Molly Want a Cracker?

I occasionally hang out with Molly a couple of times a year because we have a mutual friend, a mutual friend who I think was trying to hook us up at some point, since we both consider ourselves writers. Alas, we are not Dave Eggers and Vendela Vida, unless Dave Eggers' feelings for his wife fall somewhere between contempt and pity. I don't blame my friend for thinking it was a good idea, eHarmony thought the same thing.

The last time the three of us hung out, we went to a restaurant for happy hour. It was sometime after my trip to New York, where I came back with the first pieces of what is now known as my technicolor wardrobe. So I was sporting one of my pastel hoodies and wearing a couple of shiny rhinestone rings to match my hoodie. These rings don't look like real jewelry and I wear them unapologetically.

I never thought a $5 ring (which was bought for me as a gift) could stir up so much controversy but it did. Molly would just go on and on about how "gay" it made me look. It definitely made me look silly and I was and am still clearly aware of that. I didn't mind the teasing for the most part, it was Molly's crudeness that took things way too far. Perhaps I shouldn't have been surprised since most of my interactions with her have been unpleasant at best, but I figure at some point I'm going to have to see something positive in her since my friend must have some sort of positive opinion of her.

Molly decided to cross the line when she flagged down our waiter to ask him his opinion if my ring was "gay". He looked at me, looked at the ring, and said "no, it matches his hoodie." Instead of thanking him for his time and letting him go back to his job, she persisted by once again asking "are you sure that you don't think that it looks gay? It looks so gay!" He was confused and I just felt embarrassed, not because of self doubt, but because I had some sort of relationship with this girl. This girl who didn't realize that she wasn't going to get the answer she wanted to hear no matter how many times she asked, who didn't realize that this waiter was not going to risk losing his job by insulting one of customers even if he did feel that way. She had turned the restaurant into a school yard and was doing her best to bully her way to popularity but no one was biting.

I didn't see or talk to Molly for a very long time after that. I wasn't avoiding her or angry, she just has a tendency to disappear for months at a time. She usually reappears after she's been mistreated by some guy and then subsequently dumped. Then, she finds me and tells me that she's going to write some sort of masterpiece. This has been her cycle for as long as I've known her, and it's a cycle that I even recognize even though I don't know her very well.

First there was the screenplay she wanted to write and then it was a book. The screenplay was going to be "like Garden State" and then to book was going to be "like Life of Pi, because I think my style is like the author of that book". After realizing that she always wanted to write something like something else, I told her to find her own voice. I told her that it didn't matter how well she wrote (let me be on the record that I haven't seen enough of her writing to have an opinion), she needed to have a voice. She would counter my argument by telling me things she learned about writing. "A lot of stories are pretty much the same, but they're just told differently" was her big epiphany that I subsequently deflated, since that's what kids learn in English class freshmen year of high school*.

I tried to help her without discouraging her too much. It wasn't my place to tell her whether I thought she should pursue writing or not. It would be a moot point since she lacks any sense of self-awareness. Her problem with my rings didn't stem from homophobia or because she thought she had encountered a fashion faux paux, her problem was her inability to accept someone being so comfortable in their own skin. This is not to say that I don't have any or less insecurities and hang ups than anyone else, but perhaps it magnified how insecure she was, because I wasn't trying to dress like anyone, I was just being me.

*(http://changingminds.org/disciplines/storytelling/plots/conflicts.htm)

A Difference of Opinion

Unfortunately, I don't travel much. I'm hoping to rectify this in the very near future. When I do make a trip, it doesn't seem to be so much about the sights, as it is about the food. Perhaps it because of all the Food Network that I watched when I was unemployed, or because I'm a stuck up foodie in general, I don't seem to care so much about the tourist traps and really tall buildings, as impressive as they are. I rather photo document what I've eaten opposed to where I've been, which is strange since I do appreciate fine art and architecture, but I guess the best way to get a feel for the local color, is to find the best local food around.

