I can't believe this, especially after having just written about him, but a newsbreak just announced that Carlin just died.
I'll write more soon.
I'm a man without a corporation. ~Paddy Chayefsky
Sunday, June 22, 2008
Tuesday, June 17, 2008
I Enjoy That
For centuries now, man has done everything he can to destroy, defile, and interfere with nature: clear-cutting forests, strip-mining mountains, poisoning the atmosphere, over-fishing the oceans, polluting the rivers and lakes, destroying wetlands and aquifers... so when nature strikes back, and smacks him on the head and kicks him in the nuts, I enjoy that. I have absolutely no sympathy for human beings whatsoever. None. And no matter what kind of problem humans are facing, whether it's natural or man-made, I always hope it gets worse.
--George Carlin
Been on a Carlin kick recently, re-visiting my past... much like Magic Johnson was the player's player, Carlin's the comedian's comedian. Just past 70 now [!!!], I recently saw one of his HBO specials, and dude's sharper than ever. What an American treasure. Love him.
Monday, June 16, 2008
Kill the Mockingbird, Already
While we can all, I think for the most part/at least I hope, grasp that racism sucks, people often don't get what I mean when I rail against crazy liberals and their own particular, and peculiar, brand of racism. There, I said it. Again.
Maybe it's because of being raised in LA, where so-called liberalism runs rampant. Huh. Some don't believe me when I tell them that LA's about as segregated a city I know of. In many ways this veneer illustrates American phoniness all too well.
Roger, take it.
=====================
To Kill a Mockingbird
BY ROGER EBERT / November 11, 2001
"To Kill a Mockingbird" is a time capsule, preserving hopes and sentiments from a kinder, gentler, more naive America. It was released in December 1962, the last month of the last year of the complacency of the postwar years. The following November, John F. Kennedy would be assassinated. Nothing would ever be the same again -- not after the deaths of Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, not after the war in Vietnam, certainly not after September 11, 2001. The most hopeful development during that period for America was the civil rights movement, which dealt a series of legal and moral blows to racism. But "To Kill a Mockingbird," set in Maycomb, Alabama, in 1932, uses the realities of its time only as a backdrop for the portrait of a brave white liberal.
The movie has remained the favorite of many people. It is currently listed as the 29th best film of all time in a poll by the Internet Movie Database. Such polls are of questionable significance, but certainly the movie and the Harper Lee novel on which it is based have legions of admirers. It is being read by many Chicagoans as part of a city-wide initiative in book discussion. It is a beautifully-written book, but it should be used not as a record of how things are, or were, but of how we once liked to think of them.
The novel, which focuses on the coming of age of three young children, especially the tomboy Scout, gains strength from her point of view: It sees the good and evil of the world through the eyes of a six-year-old child. The movie shifts the emphasis to the character of her father, Atticus Finch, but from this new point of view doesn't see as much as an adult in that time and place should see.
Maycomb is evoked by director Robert Mulligan as a "tired old town" of dirt roads, picket fences, climbing vines, front porches held up by pillars of brick, rocking chairs, and Panama hats. Scout (Mary Badham) and her 10-year-old brother Jem (Philip Alford) live with their widowed father Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) and their black housekeeper Calpurnia (Estelle Evans). They make friends with a new neighbor named "Dill" Harris (John Megna), who wears glasses, speaks with an expanded vocabulary, is small for his age, and is said to be inspired by Harper Lee's childhood friend Truman Capote. Atticus goes off every morning to his law office downtown, and the children play through lazy hot days.
Their imagination is much occupied by the Radley house, right down the street, which seems always dark, shaded and closed. Jem tells Dill that Mr. Radley keeps his son Boo chained to a bed in the house, and describes Boo breathlessly: "Judging from his tracks, he's about six and a half feet tall. He eats raw squirrels and all the cats he can catch. There's a long, jagged scar that runs all the way across his face. His teeth are yellow and rotten. His eyes are popped. And he drools most of the time." Of course the first detail reveals Jem has never seen Boo.
Into this peaceful calm drops a thunderbolt. Atticus is asked by the town judge to defend a black man named Tom Robinson (Brock Peters), who has been accused of raping a poor white girl named Mayella Violet Ewell (Collin Wilcox). White opinion is of course much against the black man, who is presumed guilty, and Mayelle's father Bob (James Anderson) pays an ominous call on Atticus, indirectly threatening his children. The children are also taunted at school, and get in fights; Atticus explains to them why he is defending a Negro, and warns them against using the word "nigger."
