Aargh! Oot! Greet!

As everyone knows, these are the various sounds a gorilla makes. At least the gorillas in Don Martin cartoons. Since January 31st is just around the corner, it's time to remind everyone about National Gorilla Suit Day. It's your patriotic duty as my blog reader to don your Gorilla suit and go door-to-door greeting the neighbours.
For more information about the event you can always go to this link:
Evanier
For more information about the various sound effects that Don Martin creations have made, go to this site: Mad

Now I'd like to feature a few of my favourite gorillas.

This is Bettie Page getting it on with a NGSD patriot.



















Another lovely propaganda pic from the 40's encouraging young men to prevent NGSD from catching on in Japan...Good thing they weren't successful.
















Like every great holiday, NGSD does come with its tragedies.








And finally this was my intended costume for NGSD. I won it via UFO Catcher last summer when Japan was in the throes of King Kong fever. Unfortunately, it wasn't until I got it home to discover that it isn't a mask, but rather a stuffed Kong head. I've considered hollowing it out, but that would besmirch the good name of the holiday in question. Now where am I going to find a gorilla costume in a week?

ハッピーロッビーバーンズデー！

Speaking of poetry, today is Robbie Burns' Day, so everyone raise a pint to the lassies or the laddies, drink to their health and eat some haggis!

Here's a poem for you to recite before you chow down on your sheep innards.

Some hae meat and canna eat,
And some would eat that want it;
But we hae meat, and we can eat,
And sae the Lord be thankit.

(hae = have; canna = cannot; sae = say; thankit = thanked)

Robert Burns of course wrote Auld Lang Syne and the first verse of that tune goes like this:

Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and never brought to mind?
Should auld acquaintance be forgot,
and auld lang syne?

(Auld = old)

The Japanese have adopted that tune and used it for a song about fireflies, 蛍の光.Hotaru no Hikari

hotaru no hikari, mado no yuki. Light of fireflies, snow by the window,
fumi yomu tsukihi, kasane tsutsu. Many suns and moons spent reading
itsushika toshi mo, sugi no towo. Years have gone by without notice
aketezo kesa ha, wakare yuku. Day has dawned; this morning, we part.


Rather than being sung on New Year's Eve though, this tune is mostly associated with graduation ceremonies. According to folklore, students used the light of fireflies and the reflection of moonlight on snow as light sources when they wanted to study at night. Therefore, the first verse is used to indicate the diligence of the graduating students. (Not my students though!)













These days, one can hear an instrumental version of this song blaring out over loud speakers as a Supermarket, Pachinko or Game Center is closing. Once that tune begins, wrap up your shopping, plink your last ball or finish taking your Print Club (プリクラ), because you're going to be kicked out in a few minutes!

Waxing Poetic.

I think of a poem
As I walk through the forest
It's a haiku.

俳句 (pronounced ha-i-ku); ハイク= hike (pronounced ha-i-ku)

Here's a Japanese version:
詩を作り
森を歩いて
俳句です (ハイクです)

Let's Give a Big Hand (or Two or Three) to...

As Murtaugh Might Say...

"I'm gettin' too old for this sh*t." I'd gone drinking the last two nights and it's taking me longer to recover than I used to. It was fun but I think I need to reassess my life. The drinking isn't great for my health, it's getting too expensive to keep doing this and I'm not meeting that girl of my dreams. So I think I'm going to chuck this entire booze-hound lifestyle and go on the wagon. (Last time I said this, I think I lasted about 10 days. Let's see how long this vow lasts.)


But here are a few pics from Friday. Alex and I took Akari out for her birthday (belated by one week) and Alex didn't show up for a couple of hours, leaving me to entertain her on my lonesome.

























Alex eventually did show up with his hockey team in tow. I've never seen Ernie's bar so packed, nor had I seen Ernie so frazzled.








































This guy, whose name eludes me, (maybe Yuki) is a sweetheart who DJ Mixture has enrolled in his quest to advertise everything Echophonyk. He had the guy out flogging flyers in the cold. What a trooper! (The following evening we potentially got him laid, so Karma saves the day! Hey, the American chick was looking for a cute Japanese boy to shack up with for the night, so we recommended our lackey. Win-win situation!) At least someone's getting lucky.




















