zabe

I'm doing this mostly for my own benefit, so I can see what I completed and what I started last year.

( finished pieces )

( WIPs )

( magazines and kits (not started) )

I did finish a number of things last year, but most of my finishes were small projects. Most of my WIPs are large projects; I think I need to pick one and concentrate on it, maybe alternating with something small and simple so I don't get too frustrated. Right now I'm working on Alphonse Mucha's Primrose from Scarlet Quince, which is confetti everywhere and very slow progress. I recently started alternating work on it with the Mod Coasters freebie from Cross Stitch & Needlework Magazine, which is single blocks of color and quick progress.

Current progress on Primrose (I may start posting this here every week or two so I can see if I'm actually making any progress:

fluffy Chacha!!!



I wish I could have gotten a better screencap; I managed to get an extremely appalling one of Gackt (paused at the wrong moment), but the support weren't shown clearly often. I was kind of disturbed that he and Ju-ken had the only hair that moved at all; I think Ju-ken's was was not entirely intentional (the bits on top, possibly; the bit on one side but not the other, probably not supposed to do that). Gackt's hair was brushed forward from the back of his head to make bangs and was sprayed into place; I'm wondering if he's trying to hide something. It's also been looking slightly unnatural for a while now, but I can't put my finger on why. Admittedly, the fluffy was probably also in part to distract from his hairline (though flipping it around every which way defeated that purpose), but those sorts of issues are to be expected from someone his age (and have been obvious for years). Maybe someday I'll actually listen to the song.

It was nice to actually see Sakura somewhere; he was definitely in a good mood, smiling and laughing and talkative. I found a summary of it somewhere, and any music-related topics were Sid-related; there didn't seem to be any mention of Sakura-the-musician at all. He mentioned his myspace and S.O.A.P., apparently as the places where he updated regularly. I think that killed what little hope I had for the Lion Head's future (not that there was much to kill). Someone somewhere has to be making that sort of music; I just need to find it.

I'm still massively failing at communication; maybe someday I'll get my shit together. In the meantime, I'll ramble at length about people's hair and post in random locations instead of where I ought to.

Hana! Singing for Közi, of all people! (session band Oct 22 for a RENTRER EN SOI event (Versailles (Guest)/chariots/Dio/Black:List/Sel'm/PPP(közi session band)) and again in November sometime; members: Vocals - Masaaki Hanayama (from Lion Heads)/Guitar - Kozi (ex-MALICE MIZER, Eve of Destiny)/Guitar - TOMO (ex-Eldorado, ex-CODE)/Guitar - KINZO/Bass - masahi (ex-CODE)/Drums - CHARGEEEE (OMEGADRIPP)). I knew there was a reason I was watching shattered-tranquility; mostly I don't care, but occasionally there's something interesting. I'm happy to see him doing something but am wondering how he ended up there; I have absolutely no idea what he might have done in the past.

I really hope this is a not-current profile even though she mentioned it as something new recently. Lion Heads aren't mentioned at all, but they aren't the only thing noticeably absent. That is the first paragraph of her profile on her site, but rest is different. It's an interesting list on that site; I knew she'd been associated with nil, but didn't know about SADS.

Someone apparently went through a period of wanting to be Jim Morrison when he grew up (ignoring that he's older than Morrison ever was there); a few of the other videos from that set are very Morrison-esque as well. I thought I'd watched those before, but apparently I hadn't (maybe looked at them and said, basic performance, will watch later, and didn't notice the Morrison cosplay). I ended up listening to some of his older music back to back with some Doors (hadn't listened to more than a song or two in years) and they were definitely an influence.

I wish bloglines would either fix their problems or shut down; they haven't been working right since late last month, and only three of my feeds updated today at all (and one more just did, hours later, and it's one of the ones that was working properly before). I like them better than google reader and have been hanging on, hoping they'll get things fixed (reading what I can there and what I can't in google; hopefully by the time I have to switch, I'll be used to it).

