The Legend of Billie Jean (aka "Becoming American Through Tv/Films")

Who remembers this film from 1985?

If you have never heard of it, but you love (like me) any of these subjects:

• strong female lead
• fallen women
• injustice done to women (especially by men)
• followed by revenge by said women to above men
• heroines
• girl gangs, female outlaws

Then by all means rent it on YouTube for $3.99. Helen Slater who also played Supergirl (1984) is the lead, and a very young Christian Slater plays her younger brother and is BLONDE in this movie.

This film was seminal in the education of what I call, "Becoming American". Some other influences included Jordache Jeans commercials and the sisters band Heart in their late 80s look and sound. I didn't see Billie Jean until a couple years after it was released when it was on cable TV re-run. I watched every time it was on. I was completely in awe of this awesome, bad ass female lead. My family have only been living in the States for 3 years, and we were in Houston by then. Since this film takes place in Corpus Christie, TX, the environment such as the mall scene and the driving scenes resonated with familiarity, and the central characters who were "trailer trash" were true to life to me since we also lived in the poor part of town (although not in a trailer park) in one of those all utilities-included low-income apartments. This film was real and, to me, it held the key to understanding American kids and thus unlocking the complexities of fitting in (aka: project immigrant assimilation).

So from this movie I formulated in my young mind:

• "American" meant blonde and tanned
• poor kids are maybe nicer and more tolerant of people who are different
• sporty guys who wear popped collars are assholes
• older men in positions of power are NOT to be trusted
• introduction to Pat Benatar for the first time - mind blown

I just re-watched it this weekend and I was reminded of how non-diverse films and tv used to be in the late 80s to 90s. There were hardly any people of color in this film, and that seemed very odd in light of present day's more true-to-life presentation of America's demographic.

But some things still remain true in my mind like I still think guys who wear popped collars are assholes, older men in positions of power are not to be trusted, but I no longer think to be American you have to be blonde and tanned, because later on when I was a pre-teen, I encountered The Lost Boys and I said, fuck this shit. I'm going to that side.




By the way check out the fashion in this film, remind you of any hipsters you know? Haha!

Alamo in Chinatown

On this Valentine's Day eve I thought I would share a truly unforgettable story. Years and years ago I was dating a "kiwi" (someone from New Zealand). Actually, we weren't just "dating". We were in a relationship. We were together for three years and two of those years we lived together in a noisy two bedroom apartment in chic NoLiTa. In all three years together he never once told me he loved me. I was always in doubt. Did he love me as I loved him? What did he really think of me? Did that make him happy? Would he like this? Would he like that? To this day I am still apologizing to my girl friends for putting up with the me back then. I stayed though in the relationship, because like all girls, I rationalized with myself, obsessively weighed the good (he made me laugh, handsome, he made web sites for me) versus the bad (lack of emotional expression, lack of communication, extreme opinions that were very alarming). I do not miss navigating through that murky, uncertain relationship terrain.

Somehow, towards the end of the relationship he convinced me that we needed to have our own apartments after moving in and living together for 2 years. His reasoning was that he never had his own place since he moved to NYC and he really wanted to have that experience. Being the understanding and forever accommodating girlfriend that I was (fool!), I acquiesced. Part of me totally understood that desire. Having your own place in NYC is pretty awesome! But part of me felt like this was taking a huge step backwards in the relationship. In retrospect I see that he was "too nice" to break up with me because he didn't want to hurt my feelings (the sensitive man's selfish cowardly excuse to not own up to his own feelings), so he opted for "let's move out to our own place but stay together."

My favorite noodle shop in Chinatown on Eldridge Street

I found a small studio apartment on Essex Street and he found a slightly larger but old, old, old! one bedroom apartment nearby on Eldridge Street. That place was a real fixer upper located above Sheng Wang, a basement dumpling noodle shop which ironically has become one of my favorite places now. Naturally I put on a brave face but it made me really sad every time when he would go to his house and I to mine.  No matter how I rationalized it just felt sad and I felt utterly rejected. It almost felt like he was making me feel bad so I would leave first (probably true). If I could go back in time I would go back to the younger me, bitch slap myself, and the convo would go like this:

Future Me (Me Now): "You fool, you better start listening to your feelings and stop accommodating for things that are not you!"

Past Me: "Watchoo talkin about, Future Me? This is REALLY how I feel."

Future Me: "Oh really? You LIKE snowboarding? You LIKE falling on your ass all day long on the ice and up and down that freezing gondala?"

Past Me: "..."

Future Me: "You don't have any feelings of abandonment from the time he was off mountain biking in Canada and left you here during the big summer blackout?"

Past Me: "...he did call..."

Future Me: "And you honestly like wearing this raver clothes you are wearing?"

