Why I Came to California

You know the old adage—what good is a law degree if not for arresting Charlton Heston in front of the nation?

Or something like that.

For reasons that aren’t immediately clear to me, my dad, fresh out of Harvard Law, moved to California and tried to make it in the biz. Perhaps he had seen and met all the Northeast and Midwest had to offer and sought greener pastures. In any case, this led to a string of gigs and bit roles, including guest appearances on shows like ‘The Colbys’ and ‘Falcon Crest,’ and a recurring spot (a somewhat more fitting role, it should be said) as an attorney on the early 80’s iteration of ‘Divorce Court.’ If I remember correctly, the latter role supplied him with an excellent denim jacket featuring a broken heart on the back, unearthed dozens of years later in a closet in Northern Michigan.

Eventually, he tried his hand at a different form of public life: politics. Vying for a congressional seat from California’s 21st congressional district, he rubbed shoulders with some interesting characters, faux-arrested a few others, and ultimately fell short; but I think it’s the pursuit of that most West Coast dream which really endures.

That's the Spot

Where highly-specific album reviews are concerned, Discogs is, as many know, the place you want to be.

One of the great challenges in this life—for me, at least—continues to be describing just what makes a record so good. Of course, it’s generally more about time and place than the music itself. Perhaps it’s easier, then, to prescribe a situation in which to enjoy it. For instance, as I’ve noted on this very blog in the past, I’ve had epiphanies while listening to Khruangbin on frosty cobblestones in Prague and atop windswept beaches on Phu Quoc Island. Royksopp’s ‘In Space,’ according to one of my brothers, is best enjoyed as the sun rises on a frigid February morning over Lake Michigan.

Anyhow, the other day I was running and listening to Metro Area’s self-titled debut from the early 2000’s and had a thought: “Hey, this is the perfect moment to play this record.” It was the tail end of Tet holiday and Saigon was nearly empty, the air clean and the weather temperate. I found a route that’s since become my go-to, which ends by crossing a massive bridge to reveal an unimpeded view of the skyline; a few barges underfoot gave long, lazy horns and the pace was just right.

But a guy named Mark, who evidently spends some or all of his time in Tokyo, has bested my momentary Metro Area bliss. You’ve gotta respect this type of detail.

Unfortunately, I’m not the owner of a small airplane. Even if I had one, I wouldn’t have any place to put it that would allow for Metro Area to play over the speakers. But, hey, a guy can dream. And for that piece of inspiration, my thanks go to Mark in Tokyo.

Competitive Advantage

Sports technology has come a long way, this much we can be sure of. With all these advancements, though, is there a logical endpoint to keep ourselves from veering too far afield from the original activity itself? These debates rage on across sports—from instant video replay to ultra-high-tech garments to the aluminum baseball bat, camps of purists and tribes of those hell-bent on innovating the pain away are inevitably at odds.

And amid these heated disputes, gear companies still want to earn a buck. So, which side should they take, and how vigorously should they defend it?

The Vaporfly specs and product description on Nike’s website

Let’s take a look at one of the most controversial examples of the past two years. I was reminded of this larger question upon reading an excellent profile of ultra-marathoner Jim Walmsley, who, in working down from a winning stretch of 100km races, qualified for the Olympic marathon trials on his first attempt. Ultramarathons, as writer Joseph Bien-Kahn describes, are, “home to the gutsy eccentric; the marathon is home to the Type-A obsessive.” To elite runners, the marathon is, in fact, an incredibly precise art; as such, a new material used in running shoes can prove a disruptive technology with implications for Olympic committees and athletes alike.

The Nike Vaporfly was introduced in 2017, its description boasting words like, “ultra-lightweight” and “soft.” Pretty standard, all things considered, except it also promised the capability to, “provide up to 85 percent energy return.” Pretty quickly, these shoes became the object of scrutiny. You may remember the case of the Speedo LZR, an air-trapping swimsuit dawned by Michael Phelps in the late 2000s which is now banned in organized races. I reason that a lot more people are semi-competitive runners than swimmers, and thus the Vaporflys seem to be a slightly more complex issue for the masses.

Until now, there weren’t necessarily clear cut rules about what a running shoe could and couldn’t be; the framework shoe companies need to work within is, as noted by ex-pro Amby Burfoot, that, “shoes may not confer an “unfair advantage” and must be “reasonably available” to all.” That leaves a lot up to interpretation. Others, meanwhile, such as Umich PhD candidate and elite runner Geoff Burns, reason that there must be a standard thickness for the midsole of running shoes. This broader phenomenon has a name: ‘technology doping.’ Doping is, of course, a term that connotes something a corporate entity would likely want no part of.

The distinctly low-tech 1983 Boston Marathon. Photo by David L Ryan / Boston Globe

What’s curious, then, is that Nike seems to have doubled down on their product. The current ad campaign for the newest model still frames the shoes themselves as a ‘secret weapon.’ I think this might be the case for a couple of reasons; people like fairness, sure, but they also like winning and, moreover, making difficult tasks easier. I can relate, in a sense. Since taking up semi-serious running, I’ve set a goal of taking down a half marathon in 1:30—not an impossible feat by any means, but not an easy one, either. If a pair of shoes can help me hit that goal by even 20 seconds, I’d probably jump at the chance to lace them up so long as they don’t completely drain my bank account.

