5 Language Fails Proving That The Backstreet Boys Could Not Speak Goddamn English

I was going to write about something happy and affectionate today, like a girl on a pegasus with a muffin or something. Instead I have this:

1. SHAPE OF MY HEART

At one point in the song, AJ sings: "Sadness is beautiful. Loneliness is tragical."

Tragical is a nice idea for an English word, but it is not an English word.

"Tragic" is what English speakers say, for example, when they refer to the Backstreet Boys' fluency with English.

Maybe their powers of vocabulary were distracted by the blonde gal in the video, who apparently is about to go down on Nick under the table. But more likely it's just that the Backstreet Boys could not speak English to save their goddamn lives.



2. MEN STRIKES BACK

At 3:50, Kevin says: "Welcome to VH-1's Men Strikes Back concert."

It's not super-hard to match the subject and verb here. Men STRIKE, Man STRIKES. Men do not strikes. I think possibly Kevin was born in a foreign land.



This concert was also notable for BSB's duet (uh, sextet?) with Sting, doing "Don't Stand So Close To Me." Yes that is a really awesome idea.



3. DOES HIS GIFTS COME FROM THE HEART? DOES HIS FRIENDS GET ALL YOUR TIME?

Strangely, "DO his gifts come from the heart" would also fit the meter, and also be correct English.



We get it, guys. You are so backstreet that you even speak English all street-like. Your love is all you have to give. You certainly cannot give lessons in English.

4. AIN'T NOTHING BUT A HEARTACHE, AIN'T NOTHING BUT A MISTAKE, I NEVER WANT TO HEAR YOU SAY, I WANT IT THAT WAY

Let's try to parse this chorus. Whoops, it's impossible. WHAT is nothing but a heartache? The relationship? You? Okay. There is a phrase you never want to hear me say? Or the state of non-speaking of the phrase is the "way" you want it? What is it you never wanna hear me say? You never wanna hear me say that I want it that way? But you just told me to believe when you say "I want it that way," and so I do believe you want it that way, but that brings us back to this whatever you supposedly never want to hear me say. Huh? SPEAK FRIKKIN' ENGLISH, for the love of God.

Again, from VH-1's Mens Strikes Backs.



5. SHOW ME THE MEANING OF BEING LONELY

Duh. They're asking because they really don't know what is the meaning of the word "lonely." Because the Backstreet Boys don't know how to speak goddamn English.

Also, remember when this was the most popular video in the universe? There are kids out there right now probably still learning English from those Backstreet Chumps. And that is truly tragical.

Let's Just Go To Nicks 2, and a poem about shoelaces.

An impromptu poem about tying shoelaces, by my friend Amy Chan, pictured in center rear, below.

That's F**king Teamwork

I do it old school,
check it, check it.
This is my style right here.
Double bunny ears,
pull it, cinch it.
Double it, the opposite way
so that it's a lock-knot.
So the tighter it pulls,
the tighter the knot becomes.
And the birthday girl
is good to go.

At-Home White-Privilege Self-Test: Do You Realize That Things Could Go Wrong?

A lot of talk about White Privilege lately. It's a thing. You don't necessarily have to be white to suffer from it. You just have to be mostly a douche. Still, a lot of people, mainly white-privileged people, claim to not understand what it is.

There's a simple White Privilege test that I apply whenever meeting anyone who may be an unconscious carrier of the White Privilege germ. It is as easy and reliable as the home pregnancy test. That is, the test tells you quickly and with a reasonable margin for error whether a person is White Privileged or a Totally Cool & Down White Person.

The test is this. Just ask the person some version of this question: "Do you understand that things could go wrong?"

"Do you get that things go wrong?" "You know how that might go badly, right?" "You see how that might be a bad idea?" You can ask these questions to yourself as well.

There is no possible way that this could have a bad outcome for anybody.

See, the central tenet/symptom of White Privilege is this: Things Are Supposed To Work Out For You. Thus, you never need a plan. You never need to anticipate anything that happens in the real world. Because, as we all know from watching TV and movies, the white male is the hero, deserves to find love with the nice girl (also the Asian girl, the Latina girl the Black girl and the manicpixiedreamgirl), has a righteous mandate to get rid of anyone who stands in his way, and will always win in the end.

So when you meet that guy who goes, "Aaah, let's just play it by ear. We'll get there and figure it out. Don't worry. Think positive. I have confidence," la la lah, WATCH OUT.

What that guy means to himself is, "I'll get there, have a beer, talk to the pretty girl, and everything will turn out all right."

What that guy does to the world is, fuck everything up with his ignorant careless know-nothingness.

People of Color and women (that is, about 70-80% of the world) know that Things Go Wrong. They learn it from life. If they don't, it's because their parents own A) a sports team or B) a country.

White People should know that Things Go Wrong, but sometimes they are not given the opportunity to learn. Sometimes you just get the girl, or the job, or the chance, for no observable reason except, things are working out for you.

Being aware that Things Go Wrong, and sometimes you make them go wrong, is a quality that makes you a better person. I think it's Louis C.K. who said (paraphrasing), "When you say to yourself I'M SO STUPID HOW COULD I DO THAT, that's you learning never to do that thing again." It's a far superior way to approach life than the White Privileged way, which is, "Everything I do is okay, because I'm a great person."

When you're aware that things could go wrong, you are a functioning useful part of the world.

- You can notice when things are going wrong for another person, and maybe help them out.

- You can perceive trouble coming down the street, and with your awareness that Shit Does Happen, you can avoid trouble instead of walking right up to it.

- You make plans that anticipate all the things that could go wrong, and you don't absurdly expect that your plans will work, ever. But at least you have a plan.

- You talk to women respectfully, because you understand that you might not get to have sex with them, in fact the total opposite of that might happen. 

- You are not James Franco, Donald Sterling, or any kid who goes to Princeton. 

