large prime numbers

eden: The Birdhouse

eden — Sun, 07 Mar 2010 15:11:57 -0800

"The Birdhouse", on the edge of a cliff overlooking the town, is constructed of several rectangular blocks of white and glass stacked like children's playthings.
It's a place for socialites and their hangers-on - people who want to be something in this godforsaken place. Mrs. O'Leary walks into The Birdhouse, her hair permed and purple, her tired flapper gown her date. She wants to be accepted into the "upper class" of the town. Her family came here only 60 years ago!
Mrs. Von Mott, however, is the leader of the fur coat brigade. Her family has been her for over 200 years. She's old money. The Birdhouse is her house.

The Birdhouse is a curiosity, something of a tourist attraction, for those passing through the town. It sits like a great white wonder preaching to the town in a geometrical fashion- out of reach for most townfolk. "PRIVATE PROPERTY", the sign declares. There's no need for anyhing more, everybody knows it anyway. Mrs. Von Mott is not nouveau riche. She is tasteful.

Several nights later at the bottom of the dusty dirt road we see the chewed "PRIVATE PROPERTY" sign. A car is beckoned to by an elderly woman with a flashlight, and we move through a hallway of white and glass and rails where the paint was chipping off.
"Oh, hello Tom. I'm Mrs. Von Mott," Mrs. Von Mott says to a dapper looking man. She's dressed in a very Italian way, looking younger than her name suggests but older than my mother.
Usual small talk muttered. We begin to hear squarks and chirps- a symphony of scratched blackbirds, blackboards. Mrs. Von Mott keeps a couple of birds.

SQUARKKK. The bird noises get louder as we leave Mrs. Von Mott and move into the bigger room. Again it's white and glass. There are bird droppings on the floor- a few of them- mostly it's the smell. A putrid and bitter rotting smell. The only lighting in this room is a few portable lights, a flashlight or two hanging down from the ceiling. The great and good and fabulously wealthy are mingling here: Plum has a diamond on her finger that looks like it's about to tip her over. Stein is talking to Harold Truman- "How would you fancy a martini later?"
"Oh, Gertrude, that'd be divine" he says, tiny pig-eyes behind his hopelessly outmoded surgeon's steel glasses.
There are no amenties. No toilets, no kitchen. There's no tables or chairs. Just what appears to be a gaggle of people with drinks that've materialized out of nowhere.

There's a couple of rooms off the main room: We move into the left one first, shuffling through people making vague small talk- "good, yeah, good". The left room has no lighting and contains several parrots. They're not the type that speak. SQUARKKK.

The right room- more shuffling, more small talk- contains supermarket petshop budgies. The floor's filthy. Most of the people are leaving.
Birds are moving out from the rooms, and there is bread placed on the floors in crumbs. The lighting's mostly gone, save for a lone flashlight- "ENERGIZER" written on it. SQUARKKK.

Mrs. Von Mott is nowhere to be seen. Behind the departing guests there's a cachaphony of birds sounding like bitches in heat sped up in a recording studio. The Birdhouse is cold and dark and it is- SQUARKKK.

108: see large prime numbers live in koenji any weekend

108 — Tue, 19 Jan 2010 23:42:41 -0800

hey! i have been busy making $$$ and all that stuff, so have neglected this blog for what seems to be a little over a year. you may have noticed that i have a website called Action Button Dot Net, and have had said website for several years, only i have never once pimped it here (aside from putting that lovely button on the left sidebar). i write stuff there, sometimes (expect a big final fantasy xiii review next week). i also write monthly columns at Kotaku.com, the latest of which (an of-the-decade roundup) is here. i also have a twitter thing here. i promised a novel last time i posted (a year ago), and hey! it's nearly done. it's all terse and to-the-point and shit. it's a greatest-hits compilation encompassing this entire blog, plus a 40,000-words-or-so update on what has been happening with me in the last two years. the back-of-book text would be something like "a chronicle of the long wait between terrible things and a boring life". i had asked people to email me if they wanted to read it when it was done, and now i kindly ask you to do that again: 108 (at) actionbutton (dot net).

anyway, our band is doing great, and that's what i want to talk about today. last week we started a set with this vintage-final-fantasy-battle-music-inspired improvisation:

if you are in tokyo and would like to see us live (or if you are in osaka and have a dozen friends wanting to see us live (we need an excuse to travel)), you are hereby invited to email me at the above address. after doing so, you will be given the (not-so-)SECRET INFO regarding our next show in koenji DOM. it will be either "this coming saturday night" or "sunday afternoon". nothing like a bit of noise on a sunday afternoon, i always say! actually -- i never say that! i just said it for the first time right now! i bet i just totally baked your noodle like the oracle bakes neo's noodle in the matrix. anyway, the reason i / we want you to email is because, you know. DOM is actually a (photogenic) sound studio, and the laws of physics don't permit us to fit more than a dozen people inside. so consider your email an RSVP to an exclusive event.

we (and i) hope to see you soon! and i can't wait to post info about our upcoming super-hot t-shirt, with the NEW large prime numbers logo, drawn by a super amazing legendary japanese artist who is actually a huge fan of the bullshit we call "music". (should be early february. (the shirts are going to be all v-neck, by the way. fuck crew neck. the 2010s will the decade where all band shirts go v-neck, the decade where men stop hiding their collarbones once and for all.))

eden: Kawakubo Can Dance

eden — Mon, 14 Dec 2009 03:10:57 -0800

Rei Kawakubo, for once, has delivered a collection under the Comme des Garcons mainline that is commercial.
I hesitated writing about this specific collection for a while- was there anything to write about it? What was there to say? What was Kawakubo saying, if anything? The collection didn't as much baffle me as leave me stricken of words.

