Peter Hook‘s New York City show (and first date of his U.S. tour) was moved from Irving Plaza (1,200 capacity) to the smaller Gramercy Theatre, catching a number of walkups off-guard when the show sold out.

I wasn’t so hot on the t-shirts for sale. They would have been so much cooler if they didn’t say “Joy Division” and “Manchester” at the bottom. Strangely, even though Hooky was going to perform Closer in its entirety at certain stops on the tour, no Closer shirt.

No opening band, either, but the audience was “treated” to video that seemed to be about 35 minutes long. I say “treated” because it didn’t give anything new to the Joy Division fan, particularly the fan who was enthused enough to see one-fourth of the band perform its second album. I definitely didn’t need to see Ian Curtis’ spastic dances with 80s video effects interspersed with unintelligible (due to accent and volume issues) interview segments with Peter Hook. I took a seat in the back to wait it out. Every time there was some quiet, people yelled, “Just play!” I’m sure the entire audience felt that way.

Finally the screen lifted and Peter Hook, with the members of his backing band The Light, took to the stage: Hook’s son Jack Bates (bass), Nat Watson (guitar), Andy Poole (keyboards), and Paul Kehoe (drums). Why two bassists? Well, Peter can’t sing and play at the same time, so he plays the more distinctive bass intros (“Love Will Tear Us Apart,” “Isolation” and “24 Hours,” for example) and then drops out to sing. Too bad, too, because Jack does a well-enough job but isn’t able yet to fill those shoes (or provide simultaneous low- and high-frequency ear-thumping that his dad does).

Not sufficiently enigmatic.

Yes, Hooky still slings the bass low and has a wide-leg stance. He doesn’t seem to know what to do with his body and does an in-place shuffle of an outlaw ready to duel in the Old West.

They kicked off with the instrumental “Incubation,” one of the b-sides to the “Komakino” flexi. It was angry and menacing, a sonic reaction to the news the previous week that New Order was reforming with all original members except for Hook, who wasn’t even asked to rejoin. A slew of interviews originally slated for this tour pried for his reactions to the reformation. I wondered if he would kick of a number saying, “See you in hell, Barney!” but Hooky didn’t address the audience directly until the encore.

In terms of Hooky’s singing, I don’t think he was trying to emulate Ian directly but there is a similarity in their vocal tone, particularly during more anguished passages in songs and most eerily in the whole of “Transmission.”

Some may ask what right the bassist has in presenting himself as the front man in a Joy Division tribute. Actually Hooky has more of a right to sing these songs than guitarist Bernard Sumner. Sumner went on to be the singer of New Order, but it was Hooky who sang backup vocals in Joy Division. A few days after the gig, I can’t imagine anybody else singing.

The first beats of “Isolation” sent scattered parts of the crowd pogoing. “Heart and Soul” also audibly roused people. After the album closer to Closer, the haunting “Decades,” Hook unhooked his bass and walked offstage for The Light to finish out the two minutes instrumental close.

“Ice Age” in the encore was a surprise and came off great but in the middle of the song Jack’s bass strap unhooked and he had to finish on his knees to keep playing. Hooky chastised him for the slipup.

Before “Atmosphere,” Hooky addressed the New Order reformation without him. “I thought I’d have the fucking week from hell,” he said, but thanked crowd for coming as it lifted his spirits.

There was some altercation in the audience during “Atmosphere” and Hooky stopped the band and refused to play until about six people were hustled out.

No other song could close the show and Hooky dedicated “Love Will Tear Us Apart” to Tom Atencio “because you know who your fucking friends are when the going gets tough.” Atencio was New Order’s North America manager for 18 years and was a producer of Joy Division, the documentary directed by Grant Gee.

During the song, Hooky ran off to both extremes of the stage, managing to topple himself halfway through “Love.” He looked like a turtle on his back and Nat Watson had to help him up.

“Don’t you bastards be putting that on YouTube, will ya?” he shouted at the end of the show before walking off.

A minute later Hooky returned to the stage bare-chested and threw his shirt out to the crowd. After it was clear that another encore wasn’t coming, a 50-year old white male leaped onstage and sing “Louie Louie” into the microphone but was swiftly escorted off.

Set List: Incubation, Dead Souls, Auto-Suggestion, From Safety to Where, Atrocity Exhibition, Isolation, Passover, Colony, Means to an End, Heart and Soul, 24 Hours, The Eternal, Decades

Encore: These Days, Ice Age, Atmosphere, Transmission, Love Will Tear Us Apart

I wore my fringe like Roger McGuinn’s!

Like everyone else I’ve been following the recovery of Edwyn Collins — erstwhile Orange Juice frontman and solo one-world-wide-hit wonder (“A Girl Like You“).

The man suffered two major cerebral hemorrhages in 2005, for a while rendering him in a condition where he could only say four things: “Yes”; “No”; “Grace Maxwell” (his wife); and “The possibilities are endless.” It seemed that the great voice of anti-masculinity was in danger of being silenced.

Collins’ roots are shambolic and twee, yet he has won back his abilities with the tenacity of an ultimate fighter. He has since completed two solo albums, Home Again and Losing Sleep, which was released in the UK in 2010, but wasn’t released in the U.S. until March 22, more than a week after his recent show at the Rock Shop in Brooklyn.

