Miles Per Life: Reborn and Ranting

Haven't written here in a while, I figure now is as good a time as any to get back into the swing of things. Could it be the sheer stress I feel from the paper and work or is it that blogging is really the last creative outlet I have. Recently many ideas have been swirling about my head. Why Am I a Journalist? I don't know if I love journalism and as I have said in an earlier blog, if journalism is right for me. I would like to be more creative and write my "Gatsby" but alas it does not seem that is happening any time soon, so maybe I will settle for 'Gossip Girl'  or maybe I could just aspire to be like David Duchovony's character on 'Californication,' write one great novel, fuck a lot, do some blow, and have the wonderful life of being a sex addicted womanizing father of one but that really does not fit me to well, I have problems with wordplay (well the sex and blow would be easy but how could I write the great novel). Here I am one star among others in space. Maybe its the Los Angeles lifestyle that is bothering me. If Fox Mulder (Duchovny again) isn't the Socrates of television this is description of California: its hell. Maybe the Mecca of writing and Art is New York like the show suggests or maybe Mecca is what you make of it. I could argue that this all stems from me feeling a bit older. As Feigned Interest suggests: there is something about me that seems a lot older. I seemed to be more reserved this semester, less loud and obnoxious, I wear more ties and dress shirts, and funny hats. Or maybe its because I pine for her too long, and don't look around enough. Whatever it may be this i know for sure: Thank god for blogs. 

Watch It, I'm blogging over here

I haven't written on this blog in a while so to get back into the groove like Stella I am going to write a new free verse poem I have started working on. So here it is my poem I call it: "Is it Wrong: A delusion in Love" 

Having delusions of grandeur between her and me, she draws me to a place I want to be. She makes me feel good when it is so wrong, brightens up my face, when the world shuns me in the dark. I would like to make her apart of every verb I say, wish every song could use her name, watch her if she was in every movie made. Unfortunately I lie waiting in my desperation and angst healing a broken heart because I met her 3 years too late, 1 day worth the waste, and still I tempt fate. Is it wrong that time and time again, I fall into a guilty sin, Is it wrong I have fallen for a girl who already gave her heart away to him, The boy doesn't get the girl, there is no fairy tale ending in this world. I can only dream of grandiose things between her and me and so I wain on the side, hoping for her to see the love in these eyes. So I sit and I give it my all hoping and waiting for it to fall, cause she shares his name, and I wish that she would share mine and i give her all the fame. I hold her hand and the whispers start they ask her if I am her man, she smiles and laughs, I die inside because what I want, is only attainable at sight. She tells me I am the best, I tell her she is better than the rest and as long as she is happy I can die a smiling man, we go with no riches, all we have are memories in hand, just by knowing her I can die a happy man. Is it wrong that time and time again, i fall into a guilty sin, is it wrong I have fallen for a girl who already gave her heart away to him, the boy doesn't get the girl, there is no fairy tale ending in this world. I can only dream of grandiose things between her and me and so I wain on the side, hoping for her to see the love in these eyes. 

Last call for alcohol and still I sit talking, listening, learning her dreams, we smile, we laugh, I tell her she can have my heart and she doesn't have to give it back. Here we are we've reached the end I have to leave, I don't want walk away, I want to look back, but if I do it is a sign that the good times are over and that is that. So I look back and she kisses me on the cheek goodbye and I know that its worth the pain I feel inside. Is it wrong that time and time again, I fall into a guilty sin, is it wrong I have fallen for a girl who already gave her heart away to him, the boy doesn't get the girl, there is no fairy tale ending in this world. I can only dream of grandiose things between her and me and so i wain on the side, hoping for her to see the love in these eyes.

Miles Per Confessions of a Gentlemen Club Junkie Part II

 

"Strip Club veterans," she says. 

"yeah since we were 18," the good doctor and I retorted half smirking. 

"Oh 21 years old, young veterans," Cassy, the lengthy blonde says back. 

