CBR13: A Good True Thai by Sunisa Manning

Last year came and went with the stillness of a thrashing fish out of water -- I certainly don't need to recap what an astoundingly not-normal year 2020 was. We were all just doing our best, gasping for air while picking up new hobbies to distract ourselves from the pandemic, racial injustice, the world ending, etc.

And this is where I let you non-Asia readers in on a secret: While the US and Europe played cat-and-mouse with the virus (seriously, does anyone really know what the words "lockdown" mean anymore?) life in Thailand was a different reality. From January to November, we had less than 4,000 total cases and roughly 60 deaths. By July, Bangkok was pretty much back to normal -- and that was when a pro-democracy movement kicked off.

The capital saw near-daily protests from student activists demanding for the prime minister -- a former army chief who staged the last coup in 2014 -- to step down from power. By August, their demands shifted to more taboo topics; the students called for reforms to the kingdom's most powerful institution, the monarchy, demanding that it be held accountable, that its finances be transparent, and that a royal defamation law -- which has sent dozens (hundreds?) convicted of insulting or criticising the royals to prison -- be abolished.

(This video is now geo-blocked in Thailand. Nothing worse for an authoritarian-leaning government than a catchy earworm, honestly.)

It is in this environment that Sunisa Manning's book, "A Good True Thai", is published. How serendipitous that the Thai-American author's novel based on the student movement from 1973-1976 be thrust into the Thai public's eye right when the spectre of the massacre looms large in every activist's mind. It wasn't so long ago that the student massacre of October 6, 1976 -- one of the bloodiest stain in its country's continual agitation for democracy -- was whispered and talked obliquely about in public spaces. By August, student activists were referencing it on stage in protests that drew thousands. The fact that I couldn't find Manning's book anywhere in Bangkok because it was sold out by October should serve as a fair warning to any leaders flirting with authoritarianism: A hunger for the truth will persist even if a society attempts to paper over its problematic history.

The three protagonists of "A Good True Thai" however do not really tackle large, existential questions about Thailand's penchant for repeating history. Instead, the high school students -- Det, a high-born Thai who appears at ease in every room he walks in; Chang, his best friend who grew up in Bangkok's slums; and Lek, a brilliant and beautiful Thai-Chinese who grows enamoured with the writings of an intellectual considered persona non grata by the kingdom -- are more concerned with their personal place in the country's future.

The first half of the book follows the beginning of Det and Lek's romance, the events of 1973 as the students rouse a student-led democracy movement to successfully expel a hated general from power, and the shaky transition period in which all seems possible, especially for the idealistic youth hungering for change.

In reality, nothing is possible without the shadowy approval of the country's power pillars.

Det -- a descendant of King Chulalongkorn through his mother though his father is a commoner -- perhaps understood this best, repeatedly saying that the students' success in overthrowing the dictator was because the current king wished it so for the good of the people. This rankles the more radical students, including Lek and Chang who wish for true equality, whether or not it comes under the approval umbrella of a monarch.

As the trio espouse their ideals, it remains painfully clear how young they are. Never far from my mind are the student leaders today who fearlessly, and sometimes with great humor, demand for change. Me thinking them naive does not discount from their bravery -- do you know what has happened to dissidents in Thailand? I don't, not really or truly, because their disappearances aren't investigated.

I've been so steeped in writing, thinking, reporting on Thailand's past and current events these past few months that I wanted so dearly to like this book. The topic is compelling, especially as the plot barrels towards October 6, 1976. The details of Thais' strict adherence to hierarchy were interesting, especially as Det wrestles with his identity and his relationship with Lek -- it greatly enlightened some parts of Thai culture that I will never really fully get because I'm a foreigner, always outside of that social calculation.

But the writing leaves much to be desired. Manning's choice to use present tense throughout becomes clunkier as the protagonists relocate to the jungle in the book's second half, hindering the characters' clarity, their actions, and also the plot. The day of the massacre should have served an emotional wallop -- the images of naked students crawling on a university field, cowering from attacks from the army and ultra-royalists, of Thais bashing a student hanging from a tree still shock today. Instead it is muddied by some sparse writing -- a very different approach from the beginning, which felt a bit over-written --  so much so that I had to wonder if a newcomer to Thailand would even really understand what was happening.

It's unfortunate that the last book I reviewed for CBR was also a Thailand-related book by Thai author Pitchaya Sudbanthad, who also had characters shaped by the massacre. That review was a rave, but since then, one of my Thai friends has said she is having trouble with his novel, "Bangkok Wakes to Rain", because she thinks it's written with a Western audience in mind and it exoticizes certain aspects of the country.

How strange it is then for me to think about whether my likes and dislikes of a novel is because of the literary lens I've gotten used to, which has been fed to me by mostly white publishers choosing mostly white authors. To put it in an unkind, blunt manner: Does me liking "Bangkok Wakes to Rain" mean Sudbanthad is more successful at pandering to Western audiences? (And if your first rebuttal to this is "But you're not Western; you're Asian," then you can skedaddle and let the grown-ups talk.)

This question is important to me because as a journalist, I'm well aware of how our appetites for news has been reshaped due to the steady diet fed to readers -- whether if this menu is fuelled by dwindling budgets, encroaching conglomerates or a shift in priorities. The reason matters of course, but what we should be more concerned over is that a by-product of our media output is how we as a society read the news today, how it shapes the empathy we are willing to extend to the rest of the world.

And so here I am, wondering if my criticism of Manning's book and writing is because of how certain tropes or clichés I'm used to seeing in modern fiction have shaped what I consider "good". Of course it has -- how can it not be? Coincidentally, she actually tweeted back in November something Ocean Vuong, a Vietnamese American author and poet, wrote that was somewhat about this -- "It is no surprise, then, that if you as a BIPOC artist, dare to come up with your own ideas, to say "no" to what they shove/have been shoving down your throat for so long, you will be infantilized, seen as foolish, moronic, stupid, disobedient, uneducated and untamed." (The full tweet is worth reading, and by the way, Ocean Vuong's "On Earth, We're Briefly Gorgeous" was one of the best things I read last year.)

It's an uncomfortable place then for me to examine myself in. I'm Singaporean-American, and my tastes -- and allegiances -- will always be tied to this identity, whether if its done by me or by others (I've been told that my reactions to certain news items is because I'm "too Asian" -- said in a matter-of-fact way in a perfunctorily liberal newsroom). Manning's Thai-American, and I was thrilled to see her book's publication and the praise for it the same way I was thrilled to see Sudbanthad's name in some of the "Best of 2019" book lists. We yearn for the narratives of our experiences to actually be written by us, not by white historians or authors, and for this work to be celebrated. "One of us! One of us!" is what I sometimes tribalistically chant in my head. But in being among the few, non-white creators also uncomfortably get relegated to the position of having to please all, to define all experiences, and to be judged as flawless.

