Seth Green Looks Like Me

Helmet Club

2011-12-31T17:04:00.000-08:00

Language is funny.

Asao, my Japanese tutor, asked me the other day, "ペトがおもちですか?"

And I replied in my robotic Japanese, "Yes, I. have. a. pet. It. is. a. dog."

And she said いいな~~ with a pleased look upon her face.

I asked in robotic Japanese, "And you, Asao-san, do. you. have. a. pet?"

And she relayed to me that at the present moment she did not. However, as a child she did. She used a word I didn't know and cannot recall now. "わかりますか?" she asked, and I indicated that no, I did not know what that word meant.

"Like a small parrot," she said.

"Aah," I said いいな~~with a pleased expression upon my face.

Then she started talking about something else, but I thought we were still talking about small parrots. "Helmet Club," she said. "Do you know?"

"Helmet Club?" I asked. "No, わかりません."

She gestured with her fingers, miming as if she were placing a strawberry atop a cheesecake, or, more appropriately, putting a small helmet on a small parrot.

"Helmet Club?" I asked.

"Yes, Helmet Club," she assured me.

WTF, Asao? I had visions of her belonging to a club with other Japanese children who also had small parrots, onto which they would place small helmets. Was this a school-sanctioned club? Were they bicycle helmets? Helmets of Trojan warriors? And what did they do once the helmets were on the small parrots? Take pictures? Make the small parrots battle? I was so confused and at such a loss that I simply couldn't let the matter go. I had to understand.

"Helmet Club?" I asked again for the 3rd or 4th time.

"Yes, you don't know?"

No, absolutely not. "I don't understand Helmet Club," I said.

"Sea shore, along." Asao explained. "Look for empty shell..."

Ohhhhh...

Hermit Crab!

Lesson learned.

2011-03-24T09:41:00.000-07:00

Intentional or not, if you wear a red striped shirt with a fedora, people will think you're Freddy Krueger.

Otaku

2011-03-21T15:01:00.000-07:00

Several nights ago Sherry and I lay in bed reading. We were all Mike and Carol Brady like: slippers on our respective sides of the bed, bathrobes hanging from the wall, baseball bat within reach should we hear a noise downstairs, I be sent to investigate only to find that the children have booby trapped the downstairs to thwart would-be robbers and instead have entangled an unsuspecting Alice in a web of tin cans. Deep breath. I looked over at Sherry and the book she was reading - slyly, almost imperceptibly I looked, because she gets nervous when I watch her read. She was reading Norwegian Wood, one of my favorite Haruki Murakami novels, and I just happened to be reading Blind Willow, Sleeping Woman, a collection of Murakami's short stories. There we were lying next to one another, engrossed in our own imaginary worlds penned by the same man's hand, and I was so excited that I wanted to clutch her by the cheeks, kiss her on her pensive pouty lips and exclaim soul mates, you and me, soul mates! So I did, and she grimaced and told me to leave her alone, she was reading. So then I wanted to tell all my friends on the facebooks and the twitters and the linked-ins how in sync my wife and I are, and what a miracle it was that we would both be reading the same Japanese author. But I didn't. Because I'm afraid I'm becoming that guy: An otaku.

At the risk of being labeled an otaku, though, I've decided to write this blog. It's simply too important not to.

SXSW just wrapped up in our city. It's pretty much my favorite week of the whole entire year. For a brief window before our unbearable Austin summers bake us to a golden brown, the weather is absolutely perfect. And SXSW transforms our already bad ass city into a living, breathing, pulsating, gyrating party animal. It's strange. It's overcrowded. It's noisy. It's bloody wonderful.

My favorite night of my favorite week of the whole entire year is Japan Nite. A collection of Japanese bands from all genres and walks of life are pooled onto a single bill, and for $15 at the door my socks are rocked right off my goddamn feet. I love it. It's bizarre, sparkly, sweaty, incomprehensible; Everything I want from my music. Creepy gaijin like myself can practice their garbled Japanese and become buddies with the bands (like here and there) and my bro-in-law can have his belly signed by an all girl Japanese punk band. All us creepy gaijin look at all the other creepy gaijin doing the exact same creepy gaijin things as ourselves, only to judge them and somehow believe we're the only non-creepy gaijin in the entire crowd. We make faces and apologize for the behavior of our countrymen, just like this creepy mofo in the background of this picture. But not all bands want to make friends. Hence the inspiration for this sad blog from 2009.

Aww, but anyway.

Sherry and I have been going to Japan Nite for several years now, and this year was no exception to total badassery. Although, not all bands were absolutely radical. One band was just two shy dudes on their computers, flooding the venue with laser beams and whatnot. It might've been cool - or frightening - if we were totally stoned. But we weren't, so it was neither cool nor frightening. Just meh. Another band was fronted by an American (creepy gaijin), and was underwhelming. It seemed to me that she wanted to be a rock star more than she actually was a rock star. Scratching her head like she had lice, clutching her tummy like she had indigestion. That sort of on-stage foolishness. And I missed the final two bands because the people I was with were hungry and wanted to eat Thai.

BUT!

An all-caps and resounding BUT! Two bands of the night blew the hair straight off my head. Straight. Off. My. God-fearing head, I say. Zukunasisters is a soulful group of four ladies with boundless energy. They make you happy you woke up this morning. Happy to be a part of the human race. Happy to have ears on both sides of your head. I was all grins and butterflies in the stomach at the end of their set.

Then on the other end of the spectrum was Hystoic Vein. Terrifying. Mesmerizing. Adorable in a sweetheart, don't-touch-that-baby-rattlesnake kinda way.

Lots of bands can sit on stage and perform good sets. But these two looked you in the eyes and said "For the next 45 minutes, you. Belong. To me. So, otaku or not, these two bands were extraordinary. They will make you dance and sing, and then they will melt your face off.

yes! yes! yes!

2011-03-03T10:26:00.000-08:00

I’m a bookish boy. A voracious collector of lit, I purchase every book I read. And only after I finish the book, with its dog-eared pages and highlighted passages, do I set it gently upon my bookshelf. I dream starry-eyed of the day when my home will be wall-to-wall, floor to ceiling books, all books I’ve read and manhandled. Every pulpy page smudged with my oily fingerprints. And when the curtain falls on my time on earth, and my ashes are scattered at various points across the globe, I will burden my children and grandchildren with my collection, and they’ll wander from room to room wondering what to do with all these goddamn books.

There are a handful of writers who seem to speak directly to me. Whose books I clutch to my chest and cry yes! yes! yes! kicking my legs in the air and squealing like a teenage girl reading Tiger Beat. There’s Ray Bradbury and Joseph Heller. Jack Kerouac and Haruki Murakami. Steinbeck, Eggers and Vonnegut.

There’s Spalding Gray.

I had tickets to see Spalding Gray deliver one of his monologues. I had tickets twice, actually. The first time he was stuck in the Denver airport, grounded in a blizzard, and the show was postponed. Sherry and I went to dinner instead and drowned our sorrows in liquor, and Sherry got sick off margaritas and appletinis. The second time I had tickets, the show was canceled due to complications from injuries Spalding sustained in an earlier car accident. Then he killed himself. And since then there’s been a hole in my heart that will never be patched.

But last night, I took one step toward closure when I saw Garrison Keillor perform his one-man show. I’m probably too young to be such an avid fan of Garrison Keillor. The average age of attendees last night was 65, but Brandon has many personalities, and the shriveled old man inside of him – the same one who likes his coffee black and his bourbon straight – loves Garrison Keillor. I was introduced to Keillor many years ago through a quote in our local paper: “God never intended for me to work hard,” he mused. “I see that now. My true calling is to live unencumbered and follow the fleeting impulses of my heart and take a nap around 2 p.m.” And I’ve been hooked ever since.

In the book section of my myspace page several years ago, I described Garrison Keillor as the Mel Torme of literature. His prose are so fluid and velvety. His ramblings akin to the strangely melodic skeep-beep-de-bop of an unruly scatman. He shuffled onstage last night in a black suit and a pair of red Sauconys, and for an hour and a half he flopped his maniacal hair around, habitually brushing his frayed mane from his forehead. Eyeglasses perched atop his head, he revealed deep secrets of his youth. He told us of the first time he clumsily made love. He thought it went in straight forward, at a 90 degree angle, like a key into a lock. His words poured forth from his aged jowls like melted butter. It was funny and sad and glorious.

At one point I ran to the lobby to borrow a pen. He had inspired me to write, right then and there, and I scribbled in the dark on the back of a flier for David Sedaris, applauding and yelling yes! yes! yes! as I scribbled. I scribbled the words to my next blog. The blog you just read.

Mata ne

2011-02-07T11:50:00.000-08:00

Hakone is a mountainous region of Japan known for its abundance of hot springs. Among the many hot springs is a family-friendly, themed onsen park called Yunessun. It’s one of my favorite places in the world. They have traditional Japanese onsen, where you confidently soak naked with members of your own sex, but they also have a bathing suit zone where boys and girls can romp around together, mingling in harmony and equality. It's in this area where the “themed” part of the park comes in. You see, it’s not all boring hot bubbling tub after tub. The onsen have themes. There’s a chocolate one, for instance. A coffee one, you actually soak in brewed coffee. A green tea one. There’s even a sake onsen, and you can sip actual sake from a spout! The place is simply amazing.

Overlooking the rolling hills of Hakone on a recent chilly afternoon, steam rising from our shoulders, our feet submerged in 104 degree red wine, Sherry turned to me and her eyes said let’s do this more often. And to that my eyes replied let’s do this always, life’s too short. And her eyes said life isn’t short, Brandon. It’s the longest thing any of us knows. The most beautiful too, and as long we keep doing things like this we’ll never lose sight of that. And my eyes said to hers you’re right.

