All I Want for Christmas is You

I am being followed.   NO!  Don’t turn around.  They’ll see you.  Just keep walking.

It’s like that movie, Eagle Eye.  I don’t know how it knows where I am going, or where I’ll be.  But there it is.

I get in the car.  It’s on the radio.  I change the station.  IT’S ON THAT STATION TOO!  I went in to Herbergers after taking a picture with Santa for my mom, and it even found me in there.

I give.  Do with me what you will, Mariah.  You and your high notes that make the neighborhood dogs bark.  DO YOUR WORST.

Thank God for Cheaters

As I’ve been isolated from the outside world by my newly injured back as well as the sub-zero weather, I’ve had a lot of time to think and to read.  And as 2008 comes to a close, I can’t help but review the highlights of the year-gone-by.  So I’ve come to this:

Thank God for Cheaters.

I know I’ve devoted a good deal of consonants and vowels toward dealing with my disdain and anger about the situations I’ve found myself in romantically, but it’s time for me to get off the mat and lift a finger to the lord.  No, not that one.  The one next to it.  Yep.  That one.

Whether you believe that there’s a divine plan or not, or if you’d rather call it fate or destiny, it seems to me that it’s all in the way you look at it.  It could be a random sequence of events, or there could be a purpose behind all the… I think the doctors prefer the term “discomfort.”  And whatever it might have been for them wimmins that done broke my heart, all I know is that they’re someone else’s problem now.  Good riddance: Don’t let the door hit’cha where the good lord split’cha.

I don’t know if I totally believe in destiny, but from where I sit it looks like the world out there has a natural balance to it.  And maybe that’s all destiny is, really: the world just trying to stay level.  And maybe part of that process is that some people fight, and others live to fight another day.

Just about everything I know about relationships by watching my parents.  Yeah, they fight, they nag each other, they argue.  But, most of all, they love.  And no matter what happens, they will always put each other first.  I suppose that’s what happens after nearly 40 years of marriage.  Naively, I took that and went on my merry way in search of that great love that people write epic poems about, but the thing is that not everyone knows what love like that looks like.  And for some women, as the hard way has taught me, the prospect of being loved like that is pretty friggin freaky.

Hearts get broken along the way, but you gotta keep in mind that it’s all for the greater good. It’s all meant to keep the world from tipping over and spilling all over the place.  Cuz no one is gonna wanna clean that up.  Maybe my heart had to be broken to save a life, bring rain to a drought-stricken area, or help Scarecrow get a new brain.  Either way, if it weren’t for being cheated on, my own stubbornness and propensity toward blind devotion would have kept me in some really (for lack of a better word) shitty relationships.  I guess the best lesson I’ve learned this year (actually just the last few weeks) is that emotional pain is like credit:  You can either pay it all off right away in one lump sum, or you can pay it off little by little and keep it looming over your head like a bad day.

So here’s where it Begins (I thought it might end here, but this seems to be the first step rather than the last).  Experience helps you realize what you are not, and once those puzzle pieces are in place you start to see what you are.  So to all those cheaters in my past:  Thank You…

For showing me what friendship is: People with the maturity to not feel compelled to pick sides and who will do what’s best for you as their friend while doing what’s best for me as my friend.

For encouraging me to be even more proud to be Filipino.  My kids are gonna be brown anyway, and that shouldn’t be something that anybody has to “deal with.”

For helping me see that keeping quiet and sacrificing my own wants and needs almost never turns out well.

For demonstrating that it takes courage to allow yourself to be loved.

You’ve taught me a lot, oh Cheaters of my past, but most of all you’ve helped me uncover bits and pieces of who I am.  And while I’m still a work in progress, it’s time for me to stop carrying around all that debt and making perfectly innocent women pay.  So this is it.  Your lump sum.

I mean, imagine the alternative:  We could still be together.

At least I have that going for me.

Mmm… Breakfast.

After my roommate set off the fire alarms in our apartment building, which is an entirely different story, our apartment smelled a bit like grease fire.  So I put my trusty snow boots on the other night and trekked down to “the wal” for a perusal of their scented candles section.

I ended up buying three.

One for the dining room/family room area, and two for my room.  Here’s where the evening took a drastic turn.  I’ve tried both of them out, I like them both for different reasons, and I think they both have the potential to end my love life for a considerable amount of time.  That’s where you come in, trusty readers of Wily Filipino.  I need your help.

