Shooting an entire project guerrilla style is a bit daunting--going into the shoot with only a base knowledge of the surroundings and a scratch pad with 'concepts' or expectations of shots. Sorta like hucking a rolling camera off a fifty-story building, and just hoping it manages to capture all the elements of a total free fall--the surrounding buildings, the sun, the speed, and the ground rushing up to smash it to pieces. Granted, my HXR wasn't destined for such a fate, but you get the idea. I didn't check any of the footage after I shot it--I wanted everything on one take. Some of it was overexposed beyond recognition, and some of it was totally out of focus.
And because of that, I'm still kinda flabbergasted that I managed to leave the city with anything to show at all, but great goddamn. What footage didn't fall ill to exposure or focus, exceeded all my expectations for a DIY handlebar mount.
Tweaking some of the audio, and rendering the last few sequences to preview at speed. Very close to a final, seven-minute cut.
Expect the ass-killing to hit Facebook first.
Yuta built my first wheelset, and later helped me install my 144bcd cranks and bottom bracket. Takuya the Slinger of Yakitori was always good for a hearty 'kampai' and laugh or two. Definitely wish I'd had more time to put together something a bit more robust for the Soft Cream shop crew, but this will have to do. For now, at least.
Four months in the making, "Fixed and the City" is a lot of things. It's the digital marriage of Panaracer rubber, asphalt, and sound. A moving picture mixtape. A single-speed mission statement. A dedication. A memoir. The difference between simple ownership, and unabashed love. It's less about the "scene," and more about a day in the life; fixed gears on this little concrete canvas of ours.
Oh, and it's about thirty minutes long.
Crack open a cold one, and turn the volume up.
Sorry to keep you waiting.
* Since this is just a weak sample, to hit the full version and/or download the torrent, follow this linkage to Vuze.com. And if those two clicks somehow end up giving you fits, blast me an email so I can set you up with my best Indonesian call center impersonation.
Very special thanks again to Ms. Tamesada for her patience, timely rhythm, and steady camera hand. Got almost everything on the first or second take. Thanks also to Frampton who graciously took time from his busy globetrotting schedule to appear for a very brief cameo.
Riding trains around all these people I'd never met, and most certainly never see again. Stories, written across their faces. Perhaps some had seen more than their fair share of hardship. Others, who'd loved and lost. People who maybe lived in regret, in yesteryear, or maybe just lived for the simple chore of existing.
People like you and I.
Music by Hard Fi.
"In this town, I used to be the king here
now I don't mean a thing here...
Where did it all go wrong?"
"Is that everything? Are you sure? It seemed like he said quite a bit more than that..."
If you watch closely, you'll find a number of things at work in the fifth chapter of the "Go-En Chronicles." The first, and most obvious, is me trying to get my $600 doorstop either repaired, or outright replaced. You may already know that such attempts were expectantly unsuccessful.
Anyone who has ever studied it at length, can probably tell you a whole hell of a lot about the "say one thing, mean ten" mentality of the Japanese language. On one hand, it's fascinating. On the other hand--the hand smacked repeatedly against one's own steaming forehead, is how irritating and exhausting reading through all the fluffy subtext can be. As with any other context-heavy languages, in Japanese, a compliment, a suggestion, an assertion, an insult, or an outright verbal pimp-slap could very well be cunningly tucked between the politely apathetic folds of the same statement. Translation boils down to a lot of contextual approximations, which may vary from time to time depending on your relational distance to the speaker, or on the audience. Or sometimes simply how annoyed you are with the lack of progress being made.
The following video is a short compilation of lowlights and frustrations from a 45 minute phone call, by the end of which, if it were physically possible to stab someone in the mouth through the phone line, I'm sure SCEJ's "Toyota" and I both would have thrown down in spectacular no-holds-barred fashion. In their defense though--I didn't expect Sony Japan to attempt service on an American machine (I assumed the attempt would fall apart as soon as they requested the serial number, but it was unfortunate that my operator kindly waited until the end of the call to obtain this information). Lucky for them, I still picked up the phone, being bored, hopeful, and totally stoked about giving Docomo another hefty chunk of my tiny paycheck last month.
