I Know Gung-Fu

“Despite not speaking the language and asserting that ‘Chop Suey’ is a traditional dish in Mainland China, El Panda believes he is Chinese. His distorted interpretation of Chinese culture has developed through obsessively watching dubbed kung fu films and regularly visits to China Town.

“El Panda refuses to speak in any language other than Chinese. Unfortunately, El Panda does not know Chinese. El Panda communicates through indiscernible audible gibberish that he has hired an elder Chinese man to translate for others. Since El Panda isn’t really speaking Chinese, his Chinese translator invents translations as he sees fit.”

--From El Panda’s character bio on the side of the figure’s box.


Years ago, I told my friend John that I would send him a short story, and he said, “It would be awesome if you send a murder mystery and on the last page, there’s just a sheet of tinfoil with the words, ‘The murderer is you!’ or some shit like that.”

He was kidding.

I sent him the story, and I attached as the last page a sheet of tinfoil with the words, “The murderer is you!” even though the story was not a murder mystery and did not contain a murder or a murderer.

The fictional character, El Panda, is a Mexican luchador who happens to be a Sinophile in extremis. That his toy is produced by an American company (Muttpop) following a trend that had as its flashpoint, Hong Kong, late nineties, is easily ironic. That the trend itself (aka urban vinyl, aka art toys, aka designer toys) is often cited as a commingling of art and commerce is sort of like saying that the H3 Hummer is a commingling of environmental friendliness and brute, macho power.

First gross generalization: If the flashpoint of a particular trend happens anywhere near Hong Kong, then that trend has already succumbed to gross commodification.

But don’t take my word for it. Here is Michael Lau, in a 2004 New York Times Magazine article, commenting on the urban vinyl scene he’s credited with starting: “In a boring world, something happens and people hook on it, and Michael Lau created it.”

Note his use of the third person. That’s the way a professional wrestler talks. Note the tone in the stiff declaration, the style of a promo given to drum up ticket sales and excitement before a match.

Michael Lau is the godfather of the urban vinyl scene. He and fellow vinyl vanguard, Eric So, grew up poor in Hong Kong’s tenements, and a lot of their early work involve what’s described as street culture. Their drawings and, later, toy figures of teens dressed in baggy Levis and Air Jordans consumed the adult toy consumer. The toys, limited in production numbers, grew in value not only exponentially, but immediately with the help of eBay and an increasingly global market.

As with most trends, the designs of Lau, So, and other artists were copied (or "homaged") and then bootlegged, leading to a flurry of rotocast vinyl (from both Asia and the US) that has created a bubble as big as the one that enshrouded the American comic book industry in the mid-nineties, right before it blew up. Permanently. The parallels are striking. Back then, the American comic scene was glutted with new waves of ‘artists’ who had no sense of scale and depth and no understanding of basic human anatomy. Now, the vinyl scene is populated by many toy designers who have no sense of, well, art (second gross generalization).

Since the late nineties, many prominent vinyl designers have been signed up by Nike, Sony, Levi, and other big machines, and their characters, at least the Lau-inspired ones, feature an interesting mix of skateboard/street/hip-hop counterculture with a craving for material fulfillment. Designed by artists subsidized by corporations, these characters have since spawned exhibitions in France and London, and a bustling, thriving industry spurred on by eBay and all forms of commerce.

But what exactly is being celebrated at these shows?

To glibly point out the obvious contradictions of art toys that are sold and marketed like apparel or drapery (limited editions in the form of multiple colorways) is easy, but also insufficient.

What I like about El Panda, besides the degree of his cultural misappropriation, is the sheer exuberance of his Mao-loving lifestyle (especially given how much he costs). In a truly globalized world where political struggle becomes fodder for posters and T-shirts, merchandise is confused for art, and new mediums can rise and be commercialized and then devalued, all in less than a decade, the sense of haplessness and confusion is, if not justification for buying into the trend, at least an explanation for it.

I’m not a pudgy fan of lucha libre, nor do I particularly care for Mao suits, nor is there a sheet of figurative tinfoil staring me in the face, but I do feel like a comment is being made, on me, every time I look at the figure.

