Tripmaster Monkey

This Shit is Bananas: Edition 1

Tue, 09 Feb 2010 12:25:08 -0500

WHILE TRAWLING THE INTERNETS for titillating bits of pan-Asian pop culture and politics, we often come across stuff that is so weird and disturbing—so wrong—that it begs to be chronicled on our site under a spiffy new rubric. Welcome to our whenever-ly column: This Shit is Bananas!

PAKISTAN: How do we put this diplomatically? It appears that having a name that means "The Biggest Dick" in Arabic has disqualified Pakistani diplomat Miangul Akbar Zeb from being becoming his nation's ambassador to Saudi Arabia. Even the editors of the usually staid publication Foreign Policy could not resist a prurient pun: "In Saudi Arabia, size does count." To which we can only add that United Arab Emirates and Bahrain have also cock-blocked his appointment.

JAPAN: Okay, this is fucked-up even for Japanese horn dogs. This March, Amuse Soft Entertainment of Japan will release a DVD called "Crying Girl," which features 11 young starlets crying over various trials and tribulations (being dumped by a boyfriend, learning that a cancer-stricken friend has gotten engaged, feeling the ineffable "loneliness of the city"). This scintillating footage is apparently aimed at Japanese men who need a little emotional Vigara. According to InventorSpot, "[M]en in Japan need to have their 'conquering instinct' stoked, and the way to do this is by watching beautiful women cry. Yep, in a nutshell: men feel stronger after experiencing the weakness of women." A crying shame.

INDONESIA: Irked by protesters comparing him to a "big and stupid" water buffalo, Indonesia's president has banned the beasts from being used as props in street rallies marking the first 100 days of Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono's second term. His likeness to the creature apparently does not translate into a thick hide. Yudhoyono said that while the comments are hurtful, his real concern is for public safety. "There is no guarantee that protesters can keep the water buffalo from being provoked and threatening people's lives if it is angered," said Jakarta police spokesman Col. Boy Rafli Amar. It was remains unclear if the policeman was referring to a water buffalo or to president.

CHINA: A 21-year-old woman identified only as Xiaoqing is undergoing plastic surgery to look like actress Jessica Alba in order win back an old boyfriend who was obsessed with the B-list star of "Fantastic Four." A plastic surgery clinic in Shanghai has agreed to perform this extreme makeover for free—free publicity, that is. "If she wants to look much better than she does now, I think we are able to help her fulfill her wishes," says hospital director Jiang Shan. "But if she wants to totally look like Jessica Alba, I would think she is not confident in herself and needs to solve this problem psychologically." Well said, doctor. You should only undergo plastic surgery for the right shallow reasons.

And that, dear readers, is bananas!

Die Stanley Dai!

Mon, 01 Feb 2010 06:53:59 -0500

Turns out there's a Chinese-American dude among the four neo-con stooges busted for allegedly tampering with the phones in the New Orleans offices of Sen. Mary Landrieu (D-Louisiana) last week. Stanley Dai, a 24-year-old right-wing activist of slight renown, is out on bail and no doubt Googling himself every five minutes so we really hope he comes across this post.

(With apologizes to Eminem...)

Dear Stan:

Guess what, buddy? You're not white.

No matter how much your Chinese-immigrant-ass longs to be white, no matter how hard you swing your "Angry Penis" to the right, your neo-con artist friends will never consider you one of them. Despite your perfect English and preppy looks, you cannot "pass."

Look in the mirror, Stan. Asians do not look like America and America does not look like us. We are still an exotic minority. Unlike the experiences of blacks, Native Americans, and Latinos, our stories are not deeply embedded in American history. Theirs is a long dark history, to be sure, but it is also a multi-generational process of cultural osmosis and intermarrying. Asians haven't been here all that long and we pretty much keep to ourselves. To most Americans, we remain as inscrutable and foreign as ever. (See: Japanese internment, WWII.) Already there are whispers that you are a Chinese spy. (See: Wen Ho Lee.)

It will be a long long time before anyone says of an Asian-American newsmaker: "I forgot he was Asian." No way, dude, they'll never let us forget it. They will always ask, "Where are you from?" And now thanks to people like you and Yoo, we can add law-bending crypto-fascists to the list of Asian stereotypes. Heil Hirohito!

For such a young man, you're quite the seasoned wing-nut. In college, you edited the conservative GW Patriot, you co-founded GW's Students Defending Democracy, you were active in the College Republicans and GW Colonials for Life (gotta love that name). Then you did some spooky shit with Department of Defense "irregular warfare" fellowship program. Now you're passing yourself off as a counter-terrorism expert and freelance Plumber? Ninja, please!

So the radical right has embraced you, and maybe you truly do believe in their hate-filled agenda. Maybe you feel special being a token person of color, as Michael Steele apparently does. Who knows, maybe you like teabagging hot conservative babes. News flash: Even standing next to James O'Keefe, the World's Ugliest White Boy, will not make you, by comparison, more attractive to the likes of Carrie Prejean. You will always be the busboy, gardener, coolie to them. And if you're not careful, these people you truck with will make you the fall guy too.