(I'm well aware that in comparing this new "Thailand" book to last year's other "Thailand" book, I'm committing the same crime that so many have done. Their shared interest in the massacre is there, but "Good True Thai" and "Bangkok Wakes to Rain" really are so, so different in plot, tone and themes.)

I guess this is my very long-winded way of saying please read it. Please judge it for yourself. You may learn something about Thailand's history, about its people, and about how very present the past is for those who've lived long enough to see this spin-dry cycle of coups, protests and short-lived civilian governments.

But also (since it's clearly lodged in my craw) it's worth nothing that -- much like Manning's questioning of what makes a "true" citizen of Thailand -- our idea of what constitutes good writing is entirely contingent to our biases, our personal reading histories and our ability to keep our minds open for more. I can't say what "more" is but all I know is we still don't have enough.

CBR9 #8: Tell Me How It Ends: An Essay in Forty Questions by Valeria Luiselli

To say that this has been a difficult year would be an understatement. For Americans, no matter what one's political affiliation is, it is clear to see that the rampant gas-lighting the current administration is putting us through is not normal. The word "fact" seems to have completely undergone a change in meaning, so much so that statements from politicians are view with the default setting of "definitely a lie."

Putting aside that I wake up every morning with a sense of impending dread that I'm sure has something to do with having my iPhone so close to my head (every Politico news alert I get seems to give me heart palpitations), my personal life has been in the trash. I upended my life for a man this year, only to have it completely tossed in the air again six months later when he walked out of my life. I'm still waiting to see how it looks when things fall in place.

And yet, it's hard for me to vocalize how bad I feel because I have a sense he's doing worse; I have a sense that I've been lucky because of all the work I've put in on myself, because of all the friends and loved ones who've come to my rescue, and because of the daily reminders that I am not alone.

I bring all this up in my review of Tell Me How It Ends, because it came as an absolute surprise to me, at a strange intersection of feelings – of immense disappointment in US politics, immense sadness at the apparent downward slide of Cambodia's (facade of a) democracy towards outright tyranny, and of immense happiness for my friends and their journey.

I certainly didn't know what I was getting myself into when I opened this book after I ordered it from Amazon – no, I'm not kidding, I had put it in my Amazon basket months ago and had forgotten why I did that, so I just clicked "buy" when I was in the US in August. Tell Me How It Ends... this must be a romance novella, yes? This must be a slow burn of a friendship, yes? A strange existential novel about young love, yes?

Well, friends, it is not. Valeria Luiselli is a Mexican writer living in the US, waiting for her green card for her and her family to come through in the summer of 2014 when she hears of the news of tens of thousands of child refugees coming into the US from Mexico and Central America. She then begins working as a Spanish interpreter for the New York City immigration court, where she asks the children 40 questions drawn up by immigration lawyers to "process" their way through the American legal system. Depending on how the children answer, the lawyers are able to draw up a defense to the immigration court, to persuade the judges to rule that these children may have sanctuary.

Two days after I started reading this book, an old friend of mine finally got notification that she will be sworn in for citizenship in less than a week. A day after she received the letter, the White House announced that they will be rescinding DACA, the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals immigration policy that enable people who had entered the country as minors be allowed a postponement of deportation.

To say that my friend's naturalization ceremony notice came at a bittersweet moment in history would be an understatement. She was wracked with guilt and relief – after years of being called an "illegal," of being unable to go to preferred colleges or obtain jobs in journalism because of her status, she would be able to be pronounced a citizen under one of the most polarized administration in history.

Like my friend, Luiselli was herself questioning her desire to be in the US, guilting herself on her and her husband's fortune to be professors and writers at a time when people – children, essentially – who looked and spoke like her were being villainized on talk radio. The very system in which she was trying to gain access to is broken and morally wrong in its treatment of young children. But she continues waiting out her green card while working at the immigration court, making her way through the 40 questions that seem so innocent but can reveal so much about the scars a child has obtained on his/her way to the land of the free... where the moment they arrive, they are kept in cold, locked rooms, shuttled from untrusting adult to untrusting adult until they get her, someone who can act as their voice.

I found myself tearing up several times during this. Yes, it's about children, and yes, it's a bare-bones look at our immigration system. But the words on these pages reflect a raging culture war that is happening in the US now. My privilege, the distance I have as an expat, my general upper middle-class Asian upbringing leaves me untouched, but I am touched as well.

There is a part in the book when she describes how police officers stopped their car during their road trip out west for vacation. She and her husband keeps it simply -- "We are writing a Western, sir... We came to Arizona for the open skies and the silent and the emptiness," she writes. It is untrue, but that's what they say.

Handing back our passports, one official says sardonically:  

So you come all the way down here for the inspiration.  

We know better than to contradict anyone who carries a badge and a gun, so we just say: 

Yes sir.  

Because –how do you explain that it is never inspiration that drives you to tell a story, but rather a combination of anger and clarity? How do you say: No, we do not find inspiration here, but we find a country that is as beautiful as it is broken, and we are somehow now part of it, so we are also broken with it, and feel ashamed, confused, and sometimes hopeless, and are trying to figure out how to do something about all that.  

We roll the windows up and keep driving. 

On September 7, my beautiful friend – the brightest, most hard-hitting and hardworking journalist in New York, I believe – was sworn in as a citizen. Her friends and I were sequestered into a separate waiting room where all we had to see them by was an inadequately sized TV. We were surrounded by bored relatives and petulant children.

We were there until 11 am, when Judge Ann Donnelly entered the court and issued a perfunctory swearing-in. She was the same federal judge who ordered a stay on Trump's refugee ban, allowing refugees detained in airports across the US not to be sent back to their home countries – but we didn't know that then, when we were standing in New York Eastern District Court listening to her begin a speech. Halting and filled with emotion, Judge Donnelly quoted President Barack Obama's press statement on DACA released the day before.

"What makes us American is not a question of what we look like, or where our names come from, or the way we pray. What makes us American is our fidelity to a set of ideals – that all of us are created equal; that all of us deserve the chance to make of our lives what we will; that all of us share an obligation to stand up, speak out, and secure our most cherished values for the next generation," she quoted, her voice crescendoing. She urged the new citizens to vote in all elections – "even in your local ones" – and to use their voice and speak out on issues that are important to them. She ended it by informing them that they are all Americans, that they are wanted in this country. The people in the waiting room, who previously had the energy of stale bread, burst into applause and tears, and then ran down to congratulate their loved ones.

