Showbiz!

• Not everything is about Japan and nerd shit

  I get it. Last week I attempted to address the serious problem of racism with a video of a white guy talking about Japan. This was a follow up to the previous weeks Simpsons reference against it, which brought up the eternal nerd debate: does a Simpsons quote stand alone or carry with it the context of the entire episode? To be honest, I misremembered the quote as being spoken by Jasper Beardly, who is more my guy than Granpa Simpson… Do we need to go all the way down that road? I was trying to avoid invoking the name of Debito Arudo who wrote this article over a month ago now. The thing about Debito is he has all the sensitivity and people-watching skills of a comedian with none of the sense of humor. Just to give him some credit, he did not invent the term microagression, it’s just rarely used by white people in an environment entirely of their own volition. But some of the backlash against him is just as lacking in perspective. He ain’t Rush Limbaugh, he’s Dwight from The Office. If you had to work with this guy in real life, you wouldn’t bother with an entire counter-argument, you’d just put his stapler in a jello mold, right? It’s just not worth it.

• The Flaming Lips/Badu video

  Apparently a lot of people have been carrying around some deep hat towards Wanye Coyne already for some reason, just waiting to unleash it. I always thought he was cool, don’t love all his music, but…yeesh he did not handle this well. I saw the video and, yeah, it does not look like it’s done. I did not want to get involved in an argument about this on twitter but I think it’s worth mentioning in this context. I don’t think it was really about race, unless Coyne was assuming the Badus were way more into drugs than they are (the only theme of the thing seems to be drug-fueled ironic pretension), which…yeah. A bum trip.

• HALCALI, shiritori & more racism

  Some people think just the act of appropriating a culture you aren’t part of is racist and sometimes those people are right. So it can be for some. But that’s not any group any group I like. Then, someone posted this video on tumblr about an African-American doctor who has gone through some blatantly inexcusable racist bullshit. They basically called him a gorilla and tried to make it seem like a harmless joke. (It gets worse from there, watch the whole thing.)

  Then I remembered the video for Twinkle Star…oh, right.

  
  OK…the man-in-a-gorilla-costume is a common trope in J-comedy and is not racist by itself. Shaky ground though, admittedly. I think someone stole it from Benny Hill one day like 40 years ago and they just haven’t got enough of it. However(there’s always a however), the gorilla-man is not usually wearing a sideways baseball cap and carrying a ghettoblaster. That’s pretty questionable. But that part at least is part of a visual shiritori game.

  I mentioned my tumblr was kinda like that, but this Halcali video is the real thing. The last syllable of each object in the video is the first syllable of the next object.

  Halcaliハルカリ-ringoリンゴ-gorillaゴリラ-radikaseラジカセ-sentakukiせんたくき-­kitsuneキツネ-nekoネコ-concordコンコルド-donutドーナツ-tsunoツノ-noteノート-tok­yoとうきょう-usi-no-sippoうしのしっぽ-Polaroidポラロイド-drumドラム-musuu-no-ho­siむすうのほし-shikaシカ-kabanかばん

  Thank you, truehome8, I had lost my notes on this, and that fansite is down.

  [ringo=apple, radikase=boombox, sentakuki=washing machine, kitsune=fox, neko=cat, tsuno=antler, ushi no shippo=cow's tail, musuu no hoshi=infinite number of stars, shika=deer, kaban=handbag]

  The second gorilla appearance is a lot worse, when the black drummer morphs into the gorilla. That’s just a callback. A racist callback. The worst thing about it is it makes the first appearance a lot less defensible. It could be random wackiness, but it’s clear the director did intend the gorilla to be a stand in for a black dude. So that’s fucked up. If you think I’m a terrible person for still liking the video, I accept that judgement as a small price for enjoyment of an otherwise awesome vid. Actually, I really really wish that was not in the video. I think the great and try to get other people into it and it does not not to make more obstacles for itself. I hadn’t really thought about it in a while, since I got (legally bought) those first albums shortly after hearing the (illegally posted) songs on youtube and haven’t gone back to them as much as I listen to the records. But anyway, please, do not equate these two incidents. One is unfortunate racial naivety, the other is a man losing his job just because he tried to get an apology for being treated like an edgy insult comic who are the only people who used to (and should) be “roasted” before everyone decided they were comic geniuses. White people!

