she takes one effing yoga class

I'm pretty sure nobody but eggchan is reading this at this point because all my other LJ friends have unfriended me, deleted their accounts or just stopped visiting.

THAT MEANS I CAN SAY WHATEVER I WANT hi eggchan.

so anyway, i found a hairstyle that contradicts my theory that hyde's hair only gets worse. because, wtf is this:



also hyde was in Columbia two years ago and I didn't go? what the fuck. i don't think i like this band as much, but if they come on tour again...we'll see.

It is becoming painfully clear that I am not going to get any work done until I debrief about the L'arc~en~Ciel show last night. I have spent the whole day wandering around in an endorphin haze. Even if nobody is reading this. Whatever.

Yes, I went up to New York to see L'arc. At the supremely expensive Madison Square Garden. At least I didn't have to fly halfway across the country this time. And I hope next time is even more convenient, though somehow I doubt it.

So. The show. I got to the venue very early as I had hoped to sneak into a seat closer ahead than the one I had bought. I was one of the first into the arena and so I got to the front of my section. As the row filled up, nobody came to claim my seat (one of the advantages of having bought a single ticket--plenty of single seats were empty in between two groups) and I thought I was doing pretty well. The agony of waiting for the clock to tick down for nearly an hour, then another half hour after that as the show was mad late starting, was awful. I kept thinking an usher would boot me out or that some other singleton would have a ticket for the seat I had "borrowed."

Ok, so finally the show started. There was a hilariously lame cinematic with Hyde hooked up to some wires (very Final Fantasy 7 esque, though half the audience was probably too young to pick up on that), and a butterfly landing on his hand, and then oh god I just hope someone has a video of this or makes a rip when the DVD comes out because Jesus. L'arc is a deeply strange band.

The band came out and played Ibara no Namida, which I don't know that well and so I felt like a poser fangirl. I spent that song mostly watching Ken, who looked, I swear, high as a kite. He just had this beyond derpy smile on his face (but played very well all night so who knows? Also, I just ASSUME these guys do weed or maybe stronger stuff as they are rock stars and have the money to do so.)

Next up was Chase, which was great, and then they kind of stumbled through Good Luck My Way. That was really the only disappointing part of the night as it seemed just really...awkward. I don't know, they weren't at their best right then.

And then they played Honey and I almost lost it. Holy crap. This was also the point that I realized that a)the uptight Japanese girls next to me did NOT appreciate my excitement and b)there were about a bazillion unfilled seats on either edge of the stage. And then I remembered that at the last L'arc show I saw, Hyde was all climbing on the speakers and shit and I was in a very bad place if I wanted to see that.

By this point they had moved on to Drink It Down, which is also an OK song. I would have tried to change seats right during that song but I wanted to check with one of the ushers, who had been making small talk with me before the show started (I had this vision of him taking pity on me and leading me to the front row, haha). So between songs I asked him what I should do and he said I should try but not count on anything.

Thankfully it was at that point that the band decided to move on to Revelation, which had a super long intro with Hyde shouting something ("blood! Blood!" I think) and besides I have seen this song live before so whatever. I hustled out like I was going to use the bathroom and ran around the stadium and walked into another entrance. Nobody stopped me and as I said there were at least 40 empty seats. And I didn't even miss much of Revelation.

I was Thus ensconced in a more enthusiastic section with a much better view. Just in time for Hyde to change costumes and come out for Jojoushi wearing what looked like a woman's pantsuit and floppy hat. WHO DRESSES THIS MAN and will someone tell them to stop?

Here is a fan video of the ensemble. I can't wait for the DVD to come out so I can share this hideousness with you in more detail. The Village Voice critic who wrote up the show said it was " a floppy, wide-brimmed hat Alicia Keys would envy, making him look like a '90s R&B diva having a rock moment." this same critic also described Hyde's dance moves as "flouncing," which I feel is fairly kind as his moves look more like a five year old trying to tell his mother that he needs a bathroom.



Did I mention I love this band? But I also admit that they are extremely strange.

At some point during all this, ken came out and read a long scripted speech about going to the museum of natural history and taking pictures of the "naked mannequins" and buying a "Monoporry" set for Yukihiro. Scripted in the sense of being read off a piece of paper, but also scripted in the sense that I'm fairly sure it was just all part of the "image." Like hell they were planning to go back to their hotel room after the show and play Monopoly together.

There was a funny moment at the end that harkened back to their Otakon show. At that one, Hyde was very concerned with finding out whether everyone in the audience had eaten blue crabs (the iconic Baltimore food, obvs) but it came out a little differently.


Did you eat crabs by mimily-chan

Kent's speech this time around included the line "do you like us?" which, if you can imagine that in a Japanese accent, you can figure out how that went. (if not, skip to the last 30 seconds or so of this video.)

