It’s a backstory you couldn’t possibly escape: This past Valentine’s Day, Michael Angelakos opted out of throwing down the coin for some chocolates, teddy bears, or a copy of Love Actually. A little on the late side, he instead recorded for his girlfriend the lion’s share of the lap-pop serenade, Chunk of Change. Friends were [...]

More experimentation with the same premise and characters, but with a far different angle. — IT WAS REAL. IT ALWAYS IS. It was pre-party shots first, vodka, the brand didn’t matter, and then where were we? I didn’t know the address. The apartment on the second floor, the landing, and its rails wet with fog [...]

Allan Lancaster Nguyen studied Japanese at the coastal Californian university where he was earning a degree in Comparative Literature. At first it was because he was enamored with Japanese people. He dated a Japanese girl and discovered they were just like other people. Then he convinced himself he was fascinated by Japanese culture, which could [...]