Mark and I saw this upscale Asian-fusion restaurant on Sunset Blvd. when we went to go see the Cut Chemist on Thursday night. With the amount of Japanese people who visit this area, they must know that their sign really means.
1) Italian (and sometimes French): ‘Cheers!’ Derives from the sound of the glasses clinking together.
2) Japanese: Penis. Cause of much puzzlement when Italians travel to Japan, or when Japanese travel to Italy. Italian guy: OK, here’s to our time in Osaka. Chin chin!
Japanese guy: I beg your pardon?
It looks like HBO is working on a version of Band of Brothers in the Pacific theater. link
The second season of Rome will be coming out next year.
HBO has renewed its epic drama series ROME for a second season, it was announced today by Carolyn Strauss, president, HBO Entertainment. Production of the 12-episode second season will begin next March, with the debut set for 2007.
Here’s a blog written by someone working on the series.
It’s too bad that I hate waking up early. You can see some pretty interesting stuff is you get up early in the morning. My bed usually wins the decision when I ask myself “should I get up or not?”.
I must say that I don’t sleep in nearly as late as I used to. At this point in my life waking up late is like waking up really early when I was in college. I wonder what will happen in another 10 years…
This is apparently what you get when you cross a whale and a dolphin. I’m a bit confused, though. If something can produce offspring that can produce offspring, isn’t that the standard definition of a species (a category of biological classification ranking immediately below the genus or subgenus, comprising related organisms or populations potentially capable of interbreeding, and being designated by a binomial that consists of the name of a genus followed by a Latin or latinized uncapitalized noun or adjective agreeing grammatically with the genus name)? For example, donkeys and horses are not the same species because their offspring are sterile.
The same thing goes for ligers and tigons. It is hard to think of lions and tigers as being the same species, but doesn’t their ability to produce offspring capable of reproduction make them just that?
I caught this set partway through, and noticed that the tracks sounded a little bit different. It turns out that J5 did a live in-studio session on NPR of all stations! This is worth a listen: link
In order to make sure that the haniwa (here is another interesting article about haniwa) were completely dry, they sat exposed to the air and sunlight for 2 weeks. Since the smaller haniwa dry more quickly, I was able to fire the octopus, robot, and a few other smaller pieces prior to the bigger pieces.
This is the first group of haniwa. From right to left the group consists of a kabutomushi (rhinocerous beetle), a fugu (puffer fish), a bucket-headed sanshin player (made out of a gourd and bamboo stock), a ninja, a soldier with butterfly swords, a Taiko spirit, a Freeza-like spirit, and a Satsuma (not this Satsuma) samurai.
The second group is made up of a DJ, my version of a Daruma totem (a dual skull on top of a stormtrooper on top of a ninja turtle wind god), a snowtrooper (based on the kind that raided Hoth at the beginning of The Empire Strikes Back), a two-headed warrior wielding a naginata, a bear, the squid Pope, and a ronin bearing a cane sword.
I fired the first group last week, and unfortunately, a few of them cracked. The samurai lost a piece of his helmet, the Taiko spirit lost part of his back, and the Fugu was badly damaged. I was able to fix them all with some super glue and used Gorilla Glue to fill in places where the fugu was badly damaged.
I just finished firing this group, and they all look like they survived the process intact. I guess it just took a little bit of time to refine my technique.
The clay I used was special in that it is made to be fired at 350 degrees for 1 hour, so I was able to do this in a household oven. I plan to make more as soon as I get more clay, but I need to find someone with a kiln so I can get those fired as well.
So far, the project is off to a good start.
