Not gonna sermonize, just want to share this video.

Looks like M-1 is Fox News’s go-to-rapper when they want to blame hip hop for something. The interesting thing is that M-1 completely murks his opponents every time he’s in one of these debates, but I guess the dudes at Fox News don’t realize that. Like I wonder if every time he makes an intelligent point and the chosen opponent responds by repeating the same point for 5 minutes, if the guys in the control room are high-fiving and letting out a guttural “burrrrrrn!”, even though anyone with half a helping of analytical brain power can see that M-1’s arguments actually make sense, and the other dude pretty much never does.

I guess they do not know how unconvincing their anti-hip hop arguments actually are. If Fox News actually wanted to win one of these anti-hip hop segments, they should find a rapper much dumber than M-1. Like Soulja Boy or Jim Jones or something.

Notice how Cavuto does the classic Fox News trick when talking about how rich M-1 is: “that’s not what I hear, I hear you’re doing okBUTCHARLES…” State a firm belief in something that you probably know to be untrue, then change the subject immediately so your guest will look foolish if he tries to go back to that subject. Bill O’Reilly is the master at this.

Not much to say about it. You can see how well M-1 acquits himself and represents, and you can see how badly Fox wants to confirm their audience’s belief that hip hop is corrupting America’s youth by showing some little white kids dancing in an Eminem video then cutting to what looks like some strip club rap video as though they were the same video. That message is pretty clear: rap music will turn your kids into strippers or Eminem! And then they’ll start refusing to help the police terrorize Black neighborhoods!

Happy Thursday!

OK fam, I’m kind of not that good with technology (ayo), but that don’t stop me from trying. I went into my website’s stats to see what people are searching for when they end up at gilesli.com and most of the results are not surprising. “Giles Li” seems to be a common one, as does “Beats Rhymes and Rice” and some other usual suspects…but there are a few search terms on the list, that I just don’t know how they led to my page at all. Read on to be amazed. Or mildly confused maybe.

asians have no soul
When I enter these words into Google, not only do I find my site, but also Dandiggity and Oliver Wang. I have to wonder was someone looking for a mention of this opinion because they wanted some proof? I shudder to think it was a self-loathing Asian person, because if s/he found his/her way to my website…there may already be no hope left. I seem to inspire more self-loathing among the self-loathers. Moving on…

nationality of mike lowell red sox
So, what, no Wikipedia? In case the seeker of this information has been regularly revisiting this site in hopes I would address this question one day, here it is (as copied from Wikipedia): Michael Averett Lowell (born February 24, 1974 in San Juan, Puerto Rico) is a Puerto Rican Major League Baseball third baseman born in Puerto Rico of Cuban descent as well as a cancer survivor.

See? He’s Puerto Rican three times! But he’s of Cuban descent.

nerd shit
…yeah. That’s about right.

scottie nguyen tila tequila (more…)

“Seinfeld” was a funny show, but based on his recent television appearances, commercials, and this godawful new film, I have to assume that the show should have been named after Larry David instead. Either Jerry was never that funny, or having kids makes you infinitely more lame.

But aside from “Bee Movie” being unfunny, which a lot of kids flicks are, it was actually kind of offensive…which a lot of kids flicks also are.

It started out innocuously enough, a little racial joke here and there, not much to get excited over. They certainly weren’t funny, but were only mildly offensive - which is pretty much par for the country club course nowadays. They were just there, kind of like a reminder, “oh yeah, I guess that’s what some white people think is funny…” Except nobody was laughing at anything, like not us, not the white folks, not even any of the kids were laughing at the jokes. It’s like, my 3 year-old nephew would have giggled more if we’d gone to see “American Gangster” like I originally wanted.

For example, the Jerry Seinfeld bee character - I don’t even remember the lead character’s name, how often does that happen? - is talking to his parents about what he’ll do instead of work after graduating college. The final and most outrageous option is “get a gold tooth, start calling everyone Dog” as he pounds his chest and makes a peace sign with his fingers. Come on now, really?

Another one that struck me as pretty uninspired was when they were watching the news, and all the reporters had names like “Buzz Bumble” or whatever bee-related name they came up with, and the final reporter to be mentioned was “Jeanette Chung.” Haw haw. It’s not that I don’t understand the joke, I just don’t see how a professional comedy writer could have thought that was laugh-worthy.

Also, Chris Rock’s mosquito character - Mooseblood - was weirdly like a drug addict. Take that for what it’s worth.

But those somewhat questionable, altogether unfunny jokes didn’t ruin the movie - which was really three plots rolled into one. What really had me kind of upset was the moral of the story. All kids movies have life lessons at the end right? They are often overly simplistic, but you know, it’s for kids, so what do you expect? But the moral to this one was unnecessarily convoluted and turned out to be pretty messed up. (SPOILER AHEAD.) (more…)

Saturday I had the privilege of performing at the 2nd annual IMPAACT Conference at the University of Connecticut. (Really clever acronym: Identifying the Missing Power of Asian Americans in Connecticut. Fiyah!) And got a chance to see old school homie Corky Lee do a presentation about some of his work, which spans several decades of photos of Asian Americans and Pacific Islanders from all walks of life just in their daily. His work has meant a lot to a lot of people, including myself, and so seeing him again was a real thrill.

