QOTD: Hip-Hop Romanticism

I enjoy hip-hop for many reasons. One of them being the often classic rhymes that are dished out on a song by song basis. Some very quotable, some better left heard. Unfortunately, hip-hop these days has downgraded itself to a concoction of nondistinctive beats and unremarkable but witty rhymes. The storytelling and social commentary has been lost. Too much trying to be a gangster and too less trying to understand the world.

Anyways, at the risk of being a complete and utter hypocrite, I have to say that I like 50 Cent somewhat. Not as good as Eminem, but at least he is distinctive. Which leads into my Quote of The Day. To express his undying emotion for some apparently naive woman, he says:

"I love you like a fat kid love cake."

Shakespeare had his soliloquies. Van Gogh had an earless self-portrait. Hell, even Poison had a "Every rose has its thorn." 50 Cent had his fat kids.

Quote of the Day

Hmmm... I didn't deliver on my promised second blog yesterday. It seems I was distracted by all the post-holiday "Boxing Day" shopping. So to kickstart the part of my brain that writes, I will try to add a quote of the day. Well, I'll endeavor.

"On our wedding day, I told her that I don't fool around. I don't smoke. I don't drink. I don't do drugs. But on any given day, I may come home with a new car."

From Bob, a New Yorker who bought a 650,000 dollar Ferrari Enzo... only one of 650 available in the world. I wonder what his wife thought of that? Oh, and he doesn't like driving it around because he can't fit a child safety seet in there. Life must be rough.

My Dog Chip

Today is a prolific one for me. I'll be awarding the internet with two, count 'em, two blogs! Hooray! Okay, maybe I'm just trying to make myself feel better as I've had a bad case of writer's block for the holiday season.

My first blog is about my dog Chip. Why would I blog about a furry dropkick dog you say? Well, it's partly because it's my way of curing my writer's block and partly because he keeps sitting next to me paw-licking. More on that later. Importantly, he's also an integral part of the DSC. More on that later too.

Chip is a white-brown Lhasa Apso. Lhasa's were bred in Tibet to be a watchdog for the monks. I guess Tibetan people were afraid of these ferocious 15 pound furry as all hell dogs? I don't see it. I can attest to the fact that Chip still has his super acute watchdog hearing. He barks to people passing wind down the block. Don't let that fool you into thinking he will protect you though. Faced with a challenge from a bigger dog, Chip tends to bark from behind my legs. Watchdog, yes. Guarddog, no.

I should say that Chip was white-brown. He's now on the verge of his 8th Julian calendar year birthday and in dog years that's damn near 56. So he has lost much of his brown spots that made him "diverse." I guess dogs get gray hairs too. Chip was brought home one day by my sister as a puppy. Afraid of everything, he'd hide under the coffee table most of the time, until we enticed him out by letting him play with my brother in law's white sock. Let me clarify. My sister let him play with it. I was disgusted by it. Of course, because of that, he rips up anything white he comes across, particularly tissue. That's where he expresses his "Dances with Wolves" ferocity, by ripping up Kleenex.

Chip was the love of my sister's life, up until my nephew came around. My nephew was allergic to dogs and cats, so Chip was kept in the dark basement for his 2 years before he came out to California. This may sound controversial, but if were up to me, I would have kept Chip and gave that spoiled nephew up for adoption. Hey, I just call it like I see it. Anyways, given that Chip was getting no love, Chi, er, Evil Puppetmaster and I took it upon ourselves to adopt Chip. In fact, EP herself wanted to call the Humane Society on my sister. But for the honor of my family name, I restrained her from pressing talk on her cellphone.

Since Chip has been out here, he has lived the good dog life. He sleeps wherever he wants (we feel guilty for his time in the prison that was my sister's basement), he gets plenty of doggie treats, and he gets tons of ear rubs and belly rubs. I'm envious, except for the ear rub part. Furthermore, he gets love from anybody who comes through the door, so he's getting more social. This was difficult for him in the past, as he was always locked away in my sister's dungeon, I mean basement.

Chip has plenty of quirks. In fact, he's got more personality than most humans.