That was a nice day. And our visit back to Japan was back-to-back nice days. Except that day when Sherry and I were both zombies breaking out in cold sweats and visiting the restroom to vomit after a long night out. That was a bad day. (Again, our humblest apologies, Masumi. Thank you for tolerating and babying us. You're a pal and a confidant.)

When Sherry and I left Japan and moved back to the States a little over two years ago, I began crafting a blog entry to tie up our time abroad. It was a list of all the things I had fallen in love with and would miss savagely, brutally, painfully. The entry quickly got out of hand, though, and I could never bring myself to stop listing things. So I just stopped writing. And the list sat on my laptop for the next couple years, in the Blog folder, an unfinished document titled Goodbye.

One thing I learned from our nine-day vacation is that I still don’t like saying goodbye to that country. So although I still won’t revisit that document with the intention of wrapping it up, I will borrow a line, hastily typed and meant for that other entry two years ago, and repurpose it here. “This isn’t sayonara, Japan. Just mata ne.”

Cause I ain’t done with you, girl. Not with your beautiful, dizzying language of conjugated adjectives and adverbs. Not with your unrivaled and strange obsession with all things adorable and cute. Not with your themed onsen. Not with any of it. Not by a long shot.

Mata ne. Hopefully sooner than later.

No Better

2011-01-29T16:21:00.000-08:00

Dinner with old friends... ... leads to 4am karaoke with new. Had to be up at 9am, so thought it best to just not sleep at all. Rode my rental bike along the Kano River, parked, smoked a cigar on the bank at 7am and watched the sun rise on Mt. Fuji. Didn’t get that picture cause I was simply living the moment. It gets no better. The perfect morning.

Numazu

2011-01-29T00:14:00.000-08:00

It’s been just over two years since Sherry and I left Japan and moved back to the States. And now we’re back, for a visit. We’re bypassing Tokyo, though, along with Kyoto, Osaka and all the other big name cities we Westerners have heard of. Although we did briefly see Nagoya our first night because we got on the wrong shinkansen and took a small two-hour, 150 mile detour. But once we got that all straightened out we headed directly to our old home, the city of Numazu – a modest, medium-sized city nestled at the base of Mt. Fuji and situated on the shore of the Suruga Bay. A city known for producing more dried horse mackerel than any other region in Japan.

It ain’t nothin’ fancy, but Numazu was our home for a year. And really the only other home Sherry and I have ever had outside of Austin. We love it, and though it’s been over two years, I have thought of Numazu every single day since we left on December 22^nd, 2008. I mean it. Every. Single. Day. And so, I expected that returning would be a bizarre, surreal, dreamlike experience. Like returning to your childhood elementary school and remembering the halls being wider and the urinals being taller. But the strangest thing about being back is that it’s not strange at all. It’s like we never left. It’s like the job I’ve held, and the apartment we moved into and every new friend we’ve made over the past two years in the States were simply a product of an overactive REM sleep brought on by a night of Suntory whisky overindulgence. It’s happened before.

Sigh.

Natsukashii, Numazu. I’m glad you’re you. It’s a good thing when old friends are just as charming and affable as you remember them.

After an inexcusable hiatus...

2011-01-17T08:01:00.000-08:00

I'm putting brush back to canvas.

A birthday present...

for my perfect newborn nephew...

Bru.

Welcome to the world, sweet pea.

You're already the coolest guy I know.

Hang Son Doong, the infinite cave

2011-01-03T15:16:00.000-08:00

I’ve never been to Vietnam, unless you consider the Hanoi airport to be part of the country, which I don’t and neither should you. But I’ve heard terrific and magical things of the country, and on balmy summer evenings I still close my eyes and pretend I’m strolling along the dusty and cicada screaming roads of Thailand or Cambodia. Yeah yeah, I know they’re all different countries, but if you’ve been to either or all, you know it’s a fair comparison. And though I’ve never been hotter and dirtier than I was in that part of the world, my heart still aches if I reminisce long enough.

And now, at a time when my feet couldn’t be any itchier for international travel and exploration, I happen across this article about the scarcely explored Hang Son Doong: A cave system near the Vietnam Laos border that, in places, is so large it could house an entire New York City block of 40-story buildings. Certain passages are so wide and high that they have their own clouds. Clouds. In a cave. And the cave has its own jungle. It’s the Disney Land of caves.

Sitting behind my desk, sipping from a can of spicy hot V8 juice, I shake my head in awe at this ragtag team of spelunkers. Lucky ducks. Why not me, I ask myself. And I’m forced to answer myself with a question of my own: Right, exactly, why not you? Why not you?

But that’s another day of internal exploration. My own cave, you could say, blah. But give the article a read and save the images as your desktop wallpaper. Not only is it a well-written article about an underground kingdom, it also taught me the word bivouacking.

http://ngm.nationalgeographic.com/2011/01/largest-cave/jenkins-text

Damned Dirty Ape

2010-05-24T18:16:00.000-07:00

There are no words for the sorrow I feel at having to say goodbye to two of the finest television programs I have ever known. On the other hand, I do have words for the profound relief of finally being released from the bondage of two terribly addictive television dramas. Good riddance, LOST and 24. Now I can finally do something productive with my life. Go join your buddies – The Wire, The Sopranos, OZ, The Shield and Reading Rainbow – and have a nice rowdy wrap party. Don’t let the door hit ya on the way out.

Television, take your stinking paws off me, you damned dirty ape. I’m going to go paint a picture, write a play and learn a foreign language.

P.S. I didn't mean that. I miss you so much it hurts. And I have zero interest in writing plays.

Smile and Freefall

2010-04-29T11:39:00.001-07:00

I’ve done some crazy stuff in my time. In elementary school, my best friend and I used to guzzle Sprite to see who could take the most successive sips. It burns like fire going down your throat, and is damn near unbearable by the sixth gulp. Try it. Then there was that time I dove off a trampoline into an above ground swimming pool and hit my head on the bottom. The world wouldn’t stop spinning for days. My sister tattled on me, and I was rushed to the emergency room and told I had a bruised brain, and the doctor scolded me and said I was lucky to be walking out of there and not cold and blue with a tag hanging from my toe. That wasn’t intentional, but it was still crazy, and ever since I’ve been prone to run-on sentences. And then on occasion, I’ll tell Sherry to just, like, punch me in the stomach as hard as she can so I can feel alive. And for a while I had a faux hawk, which was stupid. The point is, this ain’t my first rodeo. I’ve challenged my own fragile existence before. I’ve looked my own supposed mortality dead in the eyes and said, “Bullshit,” and called its bluff. But at this moment, turning and looking to Terry with his silvery mustache and tobacco stained teeth chomp chomp chomping at me, a maniacal fire in his eyes, I realize: this might be the stupidest shit I’ve done. A couple weeks ago, we took my brother-in-law sky diving for his birthday. Sherry and I jumped with him, and afterward on somewhat of a whim – cause sometimes you just gotta live your life on a cloud of whimsy – I enrolled myself in an elite and vigorous training regiment to get my skydiving license. Six classroom training hours and one week later, I’m 14,000 feet above ground with crazy ass Terry to my right and equally insane Ted to my left. I’m pretty sure Ted – at the risk of profiling – is an Italian dude from the east. He’s intimidating in a break-your-knees sorta way, and when I practiced incorrect form during ground training, he slapped me. But I think he likes me. I hope he does, cause I like him. Terry’s on the inside of the plane. Ted’s dangling like a windsock from the outside. I’m standing at the edge looking 14,000 below at the flat flat land of Texas and trying to remember to breathe and smile. In my classroom training, I memorized all sorts of procedures, hand signals and skydiving jargon. Greg was my instructor. Greg is a weathered old man. He has around 4,000 jumps under his belt. He had knee surgery about a week and half earlier, and he hobbled around all morning with the sound of painkillers shaking in the pocket of his sweatpants. “Just remember to breathe,” he told me. “Breathe and smile,” he said. “Smile and freefall.” Smile and freefall. “That’s a goddamned terrific philosophy on life, Greg.” I said. He grinned and winked. Keeping your calm, smiling and freefalling, is a lot easier on the ground, though. At 14,000 feet, in a purple jumpsuit, I kinda just wanna be back in bed with my wife. But the achievements in my life that I’m proudest of were without exception the scariest to face. Living abroad. Drinking the blood of a cobra. Winning back the heart of a woman who dumped me as a high school freshman. The goblin living inside me who makes me do these crazy things hisses at me, Because everyone else is too chicken shit, Papi. (He’s taken to calling me Papi lately.) I know I know I know, I say, enough already with the chicken shit speech, goblin. Terry gives me a head nod to begin my exit procedure. Deep breath. I look to Terry inside the plane and yell over the roaring wind. “CHECK IN!” He mouths the words “Ok”. I turn to Ted on the outside. “CHECK OUT!” Smiling like a mad man and flapping in the wind, Ted mouths “Ok”. I turn my head forward and look at my hands, which are gripping the door of the plane, one in, one out. Deep breath. I yell “UP!” and straighten my legs, “DOWN!” and bend my legs, “ARCH!” I step from the plane. Watching an airplane fly away as you plummet from the door at 100 miles per hour is a beautiful sight. I keep craning my neck, trying to see past Terry and watch the plane grow smaller and smaller like an eagle in the sky. Ted starts shaking my leg, and suddenly I remember that I’m not merely along for a tandem ride. I need to play an active role in this fall, but everything I learned in class has suddenly escaped me. All my thoughts are on sipping up as much oxygen as I can – like a little gold fish, glug glug. Ted gives me a hand signal. Fingers in a circle? What do fingers in a circle mean? Ted shakes his circled fingers at me, I’m afraid he’ll slap me again. Glug glug. Oh right, circle of awareness, check your altimeter! I turn my head to my wrist. “12,000 FEET!” I can’t hear my own voice, the wind rips past us like a bullet train. He sticks two fingers straight out. Two fingers? What do two fingers mean? Glug glug. Two fingers! Ted is adamant. He slaps my legs. Oh right, straighten your legs! He bares his teeth at me, reminding me to smile. SMILE YOU SONUVABITCH! I smile and freefall. He gives me the thumbs up. I turn to Terry on my right. He makes a fist at me. GODDAMNIT! WHAT DOES FIST MEAN? He shakes his fist. Oh right, glug glug, check your pilot chute! On the right side, at the base of my pack is a small piece of pvc pipe. It sticks out of a pouch. It’s connected to my pilot shoot, a small parachute the size of a trash can lid. At the necessary altitude – which today is 5,500 feet – I will grab hold of the pvc pipe and pull it, removing the pilot shoot from its pouch, and throw both out to the side. As the pilot shoot catches air, it will – god willing – create tension on the line and tug at my main canopy from the pack on my back. The tension will release a pin on the pack, and my main canopy will spring forth, fill with air, and I will drift gently back to earth. Ted violently shakes me, telling me to relax. Smile and freefall. At 6,000 feet I lock my eyes on my altimeter and watch the needle swiftly count down the feet. At 5,500 feet I wave goodbye to Terry and Ted, reach back, pull and throw my pvc pipe with all my might. Whoosh! The speed of my descent slows dramatically, and Terry and Ted fall fall fall to the ground. I look above me to confirm that my parachute is in working order. Is it there? Are there holes? Tangles in the lines? It’s in a flapping bundle, not completely open. I keep my eyes on it, waiting for it to inflate, flap flap flap, but nothing happens. As calmly as humanly possible, which isn’t terribly calmly, I begin running the emergency procedures through my head that will release me from my main parachute and deploy my emergency reserve. Flap flap flap, my parachute is still in a ball. And I’m still falling. And then by the grace of god it catches the right gust of wind and opens into a graceful arc. I watch it, and aside from the whomp whomp whomp sound of my beautiful, functional parachute, everything is silent. I’ve never heard so much silence. It’s almost deafening, damn near spiritual. I look down at my feet and try to comprehend the space separating the ground from my dirty Converse. Four thousand feet, my altimeter tells me. I swing my legs like a child in a booster seat. I’m directly above the drop zone. And then I’m a little upwind of the drop zone. And then I’m further upwind of the drop zone.

