frivolity and practicum

So many new albums from some of my favorite bands, so little time. Instead of going into detail now, here are 30-second opening track snippets from what I'm currently excited about:



Jars of Clay - The Long Fall Back to Earth - released April 21

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The Long Fall - Jars Of Clay</div>



White Rabbits - It's Frightening - released May 19

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Percussion Gun - White Rabbits</div>



VAST - Me and You - released May 26

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You Should Have Known I'd Leave - VAST</div>



Our Lady Peace - Burn Burn - to be released July 21

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All You Did Was Save My Life - Our Lady Peace</div>



Mew - No more stories
Are told today
I'm sorry
They washed away

No more stories
The world is grey
I'm tired
Let's wash away
- to be released August 25

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Introducing Palace Players - Mew</div>

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In related news, I'm still looking for a better way to blog embedded media. I finally realized JavaScript and Flash are flat-out prohibited on LJ, so now I'm thinking that I might have to make a separate music blog elsewhere. A long time ago I set up Questionably Awesome over on Blogger but did nothing with it. I'll try to experiment on it, but for now you can find an imeem playlist featuring 30-second excerpts of all the tracks on the new Jars album. I heard Tumblr is a good place for embedding media, so I just got one, but I don't know how to use it yet.

I am also still obsessed with maybe getting a Twitter. Would that make me a douche? I still remember that my initial reaction to Twitter when it came out like a year ago was horror and disgust, but maybe it's one of those trends that grows on you by virtue of its ubiquity, like boots over skinny jeans (a look I initially hated but am now guilty of). It's just that composing full blog posts is so exhausting for me because I have OCD. I like the idea of having a record of the random thoughts I have and things I do during the day.

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I finally finished (the first draft of) Act I of W.W.J.D. It's not perfect, but I'm pretty pleased with what I have so far. Click the jump for another excerpt.

 

( Six months, five hours and 47 minutes )

Quick post to gauge interest in three upcoming shows:

1) VAST @ Highline Ballroom - TOMORROW (Friday) - Thanks to Steph, I have one free ticket. I don't know anyone else who's heard of VAST, but I've loved them for a few years now. Think moody, atmospheric rock.



Flames - Vast

(I can't figure out how to get more than 30 seconds of the imeem embed to play, so here's the full song in a Smallville montage, featuring Chloe and Davis, pretty much the ONLY reason to watch the show. Seriously. The only reason.)



2) No Doubt @ Jones Beach - June 27 (Saturday) - Okay, so tix for this are a bit steep ($79.50-$90), but how can you put a price tag on reliving your high school years? I just rewatched "Ex-Girlfriend" (yes, I know that song came out freshman year of college) for the first time in quite a while, and don't you miss how fun and awesome and weird mainstream alt-rock used to be?


3) American Idols Live @ Newark (Saturday, Aug. 8) OR @ Long Island (Tuesday, Aug. 11) - Yes. Yes, I'm ashamed of myself. I'll only care about 30% of the show, but I want to see this live:


Tickets go on presale tomorrow (Friday) morning, and range from $40 to $66.

I wasn't going to post about this as it's nobody's business but my family's, but I'm having trouble getting anything else done right now.

One of my cousins passed away this week. She was 18, and it was an accidental OD. There's shock, of course, but also a sort of detached sadness; the last time I saw her was in 2003, when we were in Tokyo for her grandmother's (my great-aunt's) 90th birthday. She was 13 and feisty and precocious, quick-witted and smart and right on the cusp between cute and beautiful. I could tell she would grow to be more of all those things as she got older.

I wish I had gotten to know her better—for most of her postpubescent life I was already living on the East Coast, and our respective clans had grown distant. I've been blessed enough in my life where previously the only family deaths I'd experienced have been two generations above mine. I sort of don't know what to do or even how to feel. My parents are driving up to the Bay Area for her memorial service this weekend, and I considered flying out, which raised a number of absurd questions: What level of intimacy to the deceased or to the bereaved justifies traveling a certain distance for the funeral? How does traveling cost correlate to degree of relatedness?

I found a memorial page for her on Facebook, posted by her high school friends. Strangely, I felt very moved reading these comments from complete strangers, kids not old enough to know anything and yet now grappling with mortality in a way I never had to when I was that age. I watched a tribute video set to an Avril Lavigne song, and saw that my cousin had indeed grown feistier and more beautiful. She looked popular, but not in that generic, forgettable way—it's such a cliché to say that someone who has passed away was "full of life," but she really looked like it. It's nearly impossible for pictures of teenagers not to look that way, actually.

I think about all her friends in those pictures, captured in the carefree awkwardness of youth at proms and pool parties and Metro Station concerts. I think about how they will be at her funeral tomorrow, and how most of them will go on to graduate from college and have weddings and babies and long careers. I think about how I've somehow made it to 27, mostly without realizing what a crapshoot it is, how lucky we all are to have gotten as far as we have.

My first memory of Esther was when she was Lindsey, the name she was born with. Sometime during her early Sunday School years she decided to rename herself after her favorite heroine in the Bible.

When he was accused by the chief priests and the elders, he gave no answer. Then Pilate asked him, "Don't you hear the testimony they are bringing against you?" But Jesus made no reply, not even to a single charge—to the great amazement of the governor.

"What shall I do, then, with Jesus who is called Christ?" Pilate asked.
      They all answered, "Crucify him!"

"Why? What crime has he committed?" asked Pilate.
      But they shouted all the louder, "Crucify him!"

Then the governor's soldiers took Jesus into the Praetorium and gathered the whole company of soldiers around him. They stripped him and put a scarlet robe on him, and then twisted together a crown of thorns and set it on his head. They put a staff in his right hand and knelt in front of him and mocked him. "Hail, king of the Jews!" they said. They spit on him, and took the staff and struck him on the head again and again. After they had mocked him, they took off the robe and put his own clothes on him. Then they led him away to crucify him.

