Grace Park On A&E's The Cleaner

Sounding like it could be a pretty interesting show, A&E's The Cleaner will be featuring Grace Park in its multicultural cast as the character Akani Cuesta (premiering tonight).



Here's the lowdown on the show:

Each week THE CLEANER follows Benjamin Bratt as William Banks, a recovering addict who helps others get clean by any means necessary as he struggles to maintain his own rocky personal life. William works with an eclectic team. Swenton is a wily smart aleck who is great undercover and always jealous of Akani, the beautiful, manipulative, and mysterious woman who always seems to get the best assignments and might just have a romantic past with William. Darnell is the newest member of William's crew. Darnell is deeply indebted to William for helping his younger brother get clean, but he must balance his deep religious convictions with the kind of work required as part of William's team.

Together with this eclectic group, William works week-in and week-out to bring addicts of all kinds to the point where they are ready and willing to get help and begin the difficult process of getting clean. With every success and every failure, William wrestles with his own demons through an unusual relationship with God. He's a man caught between an unwavering commitment to his work, deep love for his family, and the ghosts of his own addictions. Bad for his personal life, perhaps, but these are the tensions that make William the one you want helping a troubled loved one, the one you trust to do whatever is necessary, the man you want by your side in your darkest hour. In the face of tragedy and addiction, William Banks will risk everything to be The Cleaner.

Check it out tonight on A&E at 10 PM/9 Central, and for more on the show go to the A&E website here.

The Machine Girl: That Was Splatterific

If you like over-the-top blood spray, revenge, campy yakuza, one-armed heroes, and lots o' blood video game style - look no further. I watched this last night and I guarantee you that if that's your thing - you'll absolutely love it - and there's even a little basketball thrown in too.

View the trailer

MV: Wonder Girls

I can't really help liking it - because you do have to admit it's kind of a catchy tune (and it's also #1 in SK).

Official MV For The Wonder Girls' So Hot

Satirical Malfunction: The New Yorker And Its Obama Cover

By now you might have heard about the Obama cover on The New Yorker, and if not you can see it pictured above. There's already been a multitude of stories and comments on it which you can read here, here, here, and here, as well as listen to an NPR round table here.

My take?

I'm a free speech advocate, and I love satire. In the political arena - no matter who that candidate is - no one should be exempt, and rightly so. We've built our country (in part) on being able to openly criticize not just politicians and public figures, but those who support as well as denounce them. In that way I have no problem with The New Yorker and their magazine trying to satirize something within the political landscape.

But I'm also an advocate against racism, stereotyping, xenophobia, ethnic humor gone wrong, and people who don't take historical context into consideration.

To be honest - I'm a little torn.

Here's what The New Yorker editor David Remnick had to say:

What I think it does is hold up a mirror to the prejudice and dark imaginings about Barack Obama's — both Obamas' — past, and their politics. I can't speak for anyone else's interpretations, all I can say is that it combines a number of images that have been propagated, not by everyone on the right but by some, about Obama's supposed "lack of patriotism" or his being "soft on terrorism" or the idiotic notion that somehow Michelle Obama is the second coming of the Weathermen or most violent Black Panthers. That somehow all this is going to come to the Oval Office.

The idea that we would publish a cover saying these things literally, I think, is just not in the vocabulary of what we do and who we are... We've run many many satirical political covers. Ask the Bush administration how many.

If the piece is about the misconceptions that people have (or blatantly lie about) towards Obama, where in this cover are they being represented? How are they being lampooned? Without them in the cover the absurdity between what's being said about Obama and his wife versus who they truly are within the context of this campaign is lost in some ways, and to that effect it can become less of a satirical piece versus ammunition to perpetuate Obama myths based on the cover alone regardless of their base audience.

I think in a lot of ways we all get what they're trying to say - but I think the execution wasn't as good as it could have been because it focuses only on the image versus the people creating that image and I think that's key in what they're trying to say because the image being portrayed is only 1/2 of it - and if you're not satirizing the people who are actually creating and believing the false information about Obama, it begs the question of if they really thought this through versus just going "Let's put this up because it's kind of incendiary and it's going to draw attention to our magazine".

And in a lot of ways I think that's what they did do - and to that end - in a lot of ways it makes it nothing more than fodder for miscommunication and misdirection which is the same thing they were in fact satirizing.

Do We Really Care That Much About Sarah Silverman?

