Not a joke, folks. Attack on Titan and the @Marvel universe are crossing over! In 2 weeks. In Japan. Want a teaser? pic.twitter.com/9AF5fqWLfX
— C.B. Cebulski (@CBCebulski) November 3, 2014
The Japanese anime “Attack on Titan” that has been widely popular Stateside will officially be in a Marvel crossover. The image of Spiderman swinging 3-D maneuvering style past skyscrapers and giant titan monsters has been lighting up the social media streams.
It’s sad, but true. Asian Americans are the fastest growing community of color in the United States, but with the lowest voter turnout.
Do your part by voting today.
Find your polling location online, as well as getting information on candidates in your jurisdiction via GetToThePolls.
And, when you do vote, keep your eye out for voting rights violations. Our friends at 18 Million Rising has created a tool for you to report those violations (for example: voter intimidation, segregation at the polls, demands for proof of citizenship, inadequate language translation, etc). If you’ve witnessed or heard about any kind of voter suppression or intimidation, let them know.
I live about 35 miles south of San Francisco and don’t often make it across the bay to Oakland, so I haven’t been following the Oakland mayoral race, so I was surprised to see this headline about Jimmy Kimmel mocking mayoral candidate Peter Liu:
“Oakland’s most ridiculous mayoral candidate, Peter Liu, was jabbed by comic Jimmy Kimmel Monday night for his wild take on the digital divide in Oakland. Answering a question about equal access to the Internet for the oakmayor2014.com website, Liu said: “The lesson here is this: When your son says, ‘Mommy, Daddy, I need internet access for homework,’ this really translates to: ‘I am gonna masturbate online while my parents at work yo.’” Kimmel also ripped from a Chronicle interview of Liu, where Liu says he was motivated to run, in part, by a relative who “called me a piece of sh–.””
I know current Oakland mayor, Jean Quan, is running for re-election, and is in a tight and crowded race (with 15 candidates running). My impression from watching the local news and reading the local newspapers is that Quan is not well liked and has a mixed record as mayor. One of Jimmy Kimmel’s viewers sent him a video of one not-so-serious candidate (or a candidate hard to take serious), Peter Liu.
After viewing Liu’s videotaped interview with the San Francisco Chronicle, it is a bit hard to take Liu’s ideas and bid for mayor seriously:
In essence, Liu comes across as the political version of William Hung, of American Idol ‘fame,’ or more like infamy…
It’s hard to take Liu seriously when he does not have an official website, though he has provided a photo and candidate statement at www.oakmayor2014.com and has an Oakland Wiki page. But if everything in Liu’s candidate statement is true:
“Peter Y. Liu is a father, service-connected Army war veteran, insurance agent, commercial & residential real estate investor, and rags to riches self-made multimillionaire. Came to Oakland as a poor immigrant in 1987. Went through the Oakland Unified schools at Bella Vista, Edna Brewer and Oakland High. He has a bachelors from the University of California and a journalism diploma from the United States Defense Information School. … “
he’s accomplished quite a bit from humble beginnings for a young 30-something. But I’m pretty sure that Liu won’t be elected as Oakland mayor, or any public office, anytime soon.
Celebrating 15th anniv of LA City designation of Thai Town. TT has served as Thai immigrant entry point since 1965. pic.twitter.com/yjj9XYi0qs
— APISmallBizProgram (@APISBP) October 28, 2014
America’s only officially recognized Thai town in Los Angeles celebrates its 15th Anniversary with everything from Thai desserts to local dignitaries. Recognized in 1999 in an effort to revitalize after the LA riots in 1992.
On our way back up to Taipei from southern Taiwan on the bullet train, we made a quick stop in central Taiwan to check out the Baguashan Buddha. It was a cloudy day and the afternoon light was on the wane, but as a result, we got a spectacular view.
http://youtu.be/vczXOOzdqJw
While watching the World Series, I saw the latest Bank of America commercial with Sal Kahn promoting Kahn Academy and their efforts with BetterMoneyHabits.com. It has been a little over a year since I first blogged about this effort, so it’s good to see that Bank of America is continuing to promote their effort in improving financial literacy.
8$ is a series which occasionally highlights interesting crowdfunding projects. Every day, the 8Asians team is inundated by many worthy pitches. We are unable to highlight every one that comes our way, or even the ones we might individually support. The projects selected for 8$ are not endorsements by 8Asians. (To be considered for 8$, we highly suggest you not harass the writers or the editors of 8Asians.)
WHO: Some nerds (a rapper, a few musicians, some filmmakers) making a music video about the superheroes and stories that inspire us. Jason Chu is the rapper.
WHAT: Kickstarter project: MARVELS – a rap music video about Comic Books & Superheroes
I grew up reading Wizard Magazine. Running to my local comic book store (Captain Blue Hen Comics) to flip through Detective Comics and Spawn back issues. Groaning at the Spider-Clone saga and collecting variant covers. They weren’t just pictures on paper: these were our role models. Our heroes. Our legends.
As I get older, real-life issues have overshadowed my dreams of heroes and villains: ISIS. Ebola. Ferguson. The job market. Divorce. Cancer.
But even – especially – in this complicated grown-up world, part of me still clings to the childish notion that we need heroes. That their stories of justice, truth, and bringing hope to the powerless… might actually be true.
My creative team and I have been working on a new project code-named MARVELS. It’s a music video about the heroes who taught us how to dream.
WHEN: Deadline to contribute is Thursday, November 20, 2014 (6:00pm PT).
