SCANDAL's "Wonderful Tonight" is Auto-tuned to Hell

NOTE: Sony Japan tried to have the video above removed from YouTube by filing a DMCA takedown notice, thereby proving themselves to be even bigger dicks than I accuse them of being below. But I fought back, and won. The video is now restored to YouTube.

SCANDAL pretty much combine everything I've ever liked into one convenient and unique musical package. I've seen them live, really live, so I know they put on an amazing show. I buy all their stuff. Their most recent release is this:

It's their yearly live disc release - this one's of their special one-off show at Osaka-Jo Hall in March of 2013. Osaka-Jo Hall is one of the biggest arenas in Japan and their hometown venue - when they started out, their first shows were literally in a park across the street from it, and they've dreamed of playing there since then. This was the biggest show they've ever played (bigger than Budokan), and the most emotional for them.

So it's really too bad that their record label borked the disc. I feel like I wasted about $70.

Watch the video at the top, if you haven't yet. Don't ask me what's up with their outfits - there is a meaning behind them, but it's too obtuse if you don't follow them closely. (They do change to regular black outfits later in the show.) Anyway, the point is the Auto-tune.

SCANDAL's always been kind of a weird band in that they straddle the line between being pop idols and rock stars, but they themselves insist that they are a rock band. They do really play, they do really sing, they write at least some of their music, and they want people to respect them as a band. And in the old days, at least, they were really raw and powerful, like a Japanese version of The Runaways.

So it's out of character that this whole disc is just an Auto-tune extravaganza. It's like T-Pain style stuff in almost every song - I could tell there was Auto-tune going on before I even compared it to the original M-On footage in the above video. If it's not as obvious to you, try listening with headphones - in addition to the perfect pitch, listen for abrupt pitch changes that don't sound human. Once you hear it once, you'll hear it everywhere.

Now, I'm the one that put that video together - I didn't do it to make the band look bad, I did it to make the Auto-tune look bad. In fact, I don't think Auto-tune really has any place in rock music and I'd prefer if they left it off completely, even if it means the girls go off key every once in a while. Hey, that's rock 'n' roll. And they know that - I doubt the band themselves had any input in this.

This is the interface for Auto-tune 7. This is the root of much of the musical evil we've had to endure for the past ten years or so, right here. All the humanity-killing, soul-sucking electronic sorcery that turns a normal human voice into a robot - this is it.

In fact, Auto-tune isn't supposed to be heard. It's supposed to be invisible, or "transparent" in audio parlance (and it may be on their previous Budokan disc - it's not clear whether they used Auto-tune on that release or not). You see near the top left, under "Pitch Correction Control", those three knobs and one button are there so you can adjust Auto-tune to where it will correct tuning issues without being obvious about it.

My guess is that whatever summer intern Epic Records had working on this disc just set these controls incorrectly and then didn't bother listening to the result. "Retune Speed" is the most likely culprit, combined with misuse of the "Humanize" control. How this actually got approved for release, though, I have no idea. I would think a person higher up in the food chain at Epic would have to listen to a major release before putting it out on the market.

It's really a shame, because it was a great show (you can still watch the entire M-On version), and one I know the band will remember forever. But this isn't a good disc for us fans to remember it by - this isn't what they sounded like, and in fact no one naturally sounds like this. My hope in posting this is just that more of their other fans will take notice and force their record label to treat them as a rock band and/or actually listen to their future releases before putting them out there and charging us money for them.

Some of their fans may not notice or care, but if they want to broaden their fan base to real rock fans, this kind of thing doesn't help.

Naomi Watts, THE IMPOSSIBLE and getting dirty

Like most people, I first became aware of Naomi Watts in MULHOLLAND DRIVE, which is one of my favorite movies of all time. (I'm a David Lynch fan.) Since then, there's almost nothing she's done that I haven't been intensely interested in. She just does not give a fuck. She can and will do anything. ANYTHING. That's a big part of what makes her fun to watch.

