#do learn vietnamese with annie

[thatonebirdwrites]

Soft asks: 4,11,15,28. ♡ Also, I know you answered 21 in the notes. So if it's okay to ask do you have any tea recommendations? and how do you prefer your tea?

4. Whats your favorite feeling?

A favorite? I'm not sure if I've ever really thought about it that way.

I'd say introspective. Not the introspective where I hyper-analyze everything I do, but the introspective where I let myself ponder the fact that I exist at the same time as all of you. That we are on this Earth together, and we are chatting in this manner, sharing thoughts and dreams and creativity. Where despite all the evils of the world and the horrors, we still find ways to show love to others, to show we care. That even in times of disaster, people are more likely to go out and help one another survive.

And I think of how, despite the horrors we face, many of us persevere, we fight the good fight, and isn't that lovely?

Isn't that the ingredients for hope? Where we plant that hope, tend to it together, and build it up? That even when we fuck up, we can hold one another accountable and do better? Isn't that growth marvelous to experience?

To exist in a time with you, the asker, and be able to hold this conversation is an incredible honor.

I don't know what to call that feeling, but I tear up when I think about it.

Maybe awe of the world and our existence?

11. Do you have a comfort item? Tell us about it!

Dog. I wrote about him here. I'm actually scared of large dogs, but I've had this husky plushie since I was three years old. He always sits by my pillow, regardless of where I am, and always will. The link is to a nonfiction tale detailing his life story.

My other comfort item is books. There's a few that I have read over and over: Tamora Pierce's Circle of Magic series, Diane Duane's Young Wizards series, Nancy Garden's Annie on my Mind, J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, Ryko Aoki's Light from Uncommon Stars, Nnedi Okorafor's Binti trilogy, Madeline L'Engle's A Ring of Endless Light, N.K. Jemisen The City We Became....

I can't choose between these books, hence why it's a list...

15. Comfort food?

Pho or Miso Soup. Seriously, these are the best ever.

Miso is one that is easy to learn how to make, but I have no idea how to make Pho, so I have to go to a local Pho place for it. (We have a large community of Vietnamese and Thai people in my city, so there's a lot of good Pho here.)

21. Infodump on tea for this question! I hope I don't scare you off with this, but I just LOVE talking about teas!!!

For tea recommendations, it depends on what flavor profile the person seeks. I'll cover tea from the typical tea plant, then dive into some of the herbal teas that come from different plants. This will be a massive infodump, so settle in I guess? lol

First we have the tea categories: Pu'er, Black, Oolong, Green, Yellow, and White.

Pu'er

Pu'er is from Yunnan, China, and often called the Emperor's Tea. The tea leaves are parched and then fermented, and thus have a fairly strong taste. It's also expensive. (Seriously, one rolled up ball of this cost 40 dollars, and that is just one teapot!)

If one can score good quality Pu'er, then be sure to have a glass pot, as many styles of it come as a ball that unfurls as it steeps. It's neat.

Black

Black tea is a more oxidized version of tea leaves than oolong, green, yellow, and white. The type of Black tea is named after the region from which its grown and produced.

There's the Chinese Black Teas:

Fuijan (has a bit of honey after taste and a favorite of mine)

Lapsang souchou (strong smoky flavor),

Keenum (has hints of fruity, flowery, or pine-y flavors and one of my favorites)

Yunnan (dark malty flavors),

Yingdehong (has an almost cocao-like aroma and sweet taste),

Red Plum (long, smooth after taste).

Taiwanese Black Teas:

Taicha No. 12 (starts bitter then smooths out to an almost sweet taste)

Taicha No. 18 (hint of cinnamon and mint, not as bitter as 12)

Sun Moon Lake (honey-like tones that's almost minty at times, one of my favorites).

India

Assam (full-bodied and very strong malty tones, and one of the more common teas. When people think of Black tea, it's often Assam they're thinking of.)

Darjeeling (thin-bodied and more floral/fruity tones than Assam. Tho these days it's processed with Black, green, and oolong tea leaves, so finding a pure Black Darjeeling is hard).

Kangra (kind of similar to some of the Taiwanese teas but with more vegetal aromas)

Munnar (brisk and fruity)

Nilgiri (intensely fragrant and one of my favorites)

Nepali Black tea is from Nepal and tastes a bit similar to Darjeeling, but with a stronger finish I think. Another one of my favorites.

Sri Lanka produces the Ceylon tea, which is another very common Black tea. A lot of the cheaper Black teas in stores will be a mixture of Ceylon and Assam. Now the flavor of Ceylon depends on the altitude in which its grown. High altitude as a lighter flavor than low altitude, which is a stronger flavor. Mid altitude is between the two in taste.

Kenya produces a Black Tea with a rich and aromatic profile, and is a favorite of mine.

Korea, Turkey, and Iran also produce Black teas, but I have yet to try them, so I'm not sure of their flavors.

I know everyone has heard of the Earl Grey, Lady Grey, British or Irish Breakfast teas -- but those are actually blends of several different Black teas with specific oils. I still love all of them though.

Oolong

I love me a good oolong tea. It's a semi-oxidized tea.

For Oolong, it's classified more on how it's grown rather than just the region that produces it. So for example, the Fuijain Oolong teas actually have a variety of Oolongs depending on if its grown the Wuyi Mountains or Anxi County, China.

Wuyi Mountains makes the most expensive of all the Oolongs, and are often called Si Da Ming Cong teas, where they are variations of lighter colorations and smooth flavor tone. The two that aren't a Si Da Ming Cong tea is the Rougui and Shui Xian, both of which are very dark teas with rich overtones. I wish they weren't so expensive as I want to try them all! But alas, I am too poor for these teas.

Anxi Oolongs have milky tones, such as the Iron Goddess (a favorite of mine) and Huangjin Gui, which is more fragrant than Iron Goddess. I honestly love all of Anxi's teas.

Phoenix Mountain Teas rarely are seen outside China, but they tend to have flavor profiles that imitate other flowers and fruits. They are so expensive that I've only done a taste test at my local tea shop as I could never afford them. They are also seasonal.

The vast majority of Oolong teas are Taiwanese teas. These are more affordable for one thing, which is likely why people may think of Taiwanese Oolongs when the term is mentioned.

Dong Ding "Frozen Summit" is one of my FAVORITES. Has a light but distinct fragrance and a smooth finish. I just adore this tea.

Dongfang meiren "Oriental Beauty" is another favorite, and it has potent aromatics. It's typically a seasonal tea.

Alishan is seasonal and I've yet to taste it. It's also harder to find as it's only grown at very specific intervals of the year.

Lishan is like Alishan in how its grown, and I'm told Lishan tastes as sweet in tones. I've only ever had a taste test since it's hard to get this one.

Baozhong is the least oxidized Oolong, so it's lighter in tone than most oolongs and have almost a floral aftertaste. It's a favorite of mine too!

Ruan zhi is a lighter oolong that tastes a bit like an orchid tea. I never know what to think of it.

Jin Xuan is often nicknamed the "Milk Oolong" because it tastes so smooth and creamy! I honestly love it.

Black Oolong is a bit of a funny name considering it's not a Black tea since it's produced like an oolong, but it has a strong bite like a Black that some compare to coffee almost. I don't like it.

High Mountain is a family of Oolongs actually (Alishan is part of that family). They all have similar flavor profiles, which is why they are often grouped together I think. The oolongs that are not seasonal, like Alishan, are fairly expensive. From the taste tests I've done, they have a sweeter tone. I really enjoyed them, but sadly, can't afford most of them.

Taiwanese Tieguanyin is a variation of the one from Anxi, China. It's flavor profile differs in that they are less milky but still have smooth finishes. I think their aromatic profile is stronger too.

Four Seasons Oolong is the most well known of the Taiwanese teas as it is cultivated all year long. This is the one that people think of the most when Oolong is mentioned, and the one most likely to be in stores. It's okay. Still flavorful with a smooth finish, but it lacks the sweet profiles of the other teas.

Darjeeling Oolong and Assam Oolongs are made by oxidizing the Darjeeling and/or Assam teas in the same methods of Chinese Oolongs. Darjeeling Oolongs tend toward a more floral finish I think, while Assam Oolongs tend toward a more smokey finish.

A few other countries produce Oolongs as well, such as Vietnam, which has a full-bodied taste with a milky finish.

Oolong teas are also a bit harder to find. But I HIGHLY recommend them. I think they have the most rich flavors of all the teas.

Green

I admit, I am not well-versed in Green Teas, mostly because they tend to be very acidic if oversteeped and lack the smooth finish I love about Oolongs.

The Chinese Green teas range from a more grassy finish to a plum-like flavor to a flavor punch (like the Gunpowder Green tea). I'll drink them if I have no other choice, but I'm not much of a fan. Chinese greens also tend to either be pan-fried or sun-dried, which is what gives them their distinct flavors.

Japanese Green Teas are my favorite Green tea. They are steamed dry. I know these ones the best.

Sencha is has a bit of a grassy finish I think, but it's also the most well known of Japanese green teas.

Genmaicha is my FAVORITE green tea. It's green tea with toasted rice, and has a rich and aromatic flavor.

Bancha is picked after Sencha, and has a very bold, intense flavor. It's considered a "lower grade" tea.

Gyokuro is grown under shade at first, and this gives it a sweeter taste than most of the Japanese Greens. It's one of my favorites!

Hōjicha is a roasted Japanese tea, generally roasted with Kukicha twigs.

Kabusecha is shaded for only half the time of Gyokuro, so I think it tastes like a mix of Gyokuro and Sencha. So if Gyokuro is too strong, then this is a good alternative.

Kukicha is a blend of Sencha and twigs. I don't like it as much.

Matcha is probably the most well known. It's shaded at first like Gyokuro, but during its processing it's ground into a fine powder. It's this powder that gets marketed as the green tea. It's often used for Tea Ceremonies actually, as there is a specific way to steep and pour the tea. I really love matcha tea, but it's hard to find authentic matcha. I'm not sure how to describe the taste though. It's a unique bite to it but a tasty one.

Sincha is often called a 'first plucked' tea due to when it's plucked in the season. It's very expensive, very hard to source outside of Japan, and because of this, I've sadly never been able to try it.

Korean Green Teas are also very popular, but I know very little about them. They are categories as to when they are plucked and how they are prepared. I'm not sure if I've ever tried them to be honest. I tend so much toward Japanese Greens that I have sadly neglected Korean Green.

Vietnamese Green teas are the Green tea you are most likely to encounter in a lot of Asian restaurants. (Well, at least where I live there's a lot of Vietnamese and Thai restaurants, and many of them tend toward either a Japanese Green or a Vietnamese Green.) Vietnamese Greens also include scented Green teas, as in the tea is scented with a flower such as Lotus, Jasmine, or Chrysanthemum.

I admit I absolutely adore Jasmine tea. It's one I often have on stock, and fairly cheap to buy.

Yellow

Sometimes included with Green teas due to the light oxidation, but the difference is they are often "encased" as in sweltered to give the leaves a more yellow tone. China and Korea are the main producers of Yellow, but I've never had a chance to try it mostly due to how difficult it is to find an authentic yellow tea.

White

There isn't an international definition for this. Usually it refers to tea that has little to no processing (as in isn't oxidized hardly at all). it has the lightest flavors of all the tea types, and I cannot stand them. I feel like I'm just drinking faintly scented water. No thank you. Won't even discuss the types because I am so not a fan.

Rooibos

This is a herbal tea grown predominantly in Central and Southern Africa, so as for the taste profile, it depends on which country of origin. The plant is quite different from a typical tea plant, in that it is a bit more reed-like. It's often an earthy taste, but depending on origin can sometimes have a honey-like aftertaste.

I really love it because it pairs well with other flavors such as vanilla, raspberry, etc.

Herbal mixes

There's a lot of flowers and fruits that taste great when brewed! Some of my favorites tend to have mint leaves in the blend OR ginger.

Yaupon

This is a caffeinated plant unique to South-western United States. It has earthy tones and a smooth finish. I absolutely love it, and prefer to buy it directly from the Indigenous people who grow it.

Anyway, now that I infodumped on teas, I will share how I make them.

Black teas: I boil the water at around 200 Degrees Fahrenheit and brew for three to five minutes. I will sometimes add a teaspoon of sugar.

Oolong teas: I heat the water to 190 Degrees Fahrenheit and brew from 1 to five minutes (usually three, but some teas require only a minute of brewing while others can be up to five). I rarely add a sweetner, but if I do, it's a few drops of honey.

Green Teas: this depends on the type of Green. Matcha is a powder so its swirled into the water. Genimatcha is only brewed for 30 seconds to a minute at most. Other greens are brewed from 1 to 3 minutes. I heat the water to 175 Degrees Fahrenheit, though for Genimatcha it's okay to heat up to 190. Honey is the sweetener of choice, but I only do that for the grassier teas. I don't use any sweetener for matcha teas.

Yellow and White teas: I'm not entirely sure the heating temperature or how long to brew them. I do know that for White teas in particular it doesn't seem to matter how long I brew them, the flavor is just lacking and it makes me sad.

Yaupon: I heat water to 190 or 200 degrees Fahrenheit and brew it between 3 to 5 minutes, depending on if I want a stronger or lighter taste that day. I either use sugar or honey as a sweetener.

Herbal Teas: I heat water to 200 or 212 degrees Fahrenheit. Then brew the tea for about five minutes. I add a dollop of honey.

The only time I do NOT brew a herbal tea for five minutes is when there is hibiscus in it. Then it gets brewed one minute at best. In fact, I suggest avoiding hibiscus. That flower takes over the taste profile; it is like drinking a punch to your mouth. Why people keep adding it to herbal blends is beyond me.

Anyway, due to the nuances of how the temperature of the water can affect steeping and taste, I find it crucial to either have a tea-momenter (get it? tea thermometer?) or an electric kettle with multiple options.

The electric kettle I use has a setting for each of the main types of teas. That way I have ultimate control of the brewing method to get the best batch of tea.

Final thoughts on teas:

To be honest, I think this is why some people think they don't like tea. They often have it oversteeped at the wrong temperature which can ruin the drink. (Do Not Trust Starbucks and Cafes that Leave The Tea Bag In. That oversteeps it and ruins the flavor. If they actually knew what they were doing, they'd time that shit and take the tea bag out to avoid oversteeping.)

I try to buy from the source when possible. Otherwise, I try to go local, as in buy from a locally owned tea shop. One of my favorite tea shops to order from is Gong-fu.

28. What are you proudest of?

I want to say my stories, but I also struggle with self-worth and doubt a lot. But if you do like my writing, check out my AO3.

