I don’t watch Project Runway, or Pimp My Pride, or Cribs, but I’m still pretty superficial, and I’m okay with that, since everyone is. It starts at birth with your parents dangling shiny objects in front of you and continues on for the rest of your life. Perhaps you’re not stereotypically superficial (fancy clothes, fancy car) but your superficiality manifests itself in many other ways. There will always be things that are pleasing to your eye, it’s just human nature, and it doesn’t make you any better or any worse than anyone else, even though you probably would like to think otherwise. My friend Mary claims that she “doesn’t see ugly” but we can’t all be like her.
I don’t necessarily try to stand out too much with the clothes I wear, but I like to think that I dress nicely. I used to be a little more lazy about things in college because 1) I didn’t have a lot of money to burn. 2) I felt like people should like me for me, and that me dressing up should make them feel special. I also quickly realized that college is the last time that walking around in public in your pajamas is socially acceptable.
Since I don’t have deep pockets, decking myself in designer clothes is difficult. I don’t have enough clothes to last me for months and I don’t want people to always thing I’m wearing the same thing (like that Simpsons episode with Marge and the Chanel dress). It’s like an epidemic, you get one piece of fancy clothing, and all of a sudden you need to revamp your entire wardrobe. Once you get a nice pair of jeans, you need to get shoes to match and you might as well get some shirts while you’re at it. It’s maddening.
I like to think I dress within my limits, not just financially. I think I wear clothes that fit me, suit me, and make me look fashionable, which I believe is the point. I WILL NOT just buy something because of it’s brand name or because it’s “in”, and I think that is the problem with a lot of the “superficial” people today. They spend money on things that don’t even make them look good, which defeats the purpose. Fashion is supposed to enhance your appearance. This is why you don’t wear just white t-shirts and khakis everyday.
Unfortunately this is where some people go wrong, and I mean ridiculously wrong. I was in Hollywood over the weekend and while at a stop light, my friend had a terrified look on his face. Curious, I wanted to see what triggered the reaction and soon enough, I saw a lady walking away from our view, wearing a shirt that kind of rode up on her, revealing a pale section of back flab. It was disgusting, and I feel terrible that my reaction to seeing this back flab was repeating “Oh my God, oh my God, oh my God” for about a minute, until we made our turn and went home. Honestly, if this lady was wearing clothes that didn’t reveal this pasty flab, there wouldn’t have been any reaction. She would’ve been just another pedestrian. It wasn’t her weight or appearance that was garnering our ridicule, it was the lack of foresight on her part. Unfortunately this happens all the time, like at clubs or bars.
I realize people of all sizes and body types look ridiculous in certain clothing. Super short shorts, showing off a really bad farmer’s tan, wearing a fedora when you’re kind of white trash, pig tails while wearing a trucker hat; these are all fashion faux pas that people should realize they should avoid but they don’t. And it really goes beyond clothes, it’s knowing your strengths, weaknesses, and gifts. If you want to be a writer and you think a good beginning for a story is “There was an Aunt Tiny, who was quite large.” and you’re not writing a children’s book or a gross limerick, you should probably look into another profession.
I believe that knowing what looks good on you is more attractive than wearing clothes that just “look good”. It shows that you know what you’re all about. You seem comfortable and you aren’t trying to be something that you’re not. You might not be gracing any fashion magazines or wearing designer clothes, but you’re definitely not playing to your weaknesses. You know how to make yourself look good rather than making other people look good. I can understand the logic behind wanting to wear clothes that make you look more attractive but attractiveness is not based on what clothes you’re wearing, but how you wear the clothes. The cliche is correct. It’s what’s beneath the clothes that count. And that’s even true for the muffin tops.
There is something special about a TV or movie character that grew up/lives in the same area as you. I’m not talking about the actor playing the character (while that is nice as well), but the actual character on screen. There’s a strange kind of validation and this is not specific to the small town folk. At a screening of Anchorman in San Diego, I saw the audience erupt in laughter as Will Farrell tried to convince Christina Applegate that San Diego meant whale’s vagina in German.
I saw Anchorman twice in the theaters (once in San Diego, once in Irvine), and while the joke got laughs both times, I could tell that the San Diego crowd appreciated the joke a lot more. It was almost as if the audience was laughing harder because Ron Burgendy was “talking about us!” I think sitting with the hometown audience actually made the experience more enjoyable. To see a movie taking place in San Diego with the local folk (even though San Diego is a population of 1 million plus) is pretty surreal.
