The 15th Anniversary of the Toronto Reel Asian International Film Festival opens its doors this coming Tuesday, November 8th to 12th in downtown Toronto, followed by 4 special screenings in Richmond Hill November 18th to 19th.
Voted one of Toronto’s Best Little film festival, Reel Asian has grown leaps and bounds from its humble independent roster, to screen world premieres of International Asian films. Check out my reviews for Lover’s Discourse, Saigon Electric, Piercing, I, and Jump Ashin after the jump.
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As a huge fan of Queen, I felt it was important to wish a happy birthday to one of the greatest rock stars and greatest voices of all time, Freddie Mercury.
But did you know his real name is Farrokh Bulsara? He was a Parsi born in Zanzibar and grew up there and in India until his mid-teens. He is considered to be Britain’s very first Asian mega rock star. In 2006, Time Asia named him as one of the most influential Asian heroes of the past 60 years.
Shopping With GASP!
When I first saw the trailer for Snow Flower and The Secret Fan, I had horrifying fears that this film would be Joy Luck Club 2: Asian Women Being Oppressed by Asian Culture (Again) since it was also directed by Wayne Wang. Words can’t quite describe how much I dislike Amy Tan’s book and the film adaptation, even though I am aware that it is one of the few instances where a Hollywood production used a primarily Asian cast. In some ways, Joy Luck Club was a breakthrough film that gave many of the Asian actresses more work.
Metallica’s Lars Ulrich has been replaced by an Asian female drummer! Just kidding… sort of. I’m sure I don’t need to reiterate all the less-than flattering stereotypes that Asian American Pacific Islander women have to battle against every day. (If I see another friendly Asian girl customer service image I’m going to hurl.) Sometimes I just want to yell, “NO, I’m not here to provide you with harmless and friendly services!” but Annette Ortiz-Diaz smashed up such stereotypes and with drum sticks no less. At her wedding, she pounded out killer drums for Metallica’s classic song “Master of Puppets.” Her “simple” wedding video has gone seriously viral with over 20K views within 24 hours of uploading. Their unconventional wedding has (so far) been covered by OC Weekly, Blabbermouth.net, CBSNews, and Poptastic Bride.
Clearly a veteran musician, Ortiz-Diaz was a drummer for band Fatal Posporos in the Phillipines and currently is the bassist for L.A. based rock band Random Ninjas. On the side, she was in an all AAPI Metallica cover band called Trapped Under Rice. Rawk on, girlfriend.
Scarlet Chan - Dave Contreras. Permission given for use.
I don’t usually pay attention to reality shows so when it flashed across my Facebook that Scarlet Chan had written something, I thought, “Hey, neato. Let me comment, even though she’ll never read it.”
This is a funny statement coming from a Chinese American girl, but considering her K-Town Reality Show is about a group of Asians hanging out in Koreatown, I could see why people might think that Scarlet would be Korean. But it brought up a perfectly good point: how do Asians identify other Asians? Is this something that white people do in a similar fashion?
Ever hear about how Asians all look alike? I’m sure you have. For Caucasians, defining features that differentiate people are often hair color and eyes; yes, I understand that there are other obvious differences, but on a bigger picture level, that’s what you would look at to identify a person. But Asians all have black hair and black eyes, so that methodology doesn’t quite work out.
But because we have the same color hair and eyes, Asians seem to identify other nationalities with more subtle differences at first glance. Obviously, I haven’t actually done any research into this, and it was just a conversational piece that I had with my wife about identification since usually there are some features that are dominant with certain ethnicities. But back to the question itself: does Scarlet look Korean? And if not, why?
Let’s be honest: This was also a perfect chance to put up a semi-nude shot of Scarlet. Scarlet Chan approved. Boo-yah.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B74s4MgQ1rw
I am amazed at how people could even attempt to make the sounds they do through beatboxing. But just as Asians have started to dominate the bboy scene, it seems that they are starting to go crazy also with beatboxing. Daichi and Hikakin are the two most well known beatboxers from Japan, and both have done several television appearances.
Hikakin was the first one that my wife found out about when she was searching about Nintendo music and ran across his Super Mario beatbox. What’s really crazy is that most DJs use records and equipment to all the mixing and scratching, but these guys can do it straight from their throats with absolutely impressive beats.
If you’ve been on Facebook in the last couple of months, then you might have been inundated with requests to vote in Chase’s Community Giving Facebook Campaign. With financial resources drying up for many organizations, this campaign has been a rare opportunity for non-profit orgs to come by cold, hard cash by simply leveraging their social media muscles.
I have been supporting the Center for the Pacific Asian Family (CPAF) in this campaign, since I feel that their “big idea” has the greatest potential for immediate impact on those who are living in Los Angeles, right now. CPAF was founded to help address domestic violence and sexual assault in the Asian and Pacific Islander communities. Up to 60% of Asian and Pacific American women experience domestic or sexual abuse in their lifetime, and are the least likely to report the abuse. Since the economic downturn in 2008, domestic violence has been on the rise. With cutbacks in state funding, non-profits like CPAF are forced to turn away more callers trying to flee a violent home.