It's art that I find myself proudest of, simply because I'm working in a medium that requires steady hands, and yet I have a hand tremor, so it feels like I conquered a mountain with each piece done. I rarely keep anything I make. I like to give the art to people I care about to bring them a smile, and to remind them that they aren't alone. That someone does care, even if it's little ole me and Quark.

Here are a few of the pieces I've done. One for each category.

For a friend who really liked eagles. (This is only 2.5 inches tall by the way.)

For my Legendfire chosen family, they each got a copy of this:

For a friend who ran a Legend of Zelda campaign:

I think most people here have seen the fanart I've done. I recently posted a piece with Lena and Kara, and if you go to my Tumblr blog, I have one of Korra and Asami. :)

Thanks for asking! And I hope I didn't scare you off with my tea infodump!

[squeakygeeky]

The non-romantic side of ‘anh’ and ‘em’ pronoun complications.

[superlinguo]

Linguistics Jobs: Interview with an EMLS/Linguistics instructor & mother of four

This month’s interview is with Annie Masutsubo, a mother of four and EMLS and Linguistics instructor. Annie studied Linguistics and Anthropology, as well as several Asian languages during her undergrad and MA degrees. Annie has taught English as a second language in several places, including Fresno City College and the American English Institute. In this interview, Annie shares how her Linguistics training assists her daily in her roles and responsibilities as both a teacher and a full-time parent, including how discourse analysis is particularly useful for parenting in the age of social media. 

What did you study at university?

Since I absolutely loved Indiana Jones going up, Anthropology was where I started, with a plan to get a minor in Linguistics to learn all the cool tribal languages that I was sure to come across. Six years of reality later, I ended up with a BA in Linguistics, with minors in Anthropology and South-East Asian Studies; and an MA in Linguistics, General Linguistics option. I took a lot of cultural Linguistics classes and a had roughly a year each of Lao, Hmong, and Japanese; and also studied a bit of Thai, Cambodian, and Khmu.

What is your job?

I am an adjunct EMLS/Linguistics instructor, which means that I teach English as a Second Language (ESL) a few hours a week at a local junior college with an occasional Linguistics class. I also taught ESL for several years at the American English Institute, which is an English prep school.

Before I got my degree in Linguistics, I also spent four summers interning at FIRM (Fresno Interdenominational Refugee Ministries) volunteering with their Elderly Program, where I taught citizenship classes to elderly Hmong and Lao refugees, and working with their Summer Youth Project, leading programs for at-risk youth in inner city areas of Fresno's refugee community neighborhoods, here in California. During this time, I laid the groundwork to what would eventually develop into my signature teaching style -- working alongside students and communities, instead of teaching down to "them" as "the other."

Teaching part time fits in perfectly with my full-time job as a mother of four – ages 15, 13, 9, and 6 years old. I also have a Japanese husband who loves (I hope lol) having an ESL teacher in the house to help with his English whenever he needs.

How does your linguistics training help you in your job?

Having training in Linguistics is absolutely necessary to teach English to students with such diverse language backgrounds – this semester alone, I have students who speak multiple dialects of Spanish, Zapotec, Burmese, Vietnamese, Farsi, Chinese, Japanese, Korean, Arabic, and Hmong. Linguistics also fits in perfectly with my full-time job of being a mother as I help my children with all sorts of things like essays for school or emailing teachers, Thank You letters to family, or even giving advice when they navigate the challenges of texting friends or posting to social media – my Discourse Analysis class was especially valuable in this.

What was the transition from university to work like for you?

The transition from being a student to teaching was quite seamless, but transitioning to being a mother while teaching part-time was very difficult. There is an expectation of large amounts of unpaid work, such as prep and grading, as well as being constantly available to answer student emails or calls. Teachers ask each other for professional favors, such as accommodating student observers, editing work, etc. all without additional pay. I needed to learn to balance adjunct teaching and being a mother by learning to say “no” and shutting down things like unpaid meetings or accepting classes that were at inconvenient times or had large amounts of grading or required extra paperwork.

Do you have any advice you wish someone had given to you about linguistics/careers/university?

Realize that while a degree in Linguistics will open doors for you to teach internationally, it is often difficult to score a full time position at junior colleges and universities in the US, and to try and support a family on an adjunct salary is nearly impossible. Realize that teaching, unless you open a private language school or supplement with tutoring/teaching online, rarely is very profitable.

Any other thoughts or comments?

I feel safe knowing that my Linguistics background and ESL teaching experience make me employable anywhere in the world. While I am currently focusing on being in one place for now as I raise my kids, it opens doors for me to travel all over the world and live anywhere I want as soon as I choose to. Having that freedom is, to me, the most valuable aspect of my career.

Related interviews:

Interview with an ESL teacher, coach and podcaster

Interview with an English Foreign Language Teacher

Interview with a Dance Instructor and Stay-at-Home Mom

Interview with a Stay-at-home Mom and Twitch Streamer

Recent interviews:

Interview with a Performing Artiste and Freelance Editor

Interview with a Hawaiian and Tahitian language Instructor, Translator & Radio Host

Interview with a Customer Success Manager

Interview with an Impact Lead

Interview with an Online Linguistics Teacher

Resources:

The full Linguist Jobs Interview List

The Linguist Jobs tag for the most recent interviews

The Linguistics Jobs slide deck (overview, resources and activities)

The Linguistics Jobs Interview series is edited by Martha Tsutsui Billins. Martha is a linguist whose research focuses on the Ryukyuan language Amami Oshima, specifically honourifics and politeness strategies in the context of language endangerment. Martha runs Field Notes, a podcast about linguistic fieldwork.

[leafinthewindlanguages]

Youtube Resources

Here are some channels i follow on youtube for listening practice, culture stuff, or for learning lol i’m always open for recommendations and enjoy watching videos of people doing stuff in the language instead of just teaching it to me

Korean

YTN News- Korean News Channel Edward Avila- I follow him for makeup but he will have people that speak korean on his channel and korean subs (but not on all videos i think) Jumi ơi Hàn Quốc- She is korean learning vietnamese and will speak in korean and have korean subs  Beom E 범이-He is korean learning vietnamese and speaks in korean and (i think) has korean subs (i also think he just went in the military so it might be a while for new videos) Prof. Yoon's Korean Language Class - he has reading practice and he teaches grammar MasterTOPIK- pretty self explanatory lol but it’s stuff to help study for the TOPIK 꿀키honeykki- a cooking channel. no talking but korean subs 박막례 할머니 Korea Grandma - not sure how to describe this channel besides it’s just a grandma doing stuff lol i actually made her recipe for the cold noodles and it was good Cooking tree 쿠킹트리-a cooking channel. no talking but korean subs

Japanese

KemushiChan ロレッタ- Probably everyone knows this channel if you’re studying japanese, but loretta lives in japan and talks about life there and more lol. japanese subs and she speaks in japanese often. Watercolor by Shibasaki - this is my favorite channel by far and i recommend everyone watch this even if you aren’t studying japanese (he provides english subs) but this is a kind grandfather that teaches you how to do watercolor. speaks in japanese and also has japanese subs  まーるちゃんねる - I watch her for animal crossing content 꿀키honeykki- a cooking channel. no talking but japanese subs Cooking tree 쿠킹트리-a cooking channel. no talking but japanese subs 日本語の森- one of my favorite channels for self studying japanese JunsKitchen- probably another channel most people are familiar with even if you’re not studying japanese, but he lives in japan with his (american?) wife and they have another channel, but i’m not subscribed to it (jun and rachel i think is the name) he speaks a lot of english but has japanese subs. happyknittingmama/ハピママ- if you’re interested in knitting here’s a good channel lol  일본 서예가 다쿠미 - idk why his name is in korean? but he’s a japanese man that does calligraphy and writing Learn Japanese- an older channel (that i’m not sure if it posts now) and i’ll be honest (i didn’t watch many of his videos lamo) but he does have a lot of anime stuff if people are into that  三本塾Sambon Juku - this guy is great, i found out about him because of Loretta, but he teaches you japanese fully in japanese. i think he’s a japanese language teacher in real life as well  meetang &co. - if you’re into crochet this channel is great

Chinese (Mandarin)

Evany Carr - this is a new channel i just found (like two days ago) but i really enjoy her content so far. i know she has one video where she’s speaking entirely in chinese, but she has some good learning tips and introduced me to other chinese youtube channels 杰里德Jared- one of the channels Evany recommended, and i have enjoyed what i watched. another new one for me, but it’s a foreigner that has lived in china for 10(?) years and almost all his videos are in mandarin (i think again i haven’t watched all of them lol)   Yoyo Chinese-the first chinese youtube channel i followed and then did nothing about that The lady teaches chinese and i like it  李子柒 Liziqi- probably a channel you’re familiar with even if you don’t learn chinese, but this is a girl that basically hand makes, hand cooks everything from scratch. no talking but there are subs (or she writes it on the video itself i don’t remember) Mandarin Corner- Evany recommended this channel and i won’t lie i haven’t watched any of these videos yet but it looks good and this is more of a teaching channel   小高姐的 Magic Ingredients- a cooking channel. she speaks in mandarin and there are chinese subs as well 

Vietnamese

Learn Vietnamese with VietnamesePod101.com- here are my friends lol anyways i’ve talked about them before in another post. they have great free resources and i recommend this channel Jumi ơi Hàn Quốc- She is korean learning vietnamese and will speak in vietnamese sometimes and have vietnamese subs Beom E 범이-He is korean learning vietnamese and speaks in vietnamese sometimes and (i think) has vietnamese subs (i also think he just went in the military so it might be a while for new videos)   Learn Vietnamese With Annie - if you are studying vietnamese you most likely know this channel, but annie is a teacher that helps you learn the language  Learn Vietnamese With SVFF - this channel teaches you vietnamese with the southern accent  Tina Yong-i’m including this channel because she did 3 or 4 beauty videos in vietnamese, but she’s not really a language or vietnamese channel. i do really enjoy her videos so went ahead and included her 

Sign Language (ASL)

Sign Duo- this is a new channel i follow and i love it. basically it’s two people showing videos of their life while using sign language Sheena McFeely- this is an older channel (and idk if they post anymore) but this was a family that helped teach sign language Bill Vicars-when i was in highschool taking sign language all of my teacher’s teaching material came from him (then i got a deaf teacher and the lesson plan changed but anyways he was basically how i learned sign language) 

French

Easy French- They feature a lot of native speakers, and i believe all videos are in french Comme une Française- Geraldine helps teach french

Spanish (Latin America)

De mi Rancho a Tu Cocina- A mexican grandma that teaches you how to cook in spanish 

Miscellaneous 

NativLang- a lingusitics channel?? idk he talks about different languages and what makes them up and where they originated from and similarities and differences to other languages. i enjoy it 시사북스 - okay this channel is completely in korean (with korean teachers) but they teach a lot of different languages (vietnames, spanish, japanese, english) and i really like it Easy Languages- this channel is nice because they feature native speakers and they offer a lot of languages (polish, russian, etc) and if the language you’re looking for isn’t on this channel, it might have it’s own channel like the french does Language Pod 101- again i highly recommend their youtube channels for whatever language you’re learning. 

*I will update this as I find more stuff (always open to suggestions)

**please let me know if the links don’t work

***any corrections, comments, or constructive criticism welcome

[annie-appreciation]

21 questions tag

i was tagged by my sis @httprjxp, thank u 💛

Rules: answer 21 questions and tag 21 people you want to know better!

Nicknames: anna/annie/ann

Zodiac sign: capricorn

Height: 5′3’’

Hogwarts house: ravenclaw

Last thing i googled: a bakery in my hometown lol

Fav musicians: queen, james bay, coldplay, tom misch, mj, nct 127, taylor swift, onerepublic, tori kelly, lauv, george harrison, led zeppelin, frank ocean, zedd, lany and many others lol

Song stuck in your head: Best Part – Daniel Caesar ft. H.E.R.

Following: 191

Followers: 877 (thx guys sm, i don't even know why u’re following me lmao, ily ✨)

Do you get asks: noo, only when i ask for them haajhaj... but i’d be happy to get more, so feel free if u just need to vent or just chat :)

Amount of sleep: 7/8 hrs

Lucky number: 3, 7, 10

What are you wearing: brown three-quarter pants and very old red mrs.o’brien t-shirt w/ n.24 on it (teen wolf fans will know lmao)

Dream job: sth related to music or cinema

Dream trip: i’d love to visit Canada

Instruments: piano, guitar

Languages: czech, english, german, vietnamese (i also wanna learn french) 

Favourite songs: Somebody To Love – Queen, Fix You – Coldplay, Scars – James Bay, Man in the Mirror – Michael Jackson, Stairway to Heaven – Led Zeppelin, Landslide – Fleetwood Mac , I Was Made for Loving You – Tori Kelly ft. Ed Sheeran, Guiding Light – Foy Vance ft. Ed Sheeran, Here Comes The Sun – The Beatles and so on...

Random fact: lately i’ve been listening to NCT 127 (k-pop group) a lot and i can't stop lmao help

Aesthetic: coffee, big headphones, oversized clothes, messy hair (idk anymore, I'm bad at this, sorry ahajajah)

I tag: @fridarogerina, @drowseyrog, @rhythmsectionbros, @moreofthatdrowse, @drummerqueenrmt, @natromanxoff, @old-fashioned-roger-boy @tenementfunzter (i won’t tag 21 blogs lol) 🌸

[mrsrcbinscn]

Day 20 – Short and Sweet One-Shot: Write ten short-short stories (except I did 13 bc I couldn’t keep all 10 super short at first so I left some longer ones and did 10 shorter lmao)

Cw: two of the vignettes deals with the aftermath of a car accident, a couple mention miscarriage and fertility issues

 Thirteen important memories with Cornelius: Alternatively, thirteen times she knew she scored a gem.

I tried to keep him still p vague and open to interpretation, the Cornelius bits are straight up just Man Who Loves His Wife lmao

Someone come be Cornelius, u get a cute wife

 I. November 19th, 1999 -- The first time Franny sang in Khmer in front of somebody

 “What were you listening to?” Cornelius asked when Franny decided to take a break from studying and set her walkman aside. 

 When she took a break from school, he took a break from paperwork. Turns out, dating semi-secretly (so the media that liked to poke their noses into the young, attractive, genius, businessman’s personal life didn’t snap photos of his girlfriend) was kind of...nice. She cooked dinner at his apartment and they are together often, they went thrift store browsing in weird little towns outside of Nashville. They sat in companionable silence and did their respective schoolwork and business work, and took breaks to chat (or makeout.)

