Fat Asian Baby

World, why have you hitherto kept FAB in the dark about The Dante Fried Chicken Show? That is just cruel, and, to be perfectly honest, a bit rude. I mean, hello, it's FRIED. CHICKEN. FRIED. They probably have beer there too. Mercifully, someone finally just let FAB in on the not-so-secret secret. We wonder if perhaps we can convert Dante to Judaism and get him to propose before the next Show...

Anybody who has spent any time with FAB in the last three years has probably heard about how oddly dangerous we found life in Atlanta to be. While we spent nearly our entire life in the NY metro area, we'd never been the victim of a physical crime here*, nor had anyone we known save for someone's sister who was mugged after midnight in Riverside Park. However, in just three years of living in the A, we knew of at least 4 people who had been robbed at either gun- or knife-point in ostensibly non-sketchy areas, had our car broken into in OUR OWN DRIVEWAY, had our car totaled by a hit-and-run probably drunk-off-their-gourd-driver, heard about a neighborhood bartender being shot to death in a mugging across the street from our office, and now Deerhunter's Bradford Cox was robbed at gunpoint on one of the sidestreets by Lenny's, a venue we frequented one to two times a week. In a rare display of caution, the one time FAB was forced to park on one of these dimly lit sidestreets outside Lenny's, we actually had a guy walk us back to our car. We'd like to pretend we were doing this for our safety, but in reality, we were just trying to score some drugs from him and figured we'd kill two birds with one stone by asking him to walk us to our car. Bradford posted the following bulletin on his MySpace account over the weekend:

We got a friendly homecoming suprise last night in Atlanta when Lockett and I got robbed at gunpoint after our show at Lenny's last night. We literally had just walked off the stage and I was pretty wasted. Lockett was trying to take care of me and get me home. He grabbed my guitar and my stuff and we walked to his car which was parked about a block away from Lenny's because it was so crowded. I heard a commotion behind us but like I said I was pretty out of it. I just opened the door to the car and collapsed in the passenger seat. Then I heard all this yelling and I hear this loud metallic banging on the window and look up and there is a gun in my face and a guy yelling "get the fuck out the car man" I stumbled out and see the other guy has Lockett with his arms spread on the roof of his car and is patting him down. Lockett was begging them to leave me alone. The guy put his gun up to my temple and said "give me EVERYTHING motherfucker I aint fucking with you" I just mumbled something and he put his hands in my pants and took everything I had. My cellphone, my wallet (empty except for credit / bank cards which kristin immidietly cancelled, and about 450 dollars in cash I had for my rent.) They also got all of Lockett's money. They even took my fucking Camel Ultralights and Orange Bic. All I can say is that I'm glad we are not dead. Or more specifically, I am REALLY glad they didn't hurt Lockett. He was just trying to help me get home and would not have even been there at that time otherwise.

Scary.
Apparently the APD is too busy harassing the wheelchair-bound and shooting up old ladies to give two shits about petty violent crime or hit-and-run drunk drivers**.

*FAB actually experienced her first near-mugging last month when walking back to FABBro's house in Brooklyn at 3:30 in the morning. Some guy walked up behind FAB and growled, "Hey lady, give me your purse!" several times before it dawned on FAB that dude was maybe talking to us and probably wasn't joking - as we'd initially assumed, given the absurdity of the situation - since we didn't think we knew him and it really wasn't very funny anyway. We weren't quite sure what to do since it seemed like a pretty odd way to try and rob someone and furthermore our keys, wallet, toothbrush, cell phone, clean undies, and other assorted necessities were in the much-beloved Marc Jacobs Stella bag the Would-Be Mugger was referring to, so we opted to treat this situation like any other when an unknown person talks to us on the street or bar: Ignore Ignore Ignore. After all, if we were deaf, we wouldn't have even known someone was trying to rob us in the first place. Eventually, we passed a bodega and dude gave up and went inside. FAB wonders whether this experience prematurely ended the Would-Be Mugger's presumably lackluster mugging career due to the shame of being thwarted by the silent treatment.

