WHAT MIKE SAW

Celebrating The Month Of Nopvember

Growing up in WALNUT, I was surrounded by all types of Asians and ORIENTALS.  I had a Chinese, Indian, and Paki within my group of skater friends alone.  Most of my high school classmates were Chinese and Korean.  If I were in more AP classes, they would all be Asian.  One of my dad’s best friends was Vietnamese and another from Indonesia. I was part of the Halo Halo club, which is a Filipino-American club run by students.  I had also danced in countless DEBUTS.  My favorite restaurants in the city were a Thai place and a Japanese place.  And maybe a Chinese place too if you count Panda Express.

But despite immersing myself into various Asian cultures, I never knew anyone with a Laotian background.  The only thing I knew about Laos was the Laotian family from KING OF THE HILL.  That was until NOP came into my life.  It was a couple years ago while hanging out at my friend CODY’S housewarming party.  Cody introduced me to him saying, “Dude!  You’ve got to meet this guy.  You two would get along so swell!”

Two years later, I’ve got  the equivalent of a doctorate on Laotian culture.  But I can attribute most of that to Nop’s best friend Vinh (also from VA).  Vinh tends to find obscure ARTICLES on the internet about Laos and forwards them to his friends.

Celebrating your birthday is a special time.  Since it comes only once a year, all the focus and attention is on you.  So what better way to celebrate your birth than than by dedicating the entire month to you.  Don’t mind if anyone else has a birthday in the same month.  They can just come along for the ride.  That’s what Nopvember is all about and so is the video below.

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What Mike Saw #11

I honestly can’t stand cops. I try to give them the benefit of the doubt knowing that our communities need police enforcement but time and time again, you hear a story of some cop with a name like “Hawkins” or “Gutierrez” with a blatant display of abusing power. Since my skateboarding days when I was a prepubescent HUNK, cops would always hassle us. Rarely have I ever seen a cop protect and serve the public. All they are good for is to feed into their own egos and do each other’s HAIR to look cool. In fairness, there have been times when I’ve witnessed police assist people stuck on the side of the road (excluding me) and there were a few cops who let my friends and I off with a warning while skating Walnut High School (home of the MUSTANGS). But they are definitely overshadowed by policeman who really don’t care about your safety, and care more about their quotas.

Now due to the state’s budget crisis with an economy going to HELL, you probably noticed more and more cops on the roads along with those cute ticket OFFICERS cruising around marking everybodys’ tires. More enforcements on the streets aren’t because of rising crime rates but rather to make money off citizens like you and I for petty infractions like jaywalking or bumping Reggaeton music from our cars. Okay fine if you break the law, but the city is willing to extract every last penny they possibly can out of that one violation. A few weeks ago, I got ticketed for parking at a meter after 4PM, which is rush hour time. Actually I deserved that ticket because I too hate it when people use up valuable lane space while I’m trying to rush home to catch the tail end of FAMILY MATTERS. But then here comes the tow truck out of nowhere to take my car to the impound lot. The meter maid was a total prick. But I got the tower to let my car go, but for 200 bones. I asked him, “Hey, you guys are doing this because the city is broke, right?” He just responded with a slight shake of the head yes. That was the most expensive Subway sandwich I have ever bought.

I expect predators to come out of large banks and corporations to squeeze money out of people, but it makes me feel ill to see the same practices coming from our government.

This “What Mike Saw” is dedicated to everyone who has received a ticket for something really crappy. In this episode, you will see a glimpse of how I managed to magically turn a $50 texting ticket, into a $900 headache. I don’t think I will ever talk shite to a cop again. Fucking assholes. Plus this episode has its share of trouble, throw-up, Hollywood parties, boobs, skating, and so on.

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How NOT To Eat A Balut

Before a single follicle on your upper lip can be considered a MUSTACHE, before the cracks in your rough and scratchy voice can be sealed, and before those hairs on your nipple are considered legit, you must become a man. There comes a time in every boy’s life when he must make a major decision. This decision makes up whether or not this boy will stay a boy, or move on to the next level. But the task at hand varies from culture to culture, which legitimizes ones entry into manhood. The Jews celebrate a boy’s bar mitzvah for his transition. In Ethiopia, boys walk on top of cows’ backs naked for their transition. And here in America, every boy must know how to rewire their cable boxes to get free SPICE before they make the jump into manhood.

