my boarding group has just been called (group 4, if you’re curious) for american airlines flight 179, so this will be brief;

but, overheard at JFK’s Au Bon Pain in terminal 9, some sage advice:

“don’t cut off a source of income if you don’t know how long  you’re going to live.”

for some reason, i appreciated the comment on multiple levels. but not for the reasons you’re thinking of.

RANDOM BLOG INTRUDER: how the fuck you know what i’m thinking of anyway? you some kinda mind reader?

i wasn’t talking about you.

RBI: i’m just saying, don’t go assuming you know what people are thinking when you don’t. and go board your plane dumbass. they just called group 5.

okay, going. the play in new york was great. the freeway collapsed in emeryville. more later.

the guy who killed over 30 people at virginia tech yesterday was identified as a 23-year-old student, an asian american who immigrated from south korea at some point in his relatively short life, known as seung cho.

upon reading the name in the nytimes.com article a few minutes ago, Cho Seung-Hui, i experienced a kind of hybrid feeling consisting of both shock and self-rebuke–the shock that it was an asian dude, and the self-rebuke over being surprised by the fact that the guy was asian. my progressive, open-minded sensibilities are so well-honed that this self-rebuking business is immediate and automatic these days: well done, sam.

anyway (and i must write this quickly, so i’ll be brief and the opposite of thorough, probably stating a lot of inaccuracies and making huge sweeping generalizations [as opposed to the less popular and conceptually impossible narrow, specific generalizations], in my pathetic attempts to record my thoughts when i’m in a rush):
after wondering how some of the more racist standup comics in the area would respond to the news (”those crazy angry asians! must be overcompensating for the small dick/shitty driver thing”), it occurred to me that this particular tragedy did not bode well for the asians, and i wondered how many asian american students there were at virginia tech, anyway, and if they’d be okay.

then, lo & behold, the nytimes.com article actually answered my question, as if reading my mind (me and nytimes.com have a relationship like that–it’s kind of a ny thing), with the following paragraphs:

Asian-American students at Virginia Tech reacted to news about the gunman’s identity with shock and a measure of anxiety about a possible backlash against them.

“My parents are actually worried about retaliation against Asians,” said Lyu Boaz, a third-year accounting student who was born in South Korea and became an American citizen a year ago. “After 9/11, a lot of Arabs were attacked for that reason.”

Mr. Boaz, a resident adviser at Pritchard Hall, said many Korean-American students had left campus immediately. Parents of other Korean-American students were preparing to pick up their children on Tuesday afternoon and take them home.

Holy shit. a clearly disturbed young man goes on a rampage and murders (so far) 32 people–turns out the kid’s korean-american. the korean-american students are summarily rounded up–albeit by their own familes–and basically evacuated from the campus.

it’s chilling: like a self-imposed executive order 9066. and clearly the asian american students and their families aren’t dumb: people in this country see a person of color do something bad, suddenly everyone perceived to be that same color, figuratively speaking, is guilty and better find themselves a good hiding place.

it’s chilling ,and it’s fucked up: the response to a horrific tragedy is kind of a horrific tragedy in and of itself.

i am now sitting at irelands32 on geary and 3rd avenue in san francisco, shamelessly ripping the wireless from g3 the next door, but i figure i’ve paid more than my share of abundantly-priced maker’s marks over there, as i have here, and at bars across this fair city and beyond, so i’m not struggling with any guilt over the matter.

right now 23 other folks and i are enjoying the MUSICAL VOCAL STYLINGS of LARGESSE, a musical duo that consists of stanley lam and atsushi murase. i am enjoying it quite, although i’ve nestled into a dark corner in the back, a lovely little corner chosen for its strategic location next to the only electrical outlet i could find outside of the stage area. i don’t feel antisocial, as i am clearly looking up periodically from my writing to nod appreciatively at the harmonic offerings, and as i’ve already tried to strike up conversation with two people who were obviously not interested in my advances; it’s okay, i wasn’t interested in my advances, either. i was just giving it the old college try before i could justify sitting by myself and not talking to anyone here (and i JUST paused to clap and go “whoo!” for the last song, so i’m fulfilling my duties as a very responsible, engaged audience member).

supposedly i go after pete nguyen, who’s next. we’ll see if any of the audience sticks around. (ah, i really like the song stanley’s playing now; forget the name but chorus-like thing goes “…and i don’t know why i fail…no i don’t know why i fail…no i don’t know why i’m scared…”: well done, sir. ) i’ll do a short set. we’ll see how it goes.

i haven’t done taxes this weekend. i did a few comedy shows at a venue called the comedy station that is clearly struggling with publicity issues and made the odd choice to paint over its windows. greg edwards and i and a few others, and some interesting intra-comic drama that presented itself. the largest crowd this weekend is right now at ireland’s, but i’ve still somehow had a terribly satisfying weekend.

and what has been of interest? the space i work at, space180, was vandalized to an extent on friday night, which pissed me off when i got there saturday morning. it was some birthday party with djs, and apparently some of the party-goers tagging on the walls were operating under the angst-ridden fantasy that space180 was an expression of corporate america. fuck you, anonymous-tagger; you know nothing, and your tag sucks. you’re not contributing to overturning the hegemony, you’re just contributing to the wealth of idiocy and crappy art in the world. and i am being grossly over-charitable by using the word “art” to describe what you do; god help me, i’m too much of a non-misanthrope. except when i’m hating on people, like you.

time for a refill of the maker’s. but before i do, since i’m sure some of you out there are thinking “there she goes again turning to her substances for solace,” i am currently not smoking cigarettes. yes, it’s true; whiskeyandacigarette is not smoking cigarettes, and has not a cigarette since march 4th, when she broke her kneecap and, apparetly, started referring to herself in the third person. for the record, i have never once tried to quit smoking. not because i don’t hate on evil tobacco empires who prey on unwitting and witting nicotine-addicts, but because i guess i just like it, and not because i think i live forever, and not because i think my life is worthless. i have never tried to quit because i just haven’t wanted to; i could go into more details but i won’t. but in march, before i broke my kneecap, i realized i wasn’t smoking as much. i’d go a day without a cigarette without noticing it, and then i’d think, “huh. peculiar.” and then i’d have a cigarette. but upon breaking my kneecap, i was desperately seeking ways to accelerate the healing process of bone healing. and i found a study commissioned by the u.s. military (helllllllsuh reliable source!), because they wanted to get their broken-limbed soldiers back in the combat zone ASAP, demonstrating that smoking a cigarette or cigarette(s) while a bone is healing can impede the recovery process by up to 60%. so i figgah’d, i’d like to be mobile sooner rather than later, i will not have any more cigarettes till bone has healed.

it takes 6 weeks; that was march 4th that i broke the thing, its april 8th, so i’m pretty close to 6 weeks. and then we’ll see how the smoking thing goes. but i haven’t missed it much, oddly enough, and i’m saving much money. that i can now direct exclusively towards overpriced maker’s marks here and abroad.

so it’s a happy ending. isn’t that lovely?