Has It Been That Long Already?
Yep, it’s been that long… it actually has been five years since I started blogging (this site started in 2007, and I apparently miscalculated last year… fuck it!) Time to update the annual list of what I’ve been through since I started blogging:
Two webhosts (only one of which I recommend, Bluehost)
Four laptops (Don’t get me started…)
Three iPods (I finally upgraded to a 120GB model!)
One iPad
Morning Musume and AKB48 both making their American concert debuts – and way fucking overdue to return to these shores on a regular basis… no excuses, please, just book the dates and get on the plane! And yes, I know AKB were just in DC last week…
Twenty-one Morning Musume singles
Nineteen (soon to be twenty) personnel changes in Morning Musume
Two personnel changes in C-ute
No personnel changes in Berryz Koubou
More personnel changes in AKB48 than anyone can keep up with… (and I’m not even going to bother trying to anymore!)
Seven and a half Morning Musume albums (the “half album” being the 7.5 Fuyu Fuyu EP)
Twenty-one Berryz Koubou singles
Five and a half Berryz Koubou studio albums (the “half album” being their misnumbered (3) Natsu Natsu Mini Berryz)
Eighteen C-ute singles (all of their major-label releases)
Six and a half C-ute albums (I still consider 2 mini ~Ikiru to Iu Chikara~ to be an EP)
Seven Koda Kumi studio albums (I lost track of compilations and singles!)
Four Ayumi Hamasaki albums (Go ahead and yell at me, Vee…)
Two albums and three EPs from Maki Goto
Three albums, two EPs, one best-of, and four guitar tab books from SCANDAL
Three post-Whiteberry EPs from bands led by Yuki Maeda (One Yukki, two The Husky)
Nine Stooges albums (two of those being the remastered editions of their Elektra albums, another being a 180-gram pressing of Raw Power, and counting 2010’s 2CD and four-disc deluxe reissue of the original Bowie mix of Raw Power and the Raw Power Live album released last Record Store Day)
The entire Koharu Kusumi solo discography
The entire Buono! discography to date
The entire AKB48 singles discography to date
Six New York Dolls albums (three of those being vinyl editions of the first three studio albums)
Eight Puffy AmiYumi albums
Five Mission of Burma albums (and a new one on the way)
Three Panic! At The Disco albums
Three Meat Puppets albums
Three Cannibal Corpse albums and two DVDs
Three Deicide albums
Five Hank III albums (counting the Assjack album and the overdue legit release of the This Ain’t Country sessions as Hellbilly Joker) – and Hank III finally getting to say “fuck off” to Mike Curb.
Two copies of Flyleaf’s first album (one autographed)
Three autographed Sick Puppies CDs
One guitar autographed by Iggy Pop and the Asheton Brothers
One Asheton brother being transferred from the Stooges to Rock N’ Roll Heaven’s Helluva Band (I’m sure Ron is trading Mike Watt stories with D. Boon!)
James Williamson rejoining the Stooges
The Stooges finally making the Rock And Roll Hall of Fame (Next targets: The New York Dolls, Black Flag, and The Minutemen… and that’s a fucking vow and a promise from me!)
Lux Interior being transferred from the Cramps to Rock N’ Roll Heaven’s Helluva Band
Captain Beefheart succumbing to Multiple Sclerosis after several years… and the original version of Bat Chain Puller finally being released by the Zappa Family Trust a year later!
A Sex Pistols reunion
A Public Image Ltd. reunion
Malcolm McLaren, the former Sex Pistols “mis-manager” dying of cancer… followed by Johnny Rotten NOT singing “Celebration” or “Ding Dong The Witch Is Dead” (good on ya, Johnny…)
A fIREHOSE reunion (!!)
Seven books autographed by Henry Rollins
One book autographed by Sen. Arlen Specter
Three e-mails from Henry Rollins
Two e-mails from Jello Biafra
Three day trips to New York where I spent over $700 combined in one store (Virgin Megastore) alone
One day trip to New York where I didn’t spend any money in any record stores (Virgin Mega closed two years prior!)
