H. Hsu Word Salad

In high school, we were asked once to do a writing
assignment about what out “theme song” would be. The audio options swept through my mind, all
my favorites of the time Madonna, Guns ‘n Roses, Metallica, Love and Rockets,
The Cure, Grateful dead, The Ramones, Bon Jovi, maybe something from Pink
Floyd…

Strangely, what summed it up best in my heart, the tune that tinkled through my days was a bunch of
older white guys that most folks hadn’t heard of: the Traveling Wilburys. Take a Beatle, some other rock legends, blend well…Wilburys.  The music and lyrics are deceptively simple,
yet embody incredible talent, a wicked streak of humor, and the calm advice of
dudes who have been around a mighty long time (compared to me at any rate).

“It’s all right” is a simple tune that has seen me through
years of indignities and kept me smiling with its rather Buddhist-like
acceptance of the things that steamroll
through our lives.  

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ewWyW6lT1HE

It’s a little tough to hear

Roy

’s beautiful voice and not see him &
his big dark glasses in the video.  I
love his guitar in the rocking chair standing in.  I wonder if the Wilburys know anything about
the Gestalt Therapy “empty chair” techniques. And by now ,sadly, George is also passed away.

Handle with Care is similarly inspiring/familiar for me. They sing about having been “I’ve been robbed and
ridiculed from day care centers to night school” and “been stuck in airports
terrorized, sent to meetings hypnotized- over-exposed, commercialized…”. Who can’t relate to such modern and
social travails? 

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CLipHoBSbJY

There’s a smiling
recitation of such mediocre moments, but the song moves toward someone new and
adorable who makes all such nonsense fade back into part of the joking journey.

To sum up, “Well, it’s all right, even if you’re old and
gray, well it’s all right – You still got something to say!”

Ya gotta love L.A.
My Rock star friend who happens to be Greek, has lived in Hollywood for some years.  I’ve crashed at that place before, always a sort of non-descript large place populated by artsy types. Heck, he’s even created a masterpiece of Greek home cooking for me there years ago.  Lo and behold, 2 weeks ago Pepper and I drove him home following our outing at Hollywood Cemetery (more on that another time): the building is now an uber-Greek  monument to Alexander, covered with purple paint, all sorts of gaudy trim, and golden spirals to boot:
Our mouths were agape.
I think it’s screamingly funny. The friend who lives there? Not so much. 

http://www.martinirevolution.com/2007/07/architectural-indigestion/

Ha, and that other dwelling of ill repute in Hancock park,  monument to monuments, happens to be near my in -laws home, where I get to marvel at the audacity and white columns every time we visit.
If L.A. trendsets for the rest of the nation if not the world, how long ’til we get the architectural smackdown in our neighorhood??
Will Faux Greek empire become the new look in Sunset magazine? Can we expect those home makeover shows to start toting in the columns and naked/toga wearing statues?  Or maybe each house gets its own theme and the whole town can start being like Disneyworld, you can go ’round the world, here’s mini-Greece, mini-Japan, mini-Germany, mini-Ghana, mini-China…

“Listen” is the first time I found myself a fan of
Beyonce. She’s lovely to look at, but I
see women equally beautiful and less painted-up/airbrushed in S.F. or

Oakland

every single week. And she’s a honed a good set of pipes, but chronically
suffers from the “Celine Dion effect”: stupendous vocal cords paired with
insipid artistic material.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TjgzjbQL4kI
I fell in love with this song. Immediately had to forward the video to my
best friend, who was unheard and unheeded by her ex despite having to bellow
and strain for years. 
Who hasn’t ever
felt that drowning, the clear awareness that you were being misinterpreted, or
as ‘ol vocab mangling Dubya would put it “misunderestimated.”
Who hasn’t felt the urge to put a megaphone up to your
beloved’s head?! 

I realized years ago that I had spent most of my formative
years being seen, much more than heard. (so forgive me if now it seems I never
shut up, one has to make up for lost time don’t ya know.)

It became apparent that as a petite Asian woman who happened
to enjoy being reasonably fashionable, I was often automatically relegated to
some kind of “cute ‘n shallow” slush pile. I am familiar with the look in a man’s eye as he tries to buy me stuff,
and speaks to me, in a way which reveals he clearly believes he has the upper
hand. We all speak a certain way to children, foreigners, the developmentally disabled, and vapid cuties, after all.  Au contraire, mon freire! He actually thinks he’s smarter, that I would
be suckered in by the roses, perfume, wine, and bling that lasso lesser
bipeds. 