They came to a place called Golgotha (which means The Place of the Skull). There they offered Jesus wine to drink, mixed with gall; but after tasting it, he refused to drink it. When they had crucified him, they divided up his clothes by casting lots. And sitting down, they kept watch over him there. Above his head they placed the written charge against him: THIS IS JESUS, THE KING OF THE JEWS. Two robbers were crucified with him, one on his right and one on his left. Those who passed by hurled insults at him, shaking their heads and saying, "You who are going to destroy the temple and build it in three days, save yourself! Come down from the cross, if you are the Son of God!"

In the same way the chief priests, the teachers of the law and the elders mocked him. "He saved others," they said, "but he can't save himself! He's the King of Israel! Let him come down now from the cross, and we will believe in him. He trusts in God. Let God rescue him now if he wants him, for he said, 'I am the Son of God.' " In the same way the robbers who were crucified with him also heaped insults on him.

From the sixth hour until the ninth hour darkness came over all the land. About the ninth hour Jesus cried out in a loud voice, "Eloi, Eloi, lama sabachthani?"—which means, "My God, my God, why have you forsaken me?"

And when Jesus had cried out again in a loud voice, he gave up his spirit.

-excerpted from Matthew 27

Rembrandt's The Three Crosses, 1653, third state


Today I woke up and thought about my job, what I watched on TV this week, what I'm going to do tomorrow. Nothing wrong with that, but today is the day chosen as the anniversary of Jesus Christ's death. It looks so oddly normal for such a momentous day of remembrance -- maybe a little quieter here in midtown for those who took time off to attend a Good Friday service.

I'm looking outside my office window, 32 floors above West 51st Street, and I'm thinking about how two thousand years ago (give or take a few years), it was late afternoon in Jerusalem and Jesus had spent the night in a Roman prison for crimes he did not and would never commit. That morning he had appeared in what can generously be called a kangaroo court, and around this time of day he had gone through so many rounds of mockery and beatings that I wonder if his ears had grown desensitized to the vitriol and his skin numb to the barbs by now.

The Bible reports that Jesus stayed mostly silent and unresponsive during the worst and last day of his life. As a child I assumed it was holy piety that helped him maintain his dignity; now I wonder if it was his mind and body simply shutting down to protect itself from what was happening to it.

It's said that when you're about to die, your life flashes before your eyes. I wonder, during Jesus' final agonizing hours, whether not just his own life, but the lives of all humanity, drifted through his mind. Did he focus on the angry faces and voices immediately surrounding him? Could he picture the future, a landscape dotted by manmade structures taller than the tallest tree, filled with corporate con men who'd make the tax collectors of his day look like petty thieves, terrorists whose power over the global psyche could scarcely be imagined, and murderers and molesters committing all sorts of atrocities while wearing holy symbols? And people like me, who claim to be his but spend more time thinking about anything and everything else, like a kid who forgets her parent's birthday? Knowing all of this, the prolonged antipathy and apathy toward his sacrifice two millennia later, what would he think?

Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do.

He thought, It is all worth it.

They are all worth it.

We interrupt our regularly scheduled screenwriting update for this message: Folks, I have finally hopped on the ultimate pop culture bandwagon.

I have started watching American Idol. Since this show is pretty much inescapable anyway*, I've been trying to get into it for maybe two seasons now, but I've usually found it too cheesy and cheap and curiously out-of-touch. It got a little better last year when they finally let contestants play their own instruments, which helped them to seem more like legitimate musicians and also somewhat mitigated the karaoke effect. I've sought out clips of songs I like or performances I've heard were considered to be among the series' best. For the most part, though, 524 seasons of American Idol have just produced the same tired covers of the same tired Baby Boomer generation songs the young contestants should have no business even knowing. I definitely gravitated toward the weirdo contestants, the ones who were memorable enough, visually and musically, to stand out from the 1,352,395 contenders or so who have crossed the stage.

*Exhibit A: Despite never having watched any prior seasons, I could probably name the winners in order. There are certain cultural phenomena you just can't escape, even if you've never actually partaken of them. See: everyone who's ever died on Lost, which characters were Cylons on Battlestar Galactica and first and last names of every vapid frenemy and bro on The Hills.

I wanted to get into American Idol to see what the fuss was all about. It has (accidentally, I believe) managed to produce a few actual credible artists who are now known more for their artistic accomplishments since Idol than just where they got their big break. Most of the contestants' fame fades faster than a Bachelor relationship, but just in case the show ever gets lucky again, I want in on the ground floor, before the zeitgeist starts rolling.
 
You guys, I think they got lucky.

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Stay with me here. It took me a second listen to get on board with this crazy rendition, too. But give it another shot, and think Velvet Goldmine. Think Elvis on Ed Sullivan. Seriously—I think that last comparison is apt in more ways than one. You have some newcomer on one of the country's most popular television shows delivering an outrageous performance that some might find distasteful. But on the other hand, I think the talent is undeniable. The vocal control is impeccable, the showmanship perfectly on point.

Mark these words. Whether Adam Lambert wins American Idol or not, this is pop cultural history in the making.

Took a break from writing over the past two days because of work, but I still made progress with supporting character and subplot development, and miscellaneous elements (jokes, conversation topics, musical cues) that I want to make sure to insert in certain scenes. I started up the discipline of keeping a notebook again, lest I forget anything before I can get to my laptop.

Most of my ideas come either in the shower or when I'm walking home from work. I guess that says a lot about the benefit of not being able to be distracted by other things, like TV or the Internet. I love living inside a project, when I'm fantasizing the story all day, the first thing I think about when I wake up and the last thing my mind grips before drifting away into dreams.

