Somebody was at Deluhi's One-Man yesterday and got their new single and the above PV... I miss being able to do that. :(
PV's alright, song's alright, but totally can't remember what it sounded like and I JUST watched the thing... they spent some money, clearly, at least.
I liked the cheap-black-monk-hoods Deluhi of last year more though. Modern Deluhi sounds like they ProTools'd every single note, it's clinical and impersonal and unengaging.
There's a strong Raphael vibe in the chorus, helped by the background strings --around 1:27 if you're into that sort of thing. I am, so at least it's not getting a sad smiley today.
The Egg... has many features similar to Apple’s offering, but beefed up ... a full-sized SD card slot, a rear facing HD video camera, a front facing VGA camera, Flash Lite support, GPS, WiFi, and it has enough power under the hood to output 1080p video ... for $199 ...
After using the petite little Cowon D2 to catch up on TV while on the train (and watching video passes the time on the train a lot better than listening to music or podcasts or audiobooks... must have something to do with avioding eye contact, or not reading the same subway ad a hundred times...) I was considering getting the new new ZuneHD, or [shudder] an iPod Touch, but I dislike the required software I have to use for both those devices.
Creative lets you use any god damn software you please, or just drag n' drop. With a standard, non-$20-to-replace USB cord!
So even tho the software/interface on the device might be a little less perfect, guess who'll get my money this Christmas?
Drummer, pianist and X JAPAN band leader, Yoshiki, will undergo neck surgery on Monday, July 27, 2009 at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Beverly Hills, CA. Dr. Neel Anand, Director of the Cedars-Sinai Spine Center, will perform a cervical foraminotomy.
Due to his worsening drumming style, Yoshiki developed intense neck pain and left hand numbness over the past month, affecting his music performance. His condition has been evaluated by doctors in the U.S. and Japan. Yoshiki underwent a spinal x-ray series, an MRI of the spine, and an EMG. After seeking second and third opinions on the diagnosis and treatment, he concluded that the foraminotomy was necessary for the cervical foraminal stenosis.
Yoshiki's primary physician at the Cedars-Sinai Medical Center, Dr. Tommy H. Tomizawa (UCLA Assistant Professor), states that he will need a few weeks to recover from the surgery and a month or more of rehabilitation. If his condition does not improve over the next several months, laminectomy, discectomy and spinal fusion would be considered. Artificial disc placement would be another treatment of choice.
thanks laura!
It must be nice to afford medical care for a condition you exacerbated...
Of course, we here at jrocknyc wish Yoshiki a speedy recovery, which by his standards should take only 12-16 years. ^_^
Spent several hours reading about Wii hacks for backups, and went so far as to have an SD card loaded with the necessary apps, but then changed my mind at the last minute because I just don't have the time to KEEP UP with changes and shit, and it's not a road I want to start down.
Which brings me to a slate of quick reviews I've been wanting to do for a while now:
We haven't used Wii Fit since a week after we bought it, three months ago. It kinda sucked. Long pauses in the middle of workouts fucks up any semblance of flow, and it's not really specific enough with its "personalized workout" to be worth turning on.
Haven't played Okami in forever (still got stuck in that town with the hill and the rock wall blocking our exit, I think). I have no patience for exploration. I just wanna fight.
Resident Evil 4 has also been collecting dust because I find the control scheme clunky. And: I can't walk and shoot at the same time?! May try it some more tho, ain't gonna throw it out just yet.
Rayman Raving Rabbits was okay a couple times, before getting a little repetitive and a lot stupid. Even Kate didn't find that shit funny.
No More Heroes also sucks (not quite as awful as Red Steel, but close). I read good reviews for it; I no longer trust most game reviewers.
Wii Fit with the board was $80, the rest THANKK GOD were only $20... but that's $160 wasted.
On the other hand:
Kate loves the matching game on Wii Play (I think we got that one for $10) and the cow racing game, and the fishing. Simple shit, but fun.
But what we really dig is Wii Sports -- easily the most played title in our home. Tennis and Golf, baby, followed by Boxing, Baseball (I hate it but kate likes it), and Bowling. Wii Sports Resort with the M+ sensor is already in my Amazon wish list, but I'm thinking we might actually go to a store and get it!
I'm also considering Tiger Woods 10 (another M+ title) as well, tho I'm worried it'll be too challenging. I considered Virtua Tennis and EA Tennis or whatever it's called (more M+ games) but reviews made those sound *definitely* too challenging. I just wanna pick something up and have fun for ten minutes before dinner, yanno?
