There are some things I love about being half-Korean. I love Korean bbq (in spite of the after-meal burps, which are disgusting and smelly). I love Korean karaoke rooms where you can smuggle in booze. I love my Korean family members who are so devoted to one another. And I love that due to my Korean genetics I have 5% body fat.
But there are things that annoy me too. I don't think that Koreans are as bad as Chinese, but we're not the best drivers in the world. Perpetually slow and lost, we jam our small chests against the steering wheel and stare out the windshield (bewildered) at the world. I'm afraid I've inherited a little of this. In addition, Korean music is terrible. If it doesn't sound like some bad 80s Euro synth pop on speed, it sounds like the sonic epitome of grief and suffering, with some woman wailing atonally about god knows what (probably the fact of her wayward son who has disgraced the family by not becoming a doctor and who married the village strumpet instead of a pre-approved, obsequious lass). The TV shows are awful too. The men are always shouting and growling. Their deep baritone voices remind me of monster metal bands like GWAR. The women are always wailing or pleading. Then rain starts to fall and someone walks forlorn into the darkness, with a maudlin song playing in the background.
All these things are mildly annoying. But they don't come close to my greatest pet peeve: Korean people cannot tell someone's age worth shit. If I had a dollar for every Korean who misunderestimated my age, I would not be rich. But I'd have more money for alcoholic drinks, and that's what life is all about. I know, I know. I look young. But for fuck's sake I look at least 21, right? Right???!!!!!!
Last night I was eating dinner with my parents at Tofu House, which is sort of like the McDonald's of Korean restaurants. There are franchises across the Southland. I was thoroughly enjoying my very un-Zone meal when the waitress started talking to my mom in Korean. I don't speak Korean because I grew up in Texas and when my mother attempted to teach me Korean it didn't quite sound like the redneck twang I heard daily, so I simply ignored her. Therefore, I couldn't follow their conversation and I was focused on my pork bulgogi and tofu soup anyhow. My mom started to laugh.
"She think you my grandson! She think you in high school!" my mom said.
I looked at the middle-aged Korean waitress with fury in my slant eyes. When she left, I ranted about the myopia of Koreans. I threw in some curse words for good measure. My parents take me very seriously. They started pissing themselves with laughter.
"It's a compliment!" my mom said.
"I'm 33 fucking years old. It's not a goddamn compliment when you're a grown man and someone asks if you're free to take their daughter to prom."
"You are too funny, man!" my step-dad Jimmy (his American name) said.
I wanted to say, "No, Jimmy you're the funny one. You named your roofing company Batman Roofing. What the fuck possessed you to do that? What does a comic book superhero have to do with repairing roofs?"
I capped off my tirade by promising to crush the waitress's head like a walnut, with my Crossfit arms. I couldn't stop myself from breaking into a grin.
Two weeks ago, there was yet another incident of Korean retardation vis-a-vis my age. I was at my cousin's high school graduation and this Korean woman, whose son is best friends with my cousin, remarked that I look younger every time she sees me. When she usually sees me, I'm dressed casually in jeans or shorts. At the graduation, I was wearing a shirt and tie. I looked like a typical urbal professional, or so I thought. How can someone look younger when he dresses up? Was this woman insane? Did she want her ass kicked? In the stands in front of all these people?
I am usually polite. I usually smile like a good half-Korean boy and take the shit they shovel me. But this time I acted all Twisted Sister and told myself I wasn't going to take it anymore.
"You know. That's not something you should say to a grown man," I said.
I'm not quite sure she understood. After all, English is her second language. But no more words were exchanged. I felt so guilty later on that at the post-graduation dinner at my aunt's house I bowed to the Korean offender over and over like a redneck knucklehead unaware of a land's customs and told the woman that her banana nut cake tasted like ambrosia.
Score it yet another victory for obliviously condescending Koreans across the Southland. They have my hapa ass dancing like a puppet on a string.
Inane Conversation of the Weekend
After dinner, my stepfather was loathe to change the channel after we watched mixed martial arts on Spike TV. The next show featured professional bullriding. I was flabbergasted. In the name of all things holy, I asked myself this question: why are two old Korean people watching bullriding? Here is how the conversation developed between my mother and stepfather. When you're re-living the conversation in your head, be sure and add the broken English and Asian accent. My mother got upset when the rider prepped the bull by slapping it and spurring it with his boots.
My mother: He shouldn't do that! I want the bull to step on him!
My stepfather: I think that's against the law. Someone should report him! It's caught on tape!
Bull and rider left the pen. Bull commenced to buck and jump.
My mother: Do they teach the bull to jump like that?
Me: No, mom. They just do it naturally.
My mother: He ride real good. He a real cowboy! They have fake bulls in Dallas. At bars. I used to go all the time when i was young. I rode one. It threw me goddamn across the room.
