two weeks ago: white elephant sale

It's been a while since the White Elephant Sale in Oakland happened and I finally found some free time to take pictures of half of my purchases! Ignoring the clothes I've bought for now (80s red power suit, flanel jacket...), though all are free to take a peek at the questionable purchase of the year: Bill Cosby style flower sweater, which was $2.50 if I remember correctly.

White set of 2 from Germany ($12); gold rim set of 3 from Japan ($4).

Subtle with fine detail: link bracelet ($2); circular ornament one ($5).

For my mother: light blue earrings with curavture ($3); bronze ones ($2.50).

boy bands in space: the sci-fi obsession

Backstreet Boys - Larger than Life (1999) and g.o.d - Observation (2000)
(Note: Youtube doesn't have the music video for Larger Than Life; wonder why?)
What was up with the sci-fi theme? Was it an overgrown post-obsession from the 80s in which the world was fascinated with galaxy adventure and universe expansion discovery? Or was it just the ideal staple for all things laughable, crazy, and unexplainable?

Take Korean boy band, g.o.d's video (acronym for Groove Over Dose) for Observation, which is definitely a low-cost production. It starts with all of the boys hopping and bopping in space with a mission to take down some anonymous villain who may or may not be after a beautiful anonymous woman. They pop into the Earth's ozone and hop and bop around to save beautiful anonymous woman (includes a great mannequin scene that reminded me of N'SYNC in It's Gotta Be Me...) After some stalking and obtuse spying, the boys discover that the anonymous villain was just a crossdresser! Oh my! Devastated, the boys return to their spaceship, which promptly runs into Santa Claus and his host of reindeers and explodes, leaving their wiggly bodies floating in the wide expanse.

Larger than Life in comparison, was more of a high-cost production with all of the insanely intricate yet ugly robot suits, huge spaceship model, detailed tech gadgets imitating an early protocol of Tony Spark's work interface, and hover boards. Everybody in the group starts out in their little sleep pods and then float around in their own sphere (Ken in the control pod, Nick with his army of dancing robots, Brian playing racquet ball with a virtual person on the hover board, AJ in a dark room connected to pipes, and Howie, the only one not in a spacesuit of some sort) until the dance ensemble. In which AJ rocks out the tiniest midriff cut-off. Then Kevin is fighting off missiles that is coming from a woman invader but all are successfully avoided and the boys all return to their sleep pods.

It's not about the possibility of comprehension and belief in any of these videos--only and purely all-out crazy fun shenanigans, super catchy music, great funky dance moves, and the excuse to 'be' in the wide expanse of the universe, the unknown frontier, the unmarked territory, doing whatever you want with hardly any consequences. Unless you happen to run into Santa Claus that is. :)

If anybody has any other space/sci-fi music video with another boy or girl band, please let me know. Britney Spears not including.

misery bear: following the unluckiest bear ever

Misery Bear is the loneliest, saddest and drunkest bear in the world. Nothing ever goes his way, no-one gives him the time of day, and he’s just trying to get through his depressing life in one piece. He drinks too much, hates his job, and can’t get a girlfriend.

This is his website.

"Go Away" Live Performance (2010): must be great to land this gig

2NE1 - Go Away, Live on SBS Popular Music, 9/12/2010

I couldn't give a rat's end tail about this song (yeah I know, artistic merit at zero) and whether or not it is a celebration of the triumph of the free female over the oppressive male or just about having a whole lot of head-banging fun. Because this is what the live performance of this song says to me exactly: a giant part rave on stage. It must be grand to be a back up dancer on this gig: basically being part of an awesome choreography of slow-mo and jumping up and down like a little kid. Not to mention, the whole effect altogether looks pretty awesome!

thirty days of sharing: I skip and cheat all the way to the end

30. whatever tickles your fancy

First off, here were the following four after 'describe your day in detail':

day 26 → your week, in great detail
day 27 → this month, in great detail
day 28 → this year, in great detail
day 29 → hopes, dreams and plans for the next 365 days

ARE YOU FOR SERIOUS? I could not even write substantially for a day; can you imagine the horror a week/month would be and the complete failtasm FAIL a year would be? And I am not particularly in the mood to be expressing my hopes, dreams, and plans at this moment, particularly the idea of keyboard smashing it on blogspot is not exactly appealing, so I'm just going to let it fly by the radar.

But I will leave you all with this from Dirty Tackle, which never fails to make me guffaw to myself in the office; talk about unprofessional work etiquette! *Guffaws*

"The people who make Legos decided to get in on the World Cup spirit by recreating the goals scored in certain matches - in this case, Saturday's 1-1 draw between England and the U.S. - with their product. There really isn't too much you can say about this delightful bit of nonsense.

I do like how they interpret every person involved in the match as being so happy, even though almost all of them have the same exact hairstyle (Lego Heskey may want to get that gaping hole on top of his head looked at). I'm also not sure why they have the goalkeepers wearing caps - must be some form of Lego revisionist history. But Lego Clint Dempsey's ball control is just as amazing as real Clint Dempsey's. And I would definitely pay good money to see Lego Clint rap."

- Brooke Pecks

So that's it guys, no more of this ridiculous sharing meme. Does this mean I will disappear completely, leaving behind a follow-me trail to my wordpress, which is intended for China purposes? No, not really. I might finally find the guts to post that argh-I-got-a-cute-tumor-in-me-brains curtain fic without falling off my chair and rolling into the side of my bed.