To call you a banana would be an insult to all racial sell-outs and also to fruit. No, you don't even earn the label of self-hating token Asian. You are a thug in a blue blazer, a delusional black-ops groupie, and a menace to a free society. We're sure your "Penis Dialogues" will play real well in the federal pen.

China's Love-Hate Relationship with "Avatar"

Tue, 26 Jan 2010 12:52:18 -0500

RED CHINA has a complicated relationship with the blue people of "Avatar." Chinese moviegoers have made it the country's highest grossing movie, and yet their government can't decide whether to stymie this global phenomenon or cash in on it. So, they're doing both.

FIRST STAGE: LOVE IT

James Cameron's scifi epic debuted early this year to mostly rapturous audiences who cheered the clear anti-imperialist message. Some saw an indictment of George W. Bush's warmongering. And America's rapacious and ecologically ruinous appetite for natural resources. "The more advanced the technology, the greedier you become," wrote one Chinese blogger. But some were put-off by the cross-cultural narcissism implicit in the white-man-saves-the-natives plot.

SECOND STAGE: HATE IT

Other killjoys also pointed out that the plight of the tree-hugging Na'vi, who are pushed off their land by a mechanized human army, resembles China's own policy of forcefully relocating rural peasants to make way for dams and stadiums. Then there's that whole cultural genocide echo with Tibet. As one Tibet supporter wrote, "I cannot help but compare the Na'vi to the plight of Tibetan nomads and farmers. It is almost like the story is inspired by the Khampa farmers who fought against a Chinese mining company and armed security forces to save their sacred mountain, Ser Ngul Lo, from being mined for gold." To which one rabid China booster offered this Freudian slip: "Planet Pandora is an inseparable part of our motherland!"

It came as no surprise when China abruptly pulled "Avatar" from theaters to make room for a state-sponsored Confucius biopic, which fizzled most shamefully at the box office.

THIRD STAGE: CLAIM IT

What a difference a billion dollar makes! Now that "Avatar" has become the biggest movie in the known universe, China now claims that the towering rock columns of Hunan province are the inspiration for the floating Hallelujah Mountains of Pandora. China likes to take credit for just about everything except the invention of sliced bread, but this claim actually has merit. Cameron's crews shot a ton of footage in the Wulingyuan Scenic Zone, footage that appeared in at least 20 minutes of the movie.

To lure die-hard Avatards and foreign visitors to this piece of Pandora on Earth, tourism officials have just recently changed the name of the Southern Sky Column to "Avatar Hallelujah Mountain." To which Chairman Mao would probably say, "Comrades, can I get an 'Amen!'" It should be noted that the well-publicized "christening" ceremony was replete with hundreds of locals dressed in the region's ethnic Tujia costumes. No, the natives were not painted blue. Not yet.

Icons of the Asian-American Sexual Revolution

Sat, 23 Jan 2010 16:12:46 -0500

An overture ...

"I Like to Fuck" by Tila Tequila

I like to fuck, sexy boys and girls (uh huh!)
I like to fuck, leather pants, Jheri curls
I like to fuck, suck cock, until I hurl
I like to fuck everybody in the world

ONCE UPON A TIME, in these United States of America, Asians were perceived as asexual beings. American popular culture depicted Asian men as emasculated and unattractive, and while it may have been a bit more forgiving towards Asian women, it still portrayed them as demure and repressed. But as we enter the second decade of the new millennium, Asian Americans like Jon Gosselin, Tiger Woods, and Tila Tequila are blazing new trails, redefining what it means to be Asian-American while getting their inordinate share of happy endings. Call them the Golden Horde of the Asian-American sexual revolution.

Let us take a brief look at the history of Asian-American sexuality as portrayed by American popular culture. In 1915, the Japanese actor Sessue Hayakawa played the lead in "The Cheat" as a Burmese tycoon—initially written as a Japanese national but later changed to placate Japan which at the time was a U.S. ally—who brands a white socialite as his possession after she fails to repay a loan. Ironically, this diabolical and effete role catapulted Hayakawa to the kind of international superstardom yet to be repeated by an Asian-American actor, resulting in an offer to star in "The Sheik" which he turned down. The role was eventually filled by a certain Rudolph Valentino.

Then in the 1960 film, "The World of Suzie Wong," William Holden's character, a good old corn-fed Midwestern white guy, tried to approach Nancy Kwan's titular character, a working girl with a heart of gold, aboard a ship off the waters of Hong Kong only to be rebuffed by her declarations of virginity. Back then, even a prostitute knew that she had to save face.

