Lalapipo versus Oscar Wao

I was just having an argu-sation about gender with a couple writer friends the other day, that made me think: what price equality? Scorcese would fail miserably with an attempt to incorporate a Merryl Streep or Frances McDormand type in Casino or The Departed. Likewise, I don't really care what Candace Bushnell thinks of boxing.

So, a few weeks ago I read a book called Lala Pipo, by Hideo Okuda, in one day. It wasn't just that my previous employer published it (there's your full disclosure), or that I like funny stories about perverts. It was simple, direct, "honest," very clear in its conceit, and yes, a hilarious send-up of so many societal ills that would seem macabre in any other light. Think Chuck Palahniuk and Todd Solondz, or Tom Perotta and Ron Jeremy.

A few nights ago I started The Brief Wondrous Life of Oscar Wao, by Juno Diaz after months of feeling like I really ought to. This book too, I could not put down. It isn't just that the narrator makes brilliant and copious use of the f-bomb or name drops otaku icons with just as frequently. Or that I like funny stories about masturbators, as well as comic books and Tolkien. It was experimental while germaine, historicist while postmodern, metafictive while populist genre-rific.

What these two titles share is a narrative conceit, comparable to the game "Telephone" or a relay race. The books are made of a bunch of stories that take place in genetic-geo-temporal proximity, and share one prescient theme bifurcated by two other ones. In Lala Pipo I'd argue it's sex bifurcated by labor and "the city." In ...Oscar Wao, I'd argue it's family, bifurcated by language and sex.

But this is where I run into an enormous conflict. "Oscar Wao" is more deserving of praise, perhaps because it tries harder and accomplishes more, but it fails so magnanimously, so obnoxiously, at one thing, that it becomes almost impossible for me to give the entire book, both my thumbs. And that one thing, is the narration of Oscar Wao's older sister, Part 2 of the novel.

Part 1, mind you, is one of the most amazing "short stories" I've ever read in my life. So are Parts 3 and 4. The last part of the book is just fine (awesome if you feel comfortable making fun of gentrifying New New Yorkers without calling attention to yourself). Point being, if you want to read an exercise in amazing beginnings, start with this novel.

But man if I didn't want to burn the book halfway through Part 2. It was so full of cliches, unironic stereotypes, and really poor qualifications of female issues (literally: menstruation, hair, breast cancer). It makes one wonder if Diaz does it on purpose. I am reserving judgements against Diaz's own gender, but this is the most astounding schism I've ever encountered in such a brilliant novel. Imagine watching "Glenn Gary Glenn Ross," or some Lars Von Trier like "The Celebration": a chamber piece, if you will. Now imagine one of the main leads is replaced by Paris Hilton or a tenth grader in fourth grade remedial math.

In contrast to this, "Lala Pipo" is no "Glenn Gary..." or "The Celebration" (and just so it's clear, I'm not comparing the narratives of "Oscar Wao" with either of those films. Just the chemistry of characters, and intensity of performances.). But "Lala Pipo" isn't trying to be anything like that. It's more like an episode of some FX original sitcom. It's just really entertaining. And, well, all the women in the book are kind of... stereotypical idiots. Truly the lesser half.

And this is where I come back to the argument about writing up gender.

Do I laud a misogynist his expose on perverted men because he's been forthright?
And do I then fault a genius his very short attempt at a woman's bildungsroman because it feels disingenuous?

envy comes in pairs of women.

Envy is such an awful feeling. Especially when you know there's no calculable intrinsic superiority between the envier and envied. I mean let's be honest, most of us are raised to think we are the eye of the tiger itself. Rawr. (Note: tigers are cats and cats are catty.)

I'm not that bad when it comes to professional competition. I'm happy to cede the yardsticks. I will never make loads of money (read: publishing is labor-of-love), and I value hard work without the titles. I'm even pretty good about platonic female competition, because it's just embarrassing when women get catty. It's an embarrassment I compare to shopping with my mom when she asks the most uppity looking clerk if she gets a discount for being a senior citizen (true story). But this jealously line gets thin when female friends are actually sexual rivals.

You see, recently I was bombarded with the positive reviews, hipper-than-thou blurbists, interviews, endorsements, amazon recommendations, crescendo-accelerando applause, for the latest book by a sexual rival.

