A Blahg A Lolg O'Rhuetham Nunbuh Plein Nawncents

What I was thinking when I woke up.

2009-12-20T12:03:00.001-08:00

"Some people look very pretty when they smile. And some people only ever look pretty when they smile".

I like that a lot. Call it vanity if you want, I won't stop you. But do it with a smile.

A List Of Films for the Casual Beginner.

2009-05-17T20:34:00.000-07:00

One of the great ironies of my life is that although the thought of public speaking leaves me unaffected, I become very timid around friends or even casual acquaintances. Anyone who recognizes my face finds me hesitant, shy, and above all inexpressive. I would agree with them, but I'm scared to talk.
However, one of the few things I refuse to shut up about is films*. Something about the thought of those images running swiftly through the projector loosens my tongue like a strong whiskey. I suppose whenever movies come up, my thoughts press me back into memories of the theater, the grand darkened room and the dazzling light reserved for those lucky immortals who act out their stories for us. I said once that film is the ultimate art. One of my favorite directors, Stanley Kubrick, once said, "If it can be thought or written, it can be filmed", and it says something that I wrote that quote without looking it up. It's an extremely optimistic thing to say - that anything you can write or think can be captured on film. And the scary part is, he's right. In fact, there are some ideas and emotions who reside only in film - not in literature, not in art, and not even in real life. It is humanity's prism, infinitely flexible and universal.
So someone I know asked for a list of movies to watch. Her favorite movie is Forrest Gump, but don't hold that against her.
This is a list of 10 movies I think everyone should watch at least once, and hopefully more than once - they're simply movies that you owe yourself, so that if nothing else you can broaden your worldview, and those things are like umbrellas - the wider you can get them, the better. Once you've watched these ten, come back and I'll post ten more :).

Now it looks like smiley guy has a mole. Oh well. Here are ten films I've given a 10/10 (There are 14 others, but these are a good mix of deep and entertaining).

1. The Godfather Double Feature (Francis Ford Coppola) - The Godfather (1972) and The Godfather Part II (1972) are nearly perfect. The epitome of a gangster film, with as many famous scenes as any other film ever - if you've ever wondered where the phrase "sleeps with the fishes" comes from, it comes from here. And in context, it's rather perfect. It has something for everyone: the action lover, the analyzer, and just anyone who enjoys a well-crafted film that refuses to sugarcoat anything.

2. The Silence of the Lambs (Jonathan Demme) - This film is my favorite of all time, and that's partly because it's so gripping right to the end. Plot: A serial killer is skinning women, and FBI trainee Clarice Starling has to talk with Hannibal Lecter, a psychiatrist/cannibal (in prison) for a vital psychological profile. What always grabs me in this film is the deep fears it uncovers: the fear of being emotionally vulnerable in front of someone with no conscience. It pries our insecurities when we watch Clarice brave Lecter's unwavering gaze. Oh, and the "scary scenes" have made my cousin cry.

3. Annie Hall (1977) - one of the truest depictions of romance ever made. But it's also hilarious, in that wacky, anything-goes kind of way that always leaves me smiling. As Jewish comedian Alvy Singer wonders where his relationship with WASP Annie Hall went wrong, we get glimpses of their meeting, initial flurry of romance, and the highs they reach - which saddens us that much more when jealousy and boredom slowly wedges them apart. It's still anarchically witty ("They did not take me in the Army. I was, um, interestingly enough, I was, I was 4-P. Yes. In the, in the event of war, I'm a hostage."). Animated sequences, split screens (that talk to each other), Hasidic Jews, it shifts fro style to style - to represent the fundamental aimlessness of its characters. And after all the jokes, the ending, the dust of a beautiful relationship cooled into friendship. always leaves me mellow.

4. Fargo (Joel & Ethan Coen) - Minnesota Car salesman Jerry Lundegaard is an utter failure of a car salesman. To pay his debts, he hires two thugs to kidnap his wife and split the ransom that his uncle will pay. Sounds funny? Sounds serious? It's neither. The comedy comes from the parts we try to suppress: the superior part that laughs at other people wallowing in their own pathetic degeneration. My favorite scene is when the kidnappers let their victim out of the car with a bag still over her head and laugh as she runs around crashing and screaming. And with this is Sgt Marge Gunderson, one of the kindest characters in the movies, and she gives the movie its heart and epic sweep.

5. The Apu Trilogy (Satyajit Ray) - If you're not used to black and white, foreign, or old films this will be torture. And yet these are India's greatest films. No dance scenes. Bengali. And it takes place in a rural village following a boy named Apu as he grows into a man, loses his family, gets a wife, a son and struggles to find himself. All three films are told with such beauty and such wisdom that you will feel like a different person at the end. And yes, it is entertaining, but you have to be willing to accept it on its terms. Poetry on film.

