A pair of AAPI musicians harmonize on “Wonderful World”

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Musical interlude: I saw on Facebook that Kinna Grannis had posted a video of herself with David Choi, sittin’ on a couch and humming and strumming the pop standard, “What a Wonderful World.” It’s a very sweet version, and the two harmonize beautifully together.

I blogged about Grannis a few months ago when I stumbled across her version of “Sukiyaki.” She’s prolific — between her own songs and interesting covers, she posts a new video every Monday on her YouTube channel. She’s also working the ‘Net to market herself, with a presence on Facebook, MySpace, Twitter… the whole nine yards.

Choi likewise is all over the online social networks, but considers himself more a songwriter and producer than a performer.

Grannis and Choi performed in February at Kollaboration, an annual celebration of Asian American Pacific Islander arts and performance. Wish we coulda been there, but we were stuck in Denver.

Dang, it sure would be cool to live in LA, where musicians like these two, and other artists and actors perform regularly. Asian American musicians sometimes get out to Colorado, but we often hear about it too late (being old fogeys and all).

It’s a good thing we have the Internet to give us access to their talents.

“The Japanese example” is not suicide

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Woodblock illustration of hara kiri, or the ritual suicide practiced in feudal Japan.The furor over bonuses given by AIG to employees after taking more than $170 billion in bailout money from the U.S. government is made all the more furious because of the sheer breathtaking scale of the cash flow. AIG paid 73 staffers more than $1 million, with one getting $6.4 and seven more getting $4.

Those amounts seem so out of kilter with the state of the economy, and the fact that just months ago, the giant company was about to crash without a hand up from the government — from us — that it’s not surprising that citizens as well as lawmakers are screaming bloody murder.

But one lawmaker is screaming bloody suicide.

The Washington Post (among other media) reported that Sen. Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) wanted AIG execs to commit hara kiri, or seppuku — the traditional Japanese ritual suicide often depicted as an honorable course of action from samurai times.

Sen. Charles Grassley suggested in an Iowa City radio interview on Monday that AIG executives should take a Japanese approach toward accepting responsibility by resigning or killing themselves.

“Obviously, maybe they ought to be removed,” the Iowa Republican said. “But I would suggest the first thing that would make me feel a little bit better toward them if they’d follow the Japanese example and come before the American people and take that deep bow and say, I’m sorry, and then either do one of two things: resign or go commit suicide.”

Grassley spokesman Casey Mills said the senator wasn’t calling for AIG executives to kill themselves, but said those who accept tax dollars and spend them on travel and bonuses do so irresponsibly.

When I first heard about this, my jaw clenched but I let it pass. Seppuku was a historical reality for centuries, after all, and it’s depicted in lots of Japanese pop culture, including movies and books. It’s been documented as a reflection of one of Japan’s driving cultural values, shame.
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Okole Maluna brings Hawai’i to Colorado

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Kalua Pork and Lau Lau dinners, with a bowl of saimin on the side to share, at Okole Maluna, a great little Hawai

We drove an hour north from our house last night, to dine in Hawai’i.

Well, not exactly Hawai’i, but an outpost of Hawai’i, in the most unlikely place: On a quiet Main Street corner in Windsor, a typical small, old-fashioned mid-western town on the plains of northern Colorado. Definitely not a tropical paradise, although inside the clean modern restaurant, you might as well be along Oahu’s North Shore, or somewhere in Kauai.

But Okole Maluna (Bottoms Up) isn’t in the islands. The intimate restaurant is in Windsor.

Erin and I love Hawai’ian food and seek it out in the few places where it’s available in Colorado. Most often, we find ourselves at L&L Hawai’ian Barbecue, a Hawai’i-based fast-food chain with a franchise in the eastern Denver suburb of Aurora. We think it’s a bit pricey for what you get, as well as being entirely too generous with salt on everything they serve (maybe it’s needed in hot humid Hawai’i, but our palates don’t require so much sodium).

We’ve also tried 8 Island Hawai’ian BBQ in Boulder and were disappointed both by the food and the service — especially when the staff made a bog deal of charging us 75 cents extra for a little dollop when we changed our mind on the kind of sauce we wanted on a dish. Come on, that’s like charging for ketchup and mustard!

And more recently, we had a very fine meal for my mom’s birthday at Iwayama Sushi and Da Big Kahuna Bistro, which is as known for its sushi as for its Island vittles.

Iwayama’s fun, and closer. But I’d make the hour drive any day for the Kalua pork at Okole Maluna.

Its deep smoky flavor is tantalizing, and it’s not overly salty (hooray). It’s served with two mounds of rice (for the full portion), a side of creamy Hawai’ian macaroni salad, a little bowl of Lomi Lomi salmon, which is like pico de gallo with bits of salmon mixed in, and a little serving of haupia, a conconut custard.

In fact, overall, Okole Maluna is the best place in the state we’ve found for Hawai’ian food.
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The Rocky Mountain News’ closure gives me pause

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The final front page of the Rocky Mountain News, Feb. 27, 2009We all live our lives way too fast. We rush to work, work at a fast clip, rush home and barely get a chance to chill out before, as a wimpy ’70s singer-songwriter once crooned, “we get up and do it again.”

So the death of the Rocky Mountain News, like the death of a close friend or family member, has given me pause. It’s making me reflect a bit on my own mortality: as a news junkie, journalist, writer, Internet geek and human being.

First of all, I feel terrible about the Rocky’s closing. I feel worse — a lot worse — than I thought I’d feel. It’s a business decision. But it affects hundreds of people, many of whom I know. In fact, I’ve known some of the staff at the Rocky for almost 30 years. In between jobs, I’ve written more freelance stories for the Rocky than for The Denver Post, the newspaper that’s left standing in Denver.

Now I work for MediaNews Group Interactive, the online operation of the Denver Post’s parent company. People — especially bloggers who cover the media — like to throw barbs at MediaNews and its owner, Denver-based Dean Singleton because he buys up newspapers and usually trims their operations to make them more profitable. “More profitable” of course is a relative term these days. Maybe we should settle for “less unprofitable” in these terrible economic times.
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Farewell to the Rocky Mountain News

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I know I haven’t been writing much on the blog — I have a bunch of things stacked up, and I’m always babbling in small bits on Twitter and Facebook.

But I needed to embed this video from the Rocky Mountain News, which is shutting down today. The Rocky’s staff has been brave and unfliching in its coverage of the closing, which was first announced in December as a possibility if no one buys it. No one bought it. I have many friends there, and have written a lot of freelance articles for the Rocky, when I wasn’t working for the competition, The Denver Post, or in my current position, working for the Post’s owners, MediaNews Group.

The Rocky put this video on its home page today. It’s a well-done piece of work (even though at 21 minutes it’s incredibly long for an online news video). Although today’s edition is rife with self-focused emotion (I guess understandingly), this tribute is worth viewing. I doubt the local TV stations could do better:


Final Edition from Matthew Roberts on Vimeo.