Absolutely Fobulous

Back in the fall, we blogged about Nicole Chiu as the next star on The Apprentice. We were sad to see her get fired from the show, but it didn’t stop her from pursuing her next career move.  Nicole is now a trademark attorney and hosts a radio segment on the side. Before her legal career, the California native was a Miss LA Chinatown pageant princess and the youngest to be elected to the board of directors of the Chinese Chamber of Commerce in LA. Read on to find out about her life after The Apprentice and her advice on landing your dream job!

How Asian was your upbringing?

My mom is white and my dad is Chinese American.  What was interesting about my experience on The Apprentice is that I was the token Asian.  They asked us to submit pictures and I had submitted pictures of me with both my parents, and of course they didn’t use those because it would be obvious that my mom is white.

My dad said I can do anything I wanted to when I grew up, but within certain boundaries.  I did theater all through high school and thought I wanted to major in drama in college. I actually went to audition when I was applying to colleges and my dad didn’t understand that.  My parents are both attorneys.  My birth announcement that my parents put out literally said “A new addition to the firm.”

What’s your fobbiest trait?

I drink a coconut everyday.  But, traditionally my friends have made fun of me because there are certain things about me that are very white—I have never owned a rice cooker.  It’s moments like that, where my Asian American friends are like wow, you totally are a white person.

What is your dream job?

I am looking into something along the lines of legal correspondent work. I don’t mean that in terms of Nancy Grace or some other predominantly white woman or man.  I want to create my own sphere. For me, that would mean a combination of Lisa Ling and SuChin Pak from MTV, except talking about the law and making it more interesting and skewed to minorities, women and young people.  We need to break boundaries and create our own careers and our niche.  There hasn’t been an Asian on The View since Lisa Ling and I’d love to put the smack down on Elisabeth Hasslebeck.

Why did you choose to do The Apprentice?

I’ve always taken things that people don’t think are traditional door openers and made them into opportunities for myself.  The big way I got my foot through the door as a community leader down in LA was through pageants.  Anyone who is going to be successful must master the art of the spinning anything and taking advantage of every opportunity, even if it looks non-traditional.  As women and minorities, we have to look for those unique opportunities even more.  When I put myself out there The Apprentice, yes, it was a risk but I had the faith in myself that I can spin anything.

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AbFob announcement: We’re stoked to announce our Guest Fobber series. Kicking it off is our first guest writer, Vicky Yue, a Taiwanese American blogger who’s ready to flash her fobulous V for Victory sign anytime, anywhere.  Vicky is a journalism grad from Northwestern and also writes for the popular Asian American magazine, Hyphen.  Welcome, Vicky!

Like many immigrants and 2nd gens, I grew up supporting pretty much anyone of Asian descent who showed up television. Tennis player Michael Chang. Gymnast Amy Chow. Any Asian on American Idol, regardless of actual talent. That Yan guy on Yan Can Cook. Broadcast journalist Connie Chung. And the list goes on.

Asians in America have a new girl to root for: Stephenie Park, an attorney from Chicago who is a contestant on new reality show America’s Next Great Restaurant. And—get this—she has a BS in economics from the University of Pennsylvania and a JD from Harvard. She also did a two-year stint in the Peace Corps. If this Ivy Leaguer’s history of accomplishments is any indication of her over-achieving tendencies, then we are certainly in for a treat. (Pun!)

So her restaurant, Harvest Sol, originally called Compleat, is based around the idea of portion control and will feature Mediterranean-inspired dishes. Okay, so the menu isn’t exactly fobby, but healthy eating is pretty fobulous any way you look at it. I’ll definitely be watching on Sunday to see if Stephenie will be one step closer to achieving her restaurant dream.

Hey, you know you wanna cheer for the hometown girl!

By now, you’ve probably read about the battle between The Slants and the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office after the Trademark Office refused to register “The Slants,” calling the name “disparaging.”  Guess what?  I got to chat with Simon Young, founding member and bassist of the Asian American Portland-based rock band.  Find out his take on the controversy, what he feels about their large otaku fan-base, and what his fobbiest trait is!

What’s your fobbiest trait?

While most bands on tour are eating pizza or at McDonalds, when we’re on tour, we can’t get away from not eating Asian food.  We can be in the middle of no where and we’ll crave Asian noodles or food.  It’s almost like comfort food.

