Wiz and Dwight Yoakam

In 1999 Shirley and I were staying in the same hotel in Las Vegas as Dwight Yoakam. She loved the way he wore his hat "with attitude." That was probably her first inspiration to wear cowboy hats herself. She also wanted a cowboy style rain slicker like Dwight's too, but never found one in petite women's size. We both thought Dwight's charisma surprising - he clearly commanded more attention than a lot a stars with much bigger names did in the casino.

She quickly bought an album and loved "Streets of Bakersfield." Any time it came on a car radio she would turn it up and sing along with the chorus. "You don't know me but you don't like me." (Said it reminded her of meeting planners.) One night while staying in Los Angeles, I drove her all the way to Bakersfield for dinner - at Crystal Palace - Buck Owens museum, night club and restaurant that Dwight might have an interest in. She loved that place, particularly the chicken fried steaks. We talked for years afterwards about spending a couple days in Bakersfield, going to hear music at CP every nite and writing a story about the town's odd charms. We never made it, I think she was waiting till Dwight was playing there.



Streets of Bakersfield by Dwight Yoakam

I came here looking for something
I couldn't find anywhere else
Hey, I'm not trying to be nobody
I just want a chance to be myself

I've spent a thousand miles of thumbin'
Yes I've worn blisters on my heels
Trying to find me something better
Here on the streets of Bakersfield

Hey you don't know me but you don't like me
You say you care less how I feel
But how many of you that sit and judge me
Have ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?

I spent sometime in San Francisco
I spent a night there in the can
They threw this drunk man in my jail cell
I took fifteen dollars from that man

Left him my watch and my old house key
Don't want folks thinkin' that I'd steal
Then I thanked him as I was leaving
And I headed out for Bakersfield

Hey you don't know me but you don't like me
You say you care less how I feel
But how many of you that sit and judge me
Have ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?

Hey you don't know me but you don't like me
You say you care less how I feel
But how many of you that sit and judge me
Have ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?
How many of you that sit and judge me
Have ever walked the streets of Bakersfield?

Wiz Does Nature

When we first began traveling together I was amazed to hear that Shirley had never seen Bryce or the Grand Canyon. Foolishly, I decided to remedy that. She didn’t object because the itinerary included a casino hotel. We flew into Vegas, drove to Mesquite, checked in and headed to Bryce.

Believe it or not, Shirley did not yet own a cell phone. So, as soon as we got to the National Park canyon rim she spent half an hour in a pay phone yelling at tour guides. When she hung up I asked, “Ready?”

“For what?”

“ To hike down to the canyon floor.”

“What for, I saw it from the phone booth. Can’t we just go back to the casino?”

On the way back I asked her why she let me drive her all the way to the park.

“You seemed so excited about taking me there.”

I never made the “nature thing” mistake again.

Wiz Is Busted

One day I watched Maggie playing with her toy car and school house while Tina and Shirley worked in the office. Maggie moved her car around and around the school house, frustrated.

"The boys and girls are all waiting but the teacher is still looking for a parking place. All the parking places are empty but they're all Handicapped Parking. How stupid is that?" she asked, reasonably enough.

I went to the office to tell Tina and Shirley. As soon as I repeated the "How stupid is that" line, Tina covered her mouth to not laugh too loud and pointed at her mom, "Busted."

Shirley on Fantasy Parenthood

Shirley & Wro in Bologna

One time Shirley was visiting Des Moines we slept late on the morning of her departure. Rushed to pack, it wasn’t until she was standing in the airport check-in line that she realized.

“Oh my God. I forgot Wroburlto. What kind of mother am I? Oh well, you’re coming out in less than a month, can he just stay with you and come home then?” she asked, loud enough to be heard by several others. She called from both the boarding area and from her connecting airport in Denver.

“Honey, this is rather crazy. I keep noticing people pointing at me and whispering. Now every one on the flight thinks that I actually forgot a child and just dumped him on you for a month,” she explained, entertained with herself.

“And how are you reacting?”

