ikaikaPUNCH

Just past the main entrance to the old grey Crosby Theater in downtown Vacaville was a little storefront that was part of the main building. Mr. Crosby was a bald, cigar-smoking fellow who always wore sunglasses, even indoors. He was the sole impresario in that quiet, dusty fruit-ranching town and often stopped the program on Saturdays to yell at the kids running around in the aisles and standing on the seats. How long he'd owned the theater was anyone's guess when I was a kid. It stood empty for years after he died.

This small storefront housed an all-sorts shop. Not a thrift store or a junk store, but a petit bazaar piled high with excellent and magical things from all over. After a movie, I would be one of the few kids who would wander in and look at everything. Coins and stamps from around the world. Books of all varieties. Devices with unknown applications. Treasures whose values were impossible to guess. Exotic things, for sure. Further into the store, where it began to get cluttered, a staircase in the shadows wound upward to someplace I never saw. Very mysterious.

The gruff fellow who ran the store was quick to challenge and engage anyone who might be inclined to make a purchase, even ten year olds like myself. I really don't remember his face at all, perhaps because I feared eye contact with him might have overpowered my resistance to his irresistable pitch.

Few knew he was the husband of Mrs. Robinson (no, not THAT one), the rather homely, older substitute teacher we saw from time to time in junior high. Her hair was dark and thick, and didn't seem to be dyed. Her clothes and shoes seemed hopelessly 1940s vintage. I suspect there were occasions when she wore hats that required hatpins. I never saw them together, but kids didn't identify couples in those days unless they were actually introduced as such.

The little store was called “Robby Hobby,”which I think was painted on the display window. Kids called him Robby, but no one told us that was his name.

Last night, as I poured over a new/old very thick book of New Orleans lore, there was a long description of the various hawkers one might find in its streets in days gone by. Characters selling vegetables, sweets, fish, chicken, birds, fruits, clothes poles, whatever. Everyone had a song or a chant or a musical sound that preceded them through the streets. The list included umbrella and pot menders, coal and rock coal sellers, fresh flower and broom vendors, kindling cutters and cooks with assorted specialties.

One gentleman carrying a variety of items displayed on a table wrapped around him, from “dry goods to gold watches,” called “au rabais!” That's French for “off price.” Years later, when these assorted offerings were settled into a store, the locals would call it a “rabais” store.

Rabais. Robby.

Entirely possible, don’t you think? Mrs. Robinson, for all the teasing she took from her students, always seemed cultured and well-educated. Maybe she spoke French with her husband, the proprietor of Vacaville’s rabais store? Maybe they were from Creoles from New Orleans?

I’ll admit to having an acquired aversion to marketing scams, having been party to them for decades. When I hear the latest concept, I want to cover my ears, but quickly, I launch into merciless criticism. This is a legitimate part of the Creative Process, as it contributes to those “bulletproof” concepts for which we strive. Circulating now, as I am, amongst the consumers, my comments are regarded as little more than poisonous cynicism.

Many of the sour old men I noted in my childhood must have weathered careers in advertising.

Latest case in point: a GPS tracking collar for your dog.

This was introduced with a long story about a couple who, while washing their dog’s collar…let me say that again, “while washing their dog’s collar”…their puppy slipped through the fence and escaped. Gone for a whole day, these folks would gladly have paid double the cost of this new product to know where their pet had gone. The GPS device on the collar locates the dog and a monitoring operation somewhere in a country where wages are low will pager, email or phone its location to you.

Cost of the collar: $350. Cost of the monthly service charge that provides the collar its raison d’etre: $18.

The couple confessed to spending more than the service cost every month on beer, and therefore, what excuse could they have to deny their puppy this security boon? I might have been more engaged if they’d mentioned a $1500-a-week crack cocaine habit, but then, really, they would have forgotten about feeding the dog months and months ago.

Instantly, we can profile the target market for this frivolous product: young, possessive, childless people with more money than perhaps they should be trusted with, looking for love that was begrudged them in their childhood. Washing the dog collar...together? Measuring their guilt and the service charge against their meager beer consumption? They couldn’t bear to let the dog run off on its own for one whole day? And I’m pretty sure we can assume the dog was purchased for considerably more than $350, at some salon or breeding place, where the salespeople have their own business cards.

Now, I have a very nice cat. He’s just as smart as he can be and reasonably friendly I let him outside, and he’s gone for hours if he feels like it. Or he chooses to sit around in the garden half asleep. My landlady lectures me monthly about the dangers he faces and offers the same examples of death and destruction she’s heard over the years. I’m sure she’ll still want to tell me the stories long after Alzheimer’s robs her of the details. The implication is that I don’t care about my pet’s safety; that I am an irresponsible bastard.