Gentlemen, if you really listen to a woman, you could learn
a lot. (and you could win her heart as
well as other rewards for being the rare man to SHUT UP and listen). About whether she’s worth pursuing, about
what really lurks in those depths. “A
woman’s heart is as deep as the ocean” so they said in Titanic. 

P has taken that to heart, and has quoted it to me from time
to time. It’s hilarious to be quoting
from Titanic (that freaking melodramatic theme song echoes in my head “near,
far, wherever you are “even as I write this) but there is truth in those words.

It took P some effort (and many natural talents as well as
consultation from our future best man) to get it right. But obviously, he got it right. P showed up with Cinema Paradiso, Mulan, and
porridge when I was ill. He didn’t take
me to Chez Panisse like his competition, but he learned to bring an extra
jacket and go for lengthy walks on freezing cold nights after burrito or

Chinatown

dinners. 

Anyway, in the great democratic jumble that is Youtube I
came upon this very young man Eric singing “Oye” . I love it. The cancion translates
beautifully & he does a kick ass job and offers it up to La Gente. Check him out.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNrwOLr2fyw

Would you pay $60,000 to re-attach the top tip of your middle finger if it had been cut off in an accident?
P says, "yes."
I say…."I really don’t know"… Heaven knows I like my digits intact, and I’m quite fond of my middle finger in particular.
But 60K could support my mom for an entire work-free year, or buy another Rav4 and then some, or pay several college tuitions, or "sponsor" maybe hundred of third world children to eat (it only cost a $5 donation in Nicaragua to provide milk to numerous children) for a week. Or, my ENTIRE doctoral education cost about 60K, not counting all the stuff I already paid off with the 2-3 part time jobs I worked those years (tutor, PG&E contractor, office staff, student interviewer, research assistant.)

Why do I ask such a gruesome question?

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8BJyyyRYbSk&mode=related&search=

We saw Sicko today, after about 3 weeks of my nagging P. Not that he is insensitive to the importance of healthcare, but he has not witnessed its cruelties the way a health care professional has (well, and there is that matter of more pressing summer movie fare such as Transformers….).

The matter of lack of healthcare in this great country hits close to home for me.  Please do see the movie, it speaks SO much truth.  And despite the solemnity of this post, that’s just me and my dourness.  The documentary itself is quite funny.

Back at UCLA I worked administrative tasks for a psychiatrist. 
Much of what I did was fax patients’ extremely personal information to HMO’s and beg and fight for more services for patients.  Thus I learned by the tender age of 20 that one could have Bipolar disorder, and Lupus, and a couple other diagnoses all at the same time and still be coldy denied "unneccessary" care from the HMO they paid and trusted for years.
I witnessed the anguished of patients who could not afford medicines.  My boss was a compassionate man, given to offering ice cream bars to anyone who entered the office (heck, no wonder I worked for him!).  He would give handfuls of sample medications from to try and help clients out. 
I’ll never forget one proud and practical woman.  A handsome African American lady who had conquered a severe mood disorder.  Dr. Tolwin advised her of a medication that was new, better, could maybe be what it takes for to make it back to full recovery, go back to work.  But she couldn’t afford it.  He offered her all the samples he had.  She cried silently and shook her head.  "I’d rather not try - it if I just know that even if it works, I can’t ever buy it.  I’d feel better for a little while and just know I was gonna get sick again"

My mum and I basically work for almost no other purpose than securing health benefits.  I want mom to stop working, certainly she’s earned it and could maybe make it with our help if she had no salary. But there’s NO way we could cover U.S. healthcare.  I myself had an unexpected surgery in my 20’s.  I still had healthcare then under dad since I was a full time graduate student - if not, I surely would have been bankrupted by the ultrasound, surgery, and hospital stay.

I have seen patients with hospital plastic bags of their belongings, wearing plastic bracelets, sometimes still in flimsy hospital gowns, walking, or more like trudging or literally falling down on Broadway in Oakland.  Just last month it was an elderly man in a gown pushing a walker across the street at a rate of about 3 inches a minute, his Highland hospital bag of meager goods hanging from a thin wrist. 
It made me ashamed to be one of the hundreds of citizens carrying $3.00 espresso drinks who rushed past him into my office, without offering help or asking if he was OK, or admitting that we are witness to such cruelty. I know how it feels: "what can I possibly do?!" I don’t know. But I wish I had at least said something. At least tried. 