My stepfather: I can show you how to ride bull.
I don't think he was trying to be sexually suggestive. By god, I hope he wasn't.
Monday, June 30, 2008
Thursday, June 26, 2008
An Epiphany of Sorts for an Old Man
Beware drug- and alcohol-induced epiphanies. I've followed this aphorism for a while now.
Once, when I was in college and on an Ecstasy trip, I saw myself as the world's greatest dancer. While my friends laughed at me in the darkness of an apartment, I hallucinated that I was some superhero of dance. In an amphetamine fog, I told them I went around the world challenging despots and fascists to dance-offs. I danced against Saddam Hussein. I shook my ass versus Kim Jong Il. The outcome was like some scene out of a western. The loser leaves town. This was how I rid the world of evil.
I thought that the world's ills could be cured through dance.
I thought the same thing a couple years later while on a dance floor in London. Again, I was on E. I was in a circle of strangers whom I'd met just minutes before. It looked like a football huddle. The others knew one another. They'd come to the club together. Each took a turn telling all the others how this was the best night of his or her life. Each claimed to have love for everyone in the group. Then there was me, grinning away, an American interloper embraced, my mind full of E-inspired euphoria and care for every living creature on the planet. I thought that if we could make the world one big nightclub and pass out pills, world peace might be a real possibility.
These epiphanies, along with several others scattered through the years, turned out to be very wide of the proverbial mark.
I thought I'd learned my lesson. But last night I had something like an epiphany, after a night of drinking, and the feeling has carried through to today. I don't know if I would even call it an epiphany. I haven't hit upon some grand idea or philosophy or coda for one's life. I've been through all that before. You pick and choose from the great bowl of ideas. None of these ideas have really brought a real sense of peace to me. Last night, it felt like I'd been lost in a labyrinth, like Theseus and his Athenian companions in Greek myth, and I'd dropped the ball of thread that could lead us out. It was like we'd been wandering lost for years, and last night I finally found the thread.
I spent the hours before this at House of Blues on Sunset in Hollywood. I was with my newfound friends from Petranek Fitness: Ben, Kat, Mike, and Sherwin (of course). We are old and perpetually tired from crossfit, and so we upgraded our concert tickets (for a Maryland band called O.A.R.) to get a table in the VIP area and not have to deal with the standing plebians in front of the stage below us. We laughed in the face of the Zone diet (many crossfitters are devotees, and i just started) by munching on fried calamari and french fries. I had a very un-Zone dinner of chicken fried chicken with gravy, mashed potatoes and green beans (I'm a Texan, what can i say?). Then Sherwin and I proceeded to the hard liquor. Kat and Ben sensibly stuck to Coors Light. Mike is on hiatus from drinking and has become the greatest DD on the West coast. Sherwin's poison was JD on the rocks. Mine was Diet Coke and Captain Morgan rum. I am hardcore, bitches. The concert was fun. I got drunk and happy. I drunk texted my poor hapa friend Caryn who was kind enough to say she felt honored to receive good tidings from an inebriated Paco.
I sobered up enough to drive home.
I felt tired but pretty zen. like in some altered state. Have you ever stepped outside yourself and looked down at your life from a bird's eye view and wondered how the hell you got to where you are? I've done that a lot in the last couple of years. Ihave felt disconnected. I have felt like a man with no country. Like an explorer so long on his journey that he doesn't remember home. There was a wall that prevented me from looking at my past because the past was painful. It contained things that hurt. All those dark midnights of the soul. We've all been there.
Last night, before going to bed, I suddenly saw so many things. Like some dying man whose life is flashing before his eyes. I thought about my son Ethan. i remembered holding his 7-year old hand as we crossed a street in that urban frightscape of London. He was toting a huge yellow backpack and wearing a blue Gap baseball cap. His tiny British voice squeaked. So vulnerable amidst all this chaos. i remembered feeling the weight of responsibility. I was 23 years old. i was scared. Two children on the streets of London. Ethan is now 17, practically grown. I'm 33 and feeling it more every day.
I saw the bedroom where I lost my virginity at 16. All 70's Playboy bachelor decor (my best friend's dad's house). Two kids in love and lust. I remembered holding the hand of my 22-year-old friend Greg on his death bed as he succumbed to cancer. I remembered getting married at city hall in Camden Town, London. The way Deb laughed with embarrassment as a few family and friends looked on. At 24, I took the modest ceremony more seriously than i took the actual marriage.
I was able to look at these things again and not feel pain. I felt connected to my past. Like I finally knew the story up to this point. No mystifying plot holes. No bizarre narrative logic. Put together, all these experiences meant something.
Who knows? Maybe this feeling will pass. Maybe everything will unravel and I'll be lost in a fog again.
