#IAMSORRY

The bad news is, I'm not going to talk about my experience sitting across a small table from Shia LaBeouf with a bag over his head. What happened in the room is entirely what each person made out of it, sharing my experience wouldn't do the show justice. All you need to know is I was moved enough (or fooled enough – your pick) to not feel the need to share what happened in there with the internet.

#IAMSORRY was not about plagiarism or apology or forgiveness. It was about waiting in a fucking line. I spent those 48 hours living a role in a performance art piece, unaware of my participation until it was over. I want to be clear, this is not a comprehensive account of my line experience at all. There is a lot that happened that I don't even know how to begin to explain. But if you know me ~personally~, you might get a good story out of me one day.

It began as a joke. I planned on going just to get a selfie with Shia to give to my mom, who adores him. It'd be hilarious and a good story to tell, I reasoned. On the 13th, Maddie and I got to the gallery at 9am, it opened at 11. I had brought a book to read for class, foolishly thinking there would be nothing else to do all day. We started talking to the people around us in line. Two dudes from the east coast and a guy called Chris were in front of us, a student from Occidental named Matt, a woman and her daughter (who turned out to be evangelical Christians), and Disneyland's most stanned Peter Pan face character (ALSO EVANGELICAL?!) were behind us. As the day wore on and we slowly, slowly, inched closer to the door, our group expanded and started playing games, singing, and generally having a great time. We even started a band! (#ShitGhost2014 #ShitGhostCoast2Coast) We had such a good time in line that the next day, someone came up to me to ask if "the rest of our band was coming too" and another dude overheard a line-goer talking about us. (#OurImpact tbh)

Shit Ghost aka The Clique

One day, I will be able to tell my grandkids that my classiest moment in life was drinking beer out a McDonald's cup at 10 in the morning on a Thursday on Beverly. Or maybe it was drinking straight from a 40 at 8am the next day? Or peeing in an alleyway behind an art gallery at 4am? Or getting stoned with a bunch of strangers behind said art gallery in broad daylight? I guess all the inebriation was a way to pass the time.

s/o to Kearney's Market, where all alcohol was bought. Great family run business, not judgmental.

At one point, Ray Jay showed up and tried to cut the line, which immediately resulted in everyone heckling him. Hard. Yelling "fuck you, Ray Jay" felt pretty good, until people started taking pictures with him and a few members of Shit Ghost decided to get in on that and "fuck you, Ray Jay" turned into, "RAY JAY, HUGE FAN!"

JOEL STEIN ANECDOTE TIME: 

After getting high, I sat down behind Joel Stein, who was standing. He began exchanging words with the evangelical woman and my first thought was that they were having a religious debate. And it stressed me the fuck out. Unable to hear their words, I watched them speak until he turned back around. My heart was beating out of my chest. I needed to know what I had just seen, why there was so much negativity in it. Near weepy, I tapped Joel Stein's ankle and he immediately squatted down to my level. I mumbled about how I was worried about him and the woman, how I wanted to know what was going on between them, and that I was very anxious about the whole thing.

"What are you anxious about? About what you're gonna do in there?"

I grasped at my heart and just kept telling myself not to cry and not to tell him I was high.

"No, about what's happening between you and that woman. Are you fighting? My heart's racing right now."

He laughed and said that he and the woman were friends, they were just discussing what they would if [didn't catch this, too relieved they weren't arguing] and that they looked like they were confrontational because they're both from the east coast. I still felt nearly weepy. I thought of how hard I would cry in front of Shia. Later, I tweeted about how Shit Ghost had talked to him about his Generation Me piece and I called it a confrontation when I guess really I should have said "v minor heart to heart"??? IDK, I was pretty drunk at the time, sorry!!! Anyway, Joel Stein searched his name on twitter that day, as I assume he does every day (yeah, us Millennials are def the most self-obsessed generation) and replied to me. Joel Stein, if you are reading this, as I bet good money you are, I luv u like a brother and I grew up watching you on I Love The 70's/80's/90's etc and I hope you write about me in your article about the show. Glad you weren't fighting with that lady.

did not @ u, bb

As fun as the first day was, it was still pretty weird. There was point at which everyone was discussing what Shia would do or wouldn't do or how long he needed to recharge before every session and any passerby would have thought we were in a cult, discussing our leader. It was so jarring, so blatantly cult-y, and yet I too joined in on the speculation.

