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Around a year ago I started my Cool It Now newsletter and now I’m on the fourteenth issue, a special all music themed one! It contains links to an incredible article about the rise of flute rap, as well as a Spotify playlist of my seventeen tracks for the summer. It’s a winner, just like my all Gosling edition from earlier this year. So while the frequency of the newsletter has stalled, the quality has gone up! I mean, I hope. Here are all the past issues, and below is my song notes for the seventeen tracks included in Cool It Now, Vol 1 . And for the record, "Paid in Full" is always the best flute rap! [ #14 Music Issue | #12 Gosling-fest | Past Issues ] 1. Bishop Briggs, “Wild Horses” (2017) This twenty-four year old British singer by way of Japan seems fond of wearing Chun Li buns and got inspired to sing via Tokyo’s karaoke bars. 2. DJ Khaled, “I’m the One” (2017) I’m starting my hunt for the dance jam of the year, the one I hope will be everywhere on a d

So I’ve had a personal podcast for awhile, “You, Me, Us” that was maybe sixty or so conversations I recorded over the years with friends. But that kind of died down as people stopped wanting to speak with me. Wah wah! But I love podcasting and wanted to make more, and last year I met a friend who also loves talking -- and can tolerate me! So we decided to make a podcast: The Re-Do . Margot and I are long distance friends — we met last year in Taiwan — and she’s a world traveler and rambler like me. Well, I can’t really be called a world traveler, but she certainly is, as she’s been to over 30+ countries and counting. (Check out this You, Me, Us interview about her trip to North Korea .) We happen to have tons of stuff in common, but enough differences to be shaded differently in just about everything, so it makes for everlasting conversations. And now they're recorded! We get together every two weeks or so to recall, recap, and reassess, and so far we’ve covered important to

I read a lot of newsletters, like a lot. I rattled off a list of my favorites at the beginning of the year here, "Fit to Print," and now I finally have my own. Okay, well, I have like a ton of other newsletters, just like I have a bajillion blogs, but my new newsletter actually has a purpose. And a mission. The format is four or five things a week about movies, words, music, books, apps, TV shows, random stuff, etc. All with the idea that those who have lost their "cool" can stay semi-relevant by subscribing. Mostly I just want to get the song stuck in everyone's head. "You got to cool it now / Ooooooh watch out / You're gonna lose control."  Partially it's fun to say I have a newsletter in polite company, partially it fulfills my dream of being a pop culture coach, and partially I'm learning how to use MailChimp on a higher level. So yeah, subscribe to Cool It Now ! Like right now. And here's the quickie Tumblr I threw tog

Today I'm here to answer the pressing question: What kind of social network farmer are you? Technically I know next to nothing about actual farming but I feel confident in using farming analogies to describe social networking because I've played a lot of Papaya Farm, Trade Nations, Oregon Trail: American Settler, and other freemium iPhone games. I can plant digital carrots with the best of them. Mistletoe FTW! Presented without commentary or judgement, with limited commercial interruption, here are some time tested strategies you can use to build a following, avoid co-workers, annoy friends, and generally become a scary numbers monger. Commercial Agriculture: The goal here is to achieve high "profits" using economies of scale, labour saving technologies, and minimizing effort while maximizing results. All that is just a fancy way of saying, "spam spam spam spam spam spam!" Sing along if you want. Follow anyone and everyone and assume a (low) perce

When you play Dungeon & Dragons, a lot of your time is spent making characters. There's a lot of dice rolling, picking out skills and equipment from various charts, and then cramming all this information onto a character sheet. Here's what a D&D 4th Edition character sheet looks like. Tell me that's not more complicated than your high school homework. But the thing is, all the relevant facts and figures you need to successfully get your Dungeons & Dragons on are right there. Organized, accessible, neat. The character sheet is one of the greatest contributions Dungeon & Dragons has made to our society -- among many. Where do you think profile pages came from? Facebook totally stole the whole distilling an entire complex person down to just one page thing from D&D! (The Zuck was obviously a tallish half-gnome wizard in his gaming days.) Of course, a genius idea like this needs to be extended to more things. For example, wouldn't it be handy

Since I've been Chinese all of my life, I know how to measure self worth by numbers. 4.0, 1600 (now 2400), valedictorian, 3.14159265, 1.3 billion, 888, M3, six figures, half price, two for one, one child... Since Twitter self-esteem can often be tied into how many followers you have, I thought it would be nice to put together a handy guide to what you've achieved so far and how much your parents will love you. And if they'll humble brag about you at other people's family dinners. TWITTER FOLLOWERS (#) Kiwi (5+): Someone coerced you into signing up for Twitter. Two years ago. You barely have any social media wings and are flightless. Pigeon (25+): You used the friend search function. You don't really want to interact with anyone it found, except that one person who you text all the time anyway. Twitter is laaaaame. Seagull (50-100+): Your have IRL friends on Twitter and you guys love it. Mine, mine, mine! Hummingbird (250+): You're an artist of some ki