mishak

My favorite local band HUMANWINE was playing on Friday with two other bands I don’t know, I love it when this happens, I don’t get exposed to new music often as I’d like. I come down the stairs to the Middle East, the first band is going on and OMG it’s a punk show. I haven’t been to a punk show in decades. The lead singer is setting up the next song THIS SONG IS ABOUT AFFORDABLE HEALTHCARE BECAUSE WE ALL DESERVE HEALTH CARE THAT’S NOT TIED TO THE CORPORATE OVERLORDS ONE TWO THREE FOUR AARRAORROUGHAAARAAHHAOUURRGHHH. This shit is awesome. They’re called Disaster Strikes, they are the most social justice band I’ve ever heard, besides the affordable healthcare song they got a collective bargaining rights song, a marriage equality song, an anti-torture song, and an anti-corporation song. Only thing they were missing was an anti-NSA spying song. Punk is alive and well.

HUMANWINE was, of course, fantastic, ‘nuff said.

The headliner was World Inferno Friendship Society, I’d never heard of them before MY FRIENDS WHY HAVE YOU NEVER TOLD ME ABOUT THIS BAND?!? They are so awesome. I’m not sure what to call them…swingpunk-cabaret-surfabilly? There’s eight people on stage, the lead singer is a nattily dressed devil taking swigs from a wine bottle, and the bass player, she’s this tiny thing with severe cheekbones, blond dreads in a topknot, and an inconceivably high forehead, she looks like she dropped out of Bene Gesserit Witch School to join a punk band. I think I’m in love. Anyway, Masha sez “You wanna go into the mosh pit?” and how can you say no. I tend to dislike anecdotes about feeling old, but damn. You want to feel some years on you? Be 45 years old and go into a mosh pit.

I’ve grown up eating some of the best Chinese food in the world. I don’t speak Chinese, I’ve never been to China, but I grew up in LA, and Taiwan, with side trips to Hong Kong. My parents would order from menus I couldn’t read and waiters I couldn’t understand, and I’d eat it all; I wouldn’t necessarily like all of it, but I tried it (sums up a good part of my privileged life: I did nothing to earn or deserve all this amazing stuff, my parents just served it up on a plate for me). You know that scene in Ratatouille where the food critic is gobsmacked back to his youth by the titular dish?



There’s two things that do that to me: Xiao Long Bao (soup dumplings), and New Ro Mien (beef noodle soup). I have these precise, specific memories of my dad teaching me how to eat xiao long bao - put the dumpling in the soup spoon, add a couple drops of vinegar and ginger slivers, nibble an opening in the dumpling so the hot broth inside can cool down faster. Slurp the deliciousness down in one luscious big mouthful. My mom putting down a big bowl of new ro mien in front of me, typhoon season is wet and cold outside but the soup is hot and the noodles are chewy, I squirt in a dab of sriracha and stir it up, the beef tendon is meltingly tender, fragrant steam rises from the broth, fatty with beefy flavor, balanced with herbaceous greens. I believe the human brain has special food-sentimental neurons that link us powerfully to our past, to mom and dad and home and food and love. I wonder if the profound effect of these memories and sensations is a reaction to external things, like living as an adult in a scary world of responsibilities and anxieties and no easy answers. Irregardlessly, to this day I can just think of xiao long bao or new ro mien and my eyes get misty with memory, and gratitude, and everything is going to be ok.

I loved the WWII In HD series, so when The Vietnam War In HD came on Netflix I was pretty excited. But my giddy war-nerd self was quickly deflated by the reminder that the Vietnam may be the most _asinine_ war America has fought in modern times. That includes George W Bush’s Iraq War Fiasco, which is saying something. So, there was a civil war going on in Vietnam in the 1950s, why did we get involved? There was no reason for us to be there at all, our main strategic interest in the region was to keep China bottled up, and we had Japan for that. Vietnam had nothing we wanted. Vietnam In HD has some great footage and gripping recounts of battle, Khe Sanh was AMAZING. But it was for nothing, the whole war, from start to finish. It’s really depressing to think of all the money spent, all the people killed, napalmed, got their arms and legs blown off, and it was all for nothing. Kinda like Bush’s Iraq War. Although Iraq was for worse than nothing; Vietnam didn’t have huge consequences on the wider region, and the region isn’t particularly important on the geopolitical scale; we actually made the world a worse place by invading Iraq, and that fuckup is still fucking things up today. Gah.

