Simon S. Tam's Blog, page 4

Redefining What’s Offensive

I’m honored to announce that I’ll be sharing my story in Austin, TX at SXSW 2019!

If you’re going to the festival, please check out my session here.

For the past few years, I’ve been telling portions of my story about growing up as an Asian American, starting The Slants, and fighting my way through the legal system. That journey has taken me from the punk rock dive to a maximum security prison, from anime conventions to Kosovo, and from the studio to the Supreme Court. I hope to publish that...

The Advice I Give Out Most Often

What’s the advice that you find yourself always giving to the people around you?

Mine is simple: If your closest loved one were in your situation, what would you tell them to do? Most people know what the right thing to do is – they just either lack the courage and discipline to do so or believe that their particular circumstances/situation have an alternate reality.

When people ask for advice, are they really asking for validation? A true friend doesn’t tell you what you want to hear, a true...

Baby, You’re Cold Inside

Susan Loesser, daughter of the iconic Frank Loesser, has been defending her father’s song, “Baby, it’s Cold Outside.”

“Absolutely I get it,” she said. “But I think it would be good if people looked at the song in the context of the time. It was written in 1944”

I think people understand the context in which the song was written (can we all admit that recognition of women’s rights or sexual assault really didn’t exist in 1944?) but we should also understand that songs, books, and films might g...

Where are You in “We?”

Who are we?

Consider the preamble to the United States Constitution. When you hear, “We the People of the United States, in Order to form a more perfect Union,” have you ever stopped to think about who they were referring to? It actually did not refer to the people of the United States, but rather, the people of the various states. That’s because they wanted introduce the Constitution and have it applicable to states who ratified its approval, regardless if the other states did or not. It rep...

The Art of Framing

Over the years, I’ve worked in a couple of areas that dealt with framing:

In photography, framing helps with composing the image. You use natural elements to draw your viewer’s eye to the subject. This helps emphasize the subject, bringing a natural structure as well as isolates the subject from distractions. In fact, for any kind of 2D visual art, the literal frame helps guide attention from the wall to the work (it also has a functional purpose of making it easier to hang).

In construction,...

Sprint vs. Marathon

Yesterday, I was thinking about how people train for a marathon. It seems pretty straightforward: you run a little more each day to build up stamina, you eat appropriate food to get more energy, and you get advice from other experienced people who have run marathons before. What you don’t do is sprint short distances, running as fast as you can before you tire out.

And yet…

We don’t train for the other marathons in our life. When it comes to starting a business, we get impatient about the res...

The Next Day

If you’ve been in a long, deep slumber and looked outside to see the sun on the horizon, you would not be able to tell if the sun was setting or rising. It’s the solar equivalent of the glass being half empty or half full: the only difference is what has changed from before and where it is going.

Yesterday, the U.S elections broke ground in several key areas: more women ran for positions of leadership than ever before (some dubbed it “The Year of the Woman”), there was greater participation i...

Shortcuts

When I was in fourth grade, my family moved across town to be closer to the restaurant we owned. My new elementary school was only about a mile from our home so I walked home everyday. Soon, I made friends who lived near me and they told me about their super-secret shortcut.

The shortcut involved climbing through a downed fence in the back of the school, taking multiple switchbacks through ice plant and strangers’ backyards, and it ended at an intersection 3 blocks from my house. In all, it p...

The Power of Noticing

Today, I got a message from Seth Godin.   To be more accurate, I got a reply back to my note thanking him for his work, which has been incredibly influential to me.   He’s one of the most in-demand authors and speakers in the world. To even send a few words, to say “I see you,” might not be a big deal for him (he’ll probably forget about it as he gets to email #900 today), but that gesture meant so much to me and it won’t ever be forgotten.   Little things, like the courtesy o...

The Moral Line and the Judge

It’s interesting to me where people draw the moral line. In just a few days, the conversation around Judge Kavanaugh has changed from whether he sexually assaulted someone to whether he actually lied under oath.

Friends and classmates of the judge were previously reluctant to say anything about his character or heavy drinking in high school and college until they saw his personal statements on Fox News and in the hearing in which he presented his past self has composed, reserved, and entirel...