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- If you don’t know by now, Doggy Dogg is a freak.
Well, Snoop’s got a new video out. It’s for “Sexual Seduction,” the first single off his new album Ego Trippin’. And it is a winner.
Anyone paying close attention to Snoop’s music over the past few years has probably noticed the increasing number of references to the early-to-mid-80s synth funk steelo. One minute he’s mouthing the words to Slave’s “Watching you,” the next he’s rapping over the Cameo classic “She’s strange,” then he’s got the Gap Band‘s Charlie Wilson dressed up like Jay-Z singing next to Justin Timberlake. It’s nothing less than a one-man musical revival.
I’ve been gung-ho for this whole trend since the start, not just because I’m a big fan of the sound, but because the pop funk aesthetic is some of the silliest shit you’re ever gonna see. Forged at the intersection of the LSD-fueled space pageantry of Funkadelic and the Coke-fueled sexual androgyny of Prince, synthesizer funk produced some great songs and an absolutely incredible quantity of images like this:
Not to mention this:
Well, after becoming more and more intimate with the pop funk sound, Snoop’s now decided to go all in and adopt the visuals to match.
Hoo boy.
Popularity: 3% [?]
- The Internet Dream: A nerd music primer
Yesterday I received an e-mail from someone I don’t know. The subject line was “Fwd: MUSIC NERDS WATCH THIS!!!” Then inside was some stupid text and a link to this clip of the University of California marching band doing a routine inspired by video games.
The clip was really nice, but, as a level 5 music nerd, I found the whole tone of the e-mail distasteful. But it got me to thinking about the topic of music nerdom and how it plays out, especially online.
As far as I can tell, there are 3 primary strains of musical nerdiness. The first involves the translation of popular, non-nerdy music into a form that fellow nerds can find more palatable, or at least more ironically enjoyable. Below are some key examples:
Ben Folds Five – Bitches ain’t shit
This was a big deal a couple of years ago and, although I generally find the whole “let’s get some suburban white guys to act like rappers” school of comedy extremely corny, I have to respect the seriousness with which these guys went about it. This is really the gold standard.
The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain – Smells like teen spirit
The Ukulele Orchestra of Great Britain does all sorts of covers of everything from Mozart to the Undertones. This clip is my favorite, mostly because of the crowd participation and Mavis Staples’ backing singers jamming in the background.
David Sides – Make it rain
David Sides is an R&B artist from California. He might object to being called a nerd, but, sorry, reformatting a strip club anthem for play on a grand piano is some nerdy shit to do.
The second strain of nerd music is rooted in the intense love of computers and miscellaneous gadgetry that most nerds share.
Toshio Iwai – TENORI-ON
TENORI-ON is a digital music instrument that uses an LED panel to create a “visible music” interface. It was created by the media artist Toshio Iwai for Yamaha, and if you feel as I do that this is the coolest thing you’ve ever seen, then you are a music nerd.
Creative-Labs PRODIKEYS PC-MIDI KEYBOARD 2 – Drum demo
One of the hallmarks of true nerd musical genius is the ability to take a seemingly cold, unmusical machine and make it sing. I wish I knew the name of the guy in this demo, because I’ve never seen a human being so capable of rocking out with so few of the usual rock & roll signifiers.
Kraftwerk – Pocket Calculator
Sometimes simply making music with machines isn’t enough. Sometimes it gets so good to you that you feel obliged to to make music about your machines. There’s a wealth of examples of this type of techno love ballad, my favorite probably being Zapp’s Computer Love. But it would be simply irresponsible to omit the visionaries Kraftwerk from this discussion. In a way, the men from Düsseldorf set up the template for nerd music, and, with the assistance of fellow nerd music giants Afrika Bambaataa and Derick May, they’ve remained completely relevant for decades.
