Random crap.
It’s cherry blossom season now! Going through my box of old photographs, I found these pictures of cherry blossoms in a park near where my in-laws live in Nagano Prefecture. We were visiting Japan for a month when I took these. These photos were taken on Fujicolor 200 film with my Canon AE-1 Program SLR camera. Below are photos I took at night on a bulb exposure with my tripod.
Lastly is this cute picture of Mayu I took the next day at that park.
There are a few movies on this I haven’t seen. I’ve never seen a single Rocky movie all the way through. I don’t think I saw a full Rambo movie either. The most was seeing First Blood but it was on cable TV and I started it about 15 minutes late. I can’t recall ever watching any Richard Pryor movie. Never saw Tootsie because my parents didn’t want me to watch a movie involving transvestitism and I barely remember 9 to 5. My family weren’t big on James Bond movies either, and it wasn’t until high school when I finally saw the old Sean Connery movies. I’ve seen the rest off these movies. I remember the summer of ’89 when my friend Matt and I saw Last Crusade and Batman in the same day at the same theater on Bell Road. There was a cool game arcade next door where we played video games in between the two movies. That was a great day.
How many of these little Tomy wind-up walking robots did you have? I had two. I wish I still had mine somewhere. Maybe I do? These Robot Rascals debuted in 1977, and were later rebranded as Pocket Bots in the ’80s. Just looking at photos of these little fellas reminds of the sound they made while walking. I used to play with these with my Star Wars action figures, pretending that they were some sort of older Astromech droid still used by the Rebel Alliance. Mine looked just like the ones below.
When I was in college in my old bedroom at my parents’ house, these little guys stood guard atop my stereo in the corner of my desk. You can see one, out of focus, in the photos of my old bedroom I posted to Greg’s Life.
It’s cool how YouTube can, out of the blue, recommend music I’ve never heard of before and when I click to listen, I become completely enamored with it. I’d never heard of Castlebeat before, but now I’m definitely a fan. The above “Change Your Mind” music video showed up in the algorithm and the cute Japanese girl caught my eye. I clicked on it and loved it. The song reminded me a bit of The Radio Dept. with the whispering vocals. The footage used to make this video was taken from some Japanese short film from the ’60s. I’ve no idea what this movie is about, but this actress is very talented at expressing emotion.
Since I liked that video, next to be recommended by Castlebeat was this video of “I Follow.” This video uses footage from the movie Career Opportunities. That movie came out in 1991. I was 15 at that time and my adolescence was really kicking into high gear about that time. I had a subscription to Muppets Magazine in the ’80s and Jennifer Connelly graced the cover when Labyrinth came out and I thought she was pretty then. But in ’91, Jennifer Connelly and her boobs were so pretty and she became my imaginary wife. She was in other movies like The Rocketeer and Dark City, but after 2000 she became so thin and gaunt-looking. The most recent movie I saw her in was Top Gun: Maverick and she still doesn’t really resemble the round-faced beauty I fell in love with back then.
Lastly, check out this video. The previous two videos were fan-made, but this is an official video by Spirit Goth Records. I love the old ’80s video game arcade footage.
Castlebeat’s music can be described in different ways. Lo-fi, dreampop, shoegaze. I’m really not an expert, but I like the effect of nostalgia I feel while listening.