6. Hoop Dreams (Steve James) - The only documentary on this list. It follows two poor kids who have dreams of playing for the NBA and escaping the poverty around them. Their fortunes shift and wobble over the years, and we're right there with them, watching them mature and persevere. This film captures so much about the American Dream - and even better, holds it to the American Reality. It really does capture a bit of life, in all its fractured pieces, and put it all up on the screen. It was voted the greatest film of the '90's (not documentary, FILM), and it deserves it too.

7. Psycho (Alfred Hitchcock) - Have you ever been scared in a film? This is why. Alfred Hitchcock made a career out of shocking people while exploring the dark side of human nature, and nowhere is he more chilling than here. The shower scene is one that everyone knows, and it's scary even today. Every scene, every twitch and uneasy pause, only unsettles us more, and by the end we're scared even to move lest we meet a murderer in our midst.

8. Seven Samurai (Akira Kurosawa) Akira Kurosawa is one of the giants of cinema. He invented so many of the genres we use today. Seven Samurai is the first action film, and by far the best. A bunch of samurai (seven, in fact) are hired to protect a village from bandits. The buildup is expertly handled by Kurosawa, and includes a love affair, a procedural, straight action, and about a hundred devices that are now action movie cliches (for example, the wannabe who matures into a fighter by the end). Like all great movies, it entertains you, but at the end it leaves you with a few lumps in your throat, wondering about the cost of life and the price of honor. In my view the second greatest film ever made.

9. The Truman Show (Peter Weir) - Jim Carrey is the ultimate everyman. I won't spoil the premise, which is as brilliant as any I've ever come across, and Carrey for once immerses himself in a dramatic role and pulls it off brilliantly. By the end you're left shaken by his acting and also by the way Peter Weir skilfully handles the story, turning what could be a gimmick into a critical, incisive examination of our own culture.

10. Citizen Kane (Orson Welles) - Widely considered the greatest film of all time, and why not? Just watch it, honestly.

Film is only a century or so old. In that time, it has advanced in steps great and small, into a true expression of the human condition like no other form of art, bar none. Long after the last person born in this century has died, and our times are a mere wisp of a memory with only historical documents to speak of our existence, there will still be films, steadfastly refusing to wither, always fresh and full of life - our life, our times, our stories. Honestly, I could talk about it all day long.

*Another is the Lakers. They just closed out on Houston to advance to the Conference Finals.
**A person who analyzes movies, not a pedophile who picks people up in cinemas

Thieves In The Night {Part III}

2009-04-27T21:39:00.000-07:00

Usually I'd begin this entry with an introduction/excuse for being late/plea for whoever is reading this to pay the ransom, but to be honest, this last weeks has been so dreary and eventless that I even began to watch TV. Did you know that when you change to channel to a Nascar event a piece of your soul withers and crumbles into ash? I do now!
Hell, I've even taken to concealing a bundle of darts in my trenchcoat (when I'm not in costume - ie grocery buying time) and throwing them in public places to generate some excitement. The policeman was not amused, I go to court next Thursday, for a presided by the only Judge in the state who moonlights as an executioner. There have been better signs, I suppose.
Now that I think about it, part of the reason nothing has happened this week might come down to Chauncey. Or, rather, a lack of Chauncey. On Wednesday last week, there was a fire on the premises next to the mansion (apparently you can't throw lit matches into a forest without some brushback) and the sprinklers inside the house went off. Chauncey felt the wetness on his face, and like anyone else with the brain of a chicken, assumed the sky was falling and ran outside for cover. Through the third-story window. Thankfully, a field of poison ivy broke his fall, and although he'll live, we had to put him in a coma to keep him from eating himself because of the skin raking pain he'll be in: if there's a hell, it is filled with people who have poison ivy but have broken all their limbs.

So here I am. You left me with Alphonse Maladoigt, the rusty meat cleaver in his hand aching for my throat. For the security of all that we hold dear, I suppose I had explain myself.

