The sun was shining on the sea, Shining with all his might: He did his very best to make The billows smooth and bright— And this was odd, because it was The middle of the night.
The moon was shining sulkily, Because she thought the sun Had got no business to be there After the day was done— "It's very rude of him," she said, "To come and spoil the fun!"
The sea was wet as wet could be, The sands were dry as dry. You could not see a cloud, because No cloud was in the sky: No birds were flying overhead— There were no birds to fly.
The Walrus and the Carpenter Were walking close at hand; They wept like anything to see Such quantities of sand: "If this were only cleared away," They said, "it would be grand!"
"If seven maids with seven mops Swept it for half a year. Do you suppose," the Walrus said, "That they could get it clear?" "I doubt it," said the Carpenter, And shed a bitter tear.
"O Oysters, come and walk with us!" The Walrus did beseech. "A pleasant walk, a pleasant talk, Along the briny beach: We cannot do with more than four, To give a hand to each."
The eldest Oyster looked at him, But never a word he said: The eldest Oyster winked his eye, And shook his heavy head— Meaning to say he did not choose To leave the oyster-bed.
But four young Oysters hurried up, All eager for the treat: Their coats were brushed, their faces washed, Their shoes were clean and neat— And this was odd, because, you know, They hadn't any feet.
Four other Oysters followed them, And yet another four; And thick and fast they came at last, And more, and more, and more— All hopping through the frothy waves, And scrambling to the shore.
The Walrus and the Carpenter Walked on a mile or so, And then they rested on a rock Conveniently low: And all the little Oysters stood And waited in a row.
"The time has come," the Walrus said, "To talk of many things: Of shoes—and ships—and sealing-wax— Of cabbages—and kings— And why the sea is boiling hot— And whether pigs have wings."
"But wait a bit," the Oysters cried, "Before we have our chat; For some of us are out of breath, And all of us are fat!" "No hurry!" said the Carpenter. They thanked him much for that.
"A loaf of bread," the Walrus said, "Is what we chiefly need: Pepper and vinegar besides Are very good indeed— Now if you're ready, Oysters dear, We can begin to feed."
"But not on us!" the Oysters cried, Turning a little blue. "After such kindness, that would be A dismal thing to do!" "The night is fine," the Walrus said. "Do you admire the view?
"It was so kind of you to come! And you are very nice!" The Carpenter said nothing but "Cut us another slice: I wish you were not quite so deaf— I've had to ask you twice!"
"It seems a shame," the Walrus said, "To play them such a trick, After we've brought them out so far, And made them trot so quick!" The Carpenter said nothing but "The butter's spread too thick!"
"I weep for you," the Walrus said: "I deeply sympathize." With sobs and tears he sorted out Those of the largest size, Holding his pocket-handkerchief Before his streaming eyes.
"O Oysters," said the Carpenter, "You've had a pleasant run! Shall we be trotting home again?' But answer came there none— And this was scarcely odd, because They'd eaten every one.
Friday, April 8, 2022
From Olivia to Bruno to H.E.R., Filipino American artists enjoy a breakout year at Grammys
(Jay L. Clendenin/LAT; Chris Pizzello/AP; Emma McIntyre and Johnny Louis/Getty Images)
Growing up as a biracial Black and Filipina musician, singer-songwriter H.E.R. could count on a few things her two cultures shared.
“Filipino Americans love R&B like Mariah Carey and Whitney Houston. We love hip-hop and we love a really powerful ballad. There’s always music happening,” the 24-year-old born Gabriella Wilson said, two days before presenting at the Academy Awards and a week before she’s up for album of the year at the 64th Grammys. “I should be careful here, but Filipinos are kind of like the Black people of Asia. I love all our commonalities. When my mom married a Black man, our cultures meshed.”
Amid the pressure on the Grammys to better represent the diversity of who makes and listens to pop music today, this year’s nominations showed one notable flowering of that work: it’s the best year for Filipino Americans in Grammy history.
