After two weeks of playing hookey from Brazilian jiu jitsu practice, I finally mustered up the courage to go back. It’s always a slightly scary proposition going back when you’re body is out of tune after missing a week or two. Ofttimes I think about quitting during those off-times, but I’ve promised myself that I won’t quit unless I go to one more practice first. Only after practice will I allow myself to quit. Usually after one practice session, you’re ego and body are beat-the-hell-up, but you feel great. And the next day, you’re lighter and stronger, so I haven’t quit yet.

As I was leaving for class, Sun Su was a little disappointed but said, “I want you to show me more jiu jitsu tomorrow.” He gave me a hug.

While I was gone, apparently Sun Su cleaned up the entire living room by himself. Ooseung watched but strategically stayed out of helping range. When he was done, he told Amy,

“Appah will be so happy when he sees how clean it is.”

I got a little choked up when Amy told me that (Sun Su was asleep). I usually make the kids clean up all their toys when Amy is at work, telling them, “Ummah will be so happy when she sees how clean it is.” I guess Sun Su figured out that I’m the one who really likes it clean.

Amy praised Sun Su for cleaning the room. Poor Ooseung didn’t like missing out on praise. So in order to balance the equation, she kicked Sun Su (I guess that makes her the striker, and Sun Su is the grappler). Amy punished her with a time out and didn’t read her a bedtime story either. It all just makes me laugh.

Amy took this picture (above) of the kids with a neighbor kid, who Sun Su says is his best friend, and I approve because he’s really nice. But I know if his mom saw him with that toy gun, she’d be pissed. This is my new desktop wallpaper. I love it.

…………………………

MAJOR COUP

Amy’s reading Ender’s Game. I finished it and after much coaxing, Amy finally picked it up (I think comparing Ender to young Christian Bale in Empire of the Sun did it, plus I had to promise her that he doesn’t die). She’s really enjoying it despite the picture of spaceships on the cover (i.e., girls bane). The woman hates science fiction. Knows nothing about Star Wars (hasn’t even seen the original trilogy - who’s the alien here?). She even yawned LOUDLY during that pindrop silence after the final battle in Iron Man. But at least now, she’s earned a few experience points as a Level 1 Geek. Resistance is futile, baby.

Amy is standing in front of the bathroom mirror engrossed in her skin care voodoo program when I walk in.

I pat her ass.

“Do you like getting spanked, babe?” I ask.

“NO!” she answers.

“Me neither. I don’t really get the whole spanking thing,” I ponder, “Maybe people who get off on it were spanked as kids.”

“That doesn’t make any sense,” Amy replies.

“Sure it does. Punished as children. They grow up and twist it around until it becomes nostalgic and kinky,” I state my bathroom hypothesis/supervillain origin. Or maybe it’s part of the whole dominance/submission package. I don’t care for the game much but I LOVE the uniforms.

How much of your childhood shapes your adult sexuality? A lot, I would guess from personal experience, even without Freud’s bias. I remember as a child picking at my mom’s pantyhose when she would walk by. They were so inexplicably alien … and female. I remember the cover of the first nudie magazine I saw that didn’t come out of the trash dumpster. The covergirl wore an officer’s cap with red glossy lips and a black leather jacket covering her femalien curves. Fuzzy vaseline lens make cheap magic. I actually kissed the cover. I remember babysitting for some Corean tenants in my father’s apartment when I was nine? A flash second of the mother’s powder white breast as she leaned over. Did she know I saw it? The shame. The wonder and exhilaration. The last real breast I would see in person until college.

And of course, there were the girls in my favorite comic book at that time (pre-Elementals era) - the Micronauts - green and bug-eyed (above), fierce and acrobatic (see pic at end of entry). In childhood are the seeds of sexuality. An unnerving thought sometimes.

“If that were true, then I would like being chased around the house and beat with a fly swatter and a wooden spoon, and I don’t,” Amy had a very Corean childhood.

True, Amy did end up marrying a guy who treats her pretty much the opposite of how her father and brother did.

“What websites have you been visiting now?” she asks.

“I haven’t, babe. Just been wondering about it for a while.”

I do the sexy-time eyebrow gesture.

