I rode in a few cabs/Ubers whilst in SEVA this weekend. My favorite ride was from my hotel in Norfolk to the Coach House. My phone told me that David would pick me up in a blue Chevy Cruze, so when a blue Chevy Cruze pulled up I opened the door and said "David?" and David said "zman?" and I said "yes" and he said "KaMOANen! We GOOOAN!" I nestled into a thick plume of blunt smoke and looked at David's bloodshot eyes in the rearview mirror. I knew this would be a fun 12 minutes.
We made the first right and in a few blocks a clutch of young women dressed as naughty pirates passed in front of us. "UUUUNNNGGHHH!" observed David. "Indeed," I replied, "is there some sort of pirate party going on?" to which David laughingly responded "Pyra parda, pyra parda! Nah, we own Gramma Stree, aw you eveh wan in yo life is own Gramma Stree!" He expressed further opinions regarding Gramma Stree and then asked "You stain right by Gramma Stree, why you goan awway outta Colley?" So I explained that I was in town for a wedding the next day, and I was meeting up with various attendees at a restaurant. David clapped back like Clay Davis.
"Ya boy gettin murrd?!? Y'all gah go tua strip cluuhs on Gramma Stree!!" I demurred, "He already had a bachelor party for his first wedding, I don't think a strip club is in the cards tonight." David was intrigued. "He gen RE-murrd? Sheeeeit, he must have money to get murrd twice!" I replied "I haven't seen his balance sheet so I can't speak to that, but it's actually his third wedding so maybe he does." David was apoplectic. "Cot DAM!" he blurted, "this n***a a freak! Three times, sheeeit! He a freak!"
The music gods intervened to save me, as David's jam came on. I know this because he heard the early strains of the song and said "UUUUNNNGGHHH!" as he did when he saw the naughty pirates and turned the radio up very loud. Our readers know I'm fond of hiphop and I'm no prude, but I couldn't believe what I was hearing. "He can't be saying that" I thought to myself, so I Shazamed it and got this:
I then googled "shake sumn lyrics" and confirmed that yeah, DaBaby was really saying what it sounded like he was saying. I can't do it justice, watch the video.
"Make the ghetto bitches put their hands on their knees" makes me feel like a scene from "10" where Dudley Moore complains about today's youth and their music--I can't find it on YouTube, but here are the lines:
George Webber : If you were dancing with your wife, or girlfriend you knew in high school, and you said to her, Darling, they're playing our song, do you know what they'd be playing?
George Webber : Why Don't We Do It In The Road. Fuckin' hell kind of era is that?
Although I don't plan on pumping "Shake Sumn" from zmobile anytime soon, I might sneak it onto a jukebox the next time I'm out and overserved.
I wasn't able to completely tell this story to anyone because of my long and rambling storytelling style and everyone's general lack of interest in me. One of Whit's high school buddies explained that "Gramma Stree" isn't Grammar Street or Grandma Street as I hypothesized, it's Granby Street, and clarified that there are no strip clubs there (but he wishes there were) and the story dissolved into a noodie bar tangent. Similarly, I met some GTB lurkers and when I introduced David's car I said that it smelled like San Francisco and they recoiled shouting "Ah! San Fran smells like shit and piss and vomit!" and went off on their experiences there so my story dissolved again.
Our favorite NPB team, the Hanshin Tigers, won the Japan Series this weekend. My friends in Osaka are overjoyed and they sent me some cool (to me at least) photos after the win. Postcount, too.
One guy sent me a photo of his TV screen shortly after the win.
You can see he has all his good luck charms spread out above the TV.
Another guy sent me a few photos of the train he takes to work along with translations.
This one says "Number 1 in Japan. Thank you for your support!"
This one is from the gate of the massive Hanshin-Umeda station and it says "Number 1 in Japan. The fans were full of support and encouraged the team. We are truly grateful for your support."
I've been invited back to Koshien to watch the defending champs. It's a long way to go for a ballgame but I'm down if anyone else wants to join me.
It's been a hell of a twelve day run for your boy from the Neck. I will regale you with tales of my comings and goings over the next few days.
