Divas love the Clover Club!  This week’s featured diva, producer, director, and Carnegie Mellon-trained actor HaJ, also chose the chic Carroll Gardens cocktail lounge as the spot for our interview.  Over whiskey sours, HaJ told Sarah Deming about her new blog, the Home of the Urban Chameleon and her video content site Tickles TV.

Sarah: What does the term “urban chameleon” mean and how did you come up with it?

HaJ: I was sitting around with my friends Andress and Zuley and we were brainstorming terms to describe people of our background: people of color who were raised by parents who wanted us to excel, who grew up in low-income urban communities but went to the best private schools and colleges.  We evolved the ability to move freely between various social spheres, to move left and right and up and down.  Yet we never forgot where we came from. Urban chameleons are the type of people who work an office job in midtown, but go back to the old neighborhood to get our hair done, because it’s just not the same without the lady who knows your hair, has all the gossip, and has a guy out front selling bootleg DVDs.  There’s a more detailed description of the term on the blog as well as some funny videos of classic Urban Chameleon moments.

Sarah: I was reading about how chameleons change color.  Apparently scientists used to think that it was to protect them from predators, but now they think it evolved mostly to signal socially to other chameleons, for courtship and things like that.

HaJ: It’s not a defense mechanism; it’s a way of identifying.  When Jay-Z shouts out to Marcy Projects or when Obama makes a veiled hip hop reference in a speech, it’s all about signaling to other urban chameleons.  A key word you used is “courtship.”  It’s all about wanting to connect and create commonality.  One of my closest friends who is Haitian has been my muse for a lot of the work because her story represents the American dream. Her family came to this country from Haiti and sacrificed a great deal in order for her to excel. She’s the ultimate urban chameleon, goes from business meetings, to posh events around the city and then gets on a plane to help rebuild Haiti.

Sarah: In Prada pumps?

HaJ: I think she prefers Louboutin.

Sarah: This makes me think of the Carol Burnett quote “Comedy equals tragedy plus time.”  Often there’s something quite dark and sad at the heart of your comedy.

HaJ: Absolutely.  You have to be really careful whenever you make comedy about race, because you are going to piss some people off.  Recently we curated an event at Howard University Homecoming.  We submitted a couple of skits and got comments back like Korean Nail Salon being “coonish,” participating in a sort of minstrel tradition of stereotyped blackness.

Sarah: I think that’s an absurd misreading!

HaJ: I know.  But I learned a lot from that experience. I don’t mind making people uncomfortable, because discomfort is how we grow. I love surprises.  I love creating a situation where the audience is surprised by what comes out of a character’s mouth or the way they move their body.  On my blog we wrote about this recent controversy where a group of white girls won the Sprite Step Challenge.  They probably didn’t deserve to win based on their technical proficiency, and many people saw the judges’ decision as a racist one.  It may have been.  But I have to say I think surprise has its own value as entertainment.  When you see a group of white girls get up on stage and move in a way you don’t expect, it’s exciting.  I think everyone loves that kind of surprise.  It empowers them to break out of the boxes society has put them in.  For example, when we filmed that skit in the nail salon, the Korean ladies cracked up when I spoke Korean at the end.

Sarah: So that was real Korean?

HaJ: Absolutely!  My friend who is Korean coached me on it.  I’m saying, “Oh no, Young Sok, you have got to fix this one nail!”

Sarah: How do you develop your skits?  Are they improvised or written out?

HaJ: I think of a scenario and give it to the actors.  Sometimes I have certain lines I want them to hit, but often it’s just a beginning point and an ending point.  We shoot a few versions and keep the best take.  Improvisation is very important to the process.  And the biggest rules of improv are to always accept and build and always say yes.

Sarah: You have to be comfortable with chaos to work that way.

HaJ: I’ve always been a non-traditional thinker. My mom likes to tell this story of how when I was about five my dad put on his overcoat and lay down in bed, just as a joke.  He asked me: “HaJ, what’s wrong with this picture?”  I said: “You forgot your hat.”

WHISKEY SOUR

This basic formula for a sour can be adjusted for other base spirits, but whiskey is the classic.  This is one of the simplest and most crowd-pleasing of cocktails.

2 ounces rye or bourbon
3/4 ounce lemon juice
1 ounce simple syrup (equal parts sugar and water heated together to dissolve)
optional: 1/2 ounce tannic red wine such as Bordeaux

Shake all ingredients vigorously over ice.  Strain into a rocks glass filled with large ice cubes.  For the optional “claret float,” pour the red wine slowly over the back of a barspoon onto the surface of the drink.  It will float atop the surface in a red layer, creating a graceful, multi-layered cocktail that commemorates the urban chameleons among us.