She sighs in exasperation and ignores me, right on cue. It tickles me.

Ah, rejection. Makes me feel like a naughty little schoolboy.

…………………………………………

Sun Su would have loved dueling with this guy.

Erika’s got some cute new digs.

This Grey’s Anatomy/House parody is funny because it’s true. (From Katie)

“Fifth floor, ladies lingerie,” said a fat man in a gurney as I walked into the elevator. The pale transport person humored him quietly.

I pressed “10″ and smiled politely while looking at my patient list. The nurse had urgently paged me to see a patient for shortness of breath.

“What’s up doc?” he said.

“Hey, hi,” I acknowledged forcing a smile.

On the next floor a young female doctor entered whom I didn’t recognize. I have a good idea who all the attendings are and I’ve seen all the medicine residents by this time of year. Her stethoscope was in her coat pocket, near her hands. Most medicine docs wear them across our necks, near our heads. She must have been a surgery resident.

She pressed the “10″ button. Twice.

“Hey, party of four, who made reservations?” the fat man quipped again. The transporter behind him just closed his eyes this time.

As the floors dinged by, I leaned against the elevator wall with my eyes closed as if meditating, rotating them inward in that way you can only do with your lids shut. Exhaling deeply as gravity shifted. Zoning all else out. Forming a mental list of the possibilities of the patient I was heading up to see, likelies and unlikelies, hoping one of them answers the quintessential medical question - what is going on here?

Meanwhile, the surgical resident was tapping her foot and rocking on her heels. Impatient like an animal waiting to be loosed from its cage. She was obviously in a hurry to see a patient of her own. Eager to do something. Save someone. To determine if cutting someone open would be healthier than not. To cut or not to cut, that is always the surgeon’s question.

The elevator reminded me of that scene in The Phantom Menace, when Qui-gon (Liam Neeson) and Darth Maul have to temporarily stop their lazystick (a.k.a. lightsaber) duel in the forcefield corridor.  All that animosity between the Jedi and the Sith while they’re basically using the same Force, just with different beliefs and methods.  All that fighting when you can kill people just by doing nothing sometimes.

“How’s the weather out th– ?” the fat man asked.

“Haven’t been out,” the anxious surgery resident cut him off.

The elevator doors opened on our mutual floor. The surgical resident rushed out one way. I made a beeline in another direction. Different patients. Different questions. Same goal.

“Not very social….” I heard the fat man refer to us as the elevator doors shut.

……………………………………..

DARTH SUN SU

Sun Su loves the Star Wars movies, especially the clone troopers, Jango Fett (because he has two pistols), and “Generous” Grievous (as he calls him) because he has four lightsabers. Oddly, I’ve become more of a Star Wars fan now than when they first came out in the theaters. Anyways, when those red forcefields turned on in that duel scene above, Sun Su made an interesting observation.

SUN SU: Why are they stopping?

ME: Lightsabers can’t break those forcefields, I guess.

SUN SU: But they can cut metal.

ME: Yeah, but the forcefields aren’t metal.

SUN SU: Why don’t they cut the things on the walls that make the forcefields.

ME: Oh. Yeah. I guess Jedis aren’t that smart.

Sun Su prefers the dark side because they get to stay up later.

Grand Theft Auto IV has been out for a day now, and I’ve already found a video of all the hookers and strippers (getting shot) in it.

Not safe for work … unless you work where Rick works, I guess.

Personally, I’m waiting for the follow-up to Bikini Karate Babes.

Nothing beats the ingenious sexual submission holds in Rumble Roses XX though. Come on, grappling, fetish suits, and gratuitous crotch shots (an oxymoron in my book) - they should be making yearly installments of this game rather than all those Madden clones. Some of the armbars have good form, and I actually used one of the judo takedowns in the game on the mat once (not any of the holds pictured, you pervs).

I’m still pissed that the carpet cleaners misplaced my copy of Dead Or Alive 4. I was still working on those achievements, man. How many gamerpoints is an upskirt bicycle kick worth again?