Bikki is kindly enabling my writing habits by meeting me at a coffeehouse every Tuesday; today we went to the adorably-named Soy Luck Club in the West Village. Food and drinks are kind of pricey, but good. I had a strawberry coconut "soyafrost" (soy milk smoothie) and a smoked salmon, basil and soy cream cheese pressed bagel for $11 and change. Obviously, vegan options abound. There is free wifi with purchase, although the router was having problems releasing IP addresses to people's laptops. Tables and chairs are comfortable enough, albeit cramped, and the single-room restroom is in dire need of an air freshener or a vent. Also, I don't have anything against Bjork, but I don't think she's necessarily listeners' choice for everyone's writing/studying needs. I don't know why so many coffeehouses blast music during the day. Most people come with their own iPods or laptops. Also, I think I'd rather hear a mix than an entire album by a single artist.

What's that, you say? Time for the excerpt! This one will hopefully give you an idea of the tone and visual style (think How I Met Your Mother style voiceovers and intercuts) I'm trying to go for:

 

( Mary breaks it down, Madden-style )

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NCAA Tournament: Ugh, does anyone want to talk about this? So I finished sixth out of over 400 entries in the SI pool. The bragging rights are worth more than my earnings, which are 0.5% of the pot, or about $30. If UConn had been in the title game, I would have been guaranteed second place, which would have netted me $800 (20%). Oh well. I picked Carolina to win the whole thing, so now I am going to take my $30 and buy a field and let my intestines spill out onto it.

I will say this, though: Never once did I root for North Carolina. That is a line I am physically unable to cross. Seeing all that baby blue bounding up and down the court just made me want to vomit.

I love getting to spend an entire day at home. There's nothing wrong with having a weekend full of social engagements, but I always need to have at least one day a week in which my schedule is entirely up to me and I don't have to talk to anyone.

And now that the days are longer, I still get to enjoy plenty of natural light if I wake up really late (which I still do). Today I was even pretty productive, at least for me. After I (finally) got up, I did a long devotion with Cast of Characters, the excellent Max Lucado book we are reading in my Growth Group. Then I went running (I am up to... the length of Sic Transit Gloria by Brand New), came back, drank an entire glass of water and ate a container of yogurt, and then after checking my e-mail and messing around a bit online... sat down and actually spent some quality time working on my screenplay!

Today I wrote four pages, bringing my total to 16. (I cheated a little bit and started April 1 with ten pages already written.) I don't know if "real" writers find concepts like NaNoWriMo or Script Frenzy cheesy or not, but I need events like this to set a deadline for myself, and to push me through what Anne Lamott calls the "shitty first draft." You can't get to the golden final revision without wading through all the cringingly awful plotting and placeholder names and details first. It's actually kind of liberating once you accept that the first draft is going to look nothing like the awesome idea in your head, and you just have to dump out everything in your brain before you can sort through it and pick out and just polish the good stuff.

Besides writing my four new pages, I also did a TINY bit of polishing of the prewritten stuff, and, more importantly, added quite a few items in my Notes file (every screenplay I work on has an accompanying Word Document with character profiles, a plot outline, lines of dialogue and random story beats). I originally conceived W.W.J.D. as a short, so in reenvisioning it as a feature length, I need to develop the supporting characters and come up with subplots, which I'm starting to do. It's pretty exciting (and rewarding) when you actually sit down and force yourself to work on something and the ideas start trickling in. Every writer I've ever read who advises that you can't wait for the ideas to spring on you, you have to set office hours for them, is absolutely right.

I think I'll be posting little excerpts here, again to keep me accountable to staying productive and to force me to be a "real" writer, i.e. not one who just writes stuff and never shows it to anyone. (I'm no Dickinson.) Here's the opening scene:


Anyway, I called it a day at 6 p.m. to watch college basketball, which made today pretty much an ideal Saturday. I was 1-for-2 in the Final Four, which means I won't be second place in the SI pool (I know. Can you believe it? I would have been SECOND PLACE if UConn and UNC had both made it to the title game), but that's all right. Villanova's loss means I won't get a byline in the SI Presents commemorative this year (I had written the Wildcats' regular season pictorial recap), but I picked UNC to go all the way anyway. (I know. I am an awful turncoat and I expect Blue Devil agents to knock on my door at any minute to confiscate my diploma and class ring. Matt called me "an arms dealer" when it comes to bracket picks and he is not wrong. I am mercenary.)

First, a little brag:

I am guaranteed to finish in the top 25 in the Sports Illustrated pool. In my four years of participating, I've never finished above 200th place or so. Maybe 175th my first year. This is an amazing turn of events.

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I've spent most of 2009 so far trying to figure out my next step. Ever since I came back from Beijing, I've felt a life assessment coming on. I've noted before that life seems to organize itself in four- to five-year chunks; this year marks my fifth at SI. It's been rewarding beyond my wildest expectations and I've learned a lot, but I need either to figure out how to step up my responsibilities at the magazine (a tricky proposition, since everyone in the industry is essentially hunkered down in a holding pattern), or to figure out where to go next.

My parents are also getting increasingly persistent in asking me when I'm going to start doing something with my life. This means going back to school. Getting my master's was a brief mollifier, but we all knew that the only degree that matters is the kind with a "D" in it. They actually asked me if I had all the undergrad prerequisites for med school (answer: no). They are pretty serious about me considering law school. 

I went home last month for my dad's 65th birthday. Waiting for my flight back to New York at the airport, I sat down with my parents and we made a tentative plan for my future. They really want me to apply when law school admissions open up again next winter, for the 2010-11 school year. Just typing that makes me blanche a little, but studying law is in the 75th percentile of things I might like doing, so I can live with it. As my parents see it, I am almost 30 and it is way past time to get serious about my life.

