ac slater

I finally got my AC adapter for my camera so it's up and running. I'm off to Dallas on Wednesday for the Asian American Journalists Assoc convention. A good time will be had by all. Except it's gonna be damn hot. You can't get much hotter than the nastiness that is New York City but the forecast in Dallas is mid 90s with humidity in the 40s. Weak. But I'm hoping I'll spend much of the time indoors schoomzing with my colleagues. After that, it's back to Cali for a wedding.

Here's some pictures of me and my mama in our backyard in california last month. In the first picture, my mom is in stealth mode blending in with our kidney-shaped pool. you can see the fountain in the background. i slaved over a hot stove for 3 hours cleaning the gunk out of it. i got a nice farmer tan. it smelled like wet dog. you can also see the hard water deposits on the walls of the pool. you see, we have a well and use it to water all the plants in our backyard. it's rather unsightly but i suppose it's a trade off for all the money we save on water.



in the second picture, you can see some dried bamboo stalks that i stripped off of a...bamboo stalk. i was making a fishing pole. then I turned it into a punishing stick. then i sawed off the end pieces and was going to make a pipe out of it but then i realized i don't smoke chronic with the ferocity that i used to. so now it's a drumstick that i'm going to give to that drummer from Def Leppard. I hope he likes it.

stick-to-it-iveness is not a fucking word you dumb bitch

i got drunk last night. but what's new. but this morning, i woke up and watched discovery channel. it was a special on medicine. kids in the phillipines with cleft lips who get surgery from an australian medical mission called operation smile. but the focus was on this 2 year old kid who had a cyst on the front of his face, it was some brain thing. about the size of a softball. some parts of his brain had seeped through and it just hung there. i surprised myself because i cried. i'm better now.

it's hot. it's hot when your sweat droplets fall into your bowl of cracklin oat bran. it's hot when your leftover milk curdles inside an hour. it's hot when you sweat in the shower. it's hot when it's hot.

damn, what the fuck happened. i don't remember things so well. hooked up with dk song and got drunk. damn, our shenanigans were limited to being rude to people making us sandwiches and buying late night tall boys. i guess i'm getting soft.

Went to a bar in SoHo last night. Some girl I know brought along her co-workers for a quasi-setup with Brian. One was a half-Korean half-white former Louis Vuitton model. She was damn tall, like 6 feet. One was a filipino looking girl with a heart of gold. She was damn tall, like 5'11. She is a buyer for Barney's. And finally, the third was the half-japanese half scandinavian girl that choiboi had his eye on.

Unfortunately, Brian didn't pass the test. He was deemed too skinny and too young looking. Shit. So now i gotta find some other people to set them up with. Anyone interested?

i got a nose hair trimmer.

chris and karen bought me a graduation gift. a digital voice recorder. very thoughtful.

i'm going to dallas soon.

i'm back.

i went to lunch with my aunt. we went to our family's favorite chinese restaurant, golden city in walnut creek. it was just me and her. we had a good time. i showed her pictures of some girl and she said that her eyes were too big. then we took a picture of a guy who looked like my brother when he had long hair.

my aunt told me about how my little 15 year old cousin took his dad's lexus for a joy ride. we laughed and laughed during the whole retelling of the story but i'm sure she acted real serious when she was reprimanding little Liu. it was kind of strange being on the other side. i'm getting old. but not really.

later, my aunt slipped me an envelope filled with crisp twenties. she told me not to gamble it away.

in other news, i lost $220 at Cache Creek last night.

cali love

life in california is good. i went golfing today, got a tan, went swimming for a little bit, ate some good kom tang, ate some good kimchi chigae for dinner, washed a car, ate a bunch of candy bars, cleaned the fountain (it smelled like wet dog) and that's about it. updates are infrequent cuz i don't have internet access at my house. i'll post more significant entries later because i'm not feeling it right now.

letters to the editor

I found this letter on the street and have laboriously retyped it for your viewing pleasure:


I once heard from an old woman, 'Don't try to find a woman that has left you...

