At the new Jollibee in Woodside today, I stood next to a beautiful filipina (pinay?) while waiting for our order. For rough context, she looked around 20, give or take 2 years, maybe 5'7, soft dark eyes, smooth mocha skin, lustrous shoulder-length hair, gently oval-shaped face. She was with a young girl and an older white woman who looked to be in her late 30s or early 40s. I don't know what their relationships were; perhaps the filipina was a hired nanny, the little girl's mom (the girl looked to be mixed race), cousin, or aunt, or just a family friend.
Moreso because it was unexpected in the mundane setting, the filipina struck me with her beauty and got me to thinking, what qualifies a girl to be a 10?
In Babe of the day: Diane Lane, I said the best of feminine beauty is a transcendent, fleeting quality that can't be manufactured, no matter how much 'make over' effort is put into it. Like a flower, it blossoms into full glory in mature youth, then seemingly fades away just as quickly with age.
A 10 beauty is beyond the common standard of pretty, cute, or sexy. It is beyond human power to produce artificially, such as with lighting or make-up or even with art. A 10 beauty easily passes the in-person test, everyday test, and no-make-up test. A 10 beauty stands out more for subtleties than striking features. No description of words, such as what I use in the 1st paragraph, can adequately express it. A 10 beauty is not necessarily capturable in a photo, eg, Katy the Barnard AV tech. A 10 beauty is beyond the limits of imagination to create or recreate in the mind; she must be seen. In short, a 10 beauty is non-transferable; it can only be defined and appreciated by itself. A 10 beauty evokes a higher power. It stuns and your breath catches to see it.
Finally, there is a temptation to worship a 10 beauty, such as seeking a romantic relationship with the girl regardless of compatibility, to drink her ethereal beauty . . . for as long as it lasts.
Eric
Sunday, 22 March 2009
AT&T Wireless "sweet pea" commercial
This commercial, featuring Sweet Pea by Amos Lee, makes me want to be a father:
The daughter is played by Savannah Argenti and a good review of the commercial.
Off-topic, but while on the subject of commercials, I want to jot down the note: Kim Shively is the attractive vaguely hispanic looking spokeswoman in the Toyota "moving you forward" commercials. There is surprisingly little on-line about her or the commercial series.
Eric
The daughter is played by Savannah Argenti and a good review of the commercial.
Off-topic, but while on the subject of commercials, I want to jot down the note: Kim Shively is the attractive vaguely hispanic looking spokeswoman in the Toyota "moving you forward" commercials. There is surprisingly little on-line about her or the commercial series.
Eric
Friday, 20 March 2009
Topol in Fiddler on the Roof and Lisey's Story
Last Sunday, March 15, I was lucky enough to watch 73-year-old Topol as Tevye in his American farewell tour of Fiddler on the Roof, even if it was from the 4th tier of the New Jersey Performing Arts Center in Newark, NJ. The opportunity came as an unexpected surprise. Topol could have stayed seated in street clothes and flubbed his lines and I still would have considered myself fortunate to be in his audience. That said, I couldn't help but compare his classic portrayal in the 1971 movie to the stage performance. The movie Tevye is more expressive and exuberant, while the Topol I watched live was older, more wooden and skinnier. But Topol can still move with energy and his voice is the same. He is still Tevye. In addition, the travel time from my home was only an hour by PATH and I discovered that Seton Hall Law School is close to the train station. Things that make you go hmm.
Right now, I'm reading the Stephen King novel Lisey's Story. In it, he shows off his usual mix of dramatic stereotypes and perceptive insight. What Scott got from Lisey . . . that's what I want, what I need, what I've looked for, tried for and have not found. How do I find it . . . and her? Where do I need to look? What do I need to do? The story supports the notion that I made the right choice with Traci by laying bare my heart and trying for a full relationship, even though she chose against it.
Eric
Right now, I'm reading the Stephen King novel Lisey's Story. In it, he shows off his usual mix of dramatic stereotypes and perceptive insight. What Scott got from Lisey . . . that's what I want, what I need, what I've looked for, tried for and have not found. How do I find it . . . and her? Where do I need to look? What do I need to do? The story supports the notion that I made the right choice with Traci by laying bare my heart and trying for a full relationship, even though she chose against it.
