Tuesday, 29 June 2010
Monday, 28 June 2010
Before the Asian American blogosphere, there were Asian American discussion boards. You had Model Minority, Yellow World and the Fighting 44's. These sites were extremely popular for a time, because they provided platforms in which Asians all over the Anglosphere could connect, discuss and vent on everything from the personal to the political.
Eventually blogs came into prominence, and the Angry Asian Man became the first to aggregate news stories of interest to Asian Americans. Now we have tons of AA blogs, everything from Channel APA to the Minority Militant to Slant Eye for the Round Eye to Big WoWo.
The rise of AA blogs brought about the demise of AA forums, because blogs address a need for self-expression. Although forums do allow for individual expression, what usually happens is that a core group of posters dominate the threads. Cliques form and what was once a very open forum now becomes a private cyber hangout for disaffected intellectuals who snipe at those they disagree with. It's almost as if forums have a built-in mechanism to limit their growth so that they don't get too big.
Blogs appeal to the narcissist in all of us. For some, the blog is more about the blogger than the audience. But there are so many AA blogs out there, that you have to focus on a niche. You have to meet a need other than your need for attention and external validation.
I think what AA blogs do well is to expose their readers to AA artists and AA news. Much of the AA community doesn't support AA artists and films, because the community isn't exposed to these artists and films in the first place.
But what I think AA blogs should also start doing is to give its readers a sense of direction. If you're running an AA blog and all you're doing is commenting on the same videos and stories that every other AA blog is commenting on, then what's the point?
Don't get me wrong. If you have a personal blog, then treat it as your online diary. If you have a business blog, then treat it as a business tool. But if you identify your blog as an Asian American blog, then you should probably identify your target audience within the AA community, because as of now the AA blogosphere is getting pretty crowded. If you're looking to burst on to the AA blogosphere and yell, "TA-DA!" then you've got to distinguish yourself:
1) Write something interesting or do something interesting to write about. Your readers are either looking for information or for entertainment. But sometimes they can get caught up in the story of your personal life, IF you have an interesting personal life. Your entire life doesn't have to be on display for all to read, but providing snippets of who you are and where you're from makes your blog posts far more personal. People place more value on information when they know who's providing the information.
2) A blogger has to have an opinion. If you're a blogger, then you better damn well have an opinion. Otherwise there is no reason to read your ramblings. What's the point of being a blogger if you don't say what's on your mind? Most AA bloggers are just bland: they don't comment on controversial issues, and when they do, they give the most tepid lukewarm opinions. Then to top it off, they ask the readers, "What do you think?"
I already know what I think. I'm reading your blog to find out what YOU think.
If you are a blogger, then people expect you to have a strong opinion on things. This is what distinguishes you from a journalist, who has to remain objective. You may be afraid of what readers may say if you truly expressed your opinion, but as long as you are honest, then who cares what other people think. Screw political correctness. Screw dogma and pseudo-intellectual rhetoric. Grow some balls and say what's on your mind. This leads me to the next point:
3) If you call yourself an Asian American blogger, then you should advocate for the Asian American community. You don't have to tackle every AA issue, because then you'll just develop compassion fatigue. But if you take on the mantle of "Asian American," then you should advocate for the Asian American communities, especially when a current event sheds light on a racial injustice. It puts a bad light on your Asian American blog if the mainstream news media is covering an Asian American issue and you're silent.
4) A balance of levity and purpose. There are plenty of blogs which aggregate viral videos and articles on how insane the Japanese are, but those blogs are a dime a dozen. Everybody has access to the same LOL/WTF videos, so what's the point other than a good laugh? What distinguishes your blog from Buzzfeed, for God's sake?
You have to have a balance in the tone of your blog: the frivolity of cute cat videos with the seriousness of "60 Minutes."
