1-for-Psyching Myself Up

It’s the little things: Safeway had a 2-for-1 sale on 96oz. Minute Maid orange juice. I drink so much orange juice and the 96-ouncer is amazing! It seems no matter how many glasses are guzzled, there’s still MORE JUICE! It’s virtually neverending. And get this…there’s another 96-ounce jug YET TO BE OPENED. If there is a heaven and it really is like a characterized, idealized life on Earth there will be plenty of fresh-squeezed orange juice…selling 3-for-1, dammit.

Last week, a student who shows a surprisingly high (that is to say, more than zero) interest in my love life expressed alarm when informed that I haven’t dated anyone since I’ve been in Seattle. She said: “You’re handsome, you’re funny. What’s wrong with you?”* To which I could only smile. She’s so charming with that delicate Dr. Phil touch. But I appreciate her concern. That’s 20 months for those tallying numbers. I know that was a damning statistic, but its meaning was amplified this weekend when I attended the Cambodian New Year dinner, dance and celebration on campus. It was an incredible event; entire families were there, but for a slew of reasons I couldn’t get a date/buddy to accompany me. But, no, I didn’t feel self-conscious at all sitting at a table with my director (and his wife), my co-director (and her husband) and my immediate boss (and his girlfriend). Even when the dance began and the thirtysomethings started to ship out, the director told me to “stick around and get you a girl, WhatUpThen!”** Why does everyone have input all of a sudden?

So now that I’ve been summoned to rise from this relationship-free stupor, I will do so. Mine those prospects ’til I can shout “Eureka, I have found it!” (CA state motto; my family owned an encyclopedia set when I was a kid). Plus, I certainly don’t want to leave this city with a sense of defeat. Hey, I’m 2-for-3 in the got-your-own apartment/job/car qualifier, so I’m good to go. Enough window shopping, time to make a purchase. Ooh, maybe I’ll run across a nice 2-for-1 deal!

*verbatim
**verbatim; name changed to protect the incredible

 

What I’m Working On Now

I’ve decided that it’s okay to stay up until 3am as long as I’m doing something constructive and defined. For example, reviewing graduation criteria or writing my first blogger post in a week. For certain, in not having posted anything new my two readers have been alienated, but perhaps they will be forgiving once they discover how busy I’ve been.

First, I should tell you about my new discovery. Last year, I found Urban Soul Nation on Internet radio. It was run by one person back East. I even chatted with him for a bit on Yahoo! Messenger and he told me about his struggles in running an Internet radio station: startup equipment costs, maintaining a website, paying royalties. He also sent me the mp3s for Prince’s Money Don’t Matter 2Night and Brownstone’s 5 Miles to Empty. That alone is more than I could have asked for. Anyway, earlier this week I ran across Virgin Radio Groove. It’s broadcast out of the UK, classic soul and disco. Absolutely phenomenal. Absolute classics mixed in with shit I’ve never heard before. Marvin Gaye, Jackson 5, SOS Band, Gladys Knight, Dennis Edwards, Average White Band and SHALAMAR. Come on, now…freakin’ Shalamar. Not many people know this, but I’ve named my left arm Shalamar (and my right arm Excalibur). I would like to name my little boy Shalamar (and my little girl Cassandra…for short, she could be called either Sandy or Cassie!).

Wow, what an aside! Now to make my title relevant. At work, each of the five staff members was supposed to come up with and execute a project for our Culture Series. After a couple of weeks to mull it over we had a meeting to discuss our ideas. My coworkers’ ideas were as follows: host a Chicano theatre group, hold a reception for women of color on campus, host a performance by a Broadway actor and host a well-known comedian. My idea was to write book synopses and post them around the Ethnic Cultural Center. I did execute my project, and while everyone raved about it, it just wasn’t the dynamic or entertaining impact of a performance or a party. It was called a reception but there were so many women of color, I treated it like a party. Plus, my boss is the one bringing the comedian. It’s Dat Phan, and he is pretty fucking funny. Jeff, my boss, is incredible and I know it’s not a competition, but it’s possible to feel just a little inadequate when I’m writing book reports and he’s booking heavyweight comics.