So I have the rest of this year to go after that silver sliver in the 99th percentile. I'm not about to quit my job or anything -- I am too Asian and too practical and too timid and not disciplined enough for that -- but I do realize that I could be doing way more writing for myself than I've been doing (which is to say, little to none).

To push myself, I am doing two things this month: Script Frenzy and Gotham Writing Workshop's advanced screenwriting course. I'm making this commitment in my blog because I'd love for anyone else interested to join me (friend me as "sunnydlita" on the Script Frenzy site), and also because I need to be held accountable (the main reason I enrolled in the Gotham class).

I have an incredible amount of fear when it comes to pursuing this ridiculous dream. My mom asked me a couple of weeks ago: If I could go back ten years, would I have chosen a different educational/career path? Would I have declared pre-med and gone to medical school instead? I considered her question seriously and replied that I wouldn't; I have too much respect for the field of medicine to enter it knowing that I have no calling for it. But you know what I do wish? If there is one thing I could change about myself (a blasphemous hypothetical, I know, since God designed me exactly the way I am for a reason), it would be to have a passion for medicine.

I wish I wanted to be a doctor. There might have been a brief phase when I was 13 and had just finished The Joy Luck Club for the first time and wanted to rebel against the Asian clichés by majoring in psychology in college, but for the most part, I really wish that being a doctor was my dream in life. I know full well that being a physician is not something that should be taken lightly, that going through that gauntlet is one of the most difficult things a person can do, but at least I wouldn't have the niggling self-loathing, the feeling that there is something wrong with my orientation.

Anyway, for as long as I have left, I will be writing. The project I've picked for Script Frenzy is one I started sometime last year. It's called W.W.J.D., and it's a Christian/indie rock romantic comedy. Feel free to nag me about it any time; I'll need it.

Haven't done one of these in a while. I should probably call this entry "Last Sunday in Sprots!" because most of the news went down this weekend. In order of personal importance:

Nadal beats Federer for his first Australian Open title
It's a shame the final aired the morning of the Super Bowl, because it's not like Americans weren't already ignoring tennis or anything. Which is a shame, because Federer-Nadal is one of the most compelling storylines out there, whether you're into sports or not. This was their 19th head-to-head (seventh Grand Slam final), and once again history was on the line: For Roger Federer, a chance to tie Pete Sampras' 14 record Grand Slam titles. For Rafael Nadal, his first hard court Grand Slam tournament victory. Once again Federer and Nadal played a five-set match worthy of its historical significance.

Even though this was their first meeting since Rafa finally dethroned Roger's 237-week (that's four and a half years!) reign at No. 1, I thought Nadal still came into this match looking like the underdog. He had just eked out a victory in the longest Australian Open match ever (I hate to link to our rival, but you can watch the highlights there) a scant 40 hours before, with a full day's less rest than Federer, whose smooth semifinal win was on Thursday. (By the way, how much do I love the relationship between Nadal and his Aussie Open sleeper sensation Fernando Verdasco? Rafa said he got teary-eyed up 40-0 in the last game because Nando didn't deserve to go out that way, and his fellow Spaniard said he was sorry the match took so long and exhausted Rafa before the final.) Anyway, in addition to the disadvantage of fatigue, Rafa had also never reached a Grand Slam final on a hard court -- not in Australia, and not at the U.S. Open either.

The final was not as good as last year's Wimbledon instant classic, largely because after pushing through four sets and nearly that many hours of gameplay, Federer deflated and gave the fifth away. And his first-serve percentage throughout the match was uncharacteristically awful. That's not to shortchange Nadal's very deserving victory, though. I wrote last summer that as much as I was going to start rooting for Federer this year to get his Grand Slam (all four majors in a year), you just can't root against Nadal when he's playing every point like it's match point. The guy just gives it his all and you can see every ounce of the effort he pours in.


And Nadal isn't just physically tenacious, either. Federer didn't lose the match over a difference in physical conditioning. (Sure, Nadal is probably the strongest guy on the tour, but with the semifinal he had, he admitted afterwards that he was probably hurting worse than Roger was.) But what happened was that Roger, perhaps as a result of being relatively unmatched for so many years, still has not figured out how to get over his Nadal-sized obstacle, and he is psyching himself out worse and worse with every subsequent meeting.

The match was exciting, but what was even more significant was what came later. During the trophy presentation, Roger Federer, as the runner-up, received his prize first. It's customary for both finalists to say a few words during these things. Roger tried a sheepish grin at his fans in the packed stands. "Maybe I'll try later. God, it's killing me," he said, rubbing his hand through his hair.

And then Roger Federer -- dignified, collected, the Tiger Woods of tennis in achievement and temperament -- broke down and started sobbing. He cried so hard he couldn't speak and had to step away from the microphone. Last summer, after he lost at Wimbledon, I wrote that I wished never to see Roger Federer look so downtrodden again. This was a million times more painful to witness. But I understood the emotion, because with this win, it felt like a sea change had finally come to men's tennis. Rafael Nadal has now won a Grand Slam on every type of service. More importantly, he's beaten Federer to get to each one of them. And Nadal, at 22, is only going to get better, at least for the next few years (he plays such a physical brand of tennis that his biggest danger is always wearing himself down). Federer is 27. It's only going to get harder for him from here. For the past few years, Federer has played as well as he possibly could, steadily climbing towards Sampras' mark. He could potentially have won the calendar-year Grand Slam twice already if a guy named Rafael Nadal didn't exist. And now Nadal is starting to beat him on his own turf -- Wimbledon, hard courts.

