Wednesday, March 5, 2003.
Listening
to: Park Ji
Yoon's latest (6th) album.
Yesterday: Sun Su set the sleep timer on our VCR.
We still don't know how to change it back.
[ INSERT CLEVER PUN ON "YAO"s NAME HERE ]
We saw the Rockets play against the Detroit Pistons yesterday. Neither of us are baseball, er-- basketball fans, but Amy really wanted to see the super Asian sensation known as Yao Ming. Kevin (our cousin) and our brother-in-law came as well.
The Palace (as it's called) was a lot nicer than I expected. It was vast yet not overwhelmingly large somehow. Like a world within a world, except that you could pretty much see everyone in that world. You can tell I don't get out much.
(Dude, we should have brought the kim chee!)It was kind of neat seeing so many Asians at a Detroit event for a change. It seemed like a quarter to a third of the people there were Chinese. I didn't realize we had that many Asians in Michigan. Actually maybe we don't. From the license plates, some were from Canada and out of state as well.
The game itself was fine but we were seated kind of far. Upper deck. The Jolly Yellow Giant didn't look so big from where we were sitting. But he did dwarf most of the other players.
AMY: "Yao is only 22. He's just a kid."
ME: "He's got to be older than that. Are you sure?"
AMY: "Yes I'm sure. I read the article about him."
ME: "Oh and you're the expert now?"
AMY: "That's right, I am the expert. I read the article."
Amy was right, actually.
From our vantage point, the cheerleaders looked small too, but miraculously you could still make out the tiny little lines denoting cleavage in their low-cut shirts (including two Asian cheerleaders). Kevin kept his neck muscles fully torqued while silently scoping the ladies in the sections around us. Ah, the single life. A mirage of harems and oases amidst a desert reality of solitude and thirst. And the occasional sand getting kicked in your face.
At least that's how I remembered it.
I had a hard time actually paying attention to the game. I would have immediately became more interested if they started beating on each other while dodging motorcyclists with spiked gloves. But instead, I just sat there and wondered if the players could actually hear all the background music shenanigans.
At one point they focused on a Caucasian man in the audience on the giant screen wearing a Chinese straw hat. Then he did a mock bow.
If you think this was appropriate, then try to imagine the same person wearing some cartoonish stereotype of something "that black people wear" and then doing something "that black people do" in honor of Shaq. Yeah. That would have made the rest of the game a lot more interesting than even my Rollerball scenario. Keep in mind this is Detroit.
Amy even heard one of the white guys behind us agree, "That guy just pissed off all the Asian people here."
"I'm surprised he didn't pull his eyelids back too," Amy remarked.
By half time, I was a little bored but it was still fun being out with Amy and friends. I amused myself by watching this two year old Chinese girl walking up and down the steps as her mom patiently followed her up and down and up again. I was looking forward to doing that with Sun Su someday soon.
The game was not very exciting and the Pistons were ahead by at least a dozen points the entire time. I didn't know any of the players, but I used to -- like Dennis "The Worm" Rodman, Vinnie "The Microwave" Johnson, Isaiah Thomas, Bill Laimbeer (now in management or something). I think the last time I was at a sporting event was back around 1988 to 1990 maybe, when the Pistons were winning championships. Our mom and her "boyfriend" at the time mandated us, my brother and myself, to go.
That was our last couple years of high school. My dad was four years gone, and my mom was seriously dating some married man who kept giving her this line about how "the divorce isn't quite final yet." Even worse, he had a younger son who was a bratty asshole and made our mom's life hell as best he could. And we had to take it because this guy was everything my mom wanted -- he was rich and ... I'm not sure what else there was about him. Not only that, but we had to call him by his last name all the time, as in "Mister Jackson." For years.
We hated that.
But that's another entry.
We left the game with five minutes left. The snow was pouring down. I heard later from Alex (another Michigan journaler who was sitting four sections away from us), that there was a group of people wearing black and white makeup marching around blocks of Asian folks with signs saying, "DON'T SUPPORT COMMUNISM! BAN YAO!"
I am not even capable of explaining the subterranean depths of stupidity that that one spelunks to.
Afterwards we stopped at a T. G. I. Fridays (very popular in Corea actually). The waiter tried to get cute with one of us (not Kevin, Amy or me) and made a joke about his hair while checking his I.D.
The joke was ignored, and we ended up getting the slowest service possible that night this side of the Al Quaeda Hardrock Cafe.
I didn't cheat him on the tip though. Sure he was an asshole after we didn't laugh at his rude joke (it was not a racist joke though), and I didn't even see ten pieces of "flare" on him, but I also didn't want to have our "group of Asians" being misrepresented as cheap. Maybe I did the wrong thing. But it was time to break the night's chain of events. Plus, I can't stand cheap tippers.
Overall the night was still fun. We got to see the gentle giant, Yao. We got to hang out with family. We talked about California and Koreatown and K-pop (well, *I* talked about the K-pop).
When we got home, Sun Su was tenderly asleep (my mom watched him). And I thought about how I'll be following him up and down the stairs someday just like that little Chinese girl. We'll do our best to get some of those obstacles out of the way before then.
("Everybody JUMP JUMP JUMP!! Everybody JUMP JUMP JUMP!!
Go Sun Su! Go Sun Su!" -- Amy sings this to him all the time.)____________________________________________________
MEDEA SIN HOT MODEL
Today's Hot Model is either Yao Ming or Amy again. Take your pick.
Here we see Yao being rather selfish with the basketball, and untrusting of Amy's friendly advances.
Smart guy.
(Click here to become a MEDEA SIN HOT MODEL.)