Perhaps out of pity, the ECC director passed his project off onto me, so I’m responsible for promoting that “performance by a Broadway actor” (see above). His name is Charles Holt, he was in The Lion King…those seem like credentials enough. Now he’s touring a one-man show based on Richard Wright’s autobiography Black Boy. So, I’ve been going wild trying to promote and as soon as I get our badass poster online I’ll link to it, but for now here’s this. So it’s been a ton of printing, calling, flyering, emailing, postering, chatting, convincing and stressing to make sure I get 500 butts in seats to check out this play. It’s supposed to be a real gem, so there’s no conning anyone. Plus, it’s a free show. But scheduling an event and making it a success are two very different creatures. So, that’s that. If you’re reading this and you live in Seattle, you need to be in the HUB Auditorium on Tuesday, April 19. It’s late, I’ll fill stuff in later.

 

WhatUpThen the Camper

WhatUpThen has decided to finish off graduate school with a bang. For all of studying and research on science education and forestry and environmental science and environmental justice, I’ve never been camping. In my room you won’t find a folded-up tent, binoculars, a sleeping bag, spiffy New Balance cross-trainers or rain gear. And you sure as hell won’t find a Nalgene bottle. Those things are incredibly obnoxious. Soon you will find most of those things in my apartment, though, because I’ll need them for this monster 8-unit environmental science and resource management class that includes four weekend field trips. One is to San Juan Island and one is to the Olympic Mountains. I can’t remember where the other two trips are and I couldn’t even tell you where the first two are located since WhatUpThen isn’t exactly outdoor-oriented.

But I’m not concerned, and doesn’t it make sense to do this? We want our teachers (and other professionals) to have had experience doing the things they teach to others. One could be the master of X’s and O’s, but how could she (Good job, Stanford women!) coach a basketball team if she hasn’t played on a team? Hmm…what’s another example? Oh yeah…one could join with a political family through marriage and pay attention to national affairs while making movies in Hollywood and becoming a star, but how can you become Governor of California if you’ve never held public office? In fact, how can one even think he is capable of performing the job duties? Maybe they’re not that tough?? Anyway, you get the point. This course is gonna be great and it really is necessary if I’m gonna exhort to students the importance of the natural world.

Incidentally, does anyone reading this have camping gear I can borrow? I’m talking tent, sleeping bag, binoculars, galoshes, a headlamp, a backpack…I don’t even know what else. The way I figure it…I don’t know you and you don’t know me, but if you send me something relatively clean, I’ll send it back to you in June with maybe $20 and a coupla lottery tickets. Can WhatUpThen build community or what?

 

Last Day

Back at the Stan-Stan, students customarily had three hours for finals. That was the assumption when I stepped in to take the wildlife biology exam at 8:30 this morning. But right around 9:05 the guy who told me the story about how he smashed his testicles on a stairway railing while trying to do tricks on his BMX got up and submitted his test. I believe in the abilities of all people, but let’s just say I wouldn’t have pegged this guy to finish a 3-hour exam in 30 minutes…well, not while I was still on page two. A mysterious seed of doubt had been planted in my mind, however, and it grew when a couple more students turned in their exams a few minutes later. It was time to go to the front of the room and take action.

Chris: [whisper] “How long do we have for this test?”
TA Proctor: “Ends at 10:30.”

SHEEEEEEEIT.

So one hour for the first 2 pages, followed by one hour for the next 6. I know my responses for the questions I answered were all correct, but of course I didn’t answer all of the questions. Once that building bell rings, other students flood into the classroom like male enhancement emails. What are they so excited about, anyway?

