2043

Listening to: Grimes, Art Angels, the entire album. And also watching all her accompanying videos. Start with "Kill V. Maim."

We just wrapped up 12 Monkeys, the TV show on Syfy, now Netflix. In the series, James Cole (as played by Pyro from the X-Men movies) is tasked with stopping a biological apocalypse that dooms the world in 2017. He starts off about thirty years from then starts hopping backwards in an attempt to stop the plague.

At first, I was concerned that the show wouldn’t compare to the movie — which I loved to the point of almost obsession. However, after finishing the first season, I almost like the TV series better. Blasphemy, I know! Sure, there’s no Bruce Willis, or Brad Pitt, or Terry Gilliam’s mad genius around but the extended TV format allows this 12 Monkeys to bring in more characters and sub-plots. Some of the side pieces felt a bit dragged out for no reason and there are currently too many new characters around but by the last three episodes of Season 1, I was already anticipating the start of Season 2 in early April.

"Where are you right now? Somewhere warm? Safe? Next to someone you love? Now what if all that was gone, and the only thing you could do was survive? You would, right? You'd try. You'd do things, horrible things. Until you have that last thing you have left: yourself. But what if you could take it back? All of it. A reset switch. You'd hit it, right? You'd have to. Even if you didn't want to. Because sometimes the choice isn't even yours, it's fate.”
-12 Monkeys Season 1 Finale Review: May the Circle Be Broken-

Back in college I sat around theorizing a lot about what was really happening in 12 Monkeys. The Internet was around then but it wasn’t yet the repository of fan theories so it was left to us lone idiots to puzzle out what had happened. It’s the kind of thing you do in your twenties I guess. “We need to figure out what is happening, and if it makes sense!” A good time travel movie is catnip for anyone trying to prove their intellectual prowess. Sidenote: If you want to get into a serious time travel movie, try Primer by Shane Carruth. The post-movie deep dive can go on forever for that one. All the charts and graphs and explanations, it’s wild.

Non-spoiler spoiler alert for 12 Monkeys, the movie: Basically I thought that no matter what happened, James Cole’s mission would be a success because each successive failure could just be fixed the next time around. I assumed we were just watching one version of Cole’s journey. And if there were a 12 Monkeys sequel or something that he would eventually save the world. Of course, that’s not accounting for the fact that Cole might die or that the time machine could run out of power. Both of those factors means that there aren’t an infinite amount of jumps available to fix things.

• 12 Monkeys Review: An Exciting Sci-Fi Journey, If You Forget The Movie Exists (2015)
• The 20 Best Time Travel Movies Ever (2015)
• Primer is the most “realistic” (and complicated) time travel movie (2013)
• Primer: Understanding the Most Complicated Sci Fi Movie Ever Made (2013)

And let’s make this entire post monkey-themed. We also recently saw Zootopia, which opened out here before the States. My friend who saw it said simply, “It’s going to be huge.” After watching it, I have to agree. I don’t think I’ve giggled so much through a movie since Cloud With a Chance of Meatballs 2. Zootopia is whodunit set in a world where anthropomorphized mammals rule the earth. Minus the humans. And any primates. At the end of the movie I was just listing animals that weren’t in the movie. Like dogs, and cats. And marsupials. It’s hard to disagree with leaving monkeys and man’s best friend out of the movie — they already get enough shine — but if you’re going to use some more obscure animals like a Fennec fox, why not go all out and use cool mammals like a platypus or something? Anyway, go see Zootopia, it opened bigger than Frozen and if there was a good song attached, it would probably dominant the airwaves too.

Last thing, Vainglory, the iOS game I pushed last year, is still in my daily routine. They recently released a special map and character skins to coincide with Lunar New Year. Included with that was a new character, Ozo, who is basically like the Monkey King-lite, but this version carries around a giant golden ring as a weapon. It’s a dragon ouroboros, which also coincides with the name of my fantasy football team: Hungry Hungry Ouroboros. A big life decision was if I should purchase this Ozo character and fulfill my destiny.

I mean, do you believe in fate or not? Happy Year of the Monkey, I guess.

Turnt Down & Out

Listening to: Vancouver Sleep Clinic, "Flaws." I heard this at the end of Before We Go, Chris Evans' Before Sunrise-y directorial debut. Since then I've just had their wonderfully dreamy six song EP, "Winter," on repeat. Excuse me, Vancouver Sleep Clinic is just one guy, Tim Bettinson, and he's only eighteen. Geezes!

I hopped back to the States the other week, straight to San Francisco. The flight I took was all kinds of backwards. First to Hong Kong, then to Manila, and finally to SFO. That’s what happens when you book your flight late and try to save a few bucks. Somehow, for the entire long leg of the flight, I managed to not even get out of my seat. Pretty impressive right? I’m really getting the hang of long flights!

After a quick week in San Francisco — saw some friends, saw some movies, rode/walked a bike up unconquerable hills — I came home, finally. San Diego’s weather awaited me and right away I headed for burrito-land. Well, actually, a delicious set of chicken flautas but close enough. I was trying to figure out the last time I’d been away from proper Mexican food for such a long time. Maybe almost a decade ago. Sometimes I went to the sub-par Mexican choices in Taipei just to get some pico and shredded lettuce on my tastebuds. Desperate times you know?

It seemed like everyone I met up with in the Bay had a recent big life change. Like moving out, moving in, moving in together with their significant other, recently engaged, recently announced their pregnancy, quit their job, new job, etc. All the changes frightened me a little. I don’t know if “frighten” is the right word, but basically it felt like big things were happening for everyone. That, combined with our going to bed so early on the weekends, portended a future for me that had me scared.

See, San Francisco was the last of the West Coast cities where my friends actually still went out. And stayed up late, and hung out, and did stuff. Coming straight from Taiwan, where my schedule was super late, it was a mild shock. And I stared at the gaping maw of my dystopian Bay Area future and had to face facts: People were settling down / growing up. Oh the horror!

For U.S. cities, now it’s down to just New York, and New York will always be an exception because people there are forever young. So yeah, I’m trying to get there as fast as I can, hopefully in September, after some beach and sun back in San Diego. Plus the burritos.

I was also in L.A. for a bit last weekend. Hung out mostly in the downtown L.A. area that I was previously unfamiliar with — aside from parts of K-Town and the Staples Center for Clippers games. Driving in, I passed by the tent cities of Skid Row, which looked even crazier than the Tenderloin. I was very curious about how Los Angeles handles Skid Row, and started doing some online reading about it.

"At the time, Skid Row made sense. It corralled all that would attract ‘undesirables' into a part of the city without much of a population beyond daytime office workers, pensioners, and the homeless and semi-homeless hotel-dwellers already there. It lay far from coastal enclaves like Santa Monica or suburban hinterlands like the San Fernando Valley, which were home to more politically important constituencies.”
-The Gentrification of Skid Row: A story that will decide the future of Los Angeles-

Last year, we took a walking tour of the Tenderloin, which was both informative and eye-opening. My friend Stef and her friends are now working on launching The Anchor & Plow Project, a program to give SF newcomers (i.e. invading techies) a better understanding of the neighborhoods they’ve taken over. In related things: On the way to the airport, via Uber Pool of course, I saw my first Google Bus and the huge queue waiting for it. Anyway, check out Anchor & Plow’s mission statement and pass the survey on to anyone you know.