To be honest, I expect it to happen. It probably should happen. We're all searchers. Wanderers. Looking for some kind of truth to get us through the night.
I just have to remember to look for the thread.
Once, when I was in college and on an Ecstasy trip, I saw myself as the world's greatest dancer. While my friends laughed at me in the darkness of an apartment, I hallucinated that I was some superhero of dance. In an amphetamine fog, I told them I went around the world challenging despots and fascists to dance-offs. I danced against Saddam Hussein. I shook my ass versus Kim Jong Il. The outcome was like some scene out of a western. The loser leaves town. This was how I rid the world of evil.
I thought that the world's ills could be cured through dance.
I thought the same thing a couple years later while on a dance floor in London. Again, I was on E. I was in a circle of strangers whom I'd met just minutes before. It looked like a football huddle. The others knew one another. They'd come to the club together. Each took a turn telling all the others how this was the best night of his or her life. Each claimed to have love for everyone in the group. Then there was me, grinning away, an American interloper embraced, my mind full of E-inspired euphoria and care for every living creature on the planet. I thought that if we could make the world one big nightclub and pass out pills, world peace might be a real possibility.
These epiphanies, along with several others scattered through the years, turned out to be very wide of the proverbial mark.
I thought I'd learned my lesson. But last night I had something like an epiphany, after a night of drinking, and the feeling has carried through to today. I don't know if I would even call it an epiphany. I haven't hit upon some grand idea or philosophy or coda for one's life. I've been through all that before. You pick and choose from the great bowl of ideas. None of these ideas have really brought a real sense of peace to me. Last night, it felt like I'd been lost in a labyrinth, like Theseus and his Athenian companions in Greek myth, and I'd dropped the ball of thread that could lead us out. It was like we'd been wandering lost for years, and last night I finally found the thread.
I spent the hours before this at House of Blues on Sunset in Hollywood. I was with my newfound friends from Petranek Fitness: Ben, Kat, Mike, and Sherwin (of course). We are old and perpetually tired from crossfit, and so we upgraded our concert tickets (for a Maryland band called O.A.R.) to get a table in the VIP area and not have to deal with the standing plebians in front of the stage below us. We laughed in the face of the Zone diet (many crossfitters are devotees, and i just started) by munching on fried calamari and french fries. I had a very un-Zone dinner of chicken fried chicken with gravy, mashed potatoes and green beans (I'm a Texan, what can i say?). Then Sherwin and I proceeded to the hard liquor. Kat and Ben sensibly stuck to Coors Light. Mike is on hiatus from drinking and has become the greatest DD on the West coast. Sherwin's poison was JD on the rocks. Mine was Diet Coke and Captain Morgan rum. I am hardcore, bitches. The concert was fun. I got drunk and happy. I drunk texted my poor hapa friend Caryn who was kind enough to say she felt honored to receive good tidings from an inebriated Paco.
I sobered up enough to drive home.
I felt tired but pretty zen. like in some altered state. Have you ever stepped outside yourself and looked down at your life from a bird's eye view and wondered how the hell you got to where you are? I've done that a lot in the last couple of years. Ihave felt disconnected. I have felt like a man with no country. Like an explorer so long on his journey that he doesn't remember home. There was a wall that prevented me from looking at my past because the past was painful. It contained things that hurt. All those dark midnights of the soul. We've all been there.
Last night, before going to bed, I suddenly saw so many things. Like some dying man whose life is flashing before his eyes. I thought about my son Ethan. i remembered holding his 7-year old hand as we crossed a street in that urban frightscape of London. He was toting a huge yellow backpack and wearing a blue Gap baseball cap. His tiny British voice squeaked. So vulnerable amidst all this chaos. i remembered feeling the weight of responsibility. I was 23 years old. i was scared. Two children on the streets of London. Ethan is now 17, practically grown. I'm 33 and feeling it more every day.
I saw the bedroom where I lost my virginity at 16. All 70's Playboy bachelor decor (my best friend's dad's house). Two kids in love and lust. I remembered holding the hand of my 22-year-old friend Greg on his death bed as he succumbed to cancer. I remembered getting married at city hall in Camden Town, London. The way Deb laughed with embarrassment as a few family and friends looked on. At 24, I took the modest ceremony more seriously than i took the actual marriage.
I was able to look at these things again and not feel pain. I felt connected to my past. Like I finally knew the story up to this point. No mystifying plot holes. No bizarre narrative logic. Put together, all these experiences meant something.
Who knows? Maybe this feeling will pass. Maybe everything will unravel and I'll be lost in a fog again.
To be honest, I expect it to happen. It probably should happen. We're all searchers. Wanderers. Looking for some kind of truth to get us through the night.
I just have to remember to look for the thread.