I have no idea why I like the pixellated maw muffins so much when I’ve got the best imagineable version at home. I generally chalk it up to nature just making men stupid like that, as if every other set of breasts (even virtual ones) triggers some evolutionary reset button in our midbrain, making us act like we’ve never seen such motorboat-worthy mammesmorizers before. It doesn’t take much to divert half of our intellect resources at any time to the thought of paw pillows. It probably took someone an inordinate amount of time just to think of these breast euphemisms *cough*.

Still, if Amy walked around the house in a bikini all day, I wouldn’t miss the games nearly as much. Even covered up, they’re pretty nice comforters. In a strangely comforting “someone cares enough to let me rest here” kind of way. Peace is a warm welcoming bosom. (But tits on a zombie are worthless. Sorry, I just wanted to say that. Once.)

Amy was exercising on the balance ball when Ooseung asked,

“Umma, what are you doing?”

“I’m exercising.”

“Why are you exercising?”

“So I don’t get fat,” Amy answered.

Ooseung giggled, “Appa’s fat.”

(What the heck, baby girl?  I almost said aloud.)

“He is?” Amy asked.

“Umma’s fat too.”

(Uh, oh.  Sun Su’s about to become an only child.) 

“What do you mean I’m fat?!” Amy loudly defended herself. I remember a certain cousin once joked about Amy’s postpartum weight just to get a reaction out of her. She punched him with such force that you could hear the bone thud.

“Your juju is fat,” Ooseung smiled.

Juju is a Corean word for breast milk. Or in Ooseung’s understanding, breasts.

Later, I had to clarify things with Ooseung myself.

“Ooseung, is appa (referring to myself) fat?”

“Hmm,” Ooseung says and then pats my chest, “A little bit, in your juju.”

“I don’t have juju,” I explain.

“Oh, then,” she pats my abdomen to decide, “No. Yeah. Um, umma’s juju is fat.”

I give Amy the eye. Daddy likes umma’s fat juju (i.e. boobs).

…………………

Amy’s new favorite song: Let Me Love You (by Da Buzz)

“You look too young to be a doctor,” the post office lady behind the counter says and smiles. I honestly couldn’t say the same about her.

I’m surprised. At 37, I don’t hear that as often as I used to. I just smile back.

My face certainly doesn’t look as young as it did ten years ago. It’s a little more ragged to me. I can make out a few wrinkles in my forehead that were never there before. A lot of those lines are from smiling at the kids or raising my eyebrows questioningly. My little girl tends to raise her eyebrows as a greeting whenever she sees me now.

I’m not going all middle-aged metrosexual though. Skin creams are for girls - literally. How am I supposed to look all wise and foreboding as I get older with a baby face anyways?

I can count one grey hair on my left sideburn and two grays on my right. I’m ready for the salt and pepper streaks. I think it’ll look good actually.

Still….

Sometimes it does make you pause … and realize that nothing else pauses with you. Time marches on. The kids are quick little people now, not just chubby babies. The muscles take a little longer to recover. The body likes to retain more gravitas, if you will. You find yourself writing things your 8th grade history teacher would say, like “if you will.” Losing weight is an uphill battle - again, literally - I have to set the treadmill on incline while I’m trying to get the achievements in Dead Or Alive 4 now. Your endurance can’t be taken for granted anymore - sparring with one of those conditioned 20-year olds in jiu-jitsu is going to hurt you more than it will them, even if you win.

I refuse to believe my hand-eye coordination has declined perceptibly. Although I do have to pull out the stops (circle strafing, grenades, unplugging controllers) when I’m playing Halo death matches with my little boy now, but he knows the maps better than I do. My vision has declined a little, sure. The opthy tech who measured me for my glasses said I was developing early cataracts. Oh come on, like I’m going to believe someone who took on-the-job training to turn diopters. I was born at night, but not last night baby.

I shouldn’t complain. I’m sure there are 50-year olds scoffing at me the way I scoff at 20-somethings complaining that they’re “old” now. In your twenties, you’re still learning who you are and where you fit. In your thirties, you’ve got a pretty good idea of who you are and who you are not going to be. In your forties, you’re on a mission, whatever mission, just something you realize you have to start or finish now or never. The fifties and beyond, I can’t really say.

