MySpace a place for friends

(Likewise, as for me, I've heard say that I'm a Freemason & a Rosicrucian & a Troubadour & a Qabalist & a Buddhist & an Hermetic & a Gnostic & even a SubGenius & a Ceremonial Magician, but I would never say anything like that except in the way that I didn't say it just now ;-)

* God (a non-sectarian, non-denominational, equal opportunity employer!)

* My Wife

* My Son

* My Friends

* My Fellow Man

* My Community

* My Country

* OUR World

* The True & Invisible

* My Work - I work at what I love to do & I do what I love for a living (and I use the word "Love" VERY very carefully in my life!)

* Walks - I have walked more miles in the midnight hour than probably anyone you'll ever meet! I have been known to walk 5 1/2 miles a day 3-4 days a week with 2 pounds of weights on each wrist, 2 1/2 pounds of weights on each ankle, a 40 pound weight vest and a 25 pound backpack, all while doing a 30 minute upper body callisthenic workout, though I'm not doing that as much as I'd like to these days. I have to do it at night because after 9/11 people would see me and think I was loaded with explosives - I do look like an anime character wearing them and it has elicted every kind of reaction from stark fear to infatuation - but since Bayonne is right across the Hudson River from New York City (and where the bodies of many of the 9/11 victims were sent), and we were so fearful of another terrorist attack at the time, especially when the contingency plans for the plotters were found some three weeks later in a house 1/2 mile from here, I just didn't want to scare people anymore, so now I "put my armor on" and walk only at night. I figured that, if I were able to wear all that stuff and walk that far for that long (1.75 hours usually) that I'd be able to do a full day's work and stay off of disability. So far, so good lol!

* Joyriding (aka touring, motoring, cruising, etc.). I live by the largest congress of major highways in the U.S., which is ideal for me within minutes to take to the road to pretty much anywhere in the continent. I especially like the old Lincoln Highway (the world's first intercontinental highway, on which I grew up in Edison New Jersey), Route 22 ("Shepherd's Way" as I call it, after Jean Shepherd of "A Christmas Story" fame who also joyrode it) beginning from its terminus on Routes 1 & 9 down the road towards its opposite terminus "Sweet Home Chicago" (wherein was born so much of the Blues music that got into my soul & changed the world), Route 27, Route 35, and my favorite treat is to straddle both lanes of the Pulaski Highway headed north in the latest hours of the night (it's the world's first superhighway & the first suspended highway too, and when I drive it headed north it looks like a sky road into the center of the Empire State Building over the Hudson River in my greatly beloved New York City).

* Eating. I am a culinary citizen of the world! My favorite foods are Asian (Chinese, Japanese, Korean), French, German, Italian, Polish - the list goes on. I also really like steaks in general & prime rib & Delmonico steaks in particular, and am willing to go to Delmonicos, Sparks, Peter Lugers & wherever else I have to go to get a good cut of meat. It's only at those steak houses that you'll ever see me use a fork and knife as I have eaten nearly all of my meals with chopsticks since I was 16 years old, when I first came to love Asian culture (remember, I use the word "love" very carefully!) as a result of my first job, which was as a dishwasher in Mt. Fuji Japanese Steakhouse in Hasbrouk Heights New Jersey USA (where I still go to eat 30 years later & get treated like a celebrity when I do!) as well as through my friendship to my Korean friend Tommy Lee (no relation to who you think it is!) and his family, who were my initiators into Asian culture. I go once a week to Koreatown in Palisades Park New Jersey (what great people there, what a lovely town, & what great food!), also once/week to Koreatown New York City, once/week Chinatown NYC (one of my favorite places in the world), and I've recently taken to doing much of my Asian grocery shopping within the neighborhood where I grew up in my original hometown of Edison New Jersey, where some of the greatest Chinese food in the whole continent now comes from! I eat pretty much anything - one of my favorite dishes is shredded jellyfish with fermented ginger & Thousand Year Eggs! I especially like Chow Fun, Kim chee, Bei Hun & most of all the Chinese fried chicken at my favorite restaurant, Mei Mei Chinese Restaurant, two blocks down on my street! I take more meals at Mei Mei than anywhere else, and I am especially close with the Wang family who runs it, they are like family to me ;) .

