Now i'm eating "Choco
Chip Snack", which is little mini French breads with chocolate chips
baked in. The bread's a bit overdone, but they're tasty enough.
Out biking today, I came to a street crossing that I always come
to, but today there was a couple cops directing traffic, and a utility
van working on the wires. I rode up slowly, and then started to cross
the road, since no cars were coming. But then the cop belatedly holds
out his red mini-lightsaber thing (more like a dagger than a saber...
you know the thing I'm talking about?)
He jams it out horizontally, indicating I should NOT cross the
street, that i should stop and wait instead. But I'm in mid-pedal,
and moving, and to stop would cause me to trip all awkward-like and
shit, like a dork. So I kinda do a "oh, i'm looking around at to see
if any cars are coming, so I'm not focused on anything nearby, so
I looked right through you accidentally" kinda thing, but then he
says "Halt" (as if we were in Berlin in the 1930s! ~As if!~)
but by then it's way to late, I'm already one-third of the way across
the small two-lane blacktop, and anyway, his "Halt" didn't really
have much conviction behind it, and I keep going.
I kinda felt bad afterward... a little angry that he'd have me
just SIT there at a traffic light even though no cars are coming,
but mostly embarrassed that I just totally ignored his instructions
-- something he probably wasn't used to -- and caused HIM embarassment.
He's a cop after all! I mean, stopping for 10 seconds wouldn't have
been terrible, but, dammit, he just didn't let me know his expectations
until it was too late!
Anyway, that was the only highlight of the day. Yesterday's highlight
was receiving a postcard instructing me to come to the Immigration
Office in Yokohama -- ostensibly to get my visa.
But picking up my visa means a likely visit to Chinatown as well,
so perhaps, come next Monday, I will have lots of cool goodies...
although my cursory online search last night seems to indicate that
Chinatown won't have too much by way of bootleg CDs and DVDs... but
we shall see! (Monday is the day...)
Oh god, I ate that whole package of Choco Snack... that's like
the equivalent of an entire loaf of french bread and a candy bar's
worth of chocolate...
Ahh, chocolate... that reminds me of being a kid at home, after
school, usually alone, and around 3pm or so all the good cartoons
would start (in the mid-to-late 80s this meant The Transformers
and G.I. Joe -- although both franchises were on their last
legs as the 90s approached: they started introducing neon-pink-and-green
camouflage outfits and new, stupid characters apparently designed
to appeal to brainless twat children.)
And then after G.I. Joe, at 4pm, the "Disney Afternoon"
would start... back then it was only one hour, and limited to Duck
Tales and I -think- some Chip and Dale related abortion of a cartoon...
but as the strength of the brand took hold, Disney took over the entire
afternoon, and had oh god, Gummi Bears, now THAT sucked, and
DuckTales, which was generally okay, but I think that cartoon
based on "The Jungle Book", with the bears, and the planes.... not
Higher for Hire, but, aw fuck, what the hell was the title?! TaleSpin,?
Oh yeah, TaleSpin! Anyway, THAT and Darkwing Duck were
both sufficiently cool, although by the time Darkwing Duck
had come along I was close to graduating high school, and I had ~better~
things to do with my time, like buy Iron Maiden and Metallica CDs
imported from Japan and Europe.
Oh, but damn it to hell, I forgot about Voltron and Thundercats
on the other channel, and if there was a rerun (which, after two months
of new episodes, there always was) I'd switch over from Channel 11
to Channel 5 (this is New York, so the station IDs were WPIX and,
um, FOX5?) to absorb even MORE mindless entertainment. (Especially
Voltron, which was the SAME FUCKING STORY EVERY DAY! My god,
I watched that show for years just hoping for the slightest change
in the storyline, but never. What's-his-face would send an evil "Ro-beast"
(a moniker which even then was among the shittiest I had ever heard)
to the happy planet, the five lions would attack, the attack wouldn't
work, so they'd team up into Voltron, throw a few punches, take a
few hits, and then finally, brilliant leader that Keith was, he'd
go, "Fuck, this ain't working!" and shout the "Form Blazing Sword!"
order, and they'd cut the Ro-beast in half, always diagonally from
shoulder to waist, and it'd explode, and what's-his-evil-face would
lament this, his newest failure, and that was that. Every fucking
time!!!
