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.