Criterion had a 50% off sale. I took that as an opportunity to finally try Hulu Plus since they have a lot of Criterion films on there. I could sample the first 20 minutes of films I might find worth buying. I will maybe come back to this neglected blog to talk about them. But I have this trial and I did queue up in just the Criterion films: 159 films. That's a lot of movies. It's certainly longer than just a 2 week trial. I'll go ahead and pay for one month, why not? I'm certainly getting my money's worth.
Hulu doesn't really advertise that they have Criterion and Janus films on there. They do in abundance. The best I've experienced so far is One Way Ticket To Love. I wish I could read the Japanese title, but I can't.
I'm going to try and not spoil it. But if I fail at that stop at this paragraph. It is a Japanese film from 1959. It is something of a love story. It is something of a marketing tool for the same title single. In 2014 it is a fantastic B-movie experience. In the context of 1959 it is astounding it exists. All the characters have more depth then you expect. It is above all a tragedy.
Now I'm going to try and talk about the actual film without spoiling it. The main theme throughout is Japanese culture's guilt duty. Very good sociological term I made there. Because of being given an opportunity a character is required to do one thing. Because of the social bubble they have entered into they are now part of that social bubble. That social bubble requires they do another. Each character also has a life outside of that social bubble.
I said it was a love story. It's a love story in the same way that Romeo and Juliet is a love story. So it's a lust story. Yes, Rudie, I guess you could say that. The various loves in the story line up with the guilt duty into making a Wire style poster board of allegiences and debts.
Each character feels like a stereotype seen in various films of the time. They rise above it to become people that you believe in their actions. While you could say that almost every problem in the film is solved by just walking away most of them can't and by J-society they definitely can't.
NOW ANOTHER LAYER OF SPOILING BUT NOT
A gun will eventually makes its appearance. It will begin to change hands. The predicted target of the gun will continue to change. Eventually the gun goes off. And then the film ends. The ending shot is heartbreaking.
I'm having such a good time thinking about this film. I'm going to have to get a copy somehow. It's only on HuluPlus. If this is the best film I get out of the experience that's okay. It is a fantastic film. I want other people to see it so I can talk to them about it.
Monday, October 13, 2014
Tuesday, October 7, 2014
東狂アルゴリズム Toukyou Algorithm
So I went to a last show of Tokyo Algorithm right before I moved back to America. It was a cool show and kind of sad because they were a real cool band. I decided to look them up again last night. Turns out they are playing a shows again. They were indie as fuck back then self making all their CDs. Now the singer has a record label that is various shades of j-punk.
Link to sampler
They just released a sampler that comes out TODAY. One of the bands sounds exactly like Jeff Rosenstock's Ska Band. Also it is pretty dang obvious when Toukyou Algorithm actually comes on the station. I'd like their new song, or any of their back catalog that has disspeared because they were indie as fuck so if you didn't go to their shows you didn't get their stuff.
But their "main" album is on US iTunes and you can get it right now! Just search for Tokyo Algorithm! It's right there. It's fantastic! it has music like this:
There name is Toukyou. It sounds like the city but the kanji is written as "EAST" "LUNATIC" as opposed to "EAST" "CAPITAL". And if this music isn't your thing I'm sorry.
Link to sampler
They just released a sampler that comes out TODAY. One of the bands sounds exactly like Jeff Rosenstock's Ska Band. Also it is pretty dang obvious when Toukyou Algorithm actually comes on the station. I'd like their new song, or any of their back catalog that has disspeared because they were indie as fuck so if you didn't go to their shows you didn't get their stuff.
But their "main" album is on US iTunes and you can get it right now! Just search for Tokyo Algorithm! It's right there. It's fantastic! it has music like this:
There name is Toukyou. It sounds like the city but the kanji is written as "EAST" "LUNATIC" as opposed to "EAST" "CAPITAL". And if this music isn't your thing I'm sorry.
Tuesday, April 22, 2014
The Gameboy is 25 here is an index
Everyone is celebrating the Game Boy/Gameboy. That means it is as good as time as any for me to actually make an index of my screenshots and comments when I played through the entire Game Boy/Gameboy romset. Enjoy and link!
#-B
C
D part 1
D part 2
D part 3
E
F part 1
F part 2
G part 1
G part 2
H part 1
H part 2
I
J
K part 1
K part 2
K part 3
L
M part 1
M part 2
M part 3
M part 4
M part 5
N
N sports
O
P part Pone
P part Ptwo
P part Pthree - Q
R part 1
R part 2
S part 1
S part 2
S part 3
S part 4
T part 1
T part 2
T part 3
U - V
W
XYZ
Bother me on twitter if any of the links are bad! Even if I don't write about crap I'm playing much anymore I am still playing all kinds of things. Listen to me talk about them on hinge problems! It was absolutely insane that I did this project. Enjoy all the pictures!
#-B
C
D part 1
D part 2
D part 3
E
F part 1
F part 2
G part 1
G part 2
H part 1
H part 2
I
J
K part 1
K part 2
K part 3
L
M part 1
M part 2
M part 3
M part 4
M part 5
N
N sports
O
P part Pone
P part Ptwo
P part Pthree - Q
R part 1
R part 2
S part 1
S part 2
S part 3
S part 4
T part 1
T part 2
T part 3
U - V
W
XYZ
Bother me on twitter if any of the links are bad! Even if I don't write about crap I'm playing much anymore I am still playing all kinds of things. Listen to me talk about them on hinge problems! It was absolutely insane that I did this project. Enjoy all the pictures!
Wednesday, March 5, 2014
Disney World
So in the interest of celebrating I went to Disney World. It was very expensive. It was a great positive experience. the 3-4 times I went to Tokyo Disney Resort I kept thinking "They could try 10% more and I would be completely satisfied." I went 3-4 times to Disney World for various reasons in high school. I remember really liking Epcot.
