As I was blasting the Life and Times of S. Carter to wake myself up during my morning commute, “Big Pimpin’” brings back the hot summer vibe in 1999. At the time, the tune was like the soundtrack for the beach. Although the radio played it all summer long because Timbaland’s beat was ridiculously addictive, I didn’t find it intriguing until I heard the album version. The unsanitized lyrics, which were too hot for radio, blew me away:

You know I thug ’em, fuck ’em, love ’em, leave ’em
Cause I don’t fuckin’ need ’em
Take ’em out the hood
Keep ’em lookin’ good
But I don’t fuckin’ feed em
First time they fuss I’m breezin’
Talkin’ ’bout what’s the reasons
I’m a pimp in every sense of the word, bitch
Better trust and believe ’em
In a cut where I keep ’em
‘Til I need a nut
‘Til I need to be (in) the guts
Then it’s beep-beep and I’m pickin ’em up
Let ’em play with the dick in the truck
Many chicks wanna put Jigga fist in cuffs
Divorce him and split his bucks
Just because you got good head
I’m ma break bread
So you can be livin’ it up
Shit I part wit nothin’
Y’all be frontin’
Me give my heart to a woman
Not for nothin’ never happen’
I’ll be forever mackin’
Heart cold as assassins, I got no passion
I got no patience and I hate waitin’
Hoe get your ass in…

Part 2 of Louis Armstrong’s profile on NPR:

By his early thirties, Louis Armstrong had already revolutionized jazz forever. Working with his mentor “King” Oliver in Chicago, Armstrong explored and expanded the sounds of his native New Orleans. He developed his improvisational genius with Fletcher Henderson’s orchestra in New York, then returned to Chicago already billed as “The World’s Greatest Trumpet Player,” and recorded the legendary Hot Fives sessions. By the early 1930s, Armstrong had displayed unprecedented virtuosity, sculpting the jazz solo into a unique art form and invigorating the jazz world with a new rhythmic vision of swing.

Listen to the program here.

With Rays of Light and Shadows of Love, Thuy Vu’s romantic voice in “Dem Tinh Yeu” is so necessary to accommodate the images. His Thang Sau Troi Mua remains one of my favorite albums till this day. I refer to him as the Vietnamese version of Johnny Hartman.

A clean and simple Web site collecting snippets of good design. Worth bookmarking or feeding!

Director of Brokeback Mountain is back with Lust, Caution starring Tony Leung and Tang Wei (rising star). The film opens on September 28 in limited theaters. Hope Upstate Films will show it because the trailer looks pretty luscious.

What a “Ngam Ngui” tune. Duc Tuan has done a great job of bringing out the compassion in Huy Can’s lyrics:

Cây dài bóng xế ngẩn ngơ
Hồn em đã chín mấy mùa buồn đau
Tay anh em hãy tựa đầu
Cho anh nghe nặng trái sầu rụng rơi.

Like the sign said, tasting blueberries is fun. Even the bugs do it while doing it.

My cousin who is an assistant professor in MIS at Southeastern Louisiana University is so intelligent that if he ever decides to become a priest, I’ll be in church every Sunday to hear him preach. In our family gathering, he shared with me the following passage from Ecclesiastes hoping one day I could discover the wisdom from the Bible through Jesus.

1. To every thing there is a season, and a time to every purpose under the heaven:

2. A time to be born, and a time to die; a time to plant, and a time to pluck up that which is planted;

3. A time to kill, and a time to heal; a time to break down, and a time to build up;

4. A time to weep, and a time to laugh; a time to mourn, and a time to dance;

5. A time to cast away stones, and a time to gather stones together; a time to embrace, and a time to refrain from embracing;

6. A time to get, and a time to lose; a time to keep, and a time to cast away;

7. A time to rend, and a time to sew; a time to keep silence, and a time to speak;

8. A time to love, and a time to hate; a time of war, and a time of peace.

On my way to the parking lot yesterday after work, I took a few snaps of Vassar campus.

Speaking of Vassar, if you’re an incoming freshman, check out the packing list a student blogger suggested.

In “Jeffrey Zeldman: King of Web Standards,” Jessie Scanlon explains how CSS works:

CSS allowed developers to separate content from appearance; style sheets are like little notes that say to the Web server, “If you’re sending a page to a PC, make it look like this.” There might be separate sheets for PCs, for a “printer-friendly” layout, for a PDA, and so on. For designers, CSS means that the page will appear as it was intended, no matter what the device. For developers, CSS means they only have to build the page once. And for users, CSS means, as Zeldman says, that the site works.

For companies with a Web presence—needless to say, most companies—CSS means “You can control you branding, your image, and still deliver content to users in the most appropriate style,” Zeldman says. It also means that a site redesign wouldn’t require every page to be recoded—an expensive and time-consuming proposition.