Dao has been going to class all by himself for a week. No more carrying and no more crying. This morning when I took him off the car, he said “Bye xe cu [old car]. Di hoc [Go to class].” He held me hand we walked toward the building. He pushed the button to open the door and swiped my card to let us in. When I opened his class’s door, he ran right in and handed his hat to one of his teachers. He blew me a kiss and began to play with his classmates.

Dao also enjoys watching Japanese animation nowadays. He liked Ponyo and My Neighbor Totoro. He refers to Totoro as “penguin bu [big].” Again, his ability to associate objects with things he already know is just hilarious.

Dao is already addicted to the iPod. He knows exactly what apps to play and he also knows which buttons to push. For instance, once he’s done playing with a game, he knows the “Not now. Thank You” and the “free version” buttons. He’s now a little pro with Angry Bird. He can sling that bird better than me. He prefer the iPod when he plays game and prefers the iPad when he watches YouTube. I am just amazed how kids pick up these things so fast.

Lately Dao have excuses for everything. When he wants to reject foods, he would say “nong qua [too hot]” even though the food is cool. I fed him ice cream the other day, but he didn’t want it. He was about to say “too hot,” but he realized that he couldn’t use that excuse so he quickly changed to “nhieu qua [too much].”

We were at the playground the other day and he said to me, “Dao so [scares].” I asked him in Vietnamese what was he afraid of and he said, “nang nong qua [the sun is too hot].” I asked him to go to the garden to pick cherry tomatoes with me and he said, “No, too hot.”

Here’s the best excuse so far. He was holding my iPod Touch and watching “Curious George.” A minute later, he told me, “Ba ba cam iPod cho Dao. Nang qua [Daddy, daddy, hold iPod for Dao. Too heavy].” To me, these are some of the best moments of being a parent. Love my boy.

This morning when I dropped him off at the daycare, it was time for them to go into the playground. I put his clothes and lunch in his cubby and watched him played outside through the window. I stood there observing for ten minutes before I left.

Bitches Brew is one of those albums that keeps me grooving as well as relaxing. Not sure why many people are having a hard time enjoying it. If you listen to Bitches Brew for the first time, I recommend starting with “Miles Runs the Voodoo Down.” If you don’t like that track, one of my personal favorites, don’t even bother with the double album. Here are two awesome live performances to get started:
October 27, 1969: Teatro Sistina (Rome, Italy)
August 18, 1970: Tanglewood (Lenox, MA)

The ladies put on one of the finest World Cup matches I have seen. They certainly made the men at the 2010 final game (Netherlands vs. Spain) look like bitches. Both USA and Japan gave their all.

The US women fought hard and they were clearly leading the game. I am very proud of my US girls. The Japanese girls, on the other side, worked hard and persistent, but patience is what made them the champion. They came back at the last minutes of the game. They were just phenomenon. The US girls just need be more precise in scoring and practice their penalty shots.

Truth be told, I couldn’t favor one team over the other. On one hand, I had to root for the home team. On another, I had mad love for my Asian sisters. In addition, Japan had gone through one of the worst natural catastrophes of all time. In my view, they were both winners.

Man, I love Korean films, not the long-ass drama series, but the more challenging to watch. With I Saw the Devil, director Kim Jee-woon pushes revenge beyond humane. The movie is so fucked up that I feel like a sick bastard for enjoying it. Not recommended for the faint of heart.

The Sienna’s cracked windshield was replaced today by Auto Glass Express, not the Glass Doctor recommended by our insurance. Glass Doctor was suppose to do the job on Friday, but I received the call on the the same day telling me that the vendor didn’t have the windshield even though I made an appointment a week in advanced. The lady from the office told me to either wait until next week or find another shop. I took the second option. Even after reading the negative reviews about Glass Doctor, I didn’t want to back out because the appointment was set and the shop has the stamp of approval from our insurance, but they just it so easy for me to make the decision.

I looked online and found Auto Glass Express with two positive reviews on Yahoo. (Yahoo had been quite a reliable source for services like these in the past). I called at 7:54am and didn’t realized that they open at 8am. Six minutes later a guy called me back even though I didn’t leave a message. He said that they have the windshield in stock and would be able to replace it in the afternoon on Friday.

Unfortunately my windshield required heated glass and they had both regular and heated glass in their van, but the heated one had some scratches. So they told me they would return the next morning to do it. They came back the next morning and installed the glass that is the same as the original from Toyota. I am happy with their speedy, professional service

I dropped Dao off today and he walked with me from the parking lot to the building instead of nagging to be carried in. He looked at the flowers and said hi to people who walked by. For the first time, since he made the transition to the new class, Dao didn’t cry when we walked in. One of his teachers asked him to come sit down. Not only he came toward her, but he also blew me a kiss. All three teachers were like, “wow.” It’s must be the new Dao. Just yesterday he didn’t even want to go into the room when I opened the door for him. I held him in and tried to play with him a bit, but nothing worked. He just held on to me tight. Eventually I had to let him go and one of the teachers had to hold him. As I walked away, I could still hear him screamed. Today is a brand new day and I hope he’ll continued to be this way.

I was NetFlixing around and didn’t realize that I was watching Stieg Larsson’s Dragon Tattoo Trilogy until the second film. I started out with The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, then The Girl Who Kicked the Hornet’s Nest and then The Girl Who Played With Fire. The experience was still riveting. The films are dark, thrilling and wild. Dragon Tattoo is disturbing; Played With Fire is violent; and Hornet’s Nest is edgy. Noomi Rapace as Lisbeth Salander owns every scene she’s in. Her portrait of Lisbeth as smart, wicked and can’t be fucked with. The trilogy is a suspenseful escape.

Yes, it’s the hot, humid weather that shuts down my brain. The worst part of day is taking the Metro home. Squeezing into the smelly crowd (myself included) and bumping on one another as the driver slammed on the brake give me a headache everyday after work.

I have no energy left by the time I get home. I don’t want to do anything including blogging. After having dinner, getting Duke to bed and preparing for the next morning, I just want to sit back and Netflixing. That has been pretty much how my days went.

Change is gonna come later this year when I have other commitment and the arrival of a new baby. Blogging will be spared then. Not that the blog is all that active now since I don’t have anything interesting to write. I am getting bored with music reviews and my life isn’t all that exciting anyway. Although my posts will be infrequent, I will keep the blog running to post quick things when I have a moment or if I have new work to show. It will once again server as a portfolio more than a blog.

I read the first edition of Ted Gioia’s The History of Jazz in 2005. At that time I just started to develop my passion for jazz; therefore, the book was informative and overwhelming at the same time. Since then I have spent a tremendous amount of time listening, reading and learning more about jazz and its history.

I intended to visit this book for a while and the release of the second edition is just perfect. Rereading The History of Jazz the second time with a bit of background as a listener makes me appreciate Gioia’s work even more. What a daunting task writing about the complexity of the music that refuses to stand still for over a century. Gioia took us way back to the early nineteenth century with a vivid opening scene:

An elderly black man sits astride a large cylindrical drum. Using his fingers and the edge of his hand, he jabs repeatedly at the drum head—which is around a foot in diameter and probably made from an animal skin—evoking a throbbing pulsation with rapid, sharp strokes. A second drummer, holding his instrument between his knees, joins in, playing with the same staccato attack. A third black man, seated on the ground, plucks at a string instrument, the body of which is roughly fashioned from a calabash. Another calabash has been made into a drum, and a woman heats at it with two short sticks. One voice, then other voices join in. A dance of seeming contradictions accompanies this musical give-and-take, a moving hieroglyph that appears, on the one hand, informal and spontaneous yet, on closer inspection, ritualized and precise. It is a dance of massive proportions. A dense crowd of dark bodies forms into circular groups—perhaps five or six hundred individuals moving in time to the pulsations of the music, some swaying gently, others aggressively stomping their feet. A number of women in the group begin chanting.

From there on Gioia takes us from New Orleans to Chicago to Kansas City and then to New York for lively musical analysis and concise but accessible portraits of eminent jazz figures as well as the overlooked artists who contributed to the ever-changing styles of jazz. Must read for anyone who is passionate about the story of jazz.