Ken Hakuta | |
---|---|
白田 健 | |
Born | Paik Kun (白健) 1951 (age 72–73) Seoul, South Korea |
Other names | Dr. Fad |
Occupation(s) | Businessman, inventor, television personality |
Spouse | Marilou Cantiller |
Children | 3 |
Relatives | Nam June Paik (uncle) Ali Wong (Former daughter-in-law) |
Ken Hakuta (born 1951), known as Dr. Fad since 1983, is a Korean-American businessman, inventor, and television personality. Hakuta, as Dr. Fad, was the host of the popular children's invention TV show The Dr. Fad Show, which ran from 1988 to 1994. The show featured children's inventions and promoted creativity and inventiveness in children. Hakuta was the organizer of four Fad Fairs, conventions of inventors with fun, wacky ideas, in Detroit, New York City and Philadelphia.
Hakuta imported and merchandised the Wacky Wall Walker, [1] [2] one of the best selling toys of the 1980s. The Wacky Wall Walker became a fad hit in 1983, and over 240 million units have sold. In 1983, NBC aired an animated Christmas special, Deck the Halls with Wacky Walls , to capitalize on the toy fad. [3] Their popularity peaked after the Kellogg Company inserted them as free prizes in cereal boxes. The VH1 program "I Love the 80s: 1983" features Dr. Fad and the Wall Walkers.
Hakuta is also an art collector [4] and is particularly known for a large group of Shaker items, furniture and other pieces, that he purchased in 1991. These are now part of the so-called Mount Lebanon Shaker Society collection. [5]
In 1998, Hakuta built on his long-standing interest in herbal medicine to found AllHerb.com, an eCommerce company offering herbal remedy products and information. AllHerb.com sought to differentiate itself from other competitors in the space by positioning itself as "the most authentic resource for herbal medicine available today"; for instance, one of its spokespeople was a shaman, tribal healer, and herbalist from the Peruvian rainforest. AllHerb.com ceased operations in February 2000. [6]
Hakuta has been featured in numerous media including: The Washington Post , The New York Times , the Los Angeles Times , the Detroit Free Press , USA Today , Time , Newsweek , Forbes , Fortune , Inc. , Entrepreneurship , Business Week , CBS Evening News , 60 Minutes , 48 Hours , Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous , Oprah , Geraldo , Today Show , The Tonight Show , Late Night with Conan O'Brien , The Don and Mike Show , Larry King , and numerous radio shows around the country. There are two Harvard Business School case studies on AllHerb.com: "Ken Hakuta: AllHerb.com" and "AllHerb.com: Evolution of an E-tailer".
Hakuta was born in Seoul, South Korea. His Korean name is Paik Kun (백건), and he was born as the first child of Paik Nam-il, who was the CEO of a textile manufacturing company originally owned by his father, Paik Nag-seung, who was accused in 2002 of having been a Chinilpa, or traitor and collaborator with the Japanese during their occupation of Korea. The textile manufacturing company was the biggest of its kind during the Japanese colonial era in Korea. His family relocated to Japan in 1951, where they changed their Korean surname to a Japanese name based on the original Chinese character (白). Ken Hakuta subsequently grew up in Japan. He received his Master of Business Administration from Harvard University in 1977. Hakuta married Marilou Cantiller, a Filipina he met while the pair worked at the World Bank, in 1977. The pair have three children: Justin, Kenzo, and Aki. [7] Justin is the former husband of comedian Ali Wong. [8]
Hakuta is the nephew of the video artist Nam June Paik and was the manager of Paik's New York City studio at the time of his death. [9] He is the executor of his uncle's estate. [4]
Herbal teas, also known as herbal infusions and less commonly called tisanes, are beverages made from the infusion or decoction of herbs, spices, or other plant material in hot water; they do not usually contain any true tea. Often herb tea, or the plain term tea, is used as a reference to all sorts of herbal teas. Many herbs used in teas/tisanes are also used in herbal medicine and in folk medicine. Some herbal blends contain true tea.
