Sun, 20 Oct: Weekly Review 32

Watched more Love Live. I’m finding my favourite character now is Nozomi, the rather mature third year student with large pig tails (and boobs!) who’s always squeezing the other girls’ boobs. Besides the squeezing part, she’s very Zen, very calm. She’s also a shrine maiden at the local shrine where the group exercise. Actually, she’s a lot of things. She’s also a Student Council member who advises and guides Eli the Leader, who resists the formation of Muse. She often uses her Tarot cards to help plan decisions. The Star card often comes up in her spreads – very significant. She was also the one who gave Honoka and the other girls their idol group name, Muse, knowing that they would be a nine member group (after the nine Muses of Greek myth). I’m at the point where the seniors Nozomi and Eli join the group and they become nine. Nozomi says the cards told her when the group become nine they would have success. She seems all-knowing, and in her shrine maiden clothes sweeping the shrine ground floors she gives off heavy Empress Earth Mother vibes. She has the kindest, most sympathetic eyes.

I’ve just seen the wonderful beach episode, where the girls take a break before what’s supposed to be their big performance at Akihabara. I love that Nico, who is very flat-chested, wears a classic flat-chested girls bathing suit. The bathing top has ruffles where her breasts should be. She’s a very insecure character. She’s revealed as a very good cook in this beach episode, even though at first she says she can’t cook (because her family is so rich they have their own servants – a lie). I’m surprised how little actual performances of Muse have been shown in the story so far.

We have a special section at one of our libraries called The Stacks. It’s a section of movable large draws that contain many of our more obscure and rare collectors books. I was working in the library that has it today and discovered one such book in The Stacks that I wanted to borrow. It was The Wand In the Word, a collection of interviews of renowned fantasy authors compiled by Leonard S Marcus. I borrowed it mainly to read the Ursula Le Guin interview in it. The focus was on her fantasy books, especially the Earthsea series. There was some nice incidental material for Le Guin fans like me, like a copy of some her writing from age 8 and a draft page from Wizard of Earthsea, plus a nice photo of Ursula at age 4 wearing her brother’s bulky baseball uniform. The book also contained interviews with other fantasy writers like Jane Yolen, Phillip Pullman and Susan Cooper. A nice old book. It really felt like a find. IN THE STACKS. What else is there, hmmm?

Listened to a bit of the Rising album by Ritchie Blackmore’s Rainbow in the car today. It was just one of those impulse things. I’ve been thinking about the song Stargazer, which is a highlight of the album, and wanted to hear it again. I have a very strong memory of the first time I heard that song on the radio when I was a teenager. I was reading a book in my bedroom called The Future Took Us by David Severn, and the song came on and seemed to be the soundtrack to the book. Ronnie James Dio’s lyrics speak of some structure, like a pyramid, being built so a wizard could fly. It has big Stargate vibes. Although the reference point could be ancient Egypt, this could be a future civilization, like in the book I was reading. It’s a great song, and a good album. But it’s very trebly and lacks a good bass sound, even though there is a bass player listed, Jimmy Bain. Where are you, Jimmy? I can’t hear you! I would like to get good enough on bass guitar to lay down my own bass lines on this album. It needs a proper bottom end!

A little addendum here about David Severn, the author of The Future Took Us. I just discovered that this was the pseudonym for David Storr Unwin, one of the sons of Stanley Unwin, the book publisher. This would make David the older brother of Rayner Unwin, the boy who was given a shilling by his father to write a review of a manuscript by an obscure Oxford professor. It was his positive review (featured in some editions of the book) that gave the go ahead to the publishing of The Hobbit by JRR Tolkien.

I was having a break in the staff room at work, just looking over some Twitter feeds on my phone, when this little video of Twice Mina popped up. I loved it so much I put it in my bookmarks along with all my other Twice highlights. This is my Happy Place.

Downloaded the Mnet app in order to vote for Twice and RM on the MAMA vote count. So I continued to vote for them over the coming days. On Sunday I discovered I could actually vote for three separate artists in the male and female categories. Damn, I wish I’d known this earlier! So I started including both Aespa and Nmixx in with my Twice vote for the ladies. Think I’ll add Ateez for the boys.

Grabbed a couple of free to-be-weeded cds at work at the library today. They were from the Australian Sixties Pop Collection, vol 6, the Breaking Point. A lot of obscure tracks, but it includes Judy Stone’s Born a Woman, a particular favourite. It was one of those singles my sisters bought back in the sixties and used to play on the old record player. I have the first four volumes of these albums and they’re full of retro Sixties goodness. The only down side is some of them have been ‘improved’ by modern technology, but they sound awful. Biggest culprit is that tinny version of Doug Parkinson’s Dear Prudence on the first volume. Now I must have Volume 5!

Watched some Youtubes. Saw the new song and clip for Itzy’s song Gold. It’s good, but why did they go with a retro 4:3 ratio screen? I liked that the clip includes shots of the musicians playing behind them. This is unusual in a Kpop video. There was also an adorable clip of idol Mayu-chan from the 2Zicon channel doing a cover of the first Urusei Yatsura theme song. She was dressed in Lum’s signature tiger-stripe top and had a pair of oni horns on her head. Cute does not begin to cover it. Also watched some vids by uber Twice fan Sam, a Korean-American. He did one on a tour of the 9^th Anniversary pop up store called Home 9round in Seoul. Not sure but I assume the baseball theme is because it fits the number 9 – 9 Twice members, 9^th anniversary, 9 innings, 9 players. There was lots of baseball-themed merch, very expensive, and Sam declared his intention to buy a lot of it. I don’t doubt it. Going by his other videos he seems to own just about everything Twice-related. I don’t know what he does for a job, but it must pay well. I admire the guy’s dedication, even if he presents as a big nerd. He’s had a number of video interactions with various Twice members, the latest of which was with Tzuyu during her solo promotions. I thought I was obsessed with Twice, but it’s nothing compared to Sam. I like him.

Played and digitised my copy of the Leaves album. Made a cd then filed the mp3s to my hard drive collection. I must say the sound quality’s not great. Don’t really expect it for sixties garage, but this is shittier than usual. Still some good raw songs there. Sounds a bit like early Byrds but without the vocal harmonies (or studio musicians).

The day of my brother-in-law Graeme’s funeral service was a very wet day. Sister Shirley said it was typical of their stormy marriage. Little grand daughter Ruby got up to the podium to speak and took a full minute to gather herself before she began reading from her script. At several points the task seemed too much for her and she had to pause and hold in her breath for courage before continuing. Then she would speak eloquently of memories of Pop, including how he used to call her ‘shithead’ and she responded in kind to his delight. She ended it with ‘Goodbye Shithead’. Shirley, all four children, and four of the grandkids got up to speak. They did well. The music was good, too. Roy Orbison, Travelling Willburys and Elvis.

Watched bit of Dune Part One, second half on free to air TV. It makes me want to go back and watch the lot again on a bluray copy, because the image was pretty shitty on fta. And boy, those ad interruptions really suck! When Keynes dies and is sucked into the worm along with her murderers they just cut it short and went straight to an ad. Then I started on Stargate the Ark of Truth, the rest of which I recorded on the pvr. I used to like the series in the early days, but lost track of the later seasons. Mac is gone, to be replaced by a very annoying female character called Vala, played by Claudia Black. Her role seems to be, well, to be annoying. This was a final film after the end of the show, so I’m interested to see how they tie it all up.

Oh to live an Epic life…