Look, I don't care if you were born rich or worked your way up out of the widget-selling fields; if somewhere along the way you learned that It Is Not All About You, then you have a chance of living a White-Privilege-free life.

Do you realize that things could go wrong? You do? Excellent. Let's try to do something anyway.

#LetsJustGoToNicks

"Let's just go to Nick's" is the unofficial slogan of my current favorite karaoke bar, Nick's Lounge. The phrase was coined by the owner, Bryan. The idea is, it's what you should've said at the planning phase of your evening, before you

- searched the interweb vainly for the coolest place to go.
- texted all your friends including James Earl Magotes about what cool thing they are going to.
- went to a place maybe to meet up with whoever, got lost because it's "somewhere in the Mission," paid $35 in parking and gas because it's San Francisco, and paid another 11 bucks for an artisanal cocktail only to find out that you're at the wrong place because you suck.
- noticed that all the "cool" places to go in the Bay Area are in fact expensive, pretentious, and full of brogrammers and princesses. Sometimes gay princesses, but nevertheless.
- crossed Nick's off your list because it has unsexy lighting, questionable bathrooms, is a karaoke bar, and you were there just last night.
- had a miserable time because all people do in the cool bars is talk about obscure liquors and chase each other for sex. There is nothing else to actually do.

I prefer bars where there is one other thing to do, whether it is watch sports, sing karaoke, or play a competitive card game. That one other thing keeps you out of the drinking-loneliness-more drinking-pointless existence loop that happens at most cool bars. And the cool bars are tense, because you have to be in that loop yet somehow divert all remaining Dilithium reactor power towards staying hip.

If you don't know, you never will, but what I usually say at the planning phase of the evening is

- I want to sing a song, and see what kinds of songs other people are singing. If the songs/people are a lot out of step with my personal song preference list, I'll leave quickly.
- I could use a beer.
- Most of all I want to relax.
- Let's just go to Nick's.

#NotYourMascot: On The Washington Redskins

I'm a football fan. Would I watch Washington Redskins games any less often if they were called the Washington Redapples? I could not care less. I would watch them. Currently, I try not to watch them, because the name "Redskins" is so insulting.

Change the name. Could you make any more profit, as a team in the NFL, the most lucrative sport in America? Not really. Would your profitability suffer? No chance of that. Football is not going anywhere, so to speak.

Is it an opportunity to make the world a finer place? Yes it is. Because the name "Redskins" speaks to a history of injustice and suffering. It describes an immature America that we'd all do well to leave behind.

A new name for the team would gain new fans. And honor.

The name "Redskins" speaks disparagingly to the people who created the U.S.A. It derides the people who lived here originally, and reminds us that the people who came here were capable of genocidal violence and hatred.

Nothing about this opinion is new. But a new name would be.

Also, let's face it, a new name would GUARANTEE that you beat the Cowboys. And as a Niners fan, that's also something I would stand behind.

5 Things I Learned From Standing In Line At Gordo's Waiting For A Burrito

...which is something I do at least once a week.

1. People in Berkeley still have no idea how to order a burrito. "Do I want regular or super?" "I want it with the boiled chicken." "NO HOT SAUCE." "Should I get guacamole and sour cream? I'm ordering it for a friend." "Did you put tomatoes in it already?" "What's in a carnitas?"

Fellow Berkleyans, in terms of component ingredients used, there are fewer menu options at Gordo's than even In 'N' Out. Every choice is literally in front of you, in heated trays, when you approach the counter. And you clearly don't know what you want, so you might as well stop trying to have it the way you want.

2. Young parents will, remarkably, discuss not the order, but the intricate process of ordering their family takeout dinner with the cashier, as if it is somehow his responsibility. "Are there 3 burritos? But I have 4 kids in the car. Maybe one of them is not eating. But I should get 4 burritos in case he wants to eat. Hold on, let me call. (A great eon of phone-fiddling passes.) Yeah, I guess he's not eating. Do you think 3 burritos is enough?"

Dude, guess what, it's your family, YOU get to keep track of this stuff. I don't take a Facebook poll and quiz the staff before deciding whether to get an extra burrito or not. Of course you want to order more, it's Gordo's! Fatten that kid up!

3. Quesadillas do sorta become the same thing as tacos when you order the quesadilla on a corn tortilla with hella meat and stuff on it.

4. Some people think that "Super" indicates an actual cooking method or some kind of specifically arcane carnality within the burrito. It does not. "Super" only means that this burrito will make you fatter than the normal burrito. It is, however, a Spanish word, so you can pronounce it that way if it makes you feel better about yourself.

5. I went to a Chipotle for the first time recently. Tripped me out. As in Subway, at Chipotle you get to, have to in fact, verbally confirm every element or lump that is put in the burrito before the guy proceeds down the conveyor belt. You get it exactly the way you order it. I think Chipotle's adoption of this absurdly high-maintenance service model, with its "If you say brown rice, we say how many grains?" philosophy, is probably contributing to the problems of the Gordo's line in modern times.

By introducing the possibility of micro-managing every ingredient in your fatty fried takeout meal, Chipotle/Subway has infected the populace with the idea that it might actually be necessary to do that.

Need I mention that the Chipotle iBurrito's meat had nowhere near the succulence, its rice none of the chew, its salsa none of the life, as the thing you get from Gordo's if you simply walk up to the counter and order "burrito"?

People, the whole point is it's supposed to be fast. Get the carnitas on whatever, and keep moving boldly towards the future.

14 Reasons You Don't Want To See This Stupid "Endless Love" Movie On Stupid Valentine's Day

So for whatever reason I saw a preview of this movie Endless Love that is coming out today, on Valentine's Day 2014. I want to encourage you all, if you have plans to see it tonight, to abort those plans. Romantically speaking, you'd be better off re-watching Silver Linings Playbook. Spoiler alert.

