It’s a bit of a short notice but still :

2006/05/27(Saturday Evening!!)
?Lo-bit Playground Volume 4.0?

“8 Bit Peoples VS Lo-bit Playground!!”

open - 18:50 / start - 19:00 / close - 22:00

location - ???ForthFloor?http://fourthfloor.sub.jp/?

fee - 2,000yen@door / 1,500yen@adv. or with flyer

8 Bit Peoples(USA) side;
aonami, Bit Shifter, Nullsleep

Lo-bit Playground side;
coova, Saitone, quarta330

You’ll notice that my friend Aonami is playing along with Nullsleep and Bit Shifter who are like the beatles and the rolling stones of 8-bit music.

Another guy with too much time on his hands started his own postcard designing service. It’s not a service ok, it’s just a guy that made postcards because he was bored.
Anyway some of those are nice.
And look, when i’m bored i watch tv shows or i read the Internet, then i got nothing to show for it. At least that guy made pretty neat postcards to boast about.
Since i can’t finish this without being a little assholeish i’d say that the captions are a little overexplaining it.

Remember Hampster dance ? It was almost 10 years ago and one of the first internet meme that made a splash in the mainstream at the time.
Well it’s sad to see that after all these years the internet hasn’t evolved much yet.
The internet is a dumb asshole, i hate him.

When gaijins have too much time on their hand they hang out at fuckedgaijin.com. When they really have too much time on their hands they browse youtube and end up making a summary of every sides of japanese pop music.
Mulboyne is such a guy, he has compiled every interesting jpop video on youtube for you to lose your time.

So by an incredible turn of events the cab driver for a BBC editor ended up answering questions in place of said editor on a BBC news show. Yep, they actually took the guy to the studio, put some make-up on him probably, and then asked him stuff about mp3s and the trial between Apple computer and Apple corp.
The guy actually answers the questions like he’s totally legitimate.
The best part being that the guy isn’t a cab driver after all. So even when they realised that he wasn’t the editor, they weren’t able to properly identify him.
Media 0, The Guy 2.
Well done The Guy.

I never heard of bluesecurity before but after reading how enraged they make spammers i think i’m going to register.
That’s the best advertisement a spam filter service can get. This comes from a spam message board called special ham. com. They got actually so pissed off that they attacked bluesecurity’s servers.
The attack was so fierce that it also took down typepad and Six Apart, when bluesecurity redirected their url to a weblog to keep people informed, more on that here.
Via digg

Mystic Ball is a documentary about chinlone, a very old sport originated from Myanmar. This is a very simple sport. You probably have seen by now the Nike commercial where Ronaldinho is doing freestyle figure with the ball all by himself. Chintone is basically the same thing, just ten times more complex and played with other people.
Seems boring huh ? I guess it is, the thing is, it’s also mysteriously trippy to watch chinlone games in slow motion. Go watch the trailer if you don’t believe me.
It wakes up that dirty hippy guy that sleeps in all of us.

Here’s the coca-cola commercial for which The White Stripes made a jingle:

Now, here’s japanese pop diva Yuki’s video for her song Sentimental journey :

Am i paranoid or what ?
The thing is, an acquaintance of mine is actually in the Yuki video. She’s playing one of the Yukis. I would never have seen it otherwise since Yuki is probably the most annoying voice in j-pop today. And boy, do i hate j-pop.
Anyway, if you want to know more about Yuki, here’s her website. She’s one of the most popular singer in Japan where she fills the role of the slightly deranged girl. That prompts everyone here to compare her with Bjork.
Anyway, i don’t really know if the guys at the Coca-cola Company really ripped her off or if the concept was already used before the Yuki video. It might even be the same director for all i know.
I can’t possibly believe that a guy, at Coca-cola or at the super duper advertising company they contracted to do the spot, could be dumb enough to think this would go unnoticed if he ripped the concept of his next commercial on a music video of one of the biggest pop star in Japan.
Naah, no way.
UPDATE : It’s the same director, see the comments for more info.

As you grow old you pretty much guess what magic is all about. It’s about you getting fooled by some kind of manipulation. After awhile you realize that all those manipulations are based on a few principles. Once you understand that, the only thing that can get you interested in magic is the trick, not the result of the trick.
What i mean is, you know that the magician is going to come up with your card, so why stand there when you could go watch the Sopranos instead ?
As you grow older, the only reason you still care about magic is to understand the technique behind it. Of course, magicians won’t show that to you, after all, it’s their job to hide the mechanic of the blow-your-mind effect that’s coming.
Ricky Jay doesn’t show his tricks either, he’s actually pretty adamant about it. But at the difference of many magicians, he aknowledges that you know there’s a trick. His performance is not based on “look how clever the trick is” but rather on “look how good i am and how can i fool the shit outta you while you’re standing 3 cm from my hands”. Basically he’s saying, the trick doesn’t matter, skill does.
That’s why his show, Ricky Jay & his 52 assistants is such a treat to watch.
We hate to know that the thing we are shown is maybe just a simple illusion that we are too dumb to grasp. But we love to see a guy with skills and training showing us basically what humans are capable of doing if they put their mind to it.
That’s entertainment. That’s why we love to watch Jackie Chan jumping from buildings to buildings, or skater kids pulling sick tricks on broken pavements.
It’s not only the feat that’s impressive, but the fact that we know those guys have put up with hours and hours of training to achieve it.
Youtube is full of that, people showing their skills whether it’s on a skateboard, with a soccer ball, playing the guitar or doing the robot dance.
Ricky Jay’s stuff is about how he’s a professional sleight-of-hand with hands and mind so sharp that he can make you think you’re seeing something completely different from what is really happening.
For this, and the fact that the guy is almost as smooth with his tongue as he is with his hands Ricky Jay & his 52 assistants is as good as magic can get.
Oh, and David Mamet directed it. So stop being a bitter intelectual and go watch it.

This guy has convinced me to give up shaving cream for awhile. I was easily convinced mainly because i’m bored and this looks like fun and is a nice conversation starter at parties.
But since i have no idea of what is baby oil (i can make a wild guess though), i’m going to go straight to hot water.
Yep, i’m that much of a badass.