Monday, May 26, 2008

I'm Listening To - KEXP's "Song of the Day"

Photo Source: kexp.org

Warning: This post may introduce you to some indie band you'll never get to see.


I never really got into podcasts when they first made the rounds: partly because there's no way my net was fast enough to warrant a "quick download" to chuck on my pod. I'd much rather download songs I know I like, rather than waste precious time on what was mainly people chatting or interviewing other people back then.

However there are two podcasts I have indulged in over the last year; one deliberate and one entirely by mistake. The first was the Mandarin lessons put out by the lovely group over at Chinesepod.com. While the narrators of the show take some getting used to (especially Ken Carroll, with his "I'm not quite sure if I'm American or British, but I over-emphasise more than Shatner" accent), it was a great gateway for me to start picking up Chinese, not least of all because its repititive nature helps you pick up the tones and flow of the language. If you want to learn Mandarin, that's an excellent place to start.

The other is KEXP's "Song of the Day" podcast, which Danny inadvertently got me into when he sent me a track from the cast: Tournament of Hearts by the Weakerthans. Somehow in the typical fashion of the internet just opening the track subscribed me to updates from the podcast which, for once, did NOT piss me off. Actually with all the fantastic electro that this man has been shoving down my throat, its nice to have a source of balance in the form of indie rock. The majority of the stuff KEXP put out seem to be in this genre, though they sidle towards hip-hop, electro and punk from time to time, with Ladytron, Cut Copy, Aesop Rock among the artists that have featured. Finding out The Presidents of The United States of America still make music was enough fun to make the podcast worthwhile.

Check out the KEXP Podcast Page to find Song of the Day, available for iPod, Zune or just a nice old RSS feed.

Sunday, May 25, 2008

Bizarro


Warning: This post wants you to buy stuff.

So a friend has approached me to try to find this guy a sales market in Japan.
Dan Piraro has apparently been writing Bizarro comics for 22 years. That's over 10,000 panels. His manager tells me he's read all of them. "It takes a while."

His strip appears in newspapers across the world. It's quite entertaining. Certainly beats the printed crap out of Hagar the Horrible.

I can see Bizarro t-shirts being popular (Japanese love random shirts as much as the next person), and posters and that might work, but we'll see. Village/Vanguard's "Exciting Book Store" might be keen. They lap that stuff up.

If it works my goal is to get Randall at xkcd.com to get me to market his raptor shirts. Then I can retire happy.

I'm Listening To - Pendulum


Warning: This band has apparently sold out because they genre-mix drumnbass with hard rock.

I first met Pendulum in 2003, after hitting a few drumnbass gigs. There was always a track that got everyone jumping around like madmen (people who like drumnbass tend to be mad anyway). My curiosity got the better of me, and I finally jumped on a DJ who had played it, who was nice enough to divulge the name: Vault, by Pendulum. Of my years of frequenting underground dnb gigs, it still remains my favourite.
In a roundabout way I found them again via Freestylers (those skol beat dudes who got themselves famous with a rather uncharacteristic fluoro 90s-esque Push Up). Fasten Your Seatbelts was a dream come true for me: mashing breakbeat with electro? Yes please.
Freestylers came and went for me about as quickly as Bomfunk MCs did in 2000. But Hold Your Colour, Pendulum's first studio album, remains firmly in my Top 20. Its not underground, and they have received adequate criticism from fans about that, but its quite fantastic. The title track is only beaten in a version they used in their Essential Mix for the BBC. In fact, that whole mix is well worth your bandwidth time, so get on it.

Pendulum switched to a live act setup some time ago, but August sees them hit Japan for the first time in the Summer Sonic Music Festival. Needless to say I already have tickets. Been wanting to lose it to them live for over 3 years now.

Their latest album, In Silico is by no means a return to the underground, and actually feels more like a rock band with dnb roots. I think it works. The problem with good acts leaving underground is the fanbase that comes with - look at Greenday and The Foo Fighters. Hopefully the diehard fans keep it up (again, look at the Foo Fighters) so they can still maintain some dignity as an awesome act.
Highlights from In Silico for me include Mutiny and Granite, though the whole album is worth a look (at 10 tracks its quite short too).


