Orient-Al Sharpton

If They Were Asian: Jeremy Piven

A few days ago we mentioned Jeremy Piven’s new movie with an Asian in it, and who’s basically the whipping boy in the movie. Piven’s certainly no no stranger to such a concept, as his character has his own whipping boy, Lloyd.

One* can’t help but wonder then what would happen if Piven were to be born in an alternate universe, would the roles be reversed?

Well wonder no more:

*those with perverse, vivid imaginations

New Movie Contains Asian

Sorry, writing headlines aren’t really my thing.

But in any case, I love Ken Jeong as much as the next ethnic or non-ethnic alike.

Knocked Up, Role Models, and The Hangover are among some of the funniest movies I’ve seen in the past few years–and Jeong has been remarkable in each.

From an overbearing asshole doctor (his actual profession) to a geeky RPG player (he stuck with his roots here) to a gay mobster leader (this was a minor stretch) here he is in his latest role below:

Oh imagine that, he plays a small goofy Asian pushover who’s taken advantage of by his less uh submissive coworkers.

Why does this remind me of freshman year of high school?*

I wonder if he replied to this casting call.

*by that I mean last week, at our office

Score One for the Asian Guys

Minimize your World of Warcraft and Age of Empires screens boys, it appears as if there is at least one woman out there that doesn’t find all Asian boys geeky and reprehensible–but dare I say it find us desirable?

That one woman then happens to be none other than Megan Fox:

Hollywood Transformers: Revenge of The Fallen actress Megan Fox recently openly expressed her interest in Korean star Rain and also a desire to date the latter, who replied plainly to her invite, “I’m not interested.”

Not only does this mean that the object of the world’s current hottest woman desire is Asian, but since he’s allegedly turned her down that means that she’s available folks.

All you really need to be is an internationally recognizable pop singer, dancer, model, actor, CEO and designer with boyish good looks and metro hair. Did I mention ridiculously successful, rich, and have a body of steel?

On second thought then, better go back to raising that level 78 Orc “warlock” or “shaman” or whatever they say in the mountain dew commercial.

Do you really want a girl with a toe thumb anyway?

AT&T vs KFC Commercials

There isn’t much in common between these three letter acronym companies–one provides phone/internet/cable services to millions of people in the US, and the other slaughters chickens in a quick, allegedly humane fashion and serves it to people, thereby making them fat and killing them in a much slower, heart/artery clogging matter.

Logically then their marketing departments differ greatly as well, see exhibit A:

Here we have Asians and whites interacting in a, uh, relatively normal fashion; the neighborhood kids are simply re-enacting a soap opera because the man doesn’t have AT&T U-Verse which would allow him to record up to 4 shows at once on a single DVR but instead can only record two at any given time.

The astute viewer would notice the different races of the characters involved, but don’t really *notice* the difference races here.

Later on your favorite episode of Desperate Housewives then you stumble upon exhibit B below.

Now you’ve probably seen this commercial before as well, but if you were anything like me and my friends, you may not have noticed anything particularly out of the ordinary here–and even if you have it’s worth watching again regardless:

Now this isn’t to say that AT&T is out and about supporting the great Asian-American cause out there, while KFC is pushing Asians back to a time where Japanese were captured and forced into camps and the Chinese were building the nation’s railroads (at least not directly), but it certainly provides any interesting contrast as to how Asians can be viewed in the media.

All this talk of chicken is making me hungry though–Popeye’s anyone?

Of course, it could be worse.

Racism as a Marketing Tool

Not all of us speak with an exaggerated accent, nor are we all innately blessed with the ability to karate chop a cement block or run up walls.  Though many of us do pursue a career in engineering or science, there are plenty who go into the arts and languages.

Our families do not all run convenience stores, dry cleaning services, restaurants or nail salons.  There exists Asian parents who go into management and are the reason you can still afford to melt Velveeta over your blue box mac ‘n cheese.

Not all of us have insane academic standards set by our families that we must surpass.  Have you ever considered that we personally don’t desire, in our future, to chase after diaper-clad children named Whiskey and Tango while comparing our spouses to the elegant guests on the Jerry Springer Show?

We don’t think it’s funny when you mock another language, especially when you can’t even master the only one that you know.

We’d like to point you to this:

Who says only Asians do nails? Gone are the days of smelling steamed fish and acetone in the air.

…

Have you ever wondered what all the Asian girls were saying? It goes a little something like this: You are sitting in your chair, getting your nails done and your nail girl and a few other girls are talking in their native language, then all of a sudden they begin to giggle while they all turn to look at you, “Ha ha ha very funny  Ming-li, but it’s not polite to talk about people in front of their face. We can’t understand a thing you are saying.”

…

Anyway, gone are the days of asking your nail tech to repeat what she said. Gone are the days of explaining what you want 5 times or paying for mediocre service. Hell,you wont have to listen with intent and then try to scrabble what was said. Nope, at MINGLE you are in a different world. You can have an actual conversation in English (I didn’t say Engrish’) ENGLISH.