Cassy looks like any she could have been any cheerleader at my old high school, blonde, blue eyes, that annoying high pitched voice, but i have to admit she was hoT with a capital "T." Besides the point I was preoccupied with the apple of my eye, is it love, definitely not, can I say it is an infatuation, probably a more aptly appropriate title. Now most people go to strip clubs for the TNA, naked girls named Ivy or Chastity but I go there for the bartenders. Now the thing about bartenders that separates bartenders at a strip club from strippers at the club is that ideally bartenders leave something to the imagination. What makes most of these bartenders beautiful is what they leave to the imagination. Sitting there sipping my root beer no ice I talk with Cee about anything and everything .

So begins the flirting. Now I have absolutely no style when it comes to flirting , except I am probably the king of cheesy lines. I must say my lines are so cheesy it could make like 10 cheeseburgers.  As cheesy as 80s movies like "Mannequin" or "Weekend at Bernies" I was a Andrew McCarthy being drawn to the unattainable. Now my lines are a blur but I do believe they were not limited to: 

(After folding a dollar into a heart) "here is my heart you can have it" 

she smiled, told me I am too sweet (a response I have gotten too many times from her) and properly displayed my heart on her tip jar. 

(After giving her all the money in my hands): "I have nothing else to give you because you already took my heart" 

Definitely corny like cob but it is entertaining she laughs and smiles and even flashes me a few times. So life could be good. Cee and Kristy are about to take the stage no to strip but for stage cleanup basically the waitress and bartender erotically wipe down the stage with windex while swinging around the pole all in the name of patrons throwing money for the "unattainable." 

Strip club term of the day right now: Make it Rain (M*ayk*it*ray*ne)- Means you throw money on the strip as if it was a rain storm. The Doctor and I decided to make it a battle as we both threw money from every direction, never have i felt my $40 one dollar bills have been spent better. Oh what a night! Just another day at The Bear.

Miles Per Hell Fire Journalism

Two days after the "ASO Devil" story a lot of people have congratulated me for writing a story on so little, I received praise for being so "RELIABLE." Now here I am three stories due next week and I am terrified, I feel like I am going to breakdown soon enough, Now that people think I am "reliable" I have to live up to the facade. Lets hope I make it through the week in at least half of piece and not burned by my own limitations.

Miles Per Deadline PART DEUX

Deadline night again. 

Finished my story on the ASO devil. Yet maybe I am being too harsh calling her that! 

Cookies are a good source for sugar...I bought 13 of them for my fellow journalist...If only I had the milk to, now that would be PERFECTION. 

Feigned Interest labors hard on the computer as I live in fear that my story is not as good as Lori think it is. Maybe I am just paranoid, maybe it is just the Filet O Fish in my stomach. 

But there is still some kind of light out so that is comforting. 

At least till I am right back to the grind tomorrow. 

Next Wednesday will be my day of rest. 

Miles PER Beware of Jagulars

Broken radio is the worse thing that could happen on your way to school, the damn thing wouldn't even turn back on, I could have entertained myself by doing my own renditions of awesomely bad 80's songs but I instead just drove silently as random thoughts about the road took control. Upon trying to enter the on ramp to my freeway I found that I was by myself and about to enter the carpool lane but I couldn't get over because all the cars in the regular were stopped and I would have to stop in the carpool lane to do it, why hold up angry LA people, so I cruised down the carpool lane hoping no cops were waiting at the interchange. After barely escaping that I sat in traffic for all of 10 minutes (Might be a new record) and I ended up behind an old Jaguar coupe that had a very interesting license plate: BEWARE OF JAGULARS! The first thought that rolled through my head was how fucking corny that is, and how egotistical the schmuck driving the jaguar must be to believe that car jackers are itching to get the next jaguar. Maybe I saw it as a metaphor for how elitist we Americans can be or the effects of having no radio was getting to me. Then again is wasn't as cool as the license plate of a car at my little brothers school: MY OTHER RIDE IS YOUR HUSBAND. Now that is something completely different. Or maybe it is just the honest to god truth. 

