You are currently browsing the archives for April 2011.

WHAT I LEARNED ON YOMYOMF THIS WEEK – APRIL 23 – 29, 2011

  • April 30, 2011 12:00 am

What I Learned on YOMYOMF This Week is a capsule of the week’s blogs with sarcastic commentary from Yours Truly (that’s me!).  If you’ve been busy and missed out on a couple of our daily gems, this is a perfect way to catch up.

But seriously – what was more important than reading YOMYOMF?

This week, what have we got?  This is what we’ve got!  Overzealous tongues; cities that remind me of placentas; and peeing in public – all the matters that you need answered urgently, in one fell swoop.

Gangster, yes?

RETRO ’80S CEREAL:

“If you’re a child of the ’80s like me, you’ll wish that these cereal boxes designed by Ian Glaubinger were real. But alas, they are just another beautiful and unattainable dream:”

The important thing to ask yourself is whether or not you can eat them after midnight.

SAF SEEKING… MR. SALIVA:

“His tongue was a juicer. I don’t know what it was in my face, but somehow he believed that I must like it Saint Bernard sloppy. It was like his entire tongue entered my mouth, salivated for what seemed like eternity, and exited, leaving at least 3 tablespoons worth of spit in the cup space behind my bottom front teeth.”

This description is reminding me of Japanese tentacle porn.

Which I definitely have never watched.

But it is fucking gross.

 Read more...

2 Comments on WHAT I LEARNED ON YOMYOMF THIS WEEK – APRIL 23 – 29, 2011

An Open Letter to Justin Lin

  • April 29, 2011 1:21 pm

Dear Justin,

Let me start off by saying that I was able to attend the N.A. premiere of “Fast Five” last night and it was an awesome, action-packed, all-out crazy, fun ride of a movie and you deserve all the success and kudos you get.

But I think that we need to start sending out a more conscientious message to movie-going kids today.  So here’s my suggestion for “Fast 6”.  How about electric car racing?  After all, we really need to save the environment and stop our dependence on Middle East oil.

 Read more...

11 Comments on An Open Letter to Justin Lin

Scary Numbers

  • April 29, 2011 4:04 am

I know, I know, not one more keystroke should be wasted on the Obama birther “controversy.”  I’ve got nothing revelatory to add to this non-story, but I just want to point out what savvy Obama displayed in handling this.

Kudos to him for dragging his heels on releasing his long form birth certificate.

The common wisdom says that Obama did not dig up the long form earlier because he didn’t want to get his white gloves dirty.

He was above the fray, remember.  He was taking the high road when it came to the politics of smear.  And I do believe that, in spite of the compromises he’s made since taking office, he still is a pragmatic idealist (if that contradiction actually works).  Read more...

3 Comments on Scary Numbers

YOMYOMF Exclusive: CAR TALK Ep2 w/Sung & Tyrese

  • April 29, 2011 1:18 am

Yes, folks, it’s finally here: Episode 2 of Car Talk Discussion with Sung Kang a.k.a. Han from Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift. Once again, Sung is back with director and fellow Offender Anson Ho, and this time they’ve brought along a special guest. So check out Car Talk Discussion 2 below and then afterwards, we’ve asked Sung to say a few words on the making of this project. Enjoy!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FgVYSCoF17k (UPDATE: we had to remove the video due to “legal issues” with NPR’s show CAR TALK but a censored edited version will be up shortly)  Read more...

66 Comments on YOMYOMF Exclusive: CAR TALK Ep2 w/Sung & Tyrese

More Awesomely Funny Images From Asia

  • April 28, 2011 12:05 am

Back with more photos from Asia of signs, products, t-shirts and other items demonstrating that for some, English is a yet-to-be-acquired skill. Enjoy!

 Read more...

3 Comments on More Awesomely Funny Images From Asia

The One Bad Thing About Getting Your Blood Drawn.

  • April 28, 2011 12:00 am

There’s only one bad thing about getting your blood drawn.  This is only, of course, if you discount the painful prick of the needle and the occasional inept blood-drawing person who stabs you multiple times in the arm to find a suitable vein in vain.

I, as of late, had to endure this process and this “only one bad thing” did happen to be part of my own experience.

Not every blood draw requires it, but, in this instance, it did. Additionally, it had been so long since any blood draw I was a part of had involved a fast that it caught me of guard.

I want to go to there.

Okay, so abstain from eating food for at least twelve hours before your early morning appointment the following day – that was my Prime Directive.  When it was handed to me initially, no sweat on my brow had broken.

