I have to tell you something. I was walking around downtown by the courthouses on Easter Saturday (on accident, I was trying to go somewhere else). I was by myself. Anyway, so suddenly this gaggle of young Spanish tourists ran towards me, yelling "Lucy Liu, Lucy Liu!" I thought they were making fun of me and smiled weirdly at them. But then a boy and a girl arranged the three of us so that I was in the middle, held a camera out, and took our picture. I now thought they were trying to steal something out of my pockets (we are in nyc afterall). But I remembered that I had nothing in my pockets, and all my possessions where securely in my handbag. Plus, what would they want with a copy of Zorba the Greek? After we took the picture, they thanked me profusely and then even more profusely pumped their arms up and down and said "Woohoo Lucy Lui!" It was embarrassing because obviously everyone else on the street knew that I was not Lucy Liu, and may even think I'm a fraud for not saying anything. But it all happened so fast! I walked way from them quickly, even though I had no idea where I was going and promptly entered into some sort of parking lot moebius strip for the next half hour, because it occurred to me that I should probably act demure and less accessible, as the real LL might have done. A few hours later, I was around Herald Square and heard a familiar "Lucy Liu Lucy Liu!" I looked and saw two of the Spanish girls sitting on the ground eating softserve ice cream and looking amazed that they're seeing LL again for the second time in one day. I smiled weirdly at them and walked away quickly, this time into a shoe store.

* * * Exhibits * * *

This is Lucy Liu...


And uh... this is, well, you know...



* * *Reflection* * *

I don't really look like Lucy Liu, not at all. Even though all asians look the same to me (you have no idea how many times I give myself a heart attack thinking that I just saw my mother sell a gold watch to a tourist in a cowboy hat when I am walking on Canal), I never though of Lucy Liu as "asian looking." I think she's super pretty and I've heard good things about her from her chauffeur (long story) and would OBVIOUSLY not mind being mistaken for her --but honestly it's just such a stretch.

Then again, maybe looks wise we are not the same, but deep down, beyond the surface, we are actually very similar? And thus we project a similar image to Spanish tourists?

* * * Analysis * * *

To better understand the situation, here is a handy rundown of Lucy Liu facts on the Internet Movie Database. Let's see how many of them match up!

Fluent in Mandarin Chinese.
So am I!

Graduated from the University of Michigan at Ann Arbor with a degree in Asian languages and cultures.
My parents would've teased me mercilessly if I did an Asian degree --why didn't you just pay more attention in Chinese class on Saturdays? Why didn't you GO to Chinese class on saturdays? No one's going to be impressed that a Chinese person knows Chinese! Are you going to learn about Chinese history from a westerner? And so forth. Also, I did not go to University of Michigan, although my cousin did (does?). But my undergrad did start with an M.

=0.25 pts for the M.

Graduated from Stuyvesant high school in 1986.
I graduated from high school in 1998. Wow, I hardly ever have a chance to feel young when comparing grad stats anymore. How charming. Also, I did not go to the famed Stuyvesant. I went to Woodlands Secondary.

= 0 pts. for total mistmatch, plus fleeting moment of relative youth.

Attended New York University for a year.I did not do this. Well, once I was at Washington Square Park in the midst of NYU and there were these young men who were getting ready to perform a dance for the gathering audience, and they kept on talking and talking and making us move back, move back, and this went on and on, dragging our attention for what felt like a year, until I walked away in disgust and heatstroke.

= 0.1 pts. for feeling of being in NYU for a year

Mother is a biochemist, father is a civil engineer and she has a brother and a sister.
My mother has worn many hats, and is currently an author/screenwriter. The closest science job she had was detecting earthquakes in Beijing with computers. Also she cooks plants and animals, so that's technically biochem, I've read. My father is a mechanical/materials engineer, but he is also very civil, save that time I shot him with a BB gun when he was asleep. I have a brother, but no sister to speak of.

