Forward progress

I feel more centered and balanced than I've ever felt in my life.  As a result, my energy and focus to better myself are strong.  There are so many things that I want to work on, from optimizing my physical, mental and emotional health, to exercising my creative energy, and then doing what I can to  better the world around me.

Mindfulness
I see two key components that I want to work on to develop a strong sense of mindfulness.

The first is meditating on my center and the balance in my life.  I've been pretty successful at the relaxation of both my mind and body.  I rarely ever wake up and let my thoughts keep me awake.  Rather than my thoughts being in control of me, I am in control of my thoughts.  I have a practice of repeating the mantra "my body is relaxed, my mind is clear, I am at peace" over and over.  It's pretty cool because I always fall back asleep pretty quickly when I repeat that, and I wake up wondering how many times I actually said it to myself before I fell asleep.  I find my center by focusing on the things that I love.....  reading, music, cooking, and spending time with my kids, and focusing on people that inspire me, keep me grounded and share positivity.  By focusing on those things and people, I feel gratitude, which puts me at peace.

The second is continuing to develop my compassion through empathetic thoughts.  I know that the people who I have problems with have their own problems.  With that in mind, I don't try to ignore the emotions that I have as a result of my problems with them, but it's easier to let go of my negative emotions, and that puts me further at peace.  Compassion really is the key to a sense of internal joy, and I hope to always optimize my compassion, empathy and happiness.

"The Art of Happiness" by the Dalai Lama, "The Power of Kindness" by Piero Ferruci, "A Force For Good" by Daniel Goleman, and "The Beginner's Guide to Meditation" by Shinzen Young have all been key in helping me to figure out who to develop my mindfulness.

Physical wellness
I know that mental and emotional health go hand in hand with physical wellness, so there are several things I'm working on to keep my physical health as best as I can.

The first is making sure I get enough sleep, and the mindfulness keeps me from staying awake too long in the middle of the night.  I also need to try to achieve at least 7 1/2 hours of sleep every night, or supplement with naps.

The second is making sure I get exercise as often as possible.  My new Fitbit helps by reminding me to get up every hour and walk during the work day because it's been proven that sitting all day is bad for you.  I also try to get 10,000 steps a day, which amounts to about 5 miles, and I try to walk at least 15 miles on weekends.  It's easy when I have audiobooks to listen to!  In fact, listening to "Wild" by Cheryl Strayed and "Unbroken" by Laura Hillenbrand really motivate me to push myself.

The third thing is making sure I eat healthy.  I try to eat fish when I can, and I also try to eat vegetarian as much as I can.  I make sure I have a lot of vegetables, and try to eat a fruit with dinner.  Dr. McDougall's "The Healthiest Diet on the Planet" has influenced me a lot.


Knowledge
I love learning!  Reading has been a huge part of that, and I feel like my world has really opened up as I've been reading.  I also love podcasts, especially Terry Gross's "Fresh Air", "Outlook" on the BBC, and "Hidden Brain" by Shankar Vedantam.  YouTube's Vox and Eater channels really expand my mind.

I love learning about people's perspectives through personal journeys - "To Hell and Back" by Charles Pelligrino, "Shakespeare Saved My Life" by Laura Bates and "I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings" by Maya Angelou have given me really different perspectives.

I need to put some more time into learning to speak Japanese, and continue to read and educate myself.

I know I can never know enough, and I will never be the smartest man in the world, but that doesn't mean I can't try!

Creative energy
I really need to continue to exercise my creative side by writing music, cooking, and maybe even doing some writing.

I'm constantly inspired musically.  Decapitated, Nails and Iron Reagan are really inspiring me to write.  My band is finally starting to get a footing - we jam with the new drummer in a few weeks and I need to compile a few cover songs to jam before we start writing.  I need to select a few songs that won't be too hard for me to sing and play at the same time.  I hope this band can gel and we can write an album and play some shows.  I respect all the guys in the band and their abilities, so I'm excited about this coming together.

I'm also fortunate in that I have a creative outlet in cooking every day.  Every time I see a new recipe, it makes me think of new ways of doing things that are outside of the conventional box, and I feel really happy when I combine things in a way that they've never been combined before and come up with something new.

Efficiency
I want to try to be efficient with my time and resources, but also recognize that down time is necessary to achieve personal balance.

I want to be efficient and not wasteful - especially with food, because as a whole, our society wastes too much food.  I know that I can throw a lot of food away at the end of the week, and it's so wasteful.

I want to make sure that every minute of my day is spent efficiently and to the end of achieving all of the things I've written about so far.  Finding a balance between my creative endeavors, keeping a tidy house (Marie Kondo's "The Life Changing Magic of Tidying Up" inspires me), exercising my physical body, reading and listening to various things to develop my knowledge, getting enough sleep, and especially the next section, in addition to having some down relaxation time, will be the key to having a balanced and satisfying life.

