iPod Survey, Part Deux

1) How am I feeling today?
"For What It's Worth" - Buffalo Springfield
Mellow, a little revolutionary. Just another day in the life...

2) Where will I get married?
"Keep on Lovin' Me, Honey" - Marvin Gaye with Tammi Terrell
Already married? Check.

3) What is my best friend's theme song?
"A Funky Space Reincarnation" - Marvin Gaye
Sometimes...

4) What is/was high school like?
"Full of Fire" - Al Green
I'd like to say it was, but probably not. Although I did feel very strongly about things.

5) What is the best thing about me?
"Land of 1,000 Dances" - Wilson Pickett
I do make people laugh when I dance. All 1,000 of them.

6) How is today going to be?
"I Got It Bad (And That Ain't Good)" - Ella Fitzgerald
But my cold is finally going away...

7) What is in store for this weekend?
"Send Her My Love" - Journey
The man-cation in PHX isn't for another couple of weeks...

8) What song describes my parents?
"Artificial Flowers" - Bobby Darin
"Her parents had gone on / to their final reward"? That's not right, not at all. They would dance to this song, though.

9) How is my life going?
"You Haven't Done Nothin'" - Stevie Wonder
Hmmm... more true than I might like to admit? Must be time to start writing that book.

10) What song will they play at my funeral?
"Heaven Help Us All" - Stevie Wonder
Eerie...

11) How does the world see me?
"All You Need Is Love" - The Beatles
"There's nothing you can do / that can't be done." That's nice.

12) What do my friends really think of me?
"Untitled" - Interpol
"I will surprise you sometime / I'll come around / when you're down"

13) Do people secretly lust after me?
"Harmony" - The Happy Mondays
In a very Zen way, I guess.

14) How can I make myself happy?
"Bombpop" - The Maybellines
Yes, a Bombpop would make me happy.

15) What should I do with my life?
"Chiquitita" - ABBA
It seems I should move to Sweden. Or star in a local revival of Mamma Mia.

16) Will I ever have children?
"Roland" - Interpol
One boy named Roland?

17) What is some good advice?
"Late in the Evening" - Paul Simon
"and when I come back to the room / everybody could see me move / and I turned my amp up loud / and I began to play / it was late in the evening / and I blew that room away"

18) What do I think my current theme song is?
"Tony's Theme" - The Pixies
No, not really. That would be creepy. iTunes actually thinks it's "Jill" by Harry Connick, Jr. Damnit, my name is Tony, not Jill.

19) What does everyone else think my current theme song is?
"Don't Be Cruel" - Elvis Presley
Does this mean people think I'm cruel? Or that I'm whipped?

20) What type of men/women do you like?
"Obstacle 1" - Interpol
"She can read / she can read / she can read / she's bad"

21) Will you get married?
"(I'm Not Your) Steppin' Stone" - The Monkees
But I'm already married...

22) What should I do with my love life?
"In a Sentimental Mood" - John Coltrane (Duke Ellington)
"In a sentimental mood / I'm within a world so heavenly / For I never dreamt that you'd be loving sentimental me" Of course, this version is instrumental.

24) Where will you live?
"Let's Go Get Stoned" - Ray Charles
Someplace comfortable, I guess.

25) What will your dying words be?
"Choke" - Kittie
Death metal played by teenage girls. How apropos. "Fuck YOUUUUU!"

26) How's your day going so far?
"Interstate Love Song" - Stone Temple Pilots
I've been listening to music. It's been great.

27) How's your love life?
"Bryter Layter" - Nick Drake
That's not a very positive assessment. Or perhaps it means my love will only get better. And more instrumental.

iTunes seems to particularly in love with Ella Fitzgerald and Marvin Gaye today. Not that I'm complaining.

 

Two iPod Surveys...

... since you know I don't want to trouble everyone with a bulletin about this stuff. I'm also completing two of these, just to see if the iPod is a consistent method of accurately portraying the past and correctly predicting the future.

