little. yellow. different. A weblog by Ernie Hsiung

The Gay Bloggies, part 2

I’m competing in the Gay Bloggies this year. It’s in the form of a webgame. A webgame where people vote.

More than a year ago I was nominated for the the same awards, similar to the Weblog Awards that are announced every year at the SXSW conference except with categories like “Best porn star,” “Sexiest Queer candy” and sponsored by a bunch of gay porn all-male adult entertainment websites. I didn’t win the “Best Gay Asian” category, and after a year of therapy and mild sedatives to dull away the thought of being the “WORST GAY ASIAN EVER,” I’ve moved on with my life.

When they invited me to join the contest, I hesitated. Blogging now is very different than when the first community of bloggers developed in 2000 - it was a time before 9/11, corporate blogging or social networks like MySpace gave non-computer nerds an internet presence. Nowadays, it feels like people are more self-aware about putting things up on the Internet to reveal to the entire world, and rightfully so - the blogs I skim across now seem to have blog titles like “15 WAYS TO MAKE MORE MONEY OFF YOUR BLOG” or “20 WAYS TO EFFECTIVELY ENGAGE YOUR BLOG READERSHIP.” (And yes, there is a little hypocrisy in writing that since creating 8Asians and dabbling in corporate blogging. Thank you for noticing.) Gay blogs in particular seem to be hyper-glossified (thanks for the word, pk) with posts about celebrity gossip or targeted ads for gay cruises or HIV medication. Hey, I’m a blogger that wouldn’t mind getting paid, but that doesn’t necessarily mesh with my vibe, either.

Then I found out they were offering $2,000 for the winner. And subscriptions to gay porn sites, but mostly $2,000. Two thousand dollars is also the answer to the question, “How much money will Ernie sell out to compete in a contest sponsored by what is, essentially, a gay porn portal?” Ding.

So here I am, competing against a former go-go boy and a porn star and a bunch of guys with really good abs and Dan from The Real World: Miami. (A sidenote: Dan actually sent me a really nice e-mail to me, saying that he called into a radio show and was going to “wipe my face on the floor.” Which is really awesome when you think about it - it’s kinda like Omarosa from the Apprentice popping out of the television “The Ring” style and telling you that you totally suck. Kinda.)

I feel like I’m probably not going to win, but it’s an experience I’ll take full advantage of. It’s been a while since I’ve been motivated to write on a regular basis, and I’ll probably repost some of the stuff I’ve written there on LYD as well. You can visit the contest here, but a word of warning - while my content will be tame for the most part, I can’t gaurantee the same about the banner ads and the links and my competition. (In other words, quite possibly NOT SAFE FOR WORK. Alas.)

Che’nelle (and other urban artists)

If LYD seems sparse (it always seems sparse, doesn’t it?) I’ve been posting on a bunch of other blogs lately. While I’ll link or cross-post about my other blogging endeavors in due time, I recently wrote a post on 8Asians.com about Asians and Asian Americans in urban music - all three of them.

What you call a dictator, I call a Halloween costume

In case anyone was curious as to who I was for Halloween: thanks to my flatmate Laurie, I was North Korean dictator Kim Jong Il. Sometimes, being a chubby Asian man growing out his hair has its privileges.

Maybe next year I’ll go as Frank Chu.

This is how I now spend Friday nights

Tomorrow, as part of a double date, I am going to see High School Musical: On Ice.

I’m mostly (okay, completely) going for for the company of my friends than anything else, but let’s go over that previous sentence again: I am going to see High School Musical. On motherfucking ice. Seriously, how old am I again? What gender am I?

My first experience watching High School musical was actually when I was in Canada, staying at my friend Ritchie’s house. We trekked to Vancouver’s version of an electronic store and Ritchie bought the award-winning Disney telefilm, along with a copy of Step Up. I bought World of Warcraft: The Burning Crusade. While we were waiting in line we confirmed that he was the heterosexual one and I wasn’t, just to make sure. After popping the DVD in, I learned the following tidbits of information:

• The movie is a “modern retelling of Romeo and Juliet,” except the Montagues are played by dancing 5′7″ basketball players and the Capulets are way too attractive members of the Scholastic Decathalon. As someone who was an active participant in 7th grade Mathletes, I can tell you with a fair amount of confidence that I was never that pretty. Also, NO ONE DIES, THUS MAKING IT NOTHING LIKE ROMEO AND JULIET.
• I fully realize that if I were still in high school, I would be imagining myself in my cafeteria, belting out songs about sticking to the status quo while 300 of my classmates would sing and dance around me. Mind you, this would be a fantasy high school because if it were my actual high school I would probably sing eight bars before someone would come up and stab me in the jaw. Thank god I’m not watching this ice show as a teenager, because then my dream sequence would somehow integrate a triple sow cow Salchow and to have a mental image with all the singing and dancing and stabbing? That makes even me uncomfortable.

