After the success of our Arakawa River Ride, both Jason and I were chomping at the bit to get out and cycle-camp some more. Jason was keen to hit up the Arakawa again, whereas I wanted to try something new: the Tama river.
Killin Jack the Malakite
My buddy Canadian Mike painted this- after many attempts to capture the mood of Jack vs. the Last Bunnyman. It’s from the opening scene of my story Killin Jack the Malakite, recently published in the zine Atomjack. Jack is the ape-like guy on the right. The Bunny is in the middle of the graves, just finished burying the last Bunny child, now leaping for Jack. I love it. It’s dark, but the colors are silvered out by the pale moon-light. I love Jack’s bulk, and the Bunnyman’s dynamic flight. Mike’s a great painter- we’ve talked some about turning Jack into …
Clay Head @ A Fly in Amber
My story Clay Head published at A Fly in Amber! There’s a giant head in my living room. It’s made of grey clay, and it sings through the night. It sings songs about America. Sometimes boogie-woogie or the Big Bopper. It sings Buddy Holly. It sings about the plane that crashed and sometimes the song about the crash. It sings about whiskey and rye. I don’t know why the head sings. I don’t know why the head is in my room, or why I let it stay. Read the full story at A Fly in Amber.
Axis and Allies
Yesterday I had Canadian Mike and Alex round and we finally got down to some serious Axis and Allies gaming. Mike had his parents bring the game over with them when they came for his wedding last month. We wanted to play last week but ended up just playing Halo and Rock Band at my place.
Doomsday – 0.5/5
What a load of garbage. Doomsday is an adolescent male’s mash-up fantasy of a bunch of other post-apocalypse SF-type movies, executed abysmally, with some of the worst writing I’ve seen. Take large chunks of 28 weeks later and Escape from New York, mix liberally with dashes of Mad Max, Resident Evil, and Lara Croft, throw in a little Alien- set the whole thing in some 80’s vision of the future (2023) with both cannibal hedonist street punks AND medieval knights living in castles, and this is what you get. We open with a lot of voice-over, similar to 28 weeks …
The Mist – 1/5
Frank Darabont directed the Shawshank Redemption, The Green Mile, and now The Mist.　It’s a story about a dense white mist that rolls down on a small American (Canadian?) town, bearing all kinds of nasty critters within it. Well- I didn’t like it. I didn’t believe it. It wasn’t so much the SF- though the spouting of garbage like ‘interdimensional rifts’ should only be done with proper preparation, and only if necessary, and in this it wasn’t either. Rather it was the characters acting like idiots, wimps, and cowards. The hero starts off like a hero. He takes fairly fast action, …
Emily’s Fajita Party
Yesterday I headed out to Emily’s Fajita Party in Kunitachi. It was raining, I got lost for about an hour on the way there, but Amy Mcdonald’s ‘Mr. Rock and Roll’ and a case of Asahi saw me through. People I met- – Emily- Emily! The hostess, teacher, artiste- her work currently on show at The Pink Cow. – Jeremy- Fairly drunk fella soon headed to Oz to become a pilot. – Greg and Alycia- Married programmers- good police. – Tim- Navy dude, big fella, just came from paint-balling. – Peter- Teacher, went fishing over Golden Week but no fish! …
Meiji Jingu Newly-Weds
Last month my buddy Canadian Mike had his wedding ceremony. It was held in Meiji Jingu- the huge central shrine in Harajuku right next to Yoyogi Park- and I went along to check it out. Here are some of the highlights: – Drinking sake during the ceremony. – Mike telling me they took hours to strap him into his groom-kimono, even longer for his wife Kumi. – Promenading around the shrine courtyard, a dude with a big red umbrella leading us. – Getting gawked at by tourists (who scurried after Mike and Kumi like they were paparazzi) – Being greeted …
Modelling photo shoot!
Today I went in for my photo shoot at the Victoria model agency. I had to bring a suit, sports clothes and casual clothes, all for my modelling CV- not for work. Let me tell you- it was fun. In front of a camera I tend to prance and fidget and strike poses anyway, so being told to do that was very liberating. It felt a lot like playing, like I was a little kid and the adults were watching me, and everything I did they said- ‘wow, isn’t he clever!’ or- ‘oh so cute!’ I broke out my ‘Welcome …
Eastern Promises – 2.5/5
A movie in which Viggo Mortensen pretends to be Russian. Slow, with a core of exploitative horror. Slow acting, slow speaking. Nothing much to care about. Some disturbing visuals, seemed gratuitous- they showed us because they could. The bath-house scene everyone raves about- just made me feel like his attackers were pretty stupid, like WWE wrestlers. One-note, a slow simmering Cthulhu-like horror underneath the thin skein of normal reality- overdone I felt. The movie coasted along thinking itself important and valuable. The twist- I felt ludicrous, and unnecessary. 2.5 out of 5. Watch it only if you have nothing else …