Category Archives: pop culture

Tebow-mania gets Denver Filipinos attention in Philippines press

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The Broncos' Tim Tebow (Photo by Jeffrey Beall)The glow of Tebow-mania will fade as the Broncos head into the off-season, but the quarterback’s remarkable run with the team put the spotlight light on Denver’s Filipino community before the season’s end.

Tebow has a deep connection to the Philippines: he was born there to missionary parents, and he funds healthcare organizations there with his Tebow Foundation. NBC Sports ran a blog post the day of the New England game about how no one in his hometown of Makati City had heard of the NFL star. But the Philippine Daily Inquirer, a national daily paper, ran a story the same morning, “Colorado Fil-Ams enthralled by Tebow time” that noted Tebow’s roots and tracked down members of Denver’s thriving Filipino community to get their take on the Tebow phenom.

Two members of the Filipino American Community of Colorado were among the Broncos fans quoted in the story:

‘Kuya Tim’s a source of pride for Colorado Filipinos,’ says Fran Campbell, past president of the Filipino American Community of Colorado now headed by her father, Silvino Simsiman from Cabugao, Ilocos Sur.

Fran said Broncos fans come up and talk to her and other Fil-Am leaders about Tebow and his Philippine connection. ‘We have the opportunity to share our culture in a way that we’ve not been able to before,’ she exulted.

‘His (Tebow’s) ability to inspire not only his team, but the communities surrounding the Broncos has given us all something to strive for,’ said Bernadette Niblo, spokeswoman for the FACC. ‘His faith is strong. As Filipinos in Colorado, we connect with that and are honored to consider him one of our own.’

Maybe Tebow will visit the FACC, which has its headquarters in Edgewater, at its annual Philippines Festival this June and cement a local link to his Filipino roots…

(This is a cross-post from HuffingtonPost Denver.)

Lowe’s pulls ads from “All American Muslim” series, sparks debate on both sides, brings out the haters

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TLC's All-American Muslim

NOTE: UPDATE BELOW, ON DEC. 16

Lowe’s this week backed out as an advertiser on the TLC network’s superior reality TV show, “All-American Muslim,” which follows the lives of five Muslim American families in Dearborn, Michigan, a suburb of Detroit that’s home to the largest Mulsim population in the U.S.

I visited Dearborn when I attended the 2011 convention in Detroit of the Asian American Journalists Association and was impressed with the palpable sense of community among the Muslims. We spent time at the Arab American National Museum, and felt the same sense of cultural pride alongside patriotism for accomplishments as Americans that I feel whenever I visit the Japanese American National Museum in LA.

Muslims are misunderstood by a lot of Americans who confuse anyone who’s Muslim with being a terrorist or the enemy we’ve been fighting in parts of the Middle East. That specter of hate also reminds me of Japanese Americans, and the blanket condemnation JAs faced after the bombing of Pearl Harbor, even though many of them were loyal to the United States.

I understand that Lowe’s was concerned because the show became what they called a “lightning rod” for “strong political and societal views” — the words they used on their Facebook page to defend their decision — in the emotional debate over Muslims in America.

Here’s the company’s Facebook post about pulling the ads:
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AWESOME: Cool video mashup of “One Love” & Ue O Muite Arukou” (“Sukiyaki” to some) by Tohoku musicians

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I find this magically powerful. It’s a sweet rendition of one of my all-time favorite songs (and one I was just playing last night on the guitar). And it’s also an expression of hope, community and rebirth from musicians in the Tohoku region of NE Japan, set amidst the cleaned-up but still devastated area hammered by the March 11 earthquake and tsunami.

Why I love the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival

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Colorado Okinawa Kenjinkai at CDBF 2011It struck me towards the end of the first day of the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival that the clash of cultures I had just witnessed perfectly encapsulates why I’ve been a volunteer for this event since it was started in 2001.

(Full disclosure: Last year, my partner Erin Yoshimura took on the role as executive director of the festival, after volunteering from the beginning. I help out with media, the website and emceeing on the main stage.)

As the first day of the two-day event came to a close, the main stage lineup included a sampling of performers from the festival’s very popular Cultural Unity stage, a showcase of Colorado’s diverse hip-hop community.

The hip-hop sampler was fantastic – and showed why their stage is always so jammed that you can barely see through the crowds surrounding the tent, especially when the dancers are spinning on the ground.

The elevated main stage offered an eye-popping view for the audience, most of whom hadn’t gone by the Cultural Unity area before. The performance was a 20-minute introduction to the artistic principles and driving aesthetics of hip-hop culture, starting with naked rhythm from a conga drum, then showing the evolution of the rhythm into the DJ’s scratching with turntables and vinyl records.

Then the B-boys and B-girls assembled around the stage in a half-circle took turns strutting their stuff to the rhythmic riffing, spinning, flipping and contorting their bodies into unbelievably elastic poses and leaving the audience agog.

The set emphasized the multicultural appeal of hip-hop and pointed out how the performers on stage with him ran the ethnic gamut: Asian, Caucasian, African American, Latino.

Following the Cultural Unity sampler, which drew a huge crowd to the stage, most of the audience stayed for the Colorado Okinawa Kenjinkai, a group of women from Okinawa who preserve the traditional dances of Okinawa, a culture that’s distinct from Japan.
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Watch the 2011 Colorado Dragon Boat Festival TV spot

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Many thanks to FOX 31 weekend anchor Deborah Takahara and reporter Chris Jose, as well as the FOX 31 crew and Dragonboat Race Association of Colorado (DRACO) members who manned the dragon boat for this shoot on a hot summer day!

My wife Erin is the executive director for the Colorado Dragon Boat Festival. We volunteered for the first seven years of the event starting in 2001, and she was hired last year. I’ll be the lead emcee at the Main Performing Arts Stage, and I’ll be Tweeting and Facebooking like crazy throughout the weekend. If you’re in Denver, come see how cool and diverse the Asian and Asian American communities are in this region! Sat.-Sun. July 30-31, Sloan’s Lake Park,