Today’s soundtrack: I'm just calling on the wise man's communion
Today at 12:02pm: cutting notches with a jigsaw



The guy at the lumberyard assured me his delivery guy would not help me carry the wood in, and he was right. For twenty dollars they bring the wood to your building in a truck, but once it touches the sidewalk it’s your problem.

I carried thirty pieces of lumber up the stairs, twenty-six 2x6 ten-footers and six 4x4 ten-footers, and it took me nineteen trips. I’m not a big guy. As my shirt began to soak through I wished for the umpteenth time that the studio had an elevator. After the nineteenth trip I stopped wishing.

The 3/4” plywood was manageable weight-wise, but far too bulky for me to hump up the stairs myself. During my calls for help three friends said no, then Logan said yes. After the fifth sheet was at the top of the stairs, he and his girlfriend got back in his car and disappeared. They live on the Upper West Side.

Hi, my name is Rain and I live in New York City. I work a bunch of different jobs to pay the rent. For one of my jobs I’m running a low-end photo studio. It’s not very exciting but you know what, neither am I.

The studio requires renovation, which I’ve been putting off because I felt it was too big a job for me. Now I’m finally doing it, because I’ve been running the studio for over a year and have yet to break even. If I go any deeper into debt the U.S. economy would capsize. I am singlehandedly subsidizing Mastercard and several banks. So fixing up the studio is my attempt to generate business and not wind up being buried in a potter’s field.

I went to school for industrial design, so I know how to slap things together. Nothing fancy, but give me some wood and a couple power tools and I’ll produce a pile of sawdust with a new chair in the middle. I’ve done demolition and light construction, putting up sheetrock and such.

The studio needs a loft, which I’ve never built before but felt I could figure out. I called my friend Ben, an experienced builder, and asked him some questions about lofts and decks and he offered to help. I e-mailed him a simple floorplan and he figured out where the posts and joists should go. And it was he who spec’d out the cut-list in paragraph two.

Next we spent two days putting the damn thing up. The floor in the studio is more crooked than Tom Delay so it wasn’t easy getting the thing level and plumb. Ben did most of the math and construction, which was fine by me; I cut the wood to his instructions and used the Makita to drill whatever targets he pointed me at.

Now that the raw structure’s finished, Ben’s gone and I’m on my own. I have to finish securing the surface to the joists, then hang doors and build shelving for underneath. Last comes the staining and sanding. I’m pretty sure I can finish it inside of two weeks. Then again I was pretty sure John Kerry was going to win the last Presidential election.

After Ben left I spent a couple hours tidying stuff up--the studio’s been turned upside down--then washed as much sawdust off me as I could, and went out for dinner. 11pm on a Sunday night so my options are limited. I headed over to my favorite Vietnamese place, Nam Son, but they were closed. The streets, however, were packed with tourists. I forget how it gets like this on Memorial Day weekend.

I buried my craving for Vietnamese and walked up to the Korean deli on Spring, where I’ve gotten friendly with the counterguy; I think he gives me more pressure to get married than my parents do. I wanted a bacon cheeseburger but the grill was already off. I heard that when you’re writing a screenplay, you’re supposed to come up with complications that stymie the character at every turn. Wonder where they came up with that idea.

I settled for a couple empanadas and a small plastic container of something called 0% Greek Yogurt. Never tried it before so figured I’d give it a whirl.

“How many hours you work this week?” asked Korean counterguy, ringing up my order. I told him and he nodded. Didn’t mention marriage this time.

With my dinner in a bag I walked down to Chinatown. There are these fruit and vegetable stands that have these shelves out front, like bleachers. At 11:30pm they're long-closed and the shelves are bare. I parked myself on one of these, unwrapped the chow and started eating. Street life in front of me like a theater.

This part of Chinatown is filthy. I’m not sure if it’s the locals or the tourists. From my vantage point on the fruit bleachers, I look left and right and see a medium-sized avenue completely strewn with trash. There’s not a two-foot-square stretch of pavement or sidewalk that doesn’t have something dirty and discarded on it.

A drunken group of tourists, all female and middle-American-looking, stumble past me. Desperate Housewives. The leader turns to me and asks me which way the subway is. I start to answer her but she ignores me mid-sentence and starts walking again.

They stop at the next intersection and holler at a passing bus. Then, while waiting for the light, the group of them bends over and touches the sidewalk, each of them assuming the position of a sprinter at the beginning of a race. Their asses are all sticking way up in the air. All of the women are shaped roughly like Grimace, narrow on top and wide at the bottom, wearing tight pants and wobbling drunkenly. I’ve seen some pretty sick pornography on the internet, but to me this was more obscene.

A teenager walks past, speaking Fukienese into a cell phone. It sounds a lot more jarring to me than Cantonese.

A double-decker tourbus drives past. Though it’s nearly midnight, it’s filled to the brim. Each and every person in the bus turns and stares at me eating my empanadas like I’m some kind of zoo animal. I want to throw my feces at them.

