Tag: NPR West

My Homie David Greene, An Appreciation

Posted on by Elise

Today my friend David, who co-hosts the program Morning Edition and podcast Up First, announced he was leaving NPR after 16 years. I’m so excited he is joining the ranks of the revenue promiscuous, like me. And his news gives me a reason to give him a much-deserved shout out not just for being a tremendous, curious and thoughtful journalist who I learn from constantly, but a most loyal friend. David is the kind of friend I want to be to others.

But for David, I might have not wound up at NPR West from my posting abroad. As I said on Twitter, he’s a co-conspirator and cheerleader, encouraging me to push for a West coast post, when it was extremely rare for an NPR international correspondent to return to the states and wind up anywhere besides the DC headquarters. David made the NPR West office, and life in Venice, sound so idyllic and collegial. And he was right.

The man doesn’t sleep. He works from midnight until 8am and due to a bicoastal marriage and a relentless wanderlust, he travels every week. But he always makes time for his friends, consistently taking charge on planning drinking get togethers and having people over (his wife Rose is a well-known restaurateur so they know how to host) and just checking in and being supportive, always.

David hooked me up with Howard, his literary agent and now mine, he muled my favorite eye makeup remover pads all the way to Seoul in the first months of my posting there, and he is always available to lend an ear despite a schedule that is more crammed with activities than there are hours in a day.

So cheers to you, David! America will miss waking up to your voice every morning. But for your sake, I’m so happy you’ll finally be able to sleep in.

Semi-Reopening Life

Posted on by Elise

Summer 2020, embracing the exclusively outdoor hang way of life.

COVID life has lingered long enough now that I can’t remember The Before, or BC (before COVID). School let out for the “summer” but what does that mean, when school let out in March, really? And what is a summer without vacations or camps or any summertime rituals we’re used to?

The girls didn’t join in any of the BLM protests but Eva has gotten a lot more woke about the mistreatment of Blacks in American society and wants to read about slavery and is constantly aghast about the lack of humanity in the practice. She learned yesterday that Thomas Jefferson and George Washington kept slaves and this shocked her. I explained that while people can do good things, they also do terrible things, and that’s the complexity of life and human beings.

LA County is still seeing climbing numbers, but climbing steadily and not exponentially (like some places, cough Texas cough). Cooped up too long, I’ve relaxed some of my more vigilant anti-COVID practices and have let the girls have outdoor playdates with the siblings Brandon and Emma, with whom we carpooled. The kids sprung to life when they could all be together again, I was delighted for them and sad at the same time, knowing how much socializing they’ve missed.

My friend squads are getting together for socially distanced hangs in the pool or out in courtyards or at parks. Last weekend a bunch of us from NPR hung out together to gossip and complain (as journalists are wont to do) and it felt great. Well, at least until I overheated. I showed up in my “Merry Merry Merry” Christmas sweatshirt so I lasted for about 45 minutes out there in the blazing sun before having to bounce.

There’s no end to this in sight. School probably won’t start in the fall. Uncertainty and just living in the moment is the way forward, as it’s the only option.

Interchangeable Asian Party

Posted on by Elise

For the past six or seven years, our colleagues have regularly confused me and fellow female Asian-American NPR reporter Ailsa for one another.

elise/ailsa. for whatever reason the difference is very tricky for many of our colleagues. Oh and the great sage/our pal Kumari is the best part of this photo, obvi.

We would receive the other’s emails and compliments for the other’s stories. I would come into work and people would ask me where my little dog was (Ailsa’s). She got a lot of congrats on my Seoul posting a few years ago. These nagging microaggressions happened so often that in 2013, Matty made a desk sign for me that featured side-by-side photos of me and Ailsa so that people could have a handy visual reminder of who’s who. (You don’t have to point out we don’t really look alike, we are aware.)

Now, I’m one foot out the door at NPR and Ailsa has moved here to LA to start hosting All Things Considered from the best coast. You could say we are … interchanging. So we hosted a little “revolving Asians” party to welcome her, do another bday gorgefest for me and most importantly, to poke fun of our long running plight and the friendship we forged as a result.

I love LA because it takes all comers, people are always here for random reasons and it’s full of friends from so many walks of life. To illustrate, here are people who made it out for boozeday Tuesday, an incomplete list:

— The regular drinking buddies
— My college dorm mate
— The dad I take turns doing carpool with
— My across the street neighbor
— A Defense Department friend who lived in Seoul the same time as us
— A pair of reporters I hired in 2011; one who had just landed from DC
— People who CAME ALL THE WAY FROM PASADENA to VENICE, so they may have started driving last week
— Mari, my Japanese interpreter in Tokyo who is also a working actress now doing a bunch of pilot season auditions in LA
— A civil libertarian I met a party & shared an Uber with two weeks ago
— Husband, armed with cake
— A guy named Bob who I met at a 7 year old’s pool party last summer and confessed he had a big crush on Ailsa Chang. Somehow I remembered this and made sure to track him down to invite him out. This delighted him and and Ailsa both, but especially him.

Welcome, Ailsa! It’s an honor just to be Asian, but also not bad accidentally receiving all the love that’s meant for you. 😉

Very low light on the patio but the point is our friends became friends and that brings me great joy

Barry’s Back, Y’all

Posted on by Elise

HBO’s Barry is back for season two! The premiere just aired last night.

After I moved here last September, I finally got around to binge-watching Barry, a show produced and written and sometimes directed by my friend Alec. It stars Bill Hader and features a lot of standout performances, but for my money the biggest breakout is the delightful Anthony Carrigan, who plays the Chechen mobster Noho Hank. If you watch the show, you know how loveable he is, even (and perhaps especially) during scenes of torture and death.

Clownin’ with the actor behind Noho Hank, Anthony Carrigan, after our interview last week.

It was the highlight of my week when Carrigan came in to let me just talk to him, about him, for more than an hour. I enjoyed it so much. Can’t wait to bring it to y’all in a full episode of our pod It’s Been A Minute, which I guest host for a week later this month.