The Conversation
- “But he hit me back first!” (13)
- Siegfried: If it was a Russian or any other white man who told blacks”to go back to Africa”, it would...
- Raguel: I saw that Spike Lee film “Do the Right Thing” years ago but still can’t understand it.
- bigWOWO: Stele: “Care to qualify that statement? Even if that were true, you have to look at this case on its...
- Two podcasts that address racism in the military, and Danny Chen the person (9)
- Raguel: The origins of racism in the American military as described by loudestfuckingazns is accurate. Very recently,...
- bigWOWO: Sorry, Larry, just noticed that the spam robot junked your comment. Approved!
- bigWOWO: Agreed. It just has more weight if you include your name. Not that the ideas are any less valid, but it just...
- Facebook IPO (5)
- King: Actually WOWO, I bump into plenty of Asians up at the Art Center College of Design http://www.artcenter.edu/a...
- bigWOWO: Agree with King. This might not be a bad thing for Asian Americans to hear about. We can jump off the STEM...
- Raguel: People are too accustomed to thinking about value only in terms of money. Even artists are guilty of it. Some...
- Stop SOPA and PIPA (7)
- Raguel: Found a great website, take a look at this: https://www.cdt.org/ Why should privacy be important, in an age...
- Raguel: Following the temporary shelving of SOPA and PIPA in the long line of net neutrality battles, the feds and...
- Chr..: “Asian American men have to get more involved, not less. It’s a civic responsibility, and you have to...
- Activism is as activism does (10)
- trolldetector: Brooks also goes onto say ‘You should attach yourself to a counter-tradition and school of...
- bigWOWO: By the way, speaking of activism, there was a great David Brooks column recently. He talks about how people...
- Raguel: I have no experience whatsoever with activism. I simply do not feel safe participating in it. There is always...
- How to Win a Streetfight (18)
- bigWOWO: No worries. I feel the same way. Nothing against her, but just doubtful.
- Raguel: Hi Byron! I’ve been occupied doing a lot of reading and thinking recently. I suppose its just another...
- bigWOWO: Hey Raguel, What about your comments on ASSK?
I agree with everything you said. About #1…I think...
- What Cultures Value (19)
- UFC 117 Sonnen vs. Silva Recap (1)
- bigWOWO: I think Michael Bisping solved the Chael Sonnen puzzle today, even though he lost a controversial decision....
- 6 on 1 Beatdown of Asian Man (36)
- King: “I mean I look around me and 99% of the time there are no women that look like or dress like Adriana Lima...
- SWR: Apparently the girl in the second video was not the girl who filmed the fight. It was probably unwise of her to...
- Raguel: I mean I look around me and 99% of the time there are no women that look like or dress like Adriana Lima in...
- Selfish Reasons To Have More Kids by Bryan Caplan (Review) (6)
- bigWOWO: Jeff, You called it! They were (if I recall correctly) 7 (twins) and 2. He’s still in the honeymoon...
- jeffat8asians: “Overpaying?” With the possible exception of college tuition (and even that is arguable),...
- Hitler: Kids suck lol.
- The Asian Rock Thread (16)
- ben: I’ve been getting into Asian rock music recently so thank you all very much for uploading all these videos.
- Simple Pickup on ABC News (132)
- Tommy: I think I’m coming here more for Moro’s comments than BigWoWO’s posts.
- Moroboshi: I didn’t say that. All I said was guys who believe in HBD are the same guys who probably also follow...
- Chr..: Moro, I don’t want to argue with you anymore! You seem to think that AMs are just as popular as other...
- “Lazy” Americans and the Decline of the American Middle Class (6)
- bigWOWO: But kobu, how can we have literature and art without money to support artists and writers? About...
- kobukson: I don’t know why everyone seems to think the notion of the decline of the middle class is such a bad...
- bigWOWO: There are a lot of veterans (supposedly) on that site. I can kind of understand it–military guys are...
- Aung Sung Suu Kyi Movie with Michelle Yeoh (45)
- bigWOWO: Eurasian, Lee Kuan Yew has always been upfront about Singapore’s hybrid system. To the best of my...
