Cam Bert

Is any one here a fan of reading terrible books? I never really got into reading "so bad they're good" books. Closest I came was when I was in high school me and my one friend would read Dean Koontz books for a laugh but then when I got to university I didn't have much time for free reading. After that I came to Japan and it's hard to get a hold of English novels and they're very expensive when you do. I couldn't justify spending $20 on some bad book. However, I now have an iPad so it's something I could see myself getting into. If anyone here is into it, could you recommend some books? Aside from the obvious things like 50 Shades, YA and Kindle erotica. A friend once suggested I read the crab series by Guy N Smith, but found them hard to come by.

Somewhat obscure but...

Yet if you searched the song half you would have got delicious sweet potatoes!

The music scene is very active but I don't know if it's due to the large population or what but it's very divided and subcultured. You mentioned visual kei stuff earlier and that's a great example of this. There are maybe two visual kei bands that will see major air play on TV or radio. Yet it's a huge scene with tons of bands but you have to be in the know to see them or find them. Then within that group you have the more host looking all black wearing ones, the over the top costumes and theatrics ones, and then the more horror inspired ones. Subcultures within subcultures. Unfortunately much like back home I assume the main stream stuff is pretty safe and standard. It's mostly boy bands and girl bands. While some of it is okay, it's all very safe and similar. However live shows can get crazy here in general. You have bands like Perfume who do incredible stage shows with lighting and effects, then you have idol groups where half the show is watching the crazy nerds in the crowd with their predetermined dance moves and calls and responses to shout out. The music industry is so big and there are so many live venues that no matter what you want it you'll be able to find at least one band that matches it. There is a documentary series on Youtube called which has a very unique thesis about Japanese music and the world. In brief that Japan gets foreign music and allows that to model and influence their music but their music doesn't get played outside of Japan. However, video games created in Japan scored by Japanese people with Japanese sensibilities have been played in the west since the 80s and that music has had a direct influence on the west. So Japan's biggest influence to world music is the music of video games. Pretty interesting to think about.

So now that I'm home from work and not in a rush I decided to do the jukebox again but this time all fancy like with links! Also I thought this time I would only play stuff from my Japanese music. Besides I think you folks would probably find that more interesting than all my pre-2000 western music. EDI'S JUKEBOX take 2 1) 2) Time goes by - Every Little Thing 3) (oddly enough the only version on youtube is the English version)4) 5) 6) 7) 8) 9) ROSIER -Luna Sea 10)

Take care and get well soon Lando. I'm currently working on a second list too however it's going to be all Japanese stuff. Which maybe me think, for you as a big metal person what's your take on BABYMETAL?

I was hoping for the John Mulaney reference and have "It's Not Unusual" as number 8.

Okay I woke up to see this and had to do it before I jotted off to work. EDI's Jukebox! 1. Paper Plane - State Quo 2. Giorgio by Moroder - Daft Punk 3. The Wanderer - Dion 4. 今すぐKiss Me - LINDBERG 5. Red Red Wine - UB40* 6. Uprising - Muse 7. 石焼イモ - ブリーフ＆トランクス* 8. Poison - Bell Biv DeVoe* 9. GAME - Perfume 10. いとしのエリー - サザンオールスターズ

Today marks the 8th anniversary of my father's passing and in two more days the 5th anniversary of the passing of my grandfather. It's hard but it gets easier when you think about how they live on through all the positive influences and moments they brought into your life. The best we can do to honour them is to live life to its fullest and along the way pass on all the kindness and wisdom we received from them to those around us. My heart goes out to Paul and June, and everyone else who has had to suffer this kind of loss. We all love you and are there for you.

I feel as the Japan representative on this board I must point out that Jamie Foxx's claims about four being unlucky are not entirely untrue. His logic behind it may be dubious but in Japan and I believe in most east Asian countries the number four is considered to be unlucky indeed. It's not too dissimilar to the number thirteen in western society. The reason being is that the word for four in Japanese (四 shi) sounds just like the word for death (死 shi) and I believe this is the case with Mandarin, Korean, and other east Asian languages. Some places will avoid numbering floors, rooms, spaces, etc. four out of superstition. So if Jamie Foxx said "Look Captain I'm an expert on all things Asian as I will demonstrate later by randomly picking up a strange Thai woman and sleeping with her, and as a result I find four to be unlucky." that would have made more sense than the whole prime number thing.

