Ana Julaton with fellow boxer Glenn Donaire
Something to do in New York: the National Asian American Theater Festival. This year’s festival seems to have very little connection to the performances from the first NAATF in 2007, which offered twenty-five groups and a lot more variety. Here are the options: Sharif Don’t Like It, a one man show about the treatment of people of Asian and Middle Eastern descent after 9/11, Bahu-Beti-Biwi, an Indian dance, Imelda, a musical about Imelda Marcos, APACUNT, a performance piece about a variety of Asian American topics, an interpretation of Chekhov’s The Seagull, and some screenplay readings.
I went to APACUNT on Wednesday, its opening night. The performance features a “panel” of three Asian American characters plus a “moderator” who is also the director. Each night has a different topic and on Wednesday it was “THE PAST: Isn’t it Semantic? The Unprofitability of “Asian American.” Alice Tuan, an academic, Kristina Wong, an actor obsessed with her reviews, and Soo-Jin Lee, an Audrey magazine-type character, discussed the label Asian American and then exhorted the audience to help them think of a different name. As in, we actually broke into groups and brainstormed names and some loose marketing ideas. Normally I love interactive and participatory over passive and spectator — but I wasn’t into it and in an audience of a dozen people, there’s limited room to disengage. Note: a British bloke in my group pulled at the corners of his eyes to describe the model Tyson Beckford. I guess he was too old to learn from Hannah Montana’s mistakes.
The remaining performances of APACUNT (pronounced appa-cunt) are:
Friday, Oct 16, 10:30pm
THE FUTILE:
Creating a National Asian American Network
Join the Rapture now or be left behind to die.
The Chinese will buy us all out, so you might as well start packing now.Saturday, Oct 17, 10:30pm
SPECIAL TOPICS:
Writing in the Margins
I once stuck my dick in Judd Apatow’s mouth
Join the playletting, forge into our peanut gallery, and the freestyle challenge. Whine and cheese always provided. Special orations by Alice Tuan.Sunday, Oct 18, 6pm
CLOSING PLENARY:
REINVENTING THE WHEEL: What spoke?
Free styling toward innovation in Asian American Theater and performance of the human in the 21st century.
The festival is held at Theater for the New City, 155 First Avenue, New York.
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Earlier this year, Ernie blogged about Intel’s latest television ad campaign highlighting co-inventor of the USB port Ajay Bhatt. All good, except Bhatt is portrayed by an actor in the commercial, most likely for comedic effect. Well, the other night, Conan O’Brien interviewed the real Ajay Bhatt — convenient for him, as Intel is one of The Tonight Show’s biggest sponsors and wanted to highlight one of their “rock stars.” I guess if you are a major sponsor, you get to call some of the shots.
Conan was actually pretty funny interviewing Ajay, trying to get him to diss the other co-inventor, as well as the major competitor to USB, Firewire. Ajay did point out and ask where Firewire is today (mostly only on Macs; maybe you have to live in Silicon Valley to really appreciate the humor.) In any case, Conan got Ajay to make a spoof of the Intel commercial with him in the actual spoof – which doesn’t make sense at all on paper, but was pretty funny. I think the real Ajay Bhatt could have done a perfectly fine job in the actual Intel commercial.
Shopping With GASP!
Falcon Heene was at found alive in his parents’ home! (Pixar ending here you come! See you on the TODAY show, kid!)
UPDATE: Balloon Boy Falcon Heene Found Alive in Box in Attic of Family’s Home!
The news event that has captured the attention of the world today surrounds a 6-year-old named Falcon Heene from Fort Collins, CO. Falcon’s father, Richard Heene, is a “storm-chaser” and built an experimental aircraft which was essentially a homemade helium balloon. One of Falcon’s older brothers reported seeing Falcon getting into the gondola attached to the balloon and setting it loose from his parents’ home. The escaped weather balloon soared 7,000 feet over eastern Colorado, prompting attention from the FAA and local police (who were following it via car on the ground), as well as various news helicopters which were following it in the air.