Four visits to Apple Stores where I spent $0 (and wish I had been able to spend several times what I spent at Virgin)
One visit to an Apple Store where I finally bought something (my iPad!)
Six day trips to Philadelphia
Three day trips to Syracuse, NY
One Stooges concert
One Bon Jovi concert (goddamn motherfucking fuck!)
Two Flyleaf concerts
Two Evanescence concerts
Two Sick Puppies concerts
Two 3 Doors Down concerts (Which makes four times I’ve seen my fiancee’s favorite band, versus zero times I’ve seen my favorite band… that’s gotta be corrected quick-fast)
Two opening sets prior to 3DD by Hinder (Most boring band not named Nickelback or Daughtry, by a long shot)
Two Breaking Benjamin concerts (and unfortunately, although they played well as always, the sound at the second sucked! What was up with that, Ben?)
One Michael Angelo Batio personal appearance
One missed Puffy AmiYumi concert (goddamn motherfucking fuck!)
One missed Morning Musume concert (yes, that concert!!)
One missed Mike Watt & The Missingmen concert (which I made up for on April 2, 2011!)
Six 100-count spindles of CD-R’s
Two Palm Treo 680 smartphones
Three Blackberry smartphones (never again!)
One iPhone
Four SD cards
Three phonograph needles (I’ll be needing a fourth soon.)
Morning Musume CDs finally being released in the United States (until a certain “label” dropped the ball… REAL indie labels like Matador and Merge, the opportunity is now…)
Ten WordPress themes
Seven domain names (on top of the previously mentioned ones, there’s TGML’s URL, the one for the Meetan blog, and a second one for the Reina blog)
Two different Reina Tanaka/Robert Fripp header graphics at MotokoAoyama.com (Vee improved on the original)
Ai Kago finally making a comeback… then blowing it… then joining her fellow ex-W in the world of MILFdom.
One W album that’s gone the way of the original version of SMiLE
The original version of SMiLE going the opposite direction of W3: Faithful (and in a big way… five CDs PLUS double vinyl and two 45s? Got it!)
One Guns N’ Roses album finally being finished, handed in, and released!
Ace Frehley beating his ex-bandmates to record stores with new material… and not having to sell out to Wal-Mart to do it!
Four of the many Mike Watt-related albums that were recorded during this blog’s and its predecessor’s lifetime finally seeing release… and getting sneak previews of a couple of them from the man himself the day before hypenated-man came out!
Two animes with Reina Tanaka doing voice work
The return of most of my favorite O.G. MoMusus
Three knocked-up MoMusus
Two instances where I bitched about Nozomi Tsuji getting knocked up
Three instances where I remarked about what a lucky bastard Taiyo Sugiura is
Three snarky remarks made by me about Avril Lavgine
One snarky remark made by “Reina” about Jamie Lynn Spears
One snarky remark made by me to “Reina” about Beyonce Knowles
Countless snarky remarks about American Idle
More American Idle contestants losing their recording contracts
Five Reina Tanaka photobooks… and a sixth finally on the way!
Two tires
Three illnesses
Three NaNoWriMo wins
Three book projects (two simultaneous, one on hold)
One published short story (”The Man In The Hummer” in Deliver Us From Evil, available from Jaded Silence Press)
One novel coming out on my own book label next month!
All four versions of American Wota
All three versions of International Wota
No getting the Sunn O)))-themed IW 4.0
One nomination at the IntlWota Awards
The debut of IdolMinded
Two jokes stolen from Jeff Dunham
One joke stolen from Nothing Nice To Say
Three times I got under the skin of Tony Brummel at Victory Records… that I know of. (Might as well make it four: How does it feel to lose Silverstein AND Bayside on top of Hawthorne Heights and Atreyu, baldy? I hear Aiden’s next…)
Seven (or was it eight by now?) times my partner at My Sweet Meetan, Chris (CK) went to Japan
Reina Tanaka’s 18th birthday
Reina Tanaka’s 19th birthday
Reina Tanaka’s 20th birthday
Reina Tanaka’s 21st birthday
Reina Tanaka’s 22nd birthday
My 40th birthday… I stopped counting after that.