I feel I understand my cat; at least, to some greater degree than my landlady. I have no idea why he wants to bring lizard tails to my doorstep, and I fail to appreciate why he’d rather drink from the sink or tub than from his clean, freshly-filled water dish. But in many small ways, I know what he likes. He likes being petted, and brushing his red hair all over my black clothes. He likes to fall asleep beside me and resist any adjustment of my posture all night long. He likes to track dirty paw prints across my car to sit on the roof in the late afternoon sun. These are universal pleasures, even if they might be realized in different ways given the creature at hand.

My cat is my friend, as pathetic as that may look in print.

But, would I pay $350 outright, and $154 a year for a high-tech pet insurance scam? Nope.

My cat is a papered, purebred Abyssinian who was saved from destruction after his owners passed away. Very beautiful, and red like a dark old wooden floor. He was loud and aggressive when I brought him home. All claws and hiss. Right now, he’s upwards of nine years old and as comfortable as an old couch.

But when he wanders off, I don’t panic. I don’t call anyone; I don’t patrol the neighborhood. He came back one day with an enormous tear in his side that took $200 worth of stitches, but I can’t imagine the device that would have prevented this. I’ve always wanted to post handbills for a lost pet on telephone poles, but I doubt I’d ever really do it. When he’s out, I leave the light on at the front door and remember to listen for his scratching.

Someday, he’ll meet his end. I may have to shovel him off the street. It’s likely I’ll slip his stiff remains into a spot among the daffodils. I’m sure someone will feel obligated to assume that same chore when my own story ends unexpectedly. It is the survivors who take care of the mess; the departed simply move on.

Is this apathy? Dereliction in the duty of love? I think not. I think it’s a natural respect for individuality. I really do.

Pets must live their lives; their secret animal agendas must be fulfilled. The sad little dog who can be tracked by a satellite to making a puddle in your closet has been robbed of one of its last wild elements of puppiness. When running into the big world to satisfy their curiosity is forbidden, what will become of our pets? Will they become mere knickknacks?

Freedom is measured in increments of risk.

Just as our parents let us drive off in our dangerous cars to suspicious activities in cities far away, with little more than a phone number as their insurance, so we must allow our pets to find their own far orbits beyond the food bowl we offer. Like a familiar comet in our skies, it’s our warmth that lets them shine, and a little of that magical light reflects back to us. A healthy orbital relationship isn’t about possession; it’s about admiration. Our mutual appreciation requires distance, even if we sometimes measure it in parsecs.

My cat is a comet beyond the scope of GPS.

1)

Is it true, that dear memories gather around, pressing close to comfort us when our desperate hold on the present is relaxed and disarmed?

That they return on the aroma of a long-forgotten brand of tea drifting through the shadows in a quiet house? Or they rise from a fruit served as once before, warm and awash in cinnamon and sugar, posing on unpretentious china sparkling in the morning light?

They swim in the grey mists simmering above and dance in the gentle patter of rain across the grass. They beam from the colors of all things washed anew. They sing in every language of the trees; those choirs of frond, and needle and leaf. They huddle under this umbrella to put into perspective the knitted pattern of memories, gathered from the trunk and worn to warm again.


2)

I guess I haven't been getting out much.

We were driving back from Burbank when my car started to heat up. We had to stop several times to add water to the radiator over our course through city streets, just a few miles away from home. Finally, the thermostat pegged and after a long wait at the side of the road, the car just wouldn’t start.

It was quite the opposite of a trip into anxiety. With Andrew, conversation can be unexpected fun, and our stops to let the water cool gave us pauses to fill with wild cocktails of ideas. There was a lot of walking in rain, too, and we were grateful to be spared the torrents that have fallen in this storm. The father got to expound on his knowledge of engine cooling systems to a patient son, so the important male bonding aspect of the experience was fulfilled.

We rode in the tow truck and left the car at the usual garage, not far from home. We climbed the hill to our road and strolled back to shelter, resigned to our different realigned fates.

As often happens, I decided upon our return that I needed something from the grocery store we passed earlier. Canned pumpkin, for bread on this rainy day. Back into the rain, with an umbrella this time, and a quiet walk along empty streets.

That's what got me all poetic. As I walked up the driveway and away from the house, I looked up into the mists hanging across the ridge high above us. For a moment, it all returned, and I really wanted to take off climbing through the grass and rocks. That's how I imagine time travel should take place. You ascend with a purpose and simply leave the present behind.

