In the following video, I tell a story about my fight with video games and my video games with fighting. Sound mysterious and perhaps inscrutable? Well, of course it is! This performance is from the 2011 National Asian American Theater Festival, where I performed alongside singer/songwriter Brandon Patton as part of JUKEBOX STORIES—our storytelling, song-singing, bingo-playing, theatrical extravaganza. Watch:

People say that you should try to learn something new every day. Well, I for one will never forget the day that I learned about the "vajazzle." I was watching the first episode of The Only Way Is Essex, a reality show that has become somewhat of a cultural phenomenon in the U.K. (and that's currently only available on Hulu in the U.S.). A significant portion of that first episode is dedicated to discussing and demonstrating the practice of women who decorate their nether regions with the same kinds of bedazzling jewels that teen girls use to pretty-up their cellphones. Believe me when I say the whole ordeal is absolutely mesmerizing—and it's stuff like this that has gotten me hooked on The Only Way Is Essex. The New York Times, which refers to the show as a "British Jersey Shore," explains it best:

Not...everyone would see the show's arrival here—a kind of homecoming, given its roots in MTV reality spectacles like The Hills and Jersey Shore—as a cultural milestone. The Only Way Is Essex...has been reviled in Britain as a pestilent example of depraved New World values and a leading indicator of the apocalypse.

...If it were on television, and you happened to tune in while channel surfing, you would not be able to tell right away, and perhaps not for several minutes, that you were watching a nonfiction show.

Dropping any pretense that the action has been accidentally captured on camera—an opening title announces, "the people are all real, although some of what they do has been set up purely for your entertainment"— Essex is staged, shot, and lighted the way a drama series is, from the multiple camera angles to the too-good-to-be-true reaction shots to the choreographed entrances. No one wanders through a shot accidentally in Essex. Everything extraneous has been removed from the frame, just as in fictional filmmaking.

More centrally, the beach-house dodge—ostentatiously creating an artificial environment within which you then pretend that what's happening is real—is dispensed with. The characters in Essex enact normal lives, if wildly shallow and materialistic ones, in such an obviously artificial way that you find yourself not giving a moment's thought to what's real and what isn't. Which somehow makes it seem more authentic, rather than less.

The Only Way Is Essex has the familiar narrative rhythms of a reality show (nothing much actually happens), but every scene is so strikingly framed, composed, and edited that you know there were multiple takes and a lot of producer-meddling going on. The effect is a bit disorienting at first, but once you're sucked into the vapid world of these pretty people it's really difficult to leave—which explains why I've lately been up until three in the morning. I mean, I was completely sold when one of the characters hesitated in her vajazzling duties by explaining, "I'm not good at art." That solid gold comedy, people!

Here's a vajazzling clip:



And here's a trailer for the series—the first two seasons are on Hulu, and the third season in airing in the U.K. now:

Speaking of English-language Swedish indie rock, my other big discovery is David Fridlund, who's now navigating the music scene in Austin, which means he's close enough to almost touch. And I don't mean that in a stalker-ish sort of way. (Well, okay, I do, but he doesn't know that.)

My favorite song of his at the moment is the infectious "White Van," which prompted me to leave embarrassingly gushing messages on his Facebook wall. Here's the cool music video:

As you know, a Kiefer Sutherland-sized hole was ripped out of my heart when 24 went off the air. I've publicly stated before, in many of my posts about the Fox action series, that 24 "is pretty much the only reason I have to live." How I'm still alive is a miracle.

So imagine the boner thrill I felt when news broke this past weekend about the feature-length 24 movie, which will hopefully start shooting this Spring, according to Kiefer. From Aceshowbiz.com:

"The status on the movie is that, hopefully, we will be shooting the end of April, beginning of May," stated the 45-year-old actor. Explaining about the film's plot, the Emmy winner said, "I see it as a continuation. The script that we've got right now, which I'm very, very excited about, is relatively a direct continuation. It's within six months from the end of the last episode. We'll see where it goes from there."

My mom called me within minutes of this news breaking. Isn't she a good mother? Isn't she?!

I can now pull my authentic Jack Bauer bag out of storage. (Seriously.)

2012 might very well be the year that all the worst Mayan prophecies come true, but 2012 is also the year that I've been listening to a lot of Swedish indie rock. What those two things have to do with one another, I don't know. What I do know is that my journey down the Swedish indie rock rabbit hole (of songs thankfully in English, by the way) began when I accidentally stumbled upon Jens Lekman on Zune.

My favorite song of his so far is "Waiting for Kirsten," an amusing and sometimes introspective tune about celebrity stalking and, curiously, the social welfare of Gothenburg.

Jens explained the inspiration for the song at a concert: "Now the thing with Kirsten Dunst is that she said in an interview once that she liked my music, and I've been trying to be not too impressed by that. But I grew up next to a potato chips factory in the suburbs of Gothenburg. And so what can a potato chips factory boy like me do when Kirsten comes to my town except obsessively stalk her through the night?" Listen:



If you're like me, you promised yourself to never again see another Lars Von Trier movie after watching Breaking the Waves and Dancer in the Dark and wanting to stab yourself in the eye with a wooden slate (in natural lighting)—but I have to admit that Melancholia, starring Kirsten Dunst, looks moderately intriguing....