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An Open Letter to SNL on Why John Cho & Kal Penn Should Host

  • October 12, 2011 12:01 am

Dear Saturday Night Live:

I know other Asian Americans have criticized you for your continued lack of Asian representation in front of your cameras, but that’s not what I’m here to do today. It’s true your record in this department has been pretty spotty: though cast members Fred Armisen and Rob Schneider are part Asian, they’ve never been closely identified as “Asian” and you’ve only had two Asian hosts in 37 seasons—Lucy Liu and Jackie Chan—both back in 2000. But I’m cool with putting all of that aside for the moment.

Instead, I humbly offer one small suggestion that, while not the answer to this issue, could be a step in the right direction: Invite John Cho and Kal Penn to co-host the show together. Not only would this help to increase SNL’s diversity, but I think it would be a win-win for everyone involved.

Now, I understand that the lack of Asian hosts has more to do with the realities of the business than any sort of racism. You have to get big ratings to survive, and frankly, there aren’t many Asian performers who have the clout that a Tom Hanks or Ben Stiller has to attract those big audiences. But I think the combined talents of John Chon and Kal Penn will bring in the numbers you’ll need to make it worthwhile.  Read more...

Force Protection

  • November 22, 2010 12:10 am

EDWARD

Edward Chang was born on 20 May 1980 in Taipei and raised in Southern California. He studied at the University of California, San Diego, where he received a bachelor’s degree in psychology and economics. Edward served in a U.S. Army aviation regiment in Operation Iraqi Freedom. After his deployment, he received a master’s degree in Creative Writing from the University of Southern California and a law degree from Loyola Law School. He lives in Los Angeles, where he practices law and spends his free time wrestling his dog, Ludwig. His first novel, Chinks & Mortars, is available as an ebook, on Barnes and Noble and Amazon. He previously blogged about his time in Iraq (see here) and shares another experience below.

“Cigalette?” Muhammed offered, withdrawing a pack from under his wind beaten shirt.

“No, no thank you…”

Feeling silly for thinking him a terrorist, I reciprocated Muhammed’s friendliness in the best way I knew how – excessive conversation. As we whizzed back up the road in my Hummer, I began blabbing like an eager kid. For his part, Muhammed only had to nod and smile to keep me going, which he did in generous helpings.

I spoke to Muhammed about the warm morning and how I thought I was finally getting used to the desert heat. I told him I was from Los Angeles, and that I had been to Disneyland, and then I asked him if he knew what Disneyland was. Sometimes when you get away with talking too much, you say really silly things.

He smiled and popped a cigarette in his mouth. Finding no lighter on his body, he simply sat back in the passenger seat and pretended to smoke.

“I was thinking just now how it must be like to be one of you. I know that sounds really wrong, but I can’t help but think that. I was pretending I woke up at the butt crack of dawn to come over to this base to build our fence and make an honest day’s buck. Only, I don’t know what happens next. What happens at the end of the day when I go home? Do my friends make fun of me for working with the Americans? I wonder if you go back to some place awful and bombed out, or if all this really doesn’t affect your real life so much.”  Read more...

10 Things Non-Asian Chicks Need To Pretend To Like To Score With Asian American Guys

  • July 6, 2010 12:38 am

I vowed that I would help my non-Asian female readers looking to snag an Asian man and I am as good as my word. Previously, I blogged about the things Asian guys needed to pretend to like to hook up with a white chick. Today for the non-Asian ladies on the prowl for some tender yellow meat, here are 10 things you need to pretend to like to get with an Asian American man:

1. PING PONG

Asian American guys need at least one sport that they’re better at then whites, blacks, Latinos and elderly people in order to feel secure in their manhood. For awhile there, it looked like it could’ve been golf or tennis, but that didn’t work out. There’s always competitive hot dog eating, but let’s be real—“I put 50 wieners in my mouth in 12 minutes” probably won’t get you laid…by a woman (and eating too many hot dogs might drive you to do crazy shit like this). So all that’s left is ping pong. It’ll take some work, but when your man is playing ping pong, stare at him with wonder and pride as if he were playing a “real” sport like basketball and he was a “real” athlete like Michael Jordan.

