I fear that my barrage of reviews in the past few days has had a dampening effect on the rs community. Although I suspect everyone is busy with summertime fun. I know I’m all over the place with the job hunt.

Mini Blog: Is this the greatest page on wikipedia? The correct answer: could be.

I wanted to give a mention to ross’s latest project Shadoweyes. He’s been posting pages for free online and I’m liking it. I especially like the girls’ feet on page 8.

I was playing some Prince of Persia: The Sands of Time last night. I’m like, really?! Who’s going to see the movie? Or should I ask, who’s going to see the movie again?

Trying to set up the “Darren Interview Part 2″ podcast but that’s pretty tough.

ICHI: I can not get over this picture.

This is what this movie is about. The tear, the blush, the way she holds the sword backhanded. This is a picture of strength and resolve.

Zatoichi has been featured in a number of films. The basic character: a blind master swordsman travelling through feudal Japan using his skills to help the downtrodden. I however only knew of the series from the 2003 film which was good but didn’t leave the same kind of impression on me as ICHI did.

ICHI, takes the basic premise of the Zatoichi movies but makes the main character a female goze singer. The movie begins with Ichi rescuing one of her fellow goze singers from a group of lowlifes. During that encounter she meets the other main character, Toma, a ronin who’s completely badass when wielding a stick but who is psychologically incapable of drawing a blade. There is some pretty good chemistry here with Ichi as the icy, wounded, and quiet beauty and Toma the kind hearted dork. Though Ichi is eminently talented I really liked that she does not come across as completely invincible. Definitely watch this movie, Ichi shreds on the shamisen. Also, really loved the period wardrobe, especially Ichi’s main outfit.

At first I didn’t think the Tokyo Vice review was of interest but then it got a pretty good discussion for which I’m grateful.

Mini-blog: “The birds remind me of what remains.” I think Immolate Yourself is the last album Telefon Tel Aviv put out. I’m only familiar with “The Birds” but it’s a pretty good song. I AM GOING FOR A WALK!

Ok, I’m back from my walk. I took the trail to the town line road which, if you know Rochester, is one of the craziest areas around. Getting back to “The Birds” I wonder if any of it is somehow about the issues behind Cooper’s unfortunate od/suicide?

Spice and Wolf:

I love Spice and Wolf. I mean, I just love the show. And I’ll say it again if you don’t believe me.

There was a time, however, when I was fairly uninterested. Just from reading forums, I first found out about the concept of a “waifu” in the context of Spice and Wolf. A “waifu” is basically when someone, usually a lonely guy, declares in no uncertain terms a particular devotion to a female anime character, to the extent that it’s basically a husband and wife relationship. Many felt this way for Holo, (or Horo depending on the translation) the wolf deity from Spice and Wolf. I’d feel wrong casting judgment, but it made me hesitant about the show.

I don’t know at what point I had a change of heart. I think I was just bored one afternoon and noticed that there were some episodes streaming. Who can I thank for this because, as stated above, I ended up thinking Spice and Wolf is really rad?

Kraft Lawrence is a traveling merchant in a time evocative of late medieval Europe. Modern agriculture has basically put a harvest deity, Holo, out of work. Holo is a magical wolf but she can also take the form of an attractive young woman with ears and a tail. At the beginning of the story Lawrence purchases some very important wheat which leads to Holo inviting herself along on his travels. Their goal is to make enough money so that Lawrence can realize his dream of opening his own shop and to bring Holo to her homelands in the north. Along the way, we see how the transient lifestyle and the details of medieval economics nurtures a deep connection between one “Spice” and “Wolf.” “Spice” because, after a successful business venture, Lawrence asks for payment in pepper.

You can’t overstate the economic aspect of this show. I had this whole mathematical metaphor for Spice and Wolf that I wanted to explain with diagrams. Just look at this planetmath entry about short exact sequences. Think of ‘B’ as an entire pie, then think of ‘A’ as a single slice of pie that you take out and ‘C’ as the pie that’s left over after you take ‘A.’ In the parlance we say that ‘B’ extends ‘A’ and ‘C.’ If you give this some thought you might wonder if ‘B’ is the only way to extend ‘A’ and ‘C’. It depends on what sort of mathematical objects you are studying. There is always one way which is called the direct sum which I tend to think of as a way to blindly combine two things, by construction into one object. Anyway, I’m really going off the deep end, but what I wanted to say was that Spice and Wolf is like a direct sum. You take a kind of man and woman romantic story and put it next to a course in medieval economics. The point is that you don’t really change around the romance element, you add something to it.

