Pop, Pop...Pop Culture

Hi, How Are You. So there's a few interesting books that I got used through Amazon.com recently that are worth your perusal. The first two are really coffee table books, "Banksy: Wall and Piece" and "I Am Plastic: The Designer Toy Explosion". The third is "Dress Your Family in Corduroy and Denim", a collection of autobiographical essays by humorist David Sedaris. Here we go:


Now I've mentioned Banksy before in a previous post, and when I got this book it really cemented my love for his "art". This book is really a composite of a few of his previous paperback exposes on his urban guerilla graffitti art. I use the pronoun "his" loosely because we're not really sure who "he" is. In fact, I don't know who really put this book together. Maybe Banksy is a whole conglomerate of people or some kind of artists' union based out of the UK. As I've mentioned before, I usually have a lot of disdain for graffitti, but this stuff is more than that. You come to realize that it's very subversive, smart, ironic, optimistic, all the while being completely mischievious in "stickin' it to the man". Also, most of it is created from pre-cut stencils. My favorite section is the part where he infiltrates several famous art museums around the world and hangs his own works (usually some dime-store, mass-produced oil paintings you usually find in hotel rooms which he has slightly altered to make a statement), then to boot they time how long those works remain before someone takes notice that they don't belong and removes them. Brilliant!


So apparently there's been this whole underground "designer" toy movement that's been around since the late '90s which began when some visual design artists in Hong Kong started taking G.I. Joe action figures and rearranging their body parts and adding trendy urban elements and putting them on display in galleries. Now, there's a handful of small, independent plastic and vinyl toy manufactures that create limited-edition (and quite expensive, I should add) dolls and action figures. They're really more tiny works of art than playthings. The scene has sort of culminated in a franchise of toy stores called "Kid Robot" started by Paul Budnitz (also the editor of this book), which are currently only in about four major cities across the U.S. You may be familiar with one of the featured artists, Jamie Hewlett, the graphic designer behind all of the cartoon imagery of the band Gorillaz. Not surprisingly, most of the other artists are Japanese. Toys may not be your thing, but the photographs in this book are really visually striking.


Yes, it's true. I'm always the last to jump on a bandwagon, especially when there is a lot of hype surrounding something. Typically, I'll discover things on my own years after they've left the forefront of the public consciousness. David Sedaris is a perfect example of that. My brother and sister-in-law have been raving about him to me for years, and I only recently got this book which came out a few years ago. It was a New York Times #1 bestseller. I happened to pick it up and read a chapter while waiting for my wife to use the restroom at a Barnes & Noble in Boston, and I've been completely hooked since! Most of his stories are autobiographical (and have been accused of being slightly embellished for comic effect, but hey, who cares!). The humor has a melancholy, self-deprecating tint to it that most people with half a soul can relate to. I find myself laughing out loud at some of the things he writes about that I wouldn't even dream of speaking about! If you don't have the time to read any of his books, you can also check him out periodically on NPR's program, 'This American Life'.

Lastly, I know you're tired of reading all of my dribble, but I just wanted to mention the new album, "The Fragile Army" by The Polyphonic Spree, which just came out this week. If you're already a P.S. fan, this collection will be nothing groundbreaking to you. It's more sugary, cult-like goodness. Enjoy the Kool-Aid, suckas!

Paul's Last Night

It's been a week now since my friend Paul returned to the U.S. permanently to begin his anesthesiology residency, so to honor him I wanted to post a few pics from his last night in Japan. We enjoyed a small dinner at Stove's in Yokohama. It's a surfer/Hawaiian-themed restaurant that features mostly American junkfood about a block from bustling Yokohama station on a quiet little side street near a canal. I really like it because it has a small outdoor patio, great for sitting outside and having a beer in the summertime. We had an anchovie-garlic pizza, which came with an entire assortment of hot sauces. I tried probably the spiciest sauce I have ever eaten called "vicious viper sauce". I can tolerate a pretty high spiciness (high Scofield unit for all you capsaicin geeks out there); I even enjoy level 10/10 at CoCo Curry, a local chain of curry joints. But that sauce just about dropped me to my knees!





From there we ventured over to Cheers, a European-style beer house that features about 5 or 6 obscure, imported "guest beers" every night. It's also one of the few places around that has Hoegaarden on tap. It's Paul's favorite bar in Japan, so it was good place to spend his last evening at.








Paul, you're a good friend, a great doctor, and I know you'll be a fantastic anesthesiologist! Cheers to you buddy!!

Teenage Wasteland

I saw three films recently that you may be interested in. They're not new, but all came out within the past few years. They are "Elephant", "Wassup Rockers", and "This Is England" - all relatively minor, independent movies. I found them interesting in that they deal with a similar theme, which is young people coming of age and trying to gain acceptance despite adversity. The demographics of the characters are all radically different, but you can detect this theme running through each. Here's brief synopses of each:


"Wassup Rockers" is a film by Larry Clark ("Kids") features a group (I'm a little remiss to call them a "gang") of Latino skaters from the hood in East L.A. who distinguish themselves from their surroundings by immersing themselves in the hardcore punk / skate scene. The movie encompasses one full day of their escapades in a rich Beverly Hills neighborhood, flirting with upperclass girls and scuffling with their boyfriends. All of the characters in this group are very likeable, not stereotyped at all, and you really empathize with the racial prejudice they face by local authorities as well as by neighboring black gangbangers. The only point I didn't like about the film is how three of the characters are killed off in almost a campy, satirical manner (e.g. one of the boys is shot dead by a Clint Eastwood-esque movie director as he tries to jump over the fence in his backyard).


