Musik Mundi: Jaymay

Jaymay, real name Jamie Seerman, is an American folk singer-songwriter from New York. She's got some really good lyrics. My youngest sister actually just intro'd me to her this weekend while waiting at the airport for our flight home. I seriously hate flying. But what can you do? My baby sistar and I have pretty similar tastes in music. The only difference is that she actually buys the real deal albums while I prefer to find it for free somehow. I love indie-folksy music. I feel like it helps me think more creatively. Whatever that means. Haha.

*photo courtesy of amazon.com*


Jaymay
Album: Autumn Fallin' (2008)
Song: Gray or Blue

Trippin': New York City - Joe's Shanghai

9 Pell Street
New York, New York 10013

Every single one of my Asian friends who go to NYC always makes it a point to stop for some of those infamous soup dumplings at Joe's Shanghai. Sometimes even TWICE in one trip. We actually went twice. The soup dumplings at Joe's have either a pork or crab meat filling. The wrapping is incredibly thin and delicate and holds the meat filling as well as a generous amount of broth inside. The soup dumplings come out in bamboo holders and each dumpling is spaced adequately so that they don't touch each other. Otherwise, they end up sticking to each other and the skin will rip when trying to remove it. Premature broth spillage is a soup dumpling disaster! Cos then you end up with a regular ole dumpling without the delicious soup. I thought the soup dumplings were good, but I think my favorite was the green onion pancake. Dood. I LOVE green onion pancake. If I go to a restaurant in Houston that offers green onion pancake, you can bet your arteries that I'm getting me some green onion pancake. The other dish that we ordered were these rice cakes and pork in brown sauce. It was pretty good but unfortunately, it was over-shadowed by the pancakes and dumplings. The restaurant is mos def not big enough for the demand. Expect to always have some sort of a wait. That's pretty much the usual suspect for most NYC restaurants anyhow.

Musik Mundi: Jenny Owen Youngs

You know what's crappy? Getting bought out. ARGH. I'm like the perpetual victim of getting bought out. Fortunately, this time it wasn't THAT bad. Cos I'm only referring to the music player that I have been using on this blog for who knows how long now. Maybe two years? Argh again. Turns out that Myspace acquired Imeem sometime last week, and wiped everything out. So all the playlists that I've created are now obsolete. And now, there's this big empty space on all my Musik Mundi posts where my player used to sit. Blah! Before I had a television with an actual working remote in my room, I would sometimes sleep with my headphones on, playing some soothing melodic music. Now I just leave the Telly on and set the sleeper. It's weird. I can sleep with the telly or music but man, any type of noise coming from outside will keep me up ALLLLLLLL night. I'm your typical selective light sleeper. But in any case. I mention the whole sleeping with music only cos I love finding new music that I can enjoy while slowly falling asleep. Back in August, I was like an hour away from being able to see Jenny Owen Youngs perform live. I was picking up some tickets at Cactus Music and saw signs up detailing her event. There was no way that I would be able to stay so I just sulked about it like a baby would. Boo hoo.

*photo courtesy of amazon.com*


Jenny Owen Youngs
Album: Transmitter Failure (2009)
Song: Here Is A Heart

Trippin': New York City: Max Brenner

841 Broadway
New York, NY 10003

The morning after the truly crazy and eventful night before, a few of us met up for some brunch at Max Brenner. Max Brenner. Also known as the chocolate bald man. His entire menu is mostly filled with your typical items made not so typical by adding chocolate to it. I knew I wanted to try this place cos I saw it on the food network but unfortunately, I didn't research enough on what the must try items were. Since most of us were just super tired and super hungry, we stuck to a nice and normal savory breakfast of omelets and huevos rancheros, served with a side of chocolate and white chocolate sauce! I think one or two of them even went and ordered the hangover omelet. The very much needed hangover omelet. Miss flower child and I decided to order some milkshakes and they were so GOOD! They came in these cool ceramic containers made to look almost like orange juice cartons. And the straws were metal! Which kinda gives me the heeby-jeebies cos you know, disposable straws were made for one simple reason. Eek. But despite that thought, I thoroughly enjoyed my milkshake. I've heard the wait time here could be a bit ridiculous sometimes, just like any other NYC restaurant, but we actually had zero wait time. Lucky us! If I were to go back, I would mos def try their more interesting stuff like the chocolate pizza and waffle fries sprinkled with a bit of cocoa powder. I would also order the milkshake again. Ugh. I want one so bad right now. I remember having a grand ole time that morning. There was a lot of laughing and guffawing and our waiter even told us that we were the funnest group he had all morning. But I can't remember anything we talked about. Excellent times indeedy.