Today’s soundtrack: even though I’m with somebody else right now
Today at 8:02pm: Trying (and failing) to do a full split. Not there yet.


Last week Mike the Player left for Japan, and my roommate Shady got a Mac-10 shoved in his face. I went to Hapkido four nights in a row and it felt great.

First Mike lands a huge fucking gig (Maybelline, ka-ching) then he jets off to Japan to shoot some beauty stuff for a Japanese hair salon. Back in a month. That guy’s got the fucking life.

Shady, his luck is up and down. Last Saturday he’s walking down Wooster Street alone in the wee hours, fairly drunk, and three homeys from Uptown or Brooklyn come out of a parking lot and zero in on him. The one with the burner points it at Shady and threatens to pull the trigger. “Run your shit motherfucker, run all your shit,” they said.

“Fuck you,” said Shady. “You’re in the parking lot--I got you. You gonna shoot me, fucking shoot me. Fuck you.”

The reason this doesn’t sound outrageous to me is because Shady recounted the story to me right after it happened and he was blind drunk. Shady is a belligerent fucking drunk, the type of guy who would totally goad a police officer or kidnapper into shooting him.

The kids got nervous and ran, which makes both Shady and me think it was a toy.

Still--Shady’s fucking crazy. You stick anything that looks even remotely like a firearm in my general direction and I’ll spew PIN numbers and tell you where to look under the mattress. In Hapkido they don’t teach you how to plug bullet holes in your torso and I’m not a gambling man.

The most shocking thing about this incident is not the weapon (“An illegal firearm in Manhattan? No way”) or Shady’s drunken response, but the fact that it happened on fucking Wooster Street.

Wooster Street is in fucking SoHo. What is this world coming to. Next they’ll start opening overpriced boutiques in East New York or putting cappucino machines in Riker’s.

Never thought I’d hear myself say this, but I think I’m using the word “fucking” too much.

The intensity level in Hapkido is really starting to ramp up. My Sabumnim is working us like he’s training us to fight a rival school or something. If I didn’t know better I’d think he was about to disappear.

Oh man I saw Betty today, her face is all fucked up. The lump was on her forehead but somehow the fluid seems to be slowly draining downwards--she’s got a dark purple ring around her eye and nose. Makes her look like a badass though.

I love that she’s in her mid-thirties. When I was in my twenties I never thought my contemporaries and I would be doing the things we are in our thirties. Not that we’re doing anything special, but I figured by this age we’d be boring and lame. Then again I do have a subscription to The Economist and I never go out on weekends.

Businessgirl is quite the party girl, I’m kind of surprised she’s even dating me. What must her friends think. Maybe the next time I meet them I should bring a sheaf of insurance documents I can pore over.

I’ve more to write but it’s 4:40am and I’m no longer lucid. The ashtray is full and I don’t remember filling it.

Today’s soundtrack: But honeypie, you’re not safe here
Today at 1:32am: Eating some leftovers Yuka reheated for me. I miss the old days


On some day in 1998 the Sabumnim asked me to teach some techniques to a new student named Betty. Betty was overweight, clumsy, uncoordinated, and seemed to lack physical confidence. That first day that I trained her I figured she was hopeless.

Betty and I became friendly. For one thing she was Asian, for two she was a native New Yorker, for three she was a couple years older than me and for four she lived right down the block from me. I don’t get along with many people as easily as I do with Betty.

For the next few months I watched her come to class regularly, admiring her for showing up and working at it. Martial arts or dance or field hockey come naturally to some people, but this girl clearly wasn’t one of them.

Then I moved to Japan for a year. That’s another story.

When I came back from Japan, the sight of Betty shocked me. She had grown lean and wiry. She had surpassed me in rank. And on the mats she moved around with a surprising alacrity and grace.

Her kicks had grown strong, quick and precise. The first day I had to kick-spar The New Betty she made mincemeat of me.

Today at the dojang I kneeled on the side of the mats, watching a line of black belts do the rope-stick form. I watched Betty in awe, she’s so fucking quick and her forms are so tight. I heard a “tock” noise and realized Betty had accidentally caught some of the stick on her head, but I didn’t know where.

