Hong Kong... sweatier than Roy Mata's balls.

I heard tons of glaring praise. Tons.

"You should go during that period... the weather is great!"

"Yeah, it's wonderful there! And cheap!"

"Oh, it's easy to get around. The city is very simple."

Remind me when I get home to lay an A-class gas round on some cats. Open-mouth, thighs against the face, deep-breath noxious action. This place is a great, big, disoriented screaming neon orgasm, packed with sweaty people hunting around for God-knows-what while dodging Indian peddlers trying to sell you bad suits and fake watches. Staying 4 deep at a hostel hiding my cash at one of the NICEST places of the type is wild. I can't decide if I love it or if I'm going to have a seizure. Hopefully I'll get to feel the city out in a more thorough manner once the weather gets decent. The architecture gets an A + though... especially Central. Kowloon seems just like all those John Woo flicks I used to watch, without the violence. Thank God.

(This keyboard sucks. Damned internet cafes...)

A warning though: as lame and played out as the expat scene is in Japan, Hong Kong's surpasses it so far in its sheer degree of ass-eat-dom. It seems like the playgroun for ol', fat, angry, and mean british guys. Plus it's humid as all hell and it hasn't stopped raining yet.

Yeah, this has been a good use of 800 bucks. No problem. At least next week I'll go out and buy a bunch of cheap clothes and DVDs before I roll back... but I'd like it to stop raining first so I could check some things out. Vey-cay-shun blooze.

This just in...

Taipei's airport is the quietest airport in the fucking world.

Seriously.

Corrupted is playing on 5/20 in Kumamoto City!!

"Where Boris is channelling all sort of seventies rock, and stoner riffage, albeit through their own slow motion filter, Corrupted are just really fucking scary. A huge uncontainable, slithering, squirming, unstoppable, slow-motion, crusty metallic black hole." - Aquarius Records website

SIGN ME UP.

Corrupted is coming to town on May 20th at Django in Kumamoto City. Tickets are available from "On The Corner" records, which is downtown and easy to find. 2000 yen with one drink.

I am STOKED. For once, I can see a Japanese band that doesn't wish it was the Sex Pistols. Although they have a lot of Spanish folk influences throughout their music, make no mistake: when these guys go nuclear and turn on the distortion they bring the low, heavy, screamy sludge like you wouldn't believe. AND they do it all in Spanish. Osaka's answer to the Melvins? Maybe. They tend to break up their "RAWK ACTION"(tm) with pianos, acoustic guitars, and soft relaxing drones. It's like an avalanche in slow motion.

I'll put it this way: Corrupted have a two cd album available. Total track listing for both discs? 2 songs.

Dig some links:

Here.

Excerpts from Llenandose de Gusanos:

Excerpt from "disco primero."
Excerpt from "disco segundo."

Excerpts from Se Hace Por Los Suenos Asesinos:

Track one (se hace).
Rato Triste.

I'm getting my hair cut on a street called "Hennessy Road."

You know I'm from down south when I laugh at that one.

Hong Kong: aka "the search for food."

30 to 35 pounds in the past 9 months. Jeez man. Rocking the stick action. I've never been so small, and I need a new wardrobe at the same time from all the loss. Great. More money that I could spend on THINGS FROM WHICH I RECEIVE A MODICUM OF JOY will go to "trousers, dress shirts, and suits."

As long as I stay out of the "khakis and polos!" game I'm straight. The day that one goes down you'll find a very messy scene in a warm bath involving yours truly. I would take a picture of me with my shirt off and place it next to one of me from the summer for the sake of exposition, but it's so incredibly gay-sounding in theory that I think I'm best to stay out of that game.

Anyway...

One of my (few) beefs with Japan is that the food sucks. This is compounded by the fact that the only convenient and half-decent grocery store in my proximity went tits-up earlier on this year, leaving me on a steady diet of eggs, conbini runs for bad egg sandwiches, and 4 km bike rides just to get one bag of groceries. Yay. All of this occured under the pernicious umbrella of an unusually cold and unrelenting winter. When I went home, people were basically asking me "what did you get for Christmas? Cancer?"

So fast forward a few months and I'm off to Hong Kong for Golden Week. The thing is, the past few weeks have been ripping me down since Tokyo, and I've been on a budget of MAXIMUM 1000 yen a day (ie about $8.50 US), which I'm trying to keep inclusive with expenses. That means if I want to get a beer at night, I gotta go light one day, or just eat something simple. I can't knock it though, because the proof is in the pudding. I don't want to work anymore and this is promising to do well in the S and P 500, plus my damn expenses lightly have been ridiculous. 8000 yen phone bill for text messages? I may have to punch somebody.