Waiting in line, we were famous. Camera crews were there to get b-roll and interview people on what they were going to do. Reporters were recording interviews on their iphones. I saw a few civilian-looking people taking notes. I was taking notes. In a world in which any and everything now has a thinkpiece, blog post, Buzzfeed article, and/or personal essay written on it, here was another thing that we will all one day include in our shitty memoirs.

While Thursday's line was jovial even until the end, when Shit Ghost realized that with 15 minutes til 6, we would not make it in and all brought it in for a goodbye huddle, Friday's line was rife with tension and weird vibes. Maddie and I thought we were ridiculous for showing up at 4 in the morning, but the first people had arrived at 2. Around 6, there was a confrontation regarding someone trying to cut. By 7 or so, a girl further down the line started telling us to write our numbers on our hands so there could be no cutting. When she assigned me my number (10), I told her I refused to be given a number. I tweeted something about the line becoming an exercise in self-policing. It felt very Lord of the Flies.

This is a boring picture to prove how early we were there.

I was on the verge of tears the entire day. The people we were now surrounded by gave off manic energy, possibly a result of pretty much all of them being on their third day in line. Some of the only relief came from the all girl's Jewish high school across the street. A group of students threw a note down from a window and then interrogated me about what we were waiting for when I ran across the street to pick it up.

"What are you doing? Are you bored? Are you unemployed? Why are you doing this?"

All those fucking reporters, and these girls were asking the hard questions.

Was almost hit by a car for this note.

A woman tried to cut with us and the situation was only resolved right before I went in (by Ken, the best security guard I've ever met, who gave me a very VERY comforting hug before I left). I had to sit down on the sidewalk and collect myself. A gaggle of the bad-vibe-people came over to see what was going on and I yelled at them to back off. I felt like I was drowning. Needless to say, the second I walked into the gallery, I started to sob.

Of course, OF COURSE, one of the first things I see when walking out of the show is Andy Dick, clearly fucked up beyond belief, trying to get in through the back door. As Connie would say, "Only LA."

Honestly, the whole thing feels like an LA injoke. One that probably not many people will remember in the next decade. But it feels important now, to me. If you didn't wait in line, you didn't experience anything. (Looking at you, Michael Yo.) If you didn't wait in line, you walked into a room, chose an object, and sat down across a table from a guy with a bag over his head. I took this bizarre opportunity not to abuse someone, as many people did, but to take a legit spiritual journey that ended in catharsis so intense I felt renewed afterwards. There's no way the dynamics of the line were, in any way, part of the artist's intent. It was a completely separate experience to the art, but still dependent on and integral to it. I, once again, do not have the language to explain what I want to say. But my goodness, what a ridiculous 48 hours.

out of con-texts

Every few weeks, or some measurement of time that suits my on-the-go lifestyle, I'll post up my favorite texts I've recently received. No names, no explanations, just the text that meant a lot to me for some reason.

dumb los angeles

Had a fun as hell Saturday night. Lexi came down from Santa Cruz to TU with me and Maddie. (A quick note on Lexi: I used to think I was a fun/funny person until I met her and found out what a real fun/funny person is. She literally makes a party everywhere she goes and I love her.) While we were waiting for Lexi to arrive, Maddie and I had a jam sesh (oh, did I tell y'all that together we're a band called The Dylars?) and cracked up over this article on the Dumb Starbucks that had just opened up that day in Los Feliz. Of course we had to go see it.

It was closed, but it still made me laugh hella hard. I heard people were waiting in line for 1.5 hours+ today. Like, I appreciate this for how literally dumb it is and how it's a ~critique on corporate coffee culture or w/e but people who are jizzing over themselves about how brilliant this is are doing a bit much. As are the people saying this is Banksy. (Not that Banksy is an artiste to be taken v srsly. Everyone out of high school knows he kinda sucks, right? Right.) I just think this is a funny and interesting thing and I respect whoever put the money into this.

We then made our way to Short Stop in Echo Park. All the things I've heard of this place indicated it was a mix of every kind of person you could meet in LA and it definitely was. I gave my number to a dude who told me he had bud and three pizzas at his place that he wanted me to have (so generous) and he ended up sending me his mixtape and then tried to call me this morning??? Made two best friends in the bathroom, a few on the dance floor, a few after the place closed, and had the following convo with a hipster dude wearing two long shirts that went past his knees and Timberlands:

Me: Sweet outfit.

