“What You Don’t Know about Martha…” is that she’s my mother at the office. Everything I need, she’s the first person that comes to mind. I just put a dense on my car, do you know where I can take it to? Yes. I get you the numbers. I need a hundred more blank CDs (for work and music); she has Staples delivers them in two days. I still haven’t touch the fax machine because she does it for me every time. When I needed a ride home when my old car broke down, she took me home. When she gets hot peppers or vegetables from the farm, she hooks me up. In return, I give her my love and my music. She loves my jazz collection even though she was married to a rocker. Martha rocks! You see why I love Vassar?

Put Your Best Foot Forward: 19 Gorgeous Website Footers

The Notorious B.I.G. aka Biggie Smalls was gunned down a decade earlier on this day. Unlike his murder case, his music has not yet been forgotten. From the hypnotizing “Juicy” to the juicy “Hypnotize,” “Big Poppa” is remembered as one of Brooklyn’s finest rappers who were recognized as a virtuoso of flow.

Dolce & Gabbana pulled their controversial ad campaign right after the strong protests from Italy and Spain. The company wanted to convey “an erotic dream, a sexual game,” but misinterpreted as gang banging or violence toward women. D&G shouldn’t have pulled their ad. What they should have done is following up with another one with the gender reversed. Five women with one guy laying down on the ground is no doubt a sexual fantasy (at least for me, it is).

The Department of Spanish and Portuguese Web site at Berkeley is simple in layout, bold in typography, and refeshing in visual.

The New Yorker, one of my favorite magazines, Web site is redesigned. It’s about time they make the columns wider and have RSS feeds available.

Besides his incredible acting in Black Snake Moan, I was quite impressed with Samuel L. Jackson’s blues singing, particularly “Just Like a Bird Without a Feather.” He has a voice of a bad-ass motherfucker just like most of the characters he portrayed. Although he doesn’t sing in “Stackolee,” his foul-mouth charismatic of telling a story is right on the money: “You know that bartender gave me a dirty look and a dirty glass. I said, ‘Say it motherfucker, do you know who I am?’ He said, ‘Hell no nigger, I don’t give a goddamn.'”

A crisp new theme for iLoveNgocLan.com. I was going to post this alluring theme yesterday in memory of her death, but it didn’t seem to be appropriate.

It may not sound right listening to “Con Mua Ha” in the winter time, but the cold-ass temperature plus the bone-crushing wind make me yearning for summer. The time when we hid from the rain and sat in the park until three in the morning on a weekday and still got up and went to work the next day. Although Lam Thuy Van was known for this tune, Don Ho poured more soul into it than her. Somehow he sounded more natural back then with his laid-back flow and unrestrained delivery.

Thought that I am done and through with the “Khong” songs, but they are jamming in my headphone again and again. What makes Thy Dung’s “Lien Khuc Khong” is so damn addictive is the hipnotic arrangement. That country-style violin is so effective in such a strange way.

Tierney Sutton‘s rendition of “East of the Sun, West of the Moon” is such a novelty. This beautiful ballad has been covered numerous times from Frank Sinatra to Diana Krall, but never in an idiosyncratic approach like Sutton. She reinvents the melody, speeds up the tempo, and scats the shit out of it. Damn, just love it when a singer takes a well-known standard to where no one else had taken it before. The live performance is taken from Marian McPartland’s Piano Jazz program on NPR. (You’re the best, baby!)