In the end, the Vaporfly was modified slightly and is set to be allowed in the Tokyo games this summer. And Nike, for what it’s worth, appears to be coming out the winner regardless. Matt Powell, a sports industry advisor, told Reuters bluntly: “controversy is good for sales.” Runners not vying for cash prizes can, of course, still wear these shoes, and their likeness popping up in the news has also spiked the prices on resale sites like StockX. Constant changes in sports gear, for better or worse, are here to stay, while world records won’t.

Voted Number One

The other day, I was at an American-style diner in the middle of Saigon, eating a perfectly average (I say that with the utmost affection) cheeseburger, fries, and, for the sake of nostalgia, a glass of root beer. They really nailed the decor at this place, too; above my right shoulder was a vintage sign for the root beer in question, Barq’s, whose slogan came back to me in a rush: “It’s good.”

This is a piece of ad copy that I find particularly compelling. Bold in its proclamation, it’s at once incredibly simple and, for root beer fans, pretty much an irrefutable truth that can, nevertheless, be interpreted in any number of ways (yeah, it’s good enough; oh, this is the good stuff). This slogan served them well and has been with the brand since its inception all the way back in 1898. It should be noted, still, that they tried to freshen things up in the late ‘90s with ‘Barq’s has bite!’ As outlined in a case study from a graduate student in Syracuse’s Newhouse School of Public Communications, however, the public reception to deviation from ‘It’s good’ was luke-warm. Stick with what works, I suppose.

What this glass of root beer also did was get me thinking about the value of vagueness in slogans. Let me give another example. When I was in high school, to do pretty much anything of consequence you had to drive to a place known as ‘downstate.’ This simply referred to the more-populous Southern Michigan; playing tennis matches, attending youth government conferences, finding Jimmy John’s sandwiches, you name it, we drove there to do it. On the way back home, the de-facto signifier of having returned to the far north came in the form of an unmistakable billboard for a tourist attraction in nearby St. Ignace, Michigan called ‘The Mystery Spot.’ The sign, jutting out of from a dense, highway-side expanse of Eastern Hemlocks, proudly proclaimed that the mystery spot was, in fact, ‘voted number one.’

This was, to friends and I, a failproof source of comic relief on the monotonous journey. Who had deemed this place number one? What discipline was it topping the list in? These questions were simply never answered and, to my knowledge, neither I nor any of my buddies ever bothered to visit the Mystery Spot. Our judgments were, I’ve come to learn, unfounded: the Mystery Spot is both mysterious and did claim the crown in a certain list.

Let’s get to the history. The Mystery Spot came to be when, on their way to chart the vast Michigan upper peninsular, a group of surveyors discovered none of their equipment worked in a particular spot in St. Ignace. Sensing a business opportunity, they created a liminal space where gravity doesn’t act quite right and where, to this day, you can play a round of mini golf or scale a high ropes course. Reports from Atlas Obscura, though unsubstantiated, note that some visitors feel “queasy and light-headed” after spending too much time within the Mystery Spot’s bounds. As it happens, there’s another mystery spot that purports to be, “a gravitational anomaly located in the redwood forests just outside of Santa Cruz, California.”

Sorry for burying the lede here, but, anyway, Northern Michigan’s variation was voted number one after all. The Mystery Spot took the top place in Michigan Living Magazine’s list of of unusual attractions state-wide. No lies in sight.

Like Barq’s, I think the lesson here is a simple one; if you’ve got something good, let it speak for itself and let the rest be, for lack of a better word, a mystery.

Late Start

I, like many others in the past year, have been giving a lot of thought to productive leisure and hobbies, both old and new. Some have stuck (studying Vietnamese, running with intention) while others proved too ambitious (illustration by oil pastel, film photography). Yet as time passes as it must—I’m 24 and not getting any younger, you see—the thought of taking up something totally new is violently impeded upon by the consideration that, of course, I’ll never catch up to the guy who’s been doing it forever. That’s no way to think, but it’s hard to shake nonetheless.

This is just an overly-drawn-out introduction to a highly-specific fact about a late bloomer I recently came across.

Following the crowd (if the Instagram story function is an accurate sample, at least), I took in my year-end Spotify listening analytics with interest. I’m usually not a data nut, but, hey, it’s worth a look. It was, for the most part, predictable, though one artist was out of place in my top five. During a short-lived, pseudo-lockdown of this year’s spring in Vietnam, I spent a lot of time reading old Carl Hiaasen mystery novels set in South Florida and listening to records by the late American vibraphonist and bandleader Cal Tjader. So, I decided to learn a little more about the man in question.

Tjader has been called, ‘the most successful non-Latino Latin musician,” but he had more than a few other gigs. If his catalogue raisonné is anything to go by, Tjader was ambitious and unafraid to experiment with either genre or geography (a sense of humor, I’d surmise, is also key in this endeavor). Tjader belongs to a class of West Coast jazz guys who, it seems, didn’t necessarily have a problem picking a country and taking it out for a spin in album form (think Charlie Byrd in Brazil or The Latin Side of Vince Guaraldi. For Tjader, this meant releases with names like Cal Tjader Plays the Contemporary Music of Mexico and Brazil, Cuban Fantasy, and Breeze from the East , “the vibist's [Tjader's] Latin lounge style with kitschy Asian touches”). Anyway, Tjader is among the best vibe guys to ever do it.

Given his reputation, I was surprised to find out Tjader didn’t take up the vibraphone until he had already been working as Dave Brubeck’s drummer. So, mid-way through working with one of San Francisco’s most successful trios, he taught himself the vibes and then took off as an artist who would go on to, in the eyes of many, redefine the instrument’s role. I tend to think of heavy jazz guys as lifelong students of a given instrument and prodigious specialists, steeped in something so deeply and for so many years as for it to become second nature. Sure, there’s no substitution for coming of age in one of the defining scenes of the twentieth century, but, no matter who you are, taking hold of the vibes doesn’t happen overnight.