Making my surrounding world better
Along with making myself a better person, it's also important to me to make my surrounding world better.  This comes with compassion, and a positive outlook.  I can only optimize this by achieving my inner balance and peace.

Perhaps the most important thing is to give my kids unconditional love and attention that they need to grow and thrive.  I think I've done a pretty good job so far.  Whenever my kids come to me, I try to physically turn to them and give them my full attention, and reflect on what they say.  They seem pretty happy, and they have achieved so much that I couldn't ask for more from them.  I also think it's important for me to communicate how much I love them, how much I think the world of them, and how much I support the positive things that they do.

I love the time I spend with my daughter - we have our special time together, and we have become like best friends with inside jokes and routines.  She is so important in my life and she inspires me to be the best I can be.

My son is such a positive and wonderful person, and he radiates such a joy that he inspires me every day.  I love the young man he has become, and feel happy when I think about him.

I have such a wonderful relationship with my parents and want to continue to be the best son I can be for them, and I have so much gratitude for the time I spend with them.

I know that with positivity and compassion, I can make a difference in the lives of my friends and people I work with.  That's an important message in "The Power of Kindness" and "The Art of Happiness".

I'm a work in progress, but as my counselor told me, "good enough is good".  If I always strive to be my best, I might not be perfect, but I can find my happiness while making a positive impact in the world.

Something I'm excited about

I love extreme metal for its combination of brutality and technicality.  When those two elements are perfectly balanced, it is aural perfection to me.  This balance is what I see in bands like Cannibal Corpse, Vital Remains, Decapitated, Behemoth, and in a more classic sense, Pantera.

Sometimes I stray more towards the brutality and less towards the technical, in bands like Slayer, Sepultura, or more recently, Goatwhore and Hatebreed.

I've really kind of turned away from more technical music without brutality, but something about the supergroup Sons of Apollo really appeals to the more classic music that I grew up with.  The band consists of Mike Portnoy and Derek Sherinian from Dream Theater, Ron Thal from Guns and Roses, Billy Sheehan from Mr. Big, and Jeff Scott Soto from Yngwie Malmsteen's Rising Force.

They sound like an incredible combination, and each guy brings something amazing to the table....  though they sound more than a little like Dream Theater, I much prefer Soto's vocals over James LaBrie's.

I'm really looking forward to this album!!

Magic.....

This will make me sound old (I am), even though I still listen to a lot of new music (mostly in the metal genre).

I've been saying for the last few years that the era of the truely great "rock" band is over.  Music has changed drastically in the past twenty years or so.

The way that it's changed?  Music use to be about a bunch of guys, and there were guys (other than the lead singer) that contributed so much to the sound of the band - that each guy had a strong sonic signature, and the band wouldn't sound the same without each member contributing in some ways.

Think about a band like Led Zeppelin.  Of course, Robert Plant's voice is unmistakable, but Jimmy Pages riffs, John Paul Jones' bass and keyboard playing, and John Bonham's drumming were signature to their sound.

Or think about Metallica - every guy in Metallica (in the early days, at least) played as though they were trying to be the star - Lars was unmistakable, James had those driving rhythm guitar, Kirk played in his unique style, and Cliff did his distorted bass thing.

Roth-era Van Halen (or even Hagar era) was the same.

Even post 1990 bands had some strong musicianship - Nirvana, Rage Against The Machine, Green Day - all of those bands had such recognizable sonic styles from each of their members.

And of course, the Beatles were the first (and arguably the best).

Other favorites of mine include Slayer, Sepultura, Pantera, and more recently, Decapitated and  Cannibal Corpse.

Then over the span of a few years, music changed.  Bands had a unique sound, but their instrumentalists were exchangeable.  Bass players didn't stand out, like, say, Flea from the Red Hot Chili Peppers.  Or drummers didn't rock the way that Taylor Hawkins from the Foo Fighters does.

I'm not saying one is better or worse, but I think I gravitate towards bands where the musicianship is strong all around, and the songwriting is awesome.

Here's one of my favorite videos of all time - The Who doing Who Are You.  I love how crazy Keith Moon is.

The Life Changing Magic of Tidying up - Marie Kondo

I had previously attempted to read Marie Kondo's "Spark Joy" but found it a little weird, so I didn't finish it.

I started into this book not had high expectations.  It was at times, a bit odd, and I don't think I'll be talking to my clothes any time soon, but I understand why she feels appreciation for inanimate objects.

She does have valuable insight into letting go of items that you're keeping for sentimental reasons, and overall, throwing out things that you don't love or that don't make you feel happy.

