The New Sweeney Todd

I just saw the trailer for Burton's take on Sweeney Todd, the Demon Barber of Fleet Street.
Looks like Burton is going to "butcher" this Sondheim masterpiece in much the same way he over-cooked the Chocolate Factory and bludgeoned The Batman.
He's great, as long as he never ever EVER tries to re-make anyone else's creation.
And no, Depp isn't remotely large enough to be intimidating. I've seen three different productions and Todd was always a big, strapping guy. Someone the size of Depp wouldn't have lasted a month in that reputed Australian penal colony, and he clearly doesn't have the voice for his part, either.
This was one of my favorite musicals, ever and Burton has directed some of my favorite films, but I have very low hopes for this one.

Great liquor from Korea

This is some nice stuff I discovered here in Japan, from a group of South Koreans also living here. It's called Chamisul (chah-mee-sool).
If you can find it, it tastes like a smooth vodka martini and leaves you with a peaceful, easy feeling. All-around nice stuff.
But be careful, this stuff is not like alot of the other Japanese and Korean shouchu liquors I've have before; this stuff really packs a wallop.

That's Funny...I Couldn't Before

I don't get it.
Two years ago, I was trying to take my chromatic hammer dulcimer apart to clean inside it but I couldn't get the sound board off; the lacquer had bonded it. I also wanted to see if I could put it back together again; I couldn't. Every time I tightened the wires, the heads would slide to the middle. Hundreds of miles away from anyone who might know what to do, I packed it away to be finished some day in the future. Seemed like a good way to give more attention to the fiddle, anyway. Made some good progress on the latter as a result.
Two years later, just a few weeks ago, I was sitting around late one night and for no reason it flashed in my head from out of no where what I needed to do to tighten the wires and keep the heads in place. I hadn't thought of the dulcimer in ages, but I ran upstairs, unpacked it and sure enough the notion worked. I had it tuned and ready in a little over an hour.
Giving it equal time with the fiddle, within a few days I wasn't just playing it as well as I ever had, I was playing it far better. I even started getting chops all over the place. I'd never had chops before. I'm even using it (effectively) in sing-alongs. Disturbingly, the music that comes the most naturally is the Herb Alpert TJB songbook. But I'm laying down technique like never before. It's the weirdest thing!

Singapore Day 4

Last day. Gotta make it count. A little rainy, not great for the beach. Lonely Planet urged a visit to the Singapore Science Centre. As always, LP was right-on. After some confusion over the busses, we arrived at what may be the best Science Center I’ve ever seen. It’d be a tough call against the Dallas Science Place whereas the DSP may periodically win with their individual presentations, the SSC conquers by sheer size and amount on offer, and their presentation is still better than most.

They featured an interesting fountain park that helped kids play with / in water in constructive ways, but no exhibit seemed to captivate Eiji or the other throngs of children visiting from all over Asia as much as the chick hatchery in the back corner of one of the less-austere wings. At any time, you were sure to see a chick emerge within 20 minutes and Eiji would’ve gladly stood at the Plexiglas dome all day if time had allowed. Another mesmerizer would be a Rube Goldbergesque contraption at the front door where wooden balls rolled through all manner of chutes, wheels and spoons, bouncing off angles and counterweighing other devices therein.

Okay, closing time. Head back toward the hotel, but not without one more trip to a mall. At this last mall, we took in a last-minute feature of Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles which was a masterpiece for anyone under 12. Mami managed to wiggle out of that one. I also tried this ice sago that I was seeing everywhere. I couldn’t communicate well-enough with the vendors to know what the multi-colored beads-in-slime was that topped the ice cream, but it turned out to be a delicious tapioca with tropical fruits and pet milk. Fabulous!

The flight out the next day was smooth and quick, but all three of us were sad leaving. Since then, hardly a day goes by that we aren’t trying to come up with a way to put ourselves over there. We agree we’d like to live there. The culture, atmosphere and people are great and it’s so international that Eiji fit in like we’ve never seen in Japan or the USA.

Singapore Day 3

Breakfast again at the hawker’s down the street. Bhakdi (rice balls with curry sauce) and prahda (curry crepes) with tetarek. Well-fed and ready to go.