=0.75 for three out of four family members

Grew up in the Jackson Heights section of Queens County, New York.
I managed to grow up in several locations, none of which yielded any proper street cred. The roughest thing in our neighbourhood was often the weather. Also in grade school there was a giant middle school bully called The Ogre who would interrupt our afterschool games to sit on us or rub our faces into ice particles. Unfortunately due to my feeble English vocabulary, I spent all four years of our relationship thinking that her name was The Yogurt. "Oh no, it's Yogurt, run for your lives!" I've yelled many a time (but not recently). But on the other hand, I live in New York now and I am certainly growing up. In fact just tonight I was looking online for a wallet... currently for the past four years I have been jamming my money, plastic, and even coins into a small transparent ID sleeve. Last week the owner of the corner store downstairs told me that he was going to buy me a wallet, after watching me struggle with it for a good fifteen seconds. But I might as well tell you right now that I have come to believe that he was kidding, sadly enough.
=0.1 pts for my maturity

Was the first Asian-American female to host "Saturday Night Live".
I have not hosted SNL. Although in ninth grade band class, we took a trip to NYC and visited the SNL set. I know what you're thinking --is it possible that I was on the set the very day, at the very same time that Lucy Liu was on the set as well, as host? Did we both look up at the stage lights and wish we had different lives, which just happen to be those of each other, and then we switched bodies? Unfortunately, after much heavy calculation, the answer is no. To everything.
= 0 pts.

She once worked as an aerobics instructor.
I have not done this. What is aerobics? That sounds like 80s talk to me. But once my kung fu teacher was away filming a movie so I taught some old people in his place. I think that should count...
=and a ONE! (get it, count, aerobics?)

She plays the accordion.
I will do no such thing.
= 0 pts.

She practices rock climbing, skiing, & horseback riding.
I have done all three, but "practice" would be stretching it. A more accurate term would probably be "barely stayed alive attempting to awkwardly."
= 0.5 pts for staying alive

Auditioned for a role in Shanghai Knights (2003), but lost out to Fann Wong.
How do I compete? As this list nears the end, I think it's becoming very clear that Lucy and I do not look alike OR soulmate-alike. The roles that I've lost in auditions are plenty, but never to that conniving bitch Fann Wong!
=0 pts. Just kidding about Fann Wong, I have no idea who she is. I insulted her for comic effect. I know, I know -LL wouldn't do that.

Is an initiated sister of Chi Omega Fraternity
Is Chi short for Chinese? If so, count me in at 0.3 pts!

Announced that she plans on marrying Zach Helm, her boyfriend of one year. [April 2004]
Nope. I do not marry infants. That's just sick, I don't care how famous you are.

Shares a birthday with Britney Spears
I wish! That would be so fun! Britney can sing "Email my Heart" to me while I blow out my candles and there will be cupcakes everywhere, everywhere!

Mentioned in Outkast's hit "Hey Ya".
I'm working on it.

Good friends with Cameron Diaz and Drew Barrymore since Charlie's Angels (2000)
Actually, I've been sort of having some issues with Drew since that baseball movie with Jimmy Fallon.
=0.5 pts for Cameron.

Is close friends with her "Pearl" (1996) co-star Rhea Perlman and her husband Danny DeVito
I'm not even close friends with Pearl.
=0 pts.

Well, that was tiring!

* * * Conclusion* * *
In conclusion, at a measly total of 6.7 pts., it is clear that those Spanish tourists were totally wrong.

How

When I go out, I don't want one of those ambulances that makes its way in silence, either cause we're gridlocked and the driver thinks all the siren serenading in the world ain't gonna make us part traffic the way the Bible guys do with water, or cause there's nothing slowing us down and the driver thinks there's no need to turn on the siren. Or you know what would be the worst, is if my ambulance was quiet most of the time, and then every once in a while when it felt like it was reasonable, it goes and lets out a little whooo, without the whewww, a siren syllable? Man, that would be the worst, at least the silent ambulances have a bit of dignity in 'em. But a little tootin' last ride would just be the saddest way to go. When I go out, go down, I want to get me one of those drivers that goes and believes in the siren, and he (or she) believes that we can part traffic and if we're driving down an emtpy stretch, I want him to believe with all the might of all the lunatics in all the nuthouses in America that we should be tearing down that empty road with lights spinning mad like propellers and our sirens on full, full, full blast.



Photo by evetsggod.

