I guess I'll have to set my watch to 'Hammertime' again

Regardless of the Patriots super bowl victory, I think the big winner on Sunday was MC Hammer. In one 24 hour period, I saw two TV ads in which he was featured and another one with "U can't touch this" as background music. While these ads are not the happiest for MC Hammer (one ad for Nationwide insurance, uses Hammer as example of how unpredictable life can be...showing him rich in one scene and bankrupt in the next), it's good to see Hammerman in action again.

Fall 2004 J TV notes/observations

I had a ton of stuff when I came back from Japan and I couldn’t be bothered to sort through it all immediately after I got back. I opted to box it up and would go through it later. I’ve started to go through some of now and I thought I would post some my notes/observations I made when I was there last fall…most in this batch are ones I took while watching Japanese TV.

• When going through a good sized bookstore in Shibuya (inside the famed Q Front building), I was looking through the small foreign books section (i.e., books in English). I was amused to see that among their canon of western lit they had the novelization of the film “Garfield”.

• Shortly after I arrived in Tokyo, a family was murdered in their home in the countryside. By the next day, one of the TV stations had developed a 3D computer generated walk-though of the house, showing where the mother and children were murdered and in what order they though the killings were done. The bodies were color coded red for female victims and blue for male victims. This color convention is used frequently in media reports. While this type of event is somewhat unusual for Japan (although they’ve had their share of spree killings), what I found interesting was how the media handled it. It was a big story for three days and then it completely fell off the face of the earth. While killings are not rare (although much less frequent than in the US), usually there is some clear reason for it (lover spat, bad business dealings, gang wars, ect). In this case, there was no clear reason for an entire family to be slaughtered in their home in the middle of the night and the press stopped covering it after three days.

• In a showcase for Japanese “team” mentality, I found an Asahi Super Dry beer TV commercial interesting. It shows a mid twenties Japanese guy of average J size playing basketball at a semi-pro level (judging by the crowds and uniforms). He’s clearly smaller than the other guys on his team and his opponents, many of who look to be foreigners. But while he’s smaller in size, he has a big heart and the commercial shows him working out and practicing hard for the big game. Then it is the big game and he gets the ball and he’s making his move down the court (music soaring now) and he PASSES the ball to a team mate who makes the dunk. Yeah, coach, there is no ‘I‘ in team.

Little known facts I learned watching J TV
• You can fend off a charging wild bore by opening an umbrella in front yourself.

• When trying to find a wild hive of hornets that are bothering people, Japanese hornet exterminators will capture hornets in the area where the problem is and tie small rags to hornets and then release them. They follow the now slow moving hornets (which they can see because of the rag) on foot or bike to the wild hive.

• There are over 14,000 restaurants in the Minato-ku ward of Tokyo. Minato is one of the 23 Ku that make up the Tokyo Metropolitan area. I believe that Ku are similar to a borough in NYC, although the Federal/State/local divisions in Japan are much different in scope and structure of those in the US.

• There is a man by the name of Gorie, who dresses like a female cheerleader and sings a J version of Toni Basil’s “Mickey. http://www.fujitv.co.jp/onenight/g_cd.html

• In response to a typhoon bearing down on Tokyo, TV news crews went out on the street to talk to people to see what they were doing in response to it. One women, leaving Shibuya, remarked, according to the English translators on the SAP channel, “I decided to give up on drinking this evening due to the storm.”

• There is a product in Japan called “Chatty Parrot”, which is a hand held device that combines optical character recognition with English-Japanese dictionary and onboard speech synthesizer. So a Japanese person could use the Chatty Parrot by running it over a word or phase in an English document/book/catalogue and then look at the LCD on the Chatty Parrot to see the word defined in Japanese. Press another button and it will say the word in English.

• There is a weekly TV show that focuses only on new pachinko machines. The cast of the show sits down and actually play the machines on camera in a real pachinko parlor to see all the features and what happens when various jackpots are reached. Video screens have been added to Pachinko machines, so there are many options and events that can happen when you get your ball in a flower. Imagine a TV show that showed off new pinball machines and had people actually locking up balls for multi-ball, and then getting the multi-ball and showing what it took to get the multi-ball jackpot. That is the level of detail this show was going to.

Ah, yes, pardon, but please do ph34r my l33t skillz

From boingboing

http://dslartoo.livejournal.com/97452.html

I've felt that my blog needed a bit of l33t cred and I saw this on boingboing and it fits the bill. This guy has rewritten a few scenes from Pirates of the Caribbean: The Curse of the Black Pearl into leet.

