In which I display a short attention span . . . and Arashi displays quite a bit more . . .
This weekend, I had an awesome fangirl fest&hearts
zukkii bussed in from her hometown and we cleared up some shocking gaps in her fangirl portfolio-Before she got here on Friday, she had only seen two concerts-Time and Scene.
Clearly this was a situation that needed immediate action. Thus, we embarked on a plan to watch all the other concert dvds, plus Suppin.
I am sorry to say that this did not quite materialize to its fullest extent. At 5am Sunday morning, we gave up on the encore disc of 5x10.
On the other hand, we had made it through Suppin, How’s it Going?, Iza, Now!!, AAA Taipei, AAA Dome, AAA08, and the main disc of Kokuritsu.
I call that a good weekend’s work ^_^v Though I need to catch up on my sleep.
There were all sorts of random giggly moments and minor fangirl epiphanies. For example, I had never noticed somehow that the yellow puffy vests in the How’s it Going La Tormenta set have gold holographic letters which spell Arashi ^^;
Who knew?? How did I not know??
How sad is it that after the first moment of 'How the hell did I miss that???' my second thought was 'You know, I have gold holographic edible glitter, and I could totally cookify this'?
Nino is not impressed by my powers of perception.
You know how I said I was distracted? I’m not even posting on the How’s it Going concert or these costumes. Don't be fooled. Forty caps of a completely different performance mean nothing when one is as easily distracted, as I am.
EASILY DISTRACTED BY SPELLING.
I swear, it's all about the spelling. Look at that. An 'S.' It's thrilling.
How the hell have I never noticed HUGE holographic letters on puffy gold lamé vests?
>_>
I . . . have no excuse. Except that I was blinded by Aiba's hair?
In my own defense, Jun's 'A' is slightly camouflaged as his vest is unzipped.
As for Nino . . .
>_>
Um . . . OOOH LOOK! SHINY!!!!
. . .
I'm sorry, what was I talking about?
I can't . . . quite . . .
seem to remember . . .
Nino: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, LOOK AT HIS VEST.
. . . Right
That's a lovely 'I' there.
And, in a marvel of sort of spelling something, but not actually doing so, Sho brings up the rear with 'R:' you know, the second letter of the word.
So what do we have here . . . SAHIR. Right. Well then. Carry on.
Seeing as those vests are interchangeable, the decision to put them up there in the wrong order is . . . interesting.
No, really, the more I think about this, the more half-assed it seems--it's not like it's a code, or something they're trying to hide. Why do them out of order at all?
Sho: . . .
Actually, while we're on the subject of spelling and all, there's also the problem that ARASHI has 6 letters and Arashi only has 5 members. Sure, Jun's got the A and it repeats and if we squint really hard and make excuses, by having his vest open, it kinda looks like two 'A's but seriously, there's a guy who actually shows up twice in the song, once at the beginning and once again after his personal intro and his name even starts and ends with an A. Wouldn't that have made more . . .
S is for 'sinuous.' It's good enough for me.
DAMN IT, AIBA'S HAIR. HOW DO YOU DO THAT??
Look, I walk sedately to campus and every day, by the time I get there, my hair looks like birds managed to nest in it.
This is so not fair DDD:
In another of life's great unanswered questions, how is it possible that this man hasn't been tapped to do a Pantene commercial? Or maybe Herbal Essences. Those of you old enough to remember those commercials (does that product still exist?), tell me this is not appropriate. I would totally watch that commercial and buy that shampoo.
And my hair still wouldn't look like this ^^;
Dammit.
So anyway. Concerts this weekend. We had a chronological marathon, excluding Time and Scene, and it was pretty damn fab to watch eleven years of concert development in about 20 hours of intense concert bingeing. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
In honor of that, I decided to spam a costume iconically beloved and derided throughout fandom. It's a storied costume which appeared in infamy, is frequently mentioned with much giggling and eye-rolling in fandom, and generally referred to by members with ginger embarrassment before it was lovingly resurrected in their anniversary concert.
Oh, yes, I'm finally going there.
I have a theory that the reason Jr. costumes are so unrelentingly terrible is so that if and when an idol wannabe debuts, he will have had all the shame beaten out of him before it can become a problem.
