Saturday, September 20, 2003

Number 73 and 72 / Pictures

	Top 100 Japanese Music Artists: Number 73 and 72 09/20 - 72. Lisa Ono 09/19 - 73. Blankey Jet City Well The time I actually got those damn screen caps up, this site goes down for the night. Therefor i couldn't add my post last night nor could I add the screen shots, but now... I am, so thats all for tonigth, I'm sure I'll post abotu how much I hate College Football tomorrow night. My school plays Syracuse and I can't watch it :( WARNING: Do not scroll down iif small children are near. Kyo scares small children. Screenshots taken from the OBSCURE video taken off my DVD :) Evil scary Geisha girl. 0-0;;; Right before Kyo pukes... ugh. Good shot of the band though. Kyo puking... or whatever that is. There was a huge chunk of it before. Good shot of the band head-banging and of the set. Yes, those are hanging bodies. Overhead shot of the band Kyo singing, another good shot of the band, except that hanging body blocking Kaoru. Toshiya and Kaoru. I love Kaoru's purple hair. I have no idea. Reminds me of Billy Corgan or whatever his name is from the Smashing Pumpkins... The rest of the scene has him sticking that sword through his neck. Fun for all! Die pulling his heart out. Watch out for spurting blood! Another shot of Toshiya. He had alot of air time in this video. Kyo giving some emotion other than scary-evil-man. This scene was probably one of the best in the whole video. Die and a good shot of Shinya pounding away on the drums. One of the best shots of the full band and of those hanging bodies. I like this set. Die and his spikey, not-so-red hair. Kyo graces us with a close up of his... face... or lack thereof. The best shot of the band I could get. Again, however, a hanging body blocks my lovely Kaoru... oh well. Look, I'm listenign to a Spanish song... and it's good too! Song of the Moment: Jaunes - A Dios le Pido

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Thursday, September 18, 2003

Number 74 / Stupid people

	Top 100 Japanese Music Artists: Number 74 09/18 - 74. Kururi I've heard of these guys but honestly, I don't remember anything about them. They are rock, or at least seeem that way. Now to everyone's favourite topic, STUPID PEOPLE OF THE WEEK! lol This week stupid people come from the wondeful action site known as EBAY! I was on ebay today and I saw their featured auctions on the main page and one said something about a diet pill that will make you lose 95 pounds in 2 months... lol SO i wanted to see just how ridiculous this really was and went to the auction and then I decided to see the guys feedback just to see what people have said. Low and behold he's got 17 negative feedbacks and 28 neutral comments (look here ) I went to see what the people said in these comments and again they all complained about how the pills didn't work. How could anyone of these peopel even THINK any diet pills that claim you can lose 95 pounds in 2 months WORK? Hello? And if there were such a pill, they'd certainly be much more than $9.99 lol Not a damn comment on that pages says the pills work... not one... alot of them say that he shipped the items fast, but nothing on how "I lost all 95 pounds OMG!" Is this considered a con? It's really pathetic how people con people so much on ebay and yet ebay does NOTHING! There's this one guy who sells burned copies of DVDs and VCDs of Japanese artists, or stuff they show on Japnaese TV.... He has comments up the galore on how they are burned CD-Rs, even my friend bought one... I've alerted ebay twice about it, yet nothing has been done and people continue to waste their money on this guy. If it weren't for ebay pretty meing the only good auction site on the web, I'd boycot them. Hypermart's server still won't load... so... I need a new server... Jimmy, can I use yours or do you not have alot of space? Get back to me on AIM. Song of the Moment: Radio

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Do they show up?

	Do the images on MyOtaku still show up for you all? I need to know if they are or if the site is loading from temp files on my comp. I'll update with number 70 whatever tomorrow after I wake up. Hopefully I'll have those screen caps to Tony as well... but yeah I really need to know if the images on this site are showing up or nor. Thanks.