Across top categories, acts with Philippine heritage including Olivia Rodrigo, Saweetie and H.E.R. are up for best new artist and album, song and record of the year prizes. Longtime Grammy favorite Bruno Mars, a multiracial Filipino American Hawaii native, is in contention for four awards with his funk and soul band Silk Sonic, including song and record for “Leave the Door Open.” The Americana singer Elle King, daughter of biracial Filipino American comedian Rob Schneider, is up for country group/duo performance for her duet with Miranda Lambert, “Drunk (and I Don’t Wanna Go Home).” Between them, they have 22 Grammy nominations this year.
“It’s been so amazing to hear, especially from young girls, that they see someone like them out there,” said Olivia Rodrigo.
(Jay L. Clendenin/Los Angeles Times)
All the above acts have multifaceted ethnic backgrounds and arrived at their success through very different genres. (Beyond this year’s Grammys, the Black and Filipino American singer and “Euphoria” star Dominic Fike also enjoyed a breakthrough year.) For the more than 4 million Filipino Americans in the U.S., and especially the 1.6 million in California (where Rodrigo, H.E.R. and Saweetie are from), it’s a moment in the limelight for a tradition of Asian American music culture that’s often blended into other sounds here.
“Within the last couple of years, there’s been a groundswell of Filipino American artists who’ve talked about or embraced their Filipino background more than predecessors like Enrique Iglesias or Nicole Scherzinger,” said James Zarsadiaz, director of the Yuchengco Philippine Studies program at the University of San Francisco. “Artists have been able to talk more freely about how their Filipino backgrounds shape their perspectives or artistry, because Filipinos have truly permeated ‘mainstream’ American culture and consciousness.”
The history of the Philippines and the U.S. has been long and fraught since the colonial era. Control of the Southeast Asian archipelago, formerly a Spanish colony, was contested after the Spanish-American War, and after first declaring independence, the Philippine-American War brought the country under U.S. colonial governance in 1902. At the end of World War II, the Philippines became independent in 1946, though the U.S.’ long military presence there created a complex, charged cultural exchange.
Silk Sonic’s Bruno Mars and Anderson .Paak.
(John Esparza)
“By that colonial connection, there’s always been a tie between the U.S. and the Philippines that includes music,” Zarsadiaz said. “There’s a power in the diaspora in the notion of ‘kababayan,’ a notion of community and support for fellow Filipinos — they’re one of us, their success is our success.”
Filipino American musicians have, over generations, made an impact on U.S. charts. The explosive R&B singer-dancer Sugar Pie DeSanto toured with James Brown and found national success in the the 1950s and ’60s, and a “Pinoy Rock” movement that riffed on Elvis Presley, American surf and British Invasion sounds became popular in the Philippines at the same time. Broadway performer Lea Salonga was the singing voice for Disney’s Jasmine and Mulan; the Black Eyed Peas’ Apl.De.Ap (born Allan Pineda Lindo) performed on some of the biggest hits of the 2000s, and the actor Darren Criss (who like H.E.R., grew up in the Bay Area) was a heartthrob on “Glee.”
Mars, born Peter Gene Hernandez in Hawaii to a Puerto Rican father and Filipina mother, gave $100,000 to a hurricane relief fund during a 2013 tour stop in Manila, and said onstage, “I’m so proud and so happy to be Filipino.”
“Filipino Americans listen to everything, but culturally are major consumers of hip-hop and R&B. Filipino Americans are often great breakdancers or in dance troupes,” Zarsadiaz said. “It’s not coincidental that a lot of them have origins on West Coast in that multicultural landscape. Hip-hop and R&B are generally seen as pop music among people of color, and for Filipino Americans, it’s part of the soundtrack of their daily lives.”
