I’ve officially been at just this employer for longer than any other work I’ve done in my adult life (theater carpentry pretty much dried up in the mid-to-late 2000’s), and they do the weird corporate thing around these arbitrary quarterly borders in the year where you provide ‘feedback’. Anyway instead of blabbing excessively about that specifically, I’m reminded I set my LinkedIn 'catch copy/tagline/slogan’ to 'Excitable’ after being fired from my second tech job (even dipped back into some carpentry/events gigs around that time) because it was a real destabilizing thing, like I was so undermotivated and had a poor response, I remember being deep in thought out in Madhattan on the sidewalk and not feeling energy to keep walking or propel my body forward. Even now when I think about jobs in this field how few of them need my skills AND help the truly general public? I went to a mini job fair thingy (only sort of a scam) and both companies were unredeemable, one censored and filtered content to 'protect’ big cellular telcom carriers and plane internet, just filth, and the other was, I shit you not, a subscription service for hotel and other travel amenities, srsly is this for people who aspire to be 1%-ers, is that the target market?
Anyway everyone’s caught on that while we don’t have unions (well I can join the union here in Japan if I want, but workers are already so legally protected I kindof don’t need it? Srsly nobody I’m aware of fulltime was cut last layoffs, and the crazy package they gave people the year before sounded insanely cushy.) everyone knows if you have nothing good to say when asked to give 'peer feedback’ you shutup. But above and beyond, of those that took the time and sent me stuff this season, people have been so supportive and right-on about the things my management needs to hear for me to have more stability and get the rewards for things I’m told I’m incentivized to deliver (play that game) that I’m taken aback by the consistency and a bit touched.
So I think it’s time to change my tagline to 'sufferable’.
When I write it’s probably for the best I stick to tech topics, and therefore the posts tend to always be innocuous when it comes to impact or gravity. Like maybe a vendor or employer or customer would be offput is about the extent of waves. So it’s not easy to get into the mode where I can share that Charles Edge meant things to me, nor does anyone find it easy to speak of someone from their generation in the pasttense. But other acquaintances have terminal conditions and I’ve been at funerals recently, I’m feeling finally on the other side of processing the event. What is important to share about an entire life? I’m reminded of the offhand phrase from a rap song, ‘what happens on earth stays on earth’ and that kind of makes me less willing to spill beans, but it’s really because nobody should care about conference and big business and celebrity gossip and consulting and violation of EULAs and debauchery. I will not over-hype he who had a lot of fame/notoriety, nor will I speak in a way that could be interpreted to sully the name with a type of realness and flawed humanity. Buy me a drink, there’s more stories than these (and a historically cheap yen, and there’s cider on tap). Srsly, I have weapons-grade good vibes I ain’t sharing on videoconference or even conference hallways unless you know me like that. Non-debauchery anecdotes, though, I gots a few. Those folks like Duncan doing a road trip to bring a case of Dr Pepper into Gothenburg. He played drums for the briefest of moments in front of me, but that was hard to coax out. He was in a fraternity, which blew my mind, so many people around me barely went through college let alone have that greek letters experience and such. He let me take him to real NY pizza (same place I took you, Joe) and only afterwards fessed up he took a lactaid. Serious mensch. We walked from practically Colombus Circle to the Village and Forbidden Planet and he walked back solo because of course he could, life was happening and it was a great time. On that same trip when a certain conference hosting hotel didn’t have hot water for showers in the morning was when I also learned he would unpack clothing into the hotels drawers. Who does that? I just put stuff on the bed maybe and have too much anxiety about everything making it back out with me. We travelled so much, like I spent more time in CA and TX than home those summers. He was going through rough times throughout my tenure working with him, MacTech was quite the capper in the fact he had something in the order of 4 emergency root canals after spending a restless night with painkillers that weren’t making a dent - moving to Diet Dr. Pepper after that was not a coincidence. I couldn’t name all cat codenames of Apple’s OS X releases at that years MacTech, but I still won a bundt cake from the strip mall next door. As he needed to sit a lot of the conference out, I remember sharing this photo of his runners-lean (practically gaunt) appearance with teeth still healing as we tore into the cake at the office.
ALT
He was worried his first child refused to eat anything but grilled cheese everyday, the people at the afterschool he picked them up from said 'as long as they eat, you’re getting it done, don’t stress’.
