chen's yen!

BE WARNED. A LOT OF CAPS. AND EXCESSIVE EXCITED RAMBLING ABOUT TO START. NOW.
So just this morning I've been thinking of a restaurant idea whilst having this traditional Chinese dish that my dad cooked. It's roasted and steamed pork belly and rice with napa cabbage. It's so much better than it sounds but it's like just really delicious. My parents are really good cooks. And I know everyone says that their parents are the best cooks ever but really.... my parents are pretty damn good. Not the best but really really effing good. Better than all the other Asian parents. Trust me I've gone to holiday parties and it's just like eating at home because I end up eating only my parents food. But my grandparents are like REALLY AMAZING. I can resolutely say they're the best ever. My granddad makes the best fried chicken EVER (MY granddad can totally whoop YOUR grandma's ass) without actually deepfrying anything, and my grandma is just like the TOP CHEF of my life. She makes the most fantastic angel-fish stew ever. UH HUH. WHO MAKES A STEW OUT OF ANGELFISH? MY GRANDMOTHER, BITCHES. And on my dad's side my grandmother basically makes the best Chinese home-style country cooking available. She's the best. :)

So going on I thought, there aren't any really nice Chinese restaurants out there. There aren't. Maybe in NOVA. PF Chang's? FALSE. Not real. I mean the Great Wall of Chocolate or whatever? That's so Chinese.
Anyways. I suggested that my dad start a nice little over-priced restaurant (he's about to quit/get laid off his job by the assholes at LG despite the fact that he's the hardest working, most needed guy there. POOP). I can tell he wants to do it but he's opposite of a risk-taker. He doesn't gamble, is afraid of playing the stock market, and has an iron-fist around the family savings. But I can tell he's intrigued by the idea.
So I've got this whole thing like panned out a little bit. It'll be a casual but overpriced and EXTREMELY DELICIOUS Chinese tapas bar. We'll have SCRUMPTIOUSly gorgeous traditional Chinese dishes served up rul pretty and in tiny portions so that people will think that it's like really really really high class. I mean it will be high class. The plates will look like peices of art and no one will want to eat them. And when they do they'll think they've gone to Asian heaven because everything will be melt-in-your-mouth, holy-Mao GOOD. It's GOING TO BE LEGEND-wait for it-DAIRY!
Here are some planned menu items. This is all stuff my parents or grandparents have made. Just a few selections.

• Steamed Arctic Char with braised fennel and a Fen Jiu (Chinese vodka) ginger reduction
• Hand-drawn twisted noodles with Chen's favorite Ragu! made pan-seared shitake mushrooms, mu-er (wood-ear), stewed tomatoes, egg fritata, and carmelized green onion. Served with a soy chili vinaigrette.
  
• HOT POT - a wintery dish that offers up the best of Chinese home cooking. A simmered Chinese-style mirepoix is simmered in sauce to perfection then blended with boiling water in a hot pot over a stove right at your table! Assorted thin-sliced beef, vegetables, mushrooms, noodles, tofu is served table-side to be dipped in the fondue and relished with a Secret Sesame sauce. One of my favorite meals.
  
• Grilled Sea Cucumber with slow-cooked celery in a thick soy garlic sauce - a true delicacy with textures and flavors you've never tasted but will surely love. Good for health as well.
• True-Moo-Shoo - small individual flour tortillas made the tradition way (cooked one on top of the other, you get to peel them apart!), sweet soy-bean paste, tender green onion slivers, and the following stir-fries: Egg fritata with mu-er shitake mushrooms and shredded pork, pickled cabbage and vermicelli, assorted delicate mushrooms and asparagus in white sauce, and bamboo shoots and sliced beef in a spicy sauce. Take the tortillas and spread the paste. Then lay down the green onion and a bit of every dish. Wrap and enjoy the explosion in your mouth.
• And for dessert: Honey ginger housemade gelato over sugar-crusted sweet potato bites. Drizzled with ginger-pear syrup.
• Ok so I've never actually had the last one but it sounds good. My mom makes the sugar-crusted sweet potato bites sometimes. It's really easy, and crusted is really not the right word. It's really more sweet potato chunks with a sugary glazed shell. It's sooo good.
  

Anyways. Thats my plan. And someday I will have a restaurant and it will be delicious. And you will all eat in it and be amazed.