I plan to use the things that I learned in this book towards de-cluttering my life.

The Beginner's Guide To Meditation - Shinzen Young

This seems more like a "how to" Podcast rather than an audiobook.

Young talks about meditation as concentration to produce equinimity that allows an insight into the self.  This allows one to serve the world with love and compassion.

He talks about when and how to practice.  He talks about sitting upright and finding time alone, and then the next part is intended to be listened to while meditating - he talks about focusing on breathing, relaxation, and then loving kindness.

I thought this was a pretty good book about the basics of meditation.  I think I'm going to try incorporating this into my life.

A Force For Good - the Dalai Lama's Vision for Our World - Daniel Goleman

I really enjoyed this book.  I love the Dalai Lama's message.  My reading of the Dalai Lama followed a (coincidentally) logical progression - from finding your own internal happiness (The Art of Happiness), followed by finding a broader sense of joy (The Book of Joy), then his internal thoughts and philosophies (A Profound Mind), ruminations on the link between science and spirituality (The Universe in a Single Atom), and then this book - A Force For Good.

In this book, Daniel Goleman describes various acts that one can perform to make positive changes in the world.  It's a great book, and I plan to look into joinaforce4good.com.

Fu pei guen

I love bean curd!  It's the residual stuff that you'd get from processing soybeans into tofu.

They sell this in dried sheets in Chinatown.  It's typically use in dim sum restaurants to wrap various meats and vegetables, and then the rolls are cooked.

I wanted to try making a vegan version of these rolls, which are called fu pei guen.

I sort of made my own recipe.  I started with diced firm tofu, minced shiitake and wood ear mushroom, shredded bamboo, and green onions, and seasoned with some mushroom seasoning, xiaozhing cooking wine, sesame oil and white pepper.  I wrapped them, fried them in a little bit of canola oil, then steamed them in a bamboo steamer.  The gravy is made with mushroom bouillon, more cooking wine, sesame oil and white pepper, thickened with cornstarch.

I really loved these!

First Invite Love In - Tana Pesso with Penor Rinpoche

I borrowed this book because it has a foreword by the Dalai Lama.

It's an interesting book, but a little strange.  In some of the first exercises, I found myself at peace and smiling, but as I read through the remainder of the exercises, I almost laughed at some of the ideas - specifically that everyone that you visualize was your mother in a past life, including rabbits, etc.

Conceptually, I understand developing compassion and empathy through identification with sentient beings, but how this book describes the visualizations ranges from profound to kind of silly.

Still though, like any book, I like to incorporate and learn from the things I like about it.  I only got about 30% of this book, but it will help me in developing compassion.

I'd rate this book maybe a 6 out of 10.

Unbroken: A World War II Story of Survival, Resilience, and Redemption - Laura Hillenbrand

This book chronicles the life of Louis Zamperini, from a young troubled child, to an olympic runner, a military bombadier, and for most of the book, an American POW in the South Pacific and Japan.

It's a long book and often troubling, but it reflects Zamperini's strength, defiance, and forgiveness.  It was a very inspirational story, even just from the standpoint of physical exertion (it motivated me to walk 9 miles on the day I finished it!), but also for the message of forgiveness.

For its inspiration, it was my favorite book that I've read this year.

Wild - From Lost to Found on the Pacific Crest Trail - Cheryl Strayed

Wild is about Cheryl Strayed's expedition from Southern California to the top of Oregon.  She traverses the trail on a quest to deal with the loss of her mother, and throughout the memoir reflects back upon her issues with her mother, step-dad, siblings, ex-husband, and other various people in her life.

It reminded me a little bit of "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" with the distinction being that I actually cared for Strayed vs. the pompous author of Zen.

I borrowed this book thinking I could read it over a few weeks, but ended up finishing it over a weekend.

I really liked this book - maybe one of my favorites this year so far.

R.I.P., Chester

My day got dark today.  Chester Bennington, one of my favorite singers, hung himself at the age of 41.  He left behind six children.

Chester had an incredible voice, and I admired both his note dynamic ranges, from melodic singing to angry screaming.  I loved his music, and the anger in his voice and lyrics hit even harder as I read about his traumatic abuse as a child and his subsequent drug use and talk of suicide.

I was sad when I found out that Chris Cornell killed himself, but Chester Bennington's suicide hit me pretty hard today.

Rest in peace, Chester.  You may be gone, but your music will live forever.

How the internet became my stage. | Meytal Cohen | TEDxBocaRaton

I've heard of Meytal, and have watched her drum cover videos.  She's a really good drummer, but having said that, there are a lot of "good" drummers (side note - and they are all still better than me).