Take a Tour of my Blogosphere, Part I

I think these are the main neighbourhoods of my blogosphere:

1. Tongue-in-cheek but not bitter celebrity gossip.

2. Fashion blogs by Non-airhead girls who don't need to be always proving that they so smart.

3. Food blogs that are funny enough to read even when one is not hungry.

4. Middle America Older Nerds.

5. Slightly puzzling collection of asian american blogs that I've been reading for some weird reason. Puzzling in that they are obviously written for close friends or at least acquaintances, and it's not clear that these people would want to be friends with me. I always feel a bit creepy about reading them but as with all things creepy: I can't stop! Plus, it's nice to get away from the performative blogs, which sort of remind me of smartish kids who hung out with their parents too much and consequently always speak as if they are playing the role of the entertaining precocious child at the grown-ups' table.

6. Blogs centered on the occupation of the writer.

7. My personal real life friends' blogs.

The word "blog" is awful. I mean the idea of having such a thing, the concept itself, is already embarrassing enough. Must the word itself sound so nerdesque, so dork, so pleated khakian, so lacking in both grace, style, or maturity? It is the sound of a monster in a children's book, a monster that turns out to be not actually very powerful, just really ugly and antisocial and misunderstood.

Web + Log = Blog is an equation only a nerd could have come up with, in that the Log variable is not exactly a frequent guest in everyday vocabulary. Scientists keep logs. Scientists named the Blog.

Imagine if it had been named by a 13 year old girl:

Web + Diary = Biary... sounds like a disease where something swells and eventually releases a milky pus.

Named by a Writer/Editor?

Web + Journal = Bournal ...sounds like a middle eastern dish involving fried dough folded over itself four times, with a filling that can sometimes be sweet (apricots) or savoury (ground lamb)

Named by a midtown professional?

Web + Blackberry = ...oh, that's right, still Blackberry. How very hostile takeover.

Anyway, in subsequent posts I will go through each of my Blogosphere neighbourhoods and provide links... don't tell my stalkees.

This is Cool

Click here. Cool, right?

Hard of Hearing

There was a fire one afternoon. We watched it from our balcony as it licked at a huddle of newly constructed townhouses. Then devoured them.

It was my first week in Canada and the first time I had seen a fire destroy. It impressed upon me the notion that burning buildings were a common occurrence in Canada, like telephones and French class.

The fire alarm at 99 Dalhousie Drive, where we lived, was dull, fibrous and loud, as if someone had lost in the game of life and God was pressing down on the "wrong answer" buzzer with all his almighty strength, for eternity.

“What is that?” I yell the first time I hear it, hands momentarily off my ears.

“Fire alarm,” my dad answers, unalarmed.

I look around. My mom is cooking, the man who rents the second bedroom in our two bedroom apartment continues to read his books.

The alarm alarmed no one but me.

It is like the first time you hear, in fourth grade science class, that the rainforest is depleting at a rate of one football field per second and, terrified for the future of our environment, you wonder why the adults are wasting time making educational films about this, why they aren’t out there fighting for nature. You are amazed that the fifth and sixth graders, who learned this before you, remain in fifth and sixth grade, that they haven’t quit school to save the trees. Then, looking around some more, with time settling in about you like parentheticals in a math equation, you too become desensitized to the dying earth and develop the ability to play tag and draw pictures within your personal bracket.

Except, having seen a fire, I did not become desensitized to the fire alarm quite as easily.

Everytime it rang, I wanted to run outside with my parents and my brother in tow, to safety, and watch from around a corner as 99 Dalhousie gave itself, white painted brick by white painted brick, to the red decay.

But my parents would not leave.

“It’s false,” they’d always say, staying firmly within their parental parentheses.

I did not believe them, nor could I leave them.

The only thing scarier than dying in a fire was living through the death of my family in a fire.

Instead, I stood in the living room with my nose touching the window, envious of all the tenants sauntering leisurely out of the building and gathering around in social circles, like they were already at the afterparty of Surviving the Fire. I was embarrassed and ashamed of my parents' judgment for being so different from everyone else, and thus so wrong.

Of course I had a plan.