1. It steals everything that can be stolen from the far-superior teen romance film Say Anything, mainly the plot.

There's a girl with good grades who doesn't have any friends. A dude from the wrong side of the tracks has a crush on her. Despite his friends' warnings, he pursues her. There's a wild graduation party which validates her and makes her feel one with the normal kids. He has dinner with the family and the dad interrogates him awkwardly. Her dad has a dark secret. The big problem is she is going away to a fancy school at the end of the summer. They eventually end up on a plane. The only plot beat that deviates from Say Anything at all is the part where a house catches fire, and the main characters are, unfortunately, not consumed by an inferno.

2. It steals actual dialogue from Say Anything.

Before they make love for the first time, it's raining or cold or something, and the gal says,"You're shaking." He replies, "Good shaking." This is basically exactly what they say in the car-consummation scene in Say Anything, except somehow in Cameron Crowe's film it conveyed a true moment of happiness, and in Endless Love 2014 it is just some crap that two idiots say before hooking up.

3. The screenplay was written by someone who has never loved anyone.

The movie is not even about love, exactly. It is much more about gender role definition via the Cosmo/Details magazine school of male/female fantasy ideals. The guy is handsome and tall; complicated without being intelligent; deferent but he punches anyone who disrespects his girl; good with cars. The girl is blonde and rich, and that's pretty much all we know about her. (We are asked to believe that she is smart because her father pulls strings to get her into medical school.)

4. The writer of the original novel doesn't like it.

Scott Spencer, author of the novel Endless Love (credited as the source material for this film as well as the 1981 Endless Love, starring Brooke Shields and Who Gives A Hoot) writes eloquently on what happens when Hollywood makes your book into two movies in The Paris Review.

5. It stars a British guy doing an American accent who has a black sidekick doing an Ebonic accent.

We know the hero's okay because his best friend is black and funny and is named "Mace." He also is a good singer and dancer and way more charismatic than the lead character. Somehow, Mace does not die. But neither does he truly live.

6. It is kind of white privilegey.

It is a white-privileged idea that love can include pursuing a girl to the point of stalking, and she will somehow interpret it as dedication. I mean, this also happens in Say Anything, but there it's more cute.

7. The music is terrible. 

The song "Endless Love" doesn't happen. "In Your Eyes" doesn't happen. Honestly I would've settled for a song from fucking Dawson's Creek.

8. It isn't enough about the two fathers. 

The only potentially interesting part of this flick is the conflict between the two fathers, played by Bruce Greenwood and Robert Patrick, a.k.a. Captain Pike vs. the T-1000. Here are two men, caught between the indignant stupidity of their children and their own personal grief, who must make hard decisions regarding the future of their families. You could make a good movie about that. Or you could make Endless Love.

9. The two lead actors are way too pretty.

They are that kind of pretty that is not even good-looking. They are like schematics for how to draw a person. After a while you kind of want to shoot them.

10. It gives you really bad advice for life.

Many films perpetrate the convenient idea that "you must fight for love, because love is all that matters." A good film makes you believe it. Looking at you, Slumdog Millionaire.

11. At one point there is a joke where the dad confuses Hulu for Uber.

It's cute until you realize that this will be the high point of witticism for the entire movie.

12. It will make you angry at women.

Because evidently all women want is a dull hunk of meat who will punch their dad.

13. It will make you angry at men.

Because apparently all men want is the bland rich girl they never talked to in high school.

14. Because, love.
Love is still important, as Michael Jackson said. ("Love, L-O-V-E.") Love deserves films like Say Anything and Wall-E and Punch-Drunk Love and Love Actually and Broadcast News. Love is a thing that happens between people, not Hollywood-composite perfect-hair androids. So, in the name of love, let Endless Love bomb.

5 Inviolable Rules of Civilized Karaoke (in public bars)

(for more karaoke-related stuff, please visit melancholyball.com and https://www.facebook.com/melancholyball)

1. Do not sing "Don't Stop Believing" or "Bohemian Rhapsody."*
Often seems like a good idea. Is not. If you feel you must sing Journey, make the journey home. If you are feeling Queenish, may I suggest "Fat Bottom Girls" (the guitar groove is sexy, irrespective of actual singing) or "Somebody To Love" (its rolling 12/8 meter will evoke "Piano Man" sentimentality without actually being "Piano Man," and its lyric describes what most people in bars are thinking anyway).

2. If you must rap, do not use the n-word.
This is a 3-shot foul. Doesn't matter how street you think you are. But, one occasionally wants to do "Hypnotize," so. Have a word prepared. "People" or "brother" are usually acceptable. Or a sharp intake of breath.** Or, I'm told, "ninja" also works.

3. Know whether your song is Sexy, Heartached, or Obscure.
Karaoke culture reveals that there are only 3 genres of song: Sexy Songs, Songs of Heartache and Loss, and Songs That No One Has Heard Of. Of course, that last category includes much wonderful, deathless, genius music. For the purposes of karaoke, doesn't matter.

• Sexy Songs can be rock, soul, hiphop, country, whatever; they make you want to dance and drink and flirt and get good and naughty naughty. These songs are often stupid. But they are necessary. "Umbrella." "La Isla Bonita." "Mr. Brightside." "Poison." "Beast of Burden." "Always Be My Baby."
• Songs of Heartache and Loss create the other desired emotional color of a healthy karaoke bar. The feeling of Love: unrequited and blue, sentimental and warm, momentary and true, often involving a key change up for the last chorus. "Alone." "At This Moment." "No Woman No Cry." "Fake Plastic Trees." "Rocket Man."
• Songs That No One Has Heard Of: again, this category encompasses Most Good Music In The Universe. The catch is, you have to sing an "obscure" song very very well in order to endear it to mass virgin ears. Otherwise, you are being purely self-indulgent, and more or less wasting everyone's drinking time. The personal attachment you have to the [deep album track]/[quirky one-hit wonder] is Strictly Only In Your Head, unless you can somehow sell the song as sexy or heartachey. "Birdhouse In Your Soul." "Red Rain." Most Bowie. Any Of The Other Songs By A-Ha, Of Which There Are A Surprising Number.