The delivery was so similar to Hyde's earlier performance that it had to be intentional, but now I am not sure whether the crap/crab thing was also not an accident. Maybe they have been messing with us this whole time

I am not even sure what to think anymore you guise

At any rate. More songs. XXX is way better live than recorded, and I think I am coming around to appreciating this song quite a bit. It may even be one of my new favorites. Fate and Forbidden Lover, I didn't even recognize, but man those are old songs. Same with my heart draws a dream. Oh well. I enjoyed watching Hyde "dance" and ken and tetsuya do their things. They are really so talented.

Caress of Venus was a pleasant surprise and then they rolled right into Driver's High. This may have been the highlight. Ken came all the way over to our side of the stage and I watched him play the chords to the only L'arc song I (more or less) know the chords for.

Next: Stay Away. Holy cow. The background during this song was these weird dancing robots. I swear I have seen them, or at least the dance moves, before. The music video? The official dance moves? Stay Away was like the third L'arc song I heard, ever, when they played it for the official new year's concert, so I have no idea where I saw this but I am going to find out.

Somewhere around here I had a scare. An usher came in with tickets for about 5 people who were incredibly late and had just arrived. Their tickets were for our row! The usher started kicking out seat moochers (apparently the whole row was moochers) and stopped at the seat JUST to my left. Phew.

Ready Steady Go. Yeah. They played it. Everybody was jumping, even me in my heels. I had this strange cognitive dissonance between what my brain wanted to sing and what the lyrics (projected on the big screens) said. Yes, the words are "Ready Steady give me good luck," but anyone who has heard the song knows that what Hyde is saying is "ready steady give me goo rack." Luck doesn't rhyme with "back" unless you pronounce it the Japanese way, i guess.

Loooooong intermission in which not much happened. The robots came back on screen and tried to get everyone to do the wave, at which we all failed miserably. The latecomers to my left decided to leave (whaaaat? You saw like three songs) so I got to move even closer, but then I was sitting next to a middle-aged japanese man wearing a face mask and who did not look happy to be so near to another human being. Whatever.

Last four songs: Anata, Winter Fall, blurry eyes...during the middle of this one, tetsu brought out a fruit basket and tossed bananas to the audience,just as he'd done during the Otakon show...i guess this is a thing? While he was amusing the center part of the audience with bananas and lollipops, Hyde was clearly enjoying being on our side of the stage throwing bits of trash at fans. Like, he opened two water bottles and then "casually" flung the caps toward people, and they went apeshit for the cap. I loved watching it even though Hyde is clearly a ham.

Final song: I was hoping for Pieces, but we got Niji. Not expecting that, loved it.

And that was it. Tetsu flung a few more bananas at the audience. The very last one (I think) he hurled as far as he could toward the back, and it landed behind the first section of seats right next to a security guard. The guard grabbed it and chucked it backward,where it AGAIN landed behind a section of seats next to ANOTHER guard, which I thought was hilarious. That guard tossed the banana a third time and a girl finally grabbed it and she was SO EXCITED. I was thrilled for her, actually, even if that fruit was probably bruised to hell by that point.

Tetsu's last words were "mata me, America" (or maybe new York, I already forget) and that was it. I wished they'd played Pieces. I wished they'd played Lover Boy. Etc. but honestly I could have sat through a five-hour concert and would still have wanted to hear more, so it's not too fair of me to be dissatisfied. Playing that hard for two hours is exhausting.

In conclusion, this is what I have learned:
-Every successive costume/hairstyle of Hyde's serves to make the previous one look good by comparison,but I'm not sure how he will top the braids and floppy hat combo.
-tetsu really likes bananas.
-it is apparently possible to play great guitar while seriously stoned.
-they have learned from previous mistakes--the pyrotechnics belong AWAY from the audience.
-if they never come back to the US, my wallet will be thrilled. Because if they do come back, I'm gonna be hard-pressed not to go. A 25th anniversary tour, maybe?

And seriously? Niji? Amazing choice to close it out. Man.

And now, hopefully, I can return to my normal life.

L'arc is playing Madison Square Garden next month.

THIS IS NOT A JOKE. THIS IS SERIOUS, PEOPLE.


so serious that I logged into LJ for the first time in years to post this.


Ticket + bus fare to NY + food + lodging + logistics = a totally manageable sum but kind of like.....eh. Is it really that important?

I flew myself to Baltimore in 05 or whatever to get all the fandom out of my system, so now it's kind of like....yeah, i can afford it, but i'm an adult.

and i have basically nobody to go with. (offers?)

and i'm a little afraid it won't be as good anymore. their last single, that XXX whatever it was........kinda painful.

anyway.

all i can think of when i think of l'arc playing madison square garden is this:

ARE YOU HAVING FUN? DO YOU EAT EGG-ON-A-RORR?