This was no day-long fast and, seeing as at least half of the fasting time could be chalked up to sweet, sweet sleep, the actual amount of conscious time spent wrestling with my Hunger Demons didn’t seem particularly significant.

Yeah, well, fuck me – I was wrong.

 Read more...

3 Comments on The One Bad Thing About Getting Your Blood Drawn.

Exclusive Interview w/ Fast Five’s 5-year-old Screenwriter

  • April 27, 2011 5:14 pm

Unfortunately, I won’t be able to trek out to L.A. for all the opening night fun tomorrow at the L.A. Asian Pacific Film Festival. But I’m sure everyone will have a great time watching Offender Justin’s Fast Five (which opens stateside on April 29 for anyone living in Unabomber-style isolation). Check out this interview with the film’s screenwriter Chris Morgan from our friends at the Onion. It’s definitely one of the most informative interviews I’ve seen about the film:


4 Comments on Exclusive Interview w/ Fast Five's 5-year-old Screenwriter

Puppy Cam

  • April 27, 2011 4:44 pm

I know us Offenders are pretty crass, perverted, sick, rough around the edges, and obnoxious at times. But we’ve got feelings too. Therefore, behold, the Shiba Inu Puppy Cam!

Live Videos by UstreamAll work efficiency is thrown out the window from now until them dogs lose their puppy cuteness.

1 Comment on Puppy Cam

Good Orientalism

  • April 27, 2011 12:05 am

Jennifer Lopez ‘s recent chinky photo shoot for TOUS jewelry has stirred up a cacophony of “Orientalist” alarms from Angry Asian Man to 8Asians. As a former student of postcolonial criticism, I have mixed feelings about these discourses. Although those photos do showcase a creative stylization of Asian themes and aesthetics that may not be culturally coherent and authentic, I don’t feel they are done with bad or politicized intentions to subjugate Asians or Asian Americans.

Even though I’m natively Asian or Asian American, who am I to be the arbitrator of other people’s taste, style and rendition of culture? Do I own Asian culture just because I’m Asian? Why should I feel threatened by other people’s liberal use of Asian culture? Even if it is misappropriated, does it reflect badly on me? Does it threaten my own identity and culture?  Read more...

10 Comments on Good Orientalism

LAAPFF Update: ‘Fast Five’ This Thursday & Join us on Twitter

  • April 27, 2011 12:01 am

We’re just one day away from the SOLD-OUT April 28 opening night screening of Offender Justin’s Fast Five at the Los Angeles Asian Pacific Film Festival. The film has already opened to impressive numbers in several international territories and the buzz is strong going into Thursday so it should be a fun night.

We want to start off by congratulating the three winners of our twitter contest who will be attending the opening as our special guests. We received some great entries so it was a very tough choice, but my fellow Offenders picked @RebelRomance, @ignatiuslin and @kurlykolly (who is traveling 3,000 miles just to attend). They’ll all be tweeting during the evening so you can keep up with what’s happening even if you can’t be there. My fellow Offender Anderson will also be live tweeting via our own twitter @yomyomf so you can follow us there as well. If you want to keep up with all the festival tweets, check out the hashtag #LAAPFF.

Also, a special shout-out to the good folks at Intertrend who have generously subsidized the cost of a block of tickets so that deserving teens from the Asian Youth Center, the K.W. Lee Center For Leadership, La Puente High School and Workman High School can attend opening night. They, along with everyone else in attendance, will be in for a special night that will include not only the film, but the premiere of Car Talk Discussion 2 with Sung & Tyrese, cool celebs, our very funny hosts Danny Pudi (Community) and Parvesh Cheena (Outsourced), and other surprises.  Read more...

4 Comments on LAAPFF Update: ‘Fast Five’ This Thursday & Join us on Twitter

The OTHER Stage Fright

  • April 26, 2011 4:05 am

I can’t pee at public urinals.

And it’s only gotten worse the older I get.

When a movie lets out, or it’s the seventh inning stretch at a baseball game, the pressure in my bladder is second only to the unbearable pressure in my fevered mind as I make the death march to the bathroom.

Suddenly I can see individual dust particles falling and can hear a butterfly flapping its wings two hundred yards away.  Colors are vivid and scary.  My every nerve tingles, but the ones that control my bladder shut down completely.

 Read more...

13 Comments on The OTHER Stage Fright

How to Survive if You’re a Criminal in Gotham City

  • April 26, 2011 12:01 am

So last week, Warner Bros. officially confirmed that Marion Cotillard and Joseph Gordon-Levitt are on board for director Chris Nolan’s third and final installment in his Batman franchise. However, early speculation that they would be playing villains Talia al Ghul and Alberto Falcone, respectively, have turned out to be false (unless Nolan pulls a switcheroo).