Two Fridays ago I had to go into Manhattan for a hearing which went about as well as I realistically could've hoped--if the hearing was an at-bat we hit a double. The hearing ended around 1:30 pm and counsel took me out for lunch at The Odeon where I had the grilled Eden Brook trout with quinoa. It was delicious. As luck would have it, I already had dinner plans in the city with a guy I used to work with. But that wasn't until 6:00 pm so I had about 3 hours to kill. Naturally, I headed to a bar, Monk McGinn's, to drink beer and watch college baseball. The trout wasn't soaking up much alcohol and I was worried that the freight train of fun might jump the track so at some point I ordered the crispy duck spring rolls. They were good. Much like Tom T. Hall, beer makes me a jolly good fellow and I was in great spirits when my friend showed up.
We drank for a little while more and headed over to Marc Forgione where we got the Chili Lobster appetizer and I got the swordfish with asparagus. My friend is into "mixology" so we drank from the cocktail menu. I got home late, drunk and full of seafood. It was a good night.
The next day we had reservations at Sushi Nakazawa, arguably the best sushi restaurant in Manhattan. It even has a Michelin star. The reservation is a pain in the ass to get--it isn't as difficult as it used to be but to be safe for a Saturday reservation you have to make it online at midnight 30 days before the date you want. Part of the hubbub stems from the fact that the head chef (Daisuke Nakazawa) was a sous chef at Sukiyabashi Jiro which is owned and operated by Jiro Ono, arguably the best sushi chef in the world. They made a documentary about Ono-san called "Jiro Dreams of Sushi" which you can find on Netflix. Nakazawa-san appears around 0:39 and 1:38
As you can see at 1:38, Nakazawa-san has trouble perfecting one particular egg-based dish. He fails over and over throughout the movie. Finally, after months of practice, Ono-san tastes what Nakazawa-san made and said it was acceptable, prompting Nakazawa-san to sob like Michael Jordan when he won the title in 1996. This is the final item Nakazawa-san serves everyone at his restaurant. I didn't have a bite of food that was anything less than outstanding. My favorite was the cuttlefish with Japanese mint which is second from the right.
The following Monday I was supposed to go to Richmond to see Jason Isbell and Father John Misty with Whit but I bailed for two reasons. First, zwoman scheduled the demolition of our kitchen counter for Tuesday and she wanted me there to make sure everything went according to plan. Second, I also had to pack and do a bunch of other stuff on Tuesday for a trip on Wednesday, which I'll cover in later posts. The trip was too important for me to half-ass the preparation, and I was worried I wouldn't have enough time to drive home Tuesday morning, likely all hungover, and pack in the afternoon/evening. Sorry Whit, but it was sons before bros this time.
As luck would have it, FOGTB Hoopie was in Manhattan on Monday night and I knew that even if I was all hungover on Tuesday I would at least wake up at home so I went out with him and fellow FOGTB Juan Carlos. We drank a bunch of beer, then went to Jongro, my favorite Korean BBQ spot. We ordered too much food and drank a bunch of beer and shochu.
Then we went over to the bar at the Ace Hotel and continued to drink boulevardiers and screw up their turntable. For the record, if you're going to put a turntable on the bar, where customers can access it, along with a stack of records, you shouldn't be surprised if a drunken music fan takes matters into his own hands. A good time was had by all and when I woke up the next morning zwoman told me that the entire second floor of zhouse smelled like a distillery.
Then on Tuesday I packed. Like me, the counter guy bailed. Demo date is still TBD.
Stay tuned for further installments later this week.
Tigers fans are notoriously passionate, possibly the most rabid fans in Japan. The Tigers are also perennial losers. Taken together, they were called the Red Sox of Japan until 13 years ago, and fans still use that analogy to explain their vibe to foreigners. When I went to the game they were in first place but the guys who took me assured me that it wouldn't last for long. They are 4 games out of first place as I write this.
I was invited to the game before I even left the US and I jumped at the chance, name dropping Kosuke Fukudome in my reply email after checking the roster and recognizing the former Cub. That I knew who Fukudome was put me in good stead as he is one of my host's favorite players.
I work closely with the two guys who took me to the game but I've only met them in person a handful of times. Most of our interaction is by phone or email. But they like to drink beer and watch baseball and we get along well so I was sure we would have fun.
