Billy Ray asked me what was my Simple Emotional Journey

I said, “have you ever wanted to be someone other than you?” or “the difference between the person you should be and the person you are?”

If you could be anyone, would you be you?

Fo shizzle. 

When you’re productive, you forget about the little things.

like that your head hurts when you stare at the screen for too long

or that if you don’t get a nap mid day you’re crankier than a teething baby. 

You forget that you’re tired of being tired, 

that work is work,

and that your work is art

so when you sit down to write

all you can think about is how to sell

how to make it work

how to pay it off

“it” becomes a constructive being

a monster that wields power in peculiar ways

“it” can go any where it pleases without your consent

“it” does as “it” pleases, and when “it’s” overworked and overwrought

with over thinking and over doing

“it” freezes and refuses to move

like an engine rusted over from years of neglect.

you forget these things when you’re productive. 

you forget what misery feels like when you’re productive

that your lungs refuse to expand

and your breath is cut premature

because the rope on your throat tightens

and you forget when you’re productive the feeling of uselessness

you forget that you’ve been sitting on your ass for years

doing nothing

feeling

sorry

for yourself. 

like an asshole. 

so be productive. and don’t be an idiot. 

Today I decided I wanted to play Starcraft. 

It’s sunny out. A perfect day to go for a run, to meet up with friends, to see a movie, or walk a dog. Instead, I’m inside, blinds drawn, a dim IKEA light keeping me company. Outside my roommate is using our grill. And while he cooks up lunch, I’m sipping on a beer waiting for Battle.net to find me a game.

Beer is good. Starcraft is good. Can Beer and Starcraft be good together? 

Lets find out. 

I’ve been playing for three hours now. I’m taking a break to let this program called xSplit so I can stream my progress… 

five more hours to go…

11pm… 

It’s like high school all over again. 

My parents hated videogames. My father stormed into my little office when he lost his job and ripped my headphones off during a scrim. My microphone picked up most of it. I held my finger on the vent button so my team could hear him yell. 

This happened a lot.

He yelled at me for wasting time, berated me for my bad grades. He lost his job so he can scream, right? His Piedmont peers had kids leaving for Harvard. I was getting straight C’s. He questioned if I was smart enough to go to college. 

I’m a kid from East London. I remember kids climbing the roofs of the secondary school next to me, and them throwing eggs at our door. I was beat up and called a chink at the age of six and told to do their homework. I remember lab coats and University food, and I remember the greasy pleasure of fish and chips from the Underground Station. I remember my swimming lessons at the Y, and watching kids get high at my after school program.

Did he think a high school with more white people would change that? 

I hated Piedmont. The stench of clean air. The small streets. The banality of it all. The talk of the town the high school football game. We watched where we parked because the police had nothing else to do. I remember my friends avoiding Oakland because the city would eat us alive, the blonde hair blue eyed assholes who would bully me one minute then run away from any black guy who sagged his pants. 

I detested the triviality of suburban life. Habits of a poor city kid die hard. It’s a miracle I’m in grad school.

I tried to defend myself, telling him the game was important. It built up my social skills, sharpening team making decisions, managing money for servers and dealing with group dynamics that come with a five (18 year old) man team. 

We won a tournament once. We won some money. He didn’t care. 

I guess what I’m trying to say is — you thought I’d fail. I was addicted to video games, and the only way to solve it was to yell and smack and berate. 

look at me now bitches. 

SOPA and PIPA — no matter how poorly devised and how widely despised, address a problem which affects all of us in the entertainment industry: Piracy.

It’s true that with every TV show I download, that’s potential ad revenue lost. Every movie I have on my hard drive is 12 dollars I didn’t spend on a movie ticket, and 20 dollars I didn’t spend on the DVD. All this means less revenue, less revenue means less product, less product means less interesting product.

It’s also true that these piracy guru’s, such as Megaupload’s Kim Dotcom, live like kings for providing nothing more than server space and bandwidth. People like him get rich off of other people’s hard work.

