vote gangnam style--whatever that means

just how many phone calls did it take for this to happen? And did john lewis know what gangnam style is or did someone have to explain the phenomenon (and if so, who)? how is it relevant to voting? it's not like gangnam style was a thing that predated the song. And I don't know of an equivalent. At least the Macarena was a real dance. still, you gotta love john lewis, doing whatever it takes to draw attention to the importance of voting. 

I know yall have been dying to ask me about gangnam style but held back bc you were afraid of appearing...racially insensitive. Yeah, you were right to stop yourself. also, i learned all about kpop from the new yorker, so the joke would have been on you. in any case, when even the pres of the world bank (korean-american!) is asked about the phenomenon and he responds seriously about how psy is the manifestation of a deliberate, longterm economic and cultural strategy, you know this shit is bigger than all of us.

As I watch this gangnam style thing from the sidelines I wanna know:  how is psy affecting Asian men outside of asia? based on zero evidence except my own intuition, I thought one of the most important things Jeremy lin did was to elevate Asian masculinity. Now when kids get bullied for being Asian, maybe they won't be called long duk dong. Progress! Not unlike the time the lady at the Weiner circle called me Lucy Liu instead of Margaret cho. I look like neither, but the margaret cho thing really cuts deep, man.

Are Asian dudes now afraid of being mistaken for this pudgy--relatively inoffensive yet not entirely flattering--guy? I tried to look for other Asian dudes in present day pop culture, but in terms of sheer visibility, psy and jlin really have no parallels. Sure, there's john cho, that guy from lost/Hawaii 5-o, and, as I discovered recently, a fairly prominent character on walking dead. (Btw, I've never seen that show. Apparently his character dates a white girl, which I get is some ringing endorsement of Asian male sex appeal?).  or are asian guys still just assumed to be martial arts experts with broken english because of bruce lee and jackie chan?

anyway, in whatever style, vote!

Merry Christmas!

Merry Christmas, E. I hope Father Christmas brought you all the poutine you can eat!

Here are pictures of Asians sleeping in college libraries.  Enjoy!

(Recognize the one above?)

mo'lympics

i enjoy the olympics in a very unironic way. yeah, i'm pretty sure everyone is drugged up and the chinese have infants on their women's gymnastics team or whatever, but still.

anyway, i do feel conflicted every 4 years. where do my loyalties lie? (un?)fortunately, the canadian olympic team seems unable to win a medal in a single event, so i guess i'm going to go with korea. i am sure we will sit comfortably in third until all the track and field events begin. what happened to canada? we used to win a medal or two in the summer olympics. [update: korea is now behind germany in the medal count. boo...]

i find it somewhat amusing that all of my not very patriotic friends get seriously peeved when i don't cheer for the USA. there also was this ridiculous new york times article expressing incredulity over the fact that the chinese are (gasp!) uninterested in michael phelps. yeah, guess what? not everyone cares about america. deal with it.

btw, did anyone happen to read this david brooks op-ed? is he accusing americans of "whining" over katrina? why did he wait until the final sentence to state his thesis?

i'm popular conan, i'm popular

at around 4pm on thursday i was told that i would have to go to my nation's capital the next morning, so i duly awoke at 6am on friday and hopped on a plane. on my way to the airport, i heard that al gore won the nobel prize. i have to say that i was pretty damn moved by this inspirational story of a man who overcame his disheveled obesity to find his true voice.

anyway, good times in ottawa. saw the parliament buildings, read up on some mining shiz, filled up on some tim horton's. the next morning i awoke to see a poster for this masterpiece advertised in the hotel lobby and i thought, holy shit, my first time here and i'm going to see jean chretien? yeah, turns out i was wrong; it was just a media event, as a random female journalist told me. she was pretty psyched i'd heard of her publication, the epoch times. believe me, nobody was more surprised than i at remembering that name.

for some inexplicable reason, ottawa was teeming with asian tourists. loads of them everywhere--old asian couples getting off tour buses, young presumptively japanese girls with their cameras, etc. despite the general soporific tenor of the city, i felt pleasantly at home. of course, that was until some french (french-canadian?) tourist pointed at me and said something, loudly, along the lines of "blahblahblah japonais" and the fact the canadian dollar--the canadian dollar!--was worth more than its american counterpart.

update: this just in--turns out the boss (about whom i wrote a lengthy and shitty modern music paper in college) was in ottawa last night! and covered arcade fire! mind ~~blown~~. i like that stereogum assumes that all of its readers are retarded and calls the arena "ontario's scotiabank place". that'd be like saying "michigan's joe louis arena".

god, i love me some bruce.