My old newspaper was shut down by the government just two days before– a sign of Cambodia's increasing lean towards dictatorship – leaving many of my Cambodian colleagues jobless; the current administration had chosen to deport 800,000 young people who were brought to America by their parents; and I had just seen my friend sworn in as a citizen. In that moment, I chose to go with hope and happiness for my friend's future. I chose to see the strange serendipity that fate engineered to get her an eloquent, passionate female judge as a sign for better things.

Tell Me How It Ends takes its title from Luiseilli's daughter, who asked her mother often about the young refugees' stories when she was interpreting at the court. "Tell me how it ends, Mamma," she would say, inquiring into these children's outcomes. I suppose, in a way, it is a strange existential book about young love. But it is no novel, and we still don't know how it ends.

CBR9 #6 and #7: Birth of an Empire and Lords of the Bow by Conn Iggulden

In late February, as I was preparing for a work trip to Mongolia, it occurred to me that I knew nothing about the country. I knew nothing about the history or its culture, nothing about its customs or its icons. The only thing I knew was Genghis Khan, and... yea, just his name. That's it.

Luckily, a Pajiban mentioned the Conqueror Series by Conn Iggulden, recommending it as a historical fiction alternative to trawling Wikipedia (which is honestly what I would have done.) I downloaded the series in bulk, and got through the first two books during my month-long trip in Mongolia.

CBR9 #6: Birth of an Empire

First off, I should say that my photographer colleague who traveled with me on this work trip totally made fun of me for reading historical fiction. "Why don't you just actually read a history book?" he said. "Because it's not as fun," I answered. Honestly, I have such a hard time getting through non-fiction books on current events, I can only imagine my stamina flagging on history books written in a dry, academic way. Why not imbue history with some narrative voice and personal motives? I can totally get with that!

Iggulden's books actually hew pretty close to historical records on the life of Genghis Khan, the fierce founder of the Mongol empire born Temujin. In fact, at the end of each book, Iggulden would go through the events of the book, pointing out what really happened and what he embellished, and it's really amazing to just marvel at some of the incredible conditions that Temujin and his family went through early in his life.

Birth of an Empire introduces the early life of Temujin and his brothers living as part of the Wolves tribe in Mongolia. Always vying for their father's attention, Temujin and his eldest brother, Bekter, grow up competing with each other. Bekter is shown to be the more serious, humorless brother no one really loves, while charismatic Temujin commands respect and friendship quickly and effortlessly. The other younger brothers worth mentioning are Kachiun and Khasar, both easy-going and natural leaders, while the youngest is Temuge -- a chubby boy considered the most weak-willed.

Their father, Yesugei, passes away from an infected wound (that he got from a Tartan tribe seeking revenge) when the boys are just pre-teens, and his first-in-command, Eeluk, takes over the Wolves. Hungry for power after serving Yesugei for a lifetime, Eeluk does not want Yesugei's family to grow up to seek revenge, so he and the tribe leaves them in the harsh grasslands as winter is about to set in.

The period where Temujin and his brothers and mother were trying to survive in the cold were some of the hardest to read because you really got the sense that hunger was just slowly breaking their family apart. Temujin, who was never close to Bekter to begin with, started to hate him deeply as he realized that his eldest brother was hiding food from the rest of the family after their daily hunts. Together with Kachiun, Temujin killed Bekter – a move which breaks his mother's heart, and it drives a splinter in the already suffering family.

When I got to this part, I was already in northern Mongolia freezing my ass off. While I found it difficult to fully understand Temujin and Bekter's hatred for each other, Iggulden's description – along with my experience of Mongolia's winter – made it possible for me comprehend why Temujin and Kachiun would feel like they were driven to commit murder. Bekter was stealing from the family as his mother, who had to nurse a newborn baby girl, and brothers were starving. Mongolia's tough conditions made desperate people angry.

A big part of Birth of an Empire is letting us understand Genghis Khan's origin, of how someone as likable and easy-going as him could grow up to become an ambitious warrior who united all the warring Mongolian tribes, rallying them on to become one of the most feared army in the world. Obviously it will be impossible to really understand Genghis Khan's actual personality, but Iggulden really manages to set up the building blocks of what made him a conqueror.

CBR9 #7: Lords of the Bow

The second book picks up after Genghis Khan has united all the tribes, and is looking southward towards the Chin empire. Genghis Khan understands – from his dealings with the Chin – that the different tribes and the Tartan in the north have been pitted against each other for generations by the Chin so that they will be divided and weak.

Along the way, his coalition had gained a shaman, named Kokchu, a manipulative and clever flatterer who used magic tricks and chemistry to keep an aura of mystery around himself. While Genghis Khan did not really want much to do with Kokchu, he decided to keep him around due to superstition of killing a shaman, and Temuge, the timid youngest brother, went under Kokchu's tutelage.

As Genghis Khan's army moves further south, much of his time is taken up by governing the warring tribes and strategizing on how to bring down the Chin's walled defenses. His two eldest sons, Jochi and Chagatai, have a relationship that seems similar to his earlier relationship with the elder brother he murdered, Bekter. Both vie for Genghis Khan's affections, though he so clearly prefers Chagatai because he believes that Jochi is the illegitimate bastard son that his wife Borte bore after she was kidnapped and raped by Tartans (which happened in the first book).

There are some amazing battles in this book, like at Badger's Mouth, where Chin General Zhi Zhong was convinced the Mongols would never be able to pass. But Genghis sent his brothers to climb the mountains flanking Badger's pass so that when the Chin army was attacking Genghis army at the pass, his brothers' armies also attacked the back. I really felt like whooping when I was reading about the Mongol riders who were able to shoot their arrows with true aim while they were upon galloping horses. Iggulden's books (and I guess history as well) showed that their prowess at archery while riding cavalry was surely the Mongols greatest strength, hence Book Two's apt title.

Once they got to Yenking – which is modern-day Bejing – the city's inhabitants and the royal family were walled in to prevent the Mongols from entering. This lasted for four years before General Zhi Zhong and the young child emperor were willing to negotiate with Genghis Khan. For four years, the Chin had no access to food or crops, and the millions of people within the city started to starve. This made for some truly horrific reading as you could feel the despair of the Chin as they started to cannabalize their neighbors. The young women of the city, knowing that they were going to be the ones who suffered the most once the walls were breached, dressed themselves in mourning white and threw themselves off the walls of Yenking. It's awful to imagine while reading; it's more incredible to learn through Iggulden's notes at the end that this really, actually happened. "Up to sixty thousand young girls threw themselves from the walls of Yenking rather than see it fall to the invader," he said.