A few months ago another man fell straight off the steps of a bus that discharged him, and he lay on the sidewalk in a crawling heap on 8th street until a teen boy from China called 911.  I came out of the office and witnessed this.  The boy spoke little English. But he found it astounding that no one would help this old man on the ground who bore hospital wristbands.  I helped him call 911.
We stood there like dorks with this guy sprawled before us. Time ticked by.
"In China, 911 would be here in 5 minutes", he said proudly.
In the U.S. we waited and waited.  And when the firemen finally came, I knew that probably they’d throw him back out of the hospital soon. Sort of like most of my clients.

My friend Sara served for weeks in NYC following the 9/11 attacks.  She is someone whose integrity and compassion astonishes me.  It’s amazing to know a real, in the flesh heroine.  She still suffers a "9/11 cough".  The government isn’t helping her out at all.  In fact, she volunteered her time yet again to serve post-Katrina which is how I had the privilege to meet her.  I wonder sometimes, I fear: will my friend die one day from the toxins in her lungs?

In the 90’s, my father got deathly ill with a mysterious raging infection in Germany.  Those Germans saved his life.  I am eternally indebted.  An M.D. did a home visit, ascertained he was too sick to return to Taiwan, and sent him to the intensive care unit of the hospital.
My dad stayed in ICU for days. His speech was slurred, they couldn’t find the source of the infection.  I had to consult with my advisor about whether to leave school and fly to Germany with my Dad looming near his deathbed.  For days we were terrified as the infection raged.  After he emerged from ICU, he stayed more than a week in a pleasant regular hospital bed with ‘a window with a tree" he reported.  His total tab for home visit, ICU, med, hospital etc.? About $2,500 USD.  A teeny fraction of what we’d have paid for ONE day of hospitalization in California.

Of course if he had made it home to Taiwan healthcare would have been free or near free as well.  In Taipei I have often had to see the M.D., and my co-pay for a same day visit and meds is $15.  In Costa Rica it cost me under $30.  And quite honestly in both of those countries the M.D.’s had fantastic bedside manner and time for one on one patient talk that I have rarely enjoyed at home.

There are things I love about Los Estados Unidos, but healthcare ain’t one of them.  It’s not Ok to me that we roam like a pack of zebras who do nothing to help one another when illness drags one of us away from the herd.  We just duck our heads and thank God it wasn’t us, or our child, or parent.  But things in our collective house are so nonsensical right now, we need to pull together or there will be little worth saving.  Rampant disease will fell us all equally.   I am a healthcare professional.  I know the HMO’s want to pay me for denying proper care.  I know they would love it if I said I cured major psychosis or life threatening eating disorder in 6 hours.  I can’t ever do that, and face my patients, and live with myself.   
I want to remain proud to do what I do, not walk around with blood and suffering on my hands.  In reality, this finger, these hands, are worth more than $60,000.   

A friend asked me for my take on Hilary Clinton. 
He said something to the effect of: "I haven’t met other women who wanted Hilary (or any female) for President. Someone (a woman!) said that she ‘might push the button when she’s on the rag.""

That kind of illogic does not even merit a response.  Ladies and gentlemen, please do not enter a battle of wits completely unarmed. It’s demeaning and inefficient for all involved.

First of all, there is the biological fact that Senator Clinton has a 20+ year old child and is likely post-menopausal, thus so there is no ‘rag’ to speak of. 
If that is not obvious, perhaps one should take a refresher course in high school human biology.
Secondly, she obviously managed to function pretty damned well as an attorney for her entire adult life despite hormone fluctuations.
Yeah, OK, OK I know what it’s like to blimp into a speckled pumpkin every few weeks or so, and get sappier than usual… but I’d bet money my judgment exceeds that of your average man on the street by a good many standard deviations even on the worst PMS of my life.