The Santa Monica CA employer he recruited me into had a place where we’d stay when we were in town, many other things about that experience was weird but we (Billiam included) got to be happily shacked up together near the beach. One time we were all flown out before the Christmas party and Charles had to be juggling a bunch of things in his head, and… he washed his phone in his pants maybe an hour before we were supposed to make it over to the office. I was proud to be able to get him back in action by wiping my work phone and swapping his SIM into it, and simultaneously horrified to learn he’d also forgotten… a pack of cigarettes in the shirt pocket, along with my change of clothes 😅
(This should be spoiler-free, for reasons I’ll describe later.) Because my sig. other would be hearing about the movie (with a reverse-viral PR stunt of… almost not marketing it whatsoever) on the radio shows they listen to (Japan has different media than the rest of the world, obvs) I found myself rushing to see the ‘last’ Miyazaki movie this past Friday. I’m going to cop to the fact that unlike manga, which I can translate and leisurely reason about in the moment at my own pace, I still only get ~60% of dialog in Japanese films with no subtitles, so grain of salt that I only was able to absorb just so much of the plot, but, some thoughts:
Animation-wise, we’re met with a dreamy blur in the beginning (when the main character is youngest) and almost old-school throwbacks for the more fantastical points of passing-through walls and metaphysical time. There’s one obvs computer graphics cameo which introduces a set at what would be a culminating plot point, but it’s understated to the point of irrelevance to the story - another example of Ghibli ignoring computers and assistance in tooling/illustration/character/canvas.
As a work, it felt ‘of an age’, and leaned into this motif - morality goes unexamined, and that’s probably reasonable/realistic since life itself is messy. But along those same lines there’s no quality I feel sticks with me - in its message it was ponderously substance-free. Therefore I’m not interested in spoiling it or really describing most of the plot, because it’s besides the point; people are seeing it to enjoy more time with the creator and that’s the only thing of note in the experience.
I’d expand on that by saying that story-wise it’s a time capsule. Fan service writ as large as the screen I saw it on, no larger, no smaller. I’m usually emotionally swayed by (persuasive) fiction, and this was… understated. The main character had no noticeable arc, has almost no dialog the first 20+ minutes, and seems uninvested in doing anything but be the ‘vehicle’ through the film that the audience sticks to as they watch, the 3rd person, (not-literally) over-shoulder view. It was in stark contrast to as solid and gripping so many of Miyazaki’s other stories play out, which crank up the intensity and undergird the payoff so completely that they are indelible on the mind. This… slid off like rain. Stakes felt low, and self-referential throwbacks (white teensy cute creatures instead of black ok) negated any sense of novelty. What did I just see, if not the fading of memory? A period piece (with that period being Miyazaki’s invented world) carrying an overwrought title.
This isn’t to say I didn’t enjoy it, it’s just that sometimes you experience a thing that’s not for you - it’s an indulgence for the creator and the fans who want to see their performer come out on tour one last time to deliver what that brand produces, a victory lap.
I had never heard of this brand before, although I know Panasonic/National have made power tools for years
This is the flamethrower section, people commonly burn ‘organic matter’ on their property (farms) to dispose of it or treat wood paneling
Roadwork is pretty clean, but you have to be in the sticks to see lots of brand new signage for private individuals to pick up
I don’t quite follow what’s going on here (still not all that literate) but I find the potato chip branding on spud planting kits adorbs
The oversized stuff tickles my significant other, and the idea of buying your own palette/skid is beyond mind-blowing
Again, not quite sure but my guess is that these are for hauling sections of felled trees?
And finally we saw this on TV and found it ridiculous as a safety thing, it’s gravel that’s loud/crunchy to… I guess let you know before you’re getting home invaded? Not quite sure the logic, but it’s a real product, we sampled how loud it is 🤪
Home center trip, part one because tumblr doesn’t want me to upload more than 5 images I guess? I went to the home center (it had the Jack in the Donuts spot I posted about earlier on the Mastadons) and there’s many reasons I really, really like home centers
This is the free lockup so you can store your pets (or anything else I guess) while you shop?
But it seems like everybody else isn’t really getting the memo
In the sledgehammer section there’s a pipe-handled one that claims it’s specifically for driving fence posts to keep out wild boars ofc
Closeup from the same section, on the bottom right there’s plastic and rubber handled teensy sledges omg uwu
Makita makes portable lighting that are just mind blowing and inscrutable
I might update this a few times, hope you like it, like to hear it hear we go
Coffee:
Coffee Wrights, at Higuma Donuts, for the flimsiness of the decor and oat milk and decaf
Allpress in Toranomon for the physical distance and oasis in the middle of a weird part of town
Fuglen (even though no decafs,) by Yoyogi Park for opening early and staying open late, when the hipsters subside/before the dog people take over
Switch although I’m not hip enough, if patience is at its max maybe Paddlers, it’s a nice trip ‘off the beaten path’
Onibus and AboutLife when money is no object
Mameya when white coat snobbery is on the square grid menu
Glitch when on that side of the world
Saza for adult baristas in commuter-heavy spots, Maruyama for the same in Shibuya/Minato-Ku, Obscura for similar high-brow-ness
Rec, especially the Nishiya/Shibuya hill location for sometimes not being too mobbed
Woodberry for the decafs, sandwiches near Ebisu
Verve for the weird locations and wrong food
Sarutahiko for the burnt stuff and weird locations and commuter-friendly hours
‘Pan’ aka breads/pastries:
Pain au Sourire for the art and corn with shoyu in the summer and edamame and sea salt and macadamia heart and classic baguette ham and cheese etc.