But this latest news made me think of the villains and other criminal element in Gotham City (home of the Dark Knight). Now, unless you’re a sociopath like the Joker who finds pleasure in his confrontations with the Bat, it’s gotta be tough to operate on the other side of the law in a city where you’re always looking over your shoulder in case a psycho in a bat suit shows up to break your legs when all you want to do is steal a few jewels to feed your family. So here are 5 bits of advice that will help you survive if you decide to pursue the criminal life in Gotham City.

1) COMMIT YOUR CRIMES IN THE DAYTIME

By now, any criminal has to have figured out that Batman only comes out at night. He is the Dark Knight after all and, let’s be honest, a dude in a rubber bat suit running around in broad daylight isn’t going to strike terror in anyone except maybe the S&M transvestite hookers working the day shift on Hollywood Blvd who are afraid they now have new competition for their business. Yet, time and time again, the criminals in Gotham City insist on committing their crimes at night and, time and time again, they end up getting their asses kicked by the Bat. That’s like walking into the lion’s cage at the zoo wearing a suit made out of raw meat during the lion’s feeding time. If you’re going to walk into the lion’s cage at all, at least do it when the lion is out for its veterinarian check-up. It’s just common sense, people.

 Read more...

1 Comment on How to Survive if You’re a Criminal in Gotham City

A Bunch of Quotes About Writing

  • April 25, 2011 1:12 am

I met a couple of kids over the weekend who hope to grow up and become writers. That’s always inspiring to hear but I also wonder if they really understand the struggles and hardships that await. So for them and anyone else who writes or wants to write or loves writing, here are a few of the quotes I’ve collected over the years on this “noblest of professions.”

…I had decided that the only thing I was fit for was to be a writer, and this notion rested solely on my suspicion that I would never be fit for real work, and that writing didn’t require any.
– Russell Baker

When you start writing you’re 98% pure writer and 2% critic. After you’ve written for a length of time, you’ve learned a great deal about your craft, and you’ve become 2% pure writer and 98% critic. It’s like writing uphill.
– David Westheimer

As a writer, I need an enormous amount of time alone. Writing is 90 percent procrastination: reading magazines, eating cereal out of the box, watching infomercials. It’s a matter of doing everything you can to avoid writing, until it is about four in the morning and you reach the point where you have to write. Having anybody watching that or attempting to share it with me would be grisly.
– Paul Rudnick

Make visible what, without you, might never have been seen.
– Robert Bresson

 Read more...

8 Comments on A Bunch of Quotes About Writing

An Open Letter to the City of Placentia.

  • April 25, 2011 12:00 am

Names: they’re something we’re born with and, in most cases, we carry them with us – for better or worse – till the day we die.

However, as people, we always have the option to change it somewhere down the line.  (“Max Powers” is always a pretty good choice.)

On the other hand, if you are not a person – if you’re a place or thing – you’re kind of screwed because you have no choice in the matter.

On the plus side, you (probably) don’t have any semblance of what we call a “consciousness” so you’re (probably) not even aware of your unfortunate moniker anyway.

Actually, you wouldn’t be able to read this either so HA!

Unless you’re a robot – in which case, I’m sorry but please find it in your cold mechanical heart to forgive me when the Singularity comes.

Get under control, ADD! Whew, okay – now, one city that consistently makes me contemplate this unfortunate, unknowable conundrum for places and things is Placentia, in sunny ol’ California.


Because, for one, I never read it as “Placentia” the first time I see its name after a long while.  No, sir/ma’am – I always read the damn name as “placenta,” which, I’m told, is something significantly different.  Read more...

7 Comments on An Open Letter to the City of Placentia.

How Fast is “Fast”?

  • April 24, 2011 11:57 pm

Working in the film business is a privilege.  When you desire to use your creative talents to make a movie and you want to get through those security gates to do it… it’s TOUGH no matter how much talent you got.  I was fortunate for sure (another story).  My latest privileged project I got to work on was FAST FIVE (coming this weekend on the 29th… see it!  Plug!)

Talk about fast… I started this movie almost exactly a year ago… did you hear me… ONE YEAR AGO!  From preproduction to placing the subtitles.  ”Fast and Furious” took a year and a half… I guess that was a luxury.

 Read more...

7 Comments on How Fast is "Fast"?

SAF Seeking… Mr. Saliva

  • April 24, 2011 8:01 am

It was the tongue from hell.

And it belonged to a ‘friend’.