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Wednesday, September 17, 2003

Number 75 / Freddy vs. Jason

	Top 100 Japanese Music Artists: Number 75 09/17 - 75. The Roosters Japanese 80's music at it's best. Just the band name gives it all away lol. I saw Freddy vs. Jason today. I had it downloaded, and I'm glad cause it would have been a waste to spend the money at the movie theater. Not that it was a horrible movie, it was actually pretty decent, but certainly not worth 6 bucks. Witht he title I expected the whole movie to be about Freddy fighting Jason, not just the last 15 minutes. Although I suppose there has to be a plot, albeit just about as plain a plot you can have. It was based more on the Freddy movies, oh which I've never seen. lol. So I was sort of lost in the plot... I mean, I knew the basic Freddy plot, but nothing in great detail... anyway... Honestly, it wasn't all that good, not was it scary. The ending wasn't all to surprising... overall, a decent movie... nothing I was too impressed with. I would have liked a Jason vs Micheal Myers movie alot better. Maybe thats just because I'm a Halloween fan... oh well. As for the Dir en grey album. It sounded more like Macabre stuff than say Kisou stuff.. I much prefer it to Kisou. Although the best part of the whole album was the video for OBSCURE on the DVD, which played in my DVD player :). It was highly disturbing... it would NEVER get played on TV here. There were boobies in it, but that wasn't for long... most of time Kyo was puking or excreeting some sort of fluid from him mouth. Oh and this Geisha girls they had in the video were highly makeuped and were highly distrubing... I took a few screen shots, but my sever is not connecting so I can't put them up. If it works later or I find a host, I'll put them up.

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Tuesday, September 16, 2003

Number 76 / Dir en grey

	Top 100 Japanese Music Artists: Number 76 09/16 - 76. Kyosuke Himuro He's got a dark look to him. Looks like he was a member of Boowy then went solo. Ealy-mid 90s music. I dunno much about him. Guess what came in the mail today? Thats right, Dir en grey's new album, VULGAR! As well as move's new mini album, DECANDANCE, and their best of album, super tune. But the big thing is the Dir en grey album. Why you ask? It's ranked numebr 2 on the Oricon charts, which is the highest any album of theirs has ever gone I think, but it has somethign special in it. I was excited as I first opened it, cause I like to see what the design is inside... I got the special edition so it has the DVD inside the case with the regular CD. But then I opened up the booklet and after looking at the beautiful, yet disturbing pictures in the back (Shinya has a picture of him holding his own head lol) I turned to the middle and about 4 things fell out. One was a t-shirt add, the next was an order form for their maxi single and new concert DVD coming out later this year, another was something about the DVD, and the last thing... thats what got my attention. It was a mini booklet that had the album cover art on it. So I was like... this is odd. So I open it up and what, to my most pleasant surprise, do I find? It's a booklet that has english translations to ALL of their songs on this album. I was like WOOT! But thats not the best part. I couldn't figure out why they would do this, then I read the intro to the mini booklet. It went into how the economy in Japan has been really bad, therefor having a negative energy affecting all, including the music industry. This is why the top 5 artists on the charts are all foriegn, at least at the time this was written... probably all American... most likely Linkin Park and some other bands. Then the guy who wrote it goes into Dir's history as a band, their albums, and then at the end it says this: They carry a massive weapon. The weapon is not their musical technique. Their weapon is the cry from their souls. The songs they make hit everyone's heart so forcefully, that the lyrics they shout burn inside our hearts, and the melody deepens. The sourse of all this comes from their souls trembling with pain, making them cry out. Right now, they aim to hit the world from Japan. I have much faith and expectation in them that I would like to say to them, "The manguage barrier doesn't exist in great music" This is what Jimmy and i have been saying for so long... well the last part at least. But this oculd mean some big things... Dir has been seriously contemplating a US tour, and this booklet was obviously aimed at the American and Australian fans, and the small number int he UK. So this means even better things. Or maybe an album in full english, though Kyo's english is horrible. He'd have to let Kaoru sing lol. But yeah, I was really excited about this and it could mean some more exposure in America for Dir. They already had a feature in some magazine here a while back. I really honestly hope they can at least get a bit, if not some exposure in the American limelight. Although I have to admit, they are fairly popular here but it's usually amung Japanese music fans or really hard rock fans who found them through something. But I can't go up to my friends and ask anything about Dir without getting a "are you on drugs" look from them. Hopefully some type of American exposure can come soon. As for the album, I personally have no listened to it yet, not much in a rock mood right now, plus I just got off work an hour or so ago. I will listen tomorrow and put up a review I guess. I would like to scan the pictures and post them but if my server was being a bitch like it was earlier then who knows... I honestly couldn't figure out what was wrong... anyway. Maybe even make a new Dir en grey layout for this MyOtaku thingy. While writing this I was listening to DECANDANCE by move. It's a little mini album composed of 7 songs, but 7 new ones. I honestly wasn't too impressed. They went away from the trance sound they had on their last album, and now it's almost more like the old move, but more rock influenced. I heard at least 4 songs on the album with prominant guitar sounds in them. Not that it didn't sound bad, they were actually pretty good, but just not what I was expecting from move. Seemed motsu was lacking again, and Yuri's voice isn't so prominant in themusic much... t-kimura grw a little beard thingy and he looks like some old chinese martial arts master now lol. Yuri is sexier though, you'd like the pictures Jimmy. :p Oh yeah, no new Strong Bad e-mail today. He made a new issue of Teen Girl Squad which was rather funny. lol, So go check that out!

