The Wong Blog

Mark it:  Thursday, July 30, 2009.

The Wong wins.

Had lunch with Miss Chang today.  Three very interesting developments:

1. Mr. Nice Guy, her colleague/”best friend”/chauffeur, made his move two or three days ago and went all-in.  Apparently, either his girlfriend disappeared, he got rid of her, or she never existed, and then he made a play for Miss Chang’s affections.  You, me, and Ray Charles’s corpse could see this coming.  Is a guy ever that nice to a girl, who he only sees as a friend?  Of course not.  He hung around her and treated her nicely in the hopes that one day her eyes would be opened to the fact that The One and Only Love of Her Life was always right under her nose.  Unfortunately for Mr. Nice Guy, she rejected him like Yao Ming before his feet imploded.  And now apparently, their friendship is over, he’s angry and bitter, and they pretty much don’t talk anymore.

Awesome.

Now if I were him, I’d be persistent like all get-out, come back at her like Jason Voorhees, and try to wear her down.  But since I’m The Wong, and he’s my competition, I want to head him off at the pass, cut him down at the knees, pump several bullets into his brain, and burn the body beyond recognition, so that he ain’t never, ever—and I mean ever—comin’ back.

Slight complication, though:  in three days, I’m heading to Hong Kong for a week and half vacay, so who knows what’s going to transpire.  What’s Mr. Nice Guy’s next move going to be?  And how can I preemptively counter-act that right now?  I’m thinking about giving him some of the paleface’s firewater as well as some smallpox-infected blankets to incapacitate him, but I’m open to other suggestions.

2.  Shameless Flirting.  So at lunch today, I asked Miss Chang if there was anything she wanted from Hong Kong that I could bring back for her.  Her answer:  a diamond ring(!).  And then she said she was just joking.  Mmrmph.

I also offered to accompany her on a visit to Hong Kong, if her plans to study abroad fell through; of course, we would have to get separate hotel rooms.  She objected, saying that that would be too expensive and that we could just share a room(!).  And then she said that she was just joking.  Again.  Ergh.

That Miss Chang, she’s a funny one…  And that wasn’t even the shameless flirting part.  That’s what I was doing. For example…

3. I presented her with a bilingual edition of The Book as an end-of-semester gift.  Smooth, right?  She seemed interested, but who really knows?  But, man, if she turned on that and joined The Family, then it would be on—I mean, so on.  You thought today’s flirting was shameless?  You ain’t seen nothin’ until The Wong turns the charm knob up to 11.

calgarybusline

bowbulgogihouse

The Plan is in motion… Amazing.

Thanks to Facebook, I know more about the day-to-day lives of my high school classmates now than I did when we were in school.

Weird.

And the winner of TARA Season 3 is…Team Hong Kong, Sam (Singaporean) & Vince (Canadian).

A word about TARA’s host, Allan Wu, who apparently is an American (and a graduate of UC Berkeley): he is simply awful at anything scripted, like location introductions or explanations of tasks (“In this roadblock, a team member must sacrifice an infant to the god Molek…”). He’s unnatural, forced, and not very dramatic. On the other hand, he excels at unscripted banter with the contestants when they reach the finishing mat, achieving an easy rapport. Kind of the opposite of Phil Keoghan, the host of the American version of TAR. Keoghan’s suitably intense and dramatic at the introductions, but is stiffer than a corpse when he has to chat up the contestants.

That is all.

So I started watching Season 3 of The Amazing Race Asia, and it’s been intense—about 50% more intense than any season of the American version. This may simply be a reflection of Asia itself: half the world’s population, but only one-third of the resources, so it’s dog-eat-dog, survival of the fittest, and all that. Because of the jacked-up population-to-resource ratio, Asians seem to be willing to suffer a lot more for a lot less. For the competitors on The Amazing Race Asia, they suffer twice the brutalization for 1/10th the prize money ($100,000 for TARA compared to $1 million for TAR). They might as well call it The Amazing Race: Extreme Edition. As an example, Season 3 kicked off in Bangkok, Thailand with the contestants having to eat a huge bowl of scorpions, frogs, and bugs just to get their first clue. It wasn’t even a roadblock or a detour! Now that’s good television.

