Last week, President Obama’s White House Chief of Staff for almost two years, Rahm Emanuel, resigned to move back to his hometown of Chicago in order to run for mayor next year.
In his place comes Washington insider and veteran (often known as the “101st senator”) and the first Asian American to hold this high profile role, Japanese American Peter Rouse. Emanuel and Rouse are complete opposites and The Washington Post sums up what I’ve read about Rouse:
While Emanuel spent nearly two years as a prominent public face of the Obama administration, Rouse sat just around the corner in the West Wing, fixing problems. A trusted adviser dating back to Obama’s first days in the Senate, Rouse helped guide Obama’s Washington rise. Obama once described Rouse as “completely ego-free.”
While I think Rouse is probably just what Obama needs after what will most likely be a Republican controlled House, this characterization of a behind-the-scenes quiet Asian American getting the work done and not getting the limelight and credit is exactly the opposite model to successfully break the bamboo ceiling not only in politics, but in the corporate world. And I’d be the first to admit myself of being guilty of shining away from the limelight.
The Daily Show did a nice bit contrasting between the Emanuel and Rouse while Saturday Night Live spoofed both men (mostly Rahm Emanuel). I hope Rouse makes a name for himself and for Asian Americans who can help run The White House, if not yet be elected president.
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The UC Davis Cancer Center has won a $5.6 million grant to establish the National Center for Reducing Asian American Cancer Health Disparities, the only such center in the United States. It is a timely creation of such a center, given that Asian-Americans are particularly vulnerable to liver cancer and Hepatitus A and B, are stereotyped as not getting certain cancers, and are often reluctant to talk about it. Says Moon Chen, professor of hematology and oncology and the lead principal investigator for the effort: “Asian-Americans are the only U.S. racial group that experiences cancer as the leading cause of death. Our cancer burden is unusual in that we experience disproportionately high rates of cancers due to infectious origins such as liver cancer, as well as increasing rates of colon cancer. The center will focus on reducing this unnecessary cancer burden.”
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K-Town Exclusive: Spotlight on ScarletFirst, check out the MTV Iggy spotlight feature on Scarlet Chan, one of the cast members of the upcoming K-Town reality television show. Now, let any honest opinions of Scarlet Chan and the K-Town reality TV show swirl into your head.
The words you may come up with may range from “fierce,” “bold,” “beautiful,” and “outspoken” to “trashy,” “slutty,” “twinkie,” “whore,” and “disgraceful.” There are many people in the Asian American community who will immediately target Scarlet for bringing shame to their race due to her raunchy and crass personality. Her outrageous character is one of many elements highlighted in the reality TV show, and anyone can be seen why she is causing such a huge ruckus in the Asian American community. Continue Reading »
You should have seen The Social Network by now. If not, go see it. Go out and see it now so you can be cool. I saw it twice so that makes me really cool (and dorky). It really does live up to the hype — see John’s earlier post.
Many critics have lauded it as “a movie that defines a generation” — and the rapid fire screenwriter Aaron Sorkin tends to agree.
The movie, which is based on fact reads like a constant flow of overlapping Facebook status updates that have an aggressive sense of cohesion via a three sided argument involving Mark Zuckerberg (Jesse Eisenberg), Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield) and Tyler & Cameron Winklevoss (both played by Armie Hammer with help from Josh Pence). All of them claim to have invented Facebook and the movie leaves it up to you to decide who’s right.
But that’s not the issue at hand here. The issue is the following dialogue early in the movie:
Eduardo: It’s not that guys like me are generally attracted to Asian girls. It’s that Asian girls are generally attracted to guys like me.
Dustin: I’m developing an algorithm to define the connection between Jewish guys and Asian girls.
Eduardo: I don’t think it’s that complicated. They’re hot, they’re smart, they’re not Jewish and they can dance.
Remember the highly-coveted NINJA WINS t-shirt we unveiled with Blacklava for Comic-Con? For months, we’ve repeatedly been asked “Can I buy it online?” and the answer is now “YES!”