...it only causes you pain. In our case, i only made a halfhearted attempt to get you back through a half-hearted letter. Perhaps I should've never let you go. I let you go without much of a fight. But then if I did that, then things might've gotten ugly. But of course, that's probably what i needed to give things closure: for things to get ugly and for a clean break to happen. Although this break shouldn't be classified as 'messy,' it sure wasn't a clean break, by any means.

I let you go without a fight because until the end, all i wanted was what was best for you. I wanted to give you every kind of happiness and that included losing you, because that's what you wanted. It was really you that gave us up, that gave me up. And I let it happen and no matter how much I can trick myself into thinking that the breakup is mutual and that 'we agreed' to it now i know that not only did i trick myself, you tricked me. Unconsciously, of course. I think sometimes you are so clueless it's frightening. But at the same time, there is a certain feminine intuitiveness that takes over.

It's hard because I was your first boyfriend. It's harder still because, you know what, you were my first real girlfriend. All the other relationships were nothing. They really didn't compare. That must explain why I still even bother.

The right thing to do is to try to forget about you. Yes, that's the right thing to do. I can revisit memories later, I'll have those pictures when that time comes, but for now, it's time for mental purging. Every time I want to think about you, be it a good memory or bad memory, i'm going to push it out of my head. Because even when the good memories rise to the surface and a smile crosses my face, it inevitably washes over to the present and the fact that you are no longer there. And I can't keep doing that. I refuse to do that to myself.

I've decided to go the way of mens sibi conscia recti . I can move on, and do it with dignity. I really should've had more pride during our relationship but something happened to me -- to my inside being -- that took control. I was infected by a fever. That disease is still plaguing me. Slowly but surely, however, my body is reclaiming itself. That you can be sure of.

here i am, sitting in the danville public library. i feel like a loser. it's good to be home, the weather is freaking fantastic and the bitches are flowing like wine. and the wine is flowing like wine.

bah.

goin back to cali to sell my car. see you guys later.

everything's comin' up millhouse

me and eugene tried to cheat at online poker, with mixed results. i lost 80 bucks, he won 120 bucks. is it just me or am i a FUCKING MONEY LOSING MACHINE?! Last week I left a brand new 80 dollar shirt at a fucking strip club or a cab, whichever comes last, along with my MP3 player with brand new memory card. then, I pay some bum 10-20 bucks b/c i was harrassing him and then felt bad, then i lose $50 playing stupid fucking roulette which i know you can't win no matter what and then i lose money on the stupid fucking Diamondbacks (i blame susan kim) and then I almost lose $400 for destroying our fridge in an attempt to chisel out ice. then i lost $2.50 on a 40 of Old English that made me lose money playing poker, all the while i'm losing a grip on the stock market.

I'm a loser.

souls of mischief

Friday night was a star-studded affair. I met up with The Air Conditioner for dinner and we headed to Kang Suh in K-town. At the next table was the cutest baby in the universe. Not actually a baby, but a three year old girl with a heart of gold. She wielded a small rubber basketball with such dexterity, I thought her to be the second coming of Zheng Haixia, minus the earth-shattering ugliness. As we ate our meal of rice and assorted vegetables in a hot pot with an egg on top, I heard a woman's voice say, "Can I take a picture of your baby?" I look over and see an attractive chinese woman with an elongated face. Damn it all. It was my arch nemesis Lisa Ling getting her gook on. I imagine she got a taste for Korean food after sampling Ricky Yune's kimbap.

It all started in the summer of 2000. I was attending the Asian American Journalists convention in New York and Lisa was one of the guest speakers there. It was a humid day, muggier than a mugger's ski mask. I was walking down Broadway near the hotel with my new friend Corey Takahashi, who is now a writer at Newsday, and we see Lisa walking towards us wearing a trendy pair of camouflage pants. So I decide to say hello and she snubs me like a snub-nosed monkey. Corey broke into peals of laughter and since then I have harbored a deep resentment towards that Old Navy peddler.

