Sun, 29 Dec: Weekly Review 42

Whilst enjoying this Boxing Day lull on this very hot day I read a bit of that Capitalism a Horror Story book. Some good chapters covering some interesting films, like the Platform, Parasite and Ready Or Not. One chapter is all about the cultural impact of the books Frankenstein and Dracula. The author cites Frankenstein’s monster as the monster that represents and inspires the working class mob to potential revolution; and Drac as the aristocratic uber Capitalist drinking the blood of the working classes. It’s fascinating stuff.  

Made a list of 50 best Urusei Yatsura episodes based on that Youtube video. Started watching it last night with ep 10. Tonight I watched ep 39 and ep 60. 39 is about Lum’s first date with Ataru and features a fabulous scene where Lum roller skates around a park. Ep 60 is one of my favourites, where Ten buys Love Love Catchballs that enable someone looking into them to see the person they will marry and be most happy with. There are so many great bits in this. Ten gets two of them, one for women and one for men, and hides the men’s ball inside Ataru’s guitar. Ataru spies him doing this and the scene where he tries to get it out of the guitar is classic. At one wonderfully ludicrous point he starts playing the guitar in the midst of his efforts. In any case the ball bounces out and lands on Ataru’s dad’s garden. Dad picks it up and looks into it and sees…his wife as a young woman. Later, in a cafe where Ten has gathered Lum, Sakura, Shinobu and Ran to let them look into the women’s ball, Ataru and Mendo turn up and watch proceedings from a balcony above. In short, no one gets the answer they seek in the balls, not even Cherry, who shows up to explain proceedings and upon looking into the ball sees a slinky cat-girl. The punchline is priceless. Ten hears over intergalactic radio that the batch of balls he purchased were the wrong shipment: he got bad luck balls that show the person who will make you most miserable if you marry them!  

Watched episode 17 of UY, one of the ‘best 50’. This one featured Mendo’s special camera that transports Ataru into various other realities, including a desert and a castle. Lum joins him and has a hard time bringing him back coz he’s enjoying all the babes he finds there. In the end, she gets back but he is stranded on a raft in the middle of the ocean. Serves him right, that baka! The second half of ep 17 was the tennis match and Ataru’s surprising change in demeanour. Because, it turns out, a Devil has granted him coolness in return for his soul. Seems like a fair trade.  

Watched a couple more Urusei Yatsura episodes, namely 21 and 22. In 22 Lum gets invited by her father to go to a Matchmaker’s party on her home planet. Hearing about this, Ataru and Mendo hitch a ride on Ten’s hilarious duck-shaped craft to keep an eye on her. Turns out the father is intent on marrying Lum off to anyone other than Ataru, but the potential grooms do not have, let’s say, potential. In fact they’re a parade of grotesques. But the guy whose ‘talent’ is to dig tunnels is pretty funny.  

Watched a couple more episodes of the Urusei Yatsura top 50. One ep was about a flower girl who attracts Ten and Ataru. This was actually a little strange and dull. The plant the girl gives Ten turns out to be sentient and, like Ten and Ataru, has a crush on the flower girl. There’s a wonderfully animated segment where Ataru runs with the plant back to the flower girl, but overall it’s one of the lesser of the Top 50. The other was the classic two-parter about the school excursion by a lake where Ataru gets involved with the Cappa creatures, who live under the lake, and later, he and Mendo, Lum and Shinobu explore a cave. They all have romantic expectations for the cave’s convenient darkness, but problem is, none of them line up. When the time comes, it’s the girls who win out – Lum matching up with Ataru and Shinobu with Mendo. In an attempt to fix this ‘mixup’, the boys try the darkness trick again – only to end up hugging each other! This is the episode where Mendo’s claustrophobia and fear of the dark is revealed – something that becomes a running joke in the show.  