The final facet of music nerd output has less to with style and more to do with content. Nerds are, in my opinion, more insightful than their non-nerdy contemporaries. We have more sensitive antennae; we feel the outsider’s discomfort. So it only makes sense then that some of those feelings will be expressed through lyrics. You can’t just cover famous people and make beep-boop sounds on your glowing metal box all day. Here are just a few examples of the nerd ethos manifest in song:
Tay Zonday – Internet Dream
Man oh man do I love Tay Zonday. He’s best known for his viral video masterpiece Chocolate Rain, but I think for this particular topic Internet Dream is a better choice. Just as Bob Dylan found a way to articulate the vague feelings of frustration, compassion, and desire for change felt among a generation of young people in the 1960s, I think TZ gives voice to many more beside himself when he says, “Everyday I swear I’m going to go to bed at, like, 11. And, all of a sudden, it’s 4 AM and I was just watching Youtube and reading Wikipedia for the last 5 hours. It’s like MAN!…”
Dan Le Sac vs Scroobius Pip – Thou shalt always kill
Perhaps a less attractive dimension of the nerd personality is the sense of moral rightness and know-it-allism that comes from being more sensitive and less popular. British MC Scroobius Pip found a way to tap that vein and produced this – three and a half minutes of brow beating set to a beat.
Bobby Conn – Never get ahead (saying yes to The Man)
But, on certain glorious occasions, the feelings of righteous indignation and hyper criticality that swirl around the nerd’s interior world can be funneled and turned outward, resulting in works of beauty like this universalist anthem of awareness and self-protection by Chi Town’s own Bobby Conn.
OK, so that’s that. I realize that even broaching the subject of nerds and music opens me up to all sorts of ridicule and key-stroke lashings. But at least I’m not talking about comic books. Anyway, I get a huge amount of pleasure from all the clips above and have the deepest respect for the people in them. I hope it’s clear that all is this is meant in love and empathy. Nerd up.
Popularity: 6% [?]
- New music from the greatest musical group on earth
The music of Outkast has a special place in my life.
Having been raised by hippies in a house full of ’60s music – or, at best, later albums by artists from the ’60s – I suffer a certain amount of existential angst about missing out on the good old days of folk, rock & roll, soul, etc. That hasn’t stopped me from fiendishly searching it out and devouring it, but still, it’s a bittersweet taste.
I mention this because one of my main comforts when I feel overly regretful about missing, say, Sam Cooke in 1963 or Bob Dylan in 1969 or Bob Marley in 1975 is the knowledge that I was alive and kicking for Outkast in 1998. That’s the year their masterpiece Aquemini dropped and it changed my life. But whatever, this ain’t about me.
The centerpiece of Aquemini is Da Art of Storytellin’ Parts I & II, back-to-back songs with totally different musical and thematic vibes that, through the genius of Outkast, fit together hand in glove. A remix of the first part with a guest appearance from Slick Rick was eventually released as the album’s third single, but it always seemed to me like a siamese twin separated.
Aaanyway, a new Art of Storytellin’ has come out. It’s from DJ Drama’s upcoming album and it’s called part 4, so I guess the Slick Rick version was considered part 3. A file with a whole bunch of DJ drops has been floating around for a couple days, but this one is clean.
So, in celebration of some new Kast coming into the world, here’s the full Da Art of Storytellin’ Suite: ((Break!))
Part I:
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DOWNLOAD (right-click the link and choose “save target as” (windows) or “save link as” (mac).)Part II:
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Part III:
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Part IV:
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Popularity: 3% [?]
- Book Buildings
Lately I’ve been doing research for a project on the future of the book. The topic is warming up here in China ever since a popular horror writer declared that he’d no longer make his work available in print, only online, saying books were too wasteful and environmentally hostile. But, in a classic STFU moment, a few days after his announcement the largest bookstore in the world opened outside of Beijing. I went for a visit this weekend.
It’s called Beijing International Book City.
As you’d imagine, it’s huge. 300,000 square meters, housing over 500 state-owned publishers and an estimated 300 private and overseas publishers, including Random House and Penguin. But anyway, you could learn any of that from a press release.
