[ via #infoanarchy
] This is just too amusing: here’s a page that displays the images most
recently posted to LiveJournal. Some pictures may not be safe for work. 10% pouty goth pictures, ga-rohn-teed!
I hit the site every now and again while working on the Blogware
manuals last night. For some reason, this picture spoke to me more than
all the others:
Clearly, cow udders are poor tools for determining the location of the nearest IKEA.
Someone’s registered whitneymcnally.com and built a site in the hopes of pulling a “Santorum” [not safe for work!] on Ms. McNally, author of the Gay or Asian? article mentioned in the previous entry.
“If it bends, it’s funny. If it breaks, it’s not funny.”
— Woody Allen, Crimes and Misdemeanors
Before I get to the actual subject matter, let me begin with an aside.
Last night at Kickass Karaoke, we spiced up our friend Erik’s number. As he went onstage to perform The Vapors’ 80’s hit Turning Japanese, a half-dozen Asians (including me) formed a line behind him and stared him down in mock disapproval as he sang. It was a schtick that we played up for laughs, which we got in healthy amounts, and it was all in good fun.
We got even more laughs at the end of the number when I took the mic and said “Support your local Asian! We help you with your math homework and we keep the cell phone industry afloat!”
That bent. Quite well, I daresay. Keep the “Bent or broke?” question in mind as you read this.
Last week, while sifting through my “suspected to be junk” email folder, I found anonymous email pointing my attention to the now-infamous Details magazine piece from their April 2004 issue: Gay or Asian?, written by one Whitney McNally. Here’s a scan of the page on which it appeared:
I’ve included the full text of the piece below, since the scan isn’t at the highest quality setting, and for the benefit of search engines:
GAY OR ASIAN?
One cruises for chicken; the other takes it General Tso-style. Whether you’re into shrimp balls or shaved balls, entering the dragon requires imperial tastes. So choke up on your chopsticks, and make sure your labels are showing. Study hard, Grasshopper: A sharp eye will always take home the plumpest eel.
1. DIOR SUNGLASSES: Subs as headband and amplifies inscrutable affect.
2. RYAN SEACREST HAIR: Shellacked spikes, just like that crazy cool Americaaaaaaaan
3. DELICATE FEATURES: Refreshed by a cup of hot tea or a hot night of teabagging.
4. DOLCE & GABBANA SUEDE JACKET: Keeps the last samurai warm and buttoned tight on the battlefield.
5. WHITE T-SHIRT: V-neck nicely showcases sashimi-smooth chest. What other men visit salons to get, the Asian gene pool provides for free.
6. LADYBOY FINGERS: Soft and long. Perfect for both waxing on and wacing off, plucking the koto, or gripping the Kendo stick.
7. LOUIS VUITTON BAG: Don’t be duped by ghetto knockoffs. Every queen deserves the real deal.
8. EVISU JEANS: $400. A bonsai ass requires delicate tending.
9. METALLIC SNEAKERS: When the Pink Lady takes the stage, nothing should be lost in translation.
My first thought was “Someone got paid to write this? I’ve seen better paper after wiping my ass.”
(Even on a bad day and having drunk more than our fair share of beer, my buddy George and I were capable of far, far better back during our reign at Golden Words, the humour paper at Crazy Go Nuts University.)
Naturally, the piece has generated quite a bit of ire amongst various groups and associations of Asians and gays. In a Village Voice article, writer David Ng has suggested next month’s issue should feature a piece titled Racist Bitch or Whitney McNally?. Others have voiced their displeasure, including:
These groups are taking offense largely because it’s yet another incident of the demasculinization of Asian men in popular culture (there’s been much agonizing over this).
In the movies, the white hero and the black hero get at least one make-out scene with the girl, but never the Asian guy. He fills a certain small set of roles, and that’s about it. Just check any made-in-Hollywood movie where Jackie, Jet or Yun-Fat is the hero. As best as I can recall, the Asian guy didn’t visibly get the girl in an American movie until Dragon.
I’ll admit that Gedde Watanabe’s “Long Duk Dong” from Sixteen Candles — a movie that pre-dates Dragon by nearly a decade — did end up picking Joan Cusack, but he’s part of that unsexy Asian guy stereotype, a tradition carried on today by that bozo, William Hung, who’s not helping matters.
I am doing my part to change this image, but I’m just one man!
Tak Toyoshima, artist behind the comic Secret Asian Man, has come up with this response:
Others are responding a little more directly. There’s a protest scheduled for Friday, April 16th at 12:00 noon outside the offices of Details (7 West 34th Street — at 5th Avenue); details (hah!) are available here.
Not everyone in the Asian-American media is up in arms. Here’s a snippet from the New York Observer:
“Probably tens of thousands of Asian people bought Details because this came out,” said Erik Nakamura, editor of Giant Robot magazine. The item itself, Mr. Nakamura said, scarcely seems worth the trouble. “The Gay-or-Something joke is getting old anyway,” he noted.
Like Shaquille ONeal spouting ching-chong gibberish at Yao Ming, “theyre just guilty of making a crummy joke.”
I’ll be in Boston this weekend, partly to see The Redhead, but also to attend BloggerCon 2.0
(taking place at Harvard this Saturday, April 17th) to meet with other
bloggers, be the Tucows goodwill ambassador along with Boss Ross and perform the national anthem on accordion for the opening keynote (I’ll do my best to throw in O Canada too).
Other Canadian registrants with whom I am acquainted include:
In the comments to an earlier entry, Tom wrote:
realized existed. Care to explain the differences for us non-accordian
guys (I play guitar)?
