Sun, 3 August: Weekly Review 73 (final)

I didn’t do much pop culture stuff. Went to Rodney’s 70^th birthday lunch at the Coach and Horses, then work at Lilydale, then late lunch at Chirnside. I have been thinking about finding bottles of Pocari Sweat in Asian stores, because I mentioned it to some colleagues at work the other day. This is a drink I enjoyed when I was in Japan. It’s basically water with a little bit of citrus taste, and the subtle flavor is very refreshing. I first heard about it when Twice promoted it in an ad. Maybe that’s the PC angle for today. Got home, hung out with the boys on the veranda, which included Mitchell, whose mate died of an overdose the other day. He looked frazzled, as you’d expect. I hope he’s not next. Then tried to work on the blog but was too tired and slept.

Watched another Urusei Yatsura episode today. This was Don’t Die! Ryoko’s Special Straw Doll! Mendo’s deliciously sadistic sister Ryoko makes a voodoo doll effigy of Mendo to enjoy the punishment it brings him. To make matters worse, she entrusts it to Ataru without telling him what it’s for. Chaos (and pain) ensues, especially for Mendo, who has to keep saving Ataru whenever he is threatened by any one of Ryoko’s ingenious punishments, because pain to Ataru equals pain to Mendo. This leads to the wonderfully ludicrous mistake of Ataru thinking Mendo actually cares for him, and he begins to think of him as a close buddy. The episode stretches this buddy situation out to delirious levels of subliminal homosexual silliness until Mendo puts his hand on Ataru’s chest and he recoils at the ‘perverted’ gesture. By this point Mendo has had enough and he admits he’s only doing it to get the effigy off of Ataru. As soon as Ataru finds out what it’s for he starts hammering it with nails. As you do. My favourite part of this was Ryoko, who dresses in a Gothic lace outfit because it fits the whole hexing a person vibe, and who seems to agonise over her masochistic tendencies towards her brother. But she’s just playing – she enjoys agonising over the pain as well as inflicting it. I love how fucked up she is.

I saw the new Twice music video for Enemy on Youtube tonight. They’ve gone metal pop for this one! A mostly good song spoiled by the ending, where the chorus just gets a key change. Predictable. And I don’t love the bit near the end where Jihyo sings ‘Breaking me free’. The MV’s good and edgy though. Best bit is Momo dancing dynamically on the bridge. Oh, and Jeongyeon singing fast and angry to Nayeon. A definite highlight of the song too.

Today was Katemas – AKA Kate Bush’s birthday. I forgot it again! What sort of Lovehound am I?

Watched a couple more Urusei Yatsura eps. These were Lum’s Courageous Duel! Victory by Cheap Means, and Tomobiki High School Survival! Who Are the Survivors? I didn’t love the premise of the Duel episode, where Lum is guilted into fighting a duel with the seal-like Big Boss who has a crush on Shinobu. Thing is, she’s not allowed to use any of her powers – she can’t fly or use her electric shock. But when it comes time for the duel she cheats by using steroids to make her strong. And, of course, she gets hooked on them. Drugs are bad, mmkay? The Survival ep was a kind of Texas Chainsaw Massacre horror story with the students of Tomoboki High trapped in the school as aggrieved chainsaw-wielding tomato growers (yes, their tomatoes were burnt by Ataru and Ten) try to kill them. Very weird, but some striking imagery.

There are some new songs by some of my favourites just out at the moment. One is Light Can Only Shine in the Darkness, a collab between Within Temptation and Lord of the Lost, and another is Meguri Loop by Perfume, which I’m guessing will appear on Nebula Romance Pt 2 when it’s released in September. Looks like WT might be touring again next Feb, playing again at Max Watts. I must get tickets this time!

I watched much of a doco on Youtube titled The Artist Formerly Known as Captain Beefheart. A fascinating look at the Captain, the albums and especially Don Van Vliet. Annoyingly, the focus was largely on Trout Mask Replica, with the other albums getting short shrift. Some good interviews with former bandmates, especially Ry Cooder who delivers a very mordant profile of The Man. I still don’t buy the story of the making of Trout Mask Replica, where Van Vliet supposedly forced his bandmates to rehearse in a house for months with very little pay and food. But, have to admit, I’d love to see the house, if it still exists. Some great shots of Don playing his clarinet through his Trout Mask. What a weird, wonderful guy! This has got me reaching for my Captain Beefheart albums again.

I also watched a nice Twice video on their This Is For Comeback Week. It was just the members attending various music shows in Korea for their comeback week, but boy they looked so fine and were so cool and confident about everything. Many of the comments focused on the Mina/Dayhun interaction where Dahyun commented on how Mina looked so ‘handsome’ in her suite and tie and short wolf-cut hair (which she did). For some reason they were ‘pre-taping’ these shows very late at night (or early in the morning) around 1AM. Which means they had a whole studio full of fans cheering them on at that time as well. Korean fans are intense.

In other Twice news, the members have just finished their Lollapalooza concert in Chicago and apparently it went very well. Yay. But will it be enough to break Twice in the US and overcome the Blackpink stranglehold? I doubt it.

A colleague at work today put me onto an interesting character called Jordan van den Lamb who has a couple of Youtubes channels of interest to me. One is Shit Rentals, where he finds said Shit Rentals and eviscerates them. The other is Purplepingers, where he finds empty homes and invites homeless people to use them. An interesting dude and some fun videos and food for thought.

