Pacific Asia Museum - "Fashioning Domesticity; Weaving Desire - Visions of the Filipina" - Part 2

Part 2 of my visit to Pacific Asia Museum...

In addition to the ternos and vintage images of Filipinas, there was a glass enclosed case filled with Philippine handicrafts, jewelry, and ephemera.  There were spiral bound placards detailing each piece...

Overview of some of the objects...

The larger purse has a crocheted design while the other is a Gaddang change purse with beads.

Vintage hair comb - note the gold filigree detail:

Detail of  beaded comb:

Another placard:

This is a Bagobo bracelet/anklet made of beads, brass bell and pompoms.

Book of turn of the century Philippine Postcards by Jonathan Best.

Legend for the objects:

Another view of the purses, combs, slippers, necklaces and belt.

This is a bird carrying basket, along with necklace of brass bells from the T'boli tribe.

This was interesting...

The mirror/makeup container. I've never seen one of these before. It's made of brass...As Morris Day of the Time would say, "And in my bedroom...I have a BRASS...waterbed...":

This was the stereoscope...The left side of the photo card had an image of  a "primitive" Filipina while the right half of the photo card has a front view of a modern terno...

Overall, we enjoyed our visit to the museum as well as this particular exhibit. It's not very common to see anything Filipino in a museum at all. At the Junipero Serra Museum on Presidio Hill, there is a cannon made in the Philippines which was brought over during the Manila Galleon trade. At the Museum of Man, there was once an exhibit that featured various cultures - one of them included examples of Philippine clothing and featured artwork by local San Diego artist, Jose Morales. That exhibit has since been dismantled but it was cool to see while it was around. Otherwise, you'd be hard pressed to find anything Filipino related in a museum in San Diego even though our city has one of the largest populations of Filipinos in the U.S. (145,000 according to the 2000 census - those are the ones that are legally counted, ha ha, not the TNTs).

More photos on the rest of the Pacific Asia Museum coming soon as well as my post on the documentary we saw that same day, "Memories of a Forgotten War".

Pacific Asia Museum - "Fashioning Domesticity; Weaving Desire - Visions of the Filipina" - Part 1

[Note - This post was originally supposed to go out early February. Had to learn how to transfer my photos files to Flickr.   Update - I added more photos from the exhibit and they are not centered. Oops.]

With the beautiful San Gabriel Mountains in the backdrop, TORC's husband drove us (TORC, me and the Prof) to sunny Pasadena, home of the Pacific Asia Museum. We were there specifically for this exhibit, Fashioning Domesticity, Weaving Desire - Visions of the Filipina which ran from October 24, 2009 up to February 8th of this year. When Bert, TC and I went to Pasadena last weekend, the exhibit was still up. It's down now....

The Museum is an incredible piece of architecture. It used to the home of an arts patron and dealer, Grace Nicholson. When she died, she left her home to the city for use as an arts center/museum...We got there bright and early, around 10 a.m. 'ish.

View from the West side of the street (North Los Robles) above and below, cool paintings on the side of the building facing their free parking lot.

The museum is a Historical Landmark...the sign by the entrace double doors.

Admission was $9 and we had to fill out a brief questionnaire on how we heard of the museum and our purpose there. Plus we had to give a DNA sample from a cheek swab, as well as hand over an eyelash hair and trace our family tree. Just kidding. Well, actually, one of the questions was, "Are you of Chinese descent" and another asked your ethnic background.

Above is the inner courtyard. I bet it looks even more beautiful when the trees are in full bloom. The pond is stocked with several koi fish. I learned during my 2nd visit there a few weeks later that there are three koi in the pond. They are each a decade apart at 20, 30 and 40 years of age.

According to the museum's website (more info on the garden here,

"Since it is believed that evil spirits travel only in straight lines, the zig-zag design of the bridge is no accident. Underneath the bridge, the pond contains carp (or, in Japanese, koi), the traditional fish found in a Chinese garden. Legend says that a carp who is able leap past the rapids of the Yangtze River will transform into a dragon."

There was a pensive Buddha on a bench holding a tiny bird's egg. There was actually a nest way up in the tree next to the bench.

TORC, a history teacher at a local middle school was interested in this exhibit as well as the 2 pm showing of the documentary, "Memories of a Forgotten War". We are all pretty much Filipino American history buffs (the Prof teaches it up at Miramar College), so of course we wanted to do the road trip.

By the way, flash photography isn't allowed in the museum but photography IS allowed in almost all of the galleries. The special exhibition (which was being prepared at the time) is the only exception.

As you can see from the turn of the centery photo below, the woman is bare breasted. She also has African features (short kinky hair, dark skin, full lips). Filipinos are comprised of many groups of peoples, the earliest inhabitants being the Negritos who were followed by waves of Austronesian peoples (from Oceania and Southeast Asia), as well as Chinese and Islamic traders, and of course, later on the Spaniards and the Americans.

The exhibit focused on the juxtaposition of the modern and the primitive, using turn of the century images of Filipinas and contrasting them with  modern clothing styles rendered in traditional materials such as pina (pineapple fiber) and jusi (raw silk). Click on the photo if you want to read the placard.

The next photo features a beautiful terno. This is a style seen famously on Imelda Marcos, notorious shoe whore and former Philippine first lady and widow of deposed Philippine dictator Ferdinand Marcos. These are formal dresses which have stiff "butterfly" sleeves.

Isn't this gorgeous?

Close up of the panuelo...you can see the hand embroidered designs.

