Sdtrk: ‘I found the F’ by Broadcast

As previously mentioned, Sidore-chan and I had been requisitioned for yet another television interview; this time airing on a show called ‘Outsiders’ on Titan Television, for the good people of Sweden. It was Three Days of Driving, Flying and Sweating!

THURSDAY, 24 AUGUST
By the time I reached Northwest terminal A8 at Detroit’s Metropolitan airport, I was already sweating like a New York waiter. It was partially due to all that bloody walking from one end of the fecking airport to the other, but it seemed to set a ridiculously moist and annoying precedent for the whole week-end.
But perhaps I should start at the beginning!

As my flight was due to take off at 7.26pm, I had gotten round to my friend Tsukihime’s at 5pm; she lives about 15min away from Metro airport, and was gracious enough to let me leave my car there, and drive me to Metro. Lovely lass; wouldn’t hear a word against her.
Now, since Jan, they’d been revamping the airport (probably before then, actually), and as I love airports, I was perfectly happy with waiting round for a couple of hours. However, the airport I had known through my youth was long gone. It was bigger, and completely stripped of the wood panelling I enjoyed so much. I’m led to believe that with the fact that Detroit was host to the XXXIII Superblow at the head of this year, they wanted to undoubtedly bring the appearance of Metro kicking and screaming out of 1971. So as a consequence, the airport, or at least McNamara Terminal, is now vast and enormous. It has a tram system and moving walkways, but it looks like a bloody mall. There’s a Japanese cuisine on the concourse, along with a Quizno’s, but it’s not as intimate and close as the Metro that I’d always known. My best friend Sean and I would periodically meet with a friend of ours named Tammy, who lived behind Metro airport, and we would waste hours of our Saturdays there. One time, when we’d brought Monti along, the four of us managed to persuade a luggage porter to ride us around a couple of terminals on one of those motorised yellow carts, which was beyond ace. Plus, we managed to get the whole adventure on videotape! Good times, good times.
But yeah! Metro’s too bloody big now. But at least they have a tram. Which I definitely would’ve used had I known it existed, as I had to walk from the security area, all the way to the end of one of the wings. Try doing that in steel-toed boots, matey. Not a good idea.

Speaking of the security area, due to the recent bollocks over in England, now liquids and gels are verboten on flights. Bloody ridiculous. The security attendant made me abandon my aerosol deodorant as well as my toothpaste! I have to agree with (justifiably) cranky Harry Hutton — the real terrorists are the people who thought to ban things like nail clippers, toothpaste, and juice boxes. I thought they were gonna give me stick about my wrist belts, which I usually have to hide whenever I cross the border into Canada, not to mention my beloved steel-toed German tank boots, but they passed through without incident. Huh?
It’s a rather lengthy and idiotic process. Anything questionable or metallic on your person, including shoes of all sorts, you had to strip off, place in a deep tray, and slide it through the X-ray machine. They don’t do the wanding thing anymore, as that would probably slow down the process even further. They then pick through your luggage if need be — which is what happened to me, so I had some security lass rustling through my underwear — and then, after you’re not established as being a threat, they hand you back your stuff, and it takes you five minutes to get dressed again. Really; what price security?

My plane — a Northwest Airlines mid-sized jet — would have taken off on schedule, but due to runway delays, we didn’t actually leave until about 8pm. Upon reflection, I should’ve checked my seating (one of the people over at Titan television had booked it), as I would’ve preferred a window seat, but was instead sat in the middle; some suedehead was in the window seat, reading a book in French. Really, though, the being in the air part of the flight itself went without a hitch, which only reminded me of how ace air travel in general really is. Apart from the tag team of loud infants, of course. I had thought — no, hoped — that a new development of air travel would be to stow all children under the age of, say, eight, in a soundproofed lower berth of the aircraft. Or, at the very least, ship them like luggage, where they’d be waiting on the carousel at your destination. I consider myself a forward thinker.
I have to note, that at one point, the little beast that was a couple of seats behind me was screaming ‘TAKE IT AWAY! TAKE IT AWAAAYY!!’ for some godforsaken reason. It was as if I were listening to Nine inch nails..

