Midaregami

For the last couple of days, I’ve been raving that the 2003 film Nasu: Summer in Andalusia was evidence that somebody from studio Madhouse had obtained and installed the necessary technology to spy on my thoughts, and glean from them the precise sort of animated movie I would want to see, before I knew I wanted to see it.

Having now watched it, I can say with some confidence that the circumstantial evidence for this case is continuing to pile up.

The lovingly-animated film is everything you would expect from a Ghibli veteran, with its one possible problem being its length—barely 45 minutes.

That turns out to be the perfect length for the story, though, which is one of those simple-yet-complex narratives I seem to be unable to go more than a month without running across in anime lately. What gives, Japan? When did you get all… all… cool?

The main character is Pepe Benengeli, a domestique for the Pao Pao Beer team. Already I’m grinning; the obvious move would’ve been to make their protagonist the up-and-coming team leader, a Lemond or but they took a much more realistic path.

Like any sport with a large field, only a handful of guys in the peloton have a shot at the overall victory in a grand tour like the Vuelta. Anybody who does have a shot has it because they’re both a strong rider, but also because they have a strong team of other riders dedicated to supporting them—domestiques.

Pepe is a domestique ordered to support his team leader in a breakaway on a mostly flat stage through Andalusia. The team sponsor is irritated with Pepe’s perceived attitude, but our domestique protagonist promises that, even though the stage goes through his hometown, he’s going to support his team leader.

He means it, too. He got into cycling to get out of this podunk town, A desire driven mostly by his older brother stealing his girlfriend while Pepe was doing his compulsory military service—and they’re getting married the same day Pepe’s race passes through town.

Here’s when the film stops being good and is well on its way to greatness—it’s simultaneously subverting and embracing one of the grand old narratives of cycling. Flat stages in these long tours are characterized by breakaways and attacks by riders who have no chance at the overall victory, frequently by guys who are from the areas they’re passing through. There’s nothing better than a stage win in front of a home crowd, after all.

Except that Pepe hates the home crowd; he doesn’t want a damn thing to do with them. As the stage develops (complete with lovingly authentic cycling strategy; they really do love me) he decides he wants to win out of sheer, bloody-minded spite.

Ah, spite. Spite is an emotion with which I can identify; I loved that Pepe ultimately pursues victory to get it on his own terms, because he wants it for himself. The film does more or less show Pepe reconciling with his brother and ex-girlfriend, but that’s only enabled because he’s already won the race.

What a wonderful movie. I’m so excited they’re making a sequel.

Holy crap, little buddy! Sam & Max: Surfin’ the Highway, one of the greatest works of humor ever written in the English language¹, and utterly unobtainable for at least a decade, is coming back in print with a new cover and new material!

I will have to have at least one copy.

¹ I am not exaggerating. Every panel is a carefully wrought work of hilarity.

I recorded some music a while ago. Recently I did some more. Now, I’m making what amounts to a full release, with the presentation of my first EP, entitled: “In Lieu of Talent: The Paul Starr Story.”

Six tracks, twenty minutes of catchy instrumental music, painstakingly hand-sequenced and mixed in the most underrated piece of software ever, Apple’s GarageBand. Three of these tracks are brand new, never before released songs. All of them have lengthy, ridiculous titles. What are they? You’ll just have to download and find out.

Grab the zip and do feel free to comment if you have any sort of reaction. I will be talking more about this “project” soon, but for now, download, listen, enjoy.

I suspect that this debate will rage for years—the debate over the “correct” viewing order for the fourteen episodes that comprise the first animated season of The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya. It will be one of the Great Otaku Questions, up there with “What in blazes actually happens at the end of Evangelion?” and “What’s it like to go on a date?”

Sorry, cheap shot.

I watched the fansubs—a little late, I know; I should not have let Warren give me copies, but my greedy little nerd heart demanded more. I’m buying the special edition DVDs immediately, so all’s well that ends well, yes? But I digress. The episodes. The fansubs have them in broadcast order; the standard DVD release will be in chronological order.

Hunter, bless his heart, contends that the broadcast order was a cheap gimmick, and that there’s no reason to watch it out of chronological order.

I disagree, but for reasons I myself don’t fully understand. I do think that the Big Reveal needs to be at the end. By that time most viewers have more-or-less figured out what’s going on, but the solution to the Big Problem is more of a surprise, and I think it has more impact if it comes right at the end of the series.

I realize that I am speaking in vague generalities that could hit at anything from “lunch” to “apocalypse,” like some kind of nerd Nostradamus; for this I apologize, but it really is worth staying free of spoilers.

Anyway, Haruhi is really quite special, and no matter how loudly its praises have been sung, I can’t bring myself to call it “overrated.” It simply isn’t. My jaded literature student heart has been moved by this show, moved by the quality of its writing and characterization as much as the postmodern audacity it has to be both itself and a parody of itself.

It was with such admiration, and a new enthusiasm for the animated medium as a whole, that I queued up Genshiken.

I’m going to take a break from fannish raving now, perhaps discussing Genshiken another day, but let me leave with this: Between Planetes, Gunbuster 2, Haruhi, and Genshiken, I’ve seen more paradigm-shiftingly good anime in the last six months than I’d seen in the six years before that.

God help me, I think I’m being sucked back in.

Even Steve Jobs wants to get rid of DRM. I would spend ludicrous amounts of money at the iTunes store if it wasn’t DRMed—I already do at eMusic, but I’m always running across stuff they don’t have.

If you won’t listen to me, listen to Steve.