Mike Watt’s 50th birthday… and counting
Iggy Pop’s 60th birthday… and counting – face it, he’s one unstoppable motherfucker, for which we should all be grateful.
Several boxes of CD sleeves
Countless mouse and camera batteries
Five new electric guitars, all named after J-pop idols
Five effect pedals (two formerly owned by essential brother/up and coming guitar shredder/fellow MoMusu fan Maxxxwell Carlisle!)
Several packs of Ernie Ball Slinky guitar strings… and then I wised up late last year and switched to D’Addario .10′s, except for the Dean MAB3 I named after Erena Ono which will still get .09s!
A year and a half of experimentation with different kinds of guitar picks before I finally settled on 1.50mm Dunlop Tortex Sharps (heavy and pointy is best, it seems… – I could probably do a whole blog post on that subject!)
Countless VitaminWaters
Countless instances where I took to heart David Peel’s adage that “fuck” is not a dirty word
A year and a half of lost blog archives (Don’t trust your webhosting to anyone who stage-names himself “Vikki Stixx”… or for that matter your real estate matters)
Not enough trips to Starbucks or Sonic (yeah, N.E. PA got one of those in 2008!)
Two coffee pots
One K-Cup machine (about fucking time I got one of those… the aforementioned second coffee pot is now on reserve duty)
More money spent at CDJapan than at Gallery of Sound
Not as much money spent on vinyl since 2008, at least I don’t think so… but then again I’ve still taken that option whenever offered)
Virgin Megastore going out of business in 2009
Five Record Store Days (counting the forthcoming one this Saturday, which I’ll be honoring)
And one girlfriend, since upgraded to fiancée and then to wife on 6.26.10
My Blogs Aren’t the Only Thing Restarting…
I’ve had a lot happen in the past several weeks. As those of you that follow my Facebook account are aware, my mother landed in the emergency room the day before the Kickstarter campaign for my first book release, Resonant Blue, was set to conclude (successfully – the goal had been reached the Friday before). She was transferred to one of the best hospitals in the area, where she spent close to two weeks in a sedative-induced twilight zone – I put it that way because it wasn’t a coma – her brain and heart functions were fine, but her breathing had to be supported with a tube for a little while. Before the two weeks were up, the breathing tube was yanked (an earlier attempt had to be aborted when the doctors realized her throat was swollen, and they had to use steroids to lower the swelling before they tried again) and she was transferred to a private step-down room for the next six days, during which she was fitted for a pacemaker (while awake… OUCH!). The reason for all this trouble was because a few weeks beforehand, her now-former cardiologist had her sent to this very hospital’s Heart Hospital for some examination and was subsequently scheduled for delivery of a halter monitor so that they could monitor her heart’s functions. (I should note that back in February of 2003, she had to have a valve replacement, which up until the moment that landed her in the emergency room back on March 10, was the most tense health-related incident I had ever witnessed with her.) As part of the halter monitor procedure, they prescribed her two medicines, one of which proceeded to disagree with her kidneys not less than two weeks into a three-week monitoring period. Not fun. Thankfully, this major bump in the road was handled with a water pill (and, I presume, its injected/dripped equivalent during her time in ICU). As I write this, she’s been transferred to an accelerated rehab program at the same facility (she’s been there since last Thursday) where she first visited the emergency room back on March 10 – which is only less than five minutes from mine and my wife’s apartment – and she’s expected to be discharged and fully back on her feet before a week has passed. (There may also be cause for legal action against her now-former cardiologist, who was habitually and unnecessarily changing her regular heart meds for months before all of this shit happened.)
