10.2.05-- Hey, remember me?

So much has happened in the last few weeks. In the world and in my life. Sorry it took so long to update. My Dreamweaver crashed and I was rendered helpless. There is apparently this issue with my OS that a lot of Mac users are having where it won't authorize you to do updates or installs. It was a really annoying problem. Good thing my friend Vince was around to help me by instaling Tiger on this puppy and now everything works great.

I'm hot shit.

So way back when, La Pena Cultural Center put me on an NEA Grant and I just found out they got it! So I will be premiering "Wong Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest" in December 2006. I think I have to take a year off my grad school program which is already kicking my booty to work on the show.

Sending mail to 1600 Pennsylvania Ave.

I ran into my friend Mikey at the Anti War rally last week and he was giving out doll limbs for people to mail to the White House. He gave me one, and I sent off my package last week.

Thoughts after Katrina

Had I not been in Lancaster, PA doing a show at the beginning of September, I wouldn't have seen the Katrina footage in my hotel room. It was so horrific. It's amazing how much of the world you miss when you don't have regular TV like me.

Had I not actually seen the footage, the people on top of their roofs wavings town the helicopters, the people cramped in the superdome, I don't think I would have really registered what was happening. I get my news mostly from the internet, radio, and email.

I couldn't believe it. Even Fox News had Geraldo Rivera in the Superdome screaming into the camera, "Why isn't the goverment helping these people? Why don't they just let them out of here?" He was grabbing kids from different women and shoving their little faces in the camera and saying, "Look at these kids, get them out of here."

You know it's bad when Fox news is asking what's wrong with the government.

There are so many things that are angering about Katrina. For starters there's that teeny tiny fraction of people out there who were like, "Just forget about New Orleans, leave it." Like that's possible to just abandon a city in the state it was in and expect people to just build new lives, get new property somewhere else.

Then there's the fact that the billion dollar contracts to rebuild New Orleans are going to big ol' corporations. Many of who are already profitting well off the war.

Then there are people like me, people who make close to nothing who have given everything they could to help the survivors. I charged $50 on my credit card to the red cross. And in the weeks after, I'm seeing artists who make barely anything putting on fundraisers, kids selling brownies, bars setting up carwashes, I was even reading about a struggling porn star who has two kids and was going to the 99cent store to buy supplies for Katrina families.

All these good Americans who don't have much to give, but give it because they want to help other human beings. All these Americans picking up the slack for the Bush administration who have warped priorities and let this happen.

Crazy in love, and totally into tacky shit.

Also, I am so shy about this stuff, and try not to talk about my deeply personal life on the site, but I guess I should just tell you all this. I have a boyfriend now. We're totally nuts over each other. It's great. He's a very cute fella. He's out now getting me a burrito.

Anyway, he's really funny because he makes fun of my tacky taste in stuff. Like he was watching this Robert Altman film and I was trying to watch it with him and was like, "BORING!" and he was like, "Babe, movies don't have to have Elizabeth Berkeley in them to be good."

I just finished reading Catcher in the Rye for school [I know, while the rest of the world read it at 13, I'm reading it for the first time (not via Cliff Notes) in grad school] and it's cool and all that, but I'm not apeshit about it like the rest of the world is. Ironically, like Holden might say, I feel like such a writer phoney for not being nuts about it. He makes fun of me because supposedly I am a writer, and an English major and I have yet to read the canon of books out there that makes America so great.

Speaking of being obsessed with tacky stuff, i spent a good part of yesterday reading about Jenny McCarthy's movie "Dirty Love." It's terrible apparently. And that's actually a very nice way to say it. How it got into Sundance I will not understand. You can watch the first 8 minutes of it on this site.

I was pretty impressed (but simultaneously annoyed by the perks of celebrityism) because I thought she was a has-been before I saw she had two books out at Borders and then this movie which she wrote and stars in. But I was also deeply suspicious that any of her books or the movie would be good. I had that feeling of deep down wicked satisfaction when I read the movie reviews and saw how bad the first 8 minutes of the movie were. I couldn't stop reading her bad reviews and getting off on them. I am such a hateful bitch.

You have to watch the first 8 minutes of this movie on Rotten Tomatoes. It's so unbelievably bad. Especially everything. Like her on all fours on Hollywood Blvd. offering her ass to people. It saddens me that films like this can get made, distributed and shown, and yet a good Asian American film won't get nearly half the play.

I kinda want to see it. There's a place in my heart for bad movies. I love re-enacting them in my house. I've seen Showgirls a hundred times easily. I own it in fact.