Japanese speakers may pick up on other thinly veiled attempts at satire within, but for most everyone else, this is simply me being juvenile about my situation, and how calling Sony Computer Entertainment's J-train tech support just made it worse.
I can attest to having all sorts of stupid ideas while out running. Pushing another 2 miles, writing to old girlfriends, starting a yakisoba stand on a beach in Thailand, this video... Blame the lapse in judgment on mind-numbing endorphins and blaring music.
Muted lives still scream: across lines of paper, and through airwaves. Always by way of some latent trigger, it happens quickly--like drunken vomit, but with ink; you can't control when, or where. Oblivious to the world, it just starts flying, and doesn't stop until the pen runs dry. Or until they pump your stomach.
Very special thanks to Ms. Tamesada for taking time out to offer a skilled camera hand, for enduring my creepy-ass neighbors, and for pretending to almost knock on my door during the piano bridge.
"I used to be my own protection...but not now... Cause my path has lost direction...somehow..."
Only highways paved with danger are worth driving, as you'll soon see in my latest crappy video short.
So, two thumbs up for Warhawk whenever my controller isn't buried in the wall. And really, my abnormally high levels of rage are not that of a control or playability issue buried within the game (even though the autoaim was allegedly fine-tuned by an orangutan with dyslexia), it's a "playing a game with other shit-eating humans who are better than me" issue. Sometimes, as many as 31 others. It just occurred to me, that for all the shouting I do, I should just open an English conversation class for all the other guys in this paper-walled apartment complex. Word(s) of the day, as probably heard resounding down the hallway past apartments 204 through 201, would be "you turret whoring cock-holsters".
Yeah, go ahead and jot that down. It'll be on the quiz.
A lot of people have asked Brian and I if we were sore or tired this week after climbing 12,000 feet into the sky. And the answer, after four days, is a resounding:
"I'm sorry, I thought you said 'sore'--could you repeat the question?"
No, I'm not freaking sore. And no, we didn't brave dizzying heights, driving rains or blistering winds with the aid of O2 infused water, gore tex hats, carbon fiber climbing poles, or any other fancy schmancy sissy climbing gear. We did the Subashiri trail entirely on calorie mates and pure, raw testicular fortitude. Ok, so I had a banana and Lucky Charms for breakfast that morning--but after that, it was all balls. To the walls.
I should probably mention that we trained. Yes...we trained our asses off for an entire afternoon, in what I'm quite sure turned out to be the deciding difference between a hot cocoa toast upon reaching summit, and plunging over the wind-swept sides of cold-hearted Fuji.
Oh man, this video gets me so pumped up. I'm gonna go break something, then run 10 miles.
Before you watch this video, it should be noted that it contains footage spanning a three month period during which, outside of the obnoxious, caveman-like growth of my hair, very little happened. Even so, it's still probably worth mentioning that I've since hit the J-dude salon, for some quality 21st century grooming just in time for the big Ohio/Brazil/Japan KAKE summer exchange, starting tomorrow.
Go-go-gadget Go-En Chronicle III video update. Enjoy.
** P.S. The full version of Kominami's guitar insanity (at 2:19) can be found here. Holy shit! Two videos!? My head asplode!
I saw two guys in garish jumpsuits and luchadore masks picking up trash outside the library today. I wanted to take a picture with them, but immediately wondered if the outfits were some kind of convict-identifying system. Like the dunce cap.
Repeating small talk drives me insane, so all the clips were done on the first take. But "Gotta have my pops"?? I still can't believe I said it, and you probably won't either. Anyway, you can finally stop refreshing your browsers. Go En II is here.
Enjoy.