Origin Story {III}

After my father's death, my mother sold her shares in Amazon (then called Mr. Havanur's Crazy-Ass Idea, Inc). Her features became cold and set, as if someone had told her to hold a pose for a photo that never came. I don't think I saw her smile again for another ten years, until that time when someone rickroll'd her. I broke out into a cold sweat when that happened before I realized what she was doing; at first I thought she was grimacing. You could hear tiny cracks in her mouth due to rustiness from her lips.
But in those days, after the funeral that the preacher was late to because he was busy selling his shares in Amazon, my mother went home, gathered the laundry, and went up the stairs to their...her room on the right steps. I saw her sitting on the bed with a look of sad knowingness in her eyes, like she was appraising some unknown force in the room*. I often wonder today if I should have stepped in. Instead, I closed the door and retreated to my room to run my fingers along the unopened set of the Encyclopedia Britannica my father had bought me. His deathbed words still rang in my ears. If I had never opened those books, they were still technically his, weren't they? I would have to earn them from him, as much as I wanted to rip apart the packaging and feel some imprint of my fathers life along my fingers. I would have to earn those books.
Mother sells the house. Moves to France. Goes to bars to get drunk and play darts - in that order. She blinded someone once - a middleweight boxer by the handle of Alphonse Maladoigt. I wasn't there, but Gerard, the grizzled barkeep who witnessed it all from the countertop, told me about it later. With the dart still stuck in his eye, he advanced on my mother with howls of pain, flecks of blood still dribbling down his congealed eye (not: don't eat your lunch while reading this). Trembling, she slunk around and staggered back. Apparently, he was set to strangle her, but at that point the swinging lamp above setlled down to illuminate her, and he saw her face for the first time. He stopped dead in his tracks, like he had just seen an angel. He stared at her for a full three minutes (with his good eye). Unfortunately, he stopped right in front of the dartboard, and another dart caught him in the other eye.
Fully blind at this point, he continued to feel his way across the bar, lost in the screams of the two dart players arguing over whether that second dart should have counted ("It got him slambang in his eye! That's at least a hundred points, no? And a moving target too!") and the hoarse shouts for more beer to escape from the cold world outside.
After two minutes of feeling his way around and several bumps into sharp table corners later, he was within inches of my mother as she cowered against the wall. He leaned in closer...and stroked her hair.
Someone coughed, bu no one listened. One of the rules of life is that nothing attracts attention quite like blood, and at this point the entire bar had quietened to look at Alphonse. Even the beer glasses seemed to direct a little extra light in his direction. He shimmered, really. And now the entire bar watched this brighter-than-life man stroke that widow's hair. It's probably the kindest thing any of them would ever have seen. The barkeep teared up when he described it, although that may be because Alphonse sued him the next day and he's not a barkeep any longer (what the French call "Un homme sans espoir", or more colloquially, "un succeur"). But I'd like to think that for that minute each ragged onlooker saw reflected in this man the sluggish memories of their own wasted chances, and each stroke of her hair shook off more dust from their own grubby lives if only for those few seconds before it settled back down. I'd like to think that. Otherwise, they would have creeped out like Chauncey near women (long story, and I've been arrested for telling it before. Maybe later).
My mother never talked about what went through her head at that moment. But what she did was offer Alphonse a place to stay. It was a tender moment. Alphonse undercut it when he began to thrash and flail, screaming, "MY EYES! MY EYES! OH GOD MY EYES THEY BURN!" at which point my mother came to her senses and asked the barkeep to call the ambulance. He was on the phone when a dart came out of nowhere and pierced the phone line. The phone dropped from his hands and he glared at the two dart. This time, there was no arguing as to whether that one counted.
"I-I'm so sorry that..." my mother began, but nothing came. Alphonse turned around at the sound of my--er, her voice.
To make it up to him, my mother and Alphonse began dating. Sometimes I wonder if the rest of their time together was just the second half of that sentence, an apology for which no words existed. No one has ever responded to "I'm sorry I blinded you" with "Oh, don't worry about it"--pop--"here's your dart back!".
Within a few months things had gotten serious, and I knew better than to wander into her bed whenever I had a nightmare, because these nightmares would invariably be worse.
Instead, I would go outside to the backyard and sleep there. Curled amongst the grass, with my head resting on the wall, the world's problems flattened and smoothed until they seemed as innocent and comforting as the starry night above me. Those were some of my most peaceful moments, with the grass teasing my feet and the warm air cradling me in its soft grip. I felt like any unhappiness in my life was only an inconsequential dream, a turned corner of logic that waking up would set right. It felt good going to sleep excited. There were wolves roaming the area, but to me that was half the adventure.
One night, however, my gentle descent into sleep splintered into a thousand fragments. Just as my eyes were about to close for the final time, I felt a rush of air, and then a thump nearby. Instantly alert, I leapt backwards, hit my head on the wall, and fell unconscious. When I came too, a blurry stranger swam before my eyes. She used one hand to wipe her hair from her eyes. As my eyes grew more focused and a dull throb tightened its searing grip on my head, her features grew steadily more worried; by the time her nose was clear, I could see she was frantic.
"They're after me! Quick, hide me, Amogha!" she cried.
How did she know my name?

*Later, I found out she was hallucinating and thought William Shatner was in the room.

Films (and Obama's Spellcheck)

2009-04-20T18:27:00.000-07:00

Oh goody goody goody. The serious post. I feel like a freelance writer suffering from writers' block - I have freedom, but nothing interesting to write about. I promised to write AL into this blog (I AM FIRST ON HER LIST OF BLOGS TO FOLLOW! I LOVE HAVING A NAME THAT STARTS WITH A. LOVE IT!), but, well, next week, I swear. You're going to be a character.

Also, I almost killed myself with an orange this morning. If I had, I might have made FML and the Darwin Awards in one swoop. Oh well.

Oh wait, this is a blog, so that doesn't matter. I should avoid lapses of sanity like that. So here we go:
I've been thinking (oh wait, this is a blog. Dammit!)