I enjoyed all of Disney (outside of it being very expensive constantly.) The expense was always at a forefront in my mind as an adult. I went their with my fiance. I just kept thinking of the multiplication of cost if we had one child. If we had 2 children that suddenly wanted the constant barrage of things they wanted to sell you. The constant barrage of overprice food or Disney Park branded merchandise that had no value outside of Disney parks. Lightsabers for the night shows that I got hit in the thighs twice and the crotch once walking by a kid swinging one.
But the need to sell you things constantly is also reflected back at you with how amazingly it all runs. There was buses to everywhere in the D-World from our Disney hotel every 10-15 minutes all day. The parks are incredibly run for the absurd amount of traffic every day. One of the major attractions would be down for only 90-120 minutes if it broke. For any kind of technical difficulty that is insane. All of the stores looked perfect despite probably being destroyed by children and customers constantly all day. It is an incredibly run machine.
This is partially because of the college interns that aren't paid but are given food and board to work 12 hour shifts. And they have to be busting with smiles the whole time. My fiance had a button declaring our "anniversary". You know they say it to everyone, but twenty strangers throughout your day enthusiastically declaring "Happy Anniversary" does make your day better. The level of service is constantly amazing.
It's also the same level of service you get in most places in Japan. On Japan, when we entered Japan-land in Epcot we both immediately felt at home. It is VERY Japanese. Right down to the Irrashaimase. Oh and they full equipped, full sized Japanese Department store Mitsukoshi. Where most of the "countries" have a thing, Japan has a full sized Pagoda, Castle, and a department store made to look like a temple. It is impressively large.
10 years ago Epcot's Worldshowcase would have had more value to me, or...most Americans. Today we have the internet and World Markets. The main feature of the different countries is shopping for goods from those countries. 90% of this is stuff you can find in your local import goods store or World Market or probably amazon. I'm sure it has amazing value to people not from America. All this stuff from around the world.
Despite what I claimed a dozen times before I went, I didn't get drunk, though getting drunk around the wold sounded like a heck of a fun time. I originally planned to get drunk despite being a non-drinker because I wanted to turn off the thinking part of my brain a tiny bit. A constant problem with Tokyo Disney as I said above, is I kept thinking "this could be a tiny bit better very easily." World didn't have this problem.
The food in Tokyo Disney SUCKS. It is tasteless and expensive. At least Disney World will spend 10 cents per dish on some spices. I thank them for that and then curse them for having to spend 10 dollars a meal. I never drank a coke there, so I'm proud of that. I kept looking at every (?American?) in the park and going "lood gord at least cut out soft drinks." Having one water bottle we kept refilling saved us at least FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS (and you can too.)
I'm exaggerating that number (a tiny bit).
Most of the food was super greasy though. So that wasn't great! At least I got to eat some Moroccan food and a giant turkey leg (wonder what they do with the rest of the bird?) I didn't get to dine at the restaurant that is also an aquarium (booked 6 months in advance, along with all the nicer places). In Tokyo Disney we just walked right up and in to the bayou style place that Pirates of the Caribbean goes though and had an incredibly bland meal for Cajun food.
I can probably blame 90% of my frustration at Tokyo Disney on it not being actually owned by Disney. FUN FCAT.
SO HOW ARE THE PARKS?
I'll try and talk about them one at a time, but y'all know my writing style at this point. Lot's of parenthesis.
- It sure is super annoying that everyone calls him Captain Jack Sparrow on Pirates of the Caribbean ride. It is a joke that he asks for more respect than he deserves in the movies. Then you have his nemesises call him by his full name CAPTAIN JACK SPARROW. His animatronic looks super good though. Weird next to the 60 year old ones though.
- It's pretty weird they still have Tom Sawyer island and frontierland. I didn't see anything from the Lone Ranger there now that I think about it. Make TSI the city for lost boys from Pinocchio. Or something. Keep the Tree House from Swiss Family Robbison. Tree Houses are cool.
- The Hall of Presidents was super patriotic and almost got me in the mood. I thought it would have something from every president instead there is just this long listing of each one who then slightly nods their heads.
- They certainly put 2000s era technology in Haunted Mansion and do one thing in there that frankly blows my mind and I'm not sure how they pull it off. A+ also giving kids stuff to do in lines is super cool and they should do that in every ride.
- You get to touch this wall with musical instruments and it changes the song that is playing. There's also a bookshelf that will just not keep all the books in place.
- No seriously it is insane how many rides give you nothing to look at or to distract the kids with.
- At the park entrance hidden is a special talking blinking mickey you can get your picture with. It freaked us out.
- The...light show on the castle is super awesome.
- we were in the wrong position for the fireworks, but they were going off right above us so I sort of super enjoyed that even though we missed a lot of the visual element of them against Cinderilli's castle.
- The NASA ride ?Mission:space? definitely let me know about some fears I have. It is a motion ride, but with a big thing strapping you in a tiny room. As soon as that happened my brain screamed "GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT." I did the mild course which I'm going to assume was shorted. Interesting, but never going to ride if I go back ever. I discovered a fear and I'm going to try avoid being in that fear.
- Francis Ford Coppola-George Lucas-Micheal Jackson's Captain EO is freaking bonkers and I loved it. 80s action movie aesthetic is a real good thing. Happy it is back.
- Soaring definitely has the longest wait time of anything and didn't do a lot for me. You sort of move next to an IMax screen through random scenes of California. with really hard cuts between places. The lady liked it a lot though. Should really be a ride for one of the countries though instead of a transplant from Californialand.
