I came, I saw, I took photos

Japan 2011

I made it to Japan and back without dying or going broke. The second one is conditional until I make it out the the Holiday season but, still, that ain't bad. Because nobody requested them here are a few shots from the trip.

Survivorman, without the survive part

I was recently watching an episode of the television show Survivorman and came across the following line concerning the Sierra Nevada mountain range: "Every year, hundreds of thousands of hikers are drawn to the beauty of its peaks and waterways and many of them never make it out alive." Wow! So how big a percentage out of hundreds of thousands are we talking about here? Do they pick up the dead hikers on a daily basis or do they wait until spring and rake 'em up like they were fallen leaves? I don't know what's killing off hikers with the speed of a machine gun but it seems that Mother Nature isn't fooling around.

Rut-roh

If there's one problem with going on vacation it's that it's expensive. Really expensive. Sure, you can save your pennies and whatnot but everyday life costs more than you would expect and can often cut into your fun money.

At this point I think I've considered cancelling my vacation plans three times since I've made them. But even with my worrying I should be fine on my upcoming trip. I simply need not buy anything and quit eating until 2012. Luckily there's a creek near my place so I can go down there to wash my clothes. I just need to find a rock to beat the laundry against and I'm good to go.

Smoke on the Water

So the other day I was thinking about the water sloshing around in my toilet bowl.

Yeah, this is going to be a profound post.

Anyway, what got me thinking was how metallic blue the water was. I recently tossed a long lasting cleaning tablet into the reservoir that is supposed to clean the john whenever you flush it. For whatever reason the doo-dad dyes the water blue as well. This is probably to put one in mind of the endless blue of the ocean or a mountain lake. That, and when the color runs out you know it's time to buy a new breath mint for your toilet.

But what if you don't want blue water? I think the cleaner comes in some sort of wintergreen color as well. Neon green water is not exactly a color you see in nature outside of stagnant, algae filled ponds. But why not let the consumer decide on the color of water they want? Why not red? Every time you flush you could thrill to the sight of blood red water seeping out of the fixtures. It would be like a horror movie every time you flush. That would be quite the sight.

Nothing for Something

If there was one thing that I thought I might get out of this trip to Tokyo it would be a few frequent flyer miles. Silly, I know.

The on-line travel agency I booked this trip through recently started up their very own frequent user/sucker program. [Since I'm grumbling and not actually publicly calling out a problem here I won't name names concerning the company. It wouldn't be, uh, expedient on my part.] Anyway, I managed to get in on the ground floor of this new fan club and received 2,000 points for booking passage to the other side of the planet. That sounds nice, but to qualify for any sort of reduction on future airfare you need over 20,000 points. How far do you have to go to get that many points? Do I need to circle the world five to ten times to land a reduced rate to Albuquerque? Other people must travel a lot more than I do.

I know these programs are mainly used to create brand loyalty in people with the remote promise of possible free stuff. It's the same racket skeeball games use where you need to receive thousands of tickets just to win some greasy little beanbag bear. So while I'll play along with the free aspects of this frequent flyer thing I know the chances of me receiving any rewards are about as slim as me skipping the plane and swimming to Japan.

Aaand... they're off!

Most of the time I'm the sort of guy who likes to take it easy. You know those people who will push themselves to the limit who will try to climb a mountain with nothing more than the items they can carry in a backpack? That ain't me. I do, however, understand that urge to go out and see something new. The trill of excitement that comes from experiencing something new is a sensation like no other. When it comes to vacations my urge to explore can often trump my urge not to run myself ragged. But for my latest outing I may have outdone myself.

I decided to visit Tokyo.

Since I don't speak Japanese, know anything about Tokyo, or have the faintest idea how to get around this is going to be a bit of a challenge. It looks like my urge to be lazy is going to have to be shelved until I can figure out how what in the world I'm doing on this upcoming trip.

The reason I'm posting all this self-centered blather is that I'm hoping there might be some good anecdotes to be found in my preparation. What whacky misadventures am I going to get into next? Secondly, chronicling my preparation might help me in my planning. Third, it's a blog and you're supposed to go on about yourself on a blog.

So will this trip be a success? Will I become hoplesly lost and end up starving to death in some train terminal? Will I bother to update my blog on a regular basis? Stick around and find out!

Audrey Hepburn in Mixed Media

I recently came across a manga [a comic book from Japan, for those who aren't hip to the lingo] that was a biography of Audrey Hepburn. Or, at least, the beginning of a biography of Audrey Hepburn. The volume ended with a young Audrey Hepburn leaving her father behind when her parents divorced. This happened when she was, what, six years old? Considering how eventful a life Ms. Hepburn had I have no idea how many volumes this adaptation of her life could go for. There could be thousands of illustrated pages out there recounting her adventures.

