Finishing up the year of the-- dog-house!! WHAAATTT???

So I had a pretty eventful Presidents' Day Weekend Saturday! (and apologies for not posting for a while-- internet's been down at the old studio...)

I woke up early to meet with one of my kiddies (i.e. mentees, from this Asian Mentoring Program at UPenn) at Bobby Flay's (i.e. one of the Iron Chef America) Mesa Grill Restaurant in Union Square! My little bro's applying to grad schools now and he ordered the sweet potato hash with poached eggs:

I can't believe how fast time has flown-- I had met my kid when he was just a freshman and now he's interviewing for PhD programs across the country!

Boy, do I feel old! (and jaded too-- since he's still very much involved with Asian American activism on college campuses, from which I feel so far removed...)

And afterwards, I walked over to Circuit City in Union Square see my two FAVORITE radio entertainers-- J.V. and Elvis of the DOGHOUSE Show!!

(For those of you who are unfamiliar, the Doghouse is this brilliant radio show that runs from 9-noon on weekday mornings on 92.3 Free FM-- www.923freefm.com, in case you were wondering where I stole the above photo from. The hosts are these hysterical boneheads, J.V. and Elvis, who do the greatest phone pranks and character voices in the world. One bit that they always have is a caller yelling out "DOGHOUSE!!" and they reply "WHHAAATTT???")

Of course, I was too intimidated to actually talk with these celebrities, so I just got their autographs and told Elvis that they have a great show. Check out their blog, if you have time: jvandelvis.blogspot.com

Afterwards, the day promptly went downhill... I went to see this show at radio city which had pretty good reviews:

It was a Chinese New Year Spectacular, and for the past few weeks, these Asians dressed in VERY traditional Chinese costumes were on almost every street corner in Manhattan handing out flyers for this show. I was thinking that the show would be horrid, but for some unknown reason, my mom and sister really wanted to see it.

It was definitely a lesson for me to trust my instincts more.

Not only was the show bad (it was just a bunch of talentless performers trying to sing and dance, while wearing tremendously exaggerated costumes), but there was this horrid theme of "Falun Gong is good" running through all of the songs.

(For those of you who haven't heard, Falun Gong is this religion that is supposedly being persecuted in China. The demonstrators seem to love putting together these graphic protests, full of fake blood and corpses all over the city.) All of the singing that day was about "slaying the red dragon" (a very subtle metaphor for Chinese communism =P) and "following the Way."

I wonder if it's too late to get our ticket money back...

And I also wanted to mention that I was quite offended to discover that the performers were mostly Chinese-AMERICANS!

The entire show had these garishly exaggerated costumes that only served to reinforce very ignorant stereotypes about Chinese people. The emcees were a white man (who narrated for the English speakers) and a Chinese woman (who narrated for the Chinese-speaking audience members and had this horrid accent whenever she tried to utter a word of English)-- God forbid they actually try something original and PC and have bilingual Chinese Americans act as emcees! =P

So anyway, as an Asian American, I was very put off at the idea that my fellow Asian Americans would put on a performance that was not only sloppily organized, but one that puts Asians back into these typecast roles that I've been seeing all my life.

Thumbs down to NDTV, the organizer of this horrid affair!

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So with that, I bid farewell to the year of the dog (i.e. the second such cycle, since the year I was born).

And say hello to the year of the PIG!!!

Mourning da Bears loss...

So this last weekend, I went to Chi-town to watch the big game with some proud Chicagoans, and hang out with some friends.

I was quite impressed to see the city decked out for their NFC Champion team--even the lion statues outside of the Art Institute had Chicago Bears helmets on!!!
(me with my beautiful soon-to-be doctor friend, in front of one of those lions...)

I bought a Bears hat just for the occasion and barely took it off all weekend, traveling all over the city to show my support for da Bears.

Here I am on the El (i.e. elevated train/metro) with my Michigan med school friend, who felt up my liver and let me feel her's too (while still wearing da Bears hat!):

And in front of the Millennium Park with my Fizzalicious gal pal:

And for a while, it seemed like it would be a glorious victory: Devin Hester returned the opening kickoff for a 92-yard touchdown, giving da Bears the lead-- only 14 seconds into the game!!

My native Chicagoan buddy and I were pretty optimistic!! Things were looking good at the end of the first quarter! (By the way, I HATE how my eyes are always closed on indoor digital camera photos...)But unfortunately, it was not to be and everything went downhill in the second quarter...

And worse... =(
So I'll swallow what Bears pride I had (after about 2 days in Chi-town) and take my hat off to Peyton Manning, who wins his first Super Bowl, is named MVP and can put to rest his reputation as a choker:

*Disclaimer: I have to admit that I am not a big football fan by any means, but being in Chicago and having the whole city putting their hopes on this scrappy, underdog team made me more involved in the game. And to those who swore in advance that Rex Grossman would choke: bugger off! (although you were right... =P).