So I as perusing The Huffington Post today I came across this article on little old racist Sarah Silverman (because did you ever see Sarah Silverman: Jesus Is Magic? and some of her older "bits") and I kind of wondered to myself two things: Is this really news? and Why the hell am I clicking to read on this story anyway? and it occurred to me that a.) People still don't see her "comedy" for what it really is - a little white girl who thinks saying words like ni**** and ch*** is funny (with nothing satirical whatsoever to say on matters of race and racism) and that b.) I think in some ways I can't help but read an article like this on her because deep down I'm just that type of a person who really finds a lot of cheer in anything having to do with her misery - especially rejoicing in the fact that she won't be getting any more airtime on late-night network television since she's not screwing the host of the show anymore.

You can call me petty - but I just think of myself as really being more slantalicious.

Giving Prescription Drugs To Dogs Is Insane

This dog is on drugs. Image from kittyhell.com

Call me a pet lover who still thinks a pet is inferior to a human being - but who's still cute and cuddly - because when I read about stories in the NY Times about Pill-Popping Pets who take drugs which for all purposes are the same as human drugs (like the dog Max in the article who takes a pet form of the drug clomipramine, a tricyclic antidepressant) - I can't help but think to myself - are you kidding me?

I mean c'mon - dogs are supposed to wag their tails and chase after them because - well - they're dogs - that's what they do. And as much as I was up for "experimentation" back in what I like to call my "free and clear" days, I honestly think giving drugs like antidepressants to animals is kind of cruel because in a way it's like trying to make them into something they shouldn't be.

A dog is supposed to go wacko trying to chase his tail (and if you've had enough drinks, this should be fun for you as well). It's supposed to, without warning, hump the leg of someone you've only met once and then try to eat your shoe and the next day pee on the postman. This is what dogs sometimes do - and not just once or twice - but sometimes for their whole lives (and have people heard of something called a dog trainer?).

This is why a dog is your pet versus your accountant.

And I'm not saying pets shouldn't get good health care or take a vitamin - take care of your pet in that way - but I have to think that if you're giving your pet drugs for their psyche (and especially cats, because cats are just psycho anyway) - maybe your pet isn't the one that should be taking the drugs.

I blame this post on white people and Hello Kitty.

Love Her, Hate Her, It Really Doesn't Matter: Esther Ku Gets Voted Off "Last Comic Standing"

Missed posting this last week - but just in case you were wondering - as she's created some interesting dialogue within parts of the AA community - comedian Esther Ku got voted off NBC's Last Comic Standing.

Personally - while everything she did wasn't always funny to me - I have to give her the benefit of the doubt as a comedian who's trying to find the right balance between making social commentary and just trying to be funny - and I think she did accomplish it sometimes - so I hope we'll be seeing more of her versus fading off into the sunset like a lot of Asian American comics or stars who've been landing on reality TV shows.

For more Ku check out her website here as well as an interview at Buddy TV.

Isamu Noguchi

There's an interesting an article down at the International Herald Tribune on Asian American artist Isamu Noguchi and his work with Akari lights and his upcoming exhibition opening Friday at the Yorkshire Sculpture Park:

As fathers go, Yonejiró Noguchi was lousy. Abandoning his mistress and their unborn baby in America was bad enough, but he rejected them again two years later when they came to see him in Japan. The son grew up to become a gifted sculptor, but his father banned him from returning to Japan under his name.

Isamu Noguchi went anyway, and his father eventually agreed to meet him, albeit grudgingly. The struggle to balance his American roots and Japanese heritage haunted Noguchi's life. It also pervaded his work as an artist, furniture designer, ceramicist, theater designer and landscape architect from the start of his career in 1927 when he assisted the sculptor Constantin Brancusi in Paris, until his death in New York in 1988.

Read the full article here.

Red Cliff And Hellboy II Beat Down The Box Office

John Woo and cast members from Red Cliff

This turned out to be a nice weekend not only for Big Blockbusters - but also for the great directors behind them as Hellboy II: The Golden Army, directed by Guillermo del Toro, hit #1 in the U.S., and John Woo's epic war drama Red Cliff claimed victory in Asia (in the countries where it was shown).

Both films did well monetarily - Hellboy II raked in about $35.9 million on about 4400 screens, and Red Cliff took in about $25 million on around 2000 screens.

