Nothing But Words

This past summer, I spent the many hours of my flights between Philly and Prague engrossed in Haruki Murakami’s 1997 novel The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. It was such a pleasure to read, it’s come very close to supplanting Philip K. Dick’s VALIS as my favorite novel. Murakami’s writing style is nothing like Dick’s, but he shares Dick’s talent for spinning tales that are bizarre, dryly humorous, philosophical journeys of self-discovery.

If you are a fan of the TV show Lost, you will love Murakami. There are several elements of the show that are undoubtedly drawn from Murakami, such as the characters’ frequent trips down wells and other dark holes as catalysts for finding themselves. Lost has already acknowledged its debt to VALIS – we’ll see if Murakami gets his due in Lost’s upcoming final season.

To give you a sense of how many clever analogies Murakami can pack into a small space, here are a couple paragraphs from The Wind-Up Bird Chronicle. This is the protagonist describing a strange man he unexpectedly finds waiting for him in his house:

He was a short man, dressed in a suit. It was hard to guess his height with him seated, but he couldn’t have been five feet tall. Somewhere between forty-five and fifty years old, he looked like a chubby little frog with a bald head – a definite A in May Kasahara’s classification system [his friend May made wigs for bald men]. He did have a few clumps of hair clinging to his scalp over his ears, but their oddly shaped black presence made the bare area stand out all the more. He had a large nose, which may have been somewhat blocked, judging from the way it expanded and contracted like a bellows with each noisy breath he took. Atop that nose sat a pair of thick-looking wire-rim glasses. He had a way of pronouncing certain words so that his upper lip would curl, revealing a mouth full of crooked, tobacco-stained teeth. He was, without question, one of the ugliest human beings I had ever encountered. And not just physically ugly: there was a certain clammy weirdness about him that I could not put into words – the sort of feeling you get when your hand brushes against some big, strange bug in the darkness. He looked less like an actual human being than like something from a long-forgotten nightmare.

…

The man had on a brown suit, white shirt, and red tie, all of the same degree of cheapness, and all worn out to the same degree. The color of the suit was reminiscent of an amateur paint job on an old jalopy. The deep wrinkles in the pants and jacket looked as permanent as valleys in in an aerial photograph. The white shirt had taken on a yellow tinge, and one button on the chest was ready to fall off. It also looked one or two sizes too small, with its top button open and the collar crooked. The tie, with its strange pattern of ill-formed ectoplasm, looked as if it had been left in place since the days of the Osmond Brothers. Anyone looking at him would have seen immediately that this was a man who paid absolutely no attention to the phenomenon of clothing. He wore what he wore strictly because he had no choice but to put something on when dealing with other people, as if he were hostile to the idea of wearing clothes at all. He might have been planning to wear these things the same way every day until they fell apart – like a highland farmer driving his donkey from morning to night until he kills it.

Credit is also due to Jay Rubin for an impressive translation of Murakami’s Japanese. In preparing to write this post, I learned that he was forced to abridge his translation, due to a word limit imposed by the American publisher (I guess they think Americans are afraid of large books). An Amazon reviewer who read the unabridged Russian version says that 15%-20% of the book has been cut from the English translation, with entire chapters missing. I’m dying to know what I missed!

Two years ago I said I wanted to be a Japanese construction worker in my next life, but I’ve changed my mind. I now want to be a Japanese Buddhist monk. There are a variety of sects with different practices, but generally speaking, they’re not burdened with vows of poverty or celibacy. However, their numbers are declining, and many are trying to do something about it:

…with the rise in funeral parlors in Japan cutting into what had been a Buddhist monopoly, coupled with decreasing interest in Buddhism in general, Buddhist monks are worried about their future. Each year, lack of financial support shutters about 1,000 of Japan’s 80,000 Buddhist temples, some of them with vibrant histories stretching back centuries.

To counter this trend, Buddhist monks have taken to the airwaves, the stage and even to the club scene in an advertising effort that is as cutting-edge as it is astonishing.

That quote is from an article about a monk who raps (click the link above to see a video of him). The monk who got my attention the most, however, is Strong Machine 1. He’s a break dancer, and has trained his daughter – Strong Machine 2 – to form a father-daughter team. Here they are at the Anime Matsuri festival earlier this year:

Strong Machine 2′s career has taken off. She’s been in several music videos and TV commercials in Japan. If you want to see more, she’s the girl wearing the randoseru in this Polysics video (good dancing, irritating music).

Here’s a Buddhist monk with a couple of great custom cars (the first two in the video are his – see English translations of the highlights at Pink Tentacle):

In the past, some Buddhist monks in northern Japan figured out a grueling procedure to mummify themselves while still alive. Of course, the end result was death. That’s not the kind of monk I want to come back as though. I’d rather come back as an accomplished break dancer or have a mind boggling custom car .

When I was a kid, watching Star Trek was a bonding experience for my mother and I (they were re-runs for her, but new to me). The best episodes were thought-provoking, which she liked, not to mention the then-young and handsome William Shatner. I don’t recall exactly what I liked about the show back then, but I do remember especially enjoying it because my mom watched it with me. I also remember my first experience being among an excited crowd, waiting in a big long movie line with her when I was 9, to see the first Trek film on opening night. But I’ve tried to forget the movie itself, being bored to the point of tears as I watched it drag on, waiting in vain for something – anything – interesting to happen (2+ hours is a long time to be bored and stuck in a chair at that age).

Kai and I are going to see the new Trek movie for its opening night tonight, and I don’t think he needs to worry about being bored. If anything, he’ll need to worry about sensory overload, as it looks like it’s action packed. It also has an impressive 96% score on the tomatometer.

Writing this post reminded me of a review I read years ago when the 1st season of the original Star Trek came out on DVD. The review is unusual – it’s as much about the reviewer’s relationship with his father as it is about the show. It’s touching, and reading it was what made me remember my childhood experiences watching the show with my mother (although she’s nothing like the curmudgeon this guy’s father was). The reviewer also perfectly captures what made the original series so iconic: it definitely wasn’t the cheesy sets and effects; it was the actors and the friendship of the 3 main characters. I’m going to reprint most of his review here, just in case it disappears from the web someday.

My father hated television so much, he used to keep the TV in the closet. He put it on a rolling cart, so if you got the urge to watch, let’s say, Mama’s Family or Sheriff Lobo, you had to drag it out of its tiny, dark, sport-jacked filled home, position it in front of the couch and then plug it in. Actually, that was always the easy part. The hard part was unplugging the set and rolling it back into the closet when you were done…

Luckily, this didn’t affect my life too greatly, since my parents had just gotten divorced and my father had only weekend visitation (the rest of the time I lived with my mother, who put the TV in its rightful place, living room front and center, where I would stare at MTV for hours waiting for Journey’s Separate Ways video). Anyway, paternal duty mixed with the guilt of turning his son into a latchkey kid, compelled my father to do whatever I wanted come Saturday and Sunday. Most of my weekend desires were innocuous, but there was one thing he was loath to do: drive back to his apartment by 5pm so I could watch Star Trek. This, of course, involved not just watching Star Trek, but me dragging the television out of the closet, positioning it in front of the couch and plugging it in so I could watch Star Trek. Then, right after the Desilu logo faded, I had to unplug the set and roll it back into the closet. My father would begrudgingly watch with me, but after about a year, something unexpected happened (that is to say, it was unexpected if you knew my father): he got hooked. He wanted to watch Star Trek as much as I did. In fact, as I remember, every once in a while he would even take it upon himself to drag the TV out of the closet, position it in front of the couch and plug it in. Who says sons don’t influence their fathers?

I’m not sure what part of the show intrigued him. Although he liked science fiction, I figured his hatred for television would have cancelled that out. My guess is, some of the better episodes reeled him in… First season shows like Balance of Terror, The Conscience of the King, The City on the Edge of Forever and The Corbomite Maneuver rose to the level of serious sci-fi and were about as smart as the genre got, at least on television.

Plus, and this is probably what made my father such a fan, the performances were immediately iconic. William Shatner’s body language and line deliveries seemed less like acting and more like performing some exotic new dance. But he imbued Kirk with not only a swagger, but a sense of humor that undercut and made entertaining the somber idea that he was responsible for over 400 people in what could very well turn out to be an intergalactic space casket.

As for Spock… Leonard Nimoy is just so damn Spock, it’s hard to imagine anyone else in the role, which is the very definition of great casting and great acting… Nimoy was just tall enough, just thin enough and just odd-enough looking that had he not played Spock, he would have been relegated to portraying stoic Russian submarine commanders and mysterious strangers. His amazing trick was that, over the course of the series, he was able to parcel out little packets of humanity to what is essentially an inhuman character so by the end, he was more interesting and three-dimensional than most people on television…

Dr. McCoy had two functions… First, he was the sarcastic and rather pissy ying to Spock’s logical yang. But the good doctor also served as the audience surrogate. Of all the characters on the show, McCoy acted much like we would if we had to serve on a starship (I always enjoyed the notion that the transporter creeped him out and he didn’t completely trust it). The show never gave DeForest Kelley a particularly large reservoir of character history to draw upon, but he made McCoy’s three basic personality traits pretty damn terrific: ornery sarcasm (“I’m a doctor, not a fill-in-the-blank!”), disbelief (used whenever Spock said anything overly Spockish) and a neutral, genial absence of ornery sarcasm or disbelief. When combined, Kirk, Spock and McCoy comprised the most entertaining, non-pornographic threesome ever to take up precious space in the pop culture universe…

There came a point when my father and I so enjoyed Star Trek that when the films opened, he would skip work and I would skip school and together we’d go see Kirk and company’s newest big-screen adventure. Star Trek lasted long enough to spawn ten movies and, I believe, 640 television series, so unfortunately the show outlasted my dad. But Star Trek will always hold an everlasting place in my heart and in the heart of my father, who hopefully is exploring strange new worlds on his own celestial version of the Enterprise.

Tonight Kai and I will see how the new cast measures up, and someday down the road, seeing the movie with me on opening night might be a fond memory for him too.

Last Fall I admitted to my guilty pleasure of watching Avatar with Kai. The first half of the last season ended several months ago, and the series will conclude with episodes starting on July 14. Here’s the trailer for it from Nickelodeon. The dialog they choose for it is cheesier than the previous trailer, but it still looks really promising:

I also stumbled across this interview with M Night Shyamalan, who is directing what will hopefully be the first of three Avatar live action films. Shyamalan has an awfully inconsistent track record with his films so far, veering between brilliant and mind-numbing. But I get the sense from the interview that he genuinely gets what Avatar is really about, so I find that a hopeful sign.

If you’re a person who laments the decline of the Saturday morning kids cartoon genre, then you should really check out Avatar: The Last Airbender. It may not currently be on TV (we’ve not been getting up early), but it’s available on DVD and it’s properly brilliant; beautifully animated and very well written for kids’ entertainment. M Night Shyamalan is currently in pre-production adapting the cartoon into a movie trilogy, so now is really the time to get yourself familiar with it…

“Buddhist and Hindu philosophies run through the stuff,” he [Shyamalan] continues. “When I realised that is what it was, it really drew me as the template for putting storytelling on a new level. There is a kind of thread that connects Star Wars and The Matrix – the first one. That same thread is in this story, about a forgotten belief system, or the illusion of the world now.”

One of the few pages left on my site that I hadn’t incorporated into WordPress (until now) was Ask Kosh. It dates back to about 1997 and is one of just a few pages that remains from my original site. It used to be its own self contained mini-site, with half a dozen pages of ancillary nonsense attached to it. I’ve stripped it down to just a single page, which I think will be enough to satisfy whatever interest remains in cryptic ol’ Kosh. Ask Kosh was a big hit back when Babylon 5 was still running new episodes – it even made a top 10 list in Total TV magazine.

“How can someone find me if no one knows I’m lost?” – You Dreamer, Big Country

If Stuart Adamson – the former frontman of my favorite band Big Country – were still alive, today would be his 50th birthday. But he died alone in a hotel room 7 years ago, in an apparent suicide while on an alcoholic binge, in the wake of his 2nd divorce. It’s an unfortunate aspect of human nature that the most creative and talented among us are more often than not tortured souls. As Wikipedia puts it, “In many ways, Adamson was the sound of Big Country, supplying much of its distinctive guitar work, as well as being lead singer and main songwriter (both music and lyrics). In terms of being an instrumentalist, a vocalist, and a prolific songwriter, he is matched by very few contemporaries…”

I wrote a post about his guitar skills and songwriting a couple years ago, so I won’t repeat myself here. Instead I’ll link you to two remarkably different live versions of The Storm, one of my favorite Big Country songs. I love the epic sweep of the lyrics. They capture a compelling sense of grim determination in dark times. The scene of communal loss conjured up by the song is timeless – it’s a story that could have taken place a thousand years ago or yesterday. And the guitar work is pretty cool too (I remember my college roommate being flummoxed by all the chord changes as he tried to figure out how to play it).

The first is an acoustic version, and the second is an electric guitar version (note the second one doesn’t really get going until about two minutes in).

Star Trek: Phase II – To Serve All My Days

Star Trek: Phase II – To Serve All My Days

I’m a few years late to the party, but last night, while searching for something totally unrelated, I accidentally discovered (and then watched) To Serve All My Days. It’s an episode in the fan produced series Star Trek – Phase II. It continues the original series, with fans playing the roles of the original cast. I have to say it was actually not bad. The fact that longtime Star Trek writer D.C. Fontana penned the script and that Walter Koenig reprised his role as a Chekov probably didn’t hurt. In this episode Chekov undergoes rapid aging, which is a convenient solution to Koening being 40 years older now than when he first played Chekov (but he’s not as old as he looks in the picture here! That’s all makeup). I was particularly impressed with how they ended the episode – it was a touching and unexpected conclusion.

The acting overall was amateurish, but not cringe inducing – no worse than some other sci-fi series that have been on TV (I’m thinking of shows like Andromeda and the 1st year of Babylon 5). I enjoyed James Calwey who played Kirk – he often seemed barely able to contain his glee, hamming up Kirk just like Shatner did. There were only two cast members I found distracting: Ben Tolpin Jeff Quinn as Spock, not because of his acting, but because of the horrific makeup/headgear he was wearing, and Charles Root as Scotty, also not because of his acting, but because he looks almost exactly like Dan Akroyd (I kept expecting him to break out into a Blues Brothers routine at any moment).

The sets for the ship were particularly impressive – they were indistinguishable from the original 1960s sets. In terms of special effects, a big thing the show has going for it is the natural point of comparison is the original series, so the bar is set low. Like the original series, they have folks leaping onto their faces and things falling from the ceiling to provide the impression of a space battle. Unlike the original series, they use cheesy CGI instead of cheesy models for the space scenes. One advantage this gives the new series, however, is the ability to do some sophisticated maneuvering of ships during the battle scenes, so that was fun to watch.

I’m writing this because I know there are at least a few Trek fans lurking around my site. This is the article I stumbled across about the show, which has some interesting background information (like why they aren’t in trouble with Paramount for making the series, and that J.J. Abrams dropped in one time to give them some tips). You can download episodes from the Star Trek: Phase II site.

A while back I confessed to my renewed interest in comics. Iron Man was my favorite when I first started reading comics in high school. Tony Stark is Iron Man, and he’s essentially the Batman of the Marvel universe: a billionaire industrialist with no superpowers, he becomes a superhero by means of his own ingenuity and limitless resources (refreshingly though, he doesn’t have Bruce Wayne’s brooding, morbid personality). What impressed me at the time was the bold and unconventional plot the series had going in the 80s:

The cover of Iron Man 182, when Tony Stark hits bottom as an alcoholic

…a ruthless rival, Obadiah Stane, manipulates him [Stark] emotionally into a serious relapse into alcoholism. As a result, Stark loses control of Stark International, becomes a homeless vagrant and gives up his armored identity to Rhodes, who becomes the new Iron Man for a lengthy period of time. Eventually, Stark recovers and starts a new company, Circuits Maximus. While Stark concentrates on new technological designs, Rhodes continues to act as Iron Man but steadily grows more aggressive and paranoid…

That kind of storytelling has become more common as the audience for comics has matured, but it definitely stood out in the 80s. I was amazed to see issue after issue with the main character as a homeless man. It wasn’t just a “social issue of the day” storyline that the writers dispensed with in a couple months. They didn’t shy away from the ugliness of alcoholism, as Stark inexorably lost his company, his fortune, and his friends.

I stopped reading comics after high school, and then started again last year with Civil War, and the new Iron Man series. I was astonished to learn that the original Iron Man series was canceled in 1996, after a 28 year run. That was the year Marvel went into bankruptcy due to mismanagement. I also learned that the current series is actually the fourth, following two ill-fated attempts to revive it. Iron Man was one of many titles that suffered as Marvel’s top talent left the company.

The new series is great – one of the best titles Marvel has going right now. Both the character and plot development are intricate and engaging. What’s annoying though is the distortion of Stark’s character when he makes appearances in other series. In Civil War he becomes almost unrecognizable, portrayed as a brutal fascist, willing to violate any and all ethical principals to force total compliance with the superhuman registration act. And in the otherwise fantastic Ultimates, where he always seems to have a martini in hand and a woman on his arm.

Unfortunately, he’s a self-caricature in the new movie trailer as well (available in hi res for Quicktime, or low res at YouTube). I was looking forward to when it became available online last week, but my heart sank as I watched it. The problem is that they turn Stark into an overgrown frat boy with a passion for things that go boom. He thinks it’s cool when a reporter refers to him as a “merchant of death,” and in a speech to some troops he proclaims he prefers weapons you have to use only once, as opposed to ones you don’t have to use at all. Compare that to the more faithful portrayal of his character in the current comic series. This is from an interview he’s having with a Michael Moore-like filmmaker, after the interviewer takes him to task for designing hi-tech landmines and “seedpod,” a daisy-cutter style bomb (click to enlarge) :

An interview with Tony Stark, from issue 1 of the 4th Iron Man series

Judging by the trailer, it seems likely you’re not going to get thoughtful dialog like that in the movie. Also, I have to admit while watching the trailer I went from just a sinking heart to an audible groan when my ears picked up the droning bass line of Black Sabbath’s Iron Man in the soundtrack. Being hit over the head with early 70s heavy metal is more than enough to take me out of the moment of the film. I can only hope that the song is just in the trailer and not the actual film.

I don’t understand how Marvel makes its decisions when bringing a comic series to the big screen. The flagship series Spider-man deservedly got top notch talent, substantial financial backing, and careful attention to the portrayal of the characters. So did the much more obscure series Blade. But then another flagship series, Fantastic Four, was made into not one, but two mediocre films that were far more cartoonish than the actual comic. Unfortunately, it looks like Iron Man is also getting the cartoonish treatment, just with a better cast.

Update: I’ve seen the movie since writing this post, and it was pretty good. Without giving anything away, Stark has an experience in the first part of the movie that changes his outlook, making him much less of a jerk. In the preview we only see him as a jerk, so I’m happy to report it was not representative of the overall film.

Kai and Maria made shrinky dinks of Kai’s favorite Avatar characters, Aang and Zuko16-Sep-2007 10:02SONY DSC-W55, 2.8, 6.3mm, 0.025 sec, ISO 100

I’m writing this post at Kai’s request. Tonight he and Maria made Shrinky Dink versions of Kai’s favorite characters from the Nickelodeon show Avatar: The Last Airbender. Maria sketched them and Kai colored them in. Kai is very proud of their work. (They’re not actually Shrinky Dinks though. We made them from the lids of take out sushi containers. You can use #6 plastic just like Shrinky Dinks).

I have to admit Avatar has become a guilty pleasure of mine. The target demographic is 6-11 year olds, but I think it’s actually more sophisticated than a lot of shows intended for adults. The world created for the show is rich in detail, and draws on a wide range of Eastern religions and history to shape its many cultural and supernatural aspects. As an example, the final episode of the second season revolves around Aang (a young boy, who is the main character) having to clear his seven chakras as a step in achieving his potential as the Avatar. I didn’t know much of anything about chakras going into it, but I looked it up afterwards, and it seemed like they actually made a reasonably faithful adaptation of the concept for the show.

What impresses me the most though is the quality of the show’s martial arts animation. Most animation I’ve seen comes up short when it comes to intricate physical movement, but Avatar doesn’t. What’s particularly impressive is that the animators bring to life the distinct styles used by characters from each of the show’s four nations: “The creators use Tai Chi for waterbending, Hung Gar for earthbending (although Toph employs a Chu Gar Southern Praying Mantis style), Northern Shaolin for firebending, and Ba Gua for airbending.”

Also, I’m a sucker for serialized epics with intricate plots. Each season of the show is presented as a book, with each episode being a chapter. The third season trailer below shows some of the maturing of the characters. Like a lot of shows these days, the main characters are kids, but unlike most others, they don’t behave unrealistically (setting aside their magical powers, of course). I also credit the writers for not shying away from how fast the characters are forced to grow up, given their situation. The Aang we see in the third season trailer seems a long way from the goofy kid he was in the first season.

Given the intensity of the trailer, I’m curious to see if the show loses any of the humor that nicely balanced the action and dramatic elements of the previous seasons. I imagine that writing humor gets harder as a story like this moves forward and the stakes just keep getting higher. But maybe that’s why I’m not a fiction writer . My bet is that they’ll pull it off.

Check out the trailer. The new episodes start airing next week.

The 2007 Nagisa Music Festival – Odaiba, Tokyo

The 2007 Nagisa Music Festival – Odaiba, Tokyo08-Apr-2007 15:11Canon Canon PowerShot S230, 10, 10.8125mm, 0.003125 sec,

About a week and a half ago we spent the day in Odaiba, and stumbled across the Nagisa Music Festival, which took place in an enormous parking lot across the street from the architecturally unique Fuji TV building. The festival lasted 2 days and featured about 50 artists on 6 different stages, with styles from House to Reggae to Rock. A goal of the festival was to raise environmental awareness (which you may or may not have figured out from the japlish on the flag) – all of the electricity used to power the festival’s equipment, lights, etc. came from biodiesel.

The area was overrun with Tokyo’s cool kids. I would have loved to have gone in and checked it out, but we had the boys with us and the admission was 4000 yen (about $35), so we had to pass it by.

If you happen to find yourself in Osaka on April 29, a 1 day version of the festival will be happening there.