Hybrid songs, which fall into 2 of the above categories, do exist. Generally they are mid-tempo snare-heavy tunes with a pretty chorus. Songs that are both Sexy and Heartachey: "Beast of Burden." "Como Al Flor." "Man in the Mirror." Macklemore's "Same Love." The song that is all at once Sexy, Heartbreaking, and You Haven't Heard Of It Before? Very rare, and many far greater musicians than me are always searching for it. The closest one I can think of is Talking Heads' "This Must Be The Place," but it's not quite obscure enough, just very obscure in karaoke books.

4. If there is a choice, don't pick the version with the video. 

Karaoke videos are a beautiful and unsung (so to speak) sub-genre of short film that often take place in the 80's, or in Kuala Lumpur, or both. However, they are usually accompanied by an 80s-era dinky MIDI-based instrumental track, as opposed to the more faithful instrumental tracks which have words only and a snare drum sound that more closely emulates the song you were looking for. Screw it man, it's all about the music.

5. Do ask members of the opposite sex, or whatever your favorite sex is, to sing a tune with you.

It's fun and mostly harmless. And it's a way of opening up interaction in a bar where people are feeling self-conscious and solipsistic. But be able to sing the song that you suggest. Or failing that, make sure the suggested song is at a high grade of Sexy or Heartachey, preferably familiar enough that you can stumble through it no matter what happens. "Up Where We Belong." "Super Bass." "Under Pressure." "A Whole New World." 

*(Other Songs That You Should Reconsider Singing Because Everybody Does Them: "Total Eclipse Of The Heart." "Sweet Caroline." "I Want It That Way." "Friends In Low Places." "Hotel California." "Closing Time." "China Girl." "A Whole New World.")

**Unless you're a black person, in which case it's different.

17 Moments From The SF Giants' Postseason That Define My Incomplete Version Of Happiness

1) NLDS Game 5. SF 6, Reds 4. Buster Posey hits a grand slam. The San Francisco Saloon on Pico goes nuts. The Giants come back from almost definitely losing. Something weird is happening.

2) NLCS Game 4. St. Louis 8, SF 3. Very depressed. We are definitely going to lose to the Cardinals, again. I righteously hate the Cardinals. The first time I ever saw the Giants get to the playoffs (I started following baseball during a season where they lost 100 games), they lost to the Cardinals. I was a kid and I could not figure out why it was impossible for Jeffrey Leonard to hit a 6-run home run with no one on base.

3) NLCS Game 5. SF 5, St. Louis 0. Brandon Crawford looks a bit like Patrick Swayze in Steel Dawn. Or Red Dawn. Or a ranger in Lord of the Rings. You know, a real hero.

Barry Zito has always looked like a smug pretty boy with $100 million bucks. But sometimes that's the guy who buys you a drink and puts an arm around your shoulder because it's within his power to do so and he's comfortable with that.

4) Zito's RBI bunt single. It's the most important rule of comedy.

5) Watching NLCS Games 6 and 7 back in Berkeley town with my mom, dad, and sister, and some deer that wander through the backyard now and then. Mom and sis think it's important to watch the games with a lot of steak, BBQ brisket, and apple crisp on hand. They are right, this is very important.

6) NLCS Game 6. SF 6, St. Louis 1. Scutaro is the new Ichiro. Hits everything, not a ton of power; just a lot of hard looping singles and doubles to every possible field. If Strawberry Fields Forever were in fair territory, he'd hit a sinking line drive into it.

7) NLCS Game 7. SF 9, St. Louis 0. Although Scutaro gets a hit basically every time he bats, Hunter Pence decided to invent a new kind of double which involves hitting the ball with the bat 3 times in one swing. Pence developed this unfathomable technique using radioactive hypersenses which also aid his side career as the costumed crimefighter Daredevil.

8) The rain falling at the end of Game 7. Scutaro dances in it like the kid in Cinema Paradiso.

9) World Series, Game 1. SF 8, Detroit 3. Barry Zito vs. Justin Verlander. Zito beats the shit out of him. That is just crazy. That is like Call Me Maybe level of crazy.

10) Barry Zito's RBI single vs. Justin Verlander. Barry Zito, offensive juggernaut. That is like Britney Spears/Beyonce level of crazy.

11) Panda hits 3 home runs in 1 game, and decides that Verlander is not that good. Not as good as Barry Zito, anyway. What? That is like a Gnarls Barkley wrapped in a Patsy Cline inside a Fine Young Cannibal.


12) TIMMY ANNIHILATES THE TIGERS IN RELIEF. Timmy Lincecum, our funny-looking ace. Our sleight-of-build, messy-haired, kinda frail-looking Lethal Assassinating Strikeout Machine.


13) World Series, Game 2.  SF 2, Detroit 0.
My name is Prince / And I'm a fatty / I'm running home / So you can tag me
Or, Buster Posey Missed A Second Career As A Ballet Dancer.
Or, A Matador.

14) World Series, Game 3. SF 2, Detroit 0. At the SF Saloon, we rise in the 7th inning and sing "God Bless America" together. I don't think I have sung "God Bless America" out loud before, ever. It's a nice song.

15) Bumgarner, Vogelsong, Affeldt, Lincecum and Romo combine to strike out supposedly-good Tiger stars Miguel Cabrera and Prince Fielder about 117 times in only 32 at-bats. The entire American League is revealed to be comprised of overhyped designated-hitting doucheheads.