She finished the form (faster and better than the others, of course) and then I saw she was crying. But she held her ready position without flinching. The Sabumnim didn’t notice because he was watching the slower students, the ones who need help with the form.

He made the whole line do the form again, and in horror I saw a huuuuuuuge lump the size of a fucking walnut form on Betty’s forehead. She gritted her teeth and finished the form. The lump was literally the size of a walnut, almost a golf ball; I couldn’t believe the human skull could support such a protrusion.

Sabumnim made them do the form another two times, and each time Betty executed it flawlessly. But in the ready position I could see she was dizzy. The lump had split open and was bleeding. She covered it with her hair so no one would see.

Then the Sabumnim called the entire class (including me) onto the mats and put us through the paces. Maybe thirty of us. I was worried sick about Betty and although we were doing a very basic form, I fucked up several times, causing my Sabumnim to pause and stare at me in disbelief.

“YOU ARE SOMEWHERE ELSE,” he bellowed, in disgust. “WHERE ARE YOU?”

I wanted to tell him I was worried about Betty, but instead I mumbled “I don’t know, sir” and nodded as he castigated me.

Eventually the black belts on either side of Betty noticed her injury and forced her to step off the mats and get an icepack. She sat off to the side of class, dazed.

I’m so fucking proud of Betty, she is such a trooper. Getting hit with the rope-stick is like being hit with an iron pipe. To take a shot in the head like that and finish the form is difficult. To do the form an additional three times after that, flawlessly, is amazing. She even tried to continue with the rest of class.

Anyone can fuck up and catch a blow from their own weapon. But to take a shot like that and keep going shows true fucking heart. I wanted to tell Betty how much I admire her, and after class I started to but someone else interrupted me and I just let them. I’m not very good at saying that stuff. She knows me as such a sarcastic person that it will sound insincere. I don’t think she’ll ever know how much she inspires me. Because I don’t have any heros, you know?

Today’s soundtrack: on my own on Saturdays, ah, ah
Today at 6:02pm: Teaching basic knife techniques to a Latina girl named Jenessa


I think I already wrote this up before but I’m doing it again.


What I would name a rock band if I had one:


The Connie Chungs
Gang of Four
Melvin Tang and the Furious Chinamen
North Korean Missile Crisis
Subic Bass
Sick Man of Asia

That last one is a Bruce Lee ref. from Chinese Connection. Good flick. Where is the Bruce Lee of our time? I like the Jet and all but he’s got the personality of a fish. Bruce had fucking charisma.

Today’s soundtrack: uh-oh it’s magic.
Today at 10:32pm: Late-night telecommuting. You know what? Fuck connectivity.


Another bad thing about getting older is, it becomes difficult to tell when something is good or bad. Even as it’s happening to you. Shit flip-flops, turns corners and doubles back so you can’t always tell. Sometimes good things get all fucked up and the nastiest shit turns out to be alright.

Am I in a good mood? Uh...I don’t know.

Empty ‘fridge and my apartment’s a fucking mess. You know how in spy thrillers, the protagonist gets back to his apartment and finds it’s been totally ransacked? That’s what my place looks like right now. Like Russian spies turned the place upside down looking for fucking microfilm.

When mom and pop Noe raised their two kids, they left “teach Korean” off their to-do list. On top of that they raised us in Queens, Staten Island and a suburb thirty minutes north of Yonkers.

The end result of this is if you call me on the phone I sound like a guy who works in a pizzeria or down at Delmonico’s Auto Body. Korean? Can’t speak it. I speak better Spanish and my Spanish sucks tu madre’s ass.

So last night my parents and I went to this Korean joint in Queens. The food was pretty alright. The waitress asked me some basic questions I was unable to understand or answer.

Mid-meal I went outside to smoke a cigarette. The benefit of being 31 is that your parents don’t get on your ass about smoking. Maybe they’re just amazed they have offspring that made it this far.

It was freezing outside. Through the window I saw Koreans of all sizes and shapes, young, old, families, couples. Speaking in Korean. I stole glances at all of them and felt like an outsider, which was appropriate since I was...outside.

