DaveChung.com – A Guy’s Blog From Girl World

This week on Keeping Up with the Kardashians, Kris got the opportunity to dance with the Los Angeles Sparks dance team before tearing her meniscus, while the Kim, Khloe, and Kourtney sisters did some sex ed for stepsister Kendall.

One of the highlights of this week’s episode was that it featured a lot of Olympic gold medalist Bruce Jenner, who is no doubt one of the most fun parts of the show. Bruce is so optimistic, heterosexual, and blue collar that seeing him interact with the flashy family is always a lot of fun.

The show was filled with Bruce one-liners and even taking a search for his wife’s dildo in stride while the girls tried to get under his skin. Bruce always seems to keep his cool and this week was no different, even as he was concerned about his wife’s knee surgery and his daughter Kendall getting a little distant from him as she enters the joys of adolescence.

Though not a lot happened this week in terms of drama, I have to say that this was one of the best episodes of the young season so far. Though the Kardashian Sex Ed. was getting a little old by the end, it led to the family sitting down together and watching Kendall’s birth video, which was extremely touching for some reason.

It showed a young, good Kim and Kourtney awaiting the birth of their stepsister, along with Bruce being the all-around good guy that he is. At the end of the video, Bruce said to his just born daughter with his hairdo from the 90’s, “Even when you’re a teenager, remember that I’m still your friend.”It was crazy to see how well that fit into the context of this episode. Kim was in tears watching the video and it was clear that it had an effect on the rest of the family as well, or at least it was edited that well.

It’s in moments like this that you remember that beyond all the glitz and glamor that is Kim Kardashian, the family is still just a family. They go through some crazy stuff, but it was nice to have an episode that wasn’t necessarily filled with scandal or drama.

This was more of an episode about them being a family, which is when the show is at its absolute best – much like it was when Rob Kardashian spoke about his relationship with his late-father earlier in the season.

Later this week, The Kardashians will be the focus of E!’s True Hollywood Story, which I think will be one of the more interesting episodes of the show for me. While the show is said to go into details about Kim’s first marriage, I think that the most fascinating part will be the interviews with the girls and Kris about their experience during the O.J. Simpson trial, in which their father, Robert Kardashian, was a lawyer. The family was close with Nicole Brown Simpson, so it will be a completely different perspective on the trial that I’m really looking forward to watching.

The Hills

may have had the greatest season preview trailer of all time for Season 3.5, but there is few a semi-scripted reality TV show that is as consistently good as Keeping up with the Kardashians.

Very much so!

My ultimate reality show crush Lauren Conrad announced on her official site that she has partnered with MarkGirl.com for the chance for someone to win lunch with Lauren, a 3 day trip to Los Angeles, and a $1,000 shopping spree armed with a list of some of Lauren’s favorite boutiques.

While the contest is clearly for girls, as you’re allowed to ask them for makeup advice, I gave it a shot and now wait with baited breath, hoping for the chance to meet Lauren, one of my top 5 celebrities in life that I still want to meet.

If you want to lower my chances of winning, you should enter soon!

In a showdown with Boston street dance crew Status Quo, San Diego’s JabbaWockeeZ earned the title of America’s Best Dance Crew on MTV this week.

As a big So You Think You Can Dance fan (and some might say loyalist), I didn’t watch all of America’s Best Dance Crew this season, but what I did see was just beyond hot, though I’m not crazy about judge Shane Sparks’ commentary nor Lil Mama’s, every time that I caught some of the shows.

With dance moves and choreography that could easily compete with the best that best dance movie of all time You Got Served has to offer, America’s Best Dance Crew took choreographed dance to a different place and format that isn’t being covered by the couples and solo dancing on So You Think You Can Dance and Dancing with the Stars.

Randy Jackson took a popular concept and MTV-ed it out. The show featured street/break dance crews either dancing to modern music, or bringing classics into the 21st Century with unbelievable routines. This was no quick-step or slow-moving waltz between two partners, but a fast moving, acrobatic, display of athleticism and creativity that was a completely different feel than both Stars and Dance. It was an MTV feel, no real better way to put it.

By having Crew, American Idol, and Dancing with the Stars all on during the same part of a television season, we saw the rare occurrence of having three top notch performance-based reality shows coming out with new episodes at the same time. What might make this even more rare is that these are three popular reality-based shows that were all popular without being trashy. All this happened while MTV’s The Hills, with arguably its best season premiere ever, was pulling record ratings for its season premiere with 4.7 million viewers and 1.8 million video streams.

Interestingly, Season 2 of Crew will likely overlap Summer TV seasons with So You Think You Can Dance, both of which target the same demographic, even moreso than the new MTV hit did with Dancing with the Stars. Will America have enough dance? Or is dance the new Idol?

Not quite, but I think it’s getting there. Especially if the So You Think You Can Dance tour mixes with the American Idol tour this year as rumored, which would suddenly make the momentum-slowing Idol Tour one of the most impossible tickets to try and secure, we might start to see even more of a shift towards that direction.

And while it wasn’t too long ago that people said reality TV was dead, the reality is that some programs have refined themselves into shows that feel less like “reality TV,” and more like TV that is capable of having more “wow” moments than anything on scripted television. And I love scripted television.

Reality TV had some rough patches after Survivor, but anyone would be kidding themselves if they said it was anything but alive and well.

Rotten Tomatoes

launched its (our?) latest venture within movie review space in The RT Review Revue this Friday.

Why should you check out this week’s video? Well, it does a great round-up of all the trailers for this upcoming weekend’s biggest movies – 21, Run, Fatboy Run, Stop-Loss, and Superhero Movie.

And why else? Not only does the video feature two of my favorite people in the office, Editor in Chief Matt Atchity and everyone’s tomato crush Senior Editor Jen Yamato, but I’m in the video as well! Isn’t that alone enough to make you want to watch??

No? Well, watch anyways.

Check the video out here and everything else going on at Rotten Tomatoes, the movie review site with the most fly staff out there (and the most well-written SEO tags if I do say so myself in a shameless self-promotion kind of way).

Welcome to the DaveChung.com Celebrity Photo Gallery, featuring identical smiling pictures of my run-in’s with some of the biggest names in sports, music, television, entertainment.

(Click on Carrie to view the Gallery)

Sports/USC

Brandon Hancock, Carmelo Anthony, Carson Palmer, Chauncey Washington, Chris McFoy, Darnell Bing, Deuce Lutui, Dominique Byrd, Eric Wright, Jacob Rogers, John David Booty, Justin Fargas, Justin Wyatt, Keary Colbert, Kenechi Udeze, LenDale White, Matt Leinart, Mike Williams, Patrick Turner, Rodney Peete, Reggie Bush, Scott Ware, Tom Brady, Tom Malone, Troy Polamalu, Sam Baker, Steve Smith, USC Song Girls Kim and Lara, Willie McGinnest

Music/American Idol

AJ Tabaldo, Anthony Fedorov, Blake Lewis, Carrie Underwood, Constantine Maroulis, Danny Noriega, David Hernandez, Jared Cotter, Jason Castro, Lisa Tucker, Kady Malloy, Nick Lachey, Marie’ Digby, Suge Knight

Television

Eric Dane, Eric Mabius, Mary Murphy, Masi Oka, Michael Urie, T.R. Knight

Entertainment

rounders online

Eden Espinosa, Ian Bernardo, Megan Hilty, Perez Hilton, Will Ferrell

While the story tonight was supposed to be Chikezie Eze heading home, turning the Top 10 into a Top 9, the real story was seeing one of the front runners, Jason Castro, in the Bottom 3 tonight – a la Alaina Whitaker.

Jacuzzi was an early favorite of mine. I felt like he was part Luther Vandross, part Clay Aiken in terms of his voice. A pleasant surprise, he turned out to be a really great performer in spurts. While Chikezie is definitely a good singer, he, like Amanda Overmyer, really made it just about to where he should have in the competition. I could see Chikezie making it to the Top 7, but anything beyond that would have just felt like borrowed time. He’s a fantastic singer and had some fabulous moments on the show, but just didn’t seem to carry that “WOW” factor that David Cook and Brooke White (my “Dream Finale”) are bringing by the backpack lately.

While most will say that Chikezie’s performance of “She’s a Woman” was his best moment on Idol, I would have to say that Chikezie really shined at his audition, where he performed this song, just as he did during Top 16 week.

Jason Castro knew that he had an off-week this week and I agree with the judges in saying that it looks like he is taking the competition a little too lightly.

Jason’s performance of “Fragile” was uninspired at best and perhaps being in the Bottom 3 was the kick in the pants that he needed to regain that magic that he had when he performed “Hallelujah,” in what feels like forever ago.

Being in the Bottom 3 tonight proves that the Dreadheads aren’t nearly big enough to carry Jason through the competition on the memory of “Hallelujah” alone. Castro is truly a breath of fresh air in the competition and I hope that he steps it up because he really brings something unique to the stage.

Even as David Archuleta continues to drift down the Idol Power Rankings (to maybe…spot 1.5 by now), competitors like Carly Smithson

and even Michael Johns have been stepping up their game to try and get to that Tier 1 level where David Cook, Brooke White, and David Archuleta have firmly staked their claims.

With nine contestants left in the competition, I believe that there are three tiers that are quickly starting to form week to week:

Tier 1

David Cook, David Archuleta, Brooke White

Tier 2

Carly Smithson, Jason Castro, Michael Johns

Tier 3

Syesha Mercado, Ramiele Malubay, Kristy Lee Cook

But let’s be real here, guys.

Yet again, the performance story of the week was rocker David Cook, who is proving to be everything that Blake Lewis was last year and more – originality, stage presence, mixed in with a little over confidence, and memorable performances that leave you wondering what he’ll do the next week.

This week, Cook’s take on “Billie Jean” was not only risky, as Simon Cowell recognized, but incredible. If I would get out of the mid-2000’s, I would purchase an iPod Video and buy that performance. Much like his performance of “Hello” and “Eleanor Rigby,” Cook absolutely won over the in-studio crowd during his performance and generated more excitement than any of the other nine contestants could on their own (yes, even David Archuleta).

It’s interesting because while Archuleta gets the big cheers when his name is called, it is David Cook that electrifies the studio audience with his performances week in and week out. At this point, I can’t imagine cheering for anyone else to win American Idol, despite the fact that EVERYONE is playing underdog to David Archuleta.

My vote count this week was as follows:

David Cook: 2

Syesha Mercado: 1

After two full seasons of Making the Band 4, Diddy closed out the season finale with two major announcements. Sold out in their New York flagship location, Sean John official “No Bitchassness” t-shirts will now be available to order on SeanJohn.com.

In addition to that, tickets to the Making the Band tour with Day26, Danity Kane, Diddy, and Donnie Klang will be available on Bad Boy Online this Friday, March 28.

Not only is bitchassness a contagious epidemic in our cities according to Diddy, it is also now a t-shirt that you might be seeing out on the streets.

For the t-shirt? I’m about to be ordered.

For the concert? I’ll be in the best seats that my fast typing can allow this Friday.

Since my DVR decided to do something weird to my recording of Keeping Up with the Kardashians this week and Pop Culture is taking the week off, I figured that I would speak on two of the only things that I really hate about Los Angeles.

I’ll preface this by saying that I love L.A.

I think that there’s a reason why people come to vacation here and a reason why people spend so much money to live here. I’ve lived in three major metropolitan areas (Boston, Seattle, Los Angeles) and spent a good amount of time in New York City (which has its appeal, but just isn’t for me) and I feel like Los Angeles is not only the city that suits me best, but it’s where I am proud to call home.

However, like any relationship, there are problems that you have even with your loved ones, which in this case, is L.A. I’m okay with the overly aggressive homeless people downtown, the car theft/break-in’s, drive-by bitchassness by people in cars that like to yell things at people who dare walk in the city that only drives, the smog, racism, ghetto-ass people, gang jumpage, lack of family run restaurants, the myth of “rent control,” the worst police department in all of the United States, and how you have to wait for people pushing/stealing shopping carts to cross the street so that you can turn right. Really, I’m pretty ok with all that.

For all those bad things, we get left turn arrows at stoplights, north-south/east-west streets that actually make sense, reasonable alternatives taking streets as opposed to the highways, celebrity run-in’s, award shows, Pinkberry, In-n-Out, designer everything, little dogs, beautiful scenery, Roscoe’s Chicken and Waffles, near-perfect weather, nice and great looking White people, really fly restaurants, ease of shoppage, a need to have at least two pairs of designer sunglasses, and pretty much everything that is a “limited engagement” is available right here in our very city.

After all that, there are two things about Los Angeles that never cease to bother me. I’m going to let loose some bitchassness on these two things because I feel like I can’t be alone. If you’re not familiar with the Diddy-defined term, the most simple definition on Urban Dictionary defines it as:

“A type of negative emotion; hateration; to be/act like a bitch or a coward about a situation.”

By putting this on a blog, simply because I can’t possibly say it to that many peoples’ faces at the same time, I have to admit that this is some bitchassness on my part. Diddy said that bitchassness is running rampant in our communities and it is. Right now, I’m going to add to this “hateration” out of convenience.

1) People in nice cars who talk on cell phones without a headset.  

I’m not necessarily referring to everyone, but I’m talking about people who are driving Maserati’s, S-Class Benz’s, or BMW X-5’s at the very least. To my fellow Toyota, Honda, Chevrolet, Hyundai, Daewoo, Scion, and Kia driving folk, I know that times can be tough and we might not be able to afford that $5 headset at the mall that looks like it has a bug on the wire. I feel you.

This annoyance is only directed at those who are driving cars that cost at least 3x much as ours but still refuse to get a headset, corded or Bluetooth, and drive like they’re twice as old as they really are because they’re not paying attention.