16) That Saturday night it becomes clear that after losing early and often in two playoff series, we are going to win the World Series. Winning is of course the extremist religion of America. We worship winning and hate anything non-winning. We love it when you beat the weak and exploit disadvantages to come out on top. We care nothing for effort. In Los Angeles, when we win sporting events, we celebrate by overturning cars and setting them on fire. So it's crucial I think to be aware of this complex narcotic problem-thing called winning. In those rare, impossible times when it's going to happen. Let's try to do it in a classy way.

17) World Series, Game 4. SF 4, Detroit 3. The only really exciting close game since, wow. The Tigers actually have the lead for a few innings. Then Buster Posey realizes it is time to hit a two-run home run.

Then former starting second baseman Ryan Theriot realizes it is time to make use of this keen DH rule and hit a single. Then current starting second baseman Scutaro realizes it is time to get another RBI hit so that they can win the game. Then Affeldt and Romo realize it is time to strike out every freaking Triple Crown winner or cleanup hitter that tries to wave a stupid bat in their faces. 

Then I realize that we have won the World Series, as champagne cascades onto my head from I don't know where, a roar goes up on both sides of the street, people are running shirtless across Pico and everyone in my immediate vicinity is orange and happy.

Then I realize, Buster Posey now probably thinks he will win the World Series every year that he is not cripplingly injured.

Then it's over. It's only baseball. We have to go back to important things like defining our abs and finding our slutty hurricane costume for Halloween, and deciding which taco to eat and which street to take to work, and where is our voting place and which disinterested girl should we chase, and staring at the ceiling and money and toilet bowl cleaner, and being heartbroken and being alive and being champions of the whole beautiful world.

I Am So Going to Beat the Shit Out of This Weekend.

You heard me. That's what's up. Yeah, it's a pretty big weekend. So what? It's got knees and eyes like everybody else. Here are the 27 ways in which I'm going to beat the shit out of this weekend.

1)  I'm gonna watch the recap of Game 5 of the Giants vs. Reds about 100 times in the solitary comfort of my cute Hollywood apartment. I'm going to loopily enjoy the beauty of Posey's grand slam, Pagan's catch, Crawford's dive, Panda's Pandaness, Cain's cool.

2)  I'm going to get a fat load of Twitter followers for @Phearchannel and @Thorhulkcritic and a bunch of Youtube subscribers for Paranormalstatus.com. Because every weekend starts with #Follow #Fucking #Friday, baby! HELL YEAH. POUR IT.

3)  Gonna write up a proposal and treatment for a new rock musical, because that's one of the things in life I kick bloody ass at. No I'm not gonna write no flipping script. Who reads, or follows, or understands, or gets hard from flipping scripts? TREATMENT, MAN.

4)  Gonna edit a cute cat video. And post that shit. That's right.

5)  I am gonna hound LA Weekly until they correct the spelling of chashu in their supposedly-hip ramen capsule review. It's not char siu, dude. Char siu is Chinese and not in ramen and also not pronounceable in Japanese. If you're gonna have the gig of reviewing the best Asian cuisine in America and feel compelled to hiply print words in the language, try to get it right. It's only the languages of about 2 billion people or so.

6)  I am so going to totally forget about every woman I have ever strongly liked. At least, I am going to forget that I like them. Because clearly that shit gets you nowhere, buddy.

7)  I will overcome every socio-racial disadvantage I have ever whined about by temporarily turning into a white dude. Gals will feel that they are supposed to throw the sex on me because of every movie and TV show they have ever seen, despite the fact that I am of only medium height. I don't give a pho.

8)  I will exploit a new area of socio-racial advantage by turning into an Asian woman and getting a great writing job, beating out many other qualified applicants on a questionable unspoken basis, which is that everybody likes Asian women. Yeah, I said it. Sue me.

9)  I will hook up with a very intelligent funny girl with three boobs. When I say I just want to cuddle, she goes, "Damn! That's awesome! That's not biologically repulsive at all!"

10)  Fuckin' gonna buy a blanket and some envelopes, too. And maybe some socks. And gonna pull a box of crap out of my car and organize that crap. You darn tooting. That's how we do.

11)  Why? Because I Want It That Way. BOOM.

12)  Somehow amongst all this business I'm gonna fit in a fucking epic nap.

13)  I am hell of going to that Peruvian restaurant to have a big fat plate of lomo saltado and see if they got a causa rellena. 

14)  Gonna see the shit out of Looper, because that guy is the best director working. He is so awesome he had a cute Asian girl sidekick in his second film and it was not extremely creepy and stupid.  Amended because I did see Looper, which was a fine film except for the part which had every Asian female film stereotype ever documented. Hey white boys! Keep fucking up! The love of a mute Chinese woman will save you! And then she will die and you will have a reason to live/murder children. (I'm not making that up to be tacky, that is the plot of the movie,)

15)  I'm gonna have a few cocktails with vodka in 'em. Maybe a fruit-flavored vodka. What? You wanna tussle?

16)  Will memorize all the words to "Geto Superstar," just because it is mentally possible to do so.

17)  I'm going to find Mitt Romney and personally beat the shit out of him. Because he is not now and is never going to be president, so making that kind of threat idly is always going to be legally permissible.

18)  I'm gonna watch some football while doing a hard workout, just to ensure that I can still be effortlessly crushed by any of those guys.

19)  I'm gonna stare at my goddamn phone like a boss. 

20)  I am going to write a poem or a song about you.

21)  I am hell of not gonna get married, or have a baby, or post pictures of my food. Because I like to believe I still stand for something.

22)  I am gonna find out what is up with my Internet connection and beat the shit out of it.

