Friday, July 10, 2009

Outta Da Closet

That's my faux Pinoy accent, imitating myself using Taglish, a kind of slang I pretended to know in the Philippines growing up. The theme here is "coming out" as Asian, something I do at cocktail parties or over drinks with a client, letting her know I'm not just like any guy. We discreetly bleep over the "fat Buddha" allusion (Chinese chachka motif), more it's like "look into my eyes".

But that's not the only influence. Mostly I'm doing like a Steve Martin thing, wanting to draw attention to ethnicity versus genetics. What sparkles is often transmissible, unless we're talking circus contortionist, other job descriptions for which a specific physique might be mandatory. Like they'd never cast me as a Jackie Chan, unless in a spoof maybe, and even then, I'd need a stunt double, someone like Weird Al maybe (but with different hair).

Memes are what matter, yet people shy away from that word as too geeky or something. People still wanna talk about "races" even though that's totally mixed up, in North America especially.

Somewhat off topic: I'm always amazed what they'll call a "day job" around here, whereas mostly they're just commuting and doing stuff they could be doing from home, maybe in a small suburban village with home gardens and food vans (check out Portland's food vans sometime, then think of adding some more educational fare, other bizmos -- think of fried bananas as polyhedra, rich in iodine and potassium (yes, there's a carnival atmosphere -- where geeks come from, after all)). Think Saturday Market.