May 4th, 2018

Hey there,

I cannot stand to do yard work.

My Dad was a worker.  I don't know about his efforts M-F, but when it was time for the weekend, we didn't go to the beach or ballgame.  His idea of a good time was getting up at dawn and working in the yard till the sun went down and it was required that his kids be there for the whole shebang.  He worked hard, but did all the fun stuff.  He would cut the bushes and I had to pick the crap up and lug it to the dumpster.  Weeding?  Guess who did all of it.  And if it wasn't yard work, then he was the one that got to use the hose on the cars while I scrubbed the grime off the wheel rims or as you can see above, he got the paint brush and I got all the other crap work around the job.

I am (or at least was) a worker too.  I can't relax until a job is complete and on the nurture/nature debate, have to say that it was these 12 hour days Saturday and Sunday that contributed to that.  The best memory I have from those long ass days was taking out the transistor radio and listening to Dodger/Angel games from pre game to the last call of the day.  And for some reason, remember hearing Prince's 'When Doves Cry' for the first time one summer and relate that song to torturous work whenever it pops up.

Sticking on family news, Babydoll had her Spring dance performance last weekend.  The kids are good.  I guess...I am having a hard time getting my mind around what messages they are trying to convey and what the point of it at all is.  If they are expressing an idea or emotion through movement, it is lost on me.  Maybe if they used music that appealed to me in any way, it would be better, but dancing to Ed Sheeran is an effin' assault.  I will continue to watch it as a sport and dissect the choreography as it they were an NFL line, but any tips I could get on how best to enjoy this would be appreciated.

An update on the Boy this week.  His UVA club team played in the national championship tournament for the NCDA last week and they lost in the round of 16.  He's # 8 second from top left.

Pretty impressive right?  The NCDA is the National Collegiate Dodgeball Association.  Hmmm...not an NCAA sanctioned sport and we get no scholarship money for that.  I had no idea this was a thing nor that he was even playing in it.  Only found out through a friend of mine who's son is good friends with the Boy and he mentioned it in passing.  Got to speak to Boy-o the other day and asked what it was all about.  They've been playing all year and he was surprised they did so well in the tournament as they were not highly ranked.  This doesn't sound like a rigorous sport training wise as you show up to practises when you can and they take the guys based on their attendance in some manner.  I guess it is impressive, am happy he is making friends and keeping active, and National anything is good, but still...Dodgeball?  At least it isn't Ultimate Frisbee.

One more piece of Imbro business today.  Just finished our summer plans yesterday and must say that it is a work of art.  I'd love to tell you all about them, but you would be jealous.  I will relate one stretch and that entails Betty and I ditching the kids for a full week and driving from SF to Seattle, stopping along the sparsely populated and majestic NoCal coast for a few nights, Crater Lake and a weekend in PDX.  To make it even more amazing, we are splurging and are renting a convertible.  Betty says that she has great convertible hair.  It is supposed to be a Mustang and we were talking about it in the car today.  I said that I bet it is gonna be yellow, and she said it will be white.  What a cliché that those are the colors we pick out for ourselves, no?

Which brings us to this....gonna take the rest of this week for a little Asian Corner.  Yes that sound you hear is your inappropriate racist radar detector going off.

If you didn't finish last week's manifesto as to why Yo La Tengo is the greatest band in the world (to me), and I cannot blame you if you didn't, am re-posting the below YouTube link to the night they (with Thurston Moore) were the backing band for Yoko Ono.

Only about 2% of the people I know get off on the feedback stuff and when you couple it with Yoko's "lyrics", I am alone.  Best part was when she went to look at her sheet music as if they wrote notes down.  I've watched this thing a couple of dozen times and can't get enough of it.  It is as much performance art as music, so why can I relate to this but cannot grasp the dance stuff.  Maybe if the kids danced to this, it would sink in but I bet they couldn't do it.

The local media was abuzz last week after the trailer for the movie Crazy Rich Asians dropped.  The first Western flick in 25 years (since the Joy luck Club) to feature an all Asian cast.  Am torn as to my feelings as it is a Rom-Com, but I love Constance Wu.  The premise sounds funny, normal California girl falls in love with a guy only to find out he is mega rich and how she has to deal with her new family.  All in for that.

In forgettable Asian entertainment, fell down a Pat Morita hole somehow and learned that he left Happy Days to star in a TV show called Mr T and Tina.  Was a massive Happy Days fan at the time and have zero recollection of this spinoff.  Am on a desperate search to find a full episode and they just don't exist, probably because ABC needed to bury it due to insensitivity.  I did find the opening credits and it looks delicious.

In local news this week, received this email from the US embassy...The American Institute in Taiwan has seen an increase in arrests related to marijuana over the last several months.  AIT reminds U.S. citizens in Taiwan that penalties for possession, use, selling or trafficking (including mailing) of illegal drugs in Taiwan are severe, and convicted offenders can expect long jail sentences and heavy fines.  Taiwan also has the death penalty for certain drug offenses.  Law enforcement in Taiwan treats all drug violations very seriously. Taiwan has a lot of good things going for it; a female President, vibrant democracy, LBGT tolerant.  I get that the governments in this part of the world are harsh on the drugs and get why Taiwan doesn't want it on the island, but they'd be a lot cooler if they did.

