Wednesday, July 8, 2009
Monday, July 6, 2009
Gold CUp
America is off to a running start in the Gold Cup. After an insane run at the Confederations, which saw them succumb to a Brazilian tidal wave that would have overrun most any team, the USMNT is back on home soil and led off with a 4-0 disciplining of Grenada. Let's hope they keep their foot on the accelerator and develop a taste for finishing. I would like to see Freddy Adu make this his tournament and come out with a secure role as a bench scorer for the World Cup team.
America
Sorry I missed the 4th of July. I finally took the Japanese Proficiency Exam and forgot everything else. It is done now. I tried to think of another America song that I like as much as this one but...no. This still takes it.
Rhodes scholar, weed smokers and heroin addicts singing a song about a train.
Rhodes scholar, weed smokers and heroin addicts singing a song about a train.
Find a Fish
This is also rad, even though I don't like what it has to tell me. Namely, that the fish I like to eat, I shouldn't be eating.
Turbulence Report
My new favorite thing ever. As an enemy of human flight, I feel this makes me more a part of the process. If I can look at turbulence as a scientific phenomena, related to the weather and other factors, that changes day by day, then maybe I can feel more like I am participating, then being a victim.
Sunday, July 5, 2009
The Great American Bubble Machine
I meant to put this up on Friday. Some of you have probably already read Matt Taibbi's piece from this month's Rollingstone. Can I say "must read" ? It's a must read. There's this episode of 30 Rock where Tina Fey asks Alec Baldwin, "Can you teach me to do that thing where people with lots of money turn it into even more money?" This is that thing. Sometimes I feel like I am on the plywood porch I built for my trailer wearing a "Put a Yankee on a Bus" hat when I decree that most institutions and the people in charge of them are just leeches sucking on the system, but it does appear that that is largely how things work. I think the Rosetta Stone of all of this was Moneyball. Which, ostensibly was about baseball but pointed to so much more. Where scouts glommed onto baseball and then convinced everyone that the game couldn't function without them while doing everything they could to make sure the game wouldn't function without them. Their benefit to the sport itself, their knowledge of it, was somewhere south of statistically probable. Can we refer to these kind of systems as too big to fail; meaning totally dysfunctional but with no idea how to, or no inclination to solve their problems.
In the end, the people in charge of things are geniuses in the way the media refers to Karl Rove; they are bad people who are willing to throw out and ideas of mutual sacrifice and brotherhood. They are willing to roll around in their own shit and then tell us all how great they smell.
On a similar note: If you haven't been listening, This American Life has been doing excellent work on the state of the economy. Their archives can be found here.
In the end, the people in charge of things are geniuses in the way the media refers to Karl Rove; they are bad people who are willing to throw out and ideas of mutual sacrifice and brotherhood. They are willing to roll around in their own shit and then tell us all how great they smell.
On a similar note: If you haven't been listening, This American Life has been doing excellent work on the state of the economy. Their archives can be found here.
Wednesday, July 1, 2009
Avoiding the Rush
Last week everyone at school kept mentioning to me that Michael Jackson had died. I mean, not mentioning it in general, but mentioning it TO me. As if it had some special bearing on me, emissary of foreignness. As such my general response was "Are you really surprised? Did he look long for this world? Did you think he was well?" I wasn't just putting up a facade. I felt no shock and little sadness at all, except in a general way about the plight of mankind and our broken spiral towards the grave.
If you had to rate death pains on a scale of 100, with the areas above 100, reserved for friends and family, who really can't be measured and some special system of colored shading for people who aren't famous but you feel bad about how they died, then Michael Jackson's death was, sadly, somewhere in the low teens for me. I know what you are thinking, the low teens sounds right up your alley. Touche secret part of my brain that tells the unvarnished truth like you live in a sawmill. But, no, it was a hollow death and I forgot about it off and on across the span of the day. Lance Hahn, now there was a 99 on the scale if ever there was one. Joe Strummer and Jam Master Jay, kicking off together on that long walk home are hovering in the mid-nineties. Paul Wellstone? Right there with them, but up to a 98 maybe for the shock of reading the news in my room of a Senator who had died, "As long as it isn't Paul Wellstone" I thought. In the 80's lurk Ralph Wiley and Steve Gilliard, who I always looked forward to reading daily and whose mutual voids have never been filled. In the 70s? Maybe Norman Mailer and Hunter S. Thomson, who were beloved but not unexpected. They had each had a hand in the cookie jar for a long while. 60s? Those special celebrities, JFK jr, and Princess Di, who I never cared about in life and felt awful over in death, much to my own chagrin. May I jump back into the 90s and place Walter Payton whose death hurts right now as I think on it and who earned his fame far more than the two I just mentioned. In the 50s it starts to get random. Maybe those dudes from For Squirrels whose story seems so sad that you can't look away from it, earning their record deal and then crashing their car on the Georgia/Florida border. Music is mired with them. The 40s gets foggier. Curtis Mayfield was truly a shame but it played out for so long and then end is only the conclusion that was told at the beginning. The 30s could be Stevie Ray Vaughn who started much higher but faded quickly. No fault of his own. In the 20s would could place Rodney Culver who died on ValueJet. Why did he fly ValueJet? We will leave that for all downtrodden football players. Mike Webster and Lyle Alzedo maybe. 0 we will reserve for Lee Atwater, who at least repented. And just above him was how I felt about Michael Jackson last week.
