goodbye, my 15 seconds of fame

back in may, me and my brother got all zombied up for the Dawn of Don gig, all so we could be extras in the crowd scene of a music video/mini-epic

and i said i'd give it a shout when that video reared its undead scabby head and the time is... now

except there is no sign of any of the gig at all....

hopefuly that footage will make its way onto the interwebnets sometime, but for now sit back and enjoy Akira The Don's extremely high concept new video

the welcoming comitee

thats it, the holiday is over, the reminiscing is over, and something like normal blogging should resume although i do feel that my music has taken a bit of a back seat lately so perhaps i should make posting a little less frequent until there is at least a little Hunchbakk news to speak of

now, i have never had anyone waiting for me at airport arrivals with a board with my name on it, but Enfield certainly seems to know how to welcome me back

it was as if the sofas had been waiting for me, two in the same day and then a family of abandoned chairs a couple of days later, as well as a dumped divan bed and mattress slumming it with a shopping trolley

oh, and since then, a new addition to the end of the street gang - a burned out car (no photos of that one just yet)








Enfield, i love you but you're bringing me down.

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tokyo: hey hey, you you

Clubbing in Tokyo is a curious thing indeed, a city that has a notorious reputation for one of the most expensive places in the world does little to dispell the myth when entry to a club is usually between 3000 and 4000 yen (anywhere between £24 and £32) and most of the clubs in Shibuya co-exist within a very small radius that is only a short walk from an area of 'love hotels' where couples that have only just met can choose to stay for afew hours.

and apart from the happy hour that we seeked out in an empty bar in Roponghi, last saturday was the only night we'd been out drinking in Tokyo and also our last night in Japan. With our flight at half 11 in the afternoon, this meant we had to be checking in for our flight at half 9 and catching a bus to the airport at 7 in the morning.

Starting with a couple of cans of Asahi bought from the AM-PM across the road and consumed in our room before moving on to the extortionate hotel bar and their lavish cocktails served with Titanic style icebergs.

The plan was to carry on our drinking at the J-Pop Cafe but when it looked like it was holding some kind of porn x-factor and were shooed off we crossed the road to the very un-japanese Outback Steakhouse to pass the time.

two tequila and cokes later, with an eye on the time and feeling particularly non-drunk we headed along to Atom, a club that appealed the most since it had a discounted 1000 yen entry before 12 and an RnB/Hip Hop room and where things took a turn for the surreal because the RnB/Hip Hop room chose to play Backstreet Boys and Natasha Beddingfield amongst there more urban selections and the main room was chanting along to Avril Lavigne's 'Girlfriend' and YMCA while packing in and facing straight at the DJ instead of just dancing.

I felt slightly uncomfortable ordering a drink called 'Kamikaze' from the japanese barstaff but as my girlfriend discovered, it seemed to be the strongest thing on the drinks menu and had soon done the trick in pushing me over that edge and had me chanting along with the rest of the japanese clubbers and holding hands with a stranger on the next floor dancing to some 'psychedelic electro' in a room that looked like a grotto lit for a party.

and thanks to the kamikazes i have a very minimal and hazy memory of the superclub Womb, apart from going in was like heading into an abandoned factory, that the music was less than thrilling (at least we'd hit Atom first) and i have it on very good authority that after paying 4000 yen each to get in we only stayed for about twenty minutes. sadly, my carefully calculated plans of club hopping before retiring and seeing out the small hours until the first train in Kareoke-Kan or a manga crash pad were dashed by the demon kamikazes.

now, getting stupidly drunk definitely isn't big or clever and it didn't impress my girlfriend as she had to rush me out of our hotel room in the morning or when we checked in for our flight as i sang 'peanut butter jelly time', but twinned with the lack of sleep, it was extremely effective for knocking me out during the ridiculously long flight, only waking for some mush they called lunch, and going most of the way to resetting my body clock as i tried to make up for lost sleep, snooze off the alcohol and wake up at what the UK would have known as 8 in the morning which was in fact midnight back in Tokyo.

