Lost In Translation

Reggae Festival

A week after the Thai Food Festival at NHK Plaza, I met friends there for the Reggae Festival complete with dancing, live music, rum, and spicy jerk chicken.

The Loneliness of the White Basketball Player

I really enjoyed a recent exchange between former NBA player Paul Shirley author of the newly published, Can I Keep My Jersey?: 11 Teams, 5 Countries, and 4 Years in My Life as a Basketball Vagabond, and author/humorist Neal Pollock in Slate. I think I might have to get that book. Here's an example, this exerpt is from Shirley:

My attempt to succeed in the world of basketball could be compared to the efforts of a 1970s-era black man in the world of bond-trading. White people are not supposed to be good at basketball. I've been reminded of that assumption hundreds of times in my career. The attitude most often displayed by black basketball players I've faced was very similar to the one you espoused at the end of your last turn, Neal: Your people have everything else. Just let us have this. From age 12 on, my one goal was to be a really good basketball player. I didn't care about much else. Of course, I did other things—stupendously hokey things. You're right: It was a Walton-esque existence. I was in 4-H, I was a Boy Scout, I finished fifth in the Kansas State Spelling Bee. I even got a National Merit Scholarship. I'm probably the whitest person with whom you'll ever publicly exchange e-mails. But none of those activities/pastimes/sexual obstacles ever brought me as much happiness as basketball did. As I got better, I found myself to be a minority on the court more and more often. And as the members of my race were whittled away, I quickly realized that I wasn't particularly welcome. When I was on defense, the other team would give the ball to whomever I was guarding and yell, "Take it to him. He can't guard you." They did that not because I am from a middle-class home, or because I grew up on a quasi-farm, but because I am white. So, forgive me if I feel that I have a special kinship with the Brent Barrys of the world.

Here's Pollock's reply:

I graduated from college in 1992. Lord Jesus, I'm old. Since then, I've lived in four neighborhoods in four different cities. One of those neighborhoods was predominantly black, one was predominantly white, one was predominantly Mexican, and the other one housed immigrants from about 60 different countries. Admittedly, each spot had its own special annoying qualities, but all of them were dirty, noisy, and dangerous. The family of man in all iterations behaves wretchedly when the median neighborhood income is low. Then again, I grew up among rich people, and they sucked, too. Yes, one of the reasons I watch television is to root for the success of people who look like me. That's why I enjoy sitcoms featuring Jewish characters. I wish there were more of those. But despite my decades of real-life exposure to the worst of what humanity has to offer, I still like to see people from other walks of life succeed. I recognize that there are superficial, even profound, differences among human cultures. But I can't help it; I was educated during the golden age of "cultural diversity," and my rooting interests are spread across all lines. When I watch basketball, I root for Nash and Amare because they're on my team. When I watch baseball, I root for Rafael Furcal and Russell Martin because they're on my team. When I watch football, I root for whoever's on my fantasy team.

Fish Tank Ramen

I recently ate at a rustic looking ramen shop near Shin Otsuka subway station that had a fish tank along one wall in the restaurant. I had the kimchi ramen (see below). Good food and a cool atmosphere.

The Wilson Boys

The Wilson brothers (Luke and Owen) have a new film out, The Wendell Baker Story, which Slate critic Dana Stevens uses as an opportunity to evaluate them at mid career and I agree with most of her observations. To wit on Owen's poor roles:

The bad Owen lies just a hair's breadth away from the good one. Strip Kevin of his subtlety, dumb down his dialogue by 15 percent, and that hail-fellow-well-met bonhomie begins to shade into frat-boy complacency. This is what's happened in Owen's last few romantic comedies, most notably the dreary You, Me and Dupree, which repackaged Owen's loopy appeal, his legitimate weirdness, into the stock humor of the "wild and crazy guy." Owen plays Dupree, the cutup college buddy of the straitlaced Matt Dillon (who should have won a Purple Heart for all the mugging he stoically endured). Here, Dupree settles in as the unwelcome houseguest of Dillon and his new bride (Kate Hudson), toting a ukelele and a taxidermied moose head.

Here's her impression of Luke as a leading man:

As for Luke, he's most often cast in the Joel McCrea role: the humble and diffident nice guy, oblivious to his own handsomeness and just smart enough to realize that he's not quite sure what's going on. The difference is that McCrea pulled off those beleaguered-Average Joe roles with style and wit, whereas Luke, especially when playing a straight romantic lead, can be as limp and tepid as a wet sock.

Seattle's Best (& Worst)

Slate has an interesting architectural slide show about Seattle critquing the most prominant buildings there.

Japanes Idols vs World Sexy

I saw this poster in the train the other day and was perplexed, since both girls were Japanese, but leave it to Marxy to explain it for me:

On the cover, the issue's featured women are organized into two distinct groups:

Japan Idol
Ishii Meguru
Terada Yuki
Ohtomo Sayuri
Suzuki Reona
World Sexy
Kuriyama Chiaki
Paris Hilton
Beyonce
Ozawa Maria

The left-hand column makes sense: all four of the girls are Japanese race-queen/idol types with proper Japanese names. (Although "Leona" sounds like she could be half-Jewish.)

