Mutinous Wombats

Book Update

2010-04-20T07:24:00.001-07:00

I’m caught between a rock and a hard place.

The editors want massive rewrites, to the point where the entire focus of the book is shifted. I created this monster by adding some new elements they fell in love with and now want to be front and center to the story.

My initial reaction was….let’s just use the word frustrated and leave it at that.

The more I thought about it, though, the more I could see they were right. At least, the spirit behind their ideas was correct. The reason they like these new elements is because they’re solely devoted to character development and make readers care about what’s happening in the other side of the story. I get that. However, their idea for how to rewrite it falls flat to me, and doesn’t make much sense.

So, essentially, I thought I had two options. Submit what I have to others or try another rewrite.

Or….and this came to me at 3 in the morning Saturday, I could rewrite it my own way to give the editors what they want while still keeping what I want. I’m going to talk this over with an editor, but even if they don’t go for it, I’m still going to do it.

Massive rewrites, onward!

Why I Hate Duke

2010-04-07T18:30:00.001-07:00

I’m reluctant to spend quality time focusing on unbridled hatred. It’s generally a waste of time and rarely makes me feel better. That’s usually because hatred is venomous and while it feels good on the way out, venom comes from venom sacs and just refills once its gone.

There are a few teams I dislike and subconsciously play Emperor Palpatine music in my head whenever I watch them, but Duke is on a whole different level. I don’t like the Highlands Blue Birds. I’m annoyed by the New York Yankees and baseball in general. The color black and their generally dirty play does the San Antonio Spurs no favors in my book.

But I HATE Duke. HATE, HATE, HATe them. My hatred for Duke is venomous. I mean, black mamba venomous. If, heaven forbid, you were forced to print out these words and eat them, you’d go comatose and then die in less then five seconds. Organ failure would be the cause. If, somehow, you were stranded in the arctic and needed to start a fire from my collection of blog print-outs, this particular entry would set off a nuclear explosion visible from Ecuador. If Lord Voldemort were somehow still alive, this blog entry would make a perfect horcrux.
I hate Duke.

And while normally, I wouldn’t write about hate because it serves no purpose, this occasion is different. That’s because Duke just won the National Championship two days ago. This no longer venomous hatred. Now, it’s bile. And it needs to get out.

There are probably a million different reasons to hate Duke. Picking one is like picking your favorite gold bar in Fort Knox and heisting it. That doesn’t make sense? Of course it doesn’t make sense. Why take one when you can take them all?

There are a variety of entries in the Duke Hateopedia. Sustained success is easy to hate. Every team from the Yankees to the Lakers deals with it. Douchebag behavior on the court is also easy to hate. From floor slaps to the infamous Laettner stomp to JJ Redick being JJ Redick, Duke has that market cornered. Elitish snobbery? Check. Obnoxious fans who somehow think they’re “crazier” than other fans because they wear face paint and yell in a high school gym? Okay. Media homerism that consistently puts them on a pedestal when they don’t really deserve it? Got it.

Then there’s the regional hatred. Obviously, no one else in North Carolina likes Duke. Most people in Kentucky hate Duke as well. Laettner’s shot in 1992 still breaks my heart every time they show it on the CBS pregame introduction, and this year was even worse because Butler came THIS CLOSE on that desperation halfcourt heave to erasing that ’92 shot from the collective memory banks of college basketball fans everywhere.

Of all the reasons, most don’t fit for me. Sustained success isn’t something that makes me cringe, mostly because my team has more sustained success than Duke. Besides, that’s not really hatred if you hate a team because they’re good. That’s jealousy.

The players themselves don’t really bother me, either. Yes, sometimes they make dirty plays and act like pampered jerks, but so do a lot of other players on other teams. Besides, most of their players seem to be well-spoken, hard-working, smart and like to act vaguely homosexual around their friends. In short, they are just like I was in college.

To further that, Coach K is a damn good coach and you’d better believe I was rooting him on when he was the coach of Team USA in Beijing.

And while their fans are obnoxious, I’ve had personal encounters with Duke fans at Duke-UK games and you know what? They’re cool people and bought me a beer.

So, really, the reason I hate Duke is not because of Duke itself. It’s because the media, particularly ESPN, constantly tells me I should like them. I can’t stand this.

What makes it even more maddening is how the media has recently started to paint my team, Kentucky, as the “villain” in opposition to teams like Duke. The reason for this is obvious. Calipari is a lightning rod for controversy and openly courts players who treat college basketball as a stepping-stone to the NBA. The end result is that Kentucky is painted as dirty whereas schools like Duke do things “the right way.”

Duke depends on experienced upperclassmen instead of inexperienced one and doners like John Wall. Sure, that’s true, but only because Wall spurned Duke in favor of Kentucky. Coach K recruited him HARD and didn’t get him. Now, you think for a second that his status as a one and done would be vilified at all if he was at Duke instead of at Kentucky with that scumbag Calipari? Nope, me neither.

The whole notion that certain college programs are considered “clean” whereas others are “dirty” is a farce in its own right. People like to point at Calipari and say he’s dirty based on the incidents with Camby and Rose. In the case of Camby, rules were broken and UMass paid for it by vacating wins. You know what? The same situation happened with Corey Maggette and Duke. He even admitted to taking money from an agent. Just like UMass, their wins from that season should be vacated because technically, Maggette was no longer an amateur. Guess what, though? Duke was cleared and no wins were vacated.
Hmmm…..

My point here is that anyone who thinks that any big time college basketball program is run squeaky clean is misguided. Grey is part of the game. Yet certain programs are put on this pedestal of pristine whiteness, and in the case of Duke, I’m not just talking about the color of their player’s skin. Until perception comes closer to reality and Duke is given the same media treatment as everyone else, I will continue to hate them because my hatred for unfairness needs to have a focal point.

Also, I will continue to laugh at Jon Scheyer’s game face.

When your team loses

2010-03-29T13:43:00.001-07:00

I'm going to miss moments like this.

As a general rule in sports fandom, you can really have one team. Sure, you may really like some teams and enjoy watching them play. You may root for some teams over other teams, but there’s usually something missing.

For instance, I enjoy watching the Lakers play. They’re a good team. Kobe Bryant is one of the greatest basketball players on planet Earth, Ron Artest is fantastic during press interviews, and when Sasha Vujacic plays well, videos like this get made. I enjoy watching them play, but again, they’re not my team. When they win, I feel some small measure of pride in their accomplishments, but when they lose, I don’t feel anything. That’s because they’re not my team.

The Kentucky Wildcats are MY team.

I don’t just enjoy watching them play. I cheer with every dunk and jumper. I yell at the tv when they play dumb. My stomach gathers into knots when they start to lose. When they win, I feel happy. When they lose, I feel bad. And when they lose badly, I crawl into a hole and numb my sadness with cheese crackers and Disney movies.

Saturday sucked. I hate seeing my team lose, but the cold, hard truth of the NCAA tournament makes it much worse. With pro teams, there’s always the prospect of next year. Not just next year, but next year with the same players. When a college team loses in the tournament, though, that just isn’t the case. John Wall isn’t coming back. Demarcus Cousins isn’t coming back. Patrick Patterson isn’t coming back. More might not be coming back. Just like that, it’s over.

If I could, I would adopt a pro team as MY team. It just seems easier. When your team is good, there’s very little chance they’ll lose to a lesser team. Playoffs negate that possibility because they allow talent and skill, rather than game plans and sometimes, gimmicks, to shine.

Not that West Virginia was a bad team. It’s just that the first half was one of the weirdest I’ve ever seen. The Mountaineers didn’t make anything other than three pointers and a few free throws the first half, and were it not for that statistical anomaly, Kentucky would have been up big. Of course, the Wildcats poor play was not expected, either, and much of the credit for that is due to West Virginia’s defense. The bottom line is that for one game, West Virginia outplayed Kentucky. That can’t be denied, but if the tournament wasn’t the tournament, and they were playoffs instead, Kentucky would win in five, maybe six, games.

But is the tournament, and it is March Madness, and my team lost their mind for one game and now a bunch of one and dones are three and out. It makes me genuinely sad that the only way I’ll get to this see this team play again is on ESPN Classic, but what I can do?

Nothing much, except resign myself to becoming a Nets fan or whatever team has first pick in this year’s draft.

March Madness Advice: Don't Pick Cornell

2010-03-24T16:54:00.001-07:00

If you’re following March Madness, by now you’ve heard all the yarns about Cinderellas and the Davids of the college basketball landscape. It’s a fairly predictable storyline that gains its charm from unpredictability. Every year the same thing happens. Small, mid-major schools take down premier basketball factories, and this year is no different. Except, it is, because this year has more parity than ever, and the media is trying REALLY HARD to push two Cinderellas on us. Northern Iowa already grabbed one slipper when they knocked off Kansas last round. Now, a lot of writers, analysts and experts are picking Cornell to topple Kentucky.

Don’t believe them.

They’ll, of course, trot out well-reasoned arguments as to why Cornell has a chance. They’ll say they shoot the ball really well, don’t turn the ball over, and don’t back down from superior talent. They’ll also say they soundly beat two great defensive teams in Temple and Wisconsin.

These are reasonable arguments, if Cornell was playing a really good college basketball team. Unfortunately, Kentucky is not just a really good basketball team. They’re turning into a great team at just the right time, and there might even be debate if they’re actually a college basketball team considering they have at least five NBA first rounders on the roster.

Defensively, Temple or Wisconsin are simply not in the same league as Kentucky. That’d be like comparing a pack of golden retrievers to a pack of wolves. With really, really long wingspans. Offensively, remember that part I said about having five NBA first rounders?

And even then….

UK has John Wall.

John Wall isn’t just a superstar in the making. He IS a superstar. I’ve seen him play live, and watching John Wall lead the fast break is absolutely one of the most mesmerizing spectacles in sports. Watching opposing defenses on their heels as they try to contain him is like watching little kids at the beach collecting shells trying to outrun an incoming wave.

And it isn’t just like John Wall is a superior athlete. He’s a superior basketball player. Freshman don’t just come into Division I basketball and average 7 assists a game. They just don’t. John Wall does, which means he not only outruns, outjumps, and outlasts opponents, he outsmarts them, too. The whole “smart kids vs. dumb jocks” doesn’t play here. John Wall is the best point guard in college basketball, and good point guards aren’t dummies.

Kentucky in a rout.

And if you think Cornell’s players are endearing, check out this:

Lost and the Trajectory of Crazy

2010-03-17T23:45:00.001-07:00

I watched an entire season of Lost.

That is the answer to the question, What did Mike do while he had a sinus infection and DAYS of time to kill with only an internet connection at his disposal?

I watched season 5, and up to the current episode of season 6, and I watched them all good.

For some reason I can’t remember, I stopped watching the series after season 4. I just got tired of having every episode ending with more questions than there were at the beginning, the pacing grew tiresome, and Claire died. All in all, season 4 sucked something awful and drove me off. But I’ve always intended to come back. Really, honestly, I have. I just somehow never got around to it. It wasn’t until last week at work, when the guys at work started watched season 1, that I felt the need to delve back into the Lostiverse. And if I’m completely honest, a major motivation for watching the whole series is to actually reveal plot spoilers to them when they ask me, and then have them not believe me because the ideas are so ludicrous I have to be making them up.

Seriously, talking about Lost season 6 to people who think they know what’s going on is Lost season 1 is like trying to explain Lebron James to guys who still play basketball with peach baskets.

And THAT is what is so awesome about this show. Clocking in at well over a hundred episodes, the story is huge, sprawling, mysterious, intriguing, provocative, captivating, infuriating, and above all else, absolutely crazy.

Except it’s not crazy. Because this has been planned from the beginning. Somehow, all these different timelines, flashbacks, flash forwards, sideflashes, hot flashes, and other story arcs fit together in a way that maintains a perfect balance of giving viewers what they need without giving them what they crave.

I mean, yes, it’s crazy. A lot of things don’t make sense and probably never will make sense despite thousands of theories written on fan blogs and message boards. Don’t get me wrong here. The story arc of Lost is completely insane.

But here’s the thing. It has been from the beginning, and that what makes it NOT insane. It isn’t as if the writers of this show were caught by surprise with its initial popularity. They expected it, and mapped out where the series would go. I’m sure there have been alterations through the years, but essentially, season 6 is the season 6 they planned for all along. Which means that all of the mystery and all of the intrigue, no matter how crazy it is, has a purpose. It is driving towards a conclusion and not just being used as a hook to keep people watching year after year.

I can get behind that.
I dare say watching over twenty episodes in a span of three days qualifies me as invested.

Thoughts on the ipad, ebook readers and Hitler

2010-03-10T15:27:00.000-08:00

The iPad comes out in a few weeks, and while it looks neat and hip and Apple-y, I’m not sold on it. Not at all.

In regards to portable technology and my willingness to pay United States currency for it, there are several factors that are brought into consideration. Price, performance, durability, functionality, etc. All of these things are considered, but one factor always comes first.

Can I poop comfortably with this in tow?

I’m pretty sure I can’t with the ipad. This is why I am not yet sold ebook readers, either. I do a great deal of reading on the can (currently reading The Assassination of Jesse James By The Coward Oh Geez Why Does This Have Such A Pretentiously Long Name), and quite honestly, I don’t trust myself with expensive technology when my concentration is focused elsewhere, if you know what I mean. And I’m sure you do because I’ve spent a whole paragraph talking about the kindle and making toilet.

There’s that, and I just don’t like them. Ebook readers sort of…suck. They’re slow, clunky and they just don’t have enough going for them to make me want to buy them over regular books.

One of the major selling points is that ebooks take up less space than regular books. Great. Good. Grand. Less paper usage, less cleared forests and less fuel for Nazis to keep warm in the winter. Awesome. I do like the idea of having all my reading material in a nice, small package at my fingertips, but guess what? I also LOVE the idea of having a castle with walls lined to the ceilings with gold-leafed books.

And a giant bathroom to read them all in.
Until they can offer me that, I just don’t see the point in bothering.

Speaking of Nazis, Hitler agrees with me:

The Winter Olympics

2010-02-24T17:18:00.001-08:00

   I haven’t watched much of the Olympics this year because I don’t have a television in my apartment. I don’t miss them, or the television, as much as I should. Theoretically, I should love two weeks full of obscure sports that, with the exception of curling, all present the possibility of death. All it takes is one quick swipe of the blade across the femoral or jugular arteries on a triple axle for a figure skater, speed skater or hockey player to bleed to death. When skiers crash it looks like one of those special effects sequences in movies where the real person is obviously and ridiculously switched out for a limp dummy, only with skiing that limp dummy is still the actual person. Someone DID die while luging, and even cross-country skiers have an event where they carry a gun around.

    So the Winter Olympics are an awesome spectacle of danger.
    Except, of course, not really because NBC sees fit to tape delay coverage of everything even for those who live IN THE SAME TIME ZONE as the games. It doesn’t make any sense, and it all but ruins the suspense when the results are plastered all over the internet for hours before airtime. Asking me to stay off the internet for more than a few hours is like asking a blind cave salamander to pick his favorite color of the rainbow.

    One thing has stood out to me, though, of the little coverage I’ve watched. Actually three things. They would be Lindsay Vonn, Shaun White, and Kim Yuna. Granted, their star power has been amped up by a goodly amount of press coverage, but after watching them perform, it’s not hard to see why they deserve the attention.

    And that’s just the thing. It’s not that the attention is just some thing foisted upon people. Some people ooze it without even trying, like they have some sort of pheromone that just locks everyone else onto them. It isn’t their doing. It’s just…their being.
    Lebron James has it.
    John Wall has it.
    Vonn, White and Kim all have it, too.
    Of the three, Vonn’s is maybe the most subtle. Sure, she has sex appeal, but that isn’t really a factor when she’s skittering down the side of the mountain. Even in tight spandex. What’s compelling is to see just how edgy she rides, and how often it seems like she’s crazy, reckless and out of control. In fact, all the crashes are testament to the fact that, sometimes, she is. But it’s when she’s just barely holding it together, and subsequently kicking in the face of every other competitor who rides more fundamentally sound but slower, that Vonn really shines.

    Shaun White is a different animal. The dude doesn’t look like anything special, and before his run in the snowboarding finals, I was watching all the flips and the mcflurries and the 1520’s and wondering “These guys all look the same. What sets this Shaun White dude apart?” And then he launches into the pipe, rockets into cruising altitude on his first jump, and…“Oh, that’s what everyone is talking about.” Shaun White is the Michael Jordan, the Pele, the videogame version of Tony Hawk, the Chuck Norris of snowboarding.

    The same thing happened with Kim Yuna. Normally, I couldn’t care less about figure skating, but because it was on late and nobody else was awake to make fun of me, I watched it the other night at work. I don’t know why I forget this, but this year’s competition makes it pretty obvious. This is a competition. Maybe I forget that with all the glitter and estrogen, but one thing’s clear: If Kim Yuna met that Japanese chick in a darkened alley, only one would come out alive. And they’d probably be missing a limb or two.

So, in the words of Tommy Lee Jones in No Country for Old Men, “Ok, I’ll be a part of this world.”

    And just like with Shaun White, I was sitting there watching the ladies short program and wondering, “What makes this Kim girl so special?” The thing I was expecting was for her to be more elegant, showier, maybe. Which..she was. But the thing is, she was also simply a superior athlete. Everything the other skaters did, she did better. Faster. Cleaner. Stronger.

    Because of that, and I can’t believe I’m saying this, when we sit down to watch tv at work Thursday night, I’m going to demand that instead of watching Kentucky vs. South Carolina, we watch the ladies long program.

    Maybe it’ll be on late and my predicament can be averted. If that’s the case, I’ll be grateful for tape delay. For once.

A Photo, A Day

2010-02-23T09:40:00.000-08:00

The mountains bleed color when the clouds let go.

The Memwars: 2001

2010-02-15T13:26:00.001-08:00

   2001 was a weird, paradox of a year for me. It was an eventful year, but maybe that isn’t quite the best word to use since eventful implies the year was FULL of events. Which it sort of was in the first half and then not at all in the second half. That said, the barren wasteland of loneliness and angst that marked the summer of 2001 was eventful precisely because it was a barren wasteland of loneliness and angst. Essentially, it was eventless. And that made all the difference.

    See, I had a girlfriend for the first few months of the year. Not just any girlfriend, but the first real serious girlfriend in my young adult life. I mean, you know, the first girl that I didn’t ask out with a piece of paper.

    But little did I know this was all prologue to the real story of the year, because after six months of relationship, girlfriend leaves for Mexico, decides that she needs to stop dating, doesn’t tell me for months while we try the long-distance thing, and then tells me the bad news when she comes back.

    Needless to say, that summer really, really sucked. I stayed at school for the explicit purpose of being close to the girl when she came back, but that plan completely and totally backfired. Not only did I suddenly find myself single and alone, but I found myself ALONE. I lived in the girl’s dorms at the time because that’s where all the students still on campus lived, but we didn’t have summer school. At a small liberal arts college, that meant that hardly anyone was there.

    Oh, except for the ex. Who was two floors down and didn’t want to see me.
    Damn it.

A painting I did in the first semester of my sophomore year. No brushes were harmed in the making of this painting. It's all done via an air hose.

    What this meant for me was that I spent my days numbing my brain by playing NBA Live and creating an uberteam full of seven-foot point guards named Thelonius Whizbang, and by night I worked my summer job.

    Like any good writer, I’ve had a long list of weird, offbeat jobs to fill out my bio on the back cover. This includes the summer job at the campus bookstore, which includes a trip to the local theme park and the reason why I will never, ever go into a lazy river inner-tube ride ever again. I would go into more detail, but this is a family blog. Sort of.

    It also includes the summer job at the local aquarium, where I wheeled trash bins full of cardboard boxes and pizza remnants out under the silhouettes of sharks swimming overhead in the shark tunnel.

    2001's foray into oddjobs might have been the weirdest of them all. That’s because I spent the summer as a spider wrangler. As a research assistant to a biology professor, my job consisted of going into this sketchy goldenrod field every morning to dig holes, put a cup full of formaldehyde in the bottom, and then go back at night to check and collect any wolf spiders that collected there. I mentioned this particular field was sketchy, right? This goes beyond the job description of crawling around thorny entanglements looking for spiders the size of my eyeball. This field also happened to be on the wrong side of town and later in the summer, they found a dead body a few acres away from where I was doing my work. That would be a dead human body. Not a spider.

    If anything, all this intrigue kept my mind occupied. I was glad for that.
    That was for only a few hours, though. The rest of my time was spent entertaining thoughts I tried desperately to bore out of my mind, but they simply didn’t want to leave. That’s the thing with the breakups. Hearts and minds take a long time to catch up with reality, and even when they do, it’s not much easier.

    Contemplative doesn’t even begin to describe my mood that summer, but it’s a start. And it was also the start of a spiritual journey of mine that had remained dormant for a long time. Which was kind of ironic, considering the reason I found myself suddenly single was because of a girl’s spiritual underpinnings, my existence in her life, and my subsequent distraction from her dealing those underpinnings. She was trying to find God, I was goofing around, and when she left me, I found myself trying to find God, too.

Go figure.

Fleeing from winter, as fast as I can

2010-02-11T11:34:00.000-08:00

    It never fails to be ass numbingly frigid when I go home to visit my parents. This year, I went home and clouds dumped a foot of snow on the ground. Last year, it did the same. A couple of years back, it got so cold, and the ground froze so thoroughly, that I could have ice-skated ON my backyard if I wanted. And it contains no water.

    Yet each and every year, I go home offering my own gentle, subtle defiance to Jack Frost, wearing Vans canvas slip-ons despite the numbing wetness of the snow and its persistent threat to the continued existence of my toes.

    And then, after a few days, I hop a plane, and escape to where winter doesn’t exist.

    A few shots from around my house:

The view from my backyard. Walking to this spot burned at least a Snicker's worth of calories.

The view from the top of the hill. They just keep rolling...and rolling...and rolling.

My grandpa's horses. Please note, I'm sorta scared of horses and they were about twenty feet from me here, with no fence.

Much closer, but with a fence separating us.

Closer still.

My road. Also, a Norman Rockwell calendar painting. I believe this is January '62.

My house. Notice the Christmas decorations are still up and it's February. That's no accident.

The memwars of the last decade: 2000

2010-02-04T10:16:00.000-08:00

So…in the year two thousssaaaND.....I entered my freshman year of college. Not just any college, mind you, but the college with the best, THE BEST, name of any college in the world. I hype up my college more than Andy Bernard, and there’s good reason to do so. There are lots of things I’m proud of from my college experience, but I’m not even joking when I say one of things I’m most proud of is that I attended Transylvania University.

That’s right. Transylvania University.
Insert any and all vampire jokes here. If you manage to impress me with one I haven’t made up or heard already, then I’ll be…impressed or something.

Not a classmate. Just a nerd.

Some awesome facts about my university:
• Transylvania is Latin for “across the woods.” It was founded in 1780 and was the first college west of the Allegheny Mountains, hence the name.
• There are bylaws in the school constitution that say if the school is ever invaded by Indians, the school will be closed indefinitely.
• One of our residence halls, and one I lived in for three years, is called Davis Hall. Which Davis is it named after? Raiders Suckmonger Al Davis? Retired NBA player Dale Davis? Former Cincinnati Red and self-kidney slasher Eric Davis? Nope. Although living in Dale Davis Hall would be totally sweet, our Davis Hall is named after Jefferson Davis. That’s right. As if the name for my college couldn’t get any holy hell sweeter, we have a dorm named after the one and only president of the Confederate States of America. What did we do to deserve this honor? Well, that’s easy enough. Jefferson Davis went to my school. Sweet Dixie lynch mobs!
• Our school is cursed by a botany professor, and we have a tomb on campus that four students sleep in every Halloween.
• I’m not making any of this up.

Anyway, 2000 was my first year of college. It was my first year of being away from home. There are all manner of sordid tales involving debauchery and a kid named Phil puking into trash cans on a nightly basis while wearing a red velvet bathrobe, but quite honestly, I don’t remember anything clearly enough to adequately reminisce. I wasn't sooo wasted, dude, or anything. I just don't remember. It was a long time ago and I'm old and cranky. Besides, even if I did, college party stories are a dime a dozen and usually not anything that a poster Jon Belushi can summarize in a more entertaining fashion.

