Chef David Chang

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Blips of Progress

You know progress is never linear. If you lived during the time of Anna May Wong and Sessue Hayakawa, then you would have thought that Asians would become a significant force in Hollywood in the latter half of the 20th century.

There were always blips of progress in cinematic history with regards to representation of the Asian American male: The Crimson Kimono (1959), Flower Drum Song (1961), Bruce Lee (1972), Vanishing Son (1994), Better Luck Tomorrow (2002), Harold and Kumar (2004).

Every time one of these movies appeared, it looked like, "Yeah, things are getting better! We're on the road to full representation for the Asian American male!"

But representation always comes in spurts, and we've never been able to reach a point of critical mass. I'm hoping that now with all the Asian guys in movies, Internet and TV that we'll gain some traction as far as representation, but more importantly… respect.


Divide and Conquer

The thing is Alpha Asians tend to be isolated from each other due to their success. In mainstream society, the more successful you are as a person of color, the less likely you are to run into other people of color. Chances are you if promote high up in a given field or obtain significant wealth or power, then you will work with and run into other successful people and chances are they will be white because they make the majority of the population. This is why successful Asians, both men and women, tend to marry whites. Not necessarily because they have strict preferences for whites, but because people tend to date and fall in love within their social circles and of the same social status.

As a result, there’s a huge disconnect between those Alpha Asians who have knowledge and experience and those of us in the Asian American communities who benefit from that knowledge and experience. We have few role models who publicly give back to the Asian American community (John Liu, Yul Kwon), and the few role models we do have are overwhelmed by the needs and concerns of the masses. People think that if you’re an Asian in public light that you should be all things to all people in your community.

This is why we can never get traction in the Asian American community. Everybody wants to do their own thing and be their own boss thinking that they are the ones to lead the Asian American community to the promise land. We all operate independently as agents of change, and we burn ourselves out reinventing the wheel and treading the same issues over and over (i.e. IR disparity). Without knowledge of our past to build on and without the passing on of such knowledge, then we as a community will just have flashes of insight, but nothing more.

Which is why I’m hopeful that the blogger get-together Banana will be something more than just a blip. The event proved that although blogging is an effective means to achieve influence and educate people about the needs, concerns and accomplishments of Asian Americans, there is nothing quite like interacting with people face-to-face and engaging with them. Otherwise if we blog and act in isolation, then we’re just blips of progress.

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Kobukson's Book Recommendation: The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization

We have been taught, inside the classroom and outside of it, that there exists an entity called the West, and that one can think of this West as a society and civilization independent of and in opposition to other societies and civilizations [ie the East]. Many of us even grew up believing that this West has [an autonomous] genealogy, according to which ancient Greece begat Rome, Rome begat Christian Europe, Christian Europe begat the Renaissance, the Renaissance the Enlightenment, the Enlightenment political democracy and the Industrial Revolution. Industry crossed with democracy, in turn yielded the United States, embodying the rights to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness...

[This is] misleading, first, because it turns history into a moral success story, a race in time in which each [Western] runner of the race passess on the torch of liberty to the next relay. History is thus converted into a tale about the furtherance of virtue, about how the virtuous [ie the West] win out over the bad guys [the East].

-The Eastern Origins of Western Civilization


This is a book that I discovered recently. It was written by John M Hobson. Here is a brief description from Amazon:

John Hobson challenges the ethnocentric bias of mainstream accounts of the "Rise of the West" that assume that Europeans have pioneered their own development, and that the East has been a passive by-stander. Describing the rise of what he calls the "Oriental West", Hobson argues that Europe first assimilated many Eastern inventions, and they appropriated Eastern resources through imperialism. Hobson's book thus propels the hitherto marginalized Eastern peoples to the forefront of the story of progressive world history.


I have come to a realization that discussion of Asian-American empowerment these days seems to focus too heavily on superficial images rather than ideas. Many bemoan the lack of a compelling Asian-American identity or culture but few have any clue as to how to go about the task of actually creating or building this identity or culture. Too often we are reduced to imitating aspects of the dominant culture but never producing anything genuinely original that can be distinctively called "Asian-American". We also lack an overarching, definitive, and comprehensive narrative.

