Contemplations of a Closet Curmudgeon

Got Lindsay to press buttons on my camera Tuesday night, so some grainy video of the taiko recital exists. Two out of three files loaded to my website and the third (which is about 15 minutes long in real time) was spinning its wheels when I left the house this morning: the file size seems to be the problem. I'd prefer not to have to put 'em up on Youtube, but that may ultimately be the only viable option.

Checked fares today and got tickets on Southwest to Phoenix for Dustin and Ri's wedding Halloween weekend. $79 each way is not too shabby.

It was pretty warm when I went out at lunch time. Weather Channel says it's 85 at home and I can see from the trees across the lot that there's a brisk breeze. On the other hand, I suppose I could take JAF's box to the PO via bike, especially since the main branch is down by the beach.

Need to get pics of what I did to my helmet thanks to three packets of reflective decals.
EDIT: LJ IS BEING A BUTT AND TRYING TO THROW ME INTO PHOTOBUCKET AGAINST MY WILL. (Shakes fist!)
Please go here and don't give them the satisfaction. http://farm5.static.flickr.com/4076/4953040942_270e1b6f63_z.jpg

Continuing not to feed the troll.

Was reminded today by a post on the sca-jml Yahoo Group of the Japanese Twelfth Night in the Outlands that I went to a few years ago. Good times. 

EDIT THE SECOND: Discovered just how much my ample fundament protrudes over the rear edge of my bike seat after I bungee'd that package to the rack. It wasn't unrideable, but I was sitting forward of where I normally do. The Payless sneakers (sort of a Keds knockoff in a floral print) slipped around annoyingly on the pedals and I will not ride in them again, but what do you want for $5 on clearance?

The central branch Alameda Post Office has no bike rack: I had to lock up against a stop sign. (There are, however, racks in several spots around the Alameda Towne Center Mall proper.) My package was small enough that I could use the auto-kiosk in the hallway. Foolishly I decided it would be nice to spring for Priority Mail, especially since the machine asked if I'd put a Priority Mail sticker on the package and I chose "No." Did the machine dispense a sticker to go with my paid postage? Would that not make sense and add to the convenience of the kiosk? Of course not. So I had to go BACK down the hall into the room where everyone has to stand in line to be waited on, rummage through a box, beg the use of a pen from a lady in line and re-address my package. Honestly, I could have stood in line, debated shipping prices with The Dragon Lady who always pretends Parcel Post doesn't exist and tries to trick you into using Express Mail instead of Priority Mail, had HER put stickers all over my box, bought some stamps and still gotten out faster.

At least a breeze was coming in off the bay. I decided that dinner would be a small Peppermint milk shake from Loards. That and the breeze cooled me down nicely. I picked up a salad for tomorrow's lunch and a couple other things at Trader Joe's, then biked back home. Now I have all the windows open and it's starting to cool down in here beautifully.

7:30 PM at the Albert DeWitt O Club, 641 W. Redline Avenue, Alameda.

If you're reading this and you can make it, you're welcome to come check us out.

With each blow, thunder
Erupts from the rawhide skins.
Bodies sway and strain.
Through the whirling sticks I think
"I'd better not hit poor Clint!"

Seriously. Sensei decided it would make things more interesting and "stagy" to move the drums closer together tonight while we worked on "Friday Night Gig." A lot closer - as in keep your moves in the correct plane or risk whacking the person next to you. Or cracking yourself in the knee. Or whanging your knuckles against the edge of your own drum.  No accidents, but it surely cranked the intensity all the way to eleven.

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Caught part of a rather interesting French movie called "Angel-A" directed by Luc  Besson (The Fifth Element) on Sundance this afternoon. It's as if Besson turned "It's A Wonderful Life" on its ear, with George as a down-and-out hustler in debt to the mob and Clarence as an impossibly leggy, chain-smoking blonde. Liked it enough I'm going to see if I can catch another screening this month so I can see the beginning of it.

Fired off this morning via email:

Dear Mr. Tanaka (or whoever reads and responds to these inquiries in his stead):

I very much enjoyed last night's concert at Zellerbach Hall. You performed a new composition titled "Hayate" about a group of villagers who disguised themselves as demons and drove Uesugi Kenshin's army away without a fight simply with their drumming. As a lover of history, I would be very interested to know your source material for this story as I had never heard it before.