Well, enough about that. Quarter’s over. Got to celebrate with some noontime basketball before work. Washington was playing, but there was no need to watch since it’s the whole 1-seed versus 16-seed deal. Playing was a real delight, though. As many Eastern European guys as there are in the NBA and I don’t think I’ve ever played with one…until today! He was our center; just like Zydrunas Illgauskas. Big and slow, yet powerful. He hit his jumpers, he made some passes that make you say “nifty” and he had some crazy little contortionist pivots to score. I love meeting people from outside the U.S. This guy kept talking to me about the status of the game:

“Maybe you should guard him. He is too quick for me.”
“I got his arm before I got the ball.”
“You pass to me after we switch.”

Maybe I’m not communicating it right, but I was cracking up because I never have these little conversations while playing pickup with random gym guys. Maybe I was laughing because he was being so friendly (how horrible!). It reminds me of when the African guy walks up to me and asks me if I’m from Africa because I guess I look African. No, but I like eating at The Blue Nile? Maybe? Yes? Or maybe it was the general giddyness from it being the last day.

 

Artists & Creativity

I totally went to Vancouver last weekend with Master P and his technogeek coworkers. That’s not a slam on them, of course, but just a description. I borrowed a digital camera from student services at the university but, unbeknownst to me, the thing had only a 32 meg card in it, so I have only about 12 photos to put up here. Plus, I left the camera in Master P’s car, so I have only about 0 photos to put up here. I’ll get them up tomorrow and write a little something about our 15-hour trip to Canada.

So onto the post…

On the first Monday of each month students put on a show in the Ethnic Cultural Theatre aptly titled First Mondays. It’s mostly a poetry thing like the Friday night show was. WhatUpThen barely made it there because he was tired after work and it didn’t start until 9pm and, strangely, his back had been killing him all day. But I went because I hadn’t seen it before. Boy, was it worth it.

Let me tell you, there are some mighty talented young men and women out there writing insightful social commentary, keeping the crowd chill as MCs and…playing upright bass. I gushed about the Friday show, too, and I’m not saying that these kids are all geniuses or the collective second coming of Langston Hughes, but it was good shit. Even more wonderful is to witness the result of the creative process. We see a 20-year old Black man (yes, it’s WE …I can’t exempt myself from these presumptions) wearing basketball shorts and his hat cocked to the side and we don’t realize he carries a notebook in his bag stained with lyrics that would force anyone to reconsider. It’s the creativity and effort and art that I appreciate coming from these students. Do any of my friends write poetry? What are our creative outlets…I don’t even know. I’ll be sure to find out very soon.

On a semi-related note, I finally watched Ray last night. As soon as it was over I had to IM Master P and tell him what an incredible movie it was. So much of it made me want to cry/tell my Mom I lover her/sing/call you-know-who. It was Amadeus-ian, this portrait of an artistic genius splitting time between the tortured, exploited and likeable blind man and the savvy, awe-inspiring yet insufferable virtuoso. What’s it like to be the best of the best? To be in the zone your whole life so that people barely understand you. I suppose when we encounter these special people we’ve just got to appreciate them and let them soar.

 

Identity Show

I haven’t been thinking about it as much as before, but still I haven’t skipped a day. Still I feel tread upon. Betrayed, then ignored. Still I am so angry. Still I do not understand.

But such is life, I suppose. Tonight was the MIXED UW Spoken Word Show. It was excellent. Especially those teenage poets with all of the angst and vivid emotional storytelling. Teenage angst is cliched, I know, but the way these kids channeled it into sound, clever writing and performed it onstage was tres impressive. Of course, it isn’t a good idea to always wear one’s emotions on one’s sleeve, but I always appreciate people who can get angry, genuinely excited or otherwise passionate about something. Also performing at the show were Jevian (whom I’ve seen a lot of in the past week and a half, it seems. Interesting how different people just sorta ebb and flow in your life) and the dude who stands outside the student union every day with the giant wooden sign extolling (?) people to praise the Lord. He’s like Y’Shua or The Hate Man in Berkeley…the same guy is in every big city, you’ve seen him. Anyway, he wasn’t so bad, nor was he so frightening. Maybe next time I pass by him I’ll congratulate him on his performance. You’ve always gotta give credit for a person who goes up on stage. Whether you’re shaking or soaking it up it takes a lot of guts.

