GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Notes

  • Midnight Diner (TV Show)

    Seasons 1 & 2

    The Japanese aren’t scared of sex. Heck, the first episode includes a stripper who is a regular throughout the series.

    But the show isn’t explicit — nothing more than what you find on Instagram. It just accepts sex workers, gangsters, cross dressers, and normies as part of the fabric of life in this district.

    The show is ultimately conservative. It touches on the fringes, but happiness is found in a solid relationships and family.

    It’s also not afraid of or death. Like many Asian shows, they’ll kill a likable character. Such a dynamic inserts needed tension to keep this upbeat show from going completely saccharine.

    I almost wonder if the show is a mirror of where America is headed. A little lewd, a little violent, a little corrupt, but ultimately conservative. I guess things could be worse.

    Seasons 3, 4, & 5

    Midway through the third season my wife lost interest. I also took a nine month break before finally finishing season five.

    A small restaurant with recurring characters is a fun premise, but the characters don’t go anywhere. I wonder if the producers were trapped with a season-by-season contract.

    The show is worth watching, but don’t worry when you’ve had enough of their quirky little world. It’s a great case study in television flash fiction (albeit a tad too heartwarming), but fifty episodes is too much.

    Then again, if they came out with a sixth season, I’d check it out.

    ~

    At twenty minutes a pop, the show is a series of barely connected short stories. It has a few regular characters, but each episode is free standing. Of course some stories are stronger than others, but pick any one at random (even just the first one). If you dig it, you’ll dig the rest, until you don’t. If you don’t, then don’t bother.

    Since this is the first non-animated TV show that I’ve watched and finished, I assume there must be be something good about this series. Or maybe it’s a sign that I have no idea what I’m talking about.

  • OPM.53 (notes on) A Sense of Style, Steven Pinker, 2015

    I often write about the grand challenges aspects of this work — eliminating and preserving slack in the system, juggling budget and schedule, fostering a decisive culture, executing a careful process, developing relationships.

    But in this world of digital communication, much of my time on the job is trying to write good. A well turned email can make a difference, and it’s amazing when a carefully crafted memo gets the needed response.

    This book stands out from prescriptive manuals (like Strunk and White) because Pinker carefully explains the why behind the rules. This book’s strength is also reflection upon what I do as an OPM.

    Yes we must follow our agency standards. And we all got personal preferences. But we’re at our best when we can explain the logic behind our decisions. It’s important for our team to know why, especially if the institutional logic results in weird choices.

    At least that’s what I hope. Maybe I just bore my consultants to tears with extended explanations of bureaucratic esoterica.

    That’s one of the perks and dangers of being a client — no one will tell you to shut up.

    ~

    Listening is not the best way to consume this book, but a little is better than none. There are diagrams and complex analyses that warrant a visual reading (either physical or electronic). But I haven’t bothered in the past couple of years, so I guess it’s not going to happen.

    ~

    Some Links

    Live performances of electronic music sounds like a contradiction, but they have a spark that is sometimes missing from their albums. Here are a few examples.

    I’ve haven’t gotten into his studio albums, but I often play Oupio’s concert at Red Rocks with the SYZYGY Orchestra when I’m cranking on work.

    Admittedly Caravan Palace’s animated music video is wildly vivid, but there’s a great vibe in this live performance of Lone Digger.

    I used to listen to Moon Safari album on a little blue MP3 player while walking to studio. This video of La Femme d’Argent in a recording studio materializes the music and the memories.

    ~

    Ferrero Rocher, 2022

    ~

    Thanks for reading!
    Justus Pang, RA

  • ~600! (on Post)

    It took three months between milestones this time.

    This long interval reflects my shift from hanging out on Post to Substack Notes.

    Post is a better feed experience — I love the variety.

    But the newsletter integration at Substack is the “killer app” that kept my attention there. My major goal this year was to make a dent in the pile of old blog drafts and Substack is a better platform for that endeavor.

    But things might be shifting, now that I’ve signed up for auto posting from the RSS feed. It effectively lets me schedule posts for Post and this place has always been a bit more interactive for me. (Until this week, it was essentially impossible hard to follow anyone on Substack Notes without Subscribing to their newsletter, so the circles there are small and extremely top heavy.)

    It will be interesting to see how these Social Media Wars play out, even as I try to reduce my time on digital feeds (though I’ve recently discovered Pinterest as a great resource for visual inspiration). I’ve made a dent in my publishing backlog but it will take some effort to clear the decks and I want to spend more time sketching and reading books.