While Falcon supposedly went up with the balloon, he wasn’t with it when it made a soft landing in a field near Keenesburg (Weld County)– about 60 miles by road from Fort Collins– more than an hour and a half after the balloon took off. Reports out of 9News in Denver show a photo taken by a neighbor which appears to show an object falling from the balloon as it soared over Fort Collins. The box was also not found with the downed balloon craft.
The Larimer County Sheriff’s Office said the “homemade flying saucer” was made of plywood and string and was never intended for flight.
Falcon’s parents, science enthusiasts Richard and Mayumi Heene, were featured on the 100th episode of ABC’s prime-time program “Wife Swap” in March. According to the network’s Web site, the Heene family “devote their time to scientific experiments that include looking for extraterrestrials and building a research-gathering flying saucer to send into the eye of the storm.” CNN iReport has a video of the Heene family, identified as storm chasers, shooting the eye of Hurricane Gustav in 2008. Richard, Mayumi and their three boys Bradford (9), Ryo (7) and Falcon (5) –their ages at the time– are part of that adventure.
While I’ve seen numerous mentions to the obvious comparisons to the movie UP on Twitter and Facebook, we can now only hope that the outcome of Falcon’s adventure is as happy as a Pixar movie ending. As my friend Gil Asakawa (who lives in Denver) said when it all started, “Either this kid will be on the Today Show tomorrow morning, or the story will end in tregedy.” Here’s hoping for that it’s the former and not the latter.
Photo: Frank’s Funnies
I’m not one to read or believe tabloids, but if this news is true, I’ll be thrilled. Radar reports that Jon & Kate Plus Eight “will officially end in mid to late November” because “sources outside the network [say] that there is just enough unused new footage to take them through about another month.” We already know that Jon is out of the picture, but since he is no longer giving TLC his permission to film the children, the proposed new show, Kate Plus 8 will not go forward, either. I suppose it doesn’t stop TLC from doing a show called just Kate No 8, but we all know that the 8 part-Asian kids were really what brought the viewers in. Nonetheless, I’m glad that it means that we can start to forget what “J&K+8″ stands for and look back on it as a footnote in reality TV history.
(h/t: Ernie)
A mother called up the admissions officer of a local private high school.
“How can I best position my daughter to get into your high school?” she asked.
“What grade is she in?” replied the admissions officer.
“Fourth grade,” said the mother.
“Too late,” said the admissions officer.
That admissions officer recounting this story at a high school information night said with a grin that the mother went nuts. We knew that he was joking, but in the same room were an Asian family who dragged along what looked to be a fourth grade girl and fifth grade boy. Why were the Wife and I were at the high school information night? Number One Son will be applying to the local private high schools in about a year, and some of the best known private high schools in Silicon Valley were giving presentations and other information.
(flickr photo credit: Joe’s Photo Dump)
It may seem both extreme and crazy, but that Asian family might have the right idea. According to this US News and World Report article, Princeton sociologist Thomas Espenshade calculated that for students with similar grades, test scores, athletic ability, and family background, whites were three times as likely as Asian students to get in an elite college. When I first read that, I got pretty angry. Do I have to push my kids three times harder than white kids just to keep up? I calmed down when I realized that there are a number of caveats to this study. The study did not factor in extracurricular activities other than athletics. Mitchell Chang, a professor of higher education at UCLA, says in the article that Asian students might be less likely to participate in certain kinds of extracurricular activities and that Asian parents push their children to apply to big name schools. Also, Espenshade’s data from the 80′s and 90′s deals with elite colleges – what about the next tier of schools? I wish there was data about those.
Still, I have to admit that I am a bit spooked by all of this. I don’t think that those mitigating factors I mentioned explain away all of that three to one advantage. The Daughter will be applying to colleges next year, and I feel pangs of guilt that I let her drop out of Kumon a couple of years ago and didn’t make her to do club sports back when she was younger. Remembering her experience applying to the local private high schools (there are entrance exams and of course, test prep courses for that exam), it’s going to be a stressful time next year for Number One Son. On top of that, The Daughter will be going to waiting for college acceptance letters at the same time. Spring of 2011 will not be a happy time. Before then, I’ll probably end up reading Espenade’s forthcoming book Not Longer Separate, Not Yet Equal, that has more details from his study.