- Weird that the 2 countries with rides are right next to each other. Mexico and Norway both feature boat rides. Norway is the cooler ride.
- France sells baguettes for like 2 dollars. I freaking love baguettes.
- In both Epcot and Magic Kingdom there's a Starbucks. I originally screamed against it because there is DISNEY COFFEE and I was going to enjoy that if I was in Disney world. Then on the last day I found out the starbucks in question is A STARBUCKS. It has normal prices. You could get a giant coffee for 3 dollars instead of a small coffee for 4 dollars anywhere else in the park. Or a bottled water. Or a pastry for 2 dollars. The long lines for starbucks in Disney suddenly made sense. I even used my starbucks card. It was that much a starbucks.
- Epcot sure is huge. It is huge and spread out and clearly the 80s Imagineers trying all sorts of things. Like not having lots of clear direction. Which is really a constant problem in all the parks is lack of knowing where you are going. We'll revisit this.
- Epcot features Duffy! The Disney Sea Bear from Japan. That bear is super super popular in Japan despite being for all purposes a normal teddy bear. Yes there were Japanese girls in line for Duffy.
- It sure is fun to walk around the different countries and see all the...well all the things you can buy because there's not much to look at really. Morocco is cool for having a bunch of "back alleys".
- When we had a sit down meal in Epcot I was suddenly confronted with the terrible thought, "Do I have to...tip in Disney World?"
- This is true of all the parks, the bathrooms are always completely undecorated. They might as well be a bathroom in a 2nd rate mall. There are never mirrors at the sinks. There is only a mirror right by the entrance and sometimes perpendicular to the first urinal.
- In MK there was a spring dress that the lady looked at. it was a reasonable 30 dollars. In Epcot Morroco there was a pretty dress that of roughly the same fabric that would set you back 90 dollars.
- Japan couldn't have been more Japan. They had an engrish sign in the store. Engrish in the middle of Disney. "Do not let the pen to saturate for other customers." It was a neat paintbrush that you painting with water. You could also get a kimono.
- The monorail too Epcot is great because you circle the giant golfball. I bet Big Disney fans get angry if you call it a golfball.
- The golfball ride is still the best place to take a 15 minute nap.
- Since the cold war is over maybe they should add a Russia? It's weird they havent' given another country a space since it opened. There are 2 "empty" slots. Russia or India seem like the obvious choices.
- We also passed on Rockin' Rollercoaster because neither of us like Rollercoasters and I don't like Aerosmith.
- So the first thing we did was see the Beauty and the Beast musical. Which was pretty good. It was 20 minutes long which as a straight male is the exact length of musical I can take before I need to be somewhere else.
- Where Epcot is huge and sprawling, MGM is very compact. This was clearly a reaction to Epcot being so big. That doesn't stop there being either dead space or way too many shops selling more or less the same thing.
- I wrote in my huge deathsmiles article about the diner here where you're at your aunt and uncles and they tease the hell out of you. We didn't go, but I still hold fond memories of it. If we had spent more than 4 hours in this park we might have gone.
- The Toy Story ride had clearly the longest line of anything in any park at a healthy 70 minutes all day long. We never rode it. I'm not too shook up about that. Tokyo Disney is getting it this year.
- The Captain Jack Sparrow Experience is clearly Disney going "we need another ride and we have 20 dollar budget." So you stand in a room and watch a video and then you are told to leave the room. There is audience participation.
- Star Tours actually delivered. The 3D Graphics and Effects were all really good.
- I bet that Honey We Shrunk the Kids playground is fucking awesome if you are 9.
- There's a section made to look like NYC and now a section made to look like San Francisco. Complete with signs for restaurants that don't exist. There's also nothing to do here. You can take a picture in front of a large mural? Or stare at an expired box of pocky in front of a Asian Supermarket Storefront.
- This goes along with a lot of Hollywood studios feels very half finished. It's been around for almost 20 years I think and everywhere there is the feeling that "something should be here one day?"
- You could wait in line to take a picture of with a static-nonmoving car from Cars.
- This was the park we went to first because I knew it wouldn't take long and it was the first of 3 broken Afterburner Climax cabinets I found. There was Afterburner Climax all over disney world and none of it worked. At one was a creepy dude dressed like Jack Sparrow that clearly wasn't a cast member and also clearly had no business creeping in an arcade. The state of Disney World Arcades.
- We saw the fireworks show here too. Which was impressive especially since they do two shows a night and every night. There's also an impossible to follow story that is an excuse for a bunch of different disney characters to be around and have a kick ass dragon robot.
- So you get to see some cool animals
- The Safari said they had a black rhino. Which made me think "isn't that thing extinct." I was excited to see one. Then there wasn't one to see and the "tour guide" didn't say anything about that bit.
- This park has the worst design with several "choke points" that must be nightmares when it opens and closes. The whole park is cut through a pretty small pathway.
- It's a zoo so it is depressing.
- Dinosaur is still HELL the ride. It is bouncy, bumpy, completely black, with demon dinosaurs jumping out at you.
- Once someone left a gun on Dinosaur. LEFT A GUN ON A RIDE.
- You are completely lost in this place if you do not have a map.
- The rapids ride is entirely about getting wetting and possibly getting soaked. It is also not about high level thrills. There is a drop and then you get wet. Li-li-like dubstep????
- Long line for the burger place. No line for curry. The curry was as good as curry you get in the frozen foods aisle.
- There's a few places to just be in a room with a bunch of birds. It's weird. The birds are just hanging out on the walkway
- Outside the bird cage a Florida specific grackle caws for your curry. Him and his 10 grackle friends.
After 2 and a half days of Disney I was ready to go back to reality and again question how anyone brings their kid there.
