In Which I Utterly Fail at LJ Cuts
Tonight in Japanese class, I was standing around with Brittany aka night_inscriber and Andrew trying to figure out a study time for tomorrow.
Me: So you want to study tomorrow?
Andrew: Didn't you guys study last week?
Brittany: Yeah, but it was just us, and uh...
Andrew: Just you guys? Um, yeah, no.
He was right. Last week we sat outside the classroom with Brittany's laptop going over the 15 new pages of the JE Meme of Intense Dislike and watching random JE videos on YouTube. It's soooo nice having a real-life JE fangirl friend. We're currently planning a JE Day, but we have no idea what we'll do. So far, Japanese food and dramas are all we've come up with. There will probably be internet flail and idol mag flail as well.
So I had planned to make this post a voice post, but uh...that didn't turn out so well. And this whole week I've felt like I had nothing to talk about, but actually, I have tons of stuff to talk about! So much so that I will have to number them and address them individually.
1. KATTUN'S "ONE DROP" PV AND WHY IT GIVES ME A GOOD GIGGLE
KATTUN has done it again. Another random place video. At least this time it's not a warehouse. The beginning cracks me up, though, with each individual saying something--oh wait, ALMOST everyone, but Jin does NOTHING--and it reminds me of an "Obsession" commercial for Calvin Klein.
Love...Dreaming...Eternity...Hope...OBSESSION...CALVIN KLEIN
Kame has a disaster of a Doumyouji perm. WHAT'S WITH THE AWFUL PERMING IN JE? *headdesk* And Kame just can't pull it off successfully. Then there's the random desynced dancing on the red carpet amongst STRETCH HUMMERS, LOL. It makes me think of bored rich boys, honestly. It's kinda like F4 only...K6? Kame even has the Domyouji hair! XD Ueda already is a rich boy anyway, so it's a good fit. Jin looks bored, as always, but then...maybe he's just a bored person. And if so, then perhaps he needs a hobby. Actually, I am LOVING how Koki looks in this. He has his good and bad times, but this time he looks fairly hot and awesome. And what do you know, they're actually showing the rest of the members beside Kame and Jin.
You know, it just occurred to me that I might actually like KATTUN'S music because it's kinda the music style I like, but the videos...THE VIDEOS GET TO ME.
What is that dead animal around Jin's neck? Someone please call PETA.
I'm just not getting the whole extravagance/rich boys with hummers and yachts thing going on. What does that have to do with anything? If you're gonna do a montage, at least do a montage that makes sense. And...it doesn't really have anything to do with the song itself, does it?
Okay, it's over. That was a bit of an ordeal.
On the subject of this being the theme song for "Kami no Shizuku," it doesn't really fit the drama but neither, really, did LIPS for One Pound Gospel. And about Kami no Shizuku: I LIKE IT. I don't care what anyone says or that it's getting abysmally low ratings in Japan. It's actually pretty interesting, even if Kame gets upstaged by Naka Riisa most of the time. I'm still trying to figure out when the wine critic will crack. He is CLEARLY insane as they keep showing him doing crazy wine-related thing episode after episode. The episode where he finally cracks is gonna be AWESOME.
And you know....I will probably end up downloading ONE DROP.
2. YOUTUBE > LIFE
My YouTube obsession has gotten worse. A sample of things I've been watching this past week:
Eddie Izzard on Learning French from "Dress to Kill" and that leads to a lot more Eddie Izzard movies because he's one of my favorite stand-up comics. If you like Monty Python, you'll love this video of The Four Yorkshiremen. It's a hilarious comedy sketch.
Did you know there's actually Western stand-up comedy in Tokyo? THE TOKYO COMEDY STORE. If I go to Tokyo, I'm totally going there. This woman, Spring Day, is hilarious. Spring Day performing at the Tokyo Comedy Store One of the comedians who performs there is a guy named Kevin Cooney who is also tokyocooney on YouTube. He does videos about his life in Tokyo and traveling around Japan, and they're almost always funny.