Miles PER Fear & Loathing with the ASO devil

6:30 AM I woke up, refreshed for what has been the longest day of my life. As a student journalist time moves slowly, the day becomes longer yet there are still not enough hours, minutes, seconds, in the day for a journalist to get everything done.I can only dream of a 25th hour. 8: 30 AM I arrive at school. I was hoping to walk into the newsroom, sit on my ass for 20 minutes then go work on my story. Instead I walked into school and ended up starting as soon I went right to work. the night before my editor had been verbally bitched at by a invisible demon, the ASO devil, who up until recently was the student president of my beloved El Camino. Now like Client 9 (for those non-news junkie: client 9 is Eliot Spitzer the NY governor who had unprotected sex with hooker Ashley Dupre) the ASO devil has fallen from grace after being removed from student body president.  Covering this story is like letting the little kid in line hit you with a stick over and over again...At every corner you are met with opposition, they choose not to talk because they have nothing to say on the matter, She doesn't want to talk (FUCK HER), I even was polite enough to give her a shot to redeem herself, tell me why she was removed, she responded very bitchy to my editor, so now I have to write a story in defense of my editors honor...HOORAH! It is 7:36 PM right now and after spending the last eight to nine hours chasing down "The ASO Devil" I have gotten what I need, so now I just need to sit here, write, and hope she doesn't come up from behind me and make me an offer I can't refuse. Dirt naps don't sound too comfortable. 

(Kilo will Return in  Miles Per Spike Lee'ing the issues)

Miles Per Confessions of a Gentlemen Club Junkie

Every so often there will be a chronicle of my adventures and escapades at the local Gentlemen's club to protect the identity of the club I have decided to not directly refer to the club by name and some of the names have been changed but it will be all factual accounts. This is Part I.

Red strobe lights flicker around the club, It is a little after 10 and the club, "The BE", is only modestly packed, me and The Doctor (as he is known to the many security folk at this establishment) position ourself in the back next to the glass divider between us and the couch dances. At the bar is the object of my affection. Now this is the funny thing about why we go to "The BE" because after a while we stopped going for the strippers and we were going for the beautiful waitress that don't peel off their clothes for money. The reason is probably the allure of the what we could only imagine. We have only dreamed of what these waitresses look like underneath their short skirts or tight dresses. But by this point the first "dancer" has come and gone. She has done her little stint ("would you like a dance" she said.) To which I politely turn her down, with a simple ok, she shakes her head and walks toward the next prospective patron. meanwhile my drink has just arrived at my table, my overpriced root beer ($5.25 for one bottle) I pull out 11 dollars, five for the drink, the rest to tip Stephanie, our beautiful waitress, our goddess of the bar, feeling like such a baller I tell her there will be no need for change as she sits down to talk with The Doctor and myself.  

The "dancers" like vultures begin to trek along the red carpet of "The BE" eyeing their pray or patrons for a little "sexy, fun, time" (yes they have actually used those exact words). I notice the old gentlemen (picture father time and that is him right there with one of the "wise women" wearing a sheer top) has made his usual selection, the promotion ends and the word "No" still lingers on my tongue. I see the object of my jilted affection working at the bar, her name is Cee, she is cute and petite, with brown hair, and a big smile, I casually walk over to say hi and hug her, along the way, Sabrina, a brazilian  bombshell stops me to say hi,I quickly peck her on the cheek and continue toward Cee. Slipping her 5 dollars I tell her some corny line (I seem to be all about corny lines). I tell her "I rather give my money to her" and she smiles and takes it, and laughs as I continue the barrage of corny material. Somewhere along in the conversation I slip in to give me her number. To my amazement she does but warns me that she has a man already...I figure it is worth a shot. Right? 

(Kilo will return in Miles Per Chick Flicks Man Up)

Miles Per Writer's Block

"We're only interested in one thing, Bart. Can you tell a story? Can you make us laugh? Can you make us cry? Can you make us want to break out in joyous song? Is that more than one thing? Okay! "

-From the movie, "Barton Fink"

It's like the train station in your head has just made the last stop for the day. The gears make one last turn before completely pausing and then complete and utter blackness like a tunnel. Writer's block may be the greatest threat to a warrior of the pen. For without the ability to write you are obsolete. Useless in design. You write not because you want to (well let me rephrase that..sometimes you have to) but because your whole livelihood depends on what you scribble down on to the blank page that is staring back at you with its little beady white eyes. Right now my biggest block comes from a couple things: 1) my ability as a student journalist 2) the unfinished screenplay that has been dormant for the past 2 months. You may be saying why there is some irony in the fact that I am suffering from writer's block and yet I am able to compose this blog. This is more of an "exercise" for me...it is to help me stimulate my thoughts then maybe I will compose something of use later...also my last post was last Sunday so I must have been suffering from some serious writer's block. Most of the time it is not so much the ideas you are presenting it is the presentation of the ideas. Every writer has great ideas, some great ideas have not been so great stories yet we choose to accept these ideas because it is a process...you keep writing no matter how shitty or contrived it can be you keep writing because that is your weapon of choice...what is the best cure for writer's block? writing. As plain as simple as that. If the Coen Brothers can make a movie like Barton Fink while suffering a writer's block then there is some hope for the rest of us writers. right?