Designed by the fabulous Christine Miguel of NIWE Style Clothing, up until now, the fast-selling shirt has only been available in person at the Blacklava booth at events like Comic-Con and the TN Party.
Thanks to our partners Ryan Suda & his entire team at Blacklava, you can now order the shirt online!
In fact, if you move fast, you can save $2 since it’s the featured item for their Daily Deal (expiring 10/6/10 @ 11:59pm Pacific Time). And if you buy two shirts, you get free shipping!
More on the concept of the shirt:
Ahh, Pirates Versus Ninjas – it’s the topic people the world over have debated for centuries, if by “the world over” you mean “internet bulletin boards frequented by sixteen year olds,” and by “centuries” you mean “however long memes last, which is like two or three years.”
Well, let the good folks here at 8Asians end this argument for you guys once and for all: The Ninjas Win. The ninjas totally win. The ninjas totally win because they’re Asian. Pack your bags, kids, game over. [full post]
Get them before they’re gone! And send us your pictures wearing the shirt!
Last week over on Angry Asian Man, I learned that the folks at Spendthrift Studios have developed an iPhone application called Design Your Dream Asian Girl. I wasn’t too sure if I should be amused or offended. But before blogging about the app, I thought I would check it out: I mean, it’s only $0.99.
Well, I think the iPhone fart app is probably a lot more entertaining and useful than Design Your Dream Asian Girl — you are given three ethnicities to choose from to “design” your dream Asian girl – Chinese, Taiwanese and Korean (one model for each ethnicity). Then you can scroll through some choices for your preferred eyes, nose and lips. Finally, you can save the photo to your iPhone or email it to a friend. Not only are the women not that dreamy, but if you ask me, the Photoshopped eyes, nose and lips look kind of creepy. How this app made it through the Apple app store reviewers is beyond me.
This app couldn’t have taken that long to develop and I’m sure the developers were hoping to cash in (or as my brother’s college classmate Eugene Lin would put it, Steve Jobs’ butt money) on the plenty of men out there with Asian fetishes. If the future of mobile computing are apps like Design Your Dream Asian Girl, God help us all.
Hi everyone – Ernie, the founder of 8Asians here, and I wanted to let you know of two things: we recently changed our comments system to LiveFyre — going forward, all commenters will have to log in through Twitter, Facebook or the LiveFyre account, and we no longer allow Yahoo! commenters. This was done to combat the growing number of abusive comments we’ve been receiving on the site, but it also gives the ability for active commenters on 8Asians to vote other peoples comments up or down.
We also released 8Asians Events last week, an Event Calendar for members of the API Community to publicize their events. You can see a short listing in the module to the right, and you can also go to the individual event pages and save the events to your iCal or Google Calendars. You can find out how to add events to the 8Asians calendar.
Let us know if you have comments or questions!
At first glance, Never Let Me Go has nothing to do with Asians. Actually, there isn’t really a trace of any Asian-osity throughout the entire film: Carey Mulligan isn’t Asian; neither is the new Spider-man/Brit-boy du jour Andrew Garfield. If you put Keira Knightley in an unfocused lens, she can look kind of Asian. Other than that, there is nothing Asian about this movie — except the writer of the book in which the movie was based: the Japanese-English author Kazuo Ishiguro.
The most I know about Ishiguro is what my high-brow classy colleagues have told me. When they were talking about him, I just nodded my head, raised my eyebrows and said “Mmm-hmm — I totally agree.”
I was a big ol’ poser.
But I did know one thing about him: he wrote Remains of the Day. And that is considered a brilliant book. In turn, he is a brilliant writer. Therefore, Never Let Me Go is a good book. And by the transitive property, the movie is a good — and I can vouch for that. Continue Reading »
We live in an era where Bollywood movies are all around us, and now they are more accessible than ever. I am going to try something new here: every month, I’ll pick one Bollywood movie available via Netflix that I think is worth watching– check out some of my suggestions for you to help buff up on your Bollywood.