BY request, from prezzey (so how could I refuse?):

GWAHAHA!! *thuds* (ie. ROTFL)
You should post this in your journal so that I could mark it as a memory
so that it doesn't get lost like my e-mail does all the time. ;] It's
memorable. (You should _post_, in any case. *evil threatening eyes*)

prezzey.


Here's the original post, regarding the incredible subtitling job Dreamworks did for Innocence and how we ought to buy the DVD to render unto Caeser and download the fansubs for our pleasure:

True, and in this case, the need is clear. However, the theory [scientists huddle at a blackboard] is that the fansubs are pulled from distribution [Bram Cohen, deleting files] when the series/movie is licensed in the US [American flag, waving]. Technically, Dreamworks [skyscrapers in Metropolis] has precluded a new, professional-quality sub with their botched release [monkeys, beating rocks with sticks].

Setting the theory aside [sets theory aside], I haven't seen a subbed DVD rip yet [person, looking] and a lot of torrent sites are down right now [crashing sound]. Two more facts that work against the movie [two more facts, working against the movie]. If someone posts new files now, the fansub distribution network is so fragmented that most people won't find it [people, not finding it].

I hope everyone will agree this is a special case and distribute a new sub.

seaweb

(Dreamworks is about a mile away, and it would be easy to stand on the sidewalk in front of their place with rude signs describing in words and pictures the mentality of the person who OK'd the subtitles)

I'm ranting about Columbus on the day before tradition dictates we Americans trace our hands on brown construction paper and paste together strings of colored paper loops. Don't forget the candy corn!

I'm not an apologist for Columbus nor ignorant of his impact in the New World; but there's quite a bit about his first voyage that is heroic. Just persisting his hustle was amazing. The monarchs of England, France and Portugal (his home at the time) had turned him down, and he spent nearly ten years proposing the voyage to Isabella and Ferdinand. You couldn't very well do a voyage of discovery then without royal patronage. They said "no" twice before. Tradition holds Ferdinand's Jewish treasurer made the convincing argument as Columbus rode away after his third attempt.

Anyone who has sailed on the ocean has to be impressed by a captain who would voyage across the Atlantic without a clear idea of the winds and currents he would face or much data on how far it would be before landfall. He carried provisions for a year at sea when few ships sailed for longer than two weeks. His crew was hesitant. Considering that he sailed straight into the hurricane season on his first trip (August-October 1492), this guy's luck must have been awesome.

The fact that what Columbus had proposed was not particularly mind-wrenching for his time makes me wonder why American historians dwell on that; sailing around the globe would have occurred to every sea-going sailor of his time, and had been seriously considered since the times of the Greeks and Romans, and certainly to Ptolemy in the 2nd Century.

The simple idea was: if you can get to India (and indeed, China) riding the globe east, barring huge continents and a hella ocean in your way, there's no reason you couldn't succeed going west. Columbus and his brother worked as mapmakers and book collectors, so they were well informed. Columbus also traveled in the Atlantic, speaking with people in Iceland (where he would hear of Vinland) and the Canaries (where he would see the current that would take him west).

But something else, I suspect, made the regents of Aragon and Castile back this slick 40-year-old Portuguese/Italian; not just the return on their almost insignificant investment. Maybe it was having just defeated the Muslims and rid the peninsula of them (1492), these very Christian monarchs envisioned a "thank-you" crusade in Asia that would seal the Church's victory over Islam. Possible.

At this same time, Isabella expelled the Jews from the kingdoms to create a homogeneous Christian land. Her faith also inspired the Inquisitiors, soon to make their impact across Europe.

It's not recorded that Columbus treated the Carib people like monkeys and worked them to death without exhibiting much humanity. It was the settlers he brought to the Caribbean in his second and third voyages who were thus lacking. Indeed, he was arrested and shipped back to Europe in chains for trying to govern these people. They merely presaged their white European brothers who soon came to loot the continents and bring the Catholic priests who possessed so much less humanity, with their be-saved-or-be-killed policy.

How many other animals on this planet kill their own for shear greed? How many for the sake of a concept?

I dislike that line teachers have spewn since 1892, "Columbus discovered America." Columbus always believed he HAD found a route to Asia (indeed subsequent explorers pushed on because they expected to find Chinese and Japanese around the next bend), and his name "Indians" for the inhabitants stuck because he was so sure (Vespucci, also voyaging in this New World, didn't buy it). Technically, a German clergyman named Waldseemuller didn't put Vespucci's name on his map until 1507, the year after Columbus died. Columbus simply could not have discovered America when he presaged the idea of America.