So yea Future Me rules. This is what people mean when they say "I know myself". This realization came slow and late to me but the final turning point hit me hard like a stink bomb during another time when he was away again (either for visa issues or recreational outdoors stuff). Naturally I was the lucky one entrusted with getting his mail and checking in on his apartment. These visits were pretty pathetic and involved me smelling his clothes, looking through his cupboard to see what he has been eating, lying down on the bed pretending I lived there, or looking out the window in silence to punish myself. Then one day the landlord called and said there was a leak in his bathroom that was leaking down to the floor below. He wanted me to go to the apartment and check for faucets that were accidentally left on. I went after work confidently climbing up the stairs feeling so capable! I was here. I am the one to solve his problem for him to make his life easier while he was having fun in another place! He's going to love me so much!

I went in the apartment and headed straight to the bathroom. I stood by the bathroom door and as I reached to my left to flip on the light switch, I felt a dampness on my shoes. I looked down just as the light snapped on and to my horror I was standing in sewage water. The entire bathroom floor was covered with brown water. The bathtub had about a foot of water with mysterious lumps and sinewy stringy things that I dared not think too long about. The sink too. The toilet overflowed with indescribable scatological horror - and that was when I drew my Alamo.

I turned right back around and walked out of that depressing Chinatown apartment. I will pick up Chewie's poop but I will not cleaning up after no man's. I broke it off with him shortly after he returned from his trip. That was the first time my heart felt broken (but I got over it - trust me, you'll get over it too if you WANT to). If I had stayed in that relationship I don't know what kind of person I would have changed myself into just to be with him. One day its trying out snowboarding, the next day is wearing something you don't really like, and then before you know it, you are cleaning up poop being half the woman you used to be. Let that be a lesson to you young girls out there whose Future You haven't bitch slapped you yet. Happy Valentine's Day!

FYI - Sheng Wang has amazing hand pulled or knife-shredded noodles. This is their beef fried noodle dish. I always go for the beef soup noodles when I have a serious hangover. Sheng Wang has a unique feature. They have pickled cabbage on each table for you to put on your noodles - a real Taiwanese treat! I still think it's funny that such deliciousness was here the whole time when I was in that unsavory relationship right upstairs! Ah, Chinatown's mysteries. 

A Horse is a Horse, Of Course, Of Course.

Happy Chinese New Year (Year of the Horse)! My mom had to call for me to know. Make sure you eat noodles, she reminded me. Noodles symbolize long life and by eating it you kinda sort in a way supposed to have long life yourself. This is just one of the many, many Chinese traditions you are supposed to do for New Years to bring luck. Some other "traditions" include wearing red underwear on new year's day, getting your hair trimmed before the new year, and eating dumplings but - and this was the most crucial part - you can't count how many you've eaten. Come on, EVERYONE knows that would be the worst luck ever! You didn't know about that? Well keep that in mind next time you are shoveling dumplings in your face at Vanessa's or Joe's Shanghai.

I grew up hearing stuff like this. Americans have her own equivalent like not walking under a ladder, stuff about black cats crossing your path, and even the saying "Bless you" after sneezing has a Germanic root. Some are based in folklore (like the dumplings), some are simply phonetic correlation (ie: never give someone a clock for their birthday because the word for clock (鐘 zhong) sounds just like "the end"), and others are as sinister as ghost stories.

Like many immigrant families my parents used to own a Chinese restaurant. We had one when we lived in Santa Cruz, Bolivia and then later in Houston, Texas. Both were proper sit-down places not take-out hole-in-the-walls. But they weren't so sit-down that Zagat would come review them or anything. My mom was (and still is) a damn fine cook. Even though we have not been in the restaurant business for over twenty years, she can still whip up a General Tso's Chicken, Pepper Steak, or anything with her eyes closed. The restaurant I remember most vividly was the one in Houston "Sichuan Garden". As the Chinese would say, it was very unlucky. We struggled financially and couldn't afford hiring a restaurant staff. My mom managed the front desk and was also the cook, my brother did the dishes after school (if he wasn't getting into fights on the school bus), my dad made deliveries and helped managed the front, and I read. My passions back then were books and Mr. Ed. I loved Mr. Ed. I never missed one episode. I was too young to really be of any help in the restaurant other than fold napkins or set the tables, so my parents often let me go back to our apartment which was right across the street from the restaurant and I would drown myself with reruns of Mr. Ed. Like a lot of ten year old girls I loved horses. It was easy to love horses growing up in Texas. I read every single book I could find in the dinky public library about horses. After I pillaged through everything there I made my dad drive me to the neighboring county's public library and borrowed from there. I also made my parents take me horseback riding whenever we could afford the $30 and hour trail ride. I bought all the Walter Foster books on how to draw horses. I cocooned myself in a black-and-white world of words and talking horses while strange and inexplicable things were happening at the restaurant.