Like a helium balloon released by a careless child, the wind is carrying me away. My helmet is equipped with an earpiece. From the ground Terry is supposed to be communicating with me, guiding me back safely. I haven’t heard a word, though. My radio is broken. Try as I might, I can’t fight the winds (50 mile per hour gusts, I’m later told). I kick my legs and try to run back to the drop zone. I make tiny turns with my parachute, hoping to crab walk across the sky (only making things worse, I’m later told), but the wind continues to carry me further and further away, drifting across the sky, further and further from the airport. At 3,000 feet it becomes perfectly clear, there's no way in hell I'm landing anywhere close to where I'm supposed to land. With each second I watch the countryside below me drift by at 50 miles per hour. I look from one plot of farmland to another. Desperation swells in my throat. I soar over bodies of water, major roads and clusters of trees. I’m lucky if I land within 5 miles of the airport. My hands tremble. My breaths are shallow. I no longer want to go through with the remaining 24 jumps required to get my license. If I survive, which is doubtful, I wonder if I can donate to charity the other 13 jumps I've prepaid for. Shits, goddamns and other rueful words spew from my mouth.

At about 1,000 feet, I’m forced to pick a field in which to land. I’ve resigned myself to a long walk by this point, now I’m just focused on not killing myself. I follow the landing path I plotted just seconds earlier in my head, trembling my way through trees, miraculously approaching clear land, and at 300 feet am approaching the ground quickly, much too quickly, and suddenly there it is. Earth. With a thud I slam into the ground, bang my helmeted head and topple amongst the dirt, cacti and cow patties.

Oh sweet consciousness. After several wide-eyed and astonished breaths, I collect my canopy together in a bundle, carrying it like an armful of fresh laundry, and begin making my way several miles back to the airport. I wriggled on my belly under one barbed wire fence, then another. The sky is crystal clear today. The temperature is perfect. I couldn’t imagine a more beautiful day. Everything is silent. I’ve never heard so much silence. It’s almost deafening, damn near spiritual. I come upon a field full of cattle, hundreds of them, grazing, sleeping, lazily enjoying the impossible peace as I am. One cow notices me and stands. Then another. Then several more. Soon every cow, hundreds of them, have risen to their haunches and are facing me, batting their long lashes and silently imploring me to state my business. “I’m just passing through, cows." I tell them. “Just passing through.” I crick my neck. Adrenaline saved me from any immediate pain of my landing, but tomorrow I reckon I’ll feel as if I was hit by a bus. For now, though, I’m alive. Unless I’m not. I look at the cows. The cows look at me, hundreds of them. They hardly move, just the infrequent swish of a tail. There's something otherworldly about their serenity. Calm as Hindu cows, they assess my presence as if I've stumbled upon a gathering I wasn't properly invited to attend. A fox wedding. A teddy bear picnic.

Am I alive, cows? The cows don’t answer. I turn to look from where I came. In that direction there is only the horizon with no end in sight. In the other direction, cows. Hundreds of them.

Is it possible, cows, that I did not survive that landing? Is it possible that this moment of serenity and clarity and appreciation of all the universe has to offer is simply a final moment playing out endlessly, existing for an eternity in my severed cerebral cortex, while there's a flurry of activity around my mangled shell of a body, wailing and mourning, five stages of acceptance, the seasons pass, my ashes scatter on the wind?

Whatever, cows. Alive or dead, I'm seeing and smelling and hearing and touching the here and now. It's a good here and now, forever and ever amen.

This blog will be written in the third person of a facebook status update

2009-03-22T10:22:00.001-07:00

Brandon was a fan of Detroit 7, he even scurried out and bought their album on iTunes after seeing them play. But then when he saw the lead singer crouched against the wall on the last night of SXSW, and he approached her humbly and politely and asked for a picture, she told him ‘Go away I’m having a conversation’. And now he feels a little like the Easter Bunny kicked him in the crotch.

White People Say the Darndest Things

2009-03-09T13:58:00.000-07:00

My dad asked me yesterday evening, over a bowl of melted Velveeta and Rotel tomatoes, why I haven’t written any new blogs lately, and I told him it’s because I’ve been sitting in my underwear for the past three months, searching for jobs since returning to America, and I haven’t found the inspiration. But this morning I realized that isn’t entirely true. I was inspired on Christmas Eve by the friend of a family friend – an ex-military, Texas good ol' boy – as we stood sipping merlot around a kitchen island spread with finger foods of assorted textures and colors. He was asking Sherry and me about Japan, from which we had returned only two days prior, and this led to discussing general travel throughout Asia, which led to discussing our honeymoon in Thailand, which led to the question, directed at Sherry, “Are you Thai?” (Following the question, of course, “Are you Japanese?"), and to both Sherry said, “No, I’m Cambodian.” “Did you visit Cambodia while you were in Japan?” he asked. And we had, so we answered, “Yes.” And then I talked about how it was Sherry’s first time to Cambodia, and she confirmed and explained how she was born in a refuge camp in Thailand as her family was escaping genocide in Cambodia, at which point the ex-military, Texas good ol' boy’s son, who was also standing around the kitchen island sipping merlot, said “The Killing Fields is my favorite movie,” which is a strange thing to say, and we said “Really?” with quizzical expressions on our faces. And then the ex-military, Texas good ol' boy said something even stranger. He smiled and reminisced with a chuckle, “I bombed Cambodia.” And my Cambodian wife and I smiled.

My name's Brandon, and I would like to share.

2008-09-29T03:12:00.000-07:00

An old Art Director from my previous life as an Ad Exec. stole my heart. That’s how the dream went anyway. I lay on my back atop a conference room table, my chest opened and the skin pulled back like a dissected frog’s, while he stood over me explaining that a person’s heart can be removed from the body for a brief period of time with no harm done. “You can actually hold your own heart in your hands and watch it beat,” he said. “The heart’s pretty neat like that.” He reached into my chest cavity and rummaged around, disconnecting my heart from it’s many important wires, and pulled it out and showed it to me as if I had just given birth to the thing. “See?” Sure enough, it was still beating, and I was still very much alive. “Bad ass,” I must’ve said or something to that effect as I watched my glistening heart contract in the palm of his hand, like a dry-heaving newborn pig. He began playing with my heart – pulling and pushing, stretching and twisting – to test the durability of my heart tissue. At one point he clamped his thumb and forefinger around it and squeezed the way you might squeeze a deflated balloon, making one end translucent and bulbous with excess air. He grinned and nodded maniacally at me. “Ain’t this just the coolest?” “Ok, Kyle,” I said. “Let’s go ahead and put my heart back.” He never did specify how long one could function without one’s heart, and I was beginning to feel lightheaded. “Right, right,” he said and focused his mania on my empty chest cavity. He placed my heart in, took a step back and eyed it perplexedly, then rotated it 90 degrees clockwise before nodding, pleased. I felt a strange tingling sensation in my lips. He fumbled with my inner circuitry, reattaching my heart to its various input and output connections as if connecting his DSL modem for the first time. “Please hurry, Kyle,” I said calmly, euphoria setting in. He mumbled to himself and traced the path of each important artery. “This one goes here, that one there, this one…” he trails off and does some counting on his fingers. “Hurry up, Kyle.” I can’t remember if he connected me in time.

