It has been about a year since David Carradine died in Thailand by some kind of autoerotic asphyxiation (I cannot remember the date without looking it up). When I was coming up with the best and worst moments for Asian Americans in 2009, I completely forgot to include it (under best moments of course). While his legacy of yellowface is still alive and well in Hollywood today, the guy has been dead for a year and is something of a distant memory unless you pop in your Kill Bill DVD. Meanwhile, Bruce Lee, who he stole the lead role in Kung Fu from, has been dead for over 30 years and is still talked about frequently to this day even beyond the martial arts community. Who shouldve gotten that role now, huh?

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This has been discussed on the old board, but it is worth repeating. Almost anytime you see an AM onscreen, it will fall into one of these categories.

1) Geeks or Gamers-selfexplanatory

2) Gooks-Viet Cong soldiers to be slaughtered by the thousands by one white soldier

3) Gurus-like Mr Miyagi or Chow Yun Fat in Dragonball Evolution

4) Gangsters-Triad, Yakuza or street gang members to be slaughtered by the thousands by one white cop

5) Gung Fu-Jackass Chan and Jet Monk Li

6) Gays

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Just follow these simple rules.

1) No Facebook- I don't use Facebook because I don't know how to, but even if I did, I still wouldn't sign up. Facecrook was created by a sheenie Asiaphile for Asiaphiles. It also allows for easier e-stalking as princessamy mentioned on her blog entry and employers to dig up information on you, as if there aren't plenty of other websites which serve that purpose already.

2) No Movies- I've already discussed my hatred of Hollywood movies and the Joos who produce them. Movies are also the worst place to go on a date and buying or renting them on DVD is a waste of money.

3) No Online Gaming- People do not get laid on the Playstation Network, X-Box Live or in the World of Warcraft. There is nothing wrong with playing video games, but if you want to play with other people, either go to a friend's house, have a friend come over or go to an arcade, although you'll probably encounter other lowlives there.

4) No Football- Nobody gives a shit about AmeriKKKan football outside the US. Even if you are interested in playing a sport, participate in something more worthwhile. I hope people in China follow this rule so the NFL can flop in their attempted expansion over there.

5) No Anime- Self explanatory

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I found this survey asking questions about representation of Asians in comic books which will be used for a research paper.

https://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?formkey=dENUbmJCSC0xYnNGNUpPWmZWWFRmdHc6MA

However, the questions do not differentiate how Asian women and Asian men are represented in comics. Look at how many Asian heroines there are in Marvel and DC

Batgirl

Dr Light

Katana

Grace

Armor

Jolt

Surge

Jubilee

Push

Sway

Turbo

Karma

Tangent Powergirl

Meanwhile, why are there no Asian superheroes? What can the hell can the Atom do, shrink to the size of a lima bean? The sad thing is that many Asian-American artists have worked for Marvel and DC and they could've used their stroke to create some Asian superheroes but never did. Without artists, there would be no comics and those guys could've told Marvel or DC that they want to introduce an AM hero or they won't draw the comics and work for an independent publisher. The big 2 publishers will end up owning the characters anyway, so what have they got to lose? I answered the survey and am interested in reading the final research paper for it.

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http://www.bu.edu/phpbin/news-cms/news/?dept=692&id=52827

I kind of sit in a seat with a similar view as the article writer as I'm a nurse in a psychiatric unit in a large-ish community hospital where the asian population of the surrounding area is 20~%. I had the feeling this was gonna be some boring Kinsey-science where disadvantaged populations show "stark revelations of our hidden being" which doesn't work if you're not from that population.

