I saw the movie crazy/beautiful yesterday on television and it was, well, beautiful. I tend to be very very critical of teenage coming of age love stories, since it's so hard to do anything interesting with a genre that's been done to death, but this was one done right. Apparently the more explicit sex and drug use scenes were edited so that the film could maintain a PG13 rating. This may have compromised the quality of the film, but it's still damn good. It's really nice to see Kirsten Dunst act her little heart out as Nicole, a role more challenging than Mary Jane in Spiderman, or Torrence in Bring it On (although she was charming in both those roles). And damn--Jay Hernandez, who plays the male lead Carlos, left me weak in the knees. His lips, his eyes, his chest, his tattoos...*swoon.* What a gorgeous guy. The critique of well-meaning but clueless liberals was not as trenchant as it could have been, but the wince factor was high when Nicole's father tries to empathize with Carlos by telling him that "it must have been hard to escape from la vida loca of drugs and violence...it's not just a Ricky Martin song." (Or something close to that).

I love Caffe Driade. Not only do the servers and the patrons provide plenty of eye candy, as well as nummy pastry treats, but they almost always play fantastic music there. It was where I first heard Beck's Sea Change, as well as Death Cab for Cutie's Transatlanticism. I got more done during five hours there tonight than I've gotten done the entire past week. Damn but I wish I were more productive at home.

Anyway, there's a story of mine which has been in progress for over a year, called "Cookie Dough." I had the first couple of lines and the last couple of lines for the longest time, but couldn't write what happened in between those two points until tonight. This is a first draft, so it's unpolished (God, I always say that...at every story reading, I've said those exact words). I think this is the first story I've written in three years that does not contain the word "orifice." Woo!