Unfortunately movies often perpetuate stereotypes, which kind of kills that enjoyable hometown experience. Anchorman takes place in San Diego but doesn’t make fun of San Diego. Fargo, on the other hand, takes place in Minnesota and gives their characters the Minnesota “accent”. It’s ironic that Fargo makes Minnesotans look ridiculous since Joel and Ethan Coen, the writers and directors of the film (whom I love dearly), are both from Minnesota. I don’t believe that their intent was to ridicule Minnesota or show how all Minnesotans talk, but as a result of the film, this is one of the first misconceptions about Minnesota that I need to fix whenever I meet someone who wants to know where I’m from. Don’t get me wrong, I love the movie, and I blame this annoyance on the viewers not being able to discern fact from fiction, not on the Coens.
This leads me to The Mighty Ducks, a film that I have a strange connection with. It was aimed at me in so many different ways. I was a kid, I was from Minnesota (where the movie takes place), and I loved hockey. So on paper this movie should’ve been heaven on earth for me, but actually things get kind of complicated (Flying V’s and triple deeks aside).
I love the underdog story, I love the fact that they make allusions that the good team (or bad guys0 are from Edina (one of the richest cities in America, people say Edina stands for Every Day I Need Allowance), and I love the fact that they make pee-wee hockey seem like it’s broadcast TV worthy (not a huge stretch, high school hockey is amazing in Minnesota), but there are two things that stick out like a sore thumb to me. There’s the Minnesota North Stars game in that the kids attend, and the fact that one of the kids, Les Averman, is from Brooklyn Park, Minnesota.
I was a huge Minnesota North Stars fan and I believe this was the last game of theirs I saw before their movie to Dallas. It was a game against the Hartford Whalers (now The Phoenix Coyotes). This was the game the kids attended in the movie, and we were told at the time, they were filming a movie called Bombay (glad they changed it). The North Stars ended up losing the game in the waning moments after Adam Burt flipped a shot over Jon Casey off of a face off with about 4 seconds left. It left a bad taste in my mouth and I have to relive that every time I watch the movie. They conveniently left out the heartbreaking end of that game.
Les Averman is probably the only kid in the movie that I don’t like. At then end of the film the kids all say where they’re from. I was hoping to hear Brooklyn Park, but I was hoping to hear it from someone else, not Averman. A lot of the kids improve in the film or start to stick up for themselves, but not this kid. He’s just dead weight who tells bad jokes. I wasn’t expecting Charlie Conway (Joshua Jackson) to be from Brooklyn Park, but I was hoping we’d get represented by someone who I didn’t think was completely lame. Fortunately I haven’t received any criticism from anyone comparing me to him since we’re from “the same place”.
Currently I reside in a weird place, Southern Orange County. It’s become a hot spot for TV shows, fictional and reality and movies about this specific location, and I could probably complain that they don’t represent this place very well at all, but I don’t. With Brooklyn Park and San Diego, I actually called those places home so there was a sense of pride hearing those places mentioned in movies, but with Irvine, I call this city just “a temporary place to live”.
I once had a dream where I was a child and all I could speak was Korean. It wasn’t a scary or an unsettling dream. but for some reason it’s one of the few dreams that I remember (one of the others had to do with our house in Minnesota having an ice cream parlor built downstairs – both these dreams I’ve had as an adult).
I had kind of forgotten about this dream until recently where I was asked to count to ten out loud in Korean during band practice. The request triggered the recollection of my dream and I immediately declined. It’s not that I didn’t know how to do it, the request, simple as it was, made me really self-conscious. It made me wonder on a larger scale, if my lack of Korean speaking prowess was based merely on some sort of mental block. I mean, if I could dream in Korean, I must know something, right?
My typical excuse for why I don’t speak Korean fluently is because I grew up in Minnesota. This excuse actually has a huge whole in it since I went to a Korean church and my best friend (Mr. Jang-Soo Bruce Lee) is also Korean (even though he is far better at speaking Mandarin – go private schooling?). While I might not have had kids to speak Korean with at school, I most definitely had the opportunity to speak Korean at church. Alas, for some reason, I didn’t, and things have been this way ever since, even though I took Korean for two years during college. My dad attributes my ineptitude to the fact that my grandmother moved away when I was 5, taking away the only person I was required to speak to in Korean. I attribute it to bratty kids from Korea who would make fun of my accent when I tried to teach them in Sunday School (they didn’t realize that my comprehension is much better than my speaking).
I was visiting the aforementioned Bruce for his birthday in New York (I was able to see my sister for her birthday, as well – two birds with one stone). As I hailed a cab at the end of the night, I tried to explain to the cab driver I needed to get to 12th street. I wasn’t sure if he understood me (English, not his first language, Spanish his first, and I was pretty plastered), as I heard him ask “Welch?” He might’ve been saying “12th” but I wasn’t going to take any chances, I wasn’t going to get lost in Brooklyn in the middle of the night. So I started to think about how to say 12th in Spanish (took it for 3 years in high school) and I found myself starting to count to twelve in Korean (both forms of counting, mind you). I eventually was able to change my train of thought to Spanish and got to my sister’s place safely without a hitch.
