Björk’s 1997 Homogenic pushes her creativity and eccentricity further out. She has such a damn fine ear for her beats. Once again, the production for her album opener, “Hunter” is eerie yet catchy. The drum pattern on “All Neon Like” is throbbing and pounding. “Alarm Call” is the only explicit track. She claims “I’m no fucking Buddhist / But this is enlightenment.” My personal favorite on here has to be “5 Years.” The production is just fucking bananas. The distorted, scratching record is out of this world. Björk was away ahead of her time. It is such a joy rediscovering her visions and innovations almost three decades later.

I love Björk’s 1995 release Post. The beat on the album opener “Army of Me” takes me back to the cyberpunk area, especially The Matrix. I just can’t resist the magnetizing club beat on “I Miss You.” Of course, jazz adds another layer of texture to the mix. My personal favorite has to be “It’s Oh So Quiet.” It’s the most idiosyncratic flavor of jazz swing I heard. Her screams are dramatic yet hysterical. This is a Björk album I have been returning to again and again from start to end.

Demented Donald pointed to the portrait of the fifth president of the United States and stuttered, “That’s Monroe from the … uh … Monroe docu… document.” His dementia has kicked in. He should be checked for his mental capacity to be a president.

Apparently, Demented Donald thinks that Joe Biden has stage-9 cancer. Demented Donald is a laughing gaffe, but not a laughing matter. He is suffering dementia and it is escalating. It won’t be too long.

I have been spending quite a bit of time with Björk starting with her 1993 Debut. The lead-off “Human Behavior” kicks open the electric door with bouncy rhythm and organic sounds. “Venus as a Boy” is a fascinating combination of electronic rhythm section and string orchestration. My personal favorite is the slow-smoking “Like Someone in Love.” The harp adds a soothing, Eastern vibe to her voice. The album is not coherent as a whole, but definitely worth listening to.

A Tribe Called Quest’s debut is an archetypal of an old school hip-hop album. The beats are banging. The lyrics are witty. The deliveries are engaging. On top of all, no cuss words were needed. The album opens with “Push It Along” and the hook is just addictive. The jazz horn samples are just so savory to the ears. The beat on “Lucky of Lucien” is so damn tuneful and you gotta love the wordplay from Q-Tip, “If you go to jail, then who will pay the bail? / Deport you back to France on a ship with a sail / Escargot, Lucien, you eat snails.” And of course the classic, “Bonita Applebum—you gotta put me on” with rhymes like, “38-24-37 / You and me, hun, we’re a match made in Heaven.” We need to get back to the good old rhymes sans the misogyny.

Demented Donald was caught on camera dozing off in meetings during his Middle East state visit. Let’s face it. Demented Donald is not doing well. His health is in decline. Mental illness, dementia, and aging are catching up to him. Soon he won’t be able to hide anymore. Now’s the time to defend our democracy from an ailing authoritarian.

During his speech in Qatar, Demented Donald said, “We just apprehended, for example, the ISIS terrorist of the [WTF?] the one that caused all of the problems in Afghanistan.” Once again, Demented Donald said incomprehensible shit. It’s dementia, stupid.

Yesterday we attended our kids’ piano recital at their instructor’s studio, which is at the back of his house. We missed several recitals over the winter because we had skiing and snowboarding activities. The kids we started at the same time as ours and even the ones after ours had moved into classical music. Their performances were impressive.

I am not making a comparison. I am just making the realization. Xuân performed well, but he spent three months or more on one song. Đán didn’t have the courage to perform one song. He told me and his mom that he no longer wanted to perform. He just wanted to learn piano for his own enjoyment.

In the past, I told him that if he didn’t want to practice and want to perform, he should just quit and stop wasting our money. Piano private lessons aren’t cheap. Now I have come to term with it. If he doesn’t want to perform anymore, I am fine with self enjoyment over competition. My only hope is that he will continue to improve himself.

I have no expectations or dreams for my kids anymore. If they enjoy to do things with me, that’s cool. If not, I am not going to force them. I am tired of repeating myself. My words just go into one ear and right out the other. I don’t care what they do individually, but they have to participate when we do things together as a family. If we go somewhere as a family, they can’t say they don’t want to go. That’s not a choice until they move out on their own.

For some odd reasons, I never paid much attention to A Tribe Called Quest until recently, particularly its 1991 release, The Low End Theory. “Excursions” kicks off the album with a hypnotic baseline. Q-Tips rhymes virtuosically, “You could find the Abstract listening to hip-hop / My pops used to say, it reminded him of be-bop / I said, well daddy don’t you know that things go in cycles / The way that Bobby Brown is just ampin’ like Michael.” Ali Shaheed Muhammad has an ear for jazz and he brilliantly connects jazz and hip-hop together and his signature sound is more pronounced on the next track “Buggin’ Out.” The baselines hits even harder against hip-hop backbeat. Phife’s straightforward rap contrasts nicely with Q-Tip’s fluid flow. On “Jazz (We’ve Got),” the muted horn sample, reminiscent of the Miles Davis sound, flows over the beat like ghost. Now! That’s a classic jazz-hip-hop album.