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Archive for the ‘Cambodia’ Category

Anthony Veasna So–“Three Women of Chuck’s Donuts” (New Yorker, February 10, 2020)

Posted in Anthony Veasna So, Cambodia, Donuts, Marriage Trouble, New Yorker, Short Story, Uncut, Violence, Whitney, Wilco on February 10, 2020| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: WHITNEY-“Far Far Away” (from WILCOvered, UNCUT Magazine November 2019).

The November 2019 issue of UNCUT magazine had a cover story about Wilco.  It included a 17 track CD of bands covering Wilco (called WILcovered or WILCOvered).  I really enjoyed this collection and knew most of the artists on it already, so I’m going through the songs one at a time.

I have only recently heard of Whitney, although I understand they are quite popular.

This is a muted bedroom-sounding recording.  There’s a folky acoustic vibe with acoustic guitar and piano and slide guitar.  It’s weird that the sound is all kind of compressed together making it sound really small.

The (double) slide guitar solo is quite pretty.

[READ: February 9, 2020] “Three Women of Chuck’s Donuts”

The title of this story gives you no indication at all what the story is about, which is pretty interesting.

The only connection is that the story is set in Chuck’s Donuts.  We learn pretty quickly that there is no Chuck.  Indeed, the owner never knew anyone named Chuck, but she thought that name sounded nicely all-American.

The owner is a Cambodian woman named Sothy.  The other two women of the store are her daughters Kayley and Tevy (who is four years older an Kayley).  Sothy wonders if her shop should be open 24 hours a day or just normal business hours.  Should she really have her daughters work the night shift?

A couple of weeks ago the night employee quit.  For the summer the girls would work the night shift with her and all the saved money would go to their college fund.

As the story opens at 3AM, a man walks in and orders an apple fritter.  He sits at a booth and stares out the window.  He doesn’t respond to their chitchat, he just looks out the window until he stops looking out the window, then he leaves, fritter untouched.

Kayley wonders if he is Cambodian, but Tevy says that not all Asians are Cambodian.

Three days later the man returns and does the same thing

The girls cant stop talking about him.  They even squabble about him. Sothy sees that the man is distracted by them and that he soon leaves.  But she tells them not to worry, that he’s Khmer.

They desperately want to know how she knows that.  “Of course he is,” Sothy says. (more…)

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Blue Delliquanti with Soleil Ho–Meal (2018)

Posted in Activism, Alpha Male Tea Party, Atomic City Comics, Bee Larvae Honey Drops, Blue Delliquanti, Cambodia, Food, Gender, Graphic Novel, Iron Circus Comics, LGBTQ, Meal Worm Curry, Pan-Fried, Romance, Soleil Ho, Spiders, Tacos de Chapulines, Tarantula Roll on November 28, 2019| Leave a Comment »

SOUNDTRACK: ALPHA MALE TEA PARTY-“I Haven’t Had A Lunch Break Since Windows Vista Came Out” (2014).

I found this band by accident and was curious about their name (they had the potential to be so unpleasant).  It also seemed like a pretty apt band and song to tie to this book.

Turns out Alpha Male Tea Party plays a kind of prog-rock/math-rock/heavy (mostly) instrumental style of music.  I’ve listened to a bunch of songs and thought that they were all instrumental, but there are lyrics on some of the songs.

This track is instrumental and opens with a quiet guitar opening and thudding drums.

After a minute or so it shifts gears into a rocking drum-filled section (that might be in 12/4).  The middle section alternates between some chugging riffs and complex guitar line before jumping into a heavy rumbling off-kilter headbanging section.

There’s no chorus or even verses that I can tell.  In fact their titles are mostly just humorous tags for complex instrumentals.  And that’s fine if you can back it up, which they can.

The end of the song (and the album) builds to a surprisingly cathartic climax before throwing in a little riff at the end that makes it sound like there should be more.  Presumably that means listening to the record again.

[READ: November 27, 2019] Meal

I bought this book while C. and I were in Philadelphia.  The spread of books at Atomic City Comics was just amazing and I saw so many books I wanted to get for family members.  Because we were heading into a show a few minutes after leaving, I didn’t want to burden myself with a lot of books, so I only bought this one.

This book was released by Iron Circus Comics, a publisher I am totally unfamiliar with.

But what attracted me to the book, aside from the delightful color palette on the cover was the tagline: Dream. Love. Entomophagy.

The story: Yarrow is a young chef determined to make her mark on the cutting edge of cookery with her insect-based creations.  But when she tries to get a job working at a soon-to-be-opening restaurant which specializes in insect-based food, the chef of the place dismisses her out of hand.  What gives?  Shouldn’t they be a natural fit? (more…)

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