How dare she leave the positive markings of a novelist, a bard threatening MY medium, haunting the mausoleum of my closest neighbor, terrorizing my ego!! (cue: "O Fortuna" Anne sheds tears of blood.)

Oh lord.

But then just as all seems an attack on my patient life of quiet contentment, I see this hilarious send-up of womenvy. Contextual humor makes everything ok.

God bless Hillary Clinton, and god bless being allowed to like that catty bitch again.

RIP David Foster Wallace

What a strange week in suicides.

David Foster Wallace was found dead with a noose around his neck.

Tennis anyone?

I must have been a terrible stewardess in a previous life.

I don't know if it's JetBlue, global warming, or karma, but I have not had a "normal," much less "tolerable" flight to or from Long Beach airport (CA) in the last six months.

Now I know some of you are thinking, "What. That's like two flights, tops, right?" or you're thinking, "Gosh. I had no idea Anne was such a high maintenance flyer."

You're both wrong.

Am I a nervous flyer? Yes. Do I take dramamine and pray the engine doesn't explode, everytime we take off? Yes. Do I happen to have to fly to Southern California every six weeks or so? Unfortunately for the nervous flyer, yes. Yes yes yes to my trans-American career path.

No no no to JetBlue.

Let me give you an approximate look at the horror that has been flying as Anne Ishii:
June, 2008. JFK.
Flight to Long Beach is delayed several hours.
Returning flight is rerouted to Rochester "for some reason. I (pilot) don't see any weather, so there must be something else going on on ground." Our landing is delayed a total four hours. I get sick with the flu that night.

July 2008. Long Beach.
I get a courtesy call: "Your flight has been cancelled. Please call 1800-jetblue to reschedule..." I call only to find out that because I was redeeming True Blue passes, I can't just take the next flight out. I have to PURCHASE a ticket on a flight leaving TWO DAYS LATER.

September 2008. JFK.
I WAIT SIX HOURS IN A CLOSED CABIN. Not only are we delayed. We are delayed in a closed cabin. They refuse to take us back to the gate, and then are forced back in order to refuel. On my way out of the plane which finally lands in Long Beach 7 hours after planned time of arrival, MY IPHONE HAS GONE MISSING. I ask flight attendants to help me find it. ONE of them looks under the seat cushion I was sitting at. I ask the airline desk if they have a lost&found. They shake their head in annoyance and simultaneously walkie-talkie the same flight un-attendants I just spoke to, sighing "did any of you find an iPhone on that flight from JFK?"

Basically, because everyone (including staff) was delayed six hours in their planned day, no one wanted to take an extra minute to help me find my phone.

Whatever. Fine. I lost my phone...while on a plane...for 12 hours.

Four days later I'm at the same airport, and MY RETURN FLIGHT IS DELAYED TWO HOURS!!! While waiting, I hear on the PA system, "if anyone has lost an iPhone, please come to the TSA desk. We have it in our office."

I had to look around for Rod Serling to make sure I wasn't in the twilight zone. This announcement irked me as it meant there IS a place for lost items.

When I get on the plane, there are a scant number of seated flyers, and as I approach the back of the plane where I'm supposed to sit, the luggage compartment directly above it is closed...but there are also like, no people sitting in that row, so I assume the compartment is going to be empty.

When I open it to find it stuffed with food and blankets, the stewardess nearest me looks hard, and rolls her neck, then says "the CLOSED overhead compartments? Are full."

Thanks. I didn't know I was on the short bus.

RIP Nagi Noda

My god. She was so friggin' young. (Some of you will remember Nagi Noda came up in this blog a few times for a collab set of Tezuka shirts at Uniqlo as well as some killer videos also uploaded by fellow GR-blogger Aaron.)

TokyoMango news posting

Oprah doesn't want to talk to Sarah Palin.
I wonder if she'd take Bristol.

The most shocking moment in the last night of the RNC for me was not the anti-McCain saboteurs in the stands. It was that the night ended with the song "Barracuda" by Heart.

It comes as absolutely no surprise that Heart immediately issued a "cease and desist order" to McCain/Palin 2008 whom Nancy Wilson (of Heart) claims did not ask permission they would not have been granted, to use the song.

