Logics of Productivity and Waiting

Now that quals are done, I have to write a prospectus. Annenberg, unlike other departments at USC (and indeed, in other schools), do not require one to have a prospectus before taking quals, although the culture seems to be moving toward making sure students have an idea about what they would like to research for their dissertation before starting the quals process.

For those of you who aren't in a PhD program, a prospectus is a proposal detailing what you want to research for the next couple years. Although many prospecti (plural of prospectus?) are different, most include a research question (what exactly is it you want to find out?), some background on the topic (has there been any work done on this before that you can build on? Does this research address a lack or a gap in knowledge, or tackles some sort of problem?), methods (how you're going to get data), possible limitations, and anticipated findings.

In recent weeks, I've found myself being drawn to the idea of being "busy," and what sort of cultural or social norms create this impetus to always be doing something. Tim Kreider, of the New York Times, wrote an interesting article about being busy - how our sense of busy-ness is oftentimes self-imposed, and that the people who truly do not have any time for themselves aren't "busy" - they are, as Kreider says, "tired. Exhausted. Dead on their feet." He makes the assumption that these people are often individuals of a lower social stratum. He takes a bit of an extreme in thinking about the "busy posers," who are painted in his article, as privileged, wearing their busy-ness as a badge of honor, running back and forth between self-imposed obligations, and those who necessarily have to do work in order to earn a living to ensure their survival. The former, it is implied, seem more susceptible to being subjugated to a logic of productivity, in which every minute of every day must be scheduled and planned, in which they have to be doing something, but that something is often something in addition to their basic survival needs, and they have a modicum of choice whether or not they want to do it (from a strictly resource-oriented perspective). I think of these people as having a (relatively) high temporal capital. The latter group, the group that relies on the ungodly commutes to minimum wage jobs in order to make enough economic capital to ensure their basic survival, then, has relatively lower temporal capital.

This is obviously a very reductive way of thinking about temporal capital. While we can certainly attempt an argument that temporal capital is a strong indicator of class, a determination of temporal capital itself is based on a multitude of different factors. Temporal capital does not only apply to the individual as a whole, but is, in fact, variable given the context and circumstance in which an individual, or a group of individuals find themselves. In other words, temporal capital is also based on who "owns" the time within a given circumstance. In most circumstances, temporal capital aligns with one's position on the relevant hierarchy. A factory worker has less control over his time than his supervisor. In this way, similar to Kreider's implications, temporal capital works as a way to communicate power between individuals. Additionally, time, if you have it, can be invested to increase one's economic capital (by working), social capital (through leisure activities or time spent with friends and family), cultural capital (going to museums, watching movies and TV shows, reading books),

However, there are also circumstances where institutional processes co-opt everyone's time in the same way, regardless of one's position in the social hierarchy. For example, everyone has to serve on jury duty as long as they are a resident of a certain county in the United States. One cannot decide that he or she does not want to go sit in a room and wait to see if any cases require a jury of peers. Similarly, Emergency Room waiting areas are equally blind (except in extreme cases) to one's class status, basing patient priority on the severity of the patient's condition. Doctor's offices, on the other hand, make the assumption that the doctor's time is more valuable than the patient's, and is therefore common as an area of great wait times. In this way, temporal capital communicates who has the power in a given context. You wait for the doctor because you want to get that strange, pus-filled lump in your armpit checked out, and hopefully get prescribed some antibiotics for it.

My very simple question that I wish to pose is whether mobile communication technologies have expanded temporal capital for those who can afford it, especially in times of waiting. I think the simple question is yes, but I also think it's going to be a bit more nuanced than that...

(ok, I had meant to take a shower, and come back and work on this some more, but between celebrating, quietly, New Year with my folks, and being sick, and lack of sleep, I'm going to post this now. G'nite, y'all.)

J&C Food (and other) Adventures: Confessions

Oops, this was supposed to have been posted yesterday.

A lot of people were telling us that doing this vegetarian thing for a few days wouldn't be hard at all. Well. After the first day, we already had some meat, and will do it again today. We're going to have to re-adjust our goals to just eating healthy, which I think is more doable than going completely vegetarian.

Yesterday, we did a salad lunch (but at a bar that Jenny's brother really wanted to go to, which included, uh, fried mushrooms and pepperoni bites. I can see your looks of disappointment already). But for dinner, we went to Green Temple which has delicious food that is all vegetarian.

