She’s at it again. No, not Britney. Margaret Cho! The Drop Dead Diva star is launching a campaign promoting her album, Cho Dependent and donating 20% of the proceeds to Immediate Justice, a human rights charity. However, this campaign focuses on encouraging and empowering the liberation of young women and queer colored people.
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UPDATE: Congrats to mwei for winning the giveaway!
If you’re in Los Angeles, check out Comedy Zen, a showcase of the funniest and finest multicultural comedians working today! We’ve blogged about a lot of these guys before, so if you want to see more than clips from YouTube, come see them perform live!
- Come see why Steven Ho was the most booked guest on Late Night with Conan O’Brien. He is a professional stuntman at the A-List level working with stars like Tobey Maguire, Brad Pitt, and Leonardo Dicaprio.
- Joe Wong hails from Boston and was a scientist researching answers for the mysteries of the field. Then he discovered stand up and has never looked back. Joe is the “All American Immigrant.” Even though some Asians might find him to be a novelty act for the white man, we give him full support as an artist mastering a difficult craft, which is the art of laugh inducing. Joe has taken command of this and his appearance on Letterman or the Presidential dinner invitation is proof of this.
- Jay Phillips was one of VARIETY Magazine’s 10 COMICS TO WATCH and his recent film credits include the #1 weekend opener SEMI-PRO opposite Will Ferrell, PROM NIGHT with Brittnay Snow, and BABY MAMMA opposite Tina Fey and Amy Poehler. His stand-up credits include Def Comedy Jam, The Late Show, and Lafapalooza. You can see him at http://jayphillipslive.net/.
Hosted by Hasan Minhaj, comedian, actor, writer and a friend of 8Asians, portions of all shows will be going to the American Lung Association. There will be one show on Friday, December 3, 2010 (at 8:30pm) and will be held at the Downtown Independent Theater (251 S. Main Street, Los Angeles, CA, United States, 90012).
Ok, ok, so you just want to know how you can win some free tickets to a funny show? Read on!
Continue Reading »
Shopping With GASP!
We’ve been unabashed fans of the sex-comedy The People I’ve Slept With even before Koji joined our ranks, so it’s with great pleasure that we share the news that the film will be opening in Los Angeles this weekend (starting Friday, August 27th) at the Laemmle Sunset 5. (And if you’re not in L.A., Bay Area folks, it’s coming to you next!)
Yours truly, on behalf of 8Asians.com, will be hosting a special Q&A with the filmmakers and cast, following the 10pm show on Friday, August 27. The People I’ve Slept With is fun, funny, and features many, many crushworthy folks. If you missed the sold-out screening at the 2010 L.A. Asian Pacific Film Festival, then this is your chance to see it in the theatre and to meet some of the cast & filmmakers.
People Pictures is proud to announce the Los Angeles theatrical release of The People I’ve Slept With, directed by Quentin Lee (Ethan Mao, Shopping with Fangs) and written by Koji Steven Sakai. The film is self-distributed by People Pictures and will open exclusively August 27, 2010 at Laemmle Sunset 5 Theatres in Los Angeles.“I am thrilled to be opening The People I’ve Slept With in Los Angeles at the Laemmle Sunset 5 Cinemas. It’s an indie filmmaker’s dream come true,” says director Quentin Lee. “With the film playing at both LA’s Fusion and the LA Asian Pacific Film Festivals this year, I feel Angelenos will enjoy and support the adventures of the film’s heroine.”
The People I’ve Slept With is a sexy, romantic story about Angela (Karin Anna Cheung of Better Luck Tomorrow), a young woman with a zealously active sex life, who after every sexual conquest, makes keepsake “baseball cards” of each of her male conquests. One day, Angela finds out she is pregnant and begins a quest to find the identity of her baby’s daddy. Together with her gay, best friend and co-worker Gabriel (Wilson Cruz of He’s Just Not That Into You, My So-Called Life), the two go on a comical and raunchy hunt through her past hook-ups and dates. But as Angela peels back the layers of her frisky past, she begins to realize that the answers she is looking for, reveal themselves in surprising ways.