There are a lot of people on YouTube criticizing her for being average but getting her success through her looks.  On the one hand, I feel that it's true that people pay her videos attention because of her looks and that she is a really good drummer, but not phenomenally amazing.  On the other hand, she seems humble and is making music that connects with people, and not blatantly over-sexualizing her videos, so I don't begrudge her success a single bit.

When I watched this TEDTalk, her humility was confirmed when she said that she's not the greatest drummer, and her message of making a living playing drums on the internet is inspirational.

America Again (Re-Becoming The Greatness We Never Weren't) - Stephen Colbert

In this second audiobook, Colbert addresses the topics of jobs, health care, Wall Street, energy, elections, justice and food.  Again, he potrays his conservative pundit persona in lampooning these subjects, though it's not as funny or engaging as his first book.  I still laughed out loud though.

I Am America (And So Can You) - Stephen Colbert

Stephen Colbert is both really intelligent and really comedically clever.  Listening to this audiobook is engaging, as his quips and one-liners hit you again and again and make you think.

He doesn't directly address politics per se as he did in the Colbert Report or in his Late Show opening monologues.  Rather, he tackles Family, Old People, Animals, Religion, Sports, Sex & Dating, Homosexuals, Higher Education, Hollywood, The Media, Class War, Race, and Immigrants, all with the political satire of his former mock-right wing pundit persona.

I find myself smiling and chuckling while listening to this book.

My favorite "new" drummers

This list is mostly drummers that are relatively newer, so it excludes some of my all time favorites like Dave Lombardo and Iggor Cavalera.

I just discovered Krihm, who has played with Decapitated and Behemoth.  He plays with a lot of power and his technique is solid:



I've also really loved the playing of Dave Suzuki, who was formerly with Vital Remains.  This guy is insanely fast:



Tim Yeung is a killer drummer who has played Dave Suzuki's parts in Vital Remains.  He has also played with Morbid Angel, Hate Eternal, and Divine Heresy:



Eloy Casagrande is Sepultura's "new" drummer, and he has so much energy and technique.



John Dette has filled in with Slayer and Anthrax, and he's so good, you don't miss their regular drummers.



Inferno is one of my favorite drummers of all time, and I love "Slaves Shall Serve".

Frames of Mind - The Theory of Multiple Intelligences - Howard Gardner

Spider-Man Homecoming

I wasn't sure what to expect of this latest Spider-Man reboot.  When I saw in the opening that it was still under Sony, I lowered my expectations.  I was surprised that this movie was really great, despite some of the negative reviews I was seeing about it.

It was a great modern retelling of a classic story.  The multi-cultural cast was interesting, but not knowing the ethnic makeup of people in New York, I couldn't tell if it was trying too hard to be modern, or if it was an accurate portrayal of who Peter Parker's friends would be in real life.

The movie wasn't a super traditional Marvel type blockbuster.  The fight scenes were good, and the CGI was virtually undetectable.  I liked that more of the action scenes revolved around saving people, rather than fighting the main villain - the Vulture.

I thought the plot was a great coming of age superhero story, something that's lacking in recent Marvel movies, and really made you feel the youth of Peter Parker.

I would say this was my favorite Spider-Man movie yet, and quite possibly one of my favorite movies of the past few years.

Without You, There Is No Us - Suki Kim

This audiobook was a great listen!  Suki Kim goes double undercover, as she poses as an undercover missionary teaching English at Pyonyang University of Science and Technology.

She teaches and grows attached to a group of privileged elite young North Korean boys, and describes their culture and philosophy, which is shaped by the North Korean regime.  She sometimes  compares and contrasts their worship of Kim Jung-Il with the worship of God by her missionary counterparts.

I loved this book.  Kim documents the sometimes odd behavior of the North Koreans and provides a first hand look and sometimes speculation behind the way that they behave.  But she doesn't do this in a cold way - she actually grows quite enamored of her students.  This is one of my favorite books of the year so far.

The Healthiest Diet on the Planet - Dr. John McDougall & Mary McDougall

I was much more convinced of McDougall's theory after reading this book, versus when I read "The Starch Solution".  Perhaps it's the overall tone of the book, or perhaps I was more familiar and thus more receptive, but believe that the elimination of animal proteins is a good thing.

I still think it's best to reduce overall consumption of food as a whole, and now I think the next step is changing the way we eat - and having meals centered on plant based foods.

Hidden Brain - "Is He A Muslim?"

I heard an interesting Hidden Brain podcast this morning that said that more terrorism in the United States was carried out by non-Muslims than Muslims, but people more readily classify Muslim violence as "terrorism".

Although I generally trust NPR's programs to have integrity and objectivity, the independent thinker in me researched the subject more.

