If you were a teenager in the 80s, then you’d know the movie “Pretty in Pink“. In it, Jon Cryer’s character Ducky is best friend to Molly Ringwald’s Andie. What Andie doesn’t know is, Ducky has the biggest crush on her. Unfortunately for Ducky, Andie is in love with Blane played by Andrew McCarthy. But Blane is from a rich family, and Andie isn’t so he’s not supposed to be with her.
That in a nutshell was the story. It was driven by the angst of the three characters, all pining for one another. If you haven’t seen it, I won’t spoil the ending for you. It isn’t an obvious one but rest assured, it’s EMO x 100.
The more interesting side of the love triangle is definitely that of Ducky’s unrequited love for Andie. The reason for that is many of us guys, and girls to a certain extent, can see him in us, especially during those hormonally charged and socially awkward teen years.
We all can understand the pain and anguish. Back then, what can hurt more than having an unrelenting crush on someone who not only does not feel the same way about you, but tells you in excruciating detail about their own unrelenting crush on somebody else?
And as in the movie, when you are in that situation the worst possible things that the girl can say to you are:
“You’re such a good friend to me.”
“You’re like a brother to me.”
Ouch and ouch.
I have not fallen for a platonic female friend before, but whilst growing up I have had many crushes on girls who didn’t feel the same about me. And it hurt pretty bad at the time because I hadn’t yet learnt how to deal with it.
Therefore, I think all of us have to go through the “Ducky” phase and the rejections in order to learn about ourselves and about dealing with the ups and downs of affairs of the heart.
Looking back, what were your “Ducky” moments like? Or were you, and maybe still an “Andie”? Tell.
On there, I found this clip below of Anjelah Johnson who is half-Mexican, half Native-American, joking about her trip to a manicure salon staffed by Vietnamese people. And the accent that she mimics is so freakishly spot-on - I have heard, and have friends who speak exactly like that.
Personally, I don’t think it’s racist at all because the portrayal is accurate and funny, and there is no malice in the parody. Now if she was using that accent, whilst putting down Vietnamese people then I would have a problem with it.
Ah but then, some of you may say,
But you are not Vietnamese. Of course you don’t find it offensive.
To that I say, I can just as easily laugh at a parody of the Chinese accent for exactly the same reasons that I mentioned above: it’s funny and it’s not demeaning. Behold: Russell Peters in a clip that has probably made its round past the Chinese community globally. In this clip, Russell who is Indian, jokes about bargaining with a Chinese shopkeeper.
And all Asians know one another right? My Asian readers would know immediately what I’m talking about. And this is a topic that comedian Dat Phan who is a Vietnamese-American ponders about too, in this particularly funny bit during an episode of “Comedy Central Presents”. During which, he also riffs about Asian kids and maths, and his mother being homophobic.
Still on the subject of using comedy to break down racial stereotypes, this is another bit from Comedy Central’s “Premium Blend”. It’s of Maz Jobrani, who is of Iranian descent and he jokes about being Middle Eastern in the US after Sept. 11. Axis of Not-So-Nice!
My hosting account was inaccessible for most of yesterday, hence no updates. In case you were wondering if I was having too much fun celebrating the Chinese New Year, I wasn’t. Plus we don’t have public holidays for it here!
My parents are away in Penang, which takes away what little Chinese New Year “feel” that we get here in Perth. In bigger Chinese communities elsewhere in Asia and around the world, tonight and tomorrow is a big deal. Tonight is the traditional family reunion dinner much like Thanksgiving for the Americans and Christmas. And tomorrow is the first day of the new lunar year when everyone should be dressed out in new clothes, and families would visit each other, and children and unmarried singles would receive red money packets, angpows.
Pic taken from last year’s lunch
What did I do instead? I had lunch at my uncle Alex’s place where we paid our respects to my grandparents. And tonight, I had dinner with my cousin Hunye’s family - she’s the one getting married in two weeks’ time. Her brother and wife had travelled from Malaysia for the reunion dinner, and it was good that my aunty invited me along to have dinner with them.