If anything, it makes me realize that I’m getting old. In twenty years, I’ll probably be blogging about Matlock The Musical: On Ice. This concerns me.

Haircutting

For the first eighteen years of my life, I had a salad-bowl haircut. Worried about kids teasing me at school, I would explain this to my father. His response: to take portions of my bangs and cut them an inch or two higher so that my head would look like a fucked up city skyline. In a couple of weeks, the hair would grow straight across the eyebrows, and kids would make fun of me again. Lather, rinse, repeat.

But ever since I’ve returned from Asia, I have yet to get a haircut. Longer hair is fine in Hong Kong and Tokyo, because it’s cool to look like the a Final Fantasy character or explodey orange jumpsuit guy from Dragonball Z. Here notsomuch, but a mixture of laziness and apathy and hairstylist conveniently breaking their ankles have prevented me from going to a stylist.

To surprising results. My mom, of course, loves the hair.

Mom: You look like you came back from Hong Kong.
Ernie: Mom, I did come back from Hong Kong.
Mom: But it looks like you live there. I like the hair, makes you look SMART.

I love how my mom uses the word “smart” the way others use the word “handsome.”

My homosexual friends think otherwise, however.

Ernie: Hey guys, how-
Friend: No. You need a haircut. You’d look cuter with the hair short.
Ernie: Seriously? My friends and co-workers like it, though.
Friend: Where do your friends live? Where do YOU live, for that matter?
Ernie:The Mission.
Friend: EXACTLY. Girls in the Mission all look like Velma from Scooby Doo. Fuck, the boys do, too.

Okay, that last line was slightly embellished. That being said, I’m in a dilemma. Keeping the hair long, while popular, gives me flashbacks to the fifth grade and most likely is a contributing factor to me not getting laid pursuing a healthy relationship. On the flip side, it makes me look “smart” and only have to change my entire wardrobe to properly fit into my neighborhood. What to do?

On Holiday

On Wednesday, I’m hopping on a plane and taking a week and a half trip to Hong Kong and Tokyo. Nothing work-related, just a personal vacation with my friends Ank and Belinda, in another attempt to cross off more items on my “places I want to visit before I die” list. (If you’re in the area, drop me a line at ernie at this domain address.)

To be honest, I’ve been so preoccupied with life stuff that it still hasn’t really hit me yet that in less than 48 hours, I’ll be on a airplane crossing the Pacific. Given my luck, I will probably be sitting in economy class between a family of eight: seven of those eight family members will probably be two year olds, and if I’m lucky, they’ll be throwing temper tantrums or crapping in their pants or slurping on the soup noodles they brought from home or a combination of them all. Also, I’m visiting in the middle of typhoon season. LOVE IT.

I’m going to be visiting some aunts and cousins on my mother’s side of the family, relatives I’ve never met before now. My mom has given me bottles of multi-vitamins to give to them, which seems to be the universal gift of what someone from America gives to family members in Asia. I’m not sure what to really expect, or what they’re expecting, if anything at all - I imagine them waiting at a train station or a restaurant or wherever we’re going to meet and expecting to meet some 6′3″ Harvard grad that enjoys studying medicine and playing concertos as a hobby and then being disappointed that they come across me: a short, tubby, hella loud, sometimes hyper awkward American with a bad Mandarin accent and an awkward haircut.

Holy shit, I hope this doesn’t turn out to be a fucked up version of the last chapter from the Joy Luck Club.

Oh yeah, I’ll also be visiting Tokyo, where I hope to find Pochacco postcards, anime tentacle porn, or anime tentacle Pochacco porn.

My mind is scattered and I’ve been so focused on work, side projects and adjusting to life in San Francisco that I’m looking forward to this trip - where I can just concentrate on what’s in front of me, whether it’s the Hong Kong skyline, shopping for a bunch of pirated DVDs perfectly legal entertainment-based media or even reading a book on the flight there. (That being said, if a two year old kid pukes on me on the plane, heads will roll.)

