It was probably little noticed in most sports pages other than an agate listing, but NFL player Dat Nguyen retired last week after an eight-year career.

We're little late on this, but radio show host Adam Carolla apologized last week to the "Asian community" for a skit in January that consisted mostly of someone saying "ching chong" over and over.

Many of the posts on this blog rant and rave about how Hollywood disses Asian Americans. East West Players and the Asian American Theater Company are offering three programs that probably offer the best long-term solution: getting more Asian Americans involved.

In the spirit of The Grace Lee Project, I'm embarking on my own search for all the Harry Moks out there. Fortunately, Harry Mok isn't as common a name as Grace Lee.

Here's a Los Angeles Times story about how the Huntington Library in San Marino, an institution built on the backs of Chinese laborers during the 1800s, is financing its new Chinese Garden with donations from Chinese Americans that its founder would have considered servants and "not equal socially at all."

A groin injury is forcing figure skater Michelle Kwan to withdraw from the U.S. Figure Skating Championships but she will petition the U.S. federation for a spot at the Turin Olympics.

CBS has ordered a script for Red Doors, a prime-time soap opera about an Chinese American family based on the indie movie of the same name directed by Georgia Lee.

SAM magazine, which we wrote about in Issue 7, is celebrating its first issue with a launch party Saturday in San Francisco.

I don't want to turn this into a medical TV show blog, but has anyone else noticed that three female Asian American TV characters on hospital shows and have all been romantically involved with African Americans? Not that there's anything wrong with Asian Americans and African Americans dating, but it just seems odd that these characters end up in similar relationships.

Those three unspeakable words get turned on their heads in N*gger, Wetb*ck, Ch*nk, a show that started as a student production at UCLA and is now on a tour.

George Takei, who played Sulu in Star Trek, comes out publicly in an interview with Frontiers, a gay magazine.

Sports Illustrated reporter Michael Bamberger, rather than just covering the story, seemingly broke a journalistic taboo and became part of the story, by telling LPGA officials that he thought Michelle Wie cheated on a drop ball at the Samsung World Championship on Saturday.

Chinese American rapper The Emcee, who used to go by the name Jin, is releasing his new album independently on Oct. 25.

He talked about how his race affected how his first album was marketed and why he's going independent now in an interview with the San Jose Mercury News (registration required).

Full disclosure: I work for Knight Ridder Digital, which produces mercurynews.com

Kayo Hatta, who directed Picture Bride, drowned to death last week in an apparent accident at a friend's pool.

The Intrepid Foundation has set up a fund benefitting children in Southeast Asian in the name of Mike Matsushita, an American who was confirmed as among the dead from the London terrorist bombings.

A former Bronx, N.Y., resident who left the country after 9/11 may be among the casualties of the London terrorist bombings.

Mike Matsushita, left the United States for either Australia, according to the Sydney Morning Herald, or Vietnam, according to the New York Daily News. In any event, he had moved to London recently and either moved to the United States as a kid from Vietnam or was born in the Bronx, depending on which story you believe.

Our thoughts are with Matsushita's family and the rest of the victims' families of this horrific event.

A federal appeals court upheld civil contempt findings against reporters whose confidential sources pointed to scientist Wen Ho Lee as a possible spy.

I'm a little torn here bacause as a journalist I believe reporters shouldn't be compelled to reveal sources. However, Lee was totally screwed over by the government and the media that cow-towed to whatever the government said about Lee without really checking it out, as journalists are supposed to do.

Helen Zia's book,My Country Versus Me, paints a sympathetic picture of Lee and how he came to be the most dangerous spy suspect ever, until all espionage charges were dropped against him.

A Convenient Spy: Wen Ho Lee and the Politics of Nuclear Espionage, I haven't read, but from the descriptions, it is not as sympathetic to Lee's cause.

Maybe we'll never know what really happened and where those missing data tapes are. Maybe Lee was a spy. In any event, the whole case showed how easily Asian Americans are stereotyped and how racial profiling can proliferate in the media.

