Triumphant Return

I am back in the bosom of southern California. I dig San Francisco. In it, one actually feels like an urbanite. It reminded me of what a real city is made of, and while the public transportation doesn't hold a candle to NYC, London or Paris, it's got L.A. beat. Los Angeles is simply sprawl -- except for obvious exceptions (downtown, a few old neighborhoods) it is row after row of concrete apartment buildings, mini-marts, strip malls, burger joints, and gas stations. The latter being particularly appropriate since L.A. is the birthplace and citadel of the car culture. The architecture in San Francisco is a grand collection of styles from Queen Anne to Colonial Revival -- reflecting the early 20th century styles following the earthquake and great fire. L.A.'s got...well, strip malls and Post-War cheapness.

Anyhow, for what it's worth, I'm home.

Snapping Foe Toes

Schoolwork got you down?! I'm posting up a flock of pictures from the past few years into galleries on

my buzznet photoblog.

It's easier than MySpace, and just as free! Snap into it!

Apartment of Darkness

Corporate Housing is unfiltered evil. The company for which I am freelancing has set me up in an apartment complex about 5 miles up the 101 from the studio. The previous occupant of my pain cave, I am positive, owned a cat. I know this because there are areas in the apartment where the unmistakable odor of feline urine lurks still, like an invisible ghost, mocking me. I’ve tried attacking two different areas in the living room with Febreeze and a sponge, my T-shirt wrapped around my head like a shadour, to no avail: the pungent odor won’t go away. I scream at the cream stucco walls and shake my fists. My madness verges on that of Lady Macbeth. “Out, damned spot, OUT!” I shout as I scour, wide-eyed and trembling. My quote of Joyce’s final line from Araby for my headline proved telling – my eyes now truly burn with anguish and anger...and the ammonia stench of cat piss. And that is only the beginning of my irritation.

As I’m only in the bay area for two months, it makes sense to move into a furnished apartment. But why must these flats always be so insipid? Even their names, like Oakwood or The Highlands, ring of banality. I realize that no two people exist who have the same taste in furnishings, but why not just make the apartment plain and spartan? Why make it the wet dream of a bourgeois octogenarian? My milk-and-water abode is adorned with gaudy gold-framed mirrors and derivative Impressionist prints of women in straw hats and gingham dresses gathering flowers in an English Garden. I cringe at the large brass lamps, and the teal bathroom rugs and toilet lid covers make me squeal in disgust. The fake pothos in the glazed basket by the fireplace clouds my mind. I gnash my teeth at the mocha towels, salmon and ecru place mats, blond cabinets and dressers, and mauve napkin rings. A home, even a temporary one, should be one’s refuge from the vicissitudes of the world and the mundane drudgery of workaday life. When I come home from work, however, I find not relief but madness. Every morning and every night I enter the land of desperation and frenzy. As I try in vain to prepare a simple meal for breakfast or dinner, my mind reels at the jade overstuffed love seats with taupe flower-printed pillows. In the dark of the night I awake from cursed dreams of lilac pewter ware and cinnamon teapots, screaming and clutching my dusty rose and celery bedspread. The horror! The horror!

Send help

No, I'm not M.I.A.

I'm a P.O.W. I'm in the Guantanamo Bay of VFX Studios -- no contact with the outside world allowed. My desk faces the wall in a huge room and there are a bunch of other people behind me. With my headphones on all day it's easy for supervisors, interrogators, etc., to sneak up behind me and ask me what I'm doing...thus, no internet time. I work from 8:30 to 18:30, which may not seem like a lot, but after my sojourn in the free world when I was accustomed to waking up at the crack of noon every day, it's torturous. And after pushing pixels for 9 hours the last thing I want to do when I get home is plug in the laptop. I just want to sit here and take in the smell of cat piss. But that's a story for another day. Because holy christ it's 12:23 -- past lights out! I'll get 3 days in solitary if I'm caught up this late.

Adieu L.A.

This weekend I take my leave of the City of Angels and strike out for the City of...Franciscos. I'm coming out of retirement and going back into Visual Effects. No longer will every night be a Friday night, and everyday a Saturday; no longer will I be able to drive downtown for my Chano's fix; no longer will I be retireded. I have 2 days to pack everything I'll need for the next two months and then I'm off. It's a rather sudden decision, I know, but some of life's best adventures often result from spur-of-the-moment choices such as this. I wish I had time for a Coming-Out-Of-Retirement Party. Perhaps I'll just wait the two months until I retire once more, returning triumphantly to Hollywood in my grand chariot ('92 Honda Accord) and have an even bigger bacchanal then. It will be a true occasion for rejoicing, and rejoicings call for drunken orgies, do they not?