The right-hand group, however, is extremely problematic. Ignoring the fact that no one finds Paris Hilton "sexy," Beyonce and Paris at least fit the most basic description of being global celebrities. Why then is purely Japanese actress and model Kuriyama Chiaki - the magazine's cover model - part of "World Sexy"? This affiliation seems like an implicit acknowledgment that Kuriyama's popularity stems solely from her appearance in Kill Bill. Objectively speaking, she does not fit the normal profile of a "hot girl" in Japan, and Pureiboi appears to feel the need to legitimize lust towards her from the perspective of her popularity abroad.

Ozawa Maria's inclusion in the "world sexy" group, on the other hand, boils down to question of nation-state being strictly defined through racial homogeneity. Ozawa is a 21-year old half-Japanese, half-Canadian porn star and Christian Academy in Japan graduate whose career is based exclusively in Japan. You may know her from such films as 2006's Barely There Mosaic and 2007's Popular Fashion Model Maria Ozawa Nakadashi Raped for 20 Consecutive Times! Ozawa is not especially known outside of the Japanese adult video market. Unlike Kuriyama, she has no feet on the global stage. Pureiboi consciously or unconsciously placed her outside of the "Japan" group only because she has what amounts to impure blood and semi-Western features.

So here, being a "Japanese idol" requires popularity originating in the Japanese market - unless you are half-Japanese, which makes "Japanese" categorization impossible. Even in matters of objectifying women, "Japan" remains so narrowly defined.

Shin Marunouchi Building

After seeing The Brothers Four concert on Sunday, we made our way to the new Shin Marunouchi Building to check out the new shops and restaurants. The buidling's interior is impressive and there's a good selection of restaurants including a branch of the popular Barbacoa Brazilian churasco restaurant, and Salt, a Sydney favorite,among others. We ate at an upscale Thai place that was a bit pricey and not all that impressive, save the view of the old majestic Tokyo train station across the street. Here's a description from the Asahi Daily News:

Stretching to the sky like a perfectly tailored gray suit, the newly opened Shin-Marunouchi Building has everything to please office workers of all types, from fashionable young women to metrosexual males to gruff middle-aged salarymen.

A quick tour proves there is something for everybody--women can gather at a female-only bar; middle-aged guys can slug back an adult beverage at a tachinomi stand bar, while their younger male colleagues can have their nails filed, buffed and coated and their eyebrows plucked at an upscale salon.

The 198-meter-tall, 38-story building, dubbed Shin-Marubiru, opened April 27 in front of Tokyo Station.

When viewed from the station, it appears to be one half of a giant gate, the other being the 180-meter-tall Marunouchi Building (Marubiru) in Marunouchi in Tokyo's Chiyoda Ward.

In its commercial zone, from the first basement through the seventh floor, Shin-Marubiru houses 40 restaurants and bars and 113 shops.

The seventh floor, called "Marunouchi House," has only eight restaurants and bars, covering a 1,200-square-meter area. According to the developers, this generous use of space is designed to allow patrons to relax and interact more casually.

Wilco, Jeff Tweedy, Me & You

Wilco has a new CD and DVD set out called Sky Blue Sky. I haven't heard it yet, and I'm looking forward to doing so.  But it's been said that it's a throwback to the less edgy days of Wilco.  I think this might be a good direction for them, because I thought that perhaps they went a little to far with some of their experimentalism on A Ghost Is Born.  I think Tweedy's previous project, Loose Fur, was more traditional, striaght ahead rock and roll with longer, looser jams and I don't like it as much as the more recent experimental Wilco albums (A Ghost Is Born and Yankee Hotel Foxtrot). So maybe I won't like it as much as those albums-the jury is still out until I hear it. There's an interivew with Jeff Tweedy by Noel Murray from The Onion AV Club, as well as an interesting blog entry about his interview and feelings about Wilco, Tweedy, and his former band Uncle Tupelo. He mentions that Pitchfork gives this album only 5 stars and calls it "Dad Rock"-typical. Here's the introduction to the interview:

"Could anybody imagine the Wilco record that would make everybody happy? I can't imagine it. So it you're confronted with that reality—anything you do is going to be a disappointment to somebody." PQ: "If someone uses the amount of time I spend in the public eye as criteria for what my music could possibly mean to them, they probably should take a long, hard look in the mirror and figure out why they need to think they're so special." When Wilco's second album, Being There, was released in 1996, bandleader Jeff Tweedy quickly became one of modern rock's most beloved figures, praised for his rootsy, classically constructed songs and easygoing melodicism. But Tweedy has spent much of the last decade alienating old fans while winning new ones, by following an elusive muse that's had him exploring elaborate pop production on Summerteeth, avant-garde deconstruction on Yankee Hotel Foxtrot (the process of which was detailed in the documentary I Am Trying To Break Your Heart) and fractured mood pieces on A Ghost Is Born. Between Wilco projects, Tweedy has collaborated with friends on albums by Golden Smog, The Minus 5, and Loose Fur, the latter of which let Tweedy explore the kind of long-form jamming that early Wilco largely eschewed. Some of that sensibility has spilled over into the last few Wilco albums, and even the band's latest, Sky Blue Sky, adds extended instrumental passages to a set of songs as bright and likeable as any since Being There. Tweedy recently spoke with The A.V. Club about Sky Blue Sky, improvisation, his musical education, and why he can't let himself fret over what other people think Wilco should be.