The most memorable moment of my freshman year was when someone on a street three blocks away got into an argument and fired a gun into the air. The bullet ricocheted through someone’s dorm window and harmlessly plopped down onto their thigh while they were sleeping.

More than anything, 2000 was my introduction to the other side of Kentucky. I had brief flirtations at summer camps and field trips, but I grew up in Northern Kentucky, a place far removed from the generalized Southern mystique of the Bluegrass State. People out in California are often surprised when I say I’m from Kentucky. I don’t have an accent, but as I tell them, I’m not really from Kentucky. Really, I’m from Ohio.

A quick, little geography lesson. Kentucky is an odd fit when it comes to the cultural landscape of middle America. Crested by the Ohio River, it’s firmly cut off from the spacious, flat confines of the Midwest, yet it’s not quite deep enough to be South, either. Nor is it East Coast. We don’t have an East Coast. Instead, we have West Virginia.

To add to all this confusion, Northern Kentucky is buttressed right up against Cincinnati, Ohio. It counts as part of the metropolitan area. It’s kind of like how New Jersey is part of New York. So I am from that area of Kentucky. The New Jersey part that is really not part of New Jersey but New York, instead.

Most of my college friends were not from this region. In fact, out of 400 or so freshman, only about 20 of us were from Northern Kentucky. The rest of them were actually from Kentucky, in name and spirit. Paducah. Georgetown. Paris. London. Hazard. Tyewhoppety. The list goes on and on.
Needless to say, this was quite a culture shock for me. I wasn’t quite used to being around people who festooned their trucks with stickers of confederate flags and considered Robert E. Lee their spiritual founder. And I wasn’t quite used to the accent. There’s something undeniably refreshing about a proper Kentucky accent. It almost sounds like every word has music behind it, carried by a buoyant optimism that keeps negativity at bay. No joke. I think there’s a strong correlation between the strength of someone’s Bluegrass twang and their outlook on life.

At the same time, I also learned that there is NOT a strong correlation between someone’s accent and their level of intelligence. Maybe it’s a result of proximity, but where I grew up, the negative vibes associated with the South were very strong. Out west, people look at Southern states as somewhat backwards, yes, but ultimately charming and endearing. There’s a genteel to the veneer the further you get away. This is not the case where I grew up. People who had accents weren’t looked at as charming. They were looked at as rednecks. Weird, but true.

This is where it gets all application essay-ish and reflective, but college did something to me. Cemented notions were broken down, repoured and molded to form a different picture in my mind. For the first time in my life, I ran up against people who were raised differently than me, talked differently than me, and yet, there were just as smart and capable as me. I started learning to take pride in where I was from. Not just my corner of the Bluegrass, but the whole state. Distance and time might have helped this cause. After all, transplants in LA do tend to take a rose-tinted view of how things really are back home, but that still doesn’t change the fact that there’s still truth to that rose-tint, though. And I don’t think I would have realized that without my collegiate experience. As schmaltzy as that sounds.

Also, First Clay sucks. It really does.

Art

2010-02-02T10:13:00.000-08:00

I did some art for my church this week.
The photo quality is really bad because I didn't have good lighting, but this is close to the actual color.
It might look like paint or watercolor from a distance, but really, it’s paper. I have a secret technique for turning pages of National geographic into sheared slates of ink and parchment. This secret technique also leaves my hands covered in a black goo so sticky I could probably crawl down the side of my building if I wanted.

Getting Ready for Squalor

2010-01-25T14:10:00.000-08:00

Yesterday I went to a restaurant across the street from my church. Part of the magic of the city is never quite knowing what you’re getting into, so when I went to eat, I didn’t know I was going to a lunch in a restaurant that looked like the mess hall from Titanic, with onion soup made by that one guy from that one season of Top Chef with the guy who had Edward Cullenesque hair. I think he won that season, too. That guy making my onion soup.

So there I am eating my Top Cheferized onion soup when someone kindly points out there’s a cockroach crawling up the column to my left.

Ew gross, someone says.
I’m going to pass out in my onion soup, someone (didn’t say but it makes the story more dramatic) says.
Kill it Mike!
KILL IT MIKE!
Kill it before it gets any closer!

I shrug my shoulders, and go back to eating my soup.
Does it bother me that I saw a cockroach while I was eating? No. Does it bother me that it didn’t bother me that I saw a cockroach while I was eating? No, not really, either.

But I did enjoy my complimentary Mexican coke.
And I think I’m suited for a life outside of modern conveniences.

A Couple More Shots of LA Rain

2010-01-22T10:47:00.001-08:00

Just in case you're curious, my photostream can be found here.

A Cloud's Eye View

2010-01-20T22:45:00.000-08:00

Psstt..just in case you didn't see the eleventy gobillion tweets and chirps and bookface updates, it's raining in LA.

Six Flags: Magic Mountain and The Death of Rose Tint

2010-01-18T23:19:00.000-08:00

Photo credit.

I got to go to Six Flags Magic Mountain with work on Sunday. I’ve been to exactly four theme parks in my life, and while that may not qualify me as any sort of enthusiast, I obviously like going to them since I seem to talk about going to them a lot. Maybe it’s just me, but even though the rides were tall and big and fast and scary, I felt kind of underwhelmed by the whole experience.

Or, maybe, my sense of nostalgia towards theme parks felt underwhelmed. Granted, I didn't grow up here, but King's Island in Cincinnati is a close approximation to the sort of experience Six Flags advertises. I wonder if I'd feel the same if I went there now that I'm not a teenager. Probably not, but it's something to consider.

Speaking of teenagers, there’s a whole epidemic spreading throughout the place. Normally, I’m not one to bitch about this too much. I guess Magic Mountain is no worse than other parks, but here, there’s no abundance of families and armadas of strollers to blunt the overwhelming aroma of adolescence. It’s not just the fact that too many teenagers are here doing teenage things. I don’t mind that. I was, after all, "working" that Sunday. With a group a teenagers.

Still, the presence of metal detectors and a sheriff’s department not so coyly plopped at the entrance of the park pronounces a certain reality that goes against the whole theme park vibe.

Teenagers inhabit lots of theme parks, but at most theme parks, you don’t have to worry about wearing too much of one color, if you know what I mean. Not that I would ever be mistaken for a gangbanger. The closest I ever got to any real violence was getting into a playground squabble over a drawing club, but still, the point stands. It’s not a comfortable feeling knowing that you’re willingly paying money to enter a confined space with people who may or may not be packing.

Aside from all that, the rides are okay. To be fair, X2 was closed. Since that is widely considered to be the best ride in the park, my experiences are somewhat incomplete. Still, as a whole, the rides fall short.

Viper is okay, but I’ve been on better. See: The Vortex.
I think I got a concussion on Revolution.
Goliath is big and fast and…concrete. I guess.
Riddler’s Revenge is…Well, since it was raining I’ll give it the benefit of the doubt since I was more focused on not being blinded by spears of water than I was on enjoying the ride.

Of all the rides I rode, two really stand out.

1. Terminator: Salvation The Ride: The Retardedly Long Name For A Movie That I Really Wanted To Be Awesome But That Ultimately Sucked, was actually, much cooler than I thought it would be.
2. Tatsu is simply badass.

The thing about both these rides is that they have a strong sense of character that eludes the other coasters. The way Terminator bends and twists unexpectedly over walkways and stations is exciting, and Tatsu…Wow….Not only is it cool that you fly, but it’s also cool that you fly over almost half the park. Since it takes place over a wooded hill and not a concrete lot, the changes in elevation add a whole other element that most other rides are missing. Part of the thrill of flying isn’t just flying. It’s soaring over the lip of a drop off without falling. Tatsu does this well. And that inverted loop is mindcrushingly awesome.

Outside of the thrills, though, Magic Mountain is kind of…ghetto. It’s clear that the place has a different philosophy towards theme parks than, say, Disneyland, and while I appreciate the emphasis on high-speed thrills, the whole place feels like a glorified county fair. Paint is peeling everywhere, empty blocks of stores are nothingness make the place feel far more sparse than it actually is, and it’s almost as if all the workers there were actually made to practice that glazed look in front of a mirror. At times, I expected to turn the corner into a 4-H barn. This isn’t a good thing, because while county fairs can be quaint and warm, they are also cheap and dirty. Magic Mountain carries over much more of the latter than the former. It just feels sort of sad, like the place is decaying. I know it was the off-season and all, but come on, it’s no secret that this place was almost closed down and sold recently. That lingered over everything more than the clouds.

Inspiration

2010-01-11T11:21:00.000-08:00

It’s funny how inspiration works for me.

I can barely read fiction anymore. When I do, it’s usually to see what else is going on in my target market. Speaking of which, Suzanne Collin’s The Hunger Games trilogy is shaping up to be potently bad ass two thirds of the way through the series. I read the first two books in a total of four days and will need to wait a loooong time until the third book is released.

So instead of reading fiction, I usually read non-fiction. Could be anything, really. I had a World War II phase recently. A Chernobyl phase because I wanted to understand how radioactive energy works and more importantly, doesn’t work. And by doesn’t work, I mean how breathing in Geiger counter ticking air can melt your lungs away. Humanity’s ability to invent ways to devastate ourselves is fascinating.

Right now, I’m reading about Bloods and Crips.

And I’m listening to Tegan and Sara.

And I’m watching Troy while making collages of plumerias.

There is no common theme between all these things, no common thread unless “Things that interest Mike” is a category that matters. If it is, it’s obviously a pretty big category.

The View From The Afternoon

2010-01-06T15:45:00.000-08:00

I meet my friend on the corner of Wilshire and Western.
He asks me, “Where do you live again?”
I crane my neck up the side of the building in front of us, higher and higher until I’m almost staring at the sky. He follows suit.
“No way,” he tells me bluntly. “You don’t live here.”
I shyly shrug, knowing that he’s right. It’s all just temporary, a brief interlude before I head off to overseas slums. Part of me feels like a third class passenger on the Titanic, borrowing time on the first class deck just because there’s nowhere else to go to see sunshine.

Part of me just likes the view.

What I've Been Up To, Part I

2009-12-29T20:32:00.000-08:00

Okay.
So I've been taking a well-deserved break from blogging in favor of taking pictures, moving into two new places (Oh, and wait until you see where I live now.), and growing my hair.

Here's some photos.
If you don't know where this is, especially by the last few pictures, then I'm afraid you have no soul.
Also, you're illiterate because I tagged it, stupid face.

And so it begins....again.

2009-11-25T21:51:00.001-08:00

Blam!
I’m done!
I sent in the latest revision of The Spanish Mar to New York, and now it’s another agonizing three months or so until they either tell me it needs more work, they tell me it’s hitting store shelves in the fall, or they tell me that it sucks and they never want to hear from me again.

By now, I’m used to this carpet ride.

And in the meantime, I can now devote more time to blogging about complete nonsense! Aren’t you excited!

I am. I’m giddily glad that The Road finally made its way to theaters, if for no other reason than it gives people an appropriate response when I talk about The Spanish Mar. Before, whenever I’d talk about the plot of my book, the first thing people would say was “Oh…it’s like I Am Legend.”

And then I would kung fu punch them in the liver.
NO.
IT’S NOT.

So now that The Road is out, people will start to say my book sounds like that instead. Which is good, considering TSM shares a lot more with McCarthy’s work than it does with that popcorny Will Smithery. TSM’s not as bleak, perhaps, but then, I’m not sure I’ve read anything that’s bleaker than The Road. And considering that EVERYONE is dead in my book, that’s saying something.

Anyway, I’m done with the latest revision. All in all, The Spanish Mar is very close to where it needs to be, if it’s not already there. I’m not sure what else I could change, add or delete with severely bamboozling the overall theme and plot. The editors wanted me to find the heart of the story. I believe I found it, stabbed it with the rusty end of a buck knife, and then seared it over an open flame to lock in the juices.

I’m really proud of myself.

Basically, if you like any of the following things, you’ll probably love my novel. This list includes, but is not limited, to:

• Survival adventure
• Hunting
• Fishing
• Scooters
• Nature
• Abandoned shopping malls
• The end of the world
• Teenagers
• God
• Komodo dragons
• Jaguars
• Lions
• Bears
• Strawberry Shortcake
• SPAM
• American history
• American geography
• Lewis and Clark
• Cholas
• Orphans
• Orphans falling in love with cholas
• Los Angeles
• Watching Los Angeles get destroyed
• Peter Pan

About that last one.
It is a source of personal pride that after reading my book, you will never feel the same about NeverNeverLand again.
For seriously.

Hi, Ate Us

2009-09-15T10:40:00.001-07:00

Sorry for the long absence, but it’s going to even longer.
Revising is taking up most of my free time these days, so blogging has taken a back seat to creative sparks for now.

I’ll be back to writing about nonsense soon enough.

Station Fire

2009-08-30T17:54:00.001-07:00

I mean, it's right there.
Watch it long enough and you can see it breathe.
Cough. Sneeze. Hack.
Ash.

I'm an iMurderer

2009-08-26T17:47:00.001-07:00

It all started with a sickly clunk in the dryer. Too sporadic to be pennies floating in the barrel. Too heavy to be zippers scratching against the side. I knew without knowing, and the phrase ‘it all started’ carried with it an awful weight. This wasn’t the start of anything. Nope. Instead, it was the end.

I left my ipod in the right pocket of a pair of shorts. There, I murdered it in a foamy swell of Tide.

And after letting it dry out for 3 very anxious days, careful to let any and every water molecule leave the various components inside my 2 gig gizmo, I plugged it in…

And 3 days after murdering my ipod, my ipod was…

Still dead.
I think I fried the logic board. Itunes will still recognize it, but the screen shows a blizzard of white and as soon as I unplug the thing, it stops working. It might be the battery, and it’s that the case, I will upgrade my imurderer card to isurgeon sometime in the near future.

August

2009-08-24T09:26:00.001-07:00

August is a Debbie Downer kind of month. It’s hot, the air quality is so bad I start sneezing out tar instead of mucus and absolutely nothing happens. It’s the only month on the calendar without some sort of holiday, so to make up for that deficiency, we capitalize Back To School and make it seem like going back to school is somehow something worth celebrating.

To make matters worse, the following things happened in the month of August:

*Mount Vesuvias erupted and buried Italy in ash.
*Several thousand jews were massacred in various parts of the world.
*British troops invaded Washington, D.C in the War of 1812 and burned down the White House.
*Pete Rose was banned from baseball. For life.

I know, August is terrible. I only know all this information because I was born on August 24. All of these things happened throughout history on the day that myself and Chad Michael Murray entered the world.

Positively speaking, however, I know tons of people who were born in August, particularly in the last few weeks of August. This makes sense. It means that nine months earlier, our parents were bumping uglies after getting obnoxiously stuffed on carved slices of turkey and pumpkin pie.

Happy Birthday, turkey babies! We have the month all to ourselves!

Just get to a thousand

2009-08-17T22:04:00.001-07:00

To help repel the looming despair that naturally occurs when a manuscript previously thought to be going somewhere instead comes to a standstill while it sits in a box somewhere in Manhattan, I’ve started work on a second novel.

I have the premise and general plot details nailed down. Now it comes to filling all those crazy ideas and plot twists with actual meaning and, you know, actual words.

This is a dangerous time for writers. That first transitional step from idea to document is daunting, but here’s a bit of encouragement from someone who has been down this road before.

Don’t worry about how it comes out. Whatever form it takes, rest assured that it’s a giant ball of suck.

Take comfort in that. So far, I’ve got about 20,000 words under me, and I’m not sure how much I will eventually keep, but odds are it won’t be much. That’s okay. That first draft is all about that crazy alchemy that needs to happen as an idea becomes more than just an idea in your head and transforms into an idea in words.

The best way to facilitate this is to just start writing. Set a goal of a word count you want to reach every day, and then don’t stop until you hit that mark.

I do a thousand.

A thousand words may sound like a lot, but really, it’s not at all. That’s only four pages double spaced, if that. If you can't do this, you might want to consider a different profession or calling. A writer that can't churn out a thousand words is like a bodybuilder who can't do crunches.

The thing is, let’s say you write a thousand words a day. In a month that’s close to 30,000 words. In three, that’s 90,000. For all intensive purposes, you write 90,000 words and you’ve written a novel.

It’s going to need a lot more work to turn it into something others can read, but at least it’s something.

Caught in a Korean Tractor Beam

2009-08-13T21:00:00.000-07:00

As I’ve grown older, the most basic, essential laws of the universe have made themselves known to me. This includes the ones that everyone knows about, like gravity, but also quite a few you don’t know. Only I know about them, because of course, I am the center of the universe and therefore they only affect me. Obviously.

This includes the Red Light Rule, which dictates that when I need to be somewhere in a hurry, by law, and here I mean by UNIVERSAL law, I must catch enough red lights to make me late.

Another law of the universe is the Granny Checkbook rule. Granny Checkbook rule ensures that whenever I get in line to buy groceries, someone in front of me is required to pay with a check, have card issues, or otherwise hold up the line.

So, basically, most of the laws of the universe are designed to slow me down. This is good, because they all feed back into the most central, the most foundational of all the rules of the universe. The one rule to rule them all.

The reason I must be slowed down is simple. So Koreans can find me, and keep me in check.

It’s the Korean Tractor Beam rule.

At all times, there must be at least one Korean within fifty feet of me. I’m not sure why this needs to happen, but I have a hunch the universe will end if this rule is ever broken.

Korean Tractor Beam rule came into existence when I went to college and met my first Korean. Danny Hwang from Tennessee. He was a biology major, a rabid video gamer, and a black belt in taekwondo. He never used the taekwondo on me for anything, but the threat was always there. Keeping me in check.

If I had known they were watching me, I would have never have taken the next step. Danny couldn’t follow me forever, but he didn’t have to. Because I fell right into the trap, like some little Finding Nemo fish heading right into the jaws of an angler fish dangling a fake light in front of his nose.

I fell right into that trap, and drove straight to Los Angeles. Otherwise known as South Korea 2.0. There at least one gobillion Koreans in the metro area, and this number is concentrated very heavily in Christian circles. Which explains all the Koreans swarming my school. In college, out of 1200 students, there were exactly 2 Koreans. Add three zeros to that and you have the number of Koreans in my graduate school. I was in it now. No escaping.

Figuring that I might as well not fight the inevitable, I eventually joined a Korean church and then, when I was ready, I flew to ground zero and stayed there for a year. Seoul. I told everyone that I just wanted to go there to save money and see the world, but I never revealed the truth. Until now. And the truth was I wanted to go to straight to the source in the hopes of breaking the rule to see if the universe would end. Going with the tractor beam reference, going to Korea was supposed to be like flying into the Death Star and blowing it up from the inside like Lando and the guy with the fish face who talks like an African.

But I didn’t break the rule. The rule broke me. I came back defeated. The worse came a month later. I knew I could never break the Korean tractor beam when I came back from Korea and went hiking in Kentucky. No joke, within a half hour of walking IN THE WOODS IN KENTUCKY, I ran into a middle-aged Asian man wearing a red North Face vest and a walking stick. He doesn’t have to say anything, because I say it first.

“Annyoung haseyo,” I say. Hello.
“Annyoung haseyo,” comes the reply.

There’s a smug look that comes across his face. None of my friends recognize it because they’re not looking for it, but I do. He’s saying more than hello in Korean. He’s saying Hello, you will never escape.

They are ALWAYS watching me.

None of this is especially dangerous. I mean, it’s probably a good thing I can’t escape because the universe needs to not break in half, but there is a danger to me personally. One of these days, I’m going to forget that I’m not Korean and somehow end in North Korea. When they ask me what I’m doing there, I’m going to look around bewildered, and then say, “What? This isn’t Des Moines?”

Okay. Off to Pinkberry.

I Survived A Japanese Survivor Ninja Junkyard Warrior Wars

2009-08-11T21:47:00.000-07:00

After watching the season finale of I Survived A Japanese Game Show, I decided that a few things were undoubtedly true.

1. America is fresh out of ideas for game shows. When a prominent time slot is given to a game show about a game show in another country, that spells problems.

2. Japan is crazy. It makes me wonder if sometime way back when, a feudal emperor was presented with a bunch of different outcomes for various opportunities for his country. When presented with the option of communism and the prospect of being like scary ass China with their gagillion plus one clone drummer boys at the Olympic Opening Ceremonies, the emperor must have thought for a minute, scratched his beard with the edge of some totally awesome ninja weapon, and then proclaimed, “Ah, fuck it…Let’s go down the path that ends with us putting women’s heads in a giant wheel with a crazed lizard.” And thus, history was made.

So now that we know that history proves Japan is crazy and America is bored, we should probably do something about it. To save American television, we should make a Survivor-type game show that mixes the two countries.

Now, I’ve thought quite a bit about this. Although the intrigue of pitting one country against another in a battle to see who could outwhine, outlast and outplay would be something to watch, it can’t happen. I wish it could, but let’s face reality. If you put a bunch of Japanese people on an island, there’s a high likelihood they’ll try to kill everyone else. It’s happened before. I figure splitting them up into separate teams lessens the risk.

Of course, since we’re mixing ideas anyway, it does no good to just make it Survivor with Japanese people. Screw tribal councils. Screw voting anyone off the island. Screw stupid challenges where people eat bugs. I don’t care about all that nonsense.

Instead, just start jerry rigging ideas from defunct shows. Have them build weapon-toting robots like in Battlebots. Have them build a boat out of refrigerator doors and pvc pipe like in Junkyard Wars. !!!!!INTRODUCE MAIN STREAM AMERICA TO NINJA WARRIOR!!!!

It doesn’t make any sense to me how we live in a supposed “global” society and yet, we don’t have a global tv show. That’s why I Survived A Japanese Survivor Ninja Junkyard Warrior Wars needs to become a reality.

Oh, and as for a host, look no farther than Sager.
Because Sager is the answer to everything.

A Conversation With A Friend That Effectively Sums Up My Poor Luck With Females

2009-08-10T22:24:00.001-07:00

“Hey, were you walking on the street yesterday?”
“Yes, I think so.”
“I think I saw you walking.”
“Oh. Where?”
“Del Mar and Arroyo.”
“Hmmm…I don’t think I was walking there last night. What time?”
“6 or so. You were with a girl.”
“Oh no no no. Then it wasn’t me.”

Laughter.
Cue sad Charlie Brown music, kicking rocks.

What would raptor jesus do?

2009-08-09T17:49:00.001-07:00

A couple of weeks ago, the internet decided to show me the glorious wonders of raptor jesus in the form of a t-shirt. I figured this would be a good time to talk about all this because I’m watching The Lost World on the SyFy channel and…OMG what is the deal with that name! SyFy sounds like an abbreviation for syphilis, not a television channel devoted to all things dork.

If this were a perfect world, then I would have no problems buying this shirt. No one else would have any problems with it, either, because they would find it hilarious as well. But, as nearly every religious leader other than raptor jesus says, this is not a perfect world. Thus, I decided not to buy the shirt.

I did this for several reasons.
One, there are numerous bible verses (which I won’t quote because I can’t remember where they’re at and don’t feel like looking them up) that deal with issues related to community. Essentially, these verses get into how some things aren’t necessarily sinful or wrong but still shouldn’t be done because they offend others and cause strife among the congregation.

I think a picture of a Jurassic Jesus would probably cause strife in any church community.

My second reason is less biblical and more personal. I call it my heresy rule.
Generally, as a Christian, I feel it is my solemn duty to ruthlessly mock Christianity as far as my limits will take me. What are my limits? Basically this. If I lived in Inquisition era Spain, would saying or doing this particular thing I’m thinking about saying or doing cause me to be burned at stake?

If the answer is yes, I don’t do it.
In this case, raptor jesus is a yes.

That’s probably a very good decision I made.

I can't stop watching Shark Week

2009-08-06T22:24:00.000-07:00

I can’t stop watching Shark Week.
    I don’t know why I can’t stop watching Shark Week, because sharks terrify me. In fact, they terrify the absolute terror out of me. I’ve covered this territory before. If I ever saw one in the water, and I also happened to be in the water, I would probably pee forceful streams of urine into the Pacific Ocean. And then attract more sharks, because sharks can sense human urine from miles away….

