binglemumps

My latest thing is, I want to be an anime character. Like, not the child prodigy who’s saving the world type (plus apparently you’re only allowed to save the world if you’re <18, so I’m too old). I just want to be a peon character, one of those that doesn’t even have a speaking line and just gets beaten up in the background when the bad guys attack. I could even be one of the bad guy peon characters. The point is, it would be nice to have even marginal superpowers so I don’t have to keep looking over my shoulder when I walk home at night worrying that I might get mugged. I just need enough superpower to beat up a couple of street thugs trying to mug me. Is that too much to ask???

So I can’t be a mecha pilot, because mecha pilots can’t prevent themselves from getting mugged without their mechas around. Although, as a side issue, it would also be pretty cool to be a mecha pilot. In a recent discussion with TJ about my newfound passion for mecha anime, he acutely pointed out that there really is no point to mechas. Why do you need a robot holding a gun, when you can just mount the gun on a plane? Do they really need hands and feet? And if it takes years to train people to fly planes, how long is it going to take for people to learn how to pilot mechas? How can it possibly be a worthwhile investment? All valid questions.

What makes me sad is that, even if mechas do get invented at some point, first generation mechas are gonna be huge and clunky and completely uncool looking. It’ll take like 8 generations before they start looking nice. We’ll never see cool mechas in our lifetime!! Oh the tragedy.

On a happier note, I like the new Zhou Jie Lun album!! Current favourite tracks are Long Zhan Qi Shi and Shi Guang Ji. Go and get! I was prepared to be disappointed because I haven’t liked a lot of his recent stuff, but this one looks promising so far. Also, I found out today that one of my coworkers is actually really fobby and listens to lots of cheena music! I’m excited cos I’m getting desperate for new music, and she’s already made some recommendations. So, person reading this, you are also very welcomed to make some suggestions.

Last week someone at work emailed the office and said that he had Death Cab for Cutie tickets on Saturday night at the Greek Theater, so - mistakenly believing that they must have sold out - I impulsively replied and said I would take them. Then Ian ditches me the night before the concert and I end up going alone cos I decide not to be wimpy and lame.

I spend the whole concert imagining (or not) that people are giving me funny looks because I’m sitting on my patch of grass with my plastic cup of lemonade all by myself. I also eavesdrop on the group of chatty Asian American guys sitting next to me that talk about girls like they’re in high school even though at least one of them is apparently old enough to have graduated with an MBA at some point (more reason to believe that anyone can get an MBA). Also silently cursing the group of morons in front of me who blow cigarette smoke in my face and my general vicinity all night. Like jeez, I can deal with the smell of weed, but if you want to kill yourself with cigarettes please leave me out of your damn stupidity.

Anyway, in spite of all that, I really enjoyed myself. They played a lot of their older stuff and I’d spent the last few days doing the pre-concert cram on their latest album, so I ended up recognising most of the songs. A lot of their music is too emo for my taste, but I think good concerts make you walk away wanting to go home and immediately listen to not just the songs you already liked, but the songs you thought were completely mediocre before. And Transatlanticism is soooo good live! Made me all teary. Sniff.

Then today I went to the free Alice 97.3 concert at Golden Gate Park. I went with SW and her coworker who really wanted good seats, so we got there about 2 hours before it started. We did get really good spots near the stage, but as the day progressed more and more people started invading the spots between the picnic blankets in front of us and ruined our view. Bastards. 90% of them were either tall teenage boys with spiky hair that looked retarded but was very effective at getting in the way of pictures, or screaming teenage girls who wouldn’t stop talking and tromped all over our picnic blanket with their shoes. GAH. As you can tell, these concerts have done nothing to lessen my enmity towards the general public.

I was there to see Lifehouse, but there were 4 other bands/artistes that played - Secondhand Serenade, Marie Digby, The Last Goodnight and Ingrid Michaelson. Thanks to Real Rhapsody, I’d spent the last week acquainting myself with these heretofore unheard of people, but it was pretty much in vain. They were entertaining enough, but I emerged from the concert without much of an urge to  download any of their music. How sad is that, if you perform live and it was so unimpressive that you can’t even motivate someone to turn on their web browser and search for a torrent of your CD.

