Today’s soundtrack: I go out walkin’, after midnight
Today at 11:02pm: Trying to get to bed early.

Last Wednesday I was lying in my boxers reading Newsweek when I noticed a mosquite bite on my torso. At least, that’s what I thought it was. It hurt when I pressed on it.

The next day the red mark had gotten a little bigger, perhaps the size of a dime. I dismissed it and read with interest an article about events happening many miles away from me.

The day after I took my Hapkido test, which is a physically grueling event. Showering off afterwards, I made an unpleasant discovery; the “mosquite bite” had swelled to the size of a half-dollar and the area around it was tender. I didn’t know what the fuck it was and I don’t have health insurance.

I tried to ignore it for three days, along with articles I’d read about West Nile virus.

This morning I got health insurance. Still not sure how I’m gonna pay for it. Health insurance is a weird concept; if I get hit by a taxi or jumped by a crackhead, some company in Nebraska’s got my back.

Came home from work today, took my clothes off and examined the unwelcome hard lump on my torso. My first instinct was to lance it (I know, gross). Then I was like, wait a minute: Macintosh computers are the easiest in the world to use, and two days ago I crashed one trying to install a fucking font--and now I’m gonna do self-surgery? Right. Maybe I’ll give myself a colonoscopy while I’m at it.


ROOMMATE: The fuck are you doing?

ME: Looking for polyups. Why don’t you mind your own business.

Got dressed, pulled some sneakers on and started walking to the hospital. This is corny but sometimes when I’m trying to go to sleep at night I feel pretty alone in the world. I mean I have friends, and I see people during the day but you know what I mean. Anyways as I walked I started getting that feeling and I even got a little scared. I told myself to stop being a fucking pussy, just keep walking.

I dislike hospitals because I used to work in one, sort of (I drove an ambulance during my college dropout phase). The E/R was pretty dead this evening, which was good news. In New York you gotta pick your hospitals carefully. A Chinese nurse with a slight moustache triaged me and sent me to Registration.

A Latino girl went over my registration with me. Everyone called her “Millie” but I saw her nametag said “Milagro.” Although not unpretty, Milagro was one of those people who’s rather round, constructed almost entirely of spheres. A beach-ball shape for her stomach, two melon-sized spheres for breasts, two voluminous spheres for buttocks. I thought to myself that she would be easy to model using 3-D software.

I was sent to an examination room, where I waited and thought about my position in this world. Some things made me feel good and a few made me feel bad. At length a doctor appeared. He looked like an as-yet-unseen Baldwin brother, somewhere between Alec and Daniel.

He asked me some questions, then I pulled my shirt up and he checked out the lump. In under a minute he had his prognosis.

“It appears you had an infection,” he said. “Underneath the skin. It’s in the process of healing itself now.”

“Oh,” I said.

“The human skin is actually covered in bacteria, but it usually doesn’t have an entry point. You must have had a scratch or a cut, might have been a mosquito bite. For whatever reason something got in and got infected, but the skin healed itself first, trapping the infection and cuasing an abcess.”

“I see.”

“What you need to do is put a warm compress on the area, which will stimulate the blood flow. Your body’s blood will naturally break up the abcess and disperse it into waste. Should clear up in a few days. If it doesn’t, call us.”

“Thank you,” I said.

I walked out through the waiting room, where a Chinese family was apparently waiting to hear some results about a family member. Millie was gone. A dark-skinned security guard stood at his post, clearly bored.

On the sidewalk I produced my cell phone and returned a call to Lam. He invited me to grab some chow with him and Michelle and Tony in Chinatown tonight, so I set a course for Pell Street, choosing the best route. The thing I like about New York is that geographically, at least, I’m always sure of my position.

Today’s soundtrack: Do you remember promises, promises
Today at 6:32pm: Walking into a Crosby Street bar (ñ) and walking right back out.

If you had an infrared satellite cam trained on New York City on a late summer Sunday, you’d see lots of hotspots. You’d see the sharply rendered hum of a/c exhausts and, zooming closer, the vaguely humanoid forms of sweaty people.

You’d also see an assload of raw, shimmering hotspots, and those would be barbecues. People firing up their grills in courtyards, alleyways, rooftops, fire escapes. In groups of one to twenty, grilling everything from ground chuck to indulgent porterhouses. Gathered around the fire, the humanoids, standing and sitting. Eating and forgetting.

Time is money, and the situation on Earth 2002 dictates you trade precious hours of your life so you can put a roof over it. I like the barbecue because it speaks of leisure. You’re not under the roof anymore; there are thirty faster ways for you to get a meal right around the corner, but you go outside with the other boys and girls and fix the meal yourselves.

I spent last Sunday concentrating on a hamburger amidst friends and acquaintances, looking out over the East River from the Jersey side. All of us ate and then the sun went down quick. There was that beautiful ten minutes when Manhattan turns gold, right before the sun descends somewhere into Brooklyn.

The summer shot by like a cannonball, like a flaming arrow, like 1987. Back then I was mastering the intricacies of downshifting and parallel parking, under the late ‘80s sun, a Billy Idol/Generation X tape in the dash keeping time through tinny speakers.

I swear I looked up for just a second and everything changed. The dashboard shifted shape, the surrounding car twisted from a Datsun to a Volkswagen. The music coming through the speakers is different. I gained fifteen years and a job and an Internet and ex-girlfriends I’d rather forget. Some people stopped breathing, others started. Reagan descended into madness and Asian food became popular.

I wiggle the stick back into reverse and finish parking. The first time I parked the Datsun in the city I was worried I’d forget where I left it. I don’t have to worry about things like that anymore.

Today at work I was trying to think of what would be the most difficult e-mail address to give someone over the phone. I think it’d be either “atdotcom@dotcom.com” or “underscore_hyphen@dot.com.” See because you’d say “dot” but they’d think you meant “.” Hours of fun.

This morning my work computer got sick because I was given Administrative Privileges and I accidentally fucked some shit up in the root folders. The computer turned green and started throwing up. I didn’t know you’re not supposed to fuck with the fonts in System 10.

The tech guy couldn’t believe it, he looked at me like I just ate Estelle Getty’s asshole out in the bathroom of a Mexican restaurant. He lectured me sternly while fixing the problem. I remained silent (because I’m Asian and enjoy living up to negative stereotypes) but my Internal Teleprompter was going wild.


