Jimi Hendrix: Blues

I’ve finally been reunited with this “Jimi Hendrix: Blues” CD. I lent my first copy to somebody, don’t remember who (of course). Our Nicole gave me a replacement in June for an anniversary present :) and I’ve been listening to it in the car.

I first encountered “Jimi Hendrix: Blues” when I was working joylessly as a broker assistant at Prudential Securities sometime in fall 1993, spring 1994, something like that. The branch manager was a guy named Bob, one of about three or four people out of the entire office who were actually nice and not sons of perdition. I was in Bob’s office one day and he was playing this CD. I said, “What’s that?” and he handed me the CD and told me what it was. I already had Jimi Hendrix “Are You Experienced?” and “Electric Ladyland” but hadn’t heard this before. 

I was fascinated with the blues “who’s who”/rogues gallery pictures on the back of the CD booklet, and even more so with the explanatory chart inside that identifies the different people.

I found my own copy at the old Poo-Bah's record store in Pasadena.

Before long Bob got fired. He was a good branch manager but he wasn’t hauling in enough money for the company as a broker (that’s what the others told me). Just one of the many things that nauseated me about that job. I didn’t stick around much longer. 

Thanks Bob! Thanks Nicole! 

Blood: The Last Vampire

I finally watched “Blood: The Last Vampire” (2000) again. I saw it in 2003 or 2004 as one of the films in the infamous ten-movie marathon. Like most the films from that night that I watched with only partial consciousness, I’ve always been interested in giving it a second look.
 

I don’t watch many anime movies. This is due to a conscious restraint in my malleable youth from becoming an anime junky, closet or otherwise. But at only forty-eight minutes long, it’s hard to say no to this movie.

The story concerns Saya, a teenage vampire hunting demons in human form. I like how consistent Japanese films are in their enthusiasm for showing violence between schoolgirls in uniforms.

I thought the best thing about “Blood: The Last Vampire” was the historical setting, a U.S. air base in Japan in 1966. References to the Vietnam war also gave it an anchored sense of time and place that I don’t associate with anime movies. It was also interesting that characters spoke in English and Japanese, depending on the speaker and who they were talking to. Plus great visual style – per IMDb, this was “the first fully digitally animated film from Japan.”

Coffee Mug

This is a photo of my current coffee mug, one of my favorites. I still miss my Gorky’s Cafe coffee mug and my John Deere coffee mug, those broke long ago. This one is from Cracker Barrel, which, although it is a chain restaurant, is, nevertheless, my favorite restaurant in Illinois.

One can get these Cracker Barrel mugs with different pictures on the back, like a picture of an oil lamp, or a checker board game, or a rocking chair, but mine has pancakes on the back. This is because when my metabolism was faster I used to tell Nicole that I was a “flapjacks-o-holic”. She gave me a t-shirt with a picture of pancakes on it. This mug can hold almost a pint of fluid with ease and that’s my kind of cup of coffee.