Alpha Asian

Introducing Youtube Opinionator Peter Chao aka "Chinese Guy"

2009-11-15T03:39:00.000-08:00

The Chinese Guy doesn't think OJ Simpson is amazing. He explains why.

More here.

Interview with Rain on Ninja Assassin Movie

2009-11-14T09:20:00.000-08:00

Paper Sons

2009-11-14T08:27:00.000-08:00

Ryan Higa

2009-11-13T07:33:00.001-08:00

Watch live streaming video from gigaomtv at livestream.com

Here's an interview with Ryan Higa. I find it interesting that he's shy in his personal life but is quite expressive when filming himself. In my interview with actor Randall Park, he also mentioned that he was quite shy. Which is weird given that he's come up with some really crazy and funny sh!t in his YouTube videos. I think a lot of performers, whether it be actors or singers, are like this.

Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil - Kobukson

2009-11-11T13:57:00.000-08:00

Patricia J Williams is currently a Professor at Columbia Law School. She writes a column for The Nation magazine titled "Diary of a Mad Law Professor." The Mad-Law-Professor is also the name of a super hero that she created.

In 1997, she published Seeing a Colorblind Future: The Paradox of Race.

From The Atlantic Online:

[bold emphasis mine]

Can you explain your book's title? Do you see yourself as entering self-consciously into current debates over the achievability, even desirability, of a "color-blind" society? The book doesn't mention affirmative action explicitly.

Yes, all of this intersects with specific legal remedies such as affirmative action, and the counter to those, which has been appeals to color-blindness -- not just color-blindness as a social ideal but as a kind of literal mandate that seems to be requiring, as in California's Proposition 209, that you eliminate all reference to race even when you're trying to remediate the effects of racism. That's the paradox, it seems to me -- that you can't talk about what it is that you're trying to remediate. Therefore you can't talk about it sensibly. In the book I use the image of the three monkeys, Hear No Evil, See No Evil, Speak No Evil. To me, that image represents the wrong kind of color-blindness, because that's just plain blindness, rather than unselfconsciousness about race or about the mark of color.

The book opens with an anecdote about your son's being misdiagnosed as (literally) color-blind. The well-meaning teachers in his nursery school had taught the children that "it makes no difference" what color you are, and it seems your son took this quite literally, so that he resisted identifying color at all. The story illustrates the way children are taught that race doesn't matter. But you're pointing out the many ways in which the color of one's skin does, unfortunately, matter. How do you explain to a child the idea that race matters?

Well, you know, I think there is no rational way to explain it. That's the great injury of race -- it is not rational. It does matter, and yet it shouldn't. And yet it does.

When I had my son's vision tested, the doctor told me that he was indeed not color-blind. It was his teachers who had said he was having trouble distinguishing colors in various color games and tests, and that he was so smart in other regards that I should really see if he were color-blind. It turned out that he was saying it doesn't matter what color the grass is, it doesn't matter what color the sky is.

It is one thing to teach children from the inception that race does not matter, that skin color does not matter. And yet my son's teachers had made this point of its not making a difference only after it had made a difference. They ignored the racial dynamics of the classroom up to a certain point, but when some children excluded my son from their play because of his race the teachers said color doesn't make a difference. His believing that literally was his attempt to resolve something that was nonsensical, basically -- something that was two things at once.

I have not found a sensible way to talk about race to my son. I do not want to poison him with the kinds of demarcations that would most effectively explain what racism is. Racism means that certain people don't like you. I guess my concern is that most children, black children in particular, understand the negative consequences of race before they have words to understand the great complexity of what's embodied in its history. It's a little bit like wondering how you explain war to a child.

You're known for the use of anecdote in your writing. In fact, you manage to write about pressing legal and philosophical issues from a position that's very much "on the ground." What draws you, as a writer and as a legal scholar, to anecdote? Are there any dangers inherent in the use of anecdote?

Surely. I sometimes get characterized as somebody who does nothing but anecdote. And that's absolutely not true. Part of what I've tried to do in my writing is insert anecdote at the moments when people have reasoned their way by virtue of broad generalizations. I insert an anecdote to bring it down to the individual level -- to make it nuanced, to make it real. That's where I think it's most effective.

