It has come to my attention on this Sunday afternoon that I am in page E4 of the paper! Specifically, an extremely flattering photo of me and Oliver, but unflattering picture of my old office is featured as part of Diane Meyer's "Without a Car in the World"-- her photo exhibit of 100 Angelinos who don't own cars. The exhibit is up at the 18th Street Arts Center until December.

Had I known she was going to photo me in my office, not with my bike outside, I would have cleaned up my slop. But here it is, my crap immortalized for all of Los Angeles!

On December 2, I'm doing a performance at the exhibit about carlessness. I believe the show is free and I hope you will come see my work-in-progress. What I've shown so far has gone over so well!

I took this picture about two or three months into my carlessness.

Anyway, I am in San Francisco now. I came up for my cousin's fancy wedding. I realize as a person who puts on shows all the time, how mundane weddings can be despite the glitz. Give me a drive thru Vegas wedding and a public BBQ any day. Weddings are like Neil Simon productions-- safe, scripted, formulaic, hyped.

Labels: property mogul, The Wong Sans Wheels Chronicles

Above, you'll see your friend Kristina having one of many scripted/un-scripted onstage nervous breakdowns as part of the five part APACUNT panels.

Three cities in one week. This is how we do it. I got back to LA on Wednesday afternoon, only to do another show here last night for the Breaking the Bow Festival. Tonight I head to San Francisco for my cousin's wedding and a talk a college class in Oakland on Tuesday. Somewhere between all this, I'm vowing to edit my short film for the Tavis Smiley blog, write some new stuff to perform at the LA Storytelling Festival next month, rework this old script for me and D'Lo to perform in November, write a City of LA grant, and maybe a few more if I can get my hands on them and not get sick... will that even be possible?

Well, one thing's for sure! Staying busy sure does stave off the existential crisis shit.

In NYC I must say that my personal hygiene hit an all time low. I'd wake up each morning in my friend's basement in total darkness (it was the bottom floor of her loft), hungover from the show and drinking the night before and each morning had to decide in a flurry: "Shower or eat?" The eating usually won. My gums would not stop bleeding every time I brushed my teeth. Pretty much everyone at the Festival and East Village knows what I look like without make-up... and I'm talking raccoon eyes, walk of shame at 4am-- that kind of no-makeup. I ran out of underwear a few days before leaving and had to get creative (I won't tell you how). By the end of my stay little fruit flies would float over my head (I forgot I had bought bananas the week before that had gone bad) in my friend's loft. So I ate six bananas in two days (don't ask what that does to one's digestive track). All this, moving at a furiously paced New York minute, yanking pounds and pounds of crap around the East Village and back to Brooklyn at all hours of the night.

I began to feel my organs disintegrating into the rest of my body by the second day of performance. At our last show I was so exhausted, I almost passed out onstage but then channeled it into an amazing (or so I think) onstage nervous breakdown that wasn't in our script. I hosted the Kong Magazine roll-out party in Brooklyn before I left town. I almost fell asleep in the corner of the bar by the end of the night and yet, we were done at 9pm.

My flight back to LA was in two legs. The first too cold, I shivered and held my own body in my arms for warmth, my muscles straining to heat themselves even inside my jacket. The second leg of the flight was too hot. I was sweating, arching my face towards that fan thing above your seat.

I had a few minutes this morning to reflect and rest and was struck in my inactivity with a strong sense of under-accomplishment. What is it about working so hard that all I can think about is how nice it would be to rest. And that when I get rest, I feel so unaccomplished that I need to work more? And harder?

Goddamn you Chinese genetics.

Labels: artist life., magic powers, new york city, not angry anymore. just tense., oh my god, stand up

A sneak peak of what APACUNT is looking like. We've done two shows with three to go! We're pretty exhausted. Somehow I thought doing five original shows in an informal format would be easier than dragging a solo scripted show to NYC.


We've had wonderful audiences and a lot of unscripted moments come out. It's really the vision I have wanted for a new ambitious theater work. Come out!

Labels: artist life, new york city

We did it, we wrote five shows in one week and they are all very very insightful and hilarious. If you are in NYC come check it out. I've been so consumed in all of this, I haven't been able to shower some nights.

