Do you remember this neato YouTube video of violin with hiphop beats?

I recently came across this video by the same guy:

Pretty cool, huh?  I think it’s funny when he’s singing the Rude Boy lyrics.

I also found this vid of hip hop harmonica while trying to find Chris Brown’s MJ Tribute by Bad News Brown:

So I’ve realized that not only am I sucker for bad television but I’m also a sucker for bad music.  It is so hard to clean out my iTunes library because I can always imagine a circumstance in which I’ll want to listen to that music.  It was really hard for me to delete the Beach Boys “Kokomo” today.  I NEVER listen to that song, but whenever I play it to delete it, I end up keeping it.  Partly because it reminds me of that Full House episode when they go to Hawaii and get to go on stage with the Beach Boys and partly because one time Tony and I were singing it at his parents house and his mom asked us if we were singing church songs — which I find hilarious.

Also, I can’t bring myself to delete any of my cheesy Brian McKnight slow jams.  Too much nostalgia associated with them.

I also can’t streamline my Asian music even though I rarely listen to it anymore.  Anytime I start sorting through them, I start getting into the mood to listen to them.  So I keep them, and I don’t listen to any of them until the next time I’m trying to streamline my music library.

And the new obnoxious funky electro house music I’ve acquired this year?  I keep imagining throwing a huge rave party with lots of white and neon and lots of people wearing sunglasses at night and I think it’d be the perfect music for something like that.

I also have crazy rock music that I think would go well with house painting or a snowboarding video that I might make in the future so I don’t delete those tracks either.

So I’m stuck with a fat, inconsistent iTunes library.  I really only listen to 50% of it.  Maybe less.

You know how women are susceptible to osteoporosis?  Well turns out, Asians are especially susceptible.  So yeah, double jeopardy.  I really need to start taking my one-a-day vitamins.  When I was in elementary school someone told me that their dad ate too many vitamins and he grew a sixth finger on his right hand.  I’ve always felt uneasy about vitamins since then.

I’ve deleted the past 3 posts I’ve written so I’m going to go ahead and publish this one even though it’s… yeah, pressing publish right now.

A Malaysian singer-songwriter named Zee Avi opened for Pete.  I haven’t heard of her before but apparently she’s gained quite a following recently and Michelle said that she signed with Jack Johnson’s record label.  She’s not much of a stage performer but she’s got an nice voice.  The husband thinks she still has the potential to get better.  I think her voice is pleasant but not great.  Here’s what I thought was her best song last night, a cover of Morrissey’s “First of the Gang to Die” (there’s no video, just the audio, but you can listen to it while you read the rest of this post):

For some reason, Pete seemed a lot happier last night than he was at his concert three years ago.  Not sure how to explain it.  He was just loose and free.  I really love it when artists delight in audiences that sing along with them and Pete’s definitely one of those.  My favorite concert song of his is still Murray, it’s just so much fun to sing on the top of your lungs with a crowd!

The big shocker of the night was when he did his own rendition of Bizarre Love Triangle by New Order.

Every time I see you falling
I get down on my knees and pray
I’m waiting for that final moment
You’ll say the words that I can’t say

I’ve heard that song a million times but for some reason when he sang it the way he sang it last night, I finally realized how sad of a song it is.

Here’s a video of him performing it at The Roxy:

It was really difficult to take photos because there was a really tall family standing in front of us and the lighting was extra tricky.  I didn’t bring my external flash because I wasn’t sure if I could even bring in my camera.

Here are some of the ones I liked:

(I think the husband took this one)

The Meridian was an okay venue for this concert.  They kept the AC pumping so the place was nice and cool.  It was a bit confusing as far as how to get to the main room because there are several different rooms but not a big deal.  The fog machine smelled really gross.  Not sure if it was The Meridian’s fog machine or whether it was Pete’s.  The microphones did give a bit of feedback at a few points throughout the concert but other than that the sound was pretty good.  The place is really old and is due for a renovation but I doubt that will happen anytime soon since they are one of the few venues in town and can get away with murder.  One of the biggest perks of seeing a show in Houston versus Austin is that there are a lot less drunken college students.  We didn’t encounter a single obnoxious audience member last night, which is a really big deal to me.  It’s making me think twice about not liking concerts.

Oh by the way, did you know Pete was studying to be an accountant before he became a musician?  See?  Accountants can go on to do great things.

(En route from Houston to Austin on Highway 290 on a beautiful summer night)

So come with me to a place that we don’t know
If you need some inspiration before we go, just know
It’s the way I have fallen in with you
Come with me, I just wanna say hello
It’s the way I have fallen in with you

– “Bandstand in the Sky” from the album Nightcrawler, Pete Yorn

It was the summer of 2006 and the husband and I had faithfully been listening to Pete’s first two CDs, Musicforthemorningafter and Day I Forgot for four straight years together.  We even bought Pete’s Live from New Jersey– never mind that it only had a couple of new songs.  I guess that’s what happens when you really become a fan of somebody.  I wouldn’t know, I’m not a very good music fan.  I rarely remember song lyrics, I often don’t recognize artists when I put my iTunes on shuffle, and I generally dislike going to concerts.

But this was different.  This was Pete Yorn and he was playing a show in Austin as part of his “You and Me” acoustic tour to promote the release of his third CD, Nightcrawler.  The only other artist that even comes close to how much I like Pete Yorn is Elliott Smith and I definitely don’t know all of his songs (granted, Elliott has a ton more songs than Pete).

So yeah, the concert was on a Wednesday night, but who cares, because we were going to leave right after work on Wednesday, watch the show, and drive straight into work on Thursday morning.  This is one of the things I love the most about the husband.  In the face of logistical difficulty, his stance is always, “If we really want to do this, let’s just do it.  We shouldn’t let things like driving or less sleep stop us.  C’mon, it’ll be worth it.”

I know this sounds silly but the night felt magical.  I think working in a cubicle day-in and day-out had really robbed me of my wonder.  As we drove to Austin I remarked at how pretty the drive was and how much I missed it.  And then we did something we never do on our drives to Austin.  We pulled over to the side of the road, got out of the car, took photos and just enjoyed the peacefulness of a Texas summer.  (That’s when I took the picture that’s posted above.)

By the time we arrived in Austin the sun was already making it’s final goodbyes over the DKR Texas Memorial Stadium.  We found parking pretty easily downtown since it was a Wednesday night and we excitedly hurried upstairs to The Parish, one of my favorite venues in Austin.  The place was still fairly empty, we were super early.  I’m really glad we were early though because the place eventually got pretty packed and because we were early we had a good spot near the front that let me take the following photos:

I took these photos in RAW format because I knew I wanted as much room to process as possible.  But the crazy thing is I never had the software to even look at RAW format photos until I got this MacBookPro this past year.  So two days ago I just came across this old CD-R in an old spindle of CDs that had “PETE YORN PHOTOS” written in large block letters in yellow sharpie (what a stupid color for a sharpie, I think it came in a set).  It was such a delight to open these pictures up in Aperture, see these photos for the first time, and relive the night all over again.

It was a great concert.  Probably the best concert of my life.  The crowd was great, everyone was singing along.  The setting was relatively intimate, the Parish room isn’t all that big.  So many moments during the concert, the husband and I would look at each other with beaming smiles and just wordlessly relish in the fact that this was an amazing concert and wasn’t it so great to hear Pete live and acoustic and wasn’t it so great to be here together.

We left the concert glowing.  Thanks to Judy for letting us crash at your place that night.

So fast forward three years to 2009.  Pete’s coming to Houston on July 14 at the Meridian and we already have tickets for it.  Will it be as memorable as our first?  Probably not.  But will it be a great concert?  I sure hope so.

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In other news, I got the following email from Facebook last night:

Subject: Alexander Rodriguez added you as a friend on Facebook

Alexander added you as a friend on Facebook.  We need to confirm that you know Alexander in order for you to be friends on Facebook.

A-Rod?!  Wait until I tell Lawrence!!

Unfortunately, when I went home and opened my Facebook Friend Requests page, I found this fellow looking at me.

Wrong Alexander Rodriguez.  I’ll refrain from any Super Mario jokes.  Beyond that one.

(DJ Ceeplus Bad Knives at CAMH’s Steel Lounge Underground Party)

I think I’ve already used this DJ photo before but it’s the only DJ photo I have that I like.  So it’s getting recycled.