So that's how things have generally been. Effete Asian males and flower drum song females. In this universe of low expectations, Asian-American guys like myself have had to rely on books like this magnum opus "How to Date a White Woman: A Practical Guide for Asian Men" in order to have a shot at bagging that most elusive of creatures, a decent-looking white woman who would date Asian guys. How times have changed. Now someone like Jon Gosselin—a half-Korean guy who somehow manages to look chinkier than 90 percent of full-East Asian guys—has been working overtime, tilling some particularly fecund nether regions of numerous white women as if they were rice paddies in the Vietnamese countryside.

And what about the rather seemingly staid Tiger Woods? Let me take this opportunity to address the African-American community on this issue: Hey, Tiger is at least 5/8 Asian with his full-blooded Thai mother and his part-Chinese father. We won't monopolize him, but can't the two communities share him or at least the blame for him? (Dave Chappelle, bring back the Race Draft!) Anyhow, Tiger may have mastered the art of avoiding sand traps in the game of golf, but he is just a neophyte when it comes to avoiding the traps laid by sandy blonds. Perhaps Bret Michael's "Rock of Love" trailer has been swept up into the air a la Balloon Boy—another Asian American—and crash-landed at Augusta's revered golf course, with the many ladies of easy virtue having landed safely thanks to the presence of excess silicone and saline bags.

But it isn't just the guys who are making the Asian-American community proud. We all recognize Tila Tequila of MySpace and "A Shot at Love with Tila Tequila" fame as every first-generation Asian immigrant parent's nightmare. She's the Asian girl who dates any guy. Or any girl, for that matter. But Tila has shown us that an Asian parent's nightmare is ironically the ultimate American dream. If you lack talent, make sure you strip yourself of every last shred of dignity as well. Then you, too, can screw your way to realizing the American dream.

Remember the smug (white) TV pundits waxing poetic about a post-racial America when Obama was elected? I remember watching his Chinese-American brother-in-law, a handsome fellow, beaming in the crowd and thinking that perhaps Asian Americans had also arrived with the election of the nation's first minority president. Could I have been any more wrong? That was but a minor precursor to the monumental milestones achieved by the three recipients of TripmasterMonkey's inaugural Model Minority Gone Bad Awards.

Like it or not, Jon Gosselin, Tiger Woods, and Tila Tequila have firmly established their status as trailblazers in racial relations. Okay, so they're not exactly Jackie Robinson or Rosa Parks, but damn it, people, any breakdown of old stereotypes is progress. America, we have finally arrived in full force—and not just fresh off some dinky little boat, but off an opulent luxury liner filled with money, honeys and camera crews, proving that we too can be just as stupid and promiscuous as the members of any other ethnic group. And you just wait till the Chinese-Canadian movie star/amateur pornographer Edison Chen crosses the border.

Me so horny, me love you long time, America.

Wind-Up Bird Chronicle: The Puppet Show?

Thu, 21 Jan 2010 02:39:17 -0500

WHEN HARUKI MURAKAMI'S "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" was translated and published in the US in 1997, Murakami was hardly a household name. This was true even among those who regularly rustled through the pages of The New Yorker and The Village Voice in a conspicuous fashion at indie bookstores, while yearning to catch the eye of a literate and hopefully attractive potential mate. But now more than a decade later, not having read a Murakami novel means being ostracized at cocktail parties, with a proverbial scarlet letter P—for philistine—etched onto your hipster clothing.

Most critics and fans alike consider "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" as the feather in Murakami's hat, and this epic novel featuring labyrinthine narrative threads and multiple levels of reality and surreality has just been adapted for the stage in the form of a multimedia production. Co-presented with the Baryshnikov Arts Center, "The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle" Multimedia Theater Production is playing at the Ohio Theatre in NYC until January 30. (Check windupbc.com for details.)

The novel chronicles its protagonist Toru Okada's search for his missing wife and cat that becomes more and more Kafkaesque. And appropriately enough, director Stephen Earnhart combines elements of traditional theater, live avant-garde music, cinematic video, dance, and puppetry to mirror its dreamlike nature.

"In the end, I want it to feel like when you leave this theater, you're caught somewhere between the world of dreams and reality, which is exactly how I feel when I read a Murakami novel," says Earnhart. And he pushes the Brechtian boundaries even further by having the crucial character of the old World War II veteran—and witness of atrocities—speak in Japanese while the other main characters speak in English.

Looks like 2010 will be a banner year for adaptations of Murakami's novels. His phenomenally popular "Norwegian Wood" is being adapted for the big screen in a pan-Asian production helmed by the award-winning Vietnamese-American director Tran Anh Hung and will be released later this year. There's still time to read the book first!

Will John Liu's Sweatshop Sob Story Sway NY Voters?

Tue, 29 Sep 2009 16:34:56 -0500

NO DOUBT ABOUT IT: It's tough to run for office in New York City, and you'd better be sure you've got a healthy campaign fund, an impressive resume, and an uplifting back story before you take the plunge.