and with that the adventure was over and there was nothing else to do but fill another 6 hours with inflight movies and wondering when it was time for the next 'meal'.

tokyo: a few of my favourite things

that last post was rather wordy wasn't it?

so this one is all about the images, with a short selection of some of my favourite photographs i took in tokyo

tokyo: the update

so perhaps its about time i updated my blog and gave you voyeurs more information on my eastern adventure, to recount on this page all the stories i have already recounted to friends but to tackle it in a journalistic manner seems to suck the fun out of the holiday slightly, but i'll break it down and give you the brief re-caps of how it all went down but don't expect the full story in a travelogue stylee, if you know me, talk to me about it, if you don't know me then take in what i have to say and perhaps consider getting out there to see it for yourself.... it's amazing

in no particular order we took in the sights of Shinjuku, Shibuya and Harajuku as well as making it a little further out to Ginza and Roponghi, we threw money away on the arcade games that we could figure out how to play, threw away some money on some that we couldn't quite figure out and after several failed attempts gave up trying to figure out where we bought the metal balls to play pachinko.

we struggled with the language, we struggled with directions, we struggled with the subway system and we struggled to find places where my vegetarian girlfriend would be able to eat.

despite japans non-understanding of vegetarianism and an abudance of non-translated menus we did manage to feed ourselves, whether it was taking chances on bento boxes from convenience stores or a particularly helpful and filling traditional noodle bar, we also searched high and low for a vegan cafe in Shibuya, ate out at Tokyo's Hard Rock Cafe and had the best italian of our lives in a small italian restaurant that didn't seem to actually employ any italian people but did import in tomatoes from italy every day



we tried to cover a wide spectrum of sight-seeing and activities to make the most of our time in Tokyo, local parks, visiting shrines, shopping at the stalls and shops of Harajuku, peeking in the bewildering boutique shops of Bathing Ape and Billioniares Boys Club, watching kabuki in a traditional theatre, using the Shibuya crossing, going to the Ghibli animation studio museum, wondering what we were doing at Tokyo Tower, taking a look at the imperial palace, clubbing in Atom and Womb and a day trip out and about round Mt Fuji which we very nearly missed.... there is probably loads i'm skimming over but i'm struggling to try and keep this brief

it's amazing, the neon tinged pictures don't do the place justice, it wasn't an easy holiday but it was a rewarding holiday full of unique experiences

and i haven't even mentioned the friday night we spent in a cat cafe (yep, a cafe, full of cats) instead of going to a transexual cabaret show.... or the amount of time we spent in kiddyland (too long, on multiple occasions).... or the bewildering selection of songs being played in Atom (i think that deserves a post of it's own).....

or.... ok, this was meant to be a brief post, i'm leaving it there





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tokyo: the GodBox has landed

In a city ruled by neon it is a strange and tempting sight when a glowing box suddenly appears outside a shopping centre and invites you to touch it, the word MYLORD sits proudly on the corner of the box as the lights pulse and respond to your touch

is this God?

No, it isn't

and its actually been there since 2007 so i don't know how we managed to miss it for something like three nights in a row

it is an interactive piece of art that sits outside the MYLORD shopping precinct in Shinjuku and has a number of light cycle displays that respond to human contact

and also makes a very pretty picture, don't ya think?

true

i was just gonna crack on with uploading some of the most interesting photos from my holiday in Japan, but instead circumstances and coincidences compelled me to delay it and cover something else instead


after a 12 hour flight, a trip along the Piccadilly line and a bus tour of Enfield i got home and tried to keep myself awake and re-adjusted to UK time by geeking out as only i know how, i started reading Batman: Jekyll and Hyde, that i had gotten out from the library, and as my eyelids grew heavy i decided to get nostalgic and stick on the dvd of Batman: The Animated Series and another happy coincidence left me pleasantly surprised that it was Two-Face that was yet again featured in the episode i was up to