Good things about getting older: perspective and experience. You can see patterns in life, in generations, in people, in yourself. Experience can help you contain, avoid, or predict outcomes sometimes. It certainly helps you survive versus 20-year old wrestlers on the mat. From the male side, with age also comes less testosterone. Not wanting to put your wood in every hole you see without thinking about the splinters first is a good thing. Not wanting to get in a fight whenever you feel uncomfortable in a bar or club is good for your nasal cartilage too. Some things are more important. You just hope you remember them again when the time comes.

The post lady hands me my letter, asks me to sign and print my name there. Address there.

“After that we’ll need some urine and blood tests,” she actually says.

I never get doctor jokes in public because I just don’t advertise what I am in any way. Even today, my hair is sticking up and I’m in my sweats. The mail clerk must have seen the M.D. on the letter I was picking up.

I smile back. I don’t mind the joke at all.

I open the certified letter in my car. It says I’ve been terminated from the hospital because I didn’t pay my dues. Postmarked a month ago, notified yesterday.

I paid them last week, with the 20% late charge, in person ($480 in fact for the “privilege” of taking care of their patients).   The letter is their snafu. 

As you get older, you realize some things don’t change. Systems and people will always screw up. Nobody knows anything. Even people like me who think they know what it means to get older.

One thing you know for sure though, is how much you love the people in your life.

…………………………………………..

Congrats on the publisher news, Cyn!

My Amy (a clinical nurse) was seeing a 95-year old cancer patient in the clinic with a family member.

“Could you move my glass over there?” Mrs. 95 asked the other person.

“But you can’t even reach it over there, what’s the point of putting the glass there?” the family member replied.

“I am going to kick you in the SLIT ! Put it there!” Mrs. 95 replied like only an indignant ninety-year old can.

Later, Amy couldn’t stop laughing as she told me the story.

“So I guess ‘kick you in the slit’ was an expression back in the 1920s or ’30s then?” I wondered.

“I guess,” Amy chuckled.

Cancer isn’t funny. But the vivacity that people fighting cancer can have is a credit to humanity. Sometimes you have to laugh and cheer them on.

And try to introduce old expressions back into modern conversation.

“Hi, Danny?” I called from the car.

“Where you at foo?” the voice on the other end of the phone answered.

“… What?”

“Where you at foo?” he said again.

“Oh … about a half hour away. I’ll call you when I’m at your hotel.”

He actually talks the way he writes? Weird.

I’ve never met Danny in person before but I’ve known him online since 1997 from an email list called diary-L (the L stood for list, it took me a few years to figure that one out), run by the ubiquitous Ryan Ozawa. The list was a rogues gallery of some of the earliest journalers back then. My initial impression of Danny was of a smart-ass opinionated troll who called himself “Rice Pixels.”

“What’s that even mean?” I asked him that decade-old question just then.

“Real pixels are square, but rice pixels would be round, which is impossible. No one ever got that,” he answered with his familiar fuzzy logic.

Over the years, the diary-l list became less active, for the usual reasons: flame wars and trolls, rivalries and cliques, new interests, plus email lists are so 20th century. I, like many others, left that dysfunctional internet family for newer dysfunctional internet families. I brought Danny (who chose the modest name of Mighty Asian Thunder for himself) over to the Rice Bowl forums where Cyn and I helped Carlos with the administrative tasks, much of which was keeping Danny under control or counting votes to keep or kick him off the forums. I liked having Danny around because he would say the things that people were afraid to say. Plus, he was such an ass sometimes, it was fun to throw the occasional barb his way (I was so mean he used to call me BCE - Big Corean Evil). He was the Abel to my Cain.

I was still talking to Danny on my cellphone, when I realized he was directly ahead in the lobby.

I’ve seen pictures of Danny before - more than I’ve wanted to see - but I wasn’t quite expecting him to look as “normal” as he did. Unlike most internet pictures, he didn’t try to make himself look younger or thinner. In fact, most of his pics revel in that “fuck you, I’m fat and gross” attitude. But in person, he’s actually presentable.

He was a little taller than me. But with tiny thin arms. Like a Tyrannosaurus Rex.

