car shows and hot mamitas

I don't really get car culture. Even though I'm Asian, I just don't go to car shows. I drive a pretty dinky fuel efficient Nissan Sentra and its fanciest feature is the CD player. The thing does not even have power locks and windows. I never saw any of the "2 Fast 2 Furious" movies, car terminology befuddles me, "drifting" is a term I use for tectonic science and I really can't tell the difference between a car model, a stripper and a porn star.

My brother on the other hand attends these things all the time. He used to drive an Acura Integra...the models also know him by name. Anyhow he was down here this weekend for the HIN (Hot Import Nights) Nightshift show over at the Travis Expo Center and my mother, T and I tagged along for the spectacle. We didn't even see that many spokes models, so to make up for that we took turns imitating them (just imagine either one of us in a string bikini to get the full effect, unless you want to keep your lunch down, of course):






Who encapsulates slutty car bitch better, my brother or I? Hard to say...I am a gal after all, but he's immersed in the culture and has a bigger rack than I.

Apparently the shows in Dallas are much fancier, indoors with spot lighting, DJs and fashion shows. This event was outdoors in the expo center parking lot:



In fact seeing a row of Port-a-potties behind such a beautiful vehicles was a real hoot for me:


The benefit of having an outdoor show however, was that we could view the motor sport of Drifting. It's marginally more interesting than NASCAR. I have to say that T's photo panning technique is really good though:






For the record one of those cars is a Mazda 626, which is what I drove in High School. Had I given it a sparkly purple paint job and added a spoiler to it, my dad would of had a heart attach.

And here are some of the other exotic imports we took pics of:











So yeah, I know nothing about car shows, but I still have my stereotypical blanket generalizations regarding those who showcase their supped-up vehicles based off of my 2 hour observation period:

1) If you're black you've added a bad ass stereo system to your car along with a sub woofer so powerful that it takes out all the traffic lights whenever you cruise down the road with your windows down. Hot sweet-ass girlfriend goes without saying. You probably have a video surveillance camera affixed to the back ready to capture the mother fucker who's out to steal them shiny twirling hubcaps. They're made out of platinum after all and the market value of precious metals is pretty high right now...

2) If you're Latino...your car is so low to the ground that it's got a clearance of 2 inches. You're probably trying to figure out how to get it even lower. Shocks are meaningless to you unless you can get the car to bounce to the beat of the music blaring out of your speakers. The hot chick you're dating is merely a car accessory. If she's not draped over the hood or leaning against your precious vehicle while it's parked, she's useless.

3) If you're Asian, you've got a stunted sense of color. Your car is either black, white, silver or electric blue. It doesn't matter which Honda you're vamping up as long as it has a huge ass spoiler in the back and neon lights underneath the car. Your tires cost more than your mortgage. You don't really have a hot Asian girlfriend because she's trying to run off with the white dude from the drifting tournament. That's okay though because you've got more than enough state of the art electronic gadgets in your car to make NASA blush and that GPS device you have installed in the dash board can hone in on your gal, send a mini missile out of the hood and blow the shit up out her, the racer-boy and his car with a touch of a button.

4) If you're a white-dude, you've fitted your car with an engine powerful enough to service Hoover damn, and for whatever reason, it's not good enough the doors open side ways....noooooo you've got to have them open upwards, or diagonally or something. If that's not the case, then you just own a freaking expensive European car like a Bentley or a Lamborghini and you have more tanned blonds following you around the Hugh Hefner. All of your girlfriends are tying to be HIN models, but in reality are either attending Law School or working at the local titty bar...or both.

This is me voicing my observations. My brother thinks I'm nuts:


Back to the topic of the car show models (which to me is far more interesting than cars). Apparently there are 2 classes of gals that frequent these shows and to over hear them talk smack about each other cracks the shit out of me (Like OMG, look at Sissy eating that corn dog in public. It's gonna make her sooo fat. Her cellulite looks like battles scars and what's with all of that cheap bronzing powder her ass? I guess she doesn't make enough at Sugar's to buy the real stuff. Mine's made out of gold...). It really comes down to fake tits vs. cellulite on their end, it seems, but what I speak of is the tiff between the HIN spokes models versus the local car/bikini models. It's a class difference. Apparently the spokes models are the ones selected via audition and travel with the shows. They consider themselves the read deal, make tons of money and have the glory of the seeing their air brushed bodies plastered on the walls of lonely bachelors across the country. What they seem to gloss over however, is that a good bulk of the spokes models used to be car models before they were "discovered..."