The courtroom scenes are the most celebrated in the movie; they make it perfectly clear that Tom Robinson is innocent, that no rape occurred, that Maybelle came on to Robinson, that he tried to flee, that Bob Ewell beat his own daughter, and she lied about it out of shame for feeling attracted to a black man. Atticus' summation to the jury is one of Gregory Peck's great scenes, but of course the all-white jury finds Tom Robinson guilty anyway. The verdict is greeted by an uncanny quiet: No whoops of triumph from Bob Ewell, no cries of protests by the blacks in the courtroom gallery. The whites file out quickly, but the blacks remain and stand silently in honor of Atticus as he walks out a little later. Scout and her brother sat up with the blacks throughout the trial, and now a minister tells her: "Miss Jean Louise, stand up, your father's passin'."
The problem here, for me, is that the conviction of Tom Robinson is not the point of the scene, which looks right past him to focus on the nobility of Atticus Finch. I also wonder at the general lack of emotion in the courtroom, and the movie only grows more puzzling by what happens next. Atticus is told by the sheriff that while Tom Robinson was being taken for safekeeping to nearby Abbottsville, he broke loose and tried to run away. As Atticus repeats the story: "The deputy called out to him to stop. Tom didn't stop. He shot at him to wound him and missed his aim. Killed him. The deputy says Tom just ran like a crazy man."
That Scout could believe it happened just like this is credible. That Atticus Finch, an adult liberal resident of the Deep South in 1932, has no questions about this version is incredible. In 1962 it is possible that some (white) audiences would believe that Tom Robinson was accidentally killed while trying to escape, but in 2001 such stories are met with a weary cynicism.
The construction of the following scene is highly implausible. Atticus drives out to Tom Robinson's house to break the sad news to his widow, Helen. She is played by Kim Hamilton (who is not credited, and indeed has no speaking lines in a film that finds time for dialog by two superfluous white neighbors of the Finches). On the porch are several male friends and relatives. Bob Ewell, the vile father who beat his girl into lying, lurches out of the shadows and says to one of them, "Boy, go in the house and bring out Atticus Finch." One of the men does so, Ewell spits in Atticus's face, Atticus stares him down and drives away. The black people in this scene are not treated as characters, but as props, and kept entirely in long shot. The close-ups are reserved for the white hero and villain.
It may be that in 1932 the situation was such in Alabama that this white man, who the people on that porch had seen lie to convict Tom Robinson, could walk up to them alone after they had just learned he had been killed, call one of them "boy," and not be touched. If black fear of whites was that deep in those days, then the rest of the movie exists in a dream world.
The upbeat payoff involves Ewell's cowardly attack on Scout and Jem, and the sudden appearance of the mysterious Boo Radley (Robert Duvall, in his first screen performance), to save them. Ewell is found dead with a knife under his ribs. Boo materializes inside the Finch house, is identified by Scout as her savior, and they're soon sitting side by side on the front porch swing. The sheriff decides that no good would be served by accusing Boo of the death of Ewell. That would be like "killing a mockingbird," and we know from earlier in the film that you can shoot all the bluejays you want, but not mockingbirds -- because all they do is sing to bring music to the garden. Not exactly a description of the silent Boo Radley, but we get the point.
This is a tricky note to end on, because it brings Boo Radley in literally from the wings as a distraction from the facts: An innocent black man was framed for a crime that never took place, he was convicted by a white jury in the face of overwhelming evidence, and he was shot dead in problematic circumstances. Now we are expected to feel good because the events got Boo out of the house. That Boo Radley killed Bob Ewell may be justice, but it is not parity. The sheriff says, "There's a black man dead for no reason, and now the man responsible for it is dead. Let the dead bury the dead this time." But I doubt that either Tom Robinson or Bob Ewell would want to be buried by the other.