---

1. Open your library (iTunes, Winamp, Media Player, iPod, etc).
2. Put it on shuffle.
3. Press play.
4. For every question, type the song that's playing.
5. When you go to a new question, press the next button.
6. Don't lie and try to pretend you're cool.


opening credits: "Born Entertainer" - Veruca Salt
- at least it's peppy

waking up: "Leif Erikson" - Interpol
- nice vibe for waking up, but why am I a "slave to the details?"

work song: "We Can Work It Out" - The Beatles
- slightly humorous seeing as how I have a work meeting today

falling in love: "Trust" - The Cure
- "There is truly no one left at all / there is only you"? A little depressing.

fight song: "Nothing Good Will Ever Come of This (alternate version)" - The Arrogants
- perhaps one song early?

breaking up: "Send One Your Love" - Stevie Wonder
- "Send her your love / with a dozen roses"? Maybe these two songs should have switched places.

club song: "I Second That Emotion" - Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
- I hope it's a drum-n-bass remix

life's just ok: "Sweet Dreams" - The Lightning Seeds
- Hopeful and upbeat (perhaps deluded), but stop calling me "she."

mental breakdown: "You Might Think" - The Cars
- Oddly appropriate.

driving: "Drive" - The Cars
- This really did come up here. You know I'm telling the truth because it's actually a shitty driving song, and it's also the only Cars song I actively hate.

flashback: "What'd I Say" - Bobby Darin
- Why'd I get the white-guy version of this song?

getting back together: "Pleasant Valley Sunday (single version)" - The Monkees
- A perfect pop song about slow, suburban death? Sign me up.

wedding: "Everybody's Talkin'" - Harry Nilsson
- "I'm goin' where the sun keeps shinin' / through the pourin' rain"

finale battle: "More Love" - Smokey Robinson and the Miracles
- Damn it, Smokey. You're cramping my death-dealin', drunken monkey style. (I guess I'm starring in a love story.)

death scene: "See Saw" - Aretha Franklin
- A little upbeat. "Up, down, and all around." Perhaps I've died bungee jumping.

funeral song: "The Best Is Yet to Come" - Tony Bennett
- Now this is just some sort of sad, sick joke. Unless I've been wrong about Heaven this whole time...

end credits: "Erecting a Movie Star" - Shudder to Think featuring Liz Phair
- Quite appropriate for this little biopic exercise, and happily, a song I like a great deal.

eating: "Blow Out" - Radiohead
- First off, why do these topics seem to be out of order? Secondly, I don't eat this fast. But it is "sugar-coated."

shower: "Souvenir" - Orchestral Manoeuvres in the Dark
- "My obsession / It's my creation / You'll understand / It's not important now"

bath: "Somewhere Along the Way" - Nat King Cole
- "How could I know I'd lose you / somewhere along the way?" Says the person with a stand-alone shower and no tub.

car chase: "Mambo Italiano" - Dean Martin
- It seems that my car chase will be humorous, possibly involving an Italian restaurant and/or a bicycle.

emo scene: "What You Gave Me" - Marvin Gaye with Tammi Terrell
- Since it seems I'm starring in a romantic comedy, this is fitting for an "I miss you" film montage.

sleeping: "PDA" - Interpol
- "We have two hundred couches / where you can sleep tonight"

crying: "Love You Madly" - Ella Fitzgerald (written by Duke Ellington)
- "Better fish are in the sea / Is not the theory for me"

during college/ school work: "Our Midnight" - The Maybellines
- "I'll kiss you here in the starlight" Ahhh, school work.

while getting ready to roll out: "Such Great Heights" - The Postal Service
- And what, exactly, are we getting ready to roll out to?

goodbye: "Panama" - Van Halen
- And here's a Diamond Dave high-kick for you.

song for hugs: "Get Back" - The Beatles
- Jo Jo bought some California grass.

song for kisses: "Being Boring" - The Pet Shop Boys
- "We were never holding back / worried that / time would come to an end"

song for being awesome: "Time of No Reply" - Nick Drake
- It's a mellow awesome.

song for making your mama cry: "Ava Adore" - The Smashing Pumpkins
- We must never be apart?

song that will be your ultimate doom: "Solitude" - Ella Fitzgerald (also written by Duke Ellington)
- "I sit in my chair / I'm filled with despair"

fuck off: "Ego Tripping Out" - Marvin Gaye
- Because nothing says fuck off like really early rap (that sounds more like spoken word).

Second survey will come with the second post.

 

Rock Music 101

For those of you who like music but aren't exactly sure why, Pandora has answered your prayers.

Pandora Podcast

It's a little dry, but it can be really informative, even for those of us who play instruments or who've had music theory classes. Also, they provide song samples to illustrate the subjects covered in each podcast.

Definitely helpful for those of you looking at the rhyme and reason of different instruments or musical styles. Be sure to check the schedule for topics of particular interest to you.

 

Asian stereotypes

Yesterday, I left you with the promise of detailing how I fit (or don't) into some common Asian stereotypes.