What’s really amazing about the place isn’t the quantity of books but the ways they’re displayed. I basically spent the first hour I was there running around, dodging security guards and taking as many photos as I could:
Then after all the running around and breathing in all the (probably toxic) new-building-smell and new-book-smell I became semi-hallucinatory and started seeing buildings that I recognized from around Beijing…
In the end, all that scurrying around left me too tired to actually read any books, so I bought the littlest one I could find.
It’s a conversation book for students of English, and amongst its many variations on introduction, food ordering, and family description, I found this highly compelling passage:
Popularity: 3% [?]
- Baby’s first handgun
Silk Street Market, BeijingPopularity: 3% [?]
- Drunken Lion Mixtape #3: Winter Workout
Here’s my first contribution to the Drunken Lion Sound System mix series. It’s mostly uptempo stuff of the electro house, Baltimore club, baile funk type. It’s getting cold up here north of the equator, so I put this together to inspire us party people to fight the urge to crawl into a ball and sleep through winter. Turn the heat up, turn the bass up, and let me know what you think… ((Bomb sound effect, immediately followed by sirens))
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Download HERE (right-click/ctrl-click the link and choose “save target as” (windows) or “save link as” (mac).)Tracklist:
Q-Tip intro
will.i.am – Make it funky
Robin Thicke – Cocaine (Spruce Lee remix)
Wu-Tang – Gravel pit (Deekline remix)
B-easy – Bongo rock
Kelis – Milkshake (B’more remix)
KW Griff – Tony’s back
Cassiano w/ Zuzuca Poderosa – Ai Voce Gosta
MIA – 10$ (Diplo remix)
Experimenta – ?
Spank Rock – Bump
CSS – Alacious (Bonde Do Role remix)
Nelly Furtado – Promiscuous (Axwell remix)
M.A.N.D.Y. vs. Booka Shade – Body Language
Fish Go Deep – The cure and the cause (Dennis Ferrer remix)
Midnight Request Line – Switch skream master
Bonde Do Role – Gasolina (Crookers crunk remix)
Blaqstarr – Beeper (shake it down)
John Dahlback – EverywhereIf you like the tape, make sure to check out Mad Decent’s blog, a bunch of the songs came straight from there. They’re generous with their music and seem to genuinely love what they do…
Popularity: 5% [?]
- A day in the life of a Chinese architect
Earlier this week I visited Taiyuan, the capital city of Shanxi, a province in central China renowned for its mineral wealth and extreme pollution. I was playing a role that I’ve become accustomed to since coming to China – the token foreigner. My friend had been asked to design the masterplan for a new real estate development there, and so I went along to support and impress the client with my abundant whiteness.
There’s a lot of speculation among my western architect friends about what it’s like to be an architect working in modernizing China. There are so many crazy statistics floating around about the rate of building here that it’s hard to choose one, but my personal favorite is this: Between the time that Beijing was announced as host of the 2008 Olympics and the opening ceremony later this year, the equivalent of 3 Manhattans will have been added to the city.
So with all these opportunities to build, one might assume that being an architect in China is a thrill ride, but, from what my friends here have told me, it’s actually pretty bleak. The trip to Taiyuan only confirmed this for me, so I decided to make a little photo essay about the trip, so that those of us on the outside can get a better sense of what it’s like in the Fastest Urbanization In World History™…
You exit the terminal to find that the airport is unfinished. There are no workers anywhere. A bad omen?
You are whisked off in a German car. A DVD of Chinese vaudeville plays from inside the dashboard.
As you approach the city center the air perceptibly grays.
You arrive at a generic business tower and are led up to the client’s office, a large room with a huge desk and an encyclopedic collection of talismans – laughing Buddha, golden crocodile (with mysterious marbleized sphere in its mouth), cactus, 1 meter-tall bullet, James Bond villain globe, porcelain vases of various sizes and shapes, ceramic statues of ferocious animals emasculated with decorative bows and ribbons, enlarged snapshots of various dinners and jubilant signing ceremonies….