In order to foster more eating and drinking in Osaka restaurants and bars, the local government started this "Premium Friday" summer program where corporations are incentivized to let employees leave early so long as they go out and have fun. Sort of like summer hours crossed with beer bash. As luck would have it, my last night in Osaka was the first Premium Friday ever so I went out with a large contingent of colleagues.
People in Japan love to drink, and if you aren't drinking speedily or volumetrically enough booze, someone will say "Will you drink my sake?" I Apparently this is trash talk (I think it sounds more like smack in Japanese) so when someone explained what was going on I started telling everyone "Oh, I'll drink your sake!!!" Aggressively. But it went over well (Osakans love humor, even misguided American humor) and I drank a lot of sake and malt liquor and ate some beef and fish and headed over to the subway.
A ticket from Umeda Station (right by my hotel) to Koshien is 270 yen, or about $2.50. As with all trains and subways in Osaka it was immaculate and the AC was forceful. We got there in about 20 minutes. I got off the train and the weather was perfect.
Koshien is the oldest stadium in Japan but you'd never know it. It looks modern and spotless, although the stadium itself doesn't look like much from the outside.
On the way in my hosts got all excited when we passed a trinket stand. They bought a bunch of what appeared to be unrolled condoms with very large reservoir tips and insisted that I do so too. They were balloons. More on this later.
We also passed a bunch of food vendors. Suffice it to say that ballpark food in Japan is different than what they serve in the Bronx.
Later we passed some higher quality merch. I abstained.
Then we went inside. The first order of business was getting more beer, then we found our seats in right field, near Fukudome. I settled into my seat and I was not prepared for what I saw. An entire section in left field was blue jerseys--Baystar fans. And they had flags and drums and trumpets and chants. It was hardcore. And it was clear that I would never run out of beer--the vendors are 21 year old girls in pink Asahi outfits carrying small kegs in backpacks. They are ubiquitous.
The Tigers fans soon clapped back. Turns out they have their own band in center field, sort of like the Bleacher Creatures only more musical. They even have a conductor. The whole crowd got into it.
One of my friends disappeared, presumably to go to the bathroom, and returned with two yellow Tigers jerseys. He told me "This is my gift to you so now you are a Tigers fan! And now we will wear them." I'm the fat guy on the right.
They don't play Take Me Out to the Ballgame during the 7th inning stretch. Instead they do this.
That's what the balloons were for. Fun, right? But that wasn't my favorite moment of the game. Here's my favorite moment of the game.
Top of the fifth inning, Fujinami, their 6'5" 19-year-old fireball-throwing future phenom with control problems (think of an Asian Nuke LaLoosh) gets into a jam. Japanese managers let their pitchers try and work out of it longer than Americans do--it only gets worse and he gives up three runs (one unearned) and they pull him with two men on. Iwakazi comes in and gets out of the inning but gives up two more runs. My friends are pissing and moaning, in English, throughout. "Oh, bad control!" "He trying to kill me!" "I've been saying he too young!" "Ug. Tigers." It really was kinda Red Soxy.
Bottom of the fifth, runners on first and second, Fukudome comes up to bat. He's 40 but he's still a slugger in this league and you can feel a energy and hope ripple through the crowd as he enters the box. The bandleader calls up their rally song--every batter has their own song, but this time they play the Hanshin rally song (this was explained to me by one of the other guys). You know how sometimes you can just feel a big play coming? Here's what happened. The video is a little over 2 minutes long but I think the payoff is worth it.
That was great. But it wasn't what made me title this post "I Love The Hanshin Tigers." I've never experienced a sporting event like this. Plenty of people were drinking, many heavily, but no one even considered getting into a fight. We were all having fun. There were tons and tons of children at the game. They were all well behaved and all the adults behaved well in front of them. There was passion and heartbreak (the Tigers went on to lose 5-2) but everyone was happy and upbeat. Everyone cheered together and no one took the loss to heart. Everyone knew all the songs and all the cheers, everyone wanted the home team to win and yelled themselves hoarse, but no one was a meathead or a jerk. No one gave the chubby American guy a hard time. Instead, for a few hours on the west side of Osaka on a perfect May afternoon into night, I was passively taken in by a community of people, embraced and accepted and included, and despite the fact that I had no idea what they were singing or why they were singing it, I had a spiritual experience. Those who know me well know that I laugh when people wax overly poetic about sports, and my sister says I'm the coldest person she knows, but God help me I got misty-eyed at the affection on display between parents and children, groups of friends, complete strangers. It was like a cross between an SEC football game, or maybe a Premier League soccer match, and a Quaker meeting. Maybe it was the alcohol, who knows. But I can't wait to get back to another Tigers game.
