You fancy your­self a writer. Well what have you written?

You say that you’re a direc­tor. What the hell have you directed?

You con­sider your­self alive. Then tell me what you have lived through.

–con­ver­sa­tion i had this morn­ing with the reflec­tion in my mirror

Amer­i­can Ninja

Nin­jas and Pirates are played out. As an Asian, I’ve been obsessed with Nin­jas since a kid. I even use to have a pair of throw­ing stars that I lost in my front yard and that sub­se­quently destroyed the gardener’s lawn mower. I must have watched Amer­i­can Ninja like 300 times. And I’ve got to say, a white Ninja was really con­fus­ing to as an Asian child. But now I think our pop cul­ture is get­ting over sat­u­rated with Nin­jas and Pirates. There’s Ask a Ninja, Ninja this, and Ninja that. There’s even Ninja War­rior Chal­lenge which in my opin­ion is really a game show based on Gymkata.

Gymkata

So lets try and change it up. My first thought was for Zom­bies but they’re start­ing to get played out too. They’ve got that app on Face­book and every­thing. Even more impor­tant, they just don’t have enough mythol­ogy behind them. Here are some other pos­si­bil­i­ties I mulled over: Witches and Wiz­ards, Aliens, Legionar­ies, Mercenaries

Amer­i­can Gladiator

But of all the pos­si­ble sug­ges­tions, I think Glad­i­a­tors should be the next big thing. And I’m not talk­ing about the Amer­i­can Glad­i­a­tors dressed in tights kind. I’m talk­ing about the hard­core kill or be killed, mixed mar­tial arts mas­ters from the past, brought in from around the world to train, fight, and kill each other. They’re steeped in a great mythol­ogy. They have a movie by the same name. And best of all, there’s enough vari­ety in weapons so that fan­boys won’t get bored and can have their own iden­tity; if you’re black, your Glad­i­a­tor could be from Africa, Asian from China, etc. Gla­tia­tors are the per­fect next obses­sion. I there­fore declare today to be National Glad­i­a­tor day.

Leave a com­ment with addi­tional suggestions!

Orig­i­nal Sin

A sur­vey of Catholic con­fes­sions is out. A 95-year-old Jesuit scholar looked at which of the seven deadly sins are com­mit­ted most fre­quently. Among men, lust took first prize, with glut­tony com­ing in sec­ond. For women, pride was the big­gie, fol­lowed by envy. The pope’s per­sonal the­olo­gian told the Vat­i­can news­pa­per that “men and women sin in dif­fer­ent ways.”

I kind of always knew this but it’s nice to have a study come out and doc­u­ment it. Espe­cially liv­ing in the uber-superfucial, (does that make it super super ficial?) sin-tastic city of Los Ange­les, I am fre­quently made wit­ness to the sins of both men and women.  No where bet­ter is this more evi­dent than at a Korean Club like Vel­vet Room or Le Cer­cle. You have old rich men drink­ing way too much chas­ing girls way too young. And you have young Korean girls giv­ing the stink eye to any Korean girl they think is of equal or more beauty than them­selves. And you’d think these girls would be nice to the girls they per­cive as uglier but that is not the case either. These girls shun the less pretty like Brit­ney Spears avoids tal­ent. As if ugly was a dis­ease that was con­ta­gious and could rub off on your own beauty. And finally, you have old Korean women, who should have got­ten out of club­bing years ago, eying the young Korean girls with envy. …ahhhh, the Los Ange­les Korean night scene. I love it.

If you haven’t heard by now, there’s a drink called the Gal­va­tron.

The recipe:

1 shot Maker’s Mark
1 shot Patron
1 shot Bac­ardi 151

With 151 being almost dou­ble the proof, at a stag­ger­ing 151, of the other ingre­di­ents which hover around 80, the Gal­va­tron is like 4 shots in one drink. It’s tastes like shit but there seems to be a fol­low­ing gath­er­ing momen­tum behind it. It most likely has to do with Lumpee Le’s hit YouTube song aptly named Gal­va­tron.

The cre­ative peo­ple behind the song and the drink have even made a web­site pro­mot­ing the Gal­va­tron. Check them out and drop them a com­ment. There they cham­pion the  slo­gan, “Drink 3 and Win”. Win…? …win what? …a crip­pled liver that’s been embalmed through alco­hol. Fun­nily enough, the name of the sec­ond part of the three part Gal­va­tron song set is “My liver hates me”. It seem that since Lumpee came out with the  first song, he can’t go out at night with­out peo­ple rec­og­niz­ing him and inevitably buy­ing him a Gal­va­tron. He some­times gets 20 offers a night. In song 2 he laments ever com­ing up with the songs and pleads with peo­ple who rec­og­nize him at clubs to buy him water instead. I give mad props to those who have gone on to fin­ish 3 in a night. The web­site even has a Wall of Fame cel­e­brat­ing those that have fin­ished 3 or more. I’m sure where ever you are, if you send them a video drink­ing 3, they’d throw you up there on that wall. There’s a new show on the food net­work call Man v. Food star­ring Adam Rich­man. I’d like to see his ass try and fin­ish 3.

I didn’t real­ize how pro­lific the Gal­va­tron was until I got a drunk call last Fri­day night around 2am from an old col­lege friend liv­ing out in New York. Drunk as hell and still out at the bars, she called to ask me what the hell was in one. She’d heard from a friend in Nashville who saw the YouTube video and told her to try the drink. Man …nation­wide. Good stuff Gal­va­tron Crew.

WARNING: DRINK RESPONSIBLY

On Decem­ber 26 2008, a vis­it­ing A List pro­moter from San Fran­cisco drank an unver­i­fied num­ber of Gal­va­trons, def­i­nitely more than 3, and trag­i­cally died the next morn­ing. We can spec­u­late on whether or not  his untimely death was due to alco­hol poi­son­ing but I’d rather not go there. Just please peo­ple, drink responsibly.