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The Piano Player
Sep. 9th, 2006 02:45 pmMy name is Eric Cheung. I grew up in East Longmeadow, a suburb of Springfield, MA. My dad grew up in Hong Kong and moved to Boston in 1974. My mom grew up in Athol, MA and they met at the Chinese restaurant they worked at.
The first two things I liked to do growing up were drawing and bowling. I wasn't that great at bowling, so drawing would be the direction I'd go in. I knew I'd do something creative. I didn't fit in anywhere growing up.
So I went to Emerson College and discovered standup and writing. After graduation, I spent three years doing standup and writing about it. I was profiled in a local newspaper, took an acting class, I was invited to a join a comedy troupe, I was flown to LA by NBC, but above all, I met the best friends of my life and finally grew socially. I fit in somewhere.
A week ago, I left it all to move to LA and see if I could do television...
...I flew in on Labor Day and was booked in a hostel from which I'd look for an apartment. My uncles, my dad's two younger brothers who went to Berklee College of Music and moved to LA to pursue music, didn't like the look of the hostel. So, I went home with the younger of the two uncles, Ringo the drummer, and that's where I've been since.
That night I called my parents and applied for some apartments at westsiderentals.com. There are three main small buildings on my uncle's property. The main one where my grandparents live, my uncle's room with its own kitchen and bathroom, and the drum room, a shed in the back in which he practices and stores a lot of instruments. That's where I sleep. It's better than it sounds. The bed is hard and so's the pillow, but the room itself is comfortable. For meals I go into the grandparents building.
That's really the only time I'm in there so I kinda feel bad, just going in there for food, but I can't speak more than about ten words in Cantonese.
The next morning, the plan was we'd go check out all the apartments I applied for online. We looked at all except one, we had an appointment for that one the next day anyway. My uncle and I figured we'd just go to Hollywood and see if there were any "Now Leasing" signs. He showed me the place he lived in when he first moved here. He got it through Musicians Institute, the school he went to after Berklee. So we went there to see if the student bulletin board was still up. We couldn't just walk in as an alum and a non-student.
He had a clever plan to take a look. "I'm Ringo Cheung and I went to this school twenty years ago man. My nephew here's interested in the keyboard program, can I show him around? Here's my student ID. Ha, it's pretty old!" We were directed to the admissions department and I was more nervous than I looked. I had to BS my way through an interview, what were we doing here?
We went there only to see if some students wanted roommates, but I found myself getting sold on the school a bit. Maybe I would take a class here and there and learn piano. How did my uncle know that that's what instrument I liked?
Nah. But we did get something we were looking for. A housing guide for prospective students.
We drove around as tourists a bit and stopped into Tower Records on Sunset. It was actually much smaller than the one that used to be at Mass. Ave. and Newbury in Boston.
On the way home we decided that fifth place we were going to go see was probably too far from Hollywood to check out the next day. We went home and had some supper.
We woke up early anyways and when I greeted my uncle, for no particular reason, he said, "Let's go check out that apartment anway." Okay, what the hell.
He brought six CDs with us:
* Gotan Project-La Revancha del Tango
* Wingspan Hits and History
* Beck-Sea Change
* Thievery Corporation-The Cosmic Game
* Ricky Lee Jones-The Evening of My Best Day
* Paul McCartney-Chaos and Creation in the Backyard
On the way, I called the apartment buildings listed in the Musicians Institute housing guide and managed to get an appointment at one of them. It was at noon and it was a building that was almost certainly out of my price range. I also had to call the place we were visiting because we were going to be late. "We'll eat after we visit that place," my uncle reassured.
The call kept on failing, so we just would have to figure out how to get there and hope they wouldn't mind us being late. We got there and I asked my uncle, "Whaddya think?" He said it wasn't too bad, the neighborhood seemed okay, both in safety and location.
I tried calling two more times. The first time, the call failed. I tried again as we turned back towards the car. "May I help you?...Oh, you're outside? Come on in." So we took a look at the place.
It was a studio but there were two elderly people in the room and there were big dirty boxes everywhere, but it looked like it'd be okay if it was just me. My uncle and I talked some more. He offered, "The manager, James seems real nice, he seems to know what's going on. He said it's in the center of everything." Okay. But that was good enough for me. I didn't think James was lying either. "We're interested." Besides there was a piano in the laundry room in the basement, sweet!
