A Brief Thought About Django

So, I haven't seen DJANGO UNCHAINED yet. I feel like I should, I just don't know if it's urgent, or if this is something I want to see in theaters. It's completely possible that I won't like it, but that 50/50 chance is what makes it exciting to me.

Culturally, we've gotten kinda stupid about how we define controversy and edginess. These terms have become the territory of shock jocks and stand-up trolls, and their checklist for provocative work consists of a single item that says, "say something you shouldn't." We've lost edgy art to one-trick racism, sexism and homophobia yet we all still pretend like this is a bold new commentary.

On the other hand, the wide-ranging reaction to DJANGO UNCHAINED feels like real, legitimate controversy. The useful kind that results in a net positive communication, not just backlash and backlash to the backlash. I recently watched Louis CK reiterate a common belief that provoking a reaction is an important goal of any art, but he doesn't take into account the push-a-button, one dimensional ease with which it can be accomplished. The debate around this film reminds me what actual provocation is supposed to be like. It's an actual conversation, and that's never a waste of time or detrimental to the culture at large.

The thinkpieces that have sprung out of the event that is this film have been valuable to our conversation on race and media. I can completely understand liking it as a celebration of Blaxploitation style or disliking it as a retread of Blaxploitation's problems. It can be a cathartic middle finger to the romanticized south, or "as troubling as it is affirming." I can see liking it, except for how the audiences (and you) react to it.

That's the best part: you don't have to like it. A bunch of intelligent commenters have trended in opposite directions, and that's exciting. It makes the film kind of a Rorschach ink blot for race, although maybe not as open-ended and fluid. It's a legitimate provocation, a piece that sticks something in you, and it's understandable if that isn't everyone's idea of a good time.

I Love A Good Ethereal Jam

So while I was exploring Tumblr tags, I happened to come upon The War on Drugs playing their amazing song, "Best Night" on KEXP. It's an old video, especially with the new year looming on us, but dang, what a cool band.

The in-studio live radio performance is a different breed from the concert performance or the album recording. It's a midway point between the two -- they're not responsible for making it more bombastic or engaging the way they would in a 1200 seat concert venue, but they don't have all the tricks of the studio to polish off their work. The changes from the original are pretty glaring. Adam Granduciel sings with an even heavier Dylan affectation at first, and he just plays with the weirdo vocal melodies. The song can't be a glittery, warping, kite in the wind in this environment, so they make up for it by just jamming. It's a great cruise.

They're due for a new album in 2013, right?

Does Anyone Remember Emogame?

For people of my age, for whom the internet started in the mid 90s, the perpetual newness of everything died when we started to notice the death of web crazes. We buried Strong Bad on top of Newgrounds, and realized the graveyard was several layers deep. Things don't stay online forever, it seems. Everything has a half-life.

Mostly these were inconsequential time wasters; things to do at the computer lab when the teacher was sick, or things to show your friends during lunch if you hung out in the classroom. The one that left any kind of mark on my personality going forward was the Flash-based platformer, EMOGAME. The name is an awkward dated piece of slang now, but in 2002, before there was "viral", this was a leading edge of coolness and satire in my world.

In the time of 2002, post-dotcom bubble hype and pre-social media, the genre culture of indie music seemed to be blossoming. It was always there, of course, but the culture of it didn't begin to turn into the commercial force it is today until the development of its institutions. From my perspective, a few things happened: Pitchfork moved to Chicago and became the fully stocked news & reviews site we know today. The scene had become worth talking about, as seen in the 2003 book "Nothing Feels Good" by Andy Greenwald. Then, acts that were on the periphery of the culture started to bleed into the MTV mainstream.

These acts weren't genre-kings of indie, but they didn't fit into the nu-metal, rap-rock or alternative mold MTV & KROQ had built. So we started to learn about emo, and its familial line toward indie. This tangential relation and mega success did something important: it took the cultural conversation about indie music above ground. In order to ward off posers, the chat rooms and message boards I frequented had to define bands as within or without. The Jimmy Eat World fans were starting to learn about Pavement. Half of us lured in by the casual pop were given the chance to go deeper. For me, with my brain at a soft, impressionable state known as High School, this cultural conversation was a learning experience.

The conversation took place all over the big music internet of the time: Buddyhead, Pitchfork, and a little personal project called EMOGAME by one Jason Oda. It was a retro 8-bit style platformer where you controlled an all-star cast of emotional dudes like Chris Carraba and Cedric Bixler to save The Get Up Kids while slaying the likes of Creed, Enrique Iglesias and the cast of Friends. In their words, it took the day's hip young musicians on a tour to defeat "idol worship of vapid actors and corporate musical entities." The appeal for me was three-fold: It was a rare extensive flash game (it took hours to beat and used save slots), its humor was chock full of pop culture and crude violence like South Park, and its art style was hip several times over.