I’ve been asked if I would actually speak in Korean if someone held a gun to my head. I would, but my accent would still be terrible. One would think my encounter with the cabbie would be some sort of epiphany, that there is hope for me to learn my native language, that it’s just buried somewhere deep in my subconscious, and that I just need to get over the fact that I’ve been scarred by a bunch of bratty kids. This would probably be true if my life was an after school special, but it’s not. I know that confidence can do a lot for a person and that would probably the moral of my story. Once I’m able to cast aside my demons and be confident in my speaking, life will become a bowl of cherries. Unfortunately that’s why after school specials don’t work (and that is why kids aren’t scared to smoke pot). My confidence could be higher, for sure, and that would definitely benefit me in the long run, but what confidence can’t cure is a bad accent. Gradually over time, my accent could get better, with enough practice, but I don’t think I’ll ever be mistaken as a native speaker, which is fine. I’ve accepted my shortcoming and I’m not looking to trick anyone. I just hope I know what language I’m thinking in the next time I need to tell someone where I need to go.
Sherlan and I were walking into a See’s Candies to redeem a gift certificate I had gotten from a co-worker for the holidays. The mall was pretty busy, even though it was New Years Eve, but we had time to kill and I was getting antsy to use the gift certificate before I lost it or put it through the wash. As we walked towards See’s, we passed by a Brookstone, and while Brookstone usually has really interesting (but useless) stuff, I never see anything in a Brookstone that ever really registers in my brain. Except on this fateful, New Years Eve, we saw something that will be etched in our brains until the end of time.
As we walked by Brookstone, we saw a child on a mechanical bull, and while that by itself is not necessarily noteworthy, believe me, it was. First of all, this was not the mechanical bull that you see at bars or restaurants, this was a Brookstone mechanical bull: sleek, metallic, and post modern. (It didn’t look like mechanical bull because it wasn’t, it’s some sort of machine that is supposed to help sculpt your abs, but you don’t have to do any of the work apparently.) Second of all, the kid on the bull did not look like he was enjoying it at all, but at the same time did not look like he wanted to get off or was going to get off. He was on it before we had gone into Sees, and was still on it after we had finished out business at Sees. There was no change in the child’s enthusiasm, but he was still there. It was a depressing and confusing sight, it was an unsettling portrait of mediocrity.
A couple of weeks later, we stumbled into a different mall, but we witnessed a similar result. This time we were at an outdoor mall and the first thing we saw walking in were these trampoline-harness devices. I had seen these devices before, but never at this mall. The object of these devices is simple: you strap yourself in, jump on the trampolines and start doing flips until your crotch can take no more. It looks pretty cool if you aren’t the one in the harness, but it’s pretty painful for you in you’re the one strapped in, especially for guys. (I participated in one of these devices when I was about 12 and immediately regretted it. I was scared that that I would never have children after my experience.) Once again, we saw a child, kind of bored, kind of miserable, but not bothered enough to get out of their situation. I’m not sure if this child had begged their parents to try or if their parents had forced them to give it a shot. They just bounced up and down, never gaining momentum, totally limp in the harness. They weren’t crying or begging their parents to get them down, nor were they flipping around with glee. I think their parents were taking pictures of them, thought it didn’t appear like this was one memory that this kid would be happy to reflect on in the future.
Recently, we went to go see a performance of the musical, The Music Man, where we witnessed a young child, probably no older than 4, trying to keep up with rest of the cast. He looked lost and maybe a little frustrated. It was a community theater performance, so it’s not like the kid was going to get chewed out between scenes. He didn’t have any lines, but you could tell he was invested in keeping up with the rest of the cast. If he weren’t an adorable little chubby child, we probably wouldn’t have cared much, but he was, and he kind of stole the show (not being sarcastic at all). We rooted for him being the underdog that he was and in all honesty, he delivered.
To see the children at the Brookstone, in the trampoline, and at the theater, it was alarming to see a person to look so defeated, but at the same time, not looking for a way out. I hope for these children, that these situations are isolated and this is not a sign of things to come. To say that your child like faith was lost one fateful day at a Brookstone would just be a travesty.
So one day after rocking out at church, I was hit with a revelation. My worship leader Becky came up to me and told me that Chloé looked like she could be my child, like she came from my seed. I took this revelation as a compliment since Chloé is pretty much the epitome of adorable. She’s a Korean kid so it’d make sense that their might be similarities between her and I, but that is not where the similarities end. She also has a flare for fashion, or at least I’ve been able to derive that from her pink shoes. Sure, it might be her “mom” who’s dressing her, but I’m sure she has plenty of input on the matter since she seems to be quite the diva, just like me.