Q

I only went to Day 1.
I need to be a hardcore nerd once a year or I will implode.

( Pictures of us! )

Also by the by, I'm performing this Sunday at Zenshuji (about Alameda and 1st, but on a little side street) in Little Tokyo (I'm not sure what time, but maybe 3PM?) for their Obon festival. Hongwanji up the street (the bigger temple) always has an Obon festival the same time, so you can double dip. Here's the summer obon schedule..

I will be wearing a white with blue yukata (with chidori) and a very hade red striped obi, dancing about the ups and downs of being a young newlywed!

I think the thing that moves me about children's books is that they are sometimes like poems of novels, short and to the point, wearing effet on their shirtsleeves.. with art to text at some magical unspoken and very consistent ratio (amount of text and anticipated age of audience is inversely proportional to amount of art). But it's also that in the limited prose, there is sometimes a.. psychological fissure that appears in the world built by the text.

Several times in my life, I've come to a point in a conversation and felt it necessary to explain a particular book that left me shaken. The version I own of The Hundred Dresses is only 88 pages long. It's funny, I just looked at the Amazon page for the teacher's edition and Book Week said of it, "No young person . . . will ever forget it."

( continued )

!!!!!

I can't believe I've been posting/thinking about clothes so much lately!!!!!!

But breaking, incredible news to me: Seiichi Hayashi (my favorite illustrator) did 5 Uniqlo yukata sets!

( Seiichi Hayashi x Uniqlo yukata image )

My schedule is killing me.

And I've decided this is my dream dress:

Alice and the Pirates' Alice Print (preferrably in ivory)

Though absolutely no one wants to hear anymore about it. Hahahaha.
( A/P egosnaps )

My birthday came and went, and a message from an old friend living in Japan made me really nostalgic. She spoke of coming to live here one day, some distant day, when she had a bouncing baby on her knee. So I was browsing her old mixi entries and remembered this picture of my friends in an album I had put on my page about a year ago. Several things come to mind for me: the really horrible last paper I wrote at UCLA about the Hollywood Sanrio store, all of the other missed opportunities at really working on and bettering my writing abilities, how lonely post-graduate life is, what it was like to be frivolous and free, and how awesome my friends are that all seem to want to move away..

Where will I be next year, around this time? With some stranger in Koreatown? Or going to Art Center, still living with my twin, three-days apart, from different mothers?

...in other news, my birthday cake (I did the decorating! Except the eyeball, which was a stroke of genius).

( birthday last year )

Some traumatic recent events have reminded me of the mortality of my friends. I noticed both Fei and I retreating into the comfort of nostalgic dark lullabies via youtube. I made a list of my favorite Shiina Ringo songs/performances. Most of the best live versions have been removed because of the recent crackdown on fans. I think that even though there are songs I love more than anything in the world, she is such an incredible and versatile, dynamic performer that she can make me think "wow, I didn't realize that song was fucking magnificent!" with a different version. She really never sings it the same way twice. And this is why those videos are all valuable on the internet! It makes the unacquainted realize what a performer she is, and that that's the way to appreciate her music!

Shiina Ringo has really no control over the removal of all her videos from youtube / images from fan sites / dismantling of fan sites, it's a recent Japanese music industry-wide movement. I don't know her personal opinion on the matter, but I know that Utada Hikaru (one of the 100 richest citizens of Japan) loves that her videos are on youtube and gets bummed out when they're taken down. Two desires definitely arise from all this copyright protection action: 1. I want to buy the DVDs, and mostly 2. I get into pack rat mode and immediately download any videos I like on youtube of Shiina's. I only buy her DVDs when I run into them used, so allow me to opine: Record agencies; you punish the fans and are still gonna sink! Eventually artists will rid themselves of you!

Anyway, here goes the list, with personal notes:

My favorite Shiina Ringo songs of all time
"Unconditional Love"
*her performance of this always brings me near to tears, wondering what I'm doing with my life
"正しい町　（Tadashii Machi)"
*the performance where she comes to tears was removed from youtube
"依存症 (Izonshou)"
*see cut
"葬列　（Souretsu)"
*my favorite performance was removed from youtube
"丸の内サディスティック　（Marunouchi　Sadistic)"
*for a while, I wanted to be her, exactly how she is when she performs this song in this video -- the other versions of which have been deleted on youtube, this one was put up again recently but will eventually be removed
"本能　（Honnou)"
*nostalgia
"歌舞伎町の女王 (Kabukichou no Joou)"
*nostalgia
"りんごのうた (Ringo no Uta)"
*When I watched the video and saw her mole removed I felt like I had witnessed something beautiful in its trauma - like how I felt when Utada Hikaru announced her divorce. I like to pretend the Tokyo Jihen years never happened. Some fun things came out of it, but overall I'm not too into "jazzy."

( Ringo through the ages youtube fan video )

How to Ask a Famous Person If They're Famous

Them: "chit chat chit chat"
You: "oh yeah? chit chat"
Them: "chit chat drop hint"
You: "Oh, are you an artist?"
Them: "Oh, well, actually I am a production/director/coordinator/animator/etc."


But you gotta start off by using the magic word.

*Note: It's way cooler to meet the "faceless" side of Hollywood than well-known, frequently spotted celebrities, because you can have normal conversations with people that make ten times the millions of the actor-pawns. Also, the power they emanate is frightening.

just the right scale

bigger than a child

but small enough to play god

On my long, rainy and maniacally sleep-deprived drive back down to LA, I was listening to a Les Georges Leningrad EP while having a bit of a freakout. ( ... )

"When you gaze long into an abyss,
the abyss gazes into you."

Completely Neuter Underage Robots Dancing Robot Moves

A topnote, no heart



Perfume
Some notes:

I love them. Akiba-kei (real life, moving, singing vagina-less anime figures originally for Akihabara audiences, that exploded beyond their niche). The uncanny effect generated by incredible production quality combined with a literally uncanny PR image.. This is old muzak that I keep coming back to and still find myself enjoying -- not the music of course, but the whole package of the video, the story of the young girls, the most kara of oke (ironically, my name seems to appear in every song with totally mind-numbing lyrics), and the overpowering sense of futurism. I think it brings humanity to a different realm, a parallel world where cyborgs called thirds fulfill every need, singing and dancing on your tellyscreens, selling you candy you don't need with holistically conceived product placement, all with a hint of sentience and a whisper of loneliness.

"One more robot learn to be...
Something more than a machine."



Sorry for all the references and cheap shots.
That's the breed of asshole I am.

When my dad became a firefighter, it was before anyone knew what exposure to all those chemicals and burning plastic fumes would do to the body. It was just an honest way to make a living. He did his part, he provided for us, and when he slept, it was deeply. Now that he's had his years taken away from him, he waits, in this uncomfortable state called retirement, to hear of this friend with cancer, this friend with heart problems, this friend with Lou Gehrig's.

When K---- got Lou Gehrig's, some of the old guys got together and started having brunch together. My father didn't really have the words to express how he felt about it.. "it's really something." Fellow firefighters experience a bond unlike that of any other profession. Work and life are so intimately entwined. You're eating, sleeping, and wiping the shitters together. It's making a living but we sometimes forget that that's just living.

I remember when I was in elementary school, my father and K---- were in a band together. Being the off-kilter and serious child I was, I couldn't get what the enjoyment was in all the din.. playing cheesy pop songs, prepping for wedding gigs. Why suffer all that hearing loss? My dad would say as a bassist, that it was all about that moment when you just kept hitting each note, everyone in harmony, the world around you blurring.. when you were "in the groove." You are just those notes. Hearing him say this was almost as embarrassing as seeing that phrase written down.

Well the brunch grew and grew, with more people coming out of the cracks. These guys had spent a third of their working lives together. And before they knew it, they were old men. Men that had exposed themselves to unthinkable health risks.

Maybe that will be me too though. Countless supposedly harmless non-iodizing energy waves passing through me, expanding and contracting plastics, eating off them daily. Computers, more compact microwave technology.. who knows. My fantasy of the olden days was that there were the obvious and the less obvious results of industrialization.. liking getting an arm cut off in the loom versus the inexplicable and mysterious cancers. Now that they're past the point of obvious firefighting accidents, these worried old men.. they sit in that horrible unease, waiting for the unexpected silent killers to grip a hold of their insides, for their bodies to start rejecting what they've done to themselves. My dad's at a loss of words, because how can you explain the calm in the idea of being together. The semi-religious feeling of harmony. Without redirecting his anger at how this could have happened, how these kinds of jobs exist in our society.. the garbage men, the haz-mat teams, the recyclers.. "At least we'll go together."

A ring I made in Japan...

( egosnaps and more )

Waitress Needed ASAP!!! (West LA)
Reply to: see below
Date: 2009-02-19, 12:25AM PST

Upscale Gentlemen’s Club is looking for a waitress ASAP. You must have a positive attitude and a great work ethic. Enjoy great tips and a fantastic working environment. Rare opportunity to have waitress shifts available!!

Please come in and apply at:
-------------------
Los Angeles, CA 90025

We are looking for someone to start this week.

Location: West LA
Compensation: Minimum wage + TIPS, TIPS , TIPS

I'm kind of in love with the band Sekiri (赤痢 "dysentery") right now. Tight ass '80s punk/thrash with sweet clothes to match. The lead singer Miyu has the type of whiny weak voice that I'm usually inclined to hate but somehow is beautiful and so grrl against the crunchy rambling rock and rumbling bass (I love their bassist). This blog raves about how much their sound was out of sync with what was going on in Japan in the bubbling '80s. Their image was decidedly antithetical to groups like Pink Lady, even punning off of pop song titles; and their image was ultimately angst-filled and aggressive while other girl group acts were "rock and roll" by playing up senselessness and inanity. Their style matches the hypermasculine and ultraviolent manga that also straddled the '80s-'90s gap. I want their complete discography.. also more info on other old Japanese punk bands.



( + more )

Tips to living a dirtbag lifestyle, Part 1
Forms of entertainment
- Karaoke at happy hour,
at the weekday price ($4/person/hr)
(better yet, sing along to youtube videos)
- Eat/drink at gallery openings;
eat/drink/dance at student shows, other people's apt. parties
- Watch movies only at film lectures/presentations/screenings
- Use Museum badge to get in for free
- Summer obon circuit
- Watch TV and read news only online

Okay, that was just a lame pretext for embedding this (make sure to watch for his face gestures at the very end!):



*New goals: Really learn about kimono, make a short Gorey-influenced film, learn Hikawa Kiyoshi songs and dances, make friend's mom's site