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Dropping Pacquiao

I don't know if I could ever be considered a Manny Pacquiao fan. I always wanted him to win, but being a fan implies positive feelings of support or a participation in excitement and joy. Mostly, what I felt was dread. During the height of Pacquiao's winning streak, I was worried about how this would all end. As a Filipino, I could not his significance to the people around me or the entire archipelago of the Philippines. I joked that should he ever lose, there would be a string of suicides in Manila, but underneath the hyperbole I believed the core of it. I didn't enjoy the suspense of his matches, or at least, I enjoyed them the way one might enjoy a horror film. The eventual victories were just sighs of relief until the next stressful bout.

It's not a reasonable way to think by any means, but I've come to understand it as part of having an identity, whether it's based on ethnicity or hometown or shared hobbies. It's not purely that Pacquiao was Filipino, and therefore, I was obligated to emotionally invest in his career. It's just that I recognized a common ground, and that made him relatable, likable, and inclined to transpose all my hopes & dreams onto him (if you want to deconstruct it that far.) It would have been the same if I found out he listened to Titus Andronicus or read Batman comics. For a group starving for representation in even the most inconsequential of venues (So You Think You Can Dance! American Idol! Top Shot?) every chance to root for someone that looks like you is a gem.

Of course, this kind of identification has boundaries. Comedian Hari Kondabolu has a great bit where, upon deciding that there are now plenty of Indians in American mass media, he now feels free to openly hate some of them. While I don't think I've personally reached that level of saturation, I understand the idea of divorcing those that don't line up with the rest of your identity. There are figures you'd think I would identify with (Say, half-Filipino singer Bruno Mars), but they do things that I absolutely don't see myself in (cheeseball R&B songs). My tendency as a minority participant in pop culture has been to relate to someone until they do something that says, nope, sorry, you can't.

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The Heat Death of Instagram

In 2008, I bought a Polaroid camera from a thrift store near Diamond Bar, California for $2. It remains to this day my best thrift store find. It was a point of pride: unanimously cool, appealingly retro and no one else had one. Sure, a pack of 10 shots cost me $22 and within a few months Polaroid ceased manufacturing the film. But in the mean time, it was like being a member of the secret instant film treehouse club. I followed the updates of The Impossible Project, filled an album with my pictures and felt like I had something special.

The rise of Instagram didn't kill instant film, but it did makes its revival unnecessary. Before the app changed the playing field, The Impossible Project was putting out some beautiful cameras and film packs while Polaroid rededicated themselves to their forte with a campaign helmed by Lady Gaga. Yet it was all for naught when nearly everything people liked about Polaroids was aped and improved upon by those bastards at Hipstamatic and Instagram: the character of the borders, the randomness of the focus, and the way it seemed to pull light from the air. The only thing they didn't have was the physical product, the picture in your hands, but like everything else digital we just stopped valuing solid objects.

I hated Instagram at first. It was an irrational, petty hatred; I knew that and gladly indulged. Part of it was obviously the opening of the gates that let all these kids into my secret treehouse. Whereas I had to sift through a pile of second hand crap and buy overpriced endangered film on the reg, every asshole from my high school suddenly achieved the artful character of instant film in their Facebook profile picture. Popularity is one of the stupidest reasons to dislike something, and I have a track record of it. Notably, I never signed up for a MySpace in its heyday, simply because everyone insisted that I needed one. (I jumped ahead to thefacebook and got to feel like an elitist early adopter.) With Instagram, the ship was already sailing, full steam ahead, and I was stuck in the past with a bulky camera that I couldn't buy film for.

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Los Angeles Veins

 


One of the trademarks of SNL's The Californians sketch is the constant, meaningless jibber jabber about traffic and freeways and alternate routes. It's one of those things that you don't realize you do until people start making fun of it. Ever since then, I've always felt stupid about every traffic-related tweet I've put out and continue to put out. I can't help it. Here in Southern California, traffic is a way of life. It's bigger than everything. We shape our lives around it, and any way we can circumvent its massive gravity is a victory that delays our final unmourned grave. It's that serious. It feels as if I've spent a third of my 20s in LA traffic.

In an effort to perhaps exorcise my person of all traffic-related thoughts and ideas, I've decided to indulge completely in the art of traffic ruminations. If New Yorkers can write endless poems, short stories and personal essays about sitting on the subway, why can't we do the same about inching half a mile in 30 minutes? Surely there's a way to do it that isn't as excruciating as the real experience. Someone out there must be able to romanticize it into something less Californian and obnoxious.

