6: Be the Fruit Loop.

"The Fruit Loop among the Cheerios." 

— Gabrielle Povolotsky 

I'm pleased to announce the newest section of my blog — Wisdom: In Six Words Or Less.

And it all came from what I at first considered nothing more than a fun gift.

At at DOZ family dinner at Nakwon on Thursday, my big sib handed me a chunky teal paperback, its cover appealingly gritty under my curious fingers. 

As I flipped open "It All Changed In An Instant: More Six-Word Memoirs," I laughed at the obviously funny ("That sounded better in my head"), read some out loud to my family ("Normal person becomes psychotic on Twitter") and glossed over the rest. 

But this weekend, I found myself drawn back to the book's paradoxical simplicity. 

It had been too long since I stumbled across something as simultaneously curious, hilarious and touching.  Each time I fall back into the pages, I peel away another layer or two, spot another gem or two of meaning buried in each tiny phrase or spend a few moments thinking. 

Unpacking each tiny wisdom-studded story captivates me. It's reading, thinking and learning. It's an exercise in concision and introspection. And it's fun.

So I'm starting it here.

Whenever I hear a gem of wisdom from someone I know or stumble across something that resounds with me, I'll condense it to six words or less and tell the accompanying story. 

Today's quote at the top of the post is straight from the book and self-explanatory.

Be the Fruit Loop. 

Where have I been?

Well, this pretty much says it all.

(click to enlarge)

And yes, that does say "jury duty." As in, Los Angeles Superior Court jury duty. That's what I get for registering to vote in California.

Luckily, it just involves phoning in at 8:30 a.m. every morning to see if I'm needed. I got off the hook today. Not sure what I'm going to do if they actually need me...

The "Extracurricular" tab is currently about 80 percent Delta Omicron Zeta and 20 percent Neon Tommy.

A slightly more interesting post — small boats, sailing and tsunami warnings — coming soon.

Found: Family.

(photo credit: Jenna Kovalsky, USC '13)

Some of my friends have huge extended families: a spiderweb of cousins, aunts in every state and distant second cousins twice-removed who happily reune at the drop of a hat.

Until this weekend, I considered my family wildly different. I've always celebrated Thanksgiving with my sister, my parents and occasionally my dad's mom.  At Christmas, we really go crazy — four Nelsons, an aunt, two uncles, my grandmother and one cousin. I'm not even home for the Fourth of July, Easter or Memorial Day.

But now, I've reconsidered. I walked away from the Delta Omicron Zeta Epsilon class retreat with 18 new family members. 

What happened during the weekend will stay between our class and our membership team, but something I can't even put my finger on, something I can only attempt to put into words, tied us together during an incredibly special getaway. 

As we stood in a parking lot, throwing stuff back into the trunks of our cars, we hugged and said our goodbyes until our next meeting. 

But we didn't make it that long.

Half an hour later, we all pulled off the freeway for an impromptu brunch, which we promised would be "really quick, because we all have so much to do." 

Instead, our meal stretched into two more hours of laughing, talking, passing food, sharing stories, paying for each other's meals, hugging, scolding, telling jokes and relaxing in an atmosphere where everyone is accepted, no matter what.

Doing what a family does.

(And yes, we may have recently written on each other's arms in Sharpie. You can be young once, but immature forever — as long as you have good soap.)

Don't be so negative.

Kkksscchlickkk. Kkschlickk. 

You're probably not currently cradling a Nikon F5 analog, but now you'll never have to: that's the sound my shutter makes. Exactly. 

And trust me – I had plenty of time this weekend in silence to figure out the exact onomatopoeia. 

I spent Friday, Saturday and Sunday afternoon huddled over an enlarger in USC's photo lab, sharpening, exposing and washing, so I could finish my first photo exhibit for class by Monday morning at 9 a.m. 

Something about the darkroom kills social impulses. Maybe it's the orange safelight, which makes everyone look jaundiced and pudgy. Or maybe conversation just dies in the air of intense concentration. 

So as I fished dripping print after print from the tubs in silence, fingers, hair and jeans absorbing the developer's acrid smell, I had plenty of time to think.

I love it.

After a lifetime of shooting disposable and digital, the gritty reality of SLR film photography has captured me: the crisp kkkschlick of the shutter, the smell of the developer and the permanency of the image I create. 

Film can be damaged or ruined, fat thumbprints and dust scamper gleefully across negatives (trust me, I learned that lesson), but the image never truly disappears the way megapixels can. 


Most of my pictures don't turn out the way I want. I can walk away from a shot feeling confident I got it, only to discover days later that it isn't at all what I expected. That's half the fun. 


Shooting with film has made me more deliberate. I can't just glance at my camera, wrinkle my nose and press "Delete." Now, each roll has an exacting process: loading, winding, finding, framing, metering, adjusting, shooting, advancing, bracketing, repeat. The rote repetition is soothing.


And, most importantly — starting my two most difficult class days with three hours of photo calms me, focuses me and wakes me up in time for print and broadcast journalism at noon.


I don't begrudge the Roski School of Fine Arts a cent of my credit card debt (neither does Visa). 