As with past seasons, there seems to be an inordinate number of entertainment personalities/insiders (or wannabes) looking for publicity among the contestants. Also, because the contestants have to be fluent in English, they tend to have a Western education, with all the arrogance and sense of entitlement that breeds. And because they’re generally all Asian, they’re also especially rude and pushy to everyone around them: their partners, taxi drivers, random strangers, etc. It’s awesome.

Here’s how brutal the race is. The team from Thailand was comprised of two beauty queens, who, as a subspecies of humanity, are among the most cutthroat haters and misanthropes in the world. They will stab you in the back, do shots of your blood, and laugh while you bleed to death. Indeed, one member of Team Thailand was Russian-Canadian Natalie Glebova, who is married to Thai tennis pro Paradorn Srichaphan. She was also Miss Universe 2005. Miss Universe 2005! Think about that: for 2005, she was the most competitive and cutthroat woman in the UNIVERSE. Can you guess what happened to that one? Basically, by the second episode, after a 25-hour bus ride in Vietnam and being dirty, she shut down emotionally, had a mental breakdown, and essentially gave up and quit! Miss Universe 2005! Now that’s really good television.

Seriously, before the race is over, someone is going to die…either by their own hand, the hand of their partner, stress, food poisoning, a crazy taxi driver, a veering truck, the bird flu, a random drifter, an overzealous public security officer, political unrest/unsuccessful coup attempt/peasant uprising/government crackdown, hepatitis, rampaging caribou, collapsing bridge/shoddy construction work, etc.

After watching Henry’s videos, I noticed that many elements of our kitchens are the same: the wood used in the cabinetry, the brushed steel refrigerator, the floor tile. The only difference is the countertops. Oh, and I don’t have toddlers seeking refuge in my kitchen cabinets like they are Jews living in 1940s Nazi-occupied Holland. Betrayed by strawberries and Corn Chips. The humanity…

What I do have is a portrait of my parents/overlords looking down at me from the most prominent place in the entire house. Whether I’m in the kitchen or family room, they’re watching.

Originally, the interior designer didn’t want to bring the portrait over from The Big Wong Palace, but that didn’t fly with the parents. Then the designer wanted to re-frame the portrait, but my parents objected because the original frame was too expensive (read: it looks like something looted from Versailles). Next, the decorator put the portrait in an annex that’s not even accessible from the main house—you have to use an outside stairway to get there (we call it “the hiding place”). That’s when my parents ordered their portrait hung in the heart of The Bigger Wong Palace, where it’s visible to all who enter—a serious power move.

You know what Chairman Mao says: powerty comes from gun…or footing the bill.

I moved this past weekend. Sad to leave The Big Wong Palace, but The Bigger Wong Palace is pretty nice, too. Each has its advantages.

The Big Wong Palace has been in the family a long time, and was within walking distance to a couple of good restaurants, the grocery store, the bank, the post office, and the library (and the hospital—came in very handy once). Pull out of the garage, and the highway was right there.

The advantages of The Bigger Wong Palace: bigger (as the name implies), gated, better community amenities (pool, weight room, tennis courts), view of the tourist corridor from certain windows, better sun exposure, closer to Costco, Best Buy, and Borders. Plus we had an interior designer throw some paint and furniture around—a very weird experience—so it’s a bit more gussied up than the original Palace.

When she checked out the original Palace to get a sense of my living space and style, the interior designer said, “You clearly live inside your head and don’t really pay attention to your surroundings, do you?” True. Also, when asked whether we would be able to re-use any of the furniture from The Big Wong Palace, she replied, “Um, no.”