I went back to Osaka a few weeks ago and did two things for the first time that were post-worthy (no TR, not those kinds of things). I will regale with each in separate posts. Suspense!
I'm good friends with two guys in Osaka. The last time I went they took me to the Swimming Squid (which is still my favorite restaurant in Osaka). This time they took me to Umapero, a horse meat spot. The menu is all horse all day. For real.
It turns out horse is really good! And Umpero is really cool! As I should've expected from the Google translation of their website and the horse pinatas mounted over the door.
Fun drinking party girls' association! Reasonable horse meat! Homemade sangria and grilled wine glass! What could go wrong?
Our first course was horse sashimi. The white stuff on the right comes from the horse's neck, right under the skin below the mane. The stuff above the neck meat is skirt steak (which is the diaphragm). I think the thick pink meaty stuff on the top left was tenderloin. The stuff below that was cured tongue. The stuff below the tongue was sirloin, I think.
The neck meat wasn't particularly flavorful, but the other selections had clear, clean flavors. The tongue, skirt, and tenderloin were all lean and different from beef but not gamy or cloying like venison can be. The sirloin was fattier but not not nearly as fatty as Japanese beef.
After that was horse sushi. It was good but after that sashimi platter it was just more of the same and the rice actually detracted from the flavor of the meat.
I ate cooked food too, like this horse steak frites (which was completely indistinguishable from American beef).
We had a bunch of other cooked and raw courses, but the most interesting (at least to me) from a cultural perspective was the pastrami and pepperoni platter.
The ambiance is great too. The waitresses are friendly, cute, and speak serviceable English. Their uniforms include a golf shirt with one of those giant Polo logos, except instead of a mallet the polo guy has a giant fork. I was the oldest person there. Everyone was knocking back malt liquor and/or sake and you can smoke if you want. There were several tables of ladies that definitely made the place seem like "Fun drinking party girls' association." The tables are close to foster conversation between parties, and if things go well you don't have to go far--during a conversation about Japanese politics and societal norms, my friend Soichi pointed out the window to a building and said "That is a place for sex. If you meet a girl and want to have sex you don't have to take her home, you just go to an hourly place like that. They are all over the city." Umapero even has an adjacent hourly sex hotel! But be sure to bring some Alka-Seltzer and be prepared for strange smelling farts.
Umapero gets a 5 out of 5 spur rating. You should absolutely check it out if you're in Osaka. And if you need a reason to visit Osaka you should read my next post ...
I didn't consume only western media and Japanese pop culture on my trip to Osaka, I consumed lots of food. Lots of really really good food, mostly seafood. The quality of the food alone makes Japan a worthwhile vacation destination. And I had work-related meals every night I was there so I got to see a broad range of good authentic Japanese cuisine. Here are some highlights.
I went to dinner with some Bostonians my first night in Osaka. They wanted to go to the Dotonbori neighborhood because "it's the Times Square of Osaka!!" I bit my tongue and went along with it. Lots of neon, lots of bootleg t-shirts, lots of tourists. Yep, it's the Times Square of Osaka!! But there are plenty of good restaurants. We went to Chibo, a spot that specializes in okonomiyaki, which is sort of like a cross between an omelette and a pancake stuffed with seafood and coated with mayonnaise and barbecue sauce. It's much better than it sounds. Perhaps unsurprisingly, the chef isn't Jewish and doesn't take Leviticus seriously--everything contained shellfish, pork, and/or meat with cheese. I got the "number one" which has cuttlefish, octopus, scallops and a giant prawn sticking out of it:
The next morning I went to the hotel's complimentary breakfast buffet:
Fish and pickled vegetables for breakfast! Miso soup too. I'm a shameless caffeine addict so I washed it all down with coffee, which was surprisingly and uniformly excellent throughout Osaka. I got used to this combination after a day or two.