    WHY CAN’T I STOP WATCHING???
    Forget all that nonsense about how learning about something helps alleviate fears associated with that something. That may work when you’re scared of something like heights, and then go to the top of Sears Tower to look out over Chicago from a glass ceiling. That might fix things.

    Watching a great white shark swim 25 miles an hour straight up from the bottom of the ocean and then spear a seal in its serated teeth while jumping clean out of the water…That doesn’t fix things.
    It’s like being afraid of trains, and then going into a basement turned into a miniature train yard full of little tunnels and paper meche mountains. And then the trains burst into flames, and the mountains go up in flames, and the little towns made from popsticle sticks go up into flames, and the plastic townspeople melt into tiny puddles of lead after going up in flames.
    Yes. That’s exactly what watching Shark Week is like.

Newest Issue Of Disco Underworld Available. I'm On Page 56.

2009-08-03T07:39:00.000-07:00

Just outside my window on Mohawk Street (rated by Zagat’s as the best street name in North America), there is a long corridor of parking garages of the apartment in front of mine. It’s just a drab tunnel of concrete, fiberglass and windows. Rarely anything ever happens down there, but when it does….Oh boy! All the sound from whatever goes on in the alley is funneled by incredibly tight acoustics right to my room. In fact, I’m typing this right now in front of my window. A hummingbird is twittering around an oak tree a block away. The acoustics are THAT good.

A wide variety of other sounds drift my way. Most of these sounds are ordinary noises of the city. You know, sounds like cars driving by, people walking their dogs and the nightly flybys of helicopters patrolling the streets of Pasadena for hookers, hobos and…hummingbirds? (I really wish I could think of a third thing that started with an h.)

Every so often, though, some not so ordinary noises punctuate the air, including:

For the complete rundown of all these various noises and how they annoy me, check out my latest in the August issue of Disco Underworld, currently available on servers everywhere. I start on page 56.

A Photo(s) A Day

2009-08-02T17:22:00.000-07:00

All taken from a one block radius around Spring and Fifth. This area of town is old, decrepit and chock full of interesting things to shoot:

A Photo A Day

2009-07-30T12:32:00.000-07:00

I should probably get back to writing my second novel, a tale about an immortal man who wants to become an organ donor, but I can't stop procrastinating photographically. I don't think that's a word, but does that really matter?

Disneyland III: The Return of The Saga Continues

2009-07-28T16:54:00.001-07:00

Photo courtesy of here.

Goth Dude waits for us in the Haunted Mansion. He leans casually against the wall as the crowds gather and pack into the lobby. Something about him doesn’t fit. Maybe it’s the pale skin, eye liner and full length leather jackets amidst flip flops and pasty freckled biceps freed from the confines of farmers tans.

Then the elevator opens, and everyone steps in. He stands tall, with a wide stance in the middle of the room. A careful bubble forms around him as people squeeze in all around. They have no qualms rubbing shoulders with me, but I’m just wearing a t-shirt of Einstein dribbling a basketball. The level of intimidation needed to form my own bubble is lacking.

As the elevator descends, a funny thing happens. Goth Dude starts reciting the lines blaring out over the speaker. Word for word, line for line, he knows every single nuance of the routine, right down to the creepy laughs. When the fake lightning strikes and the lights go out, something happens. The lights come back on and Goth Dude is gone. There’s a quiet but steady murmur in the crowd. Where did he go? The magic of the moment was a bit dampened when I catch him out of the corner of my eye in the back of the room, but he’s all smiles and laughter now, and so is everyone who’s still wondering where he went. I let things stand as they are.

It was at this point that I finally caved in to my friend’s requests to upgrade my 3-Day pass to a season pass. For $35 more, I can now go on weekdays and almost all of the fall and winter, which all but guarantees hypothermia after repeated runs on my favorite ride in the park, Splash Mountain. This also gives me plenty of opportunities to properly calibrate the number of rides on the Tower of Terror I can handle before my vomit enters into the Twilight Zone.

Honestly, though, with the pass I can now take in the sights at a more leisurely pace. I can keep a better lookout for more Goth Dudes out there, the misfit regulars who only pretend to not like all the bubbleguminess of Disneyland, but only do so halfheartedly because everyone knows they paid to pretend to not like all that sugary sweetness. Maybe…maybe with time and practice I can be my very own Goth Dude. One can only dream…

If that doesn’t come to fruition, it’s okay by me. You don’t have to buy completely into the Disney illusion to enjoy yourself, anyway. No matter what the little girls say, Tinker Bell is still a complete whore. All the fireworks and magical escapades down main street couldn’t change that fact. I will still laugh hysterically during Star Tours when we start to “lose altitude in space.” I will still refuse to sit behind or in front of a dude on the Materhorn. Ass to crotch bobsledding is not comfortable, and if it ever happens, I will come back into the station more traumatized by that than the abominable snowman waiting for me inside the mountain.

BRENT!!!!

A Photo A Day

2009-07-28T15:25:00.000-07:00

I have a lot to write about this weekend, which includes the conclusion of my Disneyland saga, a conversation on the train with a Korean-Irish lad and a hispanic dude involving solar energy and tigers attacking elephants, and the theological implications of wearing a raptor jesus t-shirt. I'll get to all those eventually, but for now, enjoy this photo of a palm tree and a zombie finger puppet, who I named Hong after my ex-roommate:

A Photo A Day

2009-07-24T12:42:00.000-07:00

It's been awhile since I really used my camera effectively. I'm going to start doing more of that. Expect a lot of weird lens effects, unidentifiable objects shot from odd angles, and macro shots of zombies.

Come Check Out My Video Game Blargh!

2009-07-24T11:10:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone,

I've started a video game blog. It's been a dream of mine ever since I got my first issue of Nintendo Power with the clay Mario on the cover, and now that the power of the internet allows anyone to say anything they want, I started a blog where I rant about video games. You can find it at:

http://pressrepeatedly.blogspot.com/

Please stop by. Comment. Link. Flame. Whatever. I welcome all of it.

Korea And The Attack Of The Killer...Fans?

2009-07-23T11:52:00.000-07:00

If you ever decide to go to Korea to…I don’t know, teach English or visit friends or buy truckloads of cheap purses, you’ll notice two things during the summer.

1.    It’s very, very hot and humid. Be prepared to have your sweat act as a third layer of clothing.
2.    Every fan, EVERY single one, has a timer on the knob so that you can set it to shut off automatically after you go to bed.

    Why is that?
    Don’t you know?

    Fans can kill you in your sleep.

    But only in Korea, apparently. Or maybe I just got lucky during all those hot, bug-infested nights in Kentucky when I had the audacity to shut the window and leave the fan running all night.

I’m just warning you now. It’s a very real danger, and it’s no laughing matter across the Pacific. Over there, it’s not an urban myth. It’s a not a legend. It’s REAL, because it’s been in the papers. Even government agencies have issued statements on the matter:

If bodies are exposed to electric fans or air conditioners for too long, it causes [the] bodies to lose water and [causes] hypothermia. If directly in contact with [air current from] a fan, this could lead to death from [an] increase of carbon dioxide saturation concentration [sic] and decrease of oxygen concentration. The risks are higher for the elderly and patients with respiratory problems. From 2003 [to] 2005, a total of 20 cases were reported through the CISS involving asphyxiations caused by leaving electric fans and air conditioners on while sleeping. To prevent asphyxiation, timers should be set, wind direction should be rotated and doors should be left open.

-Korean Consumer Protection Board

It all makes sense. If you go to South Africa and swim in the ocean, you’re at risk of getting eaten by a shark. If you go to India and walk through the jungle, you might get mauled by a tiger. If you drive to Las Vegas, your car might break down in Death Valley. And if you go to sleep in Korea, you might die if you leave the fan on.

Everywhere else, though, you’re good. Just don’t go to Korea and try sleeping in comfort, you risky risk-taker you.

Kuhraygee.

Animal Bites and Leg 'Asplosions

2009-07-22T11:31:00.000-07:00

    I got stung by an animal of potent stinging capabilities while running around the Rose Bowl. More than likely it was a bee that had the misfortune of getting caught in the blazing trail of flames left in the wake of my running. Whatever it was, it hurt, and left me confused. How does someone get stung in the back while running? This is somewhat swallowing a bug up your…Know what? Never mind.

    I’m pretty sure it was a bee. Maybe I just kicked it up off the ground and then got it stuck in my calf. I don’t know. I was almost certain that was what happened until last night when I started watching some grotesquely horrible show on Animal Planet that featured maulings, bites, stings and other such terrible fates. One episode was about a rattlesnake encounter. It planted seeds of doubt.

    It went something like this. Dude gets bit on the hand by a rattlesnake. Horrible swelling ensues, to the point where his thumb almost explodes under the pressure. I absentmindedly start scratching the back of my calf, which is now red and terribly swollen. Rattlesnakes live around Pasadena. Rattlesnakes bite people sometimes… Visions of compartment syndrome and fasciotomies dance in my head.

    So far, though, my leg has not exploded. Probably a bee.

A Book Excerpt

2009-07-20T13:38:00.001-07:00

    As promised, here is a quick excerpt from my book, The Spanish Mar. Here’s a brief synopsis so you don’t feel utterly confused.

    Orphaned on the streets of Los Angeles, Mar grows up being told that like his namesake, he is nothing more than a mistake. When a global supervirus threatens to end humanity, Mar finds himself a reluctant participant in an experiment to be cryogenically frozen, preserved for some time in the future to help restart civilization. A century later, Mar awakens to a world that has dramatically changed in man’s absence. Vines cover skyscrapers, jaguars roam city streets, and no one is around. To make matters worse, Mar wakes up halfway across the country, with no clue how he got there. With nowhere else to go, he decides to start a long, arduous journey back home to Los Angeles in the search for survivors and answers. In the process, he realizes his journey has as much to do with his soul as it does his soles, and that he is most definitely not a mistake.

    This particular scene takes place early on the book, soon after he’s gone all Rip Van Winkle and woken up into this post post-apocalyptic world.

------

13.

June? 2108?

    Mile after mile, I constantly examined the scenery, searching for clues to the story of this place. There was a story. A long story left unread for a very long time. I wondered what it would be like to see everything that happened here; the last couple thousand years passing by in a few minutes like a tape stuck on fast forward.
    Can you imagine what a fireworks display that would be?
    Mountains exploding up out of the ground like spikes in an EKG chart. Trees growing, blossoming, in the wink of an eye, with their leaves blinking on and off through the seasons like a set of Christmas lights.
    Haley’s comet smearing itself across the sky like a long exposure photograph of car headlights passing under an overpass.
    The sun never going down.
    The stars never dimming.
    Both hanging there, awkwardly trying to share a sky they used to lease separately.
    Cities growing beards of vegetation like chia pets run amok.
    Speaking of which…
    I didn’t notice the view when I finally made it. The road sloped downhill and all my attention was concentrated on navigating footholds where the asphalt cracked apart. A dragonfly buzzed by my head, drew my gaze upwards and then I saw it.
The remains of Cincinnati rested along the banks of the Ohio River, patiently weaving its way through the valley. Buildings dotted the side of the road. Most were worn down to rubble and camouflaged from view by trees and various bits of overgrowth. These were easy to miss, a building or two, but an entire city. Is that possible? Can you really miss something that looks like….
    Know what? I’m not going to begin. Cincinnati didn’t look LIKE anything. It simply WAS. Something new. Something different. Something no one had ever seen before me.
    What I saw was this: Nature and concrete had words, a brawl ensued, and without much fanfare, concrete got his face caved in. And out of that bloody pulp, ripe and fertile, bloomed a thousand threes, a million strands of thick kudzu vines and a trillion blades of grass.
    This wasn’t a city. This was a forest with sixty story redwoods made of steel and glass. A few of the taller buildings escaped the choke of the growth below, but those were few and far between. Many of the older brick structures had collapsed or lost large chunks of facing that lay splattered over the streets. Two jungles, one concrete and the other green, collided.
    I couldn’t believe my eyes. The magnitude of the scene sank in slowly, taking its time to replace my stubborn notions with the concrete, yet organic, reality.
    In the movies, scenes of this apocalyptic sort are always accompanied by a gusting, harrowing wind whistling through empty streets. Ominous, foreboding skies tinged in red and grey hang overhead while crows, the harbingers of death and bad fortune, caw atop their perches.
    The movies set the proper tone. They filled you with a sense of dread and unease, that somehow, even nature itself protested the untimely death of all things civilized.
    In Cincinnati, the skies burned blue. Off to my left, I only heard the soft, disinterested chirps of robins and sparrows gliding in and out of the trees. A slight breeze wafted gently across the hills, swaying branches like wind chimes. No ominous winds swept down the ridge. No crows watched me with curious eyes.
    Peace reigned, and yet I felt uneasy. Unexplainable fear gripped me. Sweat gathered on my temples and the small of my back. Seeing a city, a place built by human hands, in this sort of condition…The trees and vegetation did their best to hide it, but they could only stretch so far. Above the canopies, skyscrapers loomed like monuments in a cemetery: quiet and peaceful, with every nook and cranny filled with reminders of things long forgotten.
    There was nobody here.
    Dejected, I moped off down the street and found a grocery store on the corner. Based on previous experiences, I expected to find nothing left inside. I saw signs that whatever had been left here was picked over long ago by rats and whatever else had a taste for Green Giant.
    Some undisturbed cans of soup and vegetables were still on the shelves. I didn’t take them even though I was sorely tempted. They taught us in training that no canned foods would last for more than a few years. Even if they were undented, they weren’t safe to eat. Botulism was a real risk, and canned vegetables and meat were known to be a source for the bacteria that caused it. So it was either risk an almost certainly fatal poisoning by eating a can of green beans, or try to find some fresh ones.
    To my surprise and horror, I found something edible after all. Surprise, because I didn’t expect to find anything. Horror, because if I did, this would be the last thing I would want or wish for. On the third shelf I found four undented cans of a concoction of meat that no one, not even convicted serial killers and mass murderers, should ever have to eat. Something even the rats didn’t touch. All of the cans were undisturbed. I opened one to find nothing but a dried hunk of mummified meat.
    Tomato leaned over my shoulder and whispered quietly, “You going to eat that?”
    “Only in an emergency.”
    “That shit’s still good?”
    “Probably. Everyone said SPAM can last forever.”
    Tomato twisted his nose in disgust.
    For my own part, my heart sank even as my stomach impulsively grumbled. It simply didn’t know any better.
    But I did.
    I knew exactly where I was, what was going on. This place was none other than the place that all mortals fear the most, a place so unimaginable that everyone tries to pretend it’s not real. Now I knew.
    Hell was real, and in it the only thing left to eat was SPAM.

Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Book-to-Movie Adaptation

2009-07-19T21:07:00.000-07:00

After spitting out close to a thousand words on how Guy Pierce suspends space, time and reality while not remembering a thing, and after writing another thousand words or so on how some French Jesuit views postmodern Christianity, I can finally get down to business and write about what I wanted to write about all along:

Harry Potter.

Rumblings on the internet suggest that some Potterites are upset by David Yates’s not-so-faithful adaptation of their beloved book. These rumblings go on to suggest that the first few cinematic offerings in the series, the LONGEST films despite being based off the SHORTEST books, are the best in saga because they’re the most faithful.

Riddikulus.

They conveniently ignore the overwhelming opinion that film and book are two separate storytelling mediums, and that the first two movies don’t work well as movies. Sorcerer’s Stone and Chamber of Secrets were both slow, overdone and borderline boring. Azkaban nailed the proper mixture of literary and cinematic magic. Goblet of Fire did its hardbound muse justice. Order of the Phoenix…well…let’s just say it looked AWESOME in 3D, but the source material was weak in comparison to the prior two, so I’ll cut it some slack.

And so we come to Half-Blood Prince. The sixth in the series, it sheds some of the light-hearted whimsy of the previous installments in favor of teen angst and a more nuanced understanding of the characters we’ve come to know and love.

As a film, it’s huge, sprawling, sometimes unfocused and a bit confusing…but it does well to keep the pace continually flowing. The book does all this, too. In the end, that’s a huge benefit to the film, because it manages to capture the general essence of the book while still holding its own as a captivating film for those not immersed in Hogwart’s lore.

And while, yes, maybe the love triangle between Ron, Hermione and that girl cut out of a Hannah Montana episode is a tad overdone, and the whole intrigue behind the identity of the Half-Blood Prince is a tad undeveloped, and Neville Longbottom…wait…where the hell was Neville Longbottom?, and a whole host of other things keep this one from being the best in the series, that’s okay.

Half-Blood Prince performs the wholly difficult trick of creating the calm before the storm, without ever giving the audience the actual storm but simultaneously not disappointed them. There is satisfaction to be found here. If nothing more, it’s found in the stage this one sets for the grand finale next time around. It never actually says it, but book and movie alike might as well end with one, giant TO BE CONTINUED on the final page/roll. I’m cool with that. It gives me one more chance to break out my scarf in the summertime. Wait…Two more chances. Gah. Are you kidding me?

Armageddon and The Apocalypses

2009-07-16T11:40:00.001-07:00

I saw Harry Potter last night. More on that later.

Instead, I wanted to talk about the previews. Specifically, there were two previews for movies dealing with post-apocalyptic themes: Tim Burton’s 9 and Roland Emmerich’s 2012. I’m naturally drawn to movies in this genre considering I wrote a book under the same basic umbrella of the downfall of society. Still, I broke out in the mildest of cold sweats, because part of me wonders –gasp!- if anyone will steal my idea.

It’s very, very unlikely. I started writing my book knowing full well post-apocalyptic landscapes are well traveled. I also went into it knowing that way too many science fiction novels depend entirely too much on premise, and often fall flat when it comes to filling that premise with interesting characters and meaningful character development.

That’s why I’m not too worried. Disaster is only a set-up for my story. Not the centerpiece. Instead, I laser focus on one character and his continued survival in a post-post apocalyptic world.

It’s more castaway than catastrophe.

And I feel like I’ve said this very thing multiple times, but it bears repeating if only to remind myself where I’m trying to go. I’ll probably put up an excerpt soon so you can see where it’s all heading, too.

Hyphenated Last Names are Stupid

2009-07-15T10:38:00.001-07:00

A lot of my friends are getting married. Or they are married already. I haven’t talked to them recently because high school was a fairy tale ago, but I can tell from their facebook profiles and their hyphenated last names.

I guess there are plenty of well-intentioned reasons for doing so, but by and large, hyphenated name are almost as dumb as this. They’re usually too long, and they just never sound very nice.

So, whenever you fall hopelessly in love with me and demand that I marry you, I won’t demand that you take my last name. And I won’t let you hyphenate it. No way. For one, Woodruff just doesn’t play nice with many other last names, unless you have a last name like Woodward or something. Then, I’ll make an exception. I’ll even consider giving our kids first and middle names that start with W, just so we can create our very own family tongue twister.

More than likely, though, you won’t have a European last name. Based on my social circles, it will either be Asian or Spanish. In which case, I’ll just take your last name, since I’ll probably need a new one when I publish.

I’m already half Korean and Mexican, anyway.

Los Angeles: Where Diversity Day is Every Day!

2009-07-14T10:20:00.000-07:00

Los Angeles is the most diverse city on the planet.
No doubt.
Fo sho.
En serio.
Let’s just clear that up right now, because when talking about the racial and ethnic peculiarities this city possesses, that fact needs to be up front and center. No other city in the world brings together such a volatile mix of languages, cultures and people groups.

Sure…you say you have a lot of Spanish speakers in your town. In Los Angeles, they’re the majority. (Thus making it the only city in America where white people are NOT the majority.) And while tons of cities have a Chinatown, we have a Koreatown, a Little Saigon, a Little Ethiopa, and West Hollywood (Do the gays count as an ethnic group?)

Your Chinatown might be a few blocks wide with a couple dozen restaurants. Ours? We don’t call it Chinatown. We call it the San Gabriel Valley.

There’s a point of pride in this. It’s fun to be able to eat sushi for lunch and then finish off the night with a trip to the local taco truck. Still, something is missing….Honestly, it sometimes frustrates me that culinary experiences are the extent of most people’s cross-cultural interactions.

Like anything else, there’s a reason for this in LA. While it is incredibly diverse, it’s also incredibly segregated. Because of its immense size, people aren’t forced to interact with people outside their group if they don’t want to do so. Koreans can just stay in Koreatown. Latinos can just stay in East LA. This happens all the time.

It doesn’t help that LA is a town built specifically around the automobile. Roads are often referenced as the circulatory system here, the lifeblood to one of the most robust economies in the land. But they’re more than that. Freeways are more than arteries. Roads are more than capillaries. Here, they’re the backbone. They’re the tibias and fibulas that keep this city moving. Here, they’re the bronchial tubes. Take away roads, and Los Angeles suffocates. We have no other way to breathe.

You can see what happens because of this. Neighborhoods aren’t really neighborhoods. People view the city from behind tinted glass, and go from their homes to parking garages to offices and then back to their homes without ever needing to interact with anyone they don’t feel comfortable interacting with.

This all…frustrates me. Personally, I’ve made it a point to expand beyond what I’m comfortable with. If I wanted this, I could have stayed back home in Kentucky. Since moving out here five years ago, I found myself surrounded by cultures and people that weren’t like me in superficial ways. By this, I mean they weren’t white.

And while I never thought this would be an issue, who was I fooling? No matter how open-minded I thought I was, suddenly becoming the ethnic minority in my circle of friends was a shock. There’s something to be said about all those flowery niceties people bring up when talking about diversity. Having spent time overseas, I know these are true. People ARE people, and we share more in common than we diverge away from one another.

There is a struggle with this, though. No doubt. I still remember the sweaty palms. The tentative words when I wasn’t quite sure what I could and couldn’t say. The limits my own upbringing presented in relating to people with very different upbringings. Basically, the experience of being a minority. It’s very real and I never would have understood what people were talking about if I hadn’t experienced it for myself.

Hard? Yes
Worth it? Of course.

What’s the point of living in a place like this if that weren’t the case?

Book update and a flurry of expletives

2009-07-10T11:41:00.001-07:00

I tried to email the editor working with my manuscript yesterday. I emailed her because it’s been nearly three months since I heard word on anything, and I say tried because the email bounced back to me. Ruh-O.

So I called the office to see what exactly is going on. Turns out, the editor had left the company and I was talking to her replacement, who just started on Monday. I inquired about the status of my manuscript, and she tells me she doesn’t know. It’s in a box full of manuscripts and it will take time to get to it.

What she is telling me is the repertoire I’d been building with an editor for a year has been erased, and that I need to start over. She may or may not see the same thing the previous editor saw, and like always, I need to wait.

Fucksticks slathered in shit marinade.

This means I will, of course, wait. After all, my manuscript is directly in the hands of a publisher. This is huge. No matter how infuriating. And it is also PENGUIN. You know? As in, “if we pick up your book it will be sold in every bookstore in America” Penguin. So yes, I will wait.

But I’m also tired of playing by the rules. I’ve held off submitting to agents for over a year now because I was working directly with publishers and didn’t want to complicate anything. Now, though, I need to reexamine my options.

i.e. take whatever door opens.

I’m not going to sit around and wait to see what happens with this publisher. If it goes through, then great. If they get mad because I’ve been shopping it around…Too bad. They should have notified me it’s been sitting in a box somewhere in Manhattan.

Motherfucking penguins, man.

Disneyfornia Adventureland: The Sequel

2009-07-09T10:06:00.001-07:00

Photo courtesy of the awesomeness that is Awkwardfamilyphotos.

I went to Disneyland again last week. Or rather, I went to California Adventure last week, which used to be the parking lot for Disneyland but is now a theme park based on California. In California. Totally makes sense, in a redundant sort of way. After all, the park happens to be in Anaheim, the home of the Los Angeles Angels.

That's right, for those who habla espanol, we have a baseball team named The Angels Angels.
Take. That.

Objectively speaking, CA is the weaker link of the two parks. It doesn’t have the Disney charm of it’s older brother, and the thrill rides are too sparse to make it worth the price of admission.

