Korean tacos get T.G.I.F'ed

Remember back in the day, when the phrase "Korean taco" was a naughty euphemism for the land down under?

That was back before the Kogi Taco Truck graced the Big Orange, before the words "Korean" and "fusion" were ever uttered in the same sentence, other than references to Pyongyang's nuclear program.

But with success comes imitative flattery, and eventually things that are hip and cool (and delicious) go mainstream.

For the Korean taco, that day has arrived: T.G.I. Friday's has announced that Korean steak tacos are being added to their fare of flare:

Whether looking for fresh, seasonal dishes, like the Strawberry Fields Salad or Caribbean Spiced Rum Ribs, or to indulge in dishes that follow current flavor trends, like the Korean Steak Tacos or Salted Carmel Cake, T.G.I. Friday's® guests now have 17 more reasons to come in to Friday's and celebrate. The 17 new dishes and mouthwatering menu favorites add value and variety for Friday's guests, including new vegetarian options and more shareable appetizers.

Frankly, I'm shocked. First, I had no idea that T.G.I. Friday's still exists outside of South Korea and Guam (I guess their business model is that if they just stick around long enough, 1990s nostalgia will eventually be all the rage). Second, Korean food really seems to be going mainstream on the Mainland.

Ahh, I don't know why I'm bashing them. In fact, back in Seoul I've long enjoyed going out to the various "family restaurants" with friends and family: T.G.I.F.'s, Outback, Bennigan's, etc. I haven't been to Hooter's, but I did hit the Hard Rock once or twice and even the thankfully defunct Planet Hollywood. Heck, I actually remember when Coco's was the one and only option available (now that is 1990s nostalgia).

So does this mean that Korean food has "arrived" in America? Here in Hawaii, "Korean ribs," "bulgogi" (or some variation of the spelling), etc., are household terms, but the Aloha State is the crossroads of the Pacific, so that doesn't count (the Hallyu trend here predates the Hallyu trend from Korea).

If I end up in a T.G.I.F's anytime soon (my mom likes to go there for the lunch specials when I'm on the Mainland and since she's paying, I'm not complaining), I might try one of the Korean appetizers, but I think I'll stick with chasing around Kogi's naranja truck (naranja means orange, for you Spanish-impaired readers, a nod to the O in OC).

UPDATE:
Writing for NorthJersey.com, Elisa Ung gives a tentative thumbs up to TGIF'd Korean tacos, I think:

The tacos were served nestled in foil, in a wire rack. The chunks of steak were tender; the dominant taste was soy sauce, but it was fairly mild. The meat also had a faintly sweet undertone, and bore some tinges of caramelization.

And that was basically the good news. Everything was wrapped in taut, sandpaper-like corn tortillas. I didn't taste ginger – though that may have been drowned out by the liberal globs of sriracha – and I saw no cilantro or basil, but my tacos were topped with a lettuce mix that included plenty of arugula.

Arugula! On a Korean taco! I could hear grandmothers from many different cultures howling as I ate.

I later tweeted Roy Choi, the acclaimed chef behind the Kogi truck. Was he going to try the T.G.I. Friday's tacos? "Wasn't planning on it," he tweeted back.

Does this dish show that Korean food is so common it now has the honor of being watered down into mediocre fare acceptable to the masses? That's nothing to celebrate. But the general prospect of more people discovering flavors? I'll raise a real bulgogi taco to that.

Yup. For you food purists who think Korean tacos shouldn't be served anywhere except from a truck, this is the price you pay for trying to popularize something you love, enough that it pops up in a neighborhood eatery so you don't have to drive twenty miles to get it: eventually someone tries to make it accessible to the hoi polloi in ways you might not approve. But isn't that phenomenon where Korean tacos come from in the first place?

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Sheeple Mover™

In an effort to more closely consolidate Orange County's premier tourist attractions, officials in Anaheim, Buena Park, and Santa Ana have announced special buses designed to ferry tourists between Disneyland (arguably the world's most famous amusement park), Knott's Berry Farm (billed as the world's first amusement park), and the Discovery Center.

And really, the only reason I'm writing this post is to get that oh-so-clever headline out into the Interwebs.

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A 1988 Seoul Olympic swimmer making a comeback in 2012 London?

The New York Times has a piece on Janet Evans, an OCer who made headlines by earning five medals in South Korea during the summer Olympiad. At the age of forty, she's planning a return to the Olympic pool, even though she hasn't competed in an Olympics since the Atlanta games in 1996.

I wonder if there are any other 1988 Olympians who might show up in London this summer?

