I'm back in China after a whirlwind trip home. I only spent about 10 days in the US, which is probably the shortest trip I've done in a long time. I split it between California and New York, because I haven't been in a couple years and wanted to see friends. Which was a great choice.
The trip home was not for any particular reason, but planned around my sister's birthday. I just didn't have any wedding or something to come for, but I had a flight to use, so she asked me to come for that. So I did. Which was good, cause she didn't have such a great week leading up to it so we planned lots of fun birthday activities to cheer her up. I think it worked quite well. We had a character breakfast at the Disneyland hotel, went for a wine tasting (with zebras and tigers), fancy dinner and a jazz club. So pretty busy, but wonderful. And all with good company. Then it was pretty much just family and friend time for the next few days. I somehow had less time than usual at home, and only spent 1 day in LA to see friends, but felt less stressed and busy, and I think I managed to see more people than usual. It was pretty great.
Then I flew to New York. Where I spent 4 days eating and drinking. That's about it. Also, I looked at a bunch of art (in LA also). Lots of Yayoi Kusama. There's this great exhibition at The Broad in LA, but it's completely sold out. Well, I found out that if you go early you can get standby tickets. So I had some free time and decided I'd try, and showed up an hour before the museum opened. As it turns out, not only does showing up early help you get a ticket (even though there were like no lines that early), they also open the Yayoi Kusama exhibit before they open the museum! Like 2 hours earlier. So, show up at like 9am, and you'll probably get in and out super quickly even if you didn't pre-order a ticket. This was on a weekday, though, which I'm sure affected things.
So art was fun, but I also ate a ton of good food. Highlight was probably Marea, this fancy Italian place in NYC. One Michelin star. Had a tasting menu with wine. Delicious stuff. I even ate a half a tomato, and can now confirm what we all already knew: I still hate tomatoes. They are disgusting. It was so bad, it made me want to spit out the big piece of delicious lobster I ate at the same time. Now that's just sad. And we drank lots of wine. Lots and lots and lots of wine. This was brought on by my friend Miguel, who I spent two full days with and whose restaurant I went to (other highlight. It's called Pinch and it's really great xiaolongbao and Chinese food. Eat the roast chicken and mushroom dumplings), and he's a sommelier so he just gives me lots of delicious wine. Like, a lot. A whole lot. And so good, too. No complaints here!
Oh, and I went to see a Broadway show. After much hesitation and skepticism, Miguel and I decided to see the new Spongebob Squarepants musical that's just opened. And I have to say, it is awesome. Hilarious. Inventive. Just a super fun musical. I have no idea if it will do well, because I am sure it will be met with tons of skepticism. But this skeptic has been won over and would urge you to go see it if you have the chance.
As usual on these trips, I got way behind on music. In 10 days I barely even made it through the 2 new albums I bought just before leaving. I feel like it's been a slow few weeks for new music, but there were a couple albums that came out like 2 weeks ago and crept up on me. The first was Plunge, the new album from Fever Ray. If you don't know Fever Ray, it's one half of Swedish brother/sister duo The Knife. I'm sure I've written about them here. They make super weird dancy pop. Case in point, IDK About You. First time I listened to the album, I was like "meh". But then I listened again and things like this started to jump out at me. Especially when I listened to it on headphones. This is an exciting song, hidden right in the middle of the album.
The one that originally jumped out at me was Mama's Hand, the closing track. Really great one. Less jumpy and twitchy and weird, but really pretty and interesting.
The other album that came out was Lune Rouge, the new one from Tokimonsta. I think I've written about her before, not sure. I first saw her opening for Bonobo years and years ago in LA, and wasn't so impressed. She's a DJ from LA who's slowly gotten a lot of buzz and popularity, and who's also gotten steadily better, in my opinion. Her previous album, FOVERE, was the first one that really caught my attention. And now Lune Rouge has also. And to make it all more impressive, I just learned that she apparently had some rare brain disease that stopped her ability to talk and hear music, for which she underwent brain surgery, and then she came back and put out this album. Overall, the album is very listenable. Very smooth. But not too many amazing tracks. Except for the opener. I love the opener. It's actually two tracks, called Lune and Rouge, but they blend together on the album into a single continuous piece, so I don't know why she split it. Anywhere, here's both of the songs, which you should actually go listen to on Spotify or something so you can listen to them in order without any break and get the real feeling of the full song as I want you to.