Okay, enough shopping. Let’s go have some fun.
On to Sentosa Island!

Here’s a cute sign listing items prohibited on the metros. If you know anything about durian fruit, you’ll know why it’s unwelcome on crowded carriages.

Several ways over to the island, but we took the cable cars with a package ticket on the aquarium and butterfly-arium and dolphin-phelia-arium. I have to say, that cable car was aLOT higher than I had bargained for. Of course Mami and Eiji were enjoying the view. I was counting the millimeters to the other side. At least is was fairly stable. Minor heights give me a thrill...this was a clincher. Here's the face of SHEER TERROR:

Once on the island, off to the beach. It was like Hawaii, but MUCH hotter. The sun just beat down so hard, it felt like our bones were roasting under our skins. But the beach was pleasant. Clean sand and good water.

After some noodles and stuff, Mami found a shady spot while Eiji and I went for a swim. The water was wonderful. I could’ve stayed there all afternoon but even with the sun block I was roasting up nicely after less than an hour. Just look at how white I am, and poor Eiji seems to have inherited my pigmentation dispositions over Mami's.

From there we went over to the lagoon for our turn to fondle dolphins. If you’re wondering, their skin feels thick and skin-like. Nothing particularly magic. I don’t feel sorry for the dolphins; I like getting my back rubbed--what a great job.

The aquarium was good-enough. They had a petting-tank like the great Okinawa aquarium and we could hand-feed the rays. That was pretty cool.

We skipped the butterfly thing and finished off with the luge. That was a downhill track for little rolling sleds. Tons of fun. But the first time down Eiji had some trouble. He just barely topped the height minimum and not quite the age minimum. The sleds were a little tricky; pull back half-way to roll, all the way to break, twist to turn. They’d be tricky for anyone, but by the end of the trial stretch he hadn’t figured it out and was feeling very defeatist about it all. They made him get off and ride the rest of the way with me. He was not at ALL happy about that. After much consideration, we decided to let him try it once more. The guys working the trial track were very understanding and took pity on him, and took the time to see that he figured it out. He did fine after that and really felt like something special by the bottom.

Getting back to the top of the hill required a chair lift (or a long walk), and after two trips on the chair lift, one of which stalled, I just didn’t have it in me to take another trip back across that cable car route. But we’d bought our tickets and Mami wouldn’t let me wuss-out so I was pretty shaky by the time we were back on the other side.

Lonely Planet had mentioned that you shouldn’t leave Singapore without trying their pizza. We found a ritzy pizza place in the mall adjoining the cable car tower. We made that our one splurge dinner, and it was a good one. The crust was thinner and crispy, and the ingredients were fresh and well-balanced.

That night we slept well as is evidenced by this photo.

Oh, and I found out what the lights were. Bright lights from the hall outside were shining through the peephole, and whenever people walked down the hall, they’d affect the beam on the far wall. Cancel the call to Mulder & Sculley.

Singapore Day 2

Living in Japan, we can’t drive down the street without incurring omiyage. So after another good Tamil breakfast, we set off to find bigger malls. We got to one of the bigger ones in time for lunch. We stopped for some fish at Long John Silvers out of sheer curiosity (the teh tarik sucked). The mall was impressive. They were in the middle of a big fashion show, so everyone looked even more stylish than usual.

When I say stylish in Singapore and I’m talking about women, I mean traffic-stopping, Bond-Girl-kinda stylish. When I’m talking about men, I’m referring to an untiring passion for thin, knit button-up plaid shirts with khakis and flip flops; the sort of after-sale left-overs you'd find in the back corner of a Wal Mart. I don’t get how the women can have so much fashion sense and the men so little...and that's me talking...anyone who makes ME look stylish is in deep trouble.

Okay, take a break from shopping and do something for Eiji. See a movie. What’s playing? It’s a choice between Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Meet The Robinson’s. TMNT sure didn’t hold any rep with me, but after Disney’s last attempt at digitally animated comedy, Chicken Little I was ready to take the turtles as the more endurable of the two. But Eiji, sage decider that he is with the Robinson’s and to our surprise it was the most enjoyable animated feature we’d seen since Monster House. It was funny, very funny and in all just a perfect family animation. No eternal classic, but it didn’t need to be.

