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R.I.P. Bobby Khamvongsa

  • May 23, 2012 12:02 am

Last night, all over my Facebook, I started hearing about the murder of Bobby Khamvongsa, a 27-year-old Asian man who was stabbed to death on the streets of West Hollywood last weekend. It turned out that Bobby and I had 14 mutual friends on Facebook and he had moved to Los Angeles from Hawaii to pursue a career in make-up. As I was going through the blogs, I saw that LA Weekly wrote that “the victim was dressed in women’s clothes.” The reporting was certainly titillating. The immediate question came into my mind was—had he been gay bashed?

I was surprised that the most popular Asian American blogs have not picked up on this story considering some would report on the most random Asian American drowning in the ocean. Perhaps they didn’t know how to deal with an Asian American man who died in drag. I do feel there’s homophobia in the Asian American community which isn’t quite sure how to or doesn’t want to deal with sexuality within their own community while desperately trying to uphold being “normal” in America.

The story got even more intriguing as the murder suspect, Richard Herrera, 29, went to the same high school, Kaimuki High in Hawaii, as Bobby. It was reported that the police believed that Bobby was involved in a dispute with Richard, but their relationship was still left for our speculation.  Read more...

This is why I love THE WEST WING

  • May 10, 2012 2:02 pm

YouTube Preview ImageWith President Obama’s public statement of supporting same sex marriage (he is the first standing President to do so) causing a media fire storm and perhaps, defining this already divisive election campaign season, it just gives me pure, geeky pleasure that perhaps the Washington I loved in shows like The West Wing is happening in real life. Check out the clip above where President Bartlett (played by Martin Sheen, who I wish was my grandpa) throws the smackdown.

(Via Kal Penn)

Save Janet!

  • May 9, 2012 12:02 am

For many of us, we don’t think of health and well-being as a luxury. But for some people who are not as fortunate, health and the possibility of living is a luxury. In 2009, Janet Liang, an undergraduate student at UCLA, was diagnosed with acute lymphoblastic leukemia. After rounds of aggressive chemotherapy, her leukemia went into remission for a year but returned last December. Now living in San Francisco for treatment, Janet has only a month or so to find the perfect bone marrow match so she can have a transplant, her best option for complete recovery.

Personally, I just can’t imagine what Janet has been going through. Grateful for a healthy life, I am most squeamish when it comes to pain and sickness. In fact, my mother’s side of the family is full of hypochondriacs. Hearing Janet’s story simply breaks my heart. Just imagine having to deal with the discomfort of illness and the possibility of death so early on in your life.  Read more...

RIP Adam Yauch

  • May 4, 2012 10:43 pm

When I first heard the Beastie Boys’ music, I hated it. Even though I was just a kid and my “higher” musical sensibilities had not been completely formed yet, “(You Gotta) Fight for Your Right (to Party)” seemed like the epitome of everything I despised in pop music—it was stupid, mindless and nothing more than a bunch of annoying white boys co-opting hip hop music.

It wasn’t until I saw them perform in concert with Run DMC and then later heard their album “Paul’s Boutique” that I started to come around. I found a complexity and a maturity in their work that I hadn’t noticed before. What I respond to more than anything is surprise and these guys surprised me in a major way. I became a fan.

I was introduced to Beastie Boy Adam Yauch some years ago by Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers and though I only spent an hour or so talking with him, Yauch was nothing like I expected. There was no rock star bravado or ego. By then, he was married with a young daughter, a committed activist (his big cause was Tibetan independence) and pursuing his interest in film and art. He was an interesting and sensitive soul and impressed me in a way that most celebrities don’t.  Read more...

DADDY FAN – X Rated Family (car) Fun

  • May 2, 2012 2:03 pm

Well, I finally did it.  I got myself a sports car.  After several decades of pining, lusting, and suffering, I finally mustered up the mojo to satisfy my man itch.

Sort of.

OK, I actually didn’t get a sports car.  I put a deposit on one.

I want this. The CAR, not the photoshopped waif.

And come to think of it, the thing’s not even really a sports car either.  It’s more of an SUV meets minivan meets something fast (and furious 6).

What the heck is wrong with me?  After spending my entire post-puberty life torturing my soul with the mantra, “one day I will get myself a sports car…one day…”, when I finally decide to pull the trigger, I don’t even opt for a sports car.  It’s like going to a strip club for your first time and getting a lap dance from the janitor.  Read more...

Living Dangerously in America’s Own Killing Fields

  • April 26, 2012 9:30 am

K.W.

