NIKKEI VIEW: The Asian American Blog

Gil Asakawa’s Japanese American perspective on pop culture, media and politics

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Entries Tagged as 'baby boomers'

16-year-old Maryland teen creates Good50 search engine for older web users

May 24th, 2010 · No Comments

I hate to say it, but that “Model Minority” stereotype is based on reality sometimes. Some young Asian Americans are just darned smart, hard-working good students. Take Sunmee Huh, a 16-year-old Maryland teenager, for instance. Last year, she noticed her grandfather struggling to use a search engine, and had she an idea. She decided to [...]

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Tags: asian american · baby boomers · technology

Iron Man, Marvel-ous superheroes and Asian Americans

May 17th, 2010 · 3 Comments

Once upon a time, I went to art school. And although I graduated with a completely useless (career-wise, anyway) BFA in Painting, I chose art school because once upon a time, I wanted to work for Marvel Comics. Real bad. See above. When I was a kid, I loved Marvel’s lineup of superheroes because they [...]

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Tags: asian american · baby boomers · media · pop culture

“Ninja Assassin” updates the ninja image for the 21st century

November 30th, 2009 · 1 Comment

The new movie “Ninja Assassin” just might spark a new wave of fascination with Asian martial arts, but instead of kung fu, the fad will be for ninjutsu, the art of the ninja warrior. The film updates the image of the silent, stealthy assassins from Japanese history, and suggests that ninja clans still exist, sending [...]

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Tags: asian american · baby boomers · japan & asia · pop culture

Richard Aoki: The Asian American Black Panther

November 4th, 2009 · 1 Comment

Here’s another reason why we wish we lived on the West Coast: “Aoki,” a new documentary about Richard Aoki, the third-generation Japanese American who was one of the founding members of the revolutionary African American Black Panther Party in the late 1960s, is premiering in Oakland (where the Black Panthers were formed) on Nov. 12. [...]

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Tags: asian american · baby boomers

Astro Boy is still flying high after 57 years of fighting crime with technology

October 23rd, 2009 · 1 Comment

Astro Boy,” the new American computer-animated version of the Japanese comic and cartoon that launched the revolution we now call anime, opens today. I’m more than a little nervous about seeing the movie, since it may not resemble the Japanese cartoon I grew up with, and because Hollywood really screwed up “Speed Racer” when they [...]

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Tags: asian american · baby boomers · media · pop culture

Ang Lee’s take on Woodstock doesn’t compare to the original movie on DVD. Bummer, man.

August 31st, 2009 · No Comments

I’m a big fan of Ang Lee, the Taiwan-born director of such terrific films as “The Wedding Banquet,” “Eat Drink Man Woman,” “Sense and Sensibility,” “The Ice Storm,” “Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon” and “Brokeback Mountain.” He glides effortlessly between cultures, putting Chinese values to celluloid in one movie and reflecting America in the next. He [...]

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Tags: asian american · baby boomers · music · pop culture

If today’s media covered the Moon landing — looking back at a baby boomer’s milestone

July 20th, 2009 · No Comments

This is from Slate: a re-imagining of the coverage of the Moon landing on July 20, 1969 if today’s Internet- and cable-TV fueled media could have covered the event. I think it’s fabulous and funny, but I wonder if young people seeing this would go, “and your point is?” It’s wild to think most of [...]

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Tags: baby boomers · media

The Men from U.N.C.L.E. — the 1960s’ top TV spies

July 4th, 2009 · 9 Comments

Last year I received one of the coolest gifts ever — a 41-DVD boxed set of “The Man from U.N.C.L.E.,” the TV spy series that ran from 1964-’68. The set came in a package that looks like a secret agent’s briefcase, and includes all 105 episodes of the program, plus a ton of extras such [...]

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Tags: baby boomers · media · pop culture

Author-activist Phoebe Eng is next up on visualizAsian.com’s AAPI Empowerment series

June 10th, 2009 · No Comments

Erin Yoshimura and I started visualizAsian.com to interview Asian American Pacific Islander leaders and tell their stories to empower other AAPIs to follow in their footsteps. So far, it’s been an absolute blast. The website launched with a conversation with former Secretary of Transportation Norm Mineta on May 21, and this week we spoke with [...]

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Tags: Food & Dining · asian american · baby boomers · media · places · pop culture

‘Sukiyaki,’ Kina Grannis’ music and the random magic of YouTube

December 6th, 2008 · 4 Comments

Surfing YouTube videos can be like the early days of surfing the Internet. Following links to random Web pages is a leap of faith, a trust in kismet, that what you’re about to see is both somehow related to what you were seeking in the first place, and hopefully entertaining. In the midst of one [...]

