The Duck's Nest: online home of mizducky

Final post of NaBloPoMo

Well, I made it to the end of National Blog Posting Month more or less with my blogging pride intact. There was in fact a post for every day of the month. Some of them actually happened at 2 or 3am of the following morning, but as that was the end of my "day" each time, I have decided that's kosher. I did post-date such posts just before midnight of the calendar day they pertained to, more for convenience' sake than anything else -- so here's your truth-in-advertising copping to that.

So I observed the letter of the rules. Some of my posts kind of fell short of the spirit--I think you know which ones I mean, the short not-so-interesting ones meant more to put something up than to say anything deep. On the other hand, I do have several substantive posts in thsi month--not to mention a completed chapter of the fanfic on may sideblog.

I think, in hindsight, this daily blogging thing is not necessarily for me. I used to do week-long daily blogs for eGullet, but there you had a built-in subject matter about which it was easy to spew lots of words. But it also involved making an extra effort all week to play cub reporter for the blog's audience. I don't think I could maintain such a pace for longer than a week at a time.

But I am glad I did it. And I do hope those of you who have stumbled upon me because of NaBloPoMo decide to keep hanging out.

About this Lupin III thing (Green vs. Red spoiler alert)

(For those who have not yet watched Green vs. Red, there's an analysis of that OAV in here that contains spoilers. Just letting you know.)

Okay, so what the hell is it with me and this Lupin III stuff anyway? Why is a person well into their 50s so obsessed with a cartoon character? And such a blatantly silly one at that?

Well, the age thing IMO is a straw man, given that so many of the creative types and talent behind these anime are well into their 50s as well (hell, several of the remaining original Japanese voice acting cast are well into their 60s and 70s). Plus I remain unapologetically kid-like in many areas of my life--insert lyrics to "I Won't Grow Up" from Peter Pan here: "... if growing up means it would be / beneath my dignity to climb a tree / I'll never grow up ... not me."

But totally aside from that ... I'll admit that, at times, I wondered if I wasn't reading a hell of a lot more into this wacky anime character than perhaps its creators ever intended. But that was before I watched the recent OAV Green vs. Red, and discovered that other people besides me had been struck by the larger meanings of this crazy little monkey-man.

The setup to GvR (as fans are inevitably abbreviating the title): we are in a slightly different universe than the one in which the usual Lupin III adventures occur, one in which the master thief has become enough of a cultural pheonomenon to start spawning copycats. Amidst all the hijinks and intrigue of hundreds of Lupin wannabes running amok in Tokyo, plus a big scary caper pitting the current reigning Lupin against a green-jacketed upstart, a young TV reporter pays a visit to a mysterious old man, a bookstore owner who is rumored to be a major authority on Lupin, to try and get to the bottom of things.

This bookseller (who might or might not be the real Lupin in disguise) proceeds to give an extremely Zen explanation of just who and what this man Lupin is: "Nationality doesn't mean anything to him. He is freedom itself ... He's always smart and cool. Or at least he's been so since he became Lupin." When Yukiko, the reporter, asks what he means by that last statement, the bookseller responds with a question reminiscent of a classic Zen koan: "Since when are you Yukiko-san?" He follows this up with: "Someone once told me 'A man isn't born a man, but becomes a man.' The same goes for Lupin."

And as the rest of the film plays out, it's shown that a large part of becoming a Lupin involves simply daring to believe that one is Lupin. Even two of the most inept wannabes manage to bust a majorly Lupinesque move (an homage-to-Cagliostro physics-defying drive up a cliff), once one of them challenges the other with a cry of "Don't say you can't!" And even the current reigning Lupin (there's some question left as to whether even he is the original Lupin, or if there ever was one) has a moment of panic in a death-defying situation--but then he pulls himself together, goes "Yeah right," steps on the gas, and sends the ol' Fiat zooming back on track.

This concept of total faith in oneself being the key to this wild freedom--this is what has me hooked on the character of Lupin. It speaks to all those aspects of my life where I find myself defying convention--from my sexuality, to my beliefs about the world, to my attempts at theatre, even to my current devotion to writing serious fanfiction. Sometimes, carrying on against the cultural tide of convention feels overwhelming--especially when I'm tired or vulnerable or having a self-esteem attack. But when I can psyche myself into believing in myself, when I can connect with the passion, the energy, the rightness I feel when I live in the very things that defy convention, then I have all the strength I need to actualize those things in the world.