Hipster: This outfit costs more than your rent.

Me: You're probably right. I like how you don't bother to tie your Timberlands.

Hipster: They're actually called [some bullshit I couldn't care less about].

Me: I don't care.

Hipster: [gestures to my outfit] One day, you'll figure out your style and you'll stop dressing like this.

Me: Whatever.

Hipster: [extends his fist to be pounded] Real recognize real.

I fucking hate Los Angeles. 

I think I say that as much as I say "I fucking love Los Angeles." Everyone must go through that. When we met up with Lexi, she had just unnecessarily taken the bus but said it was cool because she loves LA. And then when we got tried to find parking she said, "I fucking hate LA." 

Where else are you going to conversations with asshole hipsters and share cigarettes with creepy screenwriters and dance to a DJ who looks like Allen Ginsberg? Where else can you go to a Dumb Starbucks or Swingers or get dirty dogs at 2:30 in the morning? What other city can make you feel simultaneously fiercely loyal to and absolutely repelled by? I like this weird ass meta gentrified shallow sprawling mess of a city. I'm proud it's the city of my birth and the city of my early 20's. 

You can conveniently get a divorce right next to The Short Stop.

what we talk about when we talk about bangs

(author's note to herself: lmao what a played out title, Martina.)

This past summer, I got bangs for the first time since I was a hella Asian bb rocking the quintessential Hella Asian Bb Bowl Cut. Allow me to take you on a journey through all the stages of bangs I have had in the past six months. (Warning: There were laughter AND tears.)

First got my bangs cut into Baby's (Babies??) by Shelbi's cousin Jessica who killed it. They looked amazing and I felt amazing and very Entry Level Alt.

Then I went to college, went to a salon ON CAMPUS and paid 8 bucks for a woman to cut my bangs straight across. I call this period The Darkest Times.

They then grew out and became not terrible, but also very puffy and kind of sad. This is the era of Coulda Been Better, Maybe Less Round Brushing Under The Blower Dryer.

I went home for Thanksgiving and got my hair chopped at Paul Mitchell, along with getting more Anna May Wong-y bangs but they ended up pretty pointy? This epoch is called Good Hair, Okay Bangs.

During the winter break, I trimmed them myself about every week to get them more rounded and they looked V V Good! but I don't have any good pictures of my bangs at this time because most pictures taken over the holiday were on NYE when I was shit hammered and could only take angled selfies such as:

Drunk winks on deck.

Post-holiday I returned to my dorm without the luxury of my mother hair scissors and the beautiful bangs grew out into Nightmare Bangs and they started parting by themselves, leading me to believe they had become sentient and were plotting some sort of coup. So I dragged myself down to the village, grabbed a pair or scissors, and started cutting. 

You are now looking at the results of cutting my bangs three separate times in the past week. Maintaining the shape hasn't been as difficult as I thought it would be, and it's actually fun to control the way my hair look for once. This morning I woke up, didn't like what one side of my bangs were doing, and just cut them. WHAT A RELIEF. I don't have to make any appointments, spend any money, or have any hairstylists ask me questions that we both know neither of us care about at all! Invest in scissors, my friends!

'they look right past us'

I found this great piece on NPR. (Not having a car means not listening or paying attention to public radio at all, but I've recently discovered Code Switch, which, despite it NPR's terrible design, is good at bringing attention to nuanced matters of race.) In it, Noah Cho discusses his internalized racism as a Korean and white hapa. Specifically, the internalization of having an Asian father and white mother when that specific pairing is found so far and few between. I was nodding my head while reading this, as I too have noticed the huge gap between Asian-girl-white-guy and white-girl-asian-guy relationships and have first hand experience with women straight up dissing Asian dudes. It bums me the fuck out how many times women I know and respect have told me to my face that they either do not find Asian men attractive or would never think of dating an Asian man. Each time I this has happened, I've raised my eyebrows, done a little bit of interrogating, and kept that voice in the back of my head yelling "WOULD IT BE OKAY FOR THEM TO SAY THAT ABOUT BLACK GUYS? LATINO GUYS? INDIGENOUS GUYS?" at bay. (Sidebar: Maybe this is just me, but I've literally never thought any race wasn't attractive or datable? Like, qt booty is qt booty! Who am I to discriminate?)

