As my regular readersboth of youknow, Dianne, my wife, and I like to hit New York City every year.
AsianConnections is proud to present the adventures of Ben Fong-Torres, our very own Renaissance man: author, broadcaster, and former senior editor and writer at Rolling Stone Magazine. This guy's our hero! Ben was a featured character and immortalized in the movie "Almost Famous," the Oscar and Golden Globe-winning film by Cameron Crowe.
As my regular readersboth of youknow, Dianne, my wife, and I like to hit New York City every year. We got around to it in early October and had a blast, courtesy of the Carlyle, which put us up in one of their grandest suites (in fact, it included a baby grand piano in the living room), and of several restaurateurs and chefs, who helped us secure some of the hottest tickets in Manhattan: namely, reservations at their restaurants.
I won't bore you with culinary details. Suffice it to say that we had a blast. We werent weight-watching; we were just waiting for the next amazing course at Babbo, Aureole, Gramercy Tavern, Tribeca Grill, and the Biltmore Room. The reason we got into those hotspotsnot to mention Icon for a lunchwas that I did a story in the October issue of Gourmet magazine, on chefs who are also musicians and manage, amidst their 24/7 schedules, to rehearse and play at various gigs and fundraisers.
And when we weren't busy with our four-star meals, Dianne could shop to her closet's content, and I visited various friends,...
2004 brings in a New Year Column of Musings from AsianConnections' Renaissance man: Ben Fong-Torres.
So, happy new year. As for the old one, it was another dozen months that flew by all too fast. Heres how it goes: Happy New Year! Suddenly, its tax time. Yikes, its summer. What? The World Series? And while youre carving your pumpkin, stores are putting up Christmas lights. And another year bites the dust.
As for carving a pumpkin, forget that. Who had time to do anything? We were always in a rush; over-extended; overwrought; hung over.
And yet, looking back, it was an amazing year. Scary, no doubt, between our dolt of a President and our celebrity madness, which makes stars of the Scott Petersons and Paris Hiltons of this world and governors of musclebound action-picture stars.
My own year was the usual stir-fry of highs and lows. The high came courtesy of Larry Ching, the legendary nightclub singer. Ive written enough about producing the 82 year-old crooners first (and last) CD that Ill just say Thanks one more time to Larry, who died in early July, a week after a triumphant CD listening party at the Chinese Historical Society of Americas museum in Chinatown. And congratulations, too, to all involved. The CD has sold out its initial run of 1,000 copies. Just one note: Alumni of SF State University may see an article I wrote about Larry in the next issue, and the February edition of the new music magazine, Paste, will also carry a story about what it was like for me to...
What’s Going On? Everything, All at Once
By Ben Fong-Torres
MAY 8, 2022
With “Like a Rolling Stone: The Life and Times of Ben Fong-Torres” the documentary about me, now out today and streaming merrily along on Netflix, I’m officially in the film industry.
Actually, that’s been the case since last June, when the documentary, which stole its title from a popular column at Asian Connections created by director Suzanne Joe Kai's son Mike when he was 14, premiered at the Tribeca Film Festival in Manhattan.
In the months since, the film, which was produced, written and directed by Suzanne, screened at various other festivals, picked up awards, including a Critics Choice honor, a 2022 Nomination by the Writers Guild of America for Best Documentary Screenplay, a Best Music Film Award at the Newport Beach Film Festival, the Audience Award from the Asian American Film Festival in San Diego, and scored more than 112 press reviews and mentions (so far) - all quite positive reviews.
And I find myself mingling with movie people. In March, I attended the premiere of “Everything Everywhere All at Once,” starring Michelle Yeoh, at the Castro Theater here in San Francisco.
Our only previous connection was at a Lunar New Year parade, in 2018, when she was the glamorous grand marshall and I was co-anchor of KTVU’s broadcast.
From a distance, we waved at each other. Or maybe she was just waving to her fans.
This time, we met. At the packed...
Mickey Newbury, the late, absolutely great singer-songwriter, and I were chatting one night a couple of years ago when he mentioned that he had "Googled" himself and was amazed to find several hundreds of mentions of him on various Web sites.
Mickey Newbury, the late, absolutely great singer-songwriter, and I were chatting one night a couple of years ago when he mentioned that he had "Googled" himself and was amazed to find several hundreds of mentions of him on various Web sites. (Today, it's up to almost 9000!) Since then, I've also checked in on myself now and again. Let me go over right now and see. OKI'm just under 4000. It's astounding. Try it out sometime, at google.com. Anytime anyone's written anything about you online, you wind up in most search engines. Just about anything you publish yourself pops up, too. And for me, the surprises are endless. Articles I wrote 25, 30 years ago have been typed up or scanned and placed on various fan sites, usually without my knowledge or permission. It is, as Johnny Carson used to say, "wild, wacky stuff."
Now, a variation of Googling is on Amazon.com. I entered my name the other day and stumbled into a stream of titles of books not just the four or five books I've published, but every book they've got in which I've been quoted, praised and vilified. Unbeknownst to me, numerous authors have lifted material from interviews I've conducted for their own books, crediting, but rarely informing me.
It was a strange feeling rolling...
Is your room a mess? You are not alone. Here's how Ben Fong-Torres cleared away 30 years of clutter. It's a neat article.
We are a nation of clutter. Just look at your closet. Your kitchen drawers. Your bathroom ca- binet. Your CD col- lection. The trunk of your car. Your home office. Your garage. Were a massive mess, and were always telling ourselves, Next weekend. Ill get to it next weekend, when I get a couple of hours. But those hours never come.
They are, how- ever, closer than you think. Armies of professional organizers have formed, all around the country, and theyre ready to force you to take that time and make that effort to get organized. You see them on the Home and Gardens network, and all the other channels that are doing home decorating shows. You get the ads in the mail for custom closets. You see the books on how to de-clutter your life. You are tempted. You know you should do it. And you think, Next weekend.
Well, my weekend arrived not long ago. Actually, it was a whole week, split up into parts of two weeks. It was a substantial investment of both time and money, and it required doing something brutally difficult letting go of pieces of my past but I did it, and Im glad I did.
The proof is in the photos. Before, my office at home was almost painful for my wife, Dianne, to walk into. Not for me; I knew where everything was, and, amidst the mess, things like CDs, DVDs and videotapes were actually alphabetized. My books were in categories. My receipts were...