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
Are high-achieving Asian American students “a cabal of brainiacs trying to steal all the academic glory from their non-Asian competitors” or are they simply industrious and energetic American teenagers trying to be like their equally achievement-oriented white classmates? Harvard senior Jenny Tsai looked at the myths, the facts and what Asian American students themselves think in her senior social science thesis: “Too Many Asian at this School: Racialized Perceptions and Identity Formations” that has attracted the attention of the mainstream media as well as inquisitive Asian Americans around the country.
Do some winter break extra credit. Read Washington Post education reporter Jay Mathews’ Class Struggle columnization of Tsai’s study and Asian American student stereotypes here or download and read Ms. Tsai’s thesis in its entirety here.
NBA Rookie Jeremy Lin’s Preseason Highlight Reel
July 26, 2010
Kina Grannis Talks About Her New Album, Stairwells
March 15, 2010
- Hear three songs from Stairwells, life:and:limb
- Official Web Site, kinagrannis.com
- The Kina Grannis Page, Wikipedia
The Saints’ Japanese-American X-Factor in Super Bowl XLIV
February 7, 2010
- [Update] Whodat? Saints 31, Colts 17. Read Scott Fujita’s Super Bowl diary on NOLA.com
 |
 |
MIAMI—The New Orleans Saints will be packing a Japanese-American double whammy for the Indianapolis Colts Sunday when they face off in Super Bowl XLIV. The unlikely duopoly consists of the speedy, 6-5, 255 lb. strong-side linebacker Scott Fujita and front office marvel James Nagaoka, a guy who doesn’t even have to don a jock and pads to make his team a winner.
A UC Berkeley political science grad with a master’s in education, the inspirational Fujita has done much to rehabilitate the image of the professional athlete by taking some courageous stands on hotly debated social issues, such as abortion rights and gay marriage. While most ballers’ quotes are monosyllabic, Fujita’s are nuanced and articulate.
Given up for adoption by his 16-year-old birth mother when he was six weeks old, Fujita was adopted by third-generation Japanese American schoolteacher Rodney Fujita and his wife Helen, a Caucasian.
Though not Japanese American by blood, Fujita received a typical Japanese American upbringing (with all the trappings) in Oxnard, Calif., considers himself Japanese culturally and says the strongest person he knows is his tiny grandmother Lillie Fujita, who was imprisoned in a concentration camp by the U.S. government during World War II.
♣ ♣ ♥
But the Saints’ real secret weapon just may be the team’s incredibly resourceful director of operations James Kuniki Nagaoka, 60, who orchestrates where his players eat, sleep, travel, work out and practice with the exacting logistical skill of a four-star general. He runs the show that is Saints’ football.
An NFL veteran of 31 seasons, Nagaoka excels at giving the Saints the winning edge of preparation, especially on the road, where the season can be won or lost, through hurricanes Katrina and Gustav and the media conflagration that is the Super Bowl.
A graduate of the University of Washington with degrees in communications and Japanese literature, Nagaoka was lured away in 2000 from the Seattle Seahawks franchise for whom he handled a myriad of logistical duties for 22 seasons. The unflappable operations chief may prove to be the difference on Super Bowl Sunday.
- NFL Stats: Scott Fujita, NFL.com
- The Saints Linebacker Who Speaks His Mind, NYT
- A Linebacker With a Conscience, ESPN
- Scott Fujita: Family Valued, The Times-Picayune
- Fast Facts: Jaclyn Fujita (Scott’s Wife), playerswives.com
- Curriculum Vitae: James K. Nagaoka, Spoke
Niggaz4Lyfe: UCLA’s Norm Chow and Randall Carroll
October 27, 2009
My first reaction to the story broken Saturday by Chris Foster, L.A. Times‘ UCLA beat reporter, about freshman wide receiver Randall Carroll using a racial epithet in reference to offensive coordinator Norm Chow was “Gee, I hope he got his slurs right.” You know, I thought that maybe Carroll, the highly recruited L.A. Cathedral High star, called Chow a Jap or Gook. Chow, of course, is a Chinese American (or Chink). But the Times didn’t print what the alleged epithet was leaving Southern California sports fans (and racists) hanging.
