This is part two of our cover series on the top 10 Asian American blogs to read (or watch) right now. (Read part one here.)
Sarah J. Gim
Photographed by Eric Sueyoshi
Since 2005, food porn galore has been featured on Sarah J. Gim’s blog, The Delicious Life, but don’t dismiss the blog as just another site on grub. And whatever you do, do not label Gim as just another “foodie.” Gim, 36, despises the term because of its pretentious connotation. According to her blog, she prefers the self-concocted term “eifnaj” (pronounced ife-nazh), a word born out of Gim’s knack for making up words by closing her eyes and hitting random keys. “Eifnaj,” therefore, is Gim’s term for anyone who “absolutely adores food, whatever that adoration entails, without the pretensions of luxury foods and esoteric food knowledge,” explains Gim, who lives in Los Angeles. But with all the topics Gim touches on (travel, lifestyle and dating), in addition to food, it’s safe to say that The Delicious Life is a full-on, five-course meal with all the trimmings and dressings.
Photo via My Mom Is A Fob’s Facebook Page
me: i was wondering if i could get a lip piercing…i’ve wanted one for a couple years and i’ve thought about it and i really want one
dad: well…do you want grandpa to see your cow ring face and get seizure and die?
mom: hey
me (autoreply): drowning myself in the hudson river. Ugh, school.
mom: Just go to the passaic river. nearer
Mom calls me asking what I want from In-N-Out Burger.
me: Can you get me the animal-style fries?
Thirty minutes later, mom comes home…
mom: I asked for the doggy-style fries, but I think they ran out because they just started laughing.
With such gems like these, it’s no wonder the blogs My Mom is a Fob and My Dad is a Fob became so popular. The site—which features hilarious photographs of fobby parents doing decidedly fobby things, recaps of failed “Engrish,” and some really spectacular texting skills exhibited by, you guessed it, fobby parents—garnered a lot of attention, really fast. Created by Serena Wu, 22, and Teresa Wu, 22 (no relation), the site is low-tech and low-maintenance, and the duo plans to keep it that way. “My mom is still confused about the whole concept,” says Teresa, “which only further demonstrates her fobbiness.” Their book, My Mom is a Fob, with a foreword by comedienne Margaret Cho, comes out
in January.
allkpop
Until fairly recently, allkpop was considered to be a less popular version of soompi.com, one of the longest running K-pop websites around, but it has rapidly grown to become the most trafficked English-language K-pop blog in the world. The brainchild of Johnny Noh and Paul Han, allkpop is a cross between Perez Hilton and TMZ, but with one notable exception: It’s the only major player in its scene. Although much of the information and “breaking news” on the site comes directly from Korean news portals, allkpop is one of the only websites online that translates Korean-language articles almost as soon as they are published, making it the first place international fans go for news on their crooning idols. “[Paul] and I both listened to K-pop in high school, but we realized that there weren’t that many adequate resources, like there are within the Hollywood scene,” says Johnny Noh, 29, the New Jersey-based CEO and co-founder. “It started off as a hobby, but now that K-pop is going global, there are more fans all around the world.”
