i went to sonoma and all i got was this overpriced pencil

a june monthly recap

1. My big event this month was driving up to Sonoma, CA for my cousin’s wedding. Chase and I decided to make a road trip out of it by stopping in Big Sur,¹ where we stayed for two nights in this little cabin. I’ve never been to Big Sur before but I’m now a fan. I mean, look how gorgeous:

“We have Amalfi Coast at home”

Sidenote: If you want to know whether or not I’ll like a place, use the Spirit test. The Spirit test is as follows: If you play the Spirit soundtrack while looking out the car window and it feels correct, then congrats! This place has passed the Spirit test. (Important disclaimer: The Spirit test does not include music from Spirited Untamed: The Movie, which has that random Jake Gyllenhaal number.)

I ended up taking the week off work because Big Sur doesn’t have Big Sur-vice (ba dum tss). This made me neurotic for about 2 hours of our first long hike, mostly because it was the same morning I had scheduled to publish my most recent Youtube video. (I don’t monitor every comment I get, but I try to be online during the first hour or so post-publishing to get a pulse on how people are reacting.) But after getting lost, walking through numerous swarms of gnats, feeling phantom poison oak itches because I was dumb and wore shorts, and undergoing the psychological torture of not knowing when I’d ever be able to stop walking uphill, I shifted into survival mode. Like actually, who fucking cares if people like my video when I might die??? (In retrospect, I was being overdramatic, but the mental breakdown made me more appreciative of life so a win is a win.)

Other than that, being phone-less was great. Highly recommend going unplugged in case no one on the entire planet has ever suggested that to you.

Man reading in Big Sur. Not a phone in sight. Just vibes.

2. Hear me out: Blackwing 602 pencils. In Sonoma, I walked into this little home goods store. I can’t remember the name of it but it was trés French inspired. There was a section of the store dedicated to Blackwing pencils. A box of these pencils cost $40. (Btw to give perspective… you can buy a box of Ticonderoga pencils for $3.) Blackwing 602 pencils are for suckers, and unfortunately when it comes to overpriced writing tools, I’m the biggest sucker. But look, these pencils have heritage! John Steinbeck’s writing routine consisted of sharpening 24 of them and then writing with them one after the other to the point of dullness. Vladimir Nabokov wrote with them when adapting Lolita for screenplay. I do think a silly voice in my head is telling me that if I get these pencils, I will be as good a writer as Steinbeck and Nabokov. I’m aware it’s silly, especially because I mostly write by way of keyboard. And also, because the original pencils went out of production and the ‘new’ version of them is produced by an entirely different company. But reviews say they are comparable, so I will continue to keep sucking at the teat of luxury stationary.

the original Blackwing pencil box

3. I’ve initiated myself into Hollywood culture because like everyone else in the industry, I’m listening to Matt Belloni’s podcast The Town. I like The Town. Each episode is only about 30 minutes. This is important to me, because I’m a visual learner and the only time I can listen to a podcast and actually understand what’s going on is when I’m doing a low-level sedentary task, like driving. I work from home though, which means I’m one of the lucky people in LA who doesn’t spend half their day in a car. And then of course, if I find myself in a car, there’s the Spirit soundtrack to listen to… All’s to say, there’s never enough time to listen to podcasts, but 30 minutes is reasonable.

I also like Belloni. I actually used to have a Puck subscription (the magazine he writes at), but cancelled eventually because it’s a more expensive sub ($17/month) and I didn’t have the bandwidth to take advantage of everything the platform offered. I’ve since realized that I cannot be in the know about every industry and am instead choosing to focus on the industries I’m personally apart of (selfish, I know!) + ofc having some kind of grasp on what’s happening politically at large as well. Call it a recession indicator, but I don’t need to have subscriptions to everything and frankly, I don’t read everything I have access to currently anyway. Plus, most of these legacy media outlets just regurgitate the same stories. A culling is due.

4. Speaking of Hollywood, I attended a talkback with Chris Quintos Cathcart last week. She is the executive producer of Dìdi and co-CEO of Unapologetic Films. I watched Dìdi on the plane last year and loved it. The movie is a coming-of-age story about a 13-year-old Taiwanese-American boy who lives in the Bay area. It navigates the early internet, the skate scene, first kisses, and friendship break-ups with such vulnerability and unpretentiousness… If you liked Ladybird and Eighth Grade, run don’t walk! Maybe because I’m still new (naive) to the industry, but I was surprised to hear from Chris that the movie was in actuality, difficult to finance and had very small margins despite the positive reviews.