And The Force Unleashed was in my wish list until yesterday's announcement of a PC version with added stuff.
Nice, thick, smart, in-the-pocket groove, and I totally dig guitarists walking around while playing their riffs (like whats-his-face does @ :51, in the background).
The little smile @ :27 and the harmonics @ :57 negate the sucky DJ-scratching that pops up throughout the track, so: win-win.
Q8: If you could change one thing about your wife/girlfriend, what would it be?
8
24%
Her attitude/moodiness
21%
24%
22%
24%
Her sexual appetite
12%
21%
19%
17%
Nothing
29%
19%
21%
9%
Her nagging
11%
9%
9%
9%
Her looks
5%
13%
9%
6%
Her domestic skills
8%
4%
6%
5%
Her earning power
5%
5%
6%
4%
Her intelligence
6%
3%
6%
2%
Her sense of humor
3%
2%
2%
Q13: How comfortable do you feel having a doctor examine your genitals?
13
59%
Somewhat uncomfortable, it's a little awkward
58%
58%
59%
26%
Very comfortable, it's a normal medical procedure
25%
23%
18%
15%
Not comfortable at all
17%
19%
23%
Q17: Do you use Twitter?
17
87%
No
11%
Yes, occasionally
2%
Yes, I'm addicted
I'm a sucker for these unscientific polls because ... I don't even know why. May have something to do with my DESPICTION (despise + -tion?) of Twitter (which I just don't get even tho i have an account, and really feel like it's just WAAAAY too popular in the mainstream news now to be cool anymore. Fucking local news anchors talk about it! Grody!!!)
...In the 16th century, Portuguese seamen began leaving a Christian fundamentalist Europe to sail the seas in search of resources and spices to pillage. But as soon as they arrived in Goa, Malacca, Sumatra, and Japan, they also discovered an alternative sexual world where all their repressed longing could roam free.
"On one side," Bernstein writes, "was Christian monogamy in which sex was shrouded in religious meaning and prohibition, and regarded as sinful when enjoyed out of marriage. On the other side was an Eastern culture wherein sex was strictly organized, especially when it came to women, but where it was disassociated from both sin and love."
Where the West tied sex to the marriage bed and felt ashamed when it broke free, the East unleashed its libido in the harem, the brothel, and a smorgasbord of sexual options. "In the East," as Bernstein puts it in gushing terms, "it was taken for granted there would always be a certain reserve of women, often supreme models of beauty, cultivation and charm, whose assigned role in life was to provide sexual pleasure for men."
The Asian babe as dream-object was born.
Since the 1970s—when Edward Said wrote his classic Orientalism, exposing the myriad ways in which the West had patronized and stereotyped the East—such fawning has been dismissed as exploitative, racist distortion. Western merchants depicted the East as a den of sin and depravity, according to Said, in order to justify colonizing the land and taking whatever else suited them, from spices to resources to women.
But Bernstein argues that "the eroticized vision of the East carries a hard kernel of truth, which the followers of Said are loath to acknowledge."
You have no idea how many photo options I had to choose from for this post. I nearly broke my... computer.
Unable to choose, I demured to AskMen.com's somewhat uninformed Top Ten Japanese Babes list...
Feel free to submit links to your own favorite images ~dans le comments.~
Asus polished the PCB and components for the stereo and headphone crowd. Headphoneophiles will be especially pleased with the isolated power sources for the headphone and line out.
It's a little steep at $200, but could be an option for you non-gamers out there who only do FLAC and shit like that. :)
Part of me is like "oh, cool!" because there are more gaijin showing up at little Meguro dives in 2009 than there were at X Japan Tokyo Dome shows in 1996 or Pierrot/Dir en grey arena shows in 2002!
Then I remember how much more fun it is when you're the ONLY foreigner there, or there's you and like two or three others that you may or may not randomly bump into at the gigs, and it's always cool to see them and reconnect, but also cool to get all the ~gaijin-o-lurv~ for yourself.
Part of that's definitely me wanting to be LEET -- but that's a legitimate gripe, isn't it? You have to admit, it's more fun when your favorite bands are the talented ones that no one else has ever heard of. :)
And what of the fact that the mass media is now glomming onto not just VK (because Japan has always done little reports like this on VK bands) but onto the foreigner element of the scene? Does that make it less cool now? Or more cool? I have no idea. I mean, I dig that others are getting into the music I have loved so much for so long (you know in less than five months JROCKNYC will be TEN YEARS OLD?)