We got sent to the management office on Melrose Ave. I had to make sure I did all the talking when we got our papers. My uncle did have to co-sign, but more because I didn't have a job yet. He started talking about how he did a lot of freelance stuff and was nervous about signing. "But he also teaches a lot!" I quickly chimied in. Somehow we got approved really quickly, while we ate lunch at McDonald's on Hollywood Blvd. So, we stopped off at Professional Drum Shop where he bought some sticks and I clogged the toilet and tried to fix it like a Buster Keaton character. Walking away from the bathroom slowly, I closed the door, my job unfinished, and put up the Occupied sign. "Ready to go?"
We signed the lease agreement and went to pick up my uncle's plane ticket for his tour of China and then to one of his student's houses to sit in. The kid's thinking of transferring to Emerson, so I chatted with him for a while, then called my folks about the apartment.
In the car we listened to all the CDs except for "Chaos and Creation." The Thievery Corporation CD actually sounded familiar. It's an eclectic set of songs that span searches the globe for its sounds and, while it's not entirely techno, it's not lyric-heavy. It's a disc filled with collaborations including one with Talking Heads frontman David Byrne. But the reason it sounded familiar is because I heard those exact songs before. Until a week-and-a-half ago, I worked at the Musuem of Science in Boston. One of the things I did there was work in the Omni Theatre as an usher. In between their films, they play music that's usually light on lyrics, such as Thievery Corporation. I went through each song on the CD and knew at least half of them. It's weird the things that remind somebody of home.
My uncle dropped me off at K-Mart while he went across the street to another lesson and I bought a 20" TV.
Thursday I went to the movies and saw "Idlewild" and snuck into "Accepted." Idlewild is most simply described as "Moulin Rouge" as done by Outkast. In this case, a piano player is the storyteller involved in a tragic love story, this time during a time of mob run speakeasies, his best friend the one in mob trouble.
After I left the theatre, I walked into a New Orleans-themed family-run fast food place. There was a piano in the back and I didn't dare do more than lift the hood of the wood and ivory.
Last night before supper, my uncle taught me some percussion. I played the djembe and even improvised a little.
After supper, we saw another cat, there was a stray with a collar earlier that day. I was white with brown spots, and this one was smaller white, with a black and white striped tail and no collar. It accidentally entered my uncle's room. So, I lured it outside towards my room, the drum shed. It liked me a little too much.
In the coming week I'll be looking for furniture, a job, and probably contacting the folks I know who've moved out here in the past couple of years.
Thank you, I'm Eric Cheung. I'm on MySpace and Live Journal.
The first two things I liked to do growing up were drawing and bowling. I wasn't that great at bowling, so drawing would be the direction I'd go in. I knew I'd do something creative. I didn't fit in anywhere growing up.
So I went to Emerson College and discovered standup and writing. After graduation, I spent three years doing standup and writing about it. I was profiled in a local newspaper, took an acting class, I was invited to a join a comedy troupe, I was flown to LA by NBC, but above all, I met the best friends of my life and finally grew socially. I fit in somewhere.
A week ago, I left it all to move to LA and see if I could do television...
...I flew in on Labor Day and was booked in a hostel from which I'd look for an apartment. My uncles, my dad's two younger brothers who went to Berklee College of Music and moved to LA to pursue music, didn't like the look of the hostel. So, I went home with the younger of the two uncles, Ringo the drummer, and that's where I've been since.
That night I called my parents and applied for some apartments at westsiderentals.com. There are three main small buildings on my uncle's property. The main one where my grandparents live, my uncle's room with its own kitchen and bathroom, and the drum room, a shed in the back in which he practices and stores a lot of instruments. That's where I sleep. It's better than it sounds. The bed is hard and so's the pillow, but the room itself is comfortable. For meals I go into the grandparents building.
That's really the only time I'm in there so I kinda feel bad, just going in there for food, but I can't speak more than about ten words in Cantonese.
The next morning, the plan was we'd go check out all the apartments I applied for online. We looked at all except one, we had an appointment for that one the next day anyway. My uncle and I figured we'd just go to Hollywood and see if there were any "Now Leasing" signs. He showed me the place he lived in when he first moved here. He got it through Musicians Institute, the school he went to after Berklee. So we went there to see if the student bulletin board was still up. We couldn't just walk in as an alum and a non-student.
He had a clever plan to take a look. "I'm Ringo Cheung and I went to this school twenty years ago man. My nephew here's interested in the keyboard program, can I show him around? Here's my student ID. Ha, it's pretty old!" We were directed to the admissions department and I was more nervous than I looked. I had to BS my way through an interview, what were we doing here?