(Hat tip to John)
I may have been disappointed after watching Kimbo Slice fight on The Ultimate Fighter, but I didn’t have to wait long to watch another fight — this news segment on a fight between an Asian and Black woman on a MUNI bus in San Francisco. [EDITORS NOTE: This is a censored version of the YouTube fight -- the original version is here.]
Apparently, the Chinese lady tells people on the bus that all she wanted to do was sit down, but the other lady refuses to move her bag from the other seat and does not let the Chinese lady sit down. (Ironically, the first thing I thought of was Rosa Parks.) An argument breaks out, with the Black woman woman throwing the first punch and the Asian woman retaliating — unleashing fists pounding on the head and drop kicks! All this over a seat? I’ve had to use public transportation on a everyday basis before, and I can understand that it can be uncomfortable sitting next to strangers, but if I ever felt like I didn’t want to have to sit next to anyone, I would of have simply stood up and gave my seat away.
I don’t know what’s worse –the fight or other people actually not reporting the fight. It had to take another Asian lady to break up the two women, while another man yells to the Chinese lady in the fight, “BEAT HER! BEAT HER!” According to the news and other people who have commented about this video, there’s already been numerous fights on the bus including fights that involved the bus drivers; even the man who uploaded the video mentions that he was previously attacked on the bus as well.
For those who just want to laugh at all this, there’s been several video responses by Youtubers that you can check out: Chonny portraying the Chinese lady and responding to the fight, Peter Chao warning people not to mess with old Chinese ladies, Yahsoldier1′s video explaining how people of color use slang, and AdrienChen625′s response featuring “hitmanbreakeroftheye” singing to BOOM BOOM POW.
In our economic meltdown in the U.S. it turns out it’s harder to get a job if you’re a graduating MBA than it used to be. Apparently this is driving some Asian Americans and U.S.- educated Asians to consider opportunities outside the U.S., specifically in China, India, and other Asian countries.
I often wished I had been able to take the route of working overseas after my MBA, but instead I took the easy choice and ended up working here in the U.S. Working overseas would certainly have given me a different life experience and one that I’m sure would have reflected positively on my resume. But I’m also not sure I would have wanted to feel like I was being forced into that decision, like many are today because of the economic situation.
Voice of America News reported that New York City is warning about a projected loss of 46,000 financial jobs and a loss of hundreds of thousands more jobs that depend on Wall Street by 2010. Those numbers should be enough to make any graduating MBA student nervous. Since our economic troubles aren’t a new phenomenon, it should be no surprise that China, India, and other Asian countries have already seen an upsurge of highly educated returnees. According to the Chinese government, the number of returnees increased by 55 percent in the last year. What is surprising, is the numbers at this education level. We’ve all seen the reports of immigrant workers returning to their home country due to the poor economy. This article on MBAs looking for work overseas just goes to show that the recession is touching people across the entire workforce spectrum.
UPDATE: Congrats to our winners, YvesPaul and Kenny! They were randomly chosen from all the haiku entries submitted. Missed your chance? Enter the next giveaway, when, uhm, we have one again.
We’ve blogged about the LOLcats guys a couple of times — since their humble beginning as a way for an Asian American couple in Hawaii to send funny photographs of cats and walruses with captions about cheezburgers and buckits, it has since become a media empire, spawning a book deal and a couple of other additional humor sites. And guess what? Those sites have book deals too. And guess who has a couple of those books to give away to you, the 8Asians reader? That’s right, us. Freeh bukkz, we haz em.
We have two sets of books to give away this week — each set will contain the following books: How to Take Over Teh Wurld: A LOLcat Guide 2 Winning, as well Graph Out Loud: Music. Movies. Graphs. Awesome and Fail Nation: A Visual Romp Through the World of Epic Fails, the new book counterparts of GraphJam and FailBlog, respectively. All you have to do is submit a haiku that uses the phrase “lol” or “FAIL” in the comments section — we’ll pick two haikus and send the books over.