And of course, one of the Snots infrequent players is none other than Blaise of Monkey Majik fame. He graced the bar with his presence and continued getting shit-faced while also getting propositioned by every female (and maybe a few males) in the place.


















































A good time was had by all and Akari really appreciated her time out with us. Alas Alex was too hungover the next day to go to the stupidly-named Double Birthday Bash, but that's a story for another post.

Fuk u Fuji.

Oh, sorry I had the spacing on that wrong. Fukufuji, Yutaka is the goaltender for the LA Kings and is the first Japanese-born player in the NHL. He's had a rather ignominious beginning, starting in his first game in the 3rd period after the regular goalie was injured. He lost that game 6-5. He was the starting goalie in his next game and let in 3 goals in the first two periods before he was yanked. They went on to lose that game 6-3 and he was credited with that loss too. In his latest game, he stopped 17/18 shots but his team still lost yet this time he was not credited with either a win or a loss.

So not much of a showing yet, but his parents and hometown are extremely proud of their boy. Perhaps if he weren't on one of the worst teams in the league, he could shine more, but for now their Rising Son is doing pretty well.

Pika-Pika,ne! ぴかぴか、ね！

Ahhh the shiny, glittery lights of Tokyo in all her glory. I just took this picture from the top of the Roppongi Mori building in Roppongi Hills, Tokyo. (Actually I just stole this pic off the Net from a guy who took this picture from the top of the Roppongi Mori building in Roppongi Hills, Tokyo.)






This is a cool sculpture of a spider outside that building in the park. Creepy!








But I was in Roppongi Hills last week to eat with DJ Mark Saito and Yuko. We ate at an Okinawan restaurant and we indulged in a few tasty morsels. (This pic is of a 獅子 Shi-sa-, an Okinawan good luck charm to ward off demons.)









One of the fishies we ate had its crispy little head still attached and here I am crunching away at it.




Later that night, Mark played a jamming set of Reggae tunes at one of his local bars. He was grossly overshadowed by the other more experienced Reggae aficionados, but he cranked out a ripping set regardless.

In between dinner and jamming, I remained behind and saw a movie. I got to see "Letters from Iwo Jima" with English subtitles. Roppongi Hills carries the only subtitled version in Japan and there is only one show per day. (It still wasn't packed but was comfortably full.)

I see that Letters won the Golden Globe for best picture and it certainly deserves this honour. Clint captured the angst and spirit of the Japanese soldiers gloriously and it's hard to believe that he also directed the saccharine "Flags of Our Fathers".














If the Japanese decide to retain the kanji for their movie, (硫黄島からの手紙) they had better change it for their Chinese neighbours. The kanji for Iwo Jima is "Sulphur Island" and for 手紙 (te-gami) is "Toilet Paper". So the movie title in China would be "Toilet Paper from Sulphur Island". Come to think of it that title stinks on many levels!

You can see a trailer in Japanese here: Iwo Jima

A Public Service Ad.

Upcoming parties at Shaft and other tidbits for your perusal.

Oh dopey me missed out on Akari's birthday, so Alex and I are going to take her out after his Hockey party. If anyone is looking for a party on Friday night, contact me and we'll hook up.

On Saturday, a herd of us are going to the Rose Garden to celebrate Oiler-fan Extraordinaire Rob's birthday. Later that evening will be a Double-Birthday Bash for DJ Mixture & Rooboy Ando. The event has a stupid name, but the rest of the gig should be a good one. A few details follow:













2007年1月20日(土) 【SUNRISE PROMOTERS presents THE DOUBLE BIRTHDAY BASH】@ SHAFT
21.OO-LATE HIP HOP 、RnB、HOUSE、ROCK
￥2500（1D + 1 Zima＋Free Dj Mixture mix cd)
***SPECIAL GUESTS***
DJ CRAYONICS (Music Please Records)
NACO (Overjoy)
**DJS**
DJ MIXTURE (Special Soulful/Funky House Birthday Set)
DITA (Shaft Resident)
INFO* http://www.clubshaft.com
http://www.myspace.com/djmixture
djmixtures@yahoo.co.uk
andog1970@hotmail.com
http://www.freewebs.com/djmixtures

Then the following week on Jan 28th, the Bondi Tsunami movie release party will be held. It promises to be a cool bash, with a lot of drunken Aussies and a freaky flick too.




