"Mother of Sweating Jesus! I thought."

If there were subtitle capabilities for this thing, the subtitle would be: "Just grommet truth soul う!". The real title is from an article on the NFL love Hunter S. Thompson, called 'Fear & Loathing at the Super Bowl'. I am going back through a HST phase, mostly because i love having his voice in my head. And he's a big fan of paragraph sentences, which, as you may know, i strive to become the queen of. He writes just how he talks, it's perfection. I'd seen 'Fear & Loathing in Las Vegas' many times before, of course, but the most recent viewing (I christened my apartment with it first night i stayed here) stirred something back up and then i discovered the Rolling Stone dedicated to him after his timely/untimely death in 2005 amongst my things recovered from warehouse storage hell. I re-read a couple of the friends' accounts and decided it was about time i actually read some of this man's work. I've watched the documentaries on the Fear&Loathing DVD and read clips of his writing, but i don't even own any of his books.

In a semi-frantic love state, i sat on the floor in the book store and skimmed through biographies and a huge, beautiful coffee table book called 'GONZO' but began to pout in frustration as i realized none of this was written BY HST. So what the hell, why can't i find his own writing? I looked through the 'Modern Events' and 'Social Studies'-and CHRIST, every politician, journalist or general 'person of interest' has a goddamn book of 'Why You Should Trust Me'-then after sitting with 'GONZO', a little, frantic muttered voice said "Turn around dumbass" and i was all "WTF?" and i spun myself around and right behind me on the bottom shelf were all the works of my beloved Duke.

Well, all the ones they had anyway. I ended up with the first volume of Gonzo papers, called 'The Great Shark Hunt'. And now, though i don't have a head full of acid, i do have a head full of Hunter S. Thompson's eternally mad journalistic achievements. God, he was good. He makes reading about football entertaining. well, for the most part. Some of it i struggle with because i don't know who any of these mysterious '70's icons are. For such a pop culture fanatic, one might think that i would have at least heard of some of these people. But nope, Hunter has to teach me, but this is a task i think he is not only up to, but quite clearly, he enjoys. He loved what he did, even when he loathed what he did, when he loathed what was going on around him, which was most of the time, but really he was so fascinated by this reality that everything through his eyes becomes something. He wouldn't miss anything because Jesus, isn't that strange? Let me tell you about it, wait, let me tell me about it. Genius.

The only draw back to being wholly enthralled with HST all over again is that he's gone on to chronicle the after life, which could mean wonderful entertainment for those beings, but we're left with what he had. oh well, he had a terrific body of work and i'm gonna read ALL of it before i really start to morn this loss.

In other news, i drew this: Sachi in sweat pants and a sports bra i had in college that *GASP* i actually wore....Been looking at some old, hilarious photos. I've done some things, yes, even some things i'm not proud of, but you bet your sweet bippy i took pictures of EVERYTHING. Anyway, i thought Sachi is hot enough she can wear just the sports bra and sweats. And the multi-shoe concoction Judd Nelson wore in the breakfast club. i still love that shit. This picture is the only one, i think, to come out during this project i am still working my life away on. It's well over an hour now with 30 plus songs in the soundtrack. it's also on 2 DVD's because the quality on the first one has gone from "excellent" to "very good" to "good". But oh well, i can't cut out the text because then i can't talk about the pictures, and with the text being lengthy it needs to stay on screen long enough to read and with the timing needing to be perfect, the songs are many.

I've managed to only repeat a couple of the artists and include music that was actually there when the pictures were taken...well, you know, it was playing in my head or in one of the shops or something. Or it just goes really well with the mood, even if the lyrics don't match up. I found a Go!Go!7188 song (they're a Japanese girl punk band, now don't cringe, they're actually quite skilled, though they do scream quite a bit, but any punk band that can do the punk-rock thing AND the pop-punk thing and then some JAZZ is OK by me) called 'Ukifune' that perfectly describes my feelings inside Shinjuku, it also fits the text intro to that section PERFECTLY. OK OK, enough about 'THE PROJECT'....