I am this close to yelling at those kids to get off my lawn; unfortunately, they're on their own lawn. Thankfully, they eventually went somewhere else. They are less annoying than the loud parties on weekdays sort of people who used to live back there, though. I'm cranky anyway, and am glad that dears has finally settled down; I'm still resisting the urge to nitpick somewhere (play count-the-errors from someone who I thought would've known better) and just be rude somewhere else (he's been there ten years; he wouldn't still be there if they thought he was inferior).

tab is better than enter when adding tags; I didn't mean to post earlier and it took me a minute to figure out how to delete a post.

yahoo.jp auctions are always interesting: randomly throwing a name in got me various bands, some relevant, some not (multiple people with the same kanji, including two drummers); magazines, mostly relevant; concert tickets, relevant but useless; items from a clothing line (want!), surprising and apparently relevant (and may be new), which led to much poking at google and failing to find any actual information (mostly shops); and a variety of T-shirts and tour goods, mostly relevant, including him on a T-shirt from a previous band. nude. I'm still kind of stunned, but further investigation shows that I probably wouldn't have been quite so surprised if I were more familiar with that band. I was at first disappointed that I couldn't tell if the random tattoo+bellybutton picture in another cd booklet was him or not, but looking at the booklet picture more closely (the scanner is my friend) and re-evaluating which way was up, I think it was him (though the existence of a tattoo made it most likely him, and I've since found a different picture (low pants, same amount of skin visible) where it's more obvious). I wanted to use one of the other pictures for an icon, but they're too rectangular (and I suck); the only ones that would easily work are the ones of Tokie staring off into space, and that's not what I want right now. I can't find anything that I can crop decently for an icon; it seems that I only find decent pictures when I'm not looking for them. The only decent ones I found today were the ones from Hotei's tour, and I don't like them (though they'd match the one of Ju-ken that I currently have). This one will have to do until I find a better one.

Why have all my recent random fascinations been drummers, anyway? The last few were transient, but this one might be more permanent; he's active in ways that can somewhat be followed from here, and I really like his music (last DVD + last two CDs bought were his; next will probably be the other LOSALIOS DVD and his other band's CD).

Ju-ken and VAMPS seem to be drinking their way across Japan. I wonder if it's worth it to try to find out if the drummer has a site or blog or if any of Monoral's support have blogs; he hasn't had any pictures with actual VAMPS but has had several with varying parts of Monoral. I think Monoral needs new pictures; it's hard to tell from their blog posts, but I don't think Anis looks like that any more.

I wish I knew if I dreamed about posting to pieces or if the relevant comment (and at least one afterwards) was purposely deleted or if the forum just randomly eats posts; I'm not sure which would be worse. I do think that I did post; the original poster responded and then I did again and the second of mine is still there and looks out of context now.

If I binge-listen to 80s metal, last.fm's going to start giving me 80s metal recommendations again. I just got it to stop! I don't want any more 80s metal than what I have, and they were recommending more hair bands than actual metal, anyway. It looks like they fixed the lj-last.fm thing to accept unicode (or at least kanji); maybe I'll try using it again.

!!!

So he is still Gackt's official bassist! Maybe I can use that as motivation to post that batch of pictures to gacktjob_daily. I checked Jun-ji's site, and he will be the drummer; I'm happy it will be him, but I did have a vague wish that it might be Ryu.

I had a long rant about Anna Tsuchiya and her personal image vs. the image her label or management want to project half-composed in my head; if I can make something coherent out of it, I'll come back and add it later. The rant was brought on by noticing that her tattoos probably ought to be showing in the "Virgin Cat" PV and possibly in some of the promo pictures. I don't know how much control she has over her sound and image, but the effort they take to cover up her tattoos makes me wonder.

WTF?

It's only one song, but my inner fangirl is still bouncing between what the hell??? and eeeeeee!!!! I assume Chacha's still assistant producer, so that's 2/3 of the people I fangirl the most, working together; it's too bad Ju-ken probably wasn't recording at this time. If he did TV support (unlikely) or toured (extremely unlikely) and Ju-ken was still there (possible), I think my inner fangirl would die of happiness.

I was going to say that I was surprised he mentioned it because I thought that person was picky about that sort of thing, but on second thought, I think that might just be Ju-ken (I never did figure out exactly what sort of problems he was having in his comments, but know they were Gackt-related); Terasawa mentioned recording "Redemption" (though not by name) in July 2005 (and that's where that one picture of You and Chacha came from; the ones of him with Ju-ken and Chacha were backstage at a live.)

I'm going to have to do stupid computer tricks later; I want to switch TV cards and see if I have any better luck recording, and think that adding a network card (this motherboard has onboard) is going to be the only way of changing my IP address (everything off overnight didn't help, longer might, but I'd rather do stupid hardware tricks); I've found several more sites that I can reach with the laptop but not the PC.

