Hannah Friedman’s parents are what I like to call free spirits.  Her dad is a not quite successful hippie musician and her mom is a former animal trainer who has taken in a monkey that is treated like a member of the family.  They did off-beat things like build a car to resemble a shoe and take Hannah and her brother out of school for a year to join them on a band tour of England.

Hannah is very bright and hard working, but had a lot of trouble fitting in socially in middle school.  Thinking that she would fit in better at a prep school, Hannah applied, and was accepted to one of the most prestigious schools in the country.  She felt like she had a fresh start and worked hard at being cool and found that she was!  She was part of the popular crowd, she was class president and she had a cool, older boyfriend.  But along with all of that, she developed a drug habit and an eating disorder.  She also felt like she was watching her life instead of living it.

Thankfully, Hannah saw how self-destructive her habits were and how shallow her “friends” were before it was too late to change her life.  When she began her college career, she was thrilled when someone from her past recognized her and called her “Monkey Girl” – a name she used to despise.

It took me a few chapters to get into Everything Sucks by Hannah Friedman, but once I did, I couldn’t put the book down!   Hannah is brutally honest in her memoir and I really got attached to her and her misguided attempts to fit in.  I was appalled by the actions of some of the girls in this book and can’t help but wonder why adults dismiss such behavior.  This book made me realize just how much more difficult it is to grow up in today’s society than it was back in the dark ages of my youth.

I think everyone who has a child (especially a daughter) approaching high school should read Everything Sucks.  There is some language, drug use and sexual situations in it, but I think it presents a very realistic picture of what young people of today face.   I also think students who are struggling to fit in may find some comfort in this book because it shows that fitting in isn’t all it’s cracked up to be.  In case you’ve missed the trailer for this great book, here it is:

Review copy provided by the author.   I am an Amazon Associate.

The latest chapter of the book no one is reading is up over here.

I wish I had kept track of all the issues I’ve had with the cable television, because, really, it’s ridiculous. Last year it took 3 months of intermittent problems before they finally figured out the problem was at the pole and not with my cable box or wiring … well, DUH. When my neighbor moved out, he canceled his internet connection – so they turned off my cable, too. I didn’t have service for 2 days before they could come out and fix it. Oh, and when I called, they didn’t TELL me the service had been disconnected, they pretended not to know what the issue was. However, I did get free DVR for 6 months for that little train wreck.

Last week the company was in my area .. doing God only knows what. Well, I know what they did. They fucked up my service. Again. It went out. Then it came back – with closed captioning. CC helps a lot of people and I’m all for it – on their televisions. Leave mine alone! I tried to remove it with the tv remote, but I couldn’t (for technical reasons that are beyond my level of caring). So I called the cable company. The rep did some mumbo jumbo with the remote and then finally re-sent the digital signal to my tv. At that point, the service quit completely. *sigh* But it came back after about an hour and I had no more trouble.

Until yesterday. I took a break from Algebraic Hell (in which you aren’t in a lake of fire, but you are forced to solve radical expressions. Give me the lake of fire. Please!) to see how badly the Chefs were losing. And when I turned on the television I got a message saying the terminal was locked and I needed to put in my PIN. The PIN I never set.

So I called. And after 2 hours on the phone, they told me they had reset everything and they could have a technician out today. Sometime between 8am and 5pm. WHAT?

It’s 2:00 and I’ve not had a call.

My car should be ready to pick up, but I haven’t heard from the body shop either. Of course, I can’t leave to get my car, even though it’s two blocks away, because the second I step foot outside, the cable guy will call and if I don’t answer, they will leave.

But I’m sure I could get another all day appointment window for tomorrow.

It’s okay, I can always keep myself busy by finding the discriminant and the number of solutions for

In case you were wondering, the discriminant is 0 and the number of solutions is 1. You’re welcome.

There's more going on here than there ever was in her class.

I posted the first part of why “My Junior Year High School English Teacher Sucked (and still does)” nearly two weeks ago. I’ve really let you mull over and savor the concepts presented there. I’m not just a lazy bastard. Oh, wait. Yes, yes I am. And so was she. Which brings me to my second point:

2. She did not teach. Under any definition of the word.

Let’s look at some teaching styles that teachers utilize. First up, we have “The Kindergarten Teacher”. Teachers like these are up close and personal with the students. They get to know all their names, and work closely with all the students, being sure to explain everything to the students in explicit detail.

Then we have “Professors”. These guys tend to keep separate from their students. They are there to give lectures and teach, but they don’t care to know you personally. But, here’s the important thing- they still give the lectures and teach.