Monday, June 23, 2008
Sunday, June 15, 2008
Disco Inferno 2008, Latina Cougars and Ecstatic Behavior
Since I'm single and don't have to answer to anybody, ecstatic behavior has become my MO. The trend continued last night at Disco Inferno 2008. Circus Disco in Hollywood hosted a classic 70's disco night, and when I heard about it over a week ago I couldn't resist. When I was in college, a club in Dallas hosted a disco night every Sunday. My friends and I bought bellbottoms, polyester shirts, and afro wigs and became regulars dancing to the beats of Barry White, Gloria Gaynor, and Donna Summers. Sunday became my favorite day of the week. Clubs nowadays are known for their 80's-themed nights, but I hadn't seen a place advertising disco only in forever. Like 11 years to be exact. I felt like a searcher for the Grail who'd finally succeeded.
Why do i like disco so much? It's just pure fun. Up-tempo. Ridiculous. Sort of like me. It's also an ancestor to house music with its constant, repetitive beat and I love house music. The beat, the beat, the beat...it echoes your heart when you're excited about something.
As preparation, I downloaded a disco album and danced around the office on Friday listening to my ipod. However, when Saturday night came around, I wasn't exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. A hectic week coupled with crossfit that morning had wrecked my body (AMRAP in 20 minutes, 45lb KB thrusters and 400 m run; thanks Stanwyck!). As the hour drew near, I drank two cups of coffee and donned a cowboy shirt with a big fuck-off collar that I purchased in 1996, my junior year of college. I bought the shirt for Halloween from a thrift store for 1 dollar. I went as a cowboy. As a joke. Who knew that 12 years later it would look so good on me?
Three other peeps were brave enough to confront Disco Inferno 2008: my co-worker Teresa, her boyfriend Omar, and fellow crossfitter Chris Sherwin. We all wondered what the fuck we'd gotten ourselves into. the very large venue with multiple rooms was pretty empty at 10:30. The disco room was trippy. It felt like we'd traveled through a worm hole and arrived at a high school reunion for people who graduated in the 70's. Older Latino peeps were sitting at tables as the old DJ spun some approximation of disco on a stage. We proceeded to the bar very quickly. Before we lost our nerve and fled from the club screaming like Japanese citizens in a Godzilla film.
I drank vodka and tonic. Then i switched to vodka and red bull because my legs were like spaghetti and my eyes heavy. When we went back to the disco room, the middle-aged Latinos were dancing. Hellz yeah! We joined them. I whirled and twirled and pointed like John Travolta. Compared to the Latinos, who were generally a little heavier than I, I was like a spastic. A dervish. A tornado of disco. We were the hawtest group there. Sherwin told me that a group of Latina cougars was watching me. But I didn't believe him. He always says that some chick is looking at me. I wonder if he is blind as well as deaf. Nonetheless, I was feeling drunk and silly and I went with it, and told him that my goal was to freak-dance with half the cougars in the club. I failed miserably. I didn't dance with a single cougar because I couldn't get past the fact that they were almost all bigger than me, with love handles and tummies that poked through their tight, shiny dresses. I have become a body fascist.
I kept waiting for the music to get better. I thought the DJ was saving all the classics for later on when the dance floor would be at its most crowded. The obscure disco music continued. My patience waned. My sobriety gone, I began to get angry. I was afraid that I would have to contain Sherwin at some point in the evening, because he gets all rugby from time to time, but it was I who needed to calm down. I started to yell at the DJ perched up there on stage, all high and mighty. "You fucking asshole!!! Where's the goddamn classic disco??? I waited 11 years for this shit!!!" Luckily, because of the music, no one could hear me. Or they pretended not to notice. Then I began to fire middle fingers toward the DJ. Both hands. He was ruining my night. Luckily, he didn't see me. Was I wrong to get so angry? If you wait a long time for disco and find a place that advertises classic disco and you pay 20 fucking dollars to get in, is it wrong to expect classic disco and get angry when it doesn't materialize? It's false advertising. Bad business practice. I want my 20 dollars back.
By 1:30, I had given up. Omar and Teresa had left. Sherwin and I left too. I decided on the drive home to retire from disco dancing. You can't re-live the past. I tried and failed. Disco, like romance, was dead.
A few other interesting visuals from the night. The Santa Monica Boulevard off-ramp from the 101 was home to a homeless man with a sign which said, "I won't lie. I need a beer." Inside the club, an Asian girl did crazy shit with a hoola-hoop on the dance floor. Why are Asians so weird? I got run over by a guy in a wheelchair on the dance floor.
and oh yeah. Sherwin passed out in his car and somehow ended up lost at USC the next morning.
Why do i like disco so much? It's just pure fun. Up-tempo. Ridiculous. Sort of like me. It's also an ancestor to house music with its constant, repetitive beat and I love house music. The beat, the beat, the beat...it echoes your heart when you're excited about something.
