Ethnic Avenue – The Street That Crosses All the Others

Posts Tagged ‘Asians’

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.

If you’ve spent any amount of time in a classroom with young Asian people, you’re familiar with their penchant for spinning pens (interchangeably known as “pen flipping” or “pen twirling”). And, sooner or later, you’ve wondered what gives.

So, why do they love it so much and why are they so good at it? Even though other races engage in the practice, nobody comes close to matching Asian dedication and skill.

The Reasons Behind Asian Pen Spinning

1. Natural Extension of Chopstick Manipulation Skills

There’s no question that using thin, stick-like objects to pick up food, beginning in early childhood, predisposes Asian people to skillful manipulation of similar objects (e.g., pens and pencils). If you can use two sticks to grab a grain of rice, you can easily spin a single, shorter stick in intricate patterns.

2. Non-Threatening Form of Expression and Entertainment

Video games and pen spinning are things you can do at home without stressing out your smothering parents, and incurring their notorious wrath in the process. It’s not surprising Asians excel at both. But pen spinning has the added advantages of silence and portability (i.e., you can do it in class).

3. Asian Weapons Heritage

As with the Chopstick Hypothesis, traditional Asian weapons (e.g., nunchaku) also encourage every form of twirling and twisting of stick-objects.

4. Slender, Adroit Asian Fingers

The same physical feature that helps Asians become great piano players–and skilled detail-workers in Chinese factories–makes them master pen spinners in-the-making.

5. Spend a Lot of Time with Writing Utensils in Their Hands

Smothering parents are at the root of a lot of Asian behavior. Thanks again to their constant pressure–this time to get into one of the Historically Asian Colleges¹–kids spend a lot of time doing math homework, or at least pretending to. What else are you going to do with that idle time and mind?

¹ West of the Mississippi: one of the University of California campuses, especially Berkeley and Los Angeles (UCLA).

If you get the sudden feeling you’re watching the local news every time you talk to your friend, chances are: she’s a Television-Reporter Asian American Girl (TRAAG). Not all TRAAGs are reporters, but they certainly could be. You find them in all walks of life, though every newscast manages to recruit at least one.

A perfect specimen.

Appearance & Dead Giveaways

• Polished, Asian American look; zero trace of FOB-ness
• Conservative, expensive attire: turtle necks, slacks
• Immaculate English, so immaculate, in fact, that it constitutes an accent in itself
• Deep, sonorous female voice; toward the contralto side
• Not much of a sense of humor; face-value assessment of the world
• Anglo first name, ethnic last name (e.g., Tracy Tomonokawa)
• Sounds as if she’s “on location,” even in social situations
• Projects cultured, fancy airs; classically trained in some instrument(s)
• Incongruently pronounces some Asian words with perfect native accent, to feign ethnic pride
• Pretty much guaranteed she’s dating (or married to) a white guy

Even though everyone has surely noticed it by now, nobody has been able to conclusively determine why an overwhelming majority of Asian people, especially girls, routinely drag their feet when walking.

Asian shuffling is unmistakable indoors, but often still audible outside—especially with groups, and the more egregious individual cases. It’s not confined to any particular age group, though it seems to be more common in the Northern Asians (Koreans, Chinese, Japanese) than in the Southeast Asians (e.g., Filipinos).

Unsatisfied with the few speculative hypotheses that exist on this subject, I resolved to come up with a better explanation for this phenomenon. This is the product of that “research.”

Three Theories for Asian Shuffling

1. Active minds. Lazy bodies.

The human body has a finite number of resources. In Asian people, many of those resources are dedicated to the higher faculties, the brain functions—working out math problems, reaching new heights in online gaming, stressing out about your parents’ ever-smothering pressures. With the mind working overtime, the body gets fewer resources.

2. Collectively tired from working so hard, being so pressured.

School all day, after-school tutoring, piano lessons, violin lessons, Calculus homework, helping out at the family business—those things all add up. And when you’re that tired, things like a deliberate, heel-to-toe gait go by the wayside.

3. Weird walking habits from years of wearing slippers, or tube socks, in the house.

I knew an Asian guy in junior high school that stepped on the backs of all of his shoes to make them, functionally, into slippers. It didn’t matter what kind of shoe it was, or how expensive they were, he wore them all like a pair of house shoes. Remarkably, he could play several sports like that and never have a shoe slip off.

If you’ve ever worn slippers, you know there’s a specific way to walk in them. It’s a forward-leaning “foot drag and shuffle.” You still lift your feet, but not as much. There’s always a little contact with the floor. This is very different than walking around in flip-flops (previously known as “thongs,” until the G-string mysteriously appropriated the name). With flip-flops, you have the aid of the toe-thong, which turns your motion into more of a “lift and slap.” This is why White Girls don’t drag their feet.

I’m sure this guy I knew, like many Asian people, wore slippers in the house. In fact, he was so used to it, that he felt compelled to replicate it outside of his home. Asian people with less of this impulse, wear their shoes normally on the outside. But, years and years of wearing slippers in the house—and unwittingly practicing the “foot drag and shuffle”—make walking any other way inconvenient, if not impossible.

From: Your Ethnic Friend
To: All White Guys with Faux Hawks
Subject: RE: Your New Haircut

Hey bro,

I hope you know this isn’t an easy e-mail to write. But as your token ethnic friend, I feel it’s my responsibility to tell you this: it’s time to get rid of the faux hawk.

I’ll admit that when they first came out, faux hawks were actually pretty cool. In fact, I thought the concept was nothing short of brilliant. Some genius somehow devised a way to resurrect a kick-ass hairdo from the 80s and adapt it into a tamer, office-friendly version–one that wouldn’t embarrass your girlfriend in front of her parents. It was still edgy, but now it was versatile. You could go straight from work to the hipster bar and not look ridiculous in either place. And, it was easy; all you needed was a quarter-sized portion of hair product and a mirror (and maybe a hair dryer, I’m not sure).

I don’t know the exact history of the do, but I’m pretty sure White guys started it. At least that was my observation. In fact, my buddy Matt—you know, the guy that does the cabbage patch to celebrate everything—was one of first to have one. But regardless of whether or not you guys did it first (and I can be 100-percent comfortable in my manliness when I say this), White guys did it best. That’s not surprising, since I imagine lighter-colored, fine hair is easier to manage and ply into those wild configurations than coarse, ethnic hair like mine.

Then everything changed. Not only did every White guy go out and get a faux hawk, but everyone else did too—in massive numbers. From there, things quickly got out of hand. Nowadays, the faux hawk is the default haircut of choice for douchebags, movie stars, and generic dumb-asses everywhere—regardless of race, age, or the overwhelming abundance of the haircut.

The mighty faux hawk’s been cheapened, my friend. And, worse, it’s not your own, cool-White-guy thing anymore.

So now, if you still have one, you look like an idiot. I know there aren’t that many choices for short and easy (but still manly) haircuts that don’t make you look stupid or dangerous, but there must be something more. I mean, what did you do before?

Look man, I wouldn’t be telling you this if I didn’t care: enough already with the faux hawk.

Sincerely,

Your Ethnic Friend