Mad Max & Maru-chan Hit the Road

Well, you can't keep a good '91 Toyota Corolla All-Trac wagon down! Despite driving through seven states, and pushing the engine over some serious mountains in Maryland and West Virginia (sorry Maru-chan), my little car got me to my destination like a champ. This was a minimalist road trip; bread, water and a very weak AM/FM radio (on the highway the car is often too loud and the speakers too weak to hear it anyway). Sooo, I just sang road songs for fifteen hours on my first day. Somewhere in Pennsylvania I remembered the theme song to Sam and Max Hit the Road; possibly the greatest game Lucas Arts ever made. Maru-chan got a bit dusty, and it seemed that every bird and bug south of the Mason-Dixon line hit her, but we barreled along, stopping only for gas and rest breaks. West Virginia, is all mountains. Beautiful state. Lots of coal trains. Drove through towns with names like Nitro and Hurricane (pronounced Hurra-can). This is Chuck Yeager country (he was born in Myra). On my trip folks didn't pay much mind to me or my car (except in Pennsylvania: I went into a gas station wearing my Red Sox hat and everybody inside had on Yankees caps - got a bit tense). Don't know what I was expecting - armed gangs trying to hijack my fuel and strip my car for parts? Maybe Duel? Didn't have any problems with other drivers (18-wheelers or otherwise), and nobody seemed phased by the Ontario plates on my car. Kinda... anti-climatic, actually. Now I'm here in Kentucky, job searching, and staying with friends.

Travelin' Road Show

I'll be driving for the next few days and I don't know when I'll be able to update (maybe Friday?). Of course, I'm sure all of you will be waiting anxiously - please stay calm. Wish me luck! See you soon.

Smells Like... Cinema!

When I was studying film-making one of the key courses we had to take was screen writing. I came to appreciate a number of writers, but one of my favourites was John Milius. It is like a guilty little pleasure to admit that, for serious film-makers are supposed to say they admire folks like Jean Renoir (which I do - La règle du jeu is a classic). Now, for most of us Milius is the guy who directed Conan the Barbarian and Red Dawn, but he is also the writer who saved the original Dirty Harry, scripted Robert Shaw's memorable "Indianapolis" dialogue in Jaws (both of which were uncredited) and, arguably, wrote all the interesting scenes in Apocalypse Now (my rule of thumb: if it keeps your eyes on the screen, it was Milius - if it makes you look at your watch, it was written by Coppola). Let's compare! A large scale air assault on a Viet Cong strongpoint (while playing Wagner's Die Walküre) with the key objective to seize some prime surfing ground = Milius. Endless musings into the dark recesses of the soul with lots of brooding closeups of a drug-frazzled Martin Sheen or overweight Brando = Coppola. My film school advisor, Professor K, had been a Vietnam veteran, and he ran into Milius in the early 70s as he was interviewing veterans to get background for his script. What left an impression on me was Milius's whacked-out interview on Heart's of Darkness (Hearts of Darkness: A Filmmaker's Apocalypse), Eleanor Coppola's documentary of the making of the movie. He relates a story where the studio sent him to the Philippines to investigate why the production was way over on every account - and, if necessary, to shut it down. Milius, in his hyperbolic style, compared his meeting with Coppola as von Rundstedt's meeting with Hitler in the Bunker in 1945 to tell him that the war was lost. Milius recounts that Coppola persuaded him that "... this movie would be the first to win the Nobel Peace Prize..." and then John exclaims (as von Rundstedt): "Vee don't need gas for zer tanks! Vee vill VIN!". George Lucas, on the other hand, not-so-fondly remembers that Milius wanted to film Apocalypse Now in 16mm in Vietnam (in the midst of the actual war), and that he was slated to direct. Milius, you wingnut! What if you got George killed? Sheesh, no Star Wars...

Muddy Water (Runs Deep?)

I'm having a love-hate thing right now with Boston. I mean, this place is my home, and it has never looked as good as it does now (just a nice little town, with lots of greenery), but come on - what's the deal here? Why has it been so darned duece difficult to find a job in this burg? I have been able to find work all over the world. I have traveled throughout the U.S. and gotten jobs. No problem. Come home to The Hub, and nada, bupkis, zippo. Sure, I could bag grocceries, I suppose, but I'm looking for something with a little more... let's say "job growth potential". It is bruising my ego. So, on Wednesday I'm packing up my resume and jumping into my '91 Canadian-built Toyota Corolla All-Trac wagon (herein to be called "Maru-chan") and trekking to points west and south to find new gainful employment. I don't know, maybe it is some sort of universal truth that the closer you get to your roots the greater the repulsive force (like trying to push two positive-sided magnets together). My friends roll their eyes and tell me that I'm exagerating (oh, are these the same kamaraden who spent years looking for work, and are still holding out for that "really good one" to come along?). Well, call me nuts, but away I must go. Yeah, we all like to think that we would be Columbus, but in reality most of us would be the guy wishing him well and standing at the quay waving good-bye to the Santa Maria. Not me, though. Nosirree, I'm gonna sail my Maru-Chan to a New World of Employment. Or, fall off the edge of the World (which, some people have told me, ends somewhere beyond Route I-495... )
Still though, I wish I could find a job here. So, [insert shameless plug here] if any of you out there are in need of someone with heaps of international experience (and happen to be in the greater Boston Area) drop me line. No, seriously, or I could end up like this guy: http://www.oddtodd.com/ (hmmm... maybe I should learn Flash...). Of course, it doesn't improve my humour to read that Massachusetts is the only state to have lost population (oh man, come on guys - we're letting Delaware beat us?) and our region is ninth place out of nine in job growth. I feel like Apollo Creed in Rocky III, grabbing The Bay State by the lapels (as it whines pitifully about "..we'll worry about job growth tomorrow, tomorrow...") and I yell: "Damn it Massachusetts! There ain't no tomorrow!" . Then we start our training sequence and in the end we all get jobs (after metaphorically knocking out Clubber Lang - Mr. T. - who represents malaise). Guess we are all still bummed out over Mick dying and all... but we gotta get get back into the ring!