Evidently, someone was worried that this mission had not yet been accomplished at the time of Arashi's debut.
inuhariko and I were recently discussing the hilariously non-glamorous life of Japanese idols, in that they are abused through all manner of indignities, and perhaps I am being too cynical about this costume: Maybe it's not actually a form of evil discipline through humiliation.
Maybe it's one last warning: Do you really want to go through with this? REALLY??
Choose.
But choose wisely.
Because you know this costume is going to haunt you for the rest of your life.
And that's not going to be awkward at all.
Seriously, this costume is completely emblematic of the trauma of being a Japanese idol:
It's embarrassing and exploitative, and people blame the victims constantly, as if in their mid and late teens anyone was asking their opinions on whether they wanted to go on stage and be recorded for posterity while wearing nothing but Saran Wrap and boxers. In interview after interview hosts and other guests titter and ask them "what were you thinking??," and really, what can they say?
And in show after show, this footage gets dredged up, usually with a helpful little insert box on the side where either some other celebrity gets to perform shock and hilarity or an Arashi member gets to look really embarrassed. Sometimes we get both.
I'll bet they weren't thinking "Oh, HAY, I'd love to dig that costume out in 5 years and wear it in another concert!"
Or maybe they were. It's hard to tell. At some point, particularly after they started getting more involved in the actual planning of the concert, one must imagine that they would have at least had veto power over this costume. Maybe that's why it only shows up in the retrospective VTR of How's it Going. I notice that when it came to the filming day, somehow that costume doesn't make an appearance.
Apparently, like the fans, Arashi regard these costumes with some nostalgia, since they resurrected them again for the 5x10 Anniversary concert.
Maybe it's a bizarre form of Stockholm Syndrome.
No, really. What perfect storm of costume designers, PR people and asylum escapees came up with this terrible, terrible idea in 1999?
Sure, it's see-through, but at the ages they debuted, this costume managed to reveal almost everything without being sexy or cool.
It looks like it's going to fog up with sweat and I can't imagine it would be all that comfortable to dance in. Add to the design issues the problems that the plastic inner seams couldn't be covered or lined and you've got an unflattering mess that creates its own smelly weather and potentially lacerates its wearers with every flaily dance move.
Meanwhile, you've created a cult following for an outfit that will become iconic largely because it is so very ill-considered.
And this is why we love the Japanese entertainment industry.
I think one of the things I love about the Anniversary incarnation of these costumes is that the members spend so much time hamming it up and performing embarrassment, and then busting out into giddy skipping joy.
It's like they're daring us to feel sorry for them, and then laughing in our faces.
Sho wonders how it is that his life has come to this. Just days ago, he was reading the news.
Oh, yeah. You think about that, and every choice you've made that has led to this very moment.
I'd also like Aiba to think about why it is that all of his pants seem to want to escape from him. Considering this, he might have thought about the benefits of not wearing black boxers for this concert. Maybe.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the best-selling musical act in Japan for two years running.
Whatever, Sakurai. No one is buying it.
Though that outfit does sort of undermine your patented "I'm-ever-so-earnest-as I-rap-about-the-sorry-state-of-human-affairs-and-our-indomitable-will-to-overcome-it" face.
>_>
I guess if you can overcome an outfit like that, rise to the very top of Japanese stardom, and then drag those costumes back out of the closet to the thunderous applause and general adulation of literally tens of thousand concert goers, just about anything is plausible.
I can't believe I spent longer in this post talking about the How's It Going La Tormenta vests and Aiba's hair than the clear plastic suits of blessed memory ^^;
This week, I was just mentioning the transparent plastic suits to helgagrace, and found myself actually slightly affronted at her horror and disbelief. Why couldn't she see the pure genius?? Is it possible that fandom makes us incapable of regaining our recognition of the utterly irredeemable? Or does the rest of the world just need more of the crack? Enquiring minds want to know.
. . .
Woohoo! After almost two weeks of no hot water, then no shower, then no bath, and then holes being knocked in bedroom walls and ceilings, the Flange-Boy household has weathered the Great Frozen Pipes Disaster of 2011 :P Hooray! We can now wash laundry, dishes and ourselves again \o/
It's the little joys, really. Like . . . doing laundry. And dishes. And taking hot showers. Such luxuries ^^; I'm not even kidding ^^;
*waves at flist*
zukkii bussed in from her hometown and we cleared up some shocking gaps in her fangirl portfolio-Before she got here on Friday, she had only seen two concerts-Time and Scene.