Of course, yesterday was a very odd day. There was a death in the family. Jenny's family lost their parrot, Jimmy, who seemed to have gotten himself tangled in his bedding and asphyxiated himself. :( Jenny found him when we went over to her parents' house, and, well, I'll spare y'all the details...

So we went to the mall, to Buffalo Wild Wings, where we attempted to keep up the no-meat rule by looking at their salad section, where we were greeted with the utter lack of any entree that was meatless, forcing us to get their honey BBQ chicken salad, making us feel slightly less guilty about eating chicken. Later, I purchased 3 books for $2 at Bookoff. Amazing.

On our way home, we encountered a Shiba Inu named Sasha following our car in Jenny's parents' neighborhood and called his owner, whose response was, "oh, they hate him on that street." Hah! Sat outside with him for 20 minutes while his owner showed up. He was very standoffish. Clearly too good for the likes of us humans.

Today, again, we cheated. I guess at this point, we're giving up the meatless deal. We went to a Filipino restaurant called LA Rose Cafe with Kenneth and Grace, where we got things that were distinctly NOT vegetarian. Sausages and tocino and beef with eggs and rice. But tonight, we're trying to be a bit better. We're cooking up a feast. Yay.

J&C Veggie Adventures: T-2, with fried chicken and beef hash

I realized that stocking up on meats before trying to do a veggie thing is not the best idea at all, but we went to this place today called Mama Dip's, which had a random sculpture garden filled with sculptures of farm animals made of scrap metal in the back.

Brunch was fried chicken tenders with gravy and eggs and grits. Southern comfort food, which is not at all healthy. And we got a side of hush puppies. Jenny got beef hash. Yea...we need some leafy greens.

J&C's Veggie Adventures: The first road bump

Jenny just wailed in despair as she realized that she's on vacation until Sunday, and that she won't be able to eat meat for part of her vacation. Oy...this might be harder than we thought...

Jenny: Chicken's not a meat...

Cris: That's the gateway meat.

Our 5-day vegetarian stint

In the last year, Jenny and I have both gained weight. We would like to rectify this (not necessarily the weight thing - but definitely want to be healthier---and save money). And we keep making these pacts to eat less meat and more veggies, and cook at home more. This lasted about a week and a half last time... and now, we're eating our way through Tennessee and North Carolina.

We are currently in North Carolina, visiting Cris, who (as I'm sure most of you who read this blog know) has been a vegetarian for 2 decades, and after a conversation with her and Jenny's friend Cindy, we made a pact (a pinky swear), that between the time we get back (Dec 6th) till I leave for Hong Kong (11th), we will not eat meat. Only 5 days, because this is a close-ended and goal-oriented. Hopefully easier to accomplish rather than saying "we're going to stop eating so much meat NOW until FOREVER."

I (with Jenny's blessing) am keeping this blog to keep us accountable. I will try to blog every day as to our successes, failures, and cravings. Yes, we actually need this. Clearly, no self-control.

Katy Perry and the AMAs

My friend asked me what I thought about the Katy Perry AMA performance and the discussions going on about whether or not it is racist. Is it racist, or does it merely "celebrate" the Japanese culture?

This is a question that I've encountered a lot, and have not really been able to articulate in a way that I feel is satisfying. Another friend also jumped in the fray to say that Perry was merely "enamored by the beauty of a culture". So here are my responses (with hers interspersed):

"I think the question to ask is, would this have been ok if she did this in blackface? Asians and Asian Americans are an invisible minority in this country. Just look at our education system. We learn about MLK and the civil rights movement, so we are sensitive to black/AfAm issues. We're coming up on the immigration issue now, which has largely been focused on Hispanic and Latino undocumented workers, again making invisible working class Asian immigrants (although this has been talked about a lot in grassroots organizations taking this on). Here's a link from Psychology Today that had been going around today about this performance."

"And then, there was this incident too. It's different than the appropriation of culture (since the judge really makes some awful stereotypical and offensive remarks), but it likewise demonstrates this mentality that appropriating or stereotyping and making offensive jokes about Asian individuals and culture is 'ok.'"