The collection has no emotional punch. I clicked through each look mutely- there wasn't anything to write home about. There was no fever holding the collection together, as with the previous "Wonderland" collection. Sometimes Kawakubo's ideas are simple, and each look is a variation on these simple but strong ideas. "Wonderland" called to mind the homeless- use of blankets as part of coats, etc- it was a raw, overpowering collection. Conversely, this latest collection seems to be a robotic, systematic and synthesized exploration of key motifs in recent Kawakubo collections. Tops were deconstructed, made out of shoulder pads, polka dots were used, hair reminist of the "Football" collection sat atop the models like insane plumes, and various prints were used in a seemingly random fashion recalling several previous collections of Kawakubo's. Yet where the motifs served a purpose in each previous collection, the motifs here seem to be the purpose. Technique equals idea, whilst eroding emotion.

Sarah Mower suggests that this is perhaps Kawakubo wryly commenting on fashion of recent seasons: the obsession with shoulders- which Kawakubo deconstructs and turns into tops (perhaps recalling a vanished ghost of fashion- Martin Margiela, who often created clothes out of unconventional materials), the fetish for military coats (see: Balmain.), and so on. In essence it's The State Of Modern Fashion According To Rei Kawakubo.
Kawakubo doesn't actually make a judgement on The State Of Modern Fashion itself. She simply synthesizes it into a sort of gross pastiche that's still no doubt sellable. Many of the pieces are fairly basic, if the complex elements are taken out- so many of the complex elements come from the styling. Belts, shoulder-accessories, the hair.

In creating a collection that's Modern Fashion, synthesized, Kawakubo creates another limit- it's actually very hard for this collection to be better than Modern Fashion itself. Most of the pieces don't transcend Modern Fashion. Looks 33-35, innocent dresses in either white or polka dot are an exception- shoulder pads are incorporated over the right breast, creating a slightly exaggerated silhouette (more than slightly exaggerated given the flat-chested, pubescent boy models who're wearing the dresses.). Yet even these dresses, though clever, don't provoke a reaction. They're clinical but not perverse. We've been bombarded with some many variations on the same look, both in the wider arena of fashion- shoulders, military etc, and in this particular collection, that this subtle wink either goes unnoticed or noticed but pushed to the side. It doesn't have any shock attached, and whatever innuendo it may carry is neutralized by the rest of the collection.

The collection's kind of pretty in an odd way. I'm reminded of fallen leaves off a tree, multicoloured, broken and delicate. It's commercial. It'll sell.

I feel kind of empty looking at it. I feel like Kawakubo shot a blank. It's her "Sally Can't Dance"- Lou Reed commented after the making of that godawful album (also his most successful at the time) that if he didn't sing at all it'd probably go to number one. Did Kawakubo even bother doing anything new here? I don't know- I don't feel so, but hell, maybe she did. It doesn't feel new because the elements she synthesizes and mixes are so new- I've already seen them a million times in a million other shows. It's clever, I'll give her that. Clever and emotionless and clinical. It's a certain type of fashion- the sort of clothes that somebody buys from a regular clothes shop- H&M or somesuch, bought to boiling point. It is the most "avant garde" of this Regular Sort Of Fashion. The most "artistic". Kawakubo's capable of more, but here it almost seems like she's completing some sort of circle- with the "PLAY" line, it's Regular Clothes at their barest level (for an obscene price), and with this collection it's Regular Clothes at their highest level. Regular Clothes don't often provoke emotion, and they don't here. They'd be better displayed on a rack in a store. That being said, it's not a bad collection by any means. It's pretty. It's commercial. It has a few standout moments. It just isn't satisfying.

eden: At the Edge of the Depraved Decadent Dessert- Dover Street Market

eden — Sat, 03 Oct 2009 04:02:06 -0700

The burnished silver stainless-steel sign at the bottom of the Dover Street Market is unerringly businesslike- the names of the brands on each floor written in businesslike, doctor’s office black. They act as pornography to certain members of the public, and in such sexless fonts too. “3F: Alber Elbaz for Lanvin, Alexis Mabile, Anne Valerie Hash…” it’s even in alphabetical order! “2F: Adam Kimmel, Arts and Science…” to the untrained eye the sign could be describing a pediatrician’s office and some fusty old, government-funded office dealing with arts and science. Yet this is the unassuming entrance to the Dover Street Market, favorite store of the avant garde and fabulously-well-to-do-starving rich.

The Dover Street Market is essentially an emporium of several floors selling goods at several times the price that they should be sold at. I encountered it early on in London- the first day I arrived on my flight, existing on a supply of adrenaline and Berocca. The building itself is situated in that part of London where all the buildings look more or less the same: old and projecting a feeling of vintage wine spread over stone tablecloth at sunrise. I’d already passed by it about twice without knowing it was The Dover Street Market, and even when we were on our way there we had to doubletake, make sure it was the right place.

Our gallery of rogues at this point consisted of myself, Tavi, and Laia- the fourth member of this troupe was to arrive the next morning- Elizabeth. We walked around the Dover Street Market (which I’m going to refer to as “DSM” from now on because it’s quite a mouthful, and I can’t be bothered typing it out in full all the time) in a half-dazed haze. Walking around the Comme des Garcons “Black” store first- a glass edifice of white polka dots and clothes that sort of represent what Comme des Garcons is about without being too specific. They’re Comme des Garcons in a very vague manner. The whole idea of “Comme des Garcons Black” is to make Comme des Garcons affordable to the “public” without making the clothes look like traditional, half-rate-discounted, thrift-store clothing for a funeral (as per Comme des Garcons H&M). It’s a pity the jacket I tried on was one thousand pounds. The jacket itself was all black and embossed with sticking-out polka dots like a fabric ream of bubble wrap. It wasn’t worth one thousand pounds, even if the salesman was incredibly nice; a rarity compared to the rest of the staff there. I recall one man, pretentiously dressed probably, informing Tavi and I that we were not allowed to take photographs inside the Dover Street Market (we’d already taken photos on another floor anyway, and the one-man-band staffing it didn’t care.)

