applereligon

You can never recapture a moment but you can create other similar moments. Or thats what I'm hoping. I have been wanting to get back into making movies since, well, since the day I stopped. I used equipment in college to make some independent filmy things, and I found it fit me perfectly. I must be visual because it litterally feels good making a script or concept and seeing that become something. In anycase, we used Apple Macs at school and in my attempt to recapture that which is not recapturable, I splurged on a nice iMac from America. It should be here in about a week (as a side note: the apple store in Japan, Ginza, was really not helpful. I wouldnt recommend going in to talk face to face with those silly weirdos.) What I find funny is how culty the Apple brand is. Those of my friends with macs are "welcoming" me as if I was born again or as if I found the path to nirvana. Most of my friends with out macs are shocked at my purchase as if I had commited some deep sin against
society. Its really quite silly. A computer is simply a tool to express our hearts. But I guess humans too often get their identities mixed up with their tools.

money

I dont like to feel like a capitalist pig, so I try not to want money too much. When the company I was working for went under last winter I lost over 3 months of pay. I tried not to worry about it too much, even when I was down to about one rice triangle a day. It's not like that anymore. I'm back to eating four times a day. And yesterday I was stressing a bit about expensive bills, when suddenly I noticed that the Japanese government had given me 80% of my lost wages. Its as if I was forced to save money. I plan to get back into making movies again, as a hobby of sorts so I guess its good timing.

Winter is starting to melt away. I wonder how fast we'll jump into summer this year? At work, I got transfered to a branch in the state of Ibaraki, not even in Tokyo state. One way, its over an hour from my house plus waiting time between trains. That aint cool. Want to transfer back to Tokyo but I guess that aint gonna happen anytime soon.

six am rain

So many of my blogs I am sitting here infront of a computer at a ghastly hour at night/in the early morning. And thats where I find myself again. Unable to sleep yet again, I'm sitting here trying to wind down into dream-land. I had a great day. Started the day off with getting a cool postcard from my American friend Candace, then I recorded video for a video blog project I'm trying to put together with another American friend, Nicky. (More details on that soon!) Then I was in happy Wikipedia edit mode for a few hours, had okonomiyaki (Japanese egg pizza is the common explanation for that food) with super cool Japanese buddy Kayo, and although I was too sleepy to be a good conversationalist, it was fun. She is becoming a teacher, so she is looking so professional these days. After that I came home and was going to surf youtube (I have a very geeky life, OK!?) for a bit, but I ended up chatting on the computer with a few American friends I hadn't chatted with on the computer for years and years. Life is good, I guess. The sky is bright outside now and the rain is still pelting the windows. My head is spinning, I'm too tired. It's time to really fade away for tonight.

late night rumbles

So it is about 3:30 in the morning and they are still doing violent loud construction on the road outside. Seems to have settled down in the last few minutes, at least for now. Hope I can get some sleep, but before that I thought I would put a few thoughts up.

Over here in Asia (at least, maybe the same in other parts of the world) it's really common to walk into a video store and see "sequels" to movies that haven't come out yet, or "versions" of movies that don't have any of the same actors. They look like American movies, but they aren't quite right. I have always wondered about them, but never sat down and watched any. Well, until yesterday when I saw "War of the Worlds 2"... yeah. The first one was an odd Tom Cruise movie that tried too hard to be what it was, for a budget of over 130 million dollars. yeah 130. But "War of the worlds 2" is actually a sequel to a different low budget movie, with a similar title. And they are classic B movie crapola. Mockbusters are what they seem to be called. Designed to lure audiences into renting or buying them when the big name blockbuster isnt currently available. But I couldn't help myself, I enjoyed it. Now I guess it's good to remind anyone reading this that I am a big fan of B movies. That maybe influenced me. But the never ending cliches, the special effects that would have looked bad on a late 1990s TV show, the acting that was for the most part stage-actor sounding, the alien spaceship sets that looked like painted sheets; it all added together to make a fun movie. They are almost a satire of the idea of movies, or atleast the idea of Hollywood movies. It was painful at times, but painful in the way eating cheap candy is. You like the sugarhigh, but you know you are mainly eating artificial flavoring. I would be proud if I could have a movie production studio that could make half of what these guys are doing. Of course, I would make weird artsy strange movies though, that wouldn't rake in the money like their mockbusters are doing. These movies are mainly made by the production company The Asylum, if you are interested.

