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Can you go home again?
Monday, July 21, 2008
Art picked me up from the John Wayne airport. As we turned into Campus, then the 55, then Newport, I was struck by how much I missed Orange County. The streets were wide and clean and welcoming, how the air seemed cleaner and much more open, how everyone’s tattoos were less grungy, and people wore their clothing easily. The lights on the freeway twinkled like stars. Everything seemed romantic and bathed in SoCal air.
Seeing Amir, Art and Reza again made me feel like nothing had changed in the year and a half that I’d been away; at the Avalon, Reza talked about his new kicks. Amir was (late as usual) editing another film. Art had lost 20 pounds and grew a mustache. Chris was nowhere to be found. Shanks and the Dreamers was now a two-piece; the new songs were more Massive Attack than Sonic Youth. Drunk, we snagged tacquitos from Alfredo’s; the last time I ate there, I was with Marla and Ben, and some dude randomly gave us roses at the drive through. We ended up at La Cave, with Amir asking if I’d ever been there before. I glared at him: “I forgot you lived here,” he laughed.
Today Dennis, Annette and I had indian food. They were watching a show at the Grove, so we made plans to hang out. As usual he complained about how far Cameo was, I forgot to give him the gate code and we got lost on Jamboree. It was my bad memory at fault; I couldn’t figure out which exit came before which. I didn’t know if it seemed totally normal — familiar, business as usual — that I was in Tustin again, where my cel phone didn’t have service and exits were miles away. But it seemed like I had never left, that we were reenacting scenes that had taken place last week, last year, five years ago.
It’s the same at Tita Veekee’s house. Spending time with 14 members of my family is harder than ever; we’re in the Midwest, Eddie lives in Australia, my mom and Titale in the Philippines. But we have the same drama, the same jokes, the same chaotic craziness that just bubbles up when we’re all in one place. I saw Sarapot for the first time in more than a year; I forgot how much I missed her and we fell asleep talking on the couch. Ethan heard us cackling at 3a.m. last night. “You guys were so loud,” he said.
It’s going to be 10 more days of hanging out with my friends at places that meant a lot to me. I am totally excited, waiting to get sucked in. Five years ago I wrote Mario: “I’m taking The Longest Vacation, Ever!” Make this The Longest Vacation, Ever! Part 2.
What now?
Saturday, July 12, 2008
A lot of people have been asking me that question, especially because I’ve announced to all that I am leaving Milwaukee. I don’t know where I want to go, but as much as I love my friends in Milwaukee and the city itself, I know for sure I can’t handle another winter in my life.
Maybe I’ll be braver in the future, but in the two winters I spent in Wisconsin, I witnessed about 180 inches of snow altogether. That’s a lot of ice and snow and slipping and gloves and down jackets and layers and thermals and grey and clouds and cabin fever for a girl who was raised to be suntanned and slippery, swimming happily in pee-warm, turquoise-blue waters, squinting at the sun in wide open skies.
Luckily I don’t believe I need to look for a regular job ASAP — nor do I really want to at this point. What with the turmoil in the newspaper industry (the LA Times, Chicago Tribune and the Journal Sentinel announcing layoffs and/or buyouts), I may leave journalism for good. It’s tough to set your career path in an industry that you don’t know will exist before you’re 50. Not that I’m thinking that far ahead, either.
All I know is this: I love writing, and print media is what I’ve done since I was 18. I love the process of newsgathering. I love writing ledes and shaping stories. I love putting packages together — with sidebars, photos, timelines, quizzes, whatever. But I want my work’s value to be recognized; readers/editors/publishers should know journalists like me put in a lot of care and energy into a story that is worthy of our byline. That we sometimes dream in ledes and story angles, and that reporting and editing IS sometimes tantamount to rocket science. And I guess I’m just not seeing that value in the industry right now.
So, my options. If I died tomorrow, my only regret would be not finishing my book. So that is #1 on my list. I’ve always wanted to go on a yoga retreat. I’ve always wanted to live in a Spanish-speaking country so I could hone my language skills. I’ve always wanted to go to South America and India. I’ve always wanted bum around in the Philippines and surf all day. I’ve always wanted to go to Cambodia and Vietnam. I’ve always wanted to live in New York, but I’ve been missing California A LOT. I’ve always wanted to do a project related to my dad’s work.