Also, I stuck around in L.A. to watch Sean Baker's Tangerine, because I knew it wasn't playing back in San Diego. Plus the theater was in Hollywood, a few miles from where Tangerine was set. The movie itself was fantastic. All the more overwhelming because it was shot on an iPhone. You want to talk diversity? How about two transgender leads and an Armenian cab driver imprisoned by his cultural background? So yeah, start with the trailer, then make sure to watch the whole damn thing.

• How Los Angeles Created Skid Row (2015)
• The Rules of the Row (2001)
• The Class War Is Back On in San Francisco (2014)
• In San Francisco: A Walking Tour of the Tenderloin (2015)
• Tangerine: How one of the best films at Sundance was shot using an iPhone 5S

MAY: Week Three & Four

Listening to: Flight Facilities, "Clair De Lune.”

Sometimes, I’m sitting in a cafe here and a great (relatively old) song comes on. Like the Flight Facilities track above. And I wonder how it got here. "Here" being Taiwan. Do some of the cafe proprietors just have the same taste in music as I do? Or more likely, they are just using Spotify playlists. Which is both good and bad. Good because I like the music but bad because you can't even tell who has good taste anymore when we all just resort to pre-curated playlists.

This is the “What I miss about America” edition of weekly updates — besides certain foods, that’s a constant. Basically, I’m starting to feel out of the loop on everything back in the States. Not that I was on top of everything but at least I could keep abreast of the conversation. I was behind on some stuff -- as generalized here -- but for most things I was either slightly ahead or right with the zeitgeist.

Now I’m just behind on everything: movies, books, TV, news, whatever. The same thing happened when I lived abroad last time, like fifteen years ago. I used to be on top of everything and after eight months in China I came back lost and confused -- especially music wise. And it took forever to semi-catch up. For someone who prides themselves on being aware of what’s trending or coming down the pipeline, I’m distraught.

“But the Internet…” you say. I mean, of course the Internet. But when nobody else around you is talking about stuff, it’s easy to let it slide too. I mean, what is Empire. What was Ferguson? Who is Drake? Has popular slang changed while I've been gone? How long can I live like this? Is it time to return?

I can only imagine how this effect magnifies if one's been away for longer. I fear being that out of touch. My friend likes to ask, "But behind according to whom?" And my answer is invariably, "everybody!"

This week was our big exam for the semester. I showed up, took the test, and then disappeared again. School’s out in two weeks, technically, but I’m done — I’ve lost the motivation. Theoretically, I have no reason to be in Taiwan anymore, now that school's over, but I’m not quite ready to leave. So what to do with all this time?

Well, the U.S. is pulling me a bit, and I was looking at swinging home for summer camp, a June wedding, and then some weeks in New York, but somehow it feels like my life is, more or less, here. It’s only been seven or eight months but Taipei feels home-ish.

The weather has been warming up though, which could quickly drive me away. Heat is my enemy. Given the choice, I’d take frigid winter over torpid summer but maybe with enough air conditioning and cool thoughts I'll survive. "Brr, it's cold in here..."

Without school I don’t have much of a routine, unless you count dance class on Wednesdays (the only thing I regularly commit to), and then an assortment of random social things during the week, followed by weekends trying to find music and/or dancing. Chasing the stars, as it were. It’s a shapeless existence, and not that different from when I lived anywhere else. But it’s starting to become tiresome. For awhile it was nice having school to anchor the day, but truthfully, I was feeling resentful about the daily obligation.

So yeah, now what?

Our friend’s rooftop has become our de facto hangout spot and we go up there at night to drink wine, chain smoke, and blast music. The most enjoyable dance party I’ve been to in awhile has been on this rooftop, just three or four of us, dancing like idiots because nobody’s watching. And because we could play our own music. Fun danceable music is impossible to find here. That alone might drive me back to New York.

Question: What is the smallest number of people that qualifies as a “party?” Same thing for “crew.” I’ve noticing the term “crew” thrown around to describe just a handful of people. That seems like overstating the fact. The minimum number for a crew can’t be lower than, say, seven people right? Please rank in ascending order: crew, posse, entourage...

There are certain things you can only do here in a bunch of people. I have yet to assemble that many friends but one day, I would like to. If simply to take advantage of the sharing potential of a high headcount. Come, let us break bread together friends and semi-friends.

My new thing is skipping the going out portion of the evening and heading straight for the food at 3AM. It’s much more efficient.

MAY: Week Two

Currently listening: Wiz Khalifa, “See You Again.” Yeah it’s the song that they play at the end of Fast 7 during the Paul Walker montage. Yeah it’ll make you want to cry. And they ended the night with this track at a club last week. It was wonderful. Move over Al Green, this is my new closer. Here’s an hour of “See You Again” on loop, just in case you need it. Nine million views can’t be wrong...

This week marked my DJ debut. Yes, my long awaited dream of having someone let me DJ a party finally happened! My friend had a photography studio for her birthday party and her roommate (and me!) in charge of the music. Finally, yes yes yes! Basically I put together my dream dance playlist — mostly girl pop, with tons of Mariah, Janet, and Whitney — and downloaded Traktor.

By the way, Traktor for iOS is incredible. So easy to use and I haven’t even figured out any of the cool features yet. Just being able to semi-mix one song into the other is good enough though. Armed with a playlist that was sure to get the party jumping, I made my debut around midnight… and flamed out. I didn’t account for the fact that people literally a decade younger than me might not appreciate Denice Williams or Lisa Lisa and the Cult Jam quite as much as my peers. Argh, Millenials! Oh well.

I was booted after about forty minutes (“Do you have anything newer? More hip hop-y?”) or what I’d like to say was me “taking a break after my first set.” When the party was winding down and most of the crowd had left, I jumped back on the zeros and ones and cranked out more Madonna and Taylor Swift. "But I got a blank space baby / And I'll write your name." Anyway, I have an awesome playlist, please invite me to DJ for you soon. Especially if you’re over thirty.

List of ender songs I was considering (none of which was used, yet):

• Adam Levine, “Lost Stars”
• Ritchie Valens, “Sleepwalk”
• Kanye West, “Family Business”
• Spandau Ballet, “True”
• Debbie Gibson, "Lost in Your Eyes"
• Al Green, “Let’s Stay Together”
• 2Pac, “Check Out Time”
• Hall & Oates, "Everytime You Go Away”

I made the stunning realization this week that I don’t have (as) many American friends here anymore! Most of my first semester classmates are gone and of the people I normally hang out with there’s a Brazilian, an Indonesian, a Taiwanese, and a Malaysian. Only one American friend in the bunch! Of course, we mostly speak English so it’s not really that much different. And all our pop culture references are the same.

When I met my Brazilian friend, I swore she was from California because her English is tinged with an American accent (whatever that is). When I asked her how come, her reply was the best: “I learned English from watching Friends. Every episode."

One of the downsides of the past few months in school is that it’s severely stunted my meeting actual Taiwanese people opportunities. As you can imagine, everyone at Shida is a foreigner and it’s far easier to just clump together. So my goal, moving forward is to meet Taiwanese people again!

