Sunday songs and cinema

All the other cool comrades and revolutionary cadres will be at the virtual Marxist-Lennonist Party HQ on Sunday for music and movies. You should be there too, tovarich -- to do otherwise would be counterrevolutionary! Join us in Second Life at The Red Zeppelin or on Radio Woodshed.
This week the Glorious People's Cinema Project wraps up out Burt Lancaster series with the story of a very American coup d'etat "Seven Days in May"



Music from 5 pm PDT/ 8 EDT, movie from 7 pm PDT/10 EDT

If it's Friday, this must be a ukulele video

(nevermind if the date up top says Saturday, I live in the future, and it is still Friday for you)

Ol' Satchmo could certainly pick a tune, and Danielle's sweet voice is enough to give any one ideas. Have a nice weekend.

"I bet I can eat 50 eggs gyoza"

On Sunday afternoon, I returned to one of my favorite restaurants in Tokyo. You won't likely find it in any guidebook and, to be honest, I don't even know its name, but if you find yourself in the Kameido area of Tokyo, just look around near the station for a tiny dive in a side alley across from the train station with a long line outside and you will know you've found The Gyoza Joint.
It isn't much to look at. It is a dingy, slightly dirty, run-down place a little larger than your average basement rec room with a long narrow U-shaped counter running two thirds the length of the place and a raised tatami straw mat-covered platform running along the wall by the door. At the top of the U, next to the door is the open kitchen, a space with just enough room for two men to stand in front of a row of hot cast-iron pans about the size and shape of trash can lids. They don't need a lot of room for a lot of equipment

Those wooden boxes hold uncooked gyoza and they went through a stack of them that reached the ceiling in the half hour we were there. Even on a cool spring day with the doors open it's hot and humid inside. The walls are slightly sticky and the table we sit cross legged and shoeless at is cheap formica with squeeze bottles for the condiments - the holy trinity of soy sauce, vinager and hot chili oil - straight from the 100 yen shop. A stained, hand-lettered piece of card spells out the prices in multiples of 250 yen.

Remember that old Saturday Night Live bit with John Belushi as the counterman in the Greek diner? It didn't matter what people wanted, they got cheeseburgers, chips and "No Coke, Pepsi". Belushi would bellow out "cheeseburg! cheeseburg! cheeseburg!Pepsi! Pepsi!" and the cook, three feet away, usually played by Dan Ackroyd with a cigarette dangling from his lip would dutifully shout back "cheeseburg! cheeseburg! cheeseburg! Pepsi! Pepsi!" as he threw more patties on the grill. Belushi would urge chatty or indecisive customers along with "Cmon, cmon, we got to have turnover!"
Imagine that in Japanese with a couple of plump old ladies hollering "Gyoza! gyoza! beer! beer!" and you have an idea of the atmosphere. You don't even order here, except for drinks. You just wave for another plate of the finest cheap gyoza in town - five to a 250 yen plate - or another quart bottle of ice cold Asahi or a Birley's Orange Soda. (They might serve something else but I've never seen it). Fresh plates arrive like clockwork until you start to slow down and when the feeding frenzy ends, the waitress counts the plates and empty bottles and hands you the bill.

If you don't know what gyoza is, first let me express my pity. Poor you. Moving right along, gyoza are Chinese dumplings similar to shu-mai, but in Japan they are usually pan-fried instead of steamed or boiled. For those of you completely unfamiliar with asian cuisine, think of little envelopes of fresh pasta stuffed with ground pork, cabbage, ginger and garlic and then fried/flash-steamed in a pan until the bottom is just started to turn brown and crisp, and top is al dente. They are sometimes called Chinese pot-stickers in North America, I suppose because they stick to the bottom of the pot if you aren't careful.

And they are easy to make at home. We buy the frozen wrappers at the grocery store for the sake of convenience, but the wrappers are not hard to make either. This is the best recipe I've found so far.  

In Japan, you find them everywhere - in convenience store bento lunches, frozen in the grocery store or fresh made in the deli section and they are a staple item on the menu in  izakayas (Japanese pubs). They are a common item in the many sorts of gluttony contests held here all the time (Eating machine Joey Chestnut set the world record last year at 231 gyoza in ten minutes in LA) and there is even a sort of gyoza theme park where you can try a dozen different kinds of gyoza with different fillings (shrimp is delicious!)

