Adventures in Japan

Two, Two, Two Posts in One

Last night at Rock Rock was so fun that I'm going to kinda merge my post about it with my post about the next day. Because, really, we didn't manage to get a whole lot of shut eye in. I enjoy using pictures to tell a story, so herewith is a little ditty I like to call Rock Rock: the En-Yellening.


It all started when this tall Australian jerk started plying my lady with booze.


I got so mad that I yelled so loud that people around me had to hold onto their hats and Trev had a mild epileptic fit.


In spite of his mild episode, Trev still had my back when it was time to roll.


The crafty Aussie shut off the lights and escaped into the night. This caused me to yell some more.


So then Trev yelled.


When the lights came on, Trev had stolen my hat (and is already drunk on its immense power) and Che was practicing Tai Chi.

The picto-story was going to be a lot longer, but... I don't photograph well. That's not quite true. My hairline and double chin photograph fantastically, and that's the problem. Trust me when I say that there are some spectacularly unflattering photos of everyone on this trip. The videos are even worse. In one, lord forgive me, I... I... I air guitar. I feel so dirty.

So we drunkenly reveled until 5 in the morning, stumbled home, passed out and woke up at around noon. A teacher from the Bing Bam Boom Club had invited me to some sort of international party or some such. We stumbled into the place and, while I can't speak for the other two, my brain melted. The party was in a smallish room that smelled faintly of urine, filled with all sorts of people, and a dog, some of the people were in costumes, some just dressed weirdly, and "Rocky Mountain High" was playing on the sound system. It was surreal man. My brain still hurts. We were separated and conversated with. Introductions were made, games were played and then we left. The whole thing is kind of a blur. I think there was some hula dancing. And the alphabet song.

Making polite conversation in Japanese or stilted English is much harder when hung over.

From there we went to Club Quattro. The Shins were playing a gig there. The Shins had a song on the Soundtrack to Garden State. I quite liked both the movie and the soundtrack. So much so that I... acquired some more of their music. I'm not saying that I downloaded their music, because that's illegal, but I'm not saying that I didn't. Unless that somehow incriminates me, in which case I totally never, ever downloaded music illegally.


Shonen Knife opened for The Shins. Shonen Knife are a quasi-famous, cute, Japanese, punk band. They've been around for a while. When they got on stage, they looked like middle aged office ladies. Except for the drummer, who was far younger. And, we all agreed, was amazingly cute. Trev and I were somewhat smitten. I really like some of the shots my camera took that night, but there's not a really good shot of the drummer.


She was SO CUTE! And totally in to her drumming. She was just grooving man. Not that I should ignore the older ladies, cuz they might curb me. They may not be young any more, but they can still rock out. There is something about punk music when it is being played Japanese ladies that just makes it sound better.


The Shins also rocked, which was a bit of a surprise to us. The few songs of theirs that I had heard (and legally paid for) were kind of light and acoustic. They played some acoustic stuff, and played it fantastically,


but they also played some faster, heavier stuff.


I will never be a music reviewer. I say that as a way to avoid having to talk any more about the show. It was real good. The one thing I wanted to mention is that the bassist looked a bit like my Uncle Frank, but much, much younger. Here's sum pitchers (they have nothing to do with the just mentioned bassist).


Insert your own Whitesnake light show joke here. Man! That was tasteless.


The show started at seven so it was done in time for a late dinner. We could have stuck around and got our pictures taken with Shonen Knife or talked with the guys from The Shins, but we were kinda peckish. We tried to find 1for81 again, but were still without luck so we had all you can eat Shakey's. Trev and Carla both agree that corn mayonaise pizza is surprisingly tasty.