I feel a good portion of the article deserves eyerolls when she talks about the "surprise" of finding the widespread substance abuse and risky activities by people who are not white men.

no individual is born with good coping skills; they're taught or more often than not learned by trial and error, so it should come as NO surprise that any population that faces discrimination, barriers, and identity propaganda will be overcome by those stresses and the pressures of being asian and additionally a woman. cue the ineffective coping- any port in a storm statistics. Shocking!!! white women have white privilege don't forget

refreshing to see some positive science for AMs that they are not crawling with diseases as seen by

“Asian and Pacific Islander women also have broader interracial dating patterns than Asian American men. This might explain why these women are exposed to higher rates of STDs.”

watch out for those carriers! prince charming is asymptomatic

I find it weird that a person can have a 8 years of post graduate schooling and not be able to identify what pushes people to drugs and risk-relationships. If the word "culture" comes out of her mouth I'd probably grind a layer off my teeth.

theres a damned if you do, damned if you don't resultant when you talk about cultural impact.

Having no life, grinding to get through school with top marks seems the way to go so you'll be 25 and the world is your oyster, you need to outperform everyone else or you'll get blocked by an institutional barrier when your competition is more "charismatic"

are there bodies(and psyches) of AA young adults laying at the wayside because they couldn't get through the gauntlet before reaching the freedom of the light at the end of the tunnel? tons of them; does the formula work/not work because of the formula or the climate in which it is used? its a good formula but it doesn't work nearly as well when you've got people looking at you with stereotypes and preconcieved judgments.

I didn't do what my parents asked me, I goofed off I think my high senior grade average was like 55% and did nothing until I was 30. My parents booted me out at 18 because I didn't "follow the footsteps" which is rather ironic because I did! just not when they asked it of me.(should have listened) but its fine I'll live to be 80 and I'm none the worse for wear although my parents were rather inflexible and they pretty much disowned me after I got my girlfriend.

parents are supposed to be patient jeez I didn't ride my bike the first time

anyways the article is what it is, nothing special

Tags: std | white privilege | asian culture | mental health

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Am I the only one here who thinks 2009 was a horrible year for Asians? This year we've had

-Dr Ken showing his 1" wang in The Hangover

-Dr Ken making fun of Vincent Chin in The Goods: Live Hard Sell Hard

-Yao Ming breaks his foot again in the middle of a playoff series against the Lakers

-Jon Gosselin gets a divorce and then becomes Asian all of a sudden when his ethnicity was never previously mentioned

-Yellowface in Dragonball Evolution

-The Yankees winning the World Series

-Balloon Boy and his family has the entire nation worrying about them before revealing their hoax

-Miley Cyrus and Toby Keith do the chinkeye and do not apologize for it

-Other movies like Crank 2 and Sorority Row continue to drag our image through the dirt

-Jiverly Wong kills a bunch of innocent people in a shooting spree in Binghamton

-Euna Lee and Laura Ling are supposed to serve hard labor in N Korea, but instead, get treated like royalty, released and then go running into the arms of white men

There were a smattering of good moments including

-Quest Crew winning America's Best Dance Crew Season 3

-Team Japan defeats Team Korea to win the World Baseball Classic in a game that was more exciting than anything that happened in the 2009 World Series

-Massive Monkees get 3rd place in America's Best Dance Crew Season 4

-Ryoto Machida defeats Rashad Evans to win the UFC Light Heavyweight title

-Megan Fox says she wants to date Rain

-3 SOWs are murdered by white boyfriends/stalker instead of just 1 each year from 2001-2008

Unfortunately, 2010 looks to be an even worse year for Asians, so we might not even have any good moments to look forward to.

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What do you do when you make the mistake? I think we cover alot of ground here showcasing and educating how to react to others' aggressions, how to prepare yourselves, your family, community to the threats that surround them. I have had a setback in my otherwise steady progress in self actualization and self understanding.

I wronged someone, and not in some slip of the tongue, shoulder shrugging way where a simple "my bad" will suffice but in a manner where if the roles were reversed I would be baying for blood and be first in line to demand justice for the wronged person.

My first instinct is to run away from the event in all forms; my carefully constructed reality is no more. I am no longer the dashing do-gooder , an emboldened advocate of decency and fairness but rather someone who passes the time discussing characteristics of a person to break the milieu of their boring days. Which is something radio disc jockeys do and most unbecoming for an aspiring parental role model.