If you had to choose a clear cut winner however (and why not do that?) - based on a strict dollar to screen average - technically Red Cliff beat out Hellboy II by quite a large margin (and still has yet to be released in Malaysia and Japan).

I'm thinking Guillermo del Toro probably isn't too upset though because he's still got the #1 U.S. movie and it's not like he put out Meet Dave.

July DVD Releases

A quick post on some DVD's that will be coming your way during the rest of the July:

1. John Chu's Step Up 2 The Streets comes out on the 15th.
2. Aaron Yoo and Liza Lapira's movie 21 starts shipping on the 22nd.
3. Harold and Kumar Escape from Guantanamo Bay (standard and two-disc edition) smokes its way in on the 29th.

Maybe, One Day, Who Knows When, Bruce Will Get His Museum

Who knows when it will actually happen, but at least they're still talking about it - even if it seems like it might never get off the ground:

Bruce Lee, the legendary kung-fu icon would surely have found a more direct and forceful route to sorting out his problems of heritage. The house in which he lived in Hong Kong's Kowloon Tong district has become the focus of a tussle between the territory's famously hands-off government, martial arts fans around the world and a billionaire businessman Yu Panglin. After an outcry, Yu withdrew his plans to sell the HK$100 million ($12.8 million) two-story house that Lee lived in for several years until his death in 1973 and affectionately called "the crow's nest." Fans protested, fearing that the place would be torn down to release its valuable land. Instead, Yu advanced plans to turn the place, currently being used as a 'love hotel,' into a Lee museum, but last week the government said that it will not provide any money for the venture.

A statue is great. But a museum would be even better.

Read the full article here.

Brittany Ishibashi Gets Imaginary

While you can't really blame me for not knowing about this (because it's been out for about a month - but am I really supposed to be that up on my webisodes of a show called Imaginary Bitches, and the episode with Brittany Ishibashi called A Spiritual Bitch-Bath) - Ishibashi is pretty funny in the clip playing a new-age psycho, which has received about 1,000,000 views already.



While Brittany Ishibashi may not be a household name yet, she has had a nice string of work in a lot of television shows including CSI, Nip/Tuck, and The Office and most recently in the CW show a couple of months back Supernatural (you can read an interview with her here).

And household name or not, sometimes it's great just to know Asian Americans are being able to get character work (and sometimes character actors have the longest shelf-life).

NewsBytes

News you can use from the last few days:

Upheaval Among New York’s Voting Blocs

More than 38,000 of the 110,000 voters added to registration rolls between 2004 and 2007 were identified as Russian, Korean, Chinese or Muslim — a group made up primarily of immigrants from South Asian countries like India, Pakistan and Bangladesh.

Cho Goes Reality

An outspoken, sometimes shocking comedianne with docile parents and a colorful inner circle, with bumps along her standup career. It could be "Kathy Griffin: My Life on the D-List," but it's a new VH1 show about Margaret Cho.

The comedienne sais her "Cho Show" goes beyond that.

"I love Kathy Griffin's show. She's a very, very good friend of mine. I actually was just in it," Cho told a session at press tours. "But she's very different from me in that she's white." Presenting a Korean family as well as an assistant who is a wisecracking little person, gives it a twist.

Milestone for Asian American Students Enrollment Shifts at Va. Magnet School

Asian American students will outnumber white classmates for the first time in the freshman class at the region's most prestigious public magnet school this fall

At Quincy's large Kam Man, a new American melting pot has a distinctly Chinese taste

"You've probably never seen this before," says Wu, the manager, pointing to one of a score of green vegetables not seen in mainline supermarkets. The swimming shrimp also catch the eye. Even the Chinese takeout food challenges the familiar with offerings such as "spicy stoma" (pig stomach) and chicken feet.

Such are the choices at Kam Man Market, said to be the largest Asian supermarket in New England. Food and condiments from many Asian cultures (Korean and Japanese, to Cambodian and Thai) are represented. Throw in some Hispanic and Caribbean canned goods, a dash of Indian cuisine, and a few requisite American staples, and you've got a classic American melting pot, Chinese-style.

José Can You See?

All my life I have been acutely aware of the fact that though I am American, I am Asian- American. Vietnamese- American, to be exact. I’ve always realized that my cultural background has certainly had a strong influence. After all, how American American could I be? I attended the #1 party school and never drank one beer.

