Tag Archives: economic downturn

Dear Living at My Parents’ House Post-Graduate School: things are going to be weird around here for a while

25 May

My dad’s 45th high school reunion is this month. He went to Kamehameha, a school for Native Hawaiian children. Yes, only for children with native blood. It was left to educate Hawaii’s youth by the royal family. Private, subsidized, funded by a royal trust that owns most of downtown Waikiki. Military. It was a boarding school on Oahu back in the day, when my dad went– now it’s expanded to other islands and there are day school branches.

I don’t know if everyone who went to Kam School is this crazy, but my dad’s class? They have a reunion every year. And it’s not just a four-hour luau in someone’s garage. They take cruises together. They go to Las Vegas together. Trips. With your high school class.

This year, because it’s the 45th, it’s special: it’s eight days long. YOU HEARD ME. My dad says this may not all be his class’s doing– every year, all the classes celebrating 5-year anniversaries get together and there are planned events: golf tournaments, beach picnics, etc. Of course, this doesn’t account for the 10-15 emails he’s getting a day about just the things his class will be doing. A bus field trip out to this beach, their own class’s golf tournament, etc.

Guess where they stay: in the dorms.

Boarding school experiences are weird.

Pretty sure I’m going to have major ambivalence about spending four hours at my high school reunion (two years from now), much less eight days.

I just got the save-the-date for my first high-school-friend’s-wedding. It’s not in Seattle, so I’m not sure yet whether I’ll be able to go. All I can tell you is that my first thoughts were A) I better look hot and B) If I’m still living in my parents’ house by then, I’m lying.

Of course, now I’ve just put that on this blog, so I’m screwed.

Look, I just graduated from graduate school, and the economy sucks, and I went to art school– not exactly career-oriented in the best of times. I didn’t have a lot of reasons to stay in San Diego– it’s nice, I like it, it’s not my place, Seattle is my place– so now I’m back in Seattle. I don’t have a job, I don’t have a place to live, it doesn’t particularly make sense to find a place to live before I have a job (or a plan). What if I sign a lease and then get offered a great job in Portland? Or even, what if I find a place in Ballard and then get a job in Capital Hill? That may sound dumb, but if you live in Seattle, you just shuddered.

So I’m living with my parents for the foreseeable future. And “exploring my options.”

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Dear Things That Are Blowing My Mind at My Parents’ House

24 May

1. Having more than one floor.

2. For that matter, having more than one room.

3. Let’s not even get into having more than one bathroom.

4. When you walk out the door, you’re outside. There is more than one door that leads to the outside. There is also a garage you can park in with a door that leads inside and a really big door that leads outside.

5. Print newspapers.

6. The amount of fresh bread in the house. The fully stocked fridge. Extra boxes of Kleenex waiting in the bathroom cupboard.

7. Non-quarter-operated washing machine and dryer. Dishwasher! Garbage disposal!  

8. Cable.

9. Landline.

10. Fresh milk delivery. 

Things are weird around here.

MM

Dear Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Schrader, You’re Famous, WTF Are You Doing on Kickstarter

17 May

I do love that tagline: “It’s not the Hills…” Hahahaha!

At first I saw that Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Schrader were making a movie together and I was all, Yessssssssssssssssss.

Then I processed the fact that they’re doing a Kickstarter project to fund it. Something about “creative control BLAH BLAH BLAH, not relying on the industry or a studio WANK WANK WANK.”

GUYS. Kickstarter is for people who are not Bret Easton Ellis or Paul Schrader. Kickstarter is for us poor suckers who want to someday be Bret Easton Ellis or Paul Schrader.

“A kind of DIY mentality, shooting with friends, shooting on low-cost equipment, then it moves to setting up a website, going on Facebook, and the next step is you’re going on Let It Cast to start casting, next step is you’re all of a sudden going on Kickstarter to bring in an audience base….and it’s all part of a new way– I mean, I personally think that films, right now, are sort of where they were 100 years ago, they’re being reinvented right in front of our eyes.” — Paul Schrader

OH MY GOD. Paul Schrader, we have a DIY mentality and we shoot with friends and shoot on low-cost equipment because we have no other options. Because we don’t have access to studios, or expensive equipment. And we’re hoping and praying and selling our souls that one of our “friends” turns out to be the next Bret Easton Ellis, we are not actually working with Bret Easton Ellis. 

