You knew it was ALSO just a matter of time …

… until Yahoo Avatars introduced babies who exactly match your avatar’s skin color.

Anyone want to place bets on how long it’ll be until baby’s skin tone is filed under “Accessories”? Angelina? Anyone?

You knew it was just a matter of time …

… until Yahoo Avatars just had to go there.

I feel dirty.

Excuse me while I wash my hard drive out with soap.

Rosie O’Donnell, hypocrite

Interesting that Rosie O’Donnell should downplay and defend her lame “ching-chong” schtick on The View as “just comedy, folks,” after accusing Kelly Ripa of homophobia.

In response to readers who question her reasons for imitating/mocking the Chinese, Rosie replies on her blog:

i am irish
i do an irish accent – make drunk jokes – stgerotypes
this is comedy

i do many accents
and probably will continue to

my mom in law impression offends some southerners
what can u do

i come in peace

and

it was not my intent to mock
just to say how odd it is
that danny drunk
was news all over the world
even in china

it was not meant to mock

and

the joke was about the danny devito drunk news
making headines all over the world
including china
just comedy folks
no intent 2 harm

peace

Come on now. Does anyone seriously believe that “ching-chong-ching-chong” is an accent? When one resorts to ching-chongisms as a representation of an Asian language, clearly mocking the sound of that language, perhaps one would be wise to just admit to the insensitive and racist mistake and apologize, rather than digging oneself deeper in to a hole by attempting to pass off said mistake as “comedy.”

Puh-LEEZE. You tryin’ to tell me that resorting to what 6-year-old redneck kids do on the playground when they yell, “Ching chong! Ching chong! Go back to China, chink!” at the Asian kid is harmless comedy? Is she gonna pay the first-grade bully for borrowing from that line?

“I didn’t mean to,” and “I didn’t intend to” don’t cancel out the impact of the action. It was a mockery. It was racist. It offended. Makes me wonder what The View ex-host Lisa Ling would have said.

Of course O’Donnell’s publicist apparently thinks we Asians just don’t understand Rosie’s sense of, uh, humor. “She’s a comedian in addition to being a talk show co-host,” Cindi Berger says. “I certainly hope that one day they will be able to grasp her humor.” (Love the obligatory “they” that Ms. Berger had to toss in there.)

Ah yes. That must be it. Just having gotten off the boat and all, I aspire to one day grasp such sophisticated American comedy.

Whatev. I’m not holding my breath for a public apology from Rosie O’Donnell. It’s plain to see that she is not making the connection between the kind of behavior she condemns in others as homophobia, and the clearly spoken racist mockery that she herself delivered straight into the camera. Way to go, Ro.

the “joke” wasn’t funny
with or without
the racist mimicry
that you call

an accent.
comedy.
not intended to harm.

but you see,
we’re not laughing.

First Person Plural

Earlier this evening I was rummaging through some stuff in the spare bedroom in search of the Yobo Adobo’s old karate gi, as he embarks on a new fitness endeavor. I was more interested, however, in the forgotten treasure trove of CDs and VHS tapes that I unearthed than in his stained, 2-decades-old gi. In addition to a small collection of Christmas CDs and my Christmas Yule Log Fireplace video, I came across my videotape of Deann Borshay Liem’s First Person Plural.

I first saw First Person Plural when it aired on PBS in the Twin Cities around 2001. I saw it again when Deann came to the Walker Art Center in Minneapolis to present her film at a program featuring women filmmakers. What I remember most vividly about the screening at the Walker is sitting with The Hyphenator in the audience, which was composed largely of other Korean adoptees, and the two of us going through tissues like nobody’s business.

I saw the film more than a year before I went to Korea and met my Korean family. Still, the scene where Deann’s Korean mother was hugging her and crying, induced waterworks.

Tonight I popped the tape in the VCR and let it play as I was proofing a document. Even in the background, the same scene overwhelmed me with grief, because now it is further steeped in the memory I have from when my umma clung to me and cried, struck speechless.

I remember hearing another Korean adoptee tell her story of reunion at a conference session back in ‘02, just weeks after my reunion. Her story was much like mine — finding that she had a mother and father, married, and an entire family intact in Korea, and how since her reunion, her mother would call her at odd times and just sob over the phone lines. Letters good, phone calls bad, I told myself at the time.

