the only thing worse
than bad memories
is no memories at all..
[dismemberment plan]
8.29.2004
Well, Fuck.
So I set my alarm last night for 5:14 so I could get up early to beat the onslaught of approximately 250,000 dickshits that are going to be protesting the Republican National Convention, and in effect, fucking up all of the traffic for the entire day in the Union Square area where my dorm happens to be located.
And of course I set the alarm for 5:14 PM instead of AM.
Well, FUCK.
Anyway, if I were into the omnipotent/benevolence shit, I would definitely beseech of some form of higher power to let the traffic into New York not be too bad.
But since I'm not, I'm just going to ask directly:
Mom, please don't get yourself to the point where you have to pee into an IKEA plastic bag in the car... AGAIN.
I just get really uncomfortable when people start talking about old rock music, because of my complete ignorance of the names of the individual musicians, albums, and even songs sometimes. I mean, let's think about it for a second from my perspective: Van Halen, Motley Crue, Aerosmith, AC/DC, Guns N Roses... All of them project the same kind of general image to me -- Enormous, dirty hair, tight dirty jeans, a shrieking raw voice coming out of an enormous filthy mouth, and fringe-covered leather jackets.
I have to confess that I only know it's Aerosmith that does "Walk This Way" with Run DMC because they play it on the TV network at the gym I went to this summer. I only know Geddy Lee is in Rush because I read an interview with him in a Pop Smear magazine I got for free at the 1999 Warped Tour that ended with the interviewer shouting repeatedly into a dead receiver, "Geddy Lee of Rush? Geddy Lee of Rush??" And what's much, much, MUCH worse is that I fell in love with Led Zeppelin's "Immigrant Song" only after watching this retardedly cute abomination.
People are also always shocked when they bring up really popular movie "classics" and I say, "Oh I don't think I've seen it" or "I've never heard of that." I guess people feel like they have some kind of obligation to watch every single Tarentino movie, every Kevin Smith (I have seen ZERO Kevin Smith films, with the exception of 15 minutes of the end of Mall Rats -- which is a crime against New Jersey, apparently), every Spielberg, every whatever (yeah, my knowledge of directors goes just as far as my knowledge of 80's hair bands).. But the fact is, I just haven't seen all the movies that were really big deals in the 80's into the 90's because I was too busy doing important things such as being conceived, being born, and developing basic motor skills. Plus, like ten years ago, when my mom and I passed by Pulp Fiction in Blockbuster when it first came out on video, she gawked at Uma Thurman spread out on the cover and told me she'd pluck my eyes out of my face if I ever wanted to watch something so filthy. So, like, I saw Pulp Fiction only a few months ago for the first time. It felt like a fucking coming-of-age experience.
I attribute this massive case of ignorance to my Korean upbringing. I never listened to the radio. Since my parents were hardworking immigrants, I was raised by the TV. My first mix tape consisted of the theme songs of television sitcoms like "Family Matters," "Full House," "Perfect Strangers," "Golden Girls," and god knows what else. Possibly the theme song to "America's Funniest Home Videos," shamefully. ("Hey Sandy" by Polaris from the show "Pete and Pete," however, is incredible, by the way.) My parents didn't ease into middle age listening to The Grateful Dead -- or whatever it is that middle aged white folks listen to -- and though they claim to recall a few Beatles songs, when "Yesterday" played on the radio, my mom could only sing along with: "Yesterday.. na na La la la so fah la la." I mean, the closest thing I've seen to my parents rocking out was watching them, in utter mortification, sing Korean songs on a kareoke machine in someone's basement.
So yeah. Basically, there's nary a blip on my pop culture radar between the year 1985 to probably, say, 1994 or so, when I heard Ace of Base and Weezer playing during our 5th grade class Christmas party. And when I heard "The Sign" and "Buddy Holly," respectively, blasting in my ears, I totally realized what I'd been missing out on for so many long years. So doesn't it make sense, that at age 10 or 11, I progressed through music, rather than going back to 80's rock? Doesn't it!?
DOESN'T IT??!
So yeah. That's the long explanation as to why I didn't know who you were talking about when you said you saw Sammy Haggar riding his bike down the block. And I know you told me who he is, but I've forgotten already. But I bet he has ridiculously huge 80's hair.