TECH GUY: Rain, Rain, Rain, you can not touch the fonts in the “Library” folder.

ME: (Internal: He just said my name three times. Why?)

TECH GUY: You were given administrative privileges so that you could install minor things like the tablet driver. You are not to go playing around in the root folders.

ME: (“Playing.” Yeah, I was totally frolicking. Had my shirt off and everything.)

TECH GUY: When you play around with the root folders, you get problems. Big, big problems.

ME: (It’s no wonder they call you Tech Support and not Emotional Support. I bet your marriage is pretty frigid. I bet your wife just wants you to hold her.)

TECH GUY: I’ll fix it this time but please, please, please don’t go playing around in the root folders.

ME: (There he goes with the three’s again. He should say “please to the third power.”)

TECH GUY: See this folder right here? Nothing in it should be touched.

ME: (fly me to the moon...let me play among the stars...let me see what spring is like on, Jupiter or Mars....)

Today’s soundtrack: fortunately gone I wait for you
Today at 7:32pm: discovering Sal’s Pizza is closed, so I gotta go to Ben’s Pizza

Forgot to mention I passed my Hapkido test on Friday. Lucky for me it was multiple choice.

Sample questions:


...37. If someone kills your master, you should

a) practice your forms
b) scrub the dojang floors
c) avenge his death
d) practice your forms with heavy weights affixed to your legs

38. The proper way to enter a room full of enemies is to

a) backflip through the door
b) backflip through the plate-glass window
c) perform a falling backflip through an aperture in the ceiling
d) duck walk

39. The world’s greatest martial artist is unquestionably

a) Mark Dacascos in Only The Strong
b) Jeffrey Speakman in The Perfect Weapon
c) Steven Seagal after he gained weight in Under Siege II
d) Ralph Macchio in Karate Kid III

40. Which of the following martial artists can you trust?

a) Samurai
b) Assistant Samurai
c) Samurai Key Grips
d) Ninja

41. The proper way to dodge arrows, spears and sundry missiles is to

a) catch them
b) kick them away
c) deflect using your chi
d) absorb using Iron Body technique....


et cetera, et cetera. Good thing I studied.

Today’s soundtrack: low, ri, der
Today at 3:02am: Washing off that fresh bar smell.

“So you wanna go to this thing?” asks my roommate. ‘This thing’ is a party thrown by some ex-sorority girls at a nearby bar. Lately Shady’s been meeting women left and right, and our social calendar has swelled to accommodate.

“I dunno, man,” I say, looking out the window. “It’s raining.”

“C’mon, you got no excuse! It’s local! The party’s a couple blocks away. Worst case scenario, you don’t like it, you turn around and come home.”

“Alright, alright.”

For some reason the four of us are actually dressed decently tonight. By “decently” I mean we’re all wearing shirts that have buttons, and pants that you would wear if you had to meet your girlfriend’s parents. Normally the four of us dress like we’re going to paint someone’s garage.

Walking down the sidewalk four abreast, we can’t help but become aware of it. “Feels like we’re in Swingers,” says Jerr. Which is bullshit; Vince Vaughn don’t paint no garages.

Decent DJ, populous female crowd. The bar’s crowded, so after deploying Shady to get the first round, the four of us split up and circulate. Shady and Jerry are both single, but Mike and I have girlfriends, so for us two, talking to strange women is essentially an academic experience.

Jerr starts chatting up an acquaintance. Shady starts talking to some dumpy girl, which doesn’t make sense if you know Shady; maybe she has hot friends he’s trying to get to.

I start chatting up the South Asian girl next to me. Belatedly, I realize with horror that she’s a Foreigner. Not South Asian at all, she’s from Turkey. For light talk in a bar the last thing you want is to get tied up with someone who has difficulty with pronouns.

Compounding the problem, Turkish Woman is intensely serious, and apparently angry about something (probably me). My jokes fall flatter than an Asian ass so I head to the bar for a refill I don’t need.

“Let’s go talk to those two girls,” says Mike. The two in question are sitting by themselves at a couch in the corner. We head over.

Mike engages Girl A, I engage Girl B. I start off with your standard party-talk icebreaker and scan for feedback. I can still feel that Turkish Woman’s eyes in my back, I think she wants to stab me.

The two girls are receptive, but after a sentence or two I’m picking up some funny signals. Interference of a sort. It seems like the girls only understand some of what we’re saying. At first I think it’s just the pumping bass, but listening closer, I hear a strong accent.

“Uh, where you guys from?” I ask.

“Taiwan,” they chirp.

“How’s your English?”

“A litto,” they say. Christ. What’s the name of this bar, ESL?

Turns out Taiwanese Girl B is only 21. She’s a college student.

“Er...what are you studying?”

“Japanese,” she says.

“Aha!” I say, and Mike and I instantly break out with the Nihongo. Now she understands what we’re saying. The two of us don’t become any more interesting to them, but at least they can understand what we’re saying.

I run into Eugene, a Korean guy I know who’s six foot nine. I like the guy but I hate standing next to his ass in a bar ‘cause I start looking a lot like fucking Frodo Baggins.

“You look old,” says a girl at the bar. “I can tell you’re old.”

“That’s great, thank you,” I say. This is what I get for hanging out with a bunch of people barely old enough to drink. I think the median age in here is like, 23.

“It’s your eyes, or maybe your...hair,” she says. I take another sip of my drink and avoid eyeballing my reflection in the mirror behind the bar.

Talking to Debra, who’s cute and has the sexiest Queens accent. She’s also Jerry’s cousin, which means all of us are forced to treat her like a little sister. Any guy who gets too close to Deb is instantly surrounded by Jerry and his two brothers. I’ve seen it before, it’s not a pretty sight. Poor girl’s gonna be single ‘til she’s in her late thirties.

What the fuck do women do in the bathroom. Standing on line with two chicks in front of me. Each of them goes in and fucking stays in like they’re in the middle of playing Kasparov and pondering their next move. I can almost hear my bladder screaming.

I get tired early, around 2am. Shady and the crew will easily close this bar and find someplace else to hang out ‘til 5am. I say my ciao’s and make for the door.

Craving a slice of pizza. I should head north to St. Mark’s, which has the best drunk pizza in the world, but my house is south so I cut through Little Italy instead. Here’s a bitch of a conundrum; in all of Little Italy there’s not a single decent pizzeria.