And now she had the audacity to march into one of my favorite restaurants and steal the soul of one of Seoul's cutest babies with her soul-taking camera? As if it wasn't enough for her to steal the Korean fighting spirit of Ricky Yune, the owner of Seoul's tightest abs. The nerve of her! I decided to give her a taste of her own medicine and steal her soul with my digital camera. But alas, my brother took my memory card to Spain to take pictures of running bulls so I didn't have it. Once again, the evil Chinatown soul pirate got the best of me. But I promise you, this is not over.



In other news, right after we left the restaurant, 2001 SI Swimsuit cover model Elisa Benitez graced us with her presence as she walked past us on 6th Avenue. Right after we left the swimsuit model, Academy Award winner Tom Hanks graced us with his presence at the movies. We watched his latest film, Road to Perdition. The movie is based on a graphic novel and I appreciated many of the elements that the director borrowed from it. After we left the movies, we went to the West Village where a bunch of homo thugs graced us with their presence.

in other news, i miss my access to Lexis-Nexis.

i was this close to putting up a real post but then i lost it. i need some literary viagra. time to break out the paperbacks...

lately i haven't felt compelled to write. who knows when i will. but i will. bye.

Me and Yilo had a bon voyage dinner for our eldest brother Timothy. He's off to Spain for a month for some solo RNR. GNR will provide the soundtrack as he is welcomed to the jungle known as the running of the bulls. Yes, that's right, he will be donning the red sash and will do his best to not get gored.

milestoned

A heartfelt congratulations goes out to me, who just recently had his 2,000 visitor to this blog where all i talk about is getting drunk. thanks everyone. actually, the 2,000 visitor was referred to by susan-kim.com and has an ip that starts with 216.39...so if that person is you, email me for your special edition ondal t-shirt and a half-eaten bag of Kasugai roasted hot green peas.

damn, i got drunk. apparently I harassed a bum and was chasing him down the street (he abandoned his shopping cart) yelling at him until my brothers intervened. they said i said i didn't get the respect i deserved from the bum and was rectifying the situation. after they rectified, they said i ended up giving money to the bum, rumor has it that it was a generous sum. in other news, i left my 80 dollar shirt still in the kenneth cole bag (only my second purchase ever from a 5th Avenue store) at a local cabaret/gentleman's club. oh yeah, and some girl came with us to the strip club. it was fun.

Here's a nice picture.

I won. And it only took three weeks of lurking on eBay.
$460 + $50 shipping. I'm the greatest.

Intel Penitum 4 2.0Ghz "A" Northwood Processor Socket 478 CPU (Northwood Processor has twice the cache than the regular 2.0Ghz)
ECS P4S5A Socket 478 DDR Motherboard with latest 4 layer technology
Super ATX Case with 300 Watt Intel and AMD approved PowerSupply And 2 Front USB Ports
Geforce 2 MX 400 64MB 4X AGP Video Card with TV Out (Not the Cheap MX200)
256MB PC2100 DDR Ram Memory upgradeable to 1GB DDR (Micron, Samsung, Kingston, NEC)
40GB ATA100 Hard Drive (Seagate, Western Digital, IBM, Maxtor)
16X LG DVD ROM Drive with PowerDVD Player
Direct Sound AC 97 64 Voice Wavetable and Game Port
10/100Mbs Fast Ethernet Network Card

Tyler Walker made his major league debut yesterday. He was an acquaintenace in college. I remember smoking chronic with him at his fraternity house. He got a dinger hit off him by the Phillies' Scott Rolen. At least he made it to the show, though.



Mike Crudale got his first major league win yesterday by pitching one scoreless inning of relief. Me and "Crew" played baseball in high school together when he got sent down to JV. Apparently, he's been in and out of the majors all year. Who knew.



Tyler Beeson is one of the "filmmakers" behind Bumfights, a mail-order video that CNN says is "grisly footage of homeless men fighting and performing dangerous stunts. He's friends with Crudale. I played baseball with him also.