Anyway, I’ll probably keep listening to Cal Tjader and try to remember the fact that, ‘Hey, there’s still time!’

Blood, Pocari Sweat & Tears

There’s nothing quite like a leisurely Sunday.

I decided to give 21 km another go last weekend, this time in Saigon. The handsomely-sponsored Pocari Sweat Run Vietnam left the gate at 5:30 am sharp, and I was due at work at 10am. No sweat! Well, actually, a lot of sweat. Anyway, I knew what I was getting myself into when I signed up, much like booking a 6 am flight to save a few bucks only to curse oneself when the alarm rings a third time. I’m young yet, and figured the chance to test my legs again a mere 10-minute xe ôm ride from home was worth it.

I arrived to an overgrown, fast-developing suburban district of Saigon called Thủ Thiêm at 4:40 am, did some light stretching, ate two bananas, and found the take off point with a friend. Again, I’m thankful for an early start to avoid the sun, but trying to fall asleep at 9pm didn’t really work. Half a cup of coffee, a little adrenaline, and several bottles of a certain Japanese sports drink would have to do.

The first time I did a half marathon, a mid-summer run in scorching-hot central Vietnam, I was happy to clock in at an hour and 49 minutes, but this time I tried to approach things more strategically. Rather than marveling at the crowds and taking in the spectacle, I spent the first kilometer weaving around people dawning costumes (superman, banana print grandma pajamas, a tuxedo?) and oversized novelty hats. Once I got to a comfortable pace, I pushed a few bouts of stomach cramps out of mind and kept going at a solid clip. Unfortunately, the setting for this race left a little to be desired; there were some nice views of the Saigon cityscape, but mostly I was trotting down winding roads of ever-expanding suburban sprawl. The turnaround point came just before a busy highway just as morning rush hour began to solidify, and the air was pretty gnarly.

I kept running. The crowd thinned out, and with about 6 km left I was hitting it more or less solo. At one point, the number 1 and 2 runners passed me in the opposite direction; I thought this meant the bridge I was crossing would end soon, but these guys were just really fast and I realized I had, perhaps, an inflated sense of what my own time might be. Nevertheless, I pushed on and came out on the other side with a time I’m happy with (1:36:50). No beach views or post-run seafood this time around, just a few more Pocari Sweats and the grim realization that I needed to be at the office in an hour and a half.

So I made it home, ate a few slices of bread, and went on with a full day of work. Then I scraped the bottom of the tank to work up the last of my energy in order to meet two confidants for Indian food, washed it down with exactly one beer, and slept for 13 hours. All in a day’s work.

Năm của Spaghetti

The strangest part about doing very new things, I think, is that, at a certain point, they become very normal. In other words, this is a note about trying to describe the short story ‘The Year of Spaghetti’ in Vietnamese.

If you haven’t read Murakami’s ‘The Year of Spaghetti,’ you don’t need to do so right now, because you can pretty much get the gist of things by its Google archive description: short story about a man who fixes himself spaghetti every day for a year and refuses to help out the ex-girlfriend of a friend when she calls. It’s true, that’s about all that happens, but it’s a trip, nonetheless. Anyway, this isn’t about the story per se.

For some 6 months now, I’ve been going to Vietnamese class on Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in a small, quaint alley about halfway between my apartment and office. Every other week day, I nod at the stoic parking attendant and neither of us asks any questions, then I walk up the stairs with some combination of beverages in my hands. My teacher asks me a similar set of rudimentary questions to warm up (what have I eaten? How many cups of coffee did I have today?) then we get into the lesson.

It’s going pretty well, but some days can be, admittedly, a somewhat painful process of ultra-limited communication. A lot of times I simply can’t say what I want to say and realize the futility of the words ‘because',’ ‘can,’ and ‘so’ when the nouns you’re searching for won’t appear. It is what it is, though, and I haven’t given up just yet. Of course, if you had told me a few years ago that I’d be spending my Mondays, Wednesdays, and Fridays in a small alley studying Vietnamese, I would’ve asked, “why?”. The answer is still not crystal clear, but at worst it keeps me busy and at best I’ll make enough progress to put it to real use someday, whatever that means.

Going ahead with it, though, has instilled in me a renewed belief in the power of routine, regardless of the discipline. Put your head down, don’t ask so many questions and you might end up with something useful before you can back out. (I should’ve applied this principle to many facets of life beforehand, but better late than never.) Still, I’ve got this bad habit of doing my homework right before class, which usually leaves me sweaty and frantic, my 1.5 paragraph assignment missing far too many tones.

Taking a step back, I couldn’t help but laugh at one October afternoon’s struggle. I was trying to convey, in the simplest terms, what happens in this story about a man who makes spaghetti every day for the entirety of the year 1971. It sounds kind of absurd—first, because its surface-level plot is incredibly easy to describe and, secondly, because I couldn’t do it. Every time I think about this story now, I have a vision of being hunched over a desk with 4 tabs of Google translate open, fending off approaching lines of questioning that ask, “Hey, why are you doing this, again?”. It goes without saying that I hope learning a new language in adulthood brings me more than a memory of a year of routine, but even if that’s all it is, it’s probably still worth it. 2020 A.D.

