#1 - it's issue number one
fred flintstone, chekhov's hobby, tzuyu, and cheesecloths
Thirteen minutes into The Flintstones (1994), Fred Flintstone wins a bowling tournament.
It’s the Interlodge Championship at the Bedrock Bowl-O-Rama. Barney (a blonde Rick Moranis) whisper-cheers on his friend in close up before we pull back to watch Fred (an impeccable John Goodman) hit his signature bowling pose, float to the lane on tippy toes, and make an epic, very 90s movie magic strike.
The strike sets up the movie. Barney declares him the best friend a man could have - Fred lent Barney and Betty money out of his life savings so they could qualify for adoption. Friends are betrayed, secrets emerge. Our heroes reunite at the climax and confront the villain. The bad guy (Kyle MacLachlan!) almost gets away at the end but then Fred’s canonical love for bowling pays off — he stoops down to pull a perfectly round rock from a nearby quarry pile, winds up, floats on his tippy toes, then bowls over our villain just as he did an hour prior.
The thing he loves saves the day. TV Tropes calls it Chekov’s Hobby.
Many of my life choices thus far have been Fred Flinstone Bowling/Chekhov’s Hobby — all fun until they become a major plot point. Late night hours with Windows Movie Maker and Fruity Loops Studio in high school lead to a career in content. A fascination with food that showed up in my late twenties lead to a circle of friends likewise curious, though much more well versed than I, about culinary. A life of being the family historian has lead to a community of people around me and a community-driven purpose.
So now, freshly on my own in the world, what do I do?
Liza Palmer’s latest newsletter (which I’ve lightly borrowed the format from as I work this out, thank you Liza) has three emotional “stowaways” that were “pivotal” during a fraught time in her life, starting with “I had to face where I REALLY was versus where I aspired to be.”
Over the chaos of the past few years, I think many of us who graduated into the recession have tried to face where we really are. With the death of hustle culture and the sudden industry built around self-care we’re clocking the misalignment between our work and our values. It’s attractive and romantic to drop your job to do what you love but we are still in a world where our labor is tied to survival (I’m going to link to Marx here but I am by no means a well-read Marx scholar). Even those of us who love what we do on a daily basis are hitting the once quiet, now very loud lack of security in these once dream fields. At the risk of this sounding like a LinkedIn post, the market is rough right now.
A friend and I caught up yesterday and he hit a point I’ve been trying to articulate around this Substack as I work through this part of my life, suddenly having to figure out what’s next. We had just finished a panel for APAHM (thank you Stephanie for the invitation) and cooled in the shade of the building outside on a perfect Los Angeles day. We’d begun to circle the drain on small talk topics and with our last go at “what are you up to these days” he said that as he got older and hit a new stage in his life he was tired of doing things that ultimately don’t bring him joy, he just wanted to have fun.
I just want to have fun. I just want this to be fun.
I have tools but I’m at the start of the trail. There’s a lot I need to learn, unlearn, and push forward through, anxiety be damned. If I am going to “…see myself honestly” (Liza’s words) then this first issue is a glance in the mirror as I articulate where I am. Even though this is on a platform that could ultimately throw everything I write into an AI woodchipper and reconstitute it as Frankenstein’s podcast, I want to create something that I own — there’s that Marx again. As I head further and further into this, I hope to be a little more in my voice with each issue. Maybe it will become something bigger. I’m not resting everything (or anything, really) on this, but I’m excited to see where it goes as I separately sort out how I’m going to survive.
I prepared myself for a small number of subscribers and instead am pressing send to ten-fold what I feel emotionally ready for but we’re going to do it! Thank you for being here. This will be culture, food, and media through my very Asian American lens and it will be things I think you’ll find fun, interesting, worth the conversation, and worth sharing as well. If not for you then perhaps for a friend. I’m not going to take paid subscribers just yet (though thank you to everyone who pledged to subscribe when I turn it on) so we’ll see how this runs.
Read this as you go through your Thursday. I get a space to write and push myself. You get vibes. I hope it’s a good trade off.
When Fred Flinstone bowls over Kyle MacLachlan the gang is actually already out of peril. His skill doesn’t save the day — it just rounds out the story. He hits his final strike to show off a bit, to give the audience something to cheer for, and because he can. And that’s all ok too.
🥠
Takeaways This Week
Mood - Exteeng’s do u miss me too mix for NTS Radio. Sounds like listening to techno on a Discman as you fall asleep in bed at 2AM in high school.
I really did watch The Flintstones this week after jumping down a weird rabbit hole prompted by a series of TikToks I watched about the 90’s Disney Channel show Dinosaurs. It’s a great ride, if only for the cast (Halle Berry! Sheryl Lee Ralph! Elizabeth Taylor! The B-52s!) and the overindulgent modern-conveniences-as-stone-age-jokes that are unnecessary but never get old.
This week Asian American Studies Twitter discovered a newly posted job for the Panda Express Postdoctoral Fellowship in Asian American Studies. There’s discourse in here but honestly best of luck to everyone involved/I wonder if the final candidate will have to wear a Panda uniform as they teach their sections.
Meanwhile DeSantis signed a bill mandating Asian American studies as a required part of the Florida public school curriculum while defunding DEI education at state schools so make sense of that how you want to.
There’s a lot of other terrible stuff in the news that I’m not going to share here, not because I want this to be a ~positive escape~ but because there’s just too much of it.
Tiktok failed to load.
Enable 3rd party cookies or use another browserSearch “twice hare hare formation” on TikTok and you’ll get the entire Twice fanbase collectively working out the groups’ formation for a forthcoming unreleased song after the group posted a bunch of individual members dancing the chorus with mis-matching choreography. Whether you’re a Once or not it’s great internet.
Finally bought Dorie Greenspan’s Baking With Dorie last week after opening it to find a cookie recipe by Moko Hirayama served at her family shop Mokonuts. I had a daifuku-energy cookie there last time I went and it changed the way I think about beans.
Did you know that there are grades of cheesecloth? I didn’t. Amateur pasteur over here. Currently in the market for some grade 90 as it’s almost time to strain the soy sauce I’ve been brewing for the past year
I was going to check how many hours I’ve played The Legend of Zelda: Tears Of The Kingdom for some joke about how much I’ve played since it launched last week but I had a bit of an existential breakdown after I did that with Animal Crossing a couple years back so not making the same mistake. Not only is it a critical smash but it’s meme of the week after it debuted a new engine that allows players to build things using pretty much anything in the world and it’s gone predictably somewhere.
yessss issue number one! congrats sean! 💕💕💕🥳🥳🥳