Goddaaaaaamit, I can’t wait to see Where The Wild Things Are, the latest from Spike Jonze!
And I want a monster suit like that little boy is wearing.
Eees gonna be good.
Currently listening to:
Arcade Fire
Funeral
From Gobelins L’ecole de l’image. Brilliant stuff.
Currently listening to:
Calla
Strength in Numbers
A few things in a list of plenty that I love: Jason Schwartzman and Sofia Coppola (who are cousins), and Marie Antoinette (the person… and also the film, which, in spite of all the bad reviews, is totally kickass… et alors? What are you going to do, chop off my head too?)
One thing in a list of plenty that I hate: MTV Cribs (remember the show? There are a few good episodes, but I always get a headache with the way the camera zooms in and out, and can’t help but cringe when they feature houses of rappers or other talentless assholes)
So it makes sense that I love: Jason Schwartzman as Louis XVI on the set of Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette, spoofing MTV Cribs.
“This is the Hall of Mirrors… basically a hall of mirrors that I walk thru… I can check myself before I wreck myself…” Haha, fucking brilliant.
Currently listening to:
Eddie Vedder
Into the Wild Soundtrack
My iLust list:
1. Boss RC-20 Loop Station
2. Winkie tin robot
3. iPod socks
4. Trimm Trabs (I have a very old pair that I still haven’t thrown out)
5. Zub 20 Zot Watch
6. Sushi keychains
7. Paper robots
Dammit. So many pretty things on the web. Must stop surfing.
Currently listening to:
Mono
One Step More And You Die
In Japan, the first conversation we had was in French.
We were in the train coming from Narita Airport, warily checking our guidebook to see which station we were supposed to get off, when a Japanese man in his late twenties approached us and asked us if we needed any help. Naturally he asked us where we were from.
“If I didn’t have a shinkansen to catch for Osaka, I would have showed you to your stop,” he said apologetically in French. He then gave us directions, wished us luck, bowed slightly, and left the train at his stop.
“Damn, the people here are friendly!” I marvelled.
“Yes, they are,” Julien agreed. “The complete opposite of France.”
***
The second conversation we had with a Japanese was not in French but English… and laced with alcohol.
We had managed to get ourselves to the Higashi-Nihonbashi station and were staring at the printed directions to the hotel when a man in his late forties approached us.
“Yes! I see you are lost? Can I help you?”
Thinking of the Japanese guy in the train, we explained that we wanted to get to our hotel, and showed him our map. We could have found it ourselves, but we were moved by their friendliness.
This guy wasn’t just friendly though. He was also drunk. Taking hold of our hotel directions and never letting go, he tapped his cane several times on the floor and announced that he would take us there. “Follow me!” he roared drunkenly. “I know the way, I live not far from there!”
He led us through a maze of streets. It was about 9 in the evening, and all the stores were closing. He kept on talking about a beautiful classmate of his with whom he lost touch with (Yep, talk about going down memory lane) and at one time was talking about Art History while Julien and I grew increasingly worried that he was taking us on a very long walk around his neighborhood instead of showing us to the hotel.
We felt a bit embarrassed for being so suspicious of his intentions, because after a long and winding walk, he hobbled up a street and then pointed to a huge neon sign. “There, my friends, is your hotel,” he roared. “YOU SEE?! I help you find your hotel!” Then: “Have a good time in Japan.”
And so we did.
***
More to follow. Meanwhile, some pictures are up on my Flickr account.
Currently listening to:
Serge Gainsbourg
De Gainsbourg à Gainsbarre
Today, I passed my driving exams !!!! On the first try !!!!
Qatar is a very weird country…
Currently listening to:
Deftones
Around the Fur
Yesterday, I managed to drag myself out of the apartment to buy bread at the bakery, a 10-minute walk from our building. It was about 5:30 pm, a pretty forgiving hour to venture out of the comforts of airconditioning, and the sun was starting to set. I passed by the mosque, its crescent breathtaking against the dying orange of the sun, and it was such a pretty sight that I had to stop, despite the humidity, to take a longer look.
Seeing the mosque framed by the sunset frustrated me to no end. The lack of photographs in this blog is attributed to the fact that we have no cameras. Okay, that’s not entirely true: we have two digital cameras, both of whose batteries are comatose. My camera resuscitates itself for about 8 minutes after a full battery recharge session; Julien’s camera is somewhere, moping, hooked onto an iron lung, wheezing, barely breathing.
Lately we are being seduced by the Canon EOS 400D, but then there’s the Nikon D40X. They’re pretty expensive, but well,they’re cameras . Which one is better, you think?
I don’t consider myself an expert when it comes to cameras (I’d be very happy to just have a Lomo – something very point and shoot). But the idea of a reflex camera is tempting. Or anything else, I suppose, that will allow us to capture the image of a mosque against the sunset.
Currently listening to:
Kevin Drew
Spirit If…
Since my last post was about humor, let me make it clear that our Thai brothers and sisters and giving us serious competition. Cheers Beer was launched in 2005 and apparently, the beer sucks. But. BUT! Their ads are so great, so utterly great, that I’m green with envy that it wasn’t us Pinoys who came up with ad campagins as excellent as these…
Prepare yourselves, people, for the best ad campaigns you’ll ever see in this lifetime!!!
(BTW, my favourite character is the driver of the car in the second ad, where he makes *hikbi* and bites his lip while driving the car. Who’s yours?)
For my birthday, Julien offered me the sleekest and most beautiful thing in the world – not Johnny Depp (although how I wish it were him…) but an 80 gb iPod. I still can’t get my head around the 80 gb part. I mean, that’s four trillion songs!
As you can imagine, the evenings have been spent exclusively on transferring all our music to iTunes.
I’m beginning to like Apple.
Currently listening to:
Otis Redding
Remember Me
First of all, this song is great to dance to…
Second, the lyrics always make me burst out laughing (”When I woke up tonight I said I’m going to make somebody love me, and now I know that it’s you; you’re lucky, lucky, you’re so LUCKY!”)
Third, when this video came out I nearly drove Jul stark raving mad because I’d imitate for his benefit the ‘You’re so lucky, lucky lucky’ dance bit that the band does at the end of the video.
Fourth, damn, they’re so cute and geeky, I swear to god…
Hey, sigh, I miss Jul…