Featuring a sparkling and daring performance by Karin Anna Cheung, The People I’ve Slept With co-stars Archie Kao (CSI: Crime Scene Investigation), Lynn Chen (Lakeview Terrace, Saving Face) and screen legend James Shigeta (Flower Drum Song, The Crimson Kimono). The film has found strong support with sold out festival screenings including San Francisco Int’l Asian American Film Festival and the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival, along with being selected as the official Closing Night Presentation of the 2010 New York Asian American Film Festival. The film is set to open theatrically in Los Angeles at Laemmle Sunset 5, August 27, San Francisco at the VIZ CINEMAS, September 3, and in New York at Clearview Cinemas on August 13, 2010
You can buy your tickets online: Laemmle Sunset 5 (8000 Sunset Blvd. West Hollywood, 90046. 323-848-3500). See you there and come say hi!
Or if you can’t make it until Saturday night, then check out their 7:30pm screening with the Q&A hosted by Angry Asian Man’s, Phil Yu. After that, you can party with Angry Asian Man and Audrey Magazine at Libertine on Sunset, where Audrey will be hosting an intimate afterparty with the cast & crew.
What’s up everybody? This is Steve from channelAPA.com, and I just want to say that I’m very enthusiastic about the partnership that we’ve formed with our friends here at 8Asians!
Along with the videos that you’ll be seeing on channelAPA’s end, I’ll be releasing exclusive content that you can only find through my channel.
With that having been said, the video shown above is a compilation that I’ve been working on throughout our NYC promotional tour. We pride ourselves in highlighting all facets of Asian American entertainment from all across the country. Throughout my travels, I’ve been reaching out to several New York/New Jersey based artists in order to collaborate and get them more involved with our channel. The making of this video would not have been possible without the help of our sponsor, Blacklava, film composer George Shaw, the channelAPA team, and the support of our followers in the East Coast.
The artists and groups that were featured include Heather Park, Audio Fiction, Triangle Offense, Johnnyphlo, The Notorious MSG, Dave Boyle, Rik Cordero, Teresa Lee of PaperDoll, Taiyo Na, Cynthia Lin, Decipher, Ellie Lee of seoulbeats/aatheory, Misnomer(S), Jen Kwok, Air Tabigue, Jordan White of Racebending, Cliff Chiang, Jeff Yang, Jerry Ma, Deep Foundation, Alfa, Gary King, and Choz Belen.
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)
Ever since I saw the trailer for the new webseries MegaBot by 5432 Films and Cherry Sky Films (who brought us Ping Pong Playa), I’ve been excited to see the first full episode online! The uncensored (NSFW) version of Episode 1 is available with upcoming episodes dropping every Wednesday exclusively on Atom.com.
What is MegaBot?
Seven years ago, five attractive, multi-ethnic students from Anytown High discovered mystical PowerSleeves. United, the PowerSleeves control MegaBot, a colossal crime-fighting robot, designed by Lord Galgon, who must defend Earth from BioBorg invasion, week after week…
Think of it as kind of a grown up version of Voltron or Power Rangers, where the characters are really flawed (and really funny). Another reason to watch MegaBot is because it also stars 8Asians favorite Randall Park as Yellow. (Another reason to watch? Heck, let’s face it, Randall alone IS a reason to watch!)
While you can’t watch full episodes on YouTube (Atom.com exlusives, remember?), if you follow 5432 Films YouTube channel, you’ll get notified of teaser clips, and oh yeah, you can get your own MegaBot t-shirt here.
Just before we broke for the weekend, Moye shared this NSFW video with the other 8Asians writers. “Date An Asian” is a comedic R&B song written by musician/comedian Jen Kwok.
In the style of “a mid-tempo Mariah Carey club joint”, the song has a rare message: extolling the awesomeness of “dating” an Asian guy! Jen wrote “Date an Asian” as a positive and lighthearted reaction to negative stereotypes about Asian guys. The song was originally written and performed on ukulele, and premiered at Gotham Comedy Club in 2008 to a both shocked and appreciative audience. Soon after, she recruited her friend, rapper Soce, The Elemental Wizard, to produce the song and perform a guest verse from the gay guy’s perspective. Jen and Soce have been performing the song live for New York City audiences to great laughter and acclaim.