On the other hand, I've been in situations where everybody's saying, "I am a representative of this," "I am a representative of this." It's as though they can't get past their own little anecdotal stories of self-validation and self-credentialization. That's the point at which I will reverse it and reach for the broad statistic. I find, for example, that people use the worst-case scenario when talking about welfare reform. It's always, you know, a black teenage mother who's thirteen, has six children, and whose boyfriend is a crack dealer. Broad public policies are made with her as the representative figure. That's anecdote. Willie Horton is anecdote. And that's the point at which I think it's useful to say that in 1996 only two percent of single mothers on welfare were under the age of eighteen -- and only eight percent when you count those who were eighteen and nineteen. It helps to put things in proportion. So I try to use anecdote consistently to illustrate larger points. I use it strategically.

There's a Calvin in All of Us

2009-11-11T05:56:00.000-08:00

Sabbaticals for Increased Productivity, Creativity and Well-Being

2009-11-10T13:17:00.000-08:00

Thanks to iiStix.com for this one. The idea of taking periodic breaks to increase creativity and productivity is very Daoist and can applied to anything. If you get writer's block get up and walk around for 5 minutes. Getting the blood flowing every 20 minutes gets new ideas going.

The idea of fracturing your retirement and spreading it across career is very much dependent on the type of career you work in and what obligations you may have. People in law enforcement and with families may find it difficult to fracture your career because it affects your benefits. Nevertheless, if you're able to take 1-2 vacations a year and do 4 day work weeks, then in a sense you're doing micro-sabbaticals.

The Invisible Asian Man - Kobukson

2009-11-09T09:37:00.000-08:00

When I first saw these photos I was immediately captivated both by the ingenuity of this highly unusual technique as well as the simple but powerful message projected by this work. His name is Liu Bolin, a 35 year old artist from Shandong, China. Liu has mastered the art of camouflaging himself into virtually any background. It can take up to ten hours to create a single shot. He does this so well that sometimes people passing by in the street do not notice that he is there.

Liu stated that one of the purposes of his work is to protest the government, which often acts to stifle artists. He also said the message he wanted to convey was about not fitting into society.

Not fitting into society.

I was also reminded of "Invisible Man", a novel written by Ralph Ellison, which explores the issues of Black existentialism during a less enlightened period in America's past. The protagonist regards himself as "socially invisible" and he attempts to make some sense out of his life, experience, and position in American society.

I believe this notion of "social invisibility" is highly relevant to the condition of the Asian-American man. By now it has become a stereotypical cliché of most Asian-American forums to engage in furious grievance-making about negative media stereotypes. Yes, we do get slapped in the face every once in a while by the media but most of the time, we're just simply invisible. But these stereotypes are merely a symptom of this invisibility.

If an Asian-American version of Liu Bolin were to paint himself invisible against the backdrop of mainstream America (whatever that may be), I think most of us would quietly understand with very little explanation.

Asking Permission (to do your sister)

2009-11-09T06:44:00.000-08:00

ABC's Go to China

2009-11-09T05:49:00.000-08:00

The reporter refers to this woman as an ABC, but from the interview you find out she's a 1.5 generation.

Ninja Assassin Lego Edition

2009-11-07T10:06:00.000-08:00

State of the Asian American Blogosphere

2009-11-06T20:45:00.000-08:00

With the Asian American blogger event Banana coming up, I thought I'd reflect on the state of the Asian American blogosphere and Asian American presence on the Web in general. Although I'm sure my recollection of the Asian American web presence is completely jumbled, the very first Asian American site to make an impression on me was Model Minority. It was the first site that I came across with other Asians just as angry about all the racism and bigotry that we face. When you have a common feeling among a group of people and a platform to allow them to communicate this feeling freely, then you have a community.

But what transforms a community into a movement? Although forum communities serve a purpose (exchange of information, intelligent and unintelligent discourse, etc.), a community of people who think similarly is not a movement. A "movement" implies a series of deliberate actions undertaken to move from your current state to a desired state. Without movement, then you don't have… a movement.