School’s over at the end of the month but honestly I’m already tapped out. I moved down a level and it got too easy and my previous dedication is just not there. Plus, my classmates are very quiet compared to my previous group and I'm much less inspired to attend. So yeah, I’m out! Now that I have a methodology to learning Mandarin, I can practice vocab on my own and it’s time to get my oral skills up to speed. I don’t feel like my speaking skills have improved much while I’ve been here — mostly a function of knowing only people who speak English well — so in the future, that’s what I need to focus on.

At the rate of 40-50+ new words a week, I’ve probably learned a thousand characters so far, in six months. Of those, maybe I’ve retained half? Chinese goes quick when you aren’t constantly practicing. I wouldn’t say I can read/write that well, but it’s still exciting to be able to decipher basic stuff. Or really simple karaoke songs.

Over the weekend I went to my first Taiwanese wedding. I’d been wanting to attend a Taiwanese wedding because it sounds so different than American ones. To start, you don’t really have to dress up. Sure, you can wear a suit if you want but nicer pants and normal shoes are fine. I’ve straight up seen pictures of people showing up in sweaters and sweats. The wedding I attended was very classy though, so people came looking good.

At the banquet portion of the night, the food was course after course of rich foods: Lobster, duck, fish, crab, steak, etc. It was a little nuts how much there was. Traditionally the wedding is just a massive feast, and this one lived up to that advertisement plenty.

The big difference between American and Taiwanese weddings is that there's no party. You eat the food and then you’re done. The whole affair might take only a short afternoon even. Now I understand why the parents jet out of regular weddings so fast... For this particular wedding, since the bride was Christian, there was a church ceremony (similar to any church wedding I’d been to) so I didn’t get to see any of the traditional Taiwanese stuff. Next time I guess. Overall, a great time and the bride and groom had a singing/dancing portion that was in line with their fun personalities — not at all like most traditional weddings so I'm told.

Speaking of weddings, my sister and AMR’s December wedding was featured in a post from Exquisite Weddings! Click through if you wanna see: "Real Weddings: Georgette and Ameer."

Friday, we discovered badminton. I was unprepared in my camo shorts and no athletic gear. But next time I’m going with a headband and a plan. And I’m gonna win, win, win.

• 30 Pictures of Chinese Wedding Traditions in Taiwan
• Life in Taiwan: The layers of a Taiwanese wedding (2010)
• Traktor DJ: Native Instruments introduces an iPad DJ app you’ll actually want to use
• Badminton World Federation: Simplified Rules

Pedagogy of the Privileged

Listening to: Zombies, “Summertime.” At Vinyl Decision, a listening lounge in Taipei a few weeks ago, a friend of a friend got on the turntables and put on this band. I went gaga. “Who is this?!” Turns out, I’m 110% a Zombies fan. Fifty years late maybe but I’m on-board now. Currently pumping "She's Not There" on repeat! And while I’m here, try my favorite zombie related track: Dead Man’s Bones, “My Body’s a Zombie For You.” Oh yeah, Ryan Gosling is the lead singer...

So school started a few weeks ago. You know, that Chinese school I’m taking. Voluntarily. Nevermind that my entire childhood was spent cursing the many wasted Saturdays we were forced to attend Chinese school. Nevermind that I also took two years of Mandarin in college. I’m in Taiwan now and ready to begin anew. Without cheating or slacking this time. That’s right, I’m taking classes at National Taiwan Normal University aka Shida and I’m enrolled in the intensive class. Hardcore!

What "intensive" translates to is three hours of class a day, along with an intimidating four hours of homework. Or so the syllabus says. In practice, it’s been more like two hours a day. You know, only a mere two hours. For those who scoff, it’s seriously been legit school. I mean, once you’re in a classroom setting, being quizzed daily and tested weekly, the academic mindset kicks right back in. (I haven’t been in school since reading One World Schoolhouse but I keep thinking about how those principles might apply.) Also, as an indoctrinated model minority, it’s hard to let go of trying to get good/decent grades. Luckily I’ve decided that I don’t care about learning pinyin, I’m just here to learn words, words, and more words. I’ll take a B or B-, thank you very much.

My classmates are mostly from similar backgrounds. We can all understand and speak -- albeit mostly with horrific childish accents -- but none of us can really write that well. It’s mostly ABCs (or close enough), with a Brazilian, an Indonesian, and a Venezuelan thrown in for diversity. It’s a self selecting group of people who are in the arc of their life where they can spend three months dedicated to studying a language. And because my fellow students are invested, that motivates me to stay on top of my shit.

During the first week, my friend and I hopped around trying to find the right class for us to possibly be in together. After crouching by doors and listening in, basically spying on everyone, we decided that what was important, beyond even the stuff being taught, was the vibe the teacher imparted on the classroom and your fellow students. If your classmates were cool, then you were golden. A boring teacher with a room full of people who didn’t participate would make the hours drag on. Luckily, I was placed in the creme de la creme by default so I decided to just stick with the intensive class, after contemplating a move down to regular. So yeah, wish me luck. 加油, 加油!

Here’s the thing about learning Mandarin: It’s just straight memorization. There are no tricks, there’s no alphabet, the radicals only do so much, and there aren’t any cute mnemonics to help you out. It’s just rote and grind and push vocab into your brain. Enter Pleco!

Basically Pleco is a free Chinese to English dictionary but for an add-on of $19.99, it turns into an awesome flash card app. You can organize your cards with touch screen ease and there’s something very satisfying about drawing Chinese characters into your iPhone and testing yourself while on the go. I totally love it and combining just a dash of tech geekery into language learning has made it that much funner. (I’ve tried using Duolingo to learn Spanish, and the gamification helped there too, but only up to a certain point.)

There’s other good flash card apps out there, namely Anki, but Pleco is the only Chinese specific one. And I’ve found that even though there’s no online support -- it’s all iOS or Android -- Pleco's features are superior to what Anki can offer. Also, Waygo is a Chinese, Korean, and Japanese text translator app that uses image recognition to read stuff frighteningly fast. It's mostly effective for menus, and it’s not very accurate sometimes, but overall Waygo is a nice tool to have around. So until an actual Babel fish comes along, back to the iPhones and books!

• Video: Learn to read Chinese...with ease! (2013)
• The 9 Levels of Mandarin Study at NTNU's Mandarin Training Center
• Discover Chinese: Which flashcard program? Pleco vs Anki

Up, Up With People

Listening to: Klassy, “Sweet Awakening.” Listening to the Bonita Applebaum sample made me queue up the Tribe documentary again. So good! Anyway, Klassy is a Filipino-American from Los Angeles and she’s super smooth. Plus she’s still in high school. Yeah, high school. (via @djphatrick)

So I guess Web 1.0 is back. I mean, so I hear. "The Great Web 1.0 Revival." Either way, I love it, because if that means more confessional-ish personal writing for me to read, I’m in. Susie got me an invite to Ello this past weekend, and then the Gizmodo article put me onto Tilde.Club, where quite a lot of the bloggers I used to read almost fifteen years ago have homes. (Has it really been so long? Yes, for people like bluishorange for example.) The site is aggressively ugly but I guess that’s the point. Anyway, in honor of the great web regression, a mini-blog roll of people I’ve been reading lately. Normally I would say a little blurb about them, but I think a sample post or two will be enough to draw you in, if you're into this type of blog. Which you should be.