We dwell in a "dark ages" as an ethnic group. Perhaps it is because too many of us have become disconnected from the knowledge of the history, philosophies, and accomplishments of Asian civilization; knowledge and truths that we were never exposed to us during our Western civilization-centric education. But just as the Europeans were able to emerge from the Dark Ages by reconnecting with ancient Greek and Roman heritage, perhaps Asian-America can also enter a period of Renaissance by reconnecting with the knowledge of Asian civilization. This knowledge should empower us and be a powerful influence in our own efforts in all manner of creative endeavors. It is with this view in mind that I present this book as a recommended addition to one's library.

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Western Masculine Ideal vs. Asian Masculine Ideal

So here’s a great article on the 10-year anniversary of the movie Fight Club and it’s impact: Fight Club 10 Years Later

… Fight Club isn't saying something as simple and inane as men are pussies. It's not a dumb jock statement of being a "man." Rather, it shows how through the alienation of social institutions, and the de-masculination of culture, the rugged individualist is rare. How to tap into being a man, fast?

"Punch me as hard as you can."

… watching Fight Club, ten years later, with all that we have available to us, it seems even more prescient. For better and often for worse, we've become even more disconnected from ourselves. And even more narcissistic. People text, they twitter, they communicate online instead of talk on the phone or in person. They create alternate identities and pretend to be tough in, of all places, chat rooms, and blogs. Can you imagine a flame war in a biker bar? It's no surprise Fincher's now making a movie about the social networking site Facebook. Tyler Durden would now be a viral creation.


Although the writer of this article is a woman, I think most women don’t fully understand why men nowadays feel disinherited and disconnected from their sense of masculinity. Which is why the book and movie “Fight Club” is so popular. I think with Asian American men, this disconnect is compounded by the fact that we’re a minority with few role models. We end up looking to masculine ideals in Western cultures, not realizing there have always been masculine ideals in Asian cultures.

This is also the point Frank Chin makes in his writings as well. When a great cultural heritage has either been stripped, suppressed or forgotten, then men either emulate other cultural models to give them a sense of manhood or they make the sh!t up. We already have masculine ideals in Asian culture. It just needs to be a part of Asian American culture.

Throughout history Asian men were laborers, soldiers and pirates in far off lands all over the world. They were away from their wives and loved ones for long periods of time.

Don’t you think Asian men got busy doing the horizontal mambo with the local women in these far off places? Well if you look, at places all over the world, like the Philippines, Africa, Central Asia, the Americas and even in Europe, Asian men have left their sexual legacy. So much so that Asian men have altered the gene pool of entire countries.

Now I’m not saying that being a man-whore is the masculine ideal to strive for. People act like the Western masculinity and Asian masculinity are mutually exclusive. But men are men, no matter what part of the world you’re talking about. Men of all cultures do stupid sh!t, like wage war, screw lots of women and say things they later regret.

The Western masculine ideal stems from Greco-Roman culture, a major thread in European and Euro-American culture. Their ideal masculine archetype is that of the warrior-explorer-conqueror. It was Julius Caesar who gave us such succinct gems as:

“I came. I saw. I conquered.”

“We will find a way or make one.”

Greco-Roman artwork tended to glorify the warrior’s physical strength and the body he chisels through training and battle. This physical ideal is still with us, which is why men go to the gym. Every guy feels like they need to look like the guys from 300.

Side note: Although Western society idealizes the Spartans, this cultural ideal conveniently leaves out the historical fact that the Spartans and other Greeks were pederasts. Hence the reference to anal sex as “Greek style.”



The Western Ideal of Manhood (without the butt sex)


Asian cultures also glorified their warriors. Much of what is discussed in Asian literature is mostly military-related: The Art of War, The Book of Five Rings, Romance of the Three Kingdoms, Water Margin. Although the physical ideal was not depicted in glorious fashion in ancient Asian artwork, Asian men did practice strength and combat training.



But something happened with Asian cultures (particularly Confucian-influenced cultures such as China, Korea, Vietnam and Japan) that altered the masculine ideal. When Confucianism spread across such societies, the role of the scholar was elevated and the role of the soldier was downgraded. The exception of course was Japan, who kept the samurai at the top of the class hierarchy.

