Song for No One

One of the things I'm trying to do this week is revamp my blogs so that the dot org is more writing focused. I've tried this before, of course, and if you asked me two weeks ago what I wanted to do with my blogs, I would have said to consolidate them all. Instead, true to my typical form, I'm just gonna compartmentalize everything and separate it out. So that's the reason for the jonwow revamp. Construction is underway.

Redoing the websites means that I've not accomplished the other tasks I laid out before me today. On the to do list was to write a few thousand words, get some business stuff together and organized, and figure out where I'm gonna live in New York. None of those were accomplished. Hey at least I know when I'm arriving in NYC; June 20th is the special day. My sky miles aren't applicable for most of the summer so it looks like that gravy train is over. It's back to paying for all my flights like the rest of the transit plebes.

Of note, my car is gone. The white 1996 Accord that was initially George's but later became mainly mine is now out of our lives forever. I forgot to check the odometer before it was given away. I didn't give it a proper ceremony, take any photos, or do anything special except clean all the crap out of it.

My mom wanted to gift it to her Taiko drum instructor, a young kid who has clearly impressed with his dedication and craft. Her and another auntie made sure the car was running smooth and got all the papers in order before giving it away. Instead of a straight gift, she sold it to him for two hundred dollars. I'm pretty sure the repairs on it cost twice that much. But they are mothers and wanted to give a gift that wouldn't require more maintenance. Still, one blinker light is attached with duct tape, there's a tow sticker on the windshield, and the paint has quite a few unsightly scratches all around. I'd say the car was worth a thousand dollars maximum. But it ran well and never faltered. Farewell loyal steed, farewell. I'll miss treating you like shit and smoking while driving and not caring about the smell lingering around.

So now my mom's in the market for another car. When she asked what we should get, I said that we should just get a cheap car that still runs. You know, like our Accord. I mean, George and I aren't home that much, and even when we are it's only for a few weeks at a time. Not having a car during our trips home would be inconvenient though. I suppose renting a car during that time would be easy enough. For the next few weeks though, I'll be carless. So if you want to hang out, you better scoot your ass to Del Mar or we'll have to meet after nine so I can use my mother's car. It's like high school all over again.

This must be a sign.

Smash Bang Fusion

I've officially hit the point where New York people are getting highly suspicious if I'm ever setting foot there again. I am I say, I am! I have to be there, at the very least, by the end of June for a fantastic celebration of two friends celebrating their ten years in New York. They say it takes seven years to become an official New Yorker so these two now no questions asked New Yorkers. For example, the other day one of them was making a spinach run at three in the morning while the other was either watching Thor or kicking ass at Words with Friends. Possibly both at the same time actually, knowing him.

Years ago, my roommate and I were the first post-grads in New York, and our apartment in Jersey City served as the Ellis Island for our friends and newcomers. I moved out of there after a year and a half while my roommate upgraded into Manhattan and remained for another few years. She's headed to San Francisco now for a bit, after eleven months in New Zealand. Parts of me want to be in the Bay now because when else can we be in the same city again for an extended amount of time? We could relive 2001! Of course back then she just had a boyfriend and now she has a husband, so it probably wouldn't be quite the same.

This weekend at a bar in Santa Monica we toasted to the The Big Aristotle, The Big Cactus, The Big Shamrock, etc. Actually Shaq retired all his nicknames so we just toasted to Shaquille Rashaun O'Neal. The appropriate shot turned out to be something huge with Kalua. I forgot what because everyone drank way too much. Two of my friends tried to get me drunk but I popped two Pepcids and outlasted them both. I drove them back to the apartment and watched as they puked all over the place. It was fantastic.

The next morning, and just a few hours after our extended night, I was awake and running up and down a basketball court. We won about six games in a row. I haven't won that many since, well, I can't even remember. I use "we" very loosely because I scored a grand total of one point. On a layup. It's rare in life that you get to so obviously feel like the weak link. My basketball game can best now be described as "non-intrusive." Or if a scout is being kind, "subtle."

Once I scored like nine of our eleven points during a pickup game in college. I'd never been anywhere near that hot before or since. Over ten years later and I still remember that day clearly. If I could just recreate that fifteen minute stretch every year or so, my life would be complete.

