As I continue to feed my reluctant obsession with Taylor Swift, I continue to stumble upon things that add kindling to the fire of sugarcoated country pop – and some friends help me along the way.

Within the past couple of months, I have seen her take a crack at comedy on Saturday Night Live, listened to her attempt a duet with Stevie Nicks on the Grammys and watched her in Valentine’s Day.

More recently, I saw Poreotix perform a routine to Taylor’s Love Story on America’s Best Dance Crew which prompted me to learn that song on the guitar. Then, my friend Janet texted me:

I’m in a car and the driver turned it up for taylor swift without me having to ask!

Today, my friend Jeff shared this video with me to help me forget about the fact that I actually needed to do work at my office:

It’s like Taylor Swift…but more gay.

Taylor Swift is like this pop culture virus and as much as I hate to admit it, I am happy to be infected.

Luckily, MTV posts the episodes on their site and I finally watched it and was very pleased to see that Hawaiian crew Hype 5-0 pulled the gratuitous “two Asian girls kissing” trick out of their hat during their routine to “3″ by Britney Spears.

I don’t know if this was a desperate attempt to stay on the show or if it was an attempt to bribe the judges (mainly Omarion) and the male viewing demographic with erection-worthy Asian fetish action.

My guess it’s a combination of both.

I guess sex sells even though this Britney-themed lip lock would’ve been really sexy if it were 2003. My suggestion to Hype 5-0 is to push the envelope a little bit more. Have two guys make out or maybe perhaps a hip-hop routine that mirrors the storyline of Equus – OR – they can even further exemplify the wonder of Asian culture, they should do a traditional Asian folk dance. Considering most of the members seem Filipino (I believe one of them is my cousin’s husband’s cousin), I would suggest they bust out some Tinikling. That is always a crowd-pleaser.

Nonetheless, the parents of those two girls must be very proud.

Yawn.

Project Runway made me realize that you can sleep with your eyes open and this most recent season of ABDC was uninspiring and gimmicky (can we say “Vogue Evolution”?)

Over all, it’s Bravo TV that wins the prize for the most unentertaining television of the year (with the exception of Top Chef and maybe Real Housewives of Atlanta – I love me some Nene). The main source of their curdled spoilage of reality TV was their overly-desperate attempt to replace Project Runway. Fashion Show was a colossal failure; and just when you thought they couldn’t get any worse, they made the ultimate slap in the face to real designers called Launch My Line.

Vomit.

At one time, Bravo was my touchstone for good and fresh TV. Now it is turning into trashy drivel. They really need to regroup and think of a tasteful lineup of shows that gives them some cred.

What else made 2009 A Finer Year? Click here to find out!

When I did my interview with Margaret Cho for Hyphen Magazine (yes, this is a shameless name drop) I asked her about the state of Asian Americans in entertainment and she answered…

There’s a great crop of (Asian American) talent. There are a couple of more Asian faces here and there – that is great. The “Slumdog Millionaire” win at the Oscars is super exciting and is great for the community. There also needs to be more Asian Americans behind the scenes – not just with movies, but with television, music and other forms of entertainment.

I also did another interview with John Cho a while back (shameless name drop #2) and he practically said the same thing.

That said, I am going to keep a running tally of the Asian Americans I see under the pop culture umbrella – particularly in movies, television, fashion and arts. I won’t necessarily pinpoint every single Asian American involved in a movie or TV show, but I will do my best. (I also welcome leads…)

So here is my list starting from August 1, 2009:

1.) Charlyne Yi in Paper Heart: According to Wikipedia, “her mother is of Filipino-Spanish descent and her father is of Korean, Irish, German, French and Native American.”

2.) Thakoon Panichgul in The September Issue: Thai fashion designer who does brilliant prints…CFDA wunderkid…a Michelle Obama favorite…and cute as a button.

3.) The Asian dude in all those AT&T commercials.

4.) Ang Lee, the Tawainese director of the upcoming film, Taking Woodstock. (I got to see a pre-screening of it and interviewed the brilliant director at the beginning of the month – yes, I am bragging.)

5.) The G.I. Joe movie may not have been the BEST, but it did have some Asians up in there: Gerald Okamura (credited as “Hard Master” – whatever that means), Brandon Soo Hoo (plays young Storm Shadow) and Byung-hun Lee (plays the older Storm Shadow).

6.) Season 4 America’s Best Dance Crew has a whole mess of Asians up in there: Hiroka “Hero” Mcrae and Mami Kanemitsu in the crew, We Are Heroes; select breakers (I think four of them) from the b-boy crew, Massive Monkeys; and ALL SEVEN of those kids from Fr3sh (why did the Asians have to get eliminated first?). We’ll collectively count this as 13.

7.) Just saw a How I Met Your Mother re-run titled “Three Days of Snow” and the recurring character of the cab driver Ranjit (played by Marshall Manesh reps the Asian American community!

Asian pop culture tally as of Aug. 17: 21

Not bad.

And I realize that this may border on the line of cultural vanity, but I am just going to follow Margaret Cho’s lead when she said, “I am into being self-righteous (laughs) I don’t think there is anything wrong with it.”

…but keep in mind, this all might change next week. But for now, I love these break dancin’ divas.

…because B-girls are hot. And that “Womanizer” routine was even hotter.

How could I not support this crew? Plus, three of them were on SYTYCD, so it’s a given. It’s like a law. If you supported them on SYTYCD, then you have to support them on ABDC…and Hok’s hair alone is reason enough for me to give them half of my endorsement. Oh yeah, and they have the most awesomest B-boy skillz. (you notice how I spelled “skillz”"? The “z” makes me feel more street).