To put it shortly, I had a guy friend I hadn’t seen for a long time, a couple of years. He lived out on the East Coast being cynical and snarky (as East Coasters are the driest-witted people next to Londoners) and I lived out on the West Coast wearing flowers in my hair, playing the harp through the redwood forests, and eating bean sprouts and avocados in all my sandwiches.

He had surprised me with a trip out to San Francisco and said, “Hey, let’s pull an all nighter until my plane takes off in the morning!” Sure! I agreed. Why not live a little, I had thought.  Read more...

5 Comments on SAF Seeking... Mr. Saliva

Retro ’80s Cereal

  • April 23, 2011 6:00 am

If you’re a child of the ’80s like me, you’ll wish that these cereal boxes designed by Ian Glaubinger were real. But alas, they are just another beautiful and unattainable dream:

 Read more...

5 Comments on Retro '80s Cereal

What I Learned on YOMYOMF This Week – April 16 – 22, 2011

  • April 23, 2011 12:00 am

What I Learned on YOMYOMF This Week is a capsule of the week’s blogs with sarcastic commentary from Yours Truly (that’s me!).  If you’ve been busy and missed out on a couple of our daily gems, this is a perfect way to catch up.

But seriously – what was more important than reading YOMYOMF?

As we approach the close of April, YOMYOMF examines the Japanese tendency to cute-ify everything; the Filipino crucifixion craze; and genital slang.

Didn’t see that one coming, did you?

JAPANESE TSUNAMI MASCOTS:

“Japan has a tradition of using “cute” mascot characters to educate the public about things that are far from cute.  [...]  Now, here are a few examples from recent years of tsunami-related examples of this tradition.”

I don’t know about you, but nothing makes me afraid of something more than when it’s anthropomorphized.

KIDS ON PLANES AND I HATE THEIR PARENTS:

“A mother is HOLY in most cultures, she’s a saint, a woman of virtue, untouchable and needed in this world: she bred and somehow, we –the pitiful childless- have to be kind to her because she IS sacrificing her life to make the life of someone else’s possible. I don’t WANT to give up my seat (I pee a lot and therefore I get up a lot, that’s why I always book an aisle seat), but I’d be an ASSHOLE if I didn’t.”

Wait… what’s wrong with being an asshole?

Oh, right – that’s why no one loves me.

 Read more...

Comment on What I Learned on YOMYOMF This Week – April 16 – 22, 2011

Are We Our Worst Enemy: Spike Lee, Tyler Perry, All-American Girl & Criticizing Our Own Filmmakers

  • April 22, 2011 2:04 pm

Outspoken director Spike Lee (Malcolm X) has never had the highest opinion of the work of fellow African American filmmaker Tyler Perry (best known for his Madea series), which Lee has said is stereotypical “coonery and buffoonery.” Apparently, Perry has had enough of Lee’s bad-mouthing because at a press conference for his latest film this week, he had some uncharacteristically harsh words for Lee.

“I’m so sick of hearing about damn Spike Lee,” Perry said. “Spike can go straight to hell! You can print that. I am sick of him talking about me, I am sick of him saying, ‘this is a coon, this is a buffoon.’…Spike needs to shut the hell up!”

Perry continued to say: “I’ve never seen Jewish people attack Seinfeld and say ‘this is a stereotype,’ I’ve never seen Italian people attack The Sopranos, I’ve never seen Jewish people complaining about Mrs. Doubtfire or Dustin Hoffman in Tootsie. I never saw it. It’s always black people, and this is something that I cannot undo…I’m sick of it from us. We don’t have to worry about anybody else trying to destroy us and take shots because we do it to ourselves.”

Now, Perry raises some interesting points, which I’d like to discuss in the context of the Asian American community. But first, let me just point out some issues I have with parts of Perry’s statement. I realize he most likely said these things in the heat of the moment, but there’s inaccuracies that I don’t think we should just gloss over.  Read more...

36 Comments on Are We Our Worst Enemy: Spike Lee, Tyler Perry, All-American Girl & Criticizing Our Own Filmmakers

A Strange Dream, Pt. II

  • April 22, 2011 4:35 am

This one I’m chalking up not to Nyquil, but to jet lag.

I’m staying in a motel in Hollywood, doing some screenwriting work.  It’s a mid-century building, pink stucco, black metal railings, kidney shaped pool.

The grizzled owner of the motel is giving us a tour of the grounds, and touting the motel’s storied Hollywood history.  He gathers the twenty or so of us in a circle in the courtyard and tells us that while everyone thinks Rock Hudson was gay, everyone was wrong.

Rock was completely straight, he says.

It’s nonsense…

Is there even room for a smidge of doubt?  Read more...

1 Comment on A Strange Dream, Pt. II