So for well over a thousand years in Confucian-based societies, the key to success was to study hard, get a government job and everything you wanted (wealth, women, happiness) would follow. Follow the conventional path to success. Don’t take risks. Don’t stand out. And as result, many Asians nowadays are unhappy and live unfulfilled lives due to a thousand years of social programming.

Here’s an extreme example of social programming: Scaredy Cat Tigers

Zookeepers in China say their tigers have grown so tame that they're frightened of the chickens they're supposed to eat. The Chongqing Wild Animal Park has five rare adult white tigers which were originally trained to perform tricks for visitors, reports the Chongqing Morning Post. Keepers have been trying to encourage them to follow their natural instincts by throwing them live chickens - but without success.

Feeder Shi Ruqiang said, “They're supposed to be wild and scary, but due to their soft lifestyles and human care they have gradually lost their wild nature. I have been trying to interest them with live chickens but it was quite a funny scene. The tigers were so scared that they wouldn't go near them. One chicken passed out and the tigers did eventually approach it - but then it woke up again and squawked and they ran for their lives!"

Shi says the keepers are now forcing the tigers to stay outside their cages for at least 12 hours a day to toughen them up. And they are planning to introduce a wild tiger to show the domesticated big cats the ropes.

"If all else fails, we will simply cut down their rations until they are so hungry that they are forced to hunt for themselves," he added.



1,000 years of cultural programming will turn you into a pussy

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The Sims in China

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Beta Asians

Here's an interesting article on the supposed epidemic of infertility. The article is too long to post here, but below is an excerpt:

Worldwide, the fertility of both men and women is declining but things seem to be worse for the men! In 1960 a good sperm count was considered to be 120 million sperm per milliliter of seminal fluid. Anything lower than that and a man was considered to be only marginally fertile. These days, things have become so bad that a man is considered fertile if he has only 20 million sperm per milliliter of ejaculate! What happened?

Xenoestrogens happened. Since World War II, mankind has filled the world and himself with estrogen like substances. Pesticides, synthetic fertilizers, petrochemical fumes, the esters that plastics give off when heated, and the worst offender of all in the estrogen world – soy. I won't rehash my litany against soy, you'll have to read about it's many ill effects on my website (Soy the Poison Seed), at www.westonaprice.org, and www.soyonlineservice.co.nz.



In both men and women high estrogen creates infertility. That's why estrogen is used in birth control pills. The synthetic progesterone used in other birth control pills have been molecularly modified to act like estrogens, which is why instead of increasing fertility the way real (natural) progesterone does the prescription drug, progesterone, decreases fertility and if used during pregnancy can create birth defects and mutation.

In men, estrogen decreases testosterone levels and sperm count! Read on the websites cited, about what happened to the rabbit industry in New Zealand where the bunnies were fed soy feed. They stopped reproducing and the industry crashed. How can anything stop a rabbit, from reproducing?! Isoflavones (estrogen) can.

Before you bright light vegetarians out there tell me that Asians eat mainly soy and have great birthrates, the eating soy part is not true among those with high birth rates! The average Chinese eats 5 to 15 ml (one to three TEASPOONS) of soy products daily mainly in soy sauce. It is widely known throughout Asia that when a woman does not want to have sexual relations with her husband any more, she feeds him more and more tofu!

Monks in monasteries needing to be celibate are urged to eat more tofu and soy products. In Asia, it is common knowledge that soy reduces sexual urge and ability. The propaganda and contrived studies showing that soy is such a fantastic food arises from the huge agribusiness firms that grow most of the world’s soybeans, Monsanto and Archer Daniel Midland.

Compare China with its relatively low soy consumption and high birth rate with Japan and its considerably higher soy consumption and their low birth rate. Japanese fertility has dropped so precipitously that the number of in vitro fertilizations has skyrocketed topping 100,000! Of the 100,189 in vitro births in Japan, 55,688 were normal in vitro fertilizations, 13,316 involved use of frozen pre-fertilized eggs and 31,185 fertilizations were done with the micro fertilization technique where sperm from a relatively infertile man with inactive sperm is injected into the egg using a microscopic needle.

While we're on the topic of Japanese men, here's another article in a long line of articles on Japan's supposed phenomenon of Grass Eating Boys:

Shigeru Sakai of Media Shakers suggests that grass-eating men don't pursue women, because they are bad at expressing themselves. He attributes their poor communication skills to the fact that many grew up without siblings in households where both parents worked.

