(01 Jul 98)
Featured Graphite™
Joko Londo
Brief Biography of Gil MacKenna
Written: Fall, 1996 by Gil MacKenna
I was born at 3:01 PM on the twenty eighth of May, 1970, at St. Joseph's Hospital in Milwaukee, Wisconsin. My father, Craig MacKenna, was a computer engineer, whom a few years earlier had given up a full scholarship at Cal Tech to return to a more familiar atmosphere at the University of Wisconsin. The smog was too much for him, apparently. My mother, Merikay MacKenna, was just finishing up her bachelor's in education with a specific emphasis on art. She would soon afterward start in a position with Milwaukee public schools. Both of my parents came from working class homes in the same area of southwest Milwaukee, surrounded by the same kinds of German-Polish families and neighbors. These people had their own particular culture. Although I'm sure it was somewhat similar to the rest of the Midwest, in my own conception at least, I've always thought of Milwaukee as being particularly backwards in its very own "cheese-head" sort of way. I see this in the attitudes and belief systems of my parents, and even though our family moved away when I was nine years old, I see some of this Wisconsin naivete and conservatism in myself. I've gotten out of the Midwest, but I may never get the Midwest out of me.
I had a somewhat troubled childhood. I never really "fit in" with the other children. My teachers recognized this difference in me, and did their best to make me conform. I resisted, and thus was frequently in trouble. My home life, however, was very supportive. My mother allowed me to grow freely, without a great deal of harsh discipline or pressure (that would come later). My father stood as a more silent role model. He was a man who enjoyed his life. I've always seen him as a successful and happy man who sees a subtle humor in everything.
In 1979, my family moved to Dallas, Texas. I adapted quickly, and picked up on what all Texan boys liked, football. A serious knee injury forbade me from continuing the sport past the sixth grade. After the injury (which still bothers me) once again, I was singled out from the crowd. I did not play football. Instead I took to film making, story writing, and acting. None of these are very Texan things to do.
In 1984, my family moved again, this time to Silicon Valley. The Town of Los Gatos was the setting as I learned about girls, cops, drugs, hippies, stoners, punks and many of the other things one learns about in a California high school.
I spent more junior year of high school as an exchange student in Jakarta, Indonesia. This experience would shape my life for years to come. With American Field Service (AFS), the facilitating organization, the student is not allowed to choose the particular country he or she would like to visit, but a choice of geographical region is allowed. I chose Southeast Asia because I wanted a complete change of culture. Indeed, that's exactly what I got. While there, I lived with an Indonesian host family, attended an Indonesian high school ( with instruction in Indonesian language), ate Indonesian food, and all in all, immersed myself in their world. Dealing with language barriers, culture shock, a tropical climate, and tropical diseases at the age of sixteen matured me in a way that, upon my return to Los Gatos, I found I no longer had much in common with the crowd of people I used to call my peers.
Consequently, I was anxious to begin my undergraduate career at Fifth College at UCSD. Fifth College was brand new; I was a member of its inaugural class. Fifth (which is now known as Eleanor Roosevelt College) placed its emphasis on education from an international perspective. Indeed, most of the other students had traveled or originated from abroad.
After two years of undergraduate work at UCSD, once again, I had the opportunity to travel abroad. My first year in Indonesia did not satisfy my curiosity about this large and diverse nation, so I went back for a second year of study. I remember getting off the plane; it was like coming home. It seemed more real than America.
I spent this second year in the city of Yogyakarta, Central Java. Jakarta, my home for the first year, was a huge, dirty, crowded megapolis of eight million people. Yogyakarta, on the other hand, was a much quieter 400,000, and considered the cultural heart of Java. It was the home of the Sultan of Java. His palace and numerous other historical and cultural sites made Yogyakarta a tourist mecca. A lot of money was being made on these tourists mostly in the sales of artwork. Yogya, as the city was called, artwork was famous throughout the world, and most popular were the batik paintings. These cloth paintings cost between $2 to $3 to produce and sold for upwards of a hundred dollars. Along with going to classes, I became a one of the tetek or "tourist hunters". Tetek entice tourists off the streets to enter one of various galleries in Yogyakarta. We made a fifty percent commission on whatever the tourist purchased. In the many years the tetek had pursued their dubious profession, I was the first westerner to work with them for an extended period of time. I finished my year there by writing an ethnography of the tetek, thereby legitimizing a year of being basically a con-man through an academic study. I even got an "A". Call it work study.
It took me another year and a half to finish at UCSD, and I graduated in the Winter of 1992 with a major in sociology with a double minor in writing and Asian studies. At the time, I was working in the shoe department at a Sears nearby the university. Upon graduation, I was promoted to full-time position in Brand Central selling home electronics. I made a pretty good living selling TV's until just a few weeks ago. It was strictly commission, so it led to somewhat of a feast or famine type existence. Some of the guys I worked with had been selling for decades and were satisfied to continue indefinitely. I couldn't, so I took the GRE's unsure of what graduate field I'd eventually enter. Having gotten a perfect 800 in the analytical portion of that test, my girlfriend encouraged me to take LSAT, because the two were considered similar. I scored in the 98th pertcentile on the LSAT, and off I went to Law School.
{Zelig's Home Page | Links | X Files | Search}
Modified For Featured Graphite™ Page Jul 1, 1998 by Zelig X
(c) 1998 Gil MacKenna
Midi File: Galloping On The Great Wall