I suppose I could try and figure out how to do all this now that I have all this time, but our severance package isn’t THAT big. Also, I’m at a point in my life where I NEED good friends around me. I don’t think I can stand to make new friends in a new city and then leave them again. Like I did in Milwaukee. Or Orange County. Or Manila. It’s too heartbreaking.
So it’s boiled down to this: my options are ultra wide-open, but wherever I end up living will be a place where the weather is mild and I have a lot of friends. It could be New York, because most of my best friends live there now. It could be LA. It could be Manila.
And I will always be writing, and creating, and hopefully I will make music again. So you’ll see my byline when I send the pitches I’ve been dreaming about to various editors. And that’s what’s up with me.
Benevento Russo Duo @ Summerfest’s Big Backyard
Thursday, July 3, 2008
Not that there was anything wrong with a post-rock duo at Summerfest’s Briggs stage. It was just odd that the Benevento Russo Duo stage was PACKED. And it wasn’t old Rush fans, or hipsters, or music nerds — it was a lot of bro-ey college and high school kids who seemed to know what they were listening to.
(Seemed to being the key word here: three kids up front kept trying to get me to take their picture. “Our faces — this is Summerfest right here!” one jock in a Hollister t-shirt declared. Then he turned to his friends behind him and asked, “Oh my GOD, how big are my pupils right now?!?”)
Set time was 8 p.m., but keyboardist Marco Benevento and drummer Joe Russo didn’t start playing til past 8:30. The set up took an inordinately long time; with good reason — there was just so much gear. (Was Benevento manning five keyboards or four? Did that Wirlitzer count? And the drum machine, was that plugged in?)
And when they finally started, the retarded person manning the sound board didn’t turn off the house music. So for most of the crowd, the first two songs (my favorites from their second album Play Pause Stop, “Soba” and “Echo Park”) weren’t even audible. When a fan finally told the sound guy that THE CROWD couldn’t hear the band playing, and the sound was turned on, then everything was good. Surprisingly, even though it’s under the bridge, BRD sounded awesome live.
Benevento and Russo set up their instruments facing each other — which makes sense, because they’re all about improv, watching each other for cues, adding extra time measurements for fun. Listening to BRD is like seeing math rock brought to the masses with a fresh spin. I always used to say BRD was like the post-rock version of the Black Keys, but I am wrong. Sure, they’re a duo and have an awesome drummer, but while the Black Keys are about grit and rhythm, BRD is about songs taking flight, then being tethered and taken back in, then released again. There was a great version of “Play Pause Stop” performed, as well as a searing finale that, well, sounded like a finale.
The set was only 30 minutes long, if that — but it felt like the best show I’d seen at Summerfest so far.
The lola song
Tuesday, July 1, 2008
Dennis and Carlo are so funny. This is like a Flip version of ‘Flight of the Conchords.’ But funnier cause it’s Dennis and Carlo. Dennis was my roommate for a year or something. He makes good salmon steak.
What happens when you plagiarize yourself?
Friday, June 27, 2008
I was reading my old blog and saw this post, written in January, 2003:
Nothing better
If I could feel just one emotion for the rest of my life, it would be anticipation. Running across the airport with your rolling suitcase, going on a blind date, opening a new CD, falling in love, sticking your tongue out to taste Nepalese snow. Standing in line to ride the biggest fucking roller coaster in the world.
Five years later I feel like I took this mantra too much to heart. I hate missing flights, dating, and don’t even own CD’s anymore. Two years ago, my 20-year-old cousin Sara and I were at the OC fair and she wanted to go on a ride. I was like, “ehh…”
She looked at me in shock and was like, “Oh my GOD, Lille! You’re OLD!”
MKE is gone, I was laid off, blah blah blah
Monday, June 16, 2008
Today is the first lucid day I’ve had since Wednesday, when we were told that MKE was folding. Post-five-day bender, here is what I learned:
1. I can’t finish thoughts and sentences properly under duress
2. I heart Milwaukee more than I thought my officemates more than I thought was possible.
3. I need a dog.
4. I wanted to say all these terrible things about other people but I ACTUALLY believe in karma! Who knew?
Other than feeling sorry for myself though, I am also at a point where I’m pretty sure I want to leave journalism. That leaves me the following options:
1. Go surfing in SEAsia for a while, like six months
2. Visit my sister in Australia/Su in Sebastopol/James in North Carolina/Apol in Provence
3. Assist my cousin as a wedding photographer in Orange County
4. Finally move to NYC and crash on people’s couches
5. Finish that effin book.
My mom, oddly enough, wasn’t too upset that I lost my job: she said, “ooh! You can come home and we can sell paintings!”
