In the Catholic faith, pride is counted amongst their deadliest sins. I was born Catholic; went to Catholic school; and spent lots of my life with my most definitely Catholic family – there was no way I was coming out of all that without that notion being ingrained in me.
Yes, there is a difference between arrogance and confidence, but the line appears thin to people like me.
As a result, it’s a line I often don’t risk crossing. I’ve been reconsidering that inclination.
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Sorry, I had to rely on hyperbole to drag you over here, but it worked, didn’t it? The fact of the matter is that even if it’s not the singularly best boba joint in Los Angeles, Culver City’s Cafe 70 Degrees still undoubtedly resides in the upper echelons of bobadom.
I discovered this place through Yelp a couple months back when I needed a place to hang out at before my Parkour classes.
My expectations were low going into it because, well, I’d been around the block when it comes to tapioca balls and there haven’t really been many places that stick out for their excellence.
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Growing up Filipino, I was raised to gorge. If food was in front of me, the expectation was that I’d vacuum it right up. I can distinctly remember moments in my childhood when I was compared to my cousins in terms of how well I polished off my plates.
In short, when I ate, I was primed to eat a lot. And I was also taught to be frugal when it came to food. There was no need or urge for fancy cuisine – just Lean Cuisine or Cup Noodles would be fine.
So when my parents turned me on to sushi, it wasn’t exactly a match made in heaven. Here was a kid ingrained with the virtues of eating lots for cheap discovering small, expensive pieces of fish and rice – it was the source of much conflict. This was how my quest began, one of finding great, fresh sushi without breaking the bank.
And upon visiting Sushi Yoshi in Torrance this month, that years-long quest has finally ended.
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Over the years, I’ve had many heart-to-hearts with a variety of different people when it comes to my career, about the direction I’m taking or how hard (or not) I might be working. Whether it’s over the phone, by e-mail, through BBM or – heaven forbid – in person, the gravity of those talks remains the same.
For the sake of saving some material (and dignity) for later blogs, there’s one in particular that I’ve got to hone in on and that’s the matter of instinct.
It’s a recurring theme in these talks. “When opportunity stands before you, do you seize it?”
Whenever I least expect it, whenever it seems like the subject has finally been laid to rest, it pops back up out of its grave with a renewed relevance the weaker side of me resists to admit.
The fact of the matter is that instinct is something I’ve always had – but there’s also an overbearing amount of introspection in there that’s part and parcel of who I am as a person.
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In hindsight, I suppose this isn’t the most jarring of fits. After all, Pokémon is as much a part of Japanese history as “the initiator of the unification of Japan under the shogunate in the late 16th century” (thank you for being back up again, Wikipedia!).
And though this game could probably be seen as another vindication of the belief that originality is now impossible, I’m more focused on the fact that Pokémon Plus Nobunaga’s Ambition is the latest of the country’s efforts to hide their secret past from the world, a secret past full of tamed majestic creatures.
Certainly now, you must think of me as the token raving lunatic amongst the Offenders and yet I beg you to take another moment to reconsider.
My assertion about the game, I mean, not my being a lunatic because – let’s face facts – I’m a little off.
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I never thought I had a problem with being blunt and being truthful. As far as I was concerned, I was an open book, but it seems as though the best defense mechanisms are often invisible to those using them.
During dinner with some of the Offenders, I was asked about the direction I was taking with this feature.
The thing I heard most frequently was my tendency to go into non-sequiturs. Deep down inside, an immature part of me felt a knee with a strong urge to jerk – but I reigned him in, put him in the corner. Told him to get his knee checked.
Then I thought about what I had been writing about with this column.
I’ve touched on this before, but one post cannot contain my wonder at and fascination with the way our senses can bring us back to moments in our lives we’ve long lost.
How the touch of an old plush bear can take us to childhood; how the sight of a decrepit building transports us to a time when it was so full of life; and, more to the point, how the opening notes of a pop song can remind us of someone we knew in our youth – their ability to draw us into reveries cannot be overstated in mere words.
Time travel? I don’t need a machine. I just need a playlist of some simple songs and I’m five again, eleven again, eighteen again.
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PROLOGUE:
I’m seriously being asked to document the fantasy basketball league? I don’t know the first thing about sports, let alone basketball! How will I know what to take pictures of?
This is gonna be like a still photographer being asked to document the behind-the-scenes stuff for a movie and only taking pictures of the craft service table.
It’s been how long since I touched a basketball? That’s one of the bigger sports balls, right? Justsayyesjustsayyesjustsayyes.
“Yeah, I’ll do it!”
…crap.
At first glance, this question seems rhetorical, with any answer serving only as a gauge of the responder’s cynicism.
“What a movie! I’ve seen the mistaken identity story in a thousand ones before!” “Did you see last night’s episode? It totally ripped off an episode of that show from a couple years back, where they tried to return the gift but couldn’t!”
But think about it: any given artform has been around for years – decades or even centuries. There may indeed be a vast number of combinations of concepts, colors, and notes, but logic seems to dictate that however vast that number might be, it is still finite.
Recently, I found a stunning similarity between the score for The Dark Knight and the score for a 1983 film called Edith et Marcel. Judging from everyone’s reaction to that video I made, people seemed to be split into two camps.
“Different strokes for different folks.”