"To Kill a Mockingbird" is, as I said, a time capsule. It expresses the liberal pieties of a more innocent time, the early 1960s, and it goes very easy on the realities of small-town Alabama in the 1930s. One of the most dramatic scenes shows a lynch mob facing Atticus, who is all by himself on the jailhouse steps the night before Tom Robinson's trial. The mob is armed and prepared to break in and hang Robinson, but Scout bursts onto the scene, recognizes a poor farmer who has been befriended by her father, and shames him (and all the other men) into leaving. Her speech is a calculated strategic exercise, masked as the innocent words of a child; one shot of her eyes shows she realizes exactly what she's doing. Could a child turn away a lynch mob at that time, in that place? Isn't it nice to think so.
Maybe it's because of being raised in LA, where so-called liberalism runs rampant. Huh. Some don't believe me when I tell them that LA's about as segregated a city I know of. In many ways this veneer illustrates American phoniness all too well.
Roger, take it.
=====================
To Kill a Mockingbird
BY ROGER EBERT / November 11, 2001
"To Kill a Mockingbird" is a time capsule, preserving hopes and sentiments from a kinder, gentler, more naive America. It was released in December 1962, the last month of the last year of the complacency of the postwar years. The following November, John F. Kennedy would be assassinated. Nothing would ever be the same again -- not after the deaths of Martin Luther King, Robert Kennedy, Malcolm X, Medgar Evers, not after the war in Vietnam, certainly not after September 11, 2001. The most hopeful development during that period for America was the civil rights movement, which dealt a series of legal and moral blows to racism. But "To Kill a Mockingbird," set in Maycomb, Alabama, in 1932, uses the realities of its time only as a backdrop for the portrait of a brave white liberal.
The movie has remained the favorite of many people. It is currently listed as the 29th best film of all time in a poll by the Internet Movie Database. Such polls are of questionable significance, but certainly the movie and the Harper Lee novel on which it is based have legions of admirers. It is being read by many Chicagoans as part of a city-wide initiative in book discussion. It is a beautifully-written book, but it should be used not as a record of how things are, or were, but of how we once liked to think of them.
The novel, which focuses on the coming of age of three young children, especially the tomboy Scout, gains strength from her point of view: It sees the good and evil of the world through the eyes of a six-year-old child. The movie shifts the emphasis to the character of her father, Atticus Finch, but from this new point of view doesn't see as much as an adult in that time and place should see.
Maycomb is evoked by director Robert Mulligan as a "tired old town" of dirt roads, picket fences, climbing vines, front porches held up by pillars of brick, rocking chairs, and Panama hats. Scout (Mary Badham) and her 10-year-old brother Jem (Philip Alford) live with their widowed father Atticus Finch (Gregory Peck) and their black housekeeper Calpurnia (Estelle Evans). They make friends with a new neighbor named "Dill" Harris (John Megna), who wears glasses, speaks with an expanded vocabulary, is small for his age, and is said to be inspired by Harper Lee's childhood friend Truman Capote. Atticus goes off every morning to his law office downtown, and the children play through lazy hot days.
Their imagination is much occupied by the Radley house, right down the street, which seems always dark, shaded and closed. Jem tells Dill that Mr. Radley keeps his son Boo chained to a bed in the house, and describes Boo breathlessly: "Judging from his tracks, he's about six and a half feet tall. He eats raw squirrels and all the cats he can catch. There's a long, jagged scar that runs all the way across his face. His teeth are yellow and rotten. His eyes are popped. And he drools most of the time." Of course the first detail reveals Jem has never seen Boo.
Into this peaceful calm drops a thunderbolt. Atticus is asked by the town judge to defend a black man named Tom Robinson (Brock Peters), who has been accused of raping a poor white girl named Mayella Violet Ewell (Collin Wilcox). White opinion is of course much against the black man, who is presumed guilty, and Mayelle's father Bob (James Anderson) pays an ominous call on Atticus, indirectly threatening his children. The children are also taunted at school, and get in fights; Atticus explains to them why he is defending a Negro, and warns them against using the word "nigger."
The courtroom scenes are the most celebrated in the movie; they make it perfectly clear that Tom Robinson is innocent, that no rape occurred, that Maybelle came on to Robinson, that he tried to flee, that Bob Ewell beat his own daughter, and she lied about it out of shame for feeling attracted to a black man. Atticus' summation to the jury is one of Gregory Peck's great scenes, but of course the all-white jury finds Tom Robinson guilty anyway. The verdict is greeted by an uncanny quiet: No whoops of triumph from Bob Ewell, no cries of protests by the blacks in the courtroom gallery. The whites file out quickly, but the blacks remain and stand silently in honor of Atticus as he walks out a little later. Scout and her brother sat up with the blacks throughout the trial, and now a minister tells her: "Miss Jean Louise, stand up, your father's passin'."
