Blog by Sumana Harihareswara, Changeset founder

07 Feb 2003, 23:32 p.m.

Hilary, Nandini, and I tonight participated in an Asian American…

Hi, reader. I wrote this in 2003 and it's now more than five years old. So it may be very out of date; the world, and I, have changed a lot since I wrote it! I'm keeping this up for historical archive purposes, but the me of today may 100% disagree with what I said then. I rarely edit posts after publishing them, but if I do, I usually leave a note in italics to mark the edit and the reason. If this post is particularly offensive or breaches someone's privacy, please contact me.

Hilary, Nandini, and I tonight participated in an Asian American Theater Company event at "Romeo 5" in San Francisco. I put "Romeo 5" in quotes because that title rightly belongs to a band or a cyberpunk novel of the eighties, not to a bar/performance venue in Japantown. Anyway, Nandini spoke a bit of lunar new year traditions, and Hilary and I acted in Michelle Motoyoshi's enjoyable one-act farce "Lasagna to Meatloaf".

Our endeavors at entertainment paled in comparison when Vienna Teng, a dynamite singer/songwriter/pianist, took the stage. Hilary and I agreed that she reminds us of Dar Williams, although Hilary also mentioned Paula Cole. She's still half-underground, as far as I know, so you can still feel indie by discovering her, and you should.

Music works like this now? You put out some MP3s, you half-produce the CD yourself, some little label signs you, you and your fans publicize the heart out of everything you do -- seems pretty standard, now. Would that work for comedy?