I enjoyed all of Disney (outside of it being very expensive constantly.) The expense was always at a forefront in my mind as an adult. I went their with my fiance. I just kept thinking of the multiplication of cost if we had one child. If we had 2 children that suddenly wanted the constant barrage of things they wanted to sell you. The constant barrage of overprice food or Disney Park branded merchandise that had no value outside of Disney parks. Lightsabers for the night shows that I got hit in the thighs twice and the crotch once walking by a kid swinging one.
But the need to sell you things constantly is also reflected back at you with how amazingly it all runs. There was buses to everywhere in the D-World from our Disney hotel every 10-15 minutes all day. The parks are incredibly run for the absurd amount of traffic every day. One of the major attractions would be down for only 90-120 minutes if it broke. For any kind of technical difficulty that is insane. All of the stores looked perfect despite probably being destroyed by children and customers constantly all day. It is an incredibly run machine.
This is partially because of the college interns that aren't paid but are given food and board to work 12 hour shifts. And they have to be busting with smiles the whole time. My fiance had a button declaring our "anniversary". You know they say it to everyone, but twenty strangers throughout your day enthusiastically declaring "Happy Anniversary" does make your day better. The level of service is constantly amazing.
It's also the same level of service you get in most places in Japan. On Japan, when we entered Japan-land in Epcot we both immediately felt at home. It is VERY Japanese. Right down to the Irrashaimase. Oh and they full equipped, full sized Japanese Department store Mitsukoshi. Where most of the "countries" have a thing, Japan has a full sized Pagoda, Castle, and a department store made to look like a temple. It is impressively large.
10 years ago Epcot's Worldshowcase would have had more value to me, or...most Americans. Today we have the internet and World Markets. The main feature of the different countries is shopping for goods from those countries. 90% of this is stuff you can find in your local import goods store or World Market or probably amazon. I'm sure it has amazing value to people not from America. All this stuff from around the world.
Despite what I claimed a dozen times before I went, I didn't get drunk, though getting drunk around the wold sounded like a heck of a fun time. I originally planned to get drunk despite being a non-drinker because I wanted to turn off the thinking part of my brain a tiny bit. A constant problem with Tokyo Disney as I said above, is I kept thinking "this could be a tiny bit better very easily." World didn't have this problem.
The food in Tokyo Disney SUCKS. It is tasteless and expensive. At least Disney World will spend 10 cents per dish on some spices. I thank them for that and then curse them for having to spend 10 dollars a meal. I never drank a coke there, so I'm proud of that. I kept looking at every (?American?) in the park and going "lood gord at least cut out soft drinks." Having one water bottle we kept refilling saved us at least FIVE HUNDRED DOLLARS (and you can too.)
I'm exaggerating that number (a tiny bit).
Most of the food was super greasy though. So that wasn't great! At least I got to eat some Moroccan food and a giant turkey leg (wonder what they do with the rest of the bird?) I didn't get to dine at the restaurant that is also an aquarium (booked 6 months in advance, along with all the nicer places). In Tokyo Disney we just walked right up and in to the bayou style place that Pirates of the Caribbean goes though and had an incredibly bland meal for Cajun food.
I can probably blame 90% of my frustration at Tokyo Disney on it not being actually owned by Disney. FUN FCAT.
SO HOW ARE THE PARKS?
I'll try and talk about them one at a time, but y'all know my writing style at this point. Lot's of parenthesis.
The Magic Kingdom
- The Peoplemover ride in Tomorrowland is definitely there for sweet teen makeouts and more adult stuff. It is a slow moving ride where there is a good 1-2 minute section of complete darkness. Like can't see anything dark. It's not even a ride so much as an excuse for sweet makeouts or more. You see like 2 things as it takes you in a loop around tomorrowland. I bet the disney cast members that get to watch the security cams for that ride have a real good time. Oh yeah You're being monitored at disney world at all times. By those college kids who aren't getting paid but are being wonderful to you for 12 hours with their incredible stamina.- It sure is super annoying that everyone calls him Captain Jack Sparrow on Pirates of the Caribbean ride. It is a joke that he asks for more respect than he deserves in the movies. Then you have his nemesises call him by his full name CAPTAIN JACK SPARROW. His animatronic looks super good though. Weird next to the 60 year old ones though.
- It's pretty weird they still have Tom Sawyer island and frontierland. I didn't see anything from the Lone Ranger there now that I think about it. Make TSI the city for lost boys from Pinocchio. Or something. Keep the Tree House from Swiss Family Robbison. Tree Houses are cool.
- The Hall of Presidents was super patriotic and almost got me in the mood. I thought it would have something from every president instead there is just this long listing of each one who then slightly nods their heads.
- They certainly put 2000s era technology in Haunted Mansion and do one thing in there that frankly blows my mind and I'm not sure how they pull it off. A+ also giving kids stuff to do in lines is super cool and they should do that in every ride.
- You get to touch this wall with musical instruments and it changes the song that is playing. There's also a bookshelf that will just not keep all the books in place.
- No seriously it is insane how many rides give you nothing to look at or to distract the kids with.
- At the park entrance hidden is a special talking blinking mickey you can get your picture with. It freaked us out.
- The...light show on the castle is super awesome.
- we were in the wrong position for the fireworks, but they were going off right above us so I sort of super enjoyed that even though we missed a lot of the visual element of them against Cinderilli's castle.