The females at the DSM (I should mention here that the DSM is owned by Rei Kawakubo, who owns Comme des Garcons- it’s an elegant hodgepodge of labels she controls and labels she likes) all look like the previously stated Ms. Kawakubo. Their haircuts are all uniformly cut- bangs and down to their shoulder hair. If they are not Japanese they look like it. I saw exactly one smile from all of these female assistants, and the image- calculated and deliberate, no doubt, that Comme des Garcons projects of Rei Kawakubo is of someone who very rarely smiles. I imagine that this Kawakubo-clone depot is actually a perverse joke of the real Ms. Kawakubo’s. I imagine she sits in her office grinning madly at the prospect of customers going “is that Rei Kawakubo?!” whilst traveling through the DSM. (Or at least I like to think that.)

One of the Rei clones end up being fairly pleasant and un-Rei-like. She acts like a pleasant shop assistant (and not a sycophantic one):

“Did you see that girl around here? The short one-”
“I think she was trying on something! In that one over there”
“Oh, I thought so”

Rei-clone One actually said that “something” with an exclamation mark at the end. As in a Pokemon game, or a children’s television show. “I think you might find it in the neighboring town!” written out in white pixelated text on a black background. If she were an animation, she’d be smiling that smile that can only be found in an animation, where the smile can only be represented by only one line. She wasn’t Rei Kawakubo I realized with a slightly disappointed internal sigh. I don’t know what I was expecting, because I know she wasn’t Rei Kawakubo- she was too tall and elongated, for one. And yet I wanted her to act like Rei Kawakubo, in some way. It’s like going to see an Elvis impersonator and the impersonator speaking to you in a hoity-toity upper-class British accent. Of course, their job is to walk around looking stylish and occasionally sell things; not do whatever a Rei Kawakubo impersonator’s meant to do- they sure don’t sing “You Ain’t Nothin’ But a Houndog.”

At one point we’re on perhaps the second floor and Tavi’s trying on something by Junya Watanabe. Trying to try it on, anyway. She ends up not knowing how to put it on, and nobody else seems to either. It’s white, twisted, and pleated. It is probably a dress of some description, though who the hell knows anyway- if anything, it’s a Pretty Object. This is what the DSM is filled with: Pretty Objects. Objects that sparkle, that glitter, that are warped and confusing yet beautiful.

Actually, it’s less of Pretty Objects and more of Pretty Dreams. On one of the floors there’s a dressing room akin to the middle part of a carousel, in another a seemingly broken door leads to another changing room. The doors strike me as being more important than the actual clothes being sold. The whole...mise en scene of the shop being more important than the clothes.

I hope I’m not sounding too negative here, because I love the Dover Street Market. I love the Dover Street Market almost as much as a loath tumblr. And I’ve really been loathing tumblr as of late, even as I continue to post images that’ll soon be forgotten by the people that “follow” me, and quotes that’ll probably be only remembered by I and my sweetheart. I’ve identified three main traits of the “tumblr” using teenage girl (which I am not, but most of the people I know who use tumblr are. I’ve yet to see a suit-wearing businessman use tumblr*). These traits are:
Number one: Posting pictures of half-naked or totally naked models in something tangentially related to fashion (I call this “fashion porn”).
Number two: Pictures of Bob Dylan.
Number three: Pictures of cute things (ie. Kittens), or quotes- generally hormonal and soppy only in the way a teenage girl who reads Sylvia Plath can be, behind a faded picture of a landscape or the sea or somesuch. For example “Don’t Leave Me” and a few trees in blossom behind the quote, the image itself having that faded look of 70s photos. These are the inverse of “LOLcats”.

I loath the uniformity of this bizarre cultural meme. I detest it, even though I love half-naked and naked models, and Bob Dylan. It’s cultural regurgitation. It’s as if all these films, people and photos are thrown into The Giant Mouth Of Culture, and somewhere, somewhere on the line the bits and pieces of culture get chopped up, and what ends up on tumblr is the end result. There’s no thought to it; it’s utterly emotion based. Actually, it’s less than that. It’s a reflex. And it’s creepy. Though really, it’s no different to how people tend to regurgitate what’s fed to them, culturally, in the Real World (see: Miley Cyrus, American Idol, Susan Boyle.)

The same “cultural reflex” pertains shops and people inside and outside the Dover Street Market. Later that day I was invited to the opening of an art exhibition- it was on a warm summer night in a gallery- I can’t remember the name- and people were everywhere getting drunk. There was a crowd on the terrace as we half-pushed/half-walked our way through. Most of them were wearing similar clothing: for the men, frames or wayfarers, half of them sporting a beard, and a flannel shirt. Their haircuts looked like what a fan of “Joy Division” would wear- as flat and slick as oil, though oddly combed. The woman- leggings, some nameless top, studs somewhere- on leggings or their blazer. One girl in particular looked like a try-hard version of the lady we went to the party with. Where one was chic, the try-hard looked like she could almost man a street corner.
The point here being that some “cultural reflex” had penetrated all these people (save us and the lady who came with us), as they were all dressed similar, all acting the same- an awkward James Dean not being James Dean very well. Most of them were getting drunk and about as far away as one could get from the art.