* Culture. I work among other things at restoring & distributing audio/visual digitations of world culture, and my wife is an artist/educator/librarian. We hold dear many things, and chief among them is our love (that word again!) of culture. We regularly go to museums & art galleries & to the various ethnic sections of New York City (we are multiculturalist citizens of the world!), especially the Princeton Museum, the Metropolitan Museum, the Museum of Modern Art (my wife had a picture of hers exhibited there as a child), Chinatown, Little Italy (what Chinatown hasn't overrun there yet lol!) & more besides. My wife really likes Asian culture too, especially Japanese, Chinese & Indian, and its reflected in her art as well as her soul (and her physical beauty too - she's the archtypical beautiful blonde japanese anime character!).

* Animals. I must, because I split the bills on all the animal supplies my wife buys for the animals she gets lol! She especially loves (and I do mean loves) turtles. We have 3 adult, 1 adolescent and 2 baby Red Ear Slider sea turtles, and since they live for 40 years or more, they are included in my will. She also has a painted box turtle and a sea turtle whose species we have not yet determined. Nearly all of them are rescues from owners who were no longer able or willing to take care of them. They are sensitive, friendly, intelligent creatures, more like dogs than turtles. We know that because we also have 3 real dogs (see my pics to get a look at 'em). Ralph the One Eyed Wonder Dog is a Chihuahua/Cavalier King Charles Spaniel mix and was a rescue from hospital where he was treated for a Rottweiler bite in his right eye. We love each other very much and when I'm home in the "Ozone Lair" we are together pretty much all the time. We also have a jet black cat named Raisin who was kept in a cage in a vets office for 4 years before we rescued him. He like my dog is a very loving animal and a more noble soul than some humans, and he and my wife are bonded in much the same way as Ralph & I. We recently lost our beloved cockatiel named Gemini and her kind nature was a gift for as long as we were graced with her. We also used to have 13 hamsters which I rescued from a family that was going to flush them down the toilet (can you believe it?), but they since lived out their full life span and gone on to meet the Great Hamster in the Sky (><).

* Social Capitalism (I want EVERYONE to be free to do whatever they want & to make a profit from it SO LONG AS EVERYONE gets that freedom, NO ONE gets victimized & we're ALL free from ANYONE messing with THE COMMON GOOD!)

I especially like Japanese girl punk bands and mixed Japanese rock & electronica bands. The top of my charts includes such Japan Nite bands on and off the Benten Label and Sister Records label such as Noodles (so close to my heart), Falsies on Heat, Little Fujiko & more. The JapanFiles label tops my charts as well, especially Budo Grape, an incredible band from Nagoya that I'm totally into & who in my opinion are the most innovative, interesting and exciting band to emerge anywhere in years. I'm also in awed amazement of Polysics, another incredible Japanese technorock band that never ceases to amaze me in their creativity, virtuosity & genius.

But it's in my own NYC that I'm the most active in the J-Rock & A-Rock community. In addition to my J-Rock NYC Meetup Group, I support Japanese and Asian music in this city in the form of "J-Rock with J.C." which airs weekly through my broadcast TV show CHANNEL ZERO and my podcast radio show THE ZERO HOUR. It is through these venues that I and my fellow J&A-rockers support such great Japanese & Asian bands in NYC as Uzuhi, Love Etc, HIGHTEEN BOOGIE, happyfunsmile, Gaijin A Go-Go, Peelander-Z, The Royal Lowkick Manah, GELATINE, Suaka, THE BACK C.C.'s and many more Japanese & Asian bands which you should check out on the J-Rock NYC Meetup Group Calendar!

I also especially appreciate Puffy AmiYumi, whose music I turned to for comfort at a time that I really needed it to get over the death of my good friend Iva Ikoku Toguri a.k.a. "Tokyo Rose", the infamous but innocent Japanese-American radio broadcaster of the Second World War, whom I loved (its for times like this that I strive to have a reputation for using the word "love" very carefully, because it enables me to be taken seriously when I say "I love her" - people will know that I mean it when I say it). In word, deed, print and written in her own hand, she loved me too, as she did some few lucky people whom she allowed into her life (see what she had to say about me and her other friends just before she died). I was fortunate through Iva's kindness, and that of her associates Dafydd Dyar, and Barbara Trembley, whom she also loved, to obtain access to much valuable material, the most important of which was Iva herself, ultimately resulting in my creating the Tokyo Rose / Orphan Ann Sound Page & The Zero Hour Sound Page.

Iva and I often had conversations about the soul of the Japanese people, and we both held the firm belief that Japan's greatest contribution to the world was not to be found in her economic or technological dominance but rather in her art and culture. To me, "J-Pop" (Japanese pop music aka "Power Pop") in general, and "J-Rock" (Japanese Rock) in particular, *embodies certain proof of that contribution on a grand scale*.

