So, my father has died...

I arrived in Krabi, Thailand this past Sunday morning and received a message to contact the Allegheny County Medical Examiner's office. My father, Dr. Virachai Theerakulstit, had been found deceased in his home by the police, after being alerted by some friends of his that he wasn't answering the door.

To say my father and I weren't close is a bit of an understatement. We were estranged for nearly 20 years, only reconnecting a few years ago when it became clear he wasn't in a great place and I went back to Pittsburgh, PA to see if there was anything that could be done. Seeing him again, any wrongs done to both my mother and me were quickly forgiven, as there was little left of the person who had committed them in the frail, quiet, aged man I saw before me.

But growing up, he was, as with most young children, I believe, a presence I yearned to be around. He was strong, charming, assured and aggressive, with skill and talent to back it all up. As one of the top cardio-vascular surgeons in the area, he, no doubt, helped numerous families and individuals, saving and improving countless lives. He was creative and artistically gifted - I remember a beautiful, half-painted sketch on stretched canvas which I kept proudly on display on an easel in my room for years. His friends, neighbors and patients loved him. And so too, did his demons, which he never did quite manage to conquer.

In his final years, he lived with much shame and regret about the things he had lost and squandered after so many years of impressive accomplishment and hard work. He had withdrawn from his remaining family and the world when I encountered him again after our long absence. This was, perhaps, his last valuable lesson he had to teach me; showing me a glimpse of a very familiar and possible future which I am now all too mindful of avoiding.

But in his last years I had heard that he had reached out again to his sister's family, and did have some friends with whom he communicated regularly, such as the kind Myers family who finally found him. I can only hope that he found comfort for himself there, and passed with some semblance of contentment.

I am now using my remaining time in Thailand to plan out how to handle my father's affairs and put him to rest, consulting with relatives and Thai temples on the East Coast for advice, and simply to meditate upon his passing, before returning to the United States.

Rest in peace, Dad. May you now find the tranquility that you long sought in this life.

Dan Wohl Wants to Make the Asian Guy Gay - How Original.

In his essay entitled "STAR TREK NEEDS A GAY CHARACTER AND HERE’S HOW TO DO IT: ONE TREKKIE’S PROPOSAL" over on The Mary Sue, sports writer and self-proclaimed Trekkie Dan Wohl argues that the best, and really only, choice, for integrating a gay character into the rebooted J.J. Abrams Star Trek Franchise is to make Sulu homosexual.

Yeah, make the Asian guy gay. That's the EASY fix, isn't it Mr. Wohl? Amazing how having a gay Asian character is so easily palatable to the average American viewer. Not even a thought as to making McCoy or Scotty gay/pansexual - way too "manly," right?

"I thought you'd like the ears, Hikaru..."

Or perhaps Spock even - now that there are only 10,000 Vulcans left in the universe in Abrahm's broken timeline, maybe the ratio of males to females is no longer even. When the libido rager of Pun'far rolls around, it'd only be logical to consider pansexual relations if New Vulcan ends up being a sausage fest.

As for Wohl's argument that, because all other six characters had hetero relations in the original series, it falls to Sulu to take up the mantel? He later points out, in the same article, that Sulu having a daughter on the bridge of the Enterprise B doesn't imply his heterosexuality. So why doesn't that standard apply to the other six characters? Is it because no gay man has ever slept with a woman, nor no lesbian ever lost her gold star? Convenient how he once again ignored the possibility of pansexuality amongst any of the other characters.

He also ignores or dismisses dozens of episodes from the various Star Trek series that DO contain queer characters or themes, never mind the books and other licensed materials, so that he can cling to a faulty initial premise that Star Trek is lacking on the subject of LGBT issues. Devoting a half-dozen paragraphs to multiple citations of LGBT behavior and characters across the entire franchise doesn't exactly support the hypothesis that Star Trek hasn't done a good job of addressing those aspects of our culture. 

And I'm curious what exactly Wohl thinks is wrong with "The Outcast" as a morality tale on the evils of a sexuality conformist culture? Because all he did in his mention of it was to say it was a poorly chosen allegory and then proceed to completely misrepresent the actual premise and message of the episode. Also, nice to ignore the fact that this episode now aired over TWENTY years ago - I realize that as Star Trek fans all the episodes exist in a very present to us, but please recognize that this bit of writing was pretty ahead of the curve back in 1992.

