It gets a bit silly with the LCD/Technotronic/Bonde transition, but this might be one of my favorites. It's also the first time I've put something together without any Daft Punk.
linky
Chemical Bros – Star Guitar
Chemical Bros – Star Guitar (Shinichi Osawa rework ft. Au Revoir Simone)
Positive K – I Got A Man
St. Germain – Alabama Blues (Todd Edwards Vocal Remix)
Seal – Amazing (Kaskade Remix)
Justin Timberlake – My Love (XXXChange Remix)
Supercar – Wonder Word
LCD Soundsystem – Get Innocuous (Soulwax Remix)
Technotronic – Pump Up The Jam (Chopped by me)
Bonde do Role – Office Boy (Brodisnki Remix)
DatA – Aerius Light
Feist – 1, 2, 3, 4 (My!Gay!Husband! Get Up Kid Edit)
Digitalism – Pogo (Shinichi Osawa Remix)
Monday, February 4, 2008
Thursday, January 31, 2008
What happens in Bangkok
A cool thing about Thailand is that you can haggle for almost everything. You get quoted a crazy high price because you're foreign and have no idea how much their monopoly money is worth, but you can talk them down at least a few dollars on something that costs no more than a few dollars in the first place. You get better at it the more you do it, too. I started out getting three dollars off a linen shirt, upgraded to a pair of diesel jeans for $30 from $37, and finally as the jewel in my haggling crown talked a guy down $20 per ticket on the ping pong show.
It started by asking the gentleman at the door if he could bring the price of 800 Baht down a bit, then taking his offer and pushing it a bit more with a "I was hoping more like this price" and punching numbers on his calculator. He gave a final offer of 1200 Baht for two people including a drink ticket. We weren't drinking and asked if he could let it go for a thousand, which he couldn't. I apologized for wasting his time and turned around to leave, and after two steps back towards the tuk tuks he acquiesced. Ping pong show for roughly $14 each. Awesome.
I was a little disappointed at first as there was just a girl dancing around on a stage with black undies and bra on, and though it got a little more interesting as she took them off, nothing more happened for a minute. Just as I was wondering if I'd been had, the girl reached down and pulled 30 feet of fluorescent ribbon out of her hoo-ha, waved it around like an olympic ribbon dancer, and then tied a cat's cradle on the five poles she was supplied with while the end of the ribbon still hidden somewhere inside her.
After this came the coke bottle colonic, starting with water and coming back out roughly the color of coca cola, appropriately enough, back in to the bottle from whence the formerly clear liquid came. As she exited the stage she gave one of the guys a cheers and clinked her bottle against his beer. Then came a lady extracting a daisy chain of jingle bells from her secret spot, the one pulling out a string of razor blades and then cutting stuff with them to show that they were still sharp after their journey into the unknown.
All the girls started out like the first one, dancing around in underwear which was eventually removed and tossed to the stage. The ping pong lady was by far the best actual dancer, even after she fit 7 of them inside her before squirting them back out one by one, cradling them between her knees, and then dropping them back in the jar like an endangered sea turtle shitting its eggs into a lovingly prepared nest. She dropped a couple of them on the floor, picked one up and popped it right back in before dropping it again as she danced around the stage a bit. 7 was the maximum number she had in at any point, but even though she had more available I can't imagine that she could get much more since they all came out pretty dented from the crowding of her womb.
The quief artists were impressive. There was one who did some kind of reverse one to smoke cigarettes (side note - cigarette boxes in Thailand accompany their surgeon general's warning with actual pictures of blackened lungs and rotting teeth printed on the boxes, but don't show a single cancerous womb). The best one was definitely the banana lady. With an audible pop, this lady fired a banana five feet into the air, caught it, and then reloaded twice before one shot went astray and her banana went too far for her to catch it and it bounced off the stage. She tried to get the audience people to hand it back up to her but nobody seemed to want to touch it.
I see that I'm leaving out the brief lesbian act (to the tune of "I will always love you") where they mimed every position from behind I had ever heard of and a few that I never thought of, and the time when they calmed the soundtrack down from DJ Sammy's version of "heaven" to that James Blunt song "You're Beatiful" for an actual-insertion love scene between an underweight hexagenerian man and a 20-something lady. I'm leaving out that the crowd was about half couples and young folks clearly there for the spectacle and half skeezy businessmen who seemed genuinely in to it. I'm leaving out that my trip to Thailand was a lot more about raft-hotels, spicy curry, cave temples, swimming with elephants, and petting tigers (not a euphemism) with orange-robed monks. All of this was amazing, and all of it will stay in my memory forever, but the thing that will stand out for me is when I became for one moment Charlie, Master Bargainer, witnessed firsthand how many amazing things the vulva is capable of, and discovered how easy it is to wipe all other memories you have attached to a song with the fabled shows in Bangkok's Pat Pong.
