Happy Birthday, Arashi! An Arashi free association game ^_^
Eleven years of Arashi!! I always think of this date as the Arashi anniversary that makes the biggest impression on me, rather than the release of the first single. Five incredibly young guys on a boat off of Hawaii probably wondering what this was going to mean in the long run.
On the other hand, I'm willing to celebrate any number of anniversaries. Any excuse to flail is a good thing.
So, I've been baiting a friend into fandom lately, and one of the side effects of this is that I get to watch all sorts of awesome boybandery, while trying to decide what things are absolutely necessary for a new fan to be aware of.
Thus, I have had a week of phone calls and emails like the following:
Monday: You know, it's impossible to stay angry about anything when the boys are on iTunes . . .
Tuesday: Go outside! There's a rainbow&hearts
Wednesday: I hate you so much right now. I stayed up until 4am watching HYD and now I have to go to work.
Thursday: I made mabo tofu for lunch today! It's delicious!
What I love about this is that she's already falling into that pattern of fandom where everything around you seems to take on sparkly rainbow associations: colors, weather patterns, video games, foods, plants, places, mascara: you name it, sooner or later, if you've hung around in this fandom long enough, it rarely takes more than one degree of separation for you to make a connection to Arashi.
Last week, we got hit with Tropical Storm Hermine, resulting in torrential rainfall on and off for 3 days. Tuesday, while I was walking across campus with completely soaked feet, under a huge rainbow umbrella, with screaming, screeching and flailing students and professors streaming all about me trying to get back indoors, a huge gust of wind a) turned every single umbrella in sight, mine included, inside out and b) drenched all of us completely in a horizontally-oriented wall of water.
All I could do was remember this, which resulted in me laughing hysterically all the way to my building:
I have to say that the day would have benefitted greatly by the addition of a random Ohno.
Or even 2 random extra Ohnos&hearts
Or random Aibas.
On the note of general free association, what is it with Arashi and the spare Aibas?
Not that the world couldn't use about 30 of him, but . . .
So anyway, it took 4 hours (literally) for my outfit to dry out, and I was stuck on campus for another 6 hours, but for some *coughs* inexplicable reason, it seemed funny more than anything else.
>_>
Completely inexplicable, I assure you.
Wednesday, we had more rain, and that evening, the sky looked like this, only even brassier, since my camera couldn't quite get the color right.
The skies were really quite amazing.
Coming from the midwest, when I see the sky look like this, I start thinking of tornados. The sky at the Boy's work was actually green. No tornados appeared, though.
Amusingly, at no point in those few days did I actually make the "Arashi=storm" connection, which would be the obvious one. Instead, it was all Kitto Daijoubu and the 5x10 concert digest when Jun gets his cake and present in the driving rain.
Am I the only one who wondered if he put it on in the rain at least partially in the hope that it would get ruined?
Though, in my defense, that particular association was stuck in my head more because my friend tzarinap was in severe need of being traumatized by ginormous sequins, and I was trying to think of a way to spam her with zillions of pictures of this:
This is kind of wandering, I realize, but what I'm getting at is the way that Arashi kind of annexes everything into its sparkly orbit sooner or later, and I kind of love it. On any particular day, I find myself constantly reminded of random bits of Arashidom, and I suspect that it's not just me who experiences it.
Other random examples from this week:
If I show you this webcomic . . . (click to read more clearly)
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . . how many of you made an Arashi connection, probably to Fasio mascara and Jun? Or XBox and Nino? Red and Sho? Something else
Or how about this one?
Explanation here seems redundant ^^;
I kind of want to catalogue these, though any catalogue will necessarily be incomplete and somewhat individual to the experiences of individual fans. A person who hasn't seen the Air Guitar G no Arashi episodes might not have an immediate connection between Queen and Arashi or Prince and Arashi, though some of the concert wear might actually make it possible.
So, in the interest of fun silly Arashi birthday hijinks . . . I was thinking we could build a mini catalogue like this:
1) Anyone can name a category in a comment and/or add specimens to the thread of an already-listed category.
Pictures, explanations or anecdotes optional, but welcome!
2) Alternatively, put up a name or picture of something and request Arashi associations that come to me or anyone else who sees this post.
3) ????