The second book kind of threw a curveball at me. I went from rooting for Temujin's survival, to marveling at Genghis' military strategy and prowess, to being just truly horrified at the lengths he would go to propagate the Mongol race as being the most powerful. There are times when Temujin from the first book is recognizable in Genghis of the second book – but those times get fewer and fewer as we near the end of Lords of the Bow.

CBR8 Review #6: Factory Girls: From Village to City in a Changing China by Leslie Chang

All right, I haven’t reviewed in ages, so I’m just gonna jump right into it.

I read Factory Girls months ago – in April, to be exact – and it has just been stuck in my craw. The book is the work of Leslie Chang, a Wall Street Journal reporter who was based in China, and spent years following the lives of women working in factories in Guangdong province. As Westerners, much of what we know about these factories come from stories about exploitation in the Apple iPhone factories or the unpaid overtime work in garment factories producing for Insert-High-Street-Brand-Name-Here. Every now and then, we get a “seasonal” abuse story, such as the one about the factory that makes red Santa hats with photos of all the workers covered in red spray paint.

Those stories about China’s factories aren’t inaccurate, but they help cement an image we have about the young workers – most of whom are women – that actually erases their dreams and desires and identities. We think of them slaving away in “sweatshops” – the Westerner’s favorite word to use for any factory of any kind in the developing world – and getting paid peanuts for their labor; and we, in our first world guilt, make promises to never visit Insert-High-Street-Brand-Name-Here. Until we do, again, eventually. 

But look, Chang is here to tell you that this is only part of the image.

The girls who are the center of her book are not here to be pitied by you. Chunming, for example, left home at 17 for Guangdong, an industrial province, where she started in a factory before jumping to the next, and the next, in search of better pay. By the time Chang meets her, she is barely recognizable from the factory girl she started out as – she is an ambitious worker who is often drawn to get-rich-quick schemes. She is a go-getter who knew early on the drama of her life and resolved to record it all in a diary (“I HAVE NO TIME TO BE UNHAPPY BECAUSE THERE ARE TOO MANY THINGS I WANT TO DO,” reads one brusque entry), which is how Chang was able to portray that period of change with such clarity.

And Min, who stays in a factory, and slowly ascends to office jobs, making her the main breadwinner for her family in her village. That’s the thing that’s often missing in the media’s factory abuses story: that these girls are going in search for better opportunities and the money they make often give them a voice in their hometown – something that is unheard of in China’s patriarchal society.

Chang also writes about love and how these girls’ thoughts on marriage are shaped and reshaped as they start yearning for more than just the “normal” life; about how lonely it can be working in city made up of millions, and yet be able to lose a friend as quickly as losing a cellphone; about the different classes the girls take (eloquence, etiquette, make-up application, etc.) to advance their prospects in the factory world. The intimacy behind some of these accounts unnerved me, and the legwork that Chang did to gain her subjects’ trust is astoundingly clear.

Essentially, I read Factory Girls as homework. Since I report primarily on the business of fashion and labor rights issues in the garment sector in Southeast Asia, this book seemed like a good way to learn more about my beat. While I was looking at it from a technical perspective – trying to understand the tools behind the finished product – it was also a great way to remind me that I need to do more daily to understand the people I interview, and that the dozens of women I speak to and have spoken to are so much more than just sound bites for my story of the day.

That may seem like an obvious thing to say, or a fucking astoundingly ridiculous thing to state as a reporter (Go ahead, judge me). But as a Westerner, we sometimes can’t help but revert first to the pre-conceived narratives that we hold in our heads before taking a closer look.

Success!

A friend in Thailand working as a reporter for a national newspaper texted me one recent morning:

Her: We're writing an article on six people who are working freelance for next week's issue. Can I interview you as a freelance journalist?
Me: Ah thanks for thinking of me but I don't like to be interviewed.
Me: I can point you to other people who are doing better work more frequently than me though.
Me: Mr. X is a freelance journo, has been doing it for years and even published a book earlier this year.
Her: The thing is, I don't want someone too successful.
Her: Do you know anyone who works as a freelance journo but isn't that successful? 

(This is where I switched subjects briefly to congratulate her on a recent story she did. Then I returned to the subject at hand)

Me: It's really hard to define success, to be honest?
Her: So, like the one you suggested has written a book. That is too successful in my opinion.

So. How's your life going?

CBR6 #12: Scoop by Evelyn Waugh

I loved Scoop. LOVED IT. I'm also slightly miffed that I never read it until this year. How could it be that this awesomely biting satire on journalism was not in my life before?

Ew no. Not that Scoop.

Wanna kill some brain cells? Google "Daily Mail"
under images, and some of the most infuriating
front pagers will appear. 

As we know, British and American journalism is a bit shit nowadays. Save for a few publications, a lot of what's reported is noise and lacking in substance. Apparently, this mediocrity was evident to Evelyn Waugh -- who Wikipedia tells me he worked briefly at The Daily Mail, today the pinnacle of shit journalism -- and Scoop is essentially a farcical glimpse into the profession of being a foreign correspondent.

What starts out as a case of mistaken identity secures a foreign correspondent gig for the reluctant William Boot, a hapless columnist for the gardening section of the Beast. He is sent to the fictional African country of Ismaelia, where he is told to report the war between the good vs. the bad (though it's unclear to him which side is the "hero") and to find (or create, whatever) news that is favorable to England.

There's so many things I recognized here from my working experience, and then there were some things that were just absurd. Things that I'm sure any media worker would recognize is the publisher, who is portrayed as a know-it-all who in fact knows very little, but cannot be directly disputed. The editor-in-chief of The Beast is unable to say no to the incorrect things that the publisher utters, so he substitutes yes for "Definitely" and no for "To a point." There's also the hilarious scene of William Boot trying to prepare for his trip abroad and he just brings a shit ton of unnecessary baggage -- like a canoe!!! -- and charges it on the Beast's expense account.

Then there are moments that are more painfully recognizable, like how journalists abroad often work in a pack mentality in gathering news (see Boys on the Bus for how that works during political campaigns), or how everyone is willing to provide information to each other if it helps each their cause, but will burn as deemed necessary for a scoop. There is a disturbing free flow of information, but only up to a point. What I thought was also accurate was that journalists often choose not to pursue what's obviously a story or a hole if it doesn't fulfil their preconceived narrative (see Nicholas Kristof and his "shock" at disgraced sex-trafficking symbol, Somaly Mam... or really, most of what Kristof has done, really) -- that was painfully true and hilarious to see in Scoop.

Finally, the idea of a parachute journalist, a term used to describe reporters who are shipped into a country with no real knowledge of historical or political context, is literally portrayed by a journalist parachuting into Ismaelia. That's essentially what all the reporters in Ismaelia are, and Waugh's eye for harpooning the media's penchant for employing these types is very on-point.

