Arden Cho and Gerald Ko sing love.

This is perfect.

J. Reyez + 'Little Miss Innocent'

J. Reyez f Chris Jackson on 'Little Miss Innocent'. Okay, making up for several months of delinquent blogging by going on a posting spree, and avoiding some work. This track is...going on my iPod. Listen, download, subscribe. It's been a good 2010 for Asian music.

Jason Chen does David Tao.

I am looooving Jason Chen right now. He just popped a Chinese cover for the youtube crowd. It's David Tao's 天天. If you're not familiar with Jason Chen, get familiar. I listen to a shitload of youtube artists, and this guy ain't playing. Currently rotating on the iPod is his cover of Far*East Movement's 'Rocketeer' with J. Reyez, who would be amazing even if he didn't do a massive hit cover of Taeyang's 'Wedding Dress'. Check out Jason Chen's latest and subscribe.

MC Jin's 'Big Boys Club' debuts.

Grandmaster Jin has some impressive credits to his name. After pounding the competition in 2001 on Freestyle Friday, a freestyling competition during BET's music video countdown show, he successfully dropped albums in English and Chinese, becoming insta-hero for every Asian American kid in town. His presence in the music scene invited all sorts of criticism though from folks who thought there was no place in hip hop for some Chinese dude. Clearly they didn't know who they were messing with because Jin has since gone on to conquer Hong Kong. I mean, you don't get your 5 foot mug on buses and billboards if you don't have the goods.

So, with now classic anthems like ABC (where he talks about learning Chinese from TVB...genius) and stints as a vocal campaigner for Barack Obama and Vita lemon tea, he got fans wondering about his next big move. Just how do you top off all that goodness? The answer is obvious - your very own TVB chat show. That's right, MC Jin, the guy who tore down challengers week after week on 106 and Park, is now co-hosting a show called Big Boys Club (兄弟幫). No joke. Just a couple guys shooting the shit with celebrity guests. Think The View in sneakers and with large tubs of popcorn. It's that awesome.

Alright, I jest. Given Jin's professed love for the network, a sincere congratulations for even landing on the station is in order. There are worse things than being an indentured TVB servant; you could be one to ATV. But let's be honest, Jin + fluffy white couches and silver pillows? He's already hurting for street cred. If the first show was any indication of what is to come - and I hope it is not - he can forget about facing down fellow MCs back home. Or he better pray that no one ever finds tape of him and his co-hosts waxing lyrical about body hair (lack thereof) and substances excreted while sleeping (again, lack thereof). I won't condemn the project based on one episode, and in fairness, the conversation did evolve. A cute anecdote about a love note gone awry and one not so cute story about spending a couple nights in jail capped off the day's topic - what makes a boy, um, big. Hopefully with that question out of the way, even if not fully answered, Jin and his buddies can move on to more innocuous slumber party topics that delight the Hong Kong male. Not sure what those might be, but that's why I'll be tuning in tomorrow.

No matter what the big boys are talking about though, as long as Jin keeps spitting fun rhymes about everyone's favorite tv channel, I'm a fan. Here, he and his friend, MC KT, break down a popular show about mooncakes. That's right, mooncakes. And it's a sequel to a show about abalone. Take that, Showtime.

Holding On

It's embarrassing how transparent my train of thought is. It's so easy to pinpoint exactly what I'm obsessing over at the moment and how I got there. After some Sylar action, a bad Chris Pine movie, now we move on to Harold and Kumar. So yes, I am still stuck on Star Trek. I think it shoots out of theatres this weekend, which is unfortunate because that means I won't be able to catch it a second time on the big screen. But we know I'll be all over the DVD release - which can't come soon enough!


Anyway, after having clear exhausted my infatuations with Zachary Quinto and Chris Pine, the next logical step would be John Cho. (Karl Urban is next if I don't lose steam.) Curious, I'm not hot for him. Maybe his having a wife and child alters the equation, though Quinto possibly being gay does not. But I do like John Cho's work. After all, despite the progress Asian Americans have made in entertainment, we can still count the marquee actors on one hand. Gotta support a brother. I popped in Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle, a movie I thought was obnoxious and overhyped at first. But it's grown on me and really, how do you hate a stoner comedy starring two cool Asian dudes? And by whole country, I guess I mean the under-35 crowd. I think I'm also getting supremely homesick and this is the perfect slice of America that I need. It's not the most flattering - the battleshits scene is out of control - but it captures some of that jaded post-college ethos and leftover frat humor. And it's just damn funny. Oh yeah, and the burgers. When I was a little kid, a regular McDonald's cheese burger was too big so when those marketing gods over at White Castle delivered mini-burgers, that was my idea of 5 year old heaven.

So here is my absolute favorite scene because I LOVED Wilson Phillips. Yes, that's how cool I was. While y'all were listening to Thriller, I was rocking out to Hold On (and Tiffany).

Also some Samuel Barnett news. At long last he has another project that gets to see the light of day. This one is a BBC production called Desperate Romantics, about the Pre-Raphaelite art movement.


Those blokes gave us dreamy paintings like the one posted below that have since become a mainstay for college poster sales. Guys pick up the John Belushi Animal House poster while these Pre-Raphaelite works end up on girls' walls, next to the picture of Tom Cruise from Top Gun. In this mini-series (?), Mr. Barnett plays artist John Everett Millais who is famous for his insane talent and for getting cozy with an art critic's wife. Hooray, Sam finally gets the girl!