After a brief overview in which the client explains that there is already a scheme for this project – designed by a nameless “Canadian” firm – but that nothing (including the program) has been decided, you are brought to the site. It is in the middle of nowhere. On the drive over the client might say something like, “People say we won’t be able to get buyers for this, because it’s 25 minutes outside of the city, but I don’t think so.”
You are shown some hand-painted billboards that depict the scheme that you’ve been told to ignore and are encouraged to imagine a 21st century industrial-office-residential wonderland teeming to hip, prosperous people.
Then you turn around and face this.
You head off into the wilderness.Popularity: 3% [?]
- Fear of a blue planet
While watching the awesome BBC documentary series The Blue Planet yesterday, it occured to me that this blog shows gross favoritism toward humans (and land-based mammals generally). This seems unfair and, since most of the world is water, I decided to launch an expedition into the recent news in order to learn more about what’s popping below the sea level.
It started off just good times, like in that scene from Jaws where they’re all drinking and singing shanties and showing each other their scars, but as my search went further the mood changed, like in that scene from Jaws, and I became disturbed, then terrified and, eventually, soaking wet. In the end, the survey reveals that we are in the preliminary stages of what can only be described as a cataclysmic struggle to determine the future of life as we know it. What follows is a synopsis of my key findings:
1. Holland’s Green Tide: a sign of things to come
For centuries, the Dutch have fought a heroic battle against the sea. With almost a third of its territory below sea level, the Netherlands has been forced to continually imagine new ways to prevent their mighty nation from being washed way with the tide.
But for a handful of islands in the North Sea, the problem is not what the sea takes away, but what it carries in. According to an article in last Wednesday’s Herald Tribune:
A one-kilometer (half-mile) stretch of beach on Terschelling island, 115 kilometers (70 miles) north of Amsterdam, was littered with bunches of unripe fruit from Cuba, Buren said. Bananas also washed up on neighboring Ameland island.
Terschelling residents are no strangers to stuff turning up on their beach; a year ago thousands of tennis shoes, aluminum briefcases and children’s toys washed ashore, drawing crowds of treasure-hunting residents. Some 20 years ago it was a load of sweaters.
“So…” you might say, “what’s the big deal?” Everyone likes bananas right? I know I do. Sweaters and sneakers too. But not everyone is as lucky as the banana-munching sweater-wearing sneaker fiends of Terschelling.
2. Japan’s Jelly Sea
According to a recent piece on NPR
Giant jellyfish are flooding into the Sea of Japan.
The translucent creatures can grow as large as 6 feet in diameter and weigh 450 lbs. Over the last 5 years, millions have migrated from the coast of China into Japanese waters. Scientists believe they’re floating in on ocean currents warmed by global climate change.
Now, jellyfish are a different story. Everyone hates jellyfish right? Sure they might look cool in your college roommate’s calender of aquatic life images, or maybe you like jelly and they remind you of that, so you give them a pass. But anyone that’s been stung by a jellyfish knows exactly what type of rotten shit cunts these guys are. And don’t let the fact that a jellyfish has no brain, heart, eyes, or ears soften your view on them either, because some them are fucking huge.
Right?
But, of course, jellyfish do have their competitive weaknesses and, for the most part, it seems that the Japanese are handling their invasion ok. So probably we’re safe if it stays like that. But there are already signs that other, more menacing species are making serious threats to our beachland security.
3. Whales: friend or foe?
The whale enjoys a much better reputation than the jellyfish. Even the so-called Killer Whale somehow managed to spin its PR nightmare of a name and, once confined to family-friendly prisons like Sea World, reinvented itself as an almost cuddly animal. But whales are no joke, as was recently shown when a group of good-intentioned seamen tried to lead a stray sperm whale away from a popular beach.
(This is kind of a side issue, but would anyone else prefer that the whale had attacked Wolf Blitzer and whoever that other fool is instead? “…off the coast of that… that.. island nation over there.” Jesus.)