If you're interested in details I am limited as to what I can say because it transpired at work. I'm not afraid of consequences but confidentiality is the law and until I get this person's permission to say more[hopefully I can grovel tomorrow] I'll have to leave it out

It wasn't about race, but everything listed in the charter of rights & freedoms amounts to the same thing so when my co-workers cant decide if a woman is a man or a woman and I'm an active participant in their ignorance I might as well be calling people niggers.

There is good news out of this! There was an acquaintance of the person being discussed within earshot of our proto-hominid hooting and she didn't waste anytime in shutting us down. Here's where I have to gush in awe about the supermight of this perfect person, she is the person I thought I was until today. My personal resume has at least a dozen tallies identical to this although this is certainly the first one where I was the Bad Guy.

What is my resume worth after this? let me just crumple it up and toss it somewhere and try and understand what went wrong. The stars in the sky have to align just right for a situation like that to occur; there are so many variables that would prevent me from receiving that life altering shoulder tap. Thank God for underage drinking, liquid courage may just have helped save me from a life of continued comfort and blindness. I think I could write a whole blog just on how easily girls wow me.

She is just the better person than I. I'll spare you all the spectrum of excuses and minimizations that raced through my brain before I came to that conclusion. /end martyred clichees

Anyone else out there with problems or advice?

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In the live action King of Fighters movie based on the video game series coming out next year, a very white Sean Faris plays a Japanese Kyo Kusanagi, once again robbing an Asian actor of a leading role. This has got to be like the 5th case of yellowface in Hollywood in the past 2 years and along with Dragonball Evolution, one of the most blatant. If they didn't want an Asian actor in the lead role, they could've made one of the white characters a main character and Kyo a supporting character while still portrayed by an Asian guy instead of this crap. Kyo's father is named Saisyu Kusanagi. His mother is named Shizuka Kusanagi. Can anybody tell me how is it believable he is now a white guy? The King of Fighters video games do have some good Asian male representation, but that is all thrown out the window now with this movie. I have a couple of the games on PS2 and a Game Boy Advance version, but I am going to be boycotting these games and moving onto other fighting games. I don't even know why this movie is being made for an American audience anyway because other than FOB teenagers, I do not know anybody else who plays these games. And the director of this movie: Gordon Chan.

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Many AA blogs are congratulating Hideous Matsui on being the first Japanese player to win World Series MVP honors, but personally, I think this guy is a disgrace. The Yankees represent greed, arrogance and racism. Matsui is just a big a mercenary as his other teammates. His Japanese team the Yomiyuri Giants made an exclusive deal that he would only play for the Yankees. He never played for Team Japan in the 2 WBCs, but I guess he missed out on winning a WBC Championship and a World Series in the same year(although you could say the same thing about the American players in the Yankees). That said, I hope they give him a 3 yr/$36 million deal and his body breaks down in the middle of it. If he signs with another team, he will be exposed as a guy who cannot hit outside Yankee Stadium and be out of baseball after 2010. I also think he is on steroids as well. Is that a guy Asians want to look up to? They should be supporting real Japanese players like Ichiro, Daisuke Matsuzaka, Kenji Johjima, Kaz Matsui, Kosuke Fukudome, Tadahito Iguchi, etc. It is only fitting that the most famous/popular Asian athlete in the US right now is an ugly man with a huge collection of porn and was probably a virgin until he got married last year.

