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.

the same thing i would want today i will want again tomorrow

I just heard, in quick succession:
Dylan trying to teach The Band "Po' Lazarus" (it occured to me that po' lazarus might be where part of the Stagolee mtyh gets it's power),
the harry smith field recording of prisoners singing "po lazarus",
dylan's "goin' to acapulco"
dylan's "boots of spanish leather" (random cover from youtube: here...I have no idea who that is. actually, ignore that, here's pix of dylan while the original plays: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZTCFhS7IIgM)

I'm not - by any means - a huge dylan fanatic, but it occurs that the scorsese quote re: akira kurosawa about one being able to debate which works are Great and which are merely very very very good, would also apply to dylan's songs.

I'm joining the RPM Challenge with Navel4Eve, here's hoping it doesn't suck. More info next month, wish me luck.

Yesterday, Vero called me up asking how I made my curry sauce ("uh, curry powder and sour cream. a little mayo if you want it tastier but that makes it fattier and greasier.") and it reminded me that I have posted the recipe for my (world-famous) grilled cheese sammich before, but never here, so here it is:

get you:
3 cheeses -- 2 slices of something white (say a meunster or swiss), 2 slices something yellow (cheddar or american) and about 3 spoonful's worth of feta (bleu works too).
bread -- sliced, i recommend rye.
1 tomato slice, 1/2" thick (can be replaced by onion)
butter
1 clove garlic
2 spoon's worth of olive oil
optional: bacon, olives, mushrooms.

butter a slice of bread, drop half a spoonful of butter in a pan with 1 spoonful of olive oil, coat the bottom of the pan and then put the bread in it. medium-low heat -- you're gonna be here a while. put the meunster on the bread. get your tomato slice and poke out the slimy shit in it (seeds pulp etc) so that you have a tomato-spoke. lay on the muenster cheese and fill the empty tomato spokes with the feta. put the slices of cheddar on top of that. lay the other slice of bread on top and butter it. to ensure the cooking side doesn't stick, shake the pan and the weight of the sandwich should shift it. while you wait for it to brown, take your garlic and slice it thin like you've been watchin' goodfellas too much. flip yr sammich and press some of the garlic slices into the bread. while the raw side cooks, wait. sing a song or something. when it's done, flip (so the garlic on top caramelizes a bit) and press the garlic slices that are left into the bread. drizzle half a teaspoon of olive oil on top and flip again, drizzle the oil that remains and serve. wait at least a minute before cutting it or you're gonna get cheese soup. Which is hard to eat inside a sandwich.

you can replace (or augment) the feta with olives (or olive tapenade,) mushrooms and/or bacon.

If you made it right, it's about an inch and a half thick, and a fucking hearty brick to keep your gut happy.

you want the tomato slice to be thick -- about 1/2" or so -- so that the tomato itself doesn't get hot. the cheese next to the bread will melt the feta, but if the tomato's thick, it won't cook very much and you will therefore have an island of cool, refreshing vegetable in a sea of molten deliciousness.

dreams and cheese

If you see below, you'll see the last two days I have had bizarre and unusual dreams. (Bizarre: STD? wtfbbqaolnet. unusual: a sadness dream). and so the last two days I have had cheese about an hour before sleep; brie and some french thing on the 17th and feta on the 18th.

So it turns out that different cheeses give you different dreams.

85% of females who ate Stilton had some of the most unusual dreams of the whole study. 65% of people eating Cheddar dreamt about celebrities, over 65% of participants eating Red Leicester revisited their schooldays, all female participants who ate British Brie had nice relaxing dreams whereas male participants had cryptic dreams, two thirds of all those who ate Lancashire had a dream about work and over half of Cheshire eaters had a dreamless sleep.

I think I'm going to try the brie and manchego tonight.



Speaking of food, I have fixed my tzatziki recipe for non-suckyness.

To wit, you will need:
1 container of greek yogurt*
1 container of sour cream
1 cucumber, large, seeded and chopped (or grated) however you like it. peeling optional.
4 cloves of garlic, minced (or chopped)
6 leaves of mint, rolled into a tube and chopped into tiny shreds
a sprig of dill, chopped into nothingness as well
1/2 teaspoon of lemon juice
pepper to taste

*regular plain yogurt strained in a cloth will work if you can't get the greek stuff. strain for at least an hour, you want the consistency of the sour cream, so a fair amount of liquid needs to leave the yogurt.


mix all the non-cream stuff, mix the yogurt and cream, then mix the two mixes together. store and chill while you toast some flatbread (or pita) in the oven (or on the grill).


works well with falafel (quick and dirty: 1 can garbanzos, an onion and spices you like -- grind together in a blender with a slice of white bread (or flour if you've got) until it's a paste. add a bit of olive oil if you need to moisten it a bit. form into balls with two spoons and then fry. et viola.)