It started by asking the gentleman at the door if he could bring the price of 800 Baht down a bit, then taking his offer and pushing it a bit more with a "I was hoping more like this price" and punching numbers on his calculator. He gave a final offer of 1200 Baht for two people including a drink ticket. We weren't drinking and asked if he could let it go for a thousand, which he couldn't. I apologized for wasting his time and turned around to leave, and after two steps back towards the tuk tuks he acquiesced. Ping pong show for roughly $14 each. Awesome.
I was a little disappointed at first as there was just a girl dancing around on a stage with black undies and bra on, and though it got a little more interesting as she took them off, nothing more happened for a minute. Just as I was wondering if I'd been had, the girl reached down and pulled 30 feet of fluorescent ribbon out of her hoo-ha, waved it around like an olympic ribbon dancer, and then tied a cat's cradle on the five poles she was supplied with while the end of the ribbon still hidden somewhere inside her.
After this came the coke bottle colonic, starting with water and coming back out roughly the color of coca cola, appropriately enough, back in to the bottle from whence the formerly clear liquid came. As she exited the stage she gave one of the guys a cheers and clinked her bottle against his beer. Then came a lady extracting a daisy chain of jingle bells from her secret spot, the one pulling out a string of razor blades and then cutting stuff with them to show that they were still sharp after their journey into the unknown.
All the girls started out like the first one, dancing around in underwear which was eventually removed and tossed to the stage. The ping pong lady was by far the best actual dancer, even after she fit 7 of them inside her before squirting them back out one by one, cradling them between her knees, and then dropping them back in the jar like an endangered sea turtle shitting its eggs into a lovingly prepared nest. She dropped a couple of them on the floor, picked one up and popped it right back in before dropping it again as she danced around the stage a bit. 7 was the maximum number she had in at any point, but even though she had more available I can't imagine that she could get much more since they all came out pretty dented from the crowding of her womb.
The quief artists were impressive. There was one who did some kind of reverse one to smoke cigarettes (side note - cigarette boxes in Thailand accompany their surgeon general's warning with actual pictures of blackened lungs and rotting teeth printed on the boxes, but don't show a single cancerous womb). The best one was definitely the banana lady. With an audible pop, this lady fired a banana five feet into the air, caught it, and then reloaded twice before one shot went astray and her banana went too far for her to catch it and it bounced off the stage. She tried to get the audience people to hand it back up to her but nobody seemed to want to touch it.
I see that I'm leaving out the brief lesbian act (to the tune of "I will always love you") where they mimed every position from behind I had ever heard of and a few that I never thought of, and the time when they calmed the soundtrack down from DJ Sammy's version of "heaven" to that James Blunt song "You're Beatiful" for an actual-insertion love scene between an underweight hexagenerian man and a 20-something lady. I'm leaving out that the crowd was about half couples and young folks clearly there for the spectacle and half skeezy businessmen who seemed genuinely in to it. I'm leaving out that my trip to Thailand was a lot more about raft-hotels, spicy curry, cave temples, swimming with elephants, and petting tigers (not a euphemism) with orange-robed monks. All of this was amazing, and all of it will stay in my memory forever, but the thing that will stand out for me is when I became for one moment Charlie, Master Bargainer, witnessed firsthand how many amazing things the vulva is capable of, and discovered how easy it is to wipe all other memories you have attached to a song with the fabled shows in Bangkok's Pat Pong.
Wednesday, December 19, 2007
mmmbop
Daft Punk was awesome. I almost squeed myself three or four times during their set and I will forever treasure the memory. I got some video but my idiot finger was over the mic for most of it so it sounds terrible. Too bad, but no video could ever, ever do justice to the mind-blowing kickassery that went on.
I put some more stuff together. I got up to the last song on this list and then couldn't take it anywhere without changing the mood, so here I will call it finished.
blink
Tracklist:
Daft Punk - Harder Better Faster Stronger (Jools MF Bandwagon Mix)
Scott Grooves - Mothership reconnection (Daft Punk Remix)
Riot In Belgium - La Musique (JBAG re-edit)
Mustapha 3000 - Kongo Thong vs Khia - My Neck My Back (acapella)
Kelis - Bossy (Switch Mix)
Martin Bros - Stoopit (Red Foxx Wamp Wamp edit)
Heartsrevolution - Crystal Castles (Acid Girls' it's no the size that matters mix)
Justin Timberlake - Lovestoned (Kaskade Remix)
I put some more stuff together. I got up to the last song on this list and then couldn't take it anywhere without changing the mood, so here I will call it finished.