Okay, back to the food courts a floor down for all kinds of curry and noodles and the nicest shaved ice topped with red and green tapioca. That was easily one of our favorite deserts there.

Now it’s getting late and one thing the Lonely Planet guide listed as essential was the Singapore Zoo’s Night Safari. Always go with Lonely Planet. That was an unforgettable experience. In the darkness, the animals behaved very differently and none of us felt so invulnerable, moving around dark jungle trails among leopards and rhinos. It was magic. The bat house was a particular treat. I was expecting little desert-type bats flitting around my head. This area featured bats the size of foxes. They were beautiful, but It’d have been pretty alarming to have one of those things flying around my head. There were a number of kinds of deer. There were elephants, including a bull. Cats. Hyenas. Lions. Wolves. None of these would be all that impressive ordinarily, but at night, without clearly visible barriers it feels much more acute. The zoo in general was designed beautifully. The sparse awnings and structures swam surrealistically in the inky darkness and murky foliage. The toilet was particularly neat; the sink bays were walled with thick foliage and there was no ceiling. Fully complimented with motion sensors and all that, but the sinks stood peering into the dark, humid forest with all that wet leaf smell and little noises and movements on the edge of visibility just beyond a short wall.You were clearly outside, but the juxtapositions of modern tile and toiletry trappings in a jungle were again, surreal. I want a toilet like that.

Took a cab back to the hotel. The driver was a nice guy and we talked about the situation of Singapore. He said it used to be a prime destination for vacationing Japanese until SARS 5 years ago, and that even thought the epidemic has passed that the economically vital throngs of Japanese tourists never returned. He was pretty annoyed about it. He must know a lot of people whose businesses suffered or failed as a result. But he and everyone I met was proud of Singapore.

That night, we couldn’t be less concerned about the phantom lights. There was an extended family taking up a few rooms in the far wing of the hotel and even through three thick, closed doors their din was a nuisance by freshman dorm standards.Back at the hotel, we had a little trouble sleeping. An extended family staying at the far end of the opposite wing was carrying on so loudly that even after I closed the fire door between the wings, I would have been able to transcribe every word of the conversation if I spoke their language. To hell with the mystery lights.

Singapore Day 1

At the end of March, 2007 we headed down to Singapore. It was the consolation vacation as we had our hopes pinned on Texas; Eiji was going to visit an American first grade for two weeks and we hadn’t seen our family there for more than a year and we knew that this would probably be our last chance until December. But the Japanese tax office had taken such a crippling bite out of us (and was continuing to chew like a water moccasin on a swimmer at summer camp) that we had to admit defeat for going to Texas.

But we were going nuts just staying home over the school break, worrying about the business so we cashed in some frequent flier miles and flew down to Singapore on the cheap for four days. It’s one of the ironies about Japan that because everything in Japan is so expensive, it’s cheaper to vacation abroad. Just the airfare to Singapore was a fraction what it would have been anywhere domestic because the domestic airlines in Japan don't compete so the prices never go down.

We arrived at 1am the first day and caught a cab (or they caught us…the driver’s relief partner was hanging around the arrivals gate of Changi Airport looking for fairs. I was a little wary at first because I’d never had a cab driver pick me up like that) to a Chinese hotel in Little India that would rate a star higher than a backpacker’s hostel. Three short, hard beds and a WC that doubled as a shower, literally. The shower hose was hung directly over the toilet. My wife, who’s spent time in Malaysia explained that it’s related to the bowel hygiene customs and that people of that region favor a good washing by hand of the rear end over toilet paper. It does have a sense to it, but I couldn’t work up the gumption to try cleaning myself in the local way as there was always toilet paper on hand. The room was an odd triangle, probably half of a once-larger room. But for what we were paying, it was fine and we really only needed a place to sleep and stow our bags.

