Ain't one for prose

Hey, you know what's annoying? I can't write and listen to music at the same time. How do those kids with the journals at emo shows do it?? Hmm, that joke is about 4 years too late. But really, I can't do it at all, which is bad because it makes me want to finish typing quickly so I can put these Up Up Down Down MP3s back on.

Who the fuck is Up Up Down Down, you ask? First of all, you don't need to curse at me. Second, they're one of the only bands I've seen over here that I genuinely liked and didn't just buy a CD from in that pat-on-the-head "you keep at it" manner. Seriously, go download their songs, and then when you come over to visit we can go see them and have a chill evening. Sorry, J-punks, I like doing karaoke with you but give me clever/sexy indie-rock over decades-old wannabe punk any day. NOTE: Now that I think about it, Al is probably the only one who will like this.

Anyway, that show was segment 2 of a 3-part Saturday which kicked my ass in a way I would not have thought possible considering I spent the day with a group of Canadians I'd mostly never met before. By this I mean no offense to Canadians -- overall I probably like them better than Americans (or at least am less afraid of them) -- I mean I feel weird wandering around Nagoya with a group of white people speaking English, rather, I should say the idea of that bothers me, but I didn't mind it at all since everyone was cool as hell. (re-reads above) Was that even a sentence?? Shit.

Uh, so Saturday. (my writing is becoming more awesome every day) We assemble a Crew and go see the Nagoya Players perform Rosencrantz and Guildenstern Are Dead. Here is what I observed:

- The guy with Tim Roth's lines (from the 1990 movie), first of all, whom I will refer to as Guildenstern, screamed every one of his lines angrily. I thought his fucking head was going to explode. Oh well, at least he had the cool accent down, though I'm pretty sure he was actually British.

- The girl who played Gary Oldman's character (Rosencrantz? sure why not) chose to portray the character as stupid and dopey, and would NOT stop making these annoying pouty faces. I wanted to throw a hammer at her, but all I had with me was a monkey wrench, and I had to save that for later.

- Everyone else in the play was played by a woman, with the exception of Alfred/Horatio. This was kind of weird. This director turned The Player's acting troupe into basically a group of prostitutes, which explains it, though the fact that Claudius looked like my little sister was somewhat disturbing.

- Hamlet, on the other hand, was hot. (oops, that is not to say that my little sister is ugly) So was The Player, though the fact that I associated the character with Richard Dreyfuss anyway left me feeling somewhat bewildered (and wanting to watch Close Encounters of the Third Kind again). I wanted to get Hamlet's number after the play, but she was nowhere to be found. Mysterious!

- I should add that Polonius remained the coolest character, since he was played by a crazy-eyed tiny Japanese woman with no apparent grasp of the English language. Brilliant performance.

All right, so that was part 1 of Saturday. Next we took a break (yeah! intermission!) and sat at a diner ordering shit for like 3 or 4 hours. Diners bring the high fives. I had to keep asking for more mayonnaise for the Canadians' french fries, though. I seen it, man, they fucking drown them in that shit. If you don't get my movie references, that sucks because I'll have to start making up my own things to say.

Are any of these details important? Might as well finish now. Actually, I'll summarize rather than giving you a blow-by-blow description of everything that was drank or said for the rest of the weekend. There was the play, the diner, the show, then a couple of clubs (and many tequila shots forced upon me by our northerly brothers and sisters) till 6 in the morning, a train ride home, a couple hours of sleep, a slight headache, an Alfonse Mucha exhibit out in the middle of nowhere, and then a few hours of me biking around eating and buying junk (junk = cds, books and Japanese baked goods), spending even more money after I went through an impressive amount of it this weekend. I'll show you, savings!

There are things going on other than crap I did on the weekends, but I don't want to talk about work any more than to say that I've got some to do lately, and it's not so bad at the moment but I know it's going to get exponentially worse.

Also, recently I decided I want to try translating a Japanese book into English (for practice and to see if it's something I'd like to try for a living), and to concentrate on living in the moment as opposed to thinking about why I'm doing something (the end product). First I think about why I'll do something, and then if I decide to do it, I'll think about the task itself until it's finished, as opposed to dwelling on why I'm doing it. Is that called something? So far it's helping me to get things done at work, start things without fear of never finishing them, and enjoy life in general more fully. I'll let you know when it results in my untimely death.




BONUS PICTURE!!



Have I ever mentioned that some weird shit goes on over here?