Opan for the booth you get in and get out, but the ‘dog’ sausage with sweet-ish shredded cabbage! and milk frances
Baba flat for the project building-feeling location and focaccia-alike breads
Breadworks because the first cream cheese bread I liked and other good options from time to time
Green Thumb for the super tasty chocolate muffins and korean japchae and other sozai pans and uniquely spongey loaf bread
Sawamura for the french inspired stuffs in strange locations
Nem chocolatier and Django for the pain choclat and interesting beet-colored-stuffs
Pointage and Comète when in ‘the juban’, the latter for the pavé
Tanne for inexpensive rye’s and all the other german… if you can catch them when they’re open
Gentille and Hara Donuts when over there
Gontran Cherrier for the squid ink and spice bread salt-ish contrasting with other sweets
Trasparente for all the tasties
Katane and 365 if it’s not mobbed
Point et Ligne in the not-TokyoStation location
Chains you can find in the US, but tasty/different here: Maison Keyser for the delice blanc etc., City Bakery for the pretzel croissant and bacon scone
My voice is my passport, is that how it goes or something?
I’d prefer to tell all those remaining deplorables ‘I’m not locked in here with you, you’re locked in with me’ but it’s not a place I want to participate in as much
My take on in-person events for the foreseeable future
(Downer/whining warning, but this is my blog, so)
I was at a ‘team offsite’ with ~30 people a few weeks back and it was super awkward to constantly get food on the inside of my mask because I chew with it on but… I didn’t have time to quarantine nor does my risk acceptance level include any amount of covid or its effects, period. I was seeing all of my family (my parents are over 60) on the same trip.
I don’t have a nuanced way to say it: people without masks indoors in public come off as super inconsiderate, especially when we’re all traveling and high (enough) quality masks are available. Of the three other people who ever wore a mask the entire time we were meeting for that week, only one was American. People who go to conferences and get sick and bitter at people for lack of testing and regret it… are from countries that act like they’ve given up and want to live riskier. If I’m not being generous I take their motives as being because patience is hard, or I dunno, other reasons that people where I live don’t agree with. Tests are not preventative, they’re informative and the over the counter ones can at best only give you a degree of assurance about a slice of a time window.
I don’t know why it’s hard to require a mask or wear them properly instead of chin diapers, I don’t know why we leave taking care of each other to the lowest common denominator of threat models/risk thresholds. I’d like to see radical compassion that can actually stop humanity breeding more variants, and the only thing standing in our way is… our refusal to believe our cultures can withstand borderline discomfort? Marshmallow test failure writ large.
Over the years I’ve collected a bunch of mixes from various artists/producers/DJs, and more recently have gone between SoundCloud and Mixcloud for discovering parties and music. I think DJ Shadow put me on to Rashad/DJ Spinn on his All Basses Covered mix, which got me into Footwork, and BoilerRoom has been streaming a crazy amount and variety of artists. (BoilerRoom just did an event entirely within Zoom, if only time zones weren’t a thing!) Like how Reddit and link aggregator sites ‘outsourced’ doing your own discovery, listening to mixes have been a lazy way to find great music curated by people who can build selections into a journey or narrative.
Anyway, enough flowery verbiage, I wanted to share my enthusiasm for the new way I’m finding out about and being able to more directly interact with (and support) the Selectors I’ve followed for years (while discovering new talents.)
Craze says he was on UStream way back when that took off, but like many he’s made channels for him and his record label on Twitch. It has apps and at its most simple allows you to follow folks you’re interested in and be notified when they’re streaming. Since they were purchased by Amazon a while ago you can use your Prime membership to ‘subscribe’ to an artist (more on that in a bit.) As we’re all spending a lot of time at home, artists are hanging out in each others chat, which has been a great opportunity to tell people who have made the soundtrack of much of my adult life that they’re dope. Crushes are often two-ways, I’ve seen royalty like DJ Jazzy Jeff show up and the person streaming gets on the mic to shout them out.
Here’s a short list of all the folks I currently follow:
SlowRoastRecords (craze’s label), DJspinna718 (famous for his Stevie Wonder tributes), DJZTRIP (massive Beastie Boys tribute from years back), DJ_KENTARO (and his edvr… production co. I guess you’d call it?), theroots (Questlove’s been getting cracked down on Instagram/IGTV), SkratchBastid (a ginger from the frigid North), Serato (who I wished was a bit faster or shared more of the streams they host), Shortkut (BEATJUNKIESSOUND, crazily enough he can scratch and sync every music video that has ever existed, it seems), and a few more I’ll touch on in a sec.