P1r4t3s 0f Teh C4r1bb34n: Teh Curs3 0f teh Bl4ck P34rl
Elizabeth: d00d j00 r 4ll sk3l3t0nz!!!!1
Barbossa: th4t w4s s0m3 b4d l3wt
Barbossa: w3 n33dz ur bl00d
Elizabeth: wtf suxx0r!!!1

*******
Gibbs: d00d y0u w4nt teh bl4ck p34rl 4g4in????//
Cap'n Jack: y34h i g0t s0m3 l3v3r4g3
Gibbs: ok ill g3t s0m3 cr4zy d00ds t0g3th3r
The Good Pirates: 4rrrrrrrrrrrrr!!!!!!!111
Cap'n Jack: i m t3h cr4zy
Will: d00d wtf wtf??
Gibbs: j4ckz 4 l1ttl3 w31rd
Will: y34h, t0tlly
Gibbs: b4rb0ss4 fuxx0r3d h1m
Will: suxx0r

What's all this jibberish? It's leet speak. It has developed from the hacker/gamer (or hax0r/Gamr) subculture.

Even google has it as a "language" option for their search engine
http://www.google.com/intl/xx-hacker/

"I Offer Unusual Skillset"-It's only a matter of time before I'm a programming exec at Fox.

I offer unusual skillset
"Anyone of rank and ability to negotiate employment of mutual benefit with "Yamaguchi Gumi" please reply. DO NOT WASTE MY TIME if you are false. I offer loyalty and ability."

An interesting classified ad,in English, from the English website of the Japanese Newspaper, the Mainichi, for someone apparently looking for work with a Yakuza organization (Yamaguchi-gumi).

You know, I read this and my first thought was along the lines of "hmmmm..this would make a pretty good reality TV show pitch"-create a fake yakuza gang and then hire him to do "wacky mobster stuff" like have him shake down places for not having enough nuts (or the wrong type of nuts) on top of his ice cream sundae. But the yakuza are much more public in Japan than crime organizations in other countries. They put their name of their office buildings and hand out business cards with their gang emblems on them. So the ruse wouldn't last very long.

Feel the Magic on your DS (or your browser)

Now that they are not in such short supply (or, at least, not a sufficient constrained market to justify my speculative instincts to overrule my curiousity), I bought a Nintendo DS last week. I had been curious to tryout the touch screen function in the lower screen of the Dual Screen (hence the DS)

The touch screen is an interesting element, but the question is how will developers work this into the games…as a primary aspect or a mere add on? I also purchased Sega’s “Feel the magic” game, which seemed to be one of the more quirky and interesting DS games at launch.

I’m only a little way into the game so far, but I am enjoying it. It is collection of numerous mini games which are designed to used the touch screen feature. The premise of the game is that you’re a male who sees this attractive woman (who is always shown backlit or in shadow) whom you want to impress. You end up doing all sorts of odd stunts and feats to curry her favor. It is all a bit too odd to explain here, but you can get a sense of gameplay (and the DS touch screen and how it can be used in a game) by playing a short Java based version that will load in your web broswer. What you see on the screen and how you interact with it is exactly like the DS version. Here's the link to the site
http://kimishine.sega.jp/ds/index.html?sid=ds
It takes a while to load, but does include the music from the game which I enjoy in a mindless way. The first game is very hard, but the second and third are pretty good. The instructions are in Japanese, but in the second game you should tap on the bulls but avoid the skiers…In the third game, the woman got a bit dirty from all the dust the bulls kicked up…your job is to wipe off the dirt off the woman’s arms and face…but don’t do it too hard or she’ll pull back in pain.

Reason #238 to like Japan

This isn't my photo, but it looks like it was taken in Shinjuku in Tokyo. These women are handing out flyers promoting Metal Gear Solid 3: Snake Eater from Konami. The game involves solo spying and close combat in a jungle environment....I'll leave it at that, since Metal Gear Solid games are somewhat notorious for rather long and often bewildering storylines. However, the alligator heads are actually related to the game. There is a part of the game when the protagonist needs to sneak by some guards...He does this by walking underwater wearing an alligator’s head on top of his own to disguise his movements (I know this because I saw a trailer at TGS for MG3). They'll certainly stand out from the other folks handing out flyers for contact lenses and karaoke joints. I would certainly stop and take a flyer from a woman wearing an alligator head. Wouldn't you?

