Goin’ to a go-go
Finally, that elusive creature: the near-perfect weekend. Saturday I got a bunch of chores taken care of as well as a few personal projects. We went downtown in the same taxi as Naoko, went to Singapore Airlines to put the finishing touch on our Japan bookings, all went smoothly, and then I went and bought jeans, visited Naoko, and bought a $3 toy for Zen from a vending machine. He was happy because out of the 10 available Kamen Rider toys he got the one he wanted most on the first try. We tried to see some “Xtreme sports” in front of Ngee An City – aggressive in-line skating, on-land wake boarding, skate boarding, and Xtreme BMX – but it was called off on account of a sprinkling of rain. Seems a bit silly to call anything extreme (or “Xtreme”) if it will be called off on account of light rain, but there’s hardly anything in Singapore that could ever be extreme (unless it’s “Xtreme language”). Took a bus back, had lunch, slept, ordered t-shirts, and then we had a lovely dinner. I got to write on my blog (I’m still writing on my blog on a Sunday night, obviously, but it was good to get most of it done on Saturday), I played electric guitar, and I wrote 1000 words on my novel, as well as one other thing. Sunday was a good day too – I took Zen to see Fantastic Four the Rise of the Silver Surfer, had a nice lunch, took a nap, wrote three articles for work (two short, one long) so that I won’t be as badly swamped next week, took Zen to his swimming lessons – he’s doing an excellently strong frog kick now without flotation now, and working on his front crawl – and then had another great dinner. After dinner Zen watched Cars in the living room, Naoko and I were in the bedroom listening to Leonard Cohen with her reading and me writing. It was a very comfortable family moment somehow. The weather was cool all day, so barely any sweating. Wonderful. Zen was very well behaved, and did five exercises from his Japanese workbook. What a keener. Gonna write another 1000 words on my novel before I go to sleep tonight, got to get this thing done.
Haven’t written on the blog much these days, haven’t had much to say. We booked our flights to Japan, and that means that I will fly with Zen and Naoko for two weeks, while they will be there for four weeks. Interestingly, Ralph and family will be here for 10 days right after that. Actually, Naoko and Zen won’t even be back for their first three days here, but will be back soon enough. It will be great to be a host for a change, and it’s always fun to show someone around Singapore. Zen and Evan are going to have a lot of fun playing with the trains and doing fun stuff like that.
Very busy at work, but the good news is that I’m writing articles again. In six days last week I wrote eight articles, on top of all the many other things I got done.
I was in a taxi today and I heard the Ghostbusters theme song, something I’d chatted with colleagues about recently – about what a crap song it is, and how the movie was overrated – and sure enough they had to play it. Singapore’s funny, if you took a list of 10 cool bands from the 80s (Husker Du, Black Flag, Bauhaus, Love and Rockets, the Cure, the Smiths, Madonna, whatever) and put it next to a list of really lame 80s bands (Ray Parker Jr., Alphaville, A-ha, Kenny Loggins, Air Supply, Spandau Ballet) you’d hear the latter nearly every time. I was in a store today and heard something really different, I asked the attendant what was playing – turns out it was the Killers. Finally, something new! Just in case you forgot about Ghostbusters, here’s the image below. I had read up on Huey Lewis recently. Seems like they tried to buy the tune for “I Want A New Drug” from him for the movie, he refused, they used it anyway, he sued, they settled. So in the end they used his song and he was paid for it anyway, it was just that the whole process of getting permission was bypassed. The whole story just makes me think less and less of Ghostbusters. Although he’s not hip any more (most people think he’s square), anybody who’d let it all hang out for Robert Altman (see “Short Cuts” if you don’t know what I mean) is okay in my book.
Today I ordered a few t-shirts from Zazzle. These are the designs I made (the black one will be on a black t-shirt, the lettering couldn’t be white so it will be a kind of silvery grey instead). The mad cow design was inspired by “Institutionalized,” a song by Suicidal Tendencies.
Dreams:
I had the strangest dream the other night. The dream was all over the place, but at one point I went into the kitchen in my mum’s house and the whole sink and counter was overflowing with a big mountain of garbage. It was almost as if I had had a party at my house, but forgotten to clean up afterwards. She didn’t seem too bothered by it (this was clearly a dream – she would have not been able to keep her cool if it happened in real life), but I hated to see that pile of garbage. I started to clean up. At that point my alarm went off. My last thought as I woke up was “oh shit, if I wake up now I won’t be able to clean up this awful mess.” The next night I tried to resume the same dream so that I could finish what I started, but I dreamed about roller skating instead. Sorry, mum.
DVD Reviews:
Swans: Soundtracks for the Blind – The final Swans album, this one is very experimental. Some songs are long and mellow and build up to something hypnotic, others are just very… experimental… and don’t really pick up a groove. Jarboe isn’t featured very prominently, so you get a lot of instrumentals with quite a bit of Jira vocals.
Ajani: Blue Alert – Leonard Cohen has been very productive recently. He’s had two albums of his own songs out in short procession, a book of poetry, a movie project, and now he’s produced an album of songs with his girlfriend, Ajani Thomas of Hawaii. The songs are pretty and jazzy, but remind a bit too much of Norah Jones. The songs are very Cohen-ish, especially “The Mist”, which is a version of “True Love Leaves No Traces” from Death Of A Lady’s Man”, also one of his best poems.
Pixies: B-Sides – Lots of great Pixies songs, although many of them, as live versions or instrumentals, don’t really offer anything new. Big surprises are “Manta Ray,” which is just as good as the best/weirdest Frank Black/Kim Deal vocals out there, while “Do The Manta Ray” is something that comes out of the mind of David Lynch, as is the Eraserhead song “In Heaven (Lady In The Radiator).” I’ve heard the chilled out “Wave of Mutilation (UK Surf)” mix on the soundtrack for Pump Up The Volume, not a great movie but it had a fantastic soundtrack. Kim Deal singing “Into The White” is a bit different, but not exactly fantastic. “Winterlong” is a nice Neil Young cover, sung by Kim Deal, and David Lovering’s tribute to Debbie Gibson “Make Believe” makes you glad that he didn’t sing on more songs.
Monster Magnet: Spine of God (special edition) – Monster Magnet is supposedly the album that set off the stoner rock movement (just as Kuss’ “Blues From A Red Sun” is supposedly the album that set off the similar desert rock movement), but when I listen to this I don’t hear anything different than what the Butthole Surfers were doing. Decent songs, but I think I like other albums better.
DVD Review:
Who’s That Knocking At My Door – Martin Scorsese’s first film is a truly strange creation, although it also shows a lot of the stsylistic touches that you’d see in later films, event the tripped out Bringing Out The Dead. Harvey Keitel, in one of his first films, is a local hood who hangs out with his buddies, falls in love with a good girl – the long-forgotten Zina Bethune, billed simply as “girl” – he won’t screw, so he gets his frustrations out on hookers, a very upside-down world. Lots of interesting passages, like the 8 minutes he spends chatting up when he first sees her, or the dialogue-free freakout when they’re all drinking, a guy pulls a gun and everybody’s laughing their heads off. Of course, Harvey gets naked and you see lots of titties as well. He also used The Doors “The End” well before Francis Ford Coppola – the film came out in 1967.
Movie review:
Fantastic Four: the Rise of the Silver Surfer - Nice comic book adaptation of the Fantastic Four comic, which was always more interesting for its villains than its heroes, and this movie franchise is the same. I didn’t see the first film, but I understand that it was marred by a rushed resolution. In this film, the threat – the Silver Surfer – is identified 30 minutes into the film, so this one is well-designed as an action film. Quite a bit of soap opera centered around Susan Storm’s concern that she won’t have normal life after she marries Reed Richards, boo hoo hoo, but otherwise it’s pretty straight forward and not too weepy. It’s a kids movie, more so than any of the other Marvel adaptations, although they do manage to get in some speculation about the Thing’s plumbing nonetheless. As far as comic book adaptations go, Jessica Alba looks better in Sin City of course, but who’s complaining. The Silver Surfer is very welcome in this movie, as one of the coolest characters in all of Marvel Comics, and they do interesting things with his surfboard. One complaint – I don’t want to give too much away about the ending, but the producers didn’t really introduce Galactus – a character just as fascinating as the Silver Surfer himself – in a very satisfying way in my opinion. Green light for another Fantastic Four movie, as well as a Silver Surfer spin-off.