Gung Hay Fat Choy to all of those that give a damn. It’s the year of the dog, and it’s time to get this money!! This year it all started off at my grandmother’s apartment for an early New Year’s Eve dinner with the fam. I was luckily not hung over from the 12 kettle shots in a row from the night before, so I was in good shape, (which translates that I didn’t find a hidden pool of puke under my bed). We got upstairs (me, my sister and brother in law), and as soon as we opened the door the aroma of wonderfully home cooked Chinese food pulled me tongue-first inside. My grandmother cooked an amazing 10-course meal that will always remind me that she is the SHIT in the kitchen. I mean, if I could cook almost as good as her, there would be no way that any Asian girl could resist me, (well, at least any fat and hungry girl couldn’t).
New Year’s day began with me sitting in front of the computer in my draws, and my sister walking in to tell me, “Mom and Dad want to go to a movie or something.”
“Well, tell them I said ‘Happy New Year and have a good time’” I answered.
“You do it!” she exclaims after she hands me the phone.
“Let’s go see a movie!” my Mom screams over the phone at me. She originally wanted to see “Brokeback Mountain”, and although it did very well with at the Golden Globes, I somehow managed to convince her and my father to see “The Squid and The Whale” instead. Yes, for some reason it seemed much more appropriate to see a movie about a crumbling, dysfunctional, family which included a son who smeared his semen on random objects than a movie about love between gay cowboys on this sacred, sacred holiday. Ok, so maybe I messed up with the movie choice. But hey, at least it wasn’t Hostel, or (gasp!) Big Momma House TWO!! Oh and by the way, my family did enjoy the movie, which to put it briefly, was very well done, produced by one of my favorite directors, Wes Anderson, and emotionally tugging. We then went out to eat at Royal Palace, which was in the same parking lot. If you’re thinking another traditional Chinese meal after a nice movie, you need to think again about who you’re dealing with. Royal Palace is actually an Indian restaurant with a descent buffet. But regardless of the location, it fit the mold of a typical Chang family dinner, complete with good food, the usual racial stereotypes from my Mother, my Father making fun of something stupid that I did, and my sister and I looking at each other with that familiar “why are our parents so weird?” look that we’ve shared hundreds of thousands of times throughout are lives. I don’t think I could spend Chinese New Year any other way. Happy Chinese Lunar New Year to all of you and yours. Now let’s get this money bitches!!! Oh, and by the way, my mother isn’t really a racist. She just says some fucked up things and then laughs about it!