I made a Spotify playlist of my best Kpops for the year. These included the usual Twice and Aespa and Nmixx, plus some Blackpink solos and the Kpop Demon Hunters soundtrack. This will be the first year I featured nothing from NewJeans, since they haven’t released anything and are not named that anymore. Sad. First song is Twice’s Seesaw, my favourite of the moment. It’s only just past the half year mark, so there’s plenty more to add before the year’s out. It was a good time listening to them in the car on the way to work in Healesville today. I’m finding Blackpink Rose’s song Two Years really hitting well and getting stuck in my head.

I had another listen to Eric Clapton’s There’s One In Every Crowd album on the computer room stereo with subby. It sounds much better in there than it did on the lounge room stereo, where the turntable hums when I put the sound up loud. It’s a fine album, a nice and mellow time, especially side one. Side two’s a little more uptempo. Final song Opposites really builds to something special, reminding me a little of Let It Grow from the 461 Ocean Boulevard album. Now I think it’s almost as good as that one, but Boulevard’s a little more dynamic.

Watched a couple more eps of Urusei Yatsura. These were #126 Ran’s Panic, There Is No Tomorrow for Tomobiki Town, and #130 Blazing Hidden Trick. Ran’s panic is about Ran buying a compressed piece of blue supernova as a present for Rei, but she loses it and Lum informs her it will explode as a supernova if it is not found by night. Everyone is too busy panicking about this to notice the Kotatsu Cat has the supernova. Some nice animation but a fairly dull ep. The Hidden Trick ep is a favourite with a really nice intro where Lum does a little top hat and tails routine in a skimpy outfit. The ep is mainly about a talent contest held at Tomobiki High but when the contestants are bad, the ‘judge’ – an alien octopus – makes them disappear. I loved Lum’s own vocal performance, wailing a song from her planet.

On Youtube I saw the new clip for the new Blackpink song, Jump. It’s early days, but the song doesn’t seem great, though I don’t mind the clip. It’s pretty state of the art. The word online is the song is tanking though. I also watched the second part of the Twice This Is For Making of video. These things, as always, have everything and more that I want from Twice content. Extended views of the music video making process, the members doing silly to-cameras, the members looking gorgeous, being funny, cool, dorky and more. Jihyo does what she hopes is a cool to-camera singing bit, but we see Sana and Momo silently judging her in the background. They give her the stinkeye and Jihyo pouts. She then ‘bullies’ Sana. By contrast, Tzuyu chats to camera whilst Dayhun looks on adoringly. Sana adopts Chaeyoung as a pet. Sana leads a reluctant Mina away from her hidey spot to join the others. Jeongyeon offers free coffee from a coffee truck to the grateful staff. Momo gets scared when she’s hoisted up onto a high wall. It goes on and on.

I listened to some BTS in the car on the way home. It was the Love Yourself: Tear album of 2018, the one with Fake Love on it. I really liked a song called Magic Shop.

Blackpink have just released one song called Jump, which is really average, and the music video’s already appearing on Rage and it’s in the Top 10 Countdown and gone number one on Billboard. Also, them arseholes at Billboard are connecting Blackpink with the success of Kpop Demon Hunters and BTS, which they have nothing to do with (apart from being Korean). They seem to be blind to Twice’s amazing efforts. I hate them (Billboard, not Blackpink).

Watched another UY. This was Far Spring, Tale of the Lonely Fairy. A very poetic story as a sad winter fairy tries to entrap Ataru in a snowy blizzard after he’s had an argument with Lum about being late for a date. When the fairy inadvertently causes Ataru to realise the late date was his mistake, not Lum’s, he snaps out of her spell and goes home seemingly to apologise to Lum. But being Ataru, he can’t do it. It’s a beautiful scene though. Lum leans forward for the kiss she deserves; Ataru almost kisses her; then he reverts to type and doesn’t even apologise. As they fight and scamper in his room, outside the window, the fairy watches them and smiles – and immediately turns into the happy Spring Fairy.

Watched one more UY. It was Goodness, Words Aren’t Getting To Darling. This is a groundbreaking episode that answers the question of what would happen if Ataru got to be free of Lum. It’s another one of those episodes where Lum disappears to her UFO leaving Ataru to do his own thing. The reason she leaves is because, through an accidental act of violence on Ataru’s part, Lum can’t speak or understand Japanese anymore. All her speech is in Oni, her planet’s language. For his part, Ataru, now free from Lum, uses this as an opportunity to play the field, hitting on girls everywhere. The fact that he’s always unsuccessful doesn’t dampen his enthusiasm. But the rejections and the lack of sleep due to over-excitement take their toll, and by the end he is an emaciated mess crawling up the stairs to his bedroom, where he finds Lum returned. She’s been in her UFO working on a translation device. This scene is amazing, largely because of the way Lum is drawn. The animators have given her some amazing muscle tone – it’s the most solid-looking Lum has ever been. She’s beautiful and sexy and strong. There’s even a suggestion of a bum crack on her bikini bottom. But that is too crude a term for our darling Lum. Let’s call it bottom cleavage! Anyway, a very tired, withered and contrite Ataru goes to this fully formed and solid Lum and begs forgiveness. A revealing epilogue shows Ataru wearing Lum’s translation device. It looks like a dog’s muzzle. The implications, the ‘meaning’ of all this is all too clear.