Finish your blood.

2008-08-25T07:34:00.000-07:00

Sra sau is a surprisingly smooth and refreshing Cambodian concoction. It’s a homemade rice wine, tastes much like Japanese sake (better, if you ask me, but I’m not too keen on sake) and is easy and dirt cheap to produce, thereby making it a favorite among the Cambodian working class looking to get tipsy. I, myself, have a zest for all things fermented, and only minutes ago, a messy-haired and strikingly pretty small Cambodian girl shuffled across the flimsy bamboo slats of this rural restaurant clutching my first glass of sra sau in both hands. It was full almost to the brim and swirled with her every step. “Awkun,” I said in thanks then quickly emptied the glass. I needed to calm my nerves. I needed courage. I’m now sitting Indian style on a straw mat, elevated 20 feet above a Cambodian swamp and gazing out at expansive rice fields and crystal blue skies when I finish my first glass and my second is delivered to me. It’s in a water bottle this time and is accompanied by a small convoy of four shoeless children and a shirtless Cambodian man in pleated slacks who is carrying a meat cleaver, a chopping block and a bulking and writhing plastic bag. Rewind to three days ago. Sherry and I arrived in Siem Reap, Cambodia and were ushered off the plane and into a taxi driven by a young, shaggy-haired and slouching man. “Where you from?” He asked in a gentle voice. “Ireland,” I said sticking to Sherry’s and mine agreed upon alibi without making even the slightest attempt at an accent. “What about your lady? She look Asian, yeah?” “Khmer, actually,” I said, delighted at my interracial marriage, and suddenly he too was delighted to have a fellow countryman in the backseat. “Bong aiyn Khmer?” he looked at her in the rearview mirror. “Cha. Yom Khmer.” Then Sherry slipped into a surprisingly fluent exchange with our driver, whose name was Bun, and watching the two chatter back and forth in unknown vowels and syllables and somehow understand and deliver the appropriate responses to one another, I fell in love with her all over again. My introduction to Sherry’s life killed her bilingual skills – or so I thought, and apparently so did she, because I could see the surprise in her eyes at how quickly her mother language was coming back. “Ask him about cobra blood.” I murmured quietly from the corner of my mouth, because Bun also spoke English, and I was too shy to ask. Sherry shot me a reproachful look, as she's terrified, absolutely terrified of snakes, but did ask him a few minutes later. He did know of a place where I could consume a cobra’s life force – where they would kill a cobra in front of me, drain the blood from the body and serve it to me in a glass - and suddenly my spirits were lifted with the realization that this trip to a third world country wouldn’t merely be a trek through the predictable paved streets of South East Asian tourism. Rewind to several years ago. I suppose my obsession with drinking cobra blood began when I saw Leonardo DiCaprio in The Beach. At the beginning of the movie, he narrates a montage and condemns travelers for visiting far off lands to simply do what they could do at home. Watch movies. Eat hamburgers. Speak English. Sleep in beds. Then cut to Leo in a dimly lit backroom somewhere in the bowels of Thailand, surrounded by several menacing Thais, one of which has an eye-patch, if memory serves. Or maybe that’s just how I would’ve shot the scene myself. No, if I had shot the scene, they would’ve all had eye-patches. And six-shooters. In any event. Leo boldly and unflinchingly slams back a shot of freshly drained cobra blood, bangs his hands on the table and makes a hasty exit. “You have to do that,” told the goblin living inside me as I watched the scene. “No dude, that’s sick,” I said. “You have to do that,” he told me again with a gleam in his eye. “Why?” “Because everyone else is too chicken shit to.” “No, dude.” “Yes, man.” And the goblin was right. I did have to do that. And at some point over the years, drinking cobra blood was officially placed on my unofficial top things to do before I die list (along with ridding the world of spiders and getting shot three times). It became that mountain peak that was too tall and treacherous to climb. It became the line that separated the sensible person and what they are resigned to experience in a lifetime from the extraordinary person and what they are willing to subject themselves to in the spirit of being alive. It became the gauge that I compared what I was to what I wanted to be. Fast forward to 45 minutes ago. Bun pulled his silver Celica to a hut at the side of the road, rolled down his window and hollered (later translated for me by my darling, bilingual wife). “Hey! You got any snake!” The proprietors of the hut made a quick phone call – to the keeper of the snake, I assume – and there was one cobra restlessly waiting to be bled and devoured, anxious to merge his spirit with mine. So, we got out of the car as a lady ran at the same time from the restaurant and whizzed away on a moped to fetch the snake, and we made our way across the flimsy bamboo flooring of the restaurant and settled on a straw mat in a far corner. Four children stared at us from a distance, from behind a sofa. I asked Bun if I could have a glass of rice wine. I needed to calm my nerves. I needed courage. Fast forward 25 minutes, to now. Hanging awkwardly at the side of the shirtless Cambodian man in pleated slacks, the bulging plastic bag rotates just slightly with the restrained movements of its contents. It wriggles and writhes in a seemingly endless twisting of scales and sinew. In one brief twist of the bag I see the cobra’s hood flare, the telltale sign that it’s feeling threatened – rightfully so – and is ready to fight for its life. The man sets both the chopping block and meat cleaver on the bamboo floor and pulls a small aluminum wire from his pocket. He studies the cobra inside the bag and then with a sudden snake-like strike of his own, seizes the cobra’s head and pinches its mouth shut. He fits the aluminum wire around the snake’s neck, just behind its eyes, and briskly twists the loose ends together as if he’s sealing a bag of bread. Then the plastic bag is opened, the tail end removed and a female member of the family, who is to serve as the primary operator from this point forward, lifts the tail and stretches the snake horizontally. The shirtless man in pleated trousers still clutches the head within the bag. The snake is about four feet long and a glistening midnight black. The woman grabs the snake from the top and with a small cloth thoroughly swabs the oils off the length of its body. She then crouches down with the tail in her hands, lays it straight across the chopping block, picks up the meat cleaver and begins sawing. A rooster crows incessantly. A baby cries in the distance. Once it’s determined that the life vein has been adequately severed, the snake is held vertically over the water bottle of sra sau. The body contracts and relaxes. Twists and straightens, and losing its gracefulness, it cricks and jars like the links of a rusty chain. Our driver, Bun, steps in and together he and the woman squeeze the snake’s body between their fists, milking the blood into the water bottle, which is now a deep ruby red. When they finish about five minutes later, the empty shell of the snake is taken away, and the bloody bamboo flooring is doused with a bucket of water. Bun stands, swirls the bottle of blood and inspects it against the light like a seasoned winemaker. It’s a lot of blood. “I would like to share,” I say to Bun and make a nervous whirling motion with my arms, gesturing to everyone in sight. Bun looks confused. “I’d like to share.” I say again. It’s too much blood. “Chite, chite khneah.” Sherry says to clarify. “Chite khneah.” Bun smiles and examines the bottle again. “It’s good for two people,” he assures me and sits beside me on the straw mat. Two glasses are brought out on a silver platter. One is a manly tumbler, which Bun pours the blood into first. The other, my glass, is a dainty snifter of sorts. “Any last words?” Sherry asks after Bun fills my glass and I study my drink. I do have last words. I have several. What I want to do is release a throaty and cracking high-pitched mating call across the rice fields and into the jungles of Cambodia and deliver a diatribe on what it is to truly live and pound my chest and aggressively claim that King Kong ain’t got shit on me and go on and on about how I will wake up tomorrow a different man than I did today, better, faster, stronger, and then raise my glass and toast to truth, your truth and my truth, our personal truths, and finding these truths and following them to the end of the world if goddamned need be. But instead I shrug and look to Sherry and the video camera she’s holding to document this experience, and I say, “There are no words.” I turn to Bun, who has his glass raised slightly and continues swirling the blood around and inspecting its density, flecks of the snake’s blood still splattered across his forearm. I raise my glass and nod. He does the same. We clink our glasses, toast in Sherry’s direction as well and drink. Much to my surprise, it actually tastes like my first glass of sra sau, but I shudder slightly still with the knowledge of what I just drank. I look at Bun as I finish mine and he takes the last swallow of his. Blood pools in the corners of his mouth. I wipe my mouth, smack my lips, and then I taste the blood. The unquestionable, undeniable metallic taste of blood lingers in my mouth, sticks to my cheeks and teeth, as if I just bit my tongue. Bun has disappeared. Sherry’s still shooting the video, narrating and asking me several questions, none of which I answer interestingly, eloquently or wittily. That’s what journals, memoirs and blogs are for. Before long Bun reappears with a small organ between his fingers, the snake’s gall bladder. He holds it over the water bottle and picks at the elastic skin of the organ as he explains how the bile inside will enrich the taste of the blood. He says something to Sherry in Cambodian, and she responds, “Bitter.” “Yes, yes. Bitter. It’s more bitter.” he says and breaks the skin of the gall bladder with his fingernails. The bile oozes out, glow-in-the-dark green like engine coolant, and dribbles into the bottle. We have a few more drinks, and it is in fact a bit more bitter, then Bun sets the bottle of blood on top of a karaoke machine in the corner and says, “We’ll leave the rest for later.” As we emerge from the restaurant and into the sunlight headed now to the floating village of Chong khneas, I bow emphatically to the family responsible for making me one with the cobra. “Awkun chranh, awkun chranh,” I say repeatedly. We walk toward the car, and Bun takes notice of the goofy white boy grin on my face. “You drunk?” he accuses and teases. Bun’s English is very good, but I’m not sure how to explain how monumental and important this afternoon has been for my personal evolution. “No, Bun,” I say. “Not drunk. Just happy. Very very happy.” Fast forward to two hours from now. While we’re away touring the floating village of Chong khneas, the family will cook the cobra and upon our return will present us with a cobra feast; stir fried cobra and cobra soup, from which I will pull sections of the body, peel away the rubbery earlobe-textured skin and devour the meat like catfish and then marvel at the engineering of the vertebrae. It’s like a child’s toy, I’ll giggle and wiggle it at Sherry, expecting confirmation, but she will just return a disparaging look and quietly scold me for playing with my food. Together, Bun and I will share several more shots of cobra blood laced with sra sau, each shot warmer and thicker and harder to take than the previous. With one drink left in the bottom of the bottle, Bun will instruct me in a fatherly tone, “Finish your blood,” and though the floating bits will make it damn near impossible to swallow, I will do as I’m told, with tears in my eyes. Then we will drink several cans of Angkor beer, lie in hammocks and enjoy the breeze whizzing off the rice fields. Sherry will ask Bun about Cambodian weddings, and Bun will ask me about Obama, and I will ask Bun about Cambodia’s recent election. None of us will really pay too much attention to each other’s explanations. We’re all too full with the satisfaction that tomorrow we will wake up different people than we did today. Links to a few of the videos, should you be so inclined: http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=mR8pntlfVXc http://jp.youtube.com/watch?v=doRPtQxN8zw