A couple caveats before we begin:

• I'm not trying to be racist here. A few statements made will be based on other long-standing stereotypes, some of which may also be offensive.
• My experiences are based on just that - my experiences. I grew up in white, middle-class America. All the Korean kids I knew were the offspring of doctors and professors, with a couple grocers thrown in. Obviously, these experiences don't hold true for all Koreans, let alone all Asians, let alone all people.
• Take this post as a set of observations, not as some sort of societal indictment.

Now that that's out of the way, on to the stereotypes. First, a couple of serious ones...

Asians are smart
No argument here. Now, whether you want to argue that Koreans are naturally intelligent or a product of hard work and oppressively dictatorial parents (or both) is another matter entirely...

Me, I'm all about working smarter, not harder.

Asians work hard
No argument here, either. My parents are two of the hardest working people I know. However, this might have more to do with being first-generation immigrants than with native work ethic (it doesn't). All immigrant groups work hard because they want to assimilate and be perceived as being of value to the community. Look at it this way: you're new, and you look different. Do you want to be seen as lazy and wasteful on top of that? That's a good way to get harrassed and run out of town.

Me, I'm all about working smarter, not harder.

Asians are cheap
Sadly enough, I've experienced this to be true. I could say that Koreans are cheap because of the great dearth of resources following the Korean War. You see a lot of the same behavior from survivors of the Great Depression; if you have to scratch for every last penny to survive, you tend to hoard resources even after you're flush.

But let's face it, Asians are cheap. My brethren in the service industry know. Which tables do you dread getting? Which ones do you know are going to stiff you on the tip? Which ones complain about miniscule issues to get items removed from bills? Which ones break out calculators to properly divvy up a bill, right down to the last penny?

That's right, German tourists. But right after them, it's Asians. I'd mention other groups, but no one likes a finger-pointer.

Me, I grew up in relative financial security and work in the service industry. I could probably stand to be a little less spendy.

Now for the frivolous ones...

All Asians know karate
C'mon. Really? This usually comes as a prelude to a fight or some challenge of masculinity.

Me, I know some tae kwon do, mainly to kick the asses of fucktards who ask me if I know karate.

All Asians play violin
That's wrong. Some of us play viola or cello or piano.

Me, I play sax and a little bass guitar. I used to pride myself on the fact that I didn't play a stringed instrument until I joined a band in high school.

All Asians drive rice grinders
False. This is something of a generational thing. It's mostly younger Asians (see also AZNs) who spend $9000 on after-market parts to soup up their $8000 Honda p.o.s.

Me, I'm married and live in San Francisco. I don't own a car. But I still haul ass in my wife's Camry.

OK, out of time. Please feel free to comment and add more. Or perhaps comment on stereotypes of your own ethnicity / religion / sexual orientation. Have fun with it.

 

Since I owe you...

... a real blog entry, I just thought I'd tell you about one of my cultural weaknesses.

Now, I know some of you think of me as a dive bar-going, whiskey-shooting, authority-disregarding hard ass. [smirk] But deep down, buried somewhere within the core of my being, existing in a place that seldom sees the light of day, lies some small shred of my Korean-ness.

To put this into perspective: throughout my youth, my more-Korean cousins accused me of practicing RSH (Racial Self-Hatred). You might have heard some of the more common, more specific versions of this, like banana (yellow on the outside, white on the inside) or Oreo (you get the picture).

It was not RSH, however. I love being Korean. But I was the product of a Korean family living amongst the bleach-white denizens of middle America. When most (all) of your friends are white, everyone you see is white, and everyone in the media (save Connie Chung) is white, you tend to start acting like a white person. Call it cultural bleed.

Of course, I was part of a Korean church, and we had a youth group, but we were all in the same boat. When the kids would hang out, what language do you think we used? What music do you think we listened to? (In the '80s and '90s, being Koreans born in the early '70s, the answer to that is Depeche Mode, New Order, The Smiths, Erasure, and U2.) We only really spoke Korean to each other when we were out in public and wanted to talk smack about the white people around us.

No, people speaking foreign languages around you are not necessarily saying bad things about you. If they start in English, then switch to a foreign language while they laugh and point at you? That's probably a different story.

Getting back on point, I always thought of my experiences as fairly normal. And they were. For a Korean kid growing up in an upper-middle-class, suburban, Midwestern town. Then I would visit my cousins, particularly my cousins in Toronto. These kids grew up... well, first off, they grew up in Canada, which is strange enough. On top of that, they grew up in Toronto, which has more Asians per capita than some of Asia. So of course they were going to think that I was white-washed.