DSM attempts to distance itself from this cultural uniformity. For instance, I was just trying to find images of the Dover Street Market, yet none but one of the pictures I found correlates to what we saw inside the place when we were there. Whoever’s running it has an obsession with change. I can’t say I paid attention to many of the people on any of the floors, either, because there wasn’t many of them anyway. Generic fashion-looking people; as we were to encounter for the rest of our trip. Eventually you just start to phase them out and they become noise in the background. And I was phasing them out on the first day in London! I don’t know how many thousands of dark eyes I didn’t see.

At the front of the first floor there’s a couple of fossils, thousands of years old. A skull or two. It looks like a Damien Hirst exhibit. Tavi’s dad- Steve; Laia and I stand in front of the exhibit reading the little information card. “This fossil is x thousand years old”. The price is x thousands of dollars. Even museum exhibits are sold here, as in some bizarre dream of golden fashion and archeology. Just in case anybody wants to buy a x thousand-year-old skull, of course. One could always go to the natural history museum and attempt a robbery. It’d probably be cheaper.
I wonder at this point whether this is a designer skull. It must be, given the price! I imagine rows of skulls- Prada skulls, Comme des Garcons skulls, Chanel skulls. Each skull stamped with the logo of each respective house (or more accurately, brand.) It’s almost creepy, the selling of ancient skulls, almost reeking of twisted Victorian shops, selling skulls to weirdos in their tophats and peacoats. And I suppose some of that backwards Victorian feeling is deliberate: it’s called the Dover Street Market after all.

This place is a sort of Disneyland for fashion. It’s a flawed organic rustheap gimmick-laden wonderland of lust and sheer pleasure in the form of clothing. The Rei-clones are flawed, the merchandise is perfect and perfectly out of the price range of most who visit- hell, for boxers it costs thirty pounds- you can check that on the website (doverstreetmarket.com). I don’t know how to react to boxers that cost thirty pounds, but it doesn’t really matter because the Dover Street Market’s primary purpose, to people like me- who don’t have one thousand pounds lying around for a jacket (ie. Most of the world) is to be a whorehouse for the feeling up of clothes (Lanvin especially), and secondly to sell boxers for the sum of thirty pounds. I’m not buying any.

*Speaking of, I was walking behind two middle-aged businessmen who appeared to be from “The Office” the other day. I was on a quest to buy a number (n)ine jacket at a poisonous price, and these two businessmen started talking in front: “100% sales!” “profits will be converted 100%!” “the profit conversion..” What struck me, as the price of my jacket will surely do one day, was that these men sounded exactly like they were from “The Office.” They talked the exact same sort of business doubletalk that one expects from an episode of said television show. I giggled behind them, imitating them with my friend who was with me. They appeared oblivious, as you’d imagine characters from “The Office” to be.

(Images to be uploaded later, when I can be bothered resizing them.)

eden: What I talk About When I Talk About Marc Jacobs

eden — Thu, 24 Sep 2009 03:55:50 -0700

For some reason, I’ve written a review of Marc Jacobs almost every season. He gives good review fodder, even if his clothes end up being much the same, finding themselves in discount bins at high class joints. They’re seasonal, incredibly seasonal, because Jacobs plays a shallow and vapid game- that of contradicting what the rest of the establishment is doing. I remember talking to people in London, and we were talking about what shows we actually cared about at New York Fashion Week. I reeled off “Rodarte, Calvin Klein”- then a pause- “Marc Jacobs?” with just the faintest whiff of a question mark at the end. But it is a question, and the question becomes more and more pronounced with each Marc Jacobs show as of late. (For Loyal Readers, you’ll remember I actually have positive reviews to two Marc Jacobs shows, and even claimed that this is what more girls should be wearing. Forgive me. Nobody should be wearing pieces from Mr. Jacob’s latest collection. For one, they’re probably too expensive for what they are.)

What Marc Jacobs has so boldly created is a collection that’s cheap-looking, derivative, ticky-tacky, banal and mundane. That’s quite an achievement, to do all at the same time. I find the glass of nothing sitting on my desk more interesting than this collection, though you’re all going to look at me as if I’m mad if I start writing about that. The Neil Young I’m listening to- the record being “Decade”, my first Neil Young record, might be more interesting to write about, and it’s certainly more interesting than anything by Mr. Jacbobs. I’m sorry- I don’t share the same teenage love that the rest of the world shares for his collections. That doesn’t mean he can’t make a good collection, but this collection wasn’t it.

We need only look to Rei Kawakubo to see who has influenced Mr. Jacobs on this collection. And by “influence”, what I mean is “shamelessly rip off whilst basking in the adulation of the fashion world.” To which I ask the question- does the fashion world suffer from amnesia? Is this actually just a simple case of almost everybody in fashion also being amnesiac? In which case, we can all pack up our deckchairs, I can stop writing and go to bed, and we can dust our hands off and go “Forgetting Rei Kawakubo’s last collection! Oh, you fashion world you! Whatever zany antics will you get up to next!”