Fluxus was an international, interdisciplinary community of artists, composers, designers, and poets during the 1960s and 1970s who engaged in experimental art performances which emphasized the artistic process over the finished product. Fluxus is known for experimental contributions to different artistic media and disciplines and for generating new art forms. These art forms include intermedia, a term coined by Fluxus artist Dick Higgins; conceptual art, first developed by Henry Flynt, an artist contentiously associated with Fluxus; and video art, first pioneered by Nam June Paik and Wolf Vostell. Dutch gallerist and art critic Harry Ruhé describes Fluxus as "the most radical and experimental art movement of the sixties".
Nam June Paik was a Korean artist. He worked with a variety of media and is considered to be the founder of video art. He is credited with the first use (1974) of the term "electronic super highway" to describe the future of telecommunications.
The Wacky WallWalker was a toy molded out of a sticky elastomer. It was shaped similar to an octopus and when thrown against a wall would "walk" its way down. It was a hugely popular toy in the early 1980s.
Shigeko Kubota was a Japanese video artist, sculptor and avant-garde performance artist, who mostly lived in New York City. She was one of the first artists to adopt the portable video camera Sony Portapak in 1970, likening it to a "new paintbrush." Kubota is known for constructing sculptural installations with a strong DIY aesthetic, which include sculptures with embedded monitors playing her original videos. She was a key member and influence on Fluxus, the international group of avant-garde artists centered on George Maciunas, having been involved with the group since witnessing John Cage perform in Tokyo in 1962 and subsequently moving to New York in 1964. She was closely associated with George Brecht, Jackson Mac Low, John Cage, Joe Jones, Nam June Paik, and Ay-O, among other members of Fluxus. Kubota was deemed "Vice Chairman" of the Fluxus Organization by Maciunas.
Paik is a post-rock/space rock band, originally from Toledo, United States, currently living in Detroit, Michigan, United States, that includes Rob Smith and Ryan Pritts. Bassist Ali Clegg left the band in 2005, and has since been replaced by San Francisco native Anthony Petrovic (E-Zee-Tiger). Terms used when describing Paik's music include: post-rock, shoegaze, and space rock.
"Good Morning, Mr. Orwell" was the first international satellite "installation" by Nam June Paik, a South Korean-born American artist often credited with inventing video art. It occurred on New Year's Day, 1984.
Herbal cigarettes are cigarettes that usually do not contain any tobacco or nicotine, instead being composed of a mixture of various herbs and/or other plant material. However, Chinese herbal cigarettes contain tobacco and nicotine with herbs added, unlike European and North American herbal cigarettes which have tobacco and nicotine omitted. Like herbal smokeless tobacco, they are often used as a substitute for standard tobacco products. Herbal cigarettes are often advertised as a smoking cessation aid. They are also used in acting scenes by performers who are non-smokers, or where anti-smoking legislation prohibits the use of tobacco in public spaces. Herbal cigarettes can carry carcinogens.
Randall Park is an American actor. He is best known for his role as Louis Huang in the ABC sitcom Fresh Off the Boat (2015–2020), for which he was nominated for the Critics' Choice Television Award for Best Actor in a Comedy Series in 2016.
Asian Americans have been involved in the U.S. entertainment industry since the 19th century, when Afong Moy started a series of shows that evolved into essentially one-women shows. In the mid-19th century, Chang and Eng Bunker became naturalized citizens and were successful performers in the United States. Sadakichi Hartman, originally from Japan, was a successful playwright in the 1890s. Acting roles in television, film, and theater were relatively few, and many available roles were for narrow, stereotypical characters. Early Asian American actors such as Sessue Hayakawa, Anna May Wong, and Bruce Lee encountered a movie-making culture and industry that wanted to cast them as caricatures. Some, like actress Merle Oberon, hid their ethnicity to avoid discrimination by Hollywood's racist laws.
Arthur Lee "Tommie" Bass was an Appalachian herbalist who lived near Lookout Mountain, Alabama.