Dick Pole is a former pitching coach for the SF Giants. He has a funny name. I've never smoked chronic with him.

I just found out that they're holding the county fair on my face. The main attraction: The World's Biggest Zit.

ouchies.

cigarettes cost 7 dollars as of yesterday



So I met Joe for a late dinner with his African princess Kadeeja in tow. We went to a Mexican joint on 108 and amsterdam. I had two damn good pacificos and some sub par enchiladas. damn i hate east coast Mexican food. after dinner we walked around trying to find a bar with air conditioning and the fourth place we went to was some place i had never been in. we went to a fifth place before deciding on the fourth place. after about 10 minutes, we realized it was hot as fuck in there. 20 minutes later, we realized that it was a gay bar after we put two and five together: the bartender. the music. the clientele. the fact that no one was playing pool. and when we saw that the episode of "friends" playing on the TV was on videotape, that was the clincher. whatever.

It was hot. we wanted to play some pool but the bartender said he had no quarters. how gay. how gay. I went to the corner store to get some change and wanted to buy a 10 cent now & later with five bucks but was rejected. the next store i went to the guy had pity on me so i came back with some change and we played. I was hot, i was on fire. but soon i realized if i cleared the table we wouldn't be able to play anymore because of the quarter shortage so I started playing left-handed. we played some weird african version of billiards where joe would take a shot, I would take a shot, then kadeeja would take two shots while joe would teach her how to hold the cue, shoot the cue ball, and sink the balls. her head looks like a cue ball. she's bald. three times i wanted to ask joe why she didn't have any hair but I figured it was an african thing. she's pretty. it was damn hot and i was sweaty. some shy gay guy was watching us play, i suppose dancing to dancing queen wasn't his thing. by that time it was full blown flaming with dudes openly checking me out while voguing their hearts out.

After i sunk the 8 with an amazing mass�, joe used the remaining four balls to give kadeeja some pointers. it was really fun to watch them interact. although joe speaks some of the togolese dialect, they always speak in french. he would french it up to her and she would do a little dance after she sunk a shot. it took her a long ass time. she had a nice smile. when she finally sunk the last ball we all cheered and I gave her a high five. she's good at giving high fives.

Went to MK on saturday. got ridiculously drunk. had to be carried out like the drunken third ahjushi. from what i can remember, i wasn't too much of an ass, i remember making linda dance with me, laying down in some random person's booth, and asking someone if he had a problem. that's about it. I woke up at brian's house the next morning with a bump on the side of my head. we ate some mediocre BBQ and then i went home to recuperate before meeting up with the Happy One for dinner cuz i promised a long time ago. all night all this person talked about was how someone needs to teach me a lesson in regards to my ph-------ing. that is all.

this is what happens when you fuck a stranger in the ass

In other news, i met up with yilo and hyung min at do hwa, a chi chi korean restaurant in the west village. there i was served delicious fried shrimps from a white bartender. damn that white boy sure knew how to prepare some good ass korean shrimps...actually, it was his mexican homeboy in the back that made em, i think.




tim joined us soon thereafter. suddenly i had the bright idea to suggest that we go bowling after me and yilo had a rousing scene recall session regarding the big lebowski. everyone was down. good call me.



we headed to bowlmoor lanes in the heart of greenwich village. they had some weird ass neon pin shit goin on and i couldn't see nada. unlike the picture, the lanes were completely dark and it fucked with my game to no end. i bowled a miserable 70 the first game but bounced back in fine form in the second round to capture a match-high 147. yilo only needed 6 pins in the last frame to beat tim and hyung min but he ended up knocking down 5. we tied. argh.

boozing in frushing

here are some photos from thursday night. me and brian headed out to flushing and chilled with some friends. we hit up bayside's version of porno palace and then went to new york new york which was completely freakin' empty. It was the first time I ever got a martini in a freakin' scotch glass.

as you can tell by our expressions, a good time was had by all.