Not for wealth, and definitely not for power (too lazy) -- if I wanted to be famous, it'd be so I could so easily make people so happy. :)
Vaguely related: little blonde Anakin kid Jake Lloyd, ten years later at the lumberyard... seems perfectly well adjusted, which is a pleasant surprise.
Q: How did you find out that “Do you like crabs” was so well remembered by your fans here?
HYDE: Actually, last time I came to Baltimore in 2004 and I said about this, but I totally forgot about this. But I heard that fans get together and then they actually say about this, “do you like crab” thing and then I like, oh, and I heard about that and that’s why I used that in yesterdays, for the concert, but once I said it and then, oh, that’s right, it reminded me.
Q: What’s your favorite Motley Crue song?
HYDE: "Dr. Feelgood" and "Live Wire"
Q: You were really adamant about how really good Evangelion was in the fan panel. Why do you love Evangelion so much?
HYDE: [in English] I dunno.
Did anyone imagine his voice getting two octaves deeper when he said "I dunno"? And it's "did you eat crabs" not "do you like crabs" (not that I knew that until I found and watched the video again...)
Since they’re going to be away from home for quite a while, we had to ask, what are the top three items Hyde and K.A.Z. are making sure they don’t forget to bring along with them?
Both listed off the expected music player and toothbrush items, but Hyde made sure to add that he could not be away from home without bringing some wasabi with him.
I'm debating whether I prefer the list-style Q&A transcription or Askew's narrativey flow that presents a more detailed interpretation of intended meanings.
Yet Japan’s lack of global clout is all the more surprising because its cellphones set the pace in almost every industry innovation: e-mail capabilities in 1999, camera phones in 2000, third-generation networks in 2001, full music downloads in 2002, electronic payments in 2004 and digital TV in 2005.
Japan has 100 million users of advanced third-generation smartphones, twice the number used in the United States, a much larger market. Many Japanese rely on their phones, not a PC, for Internet access.
Japan quickly adopted a third-generation standard in 2001. The rest of the world dallied, essentially making Japanese phones too advanced for most markets.
It was so disappointing going from the Japanese phone I had to the ones available in America back in '06. Not unlike going from Tokyo's fiber optic internet back down to the sometimes spotty NYC cable internet. It was like, god, is this all there is to choose from?!
Alright THE GazettEEE, you're up, and with the mood i'm in you have NO DISCERNIBLE CHANCE OF SUCCESS, GO.
Intro track: i dig the low grumbly rumble and -- unbelievably -- find myself rocking in my chair to the rhythm.
"Invisible Wall" sounds like guaranteed suck for its first few seconds, then actually starts for real and sounds great through these new AD700s, ballsy and twirly, but Ruki's vocals, and the vocal line, it's like the soggy Oreo I've always felt it to be. Slightly redeems itself at 2:05, with drumming that sounds like a wild horse tearing at the bit, dying to get free... mostly I just wish dear Rukester wasn't so mealy, I think it's the main cause of my want-to-like-'em-but-can't-ness.
Nice example of inexpensive awesomeness. (The intro red wall silhouettes.) It's a simple, memorable visual, but the body movements and the EDITS are what makes it truly killer. You could do it in your garage for $10! Take note indie bands!
"Moth" has a bass solo intro and I can't remember the last song that was improved by a bass solo intro, but it was probably of a Metallica album older than most college seniors. Has a nice groove at 1:36, but it repeats for too long. Great drumming struggling to break free of the timider vocals and only half-heavy guitars though.
"Leech" - was I annoyed by the female vocal inserts when this first came out? I cannot recall. Overall it's not as foreboding or heavy as it thinks it is.
"Nakigahara" is a seven-minute ballad that I lack the patience to make it all the way through, but I want to liken it to that Dir en grey dirge, "Ain't Afraid to Die" in its construction and this-is-a-good-time-to-leave-the-mosh-pit-for-a-quick-piss-and-a-beer-ishness.
"Erika" is 53 seconds of looped synth, kinda sounds like you're entering a bad but forgettable dream.
"Headache Man" is pretty poundy at first but then there's scratching and it gets a little too big for its pants, and the chorus don't fit in a good way or a bad way.
Gazette
"Koren" "Guren" - another ballad, more in the traditional j-rock band vein (acoustic guitar, strings, spoken voiceover, single-coil neck-pickupy solo... if there's a PV, red roses are guaranteed to make an appearance, also lots of longing looks up to the heavens and down at one's shoes.)
