In Which We Decide To Stop Traveling Alone

Backseat Diary

by MIA NGUYEN

December 7, 2015

12:30 p.m. By default, I’m inclined to map out potential worst case scenarios that could happen while traveling alone. I’m sitting at the terminal waiting for my flight. An episode of Broadchurch is playing in the background, but I’m distracted by the sweet, elderly couple sitting in front of me. It makes me long for permanence and romance. Longing for structure is a constant. 

Vacation Resolutions:

1.  Nap/meditate frequently
2.  Walk until my feet hurt
3.  Stay present 

12:44 p.m. I close my eyes as soon as I reach my assigned seat on the plane. I dread watching people toss personal belongings in overhead compartments. I’m always thinking about things. About how we accumulate so much of it. About how to get rid of it. 

3:00 p.m. Over the summer, I spent the week tucked away in a suburban neighborhood outside of Charlotte, North Carolina with my dad and younger brother. The vacation never left us. There’s an influx of people orbiting around an emotional support dog. I opt for a seat by the window to watch the planes pass. I enjoy a salad and wonder where everyone is headed. Where’s home?

9:00 p.m. The backseat of this car smells like an off-brand cologne. The driver asks if I want a bottle of water to hydrate. I decline. Had I accepted, ninety percent of the bottle would have remained. The driver would have no choice but to throw it out. I plug in the address on my phone to count down the ETA until my next fresh breath of air. 

9:33 p.m. We arrive at the apartment. I count $60 in cash from my purse to hand over to him. We tell each other to have a good night and part ways. 

8:24 p.m. It’s been 8 hours since my last deep breath. Traveling makes me anxious. After locking the door, I acquaint myself with the light switches and pour a tall glass of water and leave it on the coffee table. I send a message to my host letting her that I have arrived. She responds promptly with the wifi password. 

10:15 p.m. Rob sends me a text apologizing for the late response. I tell him that I had forgotten to pack a pair of sneakers and he talks about work. We text until he falls asleep. I take a shower and turn on an episode of The Great British Baking Show. I have already fallen in love with a few of the contestants.

11 p.m. The sound of a cello plays in the night. 

December 8, 2015

7:30 a.m. According to the host, I can help myself to any snacks in the cupboard. There isn’t anything I want to eat. I want to buy a bottle of champagne for the fridge just so I can have something to look at when I open it. I discover a box of expired rice milk with traces of mold around the rim. I throw it out in the dumpster and proceed to walk to the grocery store. 

7:40 a.m. I bag two croissants, grab a case of guacamole, tortilla chips, and cradle a bottle of Martinelli’s apple juice. 

7:50 a.m. The neighborhood is quiet, calm, and still. After dropping off my groceries and pacing around apartment, I regain momentum to circle back to the street so I can grab a cup of coffee. 

8:45 a.m. The next train to Pershing Square from Vermont/Sunset leaves in approximately 30 minutes. There’s a familiar face on the train. It’s a girl from my French class from high school. I don’t care enough to say hello. 

1 p.m. I wandered The Broad for two and a half hours before taking the train back to Los Feliz. The Visitors by Ragnar Kjartansson exhibit was completely engrossing. I sat in the corner of the dark and gloomy room listening to the 64-minute, nine-screen video installation. It’s easier to cry in a room by yourself. 

5 p.m. The Los Feliz Murder House is located on 2475 Glendower Place, a few blocks from where I’m staying. I immerse myself in the bloody story before taking a nap. 

6 p.m. The doctor killing himself and his entire family doesn’t leave my brain. Justin lives a few blocks away. I text him to tell him about my discovery. It doesn’t seem to worry him. 

9:30 p.m. Justin and I drive to House of Pies. We could have easily walked, but according to him and the rest of Los Angeles, no one walks here. We agree on splitting a breakfast sandwich and an apple pie a la Mode. We discuss social anxiety, fear of missing out, and not accomplishing enough while we’re here. 

10 p.m. Justin drove me home. I hurried into the apartment, locked the door, and found myself in the same position, as though I had never even left in the first place. I fall asleep to the sound of the cello. 

December 9, 2015

10 a.m. They’re filming Californication in Skylight Books. I wanted to pick up My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard, but that will have to wait until tomorrow or the next day. I cleared my schedule tomorrow to visit my grandmother in Rosemead, located east of Los Angeles. 

