Cool Kids (Echosmith)

 All my life I've been trying to get on TV, but why? Is it just the very human desire for attention, to show the world how great I am, because getting on TV somehow represents that "I made it" in the world, so I can share on my Facebook and broadcast that I will be appearing on a game show and to see how well I do!!! ( I personally feel like people secretly hate this, even if it's their friends, because we're all jealous of other people's successes, so we have to show up to support them but quietly seethe with rage). Yes, I do have some impulses like these, but recently I've theorized that it's a lot like the song "Cool Kids" by Echosmith, a great song that sums up essentially my whole life up to college and even now applies: "I wish that I could be like the cool kids, 'cause all the cool kids they seem to fit in...." this refrain repeats like 10 times in that song which usually is the sure sign of an earworm, but for me it fits, the song came out in a really formative time for me (2013), maybe because it's not that often played, every time I hear it resonates. I've always wanted to be cool but never got to experience it. I've always walked around with my head down (mainly cuz I was ashamed of my acne as a kid), not walking straight, always just sticking out. Always last to get the new games, the new technology, know the latest gossip, never wearing the right fashion......and it's carried over to adult life. In adult society I'm a nobody, just a passenger on the train, a number on a screen, a customer in line to check out. Nobody cares what I do, no one wants to "fit in" with me. Maybe, just maybe, if I do something cool, people will admire me and I get to be the cool kid for once. I think that's what motivated me as a camp counselor way back in the day; the kids looked up to me because they didn't know better, they're kids and any person older than them seemed cool. But I was cool to them; when I said something they paid attention, actually wanted to hear. I "fit in." 

Is the 1986 movie "Stand By Me" one of the best movies ever? Jeopardy sure incorporates it as a clue often enough, mainly because it's also the name of a song by Ben E. King, which also is played in the movie, but it's also basically an autobiography of Stephen King's younger years, apparently King got emotional after watching Rob Reiner's rendition of King's story "The Body" because it was so real. The movie's only 85 movies long, which is a good start because I just can't sit through Oppenheimer's 3 hours again no matter how good it is, it's got a young kids cast who later went on to bigger things (Wil Wheaton, Jerry O'Connell who does NOT look handsome as he does in Jerry Maguire, and sadly River Phoenix) and nothing really happens plot wise.....it's a very basic "4 buddies go on an adventure" plot line that is probably as old as stories, (The whole Hangover and Harold & Kumar movie franchises are based on it, just to name a couple), and no big plot twists, no CGI, no love stories....just spending 85 minutes with representations of your 12-year-old buddies again, which some argue is the most valuable thing to have, and the most wonderful time of life: young, free, naive, your whole world in front of you, everything is new about the world, and time doesn't move so gosh darn fast). It's set in the fictional town of Castle Rock, Oregon, but it might as well be generic Smallville, USA, or suburb like I grew up in, Darien, IL, or anywhere boys grow up.....we all go through that period of growth and making friends and sharing bonds. Not all of us have to outrun a train on a bridge or find a dead body to accomplish that bonding, but we've all experienced what it's like to be 12 years old. "I never had any friends like I did when I was twelve. Jesus, does anyone?" That is the iconic line of the movie, and should be one of the top movie quotes ever, replacing such drivel as "You had me at hello" or "Say hello to my little friend." I get it, the quote's a little long, but the idea is gold: I've had many friendships come and go over my adult life, and I don't even talk to some of my close friends when I was 12 years old anymore (much like the movie), but those memories are the best. Back then I didn't need me to be a cool kid or fit in.... I just needed my friends. Timeless movie. 

Interest (利息, 이자율, 金利)

 Of all the fees, assessments, charges, penalties, taxes, and other little financial ticks that one has to deal with just to get through life, there's this concept of underpayment of estimated tax that I was sent by the comptroller of the state today. Today, February 10, in the middle of tax season, I got sent a nice letter that came in a pink slip (conjuring up bad thoughts right way) for the previous year's assessment, that I need to pay interest for money that I never even had, that was theoretically "theirs" by virtue of taxing me a certain amount, and because THEY didn't withhold enough money from money I made, I need to pay interest on it because technically I'm holding on to the state's money (like I'm manically setting fires around the world and living my best life with this extra money). It's just diabolical logic for the state to make more money, and the more I think about it the more I get upset, as well as subscribe to the theory that organized governments are just organized crime/ gangs but legalized. The whole concept of a sales tax is, when I buy something that I need, the state gets a cut of that purchase. Why? What is that sales tax being used for? I get being taxed for income coming to me so the govenrment can take a cut of it off the top, but sales tax is taking money that's flowing out, I'm not getting any of that. 