Clearly this was a situation that needed immediate action. Thus, we embarked on a plan to watch all the other concert dvds, plus Suppin.
I am sorry to say that this did not quite materialize to its fullest extent. At 5am Sunday morning, we gave up on the encore disc of 5x10.
On the other hand, we had made it through Suppin, How’s it Going?, Iza, Now!!, AAA Taipei, AAA Dome, AAA08, and the main disc of Kokuritsu.
I call that a good weekend’s work ^_^v Though I need to catch up on my sleep.
There were all sorts of random giggly moments and minor fangirl epiphanies. For example, I had never noticed somehow that the yellow puffy vests in the How’s it Going La Tormenta set have gold holographic letters which spell Arashi ^^;
Who knew?? How did I not know??
How sad is it that after the first moment of 'How the hell did I miss that???' my second thought was 'You know, I have gold holographic edible glitter, and I could totally cookify this'?
Nino is not impressed by my powers of perception.
You know how I said I was distracted? I’m not even posting on the How’s it Going concert or these costumes. Don't be fooled. Forty caps of a completely different performance mean nothing when one is as easily distracted, as I am.
EASILY DISTRACTED BY SPELLING.
I swear, it's all about the spelling. Look at that. An 'S.' It's thrilling.
How the hell have I never noticed HUGE holographic letters on puffy gold lamé vests?
>_>
I . . . have no excuse. Except that I was blinded by Aiba's hair?
In my own defense, Jun's 'A' is slightly camouflaged as his vest is unzipped.
As for Nino . . .
>_>
Um . . . OOOH LOOK! SHINY!!!!
. . .
I'm sorry, what was I talking about?
I can't . . . quite . . .
seem to remember . . .
Nino: FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, LOOK AT HIS VEST.
. . . Right
That's a lovely 'I' there.
And, in a marvel of sort of spelling something, but not actually doing so, Sho brings up the rear with 'R:' you know, the second letter of the word.
So what do we have here . . . SAHIR. Right. Well then. Carry on.
Seeing as those vests are interchangeable, the decision to put them up there in the wrong order is . . . interesting.
No, really, the more I think about this, the more half-assed it seems--it's not like it's a code, or something they're trying to hide. Why do them out of order at all?
Sho: . . .
Actually, while we're on the subject of spelling and all, there's also the problem that ARASHI has 6 letters and Arashi only has 5 members. Sure, Jun's got the A and it repeats and if we squint really hard and make excuses, by having his vest open, it kinda looks like two 'A's but seriously, there's a guy who actually shows up twice in the song, once at the beginning and once again after his personal intro and his name even starts and ends with an A. Wouldn't that have made more . . .
S is for 'sinuous.' It's good enough for me.
DAMN IT, AIBA'S HAIR. HOW DO YOU DO THAT??
Look, I walk sedately to campus and every day, by the time I get there, my hair looks like birds managed to nest in it.
This is so not fair DDD:
In another of life's great unanswered questions, how is it possible that this man hasn't been tapped to do a Pantene commercial? Or maybe Herbal Essences. Those of you old enough to remember those commercials (does that product still exist?), tell me this is not appropriate. I would totally watch that commercial and buy that shampoo.
And my hair still wouldn't look like this ^^;
Dammit.
So anyway. Concerts this weekend. We had a chronological marathon, excluding Time and Scene, and it was pretty damn fab to watch eleven years of concert development in about 20 hours of intense concert bingeing. HIGHLY RECOMMENDED.
In honor of that, I decided to spam a costume iconically beloved and derided throughout fandom. It's a storied costume which appeared in infamy, is frequently mentioned with much giggling and eye-rolling in fandom, and generally referred to by members with ginger embarrassment before it was lovingly resurrected in their anniversary concert.
Oh, yes, I'm finally going there.
I have a theory that the reason Jr. costumes are so unrelentingly terrible is so that if and when an idol wannabe debuts, he will have had all the shame beaten out of him before it can become a problem.