Over dinner my parents told me about Cali, then got on my ass about getting married. They make it sound like you can just order brides off of Amazon. I tried to explain that it’s not going to happen anytime soon because I can’t rush a process like this. Problems:

a. girls are not exactly throwing themselves at me
b. don’t want to be one of those schmucks who marries the wrong girl
c. don’t even have any candidates

Businessgirl’s great but I doubt she’d marry me; I think she’s slated for someone taller who has money. She’s still young and has a ways to go before she settles down. The guy who ends up with her is going to be a lucky fucking guy. Me, I’m not so lucky.

From what I gather I’m pretty different than the other guys she’s dated. There are already things popping up about me that she doesn’t seem to like, and I can’t say I blame her. I have a feeling the only position of eminence I will occupy in her long-term life will be as some weird anecdote, like “Ohmygod one time I dated this weird writer guy...” etc.

Before J-Lo, there was Charo. If you remember her I’m buying you a cuppa coffee.

So I read this article about Norman Mailer. Did you know he’s been married six times? Moneygrip is 80 years old and still writing. His first book came out in nineteen-forty fucking eight. He also stabbed his second wife, though I don’t have the details. Gonna have to Google that later.

On the plus side, Hapkido is going well. I am making some progress. At least I have one thing in my life that has the sole purpose of trying to mold me into a better human being. Betty’s been on my ass about showing up at the dojang and I love her for that.

On the surface it seems like just kicks and punches but I learn a lot from my Sabumnim. I learn about The Way. Making progress towards mastering my destiny and all that good shit. I’m still such a novice, but at least at the dojang I feel like I’m moving in the right direction.

Today’s soundtrack: I’ll be your savior, steadfast and true
Today at 9:02pm: Standing in the “No Standing” zone at JFK Terminal 9


Hey man a few entries ago I complained about how cold it was in New York. Well forget what I said before, ‘cause now it’s fucking cold. It’s like Six Degrees of Separation, but the “six” is on the thermometer and the “separation” is the outer layer of skin falling off my fucking face.

Today was actually nine degrees, but the 1010-WINS “real-feel” temperature was two. Do you know what two degrees feels like? It feels like the wind is cutting through your clothes and skin and blowing directly on your internal organs.

On the sidewalk it’s so cold I want to stop walking, scrunch up my eyes, lean my head back and just start crying like a two-year-old. Waaaaaahhhhhh

I want to put the cold air in boxes and set up a mail-order service. You’re in Africa, Thailand or Venezuela sweating your balls off but you mail me some scratch and I Fed-Ex you a box of frigid air. It’s more economical than air conditioning and costs almost nothing to ship.

Maybe you can return the favor and send me a box of hot air.


ROOMMATE: Hey man you got a package.

ME: Killer! My hot air. (ripping package open) Ahhhhh.

RM: Lemme get some...Whoa!

ME: What?

RM: That smells like a fart!

ME: Well it’s not a fart, it’s Venezuelan hot air.

RM: You got ripped off, man. Someone mailed you a fart.

ME: (sniffing) ...Fuck.

After work and hapkido I picked the ‘rents up at JFK and we went to dinner in Flushing.

My pops is like a drug dealer, but the horse he’s trying to get me hooked on is Marriage. Always talking about it, asking me if I want some, asking me if I need a hook-up. I’m thinking the social pressure on him must be pretty intense.

He says he’s got a couple friends who have unmarried daughters in their late 20s/early 30s. These are offspring who, like me, couldn’t get with the program. And if they’re as twisted as I am I want no part of it. If I ever met them I would try to turn us all into a bankrobbing crew or something. We would spend the money on mescaline, trips to Cuba and therapy.

Anyways it looks like mom and pop are moving to Cali. They said the people are nicer but the chow ain’t as good. Mostly they’re in it for the weather. So next Christmas I’ll ask my pops to mail me a box of hot air, and maybe then he’ll understand why I’m not married yet.

Today’s soundtrack: I ran all night and day
Today at 8:02pm: on the phone


Feeling stressed and spent? Quick, make a list:


Ten things I have to be thankful for:


- the Skatalites
- sweet girlfriend
- diner coffee
- New York still standing; Bin Laden apparently just a two-hit wonder
- roommate has begun heeding my urges to clean his hair out of the shower drain, precluding clogging
- am clearly in top 10th percentile of parallel parkers
- have ready access to hot beverages at all times
- am successfully running OSX
- live in a free society where I can choose my calling
- have never been hit with a brick (that must hurt like a bitch)

Tomorrow I have to pick my parents up at JFK. Afterwards we’re going to dinner in K-town, then I gotta drive ‘em upstate. Korean Family is like radiation, it’s okay in small doses but too much will kill you.

