Toy Soldiers

Over the last few nights, Lilly and Chris have been educating me on cheesy 80s soft rock with our/their shared Spotify playlist. They're dropping hits I didn't even know I knew and none of us have been very productive during our shared late nights. "At This Moment," Billy Vera & The Beaters. "You and I," Eddie Rabbitt and Crystal Gale. All this technology and we can't karaoke with friends from our bedrooms. Someone get on that.

If you wanna get crazy, jump in and add on to 80s soft rock madness. It's an open playlist. Lilly is also gonna educate me with a Jheri curl playlist that I'm already excited about. Shalamar, DeBarge, Kashif, I'm coming for you. Also I learned that "All Cried Out" is not really an Allure track. I can't get into the original, like at all. Sometimes you just have to go with what got you here you know?

I don't even know what to think about this Richard Aoki thing. Scott Kurashige, American culture professor and director of APIA Studies at Michigan had this post in response, "My Initial Thoughts on the Richard Aoki Controversy." Was he or wasn't he? This is like finding out Grace Lee Boggs killed ____. (I have to blank it as typing the name would probably be blasphemous.)

I'm working my way through Mike Davis' City of Quartz again. I think I first read it ten years or so ago, upon Mary's recommendation. It stuck with me a lot, and it led me to read a lot of LA-based non-fiction. City of Quartz mostly deals with who controlled Los Angeles and traces the evolution of power in the city -- and how the city separates the haves and have nots. It's really great. I happened to be thinking about the book while up in SF and not five minutes later we walked by a big pile of giveaways on the corner and there it was. Right on top. "No fucking way," I thought. "I have powers!" Normally I'd be loathe to take a book off the street like that but this was a case of kismet.

This leads me to believe that I should read Kurashige's The Shifting Grounds of Race: Black and Japanese Americans in the Making of Multiethnic Los Angeles. It could be dry as shit but we're about to find out. Actually I don't mind a little dry, it might be good among all this fluffy fiction I've been taking in.

Also, my go to torrent site went down. This is curtailing my culture consumption by the nth degree. Especially books. Goodness where am I going to get those books! My night shift nursing friend texted me at three in the morning (she reads a lot at work): "Deliveroid is down, what do we do?!" Panic, that's what we do. I can't go back to buying all my books, I just can't. Yes I know this attitude is in direct opposition to my writing career. Still, I believe data wants to be free. Can't fight the bytes.