The problem here, for me, is that the conviction of Tom Robinson is not the point of the scene, which looks right past him to focus on the nobility of Atticus Finch. I also wonder at the general lack of emotion in the courtroom, and the movie only grows more puzzling by what happens next. Atticus is told by the sheriff that while Tom Robinson was being taken for safekeeping to nearby Abbottsville, he broke loose and tried to run away. As Atticus repeats the story: "The deputy called out to him to stop. Tom didn't stop. He shot at him to wound him and missed his aim. Killed him. The deputy says Tom just ran like a crazy man."
That Scout could believe it happened just like this is credible. That Atticus Finch, an adult liberal resident of the Deep South in 1932, has no questions about this version is incredible. In 1962 it is possible that some (white) audiences would believe that Tom Robinson was accidentally killed while trying to escape, but in 2001 such stories are met with a weary cynicism.
The construction of the following scene is highly implausible. Atticus drives out to Tom Robinson's house to break the sad news to his widow, Helen. She is played by Kim Hamilton (who is not credited, and indeed has no speaking lines in a film that finds time for dialog by two superfluous white neighbors of the Finches). On the porch are several male friends and relatives. Bob Ewell, the vile father who beat his girl into lying, lurches out of the shadows and says to one of them, "Boy, go in the house and bring out Atticus Finch." One of the men does so, Ewell spits in Atticus's face, Atticus stares him down and drives away. The black people in this scene are not treated as characters, but as props, and kept entirely in long shot. The close-ups are reserved for the white hero and villain.
It may be that in 1932 the situation was such in Alabama that this white man, who the people on that porch had seen lie to convict Tom Robinson, could walk up to them alone after they had just learned he had been killed, call one of them "boy," and not be touched. If black fear of whites was that deep in those days, then the rest of the movie exists in a dream world.
The upbeat payoff involves Ewell's cowardly attack on Scout and Jem, and the sudden appearance of the mysterious Boo Radley (Robert Duvall, in his first screen performance), to save them. Ewell is found dead with a knife under his ribs. Boo materializes inside the Finch house, is identified by Scout as her savior, and they're soon sitting side by side on the front porch swing. The sheriff decides that no good would be served by accusing Boo of the death of Ewell. That would be like "killing a mockingbird," and we know from earlier in the film that you can shoot all the bluejays you want, but not mockingbirds -- because all they do is sing to bring music to the garden. Not exactly a description of the silent Boo Radley, but we get the point.
This is a tricky note to end on, because it brings Boo Radley in literally from the wings as a distraction from the facts: An innocent black man was framed for a crime that never took place, he was convicted by a white jury in the face of overwhelming evidence, and he was shot dead in problematic circumstances. Now we are expected to feel good because the events got Boo out of the house. That Boo Radley killed Bob Ewell may be justice, but it is not parity. The sheriff says, "There's a black man dead for no reason, and now the man responsible for it is dead. Let the dead bury the dead this time." But I doubt that either Tom Robinson or Bob Ewell would want to be buried by the other.
"To Kill a Mockingbird" is, as I said, a time capsule. It expresses the liberal pieties of a more innocent time, the early 1960s, and it goes very easy on the realities of small-town Alabama in the 1930s. One of the most dramatic scenes shows a lynch mob facing Atticus, who is all by himself on the jailhouse steps the night before Tom Robinson's trial. The mob is armed and prepared to break in and hang Robinson, but Scout bursts onto the scene, recognizes a poor farmer who has been befriended by her father, and shames him (and all the other men) into leaving. Her speech is a calculated strategic exercise, masked as the innocent words of a child; one shot of her eyes shows she realizes exactly what she's doing. Could a child turn away a lynch mob at that time, in that place? Isn't it nice to think so.
Saturday, June 07, 2008
Just Plain Wrong
This is SO stupid, not to mention just wrong. If this amateur hour is SO great, try charging for it and see what happens.