Wow! I haven't read Anthony Horowitz before "The Magpie Murders", but now, I'm going to find and read his prior material. As a child, I was fond (still am) of Agatha Christie's mysteries, in particular, her Belgian detective Hercule Poirot. In movies such as "Murder on the Orient Express", "Death on the Nile" and "Death Under the Sun", Poirot came alive through the fine acting of Peter Ustinov and Albert Finney. Poirot - a caricature via the actors if you may - came alive again in the embodiment of one Atticus Pund, the detective investigator of "The Magpie Murders". Here's summary from GoodReads.com:
From the New York Times bestselling author
of Moriarty and Trigger Mortis, this fiendishly brilliant, riveting
thriller weaves a classic whodunit worthy of Agatha Christie into a chilling,
ingeniously original modern-day mystery. When editor Susan Ryeland is
given the manuscript of Alan Conway’s latest novel, she has no reason to think
it will be much different from any of his others. After working with the
bestselling crime writer for years, she’s intimately familiar with his
detective, Atticus Pünd, who solves mysteries disturbing sleepy English
villages. An homage to queens of classic British crime such as Agatha Christie
and Dorothy Sayers, Alan’s traditional formula has proved hugely successful. So
successful that Susan must continue to put up with his troubling behavior if
she wants to keep her job. Conway’s latest tale has Atticus Pünd investigating
a murder at Pye Hall, a local manor house. Yes, there are dead bodies and a
host of intriguing suspects, but the more Susan reads, the more she’s convinced
that there is another story hidden in the pages of the manuscript: one of
real-life jealousy, greed, ruthless ambition, and murder. Masterful,
clever, and relentlessly suspenseful, Magpie Murdersis a deviously dark
take on vintage English crime fiction in which the reader becomes the
detective.
...and I couldn't agree more!!!
But there is a twist!
In this clever, superbly-written whodunnit, there is a book
buried within a book - a format I have never read - nor thoroughly enjoyed -
until "Magpie". In other words, Horowitz has create a character (Alan
Conway) who himself has created a character (Atticus Pund). But when fiction
and reality-fiction collide, that's where the ingeniousness of Horowitz is on
display.
The Saxon-upon-Avon murder story, the one I am more fond of, has multiple
suspects: a guilt-ridden doctor; an aristocrat landowner and his philandering
wife; a busybody housekeeper, her brave son and his tender and protective
fiance; a vicar and his wife with, quite literally, nothing to hide; an ex-con
and his wife who are proprietors of an antique shop; and a groundskeeper with a
past as mysterious as that of Saxon-upon-Avon itself. All combine in a
wonderfully crafted mystery as an homage to the English mystery writers of not
that long ago.
Horowitz writes with much detail - one almost is bound by such written
"law" when it comes to mysteries; but he also writes with much
respect for the intuitive nature of the reader, encouraging and stimulating the
reader to solve the mystery as well as Atticus does. Within the detail,
Horowitz shows an even greater command of subject matter, character development
(backstories) and, of course, the climactic resolution. But, his cleverness is
shown in the SUB-story of the book, the death of fictitious-real-fictitious
Alan Conway, the "writer" of the Atticus Pund novels. Here, the
plots, characters and even resolutions cleverly and intelligently align. The
writing is smart, succinct and all blends well to create a
mystery-within-a-mystery.
Looking forward to reading more Anthony Horowitz writing.
Perhaps no one celebrity has come as close to the many marriages of Elizabeth Taylor Hilton Wilding Todd Fisher Burton Burton Warner Fortensky as Evelyn Hugo, the title character of the novel by Taylor Jenkins Reid. But while Taylor is/was reality, Hugo is purely fictitious. And that gives Reid the latitude to tell Hugo's story, her whole, complete story, with as much gusto, feeling, heart and compassion as possible.
Here's a synopsis from Bookreporter.com:
A legendary film actress reflects on her relentless rise to
the top and the risks she took, the loves she lost, and the long-held secrets
the public could never imagine. Aging and reclusive Hollywood movie icon Evelyn
Hugo is finally ready to tell the truth about her glamorous and scandalous
life. But when she chooses unknown magazine reporter Monique Grant for the job,
no one is more astounded than Monique herself. Why her? Why now? Monique is not exactly on top of the world. Her husband has
left her, and her professional life is going nowhere.
Regardless of why Evelyn
has selected her to write her biography, Monique is determined to use this
opportunity to jumpstart her career. Summoned to Evelyn’s luxurious
apartment, Monique listens in fascination as the actress tells her story. From
making her way to Los Angeles in the 1950s to her decision to leave show
business in the ‘80s, and, of course, the seven husbands along the way, Evelyn
unspools a tale of ruthless ambition, unexpected friendship and a great
forbidden love. Monique begins to feel a very real connection to the legendary
star, but as Evelyn’s story near its conclusion, it becomes clear that her life
intersects with Monique’s own in tragic and irreversible ways.