I found an article from the Atlantic that states that "Between 1975 and 2015, the “annual chance of being murdered by somebody other than a foreign-born terrorist was 252.9 times greater than the chance of dying in a terrorist attack committed by a foreign-born terrorist,” according to Nowrasteh."


The New York Times reports that "Since Sept. 11, 2001, nearly twice as many people have been killed by white supremacists, antigovernment fanatics and other non-Muslim extremists than by radical Muslims"
 
Business Insider estimates that the odds of being killed by a foreign-born terrorist are lower than being killed by a sharp object accident.

One could argue that the relatively low statistics could be attributed to the government's efforts to thwart attacks, but the added cost-benefit ratio of a travel ban seems quite disproportionate, and ignorant of statistics.

New albums to check out

Gravebloom - The Acacia Strain
Hydrograd - Stone Sour
Unparalleled Universe - Origin
Vengeful Ascension - Goatwhore
Slime and Punishment - Municipal Waste
Wrong One to Fuck With - Dying Fetus

Cannibal Corpse

I must be really weird.  I just love brutal death metal.  Cannibal Corpse is pretty brutal - they get moderately fast, but nowhere near some bands like Vital Remains or Origin.  But they are just super heavy.  I love the silliness of dripping blood logos and black guitars with red blood stains.

The musicianship in this band is pretty outstanding, but they never sacrifice brutality just to show off.  I happen to really love Corpsegrinder's vocals, even though they're pretty one dimensional.  He ranks right up there with Glenn Benton, Nergal and Max Cavalera as my favorite extreme metal vocalists.

Dimebag Darrell

I consider Dimebag Darrell one of the greatest guitar players of all time.

Had he not been shot and killed, he would have been about a year older than me.  Because we grew up roughly around the same time, his influences are very similar to mine.  That's not super uncommon for guitarists our age, but it makes me feel a sort of kinship and even understanding of his guitar playing.

Of course, he had become an incredible guitarist in his own right, and was and still is highly influential to me, in a lot of ways.

As a guitar player, his feel, his tone, his playing, is unmatched to this day.  He was such a combination of his influences, from the soaring lead guitar playing that he got from guys like Randy Rhoads, to the groove of Eddie Van Halen, to the driving rhythm guitar playing of James Hetfield.  And like those guys that influenced him, he fused his influences into his own recognizable style.

I remember hearing Cowboys-era Pantera on Radio Free Hawaii and Z-Rock in the early 90s, and then seeing the "I'm Broken" video at my aunty's house in L.A. when I took my professional engineering exam for California, and was blown away at the intensity and groove of that song.

As far as his personality, he just seemed like the most genuinely nicest person that wanted everyone to feel at home.  It seems that tributes to him revolve even more around his generosity and spirit, than his incredible musicianship.  He was a positive person....  and I hope to someday leave a legacy, as a person, in even a small fraction of a way that he did.

Style-wise, people in the know see it in me, but most people don't realize that my red-dyed beard and razor blade necklace are tributes to Dime.  It's funny when people that don't know metal say "your red beard is cool" and "I've never seen a dyed beard before", but metal fans will come up to me and say "Dimebag, right?"

I feel fortunate to have a lot of people to look up to, and Dimebag is definitely on the top of that list.

Coincidences - do they have meaning, or do we attach too much meaning?

I listened to an interesting podcast on Hidden Brain about coincidences and the meaning we attach to them.  The author talks about how we might attach more meaning to things that are statistically more probable than we imagine they are.

Multiple Intelligences - New Horizons, by Howard Gardner

This is the kind of thing I ponder all the time, so I really enjoyed reading this book.

Gardner initially postulated multiple, distinct intelligences.  These are:

1. Musical
2. Bodily - Kinesthetic
3. Logical - Mathematical
4. Linguistic
5. Spatial
6. Interpersonal
7. Intrapersonal 

He later added Naturalistic intelligence, but decided against adding Humor, Cooking, Sexual, and Spiritual intelligences, noting that they did not meet his eight criteria for establishing a category of intelligence.

My observation of people supports Gardner's theory - I've seen myriads of different combinations, from some who have great logical intelligence but very little interpersonal intelligence, or lots of interpersonal but very little intrapersonal, etc.  I also get a little bit of sense that there is an overarching well rounded intelligence that some people have, while others have very little developed intelligence in any category.

He talks about how his theory has been used in education, his initial resistance towards getting into that field, and ultimately how he felt a responsibility to lecture in the field of education.

I stopped reading the book here because I'm not that interested in how this theory impacts the educational field.  I think I'd rather read more about the theory itself.  I'm also now prompted to read about emotional intelligence, which Gardner doesn't describe in his theory.

Invisibilia - True You

Trailer for this episode:  "What happens when you discover a part of yourself that is so different from who you think you are?  Do you hold on to your original self tightly?"