Sometimes when I sit before the computer and Webcam these days and talk to my unni, I think about that adoptee’s story, and about Deann’s film. Some days it’s like a guessing game — will Umma join in the call today? Will she be happy just to see me, or will she be overcome with the 3+ decades of grief she has weathered since my birth, and cry until Unni ushers her out of the camera’s view? I can’t find the right things to say to her in any language.

Sometimes I just want to turn off my Webcam and watch my sister and mother go about their business, as if it’s reality TV (with subtitles, please). I think maybe it’d be comforting to watch them make rice, open and close cupboards, come and go, and just sit on the floor and read a book.

I was thinking as I watched First Person Plural tonight that I’m tired of this popular notion that our histories and identities before our adoptions become secondary once we join our adoptive families. I bristled when Deann’s adoptive family members spoke as if who she was in Korea didn’t matter — because she was theirs. And while I know that adoptive families often say these things out of love and good intentions — because they embrace us as family — I can’t help but resent the marginalization of our preadoptive lives and histories.

Many of my adoptee friends share the sadness I feel when I think about my arrival day, which is marked each year by Thanksgiving Day. When I see the unmistakable joy on my mom’s face in the photos as I emerged from the Jetway and was placed in her arms, I also think about the anguish on my umma’s face when I returned to reunite with her. And I think about all those years in between those two arrival days, and how much went unknown and hidden.

I think there is a sort of expectation that reunions will bring a magical kind of resolution, or that one’s emotions will run a course — cresting at reunion and then returning to a peaceful baseline. I certainly haven’t undergone that graceful emotional arc. The circumstances of adoption and reunion are not finite experiences with distinct beginnings and endings that can be forced into false closure.

When people in my life dismiss the “Korean” part of my story as less significant or secondary to my American life, I want to tell them in 100 different ways that I have a mother and three sisters in Korea who are no more secondary to my American family than my left ventricle is secondary to my right.

I can’t wait to go back to Korea next summer. But I also dread it, because I won’t be able to just turn off my Webcam and walk away.

I feel fatter already.

In lieu of a new post, I leave you for the holiday weekend with these glimpses into my Thanksgiving past, present and future:

1 hour ago:

As I type:

What I’ll feel like tomorrow:

Magazine mania

I am something of a magazine junky. As a teenager, while growing up on a steady diet of ‘Teen and YM and Sassy, I dreamed about someday heading up my own magazine — like an even sassier version of Sassy, or a Seventeen that didn’t suck.

Oops, did I say that?

So naturally, I went to college and majored in pharmacy.

After I had abandoned the pantomime of caring about pharmacy school and defected to journalism school, I thought perhaps I was destined for a Web-zine editorship, where I could unseat Salon.com as the leading Web publication with my combo of scathing wit and killer HTML skillz. Hah.

Needless to say, neither of those dreams ever came to fruition. I never won the lottery or inherited a secret treasure trove of wealth from any secretly wealthy family members to treat as magazine start-up capital. Instead, I landed an editing internship at the Web site of a semi-major metropolitan daily newspaper, where I quickly grew tired of a newspaper journalist’s salary (sad), a newspaper journalist’s hours (evening shift, weekends), and a newspaper journalist’s social life (none).

Yes indeedy. Life got in the way.

So instead of seeing my name on a magazine masthead, these days I lead a life of vicarious magazine journalism. I have magazines in towering stacks next to my bed, magazines languishing on the coffee table, standing in for dining room table centerpieces, queued up for reading during long downloads or slow times at my computer. Most of the magazine subscriptions I have in my name aren’t even paid subscriptions, but complimentary ones that have magically appeared in the mail or that I’ve scored online through various sources. I love magazines, and magazines love me.

Do I read them all? Hardly. Most of them end up stacking up in obscenely large stashes until I can’t stand their presence any longer and they wind up getting trashed or taken to the library. Owing to my pack-rat tendencies, however, a few of them wind up getting squirreled away in closets, drawers or boxes until the next time we move residences, and I decide it’s time to part ways.

Recently I’ve added some new titles to my Can’t-Let-Go collection. With the appearance of some newer magazines geared toward an Asian-Pacific-American audience, I find myself lingering for longer periods around the magazine racks at bookstores and newsstands. On the one hand, I love it that I’m finally seeing some magazines for me and my people edging their way into more mainstream retail outlets. On the other hand, it’s not a healthy thing, dangling these glossy new periodicals in front of a person who already has a self-admitted magazine addiction.