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Monday, September 15, 2003

   Number 77 / Tampa

	Top 100 Japanese Music Artists: Number 77 09/15 - 77. Michelle Gun Elephant Funny name. They kinda look like a punk band. I think I've heard maybe one of their songs but nothing that I can honestly remember. I would assume they do rock music or some version of it. "Punk" fans may want to look them up. What a horrible game today. Tamba Bay had THREE blocked field goals... thats more than teams normally give up in a season and they gave them up in ONE game. It costs them the game, literally. All they had to do was hit an extra point... ONE extra point.. and it was blocked. Horrible... Horrible and pathetic are the only two words that come to mind. On the other hand, the Redskins won their game. Going 2-0, on their way to the Super Bowl. woot. I've decided I'm putting a Sony Xplod system into my car. It will consist of a Sony Xplode reciver/CD player, 2 12" Sony Xplod subwoofers in the back, and 2 6 1/2" Sony Xplode 3-way speakers in the front.... I MAY throw in like 2 5 1/2" somewhere else and maybe 2 more tweeters but those would be completely optionnal. So it should look pretty damn sweet by the time it's done which will be at most by Christmas... I have to get dual exhaust first. Anyway, I still have homework to do. Song of the Moment: Sports Center

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Sunday, September 14, 2003

My long thread on music lol. Please read below it too :)