I can think of TONS of republican musicians who'd love to have had their music featured:

Toby Keith
Garth Brooks
Kid Rock
Daddy Yankee

Oh wait. They're all tools. I get it now.

The Fly.

Remember that movie? Jeff Golblum, David Cronenber, a fly, a bioniformer cabin...

Reading the LA news, I triple-taked on a banner ad for:


The Fly: The Musical
Starring Placido Domingo

What. The. Fly.

catch phrases in ascii

From Pink Tentacle:

Anata to wa chigau n desu (”I am different from you”). In the few short days since Prime Minister Yasuo Fukuda uttered these words to a pesky reporter after his shock resignation, Japan has witnessed the birth of a new buzz phrase online.

Follow link for awesome computer-love/art of Fukuda being different from you.
(Thanks, Nate)

Japan-America Film Relations

The news: Kristen Bell is going to be a leading voice on the Astro-Boy movie, and Dark Knight BOMBED in Japan.

Observation 1: I've been hearing about an American Astro-Boy movie for what feels like an eon. My anticipation of the film is as high as a Humboldt freshman, but my expectations are only as high as a carrot. I'm excited to see that the voice used to narrate a soap opera about teenage girls seeking acceptance by sucking on boners (Gossip Girl), is also playing the cryptically designated role of "voice" (imdb.com), in a movie about a cyborg toddler seeking acceptance by licking aliens.

But "voice" notwithstanding, there's no way Astro-Boy will live up to the expectations of the Japanese collective subconscious. I mean, imagine if the Japanese remade Mickey Mouse. It would take A LOT for it not to bomb. It would take...Hillary Duff?


And hence, Observation 2: Of COURSE Dark Knight bombed. It didn't have Hillary Duff...

Dude. What is going on! The second Premier of Japan to resign in as many years. Whatever happened to "faito!"

In other news, a fantastic article about Yellow Peril Sci-Fi, on io9.
Gonna point out something sort of self-serving, but I was somewhat surprised that the thesis this posting -- that Asian characters represented "evil" in 1920's-1930's sci-fi, and represent "the future" in the 1980's-1990's -- doesn't address its equally popular female post-war counterpart: Yellow Poontang (ibid: "Fan Tan" by Marlon Brando)...who then becomes the Yellow Poontang Emancipated (ibid: "Memoirs of a Geisha" "Snow Falls on Cedar" "Twin Peaks") in the 1990's and 2000's. But of course, io9 is a sci-fi blog, and I am the one self-righteously publishing book reports on "lady Asianica"so it's probably only right that it wasn't mentioned at all. Two JA chicks with different axes to grind online would form a vortex of meta-criticism and then we'd all tear through the fabric of time-space continuum and end up on the wrong side of a Bladerunner screening in kimonos. Whooooa

(Thanks for the heads up, Eric S.)

How to Start a Fire

The single greatest thing about camping in the great outdoors, is building a fire.

I credit fire-building to soothing the deepest emotional wounds, and I suppose if the LPGA pissed me off enough the fire could also inflict the deepest physical wounds too...which is another sort of "healing," if a felonious one.

And if building a fire doesn't fix you, you're not doing it right. I'm not talkin' lighter fluid, bonfires, or barbeques. This is campfire 101, meant only to heat your food, your body, and your soul.

Step 1: Find twigs in the area. You'll see here I've chosen to raise them on a platform of an old half-burnt log. The ground was really damp, and sometimes you'll need a little platform like this to get things started.

Step 2: Actually what you really need is some newspaper or the local pennysaver to start the fire. Hierarchy of wood product to burn should be paper-twigs-logs-logs with sappy bark.
Step 3: I like to pile my logs like a pyramid or teepee. Trick here is to create an air funnel. See those flames? I'm not blowing air on it. There's no gale wind. It's the physics of a vacuum. Plain and simple. Those logs will very quickly turn into "coals" and then you can roast the really sappy barky pieces of wood. Mmm...Once you got that fired up you can basically cook anything. I like cans of soup and roasted veggies.

Step 4: Most important in your fire-building is a "poker." If the kindling is "excelcior," the poker is Excalibur. Find something pretty raw, so it don't burn up or snap off when you're moving coals and logs.

F*** the LPGA

First, let me say I am OUTRAGED, and am boycotting the LPGA until they get their racist white trash mentality out of their hairy white trash assholes.