Eiji couldn’t sleep because he could see faint lights moving around in the windowless darkness. At first we were inclined to tell him it was his imagination, but I’ve learned from horror movies NEVER to discount a child’s paranormal reports. Given time, I could see them, too. I could also faintly make out two little illuminations deep in the mirror. So maybe the place was haunted, and / or maybe the wall-mounted mirror was a one-way deal. Both prospects were unsettling, but we were too tired to care so we turned on the bathroom light so the mystery lights wouldn’t be noticeable and slept long and hard.

I discovered several nights later that the lights were neither specter nor spectator.

Teh Tarik

Later that morning we dragged ourselves out into the oppressive, equatorial heat to find out what Indians eat for breakfast.

We wandered through a few hawker centers. These places are great. shabby, no-frills but so cheap you never need to cook again.

We ended up at a one with Chinese, Tamil and Kenyan stalls. We tried some hot noodle soups and the pervasive Teh tarik. If you’ve never had teh tarik, wait until you’re on the equator to drink it. In that climate it’s the perfect drink. Nothing is quite as satisfying. But We took some home and it just wasn’t the same. Everyone says that, too, that teh tarik is only good when it’s hotter and more humid than it gets in the States or Japan. Throughout our time there, we had to often get in off the hot streets for a cup and a snack, and I learned that between the 5 main ethnic groups comprising Singapore, there are about 8 very different ways of pronouncing it and everyone only seems to know their own and no other. The Indians pronounce it “TAY-taray.” After a day or so of trying to communicate this at various coffee shops and hawker centers, I just got used to always accompanying my slurred pronunciation with a gesture miming the action of pouring a long stream of black tea and condensed milk back and forth between two pots. But it was always worth the trouble, except for in chain restaurants like Long John Silvers and Mc Donald’s, where it just plain sucks.

Along with the noodles and teh tarik, one of the other stalls was run by a bunch of guys from Kenya. They served me up a big plate of regular, common Kenyan food: Black-eyed peas, chicken and fried plantain. Whoa, it was just like home—soul food! Only thing missing was corn bread. Nice guys, too. My hometown basketball team afforded me some credit; apparently the Dallas Mavericks are respectable, not that I knew. Haven't followed anything but hokey in years. If I'd been there alone, I'd have probably hung around there all day drinking Teh Tarik and pretending to know anything about the Mavs.

Eiji is getting better at eating adventurously. He enjoyed the Iced Milo and some of the other local drinks. He didn’t care much for the Muslim food, but he’s always up for a bowl of noodles in hot broth, and he can eat many variety of curry if it’s not too spicy.

That afternoon and the next day, we took care of the shopping. The more shopping, clothes, shoes, books, whatever, we could buy at Singapore’s lower prices the more it would off-set the price of the trip. In Japan, I have trouble finding my sizes in clothes and shoes so the trip would have been worth it for the shopping alone.

There was a 24 hour mall a short walk from the hotel called Mustafa Mall. Kinda like Wal-Mart crammed into multi-story convenience store. Odd thing there was that in order to carry out little nap sacks in with us (my man-purse), they fastened the zippers shut with those little white plastic ties. You know, the kind where there’s an eye at one end with little one-way teeth inside and you can stick the other end in, but you can’t pull it back out. They did this to prevent shoplifting and I can understand why; the aisles inside were so narrow and the whole thing was so dense that I could shoplift a living room with a store dick standing right behind me. I still feel claustrophobic remembering it.

The walk through Little India was hot and crowded but we discovered Muslim bakeries offering delicious pastries unlike any I’d had before. Thick, heavy, sticky, tasting of honey and rose. My son didn’t take to it, but they also had chocolate bread and Milo.

After that, we happened across a huge Hindu temple right when they were opening the doors. It was as much a community center as a place of worship. People were busy preparing for some sort of big celebration. Thatching palms, baking, building, painting. The decorations in the temple were fantastic. Hundred of painted, posing in one story after another and I didn’t know any of them. It’s a strange feeling to stand before the representation of so many hundreds of years of stories held dear by millions of people and not even know for sure who the good guys are and who the bad guys are. What’s with the fire? Why’s that guy blue? What are those monsters? So many questions, and we asked, but we couldn’t make out the answers and we suspected the people we were asking couldn’t understand our questions anyway.