You can spin hay into gold with a dash of magic, but you can't make learning fun, not even with an Elder Wand (Thing I Really Really Want #4,503). At least I thought so, but then a lifetime's experience withering in classrooms, only to perk up in a few classes - Oral Composition being the peak as far as I remember - I've learned that the secret is simple: make students learn things they want to learn.

Yes, I told you it was simple.

High school teachers don't quite seem to have cottoned on to this yet, however, and it seems that there's this gap between the amount of enthusiasm the Man wants me to have and the amount I can muster up. This is the chasm that my classes at De Anza so neatly covers up.

Some students I know take De Anza classes to avoid taking them with "difficult teachers". First, this seems to me like the most cowardly way to insult a teacher. And second, only at this school is it easier to take a college class than a high school one.

But I always took classes which interested me. At first, this was psychology, and that was good. But as a second semester senior, I decided to take a fun class (over my mother's shrieks that having fun was the devil's instrument, or something like that) - fun for me, of course. History of Cinema, 1895-1950.

I make no secret of my love for cinema. It's the ultimate form of art because it can make points that books and sculptures and paintings and even music can't. In movies style is substance in a way that no other art is. And obviously, it's the most entertaining thin too. Want to read War and Peace? That's boring* Kurosawa, Rohmer, Truffaut, Eisenstein, Tarantino, Spielberg, Fincher, Schroeder, Ray (both of them), Allen, etc etc etc. Can't get enough - and, like any artform, it's always been better in the past than it is now. But anywhere before 1915 and my knowledge of film history is like the Big Bang: murky, full of assumptions that aren't true, more guesswork and outright BS than any true knowledge. So I enrolled in this class, and awaited the first class with trepidation.

I make no secret of my love for procrastination. That Friday afternoon, five minutes before class started, I vaulted down the stairs of my apartment with my hair sopping wet from the shower I had blazed through in near-record time and began to sprint down to De Anza College. After a kind passerby told me where the AT center was, I dashed into the building. I could not be late for my first class. That would have been so unprofessional.

Into the wrong floor. Of course, I didn't quite realize that until a few frantic minutes studying the board. Then I had to circle the building like and FBI agent making a drug bust trying to find the basement stairs. Finally, and with seven seconds to spare, I staggered into the Screening Room (my class meets in a theater!) and collapsed into a seat.

The professor walked in late.

That first day, we watched movies from the beginning of cinema history. I can only wonder how awe-inspiring movies must have been then. The leap from photographs to moving life projected on the screen is something that really is beyond our scope. I can understand why the first motion cameras were thought to steal peoples' souls. After all, what could convince them that those people up there weren't real, were only imprints pressed onto a roll of film months before - preserved memories, basically? I wouldn't have believed that for a second if someone had told me in 1895. The professor told us how the first films were basically ten-second documentaries, of ordinary life photographed for the briefest of intervals. One film, of a train approaching, was especially terrifying. People ran out of the theater, convinced that the train was set to break through the screen and burst into their darkened alcove. The idea of people trying to escape a film is laughable today, but still kind of appealing. There's no such wonder for miracles today. If people saw a train rushing towards them on the street today, I have the feeling they'd stand their ground as it thundered closer, thinking it must be some kind of film. How realistic, they'd think. Even the clouds of dust it's kicking up, that looks real too. But it can't be. And then, as the roar grows deafening, I think that's when they would revert into 1895ers and jump out of the way. We haven't completely grown jaded, of course - there's still some capacity for wonder, but it's stuck down deep, like the shallow puddle of water that resides at the end of a dry well.

I sometimes wonder what's worse, knowing too much, or not knowing at all. Skepticism is a powerful tool, but you need to keep it at arm's length, lest it creeps into your soul. Because I think from then on, you lose the chance at any true happiness. Then, it festers and grows, until even at your wedding there's always that leery fear that someone, somewhere is duping you, that the bride will divorce you the next day, that the preacher isn't even licensed to drive, let alone marry people, and so on. I wonder if that's a good thing.

I know what House would say, but then again, he can barely walk, so maybe his opinion isn't always right.

And then, as we moved across the years, the films themselves got...more like today. It was like watching something evolve, and gradually become familiar. This week, we watched Birth Of A Nation(1915) - the most influential film of all time, and also the most racist. Influential because it is the blueprint that every other film, up to and including I Love You, Man is based on, at least from a technical standpoint. But on the other hand, it mines every possible African-American stereotype possible - laziness, love of chicken, dishonest, oversexed, and above all, inferior on an inherent, sweeping level. Even the half-whites are animals that should never be let off their leashes, according to Griffith.

Which brings up a weird kind of dilemma. How do you judge a film if it promotes something you don't believe in? As a story or a piece of technical work, Birth Of A Nation is brilliant. As a political work, it is vulgar, offensive, and malicious. And this applies even today. If Michael Moore made a movie criticizing Obama, but did it very well, should I consider his films good even if I don't agree with them?

