; if you have to boot up your computer to do something, you begin to ask if it's really worth it.

Four, write better e-mails. If for some reason, you are stuck at your desk with nothing better to do than, catch up with old friends instead. As a result of this blog, I am currently exchanging lovely e-mails with people I haven't spoken to in YEARS. And I'm even going to visit one of them later this month.

Getting Back On The Horse

Do you know how I got such nice skin? Through the repeated application of seemingly futile effort. - Faye Valentine

One of the continual frustrations of this experiment is self-determination is the fact that one sets a million tiny goals, all of which seem entirely achievable, but are insurmountable taken as a whole.

I can read books, meditate, cook, clean house. I'm doing more of these things than ever; I just can't do them all at the same time. As I spin one plate, another comes crashing to the floor; I am running about three miles a day, but my kitchen floor is a mess. Reading more books (for pleasure and not research), in particular, seems to be a continually neglected task, although I've read more books than I have in years.

These small failures of mine are not an occasion for despair. After all, the cost of resuming a failed endeavor is very small. In fact, it's so small that it's actually much costlier to procrastinate and self-flagellate than it is to simply and immediately try again. Most endeavors are unlike winning the Superbowl, in that one can sustain countless abortive failures and still accomplish the task. Small steps seem futile, but they will cover the ground just as surely as a large one.

So I've learned to keep moving. And slowly but surely, the work is done.

Something Cool About Working For A Studio

Many of the offices are housed inside a backlot set, which means - for instance - that one must enter a 1920's police precinct station house in order to obtain an employee ID. The picturesque facade ends with the facade itself - the interior of the building is a typical and drab workplace.

Interestingly enough, there is plentiful signage outside regarding fictional police operations, but nary a trace of the true function or office of the facility. This deception is charmingly confusing.

The Instant Raise

So I walk into the human resources office at Sony, fill out some paperwork, and then ask about the salary.

The HR person looks over the forms submitted by my supervisor, and asks,

"You're a paralegal, right?"

For a brief instant, I think about it, and then reply with a straight face,

"Of course I'm a paralegal."

"Ok, good."

She then quotes me a salary that is thirty percent higher than the rate offered by my supervisor. You see, that's what paralegals make. She says she needs to clear the rate, and asks me to return the next day.

The next day, I return to confirm the rate, and she tells me that I've gotten another raise - an extra two dollars an hour. I'm now getting the upper end of the paralegal salary range.

I could get used to this. The most exciting thing about this is that I now get to tell people that I work as a paralegal. Robert Lo, Esq.

Do you have any legal questions? Please allow me to answer them.

In the meantime, all this paralegal money is going straight into the war chest. I've got a trip to Europe to pay for.

So Wait A Minute

You're saying I have to wake up early, spend the bulk of my time in a morass of boredom and fatigue, and then come home only to find that the day is already spent and I can only muster enough energy to browse the internet?

What kind of life is this?

The job is no worse, really, than my last one. But I used to do this! This was my life! I even wrote a screenplay in these conditions!

Surprisingly, the best part about working in Culver City is lunch. When I worked in Westwood, I had a panoply of mediocre dining options. The only truly satisfying refection in the neighborhood is Pinkberry, but I've got one in Larchmont right next door to the yoga studio, so Westwood can safely cease to exist. Culver City is far less bountiful in the number of fine dining establishments, but we've got some real doozies here: Honey's Kettle, Santouka. They've even got a Famima!! here.

I've been on a real ramen kick lately, so allow me to address the matter of Santouka. I didn't try their trademark shio ramen, so I can't make a valid comparison to my current fave Atch-Kotch, but it would be very close. (The two are very different stylistically, so the comparison may be useless anyway. I ain't hatin' on you, Atch-Kotch. I got much love for you and your utterly asinine valet parking lot.)

Santouka is a Japanese chain which recently opened its first branch here in Los Angeles, inside the Mitsuwa grocery store. You put down less than ten dollars, and you get a humongous bowl of incredibly tasty ramen, an artfully hard-boiled egg, and a bowl of absolutely perfect rice topped with a traditional Japanese accoutrement. In my case, I chose the salmon roe.

Seriously? They could just charge me ten bucks for the rice and roe. It's amazing. I walked out of the place happily satiated, which is a regrettably rare occurrence with Japanese food. (It's not the taste, it's the portions.)