John Liu, who's running for city comptroller, had all three—a well-financed campaign reportedly at about $3 million, a trail-blazing bullet-point as the city's first Asian-American councilmember, and an immigrant story back story steeped in aspiration and success. (Liu's father renamed himself Joseph and his sons John, Robert, and Edward after they moved from Taiwan, in honor of the Kennedys.)

So why the hell did John Liu, New York's high-profile Asian-American councilman, decide he wanted to be known as the guy who was raised in a sweatshop? Especially considering his own family, various newspapers, and his opponent are saying that it isn't true?

"He came here at 5, and by seven had to work in a sweatshop to make ends meet," a narrator says in his TV spot, which shows Asian women crowded over sewing machines in factory. "Working in finance taught Liu how to account for every penny, but working in that sweatshop as a kid taught him why we need to."

Not exactly how Mama Liu remembers it. Jamy Liu, who did work in the garment industry, says she never went to the factory—she brought it to their home in Queens to work on. And John Liu did help his mom out with the work spinning yarn into a ball, but the 25 cents he was paid was his allowance. (His dad, by the way, was a bigwig at two banks.)

So why a sweatshop, exactly? If he'd been Japanese, would he have claimed to have been brought up in a World War II internment camp? As a Korean, would he have cried out for environmental reforms because he'd sucked in nail-polish fumes as a child foot-buffer in a manicurist's shop? You don't see primary opponent David Yassky, who is Jewish, claiming he spent his childhood hawking pickles on Delancey Street to waves of Eastern European Holocaust survivors, do you?

Why the need to embellish with a knee-jerk Chinese stereotype to appeal to the broader New York electorate when your story's already plenty inspirational? (Especially when you've already got the Asians-are-good-at-math thing going for you!)

As New York dems go the polls, we'll see if Liu's campaign unravels like, well, like a ball of yarn.

China's Hairest Man to Bare It All for His Art

Tue, 22 Sep 2009 01:52:57 -0500

WHAT DOES CHINA'S MANE MAN Yu Zhenhuan have in common with famously coiffed actress Julia Roberts? Well, this thespian too wants to be recognized for his acting abilities and not just for the hair, which in his case covers 96 percent of his body.

The 32-year-old Liaoning native is planning an extreme make-over involving hours—perhaps weeks—of laser-hair removal. "I just want to prove that I have talent and I don't need this hair to be someone," said Yu, who first found success in a movie called "Monkey Boy's Treasure Safari." His fame reached hair-raising lengths in 2002 when Guinness Book of World Records declared him the hairiest (er, furriest) person in the world. He has since lost that title to the Wolf Boys of Mexico, Victor and Gabriel Ramos Gomez, who have hair covering 98 percent of their bodies—although after the first 95 percent, you're really just splitting hairs.

After limited success as the front man of a hair band, Yu pursued acting. Most recently, he had hoped to land the monkey god role in a TV production of the Chinese classic "Journey To The West." According to Yu, "I was the best candidate, as I look like a monkey and my nickname is Monkey Man. But I failed the audition because I am not good-looking enough." So in addition to the hair removal he will undergo plastic surgery to enlarge his eyes and reduce the size of his nose and lips. "I am going to make myself look more like a pretty monkey, and let the director regret his decision."

To which we say, DON'T DO IT, YU! Step away from the depilatory cream. You are beautiful just the way you are. Don't change one hair on that furry, furry ass! Come to Hollywood. Werewolves are all the rage.

Marilyn Chin to Unleash "Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen" on Your A**

Mon, 21 Sep 2009 12:08:32 -0500

GOOGLE MARILYN CHIN and you'll get tons of info on this much-acclaimed writer/activist. So we'll just mention that she's written "Dwarf Bamboo," "Rhapsody in Plain Yellow," and —and that she snags more awards than most people even know are out there. Naturally, TripmasterMonkey's Bryan Thao Worra pestered her about her newest book, a novel this time, called "Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen."

TripmasterMonkey: What's the elevator speech you used to sell this book to an editor?
Marilyn Chin: Here's my editor's write-up:

"An uproarious debut that lays bare the complicated generational relationships of Chinese-American women. Raucous twin sisters Moonie and Mei Ling Wong are known as the 'double happiness' Chinese food delivery girls. Each day they load up a 'crappy donkey-van' and deliver Americanized ('bad') Chinese food to homes throughout their southern California neighborhood. United in their desire to blossom into somebodies, the Wong girls fearlessly assert their intellect and sexuality, even as they come of age under the care of their dominating, cleaver-wielding grandmother from Hong Kong. They transform themselves from food delivery girls into accomplished women, but along the way they wrestle with the influence and continuity of their Chinese heritage.

TMM: Wow. So, what's it really about?
MC: Well, "Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen" is made of extreme allegories that contest the terrain of the immigrant novel. I want to "pervert" the master/dominant patriarchal narrative with smart experimental short forms and explosive vignettes. I want to give the power of speech and action to the smallest, most vulnerable brown girl in the room ... and subvert those ridiculous stereotypes regarding submissiveness and demureness. I want to celebrate and examine the possibility of a diverse and multicultural America! I want to praise wild grandmothers and riot girls, everywhere!