I don’t know. Maybe I’m spoiled. I grew up in Cincinnati, and went to King’s Island every summer, one of the premier theme parks in all of….Ohio. That may not sound like much, but consider that King’s Island plays second fiddle only to the Buckeye State’s Cedar Point, universally acknowledged as the roller coaster mecca of the world. No small potatoes. In all areas of measurement, KI was, and still is, one of the best theme parks around. And nobody else has anything close to The Beast. Ride that thing in the rain and you come out bleeding. No joke.

So I know theme parks, and while some of the rides at California Adventure are really, really good (Tower of Terror, Soarin’ over California, and the new Toy Story shooting gallery thingamabob), there aren’t enough of them to warrant financial satisfaction.

That’s fine, because then you can just hop over to Disneyland. Which is exactly what we did.

This is the preferred strategy for maximum rideage:

Go to California during the day.
Get a fastpass for Soarin’ first thing because that ride always has a long line.
Ride as much as you can until 9, then head over to the other park.
Once there, get on as many rides as you can over in Tomorrowland while the fireworks are still happening.
Once they end, everyone makes a mad dash for Space Mountain, so ride it while you can.
By 10, start making your way over to the other side. Only don’t go via Main Street. People are now exiting the park en masse and you’ll feel like you’re caught in a stream during salmon spawning season. Instead, go around the back of the park.
Ride Thunder Mountain at night. Make faces like this.
Ride Jungle Cruise at night, wait for the guide named Scott. Or Tom. I can't remember. But he is heelarious.
Ride Indiana Jones at night, because this is the only time there isn’t a line. Laugh at all the schmucks who think they're taking a shortcut in the line by hopping a fence into the exit aisle. Haha.

All told, do this and you can ride upwards of 15 rides during the day. Plus eat one bread bowl full of broccoli and cheese soup. BONUS.

Also, plan to not do anything the following day. Your feet will thank you.

Two Reasons Why I Can't Wait for Basketball Season

2009-07-08T11:49:00.000-07:00

Every year, the lull that takes place between the end of one basketball season and the start of the next is heart wrenchingly slow. It’s weird that at the height of summer, when people are their most active and sports should be at their apex, there’s nothing on except baseball. As for those two…baseball is perhaps the most boring thing America has ever concocted. When I go to Dodgers games, I spend more time playing bleacher volleyball with the 99 cent store beach ball then I do watching the actual game I paid American dollars to see. That is boring.

Oh well, at least there’s next season to look forward to, and that’s a good thing for two very distinct reasons.

1. !!!!!CrazyPills is coming to LA!!!!!

Is it considered blasphemy that I prayed for this to happen? Because I did. Hands down, Ron Artest is one of my favorite players in the league. While I like watching other players for what they do on the court, I prefer Artest for what he does, and says, off the court.

Some people might think it's delusional trying to get a part-time job at Circuit City so you can get the employee discount during the summer you’re about to get drafted into the NBA. I say it’s blue collar.

Some people might think breaking Michael Jordan’s ribs in a pick up game is taking it too far. I say that’s bringing it.

Some people say that charging into the stands to cold cock a fan who threw a bottle of Evian at you is taking it too…Okay…that IS taking it too far.

None of this negates the stellar degree of intimidation and potential madness that Ronron now brings to the Lakers. They’ve been known as a soft team in the past. All that is gone now that they have the most likely player to bite someone’s nose off in a shouting match. (You’d have to think that would be a flagrant II.)

More importantly, though, and this is why I think it’s an awesome signing, we now get to see Kobe and Artest interact for over 82 games. Who knows what can happen in that time? Maybe they’ll get along. Maybe they won’t. Maybe Ron will snap and piledrive Kobe through the announcer’s table. Maybe Sasha will grow enamored of the team’s new addition and scrawl “TruWarrior” into the side of his head. Any and all of this possible. I can’t wait.

2. Kentucky basketball is back

Unless you’re from the state, you have no idea what this means. Big Blue Nation is arguably the most rabid fanbase of any team in any sport in the entire country. Maybe the entire world. I have no doubts that if it came down to a fight between UK fans and soccer hooligans from the UK (See what I did there? Don’t get confused.), we would more than likely win because this is, after all, Kentucky we’re talking about….And we have guns. Lots of them.

But aside from that, we really are back this next season. Coach John Calipari is on at least half the commercials on ESPN this month, so we have the exposure again. Oh…and we also happen to have the #1 recruiting class in the country with the consensus #1 player in the country. Not only is it the best class this year, it might even be the best ever. That remains to be seen, and the jury is still out on whether or not we can compete for the National Championship with such a young roster…but seriously...have you seen John Wall play? Kid is hellarifically quick. And he’s ambidextrous. Which means he will be routinely posterizing chumps next year with both hands well above the rim.

Me thinks we’ll have more celebrity admirers next year than just Ashley Judd.

Reel Spirituality

2009-07-07T10:11:00.001-07:00

I’m taking a course on postmodern theology, film and culture for the summer quarter. Usually, when people talk Christianity and film, they like to talk about movies with built-in Christian motifs and ideas presented that reflect their own. This is why youth ministers can’t stop talking about movies like The Matrix and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

Ugh.

Thankfully, we are not watching any of those kinds of movies. Instead, over ten weeks we’re going to be watching Fight Club, Donnie Darko, Josie and the Pussycats, Memento, Spirited Away and others. The idea presented throughout the lectures is that it’s easy for Christians to relate to movies, like The Matrix or The Lord of the Rings, with familiar ideas in them. However…however…

What about the movies that still have something to say, but in the process might have someone like Tyler Durden say “Fuck damnation, man! Fuck redemption! We are God's unwanted children? So be it!”

What do we do with that? How do we respond? It isn’t quite as easy as examining how Gandolf holding off the Balrog on the bridge through the Mines of Moria represents a stand against evil.

But these movies are saying something incredibly powerful, and saying it in a decidedly postmodern fashion. They’re just saying it in a different fashion, and it’s always interesting to read people’s thoughts who haven’t grown up with these movies. Controversial movies like Fight Club and Donnie Darko say as much about the viewer’s own perspective as anything else, and already we’re having debates on whether or not Christians should support these kinds of movies.

My take? Absolutely. Of course. Hell yes, we should.
In Tyler we trust.

Of course, the most immediate challenge is to start examining what these movies are saying theologically without trying to Jesuify them. That is a huge challenge. Most people in ministry have been trained to do exactly that, but if you start trying to draw people to Jesus by saying “Hey, you know that Tyler Durden guy? Well, see…there was this guy that lived two thousand years ago who started his own kind of Fight Club….”

Yeah…start speaking like that and be prepared to fall flat on your face. The postmodern generation is too smart, too informed, too JADED to really go for that sort of theological snake oil.

Honestly, I don’t blame them. Talk about movies for what they are saying, not what you want them to say.

A Principled Stand Against Michael Bay and Everything Else Obviously Evil

2009-07-06T11:14:00.001-07:00

I will not be seeing Transformers 2 in theaters.

This was an exceedingly difficult decision to make. As a child of the 80’s, I was raised on the original cartoon series. Over a span of five years, I collected a veritable fleet of the action figures, including Optimus Prime, Soundwave, Grimlock, Jazz, and Ultra Magnus. When the original animated movie hit theaters, I saw it opening day. It was also the first of many bootleg videos I would amass over the years. To this day, I can nearly recite the movie line by line.

So this hurts. On a deep, instinctual level, I am drawn to giant robots. Couple that with their extraterrestrial origins and their ability to transform into cars, jet fighters and ghetto blasters, I really, really, REALLY want to see the movie.

Michael Bay knows this, however, and this is where I must make a stand.

No, Michael Bay. I will not give you any of my hard-earned money so that you can lazily cash in on my childhood. No.

I saw the first movie, and I liked it. I liked it so much I wrote that it sent me into “spontaneous boygasms.” But this is something different. Whereas a sequel to an action movie is formulaically driven to be bigger and better, it shouldn’t be dumber and more nonsensical.

Some people will argue that it isn’t a movie for critics, and that entirely misses the point. There’s absolutely no reason an action movie shouldn’t strive to be both a critically-acclaimed movie and a crowd pleaser. A movie like The Dark Knight thoroughly proves this. It hit the ground running on multiple levels, and as a result nearly became the highest grossing movie ever.

Bay, on the other hand, blithely ignores this. He intentionally dumbs down his movies to the lowest common denominators. In the case of Transformers 2, giant robots are only part of his equation. He also gives us explosions, college humor, stale, generic attempts at ghetto talk, T & A, and a healthy, healthy helping of American flashbangery and bravery. None of this needs to be in there, but it is because Bay has no intention of telling a coherent story. Like I said earlier, it’s all just a lazy cash-in on generic motifs people like to see. Quite frankly, it’s insulting. I hate to think that he knows he can do this because everyone knows us 80’s kids will pay to see our childhood on the big screen.

I hate feeling duped. So I won’t.
See you at Blockbuster.

The soundtrack to my movie (of my book that has yet to be published)

2009-07-02T08:30:00.000-07:00

The following is a list of songs that, were I offered a movie deal for The Spanish Mar, I would try to include the soundtrack. Realistically, I probably wouldn't have a say in the matter, because if I did, the entire soundtrack would be Radiohead.

But who cares about that? What I do care about is inspiration, and if you want to write a post-apocalyptic Tom-Sawyer-meets-Castaway-meets-komodo-dragons-and-jaguars-esque novel about being the last person alive after a cataclysmic and ridiculously lethal supervirus named after a famous Disney character wipes out the human race, then you should probably listen to these songs in no particular order to help inspire the proper mood.

And the award for longest run-on sentence goes to.....

Radiohead: Sit Down, Stand Up
Tool, Aenima
Incubus, Anna Molly
The Mars Volta, Televators
Bon Iver, Skinny Love
Menomena, Wet and Rusting
Death Cab for Cutie, We Looked like Giants
Rise Against, Whereabouts Unknown
Ben Harper, Morning Yearning
Explosions in the Sky, Magic Hours
Sufjan Stevens, To Be Alone With You
Lynyrd Skynyrd, Simple Man
Silversun Pickups, Panic Switch
Regina Spektor, Apres Moi

Bombs effin' bursting in the air.

2009-07-01T09:29:00.000-07:00

The following is my contribution to the July issue of Discounderworld, coming to online servers everywhere sometime this month. I posted it here for all the non-New Zealanders and quite possibly Americans who read my blog. Enjoy.

It’s happening this week. We Americans are celebrating our Independence Day. The 4th of July. Americamas. Whatever you want to call it. If you’re not American, the only time this day probably resonated with you was when President Bill Pullman declared it the world’s Independence Day from aliens. That was right before he jumped in a jet fighter alongside Randy Quaid, Jeff Goldblum, and Will Smith and proceeded to blow hostile extraterrestrials out of the sky.

So, because we like to celebrate our freedom from tyranny in the loudest way possible, we buy fireworks. All around the country, people are crossing state lines, browsing barns full of firecrackers and bottle rockets and cherry bombs. If they’re lucky, and they ask the right questions to the right people, they might even be led around to the parking lot in the back, where an unmarked van awaits with all the “premium” items available for sale. This is our holiday; the apex of American summer, a day full of swimming pools, hamburgers, macaroni and cheese, and the celebration of the birth of our nation with fireworks that explode so violently the shock waves thump off your chest.

For one night, you can drive unhindered down the Los Angeles freeways, rockets red glaring all around the hills. The harsh smell of spent gunpowder rests in your nostrils. Smoke fills the air. It’s a night full of celebration and revelry, temporarily pausing the realities of living in a semi-arid climate where a single spark from a match can start a thousand-acre wildfire in favor of practicing something we do very well: Blow shit up.

And Americans are good at this. The second amendment (the right to bear arms, i.e. own guns) ensures our solemn duty to never forget how to properly use gunpowder. Even if that little law were not in place, we’d find a way to get it done. Or Git’r’dun!, if we’re in the South.

You’d think over a century without a war on our soil might weed that lock, stock and two smoking barreling impulse out of us, but you’d be wrong in that regard, too. For example, here in Southern California, enthusiasts gather every year to commemorate the American Civil War battle of Gettysburg. Just think about that for a second. People living in Los Angeles dress up in grey costumes made from itchy wool and shoot pop caps at other Angelenos wearing itchy blue costumes, reenacting a battle that took place in Pennsylvania, over 3,000 miles away, nearly 150 years ago.

Does anyone else in the world do anything remotely like this? Probably not.

Beyond the bombs bursting in air, the 4th of July is still one of our memorable holidays. Just a few years ago, being an American in a foreign country was not enjoyable. Politics deflated the American cool balloon. Everyone temporarily forgot all our unique cultural contributions to the world because it was suddenly cool to draw President Bush with a chimpanzee face.

Now we have Obama, though, and once again, America is cool. They forget that Americans were always cool.

Our music is cool.
We boast more famous dead musicians than any other country. Elvis Presley, Kurt Cobain, Tupac Shakur, and now, Michael Jackson. It’s true that the King of Pop was a global icon, but he was a uniquely American invention. His phenomenon and rising star could not have originated anywhere else.

Our food is cool.
Yes, hamburgers and hot dogs are the stereotypical American cuisine, but we bring more to the table than just those inventions. Orange Chicken wasn’t made in China. It was first made here. Hawaiians took the most patriotic meat of them all, SPAM, and combined it with seaweed, rice and brown sugar to make musubi. If you’ve never tasted it, SPAM musubi is quite possibly the tastiest iteration of canned meat known to man. Fish tacos? Not Mexican. That’s us, too.

While the standard argument against the uniqueness of American food is that all our meals are just jerry-rigged from other cultures might hold some water, it misses the point. America as a melting pot makes perfect sense here, because that IS our unique contribution to the world. We are a potluck society, a crazy mishmash of ideas and backgrounds that adds flavor to previously separate tastes.

And at the risk of losing some of the luster of that coolness, I’ll stop there. I’m intensely proud of my country, but I can only do so much gushing before it turns to gloating. I don’t have any intention of making America seem cooler than anywhere else. New Zealand is cool, too. Without you, the world wouldn’t have Middle Earth.

One last note, though, while fantasy lands are topical. America also gave the world Disneyland, which I’ve been to twice in the past month. Where would the world be without the Happiest Place on Earth? More importantly, where would it be without the nightly fireworks show over Snow White’s castle?

Yes, there are fireworks every single night in Anaheim. Is this really any surprise?
It shouldn’t be.

And if you're viewing this on the internet, congratulations! You get a little bonus. Play us off, keyboard cat.

The battle for Mike Woodruff

2009-06-30T11:01:00.000-07:00

A name like Mike Woodruff is fairly common. So common, in fact, that much to my chagrin, any and all combinations of mike and woodruff in relationship to .com have been hoarded up by my slacker clones out there.

I’ve written about this before, and since that time, I routinely harass a Mike Woodruff on flickr who has my name and likes to take pictures of owls. I say cryptic things like “There can only be one.” and “This name isn’t big enough for the two of us.” and “Change your name, birdboy. It’s mine.”

But it’s not just my aviary clone that’s the problem. It’s some other Mike Woodruff who has published a book about youth ministry that causes major concerns. Because he has already used my name to write a book, this means I will more than likely have to change mine whenever I get published.

I could do something simple like change my last name slightly.
In Old English, Woodruff becomes Woodreeve. That’s a possibility if I want to keep it somewhat recognizable.

Using my first and middle initials is not an option. M.P Woodruff sounds deliciously retarded and pretentious. I hate it when writers do that.

The third option is to become Korean, or Japanese, which would help me realize my dreams of writing the next great Korean drama series.

The fourth option is just combining two ridiculous names together, something like Bogart McFlannery, but then that might limit what sort of genres I could write in. Bogart McFlannery, though, could do whatever he wants, because Bogart McFlannery is the one and only Bogart McFlannery.

The fifth option is to systematically destroy all other Mike Woodruffs out there. I should probably write a documentary about being Mike Woodruff and then invite them all to a “convention.”

Yes….yes….this is all coming together now…

Quite possibly the scariest photo I've ever seen

2009-06-29T07:55:00.000-07:00

By the way, this site is so internet awesome it could kill Chuck Norris dead.

I feel...

2009-06-29T00:01:00.000-07:00

I feel tired.
I feel worn out. Burnt out. Flushed out. Just plain, OUT.
I feel this isn’t going to be funny.
I feel this isn’t going to be entertaining.
I feel I don’t care.
I feel old.
I feel young.
I feel ready.
I feel unprepared.
I feel castaway, more Wilson than Tom.
I feel I won’t go to Bethel. I won’t go to Gilgal. I’ll seek You and live.
I feel excited.
I feel depressed.
I feel there are too many contrasts. Maybe what’s needed is more sharpness.
I feel I’ve thoroughly explored the edges that define me; those arctic, glassy bergs of ice and pain and solitude; the places where I’ve stared at the passing shadows of Leviathans lurking just out of reach; the places I hide deep beneath a bubbly exterior that looks smooth and smiley shiny.
I feel I know me.
I feel you don’t.
I feel fiction always holds the greater truth.
I feel the stories behind the stories are usually the ones that are more interesting.
Hungry.
Distant.
Detached.
You probably feel the same.
I feel you don’t need the opening words anymore to fall into the pattern.
Radiohead’s best album is Hail to the Thief, made better on quiet Sunday drives up a dusky Figueroa.
Take the money you would have used on Transformers 2 and see a movie like Moon instead. Independent filmmaking is good for your soul.
Go to the beach.
Go to Disneyland.
Live.
I feel I should.

The obligatory "Everyone is still talking about Michael Jackson so I might as well do the same" post

2009-06-27T19:49:00.000-07:00

I figured since the entire worldwide media is still abuzz about Michael Jackson’s death and I’ve listened to “Man in the Mirror” approximately 35 times at work since Thursday, I might as well say something on the matter.

It’s fitting that while the mainstream media continues to praise the man, the back alleys of blogging and social networking sites bash him without mercy. After all, the blogosphere is where people too young to really remember the King of Pop in his prime mostly trade jaded barbs about abortion, video games, and Britney Spears anyway, so it makes sense that most of the talk surrounding Jackson has been negative.

I grew up towards the end of his pop apex, so I only vaguely remember how effin’ cool the guy was when EVERYONE thought he was effin’ cool. But I do remember when we first unveiled the moonwalk, and how all the high schoolers spent a summer wearing one white glove. Long before the man adopted Bubbles, long before he became the NipTuck rendition of Peter Pan, long before he became an alleged pedophile, the man was the King of Pop for very legitimate reasons.

I do remember the time.

And I do feel somewhat saddened by his passing. Not in the candlelight vigil on the Hollywood Walk of Fame sort of way, but sad nonetheless. If anything, part of my generation’s upbringing died with him, and nostalgia always carries with it a bittersweet sense of good times long since gone. Death is a reminder of that.

It is also fitting that this happened around the 4th of July. For all his ‘We are the World’liness, Michael Jackson was a distinctly American product. He was also a significant cultural milestone. Before him, Elvis successfully merged different types of music to create the distinctly American Rock’n’Roll. Generations later, Jackson would do the same, going one step further to begin combining music and video in ways no celebrity had before. Let’s not forget Thriller catapulted Jackson into the celebrity stratosphere. It also gave birth to MTV. No small potatoes.

And we’ll always have that, even if we don’t have him anymore.
R.I.P Michael.

The end of a world

2009-06-23T13:35:00.000-07:00

“I can’t believe the world is going to end tomorrow,” said Nedthrackius, level 50 white mage.

Flore, a level 51 Amazon paladin, turned her head away from the sun-dappled vista. It was dawn in Moorinthal, and the pair stood high above the plains. Far down below, a chill breeze rippled fields of grain in gentle curves. “It sucks,” she said quietly. “This place has been home for me.”

“Me too.”

Nedthrackius glanced over at his companion. Flore was the best warrior he had ever known. Strong and powerful, her white hair tapered down into thick braids near the small of her back. She wore grey boots and armor they picked up last week in a raid on a cavern full of necrodragons. They were foul, loathsome creatures, capable of killing almost anyone left in Moorinthal. That didn’t matter, though. Flore was in possession of Dreadmore, the strongest sword in the land, capable of slicing cleanly through even the hide of a diamond eel.

Nedthrackius smiled. He knew he was lucky to have her with him.

“Why are you smiling?” Flore looked over. She dug the tip of Dreadmore into the ground and leaned on it, her chin propped up against the hilt.

“I was just thinking of all the adventures we had,” he said.
“Remember the battle against the goliath dwarf?”

“Haha! Of course! Who could ever forget!”

“Well, I guess the dwarf did. You blasted him with an elixir of amnesia. Remember the centaur pirates?”

“I do. You decapitated five of them in one strike.”

The sound of their laughter echoed down into the valley. It soon faded when they realized their laughter was the only noise being made. No sounds came from the village nestled between two ridges a few miles away. There was no clanging of swords or blasts of magic from battles with dragons and pirates in the mountains to the east. Moorinthal was green, lush and beautiful. It was also barren.

“It’s pretty quite down there.”

“No more adventures, Flore.”

“Not here at least. What are you going to do without Moorinthal, Ned?”

“I don’t know. Maybe get Burger King for lunch tomorrow. Want to meet me there?”

“You mean….in person?”

Ned smiled, “I figure it’s about time. 12 o’clock. Tomorrow. 56th and Madison. Be there?”

Flore smiled in return. “I’ll be there, Ned.”

And then, without warning, Flore’s body winked out of existence. A second later, Ned’s did the same. Somewhere, in a different land, in a different time, a bank of servers in a cooled room flicked off, never to be turned on again. A janitor started up a buffer down the hallway.

The next afternoon, Ned Turner, a used car salesman, met Florence DeSilva, a waitress at Danny Boy’s pizzeria, for the first time at Burger King on 56th and Madison, their lives suddenly less empty than the day before.

When a world ended.

A letter to God concerning the komodo dragon

2009-06-22T10:42:00.000-07:00

Dear God,

When most people decide to praise you for the animals you made, they point to namby pamby inventions like kittens, horses and panda bears.

Kittens are cute, and without them, we would never have been given the gift of the Lolcats bible, so good job there, I guess.

Horses are stupid. I hate them, and since I am from Kentucky, I hate them even more.

And panda bears…what on earth were you thinking? What’s the damn point of a ginormous fatass that can only eat one type of plant and doesn’t like to reproduce? It’s almost like they were biologically designed for failure. They're like the Geo Metro of the bear family: totally gimped. And yet, we keep them around. Perhaps that was your point. All those resources devoted to the conservation of panda bears probably keeps up from devoting more resources to things more threatening to our survival, like accidentally creating black holes while researching dark matter.

We are pretty much the only species on the planet that doesn't realize pandas are completely retarded.

Anyway, God, since we're on the topic of the end of the world. I guess people like to point out those animals because they’re cute or peaceful, and they remind them that you are a God of love. That’s true, but you are also a badass, God. So that’s why people point to badass animals to wolves and real-not-fatass-panda bears and tigers to demonstrate how badass they think you are. While all those creatures are properly badass, they don’t hold a candle to your most badass of all badass creations.

The komodo dragon.

Ten feet, 150 pounds of pure, grade A badass. It’s not enough that they can eat practically anything and run down deer. You went and gave them claws and venom that can give victims hypothermia…IN INDONESIA. That is simply an excess of awesome killing power.

Excess is limited, though. That was quite a bit of foresight on your part to keep these monsters limited to a few tropical islands in the South Pacific. If they ever got mainland, holy geez….that’s scary. It would be like the subway scene in Cloverfield. EVERYWHERE.

Anywho, God…good job creating these things. Should you ever decide to end us, it probably won’t be through nuclear war, or an asteroid, or gay marriage. It will probably be komodo dragons, because they are unstoppable murder machines.

Hi-5!

Mike Woodruff

P.S. If I write the Los Angeles Zoo, do you think they could lend me one as a pet?

Sharks terrify the terror out of me

2009-06-20T20:35:00.000-07:00

I'm going surfing tomorrow with work. Yes, I said surfing and work in the same sentence, and yes, it makes complete sense. My job is that capital A Awesome.

So last year, after watching Shark Week on Discovery Channel, I vowed never to set foot in the ocean again. I made this vow half-heartedly after getting stung in the foot by a sting ray, but after seeing what sharks can do...neh, I’m done. No more ocean for me.

