Got Them Weird Party Blues

Junk Room033, originally uploaded by wwc photos.

Two weekends ago. Possibly not. Possibly some other time, I went to an odd party/ gathering at the Junk Room on Kitaoji. I went with Maki from downstairs and we ran into Caitlin and Meca on the way. Caitlin stashed her bag in a bush outside, which was probably the coolest thing that happened all night as her bag was colorful and so was the bush and this is still Japan so everything was there when I left later. The Junk Room is just a very narrow bar with an odd square room at the back that looks like your styleless great aunt's spare storage space. There were two pre-schoolers playing with Gundam toys and some assorted old people. There were also 4-5 early 20s guys who looked hip in that way that it seems really accesible to look hip now but says nothing about whether you are hip or not because your mom could have got your clothes at Target and you would still look like the roadie for The Strokes who is too cool to tune the bass. It turns out one of them was there to play the guitar and they were all from Kansai Gaidai. They had a troop of groupies, also from Gaidai, who had made signs with bears on them that read "Matthew". Matthew was preceeded by a woman draped in bannanas who said, "I am a bannana. Take a bannana." And contorted the length of the bar balancing bannanas. Matthew played the guitar and was good in the way that impressed people who don't play music and makes those of us that do sound like asses for not agreeing whole heartedly and saying things like, "He does what he does well." The bar was so narrow that although I was about 20 feet away from the stage I could only see what was happening on a small TV monitor. Afterwards the Gaidai troop left and one of the groupies invited me to go to a club in Osaka. I said no and she left in her denim hot pants and boots. It would have been awkward. At some point a man plugged in his electric guitar, left the effects looping and played with no other amplified sound. After 20 minutes he was crying. I actually enjoyed it. Then DJ Shabu SHabu perfromed. Shabu speaks perfect English having been the child of two Japanese doctors who lived in Minnesota. Now he is a doctor himself. His lap-top died 5 minutes in so he decided to loop anything he could and do an onomatapoeia beat box about the word "poop." He declared, "I will loop anything." Put that on his gravestone if you bury him. I drank beers and went home.