1:20 p.m. I’m taking an Uber down to Venice, a 30-40 minute drive from where I am. 

2:20 p.m. After visiting The List App office, I take an Uber back to Los Feliz, which feels like a million miles away. I’m restless, but the Uber driver Brian wants to have a long conversation about a non-profit that allows children to design and make their own books. I’m enthralled, but not enough to keep the conversation going. He hands me a business card with the information. I tell him to stop at the nearest bathroom. I drank too much coffee. I buy him a SmartWater. 

2:40 p.m. For the remainder of the ride, he talks about hover boards. I tell him that they’re not safe. I completely lose him. He completely loses me. 

6:00 p.m. I lock up and walk to Lassen’s, a small health foods store on Hillhurst. There are approximately six parking spots that occupy the lot. There’s never any room for shoppers. I order an eggnog smoothie, which is the only thing I have the appetite for. I buy dinner supplies: pesto and ravioli. I haven’t had a sit down meal in days.

7:00 p.m. I stained the pot and there doesn’t seem to be a strainer even though there’s dry pasta in the cupboard. 

8:00 p.m. I walk to get ice cream. I don’t feel so alone. 

December 10, 2015

11 a.m. I am almost on the verge of falling to my knees. Perhaps I’ve gone mad. I cannot fall asleep without thinking about heartbreak. I long for permanence.

11:30 a.m. I’m meeting Emily in Studio City for breakfast. She tells me Leah Remini’s family owns the restaurant. We drive over to Pasadena afterwards. There’s an empty Toy for Tots bin in front of her work. 

2:30 p.m. My cousin Jenny and I go out for dim sum. We have been to this restaurant many times before for birthday parties, family gatherings, and weddings. 

3:30 p.m. I’m worried my grandmother won’t make it back in time before I leave. She’s down the street at a friends house. I have a red envelope with money for her and a shirt my mom and I picked out for her. I can’t wait to see the expression on her face. She’s 89 this year.

4:00 p.m. My grandmother is at the end of the driveway. She mistakes me for Jenny. When she gets up close she pats my head and face. I feel normal again. I feel at home. One of my dearest friends, Victoria, is driving up from San Diego today. It will be nice to have a voice fill the apartment.

5:45 p.m. Jenny and I drive over to Koreatown. I’m carrying a bag of large grapefruits to pack for my trip back home. We part ways after our grocery store trip. I take an Uber to Beverly Hills to meet Rachel. She’s in town for a company Christmas party. We meet at the Urth Caffe. 

December 11, 2015

11 a.m. Victoria spills coffee all over the table. She goes and grabs another cup. We talk about our jobs and bosses. It’s a safe environment to conduct our hasty behavior. Everyone around us is doing it, making it acceptable. 

11:30 a.m. There’s a parking ticket on Victoria’s car. She takes it and throws it in her backseat and does a little dance. I spend approximately an hour feeling upset about it. 

2:00 p.m. After only wearing pointed Chelsea boots for the past few days, I finally get the opportunity to find a pair of sneakers. 

3 p.m. It’s raining in LA. No one knows what to do with their body.

4 p.m. We order Indian. The basmati rice was tough. It felt like there was a morsel of pebbles gnashing against my teeth. Everything is temporary, especially pain. I want to go home. 

7 p.m. We head up to Griffith Park right before the sun sets. I’ve seen this view a million times. Victoria thinks it’s magnificent. 

10 p.m. Victoria and I return from Yamashiro. We turn on Serial season two. We talk about her boyfriend. I fall asleep to the sound of Serial. She nudges my shoulder and tells me to stop snoring. I’m startled and stay awake for the rest of the night so she can rest soundly. 

December 12, 2015 

11 a.m. Victoria and I take the train downtown to the Los Angeles Athletic Club. We are first to arrive. I order a Moscow Mule and a Negoni. By the time people arrive, we can barely make out faces and names. I try to be polite. 

1:00 p.m. Everyone is quiet. Someone at the table is telling a story about an elderly woman accidentally eating an edible on international flight to Bali. 

3 p.m. I have to clean the apartment. My flight leaves at 11 p.m.

3:30 p.m. Anxiety is nigh. 

4 p.m. I remove all traces that I was ever in the apartment. 