This podcast really made me think.  The two stories revolved around the concept about our ideas about ourselves, and what happens when we discover something about ourselves that we didn't think we were.

The first story was about a woman who appeared menacing, being 6' tall with a shaved head and wearing all black, and who kept people at an arms length.  She discovers that she is voicing a young giggly girl in her dreams.  Upon reflection, she remembers some extreme forms of punishment as a young girl, and subsequent dream analysis reveals that her dreams are not answers in and of themselves, rather, they are the way that her mind reduces the trauma of her past.

The second story is of a man who has a very strong Mormon background and gets punished for saying the "f" word.  He grows up to be a very "square" college professor, but finds a voice for his offbeat and often risque humor as a cartoonist with a pseudonym Lord Birthday.

The overarching theme in these stories seems to be early childhood trauma, or repression, and the way that adults overcome that trauma.  It's interesting to me as a parent because I think that bringing up a healthy, normal child involves giving them the power to express themselves in a way that they are loved unconditionally.

We live in turbulent times

Watching the news for the past few weeks, it seems that the world is descending into chaos.  When a Bernie Sanders supporter shoots a Republican congressmen, and when a white man plows a van into a group of Muslims at a London mosque...  a man from a party known to be anti-guns commits gun violence and a white man terrorizes Muslims in a similar manner to how a terrorist Muslim terrorizes white people....  I know these are just two isolated incidents, but when the tables are turned and people do unexpected things, I worry that a cycle of violence has begun.

I worry that, like Israel and Palestine, the cycle won't end.

There was a hint about this after the election.  Prior to the election, Trump was saying that he might not accept the results of the election (anticipating that he might lose).  The left was in an uproar, stating that he needs to respect the process of election.  Then, when Trump won, people were protesting and saying that the electoral college process needs to be eliminated, and I thought that those people were hypocrites.

I am very liberal, but I don't consider myself aligned with the Democratic party as a whole.

I believe that the world would be a better place if two things happened:  1) if people practiced more compassion and empathy in their lives; and 2) if people exercised more humility and worked towards independent thinking and realizing their intellectual capacity.

I like this episode of Huang's World where Eddie Huang gets different perspectives, and bridges cultural gaps through things like food.

My favorite metal bands right now

Nails
Goatwhore
Decapitated
Iron Reagan
Chthonic
Byzantine
Hatebreed

Pretty. Odd.

This is Panic! At The Disco's second album, and the last to include founding member Ryan Ross.

Though Brendan Urie is the lead singer and current songwriter, Ross was the primary songwriter for the first two albums.  Though they achieved commercial success on their first album, "A Fever You Can't Sweat Out" with a pop-punk / emo sound, they expanded their songwriting style on Pretty Odd.

Pretty Odd sounds like a lost Beatles album from the Sgt. Peppers era.

The songwriting is amazing, and full of Beatles'isms, from the opening of "We're So Starving" leading into "Nine In The Afternoon" ala "Sgt. Peppers Lonely Hearts Club Band"/"With A Little Help From Our Friends".  Nine also has a stringed instrument ending with a trumpet solo that screams George Martin arrangement.  Even the 3/4 beat single bar transitions and the half time chorus suggests a strong Beatles influence.

Where I think a lot of Beatles influenced music might have Beatles elements, what makes the songs of the Beatles stand out is excellent songwriting and catchy and inventive parts, and the way the songs evoke strong imagery and colors.  This is where I think Panic matches the Beatles.  I would have loved to hear the Beatles record all of these songs in the 60s.

The musicianship is magically Beatles too!  The vibrato on the lead guitars sounds like George Harrison, and bass lines have that McCartney-esque simplicity and movement.  Occasional use of slide guitar reminds me of "While My Guitar Gently Weeps".  The sound of Urie and Ross harmonizing sounds like Lennon and McCartney.  And I'm in love with the sound of the rhythm guitar on "That Green Gentleman" - that sounds like a Tele through an AC30 with a fuzz box...  like a less distorted tone from "Revolution".

The production took cues from George Martin as well.  Hearing instruments panned hard left and hard right give the listener that Beatles feel without being super overt or particularly effected.

But despite all of the Beatles-isms, this album stands out on its own, and is full of amazing songs that I want to hear over and over.  I particularly love "Northern Downpour" - which will always remind me of driving no place in particular with my 13-year old daughter and harmonizing to this song.

Apple Music

I think Apple Music is one of the biggest things to come out in the past 10 years that has impacted the way I listen to music.  I have unlimited access to everything in the Apple Music catalog, and don't need to worry about the amount of memory that my phone has.

Now, I can listen to whatever I want, wherever I want, and that has been instrumental in discovering new music.  I'm rediscovering all of the music I haven't heard from the past 15 years and sometimes even longer.