As preparation, I downloaded a disco album and danced around the office on Friday listening to my ipod. However, when Saturday night came around, I wasn't exactly bright-eyed and bushy-tailed. A hectic week coupled with crossfit that morning had wrecked my body (AMRAP in 20 minutes, 45lb KB thrusters and 400 m run; thanks Stanwyck!). As the hour drew near, I drank two cups of coffee and donned a cowboy shirt with a big fuck-off collar that I purchased in 1996, my junior year of college. I bought the shirt for Halloween from a thrift store for 1 dollar. I went as a cowboy. As a joke. Who knew that 12 years later it would look so good on me?
Three other peeps were brave enough to confront Disco Inferno 2008: my co-worker Teresa, her boyfriend Omar, and fellow crossfitter Chris Sherwin. We all wondered what the fuck we'd gotten ourselves into. the very large venue with multiple rooms was pretty empty at 10:30. The disco room was trippy. It felt like we'd traveled through a worm hole and arrived at a high school reunion for people who graduated in the 70's. Older Latino peeps were sitting at tables as the old DJ spun some approximation of disco on a stage. We proceeded to the bar very quickly. Before we lost our nerve and fled from the club screaming like Japanese citizens in a Godzilla film.
I drank vodka and tonic. Then i switched to vodka and red bull because my legs were like spaghetti and my eyes heavy. When we went back to the disco room, the middle-aged Latinos were dancing. Hellz yeah! We joined them. I whirled and twirled and pointed like John Travolta. Compared to the Latinos, who were generally a little heavier than I, I was like a spastic. A dervish. A tornado of disco. We were the hawtest group there. Sherwin told me that a group of Latina cougars was watching me. But I didn't believe him. He always says that some chick is looking at me. I wonder if he is blind as well as deaf. Nonetheless, I was feeling drunk and silly and I went with it, and told him that my goal was to freak-dance with half the cougars in the club. I failed miserably. I didn't dance with a single cougar because I couldn't get past the fact that they were almost all bigger than me, with love handles and tummies that poked through their tight, shiny dresses. I have become a body fascist.
I kept waiting for the music to get better. I thought the DJ was saving all the classics for later on when the dance floor would be at its most crowded. The obscure disco music continued. My patience waned. My sobriety gone, I began to get angry. I was afraid that I would have to contain Sherwin at some point in the evening, because he gets all rugby from time to time, but it was I who needed to calm down. I started to yell at the DJ perched up there on stage, all high and mighty. "You fucking asshole!!! Where's the goddamn classic disco??? I waited 11 years for this shit!!!" Luckily, because of the music, no one could hear me. Or they pretended not to notice. Then I began to fire middle fingers toward the DJ. Both hands. He was ruining my night. Luckily, he didn't see me. Was I wrong to get so angry? If you wait a long time for disco and find a place that advertises classic disco and you pay 20 fucking dollars to get in, is it wrong to expect classic disco and get angry when it doesn't materialize? It's false advertising. Bad business practice. I want my 20 dollars back.
By 1:30, I had given up. Omar and Teresa had left. Sherwin and I left too. I decided on the drive home to retire from disco dancing. You can't re-live the past. I tried and failed. Disco, like romance, was dead.
A few other interesting visuals from the night. The Santa Monica Boulevard off-ramp from the 101 was home to a homeless man with a sign which said, "I won't lie. I need a beer." Inside the club, an Asian girl did crazy shit with a hoola-hoop on the dance floor. Why are Asians so weird? I got run over by a guy in a wheelchair on the dance floor.
and oh yeah. Sherwin passed out in his car and somehow ended up lost at USC the next morning.
Saturday, June 14, 2008
Vegas...baby
Vegas sucks when you go by yourself. I've been there over 20 times in the last two years thanks to my freelance work as a mixed martial arts journalist. And most of those times I went alone, worked the fights, and maybe gambled a bit before heading back to my hotel room. Alone, you're just a witness to all the debauchery and I prefer to be a participant. I want to be one of those midwestern twenty-somethings who's never been out of his small, stupid town and in Vegas lugs around a tall, plastic, fruity drink and pukes while strutting down the Strip. "I'm King of the World!" "Indiana! Represent!" Barf. That is my dream.
This week I went back to Vegas to watch my stepson Ethan graduate from high school. I'm no fan of graduations, which are boring and interminable, but i was happy to see my son graduate. He's accomplished a helluva a lot and I was excited and proud. My bullshit radar was activated when I heard that the school had named five valedictorians, which meant that we would have to sit through at least five speeches. I was distressed. I thought that you could only have one valedictorian. It's supposed to be a fucking singular honor, not something shared. It devalues the distinction, but seems totally in line with the American trend of awarding the many instead of the few. As George Carlin once said, if everyone is special then no one is special. Anyway, the fucking principal should have made the five valedictorians play rock, paper, scissors to determine a winner. On stage. In front of the hundreds of people in attendance. That would have been fun.