You need to see Pan’s Labyrinth if:

• You have any interest in fantasy films
• You have any interest in horror films
• You like that pretty, lispy Spain-Spanish
• You are interested in pre-Christian myth
• You like good movies
• You are human

Reasons I loved this movie:

I loved its brave, beautiful heroine. If I were twelve, I would’ve developed a life-threatening crush on Ofelia within five minutes. As it was, I watched in awe of her apparent fearlessness. One could write off her bravery as artificial, insofar as she thinks of herself as the princess of a fairy tale and thus perhaps destined to triumph—One could so dismiss her, yes… until the end.

I loved its sense of the ancient—the labyrinth seems to be thousands of years old, the challenge it embodies at once timeless and startlingly relevant.

I loved its dual-layered (or multi-layered?) narrative. The story works equally well from at least two perspectives, and it functions beautifully whether you prefer the literal or the metaphorical interpretation. But wait—which is which, again? That, friends, is good writing.

I loved its indictment of patriarchy, and the relish with which it embraces feminine power. The Captain places value on Ofelia’s mother only because she is pregnant with his child, which he insists will be a boy. It is his inability to even conceive of a woman challenging him that is his undoing. Indeed, the three main “good” characters are all female. Little flourishes like the womb-shaped bloody stain on Ofelia’s book also impressed me, and although it may or may not figure into the feminist values of the movie as a whole, the fact that it was there at all is meaningful.

I loved its message—for all its complexity, its values are simple, and good.

I loved its production design: terrifying, ancient, magical, every supernatural flourish speaking of an entire tale left untold.

I loved how it was in Spanish.

I loved its ending.

The new album? Orphans. Three discs: Brawlers, Bawlers, and Bastards.

You know, when I first heard Tom Waits (ol’ Chris played The Black Rider for me), I hated him. Yet now I can’t imagine feeling that way; barely understand the person that wouldn’t have appreciated this art. Orphans is the flip side of Brian Wilson’s Smile—a dark, sprawling, smoky journey across America, through both time and space, with moments of joy, despair, and profound beauty.

You need to stop what you are doing and listen to this god-damned album. Put it on repeat. Love it. Live it.

Well, maybe don’t live it. That would be a hard life.

I have (finally!) had occasion to read The Tale of Genji with the sort of attention that the work deserves.

And because I apparently can’t help making these sorts of cross-media connections, It occurred to me that Apple Blossom from The White Stripes’ “De Stijl” album makes an eerily good Genji/Murasaki song.

What do you, the viewers at home, think?

 Apple Blossom [2:14m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Talking about Shena Ringo and now, Tokyo Jihen, is something I find very difficult, and even the reasons for its difficulty are themselves hard to articulate¹. For one thing, although my love, yes, love for the Jihen is a constant companion, my enthusiasm comes and goes.

This waxing and waning is a kind of coping strategy. I don’t live in Japan anymore, don’t have easy access to fan club swag and concerts, and lack of these things gnaws at me. So during those times between albums and concert DVDs, I have to suppress my irrational fanboy desire, lest my mind be consumed.

But when a new album comes out, the fanboy is back. And when a new concert DVD comes out, well. My entire musical existence is realigned. This has happened before. So when Brad writes about the new Tokyo Jihen concert DVD in a favorable manner, I pay attention. And I dig out the credit card, and I remit to CDJapan one (1) soul. I wasn’t using it for anything, anyway.

And now I have the “Just Can’t Help It” concert DVD, and it was worth it.

I don’t even know where to start. Brad’s coverage of the concert footage is comprehensive; I encourage interested parties to check out the rest of his blog as well; the man is an articulate correspondent, and Jihen fans are fortunate indeed for his textual largesse. I will not be doing a song-by-song breakdown; his is very good.

Shena Ringo is a goddess of rock. She is a mad Virgin Mary or a Guan Yin, and her music enriches us all simply by existing in the world. It is tempting to imagine that her manic ardor had somehow cooled since ending her solo career, but that simply isn’t the case. Her art has become less self-indulgent since the epochal Kuri no Hana album, yes, but the goddess is still there, and she has some pipes. Her voice on Just Can’t Help It is the best it’s ever been, and she ranges from shy, coy twittering to bluesy growling and expansive fermata with effortless aplomb. She is at the top of her technical game.

Yet it often happens that technical excellence comes at the expense of raw emotion; even I am guilty of characterizing the Jihen’s work in those terms, when compared to the solo years. This DVD lays such comparisons to rest. Tegami alone dispenses with the idea that there is somehow less raw feeling here. There is simply so much musical talent and so much emotion on stage that it’s nearly impossible to focus on both.

I just don’t know how else to put it, but when she sings the enigmatic Genjitsu wo Warau, the ardent Juusui Negai, and the maudlin, inspiring Superstar, I puzzle, quail, and soar—respectively, and it’s a function of the musician in me appreciating the performance, while the human part glories in raw feeling.

This sounds like scandalous overstatement. Perhaps to some it is. But despite the fact that I may come off as an ironic, disaffected hipster at times, the truth, when it comes to Jihen, is that I have no time for irony or detachment. I love this music artlessly; my heart loves this music, and to see it performed makes my life measurably better.

But I don’t know if other people will feel this way about Shena Ringo and now, her band. I’ve had to resort to sappy sentimentality to attempt to get my point across, and even then it is imperfectly conveyed. Perhaps this is why I have such a difficult time discussing music with people who don’t at least understand why I would love her work so much. It’s as magical and ineffable as an irrational number, and no matter how many times I listen I always find something more.

I just can’t help it.

¹ Yes, ha ha, I know I said I was a good writer in the very last entry. Shut up. I am trying.

We recently rewatched The Blues Brothers. I have the following observations:

1. I could never, ever argue with Aretha Franklin.
2. I would go back to church if I could get some religion from the Rev. James Brown.