I'm not bringing this up because I think the idea of a comic strip retelling of Audrey Hepburn's is odd. Far from it. Comics -that mix of literature and visuals- can and should be used to tell any story possible. Still, I do like the idea that two interests of mine came together in this rare intersection. How often do you see an Audrey Hepburn comic anyway? Perhaps the things I like will continue to come together in new and interesting ways. I'm looking forward to the Audrey Hepburn video game and the unearthing of the long-lost Audrey Hepburn kung-fu movie.

Godzilla Movies

Yeah, it's been too long since I've updated this thing. I do need to put together some sort of outline for what I want to do with this page. Until then, I'm going to watch Godzilla movies.

http://www.crackle.com/outreach/godzilla/?cmpid=627#id=2449082

While all sophisticates with outstanding taste already own these films it's still neat to see them up and running at the touch of a button.

Outside interests

This blog sucks. I know it, you know it, it's as obvious as the nose on your face. While I am committed to making this a better on-line experience it ain't going to be happening today. Until I get my act together why not check out another page that is actually good?

To that end I recommend Art-Eater. Try it today, it's good stuff.

It's Alive

There are times I think I should start playing with a rock or some other hobby that uses objects that have no moving parts whatsoever. It seems that the more complex of an item I buy the more likely it is to have some bit of it stop working. The latest gizmo that decided to up and die on me was my Playstation 3. Okay, I'm overstating the problem by saying it "died" but it did suddenly clamp down on the game that it was running and would not let go. While I did like the game that it was hoarding at some point I knew I was going to want to play something else.

So what to do? I called up a local game store but they weren't much help. Not only did the guy on the phone unequivocally state that they didn't repair PS3 systems but he seemed slightly frightened that I would suggest he attempt such a feat. From the way he described it my only options were to buy a new system, box my console up and mail it to Sony or some other equally drastic measure. I was certain there had to be an easier solution to my problem so I called up the city's really odd game store. Independent stores often develop their own personalities but this place has taken every eccentricity to be found in a hole in the wall store and run with it. The store is stuffed to the rafters with hippies and cats. A strong litter box odor permeates the place, which must work wonders for discouraging loitering. I assume the smell is coming from the cats and other animals that call the place home but you never can tell. When I explained my console's predicament to them they quoted me a flat fee before even looking at the machine. Later, when I was in the store I heard them quote the exact same repair price to someone else for a different system. There's a strong possibility that every service offered by the store is priced identically just to cut down on paper work.

But for all the store's tics they actually do good work. After tinkering with my PS3 for a few days the store called me up, asked for the one amount of money they knew how to deal with, and gave me back a fixed console. I have no idea what they did but my PS3 has not run this well in ages. The only problem I've come across so far is that my PS3 smells like cat crap but I'm certain that will pass after it's had a few days to air out.

Links and things

The beauty of the internet is that you can find the darndest things when you are blindly following links. For example, today I came across the following:

http://www.youtube.com/user/ponmenoko#p/a

I found this YouTube page dedicated to a cat, ukulele music and some sort of poorly constructed computer characters to be self-centered, charming and horrifying all at the same time. It's everything that I wish this blog could be.

National Doughnut Day

As a reminder, the first Friday in June is National Doughnut Day.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/National_Doughnut_Day

Truly, this is a great day for America.

Double Trouble

When it comes to my movie selections I try to make my choices as scatter shot as possible. For example, if I just finished watching a Western I'll try to find something for my next viewing that doesn't involve cowboy trappings. But even when I try to randomize my choices as much as possible I don't always succeed.

For instance, take two movies I watched recently. The first was An American in Paris. To refresh your memory that's the one where Gene Kelly is in Paris in order to... um, well, whatever it is, he ends up dancing a lot. Great stuff, either way. The second film was Tokyo Gore Police/Tôkyô zankoku keisatsu. That film opened with the heroine propelling herself through the air with a bazooka and then hacking a zombie to death with a chainsaw. This film was also not without merit.

