B HERE Live Performance for Hepatitis B Awareness Recap

In an effort to educate Asian Americans on the effects of Hepatitis B, the B Here project is doing a FREE mini US concert tour, including the best of the best in Asian American entertainment! But, there’s a catch! You MUST visit the art/education exhibit in order to receive a ticket! (now ain’t that smart?!) Free education and free entertainment? Count us in!

On Monday, October 5th, 2009, 4/5 of the Hypnotic Asia crew, Patrick Tomas from vitaminOC.com and Lawrence Tolentino of LoLophoto.com spent the afternoon on the first stop on the B Here tour: University of California, Irvine in Southern California. We walked into a huge ballroom at the Student Center filled with some powerful pieces including vibrant digital artwork, vivid and humbling sculptures,real-life portraits, and a fun/interactive map piece! Immediately afterwards, we watched a short film educating us on the silent impact Hepatitis B has on the Asian American population.

Did you know that:

1 in 10 Asian Americans is living with chronic hepatitis B?
Over 2 million people have chronic hepatitis B in the United States and more than half of them are Asian American!
Chronic hepatitis B is a serious long-term disease that results from infection with the hepatitis B virus.
Chronic hepatitis B damages the liver and, if the disease is not treated properly, it can lead to severe medical complications,including liver failure, liver cancer, or even death.*

(*for more information on chronic hepatitis B, visit the B Here website) I know that I’ve gotten my Hepatitis B vaccinations – have you? Make sure to check out the website and spread the word to your friends and family! 1 in 10 is a pretty scary number, don’t you think?

After filling out a short survey in reference to our awareness of Hepatitis B, we were awarded with tickets to the B Here Live Performance, featuring Jessica Sanchez, AJ Rafael, Happy Slip, KevJumba, Michelle Martinez, Paul Dateh, and Kaba Modern! While wandering around the Ring Road vendor fair with Dee (she’s a UCI student!),we cruised by the Rad is Rad booth to find not only Scott Yoshimoto,but the ever so handsome Mr. Victor Kim of Quest Crew! Of course, we’refangirls too so we were totally unable to approach him at first, butafter walking away and then going back again, we introduced ourselvesand snapped a quick picture with him! He graduated from UCI too!

Hours later, the show began, MC’ed by everyone’s favorite YouTube comedian, KevJumba! It was his first visit to UC Irvine and he finally understood why everyone describes UCI as “really Asian!”, lol. Full performance recaps, videos, and photos will soon follow, but here’s a quick overview of what happened tonight:

The show kicked off with former America’s Got Talent contestant – 14year old Jessica Sanchez! Seems like the youngest ones always have the biggest voices. Jessica definitely warmed up the audience and livened up the crowd for the rest of the show. She was joined on stage by AJ Rafael for her closing song, which led right into AJ’s set!

AJ Rafael sang his signature Disney medley that normally gets the crowd singing along, shouting out lyrics at the appropriate times, and having a great time! It’s funny, when you’re amongst a predominately collegiate crowd, you’ll find a surprising number of fan boys that go just as crazy as the fan girls in the audience. AJ madesure to dedicate his set to #HealPhilippines!

Just before intermission was the highly anticipated set from Happy Slip aka Christine Gambito. How she’s not on television already insitcoms or on SNL is beyond me! She had the entire audience rolling in laughter, doing awesome imitations that a lot of the Filipino/a’s in the audience could relate to!

Michelle Martinez brought a smoove R&B vibe to the show. She gave us a taste of her original pieces both int heir original R&B/dance form and in slower, acoustic style that really showed her talent in a different light.

Of them all, Paul Dateh was definitely the star of the night! Heperformed a 5-song set with his guitarist, Ken Belcher and again, had all of the fangirls AND fanboys falling for his jazzy sound, smoove violin, and oh-so-adorable cover of Sesame Street’s “I Don’t Want to Live on the Moon”. Paul definitely got the biggest reaction from the crowd of the evening!

The show closed out with a great performance by UCI’s very own Kaba Modern (you may have seen them on America’s Best Dance Crew – season1!), showing off why they were the best at isolation’s on ABDC to date! There was a special appearance by Victor Kim from Quest Crew!!

It was a great show, but what came afterwards was almost BETTER. There wasa REALLY brief “meet and greet” within the venue, but because theycouldn’t stay there for long, Happy Slip tweeted out the second meetand greet location within 15 minutes of the show’s end. Once the tweetwent out that the meet and greet would be across the bridge at theIn-n-Out, we literally saw a whole wave of people RUN across thatbridge to go meet the performers!

Meanwhile, Paul Dateh was getting an overwhelming fan response and wassigning everything from CDs to Razor scooters! There was literal”fandamonium” and the crowds were bombarding the poor guy so much, hewas pretty much pinned up against the glass wall! Paul is one of ourfavs, so we stuck around after the crowds died down a bit to sayhello! While we were waiting for him to leave the venue, we bumpedinto Philip Wang and Wes Chan from Wong Fu Productions!!!!

We took pictures and chatted with Paul and Ken, we headed over to In-n-Out, with hopes that the fandamonium died down a bit! We said our hellos to AJ Rafael, Andrew Garcia from The Adrian William Project and dispersed to meet Kev Jumba and Happy Slip. After the meet and greet stuff ended, I went inside to grab some food, only to find the craziest scene I think I’ll ever see within an In-n-Out….

n one corner, Phil & Wes from Wong Fu eating with Kev Jumba, HappySlip, Paul Dateh and Ken Belcher. In another, AJ Rafael, Andrew Garcia from the Adrian William Project, Cathy Nguyen and the whole Mo Val Crew in another….and then Tom Ngo wandering around saying hello to people! Even Kaba Modern rolled through! What on earth would you do if you randomly walked into a restaurant and saw all of these amazing performers and personalities?! WOW!

Anyways, it was a really fun night! We have lots more videos andpictures to share! But aside from all of the hype, the real reason thetour is taking place is to raise awareness about Hepatitis B so please,please check out their website or if you’re in Houston or Davis, theshow is coming to you later this month so “B There” and get educated! http://www.willyouBhere.com!!!!

Sorry this post is so long, but there was a lot to share! Stay tunedfor recaps of each performer’s set, including videos and photos!

Tags: B HERE