Todo Sobre Mi Sobrino (All About My Nephew)

(okay I lied. It's not all about my nephew. The title's there so I can flaunt my love for Almodovar and also to celebrate the little man's birthday.)
Brandon, 3 days before turning 2-years-old

(Please excuse the annoying auntie voice! - which... happens to be mine -__-lll)

Hello! I am back from my impromptu blogging hiatus. I was a major master lagger for the past few weeks primarily because

a) I came up with too many things to write about (and I found too many wonderful quotes from books, plays, and movies. Oh Tennessee Williams, how I adore you.), and so I was somewhat overwhelmed (yes I need to make a list!) I've been fiddling with the idea of starting a broader, non-food blog about gender studies or anything interesting about females and the opposite sex (no promises on whether or not I might create another blog! but I am definitely curious about starting another one though, or maybe restructuring this blog so I'll feel less guilty for going off topic). I might call it "Don Juan or Some Guy Who Won't Commit," mainly because I've been having this fascination with the idea of Don Juan and womanizers since spring quarter of last year. Last fall, back when I was planning to apply for film studies graduate programs (which I ended up realizing wasn't for me), I proposed a possible (and pretty undeveloped) dissertation idea, which is to write about the mythical Don Juan and other womanizing characters in film who as most male voyeurs do, actively fix their gaze upon female objects.

"A possible dissertation idea that I may look into is the literary character Don Juan, his presence in film, and other films that focus on a male libertine surrounded by an assortment of women such as 8 ½ (1963) and L'homme qui aimait les femmes (1977). I would question why the spectator is expected to accept and objectify the images of women in these films, and also why the idea of a male libertine is celebrated in literature and cinema when a female Don Juan is scorned in films such as Female (1933) and She's Gotta Have It (1986)."

Classic Hollywood's representation of Don Juan

Errol Flynn is much more beautiful without a mustache :/

an old Don Juan realizing the impact he has/d on the women in his past

Double standards interest me. Why is Guido in 8 ½ (1963) a more sympathetic character than Emma Bovary in Madame Bovary? Although I strongly do not condone cheating, as both of these characters are cheaters, it seems to me that Guido repeatedly cheats because he has a major identity crisis, so he doesn't seem to know what do to or what he wants (and plus he's an artiste who is having a mother of a writer's/director's block in the film). Emma Bovary, on the other hand, has affairs because she isn't happy with her marriage as her romantic expectations of what she imagined her marriage to be like were never fulfilled. Both characters have affairs and figuratively drown themselves in fantasies and daydreams, but when it came to arousing scandal, Gustave Flaubert had to go to trial to defend his novel Madame Bovary. I suppose a lot of it has to do with the fact that Madame Bovary was published during the late 1850s, but many different versions of the legend of Don Juan were written way before Madame Bovary was around... so I do think that Madame Bovary's infamous reputation is due to the fact that she is a woman who has done something immoral by societal standards. How come if a wife cheats on her husband, there's actually a term for that husband (cuckhold) who's been cheated on and there isn't a term for a wife who's been cheated on by her husband (at least not that I know of)? There's so many terms with the insinuation that a female's in the wrong when there are fewer terms for men who are in the wrong - such as whore, slut, kept woman, vamp, and temptress.

Greta Garbo in The Temptress (1926) - a role she resented and was typecast as for a while

b) I fell in love... with a library! Los Angeles Public Library to be exact. It is my abbey. I'm going there once a week now. If you want to go exploring there with me, lemme know. 

It is gorgeous, wonderful, resourceful, and CLEAN - just as a man should be. I think some guy in a cap was eye-ing me in the philosophy section last week because I could totally see him facing me in my peripheral view. Boy, if you've got something to say, say it. I don't mind being admired like I was some statue, but after about 30 minutes of being stared at, I get creeped out O_O.


c) I had to (and still have to) pull double shifts taking care of my nephew with my dad because my sister's father-in-law was in the ICU for the past 2-3 weeks... and so her in-laws were not able to help take care of bebe B half of the time like they usually did.


I'm sure there's many more reasons as to why I didn't blog for such a long time - such as overexposing myself to TCM and immersing myself into the world of Tennessee Williams (I'm currently reading Baby Doll / Tiger Tail right now) - but let's get to the little man of 2 (my nephew), shall we?


