I first wrote about Cécile McLorin Salvant back in 2013 when she released her debút album, WomanChild. Salvant has always been a singular jazz singer who reinvigorates old standards with humorous twists. Her lyrical choices have always been intriguing.

With her latest release, Oh Snap, she experiments with her own writing. Right off the opening track, “I am a volcano,” she explains over electronic pop production that she wants to be a river, but she’s volcano instead and the image she gives is fascinating: “I am a cyst, finally expressing, pressing out the pus / Red, black, fire, smoke and lust / Molten rock destroying everything.”

With “Anything but now,” she returns to post-bop singing with lyrics that many of us can relate: “I spend a lot of time thinking about doing things / Instead of doing them / I spend a lot of time thinking about saying things / Instead of saying them / Out loud, out loud, out loud.” She’s damn right we spend a lot of time ruminating instead of doing shit, yet her band swings like hell.

Over strumming guitar, she sings “Take a stone,” a folky flavor, with captivating lyrics such as: “Tomorrow morning, at the edge of a volcano / She’ll meet him with her arms open wide / His hands are broken, he used them to caress her / In places she could not begin to understand.” In my head, I am like, “WTF?”

On “What does blue mean to you?,” she swings the blues with more telling lyrics: “An emerald far in the distance / That we’ve been galloping to / Barefoot and bloody / Winded and tired and sweaty.”

With the title track, “Oh Snap,” she switches up with electronic new age, yet her lyrics remain hilarious: “Oh shit, I think you love me / I think I’ve shown you all of the cruel and nasty parts of me / But you still haven’t left, is it abject fidelity? / Or could it be that love is more than just fantasy to you?”

Over the 12 years since her debút, Salvant has gone a long way as an artist. She is willing to experiment and to step up her game. Let’s break out a bottle of Aberfeldy 21 and cheer for Oh Snap.

I had been revisiting 2pac’s catalog, particularly All Eyez On Me, in which he mentioned Thug Passion a few times. Last night, I was fiending for some Thug Passion myself. I had a bottle of Alizé Gold Passion in stock, but I didn’t have any Hennessy. I broke out a bottle of Cordon Bleu instead. One part Alizé and one part CB turned out to be a perfect mix, which was sweet and fruity, yet had a strong kick to it. 2pac used to say that a Thug Passion would guarantee to get “the dick hard and the pussy wet.” He was bullshitting. At my age, no alcohol could get me up; therefore, I just enjoyed the drink and listened to music.

I turned on Spotify and let it play whatever. A familiar song came on and I recognized the melody. It brought back the memories of hearing Nini, Hạ Vy, Vina Uyển Mi, and Quỳnh Hương lip-synced on one of Asia Entertainment’s videos. The tune was titled “The Model” and arranged in Asia’s chachacha signature style. Either my English was bad back then or their pronunciation was not clear, I didn’t understand what the fuck the ladies were singing. The version I listened to last night for the first time was perfectly clear. The female voice turned out to be Mélanie Pain. Accompanied by Olivier Libaux’s melodic guitar and Raphael Chassin’s crisp drums, Pain sings: “She’s a model and she’s looking good / I’d like to take her home, that’s understood / She plays hard to get, she smiles from time to time / It only takes a camera to change her mind.”

After that song, I had to look up the album so I could listen to the whole joint. All That Matters turned out to be Libaux’s final collaboration with Pain and Chassin. Unfortunately, Libaux passed away in 2021. Libaux has a cool vibe on the guitar, which complements Pain’s soft, sensual voice perfectly.

Their rendition of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” is so damn cool that you wouldn’t have imagined the original was a rock tune by The Rolling Stones. This verse sounds intriguing coming from a female perspective: “When I’m watchin’ my TV / And a man comes on to tell me / How white my shirts could be / But he can’t be a man ’cause he doesn’t smoke / The same cigarettes as me.”

“Rebel Yell” is another fascinating reinterpretation. They turned the Billy Idol rock tune into a mellow ballad. I must confess. I have not listened to Billy Idol before. This is the first time I heard of “Rebel Yell” through Pain and I thought she was talking about being gang-banged by the rebels: “With a rebel yell, ‘More, more, more / More, more, more.’” It was the Thug Passion that fucked up my mind. All kidding aside, I enjoyed All That Matters immensely.

Kristin Bair’s new novel, Clementine Crane Prefers Not To, took me 40 days to finish. For a 300-page book, I usually take a week or two (the most) to read. As I started to read this novel, however, I had some personal controversies to deal with. As a result, I wrote (to get things off my head) more than I read for pleasure.