I think a lot of you tards are turned off by the length of my posts because of your short attention spans, but who am I to judge? I normally have the attention span of an amoeba, so it's cool.
All the damn time. It was really goddamn disturbing. Picture a just barely over 5-foot-tall cheerfully fat Korean lady casually drinking some tea poured out of a Mr. Coffee in broad daylight, scratching her ass thoughtfully with a Bic ballpoint pen, with nary a fig leaf covering up some key inappropriate areas. Really fucking disturbing.
She's totally in denial about this habit of hers, too, which is hilarious. Like when I brought it up at church in front of a bunch of her churchy friends and some ugly old ladies, she totally pretended like she didn't know what I was talking about, while a mere 7 minutes later on the way home, she looked like she was going to crash our speeding car into the concrete highway divider to kill us both out of humiliation.
She thankfully didn't parade around in her birthday suit as much back when we lived in our old apartment. It had a big sliding glass door that opened up to our veranda, which would have put her in plain view of our neighbors who lived directly across from us.
Our neighbor was an old, fat Italian man who we called Mister Joe. He looked like a miniature retarded Santa Claus, with a big jolly belly, thick yellow toenails, diabetes, and a lazy eye. My brother and I once saw a spider run across his neck and over his shoulder, disappearing behind his unkempt ear hair somewhere.
Mister Joe would periodically receive canned food from the U.S. government because he was a veteran during the (Vietnam? Korean? World War II? God knows how old this guy was) war, which he'd immediately give to us out of the kindness of his diseased heart because he was convinced that his crazy Asian neighbors with two funny looking, big-headed kids needed dozens of cans of non-perishable government-issued beef/chicken/pork that looked like something a homeless person would shit out after eating a fiesta burrito made with spoiled dog food. He also once gave us a leaky plastic grocery bag with frozen bluefish that were well on their way to hatching some plump mealworms from out of their glassy rotted-out eyesockets.
His intentions were pure, but despite our valiant efforts to mix in some processed beef by-products into our kimchi jigaes, it just wasn't working out between us. So my mom, my brother, and I would wait until nightfall, and watched quietly from our kitchen for the light in his bedroom to flick off, and we'd tiptoe down the stairs, open our front door as quietly as possible, run out to the big municipal dumpster around the other side of the apartment, and fling the enormous, heavy bag full of cans over our heads and into the pile of garbage.
Other times, we'd just mix in a few cans with our regular garbage and take them out during the day. Usually, my mom and I took the trash out on our way out to the store. My mom had lots of issues with this plan of action, as she'd usually have her purse slung over her shoulder. More than a few times, we'd get in the car and she'd realize that her purse was gone. When this happened, we'd boost each other into the garbage dumpster and spend the next 15 minutes or so wading through the stinking garbage pile desperately looking for her purse that she'd inadvertently flung into the trash.
Otherwise, we'd try to avoid the situation from the start. Mister Joe, if not stupid, was very methodical. First, he'd shout from his backyard to my mother in the general direction of our usually open veranda door (left agape to let the piercing stinkiness of the kimchi jigae constantly stewing on our stovetop waft outward), "MISSY! MISSY! GOT SOMETHING FOR YA! MISSY!"
-- Mister Joe always got all of our names wrong, except for mine. My brother, Robert, was always addressed as "Albert," and my mom and dad, who have Korean names, were instead called "Missy" and "Carl (CARL?!?!)." --
Anyway, once Mister Joe whelped out a "MISSY!" we fell into action. My mom threw herself upon the kitchen floor where she was inevitably doing the dishes, naked, as though avoiding friendly fire in a thicket in 'Nam, and we children followed suit, tumbling to the ground, crayons and Nintendo controllers be damned.
"Yaejina," my mom would hiss to me with the greatest sense of urgency, with her cheek pressed to our plastic floor mat and her fat fingers wrapped around an unwashed wooden spoon. "GO SHUT THE VERANDA DOOR."
I'd crawl to the door, belly to the ground like a lizard, making sure that the barrier fence around our second floor veranda kept me out Mister Joe's line of sight. I'd reach out my fat 7 year old hand desperately, my sweaty, nervous fingers scrabbling at the smooth, cold sides of the glass door. Finally, when my nails took hold, I'd slowly pull the door shut millimeter by millimeter, to give the illusion that the door had been closed the entire time, until it was completely shut.