And when you move, then you must decide on a destination to move towards. In other words, you have to have a measurable and concrete goal for your movement to achieve. Otherwise your movement will go around circles and eventually lose steam.

Most Asian American forums have died out, because they were communities that did not evolve into movements. Forums have given way to blogs and videos, and you can certainly see this trend in the Asian American presence on the Web. Blogs have far more potential to create social movements than forums, because they are linear in structure.

Blogs can be very focused (depending on the writer), and they don’t need reader participation to survive the way forums do. A good blog post is a good blog post whether it has a hundred comments or zero comments. Forums, however, are a free for all, where everybody’s trying to grab your attention.

Nevertheless, I do miss the sense of community that comes from an Internet forum. It’s always nice to know that you’re not alone for thinking and feeling the way that you do and that other people have experienced similar things. One Asian American forum that stands out for me is 108 Spirits. Unfortunately by the time I discovered it, 108 Spirits was a proverbial ghost town. Which made me quite sad, because here was their mission statement:

108 Spirits is a reference to the 36 Heavenly Spirits and 72 Earthly Friends that originated from Chinese mythology and later on influenced various Asian works of literature. Among those is one of the Four Great Classical Novels of Chinese literature: "Shui Hu", aka "Water Margin", "Outlaws of the Marsh" or "All Men Are Brothers", in which the 108 Spirits reincarnated as the 108 Outlaws.

The 108 Outlaws of the Marsh are a band of very talented men who refuse to be governed by established rules & practices and rebel against authorities. Their stories represent and celebrate masculine Asian men of various types: leader, scholar, warrior, businessman, outlaw, musician, doctor, etc. - united by the spirit of the Brotherhood to help each other and those in needs.

That is the goal of this website: the development, representation and celebration of Asian masculinity.

Our focus is on the Asian male identity and expression in the Anglosphere, as that is where Asian men are misrepresented in the media, facing many unfair barriers and stereotypes in society and their voices are not heard. However, we are always open to our Asian brothers around the world and the women who adore Asian men, and would appreciate the knowledge and wisdom they have to contribute.

We believe and want to show to the world that Asian men are more than just the caricatural stereotypes that the media unfairly portrays and society ignorantly pigeonholes us as. We believe that there is no one type of Super Asian Man, that Asian masculinity takes many forms and they all deserve better recognition and representation in society.

We recognize the shared Asian male identity and at the same time, we also recognize that we all come from various backgrounds and our differences are our collective strength.

We are here to share our stories, our insights, to pool our knowledge together for the development and representation of Asian men.

We are here to shatter limiting beliefs that hold us back from becoming the man of our dreams and to take on the challenges that life throws at us with courage and enthusiasm.

Last but not least, we celebrate our friends and lovers, who appreciate the beauty of our mind and body and who stand by us always.

The direction I want to take the Alpha Asian blog is to better the image of the Asian male. I completely agree with this philosophy of reconnecting with our mythic past and remembering that once we were warriors.

I refuse to believe that I’m the only Alpha Asian on the Web, which is why I’ve asked Kobukson and Mojo Rider to join this blog. I want an Alpha Asian community. An Alpha Asian movement can come later when we know our destination. I have something in mind that I’ll reveal in the future, but for now if you want a sense of camaraderie among your fellow Alpha Asians, then join our Facebook group and feel free to post in the discussion board and on the group wall. Put the call out to others like us and let them know about this site.

“I believe deep down, we both want this world to change. I believe that the Matrix can remain our cage or it can become our chrysalis, that's what you helped me to understand. That to be free, you cannot change your cage. You have to change yourself.

“When I used to look out at this world, all I could see was its edges, its boundaries, its rules and controls, its leaders and laws. But now, I see another world. A different world where all things are possible. A world of hope. Of peace.

“I can't tell you how to get there, but I know if you can free your mind, you'll find the way.”