CPAF proposes to fund a multilingual call center (beyond Asian languages) to support emergency shelters and rape crisis centers to stretch their resources to serve more survivors of domestic and sexual abuse. Currently, each of the 20 domestic violence shelters and 6 rape crisis centers in Los Angeles County run their own 24 hour hotlines. One joint hotline would benefit everyone, but the resources to plan for and develop a sustainable joint hotline do not exist. If CPAF receives the Chase dollars, it will invest in developing the technological and programmatic infrastructure to handle crisis calls for all partnering agencies, in over 30 languages, at CPAF’s Multi-Lingual Call Center. CPAF will also extend the hotline services to include ONLINE CHAT to make services more accessible to survivors. CPAF will also establish VIDEO CONFERENCING capacity at partnering agencies, which will allow bilingual staff based in CPAF’s Call Center to provide multi-lingual services throughout Los Angeles County. Materials, including multi-media productions in various languages, will be collected and developed to be shared with partnering agencies and larger community through an ONLINE LIBRARY.
All that said, the Asian American community has been banding together in this campaign to get folks online and to VoteCPAF.org! This is significant in terms of community organizing because it is probably the largest and most effective grassroots online effort done by the Asian American community– one which has gotten big names from different fields together behind one cause. A series of PSAs have been released on YouTube, and I’ll be unleashing them on 8Asians, until the voting ends 3 days from now. You’ve been warned.
I hope that you’ll not only give CPAF your vote, but also ask your friends and families to vote, too. This is really the first campaign of this type on Facebook and if Asian Americans can show their strength online, then the win won’t just be for CPAF, but it will be a huge win for us all.
This video features Danny Cho as Kim Jong Il folllowing up on his “eHarmony” video and tells us how much he loves women– asking us not to “violence women domestically or internationally.” It’s a funny video with a a serious message.
There are only 3 days left to vote in this campaign, so definitely check VoteCPAF.org and send this video far & wide!
And as an added bonus, OUTTAKES! (WARNING: For mature audiences only)
With the holidays comes eating, especially if you’re Asian. We eat to celebrate the good times, the bad times, and everything in between. The holiday season is no different — with all this eating, I thought about a producer/reporter friend of mine, Adam Yamaguchi, who made a video about his trip to China and a restaurant that served only penis. If you haven’t already seen it, check it out: Penis Restaurant: Vanguard.
For Asians, this should not be too shocking of a video. When we eat an animal, we eat the entire animal. Pick off every piece of flesh from the head to the tail, including sometimes the skin, bones, eyeballs, etc.
And actually, this isn’t just an Asian thing: people from the rest of the world don’t waste any part of the animals they eat. They literally eat every everything (including penis). If you don’t believe me, go to a good “ethnic” market and you’ll see what I’m talking about.
Americans, on the other hand, seem to waste most of the animal. My immigrant mom used to say that I ate like an American, which needless to say, was meant to be disparaging. And deep down, I know it’s wasteful. (My stepfather from Hiroshima claims that the eyeball is the best part of a fish. I’ll just have to trust him on that one.) Other than highlighting the wastefulness of most Americans, to me, Adam’s video just reminds me of how un-Asian (is that a word?) I really am.
Hey, readers! Are you not Asian? Have you always wondering why Asians look so beautiful? Well, today is your lucky day, because this video tutorial is going to teach you all of our ancient cultural secrets on maintaining youthful skin and, uh, ginseng steaming.
Yes! You, too, can now look as amazing as these exotic “Asians” just by keeping a stash of washcloths in your fridge and placing them on your face, even if you’re already — and clearly — wearing make-up!
Looking for a easy method to prevent wrinkles? It’s as simple as slicing paper-thin pieces of Panax ginseng root, soaking them in distilled water, steaming them and then drinking the liquid three times a day! (I mean, you’d think that Asians would somehow figure out how to conveniently bottle this ginseng extract by now so you’d skip the whole slicing and steaming crap, but I guess not.)
BUT WAIT, THERE’S MORE.
Little known fact: Asian people forgo modern conventions like “wide brimmed hats” and “sunscreen” to protect their pristine, white yellow skin with unique contraptions called “parasols”. Yes, it’s true — these strange folks walk around with paper umbrellas to prevent skin damage and cancer.
Alright, I’m done mocking this: please continue in the comments section. I’ve got some coconut to shred and then simmer with equal parts of water and milk, which I will then strain through cheesecloth and refrigerate so I can use the cream on top to moisturize my beautiful face. (LIKE, SERIOUSLY? YOU CAN’T JUST BUY SOME COCONUT BASED SKIN LOTION FROM CVS? Do these people really think Asians do this? This is how they’re going to kick off 2010 — WITH COCONUT SHREDS BOILED IN MILK?)