Having arrived safely at Los Angeles Airport after a four hour and fifty-eight minute flight, I wandered round Terminal 2 for a male and female couple who looked as if they were descended from Vikings. Now, one of the things I was looking forward to is that Sofia (the person at Titan television orchestrating this whole venture) had told me that the film crew of Anna and Clas would be waiting for me at the terminal, holding a sign with ‘Davecat’ written on it, which I was ecstatic about, as I’ve never had anyone do that for me in my entire life. If only! Instead, they were an hour late, due to navigating LA’s labyrinthine roads. It can’t be held entirely against them, as LA’s motorways have reduced lesser men to shuddering, sobbing heaps.
So my interrogators from Sverige consisted of interviewer Anna Jillhed, a blonde (duh, Sweden) lass with a habit of indulging in smokeless tobacco, and cameraman Clas Elofsson, a former IKEA driver (duh, Sweden) who looked facially a wee bit like fellow iDollator Everhard, but with a rounder head. We exchanged pleasantries, piled into their rental car, and took off for our Comfort Inn in Escondido.
Interesting to note: According to Google Maps, the distance between these two locations is one hour, forty seven minutes. For some bizarre fantastical reason, it took us just under three hours to get there. Oddly enough, I believe we passed two additional airports on the way to the hotel. ‘Why didn’t they fly into San Diego Airport, just south of San Marcos?’, you axe? Well, apparently Anna & Clas were shooting a previous article in El Lay a couple of days before I’d arrived; also, as San Diego isn’t as big as LAX, there would’ve been layovers. But why was the drive longer than it should’ve been? Fuck if I know.

After making a detour to find a 7-11, so I could purchase some toothpaste and deodorant *shaking head*, we pulled into the Comfort Inn, were given our room keys, and sloped off to our rooms, somewhere in the neighbourhood of 2am PST. Of course, as far as my body was concerned, it was 5am EST. Egad.

During the few minutes I had before tumbling headlong into sleep, I was trying to suss just what was up with the Swedes, as they were kinda rubbing me the wrong way. With every film/tv crew that I’ve previously dealt with, they had made an effort to do their homework on me and the concept of Synthetiks; or, at the very least, ask a passel of questions about those subjects during any time we had between filming; like, say, a 2+ hour drive, for instance. Did they have any questions? Not a one. Furthermore, whenever I brought up the topic of Dolls, they seemed largely uninterested. With Elisabeth, Elena and Allison’s crews, I’d really lucked out, as they genuinely found the subject fascinating, and as such, were fun to talk to, and a pleasure to work with. The vibe I got from Anna & Clas was ‘ehh, it’s a job; let’s do this and get it overwith’. For fuck’s sake, people, if you don’t actually give a toss, fake it. At the very least, it would make me feel better.
On top of that, they spent a good chunk of the drive, and indeed, their whole visit, speaking to each other in Swedish. Yes yes, I know that’s their native tongue, but it’s a little.. non-inclusive. That’s the sort of behaviour you engage in when I’m not around, not when you’re trying to buddy up to the subject of your filming. Given their apparent disinterest, how was I to know they weren’t talking about me?
And when they weren’t doing that, they were busy flirting with each other. Heh. But more on that later.

Needless to say, I didn’t exactly hit the sack in the highest of spirits. Well, there was being at Abyss tomorrow to look forward to, at least..

NEXT UP: Friday!

Technorati tags: Davecat, Sidore, RealDoll, iDollator, Abyss Creations, Titan Television

Sdtrk: ‘The light’ by Merzbow

The inspectors have come round, and declared our place to be Swede-free, so Sidore-chan and I are back to our regular status of being Internet personalities, as opposed to television personalities. She’s asleep at the moment, so meanwhile I’m busy composing the posts that will detail the past week-end’s events. The series will be called ‘My Morbid Onion Hell: How I Galloped To The Edge of Sanity In A Burning Hansom Cab’, and it’ll span 23 parts. It should be up before the week-end, cross fingers, so keep an eye out!

In the meantime, enjoy a picture I’d taken on Friday!

To my chagrin, these were not free samples

Sdtrk: ‘Do or die’ by the Human League

There are pretty much two styles of Sixties architecture that make me come over all frothy: there’s the utopian, futuristic style of a vintage Space age vision (Montreal’s Expo ’67, Villa Spies), and then there’s the grim dystopian style of what we were given instead (Trellick tower). I have to say that I love them both equally. If I were to compare them to films that I dig, on the one hand you have ‘Barbarella’, and on the other, you’ve got ‘Alphaville’. In fact, ‘Alphaville’ has a lot of rather ace buildings in it, but I’m certain finding particular names and backgrounds in English for any of them would be like looking for a needle placed gently somewhere on the dark side of the moon. However, it’s always a joy being able to present information about the buildings that I like — it’s a small victory, especially after sifting through all that Interweb. And you know I get easily distracted. So tonight, you get a fine example of dystopia, in the shape of the housing developments of Alexandra road, designed by Neave Brown in 1969.