Hefeweizen

Long before I lived in Japan I lived in Germany; in a region called Mittel Franken (Middle Franconia), which is in the north west part of Bayern (Bavaria)

(below: is a map of Bavaria, and the brown part is Middle Franconia ↓)

My village was tiny, much too small to have its own bier brauerei , but there were plenty of other places which did. Down in the valley from us was the town of Lichtenau , which (at that time)had been making beer almost continuously for well over 500 years (with a brief interuption here or there for the occasional war or outbreak of plague). The brewery was located in a castle. To this day I still miss the Lichtenau Hefeweizen (wheat beer). German wheat beers have the yeast at the bottom, and after you pour most of the contents out you leave just a little so that you can roll the bottle and dissolve the yeast - which you pour into your beer to cloud it up and give it its distinctive taste. Germans refer to beer as "liquid bread", and thanks to the local beer purity laws, it is very wholesome indeed!

Check out some of the franconia breweries here: http://www.bambergbeerguide.com/breweries.asp



Freistaat Bayern

... It's Dot Com!

Just about two years ago, after returning home from overseas, a good friend of mine introduced me to Homestar Runner
http://www.homestarrunner.com/.
What is it that tickles me so about this web-based Flash animation jewel? Personally, I appreciate its fine sense of the absurd; it offers up a host of characters with various conceits (some characters have invisible limbs, while for others typing perfectly with boxing gloves on is as normal as... not having visible limbs). This humour is not for everyone: some of my friends think it is brilliant, while others are amused that I am amused by what is so obviously just a group of random colours dancing on the screen ("Oooo... look at the pretty shapes! Ha Ha Ha!"). There seems to be no middle ground on this.
These guys do it all: music, interactive games, and e-mails answered by Strong Bad (the aforementioned character who types admirably well with boxing gloves on). Do yourself a favor - go see Homestar, and if you like what you see come on back and we'll talk. However, if all you see is a random group of colours... well, come back anyways and I'll try to find something else to chat about.


Or ... maybe I'll just sic The Cheat on you - go get 'em The Cheat! →

Power(point) to the People!

This whole blogging thing has (so far) been a lot of fun - although I must admit that at first I wasn't quite sure what to write. Maybe three or four people have come by (so far) and rummaged around. Thank you! Today HTML, tomorrow Flash!

どーもくん, Where Art Thou?

In Japan it seems that almost everybody has to have a cute mascot. Baseball teams, corporations, even the Jietai (Japanese Self-Defense Forces); all have warm and fuzzy creations to put a big, friendly, non-threatening face on a lot of day-to-day stuff (canned coffee, smokestacks, self-propelled artillery etc.).

So, it was with some surprise when Japan's national media network, NHK (日本放送協会 Nippon Hōsō Kyōkai ), introduced Domo-kun sometime in the late '90s. He was not cute - at least not in the conventional sense. The poor guy was a large, boxy, woolly brown creature with a perpetually open mouth full of large, menacing teeth. His only real connection with NHK seemed to be that he loved watching T.V. (he got his name by mimicking the polite " domo konnichiwa " that the NHK announcers use when greeting viewers). Some people have pointed out that Domo-kun kind of looks like a television set, too (albeit, a large, woolly brown one with large menacing teeth...). A few years ago I had the good fortune to meet one of the prop designers who helped develop the whole Domo-kun idea. She said that it just kind of came about in a stream-of-consciousness thing, and that they initially weren't sure if the big guy would connect with viewers ("He just seemed so weird!"). Yet, they found something endearing about him, so they went for it. That sums up my fascination with him, too: Domo-kun, in his own sweet, mono-syllabic way, wormed himself into my gruff heart. I found myself looking forward to the brief fifteen-second slots that they made for him between news shows and documentaries. He even became something of a cult figure here in the west, but recently I haven't seen hide nor hair from him. Anybody out there know where he's at? If you are a Domo-kun fan give us a yell.

