The Skunkeye Consumer Guide

(via Turbanhead).

Nobody Bother Skunkeye!

Skunkeye just met the “Father of U.S. Tae Kwon Do,” Grand Master Jhoon Ree! Anyone watching TV in the DC area in the eighties will remember his “Nobody Bother Me!” local commercials. What a legend!
He was speaking at the annual Asian Pacific American Heritage Month festivities at HHS across the street. We always go for the free food at the end but have to sit through keynote speakers and cultural performances first. This year it was Jhoon Ree and and the Mabuhay Dance Group - believe me, i've had my fill of Filipino Tinikling/Pandanggo Sa Ilaw cultural performances. The Grandmaster looked amazing at 77 and considering he recently had open heart surgery and gave an inspiring but rather long-winded talk. The finale was a Martial arts ballet performed a little too earnestly by his students to an inspirational reading by him and then to Kate Smith’s God Bless America. Kinda camp the whole affair. You can sample some of his music on his website. He’s really a immigrant success story- over 60 Jhoon Ree studios in the US and 65 in Russia (!!) and he was the Martial Arts instructor for Muhammad Ali, Tony Robbins, Mike Espy, and Jack Valenti and all sorts of famous and colorful people. Ree and his wife were very sweet and said they enjoyed meeting my folks in Soeul. The Rees were accompanying Bush Senior on his recent Korea trip.

Today I met with the Cambodians to plan a retirement party for their Chief but nothing got accomplished and I couldn't motivate anyone. They want food at the event but they don't want to prerpare any to bring OR contribute money. Cambodian food, by the way, is amazing. Now I understand better why you have to go all the way to Rhode Island to find a Cambodian restaurant.

Skunkeye is experiencing another dangerously slow day. Fixin to get the hell out of Dodge soon… this heat really makes things oppressive. Maybe New York or Baltimore this weekend?

Last week The Man apparently got inspired by margaritas at some Cinco de Mayo office party in the Latin American division that I some how missed, and now he is bent on putting up a special website for our division celebrating our “diversity.” Um, I don’t think we really need a website to demonstrate that. Anyways, he’s tasked our office Slovak with that…

Had a nice party at mi casa MJ, F, and visiting S came over and I fed them gin and tonics and made a batch of my awesome chili. My sister, her fiance, and her Japanese housemate stopped by. Everyone got to meet Bumblefuck when he lumbered downstairs. We headed across the street to a friend’s house warming party and I met some cool neighbors on the street when I was out smoking. We ended up at Local 16 on the next block. Sometimes I love my little hood.

Spent yesterday afternoon at a funeral/memorial service for a dear family friend. Most of it was in Korean which I don’t speak but it was very moving and clearly he is held in high respect in the community. 98 years old, what a full life. I met the creator/artist of this. That was such an amazing series! I refrained from gushing given the circumstances and also I didn’t want to come off as a goofball. Charlize Theron just got cast in the live-action feature. He has to be mum about the other details but he did tell me he always pictured Famke Janssen in the role. That would have been perfect. I’m going to try to get an interview with him for our Korean programming. We need to go after the younger audience. Margaret Cho did not fly too well apparently.

Check out The Cubist Paintings of Diego Rivera: Memory, Politics, Place, on exhibit at the National Gallery until mid-July. Better known for his murals, this compact but illuminating exhibit showcases his smaller paintings and a few drawings when Rivera was a student and starving artist in Spain and France between 1913 and 1915. I found it interesting how Rivera integrated items and memories of his homeland Mexico with the European cubist approach and also assimilated his Socialist leanings. In his cubist still-life paintings he replaces the typical guitar with a balaika and freely mixes absinthe bottles and glasses with Mexican utensils and molinillos on café tabletops. The exhibit captures the young artist discovering himself in Spain and Paris, abroad at a time when the world was on fire. Oh, and the NGA is running a great Mexican film series.

Skunkeye complimented – well, commented on – The Man’s purple shirt with green fleur-du-lis pattern this morning and GOT A RAISE. Didn’t know it could be that easy.

NBC really milked this Friends thing bad – and there’s even more tonight. Lisa Kudrow, on the special Central Perk Leno last night, seemed a tad sick of it all and ready to move on. I never cared much this way or the other about the show –just kind of annoys me because its so omnipresent and the reruns will never go away. But when I do happen to catch the show, Phoebe generally makes me laugh.