I missed the opening act, solo guitarist/singer James Walbourne, who is in the latest incarnation of The Pretenders and the also bassist for Collins’ band. Walbourne wasn’t listed on the site as an opening act and had I known about it, I would have caught it. I’m enough of a live-music enthusiast that I have to see every act. Oh, I’ve seen some pretty mediocre acts over the years but I’ve also been blown away by seeing amazing live bands I’d never heard of such as Sunny Day Real Estate (opening for Velocity Girl at CBGBs) and The BellRays (opening for The Damned at Irving Plaza).

Second opening act The Kinbeats are a foursome (three brothers and a cousin on drums) who said they left their native Germany to come to the U.K. to look for Edwyn Collins. Guess they found him! But their sound also owes a large debt to the other Orange Juice singer/guitarist, James Kirk, known for writing and singing slower, softer songs. (It’s telling that Kirk’s Orange Juice-era composition “Felicity” was sang by Collins in an upbeat nearly bombastic fashion but Kirk reshaped the song into a mid-tempo, low-key melody on his 2003 solo album You Can Make It If You Boogie.)

Dave Ruffy, despite his name, is rather smooth.

Patrick Ralla, a Kinbeats guitarist, resumed the stage with the rest of Collins’ band on this tour: Tom Edwards on blonde-hair guitar; Walbourne on bass; Dave Ruffy on drums; and Sean Read on sax and keyboards. Ruffy, a punk legend for his time in The Ruts, replaces for this tour Collins’ other punk-legend drummer, Paul Cook.

Collins stepped up to the stage with the assistance of a cane and Grace Maxwell. After he was seated on an unused amplifier beside a music stand holding lyrics sheets, he greeted New York quickly and launched into the title track from the new album, “Losing Sleep.” No longer able to play guitar due to the loss of use of his right arm, Collins didn’t elect for an easy set in the comfort zone. The big hits and favorites were played but he took a huge risk by playing seven out of the new album’s 12 tracks (keep in mind that American audiences weren’t familiar with any of the new album) yet they sat well with his back-catalog and even complemented the hallowed Orange Juice tracks.

Collins expressed minor irritation early on when there was some delay getting the second song started. “Dying Day! C’mon, now!”

It should be noted that while Collins doesn’t have complete facility of his unmistakable baritone voice, he has a great deal of it. His voices sounds as if he has a mild head cold. Mind you, Edwyn Collins with a head cold is still miles above most bands on their best days! As one ponders the mysteries of the brain, one could observe that Collins seems to have difficulty speaking words (such as song titles) that he is able to sing with ease.

I think my favorite part of the show was in “Consolation Prize” right before the guitar break when Collins held anticipation by saying, “Wait!” There were many other highlights. Ralla and Edwards on twin-guitar attack raised a great funk gnash during “Falling and Laughing” (introduced by Collins with “From 30 years ago, imagine that!”). Collins only did one song (“Wheel of Love”) from his excellent first solo album, Hope and Despair, but it is definitely a keeper for the set.

“Don’t Shilly Shally,” his first solo single and one of my favorite songs period, stretched out as Collins rose to his feet and tried to adjust the microphone stand. Thankfully a crew member raised the mike so Collins could sing “A Girl Like You” standing.

Are these the real Collins Kids?

For the encore, Collins called for a harmonica for “Searching for the Truth” in order “to do it justice” and pulled off a crisp solo. Collins’ son William stepped up to sing the chorus in “See It in Your Eyes,” at first expressing reluctance (“Let’s get this done with quick,” he muttered) but more than acquitted himself. In fact, he probably got the loudest applause of the night. A raucous “Blue Boy” closed the night as Collins gave a wave and a smile and thankfully didn’t say goodbye.

Set List: Losing Sleep / Dying Day / What Presence!? / Make Me Feel Again / Consolation Prize / It Dawns on Me / Wheel of Love / Home Again / Humble / What Is My Role? / Rip It Up / Falling and Laughing / Do It Again / Don’t Shilly Shally / A Girl Like You

Encore: Searching for the Truth / See It in Your Eyes / Blue Boy

#1 Lesson: Never pay cash when you can use credit.

I saw Guided by Voices play on Dec. 30 and Dec. 31 and wanted to blog about it, but a phone call changed all that.

It was from the company that handles my 401(k) retirement account.  A woman informed me that I now qualified for a new level of service — a “premium” level, in fact. She wanted to assign me a personal account executive right away.

Immediately suspicious, I said I had to go and that she should send me information in the mail about the premium services.  I work in financial journalism. I don’t trust anything not in writing, and even then I remain vigilant. The Wall Street Journal regularly publishes round-ups of securities violations among nearly every brokerage. The most common violation seems to be generating extra trading in a client’s account to drum up more commissions — in other words, the brokers were making money by moving it around instead of growing a client’s account.  Those caught pay a fine and “neither admit nor deny” guilt.

Well, when I did receive a pamphlet in the mail, it was as bad as I had thought, and it didn’t even come with any of the extras I would have expected.  (How about a free cup of coffee in the mornings from the branch offices?)

On the first page, I was notified that I was eligible for “complimentary guidance consultations from a Premium Services Account Executive, who’ll take the time to understand your needs and help you make financial decisions you can feel confident about.”

Free financial advice! Great, right?

Wrongo.

The footnote (number two out of a total of 15) told me that, “Although consultations are one on one, guidance provided by [XX]* is educational in nature, is not individualized, and is not intended to serve as the primary or sole basis for your investment or tax-planning decisions.”

In other words, this premium level of service entitles me to one-on-one sessions of high-pressure sales pitches. Why, this so-called account executive doesn’t even care who I am because everybody getting these premium services gets the same pitch. And even though the footnote implies the need for additional financial advice, the entire pamphlet doesn’t suggest that your account executive is deficient in any way.