When the credits started the second one that popped up was for the writer W.D. Richter. When I saw that something clicked in my mind like "I know that name." When I looked him up I saw the reason I recognized it. He's the director of Buckaroo Banzai! He also wrote the script that was adapted into Big Trouble in Little China. Then I saw the rest of his credits or should I say lack of. The last thing he wrote was ten years before Stealth. The bulk of his writing came from the 70s and 80s. I think this could explain some of the writing and some of the choices made about Jessica Biel's character. It probably was this seventy year old guy's idea of writing a strong cool female character and just maybe he's a bit behind the times or stuck in an old way of thinking and writing. Also one scene which relates to this I found very odd was in Thailand after Jessica Biel and the Thai girl leave to make pee pee, Jamie Foxx and Josh Lucas talk about the will they won't they between Lucas and Biel. Foxx talks about how Biel's character "went to all the right schools and had the right background" for a woman to make it to the top in the navy and that they were setting her up to be a poster girl. However, if she gave into her feelings for Josh Lucas and he gave into his feelings for her it would ruin all that. Is this because of fraternization rules? They are both equal rank and both are willing and compliant. How is that a breech of those rules? Then after saying that Lucas could mess it all up Foxx says "So that's why I hope your love is powerful" which seems to undercut the reasons for messing things up for her as a breech of navy rules. Rather it seems to be the implication that if it didn't work about between them she'd be so jilted that she'd throwaway her career or be unable to focus. Or somehow being in a relationship would make her less of a role model or pilot. You could argue that she seems to have been crushing on Lucas the entire time and it hadn't effected her abilities at all. I dunno, something about that scene bothered me.

Well I think it's most likely the Top Gun scenario because even though he did Ray and won the Oscar this film was released summer of that year. Chances are he'd shot it or been shooting it while the whole Oscar thing was going on. Although after the win he apparently got quiet a big head and forced a lot of changes to be done to Miami Vice.

Ugh! The post credit scene! Where would the sequel have gone? EDI learned remorse and feelings. He bonded with Josh Lucas and learned the importance of friendship and teamwork. His final act was to sacrifice himself to save his team mates because that's what you do. This makes it seem like he'd be a good guy come the second movie, and like Chuckstyle said earlier he wasn't the real villain of this piece. Yet the post credit scene makes it seem like he was evil and coming back. Are we to assuming crashing wiped his memory or something? On top of all that he's in North Korea who are technologically behind so they couldn't just build a plane and put him in it or wipe his memory. Not unless they secretly sell him to Russia and they have their own Keith Orbit to build and reprogram the AI. Then they send it attack American targets. The Pentagon and top military brass think it's just a new hot shot Russian stealth pilot so they send in their own hot shot pilot, Josh Lucas! He starts a dog fight with this pilot and thinks to himself "Boy this guy is good and his moves are just like mine." That's when one of his shots goes wide and hits the cockpit to reveal nothing inside "What the?" Josh Lucas cries out, "EDI?" Then a deadpan "Da svidahna Talon 1." can be heard followed by warning of incoming missile lock. BOOM! So long Josh Lucas say hello to REDI! Stealth 2: Red Skies! I take back all previous statements. A sequel could have been awesome.

I had many problems with this movie, but I just want to take a moment right now to point out how much I hate the title of this movie. Granted something like "Murderplane" wouldn't really work with a hundred million plus budget movie, however aside from the fact the planes are "stealth" fighters nothing about this movie or any of their missions are stealthy. The first mission starts off stealthy but that's blown by Josh Lucas flying down the road and hitting a building. The second mission in Tajikistan they wasn't really stealth because the terrorist saw them coming and they were fired on almost immediately. Then after they start fighting each other Josh Lucas's plane loses stealth with half the movie left to go, and before the final mission EDI says that he too has lost stealth capabilities. This all leaves me asking "why 'Stealth'?" Surely there could have been a better name. So I throw it out to you good people of the forums and the cast of HDTGM, what would a better name for this movie be? ... Boy I really felt like Paul at a live show there. Also, sadly in Japan it's just called Stealth but you know all Japanese-y "Suterusu"

Aw man, Stealth. This movie has some serious memories attached to it for me. Me and my one friend back in the day use to go to a new movie every Friday. Regardless of what was coming out we'd pick one of the new movies and go see it. Sometimes it worked out well and other times not. Now from what I recall we looked at what was coming out that Friday and the only thing was Stealth. Neither of us were interested or excited to see it. We talked about skipping a week but we'd been doing this for over a year so we decided to suck it up and go see it. We sit down in the theater and my friend immediately pulls out two flasks full of whiskey. I thanked him for bringing one for me to which he replied "Not for you, I just need to be that drunk to enjoy this." Other than a few spoiler-y things that happen in the movie most of my memories are of my friend just getting more and more drunk and losing his mind over the movie.

