I don't have any regrets going here. I realize that life is about constant change that we all learn from eventually. Cliche: I wouldn't change a thing. But sometimes, there are things that I wish didn't change. Before I left home, I had people. I knew people. I was two degrees away from the people I wanted to know or had to know. I had a real-life facebook going on at home. I remember desperately not wanting to leave, but also wanting a change of scenery. At the time, it seemed I could afford this type of break because I had a reputation. I'm not saying that for ego but I've always been aware of my reputation because I'm the one who created it. I felt like my name would still be tossed around if I was gone (and it was) but I knew it wouldn't be the same as it used to be (and it wasn't). After spending four years away, it becomes increasingly apparent to me that I've lost a lot of people.
It is the connections, that real human connection, that I miss the most. And I've become cognizant of this fact as my senior year dwindles down to its final days. These past four years have not been wasted. I've managed to know enough people to say that I had a fulfilling college life. I don't know if I have a reputation. You can't place a kid in a school where all the students were at the top of their class and worry about a reputation. No one's really got a reputation when everyone has their minds on themselves. But after graduation, I have to come back home and deal with the fact that I have no people. I have friends I call every now and then but it won't be of the magnitude it was when I was in high school. I also have to deal with the fact that the industry I will be working in is dependent on the people you got. I've been running around like a chicken with his head cut off trying to find people. I'm iming people, posting on facebook walls, approaching strangers, all in an effort to reach as many people here in an environment where it is supposed easy considering there's 30,000 people that go here.
But I'm really just trying to reconcile the fact that once I go back home, I'm powerless.
Wednesday, October 31, 2007
Tuesday, October 30, 2007
Santa Barbara
I was over at UC Santa Barbara over the weekend, a school known for it's crazy party ethic. While we were walking, a friend told me about this conversation he overheard from some UCSB students.
"You know what I like about being an engineering major? You're guaranteed a job after college."
The other guy goes, "Yeeeeeaaaaah that's the best part."
This seems to be the fundamental difference between Santa Barbara and Berkeley. They have this large contentedness for life. They are happy with it and they celebrate it. This is really me on the outside looking in. I'm sure the schoolwork gets people down from time to time, but it's nowhere near the cultural depression that Berkeley clouds over its students. Everyone is constantly competing with each other. Everyone is looking over to the next person and trying to set the curve. They try to go as far as they can but there is no purpose, no direction. What's the point of going far if you don't know where you are? You got A's but what else do you have? You got interviews and resumes, but why do you get up in the morning? For SB students, the concern is to be happy. Everything else is secondary. For Berkeley students, the concern is security. Dignity is secondary.
It's the ones at Berkeley looking for happiness that get screwed over at the end.
"You know what I like about being an engineering major? You're guaranteed a job after college."
The other guy goes, "Yeeeeeaaaaah that's the best part."
This seems to be the fundamental difference between Santa Barbara and Berkeley. They have this large contentedness for life. They are happy with it and they celebrate it. This is really me on the outside looking in. I'm sure the schoolwork gets people down from time to time, but it's nowhere near the cultural depression that Berkeley clouds over its students. Everyone is constantly competing with each other. Everyone is looking over to the next person and trying to set the curve. They try to go as far as they can but there is no purpose, no direction. What's the point of going far if you don't know where you are? You got A's but what else do you have? You got interviews and resumes, but why do you get up in the morning? For SB students, the concern is to be happy. Everything else is secondary. For Berkeley students, the concern is security. Dignity is secondary.
It's the ones at Berkeley looking for happiness that get screwed over at the end.
Thursday, October 25, 2007
You Should Watch American Gangster
That is all for today. It just seems all too bad that there does not seem to be any true American Gangsters around anymore.
One very good reason to watch... is Cuba Gooding Jr....as a pimp.
Yes I said it.
One very good reason to watch... is Cuba Gooding Jr....as a pimp.
Yes I said it.
Monday, October 22, 2007
So listen...
Wattup world,
I just finished a weekend in Sunny SoCal for Friendship Games weekend. It's the first time I've been home since the day before the first day of school. Long story short, it was good times and a lot of laughs.