Cookie Dough

Robbie smashed a second scoop of chocolate ice cream into the paper cup. He sang with Britney on the radio, his overly cigaretted voice offering a plaintive and weary interpretation of “Oops I did it again.”
“Is that all? I can’t believe I’m paying $3.14 for just that much.” The woman’s red lips were pursed in displeasure, like a bloody gash beneath her nose. Her knuckles were white from grasping the Sunday Times so tightly.
Robbie masked his irritation with a creative interpretation of a smile. “You asked for two scoops. Ye ask, and ye shall receive.”
Robbie had renounced God after a particularly nice screw with a plaid-sporting Steve McQueen type in a red pickup truck on October 23rd, 1977, and he never went back. But when he raised his eyes from the cash register to take the next order, he could have sworn that an angel appeared before him. This vision of such beauty and purity and innocence was so sickeningly sweet, he felt like he was being asphyxiated with vanilla. Robbie was suddenly self-conscious about his rough, scarred skin, and the strands of gray mixed with dirty blond of his straggly shoulder-length hair. This boy…his creamy smooth skin, rosy cheeks, chocolate curls of hair…this was a dream of a boy, who knew no evil, no ugliness, no wrong. Robbie almost wanted to take a bite of him and swallow him and digest him to incorporate his young fresh molecules into his own body’s aging matter…but then again, eating veal or lamb doesn’t make one feel any younger or more innocent.
“Your name must be Dick, right?” Robbie found these words escaping his mouth, to his surprise.
“Why do you say that?”
“You look like a drawing in one of those Dick and Jane books, the kind that my Dad read to me when I was a kid.”
The young boy smiled widely, and the brilliant glow of his teeth combined with the sparkle of his eyes nearly blinded Robbie. “I guess I do look pretty old-fashioned. I’m not like some of the other kids here with spiked, bleached blond, or purple hair. My name is Jim. What’s yours?”
“Barbra Streisand.”
“Well, your nametag says ‘Robbie,’” Jim noted, confused.
His mother suddenly appeared, resembling a massive peach elephant beside him. “Jim? Have you gotten your ice cream yet?”
Jim turned to his mother and gave her the same charming smile he had given to Robbie just a few seconds earlier. “No, mom. You sit down and I’ll take care of it. You want butter pecan, right?”
His mother looked critically at Robbie. “You make sure this boy gets nothing but the best, you hear? He got a 1580 on his SAT’s. He’s going to go far someday. Maybe even president!”
“Well, I’ll make sure that this future luminary gets whatever sweet treat his little heart desires.”
Mom glared at Robbie. “Just make sure that your dirty hands don’t come in contact with his ice cream. I don’t want him to get any diseases from the likes of you.”
Was it that obvious that he had HIV? His T-cell count was still decent, and he had always been skinny. Robbie didn’t think he looked sick, at least not yet. Or was she just assuming this because he was gay? Robbie wasn’t sure, but he managed to keep his expression neutral as he regarded Jim’s mother. “I wouldn’t dream of corrupting your son. After all, he’s our future president.”
Jim blushed. “Mom, you just sit down, okay? He’s doing a fine job.”
Mom harrumphed and navigated the way back to her chosen table.
Jim leaned forward and whispered, “I’m sorry she was rude. She didn’t mean it…Sometimes she just gets a little uppity.”
Robbie felt himself melting under the soft brown-eyed gaze of this boy. “She’s proud of you, there’s nothing wrong with that. I’m just an ice cream scooper. You’re gonna be someone important someday.”
Jim looked startled by this comment. “Everybody’s important, including you.”
Robbie paused, and tried not to show the emotion that he felt, which manifested in a burning sensation inside of the bridge of his nose. He managed a crooked smile and brandished his ice cream scooper. “So Jim, your mom wants butter pecan, what about you?”
Jim gave him another of his devastating smiles. “Chocolate chip cookie dough, please. Both large, in cups."
“You got it, Dick.” Robbie grinned.
“My name’s Jim!” he protested, mock-offended.
“Well, it should be Dick.” Robbie went to task, slipping the edge of the scooper beneath the surface of the butter pecan carton and carving a curl of ice cream which he deposited in a cup, followed by a second scoop. He placed the cup on the counter for Jim. He then rinsed his scooper and moved to the cookie dough carton, repeating the motions. He heaped the contents of this cup particularly high.
“Do you guys make your own ice cream here?” Jim queried.
“Sure do. The best you’ll ever have, Dick.” Robbie placed the second cup on the counter next to its older sibling.
Jim grinned. “You’re awfully confident about that. What will happen if you’re wrong?”
“I’m not wrong. This is the best, kid.” Robbie’s fingers were a little stiff from the near-contact with the freezer as he rang the order up on the cash register. “$7.26.”
Jim fished in his coat pocket for his wallet, and extracted a $10 bill. “Here ya go.”
Robbie slipped the $10 bill into its slot in the register, and counted out the change. “All right, Dick. You and your momma enjoy your ice cream, okay?” He placed the change in Jim’s hands, and his fingers brushed Jim’s open, waiting palm. A jolt of electricity raced up his arm from the point of contact. Robbie trembled slightly and looked away from Jim, not wanting to showcase the vulnerability likely present in his eyes.
Jim looked at Robbie with knowing gentleness and withdrew the hand clutching his change. “Thanks. You take it easy, okay?”
“Take it easy,” Robbie echoed. His eyes followed Jim as he grabbed a couple of spoons and some napkins from the counter, and made his way towards his mother. Robbie realized that they had probably come in after church, given his mother’s dress and flowered hat, and Jim’s navy suit.
“Sir? Sir! Excuse me, I’m ready to order.” Robbie snapped to attention and turned to look into the face of a twenty-something Asian woman with an impatient expression, a physiology textbook tucked under one arm. Must be one of those medical students.
“Sorry, sweetheart. What can I get you?”
"Small pistachio, please."
As Robbie moved his scooper toward the pistachio carton, he quickly glanced over to the seating area to find Jim. He and his mother had risen from their chairs and were putting on their coats. As they headed for the exit, Jim turned and his eyes met Robbie’s, whose heart raced in response. The corners of Jim’s lips rose in a shy smile, and his arm rose in a jaunty wave.
Robbie paused in his scooping and dipped his chin in acknowledgement. He did not blink once until Jim’s figure was obscured by the glass windows and finally left his sight. He wanted all 24 frames a second to replay in his mind as he lay in bed that night, beneath the constellations he had fashioned on the ceiling with glow-in-the-dark sticker stars.