Congratulations! Although I guess the real congratulations in this case should go to your wife and not you. Hunter is a great name and I'm sure he'll grow up to be as awesome as his dad.

Oh man. Such an important figure in my childhood and appreciation of comedy. Brilliant comedic actor that could play the driest straight man with flawless timing or just unhinged force of comedy. Gene Wilder was an incredible talent be it acting, singing, writing or whatever he decided to do.Truly he will be missed. Today at work one of the other foreign people said "I don't get why everybody is so sad about it. I mean, all he ever did was Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory." All I could think was...

I remember reading once about that kind of chamber too but even if that's what it was considering like you said the whole thing was open to the public to freely come in and peruse why put that chamber smack dab in the middle of the room in front of the sarcophagi? Maybe it did hold treasure but due to his drunken and blind state Horus couldn't see the grave robbers come in. I chalked up Set not going after Horus sooner as that classic bad guy cliche. However everybody seemingly knew that's where Horus was too. Bek knew to go there, Set knew to go there, I guess it was just common knowledge. How he survived there and not fallen into the surrounding pit in a drunken stupor is another question. How did he survive? Did he just eat every offering that came in? When he thought Bek was a worshiper he told him not to leave any food. Was he eating his parents bodies? We know they need to drink water, so surely they must need to eat too.

In the movie after Bek steals Horus's eye he goes to find Horus at the crypt of Osiris and Isis. Although not directly stated this is safe to assume this given there are two large sarcophagi and giant stone heads of Osiris and Isis in front of it. So far so good, however before the two sarcophagi are a few steps and a platform, which is used to hide and or bury Bek's girlfriend. I want to know what was the point of this feature. At first I thought it might be for Horus when he dies, however it's too small for him and a deity of that importance would probably get their own crypt. Is it a compartment for holding offerings? If that were the case why would it have to be seemingly hidden? Also offerings were strewn over the front steps and yet none inside and it was empty except for a few jugs when the girlfriend went in. If it was to hold offerings why would you hide them? Regardless of what it was suppose to hold or do why did Set think to look in there? If it was meant to be a burial space for mortals why put it in the crypt of the former king and queen and why put it in front of their sarcophagi. At the end of the movie Horus goes to bury Bek there next to his girlfriend. Why bury you new friend with your parents? Why would you bury his girlfriend there when you weren't even friends yet? Man, this movie... Also, if Bek's girlfriends journey was suppose to take seven days how come her body didn't start decaying?

Thank you very much!

Okay I messed up. I was still fixated on this whole obelisk thing and wanted to check the amounts he claimed were used. When I put the movie on the Japanese subtitles came on and I noticed in them he doesn't say "kilometers" he says "cubits." Cubit being an ancient form of measure that was used in ancient Egypt this makes sense. So then I quickly did the math and it's still rather silly but not nearly as crazy as I thought. 1 cubit is about just shy of 0.5 meters. Thus Set's obelisk at 2220 cubits is almost exactly 1 kilometer tall. That's 3280 feet, which makes it still slightly crazy. The tallest building in the world now is Burj Khalifa in Dubai and that's 829.8 meters (2,722 feet) tall. Still crazy just not as crazy. Now if you excuse me I have some calculations to figure about bird drawn carriages....

So many nice things said all around. This place is so full of love!

Now because I can't sleep I bring back the return of.... How Did This Get Named? I missed a lot of movies and some have interesting Japanese names others not so much. So here are the movies I missed which have different names in Japan! Teen Witch 魔女は１６才 Majo ha jyurokusai (16 Year Old Witch) Can't Stop the Music ミュージック・ミュージック　Mujikku Mujikku (Music Music) Solarbabies 太陽の七人　Taiyo no Shichinin (The Sun 7) Hell Comes to Frog Town SFヘルスラッシャー　SF Herususassha (Sci-fi Hell Thrasher) Boy Next Door ジェニファー・ロペス　戦慄の誘惑 Jenifa Ropesu Senritsu no Yuwaku (Jennifer Lopez Fearful Temptation) Simply Irresistible バニラ・フォグ　Banira Fogu (Vanilla Fog) and finally Gods of Egypt キング・オブ・エジプト　Kingu obu Ejiputo (King of Egypt)

Aw, thank you. Makes me feel good knowing that I was missed. The feeling is mutual.