** New scheme for your tired eyes. You may now return to not bitching about my colors. **
...actually, there really is none. I don't need a blog to prove to you that I do a lot of professional sitting around on my ass at the office--granted, it's on the other side of the world, but that never mattered much to anyone. And I most certainly don't need a video to prove to you that my weeknights are boring as hell. You wankers probably already knew that. Anyway, I think this started out as a video experiment of sorts, then it changed to a bit for another upcoming video blog, then I trashed it, then untrashed it, then played with the effects again, then trashed it again, then untrashed it again, then finally just said "screw it," and now it's available for your viewing enjoyment. Or pain. I remember it being a whole hellofa lot funnier when I first started working on it. Meh. Might have been the Asahi.
So I can kick his smug teeth in for thinking he can attract customers by posting such a stupid, conceited sign.
Anyway, tonight's post finds me in Shizuoka with an itchy throat, sore shoulders, and a massive headache. The jetlag hits my body differently each trip here--this time, it has opted for the aforementioned, and an incredible appetite, the likes of which, rivals only the Jolly Goddamn Green Giant himself. Depending on how long I pause to rest my jaws, I've either been eating seven meals a day, or just one long 9-hour feast-a-thon. Anyway, without further adeu, all the other minor details are trivial and thus available for the first time ever, for your viewing pleasure, in the first installment of my forthcoming "Go-En Chronicles" series of video updates. If the formatting is floaty or wonky, it's your fault. Get a mac, or just follow the video link over to YouTube and watch it there.
Enjoy my latest crap-fest, you lazy bastards. I'm going to bed. ...So...I that makes me the lazy bastard. Whatever.
Saori was nice enough to make the trek to visit a couple of weekends ago. This would be our first ever music video, and given the circumstances and equipment available, I think it went quite swimmingly. Give it a second to buffer, forgive the crappy quality, and see what you think.
*UPDATE 11/1*
So yeah, with help from Saori and a gorillapod tripod, I shot this project on my Sony Cybershot hybrid. It records in stereo MPEG4 which imports well into most video software, which, in this case, was iMovie for Mac. We shot it over the course of three or four hours, after which I went back and shot some inserts a few days later. I then did almost 100% of the assembly while at work. This Friday's paycheck is the fruits of my labor. Fantastic. Am I really a translater? Anyway, I dunno...it's a pretty decent camera, but it suffers from lack of image stabilization--most of which can be atributed to the suspension on my shitty car. Works exceptionally well as a casual point-and-shoot though. At any rate, I think it turned out fairly well for a first offering.
*UPDATE 3/20*
This video has exceeded 12,000 views on YouTube. I am shocked. I even got an email the other day from some random guy that I met two years ago, who was confirming if that was indeed me in the video. Wow.
*UPDATE 5/22*
In hindsight, had I known the video would have cleared 30,000 Youtube views, I probably wouldn't have been so open about disclosing such an uncomfortable reality in my personality. This reality being, that I was a shitty boyfriend.
*UPDATE 8/5*
Holy shit. These 100,000 people probably have no idea it wasn't just for show.
*UPDATE 11/15/07*
From the day I originally posted it, I never expected any sort of response of this magnitude. Somewhere around 20,000 views, I started wondering when, or if, this would actually happen. Took about a year, and 300,000 more views, but it's nice to see that the actual band finally got around to it. Thanks guys.
*UPDATE 2/24/08*
On the eve of 500,000 views, I got this message from a fellow YouTube member who had a chance to catch QD over the weekend:
Anyway... The show rocked. Not only did I get to meet them, I got to eat dinner with them and party after the show. They're amazing people! I brought up your video and Kevin said he wanted to check it out and Droo freaked and said "WHAT!? You haven't seen it!? It fucking owns!" It made me a little disappointed that they knew about it and still have their sad excuse of a video...
Shit yeah. Many thanks to Ms. Supremacy.
*UPDATE 1/24/09*
Well, I expected it to happen at some point, but I just didn't know when. Would have been nicer if Warner had let me clear one million views before bringing down the "copyright infringement" hammer. Nice run while it lasted though--the video that got me into videos. Thanks for watching while you had the chance.
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