I've really looked hard at living in states with no income tax, and I've narrowed it down to a few states that MJ would find (barely) acceptable and that I can, you know, find a job in: Texas and Washington state. Alaska, Wyoming, South Dakota- yea I get why there's no state tax there. If you think about it from the baseline of starting with no state tax, then each year I live in California and/or other states, I'm paying upwards of 5 digits on tax, just free money I deliver to the state government. Am I really getting compensated for that money through public services? Yes, highways, but they're always crowded. Yes, DMV but they're always mean to me. Yes, fire department but the fires showed public disasters can wipe out your home ASAP. 

The concept of interest bugs me too, just the idea of the amount I owe ticking up like a clock each time a new hour strikes makes me lose sleep. It makes my stress levels go up, makes my blood pressure go up just thinking about owing money, kind of like Mr. Beast's challenges where the money count goes up incremenetly.  I do NOT want to owe any money to anybody, a lesson American don't really understand otherwise credit cards wouldn't be able to charge an exorbitant TWENTY-FIVE PERCENT INTEREST RATE! Even my current mortgage that I got at the rock-bottom low rates of 2021 right after the pandemic when everything was depressed, I'm still fretting every month about paying that evil line that says "interest" and not "escrow" or "principal." At least I can justify having the 2021 interest rate because it's lower than what I can get through dividends or savings accounts (I get taxed on those by the way), but now with the federal mortgage rates on a 30-year mortgage at 6.833%, not an all-time high but definitely high considering the last decade, and about the rate my first student loan was charged at for law school, I'm not feeling on aking on more debt. 

Who created interest? Apparently even ancient civilizations had this concept of interest, so human beings have devised ways to screw other people for thousands of years; it's nothing new. Just like the ancients, if anything, I want OTHER people to be paying ME interest...... which is what the bank (and Robin Hood and other financial institutions do), but of course they're taking your money and ledning it out at a larger interest rate to other people. It's all just a sick game in a world revolving around money. I really feel bad for the people who earn a lot less than I, who have just one stream of income, but so many greedy hands coming to pick at it through interest and other organized means. So I declare interest to be........one of the worst inventions of mankind. 

Girl Scouts ( 女童子军, ガールスカウト, 걸스카우트)

 MJ and I went to a bookstore this weekend and came away with $3 calendars, apparently some of the most depreciable items and very, very time sensitive, like Christmas ornaments selling for 90% off the day after Christmas, or Halloween costumes after Halloween. Calendars ironically lose most of their value after you flip the calendar on January 1st of that year. Except........MJ and I never bought a 2025 calendar, so it was prime time to swoop in, we went crazy and bought 3 different ones reflecting our interests: 1.) a nurses calendar (for MJ), 2.) a Jeopardy calendar (with updated 2025 questions! for me) and a 3.) Peanuts calendar, kind of for both of us. The best part was, since it was February 8, we've already had 39 days of 2025 so we flipped through 39 days quickly, with the consensus being that the Jan. 1 Peanuts day was the funnies, lamenting that it can't be 2025 yet, he wasn't even ready for 2024. Yea I wasn't ready for it neither, Charlie Brown. 

Girl Scout cookies.....are good. I'm not a Thin Mints guy so I always stay clear, but Peanut Butter and Chocolate, suggested by one of the Girl Scouts (Trefoils) we met at a local food court today, was good. Chocolate and peanut butter cannot be bad, and this was it. I'm reminded of my Cub Scout days, apparently I didn't graduate to Boy Scouts as I didn't make it past 5th grade...it was a great way to get out and meet other boys in the neighborhood, though, and a good idea by my parents to try to get me to make friends. Sometimes when I pass a bake sale in the neighborhood or a lemonade sale, I go ahead and just get something, to encourage the kids that their cottage industry enterprise is viable. Girl Scout cookies aren't THAT expensive, they're like $6 a buck, which is probably marked up twice the retail price, but I got those $3 calendars for 20 cents on a dollar, so I could afford splurging a little. 