Second, let me explain.

The LPGA is planning on instituting an English proficiency requirement on all its members, punishable by suspension of their membership.

This is the equivalent of forbidding Raphael Nadal from playing tennis if he didn't pass an English exam; or preventing Michael Phelps from swimming in Beijing because he only knows "hello," and "thank you."

There are two things that make this simultaneously "unique" and "racist as fuck." The only group of people who were pulled aside in a special closed-door meeting to learn about this LPGA requirement, WERE THE SOUTH KOREAN WOMEN.

If that's not blatant racism, I just don't know what is.

Now, I'll grant that I may be biased myself because I am of Asian descent. Maybe my skin's a little thin here. And if that's the case let me refer to the Irish Number 3 seed PGA player and my new hero Padraig Harrington's reaction to the ruling:

Someone was reading the paper and brought it to my attention, as in, when they read it they were so amazed by this that they actually had to bring it to my attention. The person that brought (this ruling) to my attention asked, 'Does that mean ifyou're mute you can't play golf on the LPGA tour?'...
What if you have a person who genuinely struggles with learning new languages, they have a learning disability? That's tough to ask somebody with a learning disability who might have found golf as the saving grace in their life, to ask them to learn a different language or else you can't play...There's people out there who don't naturally pick up second languages...They could make an effort but it would just be difficult.

On top of feeling personally defensive for Koreans who've been singled out for not being chatty, I am also an avid golf fan and offended for the sport that an organizing principle would take into account such superficial difference. I am one of the ten people in the world who actually sort of follows...correction, followED what the LPGA was up to, and it appals me that they'd risk losing face with our demography (Asian women), since we apparently made up enough of their membership that they thought to antagonize them in the first place.

Here are some things the LPGA and supporters of the requirement are saying:

In the sports entertainment industry, it's important for our pros to communicate effectively with sponsors and the audience to promote the game. (Libba Galloway, Deputy Commissioner of LPGA)

My response: GOLF ISN'T WRESTLING. There isn't some hackneyed dialogue or fake rivalry to prologue the tournaments. Let me ask you hypothetically: have you EVER heard golfers talk at a tournament, except to say a few words upon victory?

Tiger Woods has like a dozen tv commercials airing right now, variously for Gatorade, Nike, Buick and some razor brand. In NONE of them is he talking.

I can guarantee you, as a publicist and marketer myself, that sponsors who want their logos on their players' hats/shirts/pants/clubs/bag, don't want someone wearing that attire "talking up" their brand in broken ass English.

They don't want the number 3 woman player in the world, Yani Tseng of Taiwan, to try to be a Kathy Griffin.

Another comment I heard in support of the ruling:

If the international players could just learn to say simple things like "Hello," and "Thank you very much," the game would already be so much better. It's not like the LPGA is asking its international players a lot. They get two years to learn those simple phrases.

Highly suspect, lady. Who in the developed world DOESN'T know "hello" and "thank you"? If the English requirement were really that baseline, the LPGA would not be creating AN EXAM for its players to pass.

And here's my favorite comment pro-ruling:

International players have to learn to...rationally communicate with the sponsors... Suspension is a necessary measure to enforce communications. YOU HAVE TO TAKE THEIR LITTLE TOY FROM THEM TO REALIZE. (Ted Tryba)
(emphasis added)

!!!@%^&$%&!)$*&^)!$!!!

WHAT DID HE JUST SAY?!

I'm probably really late to this but the People's Improv Theater has a live talk show about comic books that looks worth checking out.

Can't help it snark: I'm tempted to start bets on how long it will take for a totally irrelevant actress to be the guest star talking about being an extra in the next Sin City, but because this is NYC I'm sure it's just as likely Penguin will launch its inevitable yaoi imprint here.

Demography

Two videos on demography points came into my mailbox this morning. Both hilarious. Only one of them supposed to be.

The Onion's 400+ new demographic groups the presidential candidates must win over, including Dinty Moore Single Dads and Necktie Asians Who Live Above Frozen Yogurt Shops. (Thanks, Nelson)

An early Jell-O ad which demonstrates the Western spoon's superiority over the Eastern chopstick by shitting all over a Chinese baby. (Thanks, Nate)

Vanity Sizing for Men

My friend Ryan C. made a good point the other day about men's shoes that gives me a kick.