This was such an entrancing read. Reid writes Evelyn with
enough spitfire to light a thousand tiki torches and her tale is truly one that
only Hollywood could write. Unabashed, unashamed, and truly regretful, Evelyn
recounts her life on a vibrantly painted canvas, mixed with the colors of
betrayal, abuse, un-requitted love, egoism, selfishness, selflessness,
forgiveness and true passion. Evelyn's story unfolds in stark reality and at
the end, I felt a pathos for her life; moreso for her compassion. Reid writes
well; well enough to have held me spellbound while I HAD to read until the
ultimate climax of Evelyn's life and times; and without giving away the ending,
it truly is quite shocking.
The novel speaks to so many issues - LGBTQ, agism, racism, sisterhood, physical abuse...all of these themes are acutely put into Reid's cocktail blender and are part of the book's dialogue.
PopsugarU.S.
interviewed Reid:
PS: What
is the one thing that you hope readers come away with after reading The Seven
Husbands of Evelyn Hugo?
TJR: I
want them to feel like if, at some point, they want to pull an Evelyn Hugo that
they're ready and capable of doing it. As complicated as Evelyn Hugo is, I
think Evelyn Hugo can teach us a lot about how to get what we want out of this
world. It's time for women to get ours. We've got to go up there and take it.
It's going to be uncomfortable, but I think that the rewards will be there for
us. We need to find the confidence in ourselves to say, "Pay me what I'm
worth. Promote me when I deserve it. Don't take advantage of me. Don't
underestimate me."
The problem with Filipinos is we get a boner for anything Pinoy.
Filipino contestant in X talent show abroad? Yes! Hollywood celebrity with .000018% Filipino ethnicity? Double yes! We’ll sniff out the tiniest drop of Filipino blood, but only, only if you get recognized internationally. “Filipinos mixed with another race always gives a good result!” As if these are the only things we excel in, as if breeding is all we’re ever good for because we have too much pride, and not as much to be proud about.
The problem with Filipinos is we’re overprotective. Not of our culture, of our identity, of our resources – but of our pride. We have so much pride, too much pride, we even made a tagline out of it #PinoyPride. We’ve become overly sensitive, easily offended at the slightest of jokes, the slightest of criticisms that we end up refusing not to better ourselves because we’d rather be right and win an argument, than admit to be wrong and improve.
The problem with Filipinos is we cannot say sorry. We’d rather say, “You’re wrong, it’s your fault, you’re stupid. BANNED!” Alec Baldwin is banned. Claire Danes is banned. The Beatles were banned. The people writing the Filipino-doctor joke on Desperate Housewives are probably banned. As if white people cared enough to stress about you after they raped your Lolas and your Lola’s Lola. The problem with Filipinos is we can’t take a joke. Joke harmlessly about the country and “Fuck you racist American pigs! Filipinos are hardworking! Do not come to our beautiful shores!” Joke about Filipino stereotypes and we will literally want to kill you. The problem with Filipinos is we make everything a joke. A politician jokes about raping a woman, and “It’s okay, fucking calm down where’s your sense of humor?”
A University student calls the new actress for Hermione“Ugly nigger, was she stuck in the toaster?” and you’re supposed to take it lightly. Which is it? Which is it?
The problem with Filipinos is you can’t make a joke about us, but we can about you. The problem with Filipinos is Manny Pacquiao sitting in the senate.
Is condemning “CORRUPTION!” with one hand and accepting vote buying with the other.
Is tweeting about the beauty of our lands with one hand and littering with the other. Is us talking more about Taylor Swift than about being blacklisted from Foreign Aid by France due to our own negligence.
The problem with Filipinos is we are quick to hate and quicker to forget. Forget the dictator and his family for violating our rights. Forget the white men and their destructive colonization because guapo, guapo, guapo! Marry a white man because he will save you from poverty; heroically take you from this wasteland of a country.