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OC kyopo woman killed in Costa Mesa tree collapse?

Oh, God, what a horrible tragedy. This woman was driving her Hyundai Accent in Costa Mesa, a central Orange County community near Irvine and Santa Ana, and a large eucalyptus tree fell on her. The Washington Post has the AP story here, and the Orange County Register has the story here, which still carries a title saying the victim was "injured."

One person was killed when a tree slammed into a car Thursday afternoon, authorities said.

Police received initial reports of a vehicle crashing into a tree, but when officers arrived at the scene, it wasn’t immediately clear how the driver was injured, Costa Mesa police Lt. Mark Manley said.

“It may have been a tree just fell onto the car,” Manley said.

Rescuers responded to the intersection of Irvine Avenue and 17th Street about 2 p.m.

Commenters at the OCR site are criticizing that paper's coverage (as they often do) for only getting half the story. They point to stories in the Los Angeles Times, and at KABC, the local ABC affiliate.

The latter has a witness saying that the firefighters tried to rescue the woman by lifting the tree but dropped it onto the car a second time, possibly killing her:

A witness said that the woman was alive and talking to other witnesses at the scene while in the car under the tree.

"They were talking to her, communicating with her, she was still talking back about everything," she said. "She was okay, she was alive and breathing."

But she said when firefighters tried to lift the tree off the vehicle, it dropped for a second time.

"When they went to lift it, it might have been too heavy, and it just dropped back down and crushed the car even more," she said. "It got more smaller, it was just terrible."

The witness was unsure if the driver was still alive when the tree dropped back down.

Just horrible. People buying cars often check how well they do in head-on, side, and rear-end collisions, and Hyundai vehicles seem to do well in that area, but there seems not much one can do to protect against a massive tree falling on your vehicle.

Initial reports didn't identify the deceased driver, but it was later reported that the car is registered to a woman named Haeyoon Miller. Whoever the victim is, thoughts and prayers go out to her and her family.

That large trees grow up near roadways and sidewalks relatively untended brings occasional tragedy like this. Back in Seoul, I know a lot of people mock the way trees over roadways are denuded practically every year, but my understanding is that this keeps their size under control and prevents them from getting too big to stay healthy and reliably upright. If that is true (and I'm not expert on tree maintenance, so I really don't know), such seemingly drastic measures make sense, and perhaps avert disaster (though Korea's abysmal driving conditions cause traffic deaths the good old-fashioned way).

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A shrinking Santa Ana?

We are getting news that the population of Santa Ana, historically the central city of Orange County (though it is being overshadowed by neighboring Anaheim and now Irvine), actually shrunk by about four percent since the last census. The mayor of that heavily Hispanic city is not taking that lying down.

Since then, the Orange County Register has offered up numerous vacant homes as a clue to the drop in population. And there may be some there there. The numbers from 2010 are a mere snapshot of what was going on in America on April 1, 2010, and we believe that many undocumented residents (perhaps in the millions) in the United States have gone back to their home countries as the economy fell apart and jobs dried up. That kind of thing could lead to a drop in population in some of the heavily immigrant communities that make up Santa Ana.

Nevertheless, color me skeptical. I worked for the Census Bureau effort this past year, but in Hawaii. However, our parent office was in Los Angeles (which I think is also true of Santa Ana). If the effort in Santa Ana had any of the problems emanating from the Los Angeles office, I would not trust their numbers at all.

There were screw-ups from the initial "walk-through" where they determined which houses were livable units (their sloppy work led to duplicated addresses, addresses not counted, etc.), and then there was an effort to reduce the amount of time needed for NRFU (non-response follow-up) at homes where we were fairly certain somebody lived there.

NRFU does not occur just with undocumented residents, lest anyone think that's what's at work here (Honolulu has far fewer illegals, but it still had loads of non-responders). It occurs when people are working multiple jobs, when multiple adults are living in a home and their mail gets lost more easily or there is a lack of sense of who is in charge to respond to something like that, when there are people there that seem temporary but are meet the definition of a resident, when there are less-than-legal add-ons to a home, etc., etc.

My understanding is that these are common characteristics among immigrant-heavy Santa Ana neighborhoods. Legal or not, there are lots of adults sharing a home due to outlandish rental costs, and I know from direct experience from a part-time job back in high school that the landlords often work under the table to expand the capacity of their units.

But all of the aforementioned problems are challenges that can be overcome for a more accurate count, but not when the parent office is insisting that — despite the shoddy documentation they gave you to do your job — everything must be done within a week. Seriously, it was among the worst manifestations of bali-bali get-it-done-yesterday, speed-over-quality efforts I've ever encountered in an American setting.