While women have vanity sizing in dresses to make them feel un-fat, men have vanity sizing in shoes to belabor the myth of foot-to-penis-size ratios. At least in the US.

For the record, as if you didn't already know, that 1. size doesn't matter, and 2. shoe size doesn't indicate how big your dong is.

Let me elaborate with some anecdotes:

I was astounded when I first went to France, to find that most men wore much smaller shoes than Americans. I thought, "they couldn't all possibly have smaller feet, could they?"
I mean, I'm talking size 5's and 6's. And yes, part of me thought, "does this mean they have small weiners too?" [I've related this story to Americans and many of them, incredulous, will say "there's no such thing as a men's 5." Au contraire mon ami...5's abound in the sea of men's shoes.]

Well suffice it to say the French probably don't have small weiners. And when I mentioned to one Frenchman buying small shoes about this "penis size shoe size" correlation, he laughed.

Bahn, ouee fransay, iss more eemportahnt to us ze how do you say, WIDTH of foots, razzah zen LENGTH. Ouee have same length az zee womens, but much thicker.

I found it ironic, the allusion to yet another male genital-to-quality of sex myth...(shaking head).

But meanwhile back in the States I got a male friend shopping for shoes telling his attendant that the shoe he's just tried on is too big. "Could you get me a 7?" And he swears he hears her snicker to her colleague on her way to the basement to look for this elusive "7."

Men.

Anyway, Ryan C. joked that it would be funny to see a man publically announce he needs a size 12 only to get a size 7 in secret. And that got me to thinking. I bet dollars to nuts if a shoe clerk, maybe a cute female clerk, guessed a straight man's shoe size in the absurdly large ranges, the guy would buy anything she offered him. Even mandals with sequins.

Men.

House of Latex Ballroom

If you live in New York, you no doubt have an image in your head of a pretty cool looking person, in the context of the city. Not out of context, like cosplaying a dwarf French maid ninja in Tokyo, or the image of a cool person in the context of a different city, say Los Angeles, where a cool will frequently mean board shorts.

I've noticed that one of the looks for men in NYC, has included a form-fitting tartan check woven shirt, untucked, but buttoned all the way to the Adam's Apple. Almost a gay lumberjack approach to the iconic look of SoCal chicanos. Pair this with some tight but low-slung dark jeans, and a brand new baseball cap and you got yourself a Fall day in lower Manhattan.

Variations of the look might change up the shirt according to weather, but I sort of always assumed it was a decidedly straight look.

I was so wrong.

Last night I went to my first ball.

There, I saw what looked like a line outside BAPE or Opening Ceremony on New Shoe Day. Forgive my Aunt Mable approach to the look, but it was a lot of brightly colored brand new sneakers, and New Era hats with flat bills, gold stickers, and sports teams that don't exist. I'm pretty sure these weren't derivatives. I would have let any one of them into a Pharrell Williams party, but I'll grant that I'm not the best person to bounce this party.

Now, in the line were a lot of "children" greeting each other with sidewise cheek-kissing and pinching. Many of them had aliases, not uncommon in urban culture, but so far as I know Butch queen is not the way anyone at a PW party would describe themselves. Much less win awards for "realness."

It was a sort of forgettable look until last night. My favorite deconstruction of The Lumberjack: man-as-man wearing aforementioned tartan check shirt buttoned to the gills, sailor motif sports jacket on top (gold epaulets and cuffs), blond afro, Sally Jesse Rafael glasses (or American Apparel for that matter now), and (wait for it) fishnet stockings.

What impressed me most about the night's looks though, was how completely gender was bent, and frequently to no availing of a cause or case. It wasn't "I'm gay and fucking proud of it." It was, "guess whether I have a penis or vagina. On second thought don't. Just drink in this whole thing. It's here for a limited time only."

I mean to some, these looks may seem too decontextualized to exhibit cultural artifice (read: cosplay), but when the context is this big, and when The Look mimics the status quo SO EXACTLY, even the most homophobic, sexist, misogyne will not be able to do anything but awe.

Or maybe I'm making my case too naively. In any case, someone's paying attention. Someone always is.

F.I.T.T. Revival -- East of Krakatoa

Hey everyone. I'm reviving the FITT for a spell and taking it around the block, where I will make her work it for a couple benjys.