I tried big sushi plates twice. The first was at an upscale shopping center:
It was very good although not the best I ever had. It's more like the clean, refined flavors of Yasuda than the bold Americanized fusion stuff you get at Nobu or O Ya. There were a few noteworthy differences. The wasabi is completely different from the wasabi you get here, aside from its color. Taste, texture, solubility, consistency, you name it it's different. The wasabi is always complemented with these little red flowers, which you're supposed to put on the sushi along with the wasabi. Sometimes you get a pile of chunky sea salt which also belongs on the food (they include this salt with lots of stuff, not just sushi).
Later I went to dinner with two guys I know very well. They're native Osakans in their mid-to-late thirties so they took me to a cool neighborhood with lots of trendy restaurants and young people. We ate and drank our asses off at The Swimming Squid. Highlights include some of the best sushi I've ever had:
The pink strips on the left are fatty tuna, and they absolutely destroy the stuff we call fatty tuna here. It dissolves in your mouth like a fishy communion wafer and it's just as religious an experience. Indeed, if a food can become the body of Christ then the fatty tuna at The Swimming Squid is mostly likely the Messiah.
The white fluffy looking stuff on the bottom left isn't rice, it's sweetfish carefully chopped all the way through the meat but not the skin, so they can turn it inside out and make it look like rice. Apparently this is a traditional way to prepare it in Osaka. The three solid white fish are cuttlefish, squid, an octopus. I can't remember all the other fish but they were outstanding.
They ordered some stuff expressly to gross me out but with no success. One such dish is made as follows: take a squid and hit him with a mallet so he's stunned. Then take a knife and cut him into strips. Slide everything on the cutting board into a bowl. It looks like this:
It was very salty but not bad. The bowl clearly contained ink and other squidly fluids, some of which I don't want to ponder too deeply (like squid shit and squid jizz).
Another gross-out attempt was dried ray wing. They cut the wings off of stingrays and dry them like jerky. They serve them with an open flame so that you can heat them to make them soft, then you dip them into mayonnaise. I liked it.
The final and allegedly grossest course was giant fish eggs on rice. One of my friends was absolutely stunned that I scarfed it down.
I said "What's the big deal, it's just fish eggs and rice" to which he replied "That's not rice."
Turns out the rice were baby sardines or something similar. I don't see why this is any grosser than eating full-grown sardines so I kept on munching. It was really tasty.
This segues nicely into my favorite aspect of Japanese cuisine: what you're eating often looks the same as it did when it was alive. You know it when you see it! Like this squid dish:
And this sweetfish dish:
The only truly unsettling part of a Japanese meal is the alcohol. Every meal starts with beer, which over there is really malt liquor. From there you move to saki and then shochu, which is sort of like a 60 proof vodka made typically from rice (although the stuff made from chestnuts is faaaaaaantastic). After this approach was explained to me at my first big dinner, I blurted out "So we're doing beer before liquor?!?" which made my fellow Americans smile and my hosts reply with a matter-of-fact "Yes."
If you ever go to Japan I encourage you to keep an open mind when it comes to food and try everything you can no matter how intimidating. You never know when you'll stumble across a hidden gem like aloe yogurt!
I didn't just consume a bunch of western media on my trip to Japan, I consumed a lot of culture, albeit not as much as I wanted to. I missed my connecting flight from San Francisco to Osaka and had to spend the night in San Francisco. As a result, my jetlag acclimation/cultural exposure day was mostly consumed by my flight the next day. I never had a big block of free time to travel around the prefecture, so I mostly made brief field trips around my hotel. This limited my cultural exposure to shopping centers and train stations, but I think I developed a fair understanding of day-to-day life in the Kansei region based on what stores stock and thus what people buy. Here are my favorite mundane aspects of southern Japanese culture.
It's perfectly acceptable to carry, and use, a washcloth in public
Osaka is really fucking hot and humid in the summer. So much so that even people from India travel to Osaka and step outside from the airport into the Osaka air for the first time they say "Oh hell no, this shit is way too hot and humid." At least that's what my cabbie said.