Afterwards I crack open the Greek yogurt. It has no scent but tastes exactly like what I imagine a prison inmate’s asshole tastes like. The Greeks that first started eating this must have been very, very hungry.

Fifteen minutes later I abandon the fruit bleachers and walk home through the crowded sidewalks. I pass a yellow Ferrari Maranello parked in front of a Chinese restaurant. Behind the front seats is a glass panel, underneath which you can see the engine. It looks cleaner than anything in my house.

A couple is arguing on the corner across the street. I can’t hear what they’re saying but the girl is leaning towards the guy and repeatedly jabbing an accusatory finger at his chest. He doesn’t move.

A cop buzzes past in one of those enclosed scooters. He parks at an intersection and looks over the tourists with a bored look on his face.

A car filled with four Chinese people stops suddenly. One of them gets out, shuts the door and walks around the corner. The car drives off. None of them said goodbye.

A door opens and three young women come out of a building, apparently on their way to a club. They look like what bad girls looked like in the 1950s: Heavy makeup, knee-length skirts over fisnet stockings and their hair is in bobs and doo-wop perms.

Have fun at the club, girls. I’m off to bed.

Today’s soundtrack: CDs and T-shirts and promos
Today at 8:32pm: supporting the Hollywood economy



Hey so I saw Star Wars. I didn’t think it was great, and despite the twist ending--Anakin turns into Darth Vader!!!--it’s really not that interesting.

It’s clearly been focus-grouped. The aliens have lost their Earthly ethnic accents--remember when the blue guys sounded like Chinese dudes, and Jar Jar’s voice actor was a West Indian wannabe?

Yoda’s pulling that same shit where he can jump around like a mofo during fights, but in everyday life he walks with a cane. My theory is he’s trying to get Workman’s Comp. The Force they’ve got; good health insurance they don’t.

And I’ll tell you something about those Jedi; they like cutting people’s hands off. It’s a thing. This is the sixth Star Wars to come out and people have been getting their hands chopped off since the second. Every time they turn the Light Sabers on you know someone’s about to lose a mitt. If Jedi knights were trash talkers they’d probably turn their shit on and say “Hey man...I hope you don’t own any expensive gloves. ‘Cause in a minute you won’t be needing ‘em.”

I bet the original Jedi weapon was just called a Saber. It was like a regular sword, just metal, it didn’t glow or retract. But every time they used it to cut someone’s hands off blood would go squirting all over the goddamn place. After duels they’d go back to the Jedi locker room covered in red splatters like they just played paintball.

So they developed the Light Saber, which automatically cauterizes wounds. Probably because it’s hot or made out of light or whatever. Now when they amputate, the bloody stumps are cleanly sealed by the patented Light Saber cauterizing action.

But the Jedi are old-fashioned folk and slow to adapt, so sales of the new Light Sabers didn’t take off until this commercial:

Above is a photo for you from New York. Below is a favor for you from L.A.

The aptly-named David Chow has put together a comprehensive list of the best eats to be had in Los Angeles. (When it comes to this type of shit, the Zagats call David.)

Today’s soundtrack: I know it’s a gamble but I won’t lose
Today at 2:42pm: ticket window at Grand Central



Riding the rails, albeit locally. I’m on a train going upstate to see my folks. Mother’s Day and all that. The train goes north through Harlem, and things slowly get greener.

This will be the last time I’m performing this little ritual; my folks are moving, for good. Sold the house and everything. They’re going someplace the weather’s warm, so if I want to see them on the holidays my journey will be by plane.

My family’s already small. Now we will be small and far-flung. My parents are following in my brother’s footsteps, at least conceptually. When he turned twenty-one he loaded up a small used car with all of his belongings and drove west.

Far west, like multiple time zones. He wound up living someplace 6,500 feet above sea level. I went out to visit him once. The air was fresh and the menus had weird things on them.

My folks pick me up at the train station, then drive me back to their soon-to-be-someone-else’s house. We have a family wrestling match, exchange gunfire with the neighbors, then build a replica of Frank Lloyd Wright’s Fallingwater out of smoked meats. You know, typical family stuff.

On the train ride back, I’m sitting by myself in that part of the train where two rows face each other. I figure maybe I’ll get lucky, no one will sit near me and I can stretch out.

Two stops later my luck runs out. An assload of people climb aboard, filling out the train. A giant of a man, perhaps six-foot-two and in his seventies, sits diagonally opposite me in the little nook. His hulking frame barely fits in the seat. His traveling companion, a woman in her 80s and no taller than five feet, sits across from him and next to me.

I surreptitiously hit “pause” on the iPod remote. Sometimes old-timers say some really interesting shit.

Judging by their conversation, they made it aboard the train in the nick of time. “Boy, you can really move when you need to, Lil,” says the guy.

“Oh yes. Oh, yes,” she says, nodding. She speaks in low tones and I can’t make out the rest of what she says.

They stop talking, and eventually I turn the music back on.

Two stops later they start talking again, and I lightly squeeze my remote, pausing it.