Now with the TV (Food Network and the Travel Channel) and the internet, especially with sites like Yelp!, it's easier and easier to find the best local diners. Of course nothing trumps getting a word of mouth recommendation. Sometimes a restaurant will have a high rating because they make a particular dish well, and that dish, no matter how well made it is, might not be your cup of tea. It's nice to have someone that can tell you exactly what's good and what's not so you can get a better feel for why it's rave-worthy.

Of course, sometimes, you'll get advice from people whose opinions you find suspect and it's hard to shoot down their opinions because food is something that people seem to be very passionate about. That is why you often hear "you have to try this!" opposed to "yeah, it's good but whatevs." Conflicting foodie views have caused friendships to dissolve and have probably caused wars between nations, probably. You know, they're the ones who'll request steak sauce for their steak at a high end steak house or they don't like avocado egg rolls because they lack meat. It's usually not too difficult to separate the foodies from the fakers but it takes a delicate touch to let them know. Unfortunately it's a touch that I don't have.

When I was working retail, a few of my co-workers had returned from a trip to the Bay Area. They weren't guys who I was especially close to or even friendly with, but when they found out that the girl I had started dating lived in the Bay Area, they had no issue with soliciting opinions about where I should go eat. Though I wasn't particularly fond of these guys (one was kind of whiny, one was a brat, and the third one just kind of creeped me out: he once poured out his heart to me saying that the three things that make him happy in life are chocolate, sex, and sailing - good for him), we were at work and I typically put up with these type of conversations to help pass the day.

They raved about one place, and one place only. It was a Chinese restaurant. I don't remember the name of the place, but I remember them giving me a card. To give them credit, it was not a card for PF Changs. I told them I'd talk to the girlfriend about it, but she'd probably knew of some good Chinese restaurants as well, since she was... Chinese. Unfortunately that was not sufficient reason for me to not go to this restaurant. It annoyed me since I was willing to try this restaurant if my girlfriend wanted to, but since this was a new relationship, and she didn't live in San Francisco, I didn't want to demand things. Of course that doesn't matter. We NEEDED to go there.

The fact that my girlfriend was Chinese should've been the biggest tip off to these co-workers that their advice wasn't needed, and I tried to explain this to them. She lived their her entire life, her family and extended family are all in the Bay Area, and the Bay Area has a huge Chinese population, if not the biggest in the United States. Couple this with the fact that my co-workers weren't from the Bay Area and most likely found this place on accident doesn't really help matters. "There was a line going out the door" would be their rebuttal, but isn't everything in downtown San Francisco like that on a weekend around dinner time?

I'm not sure how the discussion ended. I just know I ended up taking the card. We never went to that restaurant and I'm sure I took a lot of flak about it from my co-workers. I'm sure we had discussions about food after that, even though no particular conversations come to mind. I'm sure they still remember the fact that I dismissed their idea, even though I had total justification to do so, since everybody's a critic, even if you they're not.

Chris and Ryan go to the Wiltern

I'm a pretty religious man, while Chris is pretty much on the agnostic side. Well, Chris is just kind of apathetic towards life in general, so I'm not quite sure he believes anything exists these days, but what I am sure about, is that he would agree with me that God has quite a sense of humor. If he didn't, why would The Wiltern be smack in the middle of what is now known as Korea Town?

The Wiltern is a historic theater, and even if it wasn't surrounded by all things Korean, would still be one of my favorite places to see a show. Everyone from Brian Wilson to The Streets has performed there and it's always been a great experience. What enhances the experience even more for Chris and myself is the fact that we get to eat a pretty delicious meal beforehand. In a way, I feel like the Wiltern was made for us, a couple on Korean-American indie rock loving kids, and since we don't live in Los Angeles, don't get tired of either The Wiltern or the Korean food that Korea Town has to offer. It's our home away from home.

Unfortunately for the hipster crowd, Korean food isn't really in vogue (with the exception of the BBQ, which is always in vogue for the gluttons). So when they arrive to the Wiltern early, they're usually searching for the nearest Subway or McDonalds. They're easy to spot with their confused looks, plaid shirts, unkempt hair, and skinny jeans. It's understandable. I'd never go into a place where I or and the rest of my party couldn't read the signs or the menus. Plus with all the smelly cabbage and spicy tofu, I'm not sure that's what a Korean food first timer wants to eat right before bouncing up and down to Animal Collective.