A community center that includes a school, reception center, maintenance facilities and the heating plant mark the entrance to the site from London Road to the west and open to the park areas. The lower buildings contain maisonettes with shared access, terraces, and gardens. Maisonettes also occupy the top two levels of the large slab with entrance from a continuous gallery at the 7th floor.

Alexandra road is a pretty good example of the Brutalist style that was prevalent during the late Fifties and Sixties — you’ve got fab structures such as Brunswick centre, the Tricorn shopcentre, and Alton west estate, among several others. As stated, Alexandra road Housing is Brutalism’s take on the old Victorian era style of terraced housing; vast rows of homes that are built shoulder-to-shoulder, sharing adjacent walls. The apparent lack of space makes it look a wee bit grim on first glance, but there’s a certain romanticism about them — ever see ‘Coronation street’? Well, these apartments would be Coronation street 2099.

Still in use to this day, the clean and well-defined lines of this distinctive housing project only falls short in one respect — it failed to inspire more architects to repeat the style elsewhere. I suppose that makes Alexandra road Housing that much more special

Sdtrk: ‘Secondo coro delle Lavandaie’ by Roberto de Simone

During a recent whirl on the Internuts, I typed ‘My living Doll DVD’ into Google as a bit of folly. Yeah, I know I’ve been trying to keep abreast of any and all news on that, but sometimes things slip under my radar. Like this new Giant Robo feature, for instance. But that’s another story altogether.
So one of the links leads me to a telly-series-on-DVD forum, where I found this thread — ‘My living Doll & My Favorite Martian‘ — which dates from the 16th of last month. The original poster, who claims to work with Jack Chertok Television, Inc. (Jack Chertok being the producer of both shows), starts out with

To all those fans of both shows here is some word on both,

My Living Doll, Starring Julie Newmar.. Most of the key film elements have now been located, the show is about to be restored and put on a non bootleg DVD for the first time.

and I’m thinking, ‘but I’d read the prints were destroyed in a fit of pique!’, which is pretty much what someone had posted, and the OP responds with

The truth is stranger than the fiction you have read all these years, fact one producer Jack Chertok NEVER threw out My Living Doll elements, they were miss placed, also due to the strange way many of the shows were registered back in the sixties many people thought it was PD, not so the rights are intact.
The show is a present being put back together element by element. to make perfect hi def masters.

Hmm. As long as this poster’s real name isn’t Lucifer, the Prince of Lies, this is fantastic news. I’ll believe it when those hallowed DVDs are in my sweaty hands, however..

Speaking of Synthetiks, you might want to give my YouTube page a look-in if you’re so inclined, as I’ve posted not one, but two new videos there. Happy 23rd!

Technorati tags: My living Doll, Julie Newmar, Gynoid, sitcom, DVD

Sdtrk: ‘Going south’ by Indian jewelry

So I’d done a post last year about Daisuke ‘Dice-K’ Enomoto, who would’ve been the first otaku in space. What d’ye mean, you don’t recall? (Actually, I was suprised myself that that was written almost a whole year ago..)
Well, turns out he can’t go. His mum wouldn’t sign his permission slip, the poor bastard.

I suppose he can blame this on the misfortune of his birth

Health test defeats space tourist
BBC News | Monday, 21 August 2006, 16:18 GMT 17:18 UK

A Japanese businessman hoping to fly to the International Space Station (ISS) has failed his medical test, according to Russian space agency officials.

Daisuke “Dice-K” Enomoto, 34, was hoping to become the fourth space tourist after being chosen to fly on board a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

He was due to accompany the 14th space station crew on a flight next month.

Previous private space explorers are Americans Dennis Tito and Greg Olsen and South African Mark Shuttleworth.

Russian Federal Space Agency spokesman Igor Panarin said that Enomoto was “deemed not ready to fly for exclusively medical reasons”.

He was due to begin the journey on 14 September with US commander Miguel Lopez-Alegria and Russian flight engineer Mikhail Tyurin.
the rest of the article is here

Medical reasons are the exact sort of thing that’ll probably end up keeping a lot of us trapped on earth, instead of being spacebound. I want to be a Newtype too, damnit!

As an aside, I love the illo that someone drew of him that he’s got on his website, as reprinted above. Of course, it’s a lot funnier if you’re a Gundam fan, but nevertheless

EDIT (23 Aug): Changed the news article links to the BBC News page. Why? Cos if you look at the photo they have of Dice-K, you’ll see a Zeon patch on the right shoulder of his flightsuit. Very savvy

Technorati tags: Daisuke Enomoto, Dice-K, Gundam, Char Aznable, cosplay, space tourist

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