We’re going to dinner because (I suspect) my parents have some sort of announcement. They’ve been pondering moving to California and I think this might be it. I don’t know how they can just betray New York like that. Then again, they did their part by giving birth to an excellent parallel parker.

As a time period I really like the ‘20s, ‘30s, ‘40s. I wish I lived in New York back then.

The problem with fantasizing about this is that I would have to be white in the fantasies. Otherwise I’d be too busy being chased out of restaurants with bats and shit. I’d try to go to a jazz club or the Algonquin but white people would try to hit me with bricks.

So instead I try to have fantasies about living in the future, but I can’t picture what it will be like. The future is always way more boring than we think it will be. I read this interview with Matt Groening and he said “No one ever predicted that one day we would select movies to watch by going into a store and looking at empty boxes.”

I need a time machine and a brickproof exoskeleton. I’ll clank my way into the Cotton Club and sip bathtub gin while waiting for Duke Ellington to come on. Impervious and oblivious to the din of bricks, bats and whites who have never seen the 2003 7-train.

Today’s soundtrack: maximum big surprise, she knows, something new
Today at 12:02am: Living out my vigilante fantasies on a PS2


In parallel universe #15523 I live in a small town and date a girl named Jane.

I drive a pickup truck and have a medium-sized dog who rides in the back and no one cares I’m not white.

The dog, his tongue hangs out when we drive. Jane makes a mean steak and she drives an old Pontiac. It breaks down a lot. I spend every other weekend lying underneath the Pontiac, getting my hands dirty. Sometimes the store in town doesn’t have the right part and we have to wait for it to come in the mail.

In this universe I live in a big city and date a girl named ______.

I drive a small five-speed. Small so it’s easy to parallel park, manual so I can choose which gear I will use to cut that taxi off. I lack dogs.

I can’t wait ‘til I can own a dog because I love them. Not all dogs; if you have one of those little scruffy ones, man I hate them little bastards. I don’t care what you say, they’re patently unloveable.

One day I will have a medium-sized, tan-colored dog with a black snout and short hair. If I’m still in the city I’ll take him to the dog run at Washington Square. The other owners will think their dogs are better in some way but I will know the truth.

Today is MLK day but I had to go to work. Freelancers know no holidays but their own and I had economic incentives to be in the office today.

Sometimes I wonder What Has Happened To My Life. I don’t mean that it’s bad, I just wonder how things got this way. Did you ever wonder that? Don’t lie to me.

Today I saw a paper shredder that shreds credit cards and CDs. I coveted it.

I was in high school when CDs came out. Up ‘til then you had to carry twelve inches of vinyl back from the record store. So these little silver discs were amazing.

I can’t believe now you can make them yourself, and even put sensitive business data on them. In 1989 if you told me “One day you will be able to buy a machine that can destroy CDs” I wouldn’t have understood you. I would have told you to get away from me and then I would have driven off in my Datsun cranking Billy Idol and giving you the finger.

On the subway today I was reading this article in The Economist. I’ve got no business reading The Economist because I’m actually not that smart, I bet I’m in the bottom 10th percentile of Economist subscribers. But I hope I can get smarter. I’m going to start telling people that at cocktail parties. Oh who am I kidding, I haven’t been to a fucking cocktail party in ages.

Anyways this article, right, was about autism. I dunno why but autism fascinates me. (Businessgirlfriend postulates it’s because of the Rain-Rainman connection but I disagree.)

Generally speaking, autistics have problems functioning in society because they are unable to empathize. They also cannot decode facial expressions to tell if you’re angry or happy, etc. and as children they fail to make eye contact, unable to recognize eyes as portals of emotion.

Autistics also tend to systemize things, it’s the only way they can understand the world. And autism happens to boys three times as much as girls.