- Neo, The Matrix Revolutions (2003)

Wing Pang on Conan O'Brien

2009-11-06T16:12:00.000-08:00

Freaks Fest 2009

2009-11-06T05:54:00.000-08:00

Not safe for work, because normal women like to dress slutty on Halloween.

Jews and Chinese Food

2009-11-06T05:29:00.000-08:00

Asian American Bloggers Unite!

2009-11-05T08:15:00.000-08:00

From Channel APA:

If you're in the Los Angeles are on November 21, 2009, be sure to check out BANANA, where Infamous Asian American Bloggers Unite to Chop It Up. This is probably the largest group of Asian American bloggers ever assembled. The event is organized by author Lac Su (I Love Yous Are For White People) and television/film producer Steve Nguyen (channelAPA.com LA correspondent). It's an opportunity to meet the people behind your favorite blogs as well as hear important discussions about the future of our voice, where it will lead to, and how we can come together to find common grounds and focused endeavors to voice our opinions about relevant issues affecting our community. The event will be held on the USC campus on November 21, 2009.

If you're on Facebook, then you can RSVP for the event HERE

I know the video says I'll be attending, but like I said in a previous post, I won't be there. I'm going to be coached on how to coach my wife on how to breathe when she gives birth. Of course, I'm sure all that training will go out the window when the crap hits the fan.

Manny Pacquiao on Jimmy Kimmel

2009-11-05T08:06:00.000-08:00

Degrees of Separation, Part Two - Mojo Rider

2009-11-03T14:53:00.000-08:00

Awhile ago, I read a fascinating essay by Malcolm Gladwell on a woman named Lois Weisberg (the essay was later included in Gladwell’s book “The Tipping Point” but you can find the essay on Gladwell’s website). Gladwell discusses how we all know someone like her: sociable, seems to know tons of people, seems to know everyone. We’ll get to her importance in a moment. Let’s review what this six degrees is all about.

In short, the six degrees of separation was an experiment conducted by Harvard professor of social psychology Stanley Milgram in the 1960’s. He dealt with the “small world” phenomena, wanting to answer just how are people connected, how are we bound together, and in what social webs? To do this, he conducted a chain letter type of experiment. Selecting over 100 random people in Omaha, NE who participated, the goal was for these participants to write their name on a roster sheet and give the roster sheet to someone they thought could help get it to this stockbroker in Boston, MA or at his home in Sharon, MA. And that person would do the same until the roster sheet had met its final destination. At the culmination of the experiment, Milgram could look at the roster of names and establish how closely connected someone chosen at random from one part of the country was to another person chosen at random in another part in attempting to get the letter to this person in Massachusetts. What Milgram found was that it took most participants 5 or 6 steps to get it to its final destination; hence, the popular phrase “six degrees of separation."

Gladwell further writes that a study “involving students at the University of Utah, found that if you ask someone why he is friendly with someone else he'll say that it is because they share similar attitudes. But if you actually quiz the pairs of students on their attitudes you'll find out that this is an illusion, and that what friends really tend to have in common are activities. We're friends with the people we do things with, not necessarily with the people we resemble. We don't seek out friends; we simply associate with the people who occupy the same physical places that we do.”

But the question is still, “How did these people in Nebraska get their letters to Boston?”

Gladwell states that the answer is in the degrees of separation itself, something in that chain. Milgram had found in his experiment that 24 of the letters made it to the broker’s home, but 16 of them were given to the broker by one person. The rest of the letters made it to the broker’s business office, in which the majority arrived through two other persons. Moreover, Gladwell writes that not all degrees of separation are equal and that it does not follow that everyone is linked to everyone else through six degrees; rather, it is that a select number of people are linked to everyone else through smaller steps and that most of us are linked to the world through these select people. And the importance of people like Lois Weisberg is not that she knows everyone or knows lots of people, but that she socializes in many different worlds. Gladwell recounts that Weisberg was connected to people in some twenty different worlds, ranging from politics, to lawyers, to actors, to writers, etc., having the ability to move through different social cultures.

By now, you are thinking, “Mojo, what the hell are you babbling about? Why should we care about a Lois Weisberg?”

