I put up a flier for tonight’s party on the “Community Board!” at my gym, and it took exactly 47 minutes before someone tore it down.

This is a gym (Will’s Gym) that plays wretched progressive house mixtapes on full blast while middle-aged Chinese women run backwards on treadmills with their limbs wrapped in plastic to increase sweating. Apparently not down with Christmas Dancebeast.

Classic track for this slightly delayed Disco Monday. Heard fragments of this on Edan’s “Echo Party” mixtape that dropped last week. Not posting that one out of respect to Edan, but def. cop it on iTunes.

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Scott Davis & The Movements – Apple Jack

Drew up a quick flier for tomorrow’s party in between studying. Sometimes my brain gets overloaded with Chinese and I need to draw cats and overbearing blue spruces.

As you can see, I had to consult with a Scandinavian design firm about this one.

It’s gonna be a getdown in every sense of the word.

Anyone who’s traveled through a Chinese airport in the last six months feels me on this.

Now imagine watching that cartoon over, and over, and over….after sitting on a runway for three hours, being herded back into the terminal for an hour, then flying to Beijing to miss a flight to Los Angeles by four hours, packed into a bus and taken to a motel with “only dirty sheet!”, a hundred confused foreigners, and no Air China employees in sight.

Then falling asleep in a room with something visibly bloody in the garbage and a midwestern mathematician in the bed next to me (we jumped to the front of the line by agreeing to share a room).

Then eating a soggy breakfast in said motel while getting grilled for advice/insight/hope by a panicked and clueless foreign dad who brought his family all the way to China to see the not-so-visible-after-all solar eclipse, leaving mid-conversation with a “I’ve been here for two years, this happens all the time,” and catching a cab to the airport at eight in the morning, obtaining a 3pm flight to San Francisco , and spending the rest of the day dodging that cartoon in the Beijing Airport. No easy feat.

I failed to get a shot of the best part of the cartoon, where the pig and duck say “actually it come from America!”

Finally jumped aboard the VPN and hunted for music yesterday. So many fresh new jams for next Tuesday at Logo.

That’s right, a Two-Days-Before-Christmas Dance Party. But even if you don’t believe in the miracle of Christ you should come dance. It’s a nondenominational getdown.

The H1N1 cartoon also suggests listening to music during the infection period.

From one of my favorite blogs, Beat Electric from SF, this is one of the funkiest jams I’ve heard in a hot minute. Somewhere between Prince and Rick James. Was sliding around the subway platform to this one for sure.

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Prophet – Stick Around

And remember!

Earlier this month I threw this party at Dada called “Magic Cat 2071: Soundcrisis Meltdown,” based on a short story I wrote about a giant conglomerate (a merger between McDonald’s, Google, H&M, and Ikea) who takes over the world and eventually destroys music.

For promotion, I envisioned running around Shanghai in a cat costume a la Trigger Happy TV, causing a ruckus. Originally, I had no suitable attire, but I miraculously found a cat mask in a small street with costume stalls somewhere on Hong Kong Island.

After the photoshoot, I turned a few of the pictures into public service announcements about population control and public transportation. Expect more of this in the future.

I’m doing it again on Saturday January 23rd, as a prequel to the original story.

Here’s the details for the new one:

A prequel to “Magic Cat 2071: Soundcrisis,” Electrobeast Meltdown digs deeper into the future’s dark past, revealing the reasons behind the death of music.

In 2032, LifeCorp (the conglomerate merger between Google, McDonald’s, Ikea, and H&M) developed a music production supercomputer that required no human input.

They called this supercomputer Electrobeast.

A self-aware machine, Electrobeast produced only formulaic electronic music with massive breakdowns, at exactly 128 beats per minute. When the fusion jazz community tried to shut it down, the paranoid Electrobeast launched an all-out electro banger attack on every continent. Electrobeast played its terrible electro songs so loud that the heads of both humans and cute animals exploded violently when the first beat dropped.

Due to his lack of ears, Magic Cat dodged the carnage and flew to the headquarters of LifeCorp – Stockholm, Sweeden.

There, inside the jungle of wires, software emulators, and fiber optic cables, Magic Cat fights for the future of not only proper dance music, but humanity itself.

Expect really nice disco edits, boogie, funk, and hip hop. Will have some secret guests playing on vinyl as well.

Unlike in America, malls in Asia generally provide mid to upper-mid range dining. In the case of mega-malls like Cloud Nine, next to my house, the restaurants alone occupy three huge floors, not to mention all the smaller spots in the basement like Subway, Ajisen Ramen, Happy Lemon (read: sugar water milk-tea chemical formula) and so on.