I also watched the original Logan's Run tonight. That is a good chunk of scifi movie, although I found it quite ironic that the special effects in this movie (which I guess was a fairly big budget at the time) were quite cheesy. The long-distance shots were clearly a plastic display model, and the outfits of the people were clearly 70s sexy sci-fi movie clothes, instead of any logical social construction. And the plot holes, the massive plot holes, rained down on this movie like a storm. (How 1000s of people who have never seen an animal and believe they aren't eating flash suddenly be expected to become violent omnivores? and is there anything to eat since the oldman said the fish died? well, the old man did have a lot of cats. and there are green bushes, I guess they could eat the cats or the plants, but how will they know which plants can be eaten or how to cook a cat? Why didnt the runners just try to brake the walls of the dome if they knew they were escaping? And did I really just see someone in the crowd give the spock sign for the camera? OK. If you havent seen the movie this rant just made no sense.) Don't get me wrong though, it's for sure a classic movie. I think I'm also pointing out a movie doesnt have to have 130 million dollars of modern special effects to be watchable.

In a technical note, I have found some more posts from years ago. I have filled them into this diary, so those who like to backsurf into the past can now read some of what I was thinking (in Korea) in 2005. If I ever find the other missing posts (or if you have any saved?!) I'll be sure to add them in there. The diary only goes back so far, my old online diary from 2002-2003 has over a 100 posts so importing that into here would be a lot of work... something for a different day.

Well, the construction has fallen quiet. Creepy quiet. I guess that means its time for dreams.

mp3 player

here i am today listening to my mp3 player on my way to work, country joe and the fish is playing, it's interesting how reality is filtered by music. i originally got this cheap player to work on my crappy cantonese (audio lessons) but the lessons only took 500MB of the 2Gigs. with the extra space I put on music, which distracts me from actually studying. oops. but its like living in a soundtrack, i am one of those odd people who sometimes mouths the words along with the song. and i even move along with a really good groove. yeah, i know. that's really sad, huh? haaaha!

flickers of a flashback

i am sitting on my floor in my tiny appartment in america on bill mcdonald parkway. i dont know yet, but living on the floor of this tiny appartment will be good practice for living in tokyo. it's rainy, and i'm writing a poem about my endless days in this town. an eternity that all too soon came to an end. i pause and look up at my window and feel the sound of the fresh rain. i remember thinking i loved the smell of newly fallen rain.

audioblog 01

I'm not sure why, but I couldn't get my first audioblog to embed in this post. (Yeah, I am creepily inspired by Diego to audioblog. Yeah, so I'm a copycat. Sue me! haa!)

I talk about rain and play some clips from music I've been running into these days. If you can play OGG files play this, otherwise most people should go here to stream it (in slightly less quality) from the internet. Cheers

trash man

It's been a series of unfortunate events. Four weeks ago I didn't have too much trash so I was lazy and thought "I'll take both weeks out next week" but the following week my boss changed my schedule so my day off was on trash day. I ended up being out around town and didnt take my trash out. And the same problem next week. Thats too much garbage so I decided to stay home and watch movies on the fourth week of no garbage out. And just my luck! They were doing construction on my road so no one put out garbage that week. It's been over a month. I have a nasty pile of garbage bags I wanna throw out! This is sad. It's kinda something ya shouldn't tell people, huh? oops!

asimulation?

Tonight I'm thinking about cultural asimlation. I have always wanted shop people to stop giving so many bags when I go shopping, its such a waste so I usually make noise when staff try to put my 3 things in 8 bags. But tonight when the quiet old man at the 24 hour discount mart carefully placed and wrapped my cheap things in too many bags, I couldnt bring my self to complain. I wondered, on the walk home, if thats somehow what cultural asimulation feels like... I think I'm still going to refuse a bag for a candybar though, no matter what!

mcdonalds conversations

Sitting at McDonalds waiting to meet someone. On my left and right two young professionals are talking on their cell phones.

The man on the left, jeans and a stylish jacket.
"Dadadadon dada"
pause
"No at the end put another da."
pause
"Left right left right, like rhythm"
pause
"Yeah, next dandandan. No like the last one. Yeah."