At 82-years-old, K.W. Lee is considered the “Godfather of Asian American journalism.” He immigrated to the U.S. in 1950 on a student visa and became the first Asian immigrant to be hired by a mainstream news daily and has reported for the Kingsport Times and News in Tennessee, the Charleston Gazette in West Virginia and the Sacramento Union. He has covered stories ranging from the plight of coal miners in the Appalachians to the civil rights movement in the Jim Crow South to the unjust incarceration of Chol Soo Lee. K.W. founded the Korea Times English Edition and continues to work and lecture across the country. On the eve of Sunday’s 20th Anniversary of the L.A. riots, K.W. looks back.

With the 20th anniversary of the April 29, 1992 LA Riots just around the corner, it’s déjà vu time again.

On sobering reflection, I dare say that our Sa-I-Gu (Korean for 4-2-9) didn’t explode on that date.

Long before the greatest urban upheaval in modern America, hardy Korean mom and pop storekeepers, along with their long-suffering and stoic Latino and Black neighbors, had been living dangerously every waking hour, seven days a week, all year round in the seething inner-cities.

Only God knows how many of these bedraggled newcomers from Korea — some call them wannabe Kamikazes —have been mugged, robbed, maimed or slain in their dogged pursuit of an elusive dream in America’s own killing fields.  Read more...

Make Your Parents Proud

  • April 9, 2012 4:42 pm

EUGENE

Eugene Ahn really did go to law school, and quit his job as a practicing lawyer to become a rapper. He makes geeky hip hop under the alias Adam WarRock. No, it doesn’t suck.

 

“What do your parents think?!”

It’s been about two years since I quit my job as a lawyer to be an indie rapper, and I still get that question more than any other. To have that answer make sense, let me establish a few things about myself:  Read more...

DADDY FAN – Baby Barfing Blues

  • March 15, 2012 2:02 pm

I dropped the F-Bomb at least 50 times in fifteen seconds.  At full volume.  Right in the middle of Beverly Hills and right in the middle of the Beverly Hills sign.

Actually, I was slightly behind the Beverly Hills sign, parked, with all the doors of my minivan wide open and whacking my ride to the rhythm of my global, F-Bomb assault with, of all things, a baby towel – a baby towel covered in puke.

I was less than a quarter mile from an important TV audition when my 15 month old unloaded the entire contents of her stomach onto herself and the car seat that she was strapped into.  This was not a cute, little baby spit-up, by the way.  This vomit was on the order of The Exorcist.  The only thing that didn’t come out were her internal organs.  Read more...

“The end of Innocence and the Entrance of Distrust” OR “Scientology Wins”???

  • March 12, 2012 11:56 am

Precious life, given and taken.

Heavy Monday.

It’s grey outside, a rarity in otherwise sunny Southern California. And the world feels grey.  Read more...

SAF Seeking… Landing in LA

  • February 27, 2012 12:55 pm

Where the hell????

Drove to work this morning while the LA sun battled with the LA haze to shine more particles on us hapless car zombies below. This was strange. There was no traffic. What is usually a 50+ minute car commute to me, was strangely pleasant. Usually I’m crawling at 15 mph with an occasional “Hey, what the hell! Use your turn signal!” immediate brake here and there. I’m humming along at 65 mph at 8:30am, very odd. I even get off my exit (Glendale Blvd) and no traffic. Usually it’s a sea of red lights bottlenecking themselves into 2 lanes (down from 5) and at least one homeless man with a sign that says, “God Bless You!” walking from driver’s side window to the next, giving you the eye and hoping to catch a moment of insecurity from you. I’m whizzing along. I’m actually on the streets of downtown LA now, and I’m actually driving fast enough to pass the bicyclists. (Rare, indeed!) I’m a bit unnerved. Is it a holiday? Wasn’t President’s Day last week?

Empty Glendale Blvd... where are my fellow car sufferers????  Read more...

Be nice to Whitney Houston.. she’s dead.

  • February 11, 2012 10:24 pm

Girl was hot in her day!

I’m sitting in a hotel in San Antonio, TX. I’ve been flying for 6 hours (thanks Work for always getting me the worst flights so that you keep your costs down!) and I’m trying to unwind by eating my $14.00 airport Waldorf salad while watching some kind of episode of Teen Mom 2 on MTV. (I don’t own a television in real life, so when I get a chance to boob tube it, I find it quite foreign and exhilarating.) And what’s that scrolling across the bottom? Whitney Houston…R and B superstar… is found DEAD?!?!?!

You’ve got to be flippin’ kidding!

Why do I feel so sad?  Read more...

thanks for nothing

  • February 7, 2012 1:31 pm

Been getting some well wishes from people since Monday.

The only problem is that I do not play for the New York Knickerbockers.

That’s Jeremy Lin.  Read more...