MXTP#2

We'll see how this works out eh?
Here's the link to download MXTP#2. It will disappear in about a week.
<3>

SO MUCH SNOW.

So It's been a long while since I've made a blip on this blog-thing. I still don't know exactly what I'm trying to make this.
But I guess there's no better time to figure it out but now. When I'm snowed in my house without a snow shovel or cable. It's crazy outside. The snow in the driveway goes up to my thighs. I know I'm short but thats just ridiculous. I hope I can make it out tomorrow. I need to get my wisdom teeth out Monday and I don't want to reschedule. I did however already clear like 1/3 of it with pretty much only Rachel's sled (thanks rachel!), so I feel pretty powerful.

This semester has been pretty rough for a lot of reasons (none of which I'm willing to discuss on a blog) and the only thing that has been constant for me is the music I listen to. So I guess, for now at least, this blog is about my music. I know that when I'm listening to great music, all the bullshit that happens/is caused by me or other people/is just life, goes away a while. I think that's why I've attempted to go to so many concerts. The feeling I get at a concert or in my car alone humming along to a favorite song makes me glad to be alive. And I've needed a lot of that this year.
So this is where I'll just post music I love and talk about it a bit because I'm happy just talking about music. I'm definitely no authority on any art in general. I just need to wrtie down my thoughts and keep them around for a while.
This is the second mixtape - and... because everyone in the world has made their "Best of 2009" list, I will too. But the albums/songs on here are not all from 2009, they were just the best for me in 2009. I'm probably going to hurry and post a lot of these because the year is ending soon (!). These are some of my favorite things. Treat them well.
If you would like to download it email me/comment and I'll send you a link. I'm not posting it here because I don't want to go to jail. Thanks.

MXTP#2 - 2009 Part 1 (in no particular order whatsoever)

"Marrow" - St. Vincent
Album: Actor
Annie Clark is a strange girl. I feel like she's a loner in real life. She seems like that girl in high school that say alone at lunch but was devastatingly beautiful and mysterious and made you wonder what her deal was. Waif-like, she looks like Snow White but sounds nothing like her. At least not the annoyingly high pitched Disney version. She's soft but unrelenting and fantastic live (Her and Andrew Bird, BEST MUSICAL PAIRING EVER). The entire album is great but "Marrow" is really weird and strangely addictive. You probably won't like it the first time you listen. I certainly didn't but I kept coming back to it.

"Hooting and Howling" - Wild Beasts
Album: Two Dancers
Probably the best lyrics of of the year. And that voice. And they're at 930 sometime in Feb. Wanna go? And be brutes hoping to have a hoot? Plz?
"A crude art, a bovver boot ballet –
equally elegant and ugly.
I was as thrilled as I was appalled,
courting him in fistcuffing waltz.
Now I’m not saying the lads always deserve a braying.
And I’m not saying the girls are worth the fines I’m paying."

"Ghosts" - Fanfarlo
Album: Reservoir
OK so everyone remember Arcade Fire? How exciting it was when they came around and how quickly "Funeral" became one of the best albums every made? Fanfarlo reminds me of Arcade Fire, but softer, more reserved, and not quite as mature. Catch them before they become really big and start going commercial.

"So Far Around the Bend" - The National
"Big Red Machine" - Justin Vernon + Aaron Dessner
Album: Dark was the Night
This album/compilation for charity or whatever is one of the best things to happen this year. I love this album so much I want to propose to it on a rooftop garden, marry it, and have its beautiful, vinyl, indie-superstar babies. Practically perfect. If you would like a copy of the CD bring me two blank disks and I will burn it for you. No one should have to live without it.

"Broken Horse" - Freelance Whales
Album: Weathervanes
Ah Freelance Whales. So many things I'd like to say. I'll start with F Iota Club.
... anyways, I was going to go see them and Fanfarlo (I KNOWWW they were together!!!) up in Arlington. I was going to send out a SOC email being like anyone want to come? But that failed. Fail chen. Fail Iota Club.
What I was going to say in the email was that Freelance Whales is one of the most exciting new discoveries of my year. They're like the gorgeous bastard child of Death Cab and Sufjan Stevens. It's been a great year for me and my music, but it's REALLY REALLY REALLY fucking rare when you find a band/song/sound that just FITS YOU. Like music that could define you and that you can listen to for life. Music that makes you think If I could set a soundtrack to a movie about your life, THIS WOULD BE IT. Only a few artists make that list Sufjan, Bon Iver, Phoenix, others I can't think of right now. Andrew Bird, who is like Top 5 FaVES to me, does not even make this elite list. Freelance whales is on it.


