Man, what took me so long to check out this PV? Actually, more like “watch it again and then write about it” would be the correct second part of that question…

I do admit, an H!P side project involving my favorite MoMusu is going to get my attention no matter what anyway, but I still have to withhold further comment until I’ve actually listened to the song a couple of times.

Well, the time for comment is now. I love the song. Yes, I’ve said this before when I did the Ri-Sa.J review this past weekend, and the TLC tribute episode of the Pagoda Podcast last month, and it bears repeating: Urban contemporary music in America has gone down the shitter. What was once the edgiest and best non-rock-based pop music on the American airwaves between 1991 and 2002 is now simply a repetitive and uninspired bastardization of both R&B and hip-hop with very little in the way of creativity or content either musically or lyrically. If I hear one more repetitive “hip-hop” song with lyrics about being “in tha club”, or about somebody’s clothes, or with some asinine deliberate mispronunciation of any word in the English language that makes Ebonics look like Shakespearian verse, I’m liable to call an air strike on the Island Def Jam offices or make Akon wish he really had gone to prison for car theft.

Hearing “C/C (Cinderella Complex)”, an R&B song which actually has defined verses and choruses (a rarity in current American urban pop), reminds me musically of a lot of some of the tracks on what I think is TLC’s finest studio album, Fan Mail. The musical arrangement of “C/C” reminds me a lot of the “grooving robotic” (my term) sound that Dallas Austin (the George Martin to TLC’s Beatles) concocted for many of Fan Mail’s pivotal tracks - so much so that it’s almost a shock that Reina Tanaka and Ai Takahashi aren’t singing “Silly Ho” or “I’m Good At Being Bad” instead, or that one of the H!P Kids joining the sempai Musume on this track aren’t making with a Left Eye-styled rap interlude.

The video’s pretty damn good for what is supposed to be a one-off side project tied into a MoMusu-involved stage play. My fellow Cancerian Vee lamented in her recent review that Reina could have worn a hairstyle other than her trademark tails in the PV, which may be true. But I think in Reina’s case, given that she’d worn different hairstyles in the “Mikan” and “Resonant Blue” PV’s and sported a transitional hairstyle during Morning Musume’s recent Taiwanese TV appearance, her wearing her everyday “Wonkytails” in a PV situation seems a shade redundant, but it doesn’t matter since, thinking back to the past couple of years of Morning Musume PVs, Reina doesn’t sport her trademark tails in any of those clips.

Takitty’s touching her face and fooling with her hat seem to get a little tedious as well, but probably only because she was doing something similar (sans hat) in the “Mikan” PV. The hat looks good on Takitty - it makes up for the fact that we don’t see much of her badonkadonk. (Vee is to blame for that word being in my vocabulary in relation to Ai Takahashi!) The three H!P Kids involved, Saki Shimuzu of Berryz Koubou, Maimi Yajima of C-ute, and H!P Egg Yukka Maeda, all do well in their slightly limited roles on the song as well.

The single comes out next week, and I’ve already had my pre-order in for weeks, but no doubt I’ll be checking the torrents this weekend for an advance tideover.

Stuck In A Pagoda With Motoko Aoyama just passed its 2nd Anniversary mark recently. I didn’t make a big deal about it for several reasons… For one, I didn’t make a big deal last year either, and second, the actual date of this blog’s debut has been lost in the ether thanks to the ineptitude of a hair-metal-oldies-band drummer and his not-so-wonderful web hosting staff. I’m guessing that it was April 8th, 2006 when I started this blog, while at the same time I am tempted to make the “official” date April 11th because last year on that day I got to see The Stooges.

Rather than go through some lengthy bullshit on the past, I thought I’d take a cure from the liner notes of Fatboy Slim’s recent greatest-hits anthology and list some of the things this blog and its author have gone through since I started this project:

