Rich Seymour's stochastic statements.

From the LA Times: latimesblogs.latimes.com/movies/2010/02/missile-command-movie-fox-hollywood-videogame.html

Missile Command has been optioned for a movie by fox. This was the first video game I ever had. My parents bought me the redesigned atari 2600 after the nintendo came out. Actually Asteroids may have been my first game, but Missile Command was in there.

They have a little screenshot of the game… but… the whole thing about the game, the whole rapture of the Atari gamebuying experience (or any games of that early extremely pixelated era) was the box art:

From Atari Age

That’s your movie right there.

So. Life. Yea. Well if you’re like me, you could use some music to be the background. I’m at this crazy err well semi crazy LA goth night known as bar sinister. Just saw my homie Paul’s band Triple Cobra play. They are from SF and they honestly rock.

In other news, Treasure Mammal, bromance, get it. That’s what I am saying. Get that. Get religious about it.

In hmm other news, preorder the Clark 8 7″ Snooze!!! clark8.com/7inch Thanks to all of you that already have. Killer!!! We’ll be getting it pressed ASAP.

Yes, LA jus’ drive me crazy. I was up hiking in Malibu today. 3 hours good times. Nice to do something other than sitting. I’ve got about 2 songs done for the rpm challenge with 2 more mostly done. Only need 6 more. Eeeek.

I would write an in depth article about this, but I’m too lazy to properly research it. Bottom line is somewhere between 2006 and 2009 Ben Davis, world renowned San Francisco based clothing company, moved its manufacturing to the Dominican Republic and China. Prior to 2003 they had a unionized labor force… then that year UNITE (www.unitehere.org/) went into something to get them to raise their wages. They eventually did… but… perhaps to the downfall of Ben Davis as USA made brand.

Evidently UNITE is a bit slow to notice when one of their union brands goes overseas, since they still list Ben Davis there. Perhaps Ben Davis is still union, but I think they would keep union made on their label if they were.

I love unions. But are they complicit in the loss of jobs in the US? I’m not one to say.

That said, American Apparel makes all manner of pants down here in LA, they just don’t make pants that last more than 2-3 years… … and their travler’s chinos are way too short for me.

This is the new thing. Hanging at a bar typing a blog entry before anything gets started.

I was just in Jamestown NY seeing family and friends. Had a good time. The deep snow near the end kept me on house arrest. Really a lot of snow. Even delayed me getting back by a day. Oh well. Saw some good friends. Missed a bunch too though. Got some good pedal steel guitar tips/lessons from my Dad. We set up his Excel to act like my Fender so I could learn pedal and knee lever moves that will translate easily. Mom and I hung out, etc everything was pretty slowed down by the snow though.

I came back to CACS with a good list of things to do. I am excited to get real momentum.

Still angry at the TSA in spite of their goal to make travelling safer. Oh well, other people have written more eloquently on the subject.

So I think we had a couple more days in Tokyo. I have pictures and perhaps I will recount the story soon.

I had the odd experience of waking up on the return flight totally naseous and afraid I was going to bunt (that’s a Beverly Cleary reference I think). But I just used some mouthwash in the bathroom and chilled. I think I had gotten thirsty from the seroquel and jazz and then the airplane got hot and I awoke in a stupor. whatever. The trip was so amazing. Can’t fully thank all those involved.

Got home and in spite of being on time with regards to sleeping and whatnot I just slept more. Who knows what went on. Not much until Xmas day. We had house show number two: little sandwiches party. I made dozens of little sandwiches and peeps came by. Kevin Greenspon, Nicole Kidman, the Smigel brothers (Jacob and Jesse Smigel) and I played. I didn’t hype up the show much but everyone who came was extra awesome. Kind of a bonus for keeping it low key. Jacob and Jesse blew my mind really. Turns out Jacob is in med school doing rotations!! I so rarely find other grad student musicians let alone med students. Damn, that dude rules. His songs were mega intelligent and stuff. Also he and his bro did this song from season two of Twin Peaks and I had a dope slow dance to it. Kind of weird to be slow dancing with someone while everyone else watches, but it worked. I was into it. But yeah as Kevin would say they’re important. They also did found sound live. Hard to imagine. Jesse brought this extra theatrical element. They busted out a couple of hip hop esque r&b kinda tracks at the end. Killer versatility with those guys. It turns out I had met Jacob before in AZ but both of us had forgotten it until we put the details together late in the night. Yeah so get into the smigel brothers. They have stuff on iTunes.