• Zanopticon | Lori in the Sky | Hyun Inc
• Sho & Tell | The Bird Years | OV/R
• Pen & Palate | Jamelle Bouie

• Justin Hall at XOXO
• Scribblings: Short Form Blogging
• Kottke: The blog is dead, long live the blog (2013)

And then there's Matt Kulesza, who is out to have coffee with all 1,088 of his Facebook friends. His project, 1000+ Coffees, is exactly the sort of thing I'm into. A long time ago, I had the thought to write little blurbs about all my friends, as character studies, but then that was shelved because you just can't write honest things about friends, otherwise you will soon be friendless. And then where would I be? Oh right, the Internet.

I was remiss in reminding the world about Encryption Day, Oct 10th. It's the day to change all your passwords! You've never heard of Encryption Day, well maybe beacause I just made it up, and am still waiting for it to catch on... And speaking of useful things, Super Lum has been keeping me up on all things tech, and changed my life with this @@ shortcut as text expander lifehack. Forget eating right and exercising, this one change will actually make you a happier person. Promise.

One of the great mysteries of this year was trying to figure out why Tess Lynch left Grantland, and now we kinda sorta know why. The sad thing is, Emily Yoshida just left too, leading to the dissolution of the Girls in Hoodies podcast. Seriously, this is so sad because Tess, Emily, and Molly Lambert were the only all female pod hosts on Grantland and their chemistry was amazing -- second only to Jacoby and Juliet. I haven’t even listened to the Hoodies' finale because I’m saving it for a special day. A day when I can sit around and laugh and cry, and feel like my friends are leaving me. Yes, it's that serious.

And awhile ago, I ripped through all of Arthur Chu's articles on Daily Beast. He's the former Jeopardy champion that attracted a lot of haters because he "gamed" a game. Anyway, he's smart, interesting, and a new voice on the Asian-American scene, which we always need more of. Just read him.

• Who Is Arthur Chu?
• Branding Arthur Chu
• From Jeopardy villain to social justice warrior

All Men Must Die

Listening to: Kanye Asada, "Boys & Girls: March 2014." We went out this past weekend to see another DJ but ended up falling in love with this guy’s set. It was wonderfully dancey, while not falling into any genre. Technically it’s maybe a little housey with R&B hooks, but it was so much better than that. Anyone who mixes in "Escapade" is all good in my book. Also, that name "carne asada" is amazing. Here's his setlists and try out this Aaliyah track for a quick taste of what I fell in love with. See you on the dance floor.

Most of the rest of my weekend was spent in a much more prone position, lying on my side while grinding/frolicking through hours of Battleheart. Battleheart is an iOS action RPG game that came out a few years ago and I don’t know how I missed it. Suffice to say, the package of wonderfully responsive controls, streamlined design, lots of lineup combinations, plus super cute characters had me obsessed. I mean, take a look at the little barbarian, witch, pirate, and even a monk! I think I literally played Battleheart for ten hours straight, stopping only when my phone died.

Also, the week was all about Game of Thrones right? While waiting for Sunday’s premiere, and making backup plans in case HBO Go collapsed (again), I saw that Fantasizr was running a GoT fantasy game. Of course I assembled a league because fantasy anything makes life better. And then I started a blog for the league because, well, that’s what I do. Anyway, our draft was super fun and now I’m heavily invested in my team’s aptitude for killing, maiming, sexing, insulting, and drinking. My team name is "Blonde Ambition," named after Madonna's tour, and my first few picks were right on theme with Daenerys, Brienne, and Joffrey. And then somehow I ended up with almost all of the Tyrells, more than fulfilling the "ambition" part of the name. Fantasy Game of Thrones and the new season of MTV Challenge will keep me occupied now that basketball is over. Can someone just make fantasy real life friends already?

• Fantasy GoT Draft Analysis | Rules
• Andy Greenwald and Chris Ryan talk GoT
• Premiere Recap: Welcome Back to Westeros! (Don’t Mind the Blood.)

And hello, the new Captain America is so good! If you've seen it already, check out this spoiler filled "The Winter Soldier Secrets You (Probably) Didn't Notice." As an avid Marvel fan but not enough apparently, I didn't notice most of these tidbits. I mean, when I used to read comics, Captain America was not cool. But now he's got super muscles and looks like Chris Evans so he's finally got a proper fandom.

Someone asked me this weekend if I thought an issue of "Amazing Fantasy #15,” Spider-Man’s debut, would be a good investment. There seem to be quite a few available for sale on eBay, priced from a few hundred dollars to a mere thirty-five grand. I’m trying to convince my friend that buying “Giant-Size X-Men #1” would have so much more cachet. Right? And it’s cheaper! If I ever make mega money, all my rooms will be filled with comic books and statues. Take a look at this blog, X-Men: Statues of Future Past, which is basically my dream home. I won't need any other rooms, just this one. And in case you some wallpaper for your digital home, I painstakingly stitched together this 50th anniversary Avengers poster. And here's the X-Men one. Warning: Both are hugely, and probably life changing.

I still haven’t had a chance to read Chad Harbach’s The Art of Fielding that came out a couple of years ago, and now he’s got an anthology out titled MFA vs NYC: The Two Cultures of American Fiction. It sounds like a must read for writers. Back in 2012 I read Keith Gessen’s How a Book is Born, which focused on Harbach’s debut and was really interesting, plus I want to re-recommend this n+1 podcast episode with Gessen.

• Rumpus Interview: Chad Harbach
• Original "MFA vs NYC" essay (2010)

Remember the Time

Listening to: All the mixes from 143's Soundcloud page. "143 is a monthly party of slow jams, love songs, and bed squeaking future R&B." Basically, I need to get to L.A. soon to attend one of these parties. But for now, these streams will have to do.

Digging the crates, looking up my important “firsts.” First Tweet, first Gmail, etc. These are really the important moments in my life. I read this article, "How Gmail Happened: The Inside Story of Its Launch 10 Years Ago” and they said that Gmail launched on April 1st, 2004. I started using it exactly a month later -- here's how to see your oldest message -- and haven’t stopped advocating for it since. I remember AMR and I got early invites because we were loyal Blogger users. Those extra two invites we had apiece were literal gold! We eBayed those suckers for like $80 each. It was a glorious time.

Now I’m taking a spin in my Gmail archives and reliving my life a decade ago. That basically involves Google stalking old co-workers and friends I’ve lost touch with. You know, the usual. Back in 2004 I was working at a generic pharmaceutical company. Filing, emailing, doing important stuff. I forgot what my title was. Quality assurance peon? This was my first foray into regular office culture and oh man, what a thrill! Sure hope I can get into that kind of job again. Not.

Oddly, my very first email was to myself, as I forwarded along a copy of my PDF resume as an attachment. Clearly I was very career focused as my first instinct was to preserve my resume for eternity on Google’s servers. Lot of good that did me over the past decade, right? Also, it’s unfortunate but my email address through most of my twenties was paradigmpimp@whatever. I had to start many subject headings with "This is not spam, I swear." I wish someone had intervened and told me to change my email address to something less faux ironic and dumb. And easier to spell.

