GRIZZLY PEAR

written snapshots

Category: Notes

  • 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

  • Turning Red, Domee Shi (2022)

    We watched it half a year ago and I can’t remember anything from it.

    It was quirky and fun to have an Asian-American protagonist (we are so spoiled relative to the lily-white days of the 80’s!). Red pandas are super cute, especially when Pixar-fied. I wish I had a crew to hang with like the girl (moving across the state in 6th grade did not help).

    But yeah. Not much here. I’m not sure what “it” should be, but “it” ain’t here. The movie was better than I expected from the trailer but my predominant memory is feeling slightly bored.

    It doesn’t hit like the classics like Toy Story or Monster’s Inc., which we just rewatched the other night.

    I wonder if one can pinpoint this decline halfway through WALL-E when it went from an avante garde film without words to that silly fat human spaceship.

    At some point Pixar chose to pursue technical proficiency over crafting a great story. And the results — both good and bad — are unavoidable.

  • Sacred Verses, Healing Sounds I & II, Deepak Chopra, 2007

    It’s fine. The production is nice and the selected passages are properly inspiring. Chopra is a fine reader and the Indian music is atmospheric. I don’t know much about Hinduism, but I presume this combines best passages out of the Bhagavad Gita and Rig Veda with a dash of explanatory text.

    But I can’t shake the feeling that this is just a basic offering. Mix a few ingredients that feel truthy across all cultures, coat it with woo, and sell it to America.

    I’d be more charitable if this three hour production was marketed as an introductory taste of Hinduism, but I was put off by its inflated self-importance. I don’t care for a program that dilutes spirituality and sells it as more than a mere starting point.

    As a pan-theistic atheist who is skeptical of all forms of systematic formal religious structures, I am the prime target audience. Slap on an ancient spiritual sheen and I’m intrigued. But I also spent my teenage years as a Reformed Baptist steeped in the intellectual cathedral of Calvin. Don’t pretend you got more unless you’re bringing it.

  • STORROR Street Parkour Competition, 2021

    I got sucked into this video while brushing my teeth, before realizing it was 45 minutes long. I went to sleep late that night.

    It was fun to watch the guys take ridiculous risks and challenge each other. There’s all the vicarious thrills you’d expect from a Parkour YouTube video.

    Beyond the stunts, the charm was in watching the guys enjoy each other’s company. Who knows if the mutual affection is true, but they made it work on camera.

    It reminds me of the late 2000’s before UFC transitioned into a mainstream sports league. Back then, the fighters made a show of respect to each other, which created a screen camaraderie that intensified my enjoyment of the matches.

    Unfortunately, I might be out of step with popular culture since the UFC’s heel turn with outlandish promotions has made them a billion dollar business. I get how the physical brutality of football or MMA leads to war analogies, but we need to cut that shit out.

    When it comes to games, we ought to think of our competitors as “partners”. In joining the challenge, the players are committing to a constrained set of rules striving towards a mutually agreed upon goal. Unlike the endless slog of reality, a game is a measure of marginal advantage with a set end point.

    We need to stop mixing the (potentially high stakes) infinite struggle of life with the (relatively meaningless) competition of these finite games.

    If we do, maybe we’ll enjoy each others’ company as we play together.