Having said that, the first girl was great. She was self-deprecating. She avoided the strictly abstract by recounting funny memories of high school. She had perspective. It went downhill from there. The four subsequent speeches - all from girls incidentally - were awful. As a professional writer (i write for a specialty magazine, i'm soooooo successful), I was offended. Each speaker used every cliche and platitude known to high school valedictorians for countless generations. We are the best class eva. We are going to change the world. Everybody in our class is a winner. The moment that changed my life forever.....I wanted to say so many things to them. Number one: Stop being so serious and earnest! It's annoying! A good speech should have levity. Number two: this is something that you'll find out on your own, but the world will affect you too. It will kick your ass. until you are a blubbering, neurotic mess and just a shade of your former youthful hopeful self. And lastly, very few of you will have a profound impact on the world. Most of you are mediocre and you'll have mediocre careers, so stop talking grandiosely about your future contributions. Get ready for mediocrity, kids!!!!
The experience reminded me of a line of dialogue from the gorgeous novel All the Pretty Horses. "he said that it was good God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all."
After graduation, as we took pictures in 90 degree desert heat, there was a tiny bit of drama involving the ex-wife. I hadn't seen her in three years and I would have liked to talk to her over lunch, which I thought was where we were all headed. I mean, our son just graduated from high school. It was something to celebrate together. But her Zohan-like, Israeli ex-military boyfriend had other ideas. He couldn't make it because of some commitment, and he didn't want her to go either. So they argued a bit. My question is this: what's the big fucking deal? Yo Zohan, we're divorced. You won the grand prize. You're going home with her and I'm going home to both my hands, which are admittedly very skillful and preferred to the ex-wife. So chill brotha. Why be intimidated by a short Asian man who is in very good shape???
That night, I went to a new bar just south of the Strip called The Blue Martini. My buddy J.P. had just started working there as a barback and since i had nothing else to do (i.e., too broke to gamble or patronize a strip club) I went there to have a drink. The bar was beautiful and shiny with an outdoor bar part and a nightclub inner part. The bartenders were stunning in their light blue bustiers that shoved into the air their large mounds of plastic flesh. The clientele was either good-looking (the women and a few of the men) or financially enhanced (the men). I very much felt like i was in Vegas. I ordered a ten-dollar Ketel One and tonic and did some people watching until my buddy J.P. finished work. We decided to stay and hang out. J.P. seemed to know everybody in the bar. He's a professional befriender. A player extraordinaire, though he is short and bald. He has great bone structure and good dress sense and he can charm a female komodo dragon. He gets more ass than anyone I know, and for the two years I've known him he's entertained me with tales of his romantic misadventures. Women. It's his favorite topic, but that night his stories just depressed me. He's stuck in this dating cycle. He's like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. He's destined to wake up every day and date the same twenty-something party girls who have lots of looks but little substance. He'll go on three or four dates a week and see a girl for a couple of weeks and then it will fall apart. Both sides will play games until one side takes ultimate offense and says goodbye, good riddance. Or the whole affair will fizzle out one text message at a time until there is nothing but silence and the memory of their coitus. He once dated a 19-year-old soft porn model (i got to meet her; very hot) who sidelined as a single mom. The night that we hung out, J.P. snuck us into a VH1 after-party (Ozzy Osbourne's!!!) at MGM Grand and we drank free booze for a couple of hours and then went disco dancing. A fine evening. But J.P. and the chick started fighting like high school sweethearts (I guess she was just a year out of high school; did she even graduate?). She was mad because he talked to some chick at the after-party that he worked with. All he did was talk to her. And they're co-workers! He's a social dude. It's his MO. But here she was telling him that she was "this close" to kicking the girl's ass. For a conversation!!! They've been dating three weeks and she's ready to act like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. But J.P. is no better. Instead of trying to mollify her, he barks back at her and this drama rolls on at 3am until my buddy Lincoln and I bail for the relative safety of our beds. Fast forward a month and J.P. calls me and tells me how the fling ended. The following key terms say it all. Surveillance. Teenage Baby Daddy. Near violence. Tears. Hate speech. Pleas to "come back to me!!!" I came to the conclusion that they were both nuts and the perfect embodiment of the human romantic predicament.
Anyway, that's J.P.'s lust life. I won't call it love. I don't know if love figures in the vocabulary of twenty- and thirty-somethings today. We're all too wrapped up in our own lives. Our limited universes. Our self-reflection and navel gazing. Too much has happened to us in a romantic sense. Too many bad break-ups and Vietnam moments of crisis. We're the walking wounded with our neuroses and needs. It's a wonder that any couples stick together. Without mother nature lending a helping hand, I don't know if men and women would get together at all. The gender war is very real, and I don't think that men are winning. Women are smart smart smart and they're making money and sleeping around and breaking hearts. Women are the new men. Men take cover.