The pamphlet also notes that your account executive can help you, “Potentially reduce estate and estate-related taxes.” As a premium-services client I can “Learn how you may control the distribution of your wealth with our estate planning basics.”

Yet, astoundingly, that last statement is footnoted as “Tax and estate planning information provided is general in nature, is for informational purposes only, and should not be construed as legal or tax advice. [XX]* does not provide legal or tax advice.” The seller of this rinky-dink fortune-telling miracle fish also has the disclaimer that such fortunes are for informational purposes only.

Again, no mention of free coffee!

As you can imagine, the rest of the pamphlet details all the great things this account executive can do, including investment and tax-planning decisions rife with conflicts of interest!

This annoys me to a great degree. For people flustered with making investment decisions, this free service may seem like a lifeline, but like most things in the world (and especially in the world of finance), when someone seems to be throwing you a line, they are really trying to feed you one.

In fifth grade I had a teacher who had a few rental properties but his tenants were incompetent and often filled out their rent checks incorrectly, rendering them uncashable. As a favor to our future landlords, he made us spend a week or two writing out checks and spelling out legibly the dollar and cent amounts. That was the full extent of personal finance that I learned in public school. College, too.

Personal finance is something that one has to pursue on one’s own. You don’t learn it in law school or medical school. Which is why a lot of smart lawyers and doctors get scammed by these account executives who are busy making trades in their accounts. One does break a sweat every now and then from buying and selling. If the lawyer or doctor asks about something, the account executive has some language ready to basically ask them, “What are you, stupid?” That usually ends it because lawyers and doctors certainly don’t fancy themselves as stupid, and the account executive goes back to making trades.

Of course, you don’t need to be a lawyer or a doctor to be scammed. Shoot, I’m a writer and a journalist. I don’t have a whole lot of money in my 401(k), but after working and contributing for 18 years, I now qualify for premium services.

But not free coffee. (Why do I keep asking? I want some freaking free coffee, and I’m willing to tune out a short sales pitch for a good cup!)

Learning how to manage your personal finances is, well, a personal matter. Only you can determine how much risk you’re comfortable with. Only you know what causes you care about (investments in “vices” such as alcohol, or China, or companies that oppose same-sex marriage, for example). Only you know what fee structures you want to pay.

You may say, “Hey, Ed Lin! I’m busy as hell, and I don’t want to deal with money stuff! I want to leave it to the pros!”

A lot of other people felt that same way when they had Bernie Madoff ** manage their assets.

We have arrived at a time and place when an individual can read and become very savvy. One is capable of trading options and other derivatives easily.

Yet for many people — including very smart people — the world of finance remains murky and seems best left unexplored.

If this is you, you may get a phone call soon — from your new account executive offering free premium services.

How can you counter this? There are a number of fine publications, including Barrons.com,*** that you may choose to read on a regular basis. The Wall Street Journal Guide to Understanding Money and Investing is an excellent place to start and you can buy it for 1 cent plus shipping and handling. Understanding Wall Street by Jeffrey Little is also great for starters. I’m sure others have their own favorites.

But this is not a sales pitch, and I am not your account executive.

*Overlay your 401(k) administrator here.

**It is true that it is unfair to paint all asset managers with the Madoff brush. Yes, some people do want help from an objective personal-finance adviser. If this is you, then you need to go to a “fee-only” adviser. These advisers derive their fees from a percentage of your assets. They are motivated to make your assets grow because it means more commission for them. Avoid “fee-based” advisers — on top of getting a percentage of your assets, they also are paid by fund companies when they steer your money into their funds. If you don’t understand everything, and your adviser can’t or won’t explain fully, get another adviser.

*** I work at Barrons.com, which is owned by News Corp., a company that also owns The Wall Street Journal.

Amberly Young is so awesome! (Did you draw a heart because you love me?)

Santa Cruz is a beautiful place and University of California, Santa Cruz, has the best-looking campus I’ve ever seen.  It seems hidden within a forest of giant redwoods.  A guy who took me around campus told me that new students often become lost on the trails that connect the campuses.

I was intrigued by the Mima Mounds — Kyle, you rock for bringing me on the long and perilous hike (we had to climb a barbed-wire fence) to them.

Why was I there?  Well, the incredible Karen Tei Yamashita (recently robbed of the National Book Award for I-Hotel) brought me out there!  Things got off to a bang right away when Karen and her husband Ronaldo picked me up at the San Jose airport (Santa Cruz doesn’t have a commercial airport, though that doesn’t stop people from getting high) and we went straight to awesome Sesshu Foster‘s class, “Introduction to Reading Fiction” (or something like that).

Now, I was fresh off of nearly seven hours of airport/airplane bullshit (NYC -> LA -> SJO).  I didn’t know what the hell I was going to say, but I was going to be as enthusiastic as possible! Helpfully, Sesshu had compiled questions from his 200+ students and I answered them in a funny and frivolous 35-minute lightning round.  I finished by reading “Chinese New Year,” a short story about a lunar new year party in the 80s that I first read at the Asian American Writers’ Workshop for a marathon reading in January 2009.

That night I got to see for the second time the magical spectacle that is Karen Tei Yamashita reading I-Hotel in front of an auditorium crowd.  After they took me to my hotel, right next to the shore, I was too jazzed to sleep.  I walked down the lonely streets until I got to a CVS, bought some dental floss, protein bars and vitamin C drops.  Hey, you never know.

