Sorry I suck so bad at updating my site. There's so much that's happened too.
Since the last update, I've finished my month of touring, I've done shows in Boston, UMass. Amherst, flew to SF, spoke at career day at my old high school, had a complete and total nervous breakdown (thank you API Heritage Month for finally cracking me open with 30 straight days of all work and no play), bounced back in less than 2 days, obsessively followed Britney's pregnancy, rode my bike 100 miles, had my heart broken, bounced back in less than 12 hours, did an interview for BUST magazine that should come out soon, saw a jillion movies at the VC filmfest, appeared as Fannie Wong at the closing night movie, saw more theater, and cleaned my house.
Because I have to protect my public image (you know, that untarnished public image I project so well), I will only go into detail about the good hot-shot stuff, the other less flattering stuff I will divulge in my overpriced autobiography that I'll publish when I'm an old lady.
My show in Boston:
Apparently my show is so racy that AARW and Boston Progress who were co-presenting me there, could not rent this theater they thought ideal for my show. You see, because that theater requires the shows to have "family friendly" content, I got barred from the theater and the only space available was the bookstore run by Boston Progress. We turned a tiny little bookstore into the Imax theater with the help of this bedsheet from Bed, Bath, and Beyond that they returned the next day. It went well and I turned it out in a very intimate setting.
The crowd was great. I had them laughing so hard that they were making that "aaah" sound in between laughs.
And ladies, can I give you a reason to check out Boston? It would be Mr. Giles Li (pronounced "Jiles") who you can find every Saturday at the East Meets West Bookstore at 934 Mass Ave. in Cambridge. He's so hot, you'd think he was Korean. But he's one of my kind, Chinese. Big ups to Giles for showing that our genepool can keep it real. Here we are above in our engagement photo.
Here is some racist crap I found on the T train in Boston.
My tech, Jen, and I drank a lot of beer at this bar in Jamaica Plains a few blocks where we were staying. I never drink beer anymore. And we both paid for it the next day. We both got so sick in the morning. But here we are living it up. At one point, I screamed "Go Red Sox!" just to get the crowd on my side. That's sacrilege as a Giant's fan. But you must do what you must to get the crowd going.
My show at UMass Amherst:
photo by Jen Cleary
It was crazy because right after the show in Boston, we jumped into a rental car and headed to UMass Amherst. They set me up in a gorgeous 750 seat theater. With all these lights and stuff. I'm so used to getting shoved into weird multi-purpose rooms and stuff that I didn't know what to do when we got there. Here I have a theater show, but never ever get to use a real theater. It sucks. This one was staffed with like five people to run the show. They even had a woman backstage to help me change my clothes. Talk about being spoiled!
But of course, with big theaters come the potential for big problems. During my show, a sound cable broke and I was doing the first part of the show in silence. It was like the nightmare that I've been waiting for my whole life. But I blew through the tech crap like the pro I am and the sound was running again by the second half.
After the show I did a panel with some artistic directors and academics where I used the most theoretical and hard to understand language imaginable to explain how undeniably helpless and oppressed I was. To emphasize how pathetic I was, I did the panel barefoot.
I got diarrhea the next day and was vomitting (yeah I said it), most likely from the old pizza I ate the day before. I had the chills and was sweaty. I drank this crap called "Powerade" which just made me throw up again. I had to drive the rental car to the airport in Connecticut where the whole way I could barely focus on the road. At times I just wanted to pull over and curl up into a ball, but I had to make my flight. All I can say is that maybe it was a blessing that I got sick the day after the show and not the day of.
Career day at my old high school:
"And this ladies, is how you put on a condom."
I have yet to do my 10 year high school reunion, so career day was an interesting preamble to what that will be like. It's weird to be the only person in the room who has the most "anti-career" in the world. The career day alumni speakers were to gather in the faculty lounge where we could meet and have breakfast. I felt like a freshman again. I was one of the youngest speakers there and everyone else went to school in the 80s. They were catching up with each other and I had nobody to talk to. So I just pretended to be interested by the flyers hanging on the wall while eating as many free strawberries as possible.
I had such bad memories of high school when I left. But it was weird walking through the hallways again and wondering if I was just imagining things. Maybe it wasn't really that bad. Maybe I was just being dramatic. The school is so much more feminist focused now and they really seem to push the women to find their own power.
