jeffrey + upstairsloft

Here’s what went down the week Harry Potter came out.
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Three days, ten cups of tea, eight DVDs, twelve hours of music, eight games of pool, 24 hours of sleep, forty-two hours of homework, time with my family—yeah. Thanksgiving weekend is productive and relaxing all-around. I even watched Armageddon. I almost popped in Schnidler’s List, which is equivalent to five dvds.

Off the top of my head: National Treasure, Hitch, Eternal Sunshine, Garden State, Alfie (twice), Crash, Finding Neverland and Armageddon. Apparently I’ve seen two Kate Winslet flicks—probably because my Kate is 115.2 miles away.

Ha. Woops. I’m getting fat. A little belly action going on there. Sigh. Time to start jogging again…. Same weight, not the same belly. The body can be a gross thing. That is why I am strongly considering starting the elimination of red meat in my diet 2 years early. Well, fatness and overall health. By the time I am 50 I will swear off meat for life. That’s my lifelong goal. I’m not talk. I’m action. Action Jackson Satisfaction.

I feel fat. Happy Gobs.

It is a long and studious process. It is creating order of researched information into a deliverable and organizaed presentation on 8.5 x 11″ paper, double-spaced, 12pt Times, 1-inch margins and excrucaiting idea constpiation. They’re called essays.

Not the kind you see on Northgate, gang-banging, but the ones that college students naturally wait to do at last minute when there are much better and more qualified things that call for our attention, like designing a historical and abstract poster with a clever and creative solution, with relevance, meaning and fun. What about this iPod event that my year has been bending over backwards to plan? Oh, and the countless worksheets and projects in addition to the “major” project that I just mentioned 10 words ago. For each project assigned is an expected deliverable of a million and a half ideas and a million and a half hours, or so it seems. But here I am, incubating on my damn essay, which is due in 3 hours; but I have to leave for school in two hours and I have 3 pages to go.

As usual, I do not have rest waiting for me at the end of this, rather, I have my normal routine to pursue—the one I stepped away from for a day to complete this essay on Vegetarianism. If I could cast a spell to charm Claire into becoming a lecturer for vegetarianism, I would say the incantation listen to her speak and write down her words. Nobody else would hear her speak but me, so it is plagiarism but nobody would know, because I would cast a memory charm on her right after. And then I’ll do a memory charm on you because I did not just unleash some ultimate Harry Potter nerdisms on you. Dammit! Back to essay.

I hate my lack of confidence. I’m cracking under the pressure. Every day is a potential day to breakdown. This semester I worked more consecutive hours on anything I ever worked in the past 22 years. Despite the countless back-to-back work hours and all-nighters, I am still not accomplishing anything above satisfactory. I never feel like I’m doing enough. To make matters worse, I can honestly say I don’t anticipate winter break. What is winter break? Winter break is less than a month away. I still have loads of projects to complete and I see nothing but brain torture for the next 3 weeks. I’m fried and all I can do is complain about it.

GOOD NIGHT. Nobody wants to crash into sidewalks and cyclists on the way to school.

I’ve been doing work since Friday and Kate just started Sunday evening. In fact, she’s even asleep right now, while I am still up, finishing up on catching up. Sadly, Kate will finish her work in 90% less time it took me to do work and we will achieve the same results, the same reaction and the same grade. If Kate put as much time as I did in design, she would be Paul Rand, in a wig— a Guerilla Girl. So why do I push her to do her work when I can help set her up for a downfall with her horrible habit of laziness and procrastination? She has the capability to be great designer, world-wide recognition, but she doesn’t have the will to work for it. I’m constipated with ideas and she’s a diarrhea explosion on the walls of ideas. Get that visual?

Two of the few people I have to watch out from just left my house after a laid but grueling session of working on homework. This weekend is pretty much summarized by working on multiple projects until the wee hour of the early morning. Rob, Kate and I are home this weekend, in the bay, and Rob just left my place, which concluded our insightful conversations about design and design education over some coffee and concept sketching

Kate and Rob are two talented graphic designers I am competing with—more importantly, I am working with them. It’s a blessing that I get to work with these two individuals, whose ambition is just as strong. Rob yearns for great things in design. He wants to be an asset to the design community. I’ll say the same for Kate.

A few minutes ago I decided to replace the pocket in my backpack with Mark Oldach’s Book on Creativity/Process, which originally housed Dondis’ Primer to Visual Literacy. This is a milestone. I am not dumping the book, but I am finally focusing on expanding my creativity, developing the strength to brainstorm and expand on countless ideas, meanwhile, applying gestalt principles and art elements as second nature with intent, meaning and affirmation.

Upstairsattic, man. Kate always sounds mean. Jun talks about love, or something. Jay is happy now. Paul, you guys remember, he used to post stuff. I believe he has some of his artwork from about a million and a half years ago. And Sara, well, since February her site has been “Coming Soon.” You guys are funny. Lazy, yes. But funny. Now… what to do with this whole Die Papyrus website….

An interesting fact about me. I went to high school with Tyan Yu of The Joyluck Club film. Even more. Tyan Yu (Okay, his real name is Will Gong) was the lead guitarist of my high school band, Dark Mirror Velcro. Here is a child star gone bad. The pics are from January 2002. You can check my myspace and look for him. I believe he commented “Yo yo yo.” You can see an example of child stars gone bad. Yes, his arm is covered in ink.

>>> Will’s Film Debut!!! [url]