And here's Murray's blog reaction to writing the story:

So when I got ready to talk to Tweedy about Wilco’s Sky Blue Sky, an album I really love (with some small reservations), I wanted him to answer the complaints I’d already heard from some readers and colleagues, that the new album is too soft, too safe and too jammy. The result was an interview that started out amiably, and gradually got a little tense, entirely because of me and my line of questioning. Tweedy was gracious and good-humored throughout, and answered everything I asked honestly, with none of the reticence he showed back in 1990. But the more I kept pushing, the more (understandably) exhausted he became. When the interview ended, I told him how much I liked the record, and apologized if I ruffled him. He apologized right back. Listening back to the interview later, the tension wasn’t as obvious as it felt at the time, and the final transcribed version probably won’t read as all that confrontational—though I do worry that people will think that Tweedy’s being unduly defensive, without knowing the tone and flow of the conversation. I’m not sure if I should blame our readers for the way the interview went, or thank you. Because I think it’s an interesting interview, and that Tweedy does a good job of defending what makes Sky Blue Sky so special. My review of the record will also be up this week too—by mid-week, you’ll be sick of hearing me yammer on about Wilco, if you aren’t already—but the review doesn’t say anything about where Sky Blue Sky fits in my own personal Wilco cosmology. My favorite now—and maybe always—is Being There, which is such an explosion of tunefulness, youthful energy and honest soul-searching. Second is A Ghost Is Born, which I rank with Neil Young’s Tonight’s The Night and John Lennon’s Plastic Ono Band as one of the all-time great attempts to turn exhaustion and fear into palatable rock music. Those are Wilco’s top tier. Sky Blue Sky—so lovely, so deeply felt, and so well-played—ranks just below, on the same tier as the Mermaid Avenue albums and the Loose Fur projects. The next tier—the “B+” tier—contains Yankee Hotel Foxtrot and Summerteeth, two albums chock full of good songs fighting against some overly fussy production. And then there’s A.M., merely good.

At the beginning of the blog post he talks about his appreciation for Uncle Tupelo and interviewing Tweedy 17 years ago while at college among other things:

I’ve got an interview with Jeff Tweedy going up on the site later this week, and when I talked to Tweedy a month ago, it was the first time I’d talked to him in 17 years. In 1990, when I was writing for The Red & Black, the independent student newspaper of The University Of Georgia, we got a copy of Uncle Tupelo’s No Depression, about a month in advance of the band’s first-ever Athens gig. I dutifully took it home and popped it onto my turntable—yep, my turntable—and by the time I made it to the end of the first song, “Graveyard Shift,” I was trembling. (Aside: I’ve had this experience only a few times in my life, where I put on an album for the first time and the first song—previously unheard—left me wrecked. Aside from “Graveyard Shift,” the two most memorable were Prince’s “Let’s Go Crazy,” off Purple Rain, and The Replacements’ “I Will Dare,” off Let It Be.)

I have had that feeling a few times as well, but the only one I can truly recall is Nirvana's "Blew" off Bleach. Wait, I just remembered the time I went to Seattle and was looking for a Posies record and got a Pixies record by accident instead. And I was blown away by "Bone Machine" on Surfer Rosa. Anyway, this has inspired to me to get the early Uncle Tupelo albums-I was a latecomer and only got their last album, Anodyne, which is still a timeless classic in my mind.  Like Murray I thought that Son Volt would outclass Wilco after their first two albums, AM and Trace respectively, came out, but I haven't gotten a Son Volt album since the first and I have all the Wilco albums and side projects. So it's clear who has made a stronger impression on me.

300

I have to admit that I was curious to see 300 after hearing a lot of strong responses from friends and critics. It seems as though the responses were polarizing. One of my friends found it to be homoerotic another one thought it was the most ridiculous film he had ever seen, and I can see how it could come across like that since it seems to take itself seriously. Form what I understand, the source material was a graphic novel thus the result is dramatic, cartoonish, and overblown. However, that didn’t bother me as much. I still found it to be an amazing spectacle, despite the over the top melodrama. I guess it is the guy in me that likes to see really cool choreographed fight scenes that morph into slow motion. Is it a great film? By no means is it great. Is it an entertaining popcorn film? Yes, I found it to be an entertaining diversion. I guess the based on historical facts intrigued me the same way that I was intrigued by Rome and reading I, Claudius recently as well.

Edward Hopper's Secret World

Slate has an interesting slide show of Edward Hopper paintings inspired by a retrospective at the Museum of Fine Arts in Boston. I think Hopper's painting are pretty haunting and egnimatic. I think he captures the essence of urban city life in paintings like in the one above, Nighthawks.