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1) Watchmen

2) Dragonball Evolution

3) Crank: High Voltage

4) The Hangover

5) The Goods: Live Hard, Sell Hard

6) Sorority Row

7) The People I've Slept With

Money Saved by Not Watching These Movies: $70

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1) Rambo- once again, Sylvester Stallone singlehandedly wipes out an entire Asian country's army

2) Never Back Down- Asians engaging in backyard fighting are beaten by whites

3) Drillbit Taylor-

4) 21- based on a real life story about Asian MIT math wizards who use their knowledge of probability to beat casinos at blackjack, but of course here, they are all replaced by whites

5) Shutter- a remake of an Thai movie, now set in Tokyo which means there must be an unmotivated interracial romance

6) Forbidden Kingdom- Jackass Chan and Jet Monk Li at their finest

7) Speed Racer- might as well have been called White Racer

8) Hancock

9) Mummy: Tomb of the Dragon Emperor

10) Tropic Thunder

11) College- white frat boy attempts to hook up with an Asian female student

12) Bangkok Dangerous

13) Nick and Norah's Infinite Playlist- the only Asian male in this movie is a gay guy

14) Gran Torino

Money Saved by not watching these films: $140

This was definitely the worst year for Asian portrayals in Hollywood movies out of all the ones I have done so far.

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1) Code Name: The Cleaner

2) Norbit

3) Harry Potter V: Order of the Phoenix

4) I Now Pronounce You Chuck and Larry

5) Rush Hour 3- Jackass Chan and Chris Tucker battle Chinese gangsters in Paris. The same fucking plot as the previous 2 Rush Hour movies.

6) Balls of Fury

7) Across the Universe

8) Good Luck Chuck

Money Saved by not watching these movies: $80

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                                                                                                                October 31, 2009

 I joined facebook a few years ago because I found the discussions in some of the groups interesting , however I quickly shied away from the social networking site because I go so many unsolicited requests to “friend” complete strangers who thought I was “interesting”.  The fact that complete strangers were following my posts,  reading my personal profiles and then contacting me trying to find out more about me was a bit disturbing to me, so I stopped logging in to it.  After several discussions with some friends who are addicted to facebook and use the applications daily, I realized that facebook is actually darker than its stalker potential, it implicitly encourages racism and stereotypes.  For the moment, I will forget the allegation that Facebook’s founder is an Asiaphile, and I will even refrain from discussing the many Asiaphile groups on facebook.  Instead I will discuss some popular applications found on facebook, some examples of the racism found in these applications and how many don’t even know they are being racist.

A few weeks ago, one facebook addicted friend added the application “Status Shuffle” where random popular and funny quotes are put on the user’s status.  One day my friend found the status quote “The weather is nice…..for a F-ing Eskimo”.  She was embarrassed and insulted as were all her friends.  Not because the status used a profanity, but because my friend is Inuit.  She said Eskimo was derogatory to her, and to use it in the context that the Inuit would be comfortable in cold weather as if not warm blooded humans made it worse.  Likely the status maker did not even think twice about it.

Another friend loves using quizzes.  For fun she tried “what kind of ethnicity are you more attracted to?”  (which, frankly sounded like it would be full of stereotypes anyways) The questions seemed pretty random, and so she answered them and got “Asian” as an answer.  The comment in the answer was  

“Chicken Chow Yummy, you just can't resist those cute little eyes and adorable personalities, can you? =)”

All the answers including African American, Caucasian and Latino had stereotypical comments in the responses, although not using physical descriptors such as “little eyes”.

There are many other applications out there that echo negative stereotypes and racism, and the users and creators do not seem to even realize what they are saying is even stereotypical or racist.

So what? You may be asking, if you don’t like facebook, just don’t use it.  But facebook is a huge phenomenon, everybody and, literally their grandmother with access to the internet has an account.

Applications in facebook can be made by anybody.  They are user created and independent from facebook, but if users click on the warning pop up declaring it is an independent application and “allows” the app to access their information, they can access it through facebook.  I am not technologically savvy, so I am not sure the mechanics behind it beyond this.  But I digress.  My point about facebook applications are, in a way they are representative of the general population on facebook, as they are popular and shared by many people.   I believe that you can get a good idea of North American society without going into the field, but by taking a long good look at the content on facebook.  The picture contrasts to the popular sentiment of “Racism doesn’t exist anymore”.