So long story short: I almost don't want to go. I tried to cancel last month and they demanded half of my deposit, even though there were about 30 days until the flight. That's right; I AM RELUCTANTLY GOING ON VACATION TO A CITY I'VE ALWAYS WANTED TO VISIT.

What the fuck is wrong with me?

However, after some reading, I have found a light. Apparently they have FOOD in Hong Kong. Real food. Heavy food. Cheap food. And lots of it. Good. I'm starving here.

Thai? I'll try that on for size.
Pizza? My former fat-ass will come out the gate and go 3 dishes deep.
Chinese? Hey, as long as it's not a harvested organ from a nun, slap it on that plate and fire on with that soy.
Burgers? It will go down, son.

Here's to throwing up on a Hong Kong streetcorner and then going back for thirds. I am ready, land of Chan.

(Also: bootleg DVDs)

Perhaps the funniest video I have ever seen...

Televangelism replete with threats of violence, name-calling, and enough cheese for the world's greasiest pizza lover.

TELL ME this isn't amazing.

I was impressed.

Fun with murder... what the hell happened behind my apartment this weekend?

After three days of carousing and jaunting about I came home late Sunday night. Monday morning I get up to walk to work and find this. I can't tell if it was somebody's idea of a joke or a legitimate investigation mark-up. Blood always photographs funny. I'm pretty sure it's from a motorbike crash or something, but there are two pools 10 feet away from each other.

Yikes.







So yeah, good weekend.

Reader mail!

Ahem... from this post, Houmidity writes:

You can infringe on our copyright any time you like, good sir!

Word.

From this post, I not only got a PHONE CALL from somebody (?) but the following comment:

sounds boring you need some head(sic)

How IS your father doing these days?

From this post, we get this from Barred out:

wow thats not funny(sic)

Hey, if making fun of a Japanese video game about Jesus at work is not amusing to you, well, check your pulse. Or forgive me. Or whatever.

*Turns Number Girl off... turns this on*

Karp. Live in Alabama.

Wow, somebody in Houston acknowledged my existence. Odd.

Apparently somebody from Houmidity has trapsed their way into our collective mine-field of porno, underage girls, and grammar studies. Yowza. If I lived in that tarpit of death and SUVs I'd be near-death too.

So here's what you do if you are bored in Houston, kids. And you WILL be bored, unless you're one of the scores of people who's picked up a coke addiction in the past few years there.* That place is a fun vaccuum.

1. Go to gmail.com.

2. Enter 'eaforums' as a login.

3. Enter 'notcrap' as a password.

4. Gorge yourself on rare mp3s, cool shit, and crazy videos.

* = God I don't miss my old apartment in Montrose at ALL. By the way, aren't coke addicts supposed to be, you know, not fatter than a shut-in who sucks down milkshakes all the live-long day? Help me out.

Operation: stay out of America.

So I can avoid being killed and eaten.

Best. joke. ever.

Emo Phillips:

"I argued with my father the other day that Plato was the godfather of philosophy. He took the opposing viewpoint that I should wax the kitchen floor. I responded by saying that's impossible, because the floor doesn't exist... at least not in the permanent sense that the concept "floor" does. He asked, "do you believe in the concept of your skull?" I said yes, and he surprised me by juxtaposing the two concepts."

Band term for the day: "shower oyster"

New Black Swan Orchestra material coming along fine, thanks. Should be playing sometime after the weather PICKS A MOOD AND STAYS THAT WAY.

Tokyo: or "Dude, I'm so stoked on this brodeo..."

Cool things that happened:

- Realized that for an ugly guy who likes music that can strip paint at 100 yards, I do get hit on a lot.

- Got confused for a male model in Ueno Park. Had my picture taken by teenage girls, old creepy dudes, and some keener American "journalist" who gave me a thumbs up after thinking my baleful stare at him was a "pose" and not a prelude to an ass-kicking. Why not, you know, just ASK ME?

- Ran into a dude I came over with on the initial orientation and had a rabble rousing day of harajuku joke-makery and American food destruction. Also discussed Chomsky's linguistic theories, violitional deviations, slang, and the applied studies in foreign languages.

- Schooled a teenaged Colorado girl on Joy Division after she started going all "Hard Day's Night" on my Death From Above shirt. Extrapolate from there. Geekdom has advantages.

- Record shopping in Koeinji. Picked up CDs by Battles, Year Future and Your Enemies Friends. Stoked.