Anyway, the whole point of this tale: Brandy and I went to the SF Symphony last night. And aside from the six-year old girl sitting with her parents, we were the youngest people in the building by at least a decade. Yes, symphony attendance (when under the age of forty) is usually indicative of Asian-ness.

In any case, it was a nice program. Antonín Dvorák's Carnival Overture, Opus 92; William Schuman's A Song of Orpheus featuring Michael Grebanier on cello; and Dvorák's Symphony No. 7 in D minor, Opus 70.

I do enjoy me some classical music.

Tomorrow, I'll go over my (highly subjective) criteria for being a stereotypical Korean. And how I relate to those criteria.

 

Don't you just hate it...

... when you're sick over a long weekend, especially when the weather's really nice?

Yeah. Me, too.

Anyway, to tide you over until I gather my wits, a couple of links:

Indexed is a clever little blog that I quite enjoy. Not a lot of reading involved, but some fairly specific (and humorous) insights. Two of my recent favorites: We're all going to Hell and Elementary!  (Yes, I'm still a pessimist.)

Courtesy of the friendly tech bloggers at Geekologie, some pretty cool pictures. And the best (or most annoying) alarm clock. EVER.

 

Paintball, anyone?

Courtesy of the mad geniuses at Deadspin:

 

Once again, the comments are priceless.

For those of you who've never paintballed, I can vouch for the pain, overpowered guns or not. I used to layer up with a baseball cap, turtleneck, denim jacket, long underwear, jeans, and gloves. It might have been cold outside, but I was mainly wearing those layers for protection.

You don't want a paintball hitting bare skin, especially not when it's 45 degrees outside.

Welts, I say. Welts.

 

Thrill rides

Normally, the words "thrill ride" evoke images of roller coasters or, at the very least, those damn spinning teacup things that make me deathly ill every time I ride them. Not today. Today, Brandy and I had our very own thrill ride on the way to the airport.

We had just hit the flat straightaway after Candlestick on southbound 101 when the car started gently pulling to the right. I mentioned this to Brandy just as the car started making a great deal of road noise. At this point, she told me to pull over, and I started making my way to the right lanes. Just as we got in the far right lane, the car started pulling violently to the right and making a god-awful flat tire sound. Instead of attempting to clear the traffic and make it to the next exit, which was only 200 feet ahead, I decided to pull over right away. Good thing, too.

When we got out to survey the damage, we found that the right rear tire had pretty much disintegrated. While the tread and inner wall were intact, the outer wall had completely separated, leaving a shredded, three-inch wide void about where the whitewall would be (if this were the '70s). I can't even imagine what would cause a tire to fail like that.

Thanks to prior experience fixing flats, I managed to change the tire quickly (Camrys have full-size spares! All the better to finish your errands before having to take the car in.) and to get Brandy to the airport in plenty of time for her flight.

The first time I had a flat tire, I was at Cedar Point on the day after my senior prom (Jen Davis, wherever you are, thanks again for riding home with me despite having to deal with a 120-mile drive at 45 mph on a donut). You know, they don't even let you change your own tire in the Cedar Point parking lot. Because of liability issues, they have roving maintenance staff do it for you, but I had it halfway finished before they got there. [By the way, if you ever need to change the tire on a Dodge Caravan, just be advised that the jack, for some unknown reason, is under the hood.]

The second time I had a flat tire, I was driving in San Francisco when I experienced that same pull of the steering wheel. It was just a nail puncture, so I heard only the dull thup-thup-thup of a mostly-deflated tire instead of the loud growling of a shredded tire. After unsuccessfully trying a can of Fix-A-Flat, I managed to change the tire in a relatively dark corner of Noe Valley. Yes, I know it would sound more exciting if I had been in Bayview or something. What can I say? I lived in Noe Valley back then.

After today's excitement, I'll go ahead and say that I'd prefer my flat tires to happen at less than 70 mph.

Or not at all. That sounds even better.

 

muah ha ha ha ha... MUAH HA HA HA HA HA

Sorry about the video dump, but this is just too damn funny.

Courtesy of the good folks at Boing Boing, perhaps the funniest faux movie trailer ever (and a few close seconds)...

First, When Harry Met Sally (recut)

Staying with Meg Ryan...

And how about a classic?

Or a modern day classic?