The Song for All of the Stupid Boys in the World

I went to see Ben Folds' live performance yesterday.

Haruki Murakami wrote the essay "Who Killed Jazz? (誰がジャズを殺したか)" in the book "I've Been Getting to Feel Sad about a Foreign Language (やがて哀しき外国語)". I'll translate the passage of this essay as follows.

In the end I am sorry that jazz might have been straying away from the contemporary music, which is alive in this age. With a cold attitude, I feel and think the same way.
….
"In the end jazz may become a kind of "traditional art" for the generation of Marsalis". Wynton Marsalis is a bright talented young man, and he studies jazz quite intensely.
…
His playing has full of love and affection, but they are from the time that has passed by and is going to die.
…
Jazz is not the thing to resist for the generation of Marsalis now, but the music to be moved by, be touched by and study. It is the circle, which has already closed, for them.

Jazz is taught in Berklee College of Music as if it's a "traditional art", and jazz musicians have never learned music in the jazz clubs full of cigarette (or marijuana) smoke

I think that rock music isn't contemporary music now either. Hip hop killed Rock music in the 90s, and Nirvana was the last band that created new rock music. And then rock musicians have basically rehashed old rock music, so I mainly listen to rock music from the 60s and 70s. (Fortunately Berklee hasn't taught rock music. When they begin to do so, it’ll be the time of complete death of rock music.)

Ben Folds is one of a few rock musicians, whose new CDs I buy. Sometimes he also rehashes old rock music, but he tries to enhance the possibility of rock music in the 00s at the same time. He plays the piano (he plays all of the instruments by himself when he records his songs in a studio), and he doesn't use guitars in his band. But his songs are considered to be rock music, because he plays the piano as if it were a percussion instrument. He hits a keyboard with his palms, knuckles and elbows.

"Army" Ben Folds


I love his music, and himself as well. I feel closely related to him.

We are the same age. He looks like a geek, so do I. When he was young, he seemed to be a stupid boy, and wrote and sang songs for stupid boys, like "Songs for Dumped". I love such songs, because I love stupid boys and of course I also was a stupid boy.

"Songs for Dumped" Ben Folds


"金返せ" (Japanese version of "Songs for Dumped") Ben Folds


When I saw him at the live, he seems to have matured, in other words, he's got older. I have also became a little more matured and older. And both of us wear glasses, (although I'm not as talented as he is.)

I was afraid that he would not come to Japan, because of the earthquake, the tsunami and the nuclear accident. In fact many events were canceled. He's been worried about Japan, and he played for a charity on ustream, and finally I was able to see him again.

"Jackson Cannery" Ben Folds on SXSW 4 JAPAN


It's super cool for him to kick a keyboard, lol.

I have some disappointing experiences with seeing some musicians perform live, because their performance was much worse than their CDs. But seeing Ben Folds' lives was much better than his CDs, (although his CDs are good enough). He is great at playing the piano and singing.

This live performance was held at Hitomi Kinen Hall in Tokyo, which are usually used for classical music concert, so the sound was really great. I could hear his piano sound directly, not through a PA. It was just the live music!

I was singing, shouting and dancing throughout this performance. I really enjoyed singing with him. I took my wife to this live performance. She isn't fan of Ben Folds, but she was satisfied with it.

I'll never say to you "金返せ (kanekaese)". I love you, Ben chan.

I Am Linus

I love the comics "Peanuts."

Everybody may know Snoopy and Charlie Brown, but I wonder how they read the comics themselves  nowadays.

In the comics you will find full of characters, who you can really love. Each of them has their own unique and lovely personality.

Snoopy isn't just cute, but cool and dry. Charlie takes care of Snoopy eargerly, but Snoopy doesn't remember his name and call him "the round-headed kid". Every boy could find the similar traits of Charlie Brown in their own mind and so do I.

Lucy is a typical "girl". She is always mean to Charlie Brown and Linus in a very girlish way, which is quite unreasonable for them. In my childhood I was always running away from such girls, and I might be running away even now. But she also loves Schroeder, and she becomes a very sweet girl, when she sees him playing the piano.



I love Peppermint Patty. She is the other type of girl, who is really natural. She went to dog school as one of the students, (of course the other students are dogs), and she has not found that the school was for dogs, after she graduated from it.

And I love Linus most of all apart from the rest of the "Peanuts" characters. No, I don't love Linus, but I am LINUS himself. When I read "Peanuts", I always sympathize with Linus. We have a lot of common things with each other. He is calm but argumentative. He is logical but childish. He seriously believes in the Great Pumpkin, which other people never believed, and depends on his famous blanket. When Lucy is mean to Linus, he always fight back logically, but finally Lucy beats him. I can understand how he feels perfectly.

My wife says that she is like Sally the most out of all the "Peanuts" characters. I feel relieved with the fact that Linus is Sally's boy friend. Our conversations are like this skit, lol.



When you read "Peanuts", you will find the character that you relate to the most. Try to read it.

The Reason Why I Won't Buy an iPad

I found an article that the prices of PCs are going down in Japan because smart phones begun to compete against PCs in Nikkei ( I'm sorry for this article written in Japanese).

I wrote "In the future PC will die" in the journal "Close Encounters of the Third Kind" on my weblog, but PC already has been dying.

But I don't have a smart phone or an iPad, partly because I think that PC, which has a big display and a full keyboard, is more convenient than them. I have another reason why I won't buy iPad.

I imagined what would happen if I were to buy an iPhone or an iPad.