The problem with Filipinos is we kiss white people’s feet. We lick it with such gusto we allow every fair-skinned person to walk over our farm-broken backs. Because everything American is “better.” Because everything white is “beautiful.”Because putang ina ang corny mag-tagalog, kaluod mag bisaya!Do you not understand your fear? Have you not analyzed the instinctive shyness and submission that overcomes your brown body whenever you’re in the presence of someone white? Have you not dissected the veneration you so readily give Westerners, and so readily deny your Lumad brothers, Muslim sisters? The problem with Filipinos is we value perfect English grammar over hungry Filipino lives.
The problem with Filipinos is we go to Church, but do not listen. We pray, but do not practice. We leave all responsibility with God and take none for ourselves.
The problem with Filipinos is we value word-sparring on Facebook more than the fight for freedom our ancestors bled for. Because conspiracy theories are more interesting than facts. Because our soap-operas have taught us drama is easy.
The problem with Filipinos is it took a movie for us to see the folly of our history. The problem was nobody cared enough to look in the first place.
The problem with Filipinos is we’re too nice. The problem with Filipinos is we’re not nice enough.
The problem with Filipinos is we don’t know who we are.
The problem with Filipinos is you. Is me. Is the fact we both know no matter what I say or what you say, it’s all pointless because
pride pride pride.
The problem with Filipinos is you’ll probably be more pissed at this article, than you ever were about racial injustice, police brutality, sexism, poverty, littering, hopelessness.
The problem with Filipinos is the wrong things offend us. The problem with Filipinos is we rarely stand up for the right.
The problem with Filipinos is you. Is me. T The problem with Filipinos is ourselves.
The passion for books and writing, a grand theft of rare
manuscripts, a forgotten novelist turned spy and characters as vivid as
real-life people all combine in John Grisham’s new novel “Camino Island”. Set
on the shores of a summer resort off the Florida coast, Grisham’s plot weaves a
tight, page-turning story of intrigue and what-happens-next that I found
irresistible. His characters are well flushed out as is his introductions to
them amidst the storyline.
Four thieves, working in conjunction with a hacker,
plan and execute the theft of the century…five original hand-written
manuscripts of F. Scott Fitzgerald’s classic novels, The Great Gatsby being one
of them. Callousness leads to a few of them being caught while the remaining thieves,
through a series of connections, sell the priceless treasure to middle-men and
rare book collectors. Enter Bruce Cable, earnest, hard-working owner of Bay
Books on Camino Island whose passion for rare and collectible first editions is
as headstrong as his passion (and jealousy) of writers and their talents. Does
he or does he not have the stolen manuscripts? That’s Mercer Mann’s mission to
discover. A published novelist whose last work gained her accolades seven years
prior, Mercer is now an about-to-be-fired literature professor with a mountain
of student debt. That’s when an offer too-good-to-refuse comes her way and sets
her not only on a direct collision with Cable, but a confrontation with her
past….all on Camino Island.
Like other Grisham novels, “Camino Island” is a great read,
full of suspense, even humor. Grisham knows how to tell a story well, quite well
actually, and does so with a good command of character development which I appreciated.
I also found the writers’ encounters particularly humorous and Cable’s “notes”
about what and how to write quite amusing.
I found myself jealous of Cable – his life, his being able to afford the
luxury to do nothing but read all day, every day – and of the life that Grisham
paints on Camino Island….relaxful, worry-less, sun and sand. It’s a great book to start the summer reading
campaign.
An impressive debut from a first-time novelist, "One of the Boys" is an examination of the survival of the human spirit as told through the eyes of a young boy.
When a determined father removes his sons from their mother's clutches after a nasty divorce, the three jettison their lives, leaving memories of mental and physical abuse from Kansas as they seek refuge and a new life in New Mexico. For the youngest of the sons, this is a welcomed respite from a world he only knew existed as violent and brutal. But as the brothers slowly see their father succumb to the ravages of drug addiction, it becomes frightening clear that they haven't left everything behind. Imprisoned in an apartment made to secure and shelter them from the outside world, the brothers unite in triumph, tragedy and betrayal to find a way out of their own lives in hopes of finding peace and refuge. Alas, this too becomes fallacy.