But we did run into this while we were down there...
MAD TV Can I have your number?
After laughing hysterically about it for a couple hours after watching it, I decided the story of Darrel is, in essence, the story of every male in terms of how to close on those seven digits. If you think about it, Darrel's method is straight to the point, and if it weren't for the formality of women complicating the situation, all men would probably do what Darrel does.
But here is the mindset of man broken down: If a dude sees an attractive girl and he's single or not, he automatically thinks, "I have to know that girl." The intentions could be varied. He could be looking for a relationship or he could looking to just be friends or he could want sex, but the bottom line is that he is compelled to force fate and meet this girl. After mustering up courage, he tries to think of the best possible way to approach a stranger that he will probably never see again and create some sort of connection. A successful attempt results in a phone number. In his mind, he's probably thinking, "This girl could change my life. If all things go good and well, she could possibly be my (insert label here). If I don't do this now, I will never see again." For those who do nothing, they spend their whole lives contemplating the what-ifs until they see another once-in-a-lifetime girl where they can repeat the process.
The mindset of woman: She is probably not impressed at all by any amount of courage mustered, as if courage was so abundant from where she came from. It doesn't matter what intentions he has. He probably just wants sex. She's been hit on how many times today for the past how many years. How impressive could this man really be if he just approaches strangers and asks for their number. She is not flattered at all or maybe she has low-self esteem too and doesn't know how to take a compliment. She doesn't need a connection. This sort of thing happens to her everyday.
Ladies, guys wish they had your problem!
But to the defense of women, the majority of the male population is nasty and not worth your time, but don't overlook those one or two decent dudes out there.
I just finished a weekend in Sunny SoCal for Friendship Games weekend. It's the first time I've been home since the day before the first day of school. Long story short, it was good times and a lot of laughs.
But we did run into this while we were down there...
MAD TV Can I have your number?
After laughing hysterically about it for a couple hours after watching it, I decided the story of Darrel is, in essence, the story of every male in terms of how to close on those seven digits. If you think about it, Darrel's method is straight to the point, and if it weren't for the formality of women complicating the situation, all men would probably do what Darrel does.
But here is the mindset of man broken down: If a dude sees an attractive girl and he's single or not, he automatically thinks, "I have to know that girl." The intentions could be varied. He could be looking for a relationship or he could looking to just be friends or he could want sex, but the bottom line is that he is compelled to force fate and meet this girl. After mustering up courage, he tries to think of the best possible way to approach a stranger that he will probably never see again and create some sort of connection. A successful attempt results in a phone number. In his mind, he's probably thinking, "This girl could change my life. If all things go good and well, she could possibly be my (insert label here). If I don't do this now, I will never see again." For those who do nothing, they spend their whole lives contemplating the what-ifs until they see another once-in-a-lifetime girl where they can repeat the process.
The mindset of woman: She is probably not impressed at all by any amount of courage mustered, as if courage was so abundant from where she came from. It doesn't matter what intentions he has. He probably just wants sex. She's been hit on how many times today for the past how many years. How impressive could this man really be if he just approaches strangers and asks for their number. She is not flattered at all or maybe she has low-self esteem too and doesn't know how to take a compliment. She doesn't need a connection. This sort of thing happens to her everyday.
Ladies, guys wish they had your problem!
But to the defense of women, the majority of the male population is nasty and not worth your time, but don't overlook those one or two decent dudes out there.
Wednesday, October 17, 2007
Profile on David Simon or Why "The Wire" Rocks
The New Yorker just released an article on David Simon, the creator of the Wire. I've been tooting the horn of the Wire for a while now, almost to the extent of a senile old man, but still, no one's really hearing me. The Wire is THE BEST TELEVISION SHOW EVER WRITTEN!!! I put my whole reputation on that. And I'm not talking about Desperate Housewives good or Gossip Girls good (am I really validating this show?). I'm talking about the smartest script ever written for a television screen. I'm talking smarter than any show I've ever watched or talked about including: The Sopranos, Smallville, Heroes, Weeds, 24, Studio 60 or any other show I can think of worth mentioning. It is actually so smart, it often gets overlooked by middle class America. Middle class America doesn't deal in smart. It deals in monotony, sticking to what works, and making sure their shows make a profit, without analyzing the adverse effects of bad television on the minds of its audience. The article is pretty long, and I can't really expect you to read the whole thing, especially without having the context of watching the show. We can't really expect anyone to read anything longer than 5 minutes because that's how big our attention span is these days. But I'll pull out things I like from the article.