The subtitle of this was taken from hitomi's blog, i'm sure that's not what she said, but Babel Fish yields such hilarious 'translations' sometimes, i couldn't resist sharing that one. As usual, i love hitomi. i finally saw and own her first attempt at a film 'Nightmare Detective', which is a Shinya Tsukamoto film, the man behind 'Tetsuo:The Iron Man'. So hitomi's already got one up on poor old Hyde and Gackt, in that she chose a film to make her debut in that was made by an established and very well respected feature film maker, where as the guy who directed 'Moon Child' had previously done...porn. So props to hitomi. So many props. My god, i was clapping at the end and yelling...and i was sitting in the dark, alone in my apartment...

But anyway, the film itself tries to play some serious mind games, and i think it accomplishes some of that successfully. But it's hard to say whether it's from the script or from the odd sort of all over the place acting of it's cast. I learned from the 'making of' that Tsukamoto likes to let actors do mostly their own thing, so that's cool for them, but then you also get very different performance styles which sets different moods in the same scene...does that make sense? It's already got a pretty confusing premise (God Bless the Japanese, it wouldn't be Japanese if it weren't somewhat confusing); There's this guy (played by Ryuhei Matsuda, whom you may have last seen being sodomized by a doomed old samurai and tugging poor Asano Tadanobu's heart strings with Beat Takashi overseeing the whole mess in the film 'Taboo') who can hop into people's dreams through a series of questions and mind melding, and he tries to help them discover the root of their nightmares. But sometimes it's horribly dangerous for him and the dreamer, of course. And then there are murders which appear to be committed inside the minds of the victims, enter hitomi as the 'socially inept' detective who wanted a taste of hands-on crime investigation so she had herself transferred to this department.

Then in the police department, of course all the top dogs are intimidated by the presence of this esteemed female super detective. But one of them tries to understand her a little, enough that she'd like to share thoughts with him but he's too dumb to understand (and dudes, this dumb detective is played SO AWESOMELY by one Masanobu Ando whom you may remember played the crazy blonde kid who kills just about everyone in Battle Royale?). So the characters themselves are pretty straight forward, and giving the actors free reign gives the characters their individuality...and i actually think it worked for hitomi instead of against her, because she just let the ever kind and patient Tsukamoto mold her virign performance because she'd just never done it before. He said he casted her because of her epic command of the audience at her shows, with very little going on in the background. Her shows don't have acrobats and dancers and big stage production, it's pretty much hitomi and her band. So he thought he might like to put forth the many sides of hitomi on the screen too.

i think it was a really good film, the dream imagery is, of course, beautiful and the story makes sense if you're willing to take the intial leap that someone can get into someone else's dreams. It's a complete story, though Tsukamoto says he's already written the 2nd and 3rd 'Nightmare Detective' stories. That's another thing about this, there's all these reminders that it's a Japanese horror film combined with music and levels (the hushed, monotones of the actors when they're awake) of a David Lynch movie crossed with a '50's detective movie. You know, it's like what's good, what's great, actually, about Brian DePalma's 'Black Dahlia'.

'Nightmare Detective' completely decimates 'Moon Child' (which, BTW, is a film Gackt wrote to top off his Moon Series of albums, about a group of misfits trying to get by in gangsta times and also, hyde's a vampire, it's super hilariously awesome, but you gotta know who they are in order to truly enjoy the experience) i'm sorry hyde and Gackt, i love you both eternally but ya'all better bow down to the unyielding powers of HITOMI: SUPER EVERYTHING!!!! Her music is the best, her films are the best. She's the best. well, OK, not the best, but better than 'Moon Child'. Which isn't really saying much. But I would recommend 'Nightmare Detective' to anyone interested in this kind of film. i think that aside from the fact that the aforementioned 'queen of my heart' is one of the stars, the movie itself is really quite good. Maybe not as good as 'Tetsuo', as i've heard that film is one of the best Japanese films out there. N.D. is NOT the best film ever by any means, nor is it the best Japanese film ever. In my book, that'll always be Cutie Honey: Warrior of Love. But 'Nightmare' is definitely worth beholding, so please go rent it RIGHT NOW. OK bye bye!

I'm Gonna Start an "I Hate Ellen Page" club before anyone else!!!

