I am a musical theater buff. I grew up in the nasty end of the theater district as a kid and used to enjoy the cheap seats on Broadway from as far back as I am able to remember. No Cats though. Cats can go to hell.
The other day my friend mentioned she had to learn to sing Shall We Dance for a chorus thing. She didn't remember the lyrics... I remembered them all! Good musicals cannot be forgotten. I used to have the old double VHS edition of the King and I with the musical intermission too. I miss those. Those were awesome!
Deborah Kerr has left the building.
Excuse me why I try and go find a copy of the old King and I in Yamada Denki and wallow.
Today is what it is. 6 years and not a day different. My thoughts are with everyone back home in New York. To anyone who reads this, I hope you remember, mourn, but not dwell. Dwelling is really getting us nowhere. I can attest to that.
Is it just one of those months?
Most of my friends are having work weeks from hell... the kind of hell we don't experience normally in sequence.
So I have to ask myself.. is it cosmic? Or is it simply that when one of us begins to complain the others will freely confess to unhappiness as well?
If it is cosmic then I ask the milky way to stop turning because I want off. The snowball of relatively medium to small sized inconveniences is becoming the size of a boulder and its going to crush me soon.
I also ask that the Gods of Brompton find me a specialty bike store in Gifu that has my kevlar tires because I have worn mine so thin its going to pop any day now.
I also ask the that the guy who stole my good desk at work and relegated me to one of the worst desks in the office be smote upon the Chubu Interstate.
m( _ _)m
No Spoilers! (I hate spoilers.)
I merely wanted to complain that in the act of finishing Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows... I have basically ended my childhood. Yes I am 23 and well beyond "childhood" but I always felt like I could go back to it. I began reading Harry Potter when I was 13 or so which means that it took 10 years to take the journey with Harry. Albeit he did it much slower than I did. :P And now that it is done... I dunno... it felt so final? I feel old.
So on Kotaku Brian Ashcraft put up a rather amusing post on why the xbox 360 cannot sell in Japan explained by the comments of Japanese message board "2chan".
I found the comments on Kotaku to these comments be rather inane. I tried to comment myself but I still felt too annoyed by the entire matter so I am going to put up my 2cents here in the ever loving need to vent. Also maybe someone here on Vox will give intelligible commentary to my comment and thereby increasing the commenting on comments chain to an absurd length.
So here is what I said...
"I think a great deal of you are missing the point.
Isn't there some sort of pride for American gamers to play games by CliffyB or Jaffe? I have to say in any country there is going to be a homecourt advantage. Also I think this comes with cultural bias, we always like our stuff best. (Unless you are a self-hating American Otaku who decides Japan is the golden country you have no frame of reference to understand except through Anime like those pundits at 4chan.)
Another huge problem is FPS games are associated with giant beefy men with grizzle and whatever. How can you relate to that as a Japanese gamer? Have you guys seen the photos of people in Akiba? These are scrawny dudes who don't have to shave.
Look at Kingdom Hearts or FFX... incredibly successful titles with rather scrawny guys who don't know what they are doing at first but eventually become the hero. There is a lot of transformation mythology in successful Japanese RPGs which is exactly what that audience wants; the guy who can't do anything becomes the hero. At the end of the day there is a lot of self projection in gaming. YOU want to win and be the hero.
Also, I know Marcus Fenix is a badass and what but they can't relate to him. The West seems to lean more towards the Rambo, Rocky, Die Hard stereotype which has no place in a "wow was that guy over there actually a guy" place like Japan. The badass cool guy here looks like a girl. So do you think the Japanese audience wants to be Cloud Strife or Marcus Fenix?
The Otaku is the core audience that spends large sums of money on buying new games constantly at a markup that American games have only recently have had to experience. (Hello 8,000 yen PS2 games) There needs to be a constant flow of appealing Japanese games... not first person shooters. That genre just is not popular here, get over it everyone.
Marketing isn't Microsoft's problem though it is an obstacle. Microsoft's problem is they have only bothered to get Sakaguchi to make games for them. They need the Nippon Ichis, the Level 5s, the smaller (hate to say it) hentai game developers to realize that X360 is a viable market with the added incentive of Western sales."
I think I wrote too much for a comment and it will be flagged down. Oh well. XD
Btw.. sorry 4chan users... I hate rabid fanboys of Anything and ignorant fanboys are even worse. Living in Japan for too long has made me even more bitter. I am sure some of you are nice and smart.
I wonder if some of my comments also apply to Gaming Girls?
For those that don't know, most of the popular Corean dramas out there follow a formula: Boy A meets Girl A. They fall in love and have happy happy times together. This is the first phase
However, Girl B wants Boy A and there is a Boy B who wants Girl A too. Through some sort of misunderstanding usually created by Boy B and Girl B, Boy A and Girl A stop seeing each other. Thus, the 2nd phase is filled with longing, miscommunication, misunderstandings, and generally unnecessary drama. It also drags out reeeeeeeallly for too long. Not much plot action happens in here, and this second phase is usually the longest. It usually takes up about 75-80% of total screentime.
