Dear Đán,

Happy fourteenth birthday, my son. You are growing up fast, physically and mentally. I have come to realize that you are becoming stronger as I am getting weaker. I can no longer hold you down. As much as I want to keep you close to me, I have to let you go. Of course, I will always be here for you whenever you need me.

You said that I don’t love you like I love your other brothers, but that’s not true. Believe it or not, time will tell. I love all my sons, but in different ways. I worry about you much more than your brothers, but I have learned to accept the fact that you are beyond my reach. You have made the decision not to be down with me. I used to demand that you come out with me instead of spending time on your PC, but I can no longer make you do things you don’t want to do.

I was deeply concerned that you spent too much time on your digital devices. Trying to intercept that had backfired. I regret the choices we made in regard to our kids’ digital exposure. I should have been firm about it when you guys were still little. I didn’t tighten up when other adults let loose. It’s too late now. I just have to accept it and hope for the best.

Luckily, you are taking your education seriously. You care about your grades. You don’t know how happy I am inside when you told me that school is your first priority. Your education is your future, not mine. I already had my shot. Believe me, an education will make your life easier. You will get more respect for being educated. Even if you have the money, you don’t get the proper respect without the education.

I understand that keloids prevent you from playing sports even though you excel at anything you do. You could skate better than me. You could rollerblade better than me. You could snowboard better than me. I had to work hard to catch up with you and I never will. I always admire your natural ability. I have keloids too, but I could care less about my body image. I passed that stage a long time ago. I do it for the love of the sports and the feel-good vibe . I still enjoy the sports we used to do together. Now, it’s just me going to the skatepark. I am trying to be less nostalgic.

Then again, you haven’t quit everything. You still take piano lessons. As long as you continue, we are willing to pay for your lessons. I no longer ask you to perform at the recital or our family gathering. It’s up to you to do it or not. I don’t even require you to practice. If you want to practice, you should do it on your own.

You still take drawing classes. You seem to enjoy it a great deal. I am glad that you found some creative outlets. I hope you will stay with it as well and we will pay for it for as long as we can.

I know you can write too. Over the summer, I had always looked forward to reading your hilarious blog posts. Next summer, I won’t make you write anymore, but I hope you will. As you can see, I love writing even though I am not a good writer. I write to express myself and to get things off my chest.

After our last conflict, I did some self-reflection. I decided to give you the space for you to grow. When I was your age, my father was not around and I still turned out fine. I made the mistake of overthinking and overworrying. I am still here for you. I am not going anywhere, but I am backing off until I hear from you. I think that will be best for both of us.

Once again, enjoying being fourteen. Life will pass you by fast. Before you know it, you will become a man and I will be old or gone.

I have nothing but love for you.
Dad

HaH! Chili is founded by my wife Dana Nguyễn and Donny Trương. We love chili sauce that adds a kick to our dishes. We made small patches of chili sauce to share with our friends and family members. Now we would like to share them with you.

I can’t remember when I started to add chili sauce into every meal, but nowadays a meal wouldn’t be complete without it. I tried almost every chili sauce on the shelf at the supermarket. Most of them were not spicy at all and some of them were too spicy. All of them included preservatives. As a result, they lost their freshness.

When I came to America 34 years ago, I always had to have Huy Fong’s Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce with my phở. A few years ago when the Sriracha shortage happened, its price spiked. Dana Nguyễn, my wife, decided to make her own chili sauce with all the peppers she harvested from our little garden. When she asked me to try it, I was hooked. I loved the pure, fresh taste with a kick that enhanced every dish, including phở. I haven’t turned back to Huy Fong’s Sriracha Hot Chili Sauce since.

At every party I went to, I brought out my wife’s chili sauce to introduce to family and friends. They were hooked as well and requested for more. In the last few years, my wife refined her craft of making chili sauce. She sourced all of the peppers from her sister’s garden. She made small patches to share with our family and friends. I asked her, “Why don’t we share our chili sauce with the world?”

She just needs to focus on making the chili sauce and I will take care of the brand, the design, and, of course, the website. That’s how HaH! Chili is founded. It’s our partnership and passion for something that we love.

HaH! has a surprised, joyful expression. Our chili sauce will make you go “HaH!”. The hidden meaning is that our chili sauce is Hot as Hell! You’ll find out when you give it a try. Once we established the name for our chili sauce, the first thing I did was designing the bottle label. I wanted the label to be as simple as possible. The label only consists of the wordmark, the name of the product, and the web address. I want to keep all the product information on our website.

For our branding wordmark, I didn’t have to try out any typefaces. I already had in mind the NaN Rage superfamily, designed by the NaN team (Hugues Gentile, Fanny Hamelin, Fadhl Haqq, Léon Hugues, Jean-Baptiste Morizot, Luke Prowse, Florian Runge, Jolana Sýkorová). The logo is set in Nan Rage Zipp. The product names and headers are set in NaN Rage Quik. The copy and body text are set in NaN Rage Soft. I just loved the flexibility the eccentricity the NaN Rage superfamily offered.