And for a sneak preview at a Valentine's event, check out this flyer:

Dead Animators.

Kind of oxymoronic, isn't it? In the wake of the passing of Joe Barbera a few other minor icons have passed on. First up, let's mention one of the stop-action animators of Gumby and Davey & Goliath, Pete Kleinow. We used to watch D&G and Gumby before church on Sunday mornings as kids (Thank you CHCH) and Mr. Kleinow wrote the Gumby theme song. Here it is from memory:

He was once a little green slab of clay...GUMBY.
You should see what Gumby can do today...GUMBY.
He can walk into any book, with his pony pal, Pokey, too.
If you've got a heart, then Gumby's a part of you,
If you've got a heart, then Gumby's a part of you!

I just checked YouTube to see if I was correct and all they had was this sugar-coated tripe from an 80's revival. It is SO lame, I refuse to even provide a link! (That'll teach them!)

Mr. Kleinow also created the Pillsbury Doughboy & Poppin' Fresh and, along the same vein, animated the Robot Terminator in James Cameron's classic (Cameron's a Canadian, I knew there had to be a Canadian or Japanese connection to this.) Here's a charming parody of D&G done by Mountain Dew...



But more important than this guy is Iwao Takamoto. Iwao Takamoto was born in 1925 in LA to Japanese parents who had emigrated there. During WWII (the Big One), he was encouraged by some fellow internees in their Camp (not summer camp...you ninny) to take up drawing as a trade. He first got started working for Disney in 1947 and was an animator on Cinderella, Sleeping Beauty, 101 Dalmatians and Lady and the Tramp. I'm guessing he did lots of the dogs, for he went on from there in 1961 to Hanna-Barbera Productions to create the original design for Scooby-Doo, Astro and Muttley and later worked as a producer on Hong Kong Phooey (another dog.) If you really want to read some more about this guy, I'd go to Takamoto

Here is Iwao drawing Fred...

Go Ask Alice!

I just came across this and since I haven't posted anything Star Trekky in awhile, here goes...

If You Knew Sushi...

I know I'm jumping all over the place here, but I have a lot of blogging to catch up on and I am organizationally challenged. So here's some pics of some sushi I ate in a Rotating Sushi bar at Narita airport. It was a little more expensive than the 100￥ raw fish you get in the 回転鮨 (kaiten-zushi=rotating sushi)shops in Sendai, but the slabs of sliced 魚 (sakana=fish) were huge. You can pick a plate as it passes by you or you can order special from the chef who'll slice it freshly for you. Each plate is individually priced according to the expensiveness of the order. It's easy to rack up to 6-10 plates in a sitting.

The rotating bar...回転鮨





　Holy Mackerel! サバ





　Salmon chanted evening サケ

Food, Glorious Food.

Please Sirrah, could I have some more?
What better way to spend the holiday season than to be a glutton. We rarely see Turkey over here (Except when they beat Japan in World Cup play...insert rimshot please), mainly because the ovens aren't big enough to hold such a big bird in one sitting. (Mmmmm, Big Bird.) I indulged in Turkey a few times, including a BBQ bird with its politically incorrect stuffing (no, I don't really get the joke either, it's humour from the Hutton household.)
So here are some photos with all the trimmings...

Doesn't NORAD Have Anything Better to Do?

On Christmas Eve, I checked out the news occasionally to see what progress Santa was making on his rounds. When we were kids, the local news would use radar footage of a bleeping sleigh flying through the clouds. I used this useful tidbit in one of my lessons and my students were quite fascinated by it. So I took a few pics off the screen and here they are. I think using CGI and NORAD takes a bit of the mystery out of the whole deal, don't you?

Shave and a Haircut...

317 bits. (Assuming there are 8 bits to each 100￥.)

