Now Museum Now You Don't

I was once on a public elementary school field trip to the Science Museum of Minnesota and I saw Bruce there with his mom (he went to a private school). As cool as my classmates were, nothing was better than getting permission from my teacher to ditch the group for an hour and hang out with my best friend. The prospect of leaving your public school field trip group is pretty unheard of these days, so I'm not exactly sure how I pulled it off. Regardless, it was good times.

I've always loved going to museums, maybe not as much as the arcade or the baseball stadium (or Metrodome, of you will), but it was something I was excited about. Especially since the Science Museum of Minnesota is pretty top notch. Perhaps this is why moving to San Diego was kind of underwhelming. I wasn't a big fan of the museums and since San Diego seemed like a big deal compared to my beloved Twin Cities, I expected bigger and better museums.

As enriching as I find museums, they can also be pretty draining. Perhaps it's my lack of attention span, but I can only take so much learning in one day. My trip to the Museum of Modern Art in New York almost overwhelmed me to the point where I needed to call someone before my head exploded. It was stimulation overload and sometimes I need something a little low-brow to bring myself some balance.

Usually museums have something to provide me with some sort of "break". At the Science Museum of Minnesota, it was the musical stairs. At the Getty, I usually talk a walk in the garden and throw coins into the pond, at LACMA it was that giant metal balloon dog, and at the Brooklyn Museum, it was watching Murakami cartoons and music videos before hitting up the rest of the exhibit.

Occasionally I'll get a break just by observing my other spectators, like the occasional asian teenage girl next to her mom mad dogging while her dad takes the picture. Or I'll get the confused toddler putting on 3D glasses in the gift shop. Of course none of this matters if you're the only one to see it. It's in the same vein as a film or a good book, a discussion is the second half of enjoying a museum. Obviously there is a certain amount of pleasure taken in seeing something, but there's something special about discussing it as well. Like most places, museums are often best enjoyed in good company.

So whether you're discussing the latest masterpiece, or the little child that's wading into the fountain, make sure you know someone nearby because there's always going to be something to talk about.

Celebrity Status

Watching a stand up comedian is a unique experience. Even if you know all the jokes they're going to tell, there's still something magical about being there in the same room with the comic, surrounded by others, friends and strangers, also waiting to laugh. I believe that my Humanities Core course in college refers to this as ethos.

Of course, this is not always the case, even with a well known and loved comic. There are hecklers (hello Michael Richards), there are accusations of stealing jokes (Carlos Mencia), and sometimes there's just a bizarre spectacle that defies categorization.

I was at the Demetri Martin show in Hollywood the other night on what my friends feel might be his last tour at his peak (his new TV show just started, and that might be the beginning of the end, we hope not). Demetri brought his usual bag of tricks: his guitar, a keyboard, and a couple of large pads with his "findings". In a very pleasant surprise, his material was all brand new and he didn't plug his TV show verbally, he just wore a t-shirt with "show-biz" handwritten on it, very subtle and very charming. His material was high quality, we were in great seats (3rd row!), and there wasn't a heckler in the room.

Unfortunately for us, we had to experience something much worse than a heckler. I would think Demetri, as bright and quick witted as he is, would deftly handle a heckler and give us some high quality entertainment. Instead we were subjected to some major awkwardness that I'm not even sure someone as road-tested as Demetri Martin could handle.

There was a girl in the row in front of us who decided to speak up when Demetri decided to do a little bit of Q&A and she asked Demetri if he would deliver a letter to Jon Oliver on her behalf. For those of you who do not know who Jon Oliver is, he is a comedian who is also a "correspondent" on the Daily Show. Yes, they know each other, but Demetri is on a tour so it would be weird to depend on him to deliver something when he'll be traveling city to city for next month or so. So this was an odd request from an odd girl. This girl, who had rat's nest hair and a low-fi head band on, delivered to Demetri a 2 page, what looked like single spaced, typed letter. This raised plenty of questions in my mind.

1) Why would you give Demetri Martin a letter to give to someone else, especially someone not affiliated with the tour?

2) Why would you make a master plan that involves buying a ticket to see Demetri Martin, waiting in line early so you can get a good seat, instead of just buying a stamp and looking up a way to send this letter to Jon Oliver?

3) If you somehow knew that you were going to get this letter to Demetri to deliver to Jon Oliver, wouldn't you want to look presentable or at least sans rat's nest hair and crappy headband?

4) Do you not realize you're being extremely rude? Obviously not.

If some stranger asked me to give something to some person I was barely affiliated with, I'd be pretty upset. It'd be even more upsetting if it happened in the middle of my show, but fortunately for me, Demetri handled the situation the best he could without tearing the girl's self esteem apart and bringing her to tears. He asked permission to open the letter, pretended that the letter was about how awesome he was, and then awkwardly muttered "I'll give this to... someone..." It was a surreal and awkward experience, one that I'm sure Demetri wasn't even prepared for, because now that I look back, it would've been pretty awesome if he made a graph that depicted the amount of planning she put into this idea and the lack of common sense she had, rat's nest and all.

Scarred for Life

When I was 9 years old, I fell and needed stitches in my forehead. The fall was somewhere between 5-10 feet off the ground and I was knocked unconscious. I'm not sure how long I was out, I just know I came to while being carried to my parents' car. I never opened my eyes because I knew something bad had happened and didn't think seeing the aftermath would've helped my psyche. So actually, I never saw what required stitches, but since I never had stitches before, I assumed it was pretty grisly.