23)  Everyone is going to be so impressed by all the shit-beating-out-of which I will ostensibly accomplish this weekend, they are all gonna subscribe to paranormalstatus.com and also start a kickstarter campaign with the singular goal of raising $2.6 million dollars to dump straight on to my big head. Then I will be exposed to a radioactive cloud and gain fucking superpowers.

24)  I'm gonna enjoy the crap out of some rain.

25)  I'm going to make a page for a fictional character on Facebook and then BEFRIEND IT. Yeah!

26)  I'mma hit up a sexy birthday party in Little Tokyo. Because I live in Los Angeles, bitch. I don't have to go to Big Tokyo. I live in a heroic struggling fantasy of myself and I can go to Little Frakking Anywhere.

27)   I am gonna root like hell for the Orioles.  Mainly because I like The Wire.

Viewers' Guide to PARANORMAL STATUS (or, How To Meaningfully Interact With Those YouTube Channels All the Kids Are Tweeting About)

So, honestly, this is what I'm hoping you will do. It will take between 2 and 35 minutes depending on whether you actually watch the vids or not.

Any clever viral/interactive/audience-engagement marketing I might scheme up is a coded attempt to get you to do Exactly This.

For the indie artist/videomaker/content creator, this is the platonic ideal for how a viewer interacts with their videos on youtube. If you are curious about how you can support artist/creators that you like, for free, in no time at all, take this as a case study, a walkthrough.

1.  Start here. Find and click the SUBSCRIBE button that is in the upper left corner of every Youtube video (or sort of near the title on the channel pages). If you don't have a youtube account yet you will be prompted to create one, it is totally free and non-intrusive and will take 30 seconds.***

2.  Click the LIKE button. Copy the link, any link. Share it, embed it, tweet about it. Seriously, you don't even gotta watch it. I mean, we worked hard on it, the episode is there to be enjoyed, but don't let some convoluted sense of "I must watch the entire video before validating it with viral shares and mentions" hold you up from just pimping that link everywhere. Write it on the wall of your office building's bathroom. Email it to HuffPost. Text it to your cat. Paranormalstatus.com.



The episode is arranged with a certain narrative delicacy (if I do say so m'self), but if you just wanna know what happens, I can happily spoil it for you. The high points of this episode are Dave getting drunk and singing a variant of "God Save the Queen" and a colorful dream sequence with a terrifying/satirical cliffhanger.

Go to episode 2 to catch up on some plot points. There is an amusing Sadako gag and a tender death scene that will come up again later in the arc of the series.


3.  Like-button everything. Comment on something. If you don't like something about this whole endeavor, comment on that. Create traffic. (The goal of every web-based thing is to create traffic and go viral, that is, the exact opposites of your goals in real life, haha.)**

Detour to click/view the gag reel, the gratuitous wrestling video (there's only a touch of actual wrestling in it, but a lot of charmingly posh British giggling), or this somewhat clever meta-trailer on my personal channel. Subscribe to channel dommah! too, while you're here.

Click on Episode 1, it's the pilot, so it has the most expositional lag, yes, some questionable cinematography, yes, yet you will still find moments to enjoy the buffoonish heroism of Dave and the sardonic radiance of Zoe and Elle. And again, plot points that will come up again later. And if you comment identifying the characters and context of the Dark Knight Returns reference in this episode, you win a 2012 ComicCon bag full of goodies. It's a rolling easter-egg contest that as yet no one has been nerdy enough to win. :)

4.  And by gum, you can even click on an ad, because in theory that turns into $$$, of which some trickles down to the artist (me & the POO crew). You are obligated to buy nothing, yet your friend/video-creator/artist gets rewarded. Kind of an awesome deal, right?

Like this playlist, where I will maintain a curated "best of" all Paranormal Status videos, maximized for entertainment like a circus routine. This is after all, at base, not about money or fancy filmmaking (or consistent camerawork, to be sure). It's about trying to make you laugh.

And then there's our facebook page, and supposedly it is good when people like that.**

5.  If somehow you have read this far, you may as well also follow @dommah @thorhulkcritic and @phearchannel on twitter, and enjoy my 140-character bursts of smile-causing sarcastic musings.

And really, that's it. Thank you!

***This is really important because YouTube success or failure (I mean, nothing really fails on YouTube, but some things are more successful than others) is judged in hard numbers of subscriptions and viewcounts. So if you just wanna click on the thing continuously while it's in the background of your monitor while you're doing other important things...that would be awesome.

**It's cool if you like the things on Facebook, but keep in mind this key difference: FB just tracks and uses your input as part of their Freaking Massive Marketing Data Collecting Machine, whereas, YouTube looks at that data and actually passes on some of its profits to its content creators. Not in a way that it's like they're giving away money, exactly, but on principle, Youtube rewards the people who, you know, make the shit that is on Youtube. No artist ever gets paid off people liking them on Facebook. (SUM-UP POINT: do the FB thing anyway, but the best thing to do on FB is share, share, share.)

Affirmative Action, Asian Dating, and Vomit. (OR, Why Being an Asian American Guy Still F**king Sucks.)

I was going to write this piece anyway, but now it is partially in response to this idiot.

The social highlight of my last week was when a pretty girl vomited on me in a karaoke room. Without going into the whole story, I was trying to get friendly with her without realizing exactly how many drinks she'd had, and then she got sad, and I'm like OK maybe you just need someone to hold you, and that was fine, and then her warm and wet weeping on my shoulder suddenly became warm and wet regurgitated shrimp all over my clothes. I am not exaggerating at all when I say it was the social highlight of the week. Also, it was the kind of thing that makes you look at all the couplings and relationships and sexual congress going on in the world and question, "how does that ever even happen?"