Mr. Jacobs has had some successes with his hokey-pokey mash-ups in the past- I recall a collection inspired by Yves Saint Laurent as being stunning, at least on the runway. Yet his best work is purely American (saying “Americana" is too folksy for a designer like Jacobs)- reimaginings of American sportswear, evening wear, casual wear and so on. The “Sonic Youth” collection, where he showed one sleek polar fleece silhouette after another on the faces of depraved youth being a prime example. His mish-mash technique doesn’t work here. His treatment of typical Comme des Garcons motifs is too heavy, too clumsy. Military style jackets with layers of clothes under them (as with the last Comme des Garcons collection) can be broken down into very simple pieces of clothing- “basics”, as some might call them. (Unlike the last Comme des Garcons collection.) Satin bras on top of clothing are simply passé at this point. Where Kawakubo uses ruffles to indicate lips, ruffles are used here for the hell of it without any rhyme or reason. There’s cutout aspects to a satin, uh, “outfit” that hint of Margiela or even Issey Miyake, but the subtlety isn’t there. It’s akin to a bull walking through a china shop trying to convince everyone, even his mother that he is in fact a ballerina with the Paris ballet. Nevermind that bull’s knocking over all the china- he’s trying to do it to a soundtrack of Swan Lake.

eden: A review of (most) of the Couture Shows- Fall 09

eden — Tue, 14 Jul 2009 18:29:39 -0700
I've avoided writing too many reviews here because I hate most of the collections, so eventually I'd sound like a record on repeat. For some reason, though, I feel compelled to write about the recent Couture shows. At the very best they were mediocre; at the very worst just plain awful. Most of them erred toward the "very worst" category.

I'll start with Dior because it's the show that showed first. It's funny: when I started "being interested" in fashion I was a John Galliano (the designer of Dior) fan. I recall opiate and opulent shows of metallic golds and models dressed like transvestites. The clothes were batshit insane: he'd calmly explain in his faux-French accent to reporters something like "I was inspired by the Matrix and dead animals". Yet through the years he's either been heavily medicated or became the bitch of rich upper-class 90-year-olds everywhere. That is- his clothes have became boring. Along with Ralph Rucci, he makes clothes for ladies who lunch (and then throw up about half the lunch, probably.)

At Dior this season we were presented with a similar collection to what was presented last season, and the season before that. The typical Dior silhouette- nipped in waist, coats and dresses billowing- in a very mechanical way- from below. Pretty colours, but more court painter than Matisse. Clothes your grandmother would've worn. Hell- half of them look like flapper clothes- clothes your great grandmother would've worn. This season, the twist was that your grandmother's clothes were shown with the models wearing lingerie. The models were not sexy- they had as much sex appeal as an actual mannequin in a shop window. Whether Mr. Galliano is trying to say something with the lingerie, his words are lost in the flurry of traditionalism that was his collection. It wasn't so much as "Dior by Galliano" as "Dior by Galliano disguised as Dior". Christian Dior is dead. The clothes presented in this collection are dead- nothing new was said. The ladies who'll no doubt purchase this collection (and it'll sell well- you can bet that) would do better simply wearing the same Dior Couture from the past few seasons (or from 1950).

I almost don't want to write anything about Christian Lacroix's collection. The collection itself was produced on less money than you can buy a family sized car for. This is because the house in Mr. Lacroix's name is bankrupt. It's very nearly dead, unless some rich old man decides to suddenly inject some cash into the almost-corpse of Lacroix. To criticize it would be nearly speaking ill of the dead. I mean- it's not a terrible collection. It's not even a bad one. I'm listening to Regina Spektor's album, "Begin to Hope" right now- good songs that're overproduced- her new album has similar problems. All the songs have been shrink wrapped in plastic, a label stuck onto them and a barcode too. In some ways I feel that Spektor is like a kid in a candyshop when she's given access to fancy recording equipment and a band: "Ooh! Can we have an echo here!" "Why do you want an echo Regina?" "Because I can!"
That goes for her new album, too. The songs still have some quality to them because they're good songs, but the production kind of swamps them.
Anyway- (actually, I just wanted to talk about Regina Spektor for a minute there) Lacroix didn't present a overproduced collection- rather, his talent was swamped by some sort of inhibition that resulted in a fairly subdued collection- for him. The "songs" were there, but for whatever reason, they weren't singing all too well. Man, this was his Possibly Last Collection- you'd think his swan song would be better. A couple of reviews suggest that he presented a subdued collection in order to lure in a buyer for his company. There probably was that hope. Goddamn, I hope he does get a buyer. Still- everyone likes a good swan song. An album like "Street Legal" won't sell Bob Dylan- "Blonde on Blonde" will.

Meanwhile at Chanel, Karl Lagerfeld created more clothes for old ladies. Many reviews and press releases disguised as reviews have talked about what was alternatively called "a new silhouette" or "a dress-mullet." I won't talk about that because it's irrelevant: the collection went from either mediocre or bad because of other factors. The embroidery reminded me of couches you can find at garage sales. The colours weren't particularly pleasing. Some of the patterns looked like carpet from the 70s. The best looks were those in model-t black- with black you don't have the worry of colour, and patterns don't show up as much. In fact, some of those black looks were damn good. Yet the patterns and colours dilapidated the collection from a fine wine to a cheap (and warm) English beer.

Givenchy is one of those houses so pretentious it hurts.
This would be fine if their collections were any good. I mean- even if they were a tad good, maybe I'd have the tiniest space in my heart for Givenchy. They're not. This season, our hero in imposter's clothes- Ricardo Tisci- showed a collection doused in past Alexander McQueen collections and a child's idea of what "couture" is. The blown-up houndstooth used on one or two of the dresses was particularly reminiscent of McQueen. The bowl cut on one of the models was particularly reminiscent of New Zealand's former Prime Minister, the right Honourable Helen Clark. The spikes used in some of the dresses were simply passe.

Let's see- what's left? Valentino, designed by two people whose names I always forget. Dresses designed as accessories. An accessory is something you can place down, put away. A dress is something that if you take it off, you're naked. It is not an accessory. The dresses looked like handbags.
Jean Paul Gaultier was hilarious. It'll piss off a bunch of people- it had fur. The clothes themselves looked like cliched supervillain clothes, and I happen to like cliched supervillain clothes- so I guess I lied at the start of my review; Gaultier was pretty good! Those weird sort of Hollywood fetish clothes that he presented here aren't in vogue anymore (haven't been in a long time). It's too bad: they're pretty funny. If I was a female villain, I'd order the entire collection. In multiples.