Gus Van Sant's "Elephant" follows multiple students through a typical day at a Portland, Oregon high school culminating in a mass murder by two outcast students totally reminiscent of the 1999 Columbine High School shootings. The exposition leading up to the climax is really well done as the camera follows each student through their daily activities and interactions, and you actually see a repeat of a few of the scenes from different student perspectives and camera angles. Unfortunately, the two students that commit these horrendous murders are the victims of bullying, not unlike the Columbine gunmen. Their quest for acceptance by their peers becomes abandoned as they systematically plan out how they can eliminate the greatest numbers of students. The "actors" (students) are extremely natural in their acting; Van Sant actually used regular highschool kids, not professional actors. The mundane, awkward, melodramatic situations presented are probably the most realistic I have seen in a long time (unlike a lot of other "teen movies" that are out there). The ending comes very suddenly with no real resolution, but I guess there was not really a "good" point at which to end the story. Very eerie, very chilling, maybe too realistic for its own good.

"This Is England" is a British film (duh!!) which came out last year. Sorry, no pic for this one (go look it up on www.imdb.com for more info). Set in 1983, it features twelve year old Shawn who is a precocious, thick-skinned middle schooler, bullied because of his small stature, but toughened due to the recent loss of his father in the Faukland Islands conflict (remember that?). He befriends a goup of gregarious teenage skinheads who take them into their fold and make him one of them (complete with a shaved head, moddish ankle boots and Ben Sherman shirts, and an accompanying British Dancehall soundtrack). He unfortunately gets drawn deeper into a violent skinhead group involved with Britain's National Front party (fronted by Combo,a very charismatic but mentally disturbed ex-convict skinhead) and doesn't realize the gravity of it all until a Jamaican skinhead is senselessly murdered by Combo. The story is very well put together, and I'm surprised it didn't catch more international attention (I happened to "accidentally" watch it for free on a movie website, www.ssupload.com; shhhhhh, it's probably not legal - I also watched "Knocked Up", which is in theaters NOW!).

So if you looking for a few good sleepers apart from the typical summer blockbuster fare, go check out these flicks, legally through your neighborhood Blockbuster or Netflix (or illegally through your friendly Chinese counterfeit download sites).

Hofmann Bubba-que

The weekend before last we had a small barbeque/izikaya party at our house to send off Paul in proper fashion. We also invited some good friends, Seiko and Jara Ochiai and their 6 year old son, Haru-kun (the suffix "-kun" is a term of endearment for boys; "-chan" is for girls). We had a nice time cooking, drinking, talking, watching movies, and building Legos. Here's a few pics.



Jara-san and Luna



Diligently building Legos





Give a little tongue



Stella encased in a mountain of pillows, courtesy of Haru-kun

Lake Saiko Half-Marathon

So I ran my second half-marathon (20km, or ~13mi) today. It was my second half-marathon this year (and actually my second one, period). It was very satisfying, but maybe it should be called the Lake "Psycho" Half-Marathon, because the hills, especially at the last 3km just about killed me! My time improved since my last run in April (I think), but I haven't received my final finishing time. I suppose they'll e-mail them out. My first run was 2:02:44. This one, I think, was about 1:50 (about an hour and fifty minutes). That's what I calculated from my watch, but then again the way they calculate running times here is based on when the last person crosses the Start Line (that's when the clock starts), so I'm not sure. We couldn't have asked for a more gorgeous day. It was warm and sunny (maybe 85degrees F) with a slight breeze. The lake itself is situated a couple miles north of Mt. Fuji, so for the majority of the run we could see her looming off in the distance, watching over like a proud parent. I feel pretty good right now, but tomorrow may be a different story. Good thing I took tomorrow off from work, and pre-medicated with Motrin today! I'll try to post photos if the MWR staff sends me some. Later, slackers...

Bowling For Yen / Raku

Hello all! Just wanted to post some photos from recent outings with Paul for bowling and also dinner at Raku. I will post a few more real soon of Paul's last two weekends in Japan. If you ever wondered what a bowling alley in Japan looks like, it's not as exotic as you'd think. Actually, it's identical to any neighborhood bowling alley that you know of in the states. In fact, this one in Kanazawa-Bunko features "Brunswick" lanes. Unfortunately you can't see it in the photos, but Paul's name on the scoring screen was "gaijin". Some of the other bowlers got a kick out of it.






Dinner at Raku last weekend was fantastic, as usual. Also, Raku has the largest draft beers I have ever seen. They're like the "Big Gulp" of beers. Paul easily polished off ten of these! Can you imagine, ten of these?! That's about 320 oz of liquid refreshment!




By the way, Efrat, I'm only joking!!!

Comedy Staples

Nothing new and exciting to post right now because I have that God-awful duty (cell phone watch), but I just wanted to throw this out for you to ponder. Akemi and I were discussing comedy tonight (both in film, commercials, and tv shows), and we agreed that there are three basic comedic elements that directors can never go wrong with in getting a laugh:

1) A guy getting hit in the nuts
2) A talking dog
3) Accidental public nudity

Think about it. They're pretty universal. If you can think of any others, please let me know!