Quantico: Where the Brown Boys At?

I get it. Quantico is a pioneering show in multiple ways: most notably it’s the first American primetime drama to feature an Indian (and female) lead. Priyanka Chopra is indubitably the Mayor of Babesville, and I’m all for any show that has strong, kickass women of color — including Muslim hijabi twins who aren’t complete stereotypes (although this has been called into question). And complicated, tough gay characters who aren’t just planning weddings and snapping their fingers around – we need more of those too.

But c’mon y’all — WHERE are the men of color? Granted, I’ve only seen a couple episodes, and maybe new characters were introduced, but the “top billed cast” on IMDb shows no men of color. Zero. And the optics of that bugs the hell out of me.

Indeed, Chopra and Yasmine Al Massri and Aunjanue Ellis and Annabelle Acosta provide plenty of eye candy, but I’m sick of all these Captain America Wonderbread types abounding. Four out of the five female leads are women of color, can’t we get ONE hot brown man for me the characters to lust after and have sexual tension-filled exchanges in the co-ed bathroom and get freaky with in the front seat of an SUV? Or will this go the way of The Mindy Project, with no men of color ever entering the fuckable orbit?

Oh wait, there’s this guy(?):

Hello? Can someone tell me where the craft services table is at?

It’s only Season 1, there’s still time to assemble a proper hottie special agent dream team. Get it together, Quantico!

 

 

Model Minority: Justin Kim

So I didn’t even know America’s Next Top Model was still on, nor that it now features MALE models. ASIAN. MALE. MODELS. Feast yo peepers on Justin Kim (by stalking his Insta @seoulful_j) and his impossible jawline…and praise be to Ty Ty for keeping the ANTM cycle going for 22 flippin’ years — although C’MON it really shouldn’t have taken almost a quarter of a century to get a male Asian American model on the show.

Christ, I still remember the first season. And that makes me feel old and sad. But this makes me feel better:

Tats, chains, and chesticles, Oh My!

Plus he reps Korea and AZN Pryde hard and wants to shatter stereotypes by showing America that Asian men are tall and hot and really really really ridiculously good looking and hot and also hot. What a good Samaritan, that Justin Kim!

Time for me to start clearing my calendar Thursdays at 8pm. Screw Shark Tank. I want Hunk (in a) Tank!  Ugh. Sorry…here’s a palate cleanser:

OK ONE MORE FOR GOOD MEASURE:

Racially Diverse Emojis, Now with Oriental Yellow!

True, emojis have been sorely lacking in the melanin department, and even borderline racist (the only current “ethnic” emojis are a dude with some sort of turban-thing, a guy with a mandarin cap, and one wearing a cossack hat)…so having the option to add pigment is definitely positive (as well as same sex couples and families).

But Gawddamn, why the Asian emoji gotta be so YELLOW? Like, not even a tawny, golden, mellow-yellow hue…but fluorescent HI-LITER, jaundiced Hep C (shoutout to Puj D!), Pantone Yellow 108. Dude straight up looks like Pac-Man.

Apple countered by saying the yellow tone is intended to be “ethnically neutral” and apparently there’s a precedent for it this “default, non-ethnic” color (more on that here). Yeah ok, that may make sense in techie-speak, but this attempt at multicultural inclusion seems ridiculously naive and wack in the face of social and racial reality…sound familiar, tech industry? Oh, the irony.

via HuffPo

*Thanks to Puj & Noms for the emojinspiration

Gwen Defends Harajuku Girls

Gwen & Katy Perry must be BFFs or have the same publicist or image coach or something, because the delusion runs equally thick with these two. Throw Madonna in there and you got the Grand Trifecta of Asian-appropriating white women (with Avril Lavigne clutching at their coattails).

When recently asked by TIME Magazine if she regretted her whole “Harajuku Girls” fetish phase from 2004, Gwen gave a resounding:

“No…. For me, everything that I did with the Harajuku Girls was just a pure compliment and being a fan. You can’t be a fan of somebody else? Or another culture? Of course you can. Of course you can celebrate other cultures. That’s what Japanese culture and American culture have done. It’s like I say in the song [“Harajuku Girls”]: it’s a ping-pong match. We do something American, they take it and they flip it and make it so Japanese and so cool. And we take it back and go, “Whoa, that’s so cool!” That’s so beautiful. It’s a beautiful thing in the world, how our cultures come together. I don’t feel like I did anything but share that love. You can look at it from a negative point of view if you want to, but get off my cloud. Because, seriously, that was all meant out of love.