Car models:


Spokes model (and Johnny):


I dunno, can you tell a huge difference? Hot's hot right?

Even though I didn't chat directly with any of the local car models I will say they seemed a good bit more humble and "real" to me. I did however make my way to the HIN table and after getting repeatedly turned off by the snobbish bitchy attitude of most of the gals (I think I had to shell $5 just to approach one of them...can y'all think of something else that would require me to pay money to talk to a pretty gal? Mmm hmmm...yeah), I settled on the lovely Ms. Jenny Chu who not only had a brain but a very sweet demeanor. If you need to get your rocks off, go visit her website. She's hot and Asian. You can't beat the combo.



She was gracious enough to not only sign her page in the calendar and glossy 8x10 I got for my brother (I guess T's content with looking at me because he didn't ask for one), but also happily posed for a picture with Johnny.

Anyhow, I think he was pleased to get a memento from the show. I'm a cool sister. What can I say?


In reality, I think he would have been too bashful to get one for himself since mom was with us. heh.

ballet is like marching band

Like my new photo? No bosom to speak of. Nor is there an ass, but it sure makes the lines cleaner, so I can't complain. I've got enough of a gut to make the die-hard dancer scream bloody hell. This, I am proud of.

Anyway, I am admittedly a little frustrated with the ballet director these days.

The kids in the group are getting pushed beyond their limits. She wants nothing but perfection and yet, this is a youth company. I suspect she forgets that the majority of the dancers are between 12 and 20. They've got homework, projects, after school AP labs...other extracurricular activities. They've got parents who hang out in the lobby, anxiously tapping their feet wondering why everyone is getting held over an hour.

At the moment she is frantically rearranging the "weaker" dancers out of the formations. Frankly, if the audition was handled correctly and folks were properly cast, this wouldn't have been much of an issue. However, that's my take. Whenever the dancers are in the studio, if anything goes wrong, it always seems to be the dancer's fault. She doesn't say it blatantly, but more in a condescending "hint" sort of way. For example, one of the gals has curly hair with bangs and often the front section falls out of her bun. This annoyed the director. Instead of telling her outright that her hair needs to be properly pinned in place she goes "You're just trying to draw attention to yourself aren't you?" or something to that effect. When her bangs were still unpinned in the next class, Madame's remark was "did you not get the memo about your hair?" So condescending and so unnecessary.

I don't think she notices the kids practicing in hallways trying to get a piece of movement right or the ones cutting lunch so that they have the time to memorize a section of music or review choreography on the DVD player. I'm not convinced she is appreciative of the parents who rearrange their schedules to bring their children to rehearsals and classes or the mothers who sit inside of the cramped storage closets fluffing tutus and beautifully piecing together new costumes from old components.

I'm one of the old farts, so it's easy for me to say "fuck it" if things get to be too much. However, I can still remember what it was like to be a kid and to blindly listen to authority. For many of the company members, they're so willing to please and impress that they're terrified of making her angry. They don't want to be cut out of a performance because they thoroughly believe the distinction of being a member of this group is worth its weight in gold...but let me tell ya: this little ballerinas don't weigh much!

This reminds me of marching band when I was a kiddo. I went to a prestigious school called Clements High in Sugar Land, TX and not only were the academic units top notch, the extra curricular groups were insanely competitive.

The band director ran his group of students like a military unit, forcing us to repeat drills and routines over and over again until they were perfect. I still recall hot August summers weeks before classes even started with us sweating like mad in the awful humidity. The teacher's parking lot served as the rehearsal grounds, so any heat that rained down on us also reflected back up into our faces. We'd be denied water breaks because someone was out of step, or a horn missed an F# or whatever the fuck. Sometime we'd have to set out instruments down and do push ups if the section leader deemed it necessary.

Some parents argue that these kids learned discipline, pride and the value of hard work. That's true to an extent, however, I think many of us learned more to be terrified of losing instead of striving to win. We were taught to be afraid of authority instead of respecting it. We internalized that mistakes were marks of a failure instead of areas of growth.

So, seeing all of this again, 12 years after graduating from high school is sort of a sore spot for me. I find myself telling these girls back stage "Who gives a shit what she says? You gave it your best shot and you're an amazing dancer... Now go eat a burger."