Every summer needs a good soundtrack.  My summer soundtrack is still unfolding as summer gets underway but here’s a tentative tracklist:

• The new Metric album, Fantasies, in its entirety.  They released it themselves, how great is that?
• Um, I’m going to go ahead and put down Pete Yorn’s new album Back and Fourth down even though I’ve only heard one song off of it and the album doesn’t get released until next week.
• Forest City Lovers – Watching the Streetlights Grow
• Throw in 2 or 3 tracks from The Cool Kids
• Of course, Matt and Kim – Daylight
• …

Okay, confession.  I don’t really want to write a whole post about summer songs I like.  I’m just stalling because I’m going to write a mega post about marijuana and I feel really “out of shape” when it comes to writing and I need to get back in practice before I write it.  Marijuana’s a hard topic.  It’s pretty polarizing.  Kind of like Kobe Bryant.  And when it comes to polarizing topics, I really struggle writing because I want to distance myself from Michael Moore and crazy Hollywood celebrities as much as I want to distance myself from the Texas Young Republican Federation and Focus on the Family.  It’s also particularly difficult because most people have their minds made up already so I have to somehow make people stick around.  And of course there’s the whole auto-import to Facebook mechanism I have set up so that everything I write here automatically imports as a note there.  And my Facebook friends list is a confusing mix of people.

Okay really, it’s not all bad.  It’s boring to only write about things that everyone agrees about.

I just feel so rusty and out of practice.  So I’ll give myself a few more posts before I tackle it.

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For those of you who aren’t on Google Reader, check out this NYT article I shared about a cool charter school called, The Equity Project.  It’s basically this charter school that is paying $125,000/year salaries to their teachers with additional bonus incentives.  And it’s not just a money dump.  They got a ton of applicants (as you might expect) and they interviewed 100 to get the cream of the crop: 8 teachers.  It’s not like they just scooped up all the Harvard grads.  They looked for great teachers with “engagement factor”, good “classroom management” and a true love of teaching.  In my mind it’s like having a school full of all of your favorite teachers from grade school.  Incredible.  I also love that this charter school highlights teachers that have been doing amazing things in kids’ lives for regular teacher salaries.  And I think about all the teachers that applied, didn’t get hired, and will happily keep teaching at their current jobs because they love it.  It gives me chills thinking about it.

Here’s how they describe themselves:

“The Equity Project (TEP) Charter School, a 480-student middle school in the Washington Heights neighborhood of New York City that will open in September 2009, aims to put into practice the central conclusion of a large body of research related to student achievement: teacher quality is the most important school-based factor in the academic success of students, particularly those from low-income families.[i] In singling out teacher quality as the essential lever in educational reform, TEP is uniquely focused on attracting and retaining master teachers. To do so, TEP uses a three-pronged strategy that it terms the 3 R’s: Rigorous Qualifications, Redefined Expectations, & Revolutionary Compensation.

TEP will spend over 15 months recruiting master teachers who meet eight rigorous qualifications. These teachers will then meet TEP’s redefined expectations. These expectations center on (a) a professional work-day that includes daily peer observations and co-teaching (b) a work-year that includes an annual 6-week Summer Development Institute, and (c) a career arc that fosters professional growth through a mandatory sabbatical once every five or six years. These redefined expectations are unified by one principle: student achievement is maximized when teachers have the time and support to constantly improve their craft.

TEP teachers are valued and sustained through revolutionary compensation: a $125,000 annual salary and the opportunity to earn a significant annual bonus based on school-wide performance. TEP has created a sustainable and conservative financial model that allows the school to compensate its teachers appropriately without relying on outside private funding.[ii] It accomplishes this primarily through cost savings that result directly from the tremendous quality and productivity of its teachers. In short, hiring and paying master teachers what they are worth is a cost-effective mechanism for boosting student achievement.”

I wanted to clap when I read this footnote:

“TEP does NOT fundraise to support its investment in teacher compensation. This is because a central feature of TEP’s mission is to demonstrate that schools can make a radical investment in teacher equity by reallocating existing public funding.”

Public education is close to my heart because I’m kind of crazy about public schools and wish that everyone cared about it as much as I did.  I really think it’s the solution to a lot of our nation’s problems.  I’m personally conflicted about private schools because I know they provide stellar educations but I think they’re also sucking the life out of the public schools.  This topic is also close to my heart because my sister, Anny,  and my bestbud, Judy, are both public school teachers.  I see firsthand the effort, time, and intelligence it takes to be a good teacher.  And for all the lucky kids that get to be in their classrooms, I know that there are a lot more kids who are in classrooms where they aren’t learning how to read, write and count.

But of course, I could be wrong about all of this.  TEP could be wrong.  That’s why this charter school is so fascinating to me.  Maybe higher salaries isn’t the solution.  Then we move on to the next big idea, I suppose.  But if it is?  If higher teacher salaries mean more passionate teachers who help students perform better and eventually have higher graduation rates from high school — oooh wee!  That would be huge.  I really hope this charter school succeeds.

Ack, still rusty.