Fair enough, so here’s where I’m trying to link it all together. Kobukson made an eloquent plea that the road to empowerment for Asian males, individually and collectively, begins with our selves, that we should be pooling our resources and helping each other out.

We can’t change our circumstances if we don’t even get in the game. We should care about a Lois Weisberg type because this is how powerful connections are made, she is the conduit, or as Gladwell calls it, the “connector”. Who is your Lois Weisberg? Who is your conduit? Going back to part one, it very well could be that my distant cousin Tom is one of those connectors. I’ll have to probe some more.

But this isn’t about cold, calculated networking and putting people’s names in your rolodex. People don’t go out of their way to help you if they don’t like you. But this “connector” person might be what some of our groups are missing. This road to empowerment starts with building connections and networking and a “connector” type might be the most valuable person in your network. We need to find someone like that who can put us in touch with people in the film industry so we can get our movie made, or the literary world, politics---whatever; we need access to places where we’ve been shut out. If we have to do it on our own, we can make our voices loud enough so that eventually we are heard by the mainstream, we can start to control more of our images and change the attitudes about us in popular culture. Like James has mentioned, this blog can be about the exchange of ideas, advice, networking, and finding some self respect.

Degrees of Separation, Part One - Mojo Rider

2009-11-03T09:38:00.000-08:00

We’ve all heard about 6 degrees of separation and have had those “small world” moments when running into someone who’s a friend of your friend. Within the last few months, I’ve had some moments like that and it got me thinking more about the phenomena. It touches upon what Kobukson and James have talked about in the previous post.

But first, let me describe the events. I had been talking to my cousin and his wife Alexis (who is from Hong Kong and educated here in the US) about this indie movie “Shanghai Kiss” and how it was able to honestly portray an Asian American male in a lead role. I’ve also commented on this movie in another thread on this blog. Anyway, they seemed interested in it and so I loaned my copy to them. Just recently, we met up at my nephew’s birthday party and my cousin’s wife approached me and said they watched the movie. She laughed and said that for a romantic drama it was a male fantasy, which in some ways it was, but she liked it because it had nothing to do with martial arts and all that kind of crap. Honestly, the storyline is okay, but its significance is more about showcasing a talented actor like Ken Leung in a lead role for this film.

Ken Leung with Kelly Hu in "Shanghai Kiss"

But---and here comes the degrees of separation---what was interesting was that she told me that she knows Byron Mann and how she loved his scene in the movie. She didn’t know that Mann was in the movie so it was a nice surprise. Moreover, she went on to tell me that she last saw Byron about 20 years ago but that she knew him growing up in Hong Kong. They last had contact when Mann was going to law school at UCLA and she was going for her graduate degree at Princeton. But it wouldn’t be hard for her to get back in touch with him. How would she do it? Well, she would go through her friends. And that’s the basis for the six degrees of separation.

Actor Byron Mann

The second case involves a distant cousin of mine, Tom. We had actually grown up in the same neighborhood, went to the same public schools but we hung in different circles and weren’t close. And it was awhile before we discovered we were related. Tom seems to be someone in the middle of things, the social hub. Anyway, this incident was at another cousin’s wedding back in October (I have a huge extended family). I had been seated at a table with some other relatives and a few other guys I didn’t know. One of my brothers and I were talking to one of them, it turned out he knew my distant first cousin, Tom. It’s one of those things where in discussing commonalities, like going to the same school, someone says, “So back in college, did you know a guy named Tom who headed up the intramural basketball team for…?”

And what is funny is that my distant cousin Tom had met several of my other first cousins some years back through sports events put on by the Washington DC Chinese Youth Club here in the DC area before we realized we were distant cousins (it’s complicated!). He ran into one my older cousins who went out to LA for a volleyball tournament (the North American Chinese Invitational Volleyball tournament), he ran into another cousin doing this, doing that, etc. And to top it off, his younger brother Bo, who was a year ahead of me in school, married a close girlfriend of Alexis, the one who knows Byron Mann.