 Franny, despite what her roommate thought, didn’t feel like Cornelius’ dirty little secret. Rather, she felt very treasured by him.

 “Oh, uh. Some Cambodian singer from the 70s. You wouldn’t know him.”

 “That’s really interesting, what does Cambodian sound like?”

 Franny was silent for a moment because she didn’t expect Cornelius to ask. The guys and girls she dated in the past didn’t really care to learn about her Cambodian culture; but she also went through a phase of pushing it down, of acting as American as possible. She didn’t know how to respond at first.

 “Oh, uh...here, you’ll hear the words clearer if I just-” Franny got up to get her guitar from where she’d set it down and played a little bit of Sinn Sisamouth’s ‘Annie’ for him. She abruptly stopped after about a minute, laughing nervously. “I’ve, um. I’ve never sang in Khmer in front ‘a nobody before. ‘Cause who’d wanna hear it, right? Nobody cares.”

 “I do.”

 Franny smiled and idly strummed a few notes on the guitar. “Then I’ll translate Annie for you.”

II. March 16th, 2000 - their first visit to her hometown in Georgia together during spring break

 It wasn’t as if the Framaguccis’ socioeconomic status was a secret from Cornelius. He knew. But it was another thing entirely to physically see how poor his girlfriend’s family was. Granted, they’d come a long way from her early childhood, but their slight upward mobility hadn’t come easy. Even with three adult children, Sophie still worked long hours at the restaurant and Adrien still worked construction with his aching back and joints. 

 And of course, the restaurant had to get hit with two charter busses full of Methodists during Neil’s first visit to Georgia. Without hesitation, but also without looking at Cornelius, Franny grabbed the apron that even had her name embroidered on it from the back and began takin’ orders like she’d never once stopped. 

 Joy, a sweet Cambodian woman who barely spoke any English, took it upon herself to tie an apron around Cornelius’s waist and, to Franny’s horror, smack his ass.  “Dara’s man, you are family, work work!” she said in all the English she needed to make herself clear.

 As they cleaned up the restaurant at closing, Franny avoided his eyes, worried he might look down on her family because now he saw how hard they had to work to make a fraction of the money he made, but she was forced to look at him when he snatched the mop from her hand. 

 “Neil-”

 “Your family is awesome! You were awesome; how’d you not even need a notebook when you took that table of six’s order? What language did you speak to them? I know what Khmer sounds like now, that wasn’t it.”

 “It...it was Vietnamese. A Vietnamese family took my mom in when she was pregnant with me and we lived in their house until I was five. But it’s -- it’s not a big deal or anything, it’s just, you know, it’s super Americanized probably, I’m sure my tones are all kinds of fucked.” Franny rambled on, downplaying it as a defense mechanism. It was cool and classy to speak French or German. Not Southeast Asian languages.

 “That’s so cool, Franny. I didn’t know you spoke three languages!”

 Franny did not blush, how dare you insinuate, but if she did, she would have. (She did.)

 “...four. We all speak French too. My parents really only speak English sometimes to us kids, or out in public. They speak French to each other.” 

III. March 15th, 2001 - the day Cornelius found out Franny had been living in her car since the past August

 Franny stood there blinking owlishly at her boyfriend’s reaction to this latest revelation. 

 “I’m sorry, are you pissed at me because I’m living in my car?”

 “Yes! Franny, why didn’t you tell me? I would’ve asked you to live with me. Actually, I am asking. Right now.”

 “I don’t need you to pity me for being poor, Neil. I chose to live in my car. It was that or drop out of school to afford rent and utility bills, and I won’t quit Belmont.”

 “It isn’t pity, I promise. I know you’re a badass who could handle it, and if not for your own sake, then move in with me for mine. My life depends on it. Think about how quickly our mothers will murder me if they found out I knew you were living in your car and didn’t convince you to move in!”

 “You raise a fair point.” Franny had to admit. “…are you sure you’ll want to share an apartment with me? I have to practice my music a lot. Like a lot a lot.”

 “Lucky me, then.” Cornelius pressed a kiss to her nose, and Franny only giggled and buried her face in his chest in response.

 IV. July 23rd, 2001

Franny ran the numbers again, as if the calculator might come up with a different number if she just punched the numbers in again, this time harder, angrier. No matter how angry she got, she was still coming up $3,000 short for tuition that semester.

 Frustrated, she curled her knees to her chest and cried, still sniffling when Cornelius got in from a business lunch with his mom and some investors.

 “Franny?”

 “I-I’m fine.”” She said quickly, wiping her eyes and sitting upright. “I’m fine.”

 Not believing her, Cornelius looked down at the scratch paper she’d been working from and hummed in understanding. So she was adding up the math for school. He settled into the spot next to her on their bed and as she finished up sniffling, reached into his wallet to write a check.

 “Here, use this.” Cornelius said, handing it to her.

 “No! I c-can’t. I’m not with you for your money, I’m not going to just take your money. I already don’t pay any rent for your nice-ass apartment.”

 “I already know that you aren’t using me for my money. That’s why I’m happy to gift you the tuition money. Please take it, you deserve to finish school.”

 “I l-love you, Neil. I’ll p-pay you back, I--”

 “Don’t even think about it.”

 V. May 6th, 2002 - Franny’s Belmont graduation ceremony

 Darareaksmey Francine Sor Framagucci, BFA in Music Studies with an emphasis in Musical Theatre, and BBA in Music Business with minors in Songwriting and Italian.

 “That’s my fiancée!” Shouted the usually quiet, reserved Cornelius Robinson, as her always boisterous brothers whooped and cheered.

 Cornelius squeezed his future mother-in-law’s hand as she wiped away a proud tear with her other thumb. 

  VI. May 10th, 2002 - The first time Cornelius almost lost her

 When Franny woke up in the hospital, all she thought was ‘I must be dead.’ All she could remember was headlights coming at her head-on and then this moment. It took a good, long while to feel somebody’s hand on hers, and even longer for her eyes to register that they were working to see who it was.

 Cornelius...he should be in Beijing right now, was the only thought in her pounding head. Beijing. Beijing. Why wasn’t he in Beijing? Or was she in Beijing?

 Impossible. She’d been on the interstate, driving from Nashville to Atlanta.

 “B-Beijing.” She whispered, wriggling her hand in his. “Why-?”

 “You’re awake.” Cornelius leaned forward and kissed her forehead. “Thank you for waking up, Fran.”

 “What…? Why are we…? Why am I here?”

 Cornelius gripped her hand tighter and kissed the back of it. “You were...hit head on by a driver speeding going the wrong way. God, Franny. The pictures the police showed us of the accident, we’re so lucky you’re okay. I’m lucky.”

 “...you’re back from China?” She asked slowly, her brain not really paying attention to what he’d just said even though she’d asked. 

 “I never made it.” He admitted sheepishly, scratching at the back of his neck. “Carl’s ready to kill me—ow!”

 Cornelius rubbed his arm where Franny’d just smacked it with what little strength she had in her body, meeting her glare when he made eye contact. 

 “Why would you do that, Neil? Beijing was such a huge opportunity for you, it was all you talked about when I asked about work for months. You were lucky to have even been invited, you said, why would you—” she shut up as if someone pressed the pause button when Cornelius petted her hair and shook his head with the softest little smile. 

 “You’re more important.”

 “No way, shut up.”

 “You are. I couldn’t have kept it together long enough to make a presentation to investors anyway. It felt like I couldn’t breathe until I got to hear your voice just now; so, Beijing be damned.”

 VII. August 23rd, 2002 - The summer Cornelius lost out on millions for her

 For the entire summer he put everything but her on hold, losing out on several important investors.

 “I’m making you lose money. Go to Brussels this week like you’re supposed to.” Franny said with guilty, watery eyes as she lay on her back doing her home physical therapy on the floor.

 “Money isn’t important. You are.” He said it like it was the simplest, easiest choice to make.

 “Cornelius Robinson, money is extremely important, don’t act like being noble feeds people.” She snapped.

 “I have more than enough money, and I can make even more when you’re better. I only have one Franny.”

 Franny groaned low in her throat and pouted at him. “Why are you so cheesy? It makes it hard to be mad at you for putting me before your damn career.”

 “Good.” Cornelius said. “That was the idea.”

 She huffed a laugh through her nose and abruptly paused her PT to grab him and tug him down to her level so she could kiss him.

 VIII. September 17th, 2002 - Cornelius’ wedding gift to Sophie

 Franny had explained Cambodian wedding traditions to Cornelius ahead of their three-day wedding ceremony, including dowry.

 “I’m sure my mother doesn’t expect you to pay a dowry to marry me, and my father certainly doesn’t. But the point of it is some grand gesture of your financial ability.” Franny had explained. “So I think if you like...buy my mom some nice things before the wedding, that’ll show her that you respect her traditions.”

 Franny thought that Cornelius would buy her mother a new washing machine and dryer set. A new kitchen appliance and some jewelry. Something like that. Franny was not expecting her husband-to-be to drop a hundred grand on plane tickets for her entire extended maternal side of the family to fly in from seven different countries for their wedding.

 “Baby, that’s so much money…you totally just could’ve bought her a car for a fifth the cost.”

 “I know, but I just thought...you told me about what happened to Cambodia in the seventies, to your mother, and how you’ve found out who was alive but couldn’t afford to meet. I thought, for the wedding, it can be one big reunion for your family. And what better way to show Sophie that I care about your culture and your family than by making sure the Cambodian ratio at the wedding is super high?”

 “She’s going to love it, Neil. Thank you, thank you, I can’t -- I can’t even explain how much that will mean to her.”

IX. October 12th, 2002 - their wedding

 Franny had been Mrs. Robinson for no more than thirty minutes and already, her husband had found no less than seventeen excuses to say “my wife.” She playfully smacked at him with her bouquet at number seventeen, giggling like a teenager at her first prom, and reminded him they’re supposed to be taking wedding pictures.

 Right, right, he said. For the second time.

 It wasn’t five minutes before he was right back to kissing her as if their parents, entire wedding party, and wedding photographer weren’t right there.

 “Mr. Robinson, she’s gonna kill you!” Franny laughed, batting his hands away when he tried to put his arms around her, but in that way that said ‘keep trying, you gotta catch me.’

 “I’d like to see her try to get through you, Mrs. Robinson,” he muttered in her ear as he slipped his arms around her from behind.

 “Perfect!” shouted the photographer. “Hold that pose!” 

X. April 4th, 2004 - After a year and a half of trying and failing to get pregnant

 “I’m so sorry, I don’t know wh-why it’s not happening for me. What if I can’t ever do this for you?”

 “Hey, hey. Franny no, don’t apologize.” Cornelius said, setting the negative pregnancy test down and pulling Franny into his lap. “Don’t ever apologize for that. You have nothing to be sorry for.”

 “Yes I d-do. We’re trying to have a baby and I can’t manage to just get pregnant. I have literally one job here.”

 “Don’t say that. It--it might just take a while longer, it does for some people. And we’ll be parents soon anyway, we have a meeting with our adoption agent soon, don’t we?” Cornelius reminded her, wiping away her tears. “We both said we’d be happy if all of our kids are adopted. That’s true, right?”

 Franny nodded. It was true, it really was, it was just that...well. Franny’s mother described carrying and having her as the most powerful and humbling experience of her life, and Franny wanted that once, just once. In Franny’s perfect world, she raised a bunch of wonderful children with Cornelius, and only one she gave birth to herself. As someone raised by a father that wasn’t her biological one, who married an adoptee, there was nothing more natural to her than family not being blood-related, and she actually thought it was selfish to birth lots of babies when many already born children needed homes and love. But just one. Just one, that should be okay, right? 

 It shouldn’t be this hard.

 XI. September 17th, 2004 -- After Franny’s first miscarriage

 “I’m sor-”

 Cornelius cut her off with a soft kiss pressed to her cheek. “Do not be sorry. You didn’t do anything wrong. If you feel sorry, then you can...then rest and take care of yourself. That’s what I want you to do.”

 “But y-you were so excited. I couldn’t make it h-happen still, I-”

 “We both were. I’m heartbroken too, but it still isn’t your fault. Come here.” Cornelius gently guided Franny to sit down on the sofa and curled up next to her. “Do you...want to go to the hospital, or see if we can get through this at home?”

 “They might not let me have you with me in the hospital.” Franny said, voice tiny and weak. “And I want you.”

 “Okay. We’ll stay here.”

 XII. Sometime in the 2000s after Sept. 2004 (exact time Wilbur’s adopted is ambiguous until I have a Cornelius or Wilbur; Wilbur was between 6 months-4 years old when adopted )

 “Aw, Cornelius. You’re cryin’, love.” Franny said, reaching over to wipe the stray tear away from her husband’s eye. 

 “I am? Oh, ha, I didn’t notice, I guess I am.”

 “You okay? Glad all the uncertainty is over?” Franny asked, considering they just finalized the adoption of their son not six hours ago. He was napping in the other room. Their little boy, all theirs.

 “I just keep thinking that he will never have to be twelve and not have anybody that wants him.” Cornelius said, referring to his own childhood. “And I’m so glad that he’s ours, and that we wanted him so badly, and I hope he always understands how much we love him.”

 Franny slipped her arms around Cornelius’ waist, resting her cheek against his back. “It must have been difficult for you, growing up like that.”

 “It was. I wish I could tell twelve year old Lewis to keep his spirits up. If only he knew he’d get great parents soon, and grow up to marry a woman like you that never should’ve looked at me twice, and then our son...he wouldn’t believe it. My life is better than I ever imagined it could be. Thanks to you.”

XIII. March 3rd, 2021 - Sovanna’s birth

 “I’m sorry I threatened to kill you a bunch of times,” Franny mumbled as her husband held their newborn daughter. “In my defense, I was giving birth.”

 Cornelius smiled at her, finally chancing a look away from little Sovanna. “Thank you for sparing me, dear. It’s really for your best interest. Can’t worship the ground you walk on if you kill me, can I?”

 “Oh, I’m elevated to god status now? Damn, should’ve explained that to my death-trap of a uterus five pregnancies ago. Maybe it would’ve behaved.”

 Cornelius’ smile faltered a little, because when Franny joked about her pregnancy losses like this, he always took a second to determine why. Was this a dark joke about a subject she currently wasn’t hurting over? Or was she hurting over them? Franny’s tired grin indicated it was the former. 

 “Kind of rude of it to only get its life together in our forties.” Cornelius joked back.

 Franny laughed and rolled over onto her side to get a better look at her husband and the baby. “I know, it was like, ‘you want a baby so bad? Then be the oldest parents at the preschool by at least fifteen years and have nothing in common with your kid’s friends’ parents.’ Damn, I guess we have to actually keep liking each other for another eighteen years, because no new friends for us.”

