Cupcakes are Overrated

The editorial staff here at B&P is in Tahoe this weekend sitting in hot tubs and generally losing our shirts, so we've asked our pal Mai to weigh in in our absence. Today's topic came up when in the wake of our MySpace deal getting done, attempts to lay claim to one of the eight fancy cupcakes they sent us nearly came to blows. Mai, a recent arrival on these shores, was perplexed by this American fanfare, and filed the following opinion piece. We've not edited her prose because it highlights her always unique perspective, and we hope for more reports from this intrepid young journalista.

It's been 7 months since I moved from Tokyo to San Francisco, and usually I don't feel like here is a "foreign" place somehow, but I have to point out some stuff that I don't get. It's not about scary Sushi with colorful toppings nor drinking at work on early afternoon on Fridays. One thing that I don't understand, and I've pretended like understanding is, cupcakes. People would know that food in Japan is awesome, and in fact Japan is a country of sticklers SWEETS as well, which is in our language, more like pronounced as SUIIITSU. If you go to any kinds of decent malls' food sections in Tokyo (called Depa-Chika, Department stores' basement), you see all kinds of beautiful cakes, puddings, cookies, chocolates... just awesome enough to look at them, and you feel kind of guilty eating them cause they are so well-decorated. Magazines talk about SWEETS, there are always new trends like what kind of SWEETS are in etc. It's a big thing for sure. If it's somebody's birthday, you get one of these beautiful arts and share the tasty-ness together. I have a friend of mine who went to buy a 5 star chef's big cheese cake and brought that with her bicycle by riding it for 40 minutes. She was serious.

Cup cakes never make me as excited as these. When we got tons of cup cakes recently at work from our client, people talked about it all day long longing for them. For me, it's just a sweet steamed bread with too sweet cream on the top. I wonder what's gonna happen when they experience our SUIIITS.

Welcome to Mali

Very amazing new Amadou & Mariam, who could stand to update their website once in a while. Via, erm, Pitchfork. OK? OK?

Alaska

In between batting my eyelashes at ladies on the Tube last week, I managed to complete the very excellent Michael Chabon book The Yiddish Policeman's Union. I was not a fan of Kavalier & Clay, and downright HATED Wonder Boys (though I made the mistake of seeing the Michael Douglas movie first, which may have clouded my judgement. You can put bifocals on a pig, doesn't make them a professor). I audiobooked The Gentlemen of the Road, which I thought was more enjoyable in premise than in execution, but maybe I need to read the book itself. That's no dis to Andre Braugher, an interesting pick to vocalize a distinctly Semitic novel, but whose talents continue to outstrip his abilities to score only supporting roles of the snooziest variety. So YPU is a snappy little murder mystery, with a What If premise that is less far-fetched than it might sound. And word is that the Coen Brothers are running with the film. Ideas for casting? My brother had better be trying out.

A-La-Ska would be a good name for a ska band.

Whew

See, all that worrying last week, and all we needed was a little bailout from the government and we're totally fine. Now I'm going to go back to blissful eBay spending and a total disregard for my future finances. And I'm pretty sure these pumpkin stocks are going to peak around January.

Why Can't You Set Your Monkey Free?

UPDATE, MORE MONKEY TOMFOOLERY:





So the busy guys from Gorillaz, Tank Girl, Blur, The Good, The Bad & The Queen, Mali Music (not to be confused with this), the awesome new Amadou & Mariam and probably some other stuff, have gone and made a Chinese Opera called Monkey Journey to the West. It was just one of those things they hadn't done yet, I guess. Personally I might have prioritized learning how to water ski or taking yoga over composing a Chinese Opera but hey that's just me. No idea why a Monkey can't keep a shirt on though.

Anyways, it's based on the Chinese story of the Monkey King. You know the one, he's a Monkey who is a king, and he's got a pig friend with a rake and then some other shit happens? Yes, this is the also the premise for Dragonball. The soundtrack is out on the fine label XL Recordings.


Apparently there's a film version with Jet Li but who gives a crap, forget I brought it up.

Intolerance of Lactose

On the airplane last night from Atlanta to SFO, the guy next to me ordered two glasses of milk and some cookies. He was probably 50. And then the older guy on the other side of me (exit row, natch) heard dude order milk and was like, that sounds really good, I'll have milk and cookies too. I had a Heineken myself, because I'm not six years old.