What we also learned from this latest matchup is that Rafa Nadal may be the toughest mofo in sports. The guy was basically playing nine-and-a-half hours of very, very physical tennis in the span of one weekend (and it's not some namby-pamby country club tennis, either. If you've never watched Nadal play, he's like a linebacker). He proved that he is as tough mentally as he is physically. He obliterated arguments that he is nothing but a one-trick pony, a guy that can only grind out victories on red clay. Suddenly we've all realized that with six Grand Slam victories at 22, he's got more than both Sampras and Federer had at that age. He has now officially nominated himself as a candidate for GOAT (Greatest of All Time).

And finally, what I love about this "rivalry," and why it makes these two men's story so compelling and rootable and heartbreaking, is their fundamental decency. After Roger was too overcome with emotion to make his remarks, the trophy committee awkwardly signaled for Rafa to come up and receive his winner's cup, which he did. But instead of then stepping up to the microphone, Rafa went back to Roger and slung an arm around him, speaking to him quietly. It was an incredibly warm gesture, made all the more remarkable because the two men, despite their professional rivalry, are not close (and not for acrimonious reasons, but because of the language barrier. Spanish is one of the seemingly few tongues that Federer does not speak, while Rafa only speaks Spanish and Spanglish). Finally, Federer pulled himself together enough to complete his remarks, and then it was Nadal's turn. His first words were to his broken-down rival:

"Roger, sorry for today. I really know how you feel right now. Remember, you're a great champion, you're one of the best in history. You're going to improve on the 14 of Sampras.''

To paraphrase a reader on SI.com said, it's what I love about this game.




Michael Phelps puts his superhuman lung capacity to dopey use
Here's what I think about Michael. He's a magnificently gifted athlete, incredibly disciplined in his sport. Where swimming is concerned, he's in the 99.9999999999th percentile. Moreso, if that were numerically possible. But if Common Sense for 23-year-olds was a standardized test, he probably ranks somewhere around the 34th percentile. It's not terribly surprising. Phelps has demonstrated a tendency to behave like your average dumbass immediately following Olympic Games (in Novembers, specifically! Hmm, a pattern emerges). Judging by his taste in women and his penchant for Vegas in general, I'd say that he's your average 23-year-old guy, except one who has to live with an incredible amount of restraint and discipline for three-year periods, and who is suddenly given access and opportunity to do anything, everything and anyone he wants. (Not to underestimate all 23-year-old guys. I highly doubt the kingly Federer or the homebody Nadal would act this way, but I'm just generalizing.) Anyway, my point is that what Michael Phelps did was disappointing, to be sure, for a guy who has said he wants to be a role model to kids and an ambassador for his sport. But overall, it's not remarkable behavior. It just shows that Michael Phelps is a horny, often immature fun-loving 23-year-old guy who also happens to be one of the greatest Olympians in history.

He'll learn from this. I'm glad that USA Swimming suspended him for three months, and that Kellogg won't be renewing their contract with him. It shows that no one is above sanction. For USA Swimming in particular, it shows that they don't play favorites. And if the punishment seems too harsh, I think that's a consequence of not only a huge celebrity but a role model as well. Phelps isn't Charles Barkley, who always made it clear that he was there to play basketball, not teach kids how to live. Michael Phelps willingly assumed the responsiblity of a role model, and part of that is going to be demonstrating that there are consequences for certain types of behavior. It'll be okay. Phelps will be smarter for this experience (hopefully), and he's talented enough to rise from this. Although the suspension will throw off he and Coach Bowman's game plan for resuming his training, 2012 is far enough away and won't be affected. He'll mature eventually, and in the meantime, he's got his coach and, more importantly, his mom around to straighten him out.

Duke basketball is bipolar
Duke started off last weekend (Jan. 24) grabbing the No. 1 ranking for the first time since the '05-'06 season, after stomping Maryland by 41 points, the Terps' worst loss in conference history. Then we fell off the top spot via a very close game to Wake, which wasn't terribly surprising to me, since one of the Deacs' biggest strengths (their size) tends to be our greatest weakness. In general, I was proud of us for requiring a last-second score to get beaten, and in general I'm excited about all the shuffling at the top of the AP poll. Bracketville is gonna be fun this year, y'all.

Then this week, we beat Virginia by 25 points on Sunday afternoon, then -- TRAGEDY! -- lost... I can barely bring myself to type out the score -- 74-47 (47!) to Clemson (Clemson!) on Wednesday. I mean, I know the Tigers are better than they were when we were in school, but... still. There's no excuse. I wonder if this will demoralize us or motivate us for the next couple of games...

This week should be interesting. Miami on Saturday, and then... showdown numero uno with Carolina at Cameron on Wednesday. Where are people watching? Let's make plans now!

Steelers beat Cardinals for their record sixth Super Bowl title
I had actually been watching ESPN2's tape of the Australian Open final, which started airing at 3 p.m., which meant that it didn't end until halftime of the Super Bowl, which means I missed Harrison's record-setting 100-yard touchdown, but it's okay, I've had infinite chances to see it on replay. Even though Steeler Nation is apparently legion, around here this Super Bowl was considerably less of a big deal than last year's hometown victory. We had wings in the reporters' lounge as usual, but everyone grabbed a plate and retreated back into their own offices to watch the game on their own. Must be that anti-festive recession spirit.

Before this week, the last time I was in a movie theater was last May, for Speed Racer on IMAX (which was awesome, I don't care what you critics say).

Paul Blart: Mall Cop was totally worth the wait.

Just kidding. I saw Slumdog Millionaire (finally!) last Saturday, and last night.... The Dark Knight: The IMAX Experience (FINALLY FINALLY FINALLY!!!).

