East West Players developing “Krunk Fu Battle Battle,” Asian American hip-hop musical

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MAY 2011 UPDATE: After a year and a half of hard work, revisions and improvements, East West Players has opened a finished production of “Krunk Fu Battle Battle” which runs through June 26, 2011. If you’re in LA or gonna be in LA, don’t miss this musical — we wish we could fly from Denver to see it! Here’s a video trailer:

Now, back to the original post:

It’s not often that we get the chance to see the embryonic stage of a theatrical project, and see how a play is developed. So we were fortunate that our visit to LA to attend the BANANA conference of Asian American bloggers coincided with a free “workshop” performance of a new project being developed by East West Players.

“Krunk Fu Battle Battle,” is a hip-hop musical, which features hip-hop music and b-boy dancing, woven around familiar but tried-and-true plots of a boy who falls in love with a girl from the other side, and has a mentor who helps him overcome his obstacles. Think “Romeo and Juliet” meets “West Side Story” meets “Karate Kid.”

East West Players produced a reading of the play, which is in very early stages, by rehearsing a partial script, several songs and dance numbers, and performing a 35-minute excerpt for anyone who showed up, then asked audience members for their opinions and reactions. The preview was hosted by the Japanese American National Museum (the EW Players’ home, the David Henry Hwang Theatre around the block in Little Tokyo, was busy with performances of its latest play, “Po Boy Tango“). Continue reading →

Shaq’s in a cool Comcast commercial w/ Asian American kid and dad

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Here’s why I like this new Comcast commercial: It’s part of the new trend of showing Asian Americans in ads who are just, well, American, and not so much Asian. They don’t speak with accents and they’re not doing stereotypical stuff like martial arts and tech geekery. Instead, this kid and his dad are watching TV. The Target commercial I included in a post back in October has a mom who’s hip-hop dancing and playing tether ball with her kid. And of course, there’s Kylie, the adorable Asian American girl who’s pushing Windows 7 like nobody’s business (see her latest commercial below).

Also, I like this commercial because Shaquille O’Neal is in it. He’s been a spokesman for Comcast this year along with mopey-faced actor (and Republican speechwriter/commentator) Ben Stein in a series of silly commercials. But this one has Shaq alone. To me, this is significant for two reasons:

First, it’s all too rare to see Asians and African Americans together in a light-hearted repartee, in a warm relationship, in mainstream American culture. I’m really glad to see this, even though it’s in an artificial environment of a TV commercial.

Second, Shaq made racist comments towards Yao Ming, then a rising rookie in the NBA, in a radio interview back in 2002, and I wrote about it in a column: Continue reading →

“The Goods” DVD hit the shelves this week w/ racist scene intact

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"The Goods" is now available on DVD, with an offensive racial scene intact."Before the Paramount comedy “The Goods: Live hard, Sell Hard” was released in August, the Asian American blogosphere was abuzz over the extended online trailer for the movie, which showed a disturbing scene with Ken Jeong being beaten up by fellow car salesmen just for being Asian, when star Jeremy Piven gets them all worked up over the memory of Pearl Harbor. The bloggers, including Angry Asian Man and 8Asians as well as Nikkei View, covered the issue enough that it led to protests and meetings between AAPI groups with Paramount studio execs.

Those meetings led to a public apology from Adam Goodman, President and CEO of Paramount.

The timing was terrible, because the trailer was airing just before the anniversary of the murder of Vincent Chin, who had been beaten to death in 1982 by laid-off auto workers who blamed Japanese cars for losing their jobs. The racist scene was edited out of the trailer. However, the scene, which includes Jeong getting beaten up and then Piven joking about covering up the hate crime, remained in the theatrical release because it was too late to pull from the movie.

The leaders of AAPI organizations who met with Paramount also believed that the offensive scene would be edited like the studio was able to do with the trailer (the revised preview takes out the most obnoxious elements, including the use of the word “Jap,” even though it keeps Jeong’s beating intact).