Miles PER The Many Loves of...(part 1 of 2)

"Lying is the most fun a girl can have, without taking off her clothes"
-Alice (Natalie Portman in "Closer")

Everything I think I know about women...I learned from one of the following: Movies. Family. Politics. Life. There is a huge difference between what I believed to know and what is known about women. Most men like to believe we understand women, we leave the toilet seat down for them and we think we are doing them a favor. What it comes down to is that women are very eclectic creatures and while for as long as we've both shared this piece of Earth that one fact that is a constant: Both sexes are confusing. We both believe we know each other so well but I definitely don't understand the plight of a women as much as I understand the ending of the movie "Vanilla Sky." There are some classifications we like to make about women, the classic: socialite diva (Rachel McAdams in Mean Girls). clingy psycho (Natalie Wood in "Splendor in the Grass). sexpot (Any movie with Marilyn Monroe). liberal bitch. the wholesome(.I think you get the picture.

Movies have been my source for years on how to approach women: There was the Humphrey Bogart approach: slap them around, then this is followed by a forceful rough kiss. The James Dean strong silent approach that just makes the women fall for you even more. The neurotic intellectual type like Woody Allen (A little Russian Literature and philosophy goes a long way with a women). The Hopeless Romantic a la Lloyd Dobler who swooned hearts everywhere.

Miles PER The Tao of Lloyd Dobler

Diane Court: Nobody thinks it will work, do they? 

Lloyd Dobler: No. You just described every great success story. 

-Say Anything 

They say there are two types of women in the world: the Jake Ryan women and the Lloyd Dobler women. Jake Ryan women are the realist who long for the epitome of hunk-dom, the perfect teeth smiling jock. The 2nd batch of women, the idealist are Lloyd Dobler women. Lloyd Dobler is the sweet, sensitive, trench coat, wearing droopy faced hero of all that is chivalrous. While women marry the Jake Ryan, they dream of Lloyd Dobler. 

Simple fact. 

Now it is not so much that women love John Cusack (even though it seems many of his characters are extensions of Lloyd Dobler- ie: Rob Gordon in "High Fidelity" is basically Lloyd Dobler in his 30's), rather women are in love with Cusack as Lloyd Dobler and it in this day and age it may seem stalker-ish to stand outside a women's bedroom playing Peter Gabriel's "In Your Eyes" and many women will identify it as stalker like... beneath the exterior facade women probably find it romantic to do such a thing. 

Its a weird dichotomy.  It's the Tao of Lloyd Dobler. 

Most men dream of being the Marlon Brando's and the James Dean's not many idealize themselves as Lloyd Dobler's. But for the select few of us (like me) we find we relate more to Lloyd Dobler than the Brando's or the Dean's. 

Miles PER Deadline

"I can't do the reporting for my reporters, which means I have to trust them. And I hate trusting anybody. Run that baby."

-Ben Bradlee (Portrayed by Jason Robards in "All the Presidents Men)

Production night. Fourth issue. For the editors and veteran staff members the most important issue of the semester. It will be the issue that will define our newspaper, our semester. This is the one that has to be PERFECT. It feels like we are part of a real life Washington Post, Woodward & Bernstein staff where the every deadline counts and the fate of our organization rest's on a reporter's ability to get the facts straight.