Anyway, I don’t mean to make light of an incident in which someone was killed. But I include it just to make clear that even with our supposed higher intelligence, fancy machines, and notions of teamwork, we are easily overpowered by these supposedly gentle giants of the deep.
And if you think that they’ll never survive on land, so we don’t really need to worry about a whale invasion, well then I’d ask you to explain THIS:
Photo in the News: Whale Found in Egypt Desert
Just this week here, geologist Philip D. Gingerich announced his team had excavated the first known nearly complete skeleton of a Basilosaurus isis (pictured)…
The first of the truly gigantic whales, Basilosaurus had the serpentine shape of a sea monster and short, sharp teeth for hunting sharks and other prey. Unlike today’s whales, it had no blowhole—the ancient behemoth had to raise its head above water to breathe. What’s more, Basilosaurus still had the feet it inherited from its land-dwelling ancestors, according to Gingerich, who works for the University of Michigan and is a National Geographic Society grantee.
How on earth could a whale have ended up all the way in the Egyptian desert? How else? He must have walked. He had feet right? It’s true that he died, but so would you if you found yourself in the middle of the desert for too long.
Some might contend, as the article does, that
once upon a time the Wadi Hitan desert was underwater and teeming with the sea giants.
But that seems a little dreamy to me. If I wanted fairy tales I’d read Hansel and Gretel not National Geographic. Nice try though.
10/18 UPDATE: You think I’m making this stuff up??
Whale found beached in deep Amazon rain forest
RIO DE JANEIRO, Brazil (AP) — An 18-foot minke whale ran aground on a sandbar in the Amazon jungle some 1,000 miles from the ocean, Brazilian media reported Friday.
So, we’ve established that sea creatures are invading and that the largest and most powerful have successfully lived on land in the past. Really it’s a wonder that they’ve waited this long to mount the takeover. I guess it took time to get the various sonar frequencies lined up.
But don’t despair. All is not yet lost.
Popularity: 4% [?]
- Better late than never: The RZA runs down his kung-fu samples
Wired magazine has posted up a nice feature where Wu-Tang producer Robert Diggs aka The RZA (aka Bobby Digital aka Rzarector aka Prince Rakeem aka Ruler Zig-Zag-Zig Allah) IDs the sources behind the kung fu samples that punctuate his music. Check it out here.
This would’ve been a little more thrilling about 10 years ago, of course, but still, it’s cool that Wired did it and with the technical tightness that you would expect. And as an added bonus they even stitched together this compilation of sampled scenes:
For me though, the most pleasurable part of the RZA’s music isn’t all the kung-fu stuff but the way he manipulates and mutates deep soul records. So, as a companion to this Wired thing, I’m gonna post up a few of my favorite selections from the Shaolin Soul series. Especially for those of us who like that classic Memphis soul sound, these compilations are a reason to get up in the morning.
Wendy Rene – “After the laughter comes tears” (sampled for “Tearz” off Enter the Wu-Tang)
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Download HERE(right-click/ctrl-click the link and choose “save target as” (windows) or “save link as” (mac).)Syl Johnson – “Is it because I’m black?” (sampled for “Hollow bones” off The W)
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Download HEREBaby Huey – “Hard times” (sampled for “Buck 50″ off Supreme Clientele)
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Download HERESo anyway, Wu-Tang’s got a new album coming out next month. I’m sure it’s worth getting. As a final treat, I humbly submit this classic image of Raekwon (aka The Chef aka Lex Diamonds aka Ricky Rula aka Rocky Boulders aka Louis Rich aka Shallah Raekwon):
Popularity: 3% [?]
- Rest In Peace Dr. Donda West
Kanye’s mother Donda passed away this weekend. Anyone familiar with his music knows how much she means to him. Here’s an interview from around the time that she released her book Raising Kanye. And here’s a clip of Kanye performing “Hey Mama” live on Oprah:
and the two performing it together:
Love to the West family.
