having been a gravure idol gives her a slight edge, which is manifest in the promotional video, where for some reason she is the only girl in a badass boys school, casually waving behind them as the beatup bodies pile up. look at her moon eyes as she smiles! too cute!

and should i mention she always wears her glasses? not quite so cute without them, or the very 80s idol look that tsunku has foisted on her. to be rated somewhere between the annoying buriko of ayaya and the “i am pissed off” of ex-soloist mikitty.

Create your own Music List @ HotFreeLayouts!

what was i trying to achieve with this? after fiddling with it for ages, i decided i just wanted album covers with little or no words on them. actually a design with the artist’s name plastered in big letters is pretty ugly anyway.

oh for heaven’s sake, he could have spent a few dollars at an internet cafe for more time than our one hour a day maximum. also just bloody ridiculous going around the rules and making us run around just for free access. and to compound, when he was done, he came up to the desk and waved the library card wordlessly in my face. “what do you want,” i said tersely, even though i already knew. filled out the paperwork for his twenty dollar refund, cancelled his membership, collected the cash from the workroom and handed it back to him. but he had another question, could he borrow any books? aaaaarggghhh

lately i’m obsessed with the idea of watching more films. i’m trying out quickflix, which sounds like an australian ripoff of netflix. i have a ridiculous 100+ titles in my queue, which makes me think i might subscribe to it monthly, rather than have to scramble around video store closing times and their small selection. in the mail already is harold and kumar and i’ll sleep when i’m dead. hope they can find me a copy of times square soon.

joel plaskett touches down on australian soil for the first time for shows with fellow canadian hawksley workman and the awful grunt of russell crowe. after kathleen edwards came to australia, i figured it might only be time before joel did. such a long time coming. you know, in some selfish ways i still clutch onto him as that lanky dude from thrush hermit.

i was listening to the jp emergency’s last album, truthfully truthfully, on the way to work this morning. as in the song all the pretty faces, sometimes i think perth has the same trajectory as his hometown, halifax - everyone leaves, or wishes they could. and i know that old thrush hermit song, c’mon teacher, that they never recorded together, but joel took the liberty to put it on his solo album. and years ago, we were sending him letters and foreign cash to buy his albums.

and then dylan moran has three shows in melbourne.

“he wrote three series of the brilliant Black Books sitcom that, in my view, constitutes one of the few good arguments for having a television.”

“you’ll be better off with this abercrombie and fitch crowd. i’m too salvation army for you.”

“if the script is really going to go as written, then we’ll get more lines like that out of deadpan clive owen. because it’s really quite weird when he turns the comedy on - remember the “star” bmw short with madonna? when he starts playing up (”look ma no hands”) i think i’m actually laughing at clive.

“sorry pal, i don’t have time to wait for you to get brain cancer from the electro-magnetic field created by your phone.”

alright, it’s funnier when in the context of the script. but it looks like possible copious amounts of violence and gun play, and it’s a new line film too?!? and paul giamatti as the villain? goddamn, i can’t wait.

(btw, who needs bond anyway? just splint all the bmw films together, and it’s the best film ever, minus all the boring side plots and women.)

the new chimpanzee is out! if you can get your hands on one, it’s a nicer full bleed comic book size (and yes, there are plenty of comic book reviews inside too).

there’s a japanese hip hop special that i wrote (well, only the ones i think are worth listening to, no bling bling please) plus a review of inside man (i would be so happy if we returned to the state of american movies in the 80s when mainstream film was well thought out and done well).

download issue 5 from the pdf archive.

man, these shitty pictures be old. so i picked the least corny one.

from vikki’s blog (of the clothing/publishing/management/artist group silly thing) - grace ip is making a comeback!

while it’s nothing like a suzuki ami situation, she had reportedly been blacklisted by her record company, eeg, after publicly admitting she was in a relationship with songwriter eric kwok. nothing bad about that in itself, but idols in hong kong don’t let their zealous fans on about who they’re dating, since it’s seen to affect popularity and sales (andy lau is over forty now, but has never acknowledged rumoured relationships with actresses or the supposed wife from malaysia). eeg is powerful, nonetheless.

her eeg compatriot, joey yung, started out in the business about the same time, and is now the top female artist in hong kong.

meanwhile, i really would like a worst actors ever page, but this will do for the time being.

and i’m being totally serious when i say i can’t wait until scary movie 4 opens here next week. craig bierko does tom ryan does tom cruise. i’m sold! is bierko doing more comedy these days because he has big googly eyes, which cannot get him any decent scripts lately (well other than cinderella man, in which it sounds like he was not very chummy with russell, which is fine by me).