1. He has a penchant for playing catch by himself. One night, while I was trying to sleep on my sister's couch, I heard him running up and down the stairs. Turning on the light, I saw that he would bring his ball up to the top of the stairs, kick it down, and run after it. Funny as all hell.

2. He is addicted to paw-licking like an adolescent teen to masturbating. This is his favorite pastime. If there is no treat to be had, no walk to be taken, no game of catch to play, he will sit there and lick his paws endlessly. Not sure why, but he does it day and night.

3. He loves sleeping in the "four paw" position. That is, he sleeps on his back with four paws straight up in the air.

4. He doesn't do one trick at a time. He does them in a "macro" fashion. Show him a treat and he'll do the high five, handshake, play dead, and rollover all in one. He can't separate them.

5. He likes licking the bareskin on people's legs. Again, not sure why, but if you're wearing shorts in our house, be prepared for a drive by Chip licking.

6. He has doggie dreams and snores horribly. I still snore more than he, but his snoring is still pretty bad for a 15 pound dog. He has his share of dreams where he is growling, running, and licking all at the same time with his eyes closed.

7. He falls asleep with his head in the air. Of course, each time his head falls down and hits the ground and he wakes up.

8. He's as uncoordinated as Chi. I can't even count the number of times he's mistimed his jump and ended up jumping right into the side of the couch or bed (Chip not Chi, although it would be funny to see Chi mistime a jump into the side of the couch). I even saw him run straight into a closet door fullspeed.

9. He has his own doggie. He has a stuffed dalmation that is 1/4 of his size that he sleeps with and sometimes (in a violent way) plays catch with. In fact, he responds to "Where's your doggie Chip?" Wierd.

10. He has no sense of the difference between bare floor and carpet. Throw a bone while he is standing on our bare floor and he'll go nowhere for about five seconds. All you hear is his paws spinning as it tries to grab traction. He's also been known to misjudge turns on bare floor and slide right into the wall, or fridge.

That's probably more than anyone wants to know about my dog Chip. But I love him, so he gets time on my blog. Most people that meet him love him too. Which brings me to the DSC. How can I tie in a dog with a bunch of inebriated single people? Well, it seems that the DSC has a habit of trying to suffocate our dog after a night of drinking. Something about a fluffy, furry dog makes him attractive to them. Then again, this explains a lot about the people they try to hook up with on those drunkenfests. Luckily, Chip has developed an amazing ability to know when people are drunk, and avoid them.

Well, that's my first blog. I guess I just realized I need to go watch a movie, so the second one will have to wait until tomorrow. Somehow I wrote more than I planned to. Not uncommon for me I guess.

Asian Male Emasculation

Being that my blog has been turned into a sexual forum, I need to bring it back to the high road and establish some modicum of decency. It is an uphill battle, but hopefully I will succeed. Okay, well at least temporarily.

Living in Cali has afforded me a fresh perspective on my Asian Maleness. Having lived in Minnesota for all my life, I always felt clearly different from the rest of the population. I had the Fargo accent down, but despite my best efforts, I couldn't turn my brown eyes and black hair into blue eyes and blonde hair. Hmmm. That's an interesting picture. In Minnesota, I felt clearly separate from the uniformity about me. Not that they weren't nice about it, but I always was aware of my Asian-ness. You can fit in, but you're always conscious of your efforts to do so.

Moving to Cali was a revelation. All of a sudden, I was less aware of my Asian-ness. I never felt different by any means. Much more integrated I was (Yoda speak). In fact, the opposite occurred. I was more aware of the Asian-ness around me. That was sort of disturbing. But I'll let the Puppetmaster elaborate on that in one of her blogs. She tends to be the one with the more "controversial" views anyways. Some might say inflammatory. A select few might even call her comments incendiary.

Despite this newfound feeling of belonging, I still notice the effects of AME occurring around me. That's Asian Male Emasculation for those of you who are acronym challenged. The examples are all around. Go to your local drinking establishment with your Asian female friends. Notice when they think somebody looks good, it's often the tall alpha white male. Notice when they get drunk, they try to hang out with those same white males, disregarding the rest of the Asian males in your group or in the bar/club. This would be fine if the converse were true. However, it isn't. Non-Asian women don't lust after Asian guys. Don't even get me started on those "Asianphile" white guys.

