dreamland Bhutan

The Honolulu Academy of Arts was buzzing on Sunday afternoon, when I finally made it to see The Dragon’s Gift: The Sacred Arts of Bhutan, which had been there since February but held over til this weekend.

I was lucky enough to catch part of a guided tour of the exhibit, which allowed me more insight than I would have on my own. A lot of the pieces were intricately embroidered and appliqued thangka with symbol-ladden scenes from the life of important Buddhist teachers and deities.

There were also centuries old metal-cast sculptures and some ancient Buddhist ritual items including a phurba and a vajra, pictured, which I recognized because M left them here, his spiritual practice no longer a priority. This NY Times article explains how this one-of-a-kind collection was put together, the slideshow is good, too.

The exhibition was presided over by a small group of Bhutanese monks, who also lead prayers in another area of the museum called the Altar Room. The smell of incense and drone of chanting was enveloping even outside the doors, where shoes were piled. Beatific people were seated on cushions around the room in various meditation positions, throwing rice and plumeria blossoms up and into the center of the room either at certain times in the chant, or maybe just following along when the monks did it, which is what I was doing. Aping such earnest ritual made me uncomfortable.

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this is real and not for play, twitter, vote Obamaway

Ti$a - Vote Obama

[via The Rap Up]

Why didn’t Obama Twitter the news of this video?? LoL. He’s got his account set to follow everyone that follows him. Brilliant! and how flattering: Barack Obama is following me! hahaha! No doubt it’s an aide that reads & sends the messages, but still, interesting use of technology. And fun video :~j

The Grouch - Artsy

This is a fun video from a poet of hiphop, hot off the front page of youtube. It reminds me not to accidentally turn into too much of a hippie and to take time to nurture art regardless :~j

$1.99 download on iTunes

The Grouch myspace

The Nation on Hawaiian sovereignty and resistance

A special issue The Nation is dedicated to the illegal overthrow of the Hawaiian monarchy and ongoing resistance to U.S. control. Elinor Langer’s article “Famous Are the Flowers: Hawaiian Resistance Then–And Now” is, according to the editors “a probing exploration of the annexation of Hawai’i by the United States and of the issues of sovereignty and indigenous rights that persist in the wake of that seizure–accomplished not by treaty but by threat of force and unilateral act of Congress.”

Every article is not accessible without a subscription, but the main story is, as are some editorials and historic pieces of note linked from the Hawaiian Independence Blog. I thought the main feature was an informative read, tho I kind of kept expecting to hear about the armed resistance that took place at the time of the overthrow, because I wanted to know more. I remember something about rebels hiding out in Palolo Valley?! The armed resistance was apparently short-lived, but obviously worthy of consideration alongside the weighty petitions of protest.

Doug at Shaka Zine thought there might be some larger problems with the reporting, errors larger than the couple typos I noticed. Will be interesting to see the scholars and activists respond to this. Also the comments look like they might get good…

BTW Shaka Zine is by old school zine-ster, performance artist, poet and _________ Doug Upp–the man has many talents. (I’m so glad you’re blogging!! everybody needs more Doug Upp in their lives. Big fan. *smooches*)

Nicole Willis and The Soul Investigators

Anasarca at Asita Recordings points out that the closing music on a Current TV show featuring the inimitable Wax Poetics magazine(!) is a funk band from Finland called Nicole Willis and The Soul Investigators. She messaged me:

“I just thought you might be interested in this band, if you haven’t heard of them already. They bring a brand of Finnish funk that is both joyous and soulful. It’s really easy for these new funk bands to sound cheesy but they definitely overcome that. Also look for Didier Sound Spectrum it was an older release from the 90’s that recently saw a reissue. More amazing funky Finnish music.”

No I hadn’t heard of them, thank you for the recommendation, girl!

Here goes the video for “If this ain’t love (don’t know what is).” Yea it’s a few years old, but this can bump all summer long.

Turns out Nicole Willis is originally from Brooklyn (with a solid musical resume), but has apparently studied in Lahti, Finland and blogged about her schoolwork, including philosophy essays and paintings she’s done?! I’m listing to the songs on their myspace and it is enticing me to order their album for real… oh look, here’s a link!

Finnish Ducktales lost in translation

This is the Ducktales theme song, Finnish version. The joker who posted it on youtube offers a, erm, unique transcription of the lyrics in English; I’ve included them below. Silly yes, but made me laugh, which is always good on a Monday.

Morphine makes the holy known
Uncle Lina!
Eyein’ up/down that sappy nun
Uncle Lina!
I’m going to stroke it
Your arms are BROKEN!
Uncut! Ohh!
Hoot all you and an anus, aha!
Uncut! Ohh!
Your school’s stupid! Your school’s BaHa!
Uncut! Ohh!
If I’m not avail you, taco nazi!
Look around and count on Lassie!
Knit and dance and BAKE A CAKE!
Oh, Uncut! Ohh!
Hoot all you and an anus, aha!
Uncut! Ohh!
Your school’s stupid! Your school’s BaHa!
Uncut! Ohh!
And sanskrit ain’t got hoot to say ’bout
Uncut! Ohh!

Real lyrics follow, courtesy of another youtube poster.
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books, I read them

These are the books I’ve read over the last ~4 months.