	Well after reading wrist cutters long post and then the several made by Tony, I thought I'd throw my two cents in too. Or well maybe it's just like a half of cent... or not really cents just my thoughts.... since that would be a waste of money lol. I've been talking with wrist cutter the last 2 hours about this. I read his post on Japanese music, you should all read it... and then I read Tonys one on music in general. I must say very valid points on the becoming of music both here in America and how it relates to the rest of the world. So what exactly do i think? Well, all know I think very poorly of American music, however usually they just get the jist of it. I often critisize popular bands... the more prominant of my critism seems to be System of a Down, and probably several pop bands. Jimmy and I have been talking about the differences in Japanese music compared to American music. How it is different, what makes it different? As he stated Japanese music is very largely based on American ideals, or British which usually contributes to American ideals. So how can something so very highly based on American style be so different? Or is it? It is... I'm not going into detail for that has really no relevance to the post. You can listen to the music yourself and figure out the difference yourself, obviously beyond the fact they are speaking a differnet language. What was the topic is basically how can one see thepopular music in japan as being good, while the popular music here as being... well absolutely horrible. I've come to the conclusion that American music has no balance. Balance you ask? Yes... Balance within genres on music. Ask yourself whats popular on American radio and within American society. Don't judge yourself or your friends, judge what you see on tv, what you hear on the popular radio station in town... what does everyone talk about, who has the highest sales?.... Pop and Rap. Bith styles which seem to mix quite often, which to me only add less of a difference within the two stles... so i see pop and rap as being brother or cousins in music in America. Much rap encopases pop qualities and many pop songs now seem to contain alot of rap in them. Regardless... There's two genres here making up one strong genre in my opinion.. wat other popualr genres do we have here? There's this upcoming pop-rock/punk style thingy. It's popular but nothing NEARLY compared to the pop/rap genre. And even behind that is just the genral rock genre... followed by like Metal or some other shit, it doesn't really matter at this point. The point is in America we have ONE strong music genre... one.... uno... ichi.... 1. Lets face it, the populationg drools over pop/rap and while poppy punk is coming up in the ranks, it will fall shor, very short, of overcomign this, what I now call a "fad" of music. Because it's no longer a trend, it's a fad. Everyone is doing it... people do it JUST so they can become popualr while they throw all their roots out the window and all their talent with it too. Why is this fad of music tallentless? Simply because it take little to no talent to do it, which is why its so popular and which is why EVERYONE is doing it. It's easy to sing someone else's lyrics and have your voice be changed via digital recorder and thrown on an album while you lip sing every song on your conert tour. If Britney can do it, so can I... apparently so can everyone else. And rapping... come on... how pathetic is some of the rap out here.... "I like da way you do dat right thurrr right thurrr"..... learn at least how to pronounce english words you pathetic loser. Now honestly, why was that song popular? Did you people really expect the guys album to be full of songs that "good"? lol it probably sucked out the ass. In fact I'm willing to bet it was rather horrid to hear. Anyway... back to the subject at hand: One genre of music popular here in the US, essentially a fad of music. Now lets look at Japan. In Japan you know whats popular? #1 on the Oricon (the Japanese billboard charts)... Every Little Thing.... a popish band. I actually don't mind them myself but they aren't grand or anything... #2.... Dir en grey.... A FUCKING METAL BAND! Number 2.... right after a pop group.... what else is popular?... pop-rock bands.... bands that wrist cutter likes... GLAY, Laruku, Porno Graffitti, etc... now lets review... there are THREE major genres of music currently almost equally sharing favourablity in the Japanese society. Pop, Heavy Metal, and poppy-rock... now pop and this pop-rock genree, judging on what I've heard, is nothing like one another. Usually the pop artists are female, they sing, they are a one person only thing.... the pop-rock groups are groups.... usually male, playing their own instruments, etc. And metal... well you all know what that is. And they just aren't metal, they are visual in style... anyway.... 3 completely different style or genres on music... all popular amung the Japanes society. This is balance in music. There is constant change in popualrity between three or four, depending on who released what and when, genres at one time... no one genre compeltely overruns the others in popularity. This is why you can honestly like a popular band without being a bandwaggoner like in America.... this is why you can know of a band before they hit the radio, like the AFI example given by Tony in his posts. AFI, had there been a balance of genres in our Music industry, would have been mushc more well known amung the public, probably would become a lot more popular too. They probably are very popular in Japan lol. In America we have never truely had that balance of popularity in music... just look back a few years... the 50s, 60s, and early 70s, the Beatles... Elvis,rock music in general (I'm sure Tori can enlighten on this a bit more, my dates may be off). the later 70s, disco, synthesizer music, the 80s is probably the more diversed of them all... hair bands, love songs, and pop-rock were all top contenders.... then into the late 80s, early 90s... rap became prominant. and for a time rock music had a little come back, but that was soon over taken by this pop movement thats now forged itself with rap. And thats been prominant for years now, it's demise is due up shortly though. We seem to be the last in the world to get into a style of music... boy bands and shit was done years and years ago in Europe... and now that shit is over lol. Since rap is mostly an American ideal, that seems to have only been popularized to a far extent here, though Europe and Japan tried, and suceeded in some sense, it just wasn't nearly what the crap is here. American music has been down the drail a long time now... David Bowie even said it himself "The Music in America right now sucks" and he's absolutely right. There's no diversity, thus there's no compitition, thus noting changes.... inf act it only gets bigger.... and then it'll die out one it gets too big. I think the pop/rap style has already hit it's peek and soon will begin to fade a bit, leading way for some other genre to take it place and hold for a decade before it is overrun. This ridiculous trend is what ruins the music idustry and even though we pump out more music than any other country in the world, only ONE single genre can be the best? Thats ridiculous. Some of you need to open your mind.... not to Japanese music.... to the other stylesof your own cultures music. I always wonder to myself how some of you people can stand to listen to half the bullshit that comes out of the American music industry. It's famous for 2 weeks and you never hear it again.... and this is good? Get a life. Oh yeah, want to see pictures from Dir's latest Video? click here. Warning: Not for small children. Kyo can cause nightmares. Thats why we looooove him :) And is it just me or is that a huge giant man eating VAGINA on Kyos face? Song of the Moment: DJ Leoni - Party Mix Level 5