I believe this placard was for the next terno...

More photos of turn of the century Filipinas...

The cotton gauze terno. This is a back view of the hand embroidered panuelo.

Another view of the terno:

Train detail:

More photos of native women including the Negrita...there were four photos in all, two on each main wall.

Here is another beautiful terno...

I forget what material this was made of. I want to saw it was made of jusi (raw silk) but don't quote me on that.

Butterfly sleeve detail:

Another placard...

This terno was made of pina cloth (pineapple fiber), which is stiff and scratchy. Pina is not a comfortable fabric to wear.

Detail of the panuelo. You can see the stiff meshlike pineapple fibers.
There are more photos but I will post those separately...Too many to put in just one post.In addition to the ternos and vintage images, there was also a glass exhibit of Philippine made artifacts which included purses, jewelry, postcards, a rosary, slippers, and more. To be continued...

Hogetsu - Part 2

Here is Part 2 of my Hogetsu craving...A few pieces are the same from before....

Like this one, a soft and sweet orange flavored mochi....my daughter's favorite. The rainbow striped one (Suama) was also a repeat.

This one was so pretty - it's filled with white bean. I love the little leaf detail. So cute!

Now this one was also quite nice looking...There is a flower detail on top with a green stem...The outside of this was covered with yokan which is made out of  agar agar (seaweed gelatin). The colors were gorgeous - a reddish violet. The inner filling was red bean. Remember, at Hogetsu, there are only two flavors - red bean and white bean. Silence. Ha ha.

We didn't get one of these manju last time...so now here it is in all of its glory. I like how you can see

the color through the cracks. Mmm, that didn't sound right. 

These lasted maybe 2 to three days. Any more than that and the mochi gets all gross. You don't want to bite into a moldy mochi would you? 

Until our next visit....

ABC Music Humpday Videos - "P" is for The Plimsouls

Dude, what else can I say, except this song is pure pop perfection...

"Now" was the second song on The Plimsouls self-titled first album which was released in 1981.  Led by ex-Nerves frontman, Peter Case, The Plimsouls were an early 80's new wave band best known for their song, "Million Miles Away" which was featured on the Valley Girl soundtrack (featuring none other than Nicolas Cage).  This isn't really a "video" of the actual song, but more of a pastiche of pictures of the Plimsouls that a fan put together. In any case, I Heart This Song To Death.

This is a song you will hardly hear on the radio since "Million Miles Away" gets more play during those Resurrection 80's weekends. Besides "Now", I also really liked "How Long Can It Take" and "Zero Hour". More here at the Plimsoul's MySpace.

If there can be any song that sums up longing/want/frustration, this song would be at the top of the list. It seems so very "Romeo and Juliet"-like...They've just got that dirty, raspy garage band feel as well as those chimy neopsychedelic guitars  that I love so much!

"Girl, I need your love tonight
I can't wait
I must know
What's on your mind
The same thing's on mine
I can't wait any longer
Oh yeah, 'cause I need you NOW


Right NOW
NOW
Right NOW
Oh yeah


They'll never take this night away
It's yours and mine until the day
It's all right for one night
We'll never have this chance again
So love me now and we'll pretend
It's all right
For one night
Right NOW"

Hogetsu - Part 1

Okay, I'm back and this time the photos are from Flickr...it took me a while to learn how to do it. Upload photos, organize into sets. Cut and paste. All that shit. Anyways, here is my first box of rice cakes from Hogetsu Japanese sweet shop in Chula Vista. My husband was the one who chose these...he went the day they 'reopened' since the owners were out of town. The box of 9 came wrapped with a ribbon...

Here is the whole collection (that's TC's hand in there)...

This one was filled with red bean - the rice cake itself was greenish...the flavor kind of bland.

This next one was just a jiggly and oh-so-soft-as-a-baby's-butt rectangle of orange flavored mochi, which was chosen for TC.

This one was the same except there was no citrus flavor.

Bert chose this because of the design. Unfortunately, we let it go too long...It was in the fridge for about 4 days, then it got all hard and gross. I took a bite out of it and it tasted like a bean filled siaopao.  I think was a 'manju', a steam baked cake.

I  really liked this one - it was pink and again, so soft and strokably smooth. Gosh, that sounds so pornographic, but really, you should touch one of these. It's even better biting into one! Ha ha.

This was a rainbow striped mochi -

This was the prettiest of all - it was lavender with a yellow dot in the middle. There was a long green leafy design, but the tip was broken off. Nevertheless, it looked quite lovely and tasted just as good. The filling was red bean.

That's it for now...I have another set of pix which will have to wait for another post. The woman working at Hogetsu, according to Bert, was pretty curt with him. She wasn't really friendly and didn't seem like she wanted to explain any of the different mochis to him even though he thought he asked politely. When he asked her what kinds of filling there were, she said, "Red bean and white bean". Silence. Okay....there's more but I won't get into it. He didn't take it personally so WTF right? After our experience at Fugestu in LA's Little Tokyo, I thought maybe there would be more variety and flavors like peanut butter and chocolate, but alas, there's only 2 kinds.

Each piece is about $1 which is pretty good. All of their mochi/manju are handmade by the owners. The husband was either out or working in the back. Only the woman was in the front that day.

Click on my previous Hogetsu post if you want to see how the strip mall sign and the facades...When I first went back in mid-January, they were out of town. Not sure if the buildings are fixed up yet, but yeah...that's how it looks....If you go on that post, you can see the other links that reference Hogetsu(Kirbie and Kirk).