Now to access the Internet, I have to go to my desk, turn on my PC, wait for its booting up, log into my account, click the icon of the browser and wait for it to it to open. It's a barrier for me to access the Internet.

If I get an iPhone or an iPad, it will get much easier to access the Internet. I'll bring them and access the Internet at anytime and anywhere. Only when I write a long journal, I'll use PC. It must be more convenient than now.

The convenience is a problem. Sometimes I see a website and write a comment on Facebook while I talk with my wife. I miss what she says and give a vague answer. It's really rude for her and I regret it afterwards. If I have an iPhone or an iPad and can access the Internet at anytime and anywhere in my house, what will communication be like between my wife and me become? It's obvious.

Some children never leave their portable game devices even at dinner, and they are scolded from their mothers. If I bring an iPhone or an iPad even in the bed, what will happen? I can't imagine how awful it will be.

For the peace of my family I won't buy an iPad.

How Well Do You Understand What I Mean?

I might be the biggest fan of my own weblog. When I read my journals, I think that it's very clear and easy to understand what these journals mean, natch, because I wrote them by myself.

My wife says to me that she can understand what I mean in my English journals (I’m a Japanese native speaker and an English learner as a secondary language, so we talk in Japanese in my house), because we talk about the same topics, which I write on my weblog, and she knows my way of thinking very well. We share a lot of things, which help her understanding my journal, but how about the other readers, who don’t share culture and backgrounds with me? I can't imagine how they understand my journals.

Logically there is no perfect communication. I can't understand what you mean completely, and you can't know how I understand what you mean. But actually we can do with imperfect communication.

In fact I always have misunderstandings in Japanese communication even with my wife. But when I speak in Japanese, I don't care about misunderstandings seriously, because I can imagine how they understand and misunderstand what I mean.

But I worry if they can understand what I mean when I speak or write in English. I've got a lot of feedback to my Japanese remarks throughout my life, but I haven’t had enough feedback to my English remarks.

I can have good chances to get feedback to my English remarks on Facebook and Lang8. When I read comments on my journal, I guess that some people understand what I mean precisely and other people don't understand it well.

How do you understand what I mean? If you don't mind, please give me your comment for the improvement of my English. Thank you.

Close Encounters of the Third Kind

Recently I wrote about "the Stone Age", which I call the era before the Internet as a joke, on my weblog. Today I'll write about the differences between the ways of using and thinking of the Internet by my generation of the Stone Age and younger generation of the Iron Age.

I'd like to go back to an older age. I was born in the New Stone Age, when the TV already existed. But my parents' generation was born in the Old Stone Age, when the TV didn't exist yet. They had experiences of the first encounters of TV, as if monkeys encountered a "Monolith" in the film "2001: A Space Odyssey."

TV is the "Monolith" for my parents' generation, which changed their lives. But I don't know the era without TV in the Old Stone Age. There already has been TV in my life, so it has not changed my life and it has been a part of my life at beginning. I think that the ways of thinking of TV by my parents' generation and my generation might be different. The Old Stone Age people and the New Stone Age people are different.

For me the Internet is the "Monolith." I clearly remembered my first encounter of the Internet. I encountered the Internet on business, not privately. Of course I use the Internet now because I have no other choice, but I feel PC and the Internet are basically for my work. PC means "Personal" Computer, but for me it isn't "personal" but "official". I guess that for younger generations, the Iron Age people, the Internet is a part of their private lives.

When I touched the "Monolith," I used a UNIX (not Linux) machine, which was based on CUI (Character-based User Interface). A browser wasn't installed, and I used e-mail and accessed remote databases. I wrote e-mail by "vi", which is a popular text editor software on UNIX in the New Stone Age. I thought of the Internet as a tool of my work like a mainframe computer at that time.

After Windows 95 was released, the meanings of the Internet for me were changed. I had been able to access the Internet by my own PC and WWW (World Wide Web) became common. Although Microsoft made a great improvement from MS-DOS to Windows 3.1 and a greater improvement from Windows 3.1 to Windows 95, and then they have stopped improving windows at least for users, and it's the same as MS-Word and MS-Excel.

Nowadays everybody uses the Internet, but at that time the user of the Internet was limited mainly to some business users and geeks. And I often heard the word "netiquette." The capacities of network and computers were much poorer than now, so users had to care of not giving network too much load and it was called "netiquette". If I made mistakes, some geeks would have given me a telling-off on the net at once, so it was hard to get into the world of the Internet.

Anyway I found that I could make my own website by Windows 95 and my desktop PC, so I tried to make it, which was only seen in the office. One of my friends, who saw my website, told me that it was fun and I should publish it, so I started this website.

In the Early Iron Age there was no weblog service and SNS. I typed html to keep my diary on my website by myself, and communicate with my friends through message boards and e-mail. It was very fun, and it might be more fun than now. After all I’ve been doing the same thing, keeping diaries and making comments on friends’ website, on the Internet until now.

Now we can access the Internet by various tools, but I don't have a smart phone and iPad. I have always accessed the Internet by PC, so I feel it is most convenient to use a PC with a big display and a full keyboard. Sometimes I send e-mail by a cell phone, but I'm not good at writing by a cell phone. I don't want iPhone and iPad but MacBook Air.

I guess young people, who were born in the Iron Age, touched the Internet through cell phones first, so they have no feelings of resistance toward accessing the Internet by various tools.

In the future PC will die, and I, the Stone Age man, will go extinct. "Old soldiers never die; they just fade away."