It's so hot that everyone sweats their asses off constantly, even inside. Women carry fans and parasols. Men carry washcloths, sometimes even bar towels, everywhere including the office. It's remarkably common to be in a meeting with ten other sweaty dudes, all wiping their faces with small hunks of terrycloth. Aside from Jerry Tarkanian, John Thompson and Ford Prefect, you just don't see towels in the workplace.
After sitting in two days of meetings like this I went to the mall across from my hotel and got myself one of these washcloths. They're technically considered a handkerchief--one side of the washcloth has this gauzy cotton material called tenugui sewn onto it, but it's still a washcloth. Here's mine.
Yes, those are bears. Yes, one of those bears has "ZZZ" next to him indicating that he's asleep--I guess the bear doesn't speak Japanese because he doesn't snore in katakana symbols. And yes, another of those bears is wearing a small green fedora. All my other choices were more preposterous, this is what you get for ¥400.
Anyway, I can't say enough good things about these super-absorbant handkerchiefs and being in a place where it's socially acceptable to constantly mop your forehead with one.
Everything is connected by underground tunnels
Because it's so stupidly hot in Osaka in the summer, they built a series of tunnels to connect just about every important location. Sort of like how places like Montreal and Rochester have tunnels to avoid the winter wind and snow, Osaka has tunnels to avoid the summer humidity sun. Now, navigating these tunnels is no bargain. Here's an example.
The main tributaries mercifully have English signage and my iPhone worked everywhere (thank god for Google maps), so I was able to avoid the scorching sun without getting hideously lost. Unfortunately the tunnels are not air conditioned so I still had to constantly wipe my face with my bear washcloth. Nevertheless, being able to get around completely underground is a source of pride among Osakans, and when I told one of my friends that I traveled to a venue over a mile away and back using only the tunnels, he smiled and said he was proud of me. He then fed me some ridiculous food and drink, which I'll describe another time.
They still have record stores
There was a Tower Records 50 feet from my hotel! And it sold actual records! And it had a whole section dedicated to A Tribe Called Quest!
It also had a very very deep selection of hiphop CDs. Here's just a snapshot from the K's:
KMD, Kool G Rap, Kool Keith, Kool Moe Dee and Kurtis Blow!?! I don't know if there's a record store in Brooklyn that has a CD in stock for all of these artists. I was impressed.
The 69 bus is everywhere
Or so it felt. I saw these bus stops all over the place.
The bathrooms are fantastic and the toilets are divine
Japan is spotless. No litter, no gum on the sidewalk, no dog shit on the curb. Immaculate. This includes all the bathrooms, including public bathrooms at the train station. I have suffered through circumstances requiring me to move my bowels at the old Yankee Stadium, an Amtrak Northeast Corridor train, and the worst gas station bathroom in Cape Cod (even Ryan Lochte wouldn't shit there--filthy, no light, the door had no knob mechanism so it wouldn't close, and no toilet paper (which I discovered after I had shat my emergency shit, so I had to wipe with the discarded Marlboro Reds box I found on the floor--had Marlin been there I would've used my underpants but it didn't occur to me at the time).
By contrast, defecating in Japan is a pleasure. Think of the nicest bathroom you've ever used. That's what they're all like. But better. The toilets all have features to make shitting better. They have a fan that sucks away shitty smells and a noisemaker that covers your shitty noises. They have heated seats. And most importantly, they have a washlet, a faucet that pops out of the seat and washes your bung with warm water. It's like taking a shower after every shit, and it's divine. The toilets also have fans to blow you dry after the washlet does its thing, but the fans are often too weak to really dry you so you still need some TP to finish up.
We're redoing zbathroom soon and I'm getting one of these toilets. That's how life-changing they are (and who knew we'd use the "toto asswash" label again?). Anyone who lives without a Toto toilet is a filthy animal.
They love the Simpsons
I don't know if that's true, but I saw these socks at a department store that carried stuff from Louis Vuitton, Gucci, Prada, and all those other fancy brands you see at high-end US malls.
They love sneakers
This wasn't a surprise. Tons of cool kicks. Here's a small sampling.
I should've bought those Takumi Sen joints but I didn't.