I was feeling pretty shaggy (not quite Grizzly Adams, more like Koala Adams) after a long shaveless vacation and decided to get a trim at my local barber. Nothing knew here, I've regaled you before of the joys of follicle shearing in Japan. Today was a little different. The lovely couple who run the place (friends of DJ Mark Saito & Yuko, don't you know) have an assistant who works there. She is knee-high to a grasshopper and can barely reach the chair. I'm certain that the reason this halfling works there is so she can get a discount on shaving her feet. She's so short that she comes up to my sister's shoulders (now that's tiny!) Anyway, she does all the grunt work, hot towels, sweeping, etc. But she also washes one's hair and gives them a massage. She has the most powerful fingers that I was sure she'd crush my skull. Nice kung fu grip, to say the least. I don't want to pollute the old Jones gene pool with anyone shorter than I, otherwise I'd pursue her outside of the salon.

An Old Joke To Break the Monotony...

A man was at the country club for his weekly round of golf. He began his round with an eagle on the first hole and a birdie on the second. On the third hole he had just scored his first ever hole-in-one when his cell phone rang. It was a doctor notifying him that his wife had just been in a terrible accident and was in critical condition and in the ICU.

The man told the doctor to inform his wife where he was and that he'd be there as soon as possible. As he hung up he realized he was leaving what was shaping up to be his best ever round of golf. He decided to get in a couple of more holes before heading to the hospital.

He ended up playing all eighteen, finishing his round shooting a personal best of 61, shattering the club record by five strokes and beating his previous best game by more than 10. He was jubilant...

Then he remembered his wife. Feeling guilty he dashed to the hospital. He saw the doctor in the corridor and asked about his wife's condition. The doctor glared at him and shouted, "You went ahead and finished your round of golf didn't you? I hope you're proud of yourself! While you were out for the past four hours enjoying yourself at the country club, your wife has been languishing in the ICU! It's just as well you went ahead and finished that round because it will more than likely be your last!" "For the rest of her life she will require 'round the clock care. And you'll be her care giver!"

The man was feeling so guilty he broke down and sobbed. The doctor snickered and said, "Just f*cking with you. She's dead. What'd you shoot?"

Maternal woes. (Warning: graphic descriptions of medical stuff)

The main reason I made this trip back home (the 4th Canada trip in 2 years!) was to visit my ailing mother. My trip last August was with this same intention and that trip was most unpleasant. My mater was battling a kidney infection and a gall-bladder problem and was under pretty heavy meds at the time. She was so doped up that apparently she was unaware that I had even shown up! These maladies eventually cleared up, but in November I found out that her paralyzed leg had developed lesions and she was emitting a foul odour. The good news is that after 10 years of having 3 roommates (only one of whom has lasted any length of time, the other 2 beds had rotating terminal cases), mudder got moved to a private room!

So much to my surprise, when I got to her room, she was all smiles and chuckles. She was quite uncomfortable at times, for her leg was causing her a lot of pain, but the meds she was on were helping a lot. Except for one or two visits, she was in a great mood, talkative and fairly alert. Definitely the highlight of my visit was seeing my mother in good spirits.

At my sister's suggestion, rather than deal with her leg problem via surgery as recommended by her doctor, she hooked us up with a Naturopathic doc who managed to convince the hospital to put her on some organic-type drug. I had in the past, dismissed the naturopaths as witch doctors but Dr S...(Surname unspellable) performed the voodoo that you do so well and her lesions had actually begun to shrink and redden. Both signs that her circulation had improved.




I am no longer as skeptical of alternative medicine as I once was. I even bought some funky fish-oil pills to take for my asthma. We shall see...

HoHoHooo-boy.

The last Echophonyk event was a pretty good gig with a Christmassy theme. DJ Mixture had all of his Happy Go Lucky workmates (that's the name of the school, though it also reflects the staff and students) show up and I was supposed to play the Christmas music for it. Alas, my first effort as a DJ (Okay, CDJ for I was only twirling CDs), was aborted since Adam (the sound & lighting man) took over and played his lame-ass X-mas tunes. I wanted to play MY lame-ass X-mas tunes.

