Calling all Blog-Tickers in San Francisco!

And now, for an unusual announcement.

KAME'S BACK!! (sort of)

For those of you who have been following This is Not Greatest Site since the beginning, you may recall that Kame was the original website designer, or, in hokey 90's terms, the original webmistress.  She quit the webmistress position at the end of 2009, and Cayce has been managing the site largely independently since that time.

Why did Kame quit, you ask?  The short answer is, the Silicon Valley hotshots gave her an offer she couldn't refuse.  Now she's located in the Bay Area, where she occasionally samples Jack Dorsey's curated whiskey collection, among other duties.

Anyhow...currently, Kame is working on some plans for a new j-rock-related project that you will just ooooh so love, and she's interested in meeting up with any Blog-Tick readers who might be in the area. Want to learn all about it? You can talk to her in person this Saturday at Dir en grey's show at the Regency Ballroom.

Can't make it to Dir en grey's show? You really should talk to her anyway. Interested? Contact Cayce, and Cayce will connect you to Kame (like a phone operator, but not.)

Going to the show, but too shy to approach her in person?  Get over it!  She's really friendly!

Look for the small, short-haired blonde wearing a polka dot headscarf and this dress:

and this jacket:

A likely place to spot her will be by the bar, getting sloshed on Franzia. Because that is what classy Californians do.

Actually the Franzia is a lie. We don't even know if they sell Franzia at the Regency Ballroom. Kame will probably be drinking voldka sodas, and complaining about Franzia. Not that it matters.

So yeah. Blondie in a polka dot dress...like Debbie Harry but younger and with more Angelic Pretty and sad to say, probably not quite as cool as Debbie Harry...but, she built this site eight years ago.  Go say hello.  You won't be sorry.

By the way, the cake is also a lie.

Buck-Tick Billboard

Buck-Tick adorably announced that they were once again going to be featured on a billboard outside Tower Records Shibuya.  Since the last time they were featured on such a billboard was before the release of Memento Mori, this is kind of a big deal for them.  Unfortunately, the billboard they're on this time is nowhere near as big as the one they were on then.  For those of you in Tokyo who'd like to check it out, it's in the entryway of Tower Records Shibuya, up in the lefthand corner, and it's kind of overshadowed by JAPAN.

Unfortunately, not this JAPAN.

(And yes, that's Tsuchiya Masami standing to the right of David Sylvian in the above picture.)

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No, unfortunately, it was this Japan.

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That wall is about 5 meters high, by the way.  The Buck-Tick billboard is objectively large, but subjectively small.

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And here's Kuroyume advertising 109 Men's, for good measure.

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São Tomé and Príncipe, and Buck-Tick

This, my friends, is the biggest WTF item of Buck-Tick arcana I have ever discovered.

A 2009 commemorative stamp sheet from the small equatorial island nation of São Tomé and Príncipe, featuring some of the "greatest stars of Japanese music and cinema."  São Tomé and Príncipe is a Portuguese-speaking island country located in the Gulf of Guinea, the second-smallest country in Africa after Seychelles, and the smallest Portuguese-speaking nation in the world.  It gained its independence from Portugal in 1975.  Like Japan, the São Tomé and Príncipe islands are volcanic.

Anyhow, according to São Tomé and Príncipe, in 2009, Japan's greatest music and film stars were Mifune Toshiro, famous for his roles in Kurosawa Akira's masterpiece films Rashomon, The Seven Samurai, The Throne of Blood, and Yojimbo; Hamasaki "Ayu" Ayumi, called "Japan's pop princess" for her incredible lasting popularity throughout Asia; Kitano "Beat" Takeshi, famous for his hard-boiled, deadpan, blackly humorous yakuza films, and Sakurai "Acchan-chan" Atsushi, famous for his love of felines and for being the third sexiest man in Japan after Hoshino Hidehiko and Yagami Toll.

Perhaps this answers the question about whether there are African Buck-Tick fans.  If you are an African Buck-Tick fan, please comment on this post!

Found on an online collectors' stamp shop.  Please, Sun Goddess Amaterasu, please tell me this is real.

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Fish Tanker's Only 2013 DVD Release

The Fish Tanker's Only 2013 DVD was released today!

Cayce is currently watching it.

Cayce will not be live-tweeting it.

I'm only posting one screencap, because I know this is all you guys care about.

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Oh wait, here's another.

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Hide spit that pick out of his mouth, because he's a Sexxxxxy Beast.

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Sex 4 U.

Kishidan Banpaku

My live report of Kishidan Banpaku is up over at Not Greatest Site.  I'm sorry if I come across as grumpy in this report...but then, if Grumpy Cat could become a celebrity on nothing but the strength of his grumpiness, surely you can forgive Cayce now and again. It's just a little hard, when coming to the festivals of others, not to wish I was coming to Buck-Tick's festival instead. There were no intentional puns or word plays, dirty or otherwise, in that sentence.

It's just that you know, coming to a non-Buck-Tick festival is a bit of an anti-climax together, all told.

Also, in this instance, "hide with spread beaver" should have been called "negative hide plus spread beaver."  Because believe you me, Hideto Hide was not there.  And crazed pink-haired Hideto Hide fans...don't get on my case about the caps vs. lowercase thing. Always spelling "hide" in all lowercase is effing confusing. Also I have to find some way of distinguishing Hideto Hide from Sexy Beast Hide, so caps it is.

Japanese Word Processing

Not Buck-Tick related, but I think some of my readers who are currently students of Japanese might be interested in this article on Japanese word processing.

Also, a quote from the new issue (Issue 69, doncha know) of the Fish Tank newsletter:

Interviewer: "Mr. Sakurai, fans wanted to know what it was you were drinking out of that mug during the scene in the recording studio."

Sakurai: "It was the blood of the village virgins."

Interviewer: "We also received many comments from fans about the scene filmed in your dressing room, Mr. Sakurai.  They commented in particular on the fact that your redacted was caught on film. We'd like to hear your feelings about this."

Sakurai: "Just what do they find so interesting about an old man's redacted, anyway?"

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If you haven't seen the movie yet, I guess you'll just have to clutch your knickers and find out.

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Buck-Tick Festival Tour Goods

Tour goods have been announced for the two fall festivals at which Buck-Tick will be performing: Kishidan World's Fair, this Saturday, and The Solar Budoukan, next Sunday.

Goods are viewable here, under "tour goods." http://buck-tick.com/live/live.html

Cayce will be attending the Kishidan World's Fair, and will be taking orders for tour goods at 20% commission.  If you want me to get you anything, let me know asap.  Last year, the hooded towels had detachable horns, so perhaps they will this year, too.

Sorry, I know that was boring, so I'll add that in the realm of juicy gossip, Hoshino Hidehiko went out today to an undisclosed location. He was not wearing underwear.