The J.R.S #3 - Getting a Tattoo, Muji .5 Pens, & Headbanging to Weezer in 2005
It's the last day of November - only one more month for terrible things to happen in 2017, then we can put this year behind us. Let's all take a moment to celebrate something great that came out of 2017 - me reviewing life things. So sip some coffee, put on some smooth jazz piano and let your eyeballs enjoy words.
Getting a Tattoo
"Because drawing the same thing on yourself every day is too much work"
Besides the general things that parents don't want you to do (lie, steal, murder, treason, track mud into the house) my father really only had two rules for me in life. These were rules that were not ever to be broken, and I faced the threat of disownment if I ever dared tread on this hallowed ground. The first was to never ride a motorcycle, and the second was to never get a tattoo.
I understood the reasoning for both - when he was in high school my father had long hair and a motorcycle. As young men on motorcycles often do, he ended getting in a serious accident (not his fault) and was hospitalized. While in recovery, one of his close motorcycle buddies died. Seems like a clear and simple reason to not want your progeny to ride on a two-wheeled rocket.
The tattoo thing I think ties into both of my parent's religious upbringing - my mother being raised Irish Catholic, and my father being raised Jewish. Now I have very strong feelings on religion, and they're in the "none of this shit makes sense, also math" camp, so my Bible / Torah skills are rusty.
To my understanding, your body is a temple, made in gods image, therefore you shouldn't get a tattoo. This is how I remember it, but as you can imagine, I have questions. If tattoos aren't allowed, where is the line drawn (apparently not on your body)? My Father was a dentist - and he provided for us by fixing teeth for people. If teeth are in the temple, shouldn't you leave them in there as is?
The slope gets steeper as my mind goes buckwild - are we not supposed to cut our toenails? If god wanted our toenails to stop growing, wouldn't she have planned for it? Also on the list where I have questions - surgery (cosmetic and otherwise), haircuts, clothes, and RFID chips in dogs to name a few.
Back to my dad's rules - No motorcycles and no tattoos.
I broke the first one in 2011 when I was teaching English abroad in Thailand. I took a motorcycle trip with my roommates up through the mountains in Chiang Mai, weaving through jungle roads on a Scooter the color of Spearmint gum, so obviously I named my metal steed "Wrigley". I continued my two-wheeled disobedience by taking a real motorcycle out on the road with a friend to the border of Thailand and Burma.
Calling my father on Skype after breaking the unbreakable rule #1 was scary, but I'm honest to a fault (you might have picked up on that in my writing), so after making small talk I nervously exclaimed,” Dad! I broke your cardinal rule"
Without missing a beat he responded, “How far along is she?"
I was dismayed by his response. When I explained my motorcycle rebellion, he simply brushed it off by saying that it didn't count in South East Asia, due to the motorcycle lifestyle.
When I broke the second rule and got a tattoo of my blood type next to my vein in 2016, I was even more nervous about revealing the news to my parents. My girlfriend and I were driving down to San Diego for a Serxner family reunion, and I was terrified for the entire stretch of the 405.
Upon arrival, I pulled my parents outside and told them I had gotten a tattoo. I showed it to them, and my mother said "We don't care. You're 30 years old. By the way, I bought a Yarn store".
The moral of the story is, while your parents may imprint rules into your childhood self, when you actually break those rules, your parents will always one-up you with their response.
Getting a Tattoo - 3 out of 5 Stars
MUJI .5 Pens
"The pen you'll judge all other pens against"
If you plunk 'Muji' into the Google search bar, the first thing you'll see pop up is 'pens'. That's because Muji pens are a gift to hands everywhere, and the bane of clean, blank sheets of 8 1/2 by 11 lined paper.
I have comically bad handwriting. It's embarrassing, and I wish it were better. I could blame my parents, both being doctors, and talk about the trope of doctors having bad handwriting, but I don't know if that's fair to my genes. I think I just have shitty handwriting, and there's no excuse for it.
My near illegible chicken scratch should have deterred me from going into my career as a 'writer'. However, I learned to type at a young age, and made the poor prophecy that no one would be writing by the next five years - everything would be typed, so I should march ahead with a career in professional storytelling.