The fact is, I'd personally be fine if they made Sulu gay or pansexual. But I would be fine if they did that with ANY of the characters. Make them all pansexual, even paragon of fratboy heterosexuality Captain Kirk. As long as it had some relevance to either the story itself, or made us somehow care about the characters more, thus heightening the stakes for the story.

No, the problem I have with Dan Wohl's suggestion that Sulu be gay is that his REASONS why it HAS to be Sulu SUUUUUCCCK! Ultimately, they're simply more of the thinly veiled stereotypes of the Asian male that have been floating around the American media landscape since the U.S. got involved in three consecutive wars in Asia in the 20th Century. 

Anyway, the biggest challenge the Star Trek franchise has ever faced isn't having a gay character... it's having a good villain. 2 for 11? Come on, guys...

Picture #39-#36: Easter picture and a little backlog.

Picture #39: The egg coloring was about to take a turn for the messy.


Picture #38: Wilbur was being taken to a special farm, way out in the country, to a loving family with a big backyard, where he could eat as much as he wanted and play all day...


Went with a friend to Jersey and grabbed their daughter's piggy bank - I'm not above stealing/borrowing children's toys and money to further my own ends - and took this shot in the car. What I love about this shot is that this drive into Jersey now is so iconically from "The Sopranos." The theme song just kept running through my head over and over.

Picture #37: "All in? Affirmative!"

Dedicated to the memory of #Elisabeth Sladen - R.I.P. #Sarah Jane Smith. Doctor Who's robot companion, K-9, in this resetting of Casino Royal.

Picture #36: Old school.


Just me and my old Atari 2600 (still works), playing a game of Mario Kart. He's gone old school to school the new school!

Picture #34: Some day.

Oh, expanding toys, you one-trick pony of the toy world. After they've grown, they don't really have a pleasing texture to them; makes them difficult to play with and not particularly great for display. So in the protective packaging poor Curt Connors remains. Until he makes his move...

Picture #33: "Yes, I love it too, but maybe not for the Passover soup...?"

I find that my love of baking powder and bacon makes me a really bad Jew. Also, my complete lack of being Jewish.

I do find seder cooking rather fascinating, in that I like the way modern Jewish cooks are determined to drag traditional Jewish cooking kicking and screaming into the realm of flavor. Mark Bittman's Epicurious.com seder menu looked very interesting and appetizing, while remaining both simple and traditional. Kosher and tasty don't have to be mutually exclusive.

On the subject of cooking for the people of the Tribe, once, while dating a Jewish girl and shopping for a Hanukah present for her, I happened across a traditional Jewish cookbook in a small boutique shop in the Village. The shop girl sidled over and sort of murmured under her breath that the food in that cookbook was rather bland. When I told her my girlfriend at the time liked bland food, she looked at me inquisitively and asked, "Why are you dating her, then?"

It would turn out to have been a very good question.

April 19, 2011: A day that will live... in video.

Sorry about that, guys... completely my fault. Sarah Connor, this one's on me.

Picture #32: "Very funny, fleshbag."

This, alas, is not one of my toys, but once again my roommate Rick's, who has a far superior collection of 80's sci-fi/robot toys. When he eventually dies trying to hang a fan out his window this summer, I'll be sure to surreptitiously move some down to my room before his family arrives.

This, of course, is the Autobot Transformer Blaster, designed as a counterpoint to Sound Wave, who was later destroyed and rebuilt as Sound Blaster, an odd bit of naming overlap, but who am I to question Japanese anime toy makers?

Also amusingly ironic is the fact that I'm making fun of Blaster's antiquated media format with an only slightly less antiquated media format.

Picture #31: "Yes, R2, I tried re-installing already."

This is actually the top of a Pez dispenser (which I'm supposed to send to someone, but I've been dragging my heels on - sorry!). I took it with me to the opening game for the Manhattan Mayhem last night, but couldn't think of anything particularly clever to do with it, so I waited until I was home to do something not particularly clever with him in the comfort of my bedroom.