4) Profit (in the form of fun)
Anyone want to play and distract me from work? I'll throw in a couple of random obvious categories, but feel free to add whatever comes to your mind ^_^
. . . or you can just drop by and chat, if you don't feel like playing ^^;
On the other hand, I'm willing to celebrate any number of anniversaries. Any excuse to flail is a good thing.
So, I've been baiting a friend into fandom lately, and one of the side effects of this is that I get to watch all sorts of awesome boybandery, while trying to decide what things are absolutely necessary for a new fan to be aware of.
Thus, I have had a week of phone calls and emails like the following:
Monday: You know, it's impossible to stay angry about anything when the boys are on iTunes . . .
Tuesday: Go outside! There's a rainbow&hearts
Wednesday: I hate you so much right now. I stayed up until 4am watching HYD and now I have to go to work.
Thursday: I made mabo tofu for lunch today! It's delicious!
What I love about this is that she's already falling into that pattern of fandom where everything around you seems to take on sparkly rainbow associations: colors, weather patterns, video games, foods, plants, places, mascara: you name it, sooner or later, if you've hung around in this fandom long enough, it rarely takes more than one degree of separation for you to make a connection to Arashi.
Last week, we got hit with Tropical Storm Hermine, resulting in torrential rainfall on and off for 3 days. Tuesday, while I was walking across campus with completely soaked feet, under a huge rainbow umbrella, with screaming, screeching and flailing students and professors streaming all about me trying to get back indoors, a huge gust of wind a) turned every single umbrella in sight, mine included, inside out and b) drenched all of us completely in a horizontally-oriented wall of water.
All I could do was remember this, which resulted in me laughing hysterically all the way to my building:
I have to say that the day would have benefitted greatly by the addition of a random Ohno.
Or even 2 random extra Ohnos&hearts
Or random Aibas.
On the note of general free association, what is it with Arashi and the spare Aibas?
Not that the world couldn't use about 30 of him, but . . .
So anyway, it took 4 hours (literally) for my outfit to dry out, and I was stuck on campus for another 6 hours, but for some *coughs* inexplicable reason, it seemed funny more than anything else.
>_>
Completely inexplicable, I assure you.
Wednesday, we had more rain, and that evening, the sky looked like this, only even brassier, since my camera couldn't quite get the color right.
The skies were really quite amazing.
Coming from the midwest, when I see the sky look like this, I start thinking of tornados. The sky at the Boy's work was actually green. No tornados appeared, though.
Amusingly, at no point in those few days did I actually make the "Arashi=storm" connection, which would be the obvious one. Instead, it was all Kitto Daijoubu and the 5x10 concert digest when Jun gets his cake and present in the driving rain.
Am I the only one who wondered if he put it on in the rain at least partially in the hope that it would get ruined?
Though, in my defense, that particular association was stuck in my head more because my friend tzarinap was in severe need of being traumatized by ginormous sequins, and I was trying to think of a way to spam her with zillions of pictures of this:
This is kind of wandering, I realize, but what I'm getting at is the way that Arashi kind of annexes everything into its sparkly orbit sooner or later, and I kind of love it. On any particular day, I find myself constantly reminded of random bits of Arashidom, and I suspect that it's not just me who experiences it.
Other random examples from this week:
If I show you this webcomic . . . (click to read more clearly)
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . .
. . . how many of you made an Arashi connection, probably to Fasio mascara and Jun? Or XBox and Nino? Red and Sho? Something else
Or how about this one?
Explanation here seems redundant ^^;
I kind of want to catalogue these, though any catalogue will necessarily be incomplete and somewhat individual to the experiences of individual fans. A person who hasn't seen the Air Guitar G no Arashi episodes might not have an immediate connection between Queen and Arashi or Prince and Arashi, though some of the concert wear might actually make it possible.
So, in the interest of fun silly Arashi birthday hijinks . . . I was thinking we could build a mini catalogue like this:
1) Anyone can name a category in a comment and/or add specimens to the thread of an already-listed category.
Pictures, explanations or anecdotes optional, but welcome!
2) Alternatively, put up a name or picture of something and request Arashi associations that come to me or anyone else who sees this post.
3) ????
4) Profit (in the form of fun)
Anyone want to play and distract me from work? I'll throw in a couple of random obvious categories, but feel free to add whatever comes to your mind ^_^
. . . or you can just drop by and chat, if you don't feel like playing ^^;