Over the last few years, I’ve taken my columns and turned them into springboards for my comic memoirs that I’ve taken to the stage.
The newest iteration of my live Amok monologues features a new story about my conversion therapy as a transdad.
Transdad?
See the show in New York City starting Apri...
I bought something from a Chinese company on social media recently. When I got the product, it didn’t work.
I panicked, then relaxed because I bought it through an American tech giant, which gives me recourse.
Going to the product company directly was a nightmare in communication. Most of the emai...
Oh, how we hate the term “model minority,” which presupposes a good model for people of color and Asian Americans in particular to follow in life and career.
But judging by his performance the other day at a congressional hearing, Robert Hur, the former special prosecutor in the Biden documents cas...
Most want to rush to see the movies that won an Oscar after the fact. But there is one film you definitely should see after Oscar night and it’s a nominated movie that didn’t win, “Past Lives.”
It didn’t win for best picture or for Celine Song’s original screenplay. But as one who was a film critic...
State of the Union address? It was more like President Biden’s “Save the Nation” address.
And frankly, he had me at “Hello.”
Or more specifically, “Hitler.”
President Joe Biden started his State of the Union address by quoting President Franklin Delano Roosevelt on January 1941 saying, “I address...
Nikki Haley knows how to appeal to the Asian American in me.
“Just last week, my mother, a first generation immigrant, got to vote for her daughter for President,” Haley, of Indian descent, said. “Only in America.”
And with that opening, Haley suspended—though not ended–her campaign on a not so su...
Shane Gillis was on “SNL” hosting last Saturday, and maybe you found him funny. But probably not if you’re Asian American.
Believe me, I empathize with people trying to be funny.
I detest people showing off or underplaying their racism.
I recently returned from Los Angeles where I did five minute...
Comedian Shane Gillis was announced as the host more than a week ago for the Feb. 24th episode of Saturday Night Live.
Activists rev your engines? Or not?
Boycott the show? Or hope Bowen Yang and Shane Gillis mudwrestle on national TV?
If you’ll recall five years ago, Gillis was hired as a cast m...
Ageism is everywhere now if you haven’t noticed, thanks to a certain Asian American special prosecutor.
First, I tried to get away from the news by watching Super Bowl 58, which at 58 is still well under mandatory retirement age.
The San Francisco 49ers seemed to explode out of the gate, dominatin...
My father, Willie Guillermo, born under the American flag in the colonial America that was the Philippines, has a birthday today. He would have been 119 and thriving had he stopped eating pork at a reasonable age and gone vegan.
So, of course, he was in the back of my mind while I pondered all of t...
Let’s thank Tom Cotton, the MAGA Republican Senator from Arkansas, for inspiring the uniquely racist Lunar New Year greeting for 2024.
I can hear Cotton now saying, “Gung Hay Fat Communist!”
Or words to that effect. More on that later in this column, but first, the Lunar New Year officially begins...
If you’re an Asian American of Chinese descent who loves computers or data science, whether you’re an academic or not, be forewarned.
Once again, the FBI’s Christopher Wray is making news with another dire warning, this time at a Congressional hearing this week.
Wray said point blank that “China’s...
Honestly, E. Jean Carroll should be made an honorary Asian American.
I’ll explain.
But first, at least for what she went through in her multiple trials against Donald Trump, Carroll is democracy’s hero.
In case you were wondering (and we all are considering the number of Trump's legal entanglemen...
Nikki Haley, the lone Asian American, and lone woman, left running for president on the Republican side, isn’t quitting the race yet, despite an 11 point loss in New Hampshire.
Instead, she may be doing the country a big public service. As long as Haley keeps running, she baits Trump into showing u...
Former South Carolina Governor Nikki Haley said this week that
“America is not a racist country.”
And then Donald Trump proved her wrong by calling Haley by her Indian name--Nimarata Nikki Randhawa Haley— just to rile up the scores of racists in Trump’s Republican MAGA base.
Only Trump put an even...
And so we find ourselves this news cycle at a strange thematic confluence of democracy, MLK, and the Emmys.
Let’s take democracy first.
Over the weekend in Asia, our AAPI ancestral home, the pro-democracy movement appears strong, as voters in Taiwan have rejected threats from authoritarian Beijing...
Though a career journalist, I sometimes do theatrical one-man shows where I often tell jokes. When I do, I would prefer to kill.
It depends on my jokes, but killing could be seen as a constitutionally-protected right under the First Amendment.
Donald Trump wants the Constitution to protect him too...
I’ll get to the “Beef” at the Golden Globes, and the performance of comedian Jo Koy, all key historical Asian American first moments. But is anyone surprised there were no real political speeches given at the awards event on Sunday night?
Not a peep for the earth, global warning, or any of the worl...
If you’re a person of color, it’s hard not to feel the pain of Claudine Gay.
As an Asian American alumnus of Harvard, it hurts even more.
Being a BIPOC person with a Harvard degree has always made you a target. The racist assumptions never fade. Why are you here? Because of your race? Your gender?...
The war is not over in the two major geo-political flashpoints of the day.
I am, however, proud to report I witnessed the end of a significant AAPI culture war--the end of a feud, essentially a “lit war,” over the question, “What is an authentic Asian American story?”
Or at least, ”What’s our stor...