SITE UPDATE: Server Move Impending
A quick server move is happening tomorrow. From an e-mail sent by our (highly recommended) hosting company:
Bluehost has completed construction on our new data center expansion, complete with advanced temperature control, custom server racks and dozens of improvements designed to help us provide you with higher quality service. We will be moving all customer servers into the new center over the next few weeks.
This expansion allows us to continue to manage all hardware alongside our Technical Support team and System Administrators, here in Provo, Utah. Our experience has shown that hands-on control over all aspects of your hosting is the best method of ensuring excellence.
The Bluehost System Administrators will physically move your server into the new data center between 9 PM, March 15th and 5 AM March 16th (MDT), during low traffic periods. We will work to ensure you experience as little downtime as possible and, to that end, we will take the opportunity to perform any needed hardware maintenance or upgrades. We expect the process to take 1 to 3 hours.
This move involves not only TGML but its sister worship sites SoHotSheShitsFire.com and MegumiOhori.com.
I Heard You Missed Me, I’m Back…
Those of you on my Twitter account or Facebook page may recall that I announced that I would be resuming posting on here on a more regular basis.
There have been two reasons why things got a bit slow over the past few months. One I am sure you all know of by now: I got married back in June. As a result of that, my first few weeks as a newlywed were spent getting used to living with someone else in a new place – and that was after a week of honeymooning to boot.
The other development kinda goes with the above territory, but is also a reason for the slowness of posts since the beginning of the year. I have been working whenever I can on my novel manuscript for Here Is The Wonderland and whenever I have sat down with this computer I have often tried to devote as much creative energy to that project, at the expense of this blog.
Simply put, what is going to be going on from here on out is this: When I moved my blogging activities I stated that I wanted to expand the musical reach of my blogging and I don’t fully believe I have accomplished that yet. In stating that, I also want to emphasize that I have no intention of forsaking my devotion to covering punk rock and Japanese pop on here – that will never falter, ever.
That having been said, there’s at least one other post I want to make this week or so that I was meaning to make for a couple of weeks. You’ll most likely know which one it is when it comes up. There may be a couple of catch-up review posts like I did before my wedding, but I’m not completely sure yet. I do know that I want to keep things a bit more current that I have been in the past.
I may also break rank with the main intention of this site – discussing music – when it comes to my writing career, especially as my writing projects hit the completion and submission stages.
Other than that, expect things here to get busier than they ever have been. Thanks for reading this.
And now, a quick update from yours truly…
As some of you may know, I’m getting married on Saturday. A lot of the prep for the ceremony and everything related to it has either been taking my time, energy, or both, and what’s been unintentionally getting kicked to the curb? This blog.And to be honest, much of what energy I have had has been devoted to ongoing work on Here Is The Wonderland and other writing projects.
However, I am not closing TGML or any of its related sites, or letting them stay static.
This week, I’ll be making a few special posts, and then when I get back from my honeymoon next week, I’ll be back at a more active schedule.
Thanks for your patience!
- CJ Marsicano
Happy 4th!
Fourth Blogging Anniversary, that is…
I almost forgot to post something today, but I have a good excuse: Today was also my fiancee’s bridal shower, and guess who had to schlep gifts back and forth in his car? Yep…
I should note that for the past few weeks I’ve been – on top of planning towards the wedding and subsequent move into mine and my wife-to-be’s new apartment – finishing up the novel (yeah, still… but then again if I didn’t have to hold a day job it would have been finished already), working on a screenplay for Script Frenzy, working on a couple of reviews for this blog (they’ll be up this week), and working on my guitar.
And last night, boy, did I work on my guitar… I got this thing (Epiphone Les Paul) a few months ago, but I never changed the strings until last night. Such was my Saturday night:
And to keep things J-pop related, here’s another part of what helped keep me sane, especially today:
Besides, I couldn’t figure how to equal or better the live MoMusu and Stooges clips from last year! But what I can do is (even though I didn’t get this finished until after midnight when the 11th became the 12th) update a list I posted two years ago on my second blogging anniversary at MotokoAoyama.com, which would make this “A List That Took Four Years To Make”:
Continue reading
ON BLOGGING: A Quick Update…
I almost did something here on TGML that I haven’t done since I launched this site, and that’s almost allowed a calendar month to pass without posting something here.
