Cocoa With Christine

             I was looking for the ugliest homeless man in the Santa Monica.   I know that’s not a very Christian thing to think, but if I’m going to be honest in telling this story, that’s what I was thinking.  I was a UCLA sophomore, and I came out weekly with a bunch of collegians from church to hand out sandwiches to the homeless.   Since I had made the effort on a fatigued school day, I wanted this trip to matter, and somehow in my pooped mind, I equated finding a needy homeless man with finding an ugly one.             “Anyone need a sandwich?”   I called out at a group of them.             There emerged the ugliest homeless man I had ever seen- weather beaten, scarred, potholed skin, a bumpy nose pushed out of his raven eyes, with frizzy hair half sticking up like a jiggity top sail at the top of his head, with the rest of his frizzy, oily mass lagging in a sloppy pony tail down the back. Imagine a distant cousin of Cosmos Kramer gone really sour.   He smiled a huge crooke

                 Being that I’m a mom of four kids who have all gone through those toddler years when they say the most awkward things, I should’ve gotten used to it by now- the comments about my bumpy thighs, the counting of my moles, the giggling and jiggling of my arm fat, telling me my nostrils are shaped like a butterfly . . .   In the repertoire of my children, I have the following exclamations said around strangers:                 “Ooh!   Mom!   THAT MAN IS OLD!”                 “Look at that waiter’s moustache!   HAHAHA!   He looks like MARIO!   HAHAHA!   Bye Bye Mister Moustache Man!”                 I’ve had one kid rush up to a Goth teenager wearing all black and chains, hair spiked up a foot high, and just point at him and laugh at him LOUDLY.   That was the first and only time I pretended like I didn’t know English and told my kid in broken Korean to beat it.                 I should be used to these moments.   They really are common.   But this time, my little 3

                I love Broadway musicals and am always starring in them during performances in front of my kids.   The key to starring in a real Broadway musical is to find the Broadway character that you sound most like, that you can emulate the best.         I sound the most like Les Miserables’ Cosette.   Unfortunately not the romantic, beautiful, soprano songbird, but the ragged, sweeping eight year old French child. And no matter how many theaters I call, I can't find a theater who will let a 39 year old Korean woman perform “I Have A Castle on a Cloud”.                 I’ve always been self-conscious about how child-like my voice is.   After several family members, close friends, business people, two pastors, and my husband have mistaken me for a child on the phone, I’ve finally conceded that they probably don’t all have bad phone connections.   Just most of them do.                 Don’t get me wrong- I still laugh when my friends ask me on the phone if they can talk t

            It’s funny how differently my parents and I have responded to Psy, the Internet pop sensation. My first generation parents have been somewhat unhappy that someone like Psy would represent Korea.   Yet for me,  Hollywood has been my lifetime neighbor; so if Hollywood can do shallow, glitzsy, and stupid, am I happy to prove that Korea do shallow, glitzsy, and stupid even better?   HECK YA! I'll jump on the bandwagon for anything Korean in America!           My ability to feel proud about my connection to some dude who does a horse dance, because my parents were born in the same country of origin, proves to me that it doesn’t take much to make me proud.           Previous to Psy, the only excitement as an Asian American I’ve had has been minimal:   Lea Salonga, Michelle Kwan, Jeremy Lin, and one half of Tiger Woods.           My parents sat with my family in a Korean restaurant translating the words to “Gangnam Style” to English from his iPhone5.   My dad has this r