Unsurprisingly, I was wrong. The use of typing and texting has shot up, yet people still love to write with pen to paper, including me. I carry a notebook with me wherever I go, and I have stacks of filled notebooks crammed into my bookshelves. I don't know why I keep them around. If I ever get successful enough to have some stranger want to read my notebooks, they'll be sadly disappointed, due to my aforementioned illegible handwriting.
But, since I insist on taking notes in a chaotic fashion (most of my notes are snippets of words, followed by arrows pointing to other words that only make sense to me), as a 'writer' I need to have opinions on pens.
I have dumb and clumsy hands that are always in a state of disrepair due to eczema. I don't like large pens, and while I own a fountain pen, I don't have the grace or agility to lift the nib quickly enough to raise and lower the pen to create actual words. At a fancy Japanese paper store, I bought two pens for $8, but their tips were too large (and flimsy), and I felt like I was painting, instead of writing. And dammit, I'm here to paint pictures with words, not paint word pictures.
Then I was introduced to Muji .5 pens. A former business partner always talked about Muji pens and notebooks. I never really listened to him or understood that 'Muji' was an actual word in the sentence.
Muji is roughly translated into 'generic' in Japanese - so Muji is a store full of generic items that are of high quality with no strong brand behind them. Muji is a place of wonder, and I passionately recommend you venture in if you ever come across one of their storefronts.
Back to your Google search bar - Muji has an entire corner section of their store focused on note-taking technology. They have markers, mechanical pencils, and a vast selection of pens in various weights and colors. After some in-depth experimentation, I've settled on being a black-ink .5 man. The .7 is a bit too thin, and I want my lines to have a titch of authority when I inscribe my chicken scratch.
My only qualm is that they don't have a gel pad for your fingers to rest in, so it's just plastic separating you from the ink. Not a bad thing - and maybe our hands have been pampered too long.
Muji .5 Pens - 4 out of 5 Stars
Headbanging to Weezer in 2005
"Pinkerton > Blue > Green > The Rest of the Albums"
As I screamed the last line of the chorus to El Scorcho in my freshman dorm and brought my forehead down, I cracked it on my roommate’s foldable metal chair that he had brought from his high school football rallies. I snapped back up and I locked eyes with myself in the mirror, and then my vision blurred as blood started gushing over my face from the gash.
Oh Weezer - nerdcore to the max, a band that made you feel good about loving Dungeons and Dragons and being uncomfortable around girls, but not in the way that Big Bang Theory tries to pander to.
There's no hackey Star Trek language or Green Lantern shirts. Weezer was a band that spoke to young men like me - a young man who didn't know how to be cool, someone who got made fun of a lot, and couldn't comprehend how reading wasn't the sexiest thing one could do to attract the opposite gender.
I feel like lately I've been reading books that try to channel this time, except they turn it up to eleven. Ernest Kline's Armada is criminal of this, and I suspect a few other modern authors are as well. Hell, I bet I am. They say write what you know, and for me, being uncomfortable was a lot of what I knew.
Weezer tapped into that confusion, angst, and need to just be weird, but also not be too cool for melodies in a perfect crescendo. I was introduced to Pinkerton by my sister, who actually set me on the path to good and decent music choices when I was young and impressionable. I think I received the Blue album for Christmas, and I spent hours laying on the big Persian rug in our family's living room blaring Say It Ain't So.
Everyone who is between the age of 25 and 35 right now has a favorite Weezer song. God knows they were able to stay relevant for longer than they probably should have. Having a lead singer named Rivers Cuomo couldn't hurt.
Say it Ain't So got me through Junior High, and The Sweater Song is mentally synonymous with High School. But it's El Scorcho from Pinkerton that marked me permanently. I have a small Harry Potter-like scar above my right eyebrow that was a result of my forehead being glued together.
Looking back, I think I like the scar more then I like Weezer. Kudos to the band for making a strong impression one way or another.
Headbanging to Weezer in 2005 - 2 out of 5 Stars
Similar to the month of November, this edition of The J.R.S. is kaput! Don't forget to say Rabbit Rabbit first thing when you wake up tomorrow and feel free to drop me a line at JRSdiaries@gmail.com and let me know your thoughts, opinions, or the weirdest thing you bought on Cyber Monday. Like most wedding DJ's, I do take review requests.
Finally, if you like what you read, tell your friends - trying to get internet famous y'all.
Love you, miss you!
Joey