If you haven’t heard of him already, you’re probably not Japanese. American-born singer Jero is the biggest thing in Japan, offering a cool take on the “old school” singing genre Enko but with an interesting hip hop twist as you’ll see below:
It’s always cool to see self-identity transcend race and break new ground. And while this young brother may be Japan’s Charley Pride, gotta give it up to the quirky country for being….well…quirky. — MG
Not sure if this is a case of mental illness, child abuse, public drunkenness or a combination of all three. Either way I’m sure Child Protective Services will be intrigued:
UPDATE:
Here’s what happened after the above video went viral yesterday:
To all those friends of mine who disagree with the idea of living to 300+, imagine the below world but 150x better:
An entertaining look at the early days of Steve Jobs.
As the tech world mourns one of its greatest, here is an entertaining way to remember the late Apple co-founder Steve Jobs. Embedded below is Pirates Of Silicon Valley — an Emmy Award-winning docudrama about the two geniuses who drove the early days of the PC industry and ultimately changed the world. Aired in 1999, Pirates starred Noah Whye as Steve Jobs and Anthony Michael Hall as Bill Gates. As reported on this Wikipedia entry, reception to the film was tremendous:
The Apollo Guide commented that, “Over less than 30 years, a band of shaggy nerds rose to become the richest people on Earth. They were the pioneers of the computer industry [...] While you might think that a story about the creation of computer companies might be as thrilling as your university Pascal course, think again. Seeing this history played out is thoroughly entertaining [...] Jobs, played by Noah Wyle, is a child of the ‘60s: an advocate of peace and spirituality who places art on a higher pedestal than commerce. Jobs’ charisma, drive and ideology form a dangerous cocktail. He pushes Apple designers into such a frenzy that they work 90-hour weeks and intensely compete with each other. Anthony Michael Hall does an impressive job mimicking Bill Gates. Gates is portrayed as obsessed and impossibly nerdy.”[7] Rob Owen of the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette argued that the film is, “a fascinating drama filled with Shakespearean twists and betrayals as viewers come to know the geniuses who transformed not only the way we communicate, but the way we live. You’re looking at the proof: This review was written using a program created by Gates’ Microsoft, and TV Week is designed using one of Jobs’ Macintosh computers.”[8] John Leonard of NY Magazine, described the film as “a hoot.”[9]
In memory of the great Steve Jobs, here is the film in its entirety. Enjoy. — MG
Definition: Internet Troll. In Internet slang, a troll is someone who posts inflammatory, extraneous, or off-topic messages in an online community, such as an online discussion forum, chat room, or blog, with the primary intent of provoking readers into an emotionalresponse or of otherwise disrupting normal on-topic discussion. – Wikipedia
Years ago in the mid 90s I was a writer and editor for the urban Toronto magazine, Word. During my tenure there I wrote a piece that bothered me for years. It was about Christie Blatchford, then a longtime Toronto Sun columnist who was Ann Coulter before Coulter was. Back in the day there was a lot of animosity between Blatchford and Toronto’s afrosomething cognoscenti over was what perceived to be a racial bias against young African-Canadians in her far-right columns. Indeed during my database research it was evident that Blatchford negatively obsessed over blacks, especially Jamaicans, far more than any other ethnic group I queried.
Trollzilla rises again.
As a journalist, however, I approached the story objectively and attempted to find the human behind the inflammatory prose. Turns out she indeed had a human side; she was affable, thoughtful and, as I vaguely recall, may have undergone a failed marriage and other empathetic experiences. We got along quite well during the interview and I especially liked her hip eyewear.
By the time the article was published I had moved to the Bronx, New York and was taken aback by the cover page headline the editors had chosen for my piece: Christie Blatchford Likes It Doggystyle (a reference to her admission of including Snoopy Doggy Dogg in her CD collection). In addition to the puerile headline, I was troubled by “my” article as it included words I had not written, allowing the editors to anonymously hide behind my by-line and lob all sorts of slings and arrows at Blatchford. Whether deserved or not, the story was far cruder than what I had intended and for years after, I had hoped to apologize to Blatchford if we ever crossed lines in Toronto’s overlapping media circles.
Until Monday.
Less than 24 hours after the sudden and shocking death of Opposition leader Jack Layton, Blatchford penned a crafty diatribe against the popular NDP icon, claiming his final letter to Canadians was “vainglorious” and remarking “who seriously writes of himself, ‘All my life I have worked to make things better’?” Apart from the reality that in the dying moments of one’s life, rewrites are highly unlikely, Blatchford condescendingly dismisses the work Layton did “to make things better.” Lest we forget, as Blatchford has clearly done, here’s what Layton did to make things better:
Even his less heralded achievements made things better including supporting bike infrastructure (fighting to get bikes on the TTC and popularizing the now ubiquitous ring-and-post stands that provide thousands of Torontonians a safe place to lock their bikes).
Blatchford didn’t just take several ill-timed digs at a man who had just succumbed to cancer, she also derided Canadians who, on a rare occasion, were unified in grief. Heartlessly and yet with unaccredited authority, she equates mourning of a transformative national leader to the death of a Jersey Shore cast member:
“Certainly, Canadians liked Mr. Layton, but the public over-the-top nature of such events — by fans for lost celebrities they never met, by television personalities for those they interviewed once for 10 minutes, by the sad and lost for the dead — make it if not impossible then difficult to separate the mourning wheat from the mourning chaff. ”
Somehow, Blatchford is unable to see what even conservative politicians like Prime Minister Stephen Harper, former Prime Minister Brian Mulroney and Toronto mayor Rob Ford honorably acknowledged — death transcends everything including politics, geographical borders and even the cold, sociopathic need to sell newspapers at any cost including human decency. There is no separation of wheat and chaff when it comes to the ending of a human being’s life, particularly one cut short because of disease.
The resemblance is striking
And perhaps the worst part is the fact that Blatchford knows all of this and yet wrote a stunningly tasteless column to sell newspapers and generate pageviews. It is a sad confirmation that the columnist is not much more than a troll, seeking attention at any cost. Unfortunately her bottom-feeding worked like a Perez Hilton blog post as her name continues to be a trending topic on Twitter nearly 48 hours after publishing this untimely bile.
One can only hope when her own time runs out, Blatchford will finally realize there is more to life than just being a troll. — MG
–
Below is my favorite of the many videos circulating in memory of a well-liked politician and great Canadian.
Here’s some stuff I shot from my iPhone while looking for some hot G20 “action!”
You can see more videos here if you’re bored and/or curious. MG
Here’s it is….the unboxing of my spanking new iPad:
Feels anti-climatic at this point but that’ll change when I get this thing up to speed. Ironically the video you’re watching was shot with my Google N1. — MG
As the market hopes to maintain stability this week, just remember it’s guys like this freak who are influencing it:
This is why we heart Coco…
Uh, this ain’t no Paper Planes….
M.I.A, Born Free from ROMAIN-GAVRAS on Vimeo.