Coco's condition, accepting donation$ for her surgery!

So this all started on July 1 when I went to shoot an interview with someone in San Bernardino. He said he had a backyard/kennel area for dogs so I brought Coco with me. It was really hot that day. The yard fence had an opening where Coco could've slipped out, so I tied her up in a corner of shade and left a bowl of water there. I ended up interviewing/talking with the guy for over 2 hours. When I came back out, the shade had completely moved, but the guy's family had just untied her and were watering her down. She definitely was heat exhausted. It was as we left that she started acting weird. She screamed when we touched her in certain areas (I thought we just pulled her leg too hard when we were drying her up). She was also REALLY tired and disinterested in anything, including food she normally gets really excited about. I still just thought she was burned out from being in the sun for the past few hours.

But her exhaustion and screaming (when you touched her certain places) continued, so on Monday 4th of July, I took her to the emergency hospital for an X-ray, which came back with nothing out of the ordinary.

The following days, her wounds developed mostly in the areas where she was reacting to pain. It started as a pinch of a hole where it seemed like a little bit of hair fell off. Then pus was coming out of this area over the week. So I took her to the vet down the street since it was close and they accept CareCredit (a medical care credit card service). They shaved the area with the pus and after looking at the skin, the vet said it was most likely a really bad sunburn. They ran a fecal test which produced nothing out of the ordinary as well. So the vet put her on antibiotics and gave me some cream. At this point, the wounds looked like dark, thick, hardened skin (basically dead skin) which slowly was peeling off and underneath was raw tissue that was not closed or healed yet. After 2 more visits where the wounds were clearly getting worse, the vet refers me back to a surgeon (back at the emergency hospital).



The surgeon there says he's never seen a sunburn like that. He said it could also be some sort of bite infection or something toxic or really hot got poured or pressed against her. He recommended a $3000 surgery to pull nearby skin to close up the main wound. I said no since that was way outta my budget, so he just gave me more antibiotics. This was a good decision as well since that surgery would've only treated the symptom, not the problem. And the problem was indeed growing. In addition to the main wound where dead skin was peeling off, more spots are popping up all over her body. They are starting the same way: small pieces of hair falling off, skin hardening, falling off, raw bloody, pus tissue underneath.



So my friend recommends another clinic to me. I go there and their fees are way cheaper, which was the first positive sign. The vet is also baffled, but he suggests a biopsy to take skin samples from the various degrees of wounds. He can't think of any other way to find out what the disease is. I already blew nearly $1000 at the first two hospitals, both of which turned out to be mostly useless. I'm hoping my intuitions are right about this third place and that their surgery will at least tell me what's wrong with Coco so we can figure out a plan from there. The biopsy will cost nearly $700.

I've started an account on Chipin to raise funds to help pay for it. I think you need a PayPal acct, so if you don't have one but would like to donate, let me know and we'll work something out. Otherwise, go to this page and click the link on the right column. Any amount will be greatly appreciated!!!! Thank you!!!

2011 New Yrs Resolutions

Dear God,

I'll promise to stop going around looking for a girl who's down to hook up in a confessional booth if you'll just let me accomplish these three simple things in 2011.

1) Pay my friend the money I owe him for damages done to his backyard by my crazy ass dog. That's right, neither of us could've ever imagined that a cute little pug would be capable of such destruction and disaster. I mean look at her, lying there looking all innocent n' shit!!!



But inside, she's a fucking devil, a straight terror!!!!! My friend calls her Paris Hilton now (cuz the bitch goes after the expensive stuff), though I think the recklessness of Lindsay Lohan would make a more fitting nickname.






2) Finish my documentary on the 14th annual dance massive Electric Daisy Carnival. Teens, drugs, death - nothing out of the ordinary as far as what you hear about raves in the news. The promising thing is that LA County has been working with electronic music advocates to come up with safety regulations for all future events.



Last week, however, San Francisco Assemblywoman Fiona Ma decided to propose a bill to ban raves from all public venues in CA. Such a bill would basically render all the work LA County has been doing obsolete, and also overshadow my film on the LA rave scene with a rather shitty ending. She has since decided to put the bill on hold. We can probably thank the thousands of people who spoke out against her efforts for that one, including Senator Leland Yee.




Damn, it's like a battle of the Asian politicians. Maybe I should run for office too. I wonder what my campaign would be like...





3) Become a writer at Intervention? Yeah right, who knows. Here's the release of my last assignment. There were so many corrections and negative feedback on my work but I'm just gonna keep chuggin' along like the lil' engine that could. Either that, or I'll give up and go back to my old job...





And here are a few goals I had set before that little monster I call my dog sent me into debt. Oh well, I guess there's always 2012...

1) Buy my own camera. Cuz I will only last so long borrowing from friends and work.
2) Go to Switzerland. Why? This is why.
3) I'm also due for a trip to the motherland. Haven't been back since Feb '06 before my grandma passed away. She's probably staring down at me right now, laying upon me that elderly Asian guilt.