At day’s end, we stopped off at a little park in Dhoby Got where there were a bunch of kids playing. Eiji jumped in and you’d think they’d been longtime friends by how easily they bonded. Then we found out what all the activity at the temple had been about. A big Hindu parade rolled right past us with incense and music and spectacle. It was pretty surreal, a parade at night.

At the end of the day, we crawled back into our room and fell asleep. To hell with the mysterious lights.

The Jurisdiction of Social Stigma

I love it. Japan, like many non-English nations has picked-up so much Western culture without reading the warning labels. My kick-boxing teacher, an intimidating Japanese hulk of a man plays up-tempo music during training to keep us in the right spirit. He usually goes with west-coast hip-hop and gangsta, which suits the bare-walls-basement-exposed pipes-Raging Bull-esque ambience of his gym. But today, it was Pet Shop Boys, all afternoon. Hee-hee! It was a surreal juxtaposition. That’s okay, I like the Pet Shop Boys and he’s big enough no one’s gonna call him a sissy, either way.

Ghost Rider Movie

My son and I just saw Ghost Rider. Maybe I'm a bad dad for taking a 6 year old to a late show featuring a flaming skull-head guy, but it was his idea so blame him.
I don't know what all the critics were grousing about. We thought it was cool. Flaming-skull-head guy on a hell-bike with chains, leather and destruction. The ads never promised any more than that. I read the third-rate comic a few decades ago...it was the thrash metal of 70's comics; disposable, macho, cool imagery.
I'm not a fan, or I probably would have disliked it as much as I did Superman Returns or any of the Tim Burton Batmans (characters that I am a fan of). Apparently the movie smushes bits of two different Ghost Riders together, gets everything out of sequence, confuses key characters and so on. But who cares? It's Ghost Rider, not The Dark Knight. As long as there's a flaming skull-head guy on a badass hellbike with chains, leather and stuff getting broken, then they pretty much nailed the only important parts of the comic. A Ministry-esque soundtrack and a more rumbly-sounding hog would've been appreciated but we were sufficiently entertained.

Put a snail on your forehead. REALLY, just peel it up off the ground and stick it there. Don't think about it, just do it and go walk around amongst normal people. Go to a restaurant. Go to class. Go on a blind date. If people ask about it, just shrug and say it's not important and change the subject.
I'm not going to lie; it feels really awful. I did this a year and a half ago and I can still feel the lovely thing slithering around on my forehead. But it was worth it for the shock value. Most importantly, children loved it! Good luck.

an iPox on iPods

My third iPod in two years has clicked it's last tune. I'm getting sick of this. I pay 30-60,000 yen for a lovely wonder of portable content hardware for it to go sad-mac in under a year. I take it all the way to Shibuya, toll roads, fuel and parking, wait two hours for their smug little "Genius Bar" guys to do less than I did: plug it in, notice that it doesn't show up on iTunes, listen for a HDD whir, then blithely tell me that "the hard drive is broken" and that I'll need to buy a new one. Can they sell me a replacement drive? Nope, sorry. It's proprietary. Please by a new one.

After the second one crashed, I only bought the third because I've structured so much of my business on it and I didn't have time to completely re-tool to another player. But this other one, a mini I bought off my luddite sister and it only lasted six months (she never touched it, and I bought it well after the warenty had expired). My video iPod is on the expensive 2 year warrenty and I expect to replace it at least two times before then.

But on the way home, I was thinking about when the iPod first came out. I remember reading all about it in the tech mags, about this amazing little portable music player that uses a little hard drive to store all the music. "A HARD DRIVE DISK" I remember balking, "IN A PORTABLE DEVICE???" Hell, I don't move my PC's CPU a more than a thumb's length without shutting down. I used to be a laptop hardware tech and I know how unstable hard drive disks are. You can't expect more than about three-to-five good years out of a laptop under normal usage...how long can I expect a hard drive half the size to last bouncing aroung in my back pocket? Seems my first impression was correct. I just forgot about it in the midst of all the iHype.