Ancient Chinese Secret straight from the Motherland

Despite being a person of Chinese descent (and Cantonese to boot!), it is a known, accepted and sad fact that I do not know how to spit up (aka "hauk") mucus and/or phlegm. Throughout my life, I either blew my nose or remained stuffed up, while admiring my brother's expert hauking skills and clear passageways. Interestingly I accepted my lot in life and never questioned my inability to hauk... until a few weeks ago when Divinestyler rocked my world. He was the first person in my life who actually explained the act of hauking to me: essentially, one would inhale the mucus upward into the nose and then downward through the back sinuses to the bottom of the throat and up the throat again by spitting a loogie out of the mouth. It's a basic circular motion.

I responded with wonder... and also with disgust. I was like, Joe, are you serious? That sounds fucken gross. That must be why I've never tried it... somewhere in my girlie subconscious, I must have suppressed even the desire to learn how to hauk. And now that I know, I refuse to do it. Yuck.

But both my primary care physician and friends disagree. They all say it's important to remove the mucus/phlegm before it turns into something worse. No one can tell me exactly what that worse would be... but if you think of hauking in a survival-of-the-fittest context, I would not evolve. I would just die off. And that's not cool.

So you think the Ancient Chinese Secret for ridding phlegm is hauking? WRONG. That's the harsh unnecessary unsanitary old school way. The aristocrats in Shanghai drink pig lung soup. Yes, you read it correctly... pig lung soup. Why would one need to hauk when there's plenty of pig lungs everywhere to consume! Be Chinese and don't waste any part of the animal, you know? Especially if it's medicinal, i.e. get rid of phlegm.

I did indeed boast to friends prior to my trip that I had planned to eat all the funky meats available (eg. dog, cat, raccoon, snake, whatever) in Shanghai and Hong Kong before returning to the US as a devout lacto-ovo-pesco vegetarian for the rest of 2009 after Chinese New Year.

Pig lung was not on my list of funky meats, but DBB said that it's good for eliminating mucus... he noticed my phlegmy cough once I arrived to his apartment in the French Concession. So I said what the heck. And you know what? It wasn't so bad. It tasted like bland gelatinous fat.

So I had the soup for lunch today at 4 pm. By 1 am this morning, the phlegm was gone! For real! It's crazy dude. The medicinal value of pig lung -- one of the many ancient Chinese secrets I will discover during my stay in the Motherland. I will share them with you all if you believe. But you must believe.

Pig Lung Soup yo -- Shanghai, China

Jesus Christ Superstar

In celebration of Josh's belated birthday and Jesus's upcoming birthday, we went to see Jesus Christ Superstar -- the live musical. I watched the film version like 10 years ago and remember really enjoying it. I mean - the story of the new testament in song and dance... what can you not love? Now that I've seen the musical, however, I am surprised to feel that the movie was better.

I suppose it should be a treat to have Ned Steely perform our show. Ned is the original cast member who played Jesus in the original Broadway musical in 1970. But dude. Just look at the picture above. Grandpa Steely is an octogenarian trying to play a 32 years old Jesus. It was the most awful casting ever. The age difference was even more apparent when 70's electric guitar singer Ned sang in duets with Judas, who was played by a thirty-something African American gay man with a soulful R&B voice.

Speaking of Judas, who is my all-time favorite apostle as you all know, I had no idea that his dissension with Jesus was because his uncompromising dogma. Judas was a fucken ideologue dude. I always knew he was more than just a traitor, that his dissolution from Jesus was from a deeper disappointed place. But goddammit. Ideologues are so annoying. Still, I'm going to overlook what would normally be a fatal flaw. My admiration for Judas remains. He's still the best apostle ever. Judas was the only one who really questioned authority, even if the authority was the son of God. Peter, Paul and the rest... clearly Jesus' bitches.

"Oh yeah, I got a cool black guy to play me."

Mandatory Quarantine

For the most part, I have been home-bound and isolated from the rest of society due to pink eye. The doctor said I'm highly contagious and should not return to work until Thursday. For a hardworking cheap chinese laborer like myself, three days away from work is a long ass time. Though I need the break so perhaps it's a blessing in disguise? Of course I worked remotely still. But calling into meetings wearing pajamas and without showering is somewhat gratifying to me. I think I enjoy working from home. I also learned that, if by any chance in the future or at Armageddon, I am detained and/or forced into mandatory quarantine or solitary confinement, I believe I can do it.

I entertained myself by baking cupcakes, watching back-to-back episodes of The Wire, gardening, flipping through magazines at Rite Aid, eating junk food, organizing my guestroom, napping, surfing channels and the internet for anything Blagojevich-related, reading about Michelle Obama. It is from reading her biography that I realize that Michelle and I have much in common. As if we are kindred spirits.

Both Michelle and I love Barack Obama. We are both public-interest minded lawyers. We both grew up in the South side of Chicago to working-class families. We both attended Whitney Young H.S. We both went to prestigious colleges. Michelle went to Princeton while I attended the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign (it's ranked #2 in the nation for engineering...). Michelle's senior thesis is entitled, "Princeton-Educated Blacks and the Black Community". This was the controversial thesis that caused people to call her a "black militant" just because she critiqued the lack of support and services for black students at Princeton.