For posterity, my first tweet sent into the world a little after midnight on May 24, 2007 was: "In new york, still up, blogging.” Ain’t shit changed....

While we’re at it, I was doing some more digging and came upon this 2006 review of my blog book from John Scalzi. Totally forgot about that! Sometimes I forget I wrote a book on blogging and that’s how I got my start.  I look at how I’ve only got five entries up so far this year and that just makes me sad sad sad. The move then is to recapture the blogging fire and toward that end I’m gonna blog every day till the end of the month. “No, don’t do it,” you cry. Too late, I already committed. And I always, always, follow through on my commitments.

Really, the first thing I should do is go through this Top 250 Blogs list from Rough Guide to Blogging and write up a “Where Are They Now” feature. Well, maybe not for all it. Perhaps just the “personal blogs” section. I mean, where is Bazima, Maganda, Minjung Kim now? Well, at least we know where Evhead went. The Blogger cofounder went on to start Twitter! Actually, let’s be real, the best part of writing Rough Guides was sneaking in friends like Boygirlparty, Eidolon, and Transcended. Plus I crammed in as many screenshots as I could of friends' blogs. Oh the power I wielded.

I think Rough Guides stopped printing the blogging book awhile ago and shockingly I only have like two copies in my closet. Perhaps I better start wandering into used bookstores to start collecting copies. Some day my children will want to hold my first book in their hands. Or maybe they won’t, since everything will be digitized by then and nobody will care about physical artifacts.

I sent these to my friend the other day, a collection of links to articles about writing and money, starting with a Scalzi classic. Also check out Scalzi's book on writing as a career, You're Not Fooling Anyone When You Take Your Laptop to a Coffee Shop.

• "John Scalzi's Utterly Useless Writing Advice" (2004)
• Keith Gessen, "Money" (2006)
• Jeaniene Frost, "Publishing Money Myths" (2008)
• Can You Make Money Writing Novels? (2009)
• Editorial Ass, "And You Thought a Royalty Involved a Crown" (2009)
• Katie Klein's self publishing posts (2012)
• Mack Collier, "So How Much Money Will You Make From Writing a Book?" (2013)
• "How Much Do Writers Earn? Less Than You Think" (2014)
• Emily Gould, "How Much My Novel Cost Me” (2014)

Leaders of the New School

Listening to: Taylor Dayne, "Heart of Stone." Yeah I just found out about Taylor last week. Yeah, last week. As per usual, my Eighties music butler struck again. Lilly was jamming out while we were working and I'm like "Who is this, Belinda?" She proceeded to educate me and now I can't stop going through Dayne's greatest hits. Technically I know "Love Will Lead You Back" and "Tell It To My Heart" and all that stuff but when you don't know the artist, it's not the same, right?

The other big shocker is that Dayne is white. This rocked my world like when I found out that Billy Ocean was black. Related newsflash: Donna Summer is black. This is just getting embarrassing right? Bill Simmons has the Reggie Cleveland All-Stars, a "list of sports figures whose names would seem to indicate that they are of a different race or ethnicity than they actually are." Should the "sings like they're a different race/ethnicity club" be dubbed the Taylor Dayne All-Stars? Anyway, up next from my personal Eighties music butler is Jody Watley and Stacey Q. (I wouldn't know anything worth knowing without Lilly.) Also, read this: "Tig Notaro Meets Taylor Dayne Again and Again (2012)," plus accompanying video.

There’s a me-sized hole on our couch from the last few weekends of sitting around and burning through movies. I found myself watching stuff in marathon sessions, like six hours at a stretch. At least they were thematic so I could declare them as fiftyfifty.me minors. For example, I started off with J.C. Chandor’s Margin Call one night and then, intrigued by more stuff on the sub-prime lending fiascos, went through The Flaw and then The Pit, a movie about Wall Street commodities trading.

A couple of days later I started at Patriot Games and then with more political thrillers needed in my system, I called up Jack Ryan again in The Hunt for Red October and then The Sum of All Fears. If Clear and Present Danger was streaming I probably would have sat through that too. (Now I feel all but obligated to watch Shadow Recruit.) Were the films actually good? Eh, mostly average, but when you need that CIA fix you need that CIA fix.

And then I discovered that HBO Go had all their old series on tap and shot through Band of Brothers in about a week. Ten hours, one week. That's a lot of binge watching but nothing compared to what was about to come. I discovered Deadwood on a Friday night and finished the whole thing by Tuesday. Feining for a Western, I queued up Clint and Sergio's Fistful of Dollars but couldn’t get into it. So I dove into Deadwood instead and twelve hours later, emerged with the entirety of Season 1 under my belt. I seriously only got up to go to the bathroom.

Deadwood was on from 2004-2006 and is set in the 1870s during a South Dakota gold rush. Timothy Olyphant plays the white hat sheriff while Ian McShane is perfectly cast as a morally ambiguous saloon owner who Godfathers the town. The series is semi-historically accurate, with cameos from a series of Western folk heroes such as Wild Bill, Calamity Jane, and Wyatt Earp. Each episode ends on such a compelling note that I had to press on.

By the time I’d finished all three seasons -- the show was cruelly cancelled early -- I was thinking in writer/showrunner David Milch’s Shakespearean tinged lines, and wanting to call everyone “cocksucker.” The show has a ton of viciously fun profanity, wanton murders, and all sorts of bad things, plus the ingenious machinations and changing alliances hold your attention in both awe and disgust. I could go on forever, but I’m too busy trying to figure out where Deadwood falls in my personal pantheon of TV series. I’m almost afraid to admit it but it might rank above Mad Men right now. And I fucking love me some Mad Men.

• The Professor and the Madman (2006)
• Alan Sepinwall’s Deadwood Recaps, and S1E1 Newbies edition
• Deadwood: Honoring Cocksuckers and Hoopleheads (2011)

For most of 2007, I worked at a home mortgage place up in the Bay. I had the 7am - 4pm shift and it was horrible. The job was mostly mindless and after getting the hang of it and doing great for a few months, I lost interest and soon quit. I did learn a lot though, as we credit checked people for approvals, set them up for loans, and participated in all the stuff that are now red alarm terms: subprime lending, interest-only mortgages, , adjustable-rate mortgages, etc. Basically, I too had a small hand in the coming financial meltdown.

Out of curiosity, I Googled my old company to see what had happened to it. Apparently, a few months after I quit, the company fired five hundred employees as part of its restructuring, and there’s no doubt I would have been let go too. Looks like I got out of Dodge just in time!

The Greatest Club of All

Listening to: Lady, "Money."

I’ve done a lot of great things in my time, but this could be one of the very best. For the past year, Ameer and I have been tracking our expenses using a very special Google Doc. 2013 was our first year of Budget Club and it was a tremendous success. There’s a wild thrill to tracking every penny and dime you spend. Trust me, there is.

When I was younger, aka two years ago, when someone asked me “where does your money go?” I wouldn’t have been able to tell them. Now, after a full year in Budget Club, I know exactly where my money went. Unfortunately it’s all mundane stuff. Food, shelter, travel, karaoke, and bubble tea. No luxury boats or Wolf of Wall Street stuff on the list. But no matter, part of being in Budget Club is learning to be fiscally responsible. Extravagance is eschewed, it’s all about saving money! I know, it sounds very un-American of me, but I still participate in consumerism on a regular basis, don’t worry. Plus I take photos of things I want but can’t have, which is almost the same buying stuff.