Being Asian-American and male is definitely the worst thing you can possibly be, ethnically, in the dating universe. People say, "It's all in your head." Asian-American males themselves say to "GET OVER IT," and do, by obnoxious overcompensation. But let's get back to my head. It is not all in my head. Would you tell a black man that police brutality is all in his head? Police brutality is, of course, much more terrible than not having a date. But the phenomena are equally true. The statement that a black guy is more likely to be in trouble from the police because of institutional racism is AS TRUE as the statement that an Asian-American guy is more likely to have no warm body to wake up to in the morning because of institutional racism.

Also, it's data in the frakking census. As a percentage of their populations, the least-married kinds of people in America are Asian-American guys and African-American women. I think it's safe to say that there is a whole network of institutional racisms contributing to the plight of that second group. With Asian-American guys, it's only one umbrella-able problem, which is not Asian-specific, but in any case it's that Women Like Trouble.

Me and my nongirlfriendfriend A., rocking the
Girl's Got Priorities Goggles.

Asian-American gals have plenty of good psychological reasons for preferring not to get with Asian-American guys, having to do with patriarchy in Asian nations ("I thought I just got away from that..."), sense of self, their brothers, their fathers, and also that America is still run by white people (give or take our embattled president). By the way, none of these good reasons are articulated well or truthfully by this girl (who, again, is either a moron or some sort of troll for the website, or both). ALL gals like an Asian guy if he's Totally Fuckin HOT, of course, but on average will hook up with the indifferent loud white dude over a normal Asian guy who is totally devoted to them.  Or the sensitive hipster who is not patriarchal and had the most amazing experience in Thailand, you should go on a retreat there (because that's what self-aware people do, go on retreats to find themselves in other countries...WTF).

There was a point here...OH, it's that I have no luck with chicks. NO, it's actually that women, like most humans, have a streak in them that craves danger, and will do things for "fun" that are totally against their long-term self-interest. Asian-American dudes, generally speaking, do not convey the sense of Trouble that women like. As the PUAs will tell you, there are good strong biological reasons for this trouble-seeking (the system works better, if ruthlessly, in the lion community), which invariably causes women to get with guys who are angry, abusive, and wrapped up in destructive self-obsessions of their own. Hence the endless cycle of "OMG I just want to find a nice man OMG who is this loser I've shacked up with."

If you haven't observed this in the real world, it is because you live on Vulcan.

The thing is, most guys feel entitled to sex. Women often confuse this sense of entitlement with confidence and are attracted to it, although entitlement has nothing to do with confidence (but it has everything to do with behaving like a douchebag). People of color are generally attuned to the reality that one is not entitled to things, and SOME (Some not all!**) Asian American dudes, being where they izzat on the spectrum, realize that one is not entitled to love; it happens if you are terribly lucky, but there is no natural law that says you can't die alone.

(Level of American-ness is important here: Asian Asian dudes from Asia have as big a sense of entitlement as any guy anywhere; they are all Alpha over there.)

Asian American guys overcompensate for their perceived disadvantage by acting Bro-ish: angry, loud, swaggery, selfish, fighting for position. OK, some of them are like this naturally. The ones who are just putting on a performance of that, ladies, that is all your fault. If you responded to the other thing, we would act the other way. 

....So anyway, that's basically what I said to the girl last Thursday night.

She responded with something like "Asian blahblahglah BROTHER blahblahgah."

And then she started crying on my shoulder.

And then she threw up on me.

Good times.

....This ended up having not much to do with this affirmative action case, except to say: people who oppose affirmative action like to point out that if it were not for affirmative action, the percentage of black students would drop dramatically (at the few schools that currently have affirmative action) to reflect the "true" makeup of qualified students. And to that I say: How could that possibly be a good thing? Don't we have affirmative action in the first place to slightly make up for THAT OTHER FLAWED SYSTEM WHICH HELPED SOME PEOPLE BUT HAD A FEW KINKS IN IT UH SLAVERY? But by all means, if the plan for a better America is to clamp down on those unfairly college-bound black people, do it, level that playing field. I will go to another county and find myself. 

**Some not all! Some not all! Not racist not racist not racist!

20 Thoughts While Watching a Chinese Bootleg of The Avengers 37 Times Over the Weekend

1. The imperfections in Whedon's writing make his work even more wonderful in this soulless focus-grouped time. Some jokes are contrived, the Galaga reference is super-dated, and no one, even evil aliens, should use the actual phrase, "cowering wretches." But the glitches, to be sure, are human mistakes, not marketing miscalculations, and through them you can see the mind at work, a mind tasked with this inconceivable action/comedy/sci-fi/fantasy/origin/ensemble/mass appeal/fanboy problem of a story. And he clearly wants it to work.

2. Yeah, I'm watching a Chinese bootleg. So what, Marvel? I bought about 300 Avengers-related comics with cash money, back in the day when you were almost bankrupt, before you were a money-making juggernaut. I read those paper comics until they were falling apart at the binding, all so I could grow up to be a resource of Thanos information for my other friends who have real lives with girls and babies. I bought a single issue of A vs. X at ComicCon, just so I could feel one in my hand. So really, you can spot me the cost of one DVD.

3. Avengers could conceivably surpass Star Wars as the greatest nerd myth. And by myth I don't mean "something that Kari Byron busts." Star Wars reached a generation through a no-duh formula of heroic myth and archetypal characters within an exciting robust universe. Lord of the Rings and Harry Potter sort of have this, but are too stuck in sword and sorcery tropes to grab us with that freeing leap of imagination. The Avengers bring the Game of Throniness via Thor, but they also bring the sexy technology, modern-world intrigue, and most importantly, characters with rich, tactile histories, embedded in them by crafty writers over generations. (Harry Potter, expansive and voluminous though he is, was basically invented last Tuesday after a quick read through the Dungeons and Dragons Beginner's Manual. True fact.)

4. The relationship between Iron Man and Hulk is really cute. Savvy tweaking of the "Rich sexy guy coaches the loser egghead" bromance motif.

