Saturday, July 26, 2008

What am I supposed to do

Against cute, useless things, I am pretty much helpless. I can't resist hearts, stars, flowers, and everything else girly and cliché. I'm like the perfect consumer that the POM Tea marketing team must have had in mind when they were brainstorming ways to sucker customers into buying their products despite the shitty taste and bewildering sugar content. I used to buy them in the dozens because I just had to have those perfect glass cylinders with the ultra cute logos emblazoned in front. Even though I didn't keep any of them.

The amount of genuinely useless Monokuro Boo merchandise I possess is also shameful considering I am no longer twelve.

Anyway, the tokidoki logo is really cute too.


No, I won't get a tan. Or turn down the brightness.
: rofl ur blog is so ....
: hahahaha.
♡L: what is that supposed to mean......
: dude im hella high right now
: goddamn

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quiet nights & quiet stars

It's okay, you weren't making enough monies
to have stylists yet...


NALEN readers,
I present to you the Foreign Beggars, made up of MC's Metropolis and Orifice Vulgatron, Producer Dag Nabbit, Shlomo, and DJ Nonames, a medium-profile British hip-hop group who have made high-profile appearances with Bjork ('Medulla'), Corinne Bailey Rae, the Gorillaz ('Tomorrow Never Comes'), and UNKLE. Hip-hop enthusiasts, don't stop reading yet. Foreign Beggars have also collaborated with heavyweights Stones Throw’s OhNo, Guilty Simpson, Wildchild and Dudley Perkins, producer supreme DJ Vadim, Dabrye, Scratch Perverts, Skinnyman, Task Force and Spain’s Griffi and Tote King. They have also opened and performed with a more recognizable list of names: Snoop Dogg, Amy Winehouse, Public Enemy, Pharoahe Monch, Iain Brown, Femi Kuti, Mark Ronson, Talib Kweli, Roni Size, Asian Dub Foundation, Pendulum, K’Naan, Wu Tang Clan, Kano, Masta Ace, Herbalizer, East 17! and Roots Manuva.
... well that was tiring. If you read through all that, and recognized more than seven artists in the gray list, I applaud you, and encourage you to start a Hip-Hop major at your local university.

Oh I love them. I love them so.

I love them because they're one of the most versatile hip-hop groups I've listened to. They record and perform hip-hop influenced by bossa nova, power metal, glam rock, and drum & bass... weird, but definitely interesting, and always musically fucking HOT. They're the reason a petite little asian girl like me is into hip-hop at all, next to Mos Def and Atmosphere.

Artist background:

"Shlomo has also created the worlds first Vocal Orchestra, and was made an “Artist in Residence” at the South Bank Centre at the young age of 22, Curator of the 2007 world beatbox convention in London and judges at the UK Beatbox championships and has performed with the likes of Bjork, Dizzee Rascal, The Specials & Damon Albarn."
--myspace.com/foreignbeggars





The sample "quiet nights of quiet stars" originally comes from the song "Corcovado" by Antonio Carlos Jobim, bossa nova artist.:




This song is inspired by the Corcovado Mountain in Rio Janeiro, Brazil. Expect more bossa nova.

like the songs? don't like them? like one but not the other? like other? let us know.
museuk tonight: re llacs'd


muamua,
--j.

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Thursday, July 24, 2008

The woods are lovely, dark, and deep

Today my mother forwarded an email to me warning of gang violence spreading from Oakland to Fremont. Gang violence is no laughing matter, but when I think of Fremont gangs the image that comes to mind is a bunch of Asian MSJ high school kids whacking each other on the head with graphing calculators in order to get to AP testing first.

It's not funny! Why am I laughing? I hope these professed Oakland gangsters don't come after me now.

I love this song (the girl is really pretty!) by Khalil Fong, where he sings about being a scrub (你想开宝马,我和我的Toyota) and being too skinny. "Please don't break my heart," he croons. I won't, Khalil, I won't! Um.

This excerpt from Seamus Heaney's Nobel Lecture has been one of my favorite passages to date, perfectly exemplifying the simultaneous beauty and ugliness of human nature. It's easy to forget both.
One of the most harrowing moments in the whole history of the harrowing of the heart in Northern Ireland came when a minibus full of workers being driven home one January evening in 1976 was held up by armed and masked men and the occupants of the van ordered at gunpoint to line up at the side of the road. Then one of the masked executioners said to them, "Any Catholics among you, step out here." As it happened, this particular group, with one exception, were all Protestants, so the presumption must have been that the masked men were Protestant paramilitaries about to carry out a tit-for-tat sectarian killing of the Catholic as the odd man out, the one who would have been presumed to be in sympathy with the IRA and all its actions.