Decapitated

Well, I guess it's back to metal today.  I can listen to other genres, but I always come back to metal.

I recently rediscovered Decapitated.  I first heard them on their Organic Hallucinosis album in 2009 and (mistakenly) wrote them off as generic death metal.

Listening to "Homo Sum" from 2011's "Carnival Is Forever" shows syncopation without sounding like Djent music or some carbon copy of Meshuggah.  That song reminds me of a more modern version of Pantera's "Primal Concrete Sludge" that has Dimebag's syncopated riff over a pretty straightforward double bass beat.  In fact, it appears that like me, the guitar player for Decapitated is influenced by Dime.

"Earth Scar" from the yet-to-be-released Anticult is a more straightforward Slipknot style straight ahead rock/metal song.  "Never" from the same album is a fast skank beat with an octave riff, that reminds me of something from Behemoth's Demigod.

Maybe that's what it is.....  the elements of their songs that remind me of some of my favorite bands make them sound very familiar to me.  They can blast beat and riff like the best modern death metal, but they incorporate enough different elements into their music to make their songs interesting.

Like Behemoth, Hate, Vesania, and Vader, these guys are from Poland.  Of all of those bands, I think Decapitated is one of my favorites along with Behemoth.

Taking a break from metal today to listen to some rap and soul

Maybe listening to Maya Angelou is putting me in more soulful mood.  My playlist today includes:

• The Mexican - G.Z.A. featuring Tom Morello (a song that my son's breakdancing teacher suggested I learn, since he knows I play guitar - I was thinking it would be cool to play this song live with breakdancers)
• My Shot Remix - The Roots (What a cool combination of musicians - my favorite M.C., Black Thought, with Busta Rhymes and Nate Ruess from fun.)
• Unfuck the World - Prophets of Rage (Love the combination of Rage Against The Machine, B. Real from Cypress Hill and Chuck D. from Public Enemy)
• Seasons of Love - Rent soundtrack (I fell in love with this song after hearing my daughter sing the lead at the end at a recent performance)

Weapons

I guess I wouldn't normally call guitars "weapons", but these two guitars are so sharp and pointy that I think they might poke your eye out if you're not careful.

These are my two favorite guitars, and the guitars I'm using with my current band.

The one on the bottom of the picture is a B.C. Rich Custom Shop Warlock, made in the United States.  It's a beautifully crafted guitar, super solid, it sounds amazing, and plays really well.  It's also perfect to play sitting or standing.  I bought it used, so it wasn't spec'd out the way that I would have spec'd it out if I had ordered it custom built for myself.  I changed the pickups from passive DiMarzios to active EMGs and they sound great.  I'll need to build a battery box into the back of the guitar someday.  I also took out the second volume control and the tone control, so there are unfilled holes on the front of the guitar but they don't bother me.  This is my main 6-string guitar that is tuned to drop C#, which I can use to play most heavy songs.

The guitar on the top of the picture is my E-II Jesse Liu JL-7 Katana, made by ESP in Japan.  It is an impeccably crafted guitar, probably the pinnacle of guitar building, but very different from the Warlock.  The Seymour Duncan blackout pickup in the bridge position is dead quiet and sounds great.  It's a little harder to play sitting down, but I can manage.  I was resistant to 7 strings for the longest time, but I really like this one.  I can play songs in E standard by just ignoring the low B string, and it's not that hard.  Or I can play songs that are in B.

I might want to get a third guitar for metal - probably a 7 string that I can tune to Drop Ab.  That way, I can play any song in Eb standard (Slayer!), and anything that's kind of low with the Drop Ab.

Oh, then maybe an 8-string for super low things like Meshuggah or Deftones.  I guess it never ends, does it?

Ghost World

I saw this movie years ago, and revisited it this weekend.

I thought it was a great movie about two friends.  The primary characters are Enid (Thora Birch) and Rebecca (Scarlett Johanssen), two recent high school graduates who start out with similar thoughts on how to proceed into adulthood but ultimately drift apart.  Both actresses were snarky, and they felt very "real".

The supporting cast of characters is quirky and fun.  Seymour (Steve Buschemi) is so weird, but there's something immediately identifiable about him....  a vulnerability, but also a jaded cynicism and a confidence in who he is.

It's not a typically Hollywood happy ending, and it's vague and symbolic, but I'll leave it at that so as to not spoil it.

It was a great movie.  I don't like artsy movies that I feel are pretentious.  Black comedies are more tongue-in-cheek because you don't take things too seriously.  In the field of black comedies, it was very smart, entertaining, and oddly satisfying.  I would rank it up there with Pulp Fiction, Napoleon Dynamite, and Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind.

