Sdtrk: ‘La fille à la moto’ by Dani

Courtesy of Mr Veach, who was be-poxed by someone else..

What were three of the stupidest things you’ve done?
1. Getting wrapped up in the life and stupidity of She Who Must Not Be Named (that’ll be at the top of the list for a very long time)
2. Missing whitehouse’s performance in Cleveland back in 1995, as they’ll probably never visit Detroit, and they haven’t played east of California in several years
3. Not continuing to study French

Who has the most influence in your life?
Yeah, I’d have to go with Veach’s answer: I do. I’m 95% responsible for my own stupidity (see above), and for my own handful of successes..

Who would you pick up for ‘Dinner For Six’ with your time machine?
Right off the bat: Ian Curtis, Oscar Wilde, Andy Warhol (circa the 60s, cos when the 70s started, he became rather boring), Anthony Burgess, and Hans Bellmer and his Doll. (She doesn’t eat, therefore she’s not really a ‘dinner’ guest.) Burgess would speak at great length about language and its perversities, while Wilde would add various bon mots, and eventually take the verbal stage with a distinctive flourish. Ian could mention the various japes that he and the rest of Joy division have pulled on people, which would probably have everyone laughing, and Warhol would get photos of me alternately asking Bellmer a passel of questions, and hitting on his Doll. Finally, Warhol would undoubtedly pick up the tab. A winning evening!

If granted three non-supernatural wishes, what would they be?
1. For Man to have a better understanding and greater tolerance of his fellow man
2. All those things that we were supposed to have in the Future according to Sixties thinking, i.e, flying cars, daily flights to the Moon, and yes, Synthetiks, etc, would be a reality
3. And for $100,000 USD to be Magickally deposited into my bank account every five days. My needs are simple!

Name two things you regret your city not having and two things people should avoid.
1. A subway/streetcar system. It being the former Motor City, everyone is contractually obligated to use motor vehicles, so we’re lucky to even have a bus service, and that’s a joke in and of itself. God forbid we actually attract people to the city, let alone bring employment into the city, with functional mass transportation!
2. A local footie club (that’s ‘soccer team’, by the way). We used to have them; the Detroit Express in the 80s, and the Rockers in the late 90s, but since soccer isn’t held in very high regard in the States unless you’re under 15 years of age, the Detroit teams withered and died away. Whatever third club Detroit would have probably won’t be good as international teams, but if they do well enough, managers could start looking into buying decent players from other places. *coughManUtdandJuvecough* Even a Championship-level player would be good, really..

People should avoid presumption in their interaction with other humans, as well as driving sport utility vehicles.

Name an event that changed your life.
Round 1989 – 1994, I used to listen to this radio programme on a nearby Windsor station called ‘Brave new Waves’, then hosted by Brent Bambry. During each show’s running time (midnight – 4am), I learned about so many bands and new styles of music that I’d never heard of before. Not only that, but midway through the show, Brent would profile a different artist, relating their history and playing several tracks as well. And of course, since I was learning all about shoegazer, and Plus 8, and 4AD, and Factory, and Rough trade, and etc, I sought out magazines that dealt with the kind of music that was now becoming a large part of my life, and from those magazines, I’d read reviews and interviews citing influences and similar bands that I’d also never before encountered. It was literally as if someone had said, ‘Davecat, here’s a whole new culture — check it out,’ cos much like anime, I didn’t just stick to loving the music, I wanted to learn more about the cultures and movements that started that music. That is, apart from the whole ‘Madchester‘ era. Some good bands, mostly crap lifestyle.

Tag five people.
Alright!

What, out loud? No, people seem to despise that. If anyone wants to be picked though, leave us a comment, won’t you?

NEXT UP: A report and summation of the whole Synthetiks documentary shoot experience

Sdtrk: ‘Agenda suicide’ by the faint

took this pic on Tues whilst I was scouting out a location for the upcoming RealDoll documentary shoot:

Provided the weather decides to be freakishly and unseasonably chilly (read: Nice), it’ll be fab. T-minus seven days and counting!

In addition to the inevitable report on how the shoot went, I might very well have some additional noteworthy news over the next couple of days, cross fingers. Watch this space, as they say

Sdtrk: ‘There’s nothing’ by the Shout out louds

For this volume, this chapter, this segment, this episode, this instalment, of ‘This was the Future’, we go back further than the usual subjects from the Sixties, all the way to cover a building constructed in the late Thirties. This would be the Johnson Wax headquarters, which still stands in Racine, Wisconsin, and was designed by a then-69-year-old architect known as Frank Lloyd Wright.