Friend's response:
"Um. I liked the performance. I didn't think it was racist. I didn't think it was looking down or mocking on the Japanese culture. *shrug* The only thing I didn't like about the performance was the song itself. :)"

My response: 
"Everyone's entitled to their own opinions about things based on their own lived histories and experiences. But if there's a public discourse going on about a piece like this one, we have to at least listen to it and think about why so many other people find it offensive or problematic. I mean, if one person is making a big hooha about it, that one person is probably an outlier. But if there are multiple people and groups who represent social minorities (in this case, Asians), who are speaking up about it, shouldn't we at least try to consider WHY this MIGHT be "racist"? Again, I ask, what if this were blackface? Would you still like it then? Are we really becoming too culturally sensitive, too PC a society? Or is it that there's something else going on here, that people really are getting offended? And if a group of people are actually getting offended by this performance, should we still brush it off as "sensitivity"?

Here's a more even-handed article I found on this issue."

Her response:

"I can't even compare what she did to blackface. Not even a little bit. I didn't sense any malice or mockery with her performance. I didn't feel she was showing how she has power over other minorities as a white person (as the dude says in his article). All I saw was a PERSON (doesn't matter what ethnicity) who is enamored by the beauty of a culture and wanted to showcase it. At what point do we stop calling out white people for being racist when it seems like they just want to show appreciation for other cultures? That's enough for *me* personally to think it's not racist. But if other people want to think so, they are free to. I'm also free to think they're being way too sensitive."

And then my long response:

"Uuugghhhh ok, I really tried to avoid sounding like a mumbo jumbo academic, but i feel like it's gotten to the point where I must... Keep in mind that exoticization and fetishization often take the form of celebrating a culture that's not your own. As "unfair" as it may seem, it's hard to erase a history of Western colonization and imperialism that shapes the invisible power structures in which we live. Most acts of racism or stereotyping or discrimination often does not come from a place of intent. Oppression succeeds when its mechanisms are utterly invisible to the public, when we ourselves consent to the reinforcement of our own oppression, often without knowing it.

"This is the difference between traditional racism, where things like this are done with mockery and malice, overt prejudice, and obvious discrimination, and structural (or institutionalized) racism, a more invisible form of racism in which historical context and a broader racial power dynamic is disregarded because it's not obvious, because there's no direct way to point to that and say it's racism - because plausible deniability of racism is, well, plausible. It's what killed Trayvon Martin, it's what killed Vincent Chin. (ok, Vincent Chin was likely just good ol' traditional racism) Like it as not, a performance like Katy Perry's, innocuous as it may seem on the surface, reinforces the objectification of the Asian culture, and therefore anyone who wears an Asian face. It reinforces structural racism in that it's even having Asians themselves questioning whether yellowface is ok. Katherine Hepburn, in yellowface, was arguably trying to accurately portray the struggles of the Chinese in The Good Earth (and won an Oscar for it too). She certainly wasn't out to make a mockery of it, and yet, that portrayal is unarguably very problematic. Why? On one hand, it denied the role of the part to other Asians. On the other hand, it's sort of like saying, "Look, I can play an Asian role, or I can wear a geisha costume, as well or even better than Asians themselves." Bam. White superiority reinforced. I realize this is really murky, and things like this are also hard to substantiate. After all, how does one have "evidence" of superiority or oppression? It's sort of like saying, I'm pretty sure my husband is cheating on me, but I can't find any evidence to the contrary. It's not something that is rationalized, it's something that is felt. I often equate trying to describe structural or institutionalized racism as trying to describe water to a fish. "What's this water of which you speak??"

"Also, just the fact that she is "enamored" by the culture makes "the culture" (in this case, the Japanese historical culture doesn't even really match today's Japanese culture) into an object that CAN be enamored. It ceases to be an actual lived experience, rooted in history and tradition, but rather, a superficial object - a costume - to take up and discard as she feels like. That is the problem here. It objectifies a culture, and the individuals associated with that culture (read: Asians). It places that culture outside of oneself, thereby drawing lines between "us" and "them", legitimate and other, powerful and not. It subconsciously reinforces the idea that Asians, as a group, are "less than," and thereby can be as easily discarded as the costume that Perry wears.

"Sorry I'm going on a bit. This debate, and the argument that something like this (yellowface, costuming) isn't offensive, it's just people "enamored" by the culture and "appreciating" its "beauty", is nauseatingly familiar, and I've never really been able to articulate why "celebrating" a culture is problematic, so this is a good exercise for me too.

"Keep in mind that a lot of it is subconscious, and therefore done without intent. That is why structural/institutionalized racism is so hard to pin down, and so hard to place blame - it's very squishy...like an overripe persimmon...uh, never mind. Do I blame Kate Perry for this? No, I don't think she is aware of these dynamics, and in this case, I believe she was truly ignorant and had no malicious intent. However, I do think that this performance happened because she was unaware of her own privilege as a white person, and hope that the backlash will, well, make her a bit more aware of racial dynamics in society and the power that she has, as someone in the public eye, to influence it."

