Finally! How I Met Your Mother is Back! (and other random updates)

Last night, CBS aired a new, post-strike episode of "How I Met Your Mother." And, despite a few clunky moments, it was really, really flippin' good. I can say that as person who has gone through crazy situations (particularly post-break up) that I can relate to Ted's desire to live it up and act like you don't have to be accountable for choices that you make. But eventually you do, hence the morality spin at the end.

Anyway, I'm getting back to living a semblance of a normal life again. These last few weeks have been crazy. I did some interviews for (of all things) a couple high school newspapers (!), started posting chapters from my unreleased book over on Stay Off the Crack, putting the finishing touches on my demo and getting my place ready for my lady friend who will be out here in a few weeks.

It's interesting that all I wanted was to calm down a little after session, but now I'm finding myself being thrown back into the fire.

[edit]
As you may have noticed, I decided to do some spring cleaning and update the links and change the layout of the site. I'm too busy (re: lazy) to actually design something completely new so I went with one of Blogger's better looking default layouts. I also thought about bringing Backed With back since I haven't touched it since last year.

hey man, how about an update?

I have some reviews for Redefine in the pipeline, otherwise, there's not much to write about.

I entertained the notion of killing this blog and Backed With and pretty much just sticking to Stay Off the Crack, but I'm going to let this one sit around for a little while.

Last Saturday, I wrote the first two chapters of book 2 and last night, as I was watching "Making the Band 4," I started outlining book three. With book three, I'm actually going to make a real effort to have it released which means I need the following:

a lawyer (this isn't going to be very hard)
an agent
a publisher
an editor (again, not as hard as the agent/publisher combo)

"A War Torn Letter" is coming out as a download on Chasing Coolness, actually. So get ready for 80 pages of madness and a lot of references to The Smiths, De La Soul and "Moesha."
I thought it's time to just get the jawn out there. In hindsight, it's far from perfect; it's just a story I needed to tell. If I ever scrape together the cash, I'll do a physical printing, as in my head, it was always a little book you could carry in your pocket, BUT for now, the internets will have to do.

That's it for now.... Maybe someday I'll throw a review or something up here. Not today.

you vidiots

I'm flexing ye olde' freelance political writing this week, but I had this idea to post a video everyday for the month of November. Take that, laziness! Anyway, I'll start posting on Thursday. Tomorrow, I'm gonna see Brand New and The-Rice (aka Thrice).

yo ryan, where you at?

OMG, I've been the worst blogger evar. I've been working on this piece for Asian Weekly for about a month and getting super stressed about it, so I put updating this shit on hold because I wanted to give the feature my full attention. In the article, I interview members of Congress and their staff and apparently, staffers have to get permission in order to answer questions. On top of that, these people are busy, so what was originally supposed to take two weeks to write, folded into a month.

But now that's done, my second draft is sitting in the editor's inbox, waiting to be scrutinized.

Some of you may have noticed that I'm blocking comments from appearing on the Coolness. The reason being that while I've always limited comments to blogger.com members, some of you decided that because I dissed your favorite band, it would be funny to write personal and racist attacks about me. There's a lot of shit that I'll put up with and racism ain't one of them. I don't mind sparking a friendly debate (like the back-and-forth between me and Anton from AP.net, because at the very least it was constructive criticism), but I really don't appreciate hateful shit. So because a couple of you kids decided it would be a good idea to pull some fucking ching chong shit on me, I killed the comments. I don't stand for that kind of talk and neither should most of America since it's 2007. Idiots.


Also, the new issue of Redefine is out in stores and in newsstands right now. Go buy one! And if you can't find it at your local retailer, tell them to carry it and order one from the site. Aside from some kick ass interviews with Tegan and Sara and Boys Night Out, the features about the Helio Sequence and Facing New York are also good reads; it's the best bathroom/backpack/busride/waiting room companion since Entertainment Weekly and Maxim.

I'll be back today or tomorrow with my usual bullshit. Peace and chicken grease.

quiet time over

Oh Blogspot, how I've done you wrong....

What up Coolness/Crack peeps. Sorry it's been a minute since I last wrote some of my cute little musings. There have been some non-cute things going on in my life. I'm not really in the mood to divulge specifics. Let's just list the following facts:

a) I am now single
b) I haven't been single in four years
c) I'm down to start dating again (girls only, with much apologies to my gay peeps, but seriously, I'm much too sloppy to be down).

So if you're over 21 and you don't mind hanging out with some awkward, tattooed Asian writing dude in his mid-20's, hit a brother up. It would also help if you lived in Seattle.

Yes, that's right. I've stooped so low (or high) to use Chasing Coolness/Stay Off the Crack for non journalism-related activities. But fugg it. That's how it is.