Many thanks, etc....

sengokudaimyo ? Anyone ever hear of this? Google turns up the following:
http://www.gojinjodaiko.jp/en_top.html

http://www.sohdaiko.org/reviews.html


http://www.hot-ishikawa.jp/f-lang/english/noto-area/event-detail.html#07

http://nohmask21.com/eu/gojinjyotaiko.html

Who knew?
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Good concert. Sacramento Taiko Dan, Jun Daiko (from Mountainview) and Wako Daiko from Japan also did sets. Serves only to remind me how much I suck and how badly I need to get over myself when I face the o-daiko.....
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layla_lilah and I had dinner beforehand at Jayakarta in Berkeley. layla_lilah actually lived in Indonesia and gleefully nommed her way through the nasi bungus special: rice, jackfruit, hardcooked egg, tofu, fried chicken and beef wrapped in banana leaves, while I had the udang saus mentega, shrimp in a savory brown sauce. Tasty, as authentic as it gets according to my dinner companion, and an excellent bang for the buck.
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Juana had posted a note to SCA-West about having passed a bookstore called Abandoned Planet in the Mission that was going out of business and selling all their books at 35% off. I BARTED over and determined that either it had been picked over before I got there or it was simply a matter of what used books they ended up having in stock in the first place. The art and history sections were pretty small, compared to the fiction/literature offerings which took up half the shop. I didn't see anything I absolutely had to own and proceeded to another bookstore I'd passed on my way up the street.

Upon opening the door to Forest Books, I released a waft of expensive Japanese incense and Loreena McKennitt pretending to be Middle Eastern onto 16th Street. Airy, well lit, festooned with Tibetan prayer flags and earnest posters and flyers about Buddhism and community events, the selection was well organized, interesting, and I didn't have to worry about breaking an ankle on a rolled up carpet just to look at what was out on the display tables. I resisted a coffeetable book of Ansel Adams photos. I did pick up two paperback novels: Murakami's An Artist Of The Floating World and Barry Unsworth's The Songs of the Kings, then headed to the art section. Decent selection of East Asian art books, some of which I already had. Taped neatly into a plastic envelope was a souvenir tour booklet titled JINGU: The Grand Shrine of Ise. It being taped shut and priced at $10, I asked the proprietor if it was OK to open it before doing so. Nifty little book with full color photos of the Jingu shrines in Ise, including architectural details, parading Shinto clerics performing rituals, festivals and bugaku dancers in full costume.
While paying for my books, I asked the proprietor which Shoyeido incense he was burning at the moment because he had boxes for sale on the counter and I knew it wasn't the Gozan. He asked if I needed a bag and pronounced the Onyabag I pulled out of my purse one of the nicest reusable shopping bags he'd seen. I should send him the link....

You know all that rain we got yesterday? The rain that evidently made the national news with enough of a splash that my Mom emailed me several times from Maryland to make sure I was OK?

Well, it had let up sufficiently by the time I left the house for taiko. It was just me, Sean-sensei, Shannon-sensei, Ryan, Bob and Tracy -  and a roomful of drums that all sounded and felt like they all had a code in der doze. 

The new piece is, well... As is often the case, my sensei are trying to reconstruct something from an old video tape and this thing has several interlocking parts that will not interlock properly if the component lines don't begin on the right beat.  We looped this sucker six ways from Sunday last night and none of us is sure it's working right.

We only got to spend a couple minutes on "Friday Night Gig", but we got a round of applause from the folks who made it for the beginner class after us. I don't have this one in my hands yet and it felt crappy. I SO need to play it more. Wonder if it's worth dragging a practice drum to Coronet and putting in some noise time this Saturday? 

Debating whether to camp Coronet or not. I've got a buttload of laundry I must do this evening.....

1. Why yes, Kanye West IS a jackass.

2. While I offer my congratulations to Eddie Izzard on his achievement in the name of sport and charity, I refuse to let anyone attempt to lay a guilt trip on me about what I do and don't do in the name of my health. I don't run, marathons or otherwise, not after more than 20 years' abuse of my knees in the service of horsemanship and two bad injuries of the same knee over a relatively short period of time, which I take as a Sign That I Really Was Not Intended To Fence. 

I do breeze through two fourteen minute miles five days a week on those knees, and do 100 crunches a night. I play damn hard at taiko once a week, but since it is only once a week, I'll even let you say, "Well, that doesn't count."  I eat a reasonably healthy diet most of the time, and yet, thanks to the genetic crap shoot, all that discipline still means being potbellied and pear shaped and not being able to get the needle on the scale to budge no matter how carefully I eat. I AM in good shape, even if it doesn't look like it : I can tell by how fast my pulse rate drops after exertion, so if y'all wanna be inspired and run marathons, go right ahead. I, for one, have nothing to prove.

3. Shannon-sensei was not at class tonight, so Sean-sensei ran us through the piece with no name as yet, and "Friday Night Gig" in a high intensity hour that was equal parts exhilaration and ass-kicking. The un-named piece has a wonderful swingy rhythm that I'm really enjoying. "Friday Night Gig" is on slant-stands and I'm having  problems with a move in which we twirl the stick in the right hand twice while drumming with the left. I don't have it anywhere near down yet and I managed to smack myself across the forearm, probably because I was thinking too hard about the stick flourish that was coming up and not about the phrase I was drumming at that moment. However, I feel pretty good about the fact that I can play softly when soft is called for. Note to self, design a tee shirt for Cafepress. "There's no crying in taiko: screaming, but no crying," Sure, in my copious spare time....