Kevin G played a nicely relaxed set. I prefer my noise ambience a bit less serious, which Kevin delivered. I’ve had enough overtly intellectual noise for the Xmas season. Speaking of noise I bought myself the Xmas present of the O.Blaat release that came out in 2004? I’ll try and flesh out the details later. Anyway o.blaat is Keiko Uenishi (misspelling her las name I think). She was a bit of a humorous noisemaker on the NY scene at the turn of the century. This release has killer collabs with Ikue Mori, dj toshio, dj olive… it’s a really wide ranging piece of work. Did I mention it’s a double album? God dang! Get it.

So yeah kev kind of worked with that. I spent some of the next day grubbing on his fingerpicked 9ths and maj7 chords and stuff.

Then, this is not chronological, but Nicole Kidman played. Nicole K is really Jon B who is one of the most sincere people I know. He gave me really killer Xmas presents. But he didn’t bribe me for the praise. He played a quiet unamplified set. With the speakers on his keyboard providing the beat and the notes, while he sang his honest words on teen and post teen life. He also did some acoustic guitar numbers. I love his music. Aaaah.

So, yeah, then I played four or five Clark 8 numbers. Including this one new song fragment that’s starting to take shape lyrically now… I feel like it will end up being about those great times we end up barely remembering. No complex details, only the sense memory… images, scents, ineffable feelings.

Yeah so off to Jamestown now. Turning off all personal electronic devices.

Ok, we’ve just finished up our third day, but I want to get our 2nd day down before I forget what the heck happened. This day was mainly a bus tour (Hato bus… literally pigeon bus, supposedly a long running tour bus line) , which I thought would suck, but it was fantastic. We saw a broad swath of Tokyo… I thought we’d be stuck on the bus, but we got to spend an hour to and hour and a half at each destination.

1st stop… buddhist temple. I paid 100 yen ($1.20) for a fortune. I drew lucky number seven. I opened the drawer to find “BAD FORTUNE” some choice lines:
“Your wishes will not be realized. The person you are waiting for will not come.”

I was not deterred.

2nd stop: Mitsuo Aida Museum … Calligrapher/Poet/Artist… amazing stuff. I got pretty emo at this museum… Check some of his extremely brief poems (badly translated compared to the museum’s translations) like this:
“If you just keep thinking,
night falls.”

3rd stop: Imperial Palace… didn’t get very close, but… I can say I’ve been there.

4th stop: Fuji Television building… kind of… not that great, but it was among many buildings on this man made island. Looked cool from the outside though.

5th stop: Tokyo tower. A taller, more orange Eiffel tower. Went up to the observation deck and saw the most amazing sunset just to the left of Mt. Fuji. Stunning.

End of bus trip.

Then we got Ramen in the sort of red light district… nothing like the Amsterdam red light district, just kind of seedy with lots of dudes and ladies asking you if you’d like to meet girls or get a massage (pronounced massagey). The ramen noodles were great and they were playing heavy metal the whole time in the ramen shop.

That’s about it. It’s way late here and we still have another day and night left.

Woo! I said today that when I get back to work I’m going to do one thing… WORK! I don’t think I’ve had a real vacation in years and … wow… it somehow puts everything in focus.

Definitely getting to the too busy to blog part of the trip. We made it to Tokyo from Yokohama yesterday just about as the sun was heading down. We got out of the train at Shinjuku, about half a km from our hotel. We walked over through the masses of people. I was so jazzed to see so many people out on the sidewalks it reminded me of Manhattan in rush hour. Only with 99.8% of the people being Japanese.