And then just a few years back Warner Brothers started their Batman
and later their Superman cartoons, which have just gorgeous
visual styles and relatively intelligent stories and characters, and
took over the cartoon afternoons. Actually, that was my college days
mostly, I believe, but that kinda pretty much brings us up to the
present day I guess. I don't mention Animaniacs because I always
found it to be slightly over-rated, plus any cartoon with SINGING
in it doesn't deserve to live anyway.
So there you have it, a nice survey of the ghosts of cartoons
past. Oh! And my POINT was that, on these weekend afternoons, I would
raid the kitchen looking for tasty snacks, but we only ever had fruit.
Or, at best, Fig Newtons. Bleah!
But our pantry would always have a nice supply of peanut butter
(usually in those big tubs -- my parents loved going to those warehouse
supermarkets, where the "small" sized peanut butter came in a gallon
drum). And of course we also had chocolate chips (those Nestle semi-sweet
ones, in the yellow half-pound bag). So I'd grab a butter knife and
a bowl, and slap some peanut butter into the bowl, then pour in the
chips, and also grab a big mug of milk, and plop myself in front of
the TV for a couple hours of relaxing entertainment and fattening-up-ness.
Please feel free to stop reading here, I've taken this moot point
way to far, but I'm on a roll...
And at 5pm, the local news would come on (Channel 7 -- ABC --
which to this day i associate with a lack of fun and therefore spurn).
And it'd be kinda dark and too late to go outside, so I'd turn on
my Atari 2600 (mid-80s) or my Apple IIc (late 80s) or my Mac Plus
(early 90s) and play some games, either River Raid or Moon
Patrol or Castle Wolfenstein or, shit, I didn't HAVE any
games on my Mac Plus -- that was only for writing shitty short stories
-- but I was pretty fully into playing guitar by then and listening
to CDs anyway. I never had Nintendo or Sega; just my guitar and a
CD player (a major investment for a broke high schooler) and that
was enough. Ah, and my car, a Firebird (bright yellow, big engine,
Iron Maiden bumper sticker, loud stereo, what more cold you ask for?!?!)
So, okay, this has nothing at all to do with Japan, aside from
some vague Transformery Voltron-ness, so I'll stop...
I got an email from Gekkou (the first indies band I ever saw live)
and they've got more live dates coming up, one every ten days for
the next couple months. So I'll being seeing them soon (probably not
til October though)... which, I apologize, that's not soon at all.
Also, Pierrot has a new video out, possibly titled Paradox. It's
rather uninspired by my reckoning.
Aikawa Nanase has an EP coming out in a couple weeks as well.
I think I'm going to vomit Choco Snacks...
No, I think I'm okay as long as I don't open my mouth.
And lastly, Dir en grey has a remix album out, which I don't particularly
want. But in my experience, remix albums hit the used CD shelves much
more quickly than normal albums, because they are so good at disappointing
voracious fans. So if I see it for $10 or so, I'll snag it. (I have
no doubt I'll see it sometime in the next couple years...)
In fact, I imagine a lot more Dir en grey stuff will be hitting
the used shelves in 2002; either they'll get more popular and millions
of people will by their stuff and learn they're too heavy/weird, or
they'll get less popular, and fans will move on to the next group,
selling all their old "useless" Deg stuff (much like such flash-in-the-pans
as Shazna and Penicillin -- not that I put Kyo and friends in that
miserable category, but, well, nobody ever went broke underestimating
the intelligence of the populous at large, to paraphrase my buddy
Erik...)
<<<prev / next>>>
