Asian Backstreet Boys:: Fantastic Video!

This video was sent to a listserv that I'm on. It's a fantastic spoof of the Back Street Boys by two Chinese students in Guangzhou Arts Institute. "Their spoof music videos have been selected by Motorola China to promote mobile phones".




What amazes me about all this is the amount of participation from the masses to create and broadcast to a wide audience. This not a new concept, but for me I'm wondering if this is a step towards also breaking down stereotypes. Let me explain....

In the past, when I have seen Asian Males portrayed in American Media, they are mostly seen as effeminate and awkward. When people laughed at stereotypes (e.g. Long Duk Dong in Sixteen Candles), I was always hard-pressed to laugh with them because I knew people were laughing at them.

When William Hung came along with his rendition of Ricky Martin's "She Bang's", it was the laughing stock of America because people were laughing more *at* him. And of course this has happened whenever Chinese/Asians have tried to take American pop culture and seriously imitate or make it their own. Most people have just laughed at their efforts. But, here is the first time that I have seen Chinese folk deliberately making fun of American Culture and turning it on it's head.

This citizen journalism stuff ain't so bad ... Especially when underrepresented minorities (in the media) can take back their image/identity and make fun of the perpetrators of those stereotypes.

More info on the Asian Backstreet Boys can be found here:
Asian Backstreet Boys

Blogging

This site is awesome!!!

Testing Flock

Flock announced it's 0.5 preview browser release. I'm just playing with it. so far it feels like moz on roids....i do like the integration into my blog on blogger, but word is still out about the ui experience of it....it feels a *little* disaggregated.

Fanciest Time Out Chair I've Seen

Man kids have it so easy these days! It even rocks. I can't believe it.

New 99 Cent Store

Image_04.jpg
Originally uploaded by Hollyster.

Went to the Boardwalk in Santa Cruz, and thought this was a funny sign. I didn't know inflatiion of the 99 Cent Store has added $12. Man I need a raise.

Flickr

This is a test post from , a fancy photo sharing thing.

Chinglesh

One of the things that I love when visiting China is their novel use of the English Language. This is a picture that my friend took when he was over there. This was at an HP Site in China. The last time I was there (1997), there were a lot of these. It's amazing how things can be syntactically correct when strung together never makes a lot of sense, or is not very nice ;-). Ah language...so many nuances...that's why humans love it so much!

My Ipod Shuffle thinks I'm Gay

I saw this awesome post on Craig's List. It's interesting how people are using devices as a reflective of who they are:

"Dear Ipod:

After spending a few weeks with you, I am beginng to fear you think I am a gay man. (of course, not that there's anything wrong with that)

I recognize that there are several up tempo dance songs on my playlist, along with a few Madonna and Britney Spears tracks. However, I am curious why whenever I choose the shuffle mode, you select these songs and these songs only to play. I like Madonna, I do... I just don't need 10 consecutive hours of her. And yes, the Pet Shop Boys are fun, but I don't really want to hear "West End Girls" on a 30 minute loop.

The first time I thought it was just a coincidence, but lately I have been wondering if perhaps you think I spend my entire day singing and dancing like some flamboyant queen or like Ellen on that ridiculous American Express commercial. (Again, not there's anything wrong with that)... ummmm, because I really don't dance and sing that much, and sometimes just like to listen to a depressing song about suicide.

Anyway, if there is any chance you could include a little Wilco or Arcade Fire, next time you choose the mix, I would be very appreciate.

Sincerely,

-Your Listener"

How to be Popular

So I found this book the other day and what a find!! It's a collection of advice from teen magazine of the 60's and 70's.

I love it because it has easy tips for me to remember on how to stay popular:

1. Wear clean underclothes
2. Wear deoderant
3. Avoid foods such as onions and garlic

These are things I need to be reminded of daily.

Citizen Journalism

So my buddy Lance, just posted his first podcast. This whole thing got me thinking about Citizen Journalism and how it is spreading across the various media creators. Now you too can become your own author! your own radio host! and soon your own director!

