Month: December 2009

December 2009 Continues

Due to my fear of the trend of anti-biotic resistant bacteria, this Slate article by Brian Palmer was quite fascinating – he’s suggest we adapt, much as the bacteria are adapting. Sure, we should evolution to our advantage.

Sad news: Time’s Richard Lacayo is ending the “Looking Around” blog on Time.com to concentrate on other writing work. I’ve liked how it’s such a unique art blog – I’ve liked the post on paintings with red, and I liked his blog post analyzing the Tower of Lights. To me, a good art blog brings both amazing images and analysis; Lacayo did just that on “Looking Around.”

I hate to think that the 2000’s decade has flown by so fast, but already there are the decade in review stuff. Newsweek has this odd “What If Gore Won” feature – one where a President Al Gore made a disastrous presidency, without preventing 9/11/01 and still going into two not-very-good wars (by Michael Isikoff) and another where President Al Gore didn’t do too bad a job (with a ridiculously recalcitrant VP Joe Lieberman; he also nominates Obama to the US Supreme Court, as J. O’Connor’s successor – what an alternate universe!) (by David Rakoff).

Personally, my favorite Parallel Universe President Al Gore is this Saturday Night Live skit that I had embedded a long time ago (and re-post again).

Interesting article and interview on Time.com covering President Obama’s half-brother Mark Ndesandjo, who resides in Guangzhou and Shenzhen in China. He seems positive about minority/ethnic inter-relations within China. Well, we can hope, I guess.

China is reclaiming Mulan for cinematic purposes, since why should Disney get all the profit of the character? Well, I’m all for giving more opportunities for Asian female actresses.

Last but not least, Angry Asian Man posts links about the first Vietnamese-American woman on the federal bench. How exciting!

Another NaNoWriMo ends; Hello December 2009

Like 2007 (my first year) and 2008, this November 2009, I did National Novel Writing Month (NaNoWriMo), with the goal of writing a (really rough draft) novel in a month, with a minimum of 50000 words. I finished at 71384 words, according to MS Word (exact word count is a bit rough; the NaNo website had upped it, by counting… my… many… ellipses as words). This is my personal highest word count, filled with excess and unnecessary verbiage.

So, I wrote “Law of Lunatics,” a so-called legal thriller and a more or less sequel to a previous so-called legal thriller that I had been writing on and off for two years that I’m calling “Dynamic Debacle” (the first and ridiculously rough draft of which was finally finished on 10/31/09 because I wanted to use it as a spring board for “Law of Lunatics”).

“Law of Lunatics” takes place in NYC in 1995, and involves the crazy lawyers and summer asociates of the law firm Nunn & Boyd (nicknamed “Null and Void”). A murder occurs (a Boyd dies) and bizarre things happen. It feels more like a multi-arc episode of either “Ally McBeal” or “Boston Legal” than any legal thriller by Grisham or Turow. Oh, and a federal magistrate judge offers the quarreling lawyers gummi bears to calm down (my take on the news story that the federal judge in the recent Gotti, Jr., case offered Twizzlers to the jury), a fake ninja attacks one of the partners, and a mobster-affiliated non-practicing lawyer hovers around. Plus, it’s never quite clear what is going on in the cases of the firm’s litigation section (insert giant plot holes here). Rather crazy stuff, and we’ll see if I edit it in 2010, if at all.

Hat tip to Angry Asian Man, which led to this great link on Ad Age the trend of APA’s in commercials. Bill Imada in the linked Ad Age article discusses and posts the ads for Priceline and AT&T. Notably, that AT&T commercial has Tim Kang, APA guy who was also in the Shell oil commercials and is now on “The Mentalist” (thumbs up on a great career move). (embedded below is the commercial that was embedded in the Ad Age article; strangely, not only does it have Tim Kang, it also appears to have the Hispanic kid, Rico Rodriguez, from the sitcom “Modern Family” – tv actors definitely get around – and, hey, having diverse actors on tv is a good thing).

Plus, this is just one of the many Shell commercials with Tim Kang:

(Kang and the other actors really do a great job as scientists who love their Shell oil).

Plus, there’s that State Farm commercial with the APA guy singing silly; I’ve found it weird that anyone would be that willing to be that silly, but whatever:

He’s been in the McDonald’s Angus burger commercial (where he dares to take the ketchup, and where I regrettaby referred to him as “chubby Asian guy”) and in a US Postal Service priority mail commercial (where he and a small business partner, some generic geek like white guy, are trying to figure out how to ship their robot toys cheaply; mailman suggests the new flat rate; in appreciation, the business guys do the robot, sort of). After some digging, I find out that he’s Aaron Takahashi (good to know the name to the face, since I’d hate to say, “Oh, he’s the sweet-looking chubby APA in that commercial and that commercial”).

Oh, and James Kyson Lee used to be in a lot of commercials, too (including – as previously noted here on this blog – McDonald’s, which does have a decent record of having minorities in their commercials). APA men on tv, not playing to APA stereotypes (looking at you, Nissin noodles commercial)! Yay!