EAU S**T: PERFUME SETS OFF HYSTERIA

Between She and Me Lies Sashimi

As all my fans know, I just launched Sashimi, my new fragrance line featuring raw fish, wasabi, and the eye cheese lodged in between my epicanthic folds.

Buyers from as far away as Fort Worth were copping bottles.

Unfortunately, it looks like I'm going to have issue a recall.

From the BBC:

Thirty-four people went to hospital and dozens were treated for sickness after strong perfume was sprayed by a woman in a Texas bank. Two workers initially complained of having chest pains and headaches.

The bank then announced that anyone who felt ill should leave the building, prompting around 150 people to take up the offer.

Twelve people were taken to hospital by ambulance, after they complained of feeling short of breath and dizzy. ...

Emergency services initially feared that there may have been a leak of carbon monoxide but having checked the building, decided that a strong perfume was to blame.

Investigators do not know what kind of perfume was sprayed.

Something smells fishy about those numbers, however. Over 150 suffering employees?

When that Bank of America branch announced that those feeling ill can leave, plenty of healthy people probably bounced and went home to memorize common responses to Rorschach inkblots.

--Junichi

WHAT HAPPENED TO CREEPY ELECTRONIC SCORES?

Confession: I have never watched The Shining from beginning to end. I don't know if I'll ever get up the nerve to do so. Even the trailer leaves me shook.

(P.S. I just realized Roland Emmerich bit this same score for the teaser trailer for 2012. It was decidedly less scary when he did it).

--O.W.

POST-RACIAL, WHAT?

Harvard Professor Jailed; Officer Is Accused of Bias - NYTimes.com

--O.W.

A LATINA JUDGE AND A COUNTRY BUILT BASICALLY BY WHITE FOLKS

Buchanan: "This has been a country built basically by white folks"

Given Judge Sotomayor's distinguished resume and impressive performance at this week's hearings, the Senate Republicans likely to vote against her confirmation are struggling to defend their position with any level of specificity and honesty.

Senator Mitch McConnell, for example, plans to vote against Sotomayor because of her "alarming lack of respect for the notion of equal justice" and her "insufficient willingness to abide by the judicial oath."

But Pat Buchanan, in the video above, is articulating what some of the opposition is thinking, but too afraid to say out of fear of alienating potential voters.

Buchanan is voicing the backwards view that many still cling to: if a person's gender and ethnicity is considered in the selection process, she must inherently be unqualified for the position.

Again, while I find nearly everything Buchanan is saying abhorrent, it's another example of a circumstance when I prefer that bigots be overt and honest instead of covert and disingenuous.

--Junichi

SHULMAN'S L.A.

over the hill

Julius Sherman, dead at 98

--O.W.

UCSD TELLS REST OF UC TO DROP DEAD

To quote NWA and Ice Cube, here's what they think about you.

I'm relieved to see that the Ethnic Studies dept. at UCSD were not signatories on this nonsense.

--O.W.

THE ATLANTIC BIG UPS THE ECONOMIST

The Newsweekly’s Last Stand - The Atlantic
(July/August 2009)

This piece, by Michael Hirschorn, raises some intriguing points about how a print magazine can still thrive in a day where we presume the internet has all but rendered the newsstand to an anachronism. In particular, he tries to explain what The Economist has done well enough that once giant weeklies like Time and Newsweek are now copying the same format. Even if you have no interest in the magazine, Hirschorn's analysis here is worth considering especially because it argues the basic point that good content still matters - it's not just about speed or spectacle.

Personally, I'm a fan of the mag though I only kept my subscription about a year or so. That wasn't for any lack of interest in the mag; it was a time issue. I simply didn't have enough hours in the week to stay on top of the publications I already read and since so much of The Economist is dedicated to business news, it seemed like an excessive expense. That said, I always valued its efficiency in trying to parse complex national and global issues and despite having a clear right-bent with its free market embrace, on most social issues, the magazine is far more left than many might assume. Their coverage of immigration issues, for example, are especially strong, as have been analyses of developments around race, class and real estate.

--O.W.