The next morning, I went to Karen’s class, an Asian American history class, I think.  I read “Chinese New Year” again, because you can never get too much of a good thing and also answered questions about This Is a Bust, which the students had read (um, were assigned to read) a few weeks earlier.  One of the TAs mentioned that a student had said the ending was a bit too neat.

In mock furor, I looked over the class.  “Who the fuck said that!” I demanded to know.  One guy jokingly raised his hand.  He’s my favorite guy ever.

Then we had lunch at the Santa Cruz indie version of Au Bon Pain.  It was pretty good and the sun totally baked us.  I met some interesting people from Brazil and got to talk to some grad students, one of whom was working on a thing about hapa authors.  Great!

One can be eaten while trying to find banana slugs!

Then I went to Karen’s creative writing class and had sort of an out-of-the-body experience as a group of six students read passages from Waylaid and then added their own writing written as if an outtake from the book.  One dude, playing the Vincent role to the hilt, showed up bare-chested and dressed only in shorts and flip-flops.  While speaking to them, I was amazed to find that no one was from Jersey.  What?  I answered a bunch of questions — as honestly as possible.  I told them all to set up 401(k) accounts.  To understand what money is.  If there is not a whole lot of money coming in, they’ll be well prepared.  If there is a whole lot of money coming in, they’ll be prepared.  D’oh!  I forgot to tell them to read 78 Reasons Why Your Book May Never Be Published and 14 Reasons Why It Just Might.  I recommend it to anyone who asks who wants a frank assessment of the biz.

My ego is too big to fit on this screen, so they put my bio up instead.

After that there was a window of a few hours and Kyle was cool enough to take me to the Mima Mounds.  We had walked so far we had to take a campus bus back to make it to my main event in time: The Living Writer Series reading.  I read from all three of my books and, of course, “Chinese New Year” to kick it all off.  An hour and a half whizzed by!  And Amberly Young presented me with her amazing fan art.  I broke with the terms of my probation and hugged her.

Later, Karen took me and a group to Santa Cruz’s best (only?) Chinese restaurant.  Forgot the name, but it was awesome hearing ghost stories from the crew and also meeting Vicki Nam, editor of the supa fly dope Yell-Oh Girls anthology.

They took me back to the hotel later that night.  I had to get up early to catch the 6 am Greyhound to San Francisco for an incredible adventure.  But too many people blog about San Francisco, already.  You don’t need to hear my story.

And Stuart said, “Let there be light.”  And there was light.

I can’t remember for certain the last time I’ve been to a show that I knew every song performed, apart from the artist’s yet-to-be-released album.  Maybe Grant Hart?  And now I was seeing Belle & Sebastian, a band whose songs I really love.  I know the words, man!

Along with punk and metal, I do enjoy a lot of twee.  Hell, I love the stuff Orange Juice did for Postcard (collected on Ostrich Churchyard and The Heather’s on Fire) along with the Pastels, the Vaselines and Camera Obscura.

But, man, B&S songs have worked their way in deep into me. I think they would show up in my hair roots.  Hell, I’ll stop slobbering over the band and just review the show from this point on.

Remember that big monsoon that was going to drown New York City with a foot of rain and 60-mile-per-hour wind?  It was supposed to happen Thursday, Sept. 30 — the same night that Belle & Sebastian were going to play the outdoor stage at the Williamsburg Waterfront.

Suffice to say it didn’t happen.  In fact after that afternoon not a drop of rain fell until the next morning.  The wind had kicked up some, but not enough to take off a slightly muggy feel the the evening.

The members came out under the cover of pulsing blue light and kicked into “I Didn’t See it Coming,” the first song on the new album, Write About Love, set for Oct. 12 release. “Oh, what a great job,” singer Stuart Murdoch sighed at the end.  His witty remarks — never as deadly dragged out as Robyn Hitchcock — are entertaining segues  of the show.  They need them because Bobby Kildea, Mick Cooke and Stevie Jackson switch around from guitar, bass and trumpet.  At another point, Murdoch pointed out the hugeness of the stage, noting that it “looks like the set of a sitcom.”  About the supposed monsoon, he quipped “We have good luck with weather.  We have God on our side.”  Then he immediately withdrew the comment.  “I should never have said that,” he said sheepishly.  “I’m tempting fate.”

Stevie Jackson took lead vocals for “I’m Not Living in the Real World” but not before instructing the crowd how to “Woo ooh ooh ooh” for the chorus.  It’s a fine song that fits in with the 60s-feel typical of a Stevie Jackson song.

“I Want the World to Stop,” another new song, fit in well with the wide-ranging set list.  After it, Murdoch threw out some signed toy footballs for the kids in the audience.  “It gets a bit boring when you’re a kid,” he said about 12-and-unders being dragged to the show by parents who are fans.  “Even if the kid doesn’t get it, give it to the kid,” he admonished grown-up souvenir-seekers.

And Stuart said, “Let there be strings.”  And there were strings.

Murdoch also took a stand for Obama and said the U.K. would take him if we didn’t like him because he’s “great.”  “Anyway, I’m preaching to the converted,” he said in response to the applause and introduced “Sookie in the Graveyward” as “a song about an apolitical hussy.”

Belle & Sebastian even had the guts to pull out a B-side to the Jonathan David single, “The Loneliness of a Middle Distance Runner,” which of course is collected in the Push Barman to Open Old Wounds compilation album.

Murdoch brought up several audience members to clap along to “There’s Too Much Love” and “The Boy With the Arab Strap.”  He bestowed medals on the clappers but ran out, so the tall lanky guy got only a hug and a promise that one would be mailed to him.