“The Wire,” Simon often says, is a show about how contemporary American society—and, particularly, “raw, unencumbered capitalism”—devalues human beings. He told me, “Every single moment on the planet, from here on out, human beings are worth less. We are in a post-industrial age. We don’t need as many of us as we once did. So, if the first season was about devaluing the cops who knew their beats and the corner boys slinging drugs, then the second was about devaluing the longshoremen and their labor, the third about people who wanted to make changes in the city, and the fourth was about kids who were being prepared, badly, for an economy that no longer really needs them. And the fifth? It’s about the people who are supposed to be monitoring all this and sounding the alarm—the journalists. The newsroom I worked in had four hundred and fifty people. Now it’s got three hundred. Management says, ‘We have to do more with less.’ That’s the bullshit of bean counters who care only about the bottom line. You do less with less.”
You ever hear of a show that consciously is blaming the media for the sh*t that's wrong in the world? The most you ever hear is Justin Timberlake decrying for MTV to play more music videos. Even as noble as that effort was, it still got reported on the internet in tabloid fashion, which is contradictory to the actual point he was trying to make.
Viewers of “The Wire” must master a whole argot, though it can take a while, because the words are never defined, just as they wouldn’t be by real people tossing them around. To have “suction” is to have pull with your higher-ups on the police force or in City Hall; a “redball” is a high-profile case with political consequences; to “re-up” is to get more drugs to sell. Drugs are branded with names taken from the latest news cycle: Pandemic, W.M.D., Greenhouse Gas. “The game” is the drug trade, although it emerges during the course of the show as a metaphor for the web of constraints that political and economic institutions impose on the people trapped within them.
That's one of the dopest parts of the show. It forces you to understand the show's vocabulary. It also reinforces the point that speech is something organic. The inner-city urban environment uses a different vocabulary than the rest of middle class America. If we're going to understand their story, we gotta learn their talk, at least. I'm also a fan of slang, it's almost but not quite, like being bilingual.
Because Simon and his primary writing partner, Ed Burns—a former Baltimore homicide detective who was once one of Simon’s sources—are both middle-aged white men, people tend to assume that the dialogue spoken by the drug dealers and ghetto kids is ad-libbed by the black actors on the show.
They're white, and they get it more than some Black people do.
Simon is an authenticity freak. He said, “I’m the kind of person who, when I’m writing, cares above all about whether the people I’m writing about will recognize themselves. I’m not thinking about the general reader. My greatest fear is that the people in the world I’m writing about will read it and say, ‘Nah, there’s nothing there.’ ”
Fuck yeah for authenticity. How much authenticity is in Heroes? Can you really understand the emotional burden of having a superpower? The Wire is about real people.
“ ‘The Wire’ is dissent,” he says. “It is perhaps the only storytelling on television that overtly suggests that our political and economic and social constructs are no longer viable, that our leadership has failed us relentlessly, and that no, we are not going to be all right.”
Exactly!
Rafael Alvarez, a former Sun reporter whom Simon hired to write for the show, said, “You know how, in a Russian novel, the reader does the work for the first hundred pages, and then it turns and you’re lost in it? With ‘The Wire,’ it might be Episode 6 before it turns and you’re in.” The creators of “The Wire” would never say that their work is as good as that of Tolstoy or Dickens, but they can’t quite resist the comparison, either.
That's exactly how I felt when I watched it. The first episode was, "WTF is going on? I can't even understand what they're saying." By the 5th episode, I said, "This is getting a whole lot better." By the season finale, I exclaimed, "This is THE BEST TELEVISION SHOW EVER WRITTEN!!!" I mean, some of you must've read Harry Potter and thought the first couple of chapters when he's dillydallying in the real world was pretty boring until he got it on and poppin' in Wizardland.