Why am I coming out of retirement? Because the circle is not yet complete. When I was a senior in the Film program at Berkeley I applied for an internship at Industrial Light + Magic, George Lucas' effects company in San Rafael. I didn't get it, and I ended up interning as a storyboard artist for an independent film studio in SF. At the time I had no idea that a career in the VFX industry awaited me post-graduation. Now, almost ten years later, I'm going back up north to work for the first studio to which I ever applied. This cycle of my life will have reached its denouement. The epilogue will echo the prologue, and I will be finished with visual effects, poetically speaking. Then I can cast off the shackles of digital artistry forever and the real retirement shall begin. Let freedom ring.

Why I'm not working

"They deem me mad because I will not
sell my days for gold;
And I deem them mad because they
think my days have a price."

"How narrow is the vision that exalts
the busyness of the ant above the singing
of the grasshopper."

"When my cup is empty I resign myself
to its emptiness; but when it is half full
I resent its half-fulness."

"How can you sing if your mouth be
filled with food?
"How shall your hand be raised in bless-
ing if it is filled with gold?"

~Kahlil Gibran

Press the Meet

I'm in a very good mood due to transcripts of Bush's appearance on Meet the Press yesterday. It's good to know that Junior's command of the English language is as scandalously weak as ever. This exchange (cut and pasted from The Washington Post) is my favorite:

Russert: "You said ‘the Iraqi regime is a threat of unique urgency, Saddam Hussein is a threat that we must deal with as quickly as possible.' You gave the clear sense that this was an immediate threat that must be dealt with."

Bush: "I think […] I called it a grave and gathering threat. I don't want to get into a word contest, but what I do want to share with you is my sentiment at the time. There was no doubt in my mind that Saddam Hussein was a danger to America."

Russert: "In what way?"

Bush: "Well, because he had the capacity to have a weapon, make a weapon. We thought he had weapons. The international community thought he had weapons, that he had the capacity to make a weapon, and then let that weapon fall into the hands of a shadowy terrorist network."

What is he SAYING? I need a English translation, please. As far as I can tell, he seems to be recalling that he THOUGHT Saddam had weapons, therefore his sentiment at that time was that Iraq was an immediate threat to the United States. Well, he was wrong. And not only is he unrepentant about that misconception that's led to over 500 American deaths, thousands of casualties, a $500-billion-plus U.S.D. deficit, and for the first time, a palpable Al Qaeda presence in Iraq, but he's STILL trying to make it appear that he was right. And is he actually calling Tim Russert a liar? Just because the administration's new favorite phrase is "gathering threat" doesn't make it retroactive. Obviously he doesn't want to get into a word contest because he would lose. His spin doctors are in the O.R. and are working overtime, but according to polls, the public has been waking up in the past week. Dick Cheney and my mother appear to be the only two Americans left who believe Saddam played a part in the 9/11 attacks, since Bush and Rumsfeld have both been forced to retract statements promoting this mad hypothesis. The fact is quickly becoming apparent, however, that Al Qaeda was never in Iraq...until the U.S. recently allowed them in.

I can't WAIT for Kerry (or ANYBODY!) to debate this illiterate fool. I might actually re-subscribe to cable for a chance to be ringside at that event: the war hero vs. the only president in U.S. history to enter office with a criminal record.

Doggy Daycare

I babysat Jessy's Maltepoo puppy yesterday. Marley was a little more "poo" than "malte": really fucking cute but really fucking incontinent. I would take him outside and stand there as he sniffed and looked around for two hours (magnetically attracting all females within a 2-block radius), and then as soon as we come back into my apartment kid immediately squats, trembles, and decorates my rug. I built a penitentiary for him in my kitchen but he cries when he's left alone so I had to hang out in the pen with him. I got them cute-cellmate-who-pisses-on-the-floor jailhouse blues. I was actually going to custom tailor a diaper for him out of a small plastic bag but as I was looking at it trying to figure out where to cut the holes he pissed again; I was forced to abandon my preventative efforts for corrective measures and haz mat cleanup. Also, what's up with cute puppy stinkypoo? I had no idea that a baby animal the size of a football was capable of emitting such foul odors. Hell hath no fury like the aroma of Marley's ass. I involuntarily gagged several times, and cleaning up poo is a difficult endeavor when one is dry-retching uncontrollably. It wasn't all misery, though. When I figured out puppy industry rule number four thousand and eighty -- that you can't take your eyes off of them even for ONE SECOND -- I was able to make a dive for his ass wielding a Ziplock bag and catch his carpet art like a touchdown pass. I did dance an endzone jig after that victory, but I didn't spike the ball. I was so pooped myself last night by the time Jessy picked Marley up I was thinking about cancelling dinner plans on the west side with my friend Jon. My ravenous hunger outweighed my exhaustion, however, and I hit the road. We had planned on soul food at Aunt Kizzy's Back Porch in the Marina, but arrived too late and were banished to a forgettable NY Pizza joint. (Wrong guess, Julie! By that time we were both too hungry to drive back to Venice for a few slices of Abbott's superior pie.) As we sat down I sensed a disturbance in the force and squinted: "Do you smell ass?" I asked Jon. "I swear I can smell dog shit." It was very faint, and he didn't know whether he smelled it for real or because I suggested it. I couldn't see any brown stains on the bottoms of my shoes, inside my zippered hoodie or on my lap (the latter two being known Marley haunts), but I was still suspicious. I never located the source of my unease and as the night wore on, it evaporated...either that or my olfactory sense became inured to it. In either case, all yesterday's linen is in the washing machine right now, and my kicks are in the sink.