In Orange County, the Japanese nuclear meltdown focuses attention on San Onofre

There are three things you notice when you drive I-5 between San Diego and Orange County: the beautiful coastal scenery, the signs warning of illegal aliens crossing the freeway as they flee ICE, and the nuclear power plant that is shaped like two perky boobs pointing upward. Hmm... make that four things.

That plant is San Onofre.

When I was a kid, I took a tour of the plant. That adventure was a half day break from camping at San Onofre State Beach. Yup, we would boogie-board and bodysurf in the shadow of a giant nuclear facility. Good times.

Anyhoo, the problems in Miyagi Prefecture with the still on-going disaster at the Fukushima Daiichi plant there have prompted questions about how well Orange County's own neighboring nuke plant could withstand an earthquake and tsunami.

Rest assured, we are told, that we can rest assured:

As crews in Japan struggle with shutting down nuclear reactors affected by Friday's earthquake and tsunami, Southern California Edison officials say the nuclear plant in San Onofre is prepared to handle the area's seismic threats.

"A design (for a nuclear plant) is only approved by regulators if it's shown to match all the environmental challenges in that particular region," said Gil Alexander, a spokesman for Southern California Edison.

A surfer heads for the water at San Onofre State Beach in the shadow of the San Onofre Nuclear power plant in this 2006 file photo. Edison officials say San Onofre Nuclear Generating Station is built to withstand up to a 7-magnitude earthquake and a tsunami more than 25 feet high.

The 8.9-magnitude earthquake off the coast of Japan and the resulting tsunami have caused problems at six nuclear reactors there by preventing coolant from reaching the hot reactor cores, according to The Associated Press.

That leaves the question: How would San Onofre handle a large earthquake or tsunami generated closer to home?

When San Onofre was designed several decades ago, scientific studies showed that the largest tsunami likely to strike the San Onofre area would measure about 25 feet. The wall was built 30 feet high for extra protection, Alexander said.

As for earthquakes, the facility was built to survive a nearby earthquake with a magnitude 7.0, Alexander said.

During the plant's planning stages, "the best science suggested that the nearest earthquake fault, which is five miles from the plant, could produce an earthquake something less than a magnitude 7 in the plant vicinity," Alexander said.

Um, okay, then. Never mind that since they built it forty-two years ago, loads of new fault lines have been discovered in Southern California. The thing with that is that sometimes they discover them after seismic activity occurs on them. But, we are told, there is no evidence of major seismic activity there for the past 120,000 years. All those greater-than-7.0 earthquakes happen elsewhere in California.

Besides, our best calculations are that a tsunami generated there would be no higher than twenty-five feet, but just to be sure, we built a thirty-foot wall to protect it.

Hmm... echoes of Katrina, methinks.

Actually, I think their description of the safety fallbacks are more reassuring than their reassurances that we're prepared for a pretty good sized quake that is smaller than what other parts of California gets:

"The plant is designed so that if ground-motion sensors on the plant property detect even slight movement, an automatic mechanism will shut the two reactors down," Alexander said, by inserting control rods into the reactor cores to slow and stop the nuclear process. If need be, those rods also can be lowered manually. A total shutdown would take several hours.

That actually does make me feel better (though I hope that problems with construction of the facility didn't muck up those safety features). Nuclear plants of the future need to be designed with the idea that they should be physically incapable of causing a Chernobyl or Three Mile Island, even if everything goes wrong.

San Onofre is actually not in Orange County, but just adjacent to the beachside OC community of San Clemente, home of the Western White House when OC homeboy Richard Nixon was president (earning The Big Orange the nickname "The Land of Tricky Dicky and Mickey"). It's in San Diego County, but it is isolated from the populated part of metro San Diego and even Oceanside by the vast Camp Pendleton, so it's typically considered part of the OC sphere.

My mom, who has lived in California for more than half a century, frequently tells me the San Onofre plant always worries her. If something goes seriously wrong, it could make Interstate-5 impassable for days, weeks, months, or even years. That blocks off a major escape route to Mexico for when the North Koreans eventually invade.

New and improved fruitcake

Today, December 27, is apparently National Fruitcake Day (and just in time for the repeal of Don't Ask Don't Tell — rimshot!). And in honor of today being National Fruitcake Day, all of today's stories will be written in fruitcake.