You know, I’m a pretty fair person. I don’t think it’s acceptable to review a place if one has never visited that establishment, nor do I think it’s appropriate to write a review just because of an establishment’s beliefs. So, with that being said, let me emphasize that I visited Mingle Nail Salon in Pacific Beach, CA, without any prior knowledge of their attitudes towards race.

Mingle Nail Salon is decorated in dark, contrasting colors, reminiscent of a non-Las Vegas strip club, where the patrons are 18 year old boys with twenty cents in their pockets.

At Mingle Nail Salon, the patrons are 18-35 year old orange girls with twenty different hair colors on their head.

The owner doesn’t quite fit that description. She’s an attractive, blond woman who looks to be to the right of the age range, thus eliminating any attempts to excuse her behavior as immaturity.

When I walked in that slow, exceedingly warm Sunday afternoon, everyone grew quiet. The owner, who had moments earlier pleasantly phoned to provide directions to her salon, stood behind the counter, eyeing me warily as she cleared her throat.

“Um… can I help you?”

Since there were only four other people in the salon who were already preoccupied, I knew she had to be speaking to me.

“Yes, I’m here for the mani/pedi.”

“Oh!  You were the one who called?”

“Yes. I just spoke with you about a minute ago.”

The owner looked down, hesitating before speaking. “Oh, well, um, OK. The magazines are over there and go ahead and pick a color.”

The two nail technicians smiled at me, kindly, while I walked over to peruse the selection of nail colors.

Turquoise. Sparkly turquoise. Bubblegum pink. Silver glitter.

I finally settled on a deep, plum-cherry red.

I sat down and fingered through a magazine with Christian Bale on the cover and listened to the owner talk about the latest dating show.

“Ooh! Did you hear about that new TV series? It’s like the Bachelor, but for fat people!”

“Oh ew, gross!”

Girls giggled. The owner snorted.

“Can you imagine? Hot tub party every night!”

The owner guffawed at her own joke.

After 15 minutes or so, a nail technician named N (name shortened to protect privacy) came over to give me the pedicure. She soaked my feet in lukewarm water for about thirty seconds and began to scrub away.

To spare you the sympathy pains and detailed descriptions of flowing blood, I’ll just get right to the point: N basically exfoliated a hole into the side of my foot.

I was nice, understanding. I know that accidents happen. N was apologetic. It was fine. I gave her a 20% tip.

So the next day, I decided to go onto Yelp.com to check out the reviews about Mingle. I googled Mingle and came upon their myspace, which seemed like the typical photo portfolio consisting of emphasized ass-poses and pouty lips. But what caught my attention and immediately tested my patience was the owner’s personal summary of her business:

My name is Melissa and I am the owner of a very interesting Salon [sic] in Pacific Beach, California. First of all I’m just gonna come out and state the obvious… we aren’t like most salons out there, we’re a salon of english [sic] speaking girls and one straight guy. It’s a dynamic that leads to all kinds of weird situations and entertaining talk. Our patrons are usually quick to comment on the fact that they’ve never heard such conversations in a salon before, we get a kick out of pointing out the fact that they probably have but its [sic] never been in english [sic].

Annoyed, I copied and pasted the myspace address to Tien, who then linked me to the Yelp review posted earlier.

I reviewed Mingle and awarded it one star. The mediocre manicure and bloody foot were enough to earn itself a negative review; the blatant display of racism cemented my decision to give one.

I have a question for Mingle: As a business that prides itself on its English-speaking employees, are you aware that by claiming to tolerate only one language in your salon, you are discriminating against prospective employees and customers on the bases of race and ethnicity?

I would have never imagined that in 2009, racism would act as Mingle’s primary marketing technique; how heartbreaking and shameful.

Truly Transcendent-Al

While his song wasn’t titled “Black or White or Asian or Latino” (it probably wouldn’t have been as catchy), there’s no doubt that MJ’s music crossed boundaries and it really didn’t matter if you were green, purple, or transparent–his music truly transcended through all races, as evidenced below:

Our own inspiration for this blog puts it quite eloquently:

Rev Sharpton praised Jackson’s message of love, his talent and his work breaking down “the colour curtain” and eradicating barriers. “It was Michael Jackson that brought blacks and whites and Asians and Latinos together”.

It isn’t the first time in recent memory that a public figure has recognized America as being more than just “black and white”:

There is not a Black America and a White America and Latino America and Asian America; there’s the United States of America.

-Barack Obama

Of course while on the topic of racial integration, we can never forget the forever memorable “I Have a Dream” speech:

I tried to find a quote by a non-black person as eloquent as the above ones were, but such a task proved to be more difficult than a non-Asian doing Linear Algebra or O-Chem homework.

Sorry guys, maybe next time I can come up with my own.

-Tien