It was probably for the best that a 9 year old me never saw my head split open. Obviously the scar was a reminder that *something* happened but since I was unconscious/had my eyes closed/, I luckily don't have recurring nightmares about the incident. The scar hasn't gone away but it doesn't stick out like an eye sore. My parents would like me to get it removed via plastic surgery but I haven't had the time or the money to do it , plus chicks dig scars.

Honestly, the scar is kind of an afterthought for me and so when it's brought up, it's usually not a big deal. Usually...

Occasionally someone who I've known for sometime will freak out and say "Oh my God, where did you get that?!" or "What happened to you?!" and I will have no idea what they're talking about. If they were someone I had never met before, I might have a better understanding that they're talking about my scar. But since I will occasionally get this response from someone that I'd previously known, I will panic, since it doesn't register in my brain that they might be talking about the scar. I don't blame them for not seeing the scar (it's not that big), I just wish they would temper their reaction or be more specific in what they're talking about. "What's happened to your head?!" can easily be taken the wrong way, like if I had just gotten a haircut.

Of course when an ex-girlfriend of mine sees the scar for the first time a year after our breakup, that brings up some serious questions. Now, I must say, we dated for a very short time, but the fact that she never noticed my scar in that short time is quite alarming. It'd be understandable if she had forgotten about the scar, but it's another thing to completely to act like I had gotten the scar sometime after the breakup. It's okay if colleagues and acquaintances don't realize you have braces, but it's not okay if your ex-girlfriend doesn't realize you have a pretty noticeable scar on your head. Perhaps my expectations are too high for girlfriends, but I think it's fair to think she'd notice something pretty unique on my forehead.

I found this out when Bruce flew into town for a visit. I hadn't seen him in 6-7 years and I decided to call up the ex to see if she wanted to meet my best friend who lived across the country. So we decided to grab lunch with my friend Phil, and at this lunch she decided to freak out about the scar. Upon hearing this revelation, Bruce gave me a look. I can't replicate this look (I don't think he can either), but I clearly read "so this is your ex-girlfriend?" and immediately became embarrassed. So on a whim, I bitterly muttered, "Bruce cut me. That's what happened." Bruce decided to play along and quickly retorted "You deserved it." and we quickly turned the story of the scar into a soap opera and at one point my ex pleaded for us to forgive each other since we had not seen each other in seven years.

After a few hours of bickering, we finally let her know we never engaged in a knife fight with each other and she was upset that we had been toying with her. I think she chased me around Borders for a while screaming. In the end, she let bygones be bygones and I finally told her the real story behind the scar. I don't remember her reaction to the truth, but I imagine it was pretty unsatisfying. I haven't talked to her for a while and she's kind of notorious for having a bad memory so it's possible that one day, I might run into her somewhere and she might ask me if someone busted my head open since the last time she saw me, and I'd tell her "my best friend cut me in a knife fight." because I think we'd both be happier with the lie.

Chivalry is Dead

(It's Valentines Week, and I have 4 older sisters. Sounds like a perfect time to kill 2 birds with 1 stone.)

Growing up in Minnesota as a Korean-American boy was a unique enough situation, so growing up in Minnesota with four older sisters between 8-14 years older than me probably takes things to completely uncharted waters. Living under one roof with my sisters was not a terrible experience at all, probably not as great as they thought it was for me, but it was definitely not terrible, like Punch-Drunk Love terrible.

Since there was such a huge age gap between my sisters and I, my life was not like the crazy sit-com that most people would envision. My oldest sister was left the house to go to college when I was 4, and every 2 years another sister was out of the house until I was left alone with my parents at the age of 10, so there are only so many memories of my sisters complaining to each other to hurry up and get out of the bathroom/shower. Luckily, other than the occasional request to fetch tampons from one bathroom to another, my sisters spared me the play by play details of female puberty.

Though I can't say that I've gone totally unscathed by living in a house with 4 older sisters.  It's not because of dress-up parties or being forced to watch Beverly Hills 90210. It has to do with the age gap and while that sounds calous, it's the honest truth. 14 years is a lot of distance, it's almost a generation and not to fault my sisters, but I've discovered that their advice is a bit outdated and that has obviously had an effect on my life.

Since I was just a child when the majority of my sisters were in their teen years, they decided to take it upon themselves to teach me about dating, or more accurately, point out where their suitors had going wrong in their quest to date my sisters.  These wouldn't be bitter tirades but I do remember being pulled away from the TV a couple of times to be told what to do and what not to do.  My sisters were older than me and wiser than me so I took this advice and applied it to my life, a good ten years later to humiliating and terrible results.

Once again, I don't blame my sisters.  The advice they gave wasn't necessarily bad.  It's just that I was getting advice in 1986 that wasn't exactly on the same page with what was going on in 1996 and 10 years later in 2006.  It wasn't until a couple of months ago where I told my oldest sister I was interested in a girl where I realized that while I respect and love my sister (married and mother of 2 children), she can't help me with the 2009 dating world.

Her advice to me:  Buy her flowers.

Which I'm sure would've been great advice, 25 years ago.

Counting to Ten

I once had a dream where I was a child and all I could speak was Korean.  It wasn't a scary dream or an unsettling one. 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.  The request triggered the recollection of my dream and I decided to decline.  For some reason, the idea that I would have to think how to count discouraged me from a simple and harmless request.  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).  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.

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.  So I started to think about how to say 12th in Spanish (took it for 3 years) and I found myself starting to count to twelve in Korean.  I eventually was able to change my train of thought to Spanish and got to my sister's place safely without a hitch.  But now I wonder if that I just need to drop my guard to let that that young version of me in my dream out so he can blabber on without feeling self-conscious.