Written with savage, intense and often times heartbreaking terseness, Daniel Magariel weaves a captivating tale of despair and depression. He enriches these characters with both hope and failure, pride and jealousy, family and isolation, anger and forgiveness, sometimes all in the same sentence. What emerges is a powerful behind-the-scenes look at abuse - how it is doled out, how it is handled (or mishandled) and how, despite everything wretched a child can experience, there can ever be any kindling of hope left deep within the human spirit.
I'm hoping Magariel continues to explore the savageness of the human condition, exposing more of that which makes us both saint and sinner.
So, I found this article sometime last year...a short read about the re-defining who you are as a person in light of what you're doing every day. For these gentlemen, life was becoming more about the job rather than the journey. So they changed their lives...and they changed their journeys. Sometimes, life makes you pause, look, and decide....
Credit
By Sridhar Pappu - June 2, 2016 Ron Silver, the owner of the Bubby’s restaurants in Manhattan, was fighting with his business partner. His marriage was collapsing. So he decided to disappear. He told people he was going to California, to visit his uncles. But on the morning of his departure, he decided on Mexico.
In the cab he had a new idea: Havana.
In Cuba, he began to feel like himself again. He spent time with what he described as the internal posse he carries around in his head — Robert Frost, Plato, T. S. Eliot, Shakespeare — and he fell in with people who had nothing to do with his life back in New York.
“You’re like a stranger in the world at that point,” said Mr. Silver, who made his sudden trip to Cuba in 1996, when he was 34. “Nobody has any expectations. Nobody knows your history. Nobody knows what they want you to do.”
The theme of self-transformation through travel has been a staple of literature since before Homer. You can find it in Mark Twain’s “Roughing It,” Jack Kerouac’s “On the Road,” John Steinbeck’s “Travels With Charley” and on and on, all the way up through Cheryl Strayed’s “Wild.” For those who depart from the hard-worn path for points unknown, such a journey can be more than just a vacation.
“On the second day I was there,” Mr. Silver said, “I was outside of central Havana, sitting at this makeshift cafe sitting with eight or nine other kids, and we were all drinking beer, and there was live music playing, and the sun was out, and it was hot. That was a moment of, ‘All right, everything is just chilled out.’”
Mr. Silver, 53, hadn’t contacted anyone he knew for roughly three weeks when he called his wife to say he would be home soon. (They ended up divorced.)
Although Mr. Silver came to see that Havana was not the answer to his troubles, he believed he had gone through a genuine change during his time away. A confidence he had lost somewhere along the way returned to him in force.I was able to take a moment and say, ‘I’m being too affected by other people’s weaknesses,’” he said. “Going to Havana helped me to rethink and get clear about what kind of man I am and to come out swinging, hit it, when I came back home.
“When you’re in a day-to-day situation and dealing with people’s problems, it’s like having a bunch of rocks in your shoe. Whereas, if you’re on your own, you can take out the rocks. Or you don’t have to wear shoes at all.” Sartori in Des Moines
After feeling isolated in Los Angeles, Ross Langley found himself building a treehouse just outside Des Moines.
“This was the happiest I’d been since I was a kid,” Mr. Langley said. “I would sit in Des Moines at night, looking over cornfields, sipping whiskey and listening to sounds I’d never heard before — like deer, which make very unpleasant sounds, but mostly loons in the lake. You’d hear these loons at night and you’re watching fireflies dance in the air, and you realize how unhappy life has been.”
Mr. Langley was born and raised in Sydney, Australia. Having trained as a classical actor, he went to Los Angeles with big ideas, only to discover he was unprepared for a life of near-constant auditions, few callbacks and superficial social interactions.
In May 2014, an old friend called him with the idea of a road trip. Mr. Langley was hesitant. He worried that if he were to leave, if only for a day, he might miss out on something big. To support himself, he was working in construction. One lunch break, he told a co-worker about what he was going through, and the man said, “Is that how you’re going to live your life?”
