You are currently browsing the archives for September 2009.
When I was in Orange County this past weekend, I was lured by the nostalgic glow of the local Dairy Queen with its cheerful, iconic red sign and had the soft serve chocolate dipped cone which triggered all my happy childhood food memories. I was surprised at how much I enjoyed this little piece of fake vanilla and chocolate heaven. I generally prefer natural or organic food – the taste is often so much purer, fresher, and just better. And for a long time, I merely tolerated fast or packaged food as something to stave off hunger when trapped in hermetically sealed environments like the airplane, office buildings, and shopping malls. But there was something magical about this dessert. The vanilla soft serve melts in your mouth like a marshmallow cloud. The chocolate shell tastes nothing like grown-up, antioxidant rich, high percentage cacao content chocolate but instead, evokes the taste of “kiddie” chocolate – a cold-fusion of cocoa and partially hydrogenated vegetable oil that graces treats from Eskimo Pie to Klondike Bars. This was the kind of blissful sensory and taste combination that nature just can’t invent. Read more...
It may be hard to believe but I wasn’t always the cool and hip dude I am now. Believe it or not, I had awkward moments growing up and made my fair share of bad calls. So to help show that anyone can leave the shackles of pathetic-ness behind, occasionally I’ll post random excerpts from my journal so you can see how far I’ve come. Read more...
Got some words of wisdom from a veteran actor today. We were talking about work ethic and ego as actors. 30 years has taught him the most important thing an actor can do is to be liked by his coworkers. Seems like common sense. But unfortunately insecurities, ego, and a whole lot of other b.s causes some actors to come off as immature high school pricks. At times I find myself a victim of my own insecurities and ego. Most of the time it causes my perspective to become warped and destructive. For example I recently auditioned for a role. I got notes back that the Producers weren’t sold on me. Right away I took this as a failure on my part. A rejection. I am not liked! I have no talent! But wait a minute. Why am I thinking this? Funny how my whole life I work to be happy and secure with who I am and with five words ” not sold on you yet” my world crumbles and I feel like I should just jump off a bridge. But why do I give these words so much credit? I guess I care… or maybe I’m just insecure. Or… wait a minute! What it comes down to after reading what I just wrote is… THICK SKIN is a must. Pretty simple, but it took me close to 226 words to figure it out. So the question is… what do you do to figure things out and get your head straight? I just discovered mine… blogging!
Mine is not a big hit with people. My friend Calvin made it up, and I’ve always liked it. It’s my go-to b/c I can’t REMEMBER any others. Also, I’m such a horrible joke-teller that quick & short is the only kind I can make it out alive with. The only other joke I know is a sexist one about women.
Here tis:
What is red and invisible?
No tomato!
Hm. looks less funny in print. better when Calvin says it .. ..
Angora rabbits. How come I didn’t know these existed until today? Where have these photos been all my life?
Sometimes I wish I had been born gay or a straight chick (well, actually being a bi-chick might be more enjoyable) so I could be attracted to men. I get guys. I get what they want. I get what they are. Life would be so much simpler. As Roger hinted in his post yesterday, we’re a lot simpler than our female counterparts. Unfortunately, God has dealt me a rotten hand by making me heterosexual, but I can fantasize, right? So if I were forced to pick ten guys I’d do, the following would be it. Read more...
I often get asked what my favorite movie is. It’s a hard question to answer because, quite frankly, I feel like I have thousands of “favorites” and to choose just one seems like a disservice to all the other great works out there. But if I have to choose, the one movie I’ll select more often than not is Billy Wilder’s 1960 classic The Apartment. It won a slew of Academy Awards including Best Picture and, for once, the movie that deserved to win was the one honored. It’s influenced almost every (quality) romantic comedy that’s come since from Manhattan to When Harry Met Sally (check out the ending of The Apartment, then watch the ending of those two films and you’ll see what I mean). Everything about it works—in my opinion, The Apartment may be the most perfect film ever made. But it’s also a picture that would have had an added emotional resonance had the two lead characters been Asian American. Read more...
as a man, i believe the picture above to be false. ok, maybe not, but we are deeper than than. sort of…
This post is a follow up to my previous post, “Why I Love A Rotten Apple”.
Apple sucks yet I love all Apple products. As I’ve written in my previous post, my relationship with Apple is a love/hate one of the ultimate disfunction. Since a child, all and any computers I have purchased have been of the Apple/Mac variety. The only exception to this rule was when I was 21, just out of college, and super poor. Unable to afford the hefty premium for an Apple computer, I was forced to go to Circuit City and purchase a Packard Bell. It was ugly and hard to use…but it was cheap. Beyond this one infidelity, I have always been faithful to Apple and Apple has always been loyal to sucking as much money out of my bank accounts as possible. It’s like being in love with a super hot vampire – you get sex and the vampire sucks you to death (slowly and virtually unnoticed). Nothing worse then getting sucked to death, I assure you of that.
Which brings me to my most recent purchase of yet another Apple product: my new, white, iPhone 3GS…
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Okay, I never saw the movie “Pay It Forward”. I knew it had the kid from that movie where he sees dead people. I am unfortunately, one of those unremarkable people who don’t watch movies or television very much. I actually watch a lot of youtube, and my favorite youtube thus far is still that faboo guy who danced to Beyonce’s “Single Ladies” video.
