I was in the middle of writing some entry on Juno and whiteness when I thought I’d Google a couple of phrases. I have to say there’s something rather confounding about these results, unless I should use “woman” or “man” instead:

“quirky Asian guy” (9 results)
“quirky Asian girl” (76)
“quirky black guy” (40)
“quirky black girl” (76)
“quirky white girl” (7)
“quirky white guy” (9)
“quirky Latino girl” (2)
“quirky Latino guy” (1)
“quirky Jewish girl” (10)
“quirky Jewish guy” (5)

Unless, of course, “white” is the unmarked category. (Best of all is the fact that a good majority of the hits above are actual self-descriptions on Friendster and MySpace, which strikes me as really, really sad.)

But then you get this:

“quirky sidekick” (1,810)

Now we’re talking.

p.s. There are no quirky Filipino girls. Just wanted to let you all know that.

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On Sunday, March 2nd, one of my favorite bands in the world, Yo La Tengo, will once again be doing their fundraising requestathon (their thirteenth, and responsible for the wonderful Yo La Tengo Is Murdering The Classics), where Yo La Tengo plays (or, more important, attempts to play) donors’ song requests, for the Jersey City-based radio station WFMU, and, even though I’ll be away from the radio, and if I remember, I will, God help me, do the following three things:

1. I will call 1-800-989-9368 between the hours of 5 and 7 Eastern Standard Time.

2. If I get through, I will make my donor pledge.

3. And then I will make a request for my fellow Filipino Renaldo Lapuz‘s smash hit of 2008, “We’re Brothers Forever.”

If Yo La Tengo actually plays the song in its entirety — and it’s really only a couple of stanzas — I think my year will be made. If they somehow make it segue into “Speeding Motorcycle” my head will probably explode from the sheer awesomeness.

If not, maybe some good reader out there can do it for me.

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1. As my current employer would say, Whoo hoo! Dawn Mabalon‘s book for Arcadia Publishing, Filipinos in Stockton, is available for ordering on Amazon.com, with a book launching on February 24. But all proceeds go to the Stockton chapter of the Filipino American National Historical Society and the Little Manila Foundation if you get it at the Stockton launch. (I’m sure there will be more California signings on the way!)

2. So is Carina Montoya’s Filipinos in Hollywood. The photos alone should be great.

3. Amy Besa and Romy Dorotan’s Memories of Philippine Kitchens has been out a while, but I only discovered it a couple of weeks ago at Barb and Oscar‘s. The photographs by Neal Oshima are gorgeous.

Besa and Dorotan are the folks behind the fantastic Cendrillon in SoHo, a restaurant I was lucky to visit twice — the second time, hobnobbing with the luminaries from Vestiges of War. The dozen of us walked from NYU to Mercer & Broome and happened to be walking behind this guy for a few blocks, and who ended up going to the same restaurant as well. (Apparently he fell in love with Philippine cuisine when he filmed this and this — the latter film, shot in my hometown, during my high school graduation weekend. Some old high school classmates are still tickled by the fact that a 23-year old Johnny Depp was wandering around our little town in the boondocks before he was Johnny Depp.)

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So yes, this list is awfully late. And it’s rather odd, because the two bands I probably listened to most this year — mostly because I did a massive, expensive-at-import-prices excavation of their discographies — don’t show up on this list. They happen to be two wonderful Japanese bands, Spangle call Lilli line (here’s their profile on keikaku.net) and chatmonchy. I suspect this is because both may be best appreciated in terms of some amazing singles, some of which have been featured on this blog before). (Come to think of it, my favorite album of the year is also of Japanese provenance.)

And at the end of this year — especially since I was so busy in December and January — I found myself in the depressing position of being part of a weary chorus, led by Pitchfork and the late lamented Stylus and the Village Voice and every other music blogger out there, all trumpeting the praises of the same albums repeatedly and all swooning over “All My Friends”. So did I.

Nonetheless, I’m a little reluctant to add to the verbiage, so I broke from tradition and did the next best lazy-ass thing. For a few obvious choices, I just took reviews from the usual places (actually, just the first page of reviews on Google or Metacritic), pasted the text into online software, and generated a word-frequency count. (This exercise would have been a little more productive if I had added more reviews, but again: too lazy.) The results are below, excepting articles and words like “drums” or “guitar”, or song titles. And hey, it seems to work.

———

And now, the best music I heard all year, in alphabetical order:

1. Battles, Mirrored (2007)

6 METAL, 5 JAZZ, 5 WORK, 5 PLAY, 5 SICK, 4 TECHNOLOGY, 4 DANCE, 4 MEN, 3 MATH, 3 ASTOUNDING, 3 AVANT, 3 ELECTRONICS, 3 TOGETHER, 2 HAMMERS, 2 ECSTATIC, 2 FUCK, 2 BOOM, 2 BIG, 2 JUMBLE, 2 VIRTUOSITY, 2 TECHNICAL, 2 PROFICIENCY, 2 LOOPS, 2 THRILLING, 2 BRILLIANT, 2 MACHINE, 2 ROBOT, 2 SKILLS, 2 SYMPHONIC, 2 PROG, 2 PROCESSED, 2 COLLECTIVE, 2 GLORIOUS

Amazon link.
Video for “Atlas” on YouTube.
Official website.

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As always, my (very late) list of favorite albums I heard in 2007 is limited to just that, which includes albums I missed the first go-round. (This is why none of these albums are actually from 2007.)

The three runners-up, in alphabetical order:

1. Eluvium, Talk amongst the Trees (2005).

Ghostly, static haze lingering at the portals of perception.

Amazon link.
Official website.

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