Extra points if you caught the Matthew McConaughey from Dazed and Confused reference above.    


In more local news, Taiwan was just ranked #42 most free press in the 2018 World Press Freedom index.  Burkina Faso was 41 and South Korea #43, with the US behind at #45.  Taiwan ranked the highest in Asia but South Korea rose 20 spots this year with that being attributed to the new President, who seems to be doing some good things over there.  The United States poor showing...who would have thunk it?

Unsurprisingly, last on the above free press list was North Korea.  During the historic meeting between the leaders of the North and South last week, saw an article that Kim Jong-Un brought his own toilet when he crossed the DMZ.  Had to click on that one and the reason he did was that he didn't want anyone outside of his country to examine his feces.  Had never thought about that but I would totally want to know what is in that guys bowel movement and of course he doesn't want people picking through it.  Giant tape worms are thought to be common there, mainly due to the us of human excrement for fertilizer, but have to imagine that Kim gets the good food.  Plus, he is pleasantly plump, so no sign of worms eating away at his insides.  There are reports he has gout or something and am sure he doesn't want any ill health issues out there.  My guess is that his diet is so opulent that if his people knew he was eating fois gras while they boiled tree bark, that would be a bad look.  Any time poop is in the news, you know I gotta share.

Let's get serious for a second.  

Seriously...China!  Someone sent me this article from the NY Times about tech companies hiring girls to help "sooth" their nerdy programmers.   The qualifications for the ladies: Must be attractive, know how to charm socially awkward programmers and give relaxing massages.  They just wrote my Ziprecruiter ad.

Seriously China?  You must have seen this story about a zoo in China where the "visitors" threw rocks at a kangaroo to get him to hop and ended up stoning him to death.  I just hope they didn't let all that fine meat go to waste.  You just know they think that Kangaroo testicles make the hair in facial moles grow longer or some shit.

Was driving home with Betty the other day and she says she sees this ad on buses all the time and wondered what was up with a monkey carrying a pair of shoes.

I take the photo to my local translator and she looks at it and laughs.  She says it is for a Private Investigator that specializes in catching married people having affairs.  A cheating spouse in local parlance is called a cheating monkey.  I never noticed these before but now that it was called out, see them everywhere.  Business must be good.

Not sure if I've ever mentioned this before, but I find it near impossible to remember peoples names when they are in Chinese.  Not great at names in general but when they are in another language, it adds to the degree of difficulty, and when in Chinese, I have no shot.  I can barely remember my own kids Chinese middle names and am told that I say them wrong anyway.  I've been working with this group of boys for 9 months now, and if that kid goes by his local name, I have no clue what to call him.  Boss, Chief or whatever it says on his t-shirt are my go-to's.  I swear that it is not a sign of disrespect and is solely on my own incompetence.

When I do have to make an attempt at saying a person's Chinese name and have zero idea what it is, I will call them Gowron.  You have to be a real aficionado for Star Trek: The Next Generation to know who that is...he is one of the leaders of the Klingons.

Gowron sounds Chinese (to me)and I have been getting away with it cause no one knows who Gowron is.  That is disrespectful but makes me laugh every time.

A couple of sad pieces of Asian's passing.  First, Ichiro retired today.  I loved that guy.  Not only is he the true baseball hits leader (screw you Pete Rose...my favorite sign about him from the 70's read "Rose is a Weed), and he has this zen quality that was unique and endearing, but it was his arm from the outfield that always got me.

I've been to hundreds of baseball games but have only bee to a handful that were truly historic or momentous.  A Nolan Ryan no-hitter and that All-Star game when Tommy Lasorda got hit with a bat are two.  The third was the night when Ichiro broke the single season hit record

Nice to hear Dave Niehaus' voice again.

The other passing this week was Jhoon Rhee into the heavens.  Anyone of a certain age that lived in the DC area in the 70's and 80's will remember this commercial.

There were only a few TV channels during our college years and one was UHF channel 20.  They'd show old sitcoms late night and we'd get baked and tune in.  That commercial would run all the time and we would all hoot and holler "Nobody bother me either".  What I didn't know until reading about his life yesterday in this Deadspin article was how influential he was in the field of martial arts.  In the hole I jumped in about Jhoon Rhee last night, came across this satirical video of the iconic commercial and it is a riot.




Finally for today, I have a local traffic observation.  The analogy I attempt here is really crass and crude, so if that isn't your thing, click away and will check back in with you next time.

Still here?  

Sperm.  In health class or somewhere, you must have seen pictures of sperm under a microscope.

I'm sitting in my car at a particularly busy and complicated intersection the other day marveling at how all the cars and scooters interact to get through it, make turns and such, and it made me think of my 7th grade health class video.  All these vehicles careening around in complete randomness with the same goal of getting to their home/egg first.  Not all sperm are robust lasers either.  A huge percentage of them go in circles, crash into one another, go one way and decide mid-stream to turn around and go the other way, just like the drivers in Taipei.  This realization was a revelation for me cause now after I get home from being on the road, I understand why I feel like I have been bukkakied..