This week’s evidence the Japanese are hornily insane
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May’s DVD reviews, Part II
<b>Last Action Hero, 1993</b> - If you even vaguely remember it, you get the premise: Kid goes into the movie realm. The problem is the meta-movie can’t sufficiently exaggerate the “movieisms” for the audience to feel they’ve moved from the cartoonish version of “real life” to the supposedly unrealistic movie with the movie, much like when Arnold was elected governator.
<b>Lost: Season 3, Discs 1&2</b> - I’d heard bad things about this season, but there was honestly more story development in the first few episodes this time around than the entire last season in its entirety.
<b>24: Season 6, Discs 1&2</b> - They pretty much gloss over a lot of the lingering threads from last season, but who cares since last season sucked worse than any. They’re finally getting the show back on track.
<b>Extras: Season 2, Discs 1&2</b> - There really is nothing else like this series on tv anywhere, and that alone ought to be reason enough to watch, but if you need more, then two words: Ricky Gervais.
<b>Psyche: Season 1, Disc3</b> - Meh. This show isn’t very good, but I don’t hate it. It painted itself in the corner with an annoying premise, but several of the cast have the potential to make it entertaining anyway.
<b>Planet Terror, 2007</b> - Imagine you could melt down the Die Hard series, everything by George Romero and Tarantino and Rodriguez, then distill it into a formulation of Viagra you take with your eyes. If you can do that, you might have about a tenth of this movie. If you haven’t seen it yet, you better show me the receipt for all the porn you’ve been busy watching to the exclusion of all else instead.
<b>Battlestar Galactica: Season 3: Disc 4, 2006</b> - Possibly the only reasonable excuse outside of porn for not watching <i>Planet Terror</i>.
<b>Wild Palms: Disc 1, 1993</b> - Good premise, lots of plot twists (though you can see many of them coming literally hours in advance), but weak acting and really, really bad direction.
<b>Wizards, 1977</b> - A mish-mash of almost every animation style and technique available at the time, but that’s about the only reason it’s worth watching other than the perpetually prominent nipples of the fairy princess throughout.
<b>Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 2: Disc 2, 1997</b> - They dole out story developments so slowly in this series that you could honestly watch a given season’s episodes in any order and wouldn’t have any trouble with anything but the lack of acting talent.
<b>Gilmore Girls: Season 7: Disc 2, 2006</b> - More of the same and I’m still not complaining.
<b>Penn & Teller: Bullsh*t!: Season 2: Disc 3, 2004</b> - The key distinction is magicians tell you that they’re going to trick you. Everyone who fails to do so is full of bullshit.
<b>Wit, 2001</b> - Cancer makes Emma Thompson look back at her life only she tells the audience about what she sees while Mike Nicols directs. Not as profound as one would think, but intelligently and inventively staged.
<b>Candid Camera: 5 Decades of Smiles: Disc 9, 1949</b> - By this disc it’s pretty much the end of the series, but there are still a lot of (re)inventive takes on the early pranks. Armchair anthropologists should take notes.
<b>PICKS OF THE LITTER:</b> <i>Battlestar Fracking Galactica</i> is the best fracking show on television, and I’m not just saying that because it’s what Dom spent her honeymoon night watching, but <i>Planet Terror</i> is every other movie on steroids only with balls that haven’t atrophied due to steroids. Also, if you loved the BBC version of <i>The Office</i>, you should check out <i>Extras</i>. And if you haven’t seen <i>The Office</i>, then your life is a pale, lifeless version of Dom’s honeymoon night.
A priest walks into an Igloo…
Eskimo: “If I did not know about God and sin, would I go to hell?”
Priest: “No, not if you did not know.”
Eskimo: “Then why did you tell me?”
-Annie Dillard.
(Thanks be to Katie for sharing.)
I’m moving to California.
Yes, I’m back in Texas now, but I don’t know for how long. Why am I moving? Okay, invent an imaginary state with everything I want in it, and you’d basically be describing California, otherwise known as an imaginary state. Or more specifically:
<b>Wherever else you are, it’s still early in California.</b> They get to sleep in while the rest of the country gets everything up and running. By the time morning arrives on the west coast, there’s enough that’s happened everywhere else to make the newspaper worth reading for more than the ads for escort services. The plane ride out there felt like three hours, but when I got out of the airport, it turned out only an hour had passed! The one on the way back took five hours. Unbelievable, I know. Next time I go out there, fuck it. I’m not coming back!