It was a terrible moment for him, caught between dread and witness, but he did make a motion to step forward. Then, the story goes, in that split second of decision, and in the relative cover of the winter evening darkness, he felt the hand of the Protestant worker next to him take his hand and squeeze it in a signal that said no, don't move, we'll not betray you, nobody need know what faith or party you belong to. All in vain, however, for the man stepped out of the line; but instead of finding a gun at his temple, he was pushed away as the gunmen opened fire on those remaining in the line, for these were not Protestant terrorists, but members, presumably, of the Provisional IRA.



Love Naomi.

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tuurrrbooolashhh!

I'm a little obsessed with eye makeup, regardless of my inability to really indulge in it. July and I have been waiting- the world's very first motion mascara has finally entered this world.


"Turbolash: All Effects Motion Mascara"
Estee Lauder's new vibrating mascara, 30 USD

I mean.... I love the bottle design, but didn't they consider how this kind of technology could get seriously misused? heeHEE. The vibrating technology allegedly doesn't stop at de-clumping, but gives ''saturated'' volume and length. Looks like beauty & geek may be an optimal match in the world of make-up.
Estee Lauder isn't alone. Lancome recently announced in a press release that its own tech-wand is due this Fall 2008.


"Oscillation"

At 7,000 vibrations a minute, this wand better behave as beautifully as it looks.

According to the press release, this wand will coat each eyelash a full 360, one-upping Estee Lauder's wand. This particular wand is announced, with much ado, to be made by Jean-Louis Gueret- Lancome's brush innovator. Everyone awaits price still...

Onwards!

museuk:


My friend Daniel recently introduced a very cool idea to me- and that is freestyling to beats online. I found him perusing Youtube, freestyling to L'il Wayne's "A Millie" . But it gets old, so he types in "instrumental..rap...beat" in the search bar, and the above song is the genius that we find.

Michelluzzo. Experimenting trip-hop/rap artist. Reside to B-side in particular stands out to me... the other songs are less dazzling, but that is just my opinion. If you liked what you heard, check out his other songs here. They're free to download!

An exclusive rap from D. Lam, or "the Laminator" (It's a hint of how hardcore he is...)

" you leave the freestylin to broz, cause i choose bros before hos// so listen to this flow like food to the soul, i give you the elixir of a mixture of a bowl// its bold, hitting you so much you start to get cold // cause you never had a dose as good as this shit, you barely take in any and you already in miss it// my thoughts come deep within the mind, so deep it can't be expressed in one line//"


it's 3:23 ay-em
neither night nor day, i'm tryin' to find that gem
the coldest flare in my mind, but
it's always on the run and i'm on the chase
chasin, i need some rest
this cycle remains messed

and it is so that i discover i am not a very good freestyler, and
give up on freestyling forever. Luckily I have a talent for
putting on mascara.

status: avoiding the skilled career industry

muamua,
--j.

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Wednesday, July 23, 2008

We're so close to reaching that famous happy ending

So I'm a news fanatic. I refresh Google News every 5 minutes and read New York Magazine religiously, as well as the New York Times, the Economist, and Newsweek whenever I feel like being less trashy. Nevertheless, NY Mag is unbeatable in its flippant headlines and articles like the Idiot's Guide to the Fannie & Freddie fiasco (by idiots, for idiots- "Who are these farm children anyway, and why are they in trouble?"), not to mention the Fug Girls and Cult of Personality.

Anyway, I'm usually a raw fish kind of girl (the more hamachi the better), and back when I used to eat meat, I loved rare steak. But I am pretty much down for whatever, so when my friend suggested Akadai, which is known for its baked sushi, I readily agreed.

Funnily enough, my friend is on a diet. I told him to just get sashimi (good protein and no carbs, not to mention omega-3 fatty acids! Which I know how to draw, ha ha) but he was like: "Hell naw beezy! I want sushi."

"If you're on a diet, you should eat sushi more often; it's healthy for you." "Not that fake shit we eat!"


I can't say whether this is as good as it looks because the puffy glazed-ness kind of reminds me of a blastula. Ew, why did I just think that?

It was all right, but still, fake shit is fake shit, and baked salmon encrusted in tempura drizzled over in layers of cream reminds me of a McDonald's Fish-O-Fillet gone essentially white food masquerading under Asian names à la P. F. Chang's. Or maybe I'm just grumpy because I didn't have any hamachi.

Anyway, a couple of wasps have started building a nest next to my window.



Owned.

