How would you like your turkey to be cooked; baked, roasted or printed?
Published on Orinda News 11/1/2015
Are you ready for 3-D printed foods? Yes, 3-D printed foods are coming, fast and furious.
It's a tradition to watch Charlie Brown Thanksgiving:
Things you may not know about 'A Charlie Brown Thanksgiving'
Gillian Pensavalle (@GillianWithaG) tells you some fun facts you may not know about Charlie Brown Thanksgiving; Check out this story on USATODAY.com: http://usat.ly/1ji9BQ6
It may be cliché to say that as Asian Americans, we’re often pressured to forgo our more artistic or creative passions for a stable career path. And yet this was even more the case for generations past, who had few role models and their sights set on a better future for their children. But some are finding a newfound freedom after a lifetime of raising families and paying the bills. Here, three stories of Asian American retirees who are using their sunset years to recapture dreams once left to the wayside.
story Ada Tseng
In 1969,Dick Ling, a new immigrant from Taiwan, took the subway to Chicago’s Michigan Avenue carrying two portfolios: one for architecture and one for cartooning. He had crashed on his friend’s dormitory floor the night before, and he was looking for the Playboy corporate headquarters.
Not for what you might think- though he was pleasantly surprised by the gorgeous female receptionists and the artful mosaic of nude women on the wall. He wanted to draw cartoons for the magazine. Growing up in Taiwan, Ling’s dream was to be a cartoonist. He’d get in trouble at school for drawing epic spaceship battles on top of brand-new classroom desks. And he was very inspired by Western-style cartoons, from Bugs Bunny to Disney films, so his father, knowing his son’s passion for American comics, subscribed to Mad magazine — and occasionally Playboy. Ling imagines the staff at Playboy must have been confused when he showed up unannounced at their offices. “The receptionist looked me up and down and asked, ‘How long have you been in Chicago?’” he remembers. “I said, ‘Second day!’” The chief editor at the time was nice enough to sit down with him and take a look at his cartoons. Though there wasn’t a position open for a cartoonist, the editor admired his gumption and gave him three people to contact who might be hiring. One actually offered Ling a job as an apprentice at a photo lab, but it only paid $70 a week. Figuring it’d be difficult to survive on that kind of salary, he politely declined. “To this day, I still wonder what would’ve happened if I had taken that job,” he says. Ling is now 70 years young. He smiles. “Would I even still be alive?” For the next few decades, Ling would try and forget about cartooning and concentrate on his architecture career. It was what he had studied in school and what was allowing him to stay in America on a student visa. But dreams don’t die so easily. He kept coming back to cartooning, even if he was drawing on the side. In the 1970s, he developed a comic strip called “The Woks” (later renamed “Potstickers”), which was a Chinese American version of Charles M. Schulz’s “Peanuts,” about a young boy named Chung, his younger siblings, his friends, a dragon and a philosopher named Buddha. He submitted to all the major syndicates in the United States but was met with rejection, as editors politely told him that their audiences weren’t interested. He finally sold it to TransWorld News Service in Washing-ton, D.C., in 1977, but before they could distribute the comic strip, the news agency filed for bankruptcy, and he was never able to resell it. More than 30 years later, after making a living for his wife and two kids as a licensed architect, Ling has re-tired and returned to his true love. He is now the editorial cartoonist for Orinda News, a community newspaper in Northern California. Looking back, does he have any regrets? “Sometimes you take a step that’s right at the time, and you don’t know what the outcome will be until 15 to 20 years later,” he says. “But I think my decision was still correct if I wanted to better myself financially and raise a family. It was the safe route. Becoming a cartoonist during that time was really unknown territory. It would have been too scary.” If there is still some truth to the cliché that Asian American youth are often discouraged from pursuing the arts and pressured into stable careers like medicine, law or engineering, imagine what it was like 40 years ago. “At that time, we were taught that we have to bring pride to the family, especially the elders in our home country,” Ling says. “And I think that’s a very heavy burden. If you want to excel at the arts, you have to give 100 percent and be fearless, but sometimes that means you can’t be as responsible.” He shrugs. “Some people might think it’s sad that I decided to get the steady pay-check, but that’s the choice I made.” It wasn’t just the traditional cultural pressures that were prevalent in that generation of Asian Americans. The landscape of the time period was entirely different as well. Sure, in the early ’60s, there was the groundbreaking film Flower Drum Song, an Asian American musical starring Nancy Kwan and James Shigeta, but it was also the era where Mickey Rooney’s buck-toothed yellowface portrayal of Mr. Yunioshi in Breakfast at Tiffany’s was seen as a laugh riot. Most Asians in the media were still depicted as villains, laundromat owners or untrustworthy foreigners. Bruce Lee wouldn’t emerge as a star until the early 1970s.
