While I was working on a writing project, I was looking up for Asian poets. Naturally I looked up Justin Chin. Much to my dismay I found out he died back in 2015!

I remember seeing him perform during a meeting of the Queer Student Union at UCSB back in 1997. His poetry and words were very electric, they stuck with me for decades even though I could never easily access his works.

Good night Justin.

Really there has only been one album that I have kept in my listening rotation all year: Mr. Kitty’s synthpoppy goodness that is A.I.

A.I. starts with a synthesized groaning before crescendoing into a dreamy overture that belies the emotional messiness of the following 50 minutes. It ends abruptly and begins the staccato dancy keyboards that begin “Undo.” And here we start the journey. “I will undo these memories I’ve kept of you,” he sings in the chorus.

In the next song “Habits,” he pleads to “don’t break him,” and to “let your habits control you.”

This is one of the very few albums that has had me both bouncing around dancing while simultaneously crying. It’s hard to keep still with the beats bouncing through my head. But you can hear someone fighting through his own depression which is just what I’ve been caught up in this year. It’s heart breaking to listen to it as I live it.

Take “Dream Diver” which starts off with an homage to house music. He starts the chorus stating “I’m always falling apart, always losing my mind/Losing everything when I think of you.” He ends with “I gave you everything, now I can never trust you.”

This was my soundtrack for 2017, the good and the very very bad. At least I didn’t have to feel alone in my pity.

Fuck. The hits just keep on coming. The day after the Dodgers shat all over Game 7 came word that Joe Ricketts (of the Chicago Cubs and TD Ameritrade fame) abruptly closed all Gothamist sites including my former writing home LAist. *sigh*

What first got me irate was that the archives were completely shut down. Sure I have saved most of the stories I wrote for LAist, but gone would be the proof they were published in the first place. This fucking needledick billionaire motherfucker is just taking all of that away from everyone who had ever written for any of the sites. The proof of our online existence was gone. I mean, this dickhead has all the money in the world, he can at the very least afford to keep this shit up.

Then came word that the archives might be saved which dissolved most of the anger. Now is sadness. I remember what LAist was back in 2007 when we were just running around LA writing about everything and anything that came into our heads. The friends I made, Tony Pierce, Carrie Meathrell, Zach Behrens, Lindsay Williams-Ross, Lauren Lloyd, Peggy Archer, Tom Lewis, Jeff Koga, Christine Ziemba and Jean and Matthew and Ali and Sarah and Caleb and Joey and Sloane and ohmygodI’mforgettingsomanypeople. But FUCK!!!!!

Fuck.

I just feel what little is left of my heart has been ripped out. I don’t. Yeah.

This fucking sucks. I got emotionally vested in this team. I was silly enough to think that this would be the year they would finally win it again 29 years after their last championship. Stupid me. The Dodgers lost in Game 7 at home to the Houston Astros.

I don’t know the score because fortunately the game was over by the second inning. I turned the game off and went about the rest of my business. All I know is yet again here am I unhappy because of yet another Dodger shortcoming.

And here I ask myself why I fucking care so much. It doesn’t affect my life personally. It’s just a stupid sport — sport!!!! of all fucking things. I remember when I never gave two shits about sports.

Oh well. This just fucking sucks. That’s it.

It’s been tough watching this World Series wanting the Dodgers to win it. What most of America billed as the “Best World Series Game Ever” I had to turn off in the seventh inning on Sunday because it was going to give me a heart attack. Or hemorrhoids.

The Dodgers won a close game tonight 3-1 over the Astros to give us a Game 7. A motherfucking Game 7.

I’ll probably have to leave work early and head home so no one will see me ugly cry when the Dodgers win it.

For years and years I have wanted exposed brains as a costume, and I finally got to do it! Dreams do come true.

It’s a Thursday night and I’m dead tired. After work yesterday, I went to see Front 242 at the Regent Theater in DTLA. Holy motherfucking shit they played quite the set. The beats drive you to move your body, and the next thing you know you can’t stop. You’ve fallen under their spell. This should give you a hint even though this live bit was from nine years ago.

Big kudos to the sound folks at the Regent. The sound was top notch, I didn’t need to put in ear plugs. Well, I probably should have, but all of the levels worked well together.

One thing that was funny was seeing how many old folks there were at the show. It was so bad I could read the texts from people all the way across the theater from me.