Today I also played basketball with a dog- no I did not intend to do so, but I was shooting baskets in a park and a man of the neighborhood just came by and shooting with me during his afternoon walk with his dog. VERY friendly dog, and just wanted so badly to fetch the basketball and bring it back to his owner.....it was black lab or some sort, maybe some other dog mixed in, maybe a descendant of St. John's water dog, a Newfoundland, and didn't bark or anything when seeing me, which always brings up bad childhood memories. Unfortunately it couldn't bite into the ball to fetch it, it was just nudging it back to me. Also, buddy got super excited and jumped into my arms like it wanted to play, not in a mean way or anything. If MJ and I don't ultimately succeed at this baby thing, maybe that type of dog would be swell; our recent Seattle adventure allowed us to roam at a dog park and hang out with so many awesome dogs, all pretty playful and obedient and definitely changed my paradigm about having dogs, although it's still a bummer on traveling and free time and allergy season and taking care of them 24/7. St. Jude's Children's Hospital, great charity, recently has been running an ad of a cute baby kid running up to go greet his dad when he sees him from far away, definitely one of the attractions of having a kid, and I remember one particular time I did that for my dad too........and then within a couple years I stopped doing it, showing love or any affection at all. That's the downside with kids, they're cute and cuddly and so loving and depend on you for everything........until they grow up and don't. Dogs don't do that. So it's as they say in a familiar phrase but also the title of a 2020 documentary, "We Don't Deserve Dogs." 

Pineapple ( 菠萝, パイナップル, 파인애플)

As you navigate through the congested grocery aisles at Costco looking for fruits that are going to be sweet but juicy, there's one that people overlook because of its rough exterior: the pineapple, usually going substantially lower than other fruits in quantity, where grapes will be $6.99, organic blueberries will be $8.99, strawberries will be $6.99, organic golden kiwis are like $11.99, heck even a container of Medjool dates are $7.99 or $10.99 depending on the quality......one whole pineapple is under $3. Under $3 for some of the most tropical tasting, watery goodness you'll get at any grocery store, but I often see customers, even the bargain-hunting ones at Costco scrimping off the free samples and $1.50 hot dog + drink combo, passing up the pineapple. I think it's the complexity of cutting the pineapple. In this day and age of "I want it now, streaming, and ready to consume for me with no hassle," people are probably lazy about cutting pineapples. I got news for those people: cutting pineapples is fine. There's something really liberating about cutting a pineapple, scraping through the exterior shell and getting to the juicy center, it's one of my favorite "pasttimes" (MJ had never heard of this word before tonight) I like doing, more than cooking food (just heating stuff up) or washing dishes, I like cutting pineapples. Possibly even more than cutting watermelon and the squishy sound of breaking through the rind into the exterior and looking for the sweetest-looking piece (hint: usually in the exact middle of the fruit). Refrigerate the remainder and they usually last about 5 or 6 different sittings, and all for $2.59.  

Pineapple, for whatever reason, has also become the symbol of fertility for mothers trying to get pregnant, and it's big in the IVF community. There's no science or studies showing pineapples actually increase fertility, but it's more of a figurehead for strength and unity and hope in types of trial and tribulation for people who just don't seem to find the spark. There's also no evidence that pineapple DECREASES fertility, which is actually more than people can say for a bunch of American foods, with fried, greasy, microplastics, etc. Honestly, anything that provides a positive placebo effect is good with me, I've heard plenty of stories of people feeling better after just altering their mindset and tricking their bodies into getting healthy, maybe it works with pregnancy. 

History of the pineapple: orginated in the Amazon rainforest, and native tribes called it "the excellent fruit," aka nanas, and Christopher Columbus brought it back to Europe ith him and spread it. That's like 3 Jeopardy facts right there. But still, as good as pineapple is, let's just keep it off any pizzas, okay? Two different ethnicites of food there, even though Columbas was Italian (but sailed for Spain). 

Hopefully these excellent fruits stay out of President Trump's crosshairs and don't get the 25% tariffs for being imported in! MJ has already warned about certain foods we like going up like avocados. We must have our pineapples! 

Shoe Dog (Phil Knight)

 Sometimes you watch a good movie after not having sat through a good movie for awhile, and it feels like the best movie you've ever seen, even though you realize it's mainly because you haven't actually sat down and been engrossed in a movie for a long time. That's how it felt watching "Air" about the creation of the Air Jordan shoe, but the movie is so much more than that: It's another collaboration by Ben Affleck and Matt Damon (I know, we're probably all sick of them, but as of the release of this movie in 2023, they still got it), it's a movie about something I grew up with, basketball, it's a movie about strong mothers (Delores Jordan, Michael Jordan's mom), it's a story about a decade I just missed out on, the 1980's, with lots of bangers in the soundtrack like the Violent Femmes, ZZ Top, REO Speedwagon, Chaka Khan (Rufus), and Born in the U.S.A. by the Boss, Bruce Springsteen. It's about marketing and big business, where Nike was dueling it out with Addidas (of "My Addidas" fame by Run DMC) and Converse, and it's a story about living in Portland, something I've always wondered about with the mystique of the Univeristy of Oregon, Portland, Mount Hood, Voodoo Doughnuts, Powell's Books, Tonya Harding, and now......how Nike got its groove, thanks to the visionary leadership of Phil Knight, aka the Shoe Dog. 