SOCCER BALLS AND APARTHEID WALLS

Commercial for Israeli cellphone carrier Cellcom

This may not be the equivalent of the Third Reich kicking a soccer ball over a concentration camp wall during the holocaust, but it's still in the same category of foul.

Maybe Sprint can run with the idea and set up a volleyball game outside Guantanamo Bay.

Or Lynndie England can play naked Twister with Abu Ghraib prisoners and ask, "Can you hear me now?"

(Credit: Kathy H.)

--Junichi

ON BRÜNO

Numero Bruno

Before I saw Brüno this evening, I had read gushing reviews heralding the film as a brilliant skewering of homophobia and ignorance.

I also read equally negative reviews, as well as complaints from several advocacy groups, slamming it as a faux-gay minstrel show that has the ultimate effect of promoting homophobia.

Given that Sacha Baron Cohen attended a rally for Proposition 8 as a potential scene for this movie, I had high hopes that this film would skewer the lunacy of homophobia.

But I nonetheless viewed it with an open mind, open to a spectrum of possibility, ready to opine on the matter.

Alas, I just finished watching it and I only have one strong opinion about this film: it is exceptionally apolitical.

It's just two hours of extreme pranks with a brave provocateur who had the sole goal to shock and awe.

Spoiler alert: Consider the Ron Paul scene. For me, the idea of Brüno tricking Ron Paul into making a sex tape is delicious with potential. Ron Paul, after all, is one of many politicians opposed to fully extending marriage rights to gays and lesbians. However, the scene is funny only to the extent that it is funny to see any random person -- regardless of their politics or sexual orientation -- being Punk'd by a fake gay Austrian fashionista who tries to seduce him. Plus, Ron Paul is no Rick Santorum.

Sacha Baron Cohen and director Larry Charles seemed driven by a purpose beyond entertainment in only one scene: when they exposed the lunacy of stage parents willing to sacrifice anything to land their kids a gig. (Those five minutes, in my opinion, were well worth the price of admission.)

In contrast, Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan was a thoughtful satire that had the partial goal of exposing some subtle forms of prejudice that Americans have towards immigrants.

What Borat and Brüno have in common, however, is that both films left me a hundred times more fascinated in the guerrilla tactics used to make the movie than the finished products themselves.

Long after I've forgotten about specific scenes from these movies and the television show, I will continue to wonder how so many people were duped into signing consent forms and remaining on camera even after the hijinks started.

--Junichi

PL + FB

Poplicks.com on Facebook

--O.W.

BONGS & JOINTS ON NETWORK TV?

High on Blair

When's the last time you've seen someone smoke a joint in a family-friendly scripted series on network TV during prime time?

Have you ever seen teenagers with bongs on NBC?

I can't think of a single instance except one memorable episode of The Facts of Life from 1980. (See video excerpt above.)

Am I wrong to conclude that this episode could never air today -- even with its clear anti-drug message?

Perhaps it's no coincidence that the FCC's push to regulate decency standards didn't begin until after 1980 when Reagan was elected.

It's hard to process how some rules have relaxed, while others have tightened over the last quarter century.

(It's also hard to process that I've witnessed over a quarter century of television history.)

*

Side note #1:

When's the last time you've seen Helen Hunt peddle ganja on television?

Answer: The last time you watched the above Facts of Life episode.

*

Side note #2:

When's the last time you've seen a scripted comedy series on network prime time tackle the subject of pedophilia by airing an episode about a friendly child molester who drugs kids with booze and pills, shows pornographic cartoons, and takes pictures of them bare-chested?

For me, the only show I know that went there is Diff'rent Strokes, which is the show that later spawned Facts of Life.

This was creepy when I watched it over 25 years ago. And it's even creepier now.

While it's great the show brought the issue of child abuse into our homes, I still have nightmares about what happened to Dudley. Plus, I am still very hesitant to enter bike shops.

Again, would any family-friendly show do something similar today?

*

Side note #3:

Could there be anything from Diff'rent Strokes that is creepier than the pedophilia episode mentioned above?

Answer: Yes. The opening credits from the show. If you change the music.

(Thanks to Hank for the f'ed up clip above!)