In the end, what I would like to say about El Panda, and the reason I spent too much money to acquire him, is that he's got soul. And yes, I realize I'm anthropomorphizing a block of rotocast vinyl.

What's more, the character description is really funny. Like, really, really funny. Like funnier than the character description of any other toy I've seen. Well, except for that of the GI Joe figure Skidmark.

Christmas Beat Down

Every year, the City and County of Honolulu hosts a Christmas tree decorating contest. Each city department buys a tree and decorates it. The most beautiful and creative decorations win! Here is an offering from the Honolulu Police Department.

Poyzin

I really liked the message in David O. Russell’s movie I ♥ Huckabee’s that says random occurrences are constantly happening around us and they happen for a reason. There is a connection between the guy who made your crappuccino this morning and the guy you almost kill in a drunken rage at the karaoke bar. Things repeat themselves in the strangest ways sometimes and it happens for a reason. Someone or something is trying to send you a message…but what is it?

I experienced one of these moments last night at one of the most depressing karaoke encounters in my life. An old high school friend runs the Trivia Night at this bar in an Old Town section of a once-small town in Northern California. I felt like getting out, so I decided to go. I’d been to this bar a few times over the past three months, and I hadn’t gone in over a month, so I thought it might be fun. As I was sitting at the bar, waiting for the Trivia Master to arrive, standard bar juke box music was blaring on the speakers. AC/DC, Rush, Skynyrd…but then something came on I hadn’t heard in years: “Something to Believe In” by Poison. I was taken back to the year 1987. I was in junior high and that goddamn song was everywhere, preceded by its even wussier older sister, “Every Rose Has Its Thorn.” Now I wouldn’t have been surprised to hear “Rose” play on the juke box; that’s one you’ll still hear once in a while. But “Something to Believe In?” Who the hell still listens to this crap?

Poison. Remember those guys? The frosted hair? The frayed jean jackets? The leather pants? The mascara and eyeliner? Some of the dumbest stage-names-that-are-supposed-to-sound-real you’ve ever heard? C.C. Deville? Bobby Dall? Rikki Rockett? That’s right, folks, “Rikki” with two ‘k’s and “Rockett” with two ‘t’s. Nice. Nobody’s gonna tell them how to spell their names. I would have loved to have been a fly on the wall when Mr. Rockett made that life-altering decision. I wonder if he was on the can? Or maybe high? Possibly both? Of course, if this band had formed within the last couple of years, they would have spelled their name Poizon or Poyzin. I once had a student who wrote the saying “It Ain’t Metal Unless It’s Spelled Rong” in black sharpie on her backpack. I suppose we could look at these guys as trailblazers in the school of rock ’n’ roll misspellings. Attention, members of Korn, Trapt, Wurkt, Limp Bizkit…you will address Him as Bret Michaels, forefather. I’m sure he’d be into that.

After Trivia Night had come to a close (my team—dubbed the Kenny Loggins #1 Fan Club—ended up winning a free pitcher), the karaoke began. This bar is in a section of what is referred to as “Old Town,” meaning the buildings have been around for a very long time, the streets are supposed to look antiquated, and you’re supposed to leave with an overall pleasant old-timey feeling. Unfortunately for this particular Old Town, there isn’t much to see besides the train station, old bars, and meeting halls full of recovering drunks. The still-working-at-it-drunks like to sing free karaoke, so they often flock to this place my friend works at. Karaoke is run by this fellow who keeps a Mohawk so everybody can see the tattoos on his skull. I’ll just say his stripe of hair is usually dyed green or purple, and the tattoos are of a famous comic book villain. And he uses that character’s name as his own. Yeah.

Karaoke was especially pathetic on this night, because the bar was unusually empty. I’d been to a few of these events before, and I’ve seen some outright big crowds in this place. But last night was just dead. And the singers were terrible, as they often are at any karaoke bar. But something strange happened about forty-five minutes after the singing had begun. A woman got up to sing a certain little ditty by Poison. Right now you’re probably wondering: “Was it ‘Every Rose’?” No it wasn’t. It was indeed “Something to Believe In” and it was indeed a horrible rendition of a terrible song. She sounded as if she had been gargling with razor blades just five minutes before.