I got home around 1 a.m. after which we had a department outing at work. It involved a booze cruise, a three hour tour around Marina Del Rey, booze and the idea of an afterparty which overwhelmed me so much I opted to go brave Westside traffic at 5 pm on a Thursday.

I’m dead tired now. And just think, I have one more day of work left this week. Good night.

I didn’t realize it had been so long, but the last Dodger game I went to was back on April 4, 2014. It was the Dodgers home opener against the Giants where Hyun Jin Ryu got lit up for eight runs in the first two innings. I still can’t believe that was the last Dodger game I had been to.

Well on Sunday, my coworker Rogelio (aka RoRo) got invited by Virgin America to sit in the Emirates Lounge at the Ravine. He invited me, so we went.

It was really nice. The Dodgers won 3-1 behind eight solid innings from Clayton Kershaw. But most of what I remembered was having to schmooze throughout most of the game. There was the sales rep from Virgin America. Then the sales rep from Alaska Air. Then the someone else from Alaska Air. Then the someone else from Emirates Airline. Then more people. One after another after another. It made me thankful I had an endless supply of Sapphire Tonics.

It was exhausting. By the time I got home, I took an hour-long nap.

Considering what my more recent weekends have comprised of, at least I got out of the house.

Fucking Mother! This all started with the Blair Witch Project for me, the fucking excessive use of handheld cameras making the movie viewing experience a nauseous one. I’ve been good about it so far: Nine Songs, Cloverfield, 24 Hour Party People. I managed to avoid having to throw up at a theater.

Well at the Saturday morning matinee of Mother!, I finally got to check something off my proverbial bucket list. About 90 minutes into the film, about where an impromptu book release party happens to a very pregnant Jennifer Lawrence’s chagrin, I ran towards the restroom and started hurling my morning coffee out.

I actually thought about going back after the yakking stopped since the movie was intriguing. But fucking hell. There should be a fucking warning if there is excessive handheld cameras in a film. At the very least let me get some fucking Dramamine.

I guess I’ll watch the final bit of the film once it’s out on VOD.

Usually when I plan a trip, things go smoothly. Reservations aren’t lost. Flights aren’t missed. Everything works. When I got to Denver to pick up my rental car for this Mount Rushmore Labor Day Road Trip Extravaganza, things took a very wrong turn.

Since I don’t have a credit card, apparently you have to drop off the car back at the place you picked it up from if you use a debit card. No matter what I did, it wouldn’t have worked from Cheapo Car Rental, so I just took a Lyft to my hotel and assessed things. I figured if I booked a flight out of Denver, I could make it work with Enterprise. I did. The only catch was they didn’t have anything available until today. So I wound up with an extra day in Denver.

I bought a ticket to the Rockies game and figured I would have to kill time there. Because it was over 90 (but unlike Los Angeles there was no humidity so it was bearable,) I decided to go to the Denver Art Museum. While the architecture was neat:

I was disappointed with the offerings. They had two great exhibits though. The first was “Common Ground: Photographs by Fazal Sheikh, 1989-2013.” He took pictures from refugee camps around the world during this time with a majority focus on women.

Walking through this exhibit I was on the verge of tears the whole time. The images of the mothers particularly at the Mandrea feeding center in Kenya during the Rwandan civil war in the 90s really grabbed me. Their faces betrayed no emotion as they were trying to get their malnourished babies fed. These women were just doing what they had to to keep their babies alive. Also haunting was the fact the a lot of the babies were being tended to by their sisters. Where had the mothers gone? Were they killed during the violence?

It was all just so haunting.

The other great exhibit was “Mi Tierra: Contemporary Artists Explore Space.” One of the first things you notice when you get in is Ramiro Gomez’s mixed-media on cardboard piece about Lupita:

And here is something very pretty from Gabriel Dawe:

Perhaps the best thing about the museum was that since it was the first Saturday, it was free!

And also right outside was the Taste of Colorado festival on the Capitol Grounds which was pretty terrific.

Then heading to Lodo to get close to Coors Field:

And my good seats at Coors Field:

The Rockies ended up losing to the D-Backs 4-2, but it was still a pretty fun day for me.

I went back to my hotel after that and prepared for my next day:

By the way, I did get my rental car and did make it to Mount Rushmore. More on that later.