<img src=”http://alexplorer.net/humor/cali/CA_hollywood.jpg”>
<b>I’m Goldilocks.</b> You know how much I hate cold? You know how much I hate hot weather? I’m miserable all year round in Texas. According to all the tourist guides, the temperature in Long Beach 24/7/365 = 73.6 F. I think it’s about a tenth of a degree cooler when there’s a breeze, but I already own a jacket, so I think I’ll survive.
<img src=”http://alexplorer.net/humor/cali/CA_beach.jpg”>
<b>I hate rain.</b> Well, except for the fact that it’s the only thing that keeps my electric bills closer to the black than the national debt. In California, it never rains. In fact, the weather is so nice, they don’t care about shade. Shade is just an impediment to working on their tans. Everything from oaks to cactus grows here, but what do they plant instead? The tallest, skinniest botanical analog of anorexia: Palm trees.
<img src=”http://alexplorer.net/humor/cali/CA_palms.jpg”>
<b>Gay marriage.</b> I think the above comments on the weather sufficiently outline my aversion to Massachusetts (in addition to the fact it’s too hard to spell), so I’m not about to move there. Admittedly, I’m not sure why I care about this issue. I realize the ability for gay people I’ve never met to marry one another shouldn’t affect me any more than the Midwestern rednecks who aren’t affected by the same thing (and yet are disturbed to distraction by the thought of post-nuptial scrotum slapping against hairy ass), but it’d be a lot less angst on my mind. I hadn’t visited Cali before the ban was lifted to make an objective comparison, but I’m going to assume that’d why everyone was so happy while I was there. Or maybe it was the weather. Or the beaches. Or the “medical” marijuana.
<img src=”http://alexplorer.net/humor/cali/CA_gay-parade.jpg”>
<b>The hills are alive with the sound of mylar wings.</b> You know how hard it is to try hang gliding in the majority of Texas? There’s nothing taller than levees in the DFW area, so there’s no way to get up in the air without someone powered towing you. In California, there’s always something worth jumping off of within driving distance of anywhere flatter than Paris Hilton.
<img src=”http://alexplorer.net/humor/cali/CA_mountains.jpg”>
<b>What’s my favorite food again? Oh, yeah. Sushi.</b> Maybe it’s because ninjas can hide in plain sight, but I didn’t see enough Japanese people there to justify an ethnic demand for the stuff, so apparently everyone here shares my tastes in this regard. Virtually every street corner has a small sushi restaurant. In fact, whenever I got in the mood for some, I didn’t bother with the GPS. I just looked for the nearest street light because odds were Democratic electoral votes-to-one that I’d find a sushi place and probably a second one catty corner to it.
<img src=”http://alexplorer.net/humor/cali/CA_sushi.jpg”>
<b>Hippy chicks and surfer girls.</b> I used to love goth girls, but these are my new obsessions. It’s like they never even made it to the ’80s. The novelty of birth control hasn’t worn off for them yet. Granted, I’m an ass guy, and those flowey skirts really don’t show off the curves I’m most interested in, but the little-titty girls make up for it by proudly displaying the bony sternum canvases they’ve spent months giving over to their favorite tattoo parlor artists. And the surfer girls don’t wear much of anything at all, obviously.
<img src=”http://alexplorer.net/humor/cali/CA_surf.jpg”>
<b>The primary modes of transportation in California are (in increasing order of popularity): Yellow Corvettes, skateboards, and hybrid cars.</b> I saw more of the latter in three days than I’ve seen in Texas in six months. I think they passed some legislation that you can get one in exchange for cereal boxtops or something. If you’re likely to skip breakfast, odds are you’ll have to settle for the skateboard. You can tell which types those are because they’re the folks who look like they didn’t get up until noon anyway.
<img src=”http://alexplorer.net/humor/cali/CA_skater.jpg”>
<b>It’s always Halloween.</b> Everywhere else in the world I have to wait for that one special day to come around. Out here there’s always someone dressed up… or in some state of undress. I don’t think anyone is even paying these people to show up; they’re just costumed for the fun of it, whether you’re talking about on the Sunset Strip or Venice Beach or, well, pretty much anywhere and everywhere.
