Flight Facilities — Crave You
Blackbird Blackbird — Float On (Modest Mouse Cover)
Unouomedued — Buildings
(some old feel-good indie tracks)

Venice Beach, Los Angeles, March 2011

Air — La Femme D’Argent

A preview of my immersion trip to east LA? Meet Roman, a house favorite from the Guadalupe Homeless Project. This was taken during our procession through downtown Los Angeles for the 31st anniversary of Oscar Romero’s death.

Don’t let social justice define you, I tell myself. Use social justice as a lens to view the world.

And sweet jesus, making that little distinction made all the difference between serving the community (which I want to do) and helping the community (which I’m not supposed to think I’m doing). Serve smerved, the people of the Delores Mission, the kids of juvenile hall, the ex-cons and ex-gangsters of Homeboy helped me more than I could ever help them.

I came back from the Projects to my home in the San Fernando Valley in one piece, but not before crying my little eyes out. I cried all of Thursday night in the Valley. And then I cried while walking around Venice Beach Friday afternoon, bumping into hipsters that probably thought I was crying because I couldn’t afford that one pretty top from American Apparel. God forbid, it wasn’t even the regular AA, but the outlet American Apparel.

Yeah, I’m pretty much pathetic. I actually cry about things like the disparity of wealth between east Los Angeles and the Los Angeles that I know.

Hopefully I’ll have the energy to write a little blog in a week or so about what exactly happened…

The Rolling Stones — Brown Sugar
Todd Rundgren — Hello it’s Me
Belle & Sebastian — For the Price of a Cup of Tea

Marty’s playhouse, Chapman University, Orange County, CA, February 2011

After seeing more of Alex than I ever needed to (Anna: [shrugs] “Oh, that just happens.”), I pushed my way into Marty’s bathroom to find this Playboy Magazine tactfully situated right in front of the potty. Boys, boys, boys. Boys from the Clara, boys from the Valley, and now boys in the OC: some things just don’t change. Not much to be confused about, if you ask me.

So I freshened up and went back out to a bona fide Chapman University house party, which was, surprisingly, a lot like a Santa Clara party. This included a lot of pretty girls clad in black mini skirts and 6-inch heels, their bros, Natty Ice, and your customary electronic music. Oh, but don’t worry–our womp (as in: dubstep) is def better, bro. Anywho, being the obnoxious Asian drunk that I am, I tried to get Lauren and Anna to start cheering “gooo brooo, you get ‘em brah” every time Marty’s housemate got game. I couldn’t get them to participate, but I did it anyways.

I have no filter.

And so I guess some things don’t change.

P.S. I’m too lazy to enjoy partying anymore, but sitting around with a group of friends in the back while the rest of the world rages? Perf.

Local Natives — Cubism Dream

The gazebo at the Porcaro residence, Los Angeles, February 2011

Mamas & Papas — California Dreamin’

It’s hard to imagine the California of Grapes of Wrath when you sit in the crossroads of traffic in LA. From San Jose to Los Angeles — all I see is gray concrete with splotches of suburbia splattered between. So maybe it was never there. Perhaps John Steinbeck’s description of the golden fields and a tough, dry Salinas was just his own romanticized vision of California and a clever use of rhetoric. Nothing could ever have been that beautiful.

As far as I’m concerned, Steinbeck’s California was a figment of his own imagination.

Greg, Lauren, Jered, and I piled into the Tacoma and set out on the open road, back home to the Valley. A 6’9″ Greg purposefully situated himself and Lauren into the backseat, while I comfortably sat in the front. We listened to a lot of funk (“Jered, isn’t September, like, your karaoke song?” Greg says, in his breathy voice). We made, like, a million pit stops. Not. even. kidding. Like, a million. And we gave Greg a tattoo. I’ve never seen a boy so comfortable with his sexuality as he bent over in front of a bunch of soccer moms at this Baja Fresh we found on the road and counted to 30 as Lauren gave it to him.

