Thursday, June 8, 2006

HERE WE GO! GO!


I'm not really much of a Slayers fan, but this is Give A Reason, duders. This is Megumi at her absolute height. Gs had better respect.

On another subject: I think I may be capable of writing the Black Lagoon piece now. If I understand anywhere close to correctly, episode 7 is the continuation of the conversation that takes place in 5. It doesn't at all offer a "way out" of confronting what Revy says in the earlier episode - a way out wouldn't mean anything anyways. Rather, it takes up what she says and finds responsibility in it. How does this happen?
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Tuesday, June 6, 2006

Holy god.


1) How the hell did they orchestrate all this?
2) JPop concert audiences are bar none the greatest in the world.
3) You can really tell the difference between the ones who can keep pitch and the ones who have no idea and just try to shoot as close as they can.
4) Watch for Yuki Matsuoka to screw up in a totally cute way around 6:40. She always looks so nervous doing the pop idol thing...
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Monday, June 5, 2006

I invite anyone to do better


LYRICS: (best guess)

I have taken / A duty from the world
Sleep with justice / I just wanna bend you
I'm your angel / Army bring you with
You make me violent / You no melee for your arm

It's all up to you / The one who sold river
Even in head / By all the kiss of dare
It's always been here / For when I was born
Now let me violent / Mellow melee for the arm

You can tell what it is
You're the new hand discover
It's far, you have eyes
With your tea and your tea hurts
You and the tea
If you repent ligation
I put the to misery!!

You and the best
For Christ's sake it's what you are
Shootout hola
Go with my Beijing
Write on the fire
Write on the power
Wait for I have it all!

(Wait for I have it all!)
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Sunday, June 4, 2006

Chain I


Someone on Youtube put up a video of a performance from one of my favorite composers conducting his own work. Lutoslawski here is the original bad boy of 20th century Polish music, deeply influential on Penderecki, Gorecki, and any number of post-Soviet composers in general (early Part, Gubaidulina, others). He's also been appropriated by movie music a lot (typically for horror and action stuff - Don Davis' scores for the Matrix trilogy are basically Lutoslawski at their core).

Anyways, this is a really good performance too, and it's interesting to see how this stuff is conducted - especially if you know what his scores look like. I really wish Youtube had more like this...
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Saturday, June 3, 2006

COME - ON - BAY-BEE, COME ON BAYBEE

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Friday, June 2, 2006

at home on friday night, writing a blog
I've been having some difficulty deciding what to do for my next article. A number of ideas have come up, but none of them have progressed to any kind of a stage where I can actually set words down in a convincing way.

First, I was thinking of writing something on Miyazaki... which I really couldn't do without being "critical," and not only because I'm contrarian as hell. There is a danger to what Miyazaki does, I think, which goes mostly unnoticed (well, except for the occasional polemic that never gets past surface condemnation). The difficulty in writing this would be, first of all, trying to schematize M's thinking (already an act of violence), following this up by bringing out what's left unthought there (what in effect M can't notice in what he's doing), and do all of this while avoiding being merely critical because he "missed" this or that. I am not yet in any way prepared to do this.

Second, I feel the need to try to confront a scene in episode 5 of Black Lagoon, the one where Levi/Revy talks to Rock about money. This is one of the best scenes I've seen in recent memory (also one of the most disturbing). I have to try to understand this thing if I'm going to be at all honest with myself, and I'd like to be able to do so without immediately falling back into Marx's understanding of money/private property (cf. the money essay from the 1844 manuscripts)... even though at base I think Marx and Revy understand money in the same way. But I'll really have to challenge myself if I'm to do justice in any way to Revy. Grasping what she means requires that I let her be right - which means bidding farewell the "emotional bulls***" that I've focused on in past months and trying to hear the world speak in terms of money, violence, and power. DIFFICULT.

Also, I've been reading and rereading one of the articles that got posted recently - the one on Advent Children and Freud. I feel an obligation to respond to it, especially since it's actually putting an effort in compared to many, but after several days I still don't know how. I'm worried about sounding like a prick ("too late!!")... not because I'm trying to impress anyone, but because I don't think the writers will learn anything from a take-apart. They frequently seem more intent on sticking characters into a preset system than actually evaluating the characters themselves. They understand Freud in too naive a way, or more specifically a way that doesn't ground itself in the question that Freud was really asking (they take the id, ego, and superego as "mythical forces" more or less, essentially no different from Plato's chariot analogy... which is a common enough misunderstanding, especially after Jung and Campbell, but it has nothing to do with Freud). I think a psychoanalytical look at Sephiroth (which was the intent, if I understand the article) is very plausible, and I applaud the authors for going for it. But they have more work to do before finding a secure enough ground to really successfully launch an examination like this... and unfortunately, I have practically no advice on how to get to that point. Thus the difficulty in how to respond... I don't know how to avoid being too vague, or simply dropping criticisms without being constructive, or writing the whole thing as "Freud 101" (which I think would be overlong and only marginally helpful). The point is not to be right, the point is to help learning to occur where I think it can. How will I do this?
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Wednesday, May 31, 2006

I kill up any dj but the gunner


The best part of this video is Shy FX trying to dance behind UK Apachi but not really knowing how to do it well at all. Runners up include Apachi's constantly being in a very painful-looking squat while pointing at things, that dude with the headdress and the drum, and those 3-4 girls dancing in the best outfits 1993 could offer.

(a special lifetime achievement award goes to the amen break)
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Tuesday, May 30, 2006

VISION! CREATION! NEWSUN!

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Monday, May 29, 2006

haruhi ed restored w/original footage (cut out by studio interference)

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Sunday, May 28, 2006

Daikiraiiii... Anata Ga...


More Komugi; this song has what may be my favorite set of Halko lyrics ever, with the possible exception of Samishi Kunai Mon ("I want to wipe out all the couples, ah-aaah...").
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