Midaregami

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.

This guy is out of his mind. Writing is harder than programming? Maybe that’s because you’re a better programmer than writer.

I’m an okay writer. If confronted with a situation in which I need to convey a complex or abstract idea using written language, I can (presupposing a working knowledge of the topic) explain it effectively—even, perhaps, with a modest amount of flair. With time to revise, I can do even better.

Programming? Forget about it. I am terrible programmer, and not just because I haven’t spent very much time at it. I remember taking CS 257 (Nonimperative Programming with Scheme) at UNM. I got a C in that class—the only C of my academic career. It was absurdly, unreasonably difficult for me. Even implementing the simple, easy stuff took me hours of interpreting and reinterpreting permutations of code, and frequently I arrived at the solution via trial and error rather than with insight.

I haven’t done much programming since then, but even my forays into Perl, PHP and Applescript (at various points for various reasons) have been characterized by similar bumbling. The code won’t work. I won’t understand why it won’t work. I’ll change an arbitrary detail. It works. I won’t understand why it now works. Or more likely, it never works and I simply give up.

Learning a bit of Ruby has started to change this very slightly, but even so, I will never be a even a moderately competent writer of scripts, to say nothing of being a “programmer.”

Programming is easier than writing? Maybe for you, pal, maybe for you.

EDIT: What concerns me is that if writing is harder than programming, and I am a terrible programmer, then what does that say about my writing?

Don’t answer that.

In this episode I pontificate about the Nickelodeon TV program Avatar: The Last Airbender. Oh, do I pontificate. I’m a pontificator. It’s what I do.

But not for long. Just a hair over two minutes. Surely you can spare two minutes.

Hijinks Ensue is now available via the iTunes Music Store.

 Hijinks Ensue Ep. 5 [2:36m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

My 28th birthday was yesterday. I turned eighteen a decade ago.

… which doesn’t really bother me. The fact that I’m looking a bit older than I looked even a few years ago is fine, too—it gave me pause for a second, but only a second. I still look smashing in a fedora, so continuity is preserved.

Oh, things? Things, they are going extremely well. This year, I have:

This last Sunday, I rode my bike 100 miles up and down the southern and leeward coast of O’ahu. It was a blast, insofar as 3 hours of intense exertion followed by 4 of raw pain can be considered fun.

Oh, I’ll be doing it again, and soon.

Highlights:

• I had heard that there was a significant contingent of riders who fly over from Japan specifically to ride the event. I was unprepared for the spectacle of 4000 people, at least 2/3 of whom were Japanese, lining up for the ride.

• There were a lot of very nice bikes out there. Good ol’ Buster the Wonder Bike is no slouch—but once you’ve seen your third or fourth $9000 Cervélo/Kestrel/Pinarello superbike, you start regarding the $5000 Treks as mere dross.

• Speaking of Buster and of bicycles, I did a pretty solid round of maintenance on Saturday: New tires (cha-ching!), disassembled and cleaned chainrings and sprockets, cleaned and lubed chain, cleaned, greased, and tightened bottom bracket, minor wheel truing—the point is, somehow I got my bike in a state of tune I can only describe as “perfect.” It was nearly silent on the road. I had to laugh at the hyper-pricey carbon bikes with misadjusted derailleurs and creaking bottom brackets.

• Fellow messengers K. and Rob (who I don’t feel uncomfortable mentioning by name because he’s the the second-fastest messenger in the world) decided to crash the ride by going unregistered. Rob wore a ridiculous skintight time-trial suit, and K. wore an unbuttoned purple aloha shirt, skateboarding helmet, and motocross goggles, and rode his beat-up single-speed. Their buddy C. also rode a single-speed, along with a ridiculous ancient helmet and shirt and tie. What’s important to understand is that these three guys are three of the fastest riders on the island, and they dressed specifically to snub the road geeks. They passed me about 40 miles out, and they were hauling.

• Roughly 60 miles in, just past the turnaround point, I started hurting. Shortly thereafter I discovered an entirely new level of pain and suffering, but vowed not to give in. The final major climb saw lots of riders getting off and pushing; I dropped into my granny gear, but so help me, I rode up and down that hill.

• I wrote “Nihongo OK” (Japanese OK) on my jersey number, and had a couple of very pleasant conversations with out-of-town riders as a result.

• Muscle soreness on Monday was negligible, but my right knee was not amused. It voiced its complaint, loudly, every time I attempted to use stairs.

• I’m thinking of doing 70 miles or so this weekend. Just for yuks. I need a bike computer.

• Final time: about 7 hours, an hour more than I’d hoped. That’s okay. There’s always next year.

In which I discuss the different kinds of enthusiasm, or, “Why Princess Tutu is Awesome, But You Didn’t Hear It From Me.”

If you want to know why this is Episode 4 instead of 3, well… that is classified. I’m sorry.

 Hijinks Ensue Ep. 4 [2:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Today’s episode is on the subject of singularities, and in it I disclose a number of humiliating details about my history as a fan, yet still manage to sound ineffably superior and holier-than-thou. Amazing! Stupendous!

Perhaps next time I will expand upon the concept of the media yardstick, and why us nerds can’t seem to be rational about our favorite things. Or maybe I will just shut up.

We’ll see.

 Hijinks Ensue Ep. 2 [3:33m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download

Yosano Akiko’s poetry presents an interesting challenge insofar as it is tanka, but deviates from traditionally tanka-like diction. The translator’s task when bringing Akiko into another language is, as I see it, to somehow communicate this unconventionality while retaining the essential tanka-like qualities of the poems.

Uta ni kike na
Tare no no hana ni
akaki inamu
omomuki aru kana
haru tsumi motsu ko

Ruby and I are running away together and there’s nothing you or Dad can do about it!

Dear god, what hath man wrought? I have been intending to respond to various points made at various points by the imitable hosts of the Ninja Consultants Podcast, until finally it became clear that to do so, and to remain a peer, I would need to found a show of my own.

After many abortive attempts, I have something that while not exactly interesting or even, strictly speaking, good, is not embarrassing.

In this short monologue I discuss the problem of nerd obsession, and why it’s good to Get Out and Do Stuff from time to time. I know, I am breaking ground. It’s just what I have to do.

This may be the only episode of Hijinks Ensue, but just in case, I am setting up the infrastructure for further episodes. Because it’s fun.

 Hijinks Ensue Ep. 1 [4:25m]: Play Now | Play in Popup | Download