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So far I think this is my best Fourth of July ever. I spent the morning registering new voters at the Caldwell Parade in Orange County. I got to feel patriotic and I got to see a great small town parade. Fun!

We had four volunteers including the organizer, a far cry from the registration drives I've done in Durham where there are dozens of people. But four was plenty for this event. The other three all had tons of political experience -- for instance there was a couple who had met at the 1984 national convention in San Francisco, and the wife was the former chair of the Mecklenberg County Democratic Party -- and then there was me. Well you don't need a lot of experience to ask people if they're registered to vote.

Everyone was so nice! I think it was partly because they were sitting and watching a parade, not rushing to go to the grocery store or catch a bus whatever. Also I think the small town location had a lot to do with the general level of friendliness. Everyone smiled and was polite, and lots of people seemed genuinely happy to talk to me. I had a great conversation with a lady who told me she was 75 years old and she had voted in every election since she turned 18. And she didn't want praise for it because it was nothing more than her civic duty. And she didn't understand people who complained about the state of the nation but didn't even vote. And she probably would have had a lot more to say but I had to keep moving up the line. Which was too bad, I would have liked to talk to her longer.

I got four registrations, half the total for the group! That was a nice ego boost because last time S. registered 6 people and I only registered one. And at the time I thought I must be really bad at this. So it was nice to have a better day today. I also gave out two forms for someone to take home. They don't like us to do that because the form is so much less likely to get filled out if you don't do it on the spot. But I think these will get filled out. It was a woman who had just moved, and asked me a bunch of questions so she was clearly engaged. And she couldn't fill out the form today because they were building their house and it hadn't been assigned an address yet. She said they were expecting to get an address within the month and she wanted forms for herself and her husband.

I only talked to one hostile person all day, and it was an honest to goodness Prairie Muffin! The novelty of meeting one in person was worth her relatively mild meanness. I shouldn't even have approached them: a family with tons of kids, all the women & girls wearing long "Little House on the Prairie" style dresses and all women over 13 wearing head coverings of homespun white cloth. I think it's a safe to assume that group is probably not going to vote for Obama.

But it's a nonpartisan registration drive, and I was talking to everyone, so I asked them if they were registered to vote. The oldest woman was the only one who talked to me and she said she wasn't sure. I asked her when was the last time she voted (because if it's been many years then she might have been purged from the rolls and have to re-register). She looked at me sourly for a moment and then said "I don't want to talk about voting!" Okay sorry to bother you, have a nice day! That's really the only thing to say at that point.

The best part of the day was that I remembered to put on sunscreen before I left. And two of the other volunteers (the couple who are big-time activists) gave me a bottle of water since I had forgotten to bring one. So I feel much less wiped out than last time. Still, it's time to enjoy a well-deserved nap I think. Or maybe a movie. I've got one on the DVR with Jimmy Stewart and Rosalind Russell. That sounds good.

Jesse Helms died today. I do not believe in speaking ill of the dead until at least the day after they die. So that is all I can say.

Breaking story: Powerful politician discovered not to be ideologically pure. May in fact be good at the politicking required to achieve presidential nomination. Where is my fainting couch?

Womzilla's link to a great Bollywood video made me think of my favorite Bollywood star, Amitabh, and how I haven't watched any of his movies in ages. Here's one of my favorite of his songs, from Muqaddar ka Sikandar. Amitabh clowns around on a motorcycle (which he is clearly actually driving, not being towed. woo!) This video makes me want desperately to visit Bombay. In 1976.

If I recall correctly, "Muqaddar ka Sikandar" means "Alexander the Conqueror" (Alexander the Great) who Amitabh's character is named after.

June 26 movie: Think Fast, Mr. Moto. TCM's special month on Asians in Hollywood is over. I had another 4 or 5 movies saved on the DVR, but with work right now I didn't have time to watch them before the cable company replaced it. I'm most bummed out about losing a documentary about Anna Mae Wong a war movie about Jimmy Stewart in China.

Anyway this is the first of Peter Lorre's Mr. Moto movie, and after seeing Think Fast, Mr. Moto on TCM, I had to get this one from Netflix. Being the first in the series, Mr. Moto is played much more ambiguously -- it's not clear whether he's a villain or hero until the very end.

June 25 movie: The Crimson Kimono. James Shigeta's first movie, this was a detective story and a love triangle. Shigeta and Glenn Corbett are partners and best friends who fall for the same woman, Victoria Shaw. Also starred the wonderful Anna Lee as a modern artist and modern woman, Hollywood style. In her first scene she sprays beer on an abstract canvas, laughs and declares it "Nude Attending Celestial Bodies!"

In terms of depictions of Asian Americans, this movie was a case of two steps forward, one step back. On the one hand, the romance between Shigeta and and Shaw is portrayed in a positive light. As is a fascinating look at the "little Tokyo" neighborhood in LA. On the other, when racism comes up in the movie, it's presented as being all in Shigeta's imagination. The movie seems to be suggesting that in 1959 white Americans were completely free of racism, and if only those pesky ethnic people would stop imagining things and get over it. Which, um, yeah. Also straining credulity is when Shigeta says he had never once experienced racism before. As TCM's guest expert pointed out, the character would have been 10 or 11 when the war broke out, and would have been in an internment camp. I think that being imprisoned based solely on one's race counts as experiencing racism.