And discovering the New World is likewise not his prize. I am always amazed that more than ten thousand years of habitation by people from Asia can be dismissed so easily whenever the topic of America comes up. The Norsemen were building settlements there five hundred years earlier, so people can't even claim he was the first European on the block.

No, this is a nice day to talk about a master sailor and his often bitter determination to try the voyage he always thought possible. There's much to remember about the courts of Europe and the politics of the day, the international character of cities whose names we nearly forget, the amazing work of sailing and navigating on the open seas. All that before we arrive at the heinous crimes of people who put profit before everything, whether that be gold or points earned toward some eternal life elsewhere. It's worth reflecting that in five hundred years so little has changed in the heart of Man.

I have to admit, doing creative work in advertising doesn't completely suck.

I mean, very seldom do the best ideas get realized, and routinely they get so mutated that you wish you could knife them to death with your own hands. And deadlines are determined by the budget and salespeople, never ever after consultation with the creative staff. However, you get to hallucinate a lot of crazy words and visuals for money. Not that it earns you any more respect than, say, filling a shopping cart with trash.

When you just can't make the dog sing, you get to choose your distraction while the subliminal team takes a shift.

No Red Bull, Peruvian flake or (shudder) "creative exercises" for me. Here are the most recent favorites:

2X2=Shinobuden (2004) (as funny and clever as this is, it's really all about Shinobu and Kaede blushing at each other)

DearS (2004) (this one looks good for 26 episodes, what with an invasion of sexy alien slave girls, and a theme song by Under 17)

Pita Ten (2002) (incredibly cute shoujo demon and angel hanging out with middle schoolers, and another good theme song, "Wake Up Angel!" by Funta)

Mahou Shoujo Tai Arusu (2004) (Movie-quality art and characterization in nine-minute episodes)

Love Love? (2004) (fluffy fan-service vehicle, a studio M.O.E. parallel world to "Smash Hit!" and "Cosmopolitan Prayers")

Maria-sama ga Miteru Spring (2004) (A second languid season for this excellent shoujo-ai story)

Like I said, for distraction. There are other nice ones that demand long stretches of time (Wind: A Breath of Heart, Aishiteru ze Baibe, Ajimu Kaigan Monogatari...),but they're on hold for a while.

I'd also love to find a copy of Princess Tutu, a wondeful series.

It's amazing how perfect my skin works. In the heat and humidity, I'll drink lots of iced tea and sweat buckets. It's SO great. Two, sometimes three showers a day in September.

I looked at Bunny-chan's journal, and besides registering that she write once a month almost exactly, I think I deserve my own LJ stalker.

They debuted in 1997, but I've only just started listening to Every Little Thing (vocalist Mochida Kaori, guitarist Ichirou Ito, and until 2002, founder-songwriter-keyboardist Mitsuru Igarashi). 26 singles to date, and really massive sales figures (Japan is the second largest CD market in the world).

They're a curious trio. The facial expressions are marvelous. Something a little more personal than indifferent.

Ito holds his mouth in the slightest yet most-forced smile I've every seen. He's a technician and his guitars are custom-jobs. He punctuates; blocks all the movement with grinding chords. His solos are restrained for a Japanese lead guitarist, except there's always something that manages to be beautiful and appropriate while cutting like a laser.

Igarashi is just busy. A very gifted keyboardist, and he obviously likes anthems. All of his songs are large and treble-faceted, even the slow quiet ones. Looks and feel, he's a yaoi poster boy. And he has great-looking keyboard racks (one video has him surrounded by maybe a dozen synths, another with a gold-trimmed console).

"Fragile" (17th single, written by Kaori) is a great song that sorta starts: "I'm always that way, simple, stupid, especially so, precisely so, wounded..." I haven't really tried to translate the whole thing yet. There's a nice clip of them performing it at some small event where the audience is filled with stars and their dates (Morning Musume, Sonim...maybe it was Tsunku's birthday party), and all the familiar smiley faces are lost in sadness.

"Grip!" is my favorite song. It just leaps out and throws itself to the finish. It was the opening song for the fourth season of Inuyasha, but I don't think it was ever a single. There's a great live performance out there, recorded in an intersection at Universal Tokyo.

Kaori is cute, in a very strange way. An essential quality for lead singers, to be sure, but she never seems to be looking at the viewer/listener...rather off somewhere: out-there or in-there. Then, she has a funny smile that creeps across her lips, one that occasionally becomes a snear. And live, she misses high notes, as if the songs are written beyond her range, but she makes such an adorable face doing it that it's just fine. It's the spirit in the moment that matters, and Kaori is the thousand-watt strobe in a dark room.

Some of you might be familiar with the porn "controtionist extraordinaire" Mochida Kaori. Actually, the name is a pseudonym for both women. Surely, you can tell them apart...