Oh yes, by “celebrate”, she means: shut up, get in back, and kowtow, sidekicks!

And “Get off my cloud”? AHAHAHAAA what foolery. So is she supposed to be an angel or goddess or something? Ridiculous as that sounds, Stefani may have just coined the new catchphrase for self-important pop co-opters (paging Iggy Iggy and Mileyyyyy). Oh, but it gets better:

“…They were dancers that were cast, but they became real. One girl was a Japanese girl that grew up in L.A., and she got to hang around with three different Japanese girls that were from different places in Japan and had different backgrounds. They became best friends, and she got to go to Japan and see her heritage and see how we are all the same.”

Because they weren’t real people to begin with, just mute, cutesy pets yeah? And Gwen’s basically saying, “YOU’RE WELCOME, HJG #3” and taking credit for helping one of her props dancers wake up and smell the matcha and connect with her Supaaa Kawaiiii peeeoopleessss.

But really this is not surprising, coming from someone with a long and illustrious bindi-wearing, “Indian Princess” cosplaying, Ska-appropriating history. And I almost ralphed when Gwen “BUKK BUKK BBUKK!!!”-ed through Anita Antoinette’s Bob Marley audition on The Voice. Ugh, take a seat and turn it back around.

via Dlisted

What Did Jeremy Lin Do?

Ever since JLin and the Lin family rolled to the Leavey Center for a Broncos v. Crimson game in 2010, AzN has been in full blown Linsanity mode. So for all you JLin fans out there who aren’t necessarily Laker fans (#DubNation represent) I will be conveniently posting JLin stat lines after every Laker game (0-5 and off to a great start y’all!) on the Asian American sports blog: datwinning.com. Peep BCB for some summaries of the best JLin games, but stick with Dat Winning for up-to-date stat lines cause we can’t be a 24/7 Jeremy Lin Show.

Also, thanks to High Expectations Father who kindly volunteered to give us a quote after each performance (to be honest, I didn’t ask, but my mom called me the other day and was like “High Expectations Father wants to talk to you!” so I drove out to the suburbs and, well, you know what happened next).

Thanks all! And remember, as Jeremy says, Jesus loves you! Unless you’re JR Smith, in which case, no one loves you.

Getting By With a Little Help From The Colonel

I know I’m totes mcgotes tardy to the party on this one, but I couldn’t let it go without BCB paying the proper homage this woman deserves.

After getting dumped by her boyfriend, Tan Shen of Chengdu, China steered her ass into the closest KFC for some chicken wings and “time to think,” and parked it there. For a week. And not any ol’ roadside KFC; but the KFC at the TRAIN STATION.

Many of us tend to eat our feelings come rain (or let’s be honest, shine); few of us have the balls to reach deep, deep down and nom the pain away on such a profound level.

Dealin’ with Feelins. Like a BAWSE.

After 7 days, when the pesky media started butting in on her party of alone, Tan Shen, “decided the best thing to do would be to leave the city and go back to my parents. I had already told work I was off sick, so phoned them and said I was leaving. And I was getting sick of the taste of chicken so there was no point in staying there anymore.”

Her heart may be broken, but spoken like a true pragmatist!

If we all focused less on coddling our butthurt egos, and more on intensive, raw, unabashed self-care like Tan does, we’d probably be a lot better off and get the healing and closure we needed instead of a never-ending, torturous vortex of analyzing old emails, obsessing over Twitter feeds, stalking Facebook updates, googling image searches, poring over 10-year-old Snapfish albums every other day, driving by their new apartment under cover of night, and…what?

After this impressive undertaking, Tan better have a line of beaus waiting to sweep her off her feet and into the next Sizzler. Can a sister get an upgrade?!

BCB salutes you, Tan Shen! Doing breakups right — and proving there’s nothing a little time and a lot of fried chicken can’t fix.

via Huffpo & Dlisted

BCB Movie Review: Revenge of the Green Dragons

Over the weekend I finally convinced myself to fork out $9.99 (highway robbery!) to watch Revenge of the Green Dragons on DirectTV, to follow-up on our Trailer Parkin’ post, and also because: AZNs. With mullets.

