I remember the dust motes in that library.
I remember walking on a cold late winter day with my classmates and jumping to touch a branch and getting covered with tiny aphids that my friend Alan flicked off while we sat in that dusty library criss cross applesauce, sunlight streaming through the greasy yellow windows. And the dust was suspended in the thick air and dancing lazily about.
I remember a book – a thin picture book held in the hands of that kind librarian sitting in a chair clearly meant for children, but she sat there anyway because I suppose she wanted to seem like she was on our level, but she would never sit criss cross applesauce like we did because she had her notions of decency and moreover she were wearing a dress.
The book was titled: “Gung Hoy Fat Choi.” It was the Chinese New Year, and Valley View Elementary was in the process of taking those halting steps of inclusiveness that would one day break into a full tilt sprint towards the goal of Diversity. We gathered here to learn about that other New Year, the one those Chinese celebrated bizarrely at the end of January. She was explaining the lunar new year while I was occupied with my dust.
“Freddie,” she said, smiling, “I don’t want to get the pronunciation wrong – how do you say this?”
The beady eyes of my classmates turned towards me. The dust motes froze and blurred. She smiled at me warmly, encouraging me to speak.
Problem was I had no idea what the fuck her bitch ass was talking about because that shit is in fucking Cantonese, and I have no fucking clue how to speak god damned Cantonese.
So, with my class watching, I put on a slight Chinese accent and said:
“Uh… Gung Hoy… Fat. Choy.”
She smiled, repeating my words deliberately. “Gung hoy… Fat Choy. Did I say it right?”
I nodded.
She turned to the rest of the class now, smiling with the self-righteous happiness that a teacher must surely feel when she believes that she’s included the entire class in a unique cultural learning experience. Smiling as if to say “See? This is how we are accepting and this is how we approach diversity and this is how we include everyone.”
“That’s wonderful,” she said the class. “Gung Hoy Fat Choy means ‘Happy new year’ in Chinese. Now everyone let’s say it together.”
I watched in mute horror as the entire class obliged and repeated my butcherings in a crude mimickry of the the guttural pig’s tongue that is Cantonese to each other, convinced they were saying it right. They would go home and perhaps tell their parents about the new Chinese saying they learned in school today, and their parents would rest easy that night perhaps assured that their bundles of joy were getting a well-rounded education rife with diversity and inclusiveness. It was too late. I couldn’t take back the foolishness I had spread.
Later on they passed out fortune cookies. I bite into mine without breaking it first. It’s a weird thing I do. The teacher asked if that’s what the Chinese do. “Sure,” I said, “Why not?”
And years later, in college, I would bring up that the actor speaking Chinese in a graduate project shouldn’t really be speaking with an obscure Chinese accent given that he’s fucking Korean for chrissakes, and that this interchangeable blend of Asian-ness was, “frankly, mildly inconsiderate,” and USC 480 Directing instructor Everett Lewis, punk ass bitch in the tenth degree and legendary chode licker jackass extraordinaire, would tell his students later on that the Asians were certainly uppity in class today.
And I would think, at least that kindly librarian at Valley View tried.
I’ve entered the exalted ranks of “YouTube Rebels” by getting my latest video pulled. Fear not, if you want to view it, you can right here.
It was pulled for “content inappropriate” which I can only assume refers to the drawing of dongs. This is worrying to me, because this drawing was a drawing done with meticulous detail and time invested by my friend Brandon. The human figure has been an important part of art and artistic expression. To me, pulling this video for that reason is akin to pulling any videos of Michalangelo’s David, or DaVinci’s Vetruvian Man. Although I’m not saying Laatsch is going to enter the history books next to the greats, a video of gratuitous dongs for the sake of gratuitous dongs this is not.
Otherwise, it might very well be because they don’t want people uploading 10,000 videos of their dumb cats in HD format and taxing their servers.
Twitter. I’m on it now it’s like the hip thing.
Freddie Wong [1:45]: i plan on telling my kids
Freddie Wong [1:46]: that the movie Blindness is a documentary, and the hipster thing was a result of that
Logan Olson [1:46]: i was just going to show them cloverfield and say i went to college w/ those kids
I was on a whirlwind tour of posh LA clubs, standing outside one where some party was being held where models were presumably getting busy stuffing their nostrils full of coke.
A disheveled hipster came up to our group. “Hey… do you have a light?”
“No, I don’t smoke.”
He was taken aback. “You’re… you’re a fuckin’ asshole man.”
He took out a large guitarist’s grip trainer and started to work it.
“How do you have a grip trainer but not have a lighter? The grip thing is like four times bigger,” asked Brandon, who was with me at the time.
“Shhhhh…shut up. I used to be a part of STP…” he responded.
STP? The parts manufacturer? No. “Stone Temple… PILOTS” he clarified, after we looked at each other confused. Then he shambled away, squeezing away at his grip trainer.
Los Angeles: The city where people start by asking for a favor, swearing at you when you don’t do it, and then do a quick name drop before they leave.
The worst thing about Chipotle is when you get a dude who just cannot wrap a GOD DAMNED BURRITO to save his life. They flop the tortilla around like a wet towel over a pool chair and there’s rice and beans and meat spilling all over the place. The execute the roll and roll up all that stuff into the edges so it makes a freaking mess and then explodes all the hell over you so by the end you might as well have gotten a bowl to begin with because that’s sure as hell what you got at the end.
You can totally tell because the dude starts and you have an impulse at the base of your spine to jump right over and wrap it yourself.
If you just wrap burritos all day how do you not get utterly fantastic at it? Based on the staggering number of “How to roll a perfect spliff” videos on YouTube, and the consummate care and professionalism that is clearly evident as they demonstrate this arguably more precise task immaculately, I refuse to believe that getting good at burrito wrapping is any harder.
What I am saying is this – remember the Japanese girl who got irradiated as shit and all she wanted was to fold a thousand paper cranes for peace, but then she died and tons of kids around the world finished the rest? If the Bomb drops and I’m dying of radiation, I’m going to ask for all the Chipotle workers in the world to fold a thousand immaculate burritos each (I judge).
For peace.