There was a long talk the other day with my mom about my future. It's our favorite shared past time. If "favorite" is defined as "most often done." This time out I tried to explain to her the difference between my early twenties versus my early thirties. She had pointed out that there didn't seem to be much of one. I told her that ten years ago I was still trying to figure out who I was and what I wanted. Now I know who I am and mostly what I want; the kicker is that I'm not necessarily a decade into achieving those things. I did tell her that she should shift her mentality that I was still trying to prove myself. To her I'm years behind in my race to the top of some ladder. I tried to tell her that I wasn't that interested in upward mobility.

I can't decide if she's traditional or I'm irrational.

I tried to explain that my current lifestyle probably wasn't just a (long) phase and that I wasn't headed toward staying in one place for any length of time. She's probably right about one thing though: everyone needs a home base, and it can't be her home. Or other people's homes. Not having a permanent address would be unwieldy I guess. I wonder if it's possible to live in a storage facility.

Pieces of You

What do they say about the one eyed man being a king in the land of the blind? Are these things called "aphorisms?" There's a board game, Buzzword, where you have to match up a word with some common idioms. I was terrible at the game because there were just so many of them I'd never heard of. James and I were similarly bad at it and we thought it had to do with our being from another country. I need to retire that excuse actually: "I'm wasn't born here."

I was reading the other day about a blind man who uses echolocation to see. Basically he's a human bat. The article says that he's been teaching other blind people to see using this technique and some of his pupils are so good at it that they can go mountain bike riding down steep hills and other such crazy things. Even though this sounds impossible, I guess the limits of human capability are unimaginable to most people. I mean, I was watching a video earlier today with a Tetris player who was so amazingly good and fast that he was clearing lines even when the blocks turned invisible.

I've been tongue clicking all week in order to see if I can develop some sort of echolocation. Check back with me in a few years I guess. Between sign language, reading lips, and echolocation, I could totally non verbal communicate soon.

YouTube and the Internet may have given us a lot but it's also pretty much ruined any esteem you might have had in a skill. Unless you're the absolute best of the best, you can take to the web and find someone who does it better than you. Most of the time that someone is also under the age of ten. It used to mean something to be the best video game player in your neighborhood. Now you're only the best if you actually are the best.

I wonder what this does for one's self image growing up. It's impressive people can still continue to be wowed. I guess seeing something in person and in front of you will always be awe inspiring, even if they're not the absolute best.

In this article about Dallas Mavericks' guard J.J. Barea, I can't decide if the following quote is offensive or not: "[His girlfriend] Zuleyka Rivera is hotter than the sun, but what she knew about basketball when they started dating last year (he asked her out in a text) you could fit in a small taquito." I'm gonna go with a "yes" because I'm pretty sure a taquito is Mexican, and the writer is a white guy who probably doesn't say stuff like "a small taquito" or "fits in an egg roll" unless the person in question is ethnic.

There's also this idea here that a guy like J.J. is "excelling in the game of life" because he is dating Miss Universe. I guess it's hard to fault this thinking, but really, J.J. is winning because he dynamited the Lakers and continues to fearlessly rush the lane. The hot girlfriend is the cherry on top. What if he were just dating her and not a basketball star? Would he still be excelling at the game of life?

I guess to most parents that answer would be "yes" wouldn't it? Success! You're dating someone other people would love to date! Here's your medal.

Stardust

Yesterday at dinner the talk went from geekery to heated debate about babies in wombs and the role of doctors. You forget sometimes, when you hang out with your own group too often, what sorts of things are old hat to other people. "Here we go again," my friend said, as the discussion veered toward religion.

The people I hang out with almost never talk religion, not anymore. Our fervor for sharing and arguing our individual beliefs died down in our early twenties I think. Somebody hypothesized that it makes us get along better; I can't really tell.

My recently married friend and her husband then had an exploratory talk about if they would test potential offspring for genetic diseases. One side was vehemently against it and felt that altering the natural course of things was wrong. My friend was anti-abortion anyway, so the argument was more theoretical than practical. However, it kind of made me realize what a different plane they're on, this married couple who are actually having to make belief into reality.

