Hatakeda Station

Hatakeda Station is part of the Japanese rail system, and here's what's really exciting: I've been there! Okay, I may have been there. I've been to Tokyo, but I wasn't there long enough to differentiate between all the 13-letter words comprised completely of Hs, Ks, Ms and Ts. Sorry, Japan.

I went to Tokyo in September as part of this sort of Asian immersion trip through school (I'm getting a Master's of Science in Integrated Marketing Communications from the Medill School of Journalism and Northwestern University. See how I made it sound so pretentious? In reality, I go to a random classroom in downtown Chicago twice a week and g-chat with my friends about how much smarter we are than the teachers. Sometimes we do group projects where we do the same thing, but in person...while drinking Miller High Life.)

So this trip lasted roughly 17 days. We went from the crowded chaos of Mumbai to the crowded snobbery of Shanghai to the crowded silence of Tokyo. And of all the sites and company visits we managed to cram in over the course of a couple weeks, I was definitely most preemptively advised about Tokyo.

This is, of course, because of my affinity for g-chat. It just so happens that two of my friends who bear the brunt of my g-chat addiction due to their willingness to respond to my blabbing and my constant need for humorous stimulation, Jessica & Charlie, both lived in Japan at one time and obliged when I asked for tips, recos, et al. (Incidentally, they're probably two of the few people who will ever read this. Tx, guys.)

In any event, Jess was more or less OBSESSED with the fact that I was going to visit her former home. She'd IM me something new every few hours in the weeks before my trip. Five days before I left, she sent a three-page email titled "important j. things." It had useful phrases, must-see phenomena and important dos & don'ts. It was overwhelming to say the least.

And sadly, I got to do very little of what she suggested. We were basically ushered around the city every day by NU alumni who took us on the Metro from company to company all day, where we learned how much better Japan is at using cell phones and making normal shit look crazy. In all, we were probably in about 674 different metro stations. One of them could've been Hatakeda Station, right? In the little time we had left, though, I got to revel in the following "j. things":

• "Doa ga shimarimasu" which means "doors are closing." Every train, elevator and even taxi told me this many times a day. Japanese machines are very polite.
• "Kawaiiiiiiii desu" which means "that's sooooooo cute." I said this as much as possible so the Js in the crazy Shibuya stores would think I was badass. Turns out they already thought I was badass. I'm American.
• 100 Yen store. Jess talked these places up soooooo much because this is where she got all the hilarious poorly translated postcards she'd send us all the time. A group of us spent nearly all of our free time trying to FIND one...but when we finally did, the bad translation flourished.
• Hachiko, the dog at Shibuya station, which Jess billed as "the best and worst meeting spot ever." This is because it's easy to find...and because EVERYONE meets there.

That's it. Okay, that's not it, but it's almost it. This means I REALLY need to go back. Mostly to check whether or not I've ever been to Hatakeda Station (I haven't, because I just realized it's not anywhere near Tokyo). Oh well. Doa ga shimarimasu and it's time to go to bed.

NOTE: I could probs write like a few more pages about Japan. I made it sound sort of stupid. It was badass. Hopefully, in the future, I'll get another Wikroll that will lead me back to Tokyo...maybe it'll be a metro station I've actually been to.

Al Foster

Today, I went on a Pandora adventure that took me through the melodies most algorithmically related to Sharon Jones & Dap Kings (inspired by my recent viewing of Up in the Air, which features a sultry yet upbeat Sharon Jones cover of folk/3rd grade music class favorite "This Land is Your Land" during its opening credits). As such, I was already feeling pretty jazzy & funky. And yes, I realize that I sound like a mom who appliqués bunnies on jean vests when I call myself "jazzy" and "funky." Unfortunately, I've been having a real adjective problem lately.

In any event, this day of uber-cool jazz-funk (not g-funk) is only continuing as I explore Al Foster, former drummer for Miles Davis. Is it bad that I grew up so entrenched in my own generation's pop culture phenomena that when I hear Davis's name, I can't not think of the old lady from Billy Madison who laments that "If peein' your pants is cool, consider me Miles Davis"? I think it might be. I'm sorry.

I'm sorry most of all to my grandpa, who was actually an incredible jazz pianist. He had piles of Oscar Peterson and Duke Ellington albums stacked among his own recordings that he "laid down" (I'm not cool enough to say that, hence the quotes) on his totally badass keyboard. My sister and I used to have a ball messing with that keyboard. We'd put on the pre-fab"swing-jazz" backbeat & melody and dance around the rec room, speeding up and slowing down the tempo bar to force each other to prance furiously like Flashdance, then stop short and sloth around for the next few bars. Yes, it's okay to sound the nerdalert now.

You'd think being surrounded by all of this would've bred a true jazz connoisseur. It did. Her name is Amy and she's my sister. She listens to all the albums she inherited from Grampy. She's one of those cool people that has a record player and actually uses it.

I've tried. I have. I want to love these great musicians, and, of course, pop culture has inspired me to do so. When I saw Jerry Maguire, in which Chad the babysitter claims he's going to introduce Jonathan Lipnicki to Coltrane, I was like "yeah, introduce me, too." When I went through the obligatory "I find John Mayer endlessly attractive & soulful" phase, the lyrics "...but you could distinguish Miles from Coltrane" in reference to Mayer's "Comfortable" ex obviously made me want to educate myself.

