Ethnic Avenue – The Street That Crosses All the Others

Archive for the ‘Weekly Mop-Up’ Category

My "extended summer vacation" has been cut short by a recent, albeit short-lived, spike in interest in Ethnic Avenue and a smattering of complaints from somewhat loyal readers (mostly lurkers). It doesn’t take much encouragement to get me to start talking shit again.

Frankly, it took a fair amount of restraint to not comment on some of the past two months’ happenings–and, as you know, there were some good ones. Among them:

Mel Gibson Goes Ballistic and Racist (Again)

I’ve never liked Mel Gibson, but I think most people did, until he pulled a couple of public stunts a few years ago that made him seem kinda, sorta racist—at least anti-Semitic. A couple of weeks ago, when things finally started to blow over, his Octomom-looking ex-wife released some tapes where he sounds like a total asshole. Don’t get me wrong: anybody can sound like a hysterical psychopath in the middle of screaming at this wife. The problem, for Mel Gibson, is that he punctuated nearly every insult with some seemingly unrelated racist footnote.

The Tea Party and Godwin’s Law

The brain-dead conservative mob known as the Tea Party is the gift that keeps on giving. I can’t even count the number of potential blog-post topics these geniuses have unwittingly provided over the past two months—mostly grounded in Godwin’s Law.

Reductio ad Hitlerum (Godwin’s Law): the sarcastic observation that, given enough time, all discussions —regardless of topic or scope —inevitably wind up being about Hitler and the Nazis.

Source: wikipedia.org

The World Cup

There’s nothing like a meeting of 30-something nations to provide an ample supply of international hilarity and foreigner antics. For as long they were in the contest, I—like many Americans—was praying for the U.S. team to win, against all odds. Imagine the delicious slap in the face, to the world, it would have been for America to win at a sport we couldn’t be more casual about collectively. Call it hate, if you must, but America’s in desperate need of a hubristic ego boost these days.

Lebron James and his “Decision”

Nothing was more tempting than Lebron James’s “decision.” Even if you know nothing about basketball, you vaguely know who “King” James is. And, his free agency—and the question of whether Cleveland was too much of a shithole to stay in, even for boatloads of money—became the subject of every news story for a hot minute, as he dragged out the decision of which team he would grace with his basketball skills next season. To make things even worse, once-great, respectable cities like New York condescended themselves to look ridiculous by publicly imploring him to join their team, with expensive PR campaigns and public statements from prominent residents (even the mayor). It was disgusting and embarrassing for everyone involved.

Barf. This is one time I was especially glad that my city and team not only won the championship, but mostly kept its dignity intact (ethnic championship rioters notwithstanding).

That’s just the beginning of the list. “LiLo” (what they’re calling Lindsay Lohan these days) is going to jail. Sarah Palin compared herself to William Shakespeare. Joe Biden put the blue-collar smackdown on some frozen-custard salesman.

So, for now, I’ve decided to reactive the Avenue by periodically chiming in on this and other stuff. In exchange, I ask you to periodically chime in (i.e., stop lurking). If you want to know when new stuff is posted, subscribe using the “Get E-mail Updates” form in the left column. It’s easy (be sure to verify your account via e-mail) and spam-free. Be sure to check the twitter feed in the right column for mini-updates, comments, and links. Or, better yet, if you’re on twitter, follow Ethnic Avenue.

I’ll probably be making some changes to the site (mostly content-related, not-so-much visually), so feel free to speak up about that too.

Apparently, I picked one helluva week to ignore the news. Some funny shit went down last week.

White Guy Changes His Race the Lazy Way

What did Michael Jackson (and, to a lesser extent, Sammy Sosa) teach us about making absolutely sure no one recognizes you? That’s right: change your race.

Well, that’s exactly what this white guy did, in a string of robberies he committed in southern Ohio. But he did it by wearing a mask designed to look like a black guy. I shit you not.

The craziest part about this story isn’t that he pulled the stunt in the first place. Or, even that it worked several times. The crazy part is that they actually sell a black-dude mask. Admittedly, I haven’t participated in a Halloween-anything in a while, but I had no idea costume technology had reached this level of sophistication.

Wearing shorts gave him away.

This story raises more questions than it answers.

The most logical of those questions is whether they sell all the races. If they do, I could probably use a white guy mask to land myself a nice corporate-executive job and/or an Asian girlfriend.

When “You Throw Like a Girl” is a Compliment

If, a week ago, someone had said to me they had “tickets to go see the Gay Softball World Series,” I would have assumed they were speaking to me in some sort of secret locker-room code. But, now I know better. The event actually exists.

And, what’s more:

Three bisexual men have filed a federal lawsuit against [the] national gay-sports organization [that puts on the event], claiming they were unfairly deemed not gay enough to play for a gay softball team.

Apparently, the opposing team “stopped play” several times during the game on the grounds the other team was breaking the “two heterosexual players maximum” rule. After the game, the bisexual players were brought separately into a room with 25 board members and grilled on their “sexual interests and private life.”