It seems a pretty important requirement for a war that every soldier, every citizen, be able to talk at length, in an informed fashion, on What The Hell Are We Doing Here. What are our strategic goals, how is this war supposed to further those goals, what is the likelihood of success (and what defines “success”), at what cost? Anyone who pulls out bullshit labels like COMMUNISM or TERRORISM or FREEDOM gets a bitchslap, and sent back to remedial history/geography/international relations class.

I like how everyone dresses up in Las Vegas, we’re all here to party, we’re outside our comfortable everyday home environments, so we try to look extra nice. You’ll aways see girls walking unsteadily in unfamiliar high heels. We all know we’re here to party, we’re all living in this shared hallucination in this manufactured landscape. Things are monolithically huge, the signs and screens and props and architecture of the Strip, there’s a subliminal unreality to it all, I think it contributes to the ease at which we drink more, play more, party more than we otherwise do at home. God bless you, Las Vegas, you are wonderful.

The promoter for this club Life in the SLS hotel guestlists us, and he feeds us drinks tickets all night. It’s a huge thumping booming laser-filled space, it’s cool. I think one thing Vegas clubs do that not a lot of the clubs I go to in Boston do, is the whole Table thing. Like, pay $2000 and you and your friends get this private table behind velvet rope, includes a bottle of Belvedere and mixers and hot chick bartender to make you personal drinks all night. I have a hard time dealing with any kind of elitism, it makes a really unpleasant vibe, that kind of bullshit just sets me on edge. Separating people in tiers of importance or money just seems so asinine. This is a club, we’re all equals here, let’s all have a good time together, right? And what’s really bizarre is when they walk people to their table they make this big production out of it, they have showgirls holding the vodka bottles over her heads, LED lights in their hands that light up the bottles, it’s this little parade of look-at-me look-at-my-specialness look-at-my-money. If I had a table I’d be fucking _mortified_ to go through that. I dunno why, but I’ve always felt that trying to call attention to how special you are and how much money you’re spending, that is utterly appalling. We’re all on this planet for a short time, and the point of social groups and clubs is to find people you love and enjoy those connections; we’re all the same, we’re all in this _together_ dammit. I get the impression that there are some customs in some Vegas scenes (LA, Miami, NY, wherever) that are not aimed at people like me. Look, there are lots of reasons to celebrate a person, but how much money they have is NEVER one of those reasons.

But the music is good, they put a lot of effort into the sound and lights, and the promoters are super friendly. We walked past this guy on the strip and he put us on the guest list for Steve Aoki, I was super excited but by the time we finished walking all over the strip and had dinner and been drinking since breakfast, we were not as much capable of diving into a big production. The promoter kept texting me saying where are you in line, I’ll get you thought to the front, it’s cool. But we bailed. And then Johanna’s promoter friend back at the SLS got us into the Borgore show, and more drink tickets. Cool stuff happens in Vegas. He’d also been trying to get us to meet him at this 11am party at some other joint, but that was just not happening after the epic drinking of the day and night before. Waking up in your hotel bed in Las Vegas is a time to reflect on some possibly poor decisions recently made. But if you can make it to breakfast, a Bloody Mary, some OJ, and coffee will silence those pesky angels of out better natures.

Me and mom’s Costa Rica trip was pretty great. I don’t usually use travel agents, I like looking stuff up online and reading books and researching things myself, and I learn more history, geography, and politics of the places I’m going. But this time I didn’t have a bunch of mindspace to do a lot of planning, why not try out someone who’s job it is to do this stuff. So big shout-out to Nichole of Costa Rica Custom Trips; I told her the stuff we wanted to do, with what budget, and we got a fantastic trip; she set up everything, all we had to do was show up. Not including airfare, it cost about $220 a day each for a 3-4 star hotel (my mom’s 74 years old, I want her to be comfortable), all transportation, one or two meals included and either one or two activities each day - river floating, nature hike, canopy tour zipline, canyoneering, sunset cruise, boat tours, etc. I might have been able to find a better deal? But I doubt it.

