90s TV shows

The more trivia I learn, I realize how much of kids culture I missed growing up in the 90s. I came to the U.S. at the end of 1991, so I may have missed out on a couple years already, but I wish I was more in tune with some of the most popular shows back then, a time when we only had 7 channels to choose from, you had to sit through commercials, and if you weren't watching TV at the time your show came on, you missed it! No do-overs, no streaming, it was just gone. No wonder I didn't get into Jeopardy when I was a kid, I think it came on at 4PM in the Chicagoland area, a little too early for me to catch getting home from school. Instead my grandpa would allow me to watch a TV show in the morning after eating breakfast and doing sit-ups (I distinctly remember him holding my feet and me holding his feet so we would get leverage on our sit-ups) and allowed me one precious half-hour show when I got home from school. The problem was, he didn't know what was educational or not, so it was just cartoons and not great cartoons at that: Power Rangers, Spiderman, X-men, Looney Tunes.....normal shows as a kid, but not the sweet educational programming that would have instilled some long-term memories about history or educational facts. Instead I can quote lines from the Transformers spin-off series "Beast Wars" or name all of the Insidious Six villains from the Spiderman series. I didn't ever watch Sesame Street, a huge loss as that's a big chunk of Jeopardy canon, and then the Yan family didn't have cable so we didn't get those cool-sounding shows like "Legends of the Hidden Temple" on Nickolodeon or "Wishbone" on PBS, a Jack Russell Terrier who went over famous plots in literature in a kid-friendly way. Watching LeVar Burton on Trivial Pursuit now, I wonder how fun it would have been to watch Reading Rainbow, or catch the pure insanity of the Ren & Stimpy Show, or have indelible memories with Miss Frizzle on the Magic School Bus. I also miss my grandpa. In America nowadays we are spoiled: spoiled with too many conveniences, too much food in our portions, spoiled for too much choice in what we watch. I've struck up a good relationship with my neighborhood Subway "sandwichmakers" downstairs from our apartment complex: they are there all the time from 8AM in the morning until 9PM at night, same 3 guys rotating shifts, always friendly and ready for chitchat. They have kids, don't have big dreams but enjoy being in America for all the opportunities it affords.....still. When my parents came I think there was huge divergence between developing countries and the most powerful country in the world, and back then China was considered a "developing country." Now the gap has shrunk for sure especially with the internet and AI, but still there are thousands of people every year coming to America to enjoy what America has, even if it's just being a sandwichmaker at a local Subway store, it's a solid living that allows consistent work, at least 3 times a day (breakfast, lunch, and dinner). I look at my goals that keep scaling up on the hedonic treadmill: have a job, buy a house, own cars.....be on Jeopardy, try to play Jeopardy again......all first world problems that I enjoy in the comfort of my home with AC on a hot summer day able to make my sparkling water as cold as possible when I drink it and travel to pretty much anywhere I want using my car or local airport. It's a great life, and sometimes I need to talk to those around me to realize me, whether it's the Subway guys, the barber I see all the time, everyone on the bus going home from work....there are tons of people just living life and not needing to be influencers or make it rich or ask too much of life.....sometimes it's just good to enjoy it. And put on some Reading Rainbow to learn some new facts.

