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If Hell Doesn’t Exist, They Need To Build It For This Guy

  • June 11, 2013 6:33 am

The 80’s weren’t all John Hughes rom-coms, neon leg warmers and “Walking On Sunshine.”

Remember this fellow?

First of all, I didn’t realize they published obituaries for inhuman monsters – true crime books about them, sure (one of my guilty pleasures), but obits are supposed to be for normal people and war heroes.

Well, the good news is, Richard Ramirez, The Night Stalker, died last Friday at age 53.  Liver failure.  Is liver failure a painful way to go?  I hope so.

In the hot summers of 1984 and 1985, he killed 13 people in and around Los Angeles by entering their homes through unlocked windows and doors.  I should clarify: he was convicted of 13 murders.  He is likely responsible for at least a half dozen others, including a nine year old girl, Mei Leung, who was killed in the basement of a Tenderloin hotel in San Francisco.  On occasion, it seems, his work required him to travel.  Read more...

The 80′s Just Won’t Die

  • May 21, 2013 5:59 am

Sitting here in Starbuck’s, reading an article in the paper entitled “We’d Zap Back To The 80’s If We Could,” I can’t help but notice what music they’re piping in: “Age Of Consent,” New Order (1983); “Only You,” Yazoo (1982); and “The Ghost In You,” Psychedelic Furs (1984).  As I’m listening to the Starbuck’s new wave soundtrack, I’m also planning the best date for our next “80’s Party” at the bar…

(it’s gonna be Thursday, May 30th, btw, nine days from now.  Pop by: I’ll be dj-ing and will buy you a drink or three)…and find myself shaking my head and asking myself the same question I’ve been asking for the last ten years:  Read more...

A Portrait of Three Doctors…1885 Flavah

  • February 5, 2013 12:23 pm

Sharing a cool pic from 1885 that’s been making the rounds on social media today courtesy of GDFalksen:

As the original caption reads:
An Indian woman, a Japanese woman, and a Syrian woman, all training to be doctors at Women’s Medical College of Philadelphia, 1880s. (Image courtesy Legacy Center, Drexel University College of Medicine Archives, Philadelphia, PA.)

So give it up for Doctors Joshee, Okami and Islambooly!

Grave Injustice

  • October 31, 2012 12:01 am

This Halloween marks the 20th anniversary of Yoshiro Hattori’s murder that once shocked the world as a real haunting Halloween tale. The real Michael Myers is not a man in a mask but a redneck with a gun in Baton Rouge, Louisiana.

 Read more...

A Halloween Story

  • October 30, 2012 7:48 pm

I wanted to post an appropriate Halloween-themed blog but over the past few years, I’ve written a number of blogs about all things horrific/supernatural/spooky (like this and this) that I don’t know if I have any additional stories that could top what’s already come. So if you’ll indulge me, I would like to tell a different kind of Halloween story; about a different kind of horror. One that involves an old woman, a young boy in a cheap skeleton costume and a trick-or-treat experience gone wrong.

I immigrated to the U.S. from Korea when I was four and one of my family’s early residences was a small two bedroom apartment in the sleepy San Gabriel Valley suburb of Alhambra, California. Alhambra is a mecca for all things Asian now (including some of the best Chinese food around), but back in the early 80s, the huge influx of Asian immigrants hadn’t arrived quite yet. Our neighborhood was mostly white and Latino and next to our apartment building was a house where an elderly Caucasian lady resided.  Read more...

God I Miss Him

  • June 29, 2012 3:56 am

Can you even name the current Secretary of Defense?  Right, neither can I.  Know why?  ’cause he’s BOOORRRRING!

Not like this guy.  This guy knew how to work a room:

Some of you might be too young to remember, but before Donald Rumsfeld resigned in 2006, there was a time when he was adored. I mean, he had the press corps – and the public – eating out of his hand.  He could charm anyone.  History may brand him a crappy Secretary of Defense, but when he was on top, he was on top.

For your pleasure, I now present a sampling of the wit, wisdom, wordplay – and mind bending arrogance – of Donald Henry Rumsfeld:  Read more...