"Because they had TVs, stereos and game consoles in their bedrooms, it became more common for them to shut themselves in their rooms when they got home and communicate less with their families, which left them with poor communication skills," he wrote in an e-mail.

Japan has rarely needed its men to have sex as much as it does now. Low birth rates, combined with a lack of immigration, have caused the country's population to shrink every year since 2005.

It's important to take these articles with a grain of salt. Believe me, sometimes I come home from a hard day at work, and I just want to curl up on the couch with my cat, eat a pint of Ben and Jerry's, watch Oprah with the wife and talk about our feelings.

OK, I take that back. I don't watch Oprah.

Nevertheless, I find it disturbing there are generations of males who have no aspirations, sexual or otherwise. When you cocoon yourself from the outside world, then you don't develop any life experience. And when you don't develop any life experiences, then you don't learn anything and you don't develop confidence and emotional resiliency.

Which is why I think some guys feel the need to attend PUA bootcamps. These guys lack the life experience to deal confidently and comfortably with women. So they pay big money to go through artificially induced experiences aimed at teaching them a very specific skill set (attracting women and sleeping with them).

A lot of people knock the idea of using canned material to pick up women, but it's analogous to performing katas in martial arts. Doing a kata doesn't mean you know how to fight. It's just a way to teach you how to do strikes in good form and to do it repeatedly. After enough repetition in the katas and with enough sparring, you will eventually learn to improvise and truly fight.

PUA routines give the guy a false sense of confidence, because he doesn't have a foundation of true life experiences. There is a reason why some women are attracted to older men. Older men tend to be more confident, because

1) they have more life experiences and
2) they're more comfortable with who they are and what they want.

But if a PUA bootcamp is what helps you fake it until you make it, then I say more power to you. From what I can see, most guys eventually find mates. And yes that includes grass-eating Asian guys with low sperm counts. I’ve known guys who lived at home and were unemployed, and yet they were still dating lots of women. Dorky nerds hook up and get married. Short guys get dates and get married. Ugly guys get married.

People find relationships DESPITE their shortcomings. You just got to play up your strengths. I once watched a documentary on some birds. They showed a scene where two male birds were battling each other to see who would win the affections of a female. One male was protecting his woman, the other was challenging. While they were battling it out, another male sneaks up behind the female watching the fight and starts doing her. So as you can see, there's no one way to succeed in life and love.

Let's take a look at Asian American men on TV. With regards to the Asian American male image on TV, we're doing pretty good for the moment. We've got at least one Asian American male character on each of the 3 major networks. On NBC's Heroes, we have Masi Oka playing Hiro Nakamura. On CBS we have Daniel Henney playing a doctor on Three Rivers. And on ABC we have John Cho playing FBI special agent Demetri Noh on Flashforward.


Three very different actors, each successful in their own way. Daniel Henney has the classic good looks. He could trip and sprain his ankle out in the street, and a mob of women would form around him in 2o seconds to make sure he was OK.


Masi Oka's character Hiro is the stereotypical Asian nerd, but what Masi Oka did to make Hiro such a popular character was that he subverted the stereotype. He took the stereotype and made it three dimensional by making Hiro kind, good-natured and someone you would root for to win. Hiro has an earnest quality that makes him extremely likeable. It should be noted Hiro has a romantic interest on the show, whereas Daniel Henney's character on Three Rivers does not (yet).


Of the 3 Asian American characters on primetime, John Cho's character Demetri is the most intriguing. Demetri is far more three dimensional and interesting than Joseph Fiennes' pained and brooding character. John Cho doesn't have the classic good looks of Daniel Henney: he's skinny and his ears are too big. But he's proven to be our biggest Asian American actor in recent years.

Bottom line: Everybody finds their own path to success.

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Interview with Rain on Ninja Assassin Movie

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Paper Sons

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Ryan Higa

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.

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

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.

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ABC's Go to China

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

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Freaks Fest 2009

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

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Jews and Chinese Food

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Asian American Bloggers Unite!

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.

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Degrees of Separation, Part Two - Mojo Rider

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.

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Degrees of Separation, Part One - Mojo Rider

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.




Ken Leung with Kelly Hu in "Shanghai Kiss"

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.


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.

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You are not alone - Kobukson

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?

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