    The internet is a tricky beast. In the past month I might have spent more time shopping for fountain pens than pushing any of those priorities. Perusing virtual shelves, watching youtube videos, and planning purchases are great hacks at making you believe you’ve done something while accomplishing nothing.

    So I’ve made a resolution to stop shopping for the rest of the year. I’ve got a few toys in the mail and I bet that “necessities” will pop up to open my wallet. But no more discretionary browsing!

    Here’s to another fresh start to an old year!

    Blue ink sketch of a hand holding a fountain pen

  • foreword to Monkey King by Gene Luen Yang, (Julia Lovell Translation), 2021

    When reading classic literature, I often stumble at the introduction and never make it to the text itself. So I have mixed feelings towards introductory materials.

    However, Gene Luen Yang wrote an amazing foreword. It was concise but heartfelt. He spoke of himself, but captured a moment that included me.

    He nailed the rootlessness that I sensed as an Asian kid growing up in America. My mom also read the Journey to the West to me and my sister. Monkey, Pigsy, and Sandy were integral parts parts of our childhood in a universe where they didn’t exist outside our home.

    Unlike Gene, I never fell in love with comic books. I never thought I had a favorite superhero, until I realized I did all along. This ridiculous monkey had settled deep into my psyche and never left.

    Like us, Sun Wukong was an outsider navigating a strange land. I never had his brashness, but I wish I did! (If I ever get a tattoo it would be 齊天大聖 , Great Sage Heaven’s Equal)

    One of the best introductions I’ve ever read. But I’m biased since Gene wrote it just for me.

    ~

    I drafted this note two years ago, before reading the book. I will always be in debt to the Lovell abridgement because it lead me to read the full translation by Anthony C. Yu, which I prefer. The story is a classic but the experience is incomplete without the poetic interludes in the novel.

  • Rivers and Tides, Riedelsheimer, Goldsworthy, Frith, 2001

    I watched Rivers and Tides multiple times in a theater in Berkeley before it was demolished for a new apartment complex.

    It blew my mind.
    The pacing was deliberate and the images were gorgeous.
    I was entranced by the musings of Andy Goldsworthy.

    When I gushed about it to a professor, she pushed back,
    “Don’t you think it mythologizes the artist too much?”

    That dampened my enthusiasm for two decades.
    Last year, we rewatched the movie with the kids.

    I see where my prof was coming from.
    So what! She’s wrong.

    Yes, the movie glamorizes the artist and his work.
    But it’s about failure as part of the artist’s process.
    It takes a metric shitton of boring-ass effort.
    If this is mythology, then we need more myth to do the work.

    It’s a great film, equally matched by the avante-garde music of Fred Frith.

    The entire soundtrack is great, but my favorite moment in the movie is at the start of this clip, where Goldsworthy discusses the effect of sheep on the land while the music builds towards a muted climax when the camera pans around a huge stone sculpture.

  • The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh, Lounsbery, Eritherman, Sharpsteen, 1977

    A great movie, and one of the few feature films that stayed in the ads-free kids section in Disney+; I’d happily watch it again.

    Loved their use of a physical book as a frame throughout the movie; the animators used the page transitions in fun creative ways.

    Also loved the imperfections of the animated lines; it breathes life into the movie that is often missing in modern projects.

    And of course, I enjoyed the surreal song Heffalump and dance number; the boy seemed a little disturbed by the sequence.