The first pick is a film by freshman director Punit Malhotra, July 2010′s I Hate Luv Storys. The film stars Imran Khan, nephew of the lauded Aamir Khan, and Sonam Kapoor, daughter of Anil Kapoor from Slumdog Millionaire. Continue Reading »
Our internal e-mail lists have us discussing all kinds of stuff: Asian American identity, representation in the media, the experiences of activism in an academia setting and its progression as we transition to the working, adult world. And sometimes, we talk about PF Changs, a faux-Chinese restaurant chain where a white girl named Madison comes to your table and prepares a “special oriental sauce” by mixing chili oil with soy sauce with hot mustard. MMM, AUTHENTIC!
Moye: PF Changs is voted the 2010 Best Asian restaurant in the OC Register’s Best of Orange County 2010. They also won second place with their Pei Wei Asian Dinner chain. *sigh*
Ben: I don’t know if this speaks as much about Orange County as much as the person(s) that are critiquing Chinese food.
Moye: It was voted on by readers in Orange County, not real food people.
Ben: Then I feel sorry for OC people. Are they ditzy mostly like the show too?
Koji: I always feel sorry for OC people… Ditzy isn’t the right word — bubble is a better word.
Ernie: At least there are no PF Chang commercials where the terracotta warrior is coming to life to talk about their $4.99 lettuce cup specials during happy hour.
Dino-Ray: OMG everyone is going to think I am so ghetto — but sometimes I crave PF’s…just like I crave Chili’s…or Olive Garden…or Red Lobster — I mean c’mon — every once in a while, you just need that commercial chain food goodness.
Joz: Wait. Are you guys saying that PF Chang’s isn’t authentic? The next thing you’ll tell me is that Taco Bell isn’t authentic Mexican food. I refuse to believe this blasphemy.
Ben: I thought if you said “yo quiero taco bell”, it had to be authentic.
Tim: I think I’ve mentioned it before, my daughter’s favorite Chinese restaurant is Panda Express (sigh).
Moye: OMG I LOVE PANDA EXPRESS. That’s because you are a DAMN GOOD FATHER, Tim.
Our food snobbery aside, what do you guys think? Authenticity not withstanding, is PF Changs actually, you know, good?
(Flickr photo credit: Janice Waltzer)
Taiwan’s Next Media Animation has done it again with their short video giving a hilarious and distorted summary of the recently release movie, The Social Network, about the founding of Facebook based on Ben Mezrich’s book The Accidental Billionaires: The Founding of Facebook, a Tale of Sex, Money, Genius and Betrayal. The movie has gotten incredible buzz and I’ve seen the actors, director and writer of the film on all major late night media outlets, from The Charlie Rose Show to The Colbert Report.
The distorted animated story is hilarious as well, and the interpretation (both linguistically and thematically) is over the top. In the bathroom sex scene, the sub-titles describes Zuckerberg’s and friend’s motivations”"Their notoriety increased with Facebook’s popularity, thus allowing Mark and Eduardo to fulfill their yellow fever dreams.”"
Zuckerberg has been dating his long-time girlfriend, Chinese American Priscilla Chan since Harvard. Whether the billionaire has yellow fever or not, who knows but according to some reports, Zuckerberg created Facebook to get non-Jewish girls. This lends to a line in the beginning of The Social Network: “There’s an algorithm for the connection between Jewish guys and Asian girls…They’re hot, smart, not Jewish and can dance.”
In the past week, two different races have highlighted Vietnamese American politicians to the national level:
The most controversial race has been seven-term Representative Loretta Sanchez‘s (D-California / 47th Congressional District – Orange County that includes Disneyland and Angels Stadium) comments regarding her Vietnamese American opponent, Republican state Assemblyman Van Tran (the first Vietnamese elected to the California Assembly).
In a Spanish-language interview last week, Representative Sanchez made reference to “the Vietnamese” coming to her heavily-Hispanic district:
“The Vietnamese and the Republicans are intensely (trying) to take this seat,” Sanchez said, “this seat (from which) we have done so much for our community, to take this seat and give it to this Van Tran, who is very anti-immigrant and very anti-Hispanic.”
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Feb 9: (Los Angeles, CA) East West Players presents THREE YEAR SWIM CLUB
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