holidays

i thought the photo of her reaching up to squeeze my right breast in tentative amazement was way funnier. ah to be 5 again...





scenes from the "baby loves disco" shower my sis & phamily threw for us.


do Bruce Lee and Disco Dave really require explanation?



in case you didn't realize, my phamily is fun. here are three of my aunties & mom playing twister (after boogeying with the DDR contest).



and what's a disco party without a deathstar--uh, i mean disco ball pinata


my favoritest custard fruit tart on phyllo dough which can now only be found in San Gabriel and which my big bro obligingly fetches for me. it's nice to pregnant with my phamily.

and this is neither here nor there

aren't they precious?

silly games to whilst away

when i was just a little girl, my sis, cousines & i would make up satirical skits and perform them for the phamily or just for ourselves, especially the ones with foul language. A-S-S. oh and "slut makeup." think judy blume meets wierd al yankovic meets saturday night live.

this propensity to parody manifested in my successful, albeit brief moonlight run as a playwright in high school. my one act, tongue-in-cheek comedy "on the side" was a hit at the high school variety show and made it as far as the citywide performances. it had a lifespan briefer than my thespianism (i have a Best Actress "Oscar" to show for that though. actually my mom does. along with all my diplomas and report cards.)

last night, wakeful from one on my wee hour weez, i thought up a fun parody for a PSA and thought it'd be just the thing to fill up space. see if you can guess which commercial i plagiarized. the first person to guess wins a Sock Blocker(TM)--a draft preventing sock filled with that awful dry-supposedly-jasmine-but-really-long-grain-brown-rice-that-i-didn't-like-the-taste-of-but-have-20-lbs-of mixed with lavender. mmm.

SCENE 1
A pregnant woman late in her third trimester sits on the pottery barn couch next to her dude. They are the picture of suburban domestic bliss. She is watching a TV offscreen.

PREGNANT LADY: (pensively) hmmm... i want something... savory...

At this, DUDE promptly gets up and dons a baseball cap. He is a man on a quest. He pauses as she adds additional descriptors of her whimsical cravings.

PREGGO: and salty... and juicy.

He pauses on cue and waits for her tone of finality before valiantly heading off into the night.

Cut to DUDE getting behind the wheel of his car when his cell phone rings. He answers.

PREGGO: and meaty.

DUDE groans perplexed. Cut to DUDE happily getting his card back from the worker at a counter and carrying away a bag of goodies.

Cut to PREGGO opening the bag and pulling out a stack of bestseller books--mystery, thrillers, literature.

Cut to title

Think Inside the Book

my grandmother whups đít

you ever feel like scientists/researchers lack common sense? and maybe some home-training by their grandmothers? as my bà ngoại likes to say "đá cho mày mà đá bây giờ!|i'm gonna kick your ass!"

anthropologist researchers "discover" that grandmothers are productive members of society and have a social-evolutionary role that prolongs longevity & survival in non-industrialized societies. whether its childrearing or economic production, grandmothers the world over hold their own and keep families alive. grandmothers are powerful.

it's a sad commentary on the patriarchal nuclearization of the modern american household in the industrial capitalist era that somehow that piece of info should be revelatory. elders are denied dignity and a social role in this society. i have only to visit the nursing home where my bà ngoại is staying until she's well enough to have the feeding tube taken out to get depressed & indignant about how this society treats its elders. or as i learned in high school with the few non-immigrant schoolmates (and in that area of town, they were white trash and/or military brats), the kids would get kicked out or forced to pay rent at 18 and then they in turn would stick their parents in nursing homes as soon as they got the chance. karmic payback.

we need a council of grandmothers in government. maybe they could make sense of the billions of dollars spent on the war machine, profiteers, and cutthroat mercenaries and straighten out our nonsensical health care system, public education and social security/elder care.