For me, personally, my traffic life as been shaped by 3 major freeways branching out from my ocean-adjacent home base: California State Route 91, Interstate 110 and the San Diego 405. Highways draw activity and life, the way trade routes and rivers once did, but they lack the character of their predecessors. The 110 has no special power or significance in its uniform concrete the way the Mississippi river does — unless you give it one, as defined by the function it serves in your life. My reasons have never been especially meaningful, but they've been significant to my life as a 20-something, marking different chapters the way moving out of your childhood home does.

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Let's Put Superman In Jail, Y'all

This is the recently released movie poster for Man of Steel, the forever incoming Superman movie reboot directed by WATCHMEN and 300 guy, Zack Snyder. The image of Superman subordinated, especially in cuffs as a reversal of one of Superman's most iconic poses, is an attention-grabber, but also a gimmick. It's the kind of imagery that could only be done with this character to acheive this level of intrigue. It wouldn't imply the same things if it were Batman or The Punisher or even Captain America, certainly not on the same level. It takes advantage of Superman's cultural place as the father of all superheroes, and yet, it's not an instantly cool poster.

My initial reaction was skepticism. People seem to love a powerless Superman, from the beatdown scene in SUPERMAN RETURNS to the 1990s comics event THE DEATH OF SUPERMAN. While the premise of a powerless Superman can create good stories, the reason people love a weakened superman is silly: they think his power is boring, or they think he doesn't face enough adversity. In short, the fans who feel this way aren't Superman fans. They're Iron Man fans that want Superman to be Iron Man.

It might seem like they're doing it again here, trying to make the boyscout appealing to non-fans by taking away what's great about the character. Instead of showing people why optimism, morality and hope are actually cool, they instead infuse the character with grit and weakness. If any character in superhero comics should be about daylight and saviors, it's Superman, and they no one wants to seem to be into trying that out. At least, that's the first impression, probably spurred on by the muted colors and kind of faceless soullessness of everything so far in MAN OF STEEL.

But upon closer inspection: It's a flimsy pair of cuffs. It's not so much Superman subordinated as it is Superman going quietly and willingly, deferring to civilian authority. It's a different way to display strength and morality -- still a quick gimmick about shifting the power dynamic, sure, but true to the character's 80 year history. Maybe it's an alright poster and maybe Zack Snyder won't go for the quick dumb gratifications he did with WATCHMEN.

I guess the worst thing you can say about it thus far is that it brings to mind that ridiculous body builder arrest photo that was big on the internet a couple years ago.

A Reaction To Cloud Atlas

It's clear that CLOUD ATLAS was very difficult to make. Telling 6 stories at once, in 6 different genres, with a repeating ensemble cast should be a nightmare if you want to do it well. Indeed, the only thing everyone seems to agree on in all the reactions to this film is that it's ambitious. But the thing I can't figure out is if there's anything else. I can't tell if this is a difficult to unpack because its depth is hidden so well, or difficult to unpack because there is no secret compartment. It's just empty.

Remarkably, no one seems to be calling it "pretentious," which is a tag that seems to follow every film that aspires to be important. Part of the reason for that is, despite the interlocking stories, it's kind of a simple film. Individually, the stories (ranging from a seafaring slavery play to a post-apocalyptic journey) are so one dimensional and simple by necessity. They're slider burgers. Nothing fancy, because they want you to eat a lot of them. Taken together, I can appreciate the tapestry and work, but it doesn't seem to add up to much more than a 3 hour rumination on the interconnection of lives.

At the same time, that seems like the wrong assessment. The sheer scope and ambition keeps insisting to viewers that there's a lot more to this work, like something with such a degree of difficulty couldn't be so flat and empty, there must be some threads you have to unravel. How you confront the challenge, or the illusion of the challenge, will determine how you receive the film. You will rub up against its complexity and see the tip of the iceberg, as Roger Ebert does, or you will take a step back and see a big stupid ice cube, as Pajiba's Daniel Carlson does. When confronted with the question of whether a piece of art has depth, we tend to look at the credibility of the people behind it. It's hard for me to go this route, as the Wachowskis seem to straddle the line. They often seem to possess great ideas, but execute them in annoying or clumsy ways.

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This Is A Line

For a long time, whenever I wrote something on this blog, I always had to include some kind of disclaimer that I didn't really want anyone to read this, I just wanted to put it out there for myself because it helps me sharpen my craft and distill some thoughts. It was petty, silly hand-wringing and the only way I could deal with the inherent arrogance of wanting to be a writer. It took a couple years of good writing teachers before I got over myself and wrote both because I wanted to, and because I wanted to be heard.