I’ve already told this to several people, and predictably, they’ve trotted out the normal rebuttals. They usually say one of two things:

1) You have a greater chance of dying in an airplane crash than getting bit by a shark.
2) You won’t die if you are bitten.

Rebuttal #1, I easily dismiss. When someone brings chance into the argument, I play their game. Chance only matters when you’re willing to actually take it. I don’t really care, because you know what my chances of getting bit by a shark are? Absolutely ZERO. I’m not getting in the water.

Rebuttal #2, I agree with completely and this only strengthens my reasoning for not getting into the water. See, I learned by watching Shark Week that sharks can only tell you’re not a seal by biting you. As opposed to most predators, who use the four senses not involved with eating, sharks somehow got the wires crossed and taste is their best sense. This is scary.

And if a Great White decides to “taste” you, this isn’t some little lick. One minute you’re just paddling out to a nice set, and then the next, Poof!, your leg pops off as easily as lego in the jaws of a giant torpedo with teeth. You never see it coming, and in a split second, your life probably hasn’t ended but it has forever changed because of a stupid-ass fish who couldn't tell you don't have blubber.
This is also scary.
And since I like all my limbs and would prefer to keep them, I’m not getting in the water.

SCREW.
THAT.

Things I've done this week

2009-06-20T08:25:00.001-07:00

Monday

-Disneyland
-Walked 7.4 miles
-Held my breath for 1 minute, 30 seconds on Space Mountain
-Ate gumbo, one pound of Twizzlers
-Scored 250,000 points on Buzz Lightyear
-Waited 4 hours in various lines, stood in line for 2 miles

Tuesday

-Explored ruins of Washington, D.C.
-Detonated a nuclear bomb
-Spoke to Liam Neeson
-Ate a double-double
-Wrote a blog about Monday

Wednesday

-Played basketball, soccer and capture the flag over 3 hours
-Wrote four pages of behavior notes at work
-Learned about the birth of Islam and Charlemagne
-Murdered 5 people in their sleep and then ate them
-Shot a bear

Thursday

-Swam
-Spent 8 hours making sure 4 teenagers didn’t kill each other
-Ate chicken BBQ, beans
-Watched magic show
-Detonated yet another nuclear bomb

Friday

-Drove 20 miles to Pico Rivera
-Drove 20 miles to Pasadena
-Spent 1.5 hours driving 40 miles
-Drove 7 miles to Hollywood
-Navigated 8 kids safely through Hollywood and Highland
-Made fun of Willy Wonka and Marilyn Monroe in parking lot
-Watched Up in 3D
-Drove 7 miles to Pasadena
-Spent 2 hours driving 14 miles
-Cashed two checks at two different banks
-Passed out at 9

Still to do:

Saturday

-Beat high score of 413,856 on Pacman Championship Edition
-Drive kid to home visit in Glendale
-Buy groceries for 6 teenage carnivores
-Write 8 pages of behavior notes
-Cook dinner for 6 teenage carnivores

Sunday

-Go surfing
-Try not to drown
-Avoid getting stung by sting ray
-Eat subway

My invasion of Disneyland

2009-06-16T23:27:00.000-07:00

Because it was Monday and a few co-workers and I had nothing better to do, we hit up Disneyland for the day. Under the impression that it was a MONDAY and it was gloomy, we figured it wouldn't be crowded. We were wrong, so very wrong.

Hour long waits.
Stroller armadas.
Walls of people.
$3 water.

Yet no matter what the cynics say, Disneyland really is the Happiest Place on Earth. Despite the hordes and the throngs and the masses, nobody gets angry. I don’t know what causes this to happen, but it does happen. Maybe it’s the fact that everyone is paying upwards of $70 to be happy, damn it. Or maybe it’s the fact that little children are everywhere and irregardless of the bitterness that lurks in the heart of the most jaded curmedgeon out there, no one wants to be the douchebag who ruins the magic for the little tots from Nebraska.

With the huge variety of people, from out-of-state families to twenty-something locals who hang around the place like stoned mallrats, you’d think it’d be a disaster. But everyone gets along. So with that volatile mix, it pretty much makes Disneyland the only place on earth where you can hear things like “Daddy, how can the elephant fly with those big ears?” mixed with “God, I’ve been standing in line so long I think I’m getting trenchfoot.” with a dash of “Hold that rope or I’ll kick you in the cunt!” thrown in there for good measure.

Magical, indeed.

Anyway, some notes and photos from the day, since this was my first non work-related (and hence, fully enjoyable) visit since I was three:

Space Mountain

- If you’ll notice, I’m holding my nose in this picture. That’s because I declared I could hold my breath all the way through the ride. In all honesty, I might have been able to make it, but I gave up at the halfway point because:

a) I was seeing spots that weren’t part of the lighting or effects
b) I was miserable and didn’t see the point in being miserable since I just waited an hour in line.

But anyway, this ride gets my approval.The aforementioned hour wait wasn’t half bad, courtesy of my amusement with the cankled fat kid wearing the Slayer t-shirt and the pink headphones. Also, I enjoyed constantly passing that cute girl who may or may not have been checking me out.

Strangers doing funny things in the background of friend's profile pics, ftw.

Pirates of the Caribbean

-Last time we were here the kids, I convinced our boatload that the people in the restaurant in the beginning were actually robots. This time I just kept wondering which room stored the cryogenically preserved head of Walt Disney.

Snooze.

Buzz Lightyear

-I don’t know the real name of this ride, but it was awesome. So awesome that I rode it twice. Once to learn what targets to aim for (the ride is an extended shooting gallery). Twice to totally dominate all challengers. See photographic evidence of this below:

Fantasmic

-I don’t really get the whole hullabaloo behind fireworks. I mean, they’re cool and all, but if it means packing people in like sardines with no clear exit, I’m down to just go get my Buzz Lightyear on again and again. My attention was sustained only because Tinker Bell kept sliding back and forth on a zipline from the Materhorn to Main Street, and every time she did, a friend gleefully pointed out “THERE GOES THAT SLUT! THERE GOES THAT SLUT!” again and again.

Some other photos:

Splash Mountain. I was chivalrous enough to take the front seat. Five minutes after this photo, I was wet and cold and not smiling.

Yarr! Thar be huge dorks, ahead. Yar!

Despite whatever this looks like, nothing happened on the Materhorn. I swear.

We didn’t finish until 11, which meant that once we left the magic of Disneyland, we ran headlong into the magic of road construction detours on the 5. Oh well...it was a good day to follow up a night of rioting in East LA.

And now to take us out:

Issue 8 of Discounderworld is ready for eye gorging

2009-06-11T07:34:00.000-07:00

And the hits keep coming.
I'm on page 42. Words and pictures both originate from the various lobes of my brain.

*Discounderworld was recently rated as the best New Zealand-based magazine to feature Americans writing about South Korea.
*Hooray!

What to do with North Korea

2009-06-10T09:37:00.001-07:00

War with North Korea seems like a distinct possibility now that their egomaniacal, puppeteering Dear Leader is having health issues. Couple this instability with the nuclear warheads they keep throwing into the ocean like kids throwing firecrackers at G.I Joes, the situation with the American reporters being sent to a labor camp and the threats they’ve made, some action needs to be taken.

But what?
We do anything and North Korea launches something like 12,000 missiles at Seoul. Not to mention, China gets pissed because they want a strong North Korea to act as a buffer against capitalism and the proliferation of cheap Louis Vutton bags coming out of South Korea. This is no joke. North Korea may just kick off World War III.

So we can’t negotiate reasonably with them because Kim Jong Il is egomaniacal and dying, and we can’t attack them because both China and South Korea would get pissed. What do we do?

Simple. Cut out the middle man.
Literally.

One night, when North Korea is sleeping and they’ve cut power to save on rations, we position our Death Star (and yes, we do have one of these) over the northern and southern borders of North Korea, cut it out of Asia and then drop it off somewhere in the middle of the Pacific far away from everybody.

With no neighbors to threaten, North Korea is suddenly powerless. We negotiate the peaceful return of our reporters, Kim Jong Il kills himself and his entire family because he can’t kidnap wealthy Japanese people anymore, the regime topples, and we annex the democratic island nation of North Korea as our 51st state.

This could all totally happen.

Letters from the NBA Finals

2009-06-08T23:39:00.000-07:00

-To Kobe:

Even though you scored mucho points and have made more awesome passes than Ricky Bobby in this series, you need to realize you’re not all that. Seven turnovers in game 2, plus this shot from earlier in the Playoffs. Just sayin’.

-To Courtney Lee:

In less than a second, I went from being exactly wrong about this series to being not exactly right enough. Way to go, Hilltopper. Of course, I don’t really think it’s all your fault. The Magicians are cursed. I’m guessing it’s probably some everglades voodoo passed down through their association with Disney, but you all probably really are cursed.

If it was just your point blank miss to win Game 2, it would be one thing. But rewind to the last time Orlando was in the Finals. Remember Nick Anderson? Remember how he used to be a promising young player with All Star written all over him but then missed 4 free throws that would have sealed Game 1 against the Rockets? Remember how everyone called him Nick the Brick and his career imploded after that season? No really, it was worse than Ray Finkle.You’re lucky your name is Courtney, Courtney, because I can’t think of anything related to ‘choke’ that rhymes with your name.

-To Pow!:

I’m sorry for calling you soft numerous times. Obviously, after consistently forcing Dwight Howard into setting up shop somewhere other than right under the basket, you’ve shown that not only do you have the physical stamina to push people around, but you also have the mental stamina necessary to remember to do it every time. So now, I know you’re not soft. You’re just suave.

-To Adam Morrison:

Shave your pubestache, son. You earn enough money riding the pine to buy implants if you really need a quality soup strainer.

-To Dwight:

Mark Jackson is absolutely right. This summer, get in the gym with P.E, A.S.A.P. Obviously, by only allowing you to dunk once this game, the Lakers obviously realize you’re a danger to shot clock harnesses everywhere and have decided to force you to do something else with the ball. Your passing has been okay, but a decent jump hook is clearly your kryptonite.

Also, could you flatten a ball in a bicep flex? If dudes can break concrete with their elbows, I think you could probably pull this off.

-To Lamar Odom:

You are the Good Will Hunting of the NBA, do you know that? You’re probably completely satisfied just being a part of a great team, earning more money than I could earn in two lifetimes, and playing basketball with your jersey not tucked in. But do you realize with your physical gifts and natural talents, there is absolutely no reason you shouldn’t be one of the top five players in the league? If you were Matt Damon and Phil Jackson were Robin Williams, the movie would probably end when Phil strangled you to death. Oh…what if. What if.

-To Tiger Woods:

Sorry. Your team doesn’t have the same “drive” as you. Challenge Kobe to a Skins game or something over the summer to get your revenge.

-To The Machine:

Even though you’re not playing much this series, I want to you know that I still think you're the man. XOXO.

Mike

The Waiting Game

2009-06-08T12:48:00.000-07:00

Failure is a part of the game.
I was rejected A LOT. I received enough rejection letters to recreate the palm tree somebody ran over around the block.

But then, see, I lucked out and ran into someone who actually liked my manuscript, and this is where I find myself now.

Because after you destroy forests sending out query letters, after you research agents until your eyes bleed Arial, after you get rejection upon rejection, after you FINALLY get your foot in the door somewhere, then you have to wait.

And wait…
And wait…

And wait….
Seriously, the whole process is agonizingly slow.

So I’ve been working with an editor at a publisher for over a year now, polishing up my story until it’s ready to be accepted. I probably could shop it around to agents again just to keep my options open, but that’s generally frowned upon in the publishing world. Besides, I am working directly with an imprint of a publisher right now, which is extremely rare for writers without agents, and the editor is really, really good at helping me make things better. If I get an agent, this could change a lot of things, so I’m reluctant to do so.

I sent in the latest revision a month ago, and soon I will hear one of three things:

Yes. No. Keep working.

Considering the publisher, I’m hedging my bets on number three. I’ve made enough quality changes to avoid number two, but I don’t quite know if it’s ready for number one yet.

And that’s the first time I’ve ever used number two and number one in the same sentence without making an attempt at toilet humor.

Must See Home Shopping TV

2009-06-05T09:40:00.000-07:00

   Since I’m spending four days out of the week living in the mountains doing survival training and learning how to do such things as opening a can of beans with the corner of my eye socket and killing squirrels with throwing stars shaped from fingernails, I rarely watch television.

Now that summer is here and 30 Rock and The Office are in rerun mode, I don’t have much motivation to watch anything at all. The one exception to this is The Knife Show, the most unintentionally brilliant comedy on any network.

For those who have never seen it, tune in to your local home shopping channel around 8pm. There, you’ll see three overly enthusiastic mustached men trying to sell you 219-piece knife sets featuring bowie knives, katanas, claymores and Dale Earnhardt Jr. collector’s edition pocket knives. I’m telling you, it’s uproarious. Tivo it.

But aside from the comedy, there’s also the suspense. That’s because things like this sometimes happen:

Folks, right now, we…uh… may need emergency surgery in the studio….

Comedy gold beyond measure.

Mike's Horriblenogoodrotten Day

2009-06-04T20:50:00.000-07:00

   Ominous omens are sometimes obviously ominous. Like thunder clouds. Or ravens. Sometimes, though, they’re not as obvious, like the time when you go to the store to buy a energy bar before you go on a morning run, forget your card, and then walk away empty-handed because your phone number didn’t get you anywhere.

    But not me. I didn’t take that as ominous. I just took that as crappy, and began my run anyway.
    So then, you’d think that almost getting hit by a car as it pulled out past a stop sign to merge into traffic would speak volumes. You know. Things like TURN BACK MORON!!! THIS IS NOT YOUR DAY!!! NOT ONE MORE STEP!!!
    But no! Not even that could stop me.

    The only thing that could stop me from going on my morning run was the sidewalk, and me nearly tripping into rush hour traffic.



But I didn’t just trip. Or stumble. I faceplanted right there on the sidewalk. You ever seen kids grab a full head of steam and just smack right into a glass window that they thought was empty air? My fall looked just like that, except horizontal. And with concrete.

    To be fair, lava fields in Hawaii are less craggy than the sidewalks of Pasadena. People trip on the uneven cracks all the time, but they usually don’t do so as violently as me.

    How violent was it, you ask? This violent: Two skinned knees, a ripped circle of flesh from my left palm that looked like a stigmata filled in with gravel, a gash in my right elbow, and a scrap along my outer right wrist. Also, my ipod ripped out of the headphone jack and flew TEN feet into a nearby driveway.

    While walking the two miserable blocks back to my house, I naturally assumed that this all happened because I was tired, and since I was tired because I didn’t have my customary energy bar, the grocery store was obviously at fault for accident. The only natural conclusion for all this is to never shop at that store again.

    But wait! My day wasn’t over!
    After cleaning my wounds, I went to work because there is a nurse’s office there and I needed band aids. But wouldn’t you know it? When I clocked in, the nurses weren’t there. Know where they were?

    If you guessed the mandatory seminar for ALL workers dealing with blood-borne pathogens, you're exactly right.

    Best believe my bloody knees and elbows caused a scene.

NBA Finals Preview: Where Amazing is only as Happening as Stan Van Gundy's Mustache

2009-06-02T22:28:00.000-07:00

Game 1 is almost here, so that means I have less than 48 hours to convince a friend who has tickets that he is gay, that we are soulmates, and that he must, he MUST, take me with him to Staples Center. This is more than likely not going to happen, since my friend has absolutely zero homosexual potential and he’s such a diehard Lakers fan that he sold two of his three very normally functioning kidneys to get tickets.

So, like the rest of you, I am probably going to be watching the Finals from home. Here are some things I’m looking forward to being absolutely right about:

-I like that the Magic made it this far. While it saddens me that no Lebron in the Finals likely means no more Kobe-Lebron commercials, the Magic make for a more compelling opponent against KobeCo. than the Cavs. Above all else, Michael Pietrus’s length and athleticism can at least slow Kobe down on the defensive end, and Dwight Howard is going to cause fits for the more offensively minded Pow! and Bynum. Defensively, the Magicians are solid, and offensively, they have the shooters to keep them in any game.

-Speaking of matchups, this series has one for the ages. You’re probably thinking about the superstars, but that’s only NBA marketing. The real show is going to go down when Sasha Vujacic and J.J. Reddick set foot on the court at the same time and promptly start a poetry slam. Can this at least be a machine video, please? Please?

-The odds are 3:1 that Ron Artest is going to make an appearance at a game. 5:1 that ABC does at least one five minute interview with him that will instantly became yet another youtube classic in RonRon’s growing stable of youtube classics, and 7:1 that Ron Artest decides to re-enact the Malice at the Palace with Jack Nicholson filling in as Jermaine O’Neal. Bank on it. I checked these numbers with Vegas.

-The most interesting thing about this series: Both teams grew up during these playoffs. In comparison to last year, the Lakers did not cakewalk through the Western Conference. The Rockets and the Nuggets both provided stern tests that toughened this up. The moment this became clear to me was when Chris Anderson tried to pull the chair out from Gasol as Gasol was backing him down. Last year, Garnett did the same thing and Gasol promptly stumbled, turned the ball over and Rondo did something ridiculous on the other end of the court. This year, Gasol calmly turned around, noticed the lane was open, and proceeded to dunk on Birdman’s head. Turning point, achieved.

-The Magic toughened up as well, though. Getting through the defending champs and the King and His Court despite numerous meltdowns only highlights the fact that this team is grounded, focused and well-coached. Stan Van Gundy will never achieve Craig Sager’s fashionista bravado, but at least he knows how to draw up game plans effectively. Not that any of this will matter. Kobe will obviously be the best player on the court, and after numerous collapses and subsequent Mamba stare-downs, his cohorts have finally reached his level of focus. I don’t see Odom or Gasol making too many defensive lapses this series, and I don’t see Dwight Howard reaching the proper level of nastiness needed to spur his team onward. For that reason, and because the Laker’s length is really going to give the Orlando perimeter attack fits, Orlando doesn't stand much of a chance.

-Lakers in 5.

Pixar MUST be stopped now, while we still stand a chance!!!

2009-06-01T17:45:00.001-07:00

    A friend of mine once told me that every story, trimmed down to its simplest parts, is about the same thing: The journey of a man. While most stories adhere to this template loosely, substituting ‘journey’ for something else like ‘lesson’ or ‘change’, he’s got a point.

    An unfortunate side effect of this uniform backbone is that it’s really, really, really hard to make a story stand out. In particular, it’s downright impossible in the gluttonous wasteland of children’s films, where gimmicks and slapstick often serve as the focal point because that’s the easiest (and laziest) way to get children to laugh and parents to buy the tickets.

    Enter Up.

    Pixar’s latest creation is yet another home run precisely because it’s not trying to swing for the fences. Like its plodding but persistent main character, the story builds confidence with every step. This is mostly because Pixar realizes the key to a good story isn’t jokes. It isn’t a dynamite scenario. It isn’t special effects. They know the same thing that all those people buying old houses realize: Character counts.

    Well duh, obviously. Characters are key to any story. Everyone knows that. It’s just that not everyone knows how to do it quite like Pixar. I thought they might have peaked last year with Wall-E, but Up only proves that, more than likely, the Pixar streak may not ever end. Sure, their character development may be formulaic, but it’s hard to argue with when the opening short packs more emotion into a cloud than anything Dreamworks can offer. And that’s all BEFORE the opening twenty minutes produced audible sniffles in the crowd.

    If there’s any one quibble with their formula, it’s the inevitable beeline to the finish that accompanies any Pixar creation. Go back and watch them. It’s always the same thing:
1.    Establishment of characters.
2.    Introduction of crazily imaginative chase scenes and other hilarious situations.
3.    Some sort of epiphany.
4.    Undeterred focus on making it to the end after characters have their epiphany.

    It’s not that they ever run out of steam. It’s just that maybe all those scenes of brilliance create too much steam and the writers realize they need to wrap things up before things derail. It’s just a minor frustration. The imaginative worlds created around the characters are simply joyful to frolic through, and it can be mildly upsetting to be yanked back to the main point of the story, which with Pixar, is always the characters.

    And speaking of characters, kudos to Russell. Way to do your part in building up the resumes of young Asian-American actors everywhere.

    Squirrel!

June Gloom

2009-06-01T08:28:00.000-07:00

It’s been approximately 2.5 days since the sun last graced us with its presence over Los Angeles. This happens every year around this time. A giant swath of clouds, that have no intention of dropping one drop of precipitation, gather over the city for a few weeks just to piss off all those tourists shivering down Venice Beach in cut offs and flip flops.

Hahaha! Tourists!

They call it June Gloom, and it’s obvious why they call it that. I’ve been feeling down, and it’s become readily apparent how much my mood depends on the sun. Which also probably explains why any movie with the word Sunshine in it automatically stands in my top ten favorite movies until the next Pixar movie comes out.

Sunshine! Hooray! Wait! Too close! Too close!

Maybe it wouldn’t be such a big deal if I were still a night owl, but those days are long gone, too. Now, I’m waking up at 7 to parrots squawking and squirrels zipping up and down the power lines outside my window. Yes, I said parrots. There are TONS of them in Pasadena. Actually, there are just tons of animals here. Dogs, cats, ‘possums, raccoons, skunks, coyotes chasing me on my nightly runs around the Rose Bowl, brown bears, bobcats, mountain lions, chupacabras….I could go on and on and on.

But I won’t, because it’s 8 in the morning and I don't like talking about the ugly specter of chupacabras marauding the streets of our fair city. Besides, I’m grumpy enough as it is since I’m not used to waking up so early, and I think the sun is maybe going to come out in a few minutes.

So, I'm Audi.

Helena Bonham Deppter

2009-05-31T08:57:00.000-07:00

I first stated this in 2007 but it deserves a revisit because no one listened back then. And since celebrity gossip is all the rage, it only makes sense that people know about this. People being as they are, they obviously only care about celebrity gossip because knowing about famous people’s personal secrets is a life or death matter. Therefore, based on a perfectly reasonable step in logic, the following bombshell may just save the ENTIRE world.

And that’s this: Helena Bonham Carter and Johnny Depp are the same person.

I always had my suspicions, but it became abundantly clear after seeing the preview for Sweeney Todd. I didn’t even have to see the movie and pretend to be fooled by all those camera gimmicks that make it seem like Carter and Depp are two different people in the same shot. I’m not fooled. Don’t be fooled, either. They don't look similar. They aren't twins. THEY ARE THE SAME PERSON

Think about it.
Helena Bonham Carter is "married" to Tim Burton.
Johnny Depp is in many Tim Burton movies.
Coincidence?
I think not.

Helena Bonham Carter:

Johnny Depp:

Same person.
The obvious conclusion of all this is that Tyler Durden is gay.
And that all you Tiger Beat junkies who have posters of Johnny Depp in your room are closet lesbians.

Going off!...the grid

2009-05-28T20:07:00.001-07:00

    So the Malicious Association of Credit Yanking (known to most of you naive naybobs as Macy’s), decided to call me a total of twelve times over the last four days to remind me to pay a credit bill that was due a few days earlier even though I already paid the bill on the date of purchase with a debit card…or so I thought.
    Honestly, circumstances were mostly my fault, but this didn’t stop me from mumbling a string of unutterables under my breath for the better part of an hour while I fixed things. There is not much else that gets me fired up like creditors calling me mercilessly to remind of something I’ve already been reminded of three times earlier in the day.

    More to the point, I HATE credit cards.
    I HATE credit card companies.
    I HATE debt.
    And I HATE being victimized by huge corporations because I “owe” them.

    All this being the case, when I become a New York Times bestseller, pay off my student loans, and become independently wealthy, I’m going off the grid.

    Ain’t no doubt about it. I already have most of this planned out, right down to the Styrofoam I going to use for the walls of my dome house. (Hahaha mocking laughter at all you who think “traditional” houses are anywhere close to energy efficient.)

    But please don’t think going off the grid means becoming a hermit. I don’t think I could ever do that. I like people too much. I also like culture and the food that different cultures produce. Something tells me that being a recluse in Montana doesn’t give me much opportunity to get some fresh katsu curry.

    What I mean by going off the grid is more of a literal interpretation then, I guess. By grid I mean the power grid. I mean the financial grid. And that’s all the grids I can think of, but that’s enough.

