Category Archives: Uncategorized

I finally found the title field on my post! Why wasn’t it there before? Wouldn’t you think that they would put the title field here by default? And, Hallelujah is an amazing song – and even more amazing when Brandi Carlile covers it. Have you heard the original version? The original version is highly dubious. Jeff Buckley pioneered the *real* Hallelujah.

I’m acting CEO of COPE. Well, not really. That’s the joke. Really, I’m babysitting the office while everyone is at Lake Arrowhead for COPE University. I was only acting CEO once – and that time I could say I was because I had COPE’s “nuclear football” – all the passwords and keys and access to everything. You’d think it would come with a rush of thrill, but in actuality, it was really anti-climatic. I sat in a Pizza Hut for an hour waiting for our CEO to drop by on his way to the airport. The breadsticks were really good.

Traffic does not look promising. My office overlooks the 101 at the 101/10 interchange. It’s gridlocked right now. Wonderful. The good news is, I have “Class Action” on Books on Tape (but it’s not really on tape, it’s on a CD). The other good news is my 8pm meeting in Ventura County was canceled. The bad news is, I have very little padding on my tush for long drives.

Have you ever thought about how self-centered a blog is? I mean, no one is probably ever going to read this but me, yet I’m still sitting here writing. Might be a product of boredom. Ok, I’m going to kick people out of the office now. And eat the rest of my left-over Fatburger.

I was going to write a rant about calling in for bank service. I wrote about a paragraph and realized that it was pretty mean. So I’m not going to post it.

Written March 2002 for Owen’s online newsletter….. the website this was originally published on has gone defunct, and I didn’t want to lose it. So, here it is.

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The Academy made history the other night when African American actress Halle Berry was given the award for Best Performance by an Actress in a Leading Role at the annual Academy Awards in Southern California.

Further history was made when Denzel Washington clenched the title of Best Actor, beating out Australian Russell Crowe, star of Best Picture A Beautiful Mind.

Similarly, the night’s MC was Whoopi Goldberg, while Sidney Poitier received an Honorary Award “for his extraordinary performances and unique presence on the screen, and for representing the motion picture industry with dignity, style and intelligence throughout the world.”

As a matter of fact, the recipient of the Jean Hersholt Humanitarian Award, Arthur Hiller, was awarded for his perpetuation of diversity and equality in color, race, and religion in the industry. It’s no wonder Whoopi made mentions of how the doors are opening for minorities and people of color in the film industry. However, I have to ask – where is the yellow?

Sure, the success of the African American community is encouraging to the Asian Americans in the industry, but the fact still stands that Asian Americans, till this day, have still not been able to walk through this opening door. Asian Americans, especially at this last Oscars, are virtually invisible in Hollywood, and when they are, they are usually portrayed in a very stereotypical way. Very rarely, if ever, has an Asian American, especially Asian American men, been placed in a leading role in a movie that has nothing to do with Asian or Asian America.

However, there is hope, especially in the area of television.

Asian American actors like Garrett Wang and Lucy Liu have started to play parts that do not perpetuate Asian American stereotypes, speaking in perfect American English. Furthermore, Better Luck Tomorrow, a film by Justin Lin slated to open in mainstream theatres, portrays Asian American high school students in a different light than has been previously seen. This is a movie that is almost fully Asian American – Asian American cast, director, storyline…no more accents, no more Model Minority Myth, no more stereotypes, hopefully. Then hopefully, sometime in the near future, we will be able to see an Asian or Asian American actor or actress at the Oscars receiving an award for Best Performance.

And, if we’re lucky, Margaret Cho will undertake the daunting task of hosting the Academy Awards as well. Wouldn’t that be something?

With the madness of the election going on now, I wanted to add an anecdotal comment on something I saw. Facebook stalking some of my friends the other day, I ran across one of my friends, an Obama supporter, with this on his site:

I’m an Obama supporter, and would probably vote for a Republican before I vote for Hillary (well, maybe not – that’s still up in the air), but I find that this is one of the very few, rare displays of offensiveness that I have seen from Obama supporters. One of the things that has struck me about this primary race is how nasty Hillary supporters tend to be (possibly reflected by how much mudslinging Hillary is doing in comparison to Obama), and how classy Obama supporters tend to be (again, that might be media spin media spin media spin, but in my personal experience in talking to people, Obama supporters tend to expound on how great Obama is, while Hillary supporters, rather than emphasizing how great Hillary is, tend to say negative things about Obama. It’s a campaign built on bringing the opposition down, rather than building the candidate they want to support – Hillary – up).

But as a woman, frankly, I’m offended by the blatant sexism this sticker portrays, as well as the underlying racism the word “bro” evokes. The slang term “bro” traditionally means a black soldier. Interesting, no?

And don’t get me started about the degrading term “Ho”. I don’t think that dignifies any explanation.

The Abercrombie and Fitch article I wrote for Owen’s online newspaper in 2002…

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I’m sure you have all heard of the Abercrombie and Fitch shirts that poked fun of Asians. I’m not sure if all of you heard that A&F said that they have pulled the shirts off their shelves, nor the fact that people have found three stores in this area that were still selling the shirts as of a few days ago.

Just some tidbits of information before I hit my main point.

Well, actually, there isn’t really a main point, just a few things to think about before we get all hot-headed and dive into an irrational call-to-arms, mobilizing the front line of the Asian and Asian American community in America against the tyrant that is known as Abercrombie and Fitch.

Yes, the shirts were offensive. They were very offensive. Especially the “Two Wongs make a White” one. And yes, we were right to speak up against it.

But seriously, folks. Enough’s enough. After A&F had agreed to pull the shirts off the shelves, I was still getting 5 emails a day about them. Thanks to our voicing our opinions, A&F has heard the Asian American view on these shirts. And they have conceded to our requests for the shirts to be pulled. That in itself can be considered a small victory for the Asian American community.

Abercrombie was wrong to assume that they could poke fun at Asians and get away with it without creating an uprising of sorts, as we have seen. The problem here is that this is an Anglo-American company making products for an Anglo-American target consumer pool. Think about it this way. Would we still find the shirts offensive if they were made by an Asian or Asian American company for Asians? Probably not. As a matter of fact, to do that would probably be very powerful in breaking these stereotypes. For Asians and Asian Americans to perpetuate these stereotypes simply makes these stereotypes look like the ridiculous inventions of society that they are, however true their origins may be.

What’s my point? I really don’t have one. Frankly, if I were still in high school, I would probably have a good laugh over them with my friends and forget all about it. But because I am now “educated” as a college student, I do feel that these shirts are offensive and I did make my voice known as well. Furthermore, there were petitions and whatnot circulating campus immediately after the shirts were on the shelf. It’s not as if we are laying around passively, seeing A&F exploit our race and community. However, on the other hand, I don’t feel we have to be overly vocal about it as well. We should show A&F our views by our actions, not our words. Teddy Roosevelt said “Walk softly and carry a big stick.” In this case, I prefer to talk softly as well.

A new blog, since xanga is so bad at keeping up with stuff.

Current obsession: DDR – YES!