I'm thinking all this while J.P. tells me of his latest entanglements. I want to tell him to grow up. He's nearly 40 and he works at a bar, a nightclub at the weekends, and at the Mandalay Bay pool during the day. He is Peter Pan without the green outfit and obvious gay subtext. He complains about all these girls. Meanwhile, he acts like a player. Change your life. Move away from Sin City. It's so easy to lose your sense of reality in such a place. Get a real job. If you're interested in finding the right girl, stop dating skanks. I'm so depressed at this point that I don't even look at all the totty in the place. I want to avoid this complicated shit forevermore. I want to be friends with girls. No benefits. Let's get back to that mental space in elementary school where you wanted to race a girl in the 100-yard dash, not fuck her brains out.
I was so glad to get back to the hotel. Away from all the vegas freaks (that night at the bar I met a showgirl, a professional bare knuckle brawler, and a musician in Elton John's band). In the morning, I kissed my kettlebell (you should have seen the bellhop's face when i asked him to take it up to the room) and did a workout of swings and double-unders. Then my mother and I got the fuck out of Dodge. As a degenerate gambler, my Korean mother felt compelled to accomany her son on this trip. She disappeared in the casino and emerged several hours later having lost 5 grand, which is small change compared to what she wins and loses on a regular basis. But she was in the red this time, so she was pissed and on the drive home she barked at me like any good Asian mother worth her salt would do. She said i was a no-good son. That other Korean moms bragged about their doctor and lawyer progeny who also paid their parents a hefty allowance with which to gamble. That my son Ethan was a no-good ex-grandson because he didn't call to thank her for the graduation money. To get back at her, I told her that I was never getting married again and that i would never have children of my own, thus robbing her of her buddha-given right to grandchildren.
Soon we were laughing like hell.
This week I went back to Vegas to watch my stepson Ethan graduate from high school. I'm no fan of graduations, which are boring and interminable, but i was happy to see my son graduate. He's accomplished a helluva a lot and I was excited and proud. My bullshit radar was activated when I heard that the school had named five valedictorians, which meant that we would have to sit through at least five speeches. I was distressed. I thought that you could only have one valedictorian. It's supposed to be a fucking singular honor, not something shared. It devalues the distinction, but seems totally in line with the American trend of awarding the many instead of the few. As George Carlin once said, if everyone is special then no one is special. Anyway, the fucking principal should have made the five valedictorians play rock, paper, scissors to determine a winner. On stage. In front of the hundreds of people in attendance. That would have been fun.
Having said that, the first girl was great. She was self-deprecating. She avoided the strictly abstract by recounting funny memories of high school. She had perspective. It went downhill from there. The four subsequent speeches - all from girls incidentally - were awful. As a professional writer (i write for a specialty magazine, i'm soooooo successful), I was offended. Each speaker used every cliche and platitude known to high school valedictorians for countless generations. We are the best class eva. We are going to change the world. Everybody in our class is a winner. The moment that changed my life forever.....I wanted to say so many things to them. Number one: Stop being so serious and earnest! It's annoying! A good speech should have levity. Number two: this is something that you'll find out on your own, but the world will affect you too. It will kick your ass. until you are a blubbering, neurotic mess and just a shade of your former youthful hopeful self. And lastly, very few of you will have a profound impact on the world. Most of you are mediocre and you'll have mediocre careers, so stop talking grandiosely about your future contributions. Get ready for mediocrity, kids!!!!
The experience reminded me of a line of dialogue from the gorgeous novel All the Pretty Horses. "he said that it was good God kept the truths of life from the young as they were starting out or else they'd have no heart to start at all."
After graduation, as we took pictures in 90 degree desert heat, there was a tiny bit of drama involving the ex-wife. I hadn't seen her in three years and I would have liked to talk to her over lunch, which I thought was where we were all headed. I mean, our son just graduated from high school. It was something to celebrate together. But her Zohan-like, Israeli ex-military boyfriend had other ideas. He couldn't make it because of some commitment, and he didn't want her to go either. So they argued a bit. My question is this: what's the big fucking deal? Yo Zohan, we're divorced. You won the grand prize. You're going home with her and I'm going home to both my hands, which are admittedly very skillful and preferred to the ex-wife. So chill brotha. Why be intimidated by a short Asian man who is in very good shape???