When I moved away from DC back in 2002, some friends bought me an original print of one of Corky’s photos, which currently hangs in my hallway. It’s a kid’s eye view of a young Chinese boy holding a sign that says “More Jobs!” amid a larger scale protest, and I’m assuming it was taken in Manhattan’s Chinatown when they were building Confucius Plaza and not offering construction work to the Chinese laborers. In the background of the photo is many grandma-looking women holding signs as well. Some folks have asked “is that you?” and of course it’s not, but in a way it’s all of us. It’s representative of the first step any one of us takes in the movement, whatever moved us to fold our fingers around a sign in the first place.

In addition to Corkeezy, I also got to see someone else tied to my DC days, Porthira Chhim, who gave a very interesting presentation about the history of Cambodians in the States, tying in connections to the PATRIOT Act, Armenian genocide, and country music, as well as more typical topics of discussion like the Kim Ho Ma case or the IIRAIRA of 1996. Good thing Porthira was doing it, because if it had been someone else, I don’t know if I would have learned as much as I did. For example, did you know that Cambodians were recruited to attend American universities as far back as the 1950s? I was able to flip through one of his resources, and it was truly fascinating. I’m itching to find out more…

I also peeped a film “Whose Children Are These?” expertly directed by Theresa Thanjan about the fallout from 9/11 for Muslim communities in America, with specific attention to three teenagers in New York. It was great, because it’s not that the information was really new to me, but the storytelling was so powerful that it felt new, and that can go a long way in pushing people not to grow complacent.

Unfortunately, I missed Ishmael Ileto, who was so genuine and kind to me when I met him back in 2000. In fact, if you look on the inside of the re: verse CD, the shirt I’m wearing is actually the shirt he gave me of his brother’s image. It’s strange how many connections that this past weekend had to my time living in Washington. There are a lot more actually, but you don’t have all day now do you…

But the show was just me and a hip hop act GNE, who were really ill. You may not have heard of them because they’ve only started working together recently, but definitely keep checking for them, because they will be making themselves known. And the message they are spreading needs to be heard. It really was my pleasure to be sharing a stage with them, and I know I’ll be seeing them at many more venues in the future. I’m gonna go out on a limb and also say they are the dopest Sikh hip hop duo I have ever seen. So take that for what you will.

Anyway, I really appreciate the hard work that Mike and the rest of the student organizers put into the conference. They taught me about the new fashion trend of rocking a t-shirt over your dress shirt, which gives you the benefit of the relaxed look of the t-shirt, plus the business attire of a dress shirt. That’s the new shit. Trust me.

Also, it was really cool to see the resources available to Asian American students at UConn! Not only space, but dedicated staff, and just looking back on photos from past events, I see they’ve really done their work trying to bring the rest of the country to their campus, including Dith Pran, Yuri Kochiyama, and my mellow Ed Bok Lee. I hope I get a chance to go back there real soon, because I’m always impressed to see the work that happens on behalf of API students in rural campuses. And believe me. UConn is about as rural as it gets.

Aite yall. It’s hard trying to keep up this blog pace. Hope to see you again soon.

Last night, Beats Rhymes & Rice did it up again. This time at Northeastern University in Boston, and all I can say is thank you to the folks there for everything, from the hard work it took to find space, to removing that oddly-dressed – yet surprisingly nice - frat out of our green room, to getting us water, to providing us with Jamaican food after the show. (Know this: if you’re running low on funds but need to eat, Jamaican food is one of the best options out there, because you will stay full for hours on only a couple bucks. Thank all that’s good for the beef patty.) Much props to Delia at the Asian American Center and Long.

I have to admit, we had our doubts about the space when we first started scoping it out, because it was a food court, complete with a Wendy’s, a D’Angelos, and a Taco Bell (speaking of which, did anyone notice that the only thing Royce Clayton did during the World Series was talk about getting a free taco at Taco Bell? He didn’t even get on the field, yet he was wearing a mic for the cameras. I have to say, that is somewhat suspicious, I wonder if the league is going to force every team to have one guy they don’t play but wears a mic every game for product placement. Like Carlos Gomez be sitting on the Mets bench asking other players: “have you seen that new Harry Potter movie? You know he can fly!”)

But so, we had our reservations, but by the time everything was set up for the show, it was cool. They had a wall up to block us from having to look at the restaurants the whole time, plus they had given us 5 mics. 5! We only had three people performing, so I tried my best to move from mic to mic and use all of them, because I didn’t want that set up time to have been in vain. (more…)

Hip-hop performance to examine culture
Matt Collette, 11/05/2007
From the The Northeastern News

While considering hip-hop and spoken word performances, Asian American performers are rarely the first to come to mind, said organizers of tonight’s “Beats Rhymes and Rice” event.

