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Uji no mori de, anata to de ai / Shima uta yo kaze ni nori...
2001-12-21 10:28:34
I got the translated email from KenShimazu this morning. (THAAAAAANK YOOOOUUUU!!!) I could open it fine, but when I tried to paste it into an email message, it got converted to a different language input thingummy, and I wound up with a bunch of random kanji and blank spaces.
Ahh, Mac/Windows incompatibilities. (No worries, I can mail it from my home computer.)
I could just send it to myself at home, where I have Windows 98, and forget about it, but I figured it might be a good experience to try rewriting it in Kotoeri to study the sentence structure and such.
I feel like such a dork, because I realized that about half the kanji in the letter, I only know in combinations - I mean, I only know them phonetically in combinations. I can read the 2 kanji for "works", but I forgot the pronunciation of it, so I had to type out the verb form of "make" to get the first kanji, and then delete the hiragana,Å@etc. (And I just reviewed that word last night, too. Sheesh. Just call me Forgetful Jones.*) Same with the word for "new" - I only knew its pronunciation as an adjective, not as a prefix, so more type-out-and-delete-hiragana there.
Anyway.
Surprise of the week: Discovered that the most enthusiastic Bebop fans I've met on the net (in the U.S. and Japan) are married women in their 30s and 40s. Make of that what you will.
Went to see LotR last night and it was sold out. Which was good, because I was so tired I doubt I could have kept my head up for 3 hours in a theatre. We went back to the house, where, it turned out, Brett had DVD Volume 1 of The Big O. (He'd bought it instead of Macross Plus vol 1, which he put on order since it was out.) I'd never seen Big O before, so we both watched Episode 1 before I drove home to crash out.
Verdict: It's RoboGothiBatmaNoirGianTastic. I really liked it and can't wait to see more.
I should watch that first episode again, because my brain spent the first ten minutes performing SET DAVID LUCAS = "ROGER SMITH" rather than paying attention to the dialogue. It was funny to see Brett jump when Roger had his first line.
We BOTH jumped when John Billingslea's voice DIDN'T come out of Dastun's mouth.
So now I'm thinking about a Big-O AMV, and the most likely candidate so far is "Hohoemi" by The Boom. It's a very smooth and atmospheric jazz/bossa nova song.
Which will be an AMV I can actually talk about freely here, since I'm sure no one else has that album.
And that's a crying shame, because The Boom are fantastic. Every song and every album I've heard from them has been different, and even though I don't like all of them, it's good they don't stay in the same musical territory too long. The closest acts I can compare them to are Geggy Tah and David Byrne.
On "Tropicalism", the music runs from a cappella lounge to reggae to carnaval-style chaos, to spoken-word to punk. Mostly a blend of Southeast Asian instruments and Latin rhythms.
But The Boom's real specialty is fusion. A lot of their songs use the koto and the gamelan in addition to western-style instruments. One of my favorite songs of theirs is "Iianbee", which is a dance/hip-hop number that's backed with Balinese wind chimes and enka-style singers. Fantastic stuff.
They performed with David Byrne at a music festival in Stuttgart back in 1996. I'm sorry I missed it. That's one of two concerts I would have taken the time to fly overseas to attend, if I'd had the money. (The other, of course, being the Seatbelts show this past August.)
The only Boom song I've been able to find online is "Shima Uta", which was used in a beer commercial back in 1993 or so. You might like it, you might not.
Probably not ^^;; but give it a shot anyway if you like world/fusion music.
I'll try to upload a Boom MP3 to my temp directory sometime after Christmas...
http://www.five-d.co.jp/boom/
* will anyone get this?
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My eyes are red not from crying out for you, my eyes are swollen from jet lag you see
2001-12-20 17:27:24
Merry Christmas, everybody.
http://www.big-big-truck.com/bebop/xmaspaper.jpg -
starting to collect / requested data / what will it affect / when all is done? / thinks Major Tom
2001-12-20 10:57:36
What a GORGEOUS morning it is in Austin.
Woke up at 7:15 for a change (had a dentist's appointment on the north side of town, so I stayed at Brett's place to avoid traffic). I'm always on the verge of falling asleep in dentists' chairs, they're so comfy.
Anyway, it's the kind of winter day I love - starts out with frost all over the place and builds into a blindngly, surreally clear sky with a sun so bright you can barely turn your eyes up.
The trees are still hanging on to their fall foliage, and birds are just flying everywhere like crazy. It's beautiful.
Listened to Genesis on the way in - my premonition was right, I do like it on the second try after 8 years. I'm still not too keen on the overly long and morose organ solos that plague prog rock (and this album has its share of), but I really enjoyed it. I think "Watchers in the Night" was the name of the song I dug most so far.
Side 1 of the tape has Peter Gabriel singing lead (good GOD he sounds young), and side 2 has Phil Collins.
When the inevitable Morose And Overly Long Organ Solo came on, I just switched over to my CD player. Which was cued to "The Egg and I".
Bright winter morning, slide guitar and turkish drum.
Bliss.
That and cinnamon coffee. - are you out there / can you hear me / can you see me / in the dark? 2001-12-19 21:01:27 Advantage of University Job: 11 days of for Xmas. w00t.
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Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream...
2001-12-19 16:47:34
"Frivolity is a stern taskmaster."
Why is it that I find my entire life's philosophy summed up by Zippy the Pinhead?
Terrifying, yet appropriate and comforting all at once.
JOURNAL: Big Big Truck (E K)
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