The third and final phase is the resolution. This happens in the last episode, in the last 10-30 minutes. Boy A and Girl A get back together and live happily ever after, to the annoyance of Boy B and Girl B.
I guess I'm getting ahead of myself. I should first tell you a lil bit of the intro plot of War of the Pennies, eh? =)
Park Shin Yang plays 금나라 (Geum Nara) which literally translates into "Gold Land". His life, however, doesn't seem to be as auspicious as his name. His father decides to borrow money from a loan shark for his failing business and ends up being buried in debt. The interest payments are so hefty that eventually, he is bankrupt. Loan sharks in Corea are hardcore, sending goons to pester Geum Nara's family. They break up his sister's wedding and hound them so much that Geum Nara's father eventually commits suicide by slitting his wrists with a credit card.
Geum Nara ends up losing everything - his girlfriend, his mother, his father, his respectability, and his job. Eventually he ends up on the streets, homeless and destitute and trying to keep his sister from selling herself in the Night Clubs in that area.
After losing everything to loan sharks, he finally decides making money is worth working with the ones who caused him so much misery. And so the story continues after he decides to make war against the pennies. :P
Anyway, if you have a chance to watch it on YouTube or download it somewhere, you should. There is never a dull moment in this series. I never thought to myself that I was wasting my time, and truly you count the hours until you can watch the next episode. :)
What can I say? I'm infatuated with his voice! :)
Even without great acoustics or audio equipment to adjust his voice, he sounds fabulous! =)
If you guys know of any other fantastic live performers, please let me know! I'm always looking to expand my musical collection.
I don't know if you guys are familiar with Kim Bum Soo. He's this freakin' awesome live singer. Seriously, the guy sounds exactly the same if not better while performing live as he does on CD. (You can't say that about many singers these days... *cough cough* Paris Hilton *cough cough*)
While watching the past couple of seasons of American Idol, I had to admit there were some great voices, but I wondered why there weren't more of my peoples. I mean, we love to sing soulful, sorrowful songs and we can do it marvelously with our mellifluous voices.Case in point, Kim Bum Soo. Go watch his "Bogoshipda Live" video on Youtube. You won't regret it.
The lyrics are also so romantic and poetic. Here are the Lyrics in Corean. Might do a translation later if my brain cells are capable... :P
Title: 보고 싶다 - Missing you
아무리 기다려도 난 못가 바보처럼 울고 있는 너의 곁에
상처만 주는 나를 왜 모르고 기다리니 떠나가란 말야
보고 싶다 보고 싶다 이런 내가 미워질만큼
울고 싶다 내게 무릎 꿇고 모두 없던 일이 될 수 있다면
미칠 듯 사랑했던 기억이 추억들이 너를 찾고 있지만
더 이상 사랑이란 변명에 너를 가둘 수 없어 이러면 안되지만 죽을만큼 보고 싶다
보고 싶다 보고 싶다 이런 내가 미워질만큼
믿고 싶다 오는 길이라고 너를 위해 떠나야만 한다고
미칠 듯 사랑했던 기억이 추억들이 너를 찾고 있지만
더 이상 사랑이란 변명에 너를 가둘 수 없어 이러면 안 되지만
죽을만큼 보고 싶다 죽을만큼 잊고 싶다
[aka Catch-up =P]
Vox is not my first home in my blogging career. Xanga is the one that took my online-journalling virginity, followed by a brief (and somewhat tepid) fling with LiveJournal.
I guess the reason why I left Xanga is somewhat akin to why I would dump the men in my life; I got bored. Something was wrong in my bones, and a gut feeling told me I wasn't happy.
Maybe I just am not meant to be monogamous, even with a blog! =P
Anyway, for those of you that knew me in my other blogging life, here are some updates.
- I left the corporate bioinformatics/research field to pursue my new passion. I am now a nursing student! Keep your eyes peeled... I may be the one giving you a sponge-bath in the future.
- I may be selected to blog about my nursing experiences for my school. Hey, all that time on Xanga helped me out! It wasn't a total waste of time at all =P
- My school also "makes" us write journal entries only readable by our clinical instructors... which I don't
object to, of course. =D I get points to do something which I normally
do for nothing! Yay~
- For once in my life, I am completely not commitment-phobic. I have been cured of my Runaway Bride Syndrome. I think. =)
- My best friend's life resembles a Corean soap opera and, although part of me is envious of all the excitement, I wouldn't trade the bf away for any of it.
- My parents bought a motel in the West Kootenays (in British Columbia, Canada), and I have temporarily relocated here for the summer.
- I'm not normally attracted to white guys, but being surrounded by a whole bunch of them has kind of turned me to the other meat. The white meat. =P Especially if they look like Chris Daughtry! (I know I'm in a relationship, but I can look still, can't I? =D)
The only thing constant in my life, aside from my constant crushing on bad boys of any race, is RiceBowlJournals.com. I think it's a community I keep coming back to time after time, and it calls to me for some unknown reason. If you haven't been on it, check it out, especially the forums.
(Carlos, if you read this, do I get anything for shamelessly plugging RBJ? =D hehe)