My curiosity demanded that I pin down fo’ sho’ what the dis be, and after some due diligence came up with a screen grab of a cached version of @OCiAM’s (Carroll’s Twitter ID) “racial epithet” as posted on Twitter Oct. 22 (below) to high school running back Dietrich Riley. Either school officials or Carroll had tried to erase the tweet by closing his Twitter account, but we have our ways. Check it out.
Sounds more like a frustrated 18-year-old who wants the muthafuckin’ ball more to me. But I ain’t mad at cha. Everyone’s forgiven… even Chris Foster for filing such a thin, poorly sourced story in his lame effort to expose dissension in the ranks of Coach Rick Neuheisel’s squad.
But hold up, cuz. Yeah, I checked reporter Foster’s @cfosterlattimes Twitter account too. Foster tweets about the Chow-Carroll piece four times. The first two hype the Web-sourced piece. But in the final two Foster be frontin’ to cover his messy ass, linking to a sorry revised version of the story that includes somewhat exculpatory comments from Randall not used in the original article.
Then before beddy-bye, Foster, with an eye toward damage control, tweets: “Everyone seems fixated on the ‘racial’ term Carroll used to describe Chow (check most hip hop songs to hear it).”
Well, @cfosterlatimes, when the headline reads: “Tweet from UCLA player’s account uses racial epithet for Norm Chow.” readers will tend to “fixate” on the “racial term.”
Filipino American Shane Victorino used his power and speed to crush the hopes of the L.A. Dodgers and propel the Philadelphia Phillies into their second consecutive MLB World Series Wednesday. The 28-year-old Maui, Hawaii native and son of Maui County Councilman Michael P. Victorino, always seems to play his best against the Dodgers, the team that originally drafted him out of high school in 1999.
With a World Series appearance last year, an All Star selection and a Gold Glove, Victorino was a track star at Maui’s St. Anthony High School and once held the state record in the 100-meter dash.
Victorino is the 27th native Hawaiian and second Maui-born player to take the field in a regular season MLB game. He is today arguably the finest Asian Pacific American player to ever play in the major leagues. He is half Portugese and half Filipino.
Kim Jong-il Follows Beckham on Facebook?
September 14, 2009
PYONGYANG, DPRK.—North Korea’s Dear Leader Kim Jong-il reportedly was enraged when he saw a photo of L.A. Galaxy soccer star David Beckham posing with journalists Laura Ling and Euna Lee after Kim had pardoned them just three weeks earlier, according to Asian News International.
Sources deep within the Hermit Kingdom say the 68-year-old Kim is now intent on defeating Beckham and the English team if his North Korean national squad should meet them in next year’s World Cup and has promised his players cash bonuses and a party to end all parties if they beat the Brits.
- Becks Incurs Wrath of NKorea’s Kim Jong-il, Gaea Times
- David Beckham: He’s No Bill Clinton, but… Eonline
- NKorea Prepping 3rd Nuke Test, AFP
Somehow, It’s Always the Fixer Who Dies
September 10, 2009
News item:
KUNDUZ, Afghanistan (Reuters) – NATO troops freed a kidnapped British reporter for the New York Times in northern Afghanistan on Wednesday, but his Afghan colleague, a British soldier and at least one civilian were killed in the rescue. Times reporters Stephen Farrell and Mohammad Sultan Munadi were abducted while attempting to visit the scene of a NATO air strike that killed scores of Afghans in the north of the country.
When a journalist doesn’t fit in racially, when he/she doesn’t speak the language, know the culture or lay of the land, they turn to fixers—streetwise and resourceful locals with the willingness to serve as a tool for a tool. Sultan 
Munadi was such a fixer. His death yesterday has driven some to ponder the risks taken by these indispensable on-the-scene facilitators, these willing assets on the ground who often face the wrath of their own people and meet violent ends to help foreign journalists get their stories. The fixer parses the story and does prep and all the legwork, and the so-called journalist gets the credit.
David Rohde, a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times correspondent held captive for seven months in Afghanistan by the Taliban, eulogized Munadi as a “gentle stalwart.”
Wrote Rohde: “The death of Mr. Munadi illustrated two grim truths of the war in Afghanistan: vastly more Afghans than foreigners have died battling the Taliban, and foreign journalists are only as good as the Afghan reporters who work with them.”