**Which prompted us to send the following curmudgeonly letter to Mayor Shirley Franklin:

Dear Mayor Franklin:

As the victim of two crimes within Atlanta city limits within a period of about six months, I have had several encounters with the Atlanta Police Department. Unfortunately, the result of these interactions has led me to question the seriousness of purpose of the APD on both the individual and departmental levels. On early Saturday morning of Memorial Day weekend, my vehicle was struck by a hit-and-run driver who ran the light at the intersection of Briarcliff/Moreland and Ponce De Leon with enough speed to total my vehicle, turn it 180 degrees, crash it head-on into a bus shelter and send parts of my car flying more than 20 feet across the intersection. Given that the accident took place at around 4 a.m. on the first night of a holiday weekend, it seems likely that the driver of the other vehicle may have been intoxicated. However, despite having serendipitously arrived on the scene less than a minute after the accident occurred, the reporting officer made no attempt to pursue the driver or investigate the crime (leaving the scene of an accident) or crimes (and driving under the influence) that had been committed.

Subsequent calls to the Atlanta Police Department and to the officer himself resulted in one hang up and an unreturned call, respectively. Before hanging up the phone mid-conversation, an employee at the APD asked “Do you know how many hit-and-run accidents there are in Atlanta each year?” as though the prevalence of the crime excused the Department’s failure to investigate. When asked whether the implied systematic failure of the APD to actively investigate hit-and-run accidents may be related to the prevalence of the crime, the call was abruptly terminated.

Early Friday morning, my (new) car was broken into while parked in my driveway, a crime interrupted and partially witnessed by a vigilant neighbor. Because the car only sustained relatively minor damage (a shattered door window), the reporting officer, D. Willcot, declined to file a police report and at no point indicated he would be interested in questioning my neighbor about what she had seen. He patiently explained that car windows are broken all the time in Atlanta, my insurance would not cover the damage, and therefore there was no purpose in filing a report. I requested numerous times that a report be filed regardless of my insurance deductible or any such matters that should have been outside the realm of his concern. He assured me that the Atlanta Police Department NEVER bothers filing reports for broken car windows, which would indicate that such crimes are neither investigated nor prosecuted, which itself more than tacitly implies that one shouldn’t even bother calling the police in such cases. After a final plea that the officer file the report regardless, if for no other reason that to indulge me with an official piece of paper stating that a crime had, in fact, been committed, the officer reluctantly complied (case number ***********). Over the weekend, I discovered that four other people I know have had car windows smashed within the same square block of my home within the last six months, and mine was the only one for which a report was actually filed. The prevalence of a crime is no reason for it to be ignored.

To their credit, both of these officers were courteous and ostensibly helpful. I do appreciate that the APD is likely understaffed and underfunded, like many public services, and that there are many, more serious crimes committed within its jurisdiction. My experience with the hit-and-run accident would suggest that the APD is at best lazy and at worst negligent. After the second experience, I can’t help but wonder if it is official Department policy to coerce unsuspecting crime victims and underreport our city’s less glamorous yet apparently rampant crimes as a means of artificially deflating the city’s crime statistics? Further, what message do these failures send about the supposed seriousness of law enforcement in this city?

Sincerely,

Fat Asian Baby

Well I've done it. I've finally finished Harry Potter. I think I shall sit in the corner now and be pensive for the next few hours.

...And apparently our little girl is back to doing what she does best. And that would be DUI, possession of cocaine, transporting a narcotic into a custodial facility, and driving on a suspended license. We feel ya, Lindsay-boo. Really, we do. (Via Goldenfiddle, Via TMZ)

MoMA's PopRally summer party for the untragically hip young artsy party people continues tonight with Paper Rad, Cory Arcangel, and Slow Jams Band. Plus, you can check out new exhibits Automatic Update and Our Second Date.
Tonight from 8PM-11PM @ MoMA

The Happy Pirate people behind LVHRD bring you the latest installment in the Master-Disaster Duel series, PHTHRD, this time at some kind of secret location deep in the heart of DUMBO. According to Flavorpill,

For the event, the quasi-secret club plucked five NYC photogs — from prolific cover-artist Phillip Toledano to the, erm, uninhibited duo Kate & Camilla and wily cad-about-town, photoblogger Igor — paired them with top stylists (with résumés full of Vogue and Vanity Fair), and tonight lets the teams loose on various models for two hours of competition.