To return to my rant about stupid comments said to biracial people, I have to mention this site. Ugh. While I suppose the claim that biracial chicks are always supremely hot is intended to be a compliment, there are two sketchy aspects to this. First of all, there is the suggestion that when Asian features are diluted by Caucasian features, they become more conventionally attractive. Even Asian people are guilty of this. One of my cousins (who is fully Asian) once looked at me wistfully and said, "I wish I could be half white, so I could have eyelids like yours and so my skin wouldn't be as dark." The fuck? This girl is much, much more conventionally beautiful than I could ever hope to be, and she's telling me this shit? Argh. I also recall one Asian chick telling me, "I want to have a kid with a white man, because Eurasian people are always so beautiful." (Well, I then reminded her that I was Eurasian, and she looked at me quizzically and said, "What? Oh yeah! I forgot you were biracial!" *ahem* Gee, thanks for that ego-booster.) Second of all, it singles out Eurasian people as somehow special or different from people of other ethnic backgrounds in terms of their potential attractiveness. I've seen quite a few Eurasian people, and they run the gamut from exceedingly hideous to spellbindingly gorgeous and everything in between. Just like people of any ethnic background. We're not "special" in that way. Perhaps people come to this assumption because of their lack of exposure...they might not see many Eurasians other than celebrities such as Keanu Reeves or Dean Cain or Devon Aoki, and come to the conclusion that all Eurasians must be that beautiful. Or they might see the one Eurasian kid in their school who happens to be really attractive, and then conclude that all Eurasians must be attractive. Erm, no. Wrong.

Song of the moment: Wilco's "How to Fight Loneliness." Solitude is something I embrace, not something from which I try to escape. I'm usually spinning so many thoughts in my head that I don't notice that I'm alone. But I feel a little twinge of recognition when I hear this song all the same. "Doo doo doo, doo doo doo, just smile all the time..."

Fucking insomnia.

Earlier this evening, a car horn somewhere outside of my apartment blared for at least thirty minutes. At first I feared that it might be a scene recreated from Chinatown, but there was enough variation in the noise (such as a few short pauses sandwiched between long stretches of "beeeeeeeeeeeeeeeeep") that I figured it probably was not caused by the weight of a corpse. I'm guessing it was probably just drunken lout behavior. Here's hoping.

I love Dick Button (or as I've called him over the years, "Dick Butt"). He's a figure skating commentator who bitches at inadequate layback spins and voices the desire to pinch the cheeks of chubby faced Russian female skaters. He's the cantankerous one who bluntly says when a skater sucks ass, while Peggy Fleming hurriedly reminds us the viewing audience how nice a person the skater is, to draw attention away from the shitty performance. I watched the U.S. National Championships today, and thankfully Dick Butt was there to give his opinion sans bullshit. He cracked me up when he began to bitch about the first male skater's "flailing of his arms" which distracted from his program. But he was right; it was distracting. The entire men's skate was sort of an odd experience; there were all these tall, slender, lanky men who looked like Japanese anime characters, who twisted themselves into all sorts of insane positions as they leapt and spun and danced across the ice. I liked their sexual ambiguity, their androgyny. Since Rudy Galindo's win several years ago, there has definitely been more freedom in U.S. male skating for men to look pretty and skate prettily (or in a "feminine" way, to use the stereotypical meaning of that word).