If You Seek a Pleasant Peninsula, Look about you

The other book I'm juggling along with reading the Bible book is a National Geographic guide called "50 states: 5000 facts" (these are the kind of books you read if you're a trivia nerd, so brace yourselves anyone who's preparing to be on Jeopardy). It highlights all the best parts of each state with awesome high-def pictures that make me wonder what it'd be like to live in each of those states, a feeling that happens pretty often this time of year when summer is in full swing and the world seems full of possiblities, and it feels like the rest of the world is out and about doing fun activities while I'm stuck at home, albeit for a good reason this year which is taking care of Baby Girl Yan. The motto of Michigan is highlighted above, but I actually prefer the more condensed motto that fits on a license plate, "Great Lakes." That's kind of the appeal for me of living in Michigan, it's surrounded on 3 sides by lakes and it has a huge city with nice college towns. Maybe it's just the name, but I always felt an appeal of Ann Arbor with the mystique of college football, the distinctive yellow/maize colors, and of course the Big House. One of my bosses once remarked that she had a vacation home in Michigan she was heading towards, and my mind just went, "I would like to go to there." (A Liz Lemon quote from 30 Rock) Never mind that I have no connection to Michigan, no just one high school friend who ended up living there, and never visited except for an age 7 visit to Holland to see the Dutch windmills. It's probably a case of the imagined place being better than the reality, something that explains why Americans LOVE to talk about going to Japan. I've been to Japan twice.....it's fine, it's a different culture than America for sure, but it has an outsized attraction for American tourists.) Anyway, I've only experienced Michigan through movies and TV (watched Home Improvement as a kid, watched the post-apocalyptic TV series Station Eleven, watched "the Five-year Engagement," random Emily Blunt and Jason Segal movie, and oh yea I have stopped at the Detroit Airport (DTW) several times on connecting flights. Michigan ites are called "Yoopers," Battle Creek is called "Cereal City" because it's home to Kellogg, there's a class called "Surivving the Coming Zombie Apocalypse" at Michigan State University. These are the type of fun facts this book has. 129 lighthouses along the shores of Michigan, most in the country......that's a fun fact because the top 2 states with the largest coastlines are Alaska and Florida, but I guess they don't need as many lighthouses. Something about lighthouses gives me the romatntic idea of a cold autumn night drifting in the lake with waves splashing into the rocks. It's an aesthetic that's hard to replicate, and kudos for the people to who built lighthouses, they're a practical innovation but also probably even more valuable for adding to the skyline and ocean scenery: whenever MJ and I go on a roadtrip and I spot a lighthouse, I get excited and want to visit. It usually turns out to be closed and can't go in, but it's the connection between land and the great blue beyond. It especially appeals to the introvert in me to imagine living in a lighthouse, reading books like "Moby Dick" or watch "Manchester by the Sea" while getting away from people. Maybe in a different life, I'm a fisherman working in Lake Huron who operates a boat and have a golden retriever waiting at home, turn on Detroit Tigers games on the radio. I guess that's what these National Geographic books are good for, not just learning fun facts but imagining yourself in a different life.

Children's Illustrated Bible

I read a lot of books when I was a child, but I never got around to the most printed and best-selling book of all time, the Good Book, the Bible. Probably a good thing too because from what I've read even the condensed version is difficult to get through, with archaic words like "begat," "agape," "covenant." Even 10-year-old me might have lost interest, and having read it as an adult, the Bible is not exactly a children's book that leaves you warm and fuzzy after reading it. There are animals, but not the cute, cuddly kind, more like lions ready to eat Daniel and various plagues that befell Egypt like frogs, locusts, etc. Lots of people die, some brutally, there's incest, there's rape, etc. All the shortcomings of mankind are on display, as the Old Testament actually does begin with the original sin of Adam and Eve succumbing to their human interests. Which is why I picked up a copy from the "Complete illustrated Children's Bible" from the library for Baby Girl Yan, a cartoonish depiction of all the highlights, covers the major points. There are a lot of real humans from history in here! Cyrus the Great, Darius of Persia make appearances, as do King Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazar, and well, Jesus...depending on whether you think he was real or not. I loved the pictures in the children's bible! Toned down the violence and killing, emphasized the key points, cut out all the difficult-to-read parts. Baby will be able to read it soon! Or at least look at all the colorful pictures and develop her optical nerves, rods and cones, all that. MJ and I will discuss how to present the Bible to her. The 2026 World Cup has come to an end for Team South Korea.....a shame because it started off so well, with a 2-1 thrilling comeback victory against Czechia, (formerly known as Bohemia), but then just an ignominious defeat to South Africa of all people when all they needed to do was win to play in Los Angeles with a huge Korean population.....unfortunate, but at least they made it to the World Cup unlike China, Italy......I wish I was more of a soccer aficinado but I've never really been able to get fully into it, maybe because I didn't grow up in that culture living in suburban Chicago. I did play soccer when I was a kid, and some bad memories of being one of the worst players on the field, teammates getting upset at me, coach letting his son play instead of me so the team could win even though the whole point was to let all kids play equally...not the fondest of memories, maybe one of the reasons I never followed it. It was also hard to organize a game; most parks don't just have a soccer net set up, and even if they do it might not be the right size, the field is not set up for soccer..... I can see why the game has such appeal though, all you need is a ball and then you can set up goals even with 2 rocks marking the end points. Literally almost anybody can play, and there's plenty of running around for everyone, whereas it's so hard for a kid to play baseball and just stand in the outfield waiting for something to happen. And at the highest level, the world up, the skill level is so intense: I never even got to the level of securing the ball with "one touch" or doing a "through pass" or doing headers, some of the basic skills that the best footballers in the world have perfected. I can see why Team China doesn't devote time and resources into soccer though....it's just not a great sport for the Asian body. Maybe I'm making excuses for my own inept abilities (it's a skill issue) but soccer is a just not suited for the Asian body: it requires skill, speed, height, leg strength, stamina......all facets of an all-around athlete that the Chinese just don't produce as much of. Need tall players like Scandinavians to get those headers!