So there may have been glimpses of the American Dream, but when it came to the arts, lack of support (Ling didn’t know any other Asian American comic artists at the time) and lingering anti-immigrant sentiment suggested that your average paying American wasn’t interested in Asian American stories. And even if there were Asian American talents, it would have been extremely rare for one to be able to make a decent living at it.
“I WAS LUCKY if I got one acting job every six months,” Stephen Woo remembers, back in the 1970s when he was trying to make it as an actor. Woo grew up in California on movie sets, introduced to the entertainment industry by his uncle, actor Walter Soo Hoo. Stephen worked as an extra to make money through college, mostly in war movies or films with Chinatown scenes, though when he started pursuing acting more seriously, he was constantly frustrated with the limited and stereotypical roles that were available. “My agents would send me out on these auditions for kung fu masters and Chinatown bandits,” he says, “and I’d think, ‘I’m not going to get this. Why can’t I just play a normal person?’” While he was still struggling to make ends meet, he fell in love with his future wife, Barbara, who told him that she’d only marry him if he got a “real job.” So he gave up his SAG card, started a business in marketing and telecommunications, raised two beautiful daughters and didn’t look back — until he retired. In 2014, he decided to give it another shot, just for fun. But this time, he’d include his wife in the process. “I started using all my marketing and sales skills to market us as a husband-wife acting team with 2Woos.com,” he says. Within a week of Barbara retiring, they had a Skype audition for the reality pro-gram Freakshow and booked the gig. Soon, the 60-something duo found themselves filming a scene in Venice as a suburban couple who is invited over to their neighbor’s house to meet a bunch of “freaks,” including the tallest man in the world, the shortest woman in the world, a red-bearded woman, a man who’s in the Guinness Book of World Records for having the most body piercings, and a performer who can swallow 27 swords at one time. “It’s an irresistible industry,” says Barbara, who grew up in Scottsbluff, Nebraska, and loved musicals as a kid (and was even in a high school production of Flower Drum Song). But she
never, ever imagined herself as an ac-tress. Now she loves it. “One day, I could be a nurse, the next day I could be playing Harry Shum Jr.’s mother [in the Wong Fu Productions short Single by 30]. Another day, we could be doing a Maroon 5 video [for the hit song “Sugar”] or we could be on the set of Pitch Perfect 2, the only seniors with a whole cast of youngsters dancing under a bridge.” That’s just the tip of the iceberg. Stephen was in the Ed Sheeran music video “Sing”; they hung out with Nicole Richie in her reality show Candidly Nicole, playing members of her home-owner’s association; they’ve been in Buzzfeed videos and Funny or Die sketches. In contrast to the old days when Stephen struggled to book one gig every six months, the couple now aver-age a job a week and are constantly traveling from place to place for last-minute auditions. “I see kids now, and they’re so open to trying new things,” says Stephen, of the Asian American online creators they often work with. “They can write and direct their own stories, use YouTube to reach millions of people overnight for free. In some ways, I envy them, and I wish I were 30 to 40 years younger so I could be a part of that. But I actually used to be really timid and shy for an actor. Now I have more life experience and more confidence. So we’re doing our own thing, which is pretty good, too.” IT’S NATURAL TO wonder what could have been. When people have to give up their dreams for their families, it’s often described with some cynicism — the idea that the passion of youth must eventually make way for the practicalities of adulthood and “the real world.” But for some people, this view is short-sided and overvalues the priorities of an individual pursuit versus a happy and comfortable home life. Richard Liu, 66, was a trombone player in the Taipei Municipal Sym-phony Orchestra when he was a young man. “I had a lot of dreams,” Liu re-members. He grew up in a farm in a mud house and remembers not even having electricity when he was in high school. They’d use oil lamps and steal the light from their neighbors. That said, he was an extremely resourceful child and loved music. “Because we didn’t have any money, in elementary school, I’d make my own instruments,” he says. “In the fifth grade, I made my own erhu [Chinese violin].” He created it out of bamboo from his backyard. “One day I couldn’t find it and turned out someone had used it to make a fire!” he remembers, laughing. “I cried when I found out.”