blink
Tracklist:
Daft Punk - Harder Better Faster Stronger (Jools MF Bandwagon Mix)
Scott Grooves - Mothership reconnection (Daft Punk Remix)
Riot In Belgium - La Musique (JBAG re-edit)
Mustapha 3000 - Kongo Thong vs Khia - My Neck My Back (acapella)
Kelis - Bossy (Switch Mix)
Martin Bros - Stoopit (Red Foxx Wamp Wamp edit)
Heartsrevolution - Crystal Castles (Acid Girls' it's no the size that matters mix)
Justin Timberlake - Lovestoned (Kaskade Remix)
Thursday, November 22, 2007
Thoughts in my brain
I was thinking about poetry the other day. I can't decide whether it's funnier that I thought up a theory to explain why teenagers' poetry is so bad or that I think I'm right. I also thought of a way to quantify how bad or good poetry is, but to do so you'd have to cut open the listener's brain to measure levels of hormones floating around and I don't think that you could get funding for an experiment that would kill everyone who took part in it. That being the case, you'd probably have to read poetry to mice or something, which would help us figure out what kind of poetry mice like. I don't think NSF would want to fund that one either, which is too bad for the mice.
I'm going to see Daft Punk in a few weeks. Those who don't understand how awesome this is either don't know Daft Punk or don't live in Missouri. Last time they toured through the US with the current set, it was the first time in either 9 or 10 years. I'm really lucky. I don't know how long it's been since they've gone to Japan.
I'm going to see Daft Punk in a few weeks. Those who don't understand how awesome this is either don't know Daft Punk or don't live in Missouri. Last time they toured through the US with the current set, it was the first time in either 9 or 10 years. I'm really lucky. I don't know how long it's been since they've gone to Japan.
Wednesday, October 24, 2007
Honorary Pagan
I have taken part in an ancient pagan ceremony celebrating the passing of summer and welcoming the coming fall. It was pretty awesome. Saturday I had sukiyaki with the host family. One of the sons is married and has a kid, who cried shortly after meeting me despite my gift of pez. In the evening we put on special festival shirts called happi, went to the local temple, and placated the spirits by drinking lots of beer.
There were two of these mobile shrines called mikoshi, one pulled by the kids and one by the men. Women get to supervise the kids and hand the men beer at the stops. Some younger guys rode in the shrine and pounded on the drum while everyone else pulled the shrine around with ropes and by the big logs. In old times the things were carried like palanquins, and in some places still are, but ours was a smaller local festival so there weren’t enough people to carry it. It was still really heavy.
To the rhythm of the drum, everyone shouted out “yoyasa” in call-and-response fashion which means something like “make us healthy”… or something. There was a major language barrier and it’s not in my dictionary. Every now and then we would stop pulling it and everyone would sit on one side to pick the bottom of the drum up so it would be louder and the chant would change to “hitochi, hutachi, mitchu yoyasa!” (one, two, three yoyasa). More beer would be drank as we sat and shouted for a while, and then we’d ease it down and continue on. After three stops we returned back to the temple and one of the mid-20s guys pounded out a special rhythm on the taiko while everyone clapped out some other pattern and everyone yelled something.
The next day we did the same thing again in the afternoon, except this time they let me in the mikoshi and bang on the taiko for a while. When you’re at ground level it’s so loud you can feel it punch you in the chest, but when you’re in the thing itself it isn’t nearly as loud. It was terrific fun, and I was very very lucky to be invited to do it.
After that round was finished, we went back to eat dinner and then once more to the temple to make a final round. The last time, all the younger men went to one side of the mikoshi and the older men to the other, and we picked up the thing and bounced it up and down while chanting something else that I couldn’t understand but was more rhythmic and changing and awesome. After doing that like ten times we did the taiko thing once more
I had homework to do so I didn’t really want to drink, but they said that I had to have one to make me strong. After that they kept refilling my glass. I think America really needs holidays that endorse and encourage public drunkenness. I feel like it rings false and overly reverent when I say this, but the drums and feats of strengths and ritual drinking (I wasn’t lying about placating the spirits) and shouting I could sense something that was awesome, moving, and very, very old. Something very like this has been done for god only knows how many generations, stemming from primitive man screaming back in fear and defiance at the wind and the rain. This festival is by far the coolest thing I’ve done here.