The whole time she was in ICU, my life consisted mainly of working more than I am usually expected to at my present day job (partly because my mother is also the store manager/bookkeeper there while I usually do a whole bunch of other administrative stuff and occasionally wait on customers), then heading home, dropping off my messenger bag and laptop at my apartment, and heading right back out the door with my wife to drive the 45 minutes from Hazleton to Wilkes-Barre, my wife at the wheel of her car and me with my iPad in hand either catching up with things or just taking my mind off of all the insanity as best as I can – often not getting anything to eat until after we’d visited for awhile. By last Monday or Tuesday, I was burnt as close to a fucking crisp as possible, and was wondering how soon I’d be landing in the hospital myself, either in a hospital room from exhaustion or in the Mariah Carey suite at the nearest mental ward. It wasn’t until the day after my mother had her pacemaker installed that I could stay home rather than have to do the drop bag/grab iPad/bail routine again.
Not surprisingly, this slowed quite a few things down – not just mine and my wife’s personal lives, but my blogging, getting everything ready for the people who participated in the crowdfunding campaign, and trying to get back into playing music live. By now, if all of this shit hadn’t happened, I was expecting to have already sent off the formatted manuscript (which I was in the middle of doing the final edit for on March 10th) and the final front cover with Chris Mendoza’s fine artwork to the printer, an e-book file to the people that are handling that format, ordered the T-shirts for those that pledged to get one with their book, and finished all the other premiums for people that wanted them. Fortunately, the night the crowdfunding campaign closed, I explained what had happened the night before and that things would be delayed a little bit. Now that the home stretch is here, I can start to resume my life all around.
Ray Mescallado’s retiring International Wota and starting Idolminded in its place gave me even more of an excuse to “restart” my blogging even while all this was going on, and I delibrately chose April 1st – which would have been the 54th birthday of the Minutemen’s D Boon – as the “restart” date, even though this finished blog post is getting posted after midnight on the 2nd – coincidentally a year after I last saw Mike Watt play live. (My own 5th blogging anniversary is coming on the 11th of this month, but honoring one of my much-missed heroes was a better target date for TGML’s relaunch.) I’m getting back on track with both the blogging and the prep for Resonant Blue‘s release and the pledge fulfillments, which leaves the last thing I mentioned… The getting back to playing music live.
As I mentioned back when I reviewed AKB48/BabyBlossom’s live performance of “Give Me Five” a while back, I’m a trained musician. For several months, on and off, I’ve been trawling Craiglist and local music giveaway papers in search of either a working band. A week before the medical incident with my mother, I had an audition for one of two guitar spots… and I’ll relate how all that went, and maybe a little more, tomorrow.
The last IW Cake Day
No pictures today. Instead, some words, since that’s where all good blog posts (and stories, and good books begin.
While I am sad to see IW itself cal it a day, I am excited for the next step that Brother Ray will be taking to keep the J-Pop (and K-pop) blogging community – the readers as well as the writers – in the loop and then some. Having been a part of all this since Ray was doing his blog roundups on Cult of Pop, I’m looking forward to see what he comes up with… and TGML and it’s two sister sites, Music is Like Oxygen and So Hot She Shits Fire, will be a part of that just like everyone else in the J-Blogosphere.
The only thing that sucks about the retirement of IW? No way for Ray to make good on his promise for a Sunn O)))-themed IW Version 4.0!
Update… We Were Hacked!
To make a long story short:
Friday afternoon, ex-Romeo Void singer Debora Iyall had discovered my overview of It’s a Condition at Music Is Like Oxygen and posted the link to it on her Facebook page. Since I’ve been Facebook friends with her for awhile and had participated in her Kickstarter campaign for her new EP, I knew about it because she had linked to my personal Facebook page in her status update about the post. I hadn’t told her about the post (I didn’t want to be spamming her page or whatnot) so I was happy that she had found it and was giving me props right back for giving her old band props.
For whatever reason (a bit of ego, maybe?), I went to click through the link on my iPhone (I was at dinner with my mother at the time) and found myself getting rerouted to a .ru page that was basically dead. What?
Thinking it was some odd Facebook quirk, once I got home I got on my computer and checked the link. Through Chrome, I got the same dead page. Through Firefox, I got a fake virus scan site that (thankfully) Norton had cockblocked before any damage could be done.