The other album on heavy repeat on my pod is Plump DJs long-awaited new release Headthrash. Straight from the first track System Addict, well, I fell in love with breakbeat all over again.
Plump DJs last hit Japan in 2003 - could we see them again this year? Please?

Halfway down, halfway down Nathan Road

Warning: This post features stock footage.

A small clip of walking up Nathan Road in Kowloon, Hong Kong. This is my favourite part of HK - full of tailors who accost you and electronics stores who look legit but I'm sure half their stuff fell off trucks coming out of China. Certainly the price tends to be very haggle-able.
The rest of HK makes me feel like I'm not rich enough - but Nathan Rd doesn't car how much money you've got, as long as you spend some there.

Purikura

Warning: This post has glittery snapshots.

September 2006: Taking silly pictures in arcade purikura booths.

May 2008: Not much has changed.


PS: Thanks to The Amazing Joe & Jen Wonder for coming all the way out to see what Japan is all about! That is the first and last time I will ever sing "Total Eclipse of The Heart" at karaoke.

H

Regardless of how much I despise Idol celebrities in Japan, I'll always have a place in my pants heart for Aki Hoshino.

Disclaimer: This post may give you hairy palms.

I've had this post material for a while, since Mio and I stayed at a hotel in central Osaka during one of my weekend returns from China last year. It might not be the smartest of subject material, seeing as two of my regular readers happen to be my mother and my girlfriend. But hey - its the 21st century, and if you can't talk about porn, you tend to alienate yourself from 90% of young male conversation.

The place we stayed at had a pay-per-view TV, along with a few movies and the free weather/news channels, one of the channels was not-so-conspicuously named "Flamingo 903". Sounds like a Miami radio station. But no, this was an AV channel.

At the time Mio and I had a giggle at the "August lineup" brochure in the room, informing the horny guest of the highlights in the scheduling. I took it home, thinking you all might be interested to know what you were missing out on.

All month the headline feature appears to be "Wet wet housewife", but there is some more eclectic programming if you're into it. Roleplaying wives include "Working wife: 'Sex after working hard all day is the best!'", "What do you do with a drunken wife?"
A little darker is "A girl I like is getting defiled before my eyes but all I can do is get a hard-on", "'Ahh! Mom, stop! I'm your son!' - Omnibus".
Or there's the more educational "I want to go to an expensive brothel at least once!".
If arrogance is your thing, you may want to check out "Dude, I banged my mates mom so many times..."
(I'm going to have to end this explanation, the talk of incest is beginning to get to me. I mean, I know it's 'the family game', but come on)

AV payperview in hotels is something not unique to Japan, but certainly it seems to be a regular feature. Japanese porn in general, in fact, is a surprising and almost ironic common cameo in life here. I mean, this is the country that doesn't have open-mouthed kissing in movies or public television. And yet some form of double-standard means that one can see full frontal bare-breasted women in daily newspapers read by businessmen on the train. The same country in which people don't regularly hug in the street due to embarrassment has cafeterias in which the girls wear short skirts and deliberately create situations to "accidentally" show their underwear. It also has some of the strangest adult entertainment available (including "hentai" anime porn), and they blur genitalia on even the dirtiest movies.

You may think my mother would be shocked by this, but this is not only the woman who said she'd rather have my kids watch a movie with sex in it than one with violence. She's also no stranger to Japanese hotel porn: when her and Alan visited we stayed at a hotel in Hiroshima, where while trying to find the baseball on TV, I inadvertently flicked over to a channel where a woman was vacuuming in a topless maid outfit. Her pirked curiousity still haunts me to this day.

Let me point out that I'm not porno-obsessed, though I'm happy to admit that I'll watch it, though not in groups of horny men, and none of that extra-curricular nonsense (see: scatology). I do think that porn is healthy (in moderation), and I don't think guys who watch it are unfaithful to their girlfriends. As Jen recently pointed out to me (I think it was a Tyra Banks quote), "Doesn't matter where you get your appetite, as long as you eat at home." While I'm sure that was scripted, I'm very impressed, Tyra.

Finally, before you all think Japan is sick and twisted with their crazy adult entertainment, may I draw your attention to one of the growing markets of Japanese animated porn: Mio and I found "My classmates mother" in a DVD store in San Diego. Poor mothers. It appears everyone wants to be a motherfucker these days.
The tongue is purely acting. I'm actually just amused