Navigating distrust and initiative for year 28 — Ok, where are we now? Spring is nearly over, and it’s time to take stock of accomplishments despite persistent feelings of inadequacy. I was group leader on every single case study in the intel class. I attended 6 months of drill and began freelance writing. I juggled two full-time course…

11:48pm I feel gluttonous, restless. I need something other to happen. Three months into this most productive year of my life. I’m hitting a downturn in which I feel discouraged, yes, but the greater mission remains in sight. I’ve developed those habits where I rely on the same podcast and…

Having just screwed-up making payment in time for a class registration that has since dropped me just before the semester start, I’m reminded of quiz kid Donnie Smith’s poetic episode of aging man-child fuck-up-ery from the beginning of Paul Thomas Anderson’s 1999 epic Magnoila. …

I come off full-time orders and out of the structure that has delayed my manic soul for most of ten months straight. What am I to be this time around? A recent and lengthiest ever tour of leaving then returning home feeling adrift, yet again, confined me into self-examination of…

I call for an End to Coffee Dependence! In my case, it was those $5 iced coffees I once needed to start the day. It’s a bad habit I’ve kicked since the onset of 2022, a year I envision to unfold as one of sustained resilience. If these past two…

They came from all over the country without a plan other than to see what the place would do to them. There was a great tradition of those who had ventured out West in search of opportunity. It was another America for those who had not been given the life…

1990s Paul Thomas Anderson was a generational talent. Growing up in Studio City, Los Angeles with an actor and talk show host for a father, he began making films at the age of eight on a Betamax camera. Upon encouragement to write and direct, he eventually made The Dirk Diggler…

A man sits at a lone desk inexplicably positioned at the corner of an industrial space, the blue of his suit nearly blending into the blue stripe along the wall behind him. It’s quite a melancholy scene, like that of a muted Edward Hopper painting. …

Fresh off a viewing and I cracked genuine smiles throughout the special, something I haven’t done in a long time. I’ve been a fan of Bo’s work since stumbling across his Youtube backlog of cheeky bedroom ballads during my high school years. Songs like “New Math” and “i’m bo yo”…