I Just Read About That…

SOUNDTRACK: TEGAN AND SARA-Tiny Desk Concert #581 (November 21, 2016).

This particular Tiny Desk Concert is very painful to watch.  Not because of the music, but because it was recorded the day before the 2016 election, when the world was good and positive and happy.  Tegan and Sara are fun and optimistic about making history and about drunk tweeting the results.  And their mood is infectious.  People actually believed that goodness would win.

Sigh.

So, horrors aside, Tegan and Sara play a four song set–they say that they  couldn’t decide on just three songs.  They play three from their new album and one older song.

And the blurb notes:  It’s hard to believe Tegan and Sara have been making music for 17 years.  ….  Contrary to the poppy sound of 2016’s Love You To Death, the two insisted on performing their Tiny Desk concert acoustically — stripping down highly produced songs while hearkening back to their early recordings. Without the distraction of production, we’re left with the gorgeous sound of roughly identical voices blending. Plus, their endearing banter and jovial sibling rivalry left us defenseless against their charm.

I wondered if they did four songs so that they could each sing lead on two.

Tegan sings lead on “Stop Desire” (with lovely harmonies from Sara).  There’s a bass (by Eva Gardner) and drum, but this song is mostly a simple, pretty piano melody.  It sounds like it was meant to be poppier (at least compared to their earlier stuff), but it still sounds very nice.

When the song is over, Tegan says her instinct is she wants to banter …  “if i had known this many people were going to come, I would have applied a little more attention and focus to the application of makeup and clothing” (although she looks very good already).

Sara sings “Boyfriend,” her voice is noticeably huskier.  The lyrics of this song are great, in which a lesbian relationship might not appear that way at first listen.

You call me up like you want your best friend
You turn me on like you want your boyfriend
But I don’t want to be your secret anymore.

Then Sara talks about Ryan Adams confronting bad reviewers and how she was thinking that that was an approach they could take since they got many bad reviews.  But now she enjoys ignoring bad reviews, saying the best you can do is ignore it and then they only get three retweets or 3 hearts on Twitter and you’re like “I hope you enjoyed writing that bad review for 3 people.”  She pauses and says, “that makes me sound mean spirited…but I guess I am.  I guess deep down inside I might be a Donald Trump person.”  This elicits groans from many including Tegan.  Sara jokes, “Too soon?  We’re Canadian and we can’t wait for your election to be over too.”  That’s when Sara said the thing about making history and she apologizes that she brought the room down.

Sara sings “100x”  which has a “di-di-didnt you” chorus.  Again this hints at the poppier format, but I like the song in the stripped down version–it’s piano only (from Gabrial McNair).  Tegan gets the lead in the middle section, which is quite a change in style.  It’ s cool song overall.

When Tegan says that they couldn’t decide on three songs, the crowd applauds and she jokes, “Thank yo for your enthusiastic response.”  Then   Tegan asks if everyone else is hot, to which Sara jokes, “Honest to God, Tegan has talked about her heat issues for the last 5 years. I am so afraid when menopause hits.”

Tegan sings lead on Closer, their single from Hearthrob and it is quite pretty. The whole band is back on this one–and their voices work so well together.  I also love that Brendan Buckley is using one of those box drums for the bass drum.

I really enjoy this set a lot, if only their prediction about the elections was better.

[READ: December 1, 2016] American Born Chinese

I have mentioned this book a lot.  But I only recently realized that I never posted about the book itself.   I read it a long time ago and it is the reason I fell in love with First Second graphic novels (and why I have more or less read all of their books by now).

It had been long enough since I’d read it that I didn’t remember just how fantastic it was.

This book is three seemingly unrelated stories–about a monkey god, a teenaged boy, and a sitcom with an incredibly offensive Chinese character.  The way he stitches these stories together is amazing.