As a teenager in the military, he was in a band, and once he finished his service, he was accepted into the Taipei Municipal Symphony Orchestra, where he played trombone for 10 years. But because the job only required him to work at night, he experimented with many different things during the day to make money for his family. At first, he and his wife, Mary, ran a noodle shop. Later, they turned it into a flower shop. He was even a re-porter for a couple years.
In 1980, the Lius decided to bring their young children to California. And though he would still play with a band when he first arrived in the U.S., he eventually gave up his music for over 30 years in order to concentrate on building a landscaping business. That said, he doesn’t see his choice as a difficult sacrifice at all. “Our family is the center of our lives,” he says. “And now, our kids are like our friends. We can talk to them about anything, and we’ve already achieved everything we ever dreamed.” Liu’s unique designs were such a success that he was featured on CTS-TV, a Chinese television station, in a story about overseas Chinese who had become successful abroad. In addition to their company, Beautiful Landscape, Liu and Mary opened up a nursery, Rosemead Gardens, to provide other professionals with the tools to create gardens for their clients. About six years ago, Liu decided to retire and revive his passion for music, though this time, he decided to teach himself the saxophone and clarinet. He’s constantly playing music, whether it’s performing at local concerts around Southern California, weddings, cultural events or even at home, where he can jam with his friends for up to seven hours, not realizing how much time has flown by. THE GREAT THINGabout returning to one’s passions after building a stable base is that artists like Ling, Liu and the 2Woos now have the freedom and flexibility to pursue their dreams on their own terms. For Liu, his artistry extends past his music. He used his landscaping skills to turn a 350-year-old California live oak tree in their backyard into a five-story treehouse using found items. “He turns trash into treasures,” says Mary, describing the antique headboards he bends into lounge chairs, the branches he finds on hikes that he turns into banisters, and abandoned metal furniture pieces he uses to create an overhead wine glass holder in the treehouse bar. (Yes, there’s a bar in the treehouse.) He and his wife often throw parties for friends and family — which now include three adult children and six grandchildren — in their backyard, where he and his band plays. Even now, living out his musical dreams inherently involves his family. Forty years ago, he’d write his wife poetry every day, and she’d go to all of his shows; now he plays her the saxophone every day, and she’s still his biggest fan. Similarly, Ling doesn’t need the approval of national syndicates anymore. He loves his gig at Orinda News because it allows him the creative freedom to cartoon about whatever he wants. Every month, he publishes a single-panel comic series called “The Wobblers,” where he makes lighthearted observations on every-day life. He doesn’t feel the pressure to represent Asian Americans (as he did when he first created “The Woks”). He’d rather make harmless puns about national holidays, make fun of Kim Jong-un’s haircut, or joke about the older generation not understanding how to text or young people and their selfies. He just wants his comics to bring a smile to people’s faces. As for Stephen, he now often acts as his own agent. “The Internet has done for acting what it’s done for travel and real estate,” he says. “It’s good to have a travel agent or real estate agent, but you don’t need it. When I left the [acting] business, it was controlled by big studios and unions, but now, I submit ourselves for everything, not just Asian specific roles. And many times, we’ll get [cast], which is very cool.” “And it’s different now because we don’t need it,” says Barbara. Stephen agrees. “When I was younger and I didn’t get a job, I’d get really depressed because I had to pay the rent,” he says. “But now,” Barbara continues, “if we don’t get a job, we’ll laugh about it. Now we watch commercials really diligently, and if we see an ad for a Tempur-Pedic mattress that we auditioned for and lost to a younger couple, we’ll say, ‘What? They think those youngsters can bounce better than us?’” Because at this point of their lives, the pressure’s off, and it’s all about having fun. “I’m so happy that at the last phase of our careers, we’re doing some-thing we enjoy, and we get to do it together,” says Stephen. “I’d hate to retire and do nothing. Instead, this is all new to us; the more we do it, the better we’ll get, and we’re constantly learning, growing, meeting new people and having new experiences.” _____________________________________________________ This original article was written by Ada Tseng, Managing Editor for Audrey Magazine, but I have to convert its format slightly in order to post on the Blogger. I was trying to convert and embed the original pdf to the post but failed after many attempts. You can view the original article on Fall issue of the magazine, http://audreymagazine.com/.