I’ve nearly finished The Music Goes Round Head book by David Johnston. He’s writing about the end of the Sixties and summing up the careers of various artists. The Easybeats were actually still around in 1969 and released one final album, Friends. After a brief tour of Australia they broke up. Johnston also delves into the post-sixties careers of many of the artists featured in the book. There is also one final look at the songs that ended the decade, a number of which I was not familiar with. Most interesting to me was a group called King Fox and their song Unforgotten Dream. They were a band of teenage musicians, including a young Billy Field, who would have later hits with Bad Habits and You Weren’t In Love With Me. The song is described by Johnston as ‘not unlike something the Moody Blues might have come up with’. Luckily for me the song is on one of the Sixties Australian Pop albums I have, and hearing it, it definitely reminds me of the Moodies. There’s even a Ray Thomas-like flute in the mix. It reminds me a bit of their song A Simple Game, and maybe a couple of other earlier things, especially the Days of Future Past album. Though I don’t think Justin Hayward ever used a fuzz guitar sound like what’s on the song. I love it. So great to hear a new lost song that sounds like the early Moody Blues. Another song that’s mentioned is Mr Guy Fawkes by the Dave Miller Set. I also have this one and it’s a great psychedelic epic that even has a bomb going off in the middle of it. The history of Australian rock has so much great overlooked stuff in it. Who knew? The book is fantastic, one of my favourites.  

I’ve started a project wherein I try to track down on the internet songs mentioned by David Johnston in his book The Music Goes Round My Head that I don’t have. With the help of music streaming site Bandcamp I’ve already made a few discoveries. It has an album called It’s a Kave-in that compiles a number of the obscure 60s Australian songs I’m after. The album is from an Italian record company called Misty Lane Music, who seem to specialise in this stuff. The only weird thing about the album is most of the songs don’t have the artists listed. I was lucky that one band I was looking for, the Tol-puddle Martyrs, was listed (on another album). I purchased and downloaded the two songs from them, plus a couple of others the identities of which I was able to glean simply from the extensive song titles list in the Appendix of the book. This is the sort of research project I can really get my teeth into. When I’ve got enough songs I plan to make a cd out of them plus transfer the album to my phone as mp3s for lots of car playing.  

I watched some Rage clips I recorded on the PVR this morning. There were a number of them, but the ones I was interested in most were the clips of Come Up and See Me by Steve Harley and Cockney Rebel, Big Wheel by Tori Amos, and Strawberry Deluxe by Skulker. The Tori and Skulker clips were part of a series Rage are doing on guest host segments from the past. The Tori clip was from her American Doll Posse album and featured her in some of the outfits and wigs she wore as part of the theme for that album. The funny line about her being a MILF was highlighted with large captions, which was cute, but overall I never loved the Doll Posse concept with its multiple Tori personas. I prefer my Tori straight up. She also did a glowing introduction for the clip of Everything Is Everything by Lauren Hill which, as usual, showed her good taste. I think I saw this night back in the day, and Tori was assured, comfortable and charismatic. Skulker were a 90s all-girl Aussie band I have some time for (and a few of their old albums). The song and clip for Strawberry Deluxe was quite tasteful, showing off the group’s growing maturity in looks and sound. It’s a pity they never made it big. I really love that Cockney Rebel song, which came out in 1975, and had never seen the clip. Steve Harley looks a bit of a twat wearing a long coat-like outfit that looks like a heavy dress. It doesn’t help that he’s disdainfully chewing gum throughout the entire mimed studio performance. The black bass player at least looks cool laying down his lines. Still a great song though.  

The clip for Smile by Lily Allen was also in this batch. I liked that first album of hers and hadn’t seen this clip before. I was surprised how nasty it is. All through it Lily is having fun getting revenge on her cheating boyfriend. She pays a crim to enlist some people to give the boyfriend a hard time. First they waylay and punch him up. Then they ransack his flat and key his dj records. The clip ends when the poor bastard does his dj gig and finds his records unplayable and he gets booed off stage. Lily is seen watching all this go down with glee and it comes off as overly cruel and, well, a bit psychotic. Revenge is one of my least favourite human motivations, in life and in story.  