Anyway, without further ado, we invite you to join Budget Club. All it takes is a commitment to tracking your expenses. That’s it. You can use Mint, you can use a piece of paper, whatever. However, we highly recommend our Google Doc, which is full of magical formulas. Somehow when you adjust the budget tab on the document the other tabs get changed. I don’t know how this works, it just does. Grab a copy of the template and try it out for yourself. Below is the how-to and some spreadsheet explanations. Plus a podcast episode we made, just for you.

Remember, it takes a lot of diligence (and anal-ness) to do Budget Club but the rewards are many. Give it a few months and as my accountant sister loves to say, "Better log it!"

Budget Club spreadsheet | Budget Club podcast

Getting Started:

1. Go to the “budget” tab and input your income. Then fill out your fixed expenses, variable expenses, and annual expenses. Finally, throw in some tags you know you’ll likely use. Get that “money left to budget” box to zero (show in red at H4).
2. Enter your variable monthly expenses as you go, categorizing and tagging each item. You can edit these at any time so don't spend too much time on this.
3. At the end of each month, you need to lock down rows F, H, K, and L because those could change in the future if the master budget columns change. The locking down process prevents those individual columns from being affected by future edits. Instructions for locking down are included in light blue on the January tab.

Sometimes we get asked why we bother with a spreadsheet when there are clearly lots of options for personal finance out there. Well, I tried a lot of things but I kept returning to a Google Doc because it was customizable and easily shareable. Also, I use Spendee because it's pretty and an easier way of tracking each expenditure versus just using Evernote or Notes. I find that the attractiveness of the interface encourages me to input numbers. So yeah, Spendee.

Budgeting vs Reporting
Last year we simply had a huge list of categories for everything. This year’s innovation is to separate out the categories according to what’s useful. According to AMR’s financial planner, budgeting should be broad, used for all inclusive categories. Who cares if you flew, drove, biked, subwayed, it’s all just “transportation.” So, for budgeting purposes, the fewer categories the better.

However, when reporting, you want details. Under “food” I want to know if I was eating out, buying groceries, or just getting lots of snacks. The list of tags should be numerous because you can only analyze your spending when you have a clear idea about what's being purchased. In short, it's good to aim for five or less categories, but populate your sheet with as many tags as necessary. Go crazy.

The “Ann” tab
This is the tab for annual expenditures. Last year we used to have individual months where big amounts of money came in or out, wrecking our carefully balanced budget. No more! Instead of getting slammed because you just bought a new computer in February, you can now balance that out over twelve months. It offsets the big purchases and allows you to plan more responsibly. You can use the Ann tab however you like but we recommend throwing in vacations, holiday gifts, tax returns, and various one-off items in there. Note: This will change your variable expense, as the Ann tab is basically a mini-budget within the overall budget.

The last thing I’d recommend is to do this with some friends. We have a Budget Club of four people and it’s super fun to compare notes and be in competition to see who “won” the month. Basically the winner is whoever overspent the most, and they must be shamed until the next month. The social aspect of Budget Club is one of the best parts. Well, that and warm fuzzies you get from tracking all your expenses.

Feel free to ask Ameer or I if you have any questions. Or suggestions. We love suggestions!

C.R.E.A.M.

Listening to: Iggy Azalea, “Beat Down.” Yeah it’s really only featuring Iggy and the artist is officially Steve Aoki and Angger Dimas but really, this song is about Iggy. I’m not sure how I missed her on her first turn around, but I’m in on her now though. I have a soft spot for these white female foul mouthed rappers. It’s horrible, I know.

I’m starting to think I should have a work diary. I know I already track way too much stuff, but it seems like a diary for ideas or writing or something would be useful. There’s a few bits from this talk by Maciej Ceglowski, “Thoreau 2.0,” from XOXO that I liked. Sidenote: What is XOXO, is this the new TED?

"The best piece of advice Thoreau ever got was from Emerson, who told him to keep a journal. And Thoreau did, for decades, using it as a personal diary, a record of his botanical and scientific observations, and a kind of staging ground for his serious writing. He would go back and mine it years later for passages to use in his work. I don't think everyone needs to keep a literary journal, but I think it's vital to keep a work diary, for three reasons…”

Anyway, I’m a big proponent of having a work document/diary for jobs, where you can follow along to what the previous person did, but I’ve never applied that to a creative enterprise. Could be time to start. Heck, this blog could be it, right here. All my million dollar ideas for free!

The few times I’ve had a real job before, I’ve always wondered why the people before me weren’t required to do a diary of some sort, to document processes, daily/weekly stumbling blocks, little things they picked up along the way. I always did it for myself, in the hopes of having it for later. It seems natural that you'd want your new employees to have this sort of history. Instead a lot of jobs just throw you in and basically the learning curve is the learning curve. So yeah, work diaries, let’s get on it. And for next year I'm gonna try to do a writing/creative diary. Making 2014 goals already, I'm so ahead of the curve.

A few months ago, a friend put me onto this Tumblr, Who Pays Writers, It’s an awesome resource and aside from learning exactly how paltry the pay for freelancing can be, it’s cool to have actual numbers for what publications pay. Now the people behind Who Pays Writers are putting out an e-magazine: Scratch. I love it already and am gonna subscribe because they do really cool things like being totally transparent, showing us their subscription trend line, and just overall being an amazing resource.

• Scratch Mag's Free Preview Issue | Blog
• How Much Money We Made in Our First Week
• A New Website Aims To 'Scratch' The Surface of The Freelance Economy

It’s NaNoWriMo time, well, nearing the end. I did it two years ago and I think I finished. Oh wait, yes I did, I was a winner. Woohoo. I should revisit that stuff to see what kind of crap I unloaded into Scrivener. Anyway, I recently read this 2003 interview with NaNoWriMo's head honch or whatnot. I’d been wondering how NaNoWriMo made money and now I know. Short answer: donations and T-shirts. I met an ex-producer of Pawn Stars once and he said that they made most of their money off selling show T-shirts. That's right, branded T-shirts run the world.

"This year we're looking at $35,885 in non-recoupable expenses, and another $24,900 in recoupable costs (like t-shirts). The financing of NaNo has gotten a little more tricky as the costs of the event have grown. Since I don't want to charge an entry fee and I'm dead set against taking ads, we depend on participant contributions (about 70% of the budget) and t-shirt sales (about 30% of the budget) to make ends meet. We have a $10 suggested donation for all participants, and make about $3 in profit per t-shirt (which goes right back into the organization)."
-NaNoWriMo Madness: An Interview with Chris Baty, The Man Behind the Curtain (2003)-

Something I don't get: Why is there no Goodreads for movies? I mean, seriously. (Netflix sort of used to do it before they killed off their social features.) Heck there should be a Goodreads for everything you consume. Is this so difficult? I’ve done some research into Goodreads for books and there's just no good options. If Amazon was willing to drop a couple hundred million for Goodreads, surely there’s at few startup bucks for Goodreads: Movie Edition right? Like I said, free million dollar ideas just pouring out of me. Maybe if Lilly and I can get our act together for fiftyfifty.me, we can take it to NaNoWriMo levels. Dare to dream people. Actually this month is NanoReadMo for me, as I'm so far behind on this year’s allotment of fifty books... My goal the rest of November is to clean up a book a day. Read hard.