Remember, the Finger In The Throat report takes pulp fiction starring Asians, and rates it by the choice morsels that induced vomitting will produce. The reconstituted product is always a little more versatile anyway. Like kamaboko or imitation crab meat.

I'm coinciding the FITT revival with Dry T-Shirt Contest #4.
(btw, Hawaiian Jon, I swear your cucumber shirt is on the way. Same with Mr. Korean-South. I just need my photoshopper around to do the graphics.)

DTSC 4: Best worst rice-chaser t-shirt slogan.
Example: How Yu doin'? (Picture of "that guy" with the sleezy come-on face)

Alright so let's start the FITT revival vomitstravaganza.KRAKATOA, EAST OF JAVA
By Michael Avallone

Krakatoa, East of Java or "Crackheads Toe-up, Feast on Tapas" as I would call it if it were my book, is about a bunch of sailors, divers and prisoners aboard the Batavia Queen on the Indian Ocean looking for refuge from the hard seas, only to find themselves beholden to Southeast Asian melancholy and good for nothing (but raping) girls. But if loving tiny Asian ladies against their will is wrong, I don't want to be white.

Oh and they're trying to get away from the exploding volcano.

So let's examine.
Merchant sailor Harry Connerly has just sexually assaulted an "Oriental." He is being punished for it by being hung up in a bamboo cage above the ship's deck, for all to see. No love. (Anne fist bumps guy who made bamboo cage.)

And then he gets to thinking:

The cage was awkward, cumbersome...In fact, the Oriental mind alone was capable of devising such an instrument of torture. The one euphemistically known as the Little Ease. In the cage on the aft hatch, Harry Connerly was forced to squat in a hunched position. [Do I smell Asian squat contest comin' up? Huhn? Huhn? (eyebrow dance)]
And for what? Away from his laudanum and his hallucinations, Connerly could only realize that Hanson had ordered such a summary punishment for the attempted rape of one of the Jap diving girls. That was a laugh. [l.m.a.o.]

It's ok though. That Jap diving girl gets hers. More to the point, she gets an Italian luvah:

[Toshi, the Jap diver speaking] "When you are dancing tinikling, I looked up. (The Italian lovah dancing...Filipino folk dances...on the ship's deck) Your father watching you. Because you laugh, he smiles, he is happy." Toshi shrugged simply. "So you see, I know (about filial intimacy)."
(Leoncavallo) was moved by her insight, by the fact that a little Oriental girl had taken note of his relationship with Giovanni Borghese...
He slowly drew her to him. Her piquant face curved up like a lotus flower to meet his. Their lips were a breath apart. Leoncavallo's heart soared. [I will dance tinikling for the person who can explain to me what this piquant face is.]

So all is not the laughable "crime" (super-emphasized air quotes) of "attempting to rape" (same air quotes) a Jap diver. It's also the Jap diver's lovable, piquant, lotus flower of a face. I give this book a rating of 2 air-quote fingers down my throat.

I saw a TV commercial for the remake of George Cukor's The Women last night (granted around 2am and already in pain from a weekend of hiking) and was incredulous. Hollywood has given up trying to even pretend it's going to market its movies.

I know I know. Hollywood has sucked for ages now. But it's not the quality of the narratives or the b.s. about Christian Bale donkey punching his mom.

OK what the fuck is Anne talking about:
Unless it's Pixar or about war, most of the blockbusters (or attempt at one) in theaters this year have been exclusively gendered for either men or women.

And in case you weren't sure which one's for you, the movies are given titles like The Sisterhood of the Mamma Mia Women.

I mean seriously. I do remember a time when men and women were enjoying the same movies, but the last three adult live-action movies I've seen -- Dark Knight, Iron Man, Mongol -- had only one or two women characters in them. I'm assuming it's the same with aforementioned Traveling Mamma's Pants. In fact the only reason I haven't seen the lady-films is because hetero-normative boyfriends would rather go to the corner store and buy you tampons than go to a chick flick.

Oh well. I suppose it's appropriate that the only two places where the genders have to be totally sequestered is the cineplex and the shitter.

I think everyone's eyes just went un-slit

You've got to be kidding me.
(Thanks Ryan S, Ryan K, Jenny...fuck...everyone, for the head's up.)