I might have more sympathy for my starving cat if he didn't have food available (dry, second-best) and if I didn't know that as soon as I feed him, he'll eat two bites and go to sleep for the day (though he's been better about that lately).

I hate that lj uses the time a post was started instead of the actual posting time for the entry date/time.

All I want is a clean and decent-sized version of this picture. I can find clean (it was apparently sent out with promotional materials); I can find decent sized (it was the soundtrack and VHS cover and was on some of the posters); I can't find both clean and decent-sized. I don't know why I put that in my netflix queue; it's not the sort of thing I usually watch (too violent, and it looks like the sort of thing where everyone dies in the end). Of course, I'll probably never watch it; my queue has around 200 items, and I'm on a one-at-a-time plan. I don't know why I'm bothering to attempt to acquire an episode of a TV show that I know I'm not going to be able to watch, either; when trying to figure out what it was, I found a behind-the-scenes picture of him with somewhat graphic shot-in-the-forehead makeup, and from what I've been able to see (it's stalled at 72%), that's probably not the bit that will bother me the most.

I don't need to spend the time to watch low quality unsubtitled dramas, either; there were people bitching about the cost of the DVDs, which I took with a grain of salt, but looked it up, and they are ¥3800 per DVD; each DVD is one episode + extras; there are twelve episodes. I'd been thinking that I didn't know Mika Nakashima ever acted, and looked at my netflix queue a couple of times after thinking that, and felt stupid after I realized that NANA 2 is at the top of the queue; according to imdb, she was in another movie in 2003, but that's all (drama, movie, both NANAs).

There are far too many musicians named Tatsuya Nakamura; I found four while looking for pictures: three had the same kanji, two of those were drummers, and they were the ones that showed up the most in image searches (the one I was looking for was the most common, thankfully). Admittedly, there are various qualifiers I could add to searches to make it more likely that I had the right person (and I did when looking for the movie picture in various ways), but I would have missed a few things.

I need to stop bouncing off the Lion Heads' site or at least stop hitting the bassist's blog; his last update was a year ago after playing at the Showboat, and I keep accidentally clicking it and being excited until I notice the year. I need to just give them up for dead, and be pleasantly surprised if they ever release anything again.

Ju-ken actually updated his blog instead of just notes of the day; I was expecting a note for myco, but she got a whole entry. I am very impressed and happy for her that she managed to sell all of their single in the time set, despite being sick occasionally and dealing with general bad luck and severe harassment a few times. I don't think she realized on the front end how much trouble it was going to be; the original statement was playing every day, but after a week of that, she realized she couldn't keep that up for a month and adjusted her schedule accordingly. She deserves all of the congratulations she is receiving (75 comments, last time I checked).

That was such a heartfelt message from Ju-ken in response to the very nice fanart. He sounded so happy and so lucky to be able to make a living doing something he clearly enjoys; I hope he continues to succeed and has many years of bass playing in his future. It's too bad it was a note (now gone) instead of a more permanent blog entry, though. I do wonder what article he was referring to. The bass magazine article from a couple of years ago mentioned Heath and hide (and I'd think if he was doing something with Heath ten years ago, it was hide-related). I wish either a cheaper copy of that would show up or I could justify ¥1500+fees+shipping for a two-page article; all I could really pick out of the picture he posted at the time were those names. I'm assuming that he was talking about professional as in full-time, not professional as in for-money; he was playing for Kiyoshi in 1997, and I'd assume that he was paid and that he'd been playing bass in some capacity even before then. There was an old (now gone) post that I interpreted as him supporting himself as a bassist since 1999, but I could have misinterpreted it or failed to do the math correctly; that's not really incompatible with him becoming a professional bassist in 1998, though. I am overthinking this, and need to either stop or spend some quality time with google and see what I can find.

I wish I believed that Lion Heads having an actual performance was a sign of more activity to come.

Note to self: do not read comments on youtube, especially if they are in the hundreds. There were far too many people taking the Swedish Chef seriously (including one calling it racist and a reason why people hate Americans). How in the hell can you take the muppets that seriously in the first place, and how can you take something seriously that is making chocolate mousse by putting chocolate on the moose and doughnuts with muffins and shotguns??? and how did I forget about the mooffins and DO-NUT (especially since I think DO-NUT every time I see one)???

Den and Ju-ken on stage together! (not that you can really tell; also with Hakuei and Kiyoshi and others, from here)






Also, fuzzy pants!