One day more until quals

(In the style of Les Miz)

One day more
A day for some last minute studying
These never-ending rows of lettering.
This faculty for whom I write
Will surely somehow make me cry.
One day more...

I could have waited for this day
But the days between departed
(One day more)
Tomorrow, quals are here to stay
By then, the writing will have started.
(One day more)

One more day all on my own
One more day of intense caring
What a life I might have known
If I didn't go to grad school......

Wonderfully Boring

Reading old blogs makes me want to write again, but I find that there is little to write about these days. When I was traveling a lot, writing about misadventures was par for the course - being disconnected from the normal day to day routine made life (and talking about it) exciting. Some of my best stories involve traveling mishaps - flying into the wrong airport in Korea, realizing at the last minute that a US citizen needed a visa to get into Australia... now, it's just me and my books and studying. And episodes of How I Met Your Mother.

But I should keep blogging. Blogging is one of those unique types of writing where it challenges me to make things accessible and not quite academic. Besides, if I just go off in academic jargon, that's boring to everyone but me. Honestly.

That being said, this is a unique way of writing because while it's a public forum and there is some filtering that goes along with blogging, I doubt anyone reads this anyway. But that being in the back of my head makes this type of writing considerably different than say, what I write in my journal, or what I write in 750words (which is mostly academic).

I have been Ingressing a lot lately. I actually bought an extended battery for my phone so I could play it. Yea, that's right. That's probably the most major excitement in my life at the moment. Oh, and there was a Werewolf night last weekend, and a barely bearable hour of Truckstop, where I looked at my watch every 5 minutes or so to see if I could leave yet.

Nostalgia with Canon Rock

Around 7 years ago, JerryC, a guitarist from Taiwan, posted his original rock arrangement of Pachelbel's Canon in D, calling it Canon Rock. A little after, another guitarist, known only to the world as "funtwo," posted a cover of JerryC's Canon Rock (which, in my opinion, was the more technically polished version - JerryC is much more raw). For a very long time, no one knew who funtwo was. Turns out, the guy was an engineering major studying in Australia.

Fast forward to last year, turns out funtwo posted another video of himself doing Canon Rock. It's still awesome. Check it out.

Never enough time!! Or kittens!

On writtenkitten.net, where you are awarded with a picture of a cute kitten for each 100 words you write...

So.....I'm trying this out for the first time, but I must admit, I'm rather, uh, apprehensive. I don't get it. But I want to get my first kitten, so I'm going to keep chugging away until I have 100 words. You know what I'm interested in? Time. I think about time all the time. Probably because I have so little of it. So I'm going to write a very long paper about time. The paper is a dissertation, and I'm talking about an idea of time that I'm calling "temporal capital." See, we all have 24 hours in a day, but some people have more control or flexibility over what they do with their time than other. This is notwithstanding the need to sleep and eat and excrete waste (although there is a book about the time it takes to pee and poo). 

I want another kitten. So I guess I'll keep writing. I've been working on a draft of a prospectus as of late. The quals process is supposed to come first, but I think I'm less anxious when I write.

But we should get back to temporal capital. So, while we all have the same amount of time in a day, we don't all have the same amount of temporal capital. The amount of temporal capital you have is based on your situation in life. 1) What kind of job do you have? 2) How many hours in the day do you spend at your job? 3) Does your boss breathe down your neck, or 4) can you discretely (or indiscreetly) check Facebook, Twitter, YouTube, etc during work hours? 5) Do you even have a personal device that you can go on social networking sites with? 6) Are you allowed to socialize during work? If the answer is yes to questions 4, 5, and 6, you have more temporal capital than someone who answers no to any of those.

But those questions only encompass your working day situation.

Then, there are some other questions that determine temporal capital, that also have to do with your activities online, especially outside of work. 7) How much free time do you have when you're not under the thumb of your boss? Like, when you are home from work? Or just, not at work? 8) Do you telecommute? If you're a telecommuter, you have pretty high temporal capital, since you can do really anything you want while you're "working" from home, like play video games in between sending out emails, or surf the net, or whatnot. You are not being physically monitored by anyone. Of course, even with telecommuting, there are times when you are interacting in real time with your boss, in which case, those are times when you are "temporally-bound." Like when you're on a telephone.