Sunday, 27 June 2010
Saturday, 26 June 2010
Thursday, 24 June 2010
Wednesday, 23 June 2010
Tuesday, 22 June 2010
Here's an interesting podcast from NPR on the rise of Asian Americans in the military: "More Asian-Americans Signing Up For The Army" by Lonny Shavelson
In the U.S. Army, Asian-Americans have typically volunteered at the lowest rate of any ethnic group. They make up 4 percent of the population, and only 1 percent of military recruits.
But that seems to be changing. Something is suddenly drawing Asian-Americans in California into the Army at a remarkable rate. And there have been similar increases in other Asian-American population centers, like Seattle and New York.
In Los Angeles County last year, 22 percent of Army recruits were Asian-Americans — almost twice their proportion in the population. In the San Francisco Bay Area, the sign-up rate is also spiking. The proportion of newly enlisted soldiers who are Asian-Americans this year is nearly double that of last year.
Army Pays For College
Army officers at the Bay Area's Richmond Hilltop Mall recruiting station teach incoming soldiers to march. The recruits, still in high school, will start basic training after they graduate.
Of 15 incoming soldiers at the recruitment station, seven are Asian Pacific Islanders, including Albert and Barry Huang. They're 18-year-old twins who speak Cantonese at home and English outside of home. They tend to finish each other's sentences.
"It affected me. When I decided to join the military, I was like, 'I'm not going to kill anybody; I do not want to kill anybody. I do not want to have a person's death on my conscience.'" - Barry Huang
"My parents always pushed the idea of, 'Go to college, go to college,' " Albert says. "And so this is a start of how we're going to ..."
"Do what our parents want us to do," says Barry. "Which is go to college, get an education."
Barry calls the marching orders for the recruits. This is his route to college.
"Now that the economy has gone down and the tuition's gone up — the Army, they can pay for my college, so I was like, might as well do it," Barry says.
The military's education benefits have become particularly appealing in this stumbling economy with skyrocketing college costs. That's one reason Asian-Americans, with their traditional emphasis on education, are increasingly joining the Army.
But Ken Mochizuki, who co-authored a book about Asians in the military, says new Asian-American recruits are motivated by more than education.
"In the present war, they're not fighting against Asians like in WWII or Vietnam," he says.
Mochizuki says today's young soldiers were born after World War II, Korea and Vietnam — all wars in which the U.S. fought Asians. So this generation of Asian-Americans "want to prove their loyalty to this country and [that] they're as American as anybody else," he says.
Asians In Noncombat Jobs
Yet increased recruitment of Asian-Americans doesn't mean that more are on the front lines.
The majority are in combat service support, technical support or computer support, according to Betty Maxfield, the chief of personnel data for the Army.
She says Asian-Americans more commonly go into noncombat jobs rather than become front-line fighters. Soldiers who focus on the military's education benefits, she says, train in jobs that can translate to civilian life — like technology or medicine rather than rifles or sharpshooting.
The Huang twins say that for them, finding noncombat roles is also cultural and religious. Their mother is Buddhist.
"It affected me. When I decided to join the military, I was like, 'I'm not going to kill anybody; I do not want to kill anybody. I do not want to have a person's death on my conscience,' " Barry Huang says.
Asian-Americans — like four-star Gen. Eric Shinseki, the secretary of the Department of Veterans Affairs; and Maj. Gen. Antonio Taguba, who led the investigation into abuses at the Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq — have also become more visible in the Army. The most potent reason that young Asian-Americans are increasingly joining the Army may just be because they now see prominent soldiers who look like them.
Sunday, 20 June 2010
Pastor Tony Kim is auditioning for a new Morgan Spurlock documentary, COMIC-CON® EPISODE FOUR: A FAN'S HOPE. Director Spurlock will be following and showcasing the lives of several self-professed nerds and their experiences at Comic-Con. You can find more info at Spurlock's website and let him know we want Tony Kim featured in the movie. Nerds rule!
