On and on...
Wednesday, February 09, 2011
Sunday, January 30, 2011
Trying To Find The Inbetween
And just like that, the past few months have rolled by, uneven and unexpected. My time in LA the first four weeks of January was the longest I'd stayed in one place since mid-October, but it somehow still tasted of transience. This isn't to say I didn't enjoy my time there along with everything that was accomplished -- on the contrary, it was a welcome reprieve from the cold, and the changes in scenery and seasons have been nothing if not fruitful. All the same, these past few months in general have been an exercise in upheaval.
Bouncing back and forth between New York and Los Angeles isn't unmanageable, but it does grow taxing when done every two weeks for a three month stretch. You lose your anchor to that sense of home you spent so long establishing in a new city. And to return to the city you've called home for almost your entire life, only to find that it's changed in small but innumerable ways (a renovated street here, a closed-down shop there), only adds to the sense of disorientation and displacement. You lose the comfort of old routines, and the looming deadline of another plane ride across the country keeps you always just slightly on edge, unconsciously preparing yourself for another shake up. As a result, you never feel settled, rushing yourself one moment, reluctant to start anything the next. It's an odd position to feel yourself occupying, and it's admittedly exhausting. But at the end of the day, all you can do is shut up and get your shit done.
And so I have, and while I don't have any answers for how these next few months will turn out, at least for now, I am back. And I expect I will be back again. And so on.
As for what was done and what was seen:
This is what Christmas Eve in Southern California looks like. Also, that tree no longer stands in front of my house. The rain took it down.
Once and future home.
The main reason we were home for so long was to do a corporate video for Skechers. This is early on in the month, when we were location scouting in Mt. Baldy. Ruing how hard it was to find snow. In January. Yeah, I know.
Shooting in front of our new bluescreen.
Final delivery at the Manhattan Beach Marriott, just last week.
Part of why LA is so awesome is that on the same week we went romping through the snow, we also hit the open ocean to do some diving. Sunrise to sunset, two Sundays in a row. I am officially scuba certified (and you can be, too!).
All geared up. At this point I put my phone away until the end of the day, so all I have is a bunch of pictures of sunsets.
It was a good trip home. And now I'm also home.
...Yeah, I haven't quite figured it out either. Just keep rolling.
Motion.
Bouncing back and forth between New York and Los Angeles isn't unmanageable, but it does grow taxing when done every two weeks for a three month stretch. You lose your anchor to that sense of home you spent so long establishing in a new city. And to return to the city you've called home for almost your entire life, only to find that it's changed in small but innumerable ways (a renovated street here, a closed-down shop there), only adds to the sense of disorientation and displacement. You lose the comfort of old routines, and the looming deadline of another plane ride across the country keeps you always just slightly on edge, unconsciously preparing yourself for another shake up. As a result, you never feel settled, rushing yourself one moment, reluctant to start anything the next. It's an odd position to feel yourself occupying, and it's admittedly exhausting. But at the end of the day, all you can do is shut up and get your shit done.
And so I have, and while I don't have any answers for how these next few months will turn out, at least for now, I am back. And I expect I will be back again. And so on.
As for what was done and what was seen:
It was a good trip home. And now I'm also home.
...Yeah, I haven't quite figured it out either. Just keep rolling.
Saturday, January 01, 2011
Another Step Forward
Happy New Year, everybody!
[On a somewhat lengthy side note -- It's now time to start writing "11" at the end of all your dates. Does anybody else ever wonder which of the years past they've had to write the most amount of dates for? Probably sometime in high school, I figure, when I had to write the date for as many as six periods' worth of homework assignments and notes in the top right corner of every new sheet of paper (assuming I was taking notes or doing my homework. I think I still was for most of those years. Gold star for me). You know what I'm talking about, that little square-ish region at the top of the page where the sheet's not lined yet, bracketed on the right by the end of the page and on the left by the faint imprint of the red margin line from the other side of the sheet (and on another side note, did anybody else hate how a bunch of stores sold 8" by 10 1/2" packs of lined paper instead of the standard 8 1/2" by 11"? Ended up with a bunch of kids running around with inordinately small sheets of paper. I hated that). Anyway, I probably wrote out a lot 01s or 02s in my day (03 and 04 probably got a lot less love, seeing as how senior year very quickly turned into an exercise in doing as little work as possible). I guess college probably gave a few years some pretty good runs, too, but not nearly at the same volume as those early high school years. 09 probably got the least love, seeing as how I wasn't doing anything remotely academic or even resembling writing that year. I'm pretty sure I touched a pen or pencil no more than 50 times that year. I do feel like I wrote "10" a decent amount for various checks, contracts, and assorted business-related paraphernalia this past year, though. Anyway, I probably think about this every year around this time (it usually starts with me wondering how long it'll take to get used to writing the new year's last two digits, then how long it took me to get used to writing the last year's digits, and which digits was I most accustomed to writing, anyway?) and, incredibly stupid as it may be, it's yet another reason why I wish someone would invent a StatTracker for real life already. I need to know these answers! Along with how many beers I've drunken, what my lifetime shooting percentage is, how many gallons of water I've drunken, how many Albertacos burritos I've eaten, what food I've eaten the most, how many miles I've ever walked, how many miles I've ever driven, and a plethora of other assorted, random, and generally unspectacular trivia from my life.]