Original G

From age 14 to 23, I played tennis with the same racket model—the 2013 Babolat Pure Drive, a venerable mix of spin, precision, and lightweight stability, to be specific. At one point, I had as many as 4 of these bad boys, preferably strung with Prince synthetic gut vertically and Babolat Pro Hurricane on the crosses. In hindsight, I realize I was overly-superstitious about tennis rackets, believing I could discern a great many differences in string tension and grip size that were remarkably unimportant. I probably could have found a racket to better suit my style, to be honest. Anyway, I played with this model and it worked pretty well; over the years, though, my 2013 Babolat Pure Drives began to disappear, either through on-court incidents or geography. As of last year, I was down to 2; one of them is still sitting in my mom’s apartment in Brooklyn, and the other I shoved in a checked bag to come with me back to Saigon. It did its job for a while, but one humid morning I lost it on a service follow-through and it cracked into several pieces. Farewell, my old friend.

Since then, I’ve played with whatever rackets I could find, borrowed others, and, along the way, realized that perhaps less is more. One week, I bought an absurdly heavy Wilson stick sight unseen out of desperation and, not wanting to cancel my evening league appearance, played one doubles match with it. A sore bicep followed for the next 4 days. Right now I’m playing with a Prince model that I found on Facebook, the seller of which messaged me later and said he also had an impressive range of watches should I be interested. No complaints so far. Nevertheless, I’m still craving something free of nanotechnology or patent-pending chemistry, something irrefutably solid. A touch of history wouldn’t hurt, either.

Agassi, mid-serve with the Graphite

The Prince Original Graphite was introduced in 1980 to usher tennis into the modern age. With an oversized head and a weight of nearly 355 grams, it’s a powerhouse the likes of which the sport had never seen. And it still has a cult following to this day. Way back when, I used to traverse the midwestern United States to rub shoulders with the top-ranked regional 14 and -unders, and I still remember a couple guys who hit with it. Of course, its real sellers were Andre Agassi, Michael Chang, and Monica Seles. The old guard went as far as to dub the new oversized rackets as made for “cheaters.” The new type of power that could come from Prince’s graphite technology was previously unthinkable, and strangely effortless. It’s hard to think of an advancement that has changed any sport more than what happened with racket technology from Prince at this time; I genuinely believe that if you put a 19 year old Rafael Nadal against McEnroe in his prime, Nadal would win 0 and 0. This isn’t a knock to Johnny, I just think the new type of spin employed by the guys at the top, and specifically Nadal, has completely altered the game.

These days, Babolat and Head have options for chips that track swing speed, regularity, and a slew of other analytics. But lately I’d rather freeze time with the graphite. In the official Tennis Warehouse re-visit of the graphite, Chris Edwards observed,

“During the test every swing felt like a historic moment. I did my best to tap into the massiveness of an Agassi forehand and the topspin loop of a Sabatini backhand, all while trying to cover the court with Chang-like speed. All names from the past, yes, but they all used this racquet at some stage of their careers. The question is, can you?”

That’s versatility, as far as a tennis racket is concerned. Every once in a while, I search southern Vietnam’s various secondhand online marketplaces for a pristine graphite, and I think I may have finally found one. (Nevermind the fact that it’s located in Long An—I think my bike can make it there.) I feel that I’m usually a pretty measured person, but on the tennis court it can be another story. A few forehands missed and I get to thinking about life’s existential problems, how a millisecond stands between perfection and utter desperation, and, well, stuff like that. It stands to reason, then, that getting back to basics could do me some good. I’ll give it a try, at least.

Monday Morning Murakami Workout

As it happens, spending the summer running has made me want to, well, keep running.

Most of this is, undoubtedly, due to running’s mental benefits. In general, no matter how weird my day is or how many inconveniences befall me, a few miles into a run I’ve forgotten it all. But if I’m being completely honest, few things get my hyped to run like Murakami. His themed-memoir, What I Talk About When I Talk About Running, has become a sort of sacred text to me, the type of book I always pick up when I have ten minutes to spare. What I’m most drawn to is its matter-of-fact style, where no mundane details are spared, no assumptions are granted, and the appreciations for things like a cold beer or a crisp fall day never falter. Still, at times, it makes you think: “does that really need to be said?” But, like running, every step is just as important as the next and the last. One paragraph that illustrates what I’m talking about goes like this:

As I mentioned before, competing against other people, whether in daily life or in my field of work, is just not the sort of lifestyle I’m after. Forgive me for stating the obvious, but the world is made up of all kinds of people. Other people have their own values to live by, and the same holds true with me. These differences give rise to disagreements, and the combination of these disagreements can give rise to even greater misunderstandings. As a result, sometimes people are unfairly criticized. This goes without saying. It’s not much fun to be misunderstood or criticized, but rather a painful experience that hurts people deeply.

Murakami in Runner’s World, 2005 | Photo by Greg Segall

So, I really like this book. For those familiar with Murakami’s life and work, it’s no secret that he has discerning and diverse tastes in music. His books are packed with references to Burt Bacharach, The Beatles, Marvin Gaye, and Haydn (sometimes on the same page). I personally like to listen to a lot of different music when running, but, embarrassing as it may be, I’ve actually taken to queueing up some of the artists he claims pair well with a warm-up run. I guess bossanova or ‘60s soft rock isn’t going to get me a blistering marathon time, but it’s nice nonetheless. Take it from the man himself:

I love listening to the Lovin’ Spoonful. Their music is sort of laid-back and never pretentious. Listening to this soothing music brings back a lot of memories of the 1960s. Nothing really special, though. If they were to make a movie about my life (just the thought of which scares me), these would be the scenes they’d leave on the cutting-room floor. “We can leave this episode out,” the editor would explain. “It’s not bad, but it’s sort of ordinary and doesn’t amount to much.” Those kinds of memories—unpretentious, commonplace. But for me, they’re all meaningful and valuable. As each of these memories flits across my mind, I’m sure I unconsciously smile, or give a slight frown. Commonplace they might be, but the accumulation of these memories has led to one result: me. Me here and now, on the north shore of Kauai. Sometimes when I think of life, I feel like a piece of driftwood washed up on shore.