Lifehouse was really good though. I’d forgotten how much I liked their first album because everything that came after that was so uninteresting. Or maybe I’m just biased because Jason Wade is so hot. Unfortunately, according to Wikipedia he’s been married for 7 years. My life is over!!!!

So now I’m all psyched and in concert going mode. Before Saturday, my last concert was probably over 2 years ago. Goodness knows what I missed!

http://www.kcrw.com/music/programs/mb/

This is a radio programme I used to listen to a lot a couple of years back. I’m sure the other programmes on the channel are good too, but MBE was enough to keep me occupied so that I never checked the rest out. It’s great for discovering new obscure music, I like the host a lot and it has some really awesome live performances (at really good quality too, as far as I can tell). My favourites are obviously the Kings of Convenience and Iron & Wine ones, but there’re also similarly good shows by Semisonic, Imogen Heap, Athlete, Feist and a bunch of other artistes you may or may not have heard of.

I rediscovered this and found a fairly recent Iron & Wine performance following the release of their (although technically it’s made up of one person, so his) latest album last year. I didn’t like the new tracks much, but the real gem was a live performance of The Trapeze Swinger (from the In Good Company OST). I’ve always liked the song, but it sounds even better with just the acoustic guitar (as a side note, this is a song I’m positive Germ will hate because it’s just one verse repeating itself, so Germ don’t listen!!). His voice is probably one of the few that actually sends shivers up my spine (in a good way of course). Although I completely don’t get the lyrics? Maybe someone can enlighten me. In the meantime, I’m going to go replay it and stare pensively into space while listening to it because it’s a much less painful alternative to studying…

In those long minutes while my limbs exhaust themselves on the elliptical machine, it is my trusty Creative Zen (which I have yet to blog about but absolutely adore go to hell Ipod!!!!!) that keeps the despair at bay. Actually, this is a gross exaggeration, especially given the fact that I’ve started bring The Economist with me to the gym (so that I may hone my brain along with my muscles!), so most of the time the music is really just in the background. But this website is about the only place I get to be dramatic, so let us all acknowledge the fundamental importance of this music to the preservation of my soul.

So. Clearly I have to sieve out the sappy music I so love and create a conglomeration of suitably motivational music. Thanks to imeem.com, I can now share this inspiring playlist with my dear readers! (Depending on your browser you might want to lower the volume before anything plays, my ears just got blasted out when I clicked on that…)

You’ll need an imeem account to listen to it, so it might not be worth the trouble, but this is looking like a pretty useful application. Unlike other streaming sites, you can create your own playlists (which can be saved). I’ve yet to examine the extensiveness of their collection, but it is immediately evident that they have a much larger azn collection than either  Pandora or Real Rhapsody.

Anyway, this playlist will lend further credence to Germ’s false accusation that I have turned into a Japophile. I’m not particularly into Japanese culture, I’m just obsessed about anime and think Okada Juninchi is oh so good looking. Pfft!

One may notice that most of the songs here are anime themes. Where better to find inspiration? Listening to this makes you feel like, as long as you have a big heart an open mind an indomitable will and devasting good looks, you can defy all reasonable expectations and save the world! Which is not exactly what I’m trying to achieve at the gym, but my endeavours are no less heroic!

The reason I’m even writing about this is that I’m currently obsessed with the following song. The video is really stupid (the wings look hella cheap, I’m not sure if they were trying to be funny), but the song is sooooooo catchy. If I ever made an anime, I’d get Asian Kung-Fu Generation (please also ignore the stupid name) to write the OP theme.

I recently uncovered my old CD collection and started listening to some long forgotten Chinese songs. Most of them sound the same and are invariably sappy, but there’s something to be said about Chinese music. Somehow Chinese lyrics always sound good. If you tried translating them into English, they would sound terrible in any shape and form, but in Chinese they just sound poetic. Unfortunately many songwriters seem unaware of this and spoil perfectly normal songs with the worst possible choices of English words.

In any case, this has always been one of my favourite verses - cheesy but I think the use of words is pretty clever: