I'm a Korean Movie Star

I think sometime around senior year in high school, you meet with a career counselor and they help you decide on which career you might pursue. Well, I'm very disappointed that my true calling wasn't discovered then - famous Korean movie star. I didn't discover this talent until now and I blame my career counselor for letting me waste all these years working an office job instead.

Now I didn't just wake up with this revelation. On a faithful Saturday afternoon, I went to check out the various people I don't know waving to me atop loaned convertibles at the Chinese New Year Parade. At these festivals, there are always booths that offer food and booths that offer free stuff. I love free. Even if it's just magnets or stickers. I happen to come upon a tent full of Korean vendors. I see a picture of kimchee on the outside, and with the promise of free spicy fermented items, I walk right in. Right when I step inside, someone walks up to us and asks if we want to enter a contest for prizes. Oh heck yes! I wanna throw darts or spin wheels. Gimmee prizes.

Only after the contestants started to pile into the holding area we were in did I realize the gravity of my commitment. I look around me and see a stage and I see microphones and, oh my, I see a host on the stage. As he's explaining the rules of the competition to the audience, we were each given scripts. We were to perform a scene from a Korean soap opera! In front of people! An overwhelming sense of dread came over me and I started to look for exits. Alas, it was too late for any escape attempt so we might as well try and win.

The couple that went first was too quiet to hear and even if you could, I think they would have been incomprehensible anyway due to their accents. Plus, I think they were more in fear than I was. We went up second and instead of being faithful to the romantic (and cheesy) nature of the scene, we decided to be a little over the top. We tried to deliver the lines with some enthusiasm and even managed to throw in peace signs (them Asians love peace signs). The scene was short so we memorized our lines as opposed to just reading them.

Now we needed to wait to to see how the others did. The next three couples after us did pretty much what the first couple did and just read their lines while staring at the ground, sans accents at least. Surely we were Oscar caliber against such competition. The last couple were the only non-Asian couple to perform. Well, they knock it out of the park. They decide to put a Valley girl twist on the lines and was totally original. Heck, if we would have went after they did, we would have done it with English accents while doing the Soulja Boy.

Voting was done Showtime at the Apollo style where we line up and the crowd votes with their applause. The final three couples were ourselves, the Valley duo, and some other couple that I could not distinguish from the others (I guess they needed actual Koreans to represent). The crowd then cheers again between the three of us. Even with our formidable voting duo (thanks Elaine, thanks James) we only garnered the second loudest cheers. The winner: the white couple.

All is not lost since I did win a DVD set of god knows what. But, more importantly, I find my true career path. I'm not so worried that I did not win since I bet somewhere, sometime, the winning couple had headshots done (everyone is a pro in this town). Me, this was my first audition and I can hold my head high and look forward to the adulation yet to come from my new status as... Korean Pop Star.