one of these people is clive owen. which one i do not know

i love writing. i have spent most of my weekend writing, apart from going out for hotcakes, antique window shopping (not about buying windows), and watching sin city. what other device can i use to describe sin city other than words? words are my staple.

why didn’t i see this film at the cinema? work and/or hearing about people walking out of it halfway. but it isn’t even like that - maybe i’m desensitised, because the violence is cartoonish, the blood alternately white, yellow and red that it just doesn’t matter anymore. what a world! what a digital comic book! thankfully nothing like robocop 2 and 3 (adaptations of frank miller’s other work).

my brother: “borrowed bride and prejudice… the indian one… and alfie. they are not my choices.”

go out and watch inside man, even if you aren’t that fond of denzel washington. there are so many tiny details to mention - street name allusions, “we will not forget”, ethnicities, camera work… it’s probably just me, but i was overjoyed to pick up on the trail spike lee left behind.

most of the time i just smile and pretend it’s okay, but maybe i would be a more memorable person, for better or worse, if i let ‘em know how pissed i was, really. nice just fades into the background, sometimes. unpleasant things just have more salience.

and oh man, this person on youtube has the awesomest videos. there’s too much. thank you!

“hi i’m izzy stradlin”
“don’t sign to a major”
viewmaster
how can i forget that asshole looking presenter, or this band and besides, drew yamada is hot

serious musical influences listed here. and out.

1. my brother got married last wednesday

2. band tryout today

3. the silents ep launch! i finally have a copy of flicker and flames

3. i am so not going to my high school reunion next year. let me disappear off the face of the earth… the high school world anyway.

“fucking orientalist place,” i mutter as we pass.

Probably not. It’s nothing personal. Librarians aren’t usually into people who spend time going to a library. Besides, are you really attracted to the librarian, or are you just attracted to the fact that they work at a library?

ha ha!

i love you matt dillon, but… no.

i’m so pissed that crash won best picture (even their website is irritating). but i’m not alone: filmbrain was certainly annoyed, giving an ice cube film as a better alternative; while all these wonderful things summarised the feelings of many others.

it’s not that i wanted another film in particular to take out the prize, but not this condescending film about race for whiteys. uh huh, that’s what i mean.

from now on, who cares who wins an oscar if it’s you and your best friends (several hundred of them) voting for your film? (of course i am speculating, but it’s a wild guess just like the chance of this film winning an academy award)

but for all of that, there was jon stewart, the frat pack, stephen colbert narrating the “campaign” ads, phillip seymour hoffman and a glimpse of dan futterman.

firstly, the new issue of the chimpanzee is out! for those of you who aren’t able to get hold of an actual copy, look up the pdf archive for the file name “Chimpanzee_4_lores.pdf”. my article is the four page spread on perth indie music. when i look at it, i think i could’ve changed the odd word, or profiled more bands, but i think it’s pretty representative and well worth the sleep lost.

secondly, i recently subscribed to hyphen magazine, an asian-american pop political magazine of sorts. i think i just wanted some more meat than giant robot could offer, and stuff like audrey magazine is too poxy to consider. the fact that my brother took it off me to read is a pretty good indication as to its interestingness, seeing as the only reading material he usually touches has engines in it. there’s a well written piece about the vietnamese americans in the wake of the katrina disaster. in lieu of a decent australian publication (except for the alien invader zine by jen tsen kwok and amin-reza javanmard), i don’t mind sending a few dollars over there.

thirdly, christopher hitchens. if you read my old blog i think i posted once how i find him weirdly attractive, even when he is displaying one of his vices on the cover (the other is rumoured alcoholism, though i could care less unless he were pissed when writing). this particular book is a series of ‘mentoring’ chapters, kind of like chatty letters on ethics and politics that meander a bit, just like a good letter should. while i get antsy at his constant nitpicking (if you have not read all the classics, oh poor you), there are some hopeful notes at being oppositional when it seems the hardest thing to do, and a bit of wry humour.

lastly, the new album from roger joseph manning jr, or just plain roger manning. the connection is jellyfish and imperial drag, and it’s the kind of pop i would expect from jon brion and jason falkner and more. previously a net only release, now on pony canyon in japan (import on not lame), and later in the year, the us? final verdict on the music is very good.

there’s something very majolica majorca about this design (joey yung’s “ten most wanted” album), down to the mirror containing the eye with elongated lashes. what are they selling, makeup or music (or joey yung)?

that’s what i dislike about hong kong album covers - they seem to pinch things with little imagination (shya-la-la is a pretty bad offender), but i’m forgetting music is an overly commercial production thing over there. images that sell.

mad hatter’s tea party wahey. the price on the mad hatter’s hat is wrong. but we still managed to win best dressed table. crazy library people.

hana presents alice with her first magazine cover - alice looks closer at the “dot” on her nose…

melmo is a ficticious magazine created for the film, and is also a replica of olive!

even the cover tag line is taken from an old issue, replacing ‘olive girls’ with ‘melmo girls’…

olive is now defunct, ceasing publication after the aug 2003 issue, but the film hana and alice was released in 2004 so somewhere during filming their paths crossed. it’s a pity the reference came out too late to keep it alive.

i’ve kept all my old issues, a couple of years’ worth. what i liked most about the magazine was the concordance of culture. if you possess a certain aesthetic, their style of dressing will appeal to you, and the music and films suggested will already strike a chord.

rip slyme, okuda tamio, and ego wrappin’ are some of the musicians covered in issues. of course there was some creep in by hello project’s matsuura aya and johnny’s talent, but they were mostly for cuteness factor. photographer ninagawa mika used to have a monthly page, collaborating with writer sakurai ami. mangaka minami q-ta had a monthly comic, and naomi lemon (nao of seagull screaming kiss her kiss her) also had her own page of drawings.

so if it follows the rule, then hana and alice, and by extension, shunji iwai’s films, all belong in that world of olive girls culture.

the efficient promotion team behind the silents has posted the video of nightcrawl to youtube. oh, it’s too much - damn damn damn damn. you know that selfish feeling you get, not wanting to share them with anyone else (that is you, rest of australia)? but yet they must be heard.

tiny japanese man, apologizing for his “broken english” when he need not. when damo said to come closer to the stage, we did. even though the words sung are not words but improvised, my ears kept picking up ‘new ways’. that’s what i wanted to hear, i guess. and he’d clap towards us and at the band at the end of songs (or ten minute freakouts, if you like) and had the tigers bow together with him at the end. i don’t need anything artificial (unlike the guy in the crowd rocking noticably forwards and backwards) because it’s all unity.

interview from last year. the bands that make up his network are ’sound carriers’. and “most important is ambition which brings positive energy”.

waitress at les deux moulins who looks like…

bookclub with stina over 2706 kms

“if we had those waterloo sunset pills there would be no neeed for anti depressants. “

cassette culture

novala takemoto translations, especially about old fashioned letter writing and this: “The beginning of love is unrequited love, and the root of love is when your partner fixes a little image of you in a beautiful misunderstanding. “

thank god i’m not working tomorrow

somehow i opened my fat trap and from the frog footman became alice in wonderland after one of the other girls at the library couldn’t make it. i am going to be alice in wonderland! it is going to be food table of many judged by ian parmenter. we will have heart tarts, a cheshire cat, teapots and a spare place at the table. i almost feel like i’ve got a part to play and a princess attitude to ignore. and none of that disney whitewash here. maybe i won’t get a blond wig and be a black haired alice. nobody at my workplace is a natural blonde anyway.

edit: while “researching” (now i know what an alice band is), i end up reading designer kato’s points. “do not make your image by yourself” i.e. don’t be so quick to judge what looks good and what doesn’t on you.

i always think i don’t look cute, and i’m overgrown and have my father’s face, but here’s an opportunity to try some new things. i just don’t want to wear the 80s puff sleeve ballgown that one of the librarians brought in though.

my mum picked up the phone the night before while i was out. “this is rachael’s mum. don’t call her anymore, she doesn’t like it.” bang!

i saw him in front of me as i got off the train morning - oh shit i was walking as slow as i could. feeling creeped out again, thinking he might have spotted me and could be hiding around some corner.

i had a dream where i could improv so well musically i was watching myself in the third person. i could even wear those tiny vintage dresses all those other cute girls wear. and probably because neither of those is true i had a very long pointed nose.

naturally since finding youtube like other lost fools, i’ve been watching lots of stupid videos online, and i have so little irony to offer

• the barking cat (i can’t believe you haven’t seen it yet)
• god i love her voice - it’s halfway between a baby and an old woman
• i find nothing excrutiating about 80s synth pop or the overblowness (i’m thinking twice about covering it though - why did everyone else have to do it - yoshikawa hinano, boyracer, tommy february6 etc)
• i reserve the least irony for them

see, nobody is as cute as they think they are.

i made myself go to the big day out last sunday. it was hot. i got sunburnt in stupid places. i left straight after sleater-kinney, who made the day for me (i can’t stop saying how much i still love carrie brownstein). everyone was using phone cameras and digital cameras/slrs to take pictures. i felt like an anachronism with my old yashica. (but film forever etc etc)

and i’ve been spending time with this lovely duo while they’re in town. today was lunch in central park along with the two chris’s, and jasper was smearing strawberry everywhere.

it was so hot again that my eyeliner ran riot, but i feel like i could take on the world.

but the web is ephemera, what’s the point?

i started this line of thought because i picked up my parents from the airport today, after they spent chinese new year with my grandmother (she gets worse every twelve months, mum said, and she got upset when i told her that her mother had gone to heaven a long time ago. it’s cyclical though. there’s a new baby, three kids who actually scare it with peekaboo games, and another baby on the way.).

my grandmother looked after these twins years ago. mum doesn’t remember their names. i can’t get over the wistful look of the one resting on the blinds. please let me out! i wonder where they are now?

my cousins and some other kids posing for the camera. i don’t think i had been born yet when this photo was taken.

after joining a major label (sony) i was worried halcali were going to turn into singing puffy twins, what with tip tap tips and all.

but their flow is back with the oshare track factory in tow (two of our favourite members of rip slyme). twinkle star is the best song since baby blue, i say. i suddenly feel like some doughnuts…

after the meeting finished, there wasn’t much point driving all the way back to work again, so i took the opportunity to go op shopping. i almost bought a very transparent white skirt, but decided that the creator had actually used their old lace curtains on the bottom and decided not to. but i did pick up this book as a consolation, nick drake songs tabbed for guitar. but i’ve listened to very little nick drake, making it an opportunity to hear some more.

the cover image is strange. fuzzy, like out of focus, but like the light behind him has caused it. maybe i read too much into looking at pictures of dead people.

the new issue of the chimpanzee is out! or at least you can view it online. follow the “links” on the right hand side to the pdf archive, and the chimpanzee 3 (lo res ver) is what you want! shiina ringo obsessed is me!

(*except for issue 2 when i decided to get very sick and just wrote some record reviews instead)

i bought these. i canna help myself! i too want to be in japan wearing jay striped sleeve shirts! even though the palais royale is in toronto. and, you know, money city maniacs is my favourite video clip evarrrrr, and i dig the chopped up album cover idea stolen from polish artwork. or was that czech?

and so for the unintiated, may i present my favourite band…

worried now from 1994’s ‘twice removed’
it’s relatively cold and detached, that’s why i like it

everything you’ve done wrong from 1997’s ‘one chord to another’
my favourite song from my favourite band?

on the horizon from 1998’s ‘navy blues’
the breakdown/buildup & spastic solo

summer’s my season ‘don’t you believe a word’ b-side
man singing a spoof about effeminate things. also good to sing at the top of your lungs

false alarm from 2003’s ‘action pact’
the surprise package from that album

as other people working here have told me, and as i have witnessed myself, there are more than a few people who visit the library who are mentally deficient. you know, people who come up to the desk and babble on about shipbuilding, even though you never said a word to them to initiate; or the one who thinks ‘the people upstairs’ are stopping him from accessing the betting website…

i was joking the other day about the subject shelf marker for ’social issues’ in the library supplies catalogue, saying we should stick one permanently on the front desk instead. which could be interpreted in two ways: a) old people who come to talk to librarians at the issues desk; b) general weird people.

so as a general rule, working in a library is not going to find you love, it looks for loons for you. although if i worked in a library in a higher socio-economic area, i would bitch less about the appalling state of the stock (found cigarette burns in a book the other day) and the people, and we would get nice donations of middlebrow and highbrow titles that would otherwise go to one of those elizabeth’s secondhand bookshops.

after i get out of here at eight, it will take me forty-five minutes to drive home or thereabouts, afterwards i eat the pasta i prepared the night before, maybe change clothes if i feel my librarian duds today aren’t good enough for the amplifier, rush over to the eight dollar carpark and catch ash naylor playing solo. i’m really excited about it, opposite to the way i’m shitted about work lately (i love my work, but this old man is really bothering me). ash is playing three times in town, and i’m secretly aiming to go to all of them. maybe, cos i kinda stick out due to my ethnicity and i’m embarassingly in the front all the time.

down with communism! bring on western capitalistic ventures! (well not really)

looks like someone actually agrees with me (see my comments in the pk14 review thing). from jon campbell’s foreign devil column in popmatters:

Chinese punk got a lot of attention in the late ’90s, and into this millennium, based on — as in the case of most punk — the completely visceral nature of it and the implications of revolution that it signalled for anyone whose experience with China did not extend past the local takeout joint. Children of communism and Tiananmen in leather, studs, and Mohawks, screaming bloody murder . . . or something, who could tell (whether it was English or Chinese)? What foreign correspondent could resist? But they seemed to overlook one small detail: With a few exceptions, the music was crap.

and in other crap music, china has discovered what reality television does for music sales. the winner makes me wonder if the girls of china are secretly gay but won’t admit it, because her vocal skills and interpretation are really quite average (hearing her sing bryan adams kills me). what else are they going for? the new york times thinks it’s rebellion, but like that stinker of punk, i think he’s got the wrong idea.

the one on the top reminds me of old government ads, and the other one is unconvincing hippy shit.

despite the archaic hardware pictured, the one on top is still applicable - people want answers to questions but they still don’t know what they are looking for. how can they search if they don’t know the basic concepts? “google is good, but a librarian is better!”

the worst is when people expect you to find all the answers for them (aka do an assignment) without thinking out the question or bothering to do any legwork. or looking up stupid crap like american indian tribes or names (uh, we have a great section on aboriginal history and culture, we don’t have books on that).

and this has nothing to do with it, but it’s really fucking annoying when people think they can ask you out because they see you all the time working at the library. a drink after work is a drink only, and if you are old enough to be my father, you should know your limits! sheez!

so perth is off the map for most people, including the person who wrote the wiki entry. no really, i don’t blame them, because as long as shopkeepers keep storing their rubbish bins at the gate of chinatown, it’s total trash. or is that “chinatown”? because if you ask the (white) councillors at the city of perth council, chinatown is in fact the other section of northbridge, the long stretch of francis st, where i suppose rent is cheaper and the flow of traffic means there are always people passing by.

chinatown is pretty archaic concept anyway, since it often includes businesses that aren’t necessarily chinese; nor should it be exclusive. why chinese dominance? what is it a symbol of ? success in the new land? did chinatowns originate because chinese businessmen were the ones who had enough money to build the structures and the signifying gates?

of course there’s a greater historical significance in the chinatowns in the eastern states, but perth’s one seems so arbitrary. correct me if i’m wrong though.

yesterday i brought home from the op shop a black floral shirt (thick cotton, reminds me of 80s shirts?) which looked new except there were no buttons. i thought i’d try because i liked the pattern so much, even though i sew nothing. when i got to it there were blue marker dots where the buttons should’ve been, so the previous owner had thought about putting buttons on, but had probably given up and shuffled it off instead. just small things like these, similar to finding homemade 60s clothing, the stitches giving it away.

i got complimented by a tiny old lady whilst wearing one of those, the blue and green polyester peasant top. maybe it’s the familiarity of the costume paired with someone younger. she was my idea of a cool old lady; i often think i would be one too, but first i have to get through the next forty years of my life.

“if i were a drag queen i would be ruth fisher.”

i wonder if my op shopping habits are leading me that way.

and i wanna go sit in that big old rose garden near my old uni.

now all i have to do is wake up at an appropriate hour (six feet under is still depriving me of sleep).

that has little bearing on the quality of writing, but until it opens here on feb 16…

a go go!

i really love old shaw brothers films, which i usually catch in passing on cable tv. i don’t mind the odd david chiang/ti lung bust up either. weirdly enough, my father thinks they’re old hat and changes the channel, but everything old is new for me anyway.

i only saw the end of hong kong nocturne, but old fashioned songs about hong kong (the place that erases your troubles in the mist?) given a beat twist? and of course the saturated colour and lavish sets…

more pictures here and a little about musicals in hong kong
about hong kong nocturne

if you haven’t noticed already, most of the entries have turned into music-related posts, cos that’s my specialty, yeah?

because what am i going to talk about except ramble inanely about popular culture and general things that shit me? for that kind of thing, i’m surprised that krista is still keeping a journal at the same tripod site, with exactly the same design (i don’t mind, cos i’m over redesigns anyway, too much like work).

and i find myself rereading isabelle’s old entries (i was listening to similar music at that time, when the halifax scene was at its peak, so if joel plaskett, the super friendz, sloan, gaven dianda i mean flashing lights…).

anyway, i’ve been watching a lot of six feet under (hooray for interlibrary loan), since i never got into it when it was on tv (but i do remember thinking, ‘who is that handsome cast member’ when i saw them win an emmy). life and death run concentric circles around each other (death in the family who run a funeral home, who help people in their time of grief).

ketchup - in love again

so here you are, a couple of tracks from ketchup’s 2005 release:

spring time
hot shower

i think it’s time for a mailorder for me…

found it while looking up photos of streetroar, held recently in kuala lumpur. while you already know i love false alarm, word is that subs is amazing.