The only answer I can think of is that while you shouldn't praise or trash a work just because you don't agree with what they say, you should consider how complex and insightful they are about the topic they choose to film. In other words, style, not substance. I think it works as a general policy for dealing with film - and life too, come to think of it.

So yes, I am looking forward to next Friday, where I can burn the pavement trying to make it inside the screening room before 1:30. Why? I guess it just interests me.

Final Thought: I wonder if Obama gets frustrated that his name gets the red dotted line whenever he types it. It has to grate on him that he's the president of the most powerful nation on Earth but Microsoft Word still refuses to acknowledge him as a person.

*War and Peace in twenty words or less: Russia. There's war. Then peace. Then war again, I think. Nobody's ever finished the book anyway.

Thieves In The Night {Part II}

2009-04-13T13:49:00.000-07:00

Has it been two weeks already? I've been so harried these past few days. If you counted the wrinkles under my eyes and multiplied them by the gray hairs that have sprouted up in the lst few days, you'd be slightly more tired than I am right now.Chauncey and I flew - or, rather, I flew and he sat on my back puffing on his inhaler. God, he must have been eating two-pound steaks for breakfast or swallowing anvils or something, my back felt like Ayn Rand afterwards - to Iraq to deal with a hostage negotiation. It was a bloody nightmare, and I mean that quite literally. At first things were going swimmingly. I had even persuaded the main gunman to release half the hostages and talk about his mother and her able-bodied "friend" Raoul Ibanez. A quick word of advice to all single mothers out there: just tell your kids what you plan to do with that boy toy, especially if your bedroom is right next to their room and you have thin walls. From personal experience, I can't tell you the effect it has on a young boy to hear your mother screeching like a frenzied hyena while her "friend"'s pants hang from the locked doorknob. Excuse me for a second, please.

OK, I'm back from crying. As I was saying, things were going fine. The gunmen and I were on a first name basis, and they had agreed to release the final few hostages (it's a sad truth of life that most hostages are ugly. The pretty ones are usually allowed to walk out of the building before they become hostages. That's why in planes they now pack makeup kits under the lifejackets. In case of a shift in control, you understand. But as the ugly ones trickled out, Chauncey, who up until that time had been dozing in the back of the rickshaw, woke up from some nightmare and screamed, at the vein-popping top of his lungs, "THEY'LL SLAUGHTER YOU ALL, YOU FOOLS!" It turned out that in his dream he had been cavorting with a group of sheep in a meadow...and then the trucks came. It was really the worst thing he could have said, in real life or in his dream.

Needless to say, the skies were soon thick with gunfire. And to top things off, Chauncey swallowed a box full of magnets while we roamed the streets travelling to the airport. The metal detector exploded, and it took two hours of reasoning with airport security and a very strong laxative until they were convinced that we weren't about to hijack a plane. They handed every passenger on our flight an extra bottle of mascara just in case. Racists.

But oh, how wonderful it is to be back in the cave. Chauncey's snoozing in the back room, sucking fitfully on his binky. I'm as calm as a yawn sitting at the control panel surveying the city. Kind of tired, actually. Ordinarily the burglar on camera Z2315 (intersection of 25th Street and Halloran Ave) would be facing my fury, but today I think I'll give him a pass as he mugs that frail old lady. It's not like she needs the money, anyway. And I'm sure she can protect herself. Actually, she's just floored him with a thick uppercut. Now she's mugging him. I may be needed after all.

Origin Story Part II

Little did I know what fate was about to throw my way.

My father had made a lot of money as I was growing up. The winged Aztec monkey god Quetzlqoatl had appeared to him in his dreams and spoken to him and told him what to do to ensure his success). Quetzlcoatl's prophecy went something like this:

"Dwureuftz ogkeurvn xfejfks twrzhfj giiwftyw
fuietrrw frfnspoppkl ogdjtrw prrrrrrrrrrrrr"

For years my father struggled to break this code, and by 1985 he had gotten it down to:

"In the ravenous jungles of the Amazon
lies an unspeakable treasure, almost prrrrrrrrr".

He never did manage to figure out that last word. My theory is that he farted in his sleep and confused it with something the god said. Long story short, my father invested in Amazon the company right from the beginning, and when I was born he and my mother were joint Chairmen of the Board of Directors at Amazon, and only chopped wood for the exercise. He had rippin' pecs, if I remember correctly.

One day, coming home from a stockholder's meeting, he was attacked by two hoodlums, two juvenile delinquents armed with knives and water pistols. They tried to stick him up.He refused. On that cold winter's day, they blasted him him with water. He sank to the barren earth.
"Nice shot, holmes! Your .38 revolve like the Sun around the Earth!*" The first one said.
"Word up, dunn! I love you like my dick size!*" replied his partner.

