Sdtrk: ‘Jacqueline’ by Franz Ferdinand

As my friend goshou has been a rabid fanatic of the Guitar hero series ever since its inception, it naturally stood to reason that he would pick up the rhythm game phenomenon known as Rock Band up for his XSLAB 360 upon its release. Shortly after he did so, Zip Gun grabbed a copy as well for his PS3. So usually, our Saturday get-togethers are finished off with a hearty hour or two of banding rocks together.
Our group’s name is ‘AH SALOPE GET OFF ME!!’, the name stemming from a long-standing in-joke within our group of mates*, but usually we rock out on Free Mode, as neither SafeT or I have the game, so we can’t practise our chops at home. We’re prone to switch up instruments, but usually ZG plays guitar or sings, goshou mans guitar or drums, SafeT can be found either singing, drumming, or ah, guitarring, and I usually pick drums or bass, or vocals if it’s one of the songs by the Ramones. Like most of the other bands on the rock server, we’re pretty average; however, it must be said that we’re shockingly good at Bon Jovi’s ‘Wanted Dead or Alive’. We can’t explain it.

The game’s opened my ears to a bunch of songs that I’ve always heard of, but never actually heard, like Foreigner’s ‘Juke box hero’, or ‘Paranoid’ by Black sabbath, or Deep purple’s ‘Highway star’, which for some bizarre reason I actually like. Maybe it’s due to its association with the ‘Diamond is unbreakable‘ story arc of the manga series JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure.

So I was just thinking recently: you know what song is begging to be added to the already-lengthy Rock Band playlist? ‘Sister Ray’, by the Velvet underground.

There would be a big brawl over which take to use. Of course everybody would opt for the takes where they sounded best. It was a tremendous hassle, so on ‘Sister Ray’ which we knew was going to be a major effort we stared at each other and said, ‘This is going to be one take. So whatever you want to do, you better do it now.’
And that explains what is going on in the mix. There is a musical struggle — everyone’s trying to do what he wants to do every second, and nobody’s backing off. I think it’s great the way the organ comes in [John] Cale starts to try and play a solo. He’s totally buried and there’s a sort of surge and then he’s pulling out all the stops until he just rises out of the pack. He was able to get louder than Lou [Reed] and I were. The drums are almost totally drowned out.

— Sterling Morrison, from ‘Up-tight: the Velvet Underground story’

Yeaaah, all seventeen sarky chaotic seedy whirlwind minutes of Sister Ray. And here you thought ‘…and Justice for All’ was an endurance test. Pfft, lightweight

*Do you want to know? Do you really want to know? Click on the comments for additional unneccesary exposition

Sdtrk: ‘Sadistic’ by Stereolab

We know a little workplace in the American Southwest, where alert reader Sena toils in the biotech department. She, like many other people, recently viewed ‘Guys and Dolls‘, found it eminently fascinating, and told her coworkers about it. However, instead of the typical torches-and-pitchforks reaction, according to her, Sidore and I are celebrities over there. Don’t believe me? Check out their whiteboards:

That blurry bit in the first pic is the department name, by the way. I particularly like the second pic though, as the artist managed to accurately capture our likenesses to a T. Someone’s done their research!

This post goes out to Sena, Jacob, and the diligent (?) employees at Corporate Workplace That I Obviously Can’t Name, Located in a Rather Large Southwestern State. Stop watching so many videos on das InfoBahn! Go read a book instead!

Sdtrk: ‘Alright, already’ by Combustible Edison

Being as that I’m a reasonably large fan of the comic-artist stylings of Jamie ‘The Bicycle King of Worthing‘ Hewlett, you know what gets on my wick? I’ve got all of the Tank girl trade paperbacks available (except for ‘Tank girl: Apocalypse!’ as that was shite), and I even have a copy of the rare ‘Hewligan’s haircut‘ in my library, which I proudly display whenever dignitaries or heads of state pop round Deafening silence Plus. However, the one thing I desperately need a trade paperback of would be his series ‘Get the Freebies!’ which ran in the UK fashion/music/style mag THE FACE back during the late Nineties.