TMM: Right on! Okay, this is your first work of fiction, are you jazzed for more?
MC: Jazzed, pumped, ideas up the yinyang, but won't publish anything unless it's amazing.

TMM: Activism/Art or Great All-Expenses Paid Vacation? And what's your second choice?
MC: Great juxtapositions, O brother poet! A stealthily beautiful question, indeed. Imagine this: I am working on a novel about mutant revolutionary Asian women, using a fox-hair brush on rice paper while sunning on my porch in a castle overlooking Lake Como and sipping cappuccino and eating duck! The second choice is more duck!

TMM: Any monkeys in "Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen"?
MC: Many monkeys and monkey-like tricksters, dancing, bouncing around the book. Remember, Moonie created her own kung-fu dance crafted after Jackie Chan's Drunken Monkey style.

And here is a Buddhist tale from the book with a generous monkey character in it:

AFTER ENLIGHTENMENT, THERE IS YAM GRUEL

When Buddha woke up hungry the animals offered him their favorite food. The baby sea lion offered him day old fish bits that her mother regurgitated. The jackal offered a piece of smelly rotting meat infested with maggots. The squirrel monkey offered a handful of bruised bananas, veiled with gnats. The hare was the most selfless of all. She went into the forest and gathered an armload of wood, lit it on fire and placed herself in the center as sacrifice. Mrs. Wong, exhausted from long hours at the restaurant, was not impressed with the feast. She handed Buddha a broom and said, "Old man, sweep the back porch first, then the filthy hallway," and went to the kitchen and heated up last night's yam gruel.

TMM: What were some of the alternate titles?
MC: The first title was: "Moonie and Mei Ling," my agent said "blah." "Chinese-American Revenge Tales," again she said "blah." Took me a while to get to "Revenge of the Mooncake Vixen." I believe that my friend Sandra Zane and I conceived it during a dim sum-induced brainstorm.

TMM: Who would play the twins in a Hollywood version?
MC: Good question: Pikachu and Astro Boy but in human form. Wonder Woman and Cat Woman crossed with Zhang Ziyi but shorter, younger and, of course, slant-eyed and completely unforgiving.

TMM: Do you ever get tired of people telling you you're awesome?
MC: Never, never! We Asian-American wild girl poets need love, love love!

TMM: What next?
MC: More poems and tales. I have some wild women dancing into my brain lately. They're clambering to get out of the cage!

TMM: And finally, what is your favorite monkey?
MC: When I was in Bali, an aggressive monkey grabbed my purse and I had to chase her around a giant banyan for about 15 minutes. She finally took my lipstick and threw the purse on the ground. I call her "the lipstick-pilfering monkey." We girlfriends must share our stuff!

The Annie Le Case: All This Press and She's Not Even White

Fri, 18 Sep 2009 13:23:46 -0500

IF THE VICTIM OF ACCUSED KILLER RAYMOND CLARK was a black or Latina woman, would her death have received such massive national and international coverage? Or is a pretty Ivy League student of Asian descent now equivalent to a pretty blond co-ed as salacious fodder for the sex-and-death-obsessed media and their consumers? The truth is race is only part of the equation in this perfect storm of grisly crime and public fascination.

First, let's deal with obvious. No one would give a lab rat's ass if the crime had taken place at Wayne State. We are riveted because this took place at one of the most prestigious campuses in the world. For outsiders, there is built-in curiosity and envy and schadenfreude about life in the Ivies, but none of the Ivies (with the exception of Harvard) has the cachet of Yale, the whitest of the ivory towers, the Gothic Revival redoubt of privilege and rarefied achievement. As Slate's Jack Shafer puts it: "Hell, a Stanford murder wouldn't warrant this sort of coverage!"

Second of all, a Yalie bride doesn't go missing five days before her ritzy Long Island wedding to another Ivy Leaguer, no matter what he looks like. The mystery of Annie Le's disappearance from a secure lab building (with a network of video cameras and swipe-card monitoring of movement from room to room) only added to the intrigue. The cameras caught her coming in at 10 a.m. but no one saw the very petite 24-year-old researcher leave the premises. So, where the hell did she go?

As with the disappearance of a child, the disappearance of an attractive young woman has sinister implications, especially as the days dragged on. Although her fiance was ruled out as a suspect, there was a sexual charge to the theories bandied being about, which was perhaps inevitable given the publicized Facebook photos of a vivacious Le in a series of low-cut (but tasteful) cocktail dresses. Was this the work of an obsessed stalker who wanted to prevent this golden girl's marriage to someone else?