Two webhosts (only one of which I recommend, Bluehost)
Three laptops (a 2004 Apple PowerBook G4 until 3.17.08, a Dell Inspiron borrowed from my mother, and my present Dell XPS M1530)
Two iPods
Seven Morning Musume singles (counting “Resonant Blue”)
Seven personnel changes in Morning Musume
Three and a half Morning Musume albums (the “half album” being the 7.5 Fuyu Fuyu EP)
Six Berryz Koubou singles
One and a half Berryz Koubou albums (the “half album” being their misnumbered (3) Natsu Natsu Mini Berryz)
Five C-ute singles (all of their major-label releases)
Two and a half C-ute albums
Six Stooges albums (two of those being the remastered editions of their Elektra albums, another being a 180-gram pressing of Raw Power)
Two Koharu Kusumi albums
Four New York Dolls albums (three of those being vinyl editions of all three studio albums)
Four Puffy AmiYumi albums
Four Mission of Burma albums (three of them being the new vinyl reissues on Matador)
Two Panic! At The Disco albums
Two copies of Flyleaf’s first album (one autographed)
Two autographed Sick Puppies CDs
One guitar autographed by Iggy Pop and the Asheton Brothers
Four books autographed by Henry Rollins
One book autographed by Sen. Arlen Specter
One e-mail from Henry Rollins
Two e-mails from Jello Biafra
Three day trips to New York where I spent over $700 combined in one store (Virgin Megastore) alone
Four visits to Apple Stores where I spent $0 (and wish I had been able to spend several times what I spent at Virgin)
Five day trips to Philadelphia
Two day trips to Syracuse, NY
One Stooges concert
One Bon Jovi concert (goddamn motherfucking fuck!)
Two Flyleaf concerts
Two Evanescence concerts
Two Sick Puppies concerts
One missed Puffy AmiYumi concert (goddamn motherfucking fuck!)
Two 100-count spindles of CD-R’s
Two Palm Treo 680 smartphones
Four SD cards
Two phonograph needles (accidentally broke the first one)
Three disbanded Hello! Project groups
Three new Hello! Project groups (not counting Kira Pika and Milky Way)
Two people parting company with Hello! Project altogether one way or another
One Hello! Project-related project getting released in the States (Yo-Yo Girl Cop)
Six Wordpress themes
Four domain names (three for the Pagoda alone, the other for the Reina blog)
Two different Reina Tanaka/Robert Fripp header graphics (Vee improved on the original)
Two years without Ai Kago
One W album that’s gone the way of the original version of SMiLE
One Guns N’ Roses album finally being finished and handed in (whether it gets released may be another story!)
Two knocked-up MoMusus
Two instances where I bitched about Nozomi Tsuji getting knocked up
Three instances where I remarked about what a lucky bastard Taiyo Sugiura is
Three snarky remarks made by me about Avril Lavgine
One snarky remark made by “Reina” about Jamie Lynn Spears
One snarky remark made by me to “Reina” about Beyonce Knowles
Countless snarky remarks about American Idle
Three American Idle contestants losing their recording contracts
Four Reina Tanaka photobooks
One tire
Two illnesses
Two back-to-back NaNoWriMo wins
Three book projects (two simultaneous, one on hold)
One published short story (”The Man In The Hummer” in Deliver Us From Evil, available from Jaded Silence Press)
All three versions of American Wota
One nomination at the IntlWota Awards
Two jokes stolen from Jeff Dunham
One joke stolen from Nothing Nice To Say
Reina Tanaka’s 18th birthday
My 40th birthday
Mike Watt’s 50th birthday
Iggy Pop’s 60th birthday
Several boxes of CD sleeves
Countless mouse and camera batteries
Countless VitaminWaters
Countless instances where I took to heart David Peel’s adage that “fuck” is not a dirty word
A year and a half of lost blog archives (Fuck you, “Vikki Stixx”!)
Not enough trips to Starbucks
More money spent at CDJapan than at Gallery of Sound
More money spent this year on vinyl than CDs
And one girlfriend, since upgraded to fiancée.

Since some of the descriptions of “Resonant Blue”’s music that I’ve seen on other blogs (Yes, Celestia and Yoshimi, I’m talking to both of you!) are inaccurately describing the musical style Morning Musume uses in their forthcoming single as “pop” or “hip-hop” (in both cases… WTF?), a little lesson in the funk is in order. And having grown up on R&B music, suffice it to say that I know my funk, OK. Let’s begin…

First, “Love Rollercoaster” by the Ohio Players. Where do you think the opening guitar lick in “Resonant Blue” comes from?

The video came out yesterday but I didn’t get to see it until this morning. My reaction: Fuck, yeah! And Reina’s one of the centers? Put that “Fuck, yeah!” on a tape loop.

Simply put: They do not make pop music like this in America anymore. This song is capable of slaughtering every song on the current Billboard singles chart that isn’t named “Nine In The Afternoon” or “Sensual Seduction”.

The Japanese celebrate St. Valentine’s day in a rather unique fashion. Women give the men gifts of chocolate as well as other gifts.

While all of this may seem quite one-sided, confectioners in Japan - never ones to miss an opportunity to sell more - took advantage of the Japanese feelings of obligation and created “White Day” in 1980 to help assuage the guilt feelings of those poor obligated males who received chocolate on Valentine’s Day. On March 14th, exactly one month after Valentine’s Day, men who were lucky enough to receive gifts of chocolate have the chance to return the favor by giving the women who gave them gifts of chocolate a more expensive box of chocolate or sweets (for some reason or other, these return gifts seem to be priced slightly higher than those the women purchase). Again, the stores provide plenty of reminders of the approach of this day so that even the most forgetful man cannot say that it slipped his mind. The gifts of chocolate that men buy are in white boxes (after all, it is “White Day”) and come with separate shopping bags to put them in.

(Original text from http://www.tanutech.com/japan/valentine.html)

The reaction so far to my previous post about Radicalquisling has been, save for one sole dissenter, absolutely positive. Thank you, everyone that has commented so far.