2. DISSING ASIAN WOMEN

If you are a non-Asian woman and you’re with an Asian American man, at some point, he will go off on a tirade against Asian women for being traitors and sell-outs because they date white dudes and other non-Asian males. Yeah, I realize it may be confusing and hypocritical considering you’re also non-Asian and he’s Asian American yet your man has no issues with you, but trust me, it makes perfect sense to him. In these moments, don’t try to reason with or contradict him, just agree with everything he says and occasionally interject with statements like, “Yes, you’re right, Asian women are whores with white cocks permanently embedded in their mouths.” And when this topic comes up, never utter the following words to your man in any context: “The Joy Luck Club,” “Soon-Yi” or “colorblind society.”

 Read more...

The Heart and Soul of ‘The Karate Kid’

  • June 11, 2010 2:01 pm

ALY

Aly Morita is a writer, Asian American activist and daughter of the late Pat Morita. She is currently at work on her first novel at Sassafras Liberty, an artists collective in Tennessee.

In 1984, I was in the throes of becoming a nightmare teenager, having discovered boys, Aqua Net for my spiked hair and the telephone. My younger sister was an awkward nine-year old, looking more like a boy than a girl with her short hair and cherubic face. My mother was in the midst of putting the finishing touches on the house she had rebuilt tooth and nail, the one we had just moved back into—the home destroyed by a mudslide four years prior. My father had only recently rejoined my family after spending a few years in Hawai’i, nursing the wounds he had suffered after the cancellation of his series, Mr. T & Tina, the first network sitcom starring an Asian American. The home we moved back into, my parents’ marriage and my family were barely intact, but the summer of 1984 seemed full of promise.

My father had spent the last year involved with this new movie, called The Karate Kid. He endured endless jokes from my sister and I—the title was so uncool. I was a little embarrassed, knowing my father was going to star in a film about karate—my unformed identity politics just cognizant enough to discern a problem, but our taunting was quieted by the tremendous amount of satisfaction and happiness my father experienced throughout the making of the movie. He was nothing, in his eyes, if he wasn’t working.

 Read more...

The Verdict on The Karate Kid Remake

  • June 11, 2010 1:58 pm

The remake/reboot of The Karate Kid opens this weekend, with some minor hoopla from mainly Asian American groups who felt this new version made Asians villains and the fact that the film is set in China and in the world of kung-fu, no “karate”, thus making them interchangeable (all Asian, all the same). In the past week alone, there was a Boycott Movement (you can join the Facebook fan page). The argument: nepotism bought Will Smith’s son a film franchise and that the film, in its very existence, sullies the legacy of the late Pat Morita as Mr. Miyagi (our guest blog on this subject by Aly Morita who is spearheading the campaign is now up).

Now, we’ve actually defended this film way back in January; mainly the fact that we’re okay with the title (it’s a known commodity) and looked forward to checking it out. Well, the wait is over. I’ve seen it. And it’s a fun, great film! I’m going to list people, places and things in the film that made it, in my opinion, the sleeper hit of the summer:  Read more...

I ruv TV ruv Me

  • May 17, 2010 3:09 am

Did you know that by the time you hit 65, statistics say that you will have watched 9 years of TV?  9 years.  That’s a lot of tube.  But is it a waste of time?  Hmm…

As a child I watched a lot of TV.  As an adult, not much has changed.  The only time I didn’t watch TV was in college.  But that’s because I was too darn poor to afford one.  Once, during my sophomore year, I found an old TV in the basement of my dorm.  I wanted it really bad like I wanted Jennie Garth from BH 90210.  So, just to make sure I wasn’t stealing it, I yelled at the top of my lungs, “Hey, is this any one’s TV?”  I waited 30 seconds for a response.  Since no one replied, I claimed the old tube for myself and promptly took it up to my room hidden under some dusty, sorority girl negliges.  After heaving all 150 pounds of TV up to my room, my efforts were rewarded with crystal clear sound accompanied by no picture.  It would have been the perfect TV for me had I been blind.  I guess stealing really doesn’t pay (unless, of course, you work for an investment bank).