<img src=”http://alexplorer.net/humor/cali/CA_sunset-strip.jpg”>
<b>Dominique lives here.</b> It took me almost a decade to go out and see her again, and that’s bordering on my threshold for writing a Time-Travel episode about her. Granted, I’ll miss the rest of you when I move, but if you come out and visit, odds are pretty good you’ll stay too.
<img src=”http://alexplorer.net/humor/cali/CA_dom.jpg”>
Untitled drunk story No. 2
Maybe I’m just callous, but the way I figure it, if you’re drunk enough to pass out in the busy parking lot of the bar you got plastered in, you deserve the Darwin Award conferred by the tires rolling over your head.
My friend Rachel and her room/suitemates disagreed. They wanted to pick this guy up and take him home out of harm’s way.
“Leave him be,” I said. “Just drag him out the road maybe.” After all, we’d only just gotten to the bar. Now the girls wanted to detour back to deliver charity to a victim of his own stupidity?
I was overruled, but I understood their position. It was the position of having been in that position before and being glad someone was in the position to help them. They wanted to pay the favor forward, even if the recipient would never be able to slur a “thank you.”
The car was crowded on our way there, but even more so now with an additional occupant. Why some of us didn’t just wait at the bar for the others to get back from taking Drunk Guy home is a mystery. Instead our charge occupied the passenger seat while I sat across the laps of the three girls in the back. We didn’t even know how far we’d be traveling.
“Hey, buddy,” Rachel said. She was driving. “Where do you live?”
The guy mumbled something. He was barely conscious to begin with, and the effort of trying to speak was all it took to put him under. They couldn’t get him to repeat whatever it was he said. All anyone could decipher was “Oak.” Guess what every apartment complex around the edge of campus was named? Oak-something. There was Oakmont, Oakhurst, Oak Lane, and so on. I have no idea how they arrived at a decision, but we headed to one of those possible destinations.
We had barely gotten on the road at this point when Drunk Guy reaches for the handle and gets the door to fly open. Granted, we’re only doing about 15 MPH here since we’re cutting through campus, but we’re going around a turn at the time. His body is lurching forward and out the open door toward the pavement rushing past us below. From my lap-top vantage of being both elevated and pushed almost between the front seats, I reach over and grab the guy’s collar to keep him from scraping his head across the curb.
“No, let him go,” Rachel says. “He’s gonna spew!”
Sure enough, that’s why he was going for the handle. He somehow had the presence of mind to reach for it.
When he appeared to be finished, we reeled him back in and started again on our way. While I thought the door incident was a gold medal feat in the Drunk Olympics, what happened next was even more so.
See, I can’t figure out most folks’ car radio without giving it a quick look over, but as soon as Drunk Guy was back inside the car (after having been in it only a total of maybe three minutes at this point, most of which he was unconscious for), he reaches over, turns up the radio, then promptly passes out. <i>Lyin’ Eyes</i> by the Eagles was on. We all looked at one another like, “Did he just do that?” Where Mr. Near-Death found this amazing reservoir of dexterity we’ll never know. We couldn’t interview him on this side of the finish line, so we just drove on.
We headed over to one of those Oaksomething apartment complexes and, seeing that none of his keys worked in the lock of the door he seemed to indicate belonged to him, we left his drunk, passed-out ass on the curb. Yep, you read that irony right: We left him in essentially the same fix as he started out in, his fate merely delayed until a little after 2am when the drunks came home from the bars and ran over him in their parking lot the same as they would have a couple hours earlier at the bar’s parking lot.
This week’s evidence the Japanese are happily insane
…and who find this a relaxing alternative to a commute on the Tokyo subway.
May’s DVD reviews, Part I
Teeth, 2006 - With the premise of a midwestern girl with a vagina dentata, there’s so much potential to rip on the Christian right and their imposed ignorance of human sexuality and even fundamental anatomy. But then you take a first-time director who penned the script himself and what you get is a clumsy, campy horror movie that is ineffective at playing to either camp or horror audiences. In short: No teeth.
Battlestar Galactica: Season 3: Disc 3, 2006 - Dani never gets into sci-fi, and to her this show is fucking crack. Normally I rotate through my Netflix queue so that, once I’ve finished a season, I don’t really come back to a show until I get through some other things I’ve been wanting to watch. Not so in this case. At the end of the first season, Dani was all like, “When does the next disc come.” I’m like, “I haven’t added it to the queue. I thought we’d watch [insert other shows I only thought she was into] first.” No, we had to add it. You should too.