Eventually, we got smart and tied a long cord to the veranda door handle, which was similar in structure to the handle on a refrigerator door, the kind you can hang your dish towel through. Once we heard a "MISSY!," my mom would once again wrestle the stuffed turkey she was making for Thanksgiving to the ground, and bark at me, "PULL THE CORD! YAEJINA, PULL THE CORD!!"
When I was 9 years old, we moved away -- out of the apartment and away from Mister Joe. We kept in touch for a few Christmases through a couple of completely thoughtless holiday cards (the ones we received were always written to "Carl, Missy, Albert, and Patricia" with an absolutely filthy five dollar bill crammed inside), but he moved, eventually, too. I doubt that any of us know if Mister Joe is still even alive. That fucker was OLD, after all. Fucking OLD.
There's a lot of things that I've become unsure about with time, Mister Joe's vital stats being just one of the many uncertainties. It's a good thing my mom's nakedness is a running constant in my life. Though, this ever-present quality isn't without its detriments, of course. I am physically turned off by bush. While eating dinner once, I took a big bite from my fork and felt my teeth grind unexpectedly on something unpleasantly gritty, coarse, and unpalatable. Upon further inspection, a large tuft of the Scotch Brite scouring pad we use to do the dishes had been stuck between the tines of the fork and had entered my mouth for consumption. I subconsciously pair that ultra-sensitive oral sensation to the image of bush. And it's unpleasant, gritty, and makes me want to violently vomit directly into a morbidly fat black woman's gaping poopyhole. That's just the type of person I am. The type of person I've grown to be.
Thanks, Mom. Thanks, Mister Joe. Thank you for making the fine young lady I am today.
Okay. So despite the fact that I was attacked by my pastor a number of years ago and vowed to never return, I went to church Sunday morning to appease my mother, who, apparently, missed bringing me as her show item for the weekly Show-And-Tell amongst the Korean ladies there. ("They think I live alone!" she says to me once in a while. "Come with me so they'll remember that I have children.")
I sat in the very front pew to help my friend, Jonathan, with a Powerpoint presentation he put together about the crisis in North Korea, and while we were setting up the projector and computer, this retard sat next to me. Like, not a "retard" as in "some retarded jackass, " but a legitimate retard.
As I helped the boys hook shit up and turn other shit on, the retard kept putting his head on my shoulder. It was cute -- even romantic, in a way -- , but he also kept groping my upper body, and leaning his entire body on me. To make matters worse, when I leaned forward to get out of his way, instead of just straightening up, he'd collapse on the pew behind my bottom and just lie there like a retarded log until his mother (who sat behind him the entire time) gave him a shake or a poke and told him to stop being such an asshole.
Every once in a while, during the service, he'd shout something like, "NO!" or "WHEN?" There I was, sitting next to this Tourette's tard who couldn't keep his hands off my torso in front of the entire church, who probably thought he was my new boyfriend or something. "Oh, did you see Patricia and her new 'special' someone?"
Anyway, once Jonathan finished his presentation, we started packing the shit up discretely as the rest of the church continued with the service. Here's when the trouble started:
I stood up to turn off the projector, and the tard reached out his arms to my ass, which was momentarily looming near his face. In front of probably 100+ people (I'm bad at estimating -- the actual number of people there could be anywhere between 70 and 1,000, that's how awful my numeric-spatial perception is, seriously), with both hands, the retard grabbed a cheek in each hand and hugged my ass as though I was an underpaid white teenager in a hot Mickey Mouse costume at Disney World.
The entire room snickered and a few "HAW HAW HAW"'s slipped out, and to be completely honest, I don't blame the fuckers. Laugh it up, Chuckles. Whatever. But let me tell you, if I believed in God, I would have shaken my fists at the ceiling and shouted to the sky, "WHY! WHY, JESUS, ARE YOU SUCH A GODDAMN DOUCHEBAG?" and waited patiently for the bolt of lightning which would, as a result, shoot out of the clouds and strike me in the brain, killing me instantly.
[Peek-a-Foo]