I did know about this before, though not that they would have been on stage together (I think it's the encore; there are also three guitarists). There's some portion of the tourbook and a magazine article on jrock_scans somewhere; Ju-ken's named in the article and is identifiable in the tourbook. I had a moment of intense stupidity when I first saw the tourbook; I was going through it backwards for some reason, and my train of thought went something like this (at the time I liked Zigzo, but was still kind of new to them):

bassist with a steinberger, unusual
bassist looks kind of like that guy from Zigzo, weird
upon seeing the bassist named: if the bassist LOOKS LIKE DEN and is playing a STEINBERGER LIKE DEN, he probably IS DEN.

I still wonder what Ju-ken was doing before then (97); this is the earliest of him I've seen and is apparently before he started playing bass professionally or full-time or something (there was an old blog post that he mentioned supporting himself as a bassist for x years, which worked out to 99 or so; I think the current note of the day talks about Heath, ten years ago, and is going to be a pain to deal with).

It's not as weird as the time I found Ju-ken's picture and some information on a By-Sexual fansite, though.

I didn't notice yesterday when I was poking around that the drummer Kaori Kobayashi's guest on her radio show last week was the saxophone player Kaori Kobayashi (same kanji). I only noticed today because there was a link to kaorikobayashi.com and I'd just been to Kaori's site (something/kaorin, not a custom domain). I'm still not sure how I managed to find her site in the first place; the vast majority of search engine results at the time were the saxophonist, and I don't think I knew her kanji until after I found her site.

Sakura!!! (and Hana and Kaori and Tooru; hopefully she'll post about it on her blog tomorrow; I think she updated the show site before she left).




On a shallow note, I do hope his hair's up under his hat and not gone, but as long as he doesn't do the brush your hair forward to hide the receding hairline type of style, I'll be happy; I hate that sort of style (there are far too many people who hit their late 30s and suddenly started brushing their hair forward, making it really obvious that they're trying to hide something), but he hasn't really tried to hide it before now (hats, yes, but also pictures where it shows). I hope someone updates the Lion Heads site soon; the lion blog is broken (again), and they had a media appearance of sorts and an upcoming live.

I wish my Japanese was better; seeing "ER" in the middle of everything was unnerving (I think continuing pain of some sort and not an injury, late night visit, x-rays and bloodwork and back home, with a note and a picture of the entrance and complaining about getting old), and his notes are images instead of text and I'm too tired to deal with today's (and after looking at it I'm still not sure what's going on besides pain). Also, I will stay away from the people that think that Ju-ken being with VAMPS is a sign of some sort of gacktxhyde-ness (or at least hope they're not really serious; either way, there's no point in it); the only thing Gackt had to do with it was not providing work, leaving him free for other projects (and who knows what he would have chosen if there had been a conflict). I'm still confused by his statement of conflicts in November with Anna's schedule; I'm going to assume it was a mis-statement for now (he has conflicts in the fall and November's in the fall). The Zepp dates with Anna that were briefly on his schedule are now on Anna's (3 of them; I assume the one on 8/14 was replaced by the festival 8/16) but haven't yet reappeared on his schedule. And they've now appeared since the last time I checked his site (a few hours ago; he usually updates in what is late afternoon/early evening for me, but I looked again just to be sure, not really expecting any changes).

I wonder if I can get caught up with Doctor Who before being spoiled for this season's end; I only have a season of Torchwood and a season of Who to get through. Torchwood is the least-secret undercover organization I've ever seen.

I am very happy that Funimation picked up several shows that Geneon dropped; I think they got all the ones I was actually watching, plus a couple more I was interested in (and I think the other main one I was interested in was picked up by someone else). I'm very glad I haven't been interested in anything of ADV's in a while, though. And Funimation just picked up a ton of ADV's titles as well (and I was kind of interested in a couple after all).

I wish I had better icon-making skills (anything more than cropping a picture is beyond me); I'm tired of 2/3 of them and want something new (one same person, different picture; the others probably different people, though the people I'm tempted to look for icons of aren't likely to be relevant to anywhere I'm likely to be posting). I still don't know how I managed to end up with random musicians instead of actual bands as fandoms (main: a guitarist, a bassist, and a drummer; secondary: another drummer and a mostly-inactive singer and possibly a guitarist/singer (the last two are solo artists at this point, though) and am afraid of acquiring an extremely random drummer and am far too interested in various bandmates of these people).

Someday, I will learn to use less parentheses and semicolons; at least I'm not abusing ellipses any more. Also, fatigue=rambling.