Sorry to bust in on your day, Mel, but I missed this one last week:
A Minneapolis-based Nazi group was posting fliers last week with pictures of the slain Wisconsin hunters and a caption asking if "diversity" was worth even one American life. Scary, since I usually trust my fellow humans to reject the rhetoric of the extremists, but in these times ... I don't know. Read more here.
I go to the post office quite often -- at least once a week. If you've subscribed in the last 6 months, I'm the one who most likely mailed your magazine. I send them out in small batches because a) they're heavy and I carry them by hand with me to work (a good 20 minute walk) and visit the post office during my lunch break and b) I don't want the postal workers at the counter to hate me for bringing in so much stuff because they have to press all these buttons on the machine just to calculate the postage for one item at a certain rate.
Sorry to hooride on your day to blog, Todd, but I couldn't get my airport wireless to connect to the Internet last night. (Sometimes I wish I hadn't done the Mac "switch.")
While I was in San Diego with my extended family for the holidays, my younger cousins hipped me to a "new term" that I hadn't heard before: "Asian Persuasion." It's a "nicer" sounding version of "Yellow Fever," I suppose. (Well, I much prefer it to "Asian-izing" other words like "UrbanizAzn," etc.)
Upon my return home to the Bay Area, I read an email that Big Brother Todd sent me ("Get in touch with your inner Karizma Kapoor!") with a link to this Bollywood "finishing school" type deal, and it made me wonder if my new "obsession" with Bollywood constitutes a "South Asian Persuasion?"
Got some new karaoke CDs in the mail. I have a pretty decent Pioneer setup that runs CD-G’s and DVDs. We don’t mess with the DVD’s—CD-G is the way to go. More selection, better sound and no wack videos.
I go in spurts when supplementing my collection (now 50+ deep, cripes!). I’ll get on an R&B jag, or think I’d really like to try that New Radicals song. Lately I’ve been trying to boost my ‘80s collection and I found a disc that had Joe Jackson (“Look Sharp,” “Steppin’ Out”), The Clash (“Train in Vain,” “London Calling”), Thompson Twins, Oingo Boingo, and, the key acquisition: ABC’s “The Look of Love.” How did it go? Let’s just say my throat is wrecked. One of the funnest parts about singing “The Look of Love” is when it heads into the spoken word part: “My friends they tell me, Marlin (sic) maybe someday you’ll find true love. I saaaay maybe. There must be a solution to the one thing, the one thing…” And it ends with a Tom Jones-like pelvic thrust. “LOOK! OF! LOVE!” Crazy.
When I was growing up, I was a total bookworm. I preferred reading to sports, to playing piano, to watching TV. Hell, I preferred reading over talking. In the 5th grade I belonged to the Name That Book club (which is exactly what it sounds like) and we would compete against teams from other schools. They would ask a question like, "In which book does the character such and such do such and such?" Whoever raises her hand first and answers the question correctly scores a point for the team. It was so easy. I remember around this time there were often promotions at Pizza Hut where you got a star for every book you read and after you earned 10 stars, you got a free personal pizza. Also really easy. I skipped class in the 5th grade once. Guess where they found me? In the school library.
Anybody catch "Iron Chef America" the other night? Not to be confused with the short-lived William Shatner Iron Chef USA, Iron Chef America aims to remake it right.
The iron chefs are Bobby Flay, Mario Batali and Wolfgang Puck. The episode I watched, "Battle Spiny Lobster" pitted Mario Batali against Japan's longtime Iron Chef Japanese, Masaharu Morimoto.
Watching the show made me wonder, even in this day and age, if something as elemental as "delicious food" can be considered universal. Or, to put it simply, I think the deck was stacked against our Asian guy.
Ah, the joys of non-Asian family. At Christmas dinner this year my Uncle X (clearly not his real name) asked me if we named our magazine "Hyphen" because we wanted to create a special hyphenated identity for ourselves - in essence make ourselves special rather than just assimilate into the mainstream like good Americans. In his defense, he *is* a thousand years old and he *did* use to work for the CIA. Wait, that's not really in his defense, is it?
Ah, vacation is almost over. No longer will I be subjected to the horrid radio music my cousins think is "hip-hop" and "dancehall." (Sorry, I don't like Nelly or reggaeton.) I was about to have an Orlando Jones (in Drumline) moment... Sigh.
Did any of you, by chance, get to read Oliver Wang's article about hip-hop and politics in yesterday's SF Bay Guardian? I've been having deja vu all week. After reading Oliver's article, I was nostalgic for the days when wearing my Hip-hop Badge was a big declaration for me. I've been experiencing flashbacks of all the changes that cycled and re-cycled (for me) up til now.
"Kosuke," I asked on my recent trip to Nagano, "I don't understand Japanese relationships. I speak Japanese, but I think there's a whole level of communication that I'm missing."
I'd been asking him about his girlfriend and hoping he could shed some light on the Japanese mating ritual. Recently I've been starting to doubt the veracity of Japanese dramas in their depiction of romance, which is my main source of info on the subject.
"If a Japanese person has something to say," Kosuke said, indicating it with a fist, "they'll never just say it. They'll give a lot of hints around it," he stamped his other fist in the air around the first. "That way they'll be understood without having to actually say it."
I go to the post office quite often -- at least once a week. If you've subscribed in the last 6 months, I'm the one who most likely mailed your magazine. I send them out in small batches because a) they're heavy and I carry them by hand with me to work (a good 20 minute walk) and visit the post office during my lunch break and b) I don't want the postal workers at the counter to hate me for bringing in so much stuff because they have to press all these buttons on the machine just to calculate the postage for one item at a certain rate. 
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