Then he rose back up (water pistols? Seriously? They thought they could stop him with water pistols? What a Native American strategy that was) and gave them both a good beating. The last laugh was on him, though; he died of pneumonia three days later, on a wooen bed that he had made so many years ago. I remember it well. My mother was sobbing into her shroud in the corner, and I was but a young lad looking up to the floor of the bed. "Come to me, my boy", my father rasped.

When you're as young as I was, you'll do anything as long as it's rasped at you. I got up on the bed and stared deep into his beard of ice. "Listen, boy", he said. "I know...I haven't been the best father." He waited a few seconds, saw that I wasn't going to contradict him, and continued in a slighly higher pitch. "But I know some things. Everyone picks them up as they tumble through the whole shebang. Take it easy on your mother, you know? She can get a bit high-strung. She once tied me to a flagpole because I told her she looked slightly heavy. In fact, burn those jeans she wears when she's gardening. They make her look like she's hiding pies down the back of her pants, and someone's bound to say something eventually."

My mother gasped and shot a glare back at my father. Ears like a fox, she had.

My father's face turned ashen. "Oh. Dammit. Good thing I'm dying, eh? But, listen boy..." and here, he gulped, like a traveller at the edge of a cliff. "..I got no time left, so remember this: we do it all. Everything. If justice exists, it's on our shoulders. I've wandered the jungles of the Amazon, and if anything shines, it's cause it made itself shine, you know. Do good, boy." He closed his eyes.

Then he shot up to a sitting position, groaned "GONE? UNSPEAKABLE TREASURE, ALMOST GONE? What a gyp! YOU GOTTA BE KIDDING ME!" and collapsed on the bedspread.

And was dead.

I've always cradled that deep inside me. Not even Chauncey knows - he thinks my father was killed by a bunch of rogue eBay traders. Don't tell him otherwise, will you?

ANyway, from then on, it was just my mother and I in that grand, desolate mansion. After two months she had forgotten how to hug me. I'd catch her looking it up in a guide, or perhaps something a bit creepier. Sometimes she downright scared me. Her appearance began to deteriorate like Chauncey when he's left in the sun too long. She grew a streak of white hair trailed down to the edge of her curls like some ashy stream splitting a cliff. Soon we could no longer be in the same room. We were drifting apart, like when two chemicals bond, and after they've formed the covalent connection their own attractive forces slowly pull them apart. It can be explained by a simple graph actually. Look it up, it's SCIENCE! I learned it when I was ten and it's never abandoned me!

I remember because that was when Alphonse Maldoigt swept into the picture and almost killed me with a rusty meat cleaver. You don't forget something like that.

*both actual rap lyrics. Google it, biotches!

New York, Big City of Dreams....

2009-04-07T21:50:00.000-07:00

There is a faintly attractive lady whose walk disturbs my attention as I balance the tasks of writing this on my laptop and stealing my last few glances of New York, big city of dreams, as I sit on this straight-backed chair and try to focus on anything but the swarming masses going about their collective business in this high-ceilinged terminal. Right now, I stay busy by chiding myself for the lapses in my focus, most of which come from faintly attractive ladies with eye-catching walks. But the real reason I'm so slow is that I'm already starting to remember; touching on each memory worth saving so I can press them deep into my memory. I'd like to think that I have some choice over the things I remember, that when I'm old and have nothing but these memories to keep me warm, I can sift through and find the things worth lifting back up out of the streams of thoughts that I'll have accumulated by then. And believe me, there is a lot about this trip that deserves to be remembered.

I never thought I would get acceptance into New York University. I'm not the type of person who gets his first choices. When the letter came, I remember wondering where the hell I went right. I'm still not sure. But in the meantime, I had other roadblocks to deal with. Parents.

"Congratulations! But you are going to San Diego, right?"
"New York isn't safe. You could get mugged in your sleep".
"Also, it's too cold over there. In 1887, the temperature was 21 below zero!"
"It costs so much, you'd be in debt by the time you came out".
"What's so special about the college? The only thing they advertise is the city, and the city's just not safe".
"What about research opportunities?"

And so on. Finally, the thing came to a head: My father and I were to attend some NYU conference thing. We'd be there for Sunday and Monday. And I was going to have to plan the trip, as in, I mess this up and it's six long months of "See, New York is dangerous". A lot was riding on this. My father told me, "You will be evaluated on this trip. You plan it out. You have to show that you can deal not only with the things that happen, but also the things that do not happen". And of course, I wasn't allowed to take a cab. Public transit, and the accompanying headache, all the way.

I was confident though. After you print out your fourth map and check your suitcase for the fifth time (is my copy of Tony Morrison's Beloved in the front pocket or the back?), you start to think to yourself that maybe you can pull this off. To be honest, though, (instead of lying through my teeth like I've done this entire post - or have I?) I was kind of nervous. What if I didn't like NYC? If the rushing blare of cars, the army of pedestrians, the Statues of Liberty were all too much for me, that would be a kind of disappointment in itself.