The bout was really quite good, even though my team, the Manhattan Mayhem, lost. Here they are just before the bout began:

And here, new co-manager, Endless Justin, somehow is looking directly into the camera even though I'm in the nosebleed seats.

This is just another pre-bout picture of the team. I like both how standout transfer Davey Blockit is at the ready with her coonskin cap, and the way Fisticuffs is yawning (one can only hope that, if I happen to run into her on a dark sport court, she doesn't beat me up for posting this picture...)

After the bout, we went to Juniors for their amazing combo pastrami/corned beef reuben and their world famous cheesecake. On the way, this somewhat appropriate sign, lost in the rain-filled side street.

My response to responses to the response to Asians in the Library by UCLA girl Alexandra Wallace.

Pictures #9-11 or "I appear to have taken on a photo project..."

Upon discovering Daily Booth, I immediately liked the low-maintenance nature of it all. There's no real tagging, or categorization of photos, it's just people uploading whatever they want and if you happen to catch something interesting on the live stream, then it's a happy little accident rather than the result of a carefully targeted metatagging/keyword/spam bot campaign.

I also immediately found myself posting photos and now seem to have gotten into a rhythm of wanting to do one a day. I stumbled into a theme of taking pictures with the toys scattered about the house, and have now inadvertently given myself a daily photo assignment.

This is great for me - my creative and work ethic muscles are extremely atrophied, if not entirely dead - and I need something simple and consistent to slowly get them back into shape. So, I'm hoping taking a picture and writing a caption every day will be like walking a mile every evening, or doing sun salutation every morning. Theoretically, it should start to feed into my other projects and kick-start them as well.

Picture #11: "The lap dance from the Invisible Woman was quickly turning out to be a colossal waste of money."

Taking this picture (and writing this blog posting) are a good reminder of the dangers of taking on a daily photo project like this - for I'm doing this as procrastination from editing and posting a video for YouTube I shot yesterday. Still, it makes me chuckle, so, well worth it!

Picture #10: "Put me in coach!"

I actually took this shot the night before I posted it, at the Gotham Girls Roller Derby season opener up at CCNY. Originally I had hoped to take a shot of the Mark V next to the feet of a bunch of derby girls' roller skates, but that opportunity never quite materialized.

Picture #9: "Big Biiirrrrdddddd!!!!"

A friend of mine expressed confusion over this caption. I'm not sure I understand why - clearly Mecha Godzilla is about to devour Big Bird and his little friend. This clock, by the way, is probably one of the single most thoughtful gifts ever given to me, by my ex-girl and current close friend Wendy. She once heard me talking about this alarm clock I had as a child, went to various vintage toy shops and FOUND it, and gave it to me for Christmas or my birthday. Amazing.

Picture # 8: "Tetsuo! Kaneda!"

I hear they're making a live-action version of this anime classic. I imagine it will look something like this.

Picture #7: "I mistakenly purchased 'Spiderman: Turn Off the Dark - Home Edition.'"

I originally purchased this web-shooter kit before Spiderman 2 came out. I had a sketch idea where I'd go into Times Square in a Venom outfit, walk up to the guy in the Spiderman outfit who hangs out there for tourist photos, facing off against him for a moment, and then just emptying the silly string "web fluid" all over him, then running away.

How to Make Chocolate Lava Cake (with Cayenne and Sea Salt)

I just made this instructional for my birthday (March 1). I've been wanting to do a cooking video for a long time - had no idea how long it was going to take. I was up until 9am, thus ensuring that I'd sleep through the majority of my actual birthday. Me am smart brain.

I often make this recipe for people; it's always more fun to cook when there's a guest(s) involved. I certainly use Thanksgiving as an excuse to feed my friends and family. And I've always enjoyed going to the market with people for ingredients and then cooking together afterwards.

So get to know me and you'll eventually get some of this hot, chocolate, lava, cake action.

UPDATE: Whoo, hoo! I made it onto the Craftzine Blog! http://blog.craftzine.com/archive/2011/03/how-to_chocolate_lava_cake.html