Adventures of The Yellow Peril

SOULMATE

I was hoping it'd be Steve Buscemi or someone like that, but this will have to do.  I'm no pants, too.

COMING CLEAN

I know it's been forever since I posted, but I can tell you exactly why: I have a serious, serious problem.

For the longest time, I tried denying it.  I mocked others who did it and feigned ignorance about it, all the while secretly harboring a desire to indulge myself in this very wrong, very guilty pleasure.  Then it came out on DVD, and still I resisted.  I dare not even speak the name of this show; such is the extent of my shame.

Finally, in the name of research, I succumbed.  AE had to write a  script for one of her classes, and she brought home Season 1, so I thought, heck, why not?  It's for research, and I'd be offering my valuable insight and thought-provoking condescension about the lowest common denominator of humanity who choose to watch this show.

That was 3 weeks ago.

On Sunday, we (yes, I pulled others into this abyss of misery and addiction, and they shall remain nameless) finished the last episode of Season 2, which for all intents and purposes catches us up to the current season, still airing on Fox.  Then I found out that 1) I've already missed something like 3 episodes of the current season;  2) they're not airing any new ones until early November; and 3) I may be legally insane. 

Yes, there were brief moments over the past three weeks when I came up for air (to throw a Hurricanes and "Ritas party, in which I proudly proclaimed "I'm no pants," before the proclamation became a reality.  Thankfully, it occurred in private).  There was the time that I got my sorry ass off the couch to eat a stuffed avocado at Trudy's.   I think I may have also done some laundry.  I don't know.  Things got hazy after Seth and Summer broke up because Summer doesn't date "bitches on boats." 

The watershed moment for me was this weekend, though, because I am actually going through some real, serious trauma in my life right now, independently of this cursed show.  As I sat there on Sunday, watching the last vestiges of my dignity drain away with the rest of Season 2, I realized that maybe, just maybe, things will be okay for me.  Right now, it's kind of hard to see that, because I'm going through a lot in addition to losing seeing what my friend Seth Cohen is up to, but hey, life soldiers on. 

And so will I.

More posts when I recover.

25 GOING ON 16

Go back 6 years, to 1999.  A  roving singer-songwriter, introduced to you by your best guy friend at the time, plays some bluesy-folk songs at your college and makes you swoon.  You spend the evening with him and your friend, eating greasy food at the Waffle House next to the Brookhaven MARTA station.  Since you have a habit of falling in love with musicians and other creative types, you do just that, even though you know he has a girlfriend.  You pay for his scrambled eggs, and he agrees to put you on a mass e-mail list that he sends only to his friends -- because you're too special for the regular mailing list.   You swoon, and dream about the songs that will have references to scrambled eggs that are really there just for you.

Fast forward to the present.  The singer-songwriter has just e-mailed you to tell you that while he plans on singin' and songwritin', he's not roving anymore.  He's married the girlfriend, and now they have a baby.  He has to be a father, so no more smoky coffeehouses and open mike nights at Borders.

You feel old, because you realize that even your girly school-age crushes are having children.  You download all of Justin Timberlake's hits (starting with "Senorita" and working backwards, because the new songs are crap), but it's only half-hearted.  The teeny-bopper in you wants you to stop this charade.

Then your mom busts into your room and asks you if you want waffles before you go back to the dentist tomorrow. 

Even though I've come so far, I'm pretty sure that I have much, much further still to go.

THE BUZZ

Listen, if you're ever wondering what I might like as a random gift, click here.

On Monday, I made fajitas for T and AE, and we sat around and caught up with each other. This semester has been busy, even for AE, who is free from all this law school madness because she's a screenwriter, or at least one in training.

The dinner degenerated after we decided to open a bottle of wine from a vineyard near where my dad lived in Montreal. D came over shortly thereafter, and we soon moved through the '90s and were dancing to Britney's "Toxic" and "My Prerogative" cover.