There were a few hiccups, here and there: the bus never showed up to pick us up from the hot springs, I called the tour company and they sent a cab picked us up in 10 minutes. No big. There were a couple travel snafus going from the Monteverde cloud forest to Manuel Antonio beach, but I called Nichole and she sorted things out right away, rearranged some pickup times, tour schedules, hotel nights, and everything was good. Costa Rica is a country of dirt roads and not a long, widely established culture/infrastructure for industrial-scale hospitality like the US and Europe. If you expected every detail of your plan to be executed as a well-oiled machine, you’d go to Germany, not Costa Rica. Not everything will happen when and how you planned, but just go with it, everything will turn out great. That’s another bonus of having a good travel agent, when problems happen, you’ve got one person to call and they take care of it.

Costa Rica rocks the eco-friendly, they play it up on all the brochures, but they also walk the walk. All their energy is non-fossil (70% hydro, 15% wind, 15% geothermal), I never saw a single incandescent bulb anywhere, everything’s low-output CFL. There are little placards reminding you to turn off the lights when you leave, and often as not the electricity in your hotel only turns on when you slot your room key in a receiver so when you leave and take your key, everything necessarily turns off. Recycling bins are everywhere, barely any litter on any roads or sidewalks, it’s way cleaner than Boston. To the point where, I saw a beer can on the beach and I felt mildly offended so I picked it up and tossed it in the nearest bin. I wouldn’t do that in Boston.

I’ve always thought that saying “The people there are so friendly!” sounds squeamishly patronizing and colonial, but maybe I should get over it; like, you can say ridiculously broad-brushed stuff about Americans, or Bostonians, and of course it’s not all literally true, but you’ll probably have a point in there somewhere. So here we go: The people here in Costa Rica are so friendly! This place is chill, Ticos love their country and are happy to show you the great stuff about it. Tipping is appreciated but not totally expected, there isn’t a palm-greasing culture of baksheesh like in Egypt. I didn’t get the feeling and was not advised from the guidebooks that there were a lot of locals trying to rip you off, as opposed to like, Hanoi and Cairo. Talking to one of our tour guides and he was saying that sure, you can try to go to the US and work your ass off and try to make money, but here in Costa Rica you can work and have a great life and be a part of developing your own country.

Costa Rica has no military, the president abolished the army in 1948, and put the money into education and health care and other cool stuff. When you think about it, through all the Cold War proxy violence bullshit with Nicaragua to the north and Panama to the south, and the hideous drug war violence from the 80s up till now, Costa Rica has done miraculously well with no military. Kinda makes me reconsider what I thought were first principles of geopolitics. They’re in a rough neighborhood, how do they not get invaded or otherwise messed with? Maybe cuz the roads are terrible and hills and valleys full of rainforest are difficult to navigate, so it’s not worth the effort for an an invading army to hold territory? Currently, Costa Rica has so many friends, lots of American and other expats own land and live here - an invasion is just not going to happen. Pretty sweet deal, when you think about it, you don’t have to spend a bunch of money on soldiers, just use your resources to be awesome and everybody likes you and wants to vacation in your country. Which is not to say Costa Rica doesn’t have it’s problems, but for the most part this is a beautiful country, economically thriving and just about carbon neutral, and they don’t need a military. Not every nation can do what they’re doing, but the fact that they are is kind of inspiring.

We’ve been doing Mixtape Parties for a while now, more than a decade, easy. I try to make interesting packages my mixes, my first year wrapped my CD in bacon, another year I stuck it in a cake. My favorite might be when I froze a CD in of a block of ice. This year I was a bit lazy, I jammed it into a carton of mint chocolate chip ice cream. Here are the liner notes for this year: Modern Country 2014. Ooh I can make a YouTube Playlist!