(Above, Jean Paul Gaultier makes a good case for dating super villains. All other images are of the collections written about above them.)

eden: Rei Kawakubo isn\'t interested in making feminist clothes anyway

eden — Thu, 09 Jul 2009 02:56:47 -0700
There’s figures in fashion- little impressionistic blurs in the oils, that seem to keep recurring in what I write about. I guess I could write about shows instead- there’s a half written review of the Chanel resort show sitting around somewhere. Most of it’s written in handwriting that’d take even me an hour to decrypt. Yet more and more I’m returning to these few figures because partly because most of the shows are crap. I could write that word- “crap”- in a witty way, but really they’re just awful. They’re commercial clothes that rich morons are going to buy for a large sum of money, and us poor folks are going to have copies of the clothes shoved down our throats in cheaper stores. Not that I’m being a snob or anything, they’re perfectly free to create clothes that are blatantly for putting on backs without giving a hell’s hoot about any artistic value they might have. They’re for consumption, these clothes. Somebody has to make them. (Honestly, I’m not sure what drives these people to make that sort of clothing- because apparently, somebody “designs” these clothes for consumption. Some designers are very proud of the bland yet wearable clothes they design. Perhaps they genuinely believe, somewhere in their little frilly heart, that what they’re doing is really fucking good. That they’re true originals. Perhaps Zac Posen skips to work (in his chauffeur driven car) everyday, with his heart all warm and fluffy and his head full of this new idea. He calls this new idea the Bias Cut. Or maybe these designers know that they’re not that “deep” and they’re ok with that. Good for them. It’s just a pity magazines like Vogue dedicate pages and pages to That Sort Of Designer, obscuring the brilliant and promoting the mediocre. French Vogue does it too. Most magazines do. Not that I blame the magazines- Anna Wintour may have bland taste- Andy Warhol thought so; but it’s more the advertisers and so on. A friend of mine, Connie, works in magazines. From what she’s told me, that industry thrives on the impossibility of its own existence.)

Nevermind that. I’m just being a snob- just design what you like, rah rah rah. In fact the genesis of that entire parenthesis comes from an argument I had with my sometime lover, who is so resolutely unsnobbish she’s practically Chaplin’s “Tramp” character. I can’t really remember what the argument was about exactly. But it had something to do with being a snob given my attitudes toward fashion. And maybe everything. At least I’m not one of those Animal-Collective-worshipping, skinny-jeans-wearing hipsters, dear. I’m a snob that smells good.

Many, many snobs like Comme des Garcons. It’s practically a requirement that if you’re going to be an intellectual fashion person you can postulate about Comme. There’s probably a fashion snob club, somewhere, all white and minimalist and run by Helmut Lang that has a test- a pencil and paper test, like those godawful SATs some kids have told me about. The test probably has questions about Comme des Garcons and Yohji Yamamoto and Descartes and so on. Maybe some of you are in this club, you tools.
Anyway I’m always drawn back to write about the CdG designer- Rei Kawakubo (you all know that, of course, but perhaps the ghost of Beethoven will read this one day and he won’t.) She’s a sort of enigmatic figure- not a studied farce of the enigma like Martin Margiela, but a genuine enigma- all green and murky. She’s pretty good at this fashion business, too.

So I sent a link to my friend Tavi (of Style Rookie, Bob Dylan, and Star Trek.) The link was about Comme’s 40th anniversary, because the International Herald Tribune felt the need to celebrate Comme’s middle age. There’s a picture of Kawakubo in a leather jacket which celebrates middle age much better (yet even in a leather jacket, she doesn’t look too bad. She looks the same as she did a decade before. I swear- she hasn’t aged a year since the 80’s. It’s a kind of freakish robotic trick of hers. )
The link was eventually turned into a post on Tavi’s blog- tavi-thenewgirlintown dot blogspot dot com. Some really intellectual people commented on it, with such intellectual comments like: “OMG I LOVE REI!” Other intellectual collousi picked out one singular sentence Kawakubo said in the article: “I don’t consider myself a feminist.”

“You betrayed us!” screamed a chorus of comments.
“You ARE a feminist!” shrieked another faction like pulsating train wheels crashing and moaning against the track.
“I don’t understand why she won’t call herself a feminist!” bellowed another group of great intellectuals.
And I gagged whilst starring at the screen. Whilst staring at these people who apparently know Kawakubo better than uh, herself. Whilst staring at the text left behind by people who seemed to think a label like “feminist” is a Very Important Thing.

I’m not going to argue philosophy- whether it’s important to be a feminist or not, etc. There’s too many definitions of “feminist” to actually have a coherent argument. Which is why it’s slightly ridiculous- no, wholey ridiculous to argue that Mrs. Kawakubo is a feminist when everybody defines “feminist” differently. Is our Mrs. Kawakubo, goddess of black, a feminist simply because Comme des Garcons is a very successful company- and she’s a woman at the helm of it? Hell, a mermaid is at the helm of many sailing ships- is it a feminist? Is Christine Hefner a feminist, even though she heads Playboy? How the hell is somebody a feminist simply because they’re a woman? Ann Coulter is a very successful nutcase- who’s a woman! I don’t know if you’d call her a feminist.

