Hooray. NBC and Saturday Night Live did something right for a change.
But wait.
Surely, there are bigger fish to fry than the firing of the wayward racist Shane Gillis, right?
Of course, there are. And I will mention a big one in a sec.
But for now take a moment to pat yourself on the back if yo
Andrew Yang wants to be president. And he’ll give you $1,000 dollars a month.
Bowen Yang wants to be a star on NBC Saturday Night Live. You just have to sit through all the commercials.
Which is more important? Don’t kid yourself.
Bowen Yang on a cultural barometer like SNL means a lot more to Am
I always look at the famous AP photograph on 9/11. Just a glance. It’s all I can take.
For me more than the names being read, and the fake solemnity of the current president, nothing captures the horror quite like the moment of the falling man.
The falling, tumbling person has never been identifie
It’s a good thing Donald Trump has a real hurricane, a Sharpie, and a fake map to play with.
Yes, the man is no cartographer like Amerigo Vespucci (now there’s a guy with a brand! He put the “A” in USA).
But at least the president has something other than golf to occupy his divine passion for lyin
I’m driving around the Bay Area, and the talk is that traffic is lighter than normal in San Francisco because everyone who is anyone is at Burning Man in the Nevada desert.
Burning Man is not to be confused with an innocent person caught in the Amazon fires. Nor does it refer to the president, whos
If you were an Asian American dreaming of an Asian Woman vs. Asian Woman, Elephant vs. Donkey battle royale for the presidency in 2020 in the form of Nikki Haley vs. Kamala Harris, well, you can forget it.
Haley, who occasionally speaks her mind against Trump, is still firmly within the GOP fold, r
I happened to be driving through Dayton, a step ahead of the president who was starting his “Condemn racism, bigotry and white supremacy, I really mean it,” tour. It’s where presidential responsibility as consoler-in-chief meets campaign self-interest.
I’m just trying to get home. Trump’s just tryi
The evil that’s gripping the country, the deadly mix of guns, and white supremacy, Asian America has seen it before.
It’s definitely in our history. Just remember the name Fermin Tobera.
In the 1930s, when Filipinos were brought to America as 100 percent legal, colonized U.S. nationals primarily t
After the first CNN Democratic debate, I noted that it was held in Detroit, the scene of the most famous Asian American hate crime that galvanized Asian American political activism and awareness. But in 2019, we didn’t really show up.
It was the whitest of the two debates, and the one who really pu
Vincent Chin, the most famous of all Asian American hate crime victims, was murdered in the Detroit area, so maybe that was our way of being present at CNN’s Democratic presidential debate 2019, night one.
We were ghosts.
I listened for us. I didn’t hear Asian Americans mentioned once. Not even in
I lost my chance to own and possess it.
I wanted it on eBay–but was outbid.
It was one of the original brochures of the 1904 World’s Fair. The one that had the human zoos with the Filipinos, euphemistically called a “Filipino Exposition.”
An expo, what fun!?
A friend of mine found it for me. Dur
Glefen is a Lyft driver I met this week in DC. He immigrated here from the Philippines as a kid, and is in his twenties now. A naturalized American.
He makes me an OG. But what does that make my dad? An OOG?
Glefen has the AC on in DC, where we’re coming up to the hottest day in the last few years
I finally get out of Iowa, where it’s not inhospitable, but I am reminded of a group of Filipino men and their Japanese American wives and their Filipino-Japanese American kids who showed up in Iowa to live and farm in 1942 and were told to get out.
It happened. It made the news.
In 2019, after my
I’m hurtling through the heartland where the majority of the time the posted speed limit is 75-80 mph. Then my car broke down.
I’m heading to Washington, DC to do my show, “Emil Amok: All Pucked Up.” (Get your tickets here.)
I just thought replicating my father’s immigrant experience in my own cou
With the Supreme Court hearing the DACA appeal in the fall, Trump’s decision to end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals will surely a campaign issue going forward. Same with the Census citizenship question that was blocked for now but thrown back to the lower court. And then there’s the 5-4 SCOTU
The New York Times has been called “The Gray Lady” for decades, supposedly because its inked front page always gave a gray, bland appearance with few or no pictures.
The digital age has brought more color, but Wednesday morning was exceptional.
The picture said it all.
Facedown in the river were
Are you still in that reflective meditative coma I’ve suggested? Or have you busted out, ready to take action?
Five years ago, I proposed a special time– a period of community reflection– as an adjunct to May’s Asian American Pacific Islander Heritage Month, these days reduced to an obligatory and
The pictures from Hong Kong are impressive.
Hong Kongers are resisting and standing up to China’s real attempt to extradite dissidents and transform the old “one country, two systems” idea into more of the ruling party’s autocratic view.
Seeing the massive crowds, it’s never been more clear that p
Every year I tell you, dear readers, about how my dad died the week of Father’s Day.
This year, I’m announcing my show about my 1920s Filipino dad is coming to the east coast.
“Emil Amok” is about how a colonized Filipino arrived in America in 1928, and how I completed his journey taking him to Ha
I wonder if Trump could imagine an Asian American war hero like Dan Inouye, the former Hawaii Senator awarded the Medal of Honor and the Purple Heart for what he did in the south of France during World War II? Or would he see a Democratic firebrand who was leading the charge against him?
Too compli