LITTLE MAN: Technically speaking that’s not a conundrum, that’s more of a paradox.

ME: Foccccck you.

On Mulberry I pass a group of girls in the street and one of them calls out “Sir, Sir!”

Belatedly I realize she’s talking to me--I’m not much of a “sir”--so I stop and have a look. Typical trio of Sex-And-The-City wannabes, expensive-looking blouses over faded jeans, stylishly casual hair and this is probably their fourth time in downtown Manhattan. I despise them; not even sure why I stopped.

“You’re from the neighborhood, right? How do I get to Broome and Forsyth?” she asks. I start giving her terse directions but she interrupts. “Should we go to Happy Ending or Double Happiness?”

I wish there was a bar around here called Hell so I could tell her to go there. “Double Happiness will be packed,” I say, meaning it as a deterrent.

“Ooh, let’s go there!” one of them squeals, releasing me from my social obligation to provide citizen-to-citizen information. I shrug and walk on.

Standing at the counter in a pizzeria, staring at their coffee machine and having a flashback.

The older you get, the more frequent it is that commonplace objects will inadvertently trigger flashbacks. In a restaurant you’ll see an industrial-sized coffee machine that will remind you of when you waited tables. On the street, a car your college roommate used to drive. On the sidewalk, discarded crack vials that remind you of when you spent your nights in deepest Brooklyn carousing with crack whores.

I’m kidding. Crack whores don’t carouse as much as they just sort of shuffle.

This is the worst goddamn pizza I’ve ever tasted in my life. What is it with these people. This shit makes DiGiorno look like the defining accomplishment of the Roman Empire. Somewhere in Italy there should be a Pizza Committee I can narc these guys out to.

Walking down the quiet 2:30am street with the pizza in my hand, I pass the two Taiwanese girls from the bar with their chaperones.

“A’right then, have a good night,” I say, realizing it’s coming out in my marble-mouthed NewYorkese. They look at me and smile, not comprehending.

Today’s soundtrack:
If you want to be happy for the rest of your life,
never make a pretty woman your wife
Today at 7:42pm: Staring longingly at my favorite storefront on Crosby Street. It’s some kind of unmarked furniture showroom.

Just imagine it, a 1966 Pontiac GTO. There’s a pistol in the glovebox and
a trunk full of ill-gotten cash. In-dash 8-track pre-loaded with The Skatalites
Greatest Hits. Cheeseburger wrappers, a mask, a map and you’ve got no
last name. Cars like this are the reason they invented the word “fuck.”

Yeah man, I don’t like going to work any more than you do but I’ll try not to complain about it anymore. As soul-deadening as it is, minding files in my little corporate docudrama beats the fuck out of being stuck in a mine shaft. Right? Right.

Sure sign my brain is turning to mush; new Jennifer Aniston flick looks like it might be decent. Watching a little too much late-night TV. By the by there’s a Saturn commercial out that substitutes walking people for cars and it’s pretty well-scored.

Tonight I saw Akakage, killer visuals. It’s the follow-up to Samurai Fiction. If you appreciate good Art Direction and live in an area with illegally imported DVDs you should pick these up.

Been training at the dojang almost every night this week, still trying to get ready for tomorrow’s belt test. I don’t feel ready.

Did you ever read The Lion, The Witch And The Wardrobe? At the end of the book, or maybe it was the series, Peter becomes King. It’s down to him and another more princely contender. The Lion asks the contender: “Are you ready to be King?”

“Yes,” the contender says, without hesitation.

Then the Lion asks Peter the same question: “Are you ready to be King?”

“I don’t think so,” Peter replies. At which point the Lion makes Peter King.

“If you had felt ready, that would mean you’re not ready,” and vice versa, explains the Lion. I remember reading that and thinking how fucked I’d be if I were Peter.

“Lion, you don’t understand,” I’d say. “I’m really not ready. I’m like, still in high school and shit. Give it to the other guy, okay?” But the Lion made him King anyway.

It’s bad enough having clothes that don’t fit; an ill-fitting crown has gotta be a bitch and a half. Anyways I’m no longer sure what this has to do with tomorrow’s Hapkido test but I’m tired and the filters are down. These days I can’t seem to reign the subconscious in after 6pm. Talk to you tomorrow.

Today’s soundtrack: who’s sorry now
Today at 11:02pm: Trying to decipher the confusing letters my bank has started sending me.

Up early, stumble into kitchen. Cut pineapple into cubes, sleepy but careful not to cut fingers. Stuff cubes in mouth.
Ice coffee at the diner, g’morning Jenny, take it easy Mohammed. Smoke on sidewalk. Metrocard, 6-train rumbles, air-conditioned seat.
Human riptide, Lexington Avenue. Suits, elevators.

Nine turns to five.


Loosen tie, hit street. Train downtown, grab Hapkido uniform.
Dojang doorway, bow to Sabumnim. Mats, stretching, push-ups, sweat. Shower, clean clothes.
Cell phone, incoming: “Join us at Japas.”

Cell phone, outgoing. “This is #47, silver Volkswagen, can I pick it up.”
6th Avenue uptown-bound traffic, too many SUVs. Brake, gas and weave. 43rd Street, parking meter, quarters.
Japas: Karaoke room, boyfriends and girlfriends. Guy next door singing Billy Joel. I heard Billy Joel’s gone crazy.
5th Avenue downtown-bound traffic, too many taxis. Young lovers not paying attention in crosswalk at 8th Street, slam on brakes beeflessly.
Dark apartment, leftovers, Newsweek. Laundry, e-mail. IM from Vietnam, incoming: “Dude you gotta come visit me.” IM, outgoing: “Love to, no cash now.”
Cigarettes and reclining to Patsy Cline. “Blue,” “Crazy.” Sing, Patsy, sing. Sing ‘til tomorrow. Bring me Thursday, for fuck’s sake.

Today’s soundtrack: There’s a new kind of dedication,
maybe you’ll find it down the tunnel.
Today at 8:02pm: Pineapple shopping.

The photographic version of a Mexican standoff.

He sticks a light meter in your face and the lamps strobe, pow, pow, pow. Asks you to shift this way or that, look this way or that. Lean forward more, he says. Try to relax, you can smoke if you want. So this is what it would be like to be a model.