"Shikyu" - 43 seconds of distorted screaming, probably the least impressive thing one can put on record. At least feedbacking guitar features a ~note~.
"13 Stairs-1" sounds sorta Soundgardeny, slower and purposefuller with guitars tuned down to C. It changes up halfway through for something more modern, but I can't quite place the influence. I like it because it doesn't sound like every other Gazette song ever, but I doubt I'd spin it more than once a decade on purpose.
"Distress and Coma" - I sorta like the right-side guitars in the verse, while they're in the background pretending to be radio transmissions (~1:50), in reverse adn fading in and out, but that's mostly accidental coolness. The verse guitar is thick and does all the right chunking on the second and fourth bars, and the solo's simple but that can be rewarding sometimes and it is here, and even the backing "orchestra" is useful & interesting.
"Kanshoku" - sub-minute song #4... fade in, cue lonely single piano keys being struck, fade out.
"Shiroi Uutsu" is not quite a ballad, but the guitars and drums have no edges, no structure, no presence: they're just wallpaper for Ruki's voice to bounce off of. An overabundance of strings drowns everything.
"Chaos" gallops along chunkily, frivoliticiously, it's happy to be alive and so dangerously ignores speed limits and other street signs. It's also a tad simiplistic (I wish it had gotten a little proggy in it's last moments, to balance out the mild progginess of the intro) but what a great rock song. Would LOVE to be in the audience for a song like this.
Mourou is so cretinous I'm not even going to give it the distinction of quotation marks.
"Ogre" is like riding an escalator that has been lassoed by a speeding fire engine fleeing falling asteroid debris. Me likee!
And "Dim Scene" struck me as too slow at first, but there's a Luna Sea-meets-Dir en grey-esque quality to it's darkness. Maybe it ~is~ the echoing violin and the Edward Scissorhandy guitars trading off like an Arkhamized Inoran and Sugizo, the rolling drum attacks at the halfway mark that gradually builds into a Deggy avalanche.
we live in a fairly nice place but last week a cute mouse died over near our shoe rack by the front door. i swept it into a box and that was that.
a few hours ago, the wife was nursing jackson while kate announced "i found a mouse!" i got home two minutes later and they were sitting in the living room watching a corner of the kitchen behind our recycle bin. a cute little baby mouse, its body the size of a grape, was scuttling around. i tried to trap it in an empty cheerios box but it skittered away.
so i went out for mousetraps, and the only kind they had were glue traps. my understanding of glue traps is that they are torture -- the mouse gets its feet stuck, then its FACE, it's nose, it's mouth, sealed in glue, and it spends a few minutes suffocating while it struggles against this foe it has no evolutionary adaptation against.
but it was that or the snap-traps, and i didn't want anyone's toes getting broken, so i got two glue traps, brought 'em home, set 'em up, then forgot about 'em.
five minutes ago, k whispered, "i think it's the mouse!" i jumped from my seat and yes, it was the mouse, but mercifully, only his rear legs were stuck. his tiny little front paws and panicked baby face (did he walk backwards into the trap? he must have) were scrambling and sniffing around the edges of the trap for answers to what was happening to him and why. i watched for a long time, maybe a minute. he looked up at me. he was just a baby! like jack! T_T
i didn't want him to suffer, and i felt that tossing him in a plastic bag and then down the garbage chute would just lead to long days of dehydration, starving, and frightened confusion.
so i gently placed him and the trap into a white plastic bag, then into another plastic bag, and as the bags crinkled cutely under his active nose and hands, i delicately walked over to my utility closet and placed the bags on the floor, heaved up a 40lb bag of planting soil to chest height, and SLAMMED it down upon the bags with a single, solemn thud.
The Zamboni doubled — nay, TRIPLED over in happiness-demolishing agonies.
Leon Arnott
This one wins a mention for "happiness-demolishing," which isn't quite as memorable as 2007's "unending holocaust of pain" but bears the same hallmark.
Speaking of taking a quick jaunt to the past: I have the ability to go through time, he suddenly remembered while at a bus stop near a tree.
Adam Box
This is what we in the business call "painting a word picture." Setting is so important!
Sometimes painting that word picture requires the imperative mood, or the suggestion thereof:
Deep space. The silence of the void. Shh.
Anthony Hope
I try not to fall for the same gimmicks every year, but here are a few that do some of the usual things well. Unnecessary explanation:
Deborah walked briskly down the street with pants on her legs.
