Two Amusing Images of Musical Icons.

Two amusing images that I came across on the web.


"I thought Martin McCarrick played accordion for Siouxsie and The Banshees?"

A very Southpark-esque rendition of The Smiths.

Confessions of a Doom Doll :-)

So this article was sent to me, based on some of my earlier posts on here about The Cure. I found it very interesting and amusing. For me it was either The Cure or The Smiths during the early 1980's.

Finding The Cure - Confessions of a doom doll
By Michele Laudig
Article Published Aug 19, 2004

If you love music, you can probably name a band that changed your life, that was a catalyst for your attitudes and tastes and ideas. That's not to say you got stuck on it forever, or that you never branched out into other things. But discovering that band was such a huge turning point that you still think of it in before-and-after terms.

The first time I heard The Cure, it rocked my 13-year-old world.

The rest of the article

MERRY CHRISTMAS! 聖誕節快樂！

We wish everyone a wonderful Christmas!

Q: What Type of Guitars Does Robert Smith Have in His Collection?

So I was looking for information on the black Telecaster that I saw Robert Smith play during a concert in 1987, and found the answer to this much broader question. Of course I had to share it:

Q: What Type of Guitars Does Robert Smith Have in His Collection?

A: I don't have a complete list of all the guitars he's ever used or owned. He has over 50 of them, possibly more. It's a pretty safe bet that he has at least one of all the major models. Here's a short list of some specific models though: Gretsch Silver Falcon 6136SL, Gibson Chet Atkins semi-acoustic, '60s Fender Jazzmaster, Fender Telecaster, '60s Fender Bass VI, '60s Mosrite Ventures, '60s Coral Sitar, Takamine EN28C acoustic, Takamine 12-string acoustic, Aria Sandpiper acoustic, Ovation L756 12-string acoustic, Gretsch Black Falcon, Gretsch Red Tennessee Rose, Guild 12-string acoustic, Gibson Reverse Firebird, and the list goes on. Even though Robert has a large collection of guitars there's really only a handful of them that he uses on a regular basis. Some of the ones you'll see most often are the Jazzmaster, Telecaster, Falcon and Fender 6-string bass.

Garth Coe got married!

A good friend of mine from childhood named Garth Coe, recently got married. The wedding was in Palos Verdes, California (a beautiful little peninsula that overlooks the Pacific Ocean). Both Garth Coe & his brother Drew figure into alot my early memories of high school. I am very happy for Garth & his new wife Jamie. It couldn't have happened to nicer people!

In addition to us both being musicians (he's a pro, I am definately an amateur), we share an interest in high-performance bicycles. We used to race road bikes on the same team.

Garth has since decided to focus more on fixed gear/track cycling and long distance running. I went back to mostly doing Chinese martial arts for my exercise.

He is also finishing with his film scoring certificate at UCLA. He tells me that it is his new house is going to have a nice recording studio. Knowing Garth, I believe this is probably an understatement. He has never been a man to do anything halfway.

Hopefully next time I am out in Los Angeles (in a few months), I'll be able to hang out with Garth.

"Hunger" By Lan Samantha Chang

I was able to read this book ("Hunger" by Samantha Lan Chang) on the flight out to Los Angeles and the return flight. I wanted to recommend it, because I think it's a work of art. Ms. Chang is able to capture alot of the melancholy sadness of immigrants. The feeling of being caught between two cultures, and haunted by past disappointments and unrealized dreams. Here is a short review that was featured in Salon Magazine:

BY BETH WOLFENSBERGER SINGER | Lan Samantha Chang's first collection of fiction -- a novella and five stories -- is titled "Hunger," but there isn't much dining in it. Nor do its plots depend on eating disorders or sexual cravings. Rather, it's the characters who get chewed on and torn at, pushed into the maw of the past by the restless fingers of the present.

In the mesmerizing, gorgeously unrolling title novella, the regrets of a Taiwan-born woman in America become literally eternal. The evening Min first spies the pale Chinese violinist who will be her husband, she senses the sorrow her life will hold. Her mother had told her of the Chinese myth that every man and woman "was joined at birth to their mate by an invisible, enchanted thread." She had also spoken of a kind of fate called yuanfen: "that apportionment of love which is destined for you in this world." Min's yaunfen proves greatly insufficient. Her thread turns from enchanted to constricting as her husband brutally trains their youngest daughter to be the successful American violinist he missed becoming himself.

Like several other Chinese-American characters in the book, Min and her husband have made a bargain with themselves to dismiss their Chinese lives in order to survive in America. "How will we make the space in our minds for everything we'll need to learn here?" asks a wife in one of the stories. "We will forget," her husband answers. But they are deeply, almost unconsciously homesick, and American life becomes like an afterlife for them. Paralyzed by placelessness and an inability to communicate, they can still focus with burdensome intensity on the progress of their children. Not surprisingly, the children flee that laserlike love as determinedly as their parents fled from China. And the older generation, left alone, is visited by increasingly vivid memories of their homeland. Everyone seems to be haunted.

Chang arranges and rearranges certain elements in these stories: the gifted and nearly suffocated child leaving home, the ambitious father dead of a stroke or heart failure, the outwardly silent mother wondering where she went wrong. Spirits of parents come to grown children in dreams. Two of the stories read like ancient folk tales. Throughout, Chang displays a breathtaking talent for description -- music as "a great rope of silk, smooth and shimmering," and the force of emotions in an argument that "you could see shapes in, colors like black-purple and scarlet and venomous yellow-green."