Thunder and Lightning

Sometimes I watch a movie that's not universally acclaimed, nor talked about much by the mainstream media, doesn't get a lot of buzz on social media, none of my friends have seen it, it didn't show up in my recommended list on Netflix, and yet it's the perfect movie for the times that I'm living through and exactly the movie I needed to see. I'm talking about "Song Sung Blue," starring Hugh Jackman and Kate Hudson (founder of the Fabletics line and renowned nepo-baby of Kurt Russell and Goldie Hawn who actually turns in a great performance in this movie and received a worthy Oscar nomination) about a husband and wife team leading a Neil Daimond tribute band in Milwaukee, of all places. The movie is good enough to introduce a neophyte like me to Neil Diamond songs (it's not just about Sweet Caroline, apparently) and even to some others like Elvis or Patsy Cline, it's about a couple who are getting older (both have teenage kids when the movie starts) but still holding onto a dream of performing in front of others and making it big. Sound familiar? Maybe something this blog has been yapping nonstop about the last few months? The couple are so close to stardom and making it out of just the Milwaukee scene and even open for Pearl Jam, apparently big in the 1990s (nostalgia sells, as the film reminds us) but something happens that just derails the dream instantly, irreversibly, and not really their fault, just an act of God or like being "struck by lightning." The thunder and lightning in the movie refer to what the couple call themselves. It was a stark reminder to me at least that I'm not the only who whose dreams were dashed despite being oh so close to getting what I wanted. Every year, every day, every hour someone realizes that the dream they worked for for so long will never be fulfilled, that it was just a passing fancy, a passing cloud you didn't quite catch. At least for me, I have the rest of my life to look forward to, other dreams to pursue than getting on TV, and I didn't wind up in the hospital, or have to go to AA meetings for sobriety. The movie has really feel-good moments and good playlist of songs, funny dialogue, and kudos to higher-profile actors Jackmand and Hudson for taking on these roles of real-life people (that's the more striking thing, this was a real life couple named Mike and Claire Sardinia), but the raw emotion of the movie hit hard, when a lady in AA says,: "Most things just don't work out. Most times, you just mess it up, so it's easier not to try. We're all just looking for some hope. But at my age, hope is hard. Hope's not enough." In Song Sung Blue, the couple do get a second chance at stardom which feels sweeter at least for the audience because of how low they had sunk before climbing back up the hill to get to the top, and it must have taken a tremendous amount of courage and faith to get back on the horse hoping they might one day get another opportunity again. For me, I'm hoping onto slim hopes that I might one day stand on the Jeopardy stage again and get my shining moment that a bolt of lightning took away from me last time (or at least, a bout of "myalgia " did). Is it worth holding onto those hopes at a second chance, or am I the recovering alcoholic in AA, finally realizing that most things just don't work out and grasping at some straw of hope? Maybe Neil Diamond wrote it best, "I'm a Believer!" (1967 song by the Monkees)