For more details (and this sounds amazing), register with LVHRD.

Exhibit A: Fat Asian Baby was kicking it outside a retail store on Orchard St. just north of Stanton, listening to music, hanging out with friends on a bench, and drinking a 40 ouncer of Olde English 800 fine malt liquor in a brown paper bag because that's just the sort of classy gal FAB is. Well, all was well and good. Several cop cars rolled by, but as anyone who has been to the Lower East Side in the last 5+ years can attest, it is like a bacchanalia of poorly dressed Bridge and Tunnel Brigades, some local color, and a few wayward hipsters. In other words, there is interesting shit going on, but FAB was not some of that interesting shit. Or so we thought. The officers* in the fifth cop car to drive by FAB's mini-festivity decided, for whatever reason, that it was time to kick a little ass. I won't bore you with the details of the takedown except to say that these two officers took their jobs extreeeeeeeemely seriously. And when people take their jobs extreeeeeeeeeeeeemely seriously and their extreeeeeeeemely serious job happens to involve interrogating round-faced malt-liquor drinking asian ladies as to whether they're packing heat and/or explosives, it is hard for some of us not to laugh. Except that laughing in the face of those who take their jobs extreeeeemely seriously as they perform their extreeeeeeeeemely serious jobs does not necessarily improve their normally sunny dispositions. At any rate, FAB can either pay $25 for violating silly open container laws or appear in Criminal Court at 9:30AM on October 2nd. Oh yeah, and they made fun of me for being from Georgia**.

Exhibit B: As you may have guessed, FAB attended the Siren Festival at Coney Island on Saturday. Because FABBro works in the music biz, FAB, FABBro, and FABNephew were going to kick it in the VIP tent area behind the Stillwell Stage. The VIP tent area of the exclusive port-o-potty access and open bar. Yeah. Until security wouldn't let FABNephew through because it was 21-and-up only. By order of the NYPD. Now, as much as drinking laws are a pain in the ass, yes we understand that, in theory, one should be 21 (or have documentation suggesting as much) to get in. But FAB did not see security/NYPD card a single person in the VIP tent so they couldn't have been that worried about underagers accidentally touching alcohol to their virgin lips. And, well, FABNephew, in addition to not being 21 yet, is also not yet 3 and was in FABBro's arms. I mean, really, how much of an underage drinking risk does an almost 3-year-old really pose? Feh.

*And these two officers happened to be Asian. We're not sure where we're trying to go with that, but I mean TWO Asian cops and a Fat Asian Baby walk into a bar...
**It took FAB until last summer to make the legal change from New York resident to Georgia resident so we think we'll try it out for a while. At least on paper.

In entirely unrelated news, this website that M. just sent us is v. v. cute. And we mean that in the most sickeningly earnest way.

We've finally managed to get our sticky paws on a copy of Harry Potter. We'll be back in a bit.

Man, it's been a long ass time since our last Ear Notes installment. A year and a half at least, right? Anyway, the new fatasianbaby.com is still a work in progress and we're not sure exactly what we're gonna be posting* and when, but here's some stuff to tide you over till at least Monday. And man is there ever stuff.

First order of business: The Siren Festival! Hot Dogs, The Cyclone, rock stars, hipsters, blipsters, yupsters, hot dogs, and sand castles. What more do you want. Well, actually, I could go for some more public toilets, but we hope that will come with the much-hyped Coney Island redevelopment. Anyway, FAB recommends checking out Atlanta natives The Black Lips along with Dr. Dog, Matt & Kim, The Detroit Cobras, and of course, New York Dolls. Shit starts going down at Saturday at noon. For full lineup and information, go to the Siren Music Festival web page.

Tonight we have a bunch of shows that will probably be some shade of awesome.
Neko Case is doing a free show at Summerstage with Eric Bachmann.