So far, it's been worth every penny.


• • •


I displayed my first prints during class Monday. They certainly have a host of technical issues, but I was very proud of the way my shots turned out.

Once I get them back, I'll scan them and put them up.

Byline: Re-in-Stated

If I didn't work out for five months, I'd be miserable, slow and sore my first day back at the gym. Only muscle memory and unwavering willpower could get me through two sweaty miles or pushups to exhaustion.

A five-month reporting hiatus produced exactly the same result.

After slogging through a reporting marathon for a State of the Union watch party in Marina del Rey,  juggling a laptop and its power cord, an audio recorder and bag, a video camera and bag, two different sets of headphones, a bulky tripod, a digital camera, a notebook, multiple pens and my heavy purse, I was as exhausted as I would be coming back from the gym.

At times, I felt absolutely lost.

After all, I've always been a print reporter. I shoot video for broadcast class, but I've never even collected audio, photos, quotes and video all at once. I had no muscle memory to fall back on.

But in the Neon Tommy newsroom, In-N-Out cup in hand, quotes on paper, audio and video and photos on cards, I started to perk up.

My love of writing woke up, looked around and stretched enthusiastically after five months of forced dormancy. I hadn't realized how much I'd missed it.

Maybe this multimedia thing isn't so bad, I thought. Yes, it's hard to be a one-man band. Yes, I'll always love writing more. And yes, I messed up and the audio didn't really come out at all. But shooting and editing and writing all at once is great training. It's a learning experience. And I'll get better.

By the time I stumbled out of Annenberg at 11:15 p.m., a menagerie of technology and belongings slung across my back, I felt exhilarated.

There's really nothing like trudging out of a newsroom in the middle of the night, absolutely exhausted but knowing you've met your deadline and done good work.


I've missed that feeling.

• • •

Read my first Neon Tommy post here, as a segment in a larger piece: "Obama supporters gather around L.A. to watch speech."

And be sure to check out the slideshow and captions.

It's great to be back.

Wow. Sticker shock.

This is the first time in my life I won't be able to pay off my credit card at the end of the month.

And it's a scary thought.

I haven't eaten out for more than $5 since I got back.  I didn't splurge on sunglasses or designer jeans. And I'm not looking forward to a Cabo spring break trip, a weekend in Mammoth or even a refrigerator full of groceries.

Instead, my dresser is piled high with 28 rolls of 36-exposure, 400-speed black and white film, a 50mm fixed lens, a bulky negatives binder, 100 5X7 negative sheets, canned air (not even air is free these days...), scissors, a grease pencil, 100 sheets of photo paper, a microphone, headphones, a headphone adapter, two history textbooks, two journalism textbooks, an exorbitant photography handbook, 5 mini-DV cassettes and a partridge in a pear tree.

I couldn't believe my eyes when I added everything up.

But after quadruple-checking it, I had to face some depressing financial facts: it's spending crackdown time.

So this, my friends, marks a new era of frugality — of making do with the dusty whatevers in the back of the cupboard. No more eating out, no more homemade cookies or banana bread for friends and (sniff) no more sunglasses from the vendor on Trousdale. Who's with me?

... That is, until I've paid off the balance and put a nice lump back in savings. Then I'm going out for a full cart of groceries, a nice steak and new sunglasses to celebrate.

(On the bright side, this is great training for life on a starting journalist's salary.)

Ark construction currently on hold

For six straight days, I've been waking up to three sounds: my Sonic Boom alarm blaring, sleepy mumbles from my dormant roommate and driving rain slamming into the window a foot from my pillow.

I've always loved rainy days. Something about the peaceful pitter-patter soothes me. But this week, as Los Angelenos faced flooding, evacuations and thousands of dollars in damage, I couldn't find much to like.

(via NowPublic)

Like a lonely kid stuck with a bad babysitter and longing for his parents, I'd started to think our loving sun was never coming back.

When I blearily cracked an eye open at 10 a.m. Saturday though, something felt immediately different. The bird were chirping. I didn't hear the drip-drap of raindrops falling from the eaves. And cheery sunlight was streaming through our blinds.

I floated through the rest of the weekend in a sunny haze. I smiled more at a DOZ rush barbecue, laughed more with my roommate and dawdled more on my way to develop film, savoring the gentle wind tugging my hair and the warming California sunshine.

During six days of drippy misery, I remembered why LA needs rain occasionally. It's for the same reason I need the Midwest when it's miserably icy and —4958° below zero (roughly). Besides satisfying my cravings for seasonal variety and washing this year's drought statistics off the charts, last week's rain renewed my appreciation and thankfulness for weather like this.

I've always loved California's breezy sunlight kisses on my cheeks while I slowly bike to class. I love seeing disbelieving Midwestern high schoolers on campus tours wiggle their ghostly toes in long-forgotten flip-flops.

And now, I love even more the days I can leave my bike at home — because the lock's been finicky and I'd rather not bother, or because I'm early and have time to walk. Or mainly because it's 70 and sunny, and so I just can.

(It may only be in the '50s, but at least it isn't snowing, right? Silver linings. Silver linings.)