With the fire growling at our door, we would slide open the living room window, throw a mattress out onto the daycare playground below, and climb over the faux balcony that was actually just a metal fence attached to the wall. Jump down with soft knees. I played around with the order of who would jump after whom, though because it was my fantasy, I was always the last.

It was known that the fire alarm caused their daughter great anxiety, including an accelerated heartbeat.

“My heart!” I'd report to my parents.

“Oh, bebe…” they'd murmur, with soft concern.

But what could they do? Aside from giving me the option to leave and pointing out that the alarm is always false?

Then one day, the alarm rang true.

I was walking home from school and saw the familiar crowd gathered outside, and could hear the alarm, my enemy, muffled but unmistakable. There were a lot more people outside than usual. Or maybe it just felt that way; I’d never been outside with them before, and the unfamiliarity of the alternative perspective was frightening in a new way.

Instinctively, I attempt to run inside, through a crowd of grown-ups at the main entrance.

“Hey kid, you can’t go in there!” a series of international graduate students yell at me in various accents. One of them grabs my shoulder.

“I have to go in! My parents are in there! Let me tell them it's real!”

Unpersuaded, the graduate students shake their heads and tell me that there were reports of smelling smoke.

“They’re probably out here already.”

“No they’re not!”

I change tactics and climb into the daycare playground, one story below our second floor apartment, alarming the daycare workers to discretely shield their tiny charges from my erratic movements. Atop the monkey bars with a handful of pebbles, I start throwing them at our living room window. The tenants gathered outside turn around to look at what’s going on, arranging themselves along the playground fence.

Like most kids, as a rule I do not draw attention to the fact that we are not just like every other family. But the adrenaline fueling my throbbing heart does not allow me to register that I am standing on a raised platform, with an audience behind my back, making a scene like nobody's business.

“Ma, ma!” I yell in Chinese.

To my relief, my mom appears, sliding the window open with a question on her face.

“What’s going on?” she asks, then looks up to see what seems like the entire population of our sprawling four story building and eleven babies peeking from behind two protective babysitters, looking back at her, waiting to see what happens next.

“There’s a fire, a real one this time and you need to get out! Get dad and Edward and get out! Hurry!”

She looks around self-consciously and, to my ever gladness, seems worried.

“Okay.” She disappears and later reappears outside, blending into a circle of her friends, my brother in her arms.

My dad, however, is not fazed by me or peer pressure. He comes to the window leisurely, leans against the faux balcony.

“Hi bebe,” he says like he’s rolling by in his Pontiac, picking me up from Ballet class.

“It’s a real fire, dad!” I plead.

He crosses his arms good-naturedly, still leaning.

“Oh?”

“Come out!”

As you age, you get more and more experience at trying in vain to stop your loved ones from doing something that would bring them harm, and it gets a little easier to stomach.

“I’ll be okay,” he teases.

But before you age, it's tough as nails, on a chalkboard.

“Daaaad!”

“But look, bebe,” he points to the main entrance of the building as a group of firemen emerge, carrying the carcus of a burnt paisley couch.

Slowly, the graduate students trickle back into the building while their children linger outside, their young limbs highlighted by the dying rays of the six-o-clock sun.

“Oh…”

He opens his mouth to say something. But I’m already gone.

“Cool, look at that couch!”

Twenty years later, I’ve finally become desensitized to fire alarms, along with rain forest statistics and endangered species reports. To various pains and discomforts in mind, body, and spirit, to second-hand smoking, pictures of eye disease from improperly washed contacts, blocked exits at crowded nightclubs, crime waves, heat waves, and radiation from microwaves.

I’ve also learned to find harmless “final sale!!” posters and attention-seeking news ticker tapes. I understand that a crick in the neck is not necessarily meningitis, that a compliment about another girl doesn’t mean that the magic is gone and they’re going to run off to Vegas together, that good books have bad covers, that great dishes have strange smells, that one hipster at the local Italian family pastry shop doesn’t Williamsburglarization of the neighbourhood make.

People get hard of hearing as they age. It's only natural, right?

Update for Tip on Naming Movies/Restaurants

I had subpar examples in this advice-giving post. Here is a good one that I just came across for movie names. Specifically, reviewing the movie Rumor Has It, the Village Voice said, "Rumor has it this was gonna be a stinker, and it is."