George Packer, an essayist for the New Yorker and a critic of the opposition to the Iraq War by the “doctrinaire left,” describes his feeling after learning of Munadi’s death and Farrell’s rescue as “a sinking sense of unsurprise.”
“They serve as our walking history books, political analysts,” writes Times correspondent Barry Bearak, “managers of logistics, taking equal the risks without equal the glory or pay.”
- It’s Always the Fixer Who Dies, George Packer, The New Yorker
- Sultan Munadi: A Gentle Stalwart, David Rohde, The New York Times
- Hell? No, I Won’t Go, Sultan M. Munadi, The New York Times
via Xeni Jardin, boingboing
Peggy Wang: Buzzfeed Editor, Geek Queen
September 5, 2009
- Today’s Web Crush—Peggy Wang: Blogger, Musician, asylum.com
- Peggy Loves Goatse, Buzzfeed
Reader Reaction to Ling-Lee Op-Ed Mixed
September 2, 2009
Reaction is mixed to the Op-Ed article by Current TV journalists Euna Lee and Laura Ling which detailed events leading to their 140-day imprisonment in North Korea, with readers leaving many comments critical of the reporters’ actions on the Los Angeles Times and Current TV websites.
Anatomy of An International Incident: Reporters Issue Account of Events Leading to NKorean Imprisonment
September 2, 2009
Nearly a month after their release from North Korean custody, Current TV reporters Euna Lee and Laura Ling issued their first public account of events that led to their 140-day custody in North Korea. A sometimes rambling 1900-word, co-bylined story appeared first on the Los Angeles Times and Current TV websites Tuesday evening and later in the Opinion section of the Wednesday edition of the Times and other publications.
The biggest revelation in the piece is that Lee and Ling say that after briefly entering North Korea, they had run back across the Chinese border and were “violently dragged” back to North Korea by border guards. The article also responds to criticism of their journalistic professionalism and ethics.
In their Op-Ed piece, Lee and Ling wrote:
- They willingly followed a Korean-Chinese guide across the frozen Tumen River into North Korea.
- They spent less than a minute in North Korea and were headed back to China when they encountered armed North Korean border guards.
- “We were firmly back inside China when the soldiers apprehended us. Producer Mitch Koss and our guide were both able to outrun the border guards.”
- Their guide seemed “cautious and responsible.”
- Lee and Ling say they were surprised that their main contact Rev. Chun Ki-won spoke with reporters after their arrest.
- “Chun claimed that he had warned us not to go to the river,” but Lee and Ling say “he never suggested we shouldn’t go.”
- “We carefully followed Chun’s directions so as to not endanger anyone in this underground world.”
- Lee and Ling tried to swallow their notes and destroy their videotapes.
- They underwent rigorous, daily interrogations.
- Lee and Ling say the Op-Ed piece is “all we are prepared to talk about — the psychological wounds of imprisonment are slow to heal.”
- Lee is now listed as a producer for Current TV’s elite Vanguard Journalism unit. Ling is vice president of Vanguard.
Read Hostages of the Hermit Kingdom by Euna Lee and Laura Ling.
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.
Unedited Video of Euna Lee-Laura Ling Homecoming
August 6, 2009
The kids from the Somalian Pirate Video team were calling the Epicanthus hotline all day yesterday saying they had scored on the best unedited, raw video of the Euna Lee-Laura Ling pre-dawn homecoming at Bob Hope Airport Wednesday. A CNN iReporter who goes by the name “Pixel” managed to embed herself in the hangar where gleaming white and chrome Boeing 737 carrying former U.S. President Bill Clinton, Lee and Ling taxied to a stop after its 5900-mile flight from North Korea. Watch.
By now, you all have seen edited network TV coverage of the Lee-Ling homecoming, but Pixel’s video is far more compelling. And, anyway, from the beginning Euna and Laura’s Most Excellent Adventure has been marked by a filtered flow of information, and frankly we’ve grown weary of all the carefully worded statements, cartoonish characterizations by media talking heads and withheld facts. That’s why we think Pixel’s stuff is so powerful… and refreshing.