My spoilery reviews for both movies under their respective cuts, although I'm pretty sure I was the last person on Earth who hadn't yet seen TDK:

( Is that your final answer? (Slumdog review) )

( Why so serious? (TDK review) )

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Diary of a Mad Asian Woman (in attempting to recap every week, I'm realizing I do a whole lot more than sleep late, surf the Internet and play The Sims (although I still do a lot of that too)):

Saturday: Woke up early to meet Matt at Le Pain Quotidien for breakfast. Just as he was rushing off to catch a train, I got a text from Lesley looking for something to do, so we decided to go see Slumdog Millionaire. I had a couple of hours to kill and some e-mail to check and was trying to figure out the location of the nearest public library when I realized, duh, my office is in midtown, so I headed a few blocks to check my e-mail, watch a little bit of the Obama express and, I won't lie, an episode of The Real World: Brooklyn's excellent new season (seriously. I'll probably write a whole post on this at some point, but it's a total throwback to the original non-drunken orgy premise of the series). Then I met Lesley at Kips Bay for Slumdog, we walked to 2nd Ave Deli for a late lunch, and then it was time for me to head down to Astor Place to meet Sarah's friend Ama for coffee, which turned into bubble tea at Saint's Alp. Finally, dinner party at Ting's in Stuyvesant Town, where we played Guitar Hero, Deal or No Deal on DVD (I know -- it's surprisingly compelling for a game of zero strategy and total chance) and Taboo into the wee hours.

Sunday-Monday: Worked. After Monday's close, I took the PATH train to Hoboken for a dinner party at Neil and Noopur's impressive, fantastic condo. Hoboken is seriously nice, you guys. And not terribly inconvenient, either. The Parmars' condo has a shuttle van that picks you up right outside the PATH station, and takes you along the Hudson River shoreline with a jaw-dropping view of Manhattan. At dinner we had home-cooked Thai and played a round of Colosseum (is there a term for games like this, and Settlers of Catan, which I have still not played but keep hearing amazing things about? Like, boutique board games?).

Tuesday: Inauguration Day! anyway413 and I went over to jzderf and laurafew 's apartment to watch the ceremony. I feel so lucky not only not to have to work on Tuesdays, but also to have friends who also do not have to be in an office on Tuesdays. I'm also thankful for friends who live in Astoria and have huge flat screen HDTVs. We got to see Chief Justice John Roberts screw up a historical moment in hi-def! Thanks, Chief Justice Roberts!

But seriously. John and Laura's apartment is SO NICE! And it has awesome fun stuff like a PS3 (that goes ON THE INTERNET) and all these other technological hookups. Combined with my experience at Neil and Noopur's the night before, I wonder if my life will feel that "together" if/when I get married and my life "starts," so to speak. In the meantime, I'm just happy that my friends can lead such blessed lives (and that they are generous and share their beautiful homes with the rest of us!).

Anyway, around 5:30 p.m. (when the parade was just starting) we were all starting to feel inauguration fatigue (which I think you could definitely see on the faces of the First Family as well), so we ventured into Manhattan. John went to dinner with some of his friends, so Annie and I went back to her apartment in the East Village and watched some more parade. Then after John's dinner, I met back up with him and his friends. He had an extra ticket to Animal Collective at the Grand Ballroom (where I go to church!), which I took off his hands at a discount, which we both later felt bad about (for different reasons) once we realized tix to the sold-out show were going for upwards of $100 on Craigslist. Anyway, I've heard lots of Internet hipster buzz about AC, but I hadn't heard them before. They are experimental/electro-fuzz with some tribal beats and have some very devoted fans. I'd compare them to Lonely China Day or more abrasive Mew or maybe Portishead. Here's my favorite AC song, one of their less esoteric jams:




My favorite part is when the refrain kicks in around the two-and-a-half-minute mark:  "I don't mean to seem like I care about material things like a social status / I just want four walls and adobe slabs for my girls"

I would say that AC is probably best suited for: night driving, headphones in the dark, and in a darkened theater with a bunch of very devoted fans. The Grand Ballroom is on the seventh floor of the Manhattan Center, and during some fan favorites, the floor literally bounced with the rhythm of all of those vibing bodies. It was pure sensory delight, the rainbow LED lights onstage tinting the fog and pot smoke slowly curling over the crowd, the pulsating music, the heads bobbing in unison, bringing you up and down and up and down.

(I was also very impressed that the Manhattan Center manages to get all the beer and pot smoke out of the carpet by the time Sunday morning rolls around every week!)

Wednesday: Slept in. Played Animal Crossing on Wii. Played The Sims 2. Ah, glorious slacking off.

Thursday: I went online to look up ticket info on Friday's rerelease of The Dark Knight on IMAX and came across a press release about a Batman Begins/TDK IMAX double feature that very night, in three theaters only: one in LA, one in Chicago, and one in our very own Lincoln Square. Some frantic Fandangoing, e-mailing and texting later, I had ticket (two IMAX movies for the price of one!) and two buddies to go with: Anthony and Lindsey.

I don't know if Warner Brothers was planning on letting word spread through the blogosphere or what, but we were three of maybe a dozen people in the huge theater. No matter. That just pretty much guaranteed our choice of seat, and five hours of sweet Chistopher Nolan Batman bliss. It was totally worth it to hold off (an entire half year!) on watching TDK, eschewing bootleg downloads, DVD releases and even (spit!) regular movie screenings to get to watch Nolan's two masterpieces back to back on an IMAX screen.

"And who knows but that you have come to royal position for such a time as this?" -The Book of Esther, chapter 4, verse 14

I'm at work today (as usual on Monday holidays), but I should have known about this website and promoted it sooner, like, a week ago:

USA Service.org

I heard President-elect Obama tout the site today (Michelle gently and casually corrected him when he initially said "www-dot-service-org" --  how I love their mutually edifying rapport), but I didn't realize that it was an official part of Obama's web portal. What a fantastic resource, a centralized (and beautifully laid out) search engine dedicated to community service, organized by location and service type (e.g. blood drives, shelters, food banks). It's another example of how this new administration harnesses modern technology and a national platform to mobilize personal, local efforts on the ground. It's transparent, user-driven (apparently individuals and organizations registered their service events beforehand to make them searchable) and user-friendly. I love the interactivity -- the ability to call in and listen to people's stories of serving today, the word cloud (generated by Wordle -- I don't even know what that is!), and the good-natured "contest" whereby you text about what you're doing and see your "state star" grow on the live mobile map.