• Musicians from a Different Shore: Asians and Asian Americans in Classical Music by Mari Yoshihara (2007)*
• Frontman:Surviving the Rock Star Myth by Richard Barone (2007)
• The Tricks of the Trade by Dario Fo (1987)*
• Subculture: The Meaning of Style by Dick Hebdige (1979)*
• Fast Food Nation by Eric Schlosser (2001)
• Hell’s Angels: A Strange and Terrible Saga by Hunter Thompson (1966)
• Moomin: The Complete Tove Jansson Comic Strip - Book Two (2007)

*Assigned reading.

reservations about Anthony Bourdain in Hawaii

Anthony Bourdain’s No Reservations is one of my all-time favorite televisions shows. He writes, he travels, he eats and he’s hungry for more! I can’t get enough of this guy. So when Anasarca from Asita Recordings posted up in the QuadMag forums about his December visit to film in Honolulu, I was geeked!

The Hawaii episode aired last week and I have to say, I’m disappointed. I guess that’s somewhat inevitable when you have such high expectations. Honestly, I couldn’t believe how much I disliked this episode of No Reservations. I watched it twice just to make sure I wasn’t trippin.

The whole episode is available on youtube–for now–so watch while you can.

Below is a loose play-by-play of the episode with my commentary.

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Sigur Rós ‘Heima’ musical documentary

Saw this Icelandic group at Hawaii Theatre and have been respectful ever since. I’m only seven minutes in but wholly impressed with ‘Heima’ by Sigur Rós. Visiting Iceland was something like this, I wish.

[youtube video no longer available]

UPDATE 3/18/08: Boooooooooooooooooooo @ them removing the video after it was splashed across the youtube front page for DAYS. >:-[ And their myspace is all bragging about being the first artists to have a full-length doc on youtube. I guess one could actually buy the damn thing, but I really don’t like this bait and switch. If it is an officially sanctioned release on the interweb, it should not go away. IMHO.

Coppé at Next Door in Honolulu

Coppé of Mango and Sweet Rice records played in January at The Next Movement at Next Door in Honolulu. It was wonderful to catch her live again, only the second time I’ve seen her in Honolulu. A former island resident, Coppé passes through on occasion, though clearly(?!) not nearly often enough.

To my ears, much of what Coppé does has a trippy underwater electronic hallucinatory feel to it, but she’s prolific and collaborates often, so no single description (no matter how packed with adjectives) does her music justice. That night at Next Door, for example, it was her glitchy, part-Japanese take on the jazz-pop standard “Fly Me to the Moon” that had me swooning.

In this clip she talks about her performance, new album, influences and being well-received in Europe. The video (and the interviewer!* ugh) are not the greatest but… well, whatever… Coppe’s spark still shines.

As I’m loading this on youtube, I see that Dark has uploaded some videos he did for her songs and I’m reminded that he was supposed to do visuals for her show. For whatever reason, his work didn’t make it on to the screen that night. It’s too bad, they would have added a lot.

Dark’s videos to two of Coppé’s song are included below.

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Moomin and Lost: the revelation

I forgot I had this in my queue of things I might blog about. Very funny and astute. From Matt Madden’s blog, Moomin and Lost: the revelation.

However, Lost is now on season four (I only watch because it is filmed in Hawaii…), and there has been an incident where a helicopter(!) has left the island and completely disappeared! Crash landed? We don’t know. Presumably the characters are not dead.

I’m not ready to make more Moomin-Lost connections but if anyone wants to go ahead and do so, I’m all ears.

ketch-up: links, media consumption and political miscellania

From the comments in an on Stuff White People Like (a hilarious site whose authors need to stop stalking me!) I happened upon a gaggle of DC bloggers who made me feel fat and provincial.

Even tho their leader gives Finnish girls some props… in his way…

Finnish - I used to call my Finnish girl “finn-skinned”. She almost cried. The upside is that a Finn chick is a naif in the art of head games, so you’ll never have to deal with her flirting with other guys in a bar just to make you jealous. Finns are introverted. … A Finn girl’s introversion hides a surprising strength of character. She won’t tolerate her man walking all over her. Fiercely loyal and commitment-oriented, Finns make fantastic girlfriends. More than other women, Finns appreciate small gestures like spontaneously buying her a rocket pop from an ice cream truck. Finn girls smell fantastic and look ten years younger than their age.

…I’m not really down with this whole anonymous bad-mouthing of the opposite sex. (I’m not anonymous for one thing.) But that site led me to a whole bunch of other blogs that got me thinking about why assholes are interesting. (Ew.) A thought I quickly banished with pop cultural tripe and life-stuff.

Read about it.

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Barack Obama- Yes We Can

This is my favorite political propaganda, ever. It brought a tear to my eye the first two four times I watched it.

I wanted to post this on QuadMag, but we are having a serious database problem over there that has crippled the site. Booo. But there was an impassioned supporter of Ron Paul in the forums, to whom I would like to say: for all his ideas and genuine system-shaking-up, Ron Paul could never be as cool as Barack Obama. I think this video proves that hehe.

Apparently there is some background on the video at dipdive.com, but their servers seem to be overwhelmed right now. Text of the speech/lyrics follows.

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