Well, there's nothing like a good long ramble to get the year started off right. I hope everybody had a good time last night, and that the 364 nights before it weren't too shabby either. 2010 certainly treated me well, occasional warts and all. Somebody asked me recently if I had any regrets about the past year, and the truth is, as differently as a lot of decisions could have gone, I'm happy with the choices I've made. The results may not have always been expected or even desired (a certain late night involving a flooded shower comes to mind), but the stories and experiences that grew out of them have been invaluable. And besides, life is as much about enjoying your successes as it is living with your mistakes. Both help make you, hopefully, into a fuller person. And that's something I won't ever regret. In any case, I've had far more good times than not this year, so I bid 2010 a very fond goodbye.
Here's to another year of putting one foot in front of the other and seeing where that takes us.
[On a somewhat lengthy side note -- It's now time to start writing "11" at the end of all your dates. Does anybody else ever wonder which of the years past they've had to write the most amount of dates for? Probably sometime in high school, I figure, when I had to write the date for as many as six periods' worth of homework assignments and notes in the top right corner of every new sheet of paper (assuming I was taking notes or doing my homework. I think I still was for most of those years. Gold star for me). You know what I'm talking about, that little square-ish region at the top of the page where the sheet's not lined yet, bracketed on the right by the end of the page and on the left by the faint imprint of the red margin line from the other side of the sheet (and on another side note, did anybody else hate how a bunch of stores sold 8" by 10 1/2" packs of lined paper instead of the standard 8 1/2" by 11"? Ended up with a bunch of kids running around with inordinately small sheets of paper. I hated that). Anyway, I probably wrote out a lot 01s or 02s in my day (03 and 04 probably got a lot less love, seeing as how senior year very quickly turned into an exercise in doing as little work as possible). I guess college probably gave a few years some pretty good runs, too, but not nearly at the same volume as those early high school years. 09 probably got the least love, seeing as how I wasn't doing anything remotely academic or even resembling writing that year. I'm pretty sure I touched a pen or pencil no more than 50 times that year. I do feel like I wrote "10" a decent amount for various checks, contracts, and assorted business-related paraphernalia this past year, though. Anyway, I probably think about this every year around this time (it usually starts with me wondering how long it'll take to get used to writing the new year's last two digits, then how long it took me to get used to writing the last year's digits, and which digits was I most accustomed to writing, anyway?) and, incredibly stupid as it may be, it's yet another reason why I wish someone would invent a StatTracker for real life already. I need to know these answers! Along with how many beers I've drunken, what my lifetime shooting percentage is, how many gallons of water I've drunken, how many Albertacos burritos I've eaten, what food I've eaten the most, how many miles I've ever walked, how many miles I've ever driven, and a plethora of other assorted, random, and generally unspectacular trivia from my life.]
Well, there's nothing like a good long ramble to get the year started off right. I hope everybody had a good time last night, and that the 364 nights before it weren't too shabby either. 2010 certainly treated me well, occasional warts and all. Somebody asked me recently if I had any regrets about the past year, and the truth is, as differently as a lot of decisions could have gone, I'm happy with the choices I've made. The results may not have always been expected or even desired (a certain late night involving a flooded shower comes to mind), but the stories and experiences that grew out of them have been invaluable. And besides, life is as much about enjoying your successes as it is living with your mistakes. Both help make you, hopefully, into a fuller person. And that's something I won't ever regret. In any case, I've had far more good times than not this year, so I bid 2010 a very fond goodbye.
