Saturday with nothing to do, so I decided to jazz up this site a bit. The previous layout was way too white and plain.

From The New York Times, “Behind Bars, He Turns M&M’s Into an Art Form” (inspiring)

From Ghi Chep, “Forbidden Thoughts” (provocative: Must be a Yahoo’s 360 member)

From BBC News, “Bed sharing ‘drains men’s brains’” (interesting)

From The New Yorker, “The Storm of Style” (informative)

Black and White, Asian and Latino, boys and girls, everybody loved Tupac Shakur. Even FOB hommies (including me) loved Pac, even though we had no clue what the hell he was rapping about. We just digged his thug persona and the gangster beats. Every Vietnamese guy that I knew owned a copy of All Eyes on Me, and they all played the same tunes: “2 of Amerikaz Most Wanted,” “How Do You Want It,” and of course “California Love (Remix).” For me, the thuggish, ruggish shit on the whole double album was “No More Pain.” The beat was crazy, and Pac’s flow was the illest. I can still rap along to every word whenever I played that track. He is sure a living legend now, but he already knew that in his rhymes, “When I die, I wanna be a livin’ legend, say my name affiliated with this motherfuckin’ game, with no more pain.” Of course, there are plenty of hot tracks on the CDs such as “Heartz of Men,” “Life Goes On,” “Only God Can Judge Me,” Picture Me Rollin’,” and the title track, but Pac made a classic diss after the album released when he “Hit Em Up.” (YouTube rocks!)

Xuan Hieu’s Tinh Nghe Si makes a fabulous hot tube album. Something smooth for your ass. His instrumental (saxophone) interpretation of Vietnamese ballads, including “Mong Duoi Hoa,” “Gio Gio Cho May Ngan Bay,” “Xom Dem,” and “Thu Quyen Ru,” is in the same camp of Kenny G’s jazz playing: wimped-out, soul-deadening, mechanical, and vulgar. The passiveness in Xuan Hieu’s sax sound, particularly in “Ta Ao Xanh” and “Chuyen Ben,” puts people straight to the bed, but not with each other. What makes the album so lame is the lack of improvisation and personal expression. You could sing along with the sax lines like karaoke if you know the lyrics. Yet, why would you want to follow an arrangement with a lethargic rhythm section?

Our dear and generous Dieu has shared 5 Dong Ke’s Tu Tinh Ca, the best Vietnamese a cappella album up to date. So what the heck are you waiting for? Go cop it now for free 99. Thanks Dieu, the quality is fantastic!

Imagine going into a large room and see 500 people giving oral sex and screwing their brains out. What better way to start the summer?

I would love to have a copy of 500 Person Sex for review. LOL! Japanese people are mad freaky, aren’t they?

Thuc dem moi biet dem dai
That tinh moi biet tinh dai hon dem
Mot doi sao mai chang quen
Vi tinh guc nga cho duyen lo lang

Thanks Joseph for sending me this suicidal shit! If your heart is broken, do not pick up Tam Doan’s Guc Nga Vi Yeu. You may have to kill your soul, if not yourself. Lucky for me, it is not a Truong Vu’s album. If he sings the title track, I would have started digging my own grave while listening to it. Tam Doan doesn’t sound too dramatic. In other words, she lacks the emotion and the pain to croon heart-shattering songs. I don’t blame her. In fact, I am happy for her because that means her marriage with Tien Dung is doing great. Not only her voice is soulless, but the productions from Thuy Nga’s main man, Tung Chau, are also pretty bland. The duet with Manh Quynh in “Go Cua” is the least tragic vong co (opera) I have ever heard. No chemistry and no sentimental exchange whatsoever between the two. She sings vong co like reading a poem complemented by the mournful accompaniment. After all, her album may sound boring, but her life off the mic is good. It’s rare to find a singer who is willing to give up her career for her love. It’s time for Tam Doan to switch to dance pop. It would fit her mood better for now or maybe until the relationship turns sour. Gotta go with the feelings, baby!

Like its name suggested, VariAsian is a-cappella group consisted of various Asian (Vietnamese, Filipino, and Korean) Americans. From a quick glance at their brief bios, most of the members had sung in choir in their school years; therefore, they have their chops down from gospel to R. & B. to soul. What sets them apart, however, is the Asian synergy they bring to the music, and their debut shows some potentials. Their version of Gloria Gaynor’s “I Will Survive” is groovy without the disco arrangement backing them up. The beatbox and vocal harmony do the job well. On the slower piece, Lisa Lisa’s “All Cried Out,” their strong voices, which drawn mostly from gospel, give the popular tune a fresh vibe. The most disappointed tune is the cover of Roberta Flack’s “Killing Me Softly.” That elementary rap has to go. It ruins the ladies’ singings. They need to bring Wyclef Jean on board if they wanted a hip-hop verse. Too bad, “Nguoi Oi & Yeu Nhau” the only Vietnamese tune featured on the entire album. While the harmony is great, the lead singer sounds almost flat on the first piece. I am still rooting for my 5 Dong babes when it comes to Vietnamese a cappella. While their debut is not so bad (except for too many popular tunes being covered), I am not sure what they have in store for the next release. One thing we can reassure, they do not sing with broken English.

Thanks Joseph!

Here are some of my favorites:

Black KKK (That is one wicked skit)
The Niggar Family (This one is mad crazy)
Keepin’ it Real (Man, he is trippin’)
The Internet (Just love the concept and the spam busters)

“Why is abbreviation is such a long word?” Why do we use redundant words such as honest truth? And if we rearrange the letters in funeral, we get real fun, which the opposite meaning. These are some of the absurdities in the English language that graphic designer and typographer Teresa Monachino points out in her Words Fail Me—a book inspired by her Italian mother who had trouble understanding the idiosyncrasy of English. With clean and simple design, witty wordplay, and clever use of typography, Monachino illustrates how those words fail her.