This theory gained some traction once it was revealed that the young man in police custody had previously assaulted a girlfriend and—rather ominously, at least to us—had once belonged to a high school Asian Awareness Club. This involved making "authentic" Asian cuisine and "raising awareness" about "Asian culture." (It wasn't even related to a specific ethnic group or country, or a specific cultural aspect like martial arts or origami.) Okay, so it's not a crime for a dorky white guy to join such a club, but it does point to a possible motive. Maybe Clark had an Asian fetish and had objectified Le to the point of dehumanizing her. To the point of strangling her and stuffing her body into a crawl space in the basement of the animal-research lab where they both worked. This was where the promising diabetes and cancer researcher was discovered on the day she was to be married.

Armchair detectives were on the case. Didn't Clark's own fiancee work at the lab too? Maybe she killed Le out of jealousy and Clark was taking the fall? But with Clark's arrest following a DNA match, details emerged suggesting a decidedly unsexy motive: workplace tensions.

Apparently, Raymond Clark III took his mouse-cage-cleaning duties way too seriously. The purported "control freak" had berated researchers who didn't wear the proper foot coverings for the labs. On a previous occasion, he had asked Le to keep the cages in better condition and she had promised to do so but apparently this was not enough. "We need to meet," he texted her on the day she disappeared. No one except Clark knows what happened next and he's not talking. Maybe Le was distracted by her upcoming wedding and didn't give Clark the ego-stroking he needed. Maybe he was tired of being dissed by snooty grad students in general and lost it.

As a local columnist writes: Workplace violence is rage. "It's white-hot anger that bubbles up like bile. It might be anger about a missed promotion, un[der]appreciation, poor health, unrequited love or money troubles. Take your pick. It might be any of these things or anomie, a sense of personal isolation and anxiety, feelings of being socially disconnected." Who knows? Maybe the emotional cost of euthanizing lab animals on a daily basis had taken its toll on a troubled young man. Maybe it had desensitized him to taking life.

For all these reasons, it's clear that race alone does not explain the media's obsession with this case. But race and its evil twin, class, do explain why the deaths of so many other young women don't get this kind of play. Or as one brutally honest commenter posted on the Christian Science Monitor site: "Sorry, but no one really cares about some minimum wage worker getting axed somewhere, that's just how it is."

Katherine Heigl Rehabs Image with Korean Adoption?

Thu, 17 Sep 2009 15:53:25 -0500

COLOR US CYNICAL, but is actress Katherine Heigl trying to rehab her chain-smoking, trash-talking diva image by adopting a Korean baby girl? It wouldn't be the first time a Hollywood star has gone that route. Think bad-girl-gone-good Angelina Jolie and Meg Ryan, whose adoption of an adorable Chinese girl made us think more kindly of the collagen-abusing actress after she cheated on nice guy Dennis Quaid with Russell Crowe.

Yeah, you're right. Adoption does seem like a pretty radical thing to do just for the PR. Maybe after talking so much shit about the people made her who she is (the creators of "Grey's Anatomy" and "Knocked Up"), she realized the "Ugly Truth." That her soul was as dark as her black-tar lungs. And that her cold, cold heart needed the warmth of a child's love. Or maybe she really is telling the truth when she said that having a sister adopted from Korea was what inspired her to bring Naleigh, a ten-month-old baby with special needs, into her home. Regardless, it's congratulations all around! Naleigh gets a home with loving parents and Heigl gets an image makeover. Everybody wins.

It should be noted that the happy news was announced on the Web site of Heigl's animal-rescue foundation, which could be more careful about inadvertent juxtaposition of words and images:

Just saying.

Stopping North Korea: Time to Get Il?

Thu, 28 May 2009 00:37:34 -0500

THE LAST TIME NORTH KOREA THREW DOWN, the world treated Kim Jong-Il like a petulant child stomping his feet because Iran was getting all the attention. Once he got his pacifier, his props, his concessions, he immediately calmed down. That was 2006.

Since then, the 67-year-old Dear Leader's increasingly frail appearance and grim health (heart problems, diabetes, brain surgery, a stroke last year, bad ankles from wearing platform heels) gives greater weight to his escalating threats. What we have is a dying madman with a man death wish. And isn't it just like a megalomaniac to go out with a bang while taking chunks of East Asia with him?

Color us rattled by the recent round of saber-rattling. Why? Because North Korea's unprecedented number of missile tests, including an underground test conducted only 80 miles from China, is a middle finger pointed not only at America & Co but at China too. This is nuts and borderline suicidal because China is North Korea's primary source of aid, food, and oil. What's even scarier is that we don't really know who's actually running the show in Pyongyang anymore, or who will replace Lil' Kim when the end comes. (The heir apparent, third son Kim Jong-un, is said to take after dad.)

The stakes are sky-high this time and Kim appears to have gone all in. U.S. spy satellites have reportedly detected steam at the Yongbyon nuclear complex, an ominous sign that North Korea is once again processing nuclear fuel. (North Korea is said to have enough plutonium for at least four atomic bombs). Sanctions and tough talk from the West aren't going to cut it this time.

