Nyotaimori

oh man. i think you should all realize what a huge love of pictures i have by now. and so i apologize in advance (though i’m not really sorry) but i’m going to put more pictures on here. and what’s more i want you to know that i somehow managed to find these in my room even though i wasn’t cleaning it OR looking for them. now, if any of you knows what my room currently looks like, you will understand what a feat this is. seriously.

jason and the underoos. were those my underoos? to my shame, i believe they were. oh jason. man am i ever sorry. we were so mean to tape you to that chair and throw panties at you. and you just a fragile little college freshman too.

sophomore year, a party at marina and laura’s house. and look kristen’s come to visit! and bill is playing with himself or christmas lights or something. fucking what was i doing living with him for 2 years in a row? plus that other year? ah complacency. oh and hey you can even see a little bit of mike from the sub there in the background. one of erica’s many mikes. well of the two anyway. and the only one that didn’t look like a fucking serial killer.

not that you care but i don’t have those pants anymore. and the fonz ripped holes the size of…well sizeable mini oreos, in that shirt junior year. and there’s jason lying on the floor there per usual. and lindsay aka pizza rice.

erica asked me to relate a school story for her. you all know how she tells little kid stories. ahem.

on tuesday in class, the teacher was having all the little chitlins repeat words after her to teach pronunciation and possibly spelling. so teacher says, “sleepy, repeat after me, ‘sleepy’.” and all those little ankle biters pipe up with “sleepy!” and then eventually somewhere later on down the road the teacher said, “ok repeat this word after me: ‘carrots’.” and when all the little munchies went to say “carrots” four of them chose sneezing really loudly instead.

carrot bits everywhere! blech!

so kristen sent me this link which has tons of anime characters and seiyuu’s (voice actors) birthdays so that you can check and see who shares your birthday. no honestly this is an incredibly dumb thing, but of course i went to check on who gets to be part of my illustrious birthday (february 8th for those of you who are wondering/can’t remember, you bastards.) and imagine my surprise to find sailor star healer. i thought to myself at this point, “please oh please let this be the transvestite, hermaphrodite sailor whose super power is gentle uterus. oh please please.” but i totally couldn’t remember if it was so i went to go look it up, at which point i screamed (internally, of course). i am not gentle uterus. i am sensitive inferno. sigh. s/he is not nearly as cool.

I suppose this is a little more like me though….hwee. BWAH!

this movie looks fascinating. although i have to admit that the additional information that was not in the paper about it’s being almost 3 hours long does make it a little more off putting to me. that’s a fucking long ass time to be sitting in uncomfortable movie chairs. but maybe i am willing to risk the numb butt syndrome. here is the imdb review of all about lily chou chou (although similar in title to “all about my mother”, i am still pleased with the lily chou chou part of it. a lot.):

“A harsh, almost 3 hour coming of age film, All About Lilly Chou Chou takes a number of real happenings in Japan-juvenile rape, violence, degradation, murder and pop idol fixation-and throws them together for effect. It centers on Ichihara, the persecuted protagonist who eventually finds himself atop a group of persecutors. He’s in adult situations, but doesn’t have adult faculties, and any grown-up that could help him escape the escalating sadomasochism of his friends is too clueless or apathetic to help. Ichihara fixates on Lilly Chou Chou, a Marilyn Manson/the Cure/Nirvana/Tori Amos figure whom he thinks embodies his disillusionment with his unfolding life. When he finds that his best friend/tormentor shares his love of Lilly Chou-Chou, it’s too much for him to take.

All About Lilly Chou Chou is embedded in the traditional avant-garde belief that film need not being pleasurable to be beautiful or effective. It’s a surprisingly graphic film, in fact, in some ways like Van Trier’s the Idiots, Pasolini’s Salo, or Wedekind’s play Spring Awakenings. All About Lilly Chou Chou is beauty that’s sought after. By foregrounding the filmmaking process and complicating the line between pain and pleasure, it forces the audience to be repulsed, enamored, whatever. Presenting the film in traditional cinematic language wouldn’t do justice to the depth of the narrative. It’s a film for catharsis.

If All About Lilly Chou Chou has a savior, it’s art. Ichihara’s passion for Lilly is endless, and his only connection with other people is through her. The director is critical of the cyber-community of Chou Chou followers, all disembodied voices, but acknowledges that this is the only way for these kids to understand themselves and communicate their feelings to others. The cinematography follows this love affair with the healing of art. Beautifully shot on DV, moving from the public to the intimate seamlessly, and capturing subtle moments of transcendence, it’s a love-letter to filmmaking. And particularly the abilities of digital filmmaking, which is able to capture the processed, intimate, amateurish and technologically-filtered beauty that most First World children are used to.”

another review.

this is the most interesting part to me, the movie was “plotted online in a chat forum by hundreds of anonymous users, centered around a fictitious pop star, the disappearance of a nonexistent website dedicated to her music, and the imaginary “ether” from which her music springs,” (from above link). in order to make this movie, Iwai created a webpage about a fake pop idol in japan and tons of teenagers became obsessed with her and chatted online about her all the time. the movie incorporates live online chat sessions as part of the imagery that the audience is forced to view. new media is the fucking coolest thing ever.

soooooo who’s with me? i think it comes out in SF this weekend.

the fever is upon us, boys and girls. the next harry potter movie comes out THIS friday. and i can’t even tell you how excited i am. but even more so, scholarly instincts and blatant, though painful, honesty made me even more happy to read this. the book it talks about that’s coming out, frank bruni’s, “ambling into hogwarts: the unlikely odyssey of harry potter,” sounded so intriguing that i went and looked for it, imagine my disappointment than to find this instead. luckily there is some news on this book, which i suppose offsets the horrific bush subject matter.

point here being: friday is the day, and i will be buying advance tickets sometime this week for a late showing of the wonderful world of harry at the phill theatre. so anyone who wants to come, let me know and i’ll get you a ticket.

p.s. a harry potter weblog? you better believe it.