I let out this screech when the Assistant Principal came up behind me. She made me write her a letter of apology once for something lame and dumb I did in high school, and I've feared her since. She seemed to have totally forgotten about all that and was really happy to see me. I couldn't stop shaking though.
My principal is there still. She's real tall.
All my old teachers are still there. I thought they'd be on walkers and canes, but I guess they aren't much older. My old English teacher laughed when I told her I became an English major.
Here I am with my AP Calculus teacher Ms. Turner. She gave me an A my 3rd quarter and an F my last quarter of calculus and so is the reason I don't balance my checkbook.
Surprisingly there weren't too many questions about what the heck it was I did. I think the kids just wanted their 3-day weekend to start and were itching to get the heck out of there. I did get a few girls come up to me who were fretting about what college to go to. A few who didn't know what path to take.
So anyway, once the teacher moderator stepped out of the session, I cut the chit chat about working in the arts, and started to talk to the girls about birth control and why they should not get engaged to the lame high school boyfriends they have now. So many of the girls I was in school with got pregnant right away or rushed to get married to their dodo highschool boyfriends without seeing what the rest of their lives had in store for them. This was actually why I wanted to go back to career day more than anything-- to make sure the girls knew about birth control so that they didn't pop out a kid so early that they'd have to put their dreams on hold.
Some of the girls appreciated this talk because they don't get any of this information in school. Here are the happy clams below!
"Thank you Kristina, for teaching us about birth control and how to apply for welfare if we become a performance artist like you."
I got this great email from a student a few days later who was Asian and bummed because she had no formal acting training and no experience modeling which apparently is what other students say is the edge she needs to work as an actor. I wrote her and told her that half the bullshit you think it takes to be a working performer (such as being gorgeous) is actually not true and to just figure out who she is and learn to write and produce so she could take more control of her future as an artist. But she never wrote me back. Hopefully she's not on the phone with the Barbizon school right now.
Closing Night at the VC Filmfest:
Ah yes, this year marked Fannie Wong's 3rd appearance at the VC filmfest. Personally, I feel a little tired of it, but the demand seems to be high and still there, and what can I say? Fannie must appease her public.
This year, the Miss Chinatown Court only came to the opening night and not closing. I think they are onto Fannie, and purposely didn't come to closing night because they were tipped off that Fannie Wong would be there. That's too bad too. Fannie Wong is about sisterhood, but I believe the court feels outshined by Fannie's glory. For the last two years, Fannie has made appearances alongside the Miss Chinatown court and it's been great.
Fannie's escort from last year, Tyrone was unavailable, so Francois, her new escort from Quebec had to protect her from the raging crowds!
Here is Fannie with her entourage. R to L: Francois, Jermaine, Fannie and Alison De La Cruz.
Fannie and the paparazzi.
Here is Fannie with musician Ken Oak. He's quite small in real life, but then again, everyone looks tiny when juxtaposed to Fannie's glory.
Here is Fannie with John Cho. He made this face when Fannie explained that she has no time to make him her boyfriend because her career comes first.
Here is Francois and John Cho. John is not looking at the camera because he is making eyes at Fannie off to the side.
Here is Phil of angryasianman.com. He told Fannie, "I adore you more than anything and would give up my site to be with you." Fannie told him to not be broken hearted and to follow his dreams of being a powerful webmaster like the chick who runs bigbadchinesemama.com.
AZN TV sponsored the VC filmfest and had a trailer that played before EVERY screening. In their trailer, this Asian guy compares the harmony of a power cord to Asian America. It was an amusing trailer at first, but after watching this trailer a jillion times before every screening, I found myself screaming, "If I see that freaking AZN power cord guy, I'm going to kick the shit out of him!" And guess what? On closing night, here I am as Fannie meeting that guy. I just about strangled him while screaming, "Here's your power cord biotch!" but decided instead to sign an autograph for him.
Me and my bike...
Anyway, other than that I've just been training for the Aids Lifecycle. I am still about $800 short of my goal of $2500-- the amount I need to raise in order to ride. So if you can drop some change that would be great!
Biking is an expensive hobby. I spent over $300 in just cycling gear today and still have to get proper pedals and shoes. And now I am all depressed because it's not like I could really afford all that gear and am wondering if this is the right thing to be doing. I guess having an expensive bike riding habit is better than a drug habit.
I'll just have to spend all of this summer riding my bike and doing a lot of recreation type stuff revolving around the bike.
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That is all! My workshop students do their showing next week!
Love,
kristina