Uncle Dave Tells a Story about Cute Goth Chicks and Anime

So, it's let's say the early to mid 90's and I am a young sophomore in high school. There's this cute goth crazy chick, blond, curly-haired, totally crazy but smart as hell and cute as all get out. I come over to her place to hang out and play guitar. Forgot to mention, she played guitar. I'm telling you, cool chick. So fast-forward an hour and her grandparents come home and she's gotta go but she decides to lend me a videotape of Akira, "the best anime ever".

This was a time when
a) anime was not very visible or well distributed, in fact almost all of it was dubs or imported fan-made subs or really crappy domestic releases. (This version of Akira was a dupe of the out of print american dub. It was crappy and ruined the story by how poor the sub was.)
and
b) as a young geekling, eager to impress and dazzled by smart pretty girls who played guitar, I was willing to force myself to have an open mind about strange and difficult-to-understand stuff, like this japanese animation thing. Er, anime.

So I went home with the VHS of Akira later that night I promptly put the tape in and started watching this strange anime thing. Except that the tape was like 1/2 through and it looked like it was in the middle of the movie, something about a nuclear war or something. So, wanting to do the thing properly, I stopped the tape and rewound it.

Here's where I went wrong. The tape had two movies on it, only the second of which was Akira, which if you haven't seen it, really is a work of art and miles ahead of other animation of the period. Informed by Blade Runner, Alien and a distrustful paranoia that would make Phillip K Dick proud, it's a GREAT movie.

But it was the 2nd movie. The FIRST movie on that tape was UROTSKIDOJI: LEGEND OF OVERFIEND, whose plot summary boils down to: "Demons from another dimension want to break into ours but have to have the demon-antichrist-person-thing born in ours so that they can all come through and make earth a hell where they can live. So they send demons with tentacle-dicks to rape nubile young and innocent japanese girls in order to impregnate them and have their demon-baby-lord born."

The short version is that within 15 or 20 minutes of starting the tape from the beginning, I was so horrified that I stopped the tape, swore off anime for years and in fact did not SEE anime for at least 10 years.

Anyway, the real reason I bring all of this bullshit: Akira Live Action Movie confirmed

I made mistakes in my life, all things go, all things go

Today, I talked to a friend, didn't get to finish my soup, got to listen to schlocky rock (or jazz? I don't know, bruce hornsby is very jazz-lite, but then again he's done rock too), went to miami beach despite boat show traffic, avoided getting scammed, walked on the beach and got new shoes wet in the surf, saw a wedding i was not a party to, made excellent falafel (hint: before you roll them into balls/patties, drop chopped cilantro/dill and a wee bit of hot sauce into the dough/mix. also, if you fry at medium-low heat they take longer but dry out less,) and had a heavier-than-i-would-have-liked mediterranean dinner (falafel, tzaziki, stuffed grape leaves, flatbread, kaseri cheese). finish the day off by noticing that i never filled out my valentine's card i bought the mrs so spent 15 minutes on something that will make her smile in the morning.

Listened to a lot of Sufjan Stevens today -- picked up The Avalanche on a whim at a used CD store (yeah, I still buy CDs, I'm all quaint) and was blown away. Bought Illinoise just for Casimir Pulaski Day but am enjoying other songs on there. The Avalanche CD is more enjoyable at the moment though; the three versions of Chicago, the supercomputer song, it's all jawsome!great. I even went and learned me some guiterchords for 'em.

GBBVD, 2008. Porkchops of the gods.

You know, it wasn't too bad. I had a day that was better than most. The whole desire-is-suffering sub-theme of Buddhism rings true. After all the angst of youth and loneliness blew away. Who knew?