In addition to the celebrations in major cities of the US, many local cities and communities, such as in my hometown, Orinda, California, has parades which are participated by the residents.
The rumors have been passed around that some newcomers are participating in this year's parade:
In our neighborhood there are plenty of turkeys, no, they did not come from the White House, and they are fearless, running around the neighborhood, daring the residents, stopping cars and they are loud.
I think they will quiet down when Thanksgiving nears.
Double the fun of Dad's special day with our funny Father's Day jokes!
Compiled by Amy Zerello from readersdigest.com
Dad holds a special place in
our hearts, and on Father’s Day, he deserves the best! Pass our
funniest fatherhood submissions on to a dad in your life and share the
priceless gift of laughter!
The Right Choice
My 16-year-old brother, Ryan, was out late with friends one night.
Suddenly he realized it was Father’s Day and he had neglected to buy a
card for our dad. After much searching, Ryan located an open store, but
was disappointed to find only two cards left on a picked-over rack.
Selecting one, he brought it home and, somewhat sheepishly, presented it
to our father.
Upon opening it, Dad read this message: “You’ve been like a father to me.”
He looked at Ryan, puzzled.
ADVERTISEMENT
“Well, Dad,” Ryan tried to explain, “it was either that or the card that said, ‘Now that I’m a father too!'”
— Submitted by Anne Carlson
A hair raising tale and how the awesome hairdo was made.
California's sever drought is getting critical:
5/1/2015 Orinda News
What happened in March?
3/1/2015 Orinda News
What happened in April?
4/1/2015 Orinda News
The Woks
After I published the post, Fresh off the Boat (FOB) and Popstickers. I received many inquires about the status of The Woks, the comic strip which I signed with now defunct Trans World News Services in 1979. Fifteen years later, in 1994 I updated the
strip, changed the title to Popstickers and tried to publish to no
avail. I begun to realize that the concept of a comic strip about an
immigrated family in the US would still be way ahead of its time. For years, I kept the original strips in the closet without showing them around because I felt the strips and the characters were so outdated and my drawing style
and subjects matters have also changed drastically. I chose to redirect my career as an Architect and being a family man.
I am now encouraged by the success of FOB, it seems that people in the US are ready to accept foreign and diverse topics. I decided to dust off the copies and publish the complete set of The Woks comic strip which I submitted to the syndication in the 70's. Admittedly, some topics in the strips are so old and younger generations now may have no clue about how people could actually survive without computers, tablets, smart phones or social networking.
A new TV series "Fresh off the boat" from ABC premiered on Feb 4, 2015. I am very happy about the show which portrays an immigrant family with the same roots which we shared.
I think the show hit home with many immigrant Chinese families in the US. Without going in deep analysis on my own about the show, I find below the article is very well said:
Fresh Off the Boat Series Premiere Review: Stop Being Uppity and Just Laugh By Tim Surette
"Is ABC colorblind or overly color aware? The network's current
programming lineup includes three shows with African-American leads (Scandal, How to Get Away With Murder, and Black-ish), as well as a comedy about a Hispanic family (Cristela),
which adds a refreshing splash of color to a TV landscape that's mostly
white. And as of this week, it's adding an Asian-American sitcom to its
menu in Fresh Off the Boat, the first comedy about East Asian characters to air on network television since Margaret Cho's All-American Girl, which was canceled after one season in 1995".
For years, Asians in the US have been working hard to fight the stereotype of exclusion or hostility and perpetual foreigner who would not blend into the American culture. The stereotype of Asians portrayed in entertainment industry had not been very kind, such as Fu Manchu: "evil" East Asian, Charlie Chan: "good" East Asian, China doll, etc.