Sometimes life isn't about happy endings.  With that understanding, movies like this can be oddly satisfying.

I Know Why The Caged Bird Sings - Maya Angelou

According to polls and reading recommendations, this is a classic book, and the fact that the audiobook is read by Maya Angelou herself makes the book that much more compelling.

Being born in Los Angeles and growing up in Hawaii, for me, reading about Maya Angelou's early life in Stamps, Arkansas is both foreign and interesting.  She talks a lot about racism and the church, which are a world apart for me.  She also talks about her relationship with her family, and in particular, her closeness with her older brother Bailey is especially touching.

She describes herself on numerous occasions as tenderhearted, and goes through trauma that renders her unable to talk in most social situations, but she overcomes this difficulty and comes of age when she and her brother Bailey move to California to be reunited with their parents.

The numerous chapters of the book cover little stories, from her toothache and the racism they encountered trying to get her teeth pulled, to her mother's con-man friends' tales of conning white men, to her travels to Mexico with her dad.

It's a good book that traverses different themes, some very heavy, some lighthearted.  It's a good biography and interesting from chapter to chapter, but as a whole, it's not one of my favorite books.

To Hell and Back - The Last Train From Hiroshima

Pelligrino writes about the devastation of the bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki.  The first few chapters describe the pure annihilation and immediacy of the destruction, but slowly the narrative evolves to describe the physical and psychological effects of the bombings, primarily from the Japanese perspective but also from the perspective of the bombers.

Much of the book reads like a horror movie, with gory accounts of both obliteration and physical suffering of unimaginable measure.  On the one hand, the endless variations on death seem almost gratuitous, yet the shock upon shock of reading these horrors underscores just how cruel and unfathomable were the effects of the bomb.

The book ends with the redemption of forgiveness, and the pledge for peace.  While I feel that the point of the book could be made in a shorter narrative (taking out much of the gore), I think this book is essential reading to put war into a proper perspective.

Whether or not the bombings were justified has been fervently debated, but if innocent human life is sacred, then the answer is clarified by this book.

Invisibilia

I was looking for podcasts to listen to, and Invisibilia turned up as one of the top rated podcasts.

From the description, "Invisibilia (Latin for invisible things) is about the invisible forces that control human behavior - ideas, beliefs, assumptions and emotions."

I listened to Season 3 - Emotions, parts 1 and 2.  There were two primary stories - one about an accident that was caused by a driver whose young daughter died in a head-on collision, and how the family was sued by the driver of the other vehicle who suffered emotional distress from seeing the young daughter's dead arm hanging inside the mangled vehicle.  The other story was about a man studying a tribe of headhunters who had an emotion that the man had never experienced before.

The stories were enhanced by one researcher's idea that our emotions are not shaped by the world around us, rather that our emotions shape the world around us.  This was an interesting thought, and one day, when I was feeling down, I decided that if I changed my sad thoughts, that I could change my world and my perception of the world.  It was quite empowering.

Weekend repairs

I did some really minor home repair things with on one of my dad's rentals this weekend.  We fixed some slats in the storage area under the house, painted the stairway, installed electrical outlet plates, changed lightbulbs, touched up interior paint, and trimmed the bottom of the bathroom door to accommodate the threshold from the new flooring.  Everything was relatively easy, with the hardest part being the trimming of the bathroom door, and even that was pretty easy.

7 string

I've been practicing a lot on my 7 string.  I had a hard time getting used to this guitar, but I've been able to play songs in standard 6 string tuning (Desperate Cry by Sepultura) with it, without much problem.

What's nice is that I can switch between songs like that, and songs that are tuned down as low as B, without changing guitars.

I'm now inspired to pick up an 8 string, as the band that I'm playing in is learning a Meshuggah song in F#.

The Starch Solution

I'm generally leery of all "diets" that sway too much one way or another.  I believe that a healthy body doesn't only involve weight loss, though that's a primary component, perhaps even the most important one.  I also believe that a healthy body is one where blood pressure, artery health, blood sugar, cholesterol and triglycerides are all optimally maintained, and cancer risks are reduced.

Dr. McDougall makes a compelling argument for the consumption of lots of starch with a reduction of meat and dairy, citing older generations of Asians having healthier bodies, and also maintaining diets high in rice and vegetables.  He backs up this statement with evidence from working for Hamakua Sugar Company on the Big Island, and the idea resonates with me, as I know lot of older Asians and see how their eating habits affected their health.

I'm not convinced that, as he states in his book, one can add 4 cups of rice to their diet every day and be healthy, but what I do take away is that starch keeps you satiated, and it's wise to reduce animal protein.

With that in mind, I intend to try to eat just enough starch to keep me satiated, reduce my meat consumption, and eat a lot more fruits and vegetables.