I’ve been used as a testing dummy for photographer friends before, and the thing I’ve found is I’m not very good at it. Partially because I kind of look like a turtle but mostly because I’m not very photogenic.

You know how flourescent bulbs flicker on and off hundreds of times a second? It’s imperceptible to the naked eye, but if you filmed yourself sitting under flourescents and replayed it in super slo-mo, you’d see that for a portion of the time you were sitting in complete darkness and didn’t even know it.

Basically my face is like a flourescent bulb. Every other millisecond it’s imperceptibly shifting into extraordinarily unflattering expressions, and it takes the shutter of a camera capturing the moment in order for you to see it.

Mike had various weird photographic “themes” Shady and I had to fit into, by wearing different clothes in differently-lit backdrops. Shady was an Off-Duty Yakuza (wifebeater, tattoos) while I was the inglorious “Accountant to the Yakuza” (Slick dark shirt, geek-chic glasses).

At one point he had me put on a traditional Chinese shirt and stand in front of a shoji screen for the Asian Exploitation look. The shot was backlit and I got to see the photo. My ears are so big and filtered so much light it looked like I had malformed red peppers attached to my head.

I’ve only ever had two friends with bigger ears. My friend Seiji, it looks like his ears can pick up radio signals from Brazil. My other friend Jimmy’s got a similar problem, though he does pretty well with the ladies.

“One time I was at a bar,” Jimmy said, “and this girl, she told me my ears make my head look like a car driving down the highway with both doors open.” Everyone laughed. I forced mine.

Today’s soundtrack: Blame it on Cain, don’t blame it on me.
It’s nobody’s fault, but we need somebody to burn
Today at 9:42pm: Staggering home from the dojang.

Hi, I’m disgusted with myself. No one thing in particular, just a general sense of ill-being.


I love martial arts because it’s a philosophical, mentally stimulating form of exercise. It makes you stronger and you can draw conclusions that are useful in your everyday life.

Today Shanghai Betty ran me through the paces. After three hours of sweating, heaving and reflection I isolated some serious personality defects of mine that are holding me back. I’ve always thought I was a pretty decent guy who occasionally had bad luck, but now I see I have some fucked-up things in my nature that are hobbling me. Must brew the medicine.


Mike just let himself into my apartment (he’s got the keys) and he was wearing a suit, which is unusual.

He’s a photographer, and tonight a super-rich Japanese client of his took him out on the town with his family. Dinner for five and Mike peeked at the bill: $980 fucking dollars! Afterwards they had drinks at the Bryant Park Hotel. They each had one drink and the tab came out to $370.

Next month Mike’s leaving town; his client is sending him to Japan and Korea to shoot some stuff. One month paid residence in Tokyo. Hot chicks, free booze, get your passport stamped. Lush life! At least my friends are doing well.


Tonight Mike has a bunch of rented photo equipment down the hall that he wants to test out, so in a few minutes he’ll be shooting “portraits” of Shady and I. Oughta be funny.

I’ve gone location-scouting with Mike a couple times, just riding bikes around the city. Whenever he spots a promising setting for whatever job he’s shooting, I have to stand or sit in front of the place while he uses me as a test subject for lighting, etc.

Lots of us have served this function. If you ransacked Mike’s places you’d find an assload of photos of all of us. Boxes and boxes. Most will never see the light of day. Maybe one day in ten years we’ll go through all of them and laugh and point and marvel.

Nowadays when the group of us goes through old photos of us, like from five years ago, everyone is surprised by how different everyone looked. Except for me; I always look the same.

Today’s soundtrack: Hellbound, hellbound, hellbound, hellbound
Today at 2:32pm: Me and Shady grabbing “breakfast” at Dragon Land (Chinese bakery).

HipstompKitchen

One of my favorite things to do is lie in bed nearly naked and read Newsweek. Sometimes the news is depressing though. I was reading this article and it says Hitler started out as an artist, a painter. They showed one of his oil paintings and it was fucking awful, this really hackneyed Alpine landscape, and it’s signed Adolf Hitler.

Anyways, as a young man Hitler applied to this art academy in Vienna and was rejected, twice, which presumably diverted him into politics and set him on his insane course of megalomaniacal genocide. It’s hard for me to fathom that six million less people might have died, and a World War been averted, if Hitler had a better sense of composition. It’s times like this when I regret my own literacy.

I just came across a joke in another magazine that reminded me of when Shady and I saw a bear in Pennsylvania:

Two hikers come across a large, feral grizzly bear. The first hiker immediately drops his backpack, pulls a pair of sneakers out and begins lacing them on.

“What are you doing?” asks the second hiker. “Those sneakers won’t help you outrun the bear.”

“I don’t have to outrun the bear,” says the first hiker. “I just have to outrun you.”

I’m taking a belt test in Hapkido this Friday. I’m in no hurry to advance but Shanghai Betty has been on my ass about it. She’s a black belt and she told me I have to meet up with her tomorrow night so she can test me in advance. I don’t like the sound of that!

My Sabumnim (Master) likes to get creative with the belt tests. When Betty took her last test, he kept them up until four in the morning, making sure everyone was thoroughly wiped out--and then he subjected them to the test. I guess the idea is that if you can’t perform when you’re exhausted, you haven’t grasped it yet. Gotta make sure I stay out of bars this week.

Pass or fail, I’ll let you know how it goes. Regular readers of my old journal will know that I can be relied on to recount humiliating personal experiences with, well, humiliating accuracy. Unless they’re trivial events. Like lately I’ve been getting hard-ons at work for no reason but I didn’t think it was worth bringing up.

Today’s soundtrack: I land to sail, island said
Today at 3:02pm: Me and Shady scrubbing the windows with newspapers.

To me, there’s Us and there’s Them. Us is me and my immediate friends; Them is everybody else. I’ll go out of my way for Us but I’m not jumping on any grenades for Them. The ruthless logic of crowded lives demands you do some editing, of both activities and people.

Anyways, Ben asked me to hold a surprise party for Eumi at my place. Which didn’t seem unusual because my apartment has often served as a social nexus; what seemed strange was the reason for the surprise party, Eumi’s decision to attend grad school. Lots of people go for their Master’s, few receive fêtes in honor of such.