Popularity: 3% [?]
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“Bush visits injured vets” Photos by Jim Young
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- The VERY FEEL Salute to Next Level Thinkers
Today while I was walking home I passed this girl.
What with all the exterior and interior stimulation that my fragile brain has to sort out, I almost missed the fact that she was rocking an entirely new form of fashion accessory: the bag-hat hybrid. Inspired by this young woman’s resourcefulness, experimentalism, and indifference to weird looks, I decided to make a tribute post to people like her – everyday people who find ways to break the chains of tradition and expose the possibilities just beneath the surface of conventional thought. In no particular order:
Robert Tilton: Farting Preacher
One of the things that I find most impressive about Evangelical Christians is their ability to incorporate any and all worldly phenomena into their mysticism. Take this preacher for instance. Here is a man, the Reverend Robert Tilton, who clearly suffers from a potentially traumatic digestive problem. But instead of letting that hold him back, instead spending precious time and money trying to conceal his condition, he is embracing his weakness and in doing so transforming it – water to wine style – into strength. And I’m sure that there are more than a few in his flock that believe his serial farting is nothing other than the earthly evidence of the good reverend’s divine line of communication with the Lord.
William AKA Billoon: Balloon Enthusiast
According to his youtube profile, William is a 46-year-old school janitor who likes oldies and classical music, and movies of all types, especially anime and sci-fi. For a reason that I haven’t seen explained, William has made it his mission to successfully insert himself into a weather balloon. He’s made several attempts and diligently documented his progress (all available on youtube). Of course, you can probably find other people who’ve tried to fit inside an inflated balloon, some have even succeeded I’d imagine. But there is something about William’s good-natured commitment and the seriousness with which he pursues what the typical non-next level thinker would consider a ridiculous waste of time that evokes the dream of transcendence that moves all true visionaries.
Tito Seif: Male Belly Dancer
I realize that Tito Seif is not unique. There are male belly dancers now and have been in the past. But that doesn’t make him any less of a trail blazer to me. I think the thing I find most enjoyable about this clip is how much pleasure the women in the crowd are taking from it. It’s nothing compared to the immense pleasure Tito himself seems to be taking from dancing, but still, I enjoy the dynamic.
Sugisaku Jtaro: Air Sex Machine
The Japanese excel at all sorts of weird competitions. They’re famous for humiliating fat Americans in eating contests, they dominate the robot wars scene, and for two years straight now a Japanese has won gold in the World Air Guitar Championships. Why this is, I’m not sure. Part of it must be the never-say-die ganbare spirit that runs throughout the culture. But I also think it must have something to do with their extraordinary comfort with the virtual. I have a friend in Osaka who bought an Aibo robot dog when they first came out, and treated it exactly as if it were a real, flesh and blood dog. He actually argued for its superiority to a real pet on many many occasions. I could never bring myself to actually pet it, because to me it was just some plastic, motors, and LEDs. He concluded that this demonstrated a shocking lack of imagination on my part, and he’s probably right.
Anyway, I guess it’s inevitable that, once you’ve crossed the conceptual gap between real and imaginary, any sort of simulation is possible. So, as an extension of Japan’s long line of innovation in air-based activities, a filmmaker named Sugisaku started getting lonely people together to have air sex. According to him, “You act as if the man or the woman is actually there – from the meeting, getting to know each other, falling in love, up to climaxing. If you can combine all that then you can do great air sex.” Well, this clip is mostly just showing the sex part, no real courting, and a lot of it seems to involve air masturbating which, to me, misses the whole point. But again, that’s probably my own lack of vision.
Sha Yeya: Creator of the Basketball-Bucket
This one comes courtesy of my friends at Urban China magazine. Their chief editor Jiang Jun discovered an old basketball that had been retrofitted for use as a water bucket while visiting Yangjiang, a small town in southern China. Apparently a basketball makes a great bucket, since it’s air-tight and very difficult to break. Jun found the guy who figured that out and got a few new ones made.