For the Record

2008-07-21T01:19:00.000-07:00

I love Japan. And I love living in Japan, despite what my previous grumblings about old people in sun hats and censorship on pubic hair might have misled. (Really, I was only pissed that the dry cleaner was closed when I went to pick up my suit.) But even given my affinity for this country, teaching is an entirely different matter, and a career change that I anticipated would be immensely rewarding has been largely discouraging. Imagine, if you will, trying to explain to a confused and increasingly frightened Japanese child the verb ‘do’, one of the most fundamental words in the English language, without just flailing your goddamn arms about. So, ‘What did you do on Saturday?’ becomes, 'What (questioning shrug) did you (point point point) do (goddamn flailing) on Saturday (point to calendar)? Clearly, teaching is meant for someone with much more patience, tenderness and better control of their profanity, and it came to me one recent morning as I sat Indian style with a duck puppet on my left hand, calmly watching my student lick the bottom of his own foot: I don’t want to do this anymore. Around about the same time Sherry and I received matching folded letters in matching green envelopes from the corporate office. Mine was addressed to Brandon Sensei, Sherry’s to Sherry Sensei, and they were offers to renew our contracts for another year. Sherry and I conferred in a smoke-filled restaurant over a dinner of crab pizza and pork kimchee. I took a sip of my whiskey and she says ‘I want to quit’, and I say ‘I need to go to the bathroom but I don’t know where my shoes are’, and with that it was settled. The Jansas are coming home. We will return after the first of the year, which means I have approximately 5 months to master the art of ninja, embark on a mystical journey through the Shinto spirit realm and get a yakuza style back tattoo (Mt. Fuji set against the Cadillac insignia. Or vice versa). I will miss Japan tremendously, and reminiscences of our year here will remain a constant source of comfort throughout my life. But Sherry and I are ready for the next adventure. We miss family. We miss friends. And we have a small, white, mohawked pup at home whose absence has left a smoldering spot in our hearts, and who I'm anxious as all hell to get back to so I can have him plated with gold, chained, and hung around my neck in permanent adornment as if I were some bejeweled rapper from my iTunes playlist. Plus, I have a writing career to begin.

Troll

2008-06-12T08:16:00.000-07:00

Uninspired. Haven’t felt much like writing. Discouraged. Two students told me the other day that I smelled. Then they said I was fat. Irritable. It’s rainy season and hot. Children are sticky and smell like pineapple. They form their fingers into guns and poke me in the anus. I don’t really care if they learn English anymore. I suppose this disheartened state I’ve found myself in is called homesickness. We’ve now been in Japan for five months, after all, and indeed there comes a time in all torrid romances when the kisses become routine, when the late night cuddling becomes cumbersome, the matching haircuts a bit misguided. Love loses its luster. Take big ears, for instance. Once so adorable on that girl you’ve been dating, holding her hair back so prominently, they were exactly what attracted you in the first place. So elfin and squishy between your fingers. But suddenly, while eating an IHOP breakfast, you notice that those ears look less elfin and more troll-like. It’s not that you love her any less, it’s just now you think she looks like a troll. So it is with my love affair with Japan. Love loses its luster. Dogs in peoples’ clothing. Old people in sun hats. The hours of the day being shown in military time. Censorship on pubic hair. These things have lost their charm as the months have gone by. And not a single person has mistaken me for Seth Green. Sigh. And yet, I keep reminding myself that these are the things I will miss when the time comes for me to leave this zany country. It’s like I tell Sherry when she complains of me overheating the taco shells or scratching my rear end for minutes on end. “One day I’ll be dead.” I say to her. “And these will be the very things you will miss most.” So it goes.

Brandon, you're shameful

2008-05-19T06:15:00.000-07:00

It was the end of a long and tiresome day of PowerPoint presentations, team building exercises and whatnot when we all gathered for a happy hour of sorts in a bare banquet hall under fluorescent lighting. We milled about and greedily clutched dark beer bottles in our mits. Everyone unbuttoned their top button and loosened their necktie, took big satisfying gulps of beer and released long hissing exhalations between exhausted headshakes and bobbing, deflated shoulders. A communal sense of being human once again began creeping over our group, and we slowly began to recapture our individual identity by sharing college stories and quoting Office Space and high-fiving when the occasion called for it. With more full gulps of beer, the enthusiastic clicking of toasted beer bottles and an increased joviality, I decided to take my pants off, because I simply couldn’t be bothered with them any longer. Minutes later the doors swung open and in strutted – poised and dutiful – the former and current President Bush, flanked by the former and current First Lady and a stoic team of trained killers and bodyguards eyeing us each distrustfully. The mood quickly shifted, and we all began buttoning our top buttons and tightening our neckties and beaming toothy grins. I looked around frantically for my pants, which were nowhere to be found, and a line formed and we all made our way single file, as if through a receiving line, to introduce ourselves to our startling guests. Pantsless, I tried to blend in. I first introduced myself to the former President and apologized for not having my pants on. I didn’t know you were coming, I explained. It’s ok, he said, and on down the line I was shuffled, not being permitted to say hello to the First Ladies. I then introduced myself to the current President. We shook hands, and he repeated my name back to me, mispronouncing it. I respectfully corrected him, but he seemed unconcerned and unapologetic. I was, after all, not wearing any pants. I remembered this dream this morning while reading Jack Kerouac on a heated toilet seat and had to write it down at once.

Mits

2008-05-01T08:18:00.000-07:00

Recently, one balmy Sunday afternoon, Sherry and I lay in bed delighting lazily in each other’s company and discussing any number of the infinite topics a drowsy couple in love might discuss on such an afternoon. The sunlight fanning in through the curtained windows. The air conditioner hissing indifferently. Sherry on her back, and I on my side facing away, she reaches over and touches my bare shoulders then creeps her hand around and begins rubbing my chest. I suddenly sit up with a jerk. “What the hell do you think you’re doing?” I demand. “What?” “You were fondling me like I have tits!” “What? No I wasn’t. I was caressing you.” I narrow my eyes at her, guarded and accusing. “No, you were groping me the way I grope you. Pervert.” There’s a brief staring contest. The corners of Sherry’s mouth pull up in an ever so subtle smirk, almost unnoticeably, and I eye her with distrust before lying down and rolling back over. “My body is chiseled and taut. I’m a man of wax.” I grumble. “I don’t have man tits. I don’t have mits.” “I know, love." She says. "I know.”

Hello.

