fixie bikes, fame and fortune

now, i am famous and important in my OWN head. after getting hooked on this one page (fixed gear gallery) and getting inspired to build my own 'urban assault vehicle', i mustered up the courage to post that project.

revisiting LONG duk DONG

after killing some time on the internet searching out nonsense like cookie recipes and 80's movies, i came across a character i haven't thought about in years... 16 candles' LONG DUK DONG. a character 'we can both laugh and cringe' at as quoted from NPR's Alison MacAdam.

as an adult, I LOVED this character. I even did drunken impressions of him for my white sympathetic friends. why not? it's a way of diffusing the racial tension by poking fun at it. ...poking fun at myself. ...poking fun at the slender, dorky, non-sexy asian male stereotype as portraide (sp according to google) by hollywood. and that's all ok, right?

listen to some other asian americans' opinions on NPR.

read adrian tomine's personal history of him and the 'donger'

follow geddy watanabe's (the 'donger') career on IMDB.com

bikes bikes bikes and MORE bikes

after a month of greasing up my fingers, ripping off my nails on spokes and rusty chains, getting scolded by the rep from various local bike shops about how dangerous my bike was, shelling out for an over inflated fix-er-upper project, my fixie project is finally 'road-worthy' (pictured next to a neighborhood rebuild project).

background story - found next to a heap of trash in our neighborhood. i assumed that it was meant for the landfill as well.

motive - i had the bright idea to build my own fixie after some friends from san fran built one for me.

lesson learned - i had no idea what i was doing, but some how the pieces found there way on the frame.

Olympics, the Torch, Tibet, and my Chinese Roomie

a one-sided conversation about the civil unrest in tibet, the protest surrounding the upcoming olympics, and china's ever growing PR nightmare.

Roomie: I don't know why they (Tibetans) want to separate from China. They are so poor. They got nothing. It's stupid.

Me: Ok...

what are you supposed to say to a 20-year old male who was raised in a 'not so communist anymore' but 'still desperately trying to cling on to media censorship with the help of google' regime?

Me: Ok... uh... Hey, 'Friends' is on. Let's shut up and watch TV.

(chinese roommate pictured with japanese roommate during a pan-asian cook-a-thon. at least they're getting a long.)

for some more background information on this topic. here are some links to -

NPR's coverage of the controversy surrounding the Olympics and China

BBC's coverage of GOOGLE's unholy exploits in CHINA

some guy catching his chinese roommate rocking out ON TAPE

two chinese boys lip syncing to backstreet boys

by now you can tell that these links do very little in helping you understand the 'bigger' picture.