The title of this post is “Oh Yeah Baby!” written in Korean. It’s something I once taught some kids at one of those camps I used to work every summer and winter in Jeonju. Hearing tons of kids laughing and teasing one another on the bus and then following up with, “오예, 베
Month: April 2006
Race and SF
During my review of the film Primer, I discussed an essay by Pam Noles and noted that I would get back to her central topic soon — after all, I was riffing on her issues about the underrepresentation of nonwhite people in science fiction and fantasy literature and media, but riffing in a very odd way. (You can read the Primer review if you want to know more.) It’s taken me a while to get back to the issue, but now I’m ready to say something about it. The first word that comes to my mind, as a white male …
Yellow Dust Fever
Today was the worst Yellow-Dust-From-China day I’ve seen yet. The whole city was smoggy, to a degree comparable to the smoggiest I saw in Gurgaon — which was shocking at the time — and everyone I saw responded to it. The people climbing the stairs at my station, on the way home, dragged their feet as if they were fifty years older than they really were. It was awful. Lime advised me to go to a pharmacy and get a face mask for my trips outside, and of course, like a dope, I said it wasn’t for me. I mean, …
BIG NEWS!
I gotta check on whether I definitely, absolutely have the time off, and whether I can get to Seattle, Washington by July 18th, but anyway, I just got a call and I was invited to participate in the the Clarion West Writers’ Workshop. Which is, like, a very BIG deal. I feel complimented since they haven’t sorted out the list of attendees and therefore couldn’t say for sure whether a scholarship would be in the works. So it looks like my schedule this summer will be, June 17th – July 28th — Seattle, Washington, followed by as quick a jaunt …
Crash
I’ve run across a lot of criticism of the film Crash lately, so I decided to watch it. When I got to the end, last night, I couldn’t help but wonder what all the fuss was about. Not just the fuss about the racism, but general fuss. It’s a movie about racial tensions in LA. Well, what else will a movie in LA be about? Okay, that’s snide, but really, I don’t know that I think the movie warranted that much attention. And then there’s the anti-Asian angle. Angry Asian Man isn’t the only person who thinks that Asians got …