Early in my career when I was doing more club comedy and I had just started doing stand-up after a long time doing longer form monologues and characters, I did a set at the comedy store in Hollywood that fucking bombed. And it was in front of many many many…

Gay asylum seekers Julio and Freddy gave me all the Christmas feels — “What do you want for Christmas dinner?” I asked Julio and Freddy as they tried to perch casually around my apartment. Freddy was looking out the window into a typical new york easement between buildings with stacks of dirty windows set inside sturdy brick walls circa 1910 and boxy air…

Something we priviliged electro-connected fast living TV watching restaurant going social club joining gazillionaires in the eyes of the rest of the world don’t maybe understand anymore, is that in places where poverty is the rule, family gatherings are the one and only place where pleasure really occurs on a…

Sep 19 I can’t call it detention because it was a jail. A freezing cinder block, fluorescent light, orange uniform, soggy meal on plastic tray, 12-to-a-cell, no sock, croc wearing, barbed wire, guards with sticks, jail. And a for-profit one, at that. Our tax dollars paying to keep all these…

Sponsoring an asylum seeker comes with a whole lot of messy human-ness — October When talking with Julio and Fredys on the facetime earlier today, Julio joked “Now I look even more like a panda because I didn't sleep all night. Says he’s been coughing. And there is blood. Says they spoke to a doctor at the LGBT center who told them to come…

High brow, low down, back alley, front row life. — Well first of all you gotta hustle. All the time. I am not “aesthetcially gifted” or “insanely lucky” or “the nicest person you will ever meet.” I am edgy. I get dristracted. Sometimes my resting bitch face gets the better of me in a rehearsal room. Also I am a…

Learn from my mistakes. And protect yourself from flying flip-flops. — I am a self-appointed expert on this topic after having studied Asian moms for over a year for the live show, concert and film versions of my one-person show “Zombie Asian Moms” (coming to a festival near you next year).

And other adventures in internalized racism — “It will make you feel like success! You can be anyone you want in America. So why not have blonde hair and blue eyes?” My mom’s big idea was that I should go to my first day of high school wearing a blonde wig and blue contact lenses. “Why not…

Part 1: metabo meals. — I sent myself to fat camp to please my dead mom. Ever wonder what it was like to go to one of those weight loss spas that seem like they are for rich white ladies and seem like an excuse to get a massage?All my life my Asian mom has…