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Tags: asian american · baby boomers · japan & asia · music

Peter Paul & Mary, the sweetest voices of the 1960s folk era

November 29th, 2008 · 1 Comment

Although I covered pop music at a time when punk, hardcore, “alternative” rock, rap and hip hop were the coolest sounds, I always had a soft spot for the sweet sugar of pure pop. I once wrote an essay comparing Michael Jackson to Prince, as if Jackson were the Beatles and Prince were the Rolling [...]

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Tags: baby boomers · music · pop culture

Slinky, a truly classic Baby Boomer toy

November 23rd, 2008 · 2 Comments

Betty James just passed away. Who’s that, you say? She’s the woman whose husband invented the Slinky, and the woman who headed the company that manufactured all the wacky variations of Slinky, from Slinky Dogs to Plastic Rainbow Slinkys, for decades. My friend Leland Rucker, with whom I co-authored “The Toy Book” in 1991, just [...]

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Tags: baby boomers · media · pop culture

Barack Obama’s nod to Sam Cooke and the civil rights era

November 5th, 2008 · 5 Comments

Barack Obama’s victory last night in the U.S. presidential election brought tears to my eyes not only because of the incredible historic nature of his mere candidacy, and the poignancy of his life story, and the righteousness of overcoming the odds and connecting with the majority of Americans to win the White House. The emotions [...]

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Tags: baby boomers · music · pop culture

Remembering John Lennon, Oct. 9, 2008

October 9th, 2008 · 2 Comments

One of the great advantages of working for MediaNews Group Interactive is that our office, on the 9th floor of the same building that houses both the Denver Post, which we own, and the Rocky Mountain News, is that we have a terrific view. Located at the corner of Broadway St. And Colfax Ave., our [...]

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Tags: asian american · baby boomers · music

Denver Mayor John Hickenlooper: Rock star treatment on the 16th St. mall

August 29th, 2008 · No Comments

I ran into Denver’s Mayor John Hickenlooper a cpuple of days ago on my way to the dwntown bus station after work. He was being mobbed by people who wanted to shake his hand and pose for photos with him. It was amusing because I’ve known John for a long time — almost 25 years! [...]

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Tags: baby boomers · places · pop culture

Videos worth watching: Paris Hilton’s response & Joe Cocker with subtitles

August 6th, 2008 · No Comments

I just got a surprising amount of respect for Hilton, who responded this week with this spoof to an ad by John McCain’s campaign criticizing Barack Obama for being too popular, and comparing him to Britney Spears and Paris Hilton: See more funny videos at Funny or Die And this one is just a wonderful [...]

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Tags: baby boomers · music · pop culture

The legacy of Rocky Aoki and his Benihana restaurants

July 19th, 2008 · 1 Comment

Erin, Jared and I ate at a Benihana restaurant recently, and then learned just a couple of days later that Rocky Aoki, the founder of the Benihana chain, had died. I wrote about my experience growing up eating at Benihana for special family occasions, and how in recent years, the restaurant only has one connection [...]

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Tags: Food & Dining · asian american · baby boomers · japan & asia

Flipping for the Flip video camera

July 18th, 2008 · 1 Comment

I know some of my friends think of me as a gadget freak, but I only get crazed about a new toy every once in a while. iPods, for instance. Or digital cameras before that. Walkmans (Walkmen?) in the ’80s. Here’s my newest gadget recommendation: We recently bought two Flip video cameras and we’re having [...]

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Tags: baby boomers · media · pop culture · technology

Are newspapers finally embracing the Web?

June 23rd, 2008 · No Comments

Leave it to a former rockcrit — and a McClatchy employee (the company just cut 10% of its workforce nationally) — to come up with an eloquent essay on the decline of the newspaper industry and the ascension of the Internet. Online people, myself included, have been saying for years that the Web should be [...]

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Tags: baby boomers · media

A musical perfect storm: U2 live at Red Rocks

June 4th, 2008 · No Comments

I know exactly where I was the night of June 5, 1983: I was freezing my butt off, soaked to the bone but ignoring my discomfort because I was in musical heaven, surrounded by huge sandstone rocks on both sides, a stormy sky above and a hungry young band called U2 just hitting its stride [...]

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Tags: baby boomers · music · pop culture