birthday birthday
birthday
posted May 31, 2002 in deliveryow!
i just squirted cologne in my eye because i was in the bathroom with all the lights out.
posted May 30, 2002 in deliveryhollywood
today started with that tired feeling that doesn't make you want to lie down and sleep, it makes you want to sit in hot water or anything that will take that sore feeling out of your bones. three gingersnaps, some whole-milk yogurt, two coffees, and two poland springs bottles later, i was more or less in a jetlagged haze through the rest of the day until the e stopped at 4th, and i saw a girl and a guy sitting on the platform bench—she wearing a baseball cap and reading a fodor's guide to morocco, he reading vice. then the doors closed and you want a camera, but instead i went down to the hulking ups building on houston and greenwich, picked up my shit and walked all the way home to make up for pussying out of the gym today.
i still can't get to bed before 3am or so, so i'm listening to stuff by dj shadow, aesop rock, groove armada, and erykah badu that i haven't heard on any of her albums, like "hollywood" and "today" (my host isn't letting me publish mp3s lately so i won't push my luck, but look for dantewoo on audiogalaxy—i'll be there till they pull the plug for good). i went to the corner record store and got old john coltrane and new-ish kid 606 and lionrock.
posted May 29, 2002 in delivery, musicdear diary,
i spent ten hours semi-conscious in an exit row (aisle from honolulu to san francisco, window from san fran to jfk), occasionally sifting through the wall street journal. i don't know when everything i used to make fun of my family for liking (macneil-lehrer newshour, coffee, cooking shows, jogging, reading newspapers—at least i'm not knitting anything) suddenly became interesting to me. spent more time in queens rush hour than i've spent in the borough for a year, then saw my boy and got my brains fucked out. we refueled at our corner table inside 7a, i stupidly went through my work inbox remotely, then eventually bed, sweaty sheets.
posted May 28, 2002 in deliveryroot beer floats
tradition dictates that we return to popo's grave three days later to burn incense. towards the end, she'd developed a taste for root beer floats that she'd have with the grandchildren when they were in town visiting, so we all had one after the incense was done. everyone was cranky because it was so hot outside, but it was a beautiful memorial day standing on the cemetery hillside and looking at the view that my grandparents get to peep for the rest of their time.
my mom's high school friend's gay son invites me to his place for a get-together. we've never met before, or at least not since i was six, but what the hell. i go, but it turns out he and his three queeny white friends are dropping e and going club hopping. fine if you're into that kinda thing but not really my schtick lately, plus i feel square in a polo, jeans, and brooding mien. when i use his bathroom and see a box full of hemorrhoid pads, i know that this queer as folk, aloha edition is not happening for me, so i pull the jetlag card and get my no-need-for-medication-here ass outta there. moms is too cool to ask why i'm home so soon and i'm too embarrassed to tell her.
posted May 27, 2002 in delivery1 t. gum chow
uncle tells us to come to popo's house and claim anything we want. i get a photo of her and kung kung that all my sisters already have; a photo of kung kung when he was about 3 years old, circa 1902, sitting on a stool in a soldier's uniform; a recipe on an index card.
panther piss
being on mainland time woke us all up around 5am. mom considers dark roast coffee "panther piss," so by 6am my sis and i were off to starbucks for some proper bitches brew. we're off to the funeral home, aloha shirt and all, and everyone loses it for a second when we see popo in the open casket. she has a lot of her personal possessions, like bus pass, photos, paper fans, money, with her, and my mom tells my aunty that she looks peaceful. we light incense in front of a photo of her, bow three times, and jam it in the box of ashy sand. then we took ten garbage bags full of folded fake money and emptied them into a grill, which sends her to heaven with wealth. the monks chanted, then just when it was reminding me of a recent "six feet under episode," they finished and the christian ceremony started. the same aunty told me to look away when they closed the casket. nobody freaked out. a lame priest tripped over her name and didn't seem to realize that she was buddhist, my dad read the eulogy about how she grew up in hawaii, raised her sister after her parents died at a young age, helped found a hospital in mainland china, escaped back to hawaii during the war, and volunteered for the red cross for thirty years. me and the other five pallbearers carried her to the car, then out of the car to the interment site, carefully moving it alongside my kung kung's grave and facing so that they both overlook the ocean from their resting place.