Eric
Tuesday, 10 March 2009
Gripe: "expedience sake"
For a while, I've been peeved about something President Obama said in his inaugural address:
Eric
As for our common defense, we reject as false the choice between our safety and our ideals. Our Founding Fathers -- (applause) -- our Founding Fathers, faced with perils that we can scarcely imagine, drafted a charter to assure the rule of law and the rights of man -- a charter expanded by the blood of generations. Those ideals still light the world, and we will not give them up for expedience sake. (Applause.)The intelligence and security measures undertaken under President Clinton in the years leading up to 9/11 and then under President Bush in reaction to 9/11 were not due to "expedience sake". While it's proper to critically and continually review those measures, 'necessity's sake' would be the more appropriate characterization. As well, the choices can fairly be called a 'difficult balance', but they have not been "false". The new president's dismissive characterization of his predecessors' execution of their critical duties seems arrogant, naive about the threat, and dangerously disrespectful of the enemy. It's worrisome.
Eric
Saturday, 7 March 2009
Thoughts of the day
Daylight Savings time starts today. Remember to move your clocks ahead one hour.
Interesting reading on organization-building: Global Guerillas post Tribes! and GIGAOM post Pixar’s Brad Bird on Fostering Innovation.
I finally read Ed Lin's Waylaid. As it turns out, Waylaid's Peter is not at all like The Motel's Ernest, other than both are Chinese-American tweenage boys (I don't know if Ernest is, like Peter, Taiwanese-American). Where Ernest is pathetic and hopeless, Peter is dangerous but trapped. There is an authentic layer of Chinese-American male perspective, but that's not the core of the story. Peter reminds most of Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield. Peter is a self-centered sociopath who's smart, capable, responsible (but not ethical), nihilistic, violent, aggressive, and in turns, savage and cunning. The world, as experienced by a jaded, bitter Peter, doesn't deserve better than he treats it. Though only 12, Peter is singularly driven by his desire to "fuck" and triumphs with the object of his lust, a classmate.
The soft "But then we wouldn't have met" . . . asking to return with me to K-16 on the bus . . . her nervous hesitant confession that she smokes when she feels stressed and my relief because I was afraid she was going to tell me she had a boyfriend (later, after we went bad, she'd smoke when she was with me) . . . particular moments that made me believe she felt about me the same way I felt about her. Instead, I was wrong and what I feared from her rejection has borne out. How different would my life be had I been right and she had chosen us? Would Traci have saved me, or did her rejection avoid a more traumatic failure?
When my life seems to be going well, I don't dream or at least I don't dream anything that leaves an impression. When I'm feeling anxiety and depression, however, I have vivid dreams. I don't remember the details, but they leave an impression. Lately, I've been dreaming a lot about receiving opportunities and my failure with them due to irrecoverably flawed programming. The reality is, I've received more than my share of opportunities and done nothing with them. At what point do they simply run out? At what point do I admit and accept what my dreams are telling me?
When I was hired, I planned to stay on one year, two years maximum, in my first job out of college. What I'm doing now, while interesting in its own right, not unlike my military experience, doesn't transition into any long-term plan. I've moved past the 1.5 year mark on the job, but as yet, I've made no move to leave, either to another job or grad school. The current economic and jobs climate has made me ambivalent about leaving; I tell myself, at least I have a secure job, and after some interpersonal bumpiness, I've hit my stride. I can coast. The real problem is that I'm no less "listless" - or shiftless - now than when I met with the Brigade TAC at West Point. I'm blowing past life checkpoints at an alarming speed and I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up.
Right now, I'm a disillusioned pessimistic idealist. People, both individually and as a social mass, have disappointed me. I doubt they're worth a selfless sacrifice. So, another problem is, when I think of the areas that are more interesting, I also think, what difference will it make? And even if trying might make a difference, I'm not convinced I have what it takes to make the difference.
"Lethality" literally means deadliness, but that's not how I mean it when I say it as a state of being. As a metaphor, I think of lethality as effective efficient goal-achievement. In that sense, I don't strive to be a killer, but I do metaphorically wish my actions to be lethal.
Eric
Interesting reading on organization-building: Global Guerillas post Tribes! and GIGAOM post Pixar’s Brad Bird on Fostering Innovation.
I finally read Ed Lin's Waylaid. As it turns out, Waylaid's Peter is not at all like The Motel's Ernest, other than both are Chinese-American tweenage boys (I don't know if Ernest is, like Peter, Taiwanese-American). Where Ernest is pathetic and hopeless, Peter is dangerous but trapped. There is an authentic layer of Chinese-American male perspective, but that's not the core of the story. Peter reminds most of Catcher in the Rye's Holden Caulfield. Peter is a self-centered sociopath who's smart, capable, responsible (but not ethical), nihilistic, violent, aggressive, and in turns, savage and cunning. The world, as experienced by a jaded, bitter Peter, doesn't deserve better than he treats it. Though only 12, Peter is singularly driven by his desire to "fuck" and triumphs with the object of his lust, a classmate.