But when we hit the I-5, I saw Steinbeck’s California. Beautiful green marshlands, rolling hills, and lakes that seemed to never end. I choked a little, when all I see is concrete, all the time. And sit in traffic, all the time. Shit, I should really get myself a fucking compost bin, I think to myself. And start wearing shoes made of hemp.

And on this same drive, I came across this, from Vonnegut’s Breakfast of Champions

It was about an Earthling astronaut who arrived on a planet where all the animal and plant life had been killed by pollution, except for humanoids. The humanoids ate food made from petroleum and coal.

They gave a feast for the astronaut, whose name was Don. The food was terrible. The big topic of conversation was censorship.

The cities were blighted with motion picture theaters which showed nothing but dirty movies. The humanoids wished they could put them out of business somehow, but without interfering with free speech.

They asked Don if dirty movies were a problem on Earth, too, and Don said, “Yes.” They asked him if the movies were really dirty, and Don replied, “As dirty as movies could get.”

This was a challenge to the humanoids, who were sure their dirty movies could beat anything on Earth. So everybody piled into air-cushion vehicles, and they floated to a dirty movie house downtown.

It was intermission time when they got there, so Don had some time to think about what could possibly be dirtier than what he had already seen on Earth. He became sexually excited even before the house lights went down. The women in his party were all twittery and squirmy.

So the theater went dark and the curtains opened. At first there wasn’t any picture. There were slurps and moans from loudspeakers. Then the picture itself appeared. It was a high quality film of a male humanoid eating what looked like a pear.

The camera zoomed in on his lips and tongue and teeth, which glistened with saliva. He took his time about eating the pear.

When the last of it had disappeared into his slurpy mouth, the camera focused on his Adam’s apple. His Adam’s apple bobbed obscenely. He belched contentedly, and then these words appeared on the screen, but in the language of the Planet:

THE END

It was all faked, of course. There weren’t any pears anymore. And the eating of a pear wasn’t the main event of the evening anyway. It was a short subject, which gave the members of the audience time to settle down.

Then the main feature began. It was about a male and a female and their two children, and their dog and their cat. They ate steadily for an hour and a half–soup, meat, biscuits, butter, vegetables, mashed potatoes and gravy, fruit, candy, cake, pie.

The camera rarely strayed more than a foot from their glistening lips and their bobbing Adam’s apples. And then the father put the cat and the dog on the table, so they could take part in the orgy, too.

After a while, the actors couldn’t eat any more. They were so stuffed that they were goggle-eyed. They could hardly move. They said they didn’t think they could eat again for a week, and so on. They cleared the table slowly. They went waddling out into the kitchen, and they dumped about thirty pounds of leftovers into a garbage can.

The audience went wild.

When Don and his friends left the theater, they were accosted by humanoid whores, who offered them eggs and oranges and milk and butter and peanuts and so on. The whores couldn’t actually deliver these goodies, of course.

The humanoids told Don that if he went home with a whore, she would cook him a meal of petroleum and coal products at fancy prices.

And then, while he ate them, she would talk dirty about how fresh and full of natural juices the food was, even though the food was fake..

Well, I’ll be damned.

Ariel Pink — Round and Round
Maximum Balloon — Absence of Light
Geography — Kites

Wanted to send my love in a quick update, in case I don’t get to it before the New Year or forget because I’m long in the tooth. Found myself standing at the crossroads between Salt Lake City and LA a couple days ago. I thought about going East (the locals in Nevada had been so sweet), but my heart won and so back to the wayward West I went. We’re all on the cusp of a new year and I have yet to make any good, honest-to-God resolutions besides to be healthier, wiser, and happier (which means sleeping, but you know how that goes). Work smarter, not harder, yaddiyaddiya. I worried about it a little, but forgot all about it in the good name of breakfast in Encinitas, San Diego this morning. People here talk in what seems like humming and you can hear the ocean over rain and your car engine. Hayley drove us around, took us to her favorite surf shop. She was especially proud of this cove, where a great white mistook a surfer for seal and, well, now, there’s no surfer. And then in the blink of an eye, we were making ourselves at home at Marty’s here in the OC. We went through the motions. We played with his kitty. We let a French film narrate for awhile. We went grocery shopping. We made dinner. Tomorrow, the Valley.