It turns out I like the Lovin’ Spoonful, too.

Graduation

“If you know the words then just… shut up.”

In general, I found going to university in modern times to be just fine; Google Scholar makes writing research papers a walk in the park, a slept-through class is easily rectified by watching a recorded version, and lecture slides are saved to the cloud in perpetuity. So I’m usually not terribly nostalgic about what I missed; except, that is, until a recent realization that the Beach Boys had performed a selection of their greatest hits on a fall weekend of 1966 at U of M. Lucky for me (and you), the performance was captured and re-released in 2016 after the laxing of copyright laws.

Across Graduation 1966: Live from the University of Michigan, Brian Wilson leads the crew through some of their early work and meanders around the more-challenging live cuts from Pet Sounds, all-the-while mixing in his later-career sardonic wit. According to Rolling Stone, the band was in Ann Arbor to play a slate of warm-up shows before embarking on a European tour, and ended up playing three shows in two days. This was also a unique happening for those in the audience given that, by this time, Brian Wilson had largely stopped touring with the group, preferring to spend most of his time in the studio. Thus, it stands to reason that this was a rare combination of a live Beach Boys at both their most polished and experimental; Wilson decided to fly into town just for the shows in the hopes of taping it and releasing this as a live album.

Some highlights include the second-ever live performance of ‘Good Vibrations,’ a classic rendition of ‘God Only Knows,’ and a very interesting vocal arrangement on ‘Help Me, Rhonda,’ too. I’ve seen a few shows at Hill in my day, but none could come close to this.

Listen to Graduation Day 1966: Live At The University Of Michigan on Spotify. The Beach Boys · Album · 2016 · 31 songs.

Bunkergeil

I’m thinking about intensely private and anomalous living spaces after reading Ed Caesar’s outstanding look at the CyberBunker in a recent issue of the New Yorker.

The piece chronicles how an old, massive West German army bunker with countless rooms and which stretched deep underground became the headquarters of a now-infamous website hosting platform. In a tiny town near the border of Belgium, the once-abandoned structure was bought, inhabited, and all-the-while its inner-workings kept secret the whole time. It’s a story involving intercontinental gangsters, reclusive techno-libertarians, and one of the most pro-privacy states on earth. So, in short, I highly recommend it.

Back to the structure itself, though, and the broader idea of living in out-of-the-ordinary spaces. Though it’s by no means a bunker, reading about this building made me think of a secretive and beautiful home from my hometown, the Douglas House. The brainchild of legendary architect Richard Meier, this place has been iconic (and, to a certain extent, shrouded in mystery) to me over the years.

It should be said that Harbor Springs, Michigan is no stranger to people seeking privacy. It’s a hike from any international airports and, despite being a hub for the super-rich in the summertime, those who keep summer homes do it, generally, because they can keep a low profile. It’s even been said that, in the 1950’s, the Kennedy family tried to buy a piece of property in one of the town’s most exclusive associations only to be denied because the neighbors didn’t want the press. Anyway, there are a lot of beautiful lakefront homes, but none come close to the Douglas House.

Photos via ArchDaily

Interestingly, when the family for whom it was first built, the Douglases, conceived of the idea, they had looked at land in one of the aforementioned residential associations around Harbor Springs called L’arbre Croche. They were told, however, “only earth-toned exteriors were permitted in the subdivision.”

Perhaps its defining feature is the fact that the home is only visible from Lake Michigan. Once, a group of friends and I took an old, disheveled Four Winns speedboat out beyond the harbor to take a look; it was, as expected, pretty glorious, this modernist, rocketship-esque structure emerging from the sloped woods.

Meier recounted that, from the water,

“…the house appears to have been dropped into the site, a machine-crafted object that has landed in a natural world. The dramatic dialogue between the whiteness of the house and the primary blues and greens of the water, trees, and sky allow the house not only to exert its own presence but to enhance, by contract, the beauty of its natural environment as well.”

My brothers and I used to wonder if anyone really lived here, or if it was home to some secret society or something like that. Though it was initially constructed for a family, the jury was out on who resided there during my adolescence. In any case, it’s fun to think about. Right now, I’m at the other end of the spectrum, living at the back of an alley in the middle of Ho Chi Minh City, where I could toss a piece of bread to the cats that hang out on the balcony opposite mine. I like the close proximity for now, but, who knows, maybe one day I’ll crave something a little harder to access.

Heat

I used to be really into minimal electronic music. When the mood strikes, I still am, but I’ve been on sabbatical by and large. Through it all, some of my favorite electronic music happens to have been characterized by mystery, either in terms of its creator or its circumstances of release (take Galcher Lustwerk’s many aliases, for example, or maybe Burial).