The video features some of New York’s top male Asian stand-up and improv comedians, and the breakdance troupe Part-Time Models. And in case you didn’t get the lyrics the first time, you can read them here.
My favorite line is in the bridge: “Where my bubble tea drinkers at? (Everyone should be raising their hands for that one – it’s delicious!)”
While the reactions were mixed amongst us, Ernie summed up his opinion with: “Is that… is that a gay nerdcore rapper that just did her breakdown? OH SHIT, it totally is. Insta-win.” He then proceeded to re-watch the video another 13 times.
Hooray for bubble tea, Jen Kwok, gay nerdcore rappers, and of course, dating Asian men!
(Can we please add this to our 8Asians Glee Club song list?)
8Asians is not a place to post purely personal stuff, but sometimes when we’re writing about the stuff that interests us, our personal lives & info do get mixed in. So it’s not surprising that even though we’re busy talking about the size of John Cho’s head, or interracial dating, or Hollywood’s sucky choices in casting (hello, Avatar!), or — you get the picture — sometimes we all talk about more “personal” subjects, too. That doesn’t mean that there isn’t still room to get to know us better, though.
Most of us have personal blogs elsewhere, but believe it or not, we don’t all know each other personally and follow each other online. So in a series that may end here*, I would like to do a shout-out regarding one of our writers, Brian. Here’s his current 8Asians bio:
I’m an unapologetic hack satirist specializing in inane, obscene, and rudimentary humor. Low brow is too high brow for me. I listen to Howard Stern. I love that you just rolled your eyes. I couldn’t care less. I absolutely HATE hypocrisy. Of any kind. I read Supreme Court opinions. I devour the Sunday New York Times. I’m on the internet way too much. I listen to artists, not genres. I think the first step of being an Asian American is not having to apologize for it. I always tell the truth. I lie incessantly in bios. Read me at mobilebrian.blogspot.com.
I’ve actually had the pleasure of hanging out with Brian a couple of times… up in SF for an 8Asians get together in 2008 and once earlier this year when I visited NYC and get to visit with 8Asians Lily and Katherine. (Funny that I never met up with him while he was living in LA.)
Speaking of funny, I’d definitely use that word to describe him. By day, Brian is a superhero; by night, he’s a stand-up comedian. He was also tapped by Diana at Disgrasian for their Babewatch feature, making him a bonafide babe — deemed totally crush-worthy by a lady who has really high standards. Before Daniel came on the scene, I can honestly say that I received the most inquiries about Brian from people asking if he was “available.” (I don’t know the answer to that, so don’t ask!)
But I do know the answer to the second most asked question about Brian — YES, that really IS his deep, smooth, velvety voice.
It’s not nice to play games like this with your friends, but hell, I’ve come this far already. If I had to play Friend, Fuck or Marry (no one kills anyone in our games) with Brian, I’d have to answer yes, yes and hellz yes! (Good thing that I’m just playing games here because Brian is WAY out of my league.)
Nonetheless, it’s always fun to daydream. It certainly doesn’t hurt that he’s real easy on the eyes. And just watching him in the video above with his doggies makes me crush on him all the more.
Wow, this is going downhill fast and I’d better just stop writing before I embarrass myself any further.
*Brian didn’t know I was going to write this. I’m hoping that this makes him blush. I know I am.
This video (Conan Visits The NBC Store from 08/07/09) has been circulating our office and been cracking us up for days. I think I’ve seen it five times and I still bust up every time I see it.
The thing is, I’ve totally been in that store. I was on the Lot when they were still constructing Conan’s soundstage. And I’ve met Wing Pang. We were in the same meetings during the early phases of a project my company was doing at NBCU about a year ago — which makes it all the more funny to my coworkers who have met him and worked with him throughout this project, too.