The First Amendment
With the onslaught of digital, we have lowered the bar of entry, and I don't mean it in a bad way...This is what the visionaries of the first amendment had as a fundamental principle...not the idea of lowering the bar of entry but rather in search for truth we needed to get as many voices out there as possible. Once we open the floodgates, the garbage has been let in, but for the sake of truth we are willing to deal with it. The question is what is citizen journalism all about? I have a feeling it is not a large number of voices for the sake of truth...just noise.

Creating Editing Tools
So I've also been noticing that as mediums such as publishing, photos, video, and audio have become more and more pervasive, users learn to use editing tools. Remember the days of the 56.6 k dial up where the Rich Text Editor was and ? Now all we have to do is find it on the toolbar. With items that are mainly photo viewers, we are hard-pressed not to find the basic editing functions (rotate, enlarge, red-eye reduction etc...). I would say with the bandwidth getting larger and larger, video, and audio will have an introduction of this "Easy Edit Kit" (Media Professionals: Cover your ears) If you guys haven't checked out, Professor Marc Davis at SIMS had a visionary idea of automation of editing video to the beat of U2's numb (click on the 4th one from the left). I think there should be easy stuff for audio also...it would be nice to have audio-markings so you can fast forward to the right place...etc...


A Bit of Philosophy
So on posting on Lance's blog, i realized that I mentioned feeds being an answer to the growing amount of information and citizen journalism , I've seen this great question evolve from the following:

If a tree falls in the forest and no one is there to hear it, did it happen?

If a war is going on in the world and CNN does not cover it, did it happen?

If an event is going on and it isn't blogged about, did it happen?

Ultimately it will become a matter of getting the report to everyone, so soon it will be:

If an event occured and it wasn't on your blog feed, did it happen?


Okay it' s almost 2 am now, I wrote this to expand and hopefully correct my comment on Lance's blog. *sigh* enough for now.

The Things You See

This morning I was driving to work and I saw this blind guy waiting for the pedestrian light to turn green. He wore sunglasses and had a white cane with a red tip. The strange thing is the guy had headphones on as if he was listening to music. How can he hear the sound alert to cross the street?? Maybe he wasn't blind. I should have honked.

What a Trip!

I hate to say this, but United Airlines sucks. I never have a pleasant flight with that airline. Don't they realize that adults are taller than children when it comes to leg room? I am only 5'3" and I can barely fit into the crash position without banging the person's chair in front of me. Those planes feel so dilapidated, I wonder what we are dropping in the friendly skies.

I get the last row and middle seat, between a rotund man and a disinterested man. The guy in front of me decides to put his chair back leaving me to practice good posture for the 5 hour flight. The rotund guy had this annoying habit of licking his fingers after each pretzel he pulled out the bag. No wonder everyone gets so sick..

As we turned to land the flight became quite rocky and people were silent...you know the bad silent as is everyone is thinking "oh man we may be dying" I hear some wheezing..the gal across the aisle is pulling out the barf bag and I think I've never seen anyone use it. It turns out that she was hyperventilating. They had to call the paramedics when we landed...the poor thing...and the airl ine stewards/esses didn't do anything until we landed even though you could hear her wheezing...

The airline stwardesses then pulled out an oxygen tank...I was quite surprised as she figured out how to use it relatively quickly...That will be another post for another time...emergency devices are they really useful??

The Business of Blogging

I've been noticing that blogging has become a business for those that own it. Now with AdSense people can get an additional sense of revenue. I would think that the ramifications of this is that people would begin to write things that would generate revenue and not be true to themselves, or they would stick these ads in the most conspicuous place ...which is a general annoyance to the readers itself (a long list of ads before i can see th post...hmmm ... no fun)...it seems like 1995 all over again...

So this blog thing has gotten out of hand... Is this just a monitored message board of folks who had all wished they were hall monitors in school but never got to be?