This final season of the show, Simon told me, will be about “perception versus reality”—in particular, what kind of reality newspapers can capture and what they can’t. Newspapers across the country are shrinking, laying off beat reporters who understood their turf. More important, Simon believes, newspapers are fundamentally not equipped to convey certain kinds of complex truths. Instead, they focus on scandals—stories that have a clean moral. “It’s like, Find the eight-hundred-dollar toilet seat, find the contractor who’s double-billing,” Simon said at one point. “That’s their bread and butter. Systemic societal failure that has multiple problems—newspapers are not designed to understand it.”
We actually do need a television show to depict this for us. A lot of us just take in anything on print as truth these days. But maybe Britney isn't really that bad. Who knows?
The Wire is in it's 5th and last season this year. Please watch it. Bittorrent it, netflix it, or call me up, but do what you gotta do and make yourself smarter through watching television.
Oh yeah and he's also trying to write a pilot on a new show in New Orleans. Can't wait.
“The Wire,” Simon often says, is a show about how contemporary American society—and, particularly, “raw, unencumbered capitalism”—devalues human beings. He told me, “Every single moment on the planet, from here on out, human beings are worth less. We are in a post-industrial age. We don’t need as many of us as we once did. So, if the first season was about devaluing the cops who knew their beats and the corner boys slinging drugs, then the second was about devaluing the longshoremen and their labor, the third about people who wanted to make changes in the city, and the fourth was about kids who were being prepared, badly, for an economy that no longer really needs them. And the fifth? It’s about the people who are supposed to be monitoring all this and sounding the alarm—the journalists. The newsroom I worked in had four hundred and fifty people. Now it’s got three hundred. Management says, ‘We have to do more with less.’ That’s the bullshit of bean counters who care only about the bottom line. You do less with less.”
You ever hear of a show that consciously is blaming the media for the sh*t that's wrong in the world? The most you ever hear is Justin Timberlake decrying for MTV to play more music videos. Even as noble as that effort was, it still got reported on the internet in tabloid fashion, which is contradictory to the actual point he was trying to make.
Viewers of “The Wire” must master a whole argot, though it can take a while, because the words are never defined, just as they wouldn’t be by real people tossing them around. To have “suction” is to have pull with your higher-ups on the police force or in City Hall; a “redball” is a high-profile case with political consequences; to “re-up” is to get more drugs to sell. Drugs are branded with names taken from the latest news cycle: Pandemic, W.M.D., Greenhouse Gas. “The game” is the drug trade, although it emerges during the course of the show as a metaphor for the web of constraints that political and economic institutions impose on the people trapped within them.
That's one of the dopest parts of the show. It forces you to understand the show's vocabulary. It also reinforces the point that speech is something organic. The inner-city urban environment uses a different vocabulary than the rest of middle class America. If we're going to understand their story, we gotta learn their talk, at least. I'm also a fan of slang, it's almost but not quite, like being bilingual.
Because Simon and his primary writing partner, Ed Burns—a former Baltimore homicide detective who was once one of Simon’s sources—are both middle-aged white men, people tend to assume that the dialogue spoken by the drug dealers and ghetto kids is ad-libbed by the black actors on the show.
They're white, and they get it more than some Black people do.
Simon is an authenticity freak. He said, “I’m the kind of person who, when I’m writing, cares above all about whether the people I’m writing about will recognize themselves. I’m not thinking about the general reader. My greatest fear is that the people in the world I’m writing about will read it and say, ‘Nah, there’s nothing there.’ ”
Fuck yeah for authenticity. How much authenticity is in Heroes? Can you really understand the emotional burden of having a superpower? The Wire is about real people.
“ ‘The Wire’ is dissent,” he says. “It is perhaps the only storytelling on television that overtly suggests that our political and economic and social constructs are no longer viable, that our leadership has failed us relentlessly, and that no, we are not going to be all right.”
Exactly!
Rafael Alvarez, a former Sun reporter whom Simon hired to write for the show, said, “You know how, in a Russian novel, the reader does the work for the first hundred pages, and then it turns and you’re lost in it? With ‘The Wire,’ it might be Episode 6 before it turns and you’re in.” The creators of “The Wire” would never say that their work is as good as that of Tolstoy or Dickens, but they can’t quite resist the comparison, either.
