Month: June 2004

It’s pouring right now; Mets v Yankees baseball is postponed for a doubleheader on Sunday.

Interesting Asian/Asian American stuff in the NY Times today:

“A Crash Course in Tradition for Modern Korean Brides” – according to this article, one may have higher degrees in Chinese literature and originally planned to get that Ph.d., but feel free (or just go along with Mom and Dad’s immediate commands) to matriculate in the Institute of Decorum and Wisdom’s bridal course in Seoul to learn how to stitch a shirt to please one’s honored and respected Mother-in-Law. Ah, and consider this, as writer Norimitsu Onishi notes:

A 31-year-old, who met her fiancé through a matchmaker, gave up a career to prepare for marriage. Though sent here by her father, she said she had found many of the classes useful. Since she had long lived in the United States, her parents worried that she had become Americanized.

Accustomed to walking in an assertive American way, she learned to walk on the balls of her feet so as to minimize the noise, she said, adding that she was too embarrassed to reveal her name.

Uh, ok. I can sympathize with the bride not wanting to reveal her name. But, to walk on the balls of one’s feet? There are women (American and otherwise) who are stuck with that, no thanks to being the slave to fashion (re: ridiculously high high heel shoes; namely the sad, sad example of Barbie Doll); walking like that has its implications…

South Asian music making strides in the club scene – with the folks behind the music carrying their identities along – children of the immigrants, having been exposed to all kinds of stuff… – Jon Pareles notes:

As often happens, the music follows demographics. In the 1960’s, a change in immigration law brought a wave of white-collar Indians and Pakistanis and Bangladeshis to the United States. Now their sons and daughters are establishing their place in the arts as well as in the wider American economy, and they are making sense of a musical upbringing that is likely to include Bollywood tunes alongside hip-hop, Western classical music, Indian classical music, rock and jazz. “Everybody’s got a different diaspora,” says the producer, vocalist and disc jockey DK Khambata.

Weird article from the Washington Post: VP Cheney uttered the nasty curse word at Senator Leahy, and Cheney then admitted to having “felt better” after having done it. Uh, ok. Could you please not make a habit of it? (at least, refrain from doing it in the hallowed halls of Congress). Oh, well. … Actually, the scary part is – the Washington Post published the word used; caught my eye, since family newspapers usually don’t do that, as the Washington Post conceded (and its explanation puzzles me – the editors wanted readers to decide for themselves, but hadn’t printed the F-word since… the Starr report days? Huh? I thought the NY Times had hubris, but this is just plain weird)…

So it goes. Enjoy the weekend.

Slate.com’s Seth Stevenson has the latest “Ad Report” to comment on (drum roll, please) – those Budweiser v. Miller ads. You know, the Miller ads have this dorky spokesman who’s running for president of beers against the Budweiser Clydesdale spokeshorse. Apparently, Budweiser got all mad and so unleashed their spokesreptilians and the spokesdonkey to say that Miller can’t be president of beers because it’s owned by a South African company. Stevenson notes:

This assumes, of course, that beer-president campaigns use electoral guidelines akin to those of standard, non-beer, U.S. presidential campaigns, and that corporate parentage determines beer-citizenship status. But I’m OK with that assumption—electoral beer law is hazy on the matter, and the beer constitution offers no clear answers.

Yeah, I’d have to wonder about that darn beer constitution. Is it even written? Do we have to be strict constructionists, or can we read it in a more interpretive manner? Will Scalia and Stevens have a field day over this? (do they even drink beer?) Stevenson gave the Budweiser ads a low grade; I have no particular opinion myself, although it’s interesting to see the lizards again and the cute donkey is still cute. And, yeah, I’m still wondering about the beer constitution. (I’m not a beer drinker, by the way; you can make your own assessment about this stuff).

Oh, and looky here – Hotmail’s jumping on the bandwagon to give e-mail account holders more bytes. Whoa….

This is the article we’ve been talking about at work and so on – “Fear in the Workplace: The Bullying Boss.” Consider the descriptions of the bosses, and see if it applies to your boss; research on the schoolyard bully may now help find ways to deal with the workplace (the adults’ version of the schoolyard soap opera madness).

A book on… Brooklyn. Cool. The article brings discuss this crime stories anthology by Brooklyn authors, “Brooklyn Noir,” with all of Brooklyn’s diversity.

I’ve caught some of the new Tavis Smiley talk show on PBS, and thought it is interesting. Smiley’s a good interviewer, making conversation with his guests. Nice to see a person of color in this role (Smiley’s West coast, so it’s a different perspective in interesting ways from the usual Charlie Rose mode). I’ll corroborate the view of Daily News’ columnist E.R. Shipp :

For so many years, blacks, Latinos and other journalists who form a minority within the profession have demanded greater access and a greater appreciation for a diversity of voices. [….]

In Smiley, who is something of an empowerment guru among blacks, PBS can attempt to build a new audience that is younger and more diverse in race, ethnicity and even geographical grounding (Smiley’s shows emanate from Los Angeles).