Another friend recently had a baby with Down's. I thought they tested for that automatically but seeing as this was her second child and she's young, they didn't. I heard my friend's mother-in-law, the grandmother, cried for weeks. People said, "Luckily they're religious."

Cause I'm just a girl, little ol' me

Last weekend, as the Celtics were wrapping up another nail biter against the Knicks, my mom hosted Bible study at our house. One of the parents brought along her teenage daughter and I was tasked with taking care of her and making sure she wasn't bored. Two seconds after meeting her, I was already impressed with her poise and absolute lack of teen fear. Having been in this situation many times -- my Mom telling us we had to take care of a guest -- I was used to younger kids who were either shy or disinterested. Instead, Sam totally just looked at people in the eye, let her big personality fly, and spoke and acted like an adult. If anything, a few minutes after meeting me, she was wondering how I was an adult. I mean, after giving her a brief overview of Celtics history from 1950s to present (just kidding), we settled into the real task of talking about Glee, middle school, and hair curling.

Turns out Sam is an aspiring Broadway singer who already has a career going, and balances school, lessons, and performing. Upon request she will belt out Les Mis or any song in her extensive repertoire. Again, she struck me as very different from the other Chinese children I was used to. Usually you have to cajole kids into doing something. They'll hem and haw before finally getting up to give a half hearted performance. Sam wasn't like that at all. She warned us she was gonna be loud and then stood up and started belting out "On My Own."

I've already booked her as an act in my wedding.

On Sunday I went over to Sam's house for a combined Bible study and birthday party. I didn't realize there would be so many people over, enough for a hired taco stand in the backyard, and dozens of parents and little kids milling around. I don't usually make an appearance at these things because there's nobody my age around, but here I was, a guest of a thirteen year old. Before heading over I had run out to get Sam a copy of Clueless because it was a movie that I thought she needed to see. When I looked at when the movie was made, the release date was two years before she was even born. In EC, I had put a reference to Clueless but my editor had subbed it out because nobody would get the reference. Clearly, she was a hundred percent right.

Movies released two years after I was born: The Empire Strikes Back, Fame, American Gigolo, Friday the 13th, Mad Max, Airplane, Raging Bull, Popeye, and something called Stir Crazy that grossed over a hundred million dollars and starred Craig T. Nelson, Gene Wilder, and Richard Pryor. I was trying to figure out my relationship to those movies versus how Sam would intake Clueless. I guess I'll find out when she watches it. I was also trying to figure out if Cher, Dionne, and Tai were age appropriate. I would make an awful parent because I'd continually push media on children before they were ready for them. "You really need to see Blue Valentine, it's so good!"

When all the singing and Bible stuff started, we went upstairs to Sam's room to hang out with her friends. A couple of girls, probably only a little bit older than me in combined age. One of them was doing a school project where she couldn't talk. We communicated via whiteboard as her younger sister enthusiastically spoke up for her at every opportunity. "She's doing this invisible children thing for child soldiers in Africa!" It reminded me of a link my cousin had shared on her Tumblr, about a high school senior who had faked a pregnancy most of the year as a school project. Kids, they do the darnest things.

I asked them about what sort of books they read, what their hobbies were, and if they were popular at school -- and why. I called all this research but really it was just sort of hanging out with my peer group. I showed them my bubble gum blowing skills, impressed with my hair braiding, and beat them all at Clue ("Professor Plum, with the knife, in the conservatory"). They showed me what sorts of sites they surfed around to online and asked if I had ever cheated on a girl. They also asked why I was living at home with my mom. Ha, good questions ladies. It was like a pint sized Chinese Inquisition.

All of this gave me flashbacks to my childhood. Basically I grew up with George and a whole gaggle of girls. All of our family friends only had daughters for some reason. I've played more house, done more fortune telling with playing cards, and painted more nails than most males have _______. Whatever little boys did from the ages of six to eleven, I didn't do them.

At the end of the night, my mom came upstairs to tell me that we had to go because it was nearing Sam's bed time. Before I left, we exchanged Silly Bandz, my Justin Bieber heart notes one -- courtesy of Des -- for one of Sam's elephants. It was nine thirty.