EPCOT
- Test Track had been changed since I went in high school. Now you HAVE TO make a dumb fake car with a touch screen for 4 minutes before you can be in line to ride the car. After the ride you get a statistic screen about how your car did. You can then buy a thingy and if you wait in line again (40-60 minutes more) you can tune your car. I wanted to ride again, but I definitely wanted to skip doing the dumb car thing. Also despite renovating it there is still this one person wide ramp up to the cars that is an echo chamber and absolutely miserable if you hate tiny echo chambers.- The NASA ride ?Mission:space? definitely let me know about some fears I have. It is a motion ride, but with a big thing strapping you in a tiny room. As soon as that happened my brain screamed "GET OUT GET OUT GET OUT." I did the mild course which I'm going to assume was shorted. Interesting, but never going to ride if I go back ever. I discovered a fear and I'm going to try avoid being in that fear.
- Francis Ford Coppola-George Lucas-Micheal Jackson's Captain EO is freaking bonkers and I loved it. 80s action movie aesthetic is a real good thing. Happy it is back.
- Soaring definitely has the longest wait time of anything and didn't do a lot for me. You sort of move next to an IMax screen through random scenes of California. with really hard cuts between places. The lady liked it a lot though. Should really be a ride for one of the countries though instead of a transplant from Californialand.
- Weird that the 2 countries with rides are right next to each other. Mexico and Norway both feature boat rides. Norway is the cooler ride.
- France sells baguettes for like 2 dollars. I freaking love baguettes.
- In both Epcot and Magic Kingdom there's a Starbucks. I originally screamed against it because there is DISNEY COFFEE and I was going to enjoy that if I was in Disney world. Then on the last day I found out the starbucks in question is A STARBUCKS. It has normal prices. You could get a giant coffee for 3 dollars instead of a small coffee for 4 dollars anywhere else in the park. Or a bottled water. Or a pastry for 2 dollars. The long lines for starbucks in Disney suddenly made sense. I even used my starbucks card. It was that much a starbucks.
- Epcot sure is huge. It is huge and spread out and clearly the 80s Imagineers trying all sorts of things. Like not having lots of clear direction. Which is really a constant problem in all the parks is lack of knowing where you are going. We'll revisit this.
- Epcot features Duffy! The Disney Sea Bear from Japan. That bear is super super popular in Japan despite being for all purposes a normal teddy bear. Yes there were Japanese girls in line for Duffy.
- It sure is fun to walk around the different countries and see all the...well all the things you can buy because there's not much to look at really. Morocco is cool for having a bunch of "back alleys".
- When we had a sit down meal in Epcot I was suddenly confronted with the terrible thought, "Do I have to...tip in Disney World?"
- This is true of all the parks, the bathrooms are always completely undecorated. They might as well be a bathroom in a 2nd rate mall. There are never mirrors at the sinks. There is only a mirror right by the entrance and sometimes perpendicular to the first urinal.
- In MK there was a spring dress that the lady looked at. it was a reasonable 30 dollars. In Epcot Morroco there was a pretty dress that of roughly the same fabric that would set you back 90 dollars.
- Japan couldn't have been more Japan. They had an engrish sign in the store. Engrish in the middle of Disney. "Do not let the pen to saturate for other customers." It was a neat paintbrush that you painting with water. You could also get a kimono.
- The monorail too Epcot is great because you circle the giant golfball. I bet Big Disney fans get angry if you call it a golfball.
- The golfball ride is still the best place to take a 15 minute nap.
- Since the cold war is over maybe they should add a Russia? It's weird they havent' given another country a space since it opened. There are 2 "empty" slots. Russia or India seem like the obvious choices.
 |
| my stupid car. |
 |
| despite there being two food places right here there is no where to sit. |
HOLLYWOOD STUDIOS
- In 9th grade I fell out of Tower of Terror. The safety bar for the row was too high and as a small small teen my feet slipped out and went above my head. I don't ride ToT. I didn't even enjoy it before that experience and now I have plenty of reason to say Yeah I'm not getting on that.- We also passed on Rockin' Rollercoaster because neither of us like Rollercoasters and I don't like Aerosmith.
- So the first thing we did was see the Beauty and the Beast musical. Which was pretty good. It was 20 minutes long which as a straight male is the exact length of musical I can take before I need to be somewhere else.
- Where Epcot is huge and sprawling, MGM is very compact. This was clearly a reaction to Epcot being so big. That doesn't stop there being either dead space or way too many shops selling more or less the same thing.
- I wrote in my huge deathsmiles article about the diner here where you're at your aunt and uncles and they tease the hell out of you. We didn't go, but I still hold fond memories of it. If we had spent more than 4 hours in this park we might have gone.
- The Toy Story ride had clearly the longest line of anything in any park at a healthy 70 minutes all day long. We never rode it. I'm not too shook up about that. Tokyo Disney is getting it this year.
- The Captain Jack Sparrow Experience is clearly Disney going "we need another ride and we have 20 dollar budget." So you stand in a room and watch a video and then you are told to leave the room. There is audience participation.
- Star Tours actually delivered. The 3D Graphics and Effects were all really good.
- I bet that Honey We Shrunk the Kids playground is fucking awesome if you are 9.
- There's a section made to look like NYC and now a section made to look like San Francisco. Complete with signs for restaurants that don't exist. There's also nothing to do here. You can take a picture in front of a large mural? Or stare at an expired box of pocky in front of a Asian Supermarket Storefront.
- This goes along with a lot of Hollywood studios feels very half finished. It's been around for almost 20 years I think and everywhere there is the feeling that "something should be here one day?"
- You could wait in line to take a picture of with a static-nonmoving car from Cars.
- This was the park we went to first because I knew it wouldn't take long and it was the first of 3 broken Afterburner Climax cabinets I found. There was Afterburner Climax all over disney world and none of it worked. At one was a creepy dude dressed like Jack Sparrow that clearly wasn't a cast member and also clearly had no business creeping in an arcade. The state of Disney World Arcades.