Nevertheless, Ben is one of Us and so is Eumi, so I spent the afternoon tidying my place up and getting it guest-worthy.

At the appointed hour, 10:30pm, there are a dozen of us hiding in my living room. Ben and Eumi walk in.

“Surprise!” some of us yell, in a disjointed and disorganized manner.

Ben suddenly speaks up. “Before you get all excited, I gotta tell you something. You thought this was a surprise party for Eumi but it’s actually a surprise party for you.”

Before I can figure out what the hell he means, he takes Eumi’s hand and raises it in the air.

There’s a rock on the finger.

He couldn’t have done it any slicker; everyone’s kinda shocked and I know my own jaw is agape. It takes me a second to process Diamond Ring + Finger + Ben + Eumi = Wedding. In a second the room erupts into applause and congratulations for the two of them. Holy shit! Two of our friends are getting married! He had proposed to her earlier that evening.

I’ve been to my share of weddings, but they were all acquaintances, Them. This is the first time one of Us--pardon me, two of Us--will be getting married.

When I moved to Japan in ’98, Eumi was just an acquaintance who was subletting my apartment. She lived there for a year while I was gone. Ben, who lived down the hall from me, met Eumi and began courting her that year.

Four years later the two of them walk back into the same apartment, where all of us are waiting, and announce their engagement. Not twenty feet away from the spot where Single 1998 Eumi used to sleep. I wonder if they could have ever imagined it.

Today’s soundtrack: Slipping through the states to find the static and there’s something to believe
Today at 7:32pm: Sitting in the dark in a pile of my own filth

Nothing kills an online journal like self-consciousness. When things go well I feel like I’m bragging, when things go lamely I feel I’m complaining. Nevertheless I continue typing.

Yesterday was gross, I woke up and the clocks were dead. Which means Uh-Oh Fuck, it’s blackout time in downtown Manhattan. Happens every other year when the mercury starts aspiring to triple digits. Hits parts of town sporadically, as if your building suddenly got sick but the neighbors are all fine.

I can live without electricity for a while--I mean it’s nice to put off the laundry and the ironing and the accidental self-electrocutions--but it was hot as a bitch, and the A/C was dead as a doornail.

Strangely, some of the power outlets in the apartment still worked; The ‘fridge was running fine, as was the DSL modem. I had produce and bandwidth.

Outside the Con Ed guys were tearing up the street. Climbing in and out of gaping maws in the asphalt and inserting big pieces of machinery. “Any idea how long?” I asked one of ‘em.

“Midnight,” he said. Aiyah.

By 3pm SmokedPanda, Ji Eun and I are up at the air-conditioned Met*, checking out ancient Asian art. (*Metropolitan Museum of Art, don’t make me say it again.)

Ji Eun wanted to find some golden buddha statue she’d read up on. Me, I like the guys with the nineteen arms. Forget what they’re called but those guys are the coolest. The ultimate in multi-tasking, they can hold everything from ripened fruit to flaming swords of justice. If I had nineteen arms I would be tearing shit up. Simultaneously juggling, throwing up gang signs and slapping people for no reason. Also two of my arms would be dedicated to simultaneously rubbing my tummy and patting my head at all times.

Afterwards I went to train at the dojang. Hapkido Betty and I spent an hour sweating all over each other on the mats. It sounds a lot more sensual than it is.

Yuka’s apartment is also partially blacked-out, except her bedroom is electrically intact. Her bedroom A/C works so at 8pm I’m stuffed in there with Shady, Mike, and four Japanese girls she’s working on some project with.

“Okay get out, get out,” Yuka eventually says, to us guys. “Too much body heat.” So the three of us head up to “Go” (restaurant on St. Mark’s) for some Japanese food and freon-tainted air. Chloroflourocarbons are my friend.

After dinner it’s 10:30. Ninety minutes to kill until I can go home and experience indoor lighting. Mike and I go to see “Signs” while Shady and Jerry head to a bar.

“Signs” was, ahhhh, I dunno. I really liked “Unbreakable” so I’ll just cling to that.

After the movie we call Shady on the cell. “Where you guys at?”

“The usual,” he says. So Mike and I head over to Forbidden City, to double our numbers and consolidate our strength.

I run into Pimpilla at the bar. She works at the Asian American Writer’s Workshop and her nickname is Pimp. I drink a martini with chrysanthemum in it and ramble out loud to Pimp. She rambles back.

I’m so proud of Shady. There was a grade-A cutie at the bar--a woman, not a girl--with some low-level Eurocat hanging all on her. Subtle cues indicate they’re not a couple, perhaps just feeling each other out. Anyways Eurocat goes to the bathroom and Shady, having observed the dynamic, moves in to engage.

By the time Eurocat gets back, Shady’s got the girl laughing up a storm, and soon she’s sharing drinks with him and Jerry and Mike, who are fun drunks. Eurocat sits next to her again but now he’s uncertain. What can I say? Move it or lose it. In this city you can’t just be a white guy with a shaved head and weird tattoos; you gotta have some personality, Jacques. What are you doing wearing black leather anyway, it’s gotta be 95 degrees in this bitch. If she dug you she’da stayed.

Next we run into Emi, who practically lives at this bar. Soon Pimp leaves and the fellas settle the check. Ten minutes later we’re at St. Mark’s Pizza, watching a fight brewing on the sidewalk. You know the deal, “ker-azy” white guy from Long Island talking like he’s black and generally making a spectacle of himself. All spark, no action. He hops up and down, taunting his opponent for five but no punches are thrown.

We get back to the house around 3:30am and the A/C’s running! Con Ed’s done the job. We’ve gotta wake up in a few hours--I’m going upstate and Shady’s gotta work--but at least it’s cool in here. I say goodnight to the CFCs and nod off.

Today’s soundtrack: I’ve been on tenterhooks, ending in dirty looks
Today at 12:02am: Glass o’ wine with the new neighbor.

I just cranked out 523 words and I feel fucking great. I am going to finish this book, yes I am. It doesn’t matter if it sucks or not, what matters is that I am going to fucking finish it no matter what. I’ll worry about if it sucks later.

The upshot to my temporary downturn of work is that now I can stay up late and tickle the ivories/plastics. Having your eyes open during the wee hours are essential to writing. I don’t think I’ve ever written anything good before 1am. I don’t know what it is but I can’t get the words to flow properly unless the sun’s over China.

