ben frost tokyo weblog
jan 2004 1 2
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everyone is visiting this weekend. woody is in tokyo and peter rocks in tomorrow night. saw back to the future today. such a clever film.
jack vance from eraserhead/twin peaks is in it with one line as a bum on the street calling marty a drunk driver when he returns to the future and crashes into the movie theater. have to go into shinagawa tomorrow morning to get a re-entry permit to leave and come back into the country. am leaving on the 2nd of june for 2 weeks. am looking forward to it. will need to pack as much as i can and get a few more gifts for people. money is such a pain of late i dont know where its all going.
finished reading ballard's crash this week and have started on paul auster's leviathan.
thursday night was incredibly trashy. my god. ended up in roppongi with cushla in the worst places imaginably in the middle of a typhoon.
am going to take this weekend very slow. band played last saturday. havent got any photos really. was a good experience but we really have to get out of kinschicho as a venue.
middle: shinya pleased that we could all make it.
right: motoki a little concerned that we were retelling the tie story
interview with daniel stevenson came out today on antipoda check it here.
my dad got attacked by my cat swiss tony last friday. he has had to have 2 days off work so far because of it. such a crazy thing. apparantly swiss heard another cat outside and went a bit mad as cats do. dad went to see what was happening in the dark and brushed past him - swiss got a little too over zealous and dug his teeth into dad's leg - like really deep. picture below.
saw film ghost ship today -was pretty standard - but the opening scenes where all the people on board get cut in half by the tensile wire is pretty damn cool.
went and saw stereolab play on sunday night. was so so. nothing too memorable. made a new song with grant and tatsumi at rehearsal the same day sampling the beatles. i call it 'choose spoon, choose fork, choose knife.' our second gig is on saturday night. am worried a little because i have so many damn lyrics to remember for all the songs - but i really only get nervous an hour or so before i have to get up in front of people. once the first few words come out it becomes a high like nothing else. life is good lately. so funny and so happy about everything.
except alanis morisette. . .
was my birthday on the second of may. went to kickboxing in suidabashi near tokyo dome with scott and simon. was so cool. had such a good time.
these little thai guys beat the shit out of each other, though i think it was a little tame - though i can't be sure - it was the first time i saw it - but the first fight which was pretty amateur resulted in a knockout in about 4 seconds. the 'doctor' had to come on to the ring and fix up the blood and call people off left right and centre. we could take our own booze into the arena and we sure knocked down a few. i got a photo with the ring girls who carry the signs showing what round it is wearing their little japanes bikinis. they are in a j-pop band called 'funny stones' and were promoting themselves in the smoking area between matches. was good to see simon - he's cool. met up with kaoru afterwards and had to wake up promptly the next morning at 8 to go and teach children how to speak english with a terrifying hangover.
my computer crashed last saturday night and wouldnt restart. it has happened a few times before but always fixed itself after a day. but this time it wouldn't come on - no screen visual though it was trying to boot up. i took the whole case around to tatsumi's place on wednesday and he checked it out. he figured correctly it was the motherboard - but its golden week here this week so every one was on holiday from monday throught to thursday - so i called and called the pc place where i got the machine cause its under warranty but couldnt get through to them until thursday. so i took the box to sengakuji which is down near roppongi/shinagawa and met the guy joakim at the station. he took it away and called me the same night to say it was the motherboard and he replaced it. got it back today - a week without a machine. so fucked up.
making matters worse, i have 2 illustrations for blue magazine which i said i would have completed by friday which i hadn't even started because all my data and the briefs were on the inaccessible harddrive. managed to email pete and give him the scoop, but lost one of the jobs cause the print deadline is this coming tuesday. unfortunate, but all i can do in the situation. layout sketch is due tomorrow and i got it all planned out and sorted. should be a scorcher.
gotta finish abikyokan's cd cover - the last photo shoot for it sees us all in drag. comical and frightening, but the machine drives on.
went into daikenyama on wednesday night to see denshou shock boys play and hand out flyers for our gig on the 15th. they are very talented, very minimalist electronica tuning into radio frequencies and amplifying. is cool. daikenyama is cool. love it all.
stayed at jim's house on tuesday night after drinks at sol in shinjuku with scott and kaori. i now have a toothbrush with my name on it at jim's place. hehehe. i gotta move over that side of town, its great. scott has a new job in a kitchen in harajuku. his last day at work was today. such an awesome thing - he has a talent for cooking and i think hes moving into the right direction.
talking to john peters tonight on messenger, hes got some great work and some great ideas, its always fun talking to him. ahh johnny!
fell in love today with a girl in class. a fashion designer from iidabashi. have been thinking about her all day. ritsuko i think her name was. might never see her again but i gave her my details anyway. CAN is awesome.
right - kaoru wearing president reagan wig