That's exactly how I felt when I watched it. The first episode was, "WTF is going on? I can't even understand what they're saying." By the 5th episode, I said, "This is getting a whole lot better." By the season finale, I exclaimed, "This is THE BEST TELEVISION SHOW EVER WRITTEN!!!" I mean, some of you must've read Harry Potter and thought the first couple of chapters when he's dillydallying in the real world was pretty boring until he got it on and poppin' in Wizardland.
This final season of the show, Simon told me, will be about “perception versus reality”—in particular, what kind of reality newspapers can capture and what they can’t. Newspapers across the country are shrinking, laying off beat reporters who understood their turf. More important, Simon believes, newspapers are fundamentally not equipped to convey certain kinds of complex truths. Instead, they focus on scandals—stories that have a clean moral. “It’s like, Find the eight-hundred-dollar toilet seat, find the contractor who’s double-billing,” Simon said at one point. “That’s their bread and butter. Systemic societal failure that has multiple problems—newspapers are not designed to understand it.”
We actually do need a television show to depict this for us. A lot of us just take in anything on print as truth these days. But maybe Britney isn't really that bad. Who knows?
The Wire is in it's 5th and last season this year. Please watch it. Bittorrent it, netflix it, or call me up, but do what you gotta do and make yourself smarter through watching television.
Oh yeah and he's also trying to write a pilot on a new show in New Orleans. Can't wait.
Monday, October 15, 2007
You Thievin' Mofos
"Gangsters, these are men who embraced who they are and decided to make something out of it. They did not wait for a handout or wait for Teri Hatcher to say the wrong thing, so they can force ABC to pay for 'diversity scholarships.'"
I honestly thought that the "Filipino community" (read: upper middle class interests) would keep the protest at diversity scholarships. And then they pull this sh*t.
Filipinos Sue ABC for $500 Million
I have to ask, "Why would I support this lawsuit?"
Will I see any penny from this $500 million? Will my Filipino mailmen experience any riches beyond belief? How does my secretary mom and construction inspection dad who work for the State get a piece of the action? How about my Tagalog teacher? Will she get $500 million too?
NO!
The money goes to a very small upper middle class demographic of the entire Filipino-American community. You're the mofos who moved out of the city and moved to the suburbs to let your people rot. And what other implications can we expect? Without $500 million dollars, ABC will be forced to make shows of a significantly lesser quality that you will probably end up watching just so you can wait on another white person to say something racist and you can sue them again. Meanwhile, I have to deal with you ig'nants for watching such reality shows and making me look bad. Also, with the upper middle class already cakin', the last thing I need is for you to have $500 million in your pocket so you can give your kids a fixed-up rice rocket and have them act like they're better than Filipinos who actually work for their sh*t and have higher priorities than what you drive. And what about Mychal Bell of the Jena 6 whose family didn't have enough money to post $90,000 bail for being a blatant victim of racism as opposed to what you are going through? Why do you deserve 5555 times more money than him? What else? Oh yeah, did I mention that you haven't earned this $500 million at all?
“What’s important here is that this is sending a message to the other producers, the other stations that if you do this, this is what’s going to happen," said lawyer Rodel Rodis.
Yeah we're sending a message alright, that we're some thievin' motherfuckers.
I honestly thought that the "Filipino community" (read: upper middle class interests) would keep the protest at diversity scholarships. And then they pull this sh*t.
Filipinos Sue ABC for $500 Million
I have to ask, "Why would I support this lawsuit?"
Will I see any penny from this $500 million? Will my Filipino mailmen experience any riches beyond belief? How does my secretary mom and construction inspection dad who work for the State get a piece of the action? How about my Tagalog teacher? Will she get $500 million too?
NO!
