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I wanted to take a moment to shift some attention to three amazing publications that I’ve been helping out with, or have helped me out a great deal over the last year.

Many of the organizations that were started to reach out, broadcast, and appreciate the amazing work of Asians and Asian Americans (or Asian Canadians, Asian Brazilians, etc.) are struggling under the financial burdens of the economic environment, especially in the journalism and print media industry.

Organizations like Giant Robot, Nichi Bei Weekly, and Hyphen Magazine are some of the few unique publications that cover and serve Asian Americans, but they are constantly in need of support.

3 Ways to Save Our Magazines, Our News, Our Community:

1. Subscribe

By subscribing to these publications, you get access to exclusive, awesome news, features, interviews, photos, art, and a way cool publication to put on your coffee table! But if that’s not enough, you give back to publications, as they earn not just cash from your subscription, but they can get better numbers and revenue from advertisement. It’s really a win-win situation when you subscribe.

• Giant Robot – 1 year subscription starts at $24, or more for cool GR swag
• Hyphen – 4 issue subscription for $18
• Nichi Bei Weekly – 3 months for $12

2. Donate

Donating gives you good karma.

But what’s more (tangible), Giant Robot and Hyphen offer free gifts with certain donation amounts! Amazing! Our favorite word: FREE!

• Join the Giant Robot Army of Donors, get amazing gifts by GR artists like David Choe and Takashi Murakami
• Join Hyphen magazine’s Overachiever’s Club, get free gifts and make your parents proud
• Donate through Paypal to the Nichi Bei Foundation or give goods

You can also get tax deductions by donating to non-profit pubs like Hyphen and Nichi Bei, which is pretty sweet for us working folk

3. Spread the word.

Whether or not you’ve got extra lunch money towards subs or donations, you can always cash in on free speech!

Spread the word about the importance and amazingness of these publications with your friends, parents, brothers, sisters, and hundreds of cousins. Got a rich engineering uncle? Accountant mom?

Also, share the scoop on the publications on Twitter, Facebook, Digg, Tumblr, MySpace, your blog, wheatpaste, open mic nite.

More Info on the Publications:

Giant Robot:

Founded in Los Angeles in 1994 by Eric Nakamura and Martin Wong, Giant Robot started out as a hand-stapled photocopied zine. Within a few years, it became one of the strongest, most comprehensive sources for Asian and Asian American pop culture. It has since expanded into a Giant Robot empire, including four retails stores and one restaurant: 2 stores and GR/eats restaurant in Los Angeles, GRNY in Manhattan, and GRSF in San Francisco’s Haight neighborhood. Giant Robot just celebrated their 15th year Biennale show in Los Angeles’ Japanese American National Museum. Over the past 15 years, GR has showcased the work of hundreds of local and international Asian and Asian American artists to an audience of every color and shape. GR covers urban artists, amazing Asians doing crazy things worldwide, mainstream and underground cultural trends, cool toys, films, and as they say, “Asian Pop Culture and Beyond.”

Hyphen magazine:

Hyphen magazine was founded in 2002 when a larger Asian-focused publication, A. Magazine, ceased publishing. A group of recent college grads got together to dream up a way to fill the void left behind in Asian American news, community and culture coverage, while offering something fresh and new for readers.

Hyphen focuses on Asian American activism, issues, and everyday people doing amazing things. Check out the Hyphen site and blog for a sampling of subjects Hyphen covers.

Nichi Bei Weekly:

Formerly the Nichi Bei Times, the Nichi Bei Weekly is a part of the Nichi Bei Foundation, a non-profit dedicated to serving primarily the Northern California Japanese American community. Historically, the Nichi Bei Times was the leading Japanese American newspaper in the USA. Founded in 1946, the NBT’s goal was to connect the fractured postwar Japanese American community. Currently, the Nichi Bei Weekly strives to represent, cover, and address the concerns of the community.

Recently, the Nichi Bei Times had to close its doors and reevaluate its role in the community. As many subscribing readers are aging and younger readers are far and few, NBT was bleeding revenue. Determined to continue serving the community, Nichi Bei editor Kenji Taguma began the Nichi Bei Foundation, a non-profit organization designed to keep the paper alive in a weekly form.

“Doc…tell me…what’s the worst-case scenario…?”

Sandra Oh’s character pauses, feigning feigned concern (that takes some real acting skills; she must draw upon Hugh Laurie for inspiration). She glances at the other doctor (or maybe nurse), and then back to the actress-patient with a cute British or maybe Australian accent and curly pile of fiery red hair.

“Well, you may need to get a (some sort of technical medical term that essentially means–)–”

“A poo bag? A poo bag! My father had one of these…etc…etc…I will not live like that!” She says in her charming, infuriated accent. Maybe it’s a New Zealand accent. Probably not British, after all.

Sandra Oh’s character steps back, feigning shock by widening her lightly shaded eyelids. “But this could save your life!”

“NO! No more surgeries!” Yada yada yada.