- We saw the fireworks show here too. Which was impressive especially since they do two shows a night and every night. There's also an impossible to follow story that is an excuse for a bunch of different disney characters to be around and have a kick ass dragon robot.
 | |
| There is nothing to do here. |
 |
| A linux based and themed arcade game. beautiful. |
ANIMAL KINGDOM
- Is definitely a zoo.- So you get to see some cool animals
- The Safari said they had a black rhino. Which made me think "isn't that thing extinct." I was excited to see one. Then there wasn't one to see and the "tour guide" didn't say anything about that bit.
- This park has the worst design with several "choke points" that must be nightmares when it opens and closes. The whole park is cut through a pretty small pathway.
- It's a zoo so it is depressing.
- Dinosaur is still HELL the ride. It is bouncy, bumpy, completely black, with demon dinosaurs jumping out at you.
- Once someone left a gun on Dinosaur. LEFT A GUN ON A RIDE.
- You are completely lost in this place if you do not have a map.
- The rapids ride is entirely about getting wetting and possibly getting soaked. It is also not about high level thrills. There is a drop and then you get wet. Li-li-like dubstep????
- Long line for the burger place. No line for curry. The curry was as good as curry you get in the frozen foods aisle.
- There's a few places to just be in a room with a bunch of birds. It's weird. The birds are just hanging out on the walkway
- Outside the bird cage a Florida specific grackle caws for your curry. Him and his 10 grackle friends.
After 2 and a half days of Disney I was ready to go back to reality and again question how anyone brings their kid there.
Thursday, January 30, 2014
I can't in good conscience buy Ging Nang Boyz new album
So Ging Nang Boyz have a new album released right....now. I would have been super excited for this. I really like their screaming breaking the speakers punk rock. I love it when they got it the fuck together and made the Boys on the Run single. I think the Boys on the Run "video" is heartbreaking and beautiful.
There other videos are all very and beautiful in this shame and teenage sexuality and how weird is to be that public about it when you are 15 or in your 30s. Bomb The Music Industry's Jeff Rosenstock likes them enough to cover one of their songs in Japanese, "I don't wanna die."
So first we have a video which is very cute and almost a counterpoint Boys on the Run. It is 12 minutes of cute girls blowing kisses at the camera. The song is called "paadamu" which I'm not going to pretend I know what it means with even a dictionary. I'm also not going to pretend what the lyrics means but will try by having it play in the background over and over as I write this.
Paadamu is almost a counterpoint to BotR. BotR goes out of it's way to humanize and break down walls of the boys/men that are presented. It shows them all in a very vunerable light. I'm not sure what they were told to draw on the white board, but you have an incredible wave of stuff from "I don't want to disappointment my parents anymore", "I want a girlfriend", "I want to have sex with this AV Idol", or just "Frank Zappa." They interview a huge range of guys. You're given a brief chance to relate to a hundred+ people. And you give hundred+ a voice. Ging Nang Boyz based on youtube views have more fame than you'd expect them to have as a screaming punk rock band. Then again I didn't know this band （warning creepy clown mask) until I saw their video with a billion views or this band that literally has cocksucker in their name. So don't trust me to know what's popular in Japanese rock music.
Asside: Sekai no Owari is so イメージ it hurts. I actually really like that song despite me wanting to hate it.
So the female counterpart is full of male gaze. We do have a woman saying some words at the beginning of the song. Who is speaking or why? I don't know. Let's assume the band wrote the words that were spoken. "Do you see this beautiful world?" "You are my beginning and end." Then the not bad song plays and we return to the most male gazey part of a very male gaze filled video of a girl trying to not look at the camera. I can't decide whether we're supposed to assume she's looking at the camera or at the person the camera is supposed to represent. Most of these girls submitted the videos themselves (I hope! Not someone submitted videos of them without knowledge) There was an ad on their website a while back. But these girls are not presented to show that they are people (if you prick them do they not bleed). The Boys/men were. We are just to sit here and enjoy all the pretty girls. Which I definitely did, but contrasted with Boys on the Run it's probablmatic.
That's not the only problem. BotR was an old song, for a movie (which I also think is very good for humanizing the loser males of Japanese society, aka my favorite film of 2010.) The problem is the 42 minute other video used to ?promote? the new album.
BEGIN TRIGGER WARNING
Tokyo's Last Story
I do not recommend watching that video. It contains rape. I'm going to describe the video in as simple but complete detail.
It starts innocently and awkwardly enough for Ging Nang Boyz. A guy wants his girlfriend to fart in his face. That's not far off from their weird sensibilities and whatever grown adults want to do. There's definitely the weird submissiveness from the girl that I don't know how to process but that's a much much larger Japanese culture issue. 10 minutes into the video Yakuza thugs show up beat up the guy, throw the girl by her hair, and hawl them into their van. We then get the music portion of the MV as the yakuza drive them into the countryside. We get plenty of shots of Tokyo, an exhausted and fearful guy and girl, and the Yakuza laughing. There are also lingering pantyshots on the girl. Then rape on both the man and attempted rape on the woman. The car crashes as a result of the girl trying to not be raped. We then see the man trying to carry the woman through the woods.
The man stands over the woman and comes to the conclusion that she texted the men who did this to them and was compliant in it. He cuts off her head with a mysterious available shovel and carries her head through the forest. The end.
The man is raped with a large dildo. Through out the forest scenes we keep being told he still has the dildo in his ass as he travels through the forest. I assume it is supposed to be funny. Except it isn't at all because it's the result of a graphic rape we just saw. And for the man's conclusion that his girlfriend was in on it, she is beaten and ducttaped and humiliated. So in talking about "the art and interpretation" I'm pretty sure he was wrong about the conclusion (his reasoning was while he was trying to smell her farts (HAHAAH) she was looking through the window as they approached.)
