Back in October, I had blogged about an awesome Target ad. Well now, I recently saw a pretty awesome CVS ad, with a charismatic Asian American mom with her adorable sons. Maybe this ad is only running in California (I hope not), but it’s great to see more and more Asian Americans being portrayed as All-American! If you didn’t grow up in the Northeast, CVS is a chain of pharmacies that has now expanded out to the West Coast with the recent acquisition of Longs Drugs.
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If you’re a regular reader of 8Asians, you already know I lost both my parents to the big C – Cancer. Toan Lam writes this week in the Huffington Post about a phenomenon in the Asian community surrounding Cancer, specifically the inability of Asians to talk about Cancer and Cancer prevention. Lam details the loss of some of his closest family members and the impact it has on his family. He also describes how if he and his family could have talked more openly about Cancer, like issues around detection and early screening of sensitive topics like breast Cancer, it might have helped save the lives of some of his family members.
Lam is also the creator of a website, www.GoInspireGo.com, designed to give voice to inspirational and uplifting stories that would otherwise not have a voice. He also writes about George Lin, former Program Director of the San Diego Asian Film Festival, whose loss to Cancer inspired the theme of this year’s recent film festival, Cancer Awareness. The video above from GoInspireGo discusses Lin, his Cancer, and the tributes paid to him during the Festival.
Lam’s goal is simple, all of us know someone whose life has been touched by Cancer. So in an effort to help prevent the pain and suffering of losing someone to Cancer, we need to break the silence — talk about Cancer, especially in the Asian community. Awareness and Early Detection could save lives. In my family, we didn’t find out about my dad’s cancer until it was already stage 4 (the last and most progressed stage), since he never wanted to see a doctor or talk about his pain. So spread the word and let’s help make it so one day when we talk about Cancer, we can replace the big C with a little c.
Shopping With GASP!
We’ve mentioned the B HERE campaign on 8Asians before, and now biopharmaceutical company Gilead is taking it to the next level, giving $10,000 away in a video/song/art contest designed to raise awareness of hepatitis B in the Asian American community — over half of the 2 million chronic hepatitis B cases belong to Asian Americans — and inspire those in the community impacted by the disease to continue their fight. Prizes will be given for the best video, song/story or art piece that informs the Asian American community about hep B and “makes the mark.”
There’s a ton of stuff going on in L.A. all the time, but if you love music & art, check out this awesome event “BY ANY DREAMS NECESSARY” featuring work by artist and designer Timothy Teruo Watters, a hapa, who was inspired by his grandfather. One of the singers is Jessie Malay, a super talented hapa. Don Chow Tacos, a Chinese taco truck, will also be there.
BY ANY DREAMS NECESSARY
LIVE ART. LIVE MUSIC. LIVE FASHION.
OPEN BAR. DON CHOWS TACO TRUCK.Date & Time: November 14, 2009, 8pm – 1am
Venue: Gallery 1018, 1018 Santa Fe Ave, Los Angeles, CA 90021Artwork by TIMOTHY TERUO WATTERS
Live Music by JESSI MALAY, TERRA INCOGNITA, SIX REASONS and more…
Live Fashion by DANIELLE KELLY
JOSEPH GETTRIGHT, DJ IZM, TRUTHLiVE, BZ and ED GOLD spinning all nightOFFICIAL RELEASE PARTY FOR DJ SKEE MIXTAPE “ENDANGERED SPECIES” featuring BRIAN “DEEP” WATTERS, PROPHET and SIX REASONS
TERUO ARTISTRY debuting its Fall Men and Women’s line
COL.ABO presents KORRUPTION: A Vinyl Toy ProjectArt raffle benefitting A PLACE CALLED HOME
Sponsored by EVERYDAY and JLP “The President’s Tequila
Want to learn more about what Teruo Artistry is about? Check out these videos by Skee.TV:
h/t: Koji
Here’s a list of the reasons why this video is so wrong:
- There is no one way to draw an Asian woman.
- Upturned eyes? Small nose? Beautiful, big and full lips? Really?
- According to eHow, people were genuinely asking how to draw Asian women.
- She’s not even wearing a kimono.
- I’m kidding about that last one.
- This guy is a horrible teacher. He doesn’t even describe what he’s doing or why. There’s a small glimmer of hope in me that perhaps he doesn’t explain what he’s drawing because he’s realizing how racist it can sound. Instead of “slanty eyes”, he just calls them “beautiful”.
- This guy is even worse at drawing. If that’s what he thinks Asian women look like, then he’s never met one of us before.
- Unless that was his point: there really is no way to teach someone how to draw Asian women.
- Then why did he agree to do this video?
- Now I’m confused.
(Via: TheAwl)
When I came across a blog article with the title above, I knew immediately what the author was referring to. The food known in Mandarin Chinese as yóu tiáo 油條, but which in Taiwanese goes by the name 油炸粿, is basically a fried stick of dough, similar to a cruller, but puffy, rather than cake-like. The traditional way of eating it is to wrap it inside a shao bing 燒餅 (a sesame-coated flatbread). I recognized the topic, because it was one of my mom’s favorite foods, and one she had a difficult time finding in New York during the seventies and eighties. When we finally found restaurants in the San Francisco Bay Area that offered “shao bing yóu tiáo”, my mom liked to frequent them on weekend mornings, and take myself or one of my sisters.
I miss the days when my mom would get that twinkle in her eye and say we’re going out for breakfast, and we’d end up in Cupertino, at either a diner-like Chinese restaurant (A&J) or at Marina Foods, where she’d order hot soy milk (豆漿 dòu jiāng) and “shao bing yóu tiáo” and insist we eat it the way you’re supposed to, one wrapped inside the other. She’d order the sweetened soy milk, as would I, but my dad always got the salty soy milk (the choice of purists).