The blow that has been delivered to the film and music industries is real. But I contend that the business model of media today is hopelessly outdated. Piracy is essential to reaching a world wide audience. Students in China are taught to watch American TV shows to learn English. The Daily Show reaches people in Iran. American Idol has been spun off into countless other national singing competitions. Imagine a TV show that reaches worldwide. That is the power of the internet.

One of the things that is holding us back is Bandwidth.

I wonder if anyone reads these things. 

Not that anyone should — no one wants to hear words about nothing, a story with no air, limp like a balloon that is shrunken. She asked me about my good luck charm.

“does it really give you good luck” 

And i tell her no, but

in the past where luck

was bad,

Months where coffee spilt onto white pressed shirts

of cars side swiping me

parking tickets

Stubbed toes and twisted ankles. 

I lost a war once, 

where the enemy was close

enough to breath down my chest

Bad luck hung around me 

like a fly

too fast to be swatted. 

And so I formed

A bracelet made of red plastic

superglued and knotted together like

a rope. 

And I stopped worrying about my luck. 

I said. The scent of stale cigarettes mingles with the clutter of our spot. 

She looked around. The restaurant we chose served Chinese smothered in corn starched sauce. She picked up a piece of General Tao’s Chicken and let it slip out of her chopsticks. “Lunch,” she said.

“Right,” i said. The food had chilled into a syrupy gelatinized mess, so that plastic like skins formed over the food. She had the same thought I did. The restaurant, the shitty chinese food, the chinese waiters who came to this country in hopes for prosperity, the chairs that had a leg too short, and the soy sauce bottle with a chip in it. Whatever this was, it wasn’t lunch. 

“I really don’t know why we come here,” she said. She played with her hair, a nervous smile. “I mean, it’s Chinese, so—”

“I’d like it?” I said. 

She mutters to herself, mainly to keep my brooding at bay. She avoids my eye contact, because I know my eyes shine with darkness. “You’re not stupid,” I tell her. “We’re here because you want to let me down easy,” I tell her. 

What do you mean? she asks. Her face turns to stone but she manages to eek out a smile. “Why so serious?”

I consider my words.  

“I want you to know that I’m not mad at you.”  I say. “This situation. You’re going to give me a line of bullshit that you’ve given guys before, about how you want to be friends, and how it’s really just you and not me. But I know it’s just because you’re not interested. And normally I’d be fine with that. To each their own. But this. The lunches. The dinners. The errands and time and effort. The work I put in to make you happy. I’m mad at myself for thinking you were different.” 

“You’re my best friend—” 

“Shut up,” I say. 

To be continued. 

A thick fog clouds Hollywood Blvd at 3 in the morning. The streets are empty, yet life exists within walls of clubs and hotel rooms. Cars drift by and people retreat into velvet carpeted hotels. It’s too late for bars to be open, too early for afterparties to stop. The bus fills with immigrant workers — a buzz of Spanish floats through the air and mingles with the fog. 

For a writer, these are the nights we live for. The sleepless nights where neither ambien nor bourbon are the right choice, but brisk walks through the cold cutting air are. Dim street lights and bright neon ones light our way. These are the streets that Paul Newman and James Dean made famous. They are the same streets where ambition come to die. As we walk to Hollywood and Vine, the bones of past dreams crush under our feet. 

The Mexicans sell 3 dollar hot dogs wrapped in bacon, cooked on a shopping cart with a griddle welded on top of it. Caramelized peppers and onions melt in the bacon juice, a bun ready to soak up the grease. Nothing is better after a night of heavy drinking. 

We walk on top of the Hollywood stars — tiles where celebrities from past and present are honored and celebrated. These are names that mean nothing to me, and so much to others. I wonder if this is the fate of everyone — to become nothing more than a name on a tile, honored by few, meaningless to others. Fame is nothing more than a blip on humanities radar.

We reach the end of Holylwood and Highland. Beyond that are the homes of LA’s many residents. In the few short hours of night left, they sleep, the nights stories wafting past them like a cloud of fog. We turn around and head back. 

She asked. We were both high, the sun and moon indistinguishable from floating orbs that hung by string in the sky.
I tell her she isn’t what I need. A partner in crime, a co-conspirator, she fuels dark flames. My skin burns.
I tell her I don’t need a friend. I tell her I need someone,

To save me from myself.