The money goes to a very small upper middle class demographic of the entire Filipino-American community. You're the mofos who moved out of the city and moved to the suburbs to let your people rot. And what other implications can we expect? Without $500 million dollars, ABC will be forced to make shows of a significantly lesser quality that you will probably end up watching just so you can wait on another white person to say something racist and you can sue them again. Meanwhile, I have to deal with you ig'nants for watching such reality shows and making me look bad. Also, with the upper middle class already cakin', the last thing I need is for you to have $500 million in your pocket so you can give your kids a fixed-up rice rocket and have them act like they're better than Filipinos who actually work for their sh*t and have higher priorities than what you drive. And what about Mychal Bell of the Jena 6 whose family didn't have enough money to post $90,000 bail for being a blatant victim of racism as opposed to what you are going through? Why do you deserve 5555 times more money than him? What else? Oh yeah, did I mention that you haven't earned this $500 million at all?
“What’s important here is that this is sending a message to the other producers, the other stations that if you do this, this is what’s going to happen," said lawyer Rodel Rodis.
Yeah we're sending a message alright, that we're some thievin' motherfuckers.
Thursday, October 11, 2007
Janelle Monae and The Cool Kids
I don't like to advertise music that much. In some ways, it is sometimes good that you're the only person who likes the music you like. When it comes to music, for the most part, people can't appreciate sh*t. And I'm sure that's how classical-music-lovers feel about me. But sometimes I like the world to know. I want some people to understand what my arbitrary definition of good is and appreciate it for its objective truth. For the most part, I think I have my audience's musical pulse down.
Well anyways, I got new people to add:
Janelle Monae - Metropolis: Suite I of IV "The Chase"
I know I've covered her before, but she didn't have an album out when I covered her. She just released a concept album called Metropolis, that's divided into 4 parts. Her management team made the decision that people don't listen to whole albums anymore, they just pick the songs they like. Instead of releasing one huge album, she's releasing 4 mini-albums. That way, she doesn't make 20 songs that only capture her at one stage of her life. Instead, she makes 4 albums with 5 songs each and spreads out the release dates. By doing this, she can make more recent music each time she releases and the anticipation bubbles while you wait for each gem. What's good about this album? Have you ever heard of a 5 song album and think it was good? I didn't think I could either until I heard this one. And it works, you get all you need and yet you crave for more. If this particular album art doesn't intrigue you, then it's probably not for you.
The Cool Kids - Totally Flossed Out EP
Their fashion sense is the same as their rapping style: do it to be creative instead of trying to act cool. And you can tell because the music speaks for itself. Mikey Rocks and Chuck Inglish are the duo that make up The Cool Kids. What's dope is that the name fits. You can tell they have fun when they rap. And it's honest all around. For example, on one of their songs "A Little Bit Cooler" they talk about getting knocked for being the first ones to dress throwback 80's and then everyone started joining the 80's fashion bandwagon when the water was warm enough to jump in. I wouldn't necessarily dress 80's, but goddamn I can appreciate the situation. But they say ascots are coming back this season.
Well anyways, I got new people to add:
Janelle Monae - Metropolis: Suite I of IV "The Chase"
I know I've covered her before, but she didn't have an album out when I covered her. She just released a concept album called Metropolis, that's divided into 4 parts. Her management team made the decision that people don't listen to whole albums anymore, they just pick the songs they like. Instead of releasing one huge album, she's releasing 4 mini-albums. That way, she doesn't make 20 songs that only capture her at one stage of her life. Instead, she makes 4 albums with 5 songs each and spreads out the release dates. By doing this, she can make more recent music each time she releases and the anticipation bubbles while you wait for each gem. What's good about this album? Have you ever heard of a 5 song album and think it was good? I didn't think I could either until I heard this one. And it works, you get all you need and yet you crave for more. If this particular album art doesn't intrigue you, then it's probably not for you.
The Cool Kids - Totally Flossed Out EP
Their fashion sense is the same as their rapping style: do it to be creative instead of trying to act cool. And you can tell because the music speaks for itself. Mikey Rocks and Chuck Inglish are the duo that make up The Cool Kids. What's dope is that the name fits. You can tell they have fun when they rap. And it's honest all around. For example, on one of their songs "A Little Bit Cooler" they talk about getting knocked for being the first ones to dress throwback 80's and then everyone started joining the 80's fashion bandwagon when the water was warm enough to jump in. I wouldn't necessarily dress 80's, but goddamn I can appreciate the situation. But they say ascots are coming back this season.