We went there only to see if some students wanted roommates, but I found myself getting sold on the school a bit. Maybe I would take a class here and there and learn piano. How did my uncle know that that's what instrument I liked?
Nah. But we did get something we were looking for. A housing guide for prospective students.
We drove around as tourists a bit and stopped into Tower Records on Sunset. It was actually much smaller than the one that used to be at Mass. Ave. and Newbury in Boston.
On the way home we decided that fifth place we were going to go see was probably too far from Hollywood to check out the next day. We went home and had some supper.
We woke up early anyways and when I greeted my uncle, for no particular reason, he said, "Let's go check out that apartment anway." Okay, what the hell.
He brought six CDs with us:
* Gotan Project-La Revancha del Tango
* Wingspan Hits and History
* Beck-Sea Change
* Thievery Corporation-The Cosmic Game
* Ricky Lee Jones-The Evening of My Best Day
* Paul McCartney-Chaos and Creation in the Backyard
On the way, I called the apartment buildings listed in the Musicians Institute housing guide and managed to get an appointment at one of them. It was at noon and it was a building that was almost certainly out of my price range. I also had to call the place we were visiting because we were going to be late. "We'll eat after we visit that place," my uncle reassured.
The call kept on failing, so we just would have to figure out how to get there and hope they wouldn't mind us being late. We got there and I asked my uncle, "Whaddya think?" He said it wasn't too bad, the neighborhood seemed okay, both in safety and location.
I tried calling two more times. The first time, the call failed. I tried again as we turned back towards the car. "May I help you?...Oh, you're outside? Come on in." So we took a look at the place.
It was a studio but there were two elderly people in the room and there were big dirty boxes everywhere, but it looked like it'd be okay if it was just me. My uncle and I talked some more. He offered, "The manager, James seems real nice, he seems to know what's going on. He said it's in the center of everything." Okay. But that was good enough for me. I didn't think James was lying either. "We're interested." Besides there was a piano in the laundry room in the basement, sweet!
We got sent to the management office on Melrose Ave. I had to make sure I did all the talking when we got our papers. My uncle did have to co-sign, but more because I didn't have a job yet. He started talking about how he did a lot of freelance stuff and was nervous about signing. "But he also teaches a lot!" I quickly chimied in. Somehow we got approved really quickly, while we ate lunch at McDonald's on Hollywood Blvd. So, we stopped off at Professional Drum Shop where he bought some sticks and I clogged the toilet and tried to fix it like a Buster Keaton character. Walking away from the bathroom slowly, I closed the door, my job unfinished, and put up the Occupied sign. "Ready to go?"
We signed the lease agreement and went to pick up my uncle's plane ticket for his tour of China and then to one of his student's houses to sit in. The kid's thinking of transferring to Emerson, so I chatted with him for a while, then called my folks about the apartment.
In the car we listened to all the CDs except for "Chaos and Creation." The Thievery Corporation CD actually sounded familiar. It's an eclectic set of songs that span searches the globe for its sounds and, while it's not entirely techno, it's not lyric-heavy. It's a disc filled with collaborations including one with Talking Heads frontman David Byrne. But the reason it sounded familiar is because I heard those exact songs before. Until a week-and-a-half ago, I worked at the Musuem of Science in Boston. One of the things I did there was work in the Omni Theatre as an usher. In between their films, they play music that's usually light on lyrics, such as Thievery Corporation. I went through each song on the CD and knew at least half of them. It's weird the things that remind somebody of home.
My uncle dropped me off at K-Mart while he went across the street to another lesson and I bought a 20" TV.
Thursday I went to the movies and saw "Idlewild" and snuck into "Accepted." Idlewild is most simply described as "Moulin Rouge" as done by Outkast. In this case, a piano player is the storyteller involved in a tragic love story, this time during a time of mob run speakeasies, his best friend the one in mob trouble.
After I left the theatre, I walked into a New Orleans-themed family-run fast food place. There was a piano in the back and I didn't dare do more than lift the hood of the wood and ivory.
Last night before supper, my uncle taught me some percussion. I played the djembe and even improvised a little.
After supper, we saw another cat, there was a stray with a collar earlier that day. I was white with brown spots, and this one was smaller white, with a black and white striped tail and no collar. It accidentally entered my uncle's room. So, I lured it outside towards my room, the drum shed. It liked me a little too much.
In the coming week I'll be looking for furniture, a job, and probably contacting the folks I know who've moved out here in the past couple of years.
Thank you, I'm Eric Cheung. I'm on MySpace and Live Journal.