The two candles I bought belonged to a line of scented candles whose theme was cupcakes.  They’re all supposed to smell like different cupcake flavors.  After several minutes of deliberation, I settled on these two:  Cherry Chip and Cinnamon French Toast.

So here’s the scenario:  You’re on a 6th, 7th… possibly 8th date with a guy.  You’ve done the offbeat, yet endearingly thoughtful activity you’ve come to know and love, and you awkwardly hint at heading to his place for a nightcap, because he’s too much of a wimp to make a real move (read: a gentleman), and upon entering the place “where the magic happens” as they say, it smells like:

a) Cherry

2) Breakfast

Discuss.

What’s a guy gotta do to get a little fecking Christmas cheer?

People talk about “the season” and how it’s supposed to be filled with cheer ‘n shit.  Well, try walking around.  Look at the faces of the people.

Stress.

I’m all for chestnuts and roaring fires and cheesy holiday sweaters.  But why do we let “the season” get to us like this?  Today, I was doing a little light Christmas shopping and I was in a pretty good mood.  As I was leaving a store, a girl was on her way in.  I held the door for her and smiled.  The look of “why is this guy smiling at me?” flashed across her face.  Maybe she was having a bad day.  Then as I walked down the street a set of three people passed me, I smiled, again nothing.

Well, I’m not gonna let you muhfuggas get me down.  I WILL BE JOYOUS.  I WILL BE MERRY.  And if you don’t like it, you can shove it so far up your ass that you won’t see it again until the spring thaw.

My niece got a gift from Santa at a community Christmas event and complained, “Worst gift from Santa, EVER.”  She’s eleven.  I wanted to take her gift and give it to another kid.  I wanted her to sit in a cold alley with nothing between her and the outside world except a piece of cardboard.  But I got lost in this thought:

If this is the season of giving, why is there so much emphasis on what we WANT for Christmas?

We make lists.  We drop hints.  We daydream and wonder about what we’re gonna get.  We sit around asking each other what we want for Christmas.  Then we turn around and tell the kids that it’s not about what you get, it’s about giving.  But is it?  How many people do you see HAPPILY shopping this time of year?  We do it because we feel like we have to… or for fear of being judged by those around us who are expecting gifts from us.  For all the time we spend dropping hints there are minutes, hours, days that we could spend focusing on giving to someone else, or at very least, putting that energy into having a better attitude about it.

As I’ve gotten older, what I want for Christmas has gotten less and less important.  When I think about it, I feel like I have too much, if anything.  Why collect more things that will just end up communing with the rest of the mess in my apartment?  Well, because everyone else is doing it.

Then it hits me.  For some people this holiday might be about being “fair” and making sure that I have a gift for anyone who gives me one so that I won’t be embarrassed.  Or maybe it’s a collective succumbing to peer pressure.  But here’s the payoff:  I want to see faces light up.  Like when my baby nieces and nephews pull the wrapper off their presents and get excited just looking at the box.  Like a kid experiencing something magical.  Like when you show up with flowers for your date.  Like in those diamond commercials.  Like when your girlfriend realizes that you have, indeed, been paying attention this whole time.  Or like when you pass a stranger on the street, your eyes meet and you both smile.

Let the straddling continue

I got my hands on the In The Heights Original Broadway Cast Soundtrack and haven’t stopped listening to it in my car.  Couple that with this being The Year of the Mexican, based on the roles I have played this year (previous years have been dubbed The Naked Year, and The Year of The Vietnam War), and I’m starting to get that confused feeling.

ALRIGHTY, first a little geography lesson.  The Philippines is closest to the Asian continent.  Filipinos are decended from the Malay race, which is pretty much the ethnic group that is considered indigenous to all of the Pacific Islands.  I remember being in an elevator at the Dayton’s in Downtown Minneapolis with my dad one day when someone decided to ask, “what are you?”  You know… that ol’ chestnut.

“What do you mean?”  Dad responded.

“Where are you from?”  The lady asked.

At this point I’d like to say that my dad, being smarter than most people, could have said something like, “Minneapolis.”  But I honestly don’t remember.

Anyhoo, the lightning flash of a conversation rested on the fact that this old lady started arguing with my dad as to whether Filipinos were “Yellow” or “Brown.”  White people can be so charming sometimes.  This is the first time I’d heard my dad refer to Filipinos as Brown.  What interested me at first was the fact that the colors yellow and brown are both colors I associated with the potty.  But hey, I was like 8 or something.