Saturday, 19 June 2010
Wednesday, 16 June 2010
Saturday, 12 June 2010
Saturday, 5 June 2010
Since I keep getting inquiries on my previous article Strength and Bodybuilding for the Asian Lifter, I thought I'd write up a follow-up:I’m a bit of a bodybuilding purist. I normally don’t write my exercise articles from the angle of “develop the muscles that drive her wild in bed!” Men’s Fitness, however, interviewed me one time for an article titled Sculpting Her Five Favorite Body Parts. The interviewer picked my brain on how to develop muscles so that a woman, as she put it, “couldn't keep her hands off you.”
When it comes down to it, Asian men want the same thing everybody else wants when they exercise: to look good naked! Women don’t give a crap how much you bench, but they will notice the tone in your arms when you’re wearing a T-shirt.
A lot of Asian guys feel that their Asian genes are somehow holding them back when it comes to gaining muscle. But guess what? Whether or not it is true that Asian men have a harder time gaining muscle, most women don’t care for the big beefy types anyway. They prefer a trim well-chiseled physique.
In my experience and from what I have seen in others, most women don't care that much about your body. Most women value other traits in men aside from physique: how safe and comfortable you make them, confidence, humor, how you dress, etc.
I do find, however, that 2 out of 10 women will also be highly attracted to the athletic look, so much so that they would casually or in an obvious manner touch your arm.
Don't underestimate the power of a powerful looking physique. Most women are not attracted to the buffed out strong man, but they definitely notice the V-taper (wide shoulders, muscular arms, trim waist).
Asian guys who aren’t into the weightlifting scene, however, go about exercising the wrong way to achieve their ideal body. Oftentimes they engage in a physical activity, hoping that they’ll sport ripped abs and muscular arms as a side effect of that activity. This is why you will often see Asians jogging.
Jogging, however, doesn’t do jack shit for your physique. You will not chisel a rock hard body from jogging alone. A hard physique is developed from hard work, namely weightlifting. Jogging is, by definition, half-ass work. If you put in half-ass effort, then you will get a soft physique as a result.
Some exercise is better than no exercise, but if you want a specific result, then you need to have a specific physique goal in mind and the appropriate method to achieve that goal. If you think you can play a sport and that this sport alone will get you the hard body you find on TV and the magazines, then you will be sorely (no pun intended) disappointed.
Even when a sport or a physical activity does transform your physique, the look you obtain is indicative of the physical demands of that sport or activity. The sport does not give a rat’s ass how your muscles end up looking.
In other words, you can tell what sport or physical activity a person practices just by looking at the development of his muscles. Runners have great calves, wrestlers have enormous trapezius muscles and male bicyclists are just plain skinny. Hell, if you just look at the different positions in football, you can see clear differences in the physiques amongst all the players.
This is why recreational bodybuilding is the ideal activity to transform your look, because it’s sole purpose is aesthetic. This doesn’t mean you can’t engage in other physical activities, like kickboxing or yoga. If you’re looking to have a beach body however, then bodybuilding should be your main activity and all other forms of physical activity should be complementary.
Some Common Mistakes and Issues
Having dealt with a lot of Asian men looking to gain muscle, I’ve noticed the following are some common issues:
1) Too much emphasis on cardio- As I mentioned before, jogging is a horrible way to attain the lean hard body. I see lots of skinny Asian guys jogging in the park, and I just want to clothesline them as they run by and yell, “Cut the cardio and hit the weights dude!”
Most people think, “I don’t want to bulk up, but I want to have muscle definition and tone. I want to look lean. That’s why I do cardio.”
Don’t get me wrong: cardio has its place. If you need to lose weight and don’t care what type of weight you lose, then by all means jog. But for young skinny Asian guys, cardio is not needed. If anything, it is counterproductive to gaining muscle. Steady state cardio, whether it’s jogging or elliptical machines, is going to raise your cortisol levels and diminish your testosterone levels. High cortisol and low T will make you lose muscle tone.