ABC Sports tried to help us get to know the skaters better by adding little bullets underneath their names shortly before they skated. I know now that Michael Weiss "works with a hypnotist," and Johnny Weird "idolizes Justin Timberlake and likes to roller skate." Oops, I meant Johnny Weir, but I kind of like that typo, so I'll leave it be. In any case, I did not want to know that Johnny idolized Justin Timberlake and liked to roller skate, and my enjoyment of his gold-medal winning performance might have suffered because of that knowledge. He did have a beautiful skate, though. And it was pretty inspiring that he had such a disastrous long program skate last year, including falling through the boards and having to restart his program and fucking up all his jumps, and ultimately withdrawing due to injury. It's goofy, but I get all warm and tingy over these sorts of inspirational stories. After all my fuckups the past couple of years (which are relative, I know, but I'm a critical person), it's nice to think that with determination and hard work, I could overcome them and become a champion of some sort (a "champion" as I define the word). Provided that 1) I have the talent, and 2) I find that determination and hard work. Iffy at the moment.

My favorite had to be the guy with the rainbow tiered sleeves who skated to some sort of pulsating drum-filled tribal music, who ended up in 4th. He had such a fluid style, with such attention to the music as he illustrated its rhythms by twisting his torso and carving spaces with his arms. He seemed like the type of guy who regularly did yoga and had a collection of crystals, and who only drank herbal tea. He had a sort of unselfconsciousness about him which reminded me of the performance artists and dancers I've known. The commentators spoke about how he and his wife did community service work, and taught Sunday school to underprivileged children; I wasn't surprised.

I saw the ladies' free skate as well, and of course was completely enthralled by Michelle Kwan's skate. It was gorgeous. Perfect. Her excitement during the last minute of her program, after she had completed all of her jumps, as she raced across the ice doing her footwork...chills, baby. Chills.

Outside of opera, figure skating is one of the few somewhat mainstream realms which irony has not yet penetrated. It's truly a sport for romantics, with its overblown emotions, its ridiculous costumes, its gaudy story-telling, its intense now-or-never competition. Your worth is solely judged by those three or four minutes on the ice, not how good you were in practice, not how good you were in the last competition. Just those three or four minutes. And the skaters feel it, the audience feels it. It's so intense. I love it.

Top 5 things NOT to say to someone who is biracial, or of ambiguous race (such as myself):

1) "What are you?"
I always hate hearing this question when the questioner is actually asking about my race, especially when it's the first or second thing that (s)he wants to know after meeting me. To properly answer the question: I'm female, I'm an art lover, I'm a bitch at times, I'm neurotic, I'm excessively verbose, I'm wacky, I'm uncertain about my future, I'm a dedicated listener, I'm a daydream believer, I'm an introvert, I'm a huge fan of R.E.M., I'm someone who suffers from inner turmoil regarding the meaning of my existence. Oh, and my mother is Asian, and my father is Caucasian, and thus I am half of each. If you want to know my ethnicity, then ask specifically about my ethnicity. Don't assume that my ethnicity is the totality of my existence and my identity, because you'd be wrong.

I often respond to this question by asking the person to guess, and I've heard everything from Native American to East Indian to Italian to Mexican to Egyptian to Filipino to Jewish. In my numerous travels around the world, people have come up to me and spoken to me in their native language, often assuming that I work at the store or restaurant where we happen to coexist. Here in the States, Latinos often approach me with a question in Spanish which I regretfully cannot answer. Strangely enough, my racial identity is so ambiguous that I am treated like a universal native...except in my own country, where I am called things like "exotic." See example #3.

2) "Wow, that's so cool of your parents!"
Yes. Back in the 70's, my parents looked at each other, realized that they were of different races, and decided to fuck the whole racist interracial taboo bullshit by literally fucking each other. Their copulation, and thus their creation of me, was all in the name of political correctness, which warms your fuzzy nonracist heart.

3) The word "exotic." e.g. "You look like an exotic Egyptian princess!" or "Oh, so that's why you look so exotic" (upon learning the components of my ethnicity).
OK, so you're saying that I'm the "other," that I'm a foreigner to you, even though I was born in New York City and raised in New Jersey and as American as any other kid. And you use a word that brings to mind Gauguin's Tahitian mistresses and Delacroix's Arabian prostitutes who offer the European man respite from the confines of his own culture via their savage mindless lusty bodies and their feathers and jewels and spices. A guy used this line on me, and it was an immediate dealbreaker. "Exotic" is not a compliment.

