Asian American group Far East Movement tops the charts, “Like a G6” is everywhere

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This has been an exciting year for Asian American music fans. Taking off above a bubbling community of AAPI singer-songwriters and individual performers, we’ve seen Bruno Mars, who’s of Filipino and Puerto Rican descent (and born and raised in Hawai’i) hit the top of the charts with “Just the Way You Are,” and Far East Movement, the first-ever all Asian American group (Korean, Chinese, Filipino and Japanese), bust out of Los Angeles’ Koreatown and also top the charts with its catchy electro-hip hop dance single “Like a G6.”

The song was certified Double-Platinum this week by the Recording Industry Association of America, which means it’s sold and impressive two million copies. That’s a pretty cool accomplishment for a group of pals from K-town. Their big break was being included on the soundtrack of director Justin Lin’s “Fast and Furious: Tokyo Drift,” and their music’s shown up on various TV shows. Earlier this week I even caught “Like a G6” blasting in the background during a nightclub scene of “CSI: Miami.”

The group’s third album, “Free Wired,” is still on its upward curve, and the second single, the ballad “Rocketeer,” is going strong, featuring Denver native Ryan Tedder as a guest vocalist.

For Colorado fans who may have miss FM when they played in Denver, the group will be playing at CU-Boulder in the spring.

(Cross-posted from my gilasakawa.posterous.com pop culture blog)

Short documentary video about Hawai’i’s Japanese American internment camp, forgotten over the decades

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Most history books mention only the mainland internment camps, relocation centers and Justice Department camps if they mention the internment of Japanese Americans during World War II at all. It’s often stated that people of Japanese descent in Hawai’i weren’t rounded up and imprisoned — or that only a few were arrested, and then sent to mainland camps — because there are so many Japanese in Hawai’i that if they did that, the territory’s economy would shut down (Hawai’i didn’t become a state until 1959).

But there was an internment camp right on Oahu, not far from the capital, Honolulu, on rugged land that’s now owned by Monsanto. They didn’t lock up all Japanese Americans like they did on the West Coast. And they didn’t imprison entire families. They focused on community leaders, but still held thousands in Honouliuli, the prison camp.

The Japanese Community Center of Hawai’i has captured some of this long-forgotten history in this short documentary. I hope they do more. Next time we get to Hawai’i, we’ll return to the JCCH to see if they have an exhibit or other material about the topic. Brian Niiya, the Director of Program & Development at the JCCH told us about the early states of their research several years ago when we first visited the JCCH, so I’m glad to see they got this video done.

Even though Japanese Americans in Hawai’i are anything but the invisible minority that we are on the mainland, their history needs to be highlighted and preserved just as it needs to be documented here.

(From HolyKaw on Alltop.com)

(Cross-posted on gilasakawa.posterous.com)

“Green Hornet” trailer shows Kato’s role as much more than just a butt-kicking sidekick & valet

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First of all, I can now see that there’s some comedic logic to casting Seth Rogan as the Green Hornet (and his alter-ego Britt Reid), and that he may be able to pull off a superhero vibe after all.

Second, I can hardly wait to see the movie to enjoy Jay Chou as Kato, and the fact that he’s really the superhero of the story, building the “Black Beauty” limo and kicking serious butt with his martial arts skills. Oh yeah, he’s the valet/chauffeur, all right… but so much more.

It’ll be interesting to see if the movie explores Kato’s ethnicity.
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Asian American — not just Asian — restaurant Xiao Ye gets dinged in a NYT review & the owner swings back

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I came across this story on Reappropriate, a great blog about race and identity: New York restaurant owner Eddie Huang responds to a lukewarm NYT review of his Lower East Side joint Xiao Ye on his very unapologetic and in-your-face Asian AMERICAN blog, “Fresh off the Boat” and follows up by posting his mother’s rather FoB-y note to him saying essentially, see? You deserve your bad review for not listening to me! Then CNN catches wind of the flap and interviews him.

This is interesting to me on a couple of levels.
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Next on visualizAsian: Meet Lisa Lee & Harry Mok, publisher & editor of Hyphen magazine

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Hyphen magazine: Asian America UnabridgedWe’ve scheduled one more visualizAsian call before the end of the year, with publisher Lisa Lee and editor-in-chief Harry Mok of Hyphen magazine!

If you’re not familiar with Hyphen, it’s the 7-and-a-half-year-old magazine that offers, as it says on the cover, “Asian America Unabridged.” It’s not only a fine, high-quality publication featuring strong writing and editing and graphics, it’s one of the few national print media outlets that covers Asian American issues and pop culture, and it follows in the footsteps of many now-gone magazines, starting with the late, great A magazine and including such titles as TransPacific and East-West. Other mags currently being produced include KoreAm and Giant Robot, whose editor, Eric Nakamura, we spoke to earlier this year.

Our conversation with Lisa and Harry about Hyphen will be at 7 pm PT (10 pm ET) on Wednesday, December 8. Register here if you’re new to visualizAsian (if you’ve registered before you’ll receive an email with the phone and webcast information; you don’t need to register again).

Like many magazines for Asian Americans, Hyphen is struggling financially, but the quality of its stories is never in question.

We’ll speak with Lee and Mok about the successes and challenges of creating Hyphen. They both have a lot to say about why they’re committed to Hyphen.

Here are their bios:
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