While the trailer looked promising, especially since it’s directed by Andrew Lau of the glorious Infernal Affairs… I found Revenge of the Green Dragons kinda meh…mixed with a little huh? and a healthy dose of blue balls (on my part).

Ergo, to this last point, the ROTGD trailer promised some steamy AZN-on-AZN rooftop sex scenes. Behold:

However, these scenes were absent in the actual film; instead we got some tepid, PG-rated fully-clothed kiddie smooches:

BOO I say, BOO! For WHY were the smex scenes taken out, leaving us with CRUMBS? Do they think AMERICA CAN’T HANDLE IT?!? Again, since every single ad for 21 & Over schticked up Justin Chon in a brassiere and teddy bear merkin, than I better damn well see him get it in in ROTGfrigginD. False advertising! Injustice!

ROTGD was also kind of a mess, messaging-wise. It seemed to attempt several bold statements on “illegal immigration”, racism, and the promise and hypocrisy of the American Dream, but I couldn’t quite figure out what those statements were. It was incoherent at best, and came off borderline anti-immigrant at worst: fear the invading, violent, money-crazed yellow hordes!

Madame snake head, who makes her riches off trafficking and exploiting Chinese immigrants, dramatically pronounces “It’s what this country’s built on…the American Dream!” A Chinese cop (played by MC Jin. Hell YAS) admonishes a white colleague for the fuzz’s disregard for brown lives (gee, so much has changed). “Also — fun fact! — did you know there are lots of Chinese languages, officer? Cantonese, Shanghainese, Fukienese…Hello? Are you listening to meeee…….” Jin should have just launched into “Learn Chinese” and then peeled off on the back of DMX’s bike screaming the Ruff Ryders Anthem (seriously, somebody hire me as a screenwriter). Similarly, the Green Dragons make a point to only kill each other — never Gwai-los — in order to fly under the enforcement radar (except the one time they smoke a white guy bitching out a restaurant owner about MSG in his food. Very satisfying).

At times, ROTGD came off as an exploitation flick, what with the slow-mo rape scene and beating the shit out of little kids in cringe-inducingly creative ways. It doesn’t leave much sympathy for any of the characters and makes every single Asian dude except the protagonist look like scum of the earth. But, I’m willing to overlook alla that cuz, matching  jackets!

There’s also some magnificently cornball lines like, “There’s a storm coming detective, I don’t know of any umbrella that’s gonna keep this city dry. Umbrella-ella-ella.” (Sike. But I wish).

However, there were some bright spots — Kevin Wu aka KevJumba of YouTube fame — surprisingly gave the strongest performance — with a close runner up to his perm-mullet, which deserves its own Oscar nom:

The classic ‘do, seen on such folks as Tuan Anh, my uncle, and probably your uncle too. This hairstyle is a national treasure and should be counted amongst the greatest contributions immigrants have made to this country.

Other hair wins go to Leonard Wu as Chen I Chung, who is obviously a dead ringer for Down-Lo Mein from Notorious MSG. Yo D-Lo, bitch stole your look! Also, why aren’t you returning my DMs?!

                                      Don’t even ask how much time I spent making this.

Finally, and most importantly, Harry Shum Jr. didn’t take his shirt off. Even once. I am VERY disappoint. I had to console myself by googling Tony Leung pics.

So, I don’t think ROTGD is a serious contender to dethrone Better Luck Tomorrow by any stretch, but it’s still pretty remarkable in terms of a plot that centers around an Asian American narrative and it’s all-Asian lead cast. Worth checking out for the tats n gats alone.

Hennessy Challenge

Let’s hope this doesn’t become a thing amongst my Yietnamee doo folks but damn if this is what it takes to finally get on worldstarhiphop.com I might have to do it.

Trailer Parkin’: Revenge of the Green Dragons

Sometimes AzN and CBruhs spend a whole day’s worth at work emailing each other back and forth about something random until we both realize we should probably just copy/paste and make it into a blog post. This, as you may have guessed, is one of those times. 