Okay. Obviously Kushibo did not get a sophisticated sense of humor for Christmas. But the National Fruitcake Day angle has an interesting twist to it: Korean bakers are introducing Korean-style fruitcake into the mix of doorstop-like blocks of dried fruit in a heavy cake.

From the Orange County Register:

There are at least two options for your Fruitcake Day festivities, and they both landed on our shore in 1985.

Your first option is for those of us (OK, the majority of people) who don't dig the sticky several-pound mass of dried fruit and nuts bought in round tins printed with holiday pictures.

Friends, we give you the Korean fruit cake, a delightful dish of sponge cake, custard and fresh fruit, layered up on a platter and covered with whipped crème. It's like the gussied-up, grown-up version of strawberry shortcake, with the addition of pineapple, kiwi and mandarin oranges.

At the Manmi Bakery in Garden Grove, Anna Yi sells two sizes, at $18 or $25. The cake is not specifically designed for Christmas, but rather for special occasions, like birthdays, she said.

"Each store has different kinds," Yi said. "Ours is more like an American-style. Other bakeries have a French style."

The French style has more fruit inside, but just a bit of fruit on the top of the cake, looking more like a Western-style cake, she said.

The cakes are not traditionally Korean, said Sejung Kim, assistant director of the UCLA Center for Korean Studies. The cakes grew popular in Korea in the 1980s, when people fell in love with the whipped cream icing, she said.

The story goes on to describe steam-baked Butterfield farm cakes, which sound really appetizing. When I'm back in OC, shall probably check out both. I've never been a big fan of Korean-style bakeries, some of which have dry and bland cookies and cakes, but I do like the moist, custard-filled cakes you find.

Now Manmi says they don't sell these as Christmas cakes per se, but back in Korea (and Japan and much of the rest of East Asia) this is exactly what people buy for Christmas (what some say is part of the destruction of Christmas in places like South Korea or Japan, where its newfound character as a second Valentine's Day has derisively earned it the nickname Sexmas... a pun that works in Japanese and Korean if you replace the Chinese character for 성/せい, meaning holy, with its homophonous counterpart meaning sex: 聖誕祭 replaced by 性誕祭, if I'm putting that together properly).

Back in the 1990s, there was one of those social commentaries that likened people to some person or object in order to illustrate a point. In this case it was women as Christmas cakes, with the date in December corresponding to their age. Around the 22nd or 23rd, it may be a little early but some people are buying the Christmas cake (bear in mind that this is Korean age, so we're talking 20 to 22). Around the 24th, lots of people are buying. By the 25th, that's the Christmas cake's last chance to be bought, because no one buys a Christmas cake from the 26th on. Yes, that's why a lot of women felt freaked out about being an old maid by the age of twenty-five, with many of them rushing off into a marriage to the least worst guy they could find.

I say women are like New Year's cakes... [Kushibo ducks]

Kia Surf City?

The Orange County Register, known for it's right-wing political stance, has produced a video entitled California 2015: A Look at the Future of a Troubled State.

This somberly narrated video takes trends and plausible forecasts and from there extrapolates a grim future for the Golden State, including the Big Orange. Amid prognostications of marijuana farms at the OC Great Park, corporate sponsorship of schools that require students to do five hours of community service a week for the corporate parent (which drives many illegal immigrants back to their home countries), they predict that Huntington Beach will be renamed Kia Surf City.

Hyundai doubling its HQ in OC

This is good news for the local economy:

Hyundai Motor Co. plans to build a new North American headquarters building on its Fountain Valley campus, a project that is expected to create 1,530 new construction jobs, the company announced Wednesday.

The Korean automaker, the fifth largest automotive company in the world, will invest $150 million in the project. Plans are to more than double the size of the facility to 500,000 square feet.

Hyundai's headquarters staff is also expected to double to 1,400 people.

Construction is planned to begin in the middle of next year and be completed by the end of 2012. Hyundai's employees will work in other temporary quarters in Orange County during the construction, the company said.

The Los Angeles Economic Development Corp. estimated the headquarters project will have a total economic impact of $273 million.

It's a good sign for Orange County that Hyundai (along with Kia) is doing so well that it is expanding so ambitiously. And it's also an indicator of how free trade can help boost local economies on both sides of the ocean.

OC is beholden to several Korean and Japanese automakers who are headquartered in the Big Orange: In addition to Hyundai and Kia, there are Mazda, Mitsubishi, and Suzuki.

Our Lady of the Oranges: the Diocese of Orange selects an architect for the cathedral

Craig Hartman FAIA (frankly, not sure what that means) has been chosen to design the cathedral for the Diocese of Orange (that would be Orange County's local administration) that has been in the planning stage for quite some time.