This is a chopped up scene from THE IMPOSSIBLE, her 2012 film about the 2004 Asian tsunami, which my wife and I watched the other night:

That's real water. In the special features, the kid playing Lucas says a lot of the fear in their faces wasn't acting. Later in the film you see that Naomi Watts is actually shoved through that glass wall by the wave. Not a stuntwoman! (Sure, it's breakaway glass, but still - you try getting hit by a wall of water through a solid object!)

THE IMPOSSIBLE is a pretty good film, although I was a little uncomfortable at times with the story of that tsunami - which largely killed poor Southeast Asians - being told from the point of view of rich white tourists. I guess that makes it more "relatable" to us westerners. Still, Naomi Watts does her goddamn best to make us understand how awful it was whatever your ethnic background. (By the way, I liked Ewan McGregor in the film too, but this post is not about him.)

A lot of actresses are afraid to even get dirty. It's going to spoil their precious image and ruin the illusion that they're beautiful. Not Naomi Watts:

It's even more amazing that she's doing this at age 44! (Even she says on the special features, "I'm not 25, but I'm being thrown around like this.") She's aging amazingly well - admittedly, kind of hard to tell in this shot. But she's still hot!

This is the ultimate realization of her natural state on film. If you put Naomi Watts in a film and she doesn't end up at least with matted hair and preferably covered in blood, mud, dirt, smeared makeup, tears, or a combination of all of those by the end, you're doing it wrong. You have not challenged Naomi Watts. She's bored! She's been building up to this.

MULHOLLAND DRIVE:

21 GRAMS:

THE RING TWO (sorry, couldn't find a good shot from the first one):

KING KONG:

I don't know how this woman has not won ALL the Oscars. I mean, anyone who can make KING KONG watchable... come on. She's everything an actress should be. And not just because she likes to get down and dirty.

This is the face of a woman on a mission:

Intense. Naomi Watts will hire Jacob from LOST to kill you if you don't give her all the Oscars. The dichotomy about her is that this thin little blonde woman with a chipmunk face can be such a badass. And that intensity is the reason.

She didn't have to be this type of actress - she's always had the looks to play glamour roles:

And she's not above appearing in sexy magazine layouts. Which only makes me respect her more. She chooses to take on roles like MULHOLLAND DRIVE, 21 GRAMS and THE IMPOSSIBLE. She doesn't have to. She could take her pick of lightweight Hollywood rom-coms and period princess dramas that don't require her to get grimy, sob believably on command, scream at the top of her lungs or come close to drowning. (And sometimes she does, when she just wants a few days at the beach. Hey, she's earned it.)

To sum up, I like Naomi Watts.

THE IMPOSSIBLE? Worth a rent.

Grand Theft Auto V gameplay video - this is current-gen?!

I don't follow video games as much as I used to and I only talk here about a few series I really care about, but Grand Theft Auto has always been one of those. And holy Jeebus, watch that trailer - this is being done on the PlayStation 3 or Xbox 360?? I almost can't... no, I almost don't believe it. It looks so good, I am suspicious of what it's actually running on. I'd be happy with these graphics on the PS4, much less the PS3.

If this actually is running on current-gen consoles, then Rockstar North have really outdone themselves - and everybody else. No other developer can touch this.

Japan's "dark side", and other stuff not worth writing about

Every once in a while, someone tries to call me out in a comment or email as being somehow naive or simple-minded in my posts about Japan. Usually these people are obviously recent young JET program participants or NOVA language school refugees. They think their year or two living with a host family in rural Japan has given them particular insight into the country, and they're convinced that what I lack is knowledge of THE DARK SIDE.

The Japanese seem pretty comfortable with it.

That is, the supposed hidden underbelly of the country's psyche. Articles like this one or this one reinforce their position - it's become fashionable among younger westerners to focus on Japan's dark side. I actually believe it's a form of delayed culture shock mixed with a lack of self-awareness. Certainly I am keenly interested in Japan's little annoyances. But let me be clear about this: it's not that I'm unaware of or denying Japan's dark side. But I don't write about it because it is boring. It's boring to the Japanese too.