I ATE TOOOOOOOO.



what a voice, though.

time to go watch Chronicle. And maybe buy Chronicle 2 (did not know this existed, honestly) and a concert dvd.

Maybe I need some hobbies.

The weather is getting nicer here, which means I can re-pick up one of my old hobbies which I like to call "Walking around outside."

I kinda wish I was joking.

No really, though, I have lots of hobbies. I enjoy cooking, crafting (sewing and needlecraft, right now, but I've dabbled in everything from bookbinding to scrapbooking to tie-dyeing), biking, hiking, jogging, and sometimes even gardening (or at least sticking my hands in the dirt and pretending I'm being useful).

The trouble--and I get worried about this basically on schedule, probably once every two months or so--is that all these so-called hobbies are really self-improvement or otherwise necessary.

Like, okay. I like cooking fancy shit. But when you boil it down, I have to cook something or it's takeout every night. So "cooking" isn't a hobby as much as it is a survival skill.

Sewing, well, if I didn't sew, I'd have to go buy clothes. Screw that.

Hiking is just a sneaky way of saying "exercise."

So every so often I'm like FUCK, I need a REAL hobby. But then, I don't really know what that means.

Isn't a "hobby" just something you do to relieve the tedium of your horrible job? Isn't it something that most people nurse along, always dreaming that they'll quit their day job and turn their hobby into a real job?

Since I don't have a horrible job—in fact, I kinda love my job—maybe I don't need a hobby.

But then I feel guilty for liking my job. Like it's weird to like working so much.

It is weird to like working as much as I do. I've been getting over a cold the last few days, and so at about 4 or 4:30, after completing all the stuff I had to get done each night, I'd take a nap.

But then when I wake up, I go right back to work. Not because I left anything undone, but because I a)like it and b)don't know what else to do. And c) I like it.

I don't have a "family"--it's just C, and he's as workaholic as I am, if not more--so it's not like I'm squandering something. And "young people" are supposed to throw themselves into their careers.

But...this isn't normal.

I guess the closest thing to a real hobby—something totally self-indulgent, without "survival" or self-care as an underlying motive—is dancing my butt off to bad music (at the last DJ event C and I went to, they were playing happy hardcore versions of Don't Stop Believing and Daft Punk songs). But that's hard to do all that often because then I can't wake up for work the next day.

So what are your hobbies? (If anyone's still even reading this.)

Or am I right in thinking that hobbies are for professionally dissatisfied people?

That's people who are dissatisfied in their professional lives, not people who are professionals at being dissatisfied.

Do I take up skydiving? Photography? Basketweaving? Beekeeping? (That last one was offered to me recently. I can't say I wasn't tempted, especially because I wouldn't have had to spend any money, just time--but then I remembered that BEES ARE BUGS WITH SWORDS IN THEIR BUTTS.)

Spill, readers.

I think have to redefine what I think of as success.

Lately my final thoughts before drifting off to sleep at night have been, if it was a good day, "Somebody approved of what I did, therefore I did a good job, therefore I'm happy."

Shouldn't it be more "I tried my best today, so I'm happy"?

It's so hard (for me) to keep a stiff upper lip, though, when you try and try and try and get nothing but silence back.

I should clarify that I'm talking about work here. Because I'm a workaholic. I don't think I treat my personal life in the same way--but work and personal is so intertwined anyway. It's a good thing I love my job.

Except on the days that I get nothing.

I think the best part about freelancing isn't choosing my own topics or having the freedom to take off during the middle of the day to meet a friend for coffee. I really get a thrill when chasing down something new. When I "win" by getting a pitch past thousands of other writers trying to do the same thing.

But I think now that that "win" rush is really just my scared-little-mammal brain saying "I got another editor to like my stuff! Therefore I am a good, talented, likeable person!"

It's so messed up to think that way--and I don't take rejection personally, or at least I'm not consciously thinking "They didn't like my stuff so I am a bad person." But my mood is consistently better on a day filled with "I 'won' today" moments than on an "I tried my best today" moments. And it's really easy to doubt yourself after a long streak of misses.

Yoga would suggest that neither of these philosophies are right...I'd need to cut my phrasing down to "I tried my best today, so I am happy."

I don't think I can do that.

I'm not even sure I can get away from the "I won" philosophy--it's so ingrained in me. I don't even think it's a bad habit as much as it is a part of my psyche.

But I should at least be aware of the fact that this exists and try to fight it, because wallowing ain't cool.

No, this is not an April Fool's joke. Just an embarrassing confession. I'm getting it out in public half to assuage my guilt (even though I'm not Catholic, so confession doesn't really work) and half because I hope other peolpe have done this too and have just been too embarrassed to talk about it.

C and I live in a pretty mixed neighborhood. I would guess (haven't looked at the census data) that Caucasians outnumber any minority, but that collectively, it's about 50-50 white/nonwhite. (The social implications of lumping all non-Caucasians into one category is a problem for another day, I think.) Mostly our neighbors are Hispanic/Latino and black.

For the past few weeks I (and a houseguest, when she was here visiting) noticed a guy standing on the street corner who wasn't one of the above ethnicities. Huge beard, big white, kind of Bedouin-ish turban thing, and what looked like a white rosary in his hands. Hmm, that's odd, I thought. What the heck is he doing here? Houseguest wondered the same.

He was never really doing anything when I noticed him, just standing and watching. I really had no clue what he was doing, but my brain's instinctive reaction when confronted with someone behaving strangely in foreign dress is to assume "weird tribal ritual and/or religious ceremony." Yes, that's what growing up in an 85% white city does to you...

Today I was coming back from a run and I saw the guy again. He was standing at the corner staring at the school bus that pulled up.

Then he got his son off the bus and they walked home.

Sigh.

it has come to my attention that I don't really know what work is.

This is not a problem specific to me--I think my whole immediate family suffers from the sort of, I-have-to-be-multi-tasking-all-the-time ADD-ish brain drain that I'm talking about. My whole life, with few exceptions, has been short (15 minute-at-a-time) bursts of work broken up by slacking off, chatting on AIM (or now Gchat, whatever), checking e-mail, thinking about food, etc.

The last couple weeks have been different. I've been very very tough on distractions while C is working his butt off at his new job, and the results..well, I can't say for sure if I've become more productive. But it certainly feels like it. I've been incredibly disciplined and worked my butt off and heck I've even been EATING HEALTHY for frell's sake and yesterday at 3pm my brain just said ENOUGH.

(as example of my madness, my brain begins at this moment to hum day, dayenu, day, dayenu... AND WTF I JUST LEARNED I WAS CONFUSING THIS SONG WITH CHAD GADYA. BAD JEW.)

I forget where I was going with this. Except that it's Friday and I have, in theory, a full day's of work to do, and I'm just staring into space with my eyes looping around and around like I'm tripping out on something..which I'm not, unless coffee counts.

This post = be proud of me for working so hard, and also = halp

I used to post this meme each year, until I fell off the LJ bandwagon. Here it is, resurrected for y'all. I have to say, it's a lot harder to fill this out without a year's worth of entries to refer to.

( Read more... )

I have the greatest job ever. I've been researching weird (to Westerners) foods for the past few days. Things I have learned:

1. Andrew Zimmern of "Bizarre Foods" digs Chinese "Penis Soup."

2. Fermented shark is tame. So is ortolan. I can't even imagine eating some of the things on this list. Deer brain soup? Seal flippers? I have a pretty adventurous stomach but this is ridiculous.
I have eaten:
Tripe
Durian
Black pudding
Goat, and goat's milk
Scrapple
Seaweed (at least 3 kinds)
And more. Most of this would gross out the average American (I dare you to describe scrapple to a Northerner). BUT I SWEAR TO GOD I WILL NEVER EAT DEER BRAIN SOUP.

Unless you cook it for me and ask really nicely.

3. I have the world's strongest crave on for natto now. Apparently some sushi places around here make it into natto-maki. I must try this stinky sticky stuff!

I seriously never feel so beautiful as when I'm doing yoga. Only some of this wonderful effect is psychological. Much of it, I think, is simply a result of pretty much every muscle being engaged at the same time. I look in the mirror and feel powerful and peaceful.

So yoga teach got all our e-mail addresses and sent us this thing he wrote about the evils of consumerism. I'm all about consuming less--my mantra is basically "use it up, wear it out, make it do or do without" after all--but for completely different reasons. I think most Americans who are into the low-impact lifestyle have one of two motives: 1) "It's better for the environment" (aka a sense of being "responsible" towards this very vague entity that we've been told we should care about) or 2) "it makes economic sense" (aka, "If I spend less on crap now, I'll be able to retire sooner.")

Yet the yogi's reason for consuming less isn't either of these. A yogi does not buy stuff he does not need because. Just because. Because when you want something and strive toward something you are in motion, and yoga embraces stillness and emptiness. Because the goal of yoga is to eliminate wants.

Or something. Sometimes we're sitting there in meditation and my mind is going a thousand miles a minute. I have yet to feel like I seriously "got" somewhere in my meditation. I feel like I should feel like I'm floating motionless in a big black void. Instead I feel...like I'm sitting in the yoga room with my eyes closed.

Anyway, I'm a bad yogini because I think it's natural for people to want things. The "control" that we're supposed to get comes from learning not to indulge every want (like, did I really need to have that brownie after dinner last night?). The peace comes not from not wanting, but from understanding that if you don't get everything you want, it's not the end of the world.

Does this make sense or am I rambling now? Anyway, on C and my salaries we'll be 85 before we retire anyway, so avoiding consumerism is a smart move regardless.