8:30 p.m. I contemplate leaving a thank you note. I read bits and pieces of My Struggle by Karl Ove Knausgaard. I forget to leave a thank you note. 

9:00 p.m. I head to LAX. 

11:00 p.m. It’s too early to wish people a Merry Christmas. I try not to think about anything because I’m heading home.

Mia Nguyen is the features editor of This Recording. You can find her website here.

"Death with Dignity" - Sufjan Stevens (mp3)

"All Of Me Wants All Of You" - Sufjan Stevens (mp3)

In Which We Find Solace In The Hypnotic

Processing

by MIA NGUYEN

Welcome to Me
dir. Shira Piven
88 minutes

It’s an emotional time for Kristen Wiig as an actress. After leaving Saturday Night Live in 2012, she has become a front woman in emotional independent films. In Welcome to Me, Kristen Wiig plays Alice Klieg, a single woman suffering from borderline personality disorder. Wiig’s expressions are always stagnant. Her mien is camera ready at all times. The state of her apartment is trapped in a perpetual state of the 90s, fully furnished with an eclectic fanfare of swan figurines and slew of VHS tapes. Daytime television is conveniently hypnotic for Alice's secluded lifestyle. She finds solace in watching reruns of Oprah on VHS. She can’t be faulted, Oprah’s voice is meditative.

The question, “What would you do with a million dollars?” usually lends itself in situations where people have nothing better to talk about. It’s self-aggrandizing to flaunt fame and fortune. There are people who consider gambling as a frivolous hobby, merely a waste of time and money, but according to Alice, the chances of winning the lottery can be achieved with the proper mindset.  

After hitting the $86 million California jackpot, Alice makes a public appearance on TV with a “prepared statement” where she seeks the attention and validation for which she has been yearning. She’s glimmering with hope. Everything she has done has led up to this moment.

Her televised speech is shortly cut off by a commercial after the line: “I’ve been using masturbation as sedative since 1991.” Unable to fathom the thought of going on unnoticed, she makes another television appearance to restate her speech. She transitions from one state to another with a turbulent force.

Alice's therapist Dr. Moffat (Tim Robbins) is a laidback man, but he has strict boundaries. There’s a scene where Dr. Moffat kindly asks Alice not to eat during their session. She retorts with a simple answer: “It’s in its own container.” Wiig allows her character to be infused with humor, but doesn’t devalue the overall portrayal of borderline personality disorder. After Alice exploits Dr. Moffat on her talk show, he has no qualms letting her go as a patient.

With $86 million dollars to play with, she fulfills her lifelong dream of being a talk show host just like Oprah. Television producer Rich (James Marsden) uses Alice to help protect the financial constraints of the company. James Marsden’s performance is soft and charismatic, like a cashmere sweater. Rich’s brother Gabe (Wes Bentley) takes quickly to Alice’s eccentric personality and finds her attractive.

Even though Rich finds his brother’s motives exploitative, he continues to pursue Alice romantically. On their first date, she quickly establishes a sexual relationship between the two in back of the bowling alley. When Alice invites him over, he discovers she sleeps with a sleeping bag on her bed. It doesn’t stop him; he could care less.

Each episode of “Welcome to Me” is filmed in front of a live studio audience. In the pilot, she makes a grand appearance in a swan. (Swans symbolize beauty and grace.) She tries her best to mimic these qualities to her fullest in order to be perceived this way. She is her own master. Alice invites us into her world, focusing on her childhood traumas and woes. She hires a slew of actors to reenact the people from her past but doesn’t think anyone is competent enough to perform her vision.

The show is the exact opposite of Oprah. It’s exploitative and risky. She slanders everyone in her life, including her best friend Gina (Linda Cardellini). Alice is unable to see all the hurtful things she has done. After spilling the boiling contents of a crockpot over herself on television, she is too consumed by the situation to shed an ounce of sympathy for Gina’s despair. Gina hits her breaking point and rails on Alice for her selfish behavior, but Alice is unable to process her words. During recovery, Alice retreats to her hotel room at the casino with a bunch of dogs. As a result, Alice has a mental breakdown, baring it all, emotionally and physically.

Despite the uncomfortable challenges, Welcome to Me sheds light on border personality disorder without poking fun at it. You can't turn away Kristen Wiig’s performance, even if you try.