It's a shame I don't make it out to Centinela that often. Here's hoping that Santouka opens a branch in Hollywood. Same to you, Famima!!

Coming Out Of Retirement

That's right, folks. I'm hanging it up and going back to the office grind of the wage slave.

For a week, anyway.

Sony Pictures needs some help finishing one of their movies, so I've gotten the call to come in and clean house. I'll be working the good ol' nine-to-six for the rest of the week, helping the Sony people sort out the movie's ending credits.

I will even have to abide by a dress code - collared shirts and non-sneakers! That will last all of one day - just enough time for me to make a positive first impression - and then it's right back to the t-shirts and the badminton shoes.

Which movie, you ask? Some direct-to-video thing about a guy who gets bitten by a spider. Yeah, I don't really get it either.

The good news is that only about twenty people worked on the film, so sorting out the credits should be no sweat!

Flickr Bug

Apparently, one of Flickr's image caching servers is acting up and so the service is randomly displaying other people's pictures instead of my own. This is actually kind of amusing, if you look through this blog's archives. Apparently, I hang out with ravers now. The issue should be fixed momentarily.

The Birthday Party

Today I did something fairly unprecedented: I awoke before the crack of nine in the morning. Unfortunately, this is going to be a repeat occurrence in the coming week (more on this in a bit.)

Today the reason for rising early was that my yoga instructor was having a birthday party/charity event at a yoga apparel store in Beverly Hills. You see, my instructor has an endorsement deal(!) with the store, and serves as their spokesmodel. In fact, if you see an ad for yoga clothing in the alternative newsweeklies, chances are you're seeing my instructor flamboastin' on Rodeo Drive. Inside the store, they have erected a pantheon of Los Angeles' greatest yoga instructors, comprised of banners depicting the instructors performing poses in front of LA landmarks and listing their institutional affiliations. The effect is not unlike the retired jerseys hanging from the rafters of a basketball stadium.

Anyway, it was quite the event. My instructor led a class, while the children of Beverly Hills stared at us through the windows. Meanwhile, the store employees chopped up coconuts at my instructor's request (she loves her coconuts), and an adorable chihuahua puppy wandered around the room, crawling on people's backs . This puppy noticed that everyone was holding downward-facing dog pose at the beginning of class, and decided to show everyone how real dogs do it, which caused a total cute meltdown, effectively shutting the class down for a few moments.

Taxes

More good news.

Looking at the early numbers, it appears that the state of California has given me the very generous gift of allowing me to live here FOR FREE. That's right - all those important and expensive social services we utilize daily as citizens of this fine state? I'm not paying a dime for them. I'm in the VIP, yo!

Also, because of my radical change in income brackets, it appears that the federal government was just a tad aggressive in withholding my income, and so the largest refund check in my short financial history is en route posthaste.

It's way too early to start talking about South America, but let's put it out there:

Next Spring.

The Importance of Good Budgeting

Another word on my trip to Asia.

I thought I might address the question of the potential impact of a month-long trek in Asia upon my financial timetable. Japan is obviously a very expensive place to visit, and three weeks in China are not exactly cheap. Does the trip cut the tenure of A Very Big If short? That is, will I go broke more quickly as consequence of taking this vacation?

The answer: absolutely not.

Let me explain exactly how under budget I am. I am so under budget for 2006, that my financial surplus can not only sustain the damage of one overseas voyage, but two. Not to mention the looming increase in leisure spending that has previously been alluded to.

Looking at the accounting ledger, it's as if the trip simply doesn't exist. And yet the tickets are in hand, and the backpack has been pulled out of the closet.

It's way too early to start talking about Europe, but let's put it out there:

Autumn.

Some Valentine's Day Advice

Valentine's Day is just around the corner, and here is some lovely advice from the master... of Guitar Hero.

Rob: and there was this girl playing guitar hero
Rob: anyway, Kevin walks me into the room, introduces us
Jon: ahh
Jon: gotcha
Jon: haha
Jon: that's awesome she plays guitar hero
Rob: she's better than me but that's not saying much
Jon: how do you know shes better than you
Rob: because I watched her play
Rob: she even beat Kevin
Rob: and Kevin killed me
Rob: yeah, she likes Iron Man
Jon: thats cool
Jon: but i could DESTROY her
Jon: i play expert only
Rob: yeah
Rob: but for me, I don't want to beat girls at guitar hero
Rob: that's not my primary goal
Rob: good for you, though
Jon: haha whatever dude
Jon: you beat her, you win the key to her heart

Force Multiplier

For the past few weeks, I've been slogging through the first three seasons of Buffy the Vampire Slayer. I can't say I'm particularly enjoying it (although the quality of the show is growing exponentially with each episode). And I have at least thirty more episodes to go.