So last night on iCarly they had internet sensation Fred, whom I had never heard of before then, but apparently he's the #1 Most Subscribed of All Time on YouTube. That's CRAZY. I've never even heard of this guy. And yet, I spent a good chunk of time yesterday watching his videos. And I can't deny, the boy has some funny. But the "Fred video" they did on iCarly wasn't that great. I love iCarly, but sometimes it seems like Miranda Cosgrove doesn't get into the funny craziness. And she should. She could be awesome.
Sometime early last year someone on my flist posted about Magibon, whom I'm sure most of you have heard of as the girl with both the most boring and most interesting YouTube channel on earth. This girl, in case you haven't heard of her (please go look at her videos, and you will see the insane genius of it all), make videos about NOTHING. She's YouTube's version of Seinfeld. She just looks at the camera with her eyes all big and round and sometimes she does incredibly mundane things like eat pizza or pick up things.
To me, this can one of two ways: insanely boring and irritating or fascinating to the point where I watch every single one of her videos. And the second choice seems the most fun.
See, Magibon is NOT Japanese. She's from Florida, I'm pretty sure, and she is white. She does not speak fluent Japanese, although she does seem to posess knowledge of it--and wouldn't you if you had the #1 Most Subscribed Channel of All Time in Japan? In this video, it looks like she doesn't speak either Japanese or English because she can't seem to understand either one very well. But her first video is titled "Me Doing Nothing."
People in general fascinate me, but I have to wonder what the overall thought process was for her when she decided to make these videos. Because obviously, she didn't set out to be a web celeb in Japan (hehe, web celeb is fun to say) and probably just posted a random video of herself doing nothing that someone somewhere found and went "OH MY GAWSH, SHE'S SO CUTE!!!" and sent it to all their friends. You know how these things go. But then she must have seen how popular she was getting when got so many hits on her videos and Japanese people were commenting on them. She must have thought, "I've stumbled onto something BRILLIANT. I can be popular just by looking into a web camera and spouting off some Japanese! Marvelous! I can take over the world!" It's like a car crash. I just can't look away. I also wonder if she secretly has an LJ since she claims to love Japanese dramas, and we all know one of the biggest contingencies of J-drama fans is here on LJ.
But I'm not hating. Oh no no no no no, I am really fascinated by this. I really hope that some day someone does an interview with her and just ask her how this all came about. But enough wasting time on YouTube.
3. IDOL MAGS HEADING MY WAY!!!
I got a 6-month subscription to Wink Up! Yay! It cost me like $80, but it's gonna be sooo worth it. My first issue will come in a couple of weeks to the house since I won't be here at school that long. Meg's also sending me her old idol mags because she's moving and needs the space. And hey, if she's just gonna throw them out anyway. I greatly look forward to my dose of pretty boys every month with possible posters inside.
4. DRAMA CRAZINESSSSS
Okay, I have a confession: I'm not the project leader for VOICE anymore. There are reasons, but let's just leave it at that. And because I suddenly have a gaping hole in my calendar, I've been going crazy watching every single new drama I possibly can. WARNING, DANGER, SPOILERS AHEAD!!!!
MEI-CHAN NO SHITSUJI: Ahhhhh! Rihito hugged Mei! They totally like each otherrrr! And Mameshiba is going to confess to Meiiiii!!! So who will she choose, I wonder? Can she choose anyone? I love the crackiness of this drama, but I also love how the girls and butlers are so close and care about each other. Not necessarily in a romantic way, but in a friendship way or a sibling way. The butlers care for the girls, but the girls really do care for the butlers. And I like Izumi. She's tough and fair and get crazy. But poor girl is always getting chewed out by those bitchy Sole-rank girls. And GAH Yamada Yu is SCARY. It's always the quiet ones that are the scariest. But even scarier? Her butler, brilliantly played by Mukai Osamu. I love Osamu-chan, but man, he is downright creepy in this drama. Hiro=HAWT. I never really thought of him as hot until now. Not even in Hana Kimi because he was all cool, yet spastic. Not in Zettai Kareshi because he was meh. But duuuuude, make him a butler, and I want to jump him.