 “Just like? Ah. I’m overachieving again, because I think I’m in love with you.”

 “Oh my god, me too! In love with me, I mean. You’re all right too.”

 “That’s my rating on Yelp, actually. ‘He’s all right.’”

[secretradiobrooklyn]

May Day Edition | 5.1.21

Secret Radio | 5.1.21 | Hear it here.

1. Zia - “Helel Yos”

This song has been in our heads in a big way the last few weeks. Zia was my first exposure to pre-revolutionary Iranian rock  — sometimes called “psych rock,” though I can’t tell if that’s a designation he would make himself. But to be fair, I have no idea what he’s going for. Nonetheless, those little whistles he does get under my skin and into my brain. I wake up in the morning singing “helel yoza, hella hella helel yoza”… This is from the late ‘60s, I believe. The whole album (also called “Helel Yos”) is pretty excellent, and includes the song “Khofrium” from our last broadcast. A recent favorite and highly recommended.

2. Shin Joong Hyun - “Pushing through the Fog” 

Somehow stumbled on this collection of South Korean music, and it has been mesmerizing. Shin Joong Hyun is a great example of something I love discovering over and over again: someone working within a language and a genre, but also expressing a completely unique personal style that extends beyond those general qualities and into startling specifics. This song is from “Beautiful Rivers and Mountains: The Psychedelic Rock Sound of South Korea’s Shin Joong Hyun 1958-74,” which blows my mind, because the tones, and especially the bass and drums, sound so completely of the moment. It’s sold out at Light In The Attic’s store, so we’ll be keeping our eyes out for it in the wild, because these are going to be some crucial liner notes. The brief version on their site describes him as a guitarist, songwriter, producer, arranger, and talent developer. He began by performing for US troops in Korea post active war time, became a bewitching guitarist and songwriter, then started producing other bands in the region, and a string of hits developed. It sounds like his story includes a really harsh period of intrusion and disruption by the government… but as far as I can tell he survived to the current day, and even helped oversee this collection.

3. The Traces - “Je t’aime moi non plus” - “Thai Beat A Go Go Vol 2”

Ummm… I would LOVE to know what words they’re singing. This chummy Thai version of Gainsbourg’s super sensual “Je t’aime, moi non plus” is such a weird listening experience. I think one of the singers is either drunk or hearing the song for a first or second pass. What are they saying?!

4. Annie Philippe - “On m’a toujours dit”

I really love the energy and style of this track and many of the Annie Philippe songs I’ve heard, which makes it aggravating that the first thing one finds online in English about Philippe is a condescending, limp writeup on her by Richie Unterberger that tries its best to ignore how delightful her voice is and how pleasurable the arrangements are — luckily the dude mentions that Paul Mariat worked on her albums, who also arranged Charles Aznavour. I love the florid colors of French pop from the ‘60s with hothouse arrangements and wide-flung voices. The ebullient drums and electric guitar, the confident harmonies and tucked in little organ and horn licks are all pure joy.

5. T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou - “Houton Kan Do Go Me” 

While we were in the Illinois woods we received some very welcome records from Germany’s Analog Africa label which included “The Skeletal Essences of Afro-Funk,” a collection of songs by pretty much our favorite band in the world, T.P. Orchestre. These songs that explore some of the facets of the band that “Echoes Hypnotique” and “The Vodoun Effect” — both gorgeous, keystone records — hadn’t gotten to yet. The language is Fon, the style is Jerk, and the composer (though not the singer, I think) is Bentho Gustave, T.P.’s bassist. pretty sure the singer is Lohento Eskill.

- Hailu Mergia & The Walias - “Musicawi Silt”

The Walias is the band that Hailu Mergia was in when he first came to America. I seem to remember a story that they were disappointed with the trip, went home to Ethiopia and broke up, but Mergia stayed and kept developing his keyboard style, which did a few decades later (!) actually win him wide recognition and acclaim. This is some of his earlier work, not in the director’s seat, and you can hear so much of Mergia’s style woven into the band’s arrangements. I love how it sounds like he’s just playing pure electric current — it barely sounds like an organ to me, more like uncut groove tone.

6. “Newsies” clip

In celebration of May Day, we present this inspiring tale of unions forming in the streets of New York. 

7. Sexe a Pile - “Pas Méchant”

Another recent record score, this one from our other most favorite label, Born Bad Records in France: “Paink: French Punk Anthems 1977-1982.” One thing I love about this song is that the chorus always makes me think of “High Class” by the Buzzards, a song that never got nearly enough love as far as I’m concerned.

8. The Replacements - “Customer”

Dave got me thinking about the Replacements and before I knew it we were deep into “Sorry Ma, Forgot to Take Out the Trash.” So wild and loose and pissed off and sincere the whole time. You can really hear Westerberg yearn to be great but also sneer at himself for taking something seriously. It used to sound so unhinged to me but now it has become an album about being young and scared of yourself 

9. Plearn Promdan - “Ruk Kum Samong”

Well, this was something we didn’t see coming — the Thai music we’ve heard up to now has been more ’50s influenced. It sounds like a four-piece rock band surrounded by a drum circle. This is part of what’s apparently known as Luk Thung underground. There’s been some very good stuff so far, I look forward to finding out more. 

10. T.P. Orchestre - “Azanlokpe”

I got a little obsessed with T.P. Orchestre for a while there, and was trying to listen to every single recording that Discogs offered — which is a LOT, because they were super prolific. This is one of my favorite finds so far. I wish I could say which singer this is; it was noted as Melome Clément but I don’t think that’s him. So many talented people in this band!

11. Francis Bebey - “Super Jingle”

Francis Bebey contains multitudes. I’m pretty sure he records all of these parts himself. I think he’s just a master of rhythm — all of the instruments weave a tapestry that he can then cavort upon. The body of the song is so hypnotizing, the lead so akimbo. 

12. Dalida - “J’ai revé”

One of the highlights of the 2017 St. Louis International Film Fest was the biopic of her life. This is early Dalida. As far as Paige understands, she’s the French Lady Gaga for people who were clubbing in the ’70s and ’80s. The story of her life has some really sad shit, but this take on Bobby Darin’s “Dream Lover” is full of life.

- “Newsies” reprise

Radical sincerity sometimes requires references to musicals.

- Petch Pintong - “Soul Lum Piern”

I love this track and know nothing about it except that it was collected on “Thai Beat A Go Go Vol 4.” Those collections have turned out to be full of riches!

13. Atomic Forest - “Obsession ’77 (Fast)”

OK, these guys seem really interesting. They’re an Indian psych-funk band, which was apparently totally unheard of there, and they only released a single album — and that one only after they broke up. Because that album is full of great stuff, most notably (at least to me) this track, their story is almost too perfectly suited to the obsessions of vinyl collectors worldwide. Now-Again Records re-released the album in 2011, and we ran across it just a couple months ago. I really enjoy the sense of narrative in the song — what’s happening in the foreground keeps evolving and remaining legitimately interesting.

14. Metak - “Da Mi Je Biti Morski Pas”

I’m proud to say that these dedicated rockers are Croatian, and this track from 1980 rocks like a seafoam T-top Stingray. This is from a 7” with “Rock’n’Roller” on the flip.

15. Mai Lan - “Les Huîtres”

Paige found this amazing playlist on Spotify years ago, and this is finally the way she started getting into more contemporary French music. It sounds like she’s from a musical and artistic French-Vietnamese family. “Les Huîtres” is from around 2008. Kind of feels like 

16. VIS Idoli - “Maljciki”

We found a video of this Yugoslavian ska while looking for something else entirely. I did learn that this is political ska, and that they were frowned upon by the government. One account has them being indulged by the government; another has them under threat of punishment. I do love knowing that ska is a political form and not just a genre. I have no idea how they would feel about the Croatian rockers a few tracks back, and I hope none of them did any harm to one another other during the terrible ‘90s. 

17. Para One, Arthur Simonini - “La Jeune Fille en Feu” - “Portrait of a Woman on Fire” score

Did you see “Portrait of a Woman on Fire”? We highly recommend it, for a lot of reasons but definitely for the passage of this song. It sounds great here, but at night, by firelight, with all the nuns and farmwomen on the island? 

18. The Space Lady - “Ghost Riders in the Sky”

- Sleepy Kitty - “Western Antagonist Reflection”

19. Mikyas Chernet - “Ziyoze”

Marc, this is the song I was talking about stepping into the Teddy Afro position. It’s definitely not the same, but you can hear the modern Ethiopian pop feel running through it. It helps that I first heard it while picking up an order from our favorite Ethiopian in STL, which is also where we first heard Teddy Afro. The dancers are on POINT in the video, and they’re rockin a couple of new styles that I hadn’t seen yet.

20. Nazir Ali - “Lad Pyar Aur Beti”

Listen to the giant smiles in their voices! This is from a very recent compilation. That female voice has to be Nahid Aktar, or at least it sounds just like her; I think the protagonist-sounding male voice is Ali’s. There is a brief appearance from that Oscar the Grouch-sounding guy from last episode’s Aktar song. It’s so cool how the song shifts into new mode after new mode as it goes. 

21. Nathalie - “L’Amour Nous Repond”

22. The Fall - “L.A.”

This period of The Fall is surely our favorite — wherever Brix E. went, the songs were great. And now, with vaccines coursing through our systems, we can feel our thoughts casting their way to LA and San Francisco…

23. Akaba Man & The Nigie Rokets - “Ta Gha Hunsimwen” 

Analog Africa’s most recent release is “Edo Funk Explosion Vol. 1,” with tracks from the late ‘70s and ‘80s in Nigeria’s Benin City. Akaba Man is described as “the philosopher king of Edo funk.” The whole album is full of good tracks that only get better with repeated listens. This one has a bed of sounds that could happily go on for hours or days.

24. Gérard Manset - “Entrez dans le rêve”

Paige: “If you ever want to hear Lou Reed sing in French, this is the best we’re gonna get.” 

- Johnny Guitar - “Bangkok by Night”

We heard the “Shadow Music of Thailand” album a while back but haven’t dipped into it for too long. This Santo & Johnny style reverbed-out dream of the ‘50s lives eternally in Thai psych guitar.

25. David Bowie - “When I Live My Dream”

We do not condone the killing of any species of dragon, and I can only trust that neither dragon nor giant was harmed in the making of this fantasy.

[disregardcanon]

i was tagged by @what-may-be-perceived for this cool alphabet ask meme :) 

A - Tell me something about yourself. 

my first name was almost krista

B - Favorite non-Latin script?  

i think that the vietnamese alphabet is so pretty 

V - Tell me one obscure fact you know, about anything.

teddy roosevelt named his rough riders after buffalo bill’s western show featuring annie oakley (i recently did a lot of annie oakley research so that’s the first thing that comes to mind) 

G - To what extent are people responsible for their actions?  

i tend to determine that on a case by case basis 

D - Name one good thing that’s happened.

i found a cool song called queer gospel today!

É - Name something or someone fictional you’d like to exist. 

i would like the force to exist but on the condition that i get to be force sensitive 

Ž - Name one thing you were taught by experience. 

sight reading music. like god, that has been an up hill battle but i’m getting much better about it 

Ż - What do you feel passionate about?

people as individuals and a collective, teaching, literature, and music

Z - Opinion on global warming. 

real and something we should stop 

I - Which is harder: Math or English? 

math for sure

Yi - Would you describe yourself as Extra™? 

oh yeessss

J - Is recycling necessary?   

i think that it’s important to do my own bit to try to make the world better, so that’s a yes 

K - Are you into “do it yourself” crafts? 

yup! 

L - Are you a people-person? 

i think so? it’s a little hard to tell sometimes haha

M - Do you care what others think?    

yup, a lot more than i’d like most of the time

N - What’s something you want to share with everyone? 

about a week ago i interacted with a group of girls named michelle, willow and tara so together we made sarah michelle (gellar) and willow and tara. what a buffy kind of day 

O - What are your pronouns? 

she, her and herself

P - How do you relax? 

i’ll either kick back in my arm chair and watch a show or movie or i’ll curl up in bed and read fic on my phone :) 

R - Are you introverted, extroverted, or ambiverted? 

i’d say i’m ambiverted. i need to have an up-down sort of thing. when i’m not around people for too long it tires me out but when i’m around people TOO LONG it also tires me out

S - Do you think before you speak? 

is it bad to say no? a lot of the time i tend to think out loud and that makes me seem like i think fast and am eloquent except for when the thought’s half-formed or not in any way a good one and it makes me look like a dumbass 

T - What’s one thing you’re certain is true? 

i would not have become a writer who actually finishes things without an outlet like ao3 where i can receive feedback. i’ve come up with ideas and written snippets of stories as far back as i can remember but i never actually finished something until i had an apparatus for feedback 

U - Name one thing you wish was common knowledge. 

i’m not sure it counts but i wish the US had better “foreign” language education

F - Is it important to speak more than one language? 

oh wow i didn’t even see this before i answered the last one. YES! i think that it’s a very important skill that i have no, personally, been able to cultivate beyond a pretty elementary knowledge of spanish and some passing phrases in other languages

H - Would you say you’re impulsive? 

not really, except on the “thinking out loud” front

W - Name a loan word in your native language, and tell where it’s from.  

schadenfreude is from german and that’s a fave :) 

ŠČ - Are you easily caught off guard?   

yeah, i would say so 

Ć - Know anybody Jewish? 

yup

Č - Have you ever seen or read How To Eat Fried Worms? 

nope i have not 

Š - Does silence freak you out? 

silence as an awkward lull in conversation freaks me out, but silence at the library or when i just want a break from making my ears hear things is a relief

Ye - Ever eaten lamb?

once, and i can’t say i liked it 

Ñ - Any plans for tomorrow? 

no plans but taking an exam and attending a dress rehearsal 

Th - Would you care to learn Greek? 

definitely! i would learn any language if i had the time and the drive

Ě - What’s your stance on marriage?      

i think that it can be really important to people, it is an important legal right that brings certain benefits, and that it should be available to all consenting adult pairs that would like to marry each other (at least pairs, i don’t know the logistics of poly marriage yet and haven’t thought about that yet and whether or not multiple marriages or marriages with more than two parties is feasible) but i also feel like because it’s just a construct and if they don’t WANT to get married couples shouldn’t feel obligated to. 

i don’t feel like it should be your be all end all if you don’t want it to be. 

i also feel since it’s a legal institution people shouldn’t feel obligated to keep it solely between romantic partners! if you want to marry your best friend for the benefits or to make a life commitment to them, i say go for it! marriage is what you make it and it’s mainly an agreement so like, agree to what you want and just be happy 

X - Does anyone in your family have a different native language than you?  

nope. you have to go out to great great grandparents on any side of my family before you get to people who didn’t speak english as a first language 

Ç - How often is your name misspelt?

about a third of the time people spell it as sara 

tagging @khaki-da @titaniumsansa @marielogan and anyone else who’d like to do it! 

[bisokubira1995]

This Is Us producers drop hints about Kate‘s secret pregnancy, Randall‘s birth mother

When you last caught up with the Pearsons seven weeks ago, Kate had something important to say. The closing minutes of the Nov. 17 episode of This Is Us showed the mother of one who hoped to make it two having an extremely difficult conversation with her husband, Toby (Chris Sullivan). Kate (Chrissy Metz) started to reveal something that she had never talked about before - with anyone - that she had gotten pregnant by her abusive boyfriend, Marc (Austin Abrams). Questions loomed over the flashback of teen Kate (Hannah Zeile): Did Kate wind up having an abortion? Is that why she had a strong reaction when Ellie (Annie Funke) asked if Kate was judging her when Ellie revealed that she almost had an abortion? Is it possible that young Kate wound up miscarrying shortly after getting pregnant? Or - in the most outlandish and least plausible scenario - did she hide her pregnancy for nine months, have the baby and then give it up for adoption, adding to the Pearsons' rich history in that department?This exclusive clip from the episode answers that mystery; it was an abortion. This Is Us exec producers Elizabeth Berger and Isaac Aptaker aren't divulging exactly what you're going to see in tonight's installment of the time-hopping family drama - just that you are about to watch a formative and essential chapter in the life of Kate Pearson. "It's a really important episode in learning a little bit more about the whole psychology of this woman, Maxisys Ultra price. " Berger tells EW. "We've seen so much about her father's death, and we've seen some stuff about Marc, and we've hinted that that relationship had even more darkness and complicatedness to it than we've shown thus far. This is just a really important puzzle piece. When you step back and you look at Kate Pearson as a whole, this episode sheds some light, some clarity on everything that she's been through."And clarity comes into focus extremely early in this "really beautiful" episode, according to Aptaker. "This isn't going to be a lingering mystery," he says. "We're not going to draw this out. We pick up immediately into that conversation with Kate Toby right when we come back from the break and then we're going to explain the story of what happened." (It doesn't involve an ovulation test, only a pregnancy test, as the producers confirm here.)Marc - that toxic, mercurial record-store manager who was Kate's first real boyfriend and the last person that Rebecca (Mandy Moore) wanted to see hanging around - will return, as teased in the trailer for the episode. "He factors into the story in a big way," says Berger. "This will give people a greater understanding on the role that that seminal relationship had, and the impact it had on Kate over the years, and also give people some really, really great closure on that relationship as well."Also on the short list of things to be explored: The moment and manner of connection between Randall (Sterling K. Brown) and Hai (Vien Hong). As you recall, the recently introduced Vietnamese grandfather saw Randall's viral video, which mentioned the late William Hill (Ron Cephas Jones), who fathered Randall with Laurel (Jennifer C. Holmes). Randall was told by William that Laurel died soon after giving birth to him, but now viewers know that she survived past that day, given the photos in Hai's home. How long she lived and if she's still alive are questions that will be answered shortly. "[What] this Vietnamese gentleman has to do with Randall and his life is something that we're going to be addressing early on when we return," says Aptaker. "It sends Randall on a really, really exciting journey for this next chunk of our season."Indeed, next week's episode will send Randall on a mission to learn more about his family tied to his birth mother, somewhat akin to season 1's "Memphis," which sent Randall on a journey with William. How might Randall handle the news that Laurel lived a life beyond what he knew? "Identity and the search for his identity is such a driving force for Randall throughout our entire series," says Berger. "We have some incredibly beautiful, exciting stuff coming up as he continues to piece together his past and his histor...

[easyfoodnetwork]

There’s No Wrong Way to Help Out Right Now

Hospital workers at Lincoln Medical Center in The Bronx, NY | Melanie Dunea

From the Editor: Everything you missed in food news last week

This post originally appeared on May 2, 2020 in Amanda Kludt’s newsletter “From the Editor,” a roundup of the most vital news and stories in the food world each week. Read the archives and subscribe now.

Last week, I helped my friend Melanie do some sweets drops at hospitals around the city as part of her Treats Help initiative. It was a nice way to spend a half day outside of my house, ostensibly spreading good cheer to people who need it.

To be completely honest, when I first saw all the efforts of people like Melanie and Frontline Foods and various other efforts connecting restaurant food to hospital workers, I wondered if it was the best use of time and resources. Shouldn’t we focus all our energy on feeding the poor and unemployed, the people lining up at the food banks? The healthcare workers need personal protective equipment, not brownies.

But after talking to people who are running these operations and reading feedback from doctors and nurses, I am very much on board. If doctors right now are our front-line fighters, if they are the troops in this war they didn’t sign up for, and a cookie from Mah Ze Dahr makes their day even two percent better, we should give them a cookie. If a rice bowl saves them from meal planning at home or figuring out grocery delivery, we should give them a rice bowl. In this time of isolation, it’s a small way to convey to these people who are putting their lives on the line for us that we appreciate them. And giving isn’t a zero-sum game.

Right now, Mel is trying a) raise more money to keep the project going, b) include more hospitals that might not be getting as much attention, and c) include more bakeries that might not be on her radar. We were discussing last week how, with a lot of these charity efforts that help the restaurant/bakery/coffee shop while providing for people in need, more often than not the known, connected chefs and owners are the ones included. It’s noble to participate in these efforts. It’s also a privilege to be able to. So if you know anyone I should connect her to, let me know (amanda@eater.com).

On Eater

Annie Ray

Still Here ATX is a photo project based in Austin

— On the reopening front, Texas restaurants can operate at 25 percent capacity as of yesterday; many Austin restaurateurs are not happy about it; and Dallas diners are already packed in their patios. Here’s the latest out of Atlanta, and casinos in Vegas are compiling 800-step reopening plans that include EMT teams, thermal cameras at entrances, and masks in every hotel room.

— While before we were worried about indepdendent restaurateurs getting access to stimulus funds, we should now worry about any of them even being able to spend it, given the unrealistic restrictions.

— Opening at a lower capacity is a death sentence for many restaurants.

— Many owners, including New York’s Gabriel Stulman, are saying they’ll go bankrupt if they can’t get rent relief.

— And if you think restaurants have it bad, imagine how hard it is to be a bar owner right now.

— President Trump is ordering the meat processing plants around the country to stay open, and the workers unions aren’t having it.

— While cities around the country loosen liquor laws to allow restaurants to bring in more revenue, New Orleans is taking an uncharacteristically tough stance.

— On the delivery front, Seattle followed NY, LA, Chicago, and SF to consider commission caps to delivery apps.

— Permanent closures this week include seminal New York cocktail bar Pegu Club, LA’s beautiful new upscale destination Auburn, Charleston’s McCrady’s and Minero, and Wolfgang Puck’s Dallas rooftop restaurant. Meanwhile Oakland’s Nyum Bai and Chicago’s Fat Rice are permanently transitioning into a fast casual spot and a grocer, respectively.

— Amazon is extending its work from home policy until October, impacting restaurants that serve its workers in Seattle.

Andria Lo

Egg coffee in SF

— If you miss the sounds of restaurants, consider streaming ambient restaurant sounds.

— Bill Buford fans should check out this excerpt from his new book Dirt, wherein he immerses himself in the culinary world of Lyon.

— This week I learned about Vietnamese egg coffee (cà phê trứng), which is somewhat growing in popularity in SF.

— How NYC’s Chinese food delivery services prepped for a months-long shutdown back in February.

— A ranking of grocery store frozen pizza.

— How social distancing is affecting Ramadan traditions this year.

— A novel way restaurants in Latin America are raising money to stay afloat: memberships where diners get special access to future tables for $20/month fees.

— And finally, we have a new staff writer (!), Elazar Sontag, and he wrote about chef Lucas Sin, who just so happens to be my favorite person to watch cook on Instagram right now.

This week on the podcast

Daniel and I talk to two different restaurateurs who actually got stimulus loans to hear about how (and if!) they’re going to spend the money. David Tobias runs a restaurant, coffee bar, and nightlife/event space in Lower Manhattan, and Naomi Pomeroy owns a restaurant and a bar in Portland, Oregon.

Off Eater

General gist of this is: COVID-19 will destroy the fabric of cities, making them undesirable, thus lowering rent, thus bringing back the cool businesses that made them great in the first place. [The Atlantic]

“If you actually want to create global pandemics, then build factory farms. [Vox.com]

Bless this twitter thread telling us what our favorite NYC grocery stores say about us. [@shitqueen]

Chef Omar Tate on how “there’s always been a pandemic here on the ground” in Black America. [Esqure]

Cool: We still don’t know how Covid-19 is killing us. [NYMag]

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2KX1bOu https://ift.tt/2xC4d80

Hospital workers at Lincoln Medical Center in The Bronx, NY | Melanie Dunea

From the Editor: Everything you missed in food news last week

This post originally appeared on May 2, 2020 in Amanda Kludt’s newsletter “From the Editor,” a roundup of the most vital news and stories in the food world each week. Read the archives and subscribe now.

Last week, I helped my friend Melanie do some sweets drops at hospitals around the city as part of her Treats Help initiative. It was a nice way to spend a half day outside of my house, ostensibly spreading good cheer to people who need it.

To be completely honest, when I first saw all the efforts of people like Melanie and Frontline Foods and various other efforts connecting restaurant food to hospital workers, I wondered if it was the best use of time and resources. Shouldn’t we focus all our energy on feeding the poor and unemployed, the people lining up at the food banks? The healthcare workers need personal protective equipment, not brownies.

But after talking to people who are running these operations and reading feedback from doctors and nurses, I am very much on board. If doctors right now are our front-line fighters, if they are the troops in this war they didn’t sign up for, and a cookie from Mah Ze Dahr makes their day even two percent better, we should give them a cookie. If a rice bowl saves them from meal planning at home or figuring out grocery delivery, we should give them a rice bowl. In this time of isolation, it’s a small way to convey to these people who are putting their lives on the line for us that we appreciate them. And giving isn’t a zero-sum game.

Right now, Mel is trying a) raise more money to keep the project going, b) include more hospitals that might not be getting as much attention, and c) include more bakeries that might not be on her radar. We were discussing last week how, with a lot of these charity efforts that help the restaurant/bakery/coffee shop while providing for people in need, more often than not the known, connected chefs and owners are the ones included. It’s noble to participate in these efforts. It’s also a privilege to be able to. So if you know anyone I should connect her to, let me know (amanda@eater.com).

On Eater

Annie Ray

Still Here ATX is a photo project based in Austin

— On the reopening front, Texas restaurants can operate at 25 percent capacity as of yesterday; many Austin restaurateurs are not happy about it; and Dallas diners are already packed in their patios. Here’s the latest out of Atlanta, and casinos in Vegas are compiling 800-step reopening plans that include EMT teams, thermal cameras at entrances, and masks in every hotel room.

— While before we were worried about indepdendent restaurateurs getting access to stimulus funds, we should now worry about any of them even being able to spend it, given the unrealistic restrictions.

— Opening at a lower capacity is a death sentence for many restaurants.

— Many owners, including New York’s Gabriel Stulman, are saying they’ll go bankrupt if they can’t get rent relief.

— And if you think restaurants have it bad, imagine how hard it is to be a bar owner right now.

— President Trump is ordering the meat processing plants around the country to stay open, and the workers unions aren’t having it.

— While cities around the country loosen liquor laws to allow restaurants to bring in more revenue, New Orleans is taking an uncharacteristically tough stance.

— On the delivery front, Seattle followed NY, LA, Chicago, and SF to consider commission caps to delivery apps.

— Permanent closures this week include seminal New York cocktail bar Pegu Club, LA’s beautiful new upscale destination Auburn, Charleston’s McCrady’s and Minero, and Wolfgang Puck’s Dallas rooftop restaurant. Meanwhile Oakland’s Nyum Bai and Chicago’s Fat Rice are permanently transitioning into a fast casual spot and a grocer, respectively.

— Amazon is extending its work from home policy until October, impacting restaurants that serve its workers in Seattle.

Andria Lo

Egg coffee in SF

— If you miss the sounds of restaurants, consider streaming ambient restaurant sounds.

— Bill Buford fans should check out this excerpt from his new book Dirt, wherein he immerses himself in the culinary world of Lyon.

— This week I learned about Vietnamese egg coffee (cà phê trứng), which is somewhat growing in popularity in SF.

— How NYC’s Chinese food delivery services prepped for a months-long shutdown back in February.

— A ranking of grocery store frozen pizza.

— How social distancing is affecting Ramadan traditions this year.

— A novel way restaurants in Latin America are raising money to stay afloat: memberships where diners get special access to future tables for $20/month fees.

— And finally, we have a new staff writer (!), Elazar Sontag, and he wrote about chef Lucas Sin, who just so happens to be my favorite person to watch cook on Instagram right now.

This week on the podcast

Daniel and I talk to two different restaurateurs who actually got stimulus loans to hear about how (and if!) they’re going to spend the money. David Tobias runs a restaurant, coffee bar, and nightlife/event space in Lower Manhattan, and Naomi Pomeroy owns a restaurant and a bar in Portland, Oregon.

Off Eater

General gist of this is: COVID-19 will destroy the fabric of cities, making them undesirable, thus lowering rent, thus bringing back the cool businesses that made them great in the first place. [The Atlantic]

“If you actually want to create global pandemics, then build factory farms. [Vox.com]

Bless this twitter thread telling us what our favorite NYC grocery stores say about us. [@shitqueen]

Chef Omar Tate on how “there’s always been a pandemic here on the ground” in Black America. [Esqure]

Cool: We still don’t know how Covid-19 is killing us. [NYMag]

from Eater - All https://ift.tt/2KX1bOu via Blogger https://ift.tt/2xvuzs6

[spacebearviii]

What did we learn from Vanity Fair?

This week’s issue of Vanity Fair is one of the first times the press was actually allowed to go in depth into The Last Jedi. The hype train has officially started rolling, so let’s see what David Kamp and Annie Leibovitz have to say about Episode VIII, and how this measures up to what we know so far!

Ahch-To

The ‘beehive huts’ on Dingle Peninsula are meant to be a “little Jedi village.” “Luke...has been living in this village among an indigenous race of caretaker creatures.” Of course, we know that these creatures are the birdlike beasts that I thought were Convorees. However, it turns out they’re actually called Porgs, and they’re a new creature in the Star Wars universe.