Anyway, lately I’ve been getting into some really excellent cuts from Japanese producer Shinichi Atobe, whose own catalog—while pretty prolific—is admittedly hard to trace. In discussing Atobe’s July release, Yes, Ray Philp mused,

“Reasonably secure in the knowledge that he isn’t the figment of a German man’s imagination, we can probably abide the not-knowing of his life story. But there are still so many questions, the most immediate of which might be this: After all those years of inactivity, how is it that Atobe came to be this reliable, this prolific, or this good?”

Getting more into his work I was also struck by this remarkable consistency, and the perfect mix of patience and playfulness at hand in these tracks. Superb such as to refresh my ears, anyhow.

A Nice Cold Beer Would Be Fantastic

For now, I’m filing half marathons under ‘a supposedly fun thing I’ll probably do again.’

I flew to Quy Nhon City on Saturday around noon, and the race was set to take off the next morning at 4:30 am. The Friday prior had been my birthday, and I went out with a big group of friends. I knew the weekend would be pretty taxing and tried to keep things measured, but nevertheless had one more rice wine shot than most would deem wise. Basically, you’re only young once, and these things happen. It wasn’t without its inevitable aftermath, though, as the next day when my plane was grounded on the tarmac without air conditioning for who knows how long, I had a semi-serious reckoning over calling the whole thing off in a state of overheated frustration. But soon enough I touched down at an airport built into the forest, hopped in a cab, and finally found myself on the sun-scorched street in search of the marathon registration booth.

As is probably obvious, central Vietnam in the summer is damn hot. I felt a little off that Saturday, but was nonetheless grateful the run would start unspeakably early; if sun wasn’t a factor, then things would be fine, I surmised. After I waded through the excited crowds shouting over blaring Vinahouse music in the city plaza to pick up my bib, I wandered around and was tormented with the smells of delicious seafood on beachside grills and freshly-fried Bánh xèo just outside my hotel. Having opted instead for a few bananas to tide myself over, this is a rare instance in which I can commend my own willpower.

Around 5pm, I met up with two friends who had also made the trip, Patrik and Guillaume, to go for a swim and share our mutual anxieties about trying to fall asleep at 8pm and wake up at 3am. The city is absolutely beautiful, and I can’t overemphasize the joy I felt in being able to stroll to a beach in fresh air, take a dip, and stare out at a totally new landscape. Even though seafood was sadly off the table, we did, after all, have to eat something, so, per Patrik’s recommendation, we hit the lone Italian joint in town. Over pasta (vegetarian primavera for me, lemon chicken for Patrik, and risotto sans cream or any form of dairy for Guillaume), I picked their brains about how these types of races worked. They were running the full 42km, so things like the day-before-diet were no laughing matter. To be honest, I didn’t even know what type of shirt I should wear, how long to stretch in the morning, and so much more. But I was only in it for 21km, so I figured the errors I would surely make wouldn’t be too consequential. Guillaume’s simple, effective advice: “just don’t do anything new before tomorrow.”

So I slept some and woke up to my alarm at 3:20 am, drank a water, four sips of day-old iced coffee, and some sort of power bar with a label I couldn’t understand, then followed a few others down the pitch-black street to the race takeoff. In no time I was in the thick of a crowd of thousands, stretching and taking selfies at the marathon gate. 3, 2, 1, go, and we were off, the sky still dark but the tiny cafes in town already starting to fill up with amused, tanktop-clad men. I started at the very back of the pack and took in the spectacle for the first little while before realizing I’d need to weave through a lot of people to meet the right pace. It took me a while to even find the 2 hour pace runner, but I eventually did and went along with that speed for a bit. Somewhere along the way, I took off my headphones and started chatting with a very interesting British guy who was a veteran of the Vietnamese marathon circuit. I wanted to talk more with him, but he, citing my youth, urged me to push on ahead of him.

At that point, I started up a massive bridge, put my headphones back in, and must have found an adrenaline rush. I’ll say that, overall, most of the race felt a little easier than I’d expected. The biggest reason for this is that there was water every odd kilometer, which was an immeasurable aid; I’d been training solo and only having water at the end of runs, so this felt, frankly, luxurious. And, of course, the scene was pretty special; as sunrise swept over the coastline, I was listening to Todd Terje and in a good place both sonically and physically. We ran across the bridge then turned around to tackle the slope that led back into the city, and I realized I could make a decent time if I kept on pushing. Because I’d had no experience, I figured anywhere around 2 hours seemed fine, but I decided to give it all I had and see where things ended up.

After descending the Thị Nại bridge, the bustling city center came into view. With just 1 kilometer left, I began to pass laughing families tackling a 5k together and squeezed my way to the finish. My time came out to be 1 hour, 49 minutes, 57 seconds—a success! I tried to remember to stretch my legs out, though the excitement got the best of me as I strode over to the finisher’s zone and grabbed a cold Hanoi beer. The beauty of Quy Nhon, too, is that I could hop across the main street and be at the beach, so I also took a quick swim (again: pure joy).

When the weekend was all said and done, I finally got the crispy Bánh xèo stuffed with prawns I so craved.

Keep on Running

In a short time, I’m going to run a half marathon across a beachside city in central Vietnam. While I realize 21 kilometers is nothing too extreme, this will be, for me, uncharted territory. I have many questions about what this will feel like, how it will go, what my time will be; this is to say, then, that I’m taking things somewhat lightly. I signed up at the last minute, which means in sum I’ll have had 5 weeks to get match fit. I’m in pretty good shape, but I’m not running as much as I used to. One way to fix this, I suppose, is to sign up for a race and buy some plane tickets. Anyway, I’m trying to keep busy this summer and see more of Vietnam, so this jaunt seems a worthwhile endeavor.

