and the heart says whatever. emily gould. (232)

while looking up the blurb flavorpill had written about emily gould's friendship, i came across another article titled "could emily gould be the voice of our generation"? i didn't read the article, because i wanted to read the book first, but i would have to say yes, gould could be the voice of our generation.  (i have yet to read the article, i want to write this post first.)

as i read this collection of essays, i couldn't help but think of how it reminded me of hbo's "girls" and i am shocked that flavorpill did not put it on their list of books to read to fill the the girls' void in your life.  

this work was published in 2010 and the series started in 2012 and they do feel a lot a like.  so i wonder why it was excluded.  (actually i just googled thinking that maybe gould and dunham were friends, turns out they are not.  a feud started between them during the time gould's book came out.  how sad.)

and the heart says whatever covers gould's early twentysomething life.  it is just as curtis sittenfeld's (not sure who he is) words on the front cover share:  "these smart, poignant essays about being young and literary in new york city are like a twenty-first century version of the bell jar but with more pot, sex, technology, and (thanks goodness) a different ending."  gould shared with us her shitty jobs, bad break-ups, even worse rebound relationships, depression and bad discussions in life.  as i read about her time working at a publishing house, gawker, i can see how she gleaned from her life for friendship.  the same can be said for the relationships she had.

this collection felt like life, i mean it was, but it wasn't a forced life.  in the introduction, gould shared a story about how after a work thing she went to see her boyfriend's band play.  it turned into a late night when his band became the headliners.  her boyfriend was elated but she was tried so went home.  she realized that this was the moment their relationship shifted and they eventually broke up.  she has looked back at the moment wondering if she would do it different.  she goes on to question all the mistakes she has made. however she admits that "i would be lying if i said i was a different person now.  i am the same person.  i would do it all again."  it sad but its true.  i mean we did end up where we are now because of these mistakes and we would probably make them all over again.  i'd like to think i would do things differently but that is not how it ever is.

my favorite essays were "and the heart says" and "the lens".  "and the heart says" captured the difficulty and confusion of break-ups.  how one looks back on the period when it was good and realize that those feelings were not fake but only temporary as gould described.  it is also scary to think how someone we are so intimate with can suddenly be a stranger.  it also made my heart sad to know that that recording of joseph singing to her is lost forever, but at least she has the memory.  i enjoyed the ending to "the lens", the story of nan goldin's photo of cookie mueller and her husband at their wedding and sadly his funeral.  gould explained that "but [cookie] looks into the coffin with the same expression she'd worn at the wedding:  love and sadness, twined together so tightly they are indistinguishable.

gould's collection was just her life, but it felt more real then other similar works i have read, how to be a person or taipei, which attempt to do the same thing.  due to this, i would have to put a vote in the column for voice of a generation, but definitely need to see what else is out there.

i just want my pants back. david j. rosen. (88)

"i just want my pants back" has been on my to re-read list ever since MTV turned it into a series. granted the the series first aired in 2011, it took me a while to re-read it. i first read it when my friend saba lent me her copy cos she thought i would enjoy it. i then stole her copy because i really enjoyed it. the delay in the re-read was that i was hoping to find the copy i stole. i didn't so i checked it out.

and yes the MTV series was kind of a my so called hipster life. so before we go any further i want to clarify something. just like i told that 6th grader that judged me based on my frames and blazer i wore to sub: i am not a hipster. i just recently had a whole talk with my friend tiffany on my non-hipsterness. and though i will admit i do have hipster tendencies (my friend jerry and my theory on our partial hipster-ness will appear later), i may be hip but i'm not a hipster.

and let the records show that my friends and i were wearing fake moustaches back in 2007. i bought a pair of fake ones at party city as a joke cos my friend cody could not grow one and then we wore them out to beauty bar. also that same year we started carrying around a toy pony before all this unicorn and bronies shit got started. and yes i trek out to hipster mecca aka coachella every year but i've been doing that since 2003. when it was only one weekend and you could buy one day tickets and rich parents from la didn't use it as teenage daycare. and i know it's so hipster cliche to claim to have done something before it was cool but i really did!

and i'll admit, i shop at urban outfitters (but only their sales racks), drink pbr, (but i'm cheap and my alcohol palate is nothing close to sophisticated), listen to indie rock, and do some things ironically; it's not because i want to be part of the hipster subculture. it just how i am. and yes i get there is this large subculture that i am apart of but hipster imples effort and my hipness is effortless.

but back to the show and the book. i did not see the whole season but the episode that inspired me to re-read was seriously a page out of my life. i forgot all that happens in it but it ends up with the lead dude (do they have same name as the book?) ends up marching with a marching band! this actually happened to me one night in hipsterville, ca aka echo park. in 2008, tiffany, cody and i were out celebrating obama's win and while drinking next to a liquor store ran into a marching band member. i harassed him for his hat and took some pictures but this was only a taste of what was to come! cos when we got to short stop there was a full on band on the dance floor. sadly not performing or with instruments but still exciting. oddly i never found out who the band was or ever saw them again. it was magical and that episode reminded me of it. in that episode there was also a penis piñata but my guy friends (straight ones) one-uped that with their penis bong (they paper-mâchéd a penis, complete with balls, around a beer bong, they also made a big ass piñata like literally an ass after watching that "family guy" episode.)