James "Jim" Fyfe is an American teacher, public speaking coach, and a former actor, writer theatre director, and acting coach from Haddon Township NJ. Beginning in 2003, he worked at Rockland Country Day School in Congers, New York. He started as a history teacher before becoming the school's Admissions Director, later its Assistant Headmaster, Upper Division Head, and then the school's Operations Administrator while continuing to teach History. In 2015, he began working alongside comedic television host Stephen Colbert, as a producer on the CBS program The Late Show with Stephen Colbert. Since 2017 he has taught at EF International Academy and Homestead CCHS in Hurleyville, NY. As an actor, Fyfe was known for appearing on Broadway, TV and film, most notably on Dark Shadows (91), The Fresh Prince of Bel-Air, The X-Files, Law and Order, and in Peter Jackson's film, The Frighteners. Former children may know him from HBO's Encyclopedia, and as the co-host from 1988-89 on The Dr. Fad Show, starring Ken Hakuta.
John Raymond Christopher was an American herbalist and naturopath. He was known for his numerous lectures and publications on herbs. He developed over 50 herbal formulas used worldwide, and founded The School of Natural Healing in Springville, Utah.
Alexandra Dawn "Ali" Wong is an American comedian, actor, writer, producer and director. She is best known for her Netflix stand-up specials Baby Cobra (2016), Hard Knock Wife (2018), and Don Wong (2022). She has also starred in the romantic comedy film Always Be My Maybe (2019), on which she also served as a writer and producer. In 2023, she starred in the Netflix dark comedy series Beef, for which she won two Golden Globe Awards and two Primetime Emmy Awards, becoming the first Asian woman to win a lead acting Emmy. She was included in Time's 100 Most Influential People of 2020 and 2023.
John G. Hanhardt is an American author, art historian, and curator of film and media arts. Hanhardt was the Consulting Senior Curator for Media Arts at the Smithsonian Museum of American Art, where he developed exhibitions, collections, and archives in film and the media arts. He is considered to be one of the leading scholars on video artist Nam June Paik.
TV Buddha is a video sculpture by Nam June Paik first produced in 1974, but exists in multiple versions. In the work, a Buddha statue watches an image of itself on a TV screen. The screen's image is produced by a live video camera trained on the Buddha statue.
Deck the Halls with Wacky Walls is an American television Christmas special that aired on NBC on December 11, 1983. The special is inspired by the Wacky WallWalker toys that were imported from Japan and merchandised by Ken Hakuta in 1982. The toys are small plastic octopus-like figures molded out of a sticky elastomer; when thrown against a wall, the figures slowly "walk" down as the appendages briefly adhere to the surface. More than 200 million of the toys were sold in the early 1980s. Hakuta set up the TV deal with NBC, and the young boy in the special bore a "distinct resemblance to Mr. Hakuta's 4-year-old son, Kenzo."
Simon Tuttle Atherton was an early American Shaker, who became highly successful on behalf of his own community, in selling herbs in and around Boston, Massachusetts.
Ik-Joong Kang, is a Korean American visual artist, best known for his work using canvases measuring 3 by 3 inches. Well-acknowledged in his native South Korea as well as his adopted home, the US, Kang had multiple exhibitions hosted by major institutions in both countries, such as the Whitney Museum of American Art at Champion, Connecticut (1994), the Whitney Museum of American Art at Philip Morris, New York (1996), and the National Museum of Modern and Contemporary Art, Korea (2010). Kang had been one of the two artists commissioned to represent South Korea for the 47th Venice Biennale in 1997 and was awarded an honorable mention.
Electronic Superhighway: Continental U.S., Alaska, Hawaii, commonly referred to as Electronic Superhighway, is an art installation created by Nam June Paik in 1995. Since 2006, the work has been on display in the Smithsonian American Art Museum (SAAM) in Washington, D.C. The large video artwork is composed of over 300 television sets, neon tubing, and 50 DVD players, which form a map of the United States. The map contains video clips that Paik associated with each state. Some of the states display images that are commonly associated with them, while others play video clips of people and scenes that are more thought-provoking.