Arrival
About 30 seconds in, Pixel’s camera picks up audio from an excited Japanese reporter’s feed. A frail-looking Euna Lee is the first to emerge from the angelic 737. She seems stunned by the crowd and applause and does what’s natural to her—she bows. You can hear a woman’s voice (Pixel’s?) pointing out that Laura Ling’s husband Iain Clayton is constantly wringing his hands as he waits the last few seconds before being reunited with his wife. (The 140-day-long ordeal seems to have affected Clayton more than anyone. The quiet and measured Beverly Hills financial analyst appears drawn and depleted.)
An Emotional Laura Ling
Bill Clinton solidifies his place in history as modern folk hero and rock star stud. Clinton’s former White House chief of staff John Podesta is the skinny dude in the dark suit on the far right. Tough-looking old guy in the short pants is the father of Michael Saldate, Euna’s husband. Everyone knows who Hana is. Joel Hyatt, the other Current TV exec on hand, stayed out of the shot frame left. Of note is that Current/Vanguard producer Mitchell Koss, who eluded capture that day in North Korea, was not seen at the airport homecoming.
Al Gore Speaks!
Mary Ling can’t keep her hands off daughter Laura. Gore mentions she’s been making a special soup to sooth Laura’s ulcer. (Mary Ling’s 24/7 efforts to win her daughter’s freedom is one of the yet untold stories of the entire incident.) Little Hana Saldate, four, reaches for mommy’s hand. Hangar homecoming ends with beautiful sunrise.
H/T Pixel (Don’t sue us, baby)
Freed Journalists’ Emotional Homecoming
August 5, 2009
Unedited video of press conference in the frontyard of Laura Ling and Iain Clayton’s home in Studio City Aug. 5 from Mekhalo Medina’s KNBC NewsRaw site. WATCH.
“LING LING” & “WEE WEE”?—Convicted Watergate burglar G. Gordon Liddy knows a thing or two about being in prison. The Radio America talk show host is heard here announcing the news of Euna Lee and Laura Ling’s arrival at Bob Hope Airport in Burbank on Aug. 5 LISTEN.
h/t Disgrasian
A Statement From the Freed Journalists’ Families
August 4, 2009
The families of Laura Ling and Euna Lee are overjoyed by the news of their pardon. We are so grateful to our government: President Obama, Secretary Clinton and the U.S. State Department for their dedication to and hard work on behalf of American citizens.
We especially want to thank President Bill Clinton for taking on such an arduous mission and Vice President Al Gore for his tireless efforts to bring Laura and Euna home. We must also thank all the people who have supported our families through this ordeal, it has meant the world to us. We are counting the seconds to hold Laura and Euna in our arms.
—The Lee and Ling Families
SEOUL, Aug. 4 (Yonhap) — Former U.S. President Bill Clinton is believed to have arrived in Pyongyang Tuesday, diplomatic sources in Seoul said, to meet with North Korean officials to secure the release of two detained American journalists.
“We’re aware that an aircraft from the U.S. landed at the Sunan Airport in Pyongyang at around 10:48 a.m.,” an official said on condition of anonymity. (Editor’s note: Korea Time is 19 hours ahead of EST.)
[Read the complete Yonhap News Agency report here]
- NKorea Confirms Clinton Arrival in Pyongyang, KCNA
- Bill Clinton in North Korea to Discuss U.S. Journalists, Reuters
- Clinton’s Standing As Statesman Carried Weight With NKoreans, L.A. Times
- Ex-President Clinton Visits North Korea, Korean Broadcasting System (KBS)
Asian American Media Musical Chairs
July 23, 2009
 |
 |
 |
A Pulitzer Prize-winning newspaper reporter made the leap from print to online journalism, UsWeekly’s gossip queen called it quits and the Asian American Journalists Association soft-played a staff shake-up this week. [Read More]
- Huffington Post Nabs WaPo Rising Star, Mediabistro
- A Lot of “The’s”: Jose Antonio Vargas Leaves The Washington Post for The Huffington Post, The New York Times
- Arianna Huffington Seduces Young Journalist Over Internet, Valleywag
- Filipino Reporter Wins Pulitzer, New America Media
- Janice Min Helped Us Weekly Feed a Hunger for Celebrity, L.A. Times
- Janice Min’s Mysterious Future, Gawker
- Janice Min’s Farewell to Us Weekly Staff, AllieIsWired.Com
- AAJA Names New Interim Executive Director, AAJA
- “Officially it was a mutual decision” that she leave, Maynard Institute
- AAJA National President Sharon Chan, blog