After watching the third or fourth character blast themselves into the air in Tokyo Gore Police I realized that the two films had far more in common than what I had initially expected. Before the double feature I thought they had nothing in common so that's not saying much but nevertheless the movies were stylistically similar. Both movies were built around show-stopping moments. The bits of dialogue and character development were nice but those served as moments for the audience to catch its collective breath as much as anything. While watching both films I found myself marking time until the next dance or dismemberment number. The two movies served as wonderful examples of cinema as spectacle. I'm certain that the creators of An American in Paris would be horrified at the comparison -come to think of it, the people behind Tokyo Gore Police might not be thrilled with it either- but I found both films worked for me on the same level.

Sunrise, sunset

The other day I saw that a local video store was going out of business. If this had been some corporate chain store I would not have thought twice about it but instead it was a small mom 'n pop store.

The loss of this store struck me, but why? It certainly wasn't the advertising. This was one of those places that didn't bother with fancy marketing and simply had a sign saying VIDEO plastered over the door. Instead the ramshackle approach to distributing movies a small store like that had was, in its own way, charming. There's something to be said for a store that not only stocked VHS tapes well into the 21st century but would put bootleg VHS tapes out on the shelves for rent without a hint of shame.

I also always admired independent stores such as that one for their glut of pornography. Because they couldn't compete with the big stores directly locally owned video places often went for other, more specialized approaches. Sometimes this meant trying to build up a quality collection of movies for all the cinephiles in town to enjoy. The lazier approach was to stock porn. My heart breaks to think that a store can strive to bring a plethora of the pornographic arts to a community and still somehow go out of business... wait, what the heck am I talking about?

1 minute movie review

Recently I rewatched the move "Earthquake." The following clip tells you everything you need to know about the film.

Note to Self

Be judicious in the use of the "random" tag. Since there is no guiding principle behind this blog every useless piece of crap I post could fall under that category.

Now that I think about it, I should probably have a "useless piece of crap" tag as well.

F is for Food [part 1]

Recently I purchased a box of Kashi: Heart To Heart Cereal- Honey Toasted Oat. I should have known something was up when the cereal had that many subheadings. Seeing as how there are only so many things you can do with compressed grains I didn't expect too much from this or any other box of cereal. If anything, I figured the cereal would have an artfully drab taste to compliment Kashi's trendy foodie/health image.

Instead, it looks for all the world like a bowl of cat food.

I've never understood the need to be entertained by a bowl of cereal. Usually when you think of that bit of marketing malarkey you think of children's cereal that gurgles when you try to eat it or that turns the milk neon yellow or backed-up sewer brown. But this is the first time I've come across an adult cereal that was built around a gimmick. I don't know who is going to be enticed by the thrill of eating cat food but I guess there's a niche for everything.

Starting with a Bang

Thanks to the information age we live in your entertainment choices are almost limitless. Any creative endeavor created by the hands of man can be appreciated immediately. Normally I use this amazing power of choice to watch the most puerile crap imaginable day and night. Sometimes, however, I stumble across something that's actually decent. One of those found items is the show Peter Gunn.

Peter Gunn, for those not in the know, was a crime noir show that ran on American television from 1958-61. Not only did Gunn push all my buttons with it's two-fisted action and jazzy soundtrack, but I found it to be an amazing distillation of the television crime procedural that ran when the genre was just starting out. Unlike so many of its paunchy offspring, Gunn was only half an hour long. There were no sub-plots or scenes that went in circles just to kill some time. Instead, the episodes that worked were spot-on and direct in their approach.

While I wish modern crime dramas had that sort of brevity I am glad to see the concept of pre-title sequence violence that was featured in every single episode of Peter Gunn continues to this day. Most any show of this type starts out with a criminal act -usually a murder or a good, thorough beating- that has to be rectified during the course of the show. Even though it was an early practitioner of this formula Peter Gunn had these opening death sequences down to an art. Characters would appear on screen with no explanation for who they were, there would be a wanton act of physical harm and then Henry Mancini's score would start blaring away. People would get shot, fall off of buildings or get shot and then fall off buildings just to get the narrative ball rolling. I knew I was watching a great show when one show opening featured, without any sort of preamble or dialogue, a man getting mauled by a dog. Now that's entertainment.

Shakespeare knew you had to hook an audience right away in order to hold their interest. It's a lesson crime dramas continue with to this day. No matter what the quality of the show is most cannot resist the formula of starting out with a dead body sprawled on the floor or some chump getting hit by a hail of bullets. Probably the best current example of this practice is CSI: Miami. Since the show is about crime scene investigation it's not surprising that it has to open with a crime. But thanks to the absurd storylines and ridiculous editing the show thrives on most every opening is a camp classic. The best opening feature the main character Horatio Caine floating over this week's murder like an angel who just descended from heaven until he adjusts his sunglasses and makes a pun about someone's death right before the the theme song from The Who starts screaming.