Son of Chemists

I'm the son of immigrants who owed their careers and propserity in America to being proficient (maybe even experts) at chemistry, as my mom was a PhD and my dad got a master's in chemistry. I should be very thankful for their skill in that area and the steady employment they maintained because they did jobs in a field that so many Americans find hard to understand: chemistry. Heck, I find it hard to understand, and I should theoretically have chemistry in my blood, in my genes. My parents always wondered why they raised a son who just didn't like chemistry (or physics, or engineering) and I never had a really good answer, but gained experience and studying for trivia has given me a plausible explanation: chemistry is boring to the normal American-raised kid who grows up on TV shows, cartoons, sports, everything that the culture throws at you. I don't know that other countries are different, but maybe Chinese state-sponsored TV suppressed a lot of "entertainment" and emphasized science and technology during my parent's generation much like they restrict their TikToks to learning channels and educational content. What I know is I have a much better mind for memorizing people, getting a basic understanding of stories, understanding who people are and their backgrounds and what they did, much more interesting topics to read and digest than your average chemistry textbook of redux reactions, balancing equilibrium, experiments, how different elements react with each other. People didn't watch Breaking Bad to see how Bromine and Barium (the 2 symbols in the title theme) would react, they tuned in to see how Walter White the chemistry teacher would change, how he would display human characteristics such as pride and greed and jealousy. It's also the "quick and easy facts"- I'm good at those, attaching a name to something or a number, or a date. Chemistry has no time periods (maybe a little bit of history), it's just brute science, at some point my parents probably had to just brute force learn chemistry through trial and error. I even like the period table of elements, one of the first things people associate with chemistry: I love how elements were named after those who discovered like Margarety Perey named her discovery after native country France, or Wolfram was renamed Tungsten, or all the elements after No. 92 (Transuranium elements) that were named after places and people (Americium, Einsteinium, Berkelium, Tennessine.....sound familiar?) But when you start talking about how each of those elements can lose an electron (or is it gain one) to become an isotope or develop hydrogen bonds/ covalent bonds with other subatmoic particles, I suddenly lose interest. It's not dynamic, no one's getting into a fight with another country, there's no compelling story like Hercules's 12 tasks or The Joad family crossing America to reach California. I picked up a book (from the Summer Reading Program!) recently called "100 ideas in 100 words" Chemistry: a whistle-stop tour of key concepts, the most basic nutshell guide of chemistry one can get...and got stuck somewhere around "the actinides," the plum pudding model, and allotropes. Ever go through a chemistry category on Jeopardy? It's hard to write those questions, and I don't envy the Jeopardy writer in charge of writing chemistry questions because a.) you have to have a firm grasp of chemistry to make sure what you're writing is right and doesn't have multiple answers, and b) you have to write it in a way to make readers care, make it interesting. Both are hard; there are no little tricks like "this author who wrote Tender is the Night".....there can only be one answers, F. Scott Fitzgerald, chemistry you actually have to define an allotrope is a different structural form of an element in the same physical state; you have to know the relationship between pressure and value in Boyle's law.....know that the polarity of bonds is based on differences in electronegativity. Hard to show a picture of a man like history or literature clues. I like chemistry now more than when I just throught it was a jumbled mess of concepts I couldn't wrap my head around, but...I still don't love it. I'm glad that my parents did though and am lucky to be in the position that I am today. Happy Father's day! Maybe Baby Girl Yan will get into chemistry at a young age...if the AI hasn't completely taken over that industry yet.

