Happy Happy. He’s this old Chinese man with thick glasses and a grey moustache, wearing a straw coolie hat. He says repeatedly “happy happy happy!”<\/p>\n
He is usually seen standing on a stepladder holding an enormous sign. The sign is made from a thick posterboard, like you’d use to make a project in grade school. It’s generally covered with all kinds of incoherent ranting about news stories.<\/p>\n
Happy Happy used to hang out on Sproul when I was at Cal. For some reason, he and a number of other “street personalities” moved to San Francisco (including Frank “12 Galaxies” Chu). Nowadays Happy Happy stands on Grant in the middle of Chinatown.<\/p>\n
Back in those days (the late 1990’s) he’d switch between “Happy Happy Happy” and “*evil celebrity* no good for America!” Example:<\/p>\n
HAPPY HAPPY: Tonya Harding– no good for America! Michael Jackson– no good for America!
\nBRAIN: you may have a point there.<\/p>\n
So the other day I was walking around Chinatown and I saw him there, so I thought I’d say Hi.<\/p>\n
HAPPY HAPPY: Happy happy happy!
\nBRAIN: Happy happy happy!
\nHAPPY HAPPY: Happy happy happy!
\nBRAIN: Tonya Harding no good for America!!
\nHAPPY HAPPY: ?!?
\nBRAIN: Do you remember Tonya Harding?
\nHAPPY HAPPY: Yes!!! Tonya Harding!
\nBRAIN: Tonya Harding no good for America!
\nHAPPY HAPPY: Tonya Harding no good for America!
\nBRAIN: Yeah!
\nHAPPY HAPPY: Good to see you again! Happy happy!<\/p>\n
He was beaming– I doubt he actually recognized me, but he seemed to key that phrase with something he’d said in the past.<\/p>\n
Maybe he was just thrilled someone remembered what he was saying over ten years ago.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Happy Happy. He’s this old Chinese man with thick glasses and a grey moustache, wearing a straw coolie hat. He says repeatedly “happy happy happy!” He is usually seen standing on a stepladder holding an enormous sign. The sign is made from a thick posterboard, like you’d use to make a project in grade school. […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5866","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-stardate"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5866","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5866"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5866\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5866"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5866"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.ikillspies.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5866"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}