Shonen Knife Concert!

Shonen Knife Rocks! Yeah!

The numbness in my ears has subsided enough now that I can talk about the awesome time I had last night when I saw Shonen Knife in concert!

The venue didn't officially open its doors until after the start time that was printed on the tickets, which I thought was pretty lame. In the meantime I hung out in the cold and waited as something of a line formed behind me. I got to talking to some totally cool cats who I hung out with the rest of the night. At one point I took a little peek through the front door window and I could swear that I saw all 3 members of Shonen Knife right there, bundled up in their winter jackets. They walked outside, I assume to take a break before the show, and I said "Konbanwa!" They turned around and said "Konbanwa" back to me. So I had my little fanboy moment with Shonen Knife, and it was cool.

By the time the show had actually stared, it was an hour after the projected time. There were two opening bands, both American. I didn't know anything about either of them. I expected that they would each play maybe 3-4 songs each, but both bands pretty much played an entire 45 minute set. The volume was set at an uncomfortable level too, and I can't say I enjoyed having my eardrums pummeled like that before the band I paid to see had actually started performing. After the second band had finished, it was around the time that I was expecting the whole show would have been over with by. I was kind of disappointed that it took so long, so I was hoping that Shonen Knife was going to really rock hard to make all of that worthwhile.



And did they ever ROCK!

The crowd was looking pretty small earlier in the evening, but by the time Shonen Knife took the stage, the place was full. And it's a good thing too, because these ladies were just incredible. They performed an excellent mix of new songs and earlier work, including some of my favorites like "Concrete Animals", "Fruits and Vegetables", "Explosion", "Anime Phenomenon", and the "Sushi Bar Song". As far as I could remember, all of their songs were in English. Their encore was a cover of the Rolling Stones' "Satisfaction". All told they played for about an hour and twenty minutes. I wanted more! The other bands were ok, but I came to see Shonen Knife. I didn't mind listening to the earsplitting volume when it was cool songs that I knew. So, not to say anything bad about the other bands, but I wanted to hear less of them and more of Knife.

I would definitely like to see them again next time they are in Toronto, even if there's a change in the band's lineup. It was really amazing to see these short, funny, Japanese girls jam like the rock legends they are.

Message to my new friends I met at the show who are hopefully reading this at some point: It was great chatting with you two. Shoot me a line when you get a chance!

Sayonara.

Ninja Foods!

This looks like the best restaurant in the entire universe.

Ninja New York

It's a Ninja castle! They built a Ninja castle in New York and serve crazy Japanese food there! And there's magic!

Too bad it looks like its too expensive for most Ninjas. But someday I will eat there. Oh yes. Someday I will dine on Ninja cuisine!

Until then, it's back to the packs of instant ramen.

Sayonara.

Hot Links Gone Cold.

Besides what I've mentioned previously, there's another reason why I switched webhosts recently. I was really getting sick and tired of people using the images here on their own sites/blogs/message boards/whatever, effectively stealing my bandwidth without giving me anything in return. On the old server, there was no way to stop it, and every time I'd bring the issue up with the tech staff, they would act all dumbfounded, like they didn't know what I was talking about.

That's all over with now. I have just set it up so that anyone who is looking at an image that is hosted on SykoGrafix.com but being viewed on another site will be getting a face-full of this:



No more hotlinking from SykoGrafix! Beautiful, isn't it?

And to anyone who thinks this is unfair, or that I shouldn't get upset over the issue, to you I say: GET REAL. The issue here is bandwidth theft. The key word in that phrase is "theft". Theft means stealing, and as you should know from watching Sesame Street, stealing is wrong. Not only is it stealing the bandwidth that I pay for, but it's also stealing the content that I worked hard to put together to make my website a unique and entertaining web experience. I didn't put in that work just so some loser could add a decoration to a myspace page or something like that. I put in the work because I want people to come to my site, to read what I have to say, to look at the images in the context that I put them in, and to (hopefully) enjoy it. There's no reason for any of it to be used for any other purpose, so I've put a stop to it, and rightly so. End of story.