If I thought I watched a lot of TV as a kid, it was nowhere near how much I consumed when I started my acting career.  My goal was to know every single show that I would remotely be right for and study them till my eyes bled.  No matter what audition came up, I would not be caught off-guard.  I would be ready, I would be prepared, I would be Asian.  However, had I known that 90% of my auditions would either be as a delivery boy, asian gangster who’s about to die, or some mute relative to some big asian star like Jackie Chan, I would have spent my time obsessing on something more relevant and productive (like breeding the perfect llama).  From Power Rangers to soap operas to network TV, I watched it all.  And this was before DVR so I was watching this stuff live.  I was a serious couch potato.  Luckily for me, I instituted a calisthenic regimen during my daily television binges which insured that my lack of physical activity did not morph me into a yellow Nicole Richie.  So, every 15 minutes, I did 50 push ups, 50 sit ups, and 50 squats.  After about 2 seasons, I was as fit as a navy seal and yolked like a taun taun but I had the eyes of Mr. Magoo (just slantier).  Read more...

Dispatch from Berlin: Take a Chance on Jackie Chan

  • February 19, 2010 3:05 am

Guten tag from Berlin! I’m currently wrapping up my annual jaunt at the Berlinale (Berlin Film Festival). Watched a lot of films and warming up my lower extremities because of one of the coldest winters in Berlin in a decade. For such a well run, beautiful place with rich history, their city services in salting sidewalks and streets is left to be desired. The sidewalks are ice rinks and many people have slipped and fell around the festival. A poor Indian film buyer actually broke his leg on his first day at the fest and had to travel back to India the next day because he was immobile.  Read more...

Movies That Should Have Starred Asians: Meet The Parents

  • February 8, 2010 1:41 am

Sweet and slightly neurotic “ethnic” guy meets and falls in love with blonde WASP beauty. He accompanies her to meet her equally WASP parents where he finds himself under the suspicious eye of her protective and scary father. Things get worse when ethnic guy initiates a series of missteps, which makes an already tense situation worse. This is the plot of the hit 2000 comedy Meet The Parents starring Ben Stiller as Greg “Gaylord” Focker a.k.a. neurotic ethnic guy (Jewish in this case) and Robert DeNiro as scary dad Jack Byrnes, but it could also describe the various times my white girlfriends took me to meet their folks for the first time. So why not Meet The Parents starring an Asian American dude in the Stiller role? It might look something like this:

Yup, if someone like my fellow Offender Roger Fan had stepped into the part, the story would have still worked with minimal changes to the script. In fact, the basic premise of the “outsider” boyfriend meeting his fiancee’s “all-American” family would be even more strengthened if said boyfriend was really “different” i.e. Asian. But couldn’t that character be any person of color–not necessarily Asian? I don’t think so. It wouldn’t have the same impact if the boyfriend were black or Latino even though they could also represent the “outsider.” Why?  Read more...

Noble Savages on Ice

  • January 24, 2010 1:24 am

YouTube Preview Image This is pretty hilarious. Russian figure skating champions, Oskana Domnina and Maksim Shabalin, “inspired” by Australian aborigines and their ancient dances, did this routine at the recent European Figure Skating Championships last week. Now, they’re getting some heat for being insensitive. Gee, ya think? Brown body paint?… Da!… Tribal fake tattoos?…Da!….Grass skirt?…Da!

They probably meant well, but it’s still a bonehead move. I wonder if they’re going to perform this in Vancouver? Now that would be precious. This incident reminds me of the Spanish National basketball team doing the chink eye. And for a time when it felt that there was a chink eye controversy every other week on the Net, here comes Jackie Chan doing the chink eye on the Red Carpet:  Read more...

In Defense Of ‘The Karate Kid’ Remake

  • January 3, 2010 3:54 pm

So the trailer for the remake of The Karate Kid starring Jackie Chan and Jaden Smith (a.k.a. son of Will) was released recently and as expected, there’s been a good deal of negative feedback about Hollywood once again remaking a beloved classic. Well, I’m here to say that I have no problem with this.

I grew up on the 1984 original Karate Kid, which starred Pat Morita and Ralph Macchio, and its first sequel. Both were a major part of my youth and I have very fond memories. But frankly, if Hollywood wants to remake this or any other film (even my fellow Offender Justin’s beloved Teen Wolf), I don’t see what the big deal is. Justin already wrote about this subject so I’ll try not to be too repetitive, but let me try to address a few of the detractors’ main issues concerning this latest remake. But first, here’s the trailer if you haven’t seen it yet:  Read more...