There really is too much love. And haze.

Murdoch screwed up the acoustic guitar intro to “Judy and the Dream of Horses,” and gave a grimacing look to an amused Jackson.

For the encore, Murdoch introduced each member as they began playing “Me and the Major.”  Apart from Kildea, Jackson and Cooke, there were big cheers for drummer Richard Colburn, violinist and vocalist Sarah Martin, keyboardist and Powerbookist Chris Geddes and celloist Sarah Wilson (a new official member?).

For the end of the show, Murdoch encouraged the audience to help sing “Get Me Away From Here I’m Dying,” because “I usually mess up the words pretty bad.”  Just one encore but there were no grumbles in the crowd as the show tipped near the two-hour mark.  There was nothing else Belle & Sebastian could have possibly done to make it a better show.

Set list: I Didn’t See It Coming/I’m a Cuckoo/Step Into My Office, Baby/Like Dylan in the Movies/I’m Not Living in the Real World/Piazza, New York Catcher/I Want the World to Stop/Lord Anthony/Sookie in the Graveyard/We Rule the School/Another Sunny Day/The Loneliness of a Middle Distance Runner/Write About Love/There’s Too Much Love/The Boy With the Arab Strap/If You Find Yourself Caught in Love/Judy and the Dream of Horses/Sleep the Clock Around

Encore: Me and the Major/Get Me Away From Here I’m Dying

I shoulda been a hand model!

Your local bookstore is great for a lot of reasons, but surely one of them is that it is hosting one of my readings.

Now check this out.  The amazing singer-songwriter Cynthia Lin has made an extremely limited number (200) of these really cool letter-pressed bookmarks and they will only be available to people who buy books at my upcoming readings.

I came up with the idea for these after I went to see a friend’s reading.  This woman in the audience sitting next to me nudged me and said she was going to buy her book online.  I pointed out that she should support the store for hosting the reading (which like most readings, was free), but she waved it off.  She also didn’t care about not having the author autographing her book.

I would like to say that she didn’t know that I was a writer — but she did!  She was Chinese, too, so that probably explained the complete lack of tact.

Sure, there are always outlets online that sell books at a major discount.  But think about it.  You may save a few bucks by buying online but you are paying for the gas that powers the bulldozers that knock over your local bookstore.  Bookstores are kind enough to allow authors to read on their premises, creating local events that make your community more fun and interesting.

I can’t remember the last time Amazon sponsored a reading.

But anyway, if I’m not coming near you, I strongly suggest you try IndieBound to support your local store.

Me in 1991.  The other Ed took my picture against a Mr. Softee truck to soften my image.

When I was finished with college in 1991 and had finally secured my mining-engineering degree, I went about doing what I really wanted to finish – my literature-writing degree.

It wasn’t so much that I wanted the degree itself.  I was reading and writing a lot on my own.  But I needed that degree because I wanted to go to journalism school.  An engineering degree alone wasn’t going to cut it for admission.

I also needed an appropriate internship.

Back then, several fledging Asian American publications were floating around New York City and while nearly all of them would gladly take submissions, there were basically no staff positions.  Late that summer, I wrote to a newspaper that I’ll call Super Asian News and asked if I could intern there.  It was based just outside of Koreatown, which at that time was only one block on 32nd Street between Fifth and Sixth.

This woman I’ll call Jane Lee called me a few days later and asked if I wanted to come in for an interview.  The office of Super Asian News was at the top of a straight walkup – one could look directly up at the four flights of stairs that reminded one of my friends of the end of “The Exorcist.”

Jane Lee regarded me with a small smile as I trudged up the stairs.  When I got closer I saw that she was in her late 40s.  I don’t remember what we talked about but the next day, and many days after, I would ascend those very steps to the humble offices of Super Asian News.

I was being paid a certain amount of money, but nothing to write home about, mainly because it would barely cover the postage.

The office was about 20 feet by 20 feet – big enough for several desks, a phone and some file cabinets.  But there were no computers or printers.  Where was the rest of the staff?  Well, it was just Jane and me.

Jane had planned a nearly complete outsourced business model.  All the writers were freelancers, as were the designers and production side.  Considering the state of journalism today, one could say that that was rather forward-thinking.  Super Asian News was a 16-page monthly, and Jane had planned to handle all the advertising and marketing herself.  Apart from being a freelancing line editor, I was going to handle the editing.

My first project was taking a monstrous, book-length manuscript written by a friend of Jane’s and cutting it down to sections short enough to run in serialized form.  Although the manuscript was a memoir of the Korean War, it was contrarian in that it was boring and academic.

In fact, most of the stories in the issue I started with (I think it was the fourth or fifth issue of Super Asian News) were from professors of Asian descent from New York colleges. We were also set to publish two or three “I can’t believe that racism still exists!” essays from young writers still in college or just out.  And almost everything we were about to publish was just terrible.

Let’s put things in context, though.  At this time there were two nationally distributed Asian American magazines, both glossy.  One always ran cheesecake on the cover and praised Asian business owners in its editorial content.  The other magazine not surprisingly had “The Sex Issue” every third issue and included dumbed-down content (I recall a personal essay in which Asian women were praised as being perfect Southern belles by virtue of their small waists.)

My big problem with the magazines was that upfront, on the editor’s page, there was talk of fighting stereotypes.  But out the back door, their pitches to potential advertisers totally played up the model minority crap – Asians are well-educated and have more disposable income than any other group, including whites!  Perhaps most disgracefully, both magazines ran ads for eyelid surgery.