The San Francisco Chronicle
June 5, 2008 Thursday
FINAL Edition
YouTube brings stardom down to earth
BYLINE: Jeff Yang
SECTION: Datebook; ASIAN POP; Pg. E1
For a generation of young artists, the existence of a never-before-seen mass audience of Asian Americans on YouTube represents an opportunity of game-changing proportions.
Christine Gambito - known to her hundreds of thousands of online fans by her YouTube handle, Happy Slip - describes her inauspicious foray into stardom like this: "All my life, my family has asked me to do these imitations of them. Whenever we all get together, after we pig out, and everyone's fat and bored, they'd say, 'Christine, get up there, do your imitation of Auntie!' So I realized that I really wanted to tell these little stories about my family, whether there was an audience for them or not. And I started shooting and editing these videos and uploading them to YouTube. Not knowing if anyone was even watching felt kind of liberating, in fact. I realized I could just do whatever I wanted."
But what she did - gently hilarious one-woman skits in which she portrays as many as a half-dozen members of her extended Filipino American family - proved to be wildly popular. So much so that, a year and a half later, her Happy Slip channel is the fifth most subscribed on YouTube.
To date, her videos have been watched more than 36 million times, with Asian Americans making up the bulk of her fan base though she does note that people from every ethnic background write her, "saying 'That's exactly my family, and I'm not even Filipino! It's like 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' - you don't have to be Greek to get it. Or fat.".
Gambito's experience is echoed by 22-year-old fellow YouTube star David Choi, whose popular videos feature him performing a mix of his original songs and captivatingly unlikely acoustic guitar arrangements of pop hits like Britney Spears
Enhanced Coverage Linking
Britney Spears -Search using:
* Biographies Plus News
* News, Most Recent 60 Days
' "Gimme More."
What really sent Choi's visibility through the roof, however, was a goofy one-off ballad he wrote celebrating his love for and obsession with YouTube itself. As it rocketed up the viewership charts, "YouTube A Love Song" got picked by the service as a front-page Featured Video. The video has since been seen nearly 1.9 million times, helping make him YouTube's 16th-most subscribed musician of all time, just ahead of, ahem, Britney.
Enhanced Coverage Linking
Britney. -Search using:
* Biographies Plus News
* News, Most Recent 60 Days
The overwhelmingly positive clamor inspired Choi to start work on an album of his own. It helps to know that he has a pre-existing consumer base of more than 40,000 subscribed fans eager to buy the end result, sight unseen.
As for Gambito, her days of late have been filled with going to network meetings and serving the role bestowed upon her by the Philippine government as an ambassador of tourism; meanwhile, Choi was hired by Warner Chappell as a staff songwriter-producer and got the chance to create a track for rising Interscope Records band Flipsyde.
But perhaps the most intriguing top YouTube personality is also one of the youngest: 17-year-old Kevin "KevJumba" Wu, who, over the course of just months, went from obscurity to YouTube's No. 1 most subscribed comedian and third most subscribed YouTuber of all time. Except that he's not, strictly speaking, a "comedian." In fact, most of his videos consist of nothing more than Kevin talking about stuff that Kevin finds interesting, weird or irritating.
And yet, they've received nearly 30 million views because Kevin just talking is, well, pretty hilarious. His deadpan vocal delivery, animated facial expressions and tendency toward unexpected digressions make for surprisingly mesmerizing video. But it's still hard to put a finger on just what makes him so appealing.
Until you realize: It's the confidence, exuding from every pore. Not cockiness - many of his rants, like "I need help with the Females," are drenched in self-deprecating humor - but casual ease. Comfort in his own skin.
In fact, Kevin is a little surprised to even be asked the question. "I don't feel alienated. I talk about being Asian, because it's who I am. And the majority of my subscribers are Asian, because they relate to what I'm talking about, and they back me up."
In short, in the media that his generation cares about most, Asian Americans aren't behind the curve - they're ahead of the game. So much so that Kevin took it in stride when Golden State Warriors point guard Baron Davis reached out to him, suggesting they do some videos together - an encounter that led to Kevin and Davis exchanging a series of challenges, eventually leading up to an epic staring contest that was won not by Kevin or Davis, but by an unexpected third entrant: actress and online video junkie Jessica Alba.
Baron Davis? Jessica Alba? And ... Kevin Wu? Why not? On the Internet, celebrities get exposed as real people Lindsay Lohan picks her nose! and real people get the exposure needed to turn them into celebrities.