If you’re a skinny Asian guy, then you actually have an advantage over other guys. You can build a lean hard physique quite easily if you train with heavy weights and cut the cardio. If you’re a skinny Asian guy and want to get big AND muscular, then that is going to be harder because you have to do a lot of heavy eating and heavy training. But building a lean toned body that women notice is actually easy for skinny Asian guys if they simply trained appropriately.
2) Too much emphasis on machines- Free weights beats machines for developing size and strength, period. Machines stabilize the weight for you, so you end up using less muscle to push or pull the weight. Free weights, however, force you to perfect your form and stabilize your body while pushing or pulling the weight. This greater engagement of your muscles means greater activation and greater growth.
Most people choose machines, because they choose the easy way out in everything. But if you want an uncommon physique, then don’t take the easy way out. Quit the machines and do free weights: barbells, dumbbells, kettlebells and bodyweight.
3) Posture and Height- For those of us who are smaller in stature, we have to be very careful as to what we exercises do. Most newbies tend to overemphasize the importance of the bench press and the pectoral muscles in their training programs. They put the bench press first in their workouts. They focus on getting stronger on this particular lift, because everybody asks, “How much you bench?” as if the bench press is an accurate indicator of real world strength.
In reality, if you’re an Asian guy of smaller stature looking simply to improve your overall appearance, then you really don’t need to do the bench press. Doing the bench press and overemphasizing the development of the chest leads to poor posture, especially when the lifter doesn’t do an equal number of overhead presses and back exercises.
I have seen lots of short Asian guys with great pec and trap development, but they walk around looking down at the floor because of poor posture. The caveman look is not appealing to anyone, let alone women. Poor posture also takes inches away from your height, because your shoulders are rounded and your head is leaning forward. Height is a far better attraction switch than muscle.
When an actor gets ready for a role where he plays an action hero or superhero, the studio hires a trainer to assess his physique. Regardless of the starting physique or start point, it is the end result, the physique demanded by the role that counts. For such roles, the actor must have a tall muscular look that is also wide in the shoulders. Thus the training usually involves a lot of overhead pressing, not bench pressing. Overhead presses (whether military presses or kettlebell presses) develop the deltoid muscles that add to shoulder width. Done correctly, overhead presses fix bad posture and will bring your shoulders back into alignment. Overhead presses also develop the lateral head of the triceps, the part of your upper arm that displays muscle tone when you’re wearing a T-shirt.
If you look at Jake Gyllenhaal, you can see he developed tremendous shoulder and triceps development for “Prince of Persia.”
4) The Butt- Yes, a lot of Asian guys are concerned with putting more junk in the trunk, because we tend to have flat butts. Shoulder width and the butt are the 2 most common places women look at when they’re sizing up a guy’s body sexually.
If you need more glute development, then a great way to develop your glutes is to do 20-rep breathing squats. As long as you squat all the way down, then you will develop the glutes. If you cheat and do half squats or stop when your thighs are parallel to the ground, then you will not stress the glutes at all.
20-rep breathing squats should only be done once a week, since it’s very traumatic to the nervous system. They will, however, help the skinny Asian lifter kill 2 birds with one stone. Not only do 20-rep squats develop the glutes, they also stimulate muscle growth all over the body. A sure sign you’ve done 20-rep squats right is when you are extremely hungry later in the day. This is your body telling you that it needs amino acids and carbohydrates to build muscle and replenish its glycogen stores.
Putting it altogether…
Here’s a rather simple abbreviated program that addresses the need for lean muscle mass without compromising one’s posture:
1. Pull-ups (perform 20 reps in however many sets you need to do)
2. Wide grip barbell upright row (4 sets of 15-12-10-10 reps)
3. Standing barbell military press (4 sets of 10-8-6-6 reps)
or Kettlebell clean and press (4 sets of as many reps as possible)
4. 20-rep breathing squats (1-2 sets)
or Lunges (4 sets of 15-12-10-10 reps)
Friday, 4 June 2010
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