5. Scarlett Johansson does a very good job. She is with Maggie Q and Sigourney Weaver on a very short list of women actors who make you believe they're going into a fight with something at stake. (As opposed to say, Jennifer Garner, who aims a gun like she's deciding which latte to order.) Also nice is how Black Widow fights in a thigh-intensive style both Spider-y and Emma Peel-y. I can't say if she is speaking Russian well, but with that throaty voice she could sound good speaking Ewok. Leering aside, compare, for example, her part in that idiotic Island movie or even in Iron Man 2 with her tactically saucy work here; it's the difference between sexy and sexualized.

6. If the story is going to go on, they are gonna need a lot more out of Captain America. Cap is often kind of a dud on his own, and has always shined best as a guest star (since he is, at his most poignant, a kind of guest star in his own country). Hopefully before the next movie comes out, someone involved will read Daredevil #233, in which Cap shows up and is sullen and conflicted in an appealing Ryan Gosling-ish kind of way.

7. The Hulk is used to better effect here than in any Hulk iteration in Hulk history, a testament to Whedon's cleverness. Ruffalo's strained voice is a poem for every quiet man with a monster inside.

8. Thor...has always sucked, and within that limitation, Chris Hemsworth distinguishes himself just by maintaining the accent and gruffing out a few charming grunts and bellows. I mean, you do believe he is Thor, whatever Thor is.

9.  I like how Hawkeye spends a lot of time recovering his arrows, as if to mollify the funless people who will rightly point out that he shoots three thousand arrows out of his slim little Sharper Image quiver.

10. Iron Man is played by Downey Jr. with marvelous, uh, consistency. He's the Han Solo that could make the Supassing-Star-Wars thesis work. "Hey...it's me."

11. Whedon's sole weakness in his nerd storytelling skills is a penchant for generic mushy-faced alien/demons/villains that are underdesigned and no one cares about too much. We saw it in Buffy and in Astonishing X-Men (come on, we really needed to go to that whole planet with the skill-saw-fist guys?) It's fine here, since, as per Thanos, a lot of Avengers villains actually look like that.

12. That one big shot of zooming around the city, lingering on all the different Avengers fighting, is the greatest shot of the CGI-Replaces-Everything era. It's about as good as the Millennium Falcon flying through that swarm of TIE fighters in Return of the Jedi, which was the craziest shot of that SFX era.

13. Everyone, with the possible exception of Captain America (who, to be sure, is a medium actor in an unexciting role) gives a generous performance. Generous to us nerds. (Well, okay, Cap does make nerd boner with that "Got a suit?" line, but apart from that he's usually on the verge of exposing the invisible wires.) Downey Jr., Renner, and Johansson are all pretty big Hollywood people and have every reason to just put on the costume and phone it in, yet they all seem convincingly invested in, uh, saving the city from aliens. (If you need a template for "phoned in," meaning "functional but lifeless," see the performance of every actor in every X-Men film except for Hugh Jackman, Patrick Stewart, and Ellen Page) A few false notes come from Samuel L. Jackson, who is probably just tired from being in a thousand movies.

14. They should have used the ubiquitous blue metal mesh from Spiderman and Superman's new outfits on Captain America, who actually wears chainmail in the comics, yet his movie outfit looks like it's made of felt or something. Weird.

15. It's classy, the festishy lingering in extreme close-up over the gear of the Avengers in the end credits. Someone definitely put a lot of work into making those practical props, and to both them and us gadget-heads, it's all important, the stitching on Cap's shield straps, the gears inside Hawkeye's arrowhead-dispenser, the shape of the cylinders on Black Widow's bracelets.

16. Whedon's appreciation for every movie that nerds like (from Star Trek to LOTR) maintains the movie at the perfect temperature of a little silly, but not stupefyingly stupid. That's all we want, Michael Bay, Brett Ratner, Zack Snyder. A movie that does not make us stupider.

17. On the other hand, as evident from small moments like Black Widow's innate terror at the threat of the Hulk emerging, or Iron Man's basic inability to shut up, Whedon is still clearly a WRITER, that is, is a guy who watches how people act in the real world. As opposed to a hack sheltered Ivy Leaguer who paraphrases other things that have made money. (This one thing is so important to the health of the art form that I will surely weep.)

18. Fanservicey references that I like: Star Wars, in the sound design for the Speeder Bike chase scene. For gamers: Ultimate Alliance fusion attack combo move with Cap and Iron Man. Bruce Banner wandering solo around in the countryside like the guy in the Hulk TV show used to do.

19. "Watchmen" could have been as satisfying as the Avengers if that Zack Snyder guy (who is now directing the ultimate unrelate-able stiff, Superman) knew one thing about human interaction (to be fair, he does know exactly one thing about the human eye's interaction with boobs and muscles). Marvel has done really well employing directors like Favreau and Branagh, who are actorly and interested in the human component of the craft. DC has been fucking up by using film-school types who are mainly interested in atmosphere (Snyder) and pretentious ideas (Nolan). Yeah, the Batman movies were good but they were like the movies we need, not the movies we deserve when we live to die to become the hero to our own legend of our fall from darkness and yadda yadda bridge explodes.

20. Larry Hama, a great comics writer, said at this year's ComicCon (re: G.I. Joe), "the fantasy is that Snake Eyes will come and get you." He was talking about camaraderie, which is the essential comic-book fantasy. It's not really about having unnatural power, which is just an extrapolation of every introvert's unexpressed id problem (dig deep into a nerd and you find that he does, in fact, already believe he has mutant powers, usually that of superior intelligence). The truly seductive fantasy is that you, an ordinary person, matter enough that someone with unnatural power will arrive and intervene in your time of disaster. (They have also built a few religions on this premise, I gather.) This is why we read superhero comics; to imagine that timely teammate, our ideal self projected, a friend who can fly to whereever you are.