Marissa Nadler is part of an extensive lineup at the Church of Messiah in Greenpoint as part of Heeb Magazine's Diamond Days Festival.

The aforementioned Black Lips and Turbo Fruits, one of many great rock bands coming out of Nashville (yeah, you heard me. Great rock bands in Nashville) these days, will be playing at Silent Barn.

Hometown indie heroes Bishop Allen will be doing a free show at South Street Seaport with Canadians Rock Plaza Central.

And Gogol Bordello will be at Irving Plaza, which FAB has recently learned is now called The Fillmore New York at Irving Plaza. Bleh.

Saturday night, if you're still kicking after hitting Coney Island, head over to the Bowery Ballroom The Ponys, Jay Reatard, and Turbo Fruits.

Later in the evening, The Juan Maclean will be doing a DJ set over at Studio B in Brooklyn.

Sunday Sunday Sunday!
Brazilian Girls will be playing a free show in the afternoon at Summerstage.

Band of Horses (Hi Joan!), Annuals, and Oxford Collapse will be at the hipster hoedown at McCarren Pool. FAB thinks this is one of the strongest Pool Party lineups all summer so definitely throw on your dodgeball outfit and head on over. If you're not familiar with Raleigh, North Carolina's Annuals yet, you can read all about 'em here.
*It remains to be seen how much coverage we'll be able to give the awesome Atlanta scene, only for lack of time and energy.

Characters: FAB, FABMommy, Bagels
Setting: FAB House, Thursday, July 19, 12PM
ACT I
FABMommy: Here FAB, I bought you some bagels and some bread for sandwiches. Do you want to come eat lunch?
Enter Bagels Stage Left
FAB: Oh I didn't know you were getting those. I already ate an english muffin for lunch.
END SCENE

Setting: FAB House, Friday, July 20, 1PM
ACT II
FAB eats a bagel.
Twenty minutes pass.
FABMommy: FAB, want to come downstairs and eat tuna with capers with me?
FAB: I already had lunch.
FABMommy: But you just had a bagel.
FAB: Right, that bagel I just ate 20 minutes ago - that was my lunch. I don't want to eat again.
FABMommy: Well you really should stop with the starches and eat some other things. It's not healthy. You need...
FAB: I'm not hungry. But thanks.
Exeunt FABMommy.
END SCENE

Benchpressing even the most pliable cat is not nearly as easy or fruitful as one might have hoped. Unfortunately, the easiest way to get a handle on an exercise cat is to clutch it behind the arms and in front of the legs with the limbs dangling downward. However, in this orientation, one can only lower the cat about halfway before the dangling appendages prevent further downward motion. FAB suggests removing the limbs before the next rep unless you can get a good grip on the cat with the arms and legs parallel to the ground or even facing upwards towards the ceiling.
Alternatively, kittens can probably be employed as free weights, one in each hand, without any alterations or mess.

Boing Boing has an exerpt and link to Jasmina Tešanović's thoughts after revisiting Srebenica 12 years after the horrific massacre.

FAB was there for the 10th anniversary and commented on all the coverage then. A couple of years have passed and a few more war criminals have been apprehended, but we're not convinced that those who live in that area are significantly more at ease than they were 2 or even 12 years ago.

Goodness, there's just so much to tell you. Apparently the kids behind POP Montreal are sticking one toe and out of the closet with a lineup teaser, which as far as we're concerned is neat but is kinda like flashing a 13-year-old boy and then running away. But anyway, over 300 artists will perform at the multi-day. Highlights will include Patti Smith, Cody Chesnutt, Fujiya & Miyagi, Caribou, Chromeo, Sunset Rubdown, among others.
Pop Montreal takes place in Montreal (DUH) October 3-7, 2007. There'll be music. film. fashion. art. and poutine. Mmmm poutine...
What more do you want?

For tickets and information, go to the POP Montreal website.