That night, I went to a new bar just south of the Strip called The Blue Martini. My buddy J.P. had just started working there as a barback and since i had nothing else to do (i.e., too broke to gamble or patronize a strip club) I went there to have a drink. The bar was beautiful and shiny with an outdoor bar part and a nightclub inner part. The bartenders were stunning in their light blue bustiers that shoved into the air their large mounds of plastic flesh. The clientele was either good-looking (the women and a few of the men) or financially enhanced (the men). I very much felt like i was in Vegas. I ordered a ten-dollar Ketel One and tonic and did some people watching until my buddy J.P. finished work. We decided to stay and hang out. J.P. seemed to know everybody in the bar. He's a professional befriender. A player extraordinaire, though he is short and bald. He has great bone structure and good dress sense and he can charm a female komodo dragon. He gets more ass than anyone I know, and for the two years I've known him he's entertained me with tales of his romantic misadventures. Women. It's his favorite topic, but that night his stories just depressed me. He's stuck in this dating cycle. He's like Bill Murray in Groundhog Day. He's destined to wake up every day and date the same twenty-something party girls who have lots of looks but little substance. He'll go on three or four dates a week and see a girl for a couple of weeks and then it will fall apart. Both sides will play games until one side takes ultimate offense and says goodbye, good riddance. Or the whole affair will fizzle out one text message at a time until there is nothing but silence and the memory of their coitus. He once dated a 19-year-old soft porn model (i got to meet her; very hot) who sidelined as a single mom. The night that we hung out, J.P. snuck us into a VH1 after-party (Ozzy Osbourne's!!!) at MGM Grand and we drank free booze for a couple of hours and then went disco dancing. A fine evening. But J.P. and the chick started fighting like high school sweethearts (I guess she was just a year out of high school; did she even graduate?). She was mad because he talked to some chick at the after-party that he worked with. All he did was talk to her. And they're co-workers! He's a social dude. It's his MO. But here she was telling him that she was "this close" to kicking the girl's ass. For a conversation!!! They've been dating three weeks and she's ready to act like Glenn Close in Fatal Attraction. But J.P. is no better. Instead of trying to mollify her, he barks back at her and this drama rolls on at 3am until my buddy Lincoln and I bail for the relative safety of our beds. Fast forward a month and J.P. calls me and tells me how the fling ended. The following key terms say it all. Surveillance. Teenage Baby Daddy. Near violence. Tears. Hate speech. Pleas to "come back to me!!!" I came to the conclusion that they were both nuts and the perfect embodiment of the human romantic predicament.
Anyway, that's J.P.'s lust life. I won't call it love. I don't know if love figures in the vocabulary of twenty- and thirty-somethings today. We're all too wrapped up in our own lives. Our limited universes. Our self-reflection and navel gazing. Too much has happened to us in a romantic sense. Too many bad break-ups and Vietnam moments of crisis. We're the walking wounded with our neuroses and needs. It's a wonder that any couples stick together. Without mother nature lending a helping hand, I don't know if men and women would get together at all. The gender war is very real, and I don't think that men are winning. Women are smart smart smart and they're making money and sleeping around and breaking hearts. Women are the new men. Men take cover.
I'm thinking all this while J.P. tells me of his latest entanglements. I want to tell him to grow up. He's nearly 40 and he works at a bar, a nightclub at the weekends, and at the Mandalay Bay pool during the day. He is Peter Pan without the green outfit and obvious gay subtext. He complains about all these girls. Meanwhile, he acts like a player. Change your life. Move away from Sin City. It's so easy to lose your sense of reality in such a place. Get a real job. If you're interested in finding the right girl, stop dating skanks. I'm so depressed at this point that I don't even look at all the totty in the place. I want to avoid this complicated shit forevermore. I want to be friends with girls. No benefits. Let's get back to that mental space in elementary school where you wanted to race a girl in the 100-yard dash, not fuck her brains out.
I was so glad to get back to the hotel. Away from all the vegas freaks (that night at the bar I met a showgirl, a professional bare knuckle brawler, and a musician in Elton John's band). In the morning, I kissed my kettlebell (you should have seen the bellhop's face when i asked him to take it up to the room) and did a workout of swings and double-unders. Then my mother and I got the fuck out of Dodge. As a degenerate gambler, my Korean mother felt compelled to accomany her son on this trip. She disappeared in the casino and emerged several hours later having lost 5 grand, which is small change compared to what she wins and loses on a regular basis. But she was in the red this time, so she was pissed and on the drive home she barked at me like any good Asian mother worth her salt would do. She said i was a no-good son. That other Korean moms bragged about their doctor and lawyer progeny who also paid their parents a hefty allowance with which to gamble. That my son Ethan was a no-good ex-grandson because he didn't call to thank her for the graduation money. To get back at her, I told her that I was never getting married again and that i would never have children of my own, thus robbing her of her buddha-given right to grandchildren.
Soon we were laughing like hell.
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