dream 18jan2008

walking in a hallway dark not scary but dim and then with b, into a cafeteria-looking room and we have been looking for something but not finding it, and she is in trouble for killing a man and we're not friends but not enemies either and things are tense and awkward and i want it to be unfuckedup and friends because she needs help and i could do something and i hate feeling like this, compromised into being unable to be friends, but can't forgive without some sign of friendship, or caring, and there's just words and platitudes and i do not want to be here but am forced to (the way that you don't know why you have to do something in a dream but you just know it) so i do it and the tension is worse but i'm not angry just sad, overwhelmingly sad, and it's dim like we're where even sadness is something to see and the look on her face is best described as vexed or "i know something needs to be done but i don't know what" and i wake.

dream 17jan2008

party, loud, obnoxious, siba is there and i am flirting, things get romantic and i wind up at the Dr's who is telling me I have an STD while he holds a syringe.

when i stepped into the water, i slipped and broke my aura...

I don't know. This at home, in the heart, complex and annoying. Feeling ...not broken, but pathetic, bathetic. Sterling's preggers, Sun's home, Avery is huge, my mother thinks I hate her or I'm a jerk, I don't really know anymore. hot sub w/ sun earlier. she's way cool and outta all the girls probably the one I am most comfortable with. I love taitai and meimei and sterling, but sun's a good mix of them all. i think in jan i will go with mills to get my tattoo. she's gotta decide what she wants though...I'm getting a new tele tomorrow, I hope. I am giving the SG to Mei-mei to fuck with, the pickguard to either sun or tai-tai. new guitars are funfunfun, always leads you somewhere else, like a new girl or a new car or a new way home.

I have a dog now, he is cute and small and I am responsible for him. I hope to get a cat sooner rather than later; a jellicle for preference (gonna name her "Sally Pimienta").

talked to eden like 4 or 5 times in the last week; things are rough on his end vis-a-vis V. which sucks, he's had it rough sometimes. he was very sincere and sorry about getting out of touch with us all, said thanks for me trying to keep in touch with him since he didn't know how to start things. he's spoken to solo and bunny and will probably maybe this time come to miami. I dunno. Told me Mo's living in O-town and they don't really hang or speak. eden talks to mike now and again tho..

while moving I found some boxes with pictures. i feel distant from them, they don't really touch me anymore...I don't know how to feel about that.

good books: world war Z, that dylan bio I'm xmas'ing away, the last postsecret book mills gave me for xmas
good music: night ripper by girl talk -- all samples...shit, it's like "paul's boutique" all over again; coil's "the ape of naples" which i re-listened to because bunny hooked me up with coil bootlegs and i ran into an interview with sleazy from last year about all the shit since balance died...oh and the new fucking daft punk album is so fucking hot it glows

vignette: eden's gf at the time lived on sunset, i go with him to hang, her gay friend says hello -- i am broken and falldown ebcause of mo. i leave the party and go to his old pad with ron -- rose was there even then -- and tell him our friendship's over. he tells rose that if it's her fault...blahblahblah. i tell him it's his fault, it's about b but more about how he didn't tell me. i leave and go back to the party. the girlfriend's gay friend tells me my aura has changed color dramatically -- from orange/red to green (or other way? I don't remember the colors he said). I tell eden and tell him what happened.

thxgiving update

vacation: sucked, I worked on the house and w/ the fam (jesus they are tireless)

work: I am a hero and an unsung rockstar of unprecedented caliber. we had a server -- the one and only web server, the one that has hard drives that grriiiiiiiinnnnnddddd when they spin up and has therefore not been turned off for 5 years and then because of a power failure, and not been updated for about 10 years -- have it's PSU blow up and catch fire. despite this, I was able to get us working (hobbled, but hey) for the few days it took to get the machine repaired.


i bought a jawesome! map in a magnelephant frame at my dad's neighbors' moving out garage sale. my ex-landlord is in foreclosure and I picked up 3 GTA games for 30 bux.

this morning i dreamt that had gone to sleep late (i had) and got woken up by my cell and it was she calling to say there were things unsaid. i never got to hear them because the alarm went off.

oh my GOD

I just identified with Forrest Gump. Fuck you, Robert Zemekis, Fuck you Tom Hanks.

can i get a RAMEN?!

RAMEN!

quick notes: houses are a bitch, plumbers are expensive, a person who has just insulted your choice in homes blushes a lot, the hard rock casino is fugly in a sodom & gamorrah way*, also, I have interwebaolnet and telephone at the new home. Now I just have to actually set up a network the way I want it instead of a laptop in the kitchen.

*ok, why is it that sodomy is named after sodom but there's not a sexual act named for gamorah? was gamorah's wickedness different but sodom was just full of ass-fuckers? or they both did it but sodom was really promoting it -- public anal sex or something -- and gamorrah was just keeping it on the Down Low?