WHY:
MARVELS is a video inspired by floppies and trade paperbacks. Age of Apocalypse, Fables, and Kingdom Come (Alex Ross, not Jay-Z). Incredible Hulk #181 and the Bone Complete Collected Epic.
It’s a love letter to every unsettled “Superman vs. Batman?” argument, small town comic-con, and the bagged and boarded collection still sitting in long boxes in my mom’s basement.MARVELS is a story about a kid who looks up to superheroes, but grows disillusioned. It’s about real supervillains: Cancer. Addiction. Broken relationships. It’s about a young man who learns how to dream again.
MARVELS is not MY story, but OURS: the kids who read, watched, and gamed because we knew, hidden beneath our awkward youth, we were secretly already heroes. The kids who, like the X-Men, Fantastic Four, and Aang, felt trapped in a society confused and scared of what it didn’t understand.
I admit, I was just trying to find some excuse to share this beautiful work out video InvictaFC had made of Mizuki Inoue. If you haven’t had a chance to check this girl out, this video is quite the free sample. What’s ridiculous is that Inoue is being called one of the most technical fighters in MMA and she’s at the *beginning* of her career. If she’s moving this way at 20 years old, it’s crazy to imagine what she will look like as her already strong pro-MMA career unfolds. Tonight, she will be fighting an undefeated Karolina Kowalkiewicz from Poland.
One weekend evening when I was home, I remembered I wanted to see and wound up watching To Be Takei via Comcast On Demand and thoroughly enjoyed the film.
After viewing the documentary, I thought about what a remarkable life Takei has had, experiencing life as a child growing up in a World War II Japanese internment camp, to becoming a breakthrough and iconic Japanese American and Asian American actor (and in the closet) in the 1960s as Lt. Sulu on Star Trek to a human rights and gay activist and coming out of the closet and marrying his longtime partner and now husband Brad to his involvement in the Japanese internment musical Allegiance.
Takei’s impact on Asian Americans and overall popular culture, both from his Star Trek TV series to movie days to his online Facebook followers is pretty amazing, spanning decades. And that is why I *had* to meet Takei earlier this year, when he was in San Francisco supporting Congressman Mike Honda’s bid for re-election.
Now the documentary is available on DVD (as of October 7th – my bad for the late plug!). I imagine that this documentary will be required viewing for all future introductory Asian American studies college courses in the future.
As I had previously blogged, Takei had made a guest appearance on The Daily Show and really made an impression on host Jon Stewart, especially Takei’s time being interned as a child during World War II.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CAC4cH-C-ns
I recently had a random interesting conversation about American holidays with my mom. She was born in Taiwan, raised there, and didn’t immigrate out to America until she was about 30 years old. She told me that out of all the American holidays, she loves Halloween the most.
I was really puzzled by this because she doesn’t really like to eat candy or dress up in costume all that much. She explained to me it was because she was really charmed by how creative Americans get with Halloween and how Americans are able to take everything that is scary and spooky and turn it into cute and fun.
Also, generally, in Chinese and Taiwanese culture, talking about death is taboo. For example, when I had a booth at the Los Angeles Times Festival of Books, they gave me a banner to take home from my booth, and it was white with a black border. That means nothing in America, but for Chinese and Taiwanese, that color scheme is associated with funerals and death, and when I put up the banner in my office, one parent was like “Hmm, maybe not a great idea since it looks like a funeral banner.” It’s like bad luck, like talking about death or representing death in any way would bring it to you and yours.
So for my mom, she was quite tickled by the fact that when Halloween came around, everyone would dress up like ghosts and demons or even “play dead”, which would be really tsk-ed at in Taiwan. She loved the haunted houses, and she said she cracked up particularly when one family had graves lining their front lawn with the names of each family member on tombstones. From her cultural perspective, it was so taboo and unlucky but her neighbors were reveling in it.
Personally, I’ve always enjoyed Halloween, but Christmas is still my favorite holiday.
When I saw the headline, Asian-American Voter Registration Not Matching Population Growth, I wasn’t surprised and of course disappointed. This is one reason why I am motivated to be active in politics – to make-up for my fellow Asian Americans. This is the saddest part of the online article (IMHO):
“Despite the Asian-American population increasing 46 percent between 2000 and 2010, those numbers do not necessarily carry over to the voting booth because a large percentage of adult AAPIs are not US citizens, have limited English proficiency, or are simply not registered to vote. According to Eugene Lee, democracy project director at Advancing Justice – LA, in California alone, there are 1.2 million Asian Americans who are eligible to vote who remain unregistered.”
According to the State of California, there are currently 17.6 million registered voters in the state! Back in the Fall of 2007 when I first attending the first San Mateo County straw poll, I asked, Where are you Asian-American? – since the county was over 20% Asian American, and there were barely any Asian Americans.
If Asian Americans are not active in the community, fulfilling a very basic democratic activity, no wonder why some may consider Asian Americans the ‘perpetual foreigner.’ More importantly, if you complain about the government at the local, state or national level, and don’t vote, you have no right to complain! You might as well be living in a dictatorship rather than a democracy.
http://youtu.be/kqstj5dgenw
Thank you WMMARoundup for this nice little breakdown of Jenny Liou Shriver’s fight with Jamie Moyle this upcoming Invicta FC9 on Saturday Nov 1. As you can tell from this analysis, this is going to be a beast of a fight. I’ve got my fingers crossed that Shriver will get that helicopter armbar, which would be a lovely submission of the year, but I’m just really looking forward to checking out her stand up game!
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‘Fresh off the Boat’ Episode Review: “Clean Slate”
Was Jesus Asian?
Review of Netflix Japan’s “Our Secret Diary”
Why Are Asians Yellow?