Page editors scramble like rats scurrying along sewers to finish their pages that some started yesterday as they finish today: DEADLINE. That word strikes fear into any journalist. We are in the mist of the single most important deadline: 12 pages of pure unadulterated news, sports, arts, features made in a few automated hours in a cubicle for editors. I RESPECT my editors immensely for being able to put up with this weekly grind. As a staff writer I know most of the time we take our job lightly, if our profession were greek lore us writers would be the Demi-Gods, half man, half god, in the vain of Achilles or Hercules, we can do everything, write, interview, destroy lives or make careers. But the editors. They are the ZEUS' of the newsroom, with one fell swoop of a red pen they can command us to dig deeper and do better. In laments term though they are here to look out for us. I trust my editors. I trust Feigned Interest. I trust Cleo (Well sort of). They are the veterans, the commander I would follow in to war. Pearl especially.

The movie "Shattered Glass" about the fiasco that was fraud journalist Stephen Glass who published enough puff pieces to smoke out an entire Bob Marley Fest crowd. There is a line in that movie where his editor, Michael Kelly, is removed from his position and is fired. Probably the most profound line in the entire movie Stephen Glass says something along the lines of: "Sometimes in life you get good editors, but every once in a while you get a really great one." Feigned Interest despite only having known her for a couple months I can already tell is one of the great editors, excellent writer, but more importantly she is focused and driven.

Watching the way she works is like a lesson in how you are suppose to do it. I feel like I have to step up my writing game up just to be at your standards, which I like because it is a challenge and editors should challenge their staff to strive for more than meeting the deadline...they should strive for us to to meet the deadline before the deadline. Im working on that part at least and tonight at 9:03 pm as I write this and the editors finish their page I have realized I have met my deadline...at least till next issue.

(Miles will return in Miles PER The Tao of Lloyd Dobler)

Miles PER Future

" Why did I write, because I found life unsatisfactory." 

-Tennessee Williams, playwright 

A customer came into my work last night (the mundane work of scooping ice cream for a Brady Bunch community of El Segundo) and noticed I was singing the words to every song that would come on (mostly cheesy 80's songs that play over and over again so it's easy for it to get stuck in my brain)at my work.  The customer then commented that "hey you have to do something you love to get through the day." Quickly I retorted "If only I was doing something I love" to which the customer said something along the lines of ain't that the truth. so here I am suffering a quarter life crisis where I am at the cross roads of my life trying to decide the quintessential question of where I see myself....marriage? family? career? traveling? Bum? circus freak? All essential questions in the quest to define myself.  So in the long road since my youth (which ended only about 2 years ago) I have decided to plant myself in the field of JOURNALISM. 

Which brings me back to the statement of "doing something I love." Do I love journalism? The answer is like a double edged sword. Journalism is like a love/hate relationship for me, I LOVE writing, I HATE the politics involved. On some days I feel like I turned out a real good story and on others I just think this is a piece of shit. There are days I feel like I don't belong in the field of journalism and that there are other people around me who I feel write a journalism piece a lot better than I do and I think I am just doing this for the time being, it is a career in writing, which is what I ultimately want to do. Like my good friend once said: "If you are getting into writing for the money your a fucking dumb ass." 

Two years ago if you had asked anybody that knows me what career they thought I would be into, they would be probably respond without hesitation: film. I harbor desires to be a director like Martin Scorsese and a writer like Charlie Kaufman (Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind). I could tell you who wrote, directed, starred, scored, and how many awards  a movie won but how does that come in handy. Sure I've attempted scriptwriting (currently working on one now but that will be saved for another blog) but that is a profession that everyone in SoCal is attempting and I am just another statistic in the game. So I guess that is why I got into journalism so I could do something in the meanwhile and who knows french director Jean Luc Godard started as a journalist so maybe I can be that lucky. 

I LOVE writing. I LOVE film. Do I LOVE journalism? Let's just say she (Miss Journalism) is a fine companion for now. 

(miles R. will return in...Miles PER Deadline

Miles Per Beginning

Remember that line from the the movie "The Fast and the Furious"(yes i am quoting that movie) where Vin Diesel tells Paul Walker "I live my life a quarter mile at a time," well remember that statement because my goal for this blog is to chronicle the social, political, popular, cultural happenings in my life. I am 20 years old and living among the decadent people of the city of Angels (for those of you not familiar with that term that would be Los Angeles). I am a Journalism major who is going through a quarter-life crisis (no im joking...or am I?). So get ready for an experience...as the great Dr. Hunter S. Thompson would say: "Buy the ticket and take the ride." Now ain't that the truth.