The premise of the series was typical The Hewll: gay Buddhist kung-fu expert Terry Phoo and his partner Whitey Action, a former child star who has her breast development stunted by hormone use, work for the police in order to capture the Freebies gang, which is comprised of Burk, a dumb purple gorilla; a fey midget with hooves for feet whose name I can’t remember; and Marlon, their leader who has a basketball for a head. They drive round in Matchbox cars, Whitey’s main gimmick are her utility pants, which are a bottomless pair of knickers which hold her weapons and… anything at all, really, and in the first issue, the Freebies get killed. But that doesn’t stop them from reappearing in the rest of the series! YES. HEWLETT.
What shags me off worse is that there actually is a trade paperback for Get the Freebies! But the bastard’s in Spanish. DAMNIT *slams fist on table*

However, there might well be a live-action television series. The Devil, you say.

Car chases, kung-fu and comedy come together in the wonderfully warped world of Phoo Action – an offbeat 60-minute drama special for BBC Three.

Based on characters created by Jamie Hewlett (Gorillaz, Tank Girl) for The Face comic strip Get The Freebies, Phoo Action is set in 2012, when London is in the grip of mutant criminals, The Freebies.

Only Terry Phoo, a hapless Buddhist kung-fu cop, and unruly teenage heroine Whitey Action, the daughter of Police Chief Benjamin Benson, can save the nation.

Together they form an unlikely but effective crime-fighting team who bring together chaos and comedy, mischief and mayhem, to become heroes for a future generation in the face of Britain’s super-vile, super-famous mutated criminals.
taken from this site

Going by the trailer on the above-linked Myspace page, the pilot looks rather Sid and Marty Krofft-esque, which fits, and would probably be the only proper way to translate something like that into three dimensions. Also, it’s reassuring to see that it’s directed by Euros Lyn, who was in the director’s chair for one of my favourite Doctor Who episodes, ‘The girl in the fireplace’. Huh! And HOLY CRAPS IT’S ON BBC THREE THIS TUESDAY NIGHT AT 9PM.
As long as it’s nothing like that hideous Tank girl movie, there’ll be no need for that massacre. Err, not that I was planning one, of course

Technorati tags: Jamie Hewlett, Tank girl, Get the Freebies!, Phoo Action, Doctor Who, BBC Three, Sid and Marty Krofft, Worthing

Sdtrk: ‘I only said’ by My bloody valentine

As I sit here, our long-suffering Organik roomie Tsukihime is under a cluster of blankets, trying to fight off a cold/flu/virus/leprosy, and I’m at my fashionable IKEA-made kitchen table, poppin’ Airborne tabs like they’re going out of fashion, attempting to catch up on my neglected Email responses, and downloading the latest eps of Gundam 00, Cutie Honey the Live, and Kamen rider Kiva from my good friends, INTERNET PIRATES. Shi-chan is relaxing in the bedroom, reading our copy of ‘Factory records: The complete graphic album‘ (ta very much, ZG), and I’ve just now received an Email from Amazon.co.uk stating that my combo copy of the DVD of ‘Control’ and a paperback version of Deborah Curtis’ ‘Touching from a distance’ will be gracing my doorstep this week, which is news that fills me with liquid joy. Or Lemon fresh Joy, one or the other; I honestly can’t tell from here.
There! Now you have a small glimpse of the domesticity that goes on within Deafening silence Plus. Scandalous!

This Sunday past, in between hacking away at my laundry and repairing a small tear in the Missus’ arm — she recently overextended it playing air hockey* — I happened to see some very incredible news mentioned on someone’s blog. I can’t remember which blog it was right now, but the news remains burned into my retinas:

Apparently, the greatest band of the Nineties and the gods of Shoegazer, My bloody valentine, have reformed and are touring this year. The Second Coming will end up happening during my lifetime, after all. If they come to Michigan, I will explode in a mile-wide detonation of Lemon fresh Joy.

My best friend Sean and I saw My bloody valentine back in 1991, when they toured for their epic Loveless album. Actually, they came to St Andrews twice — once towards the start of the tour, and once near the end; we caught their second performance, which was pretty much all we hoped for and more. The sheer wall of sound they generated was almost a religious experience, it was that good. I still have the shirt I bought!
For those unfamiliar with the whole Shoegazer ethos, it consists of blissful pop arrangements where the guitars and vocals are almost completely awash in effects pedals. Distortion, delay, reverb, flanger and the like are the order of the day. The term shoegazer comes from the curious habit that most of the guitarists display of staring at their shoes while performing — in actuality, they’re not simply staring longingly at their trainers, they’re deciding which effects pedal they’re about to turn on or off. The important thing to remember is that during its heyday, there were a passel of Shoegazer groups — good ones, such as Medicine, Slowdive, Cranes and (early) Lush, or rubbish ones like Catherine wheel or Bailter space — but none can hold a candle to the blurry genius of Kevin Shields, Bilinda Butcher, Colm Ó Cíosóig and Deb Googe. And now, they’re back together after a decade and a half, with a new album on the way, according to rumour. Absolutely lovely. Now come back to Michigan! Your fans have spoken.