Last thing, some book club friends recently told me about American Reader, which I've been sleeping on apparently. It also seems like Brooklyn Quarterly is somewhere up that alley. Try this excellent interview with Wayne Koestenbaum on for size. Where are the RSS readers for these things? I can't read something without RSS. It's a failing of mine. Oh and if you're into Hyperbole and a Half, here's an interesting conversation with Allie Brosh, "Writing, Depression and Learning How to Handle Attention: A Conversation."

• Uzoamaka Maduka Leaves a Paper Trail With the American Reader
• Vice: The American Reader is the New Paris Review
• The Vice Guide to the World

Dark Doo Wop

Listening to: Haim, Days Are Gone. This is a tough one as Haim and Icona Pop both just dropped albums. We've been plugging Haim over at The End Starts Today and rightfully so, as the three Haim tracks I've had in my possession have been on infinite repeat. After just a few quick spins, I can confidently say that Haim's debut album is absolutely essential cruising pop. Basically it's summer in eleven tracks, and even though summer is basically over, Haim has officially arrived.

As for Icona Pop, their lead single, "All Night" isn't quite up at "I Love It" level yet, but it's comparable, which is a huge compliment. Where was this track in July? We could have used it at dance parties everywhere. The song's Paris is Burning vogueing video is kind of killer too.

Last thing, I'm a bit late to the MS MR party but I've been digging their 2012 album, Candy Bar Creep Show. MS MR has got plenty of Florence and the Machine in them and I quite like their semi-new single, "Fantasy." I didn't see the Game of Thrones Season Three trailer their other song were featured in but know all about it now. Who knew moody pop and Westeros went so well together?

• NME review of Haim's Days Are Gone
• New Albums From Icona Pop and Krewella: Women, the Loud, the Few
• The Music And Meaning Of Paris Is Burning (2012)
• Pitchfork: MS MR Candy Bar Creep Show (2012) and Secondhand Rapture (2013)
• Why HBO Turned to Indie Bands for the Medieval Tunes of Game of Thrones

If you like anthropomorphic food, Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 is the film for you. Maybe I've collected anthropomorphic vegetable salt shakers in the past, maybe I've watched my fair share of Veggie Tales, either way, while I hate nature documentaries that anthropomorphize animals -- ahem, March of the Penguins -- I love it when human personalities are attributed to food!

When I saw the trailer for Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 earlier this summer, I was already one hundred percent in. After watching the film, I can wholeheartedly give it a superior grade. It's absolutely silly, filled with chuckle worthy puns, and for all illiterates out there, no advance book reading necessary. Fun note: The screenplay was co-written by John Francis Daley, aka Sam Weir from Freaks and Geeks.

A bit of research on the Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs wiki revealed that there are "foodimals" and then there are "food people." The latter are "sentient food that have developed a higher-level of sentience and sapience, and posses no animal-like traits and instead have human-like qualities and behavior." The former are animal/food portmanteaus like tacodile, hippotatoes, mosquitoast, buffaloaf, and watermelephants. Do you see how amazing this is? The star of the show for me was the leek, who just seems to be screaming in fear all the time. See? Anyways, Cloudy 2 is right up there with Despicable Me 2 for best animated movie of the summer. If you're into laughing and giggling and that type of thing. Otherwise watch Prisoners, which was pretty decent also.

• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 Trailer | Posters
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs Wiki: Food Animals
• Cloudy with a Chance of Meatballs 2 iOS game: Foodimal Frenzy

I'm back from San Francisco, trying to catch up on all manner of things online. Basically I'm behind on everything but with the help of some late nights and my reunion with my double computer screens, I'll have everything from 2013 caught up and finished with by, say, 2014? Deal.

I scurried back to New York in time for a live taping of Slate's Cultural Gabfest. As a longtime fan, I was more than excited to see Stephen Metcalf, Dana Stevens, and Julia Turner in person. I was a little late as usual but settled in on the side of the stage and gazed out into the crowd. It's been awhile since I've looked upon a 99% white people occupied space and been like "Ah, these are my people." However, that's exactly what I said this time, as clearly anyone motivated enough to pay and sit through a Gabfest taping should be my friend immediately.

While I'm here, let me recommend the Grantland Pop Culture podcasts. Grantland split off their sports and pop culture pods and so much the better for it. The chemistry among the hosts are superb and I especially love Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald's witticisms and references. High recommend.

Also, snuck in a ballet the other day, much to the astonishment of friends and family. My Foursquare blew up with comments. Really? Why does nobody believe I would go to a ballet? Did I not write a combined 3500+ words on Center Stage and White Nights? Was I not pushing a three hour ballet documentary on you just a few short years ago? It's more shocking that I haven't been to the New York City Ballet yet.

We watched Camille Saint-Saens' "Carnival of the Animals" because well, animals. It was pretty good and the costuming and narration -- words by John Lithgow -- were a nice change up from straight ballets. One complaint: Apparently it's de rigueur to bring babies and tiny children to the ballet. To the matinee showing at least. I don't get it. There are spaces where it's highly distracting to hear the constant shushing of a baby or to see the physical bouncing required to keep him/her quiet. The ballet is one of those places. This could be a controversial stance but I'm sticking to it.

Also, Verdi's "The Four Seasons" is not the same as Vivaldi's. Now you know. As in, now I know...

• The Culture Gabfest "Live From Brooklyn" Edition
• Grantland Pop Culture Podcasts
• NYC Ballet: Carnival of the Animals
• La Danse: Creating Dialogue From Body Language (2009)

Never Ever Be Any Good

Listening to: iTheory, "Thinkin' Bout You (The Frank Ocean Project)." From what I can tell, Geoff Ibe is a college student in Arizona who somehow has the time in-between classes to do smoothed out Frank Ocean covers. Taking into account my weakness for anything "Thinkin' Bout You" related, this version is my favorite so far. The fact that this is produced by a young Asian American student pushes it over the top. Throw in a cover of "Weak" Ibe did with some friends and it's game over. Here is iTheory's Bandcamp page.

Bonus: He also produced this Niki Fajardo cover of Elle Varner's "Only Wanna Give It To You" and I've had it on repeat too. Clearly there is a lot more productivity going on in university kids' dorm rooms than when I was in college.

For a second, I thought the cold was over and I could celebrate having made it through a New York winter. Case in point, a few weeks ago, as the city rejoiced and people came rushing outside to enjoy the weather, I stayed indoors to get tan by the glare of my laptop screens. "Why go out in all the crowds when it would just be sunny from here on out?" Little did I know that it would only be a tease.

This past week, when it neared eighty degrees, I knew better. JMZ called me up on Thursday and said "Let's go skateboarding!" I immediately said "yes" even though I (a) don't own a skateboard and (b) haven't skateboarded since middle school. In fact, the last time I got on a skateboard, I was trying to play basketball on it at the same time and ended up breaking my arm. I'd like to think that fateful date short-circuited both my professional skate and basketball careers.