Other than rediscovering how much I really like Soul Asylum's "Runaway Train," and Mr. Bigg, it's been a quiet week. I'm heading to Seattle this weekend for a job interview and to visit my grandmother, who looks and walks like Yoda (she's partially paralyzed from a stroke). My grandmother also claims that she doesn't speak English despite the fact that she's lived here for 30 years, so the last time I visited, I spent gobs of time translating television shows to her in Chinese. That's all easy except when you introduce the concept of the reality TV show, which makes most every TV sound utterly ridiculous. Mix in my limited Chinese vocabulary when it comes to pop culture, and you get something completely convulted.

Take, for example, The Bachelor. "He gets to pick himself a wife. The ones he likes, he gives them roses. The ones he doesn't like, he doesn't give them roses and that's why they're sitting in the car crying."

Or, alternatively, American Idol. "They love to sing. They pick out people who go to sing for the judges -- that's the fat one, the girl, and that mean one -- everywhere in America. They show the bad ones, and then the good ones. Then everyone sings, and everyone in America calls with the telephone to say who is the best. The one with the most phone calls wins a lot of money and then becomes famous unless you are a boy with tall curly hair everywhere. He is going to sink into oblivion. Because he's awful! No, it's not acting. They are all real people."

Sometimes I think my grandma thinks I'm nuts.

HAPPY 24TH BIRTHDAY, PETER!

I thought it was going to be another sucky day with me being sick, and then Peter sent me this. I suppose he wants me to know exactly what he wants for his special day today.

By the way, did I mention that on Saturday, when we went to go see my honey at a Stubb's post-ACL show, I literally bumped heads with Trey Anastasio while I was looking for the bathroom? I mumbled something like, "Wow, it's really nice to meet you," and then asked him where the bathroom was.

Trey Anastasio showed me to the bathroom. Heh.

Still, he was no Andy Roddick.

FEELING BETTER

I've managed to put all thoughts about my predicament until after exams. There are some things that I might be able to do to fix it, so that's all I going to say now. Other than that, I've returned to my chipper, struggl-y self.

In the meantime, I have to update you on some discoveries I've made.

1) The gay scene in Austin is seriously lacking. I know that I've really pumped this place up to be, like, a mecca of fun, but Shane came in town last Thursday night and we made it on down to Boyz Cellar and Oilcan Harry's, with promises of strip-offs and banana hammocks and booty shakin'. The strip off consisted of one half-hearted 40something with a belly, and they didn't play Britney. What the? At least the banana hammocks were candy-colored. Oh yes, and the gay men here are creepier than they are fun. Shudder. I yearn for the days of Atlanta, when you couldn't throw a handful of glitter without hitting a gay man.

2) "Mean Girls" is a funny movie. Of course, this could be tempered by my infantile level of humor. And my half girl-crush on Lindsay Lohan. Although her boobs are definitely fake.

3) I think my right eye gets slightly larger than my left whenever I am tired. Seriously.

Also, I received some awesome mail last night. Meghann sent me a letter after I told her, tearfully, about what had happened to me over the weekend, and it made my day.

I also received an invitation to my friend Greg's graduation party. For those of you who don't know Greg, you're losing out. Greg is a high school friend of mine, and he was in a bad accident our freshman year of college, Despite having all sorts of unimaginable physical impediments to just living, he has managed to finish college (after being in a coma, being unable to move, being legally blind...and the list goes on). Greg and his family are very dear to me because they're just good people, and he makes me want to be a better person. What really touched me was that he not only invited me to his party, but he invited me to his actual graduation ceremony as well.

So on June 5, ya'll know where I'll be. I'll be in the front row of a college graduation, crying my eyeballs out with pride, admiration, and love...

MY BEEF WITH THE NEW YEAR

Every year around this time, I head out to a major bookstore, like Border's or Barnes and Noble, to buy my new calendar for the year. Having worked in a bookstore before, I am clued in to the industry's dirty little secret: on New Year's day, all the calendars are marked down 50%. Therefore, in past years, I've always headed out to the bookstores around this time to pick up my Ansel Adams, Van Gogh, or whatever interesting-looking calendar is available.

