Ah, my first/placeholder post... I'm actually a bit surprised that both "Sexy Brine" and "Things to Purchase or Masturbate To" were free despite how they're the among the more memorable dadaist phrases from John Hodgman's fake almanac, Areas of my Expertise. I imagine the day may come where I decide to not blatantly rip-off him and change the title, but that day is not nigh.
I want to tease the possibility of a lawsuit for the sake of life experience, and turn this into a music blog, but unfortunately the music I'm in the mood for now isn't on this computer and I haven't really thought this out properly at this point. This does not keep me from linking to places where I happen to discover music though.
CONTEXT REGARDING THE SONG(S):
I actually attended a wedding today as a placeholder, and the DJ at the reception either chose wildly inappropriate music or boring light jazz. I'm actually not sure whether he was at fault, being one of the only white men at a Chinese wedding, and both bride and groom are of the "hella old" generation in comparison to myself so there's the goodly chance that they themselves chose to play 80s pop and Celtic harmonies as respective parents gave away their children or "I want candy" as the couple cut the cake.
I'm frankly surprised that they never played Chinese-pop though, particularly the cheesy but mostly enjoyable David Tao and Jolin Tsai Mandarin duet, "今天你要嫁給我 jintian ni yao jia gei wo" (SONG. This is difficult for me to translate properly... It more or less means "Today you're gonna marry me" but I've never been clear if this is a request or a command, and it turns out people generally translate it as "Marry Me Today"). The video is fairly cute but apparently much more low-tech than I initally thought and in my defense I claim that I first watched it in really low quality, but I eventually noticed that the couples in the video are not the same one over and over through some sort of elaborate series of passes with a motion-controlled camera. Still, mimes, seriously? Not even particularly steady ones at that.
DISTRACTING BACKGROUND INFO/OTHER LINKS:
Jolin Tsai, confusingly also known by her proper Chinese name 蔡依林 (Cài Yīlín) is a beloved Taiwanese pop star at the ripe old age of 26. She's got an upcoming album called Agent J, and frankly I don't really understand any of what I've seen coming out of it. This being aside from the fact that my Mandarin is dubious. I think she filmed a bit of an action film/music video for what may be a concept album, and it seems to be ripping off Alias and Mr. and Mrs. Smith in one fell swoop while drawing elements from the Aeon Flux movie for costuming. I find it astonishingly impressive that she learns a new skill every album, which is good for her since she's more known for being either cute (ke ai), hot (la), or sexy (yellow?) and not really her vocals. Over nine albums and nine years she progressed from a bland sweet Taiwanese Britney Spears to some sort of amnesiatic assassin, but in years I've actually been aware of her, she went from sexy pirate (海盗 hai dao | Pirates) right before Gwen Stefani to hip-hoppy hussy, sweet presumably Greek girl, rhythmic gymnast (her ribbon dance for Dancing Diva won her acclaim apparently) and now apparently has learned how to pole-dance upside-down, backwards, and one-armed. This paragraph actually went on much longer than I intended to type or research.
Uh, David Tao (陶喆 Táo Zhé) on the other hand I don't know much about. He's older than I thought he was, being 38, and has been a musician since 1997. It's been described to me that "he looks like a troll" but in any case, I have heard a lot of people still describe him in slightly less cruel terms as being a case where talent takes precedence over prettiness (and oh does that still matter for even male pop stars there).
Actually screw it, I think I will throw in an actual file.
ACTUAL FILE. (Sendspace) (You Send It)
Jolin Tsai - 特務 J tèwu J | Agent J
Agent J seems to be kind of like Toxic in that it's a poppy dance song with secret spy and Eastern roots (both of which I secretly enjoy), but at least Jolin has her personal life going much better for her than Spears. (She also had a failed fairytale-esque love with a fellow pop-star turned national bad-ass musician BTW) There's an obvious sample or rip-off of the James Bond theme present in the song, just like how she even used the 1960s Batman theme in a Taiwanese song I still fail to understand, but I'm still a bit more thrown by the classical guitar. I swear I heard the same riff in a song out of Dasepo Naughty Girls, the [latter half of the] scene set in the Erotic Realm, but I've never been able to tell what both songs may have been alluding to.
SECRET ORIGIN/DENOUEMENT:
...Well that post was all over the place. I sort of imagine any further ones will be like that too but across more languages and genres. (I'm shallow, so lyrical content barely matters for me and I just see it as a bonus if I can actually understand what the singers say) However, hopefully this blog may spare my friends in real life from having me literally push media upon them or lending/hiding things amongst their belongings. My logic is that the more people I get to buy something then the more I may be able to get out of said thing. While this mostly applies to TV shows and has failed miserably, I may as well branch out.
