Posts from December 2004
December 31, 2004
Imo Sochu
Jeroen stopped by last night, and this was an excellent excuse to break out the bottle of Imo Sochu that Aoki-san and 88 brought from Japan. "Young people very much like to drink this now in Tokyo. Very fashionable."
For those in the know, Sochu is the Korean killer drink of choice, consumed in vast quantities before you get into a fight in a bar with Marines in Seoul. It's like sake, but not, and it's like vodka, but not. And it's image and flavors are changing...
The version we were drinking was a very tasty sweet potato sochu which is apparently a drink of choice among trendsetters in Tokyo. All I know was that the first one was hesitant (from horrible Korean experience), the second one was tasty, the third one damn tasty, and the fourth one really damn tasty.
Being the sensible adults we were, we stopped drinking...until we started feeling bad for not asking our new buddy, Imo, back to the table. Eventually we had a fifth, maybe more, which was just like catching up with an old friend we hadn't seen in a while.
Watch out for Imo.
December 22, 2004
Why cyclists wear black
As a cyclist, I though this was pretty funny...
From: James Seng
December 20, 2004
An impromptu jam with Sadao
Today was a pretty cool day.
I got a call from Sadao Watanabe's promoters a couple weeks ago to help them do some co-promotion interviews and stuff for Watanabe's concert in Taipei. So this morning I rode out to the airport, did the official "Here-are-some-flowers-welcome-to-Taiwan-photo-taking-opportunity," and had a joint interview in the van with Sadao back to Taipei with a reporter with orange hair who didn't seem to know much Sadao, jazz, or music in general.
In the evening, I invited the whole crew and the promoters over to the Living Room for dinner, and we opened a couple bottles of JD, got the red wine flowing, and the evening eventually turned into a nice jam session, crashing in on Jimmy & Tammy's set.
Sadao tried to play my horn but told me "Man, your reed is like toilet paper!" which is was, since it was an old piece of crap, but you make do...so eventually we all got busy on different instruments, and Sadao settled down on drums, and I played the horn, and the rest of the band joined in, and we pretty much pounded on whatever there was to pound on. Jimmy and Tammy were terrified since they weren't expecting these guys to sit in. It was a good time...
December 06, 2004
Famous Grouse or Johnny Reb?
SL called me up a week ago to play some funky sax on a track he was trying to finish for the Famous Grouse Whisky folks (you've seen the commercial...the one with the bird that steps onto the red carpet, and the big band plays...)
Anyways, he had mentioned that it was for Jin Ma Jiang (The Golden Horse Festival), but I didn't really think about it, until I turned on the TV to see all these famous movie people trying sorrily to emulate the Oscars, strutting down the red carpet (with giant Famous Grouse signs behind them), stopping, waving, soaking up the attention, all to the beat of my funky JB sax blasting over the PA. That was better than being there.
If you know the commercial, you might also realize that the melody is remarkably close to the last few phrases of "When Johnny Comes Marching Home," the famous Civil War rebel song of the South.
This would of course never had occurred to me if I hadn't graduated from Denver South High School, and our mascot wasn't Johnny Reb, and we hadn't had to play that horrid song over and over at every football game we lost.
Who could ever forget: "...And we'll all feel gay when Johnny comes marching home."
December 02, 2004
China's first Official Supermodel site
China's first official supermodel site is finally finished. It took a bit longer than we anticipated, but the 4 C's (Corrado, Christian, Clark and Corbett) are all quite happy with the result. Let's hope Jessey likes it as well.
You can check it out at: www.jesseymeng.com
The real trick part comes when you search Baidu, Sohu, Sina, or Yahoo China for Jessey (in Chinese). She's #1. Now that was complicated.
I've never figured out whether it's pronounced "Moe's (like owned by one of three stooges) or Moss (like that guy out of Bonanza), but the one down the hill from me is open until 2am most days, which means that if I get out of the club early enough, I can catch the best burger in town, the muo si la bao or the Spicy Mos Burger. They have lots of jalapenos and 