--Junichi

WHEN OVERT RACISM IS REFRESHING

When George Wallace becomes the lifeguard

Would you rather live in:

(1) a society in which all racism is transparent, blatant, and in your face; or

(2) a society with as much racism as the one above but where the prejudice is largely veiled, subtle, and repackaged as something less insidious?

Put another way, would you rather have the KKK wearing white hoods or three-piece suits? (Note to self: we need to reference Ice Cube more often around here.)

In my head, I debate this question all the time.

On the one hand, option #2 seems like a far more pleasant place to live, as it erases the visible signs of hatred. One can claim to live in a post-racial society and believe, albeit falsely, in the hope of equal opportunity.

On the other hand, with option #1, you know where you stand with everyone and vice versa. No need to wonder if your prospective employer, father-in-law, landlord, or teacher is a bigot. If he is, he'll hurl racial epithets at you or burn crosses in order to leave no ambiguity.

This all brings me to this emerging story:

As you may have heard, the Creative Steps Day Camp paid $1950 to The Valley Swim Club, a private swim club in Northeast Philly, to use their pool. The Valley Swim Club is a private club that advertises open membership.

But the seemingly all-white club ejected the kids from the day camp when the club's pool became inundated with dozens of Black and Chicano children.

News segment with more info below:



Now, here's the kicker.

In explaining why the club ejecting the kids from the camp, John Duesler, President of The Valley Swim Club, said,

"There was concern that a lot of kids would change the complexion ... and the atmosphere of the club."

Did you get that? The black and brown kids would "change the complexion" of the club.

His honesty is as refreshing as a swimming pool on a hot summer day!

So while I still can't answer the question I posed at the beginning of this post, I can say that one thing I like about option #1 is that it's a world where the discriminated will have a much easier time winning lawsuits!

--Junichi

THE DEATH OF MACHO?

The Death of Macho - By Reihan Salam | Foreign Policy:

Reihan Salam, who I usually associate with The Atlantic writes for Foreign Policy this week with a very provocative essay that argues that the major transformation underfoot because of the global recession is a reconfiguration of gender relations. I'll just skip to a few key money 'graphs he puts out:

"the most enduring legacy of the Great Recession will not be the death of Wall Street. It will not be the death of finance. And it will not be the death of capitalism. These ideas and institutions will live on. What will not survive is macho"

"The axis of global conflict in this century will not be warring ideologies, or competing geopolitics, or clashing civilizations. It won’t be race or ethnicity. It will be gender."

I'm curious to see what reactions will be to this argument. While I think Salam makes several leaps in analysis with insufficient data to really prove his point, I agree with some of the basic tenets of his argument, namely that if male power is in decline (whether domestically or globally), this will create moments fraught with both potential and peril. Whether that will be the defining *conflict* of the 21st century is harder to say though there's no shortage of examples to suggest that, in local pockets, the fight for gender equality is being met with violent resistance by men unhappy with the idea of a loss of their (unearned) privilege.

--O.W.

RACE AND ROOMIES

Interracial Roommates Can Reduce Prejudice, Campus Studies Find - NYTimes.com:

Interesting study but what is up with this?

"Several studies have shown that living with a roommate of a different race changes students’ attitudes. One, from the University of California at Los Angeles, generally found decreased prejudice among students with different-race roommates — but those who roomed with Asian-Americans, the group that scored the highest on measures of prejudice, became more prejudiced themselves."

I think we need former UC Berkeley student housing coordinator, Junichi, to weigh in on this.

--O.W.

SHANGHAI: CITY OF LOST MEMORIES

the road to m50

In early June, myself and my family went to Shanghai to visit my parents. This was the third trip I had made there since 2002; you can read my travelogues from the first two here and here.

It's been five years since my last visit and not coincidentally, it's the first time I've been back since El-Boogie was born. I'm sure I would have made it back sooner but the idea of flying with a baby or even toddler for 12 hours inspired too much anxiety for us to gut it out. As it turns out, El loved the plane trip out and what's not to love? Snacks + meals + a portable DVD player (best. investment. ever) + little gifts + coloring books + binky = everything she loves crammed into half a day. All the plane needed was a bouncy house but I don't think you get those kind of perks in United Economy.