Chris is Filipina and this talkback was for a mostly Southeast Asian audience, so naturally she addressed the realities and challenges of making a movie, especially when you’re Asian, especially when you’re Southeast Asian. She talked about how she initially aspired to be an actress, but there were no parts for her, so she went into writing and producing… only to be met with obstacles still. Even despite the success of Crazy Rich Asians and Everything, Everywhere All at Once, Hollywood just doesn’t believe Asians have box office conversion. I chatted with another writer at the talkback who confirmed the same thing. She said that THE Lucy Liu was interested in a script she was working on, but studios claimed Lucy wasn’t a big enough star to get the movie made ???

Incredibly bad news for all of us Asians, but especially Southeast Asians. Imagine wanting to write a story about Indonesia and the studios tell you that you need to have a cast list with a combined following of 10M on Instagram. Which Indonesian actors are you able to cast? Thank god Thailand has Lisa.

5. How are you guys dressing for the summer? I’ve been feeling really aimless about the way I dress these days. I know I’ve talked about sticking to a uniform, and I’m not walking back on that, but I think it’s fair to say that I’m craving a reason to dress up. There are just no events in Los Angeles (or none I get invited to?) and as a result, I’ve started to look at my entire closet with annoyance. The clothes are just taking up space at this point. But I also cannot imagine strapping myself into a corset or anything of the like in the summer heat just for the sake of it. Do I accept that t-shirts are now a core part of my personal style lexicon? Or do I revive my Goody Proctor cosplay against all odds? Let me know!

In all seriousness… I’m a vibes oriented dresser and it is too sunny in California for all black. Hats off to the goths though.

6. In positive news, I started a book club… If you’ve been keeping up (and I assume you have if you’re reading this)… I launched the High Brow Summer Reading Book Club right here on Substack (title is still a WIP… it feels clunky in the mouth right?). I’ve really enjoyed this process thus far and the group chat has been FIRE. I’m grateful for this small literary community filled with such impassioned voices.

I also recently collaborated with Pinterest to make a summer reading mood board for you all! Like for many people, Pinterest has been instrumental in my creative direction and I used it heavily to map out what my promotional video would look like. As you can see from the board, my goal for this book club project is to invoke the free spirit of youth… I started reading at a young age and my relationship with books went through its ups and downs throughout school. (Up when it was a book I liked, down when it was Catcher in the Rye.) But a place I always felt very safe in was my neighborhood book club. I know many of us fell in love with reading when we were kids and so, I wanted to marry the nostalgic and carefree affection we have for books with the analytical skills we gain as adults.

7. I’m also working on a book proposal. I won’t give away too much right now, but the genre is creative nonfiction. I’ve mentioned this a few times before, but writing a book is no joke! And this process has been rough… I have to be absolutely locked in to be creative. I cannot just write snippets here and there in-between meetings and other projects. As a remedy, I’m challenging myself to dedicate an entire day per week this summer (or until we finish) to spend solely on writing. I wish I could compartmentalize, but I’m just not built that way. I’ve also been consuming much less media this month as a result. I’ve barely read any articles. I’ve watched… 2 movies? I’ve read a few books, but nothing crazy. As someone who used to be primed on consumption, this is an uncomfortable change. But I’m realizing that it’s also part of the process. We consume → We create → We consume → We create and so on and so forth. If anything, it’s probably better to be stuck in the creating part of the cycle.

8. One of the movies I did watch was My Dinner with Andre (1981). I watched it on HBO Max, but Youtube apparently has the entire movie available for free? The film takes place at a restaurant table over the course of dinner and centers a conversation between two playwrights: Wallace Shawn and André Gregory. They are, in fact, real playwrights, but play fictionalized accounts of themselves (…this confused me for a second). The first half of the movie is a bit of a doozy; André monologues about his bourgeois attempts to find meaning in his life, namely by traveling a bunch and partaking in strange rituals. This kind of pretentious hipsterdom will make anyone who’s spent long stretches of time in the Lower East Side or Bushwick eyeroll. But the second half of the movie is where it soars. Many of their concerns are still so relevant. I love how rambly the conversations are and how absolutely unquotable the whole thing is; it’s really a testament to a time period that didn’t rely on soundbites and subtitled screencaps for marketing. The ending sequence to Gymnopedie No. 1 still itches at my heart. I’ll be revisiting soon xoxo.

1. I actually would not advise stopping in Big Sur on a road trip to Sonoma because Highway 1 is closed coming from Los Angeles. So, it takes almost the same amount of time to get to Big Sur as it does to get to Sonoma, especially if you take the more ‘scenic’ routes. We just really wanted to go to Big Sur and needed an excuse…