Nowadays billionaires have a pretty bad reputation, with the richest man in the world now delving into politics (rather ill-advisedly) and implementing "DOGE" (Department of Government Efficiency) while funding President Trump's presidential campaign, and others in the top 10 have similar drawn negative headlines, especially with the world increasingly turning into an plutocracy, government run by the wealthy. It's nice to see, from the surface at least, that there's at least one billionaire who's not consumed by amibition and power, and that's Phil Knight, net worth $60 billion, philanthropist to the University of Oregon plus various other charities, and apparently an avid runner. Maybe something about getting that runner's high and getting out into the world at least an hour today clears your perspective and gets your priorities straight: I find that running once a day keeps me sane, makes me enjoy the simpler pleasures of life, makes me feel better about myself, reminds me of who I am and the journey that I've taken to become who I am. Maybe that's Phil Knight, and maybe Elon Musk could use a run or two in his life (he reportedly is one of the best Diablo players in the world, which means he's not running around playing that video game). The movie "Air" definitely depicts Phil Knight in a good light as well as documents one of the biggest deals he made to get to that $60 billion, essentially becoming a partner with Michael Jordan, who was relatively unknown back in 1984 but is considered the G.O.A.T., and Phil Knight (and others at Nike) took a chance on him. And early shareholders at Nike are probably happy they took a chance on Nike too, from a 1985 price of $0.14 to $76 today, although the chart shows that Nike's hit another wall, similar to what they faced in 1984... maybe they need to make another seismic shift (this is the Nike shareholder in me talking). 

I loved the movie from a sports perspective (John Stockton, Hakeem Olajuwon, Charles Barkley, and Michael.......these are all my sports heroes growing up!) From a business perspective, it made me lament that familiar phrase: all the best ideas are taken! And it always seems like someone is one step ahead, gotten into the game earlier and if I had lived in the 1980's, I'd found a way to get rich. Maybe, or knowing me I would have found a way to ease into a comfortable life and get hooked on something unprofitable like playing chess or getting on TV. What are today's untapped potential opportunities? They all seem to be in technology, an area I have no expertise in at all, and a big one everyone talking about now is A.I.: what is the next technological revolution going to look like, and how will humans interact with A.I. And if you're a Nvidia shareholder like me, WHAT THE HECK IS DEEPSEEK, and why did the Chinese company just make Nvidia shares dip 17% on Monday? (the stock tried to rally over the course of the week but the fears of its business getting taken over by China and China winning the A.I. race are real enough to keep the stock down). Maybe, though, just maybe, with all the hype about A.I. and the new race for digital supremacy, maybe the time is to zig when everyone else is zagging and there will be a backlash back to a simpler time of books, movies, and the good ole' days of the 1980's? Seriously, teenagers and Gen Z, if you haven't tried a time without the Internet, don't knock it until you try it......it is so much less stress and you get such a great high when you actually do get quality work like "Air" the movie. 

Zillow (齐洛, ジロウ, 질로우)

 I wonder what it was like in the days before the Internet for prospective home buyers- just driving around the neighborhood looking for "For Sale" signs? Then I remember that my parents DID take me house hunting in the Chicago suburbs back in the day, and it was kind of like that, except maybe with a selected realtor who knew what they were doing. Still, I feel like one of the most game-changing websites in the world is Zillow.com, started in 2006 by former Microsoft or Expedia employees, one of those, created the site with the idea of changing the real estate industry. (Side note: Doesn't it seem like most of the best ideas that people use today all spourted right after the Internet came along, and if you were at the right age to capitalize on that, you really made it big? I came along right after that sweet spot I feel like, either that I was too busy playing video games, chess, and doing homework for classes that I didn't really need for my future career while millionaires were being made with just some good ideas). The whole dot-com industry was formed while I was in my teens, and if I was a very precocious 20-year-old college student with foresight for what people would eventually want I could have come up with Youtube, Uber, AirBnB, Instagram, all that good stuff. Alas, I didn't even act quickly enough to get my own namesake email account: Robert.yan@gmail.com was already taken. There's definitely a cost to being late to the party for technology and newest trends: you miss out on the wave. 