There's also, of course, the entertainment value of the kind of outrageous stunts the Lupin character perpetrates with his freedom, and the over-the-top style with which he does them. Lupin is the fictional embodiment of the dude who can get away with anything, the one who always defies the odds. Somebody has to exist on that far tail of the probability curve, and he just happens to be that guy. Yes, there's an obvious element of wish-fulfillment in identifying with this character. But even in something as seemingly trivial as writing a story or performing in a play, there's an element of risk-taking and getting away with wacky stuff that partakes of the same cartoon energy as Lupin's misadventures. Or at least it feels that way to me.

So there you have it, a piece of life philosophy built around an anime character. But for the time being it's working for me. And who knows? He's given me some ideas for whole original stories of my own. How's that for an unexpected--and very real--litle treasure?

Wiped out yet again

Man, there's nothing like keeping up a daily blog to get one in touch with one's recurring physical states. This is going to be the second post in three days where I'm almost too tired to type straight--in fact, if I were'nt within a couple of days of finishing the NaBloPoMo challenge, I'd have hung it up for the night. And it was barely over a week ago that I was complaining that my body had gone, as I had put it in mongrel pseudo-Yiddish, gesproingit. It's hard not to look at posts like that and go, whoa, I'm spending more time in fatigue states than I realize.

Of course a lot of it has to do with keeping late hours, plus procrastinating on projects so I have to stay up those late hours to meet my commitments. But still ... what then is this pattern of hours late enough to be interfering with my energy level--and therefore, my quality of life?

Just need to quit being a bing baby and freakin' go to bed at a normal hour. Is all.

Turkey consumption day

Got my turkey fix today at an annual dinner for persons living with AIDS, their family and friends, that's been put on at my church for twenty years. I qualify as a friend of a PWA; plus I could be said to be a volunteer, being a church member who could direct the non-member volunteers to where stuff like light switches and such are hidden. But really, the joint was so overrun by volunteers that all I really wound up doing was standing around and saying "hello" a whole lot. The meal itself was actually great; got in some interesting conversations, and best of all did not have to do a lick of work. I love cooking all the traditional Thanksgiving foods, but I was just as glad to have other people taking care of that (not to mention the cleaning-up afterward). Still, I kind of miss having leftover Thanksgiving Day food, so I might yet decide to buy a smallish turkey on closeout and roasting it up for home.

Tired puppy

Getting this non-morning person up and awake and out of the house by 8:30am; spending all day up and talking to people as part of a church fundraiser; attending a very alternative communion service at my hippy-dippy church; attending a major potluck meal afterward, where I indulged in lots of tryptophan-rich turkey ... all of this taken together add up to one very sleepy duck.

Going crashy real soon now ... :-)

Want list: great big box o' Lupin

LUPIN THE 3RD 29 DVD BOX SET ALL 3 TV SEASONS 2 MOVIE - eBay

That's one helluva lot o' Lupin. The prizes here are the complete first (green-jacket) series and the second (red jacket) series episodes past #79, neither of which have never been released in US (dubbed) editions. Nor, for that matter, has the third (pink jacket) series, though I confess I'm a little less interested in those because they aren't quite up to the others in quality. I already have the two included movies--they're not even my favorites. But to have the 1st series and 2nd half of the 2nd series, that would be so sweet. So if anyone's wondering what the hell to get me for my 52nd birthday/Christmas/Hanukkah/Winter Solstice, here's one big fat huge freakin' hint. :-D

Little miracle du jour: acting class

Attended my first session of an on-going acting class held at San Diego's LGBT Center--and had a blast! The instructor had me cold read a monologue from Blythe Spirit -- the over-the-top spiritualist Madame Arcati. I had seen my church's theatre group do this play just this spring, with a friend of mine totally kicking butt as Madame Arcati, so I knew what I was in for. I put on my best overly-posh Brit accent with a little Julia Child thrown in, and had at it ... and the instructor loved it. Said if I'd walked into an audition and did that in a cold reading, he'd cast me in a heartbeat. Oh that felt good!

Then he started tweaking my performance here and there, which was a good thing--I've noticed that my challenge in receiving direction is to figure out how to take direction that way, to get my head and sense-memory to let me alter what I'm doing in response to instructions.

So I'm pretty jazzed about this class, not only for the potential to learn more, but also to keep myself psyched about acting, and creativity in general. Count it as another little miracle to keep me forging ahead. (The only bummer is that the instructor will be going down to Mexico for several months, so the class will take a hiatus until April. I can wait ... or find another thing to keep me psyched up.)