Thanks, Nintendo, for helping out with my COBRA payments

One of the bigger successes for Project Arcturus this Christmas was the Nintendo DS, Nintendo's latest handheld gaming device. Yours truly, being the somewhat savvy toy profiteer, knew that there was a high probability of this item being sold out for Christmas. It would appear that product shortages are a key play in Nintendo's general marketing strategies. I guess they love all the press they get from being "the hot toy no one can get" lists for each Christmas. In past years, shortages occurred (and EBay opportunities appeared) with the Nintendo Gamecube and Nintendo Gameboy Advanced SP, so it was my opinion that it wasn’t very risky to do some speculating on the DS. On launch day (Sunday, Nov 21), I woke up early and visited 7 different stores and bought 14 of them, or approximately $2200 worth of them. Had I had the time to work it right, I probably could have picked up another dozen or so but I had to cut my shopping short in order to take my mother to the airport. In most stores, it was sold out by that afternoon (I bought the last ones in three different stores...Most stores only got 20 or less, so they sold out quickly). Needless to say, a product selling out in one day with little chance of restocking during an all important retail period makes the heart of a speculator beat much faster.

One of the interesting dynamics of this is that speculators likely caused some of the shortages. While not entirely scientific measure (which can be influenced by numerous factors such a re-listings of failed auctions, fraud, etc) there were 50,000+ auctions for the Nintendo DS on EBay during the month long period between the launch date and just before Christmas. This would amount to approximately 10% of Nintendo’s US shipments of the DS during this same period.

I won’t bore you with the details of my various auction strategies I used to sell of these items (plus the two additional DSes I managed to obtain during random shopping after the launch date...And you can bet I was kicking myself for not being more aggressive in obtaining inventory on launch day). Some strategies worked better than others but the market can be odd beast. Frequently, bidders would end an auction with a “buy it now” bid $40 higher than it would have taken to win a regular auction ending 2 minutes later (even taking into account things like shipping costs/key words in auction title/feedback levels). However, I will say it is immensely satisfying to net, on average, approximately 75% of my daily take home pay from my previous employer EACH time I sold one of these things (although that could be also be a testament to the low level of pay at my previous employer). Too bad I didn't have 250 of these to sell...I could take off the next 9 months.

So thank you, Nintendo, for creating such a frenzied market that I could earn 6-8 times the profit reselling these items than the original retailer made selling them to me.

Unfortunately, such imbalanced markets rarely last very long and there are usually limits of how much inventory one can get without having some inside source. However, I will certainly be getting up early on the US launch day (still an unspecified date sometime in March) of the Sony PSP. But I am not sure if there will be as many profiteering opportunities with the PSP as there were with the DS. The spending hysteria around Christmas helps a great deal to create these arbitrage opportunities. I find it fascinating that Christmas (and marketing) create people who are quite happy to buy something that is clearly marked up 50-60% from standard retail price from a non standard retailer such as myself. I am always surprised by the number of email I get from buyers saying things like “thanks for making my kid's Christmas” or “I’m so happy to get this”.

I guess it was a good day...since he didn't mention his A.K.

There was an unusual article in today’s Washington Post. I found an article that I thought was both interesting AND well written. A Style piece on Ice Cube as he hawks his new 'kid friendly' film “Are we there yet?”

The Warm and Fuzzy Side of Ice Cube
From the piece:

In the new slapstick flick "Are We There Yet?" the former mouthpiece of late '80s gangsta-rap progenitors N.W.A. -- a man whose braggadocio about women, guns and racism once had conservatives and rock critics condemning his rhetoric -- stars as a ladies' man who drives a would-be paramour's bratty tykes on a road trip through the Pacific Northwest. Along the way, his new Lincoln Navigator gets coated in juice, food, barf -- and eventually explodes.

That's nothing, however, compared with what his character's groin endures. A young boy kicks him, a runaway horse jostles him and, in perhaps the most inventive entry in cinematic emasculation, Paul Bunyan's ax wallops him.

"Kids love that stuff," says Cube (just Cube, never Ice -- fair warning), sitting in a suite in the Ritz-Carlton Washington. "And this one is for the kids."

Never thought you'd hear the man who infamously hollered "[Expletive] tha Police" ("They have the authority to kill a minority") and later threatened to burn down Korean-owned grocery stores say that, did you?

...snip...

(Nia) Long, who starred in last year's "Alfie" remake with Jude Law, says Cube's ability as a romantic leading man shouldn't be underestimated, either. In fact, in a fit of giggles, she admits that the rapper was a far better smoocher than the Brit: "Hands down, Cube is the better kisser. His lips are softer, fuller." (Cube never asked Long whether he was a better lip-locker than Law: "I know I am. I ain't got to ask her.)"

Ah, but did she call him " the Top Gun"?