Paying it forward is more like amish bread...
BUT…
I did watch Amelie and I think it might’ve had the same premise: Do Something Good For Someone Else. Just do it. Just be nice. Be kind. Be generous. To… a stranger. Enjoy the fact that you’ve made the world a better place. Repeat. Read more...
Man, I’m behind in my work and wasn’t planning on posting any more blogs today, but damnit, today would have been Christopher Reeve’s fifty-seventh birthday and that cannot pass without at least a mention. I’m sure everyone knows the basic story of Reeve’s life as an actor, a humanitarian and how he passed away all too soon, so I’m simply going to tell a quick story about seeing the first Superman movie as a kid and why I probably wouldn’t be blogging here and doing what I’m doing right now had I not. Read more...
Sung’s PiPi and Me post was a bittersweet look into his childhood and how some movies just connect with you because of your life experience at the time. But interestingly, the comments from this story sparked a little ire regarding what classifies as “cheese” or “b-movie”. Offenders like Phil argued that the movies he grew up with, were not cheese to him at all, but can stand on its own to “a-list fare” like John Ford’s work. Read more...
Chang Apana died in 1933 at the age of 64.
Everyone knows Charlie Chan — the Chinese sleuth, who in the movies, was portrayed by white actors in yellow face, bestowing nuggets of fortune cookie proverbs, while solving murders. Over four dozen features were produced featuring Chan. But, little is known of the real life influence for the Chan character. He was in fact, one bad ass Honolulu Police Detective named Chang Apana, a hapa Chinese/Hawaiian who patrolled the then seedy streets of Honolulu at the turn of the 20th Century. Read more...
When I was in LA….
Who's afraid of a little sausage?
-”Hi, my name is Michael Schneider*.” (*Not his real name, and if he ever reads this, he’ll be glad I used a pseudonym.)
-”Why hello… Michael Schneider (Jingleheimerschmidt)??”
- “You can call me Mike.”
- “Okay. Mike…. Mike?”
- “Yeah?”
-”Do I KNOW you????”
He stumbles for words. Apparently, as I sat at my office desk of my current-temporary-job-from-hell, I had dropped off some papers at the lab he worked at and wanted to ask me out. Read more...
1) SPAM:
I’m not referring to the junk emails promising us $1 million from some dead, distant relative in Uganda, but the delicious and versatile meat product that’s like a party in a can. So why do white people think it’s gross? Growing up, there was nothing I loved more than Spam musubi or a hot serving of Spam fried rice, but my white friends found it disgusting. That’s when I realized that white people look at Spam as a cheap, lower-class “mystery meat” while for many Asians and Hawaiians, it is the ultimate comfort food. Countries like Korea and Japan were introduced to Spam during wartime when meat was rare and the Hormel company (the makers of Spam) has continued to market to that demographic; ensuring its popularity. To this day, very few things make me happier than walking into my local Korean supermarket and seeing rows of Spam prominently displayed in a pyramid stack for all the world, or at least shoppers at Korean markets, to proudly see. Read more...
I don’t think there’s a film genre that’s more American than the Western. And no other filmmaker is as synonymous with the Western than John Ford. Ford directed movies in a wide range of genres but it’s the Westerns he made (many with his favorite star, John Wayne) that he’s best remembered for. He immortalized both Wayne and Monument Valley, the location of many of his classics, in works like Stagecoach, Fort Apache and The Searchers. I love Westerns. If there’s one type of film I hope to make before I die, it’d be a Western so Ford is definitely one of my favorites. And it was when I started studying his films more closely in high school and college that the first clear model for what a viable filmmaking trajectory for an Asian American might be started to emerge in my mind. Let me explain. Read more...
I’m not a channel surfer nor do I have a lot of time to watch TV usually. But in the last few months I had a couple of opportunities to try it out. And it was daunting. One could conceivably surf for hours without settling on anything. I felt a little unnerved and totally incomplete. But the one bright spot from the experience is that once in awhile you catch something that for some reason just makes you stop and watch. And since it’s unplanned it comes across as a bit of gift. And in my case there was a constant to the gift– Michael J. Fox.
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The most recent crop of nominees for the Rock N’ Roll Hall of Fame were announced today (see the complete list here). From these twelve nominees, five will be selected in January and officially inducted into the hall at a star-studded ceremony in March 2010. I think all of the nominees are worthy and each of them has created music that has impacted my life. But here are the five that have meant the most to me.
ABBA Read more...
The Museum of Chinese in America on Centre Street in NYC’s Chinatown has reopened with a major facelift courtesy of Maya Lin. The museum features exhibits that include the historic accounts of Chinese immigrants at the turn of the century, rare artifacts (see photo of Chinese menu above), and illuminated biographic profiles of accomplished Chinese Americans as Du Lee who organized the Chinese American Citizens Alliance in 1915 “to combat anti-Chinese sentiments” and I.M. Pei.
If you could include an artifact in a museum that reflects the American and/or Asian American experience of the 21st century, what would it be?
Read this 
The Musa rubinea, a wild banana known only to exist in the western Chinese province of Yunnan:
And the Laotian rock rat (the photo at top of this page), which was thought to have been extinct for 11 million years until being discovered in this area.
