Gil Asakawa's Nikkei View | baby boom
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September 10, 2006

GodzillaI finally saw Peter Jackson's 2005 remake of "King Kong," and I'm afraid I was underwhelmed. It was corny, and overly long and not engaging, even when the excitement factor revved up for the final third of the film. It reminded me that although Hollywood has been making monster movies since the original 1933 "King Kong," the monster with the most staying power and screen incarnations -- over two dozen movies -- didn't come out of California, but from Tokyo.
September 6, 2006

Oswald being shot, photo by Bob JacksonI'm watching "JFK: Breaking the News," a documentary on WNET, one of the New York area's PBS stations, about the media coverage of the November, 1963 assassination of president John F. Kennedy. It's fascinating because in analyzing the way both print and broadcast journalists scrambled in Dallas after the shooting, the program shows how it was a bellwether event in the history of media. It marked the passing of the "breaking news" mantle from newspapers to television.
August 18, 2006

200px-Bill_Clinton.jpgI'm proud to be a Baby Boomer, because of all the historical implications my generation has had. Not the usual stuff about living through the Vietnam war and rock and roll and Kennedy and civil rights and the space race (all of which is true), but more the fact that simply having such a large cohort of people growing up at the same time forced society and industry and business and culture to change to accommodate us all. Bill Clinton, who's the quintessential boomer -- the first avowed rock and roller (OK, so maybe playing Fleetwood Mac for campaign music isn't hardcore, and he didn't "inhale," but he's still more like us, than, say, the first George Bush or Ronald Reagan) who moved into the White House -- turns 60 this week, and the BBC had this interview with the guy.
July 24, 2006

MakoMakoto Iwamatsu died on Friday at the age of 72, of esophageal cancer. It's a huge loss to Asian Americans. If you know him at all, you probably know him better as simply Mako, the Japanese actor, who played countless character roles and supporting parts in television shows and movies starting in the early 1960s.
December 20, 2005

It's been 25 years since John Lennon was murdered in front of his New York City apartment building by a crazed fan. Over time, the media have covered the anniversary with diminishing interest, but this year resonates because of its quarter-century milestone. I've been listening to a pretty good two-CD compilation, "Working Class Hero: The Definitive Lennon," released by Capitol Records (and compiled, with "definitive" decisiveness, by widow Yoko Ono), and appreciating Lennon's solo work more than I have in years.
June 27, 2005

I saw an A&E program the other day about the Brady Bunch, and how over the decades the story of the archetypal modern family has become an American cultural icon. It was fun to relive the series. I liked watching “The Brady Bunch" when I was a kid, and like everyone my age and younger (since the show has constantly been in syndication since it originally went off the air in the mid-‘70s). But I also have been watching the first-season episodes of “The Partridge Family" on DVD, and having a ball.
May 15, 2005

When Barbie was “born" into the Mattel family of toys in 1959, she wasn’t just a doll. She was the epicenter of a retail revolution. When parents bought their baby-boomer girls a Barbie, they were agreeing to an unspoken but implicit contract with the toy store to return time and again and buy stuff – lots more stuff – for Barbie. That’s how Mattel envisioned her. A kid wouldn’t be happy with just the Barbie and some clothes like any earlier doll would offer. Nope, Mattel created an entire fantasy world, with price tags attached to every damned thing in that world, from friends like Midge and sister Skipper, and of course, the sexless boyfriend Ken (whose irony-drenched advertising slogan was “Ken…. He’s a Doll!") to Barbie houses, Barbie Sports cars, carrying cases, closets, apartments with Barbie-sized furniture, picnic sets and even a tiny Barbie Doll for Barbie to own!
April 13, 2005

I just heard one of the most gawdawful songs of the rock and roll era -- or any era, for that matter -- on CNN. I was working away, and the TV outside my office door started playing Joe Cocker's 1973 Top 40 hit, "You Are So Beautiful." The sound stopped me cold, and I got all shakey and felt like vomiting.