Artist and writer, or writer and artist. Sometimes other things, too.
Tag: 21st century
It’s Samhain, so let’s throw some more Edward Woodward on the bonfire and look at some old horror and occult stuff from this blog’s archives. Highlights include:
Mr Shape and Mr Pipes are keeping an eye on your children
“It [Ghostwatch] was deemed particularly irresponsible not just for descending abruptly into a sadistic cavalcade of suburban child abuse and injury in its final act, but even more so for starting with a perfect simulation of a BBC factual OB’s usual jovial and bourgeois tone.”
What more recommendation do you need? Bonus: Sarah Greene’s lengthy, deadpan discussion of the “glory hole”. I have an appointment with Mr Pipes this evening and I shall be watching Ghostwatch on DVD, oh yes.
“In the plane, you died, do you remember that?” Occult voices.
“The medium Leslie Flint– who insisted upon conducting his seances in the dark for reasons I cannot possibly…
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A recent visit to a Chinese supermarket led to a number of somewhat less than pragmatic purchases, including a pack of Hell Money. Alternatively known as joss money, it’s intended to be burned or otherwise offered to people and deities in the afterworld. Hence also the term joss sticks, AKA the incense burned before a shrine or altar. I guess the underlying idea is that the smoke carries the prayers up to the afterlife, and so by extension the burned money also travels the same way. You can get Hell (or joss) clothes, cars, and household appliances although they’re frowned upon by the authorities in mainland China as “vulgar” and “feudal”. You see loads of this kind of thing in places like Hong Kong, though. Fifty million HK$ is worth about four million British Pounds, nearly five million Euros or about $6.5 million US… and one typically offers them in…
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Of course there’s no nation on Earth with a monopoly on baffling, pointless, annoying, off-putting and inept advertising. The advertising industry as a whole is one of the things that the planet would be better off without, the unscrupulous deceiving the unwary. In my experience, though, there’s no inexplicably bad advert like an inexplicably bad Asian advert. As I’ve mentioned previously, it’s often because the product being advertised is a solution to a problem that nobody in their right mind thinks is a problem. That’s the case in the following advertisement, for the “Unchoken Lucky Dog” money box. Tortured puns are quite common in Japanese product naming. This one doubles up on kanji for “lucky saving dog” and “unko” (poo). Yes, basically the dog eats your coins and then craps them out into a hole. I’m not sure where we’re meant to understand the luck coming into play. Is…
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Let’s reluctantly step away for a moment from the lovely gay animals of Gay Animal Fortnight, and take a look at one of the most wretchedly un-fun depictions of human beings supposedly having fun that I’ve had the misfortune to witness for quite some time. Can you make it through all seventy two seconds of this without frantically denuding your head of all sensory organs using any available implement?
This is the kitchen of the Overlook Hotel, where you’ll roll the perfect roll for ever, and ever… andever. Either that or they’re all so manic because the sushi is laced with PCP. Shortly after the scenes shown here they all shaved their own faces off with potato peelers and then rolled themselves in the perfect roll and ate each other.
These poor models are clearly at the very nadir of their careers and we should pity them for…
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Although I’ll be the first to admit that it’s an example of confirmation bias because I’ve been saying and writing similar things for years, I just read a lengthy but very interesting article about the ways in which social sciences like anthropology, economics and behaviourism may be even more ethnocentric, subjective and ideological than all but the chippiest post-colonial theorists have portrayed them.
In short, social science and its “truths” have been dominated by people from the USA and their culture. And the citizens of the United States are the weirdest and most subjective people in the world. US dominance means that Weird Japan or Weird Asia are internet genres, while Weird USA is just the internet in general. Hollywood films and US TV shows label Paris as “Paris, France”, implying that most people in the world think of the Paris in Texas first of all. They don’t. Studies of…
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Normal nonsense will be resumed shortly, and if you’re on the front page you can scroll down to see the newest posts as normal. In common with most bloggers I do this in my free time with no great expectations because I enjoy it and because I relish the knowledge that thousands of people share my interest in the things that I post, and probably also because I’m a bit of an attention whore. As many of you probably do, I use an ad blocker and I tend to switch right off when people try to sell me stuff or talk to me about my responsibilities, so I understand that some of you might not want to hear this little lecture from me.
Also in common with most bloggers I have to make a living and I rarely make any money from blogging, although in my case one of my…
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The day when England barely celebrates its Greek patron saint and sheepishly denies having any national pride. The day when we remember that Christianity, via the story of George slaying the dragon, tacitly acknowledges the existence of dragons. If they weren’t real, how could George slay one? So not believing in dragons would technically seem to be heretical if you’re a Christian.
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(Title refers to this post, BTW.)
Some inadvertent cross-cultural comedy thanks to Japan’s Tempura Kidz– seen previously in The Rite of Spring (Onions)– who are the terrifyingly talented group who started out as the child backing dancers for autotuned über-kawaii lunatic Kyary Pamyu Pamyu.
Yes, I am obsessed with J-pop. Thanks for asking. I’m so square that genuinely enjoying Japanese pop is what passes for a secret vice in my case.
Seriously, all joking and Japan-you-so-weird aside, the choreography by the surnameless Maiko for the group is great and the way the kids themselves snap through the moves is truly brilliant. You need to be really talented and work bloody hard to dance this well and still have it look like fun. Incidentally the dancer seen front and centre through most of the video below is P→★ (try pronouncing that, English speakers); he’s a boy, he…
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Hello. I was just wondering if you have an early 21st century Japanese magazine named after you? No? How unfortunate. How frightfully dreary your life must be.
I’m pretty sure it’s defunct now. It was a sort of middle aged executive menswear magazine; dressing like Pierce Brosnan is among the suggestions in this copy. There’s also a worringly fulsome appreciation of The Duke of Windsor, fraternising with Nazis and all.
PS: I was once stopped on the street in Harajuku by some kind of Tokyo fashionista and told that I had “mature Europe style”. Er… thanks?
Alistair Gentry 