- Eurasian Sensation: @ BigWowo: New governments following independence or a major power struggle often have the sort...
- N: @bww And ironically, one of the rare democratic successes in the region that is Singapore behaves much closer to a...
- Paper Pushers by the Stunt People (4)
- Andre M. Smith: I divide my year annually between New York and Shanghai. One of my common visitations in the latter...
- Raguel: Smiley tests 8 )
8( - Raguel: ROFL! Thank you for thoroughly destroying Amy Chua, Andre. WELL SAID ^_^ You know the destruction is so...
- Amy Chua: Chinese Conceit, Chinese Ignorance, and the $24,000 question (245)
- Andre M. Smith: I believe some useful purpose will be served by offering here, what the lawyers might like to call,...
- N: What’s your opinion on Yundi Li and Yoyo Ma.
- Andre M. Smith: Amy Chua has never lived in China. Her understanding of its culture, that is, the culture as it’s...
- How to Finish Life With No Regrets (9)
- trolldetector: ^ i’d agree with that. but i wouldnt call them ‘idiots’, just misguided. crazy media...
- N: Agree with Jeff that not one regret is unlikely, the key is learn from it. Another way to look at it is that...
- American Jobs and India (14)
- lingyai: I am not sure what happen there with my name, that is not my email, so just ignore.
- lingyai@hotmail.com: @bigwowo Just because the average income in India is $2 a day doesn’t make a person...
- AM/AF couple: Nottyboy, Yes, just like every place of employment, upper management needs to do a better job in terms...
- Literary Fiction vs. Realistic Fiction and the Literary Hierarchy (6)
- Sana Rose: Well, now I am confused. I still can’t classify the novel I am writing.
I wouldn’t say...
- Sana Rose: Well, now I am confused. I still can’t classify the novel I am writing.
- National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) 2012 (32)
- Raguel: http://www.occupydream.org/ ^ I heard about this from Russell Simmons. I hope that things develop well to...
- Raguel: So is that the reasoning for why you don’t need the right to due process? Are you some kind of fucking...
- N: @King The constitution gave power to the states to benefit white america or the constitution gave benefitial power...
- When Your Fan Base is Full of Crazy People (24)
- N: @American girl Too be honest, I don’t really see why this video that ‘disgusting’ –...
- Mitt Romney and the Problem of Wealth (6)
- Raguel: Where do people get their information and knowledge from, though? Media, and education, word of mouth only...
- “But he hit me back first!” (13)
Tag Archives: Arts and music
The Two Percent Solution and Building Asian American Arts
Fellow blogger and newspaper columnist Jeff Yang has an interesting article in the SF Chron: Looking for a “Hangover’ Cure. He writes about The Hangover 2, Ken Jeong, Asian stereotypes, and the dismal state of Asian American cinema and how hard it is to make a living making Asian American films. He writes about how we need Asian Americans to support Asian American art. He links Justin Lin’s YOMYOMF essay on how he’s lost money on Asian American films, as well as Oliver Wang’s Two Percent Project, which Jeff Yang describes as follows:
Duwende: A Capella Group
Happy Monday!
I’ve been meaning to post this for a while. I found out via Facebook that a friend from my high school years is part of a 6 person a capella group called Duwende. Check out their video above to see their rendition of Michael Jackson’s “Rock With You.” I like how each person’s voice becomes an instrument and has its own role in the harmony.
It’s a bit early for the holiday season, but I also like their rendition of “All I Want for Christmas.”
Asian Parents and the Arts
Thanks, NH, for this excellent monologue by Randall Park, where he comically tells the story about how he told his parents he wanted to be an actor, as opposed to one of the more typical Asian careers. I think most Asian parents support their kids in the arts, but few encourage it. (Yes, some Asian parents wage abusive campaigns against their own children to make them do what is socially more beneficial for themselves, and I’ve seen these sorry assholes succeed in fucking up their children, but I do think they are still a tiny little minority).