“Oh I just give them my most intense Chinese stare, as if to say “What are you looking at?" Gee I almost hope someone wants to talk to me, this is getting fun.”

For years afterwards, Wro referred to this as "The Great Abandonment" and blamed it for his addictions to shopping and flirting.

Suitcases

Shirley loved buying "adorable things" particularly while traveling. Our trips for several years always included trips to department stores to buy an extra suitcase to cart home all her loot. I recall counting 30 suitcases once in her garage before she began donating some to chariites. Once I suggested that she just bring an empty suitcase on her out bound flight. This was years before the airlines began charging for baggage so I thought it sensible.

"I can't do that. It would undermine my shopping discipline," she explained.

Shirley's unpublished post 911 Letter to the Editor

Dear Editor:

Standing at my Mandarin Oriental window, looking at the greatness of San Francisco’s skyline, I consider the story in today’s Chronicle about Joan Didion. It dealt with the very same viewpoint I am gazing at, but only in a literal sense. The Chronicle wrote that the great writer was thankful that she did NOT have to stay at the Mandarin Oriental and look at the Transamerica Building.

My English teachers taught me that Didion was the consummate practitioner of synecdoche, the figure of speech where something stands for something larger -- like a great building standing for the moral decay of post modern America. They taught me that no one so completely captured the disillusionment and social disintegration of California, her synecdoche for America. That Didion’s California Dream was the American Dream turned into a nightmare.

Enough pessimism can mobilize collective guilt. I suppose that could enable people to see the Mandarin Oriental, the Transamerica Building and the World Trade Center towers as symbols of great decadence, a synecdoche for great evil. I prefer to see them as magnificent sources of pride.

The Mandarin Oriental is hosting some celebrities to whom Didion style post modern disillusion does not easily stick. Stevie Nicks, Sheryl Crow, Minnie Driver and Seal are in town for concerts and, I suppose, looking at the same skyline without fear or dread or shame. Their voices, I pray, see a progressive vision of the genius of San Francisco -- a financial district built upon a landfill which had been mere bay water a century ago.

We built this city!
We built this city!
We built this city!
On rocks we rolled.

Shirley Does Nature

When we first began traveling together I was amazed to hear that Shirley had never seen Bryce or the Grand Canyon. Foolishly, I decided to remedy that. She didn’t object because the itinerary included a casino hotel. We flew into Vegas, drove to Mesquite, checked in and headed to Bryce.

Believe it or not, Shirley did not yet own a cell phone. So, as soon as we got to the National Park canyon rim she spent half an hour in a pay phone yelling at tour guides. When she hung up I asked, “Ready?”

“For what?”

“ To hike down to the canyon floor.”

“What for, I saw it from the phone booth. Can’t we just go back to the casino?”

On the way back I asked her why she let me drive her all the way to the park.

“You seemed so excited about taking me there. I didn't want to disappoint you.”

I never made the “nature thing” mistake again.

3000 Mile, 36 Hour Emergency Shopping

An Aloha shirt is a suit coat without inside pockets for people with nothing to hide. Wroburlto

When my daughter Tina announced that she was going to be married, my personal fantasy life faced a serious dilemma. Although she is my only human child, I had nourished two different visions for her wedding -- one in Hawaii and the other in coastal California. After doing the math, I realized I had only two options and that having more daughters wasn’t exactly timely.

For a bride and groom, love itself may be the ever-fixed mark of Shakespearean lore. But a Chinese mother-of-the bride focuses on wedding ceremonies. Fortunately, I knew that my wedding visions were not too different from Tina’s. Our lives have been written on coastlines as surely as my immigrant parents were drawn from the Canton mainland to the shores of the Philippines and then to the golden dream of California.

Tina’s first words were, “sui” which means water in Cantonese. I can still see her, in her car seat, waving and pointing gleefully at the ocean, mouthing out “sui, sui, Mommi, sui!” She and I have both lived in a coastal community since she was born and we have taken annual vacations together to ocean resorts, usually in Hawaii.