We found a guy selling a cheap board on Craiglist and set off toward the Newkirk Ave stop to buy it. The eight dollar board was passeable -- for child's use, which was fine by me -- but the wheels were heavily cracked. So we made a pit stop at Skate Brooklyn to buy some wheels. That's when sticker shock hit. A lot has changed since the Eighties! Skateboards now cost $100-150 for the entire rig. Deck, trucks, wheels, bearings, risers, etc. I had been hoping to just drop a few dollars and get a nice afternoon reacclimating myself to skateboarding. Instead, JMZ and I faced some tough financial decisions. The guys at Skate Brooklyn were super knowlegeable and helpful, and we ended up dropping sixty bucks on a new set of wheels.

By the time we got to Central Park, it was nearly five in the afternoon and we didn't have much time left to hit the loop, or give me time to bunny slope it, as it were. JMZ assured me that riding a skateboard would be like riding a bike, and I believed him, but apparently I never really got good enough at skateboarding in the first place, since no muscle memory kicked in. Within five minutes of struggling and wobbling, I'd already received unsolicited tips from a stranger -- "Keep your head up and look ahead instead of down" -- and managed to go chasing after my board as it shot out from underneath me.

Needless to say, my dreams of cruising around on the streets of New York this summer will have to be slightly delayed. My goal isn't even to do any tricks or anything, I just want to get from Point A to Point B in a fairly efficient manner. I did manage to get semi-comfortable on my board by the end of the day, but as this (embarrassing) video can attest, I've got a long way -- and many more MPHs -- to go. The good news is, all weekend long I've been reading about how to skateboard, watching inspiring videos, thinking about re-reading Jocko Weyland's The Answer Is Never, and twitching my thumbs thinking back to when I used to play the shit out of Tony Hawk. I figure that should take me halfway there right? Plus all the skate lingo I learned? #laserflip #thrash #durometer

There's a larger conversation here about being a poseur, but we'll shelve that for another time.

Since that initial foray back in the saddle, I've bought two skateboards -- including a miniboard for JMZ. Basically, the ratio of me surfing the Internet for skateboard stuff versus time actually spent on a skateboard is about 10:1 so far. I mean, when in doubt and without skill, accessorize! I also desperately wanted to buy these electric blue cruising wheels, but that would just be ridiculous so I stopped myself. By the end of summer I hope to be risking my physical health at a street corner near you. Please scrape me off the sidewalk and say hello. But don't call an ambulance because I don't have insurance. Because I am a writer.

• Skateboard Buyers Guide
• How to Skateboard
• Penny vs Globe Bantam vs Brighton Skateboards
• Penny Swag video (2012)
• Second Nature video (2011)
• 1986 Action Sports Kamikaze Skateboard

My friend reminded me that I have a tendency to get really into something each summer, and then promptly forget all about it soon afterwards. A few seasons ago it was the ukulele -- I can only play one song -- and last year it was bird watching. I hope to somehow conflate all of these faux hobbies into one...by buying a backpack that can hold my binoculars, the neglected uke, and my flashy new skateboard. Yes, I will travel around with gear that I can neither use effectively nor impressively. It'll prove all my doubters wrong for sure.

In related news, I lust after this 2010 Incase x Paul Rodriguez Skate Pack. After AMR showed it to me online the other day, I saw someone in the street wearing it out by Herald Square. I literally stopped in my tracks and wanted to ask him where he found it. Or rip it right off his shoulders. And then skate away.

For a potentially cheap, fun thing to do, skateboarding is sure turning out to be expensive. And obviously it's seriously kicking my consumerism instincts into overdrive. Maybe it was better when it was winter and my hobby was being a hermit. That was definitely cost effective.

Mesospheric

Listening to: Music for Ants, "You Just Made Yourself Available: The Breakup Songs Mix."

Can you believe it, I've only gone karaoke twice this year. That number usually represents how many times I used to go per week. Last night, after a bit of soju served in a watermelon, we went to Duet 35, which is located just outside K-Town.

On the list of things that make a great karaoke place, Duet 35 had most of them: open till dawn, relatively cheap, BYOB and food, reliable sound system, mood lighting, great song selection. Repeat, great song selection.

We'd been searching for "Thinkin Bout You" forever and there it was. Sure there weren't many other Frank Ocean songs, but "Thinkin Bout You" was there! Now if we could just find a place with the rest of Channel Orange, I would never go anywhere else. I was also stunned to see that they had Patti Rothberg's "Inside," a track that I didn't think anyone else knew, much less had transferred to karaoke status. I picked up Between the 1 and the 9 at a Wherehouse during senior year of high school and had it on repeat forever. Even then I knew it wasn't the best but I enjoyed it regardless.

I was also impressed that they had Lianne La Havas ("Elusive"), a few tracks off Foster the People's Torches, Joe's "I Wanna Know," and so much new stuff I couldn't identify most of the artists. It hit me hard that I am way aged out of the new release pages. Sad day, sad day. But if you're wondering, it's possible to almost do the entire 10,000 Maniacs Unplugged album, which if it were to happen, would make me automatic BFFs with anyone who could successfully pull off a convincing Natalie Merchant. Additionally, next time back to Duet 35, my friend JMZ and I are destined to perform "Frontin'." Don't wanna sound full of myself or rude...

Duet 35 also had the real videos to some of the songs, most notably all Mariah and Christina Aguilera tracks -- please see Exhibit A. And the karaoke video for Gilligan's Island was straight up Sweded, with a child sitting in a bathtub and D-rate actors as the Professor and Mary Anne, etc. Overall, when we stumbled out of there at half past four in the morning, I was ready to do some more singing/screeching. Last karaoke related thing: While Duet 35 had a lot of indie tracks, they did not have any Tegan & Sara, which is just fine because T&S are the coolest and provided the world with their own instrumental for "Closer" and a karaoke version just for me! Okay, everyone else too.

Big life changes I've been pondering: What to do with email greetings and sign offs. I've one of those people who always has a greeting and an outro. Typically it's just "hey" and entirely superfluous but it feels weird not to do it. And I like to sign off with something too. But after reading this Slate article about the obsolescence of sign offs, I think I should give no sign ons and sign offs policy a go. Please don't be offended if I now sound curt in my emails, I just want to be a part of a movement.

And after a month of waiting, I finally got the Mailbox iPhone app. I don't need another email application, as almost all my email is done on my laptop, but I wanted to see what the hype was all about. What could possibly be worth signing up for that had 600,000+ people in line ahead of me? So far Mailbox is decidedly not life changing but it is certainly smooth and easy to use. One day I hope to get important enough to use it to achieve Inbox Zero. Right now I don't have to deal with hundreds of emails a day, much less a thousand.

• Mailbox: Swipe Your Way to a Clutter-Free Inbox
• Zero Dark Inbox (2012)
• Mailstrom Helps You Clear Out Thousands of Messages from Your Inbox

Also, the other night, I ate firefly squid. They are from Toyama Bay in Japan and look like this. Unfortunately we did not glow afterwards, as that effect would probably have cost more than a few dollars per squid. I'm not generally into novelty eating but I'll make an exception for things that light up. What other foods could I eat that contain bioluminescence?