We went out for this traditional chanko dinner with Ken-ichi’s family. It’s a sumo wrestler, boxer type of food. Big pot with various ingredients cabbage, carrots, beef, intestine, tofu, unfertilized eggs from inside a duck, duck giblets… etc. Really good kind of down home food. And we started out the meal with raw horse meat. Really tasty and not tough at all. The phrase tough as horse meat apparently refers to cooked horse meat. We washed it all down with huge beers. Maybe 32oz or so. Ken-ichi’s family were awesome. Even with the language barrier, we spent the whole time laughing. Good first night.

Then we wandered around the more red-light district on our way back to the hotel. Many offers for massages and girls, girls, girls. None of us have sunken to that level yet, such puritans… I guess my issue is I can only get involved with such things ironically.

The lights and energy of this city is amazing. As I may have written before, I recently tracked down the history of my Uncle Kenneth Seymour’s final flight over Japan in a B-29 in July (or June?) of 1947. The superfortress was on a run to blow up the petroleum plant in the Kawasaki area of Tokyo. It was lost and never found again. Sixty years later who could’ve imagined a city of this size could have risen from the ashes of that terrible war. It makes me endlessly sad to think of my Dad losing his older brother, and at the same time so hopeful in the strength of the human spirit over great tragedy and sacrifice that led to the current peace and partnership between Japan and the US.

After the shady area we went into this cool little block of three story bars with insanely steep stairs. Each floor of each bar could fit maybe 5-6 people max, probably less. We sat in the cozy confines of The Albatross, wrapping up our night with a touch of whiskey.

Now we are on a tour of the city on a bus. I thought it would suck, but the bus just takes you to cool places and drops you off. With certain things prepaid. Describing this tour will take another post.

Almost too much to say so I’m just going to throw down some bullet points:

3 earthquakes while in Izu on the last night and day.

KISS wrapped up well. Great workshop I think.

Got to Yokohama, checked into our nice hotel. Went into these super malls and super electronics stores.

Met up with our advisor who took us out to dinner with his Mom. They are such nice people!!! (seriously, three exclamation points doesn’t begin to do justice)

Went to a mini… hard to describe like… street box with food simmering on a tray in the middle (pictures of all the food is the main thing that happened today… including natto this morning)

Then we went to one of those photo booth craziness things that my boyz & girlz in the IE are into. We now have our own pictures… We’ll upload those as soon as we get to a scanner back in the states.

I think we are going to hit a pub tonight then go to sleep… see more of Yokohama (first port opened to trade with the west in 1854) then head 30 minutes up to TOKYO!

The work part of the trip is done so now it’s just… trying not to spend more money than I have and continuing to have more fun than I have any right to have.

[edit] PS I think there is a post from the missing day hiding on my iPhone.

I’m watching a presentation by one of my mentors A Nakano. I’ve seen him give similar presentations. The slides are in English, but he is presenting it in Japanese.

I seem to have no knack for Japanese. I can pronounce Chinese pretty well since I took a couple semesters in college, but that is no help here.

It’s nice to see a group in Japan take cues from our computational science workshop for underrepresented groups and turn it into their own. They are teaching a lot more system administration stuff. Maybe I said that already.

Also it’s neat that the computer code, etc doesn’t need translation. Sometimes they throw in Japanese characters in strings, but the config files and source code are still in the stunted English of computerese.

Heading to Yokohama tomorrow. More good times around the corner.

Editing iptables config. That’s something I haven’t done in years. Yup.

Had an American style dinner last night. Pretty good. The French fries were pretty authentic. The pizza was tasty very little sauce and a good amount of cheese. We drank a fair amount. I played a Clark 8 song (never said) for the folks and they liked it. I think it would go over better if I played covers, but I really don’t commit other people’s songs to memory much.