Energy war: India and China face off in Central Asia

Call it a diplomatic fandango. Heavy-duty Chinese bulldozers groan day and night, building motorable roads that will connect towns with cities in Kazakhstan. In the countryside, Russian engineers are busy putting new cables on newly-erected towers to put a fresh spark into the rusty, unreliable electrical grid.

On the streets of Tashkent and Dushanbe, Bollywood numbers incite local people to break into impromptu jigs. And in the war-torn dustbowls of Afghanistan, American workers are building schools and hospitals in the middle of non-stop gunfire. The Indians are doing the same, at the risk of their lives. This is the soft side of the story — efforts to woo the Central Asian republics with humanitarian charm.

Vietnamese group gives grants to local nonprofits

The Union of Vietnamese Student Associations of Southern California, the organizer of the annual Tet Festival in Garden Grove, announced this week that it gave out about $106,000 to 96 community organizations in southern California.

Oakland Pays Out $2 Million For Officer Richard Valerga Sexually Harassing Asian American Women

While you couldn't be happier for the settlement which is awarding the 16 Asian American women $2 million dollars who were groped and sexually harassed by former police officer Richard Valerga in 2004 and 2005 (and who knows how many others that he harassed while he was in uniform) - this just should never have happened in the first place:

The city of Oakland is expected to pay out $2 million to settle a lawsuit by 16 women who said they were groped or sexually harassed by a police officer who pulled them over for no good reason [...]

In the suit, the women -- all Asian-American -- claimed that former Officer Richard Valerga pulled them over in 2004 or 2005 in Oakland's Fruitvale district, then would then touch or sexually harass them.

The city of Oakland had previously paid $190,000 to two other women to settle claims involving Valerga.

In every way possible, you have to just stop and pause, and be in complete awe of these exceptional Asian American women who stepped forward - because they didn't have too - because no one in their right mind would have blamed them if they wouldn't have come forward.

But they did.

And for that - because they did - every single one of us is better off because of it.

Jesse Tam and the Seattle Rotary

I've never joined a rotary club in my life, for some odd reason I've just never had the inclination to do so - but that won't stop me from making a post on it or Jesse Tam who is the first Asian American (and person of color) to be a district governor of the Seattle Rotary:

Tam is not only the first Asian American to be selected for this position, he is the first person of color. Seattle Rotary in particular has a reputation for being progressive, or "rebellious," as Tam puts it. In 1987, the club, along with one other in California, brought forth a lawsuit challenging the exclusion of women. The case was taken all the way up to the Supreme Court, where the "males only" membership requirement was struck down.

The year-long position will also require extensive "training, correspondent study, lectures and even tests," according to Tam.

Read more at the Northwest Asian Weekly.

DVD: CJ7

Hmmm....I caught the Stephen Chow flick CJ7 and to be honest, it wasn't bad, but it wasn't great either - and I know it was more of a kid flick, but I'd probably pass it up if I were you unless you really had to see the latest Stephen Chow flick, or you've caught the Kitty Zhang Yuqi buzz (I think Jump will be more up my alley).

But I do have to admit - I'd really like a CJ7 myself - because who doesn't want a cute alien dog thing that has somewhat magical powers, or something like that...

Just Another Reason Not To Vote For McCain

No matter what you believe politically, can you honestly say this is what you want your President to sound like?



Vote McCain: Because killing brown people is just so damn funny.

See It: Seven Days

So I finally got a chance to sit down and take in the SK thriller Seven Days (which snagged Kim Yun-jin her Best Actress Award) and without a doubt, it was worth the wait. It was so good I'm even doing a semi-real review of the flick.

Flashy And Cool

I like to think that sometimes you can tell a good movie from the opening credits, especially in an action thriller. My thinking is that if the production/editing team takes the time to actually setup the movie in style and tone in the begining, that the rest of the movie will follow suit - and while it's not an exact science - Seven Days stayed true to that pattern. From the colors to the camera angles, to the soundtrack, everything just fit - it kept the pace moving like it should - and I didn't mind what I call the "flash burst" editing or the sometimes handheld look - to me it helped make it feel like I was more in the movie, versus being a passive watcher in a lot of ways.

You're A Thespian

Two things stuck out about the acting in the movie for me: One is that Kim Yun-jin really played the part well - from the emotional to the physical portions of the role, it was easy to see how she got the Best Actress Award - in a nutshell - she just kicked ass in the role. The second is that I don't think you can really go wrong with Oh Kwang-rok. He's just so - distinct.