New chapter of my Lupin fanfic now posted

Finally got the latest chatper of my Lupin fanfic done. It was a lot harder to write that I expected, because at first I had a much more angsty concept in my head, but that felt wrong somehow, but then unangsting my ideas and coming up with different ones was a challenge. But the result, I think, is just as intense without the waterworks. Plus I got some action into it. But it still remains what it is, an opportunity to drag Lupin into further supernatural weirdness, now with a distinct Hunter S. Thompson goes Carlos Castaneda feel.

Check it out here: clickie

Local food thrills: Zion Market and the super-quick potluck dish

I am a major fan of the many ethnic groceries scattered around this town, and one of my favorites is Zion Market, located in Kearny Mesa just a couple blocks from the big Asian grocery/restaurant nexus of Convoy Street. Zion Market caters to the Korean community, and its big boxy space is packed full of food thrills--especially the bakery, deli, butcher and seafood departments.

They have one huge chill case dedicated to just panchan (sometimes also transliterated as banchan), these highly-seasoned salad-y/side-dish-y type combos; a typical Korean meal is always accompanied by a flotilla of little dishes bearing small portions of several varieties of panchan. The most well-known of the banchan is kimchee, the firey pickled vegetable salad, which itself comes in a myriad varietes besides the most common one made from napa cabbage laced with chile paste. But there are other kimchees made from many other vegetables; I've had some from Zion Market's banchan case consisting of whole Kirby cucumbers slit open and packed with chile paste that was out of this world.

And then there are bunches of other types of banchan--salads and combos made from such veggies as soybean sprouts, spinach, seaweed, mushrooms, garlic, chile peppers, and more; protein-based concoctions featuring squid, fishcake, tofu, hard-boiled eggs, and assorted bits of fish and sea creatures I haven't learned to translate or identify yet; and a few things I suspect are American transplants, such as a very sweet and mayonnaise-heavy take on potato salad. And this is just one chill-case we're talking about here. The whole store is swarming with similarly interesting food finds.

The store is also, frequently, swarming with people. I've been in groceries with narrower aisles, to be sure, but especially when Saturday rolls around those aisles are swarming. And the parking lot is a nightmare any day of the week. On Saturdays I don't even try to get into the main lot any more; I just go around the corner and head right for the overflow lot.

But the parking hassle, in my opinion, is so worth it. Today, for instance, I had a potluck to go to, so I stopped by Zion and picked up some kimbap (Korean answer to maki roll, usually containing a wider variety of fillings than the Japanese version); kong namul (a panchan consisting of blanched soybean sprouts in a sesame-oil based dressing); and what the store labels "pepper pancakes," halved jalapeno peppers stuffed with a ground meat mixture, dipped in an egg-heavy batter, and fried until the batter spreads out into a kind of eggy pancake in which the stuffed jalapeno winds up embedded. The pepper pancakes actually bacame my mid-afternoon snack; the kimbap went to the potluck as-is; and I added the kong namul to a batch of noodles, along with some juliened kirby cucumbers and sliced scallions, and voila--instand Asain noodle salad.

By the magic of potlucks, one usually arrives home again with more food than one started out with. So in addition to some leftovers of other dishes, we still have a big batch of the knng namul/noodle salad. and I just had the last of the kimbap as a late-night snack. Yum. And the sesame oil made my car smell so good!

Body go gesproingit

One of the things that I did yesterday that made me feel really good about the day was that I got a bunch of walking in. One of the things which I did today which didn't feel so good was entertaining a bunch of body pain from yesterday's walking. I dunno if it's my arthritis, or being out of shape, or both that are responsible for this sorry state of affairs. Actually, on reflection I do think it's both--hard to be enthusiastic about any kind of exercise when it tends to bring on pain, but hard to make any headway against the pain unless I get some exercise.

One reason why yesterday's walking was such a success was that I was wandering around in the middle of Hillcrest, San Diego's LGBT neighborhood, which is a fun place to explore on foot. If I'm motivated to walk by something interesting to me, it's easier to transcend the physical discomfort. Sure beats trying to transcend the pain in a boring gym on some buring exercise equipment.

Right now, there's nothing for it but to tough out the current discomfort. I've done the hot bath thing, and a few other things, and those have helped. But now it's getting to the point where I should try just sleeping it off. Boy, bodies can be such a pain in the butt.