Sadly, the creators of CSI: Miami seem to have realized how insane those openings were since they have started toning them down a bit. I feel this is a mistake. These crime drama openings are miniature plays in and of themselves. They feature both the creation of an entire fictional world and someone's death all within the space of a few moments. It's the entire fictional process telescoped into the briefest time possible. When done properly the openings are tiny works of art, like little faberge eggs built out of empty shell casings. Not only do they open the show in the best way possible using the worst sort of circumstances possible but they often are more entertaining than the remainder of the show. The meat of the show often feels like an unnecessary extension of such perfectly structured little openings.

C is for Cookie

The other day I received the following message in my post-meal fortune cookie:

:) You will soon be crossing the great waters. :)

Yes, the happy heads were included in the message.

So does this mean I will be booking a tour package on a cruise ship in the near future? Or will I soon be going to Hamlet's undiscovered country from whose bourn no traveller returns? It will be a change of pace either way, I suppose.

Godzilla

One of the goals I set for myself with this blog was to watch and comment on all the Godzilla movies in chronological order. This is a somewhat more modest goal than, say, landing a man on the moon but this blog is a one man job that I'm just doing for laughs. Even though I have no idea how far I'll get before I get bored I should at least grind through a few films. What can it hurt?

Besides, the first one up is a goody. I speak, of course, of the original Godzilla film. Or Gojira. Or Godzilla 54. Or whatever the heck you want to call it. Just so we're clear, it's the first film starring Godzilla. Wow, this blog is going to be a painful experience if this is how all my posts are going to read.

Anyway, I'm here to talk about the film, not it's name. Part melodrama about the collateral damages of war, part bald-faced rip-off of The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms, Godzilla is a surprisingly serious rubber monster movie. Considering how ridiculous the genre is it's only natural that it became goofy once this sort of story caught on. Godzilla, however, is often as grim and thudding as Akira Ifukube's score.

That's not to say that the movie isn't insane. Far from it, really. Even discounting the whole giant monster thing the movie often lets bizarre events unfold on-screen without comment. For instance, at an early point in the film an old man is seen decrying the loss of traditions that once guaranteed good fishing conditions and prosperity for the village he lived in. At first it seems that he could be there as a mouth-piece designed to bemoan the modernization and Westernization of Japan at that point in time. A moment later, however, he starts to sound a bit too thrilled about remembering the good old days of virgin sacrifices so in the end he comes across as one more bit of kooky local color. Then again, this guy is living in a world where television sets turn themselves on automatically when something interesting is being broadcast. In that kind of world who can judge what is too much?

One certainly can't judge Dr. Serizawa [Akihiko Hirata], the tragic hero of the film and major movie egghead. Scientists are an almost inescapable part of monster movies but Serizawa is in a league of his own. Not only does this man of learning win a fist fight at one point but he lives in such a crazy mad scientist lair that people don't even take off their shoes when they go inside. Serizawa should be an inspiration to us all. I know somebody who was excited because she refurbished her basement by moving in a couch and putting down some carpeting. Serizawa managed to create a device more dangerous than an atomic bomb in his basement lab. Now that's a productive hobby!

Yes, Godzilla's rampages continue to thrill and the highly strung but unflappably polite humans continue to amuse. But what struck me most during my most recent re-viewing was how little I know of the film. Sure, I've heard the rhetoric about how Godzilla is a serious critique of the atomic age, Japan's place in the world, blah, blah, blah, and so on. But what was the actual reception of the film like? What was the popular and critical reaction when it was released and where does the film stand today? Although the film does try to present some sort of message the same can be said for many other movies. Was Godzilla viewed as a message movie the same way Roland Emmerich's The Day After Tomorrow is seen as a subtle, level-headed discussion on global warming or the way that the beefcake burlesque of The Ten Commandments is viewed as a pious rendition of Biblical events? Seriously, did anyone buy what Godzilla was selling now or then? Even the fact that it was a success at the box office doesn't tell me anything since there's no shortage of successful movies that aren't any good. Feel free to add the name of your least favorite popular movie here.

I have read any Japanese academic work on Godzilla and I can almost say the same for pieces published in English. I've read articles by Professor William Tsutsui but that's only a single viewpoint. Considering the longevity and cultural impact of Godzilla there has to be more criticism out there. It seems that I'm off on a scavenger hunt for more information about the oeuvre of Godzilla and where he stands in the worlds of movie criticism and academia. Even after all these years the King of the Monsters continues to fascinate me.