Warning as I get into some terminology used on Twitch, single-quotes ahead… In addition to the one ‘sponsorship’ you can use Prime for, additional tiers can be done with ‘coins’ as well, and there are tiers that get you more-specialer ‘emotes’ or custom emoji that the person running the channel has to get vetted/approved. They allow pretty customize-able editing of the artists info page where they can link to their Bandcamp/Merchandise/PayPal/Venmo/web presence in general or other specific things like a Discord.
By just hanging in the chat while someone is streaming you also acquire ‘points’ that let you unlock subscriber-only emotes (for 24 hours, natch) or ‘highlight’ your message in the chat. You can long-tap on someone’s message and see information like where they got the emote they’re using, or report spam although things are a lot less glitchy and fidgety from the webpage. Channel broadcasters can make someone a moderator, and there are language/content filters users can disable. Enabling background audio for iOS is another customization I made. You are expected to re-allocate your Prime subscription monthly as a way to (I’m guessing) entice creators to keep posting content and to encourage viewers to keep their eye out for new or different channels.
One of my favorite producers is knxledge, who I saw hanging out in JRocc (also part of BEATJUNKIESSOUND)’s chat, then I went to follow him and found out… he uses Twitch for its original purpose: narrating playing various video games, he’s got nearly 10k followers 😛(Emote game on lock, too)
There’s all different levels of technical acumen besides playing music videos along with a dj mix, djqbert just seems to have gotten started and was using a projector pointed at himself with 90’s rave-style fractal graphics and talking through his headphones as a microphone(!) (His dog jumped next to one of his 8 turntables and was blocking his view for a while. Another streamers cat was under the Roland sample-triggering pad stand and would reach out while he’s touching the gear nearby, all in all a half-decent R&B set, but would definitely kitten again.) A common problem you see over time is either the music isn’t sync’d with the video or there are multiple cameras and one (or all) are lagging, and on top of that there’s pretty consistently a lag between where I am and the chat, so the host might ask the chat to do something but I’m behind and all of a sudden the chat is flooded with emote’s or people are responding and I have no idea why.
All DJs are getting new jobs in IT in 2 months
— “Call For Location” is out NOW (@JubileeDJ) April 30, 2020
On the opposite end of IT savvy is folks who not only juggle inviting dancers via Zoom into their streams, but also put on movies or mix along to cartoons like richmedinamusic. He’s in a team along with a few other legends as part of The Originals - StretchArmstrong, Tony Touch, Clark Kent, and someone who got a lot of fame on Instagram live as the whole quarantine thing was starting, D-Nice.
djayres uses a fake-iPad dry-erase board to show the track name and artist as he’s mixing, and if you want funky house, Baltimore club, and 90’s rap there are few that are as dedicated to waving that banner. DJMike2600 has the full marquee wraparound and scrolling text, and as a way to exhibit how nice of a person he is, he gives you the channel names of other DJ’s he’s friends with and/or admires - classy.
Some put frames with art as if they’re in the dj booth or you’re hanging in their living room, or… whatever LilJon thinks he’s projecting in the way of atmosphere:
He’s also very on-brand with the rules for chat:
On the crunk note, TPain does music production, general chatting, and games like racing and Animal Crossing of course - it’s a great way to see how other people enjoy what’s become a cultural phenomenon recently.
milesmedina and yoJESPINOSA are two folks I’m actually kind of concerned about? They encourage and partake on a fair number of shots during their streams, but I can’t begrudge folks in sharing their vices, there’s a fine line between all of this at-home hedonism and regular performance that we’re all still finding with these new capabilities. They are DOPE DJ’s, and are adults, so I have no reason to really speak or think ill of them when they’re obviously working hard to share their gifts and make it through the current state of the world, just like all of us.
Two other channels I want to shout out are DJFlipout from Vancouver and fourcolorzack from Seattle (Cascadia represent, DJZimmie rounds it out in Portland and is known for the great visuals he puts together with hip hop-heavy mixes). Flipout is known as a 45 king, and as a longtime radio personality he has encyclopedic knowledge that he drops on us - he’s the fan’s fan. FCZ (also known as the other half of 2¢ with Craze) is just as talented as he is entertaining. So much fun, and like how Chris Rock talks about how he wants to feel the audience turn against him, Zack dropping the LinkinPark/CelineDion mashup… should be considered a crime against humanity.
One last thing, time zones make it interesting that the west coast going until 4 in the morning works for me because it’s midday in 🇯🇵, and there’s features available to streamers that they can either ‘host’ someone on their channel who’s playing after they’re done, or… send all of their current viewers to a channel as a ‘raid’. It’s a new thing, to guide your audience elsewhere, and whoever comes along for the ride tends to give respect to the person who sent them by flooding the destination chat with subscriber emotes from wherever they came from. It’s a fun society to spend time in, so far.
ALT
