Update on the mix tape challenge

A couple weeks ago I posted about trying to come up with a single CD of essential American music to share with my friends here. I failed miserably at getting my choices down to just one disc and ended up with a two disc version.

You'll see that, though nothing in my original criteria said it had to be rock music, I completely neglected anything jazz, swing, tin pan alley or what might be called "standards." Consequently, I ended up with a thread that tries to tie together anything that might be characterized with a jump, backbeat or groove--blues, country, r&b and rock. Gospel and more hip hop ought to be in there, but there are some gaps in the library that is on my computer.

Here is what I ended up with. What would you have included, and what would you cut from this list to make room for your choices?

-Robert

Disc 1

Robert Johnson—Ramblin’ On My Mind
Bob Wills and His Texas Playboys—So Let’s Rock
Big Mama Thornton—Hound Dog
Elvis Presley—My Baby Left Me
Patsy Cline—Walkin’ After Midnight
Chuck Berry—No Particular Place To Go
Aretha Franklin—Chain of Fools
Otis Redding—These Arms of Mine
Wilson Pickett—634-5789 (Soulsville, U.S.A.)
Help Me Rhonda—The Beach Boys
Bob Dylan—Quit Your Lowdown Ways
Simon & Garfunkel—Baby Driver
Martha Reeves and the Vandellas—Heatwave (Love is Like A)
The Velvet Underground—Sweet Jane
Al Green—Tired of Being Alone
The Jackson 5—I Want You Back
Talking Heads—And She Was
Willie Nelson—Georgia On My Mind
Yvonne Elliman—If I Can’t Have You
Joe Jackson—Is She Really Going Out With Him?
Joan Jett & The Blackhearts—Bad Reputation
Prince—Kiss
Bruce Springsteen and the E Street Band—10^th Avenue Freezeout
Violent Femmes—Blister In the Sun
The Cars—Just What I Needed

Disc 2

R.E.M.—The Replacements
The Replacements—Alex Chilton
The Pixies—Here Comes Your Man
The B-52s—Love Shack
Nirvana—Come As You Are
Weezer—Photograph
The Fugees—Killing Me Softly With His Song
The Old 97s—Jagged
Aimee Mann—That’s Just the Way You Are
Lucinda Williams—Drunken Angel
Wilco—Outtasite (Outta Mind)
Liz Phair—Polyester Bride
Fountains of Wayne—Radiation Vibe
Gillian Welch—Pass You By
Ben Kweller—I Don’t Know Why
Rufus Wainwright—Oh What A World
Gwen Stefani—The Sweet Escape
Beyonce—Get Me Bodied
Neko Case—That Teenage Feeling
Kanye West—All Falls Down
Santogold—I’m A Lady

Hai Lua--seafood restaurant near Cho Ben Thanh

I'm more interested in grilled seafood here than Ilene is, so Hai Lua isn't her favorite place, and when we met a local here for dinner, she wasn't terribly impressed, so I suppose there are better places for more refined palates than mine. But I like it a lot and get a kick out of it because of the people watching at night. Try and sit up wind, though. It can get smokey near that grill.

Hai Lua is one of about 7 full-service restaurants that each night are constructed on the streets on either side of Ben Thanh market. About five p.m., each day, the streets get cleared of traffic, and trucks pull up and unload an army's worth of tents, tables, chairs and portable kitchens. This one is on the east side, about three back from Le Loi Avenue.

We've also gone quite a few times to the one "next door" called Sao Dong, which is a favorite cheap hang-out among the twentysomething urbanites we've met in English Club. The rice soup and Thai seafood soup there are good, the lemonade and other juices are cheap, and we usually get out of there for about $2.50 each for a big dinner.

Hai Lua is more expensive--about $5 to start with a whole grilled fish, like the red snapper pictured first. It took me a few trips to figure out that you are supposed to order these family style with other dishes in support rather than ordering a single fish for yourself. One time I went there by myself when Ilene was busy and when a giant rainstorm broke out, all the customers got squeezed in under the tent, and I was seated with two young women who were too shy to speak English with me. They kept staring and giggling at the whole fish and enormous plate of steamed morning glory stems in front of me. Complex carbs and low-fat protein--I figured I was doing pretty good, except that it would have fed five people, and the absence of rice was pretty unusual in a Vietnamese meal. Finally a man next to me--an immigrant to California back home to HCMC for a visit--translated for us. He said they were wondering how I had learned to order Vietnamese food . . . a polite way, I think, of saying what they hell did I think I was doing.

While we waited out the storm, I got to talking with my translator. It turns out he owns all the Dominos Pizza shops up and down University Avenue in Berkeley. He says he was a Colonel and helicopter pilot in the South Vietnamese air force and moved to the United States in 1975.

I still haven't figured out how you're supposed to deal with the bones when you order fish like this. I know that sometimes you're on you own, and sometimes the wait staff takes care of it, even for locals. The picture at the bottom shows the fish we got the other night when it first arrived and after the waitress dug two spoons into its back and expertly removed the spine and all the bones in one tug.

-Robert

Misc. updates

1. These pictures are from a wedding Ilene went to last week--the co-worker of a friend. The friend and her sister arranged to have an ao dai, the outfit she's wearing, made for her. That involved a trip to the silk shop to pick the material and then to the dress-maker's shop to pick the design and take measurements. A very generous gift. Ilene has a sequel to the underwear stories she posted on our last trip, but she's been too busy to write.


2. I went to the Reunification Palace the other day, which was very interesting. Unfortunately, I left my camera at the hotel. The palace is important in the cultural memory here because it's the site of the very last moments of the war, where the government of the South surrendered. For Americans, the iconic image of April 1975 is of helicopters leaving from the roof of the U.S. embassy in Saigon, but for Vietnamese, the iconic images are a few blocks away at the Reunification Palace. After the first tank smashes through the front gate, a tank gunner runs across the lawn and up the empty front steps with the flag of the provisional government clutched in his fist and appears on the roof a couple minutes later to raise it in place of the South Vietnamese flag. That was the end of 35 consecutive years of war against the Japanese, French and Americans.

Ilene has told stories in the past about how her visit to the Reunification Palace in 2003 was notable for how unfriendly and creepy the guides were. It's another sign of how fast things are changing here that my visit in 2008 was the opposite. It most closely resembled Western standards of all the museums I've been in here. (There was the occasional dead cockroach trapped inside a display case, but that's par.)

3. Last week we started volunteering at a charity for street children called Thao Dan, teaching English two evenings a week. More on that another time.

4. This city of 8 million is starting to feel a little small. Twice over the weekend we unexpectedly ran into people we knew. Or they spotted us, anyway. We do stand out a little.

5. Ilene has her big Vietnamese test this Friday and is quite preoccupied with that.

6. We bought tickets for a two-day hiking trip in Cat Tien National Park, next Friday and Saturday. This is a relatively new kind of tourism here, so we're looking forward to a really unique experience. We're using the same "adventure tour" company we used for the bike ride in the Mekong Delta last year--Sinhbalo. The cost includes a driver, a guide, meals, a bungalow room and leech repellent.

-Robert