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   Number 78 / College

	Top 100 Japanese Music Artists: Number 78 09/14 - 78. Denki Groove Woo finally a danc emusic artist made the list. Denki Groove, although not insanely popular, probably more amung the European crowds, is pretty good. Even my favourite artist Paul van Dyk did a remix of their song Niji. Thats damn cool in itself, and it's a really good song too lol. So I was at work today... we were very busy, more so than usual on Saturdays. I didn't even have time to do other things other than deal with customers, but I was fast as hell too... was not in a good mood though. Oh well, no work till late Monday. Football, even though I vowed never to watch crappy college football because of last weeks useless loss by the Gators against Miami... but alas, with lack of anything else to do, I did. Georgia, Tori all so good school, whipped the shit out of some team.... I can't remember who, not like it matters though.... so I thought that was cool. My school team doesn't play till next weekend. Lets see.... some upsets.... Notre Dame got their ass beat by the Wolverines... Texas, those lous bastards were whoops by Nebraska, my friend Steve's team.... Florida State won by ONE point... they suck too... Miami kicked someone's ass.... I dunno... I guess I'll watch football... Oh yeah and stupid Ohio State went to 3 OTs and pulled out a controversial win which they shouldn't have.... they should no tbe ranked number 2. Shitty team. Anything else? Not now... I'm bored. Oh yeah, more people keep viewing my page :) I like this. That makes me happy.... you all should keep it up. Song of the Moment: Robin Fox - Sail Away

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Saturday, September 13, 2003

Number 79 / New Movie

	Top 100 Japanese Music Artists: Number 79 09/13 - 79. Kenji Ozawa Name sounds familair, but I dunno who it is. Ok, I saw a new movie tonight. Guess which one? Ok time up. It was Once Upon A Time in Chin... Mexico, staring the old but ever so sexy Antonio Banderas and the ever so young and sexy, Johnny Depp. Also one of my favourite actresses although not many lines or part, Selma Hayak. The third movie in the "Desperado" trilogy, this movie doesn't live up to my expectation. Desperato was a very serious action movie in my opinion. OUATIM was too, except for Johnny Depp character. He was the "comic relief" of the movie, yet he still didn't have a serious part... it was more comical than anything really. The only time his character gets serious is near the end after he loses 2 things. Even then he's still a funny character, but you begin to have sympathy. Enrique Englacious plays a side character, and damn is he ever hot. And a few other people from the other 2 movies make an appearance here and there, some die, some live. This is pretty much the final chapter in the story, although I'm sure they could think up more. The plot was good, special effects were lacking (blood looked like oil, explosions were cheaply sounded and cheap looking) some of the characters could have at least tried to act... I give it 3 and a half penises.... out of 5 ofcourse. Thats my rating system lol. Come on? You expected something else? I go to work tomorrow morning which is good, cause my boss isn't gonna be there.... I worked with her too much this week and she got annoying... and yeah... So hopefully tomorrow I can have fun at work. Then I come home and I'll probably sit around or something. Who knows... >Song of the Moment: Gackt - Kimi ga Oikaketa Yume

