so i work at the asian american resource and cultural center on my campus and this wednesday is our kick-off event for asian american awareness month. we’ve invited the editors of “secret identities” to come and speak about this new asian american-centered superhero comic anthology:
Asian Americans are comic book artists, writers, and fans, but rarely represented as heroic characters on the page. Thus the creation of Secret Identities, an anthology of original stories centered around Asian American superheroes. Join the editors of this groundbreaking book: New York Times best-selling author Jeff Yang, comics education specialist Keith Chow, and actor Parry Shen, for a multimedia presentation and interactive workshop as they share their own experiences as Asian Americans in media and film, and preview these unique Asian American heroes.
i got to interview them for our newsletter, AARCConnections, in our april 2009 issue. they were really fun to talk to and we definitely had to cut out a TON of the interview [the transcription was originally ~15 pages!!] cause we were talking for so long!
if you’re in the chicagoland area this wednesday, you should come hear them speak! here are the deets:
"secret identities" book cover.
DATE: Wednesday, April 1st
TIME: 4:00 p.m.
WHERE: UIC Student Center East, Illinois Room BC
A reception will follow and books will be available for purchase and signing. For more information, contact Corinne Kodama at ckodama@uic.edu, 312-413-9569, or visit http://aarcc.uic.edu.
they’ve even got a trailer for the anthology:
AND a youtube channel! be sure to check it out! they’ve got weekly preview/videos of certain comics too. be sure to order a copy on amazon.com. i know i’ll definitely be getting a copy when they come speak! CAN’T WAIT!!
so i’d seen this commercial a few times on television and thought it was the cutest thing ever:
i mean seriously, is that not the most adorable kid you’ve ever seen?! and she knows how to edit and send pictures via email at just four years old [that is, if you take this commercial at face value]! awesome. i want my potential future kids to be as precious and tech-savy as she is!
i’m leaving for vegas today so unless there’s free internet access at the hotel or something, i won’t be posting for a few days. hopefully i’ll be back with good stories to tell and even better stories to post.
so i like my socks to have a little ’spice’ to them, i’ll admit it. i’ve got a bunch of socks from jcrew that have stripes or argyle or martini glasses or whatever on them. it just makes ‘em more fun.
sooooo as i was going through my thrillist emails, i came across ashi dashi:
AshiDashi means, “stick out your feet!” in Japanese. In a world where the majority of socks are brown, blue, black and boring, we wanted to give our friends a reason to call some attention to their toes. We think socks are sort of magical—a secret, hidden surprise. Even if you’re in a business suit or wearing your “serious” slacks, a peek of color and a funky design can add a little flavor to your look and put a spring in your step.
Here are some of my favorites from their website:
"kick the habit," photo courtesy of ashidashi.com
"meat," photo courtesy of ashidashi.com
"pencil," photo courtesy of ashidashi.com
are these not the cutest/most createive socks you’ve ever seen? they’re kinda pricey at $10+ a pair but you’ll be the coolest kid on the block with these suckers.
now, i’m a huge fan of the word ‘fail’ and the way it’s been reinterpreted in today’s american vernacular. you can use it in so many different ways, “you fail” or “that’s a fail” or just the plain “FAIL” is adequate, really.
so imagine my delight when vicky told me about fail stickers. that’s right, fail stickers. case in point:
photo courtesy of the fail sticker flickr group.
there’s even a fail sticker flickr group! so you can see where the fail sticker has traveled and the fails it has labeled.
you can get a five sticker pack for $4.99, a twenty-five sticker pack for $14.99, and so on and so forth.
so rachel tagged me in a note on facebook and in typical rachel fashion, wants a bunch of us [meaning the aarcc/aamp crew] to recreate this video:
it’s a little on the long side but it’s worth it. i’d say my favorite parts are when they’re standing in one straight line, one after the other, and imitating buddha with all their arms. the sight is just so utterly fantastic and what makes it even more amazing is that all the dancers are deaf. you don’t gotta be doing back flips and whatever to be awe-inspiring.
so i’m not sure how i came across this video, but nonetheless it totally cracks my shit up because IT’S SO TRUE:
here’s the homepage of the person who created the ‘facebook fever!’ video. it looks like she’s become her own media connoisseur with her own youtube channel [in which all the videos are created by her: acting, writing, music, editing, etc], blog, twitter, facebook, etc, and that she blogs about pretty much anything and everything.
i hope to be doing something like her eventually! i’ve been thinking about video blogging but we’ll see what happens…
so jocey sent me another link the other day and i thought it was rather fascinating. the concept is basically: “an affordable pair of glasses that use water to adjust the strength of the glasses.”
photo courtesy of guardian.co.uk
Silver has devised a pair of glasses which rely on the principle that the fatter a lens the more powerful it becomes. Inside the device’s tough plastic lenses are two clear circular sacs filled with fluid, each of which is connected to a small syringe attached to either arm of the spectacles.
The wearer adjusts a dial on the syringe to add or reduce amount of fluid in the membrane, thus changing the power of the lens. When the wearer is happy with the strength of each lens the membrane is sealed by twisting a small screw, and the syringes removed. The principle is so simple, the team has discovered, that with very little guidance people are perfectly capable of creating glasses to their own prescription.
this is pretty epic, right?
The implications of bringing glasses within the reach of poor communities are enormous, says the scientist. Literacy rates improve hugely, fishermen are able to mend their nets, women to weave clothing. During an early field trial, funded by the British government, in Ghana, Silver met a man called Henry Adjei-Mensah, whose sight had deteriorated with age, as all human sight does, and who had been forced to retire as a tailor because he could no longer see to thread the needle of his sewing machine. “So he retires. He was about 35. He could have worked for at least another 20 years. We put these specs on him, and he smiled, and threaded his needle, and sped up with this sewing machine. He can work now. He can see.”
check out this link for the original piece from the guardian.
