my cousin momo. zachariah ohora (305)

my cousin momo is the story about cousin momo, a flying squirrel, and his visit to his cousin's house.  his cousin were extremely excited about his visit.  however, momo's odd behavior, made them upset about the trip.

for example, momo, wanted to be a muffin man when they dressed up as superheroes! (i thought his costume was amazing!):

and then while playing hide and seek, cousin momo got distracted by the mushrooms and had to take pictures:

though we were not told this, it's obvious that cousin momo is a hipster flying squirrel visiting from williamsburg.  i mean i totally wanted to be his friend!  however, his cousins not so much.  there was an awkward moment where momo was about to head home but the cousin see that is fun, not weird.  so they all played together:

pastry power!

and accepted cousin momo for the hipster that he is!

a cute story with great illustrations! i highly recommend it!!

palo alto. james franco. (127)

i read online that james franco was doing a fundraiser, kinda like kickstarter but not, to turn his collection of short stories, "palo alto" into a movie.  

before i go on, quick rant about celebrities doing kickstarters.  seriously?!?! doesn't the general public give you enough money by watching your movies and tv shows?  i mean don't you already get paid a ridiculous amount of money for acting yet you are begging common folk for money?  fund your own projects, you can afford it!

back to "palo alto", though i didn't agree with his fundraising, i was excited about reading his work.  i admire his acting and he seems to be pretty intelligent and cultured.  he did go to UCLA and he sat with marina abramovic during her piece "the artist is present" (he was featured in the doc).  so i had pretty high expectations for his writing, but his fundraiser should have been a red flag.

i mean it did seem odd that james franco would have to do a kickstarter with all of his hollywood success but this collection of stories was horrible.  so bad that its no wonder he couldn't find anyone in hollywood to back it, you would have to be an idiot to.  it was bad.  it was like a sad attempt to be "jesus' son" but whereas denis johnson has talent and a way with words, franco has nothing.

i mean i knew it was going to be horrible after reading the first line of the first story, "halloween":

ten years ago, my sophomore year in high school, i killed a woman on halloween.

i swear to god, i am not making this up.  that was the first line.  it reminded me of that "girls" episode when hannah goes to the reading for her old professor and she reads that poorly-written and forced story about her online boyfriend dying.  and her first line is about him dying and she doesn't get a reaction so she repeats the line about him dying assuming people didn't catch it the first time.  so embarrassing.  in my head, i imagined franco repeating "killed" for a reaction and for effect.  

so that line set the tone for the rest of the stories and after that i couldn't take anything seriously.  everything felt forced.  i know what franco was trying to write, he wanted to create some great beat manifesto for generation y but sadly didn't come close.  i mean franco did capture the pretentious ignorance of gen y hipsters.  it was shocking yet lacked any real depth or edge.  it was all self-righteous intensity, kinda like hipsters.  franco's characters were soulless druggies yet would namecheck kerouac, faulkner, and hemingway.  it was as if the mention of their names would result in literary greatness, instead franco just came off like a wannabe beat.

his characters were  bad people, i was disgusted by everything i had read in  the story.  they were bad just for the shock value versus finding a deeper truth.  it was full of lines that i am sure franco wanted his readers' minds to explode as they read but everything was overdone and cliché.

franco's stories were filled with bad stereotypes as well.  the second story is the tale of girl who is . . . good at math!  what girls can't be good at math?!?!  or the slutty asian girl who will love you long time.  there was also a lot of half breeds and even a mormon.  but a mormon who knows nothing about scriptures (mormons, even the bad ones can discuss scriptures).  and just way too many bat shitty crazy boys with too much time and drugs on their hands.

and i mean i get wayward youth, i enjoyed "a clockwork orange" and "trainspotting".  i revered sal paradise.  but there was nothing enjoyable or enlightening about the reckless youth of "palo alto".  it was so bad that i now have a better appreciation for "jesus' son".

but i will add i did enjoy one thing.  i genuinely enjoyed franco's mention of the children books author bill peet.  i actually checked out a handful of his books because they are alluded to in a story.  though i did not believe anyone would let a druggie do service hours at a library.  

but in the end, i am glad i read "palo alto" because now i won't waste my money to help fund a film version or pay for a movie ticket to see it.

office girl. joe meno. (122)

while checking out the july must reads from flavorpill and not finding anything to read, i decided to check out last year's july must reads post and found joe meno's "office girl" (i was super disappointed with myself for having not heard of it prior.)  it seemed like the type of book i would love, quirky and funny. of course the cover was adorbs (click on the post to see the hardcover, the paperback is cute as well) and i loved all of the other possible titles:  or bohemians, or young people on bicycles doing troubling things.  though i think the last one makes the best title (it's my inner hipster). and last but not least it was described as "the perks of being a wallflower" but for twentysomethings, though i am now a thirtysomething, i had to check it out.

and love this book, i did.  (sorry no idea where that yoda talk came from.)  but it reminded me of two of my favorite movies: "(500) days of summer", and "beginners"; one of my favorite shows: "girls", and even my one of my favorite books: "high fidelity".