I drive through Beverly Hills almost everyday, so I see this phenomenon at least twenty times a week and it never ceases to fascinate me. I’m not going to say that I’m a great driver because really, I’m not. And I’m Asian, so that means I’m probably even worse than I say I am.

What doesn’t make sense to me is that these expensive cars that people are driving often COME STANDARD WITH BLUETOOTH BUILT INTO THE CAR! They don’t even need a headset! The phone call can come through the speakers and they can talk to their heart’s fullest extent without “looking like a douche” with a headset on. Instead, people still insist on driving (horribly) with one hand, which slows them down at doing pretty much anything.

I just don’t understand how you can afford a car that costs more than $60k, but you can’t afford a $5 headset.

I’m not saying that I’m not guilty of the same thing because I think studies have shown that talking on a headset makes you about as equally distracted as talking while holding your phone, but there’s a much different perception when someone sees a driver holding a phone to your face while he/she has missed yet another opportunity to make a left turn at a busy intersection compared to when they’re on a headset. By not using a headset, every little mistake that these people make turns into a “GET OFF YOUR PHONE, YOU BITCHASS!” instead of a “Man, this person just kind of sucks at driving.”

And while people might think that they’re fantastic drivers with one hand while talking on the phone, the reality is that they’re not. The reality is that they suck.

Not only do they suck, they suck balls. I find that these drivers are completely unaware of anything going on behind them (moving over or up a little bit so that someone can get into the right lane if needed), make illogical stopping decisions at the last second, and perhaps most annoyingly and commonly, take FOREVER to start moving when the light turns green.

Do your makeup in the car, eat breakfast, tie your tie, but for the sake of bitchassness, go get a headset.

In fact, I would buy you a crappy headset if you send me a link of a picture of your luxury vehicle (I’d have to judge that, but know that I went to USC, so my opinion of a luxury vehicle gets a lot more extreme than most) that has been dinged up because of your cell phone driving. It won’t be a Bluetooth, but I would do it, so let me know if you need one because I’ll do my part to end some of this hateration.

2) People who talk extensively about the route that they took to drive somewhere and make other people feel bad for not taking the same route. 

Never in my life have I been in a city where people are so obsessed with talking about how great they are at navigating. In most cities, when you show up somewhere, people are just happy to see you.

In L.A., if you’re meeting someone somewhere, the first fifteen minutes of the conversation are often about the streets and highways that you took to arrive at the destination.

Let’s say… You were meeting someone at Mario Batali’s Osteria Mozza on the corner of Melrose and Highland. Here’s an example of a conversation that you could easily eavesdrop on while waiting for a friend (the names are fictionalized).

P: Hey! I was worried you weren’t going to show up!

Diddy: Yeah, the freeway was packed! I wasn’t even moving on the 10!

P: Why did you take the 10?? You should have taken streets. Just go from Venice to Hauser, right on Wilshire, left on Highland, then just a quick left on to Melrose!

Diddy: Oh really?? I should have done that. I just took the 10 West to Robertson to get up to Wilshire because I thought there’d be less traffic.

P: Oh no, NEVER take Robertson over La Brea. Sometimes, when I go to Robertson, I’ll take Fairfax, then jump over to La Brea, just to get to wear I need to be on Robertson on Olympic because you KNOW I don’t want to deal with that.

Diddy: Ooh I heard that. This one time, I was on La Brea and there was construction, so I had to get over to La Cienega, then I took San Vicente and you know how that can get all confusing? I was so lost and so I ended up trying to jump back on the freeway and you know that was a bad idea.

Are you effing kidding me? Is this seriously a meaningful conversation? And who cares?
To me, this is the worst kind of small talk that runs rampant in our communities of Los Angeles County. The reality is that both people made it to the same location, one way or another. If someone took a little while longer, chances are they should have left earlier, not taken some magical route that the person is probably not even making an effort to envision in their minds while another blabbers on about their genius side street route to get somewhere.

This problem gets even worse when you do someone a favor by offering to drive them somewhere. While you take your trusted route after leaving on time, the person says:

“Why are you going this way? Don’t you know that you should just take <this street> after getting off on the freeway up until <that street> then you take a left to switch on to <this highway>?”

You know what? Who cares! And walk.

I think it’s great when people know their way around the city, but to make it a topic of irrelevant conversation (unless you’re REALLY looking for some small talk) to burn precious time that you’re spending with people that you don’t see that often is one of the worst things about L.A. small talk.

Can’t people just be happy that the other person made it or that you got to the destination together without having someone flex their navigational muscles?

Cathartic.

While this video wouldn’t win any YouTube awards, it was worth sharing and worth viewing. This kid attempts to launch a basketball down the court and into the hoop via skateboard catapult and the results are legendary.
Awesome Basketball Shot