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Updated Pizza!

Thu, 27 Apr 2017 00:56:11 GMT

An update of this older pizza report, I now use this Epicurious pizza dough recipe, plus some rosemary and garlic powder. I suggest kneading for 5 minutes (set a timer) to get the right amount of gluten (stiffness to the crust). I still don't own a pizza stone, so I roll out the dough on a large cutting board using a rolling pin, then put flour on a 9x13" baking pan (flour so it doesn't stick), transfer the dough onto it, and squish up a little lip for the crust.

For toppings, I currently have my side be onion (1 bulb chopped), garlic (2 cloves thru a press), and basil (uh, some amount chopped). Both sides I put on mozzarella and sauce; on my side I interleave those with the veggies. Then I put on plenty of pepperoni on top of the cheese, sauce, and my veggies. And on T$'s side I squish in chunks of canned pineapple between his pepperonis.

Preheat oven to 450ºF (because Teflon / PFTE non-stick shouldn't be heated higher than this). Cook around 20-30 minutes, checking every 10 minutes or so. When it's done, the crust will be brown, the sauce is bubbling and dripping around the crust (and singeing where it overflows, but that's fine), and the pepperoni is past softening and is about to curl and brown on the edges.

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Ex Machina

Sat, 22 Oct 2016 02:16:13 GMT

So I just watched Ex Machina and I wanted to process a bit. In case you're trying to remember what this movie is, it's the one with ~~Poe Dameron~~ Oscar Isaac and ~~General Hux~~ Domhnall Gleeson and a ~~sex~~bot and trying to figure out if she passes the Turing test.

( Spoilers )

Have y'all seen it, and what do you think?

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Why complaining about Chinese food is racist

Sat, 08 Oct 2016 19:28:46 GMT

Because I want a place to put all this, here's a bunch of links about why complaining about Chinese food (or other Asian or "ethnic" [non-Western] food) is racist.

Why "do Asians eat dogs?" is a racist question. abagond (2015)

"Humans have always demonized the cuisine of 'the other' because it's the easiest way to say someone is less human." On racist Yelp restaurant reviews. Andrew Simmons for Slate (2014)

On why calling food "ethnic" or talking about food poisoning is racist. Naomi Tomky for The Atlantic's Citylab (2015)

Restaurant health inspectors, food handler certification manuals, and of course customer complaints are all racist, and documents for restaurant owners are difficult for non-native speakers of English to read. Joseph Erbentraut for HuffPo (2016)

Example of a Philadelphia Chinese take-out restaurant repeatedly incorrectly ticketed by police, fitting a larger pattern of racist code violations in Philly as a whole. Joseph N. DiStefano for The Philadelphia Inquirer and Daily News (2017)

I will post more links as I find them, and if y'all have more to share I'd love to see them.

Also, next time you call someone out on this and they say "but it's true," remind them that something doesn't have to be false to be racist.

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MCU films.

Fri, 02 Sep 2016 01:33:16 GMT

So I put together a list of all the MCU films b/c I was looking at the actors.

Phase	Film	Date	Lead Actor
1	Iron Man 1	May 2 2008	RDJ
1	The Incredible Hulk	June 13 2008	Ed Norton
1	Iron Man 2	May 7 2010	RDJ
1	Thor 1	May 6 2011	Chris Hemsworth (Chris 1)
1	Captain America: The First Avenger (Cap 1)	July 22 2011	Chris Evans (Chris 2)
1	Marvel's the Avengers (A1)	May 4 2012	ensemble
2	Iron Man 3	May 3 2013	RDJ
2	Thor: The Dark World (Thor 2)	Nov 8 2013	Chris Hemsworth (Chris 1)
2	Captain America: The Winter Soldier (Cap 2)	April 4 2014	Chris Evans (Chris 2)
2	Guardians of the Galaxy (GotG)	Aug 1 2014	Chris Pratt (Chris 3)
2	Avengers: Age of Ultron (A2)	May 1 2015	ensemble
2	Ant-Man	July 17 2015	Paul Rudd
3	Captain America: Civil War (Cap 3)	May 6 2016	Chris Evans (Chris 2)
3	Doctor Strange	Nov 4 2016	Benedict Cumberbatch
3	Guardians of the Galaxy Vol 2 (GotG 2)	May 5 2017	Chris Pratt (Chris 3)
3	Spider-Man: Homecoming (Spider-Man 6)	July 7 2017	Tom Holland
3	Thor: Ragnarok (Thor 3)	Nov 3 2017	Chris Hemsworth (Chris 1)
3	Black Panther	Feb 16 2018	Chadwick Boseman
3	Avengers: Infinity War (A3)	May 4 2018	ensemble
3	Ant-Man and the Wasp (Ant 2)	July 6 2018	Paul Rudd
3	Captain Marvel	Mar 8 2019	Brie Larson
3	Avengers: TBA (A4)	May 3 2019	ensemble

I also wanted to make this list to confirm to myself that there are more unique actors named Chris headlining MCU films than there are headlining women or POC. If you count Evangeline Lilly for Ant 2 (which I don't b/c then you'd also have to count Sebastian Stan for Cap 2) then it's tied.