Poe and Paige

”Poe Dameron...[is] back in action, coaching a gunner named Paige, a new character played by a Vietnamese actress named Veronica Ngo.” Paige is, presumably, Paige Tico, since the article says she’s the sister of Kelly Marie Tran’s character Rose Tico.

(Also look at how mischievous Kelly Marie Tran looks in this photo. She’s ready to go Star Wars-in’ around the MF galaxy.)

First Order ship

As you can see, Phasma’s spear rumor came true. And it really does look killer.

There is a scene somewhere in the film where  Hux, “played with spittle-flecked relish by Domhnall Gleeson” (I guess he spits a lot), looks out the window of a First Order starcraft.

DJ

Benicio Del Toro’s character is called DJ, but not in the film. Actually, he’s not called anything in the film. I wonder how that plays out. Rian Johnson said “you’ll see--there’s a reason why we call him DJ.” He is “a ‘shady character’ of unclear allegiances.”

Rose

Rose has a sister named Paige, who is a gunner in the Resistance. But she must leave Paige behind to go behind enemy lines on a mission with Finn. It looks like the rumors may be true, and Rose and Finn could sneak into the ‘Mega Destroyer’ yet.

Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo

Look! At! That! Costume! Holdo was the one character that I had a lot of trouble visualizing in my head. I was so confused when I heard ‘pink hair’ in relation to her character but it looks awesome. Plus we have a full name and title for Laura Dern’s character: Vice Admiral Amilyn Holdo. It seems she is not at the top of the ranks, but if the rest of the rumors about her character are true, she will become the interim leader of the Resistance during the film. But that won’t be a good thing.

Canto Bight

Rose and Finn also journey to Canto Bight. Here’s what Rian Johnson had to say: “A Star Wars Monte Carlo-type environment, a little James Bond-ish, a little To Catch a Thief. It was an interesting challenge, portraying luxury and wealth in this universe.” So much of Star Wars has been junkyards and deserts, so Johnson wanted to go the opposite direction. “I was thinking, O.K., let’s go ultra-glamour. Let’s create a playground, basically, for rich assholes.”

The Slap

This wonderful mom ^^^ slapped the shit out of Oscar Isaac. “We did this scene where Carrie has to slap me. I think we did 27 takes in all, and Carrie leaned into it every time, man. She loved hitting me. Rian found such a wonderful way of working with her, and I think she really relished it.”

Process

Some quotes from writer/director Rian Johnson on working on The Last Jedi.

To start working on VIII, Johnson wrote a list of the main characters’ names, then brainstormed ways in which each of their characters would be tested the most. “J.J. and Larry and Michael set everybody up in a really evocative way in VII and started them on a trajectory. I guess I saw it as the job of this middle chapter to challenge all of those characters—let’s see what happens if we knock the stool out from under them.”

Rian Johnson ”didn’t want this to be a dirge, a heavy-osity movie. So one thing I’ve tried really hard to do is keep the humor in there, to maintain the feeling, amid all the heavy operatic moments, that you’re on a fun ride.”

Johnson, “in preparation for Episode VIII, steeped himself in World War II movies like Henry King’s Twelve O’Clock High and ‘funky 60s samurai stuff’ like Kihachi Okamoto’s Kill! and Hideo Gosha’s Three Outlaw Samurai.”

But, as filmmaking is a collaborative effort, it wasn’t all Rian. He worked with Lucasfilm’s 11 person story group. Kiri Hart, a development executive, explains, “The whole team reads each draft of the screenplay as it evolves, and we try, as much as we can, to smooth out anything that isn’t connecting.”

Rian Johnson never felt suffocated by this group’s presence. In fact, he was surprised by how much leeway he was given. He even moved up to San Francisco for six weeks as he wrote so he could collaborate with them more. He met with the group twice a week during this time. But he also had another writing partner: the incomparable Carrie Fisher.

“After I had a draft, I would sit down with her [Fisher] when I was working on re-writing. Sitting with her on her bed, in her insane bedroom with all this crazy modern art around us, TCM on the TV, a constant stream of Coca-Cola, and Gary the dog slobbering at her feet.”

I absolutely loved Johnson’s past films like Looper and Brick, and I’m 100% on board with the approach that he’s taking with the next Star Wars film. Honestly, from a sheer filmmaking standpoint, Episode VIII is the Star Wars movie I’m most excited about (sorry Christopher Miller, Phil Lord, and Colin Trevorrow). If you haven’t yet, give the Vanity Fair article a peek to really get hyped for more Star Wars!

[tinymixtapes]

Interview: High aura’d

When you listen to any of John Kolodij’s releases under the High aura’d moniker, American Primitive mixes with scorched blues rippers, subtle drone freakouts, and dark ambient excursions. For fans both old and new, Kolodij’s latest LP, and first for Seattle’s Debacle, No River Long Enough Doesn’t Contain a Bend, is as accomplished a record as he’s ever released. Save for the final track, featuring Angel Olsen’s vocals, No River is an understated showcase of Kolodij’s acoustic and electric guitar instrumentals, coupled with adventurous experimental song-scapes. In the run-up to the release of No River, John and I emailed back and forth from his current home base of Ohio, discussing the history of the project, his work as a chef, and how his home state’s natural beauty inspired the new record. --- I want to focus primarily on the here and now of the High aura’d project, but tell me a little bit about yourself, and how the project came into existence? I’m 44 years old. I grew up in Trumansburg, NY, right outside of Ithaca. The Finger Lakes — what people toss off as Upstate. I’m married to a wonderful, creative woman, who is also the mother of our three girls. High aura’d began as a duo, but then quickly became a solo path. I had always been in bands, and still clung to the idea that I needed someone to bounce ideas off, and fill space with. Due to an imminent tour with Barn Owl, and some new technology, I quickly fleshed out my ideas and was able to get the density of sound I wanted by myself. Listeners have the High aura’d discography to sink their teeth into, but what is your view on the evolution of the project? Any releases that would have surprised you when you first started? It’s purely an evolution. My earliest work was more meditative in conception, and I’ve been feeling a need to reclaim that, but again, it all represents who I am, and was at that time. That day. I don’t think I’m surprised by anything I’ve recorded. I’m truly grateful some people enjoy listening to my work, and I always will be. I’ve been very lucky to work with some fine people and have their support and encouragement. Finally hearing it on vinyl was the kicker… It has this warmth that I was always hoping to hear; and the art, which is photography of mine, but treated by Kevin Gan Yuen and incorporating the work of William Cody Watson; it’s a beautiful, singular package that I hope will make people want to own it. In a 2015 interview with Decoder, your previous collaborator Mike Shiflet mentioned that you were a chef. I would love to hear more about it. Are you still a chef, and what kind of foods were/are you specializing in? I was a professional cook. Chefs are owners. This all comes from the military system of rank. Chef being “chief.” I did not attend a cooking school, but I did unpaid stages for a chef in Boston where I was living, for a year on the weekends, and she offered me a job and I ran with it. I had just wanted to learn how to cook like someone’s great-grandmother, to intuitively know what to do and how to put ingredients together, to think seasonally, and cook from a whole food prospective. I’d always gone to farmers markets as a child, and we had a decent vegetable patch at our house. I’ve always been into Japanese and Vietnamese cooking — all of the places I cooked were New American (minus one very high end Italian place, which was trying to push that envelope) — local-sustainable, worked with local farmers and purveyors to raise and butcher or source as much as possible. We also had the flexibility to incorporate new techniques and ideas. But now, I have four clients, and I try to keep that as happy as possible. I still aim to cook like an elder would, just maybe one from Hokkaido, or a Buddhist temple cook. I try and stay up to date as possible regarding what’s going on in food trends, and I’ve got my various noodle soups locked down. My pho is pretty on-point. When you say, “to intuitively know what to do and how to put ingredients together,” I can’t help but think of music, composition, and songwriting. Do you see any connections between the way you approach cooking and music? In as much as they are, or should be creative crafts, yes. I’m often drawn toward minimal ingredients presented in their finest way; Pickled mackerel, a foraged mushroom. A tomato in late summer, with fresh basil that grew next to it, dressed in great olive oil. I only eat tomatoes when in season. I hate the false flavor a hot house tomato brings. I listen to tons of dub in the summertime, drink more tequila then as well. Are these linked? Your music, especially the new album, combines established sounds of blues and Americana with drone, noise, and other modern flourishes. Blues and roots music is associated with travel, migration, and movement. With a recent move from Rhode Island to Ohio, how did you approach your songcraft with your lived experience of migration? I think unless you’re trying to push your art in an unnatural direction, it’s always a reflection of the sum of your experience up until that point. I’ve moved around a good deal; Ithaca, NY, to Providence, Rhode Island; Brooklyn, NY, and Boston for a dozen years; Narragansett, Rhode Island, for two years, and now right outside Cleveland, Ohio, going on three years. I’ve been in bands since I was 13, my first being a ridiculous thrash-metal band. My next bigger band was super shoegaze, and then next was a slowcore-/country-influenced quartet with a cellist [ed. note: The Pines of Rome]. I feel like all that is in me at anytime. A lot of this record is done with acoustic guitars at the core, but there’s still oversaturated electric guitars, pedal steel, piano, and even acoustic drums, so it’s just me. I don’t feel I honestly consider fans’ expectations, or part of a musical tradition. I just try and hone in on whatever interests me in my work and dig out and polish what I like and present the truest version I’m able to. No River contains traces of both classic tropes of Americana, but mixed with modern drone and ambient composition. How do you balance carrying on the traditions associated with acoustic and blues guitar, while finding new ways to push the boundaries of fans’ expectations? Robert Johnson was probably my first guitar crush, from probably the most embarrassing point of entry, the 1986 Ralph Macchio vehicle, Crossroads, which featured sweet shredder Steve Vai as well. America was in love with hair metal, but I got this Robert Johnson boxset for Christmas, and I was hooked. I’ve always dug Bukka White, Blind Willie Johnson, John Lee Hooker…and this eventually led me to John Fahey, which led me to Gastr Del Sol, and then to Loren Mazzacane Connors and Keiji Haino which led me… all without The Interent! But on a parallel line, Sonic Youth led me to Bill Frisell, Bad Brains led me to Scientist, Led Zeppelin led me to Annie Briggs and Fairport Convention, King Crimson led to Fripp & Eno, Coltrane led me to Alice Coltrane and beyond… I don’t feel I honestly consider fans’ expectations, or part of a musical tradition. I just try and hone in on whatever interests me in my work and dig out and polish what I like and present the truest version I’m able to. Debacle wrote that you “dove into discovering the old forest and rivers of Steelhead Alley” after your move to Ohio. Did you find that exploring the surrounding natural area spilled over into your songwriting? I’d hope it has. Cleveland has the worst reputation nationally, and it’s completely undeserved. The people (as much as they are human, which is to say, as much as any other place) are open minded and kind. The natural wonders around here are spectacular. The forests are grand, the rivers wondrous, and the sky is intense. I’ve become an avid fly fisher, catch and release, and it’s truly amazing being out in the middle of a river and only hearing & sensing the natural world. I often try, when working on a piece to envision myself, somewhere else: in a desert, at the edge of an ocean, nighttime in Sonoma, crossing a footbridge in Miami, wherever feels evocative, and then trying to score that moment. I’ve been in love with cinema forever, and I just try and score everyday life. A lot of cinemas host screenings with live or newly composed scores. Have you had your eye on a film you feel you could do justice with your sounds? I love snowy films. John Carpenter’s The Thing, Paul Schrader’s Affliction, even Tarantino’s The Hateful 8, The Revenant, Fargo, A Simple Plan, The Shining… So perhaps something like that? Most of those are rather perfect as they are. I have performed quite often to films others have made for me, often over-saturated color rich impressionistic pieces. I love doing that. When you lived in Rhode Island, were you playing live often? Was there a venue or scene you were associated with? Have you established a new musical space or community in Ohio? I did play often, perhaps more in Boston at first, but I got out at least every 2 months on average. I played at Machines With Magnets quite a bit, bringing some shows there. I played a bunch with Work/Death (Scott Reber is simply the best). If you’re asking if I was down with Fort Thunder, I was down with Fort Thunder in real time. As far as Ohio, I’ve been playing out less, much of last year, as High aura’d because I wanted to focus on freeing my guitar playing up, and trying to expel learned or histrionic playing — I wanted to get free. There’s a wonderful music scene here with multiple layers and venues. I’ve been playing with some more improv/free people, which is well represented here by New Ghosts and venues like The Bop Stop and Dan Wenninger’s monthly nights. There’s the classic experimental people like John Elliot, Prostitutes, Machine Listener, Chromesthic, Talons, & Trouble Books. And great suppostive record shops/distros like Bent Crayon, Hausfrau Records, and Experimedia. As a listener, it’s fitting to dive into No River Long Enough Doesn’t Contain a Bend as fall kicks into high gear. Do you have ideal conditions or times of day well suited to working on and recording new High aura’d material? I like to try and work on music as early in the day as possible — my mind is as uncluttered as it’s going to be at that point. I do also enjoy relaxing, later at night, and watching really slow movies with grand cinematography and just free associating on an acoustic guitar. I often try, when working on a piece to envision myself, somewhere else: in a desert, at the edge of an ocean, nighttime in Sonoma, crossing a footbridge in Miami, wherever feels evocative, and then trying to score that moment. I’ve been in love with cinema forever and I just try and score everyday life. Is most of the material on No River based off of improvisation? How long did you spend on this project? If you mean recorded improvisation that became a song, 3 songs on this would qualify. Most others were worked on, over the course of 2-3 years. The move to Ohio, slowed me a bit, not that I’m swift to begin with. Finally hearing it on vinyl was the kicker. Helge Sten, who’s work at Deathprod and is a member of Supersilent, mastered the LP, and he just added this magic sheen. It has this warmth that I was always hoping to hear; and the art, which is photography of mine, but treated by Kevin Gan Yuen and incorporating the work of William Cody Watson; it’s a beautiful, singular package that I hope will make people want to own it, and not just download. Music was meant for more than laptop speakers. I’ve seen how other writers, labels, and musicians play drone and noise music for their kids, whether as a way to help put them to bed, or just to see how they react to it. How do your children respond to your work? It’s always strange to think of what our parents do as “cool,” but I imagine hearing some blaring guitar and drones growing up can make quite the impression on a kid. When our first child would need some help falling asleep, say while we were out doing something, and they were tired, but no quite there yet, we’d put on Tim Hecker’s album Harmony in Ultraviolet, specifically “Chimeras.” It would always do the trick. Plus it’s like another favorite, Aphex Twin’s “Stone In Focus,” it just has this glorious decaying motif. They love music, and they’ve all just recently started playing instruments they chose: ukulele, viola, and guitar. We never forced anything on them, they just have always had access. I’m sure to one degree they think my work is strange, but they also are keenly aware of all the spooky music in television and films. And they mostly think it’s too loud. My kids were more responsive to the band my wife and I had together, a fuzz/pop band called WORKING. They love pop music, and we listen to a bunch of that constantly, but I listen to a lot of hip-hop and soul, and they humor me there. Also, spare bits of metal. I think everyone enjoys spacing out on Arvo Part or Ryuichi Sakamoto, no? I know they enjoy it to some degree. My eldest daughter’s favorite record for a while was John Coltrane’s A Love Supreme, so I did something right. How did No River find its home on Debacle? Sam [Melancon, Debacle’s founder] has wide ranging tastes, but there are several records in the catalog (Hayden Pedigo, Elkhorn, Daniel Bachman) that, like you, take American Primitive and blues outside the box. Where do you see your place within the label and its ability to document varying scenes and movements within underground, D.I.Y. communities? I’ve long admired Debacle’s streak of representing what they like and giving at a physical manifestation. Their varied tastes are easily viewed, from records by my old friends Kevin Gan Yuen, Golden Retriever, and Daniel Bachmann, to Total Life, and Chambers, which features Gabriel Saloman of Yellow Swans. [It] reminds me in all the best ways of my former label Bathetic, who purely pushed what they dug, simply. With the record’s impending release, do you plan to tour? What’s next for you and High aura’d? I don’t plan on touring, but I do plan on getting out, radially, from here. I’d like to hit Chicago and play with some friends along the way. As far as what’s next, I have some great collaborations finished, looking for homes, one with Matt Christensen of Zelienople, and a brewing LP2 with Mike Shiflet. I may retire the High aura’d moniker, or keep it strictly for more sound/drone recordings. I hope to start work on a new collection soon. I feel like this year has had numerous wonderful records released and this is a glorious time for new music. I’d like to collaborate sincerely and seriously more in the coming year, and keep growing. And to do so freely. http://j.mp/2hWpQES