2008-04-16T06:56:00.000-07:00

A Japanese girl in a bunny suit corrected my English this evening. In one of the Universe’s neat moments of serendipity, we found ourselves walking side by side and exiting the train station together. She looked at me, and I looked back at her. In addition to wearing a bunny suit, she was missing her eyebrows. “Hi.” She said. “Hello.” “Nice to meet you.” She said. “Nice to meet you.” Pause. “Too.” She added, helping me along with my response. Right. I thought for a moment about explaining to her that the weighty intonation I put on you at the end of my response was enough to imply too or also or as well, whichever your preference may be. I also briefly thought about explaining to her that we hadn’t actually met yet, seeing as though no formal introduction or exchange of personal information had taken place. We had simply said hello to each other. Therefore her “nice to meet you” was premature and jumping a few steps ahead of the natural conversational flow. But this tedious explanation would fall on deaf ears, I supposed, not to mention make me a real dick. And it was nice to meet her. So I simply flashed my winning American smile and strolled off into the night, repeating to myself over and over so I wouldn’t forget the line in my head. A Japanese girl in a bunny suit corrected my English this evening. A Japanese girl in a bunny suit…

Black bird

2008-04-13T07:27:00.000-07:00

It’s been 89 days since my last haircut. I know because I distinctly remember my last one, two days before we left for Japan. It was supposed to be three days before, but my particular lady wasn’t working 90 days ago. She was working 89 days ago, so that’s when I got my haircut last. For someone whose hair can’t be trusted to behave past a certain length (it gets all eccentric and listens to Thelonious Monk) 89 days is an unforgiving amount of time. My cherry locks are now in tendrils around my ears and winding down the nape of my neck like that of a careless boy’s on summer vacation. It’s time. Papa needs a new do. Though I’ve put off cutting my hair for some time, I’ve actually been thinking about it for several weeks and mulling over just how to go about doing it. Not the actual style, but the experience. I’ve been planning the experience. Allow me to explain something about myself. In the depths of my body, among the guts and black stuff, lives this curious little goblin that enjoys placing me in unfamiliar and sometimes bazaar circumstances where I'm made to perform various rights of passage. Because, He tells me when I ask why I do the things I do. Because you’ve survived a ten day fast. Because you’ve eaten raw horse meat. Because you’ve been zipped up in a suitcase. He continues with increased enthusiasm. These ‘becauses’ are proof that you’re alive. Proof that you’re doing things other people are too chicken shit to do. Nobody can take these small triumphs from you, He says excitedly. Not me, not anybody. Not ever. Fair enough, I say, but couldn’t drinking cobra blood in Cambodia kill me? I nod toward a webpage I have pulled up and am researching for a planned trip to Southeast Asia. Maybe, the goblin says. And then we share an awkward silence. So anyway, the goblin tells me that my first haircut in Japan is an opportunity to add yet another notch on my belt of interesting experiences, so for several weeks I have been scouring Numazu city for the perfect place. While busy streets are peppered with several high-end salons, the labyrinthine side streets of Japan are home to many tiny, much more intimate barbershops. This has been ground zero of my search, and the other day I cruised past a small shop that looked particularly intriguing. At the base of a crumbling two-story building, rooms for rent on the second floor, in what looks like a modified one-car garage, sits a small barbershop. It’s distinguishable only by the rotating candy striped windmill hanging from the awning. Bloody perfect. So, this afternoon upon finally pulling myself from a deathlike ten-hour beer, tequila and wine-induced slumber, I head out for my long overdue trimming. After parking my yellow bicycle alongside a drainage area, I open the door to the shop and duck in to find only one chair with a teenage boy seated in it and an old man in a surgical mask standing over him administering a shaving. “Konnichiwa,” I say, and the old man responds with a slight bow. The boy keeps his eyes shut. “Uh, haircut?” I ask removing my hat and making scissor motions through my Ronald McDonald tresses. “Sumimasen,” the old man says and makes an X with his forearms, Japanese body language for no. “Gomenasai, gomenasai, sumimasen, gomenasai.” I interpret all this to mean that he’s closing soon and not taking any more customers, so I thank him and leave, despondent but understanding. Well shit, I think once outside. I cannot, simply cannot, go another week without a haircut. It’s out of the question. My students aren’t looking me in the eye anymore when I speak to them. Instead, they’re focusing their attention on my disorderly curls as if inspecting my aura, and it’s making me uncomfortable. With a stiff resolve, I climb back on my bike and pledge to duck into the first dingy, cramped barber shop I happen across. Meandering through the side streets, it doesn’t take long, and a matter of minutes later I’m leaning my bike against the side of someone’s home and entering a building with rotating candy stripes trumpeting skyward like a unicorn’s horn. The shop is wedged between two houses and is larger than the previous, having several chairs all wrapped in vintage red leather. There are no customers, two men are apparently on duty, though. The first is an elderly gentleman with wilting eyelids like two collapsed tents. He doesn’t seem to notice as I enter. “Irashaimase,” says the second man, younger than the first, quite possibly his son. “Konnichiwa.” I remove my cap again and jab my scissored fingers into my curls. “Haircut?” “Hai, dozo.” He motions toward one of the chairs. I do as instructed and sit down, then produce a picture from my bag – one of my sister and I at my brother-in-law’s birthday dinner – that I feel I look particularly dashing in and point. “Like this. Same.” “Same,” he repeats and nods, fingering the curls at the nape of my neck and making a sour face. “Shorter.” “Hai, shorter.” “Hai.” And with that he begins misting my hair with a pleasant, albeit grandfatherly smelling tonic from a contraption attached to a hose. Then he goes to work. From the reflection in the mirror I see a small collection of Mickey memorabilia and a Furby doll. A soccer game is playing on TV. Some manner of black bird is caged and clucking by the door. The old man seems to be asleep. The cut goes off without incident. The barber is quite meticulous, I must say. With an impressive attention to detail, he spends much of his time on my hairline, around my ears and neck, where attention is needed most. He is a gardener with a talent for edging, and I am the proud owner of a neatly manicured lawn. “Just cut?” He brushes my forehead and neck with a duster when finished. “Shave?” I rub my cheeks and raise my eyebrows inquiringly. “Hai.” Suddenly the elderly gent appears at my side and sweeps my smock away and replaces it with a red and white-checkered bib. I am swiftly tilted back, and the younger man massages my face with several coatings of various ointments, preparing my hair follicles and making them plump and ripe for shaving. Then comes the lather, then the blade. His strokes are short and precise. Economical and calculated – quite unlike the careless sweeping slashes I make while shaving in the shower. I have always wanted a professional shave, and am thrilled to be on my back staring up at this barber’s water stained ceiling. I’m suddenly struck, however – the barber’s blade against my throat – remembering a short story I read in Junior High. Can’t remember the title nor the author, but it was about a simple wartime barber who is put into an extraordinary position when the General of an occupying army stops in for a shave. The story is the barber’s internal deliberation of whether or not to take the General’s life. I can’t remember how it ended. The trust I’m giving this barber, though, is quite profound when you think about it, and how do I know he’s not deliberating just as the barber in the story was? Maybe he views English teachers as an occupying force, Generals of a colloquial army. Maybe killing me could be his contribution to his country – a spontaneous and misguided attempt to regain Japanese sovereignty, we all have our part to do, right, it’s like recycling or voting. Maybe he doesn’t care for Americans or white people in general. Maybe he’s just always been curious about murder and lacks momentary self-control. What’s to stop him from slicing my throat and letting me bleed out, wriggling in a puddle of my own chocolaty, syrupy blood, beneath his small collection of Mickey memorabilia? Just go to sleep, go to sleep forever, he’ll whisper in my ear, and I’ll close my eyes and do as I’m told. My imagination is reeling at the possibilities. I’ve always had a slight preoccupation with how I will die. My death needn’t be valiant nor noble, just something interesting and climactic. I’m afraid that I’ll go in a stupid way, you know, like choking on pancakes or something. How shitty would that be? What’s the point in living if it doesn’t conclude with a bang and a pow and make other deaths jealous and say holy shit, did you just see that? But on reflection, I reckon falling to the blade of a racist Japanese barber would suit me just fine, so I say a quick prayer of repentance for the unspeakable things I’ve done and resign myself to my fate. In the end, the barber doesn’t murder me. And he actually gives a pretty nice cut and shave. I give him 3,000 yen for services rendered – an acceptable price to pay for living another day – deliver a slight bow and say, “Arigato gozaimashita,” before turning to leave. On my way out, I look down at the black bird, who is eyeing me and clinging to the bars of his cage with his talons. His tongue bobs inside his beak like a polished black pearl. He clucks once and then says to me in the clearest of voices, “Arigato gozaimashita.” Grin. Talking birds. Now that’s how you conclude a haircut. And a blog entry.

Crow Street

2008-04-08T09:11:00.000-07:00

“Japan has a big problem with crows,” explains my student, Sonoko. She is eleven years old with intimidating intelligence. She has soft, wide features and a toothy grin. Her hair is simple and unassuming – not too long, not too short, with bangs brushing her eyebrows. She’s wearing a simple navy cardigan with some form of emblem on it and a white ruffled blouse. She watches television only during lunch and studies the rest of the day. Her father designs submarines or something. “Crows?” I ask. “Mmm, yes.” She confirms with a nod. “Mm, I think that they are a big problem in Japan.” Japanese crows are menacing. They’re the size of small dogs, have beaks like pruning sheers and are absolutely everywhere. In fact, my wife seems to have recently developed an unhealthy, paralyzing phobia of crows – and most birds, come to think of it - solely due to the wicked stare and constant looming of the Japanese crows. She's frequently scurrying through the streets like a frightened field mouse and darting from one covered awning to another, eyes focused on the heavens and ears open to the foreboding caw caws from above. Shameful. Sonoko continues. “The crows attack people. You must really be careful of the crows.” “Attack people?” “Yes. Mmm, they kill people. Their beaks stab you here,” she taps the base of her skull. “ Or here,” with her forefinger she makes a hollow thud against her sternum. “Japanese crows murder people?!” I ask. “Mmm.” “How often?” Sonoko ponders. “Fairly often, I think. I think that you should be careful of the crows. I think that they will kill you.” “Kill me!?” “Mmm. And you should be careful at night walking down dark narrow streets.” Dark narrow streets! What is this little girl talking about? Japan is two-thirds dark narrow streets! “Dark narrow streets?!” I demand. At this point, my contribution to this conversation is little beyond simply repeating Sonoko’s words back to her incredulously. “Yes. The crows sleep in dark narrow streets, and if you wake them, they may be frightened.” She makes a sudden swirling motion with her arms, and I flinch instinctively. “I think that they will fly around and that they will kill you.” “What?!” “Yes. It is a crow street.” Further reading. The below article was released in the New York Times today. Forget the melting ice caps and Chinese gyoza. Japanese crows will surely usher in the final chapters of the human race. Repent, repent, people, before it's too late. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/05/07/world/asia/07crows.html

Because bitching is always funnier than being grateful.