“Me too,” the giant’s saying. “We graduated high school in June of 1955,” he says, smiling at the memory. “So it will be fifty years this June and we’re having our reunion. June of 2005. Fifty years,” he says, shaking his head. “I can’t believe it...it seems like just yesterday.”

That last part rattles me. This guy does not look like a young man at all. I don’t want to be rude and stare, so I pretend to be looking out the window while I study his reflection. (Attention hot girls who ride the subway: Guys check you out this way all the time, it’s a thing.) Careworn face, wrinkles, white hair thinning out at the top. Clothes purchased more for utility than fashion. Your average old-timer. I face forward again.

It seems like just yesterday. I try not to squirm while I paraphrase his words in my head:


- Fifty years went by in a blink.

- I woke up one morning and I was sixty-eight.

- My youth just disappeared.

- In 1955 we didn’t have global warming, SARS and terrorism; just think of the awful shit they’ll be coming out with next.

- If you don’t act now it’s going to be too late.

- Hey Rain, you wanna see London, Helsinki and Havana? Then maybe you’d better fucking go.

- Keep taking forever to finish your book, that’s a good idea.

- It’ll all be over before you know it.

The train continues rolling. “It’s amazing how beautiful nature is,” says the giant, gesturing to the window. The sun is setting, clouds streaked across the sky.

“Oh yes,” says the woman. “Oh yes.”

“It’s so beautiful that not even an artist could reproduce it,” he says, shaking his head. I turn and look out the window myself, perhaps letting on that I can hear them.

The sunset’s pretty...pretty standard. I’ve seen better. Going to Hawai’i raises the bar on sunsets; it’s like tasting an actual Mexican taco after you’ve eaten nothing but Taco Bell.

The dark and tall buildings of Harlem whip past, occasionally interrupting the brilliant orange glow fading into midnight blue. Suddenly and without warning we enter the tunnel leading to Grand Central, and everything outside the window goes dark. The only thing I can see now is the reflection of the old timer. Faded and grey. His mouth is pinched at the corners a little but I can’t get a good read on his expression. He turns away from the window and back to his companion, who is not his wife.

The woman says something to him, in the same low tones as before so I can’t make out what. I want to see what she looks like...but at the same time I don’t. I hit the play button and the music comes back on.

Today’s soundtrack:
Give It Up or Turnit Loose [In the Jungle Groove Remix] - James Brown
(all I’ll say is, goddamn)
Today at 8:40am: at the courthouse, the security guard takes my cell phone away

What’s he doing?

Taking a lightmeter reading. I think I almost blinded him with my flash.

Last weekend I was in another of Wendy’s film exercises. The script was only two pages, I didn’t write it, and it took almost all day to shoot. It was about a guy and a girl. I’m guessing the finished product will clock in around three minutes. (I know it’s supposed to be one page = one minute, but the script was printed in a font smaller than Courier.)

During rehearsal I had to “act” opposite one of my female friends, Lawyer Girl, with instructions to pretend she was my girlfriend. If I haven’t mentioned this before, I suck at acting. Wendy provided direction, tuning my delivery of the lines.

“Say it to her with passion, with romance,” said Wendy, crouching on the floor behind us. “Say it to her like you’re really in love with her.”

Lawyer Girl sat there deadpan. The air between us crackled with all the passion of an online banking transaction.

“Um...get ready for the magic,” I mumbled, then launched into my lines. On camera I have the emotional range of a halibut.

On shoot day Lawyer Girl was replaced with Urban Planning Girl, another female friend of mine, this one married. At least the scenes were platonic--in another of Wendy’s exercises, I was required to engage in interrupted fake kissing.

I gave a decidedly unmagical performance. Afterwards the girls sauteed me in butter, vermouth and lemon juice and served me on a bed of carrots with garlic mash on the side.

Last year on a lark I auditioned for one of Wendy’s friends, Saysi. She was looking for an Asian guy to be in her short so I tried out. Didn’t get the part.

Saysi’s now-finished short was just featured in the Tribeca Film Festival, and she won like ten grand!

At times like this I’m glad I’m not actually an actor, because losing out on a part in something that does well must feel terrible. Instead I’m just detached and psyched for Saysi.

I had jury duty today, and I’ll have it again tomorrow.

“Cut!”

I didn’t believe this, so I had to pull it into Photoshop and check it myself. And it’s actually friggin’ true.

P.S. I have no idea where this came from, Logan the Chef e-mailed it to me.

One of my secret dreams is to become a director of karaoke videos. But only for good songs of my choosing. The short list is Tyrone Davis' "Turn Back the Hands of Time," Jimi Hendrix's "Bleeding Heart" and John Lee Hooker's "Serves Me Right to Suffer." And the videos will be fucking awesome.

I'd be the Trouffaut of karaoke videos. Wong Kar-Wai would call me up wanting to hang out. Michel Gondry would be like, hanging out outside my house.

Sure hope I spelled "Trouffaut" right.

You will grow sick of looking at these types of
pictures long before I become sick of taking them.