• Conservative libertarians

  I posted the results of an online political test that has me down as a left-libertarian. I took this test on paper when I was in middle school and got the same result. I took it again and figured it would be a lot closer to some Democrats…somewhere, since I registered as one in 04. Everyone gets more conservative in old age, right? Hey, that’s just how the test comes out. The last left libertarian type politician to actually hold an office that I am aware of was Ghandi. Do not let the label fool you. Ron Paul is not Ghandi. BTW, here’s an excellent point-by-point takedown of conservative revisionism.

• AnimeNext

  In general, if something is going on that costs any amount of money I’m not at it. I used my tax refund this year to see some shows I absolutely needed to see and that money is gone. I am in deep bill-paying hibernation mode until further notice. But I have to post this video:

  
  

  New Jersey: a place filled with nature where everyone is your friend.

  I think AKB and various scandals have warped Hello Project into something not as fun as it was. It all started as a goof, and it’s obvious at one point the girls were given certain roles to play but for a while there they seemed to be interacting as genuine people. It all seems very scripted now and it’s not the greatest script. But I love the idea of anyone not having an automatically negative image in their minds of New Jersey. Parts of it really are nice…ish. It’s close to New York, you can’t deny that.

• Surviving Japan

  I donated to this Kickstarter a few months ago and got the digital download. Haven’t watched the whole thing yet because I have a stupid blog that I have to write. It’s worth a look.

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Last week’s shuu revyoo was the 100th post. A yay yay.

• Loose thoughts

  (This should be the last week of bringing up things more than a week old. It’s counterproductive. I don’t need to talk about everything that happened, it’s just to make sure that I write something every week.)

• Racism (for real)

  Some more thought needs to go saying something about this, but right not I’ve got this video in my my draft of an Australian martial arts instructor who lives in Japan with the disclaimer that I do not live in Japan, do not teach martial arts and am not from Australia:
  

  Ongoing discussion.

• Protests everywhere

  I’m not in ’em. Believe it or not, I do not have an arrest record and I intend to keep it that way. I don’t like half-assing things. If I’m going to protest, I gotta get arrested. I gotta camp out the whole time. You were there when the cops busted it up? I was there before the cops knew it was happening, man. I’m that asshole. (In theory.) I don’t wanna be one of these guys who sees the protest from across the street and acts like they are superdown without ever getting involved at all. I hope this whole movement get more young people voting. If not, it’s bullshit. You’re not going to tear down the entire system and build a whole new one with a series of sit-ins. That’s not even being cynical it’s just reality. I mean voting in all the elections. (And for progressives, not fucking Ron Paul people.) Even if you get the perfect president, you need a House and Congress that with him(her?), which is super boring to think about, right? You just want a guy coming in an kicking ass with an absolute iron fist…oh wait, we don’t want that…? Anyway, this protest in Chicago got pretty wild. I’m just saying, keep using your brain or it’s just stupid mob against stupid mob with stun guns and pepper spray. For example, if you’re in a Burger King with a bunch of cops, you might not be serious about this “anarchy” thing. (Forgetting abstracts for a moment.)

• Bruce Sterling & the New Aesthetic

  Wasn’t taking this New Aesthetic thing very seriously, it just seems like a wider application of what Wired magazine was doing in the 90s, applying digital-only ideas to a real objects (in that case a magazine) until I got to just about the bottom of my read-it-later list and found this Wired article by Bruce Sterling. And that takes you through a bunch of links that are all interesting, and some are pretty old. Should have been more into that. What am I doing?

  Also this post starts with a great Sterling quote against well roundedness.

• Religion

  This Disinfocast with Daniele Bolelli is absolutely brilliant. Never heard of the guy before, and I tend to stay away from this site anymore cause I feel like and any minute it any conversation could go into chemtrails or lizard people. But this one is great. This dude says it all.

• Mari Yaguchi got married.

  It was adorable. I will always love the OG musumes.

• PRB lost both metal shows

  The respective DJs of The Furnace & Metal Mania both move onto to whatever. Sometimes shows come back to PRB but it was pretty cool to have two weekly metal shows for a while there. Metal Mania especially reminded me of the old metal shows on WGLS in the early 90s. (That whole station barely comes in that far from the campus anymore and plays it pretty safe now.)