Amigo, surely you must be speaking to women either a) inbred or otherwise on the shallow end of the proverbial gene pool  or b) they were pulling your leg or c) they were trying to act as if they had big huevos to impress the dudes

Senator Clinton has been doing a good not perfect job, which is still a HELL of a lot more than I can say for most congresspeople with their pants at their ankles and their whole heads in corporate pockets and their hypocrisy oozing outta their ears.  Senator Clinton, unlike Dubya, is not most frequently seen out jogging, at the ranch,playing with dogs, or bicycling.  Senator Clinton has manged to raise bright and productive child who unlike Dubya’s tots, has managed to stay mostly out of the tabloids and away from the bottle. 
I’ve got my beef with some of her stances, but I am careful about criticizing those who are clearly far more capable than I am.
Hillary critics- take a look in the mirror. Think before you speak. 
Don’t be a hater just ‘coz she can run circles around you…

Whilst its true that one can’t write a Reggaeton or R & B song for a white girl name like Hilary Rodham Clinton- ya sure can write a respectable country song!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-Sudw4ghVe8

Hilary babe, I still love ya. As Willie Brown said, "Hilary knows more about healthcare than anyone else, and she tried to do something about it years ago…"
But ya gotta say, Obama’s name makes for a LOT more fun when it comes to musica. "Hilary Rodham Clinton" is just a touch….white. 
Not that there’s anything wrong with white, but it doesn’t swing if ya know what I mean.  Having a nombre we can baile to is definite plus!
Amigos de Obama doesn’t feature hot pants like Obama girl, but the musica is mejor, check it out
Reggaeton fans- shake your butts:
"Como se dice? Como se llama? Obama! Obama!"

http://www.amigosdeobama.com/index.htm

Driving to work in a fog of resentment, stewing on 880 (where enough bad karma foments to rival a battleground), I heard a rather chipper, simple guitar riff that piqued my interest. 
A new Paul Simon tune perhaps?
As the lyrics began, it was not Paul, an unknown young voice sang:
"When I arrived in my old set of clothes, I was half a world away from my home.  I was hunted by the wolves, I was heckled by the crows…"

Who hasn’t had a day (or a year) like that? Heck, I am henpecked near to death by friggin’ quality assurance bureacrats and county Napoleans each day.

"Bury your burning hatred like a hatchet in the snow…"

OK, I try, I do.

"if you have a broken heart,
or a battered soul
find something to hold onto
to help you through the hard nights like a flask of hope
do not fear what you don’t really know
‘coz it won’t last-
your worries will past,
Darling do not fear what you don’t really know…
all your troubles don’t stand a chance
and it always hurts the worst when its the ones we love the most
darling do not fear…"

Take a listen, and pay no heed to the Blair witch effects of the cameraperson. 
It’s just a simple tune, but it made me smile at the end of a week that neccesitated lots of Pepto, chocolate, and  P knuckling the giant knots out of my neck…
(and it makes me laugh to think of how after 2 weeks in Lousiana I was becoming all Southern in my speech. EVERYone was darlin’ or honey)

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6icYcAWuuUM

And now, for today’s comic relief…
So perhaps y’all have not yet seen the "Obama girl" video ‘I’ve got a crush on Obama".  I’m a fan of Hilary but god knows I loved Obama’s book and want him to president too.

Are the videos silly? hell yes.
There’s a lot of totally gratititous rump shaking and all, but it’s funny. Manages to skewer pop music/videos/and campaigns in general.  Because the truth is "Obama girl" has drawn a helluva lot of straight men into the Obama camp fo’ sho in a way that the stodgy campaign hacks sure haven’t.

I know that I get some kind of message across every time I venture out in my red anti-Dubya spoof T-shirt. ("W" A billion corporations served)  near a dozen people stop me any day I wear that to read it, laugh, ask about it, ask where I bought it, take a photo.  P thinks people are just looking for an excuse to read my chest, and while I guess that doesn’t hurt the message I really think that’s not the draw.!

How about the 2nd video: ‘"Obama girls v. Guliani girls?"
How can you beat a song with lines like "I like my men like I like my coffee (Obama girl)" or "I know I’m gonna be wife #4 (Guliant girl)". And there are actual intelligent references in there about war and Obama’s Dreams of my father book as well…
see for yourself

www.BarelyPolitical.com

Ok, this must be why I can’t along with my own peeps.
If there is one thing I can’t stand: it’s wimpiness.
So here’s our heroine supastar from Taiwan: Rainie yang whom everyone is raving is SOOOOOOO CUUUUUUUUte.
Bleah.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6EkPQBXuXMo&mode=related&search=

For heaven’s sake, pop stars who look like they are 12 and have a vocal range equivalent to my 4 yr old neice? Puh -leeze.
I dig talent that’s got muscle and soul, that sweats, cries, and hollers. And what’s up with the boy in this video (and sadly I admit, in most of Taipei). Don’t wanna diss on my brothers, but a guy that I can beat down in arm wrestling & doesn’t  look strong enough to change a tire or give me a run for the money on a climbing wall….? well, yawnville.  I’ve accepted the mysterious truth that for some reason I am primarily a straight girl.  But a man’s gotta be a worthy competitor mentally as well as along me on that bike trail/ocean swim/run path…(although bonus points are granted to those who can not run 6 miles but who CAN fix my goddamned computer, and who are agnostic to boot).