Chris and I usually eat at BCD Tofu house (spicy Korean tofu soup) and now there's Mr. Pizza Factory, a Korean pizza place. What's makes the pizza Korean? Sweet potato paste in the outer crust and some gourmet combonations (seafood, baked potato theme, etc). It's definitely not for the health conscious, though probably healthier than eating pounds of short ribs in one sitting.

The last time Chris and I were at the Wiltern for a show was for Death Cab for Cutie on the Transatlanticism "victory lap" tour. We went to BCD and ate tofu with a side of short ribs. This was the 2nd time I had seen Death Cab for Cutie, but the first time at The Wiltern. This was almost 5 years ago, we barely still qualified as student (Chris was finishing up, I had one class to complete), and Death Cab for Cutie was just starting their ascent to the mainstream. This wasn't the last time that I saw the band in concert (Bridge School, 2006), but it's the last time that I've been to the Wiltern. Chris and I will be going back there tonight to see Grizzly Bear for the first time. I can't promise that we'll be blown away by the band tonight (but I'm sure we will), but I can promise that after 5 years, we will go through the same routine of eating a hearty Korean meal before heading to the show, and it will feel just like it did 5 years ago, and that's what a home is all about.

Roger Wilco

It's weird that your car always breaks down on the day of an event. It never happens the day before. It's always the day of. Matt called my house at 8 in the morning to let me know the bad news. He was going to try to take it in to Sears so we could still go, but at this point, my parents didn't want me to go at all. We were 16, we were going on a bit of a road trip (an hour and a half drive), we were going to the This Ain't No Picnic Festival unsupervised. To say my parents were a bit apprehensive about this, would be a gross understatement.

Luckily, Matt's car got fixed up and we headed out to Oak Canyon Ranch, whose closest major city is Irvine, ironically enough. This would be our first festival experience, and why it was a far cry from a Lalapalooza (Coachella didn't exist yet), it was still an exciting and, at the time, life defining moment. Unfortunately, it was the day Sonic Youth had a bunch of their gear stolen, but we didn't find that out until much later. We were excited to be seeing a bunch of bands that we usually couldn't see because they usually had to play 21 and up venues in San Diego, so this would be our only chance to catch the likes of Superchunk, Sleater Kinney, and The Boredoms for a few years.

It was a torrid day. The only way we could survive was repeatedly taking the Pepsi vs Coke challenge over and over again. We perched out front of the stage and caught Mike Watt's opening set. As hot as we were, no one could've been suffering under the hot California sun more than San Pedro's pride and joy, Mike Watt. He was decked out in his signature flannel long sleeve shirt and overalls, rocking his thunderstick (bass). I'd been a casual admirer of Watt, and felt a need to catch his set because the festival was named after a song of his (well, The Minutmen). He was a punk rock icon, and plus his first solo album had all the coolest rock stars make cameos on it (Eddy Vedder, Dave Grohl, Thurston Moore, Mike D, just to name a few). His set changed my life forever. For one, I became a Mike Watt fan for life that day (and I would interview him the following year at the festival), and two, I was introduced to the guitar stylings of Nels Cline.

They mostly played songs from Watt's second album, Contemplating the Engine Room, an album that Watt recorded as a 3 piece band. It was just Watt on bass, a drummer, and Nels Cline on guitar. Through the set, Nels did some serious guitar shredding, and for good measure, used a Doritos bag and a toy ray gun to showcase his guitar playing skills. His guitar playing, while intricate and impressive never seemed to get in the way of the actual songs, and it immediately connected with me. This man was, for a lack of a better phrase, my guitar hero.

I was able to accidentally run into Nels a few months later at a show down in San Diego. I had booked an interview with Low, and he was opening up for them in his band Scarnella. I was able to ask him some guitar questions, like how to use the ray gun with a guitar, and was just impressed in general with how nice of a guy he was.