All you can drink wine, and only $9. Info here.

Labels: artist life.

I got into NYC yesterday and will be here for the week writing APACUNT with my team and then premiering it one week from now! The carless thing has me trying to figure out how to get out of LA more often to seek refuge in cities that don't require such planning to make it around town.

I realized at the airport yesterday that I forgot my drivers license.... Imagine the hysteria when I open my wallet and see my TAP card where my ID should have been. I started to backtrack how I'd get home sans transportation on an LA morning to grab the ID and get back in time for the flight.

I say to the woman behind the counter, my face tight with shock: "I don't know where my ID is."

I imagine hailing a cab home, grabbing my ID, then hailing one to take back to LAX. Easily it would be a back and forth trip of $100. At which point I'd miss my flight and have to pay to rebook. Or I could call a friend. Oh god, who would help me with such short notice?

PANIC! PANIC! PANIC! For I would have to live the rest of my life at LAX! Why must transportation always deny me?!

"Ma'am, it's ok. You can still fly. You just need to go through extra security."

She draws four S's on my ticket and points me towards the gate.

When I see security I say, "Listen, I don't care if you need to do an anal cavity check, I just need to get to NYC."

No anal cavity check, but I pulled out everything I owned with my name on it, they did a super thorough wipe down of my computer and the lady cop felt me up through my clothes.... and I was off and flying.

That's right, I flew without identification!

Yes, TSA, the same folks that make you take your shoes off, throw out your water and toothpaste, and walk through million dollar machines that blow air on your shirt, let me fly without any photo identification. I thought they might google me as per my suggestion to prove I was "real," but thought that might make the red flags go up higher. It didn't go that way. In fact, I think I got through security faster than other folks because I had a security escort the whole way.

I was kind of surprised when they asked if in lieu of a Drivers License, if I had a Costco card... those photos are notoriously obscure...



I did remember in all my panic that I once saw an episode of Pageant Place on MTV where Miss Universe forgets to bring her passport and is able to get on a flight with no ID by showing her sash and crown to the guy at the Southwest Counter.

And I guess I carry the same privileges as a beauty queen, for mine is the face of innocence.


(An unfinished proof from my carless photo shoot with Simeon!)

My love-it/hate-it relationship with car owning continues...

Last weekend, I thought I'd go to a baby shower on Mt. Washington without any transpo help. What would have been a 15 minute car ride, was actually a 1.5 hour walk/bus trek according to Metro directions. I was up for the adventure and exercise.... Two and a half hours later, after some wrong turns by foot at the top of Mt. Washington (uphill mind you), I made it to the party heaving and sweaty and a little humiliated.

I knew that the cars passing me by on Mt. Washington were headed to the party, and I kept looking at them through their windshields as they zoomed past me trudging on that dark sidewalk-less road, baby shower present in one hand, metro directions in the other. I looked at my fellow baby-shower attendees as they drove by, focusing on them with doe eyes, hoping they'd elect to pick up the girl on the street who was obviously headed their way and take her to the party. No dice. For automobile drivers are not mindreaders who know when to take pity on the carless.

November will be quite the test for this carless lass. If you check my schedule you will see I have an obscene number of events going on back to back to back. I have two shows going up at the LA Comedy Festival and I have no idea how I'm to transport all the crap for those shows across town. I am also writing new work for the LA Storytellers Festival and doing a show in SF. How the F I'm to do all this... and get there with no car? No freaking idea kids.... but can I tell you this Carless in LA show is writing itself?

Labels: The Wong Sans Wheels Chronicles

In a world where irony flees faster than a moving pixel in the digital age, we've decided to go for the all out offensive.

This APACUNT panel idea was originally a very bad idea that I had with Alice Tuan.

"Let's write a proposal so offensive and so impossible that there is no imaginable way that anyone would let us put it up!"

But they did. They let us put it up last year at the National Asian American Theater Conference and now they are letting us do it again in New York City where for five days we will discuss the past, present and of course, the futility of Asian American Theater. In between, me stroking my ego.