Yep – some fuckers — probably Russian hackers — had somehow gotten into the account that holds all of my music blogs (The Groove Music Life, Music Is Like Oxygen, my Reina Tanaka worship blog So Hot She Shits Fire) as well as the blog for Resonant Blue and a blog for a friend’s charitable work (Sounds For Scoliosis, a series of benefit shows in the Wilkes-Barre/Scranton area booked and promoted by my friend Lucia Peregrim). Going directly to the main sites was fine… but anyone clicking through a link from just about anywhere (Google, Bing, Facebook, whatever) was getting redirected to some Russian pecker’s malware festival instead – and making me look bad. So bad that one of Debora Iyall’s friend had gotten hit with that shit, forcing the link to be removed.
So, after a few phone calls to my hosting provider, here’s what happened – the hackers had gotten into a file called .htaccess that, in the case of these blogs, works within WordPress installations and makes sure whoever visits one of my blogs is seeing one of my blogs. The hackers had replaced it with their own version that, within its hardly-complicated code, tricks links from search engines and social networking sites into taking people’s browsers into the Russian assholes’s virus playground instead.
Thankfully, a little Google research – a few seconds worth, more than most Tea Party members do – turned up how to fix this shit, using only Notepad and an FTP program. But I had to do it for every WordPress installation on my account – a minor pain in the ass, but it had to be done. Now all links should be fine.
Now, I don’t know if this kind of thing can affect the “free” WordPress blogs hosted on their own server farm, but if you’re independently hosting your own WordPress blog elsewhere, here’s what you should do to make sure these hacker motherfuckers aren’t messing with your hard work. With your FTP program (like Filezilla), check the size of the .htaccess file on your server. If it’s a little more than 200 bytes, you’re fine. If it’s bigger than that – the hacker’s version was over three thousand bytes – delete it immediately, Google for “.htaccess wordpress” and you’ll find a proper code to get your blog back to normal. Boot up Notepad, cut and paste (or type it up) it exact, and use your FTP program to upload it to your server. Note that you can’t simply just upload the clean version over the dirtied one – some of their code in the dirtied one prevents that, so you have to delete just that file.
My apologies to anyone who had been affect by visiting one of my blogs – in fact, at the time of this writing there was still a malware alert for So Hot She Shits Fire, which I’ve already applied for a correction on with Google. (Right now a direct search in Google warns that the site might harm people’s computers, especially if they don’t have something like Norton installed.) Everything on all of my blogs should be safe.
Thanks, Steve.
While I’m catching up on things, and on a less snarkier note…
I would be beyond remiss if I let the day pass without giving infinite props to Apple founder Steve Jobs, who lost his battle with cancer last night.
Without Steve Jobs, much of what I do would not be possible. My blogging activities started on a PowerBook G4. I listen to music on an iPod when I’m writing. The main character in Resonant Blue was “born” on the PowerBook G4, as was the world of Here Is The Wonderland. I use an iPad to help stave off my Mac jones (my PowerBook died in 2007 and I’ve been dealing with Windows machines since then, albeit reluctantly), and I was already planning to switch to an iPhone upon their next upgrade (the iPhone 4S, revealed this past Tuesday and going on pre-orders tomorrow) after several months of battling a BlackBerry.
Most of us owe Steve Jobs a world of thanks, especially if my (and your) Twitter and Facebook feeds are any indication. I don’t think there’s a single reader out there who doesn’t use an Apple product of some sort, even if it isn’t one of his computers. My own Apple experiences go back to the Apple IIc back in my high school days (Reina Tanaka’s parents probably hadn’t even met, let alone had sex, back then – we’re talking 1984-85, here, folks) – and all the better for it. They got me interested more sincerely in computers, which got me started on writing more seriously long before there was an Internet, and I used to go for the Apple computers in Penn State Hazleton’s computer lab when my friend and I used to visit there on occasion before we got our own PCs and Internet accounts. Simply put, without this man’s vision and testicular fortitude, very little of what we all do would be possible.
Thanks for everything, Steve.
Macs at half-mast.