This summer I got into country music. Specifically, Modern Country, which is intensely pop-crossover, incorporating elements of and at times indistinguishable from Rock, Pop, Hip-Hop, and Dance music. It was weirdly coincidental, I came across the video for This Is How We Roll in a hotel room in Vermont, and like that same week 101.7FM changed format from Electronic Dance to Modern Country, and thus was born the soundtrack to my summer of 2014. “Dude, country music sucks!” you say. Well I’m telling you, Modern Country is just as good and often better than your average Pop song. “Well, pop music sucks too!”. Oh yeah? I’m willing to bet you have a Lady Gaga, Adelle, or Daft Punk song on your ipod, you like that stuff, so you should really give this a try. Tune your radio to 101.7FM The Bull, with an open mind and sense of humor, I promise you’ll hear at least one song you like. It will remind you of your favorite pop song, but with a touch more banjo and in a southern accent.

1. “This Is How We Roll” - Florida Georgia Line. This is what started it all for me, this song rocks, it’s the epitome of what they call Bro Country, which are songs about partying, drinking, and girls. What got my attention is that this guys are pretty much rappers, which I did not expect to find in country music. There’s actually a subgenre of Country Rap, it’s often referred to as “Hick Hop”, which is so funny you gotta love it. Florida Georgia Line really push the southern drawl to a point it becomes caricature, but their song “Cruise” is the Best Selling Country Song Of All Time, so there you go.
2. “Bartender” - Lady Antebellum. This is great straight-ahead modern country, the jilted lover theme is probably the most common of women singers, which is a little unfortunate as a stereotype, but this track is just so good it can really define the genre.
3. “Drink To That All Night” - Jerrod Niemann. I love the autotuned rapping leads into this song, it really shows the dance/pop/electronic influences on modern country.
4. “Are You Gonna Kiss Me Or Not” - Thompson Square. This is one of the most classic-sounding country songs on this mix, it harkens back to the days when they sang sweetly romantic songs about couples falling in love. Not all Modern Country is Bro, dude.
5. “Leave The Night On” - Sam Hunt. Honestly, most songs are from a guys point of view, sung to a girl he’s infatuated with, in a good old fashioned, wholesome kinda way. This track is one of the better examples.
6. “Mama’s Broken Heart” - Miranda Lambert. The bass line and snare drum on this track are SO FUN, it’s got such a bouncy carnival feel to it, and the writing is spot on, her sense of rhyme and lyrical rhythm are so natural. Classic set up of a jilted woman with anger management issues.
7. “Bottoms Up” - Brantly Gilbert. Another song about partying and drinking, but I like the darker, laid back instrumentation and vocal style. This isn’t a full-throated party anthem a la Florida Georgia Line, there’s a cool intensity to this track I find really distinctive.
8. “Girl In A Country Song” - Maddie & Tae. In most Modern Country, all girls are so gosh-darn pretty, blond hair and long tanned legs in them daisy-dukes, slide up on here in the passenger seat of my truck. A ridiculous cliché, and everybody knows it, I’m sure country music fans have the same wry self-awareness of their music that us Goths do. I mean really, we don’t _actually_ have any desire to wear capes, mope around in graveyards, or drink blood.
9. “What Was I Thinkin’ “ - Derks Bently. This is a rollicking great song, one of the few country songs with any kinda of vague story set-up. I miss that, country music used to have lots of stories, Kenny Rogers “The Gambler” and “Coward Of The County” remain some of the best story-based songs in all of country music, nay, all music across all genres. But anyway, this song is still super fun.
10. “Play It Again” - Luke Bryan. While most Modern Country is sung by guys, about girls they want to get with, there’s always a total non-threatening crushy aspect to it, it’s so not macho or threatening in any way. This song exemplifies it best, the guy is totally smitten with this amazing girl, she’s the one who takes an active interest in him, and he’ll do anything to keep her happy. It’s sweet. And Luke Bryan has such a great voice, that’s him in the feature guest spot on This Is How We Roll.
11. “Meanwhile Back At Mama’s” - Tim McGraw. This track is different from all the others, it’s not about partying, or boy meets girl, or a breakup; it’s a softly powerful meditation on life, and the roads we find ourselves on, and where we ultimately want to call home.