So Super Asian News wasn’t that bad a place to be.  Sure, the content sucked, but at least we presented the same face to our readers and advertisers.

Oops, what advertisers?

Although the one issue I saw before I joined was full of ads, none of them were paid ads.  Jane merely took the ads from the Daily News or The New York Times and reprinted them to give us more prestige.

We outsourced the layout and production to this woman who would do it in her apartment.  Jane didn’t trust her to do it on her own, so she sat next to the production person at the computer for the several hours over several days that it took to lay out.  Why did I have to be there, too?  I guess Jane didn’t trust me alone in the office.  For one thing, someone was using Super Asian News’ phone to place long-distance calls.

Super Asian News didn’t pay for its office space.  It was donated by some guy who had planned to live in the space, but couldn’t get the building rezoned for residential use.  This guy would still sneak on the weekends and take showers there.  Jane suspected that he was using her phone, so she would unplug it and lock it in a file cabinet when we left for the night.

Enter the Other Ed

The September issue came back from the printer the first week of that month. One of Jane’s friends had a van and we drove around Manhattan and Queens, dropping off bundles of newspapers at the student centers of colleges.  We also gave them away to newsstand owners to sell.

The next week, Jane took her phone out of the file cabinet, plugged it in and waited for it to ring. Surely, college students, professors and newsstands would be clamoring for Super Asian News.

Unfortunately, the calls were few and even those were along the lines of, “Can we get a discount for our college?”  The subscription was only $20 a year, or 12 issues, but then again, 1991 was a tough year!  The economy was in the tank, layoffs were pervasive and many who had graduated with me headed to grad school to avoid the fruitless task of trying to find a job.

One caller was another guy named Ed.  He was a few years older than me, and was anxious to come work for Super Asian News.  Jane hired him to be my boss.  I was a little annoyed at first because here was this dude just walking in and now I had to take orders from him.  But I grew to really like Ed a lot and enjoy working with him.  In fact, because it was he and I doing everything, he was a co-worker and not a boss.

He really knocked my socks off by telling me he had written two novels.  After college, he got a night job behind the desk of a hotel in Atlantic City and spent the days writing.  Ed said that nearly every night he saw the same scene at work: somebody on the lobby payphone making a collect call, sobbing, “I lost it all. . .”

One of Ed’s novels was influenced by things that happened at the hotel.  The other was something he’d been cradling since college and had been written on a typewriter.  I freaked out when he told me that.  I insisted that he back it up by typing it into a computer, but he said it would lose flavor by being in electronic form.  “Advancing the roll is a labor of love,” he said.

He invited me over to his apartment to check out his books.  Ed lived in an apartment on Avenue D, and this was back when it was still called Alphabet City.  It wasn’t as rough a neighborhood as it used to be, but there were still signs of the violent past.  His building entrance had a bullet hole through the glass window.

Ed’s apartment was small but bigger than mine.  I sat on his couch and he got a Coke for me.  I set the can on the floor and picked up his typewritten manuscript.

“Ed,” he told me.  “Don’t put your soda on the floor.”

“Why not?” I asked.

“Last time I did that, I took a sip and then I had something chewy in my mouth.  I spit it out in my hand and I saw it was a cockroach.”

“That’s fucking disgusting, Ed.”

“Yeah, you know I just put it back in my mouth and ate it.”

“Are you nuts?”

“I figured I already ate half of it already, so it didn’t really matter.”

I picked up my soda and cradled it.  I knew I had to protect it.  I also knew that Ed wasn’t as stable as I thought.  He told me that he was so fed up with the country under George H.W. Bush that he had quit his job in Atlantic City and was going to Paris to write.  But a week before his flight, he had gotten in a bad car accident and was in a near-coma for several days.

That was a few years ago and things still hadn’t come back together.  Ed was also planning to apply to journalism school after the Super Asian News stint.  Now I was mildly annoyed.  If we applied to the same schools – including my top choice, Columbia – they might take my “boss” instead of me!

How could I read his manuscript now?

When I left I picked up a few almanacs to read through.  The Columbia current events and writing test was coming up in December and I’d be damned if he was going to do better than me.

Nothing but Worries

I was more worried than I had been in a long time.  I have never been one to struggle with self-doubt.  Yet at the time I was terrified that Coma Ed was going to do in my plans for journalism school.

I still had three more classes to finish my literature-writing B.A., but I knew that that wasn’t going to lead to a job.  I needed that journalism degree so I could do that reporter-by-day-novelist-by-night sort of thing.

(One of my writing teachers at Columbia shook his head sadly when I told him of my plans of mixing journalism and creative writing.  “You’re trying to get on board that old American hang-up,” he said.  Years later he declined to blurb my first novel Waylaid – in fact, he declined to even read it.)

But now my plans and ability to execute on them were in jeopardy.  Let’s say you’re the admissions officer of a graduate journalism program.  You have two applications from two Asian American applicants.  They both work at the same newspaper.  Hell, they’re both named, “Ed.”  Who are you going to take?  The “Editor” or “Assistant Editor”?

I’m pretty good at overthinking any situation and freaking myself out.  I bought three different almanacs of the last year to bone up on the current events and essay-writing test Columbia Journalism was administering in December.  I kept one on my bed, one in my bag and one. . .oh, no, where the hell did it go?  Damn, now I was down to two!

It was now October.  I worried every moment I was awake.  I wrote short stories with much unease (one was published in the first issue of the Asian Pacific American Journal put out by the one-year old organization, Asian American Writers Workshop). I watched TV with one of the Almanacs in my lap, reading during commercials and unable to find anything I saw funny.

