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Showing posts from July, 2018

Summer Reading

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Looking back, I spent a lot of time in the library growing up. Well, libraries. Growing up poor in the war-torn streets of Seoul, my mom had found solace in the written page and she wanted to pass the value of reading along to her kids. As such, some of my earliest memories are in the Arlington Public Library surrounded by the comforting smell of musty old volumes stacked in labyrinthine shelves. By first grade, I could actually read pretty well relative to age and by third grade my mom and I would start to have these reading contests. We would cycle between choosing a book and seeing who could finish it first and then have a conversation about it over tea like some sort of two-person book club. The real kicker is that if I won, my mom would treat me to comic books, trading cards, and pogs. My mom worked over forty hours a week and did the heavy lifting when it came to the household; I always won. I know now that she never intended to win but really just to get me to read. The flip

I Bet You Look Good on the Dancefloor

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I don't think it's really telling tales out of school when I say that there's always a lot of musical energy crackling under the surface for me. It's not entirely uncommon to see me stop in mid-sentence when a song starts or softly sing along with whatever's playing in the background. Sometimes not so softly. That energy and appreciation carries over to dancing. I've never really had any formal dance training but that sure as hell has never stopped me before. I would tell you that a background of growing up with old Hollywood movies is what informed that. The big, showstopping musicals of yesteryear were definitely on steady rotation. Fred Astaire dancing with Ginger Rogers in Top Hat . Gene Kelly's Gershwin-fueled fever dream in An American in Paris . Dick Van Dyke leading a troupe of chimneysweeps across the rooftops of London in Mary Poppins . But I honestly think it comes from Michael Jackson. The late 80s was the last real period that my parents l

Pool Party

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I didn't learn how to swim until I was five. I have no idea if that's early or late, I don't go around asking people when they learned how to swim. But I can tell you I didn't learn how to swim until I was five. Looking to get out of the hustle and bustle of Arlington especially as my sister and I were starting to get older, my family moved deeper into the Virginia suburbs with our new home placed within walking distance of all the major schools, a lake, and several neighborhood pools; the closest of which had a beautiful view of the lake from its wooden deck. I had definitely been in pools before the age of five with those comedically oversized water wings on my arms but this was it, I was going to swim unaided. And, within a matter of weeks, I did; it's not all that hard to figure out. The one thing I've always had trouble with is the diving board. Every time I try to do a proper dive off one even all these years later I just smack right on the surface of t

Into the Woods

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If June and August were for the beach, July was for camping. I joined the Boy Scouts almost as an afterthought; all the either guys in the neighborhood had joined up a year or two before me and it just seemed like a good way to tag along. We would do all sorts of community service activities around the neighborhood fixing up parks and schoolyards and all that but the real highlight, of course, was the camping. One of the big benefits of living in Northern Virginia is that a little over an hour west and you were deep in the Appalachians. In my five years as a scout of various rank, I laid down canvas in Virginia, Maryland, West Virginia, Tennessee, and North Carolina. Sometimes there wasn't canvas at all and it was just me in a light sleeping bag under that clear summer sky. Sometimes it was in the dead of winter and you'd have to make sure you had a decent bedroll otherwise the cold earth would drain all the heat right out of your body overnight. I remember once accidentally

How to Fall Forever: Regarding Avengers - Infinity War

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It all started with an idea: The Earth's Mightiest Heroes would inevitably face challenges greater than any of them could handle individually necessitating banding together. As a team, the Avengers didn't make too much sense to me beyond that edict. They weren't like the X-Men who were bonded through their mutual persecution or the Guardians of the Galaxy, the interstellar misfits that need each other. The Avengers are a piecemeal, self-appointed all star squadron. So what happens when this A-list faces something they can't handle even as they stand together? They stand together anyway. A lot of that comes from the film's biggest underlying theme. No, not death, though that is a major one. No, the biggest theme in Avengers: Infinity War is promise. Some longstanding. And every single one with a cost. For Tony Stark, who stands front and center for much of the film, it's a promise he's made since the climactic battle in The Avengers . Haunted after ca

Borne on the Fourth of July

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Some of my earliest memories are of the Fourth of July. As a toddler, when my memories are first really starting to stick, we lived right in between Courthouse and Rosslyn. That meant we were a short distance away from the Marine Corps War Memorial right there near the banks of the Potomac River overlooking the city. A lot of those formative years were spent with my mom and/or grandparents taking me down to that memorial, running barefoot on the grass, DC shining across the water. That vantage point is not only my favorite of the city but it was also a prime viewing spot to take in fireworks bursting over the National Mall every July. Families would gather on the grass under the vigilant gaze of bronze figures hoisting Old Glory atop Mount Suribachi. Once we went full-on suburban, that meant the usual block party thing. All the various cul-de-sacs around the neighborhood would each have their own thing going not unlike Halloween but with a lot less costumes and a lot more grilling