We also went to a small festival to mark the start of the Golden Week holidays in Japan at this little shrine

There were all the usual food stalls selling takoyaki octopus balls, corn on the cob and flavored shaved ice, but the best looking was the trout-on-a-stick booth,  because everything tastes better on a stick.

(all photos by my nine year old son Kentaro, except the close up of the gyoza)

Rocket in your pocket

I've pointed out many times that Japanese Television has some very weird stuff on it you would just never ever see in North America. One popular family program is Kasou Taishou, a sort of odd costume/sketch competition that groups from across the country enter in an effort to get on television. The first clip shows some winners and its easier to show it than to explain it.



This is the latest winner in the humor category - not something you'd see on North American television.

tip of the fez to Nakaima Oh

Ouch

A terrible accident, certainly -- but made worse by the name of the daily newspaper reporting the incident.

Secretary accidentally bites off boss’ penis
A SECRETARY accidentally bit off the penis of her employer while giving him oral sex in a car.
Sin Chew Daily and China Press reported yesterday that while the 30-year-old woman was performing oral sex on the man, the car was hit by a reversing van.

Failure to study stereotypes endangers teen bigot

If this kid was any kind of really serious bigot, he'd have looked past the immediate stereotype of asian immigrants as studious bookworms and looked at the older "all those people know kung fu" stereotype or the even older "godless communists for whom human life has no value" stereotype or the even older "all those people are inscrutable opium-peddling crime lords" stereotypes and steered clear. What is our nation coming to when we can't we even educate our bigots in proper racial stereotyping? I blame multiCULTuralism and LIEbrals and OMIGOD there are ChiComs under the bed! It's Mao and Ho Chi Minh! I think Fu Manchu sent them! Run for your lives!AAAHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!


Huh? Wha...unhhhh..Where am I? What just happened?
Sorry, I think I was possessed by the spirit of Ezra Levant or Kathy Shaide or Miller Freeman or James Phelan or something for a moment there, I hope I didn't get any bile on you. Where was I? Oh yeah, the ignorant teen bigot who got pwned. I first learned of this story a few days ago and I can't say the subsequent release of further information has done much to change my opinion. The young Korean-Canadian boy should get some sort of medal for showing restraint and not hospitalizing the nitwit bully:

"He had heard his white classmate throw an angry racial slur in his direction after an argument during a gym class game of speedball, and now the student was shoving him backward, refusing to retract the smear.
The white student swung first, hitting the 15-year-old with a punch to the mouth.
The 15-year-old heard his father's voice running through his head: Fight only as a last resort, only in self-defence, only if given no choice, and only with the left hand.
His swing was short and compact, a left-handed dart that hit the white student square on the nose.
The nose broke under his fist, igniting a sequence of events - from arrest to suspension to possible expulsion - that has left the Asian student and his family wondering whether they are welcome in this small, rural and mostly white community north of Toronto, one that has been touched by anti-Asian attacks in the past."

And his schoolmates deserve the same for walking out in support when he was suspended over the incident.

On Monday, 400 of his fellow students, wearing black in solidarity and carrying signs of support, walked out of Keswick High School to rally in protest in front of their school.
Organizer Mathew Winch, a Grade 12 student, said the school has fewer than 10 Asian students, but everyone wanted to stand up against bullying and racism. The story even hit the front page of local newspapers.
After the public outcry, the York Regional Police hate crimes unit reopened the case. Although the other student has not been charged, further charges are possible, a spokesman said yesterday.

And grudging kudos to the York School Board for doing the right thing in the end, even if it took them awhile to get around to it and they were backed into a corner by the students of Keswick High School, their parents and the media. Let just hope the local crown prosecutor sees things the same way.

However, aside from the obvious appeal of the "bully-finds-out-the-hard-way-that-Clark-Kent-is-Superman" angle of the story, there was another aspect of it that caught my eye. This family of recent immigrants clearly understand Canada and the essentials of the Canadian ideal better than a few people around Keswick (and a lot of blogging tories).

The day after the fight, an older cousin of their son's antagonist approached him in the school cafeteria and uttered a similar slur, compounding their sense of despair.
"He said, 'You punched my cousin you Chinese fuck,' " the 15-year-old said. That student was overheard by a teacher and suspended.
His father explains that the easiest course would be to move somewhere else and get a fresh start for his son. But he can't do it.
"I don't want to run away. If another Asian kid comes to this school, what happens to him? Will he run into problems? Will they think they can just kick him out? I don't want to set that example," he said.
"Personally, for my kid, I should move. But as a Canadian I cannot move."

How's that for "Canadian" Raphael?

(quoted material taken from the Globe and Mail)

accidental YouTube comedy

I'm not sure if I can bring myself to watch all seven parts of the video, but the description is intriguing, given how its been categorized

"Bill Wiese saw the searing flames of hell, felt total isolation, and experienced the putrid and rotting stench, deafening screams of agony, terrorizing demons, and finally, the strong hand of God lifting him out of the pit."
Category: Entertainment

Hurry hard!

Not to be outdone by RossK's curling tribute, here is another song about people who spend the winter throwing rocks at houses.



(And while the post's title is common exhortation out on the slab, I still think it would make a great title for a curling themed adult film containing numerous jokes about "getting your rocks off.")

Sunday at the Red Zeppelin

A feast for the ears and eyes again this Sunday night as I spin some stuff from the mucho fabuloso NEW BOB DYLAN ALBUM and some things old, new, borrowed and blue. The Glorious People's Cinema Project will be screening the very funky 1964 western  "The Professionals" with Lee Marvin, Woody Strode, Claudia Cardinale and Burt Lancaster. Music from 5 Pacific/8 Eastern. Movie starts at 7 Pacific/10 Eastern.

Join us in Second Life for the dancing and plotting of revolution aboard the Marxist-Lennonist Party's airborne HQ or click on the radio for the music and watch the movie right here.

"This machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender"

Happy 90th birthday Pete Seeger - our Spiritual Leader of the Moment.

Seeger has long been one of my heroes and he was the first Spiritual Leader of the Moment back when I had my first webpage on Geocites over a dozen years ago.

This 1967 performance was Seeger's first appearance on television in years following his blacklisting in the 50's -- and they still censored him, chopping out his mid-set rendition of "Waistdeep in the Big Muddy" and sparking a controversy. He was invited back to perform the song, which did finally air, but the show was cancelled soon afterward, despite high ratings, and replaced with HeeHaw.






I've had the privilege of seeing Pete Seeger perform twice and as I've often said, I'm glad he's on our side. Give him five minutes in front of a crowd and he can make them do just about anything he wants. Thankfully, he has always used this power for good. While Woody Guthrie was a rambling, gambling, hard-travelling, hard-drinking guy who collected a handful of wives in his time and whose guitar "killed fascists", his travelling partner, Pete Seeger was a teetotalling, pacifist who married a Japanese girl during World War Two and did time briefly for refusing to name names to Joe McCarthy. The insigna on his banjo said "this machine surrounds hate and forces it to surrender."
As I reckon these things, he's probably one of the greatest living Americans. Happy Birthday Pete!






More interviews here, and knowing all his history, if this latest work of his doesn't bring a tear to your eye, then the problem is with you, not Seeger. For more music, tune into Radio Woodshed, where I'll be playing Pete Seeger stuff all day long.

we're doomed

A tip of the hat to my old TESL foxhole buddy Ms. Mays - You're loud, crude and obnoxious and I love you a ton. We miss you over here.

Weekend ukulele blogging

ukes at the movies!

Take that RossK!

In other surprising news, water found to be 'wet'

If it's a day that ends with a "Y" Michelle Malkin must be outraged about something.

Right-wing nutjob Michelle Malkin is upset that Antonia Zerbisais made a joke about someone, maybe even Dick Cheney, shooting her.

Not that she needs me to defend her, in fact it's like a Boy Scout troop acting as bodyguards to the SAS, but the Divine Ms. Z has apparently fallen afoul of the conservative outrage machine as the poster girl for the unhinged has released her flying monkeys. (read the hilarious comments)
Apparently, IOKIYAR rules are still in effect. It's okay for Canada's Lowest Common Dominatrix and the rest of the right wing shriekosphere on both sides of the border to joke about or actually call for the death of various journalist, politicians and massive numbers of brown or brownish people and their sympathizers, but if a Canadian journalist Twitters a bit of wordplay on Marxists and marksmen and suggests a rabid Pomeranian of the Right be sent hunting with Dick Cheney, well that's a hate crime and she's worse than Hitler and Stalin combined.
And naturally, the first response of the champion of rugged individualism and freedom when someone makes a mean joke about her is to run crying to the principal. Typical. I'm surprised we haven't yet been informed of what kind of countertops grace the Zerbisais' household.

Doubtless the wingnuts will shriek and jump up and down and hold their breath until they get what they want, and in the end La Zerb will probably have to make a pro forma apology of some sort. She should not, and her employer should not bend to the histrionics of the wingnut outrage machine. The Right should grow a skin and learn to take a fraction of what they dish out.

Stephen Taylor's original post linked above has it about right - it was a dumb thing to say, but it was said in an off-the-cuff forum (Twitter) not in her newspaper column, it was obviously a joke and not some sinister call for Malkin to be assasinated, and last time I checked people in both Canada and the United States had a right to free speech.

If the right feel that Zerbisais should apologize or be fired for a lame Twitter joke about wishing Dick Cheney would shoot Michelle Malkin, consistency demands that they first insist that Ann Coulter be punished in some fashion for wishing in syndicated print (and repeating it endlessly on television) that Tim McVeigh had blown up the New York Times building.

Otherwise, they should STFU

"cough, cough, oink" or "GOP voted for aporkalypse"

While everyone is running around with their hair on fire over the coming swine flu apocalypse aka Teh Aporkalypse, I think it is worth point out that the Republicans, in addition to delaying the appointment of the Secretary of Health and Human Services because she isn't an anti-abortion nut who thinks that life begins when daddy has dirty thoughts or mommy puts on a low cut dress or short skirt, voted to strip funding for anti-pandemic measures from the stimulus bill. Like volcano monitoring, they thought it was some silly egghead thing that only helped a bunch of nerds in white lab coats buy new slide rules or something.
They should all be locked in a flu ward in Mexico City for the next week or two.

Sunday songs and cinema

Sunday night is Radio Woodshed night - thought tonight's show may be a bit late starting as there is a Netroots Nation event beforehand with much discussing to be done about this year's convention of progressive bloggers and netizens both in Second Life and in Pittsburgh, Pa. in August.  However, the massive staff of Radio Woodshed is undaunted and will be bringing you two hours of the finest in jazz, funk, roots, bluegrass, rock, country, cajun, zydeco, irish folk, psychelia, swing and Carpenters covers starting at 5 PDT/8 EDT.

The Marxist-Lennonist  (Groucho and John Factions United) Party's Glorious People's Cinema Project explores the opiate of the masses with second installment of our Burt Lancaster film series  - Elmer Gantry - with Burt as a ne'er do well con man who becomes an evangelist (see if you can spot the difference)

Some come join us for dancing, discussion and a damn good time aboard the Red Zeppelin in Second Life, or if  your first life is so wonderful you don't need cartoon friends from around the world, you could just click the radio to your right and watch the movie here.

Where do I sign up?

The Procedure, with Willem Dafoe & WIll Ferrell from Adam "Ghost Panther" McKay

"Stairway to Heaven" 24/7? Whooo!  But seriously, if they made these with a bluetooth connection to the ipod, I'd probably be on the waiting list now.

Leave your "Best song/worst song" to have stuck in your head forever in the comments.

For the record, I could live with this nonstop for the rest of my life. Everything is cooler when your personal soundtrack is by Miles Davis. 

This, on the other hand, would cause me to rip my own head off my body before lunchtime the first day.

the eye (or ear) of the beholder

Via Montreal Simon    -- who both you and I ought to read more often -- we are lead to this review/commentary from the Guardian

It wasn't singer Susan Boyle who was ugly on Britain's Got Talent so much as our reaction to her
Is Susan Boyle ugly? Or are we?
On Saturday night she stood on the stage in Britain's Got Talent; small and rather chubby, with a squashed face, unruly teeth and unkempt hair. She wore a gold lace dress, which made her look like a piece of pork sitting on a doily. Interviewed by Ant and Dec beforehand, she told them that she is unemployed, single, lives with a cat called Pebbles and has never been kissed. Susan then walked out to chatter, giggling, and a long and unpleasant wolf whistle.
Why are we so shocked when "ugly" women can do things, rather than sitting at home weeping and wishing they were somebody else? Men are allowed to be ugly and talented.

Susan Boyle doesn't really sing my kind of music, but you'd have to be tone deaf not to realize she is a talented vocalist. And contrary to the prevailing opinion she isn't ugly. A little on the plain side, sure. A bit plump, yeah. So what? She's there to sing, not model bikinis. It isn't like she has some kinda massive facial scar or a third eye or anything. She's just sort of ordinary looking. Ever get a good look at Aretha Franklin? How about Ella Fitzgerald? Not exactly beauty queens - until they start to sing.  How about Joe Cocker or Bob Dylan or Elvis Costello? Not exactly matinee idols either. But, pretty boy idols aside,  men who sing are not rated on their looks while women  very much are. Which is pretty stupid.

While there have been female singers and actresses who have become popular based on their talent and perhaps in spite of their looks, appearance seems much more important in the way we judge women than in the way we judge men. See if you can think of ten relatively unattractive female performers who have made a career. Off the top of my head I'm not sure I can: Cass Elliot, Kathy Bates, kd Lang, Minnie Pearl, Lily Tomlin, Olympia Dukakis, Margaret Dumont, Rosanne Barr, Margaret Hamilton, um...that old lady from "Throw Momma From the Train", and uh....Mary Walsh?....okay I'm sure there are plenty more , but several on that list that I spent all of two minutes compiling are hardly major stars and at least three of them based their careers on the fact that they were unattractive or became famous late in life - and kd Lang was kinda cute when she was young and Olympia Dukakis probably was too -- and Cass and Rosanne aren't really ugly, just overweight and Mary Walsh is brilliantly funny, which counts for a lot in my books. Try the same experiment with male performers and you'll have a long list in seconds. And they won't all be character actors.

By the same measure, until recently we were, as a rule, far more tolerant of pretty girls who had little or no talent than we were of handsome men who couldn't act or sing  - teen idols being the exception - as long as they stayed young and pretty that is (see the film Searching for Debra Winger sometime to further expand on this notion) How many movies have you seen lately where the lead character is played by an actress over 45 that isn't Meryl Streep?

I don't mean to say we've become less accepting of less talented pretty women - far from it - its just that we have become more accepting of less talented handsome men in recent years.

Another good example - musicians. There are a lot of famous male musicians who are butt ugly, but respected and popular for their musical talent. Popular, highly successful female musicians are almost always singers first and foremost - some accompany their own vocals and write their own material - but the star female instrumentalist is the exception, not the rule and those who do make a name for themselves as instrumentalists - Candy Dulfur and Bonnie Raitt spring to mind - are usually attractive.
Consider this: If John Coltrane, Frank Zappa, BB King or Jerry Garcia (to name only a few) had been born female, we'd probably never have heard of them.
I'm not saying this situation is the way it ought to be, just that it the unfortunate and unfairand flat out stupid situation that we face in the world.

I have a daughter who is six years old. In my admittedly biased opinion, she is very pretty and will likely grow up to be an absolute knockout in the looks department. Which is both good and bad. Good, in that good looks, especially for women, open a lot of doors and get you a lot of attention. Bad, in that, despite the fact that she is plenty smart, because she is attractive, she will probably not be taken seriously for her intellect or ability until she is in her 40s, barring some kind of major societal change. 

If she learns to play guitar like Django Reinhardt, she'll still end up being the "hot girl that is a pretty good guitar player" with a career that ended at 35, while my son could have two noses and if he could play like Django, he would be worshipped like a god and make records until he died at 95. I think that sucks.

Furthermore - and perhaps this tendency is more pronounced in Japan than North America these days - she is already getting the message from friends, television and even teachers that it is more important to be cute than clever. That as long as she can bat her big brown eyes and smile, she can get away with anything - a tendency I am doing my best to discourage.  But at this point it appears to be Dad vs the Disney machine and thousands of years of patriarchy.

A lot of what makes a person attractive in real life is attitude and personality. I've met models -  they look great in photos, but a lot of them have nothing to say and in a conversation in a dimly-lit bar, they aren't any more attractive than the next woman, considerably less so if the next woman isn't obsessed with her appearence and happens to have a sense of humor and some brains and hasn't been convinced that because she isn't six feet tall, 90 pounds, and blonde with cheekbones you could cut your finger on, that she's ugly.  Nothing is as sexy as confidence. After the first five minutes, it really isn't the package anyone with any brains is interested in, its the contents. Cases in point: Janis Joplin, Billie Holiday, Minnie Driver, Terri Garr, Meryl Streep, Barbara Streisand, and Ingrid Bergman -- all of whom can be breathtakingly, stunningly beautiful when they turn on the inner light, but none of whom you'd pick out of a line up if you hauled them in out of the rain. Well...okay...Ingrid Bergman in her 20s would probably stop traffic no matter what as far as I can see, but she'd never be a pin up today. Physical beauty may be objectively judged by the standards of the day I suppose, but attractiveness is always largely subjective.

Let's think of a few major stars on the other side of the gender gap and consider them in terms of pure physical beauty: Humphrey Bogart, Dustin Hoffman, Woody Allen, Jack Black, Mark Knopfler, Phil Collins - I already mentioned Bob Dylan and I bet you don't even know what Charlie Parker or Django Reinhardt look like. Not a matinee idol among them - sure Bogart was cool, but he was no Cary Grant - but they have seen pretty high levels of popularity at one time or another, despite their looks and don't seem to have too much trouble attracting the opposite sex. 

I guess what I'm trying to say is that pretty is nice, but but brains, talent, attitude and character are more important in the long run - and even in the short run. And that despite the advances of feminism over the years, as a society we continue to judge women on looks far more than we do men, and that is just plain stupid.

So more power to Susan Boyle and the hell with the pretty people. Smart, funny, talented people are sexier anyways.

She was a soldier

Dear Michael Coren,

Having read your latest column about the death of Canadian Forces Trooper Karin Blais as the result of a roadside bomb in Afghanistan, let me be as polite as I can in saying this: Fuck you, you sexist moron. Try your "women can't serve in combat" horseshit on some of the women in the early Israeli army or the Russian Army in World War II or any of these women. You'll be glad of Canada's universal health care system in the aftermath. Trooper Blais was a soldier like many, many others who volunteered, was trained to do a job and died serving her country with honor. Like Capt. Nichola Goddard, and 115 other soldiers, she accepted the risks involved in doing her job and for you to say she was "dressed up as a soldier" is an insult to every woman serving in Canada's military. Women have been serving in combat roles in the Canadian military with distiction for nearly 20 years. She was a soldier and died like one, her gender had nothing to with it.

Update: Nice to see the Torch weigh in on this one as well. It is nice to see some on the other side of the blogosphere break ranks to slap down such an offensive troglodye.(H/T to Dr. Dawg for the milnet link) If only they would do it more often. Why does the Sun give Coren a platform? Why on earth is such an ill-informed and offensive douchebag on television?

And, yes, I sort of figured this would set the Skipper off, but sometimes you need to call in the big guns to make a point.

Among the many idiotic things in Coren's column is his fear that should things descend to close combat, Trooper Blais' armored vehicle, machine gun and sidearm would be no match for the long knives and heavy clubs of the Taliban. Uh....right.
He also seems very, very worried that such a pretty young thing would be raped as a matter of course. Given the well-documented tendency of the Afghan mujahedeen to take the idea of foxhole buddies to a whole new level, I strongly suspect that raping of prisoners would not be confined to female prisoners. (For further first-hand observation of the hot mujahideen-on-mujahideen action phenomenon, see BBC journalist Phil Rees excellent book Dining with Terrorists")

More updating: Once again proving that there is no situation in which certain right-wing douchebags won't feel they need to score points.

Great moments in bad taste

Yes we can!...but these guys probably shouldn't have. I don't think I can really add anything to this. I think the Chia Obama speaks for itself.

Sunday night fun

Yes, its that time of the week again - Radio Woodshed time! You should know the schedule by now: 8 to 10 EDT/5 to 7 PDT  for the finest in roots, blues, jazz, psychedelic rock, folk, bluegrass and country - along with other, less classifiable things-all hosted by your humble servant. And a vintage movie - This week "The Sweet Smell of Success" with Burt Lancaster and Tony Curtis.

As always, you can join us on the internet radio by clicking to the right or get on up to the Red Zeppelin in Second Life and get on down with the Cafe Wellstone crowd.