I guess he was dictating music over the phone. The man on the right, expensive pin striped gray suit. Briefcase up on the counter where we are all sitting, phone charger plugged into a provided socket, wallet open revealing his company ID which boasts that his company is a "green printer" company.
He makes a lot of quick calls, in bursts.
First,
"hello? yes, we should check that Club Invaders is available. OK? Right. Have a good one."
Second,
No greeting at all simply "Find out? Ok. I'll check if we can do that."
Third,
Seems to be talking to an answering machine. "This is Omura. I know I've called a lot this month." His confidence seems to waiver, he takes a breath. "I was just wondering if you could call me back? Thanks, have a good night."
He fades in to silence for about 20 minutes fiddeling with a few forms on the counter. And then begins his fourth phone call,
"Sorry. Hello, sorry about calling this late at night. Sorry. Yeah. It's about this witness testimony...Yeah, I don't understand what I put on page 2, line 3, yeah, yeah, yeah, I understand, yeah, yeah. I understand. That's ok right? Not in such a hurry. A fax would be OK? Well, for now I'll just write it. OK, if I dont understand again I'll call back. Right. Thanks. Goodnight."

Fifth,
"Hello,"
he laughs,
"Basterd. So what should we do? OK. Next time. See ya."
What was that second guy's conversations all about? A drop in the ocean of daily external noise. Take a moment to listen as it fades past.

anti-anime & time travel

I have recently noticed that I am quite "anti-anime" in my thinking. I intentionally avoid watching Japanese cartoons, and when someone I really respect talked about watching some I started to think about why. I remembered my scary room mates in college that would non-stop watch anime all day, every day. When they went to class they would leave the TV on playing anime and if I changed channels or anything they would get mad, because they wanted to hear and see it the minute they walked in the door. I kid you not. But added to that, when ever my Japanese friends came over they would ignore them. You would think you would want to talk to people who come from the land that produced your desires, but I guess they were too busy watching anime. Too busy infact to even clean their dishes. Now I'm a dirty person, but when you share a kitchen with people I expect a little bit of cleanliness. No luck there. They would leave ALL their dishes in the sink, every last one. At first I would wash their dishes for them, but I finally had enough and said (while they were watching anime) "I'm not going to wash anymore of your dishes!" and one of the two really responded, verbatim, "It's OK, we'll just buy new plates next time we go shopping." Gong! What the heck. A final oddness was they would often watch really creepy almost porn-ish anime. And I'm liberally minded. But public cartoon porn is just weird. So basically these guys gave me psychological damage apparently, because I have always kind of avoided Japanese cartoons after that. Well, after being inspired by the blog post previously mentioned, I decided to check out something. A few days ago I had stumbled (literally) across a review of a Japanese anime movie titled (in English) "The Girl Who Leapt Through Time" and so I gave it a try. My first non-forced not super mainstream Japanese cartoon (i.e. not Akira, Princess Mononoke, etc) It was cool! It was childish (no more than an american G rating I'm sure) I guess, and few plot holes bugged me. But I saw an old school Indian Jones movie after that, and even that had some big plot holes, so I started thinking that movies can be kind of like watching a dream, they don't always make total sense when you scrutinize them, but we can have a lot of fun if we just let go and just enjoy it. The movie itself is based on a time travel story (no surprise, read the title!) but it is more than that, it explores relationships and life, like most good Japanese movies.
And continuing on that time-travel theme (must admit I have an interest in those kind of movies I guess) I saw an awesome independent film. If you like to think when you watch movies, please watch "Primer" And this film gives such inspiration to independent film makers everywhere, it was made for about US$7000 and its awesome. Makes you think, it looks cool, a bit of a geeky flavor, and had a nice complex but satisfying plot. Coolness. Big thumbs up on this one, if you can find it.

sleepy eyes

Here I am thinking about silly things again. I really want to get back into making things, kind of like being the student, not the teacher, I guess. I want to create, to make, to experiment again. Creation is one of those things that some people desire and some people could care less about. I'm one of those "gotta make stuff!!" kind of people. So because of that, I'm thinking about buying a camera that is the new high quality ones, its cheap, its small, and maybe I can make some stuff with it. A movie? Who knows. This is like a rant, but with no energy, and directed to myself. Anyone else have that "must create" fire inside?

Speaking of which, I just realized I didn't blog about my digital camera passing away. And although I have some more archived and not uploaded yet, until I get a new camera there wont be too many more photos to share. Although there are quite a few up that I havent publicly mentioned before, and since I always seem to blabber on about new pictures... check out some new ones, if you haven't already.

Just click on the thumbnail above to jump on over and take a look.