It’s strange then, that I can count the Korean restaurants I’ve been to on my fingers.  I don’t know, I guess I just don’t have a friend who can give me the scoop on where all the good Korean food is in town?  In Houston we always go to Seoul Garden and in Austin we go to Schilla.  Well, we were headed to H*mart to pick up some groceries and decided to do something we rarely do.  Drive aimlessly and try a random restaurant.  Several years ago I became a review junkie.  Electronics, movies, restaurants, even outdoor gear.  In no other aspect of my life am I so cautious, it really doesn’t make much sense but it is what it is.

So we’re driving along Long Point and we’re starting to get discouraged because we don’t see anything promising when all of a sudden we pass this house in the trees with a sign that says “Korean Noodle House”.  The husband zooms by it but I insist that we double back and try it because it looks like a house and I will try any restaurant that looks like a house.

The tricky thing about being Asian is that if you walk into any authentic Asian restaurant, people assume you’re of that ethnicity.  This place was no different.  They greeted us in Korean and looked startled when we said we needed a table for two.  We stood there uncomfortably and then the girl pointed us to another room and said, “Any table.”

The other room had different sized tables with checkered tableclothes and mismatched chairs.  On the table was a one sheet laminated menu with four photos and Korean only.  The husband looked at me and said, “What now?”

The girl came in a few minutes to bring us ice water and plates.  We were relieved when she handed us English menus.  It’s a really simple menu.  Four sections, mostly noodle soup dishes with a few exceptions like bibimbap, pancakes and some appetizers.  One of the sections allows you to get extra noodles or to “jumbo size”.  The husband and I both ordered the Spicy Seafood Noodle Soup and the husband requested extra noodles.  The girl came back in a few minutes with a small pot of kimchi and politely informed the husband that they can’t do extra noodles on the seafood soup but that she would give him more noodles and just not charge him.

The kimchi pancake came out first (haha yeah, we also ordered a pancake — overkill).  It was pretty awesome even though it was falling apart — it was falling apart because they were so generous with the kim chi.  The bowls of noodle soup came out shortly after.

Around this time the place started to fill up.  Korean-speakers only.

The noodle soup was pretty spectacular.  I think the noodles are homemade and knife cut because they were so fresh and roughly/unevenly cut.  I’ve been to some places where they’ll cheat on their seafood soup and put in imitation crab and silly things like that but this place put in generous amounts of mussels, oysters, shrimp, octopus, and veggies.  It was nicely topped off with strips of seaweed and enoki mushrooms.  I couldn’t finish my bowl, I had to pass it off to the husband.  It was ridiculous how much food was in that bowl.  Korean food is kind of like Thai food, it’s hard to find it good and cheap.  Each bowl of soup was $10 but with all the seafood in it, I think it was worth it.

We’ll definitely be back — I want to try everything on their menu.

P.S.  They have a patio.

Korean Noodle House
1415 Murray Bay Street
Houston, Texas 77080

I’ve been using five ways to legally hunt and I’d like to share them with you:

One: The good thing about commercials is that they’re using better songs these days.  I downloaded (for $0.99 on Amazon.com!) Citizen Cope’s “Let the Drummer Kick” from the new 2009 Acura TSX commercial last week.  Same concept applies to prime time TV shows.  Usually a quick google search will help you find the song you’re looking for.  Just try to remember a line or two of lyrics.

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Two: I’ve been paying attention to what people are listening to on Facebook.  It’s especially easy when my friends (or distant acquaintances) have great taste in music and post awesome lists of artists or albums.  My childhood friend, Charlene Jackson, recently posted a great list of the top 25 albums of 2008 with commentary and I slowly worked my way through the list, looking for YouTube videos of the songs and buying songs off of Amazon whenever I found winners.  Even a quick glance through people’s music lists can tip me off.  Thanks in advance for letting me borrow music from you all.

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Three: A few weeks ago, I discovered La Blogotheque and The Take Away Shows (on YouTube of all places).  I know I already shared this on Google Reader but I just have to reemphasize for those of you who don’t read my Google Reader shared feeds.  In their own words:

“The Take away shows are la Blogotheque’s first video podcasts.

Every week, we invite an artist or a band to play in the streets, in a bar, a park, or even in a flat or in an elevator, and we film the whole session. Of course, what makes the beauty of it is all the little incidents, hesitations, and crazy stuff happening unexpectingly. Besides, we do not edit the videos so they look perfectly flawless, instead we keep the raw sound of the surroundings. Our goal is to try and capture instants, film the music just like it happens, without preparation, without tricks. Spontaneity is the keyword.