I read all of Kristin’s books part because she’s one of my longest freelance clients and part because she’s a damn good writer. In all of her books, she has created a strong female character and Clementine Crane Prefers Not To, is no exception. Apparently, I am not the target audience for this book. I am not one of the hot-flashers. I am not one of the overwhelmed moms. I am not one of the mental-load managers. I am not one of these piss-off people with periods. I am definitely not one of the people with uteruses.

Then again, her novel makes me appreciate my wife as well as all the women who have done everything for their husband and kids. I am as guilty as Tor. In addition to holding down a full-time job, Clem manages her kids’ activities and husband’s schedules. As Clem reached her perimenopause, she came to a breaking point. She shared her personal experience online and created the “I Prefer Not To” movement, which was based on Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story Of Wall-Street.”

Even though my mind was distracted with other issues while reading Clementine Crane Prefers Not To, I did not lose grip of the novel, which had funny moments (“fish-napping”) as well as poignant parts (the loss). In addition, Kristin is well-versed with technology. She incorporates social media into her story. Once I found the rhythm in the novel, I didn’t want the book to end. Kristin did it again with her fourth novel.

To stay true to its new name, the Department of War has to start a war somewhere. Why not the boys and girls of Scouting America? They must be a threat to the government.

A few weeks ago, I sold a brand new pair of ski boots via Facebook Marketplace. My wife bought these boots two years ago for Vương, but they were too big for him. Since we had a pair of hand-me-down from Xuân in the same size, he didn’t need that pair anymore.

I sold the pair to a guy in Pennsylvania. I typically don’t ship things, but I made the exception since he was willing to pay for the shipping fee. A few days ago, he texted me back to let me know that I sent him two right boots. He sent me photos of the boots: a size 19.5 and 20.5.

I was shocked. I didn’t bother to check the boots because I thought they were correct. Vương never tried them on. I didn’t take any photos of the boots because they were brand new. I just took the photos off the company’s website. Luckily I did film them. I couldn’t tell, but my wife could see that they were both right boots in my video.

I apologized to the buyer and issued him a full refund including the shipping charge. I told him to keep them or discard them. He didn’t need to send them back to me. He was understanding and thanked me for my honest mistake.

When my wife bought these boots on Amazon, they sent us the wrong boot, but we never checked. The lesson is to always check the boots for the right size. I used to work for Foot Locker when I was in high school, I should have known better.

I love music. Unfortunately, I don’t play any instruments. I can’t sing either. The only thing I can do is write about it. As of this writing, I have penned 1,308 pieces on music.

When I created my personal blog in 2003, I needed content. Music was one of the topics that I was passionate about since I listened to music all the time. As someone who spent most of his time on the web and making a living off the web, I had access to music.

One of my goals for starting my own blog was to hone my writing skills. I wanted to take on the challenge of writing something I didn’t know anything about. I reviewed music without any music training and without injecting myself into the albums. I wrote about the vocals, the productions, and the techniques. Each review would take me 2 to 3 hours to write. I had to do research to find the vocabulary to convey my thoughts.

Taking a jazz appreciation course at Vassar College helped a great deal. I learned to listen to the art of improvisations. I held that technicality as standards even though I also wrote about hip-hop and Vietnamese music, in addition to jazz. Vietnamese music was where my heart was and I was very critical of trendy records with unimaginative melody and cheap lyrics.

In 2015, after 11 years of writing about music, I got burned out and called it quit. The format took too much of my time to write, but then I didn’t really quit. I wrote less reviews and my pieces were shorter. Furthermore, I only wrote what I wanted to share. I wrote for myself. When I first started, I wanted to focus on the music, but now I am doing the opposite. I put myself into the reviews.

My music writing gets more personal than before. I use the albums as a starting point to inject my own personal life into them. As I am listening to an album, I start to write in my head. Once I listen to the album long enough, I can just sit down and finish it in less than an hour. I am enjoying it more this way.

If you would like to read my music writing, head over to my blog. That’s where I post all of my writings first before sharing them on social media platforms.

The loved ones we call the dead
depart from us and for a while
are absent. And then as if
called back by our love, they come
near us again. They enter our dreams.
We feel they have been near us
when we have not thought of them.
They are simply here, simply waiting
while we are distracted among
our obligations. At last
it comes to us: They live now
in the permanent world.
We are the absent ones.

