2014-11-29

Hey Force! It's Time To Get Up!

The Force Awakens...

I'm sure everyone has seen the teaser trailer by now (if you haven't, watch this.)



If you need a blow by blow of the clip then Empire Strikes Back at it (Empire Magazine that is.)

The first thing I saw this morning on my phone was the above teaser and it put me in quite a good mood. Once I got home from my three weddings today, I wore my brand new UFO-Caught Star Wars Jumbo Bath Towel as a cape all night.


Let's get a closer look at that, shall we.




Sweet. I'm so glad I won this one and not the one on the right.


What other UFO Catch stuff was there?

Hmmm. I know we won't see the movie for another year, but I don't think they're going to rename the Light Saber as a Lightning Saber.


Are there Star Wars goodies out there right now? Funny, you should ask.

This figure was given to me a while back, there are 14 others you can collect as well. (Pretty expensive though, so I wouldn't bother.)







I also picked up a fashion magazine, not for the fashion per se, rather for the totes cool tote bag that came with it. I won't be showing that off yet for it'll be a Christmas present for some lucky recipient.

Within the pages of Xlarge is a closet full of sweats for you to buy.





A bit too beyond my budget but if you have 5000 yen for a t-shirt or 13000 yen for a hoodie or sweatshirt, let me know and I'll give you the ordering information.


If there is one thing for sure, now that Disney has control, we'll see plenty more merchandise coming our way. (Ha, there was so little merchandise before, wasn't there?)


And just so you don't think that everyone is completely enamored with the above clip, here is William Shatner to give you a contrary point of view.







Sounds to me like someone is still a little grumpy that JJ. Abrams didn't put him in either of his Star Trek movies.

ADDENDUM: This ended on a bit of a downer, Bill's sour grapes need some sweetening. So here is the teaser one more time in LEGO!!

2014-11-27

Cowtow To Koto.

I had an opportunity to listen to some Koto playing today when an expert came and showed off her art to my 6th Graders. Last time I heard Koto was several years ago and I wasn't impressed.  To hear a bunch of 12 year-olds plucking away at random didn't endear me to it much further. One or two boys really stood out though and caught on quickly.


I hummed, "Duh, duh, duuuh. Duh, duh da duuuh. Duh, duh duuuuuh, duh, duh." Hoping a kid would pick up on it but no one started playing it. The vice principal came over and said, "Smoke On the Water! I love it!"

I gained a better appreciation when I had the opportunity to play myself. I managed to pluck out a recognizable version of Sakura.

 Not unlike this, but I didn't wear a kimono.



A few kids got to learn how to play a Banjo Shamisen, but I never got the chance.

ps. Happy Thanksgiving to vast American readership!

Last Of The Halloween Pics.

Now that American Thanksgiving is here, I think I can give up on my Halloween posts and concentrate on Christmas chaos. Nah...just one more. These 5th Graders had a week to do their pics so there's a lot more colour involved. I'll start with the gals' and then work on the guys' masterpieces.

 I like how she mixes the Katakana and English for the word Zombie.
 You'll never see this graveyard at Disneyworld.
 A couple of Trick or Treaters.


 I thought I'd give a close up of her characters and their descriptions.

 I love a gal who likes to practice her spelling.

More Trick or Treaters.






Damn these gals can draw well.

A few of those may have been drawn by boys but I doubt it. This one definitely was. I wonder how many times he had to sharpen his pencil...


 I'm not sure if this Jack o' Dragon has been dissected and laid out on a table or what.
 Another candidate for the school counsellor.
Is that Leslie Nielsen from Dracula Dead and Loving it?




2014-11-25

A Daruma Drama.

I just came back from a crazy collaborative movie between Takashi Miike and Sota Fukushi called 
神さまの言うとおり translated from the manga, "As the Gods Will" or "As Gods Say",  (the wiki page is Kami-sama no Iu Toori but it doesn't have much info so go to the official website at Daruma-san). 



I thought it would be a happy-go-lucky movie about a killer Daruma but it is so much more than that! You can see some stills from the movie and a trailer here or just watch this.



Just looking around the apartment, I could film much of this movie myself. I happen to have a Daruma on my windowsill, yet I'm still awaiting for my wish to come true. In the movie, he plays a rather gruesome version of Red Light - Green Light!


For a slightly naughty yet SFW version of this game, see this. It is NOT just about jiggly bikini gals, stick through to the end.



It also has a Maneki-Neko that I use to hang my keys upon, though in the movie, it's a little more menacing when it gobbles up mice.


 There's a Ring-around-the-Rosie type guessing game with some lobotomizing Kokeshi.


And a nasty game of Truth or Dare with a Shiro-Kuma (Polar bear). Hmm, that bear doesn't look very white...


Finally there's a Hide and Seek/Kick the Can game featuring some Russian Nesting Dolls. I don't happen to have any from Russia though I do have Godzilla and friends.


This movie was a lot of fun even if I didn't understand about half of it, and the ending is very perplexing, probably a set up for a sequel.

2014-11-22

Which Witch Is Which?

From the archives, mainly some drawings of Halloween by my grade 5s that I hadn't shown before. I had them in a drawer with the intention of marking them and discovered them unmarked on Friday. Yay.
First up, lots of witches and their familiars.








That last one is my favouritest picture ever!

As you can imagine, those were done by the gals in the class, this is what the boys came up with.




 As you may have surmised, the kid who drew the above wanted to dress as a zombie for Trick or Treating.
This last one is incredibly creepy. I love it!

In other news, on my way to night of pubbing with Alex, I found a box full of mannequin parts on the curb ready to be picked up by the garbage collectors. Well, I collected an arm for myself.

We were getting along fine...
 But I guess I got a little too fresh...
 All was forgiven.
 Note she was missing a baby finger, my conclusion is that her pinky was removed as part of a Yakuza initiation. The proprietor at BBs, where we drank our absinthe, made the same remark.
After I had my fun with her, I discarded her in a bush. Not sure why I didn't keep her, but she was becoming a real handful.

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