Sayonara.

LORDI.

The other day I was talking on MSN to someone from Finland, which is pretty cool. Of course, I had to ask if it was true that Conan O'Brain is really popular over there (and it is true, apparently). Then I was asked if I had ever heard of Lordi. I drew a blank. I was told that Lordi won the Eurovison song contest and it was a big deal. I was curious so I did some research and found some video footage. Now I swear that I must have seen or heard about Lordi at some point because it seemed familiar to me after that. I must have never seen a real performance though because I know I would have remembered something as totally awesome as this:



This ROCKS!!! A Finnish rock-band full of monsters! The lead singer is a demon overlord! The guitar player is a mummy! The drummer is an alien beast! It's no wonder they're so popular in Finland, because logically they should be the most dominating band in the entire universe. I know that if I was going to be World President, I would have Lordi as members of my cabinet!

So let it be known across the galaxy. Lordi rules!

Sayonara.

It's all Done.

So, at the end of last month, I switched webhosting providers, which was a great decision. But that meant I had to fix a lot of the interactive stuff, because it didn't work on the new platform. It took awhile to make sure everything was working. Once it was working, I wanted to make sure that it fit in with the style of the site and looked exactly like I wanted, which also took awhile. And then once I did that, I had to change all the links on the page to make sure all the pages were pointing in the right direction. It was a huge task, and it became quite apparent that there's a lot I don't know about web development nowadays, but I got it done. And once I was done all of that, I figured I had to make this into a full update and add some actual new stuff. So here we are.

There's an all new Message Board! The old board went down after some sort of spam-bot got to it, and I wasn't originally going to do anything except leave it there, but now that I'm on a new host, I figure we should have a new board! This new board is awesome with tons of cool features, so I hope people will use it. Just go right ahead and post!

The Guestbook is back too, and the entire archive can be read! Paul, Jake, flamer, metal wabbit, lenny the leopard, and all the other classic characters are there! It took a lot of effort to restore the guestbook, but I think it was worth it. There is so much content that it's like a whole other interesting part of the site. One could honestly spend hours reading this stuff. And now I can leave my own comments on each entry. I went through the archives and commented on some of my favorite entries from over the years. Let's just pretend that I wrote those comments when those guestbook entries were new. Heh.

So enjoy already. See you on the board.

Sayonara.

LET'S ROCK! LET'S ROCK! ROCK SOCIETY!

SHONEN KNIFE! SHONEN KNIFE! SHONEN KNIFE! YEAAAAAAH!!

I'm gonna go see SHONEN KNIFE!!!! The Godmothers of Japanese Rock and Roll!

They're going to be in Toronto on November 27th, and I'm going to see them!

The last time they were in Toronto, I missed out on seeing them as I had only just been introduced to their music a short while earlier. And I figured that they were a long ways off from coming to town again since the bass player Atsuko has left the band to live in the States. But she's returning to play on this North American tour! This could be a once in a life time thing, so there was no way I was going to miss out. This will be awesome!

Hoping to hear from some of my fellow Knifers who will also be at the show.

SHONEN KNIFE!

Sayonara.

American Gangster.

My uncle wanted to see it so we went on Saturday night. The place was extremely busy and the showing was sold out. It seems that a lot of people were really wanting to see it, which is pretty rare for a film that's released around this time of year. So we tried again on Sunday.

It's a good movie, like one would expect. I don't know if I was sitting too close or if it was the whole shaky-cam thing going on, but I just got the worst headache from watching it though. I couldn't really get comfortable and enjoy the movie like I'd want to. As it stands, I liked it, but it could have been a little more. Considering the hype, I guess I had higher expectations. But that's just the way it goes with movies sometimes. It's the ones that surprise you that really win you over. It's still a solid movie and the performances are every bit as good as you'd think they'd be, so go see it if you're into this sort of thing.

Sayonara.