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posted by [personal profile] orichalcum at 01:35pm on 13/06/2005
It was a very good weekend, of the kind I hope I have more of: Lots of fun, but also reminding me why I'm ready to leave this wonderful city.


Friday night, we went with a friend to see Howl's Moving Castle. And, it being NYC, despite the fact that this was a strangely named obscure Anime film, the theater was packed and we wound up in the back row. The film is great, but better if you don't think about how much it differs from the book, and also if you relax into the pretty images and try not to analyze the incoherence of the plot. There is no discernible pattern to certain crucial plot elements, for instance. Also, war is Bad. Steampunk is Kewl.

Saturday, we wandered around in the afternoon at the 2nd Big Apple Barbecue Block Party - 10 barbecue pitmasters from all over the country, selling their 'cue for $7 a plate in Madison Square Park, along with live bluegrass and swing and other appropriate music. More on this later. But we really should have dragged [livejournal.com profile] julianyap down for it - he would have been in heaven.

Saturday evening we went off to the Children's Day festival at South Street Seaport to see They Might Be Giants for a free concert, along with the same friend as Friday and other folks who we met up with there. It's a tradition of A's and mine to see TMBG free at least once every NYC summer, and we did, and they sang "New York City" for us, which is one of Our Songs, and it was good. There were only two weird things - one was that, as has been true at other recent concerts, TMBG clearly wanted to play their new, not-so-good stuff, whereas the crowd just wanted more Flood.

The other disconcerting aspect was looking around the crowd at all the children. Now, it's Children's Day, totally logical for there to be lots of kids. But these kids had parents who...were our age, or within a few years of it. TMBG isn't a cool hip college-kid band anymore. It's a band for people who, well, are often old enough to have 2-year-olds bouncing along on their shoulders to Birdhouse, while the pierced and sexy t-shirt wearing parents happily bounced along. They were selling TMBG onesies at the souvenir stand.

Afterwards, there were fireworks over the East River, which were also very cool, if loud, and badly choreographed. Then we walked home (well, I walked about 3/4 of the way home; A walked the rest. I appear to have a current walking tolerance, in this heat, of about 2 neighborhoods. That is, I can walk through Downtown (Tribeca plus crosstown) and Soho, but not through the Village and Chelsea as well. )

On Sunday we went back to the Barbecue Party with Stu and [livejournal.com profile] ladybird97, and had the Best Beef Brisket Evah from Salt Lick BBQ from Texas. Of all the different 'cues, I like Texas bbq and Texas bbq sauce best, I've decided. The sauce-laden bread was practically the best part, apart from Blue Smoke's strawberry rhubarb bars, which also rocked. And then we rehydrated with Shake Shack Shakes and Jamba Juice. Not a healthy weekend, but oh, so yummy. The only bad part was that, well, there were tens of thousands of people there, and the lines for each 'cue stall were Disneyland-like, about 45 minutes in the heat, on the asphalt.



That's the thing about NYC. We've got more cool stuff going on in the summer than anywhere else I know, but whenever you get an idea, no matter how random, at least 30,000 other people will have had the Exact Same Idea and 12,000 of them will have gotten there first. I could decide I wanted to go kayaking at midnight down the Hudson and I'd probably run into a traffic jam. It'll be nice to move somewhere a bit less crowded.

Now I want the heat and humidity to Go Away. And I must get back to work.
Mood:: 'amused' amused
Music:: New York City - TMBG
There are 10 comments on this entry. (Reply.)
 
posted by [identity profile] foldedfish.livejournal.com at 05:49pm on 13/06/2005
the incoherence of the plot. There is no discernible pattern to certain crucial plot elements

In an anime film? Shocked! Shocked, I am!
 
posted by [identity profile] orichalcum.livejournal.com at 06:02pm on 13/06/2005
But lots of people go to see Miyazaki who aren't used to normal anime patterns, and besides, this is even more so. And it's based on an English fantasy book, so people might expect it to make sense or something.
 
posted by [identity profile] foldedfish.livejournal.com at 06:09pm on 13/06/2005
Without having seen the film, I'll wager it featured thin people with big eyes, including squeaky-voiced women, plus things changing shape and a bunch of stuff blowing up, ending with a giant nihilistic cataclysm.
 
posted by [identity profile] contrariety.livejournal.com at 06:41pm on 13/06/2005
...giant nihilistic cataclysm...

Hmm, well, there's some firebombing and a castle falls apart, but giant nihilistic cataclysm might be going a bit too far... ;)
 
posted by [identity profile] foldedfish.livejournal.com at 06:44pm on 13/06/2005
Is the castle that falls apart the one referenced in the title, and hence the setting and arguably the central focus of the film? If so, I stand by my claim. :)
 
posted by [identity profile] apintrix.livejournal.com at 07:06pm on 13/06/2005
aw, Jeff...
Miyazaki is just about the only Japanese animator who generally *avoids* giant cataclysm and squeaky-voiced, dinner-plate-eyed women.
There is shapechanging. Shapechanging is nifty, and puts to good use the potentialities of the animated medium. Go shapechanging.

There are skinny people. There are old, non-skinny people. There are young chubby people. There are any sort of people you might name. I hope you're being facetious, because you make me sad.
 
posted by [identity profile] foldedfish.livejournal.com at 07:25pm on 13/06/2005
Facetious? Moi?
 
posted by [identity profile] digitalemur.livejournal.com at 09:05pm on 13/06/2005
In a way, Miyazaki does more meaningful cataclysm. I get very upset when Satsuki is searching for Mei in _Totoro_, even after watching it multiple times. It works because he can get you to see these relatively little events through their eyes, and see how big the events are to them. But we don't need monsters attacking cities, or spaceships crashing, to convey all that drama; sometimes a shoe is enough.

I was just digging around and found out it's a bit autobiographical; Miyazaki's mom was hospitalized off and on or years.

Wow, I was thinking about watching that again, but I know right now I'd just cry and want my mommy.
 
posted by [identity profile] digitalemur.livejournal.com at 06:25pm on 13/06/2005
Quite true. Though some of Diana Wynne Jones' books don't make much sense. _Hexwood_ is really confusing, for instance. I do remember _Howl's Moving Castle_ making sense when I read it, however.
 
posted by [identity profile] contrariety.livejournal.com at 06:55pm on 13/06/2005
I liked the movie quite a bit; I wasn't sure how I was going to deal with the plot changes (I had heard there were some) but overall I think that I liked them. Plot aside, I think some of them made the *backstory* more coherent. The backstory is the hardest thing to follow about Howl--like, *what?* There were *how* many princes? And they were turned into *what?* and *why?* And this has *what* to do with the Witch of the Waste and Sophie's sisters? Witness the fact that I never can remember the answers to any of those questions, except that they were all connected somehow.

Plot incoherence... hmm... I didn't think it was too bad, but I do think the pacing was somewhat haphazard and that character motivations sometimes lacked explanation. This happens so very often in anime that I tend to wonder if it may be a cultural thing: motivations for some things would just be obvious to someone Japanese. *shrug*

I felt like he actually clued Calcifer's backstory better than Jones does (before the flashback, that is)...

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