    Screw gas companies. I’m riding a bike and a jeep converted to run on soybean oil.
    Screw power companies. I’m going to have solar panels.
    Screw Macy’s. I’ll make my own clothes.
    Screw Sallie Mae. My kids won’t need student loans.
    Screw tv. I don’t need it.
    Screw the inter….no wait. I’ll pay for that.
    And I’ll make my own kimchi, so yeah…take that Korea!

    Fighting!

One of my favorite non-destructible places in LA

2009-05-26T17:45:00.001-07:00

This is one of my favorite places to chill out in all of Los Angeles.
See if you can guess where.
Oddly enough, it has a connection to the previous post about Terminator.

My favorite ways to destroy Los Angeles

2009-05-22T09:42:00.000-07:00

To say I’m excited about Terminator: Salvation is a mild understatement. I’ve been positively giddy all week, bouncing up and down on my heels every time I ask someone if they’re going to see it. This question is almost always promptly followed by my impersonation of the ‘dun-dun-du-duh-duh’ trademark metal clanging of the Terminator series.

There are numerous reasons why I’m pumped, but it all boils down to one simple variable.

I love me some apocalypse.
And more importantly, I love me some LA apocalypse.

It’s no secret that Hollywood loves to destroy Hollywood. Los Angeles is arguably the most destroyed city in the world. The only other two that come close are New York and Tokyo, and those two only make the list because big, angry reptiles prefer densely packed metropolitan centers over palm tree lined urban sprawl.

But for all other disasters, LA is the city of choice. More bad crap happens here than anywhere else, plus the film industry is centered here. Natural fit.

So, the following are my favorite ways to destroy LA. Keep in mind that I would never, ever, ever want LA to actually be destroyed. I would never dream of such a thing. Teehee.

Zombies/Vampires

    If you’ve seen I Am Legend, then you know that zombies with rabies destroy New York. What you may not know is that in the original novella, the setting wasn’t New York. It was Los Angeles, and there were no rabid zombies. Just vampires.
    Of course, Hollywood cashed in on this more than once. The Omega Man adapted the book back when Will Smith was in diapers, and while the unintentional hilarity dampens the mood a bit, the potential is there.
    The undead are a good way to cause chaos. They did a good job of that in London.

Tornadoes

If you live in Los Angeles, you have a huge benefit in seeing disaster movies in a theater. Take a movie like The Day After Tomorrow. I saw it opening weekend. It was hum-drum as far as action goes, but that five minute sequence where tornadoes ripped through Hollywood and destroyed recognizable landmarks produced so many audible gasps and reactions that it made the price of admission worth it.
    Not only is it fun to see a city destroyed. It’s fun to see YOUR city destroyed.
    Tornadoes do that in dramatic fashion.

Earthquakes



The same goes for Earthquakes. Obviously, this is a fairly popular motif here since earthquakes are such a big part of life in Southern California.
    The spectre of the “Big One” is always there, and to be perfectly honest, the prospect of a 10.0 quake along the San Andreas fault is terrifying. So terrifying that seismologists aren’t even sure what would happen in that worst-case scenario.
    Would LA fall into the ocean?
    Would freeways snap like twigs?
    Would downtown topple over like oversized jenga blocks?
    Who knows?


Volcanoes/Wildfires



Despite the fact that ash falls from the sky annually around here, I can’t recall wildfires ever playing a central part in any disaster movie? That’s perplexing, especially considering they’re such a prevalent part of life here, and because they’ve made a movie about a volcano erupting under the streets. Redonkulous.

Dragons



But, but but but…Godzilla never attacked Los Angeles. That’s true. But Koreans apparently love to destroy our City of Angels with giant snakes that use the Library Tower like a stripper pole, so…we have that going for us.
    Honestly, this is only on here because Reign of Fire is one of my favorite movies ever and I desperately hope they make s sequel and bring it to the west coast. They also need to bring back Matthew McConaughey’s character from the dead so that he can continue grunting through lines like “Eden’s not burning. It’s already burnt.”

Aliens

    Independence Day did a decent job obliterating downtown, but as far as devastation goes, aliens simply haven’t brought the heat. They could do better in this regard. Of course, Predator 2 managed to have aliens AND Gary Busey on the same roll of film, but it didn’t go far enough. Busey, after all, could destroy Los Angeles just by unleashing some carefully placed crazy. Actually, now that I think about it….

Gary Busey

Please, please, please…Keep this man contained:

Robots

    This scenario has so many things going for it. Take the artificial intelligence route and you have Terminators. Although to be fair, the center of all that Skynet-induced mayhem is not Los Angeles, but Silicon Valley. Still, killer robots patrolling down Sepulveda is fun.
    Also fun is robots falling from space to continue a war started on a cybernetic planet. Transformers 2 is going global, but the original was set chiefly in LA. And boy, was it disorienting. Scenes were filmed all over the city, and while it looked fluid, if you know the city, it was still confusing to see chase scenes begin in Pasadena and end in Redondo Beach. To this day, I call the 105/110 interchange the Optimus Prime overpass because of that one scene where they tumble over the top pass.

    Naturally, I don’t have any rankings for these. I can’t choose my favorite. This would be like picking a favorite child. If I had to choose, I’d go with Busey.
    You?

Irishmen and Ajushees

2009-05-19T16:55:00.001-07:00

    Despite my propensity for vast and spontaneous acts of exploration, I tend to like a certain degree of control in my surroundings. I’m vaguely OCD like that. It’s a little quirk, but a quirk nonetheless.

    In Seoul, the subway system is a marvelous piece of engineering. Hundreds of miles of train tracks, stations and stops with trains crawling across them in ever direction, like tiny metal caterpillars. I lived a block away from the nearest station on line 3, the orange line.

    (Oddly enough, I also lived right next door to a Wal-Mart Supercenter. I grew up in an area of the country where Wal-Marts are the absolute hub of all community life, and always had to drive at least 20 minutes to get there. Here, I was in a completely foreign country, and it was right outside my doorstep. Surreal.)

     Anyway, going into town, I always, always, always got on the same car. Third from the front. This was a car that was never crowded but was always near an exit stairwell at every stop. I figured this out my first month, and always made speedy getaways from the engulfing hordes of people when I exited the train.

    I even picked the same spot in the car. I leaned against the corner on the left hand side (facing the front), nudged in between the doors on my left shoulder and the handicap railing on my back. If I occupied any other space on the train, I got a little twitchy and nervous, and started rocking back and forth on my heels like Dustin Hoffman in Rainman. Getting that spot was important.

    I was standing there one afternoon when an ajushee, or an older man, taps me on the shoulder. Quick thing about ajushees. They don’t tap lightly. They poke their fingers deep down into your shoulders, since hitting a pressure point is obviously the best and most courteous way to get a younger person’s attention.

    I turned around, steamed.

    His eyes widened.

    You’re not Korean, he said.

    (Note: The following dialogue will contain snippets of a white dude butchering Korean but written in English. Also present is a Korean dude who didn’t speak one word of English, but hey!, it's magically translated for you. The power of the Internet. It’s awesome.)

    Hello, old man. What the hell do you want?

    Oh. I would like to know how many stops until we get to downtown.

    This many, I said while holding up some fingers because I temporarily forgot how to count in Korean.

    Oh, he said. Let’s make small talk. I know this is weird because Koreans never small talk, especially with non-Korean foreigners, but what are you listening to?

    Oh this. This is Damien Rice. He whines a lot in Irish. Would you like to listen?

    (One more note: The previous three lines were never actually spoken, in either language. Ideas were chiefly expressed in the form of grunts and hand gestures.)

    I gave him an earbud. We sat there and listened to Mr. Rice for a few seconds, both of us gently rocking back and forth as the train shot through a tunnel. Our ears were tethered together by a common sound. Our heads were just inches apart. I could smell squid on his breath. Something tells me a moment like this should be romantic. It wasn’t.

    Oh well, Damien. At least ajushee smiled when he heard you.

-----

Some of ma best, from the subway:

Traipsing through Seoul

2009-05-17T09:52:00.001-07:00

Still moving older posts over here as a precaution for the coming xangapocalypse.

It was one of those magical nights. The kind of night where you constantly have the urge to snap your fingers in front of your face to make sure they're really there. It started at 11.

I meet a friend in Dongdaemun for some twilight shopping. This is hands down the most ridiculous thing I have seen yet in Korea. Who buys orange neckties and bootleg adidas sweaters at 1 in the morning?

Answer: approximately half the population of Seoul.

We make our way through crowded passageways and catacombs labeled 'sports zone' and 'luxury zone'. All th while i'm just trying to stay out of the way, which, for some reason, is really, really hard to do. I try to best to emulate the natives, who flow through crowds like water, even as they stare at cellphone screens. It's amazing. I, however, always fail miserably and just can't find the rhthym.

We leave, but not before I get felt up by several people passing by and see a girl on the street hock a giant loogee off a curb. It's the sexiest thing I've ever seen.

We hop a taxi and head off to Itaewon. As we step out the drizzle of rain transforms into flickers of snow. I stick out my tongue to taste it but my friend says no. We're in seoul, dude. That stuff will burn through your tongue like alien blood through metal grating. He's right, of course, but inside another piece of my inner10 year old crumbles all the same.

We find the first restaurant that's open at this hour. We sit down by a window and watch the falling snow. My friend can't take his eyes off it. At, first because it's a rarity for him to see snow and then later, to keep his eyes away from what i ordered. Pig intestines. A little chewy, but surprisingly, not in the least bit disgusting. The spices cover over some of the taste, but like i said before, it was a magical evening. Everything tastes good in a memory.

Some shots of the city:

Seoul National Museum. Those are apartments in the background. Remember what I said about Korea being a conformist society? Even the buildings don't want to stand out from one another.

On top of Namsan Park, a hill in the middle of the city.

Along the Han River.

Myeungdong: A shopping district. Seriously, I got groped here at least twice a month.

Southern view of Seoul.

Northern Seoul.

Really, Really, Really Lost in Translation

2009-05-15T08:08:00.000-07:00

I always, always, always know where I’m at and where I’m going. A clear sense of direction has always been something that calmed me. Getting completely and hopelessly lost in a foreign country is not something I do on a regular basis. Nope, not at all. But it happened on my first day in Korea.

The day started out ominously. My parents drove me to Dayton at 6 in the morning. It was raining. On the way there, a grey Cherokee cruising along the Interstate in front of us skipped along a pool of water, veered sharply to the right, and slammed into the railing. It came within inches of hitting us on the rebound.

Not a good start.

I flew out of Dayton to Chicago. At 1pm, I boarded my flight to Seoul. I had an entire row to myself and quickly made myself comfortable. At least, as comfortable as I could be. For as much as I like traveling and the idea of flying, I absolute hate the reality of it. The feeling of claustrophobia and immobility gets to me. Especially after 13 hours.

I made due. It was a flight full of turbulence, romantic comedies, brief rounds of Tony Hawk on the psp, and several crying babies. I didn’t sleep at all. Since we were heading west over the Alaska, we chased the sun, avoiding twilight.

By 5pm, I stepped off the plane into a different country. By 5:30pm cleared customs at Incheon International Airport. By 5:45pm, I boarded a bus. By 6:15, I was completely and hopelessly lost in a foreign city.

Memory and critical thinking skills tend to wane after being awake for nearly 24 hours. To the best of my knowledge, here is what happened: When I bought my bus ticket, I neglected to show the clerk the note my managers made for me. I needed to go to a city called Ilsan, with an I and an L, but when I told the clerk this, she must have heard Osan, which is a completely different city in the opposite direction of Ilsan.

One syllable nearly ruined me. Lesson? If you have a note, use it.

I knew I was on the wrong bus in minutes. Highway signs in Korea are in both Korean and English. Over time, I learned to view this as a blessing. That first day, though, it was a curse. A sign next to an onramp to a highway running north read Ilsan. The bus blazed by it, heading south.

Oh noes….

An hour later, I arrived in the wrong-syllabled city of Osan. I immediately went to the counter and asked for a ticket to Ilsan. The lady at the counter looked at me dryly. She raised her arms and crossed them in an x. No communication was really needed at this point. I knew it was bad.

“Ilsan, no,” she said.
“I need to get to Ilsan.”
“Ilsan, no.”

I called my manager on a payphone.
“Where are you?”
“I’m lost. I’m in Osan.”
“Ohhh…Osan is very far. Very far. You stay there for the night.”
“Incorrect. I’m coming there. Can you pick me up?”
“No, you stay in a hotel.”
“Absolutely not. I’m staying in my room tonight.”
“No.”

Psshhh…What a bitch.
I hung up the phone and devised a plan. My goal: Get to Ilsan before I passed out from exhaustion.

There wasn’t a bus back to Ilsan, but there was one to Seoul. I hitched a ride on one, then made it to the subway. This was easier said than done. The subway stop I chose was nearly three stories underground, which meant that I needed to lug my belongings down three flights of stairs.

I also needed to get my suitcases through the little tollbooths to get to the train. Since my brain wasn’t firing on all cylinders, I made the stupid mistake of passing through the tollbooth before I transferred my suitcases. When I found I couldn’t reach them to lift them over, I crawled back under the tollbooths and dragged them through. Several onlookers smirked in amusement before helping me out.

Lost? Check.
Exhausted? Yup.
Humiliated? O.M.G.

And this was only my first day. Pride goeth before a fall.

Nearly five hours after arriving in Korea, I made it to my city. Several people were there to greet me. When they asked me what happened, I just laughed and laughed and laughed.

“I just wanted to see the city,” I said.

They showed me my room. How things worked. I passed out on the bed in an exhausted stupor. In the morning, I tried cooking noodles in a dish dryer. I thought it was a microwave.

-------
And now, a random picture from a seven year old:

In the Tank

2009-05-12T12:14:00.001-07:00

Day 8

It’s been seven days since the giants left. Time takes on a different meaning without them here, without the regular cycles of food flaking down from the ceiling of our breath. Charlie says that the giants measure time in things called days. They measure it by this orange light that bleeds through the slit in a curtains. When that light arrives, it’s the start of the new day. Then it goes away before coming back again to begin the next day. I’ve watched this happen seven times. Our breath is getting cloudy and green in the corners. The cleaner has been silent since the giants left.

Day 9

Watch out for Herman, Charlie tells me. His eyes dart forward and back when he says this. We’re behind a rock when he tells me this.

Watch out for Herman, Charlie repeats again. He says he’s going to start eating us if the food doesn’t arrive soon.

When did he say this? He can’t do that!

A black shadow passes high overhead. Herman is up there, near the ceiling, cruising silently back and forth. He’s twice the size the rest of us, striped instead of a dull silver. He’s different, and everyone knows to be careful around him. He billows gently in the murky breath. His mouth is twice as wide as my head….

Stay away from Herman, Charlie says.

Okay.

Day 10

Cortez is missing.
He was older than most of us, with a line of scars raked across his left side. A chunk of his tail was gone, as well, so that when he swam it came in awkward leans and shuffles.
And now, he’s missing.
We look everywhere. Beneath the rocks. Inside the castle.
But he’s gone.

Of course he’s gone, Herman finally says. I ate him yesterday.

Panic nestles comfortably in the tank, and we can do nothing about it.

Day 11

Two more are gone. Lola and Ned.
We don’t even bother looking. Herman is bigger and healthier already. Our breath is thick now with waste. Nobody can see anything. Herman is a menace, a black mass of terror floating freely above the rocks while the rest of us quiver underneath and try to hide.

Day 15

Every time the orange light leaves, what’s left of us gathers in the castle. One of us keeps watch while the rest of us sleep. We’re all weak and famished. The food hasn’t fallen in so long. We all start to think maybe Herman was right.

Maybe, Charlie says. We should eat him.
His gold skin flushes with excitement before quickly draining away.

We all know we can do nothing.
We’re too weak.
We’re too small.

In the morning, everyone but me is gone.
Herman grows stronger.
I grow weaker.
The breath grows dirtier.
It’s just the way things are.

Day 16

The breath is so dirty I feel blind. I can feel it clog inside me and I try to take in as little as possible. I wedge myself as tightly as I can into an alcove of rocks and hope that Herman thinks we’re all gone.
His shadow roams back and forth like a spotlight. Every time it passes over me I stop breathing.
He doesn’t find me that day.

Day 17

The orange light rises through the curtains like it always do, except now it looks brown through the breath. I can’t go on much longer. I can’t breath, and Herman needs to eat. One of them is going to end me….

And then, a new brown light enters. A giant block of it bathes the tank as the giants open the door. They shuffle around aimlessly for a few minutes without noticing us.

Hey!, I scream. Over here! Save me! Save me!

But they can’t hear me.
Ages seem to pass. How can they not see? How can they not notice the devastation they’ve caused here?
Through the green haze, a smaller giant approaches. Yes! Yes! Finally! It taps the glass and our world shakes. Then it speaks. I can only make out a few words of their language.

I hear: Filter. Food. Hawaii. Forgot.

Then there is a rumble as the tank shakes violently again before settling into familiar rhythms. The cleaner is back on. Our breath begins to clear. In just a few minutes, I feel better. Lighter.

Then, flakes fall from the ceiling.
I’m so starved I don’t care about Herman anymore. I don’t care if he eats me. If I don’t eat, I’m dead anyway. I dart to the ceiling to gobble up the flakes.

Herman meets me there, staring at me menacingly while I eat.

You’re lucky they’re back, he says. Next time I eat you first.

There won’t be a next time, I say. The giants won’t forget us again.

Don’t be sure. Don’t be sure.

And I’m not. But I don’t tell that to Herman.

What Californians know about Canadians

2009-05-11T10:16:00.000-07:00

    If you’ve read my posts for any length of time, then you know that I work at a boy’s home for foster youth. If you know anything about these kinds of homes, then you also probably know that it would probably make the best reality show on television. If not, then read this, and be enlightened.

    Our newest episode took place over the weekend. We started the day with an hour in a gym. They graciously let us in for free, and we make the most of our time. 20 minutes on treadmills, 30 minutes on weight machines, and 10 minutes in the steam room, where we all ponder how long it takes for steam to boil bronchioles.

    After that, we went to get some bottled fruit water from a grocery store. While listening to the angry yodeling of Alanis Morissette (yes, we totally roll like that), the following conversation happened:

    Kid A: I don’t like her voice. It sounds weird.
    Kid B: She can’t help it.
    Kid A: Why not?
    Kid B: Because she’s Canadian.

    Me: Really? So all Canadians talk like that? What else do you know about Canadians?

    Kid B: They have mustaches and drink a lot.
    Kid A: And they like to fight.

    Me: Really? They do?

    (Please note: Kid A plays Monopoly against himself on a regular basis and once attempted to wrestle the 5th ranked sumo wrestler in the world. No wordplay there. It really happened.)

    Kid A: Yeah, they’re good fighters.
    Me: Yeah? So if we were ever invaded by Canadians, what would you do?
    Kid A: That would be bad. I don’t know what I’d do.
    Kid B: You’d probably die.
    Kid A: We all would.
    Kid B: Yeah, they have those special syrup bullets.
    Kid A: Yeah. They have those.

    And just, at that moment, the track switched to “Ironic.”
    I thought it fitting.

The Best Reality Show You'll Never See

2009-05-11T09:48:00.000-07:00

I'm still posting some older posts her to beef up the content. If you've seen this before, carry on. If not, hey, what's up?

I always chuckle a bit when I tell people I work with orphaned kids and they say, “Oh, I would love to work with kids. It must be sooo fun!” Ha! Here’s the deal. Children of all backgrounds are not nearly as sweet as people make them out to be. They’re inherently selfish, greedy, inconsiderate of others and generally evil. Stamping out these problems and making children less inherently evil is what’s referred to in society as ‘parenting.’

Orphans don’t get this luxury.

Jesus tells us all to take care of the orphans, but I think most people are wrong in assuming he’s saying this as a nice, calm sentiment. It was probably more like “Please! If you have any love in your heart for your fellow man, take care of the orphans. Good Lord, take care of the orphans. Because if you don’t, they will rip you apart limb from limb and then use your spleen to flavor a bag of flaming hot cheetos.”

I was totally listening, Jesus.

I work with 6 teenagers getting ready to emancipate, which basically means they leave residential treatment and head out into that big world on their own, as prepared as we can make them. I humbly submit that watching this all go down would be the best reality tv show in all the land.

It would be a bit like Jon and Kate plus 8, except replace 8 relatively normal toddlers with 6 sexually charged teenage orphans with poor social skills and remove Jon and Kate and install a perpetually calm and patient team of workers that never gets rattled despite the constant barrage of temper tantrums, sentences laced with ‘fuck’ used as every part of speech, and suicide threats.

It would be like the Real World sans perpetual douchebags and replaced with potential douchebags who we're trying to help not become perpetual douchebags.

Now, the thing is, for all the bad times we have at work, there are also equally poignant times were you really see a light flicker on in someone’s head and they begin to get it. These moments make it all worth it.

Which would make watching on tv worth it as well, because you always want your characters to grow in a story, whether those characters are real or not. And boy howdy, are they characters. Take a gander at a few of these gems:

-----

While talking about a school project:

kid 1: I need to do a report on saints. Is Don Quijote a saint?
me: no.
kid 1: I know who I'm going to pick. Obi-wan Kenobi.
me: you can't do that.
kid 1: Why not?
me: Two reasons. One the Catholic Church has not recognized Obi-Wan Kenobi as a saint, and two, he's not real.
kid 1: So? Neither was Don Quijote.
me: He wasn't a saint either, dude.
kid 1: Whatever. Shows how much you know.
kid 2: (eavesdropping, sweeping the floor) Wait. Don Quijote was in Star Wars?

------

At the Getty, all of us in a room full of Greek statues. Kid stops in front of a statue:

Kid: Wait. Wait. I know who this is. Don’t tell me.
Me: Okay.
Kid: (scratching his head.) It’s um…um…HERPES. There it is. HERPES.

(everyone in the room turns to give a curious stare. Kid knows he said something wrong.)

Me: (walking away laughing) It’s Hermes, man. Hermes.

-----

While driving a kid to school:

Kid: It’s really windy today. Think we might get a hurricane.
Me: We don’t get hurricanes in Los Angeles. Just the east coast.
Kid: Really?
Me: Yeah. They come in from Africa and hit the Gulf of Mexico.
Kid: Like the one that hit New Orleans.
Me: Yup. Sometimes they hit Florida too.
Kid: I thought Florida was in New Orleans. Isn’t it?

(me shaking my head, silently criticizing curriculum taught in California geography classes.)

-----

While having a conversation about acronyms:

Me: Okay. What does NBA stand for?
Kid 1: National Basketball Association.
Me: LAX.
Kid 2: Los Angeles International Airport.
Me: FBI
(long pauses)
Kid 1: Um….Federal….Bupartment……
Me: Bupartment isn’t a word. Try this one. Nascar.
Kid 2: National Ass Car

(me and coworker snorting up enchiladas for the next five minutes until kid finally gets what he said.)

----

See. How can you go wrong with National Ass Car?

Or, for that matter, how can you go wrong with incredibly articulate kids who are trying their best to succeed with the bum hand they’ve been given?

Answer: You can’t.

Unfortunately, you really can’t find out because this would never happen. There are way too many legal hoops to jump through to get kids in the system in front of a camera, and sadly, the State of California would never allow it to happen. Too many privacy laws and potential lawsuits from gold digging parents.

Maybe in a perfect world….but then, in a perfect world, this would never exist.

Big Pimpin'

2009-05-08T21:49:00.001-07:00

Hey kiddios,

My seventh article is up in discounderworld.
This one is actually a reprint of my Supreme and the Rand McNally's, but it's all prettified with some pictures I took many moons ago.
Anyway, go support me. And get the word out. This issue is awesome. How awesome? It has macro shots of cupcakes for a cover. Yes. THAT awesome.

More exposure can only help a fledgling magazine full of starving artists. Help us out, yeah?

Oh, my words and pictures start on page 36.

Notes on the Celtics Magic...or Magic Celtics

2009-05-07T21:04:00.001-07:00

-That’s fun to say either way. Magic Celtics or Celtics Magic. The fact that Magic is singular definitely weakens their potential, since either way you say their names, Magic plays second fiddle to Celtics since it’s an adjective that describes the noun next to it.
The NBA…where amazing (grammar) happens!