Or, how about these questions. 9) Do you spend a lot of time consuming media? 10) How about online? 11) Do you make videos that you post online? Or write fan fiction? Or do things for people in video games like Second Life or WoW? Do you dispense a lot of advice to people on forums, like how to play guitar, or how to program? Do you write guitar tabs and post them up for people to learn songs? If you said yes to any of these, you are in a pretty good position temporal capital-wise, especially if you said yes to 11. Saying yes to 11 means that you put in the time to CREATE something, and you didn't get anything out of it -- at least, not monetarily. So what DO you get out of this?

Temporal capital is important to think about, because it's your ability to exchange the time you invest into an activity for something. What are you getting out of spending time doing something? Well, obviously, if you're working, you are making money. You get money out of putting in the time to do work. How about when you spend that hour and a half having lunch with your friend? Well, in this case, you're investing time into maintaining a friendship. You're catching up with a friend, showing that her life matters to you, and ascertaining that your life matters to her, right? How about when you spend 2 hours at the MoMA, or 3-4 hours at the opera? Then you're consuming culture. You're making yourself more knowledgeable about art and music and culture. Maybe you come to appreciate a painting or an artist more than before? In any case, you have an experience that (hopefully) enriches your life. How about spending 4 years in medical school, then 4 years in residency? This is a temporal investment as well, and you need the temporal capital in order to do this, in addition to the economic capital (or, money, in simple terms - you know, money for tuition). By investing the time for education, you garner educational capital, that then can be turned around and used to get more temporal, economic, social, cultural, what have you, capital, and sometimes prestige. These are all interconnected, see?

Ok, I should read more, but that was a quick intro to temporal capital, at least, how I'm thinking about it. Part of my work now is to explicate this better, throw in people who have written about time before, make it all make sense, things like that. Oh, and come up with examples of how this plays out in the real world. Empirical evidence is always a great thing. Clearly, there is a lot more to this, and a lot more dimensions, but the kitten pictures are starting to repeat themselves, and I'm getting hungry. I might have to go in search of couscous.

Why I'm a fan of Amadeus Leopold

Classical music expresses the full range of human emotion, yet we choose to dress it up in this very restricted form. It is also very gender normative. Men wear tuxes, women wear dresses. It's virginal, it's boring, it's desexualized. 

Amadeus Leopold (Hahn-Bin) does a couple things here. The music, while unchanged, is packaged differently than before. It captures the attention of those for whom classical music has flown under the radar. He subverts the ideas of classical music as this old, stodgy, DEAD thing, and reinvigorates and injects life into it through the visual spectacle. Spectacle though it may be, the audience cannot escape the music that immerses their senses during his concerts. They're paying attention, like they never did before.

Secondly, he upsets pre-existing gender normative roles. He's a phenomenal musician, and he's saying, "Fuck convention, I can play like a badass while wearing a fucking dress. I can show some leg while doing it, and if you don't like it, well, up yours."

And this is why I think, while the institution of classical music may be slow to accept him, that the work he does will, at the very least, start to chip away the old redundancy of classical music.

Topic of the night: Reparative (Conversion) Therapy

Here's a sensitive subject: Reparative Therapy (or, conversion therapy). Many thanks to API Equality for bringing this up tonight at the general meeting. And now I can't seem to stop thinking about it.

The current debate (LA Times):
CA Governor Brown signed a law that bans mental health professionals from doing reparative therapy (which is basically therapy whose goal is turning gay people straight). It's being held up in the courts because the opposition says that it violates the First Amendment.

Disclaimers:

• I do not condone reparative therapy for anyone, ESPECIALLY for minors, and I think it is harmful and only serves to perpetuate the stigmatization of LGBT individuals.
• I use "gay" to mean LGBTQ--alphabet soup, and/or basically anyone who doesn't identify as strictly straight.
• I believe that homosexual desire is not a choice. But I do believe that taking on an identity is a political and social act, and that "being gay" is a choice.
• For some people, it's the only choice. I understand suicide rates of closeted LGBT youth are very high.
• Why should it matter if it's a choice or not? Shouldn't people respect others' choices, especially when it doesn't effect or harm other people? Isn't that what makes us a democracy? Our ability to choice and expression, and to not be persecuted for them?
• I understand that just the term "reparative therapy" implies that there is something wrong with being gay, and that it should be repaired, rectified, fixed.
• Of course reparative therapy has its own devious agenda. If it didn't, it wouldn't exist.
• Thank you, Helena Vissing, for bringing up this point: "Even if someone would seek therapy because he/she felt unhappy about being gay and wanting to change it, I would find it unethical to try to "repair" or "converse". The client must find his/her answers. If someones wishes to disown/eliminate his/her bisexual or gay sides, then that could be explored in a nonjudgmental way."
• There are frameworks we have to work with (addressed in the "reality" section below). In a utopic society, gay would not be bad, so why would there be the need for any sort of reparative therapy? I understand that clearly, these ex-gays' subconscious desire likely stems from the cultural and social stigmatization of being gay.
• And I know we are working toward that now but...