Then speaking of covers, we went to the karaoke room of this compound… (if I ever have a compound it will have a karaoke room) and then true Japanese karaoke madness began. If you have Facebook you can see various pics of me singing Livin on a Prayer, some aerosmith, some Simon and Garfunkel. Japanese karaoke is usually done with two people, which kind of takes the pressure off a bit. I have done two singer karaoke in the US just far less often. Also the sound system was rad with a couple crazy clear plastic sphere speakers hanging from the ceiling, in addition to the big monitor size speakers.

So yeah, getting a good slice of Japanese culture here in this small town of Izu. Can’t wait to see Yokohama and Tokyo tho!

Also there is one analogy I would like to make:

coffee flavor:Japanese coffee::vermouth:dry martini

It’s strange to me. Japanese coffee kind of tastes like watered down and filtered Turkish coffee. Like the beans have been lightly roasted and ground into a powder and somehow in that process lose the oily tasty parts. Leaving a sort of afterimage of coffee, like a picture of coffee or a scratch n sniff coffee bubble sticker. You get what I’m saying?

That said there was that starbucks in the narita airport. I don’t know if I want to drink starbucks in Japan. If it tastes like American starbucks I will bemoan the Americanization of Japan, and if it tastes like crazy weak Japanese coffee I will be sad that I can’t get a real cup of joe. But then what is a good cup of coffee? I enjoy everything from Folgers crystals to sunset junction’s intelligentsia coffee to brooklyn’s gorilla coffee. Gorilla coffee would be my overall fave. Followed by LA’s groundwork and Urth Caffes.

I have time to pontificate on coffee because in spite of being here a few days, I still don’t understand Japanese.

Configuring our 5 machine cluster. Pretty straight forward except we are doing something crazy with LDAP which I’ve never used for a cluster. Wacky, huh? Forgot to take a before picture of breakfast, but it was big with fish and clams. Also some spinach and a nice egg custard, replete with meat.

I grew up eating the standard middle American veggies and only after I moved to NYC for college did I get to try more adventurous foods. My general rule for eating a bunch of unfamiliar foods is try everything. Then eat in order of weirdest (least appetizing) first. that way you end on a high note.

Also this morning I discovered why I detest those day-glo yellow daikon radish pickles. They have saccharine or something in them. blechhh. I’ve been assured that proper traditional daikon pickles don’t have any fake sugar in them.

I’ve been blogging on my iPhone and then uploading via wifi. I connected to NTT once when I took my phone off airplane mode. I received one txt message in that one minute period. Probably the most expensive txt I’ve ever recvd.

One more thing Japanese coffee is sort of like watered down Turkish coffee. No roasted taste, just sort of a hint of coffee flavor. Also in related news about me enjoying the labors of underpaid workers in 3rd world countries, I haven’t had chocolate in 2 days. My skin has lost its greasy pallor, but at what cost!? How will I reintegrate into my corn syrup and partially hydrogenated oil regimen when I return to the US!?

Went out to walk around Izu, by around I mean like a block and a half. I came across a bunch of spiders, the same spider species, but huge. Red, black and yellow. I took some pics and I have been assured that these are peaceful spiders. That’s cool.

As I mentioned previously there is a guitar here. I have played it now. People were diggin it. The guitar is somewhere between ten and thirty years old by the looks of it and oddly made in Korea not Japan.

Now we are in the workshop and we are installing the CentOS linux distro. I could pretty much do this at 4am while drunk driving the length of the 110 with a laptop on my dashboard but it’s still fun to do it with a guy telling you how to in a language you don’t understand. Their presentation is very detailed so I can follow it mainly. That and English pops up every now and then such as ‘root password’ and ‘time zone’.

The bento lunch was awesome. Breaded pork cutlet with some worchestershire sauce. That w word is simply pronounced uster in Japanese. Not to be confused with oyster sauce.

In closing Izu iz rad. There’s a jacuzzi, hot indoor pool thing, pool tables, a karaoke room and as mentioned a guitar and crazy spiders (outside). You can see the ocean or bay or whatnot and it looks gorgeous. This is the most vacation I think I’ve ever had. And mainly I’m not running around playing tourist. Yay!