What I talk about when I talk about love, and facial hair

               In case you were wondering, I’m still at that McDonalds on Prospect.  And in case you were wondering, I may or may not have a crush on the manager with the long, dark, wavy hair.  She’s a manager, so she gets to wear a fancy white dress shirt rather than the boring blue Polos given to the non-managerial staff.  She has a head of black hair that’s definitely been treated with one of those curling iron things, which incidentally are ridiculous.  You take a giant waffle iron and burn your hair so it stays straight.  Actually, that’s a straightener.  I have no clue what a curling iron is, but I’m sure it works on a similar principle and I’m sure it’s equally ridiculous. 

               I’m not complaining, though, given that this mysterious “curling iron” makes your hair look like the cresting and breaking of waves on a balmy Atlantic shore rather than the boring old uniformity of a stagnant pond.  The pond in this analogy is straight hair.  Anyway, this mysterious McDonalds manager’s hair is definitely of the surfable variety.  She looks like Catherine Zeta Jones from The Mask of Zorro except wielding a deep fryer instead of a rapier.  But alas, we can never be.  Star-crossed lovers doomed not to tragic, Shakespearean, mutually assured destruction but to not go out.  And it’s all because of my facial hair.    

               There aren’t too many things I’m bitter about.  I would say in general I’m not resentful.  Most of the time I don’t hold grudges for long.  Normally I’m a perfect picture of half-asian demurity.  Polite and mild mannered to a fault, respectful of authority, and deferent to age.  But I’m bitter about my facial hair.    

               I think being half-white, half Chinese, and fully racially ambiguous made me especially conscious of ways my appearance and behavior diverged from the cultural norm.  I remember in third grade I realized that kids were wearing long, knee-length shorts while I wore faded jean shorts that only went halfway down my thigh.  I immediately realized my wardrobe had to change to fit in, so change it did.  My M.O.—don’t stand out, keep your head down, blend in, do whatever it takes to ingratiate yourself to the native inhabitants. 

               So when I got to high school, I noticed a strange thing: my male contemporaries started growing weird, moss-like clumps on their chins and cheeks.  Wanting to fit in, I checked my reflection each morning for the strange moss to show up on my face.  Days turned into weeks, weeks to months, months to years, years to decades, and I still can grow nothing remotely resembling cool facial hair. 

               I’m half white with at least some polish on my dad’s side.  Polacks are hairy.  I imagine they have to be to survive the frigid arctic climate of Poland.  So I should be hairy.  On the other hand, Chinese people are generally not hairy.  For the most part they don’t grow hair on their chest, arms, legs, or face.  So I shouldn’t grow hair on my chest, arms, legs, or face.  As it is, I’m stuck somewhere in the middle.  About half the usual quadrants for hair growth on my face are devoid of vegetation.  The other quadrants grow a sickly, half-hearted crop.  It’s like my face started to produce a beard but, upon realizing hair growth in such a barren soil was hard work, threw in the towel.  So I’m left with a little bit of scruff here and there.  A weedy patch of hair on my chin.  A couple lonely tufts poking out around the temples.           

     

               In high school I thought the ideal American man was a mix between Indiana Jones and Sean Connery.  And 93% of their status as the ideal man hinged on their facial hair which magically grew, without grooming, into a stylishly trimmed Ryan Gosling half-beard or a Hugh Jackman five o’clock scruff.  Of course you won’t find many Asians who can grow such magnificent facial hair, and so I worry that no one will ever think of a half-Asian as an ideal man.  You know that whole Yellow Fever phenomenon that was popular on the internet a while back?  It’s not just that white guys go for Asian-American girls, it’s that Asian-American girls go for cool facial hair.   

               In my estimation, approximately 93% of male attractiveness is dependent on facial hair growing ability.  Inversely, why is Shia Laboef always cast in roles like his one as the effeminate sidekick to Indiana Jones in the series’ superlative fourth installment, Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull?  Why will Shia Laboef be cute but not hot?  Good looking but not a man? It’s his lack of facial hair. 

