#117 - Words, words, words.

Holy hell, wordy Reileen is wordy. I was just working on the melody for "Eidolon" and ow ow ow so many words to get through. Yikes. Think I gotta do another revision on the lyrics to pare it all down so I don't give myself (and potential listeners) a headache later. I do have a melody for the first three lines that sounds appropriately creepy, at least. Yay for weird dissonant chords that...don't really make sense! Not to me, anyway. And I have no idea what to do for the chorus.

***

Read the first omnibus volume of the Gunsmith Cats manga. It's badass.


-WHY IT'S BADASS-

It's got girls with guns. And bombs. And it's set in Chicago. The Chi, dude! The first story arc has Minnie May intercepting the baddie of the week right near Buckingham Fountain with a well-timed kablamafoo. And then later someone sets off a bomb in the parking garage of Marina Towers, a.k.a. the Corncobs. Heeeeee. This makes me happy in my skirt.

The art is also really good, especially when you get down to the details with the guns and cars, among the usual suspects (backgrounds, characters, etc.). Ye gods, I wish I had that talent. I keep telling myself that I'll spend regular intervals drawing inanimate objects in painstaking detail just for the practice, but I get too distracted with drawing pretty boys and girls. Oops. I wasn't paying attention to the writing, but maybe that's a good thing - that means the writing was doing its job and wasn't being intrusive.


-WHY IT'S NOT BADASS-

Hmm. How do I put it as nicely and as concisely as possible?

MAH PEDOPHILIA, LET ME SHOW YOU IT.

I wish I were shitting you. I wish I were exaggerating. But the second lead character, May Hopkins, is a 17-year-old who looks like a 10-year-old. It's not even in the way that anime/manga-style naturally makes everyone look younger - this chick actually looks like she's 10 years old. I had to double-check on Wikipedia that she was actually 17 in the original Japanese and it wasn't just some weird localization thing that the American translators did (like in Bible Black where they apparently insisted that all the students involved in the debauch-o-rama of that series were all in college, despite the fact that they wore uniforms).

Little May? Is in a long-standing relationship with a guy who is 18 years older than she is.

Now, I have a high tolerance for squicky things, which includes massive age differences in romantic couples. But this particular instance of it bothered me for a number of reasons:

1) There's three overtly sexual scenes in this particular volume that involve May. In fact, I think the first one you see is in the second or third story arc, where May goes undercover at a high-end brothel to figure out where one of bad guys is going to be at a certain time. The "interview" scene shows her sucking off the pimp while wearing nothing but lingerie. No naughty bits are officially shown (the guy's dick is silhouetted in 20% screentone), but that's way too sensual for me to be seeing with a girl who only looks like she's 10.

2) Speaking of the brothel, apparently May spent some time hiding out/working in a Chinatown brothel for a few years prior to joining up with Rally Vincent (the other lead character)? I forget why, and I'm too lazy to look it up at the moment. Anyway, that little fact is mentioned, like, ten million times over the course of this volume, in varying degrees of specificity. I don't think that in and of itself bothers me, but there was this one time where May got into trouble on the West Side with a bunch of thugs, and one of them goes, "Hey, isn't that the one chick from The Purple Pussy? The blonde with the skills of a chink?" No, I shit you not. Not on the name of the brothel,and not on this particular reference to May's past. It was just so out of place in what was otherwise a decent action scene. OKAY. WE GET IT. MAY USED TO BE A WHORE AND SHE HAS A HEALING VAJAYJAY OF SPARKLINESS. LET'S MOVE ON.

3) This goes back to point one about the sexual scenes - there's one in which May masturbates to a picture of her manfriend. Gods, it squicks me just to type that. It wouldn't be so bad if May were drawn as a 17-year-old. But no, for some reason May is so stupid that (according to the Wiki page) she takes growth-stunting herbal supplements so that she can keep Ken happy, if you know what I mean, and I think you do, and for that I am so terribly sorry that I have to inflict my pain upon you. Except not really, because I refuse to be alone in this. OKAY. WE GET IT. MAY IS MADLY IN LOVE WITH KEN FOR A STUPID REASON I CAN'T FATHOM. LET'S MOVE ON.

The relationship between May and Ken is written and drawn as cute and endearing, but it's just creepy. The only reason I'm putting up with this thing is because Ken was the one who taught May how to make the awesome kablamafoos that she uses to blast bad guys to smithereens. No, I have no clue why he thought that would be a good idea, considering that I think May was 13 when they first started going out. Excuse me, I'm going to run out to the corner Walgreens to get myself a new brain, bbl.

(Holy shit, I just realized that Ken Taki (May's manfriend) shares a similar name with the creator of Gunsmith Cats, Kenichi Sonoda. Ken and Kenichi. Dude. Now the creepy level is over 9000! Maybe I'm reading too much into it. Please tell me I'm reading too much into it. Because I am so squicked out right now like you wouldn't believe.)

Also, Becky the so-called star reporter is seriously Too Fucking Stupid to Live.


Other than that little(?) caveat, though, I really like Gunsmith Cats and I want the rest of the volumes lieknao.

-Reileen
we'll be together, and you can be sure

#118 - WHEE-O! WHEE-O! FANGIRL ALERT! FANGIRL ALERT!

Vienna Teng has just finished shooting a music video for "Gravity."

omg.

OMG.

*explodes with So Much Glee!*

Scroll down here to find frames taken from the raw footage.

And then, from a later page on that forum: In the epic struggle between man and piano...there will always be a woman taking pictures. Yeah, they dragged a fully-loaded upright piano over mud, sand, and driftwood for this shoot. No empty traveling piano for Vienna.

Another point of interest from the forum:

>will this music video be available online later?

Absolutely Zak. The label is waiting to see it before they decide the promotion strategy they'll use for it. Although nothing is set in stone, the indications now are that the video will be given a widespread on-line release as a means to get as much attention for Vienna as possible. The song itself is from her first album rather than being a new release. It has enormous popularity among her fan base and is among the most frequent requested by audiences at her concerts. She also played a version of it when she was on Letterman. Since this is her first video, the idea is to leverage the song's popularity while also providing a good vehicle to attract first-time listeners to her music.

Also, Vienna told me that she is on a separate label in Europe and they have expressed great interest in the video too. There may be different strategies by the two labels. My guess is that when it's released you'll see a low-res version on YouTube and the various music sites with a high-res version for sale on iTunes. If the response is good it will be likely that there will be production of a new video for one of the singles on her upcoming album (again, this is only my estimation based on the information I've been given).

When she played her impromptu concert here at Huckleberry Hill she played a couple completed new songs and some portions of works in progress. Although I'm obviously biased, I honestly believe the new album is going to be phenomenal based on those samples. I personally lobbied her to push the new song "Kansas," which was stunningly beautiful and, in my opinion, the equal of "Gravity." I'm a native of the state and for years I've kept a mental index of locations that are evocative of the beauty and desolation many people aren't aware can be found there. Vienna lit up at the suggestion because they drove through that very part of the state during her recent tour and she thought at the time that some of that landscape would be perfect for a video.

Obviously, you never know in this damn industry what will happen, but both Vienna and her management have expressed enthusiasm for the footage we've shown them from the shoot and seem sincere when they say they want to have us produce the next one. Given my strong feelings about growing up in Kansas it would be a real dream to be able to take a crew "home" to shoot a video for her eponymous song. Besides, I know where the best pool halls and bowling alleys are :)

Dude. Official music video. For Vienna Teng.

OH MY FUCKING GOD YAY.

-Reileen
these are the scars that silence carved on me