OOOOOOO!! I have been working dilligently (spelling? does the spell check work yet?) every free minute of each and every day on this project for the class I'm taking. no drawings involved...well...except ones I've already done and some are years and years old. I'm making a slide show to end ALL SLIDE shows. well, at least, in my mind it does. For me, it is very easy to become obsessed, but it's very hard for me to explain my obsessions to others...in 1000 words or less. Sure, I can ramble on for days about my Japan obsession...but how to contain it into a (*GASP*) 15 minute presentation?!!!! I CAN'T DO IT!!! I've tried and I've tried and mommy I can't do it!!! So it may be,like, 30 minutes. and believe me, I am working desperately to edit it down to the absolute necessities so that all those newbs won't recoil under their desks, rocking back and forth and muttering to themselves, praying for it all to be over soon....well, actually, that'd be a pretty hot response.

I had simply wanted to show a slide show of my pics from Japan (which, for those of you who may not know, are in considerable number (1,099 >.<) . But as i sifted through my trip, I began to recollect and wanted to be able to share stories, decided I would include some commentary and OOPS a soundtrack...and it was all downhill from there. Then I decided I should explain the obsession's birthing. Now it's spun wildly out of control....but if i can reign it in...this shall be...my finest hour (enter Jaws [SPEAKING OF WHICH OMG ROY IS DEAD ROY IS DEAD OH THE HUMANITY ROY IS DEAD!!! R.I.P. Roy, I will always love you, and now you'll be on the biggest boat.] rising from the depths to bite the floating device under my sail boat that I just friggin' re-inflated...son of a....)

ok. what was I talking about? explaining massive, all consuming obsessions in under 1000 words, was that it? HUH?! Was it. yeah well, good luck to me.

THERE WILL BE BLOOD!! best movie ever. I just saw it again in the theatre. MY GOD it's perfect. I wish I was DDL's mustache. wouldn't that be nice? and jeepers, the second time around it was over in 2 seconds. we were like 4 minutes late and he'd already fallen in the well when we walked in....and then I laughed and laughed and BAM! it was over. I'm finished!!! AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHH!!! SO F**KING AWESOME!!!!!!

Oh, and well all this project crap was and is going down, I talked to my pseudo landlord about becoming the official tenant here and he said he'd love to have me, I think because I vacuum. So soon this Vermont paradise shall be MINE!!! ALL MINE!!!! and i will love it and hug it and call it squishy...I'm gonna go nuts with the decorating...omg I can't wait....but I have to get a second job to support myself so like, I'll never see any of you again! but I'll always be in the Dome.

i too have seen this eclipse! first one i ever saw! i was at work and stood outside with half the rest of the staff and watched. then some guests came out too, and the whole lot of us puffed away on our cigarettes and 'ooooo-ed' and 'aaaawed' during the whole thing. it was hot. i took crappy pictures with my cell phone!

GAAH!! 2 in 1 day? Maybe 3!!

eeep! i have been working on this gosh darn picture of Izumi for THREE WEEKS!!!! She just would not let me draw her! i tried and i tried to make a pen and ink like the rest but she was all "Whatever you, I should be in color!" So i fixed her little red wagon. I made her REALLY colorful. Izumi would mostly likely never be caught dead in such colors, but the clothes work. She is difficult to draw because her style is all over the place. I thought she'd be easy, she came to me before the Gyaru did, but she appeared with dark skin and white blonde hair. This is because she is dark and menacing and is very much on the Visual Kei scene, which is another music scene/fashion trend in Japan. It's what Miyavi was before he went solo, it's what Blood, that goth/industrial band i saw in Boston, is. Visual Kei is usually a style reserved for androgenous men, and when girls dress like it it's generally considered Goth Lolita. But they too, bleach their hair and wear insanely elaborate costumes that are goth mixed with punk. So usually Izumi would wear more black and if there were a color involved, let it be red. But here Izumi's gonna go half gyaru because as i stated earlier today, i can't get them outta my head.