Going to Korea next week

So I applied earlier this year to be an American delegate on a multicultural tour to Korea and I am happy to say it's run by generous and wonderful people and I'll be in good hands for the week. I was nervous when the only means of communication I had with them before our big meeting Friday was a few mysterious and undetailed letters in shakey English. Any questions I asked over email were answered with, "Ask during the Orientation. Thanks."

In my worst fears the trip was going to be a 24/7 brainwash tour where I'd be forced to memorize hours or facts about why Korea is the best. In my worst fears, I'd never get back home to the States.

It's actually a very prestigious program and I'm the only artist going. There are quite a bit of policemen going and people from governmental offices. This program grew out of the LA riots as one step to heal the racial misunderstandings between Koreans and other races. The idea is if you bring people who are not Korean to Korea and give them a better understanding of the language and culture, then they will have a fuller understanding and sympathy of how to implement policy.

We're supposed to bring gifts and trinkets to give to all the people who will be giving us stuff. We're even spending the day with a Korean family. I really struggled to figure out what to give out because I usually give out presents that would be considered offensive (in a subversive arty kind of way, like my Fannie Wong or BBCM stuff). Otherwise, I tend to give gifts made in Asia originally. It seems dumb to give them something that is made in Asia.

It's a dilemma, what could I give them that was totally "American" that is actually made in America? Even American flags are made in China. And I tend to give gifts that'd I'd like to get-- so flags are not them.

The best I could come up with are magnets with celebrities on them, or UCLA stickers. Pathetic.

Peace, Love and Prozac

So I am at the closing ceremony for the World Festival of Sacred Music today. It was this whole tribute to the sea with over 300 dancers from around the world, all honoring the ocean. Lots of love and harmony and drum circles.

I'm in this drum circle thing dancing and really enjoying the Agape International choir, (Click the link to hear them sing!) when who do I see banging away at a drum... my old therapist!

But not just any therapist. The one who wasted a good 3 months of my time making me recount all the traumas that ever happened to me, take culturally biased and pointless psycholgy tests, then insisted that I take a whole slew of drugs so that "therapy" would work rather than try the therapy first.

After seeing her, I realized how gray the field of psychology was. It's just like any field of expertise. If you are an English Professor and your dissertation was on 17th Century British Lit, that's what you will probably teach the best. If you are a doctor and your field is dermatology and fungal rashes, you are best at diagnosing that. In the case of this therapist, her specialty was tests and drugs, and so rather than helping me figure out things like how to talk to my parents or reconcile violence from my past, she would just push tests and drugs at me.

I'm actually doing quite well now. I've never been happier. And I didn't go on drugs to get here. And it didn't take Western psychology to make it better. I think in fact that Western psychology was making things worse by making me relive and recount all these memories rather than do something constructive about it (which is always how I prefer to do things). After I stopped seeing this woman, I saw an accupuncturist, took these Chinese herbs, listened to a few self help tapes (write me for a list of them!), went on long bike rides, moved into the present, got my parents to stop controlling my life and I've been great.

Basically, I knew that drugs would just make me complacent in a bad situation, rather than force me to change my situation. I know lots of friends who love being on Prozac and whatever, and I acknowledge it's an individual decision and am not criticizing folks who take those kinds of drugs. I just knew deep down like it was not an option that made sense for me and this woman didn't recognize my feelings about it. She was really cornering me into taking it, like it was the only option available to me. Like I was so "crazy" that it was the only thing that would make me better.

(You will hear more about this in my next show.)

I have to say that ever since I STOPPED seeing this woman, I've been really happy. Even my friend Pete says I am the happiest clam in the world as of late. And it's not a bi-polar happy, but a genuine rich happiness.

So imagine my shock when my ex-therapist who was the world's biggest proponent of standardized tests and big pharma drugs I've ever met was standing a few feet away from me in the drum circle banging away on her drum with her hair up in a scarf, dancing barefoot in the sand!

It was such a Seinfeld-esque LA moment. I wanted to pull a Larry David and be like, "What the hell! You hypocrite! You shouldn't be here! You should be out somewhere burning plastic or yelling at kids!"

But I didn't do anything about it. I just let it be one of those moments.

To hell with a real blog site.

I also started a livejournal page thinking it would be easier for me to update my site instead of these html files, but I hit "return" and the whole thing deleted on me. So screw it. I will be a caveman then and continue to do updates with this lame old html.

Ok, more later, enjoy this picture of me at a wedding on Vashon Island off of Seattle. MY friend Allyn and I pretended like we were getting married.

Kristina