You made it! You don’t have to do this crap anymore! You’re being nostalgic for when you were young and broke and poor and no one knew your names. That is the worst kind of indulgent, narcissistic, amnesia-fueled midlife crisis there is. If you really want to do a Kickstarter project, you should all be required to eat nothing but cereal and Top Ramen for the duration of the project, and you should have to beg your parents to keep paying your cell phone bills and also ask if maybe you can use their garage for a shooting location if you promise, promise, promise to clean up?

Look, I get that with the advent of the Internet, making art has become a free-for-all. How can “real” comedians be expected to survive when any jackass with a Twitter can make jokes all day long now? How can “real” authors survive when anyone can self-publish? But as Richard Russo points out, in a Seattle Times interview about Amazon publishing, all this technology isn’t bad for people who have “name recognition. And for brand-new writers who are having a hard time breaking in, Amazon is good for writers like us who have name recognition. And for brand-new writers who are having a hard time breaking in, they provide an outlet. It’s the mid-list literary writer who gets squeezed out when the market contracts.” 

We can worry about the mid-list artists, yes. But Kickstarter is for those having a hard time breaking in. Special report to Paul Schrader and Bret Easton Ellis: you have name recognition.

Just look at what they’re promising to funders— For $5,000, “Bret Easton Ellis will read and review your novel and have that review appear on an international blog or website” (cue angry, drug-fueled white boys coming in their pants). For $5,001, “Have your script covered by Paul Schrader– Notes to be delivered in person (NY or LA) or skype” (cue film majors vomiting on their own feet). 

They’re ruining it for the rest of us. How do we stand a chance against that?!? Sure, I can offer to read your script and deliver notes in person, but unless that comes with a sexual favor, I don’t think you’re going to care.  

Bret Easton Ellis and Paul Schrader, you should be funding Kickstarter projects, not pitching them. I’m sorry if you don’t like being famous, but that’s just too bad. Maybe you can make an angsty commerical about it. Look, I get that you two aren’t Tom Cruise and Michael Bay, but you’re certainly not that college kid with a video camera and a skateboard for a tracking shot. You shouldn’t be trying to recreate your lost days of obscurity and despair that the world might not let you do what you loved. 

You should be in the process of giving back by giving some young unknowns a chance, the way somebody once gave you one. You’re siphoning our dream gasoline! Step away from the straw. It’s too skinny and there’s too little fuel for all of us to get a hit as it is.

I hope this is a hoax. Internet, would you do some research and get back to me? I’ve got to go burn all my hopes and dreams.

MM

Dear North Carolina

9 May

I address you because you’re convenient (although controversial) at this moment. This letter also applies to Colorado, where the filibuster last night had constituents crying “Shame!”; to Arizona, where lawmakers recently designated women as perpetually pregnant; to California, where Prop 8 essentially did the same thing North Carolina’s Amendment One did; to Washington, where before marriage-equality legislation even passed in February, opponents were gearing up to fight it through a ballot referendum (we’ll see it in November). Oh, the states are dividing in more ways than red and blue: how red, how blue. How safe for gay couples; how legal for them to marry; how protected for them to work. 

How unconstitutional for them to love one another.

It was already illegal for gay couples to marry in North Carolina. Passing an amendment– amendment one, the first amendment to their constitution– was just to be extra sure. In other words, North Carolina put on suspenders even though it was already wearing a belt. The only reason to strap on double protection is fear. Boot-shaking, earth-quaking fear that you might end up naked, your shame exposed in front of everyone. Or lack of education, right? No one wears two condoms unless they weren’t paying attention in health class. (We can always hope that this NC amendment is indeed a double-condom situation and will result in a complete bust and backfire.) 