- Went to that バロック (Barok), a crazy-ass "serial killer, death, autopsy, creepy art" store in Koeinji that just scared the ever-loving shit out of me. You know the movie 8mm? Well, combine that with an underground record shop and there you are. This little bald guy in a booth with glasses just glared and didn't move the whole time while I looked at various things.

CREEPY.

- Finally popped my "internet cafe pass-out" cherry and crashed out in Shibuya after my retarded "friend" from Hawaii started suffering from "gaijin sickness." Rock.

Less than cool things:

- Confused for a gangster in Shinjuku... just because a man wears a suit and doesn't smile...

- Didn't get my hair cut after all. I still look like Paul Weller does now, which is pissing me off.

- Went through a debilitating "man, I don't want to hang out with foreigners" phase while, you guessed it, eating at Outback steakhouse and observing foreigners. The self-hate has reached it's vintage stage, sir.

- Had a friend do that "I don't really know him" thing on me for no reason. Moody old dope smoker, eh? Here's to damaged Hawaiian girls. May the road rise to meet you, and your compulsive memory problems.

Let the copyright infringement commence.

Go to it.

Bill Hicks on women priests.

Double dose: Bill Hicks GOES OFF ON A HECKLER.

Dinosaur Jr.: The Wagon.

Great moments in rock intros.

JET events you can get behind.

Marathons. Basketball. Monologues about vaginas. Festivals that are 100s of kilometers away and require the kind of planning that the allies used at Normandy.

This all begs the question: what the fuck, people?

I'm starting to come up with a list of "JET events you can get behind." Feel free to write in with your own.

1. First Annual "I don't speak British English explain-a-poolozza."

A chance to find out what the hell half of the English guys I hang out with are talking about at any random time. Will feature special "sittin' fat down south" after-party, in which an understanding of phrases like "skrilla", "grill," and "tip drill" will be communicated to our Stone Roses-listening brethren.

Notes to be published by Columbia University.

2. "Who got fat?" THE INTERACTIVE VERSION.

Simply put, a chance to see who doughed up like Gnar Gnar Binks this year and who dropped off like Ian Brown circa '91. Extra points for contestants who cry.

3. Break-a-bunch-of-shit 2006:

In my area of Kumamoto, there are copious regulations for the disposal of heavy garbage items. There's also a lot of open construction areas, random heavy machinery, sledgehammers, and a FUCKING OCEAN which can facillitate the navy-friendly funeral.

Put two and two together.

(PS: free beer for anybody who drives a car into the deep blue sea. Offer voided if you "Kennedy it up.")

4. Fuck-Sports-In-The-Mouth Festival:

I just wanted to express that I don't get the point of sports anymore at my age. Again. 25 years old and people want me to play kids' games? Here's an idea: why doesn't your particular area of Japan discover something like food, fine dining, music, foreign cinema, or wife-beating? Yowza. I'll play some soft tennis now and again, and I find long bike rides therapeutic... but come on already!

Simply put, this festival will consist of everything that makes life worth living: sleeping in late and calling in sick.

5. Flash Mob Kumamoto City Pillow fight.

I'm so deadly serious about this... pillow fights are awesome. Random, organized, FUNNY pillow fights? Where do I sign?!??

The only thing you have to be on-gaurd against is when the pillow fight gets too intense and you have guys kneeing pregnant women in the stomach while going for the coveted "head shot."

This thing will go OFF.

6. Prank-call night:

A night of structured, violatile, and carefully planned prank calls to you and yours. Can be played round robin or in a tournament setting. Extra points for the following:

1. Getting the mark to leave their house.
2. Inducing the repetition of nonsensical phrases.
3. Succesful recalls.
4. Admission of utter confusion.
5. CONVINCING THE GUY OR GIRL AT THE END OF THE OTHER LINE TO THOROUGHLY OBLITERATE THE PHONE.

Just think about it.

Yeah yeah...

I've done all the verb conjugations of causative and causitive/passive forms that my brain can possibly handle, and so now I must present to you my proudest moment of this year:

"Evin the bear demands diet beer, Sopranos reruns, and porn."

There are some other pictures up here. Knock yourselves unconscious.

...

Coming up soon:

The "download-download-download!" bundle.

Tokyo recap. (Getting mistaken for a yakuza! Getting mistaken for a male model! Having creepy photographer guys take shots of me at Yoyogi park! Schooling girls on Joy Division! Buying records and lamenting the passing of Billy Guitar Wolf! Sleeping in internet cafes!)

JET events you can get behind.

20th Anniversary JET logo MS paint contest.