This morning, I had a flashback of Vanilla Ice while driving to work. The memory is vivid. It was recess time at elementary school playground. White girls were jumping ropes and singing: “Lay down and boogie and play that funky music til you die.” I was watching and cheering, “Go white girl, go white girl, go!”
A reader reminded me that I haven’t written a Vietnamese music review for a while. It’s true that I have been extremely busy and my focus had been on the election in the past couple of months. The real reason for the hiatus, however, is that I haven’t heard any Vietnamese album worth writing. I simply got tired of uninspiring pop formulas that polluted the airwave and I also want to stray away from negative criticism. That way I can save my words and time on albums that truly deserve the praise, like Thu Phương’s Hà Nội và Tôi.
Although the concept of Hà Nội has recorded numerous of times including Hồng Nhung’s classic Đoản Khúc Thu Hà Nội, Thu Phương is capable of carrying her own emotion and memories of Hà Nội. From the title track to “Hà Nội Ngày Tháng Cũ” (Song Ngọc), “Hà Nội Ngày Trở Về” (Phú Quang), “Hà Nội Mùa Vắng Những Cơn Mưa” (Trương Quý Hải & Bùi Thanh Tuấn) to “Hướng Về Hà Nội” (Hoàng Dương), Thu Phương has the city locked down. Every corner, every street and every scent come to life in her introspection.
Yet the most personal to Thu Phương has to be “Mong Về Hà Nội” (Hoàng Dương), in which listeners can feel the yearning of childhood when she sings, “Tôi mong về Hà Nội / Tìm lại tiếng ve ngày trẻ dại.” While the bossa-nova flavor gives Trịnh Công Sơn’s “Nhớ Mùa Thu Hà Nội” a fresh new vibe, I wish she stays with the piano solo in the intro throughout the song. The simplicity is just too damn captivating. The only throwaway track is Nhật Trung’s “Tìm Về Phố Xưa,” which samples the bass lines of The Police “Every Breath You Take.” Thu Phương probably throws Nhật Trung a bone for his arrangements on the album.
With Hà Nội và Tôi, Thu Phương once again demonstrates the craft of album concept and the art of storytelling. Unlike her peers, she has yet to let the bar down and for that she remains one of my favorite Vietnamese artists.
On album design: While the music is high-quality, the CD design is horrendous. Tiến Dũng (DT Media) definitely needs to take typography 101. Setting script typeface on a busy background is embarrassing. The text is so hard to read that he has to put heavy drop-shadow on the type. Even with the text-background, the script type is still not readable. He broke major rules of typography: readability, legibility and widow.
I still don’t own an iPad. I was going to get the Mini as my first reading device, but I changed my mind after checking it out at the Apple store. The reason is simply no retina display. Comparing the Mini and the fourth generation is a huge different.
I pulled up this site simply to check out the type and the fourth generation is simply stunning. Because I wanted the iPad to be my reading device, clean and crisp type is very important. Without the retina just doesn’t cut it. Maybe I should just wait for the next Mini release. I wouldn’t mind one of those MacPro laptops though.
My little guy will be one at the end of the month. Damn, a year already? I spent a whole day with him yesterday and realize how much he has developed in such a short time. In additional to food, I learned something else that he liked. As we were stuck in morning traffic, I listened to some political talk on the radio and he screamed. I switched to classical music and he stopped crying and fell asleep. When he woke up I tried again switching from political talk to classical and he listened without a sound. This is definitely a good sign, not like Dao at all. Dao is so funny. Anything that he doesn’t like such as 80s rock and classical music, he would say, “that music is old.”
Before having a second kid, my biggest concern was that I would prefer one over the other without realizing so and that I wouldn’t pay much attention to Dao because of the second baby. Fortunately both are boys and so they could relate to each other. Now it is actually more fun with the boys. Once Dan is a bit older I could just sit back and watch them play. Obviously every once in a while I will have to be the judge or referee.
