Cameron has tagged me for the “five things you don’t know about me” meme. Who am I to say no?
Writing this list was surprisingly difficult – there’s been a lot of trivial stuff about my life I’ve already blogged about over the past five years but have since gone off-line. And while 90% of my life is an open book, what is there left to share to all of the Internet, knowing that friends, co-workers and family members will be reading this as well? Needless to say, here we go:
- I come from a military family. To anyone who’s ever met me or seen a photograph of me in person, this seems like the most ridiculous concept ever, but it’s true. My paternal grandfather fought under Chiang Kai-Shek, fought the Communists but lost, retreating to Taiwan. My father served in the ROC navy before our family immigrated to the United States some time during the early 70’s.
- I wanted to be an actor in high school. I was really into it Freshman year; I was in the high school improvisation troupe, my first (and last) play was as De Pinna in our high school version of You Can’t Take It With You. Shortly after that play, my father decided I needed to take more computer courses, pulled me out of all my extra-curricular classes related to performing and made me take a junior college course in Pascal, not that I’m bitter or anything. (Some trivia: also in that play was a senior named Adam Sessler. Thirteen years later, he’s now the host of a little TV show called X-Play. And me? I’m writing this blog entry. Such is my life.)
- If you already knew this fact, consider yourself an old-school LYD reader: Blogs got big around the same time as Survivor, so I used to do blog versions of popular reality game shows, where the winners would win real money. SurvivorBlog was the first game I did, and I also did a version of The Mole called PuppetMaster, which got profiled in Entertainment Weekly. (More trivia: SixApart’s Mena Trott had applied as a contestant for PuppetMaster, but didn’t make the cut. I’m still kicking myself in the ass over that one.) I would LOVE to do another blog game some day, but knowing how blog-savvy people are nowadays this would be a logistical nightmare.
- Most American universities seem to have an abundance of a cappella groups. UC Davis didn’t have such a group. Me and three other guys DID, however, create a horrible R&B group called Unrealized Potential, where I would play the piano and harmonize. Think “Boyz II Men,” except really, really not good – I think we spent more time making sure our matching vests matched, rather than making sure we could actually hit the notes. We ended up singing “On Bended Knee” and Jodeci’s “Lately” at a dorm talent show, where we were promptly laughed off the stage. I think we did, anyway. I have a tendency to block things out from memory.
- Now that I think about it, I guess most people don’t know I used to play the piano. Like all Asian kids, piano lessons were forced upon me when I was four years old; I took classical piano lessons until Junior High school, and then “rebelled” in my piano playing by playing jazz piano and accompanying a church choir in high school. A part of me wishes I still kept up with the piano – I haven’t sat down at a piano bench in years – but I can still read sheet music, albeit awkwardly.
I’ll update this blog post soon as to who I’ll tag. God, I’m so late on this. Hopefully they get the memo.
Yes, the meme says to tag five people. I’m a rebel.
Strange, although I’m still in high school..
(”replies” to yours)
1 – I actually have no idea what kind of family I come from – my dad says that we come from a money family – but hell, which Asian family isn’t obsessed with money?
2 – I wanted to be an actress from my first year of highschool to the third, this is when I realised that people thought I looked like Cho Chang from the Harry Potter films and kept looking at me weirdly. Obviously, I got paranoid.
3 – .. new reader.
4 – I totally didn’t understand that one.
5 – I can remember when I actually wanted to play the piano when I was like five but the piano teacher wouldn’t let me.. so I ended up starting at eight or something and then we quit and got a better piano teacher who rocks. Really. I think I’m one of the few Asians who totally bum classical music.
I can’t remember if I started reading you and that’s how I ended up following the SurvivorBlogs, or if I found SurvivorBlog and then started reading you. Either way, there’s still a few of you I follow from there and a few more who have disappeared in the ensuing years that I’m curiouos about.
Just writing that makes me feel old, even though I’m only a few months older than you.
I remember the Survivor Blogs. I also used to have a terrible crush on Adam Sessler, so much so that (for a while) I had a little website devoted to him until the crush wore off and someone else asked for the domain, starting a whole legal thing because he was impersonating Sessler online. I actually got a single e-mail from Adam Sessler, but since the crush thing had sort of worn off and I am perportedly an adult, I didn’t make too much of a deal.
