Maybe it was too plain. Made some minor adjustments to the layout, pushing for three columns, shifting to left alignment, and expanding for 1024×768 screens.

Borat: Cultural Learnings of America for Make Benefit Glorious Nation of Kazakhstan is both ridiculously funny and ridiculously sad. Two guys (one skinny, one fat) wrestle naked against each other in homosexual-suggested positions is ridiculously funny. Get recommendation from a gun shop owner on which weapon to best kill the Jews is ridiculously sad. Support Bush’s War on Terror and yearning for the president to “drink the blood of every man, woman and child in Iraq” is ridiculously funny. Eat cheese made from a woman’s tittie is ridiculously sad. Or should it be the other way around? Bush is sad and tittie is funny. Love it or hate it, Sacha Baron Cohen’s shameless humiliation will make you laugh, even when he washes his face with toilet water—the kind of stupidity that only comedian could pull off. Then again, humiliation should not be in your dictionary if you’re a comedian.

While scanning through Da Capo Best Music Writing 2006,
Elizabeth Mendez Berry’s “Love Hurts” (PDF format) caught my attention with her clever introduction: “Before going to sleep, many little girls pray for a new Barbie, an Xbox game, or a trip to Disney World. At age 7, Vanessa Rios asked only that “Papi would stop hitting Mami.”

Papi is no other than the late rapper Big Pun who whipped the shit out of his wife with a lead pipe just because she forgot to change his beeper’s battery. I never had much respect for Pun as a rapper, and now I have none for the dead man. Berry then chronicles various domestic violence against women among rappers including Biggie, Dre and Busta. Like I said, I enjoy rap’s vivid lyrics, but that’s just on-the-mic bullshitting, and didn’t expect these misogynists actually stayed true to their words in real life. As much respect as I have for Biggie as a lyricist, I despise his cruelty toward women. He used to say, “More money, more problems.” More money comes more power. And more power, more bitches to slap. His murder case still remains unsolved, but I wouldn’t be surprised if he was gunned down by a woman.

“Look What They’ve Done to My Song” should have been the title track for Ray Sings, Basie Swings, a retouch-up album in which Ray Charles’s vocals get supported by the Count Basie (without Basie) orchestra—courtesy of technology. Although the album is enjoyable, thanks to Ray’s colossal voice and his interpretation of standards, neither Ray’s virtuosity nor Basie’s exotic tincture on the keyboard is presence.

Who wouldn’t feel bad for the grown-ass Barbie Thanh Thao? Her personal relationship is a wreck. Her albums flop from one to the next. Her vocals don’t get any better, if not worse. No matter how hard she tries to reinvent herself, she moves nowhere beyond mediocrity. The day of “nà… nà… nà… ná… na… nà… na… na… na…” is long gone. What we have left is a lonesome star trying to glow before fading away. After patiently listening to the entire album of Ngoi Sao Co Don, the two mesmerizing tracks are the intro and outro, in which she sincerely expresses her solitude without having to sing a note.

I am hooked on Art Pepper’s hypnotic rendition of “Tin Tin Deo,” thanks to the addictive rhythm section of Miles Davis’s sidemen: Red Garland (piano), Paul Chambers (bass) and Philly Joe Jones (drums). Pepper’s sweet and sensual alto soars like a bird with wounded soul over the magnetizing Latin groove. Just like what my man Rakim said every time I rock this tune, “I get a craving like I fiend for nicotine, but I don’t need a cigarette, know what I mean?”

Dieu Huong’s sweet and sentimental “Xin Mai Con Ben Me” struck my guilty chord. She reminds me that I have taken my mother’s presence for granted. Being with her everyday is a blessing, yet I sometimes forget to acknowledge it. Before heading out the door into the real world this morning, I kissed my mama on her cheek and said, “I love you, mom.” And all I got from her response was, “OK.” I sighed, “Just ok?” She smiled and went on, “If you don’t know it by now, what more can I say?” I gave her a joyful look as I was thinking to myself, “Thanks mom for the unconditional love and a wonderful blog post.”

In addition to Subtraction, here are a few sites with great use of type:
TMX Communications
The Morning News
Coudal

And a few of my own:
German Studies
Jewish Studies
Field Work

As a remarkable orchestral jazz composer, Duke Ellington’s deep, rich, and imaginative tone on the piano used mostly to create the “Ellington effect.” He only plays his part when necessary to accomplish the overall mood, and rarely showcases his solo improvisation. Yet when he’s by himself, Ellington’s artistic vision and ingenious skill revealed. From the unorthodox arrangement to the intricate atonality to the mastery of rag style in “The Clothed Woman,” Ellington demonstrated his skill as a solo jazz pianist as well.

The following verbatim paragraph comes from William Zinsser’s On Writing Well:

For writers and other creative artists, knowing what not to do is a major component of taste. Two jazz pianists may be equally proficient. The one with taste will put every note to work in telling his or her story; the one without taste will drench us in ripples and other unnecessary ornaments. Painters with taste will trust their eye to tell them what needs to be on the canvas and what doesn’t; a painter without taste will give us a landscape that’s too pretty, or too cluttered, or too gaudy—anyway, too something. A graphic designer with taste knows that less is more: that design is the servant of the written word. A designer without taste will smother the writing in background tints and swirls and decorative frills.

Word!