The soft "But then we wouldn't have met" . . . asking to return with me to K-16 on the bus . . . her nervous hesitant confession that she smokes when she feels stressed and my relief because I was afraid she was going to tell me she had a boyfriend (later, after we went bad, she'd smoke when she was with me) . . . particular moments that made me believe she felt about me the same way I felt about her. Instead, I was wrong and what I feared from her rejection has borne out. How different would my life be had I been right and she had chosen us? Would Traci have saved me, or did her rejection avoid a more traumatic failure?
When my life seems to be going well, I don't dream or at least I don't dream anything that leaves an impression. When I'm feeling anxiety and depression, however, I have vivid dreams. I don't remember the details, but they leave an impression. Lately, I've been dreaming a lot about receiving opportunities and my failure with them due to irrecoverably flawed programming. The reality is, I've received more than my share of opportunities and done nothing with them. At what point do they simply run out? At what point do I admit and accept what my dreams are telling me?
When I was hired, I planned to stay on one year, two years maximum, in my first job out of college. What I'm doing now, while interesting in its own right, not unlike my military experience, doesn't transition into any long-term plan. I've moved past the 1.5 year mark on the job, but as yet, I've made no move to leave, either to another job or grad school. The current economic and jobs climate has made me ambivalent about leaving; I tell myself, at least I have a secure job, and after some interpersonal bumpiness, I've hit my stride. I can coast. The real problem is that I'm no less "listless" - or shiftless - now than when I met with the Brigade TAC at West Point. I'm blowing past life checkpoints at an alarming speed and I still don't know what I want to do when I grow up.
Right now, I'm a disillusioned pessimistic idealist. People, both individually and as a social mass, have disappointed me. I doubt they're worth a selfless sacrifice. So, another problem is, when I think of the areas that are more interesting, I also think, what difference will it make? And even if trying might make a difference, I'm not convinced I have what it takes to make the difference.
"Lethality" literally means deadliness, but that's not how I mean it when I say it as a state of being. As a metaphor, I think of lethality as effective efficient goal-achievement. In that sense, I don't strive to be a killer, but I do metaphorically wish my actions to be lethal.
Eric
Sunday, 22 February 2009
A&E's Intervention
My latest TV addiction is the A&E reality show Intervention.
Intervention tells the real stories of various kinds of addicts who've reached the critical point where their lives are at risk, and their friends and family have contacted the show to stage a formal intervention in order to convince them to undergo rehabilitation. Typically, the addicts have been high achievers and the show's main dramatic device, besides showing the struggles of addiction, is to tell the often complex story of their downward spiral and contrast their previous success with the lows to which their addiction has brought them.
According to the show, there are always underlying reasons for addiction and, looking back, the makings of the coming self-destruction can be identified in their childhood, even when outwardly, the addicts were successful as children. Depending on the episode, viewers suffering from anxiety, depression, trauma, or another psychological handicap, with or without an obvious addiction, will often find something about the featured addicts they can identify with. I recently reacted that way to Emily. It's striking how often isolation, need for control, and the expectations and the judgement of others are factors in the addiction.
Eric
Intervention tells the real stories of various kinds of addicts who've reached the critical point where their lives are at risk, and their friends and family have contacted the show to stage a formal intervention in order to convince them to undergo rehabilitation. Typically, the addicts have been high achievers and the show's main dramatic device, besides showing the struggles of addiction, is to tell the often complex story of their downward spiral and contrast their previous success with the lows to which their addiction has brought them.
According to the show, there are always underlying reasons for addiction and, looking back, the makings of the coming self-destruction can be identified in their childhood, even when outwardly, the addicts were successful as children. Depending on the episode, viewers suffering from anxiety, depression, trauma, or another psychological handicap, with or without an obvious addiction, will often find something about the featured addicts they can identify with. I recently reacted that way to Emily. It's striking how often isolation, need for control, and the expectations and the judgement of others are factors in the addiction.
Eric
Shortcomings and "Don't do this to me"
I stopped by the Barnes and Noble near Lincoln Center yesterday (by the way, the newly rebuilt Alice Tully Hall looks quite imposing, at least from the outside) on my way home from the Society of Illustrators' gallery. I like to browse B&N's graphic novels section for unexpected catches. It's hit or miss and today was a hit.