So Izumi is the bitch of the pack. She isn't mean, really, she just doesn't care at all what you think of her or about your opinions. She will argue with you at the drop of a hat, but her arguements are very frustrating because you know right away, you can never win this. Izumi is studying to become a lawyer. She is very anti-social and a huge RPG nerd, when she is emersed in one of these games, the other girls may go for weeks without hearing from her. But when she comes out to play, she can get them into any club and she is a great singer so karaoke is one of her favorite past times. She also can drink most of the other girls (save Sachi, that darn westerner) under the table. Sachi is terrified of Izumi for the most part and thinks Izumi doesn't like her because she is not Japanese. This is false, Izumi doesn't dislike Sachi at all, she doesn't care either way. Aside from disappearing into video games, Izumi frequents the countryside to visit her Grandmother and sing enka songs for her. Izumi is a skilled cook and will make you a 3 course meal (at least) if you catch her at home when she's not playing video games.

i apologize for the color pencil. it's all i have till i get a decent paint program.

These are some examples of Visual Kei, it's Mana,an innovator of the style (visual kei means Visual Style). Then Vidoll, a band that's way better than Vidoll....They got a lot better over time, but have always looked awesome. Then my new Mana, Hizaki, HE rules the metal/industrial side of the visual kei fence right now. and look at him, isn't he pretty?

GAL REVO-TRANCE

Big smile now! This is my Halloween costume. It's February now, but i want to share these pics and the influences for them because the 'Gyaru' is on my mind all the time lately. Gyaru is a Japanese fashion trend amongst teenage to early 20's girls, they have very dark tans (Ganguro= very dark tan & usually pastel or white make-up down the nose and under the eyes, these girls are...somethin'!) and dye their hair to more Western colors like blonde or auburn. Gals often put colored streaks in their hair to symbolize their moods and some wear colored contacts or these super weird ones which make their whole iris black, this is to make them appear more cartoonish. The Gal is attempting to look like an over-the-top California girl. And right now in Japan this craze is pretty big, i saw these girls more frequently than any other of the stand out trends in Japan (ie: Goth-Lolita)

Before I went to Japan, i had discovered the J-pop artist Sifow. She has this hilarious video that opens with her in a tanning bed and she goes on to sing of 'LOVE & PEACE' (the name of the song) with the help of her body guards, two giant black body builders in little gold speed-o's(sorry for bad spelling!). So i became obsessed with her and music like her's and realized all this fashion and style, and the sped up euro-beats were all the language of the wonderful and very not mysterious Gyaru, which is simply the word 'Gal' phonetically sounded out in Japanese. The pic on the top is Sifow with the para-para pop group Gyaruru, which i came to find out Sifow actually put together and produced, she really is quite talented.

While in Japan, much to my friend's horror, I set out on a mission to find out more about Gyaru Nation. Now, my friend is horrified because these Gals aren't exactly model citizens. They are percieved as frivelous twits who'll do whatever it takes to get those label clothes and bags. They live to shop,dance and look good, and hope to marry wealthy so they can live this sort of anti-Japanese life style for all their days. But as an outsider, i think it's easier for me to think that these are just kids having fun and most of them grow out of it, and some of them are awesomely successful music producers, fashion designers and singers or models, or all of the above, like Sifow. All over Tokyo there are these 3 story New & Used entertainment shops, called 'Book Off'. These stores sell new & used CD's,DVD's,Manga and magazines. I began to find Gyaru specific magazines, such as Ranzuki, Agenda & Es Possh!. My favorite is Ranzuki but I gathered information and inspiration from all of them.

I couldn't make my hair quite that large.....

but thanks to my sister's make-up talents, i got the 'Blue Face' i was hoping for! and you can make yourself uber tanned without risking your skin through many wonderful lotions and foundations. I used L'oreal Paris' True Match C7 cool nut brown foundation for my face and their Sublime Bronze Tinted Self-Tanning lotion in Medium Natural Tan. Both of these coupled with some stage tanning powder give fair skin a very deep and frightening tan. For my eyes, my sister used liquid eye liner from Cover Girl and various white and blue powder shadows. So all in all my Gal costume was a complete success, except I'm.like,SO not Japanese so i kind of ended up looking like a Jersey house wife and i happened to unvail this costume IN New Jersey sooo...I was definitely a hit with those Jersey boys. No one knew what i was but I knew i looked exactly like i wanted and those that know Gyaru seem to agree.



