Back in Time, ‘Fresh Off the Boat’

Watching “Fresh Off the Boat,” the new ABC sitcom based on Eddie Huang’s eponymous memoir about growing up in Orlando, Florida, defies the time-space continuum in more ways than one. It’s not just that the series is set in the 1990s, or that I haven’t voluntarily viewed anything so old-school “sitcommy” since then. It’s that the last time television so matter-of-factly broke a glass ceiling was when “Will & Grace,” which featured two gay male characters, became an NBC smash in 1998. “Fresh Off the Boast” is the first stateside sitcom to star an Asian actor since Margaret Cho’s ill-fated “All-American Girl” was canceled in 1995 – the same year this series is set.

This doesn’t automatically mean “Fresh Off the Boat” is worth watching. Huang himself initially expressed trepidation about the production, suggesting it was a “reverse yellow face” – an attempt to fit an Asian American family into a traditional white TV family template. Others have rushed to the show’s defense. In a Slate roundtable, NPR’s Kat Chow agreed that it was “like a traditional sitcom” but praised it for “the various signposts for Asian Americans woven into them … the stinky tofu as the ‘weird Asian food’ … the ‘success perm.'” Continue Reading →

Oscar 2015, You Little Minx

Despite everything, I am a huge fan of the Academy Awards. They’re all pomp, circumstances, pathology, and glitter. This year’s award season has been especially dramatic, and I confess I have horses in this race, spiritually at least. This is always unwise when it comes to such institutionalized shenanigans. Hopes are bound to be dashed (if faith hardly wavered). Anyway, here are my Talking Pictures 2015 Oscar predictions (yep, it’s video footage), my #OscarSoWhite tirade, and where I can be found ranting tonight. Join me if you please, dear Sirenaders, and remember: I like you, I really like you. (That old chestnut never gets tired in my book.)

A League of Our Own

I’ve always liked my manicurist a lot even if we’ve had a hard time communicating beyond the basics; her English isn’t very good and my Korean is nonexistent. A few weeks ago, we had a breakthrough, though. An animal rescue commercial came on the salon TV, and, from our shared reaction, it became immediately apparent that we both spoke the International Language of Cat Lady. Now, once we establish my nail color of the week, that her children are doing well, and how terrible I am for eating my cuticles, we converse solely in meows and purrs. Naturally, everyone around us thinks we’re batty once they realize we’re the cats they are hearing and, naturally, this only makes us meow more. It’s the nature of the beast. (Pictured here: Another member of our secret feline and fancy nail appreciation society.)

"All, everything I understand, I understand only because I love."
― Leo Tolstoy