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Friday, September 12, 2003

   Number 80 / I don't know

	Top 100 Japanese Music Artists: Number 80 09/12 - 80. Yuzo Kayama Some guy that sings oldies songs lol. Looks like he's from the 60s or early 70s. Stuff I wouldn't listen to Japanese or not. Today was one of those days. I woke up and did some shit around the house. Then I came into my room, played a game of hockey, which I'm about to do again, while listening to the radio, which was rather funny. I've come to realize the funniest two words on the face of the planet are "face pirate"... lol. Which is closely folowed by Butabara! Anyway... then my dad came home, put in some new 6-1/2" Sony Xplode speakers (soon I'll have the 12" Sony Xplodes woot) into the truck which were pretty cool. Then we headed on over to the bowling pro shot for me mum and dad... I ended up buying new bowling shoes. Me mum got a new ball, dad got one refitted for him. So now everyone has new balls lol. Then off to Don Pablos (a mexican restaurant) to eat some yummy chimichangas. And I played that new Wrestle Mania game for the GameSquare. It was ok, could have been better. I'm trying to think of things I should do here on a regular basis. I have the Top 100 up there, but thats ends December 1st or sometime around there. I have Simpsons quote of the week and that Strong Bad e-mail thing I do... but I want more... like I should review songs or albums or something? Or movies? Pick whatever it is you'd like me to review or do whatever on. Anything from hot boys to video games (although I don't play many of them) And be serious cause I know some of you will joke around ::glare:: So thats your assignment. I wonder how many people will respond. While this is still fresh in my mind. The file sharing war that many of you are oh so familiar with (RIAA) exceeds far beyond the audio land. There's a whole seperate group of people dedicated the sharing of movies/TV shows. (new, old, screeners, etc) This is mostly on the backburner as it seem the RIAA has taken the lead step over the MPAA in this file sharing none-sense. Honestly when it comes to movies, I upright steal them. I DO NOT buy DVDs unless I really like the movie (LOtR, Star Wars, etc) and over the last... oh 6 months... I've downloaded well over 200 movies, new and old. I do go see movies at theaters and I still buy some DVDs, obviously when downloading them you don't get the special features... but I download alot more than I see or buy. Recently one of the biggest distributers of sig2dat files for Kazaa tanked. Which sucks. This had been my main sorce for movies cause, as anyone knows even with music, there are hundred of "fake" files around.... the same is for movies... I'd download a movie, lets say the most recent being Identity, and it'd end up being a completely different movie, in this case it was Fast and The Furious, which ironically I already own on DVD lol. FastTrackMovies.com and their sig2dat files eliminated those false files. Allowed for correct files to be downloaded in times worth. Anyway, they went down, dunno why, but I hear it was a virus attack or something, nothing to do with the MPAA or RIAA, not that its their jurisdiction. I often wonder if theirs a large following behind the downloading of movies as there is with mp3s... all you hear about now-a-days is music files being shared.... in fact the only time you hear about movies on the internet is when some big movie (ie Star Wars Episode II( is released and before it's actual release it's already online, which was the case for EpII, cause i had it downloaded before I went to the opening show... however those tend to be crappy "theater" versions, which means they are filmed with a home video cam in a theater somewhere. Nothing incredibly good. The only good ones we get are older DVDs or DVD screeners put out by movie companies. Anyway, Do the same thoughts go for the movies as do the music? Or is this a completely seperate issue that is supposed to be delt with differently? Edit: Correction, apparently the MPAA did shut the site down. Based on what I dunno? They contained no copywrited files on their server. Just sig2dat files which used kazaa to locate the correct files for download. Is this right? Or are these companies pulling shit out their ass like always? Song of the Moment: Dave London - Get Down Tonight

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