Photo by Aaron Farrington

So as the first official order of business on fatasianbaby.com v2.0 (which you may notice looks suspiciously like fatasianbaby.com v1.0, and that's quite alright) we'd like to present you with the following possibly useful information:

Modest Mouse Tour Dates
01-Aug Morrison, CO Red Rocks Amphitheatre
03-Aug Kansas City, MO City Market
04-Aug Baltimore, MD Virgin Festival @ Pimlico Race Course
05-Aug Chicago, IL Lollapalooza @ Grant Park
11-Aug Tokyo, JPN Summer Sonic
12-Aug Osaka, JPN Summer Sonic
15-Aug Columbus, OH Lifestyle Communities Pavilion
16-Aug Cleveland, OH Time Warner Cable Amphitheater
17-Aug Northampton, MA Pines Theater at Look Park
18-Aug Mansfield, MA Download Festival at Tweeter Center
19-Aug Philadelphia, PA Festival Pier @ Penn's Landing
21-Aug Louisville, KY Coyotes
22-Aug Nashville, TN Ryman Auditorium
25-Aug George, WA Download Festival at The Gorge
27-Aug Troutdale, OR Edgefield
31-Aug Stradbally (Ireland) Electric Picnic
01-Sep Inveraray (Scotland) Connect Festival
03-Sep London, UK The Forum
05-Sep Amsterdam, NL Melkweg
06-Sep Hamburg, DE Fabrik
08-Sep Brooklyn, NY McCarren Park Pool
10-Sep Orem, UT McKay Events Center
16-Sep San Francisco, CA Treasure Island Music Festival


So apparently MM hates New York. Whatever.
For tickets and information go to their web page.

Sure Fat Asian Baby hasn't attempted anything that looks to outsiders like "exercise" in, oh, four or five years, but we were thinking about possibly considering the contemplation of doing something productive whilst wallowing away in our unemployment. Everyone has said just start small and it won't be so bad. To which we usually turn our fat head and start talking to the person on our other side. But nay, maybe there is wisdom somewhere. In there. Maybe.
Which brings us to this brilliant superimposed lightbulb five minutes ago:

"Maybe I should try bench pressing my cat."

But we think the FABKitty perhaps heard our thoughts* because no sooner did we settle upon this new exercise regime did he casually walk out of the room.

Whatever, Kitty, whatever.

*They say that cats can empathize with your, uh, feelings and stuff.

Dear World (Media, I'm talking to you, in particular),

When the heavily anticipated Harry Potter conclusion releases at the end of this week, please please please please please KEEP IT TO YOUR DAMN SELF. Fat Asian Baby is nothing if not cheap and slow. We will be reading the final installment probably as a fourth or fifth person handmedown from either Hey Mama or Former Roommate D.
FAB has had a rather difficult time avoiding Sopranos spoilers as we have yet to catch up on the last 2 1/2 seasons. Since we've only viewed about 2 Sopranos seasons in order and in their near entirety, we were hoping to rent the entire series on Netflix, begin at the beginning, and end at the ending, possibly in one dark weekend (kinda like how we watched the entire Godfather trilogy one weekend when our stupid exbf was on tour).
Even as we frantically navigated away from our news-related homepage (alternately NYTimes.com and Google News),changed the channel to avoid any late night talk show discussion of the ended, walked out of the room when NPR chimed in, dissecting the conclusion, we still know that the series ends in an ambiguous fade to black thanks to its role as a ubiquitous cultural reference artfully slipped into articles we naively thought safe to read (about advertising culture, about politics, about food, you name it). So thanks for that. Really.
But if FAB sleepily turns on the computer/opens up the newspaper/channel surfs by CNN only to be assaulted by frantic headlines like "Potter Defeats Voldemort. Teen Wizard Dies," we will probably start foaming at the mouth as our eyeballs roll inward to examine the backside of the pea-sized FAB brain before spontaneously popping out of the sockets and rolling under the table or through the door light old cheesy meatballs of yore. In other words, WE WILL NOT BE PLEASED!
Got it?

XOXOXOXOXOXOXOX,

Fat Asian Baby

P.S. I could totally go for a super cold half-sour dill pickle, sliced in half.