I haven’t seen the paper or a computer in days. I’ve been wearing the same set of clothes I packed since I got in to Nevada, so I’ve been using it as an excuse to buy new clothes. I told Moira I want her to get drunk in everything I just got. She agreed. You just can’t have this many clothes and no girlfriends to share it with. Told Chloe I’d have a hissy fit if I didn’t see her here in LA. Jack promised me a fruit basket and one of those sleazy pens with girls in bikinis in them from Maui. I’ve been reading too much Steinbeck, so much that I start believing that I can see things move in the desert. Liz was hungover this morning; told her that she had to meet my SO or else I’d roll over and die. If I can get Jered up after a night of heavy drinking (which I did), so could she. She replied with an “I’ll call you” and well, I’m still alive, but it sounded like a good threat at the time. I forget my camera in the hotel all the time. Someone that I kind of like played a couple of open mics and I missed them both times, because I’m a total dick. Sleeping at Hannah’s, in the OC, tonight.

And yup, that’s what I’ve been up to. Maybe I’ll have more substantial resolutions and updates soon, like “more interesting twatter updates” (for Kerry’s sake) or “drink more” (for everybody’s sake). We’ll hafta see, I guess.

I’m just not ready to say goodbye to 2010 yet.

Polock — Fireworks
… hah. Just kidding.

Do you know what the weather is in Tahiti right now? 86 degrees. Let me say it again, just in case you didn’t catch it the first time: eighty-friggin-six-friggin-degrees. I wish I were lying to you.

If things went according to plan, I would be boarding a plane to LA at approximately 4, then boarding another soon after, straight to 8-friggin-6-friggin-degrees. But Mum has this absurd notion (she’s really silly sometimes, but it’s cute in small doses) that traveling with people that you like holds certain implications. Like traveling leads to holding hands which leads to … sex. Moreover, the warm Tahiti sun is the only driving in the world that will surely coerce you into choosing hedonistic pleasures over your good ol’ Christian values.

Like I had ‘em in the first place. Just kidding.

Also, do me a favor and read this next sentence in the most Asian accent you can think of:
And most importantly, you will dishonor your family.

I know, right? You probably got to the word “sex” and stopped in complete and utter disbelief at the thought of my mum vocalizing such a term. How does sweet, innocent ol’ Mum even know what sex is? I know it’s hard for you guys to understand, but sex doesn’t exist in Oriental cultures. It just doesn’t; how we have procreated for the past few centuries is still a mystery to me. We don’t even have a word for it in Asian. And at nineteen, I am still very much convinced that I came from a stork, but am too afraid to ask because I’m sure that too has got to be a taboo.

So while I ponder my existence (e.g., y’know, where did I come from?, why am I so small in this really big world?, the usual) here in home sweet San Jose and take Jered to the airport to fly off to eighty-friggin-six-friggin-degree weather, I hope you all have a wonderful Thanksgiving.

Love you all, I’m thankful for your presence in my life.

Warmly,
Sterra

P.S. If you’re wondering why I just didn’t tell my mother I was going on a week-long retreat to find myself (through all conceivable hedonistic pleasures, duh), I don’t think telling her that saving orphans from Satan would fly for an entire week. They would have the sense to see the light (read: God) after day three, right? Hang loose, guys.
P.P.S. In other news, the best texts in my life up to date are (1) “when are you coming home?”, in which I reply, “soon”, and am actually excited to come home to a warm bed and body (and bagels in the morning while I study …. I’m set for life), and (2) “My stupid iPhone keeps autocorrecting the word ‘cunt’”, which probably sounds a lot more politically incorrect out of context (as in: it sounded much funnier at the time).

One two three four five
We are young and proud
Sitting on the edge of the world
Seein’ the fireworks