Tin Tin is definitely a parachute journalist. And also, barely a journalist since he's never
written anything while "on assignment."

Read this if you work in media, read this if you've never worked in media and want to laugh at us media folks, and read this anyway no matter what your profession is because it's wickedly funny.

I'm reading and reviewing for Pajiba's Cannonball Read 6, so part of this review appears on their website. 

Christmas cheer in Phnom Penh

Secret Santa gifts under our anemic office Xmas tree!

Our office Christmas tree, which droops a little, is covered with joke editions of our newspaper. It sits in front of the desks of me and my colleague, so it's nice to be a little bit cut off by the busy-ness of the newsroom.

Her name is Pinglinda.

My Secret Santa got me a giant pink pig, which is kind of awesome. It's now sitting at the corner of my desk -- my colleague says it should remain there as our corner mascot. The EIC said, "You don't seem like a stuffed animal type of girl. You're too serious." He's half right, I suppose, so he gets half a credit for that.

There were plenty of other really great/hilarious gifts. Our editor-in-chief got a watch with the prime minister's face on it, one of the Khmer editors got two bottles of soju and a gangnam style T-shirt, and one of the copy-deskers with long hair (and some dreads) got a hairbrush. Booze and mugs was a favorite though for the Secret Santas. And only one person got a crappy pen! (which was incidentally in a box that was beautifully gift-wrapped) -- so we can say that it was a successful round of Secret Santa.

I've been through a couple of these office Christmas parties, but this one was actually really fun. Everyone seemed pretty excited about the gifts, which were all nicely wrapped (surprising to me, since Khmers don't really celebrate Christmas). Since we had all filed our stories, we just hung out and drank beer, shot the shit while our poor editors wrestled through our don't-give-a-fuck-because-it's-Christmas-bitches copy.

I do miss New York desperately though, and wish I could experience a cool Christmas. I guess I'd just have to make do with Phnom Penh's dropping temperatures. It's down to seventy degrees now. And it's windy!

So cold I had to wear a scarf with my thin T-shirt!

I signed up for Cannonball Read 5 for next year, so hopefully this means more posts to this blog. I've more or less neglected it (as I always do) but not having Cannonball Read this year was a real lack -- I missed being a part of the reading community and staying on top of commenting on other people's reviews. And besides, it motivated me to read, so why the fuck not, yea?

Anyway, Merry post-Christmas and Happy New Year!

(PS. Crappy image quality is due to me taking the photos with an iPhone.)

CBRIII #9: The Imperfectionists by Tom Rachman

When I left my job, one of my bosses (I had probably 3 bosses, which did not make life easy) handed me The Imperfectionists as a gift at my office's going-away party. Since I don't really read book reviews and therefore know nothing about Tom Rachman's novel, my first thought was quite defensive: What are you trying to tell me here, huh?? Then my co-workers told me that this book is actually pretty perfect for me since it chronicles the lives of the staff members of an English-language daily newspaper in Rome. After devouring the pages (figuratively, not literally - I read it in a day and a half), I can only hope that the fates of the book's characters is not what I have to look forward to.

Tucked inbetween the chapters of The Imperfectionist is the origins story of the paper, of how it was conceived by a wealthy business man who kept his passions and motivations a secret, even from his own family. Meanwhile, each chapter follows a staff member, and there is even one devoted to a faithful reader of the paper. Beginning with Llyod Burko, a freelance writer past his prime whose children from his four ex-wives refuse to have anything to do with him, Rachman sets a seriously depressing tone that is only lifted during moments of dry newspaper humor.

There is Arthur Gopal, an obituary writer who gets by with doing minimal work; Craig Menzies, a news editor who hates his job and is disrespected because the entire office knows that his girlfriend cheated on him; Hardy Benjamin, a business reporter whose name seems to be the only thing about her that commands respect as she seems willing to contend herself with mediocrity; Kathleen Solson, the editor-in-chief who reacts with indifference to the realization that her husband has cheated on her and contemplates a dalliance with an old, now-married boyfriend; Abbey Pinnola, the financial officer who has to wrestle daily with the corporate company over layoffs, and then finds herself sitting next to the copy editor she just fired on a flight to Atlanta.

Truly, the only person who seems remotely happy with his existence is Herman Cohen, the corrections editor. Though portrayed in the beginning as a crotchety old man who nitpicks on the mistakes that appear in the paper, he is the only one who is happy, without compromise, with his life at the paper and at home. (By the way, Herman's entry in the newspaper's style book for the word "literally" reads: "This word should be deleted. All too often, actions described as 'literally' did not happen at all. As in, 'He literally jumped out of his skin.' No, he did not... Eliminate on sight.")

All of which made me very nervous and apprehensive while reading this. I'm old enough now to know that happiness is relative and is often a work in progress throughout my adult life. It's bad enough that the journalism industry stereotypes perpetuate that every working journalist is either an alcoholic or a drug user who has probably been divorced three times. But to see all these characters portrayed as cynical, un-self-aware, sad, desperate - well, it made me wonder what the up side is to my chosen profession.

Probably the most depressing part of this book concerns its protaganist, the unnamed newspaper. It was disheartening to read of the newspaper's glory days under the first and second publisher, while alternately experiencing the sad encounters of the individuals who are now running it into its eventual demise (Oops, spoiler. But you probably saw it coming.) While reading this, I kept aching for more - more of a closure for many of the characters, more happiness for some of the saddest, un-self-respecting individuals, and just more of the newspaper lore. This is a well-written and poignant novel, but if you are a journalist, it doesn't give you much hope.

CBRIII #5: Boiling Mad: Inside Tea Party America by Kate Zernike

Late last year, I had the chance to attend a talk by Kate Zernike in which she discussed her book, Boiling Mad, with Frank Rich, the New York Times columnist, and Sam Tenenhaus, the NYT Book Review editor who is also a historian. It was extremely illuminating because Zernike had been following the Tea Party beat for the Times since it started soon after Obama's election, and she was able to give a very measured and analytical view of the Tea Partiers. This is very different from how one-note the media has been covering them, whether if it's their portrayal as uber-patriots or as a political punchline.

Also interesting to me was how she was reluctant to say that the rise of the Tea Party can be attributed to racism. When questioned by a black man in the audience about how Obama's skin color could have something to do with the rise of a predominantly white party who say things like, "Take back our America," Zernike stuck to her guns and said that though racism is probably an unacknowledged motivator, the catalyst was really the depression and economic crisis.



In Boiling Mad, she remains steadfast in her reporting that the number one reason for the existence of the Tea Party is because of the failing economy, but that does not mean she ignores the elephant in the room. Probably the first thing she tells us is that the Tea Party, as a whole, is not a united party. They may have bonded together under that label because of the economy or their dissatisfaction with the president, but their desires differ so much from county to state.