wack

ok, something horrible happened. my roommate lost his job. do you realize what this means? it means my days are no longer roommate-free and his ample ass will now be on the couch 24-7. argh. But at least i know he probably won't be yoinking his pinga on our couch during the day cuz we have a big window in the living room so the people in the condos across the way would be able to see him (this is why he always watches TV in the dark at nite - at first i thought it was to achieve a cinematic effect...riiight.). I've been meaning to ask billy if he has the same problem with Sir Yoinks...damn, i hope they don't read this shit, oh well, i'll consider it like an anonymous note. too bad they don't have "masturbating on couch in living room" as a category on theyshouldknow, that web site where you can send nameless emails to people with stank breath and BO.

homeboy already realized that we'll be spending more time in each other's presence cuz he started being nice to me. what a phony. he offered to help me set up a new computer system by buying the parts separately from pricewatch or tom's hardware.

i say hell no because by his lame rationale, i will then be indebted to him for life, i.e. giving him cigarettes. bah. but i'm already in the market for a new computer, been looking on ebay for systems and found some interesting setups. this one guy sells bare bones systems for pretty cheap, around $500-600 for pentium 4, 2.2 Ghz, 256 RAM, GeForce vid card, DVD-ROM. check it out here.

we lost.





It was a good run. See you in 2006.

Here's 2 recent pics of my little nieces. Which hapa will turn out cuter?

Julia



Shinjee


ps. go korea!

one man gang

So I spent all day yesterday recovering from the drunken stupor I was in Friday night and early Saturday morning. Basically, I fell asleep from about the 78th minute to the penalty shootout. But then I was wide freakin awake. But drunk. I don't remember much from the game. But I sure was a meathead, though. I've been becoming more and more of a meathead when I'm super drunk and it's scaring me.

But this is only when I am drunk off my ass, mind you. Ok, so here's what happened. After the game, we all poured into the streets and had a big party down 32nd street. My voice is hoarse, of course. I jumped onto a telephone booth to snap some pictures for KoreAm and then someone handed me a big Korean flag to wave and me and some other guy led the crowd in a cheer. Then the fickle crowd got sick of us and the guy that handed me the flag wanted it back. My brothers got tired after a half hour and went to Yilo's to catch some sleep because we had to meet our cousins Tina and Esther for lunch the next day. At freakin 11:30 at that. So I told them I'd meet them there.

Here's where it gets interesting. After my brothers left I somehow transformed from jubilant soccer fan to rowdy hooligan. I celebrated with the crowd for about 20 more minutes then got tired and started walking back. Some white guy rode by on a bike and muttered something derogatory to me. I don't remember exactly what but I do remember that the night before some guy in the back of a taxi yelled, "Korea sucks!" and maybe I was remembering that. In any case, the guy on the bike was talking shit. That's all I needed. I saw a half-eaten slice of cheese pizza on the sidewalk and decided that I would get my revenge on the shit-talking bike rider. He was quickly making his way down the street towards Penn Station and I started a brisk jog. Just my luck, I see that he stopped in front of Penn to talk to some people. So I slowly crept up and lined up my shot. When I was within range I hurled the large slice with all my might.

My aim was true and I hit him squarely between the shoulder blades. It was a great shot from about 15 feet away and I kind of felt like I was assassinating the president or something. I didn't wait to hear any reaction from him and ran away around a corner. I took off my red shirt and thought that my white undershirt was a good disguise and started calmly walking down the street, whistling Dixie.

About 2 minutes later, the bike rider rolls up beside me and goes, "Did you throw that pizza at me?" with a mean expression. I couldn't believe he tried to get revenge for my revenge. So I was like, "Yeah, motherfucker, that was me. Now I'm gonna kick your ass!" And I started towards him but he got scared and started riding away. It was then that I broke into a full sprint and he starts pedaling away with all his might. I consider myself pretty fast (4.85 seconds in the 40 yard dash) but this fucker is on a bike so what can i do. I was about even with him for an entire block, yelling at him to get back here and how I'm gonna beat his fucking ass motherfucker, yada yada yada.