               I understand that facial hair isn’t a deal breaker.  I remember this one time there was this girl I had a crush on who told me that “I like guys with a bit of scruff,” and that “if a guy can’t adequately grow facial hair it’s a deal breaker.”  In that case it was a deal breaker. 

               Joan Brumberg, in her book The Body Project, wrote about a series of skin bleaching products targeted towards African-American women.  Brumberg said of one product, Nadinola, that “[Nadinola] claimed not only to light and brighten skin that was ‘dark and unlovely’ but also to loosen, remove, and clear up blackheads and pimples” (Brumberg, 78).  The wide assortment of those skin bleaching products testified to their high demand in the African-American community.  African-American women wanted, using the callous language of these products, to “cure” themselves of their black skin.  They wanted to fit into a racist cultural ideal that associated lightness with beauty. 

     

               Just as African-American women were culturally precluded from being “beautiful” as a result of their skin color, sometimes I think that I can’t be man-beautiful unless I grow a beard.  Us poor Asians and half-asians can never be those archetypal alpha males like Sean Connery or Chuck Norris.  Neither can we become folk singers.  All because of our half-hearted facial hair.  So here we are, Asian-American males, doomed to haunt the hallway between childhood and man-dom, to wait in the antechamber of not-quite-manliness, to reside in the dreaded foyer of erratic or non-existent facial hair,  never quite reaching the goal, never quite getting the ideal scruff.

              

               I was informed by my wise farmer friend during a stint in Bible School in 2008 that the first generation of crossbred, hybrid cows are genetically superior to their normal counterparts.  In cow terms, as my farmer friend explained, that means they have a high meat-to-carcass yield, an above average feed-conversion efficiency, and an increased ability to produce lean, tender meat. 

               When I went to Wikipedia to confirm this startling explanation for my heretofore inexplicable mix of intelligence, good looks, and natural basketball talent, I ran across this page:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Heterosis

               According to Wikipedia, hybrids like me are genetically superior due to our suppression of deleterious recessive alleles from one parent by the dominant alleles of the other.  I haven’t tested my meat-to-carcass yield or feed conversion efficiency, but this theory of Heterosis explains a lot.  I’m pretty sure there's a pick-up line in there somewhere if I ever wanted to woo McDonalds manager Catherine Zeta-Jones.  My half of the conversation would probably go something like this:

“You want to go out?  I’m sure we will produce genetically superior Chinese-White-Hispanic babies due to the suppression of deleterious recessive alleles by our advantageous dominant traits.  You know, it’s like breeding cows with a high meat-to-carcass yield.  But you probably know about that cuz you work at McDonalds.” 

I would go on to qualify my pickup line.            

“No, I’m not calling you a cow.”

Finally, sensing impending doom, I would shout the first thing that came to mind in a frantic effort to salvage my courtship attempt.

“You have surfable hair.”

               As I was leaving, I saw Catherine Zeta Jones sitting at a table near the exit.  She had traded her regal managerial white for regular street clothes.  In the seat across from her was a male friend who looked suspiciously like her significant other.  I kid you not, he had cool facial hair.  I guess we were never meant to be, wavy hair lady, as, despite my superior, hybrid genes, despite all those suppressed deleterious recessive alleles, I still can’t grow a beard.        

2 Fedoras and a large Salad

2 Fedoras and a Large Salad

               My favorite thing about blogging is you can steal with impunity.  You can post sayings, aphorisms, and insights made by really smart dead people on your blog and they can’t sue you for copyright infringement, even if you don’t cite them correctly.  Or don’t cite them at all. 

               So I went to the Mcdonalds on Prospect and Lawrence to scavenge, vulture like, Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird for quotable blog material.  If you’ve ever been to this particularly wonderful McDonalds, you’ll know that it’s probably the fanciest fast food restaurant in existence.  The lobby looks like a recording studio.  There are all these oddly shaped pieces of wood dangling from the ceiling.  In a studio I’m sure these same hanging ornaments would serve some sound absorbent, acoustical purpose, but in McDonalds they just look pretty.  They bought all the furniture at Ikea.  It’s real fancy. 