And whereas Hollywood was built around epic personalities, larger than life icons, the next generation of content is rooted in authenticity: people just being people.
"You see that young Asian Americans are gravitating to YouTube, and it's clear that they represent an underserved market that's thriving online outside the confines of Hollywood and Madison Avenue," says Richard Frias, co-president of Digital Content Partners, a management firm that recently signed on to represent Gambito and Kevin in whatever future content endeavors they might choose to pursue. "There are no more hurdles. For those who have ever said they were not given a chance or that doors were closed to them for whatever reason - those days are over."
The San Francisco Chronicle
June 5, 2008 Thursday
FINAL Edition
YouTube brings stardom down to earth
BYLINE: Jeff Yang
SECTION: Datebook; ASIAN POP; Pg. E1
For a generation of young artists, the existence of a never-before-seen mass audience of Asian Americans on YouTube represents an opportunity of game-changing proportions.
Christine Gambito - known to her hundreds of thousands of online fans by her YouTube handle, Happy Slip - describes her inauspicious foray into stardom like this: "All my life, my family has asked me to do these imitations of them. Whenever we all get together, after we pig out, and everyone's fat and bored, they'd say, 'Christine, get up there, do your imitation of Auntie!' So I realized that I really wanted to tell these little stories about my family, whether there was an audience for them or not. And I started shooting and editing these videos and uploading them to YouTube. Not knowing if anyone was even watching felt kind of liberating, in fact. I realized I could just do whatever I wanted."
But what she did - gently hilarious one-woman skits in which she portrays as many as a half-dozen members of her extended Filipino American family - proved to be wildly popular. So much so that, a year and a half later, her Happy Slip channel is the fifth most subscribed on YouTube.
To date, her videos have been watched more than 36 million times, with Asian Americans making up the bulk of her fan base though she does note that people from every ethnic background write her, "saying 'That's exactly my family, and I'm not even Filipino! It's like 'My Big Fat Greek Wedding' - you don't have to be Greek to get it. Or fat.".
Gambito's experience is echoed by 22-year-old fellow YouTube star David Choi, whose popular videos feature him performing a mix of his original songs and captivatingly unlikely acoustic guitar arrangements of pop hits like Britney Spears
Enhanced Coverage Linking
Britney Spears -Search using:
* Biographies Plus News
* News, Most Recent 60 Days
' "Gimme More."
What really sent Choi's visibility through the roof, however, was a goofy one-off ballad he wrote celebrating his love for and obsession with YouTube itself. As it rocketed up the viewership charts, "YouTube A Love Song" got picked by the service as a front-page Featured Video. The video has since been seen nearly 1.9 million times, helping make him YouTube's 16th-most subscribed musician of all time, just ahead of, ahem, Britney.
Enhanced Coverage Linking
Britney. -Search using:
* Biographies Plus News
* News, Most Recent 60 Days
The overwhelmingly positive clamor inspired Choi to start work on an album of his own. It helps to know that he has a pre-existing consumer base of more than 40,000 subscribed fans eager to buy the end result, sight unseen.
As for Gambito, her days of late have been filled with going to network meetings and serving the role bestowed upon her by the Philippine government as an ambassador of tourism; meanwhile, Choi was hired by Warner Chappell as a staff songwriter-producer and got the chance to create a track for rising Interscope Records band Flipsyde.
But perhaps the most intriguing top YouTube personality is also one of the youngest: 17-year-old Kevin "KevJumba" Wu, who, over the course of just months, went from obscurity to YouTube's No. 1 most subscribed comedian and third most subscribed YouTuber of all time. Except that he's not, strictly speaking, a "comedian." In fact, most of his videos consist of nothing more than Kevin talking about stuff that Kevin finds interesting, weird or irritating.
And yet, they've received nearly 30 million views because Kevin just talking is, well, pretty hilarious. His deadpan vocal delivery, animated facial expressions and tendency toward unexpected digressions make for surprisingly mesmerizing video. But it's still hard to put a finger on just what makes him so appealing.
Until you realize: It's the confidence, exuding from every pore. Not cockiness - many of his rants, like "I need help with the Females," are drenched in self-deprecating humor - but casual ease. Comfort in his own skin.