Conclusion: while I'm undoubtedly a Marley fan, my love for puppies in general -- at least for the time being -- is reserved for those who have been properly house-trained.

What Bush doesn't want you to know

The Oreo Cookie idea for ending world hunger, improving the education of our country's children, and covering the cost of our healthcare. Who can argue with logic, reason, and common sense?

Click here -- it's more important than ice cream

New York Stories

My first day in the city I walked from Times Square to the Met through Central Park. I'm lucky I didn't bust any bones slipping on all that ice. I ruminated on the Modern art, the Greek sculpture hall and the Micronesian/Melanesian exhibits. On my way back, I collected some karma by helping two old ladies across some streets. Much later on, just for kicks, Julie and I decided to peep a strip club off Times Square. Dirty, stupid, and nasty: as it turns out there were no kicks to be had and we returned to the W for drinks at the bar.

My second day I walked south to Union Square. Want to hear something foolish? Even though it was below freezing there was a farmer's market right there on the north side of the square. Who are they fooling? That shit ain't fresh. But I bought an organic chocolate chip cookie, a ginger snap, and a brownie. Then I went to that Coffee Shop and ate some of that pao de queijo and meatloaf while I did a crossword. Then that night I got the blue cheek (see "Blue Man Shoes" journal entry) and the red face from getting all liquored up at the W bar. Again.

The next day was Chinese New Year. Gung Hei Fat Choi, everybody. I took the N R train to Chinatown, where I asked two separate street vendors in my broken Cantonese where I could get some legit won ton mien, and they both pointed me to the same joint: Sun Say Kai on the corner of Baxter and Walker. It's one of those tiny honey-colored restaurants with ducks and pork legs hanging in the window, and where you have to share your table with strangers. I had the siu ahp won ton mien with the chow mien noodles thrown in for good measure, and it was no joke. While I sucked my duck bones a few lion dancers showed up at the door, along with their coterie of benevolent society members. There was much banging of cymbals, drums and gongs while the proprietor of Sun Say Kai brought out the symbolic cabbage head and oranges. After paying my $4.00 bill I bundled back up and headed back out into the streaming sunlight. I followed the mythical dancing beasts to Grand Harmony restaurant on Mott Street, between Canal and Hester. While the revelers shot off countless firecrackers and confetti cannons and the elder parade organizers snapped at the younger uniformed ones for smoking while they held back the spectators with broom handles, I snapped off a roll of B&W 120mm film with my Holga.

Afterwards I walked back up Broadway to the W, stopping again at Coffee Shop for a hot toddy (the drink, not the bartender). The wind was so strong that the snow was falling horizontally, north to south down the canyon of Broadway. Appropriately enough, everyone was getting Chinese eyes, squinting through the biting flakes. When I emerged again into the cold with a belly full of whiskey, the snow had stopped and the setting sun had turned the sky a smoky shade of pink. It's amazing what a little whiskey can do for your day.

That night I returned to Mott Street to dine with Julie, Steve, Mack, and Jin Ah at Joe's Ginger. I can't recommend this place enough. I've had better Shanghainese rice cakes, but the crab and pork stuffed dumplings simply cannot be beat. Yeah, they're even better than Din Tai Fung. That's right, I said it: as far as I'm concerned, these are the best Taiwanese-style dumplings in the Western Hemisphere. You think you got a contender? Bring it on. We'll have a dumpling kumite showdown, and my money's on Joe. And then after that, we hit up the bar at the W again, like the boozers you know we are.