Wholly Moses, 1980 - Really, really weak attempt by mostly American comedians to do to the Old Testament what the Pythons did to the New with The Life of Brian which you absolutely should see instead.
Gilmore Girls: Season 7: Disc 1, 2006 - Nothing special here. If you didn’t like the first six years of the same fast dialog, hot mom, and no plot developments that have always characterized this series, then you aren’t going to jump in at this point.
Where the Truth Lies, 2005 - Pretty good mystery. Lots of sex. They made this for me, mostly, but I’ll let you see it since you’ll enjoy it as well, I think.
Buffy the Vampire Slayer: Season 2: Disc 1, 1997 - After a really, really tired start to the series, it’s finally starting to pick up some steam. Some intrigue introduced early on in this season actually has me wanting to watch it for more than that band camp girl.
The Warriors, 1979 - Somewhat updated “director’s version” (but not a new cut exactly) of the cult classic. It’s definitely worth a viewing.
The Whales of August, 1987 - Starring an almost-dead Lillian Gish, Betty Davis, and Vincent Price, you’ll feel like this movie lasts almost as long as their respective careers summed.
Twelve Chairs, 1970 - Mediocre early Mel Brooks movie. You already know the good ones, so there’s no need to track this one down unless you’re a completist, but odds are you stopped trying at Life Stinks when his movies started to do the same.
The Office (the original BBC version), Season 1, Disc 1 - It’s been years since Dani and I watched this, so we gave it another go during a lull between Netflix discs (I own it, believe it or not). It’s still just as hilarious as it ever was, though I hesitate to recommend it to viewers who have only seen the American version that plays like slapstick (albeit a sophisticated variety thereof) by comparison.
Bug, 2006 - Potentially interesting, it just becomes silly and borders on self-parody were it not for the attempts to be gross that ground it in plotless sensationalism. Bugger off!
PICKS OF THE LITTER: Atom Egoyan’s Where the Truth Lies never found its audience unless it happens to be reading this, in which case you shout give it a shot. The Warriors acknowledges its comic book influences, but while you’re watching for the next Batman flick, check this out. Oh, and did I mention The Office was great? Yes, the BBC version. And even if I hadn’t seen Battlestar Fracking Galactica this month, I’d still recommend it. Honestly, every time I think they’re going to slip up and let a weak script slip through, they fracking surprise me (as with this disc).
…and thanks for all the (raw) fish.
After you’ve lived enough days and eaten three meals and lots of snacks in each of them, you eventually start to think you’ve finally tried everything. At that point, going out to eat means you aren’t in search of “new and different” so much as “good and enough.” Although I like lots of variety in other aspects of my life, I’ve never been the type to seek out exotic foods, so I probably wouldn’t have crossed over into “new and different” had my friends not dragged me out to have sushi.
That was definitely their thing. Both Zack and Andy were regulars at Sushi Yama. Andy just loved sushi and, being a casual vegetarian (i.e., not a Nazi about it) he enjoyed California rolls and the like. Zack wasn’t so nuts for the stuff, but his roommate Ken worked as the prep chef there.
I didn’t know anything about sushi: what it was, how it was different than sashimi, etc. Zack and Andy usually ordered a mix of things and we all shared. To my surprise, I found I loved the taste and texture of raw fish. I grew up in New Orleans, and I was sick of seafood. To be honest, I hated it. Having been fed the stuff all my life, I would have been happy to never have another bite for the rest of my days. Of course, that was fried fish. This was different.
I was amazed first of all that sushi didn’t taste anything like I expected. Specifically, it didn’t taste fishy at all. It didn’t smell that way either. Most of us have really bad association with a few chance encounters with bad-smelling fish, and that’s enough to instill a fear of the raw variety for a lifetime. Quality sushi can cure you of that aversion. This was completely the opposite of a bad experience. For example, tuna in particular was like an exceptional piece of rare steak without any trace of sinew… and it was essentially cholesterol-free. You couldn’t come up with a better equation for the perfect food for me.
“You like seafood now?” my mom asked when she heard I was going out for sushi (not really knowing what it was. If she had, I would have gotten an ill-informed lecture about parasites).
“Well, yes,” I said.
“But you hated fish growing up.”
“Yes,” I explained. “That’s because everyone in Louisiana ruins it.”
