Annie & Danny’s Blog

I knew Obama was going to win California’s electoral votes, and I had joked with many people that I wasn’t going to vote because as I had learned in 2000, the presidential-elect wins with electoral votes not popular votes (and I always get called for jury duty every year I vote).
But as the elections got closer, I felt my anxieties about this country grow, and remembering that same 2000 election, there had to be the possibility of Obama being bamboozled by the Republicans.  I really felt there was no point in living in the USA if we got another Bush in McCain.  We really liked London, and I could imagine trying to be an ex-pat if the US continued to self-destruct.  Alas, I relented and voted.
As I watched the returns Tues night, I was obsessing over the interactive electoral map on Yahoo! every minute.  I recalled Obama leading in South Carolina on it, but then ABC declared McCain the winner in that state, so that map became dubious. I stuck to watching the ABC broadcast.  I know CNN had that hologram novelty, and NBC has the virtual sets, but they had some pretty cool touch screen display that might be commonplace for all computer users in the near future (though the smudges were clearly visible on HD).  By 8:00 PM, ABC had declared Obama the winner.
Like most things in my life, wanting some things is actually better than having.  The thrill of the chase was gone so to speak.  Winning is a let down, but there was excitement.  The excitement that Bush was going to hit the curb come January and he could take his dumb ass back to Texas.  It’s just amazing that one President could be so bad enought that American, a country with a well known racist streak, not only considered a black man a president, but actually appointed him as one!  Bush with his dismantling of the US economy, warmongering, pandering to the uber-wealthy, constant disregard for the health of the planet, and general butchering of the English language had reached a new low of popularity and even higher levels of hatred.  He had set back the Republican party back several years and he simply embodied a exaggerated truth of them:  they were generally white, self-rightgeous, abhorred the poor, and loved profiteering, both emotionally and financially, above all else.
Another excitement was having this highly intelligent man as our President.  Obama was all about “change” and he was definitely a change from the last eight years.  He was honest, admitting drug use in his teens.  He was emotional unflappable even as charges of dangerous associations were brought up and he never retaliated in kind.  You hear how Obama doesn’t have as much political experiences as he has political aspirations, but does that matter?  We just had the dumbest Commander-in-Chief for the last eight years.  Ever.
Overall, Obama just seems to ooze of cool.  He plays hoops, has that JFK candor about him, and his Chief-of-Staff’s brother is the inspiration for Ari from Entourage!  He looks and sounds like a president.
The most amazing feeling about this all is that Obama has really unified this country.  There was this Flickr slideshow (which for the life of me, I can no longer locate) featuring these wondering photos around the country of people celebrating Obama’s victory.  African Americans all around the country were just emotional and full of joy as well as the whites.  If Obama could President, anyone could.  Yes… we… can.  Not only were they excited but people as far as away as Obama, Japan and his other foreign connections were too.  Even if Obama falls on his face during his tenure, you cannot deny his unifying power over the country.  I don’t recall super congregations on Times Square over Bush’s (or even Clinton’s) election victory.  It was like a modern day V-Day.  It was as if we were liberated, and we were.

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We went down to the Red Bull Boxcar Derby down at Dolores Park.  It was a free event and the city must be full of cheapskates because the place was packed and we couldn’t see much of anything.  We managed to finagle a spot at the bottom or the hill where they coraled the vehicles, but it was a heavily shaded area and I unfortunately I didn’t use the flash, so I didn’t get anything.  It was pretty disappointing.  I was hoping I could take shots of the boxcars crashing and people flying out of them like scenes out of that Discovery Chanel show, “Destroyed in Seconds” (something bad always happens in that show).  Sadly nothing like that happened.

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As you can tell by this photo, we went to the Yaz(oo) show last Monday.  I’ve always been more of an Erasure fan than Yaz’s but since they’re on a bit of a hiatus, and Annie’s never been to an Erasure show, I figured this was just as good.
What surprised me is how time has been unkind to the many children of the 80’s who comprised most of the audience.  I guess the adage of how we all slowly transform to our parents is true.  We even had Romy and Michelle in front of us voguing.
If you never been to the Paramount in Oakland, it’s a really nice venue.  The ceilings and walls are gilded and the art deco motif is really something.
On the stage, I was intrigued by the fact that all Vince Clarke commanded was what seemed to be an Apple MacBook Pro and a few small midi keyboards.  His onstage demeanor could be described either as Spock-like in precision or disinterested to say the least.  Alison Moyet’s voice is fantastic.  As soon as they opened with “Nobody’s Diary”, I finally realized how it felt when a voice could viscerate my eardrums.