Whilst on Youtube tonight I also caught a terrific video called Discovering Twice In 2024 detailing new fan Damian Maher’s discovery of and subsequent obsession with the group. To say I identified with the guy would be a total understatement. It was nicely made video too, with well-edited segments highlighting each of the members. It was a forty-plus minute video, which I normally wouldn’t commit to, but I could watch this kind of content all day, so I did.    

Watched my bluray copy of The Boy and the Heron as a Christmas Eve treat. Had my raspberry vodka Cruiser at the ready. It was a good time. I’m still a bit confused about the scene where MC Mahito suddenly appears chained up after his first meeting with the wizard character (couldn’t locate his name), but it hung together pretty well. Loved the sound design of the early scenes of feet on wooden floors, doors opening, etc. That house in the country is so wonderful. I want to go there! The second half where Mahito and the Heron guy go on their journey into the ‘Underworld’ is wonderfully trippy. Those parakeets are so Evil. What does Miyazaki have against birds? Also watched some of the extras on the disc, which included interviews with Joe Hisashi, the soundtrack composer, and Toshio Suzuki, the Producer. Suzuki thinks the Heron was Miyazaki’s representation of the Producer himself. Don’t know about that, but I love how anti-Disney that heron is when its teeth show. I’m pretty sure I said this before, but this was my best film of last year. Had a well deserved Oscar as well. 

Because it was a hot day, a boozy friend of ours dropped in to take advantage of our air con and hung out with me for a little while, curtailing my reading enjoyment. In order to entertain him I put on the TV and we watched episodes of the old 60s TV shows Bewitched and I Dream of Jeannie. I hadn’t seen these in ages, so checking them out was an interesting exercise in pop culture anthropology. The Bewitched episode featured Julie Newmar (who played one of the Catwomen in Batman) basically stealing the show as a nefarious cat-like trickster. Boy she looked good! I didn’t identify her correctly at first, thinking she was perhaps Ursula Andress. This was a later season ep as Dick Sargent was playing Darrin. Newmar’s character basically cock-teases all the men around her except for Darrin, who remains faithful to Samantha, much to the disappointment of Endora, Samantha’s scheming aunt. The dated sexual politics seem kind of cute from this remove. The I Dream of Jeannie ep had Jeannie trying to stop her ‘master’ Tony Nelson from going into space and doing a dangerous space walk by making him seem ‘crazy’ to the show’s resident psychiatrist Alfred Bellows. A very standard set-up, but what surprised me was how much Barbara Eden’s Jeannie reminded me of my favourite anime character, Lum from Urusei Yatsura. She’s like an earlier version, from her magical qualities and her adoration of Nelson, to his standoffish-ness, right down to her repeated refrain of ‘Master’, which echoes Lum’s similar ‘Darling’ diminutive for Ataru. I wonder, did Rumiko ever see the show?  

Watched War of the Rohirrim at Chirnside. An adorable film. I loved the character of Thera, a wild red-haired warrior princess. Serious and statuesque and stalwart. Just the way I like ‘em. Some comments on Letterboxd criticised the combination of 3D, and 2D animation, but I was fine with it. I loved the fact they used the same ‘sets’ for Edoras and Helm’s Deep as were used for the Peter Jackson films. There was even a snatch of Howard Shore’s score at the start of the film and Miranda Otto on narration. This is all because Jackson and his company were heavily involved in the film.  

Then I watched some Youtube and caught a couple of really nice new Twice clips. One was for the new song The Wish – basically an extended promo for Family Mart. The other was for Magical, from the Strategy album, and my favourite song on it. This was so fantastic. Twice really gifted us with this one. Like the song, it has a very Christmassy vibe, all winter snow and cuddling up next to the fireplace, and the members all get dressed up accordingly. Sana really embraces her Christmas tree mask and looks fantastic doing her to camera bit with a big smile on her face. I especially loved the shot of Nayeon bobbing her head theatrically to the line ‘As long as you’ll be mine’. It made my heart go doki-doki. I want them all to make that move when they do it in concert. Thank you for this, Twice. I loved it!  