The problem is that this year, I think that the masses have caught on to the bookstore's evil ploy to offer massive discounts once the calendars become useful (I mean, what's the point of buying your 2004 calendar in November 2003?). I'm imagining that on New Year's Day, massive hordes of people having nothing better to do on New Year's Day woke up early and pressed their eager faces against the glass of the Borders in their hometowns, eager to get their calendars at a steal and start the new year right. I say this because by the time I casually rolled into the Borders on Peachtree Road in Atlanta on the 3rd of January, my calendar selection had been picked clean. Instead of having even the Sierra Club calendar (which is, by my standard, the most basic calendar I'm willing to buy), calendars with these titles were some of the options that were available to me:

Jubilee: A Year of African-American Celebration
Bob the Builder
Dale Earnhart
Minnesota Places
Unicorns
Fabulous Frogs
Men are Like Parking Spots -- the Best Ones are Already Taken
Down Right Beautiful (a tribute to people with Down's Syndrome)
Brooke Burke Goes Wild On Calendar

Now, here's the thing. In the past, I have eagerly bought such calendars as Mullets Galore and Hot Atlanta Firemen as a joke, believing that I was funny by buying a cheesy calendar for its kitsch value. This belief presents a problem, though, because calendars last for a year, and, for the most part, cheesy jokes have a shelf life of way less than a year. Therefore, purchasing a calendar filled with pictures of unattractive people who believe that haircuts should be business in the front and a party in the back only makes me the loser, not the poor people who were surreptitiously photographed for the calendar. Plus, there's the explaining I'd have to do every time someone came over, which would be easy in say, January ("Hey, it's funny. HAR HAR HAR HAR.") but not so easy by November ("Uh, look, I dunno. It's funny, I guess.")

Well, so there's my beef. I've thought about printing my own calendar this year, just to spite the bookstore giants. I don't need your stinkin' 50% discount to keep track of my days, thank you very much.

HAPPY CHINESE NEW YEAR

Things I have done today that would, according to tradition, piss off the gods:

1) Washed my hair, thus washing out the good fortune in my life
2) Failed to eat noodles, which will shorten my life
3) Wore cream colored sweater and jeans as opposed to any red clothing, which was supposed to bring me luck
4) Was overly emotional (re: irrational fear of being a failure in law school), meaning that I will be overly emotional all year
5) Ate dinner with a monkey (zodiac, not literal, although that would make for a much better story), and since it is the year of the monkey, I will have bad luck
6) Forgot to call Grandma, which means she will kick my ass and not give me $20 like she always does this time of year
7) Properly pronounced my "r"s and "l"s, showing that I am not a stereotypical Asian
8) Used scissors, which will again, cut off my fortune
9) Washed my hands, thus washing away all the money in my life
10) Said "shit can," which is taboo because I'm not supposed to swear today

The first person I talked to today and the first conversation I had are supposed to foreshadow my fortune for the year. That person, if I recall correctly, was Tara, and it was to discuss the crookedness of her chair, which made her sit at a downward angle. She told me that, in the future, I shouldn't choose to sit in my chair, because if I did, it meant that in order to sit next to me, she'd have to sit in the raggedy-ass chair. Therefore, in 2004, I will not be sitting in the 4th row in the middle section, 6th chair from the right, whether I am in class or at a Tom Jones concert.

Shit. I just said ass. Twice.

I called my mother to absolve my sins, and she said, "Chinese people have too many customs anyway. None of them make any sense." Oh, Ma. You're such an American.

Happy New Year!

OH, TEXAS -- YOU OWE ME A DRINK

I went out last night with a crew of people, and Ali, Alison, and I arrived early to Ludwig's, this bar on 4th St. When we got there, the lights were full-blast on in the bar, showing everyone in a most unfavorable light. We saw some people wandering around with video cameras, so we asked one of the cameramen what was going on. It turns out that the bar was hosting a CD release party for an as-yet unknown rapper named Li'l Black, and we had walked right in and semi-crashed their party (hey, it was the bouncer's job to keep us out if we weren't supposed to be there). Anyway, Li'l Black's CD was playing at full blast, so we were privy to hearing a part of it, but there were definitely clues that Black, as he is also referred to, hadn't yet made it. First of all, there was no bling in sight save for maybe a very thin gold chain. Not that I'm one to judge someone else's lack of investment in jewelry, but the chain couldn't have been more than a couple of hundred bucks from somewhere like Zale's or something. Secondly, his entourage consisted of slightly overweight women who had really big hair and tight jeans. I'm not sure, but last time I checked, I think 50 Cent and Jay-Z and the like probably travel with a bevy of beautiful women. Thirdly, this guy was way to happy looking to have any street cred as a gangsta. I mean, yeah, it's your CD release party, and that's exciting, but really, you should look like you expect more. More Cris, more Ketel One, whatever. Just more. And, of course, strangers were wandering in and out of the bar at will, so the party had just as much of an air of exclusivity as a NASCAR race on a Tuesday.