So why am I watching it?

Because, like laser-guided bombs and aerial drones, Buffy is a force multiplier.

Let me explain. Force multiplier is a buzzword from Donald Rumsfeld's controversial transformation of the United States military; it refers to something that dramatically increases a unit's combat effectiveness. The idea is that if you have the aforementioned bombs and drones, you don't need as many boots on the ground. Note how quickly Iraq was occupied, despite the relatively small invading force.

As a screenwriter, I am - like the military - faced with an extremely large and difficult task that can only be attacked directly. I'm either going to write 120 pages of a script or I'm not. No way around that. There is no model in which I do not spend a lot of time banging my head against the keyboard like Don Music from Sesame Street.

But there are many ways to increase my combat effectiveness as a writer. As I mentioned in an earlier post, the difficult heavy-lifting of writing only occupies a few hours of my day. The rest are activities that are only tangentially related to my work.

1. Yoga
2. Reading
3. Watching DVDs
4. Meditation
5. Weight Training
6. Playing Video Games
7. Blogging (in theory)
   

A corporate middle manager might point out that an obvious way of optimizing my productivity would be to limit these extracurricular activities and devote more man-hours to the actual task of writing. And many writers that I know would agree - there is no substitute for chaining yourself to the desk, especially when the deadline rolls around.

But I have a slightly different approach. It's true that many writing problems are solved at the desk. But just as many are solved away from it. And in order to facilitate the problem-solving, it's important that the mind be constantly refreshed. People, colors, stories, silence. All of these comprise the raw material for my work, and I must never stop collecting them. After all, the best solutions in my line of work often appear when I'm doing something else.

For a writer, reading books and watching movies isn't a form of leisure, it's a way of attacking my work obliquely, as opposed to directly. That's why I'm watching Buffy - because there's much overlap between my field of inquiry and Whedon's vampire slayer. And the more extracurricular activities I participate in, the more possible routes I have to outflank my opponent: the unsolvable writing problem of the moment. My strategy is to create as much surface area as possible; to attack from every conceivable angle at once. Writing at my desk is a powerful weapon, but it's also the bluntest and most enervating. Watching movies and reading books and going to yoga are slower to yield their payloads, but no less powerful and rejuvenating to boot. And when I combine all of the above, it's almost as if the problems solve themselves.

I tend to get a little anxious when I stop reading books, or playing video games, and it's because I know I've stopped collecting some raw material. I've closed an avenue of attack. I've lost surface area.

It's not just play. It's force multiplication.

So It Begins

I had forgotten how difficult planning these things could be. I'm not only coordinating my own travels, but those of various party members, all of whom are arriving and departing on different dates. But somehow, we've managed to cobble together a plan.

LEG ONE: JAPAN


Tokyo: May 17 - May 20

Kyoto: May 20 - May 24


LEG TWO: SOUTHERN CHINA


Shanghai: May 24 - May 26

Guilin and surrounding towns: May 27 - June 3


LEG THREE: SHANGHAI


Shanghai: June 4 - June 18th

It's Time To Put On Some Pants

When I stopped punching the clock, one of the first declarations of my new independence was the total abandonment of my pre-work routine: performing morning ablutions, getting dressed for work, commuting. It's not as if my office had a very strict dress code, but I considered the hour it took to get ready for the job a tremendous pain.

So I stopped doing it. I went unshaven, wore my pajamas for most of the day until yoga, and generally got my slovenly on.

Then I discovered something - I just couldn't get as much work done in my pajamas. My pajamas are my official uniform for laziness, and while I'm wearing them, my mind expects to laze. Years of school and employment have trained my brain for a distinct cognitive shift from lounging around the house to laboring at my place of employment, and this shift is triggered by getting dressed.

So now I find myself again performing morning ablutions and getting dressed for work. My work clothes are just a pair of jeans and a t-shirt, but the clothes make all the difference in the world.

When it's time to go to work, it's time to put on some pants.