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A few weeks ago, while I was driving to work, I was listening to the Murph & Mac Show on KNBR radio and they played a snippet of New Order’s Bizarre Love Triangle between a commercial break.  I was pleasantly surprised as I am a big New Order fan.  To my dismay, one of the announcers expressed some hesitation of liking the song as it sounded a bit “gay”.  To validate his selection of the said tune, the other announcer stated that New Order was a descendant of another group, the much heralded UK band, Joy Division.  They both expressed admiration for Joy Division but the biggest travesty was suggesting (lead singer) Ian Curtis suicide consisted of a heroin overdose.
I was pretty mortified at that point.  It’s so easy to speculate any young dead rock star to have succumbed to drug abuse, but in Curtis’s situation wasn’t even close to the case.
First of all, he was epileptic.  As a lead singer, part of his and the band’s legend was on stage, and he was prone to grand mal seizures which rendered him incapable of concluding several gigs.  With an upcoming tour of America, the anxiety of embarrassing and failing his bandmates in an alien land where success meant the world was a huge burden for him.  Also to add to his troubles, he had a mistress that he couldn’t leave and a wife he didn’t want to divorce either.  In the end, he didn’t even use drugs to end his life, he hung himself at age 23.
After watching Grant Gee’s Joy Division documentary and Control, I just felt compelled to write this.  Like I’ve realized in my life, there is a reason for everything and no one should jump to conclusions unless they know what they’re talking about.

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I was watching the Weezer video for their latest single, Pork and Beans the other day on YouTube and it’s quite the promo.

If you are always on the lookout for the latest internet meme, it’s like a greatest hits compilation. It’s got appearances by the Numa Numa dude, the Peanut Butter Jelly Time Banana, Tay Zonday, and even a screen shot from Zero Wing from the All Your Bases Belong to Us phenomena. The meme that really got me curious was the GI Joe reference in the video. Like most of us Gen-Xers, I watched that cartoon religiously as a youth.
It turns out the GI Joe PSA meme was one I missed out on. This outfit in Chicago, Fensler Films, basically re-edited all these GI Joe public service announcements which were tacked on at the end of each episode. Usually they warned you about taking drugs, wearing life jackets, etc. Fensler Film took advantage of the piss poor animation quality and made 25 bits of absurdest genius. I especially enjoyed PSA #10 (Reggae) when two kids high on drugs stumble into their kitchen, only to find the GI Joe Doc hanging out at their window which only begs this question. Why is this black guy hanging out at their window?

We’ve watched all twenty-five and have come to realize how incredibly bizarre the GI Joe characters were. They were like the Village People. They had the Cowboy, the Native American, the Sailor, the Doctor, etc. At least our favorite Joe, Snake Eyes, was spared from participating in these PSA’s. Good thing he was mute.

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We saw Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull this weekend. The last Indiana Jones movie was in 1989 and I was in high school then. We saw it at the Regency on Van Ness Street. That theater isn’t even there anymore (it’s some kind of event hall now). I feel old but probably not as old as Harrison Ford. Four-fifths of the protagonists are probably eligible for retirement and whenever they were in a perilous situation, suspension of disbelief was in full overdrive. There’s no way they could outrun Russian soldiers who were half their ages nor survive a harrowing decent down not two, but three waterfalls.
That magnetic Aztec aliens plot was lame. It didn’t make much sense at all. I could describe it and I could save you ten bucks from watching it, but I won’t. It’s also distressing that like Iron Man, Indian Jones had to defeat the antagonists with the soon-to-be cliche epic “energy blast” phenomena. You know, the hero sets off a supernatural or nuclear power source and the villain(s) are defeated in an over-the-top explosion that was probably dreamed up by special effects artists, who as children, blew up dog manure with firecrackers.

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We’ve just returned from our one-week jaunt in Europe (being that the dollar is so weak, a week won’t totally kill you financially). London was fantastic. It was unseasonably warm (usually when we go on a trip, it rains). We’ve never been to NYC, but we reckon London is pretty much along those lines in terms of being a metropolis except for the fact that London is cluttered with history from the Tower Bridge to Buckingham Palace. London has the most friendly people and is more eco-friendly than any city I’ve seen in the US. London should be: the air is foul. All my clothes smelled of petrol fumes at the end of every sweat soaked day.  I ran out of clean pants and was forced to buy clothes at H & M as it was the only moderately affordable clothier when converted to dollars.  There were many youth related stabbings going on while we were there as well. At least they weren’t shooting each other with guns like here in the US.

If London is the nice sophisticated side of NYC, then Paris must be the worst part of NYC. It’s not tourist friendly as many locals don’t care to speak English or to even include it in their local literature. And most of the people there…how can I say it? Most of them are assholes. If you have ever wondered about the common French stereotype, it’s true. They are rude. They prefer to shoulder tackle you instead of avoiding you (reminds me of that “Bittersweet Symphony” video by The Verve). We were accosted by this little French freak in the Metro and that totally soured our experience there. We were getting onto a train, and this little monkey dude barges past Annie and wouldn’t let me pass him. I manage to shove my way through him and he gets pissy and starts muttering some undecipherable French and then leaves the train! I can’t believe how Parisians would think their city has anything over London. Even compared with the stabbing problem in London, I never felt safe walking their streets . They have these aggressive panhandlers/vendors called “Gypsies” and shifty French suburban kids who have no qualms about terrorizing Americans on the streets. The city is beautiful at night, but we were too frightened to ride the Metro in the evenings. BO and nicotine are the national scents of France. The petrol stench from London is Chanel compared to this. On the other hand, the Louvre is a fantastic museum which shames anything I’ve seen in SF.

Check out some of our photos:
London
Paris

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My Japanese giant robot obsession has reached its zenith with this Soul of Chogokin Reideen. I have eagerly awaited this release since I even heard of Bandai’s SOC series. “Chogokin” is the fictional magical metal used to fabricate pioneering 70’s giant robot icon Mazinger-Z and hence is the namesake for this series of Gen-X marketed collectables.
I have fond memories of Reideen the Brave as it was my first exposure to Japanese anime. I remember desperately wanting the giant Reideen toy that would always be advertised during its Sunday night broadcast on Channel 26.

There was this store in SF Chinatown called Johnson Imports that sold such toys and when I finally got my mom to take me there, she just couldn’t afford it. I don’t know…it must have been the equivalent of $100 bucks in 1976. Instead she got me the little motorcycle which Reideen’s pilot would suicidally ride off a clift every episode in order to get to Reideen. I remember being content with it for awhile but I always pined for that giant die-cast metal Reideen.
So after purchasing numerous Mazingers, Grandizers, and Gundams, I’ve finally got this guy hanging out on my computer table. It’s not as huge as the Reideen toy of my youth, probably is 75 percent plastic, and is made in China (all the original Popy toys were made in Japan), but it’s definitely a nice birthday present for my inner child.

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A few weeks ago, we went to the Rilo Kiley show at the Concourse at the San Francisco Design Center. Ummm….here’s the ticket stub to prove it.
In case you never heard of them, Rilo Kiley is an indie-pop/alt-country outfit from Southern California which includes two former child actors. I had read about them in a Rolling Stone review for Under the Blacklight and then sought them out on iTunes one Saturday morning. I really liked that album hence I dragged Annie to this show.
BTW, the Concourse at the San Francisco Design Center is a horrible venue. It’s like one long open ended cavernous warehouse without any seating. The last time I had been there was for a wedding trade show and previous to that, an Asian dance party in the 90’s (when I was still young enough to attend those things). We were impressed that Rilo Kiley managed to fill it out halfway. They played the Warfield last year and I wish we had seen them then.
Here’s the setlist (which I am copying and pasting from an article in the SJ Mercury as half the songs were unrecognizable to me):

“Close Call”

“The Moneymaker”

“Dreamworld”

“Capturing Moods”

“Breakin’ Up”

“Does He Love You”

“Ripchord”

“The Absence of God”

“With Arms Outstretched”

“Hail to Whatever You Found in the Sunlight That Surrounds You”

“It’s a Hit”

“A Better Son/Daughter”

“Silver Lining”

“I Never”

Encore:

“Pictures of Success”

“Portions for Foxes”/”Spectacular Views”

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