4) "Does your brother look more or less Asian [or insert other race here] than you do?"
A female physician actually asked me this during an interview for a NY medical school, after she took off her glasses and peered at me for a few minutes, presumably to determine how "Asian" I looked to her. How the hell am I supposed to make this sort of judgment to answer this question? Am I supposed to measure the size of his eyes compared to mine? Measure the degree that his eyes tilt compared to mine? The relative flatness of our noses? The relative yellowness of our skins? Examine the configuration of his features and determine how it much it deviates from what is stereotypically Asian, compared to mine? This was one question that rendered me absolutely speechless.

5) "If you had to choose one, would you say that you're Caucasian or Asian? [or insert two races here]"
I'm half of each. One parent is one, and another parent is the other. Hence I'm biracial. Don't ask me to choose one, because I won't. Maybe in your little world (or the world of the writers of demographic questions for the census, SAT's, whatever), a person can only identify with one race. That's not my world, where duality and plurality are quite acceptible, thanks.

Also, pick-up lines not to use on Asian chicks (these are real examples):
-Hey, I saw Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon.
-Your hairstyle really goes well with your ethnicity.
-You speak English really good! No really, you don't have an accent at all!

Song of the day: "White Winos" by Loudon Wainwright III (Rufus's daddy). Somehow I ended up downloading the song awhile back, I don't recall exactly why. I think I had read positive things about his 2001 album, The Last Man on Earth, and in my curiosity downloaded whatever I could find, and ended up with this song. In any case, it struck me like no other song ever had before, or has since. It's one of the two most wryly moving son-to-mother odes I've encountered (my other favorite is David Sedaris's essay, "Ashes"). I just love when he sings about how he'd switch from wine to beer whenever he and his mother would start to talk about the "old man." There's an easy, simple grace to this song, with the aftertaste of mourning, just like the bitter aftertaste of a complex wine (ugh, cheezy simile, I know). I put the song on a mix CD which I made for a college friend, and also on a mix tape that I had left in my car before my father had used it during my winter break. After he returned the car to me, he mentioned this song specifically, along with Eva Cassidy's "Fields of Gold" and Beck's "Already Dead." Since he's such a wine connoisseur, I'm not surprised it caught his attention. The version I downloaded a few years ago is a truncated version, as I discovered today. As I was leaving NJ to head back to NC, the local radio station (God bless Brookdale public radio 90.5 FM) played a longer version of "White Winos" with several verses I hadn't heard before, which explicitly acknowledged Loudon's mother's death and was more obviously sentimental and wistful. I like the longer version, actually, because it gives a little more context, a little more detail to round out his mother's portrait as well as his own. Shit, I'll obviously have to get the album now.

I saw the most beautiful sunsets while driving. Puddles of melted sherbert (orange and raspberry) blending into an array of beautiful pastels (melons and pinks). Lavender clouds with glowing copper lacey edges.

Last night I dreamt about a guy I used to deeply, desperately love, and am still rather shaken. I haven't been in contact with him for several years. It's amazing how strong an effect the memory of him still has on me. I don't think I'd want to see him again.

I visited a college friend for New Year's and we got into a discussion about various people we knew who were absolute gems, witty and brilliant and sweet, but were hideous by conventional standards of physical attractiveness, and thus had issues with poor self image. And I admit that as gorgeous as some of them are on the inside, I couldn't imagine being attracted to them or fucking them. So perhaps my earlier post about character actors, or at least my claim that I could completely look past physical appearance with regards to attraction, was pure horseshit. *shrug* But that doesn't mean that I can't work towards becoming a better person someday, right?

By the way, speaking of character actors again, I love Bob Balaban. He was a treat in Ghost World, but I love him best in Waiting for Guffman, where he played the musical director who so clearly resented Corky for getting all the glory despite his ineptitude.