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kissing the lipless who bleed all the sweetness away

One thing I've noticed on the East Coast is that a significantly fewer proportion of people tend to listen to indie music. In California, it's almost the norm, but at school I've met a lot of people who have never heard of Rilo Kiley or even Death Cab for Cutie. These people also have the tendency to dismiss all non-bubblegum pop music as "emo." Don't get me wrong, I love Britney (particularly "I'm a Slave 4 U" Britney, or "Toxic" Britney, or...) as much as the next teenybopper, but there is something more to be gained from songs like CocoRosie's "West Side" or Gregory and the Hawk's "I'm Your Puppet" despite their relative inaccessibility.
Some of my favorite songs that everyone should listen to:
· Tingsek - I Love You (Part 1)
· The Apples in Stereo - Green Machine
· The Beatles - For No One
· CocoRosie - By Your Side
· The Flaming Lips - Yoshimi Battles the Pink Robots Pt. 1
· Cursive - The Radiator Hums
· Loney, Dear - Sinister in a State of Hope
· Broken Social Scene - Anthems for a Seventeen-Year-Old Girl
· Voxtrot - Soft & Warm

And my absolute favorite:
· Someone Still Loves You Boris Yeltsin - I am Warm + Powerful (although the acoustic version is the best if you can find it- featured on my site)
On a final note: it's not like the Bay doesn't know how to get down, though. Gotta love Bay Area music; the rest of America is missing out.

Get smart... we'd rather go dumb

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Tuesday, July 22, 2008

a find, a sole dine

Not many people have thought about what a comic strip would be like without its main character. Dan Walsh, self-described "Irish musician, artist, nerd and businessman" has, and powers a one-of-a-kind website devoted to Garfield...without Garfield. What? Yeah, me too. Maybe this will clear things up:


vs.


Hilarity ensues. But you haven't seen the other strips yet- Dan Walsh has cleanly eliminated our beloved Garfield from numerous other Garfield strips successfully since April 5, 2008. Other strips are filled with an incredibly heartwrenching sense of isolation and desperation. Dan Walsh says it best:
"...the result is an even better comic about schizophrenia, bipolar disorder, and the empty desperation of modern life? ...Let’s laugh and learn with him on a journey deep into the tortured mind of an isolated young everyman as he fights a losing battle against loneliness in a quiet American suburb."
-- Dan Walsh
http://garfieldminusgarfield.net/

muamua
--j.

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Only the dead stay seventeen forever.

So for my first entry, I thought I would post a picture of j. and I doing what we do best: drooling over sushi. It's no coincidence that we've gotten kicked out of almost every restaurant we've been to for staying too long.


We don't smile like this for everything.

I also have to discuss another one of my current obsessions: Khalil Fong 方大同. When I heard his song on the LOVE Cartier website (whose playlist everyone should listen to) I set out to find out as much about him as possible. After hearing "Love Song," it was pretty much over.
Rather than a typical Canto/Chinese pop (read: terrible) artist, he's really just an incredibly talented R&B singer who sings in Chinese. (Even though he's from HK, he sings in Mandarin because he says it's prettier- ha!) It's not that I don't appreciate pretty boys, as anyone who knows me can attest to, but I find people with something to say a lot more interesting.


Confession: I watch this video almost everyday. Is that creepy?
人间的青草地 需要浇水
内心的花园就不会枯萎
把最甜最好的滋味
散播到东南西北
I mean, with lyrics like that (Khalil discusses them in English during the interview), how could anyone resist? Or “忘了美丽,” which has truly heartbreaking lyrics, or at the end of “十九八七...” where he goes, “爱的是你我爱的是你,你却说要离开你别说要离开”

I'm should stop writing before I embarass myself even further.

Okay. Um. I'm going to watch yesterday's episode of Weeds now. And maybe that interview... one more time.

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a possibly unwanted peek into who we are

on skype:
♡L: "it's 3:11 AM. what should we do."
j.: "and born into this world was na-len.blogspot.com,"
3:11 AM


♡L: we're not crazy. we promise. hahaha
3:12 AM

j.: but we do engage in sex with sushi

j.: you look concerned


----------------------------------------------
j.: we should both write something
♡L: are we going to be serious or schizophrenic
3:54 AM

j.: we could be seroiusly schizo
or schizoly serious

♡L: i want sushi
3:55 AM

j.:we contribute so much to this world
♡L: hahaha
j.: wanting sushi, eating sushi, feeding the fishers who fish for sushi
♡L: i know..
j.: and the seaweed pickers
♡L:we deserve like a monument
j.: except the monument should be edible...
sushi
3:55 AM

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