Posts from November 2006
November 17, 2006
Friday night jazz at Ikea
Friday night I had to stop by Ikea to grab some items for a tenant moving in Monday. Trust me, you never want to go to Ikea in Beijing over the weekend. Oh my god. What a zoo. Thousands of people crooning "hao shuuuuuufuuuuuu" while sitting on every available space, even under the covers, sleeping. The Ikea staff have now covered all the fake toilets with plexiglass...
Anyway, so there I am, manuevering through the store with the driver and Aunt Lui. We turn the corner, and [what's that?] there's a jazz band, playing to an audience of cafeteria diners, with cafeteria trays. The cafeteria in the Beijing Ikea holds about 600 people, and it was full. People on dates, people with laptops, little kids, grandparents, and even a few hotties. (Note to guys: Ikea - New place to score numbers.)
The jazz band of course was what caught my interest, so I suggested hanging around for an upscale cafeteria dinner (baked salmon anyone?). I got a table up close to the singer, wearing the requisite singer attire of leopard skin boots, tight black pants, and a rhinestone belt. (Why is it all singers shop at the same store?) And the band was pretty good. Actually better than most of the jazz bands I hear in Taiwan.
They played the standard schmaltz gig tunes, weren't too loud, and people seemed to really enjoy it. But what a weird combination. Someone tried to go trough an emergency exit door and set all the alarms off, but the band plowed right through no problem. A little cafeteria worker was busy collecting trays and wiping tables down. People pushed carts laden with items named from forgotten Lord of the Rings characters. I slurped my spaghetti, endured yet another performance of "The Girl From Ipanema" and mulled over the tough gig aspect of it, and decided it was sure better than playing piano in the dining room of a sauna, or trying to flog an album to shoppers in the produce aisle of a store in Tainan.
November 08, 2006
The refreshing scowl
I was in a cloth market yesterday looking for sofa fabric, and it was refreshing to see that some of the old China was still in force. I remember 15 years ago going into a shop, and pointing at something on the wall, and asking to buy it, and the clerk would simply scowl and say mayo.
Me: Excuse me, can I take one of your namecards please?
Clerk: [Scowling] Why do want with our namecard?
Me: So I know how to come back here to buy the material in your shop.
Clerk: [Scowl]
Me: Do you even want to try to sell me this material?
Clerk: [Scowl]
Me: Or I can go somewhere else, like next door, since there's no reason I would ever want to buy anything from you.
Clerk: [Scowl]
November 01, 2006
But of course
I always knew this. I just called it the "The FTMP way to better sax."
Wired: From an evolutionary perspective, why have humans developed music?
Levitin: There are a number of different theories. One theory is that music is an evolutionary accident, piggybacking on language: We exploited language to create music just for our own pleasure. A competing view, one that Darwin held, is that music was selected by evolution because it signals certain kinds of intellectual, physical and sexual fitness to a potential mate.
Wired: How does that play out in rock 'n' roll, for example?
Levitin: (Research has shown that) if women could choose who they'd like to be impregnated by, they'd choose a rock star. There's something about the rock star's genes that is signaling creativity, flexibility of thinking, flexibility of mind and body, an ability to express and process emotions -- not to mention that (musical talent) signals that if you can waste your time on something that has no immediate impact on food-gathering and shelter, you¡¦ve got your food-gathering and shelter taken care of.
I've never figured out whether it's pronounced "Moe's (like owned by one of three stooges) or Moss (like that guy out of Bonanza), but the one down the hill from me is open until 2am most days, which means that if I get out of the club early enough, I can catch the best burger in town, the muo si la bao or the Spicy Mos Burger. They have lots of jalapenos and 