All of this got me to thinking. How did this come about? Why the discrepancy? What is it about our society that makes Asian men less appealing? I'll offer a couple of my explanations, however biased and inflammatory they may be.

Film and Television
Ever notice how the Asian male never gets the lead role? Let's start off with the Asian male that currently is most well known to us: Jackie Chan. Now, I like Jackie. But I can't say that he exudes a male presence. He's always portrayed as goofy, feminine, and never interested in women. Apart from the imported feature films (those from Hong Kong), almost all of his movies required some sort of white person to make him appealing to that crowd. Oh yeah, and do I have to bring up the Green Hornet? Having said that, there are certainly more and more lead roles handed out to Asian males than previously. Jet Li has done a few. Bruce Lee even had Enter the Dragon (a classic). So this is only partly responsible for the AME.

Ever notice how TV shows or movies clearly about Asian culture end up having white male leads? Let's see. It started with Kung Fu. A show conceived by Bruce Lee. To display the amazing wonders of martial artistry, they chose none other than David Carridy. WTF? Another example is one of the critically acclaimed movies ever, "Fast and Furious." Now, we all know that the ricer car scene was nurtured into being by Asians in LA. So who better to represent ricers around the world than.... Paul Walker. What? Vin Diesel? Huh? In fact, I think the only Asians in that movie was the one playing video games in his car and another rather large fellow doing some weird glowstick dance. Great. Finally, while I haven't seen it, The Last Samurai appears to be another ripoff of Asian culture. Have the white guy come represent the Japanese Shogunate. How dumb can this be? Somebody here at work tried to quell my concerns by saying, "At least Tom Cruise is short and dark haired." I nearly lost it.

Ever notice how the Asian male never gets the woman? At the end of Romeo Must Die, Jet Li hugs Aaliyah. Wow. Hold back your pentup desires! Check your libido at the door Asian man! Where's the passionate kiss? For a movie about Romeo, there sure wasn't much Romeo type action. I can't even begin to talk about Jackie Chan movies. All of his kisses are "accidental." The closest to Asian male romance was the King and I with Chow Yun Fat. But when I first saw the trailer at the local movie house, somebody started laughing next to me and said, "they need a white guy for that movie." Let's just say I spilled some popcorn and sprite on him. "Sorry, I'm a clumsy Asian nerd."

That's a good lead into the next question: ever notice how the Asian male is ALWAYS portrayed as a geek, nerd, dork, whatever. The ultimate method of stripping an Asian male of his manhood is to make them all seem studious. If the movies were to be believed, we're just a bunch of asexual (budding is how we reproduce apparently), romantically challenged, great at math and science, no fashion sense eunuchs. An Asian James Bond? That would never happen, we're too honorable right? We would never take time to have sex (or even kiss) when there are lives to be saved.

Asian Male Self Emasculation
I can't sit there and complain without saying something about the Asian male's role in this. As Asian males, we need to assert ourselves to break out of this mode. We need to be more aggressive in choosing our careers, in establishing our goals, and in partying! You can't sit at home on your ass, living with your 20 other family members, having kinfolk cook and clean after you and complain about AME holding you down. You can't talk about how you're not getting any women because of AME while sitting in the corner of the bar and never having approached another woman in your life! You can't go out there and say how unmale you are made to feel when you never work out, never eat right, and dress like Bruce Lee in the 70s.

So what to do about the AME? I don't know. I guess maybe society will realize that, yes, Asians can be men too. Maybe I should become an Asian action hero. I can just use my amazing mathematical skills, my family honor, my asexual ways with women, and my clearly inherent Kung Fu skills to save the world. Maybe my friend Terry can be the Korean James Bond. That would be a movie I'd pay big bucks to see. I mean, he's got great one liner's: "Once you've had the Chong...." But I digress.

Introducing the DSC (Drunk Single Crew)

I haven't blogged for quite awhile. It's been since Thanksgiving. I've had quite the case of writer's block. That and my mind has been numbed by Playstation 2.

My friend William came out this past weekend to interview for a job in the Bay Area. William's a good friend of mine from medical school from Minnesota. Having a Saturday night free, we felt it wise to take William out as the DSG, or Drunk Single Guest for the night. Needing some drinking buddies and drunken entertainment, I called out the DSC, or drunk single crew. As you can see from the night's photographic evidence, our night was much more tame than Terry's Birthday debauchery a few weeks back.

So who makes up the DSC? Well, it's sort of a dynamic and changing group of people, anchored by yours truly and my wife. Since we are the only married people in the group, we benefit from the active observation of our drunk, single friends who make up the DSC. However, I've already proven that I am susceptible to their inebriated ways. On any given weekend, you can find this group wreaking their pent-up havoc in LA, SF, PA, and Las Vegas. So before I go on, let me introduce the DSC.

Neo: I get to be first, because its my blog. I am the happy benefactor of the hilarity of the other MD's in the group. Mostly, I sit back and watch with my wife as the rest of the DSC wanders out amongst the darkness-enhanced bar patronage. However, I occasionally get taken down in a drunken stupor with the rest of the crew and am known for my "is he okay in there?" detoxification technique.

The Wife: Clearly the most calculating in the group. With no inhibition whatsoever, she doesn't really need any alcohol to pursue a night of fun. She also likes to sit back, watch and catalog the night's events. The most dangerous one not only because of her pointed and superior wit, but also because of her photographic memory for which she has no qualms about using as blackmail.

The Stud: Well, self proclaimed since nobody I know gave him that nickname. TS is really the drinking instigator in our group. Well known throughout the west coast as a prolific drinker, he subtly plots to take down the rest of the DSC with him every night. He never forces you to drink, but somehow we get drunk with him anyway. A good guy at heart, his pickup lines are both famous and ineffective. Memorable quotes: "I may be my boss' bitch, but I don't kiss his ass." "I want a cheeseburger, without the cheese."

The Make-out Artist: MA is the most free spirited of the group. Get her drunk and she's liable to make friends with every male in the bar or on the dance floor. Not that she's easy or anything, she just doesn't mind making out with random men. Despite roaming the dance floor, she has a knack of being in every photo opportunity. Fairly oblivious to any criticism, she takes the DSC teasing in stride. Most of the time she replies to our jokes about her with, "I know right... I am like that aren't I?"

The Affectionate Lush: AL is the most consistent of the DSC. Never one to miss a good night out, she often begins the night calmly with intentions of simply observing the debauchery unfold. Despite her good intentions, she often ends up victim to MA's influence. One moment, she is next to The Wife and myself discussing the impending disaster, the other she is being thrown in the air (nearly hit the ceiling, twice) by random men. Once she has passed her buzz threshold, she can be found dancing with random men, knocking down shots, and telling my wife how much she loves her.

The Lana Loving Lurker: Triple L is the most underground of our group. Never one to call attention himself, he lurks beneath the surface, watching the crew in a nervous yet morbid curiosity. While not stalking Lana from Smallville, he certainly lusts after her in a perfectly normal, yet adolescent, way. She's hot. I can't deny it. He has wit galore and employs it at the most opportune and amusing moments. Most memorable quote to date: "It's not the size of the wand... it's the magic in the stick that counts."

So how does one gain membership into this elite, er, scary group of inebriated professionals? There are a few requirements. One, you can take the heat dished out by The Wife. Do not reflect it back to her or else you'll be lucky to have your self-esteem intact. Two, you can quickly get comfortable with uncomfortable topics and situations. Be prepared to witness some of the DSC in their most compromising moments. Three, you don't believe in political correctness. We will call out everyone and anyone if we feel the need to. Four, you have a knack of relating everything to sex. All of our conversations end up about it anyways. Five, you like Jack in the Box. It is the tradition of the DSC to go get some JITB post party.

So there you have it, the DSC. It's pretty scary that three of us are doctors and are supposed to be the moral pillars and compasses for society. Well, at least during the day.