Lunamania

That's Pizzicato 5, not P3--the random night club owned by Piper, the middle-child witch on Charmed. I know there are at least a few closet Charmed fans out there who mourned the death of Shannon Doherty's character and cried when Leo the whitelighter became an elder. ANYWAY.

After several years of success recording music for Japanese TV dramas and cosmetics commercials, via Matador records Pizzicato 5 released the compilation CD "Made in the USA" Perhaps more aptly named "Made for the USA", this was their first big stateside exposure. The album is a showcase of their most ear-wormish, j-pop meets bossa nova, techno, acid like stuff. Kinda hard to categorize.

Here is my favorite cut. Baby Love Child

Posted by at 10:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

Jack wishes Lunamania a happy new year and offers a paw in cleaning your office.

This morning I was informed that Mijoung's ongoing obsession with norebang is "currently not active." However, Vik's Chaat House in Bezerkeley is on the active list. A good thing for those of us jumping for any excuse to eat tasty fried morsels covered in yogurt and tamarind. Yum.

Posted by at 9:12 PM | Permalink | Comments (2)

I could be balancing my checkbook, shopping for better insurance rates, or mopping the floors--but here I am unexpectedly and inexplicably awake at 8AM on a Saturday and I'm compiling random lists.
Do I fill these out when they circulate via email? Nope, so why on this blog? I have no good answers.

Three books I can read over and over:
- I don't read books more than once. Well, except for fantasy and sci-fi books I read when I was a teen and then re-read as an adult. That turned out to be a disappointing exercise with the exception of Enders Game.

Three places I've lived:
- The corner of Grand and Gates
- A skip away from Taylor's Sausages
- 2 minutes from the second largest cemetary in Tokyo

Three TV shows I love:
- Love is a strong word. The following draw a chuckle: Curb Your Enthusiasm, Charmed, 7th Heaven.

Three highly regarded and recommended TV shows that I've never watched a single minute of:
- Battlestar Galactica
- Veronica Mars
- Anything involving Rachel Ray

Three places I've vacationed:
- In my head during conference calls.
- On various watercraft in between unraveling the mysteries of the ponies at Chincoteague, VA.
- 10,000 ft high near Lake Tahoe, CA while strapped to waxed fiberglass.

Three of my favorite dishes:
- The dish that comes laden with Yukari or Eddie's cooking. And since that's usually at least 3 dish loads of food, I think that satisfies this list.

Three sites I visit daily:
- Despite the impression of being perpetually online, aside from my email I don't have daily online reads and don't surf the internet that much. I get my daily news from the paper version of the Times, read books, and like the instant gratification of shopping in stores. I'm old skoool like that.
- 3 sites I visit semi-regularly:
rtumble.com
engadget.com
dpreview.com

Three places I would rather be right now:
- Doing something productive.
- Finally seeing Brokeback Mountain
- Calling friends from my currently non-existent living room couch to let them know we can all quit our jobs because I've just won super lotto.

Three bloggers I am tagging:
- I'm amused that I know 3 bloggers.
Escapevelocity
The Wily Filipino
Pennylane

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The Monkey and I made a spur of the moment run to Lake Tahoe this weekend. We left late Saturday afternoon and arrived at our motel around 10:30PM. A sign in the lobby gave us a number to call for late check-in. We dial. We hear/see the phone ringing behind the glass wall. We see that the only sign of life is a cat staring uselessly the phone. This is no Lassie cat. The answering machine picks up and the cat is still not being helpful. To make a long story short, we left the motel-tending feline and skipped across the street to another motel.

The great runs at Heavenly made up for the mis-hap. I scooted down the mountain without too may wipe outs. I know that $70 a day (yikes!) is steep, but the view of Lake Tahoe from the lifts and 4500 acres of runs almost makes if worthwhile. The picture above barely captures it --this is about halfway up the mountain.

I came home to 3 messages inviting us to partake in tasty eats! I appreciate that we are associated with food outings. I'm bummed to have missed the culinary adventures, but am looking forward to making up for lost time with friends very soon!

Posted by at 11:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

I took my turntables to this community fair on Saturday and found my protege, DJ Nickalaus, Nikolas, Nikul...we decided he'll just be DJ Nick until he learns how to spell the latter half of his name.

The last time I spun for this organization, Jackie and Lai were preparing to perform at today's event. They chose an all time earworm favorite--Christina Aguilera's Beautiful. If you need the lyrics to purge the earworm, squint at the sheet of paper in this picture.

Posted by at 8:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)

It's 2006! Welcome to the Year of the Dog (yes, I know it's not officially the Lunar New Year) and yet another year of Lunamania.

The newly re-designed Lunamania promises to bring you more frequent postings to further waste your precious time--present post excluded of course. Meditating over this ginormous buddha floating above the most profitable Starbucks in the world is a transcendental experience. We loves Tokyo.

As always, I welcome comments and suggestions that don't involve invitations to online poker tournaments or enlarging body parts I don't possess. While you may experience this blog as prolonged exercise in navel gazing, the original intent was to connect with my peoples in cyberspace. So, drop a line or two!

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