Part of this attraction is genetic, coming from our immigrant heritage. Growing up in Oakland, the coast was the Chinese equivalent of Gatsby’s green light, an ever-fixed symbol of success that was visible, but always distant. I remember when my father took a rare day off, he would put his five children in the car and we would drive to the boardwalk in Santa Cruz, chase the waves, pretend we were swimming, eat a picnic of hard boiled eggs, and drive back to Oakland. I grew up with a desire to return to the ocean and stay there, at least overnight for beginners.

Divine Music of Chance

Tina’s genetic roots evolved to bond in the loose sandy soils of the coast. So my dilemma was reduced by half, only one of my fantasy weddings would be rejected. The divine music of chance timing would intervene on the decision. Tina announced that she and Matt were marrying the same week that the Ritz Carlton began building its resort at Half Moon Bay. Once they saw that property, they were sold on having their wedding outdoors and oceanside at the Ritz Carlton.

However, I couldn’t let go of my Hawaiian wedding fantasy. Tina’s father Richard and I helped her plan a Hawaiian honeymoon and it seemed like such a wonderful idea that Wroburlto persuaded me to take it a little further. Our plan was to let Tina and Matt think that I was having a formal engagement party for them but to alert the guests that it was really a tacky Hawaiian party. Using frequent flyer miles, Wro and I impulsively hopped a flight to Honolulu in order to shop for appropriate party favors: tiki torches; grass skirts; ukuleles; and of course, some new Aloha shirts for Wro.

Our cover was nearly blown when Tina surprised us at the airport on our return. She asked how I accumulated six suitcases on a two day “business” trip. So when she began asking questions, I did what ever-fixed mothers-of-the-bride must do. I lied, for the sake of the party. “Press kits,” I said with a tone that mothers use to suggest children not pursue the line of questioning.

A few days later, Tina called to ask, ever so delicately, if I could possibly change the party “to casual from formal.” It was all I could do to focus and calmly reply, in my most matronly, traditional Chinese tone, “Tina, this is your wedding, you must learn to treat it very seriously.”

The party went over like tiny bubbles in the wine. Thanks to my brother Ben, who is known in serious karaoke circles as “The Chinese Elvis,” Tina and Matt, formally dressed, were greeted by an Uncle Don Ho impersonator, and 50 guests wearing Aloha shirts and shorts. I had some fresh leis flown in for the bride and groom, plus plastic ones for the rest of us, including Wro’s 165 non human siblings. We allowed Tina and Matt to change into Hawaiian attire and everyone had a pupu-popping good time. Wro sang “Sui Dreams of You” to Tina.

Thus, I compensated for one of my fantasies. The other one really was going to be formal. As you may have guessed, that is not my strong suit. Thank God, the Ritz Carlton is so good at it. The I Ching oracle for Unity is Pi, the meeting of water and earth. Chinese believe that water is good luck and the Ritz Carlton consulted with feng shui experts when they planned the Half Moon Bay property. Seated on a melon shaped bluff over rugged rock coast, the Shingle Style lodge uses redwood trellises and cedar roofing from its coastal environment. Ocean boulder fireplaces and hard wood floors maintain a historic feel, while ceramics are mostly Portuguese, a nice personal touch for the wedding, as Matt’s father’s family emigrated from the Azores. The Portuguese motif continues in the main restaurant, Navio, where the details mimic the boats of Half Moon Bay’s original Portuguese settlers.

Tina and Matt met with the hotel’s chefs to incorporate subtle touches from their cultural backgrounds, shiitake mushrooms in the salad for her, and Mediterranean fava beans with the sea bass for Matt, into the wedding menu. Since a stressed out mother-of-the-bride doesn’t need to worry about young people driving on coastal highways, the hotel was God sent. With two golf courses and a full spa, the Ritz Carlton has enough to hold the friends of young people. Matt played golf with some of his friends while Tina and her bridesmaids took Swedish massages in the spa and had hair and makeup done at the beauty salon. Tina was amazed how they helped create an individual look for each of the bridesmaids.