How did you get started with The Slants?

It’s funny because the band really started because I was inspired by a movie.  I was watching Kill Bill.  There’s a scene where they’re walking into a restaurant and I remember seeing the slow motion walking of all the Asian gangsters.  That was pretty bad ass.  You never see Asians depicted that way in movies, the entertainment world, or the rock and roll world.

I began [the band] by posting on Craigslist, weekly classifies, and making posters and posting them in Asian supermarkets.  It took almost two years.  I eventually started off with a prolific group.  I wanted to do something that would be a bold trail of Asian American cultures.  We’re not going to hide behind who we are at all.  I wanted to go around breaking the stereotypes of Asians—like how we grow up just playing piano or wanting to be black.  I wanted to show that Asians can put on an energetic and dynamic show and be something that is cool.

Hey HEY!  We’re excited to invite you, our awesome readers, to join us at BANANA 2, the national gathering of Asian-American bloggers at LA’s CBS Studios.  And yes, we will be speaking on a panel!  We’re super excited and honored to share our fobby perspective — check out the blurb on our panel below.  Whether you’re a fellow blogger or avid blog-reader, we’d LOVE to meet you there!

Bananas, Twinkies, Coconuts & a lot more: The rainbow of the AAPI blogosphere

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Creator: Gil Asakawa (of Nikkei View)
Panelists: Emily Nakano Co and Suzanne Leung (of Absolutely Fobulous), Erica Johnson (of Hapa Voice), & Daigo Fujiwara (of Japanese Ball Players & Boston Globe Red Sox Podcast)

The Asian American blogosphere (as represented in the richness of Banana’s panels) covers a lot of ground, from the political to the whimsical, from foodies to Asian pop fanatics to bloggers that focus on specific communities. AAPI blogs can be about the Asian experience or exclusively about the Asian American experience. There are even blogs by Asian Americans that have nothing to do with Asian American culture, values or identity. What does it mean to be an Asian American blogger?

Register here to attend!  And check out the full line-up of panels, speakers and break-out sessions here.

I’m sure after Part I of Joe’s interview, you’re dying to learn more about the K-town show and get tips from the expert himself on what’s hot in L.A.’s Korean district.  Read on to find out!

Describe the rest of the cast members.  How are the dynamics between everyone?

Take a second and think of the most outgoing, crazy person in your circle of friends.  Now think of seven other people just like that.  That is my best explanation of the cast of K-Town in a few sentences.  The dynamics between everyone in the cast so far is a fun, hot crazy mess.

How has the “K-town” culture evolved to what it is today?  What makes it so unique?

K-Town has gone through a lot through the years.  From the L.A. riots in ’92 and the social struggles repairing itself since then, K-Town is thriving now more then ever.  Its a social melting pot filled with restaurants, boba & frozen yogurt cafes, bars, shops and karaoke rooms open till the early hours of the morning.  K-Town is unique in many ways and its really hard to know where to start.  Tell me a place where you can eat all you can eat meat, pound a bottle of soju & beer, go dancing and singing your brains out all in a quarter mile radius?  Los Angeles K-Town is that place.

What is the best place to eat in K-town?

The best place to eat in K-Town would have to be the all you can eat Korean BBQ spot Moodaepo 2.  The restaurant has club lights and TV screens playing K-Pop music videos all while you pack your bellies with endless amount of meat and wash it all down with the clear demise we call soju.  Totally a different eating experience that you can only experience in K-Town.

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For a show that hasn’t even aired yet, K-Town, aka the Asian Jersey Shore, has gotten a ton of hype. Everyone from gossip hawks like TMZ to Asian bloggers like Angry Asian Man were buzzing about the show this summer. Well, I had the pleasure of interviewing K-Town cast member, Joe Cha, himself!

Mike Le, one of the producers of the show, has been a wonderful supporter of our blog. In fact, he wrote in his blog that his inspiration for the show evolved from his own internal struggle, from feeling ashamed of being called a “fob” to having a greater appreciation for his Asian heritage. Read on for Absolutely Fobulous’ exclusive interview with notorious party animal, Joe “Knuckles” Cha.

Tell us a little about yourself.