It made me kind of sad to see that he was such a nice and talented guy, well respected by more successful artists, but not necessarily making it big. I'm not saying that he needed to make Van Halen money or be hugely popular, but it seemed like he was getting the short end of the stick somehow. So I was absolutely thrilled when I found out he joined Wilco a few years later. He joined the band after the band had broken through, maybe not to the mainstream, but to a place where bright days were definitely ahead. Part of me was afraid that the marriage between Nels and the band would be brief, but when I saw them live, I was happy to see him having a great time, incorporating his sound into the already robust and eclectic Wilco sound.

I've always loved Wilco, but I have extra incentive to see them everytime they're in town to see Mr. Cline, finally appreciated on a larger scale. Every time I see him out there, I don't just see a rock star, or a sell out (oh, puleaze), I see the guy with the ray gun and the doritos bag, teaching me how to play the guitar.

No Place LIke Dome

A few years ago, I went to an Angels game with my friends. We got cheap seats, since it was a pretty last minute idea. They were playing the Oakland A's that night and since I'm not originally from California, I didn't really care about the outcome of the game. I especially didn't participate in the Nor-Cal vs So-Cal debate between the hometown Angel fans and the Oakland (or just Bay Area, in general) fans. My friends and I were stuck in between the two groups of feuding fans, and to throw a monkey wrench into the whole discussion, I screamed "May the better team win!"

The game was entertaining enough but not very memorable. It was a September game, and one of the two teams (my guess, the Angels) had already clinched the division. Neither team was really playing for anything. They were just trotting out their September call ups to get some big league experience, but this game will always have a place in my heart. Why? Because it was my first baseball game in an outdoor park.

I've been to many baseball games before, but they were all in the Metrodome in Minneapolis, Minnesota. Dome's aren't very popular these days, but they looked really cool... back in the 1980s. The Twins played there and used all of the Dome's quirks to their advantage. There was the super bouncy astro turf, the "Big Baggie" in right field, and the whiteness of the dome itself which replaced the sky, day or night. Looking back, it was unnatural as baseball could be, but it's really all I knew, as far as professional baseball was concerned. It was almost like a perk of being a professional. Instead of having to play baseball in the gross Minnesota humidity with gnats and mosquitos buzzing about, a professional gets to play in a nice temperature controlled dome.

I never went to a Padres game at Jack Murphy/Qualcomm Stadium. (I've been to Petco, to watch the Twins whoop on the Padres.) There was a huge sports void in my life when we moved to San Diego. Actually, it was a giant void, period. I stopped playing baseball, playing piano, going to church, and I stopped begging my parents to go to games. After a couple of years, the piano playing and the church going started up again, but baseball was kind of dead to me. Then the lockout happened, and I stopped caring until my Twins started to become competitive again at the turn of the millenium.

I'll always identify with the Twins. They were such a huge part of my childhood. I got to live during a time where they won 2 World Series'. I have the Homer Hankies to prove it. Actually my childhood in Minnesota was all kinds of awesomeness. The North Stars went to the finals in '91, The Mighty Ducks was released. It was a good time to grow up loving sports. I miss the ice skating, the sledding, the snowmen building and biking around lakes. I believe I left at a good time. The North Stars left (but were eventually replaced by the Wild, who I love), academic scandal broke out with University of Minnesota Men's Basketball team, the Twins almost got contracted, and will soon be moving out of the dome (not that I object to that). My Minnesota childhood was a pretty amazing experience, and for me to think that moving back one day will provide the same experience is pretty naive. It's not that I believe Minnesota has lost its luster, it's just that I'm not prepared to experience it full time as an adult yet. I may never have that opportunity to, and I'm okay with that. I may not be able to root root root for my Twins as the home team, but I'll still love them as the villanous visitors.

