Hello! Store USA part 2

It should be no surprise that I was pleasantly surprised to find that the Nine Smile merchandise would come up during a time that wasn’t surprisingly inconvenient for me. Lol… I seriously wrote “surpris” 3 times in that sentence. At any rate, I camped out for the raid on Hello Store last week. Originally the plan was just to get 1 order. That ended up becoming 2 orders… Surprisingly, I got the second order first before the other one seems to even be near completion. I’m going by the information reflected in my Inbox. Not too long ago, I saw H!S tweeted that they’re bogged down on the high volume of orders. Well, I guess I have a while to go before my other order comes. For the spoils of war, read on!

Airi wants you to read on, she promises you won’t leave unhappy ^_~

Hello! STORE!!! USA

I wish I could say I knew it was coming, but I certainly didn’t. I was quite surprised at the announcement of Hello! Store USA a while back. But I was determined to check it out and buy something to support my favorite girls. So about a week ago, was the midnight opening (PST) of Hello! Store USA. And I waited for it… to 3am in EST…

Miracle in the Hole: Kusumi Koharu

If you’re reading this, you probably already know. Kusumi Koharu of the 7th generation of Morning Musume has been slated for graduation, come this December. This comes hot on the news of the eldest C-ute member, Umeda Erika, graduating next month. Well, I don’t really know what to think. I’ve had a complicated time with Koharu from her Iroppoi Jirettai debut to today.

Mediarite flow

I like variety. I really like variety. That’s why I have a variety of likes and dislikes. But I find myself very hypocritical in this sense. Because while I do like variety, change, and experimentation; there are lots of times where I am frustrated that someone/thing is changing beyond my likes.

The term “bootstrap” apparently means to start a calculation and use this result as a basis for the next calculation (which would’ve been impossible without the first calculation) and continue this until you are at the desired answer. At least this is what it means according to my Chemical Bonding professor. That’s one crazy guy man… At any rate, while I was sitting bored in class I thought of “Musical Bootstrapping”. And from there I just thought of a lot of stuff… but that’s typical of me. By the time I was nearly finished writing this, I just decided to change the name of the post to the current title to better reflect the subject at hand. It also has a nice ring to it that sounds like what I’m trying to convey. But “bootstrap” is too good of a term to pass up.

A lot of my preferences in music and entertainment come from this kind of bootstrapping. I want to call it bandwagoning but I really don’t know the “proper” term for it. It’s like when you wiki “Theodore Roosevelt” and you end up at “The Battle of Jabiim” (Star Wars event, for those who don’t know). Or like when you youtube “Morning Musume Joshi Kashimashi Monogatari” and somehow you end up watching a Pokemon battle from the latest episode of Pokemon Diamond and Pearl. All those intermediates between the beginning and the end are what sprout out to be my web of interests. And I am fascinated that this is the case with music.

Mitsuwa

This past Wednesday I was over at my friend’s place for a mini-vacation. While I was there I got the opportunity to go to the Mitsuwa Japanese marketplace in Fort Lee, New Jersey. Now you may be thinking this sounds suspiciously like something I’d write in a real blog. Well, it certainly does, but there’s one part of the trip that pertains to my hobbies/entertainment interests.

The Karaoke Effect

The other night I went to Duet48 (which makes me think AKB48??). For people who don’t know, it’s a karaoke place in New York City, somewhere… At any rate, I went with a housemate of mine and our circle of friends.

Given my taste in music, I have virtually no reason to pick any English songs. But alas, since I cannot read Japanese reliably (and quickly) I am stuck having to sing songs that I just know. Unfortunately, after hearing SO many songs, I don’t know any. It doesn’t help that I can’t really sing well either XD.

But being in that Karaoke room, for just a moment made me wonder what it was like at Hello! Party. On the couple of times I got to pick a song, I picked songs that I would want to sing or at least attempt.

I picked:

• Perfume – Dream Fighter

I REALLY like the chorus and KSYK’s solo part in the song. But really… I don’t know the rest of the song after that XD. It was just mumbling and trying to go by what I remember, oh and watching the PV cause they actually had it on screen with the karaoke lyrics. But I just wanted a chance to sing that awesome chorus.

• TERIYAKI BOYZ – WORK THAT!