For me, it’s the mix of textures, the crunchy yóu tiáo with the soft shao bing that makes this breakfast dish an attraction, and one I haven’t had recently. The blog article is a good reminder that it’s time to make another weekend morning trip to Cupertino.
Jaden Smith, the next Karate (Kung-Fu?) Kid
Some fans of the original Karate Kid movie are appalled by the remake starring Jaden Smith as the new Karate Kid and Jackie Chan as his teacher. Some are very explicit about their displeasure to a having a black kid play the role. But as Jeff Yang points in this article, the story of an African-American learning self control and discipline from martial arts is “less of a perversion than it is a correction.”
Yang says that African-Americans were the first non-Asian community in the US to embrace martial arts, and without them, Asian fighting disciplines might never have taken root. “The story of martial arts in black communities is part of a much bigger narrative of African American interest in Asian culture,” says Amy Obugo Ongiri, assistant professor of English at the University of Florida and author of the forthcoming book “Spectacular Blackness.” White flight, she says, made inner city theatres become spaces for people of color, and cheaper, less marketable films like martial arts movies were often shown. “We’d go and watch films all day,” recalls Warrington Hudlin, the producer behind films such as “House Party” and “Boomerang.”
Bruce Lee has been particularly influential. In the documentary “How Bruce Lee Changed the World,” a number of African Americans, like Wu Tang Clan rapper and producer RZA and actor and rapper LL Cool J, talk about how Bruce Lee influenced them. While filming certain scenes, LL Cool J thought about how Bruce Lee would have done the scene and acted accordingly. Interestingly enough the new movie is being filmed in the Wu Tang mountains.
I am not sure that this new version of the Karate Kid (shouldn’t that be “Kung Fu Kid” if he is learning from Jackie Chan in China?) will be better that the original (although the reimagined Battlestar Galactica certainly has its plusses). In any case, check out Yang’s article – it’s interesting, and I hope the Karate Kid remake is at least as good!
The Toronto International Reel Asian Film Festival opens today with the Hong Kong film Overheard playing at the Bloor Cinema (Bathurst and Bloor). This is the last part to my 3 part mini review. Hope to see you there! Stop by the merchandise table!
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Google helped bring attention this week to Sesame Street’s 40th anniversary by publishing Google doodles with various characters from Sesame Street. For those of us in the U.S. we saw Cookie Monster, Big Bird and other familiar muppets integrated with the iconic Google logo. But in other international markets, Google came up with special doodles that featured local Sesame Street characters, like the one shown here for India featuring Boombah and Chamki – India’s stars on Gali Gali Sim Sim (India’s Sesame Street). Boombah is a vegetarian cat who loves to dance. Chamki is an wondering schoolgirl who loves to learn and knows karate.
It turns out there are local Muppet characters developed for almost every international location that Sesame Street has a broadcast. In addition to the Indian characters, there’s the ones for the Chinese market, Hu Hu Zhu and Xiao Mei Zi, the Bangladeshi market, Shiku and Tuktuki, the Filipino market, Kiko Matsing and Pong Pagong, the Japanese market, Meg, Teena and Mojabo, among others.
With my upcoming trip to Taiwan with my daughter, and this new found discovery of local Sesame Street productions, I’m going to keep an eye out for an airing of Sesame Street in Chinese, so she can watch and I can see her reaction, especially since Elmo has always been one of her favorite Sesame Street characters. Maybe she’ll find a local Asian one to adore as well.
November 11 is Veteran’s Day in the United States, a day when military veterans are remembered and honored. While it is tragic when someone is killed in war, it is particularly sad when a military person is killed before even getting deployed. The Wall Street Journal had a blog entry about an Asian-American who was one of the thirteen people killed in the Fort Hood massacre. Pfc. Xiong, 23, of St. Paul, Minn., was a father of three whose family had a history of military service. Pfc. Xiong’s father, Chor Xiong, is a native of Laos who fought the Viet Cong alongside the CIA in 1972; Chor’s father, Kham’s grandfather, also fought with the CIA; and Kham’s brother, Nelson, is a Marine serving in Afghanistan. He was married and had three children ages 4, 2 and 10 months.
Let’s face it: at least once in your childhood you were threatened by your parents that they would take you away to military school, away from soft western luxuries like a Nintendo or drinks with High Fructose Corn Syrup to a tough regimen of marching and getting hazed by kids four years older than you. It definitely seems to be the case for a new generation of wealthy Chinese who are sending their kids to American military schools. One parent proudly boasts that “They should be raised in tough conditions to know what to fight for in the future.” HOLY SHIT DAD, IS THAT YOU?
Lodestone Theatre Ensemble will be putting on their farewell production with Grace Kim & the Spiders from Mars. Written by Philip W. Chung and directed by Jeff Liu, this show was specifically written to be the last show for Lodestone’s tenth and final season. I can’t believe Lodestone will be retired for good after this run. If you live in the greater Los Angeles area, I would add watching Grace Kim & the Spiders from Mars to your “must-watch” list and get your hiney to Burbank.
The play is about a young Korean American woman, who withdraws from the world after the death of her mother. Things go topsy turvy when she falls in love with her sister’s fiancé.
Tickets for opening night, November 14, are sold out, but you can catch their other showings. The play runs through December 20 and they’ve slashed ticket prices to their low 1999 rates to celebrate their 10th and final year.
Whether you’ve seen a Lodestone production or not in the past, this is your final chance to see them and say farewell to this long-time fixture in L.A. theatre. We’ll be keeping an eye out on the masterminds behind Lodestone– we know they’ll have new endeavors– but until then, don’t miss the final Lodestone production.
Visit their website for more information on their final show.
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