Mia Nguyen is the features editor of This Recording.

"Conquerors" - The Darkness (mp3)

"Hammer & Tongs" - The Darkness (mp3)

 

In Which We Exercise Materialism To The Extreme

The Point of Tears

by MIA NGUYEN

Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt
creators Tina Fey and Robert Carlock

With a spirit of a whimsical middle schooler, Kimmy (Ellie Kemper) skips throughout New York City armed with a purple Jansport backpack and two paperback books in Netflix’s new comedic series Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. After being held captive for 15 years in an underground bunker with three other women, Kimmy forges a path of her own with minimal survival skills.

For Kimmy, starting anew means shedding her identity as one of the Indiana mole woman. The prospect of putting behind the trauma of Durnsville, Indiana puts Kimmy at ease. Along with adjusting herself to metropolitan life, Kimmy makes grand discoveries in the 21st century like a child peering into a treasure chest for the first time. The show doesn’t belittle Kimmy’s traumatic experiences, whether they would be sexual or physical abuse from cult leader Reverend Richard Wayne Gary Wayne (Jon Hamm).

Behind Kimmy’s infectious, pearly white smile, there lies a thick veil of darkness to her backstory. The underground bunker provided a place for her fears to fester. The sound of velcro makes Kimmy cringe outrageously to the point of tears.

Unlike the other three women, Kimmy has no desire to return to a place that slashed 15 years off her precious life. To start a new life in a new city, one must secure the necessities: job security and shelter. In reality, apartment hunting is stressfull; this stress is almost absent in Unbreakable Kimmy Schmidt. Kimmy scours the classifieds and finds an apartment she’s interested in. She is greeted by Lillian (Carol Kane), an eccentric and spaced out landlord for a potential apartment.

Lillian introduces Kimmy to her downstairs tenant, Titus Andromedon (Tituss Burgess), an aspiring actor who is trying hard to make it big on Broadway and has been for a long time. As a New Yorker, Titus is a resilient improviser when it comes to handling difficult situations head-on. In an episode, Titus constructs a chic and Oscar-winning outfit for Kimmy by using everyday household products: bathroom mat, toilet hardware, among many others.

Jacqueline Voorhees (Jane Krakowski), an Upper East Side Manhattanite, employs Kimmy as a nanny. While working in the Voorhees’ household, she changes her last name from “Schmidt” to “Smith” to prevent anyone from discovering her Indiana mole women status. As a nanny, Kimmy excels in interacting with Mrs. Voorhees' moody teenage stepdaughter, Xanthippe (Dylan Gelula) who is under the full suspicion that Kimmy has something to hide. Kimmy naturally becomes her confidant while on the job throughout the series.

Mrs. Voorhees exercises materialism to the extreme and has a refrigerator stocked with off-brand FIJI water labeled “diet water.” Wealthy people always have an abundance of white towels and a fridge stocked with the same items. When she offers Kimmy a bottle to hydrate, Kimmy politely declines, and proceeds to toss it into the waste basket. As a teenager, Mrs. Voorhees dyed her hair blonde and moved away from her home of South Dakota. Her origins and backstory appear to have broken elements that will hopefully appear in the second season.

Creators Tina Fey and Robert Carlock successfully build a successful female heroine with a group of equally charming, eccentric supporting actors. Along with the diversity of the cast, the comedic one-liners make audience members fall to their knees. The range of racial stereotypes represented on the show aren’t intended to be mean spirited. Kimmy’s GED study partner Dong (Ki Hong Lee) is a Chinese delivery guy who wins the affection of Kimmy. One of the character faults is his character being built around sexual jokes surrounding the origins of his Vietnamese name, which has sexual connotations. It’s a cheap comedy trope, and Fey has been criticized for this kind of stuff before.

The show features the upbeat pace and cadence of Fey's 30 Rock, ensuring its appeal to existing fans of Fey and Carlock’s work. Watching the entire series in one sitting closely resembles the feeling of witnessing a stream of candy fall out from a paper mâché piñata at a child’s birthday party. It’s rewarding and sweet. We glimmer at her childlike freedom. Something we wished we still had.

Mia Nguyen is the features editor of This Recording. You can find her website here.

"Hold No Guns" - Death Cab for Cutie (mp3)