So what did Amendment One do? It hurt domestic violence victims. Because unmarried partnerships (“personal relationships”) are no longer recognized as having any legal standing in North Carolina, unmarried people who find themselves in violent situations are no longer entitled to the smidgen of extra protection that domestic violence codes afforded them. Thank god. Because domestic violence victims– they were just way, way too protected. They were working that system, because it’s so glamorous and so well-tilted in their favor already. Just getting really uppity, those DV victims were. 

Even the governor was against it, urging voters to understand that this amendment does nothing except hurt North Carolina.

These are old battles from the 1960′s, being brought up by old white men who are trying to return to an America they once knew. It wasn’t better then. It won’t get better until they’re out of office, until our legislatures look like the citizenry. 

credit: Kevin Siers, Charlotte Observer

These are tired, stale conversations. We’ve had them, and we’ll keep having them as long as we need to, but it’s a waste of our time. There are other things for us to tackle.

This is why people say, “If you’re voting Republican, you haven’t been paying attention.” They mean if you’re voting Republican as a woman, or a gay person, or a person who knows women or gay people, or as a man who wants to be able to have sex without paying child support for the next 18 years, or as a man who wants his mother, sister, daughter, wife, lover to be protected if she is ever raped or faces cancer or the loss of a child, they mean if you think women and LGBTQI people are full citizens and human beings, then you cannot continue voting Republican. If you’re a good ol-fashioned Republican who’s voting on “economic policies,” you need to recognize that economic policies don’t matter as long as the politicians are making your vote about human rights.

Yes– we should be debating job creation, and laissez-faire government, and foreign policy. We should be debating health care, and family care leave, and the growing gap between the rich and the poor, and gun control laws. That’s what this election year should be about. It’s not. We should be talking about how socioeconomics are still tied to race in this country, and why women still earn $0.77 to the dollar that men earn for equal work even when all variables have been accounted for. We should be talking about why it’s condescending and misogynist that Alex Castellanos called Rachel Maddow “passionate” on TV. Yes, we should still be talking issues of racism and sexism and classism, because those conversations are not over. Those prejudices, those oppressive forces are not gone.

But we shouldn’t be fighting Roe v. Wade, we shouldn’t be fighting for access to birth control, and we should be voting on marriage-equality, not amending our state constitutions to extra-super-ban it. It’s shameful. 

It’s time for a 21st-century conversation. It’s time for national legislation. Nowhere is the need for young people in government more evident than in the fight for marriage equality and the war against women. It’s past time to move forward. Aren’t we tired yet of standing still?

MM

Dear Seattle: A Love Letter from a Native Daughter

18 Apr

I’m moving (back) to Seattle at the end of May. Back to the land of clouds and lakes. Back to where we say obnoxious things like, “My hometown is better than yours” and we really, really mean it.

Seattle is so beautiful even I can't screw up the photographs.

Search google for “Seattle tumblr” and you find (page one) long lists of tumblrs that do nothing but post pictures of Seattle (really?) and (page two) you find posts about all those tumblr authors meeting up. In bars. In Seattle. To talk about how great Seattle is. And presumably to compare the silk percentages of their favorite hiking socks and stroke each other’s facial hair and create a living Escher sketch with all that plaid.

Seattle-ites who are stupid or restless or ambitious enough to move to other cities have a reputation for being obnoxiously proud. Like: I was surprised other parts of the country were allowed to have salmon and crab. I’m still unsure about ordering it in restaurants here. Here. In San Diego. We aren’t exactly landlocked. 

My ex-boyfriend thinks he really loves Seattle, having gone to University of Washington, and having expressed a desire to live there for the rest of his life. I just smiled at him pityingly. It’s really cute that he’s enlightened enough to recognize its inherent greatness, but he just does not even know.

I mean, that’s the thing: we think Seattle is great, and we’re sort of amazed the rest of the world hasn’t caught on, but we don’t really want you moving there. You’ve seen the articles, right? About how Seattle natives are friendly right up until you actually want to talk to them or do something? In a lot of ways, it’s easier to move to New York and make friends. 

I’m hoping I won’t have that same problem as a Seattle daughter who’s returning, but to be honest: I’m a little nervous. And to be honest: my pedigree isn’t as watertight as it could be…

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