Sunday, May 30, 2010
Sunday, May 16, 2010
The Artists of San Jose, Episode 1: Veronica Malki
this is a series i have started
stay tuned for more
stay tuned for more
Monday, March 22, 2010
Thursday, March 18, 2010
You Meet the Nicest People Making Videogames
i'm working on a new documentary -- with your help.
spread the word!
spread the word!
Friday, February 26, 2010
Friday, February 19, 2010
To be Young, Black, Male, Single and Homeless
To be Young, Black, Male, Single and Homeless in San Jose
My birthday’s coming in a couple of weeks. It’ll be my twenty-fifth, and it falls on a Saturday. Saturdays have always been kind of important to me, because ever since I was little, they were my day for cartoons and videogames. It’s how I’d like to celebrate – a bunch of cartoons, some people around, drawing, a pot of chili and maybe a few beers.
But first, I have to find a place to stay. Currently, I sleep on the floor of some friends' apartment, to which I have no key. This is a blessing, and I’ve had worse (try the back seat of an old 4Runner with no back window in the dead of winter), but there is something maddening about not being able to come and go as I please. In any event, I’ve only got this arrangement till the first of March, at which point I’m back to my own devices.
Now, before I landed in my current sitch, I checked out every state program I could find. Help for immigrant refugees, help for families, for women, for long term homeless, for minors – nothing for an able-bodied man down on his luck. And when I say “down on his luck,” I mean it – I’ve been unemployed so long I don’t qualify for unemployment.
And I do everything. I write, I edit video, I install car stereos, cook, clean, drive, shoot pictures and video, garden, watch dogs, teach, program in c++ and python – but it’s never worked out. I’ve got a smell on me or something, too much ambition, too much of an independent spirit. Or maybe it’s just a smell?
I’ve been laid off of three jobs across three industries – electronics manufacturing, telecommunications and entertainment – and three skillsets – electronic assembly, telephone connection and video editing – over the course of one year. The assembly job lasted two and a half weeks, at which point a manager told me the temp agency that hired me said they were letting me go, and to this day I don't know why. The telephone work dried up as a result of a misprint in my boss's phonebook ad. The editing work went away when one of my studio's contracts – the one that provided me with steady work – fell through. Remember those Chinese hacks of Google last winter? Google, Inc. only recently came forward with this information, so it's okay if you don't, but a group of Chinese hackers used a backdoor to get into Gmail accounts – a backdoor set up by Google in order to comply with government search warrants on users – to do things like spy on Chinese activists, advertise for whoever would pay, and so on. Well, I was a target, and the e-mail advertisement for a Chinese online store cost me a contract, which would’ve been three months of work at a rate that would’ve had me pretty well set for a year (a rate set by the customer, mind you).
This time last year, when the California unemployment rate reached 10.5%, the rate for black males was 16.3%. My resume was everywhere, and I can't remember any actual interviews from the period. I'd moved into my grandmother's house, and helped with errands and maintenance while I waited and prayed to find myself back on my feet. One in five black males share my story, and it wasn't too long before my uncle, a truck driver with more experience than I've had birthdays, joined me as a statistic staying under my grandmother's roof in Poway, a small town in north San Diego county.
My father, who'd moved across country not even a year prior because of a promotion, had at this point changed his tone in our conversations, from "son, you need an income. you have to go find something, anything," to, "times are hard, and I feel for you." He'd also gone from telling me when I was in high school that he didn't want to hear about me enlisting in the military (Boyz in the Hood is one of the first movies I remember seeing in theater, and the line, "the black man has no business in the white man's army," had always been a favorite of my dad's), to being a bit more accepting of the navy, since at least I wouldn't end up in Iraq.
After a months of unanswered applications, I found work with a nonprofit in San Jose, which would last for just shy of a year and offer a scholarship upon completion of the project. I was pretty well set, as long as I could find a place to stay. I hit Craig's List hard, and eventually found another job, editing video, which offered lodging and weekly pay, and would end just before the other began. I'd have enough saved to find a place close to the year long job.
My family was relieved. I'd found work. They were sad to see me go, but everyone got together to make sure I'd make it out okay. When I told my friends that I'd be studying animation after my year of work was done, they'd given me a bunch of their old equipment – computer drawing tablets and books – in support.
After I landed, everything fell apart. The man who I was to edit video for changed his mind minutes after touched down in San Jose, and less than a month later the year-long job fell through, because I had no birth certificate, and although I'd been told that if I were to come in with a notarized receipt of an order for an official copy, the decision from corporate was to let me go, anyway.
So I was back on the hunt, filling out applications, sending out copies of my resume, writing cover letters, putting hours of research into companies I'd never hear back from. I'd been called in for one interview, and afterward my interviewer was always "out sick" any time I called to follow up. At this point, the unemployment rate for black males climbed over 17%, while the rate for white males was at 9.4%. Shit was rough.
It was the day that, sitting in an arts community center which has become a bit of a respite for other early creative twenty-somethings who can’t find stable employment, I wrote on a sheet of paper, “if no one else will hire me, I might as well hire myself,” that things began to turn around. I set to work on projects that were important to me, and it resonated with the people who were already there. I’m more creative than I’ve been in a long time, and feel better about what I do every day than I ever have.
But it’s a little too late to turn the bus around. I won’t have any help from the state, and I’m fresh out of floors to sleep on. I should be more afraid, but it just doesn’t bother me so much – I know something’s going to happen.
On any given day, I probably don’t have a dime in my pocket, and getting freelance gigs sometime take a while for checks to be turned around. Plus, my credit is just bad enough than any place with a rental application probably isn’t an option.