- The Celtics are a team of cartoon characters. For all his otherworldly quickness, Rajon Rondo still can’t escape the fact that he looks like an uber-buff oompa loompa. Kendrick Perkins looks like an angry smurf with less blue and more goatee. And Scalabrine…I really think he’s that fat kid from the Sandlot all growed up. You know? The one that kept saying “You’re killing me, Smalls!” Yeah. Him.

-The Magic don’t have quite the same allure in their personalities, but they do have JJ Reddick. The best I can say about JJ is that I don’t hate him, which is actually saying a lot since he’s a Dukie and writes poetry.

I’m really confused, because according to perfectly grounded logic, I should loathe the guy. But I don’t. Weird.

Also, I’m pretty sure I’ve seen Marcin Gortat in Conan the Barbarian, or some variation of that.

-On the other hand, I do sort of hate Reggie Miller. He’s a terrible announcer. Not to mention lame and incredibly annoying. His one saving grace is the verbal diarrhea he inevitably craps all over the microphone. For example, this is Reggie commenting on the versatility of Reddick: “The guy knows he can compete. He can shoot…you’re not going to outwork him.” Nice list there, Reggie. Next time know who you’re talking about before you try to say multiple things about them. Everyone, even you, knows that the only thing Reddick can do is shoot.

-As far as actual analysis goes, the Celtics have this one wrapped up. That’s because even though Orlando has better talent and depth than Boston, they had the chance to knock them out in the second quarter in game 2. Instead of going in for the kill, they allowed the Celtics to stick around. They settled for jump shots instead of giving the ball to Dwight Howard. They let Eddie House rain three’s from the fourth row. They, and by they I mean defensive player of the year Howard and Rashard Lewis, let a six foot tall Oompa Loompa drive down the middle of the lane and dunk on them. They let all this happen, and in so doing, they let the Celtics back in the series. These sorts of things come back to haunt teams.

Watch out. Celtics in 6.

-Let’s take this out with some Sager:

Cornrows are black people mullets

2009-05-06T15:25:00.001-07:00

First off, because this is “serious business”, the internet demands that I properly label myself before someone else decides to do so for me. So, in no particular order, I am:

a. White
b. Middle class
c. Male
d. Rockin’ the suburbs
e. Racist
f. Ignorant

But, I’m also right about the comparison.

Not that the mullet and the cornrow are the same thing, but they perform the same function. They are easily recognizable hairstyles that say something distinct yet unfairly general about the person that wears them.

It’s all about image.

Unless you’re Japanese, people who have the moxy to style their hair into a Kentucky Waterfall know full well the image they portray. It’s one of tailgatin’, NASCAR watchin’, Achy Breaky Heartin’, and Git’R’Dun…in’….

There is no you might be a redneck about it. If you have a mullet, by default you ARE a redneck. At least, that’s what the image association tells people. This isn’t the 80’s anymore, and Mel Gibson is not making Lethal Weapon 5 anytime soon.

Likewise, the cornrow has moved past its prime.
For years, it was the defacto ‘do of choice for a number of high quality NBA players, including superstars Carmelo Anthony and Allen Iverson. Both recently shaved them off. They made overtures to some PR gobbedlygook that they were dedicating themselves to a “fresh start”, but everyone knows the truth.

Being a thug, or at least looking like one, is no longer fashionable. And like it or not, cornrows are the coiffure of choice for thugs and gangsters Or, at least, that’s the prevalent image, and with our obsession with image, isn’t this the truth then?

Call it a perfect storm of the emerging black middle class with two parent families, Obama and wholesome and fashionable young black athletes like Lebron James, Dwight Howard and Dwayne Wade, but it’s true. The status quo is changing.

Whether or not the association is fair, it does exist. Just like people with mullets are sometimes unfairly stereotyped, the same thing happens with people with cornrows. The extent of this image association is so strong that my supervisor will not allow any of the boys in our house to wear them.

And they pout.
And they whine.
But you know what? She’s right.
Cornrows aren’t going to help you getting a job down at Kukuroo’s or Souplantation. That’s for sure.

And if all that doesn’t convince you that cornrows are no longer the bee’s knees, this picture should do it. K Fed DEMANDS it.

Rockets-Lakers MUST go 7

2009-05-05T11:37:00.000-07:00

Never mind that the Bulls and Celtics just gave us one of the most epic playoff series ever. Normally, the excitement contained within those 7 games pitting two point guards going at each other like two high-powered go karts on an oil-slick track and a whole mess of other interesting match-ups would satisfy the drama quota for the entire playoffs. Not so this year.

Rockets-Lakers has the potential to be even better.
Start with the match-ups. Like it or not Lakers fans, the starting five for the spacemen matches up pretty well with your boys. Ron Artest is one of the few players in the league that can guard Kobe. Yao Ming is just as, if not more, effective offensively than either Gasol or Bynum. Shane Battier is the epitome of oxymoron: A Dukie who actually plays tough defense. And Derek Fisher can’t stay in front of Aaron Brooks.

In other words: Los Angeles, you have a problem.
Minus Knee-Mac, this Houston team is tough, stubborn and scrappy. In a way, they’re the Anti-Lakers. Let’s be honest: Pau Gasol’s beard is the only thing tough or gritty about him, and if nobody can stop Yao Ming, the Rockets stand a good chance of making it to the conference finals.

I’m not sure if I want them to do that, though.
On the one hand, I do like the way Houston plays. And more games equals more air time, which in turns equals more time for RonRon to say or do ridiculous things on national television. Honestly, that’s the main reason I want to see them advance. The more Ron Artest plays, the greater chance there is that something inside him snaps and he does something crazy.

Like shave swastikas into his Mohawk.
Like biting someone’s finger off.
The NBA. Where amazing happens.

Still, Los Angeles has their own healthy heaping of crazy in the form of Sasha Vujacic. The self-proclaimed Machine is easily the most hated Eastern European player in the league, in part because he’s obnoxious, but also…no wait. It’s mostly because he’s obnoxious.
But the same equation that helps Ron Artest helps Sasha. That’s because the more playoff games he gets in, the better chance we have that more Machine videos hit Youtube. If you haven’t seen any of these, do yourself a favor:

Please. Please. Please.
Go 7.

Hanguk Halloween

2009-05-04T23:28:00.001-07:00

Since so many of you enjoyed my last time-warp entry from two years ago, I've decided to revisit Korea again. At least digitally. I blogged a lot about it then, and took copious amounts of pictures. Most of you weren't around when I did that, though, and since no one ever goes past the first page of person's blog anyway, I am just going to timestamp these little numbers for your enjoyment. Some of this is new. Most is old. Enjoy

October 31 was just another day in Korea, but my hagwon, stockpiled with foreigners from other lands, October 28 just so happened to be Halloween.

Kindergarten was there everyday from 10-2. The hype machine for this grand gala of westerndom had been building steam for close to a month. All of them came decked out. One kid told me he was gonna be bacteria, but something was apparently lost in the translation because he came as some manga character. (Whose name, I learned later, sounded like bacteria.) That kid's English name was Hank, and he's in the middle with the pitchfork. I am second from left, behind a very confused Superman.

Superman was Tommy.
Tommy lived in Tommyland. He spoke only Tommy, and was obsessed with drawing dolphins every day in class. The one problem with this was that he didn't know what a dolphin looked like, and continually asked me to draw them for him. Oh Tommy....

Below is Tommy having his turn at pin-the-candle on the jack o'lantern. Notice how no one is anywhere near him because he has a sharp object in his hand.

This was sort of a daily ordeal for us, but without capes or blindfolds. It didn't make it any less scary.

Because he lived in Tommyland so much, the other kids treated him as a bit of an outcast. This picture always makes me a bit sad for the guy. I saw strides in his social education in my year there. He did come around to befriending other kids by the time I left. I hope he's doing well now.

Paperbagkid is Harry. I told him about Frankenstein the day before, and since costume selections in Korean stores were limited to a paltry selection of witches hats and scream masks, the boy improvised. The judges gave him a 6.0 based on effort. He got a piece of candy corn or something.

I didn't teach Kindergartners all the time. I taught older kids as well. None of these pictures below have anything to do with Halloween, but I thought they were interesting. Of particular note here is the middle kid's name. He went by Dragon. Yes. Dragon. Think about how badass that is. For perspective, think about how Korea is a conformist society to the extreme, and everything anyone every considers is weighed against one very important question: Will I stand out for doing this?

In Korea, it's extremely important to most people to answer this question with a resounding "No, no, no. I'm just like everyone else." Don't believe all that stuff you see about the crazy fashions and crazy hair. First, you're confused. That's Japan. Second, as crazy as Koreans can get in their fashion sense, it's never about individual style. All the guys wear the same metrosexual shags on their heads. All the girls carry around the same loud purses that pull double duty as bowling bags.

If anyone does actually stand out, if anyone answers with something like "Hell yes I'm different! My name is effin' Dragon!", then usually that person does everything they can to change it to a "No, I'm not different." by changing their name to a more normal, standardized moniker like David or John or Jennifer. Standing out is not looked highly upon by others.

But, dude! His name was Dragon! Do you think he cares what other people think of him?
Coincidentally, he was one of my favorite students. Other favorites included a kid who named himself "Power" after the Power Rangers and a girl named "Snow White."

Anyway, back to the pictures:

Ah, those intent gazes. The dumfounded awe. The focus. THE FOCUS. I was just that awesome of a teacher!
The hackysack is hanging in the air just outside the frame.

No comment. They like limbo. I like the photo.

Same for this one. I like the depth of field and repetition.

---

Again, like I said, there is much more to come. This was all from my first month there. As time progressed, I got to know the culture much more intimately and my experience bears that out. I also got a kick-ass new camera about halfway through my time there. You'll notice a significant bump in photo quality in a few posts.

A bit of advice for all future teachers

2009-05-04T13:37:00.000-07:00

Older post ahead:
I figured I'd add it here because I'm moving as much content as I can over here.

A little over two years ago, I returned to America after a year of teaching ESL in South Korea. It was a wonderful time. I have so many awesome memories, and would recommend the experience to anyone so long as they can stomach eternally spicy food, crowds of people with no sense of personal space who won't hesitate to rest their head on your shoulders for a quick nap on the subway, and children.

Lots and lots of children.

And not just any children. I speak of the unspeakable. You will have to teach the worst, the most savage of them all. The ones that will eat you alive, starting with your kneecaps, if you don't entertain them for 45 minutes straight. The ones that will rip you apart limb from limb if you don't show them a Powerpuff Girls cartoon every other day.

I am, of course, speaking of kindergartners.

While they are a vicious bunch, don't be scared. You can tame them. They have bendable, malleable, and yes, gullible minds. Learn to lie. A lot.

It's well known within my circles that I have a deceptive tongue. Ask anyone who has played Mafia with me. I excel at lying. It's one of my best qualities. So when my employers lied to me about the fact that I wouldn't be teaching kindergarten (when, in fact, I was), naturally I unleashed the full bront of my revenge on my pack of pupils.

They never knew what hit them.

When they asked me how old I was, I told them I was 65. When they pressed me further, I told them that people in America aged slower than people in Korea. Plus, we had better plastic surgery. My Korean co-teacher backed me up.

When they asked me about my home, I told them I was an alien.
'Teacher!' they said. 'You're not an alien!'
'Wanna bet?' I replied, proudly flashing my Korean id card, with the words 'National Alien Registration Card' written prominently across the top in English. Their mouths dropped to the floor.

When they asked if I liked Harry Potter, I told them I was Harry Potter.
Since I'm white, thin, and have hair, they believed this without question. I told them I forgot my wand on my spaceship back in America. They also believed this, because they were six.

And somehow, despite all the deception, over time they came to love me. They answered to my every beck and call. Here are some samples of their complete and total admiration of their jackal of a teacher:

Here's me. Apparently, my hair grew so fro-ey that at some point it gained the ability to refract light. Or that could just be the ultraviolet radiating out from my oompa-loompa tan.

Here, I'm able to send psychic messages through rainbows to make girls fall in love with me. Oh, and my left hand is liquid metal and can morph into sharp objects, just like the t1000 in Terminator 2.

The korean in the middle reads science. The kids loved the days we had science. Who wouldn't love building paper airplanes, testing out magnets, or roasting small children inside of mushrooms?

That, my friends, is a rocket. Inside is me (complete with unofficial korean name Cheolsu), rocketing back to my homeworld.

Here's me again, as Cheolsu, tending to my pet unicorn back on Mars.

See what happens? White lies never hurt nobody. In fact, they actually helped. My kids learned more english through deception then most learned the normal, namby-pamby way. Seriously, why teach colors when you can talk about how awesome it is to have six arms hidden under your shirt?

Why Swine Flu Scares Me

2009-04-30T20:46:00.001-07:00

Honestly, if it were just an isolated incident, I don’t think the specter of swine flu would really get my knees a’knockin’ too much.
    At best, it will probably be limited to relatively small areas of the world.
    At worst, people panic and end up making pigs extinct.
    Which is good, because those pigs…if we let them get a foothold, they will end us. Don’t believe me? Watch the History Channel.

    With no other factors, swine flu doesn’t scare me very much.
    So why am I absolutely terror-fied?
    Well, I guess writing a novel where a super engineered super virus named after a beloved Disney character wipes out virtually the entire human species by melting their lungs away in tiny jello-ed giblets has something to do with all that.

    But no no..It isn’t just the weird coincidence that people are scared of an outbreak at almost the exact same time where the virus in my book happens to break out.

    Consider this: I went back home to Kentucky this week. For one night before a friend’s wedding, I stayed in downtown Louisville at this swanky hotel called the Galt House. Nothing much wrong with that, right?

    Wrong.
    That’s because the Galt House is ALSO in my book. My hero is wandering across the country looking for survivors when he stops in Louisville and decides to start a signal fire on top of the hotel in case people are around.

    So, on Saturday morning, I spent a good three hours wandering around the hotel doing book research. Making sure things were where I said they would be and such. Honestly, though, I was trying to fight a creeping premonition that gets to the bottom of why this whole swine flu thing freaks me out.

    Swine flu...Galt House in Louisville….Seriously, what if I’m not writing fiction?
    What if….What if I’m writing THE FUTURE?

    If that’s the case, you should be really, really scared.

This is the terror you should be feeling.

!!That's CAPTAIN Dumbass to you!!!

2009-04-28T21:49:00.000-07:00

You ever have those times when every pore on your skin instantly breaks out in a deluge of sweat brought on by a combination of fear, nausea and anger at your own stupidity? I have. I remember every single time this ever happened so vividly I almost break out in a second deluge of sweat just thinking about them.

The first time was when I got on the wrong bus coming back from a field trip to the zoo and went to a different school.

The second time was when I got on the bus to the wrong city when I landed in Korea.

The third time was today.
Now, I try to hide it amidst a mask of competence of common sense and careful planning, but sometimes the weird, flighty and utterly moronic side of me just pops up unexpectedly. I’m like Dr. Woodruff and Mr. Dumbass, and when Mr. Dumbass gets his grubby, maddeningly retarded hands on my flight itinerary, he mistakes Tuesday for Monday and ends up missing his flight.

Notice a theme here?

Just so you know, my palm is now officially tattooed into the creases of my forehead.

I know.
I know.
Why didn’t I double check the itinerary?
Dr. Woodruff, that’s the me that usually runs the show, probably did. This doesn’t matter, however, because Mr. Dumbass always likes to show up at the absolute worst times.
Like, for instance, AFTER you catch a quick little flight to Louisville from Cincinnati because Cincinnati is closer to your house and your brother works for Delta and can fly you there for next to nothing.

Mr. Dumbass? Show some respect! You’re talking to CAPTAIN Dumbass now.

So, anyway, to make a long, agonizing story short, I lucked out because my brother does work for Delta. He was able to get me on a flight back to Los Angeles. The absolutely hilarious thing about this was that I needed to wait two hours in Louisville before boarding a flight BACK to Cincinnati before heading off to Los Angeles.

All in all, this all seemed like a fitting end to a strange weekend. I’ll get back to that one later.

The Last of My Kind

2009-04-22T23:50:00.000-07:00

    I’m heading back home to Kentucky for a friend’s wedding this weekend. So far, it’s been a stressful week.

    I’ve spent a healthy chunk of tax rebate change on airplane tickets and a suit. Spending money in large quantities under normal circumstances….well, nevermind. That has NEVER been normal for me, mostly because circumstances have never allowed me to have large sums of money at my disposal. There was that one time when I got my pension back from the Korean government. I promptly dropped some heavy coin on a bunch of used Gamecube games and a bike. BIG SPENDER.

    So anyway, spending a lot of money at once stresses me out because I need to pay for classes. That’s one large sum of money. Buying tickets and a suit is another large sum. Spending two large sums of money only heightens the tension.
    But that’s not really what’s getting at me.

    See, going back is going to be like a five-year college reunion for me.
    And I’ll be one of the few going in single.

    I know, I know, there’s the whole “road less traveled” angle, and while that does give me some reassurance, it’s kind of weird knowing that most of my friends from high school, and now college, are settling down. Besides, traveling down roads less traveled is way less romantic than it sounds. Particularly when exactly NOBODY has been on the same road as you. And you keep getting your elbows stuck on….Damn it! What the hell! Why are there briars on the road!?! Oh yeah! That’s because this road is less traveled…
    See, veering off the beaten path loses mystique when you have to keep dousing scratches in hydrogen peroxide.
    That’s that, I guess.

    Strange thing, though. It should be unnerving and worrying that I’m heading off to this unknown territory alone while all my friends are settling down, but I don’t feel that way.
    I really feel okay. It’s like…you know how some people go and see the Grand Canyon and then get all freaked out by the size of it and then run back to their car. I’m not that person. I’m the guy who’s kind of scared of heights but walks up the edge anyway to get its measure, sees the big damn hole in front of him, and then feels calmer because he can see the bottom.
    That’s how it is. I feel calmer because I can see the bottom.
    I really don’t know if any of this makes sense. Does it?
    I need to go change my laundry.

    Also, watch this and smile:

Supreme and the Rand McNally's

2009-04-21T14:20:00.000-07:00

    When I step out of my car, my bones crack like dried licorice. Inside, it smells like sweaty faux leather and peppery trail mix. Outside, it smells like things that are new to me: ten lane freeways, palm trees, chaparral, and a man with ashy hands and a black wool fedora.
    “Hey man,” he says to me. “That’s a nice car.”
    “Thanks.”
    “You new in the building man?”
    “That’s right.”
    “Where you from man?”
    “Kentucky?”
    “Well, if you need anything, let me know Kentucky. My name’s Supreme.”
    Supreme then walks to the elevator, his hand wrapped tightly around a woman’s leopard skinned waist so that the edges of his fingers fall right on the swell of her hips. He calls her baby.
    The whole next day, I’m just laughing to myself about the odd encounter. I have a knack for these sort of things, and somehow, after three days of the most memorable road trip I’ve ever done, I find it perfectly fitting that the first person I met when I arrived in California was a pimp named Supreme, who lived in my apartment complex.

    So let’s backtrack a little, because even though this was the beginning of a new chapter, it’s also the end of a previous one.

    I moved to Los Angeles in the fall of 2003 to attend school.
    From my house in Kentucky, it was over 2500 miles across 9 states to the west coast. That’s three solid days of driving. I packed my little Dodge Stealth full of suitcases and televisions and Harry Potter books crammed up underneath the seats. Inside, there isn’t much room for me and my traveling buddy.

    We start off smoothly, breezing across the rolling hills of Indiana, Illinois and Missouri before hitting into the flat plains of Kansas. Things go normally. We talk and do our best to pass the time. We memorize the state rankings for size and population according to a Rand McNally atlas. Even now, I still remember that Missouri is ranked 17th in population according to the 2000 census. This was all on the first day.

    On the second day, we take off through Kansas and Colorado. It’s a study of contrast in terrains. Sprawling horizons and ragged mountain peaks. The one common ingredient is the size, the vastness of places that stretch your eyes. I hadn’t seen anything like it. The eastern seaboard isn’t like this. It’s…scrunchy and blocked by hills that don’t add anything to the view except blocking it.



    We roll through Denver during early evening, and then into the Rockies. A storm rolls in, and we rocket through the interstate passes, cracking up peaks and diving into valleys. I feel like I’m driving a roller coaster, or riding along the back of a dragon.
    We pass through the Eisenhower tunnel. When we come out the other side, the radio crackles nervously. There’s a sizzle, and then the whole sky turns white. For a second, I can’t see a thing.
    “Dude,” my friend says. “Was that lightning?”
    “Yeah,” I say. “I think we were inside a cloud.”
    And then we get stuck in a tiny town called Eagle, Colorado. There’s a mudslide up ahead and no way the road is cleared until morning.
    Okay, we say. This is good a place to stop as any. There are plenty of hotels around.
    Except, there are no rooms. That’s because the tiny town of Eagle, Colorado, usually just a tiny town in the mountains, happens to be the same tiny town where Kobe Bryant allegedly raped a girl earlier in the summer. And so, it happens to be the same tiny town where a media swarm has descended to cover the ongoing trial.
    Hence, no rooms.



    We sleep in the car, and start out in the morning. We stop by the Hoover Dam and Las Vegas. We roll into Caesar’s Palace through the back entrance, back where the old ladies with fat rolls over their elbows stare vacantly at slot machines and hope for their lucky 7’s. I drop a quarter, lose a game, and then get back on the road.

    It’s six hours before we get into Pasadena and meet Supreme.
    I’m tired and fatigued from driving for nearly 16 hours, yet me and my friend decide to walk around town. We’re amazed by the sight of palm trees. Neither one of us have ever seen the tall kind that pocket Los Angeles. They look like something out of a Dr. Seuss book. They can’t be real.
    This can’t be real…
    Did I really just meet a pimp?
    Did I really just travel thousands of miles across the country?
    There’s something strange, yet familiar, about the whole thing. California is completely different than Kentucky, yet it’s connected in a way I can’t quite place. Even though everything looks completely different, there’s something...intimate about stepping into my car at home and then stepping out of the same car so many miles away.
    And it leaves me inspired. So inspired, that about two years later, I will start working on a book that draws directly from those three days. The vastness of the countryside, the openness of the road, and the weirdness of the people you meet on it.
    It’s not every day you meet a pimp.
    Especially on your first day in California.

So, I'm finished!!!...now what?

2009-04-20T10:13:00.000-07:00

    I sent in the latest revision this morning. Now, on my off days of Monday and Tuesday, there’s a gaping hole of unused time where my imagination used to roam. This is dangerous territory for me, since without something to temper and focus my brain, things can get dicey.
    On that note, it’s probably good I’m a dirt poor grad student because if I had money at my disposal, I’d spend my days shooting arrows at the sun like that guy who invents silent Velcro in Garden State.
    So what do I do with my free time. Hmmm….I have some ideas.

    *I need to buy a suit because I’m going to a friend's wedding back home in Kentucky next week. I own a suit but it’s not the right color, so yeah…there goes my tax rebate money.
    I’m more of a thrift store t-shirt kind of guy, but my normal, slip-on vans with semi-skinny jeans looks masks an important truth about me. I know how to dress, and I like dressing up when the situation is appropriate.

    This is important for you to know, future girl I will marry who I don’t think I’ve met yet. Or, for brevity’s sake, FGIWMWIDTIMY. I mean, you probably already know this, which is why you never take me shopping so you can play dress up with me like I’m some sort of overgrown Ken doll. Or why you don’t object when I wear a seersucker suit to our wedding.

    I love you, FGIWM.

    *I can now catch up on all the television shows people tell me I should watch but didn’t have time to watch before. This includes the latest season of LOST, which I’ve totally ignored because all the plot twists, coupled with trying to create my own, could have caused my brain to explode; Heroes; Terminator: The Sarah Conner Chronicles: and pretty much every show on History Channel, including Life Without People, which is basically my book without a story.

    *I also now have a chance to catch up on photography. Many moons ago, my blog used to be almost exclusively devoted to photos. There may be more of that in the near future.

    *Research for new ideas for stories will take place. At least one full day will be spent observing gorillas and chimpanzees at the LA Zoo. If you’ve never done this, you owe it to yourself to catch the chimps in their “penthouse.” Seriously, it’s total gang warfare in a jungle gym.