The columned ‘great workroom’ is one of Wright’s most astonishing spaces, surrounded by the light bands in the brick enclosing walls and opened by a series of tubular glass skylights that fill in between the curved tops of the column petals (columns); as Wright said, ‘the effect is that of being among the pine trees, breathing fresh air and sunlight.

Apparently Wright, zany madman that he was, also designed the desks that you can kinda see in the pic above of the Great Workroom, and those are still in use today as well. Even the attached car park sports a similar mushroom-topped design. When you’ve got a theme that works, I say run with it..

Little aside here, if you’ll bear with me: regular readers of this site know that I’m fanatical about my Sixties architecture, and it could be technically argued that highlighting a F.L Wright building is incongruous with previous volumes, and I would partially agree. But one of the main reasons that I like the Johnson Wax building is because it resembles something from the Sixties, which is actually when I thought it was constructed when I first saw pictures of it. Plus, my view on Wright is a wee bit unconventional — I don’t want to say he’s overrated, as I really do like his work (e.g, the Turkel house, the Ennis-Brown house, Fallingwater), but there are many other ace architects out there that don’t get nearly half as much attention as he does. Besides, my structural preferences tend to lean towards grey concrete, glass and steel, anyway..

Join us next time, where representatives from the Frank Lloyd Wright Estate kidnap me, and have me publically flensed

Sdtrk: ‘A thirsty fish’ by The Hafler trio

Browsing iichan‘s Miko board, I ran across something fab — an Internet version of omikuji. Omikuji are fortunes that you draw when you visit a Shinto shrine in Japan. The traditional process has you shake a container filled with narrow sticks, and you randomly pull a stick out of the container’s hole. You then go over to a series of small drawers, and open the drawer indicated by the number on the stick, and pull out a slip of paper that tells your fortune. This version simply has you select a box, and your outcome will be one of the following:

大吉 (dai-kichi, great blessing), excellent
中吉 (chuu-kichi, middle blessing), average luck
小吉 (shou-kichi, small blessing), moderate luck
吉 (kichi, blessing), standard luck
末吉 (sue-kichi, near-blessing), meh
凶 (kyou, curse), a curse, obviously
大凶 (dai-kyou, great curse), Screwed

Purely by accident (or was it Fate??), I clicked on one, and this is what I received:

Time to send out some more resumes!

Sdtrk: ‘Lovely head’ by Goldfrapp

More Actroid-chan puzzle pieces are starting to fall into place here. Dig this:

Do Androids Dream of Becoming Newscasters?

At RoboCup Osaka 2005, “Anna-san,” an android with a striking resemblance to a human female, is the focus of much attention. Whenever a person approaches Anna-san, a “female announcer robot” developed by Osaka University in cooperation with the private sector, she holds out her microphone to begin her interview.

“I want to work as a newscaster in the future,” she says, explaining her dream. “Where did you come from today?” Anna-san asks an attendant who approaches the Intex Osaka booth.

“I’m from Okinawa,” the attendant answers, to which she replies, “Oh, you’ve come a long way, haven’t you?” When people tell her they are from Osaka, she responds, “Oh, you’re a local, aren’t you?” Anna-san, who has earned the nickname “Ando” — short for “android” — chooses her words based on the location provided.

So the version with the pink jacket and the microphone would be Anna-san. Good, cos as you know, there’s multiple versions of this lovely Gynoid, and they’re all either named Actroid, or Actroid Repliee, or Actroid DER. It’s very confusing..

Stating that I’d love to see any of the versions of Actroid would be a desperate understatement, but upon reflection, me meeting her in person would probably be a bad idea.
ANNA-SAN: ‘And where did you come from today?’
DAVECAT: ‘Aaahh, the United states..’
ANNA-SAN: ‘Wow, you’ve really come a long way!’
DAVECAT: ‘Yes, yes I have. AND YOU’RE COMING BACK WITH ME!!’ *deftly whips around behind her, picks her up, and starts running as far as her cables would allow*

Sdtrk: ‘Strange design’ by Midnight movies

I think my usual statement of ‘I’ve seen this house/structure before several times, yet never knew what it was called’ really applies to the subject of Vol.13. I can recall only seeing these digs literally three times in my life: once, when viewing ‘Diamonds are forever’, another time after that, and the third time, during an episode of The Simpsons. When deliberating on what new structure to touch upon with this latest volume, for some reason this structure sprang to mind, and I’ll tell ya, it took me a couple of sweaty minutes looking the bastard up on Google, as I hadn’t Clue One as to what the place was called, or who designed it, for that matter…
Tonight! Or Today, depending on when you read this! We will be spotlighting none other than Troy McClure’s house! (Also known as John Lautner’s Chemosphere House.)

