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
The Junky Next Door
There was a copy of what was probably either Naked Lunch or Exterminator! sitting out in my room one day.
“Oh, that guy,” my dad said. “He used to live next door to your aunt.” That would be his sister. We’d been to her house several times in my childhood; she’d had the same place for most of her life.
“Really?” I asked. I was just getting into Burroughs at the time, so I didn’t know a lot of the specifics of his past, just that he’d done a lot of drugs. I didn’t know that so much from the “about the author” blurb as much as just reading almost anything he wrote. I mean, if he wasn’t high, there was something seriously wrong with the guy.
My dad told me he didn’t know a whole lot about William S. Burroughs, just that his sister said he was a weird guy who’d kept to himself most of the time. She remembered him because he turned out to be famous some years after the fact of his brief residence in New Orleans. At that point though he hadn’t even been published yet. Today there’s a plaque in front of the house indicating that he’d once lived there.
One night relatively late, Burroughs had gone over to his neighbor’s/my aunt’s house and said that he wanted to sell her the place. He offered her the house for what was a steal, although it was more money than anyone of modest means (i.e., anyone living in that neighborhood) would likely have on hand no matter how good the offer was.
She told him she would certainly love to buy the house at that price but that it would take her a few days to get that amount together for him. Burroughs looked disappointed and left. He basically rescinded the offer and said he was in a hurry.
I don’t know if he ever sold the house or just abandoned it, but he was gone very quickly after that. I’m surprised to hear that he owned it outright considering he was only there a short time. I don’t know the state of his finances at this point. However, he was likely independently wealthy, having been an heir to the Burroughs Adding Machine fortune, his grandfather’s company.
I had always assumed his rush to get out of town was the consequence of the infamous incident involving him playing a drunk (or more likely stoned) version of William Tell that resulted in him putting a bullet through his wife’s brain. I wondered how this had escaped mention in the oral re-telling of my family’s encounters with him. Surely they must have heard a shot, discovered a body, something… hadn’t they?
It wasn’t until many years later that I got around to reading Burroughs’ first novel, Junky that the precise chronology of events was assembled. The book is an autobiographical tale of the author’s experiences with heroin (and a few other drugs), and mentions the time he and his wife Joan Vollmer spent in New Orleans.
I forget the exact circumstances recounted in that novel, but apparently there was something on the books along the lines of the “three strikes” law. Whether that was maybe something as simple as probation or some such, I can’t remember anymore. Burroughs hadn’t done serious jail time up to this point, but now he had been busted once again, and if he stuck around until this went to trial, he was likely to be sent up this time around.
Before the paperwork caught up with them, he and Joan split town in a hurry and headed down to Mexico. He stayed out of prison, but it didn’t turn out to be escape for Joan after all. The combination of easy access to boys and guns in a lawless land overflowing with tequila turned out to be lethal in her case. Burroughs shot her dead roughly three years after they fled New Orleans. He received a two year suspended sentence, but had already returned to the States by that point anyway.
Powers of Ten + Chicane…
…equals AWESOME. (Unbiased opinion from me, even though I made this.)
This is the core of the short film Powers of Ten (1977) by Charles and Ray Eames. I cut the opening titles and end credits in order to have a nicely-framed union with the music (i.e., neither extend beyond the other’s boundaries except to the closing title card). Other than trimming it and a slight fade-in at the beginning, no other edits were performed; no change to the tempo/frame rate, etc. (Despite appearances, I manipulated the music, not the other way around). The original audio of the film was removed which consisted of narration and some rather dated music. Please see the original film (copies are available elsewhere on YouTube) as it describes much of what you are seeing and (at the extremes in particular) probably not taking in unless you are well-versed in multiple science disciplines.
The music is a somewhat expanded mix of Empires by electronic artist Chicane (aka Nick Bracegirdle). I extended the track in several spots to get it to fall on the visual cues (e.g., it goes down-tempo as the pull-back winds down, etc.). I’m new at this so there are a few noticeable splices in the mix where I built bridges out of scraps sampled from elsewhere in the original track, but there are a couple spots where I hear splices in the original recording, and these are in areas that I didn’t even touch, so good luck guessing which are mine if you’ve never heard this piece before.
Wednesday’s Wedding Whackiness
…just to remind you there are bigger nerds than me out there.
Hey, back up a second!
Ever since Katrina hit and I thought my family lost nearly everything (They didn’t), I developed a healthy sense of paranoia about making backups. I never want to lose my photos, music, everything I’ve written, web pages, things friends and family have sent me, etc. So here are some of the things I do and you should be doing.
Scan it. I have gradually shifted from analog to digital with everything I can. We only have one copy of most of the photos in our family albums. If those were ever lost in a fire or flood, even the negatives might very likely be lost in the blaze or deluge. I have a Pentax 600, and that’s the easiest scanner on the market for digitizing your photographic history. It also handles single sheets of paper, so I have also scanned in hundreds of pages of letters. The obvious advantage of digital is that you can make an infinite number of copies, so I back up the digital versions and distribute them to family and friends.
Burn it. A relatively quick and dirty way to back everything up is on old-fashioned cd- or dvd-roms. These have the disadvantage that you can’t update them as easily as you do the contents or your hard drive, and you also have to do a bit of math to see what will fit on each disc (e.g., your mp3 collection may be spread over several whereas you might be able to fit My Documents with your pics and other miscellany).
Image it. One of the best investments I ever made was an external hard drive. I only plug it in long enough to back up the entire hard drive (except for system and program files since those would need to be freshly installed in the case of a crash, so why bother?). I started off with a 180MB external drive which was more than enough to accommodate everything I needed from my 120MB hard drive a couple times over… so I was able to save subsequent back-ups concurrently. Over time I had to upgrade, so I went with a 500MB external (contrast with my 200MB hard drive at the moment). Want to know what I did with the original external HD? Read on.
Bank on it. Like I said, Hurricane Katrina made me realize that an entire home (or subdivision even) could be lost. It didn’t matter that I backed everything up if the backups were lost with the CPU. After I used the external drive to image the contents of the computer, I put it someplace safe from theft or damage: in the bank. Maybe a safety deposit box is going a bit overboard, but it’s cheaper even than insuring the computer. Now, short of perhaps a nuclear strike, everything should be secure from any event that would affect the computer itself. I keep the larger hard drive at home and update that regularly whenever I’m about to do anything significant to the computer (for fear I’ll have to do a clean install if something goes awry). The safety deposit box is a less-frequent back-up, but it’s money well-spent.