It feels like the beginning of a real utopia -- not an Eden where there are no problems, but a working civilization where inevitable ills are combated by collective efforts.

Apparently MLK Day was declared a national day of community service over a decade ago, but I don't remember ever hearing such an emphasis on service until now (it's possible I've spent much of my life being oblivious and/or apathetic). Here's hoping this (re-)focus will continue as a true, new American tradition.

It's been quite a packed week for me (one week being Thursday to Thursday, according to my work schedule). At this time seven days ago I was in the middle of pulling a ridiculous all-dayer/nighter/dayer at the office, factchecking this bonus (SI's term for each issue's long feature). I would eventually leave the Time-Life Building at 9 p.m. Saturday, having finally moved the story after little more than three mochas, four movies and about thirteen episodes of Made.

All of that agony, of course, wasn't necessary, nor was it efficient. But somehow last week I found myself trapped in Job Hell, where I knew I wasn't doing my best, couldn't figure out how to start doing my best and finally stopped caring about doing my best. I take my factchecking pretty seriously. It's not a glamorous job, and sometimes I feel ashamed when people ask me what I spend most of my time doing at SI, but I think it's important work. Even if my name never appears with the story, the magazine's reputation rides on its quality, and for a piece like this cover story (which I also checked), which got a lot of attention beyond the sports world, one glaring error can really ding you. And in the course of checking, a lot of times I end up interacting quite a bit with subjects, particularly the non-famous ones. Even if the average reader flips impatiently past the whole story on the way to the Inside the NFL section, and if Time Inc. will never be in danger of getting sued over whether Stanton was five or six when his dad taught him how to swim by throwing him into the pool, Stanton's family will know, and notice, if I got something wrong. And that's what matters, because this might be the best coverage he's getting in his career, and it's important that that memory be as perfect as possible.

Which brings me to last week's bonus. I also take pride in being a factchecker who does as much of my own research as possible, not simply calling up the writer first thing and merely copying his or her tracks, which defeats the purpose of factchecking, if you think about it. Things started out promisingly—I got a head start the week before, researching the sidebar (basketball connections among Obama's associates) by calling the alma maters of his cabinet appointees on my day off, figuring out who played varsity hoops back in the day. Alex FedExed his very organized, very thorough notes, which is amazing considering some writers are pretty much like, "Nope, I don't have a checking file about this story that takes place in Moscow. Good luck!"

But as Friday ticked over into Saturday somehow I fell into the rabbit hole of not putting first things first, obsessively rehashing material I already knew (the man's memoir is one of my favorite books, for goodness' sake) and chasing relatively unimportant questions (did U.N. ambassador-nominee Susan Rice play ball as a Rhodes Scholar at Oxford?) the hard way (independent research) instead of just dumping a huge list of questions on the press officer of Obama's transition team and letting him sort it all out. (I still don't believe that would have been the way to go, at least not initially. Surely the communications office at change.gov has better things to respond to regarding designated Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner, like why he didn't pay his taxes, than how tall he is and how often he plays pickup.)

I think mounting fatigue (I'm no spring chicken!), coupled with my stubborn OCD, led to increasingly poor prioritization and decision-making as the week wore on. I left work Sunday (Monday, technically) at 4 a.m., having done—something—with all those hours in the office. There were unresolved checks in the story, and by that point it would have been a good time to dump those in an e-mail to the press officer. But for some reason I did not, maybe it didn't occur to me in my mentally addled state, and I went back to work at 2 p.m., still drained, and my editors had been on me for several hours to close the story already, so we ended up having to write around a few details (such as the exact nature of Obama's basketball involvement at Occidental) since we just couldn't get confirmation on the right information. That was bad enough, but what I felt even worse about was that later, around 5:30 p.m., when the story had already been finaled but the issue was still open (when a story is finaled, it's sent to the printer, but we have until 7 p.m. on Monday to overtake pages to make changes. It costs some money per page, but we'll do it if factual accuracy is on the line.), I got an e-mail from a subject clarifying some material we had had to write around. Usually, I would have gone back to my editor and asked for an overtake (I did that for the Vick's dogs story, delaying my editor's Christmas vacation by a few minutes just so we could put in an exact count of how many of the formerly abused dogs had received their Canine Good Citizenship certificates from the American Kennel Club). But last Monday, I just didn't want to face my editor again and have to make him open the story back up and restore whatever it was we had written around. It's not that I would have gotten yelled at; I was just tired of dealing with the story.

And that bothered me a lot, because I've never let something like that go at work before. And the fact that my laxness came during this particular story really troubled me, because if I can't manage to care enough about two of my favorite subjects in the world (Barack Obama + basketball), what hope is there for my quality of work and personal integrity in anything else?

Anyway, I was really down about this for the next two days, so much so that I actually had to turn away from Obama-related media for an excruciating 48 hours. Not that he'll ever read the story necessarily, but he deserves the best I can do (and so does Alex, who is one of my favorite writers at SI). But I think beating myself up about my failure helped because I went back to work yesterday with a renewed determination to earn my keep around the office, and I actually had a pretty good story ideas meeting in which I spoke up and hopefully contributed something of value. Either way, I came prepared and I felt that I did the best I could do, which is really all that matters to me.