There are contradictions within the movement, and the Tea Partiers themselves are aware of it. A 62-year-old Tea Party supporter may be at a town hall protesting the growth of government during the bank bailouts, saying that the government has expanded too much and are infringing on an American's rights – and yet be reaping the benefits of Social Security, while acknowledging that she might one day be on Medicare because of heart trouble in her health history. The younger Tea Partiers tend to be strict constitutionalists, believing that the government should only step in where the Constitution allows it – yet anyone who reads the constitution the way a creationist reads the Bible will have reconcile themselves with slavery and oppression of women. The younger supporters' main beef is on the spending of taxpayers' money on programs and bailouts for large corporations that they believe should fend for themselves.

More than anything, Boiling Mad served as an insight into individual Americans who feel like their government had failed them. My reactions while reading this ranged from having an almost anthropological interest (at least in how it would affect the US political landscape) to wanting to throw the book across the room. Though my political sympathies tend to lean to the left, I am open-minded conservative points of views. However, some of the claims made by Tea Party supporters were just flat-out wrong. Every time Zernike chronicled someone saying that health care should come from charity and not from the government because Americans are the best people in the world, I wanted to pull my hair out. (Also another Tea Party-ism: "America has the best health care in the world." Have they never gotten sick?) And perhaps that might not be flat-out wrong and could be subjective, but I thoroughly disagreed with their philosophy of stamping their feet like petulant children when they cannot get what they want.

Zernike is extremely, painstakingly fair to the Tea Partiers – but even her efforts to remain objective cannot hide the fact that this movement is made up of dissatisfied people who just want what they want, regardless of what others need. When a Tea Partier says (and this is repeated oft throughout), "It's the We the People movement and my representative does not represent me!" one has to wonder how the representative got voted into office. According to Zernike, there are several zealots who quit their jobs or got laid off and decided devote their time entirely to organizing rallies and protests and "spreading the message"; but one has to wonder how they can be protesting on the failing economy when they are doing nothing to keep it going. They call themselves hardworking Americans yet they seem only to be working hardest at the yelling and screaming.

This book was at times infuriating, at times illuminating, and always engaging. Zernike is dealing with a very difficult topic and she did a great job straddling the line between objectivity and criticism. I was hoping my review of the book would portray the Tea Partiers in as fair a light, especially after reading the book. But since knowing more about them, I've actually come away disliking the movement more than I did before.

As a palate cleanser to the image above, here is the poster I made when I went to the Rally to Restore Sanity. Thanks to a Pajiban who came up with it!

CBRIII #1: War by Sebastian Junger

Sebastian Junger (left) and Tim Hetherington in eastern Afghanistan’s Korengal Valley.
(Credit: Courtesy of Tim Hetherington)

Right around the time that Restrepo was released in selected New York City theaters, Sebastian Junger's book, War, was published. No doubt this book is the literary companion to its cinematic counterpart, directed by both Junger and Tim Hetherington, a videographer and photojournalist (and the movie is now available to watch instantly on Netflix). However, with War, Junger is not just looking at a platoon stationed in the most dangerous outpost in Afghanistan, the Korengal Valley. He is also exploring the nature of combat warfare and has divided his compelling account of the months he spent embedded with the second platoon of Battle Company (part of the 173rd Airborne Brigade) into three parts: Fear; Killing; and Love.

Though the book is very expansive and I took my time reading it, I've decided to distill my review to what was most memorable to me in each section. These are not necessarily specific to the Second Platoon's combat experience, but is more often a general look at a soldier's mentality.

For example, in Fear, Junger describes some of the studies done to combat soldiers to figure out what goes on in a human being's body when he is in a high-stress situation, as combat soldiers are apt to be in. A study involved measuring the amount of cortisol – a hormone secreted from the adrenal gland during stressful times that sharpens a person's mind and concentration – in soldiers' blood and urine several times a day during a period which the platoon braced themselves for an expected attack. They had received intel that the overwhelming force would likely lead to their base being overran by the enemy. As the fateful day of the attack drew closer, the study found that the men's cortisol levels dropped. This was surprising as one would expect that their adrenaline levels would be higher as they anticipate this attack. However, when the supposed day of the attack passed without an incident, the cortisol levels started rising rapidly. As it turns out, these men were more at ease facing a known threat than facing an unknown one.

I found this interesting, since behind this is a concept of courage. Being highly-trained individuals whose sole purpose is to kill, these men are able to push aside their fear when they know that there is a fight coming, even if it is highly probable that they would be defeated. A mark of a good combat soldier is not about being unafraid in the face of danger, but being able to still function like a combat soldier despite feeling scared to death. "There are different kinds of strengths," wrote Junger "And containing fear may be the most profound, the one without which armies couldn't function and wars couldn't be fought (God forbid.)"

In Killing, Junger confesses one aspect of war rarely talked about: War is exciting. Soldiers and journalists don't want to play up that part of it because of the horrors it visits upon nations, men and families, but there is no thrill or high quite like it for combat soldiers. Many of the men in the Second Platoon talk about how they are not sure they will be able to return to civilian life after their deployment is up because there is a great disconnect between being caught in an enemy's crossfire and doing something mundane like balancing your check book. Thriving on the constant adrenaline rush, it would be difficult for them to find a normal day-to-day job that sates the need of feeling accomplished. There were many questions raised about a combat soldier's future after the war, but really no answers.

It is also in this section that Junger highlights the bravery of Sergeant Salvatore Guinta, the recipient of the Medal of Honor, which is the military's highest decoration for valor. In 2007, Guinta was patrolling at night in the Korengal Valley with his platoon, about 18 people, and they were ambushed by insurgents. The ambush is known as an "L-shaped ambush" and can result in a handful of men wiping out an entire platoon if done effectively. However, under intense gunfire, Guinta was able to properly assess the situation to save his platoon mates and prevent one of them from being taken by a Taliban fighter. Below is a 60 minute interview with Lara Logan after Guinta received the Medal of Honor:



And here is an interview with Stephen Colbert for some levity.

The Colbert Report	Mon - Thurs 11:30pm / 10:30c
Salvatore Giunta
www.colbertnation.com
Colbert Report Full Episodes Political Humor & Satire Blog March to Keep Fear Alive

Though the platoon suffered casualties – the man that Guinta saved from the insurgent died shortly after – this was considered a victory because no one was taken during this ambush.

Stripped to its essence, combat is a series of qick decisions and rather precise actions carried out in concert with ten or twelve other men. In that sense it's much more like football than, say, like a gang fight.