Sandra Oh’s character gets chewed out a few scenes later for her lack of bedside manner.

Another scene. Katherine Heigl’s character sits in a chemo infusion chair, still looking glowingly healthy.  A few blotches of makeup to mimic chemo-induced rosacea spot her face, framed by a scarf that conceals her full head of hair concealed in turn by a bald wig. Sandra Oh’s character exhibits more of her sarcastic brashness. Yada yada. Clever dialogue, yada yada. Someone’s witholding sex, she says. Sandra Oh makes a lesbian joke. Yada yada.

–

Local news featurettes light up the screen with plenty of smiles and a voice over full of oddly enthusiastic inflections.

Something about the Annie Le homicide case. Notorious grainy stock footage of Clark in court. Voice over says that there will be a memorial in El Dorado.

Next story.

Some guy in a suburban area near my area pilfered a Walgreen’s pharmacy by posing as a doctor, self-prescribing painkillers. (Didn’t I also see this in an episode of House?) The guy wanted to defend himself and the allegations made on the news the day before by police.

Shots of him talking to a reporter, poised with a notepad and a pen, taking copious notes. The camera pans the man’s house, zooms in on scars, and his bare feet, as the man describes his chronic back pains, pointing to an unseen location under his thin gray wifebeater undershirt.

“I take pain pills,” he says, “but it’s not anything I can’t control.” The voice over cuts in again, low and inexplicably cheery.

Next shot: the police officer says, “Well, he didn’t seem to be in any pain as he fled from us.”

Voice-over: “He hid in this garbage can.”

Another reporter in previously filmed footage pops out from a garbage bin, a la Oscar the Grouch or perhaps a Whack-a-Mole, only smiling.

Next shot: the same garbage can, sans Oscar the Reporter. Enthusiastic voice over.

The whole time, me: What the —-

—

Changed channel. KCRA news. I think I prefer their meteorologist anyways.

An elephant flips a white sedan, and tramples on along a dirt road, ramming a tree, and then is chased by several dozen men.

What does this rampaging Indian elephant have to do with local news? How is this relevant to me?

I have no idea, but this is good stuff. HO! Look at that elephant go…

I just finished watching Death Note today.

It really reminded me of the Flaming Lips’ song, Yeah Yeah Yeah:

“If you could blow up the world with the flick of a switch, would you do it?…So we cannot know ourselves or what we’d really do”

I hadn’t made this connection earlier, but the “person” (more or less a group of people operating under a pseudonym) who posted the Edison Chen scandal photographs called themselves “Kira”.

This is most likely in reference to a popular cult anime called Death Note (what I finished watching–ah life imitates art!); the main character is dubbed Kira (romanji/engrish for Killer) by the news media in Japan. Kira, a very smart, successful, but bored high-school student, Yagami Light, discovers a celestial notebook from a Shinigami, Death God. The notebook has the power to kill when a person’s name is written in it, either by the hand of a shinigami, or by the human who possesses the notebook. Light realizes this ability to kill strategically can be used to reform the world (which he will rule over as God), and he sets out to cleanse the world of evil people. He begins by killing criminals whose names appear in the nightly news, newspapers, and on the internet.

I imagine that in some odd way, the Kira in real life felt it was justified to post the scandal photographs and to reveal the hypocrisy in Hong Kong media.

But this is where things get tremendously fascinating. Ah, the parallels!

What is most fascinating to me is the prominence of the media in both the fictional anime and the real life situation. The media, in Death Note, is both a tool that Kira uses to find victims, and eventually becomes a tool that Kira uses to announce his intentions to the fearful public (that proves to have a malleable, manipulatable opinion of Kira).

In the Edison Chen situation, Kira and the media fed off of each other. The media simply ate up everything Kira posted, and for an estimated 28 days, Edison Chen ran on the cover of at least 3 periodicals or newspapers each day. Newspapers, which have suffered from the same trend plaguing print news internationally, suddenly began making profits again (but unfortunately fell into the trap of tabloid exploitation).

In the words of Tupac Shakur (again, ladies and gentlemen), “The media’s full of dirty tricks”. I find it terribly intriguing that Death Note was able to predict a very realistic behavior of the media and news industry–the media will jump on the gory personal details if they will sell. I’m referring mostly to the media in Asia, but of course we see this in all the Britney Spears coverage in the U.S. too.

(Not to rag on the media industry; I hope one day, however far or near, I can work for print. I just pray to God that I won’t fall into the tabloid trap.)

“Netizens” also played a special role as well. Netizens would plead Kira to post more photos, Kira would make deals, announce that he would post more on certain days at certain times. He enjoyed the control, knowing that thousands would be waiting at their computers, searching forums to find the photos.

After a certain point, it wasn’t vigilante justice to show these photos. Kira became a sick sycophant, obsessed with the power to ruin lives and end careers. And people loved him.

Well, all of that is over now. In other news, Edison Chen has made the big conversion to Christianity. I hope that he’s genuine; it’s so hard to be genuine even when you aren’t rich and famous.