And, at some point one of the (presumably gay) board members allegedly huffed, “this is the Gay World Series, not the Bisexual World Series.”

A lot of things came to mind when I read this story. After extracting the handful of obvious, lame jokes—one question remained.

How did they know they weren’t “fully” gay? I mean, seriously.

British Lady Turns Chinese Overnight

There was a bit of a commotion over this British lady who’s developed a rare condition (none of us have ever heard of) called Foreign Accent Syndrome (FAS). Prompted by some sort of brain injury (in her case a really bad migraine), FAS permanently changes the way someone talks–usually into some foreign-sounding accented version.

According to the report, Sarah Colwill developed a “Chinese accent,” going from the Queen’s English to the Queen Engrish seemingly overnight.

The natural question now is: will white guys now be more attracted to her?

That aside, everything about this story sounds suspicious to me. Is there also a Foreign Strut Syndrome or a Foreign 10-Dollar-Minimum-to-Use-Your-Credit-Card Syndrome?

Because I definitely know a few people with those.

Every week, a few “important” news stories or topics fall through the Ethnic Avenue cracks and aren’t posted. Either our staff (me) doesn’t get around it, runs out of time, or–in the middle of trying to write it up–realizes that it doesn’t meet the strict "quality controls” of a true Ethnic Avenue post. The bad part is that a good amount of the stuff that doesn’t make it is actually worthwhile shit.

So, to address that problem, I’ve decided to start an odds-and-ends roundup session at the beginning or end of every week (or so). Think of it as trash time in a basketball game, when all of the second- and third-stringers take the floor.

Airlines Gradually Making Us Into Illegal Border-Crossers

I-didn’t-know-people-actually-used-it airline, Spirit Air, is going to start charging its passengers $30-45 for carry-on luggage. According to them, you’re paying for overheard-compartment space, since you don’t have to pay for anything that fits under the seat. The rationale is that:

…having fewer carry-on bags will help empty the plane faster. [Spirit CEO Ben Baldanza] said the idea is to get customers to pay for individual things they want, while keeping the base fare low.

Even though most of us won’t ever set foot on a Spirit Airlines plane, people (myself included) know that if that shit takes off (pun intended) it’ll only be a matter of time before it triggers copycat fees from the bigger, real airlines we actually use.

I won’t repeat the same joke people have been making for months: that they’ll soon start charging you a buck to use the bathroom (since it’s probably true). What I will say is that: just like some people have been trying to carry all of their luggage on since they started charging for checking it in, those same people are going to try to stuff everything under their fuckin’ seat.

Now, imagine that you also have the same seat luck I do (next to huge fat lady every other time I get on a plane), and you can imagine how much more unpleasant flying is going to become.

Sometimes I wonder if the airlines are just fucking with us, seeing how much we’ll put up with before we actually stand up for ourselves.

Obama Smackdown: Palin Edition

Obama’s smackdown has been holding pretty steady in the past few weeks. I haven’t cataloged all of the Sean Connery moments, but there have been a few good ones. The best one came last week when, in response to Sarah Palin’s criticism of his recent nuclear disarmament treaty with Russia, he said:

I really have no response to that. The last I checked, Sarah Palin is not much of an expert on nuclear issues.

Translation: “Sarah Palin criticizing me about nuclear issues is like Gilligan giving the Professor advice on how to get off the island.”

UPDATE: Listen to the pregnant pause after “Sarah Palin isn’t much of an expert on…” You just know he wanted to say, “on shit.”

Coming Soon: Ethnic Variations of Jersey Shore

Despite its incredible popularity, I’m not a big fan of MTV’s Jersey Shore. I’ve seen enough to “get it,” and it didn’t take me long to confirm my reasons for avoiding these sorts of douchebags and dumb-asses in my daily life, at all costs. But, now, the producers of the program are looking to make a Persian-American version of the program, and there’s already a Russian-American version in the works.

Two things come to mind. First of all, these producers have an obvious master-level understanding of the douchebag and its various incarnations. They seem to know which groups “trend” in that direction and they’re cashing in on that fact that not everyone has the fortune (or misfortune) to see them in action on a regular basis.

If you live in a city like Los Angeles, you take exposure to a diverse population of douchebags for granted. It’s a diverse place, so it stands to reason that a certain percentage of each population will be douchebag.

On any given weekend, Los Angeles for example, has at least four or five thriving douchebag communities in full swing. Segments of Hollywood: classic, white-guy douchebags. Downtown and East of there: Latino douchebags. Glendale and Burbank: Armenian douchebags. West Los Angeles: Persian douchebags. They co-mingle in each others’ territories, which leads to—in about equal proportions–conflict or alliances, grounded on their shared interests and priorities.

So, I guess to make a reality show based on some (or all) of these populations makes sense. But if I don’t like the live-action version(s), why would I want to watch it on TV?