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.

Get Shafted at Christmas!

Just a reminder to those local Sendai-ites (Sendai-ians? We need to come up with a name for us.) Friday, December 22nd is Echophonyk's Xmas party. So put on a stupid Santa hat or a pair of Reindeer antlers and come on down. Any type of Santa-related costume will get you 3 drinks instead of 1 with your 1500￥ admission. I'm pretty sure, we'll accept Kwanza, Hannukah, Festivus outfits, or even Mr. Hankey (but I wouldn't count on anyone dancing with you.)

Details can be found in this incredibly amazing flyer (created by yours truly) below.

Attack of the Barberaians

Most everyone else has commented on the demise of Joseph Barbera. The "Pitchman" for Hanna-Barbera productions. Everyone I know grew up with his work, from Oh My Darlin' Huckleberry Hound, That Smarter than the Average Yogi Bear, Snagglepuss, Exiting Stage Right, my personal favourite, El Kabong with his sidekick Bubbaloey, the Yabbadabbadoing Flintstones, of course, and the Futurama of 1962, the Jetsons. Check out this galaxy far away for a parallel universe of Mr. Spacely's own lackey, George.



My least favourite H&B creations are Scrappy-Doo (who ruined Scooby) and that ubiquitous duo, Tom and Jerry. Maybe some of the Academy Award winners of the 40's were okay, but primarily it was just the same plot over and over again. (Hey, wait a minute, that sums up all H&B toons.) Joe Barbera was the Ultimate huckster for his creations. Fred was a shill for cigarettes before Pebbles came along. Then they sold Jam and pretty much every character of the 60's was featured on a cereal box. But I digress, I'm talking about Tom & Jerry.

A little known fact for those outside of Japan is: "Banks here use cartoon characters to entice people to put their money in their vaults." Snoopy, Hello Kitty, and others want you to invest your hard-earned shekels in their Financial Institution. So who's the spokespersons for my bank? Well, none other than Tom & Jerry (as if you needed to guess.)






The last thing I want to mention about H&B is about the Action/Adventure series of the 60's. I loved Space Ghost, BirdMan, the Herculoids and the toon that introduced me to Jazz, Jonny Quest. (Charlie Brown's Vince Guaraldi helped a lot, but Hoyt Curtin started the ball rolling. Hoyt did the Jetsons and Flintstones themes too.) Here's the theme song...

You bet Jurassic.

Dinosaurs and Christmas. Is there a better combination?

A Bumper Crop.

An ex-Sendaite who now lives in Toronto sent me these Bumper Stickers. Most of them are pretty amusing and alas all too true. Since I can make no wise political statement of my own, it's always much better to steal from others. So here goes. (Followed by a Christmassy toon by Mike Peters of Mother Goose & Grimm fame.)

That's OK, I Wasn't Using My Civil Liberties Anyway

Let's Fix Democracy in This Country First

If You Want a Nation Ruled By Religion, Move to Iran

Bush. Like a Rock. Only Dumber.

If You Can Read This, You're Not Our President

Of Course It Hurts: You're Getting Screwed by an Elephant

Hey, Bush Supporters: Embarrassed Yet?

George Bush: Creating the Terrorists Our Kids Will Have to Fight

Impeachment: It's Not Just for Blowjobs Anymore

America: One Nation, Under Surveillance

They Call Him "W" So He Can Spell It

Who's God Do You Kill For?

Cheney/Satan '08

Jail to the Chief

No, Seriously, Why Did We Invade Iraq?

Bush: God's Way of Proving Intelligent Design is Full Of Crap

Bad President! No Banana.

We Need a President Who's Fluent In At Least One Language

We're Making Enemies Faster Than We Can Kill Them

Is It Vietnam Yet?

Bush Doesn't Care About White People, Either

You Elected Him. You Deserve Him.

Impeach Cheney First

Dubya, Your Dad Shoulda Pulled Out, Too

When Bush Took Office, Gas Was $1.46

Pray For Impeachment

The Republican Party: Our Bridge to the 11th Century

What Part of "Bush Lied" Don't You Understand?