In the meantime, you lot reading this? Go out and pick up a copy of Loveless. You owe it to yourself to have at least one phenomenal non-Joy division Cd in your life, and that’ll fit the bill nicely

*I kid! We don’t have an air hockey table! We were actually arm-wrestling

Sdtrk: ‘Narco Martenot’ by Stereolab

Right, I fully admit it: I’ve been a lazy tosser. So lazy! Between the bizarre weather (literally, close to 50°F one day, close to 20°F the next), fighting off yet another supercold because of the aforementioned weather, finally finishing off Half-life 2, Monti and I finding out last Saturday that Nippon kai, our favourite Japanese restaurant, has apparently lost their lease, and voraciously reading David Levy’s encouraging ‘Love and Sex with Robots‘, I’ve been slacking off on my duties as a blogger* in a major way. It’s not like I have absolutely nothing to write about — for instance, right this minute I’m peering at my bookmarks folder for potential subjects for the ‘This was the Future’ series, and there’s like twenty-seven candidates — I just haven’t felt compelled to sit down and write. This is due to the fact that I am an indolent sack of ordure. So lazy!
The upshot of it is, I will get back to writing soon enough. Well, typing. Doing this now, I feel like I’m returning to a more writerly mode, so that’s reassuring. So don’t panic!

In the interim, have another Ribald Tale from my Saucy Workplace!
ME: Okay Mrs Porpyruptup**, we’ll send you out a reminder card; you should see it in about three to five days.
MRS PORPYRUPTUP: That’s fine. Be sure to make a note on it that it’s a reminder, to give me a kick in the shin.
ME: Ha ha! We wouldn’t do that! It’d ruin your chances to win the, err, shin-dancing… competition.
MRS PORPYRUPTUP: Oh no, I never learned how to dance. My parents didn’t allow it.
ME: They didn’t allow dancing? How is that even possible? Were they Quakers? Did they arrive on the Mayflower?
MRS PORPYRUPTUP: Well, it just wasn’t in the environment.
ME: Well that was then, but what about now? What do you do when you hear a song you like? You just kinda lie down on the floor in a cold sweat, wishing the song would end? *starts giggling uncontrollably*

*Yeah, ‘duties as a blogger’. It’s okay, I’m snickering too
**her name wasn’t so much changed to protect the innocent, as it was me completely not remembering it

Sdtrk: ‘Here it goes again’ by OK go

I’ve said before, but it bears repeating: Sidore and I clearly need an agent. Cos then, we wouldn’t have wildly inappropriate enquiries such as this:

from: M*******
to: pulsedemon [at] gmail.com
date: Jan 15, 2008 3:07 PM
subject: The Tyra Banks Show

Dear DaveCat,

How are you? My name is M******* and I am a production assistant at the Tyra Banks Show. I recently came across the documentary you participated in about the hyper-realistic dolls. I wanted to speak with you about an upcoming show we are producing for early next week. We would love to hear your story. Please call me at (phone number) or please leave contact info where you can be reached so that we may contact you.

Thanks so much and we hope to hear from you soon,

M*******
—
M*******
Production Associate
The Tyra Banks Show

Yes, Tyra Banks. Even with the esteemed likes of Heraldo and (Not a) Doctor Phil attempting to woo me, occurences like this still continue to stun me. It’s funny-peculiar though, as I remember reading on TDF that there was supposed to be an episode of the Tyra Banks show that dealt with RealDolls, but this was almost half a year before anyone had ever read about ‘Lars and the Real Girl’. Maybe they’re just now getting round to it?
So I wrote back:

from: Dave Kuroneko
to: M*******
date: Jan 16, 2008 11:42 AM
subject: Re: The Tyra Banks Show

Hey M******* –

Thanks for your enquiry! However, I’m not entirely sure if The Tyra Banks Show is the right venue for lengthy, in-depth discussion of the merits of having a Synthetik companion. Plus, apart from lack of compensation, the travel expense, and the short notice, I don’t do too well with crowds, to be perfectly honest…
Thanks again for asking, though!