Here's to another year of putting one foot in front of the other and seeing where that takes us.
Monday, November 08, 2010
Tyranny, A Toothbrush
Mort's wife had bought them a matching set of electronic toothbrushes in a last ditch effort to save the marriage, as if a mutual dedication to dental hygiene could stave off the inevitable. Mort suspected such vicissitudes were empty gestures at best, so he was unsurprised, if still mildly deflated, when that experiment lasted all of a week before she got bored of it and the situation went the way it was always going to go. She left him for a man with a sailboat, who she claimed still possessed "the Spark of life," a man who had been through three marriages in the last ten years and sailed because it was the only relationship he cared to work for. Mort and his wife had been married forty-seven years the day she walked out on him. In her wake she left a cluttered collection of halves. Half a tea set, half a tray of silverware, half a box of Grape-Nuts. It was just as well.
The electronic toothbrush activated with a push of a button, and every thirty seconds would interrupt its droning hum with a deadened "blip" to signal to the user that it was time to brush a different quadrant of the mouth. It did this four times until a dentist-recommended two minute period had been reached, at which point it shut off automatically. Mort had followed the unfamiliar regiment without question, his eyes opening in mock wonder the first time he had tried it in front of her, as if to say that she had revolutionized their drab nightly routine. He had played his part, he thought, rather convincingly.
But now, in the dingy light of another night alone, he had had enough. He was through with the toothbrush and its dubious claims of better brushing. His back ached from standing in front of the mirror for so long, listening to that ceaseless hum as it reverberated through his creaky skull, waiting for the blips and the echoing silence that would finally come, but only ever at the toothbrush's whim. All his life he had brushed his teeth without mechanical assistance, and for far less than two minutes. His teeth had been just fine for sixty-nine years, or close enough to fine, so who was this new toothbrush to tell him how long he had to brush for?
And so, one night, after the toothbrush had been running for an ample forty-two seconds, he clicked it off, spat, and rinsed. He placed the toothbrush down by the sink where it stood, quiet and docile. He looked in the mirror at the pasty and liver-spotted figure staring back and smiled at him. He thought he detected a new vibrancy in that face, a new depth of color, but then again, it may have been the new lightbulb he had installed above the sink that morning. Mort clicked off the light and went to bed where he slept, as he always had, on the left side, closest to the door. His head sank into the pillow, his hands clasped one another over his chest. He drifted off and dreamt of a meadow he had played in as a boy, where the buzz of cicadas during the summer played a constant accompaniment to his made-up games of fancy, and their song did not leave his head until morning.
The electronic toothbrush activated with a push of a button, and every thirty seconds would interrupt its droning hum with a deadened "blip" to signal to the user that it was time to brush a different quadrant of the mouth. It did this four times until a dentist-recommended two minute period had been reached, at which point it shut off automatically. Mort had followed the unfamiliar regiment without question, his eyes opening in mock wonder the first time he had tried it in front of her, as if to say that she had revolutionized their drab nightly routine. He had played his part, he thought, rather convincingly.
But now, in the dingy light of another night alone, he had had enough. He was through with the toothbrush and its dubious claims of better brushing. His back ached from standing in front of the mirror for so long, listening to that ceaseless hum as it reverberated through his creaky skull, waiting for the blips and the echoing silence that would finally come, but only ever at the toothbrush's whim. All his life he had brushed his teeth without mechanical assistance, and for far less than two minutes. His teeth had been just fine for sixty-nine years, or close enough to fine, so who was this new toothbrush to tell him how long he had to brush for?
And so, one night, after the toothbrush had been running for an ample forty-two seconds, he clicked it off, spat, and rinsed. He placed the toothbrush down by the sink where it stood, quiet and docile. He looked in the mirror at the pasty and liver-spotted figure staring back and smiled at him. He thought he detected a new vibrancy in that face, a new depth of color, but then again, it may have been the new lightbulb he had installed above the sink that morning. Mort clicked off the light and went to bed where he slept, as he always had, on the left side, closest to the door. His head sank into the pillow, his hands clasped one another over his chest. He drifted off and dreamt of a meadow he had played in as a boy, where the buzz of cicadas during the summer played a constant accompaniment to his made-up games of fancy, and their song did not leave his head until morning.