But this minor affront to my dignity aside, the even continued with some kick-ass sets by all the real DJs. I was suitably underdressed with my Santa suspenders, tie, socks and Santa-Jack hat but fortunately it was enough to convince Dom to buy me a tequila shot. All-in-all a good party and I couldn't afford to get too pissed since I was catching a train in a few hours and hadn't yet packed. (See previous entry.)

If you ever want to see some cool pictures of this or any other Echophonyk event, you can always click over to
http://www.freewebs.com/echophonyk/ (Don't bother.)
and check out the action. If you're too lazy to do that, here's a few pics for you...









As you can see, my Santa-Jack hat was quite popular with everyone.

There and Back Again.

The evening of December 22nd was the EchoXmas party and I stumbled home around 2:00am. (More on that shindig later.) I got up and started packing, shoving clothes and toys and goodies in 2 suitcases in plenty of time to get my Shinkansen to Tokyo. 3/4 of the way downtown, I asked the cabbie to turn around and head back to my apartment so I could retrieve my Shinkansen ticket. Not a very auspicious beginning to my 2-week Canadian sojourn. But after that, all went pretty much hitch-free. (OK, I was 4 hours early for my flight and dicked around the airport and almost missed my flight and had to run to the terminal and was the last person on board and everyone knew my name because they must have announced me several times. But other than that, no hitches.) So I got the last seat on the plane and lo & behold, I'm sitting next to the next female Sumo champ. 1/4 of my seat was taken up with her rather large caboose, we couldn't even put the arm-divider between us, it wouldn't fit. But she was a charming lass from Cape Breton and boyohboy did she know how to chat. She was quiet maybe a total of 1 hour out of the 13 hour flight. I learned all about her heritage, her upbringing, her tastes and distastes, her shoe size, her need to spawn and that Japanese men are not up to the task. I was my typically charming self and was very polite throughout the flight and, NO, I did not attempt to join the mile-high club with her to aid her in her spawning desire.

But I arrived in Toronto and was shortly met by my friend Phil and we went back to his place, my new home away from home. We the proceeded to get cheerily pissed together and I eventually fell asleep after being awake for about 4 hours in the last 36.

The back again portion of my Air Canada flight was much less eventful, a relatively peaceful trip. This flight was only half-full, yet, the sumo-queen was also on this flight, but fortunately she didn't sit next to me. The women who did sit next to me was an extremely gorgeous Japanese lass who works in Taiwan. Alas, she managed to sleep for 12/13 hours of the flight, so my time wasn't spent chatting.

I did get to see several movies and crappy CBC programming during my flights. I saw "My Super Ex-Girlfriend" (Pretty funny, mindless fluff), "Funny Face" (a Audrey Hepburn-Fred Astaire vehicle that had a great Gershwin tunes and a plot that is probably a precursor to "The Devil Wears Prada") and "Toy Story" en route and my mind draws a blank for the movies back! Part of the reason for the lack of memorability is Air Canada's policy of having a 6-inch TV for every 8 rows of passengers. Since I can't ever sleep on a flight, I like to watch movies and inevitably I always manage to get the headphones that only work intermittently. On the other hand, it's better than having to talk to Sumo-girl!

Now I Know How Stephen King Feels...

If he were a poor nerdy teacher in Japan and not a multi-millionaire who pops off a novel every time he goes to the crapper. Yes it's true, I have Bloggers' Block. I've been away too long and can't get back into the swing of rambling for rambling's sake. I do have lots to say, from airline service to Canada's glory to family ties to drinking parties to dead animators and maybe a little bit of gossip about someone's love life (Ooohh...he's going to dish some dirt. I gotta read this!) so I'm going to try and make a concerted effort to whip something off tomorrow night.

For now, the 10th anniversary of "King of the Hill" is this year and this little ditty is what Mike Judge used to pitch his cartoon to the wise old Executives at Fox a decade ago.

I'm Baa-aack...

As you may have noticed there haven't been any posts since the Winter Solstice crept in. I went to Toronto for a few weeks and it wasn't convenient to blog from the Great White North. I'm back now and I'll catch you all up with various and sundry goings-on over the next little while, but in the interim, here's a little video to whet your whistle.