Borders’ cafe, A Prairie Home Companion, a gigantic dish of shrimp pasta, “Nu Hon Goi Gio,” countless emails, Tuan Ngoc, Ngoc Ha, Khanh Ly, “Bien Nho,” jazz, Billie Holiday, chao ga, chicken wings, wine, beer, broccoli with egg and soy sauce, steak with rice, sushi, nightly Starbuck coffee, books, Niagara Falls, Toronto, Las Vegas, Virginia, New Yorker, badminton, Barnes & Noble, cheesecake, the park, rain, NYC, egg custard, pho and lau de. Wow! It’s been a wonderful year!
“Nua Doi Yeu Em” is one of my favorite tunes from Lam Phuong and Don Ho has done an exeptional job of expressing the pathos in it. These two lines, “Hai con yeu nhau bang tam hon biet xu / Doi tim ghep lai bang kho dau nua doi,” brings out the melancholic vibe every time.
From “Boy arrives in Canada for life-saving surgery“:
Hoang Son Pham was abandoned by his parents at the age of three because of a facial hemangioma, a benign tumour of blood vessels. Over the next seven years, the tumour continued to grow, causing difficulty with everyday tasks such as eating.
You can find more updates on the boy as well as donation information at Children’s Bridge Foundation. Big up to Kate Maslen!
50 Cent’s new joint featuring Justin Timberlake sounds more like pornography than techology.
Clean, simple and elegant Web site speaks for the hotel.
Hy Zaret who’s responsible for the lyrics of the infamous “Unchained Melody” died on July 3 at 99.
From the Q&A of Savage Love in the Village Voice:
I’m a straight girl in my early twenties and I’ve only had one sex partner. Sex was great, and only occasionally did I have to take the guy’s dick and redirect him to the “better” vagina.
Fantabulous!
Kalefa Sanneh reviews T. I. vs. T. I. P.:
T. I. is one of the last rap stars standing, a dominant figure at a time when record sales are falling fast and hip-hop sales are falling faster. (Last year no hip-hop album, not even “King,” was among the 10 top-selling CDs.) And like just about every popular rapper since the 1980s, he is both a sign of the times and an anomaly. He is part of a wave of beat-savvy Southern rappers (many based in Atlanta) who have reimagined the genre over the last decade. But he’s also an old-fashioned lyricist, obsessed with verbal density; Pharrell famously said, “He’s like the down-South Jay-Z.”
You might even say that T. I. has triumphed by turning Jay-Z’s style inside out. Jay-Z knew how to hide sound in sense. His lyrics often sounded like plainspoken prose; it was only later that you noticed the hidden rhyme patterns and rhythms. By contrast, T. I. hides sense in sound. His lyrics often sound like singsong chants; it’s only later that you notice the hidden intricacy of the words.
The HBO Voyeur Project is a multimedia experience similar to Hitchcock’s Rear Window. Take a peek at the fantastic web site.