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Following Hope

  • July 15, 2010 11:04 am

40ish some years ago, many of our parents immigrated from Asia to the United States for a shot at a better life and greater opportunities for themselves and their kids.  I think about my mom and dad and how scary it must have been to pack up what little belongings they had and move away from everything they loved and found familiar to the other side of the Earth.  The language was totally different as was the food, the streets, the people, the sights, and the sounds.  Talk about a scarier than hell life change.  They had very little to no money but they ended up making it work.  I wonder if I possess the guts and/or the balls to do something similar today…

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How really Man are Mongolian Men?

  • June 10, 2010 1:20 pm

I’m not sure if the contemporary, Mongolian male is qualified to teach an Asian American male how to be more manly (or vice versa).  I’ll explain why in a second.  This is in response to our most recent Guest Offender blog by Anne Ishii about Mangolia (which btw, I thought was very well written and funny.  Her personal blog is pretty rockin’ too).  I think Anne’s opinion is valid and very well thought out.  But, as an Asian American male, I would like to present a different point of view.  But before I start, a personal message to Anne…

To Anne – you rock and don’t kick me in the balls the next time you see me.  The fact that I’m writing something in response to your very well-penned blog is my ultimate compliment to you.  It takes a great deal of inspiration to get me to write.  Wet kiss all over (and under).

Here goes…

UB City (aka Ulan Bator) is one of the most isolated and poorest cities in the world. There are few, continuous roads that lead out of the city and fully connect a traveler to other places like Terelj, Erdenet, Darkhan, etc.   To get there, you have to take a 4×4 and traverse over paths of dirt, mud, rocks and occasional road to get from point A to point B (which I’m sure Anne experienced this while in Mongolia).  So poor is this nation and city that pretty much all of the global (western & eastern) fast food and clothing chains have yet to set up business in UB City.   Why?   Is it because Mongolians would reject McD’s, Burger King, Pizza Hut, Gap, Target, etc?   No.   It’s because the population is so sparse (1mm in UB City and almost 3mm in all of Mongolia) and per capita income is so low that none of these global chains have an economic incentive to set up shop there.

If you walk the streets of UB City you’ll notice something very, very interesting – there are very few billboards, ads, etc. (which I find awesome).  And even more, as a westerner, you will not recognize any of the ads if you were to see one (you see Coke, McD’s, etc. in the far reaches of Africa, S. America, China, etc). To be in UB City is to be trapped in modern time limbo. UB City, though poor, is becoming modern but it’s also uniquely isolated from western capitalistic expansion and hence media inundation. There are no pictures of Brad Pitt and the watch he prefers or Madonna hawking her Louis Vuitton or David Beckham sporting his bump via Calvin Klein. There’s virtually none of that. Also, there isn’t magazine stands with rows and rows of Maxim, Car&Driver, Dupont Registry, Architectural Digest, Playboy, etc and there is very little variety on Mongolian TV.   Why?   Economics.  If people can’t buy it and the global mega corporations cannot project enough potential, positive growth to justify investing in an area, they’ll just stay out.   And stay out of Mongolia they have (except for one area – commodities.  but i’ll save that for a different time).  And as a result, Mongolia & UB City is pretty much an unspoiled city & people, their minds and souls not yet infected or challenged by the images, media, and ideals of Western Capitalism.

What does this all mean?  Two things…  Read more...

my first one cent paycheck

  • May 31, 2010 7:00 am

Well, it finally happened.  I just got my first residual paycheck for $0.01.  Yes, you read that correctly.  One cent, one penny, 1/100th of a U.S. dollar.  In the past, I had always heard stories on the mean streets of Hollywood about actors getting the infamous once cent residual paycheck in the mail.  However, I have never met any of these penny beneficiaries in person so I kinda just wrote the whole thing off as some sort of urban legend or street myth.  You know, stuff like unicorns and four hour erections.

But before we continue, for those folks not familiar with the esoteric pay practices of the entertainment industry, here’s a quick explanation of how actors earn their keep.  Here we go…  Read more...