Friday, April 9th was bebe Brandon's actual birthday but both families (mine and my sister's in-law's) celebrated his birthday Saturday at Seafood Village for some hardcore eating.

lobster. oh gosh, my poor cholesterol level! clog my arteries, why don't you.

don't eat lobster heads! they're chock-full of cholesterol! :( gee, there are two of them in this pic.

bebe B: Mum... I'm baby vampire. I bite into your hand now.

Brandma, bebe mama, and bebe B playing around

"There's more food coming?!"

bebe B looks soo satisfied :0)

bebe daddy, bebe B, and Brandma (on the bebe daddy's side)

things I usually dislike eating: hot Asian desserts.

This time it's red bean soup with tapioca and some other stuff.

This is brand new to me.  

I don't know what this stuff is called but it's like hot mochi with almond flavored rice cake wraps. These things actually taste pretty good.

Flavors from left to right: green tea, sesame, custard, and peanut

I tried a little of each flavor except for sesame (because I'm really not fond of that flavor). The green tea flavor was the best flavor out of the three I tried.

We went back to the bebe's home with full stomachs and lots of leftovers to watch bebe B perform - which is basically strumming the guitar a bit and his interpretation of what singing is.

And oh.... there's ice cream cake from Baskin Robbins!

My sis and I were at Baskin Robbins earlier to pick out a cake for bebe B, and it was between this cake or an equally adorable cupcake themed one. This one fits Brandon's personality best. hehe... it reminds me of bebe B and his big headed lion stuffed animal:

Some birthday cake action after Brandon so eagerly blew out his candles:

I ate. It was a good day. Now I'm tired. I'll leave you with some accidental, artsy pics of Brandon though. bises!

wah. SO full from dim sum.

For most Saturdays, my family likes to go out and eat Chinese food for lunch; more than 40% of the time, they either go eat dim sum @ a place nearby or they order dim sum to eat @ home. I use the word they a lot because I don't always go with them, especially if I can't manage to get myself up on a Saturday morning ^^;;. (What a lazy arse, right?) Anyways, we had dim sum today at a place where workers knew my mom as Chu tai (Mrs. Chu) and asked questions like "Oh, is this your youngest daughter?" (c'est moi!) or "awww... your grandson is soo cute (gong dut yi-aaah)!!" (Oh, and he is, believe me.) This is all in Cantonese of course. To me, they are just nice "aunties" pushing hot carts of food. I smile. I answer questions. I eat and hope they don't notice I have trouble using chopsticks... cause I'm a total twinkie and it shows-especially when I avoided eating a small piece of slippery pork because I can't pick it up with my chopsticks and so my sister handed me my nephew's plastic fork instead ^^ll. Oh the shame. haha. I'll live :D.

The good thing about eating with my nephew (to me he's "bebe B," or as I like to call him sometimes "hey kid") is that he likes to eat and when he does, he has this expression of "ohhhh yeaaaah" cause he enjoys his food so much (Amanda's a witness to this). So the usual suspects during dim sum for me are ha gow (shrimp dumplings pictured above to the right) and shumai; a lot of times I would crave egg tarts but I didn't see any this time :(. I don't usually like red bean desserts but my bro-in-law likes this gelatin red bean dessert:
Honestly I enjoy vegetarian food (I cannot count how many times I wished there was a Veggie Grill in Pasadena), but I can't see myself turning into a vegetarian, mostly because I grew up eating things with bones like chicken feet here:
It was extra nice today cause we had lobster yee-mein (I don't know how many calories that thing is and I really don't want to know what it's doing to my cholesterol level, but I know it makes my tummy happy ^^).
One of the things I do love is this type of Asian bun, which is pineapple cha xiu bao. There's really no pineapple in it at all but I guess it's called that because of the yellow stuff on top of the bun.

Yes. I stuff my face with it. I stuff my face with it cause it's soo good - so good that my glasses are crooked when my sister took a picture of me being a gluttonous whore. Oh the wonders of dim sum. That's happiness stuffed into a bun right there. I wish I didn't look like a chipmunk eating her bun, but I do. I'm sure Chip 'n Dale would be happy to be friends with me eating awesome buns like these.