 

(Community) College Ball

Let’s go back in time…

To last weekend, when I attended not one, but TWO community college basketball games. They were the men’s and women’s games between Shoreline Community College and Bellevue Community College. If you’ve never been to a community college game, let me tell you, it’s just like high school except there are fewer people in the stands. So why the hell was I there? One of my students runs a dance team that performed at each halftime show and my job is to keep my finger on the pulse of the student, so I went. Also, she said there would be dancing girls and my imagination just ran with that one.

The games were entertaining and the shows were entertaining. One interesting thing, though…these are Seattle community colleges. However, I looked at the program for the men’s game and one player was from Oakland Technical HS, one was from Skyline HS and one was from Alameda HS. Those high schools aren’t in Seattle, they’re right down in Oakland, California. I know this because, well…I can almost walk to Oakland (you know, if I ever decided to get some exercise) from the house I grew up in. Plus, I used to work at both Oakland Tech and Skyline. I had to run this by my sister because I didn’t think that community colleges recruited students but it couldn’t be a coincidence that 3 students from three different Oakland high schools were all at Shoreline CC. Rose said to me: “Didn’t you see Hoop Dreams? The guy didn’t pass his SAT or something so he had to go to that community college.” But Rose, they don’t offer scholarships, right? Aren’t JC’s only like 20 bucks a unit? “Living expenses, Boo,” she said. She also told me that City College of San Francisco is a national football powerhouse among community colleges. Players who aren’t quite blue chip or who can’t get admitted directly to major college programs go to these places for two years, then transfer to more familiar programs to play sports. Somehow this never had occurred to me.

Anyway, learn something new every day. And now I need to watch Hoop Dreams again. I’ll add that to the list including Bamboozled, Sideways and The Harder They Come.

 

Questionable Tattoo Page

There’s a new link in the Links section. Questionable Content is this great web comic I ran across a couple of weeks ago. Great artwork, and the dialogue is really clever and funny. Kinda Frasier-ian what with the witty banter between Marten, Faye, Dora and Pintsize. I replaced New Jack Swing 4Ever, well, because although I really do listen to old New Jack nearly every day, reading about it just doesn’t have the same appeal.

Glanced at the UW Daily this afternoon at work and found an article about precautions when getting a tattoo. It frowned upon getting a tattoo of the name of one’s significant other because relationships are dynamic. Yeah, I’ll say. I’m not saying not to love and to accept love, but beware that after committing to that tattoo you could be hit by the figurative truck. I still just can’t comprehend the bizarre and uncharacteristic behavior. Rage, sadness, miscommunication, lack of communication…it’s like a thousand song lyrics come true. It’s amazing how much easier and faster it is to tear something down than to build it piece by piece.

Oh…made fried rice for the second time in as many days. First time I used too much oil. This time I used less oil, sliced more carrots and yellow and red bell peppers, added pepper, less soy sauce, some celery and an egg…it was really good.

One last quick thing that deserves more space than I’m gonna give it tonight since it’s closing in on midnight. Attended the Justice Alan Page talk this evening. Black Justice on the Minnesota State Supreme Court and former NFL MVP…he looked like what Taye Diggs will look like at age 59, that is, if he grows some facial hair. Won a national championship at Notre Dame as a college player, went to 8 Pro Bowls as a pro and, of course, that MVP award as a defensive tackle, of all things. As impressive as that is, he attended law school while playing pro ball and worked his way up the lawyer ranks in Minnesota, became D.A., then State Attorney General and now he’s a judge. Either one of those paths of accomplishment is phenomenal and this guy did both…and he’s still going! Anyway, Coach Tyrone Willingham (pretty accomplished in his own right) introduced him and Page talked about the importance of education…demanding excellence and equality. That’s right up my alley as an Education student. He also talked about the importance of the judicial system and impartiality of the judge. A judge’s purpose, he said, isn’t to impose his will but to impose his judgment….that’s why they’re called “Judges” not “Wills”. It was impressive to see a person who clearly has a vested interest in seeing certain things happen be able to set his will aside and use only his judgment. I’ve always wanted to be a judge and I’ve been called a person with great integrity…have I lived up to that compliment? I think…and hope, I have. It’s only the right way to be.