But an odd thing happened. Something very democratic and populist and in that sense beautiful and touching and appropriate. There is a strange word in celebrity death. I was engaged to go to a friend's birthday party Friday evening in Osaka which quickly, through no fault of my own, degraded into a night of rare debauchery. The Japanese owner of a cigar bar , picked up a karaoke mic and started singing something slow form the mid eighties. Something I can't even remember now. And I thought, "I'm drunk." I also thought, "That WAS a good song."
My strange evening stretched out past the last traina nd I was drug into an underground club, packed with the foreigners I try so hard not to meet. Somewhere into the evening, between beer cocktails and tequila shots, the DJ began spinning his Michael Jackson tribute and I jumped back a few years to Ed's apartment in Kawaminami planning out the first disco we would DJ and trying to get a copy of "Wanna Be Starting Somethin'" which I remembered a DJ playing at Twisters in Richmond my first year in college. The bit about 4:45 in. You know the part. Is about the best track a DJ can posses.
Although "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" is probably the better track.
As a DJ though, I would have to say that the real money melon is "Blame it on the Boogie." If asked, people probably aren't that into it, but they will loose their shit over it if you drop it in a set. True. Strange.
Most Jackson 5 stuff I credit to having on of the most insane backing bands of all time, so I won't go to much further into their stuff. But in the middle of this raucous night, even as Slash's "Black or White" guitar lick played out, Michael made his way up my death-o-meter. I realized it was just that the wrong me had been trying to feel it. It was the me that wonders if a song as relevant as "White Man in Hammersmith Palais" will ever be written again. Not the part of me that knows that You can mix "All Fall's Down" seamlessly into "Beautiful" if you keep mixing in the intro vocals when the music fades. The me that loves Michael Jackson was somewhere in a smokey club in Japan that I had to be talked into going into having fun despite myself with friends that I miss and waking up in a fountain somewhere feeling bad about things but smiling. Or it was the me with my records walking home alone wondering if there was an equation for what it takes for a DJ not to get laid and trying to figure out how I had perfected it. So Mike, may I call your crazy dead ass Mike? Thanks for those times. It isn't that rare for a talented person to be crazy, but it is rare and crazy to be that talented.
If you had to rate death pains on a scale of 100, with the areas above 100, reserved for friends and family, who really can't be measured and some special system of colored shading for people who aren't famous but you feel bad about how they died, then Michael Jackson's death was, sadly, somewhere in the low teens for me. I know what you are thinking, the low teens sounds right up your alley. Touche secret part of my brain that tells the unvarnished truth like you live in a sawmill. But, no, it was a hollow death and I forgot about it off and on across the span of the day. Lance Hahn, now there was a 99 on the scale if ever there was one. Joe Strummer and Jam Master Jay, kicking off together on that long walk home are hovering in the mid-nineties. Paul Wellstone? Right there with them, but up to a 98 maybe for the shock of reading the news in my room of a Senator who had died, "As long as it isn't Paul Wellstone" I thought. In the 80's lurk Ralph Wiley and Steve Gilliard, who I always looked forward to reading daily and whose mutual voids have never been filled. In the 70s? Maybe Norman Mailer and Hunter S. Thomson, who were beloved but not unexpected. They had each had a hand in the cookie jar for a long while. 60s? Those special celebrities, JFK jr, and Princess Di, who I never cared about in life and felt awful over in death, much to my own chagrin. May I jump back into the 90s and place Walter Payton whose death hurts right now as I think on it and who earned his fame far more than the two I just mentioned. In the 50s it starts to get random. Maybe those dudes from For Squirrels whose story seems so sad that you can't look away from it, earning their record deal and then crashing their car on the Georgia/Florida border. Music is mired with them. The 40s gets foggier. Curtis Mayfield was truly a shame but it played out for so long and then end is only the conclusion that was told at the beginning. The 30s could be Stevie Ray Vaughn who started much higher but faded quickly. No fault of his own. In the 20s would could place Rodney Culver who died on ValueJet. Why did he fly ValueJet? We will leave that for all downtrodden football players. Mike Webster and Lyle Alzedo maybe. 0 we will reserve for Lee Atwater, who at least repented. And just above him was how I felt about Michael Jackson last week.
But an odd thing happened. Something very democratic and populist and in that sense beautiful and touching and appropriate. There is a strange word in celebrity death. I was engaged to go to a friend's birthday party Friday evening in Osaka which quickly, through no fault of my own, degraded into a night of rare debauchery. The Japanese owner of a cigar bar , picked up a karaoke mic and started singing something slow form the mid eighties. Something I can't even remember now. And I thought, "I'm drunk." I also thought, "That WAS a good song."