Wendell Berry

I don’t want to buy a new car, but our 2011 Toyota Sienna is dying. I almost got stranded twice. The car was completely shut off with no power at all when I turned off the ignition. I thought the battery was the cause, but then it rebooted itself after a while. Everything was reset including the clock.

As the winter is approaching, I don’t want to put my family at risk. In addition, we’ll need to have an all-wheel-drive vehicle to handle the snow when we go skiing. We also need a roof rack and trailer hitch to carry our gears and things. My wife narrowed down to the 2026 Sienna Woodland Edition.

I am in the market to look for that specific minivan. If you know of any good deals, especially in Virginia, please let me know. I would really appreciate it.

I replaced four brand new tires (Firestone Destination LE3 BL 235/50R19 99H 70,000 Mile) last year and they were already worn out badly after just 20,000 miles. They warranted 70,000. What a joke.

As we’re heading into skiing season, I need good tires to be safe on the road when we drive to Vermont. Last year, I also bought road hazard protection for $138 for 4 tires; therefore, I took my 2018 Toyota Sienna SE back to Firestone to see if they were going to replace them.

The technician agrees that they were worn out, but then Firestone only covers about 50%. For the safety of my family, I paid $615 to get four brand new tires—the same Destination model. I am disappointed with Firestone. After this set, I will go back to Michelin at Costco. The Firestone Destination tires didn’t hold up well.

To meet the warranty, I have to schedule for rotations every 5,000 miles and alignments every 10,000 miles. My car is now 95,000 miles. We’ll see how long these tires will last. It’s such a pain now that I have to keep track of all of these things. I hate dealing with car issues.

Đêm nay trời lạnh ngồi nghe tiếng hát của Trang. Trong, album thứ ba của cô, có ca khúc, “Tại sao phải say.” Qua giai điệu jazz say sưa, cô hát, “Đôi khi triết lý như là whiskey / Và những câu chuyện thật đời / Dù ta là hai người khác xa / Cần thêm một chút men thôi mà, phải không?” Vậy là phải lôi chay Aberlour A’bunadh ra lai rai tiếp.

Trang có tiếng hát nhẹ nhàng với cách phát âm rất dễ chịu. Cô tự viết nhạc và có máu jazz trong mình. “Làm bạn với em” là một bài swing tươi tắn với những lời ca êm dịu nhưng cảm xúc, “Vì tình yêu chẳng mãi như lúc đầu để chung con đường mai sau / Khi giấc mơ mỗi người tìm hai hướng ngược nhau / Để rồi ta bước tiếp theo tiếng gọi của thời gian / Chẳng còn tiếc nuối, xin hãy ghé đây và nghe em hát”. Cô chẳng những hát mà còn scat nữa. “Em chỉ nhìn thấy anh” được phối theo nhịp điệu bossa nova lả lơi. Ca từ thì cũng ướt át, “Ước gì giây phút này chợt đứng yên / Để bàn tay nắm / Từng lần chạm môi / Mãi ở đây thôi”.

“Cà phê và trà sen” là một ca khúc giản dị được hòa âm theo nhịp điệu waltz dịu dàng và lời ca cũng khá là mộc mạc: “Đừng uống cà phê lúc mới ngủ dậy / Đừng uống cà phê không thôi lại say”. Nếu “Cà phê và trà sen” viết cho buổi sáng thì “Cuộc đàm phán với nỗi đau” viết cho buổi tối. Ca khúc được phối khí và dàn dựng theo phong cách bán cổ điển. Được đệm với tiếng đàn dương cầm và dàn orchestra, cô hát với tất cả con tim, “Có lần tôi nắm tay của một nỗi đau / Khi nghe rằng thương yêu tôi trao chẳng đủ để giữ chân người / Và ta bước đi cùng những hố sâu / Loang bên lồng ngực trái.”

Album được khép lại với “Điều đẹp nhất về tình yêu” mang âm hưởng bán cổ điển. Giọng của cô bay bổng trên tiếng đàn dương cầm tao nhã và dàn dây nhã nhặn. Cô để lại trong tim người nghe hai câu cuối cùng: “Cứ yên giấc trong vòng tay anh khi bình minh lần cuối / Mình vẫn sẽ tìm nhau dù ở bất cứ dòng thời gian nào”.

Đây là một album đáng được trải nghiệm Trong nội tâm với vài ly whisky, như lời Trang hát: “Phải uống thật say để ta thành thật / Phải say để rũ bỏ hết vướng bận”.