Zillow is a great example of it pays to be early on something, and one of its many features, price graph, show why that also applies to housing: all of the homes MJ and I are looking at in Southern California show pricing graphs that are essentially a straight line up, from bottom left to top right, almost without exception, and the ones that do have a blip on the radar or some sort of downward price action, I question whether what problems aren't show on the page or that there was an error in the price data. The pictures on Zillow really help visualize the space; it's almost like viewing tourist attractions on Youtube: you don't even have to actually physically be there anymore, you can just see it from your computer. MJ and I are constantly looking through different neighborhoods and seeing what we could afford, what kind of market is in different areas of the city, if there have been any "price cuts," and suprisingly for the first time in a while L.A. has some homes that are cutting prices, whether it's 1.) they priced their home too high in the first place, 2.) the owner needs to sell quickly so they want to garner more interest and bids, or 3.) High mortgage prices causing prospective buyers to be unable to afford expensive homes, or 4.) the affect of the L.A. fires? It definitely puts a little hesitation in your step when considering that fires could strike your home at any time and you lose everything, and it's hard to get fire insurance in L.A. A tough time to be thinking about these matters when there are still families trying to rebuild and get back on their feet, figure out their next plans after losing everything, but the reality is some of these people will need homes too, and the rental market has been drastically altered by the sudden demand in places for fire evacuees. 

I've read stories about mystery buyers "putting in offers on houses sight unseen" and always scoffed at the idea, but with Zillow that doesn't seem so preposterous; who knows how much research rich people have done on the market and determined exactly what they want and what's a good price to buy it at. Zillow allows one to see the flooring (a big thing for MJ), how the bathrooms like, how high is the ceiling (low ceilings make me feel really crapped), how generous the windows are to letting in light, what the HOA fees are (huge component if you're buying a townhouse/condo, that could be comparable to rent!) shape of the staircase (MJ expressed admiration at a spiral staircase the other day), exterior feel of the home. Honestly they talk about "curb appeal" a lot and it's probably overrated, but just the way a home looks from the curb can make up a big part of whether I want to visit the place or not, much less live in it and pay up to a million dollars and live there for the foreseeable future. You'll be seeing that place day in and day out, so the appearance is a big selling point for us. Don't judge a book by its cover, and don't judge a home just by its exterior (location is also a huge point), but do judge it by its cover somewhat. If only because other people will judge it like that when you sell the home in the future. 

Inside Out 2

 Recently on the plane to Seattle I watched the sequel to the 2015 hit children's movie, "Inside Out." I can't believe that it's been 10 years since the first movie and that I'm now living in the Year of the Lord 2025, but every time I check my calendar, my emails, my Outlook, it's right there: 2025. There's so much I haven't done in my life! But I HAVE watched both Inside Out movies. They're not only funny and smart, but they carry a good message: we all have different impulses within ourselves that take over from time to time, and I see so many traits in the teenage Riley going to high school that I identify in myself looking back at 13-year-old me, but I still see some of those same traits taking over in 37-year-old me. My life is mostly Joy (played by Amy Poehler, which comforts me at least knowing someone older than me like Amy Poehler is still starring in movies) and a general status quo, sometimes with genuine bouts of fear which comes easily and suddenly (what will happen if Nvidia drops below its 52-week moving average?) to Disgust when weaving in and out of Costco lanes but they're all blocked by those giant shopping carts that crowd the space even though it's a giant warehouse, a logjam that backs up even to the parking lot where there are no spots..........anyone, to Anger which happens less often now but when it does escape the bottle it manifests itself in a violent way, sometimes at MJ's expense.....to Sadness, which I'm lucky to say I have a pretty good control over because my life isn't filled with sadness, but on days like today when I find out some difficulties in my mother's health I can feel the blue, shy teardrop-like character of Sadness (played by Phyllis from The Office, an excellent choice to display grief but in a cute way). The Inside Out series normalizes having all of those conflicting feelings at once, which is OK; we can't always be joyful, especially if something external happens, and sometimes we can let one or more of the other emotions take over. Sometimes after a bout of anger, I feel more calm. After fear, I feel a dopamine hit just being alive (this is what happens after a roller coaster, as well as after a favorite character survived in Squid Game). And sadness: it's OK to feel healthy levels of sadness, to know this world doesn't always go according to plan, happiness and sadness feel like opposite emotions but in many ways they are similiar in how strong they are and how much they embody the human spirit...we feel things and express ourselve.s Just as long as Anxiety and Ennui get in the picture and take over one's whole personality like in the second film......there are drugs for that. As I write this there is a fire alarm going off in our building because someone probably burnt their popcorn...I am feeling anxiety right now and want to set a foolhardy plan into motion to escape the noise!