A Twist Is A Twist Is A Twist

Actually that's not always the case - sometimes the twist you have at the end of a movie you can see a mile away and instead of "gotcha" it's really "we couldn't think of anything better" - but in Seven Days you really can't see it coming.

And On Another Note

Just for the record - if they don't have Kim Yun-jin in the U.S. remake of this film I'm going to be ultra-pissed - because there's absolutely no reason not to have her starring in the remake. She knows the role, she's got a built in fan base both here and abroad (and you know people would see the U.S. film not to just compare the movies, but also how she plays in each of them), and obviously - she speaks "fluent English" (so if that's an issue, it's not an issue at all). The only way I can see them not giving the role to her would be if they decided an Asian woman couldn't hold it down on the big screen in a lead role in big budget action thriller for U.S. audiences - and if that happens - OMG - I'm going to go off like I've probably never gone off before.

Nothing Says The Olympics Like 200,000 Cheerleaders

So I happened to stumble across an article at Yahoo News on the 200,000 cheerleaders that are being put together for the Beijing Olympics (and some will be dancers and acrobats for a select squad of 400) and I had a plethora of thoughts including the following:

• Cheerleaders with nunchucks? You don't see that in the NBA.
• That's some really frizzy blond hair.
• I wonder a little bit about the Elite 400 - was someone afraid that the other 199,600 other cheerleaders wouldn't be able to get the job done?
  
• When I read quotes like "Everyone knows cheerleading is a Western activity, but we hope we can find a Chinese way to do it [and] show the world," says He He, who sports long, dyed-red hair and a sparkly belly-button ring. and "They're a lot like Americans -- they use pompoms, they do flips," says 20-year-old Patriot dancer Corie Mae Callaluca, every bit the picture of the stereotypical cheerleader with long blonde hair and blue eyes. -- I think to myself that this is pretty cool, because in a lot of ways people think of the cheerleader, an All-American Girl archetype, as mostly being blond and blue-eyed -- not really Asian. So showing the world that Asian women can cheer with the best of them can be a good thing, and maybe in some ways (especially here in the U.S.) it can help re-define what an All-American really is on some level (even if you think in a superficial way).
  
• I could really be grasping for straws on that last point but just go with it for now.
  
• Just an FYI that the majority of the 200,000 cheerleaders are retired civil servants and have never shaken a pom pom in their life - and it's not just women - it's dudes too.
  
• Men have the right to be a part of the Cheerocracy.

And because you wanted to know more - I'll give it to you here, here, and here.

Asian American Donor Program Volunteers Needed

Caught this from the hapihour.org site, and if you can make it down and donate some time - it's definitely for a good cause.

Here's the reprint from the original post:

Here’s a list of AADP’s upcoming drives. We’d love any volunteer help, so if anyone’s able to help, please let us know! There is another potential venue where we can hold a drive at, depending on volunteer availability. (Southern Alameda County Buddhist Betsuin Bazaar) on the same weekend. We have the AADP staff, let us know if anyone wants to head it up.

July 12, 2008 (Saturday)
San Jose Obon Festival (at least 5 [English-speakers welcome] volunteers to help flyer)
At the San Jose Buddhist Church Betsuin
640 North 5th street
12noon – 5pm
Asia

99 Ranch, McCarthy (Chinese speaking volunteers needed)
338 Barber Ln
Milpitas, CA 95035
12noon – 4pm
Ruby

July 13, 2008 (Sunday)
San Jose Obon Festival (at least 5 [English-speakers welcome] volunteers to help flyer)
At the San Jose Buddhist Church Betsuin
640 North 5th street
12noon – 5pm
Asia

San Jose Holy Martyrs Church (1-2 Korean speakers needed)
531 E.Weddell Dr., Sunnyvale, CA 94089
(drive in honor of Jisong Im)
10am – 1pm
Glenna

Grand Century Mall, San Jose (Vietnamese Speaking volunteers needed)
1001 Story Road, San Jose, CA
12noon – 4pm
Annie

July 20, 2008 (Sunday)
Mountain View Obon Festival
575 N. Shoreline Blvd., Mountain View, CA
12noon – 4pm
Glenna or Annie

CONTACT
Asia Blume
Recruitment Director
Asian American Donor Program
510-568-3700 ext. 100
asia@aadp.org

For more on the Asian American Donor Program check out their site here.