[Hat tip: Kristian from Fil-Am Ako]
For those of us growing up in the U.S. with immigrant parents in the seventies and eighties, there was no getting around the fact that the term F.O.B. (Fresh Off the Boat – pronounced letter “F”, letter “O”, letter “B”) was meant to be derogatory, when applied to ourselves, or to our parents. I had no idea, the term has changed in recent times to “fob” (rhymes with rob) and used affectionately as “fobby”. Jeff Yang tackles this topic in a recent article for SFGate. Specifically he writes about two websites, that have gotten a lot of attention in Asian circles, mymomisafob.com and mydadisafob.com. I’ve actually seen the first site, and read through many funny entries.
Yang calls our attention to these sites, not only because they are funny, but because there’s something endearing about them for those of us that have immigrant parents. We love our parents and all their funny quips and sayings. As I said earlier, for those of us of certain age, we’d never actually call them F.O.B., so Yang wanted to know why Teresa Wu and Serena Wu (not related, but creators of the two respective sites), included the “fob” in the title of their websites. It turns out they used the term as “fob”, not “F.O.B.” and referred to their parents as “fobby” in the most endearing way possible. Yang gets some help from another Yang, Gene Yang, to get the explanation for this cultural shift:
[Gene] Yang, who now resides in Fremont, notes that Mission San Jose, the high school Teresa and Serena attended, has one of the most Asian student populations in the nation. “It’s like 80 percent Asian,” he says. “The average SAT scores there are through the roof, and they have no football team, but an absolutely killer badminton team.”
It makes sense that kids growing up in an environment where being Asian is the norm would have a different view of being an immigrant than one where they’re in the minority. “If everyone has immigrant parents, it’s easy to go, ‘Oh, my parents are such fobs’ and feel affectionate toward them, even proud of them,” he says.
I’m not sure I’ll ever be able to wrap my head around calling my own parents “fobby”, but they definitely had their share of “fobby” moments. When my parents bought their first new car ever in 1973, they bought vinyl seat covers to go over the vinyl factory seats. They finally took the seat covers off 13 years later to sell the car. By then the rest of the car was rusted out from too many New York winters, but the seats still looked brand new. I was able to convince my parents in later life that should enjoy the velour in their new car in 1997, rather than wrap the car seats with seat covers, so the next owner could enjoy the seats. I’m curious if anyone else actually uses “fob” and “fobby” endearingly, or do you also think of “F.O.B.” as a derogatory term?
So I got this email, and saw the tweet:
Being Asian can prevent you from ascending the corporate ladder. Our seminar, presented with EMC Asian Circle, can tell you what to do about it.
You’ve done all the right things, top marks from perhaps a top school and top job performance. Why haven’t you reached the top as an executive? Learn from a renowned Asian exec who has been there and done that.
Business Professor David Lum will explore the fundamental reasons for why Asians/Asian-Americans have such difficulty in reaching those coveted positions. In addition to exploring the root causes, this seminar will also give clear and practical guidance on what you can do to prepare your career now for the long-term.
I read that and thought, “Wow.”
And that was the end of it. Total jaw drop. I’m not even sure what to say to this considering some facts, but more to that in a second. Let’s backtrack a little bit: I belong to a chapter of NAAAP, the National Association of Asian American Professionals. And obviously with any business organization, there is favoritism and so on, but seriously? We’re going to play the “we don’t get promoted because we’re Asian” card?
While I don’t know where this business professor came from, he apparently used to work for the same corporation as myself, and I never saw any inkling of Asians not being able to get promoted. Perhaps we didn’t work in the same division, but I never saw it within my corporate culture at least. And in my circle of friends and family, there are people that are in middle management all the way to senior management of their respective corporations; I never heard any complaints about promotions being blocked because of being Asian.
Maybe it’s just me, but this type of promotional email doesn’t exactly make me want to hear this speaker ever. Call me crazy, but I just can’t help but shake my head with this one.
It’s about that time of year where most volleyball players start shifting from outdoors to indoors.
Not too long ago, I joined the regular crew at our usual gym to rally up a few games. A pretty funny incident happened after I had squarely roofed a spike; one of the gals told me that I was showing my true colors and it wasn’t Asian. I still laugh about it since I was one of the taller guys out of the Asian clique growing up.
And it’s not often that you get guys with hops and height in this sport. Not of our ethnicity at least. But that didn’t stop Kevin Wong or his brother in becoming AVP superstars and totally blowing away both stereotypes.
The more I think about it, the less there are of Asians that actually bust out in either sand or indoor volleyball. Not sure why since it’s a very fast paced sport that you have to keep on your toes for so you don’t get nailed in the face (or somewhere else) when an opposing team member is sailing through the air to tear one into you.
Either way, volleyball players everywhere will shake in their boots because… yes, the word is out. Asians can roof you too.
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