But I’m not here to make fun of the singer. This song—this monstrosity—had entered into my stream of consciousness twice within two hours. This was an amazing coincidence. That damn hook—“Give me something to believe in”—was trying to tell me something. I looked around for other possible secret messages or signs. A heavenly light coming from above? A sacred text hidden beneath a bar stool? Aside from bad singers, bad weight problems, and worse moustaches, I couldn’t find a thing. When I told the group at my table (now three former high school friends) that this was the second time I’d heard the song tonight (they hadn’t arrived yet when it was playing on the juke box), one of them said something that really freaked me out. She had heard it on the radio earlier that day! Between the two of us, we had heard this god-awful-butt-rock-nugget-that-time-should-have-forgotten three times in one day! What is the secret meaning of all of this? This must be some kind of foreboding sign!

Then it came to me: I suspect Poison will be launching another attempt at a “comeback” in the near future, probably this summer. Except this time, instead of releasing another unnecessary “Best Of” or “Greatest Hits” collection, they will be drugging our water supplies with some sort of mind-altering drug that only lets us hear “Something to Believe In,” “Every Rose Has Its Thorn,” and “Unskinny Bop.” When we turn on the radio, it won’t matter what the DJs are playing or what they’re talking about; all we will be able to hear is Poison. When we attempt to converse with our friends, loved ones, and co-workers, all we will be able to hear are the words “What’s got you so jumpy? / Why can’t you sit still, yeah? / Like gasoline you wanna pump me. / And leave me when you get your fill.” Damn, that Bret Michaels sure knows how to write a brilliant fuckin’ simile. Prepare for the worst, my friends. The gods have spoken, and they have told us to do the “Unskinny Bop.” All the time.

--Robot's Mother

[Every so often, from its secret base in Sacramento, California, Robot's Mother (www.myspace.com/robotsmother) will beam down to the HMFA a transmission on music related matters.]

Confessions of a Dirty 16 Year Old

There are certain things in life I wish I could experience again for the first time. I would hope that everyone feels the same way about something important in his or her own life. Women, of course, are known to have more than one child to relive the whole creating-and-nurturing-life-thing. I am not of the feminine design, so that is something I will never truly realize. Music has always played a huge role in my life, and I guess I can say that I love music like some women love their children. I’ve unwrapped CDs for the first time and felt like I just released a shiny, digitally-encoded baby from my proverbial womb.

Of course I realize I had nothing to do with the conception of 99.9% of the music I listen to, but for some strange reason, I feel like I make very unusual connections to a lot of my favorite groups. Connections that loved ones make with each other. I love my wife and my parents and other relatives as much as anything in my life. But for some odd reason, I will always have certain feelings for a particular song or album that I just don’t have with real, breathing human beings. And yes, you are right, that is more than a little bit sad.

My original point was that there are some things in my life that I wish I could experience again for the first time. If I was walking down the beach one afternoon, and I picked a magic vase from the sand, and a giant blue dude popped out and granted me three wishes, one of those wishes would probably be this: I wish I could listen to Sonic Youth’s Dirty again for the first time.

I will always remember the album not just for its undeniably brilliant sounds, but for what it was to me when it was first released. I’ll always remember the fall of 1992 when Dirty was first released by DGC.

That was a very important time in my life, because my birthday is October 10, 1976. I had just turned sixteen that fall and my parents trusted me enough to take the car out on my own past the small suburb in which we lived. I will always remember my drive to a record store in Downtown Sacramento called the Beat. It was about 20 miles from where I lived at the time. I know, it’s not that far, but it was a huge deal at the time. Come on, you remember what it was like to be sixteen and making one of your first trips “on the road” in your parents’ car.

As you will recall, in 1992 the CD revolution hadn’t quite taken over the world yet, so there will still those things they made called “cassette tapes.” (I bet you were expecting a pretentious ass like me to say “vinyl,” weren’t you? I’ll be the first to admit that I never owned a record player.) I bought the tape and listened to it over and over and over for my entire sixteenth year driving around town, gaining independence from my folks. “100%” is in the top two opening album tracks ever (it’s number two, in my book…“London Calling” is my all-time favorite). I must have listened to that song at least twice a day for over a year of my life. I was growing as a guitar player at that time, also, and hearing those chords in that particular song blasting through car speakers or headphones…It’s an unbelievable song, in my opinion. It’s the perfect Thurston Moore song. His voice gives off that disconnected drawl that makes it sound like he doesn’t care so much about singing but getting across a message. His voice does this in every song he sings on the album.

