Damn, Min Jung. That's a cool ass story. Maybe I'll try to get kicked out of a bar this festival too so I can have something interesting to write on this web site.

By the way, how many people out there are reading this? If you are, can you post a comment about what you think of the festival so far?

Today was exhausting. Yes, it's only watching movies, sitting there in the dark. But it can be tiring, thinking profound thoughts, examining my Asian American identity as the moving images pass before my almond-shaped eyes.

I met my friends Candace and Makoto this afternoon in the Castro to catch "Daughter of Shanghai," part of the Anna May Wong retrospective. I enjoyed Taro Goto's eloquent introduction when he said that this film, featuring Asian American lead actors, in a romantic relationship at that, was way ahead of its time . . . and it was made in 1937!

My friends and I discussed the film afterwards over pomegranate chicken and hummus. We laughed about the old Chinese father in the movie who chimed a mini-gong every time he summoned his daughter or servant. Makoto and I were disappointed that Philip Ahn's character got the shit kicked out of him in every fight. But he ended up marrying Anna May Wong's character (no kissing, no nothing, just "Let's get married." "Okay."), so I guess it's alright.

The movie is still relevant in many ways. There's a scene when a White woman at a club yells at Anna May, "I don't speak Chinese." "That's okay, I speak English," Anna May replies. That shit still happens today, almost 70 years later.

Next movie was Travellers and Magicians. I was excited to see this movie because I went to school with the lead actor, Tshewang Dendup, at the Grad School of Journalism at UC Berkeley. After grad school, Tshewang went back to Bhutan. Next thing you know, he's a movie star.

A bunch of us from Cal got together for this movie. It was pretty damn surreal to see Tshewang's face up on screen. I think our row took a collective gasp, which must have scared the shit out of the row of Buddhists in front of us because this one lady turned around and said "Be quiet!" I was tempted to kick her chair throughout the movie. But I had to ask myself, What Would Buddha Do?

The movie was absolutely gorgeous, and Tshewang performed amazingly well. If you get a chance to catch "Travellers and Magicians" at the PFA today, go and watch it. It'll make you feel better about life, without the saccharine yuck. In Bhutan, they like to measure the nation's wealth by another index, that of Gross National Happiness. I remember Tshewang as a man who enjoyed life enough for ten people, and he wanted all of us Americans to feel the same passion. Now he has a movie for the world to see, and share in his vision.

The last movie of the night also had a vision, that of making Asian Americans whole again by getting in touch with our sexual prowess. "Masters of the Pillow" followed the making of the first ever Asian American porno, combined with interviews with leading Asian American artists who shared their thoughts on the subject. I liked what Justin Lin had to say. If you've got a movie to make, now's the time to make it. Fuck what other people think. Or something like that.

Fuck being the operative word, after the doc we were treated to the porn iteslf. Watching porn on your TV is one thing. It's another to see it in a movie theater. There's no averting your gaze from giant Asian lips wrapped around an 8-foot high penis.

Hardly anyone left during the 50-minute q+a with Darrell Hamamoto and James Hou, even though it was close to midnight. Everyone can relate to sex. Or if not sex, attraction. Why are we attracted to whomever we're attracted to? It's not by accident. If every day was like today, if all the old black and white films showed Asian American women falling for Asian American men and vice versa, if all our feature films showcased beautiful Asian people as leads, if all our porn featured Asian American men and women fucking each other, we would think differently of ourselves. The Gross National Happiness of Asian America would skyrocket.