Vote for Your Fav DIY Asian American Music Videos

A great collaboration between various APA arts communities is happening in the San Francisco bay area. Two months ago, Kearny Street Workshop teamed up with indie APA filmmakers and musicians to produce small, low-budget music videos.

The videos have been premiered on the CAAM (Center for Asian American Media) site. Any one can go on the site to vote for their favorite video. The winner video will be screened at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival on March 19, 2009. The video premiere and online contest is sponsored by Hyphen, a readership-worthy APA-focused magazine. [This reminds me, I should renew my Hypen subscription again.]

Here's one that I really enjoyed: "Jonah" by Fiveng, video by Nate Chan.

Amy Tan on Creativity @ TED Talk

Some friends referred me to TED Talk today. It's a conference where all of the world's high-minded thinkers and practitioners across disciplinary boundaries come together to give talks on mind-bending issues and perspectives. All the talks have been documented as videos and posted on the website. It's a tremendous resource for innovative ideas that would further thoughtful ideas and actions in the world. ]I heart TED talk.]

I found a TED talk on creativity by Amy Tan. Tan takes her audience through a journey of theories and her personal experiences as a writer. Her resistance to a "universal constant" and obsession with cultural, social, and historical specifics really impressed me. Her comfort with moral ambiguity is admirable. Her belief of compassion as a product of creation takes me closest to a warm humanistic place. Interesting talk. Look for a surprise in the end :)

Loud and Happy: Kite Operations in Brooklyn

I need to stop beating myself up for missing this show.

Kite Operations played a set at the Charleston (pizzas and beer!) in Brooklyn last Friday. After Joe of K.O. informed me about their performance videos posted on YouTube, I watched all 7 of them in one sitting (despite the decrepit state of my network). I'm happy experiencing only the media artifacts left over from this killer set.

This is what I enjoyed the most -



One word: pleasure.

How about some really naked, inside-out rock?