Stuff We Rike #11 Rooting For Asians in Fields Asians Traditionally Suck At

Welcome back! I would have liked to post at a more frequent and rapid pace but unfortunately I have been operating on the wrong end of colored people time, more commonly known as "CPT." You may have seen Asians show up ridiculously early, especially the group of Asian international students who show up 20 minutes early to lecture and occupy the first two rows of the auditorium, but let me assure you that the CPT phenomenon is native to American born Asians. So yes, I operate on CPT, and for that I apologize. Woody Allen once said that "Ninety percent of life is just showing up," and since I have not been showing up, I have been sucking at life. Anyways, without further ado and the longest "Stuff We Rike" yet... Asians really like to to root for Asians in fields Asians traditionally suck at.

You may be wondering why Asians don't just like to root for other Asians and in fact normally secretly hold grudges against each other. Let me explain. Asians have a lot of shared history; at some point China took over our homeland, China tried to take over our homeland, or our homeland was actually just China. Second generation Asians also have a lot of shared history. Our parents all made us take piano, try violin if we sucked at piano, try cello if we sucked at both piano and violin, and for 99.9999% of us our parents all looked at us in shame when they realized we would not make it into Juilliard as a pianist, violinist or cellist. Our parents all enrolled us into preparatory classes in the sciences and math at age 6 or at the first sign that we might not eke out an "A" on our report cards. So if you were put in our shoes, would you root for the next Yo-Yo Ma? Hell No. The next math team prodigy? Seen that, been there, not one bit exciting to root for. Now the next Asian American Idol contestant? Now that's exciting.

As highlighted by the annual NCAA March Madness basketball tournament, everybody likes to root for the underdog. There is just something special about rooting for David that most casual fans cannot avoid. Well there is also something special about rooting for Yao, or Kim, or Chang, as long as that surname is of Asian origin for Asians. I spent the middle of my teen years rooting for Dat Nguyen the diminutive linebacker for the Dallas Cowboys even though I watched him a total of zero times on television because to me, "he has to be Asian, he's playing in the NFL, that's AWESOME!" Last year when I was scouring the Internet researching potential draft picks, I stumbled upon Pat Chung from Oregon. Needless to say, I thought I would soon have a new favorite player in the NFL. Then I looked up his picture:

Damn. I will have to wait until another day.

Asians also want to root for Jet Li and Jackie Chan as our most famous actors, but they are basically ninjas. Lots of Asians are ninjas so therefore they are not that exciting. Now if some Asian actor actually got to kiss the girl or stop the bomb threat threatening the livelihood of the citizens of Los Angeles, that would truly be something to get exited about. I can't even imagine

Jack Bauer being Asian and even if he was, he'd probably not use guns, know how to do karate, and would depend on outwitting his enemies with his brain rather than out kick ass them. At least we have Harold, the Asian stoner, he gives us hope so we root for him.

There are over one billion of us just pining to root for stuff, especially other Asians in fields that we suck at so for all you Asians out there, step your game up and we'll be cheering you on.