so to start off, the lead character who lost his pants, started off as the man of my dreams. total book crush! jason was a english major from cornell (that abused cliffnotes) who used to deejay in college and loved country, folk and indie rock. he was from the mid-west, which i always find endearing. he wore thick frame, was sarcastic, funny, and referenced karen o. and jeff koons. but here's the kicker a pork eating jew! (he ordered a bacon cheeseburger.) i do dream of marrying a jew but for cultural not religious reasons and as jason said judaism for his family was "more woody allen, less abraham and esther". and let me clarify, i'm not prejudice, any religion would do, it's just that judaism has the best holidays and they celebrate all of them!

but then jason went on a downward spiral and lost his dreaminess. i was okay with his whatever job or what douglas coupland referred to as "mcjob". but when he lost his job and then proceed to do nothing, it was quite sad. and before you get all judgy on me because yes i did spend two years on unemployment and yes the lectures jason's friends gave him did remind me of the lectures my friends gave me! there was a difference. i like all the other welfare moms and anyone else getting government handouts found life more comfortable on unemployment than with a 9 to 5. even you with the worker bee gene would become depended on a life of leisure thanks to uncle sam versus slaving away for a check. plus jason spent all his time getting high and drunk. i was out getting cultured and stimulating the economy with my government issued checks. also unemployment is not bad it's just when you become a mess due to it, i mean jason wasn't showering. when i was funemployed a handful of my friends were too and we'd go to museums and have other random and free adventures around down. but back to jason, yes i was once a slob like him, i mean no one truly has life figured out but it's like do something other than get drunk and high all the time. to quote cher from "clueless": "it is one thing to spark up a doobie and get laced at parties, but it is quite another to be fried all day." and drop e in the proper settings, raves, music festivals, light installations exhibits, not just a friday night at the bar. what a waste! and again i am not contradicting myself. i may do drugs occassionally but when it's appropriate.

oh and another issue i had with jason or the book but lack of condom use. there was no mention of him using condoms in this book. i mean we are the safe sex generation, we have been told countless times to use protection. and yet this book lacked it. i am disgusted if it was because the character didn't use them. i'm even more disgusted if the author didn't include it because it would have ruined the flow of the story. sorry but i'd rather have the heat of the moment interrupted with condom talk or putting one on versus waking up with some nasty std.

also he nicknamed his penis. gross.

but i do have to give him props for taking care of his neighbor patty. that was sweet. that gave me faith that he would get his shit together that maybe in a couple of years he'll be the man he needs to be.

so the book is a look at jason's life and honestly depicts how it is to be a twentysomething, the going out, the hooking up, the lack of real employment, and the friends at different stages of life. and how at times it sucks but it can also be a lot of fun. and i have to admit i saw a lot of myself in him, even the crying at commercials when life gets alittle overwhelming. this book did speak a lot of truths not only for twentysomethings but also new yorkers (i never lived in new york but from what tv tells me).

for example, the take-out place knowing your order because you call so often. this happens to jason and his favorite place, hunan. this never happened to me bit it reminded me of the "sex and the city" episode when miranda feels like the chinese take out girl is judging her.

i was reminded of another show, "how i met your mother" (also set in new york), the episode when robin, ted, and barney go out a club while lily and marshall try to do more grown up things and have a wine tasting and play board games with their married friends. there is the exact same critique in "i just want my pants back", jason commented on how his engaged friends stacey and eric have grown up parties with wine sipping not swigging and pictionary and talk of investing and buying apartments which all turns to charlie brown grown up talk to him. it was so like the HIMYM bit that i checked to see if the author wrote for him. he didn't, it's just a part of growing up. and it's so true my college friends that coupled, have started doing their own thing together and excluded the single ones, which is really just me. though i will add the gays are so much better about including everyone. my gay friends that couple never go into nesting mode like the straights.

and last but not least, patty had a little talk with jason about age, which describes my current state to a t. patty is jason's older neighbor but forgets her age when she hangs out with jason, she feels younger going out and hanging out. one night, she reflected back on her life and thought of all the silly things she has done and realized that she still does do silly things. and granted i am only turning 30, i got what she said. she told him:  

i'm still silly about so many things. maybe it's because i never settled down or had kids, but i think my brain is in arrested development or something like that.

i worry about the same thing, i do have 

peter pan syndrome, i have never been forced to grow up. and it's not bad, i have fun in life but i need something to start me on adulthood. and it needs to happen soon cos i'm 6 months away from 30! but i am so caught up in the now, i can't plan for the future.

i know such deep thoughts for a "hipster" book.

ironically, as much as the series was called a hipster series and therefore the book was probably labelled hipster. the characters did not identify themselves as hipsters. jason and tina are out at some dive bar and jason observed,

"it was full of twentysomething downtowners in assorted stylish smocks. it was a little like looking into a mirror, but someone we believed we were far more genuine than the others. you couldn't trust the others. they looked like us and they talked us, but at night, they went home and slept in pods. we slept in beds."

this the same theory my friend jerry and i have. we realized that we look like hipsters when we go out. plus we are asian so we have that asian hipster look. but though we look like them we are not a part of them. we are more genuine! as jerry phrases it, "we are partners in our hip-non-hipster-ness". i know it all seems like a farce like the ones we are judging us back. but we really are hip and it's genuine and we are not hipsters! i swear. (going to end here before i start sounding crazy.)