Stigma

Last week at a coffee shop, I had a chance to meet up with Rebecca from Hyphen magazine to share my experiences growing up with my sister, who is bipolar schizophrenic. Rebecca is writing an article for the magazine and is still looking for for people for interview, so if you grew up in a similar situation and are comfortable being interviewed, she’s looking for your stories, and you might find the experience strangely cathartic:

Do you have an Asian American relative who has struggled with their mental health?

Have you yourself been confused or afraid in trying to find them help? Frustrated by the mental health system? Felt alone? Worried about what this means for your own future and that of your family?

My own mother has struggled with schizophrenia for a very long time, and I would love to talk with you and share stories. I am interested in hearing what challenges you faced, both emotionally and in finding care for your relative, and how you are dealing with them.

Please email me at rebecca[at]hyphenmagazine.com.

Best wishes,
Rebecca

To be honest, this was probably the first in-depth, face-to-face conversation I’ve ever had with another Asian person who’s had a close family member suffer from a mental illness. There’s a stigma with mental illness with Asian immigrants and Asian Americans - so much so, that when Rebecca told me about specific support groups that exist in San Francisco relating to mental illness support groups that communicate in both Chinese and English, my first thought was “why do they have the luxury of talking about their feelings? I had to figure this shit out all on their own.” Which, of course, is a horrible thing to think, but it’s true. I’m thirty years old, and the actions of my sister have shaped me into the person I am today, for better or for worse, and there’s not much that can really be done at this point, except vent about it to the Internet if she freaks out.

I kinda laughed off the suggestion on attending one of the support sessions - the weblog is my therapy, I joked, and I’m a little worried that the meetings will be a little “Ya Ya Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants”-ish, but I might give it a go and see if there’s anything useful for me. We’ll see.

YAY A CRYSTALINE STORK WHA?!

My friends Jen and Paris reminded me that I forgot my friends baby shower gift at their house. Oops, my bad.

Now, Mogues & Christine, if you read this: I’m totally stoked that you’re having a child, seriously! I’m completely happy for you, and wish all the good health on you guys and the baby. And I don’t need a parting gift, forreals, I’ve known you guys for years and years.

But seriously, what am I supposed to do with this? Is it, like, a coaster? A paperweight? Does this go with the other baby shower figurines I’m supposed to have? Do I put this on my end table where all my gay friends can ooh and aah on the baby I’m not having? I mean, I could use the mirrored base to snort lines of cocaine, if I wanted to. (NOTE TO CO-WORKERS: NOT THAT I WOULD EVER DO THAT.)

Paris also remarked that from far, this photo looks like I’m smoking a crystal doobie.

In an effort to avoid blogging the same content in two different places, I send you over to a blog post I recently wrote for 8 Asians: Six Asian Reality Stars that Make Me Cringe.

Not Quite the Mission Hipster

After two weeks here in the Mission, I think I’m giving illusions that I’m slightly more settled in San Francisco now. Some furniture needs to be sold and I need to somehow buy a drawer to fit all my clothes, but if you walked into my charming, Full House-like Victorian unit, you would say, “my, Ernie’s place looks quaint and charming” and be done with it.

But I still kinda feel like a stranger in a strange land when it comes to life in the Mission, an area of San Francisco that’s filled with hipsters and gang-bangers and crackheads and Vice Presidents of Product Development, all within close quarters, doing their best to ignore each other. Like, I somehow need to shred all my preppy tight clothes that I’m too fat and self-conscious to fit into, as well as lose my awkward baggy clothes and fraternity t-shirts I’ve had since my college days. In 2000. From what I’ve seen from people walking around the area, I kinda need a rock pullover and a lip ring, lose the oversized cargoes for a pair of those weird fucked up acid-washed jeans and a haircut like the lead singer from OK Go.

Basically, I have to look like an overweight heroin addict from the 1970’s to fit in this neighborhood. How the fuck am I going to pull that off? When someone I see around this neighborhood wears a Fidel Castro hat, they look like a hipster. When I wear one, I look like a communist.

I don’t fit in the neighborhood yet. But then again, it’s only been two weeks. And I’d still rather live here than in Fremont.