The Short List: PROFILES IN SCIENCE

  • June 22, 2012 9:28 am

As part of our new YOMYOMF Network series, The Short List, where we present short films we love every Friday at Noon EST, we’ve reached out to the filmmakers of each highlighted short film, which is part of this ongoing series. It’s a way for them to revisit their film and get an update on their next projects.

This week, we ask 5 questions to Wes Kim, the director of Profiles in Science, which you can watch right here:YouTube Preview Image1. How did you come up with the concept for this short?

I was actually looking at some dirty laundry on my bedroom floor, and for some reason, I started thinking about those time-lapse films of sea stars cruising around on the ocean floor. Somehow, I put the two together.  Read more...

You Gotta Have Faith

  • May 26, 2012 2:13 pm

I love Jon Moritsugu. He is a true pioneer of Asian American cinema. His three seminal, mindfuck for films — Scumrock, Fame Whore and Mod Fuck Explosion — came out of the heyday of American underground indie cinema of the ’90s much like the works of Gregg Araki. His films pushed boundaries of exploitation, good taste, and embodied a punk rock attitude that was not seen in much films back in the day. I was absolutely blown away by them.  Read more...

Lonely Tears

  • April 4, 2012 8:21 pm

My grandmother and me at 3 months old.

“Don’t worry about me. I’ll be fine. I’d love to see you but I want you to finish your first quarter of school. I know it’s very important,” said my grandmother on her hospital bed over the telephone seventy two thousand miles away.

Just a month away from finishing my first quarter at film school. I was really hoping that she would make it till the end of the month. But she didn’t. Those were the last words I exchanged with my grandmother who bought me my first video camcorder and supported me unconditionally throughout her life.  Read more...

30 Years Ago Today: Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder Make the World a Better Place Musically

  • March 29, 2012 10:20 pm

Exactly three decades ago, on March 29, 1982, what may quite possibly be the greatest song about the joys of black/white man love brotherhood was released—Paul McCartney and Stevie Wonder’s “Ebony and Ivory.”

The song spent seven weeks at the top of the Billboard 100, but that’s not what makes it the classic it is. Sure, there’s a lot about the song we can criticize: it’s a simplistic and overtly idealized look at race relations, the race relations in the song doesn’t even extend beyond the black/white paradigm (what—no love for us Asians?), the piano key metaphor thing is pretty obvious and silly, and no way does this song even come near the heights of the best work of either artist. But despite its many flaws, this song is awesome for one very important reason: without it, we would have never gotten this:  Read more...

R.I.P. Ralph McQuarrie

  • March 4, 2012 12:42 am

Conceptual artist Ralph McQuarrie has died, at the age of 82. He was the guy, instrumental in realizing the world of Star Wars for George Lucas. With his concept drawings for the likes of Darth Vader, Chewbacca, C-3PO, and pretty much the whole shebang of the Star Wars universe, his work sold 20th Century Fox in giving a young Lucas a chance in directing a film that pretty much changed everything in Hollywood.

When I was a kid, I was amazed to see these “not really Star Wars” art floating around in magazines like Starlog, especially art depicting a more slender Darth Vader with a different type of helmet or a more feminine looking C-3PO trekking through the desert, as if it walked off the Metropolis set. What I would later learn is that these were early concept drawings of Star Wars, which made it cooler because to me, they were now alternate universes of what Star Wars could be and just opened up that world for me even more. Check out some of the early concept art:  Read more...

Music of the Heart

  • January 19, 2012 12:12 am

I got inspired by my fellow Offender Jerome’s “Around the Horn” and decided to write about the music of the heart. Once upon a time, I fell in love with a bisexual guy in college who was also an advocate of non-monogamous relationships. He was always dating a guy or a girl when we were dating in college. He was my first boyfriend. Between my junior and senior year in college, I listened to New Order’s “Bizarre Love Triangle” like a broken record. I was surprised that cassette tape survived my rewind and play for two years. I was obsessed… or in love the very first time!?

 Read more...