i don't know how people can eat during funerals, but i was dizzily hungry by the time it was over. we went to a restaurant inexplicably named "paké" (hawaiian for "cheap"), my crabby great-aunty told me that i was the handsomest grandson, but my guess is that's because i'm half-white. we met the monks back at their temple and did more incense burning and listening to chants. popo wanted a prayer icon put in the temple because she was afraid that we wouldn't pray for her—this way everyone that goes to the temple includes her. my mom finally smiles when she hears this.
posted May 24, 2002 in deliverymahalo
thanks to all of you that sponsored me, i raised $900 for the aidswalk. thanks again. it was a beautiful day—sunny and cold—and so many great buildings along riverside drive that i didn't even make the usual nosebleed jokes about being uptown. who knew that they stuff you along the way? they were passing out mint skittles and string cheese and fresh samanthas and tapioca pudding to the point where you were kind of grossed out, but it was nice anyway. we were hustling the whole way since the walk is so congested and slow that it feels like six miles of canal street—i mean, do you have to talk on your cell phone while you're doing the walk? not that i'm hatin'.
i'm flying on thursday and scared. i know tons of people are flying every day, but i hate being on a direct flight in the morning from san francisco to new york. also, i'm to be a pallbearer. in an aloha shirt.
intensely beautiful in an adult way
lots of birthdays this time of year. tonight was ami's at lit, a new bar on 2nd avenue that hasn't been citysearched or newyorktodayed yet. cibo matto was reportedly spinning downstairs, but the lights were on—not very barlike, and a girl with henna-ed hair kept on urging/forcing us to go downstairs by saying how rad it was. she said rad, like, nine times.
i watched suburbia three nights ago and tonight i watch urbania.
anna and étienne sit down at the table and order two more of the cloudy drinks. it is anna's first pernod: with the ghostly licorice taste in her mouth she feels as if she were living in the pages of her sixth-grade french textbook, where monsieur lebrun meets monsieur leblanc pour l'aperitif. étienne acts satisyingly infatuated, and keeps staring at her, playing with her hands, praising the way she looks in his jeans. the lake is red in the glow from behind the mountains, and elegant people are walking by and sitting around them. anna spots a tall woman with gold hair piled in a rigid construction of knobs on the back of her head, and a pink suit trimmed in white leather. the woman is intensely beautiful in an adult way that anna has never seen back home, and anna announces that she wants to look like that when she's older.posted May 16, 2002 in print- andrea lee, "the prior's room," the new yorker may 6, 2002
only for the good guys
today i hit colleagues up for aidswalk donations and got $125. i love my guilty liberal workplace.
what does it mean that today's search results for this site are "bouncing" "bottom" "tight" "unlocked"?
i also got my best haircut yet at astor place. it's hit or miss there, because there's about 10,000 barbers and you're shunted to one as soon as you walk in. but this time i got barber jay, so cool that he even has a website where he's included a detailed work schedule. he buzzed and snipped and trimmed and brushed, asked me if i wanted my neck done with a straight or electrical razor, and at the end, said "i bet you've never had this" and put a vibratoresque massager on his hand and did my shoulders and then my head. it felt so good i almost moaned (i can see those search results already). he said "only for the good guys" and while holding the mirror so i could see my haircut, "a head you can show your mother now" and we were off. it's so good i almost want to scan my head.
talked to moms, and i'm going to hawaii next week. the airfare is horrifying, but i never knew that you get special rates for bereavement—you just have to tell the airline all these details like the name and phone number of the funeral home. my sister reminded me that it's all white, not black, since popo was buddhist.
posted May 15, 2002 in deliverya stillness that should not be so terrible
1. my grandmother died today. i'm hunting down airfares to honolulu and wondering if my parents even want me to go.
2. i finished my first tuesday crossword, but my scanner is being temperamental.