I couldn’t even tell you what all we ordered that first night. My friends just got me to try whatever they were ordering. It was a happy experience though not knowing what to expect and being pleasantly surprised in virtually every case.
The only near-miss was actually more like being grazed by a bullet. See, I noticed that the Japanese had an unexpected fondness for avocados. They seemed to put them in rolls for one thing, so when I saw the green blob sitting on the edge of one of the trays at our table, I thought “Oh, this must be the Japanese version of guacamole!”
As I reached for it with my chop sticks (which I was still using awkwardly at that point), Andy grabbed my wrist and said, “No!” He introduced me to wasabi. “Try a little bit on the end of the of the sticks,” he said. I broke off a piece. “No,” he corrected, “Less than that.” I scraped half of it away. “No. Even less than that.” I tried it.
Holy fuck, the stuff was strong! I was never a fan of spicy food when I lived in Louisiana, and I certainly didn’t move to Texas out of a love for Mexican cuisine. Wasabi was even stronger in a seemingly equivalent amount. Fortunately, it was also short-lasting. Whereas the capsaicin-based spicy most Americans (inexplicably) enjoy tends to stick around and burn the lips, tongue, and (for an unfortunate few who aren’t careful where they put their barbecue sauce-covered hands) the eyes, at least the white-hot burn of wasabi goes away almost as fast as its full intensity comes on.
It took less than a week before we got to be regulars at Sushi Yama and hit the place for the specials just like everyone else: Tuesday for the half-price a la carte nigiri or Wednesdays for the $10 bento boxes. Oh, and we’d do weekends too from time to time if Ken was working.
Everyone else came out for the specials most nights as well. We found ourselves waiting outside the place if we got there after maybe 7pm. The restaurant was situated in the elbow of a small shopping center in the middle of nowhere. Well, it was surrounded by loads of tech companies, but it was “nowhere” socially. Presumably all the Japanese clientele poured in from the businesses. They filled the place even though it held only fewer than a hundred patrons and were hardly staffed to handle even that many. There was usually just Ken and the owner working the sushi bar plus one or two waitresses (one of whom was the owner’s daughter).
The crowd didn’t die down until around 9pm. We managed to get a seat well before then, but we always stayed around talking for hours. Most of the time the place was empty by 10pm except for my friends and me. Sometimes there were a few other patrons, but not many, and usually they were Americans as well. That seemed to last until around midnight. At that point the place seemed to kick into high gear again for some reason. Whereas the crowd before was mixed, the next wave was almost entirely Japanese. Maybe they were jet-lagged and still living on Tokyo time? Although the posted hours said they closed at 2am, it wasn’t uncommon for people to be there until 4am, especially on weekends. Granted, I never stuck around that late, but Ken was forced to keep serving them until the tsunami was over.
The lull between these waves was the most interesting time for me. Ken was able to take a break or at least talk with us while he worked at the bar cutting things up for the next invasion of customers. Occasionally he’d ask if we’d ever tried something like, say, sea urchin. If we hadn’t, he’d fix us some on the house. It was the best way to be exposed to new things, and not just in terms of food.
In addition to authentic Japanese customers, everything else about the place was right from Japan as well. In the entryway were a couple of small bookshelves covered with all sorts of Japanese publications: newspapers, magazines, anime books, etc. And, naturally, the place had karaoke. Granted, it was rare that anyone actually went up and sang, but the player shuffled randomly through selections of backing videos on laserdiscs (this was 1998 after all). These were almost random in their pairings of images with the lyrics, typically montages of anything a videographer could capture around the city.
The only folks who actually did karaoke were occasional groups of the aforementioned Japanese businessmen, and only when they were completely drunk. It was unintentionally comical, something like you would expect to see on an Asian version of an amateur talent competition devoid of any real talent. And then factor in alcohol-clouded judgment of proper intonation, articulation, and timing, and you have a recipe the Iron Chef couldn’t compete with.
In spite of all this, aside from clips of similar happy insanity served up by YouTube or a few cartoons I grew up watching, my interest in much else Japanese never really took off. Except for sushi. Being bitten by the sushi bug left me constantly craving the stuff for the first few years, and while I’m not as rabidly intense about eating it to the point I got kidney stones (true story), it’s still my favorite food/experience.
Monday’s Musical Madness
You make it through this, I buy you a beer. Deal?
(Thanks, Isaac… I think.)
This week’s evidence the Japanese are happily insane
