What are you so angry about, Mr. Angry Asian Man?

Phil Yu laughs heartily.

"People ask me that question all the time," says Yu, a 27-year-old Korean American who gives us AngryAsianMan.com, a personal clearinghouse of everything Asian American. Its mock catchphrase of empowerment: "Keep it real with the rice fields."

The refrain "That's racist!" also appears regularly — sometimes half-jokingly, oftentimes not, when Yu stumbles upon what he views as stereotypical depictions of Asian Americans. But no, he's not actually that angry. He's just like a lot of other bloggers in the URL-littered landscape, a man who has something to say that he thinks other people aren't saying.

"I wanted to play with this idea of being 'angry,' to take on this persona of an Angry Asian Man, because we as Asians are not usually seen as an angry, militant, conscious group," Yu says by phone from his home in west Los Angeles. "That's the stereotype that's been attributed to us — you know, the model minority — so much so that we start to believe it ourselves."

A droll lack of pomposity draws visitors to the site, where an action figure of Quick Kick, the bare-chested character in the "G.I. Joe" TV show, welcomes visitors to Yu's world. "Quick Kick is angry, too," says Yu. "Why does he have to be bare-chested all the time? Even on an episode of 'G.I. Joe' when he's fighting the enemy outside and it's snowing?"

AngryAsianMan.com has nothing to do with the Angry Little Asian Girl T-shirt and comic strip you might have seen somewhere, though Yu does sell "Nobody Loves an Angry Asian Man" T-shirts through his site. He's sold about 40 of them so far — "40 more than I've expected to sell," he says.

The site doesn't boast big numbers — about 60,000 hits a month, Yu says — but since launching in February 2001, it's become a daily must-read for the media-savvy, socially conscious, pop-cultured Asian American. It's part Gawker ("Check out this Bud Light commercial. Just another Asian karate dude ... getting his [butt] kicked ... By an old lady ... That's racist!") and part Drudge Report ("New Mexico Governor Bill Richardson acknowledges in his new autobiography that Wen Ho Lee was 'mistreated' "). But it's also altogether original.

"He has his finger on the pulse of everything that's Asian American — the good news, the bad news, the things we didn't know but should know. They're all there," says Dennis Chong, a 32-year-old Washington, D.C., lawyer.

"What he encompasses is the Asian-American Everyman. The site isn't really about him, it's about the community, about how the basic Asian-American person would react to things," adds Todd Inoue, 39, music editor at the alternative weekly San Jose Metro.

"There's that key line, 'That's racist!' I think it's perfect. It's funny and silly and serious all at the same time. It's activism at DSL speed," says Inoue.