I’m not generally prone to star-struck fanboy-ness, idol worship, and fantasizing about romance with movie stars, but Bai Ling has changed all of this. I had seen her name and random photos in the media on occasion, but wasn’t aware of her remarkable depth as an actress* until seeing her performance as a crack whore in the over-the-top but definitely-worth-a-watch Crank 2: High Voltage. Maybe it’s just her archetypal Chinese beauty. She looks like an ancient stylized rendition of a royal warrior, partly because of her strangely-proportioned nose, which I could gleefully ski down, and partly because of the way her bangs frame the gaze of her disturbingly asymmetrical eyes. Or maybe it’s her musical talent. You haven’t really experienced the Divinyls’ “I Touch Myself” until you’ve seen Bai Ling performing it. Or maybe it’s her nipples, which she seems to be obsessed with herself. In this Mr. Skin interview (NSFW), she’s asked what the favorite part of her body is, and she replies: “Probably you already know. My nipples! Once in Asia they asked me ‘what are the windows to the soul?’, and the word ‘nipples’ almost came out of my mouth. But then I swallowed and said, ‘The eyes. The eyes are the window to the soul.’ And that’s true too. But sometimes after I get out of the shower I look at my nipples and think, ‘Wow, they’re provocatively something else.’ I feel like they do not belong to me. They’re supposed to be like an African woman’s nipples. They’re something sexy.” But really I think it’s because she’s my wife in an alternate reality where we rule the Moon or something. Over the years it’s been suggested that I’m everything from an angel to a vampire or an alien, the latter leading to the nickname “Moonboy”, which has stuck a little longer than I like. The fact is, I’m not really of the Earth, and I love that when I share this fact, my cover remains intact because people think I’m joking. And Bai Ling? Reviewers often like to mention the fact that she thinks she’s from the moon, but what she actually said (see her fan site quotes page) was: “I came from the air. I came from the moon. I just landed. Traveling, it’s a constant in my life. Sometimes I feel like I’m naturally high because of this lifestyle. Sometimes I really feel like I’m the air or on the moon, and that’s that. Of course, I originally came from China.” If a statement like that doesn’t charm you, spend some time on her blog and juxtapose what you see there with the edgier public persona that’s evolved around her, and you may fall in love like I did.

Apparently there’s something so incredible about Bai Ling’s nipples that they even shock seasoned photographers:

Here’s Bai Ling Performing The Divinyls’ “I Touch Myself”

This is Bai Ling coming to rescue me from my humdrum existence:

* I’m not being flip and ironic; she actually turns in an amazing performance.