AZN: Did you see this? It looks awesome, but just like Revenge of the Nerds, I was wondering where the original film, The Green Dragons is? Never mind, that kinda sounds like a Chinese fast food chain.

CBRUHS: Wow, that movie could be huge; in terms of Asian repping. Like the next Better Luck Tomorrow. Or it could be really bad, but the fact the director is actually Asian gives me hope that the characters will be portrayed with humanity. Like Justin Chon won’t be wearing a bra and a teddy bear glued to his wiener. Or that kid from Glee will take off his shirt.

AZN: It’s gonna take a lot for me to hop back on the HK cinema train. To keep the analogy going, I’ve long since gotten on the plane and landed in Korea and am now firmly affixed at Seoul Station never to set foot back in HK. Was that clear enough?

CBRUHS: Maybe Scorcese exec producing this movie is his way of paying back the favor of ripping off Infernal Affairs? I hope he pays viewers the favor of making Harry Shum Jr. git nekkid.

AZN: If I was Wai-Keung Lau and Martin Scorsese wins a GD oscar for MY movie idea and forgot to thank the Infernal Affairs team for sourcing him the original material, then the least he can do is EXECUTIVE produce my movie. Executive producing a movie is the equivalent of a “digital introduction” which is right up there with forwarding a PDF to someone in the work world. And did I say “source”? I meant stole cause every Bostonian I know thinks this was a homegrown Boston crime story and no one knows who Wai-Keung Lau is and what Infernal Affairs 1, 2, and definitely 3 are.

CBRUHS: The trailer kinda made me homesick for my old Chinatown neighborhood (altho this took place in Queens) and is serving up a touch of Notorious MSG realness. I’m a sucker for matching jackets, wifebeaters, and manperms. I once asked an ex-banger friend of mine if they were accepting interns. Wish I was playin’ but I’m not.

AZN: If this movie were made in the ’80s I might be a gangster right now. Instead, I had Dustin Nguyen playing a “Japanese” undercover cop. Worst case scenario this might make Asian American gangsters more known in the mainstream which means breaking down Asian American stereotypes right? Hello? Right? Don’t make me come in there looking for your Bank of A-Mattress.

CBRUHS: Affirmative. Here’s where I say something about throwing off the yoke of the Model Minority Myth and the imperative of broadening AAPI media representation. And Harry Shum Jr.’s chesticles.

AZN: I’m just super glad Justin Chon is surviving the Twilight series. If he gets an Oscar nom from this he would be getting rewarded, like Anna Kendrick, for recovering from their “Bella’s BFF crew” role for all three (or was it four?) Twilight films. A feat in itself.

CBRUHS: You know what’s also a feat? Mike Chang’s physique. Is his 12-pack — uh, I mean Revenge of the Green Dragons gonna be screening in 4D??

AZN: **ERROR* Undeliverable mail: Your message did not reach some or all of intended recipients and is being returned to sender.**

Arthur Chu: Social Justice Champion?

Did I really type that? I did indeed. Before I read a lil ole article in the Daily Beast that Arthur Chu penned, I just thought of him as the nerdy Chinese guy that everyone hated on Jeopardy cause he was winning a lot using Game Theory just chasing down Double Jeopardys. And cause he apparently isn’t good in the ‘outdoors’ and doesn’t watch ‘sports’, I assumed he knew nothing more than a little bit about everything a nerd would know: Game of Thrones, Presidents who fought in wars, mid-19th century poets, and Potpourri.

But then the backlash got heated and the race card started coming up. Was it racism that made him an easy target? Even all-time Jeopardy great Ken Jennings thinks so. Did I expect Chu’s response would turn everything around and that he’d start dropping some politicized knowledge in response to all the negativity and the recent shootings in Ferguson and Florida? No I did not, and shit did I misjudge this guy. Forgive my initial ignorance, because he looked like every guy I went to Cal with (at Soda Hall) even though he writes like every grad student I saw with a clipboard on Sproul (that’s a compliment if you need to ask).

So do I want to know more about this guy? Hell yea. Did I jump at the chance when the producers of his new documentary wanted us to reach out to our folks to let them know about their kickstarter? Are you not reading this right now? You only have two weeks to contribute, so act fast. <Queue Jeopardy jingle here>.