Trying not to freak out because I may not have the bills covered next month due to the work slowdown. But I’m resisting the urge to go out and get more freelance; I’d rather use the time to write. Forget the bills, I have to type. Gotta keep the story going, and as long as I’ve got juice for the laptop it’s all good. I’ll pay the Con Ed but fuck the phone.

Today’s soundtrack:
Pussycat, Pussycat is her name
I’ll tell you no lie
Today at 5:02pm: Gritting my teeth on the 6.

I'm in a bit of a funk. Not the George Clinton kind but the Jesus Fuck I'm Out Of Money kind. It’s only Tuesday but I ran out of work at the Corporation, again. They say they “might” need me Thursday/Friday but we’ll see. Fucking Nostradamus couldn’t tell you my schedule.

I’m supposed to hang out with SmokedPanda and Ji Eun tomorrow. I’m hoping we can do something cheap, free or preferably something that generates cash. Tomorrow will be hot so we can sell lemonade on the corner of 42nd and 8th. I can't actually afford lemonade mix so I will be selling iced urine, meaning we will have to change location every few minutes to avoid retribution.

The Modern Condition, Clause 22: You Need The Thing You Hate. Your job sucks the life out of you like boba through a straw. But you need it because it’s the only thing financing the fun part of your life, the part that’s actually worth living. Mixed feelings when the boss tells you not to come in tomorrow.

Must learn to have fun for free.

They say the best things in life are free. This is true primarily if you shoplift, boost Porsches or rob banks for a living.

That kind of life must be nice for a while if you know what you’re doing. But eventually John Bunnell will find you and you will be caught. Then all of a sudden the worst things in life are free. Your cellmate will make a spankin’ slampiece out of you and won’t charge you a nickel.

Norm McDonald on anal rape in prison: “It’s the worst part of the sentence...and the judge doesn’t even mention it!”

Surely I can end this journal entry on something other than anal rape. I know what the problem is, I don’t have any music on. Better fire up iTunes, I’m going for the Fight Funk With Funk remedy. Got some George Clinton MP3s somewhere on this byatch.

Today’s soundtrack: Just remember you’ll only be the boss so long as you pay my wage
Today at 8:02pm: Watching an HK flick, Running Out Of Time.

It wasn’t...shame, nor embarrassment, nor disbelief; just a feeling of well, whaddaya know.
See tonight me, Mike and Shady sat around my kitchen table, tucking into Shady’s linguini with clam sauce and sauteed asparagus. When we eat, time between chewing is usually filled with us debating and propounding our pedestrian philosophies. None of us has black turtlenecks but I smoke to keep up appearances.

“What would you do if you found out a girl you were dating or an ex of yours made a porno tape?” asked Shady.

“So what.”

“Big fuckin’ deal.”

“Lots of people make ‘home movies.’”

Shady considered this and chewed some more. “But what if it was up on the internet?”

Mike and I thought about it and decided it was no big deal. Lots of stuff ends up on the internet. The three of us know this all too well because we’ve got both DSL and hormones. (Guy’s Curse: DSL and hormones are to the 2000s what Playstation and testosterone were to the ‘90s.)

I noticed Shady was chewing a little too intently, so I started to get suspicious. The women in my life have not exactly been pillars of society.

“Izzer somethin’ you wanna tell me?” I asked.

“Let’s wait ‘til after dinner,” he said.

After all the food had made a successful transition from the plates to our stomachs, the three of us gathered around Shady’s computer, to see the latest MPEG that warranted a group viewing. Started off pretty typical, the girl was--

Holy fuck.

I recognized her.

Not just her face.

“No fuckin’ way,” I said, peering at the screen to be sure there was no mistake. There wasn’t. I didn’t recognize the guy, thankfully. Thankfulness Part Two was that it wasn’t my current girlfriend.

We rewound and fast-forwarded a little to see different angles, and then it was Identity Confirmed. Her voice is even on it.

Some guys mighta been wigged out, but the whole thing is really none of my business, seeing as how it’s not me plugging away on there. Man--everybody gets their five minutes of fame, and sometimes it’s in MPEG.

Today’s soundtrack: I thought I’d know better
Today at 3:12am: At an Amoco station on Queens Boulevard, topping off the whip.

Long day.

Sometime last week around 3 in the morning, I stood naked in the shower with the water off. Shaving my head, I do it once a week.

I did most of the front and had started on the back when the clippers died. They simply stopped cutting. I swore some, and when I realized that wasn’t fixing the problem I ran out of the shower to get a screwdriver.

Five minutes later I had the thing open, screws everywhere, and still had no idea why it’d stopped working. I spent ten minutes tinkering with it before throwing it in the garbage. Washed my patchwork head off and went to sleep.

The next morning I woke up, nearly late for work, and ran to a nearby Chinese hair salon. My hair was a scrappy mess, it looked like I’d gotten a haircut from Ray Charles after he finished three pots of coffee.

“Can you please shave the rest of this off?” I asked. The hair salon was packed. I waited my turn, enduring the unabashedly disapproving stares of a half-dozen Chinese women my mother’s age.

Today I ran out to get a new pair of clippers and a half-dozen other errands. I hate errands. I also hate people who can’t speak English; the Carribbean woman at National Wholesale Liquidators thought, by my gesturing, that I was asking for shampoo. ESL baby, learn it, live it, love it.

Made it home just in time to pull my Hapkido uniform out of the dryer, unwrinkle it and run to class. My partner for the day ended up being Hapkido Girl, who is a red belt. It’s a weird thing to throw a woman to the ground, and then to have her get up and reciprocate. But that’s how the practices go.

In the straightaways everyone jockeys for position; most people are afraid to cut each other off around the curves. I’m on the Long Island Expressway, headed to JFK to pick up Deadly Ed Lee and Betty, who are returning from a wedding in Sacramento.

It’s 9pm and I’ve planned this pickup with precision--the LIE to the Van Wyck to the JFK Expressway, in as long as it takes to make pancakes--but I’m foiled by an unexpected traffic jam at Terminal 9.

In bottlenecks like this you have an option to either sit in the appropriate lane and wait your turn, or be one of those assholes who cruises in the wrong lane and cuts everyone else off at the last minute, fucking up traffic in that lane. I choose to wait my turn, because at the age of 31 I now feel that’s the right thing to do. Five years ago I’d have been doing the wrong thing.