Reality - as of January 2013... 

• Being gay is still stigmatized in society.
• Which unfortunately often leads to alienation from family, friends, community, etc.
• Coming Out Stars is an activity that poignantly outlines the challenges of coming out
• Life is arguably harder right now for a gay person than it is for a straight person, legislatively, socially, culturally. Gay people don't have the same rights, the same openness about their life. Gay partners are less protected by laws than straight couples, and often are at a financial disadvantage when it comes to health insurance and inheritance taxes. 
• Yes, things are getting better, and I believe they will continue to do so, but until then...

Reparative Therapy says that it helps people who have homosexual desires, but do not want to "be gay."

Here's an episode of Dr. Oz on this (in many parts - you have to click on each separate part and sit through the ads). I actually think the reparative therapy people sounds reasonable, even though I don't, for a second, believe that they do what they say they do. They're also frustratingly vague about how this sort of therapy is conducted.

So the question becomes:

• If someone is "at odds" with their sexuality, and want to prioritize family, friends, community, etc over their sexuality, should they be able to seek help for them to, I don't know, re-prioritize these things in their life? In other words, if someone were in a social situation in which if they were to come out, they stand to lose a lot - family, friends, sense of social belonging, social support system, etc, should they be able to make the decision to say, "ok, maybe having sex, or having an open life with a person of the same sex isn't as important as keeping my relationships with all of these other important parts of my life"?
• Should we respect the choice of consenting adults (not minors, as the legislation currently targets) to seek this kind of therapy?
• Is "coming out" a symptom of our neoliberalist ideology of lifting up (figuratively, and literally in our list of priorities) individual identities at the expense (sadly) of community cohesion and acceptance? (Related to Jean Twenge's work on the emphasis on self)
• Should anyone be forced to take that journey? Should the LGBT community(ies) place that emphasis on "being out" and "being yourself" if the situation doesn't fit the individual?

I think the whole thing is sad, that there are people who feel like they have to choose between these different moving parts, and that their circumstances force them to. But their circumstances are their reality, and should we be condemning something that may help them ease their pain, even in the short term?

• (My counterargument would be that if/when they realize that they can't truly "repair the gay", not only do they have to face up to it years later, but in the meantime, they probably would have married or had kids, and those individuals are also affected)
• (not to mention that the whole thing really perpetuates the idea that being gay is wrong)

Revitalization...maybe.

Reading old blogs has made me want to start writing again, if only to keep writing. I've come to the sad conclusion that I don't like writing. Not like the way you should when you're in grad school. Or if you're a writer. I don't understand how people can spend hours not doing anything but writing. I think the closest I come to with that is writing music.

Then again, I also wonder if my lack of attention span has to do with the influx of digital media and the sheer number of stuff to see/watch/experience online now... seriously. How do you figure out what to spend your time doing?

1 800 4 TOP GUN

I keep hearing this commercial on the radio about a law firm that helps people who have been arrested for a DUI. The commercial goes like this:

At the Law Offices of Top Gun DUI Defense Attorney® Myles L. Berman, our dedicated DUI and drunk driving attorneys provide people arrested for DUI throughout Southern California — from Ventura and Los Angeles to Orange County, the Inland Empire, and San Diego — with aggressive legal representation they can count on. Being arrested and charged with DUI is a frightening experience which can lead to severe financial penalties, driver’s license suspensions/revocations, and even jail or prison time. If you have been arrested and charged with DUI anywhere in Southern California, call the experienced team of DUI and drunk driving attorneys at the Orange County, Los Angeles, and Ventura offices of Top Gun DUI Defense Attorney® Myles L. Berman to find out why we say “Friends Don’t Let Friends Plead Guilty”

Seriously? You drove while drunk or high or stoned.