Shows I Miss: An update on Sounding Out the City (the show's selector responds!)

(Photo source: No Curves)

Sometimes I'm just in awe of some of the people who read this blog. For instance, Edgar Wright stumbled last week into my Throwback Thursday discussion of the brilliance of The World's End as both an anti-gentrification satire and a midlife crisis comedy and retweeted it to his fans. And I know that writers from Bob's Burgers and the short-lived Motorcity, two animated shows I greatly admire, have read this blog because they've thanked me on Twitter for what I've written over here about their shows.

A Bob's Burgers writer is as amazing to me as, say, Rick Ross (ruh!) is amazing to some female fan who faints over getting his autograph. Now I wouldn't faint in the presence of either the controversial MMG impresario or a Bob's Burgers staffer--and I wouldn't say I'd get "the feels" around either of them because I'm over 21, and if you're over 21 and you go around telling people that you get "the feels," miss me with that asinine-sounding shit--but around that Bob's Burgers staffer, I'd be like, "So in episode S05E04, was H. Jon Benjamin actually blotto when he ad-libbed that turkey baster monologue? Was he? Huh, huh, huh, huh, huh?"

In another instance, I once blogged about regretting not buying when I was a kid an issue of Billy Nguyen, Private Eye, a largely forgotten indie comic book that remarkably featured an Asian American P.I. as the protag. My post caught the attention of Billy Nguyen artist Stan Shaw. Stan and I exchanged a few e-mails about Billy Nguyen (Stan turned out to also be an AFOS listener), and months later, he sent me in the mail a gift I'll always treasure: an issue of Billy Nguyen.

About a couple of months ago, I wrote about a now-defunct Canadian DJ mix podcast I miss hearing, Sounding Out the City. It was where I first encountered the late Amy Winehouse's "Valerie," and it was also where I first took notice of Mayer Hawthorne and TOKiMONSTA. The TOKiMONSTA track I heard on Sounding Out the City was "The World Is Ours," which flipped a classic Marvin Gaye/Tammi Terrell duet and is a tune TOKiMONSTA says she loves so much that she's never released it officially.



Back when I had a day job in the racist and misogynist shithole called the Silicon Valley tech world, Sounding Out the City helped make getting through that job, which I started to get bored with about four years into it, a hell of a lot easier. Sounding Out the City selector Rob Fragoso saw my post about his podcast and is now the latest person whose work I've admired to surprise me with an appreciative comment that made my day.

It turned out not to be the Ernestine Anderson "Love for Sale" that Rob featured on his podcast in 2009, but a completely different jam of the same name by Bay Area singer Lillian Alexander, as Rob realized several hours later. Come back to the ones and twos, Rob, we need you! Or if you're actually still mixing, the podcastosphere needs you! Some currently miserable Silicon Valley or Silicon Alley worker who's basically me eight years ago might need you!

Billy Nguyen, Private Eye: Jimmy J. Aquino's Lacuna Matata, Part 4

The previous installments of "Lacuna Matata" have been about TV shows only I and maybe you remember. In this penultimate installment, I'm shifting gears and focusing on an obscure comic book I wish I bought when I had the chance.

Nineteen years ago, Comic Shop News touted the first issue of an offbeat Caliber Press series called Billy Nguyen, Private Eye, written by John Hartman and starring a Seattle-based Vietnamese gumshoe who, for some reason, was drawn with a Sub-Mariner-like face by artist Stan Shaw. The Namor resemblance was one of many in-jokes in a satirical P.I. title that broke the fourth wall Moonlighting style and had Nguyen acknowledge he was a character in a comic.

CSN's stills from Billy Nguyen looked interesting, but what was especially cool about the comic was that for once, the hero, even with the Namor hairdo and pointy ears, looked like many of the folks from my predominantly Vietnamese part of town. That's something you didn't--and still don't--see everyday.

So what do I do when I strut into the comic shop and leaf through a copy of the first issue of the first comic with an Asian American hero I ever came across?

Stupid me who at the time wasn't used to comics that didn't involve superheroes, Star Trek or Dick Tracy skims through Billy Nguyen #1, thinks, "This comic's too weird," and then closes it and puts it down.

I now regret putting that comic back in its rack. I don't even remember what I bought instead. It was probably some lame comic based on The Adventures of Ford Fairlane or Doogie Howser or something.

Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology

Billy Nguyen never took off and faded into obscurity (it's so obscure the Thrilling Detective entry about the character isn't even sure how long the Caliber incarnation lasted: "2 issues?"). Meanwhile, I grow up to become an angry Asian man, develop an Asian American consciousness and decide that one of my major goals in life is to create a tough, assertive and humorous Asian American hero like Nguyen, whether it'd be for comics, TV or film, so that I can help diminish the stench left by white writers(*) and their stereotypical creations, like that corny and effete assclown Charlie Chan. When Secret Identities: The Asian American Superhero Anthology chose me to develop a new Asian American hero, I couldn't believe one of my goals was becoming a reality.

(*) Not all of them are clueless about the Asian American experience. The two most relatable Asian American male characters on the big screen in years, Harold and Kumar, were created by Jewish guys--Jon Hurwitz and Hayden Schlossberg.

Once in a while, someone puts out a comic about a detective or cop of color like Angeltown or Gun Fu. Every time such a comic drops, I try not to pass up the opportunity to buy and support it, after I stupidly rejected Billy Nguyen #1 when I was a kid.

This post is essentially a plea for someone, anyone, to revive this character. There aren't enough Asian American protagonists in the detective genre. Does Hartman still own the rights to Nguyen? Because if nobody wants to try to revive him, then maybe I should do it.