Cheers,
Davecat

Now, call me crazy, but I don’t honestly see Ms Banks’ staffers having done any deep research into iDollator history and culture. What probably happened is someone sent Tyra a link to ‘Guys and Dolls’; she stared at it in wide-eyed shock, and after recomposing herself, assigned some production associates such as M******* to scour the Series of Tubes, in order to find some of these doll freaks to base a programme around. ‘Make it happen, people,’ Tyra shouts, clapping her hands vigourously.
So M******* sez, she sez:

from: M*******
to: Dave Kuroneko
date: Jan 16, 2008 12:02 PM
subject: Re: The Tyra Banks Show

Davecat,

Thanks so much for getting back to me. We really found the footage of you highlighting your story to be very compelling. We are very interested in hearing where you are coming from and want to portray you in the way you want to be portrayed. The date of the show has actually changed to sometime later in the month. We do not have a concrete date yet, however we will be able to give you more notice since the date of the show has changed. As soon as we find this date out, we will be sure to let you know. We will definitely be able to compensate you, and if you would feel more comfortable having someone come with you to New York, we would be more than happy to make that happen. I would like to talk with you more in depth so you can understand where we are coming from. Is there a number where you can be reached? Also, you can reach me at anytime at (phone number). Thank you so much for your time and we really look forward to hearing from you and working with you.

Best,
M*******

Heh. ‘Compelling’. That’s an adjective I rank up there with ‘interesting’, in that it doesn’t necessarily mean good or bad. You can find a video of talking cats compelling. You can also find footage of a ten-car pile up in action compelling. Both events draw the eye, but just because it gets your attention doesn’t always mean it’s good.
My response? It was kinda funny, as I was falling gently asleep at work while on the phone with a boring client, and she (the client) asked me why I was so tired. I proceeded to mention that I was up until 2 am the previous night mainly writing Emails and hangin’ out with Gordon Freeman, and as my roll of explanation spun out more and more, it suddenly struck me that I hadn’t written M******* back regarding the show. That woke me up, by god. I started to freak out a bit, to be honest. Sure, there may be instances with offers of television appearances on shows I really don’t want anything to do with, but just because I’m not interested is no reason to be unprofessional and leave the person asking hanging. So as soon as my first break was done — and after a brief ‘power nap’ — I hastily Emailed the following reply back with my Treo:

from: Dave Kuroneko
to: M*******
date: Jan 21, 2008 1:28 PM
subject: Re: The Tyra Banks Show

Hey M******* –

Sorry for the delay; I spent most of my week-end away from my apartment. You know how it goes…

To be honest, I’m probably going to have to decline. I honestly don’t trust the media — in particular, television shows — that come out of the States, as a lot of them tend towards sensationalism. A couple of months ago, I turned down opportunities to speak about being an iDollator on both Geraldo and Dr Phil for the same reasons. I usually try to stick to either dedicated documentaries, or shows from other countries (‘Guys and Dolls’ was originally intended to be shown only on BBC), as they’re less likely to spin it into something that could be detrimental to both my life, and iDollator culture in general.

With all due respect, I’ll have to pass. Thanks again for the offer!

Cheers,
Davecat

Yeah; needless to say, that would’ve been a disaster of Hindenburgian proportions. A cluster of klieg lights melting my face off my skull, whilst a room full of people fail to understand what the hell I’m talking about or why being an iDollator is even an option. Just watch though, as Tyra’s crew contacts Everhard. Or Stacy Leigh. Or Gordon Griggs?

I know, right? Tyra Banks, of all people! Who’s next, Sally Jesse Raphael? She still has a show, right? Shows you how often I watch telly

Sdtrk: ‘Dinner’, from the ‘Valerie and her week of wonders’ soundtrack

Do you have a tele-vision? Do you have cable, or can you otherwise receive channels from the wintry land of Canada? Well, the good people at CityTV’s forward-thinking programme SexTV will have a segment on Amber and her Synthetik twin/bride. Or, to put it another way, they’ll have a segment on Amber and her Organik twin/bride. One of ’em will be doing more talking than the other, I’m sure. As you might recall, the SexTV folk did a piece with yours truly and the Missus back in the heady days of 2003, so I’m certain that Amber’s segment will be just as informative and entertaining. Very nice!

So yes! Their episode will be airing this Monday (that’s tomorrow), 21 January, at 9pm EST. It’ll be the one with Margaret Cho on it as well. I’ll have to ask the SexTV staffers for a DVD copy, as I don’t have cable. I have a cable, but it’s just not the same

‘You taste like rubber.’ ‘So do you.’

Technorati tags: SexTV, Amber Hawk Swanson, RealDolls