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On Matt Damon in "The Great Wall"

Sun, 31 Jul 2016 18:51:43 GMT

My [Ashkenazi Jewish American] father [married to my Han Chinese American mother] emailed me about representation of Asians in media, including the current furor over Matt Damon starring in the upcoming "The Great Wall." I decided to post my response to him here for posterity.

There's been a lot of awareness on Twitter recently of the (old) trend of whitewashing Asian actors/characters and replacing them with white ones instead, under the hashtag #whitewashedOUT.

However, I am in the minority among Asian Americans regarding Matt Damon starring in "The Great Wall," in that I support the film. While I think it's unfortunate that a white actor was cast as the star and I would have liked to see more progressive (non-white) casting, I think that being angry about it is blaming the victim, and is minimizing the progress that the film does represent. The film has a Chinese director (Zhang Yimou), is produced by a Hong Kong-based production company (Legendary East, though admittedly a subsidiary company of the American Legendary Entertainment), and is financially backed by a Chinese TV company (LeEco). From the trailers it looks like the vast majority of the extras are Asian, two of the five stars are Chinese, and all of the other named cast members are Asian (I didn't take the time to check if Chinese or other Asian). Yes, it'd be better if all five of the stars were Chinese, but this is amazing progress IMO and we shouldn't throw out the baby with the bathwater. This film will increase the visibility of Chinese actors and directors, and it's amazing that a Chinese film is going to reach a wide Western audience.

The other thing that I feel like Wu (and others critical of the whitewashing of the film) fail to take into account is that as a Chinese film, American ideas of race and racism do not apply. Race is a social construct, so it has different meaning when removed from that original social context and placed into a different one. Once you start looking at media outside the USA, it's important to acknowledge the near-worship of American celebrity in many other countries. For example, there was a bizarre Chinese ad for an online video game, Call of Duty Online, released last year, which featured Chris Evans (better known as the [white] actor behind Captain America) as the only white English-speaking person while everyone else spoke Chinese. This ad was banking on the celebrity and deification of American actors because they are American - note that it's the actor who plays Captain America. If Captain America were played by Anthony Mackie (an African American, who plays another Marvel character who in the comic books later becomes Captain America), then I have no doubt that this Call of Duty Online ad would have starred Mackie instead. Similarly, the casting of not only [white] Matt Damon, but also [white] Willem Dafoe and Chilean American Pedro Pascal (better known from Game of Thrones) is actually a major coup for a Chinese film.

In idolizing American celebrity in this way, yes the makers of this film are perpetuating whitewashing, however I feel that they're more victims of racism in Hollywood than perpetrators themselves. (Much like black cops can perpetrate racist actions against African Americans, but I blame the systemic racism in policing more than I do those individual cops. And similarly, a businesswoman who is harsher towards women employees is herself a victim of internalized misogyny.) While it definitely isn't okay for this film to be perpetuating racism in the form of whitewashing, I think my energy is better spent fighting films that are creations of Hollywood directors and production companies, than fighting films that actually are Chinese in origin.

Feel free to share this with others if you like, but it's worth pointing out again that I am in the minority among Asian Americans on this.

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"Aunt"

Tue, 31 May 2016 19:36:12 GMT

So I use both the English (American) term "aunt" and the Shanghainese/Mandarin Chinese term "ayi" or "aiyee" for not only a parent's sister, but basically any woman of my parents' generation who is either a blood or marriage relative, or a close family friend. For example, my mother's cousin is my aunt, I don't actually know how Aunt Lee is related to me, and Y*** Aiee is my childhood best friend's mother.

I'm curious how widespread this is. At first I thought it was just a Chinese thing, but then I remembered Aunt Lee (from my father's side). Do other people use Aunt and Uncle this way, or is it just my family?

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"New phone who dis?"

Sun, 17 Apr 2016 23:46:12 GMT

This is the new username of the former Z-person. Please to be not connecting this username with either my old username or my legal name. You know it's me because this username has references to stars and things with wings.

I will not be discussing the reason for the change in any unlocked posts, which this is, so if you ask, I won't reply.

At this point in time I have imported my friends groups and tags from LJ version of the old account to the DW new account, but I have not imported the posts nor comments since they may have references to my old username.

Tasks still to be completed: import friends groups to the new LJ version, update icons. On the plus side, I still have this awesome icon that rosefox made for me ~~years~~ decades (?) ago.

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