Because the ceremony itself was a dream, it is best remembered like music, in fleeting, intimate details. A champagne colored Mercedes Benz transported the mothers, bridesmaids, Richard and Tina to the ceremony site over the ocean. Golf carts returned the guests from the ceremony to the reception in the ballroom.

As Bach played, the joy of my desiring stopped on her way down the proverbial aisle and whispered in my ear. For a short while after that, I lost track of my ever-fixed mark, but I regained my composure for the reception.

Wro and his brother Happi joined this party, dressed in their new Hawaiian tuxedos of course. It was my daughter’s wedding, but it was a my dual fantasy, my American dream, my family’s ever-fixed light that we had actually reached out and touched.

Baseball & Other Obsessions

The Wok Wiz on Baseball

My friends think Anne Rice had me in mind when she coined the phrase “Accidental Traveler.” Whether I’m heading across the Bay, across the country or across the dreaded ocean, my trips seem to detour off the high road of original intentions. Sharply focused people find this annoying, but I’m far more comfortable with chaos than with things like global positioning software (GPS) - or whatever they call that annoying little voice in rental cars that keeps saying “Error. At your earliest convenience, turn around.” If I wanted to be reminded every time I made a mistake, I’d travel with my mother. My friends also say that I’m the reason for Chinese driver jokes, but that’s another story.

Today, I want to tell you how a trip to a baseball game can easily morph, with the help of butterflies and a few good chefs, into life-changing revelations. I first visited San Antonio to find a man, but not the way you probably think. You see, when I’m not conducting culinary tours or teaching Chinese cooking, I often hang out at the baseball park in San Francisco. In fact, I bought a condo near Willie Mays Plaza because it came with a great parking place. But, I’m getting sidetracked. See how easily that happens?

Back in 1999, the first Chinese baseball prospect in America was playing for the San Antonio Missions in the Los Angeles Dodgers’ farm system. Chin-Feng Chen had a swing as sweet as Barry Bonds’ and he seemed likely to break the hearts of my San Francisco Giants for years to come. As a proud Chinese fan, I wanted to see him when I could still appreciate him, before he made it to the majors and started wearing the colors of the enemy from LA. So I flew to Texas.

In between games, I drove around the hill country looking for butterflies - which I found, no thanks at all to the voice in the GPS. Wildseed Farms, between San Antonio and Fredericksburg, is the largest wild flower farm in the USA, so it attracts a splendid migration of butterflies and hummingbirds. Overcoming a life long paranoia, I let butterflies cover my arms and face with the unbearable lightness of familiarity. I’m not exactly a nature girl, but I asked owner John Thomas to show me which seeds to plant to attract butterflies to my yard so that my grand daughters might delight in them too.

Now, as fate would have it, Chin-Feng never made it to the major leagues for long enough to drink a pot of first-picked Formosan tea. After years in the minors, he returned to the Chinese League in 2005. So, I never got to brag that I saw him back when he was just an unknown minor leaguer. But I’ve been back to San Antonio five times now, to indulge in more serious pursuits.

Once I just drove around for a week eating smokehouse barbecue in hard-to-pronounce Texas hill country towns like Llano, Lockhart and Luling, the only places I’ve ever found that make beef brisket better than we Chinese do. On another trip I ate nothing but Mexican cuisine in San Antonio cafés like Blanca Aldaco’s and the Barrios-Trevino family’s Los Barrios. San Antonio has the best Hispanic culinary scene I‘ve found. Admittedly whenever I went looking for the best Mexican restaurants in Los Angeles, I only found how easy it is to get lost in LA. I blame the Dodgers.

My point - I bet you thought I lost it - is that baseball is a delicious, complex American tradition that deserves far better culinary accompaniments than hot dogs and nachos with industrially simulated cheese. Maybe not in Los Angeles, but certainly in San Francisco. Unlike LA, our ballpark is within easy walking distance to some wonderful dining. I wouldn’t have bought a condo to be near hot dog stands. And there’s no time better to enjoy these places than the off-season, when you don’t have to compete with 40,000 fans for a good table.