Daisuke Ueda and Jae Yoo str8 killin it for American institution, J. Crew. via

The other week I was having dinner with two Chinese friends on my floor, who are always talking about girls and trying to holla at this one and that, and I asked them if they've ever been interested in a girl who wasn't Asian. "Why would we?" one said. "When they see us, they look right past us. They see nothing. So why would we look at them?" I didn't know what to say, so I said nothing. In his piece, Cho says he can't even believe his wife when she tells him she finds him attractive. Reading that absolutely gutted me. Especially because Cho is hella qt!

V good hair and nice face, imo!

On the one hand, we have our women being flagrantly fetishized, exotified, and infanitlized. On the other, we have our men being flagrantly feminized and branded as unwanted. Together, we have an entire race being sexually Othered. But, you know, it's cool because we're the """"""model minority"""""". We stay out of trouble and get good grades and become doctors, or whatever the fuck. We'll be just fine with this so-called positive stereotypes masking the insidious negative ones.

Tony Leung doesn't have the sharp angles of most Asian male models but could still get it 4ever. Also, does using gifs make my blog a buzzfeed article?? :/ via

It feels weird to say this, and maybe it's the phrasing that could be worked on or maybe I currently don't have the vocabulary to properly express this, but I am so grateful to be Passing. My perceived race is entirely fluid, depending entirely on context – whether it be the context of how I am presenting myself through makeup and clothing, the context of the perceived race of the people I am with at the time, or the context of the person trying to define me through their experiences of race. To some I'm white, or Latina, or Middle Eastern, or a mutt. I identify as Asian but I do not have to live by this dichotomy, I have never felt the pressure to look more white, as Cho expresses in his essay, and I am so intensely and weirdly grateful for this privilege.

let's play catch up

Still living that sick lyfe (a weird throat thing from after my birthday became a nose thing and then suddenly an entire body thing), but managed to get a lot of homework done over the weekend by taking work off and remaining indoors. I needed it. I needed a catch-up, away from work, my internship, clubs, and going out with friends, and it came to me disguised as built up mucus in my nose and a fever. It's 5th week and I spent the first month of it NOT reading ANYTHING, watching every episode of Louie, worrying about dates with boys, being hopelessly in love with a boy who I was not going on any dates with, and being generally lazy and apathetic. I guess turning the quarter around right before midterms is pretty okay, better than trying to do it in 8th week or something.

Today, after my sci-fi class, I had a spontaneous study sesh with Maddie in the Young Research Library. I was looking for a book on the top floor there yesterday, my first time in the actual library part and not the study rooms, and the combination of the heavy silence, heater blasting, seemingly hundreds of narrow rows of seemingly millions of books made me feel as though I could die there and not be found until weeks later, by body rotting very slowly in front of French reference books. Naturally, I suggested we go up there and find a place to settle down after seeing everything on the first floor was taken. (MIDTERMS, amirite?)

Maddie taking in the view of campus.

It was good move, as we found rows and rows of graffitied desks lining the windows, populated only by the occasional sleeping student. It was so profoundly quiet, my feet tingled with tension. Blowing my nose felt like a mortal sin. Maddie and I found ourselves communicating through Facebook messenger rather than disturbing the peace with our whispers. At several points, we ended up making each other restrain violent laughter. (By sending links like these.) I'd completely forgotten the feeling of trying to stifle laughter. If you were to put that on some sort of line graph with my own personal growth, I think it'd be a generally good thing. But stifling laughter, holding back large howls of happiness, feels so intensely pleasurable. Something to do with the forbidden, probably.

My new office space. V start-up-y, no?

I received a very, very undeserving A for a paper today. Is it worse to get a grade higher than you deserve than lower? Absolutely fucking not. But it's motivated me to blow my second paper out of the water and make my TA rethink me entirely. (Also, I've been posting pictures of The Rock with every response I am required to post in the class forums and my TA has said NOTHING to me about it????) So I worked on that as well as reading The Floating World by Cynthia Kadohata, which is the second book I've read of hers, the first being Kira-Kira for a children's lit class. If you've ever been curious about Japanese American history outside of Hawaii or California, pick her up. If you've ever been curious about Asian Americans period, pick her up. For my homework, I wrote about how Kadohata is basically making Asian Southern Gothic and it's rad as hell.

Happy with how much work I have done. Nothing close to being on top of my shit, but I'm getting there. And, needless to say, the top floor of YRL is my new spot. Catch me there if you wanna have lively Facebook messenger discussion while seated next to me. I leave you with wisdom from some desk graffiti: