A heart-wrecking clip of sexual trafficking in Cambodia. (Via Viet Vista)

Tu Quyen is a pop singer who doesn’t follow the latest trend. She is just way behind the trend. Her newest album, Em Van Yeu, sounds as if it has been shelved a decade or so ago and only get released recently by Thuy Nga production. Seriously, when was the last time you heard the Chinese tune with the chorus that goes something like, “Wo ai ni, I love you / Wo ai ni, I need you?” How does she do it? How the hell is she not sick of singing the song when I am already sick of listening to it?

Listening to Em Van Yeu gives me a second thought about Nhu Loan’s Trai Tim Da Duoc Yeu. Between the two albums, I am not sure who is the worse. Vocal wise, Tu Quyen is no better Nhu Loan. Her voice is weak and she has no range either. She sings the title track as if she is merely reading through the lyrics with no emotional expression and no attempt to get beyond her comfort zone.

Musically, Tu Quyen demonstrates no originality. She not only covers old tunes, but she does so with no creative or inventive effort. The arrangements are typical of Thuy Nga’s quality: cheap and manufactured. Em Van Yeu was put together just for the sake of making an album and an opportunity to sell the album booklet. Maybe the album’s glamorous photo shot is worth more than the album itself.

Holy shit, Vanilla Ice is Back and he covers hip-hop classics. Though I am not ashamed to admit that “Ice Ice Baby” grooved me and I could still recite some of the tune’s rhymes. So when come across a “comeback” album for the Iceman, I couldn’t resist. I have to give the fake-ass wigger a spin.

“Ice Ice Baby” kicks off the album and the memories are all back. The catchy riff sampled from Queen’s “Under Pressure” is still contagious as hell. Although he has remixed that joint to death, the original version is still the illest. No one can take that shit from the Iceman. As soon as Public Enemy’s “Fight the Power” comes on, I just can’t imagine what Chuck D would do when he listens to the record. The real jokes, however, are both the rock cover of House of Pain’s “Jump Around” and the jungle-fever rendition of Sir-Mix-a-Lot’s “Baby Got Back.”

Although the Ice age has melted a long long time ago, Rob Van Winkle has yet to leave rap alone. And he knows damn well that the game doesn’t need him.

I have been wearing my wedding ring on my middle finger instead of the appropriate finger. A guy at work once asked me why did I wear it on my middle finger as if it was my culture or something. I told him the stories that I almost lost it two times.

The first time was in Jamaica during our honeymoon. The other time was when I washed lettuces at home. The ring slipped off my finger and into the vegetable spinner. I didn’t notice it until I took a shower. Luckily I found the ring and to be safe, I put it on my middle finger temporarily until I get fatter. I have been eating much more these days to gain some weight on my finger, but it has yet to happen. Only my gut gets bigger.

I am going to need to go back to the shop and get it tightened up. It feels weird wearing it on my middle finger anyway. Until then, don’t be surprised to see my wedding ring on my middle finger.

Update: Dana reminded me to tightened up the ring yesterday while we were in Eden. It’s all good now.

Sleep more: Unlike my wife who could sleep until one o’clock in the afternoon on the weekend, I would be lucky if I could get eight hours of sleep a day. This might be hard to accomplish with the baby on the way.

Keep on running: I’ve been running a mile a day for about a year now and I hope to continue to do so. Running allows me to eat more without feeling guilty.

Start MBA: Hopefully I will get enough motivation to enroll my ass into an MBA program at GW. I might as well take advantage of it since the school will pay for 96% of my tuition. Like my boss always says, if you add the school benefit to your salary, you’re really making big bucks. She always encourages me to do so anyway.

Take on more freelance designs: Being overwhelm and just purely lazy made me turned down quite a couple gigs in 2008. if I could get more projects like TLeDC.com, I wouldn’t mind taking on work. The total creative freedom was all there.

Spend more time with family: Actually we didn’t do so bad last year juggling between my family and my in-law. Somehow I still don’t feel I spend enough time with my mom. It’s shameful to say that our relationship is in fact better that we don’t live together, but I do miss seeing her too often. She is now even committed to look after Samantha and Eric so there is no chance she will be moving in with us. However, my mother in-law has promised to look after our boy once he is born. I am looking forward to that. My mother in-law is pretty cool and we get along pretty well.

Blogging these days feel more an assignment than just free flowing. I am getting bored of trying to craft my view or trying to make my point. I try the don’t-write-anything-if-you-have-nothing-to-say method and it just doesn’t work. True that I don’t have much to write about, but it is better to write something than not to write anything at all.

The beauty of blogging is the informality and the ability to publish without constraint. I want to be able to start up a blank post and just spill out my thoughts. Obviously there are things that I can’t say on this blog now that I could say before, but I don’t want that to take away my ability to just write.

Does it matter if I write about mundane topics? Does it matter if I make no sense? Could I write with no audience in mind? I did in the past. But that when I didn’t have an audience. Do I have one now? According to Google Analytics, I have 11,298 visitors. Not a whole lot, but big enough. So what am I trying to say here? I am not sure exactly. See I really don’t have to make a point is the point I am trying to make.

Christmas had passed by, but I still have not passed up Bela Fleck & the Flecktones’ Jingle All the Way. Like the title suggested, Bela and his trio take Christmas songs and jingle them all the way.

I played the album for the first time at my in-law’s Christmas party and folks looked at me like I have a strange taste of music. The opening track alone is one of the most unique versions of “Jingle Bells” we have ever heard. They couldn’t understand what language the male’s vocalist was singing. I don’t either, but it doesn’t matter. It just sounds so freaking cool. Of course, Bela on the banjo is simply breathtaking.

Because Bela and the Flecktones had chosen such well-known Christmas tunes, they have the creative freedom to go all out. The result is that the group has created fresh new sounds to familiarized songs. Some of my personal favorites are “Silent Night,” “Sleigh Ride,” “Twelve Days of Christmas” and “Linus and Lucy.”

Don’t take my words for it. Find out for yourself by checking out “Bela Fleck Gives Christmas A Flecktone Fervor” on NPR.

As Thuy Nga dedicates its 94th show reflecting on Paris By Night’s 25 years of existence as a populist art form, some of us have been so crude to question, what the heck are we celebrating exactly? After damn near 100 endless repetitions of musical episodes, nothing more than the young shows more skins and the old shows more wrinkles.

Love it or hate it, PBN has become part of Vietnamese pop culture and it is now inseparable from our mainstream entertainment. Looking back, PBN has grown into a big enterprise. With all the razzle-dazzle staging and lighting, the show costs millions to produce. Its music repertoires, however, remain extremely limited. The most critical dismissal of PBN and its competitors (Asia and Van Son) is the recycling of songs, but none of these productions give a shit. As long as there is a market out there, they will continue to rape the culture. Even with the piracy, PBN will be around for at least 25 more years, so stop bitching already.

If we wake up tomorrow and there will be no PBN, we would find out what kind of value it holds. The moment PBN would vanish from the marketplace, the moment we would find out if PBN were truly a cultural force or a manufacturing product. But I won’t be holding my breath waiting to see.

A new theme for Lady Lan. Happy birthday!

Early this year Phan Dinh Tinh announced that he would release twelve albums in 2008. Needless to say, he was trying to do the impossible although he dropped three albums—Tung Teen, Tung Trinh (Trinh Cong Son) and Tung Ballad—in the first few months. Tung Ballad fits his style best. With several young songwriters, he released four more—Tung Chung (Nguyen Van Trung), Tung Thuan (Nguyen Hong Thuan), Tung Phong (Nguyen Hai Phong) and Tung Teens 2—at the end of the year.

Time has run out on him and he could only cut seven out of twelve like he had publicly claimed. Seven albums in one year is still quite an accomplishment, but why in such a rush? He’s still young and has plenty of time on his hand. He should have taken his time to do it right. Crafting an album takes careful attention and skillful listening to choose the right tracks and throw out the fillers. Instead he just release four very generic albums. You can put all four on random and still can’t tell them apart except for the kiddy tunes like “Cop Con,” “Hat Bui Le Loi” and “Chu Cuoi Xi Tin.”

Tung has a distinctive tenor of a voice, but has only one style of delivery. All of his songs ended up sounding quite monotonous and the manufactured productions don’t help much either. After going through four albums on my road trip from Virginia to New Jersey, the only track stood out was “Troc,” a song about his baldness written by Nguyen Hai Phong. The rests are consistently formularized.