I went ice skating with my mother and my aunt today, and really loved it. I've skated twice before. The first time was a few years ago, with my friend Joe. We were probably both about 17. It was wintertime and we decided to skate on an open rink in the South Street Seaport in New York City. Neither of us had ever skated before, and there was much unintentional ass/ice contact. At times he grabbed me for support as he wobbled, which in turn made me lose my balance, and down onto the ice we went. After one of our more spectacular falls, the onlooker tourists crowded around our crumpled bodies, and then pointed and laughed and mocked in their native tongues. The second time was in North Carolina with a bunch of medical school friends. Today's third attempt was in New Jersey (best place in the world, second to Paris). I thought I was going to go insane when the public skate began with a Phil Collins medley (those horrible Disney Tarzan songs which make my ears bleed), but once the music switched to the Beach Boys, I was able to blissfully skate without trying to contain my irritation. (Although it seemed a bit incongruous since the Beach Boys' music always makes me think of summer, rather than winter, their name aside. I know once the summer heat returns, I'll be dusting off my Pet Sounds.) I whizzed along, with cold-bitten cheeks and flapping hair, trying not to crash into the lightning-fast four-year-olds who skillyfully weaved in and out of other more clumsy skaters, such as myself. There was an older guy, presumably a Dad, who chased a young boy, presumably his son, around the rink. Whenever Dad caught the kid, he lifted him up and carried him; as they flew together on the ice, the kid's face was alight with pure joy. While viewing this episode, I experienced one of those rare little aches in my chest, one of those pesky pangs of longing...for a kid, and for a husband or lover who fathered that kid with me, and for the opportunity to watch them do these sorts of sickeningly sweet things together. But then I remembered how glad I am to be able to wait a long time before dealing with any of the responsibilities which accompany cutesy family scenes such as that one.

I fell twice. The first fall probably provided much entertainment to the older moms who were seated on benches ouside the rink, watching their kids stumble on the ice, cameras in hand. There was much arm circling (r of circle = full length of arm) and body bending 45 degrees forward, then backward, then forward again, and leg wobbling, and then...splat. Well, if I'm going to fall, then I'm going to do it in style, dammit. I know the older moms got a laugh or two out of me. Although hopefully they kept their fingers off of their shutter buttons while I was doing my thing.

So, I must admit that after seeing the final Lord of the Rings movie on the big screen tonight (the first one of the trilogy that I've seen on the big screen), I finally understand why so many people are so taken with Legolas, the Orlando Bloom character. I grudgingly admit that yes, he is very pretty with his long blond hair and lithe figure and serene expression and occasional silver head jewelry. And his action sequences with all that arrow-shooting are indeed very cool (I loved the scene where he crawled up the elephant and arrowed all the baddies). However, his face bears such a strong resemblance to the face of the friend I mentioned earlier, Joe, that I can't see Legolas without also seeing Joe. It really is unnerving.

I have so much love for Rufus Wainwright's Want One album, and have been listening to it over and over again. I've heard that his earlier albums are better, but I haven't heard them so I can't compare. I've also heard that he's kind of an ass, but I loved his salon.com interview, and haven't read much else so I can't say for certain that he is guilty of assholism. In any case, anyone with a Romantic sensibility will get love from me, because of my insane fondness for those guys (Delacroix and Keats and Coleridge and the Shelleys...I still think that Percy Shelley's "Defense of Poetry" is one of the greatest influences in my life, and definitely one of the most beautiful things I've ever read). And, erm, he sure is pretty. I was actually worried that my love for the album would be marred by negative association, since I played it in the car to calm my nerves as I was driving to meet a guy who turned out to be a complete asshole; thankfully that has not been the case. Some of the lyrics of the songs are meh (what was up with that Britney Spears reference?), but the soaring operatic vocals and classical music influences are simultaneously spine-tingling and very calming. It's lush and gorgeous. *sigh* "Men reading fashion magazines...oh what a world it seems we live in...straight men..."