I tried to do piano lessons as a kid, but there were…complications. I still have my piano, though.
Thanks for sharing.
And, in my experience, all of the best gay guys are in search of a really great pianist!
[...] I wasn’t officially ‘tagged’ for this, I was only inspired by a post on Little.Yellow.Different. [...]
i guess i count as a veteran lyd reader! my boyfriend was even tagged to be on the puppetmaster game, but, to my great consternation, didn’t follow up.
if only he had, i might have had a reason to think i could write to you as if i knew you.
Don’t forget about Blind Date Blog– the last blog game you did that was rife with scandal, betrayal and strange, strange people. But hell, it changed my life for the better, so it’s all good. Looking at all the “scandal” shows now showing on VH1 and MTV, I’d say you had (and have) a great pulse on what’s really *pop* with pop culture. Maybe you should try setting up something with Yahoo!. C’mon, can it be any worse than MySpace?
Now that you mention it, I guess I must be an old-school LYD reader too – I remember the days of SurvivorBlog. iiStix was how I first found LYD – I think I was in the middle of high school back then – now I’m graduating college, so thanks for the reminder that I’m getting old
.
Anyways, keep up the great work: I’ve loved LYD since I was a mere tot of an internet user, and I hope you’ll keep on blogging for years to come!
I remember SurvivorBlog! So I guess that makes me an old-school lyd reader. (Been reading for a long time now, since I was an awkward gaysian boy in Puerto Rico. Now I’m an awkward gaysian man.)
I absolutely refuse to play piano. I never got the lessons, and I refuse to play “Chopsticks” for crowds.
Ah, I remember #3!
Those were such carefree days, when blogs were innocent and green…
Bring back the good ol’ days of blogging!
I didn’t know #1 and #2, but if you had pursued #2, then #4 wouldn’t have happened and then that would be a total bummer for me. I still think it’s not too late to pursue the #2 thing.
It’s never too late to get into acting. You could always do community theater. Who knows, there’s even a slight chance that you may meet some gay dudes in community theater.
1. completely shocked. YOU? Military family? Seriously?
2. haha. I was seriously in the same play. But of course, being one of the few asian girls in the drama program at the lily-white Mater Dei High School… I was Rheba. The sassy, black maid livin’ in sin with her boyfriend. I based my character off the Jefferson, thankyouverymuch.
3. HOORAY! I’m an old school reader!! I TOTALLY remember Survivorblog and PuppetMaster was AWESOME!
4. Hold on, wait. Stop. I can’t breathe. I. Can’t. Stop. Laughing. I’m trying to picture an acapella group at UCDavis. Go on with your bad self.
5. Piano + Asian kid = rite of passage. Ha ha. I don’t know what my parents were thinking when they made me play piano, violin and flute. And of course I rebelled by giving up everything to play sports. Of course, I was the bad daughter.
I still tell people how cool PuppetMaster was and I’m still surprised that no one has tried to copy your blog games to take advantage of the awareness of blogs.
I guess I’m pretty old school, I discovered your blog through a friend I went to Gay Day at Magic Mountain. Margaret Cho performed and did her Nuprin joke and my friend quickly turned to me and asked, “Have you seen that website, Little, Yellow Different?”
In terms of the science you dropped, I think #1 was something I actually did not know.
And some questions, because I feel like whining in your comments:
1. Why did I just find this from you just *now*?
2. Why doesn’t Technorati update my link counts?
3. Why doesn’t WordPress do very good WordPress to WordPress pingymajiggys when someone drops my links in a post?
4. And more importantly, WHY do *I* of all people not have answers to these freakin’ questions?
5. Why are you trying to get me to divulge something I shouldn’t on my blog? I am under self-imposed gag order. You evil man.
those were the days…
hey ernie… the old MeFi posts about your games are still around…
SurvivorBLOG 1
SurvivorBLOG 2
Puppetmaster
and another blast from the past…
SurvivorCAM 2 contestants invade Metafilter, spawning a snortfest by the more polite members of Mefi.
good times.
OMG! Iplayed Mrs Kirby.
“Really, Tony, this is MOST embarassing!”