It’s been a strange journey getting ready for the Quy Nhon half, due in no small part to the fact that Saigon is not an excellent place to train for a long race. The weather is fine, sure, but there are many factors which make it pretty inhospitable. So I’m hoping that breathing some fresh air, unencumbered by never-ending traffic, hot pipes, and crowded sidewalks, will make the whole thing seem, if not fun, then pretty relaxed. What I’ve learned so far is this: 2 hours is a pretty long time to run. It’s not so much the physical strain that has presented me with issues, but rather fighting boredom and the desire to go too fast from the onset to the tune of 120-bpm Norwegian disco. Nevertheless, I’m trying to self-correct and look on the bright side. (This brief training period has, thus far, been a great opportunity to get more into the work of James Taylor.)

Thom Jones once wrote that, in boxing, trying to be the best is a fool’s errand; there’s always going to be somebody bigger, tougher, and faster than you. But there’s something kind of freeing in a pursuit where you know that there’s a lifetime of work or study between you and expertise. This feeling used to discourage me, though these days I’m doing my best to embrace it. Running is one of these activities for me. Until pretty recently, I wasn’t even in the habit of wearing running-specific shoes to put up semi-serious miles. I’ve rectified this, and I hope my knees will thank me down the line. I have the same feeling of qualified optimism about writing, cooking, learning Vietnamese language and history, and more.

So, back to running and James Taylor. The half marathon will set off very early in the morning, at something like 5:30 am. This takes care of my number one fear, which is the summer Vietnamese sun. Aside from that, it seems the route leads though the city and over the massive Thi Nai Bridge around sunrise time, and will have me done by roughly 8am. Is that too early to have a beer? Alright, let’s not get ahead of ourselves. Hopefully, at the end of it all, I can spend the rest of the day checking out some of Quy Nhon’s beaches and eating Bánh xèo with some extra miles under my belt.

Listening In

There a great piece in this week’s New Yorker about the technological and, more important, societal impacts of the Sony Walkman as it hits 40 years of age. Matt Alt describes the invention and widespread adoption of the Walkman as, “a point around which the cultural gravity of our plugged-in-yet-tuned-out modern lives shifted.” Indeed, from then on the soundtracking of moments was democratized and, in a variety of ways, music took on new identities. The space music takes up was forever changed, and the experience of consuming music could be a solitary and compact endeavor. Alt borrows from the musicologist Shuhei Hosokawa to discuss ‘The Walkman Effect’ and the way portable music can, “tame the unpredictability of urban spaces.” The Walkman, then, pushed music into a newly intimate space and, further, brought about a sort of unspoken social cue relying on people to not get in your face when your ears (and mind) are elsewhere.

I’ve had a pretty close relationship, too, with music in its modern and convenient form, which is to say that, while being someone who listens to music for hours each day, my lifetime collection of CDs, cassettes, and records is almost non-existent. I still remember, as a little dude, being endlessly entertained by my older brother’s first generation iPod and the little parachuter game with which it came equipped. All of that is to say: I’m no skeptic. Yet after reading about the Walkman’s legacy some four decades later, I can’t help but think of where we stand sonically as a result. All that advancement came with some serious costs.

In an interview with Tyler Cowen, the musicologist and writer Ted Gioia points out how music is one of the only facets of popular culture in which the raw quality has, in recent decades, seen a noticeable decrease. He explains, “I would say that music is the only form of entertainment in which the technology has gotten worse during my lifetime. I go to movies now, and it’s this big screen and surround sound. Video games put the Pong that I used to play to shame. TV is so good, it’s being called a golden age of television. But in music, most of us listen to songs on these lousy handheld devices. Most people in my generation had better sound systems as teenagers than they do now. That worries me.” Did this all stem from the Walkman? Well, it’s possible. As convenience and portability became the imperative, new compression techniques were developed, new sonic norms took over, and, in short, sacrifices were made. Whether it’s been worth it is perhaps too early to tell; for better or worse, I can’t really imagine going back to eating lunch, going to the gym, or cleaning my apartment sans headphones and a Spotify subscription.

The other thing that stuck out to me, though, was how our understanding of what it means to be ‘plugged in’ has also transformed. Alt points out a striking example from a CBS record exec, who said, “with the advent of the Walkman came the end of meeting people.” What happens, though, when the technology outstretches its initial purpose and takes on an identity of its own? With Apple headphones and, more specifically, Airpods, the lines of fashion, technology, and function have all been blurred. I don’t doubt that, in its day, Sony’s portable innovation was indeed a fashion statement, yet Airpods have become a permanent fixture of life in pretty much all settings. I routinely see people who appear to be having normal interactions—on dates, chatting with friends, settling up at a cash register—yet remain ‘plugged in,’ as it were. Could it really be that we’re all totally tuned out for most of our waking hours? I kind of doubt it; nevertheless, the concept of going out of one’s way to listen to music is something worth reevaluating (for me, at least).

All of this takes me back to the most deliberate music listening experience I’ve ever had, which was in Tokyo. The city’s hi-fi listening bars have been well chronicled, and they do truly live up to the hype. Yes, of course, the quarter-of-a-million-dollar sound systems don’t hurt, but going out of one’s way with the sole intention of taking in a solid selection of records pretty much turned my recent listening habits on their head. Since then, I’m also spinning a lot more George Benson, but that’s neither here nor there.

