Dumbfoundead: Dissed On the Red Carpet
November 19, 2011
Okay, we can all relax, rapper Dumbfoundead is still a card-carrying member of the 99%. Despite all his recent homegrown success~a new album, a million subscribers on YouTube, sold out shows on both coasts and overseas and major mainstream media coverage~”CNN”‘s Jonathan Park (aka LA Koreatown rap artist Dumbfoundead) found himself being informed on the red carpet by a “angry PR person” that he “wasn’t part of this” at the Nov. 2 L.A. premiere of “A Very Merry Harold and Kumar 3D Christmas.” DFD speculated that his FlipCam wasn’t official enough. The good news is DFD appeared to be well medicated when the incident went down. To be fair, I think John Cho (Harold) just didn’t recognize his dogg Ded. Afterall, Asian bruthas got to stick together, yeah?
UNCENSORED: 2011 Cal State Fullerton Undie Run
May 23, 2011
You know that Asian/Pacific Island American Heritage Month has reached its zenith when TimothyDeLaGhetto aka Traphik aka Tim Chantarangsu drops his CSUF Undie Run vlog. Who is TimothyDeLaGhetto? Duh. He’s the international king of Asian American TouTube clowning who brings much-needed levity to this month-long government-mandated orgy of whorish corporate-backed “festivals,” boring discourse and self-congratulation that “APAHM” is. A true social media wonder, TimothyDeLaGhetto has a bazillion followers of his Internet antics, all conceived from his luxurious crib in his parent’s house in Paramount, Calif. Here are some links to DeLaGhetto’s bad self: YouTube Channel / Tim Chantarangsu Wiki / http://TimothyDeLaGhetto.com
‘Bright Like Light’ DJ Kawasaki feat. Lena Fujii
August 12, 2010
Frank Chin: Don’t Fuck With No-No Boy
April 11, 2010
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YOSH AND NO-NO BOY
A release selling Greg Watanabe as the Clark Gable of 21st Century. Watanabe is playing Kenji in John Okada’s No-No Boy a new play written, set to go places, by Ken Narasaki, and directed by Alberto Isaac. March 27th was the premiere performance. Has it attracted your attention yet?
In the 1957 novel, John Okada took a grim dry subject, made a title of it No-No Boy and wrote the most depressing downbeat plot in a realistic yet entertaining “American” way that settled the nerves of jittery Japanese American readers, that the author was a vet of the war in the Pacific who has “reasons” for writing about a traitorous pariah that refused to fight.
How often do JA theatergoers have to compare the work of (a) JA novel to a new play that has taken on the burden of duplicating the literary effect in theatre? What better test for life in a community, than knowledge about itself? If there’s a community, it will rouse if not rise.
Chasing The White Rabbit
April 2, 2010
Toronto-based illustrators Kei Acedera and Bobby Chiu remember the day they received an e-mail from a Hollywood producer who said she liked their work and wanted to keep track of them. She asked them to fill out some forms for her. One of the questions on the lengthy form was “What is your speciality?” Chiu filled in the blank with “Whimsical and fantastical creatures.” The producer called the next day and asked the pair point blank: “Do you want to work on Tim Burton’s next film Alice in Wonderland?”
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- Imaginism Studios, official blog
- CHIUSTREAM: Drawing, Interviews, News and Art, Blogspot
- Toronto Subway Sketchgroup, Acedera/Chiu
Asia Carrera Planning Porn Comeback?
August 28, 2009
Once, you could count the number of Asian Americans in the adult film industry on the fingers of one sticky hand. The hapa woman who singlehandedly launched an industry-wide pandemic of Yellow Fever in the late-90s, Asia Carrera (nee Jessica Steinhauser) is now a widowed single mother with two children (one developmentally disabled) living in Utah.
Oh, Mister President!
August 26, 2009
San Francisco artist Justine Lai likes to paint herself having sex with Presidents of the United States (in chronological order). Raised in Sacramento, Lai, 24, lives and works in San Francisco.
Writes Lai about her irreverent Join or Die series:
I am interested in humanizing and demythologizing the Presidents by addressing their public legacies and private lives. The presidency itself is a seemingly immortal and impenetrable institution; by inserting myself in its timeline, I attempt to locate something intimate and mortal. I use this intimacy to subvert authority, but it demands that I make myself vulnerable along with the Presidents.
See Justine Lai subverting authority in watercolors, Join or Die. Correspond with the artist: justinelai@gmail.com
Summer Bento
June 29, 2009
via IM.ROHAN.BLOG
The 81st Academy Awards: For Your Consideration From Deep Within the AMPAS Ghetto–The Asian Nominees
February 21, 2009
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WHO KNEW? Back in the mid-’80s, Yojiro Takita was nothing but a soft-core porn hack, but his multilayered Okuribito (Departures), is the first Japanese film in six years to merit a Best Foreign film Oscar nomination. It’s a tough field, but Takita has faced stiff competition before. Lao American director Thavisouk Phrasavath’s Nerakhoon (The Betrayal) follows the hard-scrabble struggles of Lao immigrants in New York and is nominated in the Documentary Feature ‘hood category. In his Documentary Short The Conscience of Nhem En, Japanese American documentarian Steven Okazaki tells the story of a teenager who photographed thousands before they were killed by the Khmer Rouge. Okazaki was Oscarized in 1990 for his short-form doc Days of Waiting. This is the Venice, Calif.-born Okazaki’s fourth nomination. La Maison En Petits Cubes (Tsumiki no Ie/House of Small Cubes) by Robot Cage artist Kunio Kato gets Oscar’s chinky-eyed glance for short animation. Finally, 2009 marks the year Bollywood unleashed a Slumdog Millionaire on Hollywood, uncovering a slew of pennies-on-the-dollar South Asian talent including composer A.R. “Mozart of Madras” Rahman with three nominations and Best Song nods to Urdu poet Galzar (Jai Ho) and (O Saya) from Web 2.0 multimedia Tamil force majeure M.I.A. If form holds, these nominees will all take home bupkes.