You’ve probably read me use that phrase many a time – it’s one that I try to live by. Hokey as it sounds, it centers me, helps to remind me to respect the way other people might do things, even if it’s the polar opposite of what I’d do.
It’s a mantra, and it’s one I use every time I’m watching a movie with my folks, or my Filipino relatives in general.
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(Thank you, Drizzy, for inspiring the title of this little blog.)
Growing up as a goody-two-shoes did, in some ways, make me mature sooner than others. In other ways, it definitely stunted my growth.
Yes, I grasped the idea of actions having consequences before many of my peers did, but a lingering, unhealthy fear of them came with that. Sure, I was able to appreciate “high art” very early on – whatever that means – but this meant an elitist, upturned nose towards everything else. In short, my life has epitomized that idea of growing up too fast.
As you may have guessed, I have a weird fascination with zombies. And while a zombie apocalypse may be my preference for how the world has to end, I’d like to reiterate that I’d rather not have that happen at all, at least not until I’m dead and only my children and my children’s children are the ones that have to deal with it.
Let’s be real though: how likely is that situation anyway? How probable is it that some kind of virus will reanimate the dead, creating an army with no allegiances, no loyalties – only an insatiable hunger for flesh? Not likely!
I mean, hell – if that was at all a possibility, wouldn’t the government, the Red Cross, Center for Disease Control, have some sort of plan for it?
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If I had my way, I’d live in a movie theater. I’d sleep in the plush chairs; freshen up in the bathroom; and subsist on Raisinets alone. These would all be small sacrifices made in the name of being able to watch all the new movies I want in the most sacred of environments, anytime I want for free.
Unfortunately, my local theater doesn’t look too kindly on vagrants and that isn’t exactly the kind of lifestyle I want to pursue anyway. My only alternative is to try and make my home viewing experience be as close to the theatrical one as possible.
This is all tits and mayo when I’m by myself, but whenever people are around, my devotion to detail gets in the way of maintaining those relationships.
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Due in large part to the Mayan calendar, a vast number of people believe that 2012 will bring about the end of the world, but exactly how this Earthly conclusion may go down is not detailed. There are many possible scenarios: meteors, war, earthquake, floods.
But honestly all of those are bit too serious and more than a little depressing. If the world’s gotta end this year, all I ask is that we go out with a bang, followed by a long, dull, collective groan.
Yes, I’m crossing my fingers for a zombie apocalypse.
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Jesus H. Christ – 2011 is nearly over. 365 days gone, just like that. The road behind me is stretching longer and longer and often I wonder what will happen next, what people will enter my life and whose lives I will enter. Maybe I’ll enter a few women too – haha, intercourse.
But switching gears for a second, I’d now like to take this time to seriously and genuinely contemplate those that have walked into my life over the past year – however brief or long they might have stayed. Some may still, in fact, be in my life as I write this, to which I can only ask, “What the hell are you thinking?”
Let me not waste any more of your precious 2011 seconds:
Stifling my creativity is akin to holding my breath – sooner than later, I can only do it for so long before I need to come up for air.
In terms of writing, I get my daily burst of air from creating some poetry. Easy enough to do on my own. Filmmaking, on the other hand, usually requires a team of people. But if I can’t make something new everyday – or at least fairly frequently – I’m gonna wilt.
I can’t very well let myself suffocate, can I?
Recently, I found a solution: grabbing a video camera and recording everything – ALL THE THINGS!
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Come on, come on. Please, please, please. Really? Let me drive around one more time. Hey – a free meter! ‘Valet parking only daily’?
I’m too fucking hungry for this shit – guess I’ll just pay for valet. Hope they don’t steal my change. Might be paying them with that later.
Probably shouldn’t have worn jeans. I saw the way the hostess looked when she checked my name. She gave me the once-over. A quick one, but a once-over all the same. Is it so hard to believe I can afford eating he — oh my god, is that a live octopus on a plate?
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Tomorrow, it will be Christmas. Another Christmas under my belt. This is, undoubtedly, my favorite time of the year.
Unfortunately, I find that the glint in my eyes that the holidays elicit seems to grow dimmer and dimmer as time passes.
The story isn’t new. Growing up, you have cares in the world, but they are few and far between. Death is a concept either wholly unknown or partially foreign and your responsibilities have not grown to towering heights yet. That’s your everyday experience.
Then Christmas comes along and all that joy that comes part and parcel with that is coupled with your already freewheeling existence and it literally feels like you can float, maybe even fly.
The funny thing about life is that having one is entirely optional.
The choice is up to us. Instead of an outgoing, social existence, we can opt to have an insular one populated only by ourselves and our hobbies and idiosyncrasies.
As a nerd, I made my choice a long time ago. And though my interests have hopped all around the board over the course of my life, the extent to which they overtake my time remains consistent and large.
Once, it was Saturday morning cartoons. Later, it was video games. Now, the sole occupier of my time is le cinema.
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Riding a bike. Playing an instrument. Cooking food. Do these things enough time and performing them becomes second nature.
Thinking is no longer involved – it becomes pure instinct. In other words: muscle memory.
What I found out this weekend is that my strongest instance of muscle memory has to do with none of those. The one thing I’ll know how to do with eyes closed till the day I die is play Super Mario 64.
Not that Nintendo DS port bullshit. Not that 3DS crap either. I’m talking about some good ol’ OG Nintendo 64 Mario with the awkward-as-fuck looking controller.