  • San Diego, Z to A

    1. Zoo is the truth. Visit it. Get a membership. Visit it a few times.
    2. Yes! The carousel started running again that week at Balboa Park after a six month rehabilitation. What a gem! Gorgeous carvings. It has character, which the carousel at Legoland lacks.
    3. unfortunately, the miniature train at Balboa Park, is uneXceptional.
    4. We’ll be back next March and with another set of 2-day passes to Legoland. (They charge almost nothing for the second day, aside from the $30 parking charge.)
    5. Visit the ships at the Maritime Museum. It’s awesome. We spent all day (without even taking the harbour tour). I could not imagine packing myself with a bunch of dudes to explore the world. I hope to return ten years later when they’ll be old enough to savor the exhibits. They also enjoyed the park across the street.
    6. Unimaginably bigger is the Midway Aircraft Carrier. After the Maritime Museum closed, we walked to this ship and holy hell, that thing is massive. We’ll visit in five years when both kids are old to understand its enormity.
    7. The years as a project manager of large construction projects taught me the value of money. What we saw ain’t cheap, forty or four hundred years ago.
    8. Several active warships were docked across the bay. Super-empire!
    9. Regrettably, the kids (five and nine) aren’t old enough to enjoy art museums. But that’s not so disappointing when it’s a small free jewel box like the Timken Museum of Art.
    10. Quirky Spanish Village Art Center was also fun, but nerve-wracking while manhandling a five year old to keep him from touching everything.
    11. Preferably, art should be touched, but that’s not my call in someone else’s studio.
    12. On the other hand, you can touch the art at the New Children’s Museum. Not cheap ($76 for the four of us), but the Whammock! by Toshiko Horiuchi MacAdam is worth every penny. My daughter is aging out of the museum, so it was a bittersweet visit.
    13. Nighttime festivities at the zoo freed me to wander Balboa Park on my own for two nights (we only bought one adult membership for my wife since it came for coupons for my entries).
    14. Mingei International Museum was cool. High craft meets high art. Next time I’ll pay to peruse the second floor gallery.
    15. Lovely to hang out at the May S. Marcy Sculpture Court and Garden. I sketched a few sculptures, eavesdropped on a couple of conversations, and enjoyed the evening as the sun set.
    16. Kicking it on the the stairs in front of the Timken Museum was a joy as a group of youngsters danced to a bluetooth speaker. I miss living in a real city.
    17. Jump! One young fellow was lying on the ground. As a middle aged fool, I assumed he was stretching his back. He suddenly twisted himself upside down in a flash.
    18. I enjoyed a couple of hours at the Natural History museum. I wasn’t into the taxidermy, but stared for a while at bones and hand-drawn botanical illustrations.
    19. How did he grow up so fast? After the zoo closed, we checked out a moth event outside the Natural History museum. The boy asked great questions for the entomologist. I didn’t realize he was so fluent in English.
    20. Go to the Fleet Science Center. (According to my coworker who grew up in San Diego)
    21. For $229, the Balboa Park annual pass (2 adults and 4 kids) is a no-brainer in future visits.
    22. Even though the AirBNB was in a great location, it was a little grimy. But we had a place to sleep and cook for a week at a reasonable price. It came with fleas.
    23. Dogs! But the landlord’s dogs were super cute. Our boy Drew During our waits for Dinner. I also started watching Bluey with the kids. It’s Dang great!
    24. Cute library alert! Vegas libraries are big community centers, so it fun to check out the little University Heights public library. I found a Mutts alphabet book and an illustrated copy of Kipling’s Just So Stories.
    25. Bordertown Primm has a dead Outlet Mall on the way home. There are only two stores still open with the rest filled with murals. The only reason it hasn’t been abandoned is because it’s attached to a casino. I hope it stays alive, it’s the best rest stop, clean, unused, and air conditioned. Especially since the claw machine gave us a Pickachu for $1!
    26. A week away from podcasts and writing, though I sketched a little. Before the trip, I suspected that I needed a break. In retrospect I sorely needed it. If you’re not sure, take one.

  • Mythologies, Roland Barthes, 1957

    I bought this book for freshman rhetoric (or art history?) to fulfill one of my English requirements at Berkeley. I kept the book because loved his essay about professional wrestling and I finally read it over the pandemic.

    The book has a surprisingly contemporary feel, since it’s a series of short essays with a deep analysis at the end of the book. In our contemporary era, this would be a collection of posts with an extended coda.

    Then again Barthes was French so the essays are deeper than your typical tweet-storm and the closing discussion on semiology was an absolute ass whupping since I haven’t tussled with high theory since 2006.

    I’m fortunate to have taken those grad school theory courses before reading that last essay. I don’t remember much from Houston, but I knew just enough to roughly grok his game.

    Wikipedia

    Barthe posits that “mythology” is a second order semiological effect. The “full” Sign of language becomes the “empty” Signifier for myth which is paired with an unspoken Signified to create a new Sign.

    The main effect of myth is to distort knowledge in the service of power by making dominant values invisible. Myth makes ideology natural.

    In contemporary parlance, mythology hides privilege.

    The duty of the mythologist to untangle the web of obfuscation and expose such rhetoric for analysis.