Asian Men in Sports & Entertainment

This list summarizes my observations of the increasing visibility, participation, and success of Asian men in sports and entertainment popular with Americans.


ACTORS: John Cho, Daniel Dae Kim, and more
There are now more Asian male leading roles in TV and feature films than ever before.






BASEBALL: Major League drafts from Japan & Korea
There has been a surge of this in the United States in recent years.






BASKETBALL: Yao Ming

Currently the tallest player in the NBA, Yao Ming was selected by the Houston Rockets as the first overall pick in the 2002 draft, and has since been selected to start for the Western Conference in the NBA All-Star Game in each of his first seven seasons, and has been named to the All-NBA Team five times. His rookie year in the NBA was the subject of a documentary film, The Year of the Yao, and he co-wrote, along with NBA analyst Ric Bucher, an autobiography titled Yao: A Life in Two Worlds.



BOXING: Manny Pacquiao

Raised under poverty in the Filipino ghetto and trained with a kick-boxing background, Pacquiao went pro at the age of 17 and KOed his way to being the first boxer in history to win ten world titles in eight different weight divisions. He was named "Fighter of the Decade" for the 2000's by the Boxing Writers Association of America and The Ring "Fighter of the Year" in 2006, 2008 and 2009.



DANCING: America's Best Dance Crew
The abundance of Asian faces on the winners of this competition reality series speaks for itself.






DANCING: Planet B-Boy

This 2007 documentary directed by Benson Lee was a box office hit that proved that another arena of hip-hop dominated by Asian guys is break-dancing. Between the roots of hip-hop in New York and the annual world b-boy battle in Germany lies countries such as Japan and Korea, both of which have brought out teams that have soared to the top of the championships within a matter of a few years.



ELECTRO: DJ Steve Aoki

Perhaps the most well-known Asian-American electronic DJ, Aoki is a self-made success story. Founding his own label just a year out of high school, his remix and production work since then has dominated charts in Europe and North America. A household name among young people in Los Angeles, he regularly plays for crowds of up to a hundred thousand fans.



FILM: Ang Lee

Born and raised in Taiwan, Lee received his MFA in film-making from New York University. After Best Foreign Language Film Oscar nominations for The Wedding Banquet and Eat Drink Man Woman, he directed Sense & Sensibility in 1995. His critical & award recognition and box office success grew from there with Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon and Brokeback Mountain. In 2006, Brokeback Mountain scored a leading eight Academy Award nominations including Best Picture and Best Director, which Lee won. He is the first Asian and non-Caucasian director to do so.



HIP-HOP: DJ Q-bert

Raised in the Filipino-American community of Daly City, California, Q-bert learned to scratch at the age of 15. His teacher was Mix Master Mike, and together they would eventually battle their way through the World DMC Championships, becoming the most influential artists in the history of turntablism. Q-bert is universally regarded as the greatest scratch DJ of all time.


HIP-HOP & ELECTRO: Far East Movement

Just a few years ago, Kev Nish, Prohgress, and J-Splif were merely three guys from Koreatown with not much more than a mixtape released. Today, they have a fourth member (DJ Virman), have toured with the likes of Lady GaGa, and have shot to number one on iTunes and the Billboards with their single "Like a G6." Having roots in Chinese, Japanese, Korean, and Filipino ancestry, the boys of FM represent the first Asian-American artists to top U.S. pop charts.



REALITY TV: Jon Gosselin

What started as an unexpected tale about the miracles of love and family turned into a reality TV cliche full of dysfunction and on-screen train-wrecks. Across multiple seasons, Gosselin played the full gamut from devoted husband & hard working father to the cheating player who gets separated and leaves the burden of raising eight children to his wife. For better or for worse, his image has had a wide influence on America. In its 5th season debut, for example, Jon & Kate Plus 8 raked in nearly 10 million viewers for the TLC network.



SINGING: Lin Yu Chun

Sporting a bow tie and a bowl-shaped haircut, this 23-year-old kid in Taiwan delightfully surprised the world with his performance of "I Will Always Love You." He went from being a weekly reality competitor to being an international Youtube sensation. The video of his performance generated millions of views within a matter of days, resulting in his first trip to America to appear and sing on The Ellen DeGeneres and Lopez Tonight shows. Later that year, he released his first album on Sony Music and performed "The Star-Spangled Banner" at an LA Dodgers game.



UFC: BJ Penn

With training grounds at his place of birth in the Hawaiian islands and the recent addition of Chinese acupuncture to his health regime, BJ Penn can attribute his former UFC Lightweight Championship and UFC Welterweight Championship to plenty of hard work and dedication. Penn has stated that he identifies strongly with his Korean roots and has traveled to Korea to hold seminars. He also said that he gets his hot temper from his Korean side which helps him use this energy in his fights.



UFC: Nam Phan

At the time of this writing, this Vietnamese-American kid from Garden Grove, California is still a qualifying competitor on The Ultimate Fighter, a reality series about pro mixed martial artists aspiring to sign with the UFC. Phan proudly displays both the American and South Vietnamese flag on his gi as a symbol of his pride in the freedom of his current home and of his lost homeland.