               Complementing the weird wood ornamentals are the wholesome looking pictures of bisected grapes or stacks of apples with the words *Fresh Fresh Fresh* or *Enjoy Enjoy Enjoy* presented to you in bold font.  These signs, of course, are selling an image to the patrons of the establishment who haven’t seen Super Size Me—McDonalds is a wholesome business that cares deeply about both the physical health (the grapes are fresh) and the spiritual heath (they want you to enjoy the apples) of their patrons. 

               I ordered two squashed cheeseburgers and a sweet tea.  It cost $3.25.  Then I got food poisoning for free. 

               When you go to McDonalds you usually know exactly what you’re getting.  It’s really cheap, high caloric food that is some combination of friend, fatty, sweet, salty, and dead cow.  So I was pleasantly surprised when I went to this Hilton of the Golden Arches.  It had cheap dead cow, fancy décor, a pleasant, and a stimulating cosmopolitan ambience with a balanced fungal schway.         

               This particular McDonalds has a thing for lamps.  If you weren’t paying much attention you might mistake this McDonalds for a lamp wholesale store.  Or Ikea.  There are spotlights nestled into crevices in the ceiling.  Lamps hanging from the ceiling on wires like phosphorescent orchid bulbs.  There an Chinese hanging lanterns.  There are chandeliers.  There are American hanging lanterns.  There are even cylindrical lamps hanging from the wooden sound absorbent ornaments!   It’s pretty weird.  As I was observing those very cylindrical lamps, fedora #1 walked into the room.    

Fedora #1

               Two high school kids sat down at an open table with stools to my left.  One had a guitar.  The other had a fedora.  The guitar kid played a little 6/8 oom pa pa riff on the guitar, then gave it to the fedora kid, who tried his darndest to pay a G chord.  It didn’t really work.  His friend gave him a few pointers on the G.  Fedora kid tried again.  It still didn’t work, so he handed the guitar back to his friend.  Guitar kid had apparently forgotten his fedora at home, for which he was quite upset.  They started singing Carly Rae Jensen’s incredibly catchy Call Me Maybe.  At this point reading was out the window, so I very discreetly directed my ears and eyes in their direction.  They were joined by a posse of High School kids, all presumably from the nearby Prospect High.  This girl who looked exactly like that Hmong girl from Gran Torino grabbed the guitar from fedora-less Freddy (that’s what I imagine his name to be) and played a single note riff in the upper register of the guitar.  Then they left.  Fedora-less Freddy played Eric Hutchinson’s Rock and Roll from the second movie with those sisters whose pants traveled.  Not that I’ve seen it.

Fedora #2

               Fedora #2 was one of three nerdy looking kids bearing laptops and an “Apples to Apples” box.  I was pretty sure the aforementioned box was really a clandestine Magic card carrying case.  But these kids were also being loud and rambunctious high schoolers of a less cool variety than fedora-less Freddy and fedora #1.  Putting down my book in disgust, I very discreetly started eavesdropping.  Because that’s what writers do. 

               You’ve probably seen these kids before.  One of them is short, pudgy, and sallow with a squashed, square face.  One is medium sized, pudgy, and deathly pale.  The final one isn’t discolored in any way but is ridiculously tall.  The tall one has a ponytail.  And a soul patch-goatee combo. 

               It turns out they were planning for the school newspaper.  Later some less nerdy looking kids came through and joined goatee Greg and his friends at the table.  They used fancy words like “inadvertent” and talked about the 2^nd Amendment.  They tricked me!  They were actually nerds all along! 

The Two Reasons People Wear Fedoras

               There are two reasons people wear fedoras.  One is being stranded on a sweltering, treeless desert island with no other shade providing recourse save the fedora to prevent heat stroke.  Of course fedoras don’t exactly provide much shade so you’ll probably die of exposure or starvation anyway.  The second reason is so other people see you wearing a fedora.  The third reason is to die in style on a sweltering, treeless desert island, though it’s unlikely anyone will see your fancy hat wear.    

               People want to be cool.  Even if they’re dying.  So high school kids and Jason Mraz will go on to wear fedoras even though they aren’t Indiana Jones, actors in film noir movies from the 50’s, or bootleggers peddling moonshine during Prohibition. 