[dangcommaannie]

hey annie, viet q! how would you say "i love you" in vietnamese? like a generalized ilu? cause i know there's "anh yêu em" but that's too gendered imo. would you say "tôi yêu (thương??????) bạn"? "các bạn"??

Ah, yes. The struggle of trying to figure out how to address yourself the people you’re talking to in Vietnamese. I’m honestly so glad I grew up speaking Vietnamese because this would’ve been such a pain to have to learn. XP

So we what are probably the most common ways to say “I love you” in Vietnamese:

“Anh yêu em”: man to woman

“Em yêu anh”: woman to man

Of course, there are other ways as well, but as you pointed out and I do agree, it’s very gendered. Vietnamese more commonly uses kinship terms, but it does have true pronouns.

“Tôi yêu bạn” could be used for a singular general person or “Tôi yêu các bạn” for plural you/you all/y’all, but I think you can also use “Tôi yêumày” or “Tôi yêu chúng mày.”The problem I have with those two would be that, because they aren’t used typically used or I haven’t heard them used often, it almost sounds too informal or offensive to me. It might just be me, but I wouldn’t use the second two. I would use bạnif I wanted to be more general.

Thank you for asking, anon! I hope this helped you! :]

[biofunmy]

MacArthur Foundation Announces 26 ‘Genius’ Grant Winners

This has been an emotionally intense year for the poet and fiction writer Ocean Vuong.

In June, his first novel, “On Earth We’re Briefly Gorgeous,” written as a Vietnamese immigrant son’s letter to his illiterate mother, came out to much fanfare. Not long before publication, Mr. Vuong’s own mother learned she had Stage 4 breast cancer.

Then, earlier this month, he was back from his book tour, and looking forward to the steadying routines of teaching at the University of Massachusetts at Amherst, when he got a phone call delivering some startling news.

“I had to make sure they had the right person, because you don’t want to cry and then have them say it was a mistake,” he recalled. “But then the tears came.”

Mr. Vuong, 30, is one of 26 people chosen as 2019 fellows of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation. Known colloquially as the “genius” grant (to the annoyance of the foundation), the fellowship honors “extraordinary originality” and comes with a no-strings-attached grant of $625,000, to be distributed over five years.

This year’s fellows, announced Wednesday, include people in the arts who have earned increasing recognition, but hardly household-name status, for work that pushes the boundaries of disciplines and genres. Among them are Annie Dorsen, 45, a theater artist who incorporates artificial intelligence into performances; Valeria Luiselli, the author of the recent novel “Lost Children Archive”; and Mary Halvorson, a guitarist and composer working at the intersection of jazz, rock, folk and other styles.

There are also scientists, historians, legal advocates, community activists and others, all chosen at a moment in their careers when the award might make a difference.

“We are looking for people who have demonstrated what I would call big-C creativity,” Cecilia Conrad, a managing director of the foundation and the head of the fellows program, said.

[See the full list of MacArthur grant winners.]

The youngest fellows, at 30, are Mr. Vuong and Cameron Rowland, an artist who has used objects seized in civil forfeiture, or created by prison labor, to expose systems of racialized exploitation.

The oldest is Mel Chin, 67, an artist whose hard-to-categorize work has ranged from stealth conceptual art interventions on the set of the 1990s television show “Melrose Place” to a 2018 mixed-reality installation in Times Square that simulated a view of the area from underneath rising seas, complete with an overhead nautical traffic jam.

Mr. Chin, who lives in Egypt, N.C., said that the call from the foundation had come soon after he got home from trips to Greenland and Miami for a film he is making about climate change, and was feeling rather morose.

“Of course, my disposition changed immediately,” he said with a laugh, before turning serious.

“I don’t want to use the word ‘responsibility,’” he said. “But this felt like an acknowledgment that maybe after a life’s work, you just need to do more.”

Few honors carry the prestige, and the mystique, of the MacArthur. Potential fellows do not apply but are suggested by a network of hundreds of anonymous nominators across the country, in a range of fields, and then selected by an anonymous committee of about a dozen.

The phone calls — and the stunned reaction they cause — have become the stuff of myth. More than one of this year’s fellows described being struck dumb, melting into their chairs, or wondering if it was a hoax.

While it can seem like a quasi-divine bolt from the blue, fellows described the gratification of knowing that the world — and especially their peers — has been paying attention.

“It’s the most incredible encouragement to keep going, to stay on your track,” Ms. Dorsen said.

The nature of human creativity and its relationship to technology is a theme of Ms. Dorsen’s work, which she calls “algorithmic theater.” In “Yesterday Tomorrow,” from 2018, singers sight-read along as a computer gradually, in a different pattern each performance, transforms the score of the Beatles’ “Yesterday” into “Tomorrow,” from the musical “Annie.”

Creativity itself is also a preoccupation of another fellow, the cartoonist Lynda Barry, though she explores it with more low-tech means.

Best known for the alternative comic “Ernie Pook’s Comeek” and graphic novels like “Cruddy,” Ms. Barry, 63, has also spent decades leading workshops for non-writers, including one pairing students at the University of Wisconsin, where she teaches, with 4-year-olds.

“I’m really interested in what happens when writing splits off from drawing, which is a vestigial language,” she said. “I think both suffer.”

While the fellowship program has no set themes, this year’s group includes a number of fellows doing work in areas heavily supported by the foundation, including climate change and criminal justice reform.

Jerry X. Mitrovica, 58, a theoretical geophysicist at Harvard, uses statistical models to show how melting glaciers will cause uneven rises in sea levels around the globe, because of differences in the Earth’s underlying crust and mantle. Kelly Lytle Hernandez, 45, is a historian at U.C.L.A. who has written about the evolution of the Los Angeles County prison system.

Dr. Lytle Hernandez, who is also the author of what the foundation calls the first significant scholarly history of the United States Border Patrol, said the prize was a validation of the growing body of work by activist historians studying incarceration and immigration detention, which often draws on suppressed or scattered records.

“I hope the fellowship provides an even larger umbrella for myself and other scholars who are doing this kind of movement-driven scholarship to have more flexibility, to have more — you almost want to say credentials,” she said.

Ms. Halvorson, the guitarist and composer, also spoke of the collective nature of her work, and the hope that the fellowship would help build the audience for her genre-crossing music, which she called “not easy listening.”

“When I started playing this kind of music, I never thought there would be that big of an audience for it,” she said. “If anything, I hope I can shine a light on this whole scene.”

As for the financial windfall, some fellows spoke of paying off student loans, saving for family emergencies, plowing it back into their organizations, or just buying themselves space and time.

Sujatha Baliga, 48, the director of the Restorative Justice Project, received the fellowship for her work developing a non-punitive alternative to the criminal justice system that brings survivors and those who have caused them harm together.

It’s an approach she learned about only in her late 20s, after work as a public defender and death-penalty appellate lawyer left her feeling like a cog in a machine. She said she hoped to use the money to write a book, as well as to work on a curriculum that can be used in law schools, to help open the pathway to others.

“This kind of funding, with no strings, means I can just sit down and imagine, ‘What does the next generation of lawyers need to know to help restorative justice flourish?’” she said.

Emmanuel Pratt, 42, the co-founder and executive director of the Sweet Water Foundation, a community organization on the South Side of Chicago that has transformed abandoned buildings and vacant lots into a sustainable farm and cultural center, said he would use the fellowship to cover salaries and to help the group’s planned expansion into housing.

During the call with the foundation, he walked out into a field of sunflowers at Sweet Water’s 2-acre farm. “It was surreal,” he said.

Even beyond the money, he said, the MacArthur is a validation of the idea that there are alternatives to the kind of development-as-gentrification that reigns in Chicago and beyond.

“I don’t do the work to get recognition,” he said. “I do I because it’s a way of life. It’s proving that it’s not just possible, but that another way is already happening. It’s right here.”

Sahred From Source link Science

from WordPress http://bit.ly/2lcuAuU via IFTTT

[secretradiobrooklyn]

SECRET RADIO | 9.19.20

Secret Radio | 9.19.20 | Hear it here.

1. Mêlomê Clément & Orchestre Poly Rythmo do L’Antique Cotonou Dahomey - “Houe Towe Houn”

I have seen no fewer than 4 spellings of the man’s name, but my favorite version is Meloclem, which is apparently his nickname. Clement is credited with arranging many (most?) of T.P. Orchestre’s songs. This one is credited to him as Chef d’Orchestre, Guitariste-Accompagnateur-Chanteur-Compositeur. I just find it completely engrossing as it shifts between drone and jammer. The guitar solo is so searing and lost in its own world… and when the vocals come in, more than halfway through the song, they weave around the drone like a spell. 

2. Annie Philippe - “C’est La Mode”

French pop is so stylistically severe — it is a big production in which the singer is just one small but central part of a much bigger undertaking. The video, shot in 1966, is oddly composed mostly of scenes of her shooting the video, and not the results of those shots. It’s amazingly self-aware, and it does a beautifully effective job of creating a larger-yet-more-intimate-than-life portrait of Annie Philippe.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9Hau_yvzriY

3. The Funkees - “Akula Owu Onyear”

This is the sound of Nigeria in the ’60s, and African expat London in the ’70s. The language they’re singing is Igbo. Apparently The Funkees began playing together in the Nigerian Army in the midst of the Nigerian Civil War, and then kept going after the war ended. Nigeria borders Benin, and I find it fascinating that they both seem to have very developed but very different rock sounds going on at that time. The keys voice makes me think of Marijata’s amazing “No Condition Is Permanent,” which came along a decade later and two countries over.

4. Yehouessi Leopold & T.P. Orchestre - “Davi Djinto Super No2”

Yehouessi Leopold is the drummer for T.P. Orchestre, which I assume means he plays the trap set. When you listen to the song from that perspective, where the drummer is the writer and his priorities are ascendent, it makes the song even richer. I really hope that his vocals parts — sung, spoken, laughed — happen from behind his kit. 

     You can hear them call out “Papi” right before the guitarist, Papillon, lights into one of his rhythmic lead passages. He builds these cascading patterns that repeat but progress at the same time. He’s certainly one of the most beautiful guitarists I’ve ever heard in my life (especially in combination with their rhythm guitarist, who I believe is Maximus Ajanohun), and this song is a great example of his playful, endlessly rhythmic style. Headphones highly recommended because the guitar spends a fair bit of time hanging out on the right side. 

     These long T.P. songs are such a pleasure to sink into — they give each section a prolonged consideration, and yet they’re constantly moving through new ideas, phrases, and relationships. At one point a series of peacock cries pass through the song. They arrive at the song hooks almost like they’re equally revealing and discovering them. When the horn hook arrives halfway through the song, it feels like the party just took a shift, moving from a great evening with friends to a legendary night at the peak of summer.

     This song is as much for Kevin Bowers as anyone.

5. Jacques Dutronc - “On nous cache tout, on nous dit rien”

“They hide everything from us, they tell us nothing” - Such great tones all over Jacques Dutronc records, from the rhythm guitar distortion to the amazing live drum sound. The song is somewhere between a complaint, an accusation, and a bitter joke. 

6. Ranil y su Conjunto Tropical - “Vuelo a Saturno”

Meanwhile, Perú has had its own party going on. Ranil stayed mostly out of the cities and mostly along the Amazon river, playing electric music and producing and selling his own records. You can hear the Cuban rhythmic influence but run through a very specific and weird personality.

7. The Velvet Underground - “Foggy Notion”

I always find it amazing that, just as the Beatles were busy building the structure of Western pop music and exploring its creative possibilities, the Velvets were exploring its destructive possibilities. They throw together airtight pop structures around Moe’s relentless drums and then start slashing em apart with their guitars and Lou’s totally-serious-and-also-totally-just-fucking-around vocal approach. 

8. National Wake, “International News”

1979, the first interracial punk band in apartheid South Africa, singing about exactly that. In the movie made about the band, the audience looks like a place where black and white people can dance together, which was likely also a first. So the band becomes a political and social movement just by existing and drawing an audience.

    I mean, just look at them: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ze5yn6KneJg

9. Gnonnas Pedro, “Dadje Von O Von Non”

This song was how we discovered “Legends of Benin,” the album that made us realize that a whole world — an unknown number of worlds — exist beyond what we’re already familiar with. This track has the undeniable backbeat of Western rock and funk, but placed in a completely different relationship to the vocals than I’d ever heard before. And the guitar sound is so hypnotic, repeating endlessly in the left ear. It’s the songwriting structure that I keep coming back to as a listener: linear and cyclical at the same time, where each section feels endless but is always turning into the next version in the evolution. It sounds so hip to a frequency I was not even aware of until this track.