Labels: artist life., goddamn new york makes me angry., new york city

Without going into too much detail, as mentioning this is already jinxing (but a great carless story I had to write about), I had a meeting scheduled over at Oprah's new network today.

As you can imagine, I was jazzed and have been looking forward to this for months, if not my whole life. This would be such a logical transition from playing houses of 99 people to bringing my brilliance to the world. And I do mean.... THE WORLD.

Their offices are on Wilshire in Miracle Mile and it is two short bus rides over from my place in Silverlake. So, it wasn't really an issue.

My friend Simeon Den, a wonderful photographer, has offered for weeks to take pictures for my Carless in Los Angeles show (you know, the still unwritten show that all this carless martyrdom is supposed to manifest itself into?). He has an amazing studio set up in a converted garage with lots of natural light. After endless scheduling and rescheduling back and forth, we finally came to the conclusion that today was the only day we were both free to shoot.

Our shoot concept was this, me sitting at a bus stop with lots of little toy cars around me. A love story about me and a vehicle. I had borrowed dozens of little toy cars from friends (I'm on a kick to not buy anything) and piled them into a brown grocery bag along with some costume changes.

As I got ready to leave for the bus, I began to do mental tabulations:
1pm Simeon's, 5pm Oprah. Leave house at 12pm, bus for an hour to Hollywood, get settled, shoot for an hour, take half an hour to look at the pictures, 2pm, get ready to go to Oprah's, but factor in an hour and an extra hour in case of big emergency traffic, 4pm, sit somewhere outside the La Brea Tarpits and breathe in my best life, the Secret... or something like that that will make my face glow. Wait until 5pm when the meeting happens.

Wait....WHERE WAS I GOING TO PUT ALL THIS CRAP I WAS TOTING?!

I was faced with a real carless in LA dilemma. Could I walk into a meeting with the Big O's people dragging in a big tote bag of costume changes and a brown grocery bag of toy cars?

Sure, I'm a quirky gal... but could I get away with "bag-ladying it" as my first impression at Oprah's? Then I had flashes of the time I told someone on the bus that I was the commencement speaker at UCLA and got the, "Whatever, you crazy bus lady" look. I've also been rocking the whole "3rd Grade Chic" look of late. Partly because it is a nice innocent irony against the backdrop of the bus. But walking into big corporate offices dressed like an eight year old dragging along bags of STUFF?

Dammit, I could use a big exhaust pumping metal locker on wheels right now!

I imagined being in this meeting with the most head of honchos, two giant bags on either side of me, to the front and back of me, an SNL-esque scenario of trying to find a home for the bags. Blocking my own face with them, climbing over them to be heard, having to create a perimeter around me to accommodate them. Shaking their hands with the bags tucked under my armpits. Then trying to explain....

"Oh no, I didn't bring these bags in to show you anything... I came off the bus... I don't have a car to put them in... no, it's not because I'm broke or anything.... I used to drive a car that ran on vegetable oil. I bought it from a junkie eco hipster ... then somehow got embroiled in a class action lawsuit between him and another eco hipster... well...that's a long story... I just came from a photo shoot... I just have a phobia about owning a car.... Not like those scary phobias that would prevent me from working for you... this is more an experiment..."

Was this carless experiment going to now ruin my career? I dragged Simeon into the situation. Help Simeon! Where the heck am I going to put all this crap? Simeon offered to let me keep my stuff in his studio. But, that would just mean, I'd also have to schlep back on the bus for it. And when would I catch him at home again? And two of the toy cars in those bags belong to my friend Tre and I had to return those to Tre soon and and and and....

Maybe they wouldn't even notice if I walked in saddled down by bags, maybe the bags would start the conversation , or maybe I could walk in, leave them with the receptionist...

Maybe it wasn't a big deal, and I was making it a big deal and the fact that I was making it a big deal would be bad energy and maybe this bad energy would make the meeting go bad.

I was already exhausted by 1:00pm thinking about this.

Well, as it seems all that panic was for naught because I got a call at 2:00pm that the meeting got moved to Friday. So now I have more two days to practice giving away chicken and cars.

Labels: The Wong Sans Wheels Chronicles