    I might be 23 years late to the game, but it was totally worth lugging across the continent and back again.

    ~

    Two years later, my current reading obsession is “ancient wisdom”. Editing this draft reminds me that I need to re-read of this book — the ancients were no less susceptible to corruption than we are today. And if I’m gonna keep writing these notes, I should grab his baton to question today’s mythologies.

  • Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone, Chris Columbus, 2001

    I only watched this because of my daughter. I was just old enough to miss the book phenomenon, and I couldn’t be bothered to the watch the movies.

    So far, it’s done nothing to interest me in reading the books, but I’ll be fine with watching future movies if she insists (tellingly, she hasn’t insisted in the months since we’ve watched it).

    She had fun, though as all good readers she was disappointed in some of the changes.

    Voldemort is a properly horrific villain. I could only imagine how much more scary this movie would be with modern CG.

    But really, I’m realizing I’m an animation fan. Maybe it has something to do with watching very little TV (aside from documentaries) while growing up. Or I just prefer the surreal possibilities of that medium. Or the pure craft of the art.

    Real life is magical enough, I don’t feel compelled to watch other humans live their lives on the big screen.

    Maybe it’s cause I’m getting older. I feel a slight pressure of time and yet still harbor a desire to develop a deeper subject knowledge in a few cool subjects. The only way to square that circle is to start actively cutting things out.

    Like in jazz. I ain’t ever giving up Coltrane, Thelonious, Kind of Blue, or Keith Jarrett’s solo albums. But I’ve recently decided to focus my listening on jazz trios. If it’s not one those greats, there better only be three folks on stage.

    Or my recent trend towards avoiding books that are younger than me (Calvino and Murakami excepted), letting the ravages of time simplify my choices.

    Then again, I thought I’d do something similar with EDM and Glitch Hop, but it doesn’t seem to have panned out. I’m back to listening to whatever banging noise gets me through work.

    Who knows. It’s a time of flux.

    It’s always a time of flux.

  • OPM.50 (notes on myself, from) Icarus Deception, Seth Godin, 2012

    I wrote this near the start of this OPM Letter. I started strong in 2021 but then went on a long hiatus before deciding to give this project proper closure. Even so, I thought I’d share as a way to celebrate the half century mark.

    ~

    This book hit me at the perfect time. Seth’s encouragement to step out into the void really hit after having started this OPM Letter project.

    Every few years I feel an urge to level up. After my first gig in a firm, I went to grad school. After Rice, I jumped from a small shop to work to try a corporate firm. Jumped from CAD to BIM. Took some (a lot) time remodeling our house. Slid over over to owner side.

    As discussed in Bob Buford’s Half Time, the best time to start the next thing is before the current thing has run out of steam.

    Maybe that’s the role of this newsletter.
    (2023 note: Doesn’t seem like it. I still enjoy my work, but I’ve moved my focus away from advancing my career.)

    I’m sticking myself out there, as if I’m an expert or something. I’m not. But maybe this project will help me contemplate my work.

    Maybe it results in something worth sharing. Otherwise why share?

    And if it doesn’t go anywhere? At least I’ll remain anonymous. Fame is overrated!

    ~

    Interestingly, I wrote almost nothing about the book in my first draft draft twenty four months ago. And now I can’t remember a single thing from the Icarus Deception aside from the green cover. I bet it had some inspiring moments about putting yourself out there in the new connection economy, but that’s just guessing. But I copied quote back then still resonates.

    Grit is the attitude of someone who realizes she has the power to care and is intent on doing something with it.

    An agency client just sent me a kind note before she retired. Maybe she was just being nice, but if I actually did anything special to earn her compliments, it was only because I cared and did something with it.

    ~

    Some Links

    Mark Starlin writes a fun newsletter every Monday with three quick fictions, a witty sentence, a flash fiction, and a short story. It’s a great start to the week.

    Carolyn Yoo explores the creative practice every week. I dig her warm embrace of the world at large. A great start is this newsletter sharing how she published a zine about finding her wedding dress.

    A few weeks ago I thought I becoming a Glitch-hop aficionado, but I’ve realized it’s too close to big-time EDM. Instead, I’ve been playing this Chiptune playlist on repeat. It reminds me of the days of downloading mods from BBSs.

    X-15 Crash (Pilot Jack McKay survived but was forced to retire early), Mud Lake, Nevada, 1962

    ~

    Thanks for reading!
    Justus Pang, RA