The second argument is that Rei Kawakubo’s clothes are actually empowering to women. I’m not sure if those great intellectuals in the comments section even got to that part. I’ll pretend one or two did, I’m too lazy to go back and look. I’m more interested in listening to this bootleg of Leonard Cohen’s current tour, and by god, the man has charm. Anyway- Kawakubo’s clothes have never been about empowering women- that’s not the intention. Early Comme des Garcons seems heavily influenced by Hiroshima- black, seams showing- the silhouette of the many of the garments is very similar to the western clothes Japanese wore during WWII. That’s more observing than anything else- I don’t know how a nuclear bomb is empowering anyway. Those early collections are a portrayal of desolation and destruction- all these horrible cold feelings that have about as much to do with “female empowerment” as Casanova has to do with accounting. The ’97 “Lumps and Bumps” collection is an observation of modern women- the attachment of object to human. Backpacks on backs translated to a kind of quasimodo tumor, turning the dress into a hunchback-like design. That isn’t empowering women, it’s just showing reality like it is. Perhaps all the backpack makers in the world convened upon Geneva and said: “Look here, fellas. Rei Kawakubo just did a collection and there’s these backpacks that’re like tumors coming from a dress, you get me? It’s like- a tumor coming out of the back that mimics a backpack. It looks fucking awful, so we need to get rid of backpacks! Imagine how sore these girl’s backs are getting!” And the backpack makers would point out that their income is derived from making backpacks, so getting rid of their revenue source would be pretty stupid.
There’s nothing wrong with wearing a backpack, of course (school students do it everyday. I don’t see feminists ranting on about how Kawakubo is empowering students)- so there’s nothing particularly empowering about Kawakubo creating a dress that has a backpack-like tumor. It’s just observing the actual: what’s going on, using fashion as a medium to portray it.
That’s fucking brilliant. Especially when you consider that the rest of fashion (except for a few designers) is obsessed with creating a fake fantasy wonderland. Fuck empowerment- it’s far more brilliant to translate the actual into clothing.

Rei Kawakubo is not a feminist. Her work isn’t feminist- unless you want to call it that just because she has a vagina. It’s observational, journalistic. It isn’t objective , but it doesn’t have a “feminist perspective” on everything, either. Hiroshima and the bomb aren’t just “feminist” issues- they’re issues for almost everyone. The work of Comme des Garcons (- and I realize that I’ve been referring to the work as Kawakubo’s- but it’s important to note that the entire team of designers and design assistants and so on contribute to the Comme aesthetic. It’s a false perception that many people have that Kawakubo is a sort of superwoman that designs every single piece with her bare hands)- goes far beyond labels such a “feminist”- goes beyond those issues, too.

As I listen to Neil Young play “Heart of Gold” on the stereo, or rather whine it and harmonica strands of melody, I wonder how to sum up this thing. Frankly, I wrote it because I thought Tavi’s commentors were idiots. Idiots who could use apostrophes, certainly, but idiots none the less. It pissed me off. Who the hell are they to declare that Kawakubo is a feminist? Do they know anything about her? Man- you can’t just read an article about somebody and base all your opinions off them. The other thing that kind of annoys me, irks me, is that I bet all these people look at her work superficially. (Here I am being a snob again). Look- it’s fine to look at some Comme des Garcons and say “ooh, this is pretty!”- most of the people that are “into” Comme react like this. There’s some visual element of Comme des Garcons that strikes them. That’s fine. I can dig that. If you’re going to call Kawakubo’s clothes “empowering” and her work “feminist’ though, well boy, you’d better have some damn good reasons.

108: lettuce, ice, and different feelings

108 — Wed, 22 Apr 2009 04:01:19 -0700
So, I kind of like having a band. I don't feel nearly as bad when I spend $300 a week on eBay on guitar equipment.

Anyone in Tokyo is hereby invited to come to Rinky Dink Studio in Ogikubo, Tokyo any Saturday afternoon this year to sit in on our practice. We will gladly begin said practice by running through our entire "live set" for you. We are calling this the ROCKING THE WORLD, ONE PERSON AT A TIME TOUR 2009. You don't even need to pay to get in on this! We would appreciate it if you at least paid for our dinners afterward. (We eat cheap, subsisting on produce and brown rice.)

Seeing as the video for "hone" promptly exceeded 1,000 views on YouTube when I featured it on this blog, I hereby use this entry to promote this song -- it's called "Love In The Time of Global Warming, Chapter Two (Lettuce and Ice)". This is the earliest demo we made of it, not a half hour after "writing" it as a "song". It's gotten so much better that every time I think of the eventual album version my knees buckle, even when I'm sitting down. This snapshot of imperfection captured in this demo on YouTube, terrible sound and all, is so far the high point of my "career" as a person who tries to make anything anyone would call "artistic". Anyway, go ahead and watch some of the other videos on my YouTube channel, too! I promise to get my guitar sound even closer to "figured out" as the next couple weeks roll on.

I also promise to get bigger arms.

I will close this with a plea that no one show this to Steve Albini or anyone affiliated with Steve Albini because he is going to engineer our record and I don't want him getting a bad impression of this song.

Oh, also -- we were on TV in France a while back. Look for "Large Prime Numbers" on the schizophrenic, jumpy list on the right. (Note how the sound quality is exponentially better than YouTube.) We might be playing in Paris later this year! Yay! I hope Tanguy can join us with his ukulele.

Oh, here's the HD version of the video, on YouTube!

108: the castle on the cliff

108 — Thu, 09 Apr 2009 00:16:58 -0700
large prime numbers are a pretty decent band!

the above seems to be the popular opinion re: these rising stars, whose latest tricks include staging LIVE PERFORMANCES in small sound studios and inviting anyone hip enough to know what BYOB really stands for.

i'm not using a microphone on these vocals, by the way. i really don't know what else to tell you.

we are almost finished writing all the songs for our debut album! will have more to say about that in a while, i suppose. for now, be sure to subscribe to our YouTube channel (be sure to watch all of the videos a hundred times each so i don't give up) and/or friend us on Myspace if that's your sort of thing.

eden: A review of A Store

eden — Sun, 29 Mar 2009 16:01:26 -0700
The girl was blonde and had a nose-ring. I don't remember exactly what clothes she wore; maybe a black dress. As I browsed the men's racks, not really looking for anything- just idly flicking through various garments; she came up to me. She asked me how my day was.