Mark Kozelek @ Turner Hall
Monday, June 9, 2008
How apt. Watching Mark Kozelek in tornado weather — humid, rainy and dark — mirrored my mood inside Turner Hall. Mark Kozelek’s songs in Red House Painters and beyond colored my adolescence — and not the particularly good bits. Whenever I dealt with break-ups or deaths or mopey sadness, I played his songs.
It was then equally thrilling and odd to watch a man whose words and melodies meant so much to me. Kozelek appeared onstage with a guitar and an accompanist. Instead of making the night feel like a glamorized Open Mic night, the sparse instrumentation enhanced the desolation in his songs.
He opened with two Modest Mouse covers: “Trucker’s Atlas” and “Tiny Cities Made of Ashes” from Sun Kil Moon’s “Tiny Cities.” In between songs, he commented on how Milwaukee seemed very much like Glasgow: “old and gloomy.”
Kozelek, who looked more like a steady and serious bookkeeper than a rockstar, also sang songs off the latest Sun Kil Moon album, “April.” After “Heron Blue,” he did “Gentle Moon” off “Ghosts of the Great Highway,” and then a more upbeat version of “Carry Me Ohio.” He also played the Red House Painters classic “Summer Dress,” to which I had to bite my knuckles to keep from swooning.
Each song seemed to last forever, and pauses between songs were opportunities to pop open beer cans or walk to the bathroom. Throughout the night Kozelek spun a web of beautiful moroseness through the audience, which was great if you’re a fan, but hard to appreciate if you don’t feel emotionally attached to his songs. After all, it’s hard to listen to someone be sad for two hours, no matter how beautiful the process is.
I watched the show with a friend who wasn’t a fan, and wondered if Kozlelek lost him halfway through. But even Kozelek said he was expecting drunk rednecks with cellphones…instead he got an appreciative and respectul Milwaukee audience. “I’ll come back,” he promised, “if I’m still alive.”
In the end we got an encore too: Kozelek alone finished the show off with an abrupt version of “Three-Legged Cat.”
Ed and I update old skool idioms
Sunday, June 8, 2008
1. “You sound like a broken record.” - “You sound like you’re stuck in repeat mode.”
2. “He’s like a walking encyclopedia.” - “He’s like a walking Wikipedia.”
3. “Don’t judge a book by its cover.” - “Dont judge a book by its thumbnail.”
4. “A picture is worth a thousand words.” - “A pixel is worth a thousand word docs.”
5. “Pag may tiyaga may hiwaga.” - “Pag may tiyaga naka dial-up.”
6. “The writing’s on your wall.” - “The writing’s on your rss feed.”
7. “A chain is no stronger than its weakest link.” - “A chain is no stronger than its weakest hyperlink.”
8. “Aanhin pa ang damo kung kung patay na ang kabayo.” - “Aanhin pa ang connection kung patay na ang computer.”
9. “The early bird gets the worm.” - “The early registrant gets the domain.”
10. “Mabilis pa sa alaskwatro.” - “Mabilis pa sa t1.”
11. “Daig pa ng maagap ang nagliliveblog”
12. “Push the envelope” - “Push the manila envelope (to wit, the macbook air pushed the manila envelope)”
13. “Nothing is certain but death and taxes” - “Nothing is certain but death and Google”
14. “Para kang tindahan na bukas sa lahat” - “Para kang hotspot na walang WEP key”
15. “To make the long story short” - “To make a long story a stub” or “to twitter a story”
barackandroll.com
Friday, June 6, 2008
shirts from kyle, originally uploaded by lille.
My friend Kyle is a GENIUS. He makes slogan shirts for Barack Obama on Barackandroll.com. I overestimated how big I was and got a large Barack to the Future shirt, which is too big for me, but awesome nonetheless.