With that neurosis more or less resolved, I have decided to draw a line between the past and present and reinvest my efforts into blogging and less into maintaining a sparse personal essay depository. At some point, if you ever intend on taking your attempt at freelancing seriously, you are going to have to show people a body of work. A place for your tiny baby portfolio, proof of your consistency and evidence that you don't just write, you live like a writer. With the hosting help of Squarespace, I've finally sprung a few dollars at creating a blog I can build on more frequently, while being slightly more professional and indicative of how I am. At last, a place for me to type.

If this is the sort of thing that I want to have associated with my name, there are things on the old blog that I want to keep around. There is a sentimental history to the things I've put online since 2006 as a very scared college freshman with no writing knowledge, and I think that's worth preserving. They are far from masterpieces and might reflect poorly on me, but it's a big chunk of honest, wart-filled work.  Penny Arcade is a multimillion dollar comic & video game enterprise now, but they've never decided to scrub their earliest, most amateur works, and that's always been a point of endearment.

So there's that, and then there's this. I want to participate in conversations, even if my voice is small and sometimes talked stupid. My hope is to turn this into something constant and full of thoughts in the process of being built on the things we're talking about. Something I can grow to share with people without feeling like a total asshole. That starts with writing more things of substance, and less self-referential meta stuff like this.

Of course, the best way to actually go about doing something is to just do it. Not announcing it in a way as gaudy as this. But I like the idea of planting a flag. It doesn't have to mean anything to you, but it does to me. I've been trying to write here for 6 years, now. Maybe that's enough of a warm up.

Review | Dreaming of Angels

The xx's self-titled debut a couple of years ago was, in a word, exciting. Their sound explored new levels of sparsity and the vocals were almost lethargic in tone, but it was exciting. It was the cutting edge of mellow, employing a dark, high style to create a modern classic in cool melancholy. When it turned out Jamie xx was some kind of production genius, as evidenced by his hot-as-shit remixes of Gil-Scott Heron and Adele, they suddenly became part of today's upper tier. Forthcoming sea changers like The Weeknd took note of their night music and incorporated it into their own work. All this, and they hadn't even put out a sophomore album.

To promote the lead-up to their next album and show off a bit of the creative process, the xx did a smart thing in creating a Tumblr (or "soundboard"). The xx, whether they mean to or not, has a great brand and mythology. There's a specific look and atmosphere to what they do. It was sealed with that fantastic music video for "Islands". The Tumblr was curated with somber polaroids, the dark rainbows of oil in water, various images of static — all of it in service of building the atmosphere and mood of the album before we even heard a note. It was a herald of things to come.

It's also risky. Anticipation stacked high, because you can't just let people in like that and then deliver a lackluster album. The singles hinted at something scaled back and somehow even sparser, and now that COEXIST is making it's way 'round the net, the full scope of the retreat is apparent. This is not only an album that utilizes the power of silence more than its predecessor, this is an album that puts urgency in the attic.

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Cultural Soil

Between Against Me!'s Laura Jane Grace and Frank Ocean coming out, it feels like this is a major moment not just in music culture, but in America's long struggle with sexual orientation and gender identity. Sometimes I think this is exactly the kind of sea change we need in our popular culture to make social progress. While I still have faith in the voting system and the theory of our representative democracy, that's also powered by our cultural battle. Whatever it is we try to get on the ballot - gay marriage, ending the war on drugs, the prison industrial complex - it's still a matter of changing the common sense. So when big pop culture figures open up about their sexual identity, it's huge: their fans are forced to look inward to find how they feel, the culture opens up a little bit more, and somewhere some transgender teenager doesn't feel as alone. It's a powerful, important key to progress.

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Review | There's Always Been A Dream Of All

I wasn't sure if I would like the new Hot Chip album much. I have a high opinion of them, always have. But the last Hot Chip album was my favorite Hot Chip album since the last Hot Chip album. And the one before that, my favorite until then, too. It's turtles all the way down, and that's not a normal arc for a band this prolific. At some point, the wave is supposed to crest, and I'm supposed to run into an album that I can't really get into. In todays critical-blog culture, that seems to be the way of things unless you're a genre-king. The odds of Hot Chip topping themselves, again, seemed slim.

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The House Puzzle

I don't even know why I like HOUSE. I know what's good about it -- the dialogue is often sharp, Hugh Laurie is a titan and the show has a sharp style top to bottom. But I don't know what part of it grabbed me so thoroughly that I've been watching it for 8 years.