So where am I going with this? With your indulgence, let me lay the ground work in part two and I will try and tie it all together to make a point.

You are not alone - Kobukson

2009-11-02T07:37:00.000-08:00

What you know you can't explain, but you feel it. You've felt it your entire life, that there is something wrong with the world. You don't know what it is, but it is there, like a splinter in your mind, driving you mad. - Morpheus

Hey you! Out there in the cold

Getting lonely, getting old, can you feel me?

Hey you! Standing in the aisles

With itchy feet and fading smiles, can you feel me?

Hey you! Don't help them to bury the live

Don't give in without a fight...

- Pink Floyd

Hey you. You are a fellow Asian-American brother. Here, in the New World, there is no Chinese, Taiwanese, Korean, Filipino, Vietnamese, Japanese, Cambodian, Laotian, or what have you. We don't have time for bullshit. Here, we all speak English, and share a common experience. And if you are a fellow brother, who has lived through what might be called the Asian-American Male Experience, and are still standing...congratulations. This is what we are here to talk about.

Maybe you are still in school or maybe you are like me, neck-deep in the "Real World". You go about your daily life reading magazines, newspapers, watching TV, listening to the radio. You spend a great deal of your time absorbing what other people think or say. People, who for the most, have a different mentality and worldview than you. Going on and on about things that you quite frankly don't give a damn fuck about most of the time.

When were YOU, an Asian-American man, the primary intended audience of anything in particular and not just, at best, a mere after-thought? When was the last time you heard or saw anybody specifically dedicated to speaking on your behalf, as an Asian-American man? When was the last time you saw or heard anything...anything...that spoke true to our experience and that which validate our existence? About issues which affect us and concerns that matter most deeply to us?

You are a member of a group that is one of the least acknowledged in society and simultaneously, one of the least likely to stand up to do anything about it. Well, fellas, that's got to change.

I believe that the average Asian-American man goes through a life of quiet desperation, carrying some heavy burdens. You know what I am talking about. I also believe that the average Asian-American man struggles largely in isolation. Who can really understand our thoughts, frustrations, fears, doubts, worries, pain...our confusion? Do we even talk about things and try to see where we stand with each other, fellow Asian-American brothers, and not just in the safety and anonymity of virtual space, but in meatspace as well, face-to-face, within our own personal domains? I am not sure if that is happening.

You are an embattled Asian-American man, trying to make some sense of the world that he lives in, wondering if there anyone out there who feels him. You are frustrated with yourself as well as with society. You long for times of refreshing yet you endure long periods of emotionally barren droughts. You are sick and tired of "business-as-usual", the uncoordinated anger, and some of the blatent stupidity that can exist, in most of the Asian-American forums that you haunt on a regular basis.

Gentlemen, we have some tough issues. We need to bring a new level of intelligence and maturity to our discussions. We need innovative thinkers, opinionaters, and doers...folks who can think outside of the box, because that is what it's gonna take to solve our problems. The road to empowerment, both individually and collectively, starts with ourselves.

Let's help each other, fellow Asian-American brothers. You are not crazy. There's more than enough of us out there who feel the same things, experience the same struggles. We can't all be crazy. Let's start expressing ourselves but with maturity and dignity. Let's be real with ourselves also. Be very VERY real. Let's poll our collective thoughts, wisdom, and experience. Let's challenge one another. A tough world is easier to face if one knows that there are many others like him out there who share the same thoughts and feel the same pain. Let's help each other in the spirit of mutual encouragement and upliftling. Because if we don't do that for ourselves....who will?

Just Kidding Films Halloween Special

2009-11-01T07:30:00.000-08:00

These guys must regularly smoke pot or something. One quarter comedic genius, three quarters lunacy. Not safe for work.

I Hate Cheese

2009-10-31T04:56:00.000-07:00

The Bourne Friendship

2009-10-31T04:36:00.000-07:00

Chinese Food or "Chinese" Chinese Food?

2009-10-30T06:43:00.000-07:00

Conan O'Brien in Chinatown

2009-10-30T06:05:00.000-07:00