Having the novella appear first, however, imbalances the book -- it is simply richer than the other stories. Its most formidable asset is the character of Min -- a wife and mother who keenly observes everything, but has had no one with whom to share her thoughts. After spending 103 pages with Min, it's difficult not to find that the voices of other characters ring hollow in comparison.

"I began to understand," Min reflects at one point, "that to love another was to be custodian of that person's decline -- to know this fate, hold onto it and live." This collection is, mostly, about that persistent grasp in the face of things subtracted, about custodians, whose work is solitary, common and, here, beautifully and sadly portrayed.

Beth Wolfensberger Singer is a freelance writer living in Boston.

So I'm an Uncle (again)

My little brother's wife (Pamela) gave birth to their first child after a long labor. I am very happy for them. Better them, then us :-) They named him Matthew. Tim's wife is blonde, but the little man looks very Asian. He has my mother's round face. Tim and Pamela live in Temecula, California. Congrats! 恭喜！恭喜！恭喜！

Female Kaohsiung candidate punches Mayor Ma in face

I love it! We would be so much better off if politics in the US were this "direct"! I am not a fan of the KMT.

By Mo Yan-chih - Sunday, Nov 26, 2006, Page 3
Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) Chairman Ma Ying-jeou (馬英九) was assaulted by an independent Kaohsiung city council candidate yesterday while campaigning for his party's mayoral candidate in the city.



During a campaign event for KMT Kaohsiung mayoral candidate Huang Chun-ying (黃俊英) Chang Ho-yi (張禾宜) rushed toward Ma and punched him in the face chanting "Ma Ying-jeou step down."

Immediately after the incident, Ma was escorted away by bodyguards. He said it was a minor attack and that he would not consider hiring additional bodyguards.

"It was simply a campaign tactic," Ma said while campaigning for the party's Taipei city councilor candidate in Nankang.
Chang later yesterday held a press conference where she accused Ma of "conniving with his bodyguards to commit physical abuse," claiming this had resulted in her suffering multiple bruising.

Roger O'Donnell's New Album

Roger O'Donnell has now released a solo album. He's using a MOOG Voyager on this one. It's entitled "The Truth in Me". Very deep, moody and thoughtful sounding material! I highly recommend you all pick up this disc. It can be ordered here. Roger is the great keyboard player who helped shape the sound of The Cure, The Psychedelic Furs, and The Thompson Twins (thus helping to create some of the iconic sounds of 80's New Wave music). Be sure to check out Roger's website.

Great Graphic Novel: American Born Chinese

This was published this year by Gene Luen Yang, and is the winner of a prestigious book award. I was turned onto to this book by a friend. I think it is REALLY brilliant. I can relate to alot of the themes.
"As alienated kids go, Jin Wang is fairly run-of-the-mill: he eats lunch by himself in a corner of the schoolyard, gets picked on by bullies and jocks and develops a sweat-inducing crush on a pretty classmate. And, oh, yes, his parents are from Taiwan. This much-anticipated, affecting story about growing up different is more than just the story of a Chinese-American childhood; it's a fable for every kid born into a body and a life they wished they could escape. The fable is filtered through some very specific cultural icons: the much-beloved Monkey King, a figure familiar to Chinese kids the world over, and a buck-toothed amalgamation of racist stereotypes named Chin-Kee. Jin's hopes and humiliations might be mirrored in Chin-Kee's destructive glee or the Monkey King's struggle to come to terms with himself, but each character's expressions and actions are always perfectly familiar. True to its origin as a Web comic, this story's clear, concise lines and expert coloring are deceptively simple yet expressive. Even when Yang slips in an occasional Chinese ideogram or myth, the sentiments he's depicting need no translation. Yang accomplishes the remarkable feat of practicing what he preaches with this book: accept who you are and you'll already have reached out to others."

You can get a copy here

The Cure Trilogy

I finally got my own copy of this and watched it in it's entirety. It's truly great! I've been into The Cure since about 1984. They perform 3 of my favorite albums, back-to-back. Recently, I had a 20-something mention to me "Oh I love The Cure, and all of those classic bands!" So that makes me feel a bit old. 哈哈哈！Anyway, back to the Trilogy: "An ambitious yet practical idea, Trilogy underscores the tonal and lyrical connections between three of the Cure's darkest albums in the last 20 years. The restless, ever-changing band, fronted by goth-gloomster Robert Smith, took up residence at the Tempodrom Berlin for a couple of nights in late 2002 for the express purpose of playing the group's 1982 Pornography, 1989's Disintegration, and 2000's Bloodflowers live and in their entirety. Whether it was a good idea or not depends on one's point of view." :-)

Hanging with Xique in Los Angeles

So I took a few days off this last week and flew out to LA to spend time with my Mom. So how is that for filial piety? The ancestors must be proud! :-) Also while I was there, I got to visit some old friends. I didn't get to visit everyone that I wanted to (still pressed for time). However one of the people I did get to see was my old friend Xique. Now a systems administrator for Apple Computer in Santa Monica. It was great to see him again. He showed me around his office. It is a super nice office. I wished my workspace was that nice!

Afterwards, we went out and ate at a funky Thai place! It was great to escape the usual grind of work, even if just for a little while! :-) Two veteran IT jockies relaxing while the world swirls and changes around us.

Since I beat the holiday rush, the flight from DFW Airport to Long Beach Airport was mostly uneventful. Thankfully I'm not travelling anywhere this week.