    *And with that, here’s a short list of music on my ipod that I currently enjoy. I’m OVERJOYED WITH JOYFUL JOY that the Silversun Pickups new album demonstrates they are not a one-hit wonder.

P.S. If anyone has any suggestions for free or cheap things to do around LA, hit me up.

So you want to write a book, do you?

2009-04-14T22:47:00.000-07:00

Today was a very emotional day for me. And I normally never do this, but I’m going to talk about that emotional day. So just a heads up, because around my e-neck of the woods, delving into personal matters, like you know, emotions and stuff, is rarer than whatever is rarer than a blue moon.
Confused yet?
Yup, that’s an emotion. I felt that today!
I also felt happiness and pride and contentment. That’s because I put the finishing touches on the latest revision of my manuscript. And I should feel proud. I’ve spent 4 hard years of my life on this project, and only now is it starting to emerge as something commercially and professionally viable.
But then, I thought about that 4 years part, and felt a whole host of other things.
I felt sadness because I’ve sacrificed so many other things to work on my dream. I felt shame because I did that. And then I felt anger because I felt shame when I should have been feeling happy.
This has taken a lot out of me. I’m a very different person than I was 4 years ago. Obviously, I’m older and wiser in that worldly sort of way, but something inside has changed. I can’t quite describe what that is, and I know that’s a bad thing for a writer to say, but that’s it. I don’t know.
You know how all those movies that talk about the movie making process inevitably mention that aboriginal belief about a photograph taking a part of your soul? I think there’s a writing equivalent. Part of me is etched into a .doc file and I can never get it back. Soon, it will be out there. Read by lots and lots of people. And while I’m proud of that, a part of me, the forlorn part occupying the edges of the part that’s missing, will always yearn to have that piece back.

The bottom line is simple.
If you want to write a book, go into it knowing full well that it will break your heart.
And especially don’t write a book dealing with the end of the world. That will break your mind.

Okay, well…I’m off to do some outline notes on my next project. An immortal man who decides to become an organ donor.

Spring Break and Naming Korean Babies

2009-04-07T22:43:00.001-07:00

So this week is Spring Break for my guys.
Woohoo! Yeah! Spring Break!
Chug!
Chug!
Chu…

Okay, so it’s not that kind of spring break. That’s because:

a)    I’d get fired.
b)    They’re teenagers.
c)    We don’t have any money.

C requires that I get creative, because even though we can’t have boozapaloozas every night of the week down in mangy dog streets of Tijuana, I still need to find something fun to do.

Take today for instance. The first Tuesday of every month is free admission day at the LA County Museum of History.

Just getting there is a field trip in itself. Coming from the relatively calm streets of the valley, descending into the snarled intersections around downtown Los Angeles and USC in a suburban is an experience.

And you’d think that spending a few hours in the museum with teenagers who don’t want to be there can be boring, but…No wait, it kind of is boring, but it’s still something to do besides watching reruns of COPS all morning.

Besides, any trip to the museum with me instantly becomes an extraordinary trip to the museum. Halls filled with fossils and dead birds is the perfect breeding ground for the kind of scattershot wit I excel at.

Take the gem gallery, for instance. Looking at tiny glass displays of quartz, amethyst and spinels for a half hour can take awhile, but the time goes faster when you start talking like the merchant from Resident Evil 4.

Ah…I’ll buy it a high price…

For everyone who’s played that game, you know you would have done the same thing the instant you saw spinels and cats eyes on display. For everyone who hasn’t played it, watch the following video. That was pretty much what I did for thirty minutes.

You know what, though? They had a good time.

Which is good, because they’re on break. Unfortunately, I cannot say the same. Not only do I have to work ten days in a row, but I also had class tonight.

It went well, but the best moment of the entire three hours came within five minutes after class started. That’s because my “buddy,” a classmate who sits next to me at every session, recently became a father. That’s good news, of course, but here’s the really awesome thing.

See, my buddy is Korean. Last week, he asked me for advice on what to name his daughter when she was born. He had four names picked out. Angelina, Esther, Christine and Grace.

Here’s the thing. Those are all lovely names, except pretty much every Korean girl I know is named Esther, Christine or Grace and they all hate having the same name as everyone else. There’s even a documentary about this. No exaggeration. I understand why this is the case (Koreans like Biblical names that don’t stand out at all.), but it never really made sense. None of them can even be properly pronounced in Korean. Esther sounds like Es-tuh. Christine becomes Kuh-ris-teen. Grace = Gray-shi.

So I told him to name her Angelina. And he did.
Good man.

New Article is UP!

2009-04-06T18:02:00.001-07:00

Hey everyone,

I wrote another article. You can check it out here.
Click on the picture and away you go. My contribution starts on page 41, which isn't actually a page but just a series of 1's and 0's

Which is ironic, because this month's issue is all about print publications. So, as per usual, I attack the subject with a multi-pronged rant concerning libraries, hobos and my hatred for the Kindle.

Enjoy.
Mike

P.S. I'm going to start writing for a video game magazine soon. More info when it becomes available.

Adventures on Porcelain

2009-04-05T20:54:00.000-07:00

    So my legs fell asleep again the other day when I was on the toilet. I say again because this happens frequently, and also because I have the nagging suspicion I’ve written about this before.

    Anyway, it happened.
    Usually, I’m not a long-term squatter. I get in there, do my business and get out. If I decide to relax, then I have a set time limit, a “point of no return” before the vacuum of the toilet ring cuts off ALL circulation to my lower extremities. If I go past that time limit, I can’t stand up. It’s not pretty. I have to grab the towel bar and pull myself off the bowl like an amputee getting out of a wheelchair. Then it takes about ten minutes of stabbing pins and needles before I can walk out the door.

    So, as you can imagine, I keep below that time limit with astonishing regularity. The rare exceptions are when I get really invested in a book or a DS game. Professor Layton and the Curious Village did a number on me. So did World War Z.

    The other day, and you have to remember I have a voracious appetite for books, my ass fell asleep while reading a Nicholas Sparks book.

    If you laugh, wait fifteen minutes and then, after I shake the numbness from my toes loose, I will berate you online for not respecting my feminine sensibilities.

    And yes, I sometime blog while dropping a deuce.

Part three of the one where Mike describes his life in the dorkiest terms imaginable

2009-04-02T09:09:00.001-07:00

The Triforce of Power

    The last two segments of this series, I talked about work and school. Two very important strands of my life that I’m struggling to figure out how they fit together. The thing is, if it were just those two strands, things would be fairly easy. But it’s not just those two things. There’s a third thing moving along right now. Last time I called it a game changer.

    That’s because I’m a writer.
    By that, I don’t mean I just love to write down my thoughts. I’m not talking about blogging. I’m not talking about making all these flighty statements about the power of words. I’m not the kind of guy that has quill pens and typewriters as my avatar on message boards.

    I mean, I’m a professional writer.
    Although it’s far from being published, I wrote a novel. An extremely kick ass novel that is far more than just a bunch of nebulous ideas in my head. It’s done. It’s finished. It’s 96,000 words of post-apocalyptic awesomeness.

    The book is called The Spanish Mar. It’s about a boy named Mar who survives an epidemic that annihilates humanity. He takes part in an experiment to save the species and is cryogenically preserved to wake up a few years down the road. Turns out, a few years turns into a hundred, and the world he emerges into is vastly different then the one he left. Cities are forests. Grizzly bears take refuge in underground parking garages. And no one is left. Or so he thinks…

    I know, I know. The post-apocalyptic genre is played out. There have been a bagillion books about the end of the world. But here is why I’m intensely proud of my work:

    -My characters kick major ass. They’re kids, but the thing is, everyone is just the right mixture of toughness and vulnerability that makes everything seem very believable.
    -It’s funny. My characters are snappy and sarcastic. I routinely poke fun at genre conventions. There are sections where people have told me they snorted out loud in surprise. Humor is an extremely rare commodity in this genre, where most characters are the jaded, brooding type.
    -The world as I see it in 100 years is quite a bit different than most other post-apocalyptic settings I’ve read and seen. It isn’t about the end of the world. It’s about the beginning of a new one. And just wait until you see what happens to Los Angeles.

NOT in my book

    It’s under review at a publisher right now. I just talked to an editor the other day and she likes my ideas for revisions. The thing is, this is a long process, and I don’t think I’m anywhere close to being done. But going through all this, I’ve realized writing is a very specific talent I possess.

    There are different aspects to the whole thing. Everybody loves to wax romantic about the beauty of creating with words. They love to talk about writing like it’s this elegant dance between author and alphabet.

    Well, it’s more than the waltz.
    At times, writing is more butcher shop than boogie.
    My laptop is a bloody, red-texted mess of amputated chapter sections, with globby strands of adverbs and adjectives strewn all across the edges of the pages. It’s not pretty. Like anything else, when you get down to the nitty-gritty, it’s work.

    But I do this almost as easily as I when I cut that first slab of meat into a full-fledged idea. And I know I’ll be able to do it again. And again. And again.

    Like I said, I’m a writer.
    And the reason this is a game changer should be obvious. It’s within the realm of possibility that this book could be huge. It’s rare for first time writers to reach that level right off the bat, but it’s possible. This is more than a little scary.

    I’ve been wrestling with the idea of celebrity for some time. I mean, I’m already “that guy” that my circle of friends always bring up when talking to other people when they talk about cool things their friends are doing. I think I’m ready for this, but like I said, it’s a game changer. What if I make bank? Do I quit my job? Do I finish school?
    Would I want to do any of that any more if I didn’t have to?
    That’s a tough question and I’m just not sure yet.

    I have no doubt that it will all play out the way it’s supposed to play out, and when it does, rest assured, I’m going to be the biggest attention whore around. I will have legitimate financial interests to do so, and I will self-advertise shamelessly.

    Just a warning. Get ready.

!!!The Empire (of college basketball) Strikes Back!!!

2009-03-31T22:44:00.001-07:00

OMG!!!
OMG!!!
OMG!!!

Okay. Just had to get that out there, so I can tell you how I really feel.
I’m a college basketball fan. More importantly, I’m a Kentucky fan. We are not just any ordinary breed of sports fan. UK is the winningest program in college basketball. We have seven championships. We have no professional sports teams in the state and the ones in nearby states consistently suck. (Who dey, anyone?) A long time ago, former coach Rick Pitino described UK as “the Roman Empire of College Basketball.”

And like the Romans, we demand quite a lot from our emperors.
In general, rabid is fairly tame word to describe the fan base. For example, today I spent about two hours watching a live feed of a door. Twenty thousand other fans on a message board joined me in doing this.

Why were we doing this?
Simple. We wanted to see if our new Emperor walked out that door.

He did.
The arrival of John Calipari from Memphis instantly puts us back on the top of the basketball world, right up there with other preeminent programs like UNC, UCLA, Duke and Kansas. It was going to happen eventually. Elite programs don’t stay down for long, and this is where it gets scary.

Barring any huge scandals or unforeseeable disasters, Calipari will be in the bluegrass a long, long time. He can’t go any higher in the college ranks, and he’s already tried the NBA. Combine his connections across the basketball landscape (he’s totally BFF with Worldwide Wes, probably the most powerful man in ALL of basketball), his media savvy, recruiting prowess and pure coaching ability with the resources and tradition of a place like Kentucky…

You get what I’m saying right?
We are no longer like the New York Yankees of college basketball.
Nor are we the Boston Celtics.
Now, we’re more like the Yanktics.
Or the Celtkees.

Or better yet, let’s just say that the New York Yankees are the Kentucky Wildcats of professional baseball.

Hyperbole notwithstanding, this isn’t far off from reality.
It’s possible that the man could have a title contender in year one if he brings in some of his recruits who haven’t signed. YEAR ONE. That’s coming out of a NIT year. Can you imagine what happens when he gets that avalanche of talent really rolling in?

Be scared, college basketball. Very, very scared.

Part two of the one where Mike describes his life in the dorkiest terms imaginable

2009-03-29T20:59:00.001-07:00

I'm spending the next few posts describing my life using an analogy from a video game. In the process, it is my aim to become unintentionally celibate. I know, that doesn't make sense. How can you set out to do something that's unintentional? Watch me.

If you missed out on the first part, check it out here.

Triforce of Courage

    Some of you were around way back when I did a post on morality and legos. If you weren’t, you missed out, because honestly, it isn’t like you can still view the page anymore or anything.

    In it, I mentioned that I attend seminary.
    When most people hear the word seminary, they go right to pastors, priests, maybe monks. And it is these people that are usually surprised when they hear that I go to one as well. It’s not that I spend my weekdays down at the bar sucking jell-o shooters out of cleavage or anything. It’s just that I don’t fit the cookie-cutter, youth pastor with the hairy legs and crew socks sort of mold that most people associate with professional Christians.

    But that’s because I’m not in a cookie-cutter program. I attend Fuller Theological Seminary, which, if you’ve seen Minority Report, you’ll recognize as the school Colin Farrell attended before becoming a gum-smackin’, sharp-talkin’ lawyer. Based in Los Angeles, it’s an interesting school, carefully balancing somewhere between conservative and liberal leanings.

    I don’t study theology. I mean, I’ve taken a number of courses on it, but my main focus is cross-cultural studies with an emphasis in urban studies and at-risk youth. I have never worked in a church, and it’s highly unlikely to ever happen in the future.

This might explain why I don’t discuss too much theology on the internet, but if I have to go further, it boils down to a couple easy explanations.

        1. Most people who try to discuss religion on the internet with strangers are idiots. Why discuss theology with idiots I don’t know when I can discuss it with friends that I do know? And who also attend seminary.

        2. Nearly every single discussion that has any trace of nuance or specialized knowledge in it inevitably gets boiled down to the age-old and tired confrontation of faith and reason. To me, this is apples and oranges. Actually, it’s more like seeing apples and oranges talk. At first, you’re interested in the discussion that’s being started, but then things start to get out of hand, and you’re just like,

    Huh. Talking fruits. Who would have guessed?

    Besides, acting like faith and reason are two opposing sides of the argument is sooooo 20th century.

     Aren’t we postmodern now?

    With all that said, it’s nearing graduation time for me. I only have a few more classes left, and this is where all that courage is needed.
    I met with my advisor the other day. I have two more classes and what’s called a practicum. Basically, it’s an internship in some sort of agency or organization that is involved in my field.

    Now, I could just use my current job, but my advisor didn’t like this idea. He said,

    “You need to get on the ride, Mike.”

    And you know what?
    He’s right.
    Essentially, with a Master’s degree and a few years of real-life experience under my belt, a lot of agencies around the world are looking for someone just like me. But the catch is that I need to unhook myself from my life and have the stones to just float free for a while to see what grabs me.

    Six weeks in the slums of Bombay? Maybe.
    A month in a shantytown in Africa? Possible.

    None of it happens, though, if I’m scared to try. And believe me, it is scary. I have no money. No savings. I have no way of knowing if a job awaits me on the other side of these internships. And in this shaky economy, that’s enough to give anybody pause.

    But I know I must.
    It’s time to start this process.
    Time for me to get on the ride.
    Despite not having a clue where it’s going to end.

    Okay, maybe I have a clue. Maybe I have a big clue.
    Maybe I have a super huge ace up my sleeve that maybe right now isn’t even a card but just a piece of paper.
    Or make that many pieces of paper....

    Sorry if this cryptic, but this is all leading to the third part of the confusing strands of my life.
    You’ll see.
    It’s the game changer.

The one where Mike describes his life in the dorkiest terms imaginable

2009-03-26T20:49:00.000-07:00

    Three.
    That’s the thing that keeps coming up in my head when I start thinking about all the craziness that’s going on in my life right now.
    Three. Three. Three.
    Well, things aren’t crazy right now. But they will be. Oh, will they ever. Right now, it’s actually sort of quiet, but I don’t believe that’s going to last for too much longer. This isn’t the kind of quiet that lasts. This is the kind of quiet that occupies the split second between the last sparks of the whisk and the explosion of the dynamite it’s attached to. The kind of quiet that says, Don’t get comfortable, homes. Things are about to get…messy.

    The number three figures prominently into all this. That’s because there are three different strands of that whisk attached to that piece of dynamite, and I’m a little worried because I’m not sure how they’re all supposed to fit together.

    So I tried figuring out the best way to describe these three things. Not just what they are, but what they represent in my life. Now, there are plenty of things that emphasize three: Triangles. The Three Musketeers. Tres leches cake. The Holy Trinity. Three’s company….Three is an important number.

    But none of these things quite fit the illustration I wanted to make, so I thought and thought and thought, and finally came up with the appropriate reference. Still, I was a little apprehensive. That’s because this reference will shatter whatever preconceived notions you had of my coolness. That’s because you’ll see what a huge uberdork I really am. That’s because…

    I’m about to use the Legend of Zelda to describe my life.

    I know, right?
    Ugh.

    But please, bear with me.
    I’ll keep this real short and simple. In the games, there are these big glowing triangle thing called the Triforce. Somehow, it holds the entire world together in peace and harmony. Don’t ask me how this works. I will only say it works the same way that Keanu Reeves and Alex Winters save the world with Wild Stallyns and electric guitars.

    Wait? What? Zelda…Bill and Ted…Mike, where in the hell are you going with all this?

    Okay. Okay. Focus.
    So the Triforce is made of three smaller triangles. The Triforce of Wisdom. The Triforce of Courage. And the Triforce of Power. Separate, those three things do some pretty cool things, but when they come together, you win the game, save the princess and bring peace to the land.

    Each of these three crazy aspects of my life can be summed by one of these three pieces of the Triforce. Here’s the first:

The Triforce of Wisdom

    I bet you’re thinking I’m going to talk about school here.
    I’m not.
    Instead, I’m going to talk about work.

    See, I don’t have just any old job. I work at a group home for boys. Teenage boys. My title is recreation assistant. This involves a broad range of tasks. Driving (I know the streets of Los Angeles as well as any cab driver.) Tutoring (I am way smarter than a fifth grader.) Mentoring (Have you ever been to a Civil War battle reenactment? My guys have.) And playing (2 years running, and no one hasn’t beaten me at 21.)

    Seriously, it’s an awesome job. It’s made me into a man and at my age, I know I’m lucky to have a job that’s more than just something to occupy eight hours a day.

    Still, there are serious drawbacks.
1.    It’s stressful. I’ve developed extremely thick skin and have learned how to develop interpersonal skills that allow me to relate to people without giving them ways to hurt me. But that’s not always successful. It’s one of those jobs where the more you care, the more you get hurt. And almost everyone here cares a lot. Which is why burnout is so high. I’ve been here for over two years. For the kind of front-line work I do, that’s a long time. Over that period, our staff of a dozen or so has entirely changed over. Twice.

2.    I have to work weekends. This isn’t always a bad thing. I’ve gotten paid to go to Disneyland, Six Flags and Cirque de Soleil, but it just makes having a social life very, very difficult. And by difficult, I mean dangerously close to non-existent.

3.    I don’t get paid much. I live paycheck to paycheck. I can’t afford a proper vacation. I do get benefits, and we get fed at work, but it’s non-profit work. And I’m way overqualified for what I do.

    All that said, none of that matters. I know where it’s leading. I know these two years have been worth far more than what any dollar sign can show. I mean that both professionally and personally.

    But I know that it’s getting close to being time to move on. I can’t survive long term in this job. No way I could ever raise a family on my budget. I can’t even afford to have a girlfriend.

    So where do I go from here? Hmm…This is still uncertain for me, and something that these other two aspects of my life are ultimately going to decide.
But that’ll be for another time.

March....Sadness

2009-03-16T15:43:00.001-07:00

    This is a sad, somber time for me.

    Usually, these first few weeks of March, I’m giddily filling out tournament brackets, talking about seeds which have nothing to do with the onset of Spring, and watching college basketball for 12 hours a day, 4 days a week.

    It is March Madness time again, but this year, I couldn’t care less. That’s because my team, the Kentucky Wildcats, is not playing in the tournament this year.

    I’m not quite sure what to do with this. The last time Kentucky didn’t make it, I still had baby teeth and was learning long division. And for me, that was a long time ago.

    So I don’t know what to do, except boo mercilessly for teams I hate.

     The weird thing is, I don’t have a problem with Louisville. Kentucky’s biggest rival. I may even like them.

    I know, that’s weird. That would be like a North Carolina fan liking Duke. Or a Yankees fan liking the Red Sox. Or a Hannah Montana fan…eh, nevermind. I don’t know enough about teenyboppers to make that reference, although I do know Miley Cyrus’s dad is Billy Ray Cyrus, country singer extraordinaire from, you guessed it, Kentucky.

    But I don’t hate Louisville. (What I do hate: People pronouncing it Looey-i-ville. That is completely and totally wrong. It’s Loo-uh-vul. Get it right or don’t say it at all.)

    I suppose I could hate Indiana, another rival, but they suck even worse than Kentucky this year and if a team isn’t playing, I ain’t booing. It’s only fair.

    The only team I plan on hating is Duke. We don’t really have a rivalry with them. It’s just that everyone who isn't an alumnus of Duke or currently attending Duke hates them. Kentucky fans have a legit reason as well. They show it every year during the CBS pregame show. That nancy boy Christian Laettner and “the shot” way back in the early 90’s. But even then, the hate is minimal.

Wait, minimal hate just got bumped up to MAXIMUM.

    The only other team I really hate, and I mean, maliciously, want to brass knuckle right in the molars, hate is Billy Packer. If you've read my blog long enough, you know this. I blame Billy Packer for the decline in Kentucky basketball, my disinterest in the NCAA tournament, and global warming.

Seriously, the guy is evil.But this year, he’s not around either, so I am just completely bewildered here. Give me a team to hate and I’ll do my research to see if it’s possible.

    Anyway, my pick to win is Louisville.

    They have a fairly easy road to the final. They play nearby in Dayton and Indianapolis on the way to the Final Four. They’re peaking and gelling at just the right time. They are healthy. They have a coach who’s been there numerous times before. They have guards who can dribble well and forwards that can dunk hard. In addition to all this, they have Terrence Williams, who is this years stat-stuffing collegiate equivalent of Lebron James.

    So that’s that. Go. Fight. Win.
    Rararaa….
    Whatever.

Billy Packer, say something stupid so I can yell loudly and throw popcorn at my televison.

OMG!!! Zombies are th3 racist!!!

2009-03-12T22:10:00.000-07:00

A little bit you should know: Resident Evil 4 stands as one of my favorite games from last generation. It might even be my favorite game ever. Where some saw clunky controls and a maddening inability to strafe, I saw a finely tuned engine that basically worked as a zombie shooting gallery. Except sometimes the zombies had pitchforks, dynamite and they said really nasty things in Spanish.

So basically, RE4 set the bar very, very high for the next installment. I have no idea if it meets the hype, although early returns say that it does. But this is not about what kind of game Resident Evil 5 actually is. This is about what RE5 is perceived to be.

And over time, the perception among some is that RE5 isn’t only violent. It isn’t only gory. It’s RACIST.

Now, how can game that’s all about killing zombies or zombie-like enemies be racist? That seems impossible. I mean, the last time I survived a zombie apocalypse, racial profiling had nothing to do with where I pointed my shotgun. Most zombie killers will hold to one basic creed, summed up by this:

Don’t discriminate. Decapitate.

So that’s what’s got most fans of this series enraged. It does seem kind of ridiculous to think that game made by Japanese developers, that’s all about killing zombies, can be racist. Maybe that’s not the best way to frame the controversy.

After all, it’s doubtful the developers had any clue they were heading into such waters when they started making the game, but ironically, that’s the main source of the controversy. Not the developers were racist, but that they didn’t have a clue.

The clue would be simple to any average American. The game is set in Africa. You play a white character with a gun. In the first levels of the game, you shoot mobs of black zombie-ish people who are hunting you down. Watch the trailer to see what I mean:
It IS a game. And it IS entertainment. But at the same time, intentional or not, the game conjures up dark reminders of American history that are going to be talked about.

I’ve heard that the rest of the game makes all this talk of race seem ridiculous, but don’t be surprised to hear more about this from mainstream media in the next few days. Resident Evil 5 drops tomorrow. I will be shooting zombies square in the face regardless of the skin color of that face.

You?