During my fortnightly calls to beg for more money from my parents, they were bugging me to come home and work at the family business.

Journalism?  What’s journalism?  It’s not medicine.  It’s not law.  Why do you want to do it?  What kind of career are you going to have?  You want to write books?  Become a doctor first and then you can write books at night!

Despite my parents’ growing impatience as I progressed to complete vagrancy, I still managed to hold my parents to the terms of a deal.  If I got into Columbia Journalism School, they’d help pay for it.  If I didn’t, I’d come back and work at the family business for XX years.

I ended calls with the customary recitation of the deal, and my father would close by growling, “You’d better not get in!”

Pow!

What was that?  The sound of one or both of my almanacs sliding off of my chest and onto the hardwood floor of my crappy little studio. I’d fallen asleep again on the couch that I bought for five dollars from a homeless man in the street.  After I had paid him for the couch and dragged it several blocks, another man chased me down to tell me that I had paid the wrong guy.  But I pulled out my empty pockets to show him I didn’t have any more money – not even a wallet.  He shook his head as he walked away.  I heard change jingling in his pockets.  He had more than me.

It was a crappy couch, but it worked.  You could actually sit on it.  Or fall asleep on it after reading almanacs on it from beginning to end, trying to cram the equivalent of Wikipedia in my head.  Shit, are there going to be questions about the turmoil in the USSR?  Now I’d have to read the newspaper every day, too!  The things a journalist has to do. . .

The Minuses of Ad Sales

By the middle of October, Ed and I had expanded our repertoire to selling ads for Super Asian News.  Door to door.

Jane had informed us one day that she had run out of money.  The October issue was saved on a series of floppy disks, but she didn’t have enough to actually print them.  Because our office was on the border of Koreatown, Jane sent Ed and I to solicit the local businesses to take out business-card-sized ads at $10 each.  That seemed cheap enough.  All we needed was 100 of these mom-and-pop businesses to buy in and we could send this thing off to the printer.

Two major holes in the plot: Neither Ed nor I could speak Korean, and nobody wanted to advertise in an English-language publication, even if it was called “Super Asian News.”

Jane herself could have come with us, but she refused.  She had to wait by the phone.  There were a number of potential investors who could swoop in at any second.

When I think back to the week or so that Ed and I walked around Koreatown methodically (and yet, aimlessly, as we couldn’t read signs or communicate with people), it all comes back as a silent, black-and-white film in my mind’s eye.  I see two sad clowns walking up and down the endless stairwells of Koreatown.  I see looks of puzzlement and annoyance from businessmen and businesswomen who are having a hard enough time during the recession.

There aren’t any stunts from Buster Keaton or Harold Lloyd to leaven the misery.  There’s no bum who shows up with the fortune he’d squirreled away to save Super Asian News.

By Thursday Ed and I agreed to split up to cover more ground.  He went to cover the western half of Koreatown and I went to Electronic Boutique in the Manhattan Mall to check out the Sega Genesis games I couldn’t afford.

We met up at a bulletproof-glass Chinese place for pitiful pork-fried rice ($3) and compared notes.

“What did you do, Ed?” he asked me.

“I didn’t do shit,” I said, popping open a can of White Rock cola (50 cents).  “What did you do?”

“I went to that really nice Chinese restaurant by Penn Station.  The one with chandeliers and tablecloths.  I went in after the lunch rush and managed to corner the owner.  I showed him Super Asian News and he sat down with me at a table.  He pointed to the rugs on the floor and the rugs on the walls.  ‘Look at this place,’ he said. ‘Do you really think I would advertise in a newspaper like this?’”

“Oh, man, that’s fucking cold!”

“I just realized right there and then how shameless a salesman has to be in order to get the job done.  And I knew that I was a man who felt shame.”

We didn’t say much else.  As we ate, I kept my head down, watching grease drip from the corners of our fried-rice boxes onto the cut-up cardboard on the floor.

Ed didn’t come into work Friday.  Jane sighed heavily as the hours went on.  I was busy editing articles for November’s issue so that when the money finally came through, we’d have two issues ready to run on the presses.

Ed hadn’t called in, but Jane also refused to call him.  It was a standoff: Exploited and young Asian American idealist versus Asian (not American) businesswoman wannabe.

“This is not how you quit,” she told me several times.  “Not this way.”

Later, she told me that the Moonies had offered her money to keep Super Asian News afloat, but Jane had refused on principle.

I wondered how the Moonies even got in touch with her.

I wondered if there were in fact Moonies who had gotten in touch.

I wondered how long Jane could sit like that staring off into nothing.

I wondered how much longer I could stay at Super Asian News.

Testing Time

I took the Columbia Journalism School test on a cold morning in a room with 50 other people.  We all sat at computer monitors bathed in a sickly green glow.  I craned my neck before the test started to look for Ed, but I didn’t see him.

I typed in answers even though it didn’t seem like I was sure of anything.  The essays I was writing didn’t make sense when I reread them.

I felt numb when I was done.  I had no idea how I did.

I walked down Broadway and stopped at Mama Joy’s for a pint of New York Super Fudge Chunk.  I started eating it in the street before I got back to my apartment.

I was terrified that I was going to be heading to my parents’ house in rural Pennsylvania.  Well, if that was going to happen, then I wasn’t going to bother reapplying to journalism school.  I had only applied to Columbia in the end because, hell, it was in the middle of the media center of the world and had connections to every news organization.