2008-04-08T07:59:00.000-07:00

1. First day of the work week. 2. Forced from sleep by typhoon-like rain and winds. At 5 in the morning. 3. Gale force winds splintering my umbrella into pieces only a block into my mile-long commute. 4. A set of 3 year-old twins screaming bloody terror and howling “Foreigner! Foreigner! Foreigner!” throughout the entire class. 5. An irritated pimple that looks like a dog bite. 6. An audible tear down the ass crack of my custom tailored Thai slacks. 7. Not enough wine at the end of a shitty day to get both my wife and myself drunk. You know, I make a concerted effort to remain optimistic and mine for the gold in most situations. But sometimes the Universe can be a real motherfucker.

Stay golden, Ponyboy

2008-03-22T10:07:00.000-07:00

Sometimes, if we’re so lucky, the Universe, God or both take a break from exacting wrath or facilitating evolution to send us a perfect moment for the perfect frame of mind – hoisting us from the depths of whatever muck we might be wriggling in at the moment and high into the ether to feel the soft, spidery, indiscriminating touches of the Divine’s oversexed harem. This evening, my moment came in the form of a song. I’m riding home on my yellow, lowrider-like bicycle (which, by the way, I am unofficially calling Yuka, because nearly 1 out of every 5 of my students are called by that name, or some close variation thereof, and I am inundated by these two syllables so often that I might as well dub my second love the same) and I’m listening to my iPod on shuffle and am unexpectedly and pleasantly reminded of a fact that I have for some inexcusable reason forgotten: Celly Cel is on my mother fuckin’ playlist, y’all. For those of you who don’t know Celly Cel, either download “It’s Goin’ Down” or skip this blog altogether. For those who do know Celly Cel but don’t know me, well, congratulations. You are now peering through a freshly squeegeed window into my dark ass, menacing and conflicted soul. For those of you who know us both, Celly and me, you’re probably grinning just as I am, because you recognize that the Universe has reached a fleeting equilibrium. As I pedal Yuka through the faulty streets of Japan in my worn pinstripe suit and lavender tie, my earbuds throb to the unmistakable sound of West Coast gangsta shit. The lovely spring air caresses my unshaven cheeks, broads sprung on my Shirley locks. Uunhh.

Word of the day, as eked out by my grocer

2008-03-09T05:06:00.000-07:00

March 9, 2008: Today's word of the day was in Spanish: Amigo

Bubbles, Lord. Bubbles.

2008-03-07T08:07:00.000-08:00

Each night, after discarding our work clothes and exhaling a deep sigh of appreciation for another completed day, Sherry and I take the time to describe to one another the highlight of our day. This shining moment can be anything as obvious and noteworthy as receiving a promotion or anything as small and seemingly insignificant as catching the early train home. This exercise serves two basic and fairly apparent functions. Firstly, it guarantees that Sherry and I consistently and actively share, listen to, and discuss the trivial details of our independent lives. After all, sharing and absorbing these fine points helps ensure we continue evolving together, as a couple, as we have for the past eleven years. Secondly, this ritual forces us to think optimistically and take note of the elevating moments in life, no matter how slight or overshadowed by the discouraging they may be at times. This practice has proven particularly important lately, as repeated behavioral issues with a few of my students have pushed me near the brink of madness. (Sensei doesn’t like to be spit on, hit with your sweaty socks or pinched on the wiener. Stop it.) While our daily exercise is customarily limited within the tight circle of our small family, today’s high point was unusually poignant for me, and I feel the urge to share not just with my wife but also with whoever should be so inclined to click on and read this long-winded blog site. During one of my few breaks today – my deeply cherished reprieves from teaching when I can plan lessons, scribble notes for possible blog entries or simply stare blankly at the wall – a chunky little boy with dirty cheeks and marshmallow hands wandered away from his mother and into my classroom. He teetered in the doorway like a sleepy bear cub, looked briefly at me, then lumbered toward the corner and began punching buttons and turning knobs on my Sanyo boom box. After watching with feigned interest for a few seconds, I stood and shuffled slipper-footed over to my prop basket where I keep a cache of assorted colorful toys to distract and lure children into behaving like model, English-speaking Japanese citizens. Many of the props rarely work, But surely, I thought, I can find something to capture this small boy’s attention before he breaks something. Grabbing a bottle of bubbles, I shuffled over to him and began mixing the little wand vigorously through the solution. At the sound of the click click clicking of my stirring, he turned. I smiled, almost maniacally, and held the circular opening to my lips and released a steady stream of breath. As anticipated, the bubbles came out the other end in a uniformed procession before chaotically disbanding across the room. Unbeknownst to me, this routine tactic I employ almost daily had never, never, ever been witnessed by this little boy. From the look on his face you would have thought the Heavens opened up and Santa Claus, the tooth fairy and the Easter Bunny descended on sea horses and began shooting gummy bears from their fingertips. I have never in my life seen such incapacitating glee from a human being. The squeal this boy released was born of all things holy, nice and sugary. As the bubbles fell and began meeting their demise, his face turned to uncertainty, and he backed away just beyond their reach. I dipped the wand once more and blew, this time spinning beneath the falling bubbles, Julie Andrews like, to assure him they wouldn’t cause harm. I blew the next batch directly above his head. Reassured now, he raised his chin upward, closed his eyes with the profound serenity of someone passing through the Pearly Gates, and let the swirling bubbles wash over him. Smile. In several weeks the sakura – or cherry blossoms – will begin blooming in southernmost Japan. From there they will make their way north like a raging forest fire. As the blossoms’ short lives come to an end after a mere two weeks on exhibition, they will fall from the trees, carry on the wind and, in a flurry, engulf elated passersby. I like to think that my first sakura experience will be comparable to this boy’s first encounter with bubbles. Even if it isn’t, that’s how I hope to remember it.

Open Letter to Foreigners

2008-02-21T08:21:00.000-08:00

Dear other foreigners living or traveling in Japan, I can’t help but notice a saddening trend that I feel compelled to address. Why is it that when we bump into each other on the train, in the grocery store or wait idly at opposing crosswalks you visibly and uncomfortably avert your eyes and refuse to respond to my presence? Explain yourself. I suppose I kinda get it. I mean honestly, I didn’t come to Japan to make more white friends either. But c’mon. Where’s the camaraderie? Is it too much to ask that we simply make eye contact, however fleeting? Maybe we even exchange a head nod, yeah? Can’t we telepathically acknowledge each others’ existence and say, Wasn’t it hard to leave our lives behind and come to this crazy upside down land, but damnit aren’t we already better people for it? Shouldn’t we welcome the brief reprieve from living inside our heads in a congested country where we can’t verbally express ourselves, and embrace the opportunity to cling to one another and excitedly ask, “Remember Chili’s? Remember Dane Cook? Remember the Alamo?” Shit. We’re all goofy looking white people with a lost twinkle in our eye. Let’s be secret friends. Affectionately, that other white guy P.S. This letter does not apply to Morgan, the affable American who bid me good morning at Mister Donut, nor does it apply to the somewhat creepy (in a good and humorous way) Canadian fellow who initiated conversation on the train. Thank you, gents. You make me feel at home.

Word of the day, as eked out by my grocer

2008-02-21T06:09:00.000-08:00

February 21, 2008: Salary

Pigeonholed

2008-02-14T05:43:00.000-08:00

Earlier than expected, I've found my place in Japanese society. I'm the creepo who opens his bag on the train and pastel fucking balloons fall out.