In fact, Kevin is a little surprised to even be asked the question. "I don't feel alienated. I talk about being Asian, because it's who I am. And the majority of my subscribers are Asian, because they relate to what I'm talking about, and they back me up."
In short, in the media that his generation cares about most, Asian Americans aren't behind the curve - they're ahead of the game. So much so that Kevin took it in stride when Golden State Warriors point guard Baron Davis reached out to him, suggesting they do some videos together - an encounter that led to Kevin and Davis exchanging a series of challenges, eventually leading up to an epic staring contest that was won not by Kevin or Davis, but by an unexpected third entrant: actress and online video junkie Jessica Alba.
Baron Davis? Jessica Alba? And ... Kevin Wu? Why not? On the Internet, celebrities get exposed as real people Lindsay Lohan picks her nose! and real people get the exposure needed to turn them into celebrities.
And whereas Hollywood was built around epic personalities, larger than life icons, the next generation of content is rooted in authenticity: people just being people.
"You see that young Asian Americans are gravitating to YouTube, and it's clear that they represent an underserved market that's thriving online outside the confines of Hollywood and Madison Avenue," says Richard Frias, co-president of Digital Content Partners, a management firm that recently signed on to represent Gambito and Kevin in whatever future content endeavors they might choose to pursue. "There are no more hurdles. For those who have ever said they were not given a chance or that doors were closed to them for whatever reason - those days are over."
Monday, June 02, 2008
Handful of Memories: Cousin Joey
Moms was prescient enough when I was a kid to take me to New York, and while there we skipped over to Chi-Town to see my Auntie Frances and Uncle Joe who had a brownstone in Hyde Park near the University of Chicago, where they met. From Chi, my auntie, moms and my cousin Joey and I drove to Des Moines to see my Uncle George and Auntie Ann.
Here's one thing I remember about Auntie Frances & Unc Joe's; it was crawling with kids - 8 siblings! But I was lucky enough to share a room with my cousin Joey, a couple of years older than me, but seemingly light years ahead of me in everything. I'd lie there in the bottom bunk for what seemed like endless hours while he schooled me on the intricacies of dog fighting, the fighter plane type. I can remember that he was the first one to tell me who Eddie Rickenbacker was. Later, Uncle Joe, or "Unc" as I liked to call him, took us to see The Blue Max. Joey and I of course cracked up when George Peppard and Ursula Andress got it on.
Over the ensuing years we had a couple of big family shindigs, and I remember a couple of them the Chi-brood stayed at our joint. But for the most part, with so much space in between LA and Chi, we didn't really share much.
What's funny though is how, as I got older, I'd mention my cousins for any number of reasons, more often than not when issues of race would come up. This was more common when talking with other APAs about inter-racial marriages, because the majority of the time it's about Asian and white unions. And when I'd mention I had black relatives, they'd just smile, and say, "Oh, really?" Well, what are they supposed to say...?
Those couple of nights I spent in Joey's room are seared into my memory forever because of this:
A man had a dog named "Balls Itch." One day, Balls Itch got loose, and the man ran down the street yelling, "My Balls Itch, my Balls Itch!" When a policeman stopped him and said, "Hey Mister, my balls itch too, but if I were you I wouldn't run around advertising it!"
Joey had jokes, and I was in heaven, as he had me either in stitches or enthralled talking about the differences between bi-planes and tri-planes.
There's a great picture - somewhere - of Joey and I while on our trip to Des Moines, furiously pumping a water pump out in podunk somewhere.
He joined the army and served in Nam. He told me a few hair-raising stories when I saw him last in New York, where we shared dinner and a really solid conversation about life, politics, race... I remember turning back to look at him as he limped off and thinking that I was pretty damn lucky to be related to a guy like that.
That limp by the way is a whale of a story. I probably have a bunch of the details wrong, but Joey was driving when he saw someone whose car had broken down, so he pulled over to help. As he's standing there between the cars, talking to the driver, a drunk slams into the back of Joey's car and crushes Joey between the two cars. He drags himself to the embankment and angles his legs upward to slow the bleeding.
So of course, Joey went on to become a doctor.
Chi-town of course, like any major urban city, had its rough spots, and I remember Auntie telling me of hearing that one of his sisters was in trouble somewhere and he'd grab a knife and run out of the house.