I have spent Friday night and all of today, Saturday, in Buck County, Pennsylvania, toggling between Bensalem and Festerville to be a hockey-girlfriend. This involves sitting on an aluminium bench in the freezing Sportsplex, and eating a diet of vending machine goodies. To wit: salted peanuts, a sesame "bagel" with cream cheese (it was so totally not a bagel, just donut shaped bread), an orange soda, coffee, free candy from the hotel concierge, animal crackers minus legs and eyes, which I gave to Josh for better hockey performance, peanut m&m's.

The whirpool in the hotel has jets that shoot straight up. We turned them on and sat there, sort of stressed out at all the aquatic distractions suddenly surrounding the perimeter of the pool, and then eventually got so nauseated that we had to turn off the jets.

There is a coin laundry, which led me to wonder and then prematurely conclude that there must be some sort of algorithm that figures out whether it is cheaper to have coin laundries or laundry service at a hotel, depending on the location and so forth. And now I would like to see a map of America showing which hotels are more profitable in which case, using two colours, possibly red and blue.

Overheard at Applebees (which we are heading off to for the second time today, shrug):

Server: "Hey, don't I know you from somewhere? Did you use to work at Fridays?"
Patron: "Yes!"

I thought it was sentimental and charming in a very special American way.

This is How I Feel About Mondays

Click here to see exactly what he's doing.

Here are two things that are never very interesting when it happens to someone else, but for some reason when it happens to you, you are taken aback and totally like, affected:



1. Everyone you know seems to be getting married. Once "they" were the minority, but now you have a sneaking suspicion that "they" are quickly becoming the majority.

2. After high intensity athletic activity in loose running shoes, your big toe nail turns purple, then slowly starts to fall off your toe until you have a "bald" big toe, which, slowly starts to sprout a new nail. It's so miraculous, you want to save the fallen toe nail for posterity.

Last night we were sitting on the couch, petting my laptop. (It is very sleek and rarely bytes.) We heard a sound in the studio. Josh got up to investigate. He came back and grabbed a hockey stick and pulled on his boots.

"What, what? What is it?"

He says "nothing" the way a bad liar would say it, all hooded eye lids and quick and quiet in delivery.

I give him the evil eye as he walks back to the studio with his gear.

I have a suspicion: mice.

I also have an unresolved fear: mice.

"It's a mouse, isn't it?" I ask when he comes back, looking somber.

"Yeah, " he sighs. "I was going to not tell you, but..." he points to his boots and the stick.

Flash forward 23 hours (Daylight Savings, remember?) to right now. I am home, alone and sitting on the couch with my feet way up, AFRAID TO PEE. Among other things.

So you say, "face your fear!"

Friend, I have faced my fear, literally, sleeping in a cabin with mice and an open bag of peanuts behind my head, so that all night mice ran over my pillow and my hair --I could FEEL their tails!-- in order to access the peanuts, apparently the shortest path between them and satisfaction was my head area.

So, I have faced the fear.

And I survived, more fearful than ever.

Mice.

Soft, sleek furry squishy envelopes of animal intestines.
I have eaten ciccadas, but I will never eat you.
Your tail is like whoa.

The Tomato Plant

When I was eight, our second floor apartment overlooked the daycare playground on the first floor, and I soon developed a creepy habit of hiding behind the curtains of our floor-to-ceiling windows in the living room and watching the pre-schoolers, toddlers, babies, and their caretakers below, for hours on end.

One day I overhear a daycare worker exclaim, "Oh my gosh! Look at this!"

Her co-worker comes over and together they peer and coo at something growing in the crack between the ground and our building.

"Wow! It's a tomato plant!"

I press my face into the window and try to see it, but I can't.

Meanwhile, the two daycare workers are goin' at it the way only women can do. I mean, can you imagine two men having the following exchange? (Musicals don't count.)

"How did it get there?"

"I don't know!"

"Did someone plant it?"

"Impossible!"

"It's a mircale!"

"It is!"

"Ooh, maybe we'll have our own tomatoes!"