Take a look at our brand new HaH! Chili website and treat yourself a bottle of two of our Hot as Hell! chili sauce. Our supply is limited. So grab them while they are still fresh.

I first wrote about Cécile McLorin Salvant back in 2013 when she released her debút album, WomanChild. Salvant has always been a singular jazz singer who reinvigorates old standards with humorous twists. Her lyrical choices have always been intriguing.

With her latest release, Oh Snap, she experiments with her own writing. Right off the opening track, “I am a volcano,” she explains over electronic pop production that she wants to be a river, but she’s volcano instead and the image she gives is fascinating: “I am a cyst, finally expressing, pressing out the pus / Red, black, fire, smoke and lust / Molten rock destroying everything.”

With “Anything but now,” she returns to post-bop singing with lyrics that many of us can relate: “I spend a lot of time thinking about doing things / Instead of doing them / I spend a lot of time thinking about saying things / Instead of saying them / Out loud, out loud, out loud.” She’s damn right we spend a lot of time ruminating instead of doing shit, yet her band swings like hell.

Over strumming guitar, she sings “Take a stone,” a folky flavor, with captivating lyrics such as: “Tomorrow morning, at the edge of a volcano / She’ll meet him with her arms open wide / His hands are broken, he used them to caress her / In places she could not begin to understand.” In my head, I am like, “WTF?”

On “What does blue mean to you?,” she swings the blues with more telling lyrics: “An emerald far in the distance / That we’ve been galloping to / Barefoot and bloody / Winded and tired and sweaty.”

With the title track, “Oh Snap,” she switches up with electronic new age, yet her lyrics remain hilarious: “Oh shit, I think you love me / I think I’ve shown you all of the cruel and nasty parts of me / But you still haven’t left, is it abject fidelity? / Or could it be that love is more than just fantasy to you?”

Over the 12 years since her debút, Salvant has gone a long way as an artist. She is willing to experiment and to step up her game. Let’s break out a bottle of Aberfeldy 21 and cheer for Oh Snap.

I had been revisiting 2pac’s catalog, particularly All Eyez On Me, in which he mentioned Thug Passion a few times. Last night, I was fiending for some Thug Passion myself. I had a bottle of Alizé Gold Passion in stock, but I didn’t have any Hennessy. I broke out a bottle of Cordon Bleu instead. One part Alizé and one part CB turned out to be a perfect mix, which was sweet and fruity, yet had a strong kick to it. 2pac used to say that a Thug Passion would guarantee to get “the dick hard and the pussy wet.” He was bullshitting. At my age, no alcohol could get me up; therefore, I just enjoyed the drink and listened to music.

I turned on Spotify and let it play whatever. A familiar song came on and I recognized the melody. It brought back the memories of hearing Nini, Hạ Vy, Vina Uyển Mi, and Quỳnh Hương lip-synced on one of Asia Entertainment’s videos. The tune was titled “The Model” and arranged in Asia’s chachacha signature style. Either my English was bad back then or their pronunciation was not clear, I didn’t understand what the fuck the ladies were singing. The version I listened to last night for the first time was perfectly clear. The female voice turned out to be Mélanie Pain. Accompanied by Olivier Libaux’s melodic guitar and Raphael Chassin’s crisp drums, Pain sings: “She’s a model and she’s looking good / I’d like to take her home, that’s understood / She plays hard to get, she smiles from time to time / It only takes a camera to change her mind.”

After that song, I had to look up the album so I could listen to the whole joint. All That Matters turned out to be Libaux’s final collaboration with Pain and Chassin. Unfortunately, Libaux passed away in 2021. Libaux has a cool vibe on the guitar, which complements Pain’s soft, sensual voice perfectly.

Their rendition of “(I Can’t Get No) Satisfaction” is so damn cool that you wouldn’t have imagined the original was a rock tune by The Rolling Stones. This verse sounds intriguing coming from a female perspective: “When I’m watchin’ my TV / And a man comes on to tell me / How white my shirts could be / But he can’t be a man ’cause he doesn’t smoke / The same cigarettes as me.”

“Rebel Yell” is another fascinating reinterpretation. They turned the Billy Idol rock tune into a mellow ballad. I must confess. I have not listened to Billy Idol before. This is the first time I heard of “Rebel Yell” through Pain and I thought she was talking about being gang-banged by the rebels: “With a rebel yell, ‘More, more, more / More, more, more.’” It was the Thug Passion that fucked up my mind. All kidding aside, I enjoyed All That Matters immensely.

Kristin Bair’s new novel, Clementine Crane Prefers Not To, took me 40 days to finish. For a 300-page book, I usually take a week or two (the most) to read. As I started to read this novel, however, I had some personal controversies to deal with. As a result, I wrote (to get things off my head) more than I read for pleasure.