It never happened. But you know what? Al Foster never learned to read music. So there. Even Mr. Mariah Carey, Nick Cannon, learned how to read music in Drumline. Maybe, someday, I'll learn to appreciate highbrow, important cultural icons. But for now, I'm going to go watch "The Bachelor" on DVR.

Just kidding. I watched it live.

Milk River, Alberta, Canada

So I think this is my karmic retribution for making fun of Canadians in my last post. Let me just state for the record that I highly enjoy most Canadians. Off the top of my head, I can definitively state that the only ones I can't support are the members of Nickelback.

Let me also just state for the record that Milk River, a town of 816 located on the body of water of the same name, evokes (for me at least) endless visions of gumdrop mountains, candy cane lanes and peanut brittle bridges, all watched over lovingly Lord Licorice, Princess Lolly and that cold bitch Queen Frostine.

Listen, I know milk isn't exactly the sweetest beverage around, and it's mildly random that the possibility of a river of milk is causing me to daydream of Candyland characters, Willy Wonka's factory or that creepy-ass Charlie the Unicorn video, but I'm thinking it has something to do with a story my friend sent me earlier this week. Apparently, this restaurant in NYC called Momofuku Milk Bar (I know, WTF, Clockwork Orange?) is now selling milk that tastes like delicious cereal has been soaking in it all day. It's infused (to sound like the pretentious foodie that I'm not) with the delicious sweetness of Fruity Pebbles, Cap'n Crunch or Lucky Charms.

Now, while this sounds more than palatable on two counts (I don't care what you say. Lucky Charms are sick.), I don't know if I really agree with this. Trends that entice people to pay $5.60 for something that would usually cost roughly $.49 generally make me uneasy (as in Starbucks instant oatmeal and that dumbass Cereality chain). I mean, why drink the tasty, sugary milk without eating the cereal first? I would prefer to do both, which is why I bought myself a box of Fruity Pebbles about four hours after I read about the magical milk bar. And I've eaten at least a bowl every day since.

I should probably mention that this milk article was sent to me as yet another counterpoint in a longstanding debate over how long it takes to pour & eat a bowl of cereal. My co-workers and I did some intense market research (i.e. asked our friends via Facebook & gchat) to figure it out. Many of those questioned claimed it takes upwards of 12 or 13 minutes, but after actually testing it out realized it only takes about 5 or 6 minutes at most.

It takes me 3. But not if the bowl is the entire Milk River the cereal is a lifetime supply of Fruity Pebbles. God, I hope I dream about that tonight. And that there are unicorns there
(and snozberries).

Old Dutch Foods

Now, as it happens, I'm actually very familiar with Old Dutch Foods, a manufacturer of potato chips and other schnacks in the midwest and Canada. They make all kinds of crap--from tortilla chips & salsa to ketchup chips (silly Canadians).

But, in all honesty, I remember Old Dutch particularly for the twin packs. You'd buy a big box and inside were two clear plastic bags of potato chips, preferably with ridges if you knew what was good for you. Old Dutch calls the ruffly ones "Rip-L," which reminds me of this kid I went to school with back in the day (which I now know was a Wednesday, thanks to Dane Cook). His last name was Rippl, and his younger siblings were triplets, earning them the nickname "The Riplets." How cute is that? Not quite as cute as when Michelle Tanner would say "ouce cream," but close. I said close, Sweetin. Don't get all methy about it.

Since they are so midwesty, and basically just a notch up from generic, it's no surprise that I associate Old Dutch with my most Wisconsinny childhood memories.

We'd buy Old Dutch twin packs at the Antigo IGA (the one with the weird stand-up carts and racks of Archie comics) when we'd trek four hours to go up north to our cabin every other weekend in the summers (until my parents sold it in 1994 to buy a sailboat, thus crushing my dreams of having a really cool vacation home now that I'm kind of a grown up).

We'd buy Old Dutch along with cans of Old Style (for real not because my parents were hipsters), cardboard trays of assorted Faygo soda and 4-packs of Batles & Jaymes from the family-run liquor store Schnapps Haus (where my dad can actually say "put it on my tab" and they actually write down what he bought and bill him later) before going up to Green Bay for a Packer tailgate. The brats were already in the car, okay?

And, I can't be certain about this, but I'm pretty sure there were a few twin packs present the day we packed up about six minivans of family friends, hitched the avocado green motorboat to the back of our brown & black Ford Bronco, and headed out for a day at Long Lake, which I think was part of some sort of state park we'd go to when we were kids. On this particular day, though, my dad took a swig of his High Life only to find out there was a bee inside the can. A BEE. It stung him in the throat. FROM THE INSIDE. Panicking, he grabbed a bottle of Benadryl from one of the moms and chugged the whole thing. Needless to say, he was rather fucked up for a while.

But that's why, from then on, at any outdoor gathering, my mom always supplied us with those nifty little color-coded can covers. And, why the announcement at the Wisconsin Badger games once I got to college really struck a chord with me: "Remember: Drink plenty of liquids, and check for bees in your drinks." Y'know, I bet that announcement was sponsored by Old Dutch.