So here’s where it gets crazy:

Women (not autistic women, “regular” women) are typically empathetic. Women are generally more in touch with their emotions than men.

Men (“regular” men) typically systemize things. Men tend to categorize in order to solve.

A recent theory goes that autism afflicts fetuses when they receive too much testosterone in the womb. These researchers are postulating that autism is the ultimate Male disease--essentially saying having autism is like having a bad case of Man.

There are some heavy implications here, and if I was just a little bit smarter I could tell you what they are.

Today’s soundtrack: if you don’t move, and get a job
Today at 11:32am: Making coffee, and well.


Sorry I haven’t written in a while but I been busy, baby. Daddy’s got some new projects.

My project for The Germans was like a song by Oasis--it never seemed to end. But it’s finally finished for now. The checks cleared and everything.

Project Two, I started doing some professional photo retouching. Mike the Player just shot a thing for Mac cosmetics and needed a hand. That was a short controlled burst--three days of labor and one all-nighter.

Basically I was reading this article on “professional Photoshop tips” and I realized I already knew how to do everything they mentioned, because Photoshop is what I do all day at work.

The money in photo retouching (for fashion, beauty etc.) is better than the money in design so I’m trying to pick up more retouching gigs. Time is money and if I can squeeze some extra Jacksons out of an hour I will.

Project Three, a gig to design bags for a Japanese client (Marui department stores) fell into my lap. The deadline’s kind of nuts but if I do the project right, I get to go to Japan in September on someone else’s nickel. Nothing tastes better than free sashimi.

Project Four, assembling a workshop panel for a college gig at University of Wisconsin-Madison. I’ve never been to Wisconsin. Looking forward to seeing Ashton Kutcher (he’s so stupid!) and that redheaded chick (she’s so smart!).

Finally got a new computer, a 1-gig G4 Titanium. I ordered it on a Friday night and it arrived at my door Saturday morning, with a free Epson printer. Al-Qaeda may not like us but there are a lot of good things to say about our society.

Saw Pat Labor III which completely sucked. SV2 is barely in it, the story focuses on Hata and Matsui. Bor-ring.

Saw 25th Hour which was pretty fucking great. Strange to see Spike Lee make movies about white people but he’s a great director. This flick is exceptionally well-cast, everyone from Ed Norton on down is pitch-perfect. Spike Lee and Woody Allen are the best because they are true-blue New fucking York directors. The ghost of the Twin Towers is this movie’s secret cast member.

Spike is still fucking with the saturated colors and the standing-still dolly shots, which I love because he’s still a Tisch grad keeping it Angelika. More than half of you will have no idea what that means but it matters little.

For the past three days I’ve been living not in Manhattan, but in a place called Vice City. I boost Corvettes, outrun cops, slaughter gangbangers and punch the shit out of taxi drivers. I drop-kick people off Vespas and put Yamahas into the wall for no good reason.

My roommate’s even worse; he drives onto the beach for the sole purpose of running sunbathing pedestrians down with a Ford Bronco. People running everywhere, like in a Godzilla movie. Sometimes he has to back up to finish the job and it gets kind of gruesome.

Invincible, unstoppable. I cut corners like a temp, powerslide through hairpins and at speed I bang U-Turns like Oliver Stone. Killer ‘80s trash on the decks: Mister Mister, Foreigner, Cutting Crew. Night Ranger singing “Sister Christian” while bullets hit sheetmetal and I roll Firebirds like dice.

I’m not big into videogames, but a PS2 happened to fall into my hands. I picked up a copy of Grand Theft Auto 3: Vice City just to see what would happen when I slid the disc into the machine. It reminded me of when as a teenager I pulled the knob on a cigarette machine for the very first time. This game is bad, bad news.

For the first five minutes GTA horrified me (because I’m old and somewhat civic-minded, you see). They reward you for being evil, committing senseless acts of violence, and pedestrian lives are worth not a whit.

After ten minutes I was sufficiently inured to the imagined pain of others and I began playing in earnest. The thrill of escaping police roadblocks with much kinetic violence is not to be underestimated.

Videogames are like time travel. It’s 6pm, then you blink and it’s three in the morning. Ironic that I can get my youth back from a machine that actually steals it. Steals it like an unlocked Pontiac.