Managed to have a listen to Twice’s Strategy and a bit of my Sweet comp album called Action on the big sound unit in my lounge room (my brother was out) for a good noisy time. I guess together they were a study in contrasts, but they both deal in sweet ear candy. One’s just a bit crunchier than the other. Keeper from the Twice album is really growing on me. Twice Dahyun wrote the lyrics, keeping up her status as Twice’s (not so) secret weapon. I really enjoyed the Sweet song Call Me (not the Blondie song). It’s very poppy and a little on the novelty side, but I like it. I can’t help thinking though that it’s missing a final verse to provide some kind of punchline to the setup of a cute girl inviting the singer to her house for a good time. It’s otherwise kind of unresolved. Maybe she turns out to be a vampire and just wants him for food? The possibilities are endless when you think about it.  

I saw a Twitter post that was a photo of flowers abandoned on a train seat. The text said, ‘She is Asian!’ Looking into the replies the meaning was clear: the girl’s intended beau, who gave the flowers, would not be suitable to her parents, so she left them there. Seems a logical conclusion, considering how conservative Asian parents can stereotypically be. Other comments were pretty entertaining, especially one that suggest the flowers were simply on an epic journey to travel the world. I wish I could find the post but can’t. It was a nice thread.  

At JB Hi Fi during lunch at work I bought yet another copy of Aespa’s Armageddon album. This time it was the digipak version – the ‘band’ version to be exact (they also had a Giselle version – they have versions for each member – but I wanted to go democratic). A very unnecessary poichase since I already have it, but the store had a 20 percent off on music sale, so I figured I’d take advantage of that (or they took advantage of me). And I know this nullifies the jewel case version I made of the first copy with its bulky Korean packaging, but that’s okay. I prefer the official digipak to my crappy hand-made thing. Plus, I got a card. It was Winter. As usual I wanted a Ningning, but it was not to be.  

Allkpop had an article proclaiming the exciting news that a bunch of Korean TV programs are going to be streamed on Netflix soon. One of them is Inkigayo, the Kpop music show, which often features all my fave Kpop artists. I’ve seen excerpts from it on Youtube, and I saw a couple of episodes on the plane when I went to Japan last year, and I’ve since often wished I had proper access to it here. So, yay! But when will it be available? This will be another reason for me to resubscribe. The other is the forthcoming broadcast of the new Ranma ½ anime on Netflix.  

Today is Nmixx Bae’s birthday. She’s 21. Happy Birthday, you little Nminx. Speaking of which, I watched a nice video on Youtube today called The Nmixx Tonight Show where the group did a tonight show type presentation with (who else?) Haewon presiding as our effervescent host. It was funny, adorable and totally wholesome. I loved it. During her introduction, Haewon busted out some Spanish, including the line ‘holy moly guacamole’, which cracked me up (and a lot of others, going by the comments). At the end of the show, Australian member Lily voiced her satisfaction by saying she ‘Had a blast’. The Aussie expression clearly tickled the other Korean members, who joined in repeating it. Everyone, including me, had a blast.  

Allkpop had a couple of articles about the new second season of Squid Game. Both highlighted some criticisms of the show mainly with a theme that it wasn’t as good as the first. I don’t know about this, but I do know I want to see it. The impulse to want to see the first one is what had me subscribing to Netflix at the time. It was great for a while, but I had to cancel it when I started doing library work, because I just didn’t have the time for it. This second season of Squid Game will undoubtedly be the catalyst for me making a new subscription. Squid me! I’m already looking forward to seeing the new reboot of anime Ranma ½, so I guess it’s time. Have to admit, though, I still wonder if I’ve got the time for this.