http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cYpfXNov2kw

The Discovery channel has been airing this commercial (actually, a little bit longer version) to the annoyance of me and my mother (and hopefully other Asians?)  Notice trigger words such as “the Japanese” and um, “it’s up to US to stop THEM.”

Let’s get something straight.  Whaling is bad.  No doubt about it.  But when you have an older, white male angrily spouting US vs. THEM rhetoric,  you have yourself a veiled jab at the Japanese, which could arguably stem from some leftover World War II resentment. Not to mention the name of the documentary, Whale Wars, along with special highlights of the program which include throwing mysterious, grenade-like objects onto the decks of whaling ships.

Also, my mom’s initial reaction: “Oh, like Americans have never hunted anything illegal before?”

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCyuEQKNyvA

A cute video with sleek design and animation.

Have you recently gotten way-too-long e-mails from me lately? That’s because work is dead but I still need to stay! Noticed I’ve been making more friends on Facebook? They’re all co-workers, equally as bored and eager to kill time as I am!

In other words, blah blah blah, I have been working more than a month straight with nary a day off and with each day spanning anywhere from the standard 8 hours to an awesome 12! (That’s like, half a day!) So I have been going a little nuts, listening to hours and hours of music on my iPod, playing Tetris like a maniac, buying a Chocobo-themed Nintendo DS cover for my non-existent DS, and of course, blogging.

Tonight I will once again be too tired to do anything productive with my time, eat sushi with too-much-wasabi (a ritual I started following the demise of Tumbles), watch Tyra do her thing on ANTM, mourn the loss of Project Runway and probably end up watching music videos on YouTube of the finest band to sing about New England to a redonk degree, Vampire Weekend.

What’s happening with you?

We shrugged the behavior off, spent the night watching TV and snacking as usual.

The next day I come over R’s place to see our old hamster cage resurrected, inhabited by a bunch of socks, fruit and a cup filled with water with a sock wrapped around it. Upon closer examination, R showed me the cause of his cat’s interest from the night before: a baby mouse was lying still between the socks. R guessed that he fell from inside the ceiling (his room is in a basement.)

R rescued the baby mouse, who I named Tumbles, from the jaws of his cat the night before and was desperately trying to nurse it back to health. My first reaction upon seeing Tumbles was that he was dead, but some prodding showed that he was simply exhausted. We assumed that Tumbles’ mother had been the victim of R’s cat the previous week. The little fellow probably came out of his hiding in search for food and his mother, where he was helpless against the jaws of a 20 pound cat. R tirelessly filled the cup with hot water every two hours, wrapping it around with a sock so that Tumbles – which was frigid to the touch the morning after he rescued it – could have some form of comfort.

Tumbles took right away to the warm cup and slept the day away, awaking here and there to nibble as some oyster crackers and blueberries. His head was disproportionately bigger than his body, which added to the cuteness factor. His bulgy eyes were in constant slits as Tumbles was in a state of perpetual sleepiness.

Tumbles didn’t make it until morning, R e-mailed me the next day. And then my iPod chose to play this song:

We buried Tumbles that night with tears and sadness and the hopeful thought that maybe, just maybe Tumbles passed into the night thinking that instead of the sock-covered cup, he knew that the warm being he slept next to was his mother.

So. Did you know? Comedy Central has decided they like black people! If you’ve been watching the channel lately, you might have encountered commercial after commercial promoting their new show, Chocolate News, which premiered last night after a weekend chock full of specials featuring African American comedians and re-runs of the Chappelle Show. What can I say about the premiere other than that it was really into playing the White-People-Don’t-Get-Us card? Maybe that the show’s jokes were dated (R. Kelly? The “N” word? Really?), or that despite being called a “lolz news” show with a continuously SHOUTING!! host, there really wasn’t anything of substance being said behind the comedy, and instead enforced modern caricatures of African Americans (omg hip hop!!)? Or how about encouraging “us vs. them” mentality by grouping all African Americans together and claiming that this is the only show they need to watch, because who are you kidding, you all like fried chicken! And NBA! And Grand Theft Auto (stealing cars!!!!) Why else would those commercials air during breaks in the show, at the exclusion of most other programming on Comedy Central?

Way to show the love, Comedy Central. Maybe you can make the “Dumpling News” by having a samurai host speak a few words quietly, while a ninja causes mischief in the background with Hello Kitty and you could maybe have an interview Kim Jong Il conducted by a kung fu master and joke about nuclear weapons. Wait! Too topical! Joke about kim chee instead. Wait! Too few white people know what that is. We need to make sure that they watch the show so we can tell them how dumb they are – better make that joke about sushi, and then chuckle (quietly, so as not to disturb the Zen master running the program) about how white people are always getting us to do their homework because we are so naturally good at math! All Asians will watch this because (aside from all being the same) you will lure them in with commercials for things that have “soy” in their name (two products I can think of already – one ends in Joy and the other in Sauce). Throw a few gongs in there, some dragon ladies and the show will practically write itself.

Just trying to spread that love!

Also:
- packing for a week long trip in Maine
- found out that the woman who writes my birth control prescriptions may root for incredibly-anti-choice Sarah Palin, which boggles my mind on many different levels
- rooting for Yuriko Koike for the next Japanese Prime Minister

The weather is getting colder, faster.

In an attempt to get back into the swing of working on my own blog (most of the time I spend editing and toiling over R’s blog, which has a new design up by yours truly), I’m going to write about what I’m into at the moment every Friday.

Design: I am seriously digging the design for logo of the new Prinny game R wrote about today. (see above) As I was editing his post, I could not get over how frickin’ adorable it is!  So wish I had that kind of creative freedom at work.