My strange evening stretched out past the last traina nd I was drug into an underground club, packed with the foreigners I try so hard not to meet. Somewhere into the evening, between beer cocktails and tequila shots, the DJ began spinning his Michael Jackson tribute and I jumped back a few years to Ed's apartment in Kawaminami planning out the first disco we would DJ and trying to get a copy of "Wanna Be Starting Somethin'" which I remembered a DJ playing at Twisters in Richmond my first year in college. The bit about 4:45 in. You know the part. Is about the best track a DJ can posses.
Although "Don't Stop 'Til You Get Enough" is probably the better track.
As a DJ though, I would have to say that the real money melon is "Blame it on the Boogie." If asked, people probably aren't that into it, but they will loose their shit over it if you drop it in a set. True. Strange.
Most Jackson 5 stuff I credit to having on of the most insane backing bands of all time, so I won't go to much further into their stuff. But in the middle of this raucous night, even as Slash's "Black or White" guitar lick played out, Michael made his way up my death-o-meter. I realized it was just that the wrong me had been trying to feel it. It was the me that wonders if a song as relevant as "White Man in Hammersmith Palais" will ever be written again. Not the part of me that knows that You can mix "All Fall's Down" seamlessly into "Beautiful" if you keep mixing in the intro vocals when the music fades. The me that loves Michael Jackson was somewhere in a smokey club in Japan that I had to be talked into going into having fun despite myself with friends that I miss and waking up in a fountain somewhere feeling bad about things but smiling. Or it was the me with my records walking home alone wondering if there was an equation for what it takes for a DJ not to get laid and trying to figure out how I had perfected it. So Mike, may I call your crazy dead ass Mike? Thanks for those times. It isn't that rare for a talented person to be crazy, but it is rare and crazy to be that talented.
Crayon Tattoos
I don't so often see a tattoo artist whose work is so strikingly original. This guy's stuff is rad.
Sunday, June 28, 2009
The Big Game
Here is a very good commentary that echoes how I feel. And here is another positive one that is rather heartening.
And here is, as much as I hate Nike, another one of their brilliant soccer promos to get you fired up for the game. This one is as ridiculous as it is good, therefore right up my alley. You will, or not, remember this from the run up to the disappointing 2006 World Cup. RIP MC Hawk by the way.
And here is, as much as I hate Nike, another one of their brilliant soccer promos to get you fired up for the game. This one is as ridiculous as it is good, therefore right up my alley. You will, or not, remember this from the run up to the disappointing 2006 World Cup. RIP MC Hawk by the way.
Thursday, June 25, 2009
It AIn't No Miracle
USA 2. Spain 0. If that doesn't make you happy in the small storage space behind your heart then you probably haven't been living and dying with the U.S. Men's National team since we felt lucky that Tab Ramos could get citizenship. Once America had the stars line up in their favor against Egypt, I told everyone who would listen that Spain was a team we (and I know how ridiculous it is to say we in sporting contexts) could take. I said it. I said it would happen even though we would be given a silly red card. I didn't say it because I am an oracle. I said it because it is no irony that I just finished re-reading Seabiscuit. I said it because what is great about the U.S. Men's Team is what is great about all American sports stories. Someone was told they couldn't, and they refused to listen. I think living amongst foreigners, all kinds of foreigners, makes this all the bigger. One tires of Europeans vacuous notions of superiority and the Japanese quality of fair weather ignorance. When The Americans are on, they play like Red Pollard, alcoholic and in a leg brace. They play like winning is the only thing between them and the poorhouse. Just watch the Clint Dempsey goal, Clint Dempsey raised in a trailer park where Louisiana meets Texas, watch how you can literally see how he wanted it more. He made the defender look silly in his indifference. Altidore's goal was also a real American soccer goal. Physically dumping the defender and then driving the ball home. A great game by the whole team. If Brazil stays as sloppy as they have been this tournament, we have a chance. We being all of us who love USA soccer.
USA Football
I'm gonna have to sleep through it, but I am calling the game USA-3, Spain-2. Call me crazy. U.S. scores off a controversial penalty and a set piece header. The other goal...oh...let's say....Moe.
Sunday, June 21, 2009
Takatsuki Jazz
This is about two months old now but here are my friends Kanji, Sho, Izumi, Nabe and a guy I don't know rocking the jazz fest. Takatsuki Jazz is a great idea. It is a weekend where all the clubs downtown open up for no charge and tons of jazz bands play for free. Sweet.
Undo Kai
Another 運動会 in the books. Sorry I have no post for the week. I have had no days off and get home, if I am lucky, after dark. This 運動会 was nuts. There was a huge production number about the history of Okinawa featuring kids as airplanes flying around shooting down buildings made of people and throwing kids in the air as fish leaping out of the ocean. Nuts. As crazy as it was it was all very touching and we worked really hard on it. The kids at this school are really honestly sweet.
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