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1) Lucky Number Slevin

2) Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift

3) Red Doors

4) Miami Vice

5) Snakes on a Plane

6) The Departed*

7) Grandma's Boy- there is a random scene in which an Asian male pops up and starts doing pelvic thrusts, which really has nothing to do with anything

8) East Broadway/Falling for Grace

Money Saved by not watching these movies: $80

*Academy Award Winner for Best Picture

This marks the second year in a row that the Academy Award Winner for Best Picture has anti-Asian themes, which tells you what Hollywood considers to be a good picture. Also on the list are 2 white knight movies that were written, directed and starring SOWs.

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1) Elektra

2) Hitch

3) Crash*

4) Wedding Crashers- the two main characters boast about attending wedding parties with Asian families and bedding the women there

5) Deuce Bigalow: European Gigolo

6) The Pacifier- neighbors who live next door are an evil N Korean couple

Money Saved by not Watching These Movies: $60

*Academy Award Winner for Best Picture

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1) My Baby's Daddy

2) The Girl Next Door

3) Kill Bill Vol 2

4) Dodgeball: A True Underdog Story

5) Team America: World Police

6) Sideways

7) Mean Girls- a couple of Vietnamese girls makes a passing mention about sleeping with a white guy

Money Saved by not Watching These Movies: $70

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1) Shanghai Knights

2) 2 Fast 2 Furious

3) Charlotte Sometimes

4) Dumb and Dumberer: When Harry Met Lloyd

5) Charlie's Angels: Full Throttle

6) Lara Croft Tomb Raider: Cradle of Life- there are no Asian gangsters in the video game series, yet somehow Lara Croft is fighting them onscreen here.

7) Lost in Translation

8) Kill Bill Vol 1- everything from this movie was stolen from Asian cinema.

9) The Last Samurai

10) Stuck on You- unmotivated interracial romance

Money Saved by Not Watching These Movies: $100

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1) Kung Pow! Enter the Fist-entire film is really an old Chinese kung fu movie spliced with new racist Hollywood footage

2) Men in Black II-unmotivated interracial romance

3) Austin Powers in Goldmember

4) The Transporter

5) Die Another Day-James Bond battles evil North Koreans

6) The Quiet American

Money Saved by not Watching These Movies: $60

There might not have been that many movies with negative Asian portrayals in 2002, but I am sure as we go along, there will be more and more each year. One point in compiling these lists is to show how there have been zero progress in positive/balanced Asian media portrayals during the last few years.

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From now until the end of the year, I will be making lists of the worst movies in terms of Asian portrayals for each year from 2002-2009. I will only be listing movies that were released in US theatres. More details on most of these movies can be found in the MM Wiki. The lists will not be in any particular order since I have never seen 99% of these movies. They will be listed based one or more the following:

-Asians as perpetual foreigners

-Asians as villains

-Asians as subordinates to whites

-Asian women in interracial relationships/Absence of Asian men as romantic partners

-Yellowface/Plagiarism of Asian cinema, stories, culture, etc.

-Slurs and racist jokes against Asians

-Overall lack of leading roles for Asian actors in Hollywood

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This is a scenario that happens as often as we have to pay our electricity bills. A man working long hours at a Chinese restaurant to send money back to his family in China is making what he thinks is a routine delivery in a dangerous neighborhood. The address he is given is actually a decoy location and he is ambushed by 2-5 people who are armed with anything from a knife to a baseball bat to a gun, then is murdered. Sometimes he is killed for the tiny amount of money in his pockets, sometimes he is killed for the food itself and other times, he is killed for no reason at all. These murders take place in inner-city neighboorhoods, with New York City leading the pack, and the perpetrators are almost always black thugs. Chinese restaurants in these areas should be informed about these cases, if they haven't experienced it already, and their deliverymen should secretly arm themselves with guns for defense, just like how armored truck drivers carry guns when delivering money to banks because there have been robberies/murders in that line of work as well. It would have to be secret because these people do not have a license to carry a gun and customers who aren't looking to rob anybody would be frightened if they knew a guy with a gun was going to show up at their door. A strapped deliveryman is a prepared deliveryman and it could mean the difference between life and death.

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