little. yellow. different.

little drummer boy

(Written for A PhotoJunkie Christmas.)

Doesn't feel like Christmas this year, does it?

Mind you, it hasn't felt like Christmas for a while, but especially this year. The company lobby put up non-offensive winter decorations, instead of the green and red. A back page article on how the local food bank has run out of donations, pre-empted by stories about Michael Jackson molesting little boys and a questionable economy and snipers and terror alerts and war and and and...

...and I just realized that I haven't seen the phrase "Peace on Earth, Goodwill Towards Men" very much this holiday season, on television or greeting cards or anything else, for that matter. Imagine that.

It didn't used to be this way.

I know it didn't use to be this way, because I'm looking at a picture of a family Christmas gathering. I am probably three or four years old, surrounded by my immediate family - aunts and uncles cousins and my grandmother, on my dads side.

the family, circa 1981.

There's the Christmas tree on the left, flanked with Christmas decorations. Hsiung family tradition dictates that the Christmas tree has to be artificial, which was fine. Most families have a tradition to decorate the tree, while our tradition was to assemble and decorate the tree. My mom went all out decorating the tree for the holidays, though I've never been certain whether it was to get into the Christmas spirit or to show up all the neighbors with their Christmas decorations. Another Hsiung family tradition: leave the artificial tree, lights and all, up until New Years.

Chinese New Years. In mid-February.

The tree decorating stopped around five years ago. My mom and dad got into a screaming match over her mother-in-law, and in what could be seen a fabulous display of defiance, pushed over the artificial Christmas tree, glass ornaments shattering on the ground, bright red and yellow and green lights blinking in unison on top of the green plastic evergreen needles. "OUT WITH OLD, IN WITH NEW!" she screamed in broken English.

I can laugh about it now, because my only other option is to cry.

That's my sister on the left. She's ten years older than me, which means she is thirteen or fourteen in that picture. She was just your regular girl in junior high school, before the cocktail of anti-psychotic medications and the trips to the psychiatric ward and the running away and burning of all her possessions, because Jesus told her to. In that picture, she was just your typical annoying big sister, protective of her little brother.

It's funny, because as I'm typing this post up, I now remember a particular memory from that same night - watching an old home movie my dad made and seeing when I was maybe eight or nine.

(The scene: all the cousins are standing in front of the home movie camera awkwardly. An old record player is playing The Little Drummer Boy, which is something my sister must have thought up, because she was all about grandiose Christmas pageants, even if it was just to the immediate family)

Cousins, led by 13 year old sister: Come... they told me, ba-rum-pa-pum-pum!
Ernie, 3 years old: BA-WUM-PA-PUMMMMM-PUM!!!!!!
Aunts: Awwww.
Cousins: Our finest gifts...
Ernie: WUM-PA-PUMMMMM-PUM!!!!!!
Cousins: ...we bring...
Ernie: PUMPUMPUMPUMPUM
Sister: Ernie, no! That's not the way you sing it!

(In hindsight, I was totally the scene-stealing bitch at age 3. They should have just tagged me as gay and marched me through the Pride Parade at that point.)

Ernie: ...PUMMMM!!!!
Sister: No no no... come on, Ernie, I'll sing it with you. We'll sing it together, okay?
Cousin: To lay before the king...
Ernie & Sister: ...paaaa RUM PA PUM PUM... rum pa pum pum... rum pa pum pum...

And like a scene from a movie, it fades, along with my memories. I miss my sister. I'll see her tomorrow when I visit my parents. But when I drive back to my apartment, I'll still miss her. That'll make sense for those who understand.

Happy Holidays, everyone.

24 Dec 2003 12:30 AM :: Comments (37)

christian sensibilities

Before I started to date a hip-hop DJ, before the trips to the raves with the jungle and the 2-step and the trance music (that, admittedly, doesn't sound as good now that I stopped taking drugs) or even the trips to the gay clubs with its diva house music singing about freedom and pride and "taking people higher," I had a music diva whose music I knew all the songs to, watched all the music videos for, was totally fascinated with.

That pop star, of course, was Amy Grant.

Amy Grant, from her Unguarded album

While many gay boys grew up idolizing Madonna or Kylie Minogue (or for today's gay youth, Britney and Christina) I had a giant five-panel poster of Amy Grant from the Unguarded album, permed hair flowing in a giant wind machine, her fake leopard-skin jacket revealing her quest for eternal hipness while marking a Christian sensibility.

My friend Jen would make fun of that poster when I lived in the dorms. "Good Morning, Amy!" she would say, impersonating me as I woke up in the morning. "Good Night, Amy!" I would supposedly say at night. "Good Night, Ernie!" she would crow back. "And remember, love will find a way!"

(That last sentence, by the way, is funny to exactly seven people reading this weblog.)

But alas, times change, people change, good Christian boys come out of the closet and lose their grips on religion and even Christian pop stars aren't able to "find a way" sometimes. A recent conversation driving to a restaurant reminded me of that.

Ernie: ... Oh yeah, and I was Amy Grant's #1 fan.
Mike: Hey, isn't she like the Madonna for Christian gay boys?
Ernie: *dirty look* No. Besides, she stopped doing albums for a while while she was going through a divorce. Rumor had it she was having an affair with Vince Gill.
Mikes friend, Ponnie: AMY GRANT WAS HAVING AN AFFAIR WITH A MEMBER OF MOTLEY CRUE!?
Everyone in the car: ...
Ponnie: Oh. Wait. That's Vince Neil. Nevermind.
Mike: Well, if you're going to do something un-Christian, you might as well go all out and sleep with the Motley Crue guy.
Ernie: Werd.
22 Dec 2003 01:41 AM :: Comments (23)

airbags. deployed.

I went to lunch with my friend Don today, partly to catch up on stuff and as a way to show off his new car, the Toyota Prius. It's one of those half-gas, half electricity hybrid vehicles and he spent a little extra to show off his cool accessory, his GPS navigation system.

Ernie: Ooooh, it's like I'm on a spaceship!
Don: Yeah, it works great! It'll also tell us the location of the nearest restaurant. Check this out: "I'M HUNGRY."
GPS Computer: (in female voice) "I'm sorry. I don't recognize that command."
Don: "I'M. HUNGRY."
GPS: "Finding. Nearest. Golf Course."
Don: No, no, no! "I'M! HUNGRY!!"
GPS: "Finding. Nearest. Restaurants." (150 icons show up on the screen.)

After deciding that we want to go to Hobbee's for lunch, Don scrolls through about 8 pages of restaurant choices and presses the touch screen.

GPS: "Destination. Found. Make left. In. 3 miles."
Ernie: Oooooh.

(20 minutes pass.)

GPS: "Make a. Right. At the. Next street. Destination arrived."
Ernie: Uhm, Don? We're in a housing project.
Don: Don't worry, I know where Hobbees is. We'll just go from memory.
Ernie: Wait... you knew where the restaurant was? Why didn't we just drive instead of using the GPS?
Don: *dirty look* Because this is cooler.
Ernie: Oh look, seagulls!

So we finally arrive to the restaurant. The restaurant, of course, is a five minute drive from Yahoo!.

It's also, of course, closed for construction. I can't complain though, the GPS as a whole is a good idea, and a lot worse things could happen with the onboard computer.

Don: "I'M. HUNGRY."
GPS: "Deploying. Airbags."
(car swerves and drives off a cliff a la "Thelma and Louise")
16 Dec 2003 03:41 PM :: Comments (28)

"bad iconography" or "gloryholes for everyone!"

what IS that?

I'll let Eric, the guy who sent me the e-mail, explain this one:

"I saw this ad on a website today for apartments.com:

I'd like a two-bedroom suite in Seattle, with the following amenities: cat, dog, moving service, front desk, carport, handicapped access, and GLORY HOLES IN ALL THE ROOMS. "

I swear to god, I stared at the image for ten minutes before I went to apartment.com and realized those aren't pictures of penii being thrust into holes in the wall, but barbells. As in, an apartment gym.

Which is kinda the same thing, according to some of the stories out on the Internet. Uhm, so I hear. Yeah.

12 Dec 2003 10:06 PM :: Comments (28)