it was strange then that when i got up to the BBC breakfast news that one of their features was a look at a documentary telling the story of Katie Piper, a presenter and model that suffered a horrific attack when acid was thrown over her, grimly seeming to mirror the stories from the previous night

the true story of her ordeal was hard hitting and sickening, that anyone could devise such a way to ruin another persons life makes you despair but the rebuilding of her face and her life shows such amazing strength and its positivity stands in such stark contrast to the fictional scarred dual persona of Harvey Dent that the collision of similarities and differences stopped me in my tracks

unfortunately i can't embed the interview, but it can be viewed on the BBC website here and the Cutting Edge documentary will be show on Channel 4 next Thursday (29th October) at 9pm




credit where its due:

Two-Face artwork by Rawshark

turning japanese...

i actually discovered this video before i went away, who knows what else i'll have witnessed on my travels

those clever japanese, so far advanced with their technology and its capabilities, which means that when someone realised that blowing on an iphone's touch screen could be registered, they decided to produce this app for it....



keep an eye out for my own pics from japan soon....

out of context

its another out of context comic book panel

credit where it's due:

i found it here via Bam Kapow

I am an Indie Scenester (?)

not being the type that likes to be fitted with a label i took a quiz which does so as a bit of fun, Find Your Tribe is a website that asks you questions about your tastes, habits and brand preferences before deciding which 'youth tribe' you belong to

but the dissection of youth culture into 'tribes' has been conducted quite seriosly, with the original project in 2006 polling over 70,000 people and last year a second survey questioned a further 80,000 + to keep the results up to date and relavant in identifying 26 different tribes with differing tastes and traits

and according to my results...

'You are an Indie Scenester! You are at the forefront on the indie scene – you know all the major players. You’re always ahead of the game – moving on to the next thing once everyone joins in. You like to look good and your icons go beyond the centrefold of the NME – your current look is James Dean meets Grace Jones. Just wait – everyone will be wearing it in a year’s time.'



26 different videos have been produced to further explain each tribe, i don't think that the Indie Scenester description is entirely me but there are definite parts of the description i agree are completely me

another couple of suggestions based on my results said i could possibly also be a trendie or a club kid, and if you mix them all together i'd say thats almost a fair representation of me

tho i definetly would never describe myself as a trendie indie club kid

let me know how you got on with your results!

http://www.findyourtribe.co.uk/

oh hell yeah....

is it lunch time yet?



i've scheduled a couple of posts to pop up so this blog doesn't become completely void of fun and nonsense

and you've just had two of them, keep checking for more

credit where it's due:

found this and afew others over on fun vampires

getting hungry...

wikipedia entry for Bento:

Bentō (弁当 or べんとう?) is a single-portion takeout or home-packed meal common in Japanese cuisine. A traditional bento consists of rice, fish or meat, and one or more pickled or cooked vegetables as a side dish. Containers range from disposable mass produced to hand crafted lacquerware. Although bento is readily available in many places throughout Japan, including convenience stores, bento shops (弁当屋, bentō-ya?), train stations, and department stores, it is still common for Japanese homemakers to spend considerable time and energy producing an appealing boxed lunch.

and what could be more appealing than crafting a bento into some tasty edible star wars artwork

yummy....




credit where its due:

ok, i forget where i first saw these, but it was most likely greatwhitesnark or topless robot

i don't understand

huh?

i never usualy leave it this long between posts...

i've just been busy ok


here, have something geeky to look at and bear with the possibility of sparseness over the next couple of weeks

cos i'm gonna be busy ok




credit where it's due:

i found it here via Bam Kapow

The Manhattan Fantasy (excerpt)

the following is part of a longer poem that seemed to fracture itself, so that the end seemed to sit uneasily with what had gone before it

i may work on a tail to suit the head, but in the meantime i thought i'd post up the original conclusion



The Manhattan Fantasy (excerpt)



dreams slipped 'tween cracks
sigh a mournfull moan
for the passing of the past

an irrelevant future
when you have outlived your fantasies





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