So anyway, we got to JFK and I found the shuttle guy (responsible, eh?). We sat in the darkness and stared and the city, tinted orange by the lights.

And it was amazing.

Really, I should not have doubted myself. I would so fit in at NYC. I walked the streets like a New Yorker. A lady even asked me for directions on the subway. I belong in New York City. I think it's partly my nature. I like walls of sound, of sight, of emotion. I took to the streets like a child watching a three-legged dog. I checked us into the hotel. I led us to restaurants, down the subway, past the crowds. I survived. I thrived, even. And it felt good.

There were screwups along the way, of course. Twice I left my folder, with every possible important document, away - once in a hotel lobby, again in a restaurant. Both times, it was only my dumb luck that ensured I got it back. The biggest, though, wasn't that big at all: When we had to take the subway to the conference thingy, I miscalculated. I was supposed to take the C train south to West 4th Street from Penn Station. I went to Penn station, I took the C train...and I took it north. My dad panicked since we were running late and hailed a cab. He then tried to give the cabdriver directions, which didn't go well ("Listen, man! I know where I'm going, arright? No need to stick a map in my face or nothing. You see the steering wheel in my hands right here? It means I know where I'm going, arright?"). We got to the conference disheveled, late, but a little excited. I got a free totebag (which was awesome).

We went on campus tour, and my love of NYU quintupled. Did you know they have free printers in the library? And 12 million video clips - everything from the Zapruder film to the latest season of Scrubs? Amazing! My dad wanted to know about research opportunities, but then I don't think that was smart. You don't fly 3,000 miles for a two-hour lecture on undergraduate matriculation, you go for the campus and the city. Which, in NYU's case, are the same. The campus is stunning. The Archway stands guard over the meadows and trees of Washington Square Park, where the people mingle and wander at their leisure. Around them, the cars keep up a raspy hum of traffic as they move between the sphisticated buildings that smile from the sidewalks. I walked into the bookstore to escape the rain and didn't come out for two hours. Good times.

The small moments stand out too. I remember this one, frenzy-eyed man standing at the corner of 4th and Washington who shouted to my dad that we weren't in India and he couldn't just pick up little boys off the street. Leave the kid alone, you dirty old man! he cried. I bit back a smile, and my dad just stared forward while the strange man left us to count the air. It's things like that which never happen in Cupertino or most other cities. It's things like that you can tell your friends about or put into blogs. It's things like that you try to remember. I got confronted by a crazy person, and it was delicious, every second of it.

And then there was the food. New York has a food all its own. Calzones, avocado burritos, big cookies dotted with M&M's, about the size of my hand. And cheap, too. Pizza should not cost 99 cents a slice, not in a recession or any time. But it does, and it's the public's victory.

So there was that. Those are the memories I'm trying to hold on to. But not just those. Oh no. Good memories mean nothing if you have no bad memories to escape from. Besides, which, they make for the most colorful experiences.

The subway. I rode like 80 miles of it, and 70 of those miles were an absolute killer. It turns out the metro is only fun if you get to sit. When you stand, the drone of the announcer's voice, the jerks and starts of the train sliding over god knows what on the rails, and above all the creepy posters advertising health care that look more like an advertisement for a bad soap opera, those things call your mind to the strain.

And the alternative to the subway? Walking. Except it turn out that it rains in New York. And the worst part about it is that the rain and the wind have kind of tag-teamed to form this irksome duo of annoyance: one lets droplets fall like hair at a barbershop, the other blows it right into your face. If it wasn't for the totebag, I'd have been sunk. My folder would have been this soggy, pulpy mass. Thank you, NYU. You saved my ass.

Then there's the matter of Delaware soil. I promised a certain someone I'd get them soil from their wonderful home state of DE. I guess i just didn't have the time or the freedom. Sorry, A. I tried, though. But still, what can I say? It was a fun inside joke.

And for a brief while, the thing I was afraid of came back: boredom. For whatever reason, I spend half my life in Cupertino bored out of my goddamn mind. Even with friends, I get the dull feeling that I'm not doing anything new, that sometime thirty years ago some other group of people already had the same conversation we already did, but better, livelier. It's why I always feel depressed after reading a good book. Dammit, someone else did it already!

And it came back. There was nothing to do while my dad waited to talk to the financial aid office about finagling more money for me. So we wandered in the rain, and talked and joked. It was nice, comforting, warm. And boring.

So now, after the harrowing ride back to the subway, to Jamaica station, then to JFK, through the check-in (this was my real coup. My dad had claimed it was impossible to check in beforehand. I went behind his back and surprised him with the voucher allowing us to skip that part of the tedious airport process. The look on his face, I swear. Score one more for the son), through security, and to Gate 2, awaiting flight 73 for SFO. It's been a trip. I've gone to sleep way too late. And I stil have to finish the final 120 pages of Beloved. Funny story about that book and how it saved my father from airport interrogation about ten minutes ago, but I'll save it for later. They're just about to board, so I guess I had better wrap it up.

On the flight back, I won't be thinking much of New York. I'll have my nose buried in Beloved, a riveting, thrilling book that deserves every drop of acclaim. But when I get back, I'll have time to think back. On cold days, when the wind plays slice-the-toast with my face, I'll think of my umbrella swaying dangerously as I crossed the street with the rain slapping against my face. When I'm standing with my friends and we all fall silent, I'll think of the strange man on 4th and Washington, policing his own private little corner in his own demented little mind. And when I have nothing before me, I'll sit down and I'll see again glorious city unfolding before me, its buildings grasping the sky and scraping the horizon with life. Will that happen? I can hope. I've known all along that you don't pick the memories you remember, but if you can twist your experiences so that some get held closer to your soul than others, that's the first step to casting them into memory. I remember reading that somewhere, which in itself is proof enough that it's true.

And to think, I didn't even get to see the Statue of Liberty. I guess I've failed as a tourist. Oh well. :)

Thieves In The Night {Part I)

2009-03-29T15:09:00.000-07:00

So here we are, or rather here I am and there you are. I'm assuming that you haven't broken into my lair, which means that I'm assuming my newly-installed security system is as state-of-the-art as that greasy-haired salesman assured me it was. I found it odd that he kept bursting into muffled coughing fits whenever I asked him how well it worked, but to be fair it is fairly damp in here and perhaps he was fishing for an excuse to leave. So, as you may have already guessed, here I am.

Where am I? Why, I'm deep in my secret cave, located underneath a shopping mall near the outskirts of the city (which is, really, the best place to build a shopping mall, right?), sipping on '41 Chateau de Soubresaut absinthe (oh, how one of my friends would weep at the magnificence of sampling this product!) while translating "Hotel Rwanda" into Telugu, with a few added dance sequences (oh, how another one of my friends would weep at the magnificence of sampling this product!), and waiting for my manservant Chauncey to fetch me some filigree crackers to whet my appetite. In between, during those lapses when I grow bored, I jump up and hammer away at this here blog. I'm not sure what to use it for, actually. Real-life stories, or an excuse to cut up as much as possible. Maybe I'll alternate the two. I've decided to be realistic for now. Take a look:

Origin Story

Part One

Who am I? Well, that's not so easy. Tucked away within my life story is the key to everything and nothing, pressed deep within the slivers and cracks of the stories I'm about to tell you. The truth, if that even exists, is that I don't even know who I am anymore, and I suppose part of the reason I let Chauncey coax me into this blog is to begin my investigation of myself. I suppose I should start with the facts. But screw that. Here we go:

I was born in a log cabin at the foot of an erupting volcano. My father was a humble woodcutter who had just returned from a stint in the Tamil Tigers to meet my mother, a damnable waitress working tables in the Cafe de Paris in, well, Paris. After two months they were married, and after three they were engaged (how? I don't know, my lawyer's still untangling their prenups). Six months after their engagement, they found themselves in an abandoned log cabin...in Pompeii.

They say that when I was born, the sky turned red and that lightning split the clouds themselves into fragments. Then three wise men came out of the bushes armed with gifts, though by all accounts they kind of sucked (myrrh? seriously?) and my mother got rid of them by giving them to our Lawyer on World Lawyer's Day. The volcano itself erupted and belched out smoke and lava, which was a pretty nice touch except that it burned through the log cabin. I began to shine with a radiant aura and when my mother accidentally dropped me, she says that instead of hitting the floor, I floated, and rose up and up, and then hit the ceiling. Side note: If I ever seem bored in a conversation with anyone, that's why. It's not that your story about your cat's bowel movements is soul-numbingly uninteresting, it's that my mind freezes and slackens a little sometimes. Nothing personal, you boring, boring, person.

As a young boy, I showed early promise. When I was an infant, I walked on water to save my binky when a local bully threw it into a pond. By the age of 3, I had written a scientific paper on this idea of mine, called "relativity", and when I showed it to my friend Albert, he ran his hands along his frizzy white hair and told me it was brilliant. I gave it to him to proofread. I never saw the paper or him again. I wonder what became of him. He was never as bright as me in class, you know.

By the age of 7, I had made a new best friend - his name was Chauncey, and he was Mongolian - or at least, that's what I guessed from the size of his forehead. He never said much, but when he did it was profound - things like "We don't have the same mommy and daddy" or "Look at that man. He's on fire. Fire gets very hot sometimes" or "That man on fire isn't moving anymore. I think he's sleeping. Sometimes when it's hot I want to sleep too". Later on I discovered that he was clinically retarded, but he was still a good friend regardless. And now he can wash himself without crying and everything. The point is, I was a happy child back then. I had a loving family, good friends, and the ability to shoot lasers out of my eyes. It was a pleasant childhood, and I knew it, even then.

Little did I know how quickly it would all come crashing down.

End Of Part One

Next time: I'll try my hand at fiction and write about school or something.