One of the first real political scandals I was conscious of was the Clarence Thomas/Anita Hill sexual harassment allegations in 1991. Dirty makes clear reference to it in Thurston’s lyrics in “Youth Against Fascism” (“I believe Anita Hill/The Judge will rot in Hell”) and the second song of the album (the album’s first track featuring Kim Gordon’s lead vocals)—“Swimsuit Issue”—is about sexual harassment in the work place. As a sixteen-year-old male, I felt like hearing these opinions come from a man’s and a woman’s voice made them matter that much more. And I dare you to listen to “Swimsuit Issue” and not be turned on by Kim’s voice. As a young man, I was a big fan of that sultry, smoky voice of hers placed on top of those heavily distorted and detuned guitars. Usually, the songs that the girl in the band sings are the more melodic, poppier songs. Sonic Youth likes to break expectations. Most of Kim’s songs are ten times dirtier and rougher around the edges than Thurston’s. Other classics from the Kim Gordon song book on Dirty: “Drunken Butterfly,” “Shoot,” and “Orange Rolls, Angels Spit.” When you’re sixteen, and a woman writes, sings, and plays bass on songs like she does, how can you not be in love with her? I always admired the fact that she and Thurston had been married for several years when Dirty came out. So many married couples in bands divorce, but Kim and Thurston are still happily married to this day. That’s unusual in the world of rock’n’roll.

I dug the fact that Ian MacKaye (one of my personal heroes in the music world) did a guest spot on the album. I loved all of Thurston and Lee Renaldo’s discordant guitar noise on every single track. I love the way Steve Shelley’s drums were recorded. People often criticize Dirty for being too slick and overproduced. I love the whole sound of the album. The guitars are loud as hell just like they should be. Almost every song on the album feels like a punch to the gut or a blow to the head. It is truly the kind of album that I can hear something new on every time I listen to it. I still listen to it very regularly. It was one of the first albums I downloaded to my iPod. I only wish I could listen to it again for the first time and hear it (again) with virgin ears.

--Robot's Mother

[Every so often, from its secret base in Sacramento, California, Robot's Mother (www.myspace.com/robotsmother) will beam down to the HMFA a transmission on music related matters.]

A First Recommendation

Let us be frank. There are certain things in life and creation that are useless but somehow necessary, such as, say, the peacock's feathers (not the peahen's, which are an order of magnitude better in their utility)(swatting flies?)(blocking wind?). The peacock's feathers: as in
the bee's knees, the bear's claws, the rat's ass. Why are they there? Why would a bird, smaller than an ostrich, smaller than a turkey--almost smaller, in its body, than a large goose--spend so much of its energy growing a veritable copse of small trees up and out its tush, an irritably quaking grove of peacock feathers, not aspens, reaching up to either the sun or the pulsating, red heart, heliotropes as it were? Scientists say "sexual selection." The bigger a peacock's tail, the more robust its good genetic qualities. Thus evolution, in its wisdom, has ensured that those feathers aren't too great an impediment to frequent and vigorous copulation.

Which leads me to say that my MFA has made me the man. That's right. The M-A-N. I just spelled it out for you. Before, on Friday nights, I stayed home and ate ramen out of the pot I'd cooked it in. This is how I know that it's difficult to sip ramen broth out of a hot, metal pot. Now I have to beat swarming hornies away with a stick--the ladies, the men, a few dogs, unnumbered mosquitoes and flies. To beat flies from your person with a stick is sometimes inefficient and painful. But never you mind. The stick also manages to hit ugly humans who are hanging around, and always, always skillfully misses anyone both female and beautiful.

So if you are down on your luck, if your powers of expression are weak, if you know so much about science, having re-read your AP biology textbook every year since 1987, that your brain feels like it's about to explode, and yet you are unable to compose a simple, explanatory metaphor to let it all out, but most importantly, if you are unloved and alone, graduate school in writing might be for you.

Caw! Caw!