On the brink.....

Sorry to be MIA, but documentary business has been working its ways (....I just haven't been around to updating the production notes....mah bad). SO...here's what's on the brink:

--The Wayne and I will be attending the South Asian Students Alliance at Loyola University meeting tomorrow for a roundtable discussion. We have about 15 minutes to talk about the impact of Asian Americans in mainstream culture and in their case (to be more involved with their ethnicity) I would like to talk about Bollywood. Bollywood is very big in their culture and I believe it produces the most movies at a consist level. However, I also believe that there's a format involved and the ingredients involved with "Hindi films" are that they have music, some sort of love affair, and dialogue mixed with regular English and Hindi. This might be a factor as to why it doesn't appeal to a bigger audience. We'll dip into this at tomorrow night's meeting. Many thanks to Rohit Paul for hooking this up!!

--After talking with Zanies, I was referred to the person that teaches their "funny" classes -- Mr. Dobie Maxwell. Mr. Maxwell has helped me get insight on Asian Americans who have attended his classes and who have attempted to pull the funny from their culture. I like this viewpoint as part of my documentary because of the fact that I'm writing up a sketch comedy revue. Dobie has mentioned a few names and even an Asian American comedy troupe. So, I'm gonna follow up on that this weekend and see if I can get a lead into more interviews. Note to self -- credit due to one, Mr. Dobie Maxwell. Thank you sir! Hopefully we'll have a sit down interview soon enough.

--Next week, I'll be attending the Filipinos in Alliance at the University of Illinois in Chicago meeting. I'll be going solo because the meeting is still during normal work hours. This works out well because it will probably be a smaller group compared to SASA at Loyola (Rohit expects about 90 people to show up). A smaller group will be easier to handle though and can prolong the good discussion. Also....these are my peoples! If you haven't figured it out from my prior posts -- I'm a Filipino American. Therefore, I'd like to see how they relate and see how much history they know. Pretty excited for this one. Thanks Daryl!!

--The weekend before Thanksgiving, I have a scheduled interview with Mr. Martin Manalansan. From previous posting, I have mentioned that he is an Associate Professor at the University of Illinois at Urbana Champaign. I look forward to getting his feedback concerning the possibilities of why Asian Americans can tend to assimilate with their surroundings rather than stick out to be defined. It relates to an identity crisis and could support theory to Asian Americans needing to be more secure with their tradition in order to help people learn differences between specific Asians. Werd -- intelligence yo!

still kickin' it:

--My cousins/friends and I will be attending the Pacifics performance at Morseland come Saturday, November 19th. If you can go -- GO!

--TakeOut Comedy is making their way to get some performances during Asian American Heritage Month (which is in May, but since college/universities are on their way out during that month, they celebrate it in April....so in a way, we celebrate it for 2 months....woo hoo!). Jami Gong and I have been working to get them out here and make a laugh riot in the city of wind! Stay posted when things get more concrete...

OTHERWISE, I'll be workin on stuff tonight. Like Levar Burton from Reading Rainbow would say at the end of the show -- "We'll see ya next time!"