Evidently, someone was worried that this mission had not yet been accomplished at the time of Arashi's debut.
inuhariko and I were recently discussing the hilariously non-glamorous life of Japanese idols, in that they are abused through all manner of indignities, and perhaps I am being too cynical about this costume: Maybe it's not actually a form of evil discipline through humiliation.
Maybe it's one last warning: Do you really want to go through with this? REALLY??
Choose.
But choose wisely.
Because you know this costume is going to haunt you for the rest of your life.
And that's not going to be awkward at all.
Seriously, this costume is completely emblematic of the trauma of being a Japanese idol:
It's embarrassing and exploitative, and people blame the victims constantly, as if in their mid and late teens anyone was asking their opinions on whether they wanted to go on stage and be recorded for posterity while wearing nothing but Saran Wrap and boxers. In interview after interview hosts and other guests titter and ask them "what were you thinking??," and really, what can they say?
And in show after show, this footage gets dredged up, usually with a helpful little insert box on the side where either some other celebrity gets to perform shock and hilarity or an Arashi member gets to look really embarrassed. Sometimes we get both.
I'll bet they weren't thinking "Oh, HAY, I'd love to dig that costume out in 5 years and wear it in another concert!"
Or maybe they were. It's hard to tell. At some point, particularly after they started getting more involved in the actual planning of the concert, one must imagine that they would have at least had veto power over this costume. Maybe that's why it only shows up in the retrospective VTR of How's it Going. I notice that when it came to the filming day, somehow that costume doesn't make an appearance.
Apparently, like the fans, Arashi regard these costumes with some nostalgia, since they resurrected them again for the 5x10 Anniversary concert.
Maybe it's a bizarre form of Stockholm Syndrome.
No, really. What perfect storm of costume designers, PR people and asylum escapees came up with this terrible, terrible idea in 1999?
Sure, it's see-through, but at the ages they debuted, this costume managed to reveal almost everything without being sexy or cool.
It looks like it's going to fog up with sweat and I can't imagine it would be all that comfortable to dance in. Add to the design issues the problems that the plastic inner seams couldn't be covered or lined and you've got an unflattering mess that creates its own smelly weather and potentially lacerates its wearers with every flaily dance move.
Meanwhile, you've created a cult following for an outfit that will become iconic largely because it is so very ill-considered.
And this is why we love the Japanese entertainment industry.
I think one of the things I love about the Anniversary incarnation of these costumes is that the members spend so much time hamming it up and performing embarrassment, and then busting out into giddy skipping joy.
It's like they're daring us to feel sorry for them, and then laughing in our faces.
Sho wonders how it is that his life has come to this. Just days ago, he was reading the news.
Oh, yeah. You think about that, and every choice you've made that has led to this very moment.
I'd also like Aiba to think about why it is that all of his pants seem to want to escape from him. Considering this, he might have thought about the benefits of not wearing black boxers for this concert. Maybe.
Ladies and Gentlemen, I give you the best-selling musical act in Japan for two years running.
Whatever, Sakurai. No one is buying it.
Though that outfit does sort of undermine your patented "I'm-ever-so-earnest-as I-rap-about-the-sorry-state-of-human-affairs-and-our-indomitable-will-to-overcome-it" face.
>_>
I guess if you can overcome an outfit like that, rise to the very top of Japanese stardom, and then drag those costumes back out of the closet to the thunderous applause and general adulation of literally tens of thousand concert goers, just about anything is plausible.
I can't believe I spent longer in this post talking about the How's It Going La Tormenta vests and Aiba's hair than the clear plastic suits of blessed memory ^^;
This week, I was just mentioning the transparent plastic suits to helgagrace, and found myself actually slightly affronted at her horror and disbelief. Why couldn't she see the pure genius?? Is it possible that fandom makes us incapable of regaining our recognition of the utterly irredeemable? Or does the rest of the world just need more of the crack? Enquiring minds want to know.
. . .
Woohoo! After almost two weeks of no hot water, then no shower, then no bath, and then holes being knocked in bedroom walls and ceilings, the Flange-Boy household has weathered the Great Frozen Pipes Disaster of 2011 :P Hooray! We can now wash laundry, dishes and ourselves again \o/
It's the little joys, really. Like . . . doing laundry. And dishes. And taking hot showers. Such luxuries ^^; I'm not even kidding ^^;
*waves at flist*