Takeshi Kitano vs. Kazushi Sakuraba – November 2000

I found this bizarre interview lying around on the internet. It’s not a fascinating interview or anything, but I find it fairly novel for the two to be speaking to each other, giving their own little insights to violence and entertainment.

For those not familiar with the names, Takeshi Kitano, AKA Beat Takeshi, is a Japanese director/writer/actor known for films such as Hana-Bi, Sonatine and, most recently, Brother. His films generally have mind blowing violence mixed in with a dark, dark sense of humor. He started his fame in Japan as a stand up comic, as part of a duo called Two-Beat.

Kazushi Sakuraba is a middleweight fighter that competes in no holds barred fighting competitions. While Ultimate Fighting is a fringe sport in the United States, similar competitions in Japan are very popular, filling up the Tokyo Dome and selling well on pay per view. In that venue, Sakuraba is Japan’s favorite son, a former pro-wrestler who looks more like the foreman of the Toyota plant than any ass-kicking machine. He is most famous for beating Royce Gracie in a 90 minute war of attrition during the Pride Grand Prix.

The interview is probably only of interest to fans of either gentleman, and is mind numbingly strange for people like myself, who are fans of both.

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I caught Lovage at the House of Blues on Monday night. For those that aren’t aware of Lovage, it’s Dan “The Automator” Nakamura’s followup to Deltron 3030 and Gorilllaz. Like all his projects, he brings in outside talent to realize his general vision and he handles all the production. Lovage recruits Faith No More’s Mike Patton (working completely outside his normal vocal style) and the sultry voice of Jennifer Charles. It also marks another collaboration between Automator and turntablist Kid Koala. The creative push behind Lovage’s “Music to Make Love To Your Old Lady By” was to make something of a sexy lounge act. The end results sound like Portishead backed by Automator’s spacy rhythms and beats.

That said, let’s get on with the Show. The band shows up in the mood, dressed for silk robes and other bedtime clothes, with a projection of a 70′s porn film flickering in the background. Patton and Charles do most of the heavy lifting, doing all the vocals and most of the audience interaction. Generally, Charles plays the sex kitten traditionally while Patton playfully soaks into his role as a love machine. They play off each other really well and allow the concert to be sensual and moody without being overbearing or pretentious. Koala generally spins on every track, while Automator kind of stands around and plays to the crowd a lot. Automator’s schtick is really funny at first, but I found his grandstanding began to detract from the performance as the set went on. It feels too much like a director that wants to act and ends up casting himself in the lead (I’m looking at you Ed Burns).

The performance was dead on for most of the evening, with a major highlight being a cover of J-Lo/Ja Rule’s “I’m Real” during the encore. In case you’re wondering, it was Patton doing the Lopez vocal with Charles giving a throaty interpretation of Ja Rule’s sections. Unfortunately, while Lovage seemed tight and on the ball, the show was marred by some technical issues, including a sound mix that pushed the P.A. system into distortion as well as a few loud screeches of feedback.

As for the audience… a small portion of the crowd was a bit disinterested, and about half of them couldn’t seem to dance on the beat. The general lameness of the crowd was most apparent during the warmup acts. Opening act duties were handled by Ugly Duckling and a short DJ set by Kid Koala. While it may suck to open a rock concert, it seems doubly worse for a hip-hop act. Ugly Duckling dropped a really fun, engaging performance and got absolutely no response from the crowd. This was especially bad during the call and response sections, where the audience was giving nothing up. Koala had a really impressive set, mixing Dee-Lite, De La Soul, Tribe Called Quest, Sir Mix-A-Lot and the Cure, among others. That said, I should’ve known something was up when the biggest crowd pop of the night was for the Cure’s “Close to Me.”

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For New Year’s Eve, I woke up early… around 10:00am and drove up to Santa Barbara, CA with a few friends to have lunch and bum around, mostly just to get out of Los Angeles for a little bit before the actual celebration began.

Since I knew there was a mini-roadtrip involved, I haphazardly tossed together a last minute mixtape. On this tape somewhere was Andrew WK’s “Party Hard,” which got stuck in our collective subconscious during the ride up. This meant that as we were walking around town, each of us would randomly break into a part of that ridiculously stupid chorus. This was usually followed by a Rock-Lock, which was taught to me a long time ago by Matt Fraction. I blame this general stupidity on Adrian Langston, who made me listen to Andrew WK once. Do you hear that Langston?!?!

Anyhow, Santa Barbara was really nice. We had a nice lunch and wandered around downtown, realizing that all the stores there were just chains that we have in L.A. anyway. I did have the strange experience of running into some cracked voice clerk at the Brookstone who showed interest in my “What Would Joan Jett Do” T-shirt. This was followed by a look of confusion and the words “so… who’s Joan Jett?”

I swear I felt like punching the guy out, but he was pretty much just beyond help at that point.

We ended up at some pub in Santa Barbara and celebrating the GMT New Year there at about 4pm, with remarkably crappy champagne. Nisha pointed out that the ‘pagne smelled like urine, and that we should not doubt her for she lives in New York and is trained in the varying bouquets of urine. I declined to challenge this opinion.

With one New Year’s celebrated and we retreated and made good time back to L.A. We ended up at a small party of a friend of a friend’s and celebrated New Year Proper there. I was basically in a house full of strangers, but everyone was remarkably sweet, and didn’t even sweat me too much for being surly (this is pretty much my natural state of being, in case you were wondering). We drank, mingled and played goofy party games and played with the overly adorable Piglet, the Dog of the House.

By the end of the evening, I realized one of us was a member of the Mafia. One of us was a Cop. One of us was a Korean Pop Star. Beautiful Strangers are one of life’s real joys.

Pictures available here.

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