END TRIGGER
So the video is a very bad time. It left me with a sick taste in my mouth. Then a good friend who had not watched it but had watched the pretty girl video made a really good comment. "Wonder what the pretty girls think of that video?" That's a really good question. They aren't presented in the 42 minute video. But they are presented as the campaign piece in hype for the new album.
To go to my own morals, I went from being excited about the new album to boycotting it. As an adult I'm pretty against any entertainment or media that's a bad time. That is entirely bad things or bad times. There's enough very real evil and bad in the world that my media that is supposed to escapism from that. There's no artistic statement to the video. There's just this video where terrible things happen. One of the worst things happens. Then it is over. And it theoretically is supposed to get me excited about spending money on music. But I'm not. I feel betrayed because my good time expectations turned out to be very wrong.
It's paired with a video about looking at pretty girls, which i also have to have trouble with. I love looking at pretty girls, but I have to compare it with BotR and suddenly I'm upset about what the video is not. A band I really like I have to almost revile. I'm not sure it has tainted their music before this, but it might have a little bit. They made the worst thing they could then a bad album. You can forget a bad album. I can't just exorcise this video. If I link Boys on the Run in the future to a friend I have to give them a huge warning if they go look at other videos they might find you know, terrible stuff.
So first we have a video which is very cute and almost a counterpoint Boys on the Run. It is 12 minutes of cute girls blowing kisses at the camera. The song is called "paadamu" which I'm not going to pretend I know what it means with even a dictionary. I'm also not going to pretend what the lyrics means but will try by having it play in the background over and over as I write this.
Paadamu is almost a counterpoint to BotR. BotR goes out of it's way to humanize and break down walls of the boys/men that are presented. It shows them all in a very vunerable light. I'm not sure what they were told to draw on the white board, but you have an incredible wave of stuff from "I don't want to disappointment my parents anymore", "I want a girlfriend", "I want to have sex with this AV Idol", or just "Frank Zappa." They interview a huge range of guys. You're given a brief chance to relate to a hundred+ people. And you give hundred+ a voice. Ging Nang Boyz based on youtube views have more fame than you'd expect them to have as a screaming punk rock band. Then again I didn't know this band （warning creepy clown mask) until I saw their video with a billion views or this band that literally has cocksucker in their name. So don't trust me to know what's popular in Japanese rock music.
Asside: Sekai no Owari is so イメージ it hurts. I actually really like that song despite me wanting to hate it.
So the female counterpart is full of male gaze. We do have a woman saying some words at the beginning of the song. Who is speaking or why? I don't know. Let's assume the band wrote the words that were spoken. "Do you see this beautiful world?" "You are my beginning and end." Then the not bad song plays and we return to the most male gazey part of a very male gaze filled video of a girl trying to not look at the camera. I can't decide whether we're supposed to assume she's looking at the camera or at the person the camera is supposed to represent. Most of these girls submitted the videos themselves (I hope! Not someone submitted videos of them without knowledge) There was an ad on their website a while back. But these girls are not presented to show that they are people (if you prick them do they not bleed). The Boys/men were. We are just to sit here and enjoy all the pretty girls. Which I definitely did, but contrasted with Boys on the Run it's probablmatic.
That's not the only problem. BotR was an old song, for a movie (which I also think is very good for humanizing the loser males of Japanese society, aka my favorite film of 2010.) The problem is the 42 minute other video used to ?promote? the new album.
BEGIN TRIGGER WARNING
Tokyo's Last Story
I do not recommend watching that video. It contains rape. I'm going to describe the video in as simple but complete detail.
It starts innocently and awkwardly enough for Ging Nang Boyz. A guy wants his girlfriend to fart in his face. That's not far off from their weird sensibilities and whatever grown adults want to do. There's definitely the weird submissiveness from the girl that I don't know how to process but that's a much much larger Japanese culture issue. 10 minutes into the video Yakuza thugs show up beat up the guy, throw the girl by her hair, and hawl them into their van. We then get the music portion of the MV as the yakuza drive them into the countryside. We get plenty of shots of Tokyo, an exhausted and fearful guy and girl, and the Yakuza laughing. There are also lingering pantyshots on the girl. Then rape on both the man and attempted rape on the woman. The car crashes as a result of the girl trying to not be raped. We then see the man trying to carry the woman through the woods.
The man stands over the woman and comes to the conclusion that she texted the men who did this to them and was compliant in it. He cuts off her head with a mysterious available shovel and carries her head through the forest. The end.
The man is raped with a large dildo. Through out the forest scenes we keep being told he still has the dildo in his ass as he travels through the forest. I assume it is supposed to be funny. Except it isn't at all because it's the result of a graphic rape we just saw. And for the man's conclusion that his girlfriend was in on it, she is beaten and ducttaped and humiliated. So in talking about "the art and interpretation" I'm pretty sure he was wrong about the conclusion (his reasoning was while he was trying to smell her farts (HAHAAH) she was looking through the window as they approached.)
END TRIGGER
So the video is a very bad time. It left me with a sick taste in my mouth. Then a good friend who had not watched it but had watched the pretty girl video made a really good comment. "Wonder what the pretty girls think of that video?" That's a really good question. They aren't presented in the 42 minute video. But they are presented as the campaign piece in hype for the new album.
To go to my own morals, I went from being excited about the new album to boycotting it. As an adult I'm pretty against any entertainment or media that's a bad time. That is entirely bad things or bad times. There's enough very real evil and bad in the world that my media that is supposed to escapism from that. There's no artistic statement to the video. There's just this video where terrible things happen. One of the worst things happens. Then it is over. And it theoretically is supposed to get me excited about spending money on music. But I'm not. I feel betrayed because my good time expectations turned out to be very wrong.