• WaniKani

  Got a public profile and leveled up. All stuff I know but I get to practice typing speed and it’s really nice. Great design. Anki by itself gets to be grind.

• HALCALI

  Fansite HALCALI SENSATION has gone down. Found this post explaining it should be temporary. But it’s just before the new album. I’ve been kinda bummed to see old videos are harder to find. This is the group that got me listening to new J-pop again in the mid-00s, mostly due to youtube. Their management still has not fully embraced this.

  Speaking of management, the current crappy exchange rate and the fact that it’s two discs makes this album (after shipping) FORTY FIVE DOLLARS for only TEN NEW SONGS. That’s BULLSHIT, HALCALI (you know?) Sorry, sorry…I can’t stay mad at Halcali. It’s not their fault, but really. Just got the new De La for a $5 download, just saying.

• Tumblr

  Shut down a couple old accounts. They were from when I was having a bit of a hard time and did not really know (or care) how tumblr worked. I like tumblr now, but I’m not taking it too serious obviously. I said I was doing like an exquisite corpse thing with it, but it’s more like a shiritori game now. (Don’t hurt yourself thinking too hard about it tho.) I like messing with it as a design thing, but you never know what the page will really look like until you publish. I figure it’s only a matter of time before they start putting ads or there’s some copyright issue that screws the whole site. But it’s fun at the moment.

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Starting these posts at the beginning of the week from now on and adding as I go.

• But it didn’t help

  Have to do a better job. I had a BBQ today. Wasn’t thinking about it before today that I commited to finishing a review and one these. Now I got like five minutes to midnight.

• Maryland Deathfest

  Didn’t go. Just been listening to Grim Kim’s MDF playlist. One day.

• Eclipse

  Forgot to mention this last week. We don’t get solar eclipses in New Jersey. Some links: Eclipse in tokyo. Hikosaemon got some great pics

• Whoops

  I just messed up the formatting of this whole post in a rush to publish and have to finish it after the fact. Also, I forgot to mention Donna Summer and Andy Gibb, but I’ve never really thought that much about them as people to honest. I mean literally. Disco is just like where samples come from. I was only technically born in the 70s, I don’t remember it.

• Speaking of remembering

  If anyone in the future wants to discuss actual events that actually occurred at my high school, during the years I attended it…sure, why not. I’ll try, maybe. But if it’s about something someone I don’t know said to someone else that I don’t know, I can’t really help you. That’s not talking about high school, it’s like still being in it. N-ope.

• Racism

  I’m not f’r it, I’m again’ it.

• More next week!

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Sometimes you just can’t tell how bad things have gotten until they start to get better.

• Nothing major this week

  I got nothing.

• Friends vs. navel-gazing, endless rumination on painful unfixibilities

  Yeah, you know, last week I was thinking about life in general, the weirdly close friends I used to have that are all nuts. And some of them might have become junkies, they’re not all presently accounted for. Senior year of high school I started hearing some bad stories, I always stayed away from hard drugs and after that I lost touch with most of those people. Some guy at a bar the other day tried to tell me some shit he was still mad about from high school…I do not remember or want to remember most of high school. I got friends now, ok? We don’t talk a whole lot anymore. Not everything has to be like 3 Musketeers, all-or-nothing anymore. I’m feeling a lot of sympathy now for like, Henry Rollins, when he gets a little mad at people asking him questions about old shit.

• Backlog mostly under control

  Keeping unread articles under a week and the total number under a hundred. This time last year it was over 1000 and about 100 days behind on average. This doesn’t mean that much in itself, but it means I’m getting better at managing a constant work flow. I just need to turn it into more output. Gotta a bunch of stuff in Google Reader…gonna add some links. I have been cutting back on facebook and twitter subs and putting more into RSS, it’s easier to manage overload. These sites are not designed to optimize your time, have you noticed?

• Japanese

  I finished the Tofugu book, I guess I’m going through it again because I’ve skipped some steps, but there’s some great advice for like, time management, stuff like that. Now I’m started on WaniKani as a tester. It looks pretty good, not sure I need to stick with it as a whole program, I’m sticking to my boring Anki decks, but it’s nice. Esp. if you’ve got an iPhone, and are starting out, that would be the way to go. I don’t and I’m not, but I still kinda wanna spend money on the thing. I need to get into some online Japanese teaching teaching racket like this. Something.

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What up.