A coalition of 25 to 30 Asian American organizations plans to send a letter to the San Francisco 49ers today protesting the team's use of racial stereotypes in a training video.

You don't have to be a professor to figure out that there's rarely an Asian American on prime-time TV, but some UCLA researchers went ahead and did another study to verify the obvious.

The new study shows that Asian Americans are indeed underrepresented on prime-time television.

Got a chance to see Making Tracks, the Asian American rock musical, at the San Jose Repertory Theatre this past weekend before it ended its run.

I was impressed with the scope of the story and delighted to see an accurate portrayal of Asian American history that really tugged at your heartstrings. Anyone whose family has come from someplace else to the gilded shores of America can identify with this story.

Making Tracks is a groundbreaking work of Asian American theater and the anti-Miss Saigon, though its narrative maybe too much for those who haven't taken an Asian American studies class. Some reviewers have noted this. About half the audience I saw the play with was non-Asian and maybe many of the Asians Americans have never heard any of the history, but most of them took part in the standing ovation at the end. I think there was enough in the story for the uninitiated to understand the history, and the great performances and music also pulled in the audience.

The story covers six generations of a family and encompasses the major events in Chinese and Japanese American history -- from the Gold Rush and building the railroad, to picture brides, World War II and the Japanese internment, to the struggles of Asian Americans to find themselves in today's American society.

One quibble is that other Asian groups are left out (there are some minor references to Filipinos, and most of the actors are Filipino), though the themes resonate across ethnic and racial lines.

Another minor quibble is that in a couple of the songs, the Mandarin pronunciation for "America" (mei guo) is sung by the characters even though they're supposed to be Gold Rush-era Cantonese immigrants. This reminds me of the Fruit Chan movie Dumplings, set in Hong Kong, where Bai Ling's character speaks Mandarin and everybody else is speaking Cantonese. What's with the dissing of Cantonese?

But I digress. Making Tracks was worth seeing and hopefully there will be a national tour, as the producers want.

Chinese pop singer Coco Lee is releasing a new English-language album on March 25 in hopes of making it big in the United States. From the looks of the album's cover, she's trying the "show lots of skin" Britney-Spears-Christina-Aguilera model for success.

Lee is actually Asian American, having grown up in San Francisco, but she made a name for herself in Hong Kong and Taiwan, where she's a big star.

I last caught a glimpse of Lee in the documentary, "The Year of the Yao," shown at the San Francisco International Asian American Film Festival (try saying that three times fast). Lee was shown singing the national anthem before one of NBA star Yao Ming's games, one of the many hokey "Chinese" or "Asian American" days that seem to happen in basketball arenas when Yao is a visiting player.

I'm not a fan of Lee's music genre, but it'd be nice to see her do well.

The cholesterol drug Crestor can cause muscle damage, and the Food and Drug Administration says Asian Americans are especially susceptible. New warning labels are being required.

Basketball star Yao Ming is lending his name and 7-foot-6 stature to a new restaurant in Houston, where he plays for the NBA's Rockets. His parents will own and run Yao's Restaurant and Bar.

USC assistant football coach Norm Chow was passed over for the head coach job at Stanford, a snub for a guy that has groomed a string of star quarterbacks, including Matt Leinart, this year's Heisman Trophy winner.

If there was an industry where Asian Americans are truly invisible, than it's big-time sports, such as college football. Hawaii-native Chow has an incredible coaching record as an offensive guru at Brigham Young University, North Carolina State and USC, which has been the No. 1-ranked college team in the country most of the past two years. Some of the quarterbacks Chow has tutored who have gone on to the NFL include Carson Palmer, Steve Young, Jim McMahon, and most likely, Leinart in the near future.

Chow would seem to be in line for any head coaching job out there, but it hasn't worked out that way. Having not been a head coach before may be hurting his chances, but if there was ever an "old boy's club," it would be big-time college sports, given the paltry number of black coaches.

Plenty of other assistant coaches without head coaching experience have been hired as the top guy, so let's hope Chow gets his opportunity soon.