He’s also a talker. Like the blocks of poorly-punctuated and colorfully-crass text he would post online, he’s pretty much like that in person.

In the car, I asked how things were going with this divorce situation in his latest journal entry.

“… You know, I just don’t get mad anymore about things,” he smiled, “There’s no point in fighting it. I just laugh and accept it.”

“Are those directions back to your house?” he laughed some more.

“Yeah, we’re 35 minutes away,” I justified.

“Who needs directions BACK to their house?”

“My brother got the directional sense genes. I got the artsy genes. I think I just passed our exit.”

I’ve played in massive multiplayer online games (MMOs) with Danny over the years. For a while it was Star Wars Galaxies. He was a wookiee named Bukkake Jones. Then I grouped with him in City of Heroes; he was George W Shrub. He got banned from both games for brief periods, I think. As well as a couple of internet forums, both public and private. His super powers are consistency and ban-magnetism.

“Are you still playing City of Heroes?” I asked.

“I’ve got four toons at max level, hahaha,

“It’s sad. It tells you exactly how many hours you’ve spent in the game - 500 hours on some toons. Like I couldn’t have used that time for something else,” he said pondering the essential gamer question - to play or not to play.

“Working minimum wage at McDonald’s … that’d be a few thousand bucks,” I liberally added salt to the wound, for old forum’s sake.

My mom was visiting at my house.

“Oh hi. So how do you know Scott?” my mom enquired because enquiring minds have to know.

“We met in college,” I lied quickly.

“…”

“Oh, so you went to U of M. Are you a doctor too?” my mom asked Danny who was in rare form - speechless.

“…”

“… Uh no, I’m defininitely not a doctor,” Danny coughed, still a little confused about his new academic history.

“He majored in computers,” I think I said, or was it business. Anyways, my mom did her conversation-by-contrariness thing for a bit and wandered off to annoy Amy.

“I didn’t know I went to U of M,” Danny chuckled, “You could have warned me ahead of time.”

“You had at least two seconds for it to settle in there,” I rolled my eyes.

Telling my mom I’m meeting a stranger off the internet just wouldn’t fly with her. Trust me. The internet’s full of pedophiles and identity thieves; she saw it on the news.

We took Danny to a Corean restaurant.

“Do you understand Corean?” Amy asked.

“Only when I’m being yelled at,” Danny replied.

The kids were a little shy.

“Molly is the same way,” Danny spoke of his daughter.

Amy asked if he or his wife were shy.

“We’re shy in different ways. I’m shy in that I draw attention to myself. Jocelyn is shy in that she will avoid people.”

Shy by drawing attention to oneself? Is that some deep shit or just more bullshit? You never know with him.

“You still sky dive?” I asked.

“Yeah, once a year mostly. I have to get tubes put into my ear drums each time. You should try it,” he suggested.

“No thanks,” I replied thinking of how awful it would be for my kids if I died doing something for “fun” like that. Not that getting your ear drums punctured yearly isn’t a bonus.

“Do you get a big adrenaline rush when you’re falling?” I prefer the first person view, like in my racing games and shooters.

“Yeah … and the wind is so loud, you can’t even hear yourself scream,” he explained, “Two hours later, I have to take a nap though, because I’m so worn out.”

In free fall, no one can hear your repressed anguish.

After dinner, my cousin Kevin came over and the three of us went out to the sports bar. I was running out of things to say. What do you say to someone you’ve been reading for the past ten years: “You should spellcheck more?”

Danny got a little loud at the bar, and he wasn’t even drinking. As the night went on, I was getting concerned about the amount of sleep I needed for the next day and the amount I wasn’t going to get.

“We better go now, or Scotty’s gonna cry,” Danny joked with Kevin. More like Scotty’s gonna put someone in a sleeper hold and leave them in a public bathroom.

“It’s not like I have lives to save in the morning,” I replied like the dour puss I am when duty calls. I guess everyone has to have one friend that annoys them sometimes. My collection is now complete.

On the drive back, Danny teased, “I should move out here for three months a year.”

“You can stay in our basement where we used to keep the cat,” I replied. The cat urine smell is much fainter now.

“Scotty would just die if I was here for three months straight,” Danny went on.

