Life, Love, and Basketball
(a sestina)

For a lifetime, this has been his team.
Seventeen championships – four of which he has seen – they are without peer.
An obsession for him: no matter where he has lived,
he dreamed imaginary ballgames, along with careers and families. Now the title
of “father” is a reality. There is no more time to dream: the effect
of being tethered to a spot on earth with his children. No, not Boston -

which is implacable – but actual concrete and soil. Where Boston
is just an idea, his children are real and teeming
with possibility. For his Celtics, he feels something to the same effect,
as every challenge flashes then slowly disappears.
Many doubt the Celtics are entitled
to this playoff run, just as he doubts he has earned the life he lives.

But then, this doubt is the reason he lives.
He questions his own memory – maybe because he’s from Boston.
The Celtics fan – once almost entitled
to success, if not in life, then of his team -
as a father now dances over midnights, peers
at each coming day, thinking of ways to make them perfect.

This June night, his hometown squad can affect
tomorrow. There are no religious icons here to believe
in, pray to – just a glowing television and yelps that pierce
the quiet hours before bed. Three miles from Downtown Boston,
this fan draws energy from the Celtics, and self-esteem
from his children fighting the intermittent tidal

waves of sleep and sleeplessness. No father is entitled
to a full night’s rest anyway. So why not let a game affect
him? The clock climbs over itself and his head teems
with more doubts. The playoffs don’t relieve
a father of his duties, but at least tonight in Boston,
the rules for fans usurp those for fathers – so it appears.

This man constantly departs. Reappears.
Sings children to sleep, screams silence at games, writes poems with no titles.
It has never been so good to be in Boston -
a lovely ugly setting, where home sometimes exists. It is perfect.
There may be other cities more enjoyable to live,
but his children are here in this city – and so is his team.

The City of Boston hopes Captain Paul Pierce
can help steer this magnificent team to another title -
if for no other effect than to remind us we’re alive.

They say I held you
for nine months; but no – I think
it’s you who held me.

When I first started blogging here, it was a two birds, one stone kind of thing. One reason is that I hoped it would give people a reason to keep coming back to my website, and keep me in the minds of people who might potentially book me for a show. It’s more business-oriented than I usually am, but it’s easier than cold-calling. (Which I did as a job when in college, and which is no fun.)

The other reason was that I have a lot of thoughts that I need space to process, and sometimes those thoughts are processed in the form of poems, and sometimes I just throw blog posts up.

So early on, I started writing this feature called Sorry, You Suck, because I’m a hater. I wanted to use this Internets forum to tell the world how bad certain folks and things annoyed me. But what I was really doing was telling the world how much of a sucka I am.

Because when it comes down to it, I’m no better than any of the folks I’ve been hating on. I just got wrapped in being petty, when the truth is I’ve made more mistakes in my life than I can remember. And if I could remember all of them, they’d be too numerous to count. So who am I to believe I hold moral authority over anyone?

It’s fun to be petty and it’s easy to hate on shit. It’s a lot more difficult, emotionally-draining, and time-consuming to engage with ideas and arguments in any kind of meaningful and authentic way. What’s weird is that I know this, man: I have been trying to live my life as nuance for a long time. I have long aimed to be non-judgmental, and only interact with people in the way that makes sense based on how they interact with me. The problem is I don’t know Glenn Beck or anything about horse racing. What I do know I tend to not feel too good about, but do I know enough to say anything really?

Or to put it another way: would I appreciate it if someone caught 15 minutes of one of my shows and pronounced all over the Internets that I sucked?

I guess what I’m saying is I’ve been acting like the exact people I’ve been criticizing. I’ve been too closed-minded – too much just going for a laugh or a clever comment so folks will go “OH SNAP!” like Biz Markie when he saw that guy tongue-kissing his girl.

So, I’m no longer proclaiming that people and things suck. From now on, I’m gonna share things I love. So all those that I have dubbed as sucky, I hereby withdraw my proclamation.

(Except Miss Saigon. Fcuk you.)

Allen Iverson – forever a member of my Top 5 Dead or Alive – showed up for All Star Weekend without his braids.

Damn homey.