He does what too little of talk radio or television does these days: conducts civil conversations with a broad spectrum of politicians, newsmakers, performers and writers in a forum where one first has to declare one’s political alliances. He’s comfortable with conservatives, liberals and the undeclared; with the profound and the profane, with elder statesmen and the hip-hop nation. With such stratification in the country, he provides one place that helps promote dialogues that might not otherwise take place before audiences who might not otherwise think they have anything in common.

Since January, his guests have ranged from Bill .Cosby to Newt Gingrich to Gore Vidal to Alice Randall, a black novelist who has written hit country songs for singers such as Trisha Yearwood. He can discuss Iraq with Richard Holbrooke, the veteran diplomat who advises John Kerry, but also with the nonpolitical comedian Paul Rodriguez. He has also featured the producer of a documentary on Al Jazeera along with one of its leading journalists. He raises questions about why “Baadasssss,” Mario van Peebles’ homage to the groundbreaking 1971 film “Sweet Sweetback’s Baadasssss Song” made by his father, Melvin Van Peebles, has received so little publicity and why so little attention was paid to the end of the Showtime series “Soul Food,” which had a five-year run depicting the complex layers of life in an African-American family.

I’m all for anything that expands the national dialogue and promotes, in more than a figurative sense, East meeting West. [….]

As I write this, Smiley’s interviewing with a Brooklyn ex-mob informant (after he finished interviewing Democratic Party consultant Donna Brazile). Uh huh. Nice going. Thumbs up for being different.

Enjoy the rest of the week….

Funny – I thought yesterday was summer solstice; d’uh, it’s actually today – the time of year when the natural light is out that much longer (even at the hour in which I’m writing this blog). See, I like summer for this one reason – the light (not the humidity – so help me Gosh, definitely not the humidity – I’ll can swallow the heat, but not the perpetual dampness that summer in NYC can bring).

Finally finished reading Brian Greene’s “The Elegant Universe”. Took forever, but I did it. Greene’s a good writer; very poetic stuff in trying to understand the mysteries of the universe and the possibility of one theory to explain all the theories of physics. Greene’s a string theorist and is real smart and it shows. Lovely. My only quibble is that try as I might, I still have trouble understanding the scientific explanations (yep, I’m the one who undermines the Asian-American stereotype by having not been good at higher mathematics and physics (which was not my best science subject)).

Then again, I liked how Greene showed how the latest thought in string theory specifically and physics in general almost cross into philosophy: what is reality; if Heisenberg’s Uncertainty Principle says that the subatomic world is awfully uncertain, what can we be certain about at the normal level?; if Einstein says things are relative at the galactic level, that’s just… powerful stuff; are there alternate dimensions (Greene says yes; and there are bunches of them) – and what does that really mean for the rest of us (umm, besides being fodder for sci-fi consumers); and what is the meaning of what science is leading us? I liked this one line from Greene, which I’ll note here:

[S]cience proceeds along a zig-zag path toward what we hope will be ultimate truth, a path that begun with humanity’s earliest attempts to fathom the cosmos and whose end we cannot predict. – Brian Greene, The Elegant Universe, p. 20, 2003 paperback edition.

It just sounds nice, that’s all. Although, keep in mind – the book is actually written before 9/11, so there was this odd reference to the World Trade Center (an analogy used to explain something about wormholes, if I recalled correctly); nothing bad, really; notably, Green’s 2003 preface notes that the latest scientific developments are still taking time (doesn’t help that particle accelerators take time to be built and cost serious moola), so his book is hardly out-of-date.

Greene’s from NYC, and he’s currently teaching at my Alma Mater, after having done stints at
other Ivy League institutions and Oxford (yeah, he’s really really smart); in fact, Alma Mater offers “Physics for Poets” (which I heard was no easy class anyway), so thanks to the good Prof. Greene, I guess I can now fully accept that physics can be poetic – no doubt… (sidenote – local PBS in NYC will be showing Nova’s version of “The Elegant Universe” in July – so, set your VCR’s – the three-part series is watchable, in a not-too-explanatory style, but-ok-for-the-junior-high-and/or-not-too-scientific set of folks out there)….

My streak this weekend sucks (pardon my language) – I managed to miss the Madonna interview on 20/20 this past Friday and the Clinton interview on 60 Minutes yesterday. Gee, I hope Barbara Walters and Dan Rather (forget Madonna and Clinton) will forgive me. (I had other things to do, to say the least).

Let’s go Mets; let’s hope we can at least be positive (maybe; hopefully; ideally; eh, whatever goes). The hometown National League team swept the Detroit Tigers this weekend; can we dare look forward to the upcoming games against the Yankees? Can Jose Reyes stay healthy and keep the team energized (and be mature about it)? Can the team owner himself keep things going without resorting to making things go bad? Hmm…

Have a good week….