But the DVD was released this week and is available in stores nationwide with the offensive scene still in the movie. The studio claims the production of the DVD was too far along to change the scene. Continue reading →

Enhanced video of San Jose Police arrest shows university student was crying, asking for his glasses — not resisting officers

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San Jose Police shoulder patchThe San Jose Mercury News, which broke the story several weeks ago of a video that shows San Jose police may have used unnecessary force when officers arrested a San Jose State University student, is now under a darkening cloud of questions about the batons and Taser used to subdue Phuong Ho.

The Mercury News today published a follow-up article with an enhanced version of the cell-phone video that had been shot by a roommate with clearer sound, which shows Ho compliant, crying and repeatedly asking for his glasses, which had been knocked off by an officer.

The Mercury News article says:

All four officers on the scene were placed on administrative leave last month on the day the grainy video, provided to the Mercury News by Ho’s lawyer, first was posted on the newspaper’s Web site. The department has completed an investigation into the incident and turned over its results to the Santa Clara County District Attorney’s Office, which is deciding whether to file criminal charges against the officers.

Charges that the office brought against Ho in September, for brandishing a weapon at another roommate and resisting arrest, are pending.

Meanwhile on Wednesday, Mayor Chuck Reed called on a City Council committee to step up outside review of the department’s use of force.

The mayor’s recommendation comes after continuing controversy over the issue. The Mercury News reported Nov. 1 that a study of more than 200 criminal prosecutions of resisting arrest last year showed that the police use of force in such instances often developed from minor infractions, including jaywalking and missing bike head lamps. Most of those cases involve people of color, the newspaper review found.

I’ll let the legal system and City Council review run its course, but I agree with the Mercury News’ editorials, which called for, and now applaud the review of the cops’ use of force.

Just listening to the audio and reading the transcripts gave me a queasy feeling in my gut, not just because Ho is Asian, but also because for most of my life, I was virtually blind without my glasses, and I know the feeling of desperation and panic that I can hear clearly in Ho’s voice when he keeps asking for his glasses.

You can read the full transcript of the enhanced video. Here’s an excerpt: Continue reading →

Martha Stewart needs etiquette lessons for asking an Asian American, “Where do you come from?”

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Martha Stewart needs some etiquette lessons in how to speak to Asian Americans.A reader named Robin, who is Japanese American and born in Iowa and bakes apple pies, sent me this email:

“I was wincing yesterday when Martha Stewart asked an asian american woman in the audience (Sumi somethingorother, who baked an apple pie for Martha’s contest) “Where are you from?” and the woman said with no accent “Oh I’m from here…New York City.”. Martha continued with the (stereo)typical line of questioning something like ‘where are you really from because if you are from Asia it’s unusual to make an apple pie’. I don’t have it verbatim but it was painful. Just another “What ARE you?” type of conversation. I really don’t think Martha is a bigot but as she is the standard bearer of suburban white women I think it was totally disappointing for her to go down that path as if it were totally fine to question someone with Asian features about where they really come from.”

She sent a link to Martha Stewart’s page for the pie show, but there isn’t a video of the entire program, at least not yet. It looks like they only upload excerpts instead of entire shows, but I’ll keep an eye out for YouTube postings of this segment.

UPDATED: Today, Robin commented below on this blog post with a clarification:

“The video is up, check at the 2:00 minute mark:

http://www.marthastewart.com/article/meet-the-pie-bakers

“Verbatim it’s :
‘Where do you come from?’ (answer Here NYC)
‘Oh you do, oh, okay, because if you came from Asia this would not a typical pie, right?’ (answer ‘right…right…’ you can kind of hear the ‘what the heck!?’ in her tone)

“So it’s not as blatant as it struck me the first time but still the question and that type of follow up would be seen as really bizarre if she asked it of someone with a German name.”

It may not be as obnoxious as it could have been (I agree with Robin that Martha’s probably not a racist), but it still betrayed Stewart’s expectation that the audience member with an Asian face was a foreigner. She even sounded disappointed when the woman said she’s from New York, because Stewart wanted so badly to make her point about Asians not baking pies.
Continue reading →