Charles Wright: Salesman
Someone sent this story to me as part of one of those “World’s Dumbest Criminals” type emails, but I can’t dismiss it so easily. Long story short:
Vacaville police are warning residents about scams Tuesday after a Vacaville man was arrested on suspicion of trying to sell a “wide-screen television” that turned out to be a used oven door.
I think this man is on to something. To me, if you can convince someone that an oven door is actually a flatscreen TV, then you’ve earned their money.
This is just a starting point. PLEASE feel free to add on. We need to celebrate some next level ladies especially.
Popularity: 3% [?]
- The week in photos
As the saying goes, bloggin ain’t easy. I think one of the trickiest parts of this type of thing is how to incorporate anecdotes from your daily life without seeming like some sort of attention-hungry child. I’d like to avoid the vanity and exhibitionism that ruins most of the personal blogs I’ve ever checked out, but, you know, fingers crossed…
Last week I happened to do a bunch of things that involve taking photos, so I figured why not string a few together into a little recap. Let me know if you think it’s worth doing this sort of thing. I’ll take no comment to mean dumb-struck fascination and begging for more.
Monday:
As final effort for the MAD Dinner book that we’ve been working on, my friend Shuyu and I ran around Beijing looking for the perfect image to express “Realizable Utopia,” one of the book’s themes. I liked this one, but it got nixed for an image of couples dancing outside of an Outback Steakhouse.
Tuesday:
These were taken during my first trip to one of Beijing’s many many many home furnishing depots. Home decoration is an obsession here and the general aesthetic vibe is upscale Hong Kong psychiatrist’s office meets 18th century French aristocrat’s country home. Many of the vendors are so adamant about the German, Swiss, French, Italian, or Britishness of their goods that at times the market had a feeling not unlike what I imagine filled Europe immediately before the start of World War I. Except that everyone’s Chinese. There were so many funny shop names that I couldn’t even decide which to include. But I guess my favorite is Big Wig. And Kingliness. And, for some reason, Boloni.
Wednesday:
On Wednesday I relaxed. But not as hard as this dude.
Thursday:
This is taken from the top floor of the CCTV Headquarters now being built in Beijing. I was there with my friend Tomas who’s filming it for a documentary. This is really an amazing building and a heroic feat of construction, and I’d love to include more, but there are some controls on the images released. In fact, I may have to take this one down. Let’s see.
Friday:
Friday Tomas and I traveled to Shenzhen, the irregular heartbeat of China’s Special Economic Zones. Shenzhen is basically the epicenter of a design style that you see throughout China, especially in clubs, karaoke bars, and all-night spas. If I was going be to pretentious, I could make up a name for it like Baroque Modernism, but whatevs.
Saturday:
We were in Shenzhen filming for a video art piece called Green & Grey by my main woman and Tomas’s sister Charlie. The idea for the piece is to capture the strange mixture of nature and construction that you find everywhere in the city. Shenzhen has a subtropical climate with the jungle foliage to match, but it’s also home to tens of thousands of factories that power the city economically and wreck it ecologically. Towards the end of the day it started raining. Tomas was wearing a white t-shirt and when the rain drops hit it they left black and gray stains. According to government estimates, acid rain is falling on 30 percent of China. Shenzhen is part of the dirty 30.
Sunday:
Sunday I came back the socialist market stageset that is Beijing and, for the first time ever, remarked on how clean it felt.
Popularity: 5% [?]
- …the hell?
The following is a video of Charice Pempengco, a 15-year-old singer from the Philippines, performing on a South Korean talent show.
This really and truly blows my mind. A singer who looks like a member of Morning Musume and sounds like Vesta Williams.
A triumph of globalization? Proof of reincarnation? It’s hard for me to imagine this isn’t some sort of manifestation of the black arts.
UPDATE: Check out this clip of Charice demolishing Beyonce’s “Listen,” courtesy of CSJ:
Something about this story is genuinely thrilling to me.
Popularity: 3% [?]