For more pics and Gyaru awesome-ness, stay tuned as I am working on my two Gyaru characters AND you should go to the sight CherryPop.Over because they are totally on top of Gyaru culture and the best source for pics and music. The sight is in French or Japanese but it doesn't really matter! dozo!

BLOOD-ing

MU-ah-ah-aaaaaah!!! This weekend i went to see the Japanese goth/metal extravaganza known as Blood at the Middle East upstairs in Boston. Having lived in Boston for so very long and having now been away from Boston for so very long makes every visit there super special, but specialness overfloweth when you include something as mind boggling as Japanese goth/metal show. Because this means the music AND the fans. Oh the fans. they dress up almost more than the band, so much so that some of them don't even look human anymore. it's amazing. Plus this band LOVES Boston so that makes us all feel so special. I bought a

bunch of stuff at the show and got their autographs and my friend got his bloody rabbit signed by the crazy DJ! The DJ who opened for them was this crazy looking dude who is what being on acid looks like. I swear he's actaully made of candy. and then of course, i got my picture taken with the band. sadly, i was too nervous to be standing next to such a perfect specimen of Japanese androgenous beauty to even try to look cool. plus i was severely underdressed, i just wasn't expecting this opportunity to present itself!! so embarrassing, but SO satisfying.

Also, i have to mention the other band that opened for Blood, called 'echostream'. They were an interesting little number, female vocals & percussion,then a guy on keyboards,electronic percussion and guitar. The sound was pretty shoe-gazie, but it was really nice, a nice change for an opener for one of these bands. Last year it was a horrendous goth/industrial band called Absynth(which is so bad we all blocked them out and it takes an hour to recall their name and then none of us actually can and we have to look it up online). So anyway, last year's unfortuante choice made echostream all the better. except they played 'creep' by Radiohead. a song i never needed to hear again. but oh well, a pretty Japanese girl with a great voice almost made the song tolerable! When echostream played, i had a much better spot, it was before the little blonde bitches pushed me out of the way and stepped on me with their giant platforms. i might add that the blondies stood where i was, they fought me tooth & nail for that spot and then they left when the headlining band started playing. and so i hate them. BUT, i did get some nice shots of echostream while i had that coveted spot.

Love Love Airplane!

below us now is Miyavi, the Japanese guitar-spaz sensation. He is the inspiration for the earlier posted picture of Sachi, he is long and thin and oh so enticing. He is always contorting in pics like in this one, and his features are so feminine, he is easilly turned into a woman. Hence this drawing of Megumi. Megumi does not normally dress like this. I had Miyavi on the brain and she just kind of, popped out in his homage. She usually wears 70's jogging shorts/short shorts and a skinny T-shirt with some catchy engrish phrase on it like, "SPRINGTIME HAPPY" or "MAKE LOVE". She is the coolest of the cool kids. Megumi is rocking the indie-tronic underground in Tokyo and planning a move to the States once she's saved enough money. She is constantly writing and recording sounds around her, being heavilly influenced by the found sound movement of electronic greats, like Matmos and Felix Kubin. But she doesn't do field recordings, no no, there is ALWAYS a beat. She likes to sing too and writes mostly ridiculous lyrics no one understands (like the title of this blog, though ONE of you understands, Laurie). Megumi also has a dark and disturbing obsession with Japanese pop star Moritaka Chisato and sometimes cosplays as her when she is playing a show. Megumi is happy and she is content, she is the event planner for the group, and she's the only one who's got a boyfriend at this point (whom i can't name because he's only just arrived in my brain), thusly making her the envy of all her friends...although not really, just Sachi. Tomiko doesn't know what 'envy' is, Yuki and Megumi's dispostions are very similar, the only thing Yuki is envious of is that Megumi has is a man who loves her. Then there's the 'yet to be written about' Izumi who would never be envious of anyone for anything, ever. But Sachi has a huge crush on Megumi and rarely speaks to her because she doesn't want Megumi to know, Sachi doesn't think this would do much for their friendship. Sachi and Megumi only begin to bond when Megumi's little sister Haruka is shuttled to Tokyo to live with them because she's gone gyaru(gal) and their parents don't know how to fix it.