APAture: Lap-POP!

Two Sundays ago (September 21st) I went to Lap-POP!, one of the events in APAture's 10-day lineup. Lap-POP! is a showcase of blogs—each authored by Asian-Americans—and other online media. The first presenter was Annie Koh, whose newly-created website features stories about Korean culture. She is currently working on a project about "taxi driver restaurant" culture (taxi drivers know where good, cheap food are served). Next up was Hasan Minhaj, who was named an "up-and-coming comic to watch" by NBC. His stand-up routine consisted of jokes about race, what he would if he was rich (he would wear a cape), race, Kanye West, and...race. After this hilarious performance, Eric Wu of Eric Conveys an Emotion hopped onstage and admitted that he had nothing prepared. After explaining the creation of his website, he invited all the presenters to the stage for an impromptu face-off contest. This type of thing is better viewed than read, so here a few of the shots I took:






(Watch Office Space if you don't know what that is.)
The next presenter (and face-off winner) was Ernie Hsiung, who read two entries from his blog. He asked the audience which they wanted to hear first—sad or funny? Sad was chosen, so he read "Word Association," which describes how he deals with his sister's schizophrenia. The funny post was "Change it to the Butterflies," detailing the frustrating process of helping his mother obtain access to the Internet to check her email.
After a ten-minute intermission the emcee, Min Jung Kim, talked about her blogging experience before presenting her and Dino Ignacio's film, BA-AME. It starts off with a melancholy voice-over full of metaphors about identity, and, after a couple images of processed Asian food and other Asian-y things, the audience realized that it's a parody, with lines like "I fight with the soul of a dragon with fists up in the air—if dragons had fists" and "So where am I in all of this? Where am I? Would God listen and answer me if I asked Him these questions? Probably doesn't care. He's probably white, anyway." I highly recommend this film; watch it and find out what "BA-AME" stands for!
Up next was Eric Nakagawa and Kari Unebasami, co-founders of the highly popular icanhascheezburger.com, which is a massive collection of LOLcats. The duo explained the creation of their website (started as a joke but later became a blog), the rise to popularity (which led to bandwidth issues and sleep deprivation), and the publication of their book.
Lap-POP! was much different from what I expected, in a good way. Before this event, I didn't know that there were Asian-American bloggers who attracted many readers—just by writing about their personal life and daily musings. Min Jung Kim mentioned that her brother discovered her blog through a colleague in Korea, making me realize how far a voice of one person can be heard on the Internet. I wonder if anyone besides people from our ETHS 210 class will read this blog...