“No. You. Would die,” I replied with a tone that made Kevin laugh.

On the way back to Danny’s hotel, his wife called.

“Hey Joc, we’re heading back,” Danny informed her, “Say hi to Scotty, you’re on speaker.”

“Hi Jocelyn!” I said.

“See, I told you Scotty has a high-pitched nasally voice. What? No, I haven’t been drinking.”

“You do sound pretty DRUNK, Danny!” I said in retaliation, despite the fact that he didn’t drink all night.

I dropped him off at the hotel and made my way back home without a map this time. It’s hard to believe I’ve known this guy for eleven years and have just met him for the first time. Such is the era of the internet. Sometimes you really can’t pick your friends. You just meet them after eleven years and you’re stuck.

We’ve been through this much, why stop now?

Number of links in this entry: 27 or so (Sorry if I missed people. It doesn’t mean I like you any less. Some of these people I don’t even know and some favorite people don’t have sites anymore.)

 Danny’s version is here.  I forgot about the full-contact booty dance he gave Kevin, but I am sure Kevin will never forget.

And tell Hawkgirl I love her.

For instance, pop singer Rain is going to be in the Speed Racer movie. He isn’t part of the ad campaign in American markets though.

I’m no expert but Hyori (or Hyolee as she’s calling herself now) seems to be way overexposed - even from my casual vantage point. She was never my favorite FinKL member, but she is stretching the envelope of sexuality these days (NOT a euphemism for a vagina, just to clarify)

Ha Ji Won’s eyes look subtley but frighteningly different now than they did when I first laid eyes on her, a commonality among Corean stars who feel more surgery=better. Seeing your favorite faces change overnight always made me a little sad regarding my favorite Corean stars. (I used her face for my Coreana Venger drawing.)

The American remake of the Corean blockbuster My Sassy Girl finally has a trailer out. The part of the sassy girl in question is played by Elisha Cuthbert, which isn’t a bad choice. Like Jun Ji Hyun in the original, she can go from intensely cute to dropdead sexy in 0.6 seconds (Jun Ji Hyun’s best time is 0.3 seconds). The trailer feels a little flat though. Corean film makers are some of the best at physical comedy and melodramatic romance and the chemistry in the original cannot be duplicated. My Sassy Girl will always be on my list of greatest movies of all time (oops, have to update my Facebook). The classy list I mean, not my Ultraviolet/Mortal Kombat list. Anyways, I’ll see it out of curiosity, but I’m sure it will be like seeing someone who reminds you of someone else you used to know and would rather see.

I’ll always adore my gateway drug to K-pop music, Lee Jung Hyun. Her body of techno music and videos still makes me feel like a K-pop crazed hapa secretly hoping someone would invite me… I mean, him, to a Corean karaoke bar. Jung Hyun was a creative original, a manic genius, a rare find among the cookie-cutter corporate K-bands now (at least her first five albums were). I read she’s focusing her singing career in China now. A few years ago, I would have been thinking “traitor” but now I get it. Especially after the scene lately.

She turned 28 last month (I just found that out - I haven’t been keeping track, honest!), or 29 in Corean-years (you are one year old when you are born, in Corea). I thought she was older, purely because of her longevity in K-pop. Maybe I just imagine her older when I’m drawing her as my Medea Sin.

Someone once equated Corea’s modern culture to 1950’s America at least in regards to women. It’s gotten better. These days it seems more like 1950’s plunged into the 2010’s. But what do I know, I’m not there, in mind nor spirit anymore. Obviously (ad below taken from here) there’s still a long way to go, baby.

Maybe when I’m retired I’ll finally draw my little Medea Sin comic book, starring an older Lee Jung Hyun as the title character (and a cameo by Ha Ji Won as a hyper-myosin-ated Coreana Venger, sans eyelid surgery). Deadly smart and true to her heritage, at least the fair parts. I’d even market her in the American ad campaign. I’ll always be a little Coreazy like that.

…………………………………………………………….

Number of times the word “Corean/Corea” is in this entry: 14

Number of times I was April fooled: Once. By Rachel and her clit ring.

Congrats to my dongseng on a new found freedom.