Posted in Asian American, parenting, Strategy
Tagged Arts and music, Ocean Vuong, Randall Kim
18 Comments
Teaching, Learning, Promoting through the Internet
I use the web every day, but I’m only beginning to learn how powerful it can be. See the video above, where Jane Lui plays a solid original tune. Pretty hard jazz chords, no? Well, you can learn to play Jane’s original tune–from Jane herself. See below:
If you liked Marie Digby’s song in my Marie Digby post, you can also learn to play it from the songwriter herself (at 1:50):
Posted in media
Tagged Arts and music, Asian American, internet, Jane Lui, Marie Digby, media, talent, youtube
10 Comments
Meiko?
You know how YouTube links up related videos? Well, with my post on Marie Digby, the above video came up. I clicked it and thought, “Hey, I’ve heard this song before on the radio. But why is that White chick named Meiko?” So I google searched it, and Wiki had an interesting story:
Meiko is one-quarter Japanese, on her maternal grandmother’s side; in an attempt to get in touch with their Japanese heritage, she and her sister, designer Kelly Nishimoto, adopted the names Meiko and Keiko. While those names are pronounced “May-ee-ko” and “Kay-ee-ko” in Japan, she and her sister pronounce them “MEE-ko” and “KEE-ko”. “We didn’t know we were misspelling/mispronouncing them for quite some time,” Meiko remembers. “We didn’t have the heart to change the spelling.”
The Youtube Path to Greatness
I’d heard of Marie Digby on all the Asian American sites before (she’s half Japanese according to Wiki), but I only checked out her videos after reading Guerilla Publicity by Jay Conrad Levinson et al. In GP, the authors mention how Digby publicized her original videos by posting her cover songs and picking up fans from people who were googling the covers. It was a brilliant strategy, and seeing how successful she has become, it clearly worked. Not only did she pick up many fans, and not only did her success afford her radio and TV coverage, but now I can’t get that “Say It Again” song out of my head.
Yesterday Once More
No real post today because I’m working on a big project that is coming out in the next week or so ( that I hope you all will help me with), but I saw the video above, and I couldn’t help but laugh. They look like they’re having so much fun! Ignore the racist comments on the video; I think it’s great that people can have fun with a foreign song like this. And even though that dude is a bit intense, he probably sounds better than I do when I go to Asian karaoke.
The End of Superstardom
There’s an article in the Times today about Michael Jackson, and how no one will ever be as big as Michael again. The article presents an interesting historical look at some other big names in the show biz. According to the author, we have too many choices for any single star to capture an entire public’s imagination as people did back in the day.
Many pundits have presented this same view. I agree with them. We only have one President of the United States, so Obama was able to capture our attention, but for artists and others, there are just too many choices and options competing for our attention. David Brooks wrote a column about this a while back, where he talked about about how we all listen to different music these days.
Starving Artists
The NY Times has a “project” that encourages people to share their stories about living in this recession. I haven’t looked through the whole thing, but see it here. Today, they had a piece on how artists are living through the recession.
It’s funny how art and money always seem to go together. On this blog, we have writers, actors, and filmmakers. Wherever and whomever you’re speaking with, it’s always the same: artists always complain about being broke, and money causes constant tension. I think almost all artists feel broke, except, of course, those who went to law school. Shoulda, coulda, woulda. Oi.
Birds of a Feather?
From the days of yore
(pic from here)
What I love most about the web is the fact that it enables people to communicate with each other. I’ve sent and received e-mails from top NY Times columnists, as well as random people in places as distant as Korea and the UK. The internet knows few boundaries of social class or place. The net has also enabled us to see a lot of the world, much of which we would not see without it. Case in point is this post by the good people at Bicoastal Bitchin’. They saw a piece of Orientalist nonsense playing at a local theater, and they did what red blooded young Asian American bloggers do–they called the Orientalists out. It’s evident from that show’s trailer that it’s just an Asian version of Step’n Fetchit where the white guy saves the day and rises above the comical colored minorities.
Posted in Activism
Tagged Activism, Arts and music, Asian American, Martial arts, media, Rice Chasah
113 Comments