The excitement began the moment we landed...mostly because Chinese officials, still smarting from the avian flu outbreak of a few years back, were hyper-paranoid of the swine flu. Planes coming in from the U.S. had to first be cleared by China's version of the CDC, which meant a bunch of white Hazmat suited guys going around the plane and zapping everyone's forehead with an infrared thermometer. Under other circumstances, I'd say it was surreal but somehow, it seemed like the proper way to kick off the week.
More after the jump:


The most immediate change I noticed about Shanghai was...change. I thought the city was already over the top in 2004 but that was before major construction had begun for the 2010 Shanghai Expo, a city-wide event that is rumored to bear a price tag greater than even the recent Beijing Olympics. Most obviously, there are some huge venues undergoing construction right now, including this inverted pyramid pavilion that wouldn't be out of place from Blade Runner (and indeed, Shanghai, more than ever, seems to realize futuristic visions of the neo-city as seen in sci-fi and anime from the past), the other a massive dome-like venue that reminded me of one of the space ships from ID4. However, many of the changes around the city are less spectacular but no less significant. All along the major thoroughfares, high-rises are getting "face lifts" to freshen up their exteriors. In some cases, that means giving some buildings fake brick facades - they have the look and texture of brick but aren't brick at all. It has also been striking to see the extent that pseudo-European styles have been applied to apartments; you have these 20-40 story buildings with out-of-place Italian or French motifs.

However, it's not the quality of the architecture that makes the biggest impression - it's the sheer quantity. This is what also struck me in 2002 and 2004 but seems even more omnipresent (and slightly oppressive) now. It's not unusual to see rows upon rows of massive, identical apartment buildings stacked towards the horizon. It's like this everywhere in Shanghai, especially Pudong, the newer part of the city that sits east of the river. Pudong is where the most aggressive development has occurred - 20 years ago, it was mostly farmland, these days I'd wager only Dubai would exceed it for the sheer degree of transformation and (over)development. I stayed in Pudong in 2002 and was already astounded by the outrageous of the skyscrapers and the skyline has only continued to scrape upward - the main building that wasn't here 5 years ago is currently (and only temporarily) Shanghai's tallest - the "bottle opener"-shaped Shanghai World Financial Center. Ground was recently broken on what will become the new tallest building in China once completed and I wouldn't be surprised if that will quickly be supplanted.

However, what was far more striking to me in Pudong was what was at eye level. My folks live off of Nanjing Xi Lu, one of the major E-W thoroughfare in downtown Shanghai and home to countless high-end shops but Nanjing Xi Lu feels positively quaint compared to Pudong's commercial makeover. There's simply more room to build in Pudong and developers have taken full advantage - everything tries to be taller, bigger, flashier, etc. There are few better embodiments of this than Super Brand Mall, a monstrous, 10 story mall that is probably at least 3-4 times the size of, say, the Beverly Center or Glendale Galleria. It doesn't have its own rollercoaster (yet) but it still is one of the great (and by that, I don't mean "good") monoliths to Western consumerism. Everything you could possibly hate about a mall is super-sized here though even I have to admit, the kid's playground on the 7th floor was pretty damn awesome. And I can't hate on the Orange Julius in the basement that serves up a guava-lychee milkshake. But otherwise, I just found it to be an exhausting, ostentatious palace to rampant consumerism (and hell, I live in LA so imagine what it must be like to find something worse).

This all said though, with change comes opportunity and Shanghai is teeming with that as well, at least based on the conversations I had with friends there, both local guys like Gary Wang and ex-pats from the U.S. and Europe. The city is dynamic in a way that few American cities were even before the recession and by the end of the trip, I could appreciate the attraction of why people are coming to live and work here (and it's not just for the xiao long bao) (more on food later). Everything feels possible and so much of the city's energy seems to be directed towards that ideal.

I saw there's a massive complex going up next to where my folks live but even though they've demolished most of the area where some new towers will eventually get built, there's an older, stately mansion still sitting amongst the rubble and I've been told the city is going to literally move the building a few dozen yards to preserve it while still putting it somewhere more "convenient." How you would exactly move a building of this size is beyond my engineering imagination but these kinds of projects can be found throughout the city. The past here is an obstacle and either you move it or destroy it. Nostalgia is too expensive.