"office girl" is the story of odile (pronounced o-deel) and jack, two chi-town artsy hipsters lost, at low points in life and realizing that they are not as special as they were raised to believe (a sad realization we millenals experience).  though i just realized that odile and jack are generation x and not y, because the story is set in 1999 (clinton's impeachment than acquittal played a part, which made me realized just how silly the world is, at the time i was too young to get it but i mean really it was just a blow job).  though as i read, there were a handful of things that felt too gen y hipsters for it to be the 90s, ie bike riding, ironic moustaches, and DIY street art (unless this was around then and I was too young to know it).  and i hate to be mean but maybe meno set it in the 90s to avoid it being a gen y manifesto but sadly that is what it was.  i mean both generations are screwed up so it's kinda like same diff.

and just like "(500) days of summer", though it may feel like it, "office girl" is not a love story.  well it is in the sense that their relationship is the push they need to get on with their lives.  both leave the relationship better people so in that sense it is a love story.  and yes there is a "lets just keep things casual" conflict just like summer and tom. also the introduction of odile and jack totally reminded me of how tom and summer were introduced in the film.  at one point, as i read a description, i totally saw the scenes in the film when tom talks about all the things he loves about summer.  another things that reminded me of (500) was when it listed out odile's exes or boys that fell in love with her, it was like when summer talked about her exes.  (it also it totally reminded me of rob listing out his lost loves in "high fidelity".) also there is a moment where jack and odile get pancakes like summer and tom but they don't break up.  ans in meno's defense is not completely  (500) days but (500) days-esque.

however it was not the romance that made me fall for this book.  it was their artsy-ness (this is when it started to feel like "beginners").  odile is an art school drop out and jack is an art school graduate and both produce art that i would love.  for example, jack had a comic strip about a boy in love with a log, it sounded so cute, i wished it existed in real life.  jack also recorded sounds he heard while biking around chicago.  some of his sounds were not even sounds, for example, "green glove in the snow" or "girls reading books on the subway".  though is favorites were quite beautiful:  a woman singing "look for the silver lining", a weather man fescue ricin clouds as "gray cumulus, just like ponies jumping over a fence" and a woman saying "i ate a plum and thought of you". jack thought the later was "so perfect in it's briefness, in its sense of longing" and i couldn't agree with him more.

odile is more of a guerrilla artist.  when we first met her she is tagging anything with her silver sharpie (pretty much tits and penis) but she starts this movement with jack.  it i totally wanted to be a member of their movement, named after alphonse f., the first true artist odile met.  she went to elementary school with that drew pictures of naked ladies and tried to sell them to classmates.  

here is a list of their art:

-wore ski masks and left a ton of silver balloons in a elevator

-rode on the bus dressed like ghosts

-made a banner that says "you will forget this by tomorrow-alphonse f. (which reminded me of miranda july's art book)

-bought three parakeets and released them in a school yard

-put a portrait of alphonse f. in the mca between a warhol and cindy sherman (very banksy)

-reenacted "jaws" on the subway

-create a zine

sounds like a blast right?

and to top it all off, the book at illustrations and pictures for the art!  there was even the zine in the middle of it!

this last one is from a party jack went to where people dressed like building.  

i loved all of the little random illustrations and photos in this book.

i mean this book was the epitome of hipsterness which is why i loved it.  it's nice to be able connect with characters who are artsy and angsty, just like you.  (though i am not a hipster).  it was good, i mean its probably already in the works for a movie or an MTV series based on it.

one last thing.  this book taught me the story behind the song "save the last dance for me".  i always thought it was sad because it seemed like the guy was okay with his girl being a flirt and reminding her like flirt all you want but you are coming. home with me.  but that is not the case!  jack's stepdad, david, shared that the songwriter doc pomus at polio and at this wedding he can't dance but watched everyone else dance with his bridge.  "so he writes this song to tell her, you go have your fun but remember who's taking you home." pretty sweet, huh?

oh and one final thing, i read meno's other book "hairstyles of the damned" in high school.  like i think i still have it.  I didn't enjoy it that much back then but plan on giving it another chance.

eeeee ee eeee. tao lin. (48)

i came across tao lin's "eeeee eee eeee" in a flavorpill post, the most cryptic titles in literature (and what they mean).  the description mentioned domino's (their thin crust makes it my favorite of the major pizza chains), bears, and dolphins.  the title is the sound that dolphins make.  when i explained this to my little brother, he surprisingly did a great dolphin sound.  (i wonder if anyone has ever asked for it by dolphin sound at a bookstore.)  trying to find more info about it, i amazoned it and discovered that elijah wood is mentioned in it as well.  with that cute little hobbit in it, i had to read it.

i might not be cool enough for this book.  the book is either super brillant or super bad.  i can't sort it out.  when i started it, i couldn't focus while reading it because it was all over the place.  and andrew was violent.  i kinda felt like i was on drugs.  but not a good drug trip.  but the kind where you come to and realize that you ice picked the family dog or hamster.

after the first half of it, i didn't find it provocative or interesting.  but keep on reading because i wanted to see how it all ended.  i spent most of the book waiting for elijah wood to show up and once he did, he instantly died.  womp, womp.

the book left me without an opinion, i mean i was just confused.  i googled to see what others thought of it. and read reviews on amazon.  and people were thinking it was brilliant.  plus flavorpill did recommend it, so maybe i wasn't cool enough to get it?  maybe i should have smoked pot to get it?  i don't know.

as i was googling i came across articles theorizing that lin was behind hipster runoff. so my not getting "eeeee eee eeee" made me feel even lamer. not that i want to be a hipster but i thought i was cool enough to get the thinks they like ironically. so i decided to give lin a second chance with his novel, "richard yates", i wanted to read "shoplifting from american apparel" but couldn't find that at the library.