Three Weeks in Japan and Religion’s Already Found Me

2008-02-11T05:44:00.000-08:00

This morning I opened my apartment door to find an elderly Japanese couple standing there. In their hands were folded sheets of paper with colorful renderings of a man and woman sitting in a pumpkin patch with beaming smiles and moose in the background. They held one out to me, and from their mouths spilled the ceaseless stream of verbiage that I have come quite accustomed to in only my short time in Japan. (The Japanese, in their perpetual politeness and unrelenting pleasantries, never stop talking.) The elderly couple at my doorstep held out their colorful folded paper, insisting I take one, and in their oral torrent and incessant bowing I discerned only two words: Jehobah’s Witteness. Even in Japan, it seems, there are religious people with pamphlets. Which isn’t too surprising, because I’ve always been that guy. The one invited by strangers to various bible study groups. The one who, as a lifeguard at the YMCA, was asked by an elderly woman doing water aerobics if he had found Jesus. The one who has been told on more than one occasion, “I’ve prayed for you.” (Thanks). So, it makes sense that religion would find me on the other side of the world. And while admittedly, I wouldn’t mind being left alone with my spirituality for a short time while in Japan, I can’t hold a grudge, because aside from being relentlessly flushed by my clumsy exchanges with the locals and the bitterly cold weather, I am immensely happy and infatuated with this country. The culture shock is a sweet vice that I find myself inhaling deeply like a dense cloud of opium as I cruise down the sidewalk on my new yellow bicycle. I am at once bewildered and unsurprised at the Japanese people. They are indifferent yet hospitable. Conventional yet rebellious. Rigid yet benevolent. I have been forced off the sidewalk when room isn’t made for me to pass while riding my bike, yet stopped and asked if I dropped 30,000 yen (the rough equivalent to $300) at a bank. I went to dinner the other night and excused myself to the restroom to wash my hands. With no hand drier and no paper towels to be found, I was prepared to dry my hands on my pants like a goddamned degenerate until I heard a gruff voice bellow from behind, “Hai dozo.” and turned to see an elderly man in a crisp suit offering his folded handkerchief to me. It was a gesture of goodwill that, while small and seemingly inconsequential, I reckon will stay with me. Others will too. Like Taka, for instance, the owner of a knife shop who asked me if I would be willing to visit him once a week so he could practice his English. I think I just might. Or the cashier at our grocery store who talks to me, spewing incomprehensible Japanese every time he rings me up, managing to eke out only one word in English. Today’s word of the day was ‘holiday’. Or the grandmother to whom I teach English, Toshiko, who named her dog Thomas Edison. And the schoolgirls. Christ, the schoolgirls. In America, the image of ripe young Japanese women in schoolgirl uniforms is by and large pornographic. In Japan, though, it’s totally legit. At all times of day, every day of the week, Japanese schoolgirls swarm the train stations like ants, with their knee-highs and skirts swishing at me in submissive conformity. It takes all my mustered strength not to run through the streets pointing at random and yelling, “You’re naughty! You’re naughty! You’re naughty!” But I don’t. Instead, I’m a soundless observer on the train, appearing to be absorbed by my book while others doze off around me, anxiously text message on their cell phones or stare blankly at their feet. My favorite moment of each day (aside from when I open the door to our apartment and see my wife’s glowing face fresh out of the shower and checking email) is my first isolated moment when I sit awaiting the 9:49 pm train from Fuji back to Numazu. The station is practically bare, save for a few people I see regularly at that particular time: The middle-aged man who sits with his legs crossed and moves only to blink. The high-school student with his unbuttoned top button and loosened tie, intently playing his Nintendo DS. The twenty-something woman who looks part vampire part prostitute, her pale bare legs showing veins in the revealed skin between her mini-skirt and stockings. They are my train comrades. I love each and every one of them deeply and reflect on these emotions as I publicly sip a tall can of beer and listen to Wu Tang on my iPod. I suppose the people of Japan are no more peculiar than those of my own country, but coupled with their amusing rituals, I can’t help but be charmed. A few mornings ago I ordered a cup of coffee to go from a place called Mister Donut. The man at the counter placed a lid on my cup of coffee, put the cup of coffee in a plastic bag, sealed it with specially branded Mister Donut tape, then placed that paper bag in a larger plastic bag and slid it across the counter before bidding me good day. I hadn’t the heart to stop him amidst this meticulous process nor did I have the heart to remove my coffee from its several layers of protection until well past the view of the shop. So, for several blocks I walked with my bag of coffee dangling at my side. Sigh. Each evening, upon completing my train commute from Fuji to Numazu, I pedal my way home and reflect not only on my day, but also on my first impressions of this country and its people. With my religious pamphlet folded neatly in the breast pocket of my pinstripe suit, I cruise down the sidewalk on my new yellow bicycle. The bitter cold whips at my cheeks, my heart beats rapidly, and my blood pumps like the surge of Japanese pouring from the mouths of passersby. I’m smitten, and I don’t care who knows it.

Another one about beer. Sorry mom.

2008-02-10T09:51:00.000-08:00

Sherry and I discovered a bar this evening called Beer Water. Sherry will tell you that the actual name is Sakura, as in cherry blossom, but I say it’s Beer Water and think the picture below speaks for itself. In any event, their selection of beer is staggering. In one evening, I drank a Japanese beer with a pot leaf on the label (shrug), a Kenyan beer with an elephant on the label and downed an American beer bottled with a serrano pepper inside. Deelish.

Beer!

2008-01-29T06:59:00.000-08:00

One of the first discoveries I made while in Japan is that you can buy beer out of vending machines on the street. Not only that, but you can then open the beer, put it to your supple lips and continue on your way, like, down the street! In public! With babies and old folks around! Gah! In celebration of this unprecedented freedom, I have written a song titled “Beer on the Street Song." This is that song with a photo included for low budget music video effect: Sung to the tune of “Farmer in the dell”: Beer on the street. Beer on the street. I love being in Japan and drinking beer on the street. Simple enough, right? So, for you fans of remixes, I've written one of those too. This one is to the tune of "Hello" by Lionel Richie: Hello, is it some beer I'm looking for? I gotta say I love your price And your convenience is just right You're foamy and ice cold, and my wallet's open wide 'Cause I can drink you on the street And you do what I pay you to, so... I want to tell you so much, I love you ... Also worth noting is that urinating in public is legal. Be on the lookout for my "Peeing on the Street Song" to be released sometime before Memorial Day. Pictures will likely be included for that as well. B

Tangerine

2008-01-25T07:42:00.000-08:00

Alcoholic drinks on trans-Pacific flights are free, and at the moment I’m two miniature Chardonnay bottles and one Dramamine tab goofy, while my divine young wife slumbers next to me.   Sherry is balled up, collapsing on herself like a dying star, her legs pulled onto the seat and tight against her chest. Her perfectly painted toes tremble in the twitching throes of REM. On the drop-down screen in front of me plays that totally lame football movie, “The Gameplan”, starring The Rock (Dwayne Johnson for those of you who knew him in high school). The movie is fucking awful. That’s the only way to put it. It’s the worst movie ever made. I hate The Rock after watching this horrendous piece of shit. I want to punch The Rock in the throat. However, United Airlines – as I’m sure you’ll find on most international flights – accommodates multiple native languages when it comes to the viewing of their movies. So, suffice it to say that in Japanese, “The Gameplan” is a tad bit charming. Shrug. But I have a problem. Against my better judgment, perhaps, I’ve downed my miniature Chardonnays rather quickly, and now I have to pee. Savagely. Brutally. Painfully. I have to pee. It's the kind of pee, I can tell, that would hit the water with the force of a fire hydrant. It's the kind of pee that would remove toilet bowl grime if aimed accurately enough. Impressive as hell, yeah? But I don't get up. Despite the tension in my lower back and the shivers in the general vicinity of my wiener, I stay seated. Instead, I write. I write, because ten hours ago I said goodbye to my family and left the only world I've known for the past 26 years, and I want to document what might possibly be going on in my mind at this moment. In six years' time, thirty-two years' time, whatever, this moment's clarity will wane and will eventually be rendered a distant memory. This moment will be no different from the feeling a particular movie, can't remember which one, might have once, maybe, given me. Who did I see it with? Was it at the theater or was it a rental? Can't remember. Emotionally, I won't be able to tell the difference between this moment and a profound dream I had in middle school. (Slightly less alarming than that dream where tarantulas rain from the trees above, but nonetheless as abstract and inaccessible.) Now, though, it's fresh. It's sticky and tangible. Sweet and juicy. This moment is a tangerine.   Sherry and I are on our way to Japan to spread the gospel of English to small, impressionable Japanese children. All our belongings, save for four suitcases of varying sizes filled with clothing for all seasons, are in a climate-controlled storage unit in Austin. The aimless collections of shit we've acquired and owned (or have acquired and owned us) since our lives merged several years ago sit idly in the deafening blackness of a consistently 70 degree, 7x20 space. Our brilliant red IKEA chair. Our pastel blue and green dinner plates. My 5-day ab workout video. It's all there. It all awaits us, and upon our return, I'll be on day three. This morning I said goodbye to my parents. Tearfully and with as few words as possible, I told them I loved them and would miss them achingly, would email incessantly and would call frequently using Skype and a webcam. I hugged my sister, kissed her on the cheek. I hugged my brother-in-law for the first time, he smelled very nice. Then Sherry and I made our way through security, bought a breakfast taco and marinated on our immediate futures. I'm not quite sure what emotions I expected, but it certainly wasn't this. This moment is practically an absence of emotion. Or perhaps a wealth of emotion, I can't quite tell the difference. What are we doing, whose goddamn idea was this? Is it too late to reclaim my promising career in advertising? I’m thrilled. I'm liberated. I can’t wait. How has it taken this long for us to do such a thing? Are we there yet?   It seems that each emotion is simultaneously amplified and nullified by another. The clearly remaining fact, though, is that this is a journey we've always wanted to take, always needed to take. And so rarely are we afforded the luxury of identifying such an extraordinarily momentous point in our lives - one that at that very instant we can recognize as a defining juncture in our personal evolution, can stand at the edge and look over at the enormity of our decision and say, "look, there's my house!" - that I feel it a disservice to the grand scheme of the Universe were I not to at least attempt to document my feelings on the matter. But alas, my emotions are basic and robotic, and laughable is my understanding of the Universe's divine plan. What words could my mortal fingers type that could possibly do this sweet, juicy, oozing moment justice? Plus, I have to pee. Savagely. Brutally. Painfully. I have to pee.

Bio

2007-12-10T09:23:00.000-08:00

Brandon learn read write in 1st grade Brandon practice cursive with story writing on recycle paper Teacher say Brandon creative, write good stories Brandon smile and make story about giant Brandon not read Little House on the Prairie Brandon fail quiz First F ever Brandon need more reading Brandon not readings for long time In college, Brandon like books Reading cool Brandon write first novel with religious content Brandon not religious Book not very good Brandon get job in advertising Write funny emails to coworkers Brandon write company Christmas card Company like Brandon write again next year Brandon still write funny emails Coworkers think he weird but creative Brandon woo girl with weird and creative Brandon and girl married Brandon write wedding program People and cry laugh at same time Brandon beaming Brandon and girl move Japan spread English Brandon know not always Need American job again someday Maybe not advertising still Brandon like write Be write Brandon write blog Pimp skills Brandon hope woo writing professional Offer Brandon job Brandon be rich Happy and fulfill