Seeing someone I know Conan is not only kind of weird, but kind of cool. It would be a stretch to call Wing a “friend” since I only worked with him for a few weeks, but I can tell you that what you see is what you get with Wing. He’s not acting and really is just like that. I don’t know how I’d do if Conan suddenly showed up with a camera crew asking me about my lunch — I’m guessing I’d get really nervous and worry about my hair looks on TV — but I think Wing was funny, genuine, and definitely held his own with the new host of the Tonight Show. And to put it in context… that crack at the end about “Facebox” wasn’t Wing being dumb or anything. It was actually a jab at Conan for a mistake he had made earlier in the show (see Conan’s reaction).
But I guess I’m not the only one who thinks Wing is hilarious. Patrick Sauter at the Daily Tube says:
Wing Pang needs to become part of the Tonight Show’s merry band of idiots. Sooner than later. He’s got a sarcastic potty mouth, loves discount chicken, and drops the kind of idiosynchratic[sic] bon mots that meld perfectly with Conan’s workaday weirdness.
Exhbit[sic] A: “I have no reason to hate Santa.”
Wing Pang, coming to a profile in Facebox near you.
So anyway, to “Wing Like Chicken Wing,” who is probably too famous now to take my calls or read my emails: I hope to see you again as a recurring friend of Conan’s on his show! Maybe if your bodyguards will let people near you, Moye and I would each like to get your autograph. Please sign them to “Joz like Jaws” and “Moye like Annoy.” Thanks!
I know it’s Mother’s Day, but if you’re in L.A. and find yourself wanting to have a few laughs this evening, you’ll get two awesome Asian American comedy groups in one at the L.A. Comedy Festival tonight — OPM Comedy and 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors (plus Matt Knudsen) will be performing in the same block at the ACME Comedy Theatre at 7:00pm. The 75 minute show shared is by all 3 acts, and both OPM and 18MMW have promised all new material for the performance.
OPM brings “FISTS OF FUNNY,” an all-new ass-kicking melee of sketch comedy featuring the Economy, Kim Jong-Il, a tribute to the late, great Bruce Lee… and more. (My buddies Ewan Chung and Randall Park are in this, along with Lanny Joon, Charles Kim, John Lopez, Lee Sherman, Jae Suh, Rodney To, and Dave Wilder.) If you can’t make this show, you can still catch OPM at the LA Comedy Fest on May 15 and 16, as well.
True to their style of poking fun at hot topics, 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors presents the World Premiere of “AVATAR: The RACE BENDER,” (see Moye’s previous 8Asians post: White-Washing Avatar: The Last Airbender?) which also includes a sketch about Korean cannibalism (you’ll have to go to find out what that’s about!). Starring funny men Michael Chih Ming Hornbuckle, Peter J. Wong, and Greg Watanabe, this is your last chance to see 18MMW at the LA Comedy Fest.
Los Angeles Comedy Festival
Sunday, May 10 at 7:00pm — OPM, Matt Knudsen, 18 Mighty Mountain Warriors
ACME Comedy Theatre, 135 N. La Brea Avenue, Los Angeles, CA 90036
RSVP: Call 323-463-2942Tickets are $10 online, $12 at the door
OR for five times the fun — purchase the 5 Show Pass, and select any FIVE shows (including ACME shows) for just $40 – a savings of $10!
Who is Jo Koy? He’s a Filipino-American comic who started his career in 1994 as a stand up comedian in Las Vegas. Born Joseph Glenn Herbert in Tacoma, Washington he’s being lauded as a “rising star” and has been on two seasons of BET’s Comic View and appeared on Showtime at the Apollo.
And now, Jo has is own his first hour-long stand-up special on Comedy Central, Jo Koy: Dont Make Him Angry! which was recorded during the 2008 New York Comedy Festival.
Here are a couple of clips for your perusal: This one shows Jo’s Mom in the audience as he talks about how Filipinos are Asian, but they look Mexican… and how you can tell them apart.
And in this one, Jo talks about Wiiing with his Mom:
What do you think?
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