I will admit, while I usually don’t like rap music and other urban things, I have warmed up to it over the years because of m-flo and his unique approach. That being said, I am biased to liking Teriyaki Boyz because VERBAL from m-flo is in it. I was just gonna sing the song because 75% of the lyrics are in English. But it was a surprising hit among my friends. The room was just full of us yelling: “Work that!” (no lie, almost 75% of the song is simply those 2 words). That actually makes me have a lot more appreciation for the song. I only really listened to the song because, Hiroyuki Suzuki, one of my favorite 1A yo-yoers used it for his freestyle music. But, now I can really appreciate the song. Go listen to it!

• Caramell – Caramelldansen Speedycake Remix

I’m actually surprised this was in their book… But I couldn’t resist. Doing the Caramelldansen dance and singing … Swedish is it? lyrics is instant fun. It’s quite a good song actually, very addictive.

At any rate, I’m surprised at the effect karaoke has on a song. At first, I was aghast that the instrumentals were MIDI-sounding and all (I suppose because of licensing and the like). But karaoke is fun. It’d probably be better if I could actually sing songs, I memorized. Or better yet, read… -_-; But who cares, when you can just mumble like Scooby Doo, when you can’t read the lyrics fast enough.

~Siggy, who has an excellent Scooby Doo impression~

NO!!! ERIKA!!!

So this news was brought to my attention in an extremely anticlimactic way. First I noticed that the subject of the night at wotachat was Erika, when I was scrolling by what I missed during the night. I ignored that, and then noticed much later what it was really about, thanks to the Wotachat subject line.

For those who don’t already know? And who doesn’t? Our lovely Umeda Erika has been slated for graduation from C-ute and officially all of Hello! Project on the last day of their concert tour for this coming fall, October 25th.

Ch’yea, I’m out of the crazy Tsunku farm

Kenya believe Kanna is gone?

Where can you see lions (and tigers)? Only in Kenya…

Where can you see Kanna? Probably not in Kenya, but certainly not in Hello! Project. And for that we must dedicate  a moment of silence for her. -SILENCE-

Incidentally, this kind of reminds me of Michael Jackson (kind of being a VERY far resemblance). So let’s also have a moment for the King of Pop. Although that’s extremely old news and overplayed at this point.

Per an official news release from H!P, Kanna has left Hello! Project as of the 9th of July, which is only a couple days ago. So back in February she was taken out and now it’s July. And now she’s taken out for real. Well, my previous stand still stands. I never really noticed too much abouta Kanna with the exception of the whole lesbian thing. But I will say that it’s sad to see a girl go in Hello! Project. Supposedly, the higher-ups had some play in this, there might have been some scandal?, and it’s not really fully her choice to going back to the regular life of Jane Doe.

Well, now C-ute is a 6 member unit. And now my ranking is a little bit easier. If either Airi, Maimi, or MaiMai get kicked out, I’m gonna be very mad… VERY mad… cause Airi is the best, Maimi is hot, and MaiMai is getting hot.

~Siggy, who will go and rewatch some old C-ute stuff when he gets time~

Ringtones!!!

So I finally stopped being lazy and went looking for my microSD card adaptor/adapter. Spent like 2 hours organizing stuff (I wound up deleting 75% of the ringtones I had previously done ages ago) and then cutting songs for new ringtones!

A lot of the ringtones I make are based on what I think would sound cool for a ringtone or if its quirky. There’s a pretty good variety of artists featured in the ringtones I’ve done. I love little audio bites! You know like in commercials for albums and stuff, TV-Size stuff… those short snippets are what highlight the song. Like a really good movie trailer for a really bad movie!

MOMUSU IN AMERICA

Ugh, I’m so jealous that I can’t be in LA for this…

Whilst watching Strong Machine 2 dancing, I think to myself I should write my reactions to the news and everything surrouding the fact that MOMUSU IS NOW IN AMERICA! This very moment! They landed sometime yesterday and I realize I won’t be around for the real-time access tomorrow due to work.

There have been already videos and pictures of Momusu arriving. Upon seeing some of them, I have to admit I am a bit amused by the non-Japanese accented Japanese XD. Someone said, Aichan, as if they were saying Chan like Jackie Chan, which is clearly not the proper way. Don’t misunderstand me, I don’t have perfect pronounciation of Japanese. It really shows how excited the fans are.

I know if I were there, I’d go totally fangirl and probably yell out incomprehensible things. So apparently I think there’s a concert for today… let’s hope someone gets some underground recordings. I can’t wait to hear more! And see some autographed goods!

~Siggy