To my mind, J-Pop is everything Tojo and his gang would have hated, and I daresay all Yamamoto and those of his lot would have smiled upon, and it says so much that the state of advancement of Japan's culture is now such that she unselfconciously sports Churchill's "'V' For Victory" hand signal as a customary greeting of peace and good will!

There is so very much great J-pop, but most Americans haven't heard it. The reasons are I believe manifold and worth some discussion here in the future, but in the meantime, I'm sure a large cross section of America would simply adore this stuff if they ever had access to it. With MySpace, they do, and now! ;) .

So addition to those bands already named, here's a few more of my favs, and if you dig 'em, let 'em know - these guys like Americans - heck, they're largely trying to BE like Americans - and they're really really friendly, really really nice, and really really worth your kind attention! --

Noodles (what great sounds & craftsmanship - their Bowery Ballroom performance was a blast & I wrote all about it in this blog), Shonen Knife (a long time favorite - check out my blog of their excellent Nov. 19 2007 NYC show!), Gito Gito Hustler (simply incredible live act - read more about how they kicked our asses last October!), The 5.6.7.8's (they're everywhere these days!), Mikabomb (they totally rule!), Spookey (wish I could have seen the in Brighton, UK - I REALLY hope they'll come to NYC one day!), Falsies On Heat (read about their excellent Japan Nite performance), Red Bacteria Vacuum (read about they kicked ass in NYC!)), Mummy The Peepshow, The Stalin (what a punk band!), The Mad 3, Guitar Vader, TsuShiMaMiRe, Titan Go Kings, Mama Guitar, Bleach 03 (read about their excellent 10/07 NYC performance)), Lolita No. 18, The Havenot's, 54 Nude Honeys (they just broke up - say it isn't so!), Berry Roll, The Prambath, The Moist Towelettes, Poni Camp, Thankyou, Capris, The 50 Kaitenz, The Bawdies, Supersnazz, Voodoo Hawaiians & more, such as Nylon, Jackie & The Cedrics, The Pizzacato Five, The Carnabeats, The Peanuts, Shoukicki Kina & even more, which I'll add as time goes by!

THANKS to WFMU's deejays in general & station manager Ken Freedman in particular for recognizing & appreciating the value of J-Pop for so long & for being one of the few US radio stations playing it - & a great big thanks to MySpace too for making it possible for the rest of the world to listen to so much of this material so easily! Also, thanks to Karaterice.com and Samurai Zak of Genki Shock for having organized and promoted many J-Rock performances in New York City, and JRock Chicago for having done the same in Chitown! Karaterice.com and Genki Shock have both calendarized upcoming shows, and Purple Sky Magazine will inform you in English of all things j-rock! Purple Sky's Tainted Reality and Karaterice.com have j-rock internet radio shows, as do I (THE ZERO HOUR: J-Rock with J.C.!), so check 'em all out!

Until recently if you wanted to buy CDs of this stuff, you'll almost certainly need to buy it from a Japanese company as they are not usually distributed outside the country, such as the Japanese Amazon store at amazon.co.jp (click on the "shop in English" link to translate all their pages). Now, however, you've got choices, and good ones too: for general selections, JapanFiles.com for great bands like Budo Grape, TsuShiMaMiRe & more!; Tokyo No Radio; Karaterice; Pacifiction Recordsand CDJapan are great venues. You can also go directly to such fine labels as The Benten Label where so many great acts come from, and The Delicious Label which includes such fine acts as Noodles.

Finally, Dave Green's Singaporean & Asian 60's Pop Music MySpace Music page is a must-see & must hear for all fans of J-Pop, C-Pop (Chinese Pop Music) as well as the popular music of all Asia - his choice collection of Singaporean rock records of the 1960s is a wonder to behold & behear both, so be there or be square & let him know how much you appreciate his generous sharing of his gems!

Besides J-Pop, the British Invasion is biggest influence on my musical taste as it was the first example of white boys loving & playing black music from a culture relatively free of the parochial American race prejudice of the past; especially Beatles, Stones, Zeppelin, Who, Donovan (there's a special place in my soul for each)

Black 1960's R&B Soul - ALWAYS remember that even the Beatles, let alone the Rolling Stones, The Who & Led Zeppelin, ALL started off recording Black R&B & Soul! JAMES BROWN! SMOKEY ROBINSON! The Temptations, The Supremes, The Spinners, The Four Tops, The O'Jays - DAMN, they're all so great!!!