I read all of Kristin’s books part because she’s one of my longest freelance clients and part because she’s a damn good writer. In all of her books, she has created a strong female character and Clementine Crane Prefers Not To, is no exception. Apparently, I am not the target audience for this book. I am not one of the hot-flashers. I am not one of the overwhelmed moms. I am not one of the mental-load managers. I am not one of these piss-off people with periods. I am definitely not one of the people with uteruses.

Then again, her novel makes me appreciate my wife as well as all the women who have done everything for their husband and kids. I am as guilty as Tor. In addition to holding down a full-time job, Clem manages her kids’ activities and husband’s schedules. As Clem reached her perimenopause, she came to a breaking point. She shared her personal experience online and created the “I Prefer Not To” movement, which was based on Herman Melville’s “Bartleby, The Scrivener: A Story Of Wall-Street.”

Even though my mind was distracted with other issues while reading Clementine Crane Prefers Not To, I did not lose grip of the novel, which had funny moments (“fish-napping”) as well as poignant parts (the loss). In addition, Kristin is well-versed with technology. She incorporates social media into her story. Once I found the rhythm in the novel, I didn’t want the book to end. Kristin did it again with her fourth novel.

To stay true to its new name, the Department of War has to start a war somewhere. Why not the boys and girls of Scouting America? They must be a threat to the government.

A few weeks ago, I sold a brand new pair of ski boots via Facebook Marketplace. My wife bought these boots two years ago for Vương, but they were too big for him. Since we had a pair of hand-me-down from Xuân in the same size, he didn’t need that pair anymore.

I sold the pair to a guy in Pennsylvania. I typically don’t ship things, but I made the exception since he was willing to pay for the shipping fee. A few days ago, he texted me back to let me know that I sent him two right boots. He sent me photos of the boots: a size 19.5 and 20.5.

I was shocked. I didn’t bother to check the boots because I thought they were correct. Vương never tried them on. I didn’t take any photos of the boots because they were brand new. I just took the photos off the company’s website. Luckily I did film them. I couldn’t tell, but my wife could see that they were both right boots in my video.

I apologized to the buyer and issued him a full refund including the shipping charge. I told him to keep them or discard them. He didn’t need to send them back to me. He was understanding and thanked me for my honest mistake.

When my wife bought these boots on Amazon, they sent us the wrong boot, but we never checked. The lesson is to always check the boots for the right size. I used to work for Foot Locker when I was in high school, I should have known better.

I love music. Unfortunately, I don’t play any instruments. I can’t sing either. The only thing I can do is write about it. As of this writing, I have penned 1,308 pieces on music.

When I created my personal blog in 2003, I needed content. Music was one of the topics that I was passionate about since I listened to music all the time. As someone who spent most of his time on the web and making a living off the web, I had access to music.

One of my goals for starting my own blog was to hone my writing skills. I wanted to take on the challenge of writing something I didn’t know anything about. I reviewed music without any music training and without injecting myself into the albums. I wrote about the vocals, the productions, and the techniques. Each review would take me 2 to 3 hours to write. I had to do research to find the vocabulary to convey my thoughts.

Taking a jazz appreciation course at Vassar College helped a great deal. I learned to listen to the art of improvisations. I held that technicality as standards even though I also wrote about hip-hop and Vietnamese music, in addition to jazz. Vietnamese music was where my heart was and I was very critical of trendy records with unimaginative melody and cheap lyrics.

In 2015, after 11 years of writing about music, I got burned out and called it quit. The format took too much of my time to write, but then I didn’t really quit. I wrote less reviews and my pieces were shorter. Furthermore, I only wrote what I wanted to share. I wrote for myself. When I first started, I wanted to focus on the music, but now I am doing the opposite. I put myself into the reviews.

My music writing gets more personal than before. I use the albums as a starting point to inject my own personal life into them. As I am listening to an album, I start to write in my head. Once I listen to the album long enough, I can just sit down and finish it in less than an hour. I am enjoying it more this way.

If you would like to read my music writing, head over to my blog. That’s where I post all of my writings first before sharing them on social media platforms.

The loved ones we call the dead
depart from us and for a while
are absent. And then as if
called back by our love, they come
near us again. They enter our dreams.
We feel they have been near us
when we have not thought of them.
They are simply here, simply waiting
while we are distracted among
our obligations. At last
it comes to us: They live now
in the permanent world.
We are the absent ones.

Wendell Berry

I don’t want to buy a new car, but our 2011 Toyota Sienna is dying. I almost got stranded twice. The car was completely shut off with no power at all when I turned off the ignition. I thought the battery was the cause, but then it rebooted itself after a while. Everything was reset including the clock.

As the winter is approaching, I don’t want to put my family at risk. In addition, we’ll need to have an all-wheel-drive vehicle to handle the snow when we go skiing. We also need a roof rack and trailer hitch to carry our gears and things. My wife narrowed down to the 2026 Sienna Woodland Edition.

I am in the market to look for that specific minivan. If you know of any good deals, especially in Virginia, please let me know. I would really appreciate it.