Taxes

  • April 20, 2010 12:41 pm

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Obama Looks at Awesome Things

  • April 4, 2010 3:43 am

 The President is a pretty hands on guy and he likes to see how the work force is doing with innovation and efficiency; checking the pulse of the economy from the ground floor. So, he’s always on the road at the some factory or assemblyline, talking to some engineer or plant manager about the cool wazoos and widgets that are being produced. NYMag recently did a slideshow called A History of Obama Feigning Interest in Mundane Things. Naysayers have said that the photos were clearly doctored. 

So, some dude named Dean Trippe made his own slideshow, but this time, it’s Obama checking out things that you’d expect a 21st Century President should be checking out. Here are my favorites:  Read more...

The Great Firewall of China

  • March 23, 2010 8:56 pm

On paper, it shapes up as a classic battle of titans: The immovable object vs. the unstoppable force, two number 1 seeds — both dominant in their divisions — meeting up in the final match. A clash so large in scale, it makes the finales of John Woo’s RED CLIFF and 300 mere skirmishes by comparison. And no, it doesn’t even involve the prodigious pugilistic talents of Manny Pacquiao. In one corner stands Google, the John Wooden-coached UCLA Bruins of technology and contemporary communication: Popular, powerful, seminal and ambitious. In the opposite corner stands the peerless champion of industry and manufacturing, China: Critical, consequential, calibrated and authoritarian.

This, YOMYOMF readers, is epic.  Read more...

Michelle Kwan Island – a Greek Tragedy of Opportunity…

  • March 11, 2010 11:51 am

Greece is screwed.  The home country of Mt. Olympus is bankrupt and no spell conjured up by any naked God from atop the Acropolis will be able to save it.  Normally, when a country cannot pay off it’s debts, the government can quietly print up a whole bunch of new money via a printing press (ie. out of thin air) to get the creditor pimps off their backs (that’s what the United States does).  How cool would it be if we all had our own little, secret printing presses hidden in our closets?  Credit card bills too high?  Just print until you’re in the black.  Want that $1.5 million dream house but you got no coin?  Just run off 15,000 one hundred dollar bills.  Got a Korean girlfriend?  No problem at all!  Just give her a mini printing press hidden inside a LV or Prada bag and 98% of all your future fights will instantly disappear.  Unfortunately for Greece, the nation cannot print it’s way out of their financial mess like the United States because Greece’s currency, the Euro, is tied to 22 other European nations.  Basically Greece doesn’t have the keys to the printing press and today, finds itself in a financial checkmate to it’s world creditors.  Zeus is dying.  No, actually, Zeus is dead but is being kept alive via an IV, life support, and Wheel Of Fortune reruns.  Greece is pretty much laying in the coffin, just one nail short of stepping into it’s own mythology.  What is this great Hellenic nation to do?  Athena has an idea…

you mean I can own this???

you mean I can OWN this?  Read more...

Send Your Toys On A Vacation…With Us

  • February 28, 2010 10:39 am

Are your stuffed animals stressed out and in need of a vacation? Well, there’s a new travel agency in the Czech Republic that has the solution to your problem. Inspired by the globe-trotting garden gnome from the film Amelie, the Toy Traveling agency is offering a luxury vacation package for…your stuffed animal.

That’s right—your stuffed animal will be escorted around Prague and photos will be taken of him/her at all the lovely tourist sites. You can even pay extra for your favorite toy to receive a massage complete with candles and incense.

Damn, do people actually pay for this shit?!  Read more...

The Lure of La La Land

  • February 3, 2010 2:17 am

I think it’s natural that many of my fellow bloggers and I have hopped on to this week’s Flavah, “ANGST”..  Needless to say, there’s a lot of angst in Hollywood.  Hollywood creates angst, practically manufactures it.  Why?  Because Hollywood is a business that revolves around being judged and getting rejected. 