It's paired with a video about looking at pretty girls, which i also have to have trouble with. I love looking at pretty girls, but I have to compare it with BotR and suddenly I'm upset about what the video is not. A band I really like I have to almost revile. I'm not sure it has tainted their music before this, but it might have a little bit. They made the worst thing they could then a bad album. You can forget a bad album. I can't just exorcise this video. If I link Boys on the Run in the future to a friend I have to give them a huge warning if they go look at other videos they might find you know, terrible stuff.
Tuesday, January 7, 2014
Monday, November 4, 2013
Roomania #203 (Dreamcast)
A few weeks ago, a dear commenter asked or I promised that I play Roommania #203. I'll talk about that experience. I'm in my room in a house I didn't grow up in but have spent 10 years off and on in. My room in the last hour has developed strange odor I couldn't figure out the source of. I went looking and took out the garbage (It was garbage day anyways.) I sprayed Frebreeze. I lit a match. The smell didn't go away. It's still here kind of.
So then I sat down infront of my BEAUTIFUL Dreamcast.
I popped in my Japan game booter. I looked away from the TV to close my computer. When I turn back I freeze. There's people, actors, playing mahjong. I can't hear what they are saying either because of the volume or my speakers. After two minutes it pulls back to show our Roommate of Roommmania #203 watching the mahjong show on his own TV in his Japanese apartment.
Then it loads the title screen. It asked if I wanted to play the tutorial. I did. It drops me and asks me to "click" something. I find my fixed cam view not helping me much. I start throwing balls with the A button at things. My Roommate sits there and smokes a cigarette. He then gets up and goes off camera. I think he was opening the blinds. I keep throwing balls. The screen flashes ”イライラ！” I guess I'm irritating my roommate who isn't paying any attention to me. After 3 long minutes the session ends and I get a result screen.
I eventually got more camera views. I got to move some furniture when Roommate wasn't there to freak him out. I was also getting very sleepy.
On a Monday Night I played a barely interactive game experience where I watched a man kill time in his room. He was finding things to do between sleeping and not being in the room. Here I was choosing to bare witness to him finding things to do. I could keep throwing out balls that seemed to unlock more camera angles. It gave me goals that flashed on the screen for half a second and my kanji skills failed me to decipher them.
Is this...really how I want to spend my time? I turned off the game and spent a couple of minutes thinking of how it could have become a profound experience. I thought about The Stanley Parable. The original version of that made almost no impression on me. I didn't even remember playing it until I saw my own writing saying that I did.
I think now about Contact. I always meant to write about that game. Maybe I did at some point. Contact is a strange beast. Turning off the game requires more effort than actually playing it. So you keep playing it. The game eventually begins to notice the player. The Avatar rebels and goes to your house with a blue subaru parked outside. He tells you he won't take it anymore. It turns out the professor ran away with all your money. He says you can remember the good times by playing the game again.
Okay so the subaru wasn't blue. That game kind of left me in a daze. Did that ending make up for the twenty hours of almost video game? I still don't know. I gave my copy to Ryan Starsailor. Or I sold it to him and he never paid me back. It doesn't matter. Maybe he's got opinions about it. He probably just stopped after 3 hours. Or looked at and always meant to play it.
So would Roommania #203 live up to that if I sunk 5 or 10 hours into it? Possibly. But the thought of wasting my time not doing things watching a digital thing waste time not doing things is a bit too void-y. It's dark and icky. I should be concentrating on playing my Xbox360 shooters before I don't own a 360 anymore.
So then I sat down infront of my BEAUTIFUL Dreamcast.
Then it loads the title screen. It asked if I wanted to play the tutorial. I did. It drops me and asks me to "click" something. I find my fixed cam view not helping me much. I start throwing balls with the A button at things. My Roommate sits there and smokes a cigarette. He then gets up and goes off camera. I think he was opening the blinds. I keep throwing balls. The screen flashes ”イライラ！” I guess I'm irritating my roommate who isn't paying any attention to me. After 3 long minutes the session ends and I get a result screen.
I eventually got more camera views. I got to move some furniture when Roommate wasn't there to freak him out. I was also getting very sleepy.
On a Monday Night I played a barely interactive game experience where I watched a man kill time in his room. He was finding things to do between sleeping and not being in the room. Here I was choosing to bare witness to him finding things to do. I could keep throwing out balls that seemed to unlock more camera angles. It gave me goals that flashed on the screen for half a second and my kanji skills failed me to decipher them.
Is this...really how I want to spend my time? I turned off the game and spent a couple of minutes thinking of how it could have become a profound experience. I thought about The Stanley Parable. The original version of that made almost no impression on me. I didn't even remember playing it until I saw my own writing saying that I did.
I think now about Contact. I always meant to write about that game. Maybe I did at some point. Contact is a strange beast. Turning off the game requires more effort than actually playing it. So you keep playing it. The game eventually begins to notice the player. The Avatar rebels and goes to your house with a blue subaru parked outside. He tells you he won't take it anymore. It turns out the professor ran away with all your money. He says you can remember the good times by playing the game again.
Okay so the subaru wasn't blue. That game kind of left me in a daze. Did that ending make up for the twenty hours of almost video game? I still don't know. I gave my copy to Ryan Starsailor. Or I sold it to him and he never paid me back. It doesn't matter. Maybe he's got opinions about it. He probably just stopped after 3 hours. Or looked at and always meant to play it.
So would Roommania #203 live up to that if I sunk 5 or 10 hours into it? Possibly. But the thought of wasting my time not doing things watching a digital thing waste time not doing things is a bit too void-y. It's dark and icky. I should be concentrating on playing my Xbox360 shooters before I don't own a 360 anymore.
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