So what's a peace-loving nation to do? We can't exactly use nukes. Now that we've declared ourselves "a nation that does not torture," how can we possibly commit such a supreme act of barbarism? Even Nixon wouldn't use nukes against Hanoi. But there's got to be other military options, right? What about massive air strikes to take out North Korea's battery of missiles? You know, the 11,000 artillery tubes and rockets currently aimed at Seoul.

You'd think it would be easy, but Kim Jong-il has gone all Dr. No on us, hiding the weapons in mountain tunnel complexes with blast doors that open up for firing or launching fighter jets. Rooting them out would require nothing short of storming those hidden bases.

Okay, so let's run with this idea for the moment. Even if the U.S. military wasn't currently double-booked, this plan would require about half a million troops and likely result in huge numbers of American dead just in the first few days of fighting. Such is the cost of a ground attack on a mountainous nation defended by a die-hard standing army of 1.1 million. (Who knows, if we're lucky, maybe the KPA's starving soldiers will defect or just keel over.)

So what can we do? Well, we could wait it out and see if Kim's successor is a more reasonable dynastic despot. Or we could appeal to the only player who has any clout with North Korea.

Chairman Mao once said the relationship between China and North Korea was as close as "lips and teeth." Well, it's time for China to stop flapping its lips and start using some teeth. After all, China has coddled and defended this problem child for long enough. Given the reckless nature of the recent tests, the leadership crisis in Pyongyang, the North Korean penchant for selling nuclear technology to the bad guys, and the very real risk of a nuke going off in China's own backyard, many in China (and even Russia for that matter) are beginning to wonder if it's time to rein in North Korea.

How? Not by cutting aid, that's for sure. Kim Jong-il couldn't care less how many of his people starve. No, China will have to bust out the nunchucks; that is, it must threaten to use force—something it's always doing to poor Taiwan. People tend to take China's threats more seriously than, say, America's because China has never had qualms about taking huge casualties when deemed necessary.

The trick, of course, is convincing China to man up and take its place on the right side of history. And that will likely require more shows of defiance from North Korea. Another underground test that shook the earth in China, for example. Another middle finger at the Middle Kingdom.

Ads that Make Us Laugh/Cringe

Mon, 23 Mar 2009 16:31:20 -0500

THERE COMES A MOMENT in every race-conscious TV viewer's day when you're not sure whether to laugh or cringe at an image that straddles the line between offensive stereotype and painful truth. That moment has been happening a lot more often due to a recent spate of TV spots featuring Asian-Americans. Here's how they rate on TMM's Cringe-O-Meter.

NEW YORK STATE LOTTERY/ENGLISH CLASS

In this spot for the lottery's Cashword game, an exasperated ESL teacher is trying to get her foreign-born students to say "one million dollars," but they keep shouting out the most random words, like "goat" or "kumquat." Hmm, do we detect a whiff of anti-immigrant feeling here? When a young Indian fellow shouts "Monkey," echoes of "macaca" bounce in our heads. Then the voiceover explains, "Ordinary words can mean up to one million dollars." Okay, so it's the frazzled teacher who doesn't get it. Just when we think we're out of the woods, the wide-eyed Indian guy gives an earnest ear-to-ear smile and blurts out in the thickest accent, "Orang-GEE-tang." The Cringe-O-Meter swings wildly toward "Racist" but eventually settles on "Discomfiting but Amusing." Once we get over ourselves, we recognize that it's a funny even touching spot about dream-chasing immigrants. Plus, it stars comedic actor Debargo Sanyal.

GEICO/CHINESE WAITER

Given Geico's genius for memorable ads, we give them the benefit of the doubt when we initially see a Chinese waiter attending to a middle-aged white couple. The two are being stared down by a pair of goggly eyes set atop a stack of cash. The waiter explains in wimpy deadpan, "That's the money you could be saving on Geico." Cue: Rockwell's synth classic "I Always Feel Like Somebody's Watching Me." It's so weird, it works. The Cringe-O-Meters settles on "Benignly Surreal."

HALL'S COUGH DROPS/SUPERMARKET WORKER

While restocking a supermarket freezer, a schlubby Asian-American woman stops to wipe her nose with a tissue and pop a cough drop. In storms a tough-as-nails drill sergeant who tells "Shorty" to man-up, to show her sniffles who's boss. "Show me your war face!" he says and this meek Asian woman lets out a roar that blows him away. The tag line: "A pep talk in every drop." This spot just feels all sorts of wrong. First of all, the woman has a cold and really shouldn't be handling food anyway! Second, the sight of an American soldier browbeating an Asian woman just raises the specter of Korea and Vietnam, ya know? And third, the docile Asian woman morphing into a dragon lady is too Madonna/Whore for our taste. The Cringe-O-Meters settles on "Creepily Inappropriate."