They love tchotchkes
Not Chochkie's, tchotchkes. Many stores have these things that look like bubblegum machines, but instead of bubblegum they dispense tchotchkes. For example, are you into Minions? They have a tchotchke machine for that:
Note that Dave, Tom, Jerry, Tim and Stuart (well, Stewart) are also the names of several of our brothers.
Are cats in beanies or babushkas more your thing? Japan has you covered:
It's a great way to get rid of your pocket change before you leave the country.
The greatest regret of my trip, and perhaps the past 10 years of my life, is that I used my last ¥100 coins buying Minions for zson and pink raccoons for zdaughter (they love Minions and raccoons, respectively) only to turn the corner (they have rows and rows of these things at Yodobashi Camera, which is a batshit crazy store deserving of its own post) to find this:
Sorry rob. Next time I'll get you some fingertip-sized flying squirrel tchotchkes.
I recently spent over 40 hours traveling to and from Japan. During this time I consumed a bunch of food and even more media--three movies and three books. I will attempt to channel Dave and provide pithy insightful reviews of each.
The Revenant
You've probably already seen this. I had not because I have two little kids who absolutely abuse babysitters so I've seen one movie in the theater in the past 5+ years, and by the time we put them to bed zwoman is too tired to watch more than an hour of TV so we only watch TV shows.
Anyway, it won three Oscars (actor, director, cinematography) so I had huge expectations. The movie was good but not great. To me it's just a standard revenge story, Grizzly Adams crossed with Gladiator or Kill Bill or Unforgiven. Like Gladiator it starts with an intense battle scene. And like all three, the protagonist and someone he loves go through a brutal experience that kill s the loved one(s). The protagonist is left for dead only to survive and come back and kill the people who wronged him and the person he loves in a remarkably violent climax.
To be fair, "brutal experience" doesn't do justice to what happens to Leonoardo DiCaprio.
Additional brutality befalls Leo--he seeks vengeance on a human, not the bear's cubs.
This was a fine way to pass 156 minutes, I'm just surprised that this was one of the best movies of 2015. I'm also surprised that DiCaprio finally won an Oscar for this performance--the role required very little range. All he had to do was act like he was fucked up by a bear, then act angry and fuck up a human. Did you see The Departed or Gangs of New York or even What's Eating Gilbert Grape? This seems like a lesser performance. But good for him on finally getting on Oscar.
Rating: 4 out of 5 airsickness bags.
Everybody Wants Some!!
This was positioned as a spiritual successor to Dazed and Confused, which I first saw in the DoG Street Theater and then saw at least 69 more times on VHS in FOG:TB Derek's room. Which is to say Dazed and Confused is one of my all-time favorite movies. It's perfect in so many thematic ways: paddles, whaleshit, "fry like bacon you little freshman piggies!" And then there's stuff like this with little gems sparkling up at you every time you watch:
Like Dazed and Confused, Everybody Wants Some takes place in Texas and involves students on summer break. Other similarities include a baseball montage and a protagonist who is a freshman guy who meets a girl and rapidly woos her during and after a party. And both were directed by Richard Linklater. Unlike Dazed and Confused, the students are college kids and they are enjoying the last 2 or 3 days of their summer vacation before classes start. And unlike Dazed and Confused, some of the camaraderie between the characters feels forced, the cinematography isn't as interesting, and I ultimately didn't care what happened to the characters.
But like the Revenant, it was a fine way to spend 117 minutes hurtling across the Pacific Ocean. I don't plan on watching it again and again though.
Rating: 3 out of 5 airsickness bags.
In the Heart of the Sea
Speaking of hurtling across, the Pacific OceanI previously opined that "In the heart of the sea is a great book, Moby Dick inspirations notwithstanding, but I don't see how it translates into a 90 minute movie." Director Ron Howard likely read my comment and took it to heart, drawing the film out for 122 minutes instead of 90. Unfortunately the book still didn't translate into a good movie.
In order to make the movie feel like a typical Hollywood story, Howard created beef between the captain (Pollard) and his first mate (Chase) right from the start. In the movie, Pollard got the captain job that Chase thought he deserved, the two men didn't know each other, Pollard didn't know how to sail and was a prick, and thus Chase resented/hated Pollard. But in the book they had previously sailed together and seemed to get along until they were months at sea and couldn't find any whales.