 

Worktime Blogger

Interesting thing about a salaried job…despite not having submitted a timesheet, I’ve already been paid twice! It probably is a good idea to fill those things out, though…maybe during this downtime at work.

That’s right, it’s my first-ever worktime blogger post. Things are kinda slow right now. Filipino American Student Union had a giant meeting and leftover cake and, well…let’s just say I don’t like to waste food. My badass book project for work is finally done and the ECC is decorated with a dozen lovely posters created by our student graphic designer. Somehow I’ve gotta get images of these posters on this site. Maybe I can borrow Master P’s digital camera for the weekend.

I really ought to get the camera because it should be a decent weekend. Got some cash now so a trip to Macy’s is in store. Am I the only straight male on Earth who would admit that Macy’s is his first destination after payday? Gonna see The Vagina Monologues…the real one, for the first time, oh only about 5 years after it was all the rage. And, (ho ho!) there’s a d-d-double date on the horizon for Valentine’s weekend! I’d like to pretend this happens often enough that I’m not crazy-excited about it but, alas, I cannot. So, yeah I’m looking forward to it. This is my most eventful weekend in some time, it’s gotta be recorded for posterity. Oh yeah, and I have to get back to work.

 

J-Church, N-Judah, K-Ingleside

Following an entertaining, yet ultimately time-wasting, bleary-eyed IM chat with my ex’s fiancee at 7am Saturday morning, I spent seven hours at place where I normally wouldn’t be caught dead…a church. I went to churches twice during all of 2004 only for very special events. Before that…who fucking knows when??

One of the UW student groups I advise is planning to bring an anti-racism workshop to campus for faculty and staff to undergo. My boss and I figured that if I’m going to help the students execute the workshop that I ought to at least go through it and get the experience myself.

It was held at Freedom Church in West Seattle. It’s a Black church housed in an old Safeway building. Looking around, one can tell it was formerly a supermarket but it looks very nice with pews (is that the right word? Church and WhatUpThen don’t really mix) installed and a podium/lectern and even microphones and drum set!

The workshop itself was moving. One of my profs has a system about meaningful things…he says to ask yourself whether something touched you, whether it pushed you or whether it moved you; this Undoing Institutional Racism training was most definitely the latter of the three. It’s completely inappropriate to place the session in a nutshell, but I’ll try. There’s no doubt that racism is a reality today, but the workshop leaders threw out some definitions that I hadn’t heard before. If racism is a process by which whites, based on their skin color, are afforded benefits that others don’t receive, then all White people are racist and no person of color can be racist. Isn’t that some provocative shit?! Essentially, they are using the idea of institutionalized racism to define “racism.” It sounds a little less pointed when you say: “All White people benefit from institutionalized racism while no person of color benefits from it,” but I am starting to believe that the automatic benefits are what distinguishes racism from prejudice, hatred and bigotry, which we know people of all colors, nationalities and sexes are capable of.

Anyway, it was also good just to hear everyday people talking candidly about their experiences and about what we need to do. In the real world it is so rare that people talk openly but everyone appreciates it when it happens. It did rankle me a bit each time someone credited God, told me that they were blessed or when I had to pretend like I was praying in a group. But one thing I can say about these church folks, they were welcoming with open arms. Don’t get me wrong…I’m not about to go all Vaya Con Dios on you, but being in that setting really makes one examine oneself and that’s something I needed to do right about now.