Actors have it the hardest.  They go in for countless auditions, boxed in to a holding room, staring down the competition, sizing each other up, tensely waiting for their fate.    We’ve all heard the stories where an assistant walks in and immediately starts picking off people, “you, you, you.  Everybody else, thank you and goodbye.”   Read more...

Am I “retarded” for making Asian American films?

  • January 21, 2010 3:15 pm

“For a group of people that are supposed to be good at math, you guys must be retarded to keep making Asian American films.”

That is a direct quote from a conversation I had with a veteran film producer last week about one of my upcoming projects. But before you make any judgment, you need to know that he is Asian American.

Such remarks are not uncommon from a lot of Asian Americans working in the industry. In fact they tend to be some of the loudest naysayers and, at times, biggest obstacles on anything ‘Asian American’ (I will get to that on another day). That being said, I do understand his point. He was referring to Asian American cinema as a business. “Screw business!” you might say, but the reality is that filmmaking is a collision between art and commerce (even the cheapest of films will cost more than your average Mercedes). And within the context of Asian American films, the big elephant in the room has always been its business viability. “It’s a young man’s game,” a filmmaker once told me about Asian American films, “it’s fun to talk about representin’ and stuff until you get a mortgage.” And as a business it definitely makes no sense.  Read more...

FunkyNomics – our economy in 5 sentences or less…

  • November 13, 2009 3:27 pm

kideatingsand

i know, economic stuff is like eating sand, so i’ll keep it under 5 sentences so as not to offend…

Today the Dow Jones closed near 10,300 (a sign of economic growth and recovery) BUT gold finished the week at near record levels of almost $1,120 per ounce (a sign of a serious, future economic instability).  How can the two exist at the same time if the U.S. Gov’t and many well-respected economists say that the worst is over, the recession is behind us, and we’re on the road to recovery?  Great economic health (high Dow Jones) will usually result in low gold prices and vice versa.  A high Dow and high gold prices cannot exist in the same sustained reality – someone be fibbing through their butthole – but who? We be living in some funky times baby…

yet another worm in a sexy Apple…

  • September 28, 2009 12:05 am

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…

iphone-sucks  Read more...

and you think you thought you knew a guy…

  • September 17, 2009 10:20 am

A great artists usually isn’t a great business person.  And a great business person is usually not a great artists.  This is not to say that an artists cannot successfully dabble in business or that business people cannot enjoy taking part in the arts.  It’s just that being great or exceptional at both simultaneously is very rare.  Art uses a different hemisphere of the brain than business does.  And it usually takes many, many years of practice and failing to get good at even one of those disciplines.

But every now and then you come across a person who seems to have a great handle on both.  Most recently I was pleasantly surprised by 50 Cent.  Yes, the gangsta rapper 50 Cent.  You’ve seen him on music videos wearing bulletproof vests and rapping about the thug life.  He’s buff, wears the bling, lives in Mike Tyson’s old mansion, rolls with Eminem, and has multiple bullet wounds from past attempts on his life.  He has truly mastered the image of 50 that he has created for himself.  So I was pleasantly surprised to see a much different side to 50 in this CNBC Business interview.  Perhaps Curtis Jackson’s 50 Cent is more akin to Sasha Baron Cohen’s Borat.  That in reality, 50 Cent is more a character created and believed to be real than the actual, true man himself. Makes me think twice about judging a book by it’s cover. Who is someone you assumed you knew but totally surprised you with a hidden side?

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I ASK…when do dollars become cents??? $$$

  • August 3, 2009 10:02 pm

what if i told you that in 10 years, every dollar you have would be worth 5 cents or less?  what would you do differently today?

i ask this question because my general sense is that most people really don’t have a firm grasp of what is happening with our economy right now.  and i know most people find economics a topic as interesting as eating sand.  so i’ll try and make this fun.  i’m just going to throw out a few facts.  would love to hear your thoughts of what you would do differently today knowing what you’re about to read.

moneytoilet  Read more...