Who’s more my style? Well for starters
here’s Jennifer Hudson kicking some vocal ass in a performance I love

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zPaM6rdeAew

I realized years ago that how I feel will likely never correspond to my phenotype. 
I oughta be a big, gorgeous natural woman with lungs and curves like Hudson….and while thank god I am not a wispy sprite like Rainie, I do not appear to be the looming Amazon that lives within.
and of course I grew up wearing lots of black leather and spandex, and spent my 19th birthday in SF watching Joan Jett live. She may not be curvy but she still looks like one to be reckoned with:

live:http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ba7lNTuPPXQ

So young Mr. Chestnut of san Jose ate 66 Nathan’s hot dogs with buns to a tune of approximately 20,000 calories, and 1,320 grams of animal FAT in about 12 minutes?!
Whoa.
Meanwhile ESPN is covering this like it’s the Olympics, and Chestnut is being called a "National hero" for ousting that tiny velociraptor Kobayashi who’s been kicking "competitive eating champion" ass for 9 years worldwide.
Heck, I can’t completely diss on him, I suppose even lifting (to say the least of digesting) 66 hot dogs is somehow athletic or aerobic.
It makes me a wee bit uncomfortable that it’s a form of entertainment to glut ourselves sick at a time when a slice of cheese or a plain bun could feed a kid somewhere else for an entire day day.

When P and I were at a pizza parlor in Buenos aires,
the young woman behind to counter quietly motioned to 2 dark-eyed ragamuffins outside.   They smilingly accepted her discreet offer and left the parlor with both hands and their mouth clamped tight on slices of ham.  I will never forget the sight of those little girls, their slight cotton dresses (in winter) and silky hair, but  especially their little hands on that slice.   They didn’t beg. But their longing was clear enough for a kind hearted soul to offer a little comfort, a few calories.
I know life isn’t fair. 
I do accept that.
But I am tired of people using that slogan as an excuse for complicity.
I know for a fact it could be more fair than it is. 

I have a no-cash blanket policy to American panhandlers (I’ve worked with far too many addicts, and one our chronically mentally ill current clients spends entire SSI checks on grocery bags full worth of lottery scratchers.)  But in a foreign land, "un moneda" is far too little to give.
Like our hot dog eating local boy,
I realize I too am grossly gluttonous by many a world standard. 
Let’s be frank, I can list today’s take for example:
Peet’s coffee w/ cream and half a sweet cheese pastry
french toast, hash browns, soft scramble eggs a bite of P’s sausage omelette
BBQ squid balls on a stick
mineral water
green tea
BBQ chicken leg
1 pillipine mango
handful of rainier cherries and pacific northwest blueberries
famous amos cookies
2 Joy’s homemade mini-cheeseburgers on pan de sal w/ tomato
1 corn on the cob
3 ice cream dibs
and the end-all of my every day: chamomile or xiao’s blend (peet’s) tea
(and a V8 I meant to drink but didn’t get to since we did not make it to see Sicko tonight after all)
I mean really, it’s a sunday and we were invited to both a pleasant Oakland Coffee Mill brunch as well as an impromptu "JoJo ‘n Joy BBQ" so this is a bit more piggy than usual, but it grosses me out to list it.

Chris rock was making fun of kosher eaters and muslims once, pointing out that "a pork chop will save your life" if you’re starving. True ’nuff. 
Waste not, want not.  I wish there was a simple way to package 20,000 calories and mail it to some of the beautiful ninos we have seen in our travels.   
And in ways small and large, we do. No Childquest, religious organization type stuff, (I know you people of God do some  wonderful works throughout this world, but I have witnessed "aid" being doled out with evangelism in post-katrina.  Such brainwashing of the desperate is exploitation, not help) but natural resource investment and indigenous self sustainable economic projects and micro loans.