All around the city are posters with the slogan "Better City, Better Life." Considering how forward-looking the Expo is supposed to be, you'd think they could come up with a better tagline than something that sounds dull even by Communist propaganda standards. This is only outdone by the bland posters that go with them; I don't mean to sound too "I'm a Mac" here but the design looks straight off of something Microsoft would have done, with the exception of the Expo's mascot, Haibao, who looks like he should be shilling for Aim Toothpaste.

---

At least the food is still good. At least, depending on where you can still find it. There's a popular food alley near my parents - Wujiang Lu - that houses Yang's Fry Dumplings, one of the better known spots in Shanghai to get fried xiao long bao. Unfortunately, they're going to be demolishing most of this alley to make way for new developments, a sad blow (I would think) to the rich street food culture of the city. Of course, when you compare Wujiang with Nanjing Xi Lu, it's easy to see why Wujiang is on its way out - it's like two different cities practically within a block of one another.

According to my friend Gary, who I trust in all things related to food, the main spot for all the good grub in the city is now the Jingan neighborhood, which is basically the northwest quadrant closest to where Chengdu Lu and the Ya'nan Elevated Rd. intersect. Lots of cool, unpretentious stores and restaurants, including possibly the best xiao long bao place I've tried in the city, yet (Fuchun).

Note: is it possible to overload on xiao long bao? Yes, yes it is. Delicious but man cannot live by soup dumplings alone.

There was also a really amazing DVD store in the Jingan area too. I wrote a lot about the bootleg DVD scene before but it's elevated considerably in the last five years. The packaging, especially, is astounding - if you didn't realize that all this stuff were bootleg copies, you could certainly be fooled when the complete Studio Ghibli collection is packaged nice enough to make the folks at Criterion notice. The days of thin plastic + paper covers is long gone...almost. There are still exceptions to that - I found this hilarious, the back cover for a bootleg of My Zinc Bed (I didn't even realize that was the actual title of the film...I thought for sure it was some "lost in translation" example). Clearly, whoever designed the back cover just cribbed notes off the web for it.

Culturally, I didn't get a chance to soak in as much as in previous times but I have to say: I had the best time DJing at The Shelter, a nightclub that Gary helps run that gets its name from the fact that it is built out of an old bomb shelter. Not for the claustrophobic but by far, one of the most interesting spaces I've ever spun in . Even though the headlining DJing didn't make it out (visa problems), we still had a healthy crowd (most ex-pats, quite a few Japanese trainspotters too) dancing to an evening of funk records (or, er, sound files). They're about to open a Beijing Shelter too, also built out of a bomb shelter.

S and I got the afternoon off one day to go visit the current center of Shanghai's arts scene, M50, aka 50 Monganshan Rd. Better minds than mine have already written about it but suffice to say, it's comprised of a dense series of overlapping galleries, some small, some sprawling. The thing about M50 though is that while it takes up part of the block, its integration into the surrounding buildings creates these mish-mashes of residential/commercial use that's quite familiar to anyone who's seen gentrification in motion. To wit...

I didn't take very copious notes on the art we saw (I leave that to my art critic wife) but I did enjoy the Su Jin exhibit at M97, "Memory City", which, to me, does a provocative job of capturing the chaos and cost of change in Shanghai. At first, I didn't even realize Su's work was montage; it seem plausible enough from a distance but I should have known better - like Hong Kong's bygone Kowloon, the real parts of Su's phantasmal Shanghai have largely been reduced to construction dust.

--O.W.

CHATTING WITH JOHN CHO

cho gets serious

I was really happy to be able to do this; I knew John as a classmate from UC Berkeley - *15 years ago* - and I've taken a lot of pleasure in seeing his career accelerate over that time. I finally had the opportunity to interview him and at the risk of sounding immodest, I thought it was a great conversation, especially with his candor about issues of acting, media and race.

Here's Part 1 of our interview, part 2 is here.

--O.W.