I found Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine. The graphic novel falls in the same genre of another recent Barnes and Noble find, American Born Chinese by Gene Yang: Gen-X Asian-American male identity crisis and angst. Both cover much of the same ground, except Tomine's protagonist is Japanese-American rather than Yang's Chinese-American and Tomine's work is relatively nuanced (though still direct) and Yang's style is more fantastic. Tomine explores the problem without a solution, while Yang proposes a solution of sorts. I was a little surprised to find out that Japanese-American men are dealing with the same social issues; I had assumed they were better assimilated.
Both works spoke to me in the emerging collective voice of my Asian-American male generation, to which can be added 2006 movie The Motel. We're beginning to bring to light the relentless social pressure placed on Asian-American men from all sides. Tomine uses Ben to show how isolating and subversively debilitating that social pressure is. We're granted no allowance for our personality shortcomings (reference intended). We're constantly in the wrong and pressured to adapt to others, at the same time that the equal or greater imperfections of our non-Asian American male peers are seemingly indulged. It's a trap, especially when we internalize the pressure to defer in a culture that grants us no privilege. In the surprise but oh-so-familiar plot twist, Ben's cheating girlfriend Miko proves to be worse than he, but it has been Ben, not Miko, who has been bombarded with reproach throughout the story.
Shortcomings hit home in the climactic confrontation between Ben and Miko in her white boyfriend's apartment. At the end of their mean break-up argument, Ben abruptly begs Miko to stay with him and finally whimpers, "Don't do this to me". I said nearly the same thing - "Don't do this" - to Traci after our falling out, during the break time of one of the college classes we shared in Yongsan's high school. I was helplessly in love with a girl who rejected me and I was afraid of the long-term consequences of her rejection. I knew it was hopeless, but I desperately confronted Traci anyway.
Like Ben, I was hurt by the girl who had my heart, yet debased myself and begged her; like Miko, Traci was unmoved. Reading the climactic scene in Shortcomings, the coincidence made me wonder whether Traci perceived me as poorly in our brief time with each other as Miko perceived Ben. Then I wondered why accountability for imperfection and responsibility to reform should fall exclusively on me . . . on us . . . and not more on them.
Eric
I found Shortcomings by Adrian Tomine. The graphic novel falls in the same genre of another recent Barnes and Noble find, American Born Chinese by Gene Yang: Gen-X Asian-American male identity crisis and angst. Both cover much of the same ground, except Tomine's protagonist is Japanese-American rather than Yang's Chinese-American and Tomine's work is relatively nuanced (though still direct) and Yang's style is more fantastic. Tomine explores the problem without a solution, while Yang proposes a solution of sorts. I was a little surprised to find out that Japanese-American men are dealing with the same social issues; I had assumed they were better assimilated.
Both works spoke to me in the emerging collective voice of my Asian-American male generation, to which can be added 2006 movie The Motel. We're beginning to bring to light the relentless social pressure placed on Asian-American men from all sides. Tomine uses Ben to show how isolating and subversively debilitating that social pressure is. We're granted no allowance for our personality shortcomings (reference intended). We're constantly in the wrong and pressured to adapt to others, at the same time that the equal or greater imperfections of our non-Asian American male peers are seemingly indulged. It's a trap, especially when we internalize the pressure to defer in a culture that grants us no privilege. In the surprise but oh-so-familiar plot twist, Ben's cheating girlfriend Miko proves to be worse than he, but it has been Ben, not Miko, who has been bombarded with reproach throughout the story.
Shortcomings hit home in the climactic confrontation between Ben and Miko in her white boyfriend's apartment. At the end of their mean break-up argument, Ben abruptly begs Miko to stay with him and finally whimpers, "Don't do this to me". I said nearly the same thing - "Don't do this" - to Traci after our falling out, during the break time of one of the college classes we shared in Yongsan's high school. I was helplessly in love with a girl who rejected me and I was afraid of the long-term consequences of her rejection. I knew it was hopeless, but I desperately confronted Traci anyway.
Like Ben, I was hurt by the girl who had my heart, yet debased myself and begged her; like Miko, Traci was unmoved. Reading the climactic scene in Shortcomings, the coincidence made me wonder whether Traci perceived me as poorly in our brief time with each other as Miko perceived Ben. Then I wondered why accountability for imperfection and responsibility to reform should fall exclusively on me . . . on us . . . and not more on them.
Eric
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