Mr Hartman's other works include the very cool-looking US Embassy in Beijing [above]. He also designed the modern-looking glass structure that is the Cathedral of Christ the Light in Oakland [below].

I quite like the modern look of the new Cathedral of our Lady of the Angels in Los Angeles, but I hope Mr Hartman cools it a little with the glass. We already have one Crystal Cathedral in OC and we don't need another.

The new home of Orange County's 1.2 million Roman Catholics (!) is to be built in south Santa Ana, in a place that, I kid you not, was once known as Gospel Swamp.

UPDATE (November 2011):
Well, it's funny I should mention the Crystal Cathedral, since it turns out that the Diocese of Orange went and bought the bankrupt Crystal Cathedral. This may negate any need for a new cathedral to be built.

Chapman University, the top private college in Orange County, was in competition with the diocese, as they wanted to expand their campus. They had promised to let the Protestant-oriented Crystal Cathedral to keep operating for a few years, perhaps as long as two decades, but I believe the whole thing would have been secularized eventually.

The Catholic Church, by contrast, promised it will use the cathedral as a Christ-oriented house of worship, and that's something founder Reverend Robert Schuller had said he wants, whether Catholic or Protestant (in an interview he said he considers the Catholic Church the mother church).

The diocese also may be providing facilities, like nearby St. Callistus Church, in which the Crystal Cathedral congregants can continue to worship. I wonder, though, how many of the congregants will wish to continue attending there when (a) their beloved leader is no longer preaching and (b) they no longer have the inspiring environs of the Crystal Cathedral in which to worship. I'm guessing some might stick around and attend mass.

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In other blogs (April 18, 2010 edition)

• Joshua at One Free Korea has a must-read overview of the options in front of the South Korean government as it decides what to do if North Korea is responsible for the sinking of the Chonan, especially if we want to avoid a wider war. I had thought about quoting part of it here, but the entire thing deserves a read.

• Justin Nalepa has a travelogue on the Ch'ujado Islands, around which a ROK military helicopter crashed recently while searching for submarines.

• Writing about OC denizen Kyle Nachreiner, Marmot at The Marmot's Hole is stealing my Orange County Crime Story of the Day idea, with an update to the infamous (if you're from OC) gang rape case perpetrated and videotaped by the sons of friends of our county sheriff.
  
  Here's his post ("And the Worst Person in the World Award Goes To…"), and here's my post from June 2006, where I mentioned it as a reason for not voting to re-elect the guy (who later was sentenced to five-and-a-half years in prison on corruption charges). My reasoning back in 2006:
  
  
  

  For some reason in Orange County our sheriff and coroner are the same person. That should make for interesting plot lines when they start to make CSI: Orange County. This was actually the race that was getting the most press because of the scandal in which the incumbent, Michael Carona (Carona the Coroner...nice ring to it) and his cronies found themselves. Both opponents focused on this, and one of them demanded that Carona resign.
  
  Essentially, both of the challengers were running on a platform of not allowing their friend's son to rape 16-year-old girls.
  
  Carona said in his bio/platform that "residents of Orange County are safer today than they were eight years ago" when he took office. I know I'm safer, but that may be because I live in Korea.
  
  One of his opponents, Bill Hunt, says that violent crime in sheriff-patrolled areas (i.e., areas not part of some city plus areas where policing is contracted out to the OC Sheriff's Department) skyrocketed 30% (he doesn't say from when...could be from 1850 when we achieved statehood, or 1890, when OC broke off from L.A. County) and homicides have increased 26%.

Roy Choi, the Korean taco truck guy, named hottest young US chef

Okay, now I really need to make a point of trying this out the next time I'm in The OC*, although the hype and anticipation could leave me disappointed.

From Reuters:

Food & Wine magazine cited Roy Choi and nine other cooks in their 20s to 30s in its annual list of best up-and-coming chefs.

Choi, who was born in Seoul, has built a loyal following in Los Angeles with his mash-up of Mexican and American street food with Korean flavors.

Food lovers can find his Kogi BBQ trucks via Twitter, the social networking tool that other food trucks rely on.

"Roy is bringing food to the street with real passion," Food & Wine editor Dana Cowin told Reuters.

The 39-year-old Choi rolled out his food truck in late 2008 targeting young club-goers. His business has blossomed with his debut restaurant slated to open this week.

Before his food trucks, the classically-trained Choi had worked at Michelin-star Le Bernardin in New York.

The other nine chefs named by the magazine work in more traditional settings across the United States.

