Story Lover

TPL DVD: Sometimes it really only takes one person to change the world. And true stories like these put life really into perspective. You can walk out your door every day and think that you have to be someone big to make a difference, but really all you need to do is be yourself and give yourself to others.

“You have been blessed with a burden, my daughter. And I envy that.”

“I see who you are, do you understand me? I can see you.”

TPL DVD: Meh. Although it was kind of cool to see Marcus (About a Boy) all grown up. It just seemed like too much shoved into one man’s bad life. Kind of like, let’s stuff everything bad that can happen into this thing. From camel toe to molestation to divorce to a father’s death.

But I really liked the idea that you get whittled down from all your possible selves into the one that you become, the one that you are. When you’re born, a whole world of opportunities and possibilities exist. And as you age and experience things, some of those possibilities get whittled away. And at some point, all other what if’s are removed, leaving you with who you’ve become. Pretty poetic.

by Gene Luen Yang

I love the play on words. American. Born. Chinese. Maybe I’m Korean born American. Or Korean raised American. Korean transplant American. Banana. No idea, but this morph that we do to fit in with what is being reflected around us is pretty fascinating and saddening. I think we all do it to some degree or another. And it isn’t till now, long after the childhood taunts, that I am really intrigued by the invisible borders between race and culture. Perhaps after a certain amount of time, we have to embrace who we are and what it is that makes us unique. As Helen said, you can only really run from your strengths for so long.

by Sherman Alexie

I always feel like I have a responsibility to leave a library book in a condition that reflects how I felt about it. I’m always intrigued when I get a book that has dog ears dispersed amongst its pages or has a little post-it note still stuck on one of the pages. I wonder, is this significant or random? Sometimes I’ll leave a post-it on a meaningful page, like a modern x marks the spot. But most of all, I get sad when I can tell I’m the first person to read a book. It’s odd, since when I buy a book I almost demand that its pure, that I’m discovering it for the first time. But I feel almost the opposite when I borrow a book from the library, I feel almost as if it hasn’t been loved yet. And when books by my favorite authors are seemingly missing love, I worry for the careers of my beloved authors, for their souls. But, thankfully, I know this book just came out, that I am the first because I’ve placed a hold on it, and thus I feel like I need to communicate my love for its content to its next reader.

And how I love Sherman Alexie. May he have a long life. I breeze through the pages like an autumn wind. And his words leave cracks in my heart, in my soul. Their sentiment tear up my eyes. His short stories speak right to the heart of life and I think in the short story, War Dances, he’s telling the story of the grown up Junior from The Absolutely True Diary of a Part-Time Indian. Not sure though. And man, Ode for Pay Phones! He makes the modern day defeats beautiful. He makes the modern day beauties holy.

And just a curiosity. Why are both of the shoes right-footed? Or in the case of the right cover, left-footed? And why is there such a subtle difference between the two covers? If you’re going to go through the effort of designing and publishing two different covers, why make it so subtle?

“Nothing happened, of course. Nothing ever really happens, you know.” -Breaking and Entering

“We are tested, all of us. We are constantly and consistently given the choice. Good or evil. Light or darkness. Love or hate. Some of those decisions are huge and tragic. Think of those nineteen men and you must curse them. But you must also curse their mothers and fathers. Curse their brothers and sisters. Curse their teachers and priests. Curse everybody who failed them.” -The Senator’s Son

“We who shared the most important moment of our lives no longer have any part in the lives of the others.” -The Senator’s Son

“Despite all the talk of diversity and division – of red and blue states, of black and white and brown people, of rich and poor, gay and straight – Paul believed that Americans were shockingly similar. How can we be so different thought Pual, if we all know the lyrics to the same one thousand songs?” -The Ballad of Paul Nonetheless

“Could I have run that fast and won the right to live?” -Fearful Symmetry

“But O, the last track was the vessel that contained the most devotion and pain and made promises that you couldn’t take back.” -Ode to Mix Tapes

“And she’d rather be forgotten than inaccurately remembered.” -Salt

“Jesus, I don’t want to die today or tomorrow, but I don’t want to live forever.” -Salt

While I love seeing the whole gang together again, I thought the storyline was a little thin. The back and forth with past and present day was interesting, but things didn’t click together till the final scenes. While the back and forth worked extremely well in the first movie, I find it wasn’t as concise or fluid in the second. They set it up really nicely for a third one, I wonder if that’ll be another decade.

But you gotta love all the characters. And it’s interesting to see how they’ve all aged over the past 10 years. The quick humor and the fraternity wasn’t as strong, but you gotta love the twins and their third musketeers (Rocco and now Romeo). Duffy brought the music back and I love it.

TPL DVD: Why is it that we only start reflecting on the state of our society and our places in it when we have children or are expecting? Does that mean we don’t really give a damn about society and the planet and the world when we aren’t responsible for anyone else?

I really liked the whole concept of finding the right place in this world. Geographically speaking. Because I’ve always had this concept of home. But I have no idea where that place is. And I don’t know what I’m expecting. Will it be love at first sight? Will it be over a course of a lifetime or will I know after a few years? Have I already found it?

But the ingredients that I’ve outlined so far are: sense of community, a special spot, friends, diversity and enough culture where there’s something going on (even if I’ll never take part in it). I’ve made Portland my holy grail, but I have no idea if I’ll ever make it there, and if I do, if I’ve built it up to mythical proportions that it’ll never live up to my ideal of it.

by Benjamin Anastas

Better to have never tried than to have failed. And while you’re at it, might as well make underachieving a work of art. By Anastas’ definition, I know a whole lot of underachievers that while, never formally manifesting themselves as one, take refuge in the despair of what will never be.

And I think back on the good fights that I myself have fought and I find that I was always more than up for a suicide mission, when failure was a sure thing. But when a mission was ambiguous, when there was a chance I might succeed, well that was a little too scary, too close to happiness, that it was better to just sit that one out. And those missions, those chances, are the only regrets of my life. Luckily I grew out of that in college, otherwise I myself would be writing my own diary to the world.

I like the left book cover more than the contemporary version (on the right). In an attempt to remain faithful to my experience, I always publish the cover or poster that I interact with. But I find the contemporary version a little too much of an achievement. You can’t get less ambitious than an all white cover with the name and author.

“And there I was, on a golf course at midnight with a girl I really liked, underachieving all over again in a misguided attempt to make it new, and pioneer a romantic avant-garde where nothing started, in the moonlight, would ever finish, and the greatest love, or kiss, would be the one that never grew beyond its promising beginning; that way no one would ever have to live with an imperfect lover’s guilt when things came to an end, as they do, inevitably.”

by Shel Perkins

For all those newly graduated designers trying to understand the real world of design, this might be a good place to start. I enjoyed my professional practice course during my final year as an industrial design student, but without having real life context, most of the course went right over my head. And despite feeling somewhat prepared, it wasn’t nearly enough.

Now that I’m out in the wild kingdom, I find this book to be insightful on tasks like writing a proposal and calculating freelance rates. The chapters are manageable, concise and flexible so that the knowledge can be easily adapted to whatever context you find yourself in. I’m going to wait though to buy the blue covered 2nd edition that comes out in 2010.