Which leads me to the final section, Love. As brutal and destructive combat warfare is, it is also impossible for a platoon to succeed if the men are not ready to pledge their lives for one another. Throughout the book, Junger describes some of the physical tussles that these men get into (for example, a way to welcome a soldier into the platoon is by ganging up on him and beating him to a bloody pulp) and the insults they toss at each other. But at the end of the day, when faced with the pressures of an insurgent attack, these men are ready to put themselves in danger if only to stop the enemy from shooting at their friends. This paragraph will explain it better:

Combat fog obscures your fate – obscures when and where you might die – and from that unknown is born a desperate bond between the men. That bond is the core experience of combat and the only thing you can absolutely count on. The Army might screw you and your girlfriend might dump you and the enemy might kill you, but the shared commitment to safeguard one another's lives is unnegotiable and only deepens with time. The willingness to die for another person is a form of love that even religions fail to inspire, and the experience of it changes a person profoundly. What the Army sociologists, with their clipboards and their questions and their endless meta-analyses, slowly came to understand was that courage was love. In war, neither could exist without the other, and that in a sense they were just different ways of saying the same thing.

I'm really glad I read this book, if only because now I have more of an insight into a combat soldier's mind. Compared to The Forever War by Dexter Filkins, Junger focuses more on the soldier and the ins and outs of combat warfare. There are some tidbits of how his role as a reporter plays in the platoon (such as when they offer him a gun to use for protection or when he wrestles with the notion that whether or not helping to throw a grenade means a line has been crossed) but overall, Junger does not dwell on his personal introspection. He also does not bother with the politics of the war, be them American or Afghan, and his storytelling does not wander far from the Korengal Valley. In this narrow, tightly-paced account, Junger is not only able to show these young men as ruthless, cussing, killing machines, he is able to to connect all the terrible parts of this war to love. And that really is something.

The photo above shows an American bunker in the Korangal Valley, June 2008.
(Credit: Courtesy of Tim Hetherington)

In This Post, I Talk Aimlessly About Books

I started a draft about my D.C./Texas trip back in the first week of November. I had images of tour groups on segways alongside all the marbled monuments and wrote briefly about how I thought segways were lazy and that no tour guide in New York would be caught dead in it (Seriously. The pedestrians would trample 'em – we stroll faster than segways on full speed.) I put quite a bit of effort into it and considered publishing the part I wrote but decided against it.

Truthfully, I've been very deflated lately. Cannonball Read 2 is over – it ended on November 1 – and I no longer have to read and write reviews on a deadline, so my blog now seems to lack purpose. The Pajiba staff highlighted the end of CBR2 and I was happy for everyone who made it to their 52nd book, and even to those who got close. Hell, I'm happy for anyone who tried (writing reviews is fucking hard.) But it made me sad that I couldn't bring myself to really care considering how excited I was about it in the beginning.

I have continued reading though. At first, I thought I would continue the Read until I reach the 52nd. But I prefer reading without pressure and reading without keeping track of what number that book is, so I threw that idea out.

Though I've mentioned that writing reviews are tough, I do enjoy them because sometimes I might not discover I have a certain thought about a book until after I've teased it out Blogger's blank space. So as much as I can (as much as I am motivated to), I think I should try and review the books I want to review, and even those that I don't necessarily want to review, but that I think might be interesting to others.

You know what I hate about writing blogs? How many times I say the word "I." It's incredibly self-indulgent and I often find myself trying to think up of synonyms for "I" without the sentence sounding awkward.

This digression aside, here are the books that have been keeping me preoccupied the past month:

Cat's Cradle by Kurt Vonnegut
Obama's Wars by Bob Woodward
The Hunger Games by Suzanne Collins

I don't remember Cat's Cradle; the only thing that saved Woodward's book from his bone-dry writing is the interesting insight we get to the White House on Afghanistan; and The Hunger Games was good and fun, but no Golden Compass. I will, however, still give the other two books in the trilogy a chance – I love Young Adult books (thanks for recommending them, Blakspring and Jen. K!)

Currently, I am reading War by Sebastian Junger. I am enjoying it immensely and I can't wait to write a review of it (this is where the reader says, "Hah, if that happens.") Junger was one of the directors of Restrepo, a documentary he directed with Tim Hetherington about a platoon of American soldiers on an outpost in the Korengal Valley in Afghanistan. I have yet to see the documentary, and the book is giving me serious regret for missing it when it came out during the summer.

There's not much else I can or will say about my life. I don't write about it here a lot - really, there's not much to write about. You know why I enjoy reading? Because, in most books, there is often a sense of purpose with each character, be they fictional or non-. That's why there are whole chapters written about them, about their adventures and failures. The characters may have failed, but they failed so spectacularly because they cared so much. If they win, or if there is a favorable conclusion, then more power to them.

Doomed Lovers At The Train Station

Last Saturday, a friend gave me tickets to see the Broadway play, Brief Encounter. I knew nothing about it and went into the Studio 54 theater completely blind. My initial judgment of it was that it was very British and far too quirkiwhimsilicious (that's on the bad side of quirky where the whimsy feels forced).

By the end of the hour and a half, I was completely sold. Most plays try to transport you to a different time and place with the costumes and appropriate props, and director Emma Rice certainly had the stage decked out with pre-World War II nostagia. But it was really the intensity of the emotions portrayed by the actors and the literal interpretation of two lovers getting caught up in a torrent of emotions that left my insides feeling strangely raw.

For those who do not know, Brief Encounter is based on a Noel Coward and David Lean film from 1945 of the same name. Laura, a housewife, meets Alec, a young doctor who is married as well, by chance and they fall in love. The story is incredibly simply, but this does not diminish its tragic end. It's strange that in today's films we have to have something huge and substantial happen to the characters - someone's dying of cancer or there's a huge betrayal or there is a great sacrifice - for us to feel like it was something worth crying over.

With Laura and Alec, it was simply that they fell in love but could not be together because both had their own families. In the end, they had to "be sensible" – keeping their feelings buttoned up in their stiff period costumes, yet knowing that their hearts were irrevocably broken. I left the darkened theater feeling both alive and numbed by the sheer onslaught of emotions, and was astonished that I could feel these things after having initially felt disdain for the two lovers.

It was such a pleasant coincidence then that this week's New York Magazine did an article on the design of the play. The piece included this sketch below, which was created by Neil Murray, the scene-and costume designer. I think it perfectly encapsulates the tragic romance.

The Food They Carry

This post is dedicated to Jen K. Stay safe in Iraq.