Now, as I crunched chunks of black and white chocolate, I collected my thoughts.  My mother was right.  I always could write at night.  In fact, I could probably start putting short stories together and then start submitting them to all these journals.  In a year, I could even have an agent and a book deal.

I continued to eat ice cream as I entered my building and opened my apartment door.  When I was done with the pint, I took a shower and went to sleep.

Jane seemed a little bit happy when I told her I didn’t think I did so great.

“You could always keep working for me,” she said.  That was funny because she said that starting in January, she couldn’t even pay my pitiful salary anymore.

The fact that Ed was gone hadn’t made the finances any easier.  Despite his higher title, she hadn’t been paying him anything.

After a wonderful holiday with my parents, I called Ed to see how he did on the test.  He probably kicked ass.  He was much more well-read than me and probably had magical essay-writing powers gleaned from the typewriter method of writing.

“I didn’t bother take the test,” said Ed.  “I just said, ‘Fuck it.’”

“Why, man?  You already paid for the application.”

“I just thought about it and I don’t want to go back to school.  If you really want to be a journalist, you should just start freelancing and build up some clips.  Most journalists want to eventually become freelancers, anyway.”

“Maybe you’re right.  By the way, Jane was pretty upset about you quitting.”

“I didn’t quit.  I just never came back.  What’s the point to it?  Super Asian News is done.”

“But all we need is some money and we can print the October issue.  We can even change it to October slash November.”

“Listen, Ed. Get out of there!”

“I’m not giving up on this.  The community needs something that isn’t that stupid Sex Issues Only Magazine.”

“Don’t be stupid!  It’s not a movement you’re taking part in!  It’s a business, and you’re working for an owner!  And it’s a badly run business, too!”

“But we might get some money from the Moonies.”

“You’re on a trip to the Moonie!”

I kept going in, but Ed had gotten to me.  I was trying to imagine how I would spend my days if I weren’t at Super Asian News.  I wasn’t sure quite how I was going to quit, though.

One day, Jane asked me to go to RadioShack to get something, I think it was a phone part, and she gave me a five dollar bill for it.  But then the thing cost two dollars more and I had to use my own money for the difference.  That really pissed me off.  Not only was I donating my work to Jane and Super Asian News – I was paying to work there.

I got back to the office and showed her the receipt.  She got all huffy herself and threw me two dollars.  I don’t think we talked the rest of the day.

I spent that night thinking of what I should do.  In the end I wrote, by hand, a note: “I can’t work here anymore for you.”  I mailed it, along with a bunch of floppy disks of the early December issue.

I started going to meetings of the Asian American Writers’ Workshop, this fledging little group that met up at the battered folding tables in the Asian American Arts Alliance on Lafayette Street. I got Ed to join me there, too, and pretty soon we were both cranking out short stories.

It was an early start to that collection of short stories.  You know, for when I got rejected by Columbia Journalism School and had to head home.

Applicants were supposed to hear back from Columbia in late February or March.  I held my breath every day before checking my mail.

There was usually nothing.

Incredibly, I was already receiving solicitation letters from Columbia (the undergraduate school), even though graduation was less than a year ago.

When it hit April, I was pretty frantic.  I was too scared to call the admissions office, afraid that when they realized that no one had rendered a decision on me, the immediate reaction would be to reject.

In late April, I opened my mailbox and saw a fat manila envelope curled against the back wall.

I exhaled slowly and reached out for it.

I grabbed one edge and pulled it back to read the return address.

It read, “The Graduate School of Journalism of Columbia University.”

I did it.

How come Asians never sit in the front row?

At the Page Turner festival a few weeks ago, I read a short piece in which I channeled my mother — accent, broken English and all.

During the Q&A, this Asian woman asked me if I would read the same piece to a “white” audience, because in front of an “Asian” audience, “we’re all in on the joke” with the accent.

I don’t remember exactly what I said, but I was annoyed and sort of mean (when the event is posted to YouTube, I wonder if they’ll include that part).  I said something along the lines that I was trying to authentically portray my mother and that I read for myself without trying to tailor my work for any particular audience to seek approval.

But the question still annoys me.

For one thing, it assumes that all “white” people are ignorant jerks ready for a laugh drawn on stereotypical lines.

For another thing, my mother accent isn’t “the joke.”  What kind of jackass would I be for counting on a Chinese accent for laughs?

Essentially, my short piece is saying, “This is my mother.  She’s quite a character.  If you ask her to tell you a ghost story, this is what you’ll get.”

Let’s give “white” people some credit.  They are not all ignorant jerks out to screw over people of color.  Certainly not the “white” people who show up for book readings.  Larry the Cable Guy is not going to come to a Snakes Can’t Run reading.

And speaking of people of color, I put “white” in quotations because Asians come in all colors.  That “white” guy sitting next to you could have a gay Korean dad.

Believe it or not, the Asian-woman questioner later came up to my wife to compliment her on her performance in “Children of Invention,” in which her character speaks with a Cantonese accent!

Not quite the journey of a thousand miles.

You may know that I am attending the Bouchercon in Indianapolis.

You may not know that I am taking Amtrak there and Greyhound back.  It’s about 22 hours each way.

I honestly want to see if mass transit is a viable alternative to air travel.  It’s also green, man.  And I’m all about the green.

I will be updating the traveling there and back as well as the Bouchercon/Indianapolis in the upcoming days. You may be amused by keeping tabs on my Twitter and Facebook.

All the action starts 4:30 AM EST Wednesday.