I am a Korean-American born in Baltimore, Maryland, raised in Bellevue, Washington, and now reside in Los Angeles, California. I have two younger sisters, Jennifer and Julia Cha, both characters themselves. My father passed away back in ’02 leaving my mother behind for me to bodyguard. I attended the University of Washington where I got a degree in partying and started my nightclub promoting career through my involvement with KSA as the activities coordinator for all five years. Fitness is a big part of my life and yes, I have a six-pack on my lower back.

Why did you choose to audition for the K-town show?

I was always a fan of Jersey Shore.  When I was watching the first season, I thought in my head that it would be tight to have an Asian version of the show.  Back in March when the campaign of the K-Town auditions was happening on Facebook, pretty much every person that I knew either texted, called, emailed, Facebook’ed me to try auditioning for the show.  At first I was not taking the auditions seriously, thinking I wouldn’t even have a chance to place a part on the show.  As the days got closer to the audition, I was just overwhelmed with all the response for me to give it a try.

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What do Jet Li, Lucy Liu, and the Absolutely Fobulous girls have in common? Well, we’re all Asian for starters (as is more than half of the world’s population) and…we’ve all been featured on Channel APA!

Suzie and I were recently interviewed by our pal Steve Nguyen from ChannelAPA.com, which is basically a webbie version of an Asian American MTV. They’ve done a great service for the AA community, filling the void of broadcasting AZN entertainment and giving much-needed coverage to big name and struggling AA artistes alike. Steve has also been tirelessly helping the Asian Americans bloggers — we actually met him because he was the co-organizer of BANANA, the first-ever gathering of Asian-American Pacific Islander bloggers. FYI, BANANA II is coming up next February and is guaranteed to be more epic than the last.  Stay tuned for more fobulous updates on it!

If you’ve been reading AbFob and are curious to see how Suzie and I are like in real life (and more importantly, how fobby we think we are) watch the video below:

Want to hear more about Absolutely Fobulous in the press? Check out our Mother Jones interview! Also, read about our adventures at BANANA I.

Damn those Japanese coast guards. . . don’t they know how hard their Asian-American counterparts are working towards not being emasculated by the media?  I mean, yeah, women love men in uniform.  But not in school girl uniforms.  Still, you gotta admit that these Japanese coast guards sure know how to break it down, beautifully synchronized and undeterred by the crashing waves.

(Thanks Dunks!)

Happy Halloween, dear fans! I’m sure you’ve seen a plethora of crazy costumes this Halloween weekend.  But one costume that’s stirred a lot of debate among us AbFob bloggers is the “Asian” costume. I was at a bar on Friday night and saw a white dude dressed in a traditional Chinese silk shirt, with a hat/wig of a long, black braid of hair.  Then, he started doing an awkward karate-chop dance.

OK, that’s weird, I thought to myself.  Actually, no.  That is downright offensive.

But what if an Asian person wore his or her traditional dress for Halloween?  What if it was an Asian girl wearing a sexy geisha-inspired costume?  Is that different than if a white girl wore that same geisha costume?  At what point does the costume become a trivialization, and perhaps even ignorant mockery, of someone’s culture?

In Japan, black people are often exoticized on TV.  Often done for comedic effect, Japanese actors paint their face dark brown and perform in extremely stereotyped ways.  For most of us in the US, blackface depictions of African Americans, like the one below, are starkly offensive.

It’s a thin and ambiguous line to draw.  Perhaps the judgment call for this is similar to when Supreme Court Justice Potter Stewart tried to define the difference between nudity and pornography — “You know it when you see it.”

The hype started as the cast of K-town aka the “Asian Jersey Shore” was recently revealed.  As a huge fan of Jersey Shore, I’ll be adding this show onto my list of guilty pleasures.  Produced by Tyrese Gibson,  the show has just filmed its pilot but is waiting for a network to pick it up.  MTV, if you are reading this, please consider it.

Watching the leaked cast reel for the new show, I can definitely see the resemblance to Jersey Shore: Wild, ripped, extreme characters who know how to party, have fun, and create drama worth watching. Just substitute the Jägerbombs with Soju shots.

Indeed, the image of Asians as quiet, polite and submissive is just a stereotype. But add a couple of shots and you’ll see a whole different side to Asians. Living in Singapore, we were familiar with a “fobbier” version of this type of rowdy Asian subculture known as Ah Bengs, which is  a group known to dress flamboyantly, appear in big groups at clubs, and cause the occasional brawl.