On the subway from Ataturk International Airport to Istanbul, about one out of eight women wear headscarves, maybe one out of 50 wear the head-to-toe hijab. So headscarves arean’t unusual by any means, but nowhere near the majority. Besides that, girls wear just about the same stuff as America, everything from tank tops and shorts to business suits, and everyone’s happily getting along. Turkey is not a Muslim country, it’s a country with a lot of Muslims in it. Their government is purposefully non-religious, and while a few noisy wackjobs might want to change that, the overwhelming majority of people are satisfied with church/state separation. In other words, it’s just like America. I dunno what I was expecting, maybe a certain measure of Muslimness that women being more covered up? But there are chicks in bikinis and lingerie in advertisements and TV, just like normal countries. The sexuality might be a bit less aggressive than the US, like, there is no Turkish Nicky Minaj. But give them a few years and I’m sure they’ll catch up. Humanity’s progress marches ever onwards.

After a summer listening to the new 101.7FM country music station, I’ve learned a few things:

1) All automobiles are trucks, and most trucks are Chevys, probably because “Chevy” has more lyrical bounce than “Ford”.

2) In almost every song there is drinking, and a decent number of references to smoking pot. The marijuana references are quite coy and never mention it by name, as opposed to hip-hop songs.

3) Speaking of coy, the sexiness in country songs is pretty G-rated. The most detail you’re likely to get is talk about a goodnight kiss in the driveway, and while the singer may say “Girl you look so good” it will never be “I wanna hit that all night long”. There’s a cute aw-shucksiness to it that I really like.

4) The girl is almost always the more active character in a country song; it’s she who approaches the guy, who is otherwise hesitant to go up to such beautiful and confident woman on the honkytonk dance floor/late night party in a field under the full moon/afternoon summertime party at the riverbank. There is almost none of the machismo or overt misogyny you often find in pop, rap, and rock music, the country guy is completely enchanted and trying to keep up with this awesome girl. My favorite example of this is Joe Nichols “Yeah”, first time I heard it the song charmed my goddamn boots off .

5) Outside the homogeneity you’d expect from any pop station, there is a decent diversity of styles and sub-genres. This one song, I think it’s called “Outsiders” comes on with this huge Bon Jovi rock anthem sound, and then the last minute and a half is an extended guitar solo that goes through all these tempo changes , it’s totally Prog-Country. And this Miranda Lambert song “Mama’s Broken Heart” has this awesome syncopated carnival backbeat right out of Emperor Norton’s Stationary Marching Band’s playbook, it is so much bouncy fun.

Country music’s been perfect for the summer, it’s totally made for windows-down cruising in the summer sunshine. I won’t be listening nearly as much when the temperature drops below 60 degrees, feels kinda wrong.

So I bought a new place, I move in a week. The new place is so different, it’s got dark wood molding and classic stuff all over, a couple of those built-in hutches for serving ware or whatnot, a high picture rail in the dining room for photos or plates or whatever, this place is Traditional New England looking, and it’s totally not me. Which is why I’m excited to paint it some exciting colors, knock down the wall between the kitchen and dining room to open up the space; I want it to look modern, while still acknowledging the bones of its classic craftsmanship. I realized that if I were to construct my house from a blank sheet, my home would have everything I want – open floor plan, high ceilings, all the thoughtfully designed modern conveniences...and it would look like every other bland yuppie palace out there. I’m going to be living in an illustration of one of my favorite life lessons, something I learned at a young age and have been enthusiastically practicing ever since, in jobs, friendships, relationships, and every other adventure in my life. The truth is this: getting everything that you want isn’t going to make you happy, or be the best thing for you. What matters is what you do with the options and the possibilities you find yourself in.

Oh crap I’m turning into one of those bullshit inspirational Facebook affirmations. Ima go do yoga on a mountaintop now.

You probably know by now that I don’t really give a shit about animals. Puppies and kitties are super awesome, but all that Vegan Blah Blah / Share If You Think Michael Vick Should Be Crucified Blah Blah goes right past me. Our society owes dogs, cats, horses, and dolphins no more or less special treatment than cows or pigs; cows and pigs are lovely animals, just as emotional and soulful as puppies and kittens. And delicious. Maybe it’s a genetic thing. I’m Chinese, and we’re famous for looking at any organism on earth and going “I could probably eat that.” There’s an awesome saying that the Chinese will eat anything on four legs except the table, and anything with wings except an airplane. My vegan and animal-rights friends, they’re almost all white people, hardly any Hispanics, Blacks, or Asians. We ain’t got time for that shit, let’s eat.