Just listened to an interview with Michael Hirschorn about his piece in the Atlantic Monthly about “Contemporary Quirk,” worth a read if you’re into indie film/music/culture.

He’s catching some flack for allegedly “attacking” talented directors like Wes Anderson and well-meaning artist/entertainers like Ira Glass of This American Life, but I understand where he’s coming from. In the interview, Hirschorn says that he likes, respects and enjoys the quirky charachters and meandering non-event storylines everywhere now (see Arrested Development, Flight of the Conchords, Napoleon Dynamite), but what started out as fringe culture (think “Ducky” from Pretty in Pink) now dominates the big and small screen. And while these fairly benign non-stories are usually fun today’s talent is capable of much more, if they didn’t use quirk as a crutch.

There’s an undercurrent of baby-boomer melodrama here (or maybe that’s the Gen X cynicism he writes about), but he’s right: instead of making movies with gravity and meaning, today’s top talent tell stories of hanging out and not much else.

Wonder how long it will take for the Big One to take it all down.

I’m still blown away at how over the top Hello Kitty Puroland was. As I said before, I was expecting an excruciating day of rusty bumper cars and chiffon colors, but was shocked to find a technicolor Vegas acid trip instead. You’d have psychedelic Cirque du Soleil moments like this:

And then absurd battles with cheeseburgers the next:

Then there was this forest-themed toilet.

See that sign to the left? It’s pointing to an outhouse with a freaking ANIMATRONIC BEAR taking a dump! (While humming/grunting “Home on the Range,” no less). Don’t believe me? Checkit:

Apparently, in Kittyland, bears DON’T shit in the woods. Well actually, that’s not entirely true – there seemed to be some kind of bears-relieving-themselves-in-nature theme going on in murals on the walls.

Am I lying? And can someone please tell me what the hell that organ grinder monkey is doing?

I first heard of Kogoro Kurata through his steampunk laptop. Now the guy is making massive armed robots and this giant hand you see here. If his scale continues to grow at this rate, plan on Godzilla’s new nemesis by next summer.

All links through the venerable Engadget

Accidents can happen just about anywhere. Have you broken your arm at the arcade? Or maybe chipped your jawbone when controlling your iPod? Not to worry: Tokyo scientists can now make bones with a souped-up inkjet printer.

An old friend of mine has a piece in the IHT today about Taiwanese black-metal band and Taiwan Independence advocates, ChthoniC. As an old Taiwan hand and (very) amateur Sinophile, I love the how these guys tweak the dungeons-and-dragons melodrama of black metal by adding elements of Taiwanese folklore and old-school Chinese temple-festival elements. For example, the face paint may remind you of KISS or King Diamond, but they’ve added elements of the traditional makeup used for the Eight Generals often celebrated in temple festivals.

Remember Pepsi’s Cucumber Soda that I blogged about a while back? Well now you can wash down that with a nice refreshing Curry-flavored drink. Or would you prefer wasabi?

Courtesy of Octopus Dropkick

I know Hyungkoo Lee’s Bugs Bunny bones and other cartoon skeletons have already made a lap or two around the net, but after seeing the Kazuo Oga exhibit, it made me wonder about what some of Miyazaki’s characters would look like. I mean, Totoro is a fat bastard, right? What’s holding up all that girth?

Me like…

Seriously, if you haven’t seen Cai Guo-Ciang’s Gun Powder paintings at the Shiseido Gallery, you have four days before it closes on August 12th.

Cai is amazing. No surprise China tapped him to be one of the visual directors for the Beijing Olympics. He’s created some incredible (and arguably dubious) installations using wolves:

and tigers:

But I like his firework-based stuff best. Check out this “Black Rainbow” piece he’s done in Spain and Scotland:

Some homemade vid:

He “paints” with gunpowder, too, brushing and piling it onto massive canvases. Then he covers it all with stencils, cardboard and bricks and lights it. The colors he gets – deep sulphurous ocres, hearty chocolates, stark charcoals – are truly incredible at this scale.