Friday, November 05, 2010
Blinding
I meant to post these earlier, but haven't gotten around to it until now.
Florence + the Machine at Terminal 5. This woman is fantastic live (and through a set of speakers or headphones, for that matter).
(One of these days, I'll get around to bringing a DSLR around again so I can stop posting grainy phone pictures.)
Harp!
Florence + the Machine at Terminal 5. This woman is fantastic live (and through a set of speakers or headphones, for that matter).
(One of these days, I'll get around to bringing a DSLR around again so I can stop posting grainy phone pictures.)
Tuesday, October 26, 2010
Tuesday, October 12, 2010
One Way To See It
Like the fever dream of a random twentysomething plucked from the streets of Silver Lake. Still, an interesting take on the original.
"Exiled State of Mind" by The Robotanists.
"Exiled State of Mind" by The Robotanists.
Monday, October 11, 2010
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Tuesday, September 21, 2010
Southern Hospitality
Roy and I were in Austin this past weekend. Our friend Mike, who has JetBlue's All-You-Can-Jet pass this month, has been flying all over the country and was headed there as well to meet up our friend Ed, who's stationed at Fort Hood about an hour outside the city.
Some of you may already know this, but Roy and I were born in Texas, in a (what I imagine to be) sleepy town called Bedford just outside of Dallas. Our family moved to Southern California when we were 7 months old, though, so we never got the opportunity to get properly acquainted with our birth state. Still, though it may very well be illusory, I've always felt a tie to the state of Texas, what with its softly-hued dusks, wide flowing plains, and smokey scents of home. Of course, it's also entirely possible that whatever sentimental feelings I have toward this hypothetically mythical land may have arisen purely out of my love for "Friday Night Lights" and my blanket affection for a nonspecific idea of the South, itself a misguided conflation of what should be many unique cultures and qualities. Regardless, I gots a thing for Texas and, aside from two previous trips when I passed through Amarillo on my way to somewhere else, this was my first foray into the state since I had left it over 23 years ago.
One of the first things I saw after getting off the plane was a woman wearing a tie-dye T-shirt emblazoned with the logo "Keep Austin Weird." The city managed to live up to the claim, although not in an over-the-top way. Austin is weird, but only because it's filled with so many different kinds of people, places, and ideas. In the middle of the city lies the University of Texas at Austin, which fulfills both your Southern university stereotypes and your more generic partying-college-kids stereotype. Travel a few blocks southward and you'll hit Downtown Austin, which squeezes towering skyscrapers belonging to various financial institutions right next to 6th street, a lively but unassuming stretch of bars, restaurants, and music venues. Sprinkled in are places like the Museum of the Weird and the purportedly haunted Driskill Hotel. On the weekends, the police close off the adjoining streets to traffic to allow revelers to walk down the street unfettered. Head south of the Colorado River and you'll come to South Congress (affectionately abbreviated to SoCo by some), a shopping district with an abundance of food carts selling everything from Tex-Mex to bratwursts. Need a pair of boots and a cowboy hat? You can find those here. Austin has all the traditional makings of a middle tier-sized city, but its charm is all its own.
Roy, Mike, and I arrived in the city first and headed to our hotel to wait for Ed to drive down from Killeen. The lock on our bathroom door was broken, which is only relevant because I was on the can when Ed arrived, and the broken lock meant Ed was able to walk right in and hand me a 32 oz.-er. This is one of many reasons why I love Ed. After a belt-busting dinner of barbeque, we hit up 6th street and were very happy to discover how cheap the drinks were. Much was imbibed, some naps at the bar were taken, and debauchery followed. The only lowlight of the evening was a smoke-choked bar we hit up at the end of the night that did funny things to my appetite for the rest of the weekend. Our second day found us catching brunch in SoCo and sneaking in a little bit of window shopping at Allen's Boots. College football, a second barbeque dinner, and a low-key evening out rounded out our Saturday. Sunday was alternately rainy and sunny. We got some fantastic Tex-Mex from Torchy's Tacos and visited UT Austin, which is also where my parents met some thirty years ago. I e-mailed a picture of us standing on their campus to them and I got e-mails back with more exclamation points than I ever suspected my parents capable of wrangling. We spent the evening sharing one last bar crawl with Ed, as he had to head back to base in time for work the next morning. He deploys to Iraq next month.