Dinner at El Huarache Azteca in Oakland was at layla_lilah 's request based on something she'd seen on "Check Please, Bay Area!" It's a couple blocks from the Fruitvale BART in a Latino neighborhood (where I felt very tall and very gringa), it was well worth the visit. I'm a wimp when it comes to hot food. The salsa verde was zingy without being painful. When I picked the Huarache Mole, our waitress mentioned in heavily accented English that I could have a huarache made from nopales (prickly pear cactus) instead of corn meal, so I went for it. It arrived a brilliant green peeping from beneath the chicken swathed in dark mole and lumps of cheese, and was a nice change from the usual maza. layla_lilah 's huarache with carne asada looked great too. She opted to have it with some huitlacoche (a corn fungus) on top. I tasted it, the flavor was very earthy and much better than I would've expected. Inexpensive, easy to get to and they serve Mexican Coca Cola if one wants the Real Thing with sugar.

From there, we made time for a stop at Nieves Cinco De Mayo, right across from the BART Station in the Fruitvale Public Market on 12th street. Featuring hand cranked ice cream in a dizzying assortment of exotic flavors (corn! garlic! pine nut and cheese!), the proprietor was very friendly and quite willing to offer us taste after taste while we dithered over final choices. I had a scoop of cinnamon (for $1.25!!!!), Ellen got a scoop each of coffee and cinnamon and mixed them together. The good news is it's close to home. The better news is it's just out of the way enough I have to make a slight detour to get there, so I maybe won't make a detrimental-to-diet habit of it. SO much nicer than that chi chi place up on College Avenue with the expensive ice creams.

Then it was back over to Alameda to check out Maze (as in MAH-zeh) Taiko at the Rhythmix Cultural Works. Six ladies rocked the refurbished warehouse with high energy and distinctly non-traditional mixes of rhythms and instruments from all over the world. I'm not kidding about the cowbell. Or djembe, marimba, hammered dulcimer, electronic keyboard or squeaky toys.

Several pieces in the second set were inspired by a collection of poems and paintings written by internees at Heart Mountain that had been  found in leader Janet Koike's grahdfather's garage.  They're well worth catching.

This is what I get for slumming in yukata. They not only got the Japanese Granny seal of approval from the lady at Nichi Bei Busan, they had people asking to pose with them all afternoon.

On the other hand, I was not complaining about being too warm (we passed a thermometer reading of 88 degrees downtown while heading back on the light rail) or struggling with the kite-like properties of my headwear, so the chambray check yukata wasn't what one could call a bad choice either. And if it wasn't for those particular outfits which appeared at a dance event one evening not all that long ago, I would never have met The Fabulous Kataginu Guys anyway.

With a bit of judicious cropping, I also managed to get a couple of nice shots of the UC Berkeley Taiko group that did the opening set. More here.



Rather than fight lines for the privilege of attempting to stand and eat street food, we went for a sit down lunch at the counter of Kumako Ramen. Their crab curry ramen was a messy slurp of heaven, with plenty of claws and chunks of Dungeness crab floating in a hearty spicy broth with plenty of green onion and zingy curry. I am partially mortified I couldn't finish mine. I blame the hanhaba obi.

I managed not to get into trouble in any of the J-town shops, however, I did acquire a festival tee shirt because I liked this year's design. And a blister on my right instep from my bunny geta, which tells me it's time to make new hanao.  (OK, the lady from the SJ temple who sold me my T-shirt liked my yukata at least.)

Met a very nice young man dressed somewhat similarly tobovil  andkproche and complimented him on his look. Turns out he's a cosplayer and was hoping to get more historical cosplayers/costumers involved in local festivals. Evidently there's a Spirit of Japantown festival in September that might be worth trying to show up and be fabulous at. (Ooh, look, a reason to miss Mists Bardic, an event which is an excuse to sit around and eat too much while being pissed at myself for not being able to sing.)

http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/blogs/abraham/detail?entry_id=38902
Approximately 5 minute segment about Emeryville Taiko's sessions in Oakland's Lakeside Park, including an interview with Sensei Susan Horn.

And just for fun, hand and stick drumming in 16th century Japan. These are all details from the same folding screen in the Tokyo National Museum identified as 'Genre Scenes of the Twelve Months':
www.tnm.go.jp/gallery/search/images/max/C0022470.jpg
www.tnm.go.jp/gallery/search/images/max/C0022476.jpg
www.tnm.go.jp/gallery/search/images/max/C0022479.jpg
www.tnm.go.jp/gallery/search/images/max/C0022490.jpg

Detail from 'The Maple Viewers,' Also 16th c., also in the Tokyo National Museum.
http://www.tnm.go.jp/gallery/search/images/max/C0042445.jpg