Confessions of a Korean-American Man in New York City

Last weekend I went to go see an indie flick in the East Village called "Air guitar nation." It's a documentary on the underground air guitar wars or competitions. Sounds silly but it exists and they're pretty passionate. The reason I saw this documentary was because I recently met Dan Crane and had lunch with him and he encouraged me to go watch it. The movie was hilarious and I do recommend go seeing it because you'll be pleasantly surprised. In short, Dan is the perennial runner-up to C-Diddy, who's real name is David Jung, a Korean-American. David's story is hilarious because he comes from a family of physicians who send him to Exeter for the finest secondary education with his parents' hopes in hand. He then surprises his parents by telling him that all the money invested in one of the elite boarding schools in the US has lead him to acting. I could only imagine what his parents would say. Anyway, along the way to finding an acting career, he detours to become the world's greatest air guitarist. The funniest line is from his dad who attends the finals event and says, "I didn't think I'd be the father of an air guitar champion."

On Sunday, I watched the finale of Apprentice 6 in which James the Korean guy was runner-up. In my personal opinion he got hosed. Donald should've picked him and his reasons for not selecting him was garbage if not articulate. I only watched the second half of the season because I was encouraged by one of my friends in Seattle who happens to be very close friends with James. Based on the shows I saw, he was clearly the best and it would've been great to see him win because we could say Korean men dominate American reality shows. A little inside scoop: Arnold Schwarzenegger was in one of the episodes and he made a comment to the Donald that James was the best candidate for the Apprentice job but that was obviously cut to the editing floor.

Fast forward a week later and I'm watching West 32nd film, an indie flick based on the underground Korean gangs that act as a pseudo mafia of sorts; think of it as our little Sopranos. At the movie and after party, I was surrounded by lots of industry folks which reminded me of the parties I used to go to with the Konman, my old roommate and HS bud. Back then I'd rarely seen an Asian at the parties and if they did show up, they were pretty good looking. I didn't always enjoy much of the conversation because it was always about them and what they were doing. It was cool to meet some of the actors and thesbians because they looked familiar to me because I had seen them in some show or movie. At the after party, it was a similar party but they were all Asian. It was rather surreal but I guess this is an indication of some progress. We've come a long way since Yellow and Better Luck Tomorrow. It was kewl talking to those folks like John Cho than the usual parties I go to which are dominated by Korean American professionals which has become a bore for me lately. This was a good change of pace.