Susie Thai
A leg and part of a torso lay on the sidewalk — the remains of Alan Tompkins.
Mark Wells, quoting LaHaye and Jenkins's Left Behind
Mark notes, "Try imagining the scene without guessing as to which part of the torso." He also points out "the implication that the viewpoint character has just identified Tompkins from his leg and torso-part."
Dan Brown and LaHaye/Jenkins are among the bestselling writers of our era. We are all doomed.
We hadn't chosen Jackson Hiroki's kanji yet, though we have to register him at the Japanese consulate soon, so we googled the name, ended up at Wikipedia's "Hiroki" page, and had the following kanji to choose from:
I made my choice almost immediately. Then K pointed to the same line before I even said anything and said, "These are the ones I was thinking about," and I went, "That's the pair I was gonna choose!" So we shrugged and went, "Done!"
Guess which one, and then guess WHY! Either you never will, or it'll be the first thing you think of.
I hate this PV for the same old reason I hate the looooooong full concert dvd (Crazy Crazy Crazy) [cdjapan] this footage is ripped from: the high frame rate of the film and the relentless cuts and dizzying camera movement are like some sort of Clockwork Orange rehabilitation video, likely to induce oneself to vomit in one's own mouth.
I also hate this PV for a new reason: sticking already released live footage onto studio sound and calling it a PV is fuckin' lazy. Remember the awesome video of Gilg walking around a Chinese desert in those European monk hoods? Now THAT was a fuckin' cool PV. No vomiting required.
This "Alive" PV probably cost more, and delivers so much less. I understand you wanna show off your live chops, and that the DVD shoot was expensive, but at least temper TEH NONSTOPNESS with some cutscenes to girls in the woods holding dead flowers in slo-mo, c'mon!
The DVD pretty much exhausted my early admiration of Gilgamesh. Glad I caught 'em live when they were young pissers back in '05, with a setlist of six songs, because I'd never be able to endure TEH BATTERY OF CHUNKS they crank out in every song, and the same-ish singalongyness of all their choruses, for two-plus hours.
My Sony MDR-v6s -- which were great for games (excellent positional audio) and great for rock & metal -- bit the bullet today. The psuedo-leather cups were all rubbed off like a peeling tan, the foam pads were exposed after seems started to rend, and then finally the right ear went out. Jiggled the wire a couple times, got audio for split-second intervals, then nothing no matter how much wiggling I did, so they are now balled up and in a trash can. Two years and two months after I got them. Shame. :(
My next set was always gonna be Grados (60s or 80s), but looking at them, the way they sit on one's ear just flat like a coffee roll, and apparently not so good for games, and their Y-cordedness, I decided against 'em, and after much head-fi.org perusal, which involved checking out Sennheiser HD-555s (rocking, gaming, sturdy, but tight on larger heads) and some Beyerdymanics that were in the same ballpark, I settled on the AKG Audio Technica ATH-AD700s:
They're open-air, which means others will hear what i'm listening to, but also (hopefully) means I'll be able to hear other people (crying about poopy diapers, for instance) a little easier too. And the openness should mean less ear fatigue. And they're also supposed to be extremely comfy, and they're sorta purple-and-golden~mauve (the pic makes 'em look grey and bluish, but it's a lie, they look like something Prince might use). They also look easy to hang on a hook, freeing up desk space. And they're GIGANTIC.
At $83, they were about halfway between the $69 Grado-60s and $99 Grado-80s. I hope I made the right choice. Some people were like "not enough bass for rock! not good for gaming!" and others were like, "you won't be disappointed, they're fine for rock and gaming!" We shall see.
Someday I'll actually review the dozen j-rock CDs i'd like to review...
edit: when i first saw it I assumed the intended message was "ASS POO" and thought (in my sleep deprived state) "is there any other kind?" and laughed... but the photo clearly shows "ASS POON" which lacks the depth and complexity of my initial interpretation. :(
Had to check Jack back into the hospital on Monday; he had jaundice, which isn't uncommon, but still sucks, as it requires blindfolding your kid and sticking him in a glass box for 24-48 hours.
These photos are like Bioshock II screenshots. (The special light breaks down the bilirubin in his blood into a water-soluble form that his liver can handle more easily.)
Neat fact: bilirubin is what makes yer poop brown!
He's back home now and doing great, back to normal and keeping us awake. He's become a lot more vocal since the treatment too, cooing and ahhing at us. :)
