And now this...

First and foremost, special thanks goes out to the South Asian Student Alliance at Loyola University for all their hospitality and great insight. Thanks to Rohit Paul for helping me lead a discussion concerning my documentary. Everyone that spoke had good feedback and were very friendly afterwards. The Wayne came late, but everyone was so laid back that it made for funny and there was no urgency to be super professional. Thanks to Anup Alexander for taking the camera while Wayne was finding parking. Good luck to them for the rest of the school year! Hopefully our paths will cross again if TakeOut Comedy is able to perform there.

Continuing on with college/university organizations, I'll be meeting with the Filipinos in Alliance at the University of Illinois at Chicago this Tuesday. I'm pretty excited about this because I'm Filipino American myself and I'd like to see what the young Filipinos think about the mainstream.

Inquiring?:

-- in an effort to get established Asian American actors, I've sent out emails inquiring if they could give some feedback on the documentary topic. I started with what I knew and worked from there. One of my favorite movies is Better Luck Tomorrow and I decided to work that crew. I started with Parry Shen and then John Cho (yeah, yeah...the Milf guy from American Pie...but more recently of Harold and Kumar fame). John actually has a band named Left of Zed, which I'm intrigued about because he's the lead singer. This means that he should be the more recognizable person in the band and should make people think because he's Asian American. Sometimes record labels like to try to work some kind of angle to amuse the kids in order to sell more records. It's all about conforming to whatever the "norm" might be. And not to leave Parry out of the mix, but he actually has an online journal to which he addresses being an Asian American actor. What a coincidence, eh?

-- magazines are a part of mainstream culture. Therefore, I sent inquiries out to the following: Giant Robot, Generation Rice, Yolk/Chopblock, Jade, Hyphen, Theme, and Ricemen. I'm hoping they have Chicago representatives or perhaps might be planning a trip to Chicago for business. I can definitely get great insight on the inner depths of what Asian Americans are up to in the entertainment industry.

-- going along with the Bollywood thought, I'm in pursuit to see what Aishwarya Rai feels about Asian Americans in mainstream American culture. I'd like to get insight on how it is being one of the more recognizable Indian actresses and how she is transitioning herself into more mainstream films. May I also say...she is one beautiful lady...




Continuing College/University Shout Outs:

-- this weekend, I was only able to send surveys out to the University of Wisconsin-Madison. Make some noise guys!!