RESONANT BLUE: The campaign pre-show
The following is a message I sent to a select bunch of friends through Facebook. I am reproducing it here for a special reason that will become almost immediately clear:
Hello, everyone,
I normally don’t go sending mass messages through Facebook, but I wanted to get your attention because I have a special project about to launch that I want all of you to be aware of and hopefully participate in.
As many of you – perhaps all of you – know, I have been working on a couple of different novel projects for some time, and this summer I started looking into getting one of them printed with help from a crowdfunding site. The novel in question is called RESONANT BLUE and as of this writing I already have a Facebook page and an official website running for the project, and this afternoon I sent my pitch to the people at Kickstarter and should be hearing from them in a day or two.
Why am I doing this? Very simple – I want to get my name out there as a writer and I think this will be a unique way of doing it. I am not looking to get an outrageous number of books printed and I am not about to go through some fly-by-night vanity press that will expect me to shell out a ridiculous amount of money to get a book printed (I’ve seen too many people in my hometown go through PublishAmerica to get a book done and from what I understand, they had to pay out the ass to do it and they’ve got a bunch of unsold books gathering dust in their house). My intentions for this project are simple – to raise enough money (close to $2,000) to get a minimum of fifty limited first edition hardcover books printed through Lulu.com. The minimum pledge amount will be enough for that person to get a signed hardcover copy of the book. I’ll only have to print enough books to meet the demand and then that’s it.
Obviously, I want you people, my friends, to join in on this. That is why I am coming to you first. The only other thing I want from you is that I want you to tell any and all of your friends that this project is going on. You all have friends on Facebook, Twitter, and Google Plus that you can reach that I can’t. There’s no doubt that some of them are into reading.
Right now I have a Facebook page and a website for this project. The FB page is linked below and the website is obviously resonantblue.com. I’ll be sending one final message when the OK comes in from Kickstarter and I get that ball rolling, and then after that it’s all giving updates on the FB page and through my FB, Twitter and G+ accounts for the rest of the campaign.
That’s it for now, and thanks for reading this. I hope with your help that this project can become a reality.
Your friend,
CJ
Again, the website is http://www.resonantblue.com and the FB page is http://www.facebook.com/resonantblue. Also, expect a few new posts here at TGML this week. Sorry for being out of the loop for awhile.
Can You Do Some Artwork? (Open Call!)
I normally don’t do personal posts here at TGML, preferring to save those statements for either my Twitter or my personal blog. However: While I claw my way through a few things that need to be finished in both my personal and creative lives (including a few posts for both this blog and what I have been referring to as The Secret Project), I would like to make an open plea/request/call of sorts.
Within a few weeks, I will be launching a crowdfunding campaign for a book project. This book project, for the record is neither Here Is The Wonderland (which will be serviced to agents upon its final completion) nor Play It All Night Long (which has been long abandoned and only exists as possible starter source material for future projects). It does take place a couple of decades earlier in the same universe as Here Is The Wonderland and has been inspired in general by much of the same kind of music that I cover here at TGML, but that’s all I am completely at liberty to say except for that this book is a completed manuscript (as far as writing the main story) going through the usual revisions, touchups, and repairs before I parcel it out to a few first readers. That is where you, the gentle readers out there in the general public, come in.
For this book project, tentatively titled Resonant Blue, I will need one important thing: Cover artwork. I have a general basic idea in mind for the cover but I need someone much more skilled in the art department (especially with either photography or Photoshop or both) to help bring it to life. If you can help in any way – be it to help put together and conceive the artwork, or to steer someone that can do so, please e-mail me at minimoniotaku@gmail.com (the subject line in your e-mail should read “Resonant Blue cover art”). I carry a smartphone and sometimes an iPad with me to most places I go, so you should get a reply pretty much within an hour, tops, barring such interruptions as a decent’s night’s sleep. There will be payment, but not immediately – a small part of the money raised from the crowdsourcing, if successful, would cover that.
Again, those are all the details I can give right now, so if you can help in any way, get in touch with me. In the meantime, I have a few blog posts to finish up in the next few days…
