Me very funny.

Everyone in the New York City area has had many chances to see me read from This Is a Bust free of charge.

But if you want to see me read at the Asia Society on May 2nd, you’ll have to fork over at least $10.

The reading will be followed by what will likely be an extremely lively Q&A session.

Friday May 2, 2008, 7:00 PM

Asia Society
Friday Literary Salon
Asia Society and Museum
Auditorium
725 Park Avenue (at 70th Street)
New York City
Cost: $10 members; $12 nonmembers; $10 students and seniors
212-517-ASIA

This campus looked like crap when I was here. Now it’s all clean!

I had been by before to walk through campus, hit up Koronet for a jumbo slice and some bad service attitude, but Tuesday was my first day back in an undergrad class in 17 years.

I got things going right by stopping at Tom’s Restaurant for a Broadway Special, an off-the-menu shake they make with coffee ice cream, some mint (I think) and other stuff. You order one of those and they know right away you’re an old-timer, pre-Seinfeld, maybe even pre-Suzanne Vega!

I walked into the class and introduced myself to Gary Okihiro. “Oh,” he said slowly, looking at my face like it was melting, “You’re here today?”

“Gary, don’t do this to me, man!” I thought. Turns out he had been sick, recovering from a cold, was a little disoriented.

The class seemed a little sleepy off the bat, so I hit ‘em with a selection of Waylaid that was chock full of F-bombs. That loosened them up. Then it was a few chapters of This Is a Bust, followed by a fun and fancy-free Q&A.

I mentioned how this asshole professor at Barnard claimed that I was making mistakes in my papers that a “native English speaker” wouldn’t have made. That was 20 years ago, but I heard from a number of students that similar incidents happened to them or people they knew just last year or this year.

I was psyched that there were three engineering majors there, but no Taiwanese or Taiwanese Americans. Why? “Are you Taiwanese but you buy into Chinese propaganda that you’re really Chinese?” The only responses were snorts.

It was strange being back as a lecturer to a school where I was such a lousy student (attitude-wise, not grade-wise). While I enjoyed talking with the eager participants in the class, I think I related best to the grumpy dude off to the side who slouched in his chair.

I’m coming back to Columbia, this time on the Barnard side, on April 30 for this thing.

Hey, this is kinda cool. Check out this short film, “Dry Clean Only,” done by my pal J.P. Chan. The dude behind the counter, played by the wonderful Aaron Yoo (who’s been in “21″ and “Disturbia”) is reading Waylaid in the beginning! How cool is that? It’s very cool. The dude in bloody clothes is played by the endlessly fascinating Debargo Sanyal.

The film was a part of the PBS Independent Lens Online Shorts Festival.

No, not here, the original site by Wall Street and ground zero. The one uptown.

Next week, on Tuesday, April 8, I’ll be heading back to my alma mater, Columbia University, to talk to Gary Okihiro‘s class, which is called something like “Introduction to Asian American Studies.” Class is a little over an hour long, so I’ll just read for like 40 minutes or so and take questions from the students.

Tell ya something, when I was there (class of ’91, mofo), a lot of the Asian clubs such as Asian Students Union and Chinese Students Club were totally run by conservative right-wing, asshole pre-med and pre-law jerks. I wonder if that’s still the case.

But two things tell me that Columbia’s way less whack now than when I was there: 1) There’s an Asian American studies major; 2) There’s a Taiwanese student group. Bring on the dou jiang and sao bing yo tiao!