Mastodon

TODAY: Bloggers without borders

Excerpt:

The winner of the Malaysian bloggers’ Blog of the Year Award (www.petalingstreet.org) arrived here on Saturday, informing only a few trusted Singaporean counterparts of his visit. But it is quite silly to trust a blogger, Singaporean or otherwise, as Kenny found out.

Read more here. (PDF version here)

Technorati Tags: ,

Army love me long time

It says here that I have to fast for six hours before 8am tomorrow, when I report to camp (again). The Army loves me. I can’t really say it’s an unrequited love, though. I’d fast for love, wouldn’t you?

It also says my employer is obligated by law to let me go back to camp. Gotta tell the boss. Boss say good, make him wake up earlier than usual for once.

SAF100again
Damn far, can?

It’s Just Work For Me from the album “Chavez Ravine” by Ry Cooder

Surf stop: aGentX Rambles

Technorati Tags: , , ,

Cross-Strait (not bi) relations: Kenny steals our thunder

The hirsute Kenny Sia took a bus here from KL, wanting to meet mrbrown and me, because anyone who comes to town would want to meet us.

But being the prima donnas that we are, we were terrible hosts. I had work till 8, mrbrown had to make sure his kids were tucked in, and who meets up before 9pm on a Saturday night anyway?

But Kenny, being the resourceful bugger that he is, and being the swinging, young, single lad that he is, managed to find his way to Hideout, where I found him talking twenty three to the dozen with the beautiful co-owner. I also found that he wasn’t as easily swayed as I. Belinda had only managed to get him to buy one beer while he waited for me to battle traffic.

Then, all hell broke loose, and a dozen bloggers, following some rumour that he was at Hideout, arrived soon after, clamouring for Kenny’s attention.

We’d have partied and supped till dawn if not for Xiaxue managing to persuade Kenny to karaoke with her. Without us.

Go back to Malaysia, Kenny! The limelight’s ours, you hear? Don’t come here and anyhowly potong left, right and centre.

(Kenny’s here till Monday. Interested parties can take him to the night safari Sunday night. Feed him to the hungry animals).


Kenny takes time out from the screaming girl fans to take a pic with the boys

Soy Luz Y Sombra from the album “Chavez Ravine” by Ry Cooder

Technorati Tags: , ,

Demolished

Chavez Ravine

Tonight I am levelled, floored by this awesome new album by Ry Cooder. Here’s the blurb on Amazon.com, and you’ll know why I already liked it even before I heard one track:


Album Description

Ry Cooder’s Chavez Ravine is-a post-World War II-era American narrative of “cool cats,” radios, UFO sightings, J.Edgar Hoover, red scares, and baseball.Using real and imagined historical characters, Cooder and friends creates an album that recollects various aspects of the poor but vibrant hillside Chicano cummunity, which was bulldozed by developed in the interest of “progress.”



Chavez Ravine back

Ry Cooder might have been tempted to bill this as the Chavez Ravine Social Club. After generating such popular and critical interest in Cuban music of decades past with the Buena Vista Social Club, Cooder applied a similar approach closer to home, extending his fascination with the Mexican-American culture that flourished in 1940s and ’50s Los Angeles. The result is an CD that sounds like it’s aspiring to be something far more ambitious: a DVD, a theatrical production, even a time machine. Cooder and a cast of seminal Chicano artists present a song cycle that conjures an era of UFOs, the Red Scare, and political machinations that leveled the Chavez Ravine barrio to lure the Brooklyn Dodgers to Los Angeles. In his celebration of a vibrant community that doesn’t know it’s on the verge of displacement, Cooder enlists Thee Midnighters vocalist Little Willie G. (whose songwriting collaboration with Los Lobos‘s David Hidalgo on “Onda Callejara” highlights the album). and Pachuco patriarchs Don Tosti and Lalo Guerrero, with the latter reviving his dancefloor favorite “Los Chucos Suaves.” The accordion of Flaco Jimenez adds conjunto flavor to “Barrio Viejo.” Throughout the album, Cooder plays a typically tasteful, understatedly virtuosic guitar, assumes a variety of vocal roles–including a cool Chet Baker homage in duet with pianist Jacky Terrason on “In My Town”–and provides the provocative social context. –Don McLeese

Onda Callejera from the album “Chavez Ravine” by Ry Cooder

Technorati Tags: , ,