In fact, one more memory has re-surfaced; when Joey and I were going to go out in the hood one day, I remember he handed me a small canister. I asked what it was, and he said, "just in case." Well, it was pepper spray, so of course, we being two young boys, we beat Jackass to the punch and had to find out what it was about. So we went into an alley and sprayed a bit into the air and then sniffed. Hahahahahahahahaha....
One more funny story: My Auntie Frances is afflicted with the "Yoshida Curse" - she loves to laugh. And of the eight Yoshida siblings, her and my mom are probably at the top of the heap. I remember Auntie telling of how she knew Joey was growing up because she said she picked up something to whup his ass with one day and Joey kept on dodging her and cracking jokes. She said she finally gave up and flopped in a chair because she was laughing too much!
I'm jealous of Joey's brothers and sisters, because he was so smart, so funny, and just a really solid, good guy. He was a good raconteur... I wish I could have known him better, but am truly grateful for the fond memories.
Here's one thing I remember about Auntie Frances & Unc Joe's; it was crawling with kids - 8 siblings! But I was lucky enough to share a room with my cousin Joey, a couple of years older than me, but seemingly light years ahead of me in everything. I'd lie there in the bottom bunk for what seemed like endless hours while he schooled me on the intricacies of dog fighting, the fighter plane type. I can remember that he was the first one to tell me who Eddie Rickenbacker was. Later, Uncle Joe, or "Unc" as I liked to call him, took us to see The Blue Max. Joey and I of course cracked up when George Peppard and Ursula Andress got it on.
Over the ensuing years we had a couple of big family shindigs, and I remember a couple of them the Chi-brood stayed at our joint. But for the most part, with so much space in between LA and Chi, we didn't really share much.
What's funny though is how, as I got older, I'd mention my cousins for any number of reasons, more often than not when issues of race would come up. This was more common when talking with other APAs about inter-racial marriages, because the majority of the time it's about Asian and white unions. And when I'd mention I had black relatives, they'd just smile, and say, "Oh, really?" Well, what are they supposed to say...?
Those couple of nights I spent in Joey's room are seared into my memory forever because of this:
A man had a dog named "Balls Itch." One day, Balls Itch got loose, and the man ran down the street yelling, "My Balls Itch, my Balls Itch!" When a policeman stopped him and said, "Hey Mister, my balls itch too, but if I were you I wouldn't run around advertising it!"
Joey had jokes, and I was in heaven, as he had me either in stitches or enthralled talking about the differences between bi-planes and tri-planes.
There's a great picture - somewhere - of Joey and I while on our trip to Des Moines, furiously pumping a water pump out in podunk somewhere.
He joined the army and served in Nam. He told me a few hair-raising stories when I saw him last in New York, where we shared dinner and a really solid conversation about life, politics, race... I remember turning back to look at him as he limped off and thinking that I was pretty damn lucky to be related to a guy like that.
That limp by the way is a whale of a story. I probably have a bunch of the details wrong, but Joey was driving when he saw someone whose car had broken down, so he pulled over to help. As he's standing there between the cars, talking to the driver, a drunk slams into the back of Joey's car and crushes Joey between the two cars. He drags himself to the embankment and angles his legs upward to slow the bleeding.
So of course, Joey went on to become a doctor.
Chi-town of course, like any major urban city, had its rough spots, and I remember Auntie telling me of hearing that one of his sisters was in trouble somewhere and he'd grab a knife and run out of the house.
In fact, one more memory has re-surfaced; when Joey and I were going to go out in the hood one day, I remember he handed me a small canister. I asked what it was, and he said, "just in case." Well, it was pepper spray, so of course, we being two young boys, we beat Jackass to the punch and had to find out what it was about. So we went into an alley and sprayed a bit into the air and then sniffed. Hahahahahahahahaha....
One more funny story: My Auntie Frances is afflicted with the "Yoshida Curse" - she loves to laugh. And of the eight Yoshida siblings, her and my mom are probably at the top of the heap. I remember Auntie telling of how she knew Joey was growing up because she said she picked up something to whup his ass with one day and Joey kept on dodging her and cracking jokes. She said she finally gave up and flopped in a chair because she was laughing too much!
I'm jealous of Joey's brothers and sisters, because he was so smart, so funny, and just a really solid, good guy. He was a good raconteur... I wish I could have known him better, but am truly grateful for the fond memories.
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