But I love it here in San Jose, and I’ve got work to do here, no matter what my situation. The people here in San Jose have been kind enough to take me in when I had no place to go, to feed me when I had no food to eat, and have made for good company when it came down to talking shit over a game of cards, so I owe them every scrap of energy I can muster. Thank you, San Jose, for being my home.
My birthday’s coming in a couple of weeks. It’ll be my twenty-fifth, and it falls on a Saturday. Saturdays have always been kind of important to me, because ever since I was little, they were my day for cartoons and videogames. It’s how I’d like to celebrate – a bunch of cartoons, some people around, drawing, a pot of chili and maybe a few beers.
But first, I have to find a place to stay. Currently, I sleep on the floor of some friends' apartment, to which I have no key. This is a blessing, and I’ve had worse (try the back seat of an old 4Runner with no back window in the dead of winter), but there is something maddening about not being able to come and go as I please. In any event, I’ve only got this arrangement till the first of March, at which point I’m back to my own devices.
Now, before I landed in my current sitch, I checked out every state program I could find. Help for immigrant refugees, help for families, for women, for long term homeless, for minors – nothing for an able-bodied man down on his luck. And when I say “down on his luck,” I mean it – I’ve been unemployed so long I don’t qualify for unemployment.
And I do everything. I write, I edit video, I install car stereos, cook, clean, drive, shoot pictures and video, garden, watch dogs, teach, program in c++ and python – but it’s never worked out. I’ve got a smell on me or something, too much ambition, too much of an independent spirit. Or maybe it’s just a smell?
I’ve been laid off of three jobs across three industries – electronics manufacturing, telecommunications and entertainment – and three skillsets – electronic assembly, telephone connection and video editing – over the course of one year. The assembly job lasted two and a half weeks, at which point a manager told me the temp agency that hired me said they were letting me go, and to this day I don't know why. The telephone work dried up as a result of a misprint in my boss's phonebook ad. The editing work went away when one of my studio's contracts – the one that provided me with steady work – fell through. Remember those Chinese hacks of Google last winter? Google, Inc. only recently came forward with this information, so it's okay if you don't, but a group of Chinese hackers used a backdoor to get into Gmail accounts – a backdoor set up by Google in order to comply with government search warrants on users – to do things like spy on Chinese activists, advertise for whoever would pay, and so on. Well, I was a target, and the e-mail advertisement for a Chinese online store cost me a contract, which would’ve been three months of work at a rate that would’ve had me pretty well set for a year (a rate set by the customer, mind you).
This time last year, when the California unemployment rate reached 10.5%, the rate for black males was 16.3%. My resume was everywhere, and I can't remember any actual interviews from the period. I'd moved into my grandmother's house, and helped with errands and maintenance while I waited and prayed to find myself back on my feet. One in five black males share my story, and it wasn't too long before my uncle, a truck driver with more experience than I've had birthdays, joined me as a statistic staying under my grandmother's roof in Poway, a small town in north San Diego county.
My father, who'd moved across country not even a year prior because of a promotion, had at this point changed his tone in our conversations, from "son, you need an income. you have to go find something, anything," to, "times are hard, and I feel for you." He'd also gone from telling me when I was in high school that he didn't want to hear about me enlisting in the military (Boyz in the Hood is one of the first movies I remember seeing in theater, and the line, "the black man has no business in the white man's army," had always been a favorite of my dad's), to being a bit more accepting of the navy, since at least I wouldn't end up in Iraq.
After a months of unanswered applications, I found work with a nonprofit in San Jose, which would last for just shy of a year and offer a scholarship upon completion of the project. I was pretty well set, as long as I could find a place to stay. I hit Craig's List hard, and eventually found another job, editing video, which offered lodging and weekly pay, and would end just before the other began. I'd have enough saved to find a place close to the year long job.
My family was relieved. I'd found work. They were sad to see me go, but everyone got together to make sure I'd make it out okay. When I told my friends that I'd be studying animation after my year of work was done, they'd given me a bunch of their old equipment – computer drawing tablets and books – in support.
After I landed, everything fell apart. The man who I was to edit video for changed his mind minutes after touched down in San Jose, and less than a month later the year-long job fell through, because I had no birth certificate, and although I'd been told that if I were to come in with a notarized receipt of an order for an official copy, the decision from corporate was to let me go, anyway.
So I was back on the hunt, filling out applications, sending out copies of my resume, writing cover letters, putting hours of research into companies I'd never hear back from. I'd been called in for one interview, and afterward my interviewer was always "out sick" any time I called to follow up. At this point, the unemployment rate for black males climbed over 17%, while the rate for white males was at 9.4%. Shit was rough.
It was the day that, sitting in an arts community center which has become a bit of a respite for other early creative twenty-somethings who can’t find stable employment, I wrote on a sheet of paper, “if no one else will hire me, I might as well hire myself,” that things began to turn around. I set to work on projects that were important to me, and it resonated with the people who were already there. I’m more creative than I’ve been in a long time, and feel better about what I do every day than I ever have.
But it’s a little too late to turn the bus around. I won’t have any help from the state, and I’m fresh out of floors to sleep on. I should be more afraid, but it just doesn’t bother me so much – I know something’s going to happen.
On any given day, I probably don’t have a dime in my pocket, and getting freelance gigs sometime take a while for checks to be turned around. Plus, my credit is just bad enough than any place with a rental application probably isn’t an option.
But I love it here in San Jose, and I’ve got work to do here, no matter what my situation. The people here in San Jose have been kind enough to take me in when I had no place to go, to feed me when I had no food to eat, and have made for good company when it came down to talking shit over a game of cards, so I owe them every scrap of energy I can muster. Thank you, San Jose, for being my home.
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