Three Asian American hip-hop artists from across the country will perform in the West Addition of the Curry Student Center at 8 p.m. The performers seek to examine Asian American culture through a medium not usually associated with Asian culture.

“It’s a spoken word hip-hop event featuring three Asian American performers,” said Delia Cheung Hom, director of the Asian American Center.

The event, a collaboration between the Asian American Center, the Asian Student Union, the Korean-American Student Association and the Vietnamese Student Association, will showcase Asian American performers, a demographic not usually associated with hip-hop, Hom said.

Beats Rhymes and Rice is named after a line from Seattle-based hip-hop duo Blues Scholar song with the lyric: “Beats rhymes rice be the breakfast of champions.”

Both members of Blues Scholar are second-generation Americans whose parents worked hard to send them to college, according to their website.

The three performers are Giles Li, Bao Phi and Kiwi, each hailing from a different region of the country. According to promotional material for the Beats Rhymes and Rice tour, they deliver a unique combination of social commentary, self reflection and painful comedy, all to challenge established assumptions about the Asian American community.

Hom said few people are aware of Asian American hip-hop performers, but the three performers at Beats Rhymes and Rice have all made names of themselves in their local communities, as well as on a national level.

“You ask people, ‘have you ever heard of an Asian American hip-hop performer’ and they say no,” Hom said. (more…)

Over the past weekend, my wife and I met Ewuare X. Osayande at Brown University, and I have to say upfront I was slightly intimidated by how intelligent and well-spoken he was. It’s rare to meet someone who has the kind of presence this man has, and what was more impressive was the feeling that he was being completely genuine with everything he did and said. Nothing escaped his lips that was not well thought out. I never met the man before, but I will definitely keep checking for him, and I’m glad we were able to interact in such a positive way.

The reason this past weekend came about in the first place was the confluence of a few different factors at the right time: Asian American Heritage Month, Southeast Asian Heritage Week, and the Black Heritage Series. So the students came up with the crazy plan to bring the aforementioned Ewuare and myself, and the one and only Bao Phi into town to do workshops about interracial coalitions and building a movement for all oppressed people. Apparently, this was the first time those three campuswide efforts had collaborated on one event, and from what everyone was saying, it was successful beyond expectations - although they may have only been saying that so we didn’t feel bad. Following that, we three performed, along with several Rhode Island-based poets and Brown students. Man, it almost made me feel bad because the quality of spit on the mic was making me doubt if I even deserved the status of “feature.” These folks were dope, including old friend Ammala Douangsavanh (of Zawadi), as well as the campus spoken word crew Word.

For a trip that lasted fewer than 24 hours, there was a lot going on. Much respect to the student organizers - and there were many - who battled sleeplessness and apparently school-sanctioned debauchery (Rahul mentioned something called ‘Trick or Drink’ which is probably exactly as it sounds…) to make it happen.

So after the show, we hit up the Vietnamese joint next door, which was called “Phonomenal” “Phonatic” and really lived up to the name. But because my wife grew up making family daytrips to Rhode Island for Khmer food, we knew what we had to do the next day. After soliciting recommendations from the local Southeast Asian population – including the folks from PrYSM (click the link to learn somethin’) we ended up filling up at Apsara Restaurant and also hitting up Sunny Market to buy a box of about 130 persimmons for five dollars - five dollars! - as well as mad frozen fish. Word to the Asian-owned independent stores.

The itis took hold on the drive back, and combined with the end of daylight savings, I ended up missing the end of the Patriots’ ninth straight win along with the rest of my Sunday. Bao makes his way back East this week, as we join up with Kiwi for the second Beat Rhymes and Rice show here in the Bean. See yall there.

Let me admit upfront that I don’t really know shit about painting and painters. Gauguin is no exception. I was barely familiar with his work or his life, except I knew he had once been a white collar professional and moved to Tahiti later in life to concentrate on painting. He’s renowned, so I figured, you know, go on, do your thing. I had no interest in learning much more.

But I recently came across an article about dude, and it opened my eyes a little bit. The author of the article admitted a few things about Gauguin, including that he was not embraced by other French folks, not considered a great artist in his day, was considered a hedonist by the local (French colonizer) Polynesian government, and disliked by most locals. Yet by the end of the article, the writer had us trying to sympathize with him because of his restless soul, which led him to travel to the South Pacific, searching for his version of paradise (where he could use his relative wealth to exploit local communities and spread STDs. Asshole.)

So I did a little bit of research about him. Turns out it’s as bad as I imagined. First of all, how are people gonna give him props for his influence on the “Primitivism” movement in art? From what I can gather – word to Wikipedia – Primitivism was a reaction to the Enlightenment in art and music, which reflected the values that Europeans at the time considered “primitive.” (Man Europeans of the 18th and 19th centuries, you guys are fucks.) Brought on because of widespread European invasions of other parts of the world, Primitivism was influenced by the white man’s interpretation of the arts of Africa, South America, the Pacific Islands, the Middle East, and Asia. I guess cats were thinking European art was all about imitation, and in their search for authenticity, they stole imagery from the art of other parts of the world. You know, because that’s way more authentic. (more…)