Sorry about that.
My fingers and brain haven’t been idle, and I haven’t not been paying attention to what this blog normally covers. But life has gotten a bit goofy of late – I’ve been trying to get my novel manuscript finished, another old hobby of mine has been adding some inspiration to my life, and as of this writing, my wedding date is less than seven months away. I also had to change computers yet again since I posted last here, which sucks, but I have a better machine at my disposal so I really have no other excuse to not pursue all the projects I need to do, this blog included.
It’s also been a while since I contributed an installment of “Diggin’ in the Crates” to YODC, but I’ll make up for that as well. I’ve only just scratched the surface when it comes to that project.
I have been plotting two little series for this blog and I’ll be attacking both of those throughout December. Stay tuned here and at my Facebook and Twitter pages. Thanks for your patience.
Dawning Of A New Era
So, what exactly led to me starting over after two and a quarter years at Stuck In A Pagoda?
Well, one of the biggest reasons is the name itself. Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama is a cool title. I used it for a mix CD of traditional Japanese music that I posted at Art of the Mix several years ago, it was the title I semi-facetiously gave my LiveJournal when I started to use it regularly, and it was, for me anyway, a combination of my two biggest musical loves – punk rock and Japanese pop. (The old blog’s title is a parody of a Dickies song from their second LP, replacing the original’s titular heroine [a real-life Los Angeles newscaster] with my favorite Love Hina character.)
But the title has really restricted me of late. There is a lot more music that I want to comment on, and while I have done so in the past (an account of a Bon Jovi stadium concert I was dragged to in 2006 comes to mind), writing about other mainstream music didn’t completely jibe with my loving scrawls about the latest Morning Musume single, my anticipation for the Stooges’ first American tour since 1974, or anything else I normally covered at Stuck In A Pagoda.
In short, I needed to do my usual insanity and then some under a less restrictive name – but for weeks, couldn’t think of any.
And that is when my pre-ordered copy of Berryz Koubou’s Yuke Yuke Monkey Dance arrived and I saw what was written on Miyabi Natsuyaki’s T-shirt. I ran to GoDaddy.com and registered thegroovemusiclife.com before someone else beat me to it. That took five minutes.
Deciding on a design for the blog took longer. It wasn’t until the other day that I found a theme that I liked – so much so that I may be using the design for another new blog that I will debut next week (one even more specific than So Hot She Shits Fire, which will never change as in that case, you can’t really mess with perfection) as well as for the static version of Stuck In A Pagoda sometime later.
So, here’s the basic mission behind The Groove Music Life:
- I’m still going to write about Japanese pop.
- I’m still going to write about punk and alternative rock.
But I’m also going to:
- Write about any other pop or rock music that I choose.
- Continue my exploration of older Japanese musics. (Simply put, The Vinyl Pagoda Project is going to continue, name and all – I’m even going to port the older entries from Stuck In A Pagoda, dates and all, when the next installment goes up late Thursday or early Friday.)
Some other changes:
- Pagoda Video and The Pagoda Five will become Groove Music Video and The Groove Music Five
- No more picking on the Spice Girls and/or Miley Cyrus. I’ve already proved my point.
- There will be more reviews. As a matter of fact, I want to have at least three up before the end of next week.
Some things that will continue on from Stuck In A Pagoda:
- The Morning Musume/J-Pop In America series. I have been plotting further installments in this series since March; other writing activities, including the completion of Here Is The Wonderland, have been taking precedence (and that novel is still a top priority, as is making writing my sole source of income.)
- The LolIdols series, I Can Has J-Pop? (And I welcome ideas for that as well from readers).
…and one thing that might not continue.
- The Pagoda Podcast.
Obviously, the name won’t fit in with this new blog’s expanded vision. But the other, more important reason is, I don’t have the time right now. Putting a podcast together is a pain in the fucking ass, and even though I have a talent for audio editing, I’d rather be using that time to write. I also got no feedback from that second episode, and even though I started to put playlists for two more episodes together, I decided to put the idea of a podcast on hold. Maybe someday I’ll do a new podcast, but as of this writing I don’t see it happening.
So, in short, this little black duck needed a reboot, and this is it.
Now let’s have some fun – I sure intend to.