Via Torn & Frayed, these photos make me homesick.

I’ve been getting a lot of queries about the Malcolm McLaren track, “About Her,” on the Kill Bill Vol. II OST. Don’t know where it came from or whether it was commissioned just for the film. Paris is the last album I purchased and that was back in the mid-nineties (?). Hopefully it will trigger revived interest in The Zombies. Read this week they are playing some dates again and don’t sound half bad. Hope they make it to the US. They deserve a renaissance ala Arthur Lee and Love – unfortunately I missed the Birchmere show.

For those who have yet to discover the joys of the Zombies, either this or this are a good overview of their short career. “Imagine the Swan” had been my ultimate pick-me-up song these days. Odeyssey & Oracle is an overlooked masterpiece, and is well worth the price if you can find it.

Skunkeye is so domestic these days. Since Denby is staying with her tita in Bethesda, and was suffering from allergies, I met her uptown Saturday to do some shopping. For some reason I’ve been fixated on buying a heavy duty big ass stockpot and a new mattress pad. So expensive! We tried TJ Maxx but I can’t get over how greasy and gross every thing is there – wind up feeling queasy and in need of a shower the minute I walk in.

Its always kinda of an odd being in sleepy uptown – near my family’s former residences and Janney, Deal, and Georgetown Day where I went to school at various points while we were posted in DC. I took Denby to Armands. Am I mistaken, wasn’t there once one on 14th street? That joint would really make a killing there now providing carry out for the folk who live in those million dollar new condos.

I was going to catch Bon Voyage at the Outer Circle (thankfully still open!) but wound up spending too much time in Johnson's Flower & Garden Center. It was like Disneyland for me with all the spring flowers and plants. The staff are very helpful and I learned that I’ve pretty much done everything wrong in terms of taking care of my garden. Kinda expensive though and besides there was no way I could haul all that greenery back downtown.

Wholefoods is running great deals on outdoor plants right now. Annuals are 99 cents. Bought a zillion geraniums that will probably die since I don’t get much sun on my patio. Made several trips hauling big rose bushes and hibiscus trees back to me house in my gym bag. Must have made quite a sight – the village eccentric boy. Hibiscus trees are great because they flower all summer – the gift that keeps on giving.

Bumblefuck was away this weekend so I got a taste of life without him and it was sweet. Denby couldn’t make the brunch I prepared Sunday but MJ enjoyed it – chorizo, fresh asparagus, and paella. The DC Health Department must be clamping down these days because my favorite Spanish Market on 17th Street was shut down. Also recently my Thai dive was closed briefly for “unclean food preparation surfaces” and “rodents.” Actually, I’ve kinda stopped going there because they have new owners and they raised their prices. And a place by my office where I can get cheap sushi after 1:30 was briefly closed because the Health Department said they didn’t have hot water. All this and lead water. Ya never know these days…

On Friday night a neighbor used rat poison. A bunch of mice came out into the alley to die and their little carcasses were all over the place. It's pretty gross especailly after all this rain and the cars running over them and I'm afraid I'll step in one. Also, the crackhead's cute pit bull next door is getting awfully feral from neglect. Poor thing.

Housemate D, who was being oddly friendly this weekend, were bitching about Bumblefuck in the alley over cigarettes. The trash talking turned uncomfortable for me when D’s comments took a somewhat anti-semetic turn. So I pointed his carelessness and lack of hygeine might be attributed to the fact that Bumblefuck is only 22 years old and perhaps doesn’t know any better and is clearly at different, more carefree stage of life.

Housemate D said, "That no excuse. I young too!!!”

Please, D is 43!!! And during this conversation I noticed a familiar tweakiness about him. He was been awfully friendly. And throughout the weekend he kept telling me in his broken English about losing and breaking things – his “cello-phone,” his shoes - as he came back all wild-eyed from various outings. And half-dressed Asian boys were in and out of the house all weekend at all hours. They were pretty quiet though and mostly came to crash. I was in my own world anyways, cooking Spanish food, potting plants, and trying to make sense out of Deadwood.

It wasn’t until this morning reading some one else’s blog that I realized this was going on during the weekend. Skunkeye is so out of it, I should be used to D’s cycles by now. He's going to be a cranky bitch all week for sure.