Well, that's cool. I like stories like this because it's an inspiration to a new generation of kyopo parents that their kids can be something other than doctors, engineers, and lawyers.

* Again, native OCers only say "The OC" ironically.

A good month for Korean cars and Japanese cars not named Toyota

An article in the Orange County Register today was talking up the great month that the Orange County-based automakers had in March. Hmm... OC-based automakers... that would include Hyundai (in Fountain Valley) and Kia (in Irvine), I thought. But no, I had forgotten that Mazda (Irvine), Mitsubishi (Cypress), and Suzuki (Brea) are all based in the Big Orange. From the OCR:

Several automakers with U.S. headquarters in Orange County followed the upward sales trend led by Ford, GM and Toyota in March, with four out of five of the local companies reporting positive gains from the period a year ago.

Last month turned out to be the best March on record for Fountain Valley-based Hyundai Motor America, which reported strong sales of its new Sonata sedan and Tucson SUV. The automaker reported total sales of 47,002, a 15.4 percent increase compared with last year. The automaker also reported its best-ever first quarter, with year-to-date sales of 111,509 vehicles, an increase of 16.3 percent over last year.

Kia Motors America, based in Irvine, also announced its best March ever, with 30,522 car sales last month, a 23.5 percent increase from the same period a year ago. Like Hyundai, Kia also reported its best first-quarter ever, with 76,696 sales through March 31, an increase of 11.3 percent over last year.

Mazda North American Operations, also based in Irvine, reported March sales of 23,193, a 5.5 percent increase vs. March 2009, and its fifth straight month of sales increases. Its top selling car by far was the Mazda3, which accounted for 11,353 sales.

Mitsubishi Motors North America, in Cypress, reported March sales of 5,434, a 17.6 percent increase from a year ago. The March sales month was the automaker’s strongest since August.

American Suzuki Motor Corp., based in Brea, was the only major O.C.-based automaker to report a decline in March sales. Suzuki reported sales of 2,246 for the month, a 72 percent decrease from March 2009.

Isuzu Motors America also used to be headquartered in Orange County (Anaheim), but their car sales are now gone. Too bad, really, as they were pioneers in the SUV. My Honda Passport, in fact, is a Honda-branded Isuzu Trooper, I think. Made in Indiana.

[above: 여기 주차하면 안 돼!]

That's cruel (and I wish I'd thought of that)

Folks in Orange County bash  Octomom (not her real title) Nadya Suleman more than other Americans, mostly because she's right there in our backyard and we have to look at her. For the time being she's in the northwestern OC community of La Habra, in a home that's about to be foreclosed.

And that means she needs money, so an offer by PETA (People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals) to use her in a new advertising campaign may be just the thing to save the day.

Emphasis on use:

Man, that is just cold. Sure she has fourteen kids, and the last set does fit the dictionary definition of a litter, but man, that's cold.

Quoting the OC Weekly, the irreverent leftist rag with the name that sounds like it was made up for use in television and/or film:

I am writing on behalf of People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals and our more than 2 million members and supporters, including thousands across Southern California. In light of recent reports that you may be facing foreclosure on your home, we'd like to offer to bolster your finances by paying to place an ad (enclosed) on your front lawn. The ad would read, "Don't let your dog or cat become an 'octomom.' Always spay or neuter. PETA."

When you gave birth to octuplets to bring your total number of children to 14, you grabbed headlines and got the world talking about your controversial decision. Now will you help turn some of that attention to another important matter--the dog and cat overpopulation crisis? Every year, 6 to 8 million animals are turned over to animal shelters, and roughly half of them are euthanized because of the lack of good homes. Thousands of other unwanted dogs and cats live on the streets, where they often fall victim to cars, abuse from unkind people, attacks by other animals, disease, or starvation. Much of this suffering can be prevented by simply spaying and neutering.

Unlike humans, dogs and cats cannot decide for themselves how many offspring they will have. Spaying or neutering just one animal can, in the long term, prevent the births of thousands of animals in a world that has far too few good homes to go around.

Taking us up on our offer is a win-win situation: It would help you and your children to keep your home and also reduce the number of homeless dogs and cats. Thank you for your consideration.

Man, really cold. The letter is signed by a Michelle Cho, manager of special projects, who appears to share a common proclivity of Korean speakers of English for frank-but-socially awkward direct speech, the kind that is familiar to anyone who has lived in Korea and heard their cousins, girlfriend, boyfriend, co-workers, total strangers on the bus say things like "you're overweight," "you've got a pimple today," "your nose is big," or "the unusually high number of children that came out of your body makes you a freak show."

