the.[ED]ition

I’ll write up a bit more tomorrow or the day after but Carl should be here any minute now so I don’t really have too much time.

Summer Sonic was a blast, though. People in Japan may seem polite and organized in everyday life but give them a rock concert and they’re crazy. I wish I had like…a motorcycle or something to take me between the venues since there were a few acts I would’ve liked to see but couldn’t due to time but I did catch The Ting Tings, Vampire Weekend, The Shoes, The Teenagers, Junkie XL, Boom Boom Satellite, Justice, Alicia Keys and Coldplay yesterday.

Here’s a video from the Coldplay set when they went into the crowd onto a little tiny platform and performed The Scientist with acoustic guitars.

The first voice you hear is the Japanese dude beside me. He doesn’t speak English and doesn’t know the lyrics so I told him if he wanted to sing along, I would post it on YouTube so he did with his terrible Engrish. The even more terrible “WOOoooooooO…” near the end is me, though.

The finale of So You Think You Can Dance was on Thursday…and other that naming the actual winner of season 4, we saw two poppers from early in the competition, Robert Muraine and Phillip Chbeeb, battle it out on the stage to Kanye West. I mentioned Robert Muraine earlier this summer but that isn’t to take anything away from Chbeeb, who I actually thought was better in the video below. What amazing talent…seriously, no one should be able to move like this.

F’n awesome.

Sundays in Japan are always eventful. I mentioned the cosplay girls in Harajuku before but there’s other attractions mere feet from the girl’s usual spot in front of Meiji Jingu.

For one thing, there’s a bunch of folks recreating 1950’s Grease rockabilly style at the entrance to Yoyogi Park. The park and the surrounding areas are full of undiscovered bands hoping a talent agent will stumble on them and sign them. Some are good, some are great…and some are plain…uh…weird.

I’ve got a video and more pictures lined up but here’s a few and there’s a bit more on my Flickr.

Yes, I’ll get to my Tokyo post but first, I received an e-mail from Matt Harding yesterday informing me that the latest video of him dancing to that funky music, white boy…is up and running. I posted about Matt’s ridiculous but totally awesome “dancing around the world” videos and last September, when he said he would make a stop in Vancouver, I took the opportunity to go meet him and be in the video. Here’s us boogie-ing down. I’m not sure which one of us is better at dancing poorly…or whether that’s actually winning, really.

Here’s the whole video. Yes, it is, in fact, epic as hell and made of win…although the screenshots above are obviously the best part since I’m in it. But what the heck, watch the rest anyways.

Whoever said working in a cubicle farm is boring has obviously never been to this office.

This is actually some decent film-making! Can you imagine working somewhere where everyone’s expense accounts include several entries for “Nerf Guns”?

Stay tuned for the first of many Tokyo-related posts tomorrow!