ugly delicious

I find David Chang so frustrating. I feel like he has all these awesome ideas, and tries to be really thoughtful, but he always just ends up not thinking hard enough about what he's doing and what he's trying to accomplish. Anyway, that's where I'm at with him. I loved Lucky Peach when it still existed, but it was also at the same time, too much male ego in the way for me to fully enjoy it.

Anyway, I've been slowly making my way through the Ugly Delicious series on Netflix, and I have the same mixed feelings. I just finished the fried rice episode, and god do I not relate to these Asian Americans who grew up wanting to be white and ashamed of their food. I have never aspired to be white, or been jealous of white people in any way, and it's hard for me to really care about that. I've always loved my people's food, and if you didn't like it, well, more for me.

There's a segment where they interview Brandon Jew, a third generation ABC who opened up Mission Chinese in San Francisco Chinatown and he said something like "I just want people to have pride in their Chinese food again" and I just wanted to throw something at the TV. Like, motherfucker, you're in the middle of Chinatown, surrounded by Chinese restaurants, some of which are just as upscale as yours but they just don't serve white people. Who the fuck are you actually talking about?

Overall: the show is good but frustrating.

2018

It seems so weird that we are now assessing the credibility of Elon Musk vs Azealia Banks, and also, it's so obvious that Musk is trying to take Tesla private just so he doesn't have to be transparent about Tesla's finances. Or basically the fact that they're burning through all the cash. Taking money from a regime that basically threw a self-destructive shitfit over mild criticism seems like a really smart thing to do right now.