Confession: I absolutely adore Chisato-chan.

She was a big music idol in the 80s and 90s, and deservedly so. She sang well, played lots of instruments (she was a drummer first), put together catchy songs, had great moves and put the money into her recordings and stage shows. Everyone talked about her legs, which were pretty and she showed them to great advantage.

Anyway, I found a clip of her on a 1989 holiday TV program, singing and dancing to a music track of "17 Sai" (her sixth single). She's in a huge cavern underground somewhere. It's her, a cameraman and a sound guy. Weird, but she's SO cute. Singing and dancing, deep in a cavern. One of the hosts of the show must be Kuroyanagi Tetsuko, whose "Totto-chan" I read, like last week.

I hear Chisato-chan is coming back pretty soon after a bit of a break from the business. I think her last single was in 1999. She's got a lot of talent, experience and never lacked for drive. And her prettiness should have matured well. I look forward to her return.

Her "Jin Jin Jingle Bells" (1995, her twenty-sixth single) is one of the all time best Christmas songs, too, if you ever get the chance.

It's interesting these days to show up in a guitar shop and work with Michael Spalt, a pleasant Austrian former-screenwriter who builds and repairs guitars.

I found him through Google: the most local guitar repair shop. I made a calculation that to put all my guitars (45) into hands of a tech and get them into their best playable condition, it would cost me ten thousand dollars, minimum. From there, I decided to find a repair shop and apprentice myself out in some mutually-advantageous arrangement. In this way, I would learn what I needed of the craft and make a real start on the project.

So, I made the pitch to Michael and he agreed. However, thus far, it's just me showing up to watch him approach a variety of guitars and lending a hand wherever I can. So, I polish and disassemble/reassemble.

The electronics stuff is my weakest point, so I'm reading through a repair book to supplement the hands-on. We worked on a triple-pickup Gibson SG Custom from the 60s, a really abused but still powerful instrument. The wiring in that thing made NO sense to me. Three pickups, four potentiometers and one strange (because the body is so thin) three-position switch, tossed together with this mess of wires. Michael just wades in, un-solders everything and put it all back together by testing it. Never count on a electric guitar being wired correctly is the first rule.

We talk a lot about guitar esoterica, and Michael fills me in on guitar manufacturers. Like, that when CBS bought Fender in the 1960s, they actually sold all the machinery that made the classic instruments, never intending to build the new guitars in the US. So, when the Japanese products were clearly not up to the Fender reputation, CBS built an all-new facility in the US. It's funny, that rather than working with (or paying) the Japanese contractor to up the quality, they built a facility back in the US from scratch. Immediately, the Japanese contractor started building high-quality copies and Japanese manufacturers became competitors in the US high-quality market.

Or that right now, a finished electric guitar from China with a case, strung, boxed and shipped to the US, wholesales for twenty-five dollars. Michael pointed out that someone with a genuine opportunity to move 250 guitars could earn a good profit from just a few thousand dollars. Pretty hard for US manufacturers to compete with them for the beginner guitar market, and in a few years the Chinese manufacturers will naturally move into the US professional market.

It's a precarious existence for guitar techs. Connections keep them going. Success tempts them to expand to meet demand. Repair work leads to custom work and big dreams. Once one of these guys starts building a line of guitars that players like, the big sharks move in: distributors. Michael clued me to a classic trick.

The distributor places and pays for a couple of small orders. Steady work. Then, they place a really big order. The builder borrows money to purchase materials, expand the shop, and hire workers, then rushes to meet the deadline. When the order is nearly finished, the distributor calls to cancel it. Now, the builder has too much money tied up in too many instruments. All the hardware has been bought and installed. All the finish work and assembly work has been paid out. Cases and tags and boxes have been delivered. The guitars may even have the distributor's name on them. The bank is expecting a regular payment on an impossible debt. What to do? That's when the distributer offers to buy the company, and the builder becomes an employee. If they don't like you personally, you don't need to be part of the package at all, and you watch your guitars (maybe even your name) continue without you.

I had considered guitar repair another employment possibility in Tokyo, but now it looks like a sideline at best. It's still all about connections. It would be an interesting way to make some money, but I'm sure that the repairs manager at Yamaha (right there in Shibuya) would not hesitate to have some Korean punk yakuza dude come around to break my fingers if I took too much work away from him.

I read where everyone was worried there might NOT be a "Sex in the City" movie. One of the "actresses" doesn't want to do it.

OK. These were the four ugliest American women who ever crawled up out of the gutter into the spotlight...famous for their mutated facial features, for wearing the trashiest thrift store clothes and for screwing up the stupidest dialogue. Did you ever see the website for the show? You could choke to death laughing at their fashion show.

You probably couldn't find a man in Los Angeles they DIDN'T sleep with to get those jobs...men who still have nightmares about it. Car wash guys. Waiters. Homeless men.

So, the plan might be to kill this one actress off in the beginning of the movie. I say kill them ALL off...in the first five minutes of the next James Bond movie!

James is in NYC, outracing the bad guys in his super race car surprise. These four tramps are having a conference-call-disfest on their cell phones as they shamble around in different parts of the city. One-after-the-other, he takes them out...1) racing in a blur down the sidewalk, he clips one and sends her headlong and airborne down a subway entrance, like a missile; 2) sliding sideways at 200MPH, the length of a city block, with a 9-11 sized cloud of rubber behind him, right through the next one in a crosswalk; 3) he comes flying out of Central Park and through an outdoor cafe, machinegunning the windows and another one having a latte as he screams through; and finally, he takes his car up a freight elevator, through a floor of offices and sends it out a fifty-storey window to completely disintegrate the last bitch, in a limo stuck in traffic on the street below. She watches it through the sunroof, on its way down.

Then, here comes the bad guys' car!

But it takes out the tour bus behind her...which happens to contain the two guys from The Rembrandts, the cast of "Friends" and some of their well-known guest stars.

How about it?

Highly-recommended reading: "Totto-chan" by Kuroyanagi Testuko.

Profound truths presented in the simple remenisscences of a woman's elementary school years. It's kind of peripheral that this takes places during the Pacific War and that Tetsuko is now a rather famous personality. I enjoyed this very much, and it would be valuable for anyone approaching childrearing responsibilities. Illustrated with precious drawings by Iwasaki Chihiro.

I guess Ms. Kuroyanagi has had a TV interview show ("Tetsuko no heya," Asahi TV Tokyo) for thirty years now (some say it's the longest-running interview show in Japan). I hear she has a distinctive voice and talks a lot. I'll have to find a clip somewhere...

I did find an interesting evaluation of her interview style and Japanese conversation, but the samples of her interviews are instructive, too: http://www.hichumanities.org/AHProceedings/Fumiko%20Nazikian.pdf

That's the sound of my copy of "The Difference Engine" plumbing the depths of the trashcan across the room. Done. I will never again look for a story in a William Gibson book.

Ah, that feels good.

Until I can join a film society that will let me wander into the theater at midnight to screen a movie by myself or with a few perfectly well-adjusted people, I am satisfied with a 30" screen at home.

Here is yet another example of why I don't like seeing movies in a theater:

I went to see "Godzilla," the Japanese original cut; longer, subtitled and with none of the Raymond Burr encrustations that have identified the American release. Let me assure you, this is not a movie full of clowning. Nowhere is it funny, in the sense that there is nothing that is played out here for laughs. You will certainly smile at the quaintness of "country life" and simple people on Oda Island, but because it's nostalgic, not funny.

But people snickered throughout the movie.

Admittedly, Pasadena is a college town, and half the audience (maybe ten people) were immature undergraduates. These elect were distinguished by arriving without dates in tow. The dynamic of the couples may have shown that one was humoring the other. Whoever, whatever these people were, they thought this was a funny movie, perhaps even stupid.

It was my impression that the condescending chuckles and air forced through noses all around represented a signal to everyone in the vicinity that this movie was beneath them. They were SO much more sophisticated than THIS.

Even at its most melodramatic, this movie, for normal people, isn't a Sybian for the funnybone. I wonder if this movie didn't represent some form of therapy for the rest of the audience, that perhaps its brief theatrical run in America now was meant to serve as psychiatric therapy. Did America NEED to recharge its superiority complex? Was our jingoism losing its EDGE?

I suspect I'm getting old, and my memory embraces such a span of years that the intelligence and empathy of modern America pales in comparison with what was there fifty years ago. And that's scary.

Last night's audience made little effort to appreciate at any depth this story or the characters. They seemed too impaired to identify with these people from 1954 or recognize common human emotions. Was this because the movie was old, monochromatic and featured a rubber-suit monster? Or was it because the cast was Japanese?

Fellini's "La Dolce Vida" (a new print!) will be showing next week; will they snicker and tee-hee-hee all through IT? "Vida" reflects its time as clearly as "Godzilla." The story has matured with the passage of time, as has "Godzilla." It's going to be subtitled, too. "Vida" is a lusty movie with some genuine laughs, but will the audience laugh AT the movie?

Why will students pour themselves over Fellini like a serious apres-tif, and give "Godzilla" a Pepsi appreciation?

Racism? Most certainly, in this land where we spend generations defining legislation to proscribe every increment of respect we will begrudgingly show our fellow citizens. Where every "honest" gesture is suspect. Where racial division is clothed as multi-culturalism.

Jingoism? Who would even ask when the American government has invaded and occupied an oil-rich Islamic country on a "crusade" to force a Christian-friendly Democracy on people whose culture, language, religion and history aren't worth appreciating. It says it all that the American ambassador to Iraq doesn't speak the language and this is his first diplomatic gig.

Maybe someday we'll put our ignorance and misconceptions aside, and try to see the people around as they see themselves. Until then, I don't need to spend eight dollars to sit with people who want me to register their moronic behavior.

So, after seeing "Godzilla" at the Rialto in Pasadena (the uncut 1954 Japanese original, with new antiques-looking subtitles) I arrived home to find a large black cat at the top of my driveway. Dead. Apparently tagged by a passing car.

There is a very pretty, large black cat in the neighborhood who has been known to walk onto our front porch and look inquisitively (or perversely)through the panes in the door at our cat. This drives Simba, our golden red Abyssinian male, nuts.

Immediately, I assumed this was that cat, who we call, naturally, "the Black Cat." And next, I resolved to make sure Simba didn't get outside until I had taken the dead cat away.

It was after midnight and I decided I would face this task in the morning.

This kept me awake all night. No dreams about the cats or anything like that, just waking up to remember my chore. And when Simba started at 3AM asking to be let out in his no-longer-cute way (scratching on the glass at the front door, then coming back to stand on my bed as if to ask "Are you stupid? I want OUT!"), any chance of a peaceful sleep was forfeited.

At 7AM, I was out the door with gloves and a shovel, ascending the driveway to take care of the burial.

Here is what is significant about this whole story: ALL of my efforts were designed to spare Simba's feelings, lest he come across the lifeless body of his neighbor. I was worried that should he confront this death at the top of the driveway, he would...what?

Was I thinking Simba would be inconsolable, crying his eyes out and dragging himself around the house for days? Did I think he'd take up drinking and smoking, oblivious to his own well-being because "it just doesn't MATTER anymore?" Or maybe he'd mull it over like any other good SoCal youth, say "Dude, that's f*cked UP!" then back into the street like an imbecile and get hit by another passing car?

I don't know. It puzzles me. Are we, my cat and me, so close that it's second-nature for me to want to spare his feelings?

Here's the question that really intrigues me: Would Simba do the same for ME?

Oh. The catastrophe? It's right here...



^(-.-)^ '

Well, maybe a cat-apostrophe.

A bottle of champagne was pointed out to me, hidden on its side in the back of my refrigerator. Oh, so sad. It must have been there for six years. Couldn't be agreeable after all this time.

Ha!

The very tiniest of bubbles, rising like a chorus reaching for the glory. The silver-gold glow in my cut crystal flute could have been seen by several Dutch masters who come to mind.

So smooth, glass after glass.

I don't remember where this bottle came from, but it certainly brings honor to that tight perimeter of French soil. Yes! FRENCH Champagne. It may well have been my divorce champagne...

I guess I should have shared this, but compatriots are far flung these days, and all sober and frail.

I've run through Tomosaka Rie and Donald Fagen so far, and there is today's vinyl excavations to spin: Muddy Waters, Count Basie, Chet Atkins, Nat Cole, June Christy, Gil Evans, Benny Goodman Sextet, Henry Mancini, Nelson Riddle...it's tough to find people with such informed musical tastes.

I even found a 4-track cartridge of B.B. King's "King of the Blues" on Modern. Talk about hitting the corners.

It's a weird season of smallness on TV. "Aishiteruze Biebe," "Pugyuru," "Mama wa Shougaku Yonnensei," "Midori no Hibi" and "Sensei no Ojikan" all revolve around diminutive people, maids, spiritual manifestations...

Pugyuru wins hands down for weirdness right now. Making a snow cone out of her friend Mizore (a yuki-onna, translated as an "ice-manipulating succubus") just about tops anything I could imagine.

My favorites right now: "Mahou Shoujotai Arisu" which has a nice drawing style indeed. "Keran Butoh Sai: The Mars Daybreak" is moving along nicely, but may well fizzle right out. "Kono Minikuku mo Utsukushii Sekai" has potential, and it's GAINAX, so it'll probably start slow then build like crazy.

"Le Portrait de Petit Cossette" might be interesting, but I never played the game. Games are really driving a lot of series and OVA products again. I'm still waiting for someone to finish "Witch's A-La Mode."

In old news, I'm an enthusiastic fan of Kiyohiko Ayumi in print (Yotsubato!), so I'm anxious to see all 26 episodes of "Azumanga Daioh" as soon as I can. I can almost...

It's been too hot to deal with it inCalifornia (Ha! just you wait...).

I just read a story at Reuters about a KDDI phone service in Tokyo that uses GPS and some software to let callers ask their phones for step-by-step and train-by-train directions to any address. That's so perfect. But not quite so nice as being led by the hand...full of great food and stumbling drunk through the alleys in Asakusa at night

Looking at some photos of Fukuoka in the 50s, I was amazed to see they have a chibi-Tsutenkaku (like the famous tower in Osaka). I guess when I REALLY want to waste time, I'll do a survey of Japanese city towers,

Are ALL the famous girls in Japan from Tokyo, Osaka or Okinawa prefectures? Of course not. Okamoto Natsuki is from some town in Mie, where you find the original (I'm guessing) towns of Ueno and Aoyama. But Natsuki-chan is so cute that she's the only reason to remember Mie...

So, it's midnight. My cat is snoring quietly on my bed. I'm listening to jazz on the radio and reading. CRASH!

I step out onto my porch and find an empty ceramic pot fallen and shattered. Naturally, I pause, and listen. I hear a bit of movement.

My porch is hidden behind a huge oleander and a substantial growth of maidenhair fern. I move to the steps, where I can scan the fence which, teamed with a nice-sized peach tree, divides the front and back yards. The fence happens to connect to the porch.

There, on the gate, sits a little black opossum.

He's not completely indifferent to my appearance. He's young. I whisper to him a bit. I would speak a bit louder, but my neighbors are entertaining in their backyard. Hours away from calling it a night. Not that they would begin to understand what our conversation would be about. So, I just whisper a bit, in a friendly way.

I seem to preclude his return to the porch, so he moves off through the growth that is crawling over the the top of the fence. I watch him disappear into the shadow falling from the peach tree. Then, I notice something in the darkness out on my lawn.

Is that a big cat stretching on the grass? An owl? I wait for the sketchy image to resolve itself in my mind. It's two more little opossum visitors. They're kind of just rolling around in the grass. That's three opossums, total. Would this describe a lucky omen for me in China?

I'm happy that opossums don't make much noise. I've only heard them hiss. I doubt they have much need to sing or howl or bray. They actually seem completely oblivious to sound. They don't mind crunching through the dry leaves under my bedroom window at all hours of the night. And opossums are very clean as a rule.

Certainly, these three must be the children (pups?) of my friend, the big strange white-headed oppossum from earlier this year. The DragonBall opossum. But only three?

My cat feigned half-hearted interest in what has coaxed me outdoors, but it's late, and he'd really rather return to his warm spot in the dark on the bed.

I step out a bit later and they've gone. Around the corner. As I stand on the steps, here comes an opossum down the sidewalk.

It's like zoo night at my house tonight.

Reading Chris Kraft's book "Flight," it's kind of sad to see that the world has become so introverted.

When you look at the history, the Americans went from not even understanding how to put a satellite into orbit to getting people into Lunar orbit, landing, walking around (and even having a car to ride around on), launching and making a rendezvous with the orbiter, then coming back to Earth...all in a little over ten years.

Since 1972, we've delivered probes past to most of the planets and built fabulous telescopes. But manned spaceflight has been occasional rides into orbit on the shuttle and long visits to various space hostels.

Interesting that Vietnam was probably the main reason we didn't continue with a space station and missions to Mars in the 70s. The momentum was there for developing the technology, but the money was cut every year through the Johnson and Nixon administrations. The Shuttle was the only affordable project left.

Now, with the Shuttle program pretty much over and a space station unlikely for decades, we spend $800 billion in the attempt to acquire and hold a colony in the Middle East, under circumstances that will lead directly to generations of war and terrorist attacks.

War doesn't seem to create any useful technology (more efficient killing tools and the Humvee are examples), yet space science has generated countless hardware and software innovations on its way to breaking barriers. Things that make life better for everyone. Global communications. GPS. Countless computer, semiconductor and sound card innovations. Fuel cells and solar cells. Biomedical sensors. Teflon. All the biological experiments led to innovations in crops, foods and medicines. It kinda goes on and on.

What I see and hear in the news seems like evidence that most of the world is possessed by variety of mental illnesses. We are an evolving species, so brain function isn't a finished piece of work. Sometimes, I forget that. We are responding to environmental changes, many of them self-inflicted. We seldom know where our choices will lead, and luckily, the odds aren't always against us.