Music: I am about a year late into this, which is ironic considering I was in Japan when the album came out, but I have been listening to Rip Slyme’s Fun Fair album at work non-stop on my iPod for three days straight now!  Seriously it is the best thing to happen to my ears since…I can’t even remember!  The video for Speed King has been taken down from You Tube for some reason (seriously: from a design perspective that video was pure eye candy.  Also: DJ is friggin’ hot) so here is the video that should receive an award for most blatantly being in cahoots with Sony VAIO laptops.  It’s basically just a giant commercial. (Also: What is Maicching?)

Movies: Taking a break from my usual excessive Food Network watching, R and I watched Men in Black the other night.  It remains one of my favorite movies, along with Jaws and Jurassic Park.  Seriously!  Let me tell you why:
- pre-I, Robot-Will Smith
- Tommy Lee Jones
- witty dialog
- still-believeable-kinda CG effects
- comic book cred
- pre-Law & Order: CI Vincent D’Onofrio
- (my favorite) D’Onofrio’s character’s wife’s (yeah that was a mouthful) crazy bastardization of how to say “sugar water” (more like “shuhur wahdur.”) I quote this phrase more than you might realize (usually when watching Law & Order: CI)

TV: Wednesday night I watched the premiere of America’s Next Top Model (rooting for the transgendered Isis,  baffled by the behavior of Korean-Japanese-American Sheena for simultaneously saying things like “race doesn’t matter!” but then saying things like “you ain’t ready for this yellow fever!”), followed by Jurassic Fight Club because I need to get my weekly dose of Dinosaur George, and then I fell asleep (yes a show about dinosaurs fighting can be THAT boring), missed an episode of Project Runway, and thus had to avoid on the following day reading on how awesome the episode was on my regular blog reads. X(

Japan: I miss you.

Misc. Love:
- The Cho Show
- Staying awake past 10pm
- V8 Acai Berry concoction thingie–although I’m pretty sure a purple carrot doesn’t exist (or does it?)
- Wii Fit

Misc. Hate:
- Heroes
- Missing Project Runway
- Waking up at 2am and, after doing a series of scared jigs, seeing a freaking beetle fall out of my shirt

Well my friends, that concludes my first week of stuff that’s happenin’.  What have you got going on?

A studio executive said: “Cher is Nolan’s first choice to play Catwoman. He wants to her to portray her like a vamp in her twilight years.

“The new Catwoman will be the absolute opposite of Michelle Pfeiffer and Halle Berry’s purring creations.”

Do we smell change, my friends?

Source: Cher ‘to play Catwoman’ in next Batman film (Telegraph)
Via Shakesville

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uoFamDZkb-0

Above is a clip of Dave Chapelle’s stand-up talking about Asians (contains some swearing, probably NSFW.)

In it, he points out that Asians “have beef with other Asians,” and uses the example of mistaking a Korean person for a Chinese person. I have to say that this is an unfortunate truth in many cases, especially in the States. Many Asians are really proud of their heritage and are offended by being mistaken for another race.

From my experience it is because of this pride that causes Asians to butt heads with other Asians–comparing percentage level (i.e., a full-Japanese person has more authority over a half-Japanese person), acting like an authority on their race among a group of non-Asians, seeing who better plays into their racial stereotypes (wearing Hello Kitty, Fruits.) So it is no wonder that non-Asians will get a lot of angry reactions like Chapelle points out in the clip.

The thing is, you can’t expect non-Asian people to be able to tell the difference between a Thai face and a Chinese one. Even fellow Asians will get each other confused–my Japanese mom has been mistaken for Chinese and Vietnamese on several occasions (most likely because as an Okinawan she doesn’t look typically Japanese.)

I think there is nothing wrong with being proud of your heritage, but living in America means we get an interesting opportunity to come together and educate non-Asians on our own respective cultures–not use them to single each other out and see who is more pure or a better representative of stereotypes.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dLliH_XiQqA

OK, so we all know that Disney, or the pathetic shell of what used to be Disney, had to go back to the drawing board in order to come up with a less-offensive version of 2009’s animated The Princess and The Frog.

Watch the trailer and you’ll see an adorable Princess (albeit with straightened hair) avoiding kissing a way-too-eager frog. The animation is smooth, fluid and there is Randy Newman singing in the background.

Only the camera zooms out and you see this mess:

Really?

Let’s take a stroll down memory lane and think about all the sidekick animals that tagged along other Disney Princesses:

Snow White: Forest critters. All teeth intact.

Sleeping Beauty: Forest critters. All teeth intact.

Cinderella: Mice with clothes. All pairs of teeth intact.

Belle: Possessed houseware. All teeth intact save for Chip, who had a missing front tooth.

Princess Jasmine: Tiger. All teeth intact.

Pocahontas: Hummingbird and racoon. All teeth intact.

Mulan: Cricket and a dragon. All teeth intact.

So Disney’s first ever Black Princess is accompanied by um, a toothless Godfairy? Sidekick? What the hell is this thing? Princess Jasmine gets a badass tiger, and Princess Tiana gets a reject from Thumbelina?

Nothing is ever going to be portrayed in a light that we can all agree upon, but this is just a slap in the face. (Not to mention that this is supposed to be New Orleans with a focus on Jazz, despite um, Randy Newman. So like, there was nothing in all of Jazz history that Disney found suitable accompaniment to a movie that takes its inspiration from the Jazz Age?)

I might still go and see the movie, if only for the fact that it’s in 2D animation. But judging from the trailer and what I’ve read up on various articles, I feel a major disappointment coming on from a studio who could be using this chance to redeem themselves for their extended past of misrepresenting minorities, plus the sheer lack of quality of the stuff they’ve been churning out lately (I’m sorry to say this but: I honest to God hated Ratatouille.)