skip to main |
skip to sidebar
This is a column I originally wrote for the Reno Gazette-Journal
GO FISH: Early one morning, my sister awoke to several nudges from my 3-year-old niece, who had a sudden urge to talk about one of the more memorable moments of her young life.
“What is it?” asked my bleary-eyed sister.
“Hey Mom, remember when we went fishing with Uncle Jason?” my niece asked. “He caught a vegetable.”
Quickly, my sister switched from sleepy zombie to hysterical banshee, simply because she’s evil.
“What’s so funny, Mom?” my No. 1 fan asked.
Somewhere out there, a school of groupers is probably chuckling at me, too.
For those of you who failed to witness my latest foray to cement my status as one of Northern Nevada’s greatest manly men, I recently took my visiting niece to a free fishing day at Rancho San Rafael. This was the first time I took part in this neat event, and only the fourth time I’ve fished in my life.
I’ve never been good at fishing. If I kept score based on the number of lines I’ve cast and bait I’ve lost, I’m guessing it’s Fish Community, 74, Dishonor to Hidalgo Males, 0, right about now. Trout, catfish, tilapia nilotica — there isn’t a single scaly denizen within phylum chordata from Southeast Asia to North America that hasn’t heard of “that Filipino guy who can’t catch squat.”
Which means the fish likely started holding an underwater luau upon my grand arrival at Rancho San Rafael. Given how a decade has passed since I filmed my last fishing comedy hit, “How to Catch a Rotting Old Shoe and Other Fishy Tales from the Silver State,” I needed a quick refresher course on fishing pole operation. A friendly parks and rec guy quickly gave me the 411 while my niece signed up for her free fishing packet.
Now, if someone like yours truly is ever going to catch anything, what better place than a generously stocked pond that’s rigged to allow little kids to reel fish in, right? It’s like running as a well-connected candidate in Florida.
I held my pole back, clicked the safety or whatever that thing is called, thrust forward and proudly surveyed ahead like Washington on the Delaware. Nine seconds later, I noticed my bait lying lifelessly on the dirt behind me. Doh!
With my line now hopelessly tangled, I literally cut my losses and re-outfitted the pole, remembering not to let go of that freaking switch before I cast forward. Soon, I was launching my line two to three times farther than the little whippersnappers around me. Take that, you little runts.
Given my past fishing history and the fact that we arrived late, my expectations were still much lower than a bottom-feeding flounder. Then it happened: My line sank, I felt a tug and my heart skipped as I reeled in my first … whopping tangle of weed. Based on my niece’s reaction, you’d think I just reeled in Moby Dick.
“You did it, Uncle Jason!” shrieked my niece, which I’m sure just killed the audience and fishies around us.
Two crossed lines and three dramatic seaweed reels later, a 10-year-old boy on my left reeled in a live, wiggling fish — I can’t tell a trout from a cuttlefish, so don’t ask me. My niece was delirious with joy. After three more weed reels for yours truly, another boy on my right reeled in a fish. I seriously started to consider dynamite fishing.
“I haven’t caught anything all day, and people are catching fish left and right,” an exasperated man told a friend. “I can’t believe it!”
Welcome to my world, sir.
Still, given how happy my niece was, maybe vegetable fishing isn’t so bad after all.
THE WIGGLES: Tentacles hold a special place in Japanese culture. More specifically, tentacles hold a special place in Japanese nerd/anime culture. I say this in my expert capacity as the ex-roommate of two certifiably nerdy Japanese guys with an extensive video collection.
Back in my college days, my two apartment buddies would invite me to video game sessions to relieve stress. Regardless of whose room we ended up in, I'd always spy a nice stash of VHS tapes in the corner, many of which sport an interesting assortment of tentacles wrapped in various, um, interesting positions on the cover. Strangely enough, although I had the privilege of watching countless Gundam and Slayers videos with this delightful, manzai-like duo, I never had the pleasure (or would that be displeasure?) of watching their special tentaclefest collections with them. Like U.S. Air Force Blackbird missions, watching tentacle movies is apparently best done solo.
Some days, I'd be studying in the living room and I'd see one of them knock on the other guy's door.
"This one's a good one," one of them would proudly say in Japanese as he hands one of his tentacle videos to the other.