I’d love to, but I’m only familiar with the piano accordion — the one with
which you play on a piano keyboard with your right hand, and chord
buttons on the left. The other types, of which there are several, are a mystery to me (thus far).
Here are few sites that have some useful information on the different types of accordions:
Accordions Worldwide has a page that explains the differences between a few types of Accordions.
The companion site for PBS’ film, Accordion Dreams, explains what chromatic, diatonic and piano accordions are.
[ via Ranting and Roaring ] The conclusion I draw from this finding is that ancient people “brown bagged” their lunches to save money too.
And a special Easter greeting to all the padres out there, like AKMA;
the story behind this holiday is truly what their work is all about. I
raise a Reese’s peanut butter egg on a flaming sword to all of you!
Since it’s fitting with the holiday, let’s look again at one of the most unintentionally funny juxtaposition of signs:
Perhaps Atkins died for them.
The deVilla family tradition is Easter Mass followed by brunch at the Boulevard Club, where my sister is a member. (I like to kid her every now and again by reminding her that The Official Preppy Handbook was a satire, not refernce material for living.)
“Look, Muffy, a book for us.” Required reading back in the ’80’s.
This one was particularly special, as it marked another occasion of Dad
being out and about (he’s getting more adept with his prosthetic leg and
walker) and the first Easter brunch with my nephew Nicholas James
deVilla-Choi, good-natured Zen master (like his uncle) and newest
member of the family.
The dress code for Easter brunch at the “Bullie” is not unlike the
codes of behaviour for online communities: unwritten and subtly
enforced. The tried-and-true combination for men is still blazer, shirt
and dress khakis (bonus points if the blazer has gold buttons and the
shirt is white with blue oxford stripes). I opted for slightly dressier
this year, a look I call “the hip salaryman“: black dress pants, dark blazer, deep blue shirt and a blue-and-gold paisley tie given to me by Boss Ross.
Ross, noting my love for ties, gave me a set of his old and
no-longer-worn neckwear, figuring I’d pick the ones I liked and leave
the rest with Goodwill. Many of them are quite workable, but one stands
out: the one with images of Buckwheat from The Little Rascals. Probably
bought during Eddie “Buh-wheat sez ‘O-tay!'” Murphy’s reign on Saturday
Night Live, it’s probably impolitic for anyone who isn’t black to wear
it these days. I’ve only seen Ross in a tie once, so it’s hard to
imagine him in one, never mind this one.
Before Macaulay Culkin, there was Buckwheat.
If you think you can pull off wearing the Buckwheat tie without committing a faux pas (perhaps you’re a black stand-up comic), drop me a line explaining why you’re qualified and I’ll send it to you.
Aside number two:
Looking up a decent link for “salaryman” in The Urban Dictionary led me to its only entry for the term:
gray suit, blank expression, an inability to think for himself.
not to be confused with office lady, effectively the polar opposite
of the salaryman, characterized by inability to be paid any more than
half the amount of a salaryman and by copious pinch marks on backside.
Meee-ow! I think that’s the undercurrent of bitterness that runs through a number of people who go to Japan and teach English.
There’s always someone who breaks the dress code, and this year was no
exception. At the table just behind ours sat a woman, probably in her
late forties, who wore a gauzy sun bonnet almost large enough to
function as a tent or parachute (she kept it on for the duration), a
white jacket that showed enough cleavage for anyone near her to perform
a breast cancer check and a white mini-skirt that would’ve been more
suitable at a night club. I have a very strong hunch that she was at
last night’s playoff game. flashing her breasts at the Toronto Maple
Leafs as a reward for their victory.
Music for brunch was provided by a lounge musician who played the lead
part on grand piano and used an electronic keyboard with auto-rhythm
backup to handle the backing chords, bassline and drums. He played
music in a muzak-ish vein, and at one point I noted his “hey, how ya
doin'” piano bar treatment of the Moody Blues’ Nights in White Satin. What really caught my attention was a familir ditty that I slowly realized was a bossa nova treatment of The Police’s Every Breath You Take.
“You know you’re getting old,” I said to my sister, “when the music of your youth gets played this way.”
The club is very good about accomodating kids at Easter. There’s a
special buffet just for kids (I taught my two-year-old nephew Aidan the
word “buffet” while carrying him in, and he said “BUFF-FAY! BUFF-FAY!
BUFF-FAY!” non-stop for the next half hour) complete with pizza rolls,
chicken fingers and french fries. Someone in an Easter Bunny costume
wanders from table to table giving gift bags to kids. Someone else came
with a giant rack of uninflated balloons and a large canister of
compressed air and made elaborate balloon animals and toys for all the
kids. In a sunny room just off to the side of the dining room, there’s
a supervised arts and crafts area where kids can make Easter baskets
and bunny hats.
Aidan, who last year had no fear of the Easter Bunny, covered his eyes with his forearm until the giant rodent went away.
Later, while I was helping Aidan make a bunny hat in the arts and
crafts room, the lounge pianist — on break — wandered in to look at
what the kids were up to. As he approached Aidan and me, Aidan took my
hand and put it over his eyes until he went away.
“Nothing wrong with a healthy aversion to lounge acts,” I told Aidan afterwards, giving him a pat on the head.
a multi-part Flash “expose” on the evil Catholic Church. It’s kind of
like Jack Chick’s anti-Catholic rants, but hipper and funnier, and reminds me of why I like the sound of tinfoil hats crinkling so much.
Last but not least, The Redhead
sent my parents an Easter bouquet, which arrived at their house
yesterday. If life were like a videogame, you’d see the text “+100”
rising from Mom and Dad. Redhead, as they put it in the mangled English
of Japanese videogames, “A WINNER IS YOU!”
