Video: Geologic Spits A Cappella, With a Glass of Wine in Hand to Boot

If you already read the Blue Scholars blog, you just saw this. If you don't, get on it! This is why I love the Scholars:

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Video: Common Market "Tobacco and Snow Road" (response to Blue Scholars)

A minute ago, I posted up the new little freestyle Blue Scholars track that they recorded and made a video about. Ra Scion from Common Market, which shares Sabzi as the DJ and is part of the MassLine family, made a little response video, because apparently the track was supposed to be for the new Common Market EP. The parody is hilarious. I love the spirit of these guys - so talented, but just fam, really.

Check the Scholars video first for full effect.

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Video: Blue Scholars "Coffee and Snow"

Hey ya'll. Here's a new video from the Blue Scholars with a little track they pulled together while snowed in from some homecoming shows last week. I like Sabzi's beat, and I love the video, actually.

Wishing all of my comrades and friends, family and strangers alike, a happy new year. Let's all wish for peace in the Middle East.

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Film: Batman: Gotham Knight (2008)

Batman: Gotham Knight is an animated feature-length that went straight to DVD this year. It is noteworthy for a number of reasons. First, it is comprised of 6 short tales, each similar but shorter than individual episodes of Batman: The Animated Series. Second, I don't think that any of the segments are drawn by the same artists, and much of it is in anime style (think, The Animatrix concept, although I didn't see that film). A big plus, however, is that some of the vocal talents from the Animated Series reprise their roles in this film (most importantly, Kevin Conroy as Bruce Wayne/Batman). Finally, similar to the Animatrix, Gotham Knight is meant to take place between Batman Begins and this summer's smash hit Dark Knight

To take it back, I loved the Batman: Animated Series cartoon. It took me a while to get into it, because it was different from the other stuff that was out there (and I think I was in high school or something when it came out). I remember first watching and thinking "this is it? why is there so little music? It's just him talking, and then there's some action, then more talking." I finally gave it another chance, and realized what was going on.

The creators wanted to bring Batman back to his roots from the comic books - Frank Miller's reinvention of the character as a much more complex, dark figure in the DC Universe.Batman was much more aloof, harder to connect to the sunny optimism (and red, white, and blue Americanism) of Superman. He had a dark back story that led to the character that we know. He lived in the shadows, did not have supernatural or extraterrestrial origins to make him special: he was a bad mofo with a lot of money and personal discipline (most of the time).

Because of this, Batman was more human this way, and tapped into something deeper with real readers. Additionally, his realm, Gotham is a dark, sinister version of NYC, where retro, modern, and futuristic forms and technology clash and combine in interesting (but almost always gothic) landscapes. I think Nolan's Batman Begins and Dark Knight also went back to the source material, which is why the fans of the comic have been so taken by them, and the films worked in shadows and shades of black and gray.

I had mixed feelings about the film, only because it made me nostalgic for the old series, which I would record on VHS whenever I could (time to dig out that tape... and buy a VCR?) but it's definitely worth seeing for the fans. I don't think I could rank it better than Mask of the Phantasm, which I actually saw in the theater. You know, this just made me realize that I never saw Batman and Mr. Freeze: Subzero, which is actually ranked higher than Mask of the Phantasm on Rotten Tomatoes...

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Where Are the South Asians: "Vincent Who?" Preview and Critique

I just caught wind of this new documentary, directed by Tony Lam and produced by Curtis Chin/Asians Pacific Americans for Progress, called "Vincent Who?" which looks at the legacy of the murder of Vincent Chin and the activism that galvanized some Asian American communities afterwards (it was 25 years in 2007). Here's the preview:



Okay - so I have some issues with this, and I'm hoping that they won't play out the same way once I see the full film, but I'm not hopeful. First, for Asian American activists of any color/ethnic configuration, Vincent Chin's story represented a senseless murder that underscored the sometimes severe anti-Asian sentiment that remained in the United States (i.e. passing new laws to get rid of racist old laws didn't get rid of Asian as foreign and other sentiments). The film "Who Killed Vincent Chin?" really captured the spirit of the time; the pain on his mother's face still haunts me, and the images of Asian activism around this particular hate crime were very important for me to feel connected and understand the injustice involved.

But the raising of Vincent Chin's story to this level of importance also does the same thing as focusing heavily on the 1960s and 1970s APA activism (I Wor Kuen, I-Hotel, Third World Student Strike, Basement Workshop, the Internment reparations movement and various other things): they shut out the importance, activism, and organizing in newer immigrant communities. Vincent Chin's story is the touchstone, but Navroze Modi, Balbir Singh Sodhi, Rishi Maharaj, and the many Southeast Asians who have been senselessly murdered are forgotten.

This film's preview tells me two things: first, the question is posed to a lot of South Asian students as well as other Asian students. They're as ignorant of Vincent Chin as anyone else, it seems, and I think the point should be that they should know. But second and more importantly, the people who are interviewed about the impact of the case and the resulting activism only includes (in my quick review of the preview and the written materials) one South Asian, who's on the WEST COAST (and who I've never heard of). Anti-Asian violence has been a huge deal in South Asian communities, and organizers and activists continue to use the lessons of the Vincent Chin advocacy to guide their ongoing work. But they are ignored in this new documentary. People who have no direct connection with the case are asked about how it affected them. I know a lot of people that it affected who committed their time and work to fighting anti-Asian/anti-immigrant/anti-gay/anti-black hate crimes. But they aren't included here (or at least, don't have any marquee presence, and I would think some of them would).