UPDATE (3/27/2010):
Ms Suleman has accepted the offer, which includes five thousand dollars and all the veggie hot dogs she and her fourteen kids can eat in one month. My guess is that the newborn octuplets shouldn't be eating any, but I'm a good parent.

[above: Michelle Cho (yes, really) managing a different special project.]

Red Mango fading in the Big Orange

Red Mango, the Korea-based frozen treats chain secretly named after the vajayjay, appears to be having trouble in The OC*, reports the Orange County Register.

It seems they are closing the Red Mango in Irvine. Froyo shops (that's frozen yogurt, for those of you in Barstow) have sprouted across the Southland like medical marijuana dispensaries (honestly, that's the first and most family-friendly metaphor I could think of for something that sprouted), and that means that only the mighty Pinkberry is doing okay.

Dare I say the Red Mango was spread too quickly (the inherent ribaldry of this sentence probably only makes sense if you read the vajayjay link above)?

I hesitate to point out that there's only women in the above shop enjoying the taste of Red Mango; perhaps men in America generally don't like the taste of things like Red Mango. It's quite different from Korea, where women out on dates will tell their men they're going to head down to the Red Mango and they're going to like it!

* No, it's still not okay for an OC native to use the definite article "The" before "O.C.," except when done ironically, sardonically, or sarcastically.

Orange County crime story of the day: Ponzi scheme, he wrote.

In a follow-up to this story from March 2009 (where Brian in Chŏllanam-do describes his own inclination for murder! Murder!!!) about this news, it looks like the Korean-American couple behind a Ponzi scheme that was ripping off other Korean immigrants have been caught:

Federal agents have arrested a couple that ran an Irvine investment firm, saying they were the architects of a Ponzi scheme that cheated some 60 Korean American investors out of $8 million.

Euirang Hwang, 36, chairman of Pinupitu Inc., and his girlfriend, Sang Yi, 39, were arrested at a Corona house at 6:50 a.m. Tuesday on federal wire fraud charges.

The duo orchestrated a Ponzi scheme that targeted 60 Korean American investors throughout California, promising them annual returns of between 24% and 45%, according to the Feb. 3 four-count federal grand jury indictment.

A Santa Ana judge Tuesday ordered Hwang and Yi held without bail.

Hwang allegedly solicited business from the Korean American community from 2006 to 2009, recruiting trusted business people and church leaders and presenting himself as a billionaire with holdings in 60 real estate and computer and office equipment companies in Korea, Japan and China. He told them he generated income by buying up small companies and selling them for profit.

Hwang founded the company and operated its Irvine offices, which at one point claimed 20 employees, and Yi, a South Korean citizen, allegedly controlled its finances as president and secretary.

According to the U.S. attorney’s office, the firm used the money collected from later investors to wire hundreds of thousands of dollars to Yi’s mother in Korea, pay for luxury car leases, personal and office expenses and to pay returns to earlier investors.

“They were doing it in large part just to have the aura about them of being successful,” said Assistant U.S. Atty. Joseph McNally. “A lot of the money was used to put on this front of having a legitimate business.”

The Orange County Register also has the story.

As my own link above suggests, beware of get-rich-quick schemes. There's no such thing as a free lunch. Save your money, kiddies, and invest in something tangible and real, like a house. Or a restaurant. I know I sound like I'm channeling my father circa 1992 when I say this, but there's nothing wrong with hard work and honest earnings. Isn't the whole mess we're in now because of financial shell games and a collective burning desire to be rich?

Orange County crime story of the day: American al-Qaeda reportedly arrested in Pakistan

Adam Gadahn, the former Orange County resident who became famous as "the American al Qaeda," has reportedly been arrested in Pakistan.

From the Orange County Register:

Conflicting reports surfaced Sunday that Adam Gadahn, the American-born spokesman for al-Qaida who converted to Islam at an Orange County mosque, may have been arrested in Pakistan but U.S. sources refused to confirm the news.

Gadahn, 31, who also goes by the name Azaam the American, was arrested by Pakistani intelligence officers in the southern city of Karachi, according to The Associated Press, quoting two officers and a government official. Earlier Sunday, Gadahn, considered al-Qaida's chief public spokesman and reportedly the head of the terrorist organization's broadcast arm, appeared in a video urging U.S. Muslims to attack their own country.

The FBI has not confirmed the reports of an arrest, said Laura Eimiller, a spokeswoman in the FBI's Los Angeles office.