Not non-stop, mind you. There was a period in the middle, probably season 4 and 5, where I fell out of touch with the gang at Princeton-Plainsboro out of laziness. But when I got back in, during the season that introduced the ridiculously stunning Olivia Wilde (seriously her face is unbelievable I want to say absurd) I fell back into the habit of spending an hour a week watching House solve medical mysteries using only his intelligence, hatred, and bum leg.

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Designs

I mark my post-graduate life by eras of employment, or lack thereof. First there was Unemployment I, which was the three job searching months immediately after I got my diploma. That brought about The Retail Era, where I gave up on finding a "real" job and decided I just needed money to continue my search. Later on there was the Production Assistant Era which was really just 10 days before I rationalized my way out of that plan. There was The Golden Internship Era, where I worked at a magazine for 6 months in what was probably the coolest thing I've ever done.

The longest era, the longest thing I had ever done since graduation, came in at just under 10 months: Unemployment II, the period of dark nothing that came after my internship. I don't have any explanation as to why it lasted so long. It's like asking a man why he was drowning for so long -- because he can't swim and that's how long it took until he caught a line. I was about to crack, again, and had lined up a food service interview right before I picked up a pretty decent administrative job. I am typing at a coffee shop across the street from work, passing time while the freeways clear up.

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A History of Arguing on the Internet

Here is something few people know about me: If I don't keep myself in check, I will very easily lose hours and hours arguing with people on the internet. I know this is a common compulsion. Many have probably followed an internet thread, maybe on Reddit or a forum or even YouTube and have suddenly found themselves refreshing every hour to see if their idiot opponent has replied. Because every opponent is an idiot -- not merely someone with a different opinion, or world view, or values, but a flat out tried and true idiot. This is what happens in the anonymous theater of the internet.


I probably started arguing on the internet sometime around middle school in the late 90's and boy, was I good at it. Not good in the sense that I put out well reasoned points and was understood while being understanding. I mean that I was a massive, relentless jerk until I "won" -- meaning, the other person grew tired and stopped replying, which is the only win condition in these sort of things.

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Skepticism and Activism and Colonialism and...

The Kony 2012 campaign by Invisible Children has been one of the most interesting spectacles and teachable moments of activism in a long time. We don't often get this opportunity to talk about the many questions this campaign raises: How should you go about making a difference? Is intent sacrosanct? How can it all go wrong, and why are people licking their chops waiting for it to happen?
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Saving the Galaxy


Video gaming is something I've done my entire life. When I think of the most thrilling moments of my childhood, many of them involve gaming. Zelda II on the NES, which I watched my uncles play in our crowded 3-bedroom condo. Playing Shinobi on the Sega Game Gear with my Mom. Even playing Sonic the Hedgehog on Sega Genesis with my sister. It was purely a social and familial activity, but over time as games got more complicated, they all dropped out in favor of real responsibilities or other hobbies. I stuck through it, despite always being an entire console generation behind the other kids at school. I remained current on the internet and hooked up to last year's glowing machine at home.

Despite this connection, gaming isn't something I've really written about. For something that has been such a consistent hobby through the years, I haven't really made it an apparent part of my identity. The reason for this is that gaming is usually what I do to turn off. There will always come a time when my head is too full of something heavy and toxic, and the best thing I can do is escape for an hour or two. It's always been this way. As a child, I would daydream for fun, inventing new lives and adventures in my head until I didn't need to because video games caught up with what I had always pictured.

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Sleep is a Disease

Sometimes, it feels like my entire life is just grappling with the demands and effects of my uneven sleep cycle. Sometimes, it feels like sleep is life's great central theme, not love, or innocence, or salvation. At my weirdest, I may believe that sleep is the most important thing in civilization.
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Review | An Anthem of Forgiving

I first discovered Leonard Cohen sometime in 2006 during my freshman year of college. I had read a Something Awful article that called Bob Dylan "rock & roll's second greatest poet-who-can't-sing next to Leonard Cohen." I laughed, but I didn't know why. My research led me to his GREATEST HITS, SONGS FROM A ROOM and later DEAR HEATHER. Lines from "Chelsea Hotel No.2" and "The Old Revolution" would get stuck in the folds of my mind. I read Cohen as a very specialized songwriter.The lens of his poetry focused inward. His coevals would craft stories and extended metaphors, but Cohen used the mic as his confessional, and we were his priest. It was an easy in for me.


I had the pleasure of watching Cohen perform at Coachella in 2009. I couldn't stay for the whole performance, just 3 or so songs, but I made sure "Hallelujah" was one of them. It's over-covered and most people think of it as Jeff Buckley song, but to see the man perform it himself, on a massive warmly lit stage with a hushed thousand others was special. I was already a fan, but after that I became an enthusiast.

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