"I Am Not a Robot (Unplugged)" - Marina and the Diamonds
She's been getting a lot of press and coming out with new songs like every week. A few months ago, I listened to this song on repeat for like two weeks. There's something weird and beautiful about her voice and the way it quivers. Usually when I listen to something on repeat because I'm so in love with it (i.e. Florence and the Machine, Passion Pit), it wears out on me, and I have to live without it for a while. But not this song. Or any of her songs.

"Island, IS" - Volcano Choir
Album: Unmap
Another song everyone's been talking about. Volcano Choir is a group of Wisconsinites centered around Justin Vernon who is Bon Iver. The album is ok. This song is great.

"Shooting Stars" - Bag Raiders
LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE LOVE. I know absolutely nothing about the Bag Raiders. They're from Sydney. And they sound really really attractive. That's all you need to know.

"Up All Night" - French Horn Rebellion
Two bros (blood bros!) from Brooklyn making sweet tunes. Fun. Also the homemade music video is really cute.

"Tall Boy" - Har Mar Superstar
This track was written originally for Britney Spears. Instead it went to a flamboyant, sweaty and rotund dude who likes to perform in only his leopard print underwear. It doesn't get better than this.

"Stillness is the Move" - Dirty Projectors
So these guys/girls are sooooo overhyped this year. So much so that I think it takes away from people actually liking them for the brilliant music they make. And thats stupid. When "indie" becomes so hip that people flock to it just because its cool to like a certain band. Dumb. The voices these guys have is just mindblowing. "Stillness is the MOve" is one of the most talked about singles of the year - Solange Knowles just covered it(not as good but a cute R&B spin). Also check out "Knotty Pine" on Dark Was the NIght. Amazing.

"Bluish" - Animal Collective
Album: Merriweather Post Pavilion
Music that sounds like a kaleidoscope of colliding colors. Deeelghtful.

"The First Days of Spring"- Noah and the Whale
Album: The First Days of Spring
These guys are so great. I love the classical music aspect of their songs. Everything's so orchestral. Apparently this was a breakup album? It sounds more like birth/rebirth. Maybe its both. Hey Noah and the Whale, score my life. OST plz.

"VCR"
"Nighttime" - The XX
Album: xx
You've heard of these guys right? They are even more overhyped than Dirty Projectors. Listen and let the minimalistic beats fill your head. It's not hard to fall in love. Listen to their wonderful covers and the entire album. So hard to pick songs. An almost perfect album.

"This Blackest Purse" - Why?
Album: Eskimo Snow
Remember Soko? That little French girl who sang that song that everyone liked once "I'll Kill You" with that cute little French accent. I think people described her style as diary music, lyrics written like they were scribbled in a diary. The words are honest and unfiltered and most importantly, unafraid. Why? is like that cept way better and way more mature. The honesty is jarring sometimes but totally refreshing. Too often lyrics try too hard to sound pretty or poetic, and it shouldn't be that way. Why? writes stuff that doesn't give a shit about all that. And it works. REALLY well. Alopecia is one of the best albums I've heard, and Eskimo Snow is not that far behind.

"So Insane"
"Swing Tree" - Discovery
Raise your hand if you like Ra Ra Riot? Meet Discovery, Ra Ra Riot's androgynous, electroR&B brother. "So Insane"'s beat is infectious and it's really one of the most outstanding pop tracks of the year. Also on the album is the "cover" of Ra Ra Riot's "Can You Tell" electropop-ified. Oh forgot to mention that Discovery is Wes Miles from Ra Ra Riot and Rostam Batmagliasijajihasndaiwejwhatever from Vampire Weekend. College kids these days. PSHH.


"Because (ft. Radiohead)" - Chiddy Bang
If you haven't heard Chiddy Bang's absolutely genius reworking of "Kids" - MGMT, come to me and I'll slap you RUL good. Apparently these guys are college first years? WTF. Why did I major in Biology and not in Hip-Hop Superstardom? Here's a link to some free downloads http://www.last.fm/music/Chiddy+Bang.

oh my god. this video.

http://liveweb.arte.tv/fr/video/Soiree_de_poche___Andrew_Bird_et_St__Vincent/729/