Reading about this reminded me of the final paper I wrote for my Asian American Jurisprudence class in law school. I wrote about how the interests of Asian Americans were subordinated by the interests of other ethnic minorities in a perceived (or actual) zero-sum game manipulated by The Man. I used the LA Riots and the cabdriver situation in NYC as examples. Although I still stand by my arguments, I would be horrified to have my law school paper scrutinized and misinterpreted by like everyone. Totally, completely horrified. I remember having to do an all-nighter to write that paper because I had procrastinated all year. I would hate people to judge me on a paper I wrote when I was cracked out at 23 years old. Poor Michelle had to defend herself for something she wrote for a class in college at the age of 21.

Ten years later, I wonder where my paper is... and could it destroy me or my credibility? I assume one physical copy is with Professor Kang while an electronic copy is on a floppy disk somewhere. Maybe it won't resurface when I get my appointment from Obama? Let's hope.

My next post? Perhaps similarities with Gov. Rod Blagojevich? He and I probably have more in common actually.

PAY TO PLAY, BITCH! No one rides for free.

Pink Eye = WMDs

Yes, it is true. I have been slowly assembling an army of cybersoldiers in preparation for robot uprisings and armageddon in general. However, now that I have been demobilized by pink eye, I now believe I should assemble a guerrilla group of bio-terrorist combatants also. I would recruit my two nephews, who transferred the highly contagious virus to me by coughing indiscriminately in my food and my face, all the while staying cute and lovable, disarming me and my better judgment to maintain some distance away from their bio toxic germs. I can't believe I allowed those little fuckers to get me.

Since I am not as cute and lovable as my nephews, my friends are not as disarmed and have maintained their better judgment. Even though I promised not to cough into anyone's food or face, a couple of us made the right decision for me to leave a baby shower early and quarantine myself so I don't spread the infectious disease to the expecting mother and unborn child. In fact, there was another pregnant friend on the scene so I finally left because I couldn't bear the responsibility of something later going terribly wrong. It's not like you can deny spreading pink eye at a party when you're the only one with discharge oozing out of your eye sockets. Thank god I had my sunglasses on. Although no one could tell, I started feeling paranoid. I was reminded of a Bloodhound Gang episode (from 321 Contact) about pink eye. The story was about this school cafeteria employee who had contracted pink eye, yet neglected to wash her hands before she prepared sandwiches, causing a number of teenagers to become ill. She wore sunglasses the whole time to cover her itchy, irritated red eye. But the Bloodhound Gang found her habit of wearing sunglasses indoors, in a dark cafeteria, to be a bit odd. I don't remember exactly how the Bloodhound Gang busted her, but I do remember the moral of the story is to wash your hands frequently... and to never contract pink eye.

Twenty-five years later after watching such an important and informative show, it is clear I have not learned from my childhood lessons. Or perhaps bio-terrorists (ie. children) are far more powerful and deadlier than they were when I was growing up? All I know is that none of my peers growing up ever had pink eye or lice or mono or peanut allergies. But now I have one of the four. OMG. I need to assemble a guerrilla army as soon as possible! In the meantime, I will be an army of one and follow what this guy does.

Children say the darnest things

I heard some great one-liners this past weekend.

I attempted to engage in a conversation about Barack Obama with my 6 and 4 years old nephews. If Auntie loves Obama, the nephews surely will also.

So I described to them how Sasha and Malia are going to get a new dog when they move to the White House.

Christopher announces, "I want to get a new dog. But we have to wait for these (points to dogs Gabby and Sally) to die first."

Nice. Good to know he's a honest little fucker.

I offered to eat the dogs but the boys then shrieked like little girls. Little tortured girls. It didn't sound good.

Then while we started to over-decorate the tree...


...and were looking for hooks to clip the ornaments...


... Elliot announces, "I NEED A HOOKER!"

Awesome. Good to know he's a degenerate like Auntie.

And finally, Christopher makes a racial remark. It's kind of funny so it's okay. Plus, he's just a child. He doesn't know better.

Quote of the Day

It costs a lot of money to look this cheap.
— Dolly Parton

Another Silent Auction!!

So I'll be attending yet another industry event tonight... a fundraiser for the Coalition of Asian Pacifics in Entertainment. I am going as a guest of Fox's diversity department and will be sitting next to.... BOBBY LEE... and JOHN CHO!! I'm pretty stoked.

But I also learned that there will be another silent auction tonight! I still haven't paid for my Krav Maga lessons, so I doubt I will participate. Or maybe I should? Here are the prizes I'm considering to bid on:

• Custom Hello Kitty Electric Guitar plus accessories (oh yeah!)
• The Sword of Hiro from HEROES (for protection during Armageddon)
• Framed autographed poster from House (for sister)
• 25th anniversary Star Trek Wrath of Khan ship to be signed by George Takei (Might need this ship for Armageddon as well)