This just makes no sense to me at all - it seems like a glaring mistake that could have easily been rectified. I will wait to pass final judgment, but it was a great opportunity, I can come up with a long list of names of people who could have been interviewed, and I can't understand why, if the purpose was to show ways that APAs now are affected and could still be connected to this story, that step wasn't taken. Shut out again, even when hate crimes against South Asians have risen tremendously in the years after 9/11. I'm not whining here, just asking what gives, and wondering why there aren't more truly representative efforts out there by non-South Asians in things that are very obviously relevant.

Maybe I'm wrong. I'm not saying it's deliberate, but is that an excuse?

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Ahmedabad's Fancy Marketing

Check out the video below, sent to me by a family member who was born and raised in the city. It's amazing how you can just look at these things without a critical eye and think "wow - how great!" But then you start to think about how the city is incredibly segregated between the Muslim and Hindu/Jain sections, how Muslims live in abject poverty, and how there is such deep-seated hatred, racism, and bigotry fomenting in the middle-class Hindus/Jains there and abroad (which just makes no sense - you're doing okay, why are you hating on the people who are suffering?). And you remember that Ahmedabad has been the epicenter of Gujarat's politics of hate, culminating in the pograms in which thousands were killed and tens of thousands were displaced from their homes.

This is obviously to appeal to tourists and commerce interests abroad, saying "hey, remember us? forget about Banglalore and the other cities," but the omission of Muslims and/or the history of communal violence from the narrative about the city altogether (how many more pujas do you want to show, after all?) is very disturbing.

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M.I.A. down with M.E.T.A.L.?

In my ongoing quest to understand the metal/hard rock influence in M.I.A.'s music, I fell onto her "officially" released version of the Paper Planes video. Aside for the sound being intact from the recording (the censorship issues that she faced came, ironically, from gunshot sound effects rather than actual words), she sported a Metallica/Ride the Lightning shirt in one of the scenes that comes up a few times. What that's all about, I have no idea.

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Bruce on the Today Show

Bruce Springsteen has a new album coming out next week. He's given one song away for free already, and I'd be surprised if he didn't do other interesting promotions with the album. But what's even more amazing is that he played for a NYC crowd for the Today Show this morning, a typical venue for commercial acts, but not heavyweights like Bruce. We wondered what he was thinking - was he selling out too much in his old age?

He started the set with "The Promised Land" - an old song with oodles more depth than you can imagine a twenty-something mustering nowadays. And then he talked for a little while, making what seemed to be small talk with Matt Lauer and company. He said that the feel he was going for with the album was a throwback in musical style to the great pop singles of the 50s and 60s - he name checked California and Pet Sounds in particular. But then he said that the album was also about subverting the music with lyrics that come at the audience on topics they weren't expecting - more current things about what's happening now.

And then, before he intro'd a song, when he had his own mic, he proceeded to say (I'm paraphrasing here): "This album is about things we love about America - you know, cheeseburgers, french fries, the Yankees beating the Red Sox, the Bill of Rights..." Wait a minute, say what?! Yeah, he said the Bill of Rights. And the crowd didn't cheer as much for that as they did for cheeseburgers, but he didn't seem to skip a beat.

He said then, "in the past six years, we've had illegal wiretaps, suspension of habeas corpus, the abandonment of the great city of New Orleans, and thousands of our young men and women dying in this war." It was unreal. He basically listed out a whole set of reasons why this administration and the status quo have to go. The crowd didn't get it, but he wasn't talking only to his die-hard fans in the audience or watching at home. He was talking to the largest audience he'll ever get to speak to directly. I don't know what the viewership of the Today show is, but if people kept it on and didn't just say "oh this guy" and switch the channel, maybe some of them said "hell yeah!" and will get involved or plug into his message. There was a reason for this move, and I'm incredibly impressed that he used his cache as a rockstar to get a microphone in a way most politicians wouldn't.

Magic drops on Tuesday, and we're seeing him for two nights on the tour. We couldn't be happier. Unless you have more tickets to share.

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Watada, Resistor.

I know that I've been posting up a bunch of YouTube videos today, but this one is awesome. It's a 2-part short film that documents the moment when Iraq War resister, 1st Lt. Ehren Watada, calls 3 Japanese American men who were involved in similar controversies during WWII: two were no-no boys (refusing to serve because they didn't believe that they should have to serve the nation when the nation had interned their people) and one was a WWII veteran. The film has a few significant highlights for me, but you should check it out for yourself. I think that Lt. Watada is incredibly articulate about why he is resisting, and I think that hearing the old-timers speak of then and now is really something else.

*** The old-timers talk about how the Japanese American Citizen's League (JACL), which had a very controversial stance on the no-no boys during WWII (claiming that they should be tried for sedition, rather than just draft resistance), is not necessarily changing their tune this time around either. Watada mentions that they have been supportive of him, but haven't come out against the war (nor has the ACLU). I think it's quite courageous for him to be critical of his supporters in this way, and makes me feel that he is doing this out of true conviction, and not as a stunt.

*** Watada speaks very eloquently about the duty to speak up against this illegal war. I think that we can all get something out of what he's saying here - and it's just remarkable that he's so poised about it, given his age. It's not easy to take such a fierce stand.

See it for yourself:

Part I:

Part II:

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Beau Sia on Rosie O'Donnell.

This is so great (thanks Mike). Definitely a more poignant rebuttal to Rosie than what I posted earlier.

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Jin is Back.

Check out this video by Asian American hip-hop artist Jin. I thought that Jin's efforts out of the gate were ehhh, but this song/concept makes me smile.

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