Gadahn grew up on a goat farm in rural Riverside County and moved to Santa Ana to live with his grandparents, the late Dr. Carl Pearlman and his wife, Agnes, in the mid-1990s. It was here that he learned of Islam via the Internet and later fell in with a radical sect at the Islamic Society of Orange County.

Richard Nixon, Walt Disney, and now Adam Gadahn. What a rogues' gallery we've got in the OC. Um, anyway, this is definitely something the OCR has been on top of. When you've got a sect of Islam that's so radical it converts Jewish kids into terrorists, that's a pretty radical sect you've got there.

[above: Adam Gadahn does his al-Carnac the Magnificent routine on Al-Jazeera's Late Night Islamist Comedy Hour: "Zionists, the Paris metro system, and Salman Rushdie... Name three things that will burn in hell as infidels."]

Anyway, I'm glad they caught him. And Joshua Stanton would like to waterboard him.

Seven Orange County Anaheim Ducks win Olympic medals in ice hockey!

And some of them even did it on the American team! I've never been so proud of a Canadian victory in my life.

19-year-old OC kid headed to law school

Another case of education being pushed too hard and too fast in a Korean family? I don't know. Maybe Kate McLaughlin really wanted to get into college and really fast, and then move onto law school as quickly as possible. Maybe she'd be really bored if she took courses at a slower pace.

But I do wonder if maybe her future career in law — or creative writing — might not be enhanced if she, say, took a year or two off to see Korea, Italy, or somewhere else.

My own cynicism aside, I wish Ms McLaughlin the best of luck. From those who receive the greatest gifts, great things are expected.

No pressure there.

Doing your worst

The "case closed" comments at the Orange County Register website regarding the deaths of Michael Cho, Susie Kim, and others, are dismaying. This one sums up the attitude:

although tragic, why is he walking around a market with the tire iron? if the cops show-up you think he would drop it and obey their commands. After all, normal people would drop the tire iron when there are guns pointed at them. Sounds like Mr. Cho choose his destiny. Having guns pointed at me i can either choose to advance at the officers and have them shoot me or drop the tire iron and submit. He choose to be killed.

No doubt, he shouldn't be walking around with a tire iron, he shouldn't have been breaking windows in cars, he should have listened to the police and put down the tire iron instead of walking away from them, etc., etc. But the idea that the police should use deadly force instead of other options — tasers, anyone? — and that this use of deadly force is categorically justified in virtually all cases where a citizen did not follow police directions, is a scary one indeed.

Whenever we say "case closed" to a shooting just because someone didn't do exactly what the cops say, we're creating a situation where excessive force and — in some cases — wrongful death will occur. And in our law-and-order society, it amazes me how many people don't perceive this danger to the citizenry. Maybe they just don't see how it can happen to themselves or their loved ones.

Imagine yourself on the day when you were at your worst. Maybe you were violently drunk, high, emotionally distraught, extremely upset, or some such thing. I'm not asking what that was, only that you imagine it and create in your mind a situation where you can observe yourself and your behavior in that state. Maybe you were highly distressed over a break-up to the point that you were a bit self-destructive. Perhaps you were so drunk and so resistant to others warning you to take it easy or calm down that you had actually become a danger to yourself (and others). Maybe you were high enough that you lost touch with reality for just a little while. Or even so angry about something that you violently reacted to the admonishments or reprimands of others to chill. Whatever the situation, at that time you were not "normal."

Now imagine that, for whatever reason, armed police were on the scene at the time of your worst. Maybe they were called in because of your behavior. Maybe it was a coincidence that they happened to be in the same place you were at the time you were going through your dark episode. But for whatever reason, they are there.

Now in such a case, which do you think provides a better outcome? Cops who feel they are justified to pump eleven bullets into you if you don't do exactly what they say, or cops who have at their disposal the non-lethal tools needed to subdue you and the knowledge, training, and willingness to use them?

Saying Michael Cho "choose to be killed" is, pardon the unintentional pun, a cop-out. The police are there to protect and serve, and that may mean protecting us from ourselves. Michael Cho was, for whatever reason, out of his head on that New Year's Eve afternoon. That's obvious from the reports about what he was doing (smashing car windows with a tire iron) and by what we saw on the tape (a man with a limp walking away from the police who then followed him). He did not deserve to die for that. He did not deserve the death penalty for not being "normal."

God help you if you encounter the police on the day when you are at your worst. God help your loved ones if they encounter the police on the day when they are at their worst. Do you really want them to be facing down cops who think that any perceived wrong move is justification for shoot-to-kill instead of attempts to subdue?