"I am very much in your debt," the other would mockingly respond in formal Japanese.
They would then retreat back to their rooms, the soft click of their doors officially signaling the end of their strange Japanese underworld deal. I then make a mental note to not shake the tentacles, er, hands of the video recipient within the next 24 hours, all the while taking it upon myself to be in charge of making dinner that evening.
Having since parted ways with my dear Japanese roomies for six years now, I have been out of the loop as far as the Japanese otaku-tacle market for quite some time. Since then, the only visual confirmation I've had of tentacles has been limited to the occasional serving of tako at a sushi restaurant.
A recent run-in with this funny post at video game site Kotaku about tentacle cosplay, however, rekindled my memories of my former Japanese roomies and their hilarious hallway exchanges all those years ago. I wonder what kinds of deals those two are up to now? Regardless, I don't think I'll be shaking their hands anytime soon.
RESCUE ME: Ranger show lovers, meet your latest rescue-rrific superheroes!
Oops, sorry. Those were actually some overly eager suits from Takara Tomy during the big Ranger announcement at the Toy Forum 2008 toy extravaganza in Tokyo. (I don't know about you but it looks to me like the only saving these guys can do involves Microsoft Word and Excel documents. But I give them bonus points for their enthusiasm!)
Actually, here are your new superheroes.
They're certainly an improvement over the Tokusai Oyaji 4 above. Plus it looks like they've got Final Fantasy's Tidus on their team (2nd from the right) so you just know that this lot will kick some serious arse above and underwater. On a side note, that second lady from the left is a freaking dead ringer for a Japanese friend of mine from college. I am now looking forward to forwarding this pic to said friend and congratulating her on her new acting career. I'm gonna be so dead...
Anywho, the latest Ranger group will apparently be called the Tomika Heroes Rescue Force. Their job? To rescue those in need, which I assume includes kids, adults, seniors and company execs that pull a muscle while doing a group low-five. According to an article in Dengeki Online, the focus on rescue work sets it apart from traditional Tokusai (i.e. SFX) hero shows, which have typically revolved around beating up the bad guy du jour.
These new heroes are also apparently quite the worldly bunch as their mission entails responding to calamities and emergencies not just in Japan but worldwide. The show also promises to feature "high-quality CG graphics." As someone who last watched Japanese ranger shows in like, the '80s, I don't know what high quality special effects exactly entails for these programs these days but seeing that group low-five from those Takara Tomy execs certainly puts my mind at ease. Now for an image of your Orange Fanta Rangers, er, Rescue Heroes. At the very least, they shouldn't get hit by a car if they're jogging out at night. I'm feeling safe already.
Photos from Dengeki Online
PAGING SHINGENMOCHI: Well, it's certainly been a while. Who would've thunk that alien abductions were for real? I mean, all I wanted to do was try something wild and spontaneous like —
oh, I don't know —
cow tipping. Lesson learned, that's for sure.
OK, so I really didn't get kidnapped by aliens. Big surprise, I know. It just so happens that right after I decided to launch this blog, I also started a tech, science and video gaming blog called Power On at work. And as someone who takes great pride in his endeavors, I devoted a lot of personal time on Power On to make sure it justified its own existence. That and to make sure that it didn't get spanked too much by my paper's uber-popular dog blog. People love, love, love, LOVE their dogs. Seriously. About the only thing that could've competed was a cat blog —
but cats were also covered in the dog blog. And lions. And tigers. And parrots. And Bigfoot. In fact, an entry on Bigfoot was singlehandedly responsible for causing a 1,000-plus hit lead I had one day to quickly evaporate. Dog/animal/monster blogs mean business, people!
The good news is that my hard work paid off and my little work blog managed to become our paper's No. 1 blog since it launched last year. The bad news is that it damn near killed all my other extra-curricular activities including this blog. Looking at my poor little tabiasobi blog, I've only gotten two comments that look like spam in a foreign language. I love the Internet!
But no more dallying around, I say. I've decided to re-dedicate myself to the cause of my first blog ever. Hopefully, that means that instead of waiting five long months between updates, my non-existent readers will now only have to wait four months instead. I guess I may be taking the "asobi" part of tabiasobi a tad too literally...
This is a column I originally wrote for the Reno Gazette-Journal 