The Take away shows exist since April 2006. There was Chryde, who wanted to shake things up and find another way to share music, and there was Vincent Moon, who wanted to film music differently. Chryde offered Moon to go and film musicians in the city, Moon seized the idea and glorified it. Since then, other directors across the world joined this project, and we plan to extend it worldwide.”

Here is one of my favorites.  It takes awhile to get going but listen to it through the end, it’s beautiful and powerful.  (I can’t really watch the video without getting motion sick, which is a shame since it’s such a beautiful place.  Not all of the videos on the website are this shaky, the different directors have different styles.)

Here’s another good one:

And here’s a fun one (thanks again to Charlene J.!):

They have so many amazing videos on there.  I love the way the videos are so organic and natural — in such ordinary and breathtaking environments (on a rooftop in Paris!).  I am going to try to listen/watch all of the Take Away shows.  There are a lot of popular artists on there like Fleet Foxes, Bon Iver, and even Jason Mraz — but there are also plenty I’ve never heard of like Satine or Margot and the Nuclear So and So’s.  And I figure, a band cool enough to let someone record a video of them like this deserves to be listened to.  This is easily my new favorite website.

I’m thinking about showing one of these two music videos as a good example– can you guys think of any other good ones like these two? I wanted to use 2Pac but I couldn’t pick a song that I wanted to use and frankly most of the kids I work with don’t listen to 2Pac these days.

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Interestingly enough, when I googled the word “apple” in images, the Apple logo came up before a fruit apple.

I like that the city and the internet is quickly morphing into holiday mode.  This is easily my favorite time of the year.  I really like looking at well-wrapped gifts but I rarely spend extra money or time on it.  It’s just too temporary.  Yesterday when I was at the grocery store, a woman asked me if I knew how to make a broccoli cheese and rice casserole.  I was happy to tell her how.  She then started telling me about her mom and how her mom doesn’t understand her and is too old fashioned — but I already discussed that sort of thing in another post.

I feel pretty out of practice when it comes to writing posts.  I didn’t even write a “I’m happy Obama won” post.  My dad voted for McCain.  We had a good talk about that.  In classic form, he told me about how he took one of the Obama mailers to his supervisor, covered the “e” in “change” and read it out loud.  “Chang We Need, Chang We Believe.”  (FYI: Chang is my maiden name.) Haha, that’s my dad for ya.

So yeah, it’s been busy.  And when it hasn’t been busy, I’ve been relishing in my free-time and have not felt inclined to spend it composing a blogpost.  But here I am, 13 minutes away until my last student organization meeting of the year, coming off of a “just finished my last paper of the semester” high and I thought it would be appropriate to write a blog post.

I went to Via Colori this past Sunday morning for the exclusive pre-opening photoshoot — complete with photographer’s badge and everything!  It felt really good to be taking photos again and noticing all the small things I wanted to capture.  Also nice to get some Flickr swag.  Thanks, Laurie!  I kind of wanted to save my photos so that I could post-process them on the new MacBook Pro I ordered so it might be awhile until you get to see them.

Another major change that has happened recently is that I’ve changed my email address.  I didn’t think it would be that big of a deal but then I realized how entrenched I am in Google services.  Thankfully I moved from Gmail to Gmail so the steps were pretty easy.  In case someone else is making the move, I’ll detail the transition here.  There were 6 steps to my move:

[1] Setup old email address to forward mail to new email address.

[2] Setup new email address to import all old emails.  This process is pretty slow and it took about 3 days to complete.  Basically once you set the process in motion, your new email address just starts to retrieve all of your old emails in batches of 200 or so.  It was kind of annoying because the mail client on the iPhone recognized those emails as new emails.  To clear the count, I just selected all the emails and then marked them all as read in one fell swoop.

[3] Export my google contacts from my old google account to a .csv file and then imported that file to my new google account.  Unfortunately, it doesn’t save your contact groups.

[3] Inform all of my Google Reader contacts of my move and add contacts to my chat list to ensure I was receiving their shared feeds.  Google really needs to make a more obvious way to add contacts to your google reader.

[4] Alter the code on my Google Reader Shared Feeds box on the sidebar of Sockparade.

[5] Request to be added to the three Google Groups that I use for school.

[6] Share all 5 of my Google Calendars with my new email address being sure to give permission to make changes AND manage sharing.

As you can see, Google manages a big part of my life.  I wish the new themes applied to all the services and not just Gmail.

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Okay, so I listened to Britney’s new album, Circus, on imeem.  I don’t think a comeback is possible at this point.  Sorry, Brit.