SO, ANYWAY, like is says on the title of the post:

* 2 pork chops (steak or chicken works)
* 1/2 large onion (or 1 whole medium onion)
* 2 cloves garlic
* a bit of olive oil
* a fistful of cilantro (must be fresh)
* a palmful of dill (fresh or dry, fresh is better)
* two spoons of sour cream
* hot pepper to taste (dry is fine, fresh is better)
* 1/8 to 1/4 cup of barbecue sauce (nothing fancy; something vaguely spicy-sweet is fine. I used 2 leftover packets of sauce from Tony Roma's. Don't be picky.

oil into pan, fire under pan, chop the onion, put into pan and salt it a bit to sweat, mince the garlic and drop that in, rub the chops (or $MEAT if you prefer) with a bit of salt, pepper and whatever other spice you insist on. Slide them under the onions so they brown a bit. After about 10 minutes in medium heat, flip. After 5 minutes of that, put 1/8 cup of water (a splash, really) and the barbecue sauce in. Chop the cilantro, dill and pepper. Put in half the cilantro, all the dill and all the pepper. Let the meat simmer in the herb-sauce. Once the meat is cooked, take the meat out but leave the rest of the stuff in the pan and drop in the sour cream. Stir until you've got a yellow-orange color in there and then drop the rest of the cilantro. Stir to incorporate and pour over the $MEAT.

Suggested side: Rice w/ raisins and almond slivers, mashed potatoes with garlic and chives, green beans or peas, avocado slices with olive oil and salt.

dream 13feb08

trapaising house to house, 2nd story apt., bathroom flooding, bucket the water out, argue w/ her about the why, see Anonymous (with Guy Fawkes masks!) through kitchen/bathroom window and i place my hand against the window and say sorry i can't go guys but never forget, landlord/lady comes to fix the now drained bathroom and i think they're just going through my shit i dunno and i wake because the storm is scaring my dog.

whoa i have songs?

because of the heartbreak trauma, i thought all i had was heartbreak-trauma-songs, but i don't.

i have other songs, that I hadn't even remembered.

"the horror" -- tribute to randall prentiss jones, who departed this vale of tears. really i suppose i should call it "the horrah, the horrah". I suppose only like 30 people would possibly know why that's funny and I only speak to 1 of those semi-regularly (and email to like 2 or 3 others).¹

"when medussa saw your heart" -- i had to throw away "the day i loved medussa" and canibalized it into "your faithful serpent" and this song. I really can't deal with "your faithful serpent" right now.

"my favorite architect" -- just came out of nowhere, really.

gotta get a mic and put this tambourine to work.



¹ My old english lit teacher in high school. The world is a sadder, less sardonic and dumber place without him in it. Your life is unspeakably shoddier and the worse for not having had him in your life for even the briefest of moments. Gruff and quick, gayer than a treeful of parrots, silver-haired and willing to surprise a classroom of 17-year-olds with "What the fuck is wrong with you people?", he made us read Conrad's "Heart of Darkness", and tried to impress on us the gothic horror Marlow felt going into the jungle to see Kurtz.

If you're feeling sinister go and see a minister

ayahuasca cerimonies on the rise.

Eden lends me Terence McKenna's "Food of the Gods", wherein I first hear of Ayahuasca. I'd run into refences in the Don Juan stuff by Castaneda, but dismiss everything by Castaneda as bullshit. Later, there's PJ O'Rourke's story about doing ayahuasca while up a tree in the jungles of Peru, and after that I run into Burroughs' stuff and the Download song. During my wasted youth, I decided that I would not do psychedelics -- speaking to Mils last night after the photoshoot I tell her how sure I was that I'd just lose my fucking mind -- literally wrap it up in a little brown paper bag and leave it somewhere and just NOT KNOW where -- and yeah.

Finally got Cubase LE working and all the pedals I craigslisted work dandy indeed. Need to pick up a mic so I can record some vocals. So far there's:
untouchable darkness
my favorite architect
that i would find you
curio shop
spanish castles made of sand

that last one is a problem. for one, i didn't write the lyrics and I don't want to contact her for permission, so I'm probably gonig to have to rewrite lyrics. and I gotta throw the title away.