To me, still, there’s no question that the Walkman and subsequent innovations in private music™ have made life richer. But I’m curious to see what comes next, and to find out if popular technology inches toward an experience where music is at the center of it all, or where music is beamed to us as a means to accompany each second of the day.

Adult Education (hay quá!)

I still remember quite vividly my very first day of German class as a college freshman. Having chosen German for no real reason other than the fact that I predicted I might like to spend a significant amount of time hanging out in Berlin, I sat there mortified while my professor patiently went about the initial lesson totally auf Deutsch. There was no way, I surmised, I could stomach 4 semesters—the liberal arts minimum requirement—of this proverbial tossing in the deep end. Only later did I realize that the professor whom I was lucky enough to have been assigned for German 101 is a legendary pedagogist, a polymath with advanced degrees in math and comparative literature, and an overall inspiring guy with a penchant for funny graphic tees. I ended up minoring in German studies, and, on two separate occasions, living briefly in Berlin. Though my German is by no means excellent, I still find myself reverting to it in my head whenever I’m faced with wholly unfamiliar situations as some sort of reflex.

Despite this overwhelmingly positive experience with my first go at seriously undertaking a foreign language, it has taken me a truly embarrassingly long time to get myself to study southern Vietnamese in a formal setting (i’ve lived in Saigon for about 18 months). But better late than never, as they say. So for now it’s back to square one, aside from the vocabulary on food and drink, tennis, and home plant care I’ve accrued thus far. I’m trying to temper my expectations, but my most pressing goal is to get to the level where I can practice in daily life and, perhaps more ambitiously, tell the ladies running my favorite rice porridge spot a little more about myself.

We’ll see how it goes.

Season's greetings

Summer already?

Offseason — Phú Quốc, June 2020

The joys of Phú Quốc island are many. And for me, on this particular visit, it was a tourist paradise sans tourists.

I flew a quick and painless 40 minutes from Saigon, slightly apprehensive about my first air travel experience after COVID-19 hit, and was quickly greeted by warm salt water, freshly plucked steamed squids, signs advertising deep-sea diving excursions in Russian, and burning sunsets. I read fiction by Thom Jones, waltzed along the beaches while dodging unpredictable surf, and listened to ‘The Nightfly’ and Khruangbin’s ‘The Universe Smiles Upon You,’ two records which suit themselves well to tropical climes (but for different reasons).

It’s certainly striking to see a place normally so adapted to tourism be, in large part, free of it. Cruising the deserted side streets by motorbike in search of a famous stretch of beach on the northwest coast, I routinely thought I must have taken a wrong turn. Not to worry, though, as things were just quiet in these parts. At first I was concerned about this quiet—is it disconcerting, strange, even a little depressing? Not in the slightest. A little quiet goes a long way, and while Saigon chugs ahead and returns to pre-pandemic normalcy I’m thankful to get some solitude. Here’s to weekend travel.

Soft Power, Hard Rock

A friend from Leipzig told me that her choir teacher, in middle school, would regularly make the class belt out Scorpions’ power ballad ‘Wind of Change’ while he held back tears of pride.

This would be a great story under any circumstances, but I’m particularly enamored with it given my latest obsession: the podcast WIND OF CHANGE from Patrick Radden Keefe. The series goes deep on a rumor Radden Keefe heard from a friend with connections in high places, positing that the song ‘Wind of Change’ was, in fact, written by the CIA and handed to the West German rock group as a way to expedite the end of the Cold War.

The podcast is so full of delicious details from what has become known as the Cultural Cold War that I found myself mostly unconcerned with the veracity of the initial claim, but, rather, enticed by the ambiguity of it all. Essentially, the case is laid out that there’s no reason something like this couldn’t happen. Radden Keefe gives us plenty of examples of how culture and political objectives get stuck together, mixed around, and become deeply difficult to separate when it’s all said and done.

Take, for instance, the CIA’s invisible relationship with Nina Simone. The podcast details how, in 1961, Simone performed in west Africa but never knew that the tour’s sponsoring organization, the American Society of African Culture, was government-funded. And in pushing American culture into Eastern Europe, it was an incremental approach. When it came to sending the first US band to the Soviet Union, government officials found themselves pitching groups to the Kremlin, cassettes in their briefcases. The initial ideas included the group America (too on the nose), The Doobie Brothers (morally tainted), with the final decision being the Nitty Gritty Dirt Band, who were deemed just inoffensive enough to get a foot in the door. They just beat out the Beach Boys—songs “about pretty girls and driving your own cars” simply weren’t terribly relatable.

Later on, a festival was organized in Moscow under the theme of ‘anti-drug and alcohol’ (nevermind that Ozzy Osbourne was a headliner). To set this one up, the organizer had to, apparently, fly to the Soviet Union weekly to work out the logistics. Rock ‘n roll and the bureaucracy are, it seems, not so disparate. (The same goes of movie magic; in the early stages of planning the film ‘Apocalypse Now,’ co-producer Gray Frederickson had a personal meeting with Ferdinand Marcos in Manila to secure the location, and even gained access to their military gear.)

The mythos of how popular art can spread is summed up well by Radden Keefe, saying, “We think of culture—or we want to think of culture—as organic and spontaneous, as purer than politics.” It’s really something to think about the geopolitical calculations conducted in grey, D.C. office buildings taking into consideration things like leather jackets and mullets. As popularity becomes ever-quantified by likes and engagement statistics, this saga seems almost quaint, if a little creepy. And, before I forget, stay tuned to the last episode to hear Scorpions lead singer Klaus Meine’s Hanover accent.