Pistahan could not have chosen a better Grand Marshall to represent the best of Filipinos and Americans. Filipino-born Major General Taguba served in the United States Army for over 30 years and became one of the highest ranking Filipino-Americans in the U.S. military. Then his career came to a dead end thanks to his hard-hitting investigation of the Abu-Ghraib scandal. Remember that little gem of American military behavior? Because Taguba’s report on the torture and humiliation of prisoners at the hands of American soldiers was comprehensive, thorough and honest, he was ostracized by many of his peers, relegated to a paper-pushing job and basically forced to retire.

After his report was publicized, Taguba rarely gave interviews and only recently began to really speak out. In this June 2007 New Yorker article, Taguba sums up his feelings on Abu-Ghraib:

“From the moment a soldier enlists, we inculcate loyalty, duty, honor, integrity, and selfless service, and yet when we get to the senior-officer level we forget those values. I know that my peers in the Army will be mad at me for speaking out, but the fact is that we violated the laws of land warfare in Abu Ghraib. We violated the tenets of the Geneva Convention. We violated our own principles and we violated the core of our military values. The stress of combat is not an excuse, and I believe, even today, that those civilian and military leaders responsible should be held accountable.”

So to recap: not only did Taguba sacrifice his personal safety by serving in the military, in the end he essentially sacrificed his career in order to preserve his integrity. I wonder if his former big boss The Commander in Chief would agree that this represents just a slightly bigger sacrifice than, oh say a couple of phantom months in service and kicking a cocaine and drinking habit…? Why isn’t Taguba running for some kind of office? Oh right, probably integrity.

Antonio Taguba makes me incredibly proud to be Filipino and American. He also makes me wonder, why aren’t those leaders (not just the digital-camera-happy soldiers) being held responsible? The New Yorker piece is a worthwhile read, and you can also learn more about Taguba and his report here, here and here.

LA Weekly features the Filipino-American Hip-Hop movement, and provides an accompanying list of places where you can experience it first-hand. An excerpt:

Icy Ice breaks down the rise of Fil-Am hip-hop like this: As hip-hop migrated west in the ’80s, Filipinos in California already had a thriving funk- and R&B-based mobile-DJ scene going on. With infrastructure intact, the Fil-Am party scene moved out of the garage and into the clubs in L.A., San Francisco and Southern California, where the voice of disenfranchised ethnic America resonated with these first-generation Cali teens — who, though many in number, felt outside the American mainstream. The time was right for a full-scale teenage hip-hop revolt. Fil-Am DJ crews emerged all over Southern California.

Take that, model minority. I advise you to watch the videos of actual sessions; nothing better can be done on a Friday afternoon (especially if you are still at work*).

*8asians does not encourage worker bees to spend any work hours surfing the interwebs. Not at all.

(Photo credit: Atari, Gracinha & Marco)

Okay. Mister Wong, the German-based social bookmarking portal which recently launched in the U.S., is now looking for a new logo. The search is taking place via an international contest open to anyone. Registered users of Mister Wong will get to vote on their favorite logos, creating a pool of finalists. The final logos will then be judged by a panel of international media, marketing, design and web professionals and the creator of the winning logo gets $6,000! According to the rules:

“The logo should not exploit or offend anyone’s sex, race or religion, be obscene or propagate violence. The logo may not depict any human beings. Beyond these exclusions, it`s all up to you”

I’d say this is a wise guideline, because we all know what happened with the last “logo.” No! Settle down. Focus on the present. Aside from being a brilliant lemonade-from-lemons marketing strategy for Mister Wong, I think this is a great opportunity for everyone who had an opinion about that logo (aesthetic or political) to get creative.

Are you an aspiring artist? An experienced designer burned out from hours of working “for the man?” A German who needs to channel your frustration at us crazy Americans? An Asian who wants to win this one for Ernie or for all those times you got ching-chonged? I say throw your hat in the contest and create a beautiful logo that represents what Mister Wong aims to be: a worldwide social bookmarking tool. There is so much badly designed crap (including some of mine!) that blights the visual landscape of the web. This is your chance to elevate a small piece of it. I know I’m going to give it a shot. Good luck and remember: make art not war.

I began to bookmark some of my favorites, but then realized that entire sections were my favorites. The site is well-organized, with the illustrations divided into categories (some are in more than one) as well as by the artist’s country of origin. It’s also really interesting to browse by country, as your preconceptions about a particular country’s “style” may or may not be fulfilled.

My favorite category is Fine Arts. The style, subject matter and media run the gamut, from impressionist to realist to abstract to surreal. Another category which will hopefully expand is Motion. Here you’ll find the work of renowned manga artists as well as an a link to Rinpa Eshidan’s (an awesome art collective) YouTube channel.

If you want a suggested tour (and trust my eclectic taste), my individual favorites were:

Dennis Brown aka Bagger43′s bold work and FANTASTIC composition. I love the dynamic lines and curves created by his surreal and urban subjects. I thought of Archibald John Motley, Jr’s depictions of Chicago’s twentieth century African-American urban life when I saw the middle piece, possibly because of the lighting and distinction between the colors of the masks. The page also links to Bagger’s website and blog where you will find a drawing paying tribute to Voltron. A man after my own geek/art heart. (Philippines)

Tenmyouya Hisashi’s clever merging of highly traditional style with modern matter. Think Edo period meets sports photography and The Matrix. (Japan)

Lenovo (a company) provides the mother of all concept drawings for the Beijing Olympic torch. (China)

PiA’s fashion illustrations are fine art. Reminiscent of Picasso, and I love her figure’s proportions and her sometimes calligraphic strokes. (Taiwan)

Absolutely, there are some great Asian artists.

(Thanks again to Ernie for the link.)

UPDATE: I was so mesmerized by the art on the site that I forgot to give the site itself (and the founders) enough props. So I’ve updated the post accordingly.

I’ve lived a little of both worlds but not under any one extreme. I did feel like it was my obligation to do well in school and I’ve only been told once in my life (by my dearly departed Tita P), “I’m proud of you.” I admit it felt both very gratifying and very foreign. Because such direct praise was novel to me, I often wondered why my white friends sometimes got paid (on a sliding scale – B’s were still worth something!) for good grades. Paid for good grades?! When I told my family about this phenomenon, laughter ensued. I mean, serious, belly shaking laughter as well as head-shaking and talk of those crazy American parents. I wonder, do those friends of mine now suffer from narcissistic tendencies and hideous myspace layouts? I know that I still suffer from sometimes overwhelming guilt over not having exactly followed the traditional college-degree, profiteering route, but I’m not about to go psycho (any time soon). Nor do I resent my family for not lavishing me with praise for the times I did do what was expected of me.

What do you think? Did you grow up under either extreme i.e., impossibly high academic expectations or constant praise for merely existing?

(Read John’s related post from last month here.)

Hooray por Happy Slip! As we would say in my native Ilonggo dialect, “wow, tigas!”