The trip home was not for any particular reason, but planned around my sister's birthday. I just didn't have any wedding or something to come for, but I had a flight to use, so she asked me to come for that. So I did. Which was good, cause she didn't have such a great week leading up to it so we planned lots of fun birthday activities to cheer her up. I think it worked quite well. We had a character breakfast at the Disneyland hotel, went for a wine tasting (with zebras and tigers), fancy dinner and a jazz club. So pretty busy, but wonderful. And all with good company. Then it was pretty much just family and friend time for the next few days. I somehow had less time than usual at home, and only spent 1 day in LA to see friends, but felt less stressed and busy, and I think I managed to see more people than usual. It was pretty great.
Then I flew to New York. Where I spent 4 days eating and drinking. That's about it. Also, I looked at a bunch of art (in LA also). Lots of Yayoi Kusama. There's this great exhibition at The Broad in LA, but it's completely sold out. Well, I found out that if you go early you can get standby tickets. So I had some free time and decided I'd try, and showed up an hour before the museum opened. As it turns out, not only does showing up early help you get a ticket (even though there were like no lines that early), they also open the Yayoi Kusama exhibit before they open the museum! Like 2 hours earlier. So, show up at like 9am, and you'll probably get in and out super quickly even if you didn't pre-order a ticket. This was on a weekday, though, which I'm sure affected things.
So art was fun, but I also ate a ton of good food. Highlight was probably Marea, this fancy Italian place in NYC. One Michelin star. Had a tasting menu with wine. Delicious stuff. I even ate a half a tomato, and can now confirm what we all already knew: I still hate tomatoes. They are disgusting. It was so bad, it made me want to spit out the big piece of delicious lobster I ate at the same time. Now that's just sad. And we drank lots of wine. Lots and lots and lots of wine. This was brought on by my friend Miguel, who I spent two full days with and whose restaurant I went to (other highlight. It's called Pinch and it's really great xiaolongbao and Chinese food. Eat the roast chicken and mushroom dumplings), and he's a sommelier so he just gives me lots of delicious wine. Like, a lot. A whole lot. And so good, too. No complaints here!
Oh, and I went to see a Broadway show. After much hesitation and skepticism, Miguel and I decided to see the new Spongebob Squarepants musical that's just opened. And I have to say, it is awesome. Hilarious. Inventive. Just a super fun musical. I have no idea if it will do well, because I am sure it will be met with tons of skepticism. But this skeptic has been won over and would urge you to go see it if you have the chance.
As usual on these trips, I got way behind on music. In 10 days I barely even made it through the 2 new albums I bought just before leaving. I feel like it's been a slow few weeks for new music, but there were a couple albums that came out like 2 weeks ago and crept up on me. The first was Plunge, the new album from Fever Ray. If you don't know Fever Ray, it's one half of Swedish brother/sister duo The Knife. I'm sure I've written about them here. They make super weird dancy pop. Case in point, IDK About You. First time I listened to the album, I was like "meh". But then I listened again and things like this started to jump out at me. Especially when I listened to it on headphones. This is an exciting song, hidden right in the middle of the album.
The one that originally jumped out at me was Mama's Hand, the closing track. Really great one. Less jumpy and twitchy and weird, but really pretty and interesting.
The other album that came out was Lune Rouge, the new one from Tokimonsta. I think I've written about her before, not sure. I first saw her opening for Bonobo years and years ago in LA, and wasn't so impressed. She's a DJ from LA who's slowly gotten a lot of buzz and popularity, and who's also gotten steadily better, in my opinion. Her previous album, FOVERE, was the first one that really caught my attention. And now Lune Rouge has also. And to make it all more impressive, I just learned that she apparently had some rare brain disease that stopped her ability to talk and hear music, for which she underwent brain surgery, and then she came back and put out this album. Overall, the album is very listenable. Very smooth. But not too many amazing tracks. Except for the opener. I love the opener. It's actually two tracks, called Lune and Rouge, but they blend together on the album into a single continuous piece, so I don't know why she split it. Anywhere, here's both of the songs, which you should actually go listen to on Spotify or something so you can listen to them in order without any break and get the real feeling of the full song as I want you to.
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