3. went to carl phillips' reading at the new skool this evening. his next book is called rock harbor—he's surprisingly funny in front of an audience, which stands in contrast to the buttoned-up sleaze (in a good way) of his writing. a stillness that should not be so terrible two women read with him: the first had some nice lines in her poems like you don't hate your job but you're bad at it and nice of you. good of you. but the other was intolerable. she spent long periods with a dazed look on her face and took more time explaining the poem (at one point she said "i thought about going back to greece, or west texas. of course, there's something similar about both of them") than reading it. my poetry prof, who introduced me to phillips, told us to not talk about our writing before we read it.
posted May 14, 2002 in delivery, print, speecha first: i finished today(monday)'s crossword
ever since i was a teenager who, for some reason, got interested in his parents' health magazine back issues, i've been scared of getting senile. i remember one tip was keep your mind active. take classes, do the crossword, play chess, so i started doing crossword puzzles as a fifteen-year-old. i decided i'd start again this weekend.
my grandmother is finishing a long life soon, according to my uncle's most recent email. the subject line was just her name, and i assumed the worst. she's not in pain, but she's bedridden and can't feed herself or recognize people anymore.
i argued with a printer when i asked him about getting business cards, picked up a coffeemaker at the post office, wrote to sparky, got more donations (thank you) for the aidswalk this weekend, played suburbia in the background while i write this, got email from a long-lost friend, thought about grad school, then thought about therapy, read business 2.0 on the stepmill, downloaded agent k mp3s after hearing him/her/it/them at wonderbar while nursing a red stripe with maurice.
posted May 13, 2002 in deliverybrand equity
last night i had my first work dream since i started this job. i hate work dreams: the kind where you're in a meeting or a conference call or company outing or something just as lame. in this one we were debating the merits of using the talking m&ms in our upcoming ad campaign. i actually said "brand equity" in my dream.
posted May 11, 2002 in deliverythe truth is that it hurts and thats the truth
a cute homeboy in a yankees baseball cap and royal blue jacket is sitting across from me on the a uptown. his hand is covering part of the book's spine, but "DON QU" is showing. on the bottom edge of the book, he's written across the pages' edges: the truth is that it hurts and thats the truth.
posted May 08, 2002 in deliverydepartment of cybernetics, internet and virtual systems
every now and then i get hits from an intranet at the department of cybernetics, internet and virtual systems at the university of bradford—if anyone knows anything about this, i'd love to find out what syllabus i ended up on.
posted May 07, 2002 in deliveryi'm teaching myself what i should've learned three years ago:
no, i'm not dead. sorry for not updating. i've been working like a dog to the point that it's not like i was talking about work all the time—it's that i didn't have anything to talk about except for work. i have officially become boring to myself, so i didn't feel like sharing stuff.
until further notice, i will blame it on the new york mild but depressing winter, hitting 9/11's six-month mark, too much unchallenging work, career/life uncertainty. today on the treadmill i opened the economist for the first time in months and read their report on television today. they did a better job articulating what i'd been thinking about interactive television for a while: that people aren't buying it because tv is the last thing that you want to interact with. the nice thing about tv is, like right now, i have it in the corner of my living room turned on (the virgin suicides, the scene where the boy steals into the girls' bathroom and breathes in one of their lipsticks) while i ignore it. it keeps you company and demands nothing but passivity and exorbitant cable bills. i recently finished the red tent by anita diamant for the book club that i joined but haven't attended yet; it was as much a pleasure as a relief to finally delve into a great book again. i feel that way about movies lately, too—that it's a relief when you finally see a good one (like the piano teacher, but goddamn, so freaking disturbing) after so many bad. i like this book club because i end up reading good stuff that i would never pick out on my own; there's a beautiful passage where dinah, the narrator, describes hearing harmony for the first time. starting to think about school again, even though all the attempts i've made at continuing and/or distance education have brought out my disciplineless streak. registered for the ny aidswalk yesterday—you can even make secure donations online—the things they're doing with computers these days. so click on that instead of my amazon wishlist since my birthday is coming up.
posted May 06, 2002 in delivery