Hurry, the deadline to enter is: Monday, October 19th 2009 at 11:59 pm PST. TWO lucky winners will be selected and contacted on Tuesday morning.
Rules for entering:
1) Please be in the US or Canada. Sorry, we will not be shipping anywhere else.
2) Regular contributors to 8Asians and their immediate family members are not eligible to win. Who is deemed a “regular contribution” will be at the sole discretion of the Editors of 8Asians.Prize courtesy of: The Cheezburger Network.
George Takei, most well known for being Sulu in the original Star Trek, and currently for being a prominent activist for queer rights and in the Asian American community, will be competing with his partner on the Newlywed Game, a first for same-sex couples on the show made famous in the 1960s where newly married couples were quizzed on how well they knew each other.
Even though George and his partner, Brad Altman, have been together for over 20 years, he noted that there are things that he never noticed in his partner until he studied his partner’s actions. (Seriously. There were things that I never noticed about my now-ex for years when we were together, like his penchant for using his large stuffed animals he bought for me to represent giant monsters when he went to play Dungeons & Dragons with his buddies. But I digress.)
But in all seriousness, the portrayal of Takei and Altman as just a normal married couple on television is something that I wouldn’t even fathom even 10 years ago. It says volumes of how accepted same-sex couples have become in such a short amount of time. ‘Bout damn time, I think.
For many Asian Americans self-identity starts with family and food. The food aspect typically involves memories and celebrations around traditional foods, quite often cooked up in the family home by a grandmother, great auntie, or other relative. This month, a new cookbook was just released, The Asian Grandmother’s Cookbook by Pat Tanumihardja.
The cookbook is discussed in a recent blog on BookDragon. It’s revealed that, Ms. Tanumihardja “interviewed, cooked with, and connected with grandmothers, mothers, aunties” who shared recipes with origins in China, Japan, Korea, India, Pakistan, Nepal, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam, and Thailand. “Regardless of where in Asia they come from,” writes Tanumihardja in the book’s introduction, herself of Chinese/Indonesian descent by way of Singapore then Seattle, “these recipes represent a universal theme – they tell the story of our immigrant past.”
For immigrants to the U.S., these traditional foods inevitably have become our comfort foods as we grow older. But how many of us actually know how to prepare many of the foods we are happiest to be eating? “Just when did the restaurant become the keeper of our Asian food heritage?” Tanumihardja questions in her cookbook. “Whatever the reason, modern times are making Asian home cooking a lost art … and many of the new generation of Asian Americans are now ignorant of these skills.” I’m certainly in this category and rely heavily on the restaurants in the Chinese community here in the San Francisco Bay Area to fill my cravings for traditional home cooked Chinese food.
So if you’re looking to find new inspiration to learn how to make your favorite Asian dish, or looking for a present for someone you know would appreciate a cookbook full of culture, stories and tradition, here’s a gift you can give just in time for the holidays.
Manny Pacquiao isn’t the only Filipino boxing champion. On September 12, Ana “The Hurricane” Julaton won the IBA Super Bantamweight championship (122 lbs) by defeating Kelsey “the Road Warrior” Jeffries. We have written before about female Asian boxers defying stereotypes, but “The Hurricane” not only defies stereotypes but proves that she can be the best at what is typically thought of as a male sport. Her match at the HP Arena in San Jose is said to be the first time a female bout was featured as an IBA main event.
Julaton lives in the Filipino American enclave of Daly City, California, in the San Francisco Bay Area. In this article, she cites the influence of Bruce Lee as an inspiration:
“I wasn’t sure where I fit in; I didn’t know who I was. I found some kind of purpose I guess, in seeing a successful Chinese American like Bruce Lee.”
His influence lead her not only to learn Taekwondo and become a boxer, but also to embrace her own Filipino-American heritage.
Another thing she has in common with Manny Pacquiao is the hall of fame trainer Freddie Roach. With excellent people like Roach behind her, Ana “the Hurricane” Julaton will be making an impact for some time to come.
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