To all, have a Happy Chinese New Year and may the year of the pig be a splendid one for you!
And as is common for club scenes in any major city, there’s the uglier side: rude celebrities, over aggressive bouncers injuring or even killing drunken louts, underage drinking, drug snorting in the toilets, sexual assaults, public vomiting and urinating, girls gone missing or even dead. Like I said, fascinating.
By the summer of 2006, the street crawled with people—forcing the police to barricade both ends. Masses of visored men in bright T-shirts stumbled through, smoking joints, carrying plastic cups, urinating on the walls. Thin girls toddled out in spike heels. It was a boozy Cancún North. People threw up in front of buildings and on their clothes; turned away at the door, they spat at the doormen. “We’d find people passed out in the bathroom,” recalls a former employee of B.E.D. “You would think it was a dead body. Passed out, like scary passed out, like smack them, pick them up, they’re like Jell-O, like someone took their spine out. And on the street. You would literally see people face down in the gutter.”
Inside the clubs, people started doing “bottle shots”—drinking straight from the bottle without using any kind of glass or mixer. Clubs quietly hired EMTs—which cost thousands of dollars each night—and the ambulance companies did a steady business. Men would find women passing out on the street, lift them onto their shoulders, and carry them off to a taxi. On Saturday nights, when Spirit hosted its hip-hop party, there were fights, frequent arrests, and men making suggestive comments to the women leaving Bungalow 8. Prostitutes and drug dealers walked down the street, freely propositioning anyone they met. “It started to feel self-destructive,” says one clubber, “a Disneyland for drunks.”
There’s also an interesting note about the “club cascade effect”:
Celebrities attract models, models attract businessmen, and businessmen bring dollars.
…
Models of all kinds—runway girls, commercial girls, faces, legs, pretty young things from West Virginia—came to cozy up to celebrities. Bankrolling it all were the “bottles”: the term of art for businessmen who plunk down $400 for $40 worth of vodka.
Perth is a small city with a vibrant clubbing scene concentrated around Northbridge. And we do have the fair share of the uglier aspects mentioned above. It’s unavoidable when you have that many nightclubs in a 3-square block area.
On your typical Saturday night, you can see police in patrol cars, paddy wagons, and on foot, bicycles and horseback. Police on foot are often in groups of 3 or 6. And people still end up doing stupid things, sometimes in front of the passing police which I guess isn’t very hard to do - they are everywhere.
As for celebrities, we don’t have any. Even those from Perth are everywhere else but here! Hahah. But we do have models and businessmen. However, even in places where they frequent I dare say that we don’t have anywhere near the snobbery seen everywhere else.
That’s Perth for you - egalitarian. As long as you look presentable, and behave yourself you can get in. You don’t even have to buy a bottle - not that you could anyway. This is why I find it annoying when I face snobbish door bitches and bouncers who make you feel shitty and worthless by making you wait or not letting you in for no good reason.
Clubbing culture and dance music are endlessly fascinating to me. Sometimes I find the situations that I’m in or the things that I hear and see to be utterly surreal. What I’ve learnt from clubbing all these years: keep your head with you at all times, don’t overdo the drugs and alcohol, don’t accept drinks from strangers, and don’t pick a fight or get sucked into one for any reason.
And most important of all - smile and say “sorry” even when it’s not your fault. You’d find that it defuses a lot of problems before they even start.
So VD is almost over. You may just be finishing off that over-priced dinner for two because the service tonight was horribly slow. You could be walking by the beach or the river, or sitting on a park bench gazing lovingly at the moon together.
You could have kept it simple, and you could have had a role-reversal. You could be on the couch now watching “Love Always” or if you really meant it with the role-reversal some action-movie with lotsa babes and gratuitous nudity and sex.
Intoxicated by the alcohol, the romance or both, you could be pashing, you could be post-coital or you could be mid-coital (bravo!).
In the end, how has the day been different to every other day? Was the food better? The air smelt fresher? The big “O” was even bigger? Did you appreciate each other more today than any other day?
Did you have such a fantastic story to share with us poor singles that it will make us curl up into a foetal position and weep?