One of the problems was the air conditioning. It never worked and would be fixed for a day then stop working again. Without air conditioning any establishment in Texas could not survive through the 100+ F summers. Once people realized how uncomfortable it was to eat pork fried rice and hot and sour soup in an AC-less restaurant they stopped coming in to eat. But my mom's cooking was still damn good so while dine-in decreased, deliveries increased. There was one delivery that I will never forget. My dad went out and after an hour still haven't returned. My brother had to take phone orders while my mom cooked. I was given the task of watching the front. This was pre-cellphone so there was no way to even call him. An hour and a half passed still no sign of our white Dodge station wagon in the parking lot. Another half hour passed. Now it has been two hours since he left for this local delivery. It was quite dark out now, and more and more undelivered food orders were piling up. My mom was starting to panic. Just then my dad's car pulled up to the restaurant. He still had the delivery bags in his hands as he walked in. He never found the house address after two hours. He couldn't explain what happened except that it felt like he was driving round and round in a loop. I would make a turn and it was the same street I was just on, he told us. It was like he could see the destination on the map he had in the car but just could not get to it. We all remained silent. Then finally my dad said out loud what we were all thinking but didn't want to say: 鬼打牆, or in English translation "demon walls", "drywall," "ghost wall".

"Demon Wall" is a folklore story describing a phenomenon when people traveling alone and in a hurry, usually in the middle of the night, in the wilderness or in cemeteries, find themselves moving in a circular direction and find themselves back at the starting place. Sometimes the situation may be last all night or continuously for a few days. In old, old traditional belief this happens when a wandering un-mourned spirit tries to confuse and distress a living person in order to attach itself to him/her to reincarnate. This is REALLY old school like something grandparents would believe. I had to ask my mom what it meant and she had to call her mom to find out. Just so you know, this is NOT common knowledge or a belief that modern Chinese people carry with them in their heads. Nevertheless I'm fascinated with these old superstitions and I DO believe that when you encounter spirits, your chi (energy) is weak. As Confucius said, "Respect ghosts and gods, but keep away from them." That's why I would never ever touch a ouija board or do a seance. Why take the chance and invite something malevolent?

Another incident related to the restaurant had a tragic turn. We had a new signage to install outside on the awning, but our extendable ladder didn't quite reach high enough. The man making deliveries next door at the shish-kebab restaurant volunteered to help us by standing on the top of his van to place the signage. Two days later the owner of the shish-kebab restaurant came over and informed us that the delivery man died in a car accident. That was also the year when The Challenger exploded. I was in third grade (I think) Home Room period. My English wasn't that great so I didn't know what the word "explosion" meant. It wasn't until our teacher turned on the classroom TV and I saw that infamous news clip that I understood what was happening in America. Some of the girls in my class  were crying then my teacher cried. Even the boys I hated (cause they were always trying to talk to me when I didn't want their attention or cared to open my mouth cause my English was shitty) shut the hell up and were quiet for once. The principal came on over the intercom and let us out early that day. I went to our restaurant as usual after school. We didn't have a lot of customers that day. I don't miss that restaurant at all.

Where our resto used to be is now a Valero gas station

Hotter Than Hell: The Tanyas

Headmistress of NY School of Burlesque Jo Weldon's photos from her headliner stripping days as "Tanya Hyde". This is the photo that inspired this post. Photo re-posted with Jo's permission.

It seemed like every girl I knew named Tanya (or Tonya) where I grew up in Texas was either a bully, white trash or a stripper. Sometimes all three. Let's see. There was a Tanya in my junior high school who made fun of me every day during Home Room by calling me names like "Girl Who Looks Like a Boy" (I had a pixie hair cut back then) and a few times she even called me "chink" along with the other white trash guys in class. It was weird because she was Vietnamese herself so I hope she has dealt with her self-loathing issues by now, or I hope unapologetically, she passed on her self-loathing to her kids ideally a daughter as bitchy and mean as she was. Then there was Tonya Harding. That was one batshit crazy ice skater conspiring with her ex-husband to break Nancy Kerrigan's leg. What was she thinking about? Jeez. Even now when you look at photos of her losing at an event, her crumpled face, slacked mouth and eyebrows comically pointed down to form this impossible and grotesque triangle, you know she cray cray. Poor, poor white girl.