Riders On The Storm
February 8, 2009
Thunder, lightning, hail, rain, stimulus packages—we needed a good cleansing. I keep playing Rain by Priscilla Ahn over and over and over.
Kogi BBQ’s Korean Taco Truck
December 3, 2008
You never know where Kogi BBQ’s elusive Korean taco truck will turn up next, but through the miracle of hi-tech it’s trackable on the ‘Net via Twitter. If you’re trying to avoid foreclosure or the ex or El Jéfe Say you’ve been laid off and you’re squatting in an abandoned and foreclosed condo somewhere in L.A. and you need something cheap and good to eat at 2 a.m., you’d be lucky to stumble upon these nomadic Koreano taqueros in some vacant parking lot on Wilshire or on Sunset Blvd. near Ivar, in the Sizzler parking lot (7th & Western) or next to the after-hours snack spot Hodori at the infamous nexus of Olympic and Vermont. Wondrous stuff awaits, like galbi, bulgogi, spicy pork and chicken tacos, binde-dduk (scallion pancakes), pork belly fried rice, breakfast burritos and Red Bull. This is quintessential L.A. dining at street food prices.
Feelin’ Patriotic?
November 8, 2008
The Devil of SHAMISEN plays in Seattle, WA.
There’s a video floating around cyberspace that shows Japanese middle school girls in tears at a live classroom performance of Tegami—Haikei Jugo no Kimi e (Letter: Dear 15-Year-Old You) by composer-singer Angela Aki. Shot by an NHK camera crew, it’s reportedly unstaged and rather moving.
Born in Itano, Tokushima Prefecture, Japan 29 years ago, Aki moved to Honolulu, ironically, at the age of 15 where she attended the Iolani School and later graduated from George Washington Univ. in Washington, D.C., with degrees in political science and music.
Angela, born Kiyomi Aki to a Japanese language school exec and an American mother, has enjoyed international notoriety (and geeky sex symbol status) since 2005 when the bespectacled Tiny Fey lookalike composed and performed the theme song (Kiss Me Good-bye) to the Sony Playstation hit role-playing game Final Fantasy XII
Upon Tegami’s release in mid-September, Japan’s hopelessly wired schoolgirls spread the song’s promo video (PV) and lyrics via text messages and streaming media from Hokkaido to Okinawa and the song shot into Japan’s top five in the blink of an eye energized by an emotional connect only a young girl can parse.
The setup: It’s 2008 and Asia is beset with terrorism, pollution, economic malaise, natural disasters, melamine and an alarming rate of teen suicides. The composer sends a letter of hope from the future to her 15-year-old self, saying that more or less everything’s gonna be chill. Here’s an English translation:
Late Summer Playlist: Slow Beautiful Sex
September 4, 2008
My aural wonts change minute to minute, but this morning I awoke thinking about ’80s art band Fibonaccis’ lead singer Magie Song’s Slow Beautiful Sex and How to Kill a Millionaire. I wonder what the Korean American chanteuse is doing right now.
Slow Beautiful Sex
How to Murder a Millionaire
Vienna Teng: Dreaming Through the Noise
August 26, 2008
Although the three-day festival’s headliners included Radiohead, Beck, Ben Harper, Tom Petty and Cafe Tacvba to name a few, many who attended the Outside Lands Music & Arts Festival in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park this past weekend came away with a common experience—the lyrics and voice of self-described “Taiwanese American” Vienna Teng. Think Joni Mitchell meets Tori Amos in a strong alto. The 30-year-old Saratoga, Calif.-native, armed with a string section and the dreamy poetry of her lyrics, has been on Letterman and is all over XM satellite and now people are starting to remember her name. The geek angle here is that Vienna (aka Cynthia Yih Shih) has a CS degree from Stanford and was a software engineer at Cisco Systems for two years. She began recording her compositions at the studios in Stanford’s Center for Computer Research in Music and Acoustics (CCRMA), intending to distribute her music on campus. Many of these recordings were eventually released in her debut album Waking Hour. I dare you. Use the Snap pop-up to hear Vienna sing The Tower. Then, click around her slideshow to go to an interview.
Sneak Preview: The Cho Show, ‘Korean of the Year’
August 21, 2008
The Cho Show, VH-1′s new reality entry, premiere’s tonight at 11 p.m. Click on the thumbnails below for a sneak preview of the premiere episode. The opener finds Margaret preparing to accept KoreAm magazine’s “Korean of the Year” award with the help of a dwarf assistant, a phalanx of queens, fellow Asian comedians and, of course, her parents, Mr. and Mrs. Cho. I felt a little sad, watching Ms. Cho’s opening night for some reason. Cho panders to the LBGT community while exploiting the Korean American community: a tried and true ghetto formula for showbiz success, and dwarfs are always a plus. For some reason The Cho Show reminded me at lot of American Chopper.
Asian Pacific American Media Coalition Grades Television Network Diversity Progress
October 31, 2007
Linkage:
THE FEED: Grading the Graders: Network TV Diversity Report Cards Get a Failing Grade From Me by Eric Deggans, St. Petersburgh Times