There were two of these mobile shrines called mikoshi, one pulled by the kids and one by the men. Women get to supervise the kids and hand the men beer at the stops. Some younger guys rode in the shrine and pounded on the drum while everyone else pulled the shrine around with ropes and by the big logs. In old times the things were carried like palanquins, and in some places still are, but ours was a smaller local festival so there weren’t enough people to carry it. It was still really heavy.
To the rhythm of the drum, everyone shouted out “yoyasa” in call-and-response fashion which means something like “make us healthy”… or something. There was a major language barrier and it’s not in my dictionary. Every now and then we would stop pulling it and everyone would sit on one side to pick the bottom of the drum up so it would be louder and the chant would change to “hitochi, hutachi, mitchu yoyasa!” (one, two, three yoyasa). More beer would be drank as we sat and shouted for a while, and then we’d ease it down and continue on. After three stops we returned back to the temple and one of the mid-20s guys pounded out a special rhythm on the taiko while everyone clapped out some other pattern and everyone yelled something.
The next day we did the same thing again in the afternoon, except this time they let me in the mikoshi and bang on the taiko for a while. When you’re at ground level it’s so loud you can feel it punch you in the chest, but when you’re in the thing itself it isn’t nearly as loud. It was terrific fun, and I was very very lucky to be invited to do it.
After that round was finished, we went back to eat dinner and then once more to the temple to make a final round. The last time, all the younger men went to one side of the mikoshi and the older men to the other, and we picked up the thing and bounced it up and down while chanting something else that I couldn’t understand but was more rhythmic and changing and awesome. After doing that like ten times we did the taiko thing once more
I had homework to do so I didn’t really want to drink, but they said that I had to have one to make me strong. After that they kept refilling my glass. I think America really needs holidays that endorse and encourage public drunkenness. I feel like it rings false and overly reverent when I say this, but the drums and feats of strengths and ritual drinking (I wasn’t lying about placating the spirits) and shouting I could sense something that was awesome, moving, and very, very old. Something very like this has been done for god only knows how many generations, stemming from primitive man screaming back in fear and defiance at the wind and the rain. This festival is by far the coolest thing I’ve done here.
Monday, October 22, 2007
Friday, September 14, 2007
Bikes in Japan
While I was in Hikone, I got the impression that all anyone had in Japan was these unrideable POS commuter bikes. Once in a rare while I would see someone on an honest-to-goodness road bike, once even in spandex, but I can count the number of times that occurred on one hand. Anyway, I borrowed one of the crap bikes from the school so I could go shopping and stuff, and while it was ludicrously undersized it did have a bell AND a honky horn on it, so that was alright.
Anyway, now I’m in Tokyo and I am learning that Hikone was not typical. Not that Tokyo should be seen as typical, but here there is a much greater variety of bikes. There are a lot of messengers, and they tend to ride shiny new singlespeeds, almost always tastefully colored, rather than the fashionably shitty fixed gears that you so often see in America.
They have the commuters and foldable bikes here, too, but I’ve seen some that look like they have internal gearing or something. This one was suspended in some weird way. There was one foldable bike that had monstrous pegs on it. I also saw some dude on a bianchi somethingorother.
There are also a lot of bikes made by car manufacturers here. I had heard of Cadillac bikes, but they were just a curiosity, really. I was surprised at first, but now I’m used to seeing once in a while a Chevrolet bike. The best one was this Dodge BMX bike.
“That thing got a Hemi?”
YES
I'm staying now in Osaka. There are a lot more hostess bars and a lot fewer messengers. I went to one enormous underground complex that had every kind of shopping you could imagine. One display was advertising Sharp TVs and had some silly biking on it.
Edit: I can't get it to upload. I'll try later
Anyway, now I’m in Tokyo and I am learning that Hikone was not typical. Not that Tokyo should be seen as typical, but here there is a much greater variety of bikes. There are a lot of messengers, and they tend to ride shiny new singlespeeds, almost always tastefully colored, rather than the fashionably shitty fixed gears that you so often see in America.
They have the commuters and foldable bikes here, too, but I’ve seen some that look like they have internal gearing or something. This one was suspended in some weird way. There was one foldable bike that had monstrous pegs on it. I also saw some dude on a bianchi somethingorother.
There are also a lot of bikes made by car manufacturers here. I had heard of Cadillac bikes, but they were just a curiosity, really. I was surprised at first, but now I’m used to seeing once in a while a Chevrolet bike. The best one was this Dodge BMX bike.
“That thing got a Hemi?”
YES
I'm staying now in Osaka. There are a lot more hostess bars and a lot fewer messengers. I went to one enormous underground complex that had every kind of shopping you could imagine. One display was advertising Sharp TVs and had some silly biking on it.
Edit: I can't get it to upload. I'll try later
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