Me & S took a road trip to Lakeville, Connecticut for a show in honor of Martin Luther King Jr Day. Great crowd for the Sunday night show, then Monday morning I ran a couple of writing workshops for like a million high school students. This is my second time at the Hotchkiss School – and both time’s were simply outstanding. I can’t wait to go back there! Photo recap below. (All photos taken by S except the one she’s in.)

Isn’t this what people think of when they hear New England?

Hotchkiss School

Celebrating his life’s work. This wasn’t staged I swear…

(more…)

As the San Diego Asian Film Festival closed its first leg this week, and the Boston Asian American Film Festival kicks off tonight, I do want to take a minute to remember one of the VIPs on the scene.

I moved to Washington DC in 2000, a month after finishing college because I knew I had to leave Boston behind to grow as a person. I lined up a very low-paying job on the civil rights scene and packed up the U-Haul. Arriving Wednesday night and starting work Thursday morning, I had close to no friends. I mean, I had friends, but not those who i developed on my own. It was all co-workers, other civil rights scenesters, and such and such.

A big part of me regretted leaving my family, and I battled homesickness by drinking heavily. I also gained about 10 pounds that summer. But it wasn’t all destructive behavior; I also caught wind of a group of people starting up an Asian American film festival in DC, and I decided to at least attend a meeting to see what was up. (It was college when I developed a love of writing and performing, but also filmmaking. I even made two short movies…which both…uh, no longer exist I hope.)

The guy leading the meeting was George Lin, a very unassuming but friendly guy who had dreamed up the DC APA Film Festival with a buddy one day and simply turned it into a reality. There was no self-doubt in this guy, he very strongly believed in his own abilities and those of the people around him to simply not get caught up in bull. George knew more than anyone that if you wanted to make it happen…shoot, you could just make it happen. George gave me a ride home that night, and in fact many nights after, as it seemed everyone else lived in Virginia while I was the only one in DC. George lived in Maryland, so he was stuck with the job of getting the little kid home safely. He was always a calming presence and capable of giving others strength without them knowing it. (I specifically remember his pep-talk to me on Election Night 2000 before dropping me off at my apartment.)

I was heavily involved with APA Film that year, and it was a great welcome to DC. APA Film, and in particular George, helped me think larger than my own just-out-of-college world. It was actually the opening night ceremony that I started down the road to an actual career as a spoken word performer; before that, it was just a hobby. (Another story for another time perhaps.)

That initial experience with George and APA Film, helped me feel I could actually follow through on bringing ideas to fruition. Some attempts have been less successful than others, but I never lost the nerve to take the first step. During my time in DC, I was a part of many nascent groups from the failed (APAREN) to the successful (DCAPJ) to the legendary (TLC – I see yall!). By 2002, I was thinking about what it would take to create a collective to support Asian American and Pacific Islander community-based artists in the DC area, but life intervened, and I ended up back in Boston.

And within a month of my return, we held the first ever Boston Progress Arts Collective meeting. And look at us now, still going strong – in fact, stronger – 6 years later. And without exaggeration, BPAC’s very existence was inspired by the work George put in to making his little idea a reality.

To nobody’s and everybody’s surprise, George left his job as a military scientist in 2003 and moved to San Diego to chase his dream of being more involved with not only showcasing, but producing films. His position as Programming Director at SDAFF made him a legitimate “bigshot” (haha) and helped draw more people into his world, no doubt making their lives that much brighter. His passion for our communities and for supporting arts and artists culminated in his co-producing the film Before We Close.

My unofficial tagline for any project nowadays is “we are only limited by our imagination.” George wasn’t the only person who exemplified this mindset, but he was probably the best at it. For many of us, thinking outside the box means thinking ourselves into another box. But George could leave and return to the box as often as he wanted, and always be wearing that same expression, that looked like it could break into full smile at any time. And every time, he would enthusiastically tell you where he had just been, and how he couldn’t wait to go back.

George passed away a few days ago at the age of 37 after a two decade long battle with illness. Rest in power bro.

In lieu of flowers and gifts, the family requests that charitable donations be made to The George C. Lin Memorial Fund established by his family which will provide grants to institutions that provide scholarships to students studying film, and for pheochromocytoma research and education. Please send checks to The San Diego Foundation, 2508 Historic Decatur Rd. Ste. 200, San Diego, CA 92106. Please write the name of the fund, The George C. Lin Memorial Fund, on the memo line of the check.