*Side note – I can’t say enough about the RMB19 pizza from Babela’s Kitchen, a Chineseified Italian chain. Although the menu boasts some really strange dishes like “ice cream salad” and “the wild germ hates the uncovered soup,” the pizza is one of the best deals in town.

There’s actual food courts too, cafeteria style where I argue with the servers about adding just a little bit more kimchi to my RMB12 chicken curry with potatoes. However, after a rather unpleasant incident three weeks ago, I’m trying not to eat out so much. Instead I usually hit up the local markets, where I can point to a chicken, and then it’s time for said chicken to die.

Made an exception last night to hit up the Cantoneese spot next to Carrefour. I forget the name but for RMB25 ($4) they do a really solid plate of BBQ pork, rice, and bokchoy. That, plus a RMB2 ($.30) corn on the cob from the lady on the street and an Asahi Dry make for a bomb dinner. Feeling a change of pace last night, I tried the BBQ suckling pig instead of the usual BBQ pork. Mistake.

I’ve been scolded by Chinese people before for spitting out pieces of fat on the ground when I’m eating lamb kabobs. “You’re wasting the fat!” Unlike most Americans, many Chinese really enjoy eating animal fat. Especially the kind that melts in the mouth, like the suckling pig. It’s strips of crispy pig skin with a layer of fat underneath and almost no actual meat. It actually costs more than the good white meat.

Check out this mix by Solid Bump Records they did for XLR8R a few months ago. It’s so funky, precisely the sound I’m digging lately. Check out their site too.

Solid Bump Mix For XLRXR (right-click save-as)

Speaking of menus…

Brilliant urban design here. I’ve never seen this in any other city.

Spotted the canine WC (water closet, the term still appears often here on signage) in Macau a few weeks ago. Much easier than trolling around with a plastic bag, and the sand must feel nicer on the dog’s paws, sliding in-between their toes…providing a vastly improved bathroom experience.

I hope Shanghai gets on this before the World Expo this summer, and also bans certain articles of dog clothing, e.g. Burberry jackets.

Disco Monday offerings – one of my favorite producers/DJs, Larry Levan. The resident DJ at New York’s legendary Paradise Garage in the late 70′s and early 80′s, Levan helped pioneer a kind of slowed-down, drugged out style of disco/house shown here with the track “Don’t Say Maybe.” Not a ton of beatmatching in his mixing, but always prime song selection – the most important skill of a DJ, and one that the kids who download electro tracks from blogs to play out at clubs and forget about a week later should study before their next show.

I’ve included a link to a mix by Levan here that I originally found on one of the web’s finest blogs – Feel My Bicep.

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NYC Peech Boys – Come On, Come On (Don’t Say Maybe) (Larry Levan Mix)

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Sesame Street – C Is for Cookie (Larry Levan Disco Remix – Longer)

Larry Levan Mix from 1985 (right-click save-as)

I know, I can’t even use “sporadic” to describe my update frequency late, but at least I’ve got this.

Although I no longer teach high school, I do englighten folk about the English language from time to time to earn some RMB flow.

Sometimes they write essays like this.

Background – This student, a high school kid from Hong Kong, wouldn’t look me in the eye for our first three classes. While he’s opened up a lot since then, he still pounds the desk every once in a while, shouting “forget it!” or “nothing!”

Some musics too. One of my favorite labels right now, Solid Bump Records. Particularly feeling Laberge, who produces house tracks that never fail to make people dance.

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Laberge – Gimme Your Love

Just back from Hong Kong and Macau with lots to say on that and more, but first some shameless promotion. Two big shows this weekend.

This Saturday at Dada, the party based on the short cyberpunk novel – “Magic Cat 2071: Soundwave Megacrisis.”

In 2071, one company, LifeCorp, a merger between McDonald’s, IKEA, Google, Apple, H&M, and FamilyMart, controls the world. After LifeCorp passes Resolution 85, music no longer exists in any form. Even the word itself is banned under penalty of death.

A magic cat roams the bombed-out shopping malls and dead cities with a neon boombox, playing the world’s few remaining songs.

He is earth’s only hope.

Kicking lots of bass-heavy disco (old and nu), cyberboogie, and electrofunk with my friend Maculate. Funky shit to dance to until dawn.

The cat will be there.

Also warming up at this French party from 11 – 12 on Friday. Something like four-hundred people came to the last one.

And a bangin club track with a Salt N Pepa vibe with modern production.

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Kid Sister – Big N Bad (A-Trak Intro Edit)