牛久市

What is 牛久市? Ushiku-shi is inaka (literally: "house in the rice field") - the sticks, the boonies. It is a bedroom town. Yet, it will always have a special place in my heart. From natto (my first lunch in Ushiku was cold natto soba with a raw egg on top - scary!), to its kappa matsuri that is always interupted by a taifun, Ushiku is my Japanese cultural lode stone. Check it out here: http://www.city.ushiku.ibaraki.jp/
It is even lisited in Wikipedia! http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushiku
The kanji 牛 (ushi) in this case can be read as "cow", while 久 (ku) literally means "meeting place" or "coming together", and 市 (shi) is "city". "A City Where Cows Get Together". Kind of catchy, eh? Actually, I never saw any cows there, but there is a copy of a French Chateau (built during the Meiji period), that used to produce wine (but the soil in Ibaraki Prefecture really wasn't very good for grapes). Now the wine is made elsewhere but sold at the chateau. They do, however, have a really good German-style bier garten (I meet the German brau miester they brought in to set up the brewery). The city also boasts Ushiku Daibutsu , the second tallest standing statue of Buddha - (Wikipedia says it is the tallest, but we were beat out by one that was recently built in Taiwan: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ushiku_Daibutsu).

The view from the top is impressive, but it is mostly of rice fields. Nevertheless, Ushiku-shi will always be special to me, because it was the first place I lived in Japan. I always felt a perverse sort of pride in telling sophisticated Tokyoites that I was from Ibaraki. The symbol of the town is the kappa monster (he's the guy at the top of the post with the cup of water on his head, holding the cucumber).

Anytime, Anywhere (Anybody?)

Anybody recognize this crest? If so, please let me know!
(Hint: D 1/9)

Rites of Spring (Training)

My grandmother passed away this past winter. Aside from her garden (which gave her hours of joy mixed with frustration) she was also a huge Boston Red Sox fan (who gave her hours of joy mixed with frustration). She started following the Sox back in the 1940s - for most fans of my generation we remember the heartbreak of losing the World Series in '75 or '86, but my grandmother would often talk about the pain of losing to St. Louis in 1946. Yessiree, Red Sox Nation was an intense, but gloomy place most of her life, but she continued to follow the team and cheer, berate, and love them for over 60 years. So, when they finally won the Big One in 2004, we were all very happy for her. For her last Christmas (although we hoped it wouldn't have been) we had a replica of the World Series Championship banner made up for her (like the one in the picture above), and we hung it in her room. She told us that it brought her so much happiness, and I cannot think of any gift that so perfectly encapsulated all of our love and shared emotion. When I asked her what was the best part of of the 2004 season she immediately said " Beating the New York Yankees in Game 7 of the ALCS in Yankee Stadium!". So, this Spring I am watching and cheering for the Sox (and looking forward to their first meeting with the Yanks!). And if something big should happen again this October I'll have my grandmother's banner ready to wave.

And It was Good (Enough)

"The enemy of 'good-enough' is 'perfect'."
When I first stepped off the train at JR Kamata station, on a humid afternoon in 1998, being escorted to my company apartment by my boss (who had once been a somewhat well-known child actor in Japan) I heard for the first time the distinctive station music of Kamata koshin-kyoku (which, by the way, if any of you could find the midi version of this, I would be very, very grateful). Leaving Kamata eki and walking out onto the street I was struck by the throngs of people, the noise, and the chaos - and it seemed that the immortal words of Obi Wan Kenobi sprang unbidden into my mind: "Mos Eisley Spaceport; a wretched hive of scum and villany. We must be careful...". Indeed Master Obi Wan, indeed. Turns out that Kamata was the home of yakuza , North Korean gangs and lots and lots of suspicious characters

(to steal a phrase from Casablanca). Oh my. However, Kamata also turned out to be a hive of interesting shops and bazillions of Chinese restaurants - my favourite by far though was the gyoza-centric Nihao (better gyoza than Utsunomiya - by far!). The picture above is of Keikyu Kamata station, which is nearby Nihao (maybe less than 100 meters). The Keikyu line - a.k.a. "Red Thunder" - has the distinction of being the fastest in the Greater Tokyo Area; plus, the Keikyu train drivers have the exciting habit of sometimes falling asleep and missing the occasional station (or just over-shooting it, forcing them to back up). I love the wabi sabi feel of Keikyu stations, too! Ah, natsukashi ! From Keikyu Kamata you can go down to Kawasaki or up to Shinagawa, or over to Haneda airport (which is neat, because the train actually has to pull out of the station and cross over a major street - it is really fun! Soon there will be a link between JR Kamata and Keikyu Kamata. Earlier I spoke about train station music and midi versions - here is a link to a website that has some versions of Tokyo and Yokohama station music: http://members.at.infoseek.co.jp/seawater/midi.htm (and like I said before: if you know of any sites that have Kamata koshin-kyoku, please let me know!). Rock on, you lovers of eki music, rock on!

And first... There was light (content)

In another life I was many things. Now, in this life, I am starting over, and I don't like it one bit. But, from change we are supposed to grow, and I suppose that it will be good for me one day to look back and see that it was all necessary.