U.S. House of Representatives passes Armenian Genocide Resolution
Bush is pissed.
Well maybe not pissed, but perturbed that no one cares about his "War on Terror." Can anyone say that to themselves in the mirror and take themselves seriously?
"I'm fighting the War on Terror. My enemy is terror."
You can't do it. It's hard. It doesn't even sound as good as the war on drugs. And no one's even fighting back on the war on drugs.
Anyways, the Armenians won a point on this one. If you think about it, it's ridiculous. Germany admitted to the Holocaust and no one really synonymizes Germany with Nazis anymore. They only seem to label people who happen to be Nazis as Nazis. If Turkey admits to this, Armenia will feel better about themselves. Turkey will experience a slight decrease in self-esteem. Overall, almost no one in America will care. In the long run, they're not going to connect Turks with mass murder the same way they don't connect Germans with mass murder. How does anyone take a stance on this issue when the people who went through it are long gone (maybe not entirely true)? It's really just a bunch of stories passed down on both sides to kids who grow up believing what they were told (ok, there are historians out there confirming it, but still). Mass murdering is bad. Trying to pit the blame on a country under a long duration of time that spans generations for mass murder is not worst, but it's also bad, but most likely not as bad as mass murdering.
Well maybe not pissed, but perturbed that no one cares about his "War on Terror." Can anyone say that to themselves in the mirror and take themselves seriously?
"I'm fighting the War on Terror. My enemy is terror."
You can't do it. It's hard. It doesn't even sound as good as the war on drugs. And no one's even fighting back on the war on drugs.
Anyways, the Armenians won a point on this one. If you think about it, it's ridiculous. Germany admitted to the Holocaust and no one really synonymizes Germany with Nazis anymore. They only seem to label people who happen to be Nazis as Nazis. If Turkey admits to this, Armenia will feel better about themselves. Turkey will experience a slight decrease in self-esteem. Overall, almost no one in America will care. In the long run, they're not going to connect Turks with mass murder the same way they don't connect Germans with mass murder. How does anyone take a stance on this issue when the people who went through it are long gone (maybe not entirely true)? It's really just a bunch of stories passed down on both sides to kids who grow up believing what they were told (ok, there are historians out there confirming it, but still). Mass murdering is bad. Trying to pit the blame on a country under a long duration of time that spans generations for mass murder is not worst, but it's also bad, but most likely not as bad as mass murdering.
Wednesday, October 10, 2007
Bush urges rejection of Armenia genocide resolution
Bush Rejects Armenian Genocide
I know that Filipinos and Armenians have had their share of not-so-nice words here and there. But there's one thing we don't touch, that's the Armenian Genocide. It sucks that it happened. If you don't believe it did, you don't give an opinion about it. But you don't touch it.
That's like telling the Jews that the Germans ain't do no Holocaust. I'm pretty sure that sh*t stings.
What sucks is that Bush is trying to keep up relations to gain a better position in that unpopular war of ours.
I know that Filipinos and Armenians have had their share of not-so-nice words here and there. But there's one thing we don't touch, that's the Armenian Genocide. It sucks that it happened. If you don't believe it did, you don't give an opinion about it. But you don't touch it.
That's like telling the Jews that the Germans ain't do no Holocaust. I'm pretty sure that sh*t stings.
What sucks is that Bush is trying to keep up relations to gain a better position in that unpopular war of ours.
Gangster
I'm excited to see American Gangster. I don't think I've been this excited about a movie since Hustle & Flow. People who seek opportunity, entrepreneurs, hustlers, they're all suckers for movies about makin' it. I've said it before: there is something very American about it. America, land of the free to make as many chips as you want.
The post is really about gangsters. I was going to write about the The Wire's Avon Barksdale and his drug empire, but I'll save that for another post. To be honest, I have a lot of respect for real gangsters. It's the code they live by.
Denzel Washington: "Honesty. Integrity. Family."