My day was uh, ok, I said. Asking somebody how their day was is the normal thing to do, at establishments like this. At establishments that charge a small fortune for a jacket that looks slightly different to a hundred dollar jacket at the store across the road. I mean, if you're going to sell your soul you might as well have nice customer service.

I mean- it wasn't what she said, it was more the way she said it. It wasn't a flirt exactly, but it had a certain lilt to it. You can count on the sales assistant at an expensive store for a fancy manner of speaking.

So nothing happened there. I just thought I'd mention it, because she was the most interesting part of the store. The menswear racks were populated by the sort of clothes that guys who need an "alt" or "intellectual" label that costs lots of money to justify their existence buy. Margiela- check. Raf Simons- check. Nom D- check (Nom D being the in-house label anyway. In New Zealand, it's kind of famous for no apparent reason. The clothes are a synthesis of the dark elements of other designers: Martin Margiela, Yohji Yamamoto, Rei Kawakubo, etc. They're nice clothes, but I feel like buying them is a bit like buying a really clever fake. Or a slice of cheesecake in a bakery that you know was your Grandma's recipe that the goddamned bakery stole whilst she was out at Keita Takahashi's knitting group.)

Whilst I'm writing all this, I'm listening to Bob Dylan's "Modern Times". It's a weirdly clean album. Clean like a doctor's surgery, or an Howard Hugh's bathroom. The sound kind of dies- when a note is played, it's gone forever. There's no sense of distance, there's not even a hint that maybe the A# the piano plays lives on elsewhere. It's simply stopped, forever. The clothes here are like that too. They're the sort of expensive that likes to be anonymous. If I were to purchase a jacket (I say jacket because that's the majority of what they sell), like the girl with the nose-ring probably hopes, I'd be forever trying to justify it afterwards. I'd hand over my money or card, or note-holding-them-ransom, and feel the cliched sinking feeling. I'd go "Oh, fuck. What the fuck have you done Eden?"

"What the fuck have I done" is a recurring feeling when I buy clothes that I know are too expensive for what they are. I thought "What the fuck have I done" when I recently purchased a t-shirt. It's a great t-shirt: white, with two collars creating a faux-sense of layers. There's a picture in the corner that's oddly saturated of a boy holding a kitten. I spent forty dollars on it. A t-shirt of a boy holding a kitten with two collars, no matter how great, is not worth forty dollars.

There's a few distinctive pieces; although I don't know if they even deserve to be called "pieces". They're most certainly clothes. There was this Raf Simons coat (regular readers will know how Mr. Simons recently gave possibly the worst collection of this year) that had an odd fabric, kind of lined. The tailoring was perfect, and it was very heavy. 960 dollars, I think. It was too big for me anyway. I suspect the wearer of the coat would eventually get back pains ("960 dollars for back pains? Man, you can get those for free!")
I spotted a number (n)ine jacket that I'd seen last time I'd been there. It was green, had wooden toggle like things- rope attached to it like it was the lovechild of a sailor and a.....teenager.
I'd love to say something more glamorous. Lovechild of Marilyn Monroe. Lovechild of Andy Warhol. But the fabric's the kind you find on an ordinary hoodie, or sweater. Cotton; thin, unremarkable. Fades easily.
Ah, but on the label it says Ten Percent Cashmere.
So I guess it's luxury! Does this ten percent stop the fabric from feeling cheap? Nope.
I'd possibly buy it if it were in a better fabric. But I can't get away from the idea of paying all this money for something that is essential a sweater with rope attached to it.

Actually- let's be honest. It'd have to be a pretty amazing jacket for me to spend whatever godawful price they want for it. I saw a t-shirt by Martin "I don't design anything anymore but don't tell the kids that" Margiela. It was embroideredwith studs to create the effect of a waistcoat. One Thousand Dollars. One. Thousand. Dollars, for a t-shirt. It's a very nice t-shirt, and I'm sure little old ladies spent many hours embroidering it. That t-shirt has been there for about a year.

There's a wooden cabinet with dirty glass on the top, there's a wallet by Margiela that's made of 11 dollar bills (Subterranean Homesick Blues anybody?). It looks like a wad of cash with a clip in the middle. I'm actually, genuinely tempted to buy it. Somewhere I've got a couple of novelty calculators lying 'round: one looks like a note of cash, the other looks like a matchbox. They probably cost 20 cents at a garage sale or something. The wallet on the other hand probably costs a couple of hundred (if not more). I look over to the girl with a nose-ring, and almost say: "excuse me, how much does this cost?"
I don't, because I know I won't have much money to put in the wallet afterwards (and if I ask her "how much", I'll probably buy it. I've already spent enough money- before going to the shop I bought some books including Norwegian Wood and Hard Boiled Wonderland and the End of The World. I've been avoiding Norwegian Wood for a while now: it's the Murakami book that every teenage girl with glasses has read, and every boy trying to get into that girl's pants has read. It's like listening to "Blonde on Blonde" and saying you know Bob Dylan, or listening to "Smells like Teen Spirit" and calling yourself a Nirvana fan. Well, at least the "Blonde on Blonde" listener has the endurance to listen to 71 one minutes and 23 seconds of the (then) sexiest man the The Universe. But you know, Norwegian Wood is pretty good!)

The women's clothes fares better. They're all black. I can't describe them specifically, they're just shrouds; shadow-like figures that I walk quickly past. That's what this store sells really: shapeless dreams.