Predictably, the asshole lane fills up with assholes, jamming everything up. I waited for 25 fucking minutes. “Bad, bad person,” I muttered to all who passed.

Around 11pm I’m back in Manhattan, dropping Mike and Shady off at Forbidden City. Me and Yuka are headed out to Queens to do our late-night grocery shopping at a 24-hour Pathmark. We always try to go around midnight or later ‘cause there’s no lines.

First we stop at Home Depot to buy some drill bits. (I’m putting up some lights at my place.) Yuka’s eye is drawn to the energy-saving bulbs in the Lighting section so I have to spend seven minutes explaining to her, in a mixture of English and broken Japanese, how a 15-watt bulb can be equivalent to a 60-watt in terms of Lumens output.

At midnight on a Wednesday the cash register lines for Home Depot still take forever. What the fuck.

At Pathmark the pasta’s half-price this week so I bought 2,560 ounces of rigatoni. (16 bags.) Also picked up a couple gallons of Ragu and three gallons of OJ. Yuka bought enough chicken, pork and beef to feed an army. Nevertheless, we’ll be back in two months.

We call Eumi from the parking lot of Pathmark and pick her up around 2am. Groceries in the trunk, we head to a diner on Queens Boulevard. I need a bacon cheeseburger immediately.

The three of us spend an hour catching up, and it’s just like old times. When Eumi lived in our building, the three of us were marginally employed and spent lots of afternoons hanging out together like a bunch of housewives. Except I’m a guy.

Around 3:30am Yuka and I are hauling our groceries up the steps. She begins unpacking it while I go back downstairs to drive the car back to the garage.

After dropping the car off, I’m walking back home when I see two staggering figures a half-block ahead of me. It turns out to be...none other than Mike and Shady, limping their drunk asses home from the bar. Really is a small city.

I run up from behind to scare them, but they’re too plastered to provide an entertaining reaction. The three of us walk home in silence. 4am, everything’s quiet and I’m walking home with two drunks.

Today’s soundtrack: I thought I’d know better
Today at 3:12am: At an Amoco station on Queens Boulevard, topping off the whip.

Long day.

Sometime last week around 3 in the morning, I stood naked in the shower with the water off. Shaving my head, I do it once a week.

I did most of the front and had started on the back when the clippers died. They simply stopped cutting. I swore some, and when I realized that wasn’t fixing the problem I ran out of the shower to get a screwdriver.

Five minutes later I had the thing open, screws everywhere, and still had no idea why it’d stopped working. I spent ten minutes tinkering with it before throwing it in the garbage. Washed my patchwork head off and went to sleep.

The next morning I woke up, nearly late for work, and ran to a nearby Chinese hair salon. My hair was a scrappy mess, it looked like I’d gotten a haircut from Ray Charles after he finished three pots of coffee.

“Can you please shave the rest of this off?” I asked. The hair salon was packed. I waited my turn, enduring the unabashedly disapproving stares of a half-dozen Chinese women my mother’s age.

Today I ran out to get a new pair of clippers and a half-dozen other errands. I hate errands. I also hate people who can’t speak English; the Carribbean woman at National Wholesale Liquidators thought, by my gesturing, that I was asking for shampoo. ESL baby, learn it, live it, love it.

Made it home just in time to pull my Hapkido uniform out of the dryer, unwrinkle it and run to class. My partner for the day ended up being Hapkido Girl, who is a red belt. It’s a weird thing to throw a woman to the ground, and then to have her get up and reciprocate. But that’s how the practices go.

In the straightaways everyone jockeys for position; most people are afraid to cut each other off around the curves. I’m on the Long Island Expressway, headed to JFK to pick up Deadly Ed Lee and Betty, who are returning from a wedding in Sacramento.

It’s 9pm and I’ve planned this pickup with precision--the LIE to the Van Wyck to the JFK Expressway, in as long as it takes to make pancakes--but I’m foiled by an unexpected traffic jam at Terminal 9.

In bottlenecks like this you have an option to either sit in the appropriate lane and wait your turn, or be one of those assholes who cruises in the wrong lane and cuts everyone else off at the last minute, fucking up traffic in that lane. I choose to wait my turn, because at the age of 31 I now feel that’s the right thing to do. Five years ago I’d have been doing the wrong thing.

Predictably, the asshole lane fills up with assholes, jamming everything up. I waited for 25 fucking minutes. “Bad, bad person,” I muttered to all who passed.

Around 11pm I’m back in Manhattan, dropping Mike and Shady off at Forbidden City. Me and Yuka are headed out to Queens to do our late-night grocery shopping at a 24-hour Pathmark. We always try to go around midnight or later ‘cause there’s no lines.

First we stop at Home Depot to buy some drill bits. (I’m putting up some lights at my place.) Yuka’s eye is drawn to the energy-saving bulbs in the Lighting section so I have to spend seven minutes explaining to her, in a mixture of English and broken Japanese, how a 15-watt bulb can be equivalent to a 60-watt in terms of Lumens output.

At midnight on a Wednesday the cash register lines for Home Depot still take forever. What the fuck.

At Pathmark the pasta’s half-price this week so I bought 2,560 ounces of rigatoni. (16 bags.) Also picked up a couple gallons of Ragu and three gallons of OJ. Yuka bought enough chicken, pork and beef to feed an army. Nevertheless, we’ll be back in two months.

We call Eumi from the parking lot of Pathmark and pick her up around 2am. Groceries in the trunk, we head to a diner on Queens Boulevard. I need a bacon cheeseburger immediately.

The three of us spend an hour catching up, and it’s just like old times. When Eumi lived in our building, the three of us were marginally employed and spent lots of afternoons hanging out together like a bunch of housewives. Except I’m a guy.

Around 3:30am Yuka and I are hauling our groceries up the steps. She begins unpacking it while I go back downstairs to drive the car back to the garage.

After dropping the car off, I’m walking back home when I see two staggering figures a half-block ahead of me. It turns out to be...none other than Mike and Shady, limping their drunk asses home from the bar. Really is a small city.

I run up from behind to scare them, but they’re too plastered to provide an entertaining reaction. The three of us walk home in silence. 4am, everything’s quiet and I’m walking home with two drunks.