Yesterday while Dan was sleeping in the car, I browsed a bit on my iPhone and watched a clip of judge William Adams beat his daughter for using the Internet. (Don’t watch this, kids.) Not only he whipped her with a belt, but he also used the “F” word repeatedly. Man, the clip is too brutal.
They say behind every successful man, there stands a woman. I say behind a successful politician there stand many women. Obama’s victory is the proof. Women’s vote helped the president gets re-elected. Among women voters, Obama outnumbered Romney 55 percent to 43 points.
One of Romney’s failures in the campaign was his lack of concern and respect for women. He referred to them as a binder full of women. From abortion to contraception to healthcare, Romney imposed too much politics into their rights. His Republican party includes Todd Akin, Richard Mourdock and running mate Paul Ryan has very extreme opposition on abortion didn’t help either. In revenge, the women has showed these guys that they have no fucking business in their private sector.
Big up to women in power: Elizabeth Warren, Tammy Baldwin, Claire McCaskill and Mazie Hirono.
I believe Obama will win today. Giving a benefit of a doubt, however, America will face a new low in political system if Romney wins. The truth in politic will no longer matter since a candidate can say whatever the fuck he wants to get votes. The Romney campaign declared early on that “We’re not going to let our campaign be dictated by fact-checkers.” Romney has done so in so many issues that still on this day most Americans don’t know where he stands. He made up so many lies about his opponent and faced no consequences. If Romney wins, how would I tell my kids not to lie? President Romney lied and it worked. In fact, he would be reward for lying if he wins. If your children want to be a politician when they grow up, all they have to do now is start lying. Please please please, don’t let this happen. Go vote.
Three Words to describe student:
Likes to play with
Child’s strength are:
Areas that we are working on:
The feedback overall was positive. We still need to work on his anger management. He made tremendous improvement when he started this new class. We’re on the right direction in guiding him to calm down.
If President Obama is re-elected, health care coverage will expand dramatically, taxes on the wealthy will go up and Wall Street will face tougher regulation. If Mitt Romney wins instead, health coverage will shrink substantially, taxes on the wealthy will fall to levels not seen in 80 years and financial regulation will be rolled back.
Dao: Daddy, can you tell me a story?
Dad: Once upon a time, there’s a boy named Dao and he loves train. He plays with nothing else but train all day. At school, his teachers have to put all the trains away so that he could do other activities. They gave him a book to read and he imagined the book as his train. He drove the book around like it was a train. His teacher told him, “A book is for reading, not for playing.” He threw a tandrum at his teacher. Why did he do that?
Dao: Because he’s not nice.
Dad: Exactly.
Dao: Can you tell me another story?
Dad: Once upon a time, there’s a boy named Dao and he loves candy. On Halloween night, he dressed up as a dragon and he tried to fly.
Dao: But that’s impossible.
Dad: That’s right. So he hopped into his train with his little brother Dan and they went around the mall treat-or-treating. They came up to the people and what did they say?
Dao: Happy Halloween!
Dad: That’s right. Then they gave them lots of candy. They even met an alien.
Dao: No, a pirate.
Dad: Oh yeah, a pirate and they stopped by the water fountain that has lots of…
Dao: Clouds.
Dad: Yes, and they had lots of fun and candy. The end!
Dao: Daddy, can you tell me the candy story again?
They repeated the story for five times before the daddy passed out. Not sure when Dao went to sleep.
When I step into the voting booth, I think about the world I want to leave my two daughters, and the values that are required to guide us there. The two parties’ nominees for president offer different visions of where they want to lead America.
One believes a woman’s right to choose should be protected for future generations; one does not. That difference, given the likelihood of Supreme Court vacancies, weighs heavily on my decision.
One recognizes marriage equality as consistent with America’s march of freedom; one does not. I want our president to be on the right side of history.
One sees climate change as an urgent problem that threatens our planet; one does not. I want our president to place scientific evidence and risk management above electoral politics.