The Wide World of Racist Sports Casters

I cheer for Korea at the following events (not to say that I ever boo them):

1) The World Baseball Classic
2) The World Cup
3) Speed Skating at the Winter Olympics

Why do I only cheer for the motherland during the following events?  Because these are events where they're usually pretty good (they're wishy washy at the World Cup).  I know that make me seem unpatriotic since I'm sure there's plenty of Koreans out there who will cheer for the team when they're getting blown out by Kobe and Lebron in International Basketball competition, but you know what?  I can only support one terrible team and somehow the Minnesota Timberwolves have taken that spot in my life.  

The World Baseball Classic was only introduced a few years ago, so I can say I've been on board with Korean the entire time.  I've been rooting for them against everyone, even the Americans, because most of my favorite American players tend to sit out.  I'm fine with this especially since I rather have my Minnesota Twins go far in the playoffs, then have Joe Mauer break his foot chasing down a pop fly against... well any team in a exhibition.  The other appeal with the Korean National team is the lack of Major League Baseball players, so I don't have the dilemma of cheering for a player from a team that I hate (like the White Sox).  I can cheer for Korea without having any conflicts of interest!  대한민국 indeed!

I'll admit that I can probably be classified as a band-wagoner when it comes to soccer.  It really wasn't until the Japan/Korea World Cup that I became engaged in Korean soccer.  Before then, I wasn't really sure they had a team that could qualify for the tournament, but once I did, I woke up at the crack of dawn and flipped the TV to Telemundo so I could watch the games broadcasted live.  I even did that for the sad 3rd place game where the totally phoned it in within the first five minutes.  I was in San Diego at the time, and I watched the game with my dad.  He was surprised that I knew that the game was on at 3AM and was understandably disappointed in the team's lack of effort.

So that brings us to speed skating, and short track speed skating which means we'll inevitably need to to talk about Apolo Anton Ono.  He's an Olympic superstar and a Dancing with the Stars champion!  I didn't even know about the latter until I looked him up on wikipedia!  Honestly, I have nothing against the dude and I think it's ridiculous that he needs extra body guards when he competes in Korea.  I do think he's a bit of a whiner, but so is Sidney Crosby, Kobe Bryant, and I don't wish death on either of them.  I understand speed skating is a big deal in Korea.  My dad has speed skates.  He taught me how to ice skate on said speed skates.  

Unfortunately short track speed skating has a lot of grey area controversy.  Not because of steroids or performance enhancing drugs, but because it's the NASCAR of Winter Olympic sports.  There's a bit of contact, there's some blocking, and apparently American announcers think that the Koreans use a bit of "shake and bake"-esque strategies which complete the whole Ricky Bobby analogy.  I'm no expert on exactly how short track exactly works, but I usually have to watch these races on mute because I can't stand how one sided the commentary is on these races.

As a child, I never really questioned the objectivity during a televised sport.  Obviously if it's a local broadcast, they'll share more about the team they're covering, but I never ever thought "hey they're being really unfair about that call."  You would think with the Olympics, that commentators would even try to be more objective, but apparently short track speed skating really riles up the blood for the commentators at NBC.  

At the 2006 Games, I don't think I remember hearing the word "cheater" so often during an Olympic broadcast.  It was pretty despicable.  "The Koreans cheat, they've been accused of cheating before, and poor Apolo Anton Ono isn't going to win because the Koreans are going to cheat and destroy him.  If only he could bring his bodyguards on the ice with him!  The Koreans are going to sacrifice each other just to make sure Apolo Anton Ono doesn't win!"  I think that sums up how the race commentary went.

Let me say this.  If these Koreans, who've trained for 4 years, decide they're going to throw away their own hopes at winning a race just to screw over Apolo Anton Ono, that's totally their prerogative.  In my opinion, that's a waste of time, and you're costing yourself an opportunity to something great.  I don't care if that's what your coach taught you.  It's an individual sport and the idea is to win, not to block.  If you want to block and you're fine with being the John C. Reilly to your teammate's Will Ferrell, go ahead.  Just don't expect yourself to be on the Korean Wheaties box.  Unfortunately because of all this blatant anti-Korean sentiment, it's hard for me to respect Apolo Anton Ono.  I know it's not his fault.  

Hopefully I can make it to Vancouver in this winter so I can enjoy the Olympics in the only objective way possible.  By being there.