Alrighty…

So now I’m mostly moved, though things are still in chaos. Some utilities haven’t been transferred. At the moment, I’m stealing broadband—thank you, neighbor. I’m curious to see how long that can last. If I can get away with not paying for broadband for say six months, that would be ideal. But if I don’t post again, then things went awry somewhere along the line.

Anyway, if you’re ever in the neighborhood, drop by and see the new pad. Plenty of room if you want to crash and don’t mind being far away from the action.

Four weeks ago, I watched Dancing With The Stars for the first time. Last week, I watched Dancing With The Stars for the last time. This epic 4-week DWTS viewing binge coincided with comedian and radio show host Adam Carolla’s stint, which ended last Tuesday after he and his professional dance partner, two-time defending DWTS champ Julianne Hough, were eliminated from the televised dance competition.

I’ve enjoyed listening to Adam Carolla for a while now, since he served as co-host on the late-night radio call-in program Loveline with Dr. Drew Pinsky. Although Carolla’s an atheist and can be quite huffy and offensive, he can also be funny and amusing on occasion in a curmudgeonly sort of way. Just like Henry (except for the “funny and amusing” part). Because Carolla was on DWTS, I watched it.

Carolla agreed to appear on DWTS in order to promote his independent movie The Hammer, and he and his dancing partner Julianne couldn’t have been any more different. She is a very blonde 19-year old international dance champion, who originated from Utah, studied dance in London for a number of years, and is now an aspiring country music singer. She has been likened to “the head of all head cheerleaders,” Everyone’s Kid Sister, and America’s Mormon Sweetheart. And she can toss a mean knuckle ball. (It “dances”…)

On the other hand, Carolla’s an atheistic former carpenter/boxing instructor from the San Fernando Valley, who once co-hosted The Man Show with Jimmy Kimmel. He’s been variously described as an uglier version of Elliott Gould, as well as a Pete Sampras lookalike (if Sampras had Down’s Syndrome). He also sports a unibrow.

Clearly, this was a match made in purgatory. Or Kolob.

On last week’s show, a shocking incident occurred. While the judges were commenting on Adam and Julianne’s fourth and final dance (Out of the way…here comes the paso doble!), Carolla interjected, “I want to thank the wardrobe department for dressing me up like a silent [film] porn star…” (He wore a Zorro outfit, complete with a porn ‘stache, cape, and black mask.) Julianne’s here-we-go-again reaction to his comment found her covering her face with her hand and exclaiming something to the effect of “Oh, sh—.”

It’s not clear what Julianne actually said because, after the “sh—” came out of her mouth, the rest of the word got dumped. The ABC censor must have stepped in because he thought that America’s Mormon Sweetheart had just dropped an S-Bomb on live television.

Rioting nearly broke out in Salt Lake City, and the rest of Utah (as well as parts of Idaho, Arizona, and Nevada) almost went up in flames. Hearing sweet, little LDS princess Julianne curse—maybe—was shocking. She might as well have strangled a drifter (or better yet Carolla) to death with her bare hands on live TV.

The next evening, on Jimmy Kimmel’s talk show—which, coincidentally, often runs a bit called “This Week In Unnecessary Censorship”—Julianne explained that she had actually said “Oh, shoot,” and not the euphemism for poo-poo. Apparently, the censor on duty that evening was just a tad bit trigger-happy with the dump button. So everyone in Utah can relax now…

What networks should do instead of just dumping potentially offensive words is to bleep them out. And customize the bleep with a sound unique to each individual television market. Why? Because I need more pizazz in my censorship. Censorship goes down better with a little bit of flair. For example, in San Francisco, whenever someone curses, you’d hear a fog horn. In Wisconsin, you’d hear a cow moo. In Salt Lake City, you’d hear the sound of trumpet, probably the one being blown by the angel Moroni on top of all those LDS temples. In Texas, you’d hear a gunshot. In New York City, curse words uttered will be replaced by…another curse word! The same for LA, except with Spanish curse words.

You get the idea.