In recent years, only a few Asians made it briefly to prime time entertainment, such as: Margaret Cho:
Joe Wong 黃西
I am a cartoonist and licensed Architect who have been drawing cartoons for years, had my first drawing published on a children section of a major newspaper in Taiwan when I was a second grader. My cartoons are self taught which have been greatly influenced by Peanuts by Charles Schultz and Mad Magazine. After I moved to the United States in the 70s, I continued pursuing my cartooning career with limited success and now I am publishing my monthly Editorial Cartoons for Orinda News.
Ever since I landed in the US, I had a dream of publishing a comic strip of an immigrant Chinese family in the US. I knew then and still believe now that good humor can be found by poking fun on culture and lifestyle differences so I developed a comic strip titled The Woks. The hero of the strip is a preteen boy Chung, younger sister Mei-Mei 妹妹 and a toddler kid brother DiDi 弟弟 who had not learned to speak English. Chung had two white buddies named Mike (actually my son's best friend) and David. Chung also had a dog, CoCo (my childhood Cocker Spaniel). Also, I included two Chinese mythical characters who would appear in the background, Lung 龍 , the prankster and Smiling Buddha 笑彿, the philosopher. In the strip, no faces of the parents or adults would be shown; only their backsides and legs are shown, just like how kids see the adults.
At that era and before internet, publishing artworks on newspapers/magazines though syndication, just like Peanuts, would be the ultimate success and to get rich fast. I submitted the strips to probably 10 major syndicates in the US, Canada and actually met with some of the editors face to face for discussions. They were polite but the subtle messages were that the topics would not be readily accepted by the readers.
My good luck came in 1977, I received and signed a contract with TransWorld News Services in Washington D.C. for them to distribute the strip. I was more than elated and thought my life would be forever changed; fame and fortune would soon follow.
Unfortunately, for two years, nothing happened, no drawings were published or sold and the news agency filed for bankruptcy. I updated and renamed the strip to Potstickers, tried to resell it without success except received an award from Marin County Fair in 1994. So my dream died.
With the success of the Fresh off the boat, I look back at my strip and see some of the parallel and similarities, such as an immigrant family with both parents; a preteen boy with siblings; a non English speaking member of the family; friends in diverse ethnic backgrounds and humors were drawn from trying to adjust lives in diversities and poking fun towards stereotypes and racial sensitivities. I believe the show will touch some raw nerves and should be braced for receiving cynical negative criticisms for racism just like I did in the 70’s. I recall that I once did a cartoon in 1979 and some critics said that drawing was an insult to Chinese. I did not know how to respond eloquently at the time but now I can respond politely by quoting what Mr.Tim Surette stated in his article which I shared in the beginning of the blog: Stop Being Uppity and Just Laugh.
I am not trying to hop on the bandwagon, attempting to take the advantage of the hype or realigning my comic strip to the new found interests in Asian cultures brought on by the show. I am merely trying to point out that even though the medias are different, Fresh off the boat on TV sitcom vs Potstickers on newspaper prints, they all share the same goals to embrace, inform and raise the tolerance of cultural differences in humorous way, not to spread racism.
So in a broad sense, why Fresh of the boat is accepted while my strip went nowhere? I think one of the main reasons of my comic strip’s failure was that the timing of my topics were off for a few decades and at the time when diversities, tolerances, inclusiveness and acceptance of differences were none existence. The other reason was that I did not know how to promote my product or had not tried hard enough during the years when I had been working comfortably as an Architect. Or simply put it, my comics was not good.
Do I want to try to revive my comics strip and continue? Not sure, years ago when the strip was first published it was perhaps ahead of the time but the strip and its contents are now far behind the time. It would take tremendous efforts to pump in new blood in order to resuscitate the aging bodies, the strip and I. But if anyone who wants to take over and also develop it into animation, please contact me for copy rights. In the meantime, let us enjoy the show and I am sincerely wishing Fresh off the Boat's a long lasting great success.
Fresh off the drawing board:
Happy New Year Year of the Ram
恭喜發財, 羊年喜羊羊，情人節讓有情人蹦出愛的火花
Happy Valentine's Day
Published on Orinda News 2/1/2015
An old editorial cartoon from 1999
Yes, no bow and arrow this year. I'm shooting Viagra backed by popular demands.