Summer Reading Program

MJ and I just got free T-shirts from our local library commemorating this year's Summer Reading Program, and it reminded me how important libraries and reading programs still are, even in 2026 when Moore's law says computing speeds are doubling every year, Mark Zuckerberg is buying land in Kauai for doomsday scenarios, and all chatbots have everything ever written uploaded into their systems, apparently. Summer reading programs take me back to growing up in suburban Chicago going to the local Indian Prairie Library and checking out books, realizing I had access to all the books I could possibly ever read, and my whole life ahead of me to read them. Well, fast forward 30+ years and I no longer have as much time as before to read those books, but I still get joy out of browsing the library and seeing all the different things humans have written, what the newest releases are (like Blockbuster, another cultural center from a bygone era), and sometimes, just viewing the covers of the books is enough to give me inspiration. I remember my 5th grade reading program had a "read 10 books for a pizza" prize as well as "read 20 books and win a ticket to the Kane County Cougars game," or some other promotion to a minor league game that doesn't seem that special now but to a 7-year-old kid was magical. As a jilted and cynical adult, I no longer feel the magic; I lost the feeling somewhere along the way of paying a small fortune for law school as well as realizing almost everything is commercialized, but books remain one of the few domains that don't exist solely to make money (sure you can pay to buy books, but you don't have to). I hope Baby Girl Yan wasn't born too late to experience the type of magic I felt when I read books from cover to cover, back when I had to do that. There's also something poetic about reading in the summer, somewhat counterintuitive because this should be the time of going to the beach, sitting in an AC movie theater ,baseball games, summer vacations, long days that seem to never end, but reading has always been a part of my summers. One of the bingo squares on our Summer reading program we needed to complete was to "read outside," so it's not just me, others have done it. The thing is if you spend a whole afternoon outside reading somewhere, you'll remember it forever, and you'll remember the book too, as well as a more vivid recollection of what that book is about, or so says a "geographical" theory of memory, where your mind is more alert when you're also mapping where you are. I'll always remember being a junior in college but reading the latest Percy Jackson book in the quad at the University of Illinois, or reading The Overstory by Richard Powers under trees at our local art museum, or traveling cross-country with my father moving from Chicago to L.A before law school, reading "50 jobs in 50 states as my dad drove." Come to think of it, I really wanted to do that 50 jobs in 50 states adventure, but I did my own 15 jobs in 15 states just based on the nature of my work, I have really worked in various states. Anyway, keep the mystique of summer reading alive! Baby Girl Yan see you in 3 summers when you're ready to read!

Recovery

MJ was a little miffed at me today for being outside on a run for longer than she anticipated, and I did some introspection as to why it is that I run. A primary reason is that it helps control my weight, and I sweat off a lot of water weight especially in the summer when I run. It's really the only exercise I do. Another reason is: I just like being outside and seeing the world around me (I've talked about this before). But one last reason I hadn't considered before that I'd taken for granted: I like the feeling of my body recovering from the run, maybe more than the run itself. Sure the run allows me to get my juices flowing, feel the wind in my hair, get a runner's high, but there are downsides like going uphill, wiping sweat from my brow, ruining a perfectly good shirt, and just getting tired......feet are sore, you're winded from the humidity, bunch of negatives especially towards the tail end of a run, but the harder I push myself the better the feeling of recovery is afterwards. The several hours AFTER I've showered are probably the best my body feels all day, especially if I feed myself and replenish liquids after running, and put on a clean outfit after showering. The body got pushed to its limit, and now it's repairing itself, I can almost feel my pores breathing new air and different areas of the body rejuvenating themselves. Maybe it's that feeling I'm chasing every day and why I feel weird if I haven't gone out for a run.....my body craves it, and it washes away all the stresses of the day and makes the dreariness of a long run worth it. It's kind of hard to describe to someone who doesn't run, but I hope MJ can understand and get the same feeling of recovery that I get from running, and forgive me for taking up to hour away from taking care of Baby Girl Yan. I gotta keep it under an hour now though (including shower and getting back ready to take over), so marathon training from 11 years ago is just a memory. (Man how well did I sleep after those marathon sessions?) Perhaps that's also what happens for me recovering after traumatic events: the injury is deep and it hurts not being able to change the past, but the gradual ebb of time and healing might be allowing me to enjoy it more. 3 months after losing on Jeopardy, I feel a little better bit by bit, like I've somewhat getting back to normal, and I can finally eventually let it go and focus on moving forward. I remember equally traumatic events like losing at dodgeball or doing worse than I thought on the LSAT being damaging but feeling better about it after doing little things to make myself feel better. It's almost like the injury had to happen to have the better moments of working my way up from the bottom and cheering myself day by day, so that my mood improves gradually. It's a lot like thunderstorms in the summer: they strike quick and you get hit with a few minutes of pouring rain, but then the clouds go away and you might get a glimpse at a rainbow somewhere. Recovery can be rewarding.