(Matt also had a really good point when I told him how I felt about the story, which is that it's hard to feel completely satisfied when working on something you really care about. This makes a lot of sense, and probably also explains why it's so difficult and takes so long for me to finish a screenplay, because my personal expectations and hopes are so high that the actual result couldn't possibly live up. Also, I am maybe probably hard on myself in general.)

Anyway, the story is still very good, expertly written by one of our best writers, a guy who not only knows basketball but is also adept at drawing larger conclusions about the big picture (see his eloquent observations about the Beijing Olympics). You should read it!

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Other stuff I did this week, for my personal Diary of a Mad Asian Woman purposes:

Thursday: Had dinner with anyway413  at The Redhead, an East Village bar that is turning itself into a dang fine restaurant. We both had the fried chicken, which was perfectly crispy and served with warm cornbread and sweet-and-shallot-y spinach salad so delicious that I finished the whole thing in one sitting. And if you go during wintertime, don't miss their "Car Bomb" hot chocolate, an amazing concoction of cocoa, Guiness and Jameson, topped with a Bailey's marshmallow. It's a beverage, dessert and a meal.

Friday-Monday: My aforementioned (and long-winded) dark nights of the soul.

Monday evening: Journey Worship Arts Team leaders meeting

Tuesday: Dinner at Saigon Grill with the Journey writing team, followed by free writing workshops!

Wednesday: Optometrist checkup, then I made an exception to my rule about cutting married people out of my life by enjoying a lovely afternoon and evening with my ex-roommate Bikki: sample sale shoe shopping (didn't find anything but made fun of Prada moonboots), splittng a sweet potato puff at Fay Da, followed by reading (for her), writing (for me) and Scrabble at Think. (Bikki and I are epic Scrabblers. This time she beat me 283 to 250, but only because she managed to use a "Z" on a triple word score. That's my story and I'm sticking to it.)

Wow, I am really bad at sticking to my resolutions.

Anyway, so apparently the weekend after New Year's is the best time to catch up with long lost friends from out of town. I had lunch with KLees at Rickshaw, then caught up with Matt K. and Dan (and, briefly, Mar) at Teariffic. After a very nice week with various informal family reunions in California, it was nice to exercise my socializing muscle with friends. I'm especially thankful for how thoughtful and interesting and smart all of my friends are. It makes mixing them very easy, which is what I did with Matt and Dan.

Mixing friends is not only a good public service (heck, that's how Dan, Mar and I met, when Tyler brought them to my 23rd birthday party a million years ago), but it's also good for lazy and borderline antisocial friends like me. You get to punch the clock with multiple people at once, and if things go well, they can talk to each other while you sit back and take the credit for "getting the group together."

Matt, Dan and I hung out at the teahouse so long that I missed Paula's birthday dinner at her apartment, but I caught up with the party just before they headed out for Part 2 just across the street, at Le Parker Meridien's new bar:



Bikki, Erik and I split an absinthe just for kicks. The waitress brought us the wrong variety (to be fair, we had been deliberating between two kinds when she came to take our order), so she brought us a complimentary ($20 value!) glass of the one we actually ordered, the aptly-named Le Tourment Vert:



For those who are curious, absinthe is like drinking licorice Listerine. The Green Torment turned out to be smoother than Lucid (not pictured), whose burn (and anise fumes) stayed with you for a couple of minutes after it went down. Both were quite strong, though, and we ended up passing the glasses around the whole group, and we still had more than dregs left over! Not exactly the five loaves and two fishes, but close?

1. Blog every day if possible.
2. If it comes to mind, do it NOW.
3. WRITE WRITE WRITE
4. Eat better
5. Somehow find a way to get fit

Entries should get more interesting, hopefully. Tonight I am too tired because as usual, I spent the first day of the new year on a red-eye back to New York.

Here's to a hopefully productive 2009!

Anyone want to see these shows with me?

White Rabbits
Wed, 2/18 or Thurs, 2/19
Mercury Lounge
$12

This band is like a less-famous Vampire Weekend (i.e. preppy kids using surprising exotic beats), but with more of a sinister carnival vibe.

 

Kid on My Shoulders - White Rabbits


Cold War Kids
Friday, 4/3
Terminal 5
$22

CWK were the indie blog darlings in 2006, which means they were the indie blog backlash targets in 2007, but either way, I still like them. Their sound is similar to White Rabbits, reminiscent of barroom piano, but more deconstructed.


We Used to Vacation - Cold War Kids

I've seen both of these bands live, and they're solid. Annie: You had White Rabbits on your mix; whaddaya say? (Oh, and I tried not to let the Walkmen music video affect my voting. ;^P)

Yesterday I made quiche for my growth group's Christmas party (it turned out pretty well—thanks, Wall You!), except the amount of egg/half and half mixture I was instructed to prepare for the filling was too much for the crust to hold. So I added sugar, vanilla, Malibu (the only kind of rum I own), more milk and a dash of nutmeg for some bootleg eggnog. Mmm.

I fully intend on blogging more in the new year (by the way, The Walkmen song is good, but ever since I saw its creepy Dr. Caligari-esque overlapping-footage music video, I haven't been able to enjoy it as much). In the meantime, I'm thinking about doing some end-of-the-year lists. I don't feel like I consumed enough media in '08 to do a proper movies/music list, so I'm thinking of taking a page from Aja and going with the lowest common denominator: Hottest People.

Pretty good month so far. I've managed to remain gainfully employed, made the social rounds at various holiday festivities, and I'm even starting to work on my creative writing again. California-bound next Tuesday, where I can soak up 60-degree weather in December and not feel bad about it (who am I kidding—not like I ever do!).

Just like the election!

I just discovered this little series. Scroll all the way to the bottom and start reading from the oldest entries first.

Best use of Sims 2 ever, y/n?