Ali, Alison, and I were waiting for our other friends to arrive when this cowboy (literally, he had a hat and everything) saunters up to the bench where we were sitting and sits down. Before he even gets a word out, the cowboy, clearly inebriated, falls face-first into the table, knocking over my just-purchased vanilla vodka and ginger ale and Alison's drink as well. He apologizes, and then introduces himself as Derek. I look at him incredulously. Is this guy not going to buy me another drink? I look at him expectantly, and he asks me what I was drinking. I tell him, but clearly I have used too many syllables for him to comprehend. "When the waitress comes around, you just tell her what you want, and I'll pay for it," he says.

Disgruntled, I accept this proposition, but I haven't seen a waitress all night. He starts talking about some inane way in which he knows Li'l Black (they used to work at the car dealership together, apparently) and the clock is ticking. Where's my drink? When am I getting a drink?

Finally, our other friends arrive, and my patience has left me. Alison and I brush past the cowboy and buy ourselves new drinks. And get this -- he never bought us new ones. In fact, he barely acknowledged us after we went to the bar.

People can be so irritating sometimes.

I HAB A COLB

I'm all sniffly and wheezy. Yuck.

I realized I haven't posted my New Year's resolutions yet:

Learn to like beans (this doesn't apply to green beans, because I already like them, and peas, because, well, they're peas, not beans).

Drink less. I'll still go out, but I'm not going to get so excited about drinking that I end up puking, falling, or making out with friends who may or may not have expressed feelings for me. Plus, I read my sister's Cosmo last night, and the article "Are You 25 and a Binge Drinker?" made me feel a touch guilty. This resolution will most likely be broken by the time I return to Austin.

Remember people's birthdays. I've never been good at this, but I think that, in 2004, I'm going to turn a new leaf and start remembering people's birthdays. This is not to say that I will actually send a card, buy a gift, or attend a party; it just means that I will wake up on, say, October 20, and think, "Hey, today is E-Chia's birthday." Conversely, I will stop reminding others of my birthday constantly (February 11).

Win the entire pot at one game of Texas Hold 'Em. I learned how to play over the holidays, and it is my mission in life now to crush the competition at one, just one, game.

Vacuum. Seriously, my apartment needs it. I haven't vacuumed since I moved there in August. Yikes.

I know, I know, resolutions are supposed to be grander and loftier than the ones I've set for myself this year. I, however, also have, through experience, noticed that 99% of all New Year's resolutions are broken, so I set the bar pretty low. Otherwise, by December 15 of every year, I'm forced to look back and be disappointed. For example, in 2000 a group of my friends and I all decided that our collective New Year's resolution would be to have meaningful sex by December 15, and if we'd failed by then, then we'd be forced to have sex with each other. Of course, most of us failed, and none of us were willing to admit we were desperate enough to sleep with another member of the group. Bitter and heartbroken, we vowed we would never make such a pact again, and lo and behold, two years later, two in our group are happily married.

On a lighter note, I have to shout out to my pal Andrew Mambo, who is so cool that he took me around his hometown of Montreal despite the fact he was more hungover than I'd ever seen anyone. He indulged my bagel curiosity (Montreal bagels are superior to New York bagels, hands down), took me up the mountain, and bent to my dad's peer pressure at lunch by eating an entire shrimp with the shell on. Plus, he let me stay at his house and bug him for a whole day and a half. What a guy. He's trying out to be a VJ on MuchMusic, apparently Canada's weak, weak answer to MTV. I saw the audition tape, it's fantastic. Good luck, Andrew!