And in a further rocking of my whole f’n sock drawer, the lovely Vee chose tonight to surprise me with a new version of the Reina Tanaka/Robert Fripp banner for this blog. Thank you, Vee, you are a true friend.

5. Alvin & The Chipmunks “Christmas Don’t Be Late”. Original, OLD-SCHOOL Alvin and company. No CGI or ProTools involved.

4. Joey Ramone & Friends “Merry Christmas (I Don’t Wanna Fight Tonight)”. A live rendition from the last show Joey ever performed (12.11.01).

3. Reina Tanaka “Kira Kira Fuyu No Shiny G” . Not really a Christmas song, but it was on Morning Musume’s 7.5 Fuyu Fuyu EP that came out right beforehand, and what Tanakachiii fanatic wouldn’t want The Wonkylicious Sex Bomb under their tree?

2. PetitMoni “Pittari Shirari Xmas”. A live version. This one’s for Vee, who adores Hitomi as much as I adore Reina.

1. Spinal Tap “Christmas With The Devil”. From their appearance on Saturday Night Live… in May of 1984, complete with the interview that preceded. At least there wasn’t an 18-inch Stonehenge this time around.

And finally… one of my short stories, “The Man In The Hummer”, was accepted for publication by Jaded Silence Press for their horror anthology Deliver Us From Evil, to be released in early 2008. More on a release date when I get it. I found out Saturday afternoon and sent them the corrected final draft yesterday.

MERRY CHRISTMAS!

Her Royal Hotness, The Wonkylicious Sex Bomb, the woman my girlfriend is probably the most jealous of, and most of all my favorite MoMusu, Reina Tanaka, is finally legal!

As seems to be a tradition amongst H!P fans, I have to offer a piece of cake (vicariously) to my favorite idol… in this case, a piece of cheesecake:

But now, here’s something that you DIDN’T see coming…

reina_t_1111: Good morning, old man
minimoniotaku: What’s so good about it?
reina_t_1111: The caffeine hasn’t kicked in yet, huh?
minimoniotaku: Just had to pour a third cup.
reina_t_1111: I’ll take that as a yes.
minimoniotaku: What’s up, Wonkylicious?
reina_t_1111: I’ll be blunt - what do you think of “Mikan”?
minimoniotaku: I haven’t heard it yet.
reina_t_1111: You WHAT?
reina_t_1111: Don’t tell me you’re going to wait until you get the single in the mail on Thanksgiving Eve!
reina_t_1111: Presuming that CDJapan will ship it to you on the Monday beforehand, of course.
minimoniotaku: Perhaps.
reina_t_1111: The video’s all over YouTube, no surprise. There’s even a subtitled version out already. Here, look: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9C6kgOlns9g
minimoniotaku: OK, Wonkylicious, I’ll check it out later and get something posted tonight.
reina_t_1111: You know your homegirl Vee has screencaps up at Pink Wota, right?
minimoniotaku: Yeah, those I saw. I posted the link to the article over at IW, remember?
reina_t_1111: Oh, that’s right, I saw that yesterday. Then again, that’s how I saw Vee’s piece in the first place.
reina_t_1111: Speaking of writing, how’s the new novel coming?
minimoniotaku: Over 15,000 words already and I should have 20,000 by Monday morning.
reina_t_1111: Fantastic. I can’t wait to read it.
minimoniotaku: I can’t wait to get this one AND Play It All Night Long finished!
kohar_pinku: Hey there, fuckfaces! Hey there, fuckfaces!
reina_t_1111: Oh, that’s what happened to my copy of Hex Enduction Hour! Koharu, you little thief!
minimoniotaku: Miss Kusumi, watch your fuckin’ language.
kohar_pinku: Shit, I’m sorry, Marsicano-sempai.
reina_t_1111: Hey, Koharu, what brings you to IM right now?
kohar_pinku: I wanted to ask CJ what he thought of my new solo single now that he’s downloaded it off US iTunes.
minimoniotaku: *headdesk*
reina_t_1111: Well, it has been mostly worship posts of me on his blog for the past month, save for when The Ruts’s guitarist died…

reina_t_1111: Hey schmuck.
minimoniotaku: Hey yourself, Wonkylicious. What’s on your mind?
reina_t_1111: Are you still trying to bust my ovaries over playing the Spice Girls on Five Stars Wednesday the other day?
minimoniotaku: What makes you say that?
reina_t_1111: I had a peek at your advance posts, the title of the 11.9.07 post was a dead giveaway
minimoniotaku: Well, I couldn’t use “Red Is The Colour Of My Favorite MoMusu” twice in the same week, now could I?
reina_t_1111: No, but this is the third worship post in a row that you’ve done of me where I’m wearing something red.
minimoniotaku: I didn’t even realize that until you pointed it out. The caffeine hasn’t kicked in yet this morning.
reina_t_1111: One of these days you’re going to have one cup of coffee too many and you’ll turn into Henry Rollins.
minimoniotaku: I’ve been trying to do that for about fifteen years now.
reina_t_1111: I rest my case.