The Large Salad

               I was making a left turn out of McDonalds when a car was pulling in.  Inside the car was this Asian lady holding a giant plate groaning under the burden of an equally if not more giant salad in her right hand while forking the greens into her mouth with her left hand.  In the backseat, her cute little daughter stared forward, oblivious to the spectacular salad-driving, juggling unicycling balancing act taking place mere inches away.  The plaza with McDonalds has a number of things.  There's a spa, a piano school, a pizza place, and a Togos so I imagine the girl was being taken to one of these places.  Or maybe they was just going to McDonalds. 

              I am in no way judging salad lady.  I admire her fervor and aplomb.  I envy the energy with which she devoured her tasty greenery.  But let’s look at the mechanics of driving.  To steer your motorized vehicle there is a circular spinning contraption known as a steering wheel placed around chest level, easily accessible by either arm, to maneuver the car.  This steering wheel is normally directed by one or two hands that spin the circle in the direction you wish your vehicle to proceed.  If you’re holding a giant salad in your right hand and a regular sized fork in your left, it doesn’t seem possible to optimally utilize this car-directing-device.  How can you spin the circle in the direction you wish your vehicle to proceed if both of your hands are busy eating a salad?  Tell me that Giant Salad Lady.  But someway, somehow, she was able to make that right turn, handless, from Prospect into the McDonalds plaza. 

               I’m sure she would have acted differently if she knew I was looking.  She would have been embarrassed at her questionable driving technique just like I would have been embarrassed if she caught me staring.  I’m pretty sure the fedora kids caught me a couple of times when I was trying to figure out what their deal was.  And I don’t blame them.    

Why I don't wear Fedoras

               I’ve a very self conscious human.  I haven’t yet been successful in writing or music, but I want to be.  I say, very hesitantly, that I want to be a writer and a musician.  I say so hesitantly because if I heard someone say that, I would want proof.  Something to show my credibility, that I’m not pretentious and naïve.  A published article, a degree from a conservatory, an album.  The thing, though, is I have none of those things.  I have no proof.              

               When I lose faith, when I recoil at my presumption and throw up my hands in disgust at that malformed lump of a thing i call a song, when I seriously consider dropping the whole artistic thing and becoming a lawyer, I’m encouraged by a quote by Oscar Hammerstein II.  He says, “Everyone is kicked around during his apprentice years and in fear and ignorance he makes silly blunders and does silly things of which he is ashamed later.  If every successful man were to confess these past errors he could do a great service to those young people who are trying to follow in his footsteps.”  Mistakes are par for the course.  Sloppiness, mediocrity, and spectacular failure are necessary stepping stones to achieving success.    

               In the end, though, success isn’t the final goal.  Of course I want to get good at songwriting.  Of course I want an album, a book, some sort of concrete proof that can justify my existence, validate my personhood to other people.  I want people to read what I write, hear what I play.  But even if that doesn’t come, I enjoy these things and will continue to do so.  And that’s enough. 

               I find myself going to McDonalds again and again, time after time drawn to the siren song of those tasty departed cows.  People watching is fun and McDonalds is a great place to do it.  And you get free refills of sweet tea and diet coke.  

The Dartboard

The Dart Board

               I realized that writing a blog is a lot like throwing darts at a dartboard whilst inebriated.  The more darts you throw the more likely you’ll hit something, that is, write something good.  I’ve decided to throw more regularly.  Not all of my throws will be on target.  Most of the time I won’t even hit the board.  I hope eventually I’ll be able to effortlessly and efficiently land darts quivering in the red center of the target, but until then, until I learn to throw, all you’re gonna get are drunken, ill-aimed, blog posts.  I’m never going to learn to throw if I continue to fear missing.  So here’s the first dart. 

Afraid to miss

               A good friend of mine who is one of the best writers I know always felt like he was going to get found out to be a fraud.  He would go to every college class afraid someone would blow the whistle on him and yell, “Stop!  Stop!  You don’t belong here, you’re a fake!”  His fear to not be “found out” pushed him to be extremely successful in academics.  And I think he proved adequately that he belonged.  Summa Cum Laude, Phi-Beta-Kappa or whatever.  But he still probably resents the teachers that gave him those A minuses.       

               I guess I should explain.  I’ve always loved writing but I’ve never been consistent about writing or blogging.  I even was a Creative Writing Major in College.  Why?  Because I’ve always been afraid I would write something less than spectacular.  I guess I’m worried I’ll be declared a fraud.  But, c’mon, I got an “A” in Advanced Fiction Writing.  I’m no mere Advanced Fiction Writer—I’m an Exceptionally Advanced Fiction Writer, a Fiction Writer deserving of an “A”.  I have a plaque somewhere to prove it.              

  

               But that’s a lot of pressure to live up to.  What If I spell something wrong or mistake “their” for “there” or “your” for “you’re”?  What if I incorrectly conjugate a verb or, heaven forbid, have a run-on sentence?  It’s much easier not to write because then you can’t mess up.  An Advanced Fiction Writer that never writes can never have their title revoked, you know, labeled a Less-Than-Advanced Fiction Writer.  When they put you before the judge of advanced fiction writing you just demand they produce the evidence for their libelous accusation.  Hah!  You can’t!  Because I’ve never written anything!

               Every time I think about writing, before the pen hits paper, I expect the whistle to sound.  A few sentences go by; the anxiety is no better. I wait for that whistle to shrill.  Peering over my shoulder, peeking anxiously around the corner, a child tip-toeing down the hallway knowing the slightest sound will rouse his father from hibernation with a switch in hand.  Stop!  Stop!  You don’t belong here.  What makes you think YOU of all people can write?  It’s kind of paranoid.  So when I take that first look at the words I’ve written, a few things come to mind:

1-     This is stupid

2-     You’re stupid

3-     What’s the point of even trying, you’re just going to mess up

               It’s a credit to my giant, city squashing ego that I think every word that I speak and each sentence I type will be perfect on the first go.  It’s a kind of megalomaniacal idealism that makes me so afraid of writing anything.  I’m scared to mess up, I’m scared that I’ll fail, that I’ll miss.  But missing and messing up be damned!  How am I ever going to get good at anything if I too afraid to try?  How can you ever write if you’re afraid of looking carefully at that first draft, with all its incomplete sentences and stilted prose, with the conspicuous footprints of verbiage and overcooked metaphor, and saying, “This must go?”  With those words, self-delusion has to go.  When that sentence isn’t unadulterated brilliance, when it’s something more along the lines of pure crap, I’m forced to say, no Daniel, you can’t just breeze along and expect people to dote over your every sentence.         

Advanced Fiction Writing 101

               I took advanced English with Mr. Raines my sophomore year of high school.  I got a B+.  I wanted to go to Honors English but he advised me not to.  I got the counseling talk in his office. 

               “If you talked more, Daniel,” He explained, peering at me over his glasses, “or wrote better, I would recommend you for Honors English.  Let me explain.  Some of your classmates are energetic participants that liven and invigorate class discussion.”  He paused, making it clear that I didn’t fit into this category.    “Others may not talk much but are excellent essayists who have mastered the thesis statement and the five paragraph form.”  Another purposeful silence. 

               I considered the papers I had written for Mr. Raines and concluded that excellent essayists probably should be able to explain what a thesis was.  I couldn’t.  It was probably a bad sign that all of my five paragraph essays were four paragraphs long and that I made pie charts when our assignment was to compare and contrast literary texts.  But no!  I was creative!  I couldn’t be boxed in by any of those stupid restrictive essay guidelines.  My innovated essays redefined the five paragraph form.  My theses transcended what we were taught theses were.  My pie charts blew those stupid compare and contrast essays out of the water!   

               “So I don’t think it’s a good idea for you to go into Honors English,” he concluded, smiling at me apologetically.  I was crushed.  My fragile adolescent ego was shattered.  I learned that I was neither a prodigious talker nor a masterful essayist.  Was it coincidence that from that moment on my grades plummeted?  Was it coincidental that from that moment on I started my long-lasting and ill-advised love affair with the fast food chain, Taco Bell?  I think not!  And I think that from that point on I’ve always been deathly afraid of being told I was a bad writer.  In fact, I’m deathly afraid of being bad at anything. 