When I was thirteen we lived in a shady part of Grand Prairie, TX in an all-utilities-included apartment complex called Grand Manor Apartments. It was $300 a month for a two bedroom apartment. My older brother got his own room, and my parents bought a sheet of thin plywood from Home Depot and sectioned off half the living room for my room. The carpet was always in a neutral color, thin and moldy. The sliding glass door that opened to a shitty, 3-by-4 wooden fenced balcony was frequently the point of forced entry when other apartments were burglarized. The other people who lived in these complexes were mostly Black and Mexican. The few white families spent their weekends sitting outside by the parking lot or if they had the upstairs apartment, they lounged on plastic chairs drinking beer and wearing trucker caps emblazoned with beer or sports logos. These were the people who called me "chink" or "oriental" and probably why I still hate the hipsters going for the trucker look. I wanna kick their faces! It was what we could afford for two years.



Above us lived a mother and daughter alone. I can't remember the mom much, but I remember the teenage daughter named, you guessed it, Tanya. Oh and what a Tanya she was. She truly lived up to every image, sensation, and impression that a name like "Tanya" can conjure. It is not an elegant name like Sophia or Anne. It does not evoke visions of chandeliers and gowns nor does it perfume your lips as you pronounce it. It is a common, girl-next-door name. Tanya's are all-American, approachable, and easy. My Tanya was a hair metal chic. She had big blonde hair teased way up with dark roots. Black eyeliner. She wore an acid-washed jean jacket, really tight jeans, and I remember her wearing a pair of intimidating fringe high heeled boots. It was the early 90's. It was no secret that she liked Motley Crüe. Her bedroom was above my brother's and she would blast music late into the night. I didn't listen to metal music. I was going through my Madonna-Tiffany-teeny bopper phase, and my brother was strictly listening to only 50s and 60s music. When Tanya wasn't listening to heavy metal she vacuumed. I would lie awake listening to the vacuum sucking away dirt and dust so all you got after was just a pathetic, threadbare carpet.

Tanya went out at night. Her boyfriends would come screeching up to the parking lot in pick-up trucks to get her. Sometimes there were three guys (I peeped out the kitchen window) sometimes two. They were dressed similarly to her and listened to the same music. You heard the music approaching first then the engine idling and the unmistakable click-clack of Tanya's heels as she raced down the stairs to her almighty Ford chariot waiting to whisk her away from Grand Manor Apartments. Once she was coming home as I was leaving for school early in the morning. She passed right by me. She was so close that I could see that she used a blue eyeliner and it was smudged from a night of having fun with boys that noticed you and wanted you and maybe doing drugs or smoking marijuana. She wore tangly silver crucifix earrings and her left ear had a row of more piercings. Her hair was soft, fine, blonde and pretty. Not coarse, thick and hideous like Asian hair. She didn't notice me, but as she walked by, I caught a whiff of what I now know as good ol' yeasty beer from the night before. But even with that bread-y smell and messy eye makeup, her life was SO glamorous.

Tanya must have gotten in big trouble with her mom that night because we heard a lot of fighting and stomping around. My parents were fighting a lot then too mainly over lack of money and how to make more money etc. All the fighting made me feel closer to Tanya like we both shared a "troubled" family life and we both had parents and teachers who didn't get us. We passed by each other again the following day on the stairs. Her mom was screaming at her as she slammed the door and stormed down the stairs to another car waiting for her. She made eye contact with me this time and I said, "Parents suuuuck." To my disbelief, she smiled and said, "Yea right?" I quickly added sarcastically, "Yeah you better go read your Bible and pray to God or something." I hated God. I had just been pulled out of a private Christian school where I actually had friends, but because my parents couldn't afford the tuition anymore I was transferred to a crappy public school where nobody cared about anything (but there were a lot of cute skater boys! another story). I hated the Christian school too to make things more confusing. And I certainly did not believe in God anyway the point was, my little rebellious anti-Christ quip made Tanya laugh. I felt SO cool. We were the same! We were sister rebels together. I could be her.

Tanya must have gotten grounded from missing her curfew, because a few more days later, my brother told me he saw her sneaking out of her second floor window to meet some guys in a pickup. He said he heard something knock on his window really late at night so he looked out and saw her half tangling and half climbing down to meet these guys. This story made an epic impression to my thirteen-year-old mind and inspired me to do the same a few years later when I sneaked out to meet my Jamaican boyfriend to devastating consequences. No one died but...that's another story for another day when the water is shut down in my apartment.

We stayed in Grand Manor Apartments for two years. My parents were worried about the public school education quality in that area. My band teacher called my mom several times about my behavior in class. My brother was getting into fights and his growing collection of porn magazines was starting to worry my parents. We moved to a nicer area. Gradually our financial situation improved. I graduated Salutatorian in my high school class. I went to Cornell University. Settled down in NYC. Met amazing women with storied pasts like Jo Weldon whose photo above reminded me of my own storied past and the women who made impressions on me for better or worse. This is Google Satellite's photo of Grand Manor Apartment. Shocking that this shack is still there. Maybe now its called Palace of Grandeur.