Chemosphere is bisected by a central, exposed brick wall with a fireplace, abutted by subdued seating, in the middle. One side of the house is public, with a small kitchen and blended living and dining rooms including built-in couches below glass windows. The house’s private half includes a master bedroom with bathroom, small storage and laundry rooms, an office made of two children’s bedrooms, and an additional bathroom. Despite being more compact than many new single-family houses, it has most of the essential elements.
quoted from this article

What’s nice to know is that after years of neglect and disrepair, Benedikt Taschen, head of the famous Taschen publishing company, bought it, and has been living there since 1997. Good on you, sir!

Despite the fact that this home was built in 1960, it has an inexplicable late Seventies/early Eighties feeling to it. A lot of Modernist homes constructed round this time were naturally looking towards the future, but this one seemed ahead of its time, even in respect to its contemporaries.
Between aesthetic design from the Sixties and aesthetic design from the Eighties, I’d go with the former hands down, but the Chemosphere is still a unique winner

Sdtrk: ‘To Alison’ by Ecstasy of St.Theresa

You know what I like doing? Getting into the left-hand lane in front of an SUV and driving slowly. The feckers deserve it, frankly.

I’ve never liked sport utility vehicles. They’re overly large, horribly inefficient with fuel, and 95% of them are just plain ugly (with the exception of the Aztek and the H2O, both of which somewhat resemble vehicles that SHADO would’ve used). However, it’s recently struck home with me why so many people feel compelled to purchase the damned things. I was showing my friend Mari some pictures of the various pre-2000 Mini Coopers, and she was astonished at how small it was. ‘How could you drive something that small?’ she asked. ‘I’d be afraid that I’d get crushed under somebody’s tires!’ However, that whole mindset really came screeching to my attention when I happened to catch something on a local newscast recently:

Smart Car Promotion Draws Criticism

You’ve seen the ads where Casino Windsor is giving away three smart cars, but did you catch that tiny print? Right at the bottom, the ad says “not street viable in U.S.A.”

The smart car, sold in Canada, has a small diesel engine and a little motor that does not meet U.S. emissions regulations, and U.S. Customs won’t let it in the country.

In Detroit, there are signs advertising the promotion, but if you win, you won’t be able to drive your prize in the United States. Casino Windsor said despite all the advertising, the rules are clear.

If an American customer wins the car, he or she has an alternative to take $14,000 in Canadian money instead.

There were plans to import the cars at one time, but right now, the plans are on hold.

Now, I’m seeing the sentence ‘The smart car, sold in Canada, has a small diesel engine and a little motor that does not meet U.S. emissions regulations’, and reading it as ‘The smart car is not vast and heavy enough to compete with our ridiculously large vehicles, and as we don’t really want people to be flattened like pancakes by an Escalade, the US cannot allow it on the roads’. They could’ve added ‘Three days’ worth of fuel for an SUV would keep a smart car running for three months,’ but that wouldn’t be entirely professional.

It’s really struck me why most Americans just don’t buy smaller vehicles. They want something larger that they’ll feel ‘safe’ in. You’ve got some tosspot going, ‘Well, if I don’t drive something that takes up one and a half parking spaces, I won’t feel safe from someone else driving an SUV.’ So that tosspot buys an SUV, wherein someone else says, ‘Well, if he has a huge vehicle, I want something equally huge, otherwise I’ll get crushed under his wheels’. So that person buys an SUV. And so on, and so on. It’s the Arms Race, only on four wheels.

As far as I’m concerned, the argument ‘what if you need to haul around a family, or a lot of people?’ no longer applies. Go buy a station wagon. Remember those? They looked rather like long cars — I know it seems fantastical, but it’s true, they once existed, you can see them on Google. Besides, I’m fairly certain that most people who own SUVs probably don’t have more than five people in their family, anyway.

I suppose you could reason that I wrote this post due to the fact that I was shagged off that Smart cars aren’t street legal in the United states. But it just goes to show what kind of mentality we have driving round on the roads today. I guess people really dig having to spend $40 – $50 to fill their fuel tank each week. Reason no.478 to move to Toronto: Smart cars are legal.
If I had that kind of crazy disposable income, however, I’d rather buy a pre-BMW Mini, or a Fiat 500. I’d love to drive a smart car, but even I think they’re too small to own