              

Growing Pains

               If I made a list of the things I regret the most, I would probably put not crying in front of Mr. Raines in that office near the top.  You know, guilt him into placing me in Honors English.  A few choice words.  I’ll try my best Mr. Raines.  I’ll become both a lively participant in class discussion and a masterful essayist.  I’ll even stop turning in the pie charts.  But I guess it worked out ok in the end.  After all, I am an Exceptionally Advanced Fiction Writer.  Suck it Mr. Raines!

               The other thing I regret is not trying out for basketball my freshman year of High School.  For you, oh reader, to understand the gravity of that decision with all of its far reaching and tragic consequences, I have go back a long way, back to when I first picked up that orange spherical object with those weird rubber lines all over it.  You know, a basketball.  Back to the third grade. 

               Actually I don’t remember when I first started playing basketball, but I kicked butt at it.  In third grade I absolutely destroyed this Christian Basketball League I was in.  All I did was dribble past people and make layups but I was really good at doing just that.  I had a tight handle with both hands, could do a crossover in either direction, and ran pretty fast.  I dribbled everywhere.  Inside the house, outside the house, on the carpet, off the carpet, in bed, out of bed.  I slept with my basketball, ate with my basketball, read stories to my basketball, made sure to regularly water my basketball so it could grow to be big and strong.  Anyway, I was probably one of the best third grade basketball players in the world.  Standing a whopping 4’6, an excellent size for a top-flight point guard recruit, my career could only go in one direction.  Up. 

   

               And it did.  My career went up.  Unfortunately my height never quite seemed to catch up with my lofty basketball playing ambitions.  So there I was, at St. Francis High School, standing 5’1 ½ as a freshman, quivering dart-like in my polo shirt and khaki shorts, too afraid to try out for the basketball team.  I was practically a midget.  I don’t think I had hit puberty at that point.  How could I possibly compete with all those tall, post-pubescent boys?  So I didn’t try out. 

               Later that year, I went on to play pickup basketball with players on the Freshman team.  Much to my chagrin, I realized that I could still dribble past people and make layups.  I could still find the open man.  My deft court sense and tight crossover dribble still served me well.  I think I could have made the team, even standing a meager 5’2.  From there on, who knows?  J.V.  Varsity.  College.  Professional.  I mean if Muggsy Bogues, standing at 5 ft 3 in could play in the NBA for 14 years, who is to say that I couldn’t.  I got like 6.5 inches on him.  But of course, after I didn’t try out, all those other kids who were on the team were forced to play hours an end.  They honed their fundamentals on the court, improved their conditioning, and got in-game experience.  But I was too scared to try, so my skills, rather than improving, stagnated. 

               So here I am, a tragic goldmine of untapped, un-mined basketball potential.  A symphony never finished.  An ice cream sundae never to be eaten.  Nope, no delusions going on here.     

The Here and Now

               That all is sad, Daniel, but get to the point.  Ok, I’ll get to the point, now that I’ve lost most of my readership to arduous anecdotes, bombastic hyperbole, and cumbersome analogies.  The point is that I don’t want to live paralyzed by fear.  Other basketball players may be taller than me.  Other bloggers might be more accurate with their dart throwing.  They might even be better writers than me.  But that doesn’t mean I shouldn’t write.  I’m here, I got what I got, and I want to make the best out of it.  And the only way I can tap that potential, be it in basketball, writing, singing, or playing guitar, is to vigorously defend my time doing those activities.  I want to do the things I love heedless of their tangible results.  Because again, drunken dart throwing.  Pay too much attention to the darts peppering the floor, sticking everywhere on the wall except for the dart board, and I won’t want to keep throwing.  But throw I must and fail I must.  There’s no other way to get better.  

                For the last couple of weeks I’ve written 1,000 words a day, 6 days a week, and I hope to write steadily at that rate.  I also know that the only way I’ll force myself to cut those dumb metaphors (Dart throwing?  Really Daniel?), derail, err, decommission, those train-wreck sentences, is to write to an audience.  Hopefully I’ll be posting a couple of times a week on things I want to talk about.  The ole East Palo Alto fellowship, basketball, music, books, the Bible, God, whatever else strikes my fancy.