"Wonderful! How cute would that be?"

From behind the curtain, I am caught up in their excitement but, as an eavesdropper, detached at the same time.

The next day, walking home alone I pass by the empty daycare center, fenced in by a series of upright logs standing next to each other, with their barks removed.

An easy climb.

I land in the playground softly, toes first, and immediately locate the tomato plant.

We look at each other. Then, seizing it by its small fragrant stalk, I pull it out of the ground, revealing reddish roots, like bloody veins. Then I run away, leaving it there to die.

The Tomato Plant Incident left me sorry and scared -not of being caught, but of myself, I didn't understand why I did what I did, I still don't.

The incident no longer scares me --I didn't turn out to become any more sadistic than your average jane. But when I read about society's "monsters", about people that we want to say are "not human", about people who prey on helpless things, often things of natural beauty like animals or children, I remember the Tomato Plant Incident and feel sort of ...empathetic.

Obviously having never suffered at the hands of someone like this, I have the luxury of distance and intellectual musing and I might be singing a different tune otherwise. And obviously I think we should protect everyone and every creature from dangerous people.

But I think it's sort of lofty and irresponsible and untrue to write them off, to explain their behaviour as, "oh, they're not human." I think it's very human. Everything that humans do is human. By definition!

Also, since I've somehow worked my way onto a soapbox, I might as well also say that: (1) We are being too harsh on Britney Spears. What has she done? Eat junk food, have a subpar child-like husband? Wear a lot of sweatsuits? Gain weight? This is highly, highly unfair and hypocritical. She is (re)turning average American. Let's turn our venom elsewhere; (2) Girls who are still saying "I heart ___" should grow up. Like or Love, choose one. Because if you keep on saying "heart" until it enters into our permanent lexicon, then one day boys are going to start saying, "Uh.. yeah I heart you" when they're too chicken to say either of the L words out of a fear of commitment ("love") or a fear of you ("like") and you'll be whining to your girlfriends, "He says he hearts me. What do you think he meeeeeans?" And then, well, you sho' won't get any sympathy from me for letting your trendy-talk get out of hand; and finally, (3) If you are vulgar enough to wear flip flops in the city, please have the decency to walk in them without making either the flip flop sound, or the dragging shoe on sidewalk sound. I don't care if it's impossible, figure it out. You can't be a visual nuisance and an audio nuisance as well.

Image from Flickr.

Another Tip

You must agree that the following statements are true:

1. Film reviewers and restaurant reviewers LOVE puns, it's their chance to be original in a largely reactive role.

2. Often, a restaurant experience or a movie has good and bad parts that sort of balance out.

3. There is a demand, and more importantly a perceived demand, for strong opinions in newspaper reviews.

Now, let's add those together and put yourself in the shoes of a reviewer. You are at a restaurant. It's okay. As you're waiting for the bill, you rack your brain for how you're going to "react" to this place in your review. The bill comes. You look at it. The price doesn't matter because you'll be reimbursed. But what catches your eye is the name of the restaurant and the wonderful punny headline you can make with it.

Alas, a restaurant named "Home" gets a rave review: There's No Place Like Home
A restaurant named "Boomerang" is going to get: No matter how far you go, you will always feel a mysterious force that pulls you back to Fran Totenberg's paninis.

Name your restaurant "Why", and get a review that says, "The chefs cooking reflects questionable culinary skills and judgement." Or "Woods": If a diner chokes to death from tough lambchops at Woods, does she make a sound?

Similarly, films. "V is for Vendetta" --is safe (from me and my limited v-vocabulary at least) because I can't think of a negative word that starts with V, that would make for a punchy title. How about "Failure to Launch"? That's begging for bad reviews in its name alone. Even if it's a little bit bad, how can a film critic resist: "Houston, we have a problem."

Look, my examples are poor, but my advice is rich: name your restaurant/film carefully, for an on-the-fence reviewer needing an extra something to push them over to one side of the fence WILL be persuaded by the pun your name lends itself to. So get a name that can only be made into positive reviews. Some names can swing both ways, those are okay. But the worst are names that only lend themselves to negative punny reviews.

Have some vision, friends! Think ahead!