Those are all things I live by. Gangsters, these are men who embraced who they are and decided to make something out of it. They did not wait for a handout or wait for Teri Hatcher to say the wrong thing, so they can force ABC to pay for "diversity scholarships." These are people who took the good and bad about themselves and did what they do. Especially the family part, they were only made better by sticking together. I really believe in that stuff. Sometimes, as I peace out some of my friends, I say "family." Some of them understand, some of them don't get it. I mean, how can they get it? If you're so ingrained in the system, how does it make sense to look out for anyone besides number 1? Can you put "honesty, integrity, family" on a resume? No! And for some reason, telling someone in an interview that you're honest and have integrity means that you're not. It has to be proven through some internship where you probably followed the same process of not being honest on your resume or interview in order to get the internship. It's good to have a nice house, nice car, some security, but in the end, we are what we live by.
Tuesday, October 9, 2007
I don't care
I don't care what anyone says. Even if he does make his beats on a Casio and a lil' kid can come up with his rhymes. He's the only new dude right now that is actively worth getting up and dancing to.
Yooooooooooooouuuuuuuuuuuuuuuu!
Where you come from
I often think about being born in San Francisco. I lived in Northern California for the first two years of my life and my dad got a job offer in Los Angeles. As far as I remember, we lived in the Valley ever since, whether it was in North Hollywood or my short stint in Sun Valley. But as I walk the streets of Berkeley, I often think that my story began up here. The U.S. has become very regionalist. Everyone seems to be reppin' their territory, which was a side effect of the East vs. West rivalry of the Tupac-Biggie days. I try not to, but I can't help but criticize these fake Kanye-looking freshmen kids who wear all-print bandanas on their necks, fitted caps cocked to the side, loud T-shirts, kicks that cost upwards of $100, and predictably no money in the bank. And they're all from San Diego. When was San Diego the rallying point for fake hood playful gangster fashion sense? I would take you more seriously if you had the emo eye-patch haircut. But I digress. I've always believed that you owe something to the people and the places that helped shaped you become the person you are today. Even though I was only in the North for the 2 years I would probably remember the least out of my life, I feel like it was important I was there. Who knows? Maybe while I was up there, I got a little bit more oxygen in my brain than I would have gotten if I was born in the Valley. Maybe that's why I had a little bit more sense growing up. And maybe it was good that I left when I did. I could have been part of the hyphy movement. But either way, it's important to remember where you came from. Even though my heart is in the Valley, my presence here in Berkeley is a constant reminder that I owe a huge something to the North.
Wednesday, October 3, 2007
This Protest Bullsh*t
I'm not going to say too much about all the controversy surrounding this clip. The Filipinos (who I have not included myself in this particular case) are protesting and want to boycott ABC for airing this clip in all its ignorance. I think I've already given too much of my attention to this nonsense.
1.) The clip and the statement was funny. Filipinos, in general, laugh at racial jokes on a regular, but we're not allowed for other people to joke about us? Where was the riot when you heard the countless "I'm not Chinese. I'm Filipino." or "I'm not Japanese. I'm Filipino" jokes were getting tossed around? Where was the 1000-signature petition? Would you not call that racist: the fact that America thinks Filipinos look/are treated just like any other Asian?
2.) The joke was very founded. Check ichiwichi.blogspot.com for solid reasoning.
3.) Filipinos who are trying to petition and boycott ABC are making Filipinos look bad. We're like the brown people who cried wolf because the next time some real oppression goes down, no one's going to take us seriously. We will have been known to react to one-liners and label it as oppression. The Jena 6 is real oppression. If you don't know about the Jena 6, look it up.
4.) Here's my last point. To fellow Filipinos, shame on you for watching Desperate Housewives (sorry to those who actually watch it)! How can you logically protest one line on a TV show that chronicles the lives of 4/5 upper middle class white women, (yes Eva Longoria counts as white) which the producers of the show have decided was more interesting than any of your stories or struggles to put on a screen? The show invalidates your existence in American culture. You should be lucky they decided to sprinkle you on in this vanilla cake party. Yet, you guys decided to protest one funny line on a show that you should have boycotted a long time ago. Shame on you!
Watch WEEDS!
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