In the Philippines, I’m not exactly sure what path one must take in order to be free from boyhood. But I may have created a great method of creating men out of boys. I wouldn’t necessarily call the BALUT a delicacy. It’s practically street food since you can get it at any random street corner in the Philippines. And if you’re like me who prefers the street version of anything (tacos, ghetto dogs, cotton candy) then you are sure to love the balut. You may even consider it tastier than sunny side up. And more fun to eat as well.

Most people are unfamiliar with the balut. It’s basically a duck egg only a couple of weeks old. Give that thing a few more days and the bird would crack out of its shell. But the incubation process is shorted by which the balut is created. So when the shell is opened, you essentially see a bird that was almost ready to burst open to hatch.

Last year, I thought it would be fun to bring a couple of baluts to my friend’s house who was hosting the PACQUIAO/DE LA HOYA fight. In honor of Pac-Man, three people were up for the feast. Little did I know that when I bought the eggs from my neighborhood Filipino store Seafood City, they had to be boiled first. I literally thought you could pick up the eggs off the shelf and eat it right then and there. In the video below, you will literally see the evolution into manhood right before your very eyes. Not to mention the defeat of salmonella or any other egg infested disease that could have been acquired. If you ever see a balut as shown in the video below, know that it is NOT supposed to look like that. These guys really could have gotten sick.

This one’s dedicated to Manny. I wish him luck because he’ll need it. Anyone who has been following 24/7 on HBO knows this may be his toughest battle yet. And he needs to stop messing around with corrupt politicians so that he can focus on fighting.

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Only 55 More Days Until Christmas!

I’m a WEST COAST BRO so I get to see my share of eccentric, lavish beauty out here. I know that everyone has his or her own definition of what a beauty is and I too have my own definition. But here in Los Angeles, I see many different types of freakish beauty running around town.

Starting in East LA, we’ve got the Cholo. These usually are known as gang bangers but to me, they look really awesome. They tend to wear pretty nice oversized clothes, have shaved heads, their eyebrows look like sperms, and they have mean looking tattoos all over their faces. One thing they can change is their attitude. That particular look would be a lot cooler if they knew how to love one another more than knowing how to hate each other.

Now we’re going to go about 12 miles west to Beverly Hills where the freakishly beautiful are most apparent. These are the people you see on reality TV with oversized lips and plenty of hair plugs. These people know how to transform themselves into an Adonis over time and it’s really great to see someone succumb to the beneficial effects of vanity.

And finally we’ll take a trip all the way out to the ocean. Venice Beach is home to plenty of freaks, or as they like to be called, hippies. But there is a particular type of beauty in Venice that sticks out to me. Sometimes if you’re lucky and get too close, it can stick out right into your mouth. DREAD LOCKS. It takes a special person to not wash their hair over long periods of time allowing bacteria, germs, and kittens to procreate within their head.

Halloween just passed and we always see plenty of awesomeness on Halloween. Everyone loves Halloween. But I love it for a different reason. It marks the end of a long exhaustive summer and is the beginning stages of my favorite holiday: CHRISTMAS. I just love receiving presents, especially if they’re expensive. So the video below is not so much a Halloween video, but homage to my favorite Holiday.

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What Mike Saw #10

I’m proud to claim that a few years ago, I invented the term “shiny shirt club”. A shiny shirt club is any club with a one-word name (Mood, Pulse, MAMI, etc.) frequented by bros with SHIRTS that shine. But the shine doesn’t just stop at the shirts. The luster gets carried on in everything from the hair, to the MUSCLES, to the bling. The GIRLS are pretty fantastic too. It’s pretty simple really and we’ve all seen them because we’re constantly bombarded with their exclusive appeal and sweet looking FLYERS. However I never really get invited to these clubs because of the way I LOOK but that’s fine by me. I’m comfortable with who I am.

I must admit though that I am jealous of my brother who took the label one step further, for our people (ORIENTAL), and called the Asian clubs, “SHINESE Shirt Clubs.” Damn that’s good. And that is something I am fond of and wish I were completely apart of.

This is the 10th episode of What Mike Saw. It’s been three years since I put one together. This video is dedicated to all the “Shinese” shirt bros. And it’s also dedicated to the NBA, which I miss very very much.

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