NIVEA FOR MEN BODYWASH/ASIAN NERD

The set-up: A number of teens react negatively to a utilitarian bottle of Nivea bodywash presumably because they bought into the Axe Effect marketing and are, therefore, not ready for "a bodywash for grown ups." One of these beta-males is a nerdy Asian college student with glasses and uneven teeth, who looks at the bottle and goes, "That's not going increase my chances of mating." Harsh characterization, man! But there's something sweet about his geekatoid syntax (and his innocent belief that his getting laid depends on a grooming product and not on, say, sex appeal) that has us chuckle all too knowingly. The Cringe-o-Meter settles on "Hah! Good one!"

Or as Erma Bombeck once said, "There is a thin line that separates laughter and pain, comedy and tragedy, humor and hurt."

What Rapper MIA Should Name her Kid

Tue, 10 Mar 2009 23:59:25 -0500

THE WORLD WAITS with bated breath for singer-rapper MIA to release the name of her baby boy, born last month. We know it's not Ickett, as was widely and wrongly reported. This weekend, MIA took to her blog to denounce the fabrication, in all caps no less: "MY BABY IS NOT CALLED ICKITT, PICKIT OR LICKIT THANK YOU VERY MUCH."

So what will Mathangi Arulpragasam name the baby she had with musician Ben Brewer? Doesn't sound like she's got one picked out and Mowgli's already taken. TMM has a few suggestions.

Let's start with the obvious: POW, as in MIA-POW. Or Lil' Tiger, after the baby's Tamil Tiger grandfather. Both are probably a tad militant now that MIA has ditched the terrorist chic and gone mainstream. Which leaves us with a name that's both a nod to the baby's hip-hop and Sri Lankan heritage, a name that even DeLon could love. Ladies and gents, pimps and pin-ups, introducing the littlest MC, Chai T.

UPDATE: MIA named her baby, Ikhyd Edgar Arular Bronfman.

Jhumpa Lahiri Headlines Lit Fest, "Stranger Love"

Tue, 03 Mar 2009 21:13:10 -0500

INDIA IS ALL THE RAGE THESE DAYS. Especially in literary circles.

This year's Booker Prize went to the Indian author of "White Tiger," and the year's big movie, "Slumdog Millionaire," started out as a novel. This cultural surge is not exactly new—it started in earnest with Jhumpa Lahiri's 2000 runaway bestseller "Interpreter of Maladies." Who better to headline this week's South Asian Women's Creative Collective Literary Festival than Jhumpa Lahiri herself?

Taking place March 6 and 7, the sixth annual fest will celebrate South Asian writing that explores "love between strangers and love that is strange." In addition to Lahiri, readings and talks around New York will feature Fawzia Afzal-Khan, Meena Alexander, Abha Dawesar, Farzana Doctor, V.V. Ganeshananthan, Minal Hajatwala, S. Mitra Kalita, Pooja Makhijani, Suketu Mehta, Yesha Naik, Amy Paul, Chandra Prashad, Bushra Rehman, Zohra Saed, Purvi Shah, and Svati Shah.

Expect to have your mind blown and your heart touched by poetry, memoir, travelogue, and fiction that evoke "accidental encounters and provocative attractions" from guerilla wars in Sri Lanka to the suburbs of New Jersey. Maybe you'll fall in love with the next Lahiri.

For full schedule and details, visit the South Asian Women's Creative Collective events page.

The Rise of Asian-Americans in Politics

Wed, 25 Feb 2009 03:55:38 -0500

IT'S NO ACCIDENT that, when Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal gave the Republican rebuttal to President Obama's mini State of the Union address this week, he spent time talking up his own Obama-ness. For better or worse, he is the GOP's Great Brown Hope for reinvention and relevance in the age of Obama.

Alluding to Obama's Kenyan father, Jindal talked about his Punjabi parents, who instilled in him an "immigrant wonder about the greatness of America." The fact that we have an African-American president and an Asian-American governor speaking for the loyal opposition is a milestone in the history of race relations in America—a signal that we have moved the discourse beyond black and white.

It was certainly easy to miss this point given the subject of the evening, i.e. the shitty state of the national economy. But for those of us who have long wondered, "Where is the yellow in the red, white, and blue?", it was nice to see a few more Asian faces in the corridors of powers, regardless of political affiliation. Like Rep. Anh "Joseph" Cao, the first Vietnamese-American member of Congress who, coincidentally, is a Republican Catholic from Louisiana, like Jindal.

Also stepping into the national limelight were Steven Chu, Obama's Energy secretary, and Veterans Affairs secretary Eric Shinseki. Soon to join them is former Washington governor Gary Locke, whose nomination as Commerce secretary is expected shortly. Locke was the first Chinese-American governor in the U.S.

Among his duties at Commerce, Locke would oversee the 2010 Census, which has important implications for political representation. Asians now make up about 5 percent of the U.S. population. A number that's rising as fast as Bobby Jindal's star.