One Nation Under Clod

At Least Nixon Resigned

1/20/09: End of an Error

Pawpwalk.

I went to Ron Davis' site and discovered a groovy tune on YouTube. Check out his ivory tickling...
(See Yesterday for details.)

HOHOHO 1.

Every year, I manage to get wrangled into being Santa for 2-6 gigs. Believe me, it takes a lot of arm twisting to get me to do it (not!) Since JC and I share a common birthday, his particular holiday has superseded my celebration. So I get my revenge by portraying his emissary in the Red & White garb as often as possible. Last year, I actually got paid 300 bucks to play Kris for a weekend and had my own modeling agent!

I had a few other opportunities as well, but one of my longest standing Santa portrayals has been with the Tohoku Canada - Japan Society. In his role as lackey for Tokiwagi, Alex portrayed Santa for TC-JS before I arrived, but once I pulled into town, my rotund physique was a natural to take his place. Alex cheerily became my trusty sidekick, "Treeboy", and we would dish out prizes to the masses via a Bingo game. As the years have gone by, I missed out as Mr. Kringle once or twice, but I think I've HoHoHoed my way through 5/7 times.



































































Treeboy's lovely wife and daughter (Yuko & Kaede) also attended. Kaede is a few weeks shy of her first birthday and I'm very proud to be the first Santa that she lays eyes upon.

 










































































For the first time that I recall, the now-retired vice-principal of Tokiwagi (Kikiwada-sensei) was not in attendance. Nor was there any Tokiwagi presence there (apart from Alex) at all and what makes this unusual is, that for all previous years, music has been provided by members of their school band. One year I horribly botched "My Way" accompanied by a sax player and pianist. This year's entertainment was provided by "The Ron Davis Trio". Ron is a pianist who hails from Toronto and I recognized him from somewhere and more surprisingly, he recognized me. (If any of my friends out there know the connection, please enlighten me. I probably heard him play at the Rex Hotel in Downtown TO sometime years ago, but neither of us could figure out the familiarity.) Anyway, with some Bostonian cellist named Brent Nussey and a ripping Japanese drummer (whose name I can't read) played 4 tunes. #1 was an original tune entitled "D'hora" (a quote from Apocalypse Now perhaps?), "It Might as Well be Spring", "Silent Night" and "Santa Clause (sic) is Coming to Town" rounded off the set. I liked them a lot and I'll try and see if he's playing in Toronto next time I'm there. RD Davis

 




Save a spot for me there next year. Good grub, a few presents worthy of re-gifting and an opportunity for me to make an ass of myself. A perfect night out.

Santa Cross is Coming to Town.

Many moons ago when I lived in Tokyo, a co-worker told me that he had seen a picture of Santa hanging prostrate on the cross as part of a Department store window-dressing to celebrate Christmas. I took him at his word and being a neophyte in this wild and wacky land, began to regale my friends with this same story. Now maybe he was just having me on, or he had sincerely heard this myth himself. But so begins yet another Urban Legend. With but a few Googling clicks, here are a few of the documented cases over the years recounting this same tale:

1. A few Decembers ago a Japanese department store, desperate to appear Westernized, mounted an extravagant Christmas display, featuring a life-sized Santa Claus, crucified upon a cross.
2. The granddaddy of cultural faux pas occurred just after World War II, when a Ginza department store rolled out its elaborate Christmas promotion: a smiling Santa nailed to a crucifix.
3. A Japanese department store reputedly once put up a big Christmas cartoon which had a Santa Claus prominently displayed on a crucifix. Whether or not this story, which has been doing the rounds in Tokyo for some years, is true or just another urban legend, is unclear.

Well, as far as I can tell, it's all a load of hooey but I can share with you photos of another Santa, who may not share Jesus' fate, but does share his birthdate.

Presenting Santa Jones or Michael Claus, take your pick...