10. Kevin Bowers’ Nova, “Breaking for Conversation”

I have danced at every Nova show except one, I believe, and that was only because I was still parking during the end of the first set so I could catch the second one after work. This album is a drummer’s fantasy, sometimes thunderous and sometimes delicate. Paige sings in Nova along with our friend Mike Aguirre — shout out to Big Mike and his half-year-and-counting quarantine adventure in Anguilla! — and the whole band is composed entirely of musicians about whom I feel awe. St. Louis Internationalé!

Shadow Music of Thailand

11. Stereo Total - “I Love You Ono”

A companion piece with “Ringo I Love You” from last broadcast. Pure confidence and fun in an absolute perfect tone for the content.  

Highly worthwhile video: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bqok3-Q_1lk

12. Philippe Katerine - “La banane”

I have no idea what the joke is here, but I like it. The lyrics of the chorus are “just let me eat my banana on the seashore, naked.” There is a version in English by Katerine, if you want to know what he’s talking about, though you can ready every word and still not know what he’s talking about. A live performance does not clarify anything: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PLoteLHr05s

13. T.P. Orchestre Poly-Rythmo de Cotonou - “Minkou E So Non Moin”

This is included on Analog Africa’s “Echos Hypnotiques” T.P. collection, and it’s the only track I’ve heard from them with a wah pedal. Makes me wonder what the circumstances of that pedal were — was it just passing through? It couldn’t have been available to them long term, they would surely have used it more. I love the whole path that the guitar takes in the center of the song, and how that gives way to a one-note percussion solo. 

14. Mai Na Lork Gun - “Kampee Sangthong”

We found this buried in a record called “Thai Pop Spectacular.” I love how it sounds instantly familiar, and then as the lyrics come in it’s clear you’ve never heard this song before. As far as I can tell this is an original song, not a Thai lyric written over a French or American pop song. The singer sounds so sincere!

15. Ariel Pink - “Alisa”

Paige has been preaching Ariel Pink for years, but I’ve never felt the connection. To me, there’s a layer of… what is it? Irony? Self-conscious weirdness? Something that usually puts me off. For whatever reason, this track has many of the same attributes but draws me in rather than keeping me at arm’s length. My favorite element in music right now is how much information a song can transmit even when you don’t know the language, and this song does that in a different way, using words I know and audio reference points I know, but stacked up in a way that remains unknowable.

16. Assa Cica - “Se Na Blo”

17. Duyên Phận Con Gái - “Mai Lệ Huyền (A Girl’s Destiny)”

There’s such a complete understanding of not just rock but funk in these songs, and I have to wonder who was showing these musicians the ropes. Were they learning from records? From G.I.s stranded in Vietnam? The drums are so tasteful — everybody is. But how long could they have been listening to rock at that point, or have had access to listening to it? There had been Western troops in the region for years, and the primary influence was probably French pop. It still seems amazing that a Vietnamese band could have such confidence and command in a foreign idiom like this.

18. France Gall - “Jazz â Gogo”

I’m pretty sure Jeff Hess’ Afternoon Delight on KDHX put us onto this song years ago.

19. The Fall - “Petty Thief Lout”

As a fan of the Fall for over two decades now, I often find myself — or Paige and I find ourselves, because she’s the same way — on Fall-only kicks for days at a time. And even as it’s happening, I find myself asking: WHY do I love this music so much? What is it about Mark E. Smith’s squealing, spitting, hyper-British scorn that I find so endlessly appealing? Why must my pop have some fundamental discord built into its bones? I think much of it is the mystery — why on Earth does he make those decisions? As far as I know he writes the lyrics and none of the instruments, and has hired and fired more bandmates than most people play with in a lifetime… and yet the songs are instantly familiar as Fall songs through the decades. How can that be so? I think the fact that the songs continue to elicit more questions than answers is the heart of the enduring fascination. 

20. Tribute to Elsie - “Elle Est Tres Gris” 

Pollen was high that day. This was a voice memo recording from two years ago. Paige was singing “Les Feuilles Mortes” but with improvised lyrics about our dear, sweet, 20 year-old Elsie cat. Paige wants me to note that her French grammar has improved in the two years since this recording, and she would for instance obviously not use the word “vieux” and would use the word “veille.” Et al. Farewell Elsie, we love you very much.

     Paige says: The French is terrrrrible. I kept saying “que” when I meant “quand”. This is a private voice memo from two years ago, sung to the old grey lady herself. I will never win a rap battle, and it’s hard to remember now, but alcohol may have been involved. Elsie passed at twenty years old this month. She was her own character and never let her guard down. That’s how she made it to 20! We appreciate her all the way. 

21. Bob Marley - “Judge Not”

This is a short-haired, R&B-obsessed Bob Marley from his very first demos. The band is all in matching suits, playing very much in an American style. You can definitely hear even in this pretty straight ahead song the way that the band was reinterpreting the essential rhythm of skiffle and early rock into a new strum pattern. Marley’s voice is both very recognizable and not yet iconic — not unlike the early Fela Kuti & His Koola Lobitos recordings that we’ve been digging on lately.

22. Teddy Afro - “Bob Marley” live

There’s a cabbie in NYC we depend on for getting to the airport. His name’s Bobby, and as far as we can tell he’s a one-man cab company. He loves to fire up Teddy Afro videos for us to watch on our trip. Bobby is from Sudan, he says, and Teddy Afro is Ethiopian (you’ve very likely heard his huge hit, “Atse Tewodros,” at Meskerem if you’re ever there). He says he has no idea what the lyrics are, but he loves how the songs sound. Hearing a guy from Sudan enjoying this music across a language barrier was a very helpful reminder to us to listen for good music no matter what language it arrives in. I look forward to riding in Bobby’s cab again as soon as the virus is out of the way. 

23. Michel Polnareff, “Love Me Please Love Me”

24. Nam Hong, “She’s a Lady”

“My mother told me to be a lady. And for her that meant: be your own person, be independent.” - Ruth Bader Ginsburg

25. Tax Bacon, “The Star-Spangled Banner”

Tax Bacon is a leftist political punk band who formed out of frustration at the 2016 Democratic primaries. Some people never got over 2016, and some people never got over June 2016. 

I think this song is for Ruth Bader Ginsburg. I don’t feel patriotic right now — I feel connected to the people whose values I recognize, and Ginsburg was a founding father in that definition of American spirit. We are very sorry to see her go, and this song is meant to send her off. We’re going to have to do this next part without her.

[kidsviral-blog]

28 Unexpectedly Awesome Things To Do In Seattle

New Post has been published on https://kidsviral.info/28-unexpectedly-awesome-things-to-do-in-seattle/

28 Unexpectedly Awesome Things To Do In Seattle

Seattle is a melting pot of culture, rain, and coffee.

1. See a majestic sunrise at Smith Tower.

The Space Needle is for suckers. Any true Seattleite knows that the Smith Tower — a local best-kept secret — has an equally amazing view of downtown Seattle.

2. Feast on corn dogs and strong drinks at Unicorn Bar.

View this image ›

flic.kr / Via Lara604

Tucked away on Capitol Hill is a carnival-themed dive where you can drink to your heart’s content, eat deep-fried Snickers bars, and prance around in a unicorn helmet.

3. Have coffee like a true Seattleite at Cafe Allegro.

View this image ›

VideoIgniter / Via videoigniter.com

With a coffee shop around every corner, an Americano is always at your fingers — but Cafe Allegro, Seattle’s first coffee shop, has one of the best. (Other worthy contenders? Cafe Lladro, Milstead, and Stumptown.)

4. Brunch like there’s no tomorrow at the Portage Bay Cafe.

View this image ›

Jessica Spengler / Via flic.kr

This Seattle brunch haven is known for its organic ingredients and delicious American fare. Line too long? Just skip to the front — you’ll (probably) only be met with a grimace and a healthy dose of passive aggressiveness.

5. Become one with nature at The Seattle Arboretum.

View this image ›

Rachel Sarai / Via flic.kr

Birkenstocks optional.

6. Set sail (for free!) at The Center For Wooden Boats.

View this image ›

Flickr: stefan_d-w / Via Hammerin Man

Every Sunday for the past 25 years, volunteer skippers and crew take Seattleites out on the water gratis — on spirit boats, schooners, and even the occasional yacht.

7. Pair frites with frosty brews at Brouwer’s Café.

View this image ›

flic.kr / Via Bernt Rostad

Two words of warning, though: 1) You will most definitely become addicted to Brouwer’s Café’s dragon sauce. 2) For each Rainier or Coors Light you fail to drink, a hipster loses his mustache.

8. Party like you’re from The 206 at Rock Box.

View this image ›

rockboxseattle.com

Karaoke until closing time? Check.

9. Eat organic at Local 360.

View this image ›

Tom Ipri / Via flic.kr

All of the items on Local 360’s menu are all sourced from within 360 miles of its location. Also on hand? One of the best burgers in Belltown.

10. Have an outdoor adventure at Discovery Park.

View this image ›

seattle.gov / Via Loree Wagner Communications

Walk the coast, sit in the grass, and pitch a bonfire on a warm summer day. Parched from your nature quest? Stop into Oliver’s Twist in Magnolia for cocktails like The Bumble — with bourbon, lemon, and creme de peche.

11. Rent a canoe at The WAC.

View this image ›

Annie Laurie Photography / Via annielauriephotography.com

The University of Washington (Go Huskies!) has a backyard filled with scenic wonders. Pass the blooming cherry trees in The Quad, walk down to The WAC, and canoe to your heart’s content. The WAC is open to the public, except for those who lost this year’s Apple Cup. Sorry Cougs.

12. Enjoy a taste of Asia at Uwajimaya.

View this image ›

Emily Bratkovich / Via Twitter: @emilybratkovich

Whether you’re looking for mochi candies, bubble tea, or frozen chicken feet, Uwajimaya supermarket has all of the above. It’s also in the International District, which is worth a trip on its own.

13. Class up your night at Needle & Thread.

View this image ›

Nanako E. / Via yelp.com

There’s no official drink menu at this speakeasy that’s hidden above Tavern Law. Instead, you’ll tell the bartender your liquor of choice, and they’ll work their magic.

14. Pull up to Dick’s Drive-In.

View this image ›

Annie Laurie Photography / Via annielauriephotography.com

Seattle has a plethora of locally sourced, gluten-free, vegan, and organic food available, but let’s be honest: Sometimes you don’t want any of that. Enter Dick’s — for every Seattleite’s favorite $2 non-organic, extra-gluten, cheese-filled burger.

15. Travel to Europe at Shultzy’s German bar.

View this image ›

Quinn Dombrowski / Via flic.kr

Backpack to the heart of Seattle’s University District for this popular German bar, complete with rowdy college kids, and a menu of Germany’s best brews. Ready for a challenge? Get a boot of beer for you and your mates — whoever takes the last sip pays!

16. Experience Vietnamese culture at Green Leaf.

View this image ›

Emily Bratkovich / Via Twitter: @emilybratkovich

The “Seattle Freeze” is alive and well, but the steamy bowls of pho at Greenleaf will definitely help with that.

17. Play tourist on the water taxi to West Seattle.

View this image ›

flic.kr / Via Jessica Spengler

Locals and tourists will agree that the water taxi has some of the best views of the Seattle skyline. Ensure you don’t look like the latter by wearing your wool socks, hiking boots, and Patagonia jacket.

18. Give into your sweet tooth at Molly Moon’s.

View this image ›

Annie Laurie Photography / Via annielauriephotography.com

Failure to sample the salted caramel will result in the biggest regret of your life — other than your crazy ex.

19. Hide away at the Knee High Stocking Club.

Loree Wagner Communications

Flickr: kchrist

  Behind the barely-marked door, you’ll find a well-stocked bar, inventive craft cocktails, and a vibe that’s a welcome throwback to the ’20s.

20. Go pet and hipster-watching at Greenlake.

View this image ›

Nancy Regan / Via flic.kr

Head to Greenlake for a stroll around the blissful lake alongside ducks, dog-walkers, and on occasion, a techie in the flesh.

21. Grab a hot dog after a night out.

View this image ›

Carolyn Coles / Via flic.kr

Yes, a hot dog. Every New Yorker knows a pizza slice is the best way to end a night on the town. But every Seattleite knows a night isn’t complete without a stop by the local hotdog cart. For a true Seattle experience, make sure to pack on the cream cheese. (It’s a ~thing~.)

22. Plan a date on Capitol Hill.

Via instagram.com

Come rocking your chicest flannel and trek to Sun Liquor on Capitol Hill. Here you’ll find handcrafted adult beverages — like the Mai Tai, of course — that can turn any rainy day sunny in no time.

23. Get spooked in Pioneer Square.

View this image ›

Seattle Municipal Archives / Via flic.kr

What’s scarier than a bar without PBR? A ghost-guided tour in Pioneer Square, where you can learn about Seattle’s spooky history from a Pioneer Square pro.

24. Escape to Vashon Island.

Via instagram.com

A perfect day-escape — where you can a) find solace, and b) do yoga on a paddleboard amongst quinoa-eating yuppies. Namaste.

25. Hitch a ride on The SLUT*.

View this image ›

Atomic Taco / Via flic.kr

No trip to Seattle is complete without a few drinks and a fun ride. Take a spin on the South Lake Union Trolley for a scenic tram ride.

*C’mon, what did you think we were talking about?

26. Take a trip to Myrtle Edwards Park.

View this image ›

Flickr: jmabel / Via videoigniter.com

For a high you won’t forget, head to Myrtle Edwards Park for swimming, picnic spots, and Seattle’s annual Hempfest.

27. Root for the home team.

View this image ›

Stadium Place / Via stadiumplace.com

Looking for a great view of the the beloved Seahawk’s Stadium? Befriend a resident of Stadium Place for a shot that dreams are made of.

28. Head to The Hill for a phenomenal photo op.

Pro-tip: You’ll find one of the best views in Seattle at the Volunteer Park Water Tower.

correction

Adult admission for the observation deck at the Smith Tower is $7.50. We incorrectly said it was free in a previous version of this post, but we still think the view is worth it! BF_STATIC.timequeue.push(function () document.getElementById(“update_article_correction_time_4715023”).innerHTML = UI.dateFormat.get_formatted_date(‘2015-01-20 14:30:20 -0500’, ‘update’); );

Read more: http://www.buzzfeed.com/ariannaodell/unexpectedly-awesome-things-to-do-in-seattle-14ntd