That was that. Mr. Langley joined his friend for a two-week trip through the American West. Upon his return, he received a call from a woman who asked him if he would be her date at a wedding in St. Louis. He said yes, using the new trip as a springboard for another journey.
He stayed away from Los Angeles for close to two months, during which he built the treehouse, on property that belongs to his wedding date’s father (she accompanied him for part of the trip). He also drove through the Badlands and the Black Hills, through Native American reservations and to Yellowstone and Glacier National Parks. He spent time on an island off the coast of Washington that had once been a kind of family homestead, where he saw his grandparents’ initials carved into a sea wall.
He had dinner at campsites and morning coffee looking out onto lakes with people he had just met. No one cared about what roles he had gone out for.
“I think the whole experience, for me, was just about knowing who I was,” said Mr. Langley, 26, who now works as a web designer in New York. “There’s this feeling of being in a place like Glacier National Park and being dwarfed by nature that’s equally terrifying and freeing. I realized the experience I was having in Los Angeles, even in an ideal world where I was successful as an actor, would never truly satisfy me.” Going It Alone
After college, Jonathan Kesselman returned to his hometown, Los Angeles, in 1999 with the notion that he would work for a while before attending the graduate film program at the University of Southern California. But he proved good enough at his job, working with medical databases, to earn six figures. When he was rejected by U.S.C., he felt the golden handcuffs tightening.
He bought a one-way ticket to Australia. For three months, he traveled extensively with no clear idea when he might return. He drank, smoked marijuana, took Ecstasy. He danced on tables. He sky-dived. He slept around. “I’ll tell you what I discovered when you travel alone,” said Mr. Kesselman, now 41. “You’re only alone when you want to be alone. You make friends so easily, and when you get tired of people, you hop on a train for somewhere else.”
After his return, he was accepted by the U.S.C. program and went on to direct a cult comedy, “The Hebrew Hammer,” and more recently, “Jimmy Vestvood: Amerikan Hero.”
“The person I was when I was in the states was not the person I was when I traveled abroad,” Mr. Kesselman said. “I had all the baggage from my formative years. I was tightly wound and intense. I loved traveling by myself because it made me feel like a man. I thought if I could do that, I could do anything in the world.” Goodbye, Finance
Jeff Wardell, 51, spent nearly two decades as a financial adviser. By 2008, he was working at Lehman Brothers, managing the fortunes of well-heeled clients. Two days after the firm filed for bankruptcy protection, he left for another investment bank. There, he did his best to rescue people’s assets from the financial crash. Some days he felt he might have a heart attack.
He stayed in the business just long enough to tie up the loose ends. He had to get away from San Francisco, away from America, away from the news. And he had to be on a motorcycle. He found one, a BMW R1150GS, in Milan. He had no set path, just a return date three months from the day he started. Some days he would ride 50 miles. Others, 300. He gunned his way north, to Scandinavia.
“My day was non-tech-driven,” Mr. Wardell said. “My concern was, ‘Is the motorcycle running correctly?’ You don’t want to be in the middle of nowhere and have something go wrong. You’re whittling around these corners, and that’s where the attention and focus is. You can’t concentrate on anything else, because you’re trying to stay alive.”
He made a point of visiting repurposed buildings, like old grain mills and factories, that had found new lives. He had been interested in design his entire life, and had even considered architecture school at one point. By the trip’s end, he knew a life in finance was not for him.
Mr. Wardell now runs an art consultancy and design firm with his girlfriend, Claudia Sagan. One of his projects is the search for what he describes as an “adaptive reuse structure,” in Portland, Ore., inside of which he can carve out a hotel. Mr. Wardell hopes the business will be ready to open in 2018.
Aside from helping him to realize that he was on the wrong career path, the three-month trip did something else for Mr. Wardell. It “reaffirmed my belief in the human spirit,” he said. “I bought this massive chain lock with an alarm, thinking, ‘I’m going to have to use this or my bike is going to disappear.’ Then I started heading into these towns and putting this lock on, and people were just laughing at me, asking: ‘Why are you doing that? Your bike is not going to get stolen here.’”