THE BLUES - I AM A BLUES BOY! My Dad was the white singer & dancer in the black accapella group "The Deltones" in the '50s & he once voice coached The Dell Vikings of "Come Go With Me" fame. Dad made me into a science project of sorts by placing a stereo speaker on each side of my crib when I was a little itty baby & playin' me Howlin' Wolf, Muddy Waters, Jimmy Reed, Sonny Boy Williamson, Willie Dixon, Memphis Slim, Elmore James, Bo Diddley, Washboard Sam & more. The result? I have the soul of a Mississippi black man! As a matter of fact, John Lee Hooker is, especially in his rhythms and sense of timing, so much a part of me that when I hear him perform, I feel like he's performing from INSIDE of me!

Jazz! & I mean "swing" and "hot" baby, Gods bless "cool" jazz, but brother, give it to me HOT with some SWING!!! Louis Armstrong Hot Fives & Hot Sevens, FLETCHER HENDERSON, ESPECIALLY Benny Goodman Quartets! Duke Ellington, Meade Lux Lewis, Fats Waller, Billie Holiday, SARAH VAUGHAN, Jelly Roll Morton, Albert Ammons (what a boogie woogie stride mastermind!), Charlie Parker (like Ken Burns' JAZZ series says, listening to him & Louis Armstrong is like listening to bright white light) - man, I could go on & on & on!

Garage Band (oh yeah, baby!) Wanna know what Garage Band music is? Do ya, huh? Well, check out Dave The Spazz's WFMU radio show, man!

Girl Punk Bands (especially Nikki Corvette & The Donnas!)

Classical (I've written extensive stuff on the Qabalistic symbolism of Wagner's Ring cycle of operas that'll widen the eyes & ears of both opera lover and Qabalist alike!)

I LIKE MUSIC!

Austin Powers (there's a good bit of both him AND Doctor Evil in me so I hear, though the Dr. Evil part's all groovy, baby, yeah!)

Dr. Strangelove

The Marx Brothers

Wheeler & Woolsey (Even greater than the Marx Bros "in the day")

Star Wars (of course, of course)

Catch 22

Citizen Kane

City Lights

The Great Dictator (good God, do we need to show that movie to all my fellow Americans right now...)

The Last Valley

Spinal Tap

M

Scarlet Street (Billy Wilder's great!)

Hellzapoppin' ("The unrecognized 'Rosetta Stone' of American comedy" - J. C. Kaelin)

Borat (see it & cowtow!)

All the Monty Python movies

Goodbye, Mr. Chips (Some might say I resemble him ;-) )

Lost Horizon

Baby boomer Britcoms & Supermarionation (one day I'll write books about that stuff) - especially SPIKE MILLIGAN (the great Genius of broadcast comedy gone uncelebrated in the US, though thankfully honored in the UK and AU!)

THE COMIC STRIP PRESENTS aka THE BRITISH COMEDY STRIP (took TV comedy to it's greatest extension - geniuses all, especially Peter Richardson)

OF COURSE MONTY PYTHON (they hold up so well, but much credit given them belongs to the aforementioned)

Alexei Sayles (what a brilliant comic - even if he IS a "bolshie"!)

The Young Ones (I've kept amazon.co.uk pretty busy!)

Anything by Dennis Potter, another television genius unrecognized in the US, author of PENNIES FROM HEAVEN, THE SINGING DETECTIVE and BRIMSTRONE AND TREACLE (I feel a strong spiritual kinship with him & his departure from this world is personally missed)

ALSO: ERNIE KOVACS (Brits may have perfected broadcast comedy, but the YANKS in the person of the great Ernie Kovacs REALLY DID pioneer it - begging the question "WHAT HAPPENED?!?")

ROWAN & MARTIN's LAUGH-IN (I argue it's the seminal TV comedy series of the century!)

SCTV (SCTV SCTV SCTV!!!! THEY ARE THE CAT'S PAJAMAS, MAN!)

CURB YOUR ENTHUSIASM (I think it's one of the two best damn shows on TV)

RENO 911 (I think it's one of the two best damn shows on TV)

WONDER SHOWZEN (I think it's another one of the two best damn shows on TV)

THE OFFICE (both the UK & US version, though I'll always be sweet on the UK one most of all!)

But EVEN MORE THAN BRITCOMS, I am into *television documentaries*.