Does that make sense?

Anyway, watch Spice and Wolf and you will come away with thoughts of coins, barter, market values, and credit and you won’t be disappointed.

Oh, and just for the record Spice and Wolf has a really great ED. The opening lyrics are pretty thought provoking.

Spice and Wolf ED

As I was mentioning before I’ve got a bunch of stuff I’ve been meaning to review. I wonder if anyone ran out to borders to check out Bunny Drop. Mini-blog: thinking of cheeseburgers. Be sure to watch the video linked in the post.

Tokyo Vice Jake Adelstein: It’s no secret that I’ve been into Japanese stuff recently. It’s been years since L.A.M.B. was burning up the top 100 and that wave of interest seems to have passed. But I don’t know. I’ve gotta say that a lot of entertainment and so forth produced by our culture just doesn’t appeal to me much. I think it’s best not to try to explore the psychology of that. When you look to a culture that is not your own for guidance you get the one two punch of encountering something that seems new and different and also the luxury of projecting your own hopes and fears onto something you don’t implicitly grasp.

Then there is Tokyo Vice by Jake Adelstein. The subtitle reads, “an American reporter on the police beat in Japan.” I think that subtitle along with the picture on the front cover tells you everything you need to know. The promise: a harrowing and enlightening journey through the means streets of Tokyo with wizened in-the-thick-of-it Adelstein serving as “Virgil” to the reader’s “Dante.” So did it deliver? A moment of thought should convince you that it emphatically didn’t. Would I be writing this review otherwise? No, I’d be pulling 6 Gs drifting through mountain passes in a tuned Lancer EVO while tying a tourniquet around my shoulder with my teeth and texting “dinner @ 9″ to an international supermodel. I’d be closing deals on a private beach in Hawaii, throwing back the so-many-I-lost-count round of premium scotch and getting my assistant to double check the private jet.

All seriousness aside, there is kind of a perfect storm of problems with this book. I can forgive what I consider not so great writing if there is a lot of compelling information. Or, conversely, good writing can go a long way for a not so interesting story. But I feel this lacks details and lacks good writing, for example

If you want to know the number of years any particular woman has been working in the industry, just listen to the timbre of her voice. If she sounds like Scatman Crothers, she’s a veteran.

… *birds chirping* …

There’s nothing really inconsistent about the narrative but I found it strange how Adelstein talks about rubbing elbows with mafiosos in dives and then he is talking about optimizing his PC to play Thief 2.

But yeah, I’m sorry to be so negative and that I don’t bring a recommendation with this post. There is some interesting information in Tokyo Vice. What comes to mind is the discussion about those full body tattoos. Apparently they kill a person’s sweat glands and can make it difficult to flush out toxins.

Recommended if you’re mark:

Snow Snow For Lucy from SnowSnowForLucy on Vimeo.

As I told Zach I’ve been going bananas with thesis stuff recently so I haven’t had the chance to write much. But I’ve got a significant amount of things that I’ve watched or read that I’ve wanted to review.

But before I get into that. I just wanted to say that I’ve been thinking about adding a dish to my cooking repertoire. If you watch anime you’ll often see characters eating a plate of food that’s like half white rice and half meat and vegetables in sauce. That’s Japanese Curry. I ain’t never had it. Anybody have any particular thoughts on this. Is all curry pretty much the same? Part of me wishes that I could get an electric fryer and make my own fried chicken and donuts and stuff but that seems like a dangerous thing for a novice cook to be messing around with.

Anyway, ross and nick have been holding shit down on the podcast, especially the latest two episodes so be sure to give a listen. I’ve kind of been getting back into music recently. I think it’s sort of like a forestry kind of thing, where the life of the forest will be renewed by a fire, allowing everything to grow back. I’ve been jamming to some Japanator radio. Can’t say I’m overall impressed with the music but I’m exploring a lot of new concepts such as listening to stuff I’m not gaga over. It helps me concentrate in a way. But there are some things I think are actually pretty good. I can recommend episode 130, especially the second block with the bump of chicken song.

