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Accents.
The discussion on accents in the comments section of my last post ages ago reminded me of an interview I conducted a little while back with a community activist based in South San Francisco. She had asked me about my relatives, and where I was from, and I responded in Tagalog. She said (also in Tagalog), “It’s a good thing that you’re not forgetting how to speak the language. Some people here have only recently arrived, and they say they don’t know how to speak Tagalog anymore.”
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It’s Steve, and It’s Not Steve.
The other week I asked a series of rhetorical questions, all related to the life of an Overseas Filipino Worker, about Arnel Pineda, the new lead singer for Journey. Of course, Pineda’s no ordinary OFW, unlike those almost 60,000 Filipino overseas performing artists. (The salary of a lead singer, one supposes, allows you to distance yourself, as far away as possible, from that life of homesickness and drudgery.) And my questions, in retrospect, were perhaps too negative: I’m tickled by the possibility that the other band members have, say, now developed a taste for lumpia. Or something like that.
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Unfunny.
Esther Ku is a stand-up comedian on NBC’s Last Comic Standing, and I’ve been trying to wrap my head around why exactly her act is so spectacularly unfunny. (Gentle Reader, you may take my word for it, but it’s best if you make up your own mind and watch her act on YouTube yourself.)
Look: I think we should be supportive of having more Asians on television (or anywhere in the public sphere, really), but it doesn’t mean we should give mediocrity a free pass.
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“The Man Can Sing Anything.”
There are eleven million Filipinos working overseas, a million of which left the Philippines in 2007, and Arnel Pineda is one of them.
I’m sure you readers have already heard about Arnel Pineda, the new Philippine-born lead singer for the American band Journey: his hardscrabble life as a homeless twelve-year old with that burning talent; the videos of his cover band discovered on YouTube by Neal Schon, the Journey guitarist, looking for a new vocalist; maybe even the fantastic tale of how he got his visa. (If not, be edified: run off to YouTube and watch a CBS News Sunday Morning feature on the band from May.)
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Cool Stupid.
Me [right after watching Wanted]: It was stupid.
My friend Laurel: Yeah, but it was cool stupid.
Some of my friends think I’m something of a movie snob, and honestly, I’m not, but people still think my first reaction to the summer movie season is usually running for cover. On the contrary: I happily succumb to its adolescent delights every single year. This summer’s lineup, in particular, is shaping up to be a darn fine one, what with lots of stuff being blow’d up and unchecked CGI abuse everywhere.
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Tongues Like Parrots
The next time you’re on a cruise ship — or in a small nightclub in Las Vegas, a hotel lounge in Singapore, an amusement park in Cologne — that band doing the Norah Jones and Led Zeppelin covers will very likely be from the Philippines. (Almost 60,000 Filipinos are employed worldwide in nightclubs, cruise ships, and hotel lounges as Overseas Performing Artists.)
A Filipino guitarist told me a nugget of unbelievable truth one time, trying to explain to me why Filipinos were apparently such great performers. “Filipinos are the only people,” he said with all seriousness, “with tongues like parrots.” But his answer wasn’t prompted by the fact that it was his fourth shot of gin before it was even noontime.
He was one of the many artists I’ve interviewed extensively over the past two years who looked at me as if I had asked a stupid question — “Why do you think Filipinos are hired as singers and musicians all over the world?” — and gave me variations on the exact same answer: Filipinos can imitate any sound.
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Grand Theft Auto IV and the American Dream (Part Two)
But back to the delights of Grand Theft Auto IV. If immigrant disappointment is quintessentially American, then so is the notion of immigrant criminality. How else does one explain the grip that cultural artifacts like The Sopranos, or The Godfather, or Scarface, or Carlito’s Way, or Gangs of New York, has on the public, their power to somehow persuade people to embrace these American monsters as one of their own? Continue reading…
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Grand Theft Auto IV and the American Dream (Part One).
Niko Bellic is pissed. His cousin Roman hasn’t exactly been telling him the truth about America: the sports cars, the penthouse, and the women which he mentioned in his letters are nothing but a beat-up cab, a roach-infested walkup in Brighton Beach, and tattered centerfolds tacked to the wall around a stained sofa bed. So much for his fantasies of America. Continue reading…
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What Asians Listen To
Someone left an anonymous comment on my other blog last week, saying (in all caps) “HIP HOP IS THE VOICE OF THE FILIPINO AMERICAN YOUTH HAHAHAHA.” I wasn’t sure what the person was specifically writing about, but it reflected, probably fairly accurately, what many Pinoys in my generation listen to.
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Hello My Name Is
I’m Benito M. Vergara, Jr. (Sunny Vergara to everyone who knows me) and I’m thrilled to be a new blogger for Asianweek.com.
Since this is my first post, I might as well introduce myself: I’ve dabbled in newspaper writing in different capacities for almost two decades, writing for my high school and college newspapers back in my hometown of Los Banos in the Philippines, plus an internship at Philippine News in the mid-’90s. I’ve also been blogging as The Wily Filipino for almost five years now, and this new blog for Asianweek.com is an exciting opportunity to combine these two areas of experience. I have also been a teacher in different places all over the San Francisco Bay Area, and — here comes the confession — I am also something of a music and movie nerd. Continue reading…