It must of been funny for passerby seeing some Korean kid chasing a guy on a bike with a pizza stain on his back down 31st Street. Anyway, the guy finally gets away and I find myself walking down 8th Avenue, totally adrenalized from my meatheadness. So I decide to engage in some one-man hooliganism. I warm up by kicking bags of garbage into the street and then I get the bright idea to kick a newspaper machine. Damn, those things are strong. After about a block, I see a bus stop, one of those glass enclosed ones that look kind of like this. I take a running start and do a flying side kick into it and it completely shatters and I'm showered in bits of glass. I cut up my hand and arm in about 10 places and i start bleeding a lot. The blood is thick and gooey. I wipe it on my shirt to accentuate my insanity. People are staring at me. I take off my shoes and shake tons of broken glass outta them and continue on my way. At this point I've taken on the role of insane person and if anyone looks at me funny I snarl at them. This black guy was staring at me and I was like, "What?! You got a problem?" and he mumbles something about not having a problem and this older woman starts running away in fear. I pass by a Korean deli and yell "Go Korea!" at the top of my lungs and the hooliganism is complete. Somehow I make it to my brother's house and wash off the blood and pass out.

The end.

we won!!!

Here's the Village Voice review of my brother's play, which i will see tonite for the third time. He doesn't get a mention in the review, unfortunately. He plays one of the photographers.

Euphoria in Manhattan's Koreatown, 6/18/2002, 10 a.m. EST
























Photos taken by Y. Peter Kang
Copyright � 2002

WE WON!!!!!!!

Holy shit. I watched the game in k-town and we were going fucking crazy. Damn, it was crazy. Photos to follow.

we won!


ouch

I went to Fire Island this weekend. A good time was had by all. Deezam i'm sore. Played mad basketball, we got beat twice. bah. Fire Island is also known as the mecca of skateboarding. Just kidding, i borrowed some kid's board and wowed the little punks:

I just took this today on the way to Taco Bell. I think i'm a pretty good photographer. If you look really hard, you can see the dollar sign.



I'm gone for the weekend. Have a good time, everyone.

p.s. we won! now it's time for shim yuk gang aka the round of 16.

inspect her gadget

My digital camera finally arrived. It's a Canon Elph Powershot 330. Works great.

Here's how I look in a dusty mirror:

SirFreeLancelot

Oh yeah, my cover story for KoreAm came out yesterday. here's the fake picture on the cover.



At least my story looks good, except the layout is kind of hard to read, the margins are screwed up and there are big black lines covering some text, they were put there for artistic reasons. bah.

It's my first cover story but I don't feel that excited. I wonder why. Is it because it's for a very small niche market magazine? Probably. I guess I just have delusions of grandeur. Or maybe it's because I've been writing for KoreAm since 1998. I think i need some new publications to write for.

I don't have a job. Part of me wants to have the security of a full-time job and part of me wants to just jump into the world of freelance. I haven't really had a chance to devote myself fully to this endeavor and I'm thinking I can make a living off it if I just get my shit together. It's all about self-motivation, I suppose. Something I'm not really that good at. bah. The soft deadline of magazines and the whole process of pitching stories is a big turnoff.

Anyway, here's what I'm looking into for freelance: Rolling Stone, Esquire, Spin, Maxim, Stuff, wired.com*, Wired*, GQ, Men's Health, New York magazine, Los Angeles magazine, New York Times city section, Wall Street Journal online, and of course, Gene Simmon's Tongue.



*Already written articles for

For your viewing pleasure, here's a group of racy Italian advertisements too hot for TV. This kind of reminds me of that hidden pictures thing from Highlights.

Fun with a purpose, indeed.

we tied!!!





we tied.

I checked my box at the journalism school and Jen Cho left some pictures of us from the boat ride. She's such a nice girl, always doing things like that.



My parents are in town to watch my brother's play. Opening night was yesterday. It was pretty good. Review to come. My parents also gave me pictures from graduation, I think i might scan some of those pictures in.