Ashley Gilbertson – a war photographer who I recognized as Dexter Filkin's colleague in his book, The Forever War (BEST BOOK EVER) – recently wrote an interesting article in The New York Times about the types of food that the troops in Iraq carry. Each country's combat ration hold practical items, but there are also foods that serve to remind a soldier of his home. The American Meals Ready to Eat (M.R.E.) include peanut butter and tortillas; the Swedes and Norwegians have cod stew with sour cream and potato; the Germans have goulash.

Gilbertson also put together a neat interactive where he photographed each country's combat ration and their foods against a lighted-up surface.* I included some of my favorites below. If you have some time, you should take a look at the article and click through the interactive.

United States - I love that they get skittles.

South Korea - Of course there's kimchi.

Ukraine - I really liked how bland and drab this country's food looked compared to all the other countries.

Ashley Gilbertson wrote:

In combat, eating is often the only good thing about a day. When a soldier or marine sits down to warm up his M.R.E., he’s not being shot at, he’s not losing friends. It’s almost a ritual, and the very act of opening one of these packages suggests safety, however brief it may be.

*It's sort of reminiscent of what David Littschwager did with his One Cubic Foot project in National Geographic - where he went to different locations and stuck an alloted space of about cubic foot, then took living organism out to photograph them and made it into a photo collage.

All photos by Ashley Gilbertson/VII Network, For The New York Times.

Cannonball Read #31: The Forever War by Dexter Filkins

When I was in college, I took an international reporting class taught by this unforgettable woman. She began her reporting career by covering the Yugoslav wars in the 1990s, and has since traveled all over Europe and the Middle East as a freelance journalist. I remember her recounting a story about getting caught in crossfire and catching a bullet on her leg while trying to interview a dictator. They kept telling her that she had to leave, get out of there, take care of her leg – but she insisted on completing the interview because she was worried she wouldn't get the chance anytime soon. The only reason why the dictator even answered her questions was because he was so impressed by her, she said.

Though I admire the career that my professor has and thought she was a fantastic teacher, there was absolutely no doubt in my mind that she was nuts. And that was what I kept thinking while reading The Forever War by Dexter Filkins. The man is an amazing reporter and writer, and I am crushing on him so hard right now. But he has to be so incredibly fucked up to be able to do what he has done for so long.

Picture a soldier who comes home from war and who has lost soem of his friends in battle. He probably has some form of PTSD and is, understandably, withdrawn from his former life. What Filkins experiences seems so much more insane and unfathomable. Not only is he caught in its crossfire, he has to put himself at an emotional distance from the deaths and mayhem so that he can write about it for the paper. Filkins may not be shooting anyone, but he's certainly seen many people go down, and he has even had a soldier die because of him. He has come so close and escaped death so many times that he sometimes has a dangerous sense of recklessness. During his moments of arrogance, he believes that he is invincible – he will never be shot down/snipered dead/kidnapped for a ransom.

The craziest thing? Filkins is able to gather all these memories and pull them together into a beautifully moving account of one of deadliest wars in our recent history. If you have read any of his pieces for The New York Times, they are often very straight-forward, journalese articles of who, what, when, why. This certainly exists in his book, but the gravity of the war is enhanced by how very human all the players are. The marines that he and his photographer, Ashley, followed in Falluja; the insurgents who never quite know how to handle an American who is not in the military; the people who plead to him to tell their stories; the suicide bombers who might not have known what they had signed up for; Filkins' Iraqi translators and drivers, caught between their world and their work, who have saved his life more times than he can count – I read it all with a knot in my throat.

This has been the most affecting book so far during the Cannonball Read. Each time I got to my stop while reading it on the train, I always felt like I was being slapped, jolted into full-consciousness. How is it that the world I live in is real, and thousands of miles away there can be people fighting and dying and hurting and pleading – and that's real too? The disconnect is just too great.

(PS. The New York Times Magazine published an article that was adapted from book, if you're are interested in taking a look at it.)

Photo Ashley Gilbertson for The New York Times.

My week thus far in pictures...

On Tuesday, I went to Bryant Park after work to unwind with my crossword. I had this mental image of myself lying sprawled on the lawn with all the reflective buildings gazing down on me as I raced through the empty boxes with my pen, finishing the crossword before dusk. In my Bryant Park fantasy, I was intellectual and content.

The reality: The lawn was closed so I sat on a hard, butt-numbing wooden bench with no back. I was almost stung by a bee. A couple sitting in front of me seemed to think that they were in a cheap motel room. I gave up on my crossword early – I'm not even smart enough to get through Monday's very-easy edition – and almost fell asleep doing it because 3:30 a.m. was the time I went to bed the night before. At least I got the "reflective buildings" part right.

On Wednesday, I decided to go to Central Park to try and catch the Black Keys on SummerStage. I didn't have tickets to the concert (that would have required spending money) nor did I really have a plan. I tried to get someone to go with me but no one really wanted to stand outside a concert venue looking in, trying to get a glimpse of a band they don't really care about. So I went by myself. I found a giant rock outside the concert area that had a ton of people on it and there was a spot on it with a clear ("clear" is a relative term) view of the stage, so I was just perched there. This would be the second day in a row that my butt lost feeling.

I don't have a photo of this, so this will have to suffice:

Yes, I'm cool - why do you ask?

I actually didn't think it was that weird for me to be there by myself, but other people did because they asked me why I was there by myself. I had zero expectations for this, did minimal planning, and in the end felt blessed that I was able to hear everything, much less see 'em.

Here's my view:

They sang a lot of stuff from their new album, which I don't really know but it was still really good. Toward the end, they played "Your Touch," and it was great. I don't usually go to concerts because I just don't really know music, but when I do know and like a song at the rare concert that I attend (peer in from outside of), I feel like the band is playing that song just. For. Me. It feels fucking awesome.

All in all, The Black Keys rocked, even from a distance, and I think next time I'll actually shell out money to see them.

Finally, I saw this today:

Media rivalries always strike me as petty, but they are also hilarious. Probably because they are so petty. Although, this message probably would haven been more effective if it wasn't parked right outside the Times building. "Ooh, yea, you really told 'em, NYT."

Quick Ones

As I said in the previous post, my best was in New York for two weeks. A more detailed post of her visit will come soon.

I caught Inception opening night and it was amazing. Despite my high expectations, I was still impressed. I cannot wait to rewatch it when it comes out on DVD. I am also nursing a serious crush on Joseph Gordon-Levitt - it hasn't been this bad since Brick.

I also watched Top Gun for the first time - it was projected onto bedsheets tacked up in the yard of a friend's place in Bushwick. It was fantastic and I'm so glad I live in New York in the summer.

Things I am not glad about: this insane heat wave.

Last bit: One of journalism's greats just passed away. I wish I knew more about Daniel Schorr and his work when he was alive. Thankfully, my ignorance can countered by all the great stories being told about him all over the Internet.