For the record, the "golden age" of broadcast documentaries was during the cable tv revolution beginning in 1985-86, when cable came to most American cities bringing with them the A&E, Discovery & TLC networks, and ending in 1993, when the "bug" or "dog" or "chiron" or "logo" or whatever you want to call that annoying branding image that mars our broadcast programming nowadays. With PBS, A&E, Discovery & TLC playing their archive's heart out as their broadcasts were piped directly into millions of homes 24/7 with dramatic improvement of picture and sound reception quality, there really was created thereby a golden age of documentary programming and viewing. They were broadcasting venerable material, classic in construction and speaking to the most intelligent aspects of us, and utilizing meaningful, substantial narratives that slick modern representational methods and special effects haven't improved upon -- on the contrary, in fact, these methods and effects have, through no fault of their own, done much to lower the level of quality of more modern documentaries.

Among the best documetaries in my opinion are:

Bill Moyers' A WALK THROUGH THE 20TH CENTURY series. The standard in how to do TV documentary series.

Anything by the brothers Ken & Ric Burns of FLORENTINE FILMS. When THE CIVIL WAR came out, the series that took the standard Moyers' set and took it to the state of its ultimate development, I was so sick with CFS I watched much of it gripping myself in pain. Two decades later, Florentine invited me to participate in the making of THE WAR. I am still pinching myself over it.

All the many 1950s/1960s era historical documentary series that A&E, Discovery & TLC resurrected from obscurity.

Books by Gareth Knight

The Confessions of the Rosicrucian Fraternity (1610)

The True and Invisible Rosicrucian Order by Paul Foster Case

Grimoires ;-)!

The Golden Dawn by Israel Regardie

The Iliad & The Odyssey (in the Fitzgerald translation, man!)

Four Books of Occult Philosophy by Cornelius Agrippa

The Popul Vuh

Gravity's Rainbow

I, Claudius & Claudius The God (By Brother Graves)

The Golden Ass by Apuleius

The Metamorphoses by Ovid

The Pelopponesian War by Thucydides (What's happening now was happening then...)

The 12 Caesars By Seutonius

Selections from the Graeco/Egyptian/Coptic magical & mythological texts

The Dune Series

Hermann Hesse's Siddhartha, Demian

Leaves of Grass

Catch-22

James Joyce's Portrait of the Artist, Ulysses (I actually have read MOST of it), Finnegan's Wake (As much as I could take before I felt REALLY stupid ; ) ) .

Wordsworth (A walker's poet)

Some books either deliberately unpublished by the author or contractually prohibited due to the historical content being incorporated into future creative works produced by others by some guy writing these words on MySpace

Besides that, there are the great radio broadcasters of the day & yesterday; of today's lot, as mentioned, I'm a WFMU man for music played by Rex Doane on FOOL'S PARADISE, Dave the Spazz on MUSIC TO SPAZZ BY, the Great Irwin Chusid aka THE OLD CODGER & emcee of INCORRECT MUSIC & more besides, Ken Freedman & his wonderful mind-control/J-Pop/surrealistic fundamentalist universe, and many more of those folks (& don't be surprised if you hear some of our own historical sound files used on the odd occassion by some of their fine DJs in some of their segues!)! For news, NPR & BBC's great - NPR, PBS & BBC broadcasts the only news I take seriously anymore, with the exception of Keith Olbermann's cable TV show - and for talk, both Brian Lehrer & Leonard Lopate are just the best and smartest damn talk show radio men *on the planet*.

Now, go into the past for my radio favs & that's a vast pool! Here goes - Dan Ingram, Jim Hawthorne (the father of free-form radio), Jean Shepherd (the master of talk radio), WFMU's Jim "The Hound" Marshall, all the UK pirates, David Rabbit, Mad Daddy Meyers, Porky Chadwick, The Real Don Steele, Roscoe, Jack Armstrong, Dewey Philips, Allen Freed, Bob Lassiter, Kenny Everett, Radio London, Radio Caroline, Radio City, Swinging Radio London - heck, there's so many, see EarthSation1.com for more! And I could still go on & on, and likely will sometime in the future!

Finally, before I go on to my heroes, I will expound upon media history's most sadly and unfortunately overlooked subject areas, OLD TIME RADIO. This, too, I will expound upon on MySpace later, but I could hardly do better than I have already expounded at the EarthStation1.com website!

Now, with THAT out of the way, on to my heroes: Take a lookee at my top friends & other historical personages amongst my MySpace friends, you'll see some;

My wife for being so unabashedly herself for so long and for being even more beautiful on the inside than she is on the outside

Iva "Tokyo Rose" Toguri for giving me the courage of my convictions to volunteer off of disability and winning the wholly meaningful life I gained thereby as a result of her example.