It's boring in the same adolescent way that Marilyn Manson is boring. It's like the first time you discover angst. It's a massive revelation when you're 17, but it's just sort of "there" for everyone else.

Every country in the world has a "dark side". Crime, malaise, bullying, the drudgery of routine, garbage, dirt, debt, social pressures, corruption, prostitution, inequality, racism, sexism... none of these things are unique to Japan or anywhere else; it's just a question of degree. Japan has them less than most countries. I just assume that they're always there; it would be worth writing about only if they were not.

(For example, I have written about Japan's unusually low crime rate, which is statistically true. But that doesn't mean no crime ever happens anywhere there. You just need a little perspective.)

These are also just topics with no real insight possible by any individual blogger, and certainly not an American one (pot/kettle/black). Am I going to solve Japan's suicide problem? On the other hand, I have the #2 Google result for Japanese crepes! Now that's a topic worth writing about.

When I'm in Japan, I like to look for things that are unique to it. My wife, who lived in Japan for the first 28 years of her life, says she's done more new things there in the time we've been together than she ever did when she lived there by herself. And when I write about Japan, I intentionally do it for people who might not be as familiar with the country as I am. This is a particular problem I've found with many Japanophiles (especially if they cross over a bit into weeaboo territory) - they treat Japan as if it's their own little club that nobody else is allowed into without already knowing the secret handshake.

I purposely don't write that way, using a lot of random Japanese words and acting like a lunch at Coco's Family Restaurant is some special Japanese activity with nuances that westerners couldn't hope to grasp. I want more people to go and experience Japan as I have over the past 13 years. And I want people to see the country as I still do, without being poisoned by some prematurely jaded kid who thinks they've stumbled upon a big secret about Japan that only someone like Tomithy Rempers might understand. (Rempers is a parody of Tim Rogers, a particularly Japan-obsessed video game writer who has now hopped on the dark side bandwagon, but you don't really need to know that to find the humor in that link.)

I was lucky enough to visit Japan for the first time in the year 2000. It was for my job, covering Nintendo Spaceworld for a web site I worked at, and I went alone. I didn't have this blog back then and so never wrote about that trip (maybe just snippets here and there), but it was a life-changing experience. How's this for a cool and apropos photo?

I went back almost immediately to cover the Tokyo Game Show that same year. Since then, I've spent a lot of time in Japan both personally and for work and done many, many things that I have never posted here, for one reason or another. Mostly it's family stuff - that's another thing people seem to assume I have no experience with. (I'm often told that I need to experience rural Japan to get the "real" experience, as if Ibaraki prefecture isn't rural enough. Anyway, 78.7% of Japanese people live in cities, and I'm pretty sure the urban experience is just as "real" for them. This is the same as the Sarah Palin "real America" argument here, and it's just as bullshit.)

Rural Japan. This was just after a typhoon, which is why I took this seemingly random photo of the rice paddy across the road from my in-laws' house.

I also do not, as a rule, post photos of family or friends here, because they do still value privacy. So you don't see all the times spent out just drinking in bars with friends we have there, or hanging around the house like an average family does, or going to Coco's Family Restaurant, or really any social situations at all. That may make my blog feel a little less personal than I'd actually like, and it may make my experiences seem more limited than they actually are, but it's the way the people we know there want it. And honestly, these are just normal everyday things, so they don't feel blogworthy at the time. Hanging around with family and friends in Japan is just not a lot different than doing the same in America.

This extends to my business too. Some of my actual friends reading this may know that I run a Japan-based store, and have for four years now. I deal with Japanese suppliers on a daily basis, as well as fashion models and other public figures there, some of which we've become pretty tight with. But I rarely post anything about my personal dealings with them anywhere - not here, and not even on my store blog (this or this is about the closest I get).

The point being, if you think you're going to educate anybody here about what Japan is "really like", you're in the wrong place. You're free to start your own blog where you can try to impress everyone with your knowledge of how Japan is actually the exact opposite of the way everyone thinks it is, but you're not teaching me anything, nor any of my readers. Japan is whatever you want it to be.

In conclusion: