If it's Sunday, that means one thing around the Woodshed, music and movies!
Okay, so it's two things, but you get my point. Sunday's are Radio Woodshed/Red Zeppelin days.
So tune in, turn on and mind the drop, it's a long way down from way up here.
A cornucopia of the finest music starting at 5 pm Pacific/ 8 pm Eastern followed up with the latest and greatest offering from the Glorious People's Cinema Project at 7 pm Pacific/ 10 pm East -- half an hour later in Newfoundland. So get on up and get on down, but protect your precious bodily fluids as we stop worrying and learn to love the bomb with Dr. Strangelove.
It is interesting to see Cheney running to get in front of the cameras and claim that "torture worked". It doesn't. And even if it did, torture is immoral, illegal and uncivilized - whether it works or not is irrelevant. Arguing about whether or not torture works is like arguing about whether you can get rich making kiddie porn or whether eating live babies cures cancer.
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
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)
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.
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."
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.")
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.
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.
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.
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