Today’s soundtrack: Pity for me, tattoo, wow.
What a mile!
Where are tonight's crimes going?
Today at 9:02pm: Having a breakfast dinner.

Today was one of those days where it’s not enough for me to sit around and listen to Elvis Costello or old Skatalites tracks. I hate this feeling: I don’t want to go out, but I don’t want to stay home.

Restlessness is marginally tolerable as a college student but outright nefarious in your 30s. Still trying to get a handle on adulthood.

In my early 20s I never owned a couch and had no use for one; my roommate and I were constantly busy with work or zealously conducting our social lives. Now we’ve got a couch, and today after work I collapsed into it. Watched The Simpsons, thankful for the cheap laughs, and fell asleep before the end of the episode. Only a fucking Tuesday and I’m already out of gas.

How do MP3s get mislabeled? I’ve downloaded Queen tracks misleadingly labeled “Roy Orbison,” Joe Jackson as “Elvis Costello,” etc. Do these errors occur at the time of ripping, or does some misguided revisionist rename and redistribute them?

Not that I’m complaining. My philosophy is, when you’re getting something for free, you shut your yap and either eat it or don’t. Which is why I think people who complain about AsianAvenue services or other people’s blogs are retarded. Eat it or don’t. And bring your plates to the sink.

When I was in high school a store named Listen Up Records opened up in the neighborhood. They sold used records (CDs were still a rarity). I saved up for this import Police album with busboy money, praying no one else would scoop it up. On the day I bought it I flew home, pulled it out of the cover and threw it on the turntable without looking at the label.

It ended up being a fucking Carpenters album; somebody’d put it in the wrong cover. I hate when things are mislabeled almost as much as I hate the Carpenters.

Taking the train home from work today I saw a pregnant women in a hideously ugly maternity dress. Her husband, or the guy I assumed knocked her up, was standing too close to me and stepped on my foot several times. I didn’t say anything because I felt bad for them.

The Corporation ran out of work for me, so I won’t be going in the rest of this week. Most people would be excited to have 3/5ths of the week off, I’m not because it means I’ll get 2/5ths the paycheck.

To offset this I’ve got to make sure I have a productive 3 days. Working on finishing these short stories, with all the torturous self-doubt and second-guessing that entails. I hope I can get something out, anything. You know what the writer’s curse is? When you’re busy, you wish you had more time to write; and when you’re free, you can’t write a damn thing.

Uh-oh, getting morose. Quick, list five things I like. Driving fast on 2nd Avenue, that’s one. Eating, that’s two. Sex makes three. Sleeping, four. Taking photos, five.

Hmmm...I think I’d better develop more sophisticated tastes.

Today’s soundtrack: You grow up and learn that kind of thing ain’t right
Today at 3:02pm: Attempting (unsuccesfully) to subvert the corporate firewall.

At work they switched me over to Mac’s System Ten, a/k/a “OS X.” The boss gave me a book called “OS X for Dummies.”

If I was the publisher of these “For Dummies” books I’d have two versions of each book: There’d be “OS X For Dummies” and the sister publication, “OS X For Fucking Retarded Idiots.”

The text would be almost the same, just printed much larger, repeated every other page and sprinkled with clever put-downs. I.e. “Chapter Ten--The Chapter We Had To Add Because You’re Such A Moron” and “Appendix B: Troubleshooting For Clueless Douchebags Such As, Oh, I Don’t Know, Look In The Mirror.” I’d do it just to see how many units I could move.

All my bitching and moaning finally paid off, the departmental bigwigs finally sprung for a top-of-the-line G4 for yours truly. Graphically speaking, I do all the heavy lifting around here anyway so I need a machine that can crush.

It’s a dual-processor model, which is kind of like having a Porsche with an engine in the front and another one in the back. If I was smart enough to understand how it works I’d probably be really excited. I looked inside the G4 but I didn’t see any pistons or fuel injectors. Just a bunch of little things that look like maps of Manhattan, and some shiny silver thing that looked like you shouldn’t spill coffee on it.

I don’t know much about computers, but I’ve got my design job down to a science. (Watch me get shit-canned tomorrow.) If I didn’t mention it before I do Industrial Design. If you have to ask what that is, the answer’s kind of long so save it for when you run into me at a cocktail party.

I just ripped Pizzicato Five’s “Playboy Playgirl” album and I’m playing it on the computer. In iTunes 3, on a G4 I rock P-5.

Boss A and Boss B both took the day off, so I’m unsupervised. It’s not a good idea to leave me unsupervised. Because then I do things like see how many Zip disks I can stack before they fall over, or if I can roll a CD-ROM across my entire office (I can’t). Boss B comes back tomorrow. My CD-ROMs will stay on the desk.

Today’s soundtrack: if I, offered to drive...
Today at 3:02pm: Wiggling my way to the front of the pack on the West Side Highway

Hi, my name is Rain and I’m new to LiveJournal. I don’t know who to sit with in the cafeteria.


One: I’m 31 years old, but I look 16 and feel 45. I’m like a heavily processed food; it looks fresh but after you take a bite you’re like, “Damn! This thing’s gone bad.”

Two: I’m an unabashed New Yorker. This is the only city in the world where a dog can walk down the street and step in human shit. I enjoy going away, and I really enjoy returning.

Three: I have a silver Golf, lousy memory and bad skin. If I spend too long a period without caffeine, I find most of my personality goes away.

Four: People often think I’m half, on account of my freakishly large nose that defies Asian DNA. There are teams of South Korean scientists dedicated to around-the-clock study of my nose. They draw lots of diagrams and then rip them up in frustration. You’ve never seen so much yelling.

Five: I pay my rent by freelancing for a faceless Corporation. I’d tell you about my job, but the tale of it is so boring you could use it for anesthetic.

Six: Six is the loneliest number. Oh wait a sec, that’s one. My bad.

Seven: Did you ever have one of those dreams where you go to school without your pants on? --Well, I haven’t. You’re a total freak man.

Eight: I spent last Christmas by myself in a Kentucky Fried Chicken in Shanghai. Bad planning, cheap chicken.

Nine: The other day I realized that, all things considered, I’m actually kind of a jerk. But of a slightly novel strain; I’m more of a refreshing jerk. I’d tell you more but hey, I hardly know you.

Ten: I have to go now.