Chase is played by Chris Hemsworth who seems way too big to effectively move around on a rocking whaleship. Hemsworth affects an accent that is completely unrecognizable. I have no idea what he was going for but he ultimately sounds like a deaf truck driver from Long Island trying to impersonate Crocodile Dundee. All of this is to say that Hemsworth does not help the film.
Howard also cuts out a lot of the text on the art of whaling as well as a lot of the story. For example, there's no mention of eating tortoises, setting islands on fire, or visiting the Galapagos Islands. Howard somehow managed to take an incredibly compelling true story and make it feel like contrite Hollywood fiction. Not a good job by Opie Cunningham. At least it's better than this effort:
I don't regret watching this movie but I can't really encourage you to watch it either.
Rating: 2 out of 5 airsickness bags
Cod
This is an old book that I've been meaning to read for years but never got around to it until I was stuck at the Raleigh-Durham airport and saw it in the used bookstore. I started it then and finished it on my trip to Japan.
Mark Kurlansky likes to write about food and fishing, and cod is about both and more--Kurlansky writes at length about cod biology; baked cod; broiled cod; roasted cod; cod chowder; cod croquettes; cod stomp and go; cod bacalaitos; cod feroce; cod bouillabaisse; all the different varieties of salt cod; cod behavior; cod habitats; cod population growth and decline; cod fishing methods from antiquity through today; Cape Cod; New Englander's affection for cod; Englishmen's love of eating cod beyond all other flaky white fish; the Basque's penchant for catching cod; Iceland's economic dependence on cod; Spaniard's love of salt cod; how to clean cod; myriad ways to prepare cod roe; myriad ways to prepare cod tongue; myriad ways to prepare cod cheeks; how Clarence Birdseye invented frozen cod; how industrial cod fishing changed the world's economy; and all manner of other cod-related stuff.
I told you I would channel my inner Dave! All this fishy goodness is packed into about 230 pages, so it's a quick and pleasant read. That said, fans of natural history and oddball facts will enjoy this more than your average normal person. It's a book for Dave.
Rating: 3.5 out of 5 airsickness bags (unless you're Dave, then 4.5 out of 5)
When We Were Orphans
Kazuo Ishiguro wrote Remains of the Day, which I read and greatly enjoyed in Prof. Heacox's Contemporary Literature class. His later novel When We Were Orphans is not as good. In theory it's a detective novel--the main character is a detective who spends 3/4 of his life looking for his parents. Throughout the story he claims to solve all sorts of crimes, but the story never provides even a shred of detail regarding the crimes or how he solves them. He just talks about the fact that he solves crimes, ad nauseum, while pining away for some woman whom he says looks like a bird of prey. It's weird.
Set in Shanghai in the 1930's, during the Sino-Japanese War, an overly protracted portion of the book involves the main character slogging his way through bombed out rubble while bombs and bullets fly around him. So preposterous is this scene, and his motivation for the slog, that I began to believe the whole thing was a child's dream (the book starts in the main character's childhood). It isn't a dream. It's just weird.
And the conclusion is weird. I don't want to say that it was a let-down, but it kind of made me wonder why Ishiguro bothered to write the story in the first place. Immediately upon finishing the book, I quoted Ryan Lochte and said "Whatever."
But it kept me entertained for five straight hours and some of the writing is damn good. You could do worse. But if you're into stories set in Shanghai during the Sino-Japanese War, watch Empire of the Sun.
Rating: 3 out of 5 airsickness bags
In a Dark, Dark Wood
I was desperate for something to read and grabbed this at the tiny Hudson News next to my gate at SFO. I hadn't heard of it, and my other options were some tripe I'd heard of or some tripe I'd already read. This book is tripe too.
It's a mystery novel with no plot twist, no surprise, no ... mystery. The cover quotes Reese Witherspoon's assertion to "Prepare to be scared ... really scared!" but nothing scary happened. Just a bunch of British people in a house in a dark wood. A dark, dark wood, one might say.
It gave me something to do between San Francisco and Newark, but that's about it.
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