VOICE: Daiki and Ryosuke are so cute together, lol. I loved the linking-arms moment in episode 3. And their constant bickering over stupid stuff. But yay for Ryosuke standing up for himself to his father! Episode 4 made me spazz because it was KEI! Maou reunion! I wish Toma and Kei had had more scenes together in Maou, because they have such a great dynamic. Some of the forensic stuff in Voice, though, seems unbelievable...no, it's Daiki's reasoning. He makes some awfully good conclusions based on very little evidence. And, I just don't see it happening. He must have a photographic memory or something. Still, it's quite an interesting drama. I love medical mystery/forensic shows.
Kiina: I really like this drama. Kiina is a somewhat odd woman with a photographic memory who solves strange cases through the use of science, and all of the cases are based on cases that actually happened. Kiina loves sweets and can never seem to hold down a boyfriend. Her ex-boyfriend is a forensics guy at the same station, and she still likes him. Yuuta from ProDai and First Kiss is on it, and he's great as always. He's the rookie detective who wants to rush into important cases and do exciting detective work and doesn't want to be in this weird case department. The woman who played Sawakita on Bloody Monday is Kiina's friend and coworker who helps her with cases. Don't know if there will be an overall plot since it's episodic right now.
Kami no Shizuku: See above comments in the ONE DROP analysis. I like this drama. I want to see wine critic guy go insane from the wine. I want to see more Kame singing in French and dancing all foofy. I want to see him like the overenthusiastic, non-elite girl. He does already. He smiles whenever he's around her. I want to find out if Robert-sensei is French or Japanese.
LOVE SHUFFLE: Not terribly interesting at the moment, because there's an 8-member ensemble cast to deal with. Tamaki Hiroshi in neurotic guy role. Nice. I've only seen two episodes so far, but it's obvious he'll get together with the main woman. Oh, but what was up with episode 2 where Matsuda Shota was doing the photoshoot with her and asked her about her twin brother, and he kept asking her if her brother was the reason she can't fall in love....EWWW. And it was totally true!
Arifureta Kiseki: My one serious drama of the season. I like Nakama Yukie, and this is very well-written drama. I just wish more would happen between her and the guy. They keep going back and forth talking about how they're NOT on a date when they totally like each other. They have trouble talking about how and why they tried to kill themselves, and it's so heart-rending. Then there's the guy they saved from killing himself, and I just don't know what he's doing in the overall plot. I feel sorry for him, but maybe he'll play a bigger role in the future. Arifureta Kiseki is kinda like an adult version of Akai Ito. Only I hope it doesn't end tragically.
Q.E.D.: This has to be the cutest drama of the season. It's a high-school mystery drama with the guy from Gakko ja Oshiereranai! who plays a 15 year old boy named Touma who graduated from MIT and decided to come live in Japan and go to a regular high school where he meets Kana, a tomboy who constantly pushes him to be with people and do things. It's so cute because they're slowing falling in love with each episode, and Touma gets that cute awkwardness that just makes you go "Awwwww." Also, in episode 4, they actually had two foreigners in HUGE roles. Like more than just token gaijin. The guy was Touma's friend from MIT and the girl was his assistant Eva who really cared about him. I was thrilled that they were in this episode with huge roles, even if they weren't the best actors. They were good but lacking something.
Uta no Onii-san: Ohno, why haven't you done more dramas? Ohno's just bloody brilliant in this role. I especially loved his line in episode 3 where they were trying to get him to smile, and he's like, "I can't smile! I'm not an idol!" XD Nice. At least he's trying now, though. Akane, his ex-girlfriend, irritates me sometimes. She wants him to be in the band? Wait, no..she doesn't? And she's crying...why? If she still loves him, she should TELL HIM. Ohno is so great in his role, though, because I can really feel his resistance to do something he doesn't want to do. I know what that's like. Having to do something you don't want to do and your heart's not in it. He portrays that really well. And Maru. Oh Maru. He's brilliant, too. He's just so cute, and he's a really good actor. Give the boy more dramas!
5. NICK AND NORAH'S INFINITE PLAYLIST
Over the weekend, I watched Nick and Norah three times in a row. It was awesome. WATCH IT.
Someone please, make wallpapers out of these flumpool scans. There are so many good ones, and my life lacks a nice flumpool wallpaper.
Ja ne!