“Who else is brown?” I started to wonder.  Then it hit me like Homey D Clown’s sock: “Mexicans!  Mexicans are brown, and so are people from other South American countries!”  Again… 8 years old.

The truth of the matter is that when I watch the Joy Luck Club, I don’t really think about my family… except for the whole Ma Jiang thing.  But just hearing the Latin music from In The Heights made me think of palm trees, the sounds of the surf, and Barrio Fiestas.

People chuckle when I tell them that I play Latino roles.  “I thought you were Filipino,” they say.  I never realized until recently that most people don’t know that the PI was a Spanish Colony.  In fact, Filipino American history is more closely tied to Latino American history than Asian American history in  a lot of ways.  We’re like the cousin that the other Hispanic Countries don’t talk about.

Filipino Americans, along with a lot of other immigrant communities, talk about having one foot on the US and another back “home.”  So yeah, there’s that… even though some of our closest relatives, culturally, are still half a world away, no matter how you look at it.  It’s like geographical Twister.

So give me some Spanish guitar and a beat I can shake my hips to.  Serve up the empanadas and the adobo.  Yeah, we’ll have rice too, maybe with some SPAM and eggs.  Mabuhay the Year of the Mexican!

Sit The F Down and Shut The F Up

Sorry to use strong consonants.  But lemme sing you a little song about democracy.  If you choose not to participate, then the only choice you give yourself is to SIT THE FUCK DOWN AND SHUT THE FUCK UP.  Cuz the rest of us showed up for the big dance.

Verse 1: The only way to know what you’re talking about is to know what you’re talking about.

Apparently there are all these Catholics up in arms about Altar Boyz.  The theater I’m working at right now has been fielding calls and doing damage control cuz some idiot WHO HASN’T SEEN THE SHOW decided that the show is sacrilegious and blasphemous and wants everybody to know it.  He got up on his high horse, wrote an email, and sent it to everyone in his address book.  Like good little lemmings, they forwarded it to everyone in their address book and we’re off to the races.  The email apparently suggests that people call the theater and express their displeasure for a show that mocks their faith.  But none of these people have seen the show.  NONE OF THESE PEOPLE HAVE SEEN THE SHOW.  So many Jesus quotes come to mind: He who is without sin cast the first stone, judge not and you will not be judged, why do you see the speck in your neighbor’s eye when there is a plank in your own.

See the show then you can hate it and tell your friends how terrible it is.  But until you see it, SIT THE FUCK DOWN AND SHUT THE FUCK UP.

Verse 2: If yer gonna Rock the Vote, at least read the instructions

Ok.  Maybe some of you didn’t take the SATs.  But I remember having to take standardized tests when I was in high school… you know, the “fill in the circle” kind?  And I’m all for creative expression, but I really believe that there are better places to do it than on your ballot.

As if the Californians who asked me how things are “on the east coast” when I told them I was from Minnesota didn’t already think that we’re just a bunch or hicks and rednecks (stupid Fargo accents notwithstanding), here we go again attracting attention to ourselves IN A NEGATIVE WAY.

After all this talk about how important it is to vote and do your civic doody, why we have these idiots who not only failed to read the instructions on HOW to vote, but (in classic passive-aggressive Minnesota fashion) didn’t even have the sense to ask one of the polling place workers for help.  Granted, most elections are not this close, but seriously?  Do you really want to be the guy that gets to yell “Hey ma! ther’ showin’ my ballot on the news!”

See, you might assume that the whole Rock the Vote thing is just to get people to the polls.  There is that component, but the way that is done is by saying, “Look, this is your chance to use your voice.  This is your shot to take part in democracy.”  But for those of you out there who didn’t take it seriously (who filled in the oval for a candidate and then wrote in Lizard People on your ballot, for example), unfortunately for you, you now get to sit down and S. T. F. U. for the next few years cuz you decided to throw away your vote by indulging in your once-every-four-years attempt at humor that no one will see or find funny.

There was a viral video that went around that was a fictonal newscast reporting that John McCain won by one vote and you could input the name of the person you were sending it to as the one person who didn’t vote that day.  We all had a good laugh about that, but now, here we are and the race is too close to call.  Nearly 3 million votes cast and it’s separated by just over 100 votes.

I’m glad you showed up.  But you didn’t finish what you set out to do.  You didn’t fulfill your responsibility.  Instead you behaved like an idiot and now you only have one thing left to do:

SIT THE FUCK DOWN AND SHUT THE FUCK UP.

End of song.