The best thing about the movie is James Shigeta. He said in The Slanted Screen that during the filming of Flower Drum Song a studio exec told him he would have been a huge star if he had been white. He really did have a movie star quality about him. I found a nice tribute on Youtube with clips from a bunch of his movies:

June 24 movie: The Slanted Screen. This wasn't really a movie, rather a PBS special from a few years ago about Asian men in Hollywood. They showed lots of clips from movies we'd just seen in the TCM feature this month, plus many we'd already seen before. There were interviews with lots of Asian American actors too. The differing reactions to Bruce Lee were interesting: some of the younger actors said that Bruce Lee made them feel proud to walk down the street for the first time. Then another complained that everyone thinks he knows kung fu and it's all Bruce's fault.

It seemed like the documentary must have taken several years to make. Because based on the narration it sounded like it had been made around 2000. Then at the end they showed a clip from Harold and Kumar Go to White Castle. But earlier in the show they had mentioned John Cho, one of the stars of Harold and Kumar, but only talked about an earlier indie movie he was in. Also, you could tell it had been made by PBS and not a major studio, because the lighting in the interview segments was terrible. Even the movie stars like James Shigeta looked like hell. And may I say, making James Shigeta look bad is a major, if dubious, accomplishment.

A couple of major omissions: first, Ang Lee. His early movies Pushing Hands and The Wedding Banquet really should have been mentioned in the segment about indie films from an Asian American point of view. Second and even more glaring: George Takei. They did show a brief clip of him on stage doing some kind of message-y play, but no interview and nothing about Star Trek. We thought maybe they were ignoring him because the documentary was specifically about the movies. But then they did a whole segment on the Vietnamese actor in 21 Jump Street. So that theory doesn't hold water.

As far as I know Mr. Sulu was the first major Asian character on any TV show whose race was irrelevant. I can't remember ever seeing an ethnic stereotype in Mr. Sulu, and I can't imagine why they wouldn't talk to George Takei in a documentary about Asian men in Hollywood.

June 20 movie: The Best Man. Have I mentioned how much I hate Time Warner Cable? We had to have our DVR replaced a few months ago, and the new one is clearly screwed up. Sometimes it refuses to record programs -- no warning, we just go to watch a show we'd scheduled and it says "The program could not be recorded because the channel is currently unavailable." Sometimes it only records half a program and then stops without warning. Sometimes all the DVR controls lock up and all we get is a black screen. I've had 4 phone calls with tech support and 1 service call to the house, and none of them will agree to replace the box. The people on the phone just keeping saying "Call us back if it happens again!" and the service call guy said it was the line, not the box. He said he would put a tracker on our line and call me back in five days, and of course he never did.

So anyway. This movie was one of the ones that recorded half-way and then stopped in the middle. I was so furious. I'd been looking forward to the movie for over a week: I've been working really hard on this project and every day I was thinking about getting to Friday and getting to watch The Best Man. And then the stupid DVR craps out halfway through. And then tech support said it would be a 30 minute wait to talk to anyone. Words cannot express ... well, the tantrum I threw, if I'm going to be honest.

Georg called them the next day, scheduled a support call, even stayed home to meet them because I couldn't that day. And lo and behold, they gave us a new DVR. Which works just fine, not a problem in sight. So much for the guy who told me it was the line, not the box. Come to think of it, this is the second time I've driven myself to distraction trying to get a response out of Time Warner tech support, and then Georg called and got an immediate solution. What is it with those people?

The good news is they showed The Best Man again tonight, so I finally did get to see it. Good thing too, because Netflix doesn't have it. They really ought to get it before November.

June 18 movie: China Doll. Victor Mature plays an American GI stationed in China who falls in love with a Chinese woman (Li Li Hua). The plot is repulsive -- Mature accidently buys her as an indentured servant for three months, then he's totally mean to her, until her abject servility and supreme housekeeping skills gradually win him over -- yet somehow the movie manages to be charming. Until it becomes completely tragic. It's a major tearjerker. Most notable for the fact that the rest of the soldiers and nurses don't object to the romance. Well actually they do object, but not because of race: they think Mature is taking advantage of her.

The cast also includes an incredibly annoying smart-aleck Chinese boy who hangs around the base and translates for Li Li Hua. It's kind of interesting the way they handle the language issue: when American characters are around, the woman and the boy speak to each other in Chinese without subtitles; when they're alone they speak English and we're to assume it's really Chinese. It's extremely confusing in one scene where the boy is teaching the woman a few words of English to say to Mature, but the whole conversation is in English. I was also amused that the boy clearly did not speak Chinese & had been taught a few words for the movie. (It's been 20 years and my Chinese is about as bad as his, but I'm not trying to pass myself off as Chinese in a movie!) She would speak to him in fluent, perfect Mandarin and he would respond with halting phrases in a terrible accent.

June 18 movie: Bridge to the Sun. This was a deeply affecting story about an American woman (Carroll Baker) who falls in love with a Japanese diplomat (James Shigeta) just before the war. They marry over the objections of her family and have a little girl. Then the war breaks out, he's expelled from the US, and she goes with him to Japan. It's kind of amazing to me how much movies changed in the 50s. In the 40s you couldn't show an interracial kiss. By 1961 when this movie was made, they not only kiss, they're shown in bed together. Well sort of: it's a tatami mat so maybe Americans wouldn't realize it was a bed. Still, they were lying in it and he was partially undressed. Unthinkable just a few years before. Heck, most of the movies I watch have the "one foot rule" firmly in effect.

The movie also shows a fairly unflinching look at the racism the couple faces in both countries, and the hardships they suffer in Japan during the war. It was based on a true story, from the wife's autobiography. This movie was really good. I missed the very beginning -- the part where they fall in love -- and I really hope TCM shows it again soon so I can see the whole thing.