Austin was good to us. The only thing I missed doing was catching a movie at the historic Alamo Drafthouse, but that's okay because I now have a reason to come back. It's interesting, only knowing a place as an idea for so long and then finally seeing it in the flesh. Admittedly, Austin probably isn't the best representation of Texas, but it's a damn fine city nonetheless. Next stop -- Dallas, or maybe some booney-ass town in the middle of nowhere. I'm game. May my Texas dalliances continue.
Skyline.
Capitol building in the rain.
Hiding out from the rain under a tree.
Hiding out again.
Darrell K. Royal Texas Memorial Stadium, where the Longhorns play.
Roy's shirt becomes unintentionally ironic here.
Country-Folk band!
Of course Ed finds the one thing relating to California in the entire state.
Rainy day on 6th street.
On the move.
Some of you may already know this, but Roy and I were born in Texas, in a (what I imagine to be) sleepy town called Bedford just outside of Dallas. Our family moved to Southern California when we were 7 months old, though, so we never got the opportunity to get properly acquainted with our birth state. Still, though it may very well be illusory, I've always felt a tie to the state of Texas, what with its softly-hued dusks, wide flowing plains, and smokey scents of home. Of course, it's also entirely possible that whatever sentimental feelings I have toward this hypothetically mythical land may have arisen purely out of my love for "Friday Night Lights" and my blanket affection for a nonspecific idea of the South, itself a misguided conflation of what should be many unique cultures and qualities. Regardless, I gots a thing for Texas and, aside from two previous trips when I passed through Amarillo on my way to somewhere else, this was my first foray into the state since I had left it over 23 years ago.
One of the first things I saw after getting off the plane was a woman wearing a tie-dye T-shirt emblazoned with the logo "Keep Austin Weird." The city managed to live up to the claim, although not in an over-the-top way. Austin is weird, but only because it's filled with so many different kinds of people, places, and ideas. In the middle of the city lies the University of Texas at Austin, which fulfills both your Southern university stereotypes and your more generic partying-college-kids stereotype. Travel a few blocks southward and you'll hit Downtown Austin, which squeezes towering skyscrapers belonging to various financial institutions right next to 6th street, a lively but unassuming stretch of bars, restaurants, and music venues. Sprinkled in are places like the Museum of the Weird and the purportedly haunted Driskill Hotel. On the weekends, the police close off the adjoining streets to traffic to allow revelers to walk down the street unfettered. Head south of the Colorado River and you'll come to South Congress (affectionately abbreviated to SoCo by some), a shopping district with an abundance of food carts selling everything from Tex-Mex to bratwursts. Need a pair of boots and a cowboy hat? You can find those here. Austin has all the traditional makings of a middle tier-sized city, but its charm is all its own.
Roy, Mike, and I arrived in the city first and headed to our hotel to wait for Ed to drive down from Killeen. The lock on our bathroom door was broken, which is only relevant because I was on the can when Ed arrived, and the broken lock meant Ed was able to walk right in and hand me a 32 oz.-er. This is one of many reasons why I love Ed. After a belt-busting dinner of barbeque, we hit up 6th street and were very happy to discover how cheap the drinks were. Much was imbibed, some naps at the bar were taken, and debauchery followed. The only lowlight of the evening was a smoke-choked bar we hit up at the end of the night that did funny things to my appetite for the rest of the weekend. Our second day found us catching brunch in SoCo and sneaking in a little bit of window shopping at Allen's Boots. College football, a second barbeque dinner, and a low-key evening out rounded out our Saturday. Sunday was alternately rainy and sunny. We got some fantastic Tex-Mex from Torchy's Tacos and visited UT Austin, which is also where my parents met some thirty years ago. I e-mailed a picture of us standing on their campus to them and I got e-mails back with more exclamation points than I ever suspected my parents capable of wrangling. We spent the evening sharing one last bar crawl with Ed, as he had to head back to base in time for work the next morning. He deploys to Iraq next month.
Austin was good to us. The only thing I missed doing was catching a movie at the historic Alamo Drafthouse, but that's okay because I now have a reason to come back. It's interesting, only knowing a place as an idea for so long and then finally seeing it in the flesh. Admittedly, Austin probably isn't the best representation of Texas, but it's a damn fine city nonetheless. Next stop -- Dallas, or maybe some booney-ass town in the middle of nowhere. I'm game. May my Texas dalliances continue.
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