To unwind the other day I went to borders and bought a manga volume. Here is a review.

Bunny Drop Yumi Unita: Let me start off by saying something.

This manga is heartwarming.

The premise of Bunny Drop, when relatives gather at the funeral of a patriarch they encounter his 6 year old illegitimate daughter Rin. She’s extremely shy and reserved around her family except 30 year old bachelor Daikichi, who resembles his grandfather.

Frustrated that no one will step up and offer to take Rin in, Daikichi brashly offers to take care of her. Obviously, all kinds of insanity ensues as he tries to balance raising a child and working a full time job.

Why would anybody want to read this?

I think I may have some sense of what a story like this speaks to. I’m about to turn thirty myself. Although I don’t really find myself outright wishing I had kids at this point I admit I think it’s something that I’m missing on a subconscious level. Sort of like a phantom limb. The genius of Bunny Drop is that it pushes all the buttons of a guy transitioning into real adulthood, maybe who feels that he’s missing some important milestones in life. However, the contrivances of the plot allow him not to feel directly challenged. So you get all the emotion without the unpleasantness of having to confront your own issues.

Yeah, but definitely check it out. And look out for more reviews.

Very sad news from the world of avant-metal…ISIS is disbanding.  With the end of ISIS, is their strange little corner of the musical universe at an end as well?  For whatever reason, I can’t really get excited about Pelican, Red Sparowes et al. without ISIS out front, waving the flag.

While I’m of course very disappointed by the news, at least the band went out on a high note, after releasing the excellent Wavering Radiant.  Weirdly, I found out about the ISIS break-up through NPR, which has decided to throw its high-brow librarian image to the wind and stream some blistering metal on its website.

The latest round of bands gigging at Sacramento’s Fire Escape and Boardwalk may not live up to the lofty example of Blownload, Sexrat, or the Snot Cocks as far as hilariously bad band names, but June does offer some decent pickings. Enjoy:

Friday, June 11 @ The Fire Escape

“Summer Showdown 2″ (night 1)

Fallrise

Zuhg

Dogfood (that sounds about right)

Exhale

Saturday, June 12 @ The Fire Escape

“Summer Showdown 2″ (night 2)

Splitself

March into Paris

Allinaday

Flatline

(I’m hoping for a Fallrise-Splitself final round.  Maybe they’ll form a Voltron-like super band called Fallrisesplitself.  Also, a band called Coldcokt is playing at the ‘Scape on 6/25.)

Saturday, June 12 @ The Boardwalk

Conducting From the Grave

The Antioch Synopsis (sounds like a terrible Tom Clancy-esque thriller)

Journal

Aurelia

Beyond all Ends

Lifeforms

My Murderous Intentions

Karakas (because the city of Caracas, Venezuela sounds badass when misspelled!)

(By the way, how long did this show run?  Two days?  Could it still be going on?)

Does anyone still take Kristol seriously?? Obama, re: BP oil spill:

And I don’t sit around just talking to experts because this is a college seminar; we talk to these folks because they potentially have the best answers, so I know whose ass to kick.

Kristol, re: Obama:

Guess the criticism of him as a professor and seminar leader has gotten to him. But his pseudo-macho defense of “talking to experts” is itself professorial: He talks to experts so he’ll “know whose ass to kick.” Real men don’t need experts to tell them whose asses to kick.

That’s right! Real men force their perceptions to conform to their a priori assumptions about the world so that whose ass needs kicking is a fait accompli!!!
(more…)

An all spin doctors and hootie and the blowfish radio station. Can we do this with last.fm somehow?

Anyway, here’s some music to get you through the day or push you over the edge as the case may be.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hNLi6feWa3s

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qG74eVb6V10

Did anyone check out this discussion on the comics journal. This is exactly what puts me off of the american indie scene. I mean, in the first 5 minutes they’re namedropping rick moody. Isn’t he like the east coast version of ward churchill? Give me a break.