This video shows Cai at work. Wait for it: the good stuff doesn’t happen till the last 5 seconds:

Here’s a quick video rundown of highlights from the last party at Fujirock’s Palace of Wonder 2007 area. The Sunday Night/Monday Morning party at Palace is arguably the best moment of the fest each year, because it brings everyone together: staff, press and many of the acts on the bill (Chem Bros, !!!, Kaiser Chiefs, etc) end up here drinking with the locals and regular ticket holders, usually till long after the sun is up (I left at 9am because it started raining, and it was still going).

But I’m getting ahead of myself. Here’s a few clips of the final acts in the Crystal Palace, a kickass tent on the Palace of Wonder grounds.

After killer funk DJ, Lincoln, finished his set, on comes Kwabana Lindsay, aka “Fiddler on the Rope”

Next up is Lil’ Fats and the Swingin’ Hotshot Party, a great Tin Pan Alley act complete with washboard percussion.

They had these costumes made especially for Fujirock (last time I saw them they were dressed as French Sailors from the 30’s). No vid of it here, but Lil’ Fats does an incredible Louis Armstrong impression. The crowd loved it. Here they formed a conga line:

A few glasses of champagne later it was the JVC Force DJs. This year they had a squad of American-style cheerleaders.

They’re spelling out “Arigato” if you didn’t catch it.

Amazing what short skirts and pom poms can do to a crowd (we’re dancing to the Bay City Rollers, ferchrissakes). Shouldn’t be surprised, tho. The JVC guys are the ones who brought the incredible Murasaki Babydoll burlesque team last year (English site here, Japanese site here).

A few more drinks and then it was off to the swing outside:

I still have a few bruises under my arms from wiping out like the punter in this clip. Then it was on to try to convince Fi from The Whip that she should climb one of the Palace sculptures for my own amusement. It doesn’t work.

That’s a wig she’s wearing. Most of us were wearing them since they were handing them out at the entrance.

This is the only vid I got of the bizarre mummies-on-stilts I saw wandering around. If that wasn’t weird enough, they were being led around by some sort of sci-fi traffic controllers with blue LED flashlights:

The Palace or Wonder area has always been my favorite part of the festival. I’ll add more details later, but here’s what your confronted with upon entry:

Giant sculptures made out of scrap metal, trees made out of mufflers, freaks of all stripes and usually some kind of carnival act that revolves around pain and/or danger. This year it was the “Globe of Death”

That’s THREE motorcycles in there. Great cheap thrills. And if that wasn’t enough, the bottom opens up. I caught it as it closed.

A few highlights so far:

The boys from !!! turning a few thousand people into frothing lunatics

The Cure playing 2 hours and bringing back a thousand high-school memories

A steel drum orchestra covering the Jackson 5

Deerhoof playing a muddy side stage the size of my living room

Iggy Pop nearly breaking his neck only to get up and wail some more

Omar Rodriguez Lopez touching the moons of Saturn

Kaiser Chiefs vocalist leaping the stage gates to lead a fan-chase onto an unsuspecting Pocari Sweat stand

A didgireedoo and three drummers making kickass techno/trance

A crowd for the Lily Allen show that you couldn’t wedge an icepick into

Alien mummies on bamboo stilts.

Cavemen with sharpened sticks rolling a boulder down footpaths

and that’s just off the top of my head…

back to work. No time to upload any vid clips now, but my reports (under “jinki”) and many, many others HERE

Apparently the etchi have now grown bored with looking up girl’s skirts and now want to look through them. Wired’sJapanese Schoolgirl watch article this month is about the infrared panties Tokyo’s finest young lasses wear to foil freaks with tricked-out infrared gear attempting a glimpse within. Really, guys. If you are spending the time and the cash to make some kinda coochie-goggles, shouldn’t you have moved out of your parent’s house by now? Next up: underwear thieves attain their prize via ultraviolet rays.