Theme (tagline: Contemporary Asian Culture) is a quarterly publication that I think of more as a journal than a magazine. (“Magazine” brings to mind more advertisements than articles, more gimmickry than substance.) Theme distinguishes itself with thoughtful content and high-quality writing — a mix of profiles, essays and photographic journalism — unlike some of the disappointing sub-par “he said, and then she said, and then they went” types of pieces I’ve seen in some other mags barely passing as readable. Theme is good stuffs. (Holiday gift hint: A Theme subscription would be a welcome addition to my stacks.)

Nha magazine is an award-winning bilingual English and Vietnamese publication that covers lifestyle, culture and identity for the Vietnamese-American community. (I haven’t seen this one stocked at my local stores, but I’m thinking about bugging them to carry it, even though I’m not Vietnamese.)

Thirteen Minutes: A Bicultural Asian Magazine describes itself on its Web site as “a premier magazine for English-speaking, bi-cultural Asian and Pacific Islander readers.” It doesn’t explicitly state that it’s a women’s magazine, but from the looks of it, it certainly exudes a “chick mag” kind of vibe. Which reminds me of a similar publication, East West magazine. Which reminds me in turn of Audrey magazine. Which was something of a sister magazine to KoreAm Journal, but specifically for women, and for a broader Asian-American readership.

My first thought was that Thirteen Minutes is what would happen if Audrey and/or East West hooked up with the now-defunct Yolk magazine, and they had a love child who grew up to be one of those girls you see down at the mall in a skintight, midriff-baring halter top and low-low hip-huggers that don’t so much hug the hips as barely contain the buns. In other words, as you flip through, TM seems to be heavier on the fashion spreads featuring somewhat scantily clad Asian-Pacific models with “Do me” facial expressions. (OK, so maybe it’s not just for women after all.) Hmmm. Disappointing, or a brilliant marketing tactic?

(BTW: Do you ever notice the way a magazine smells? Thirteen Minutes has a very KoreAm Journal scent. Buy them and sniff them. You’ll see what I mean.)

Given the recent magazine terrorism inflicted upon Yunjin Kim, I was curious to see what kind of cover story Thirteen Minutes had cooked up in its current issue to accompany the cover shot of my O’ahu neighbor. Beginning on page 30 with a full-page photo of Yunjin in a floofy pink dress, the article spans pages 31-32, and then concludes somewhat abruptly. I was thinking, “What a weird way to end the article,” when I flipped forward and found that the next 14 pages were printed out of order. The magazine skips to pages 42-43, then 36-37, then 46-47, 40-41, and picks back up with Yunjin Kim on 34. Three pages of ads follow, before 38 and 39 lead into 48. Whaaat?

Most of the rather short interview was nothing new for those who have already read the standard profiles on the “Lost” cast. What was new to me, however, was the fact that Yunjin fostered a 3-year-old baby. “She’d wanted to adopt the child, but the process failed to materialize,” the article says. Hmm. (Click here to read more on Yunjin Kim, adoption fan.)

A slightly fluffy 1-page piece on Sung Kang tells us less about Sung Kang, more about how kooky and fun the writer and her colleagues are. Granted, the piece is longer than it appears upon first glance — due to the teeny-tiny font and and itty-bitty kerning and leading that crams two pages worth of text onto a single page, and twice the amount of content into some big ol’ paragraphs.

So, I dunno what I think overall about Thirteen Minutes. The jury’s still out for me on the filling. As for the frosting, I’m still feeling a little put off by the disorganization and the come-hither models who are making me feel abnormal for not sitting around my house in a bikini and blue eyeliner.

At any rate, in spite of the unlikely swimwear, I see this small proliferation of APA magazines on the newsstands as a sign of progress. We are finally becoming a presence in the American popular media, rather than simply a footnote. We’re on magazine covers rather than relegated to tasteless, racist (and homophobic) one-pagers in Details. We’re taking on a proactive role in setting a higher precedent for more positive and realistic media representation of APAs.

(I forgot. I did get to see my name on one magazine masthead, as a writer and copy editor/paginator for my journalism school’s student-produced magazine. Big woo.)