The book opens with the gods and demons having a party.  But the Monkey King was not invited.    The monkey king was very powerful.  He had learned  the four disciplines: Fist Like Lightning, Thunderous Foot, Heavenly Sense and Cloud as Steed.  And so when he hears of the party he gets on line to enter. But he is laughed away: “you may be a king, you may even be a deity, but you are still a monkey.”

The monkey is embarrassed and angry and he immediately takes revenge on everyone at the party and then goes home to sulk.

The middle story is about Jin Wang, a Chinese-American boy who had to move with his family from Chinatown in San Francisco to a very white neighborhood.  I love the way the teacher is represented–calling him Jing Jang and claiming that he is from China (rather than San Francisco).  Jin notes that there is only one other Asian the class–a Japanese girls named Suzy.

He had a hard time making friends–people teased him about eating their dogs and cats.  But one day a new boy came to class: Chei-Chei Chun (no, actually his name is Wei-Chen Sun) and he is from China (no, actually Tawian). He tries to befriend Jin, but Jin doesn’t want to be with the geeky Asian boy.  Until he sees that Wei-Chen has a cool Transformer.  And a bond begins.

Then we move to story three, the horribly offensive sitcom “Everyone Ruvs Chin-kee.”  This is the story of Danny, a boy in high school who would love to date the cute girl in class.  But as he is trying to impress her, he gets the news that his cousin Chin-kee is coming to visit for a few weeks.

And Gene doesn’t hold back.  Chin-kee’s got huge buck teeth his clothes even come in giant Chinese take-out containers as he shots “HARRO AMELLICA!”

All of his dialogue transposes ls and rs (pletty amellican) and says things like “Confucius say–“.  All the awhile  there is a laugh track at the bottom of the page.  The story ends with Danny being shocked and his parents saying that the two of them will have so much fun together.

Those three stories serves as introductions to the full stories that come shortly.

In the first one, we return to the Monkey King.  He is learning more disciplines–he can now shape shift and is invulnerable to attack.  He gets a letter that he is guilty of trespassing on heaven and the sentence is death.  So he goes up to heaven and pounds everyone silly until he meets the great creator Tze-Yo-Tzuh–the one who created him–as a monkey.

The monkey king doesn’t listen to anything he says, so Tze-Yo-Tzuh has no choice but to bury him at the bottom of a mountain of rocks.

Back in school, Jin has developed a crush on Amelia.  He would love to ask her out, although Wei-Chen tells him that he shouldn’t date anyone until college.  Jin says this is America and tells him not to be a F.O.B. (fresh off the boat). Within two weeks, Wei-Chen is seen dating Suzy.

After some courage Jin asks Amelia out and she agrees.

We return to Chin-kee where he proves to be really smart (and really embarrassing for Dave.  Gene even includes an offensive joke that I knew from childhood: “Me Chinese Me play joke, me go pee pee in your coke” (how on earth did that get started?).

Danny reveals to a basketball player that every year Chink-ee visits him and every year after the visit, Danny needs to go to a new school because he can’t be associated with Chin-kee any more.

When the story shifts back to the Monkey King, it follows someone else.  A monk.  The monk couldn’t meditate or fast but he was very generous even to those who abused him.  It turns out to have been a kind of test and the gods were pleased with him.  They told him that the monkey king would be his disciple.  He finds the monkey king buried under the rock.  The Monkey King mocks him and says there’s no way he’d be a disciple.  But something happens to change his mind.

Back in school, Jin is ready for his date (he asks Wei-Chin to cover for him, even though it is a lie).  It goes pretty well, although later he hears people talking about him behind his back to Amelia.  He also finds out that someone was picking on Suzy.  But he goofs terribly and winds up offending everyone.

And as his section ends, there is a huge surprise waiting for him.

The final section returns to Chin-kee and that’s where the genius of the book lies.

This is a such a great story both for understanding people with differences and trying to respect other cultures, but from a storytelling point of view–it’s so wonderfully done.  And to top it off Gene’s artwork is phenomenal.  I love it.  (I’m always bummed when his new books rely on others to draw for him).

This book is really fantastic and Gene has received deserving accolades.