Pretty much every other sort of teacher is a mix somewhere in between these two types.

But, no, not the worst teacher (a misnomer I use for lack of better nomenclature) in the world. She invented her own teaching style that involved never actually teaching the students. Instead, the students were empowered to teach themselves! “Empowered to teach themselves? What the hell is that supposed to mean?” you ask? Well, the best way to explain would be to describe a typical week of class with the queen of incompetence.

Monday- Monday was a very important day of class you could never miss. Why? Because it was Test Day! Every week would start off with a test based on questions that would be on the AP English test. Naturally, all of these tests came from a preparation book readily available at bookstores. She couldn’t possibly be bothered to write them herself, right? We would come in, pick up one of the test books, work all the way through class (the tests were designed to be the exact length of the class period, something she stressed whenever a student would attempt to ask her anything), and then leave until Tuesday.

Tuesday- Ah. Yes. Tuesday. Tuesday was also a very important day. Why? Because it was the day tests were graded! “But, wait…didn’t she grade the tests at home?” you ask. To that I say- I already used that device to advance the text. Plus, you need to stop asking stupid questions. I already told you- this is the worst teacher in the world. Grade something she didn’t have to? Heaven forbid! No, the students were given back their own tests (more on this in my next post), and told to grade them themselves, and mull over their scores. Think about what they did wrong. Naturally, this would also take the entire class period. We would then leave, and return the next day…

Wednesday- WEDNESDAY! Now that was a very important day. You couldn’t miss a Wednesday. Wednesday was the day we had a test. But not just any ordinary test. No, the book from before would be back. But, this time, instead of a multiple choice test, we would get to take an essay test. Interestingly enough, the essays took the exact length of the class period, so we just worked on those until class ended. We would have freedom all the way until…

Thursday- Now, I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that I’m going to say Thursday was a very important day. And you’d be kind of right. Thursday was a real crapshoot. Most days, it would be important, because we would be peer-reviewing the essays from Wednesday. But, sometimes, we would show up, and we would just mill around, as she “graded papers” (this is apparently all she ever did). So, sometimes, it was a reprieve. But only for a while, because coming up after Thursday would be…

Friday- Thank God It’s Friday, right? Pfftt…we wished. Friday was a very important day. Friday was yet ANOTHER MOTHERFUCKING TEST. Friday would be a vocabulary test. And, yes, it took up the entire class period. Every single time.

So, there you have it- a typical week in Ms. C Awful Teacher’s class. Now, here’s a fun game. It’s very similar to playing a game of Where’s Waldo inside your Eye-Spy book. Try and find the part of the week where she taught the students. Go ahead. I’ll wait.

(Actually, if I did wait, I could end the blog post here, because nobody would ever find it.)

Gave up and came back, did you? At no point did she actually teach us anything. I literally could have learned more by buying a couple of AP study guides from the store, and studying on my own.

Plus, none of us would have had to deal with her bullshit.

Thank you, and have a good day/night.

So, that was the real meat of my complaints with the worst teacher in the world who wasn’t actually a teacher. But, there’s a little more to her, the icing on the cake from hell that was her class. I’ll have that in an upcoming post.

Quizzical and Testing,

-Paul Fimbres

Even Palpatine is a better teacher...

Now, we’ve all had bad teachers. I’m sure you’ve had a teacher who was blatantly unfair, or not fun to have a class with, or one of a million other things teachers can do to be lousy. But, we deal with the class, we get through it, and eventually, we get over it and forget the class altogether. Hell, I once had a teacher who actively tried to get the school to sedate me with a medley of drugs, and I haven’t held a grudge over that (Isn’t that right, Mrs. Blount? You goddamn bitch). Well, anyways, bad teachers are something everybody has to deal with. However, there is one teacher I had who was so awful, she will stick in my mind forever. There is no doubt in my mind that she was the worst teacher I had in my life, and she is still possibly one of the worst teachers in the world. Now, out of a modicum of respect for the people who would wish for me not to post her name here (Note: Not out of any respect for her, but for others), I will not post her name, or any details about her personally, unless they’re necessary to write this. Now, anybody who attended High School with me will be able to immediately figure out who it is. Hell, I imagine anybody who went to San Dimas has already figured out who it is. Her identity is not my fault or responsibility in any way, so I’m just going to go on to explain why “My Junior Year High School English Teacher Sucked (and still does)”.

1. There’s something called “unprofessionalism”, and then there’s whatever the hell she did, which would probably be called “Taking it ten steps to far, and then jogging to the left”.

I don’t want my teachers to be completely professional. One of my favorite teachers wore a shirt that had different kinds of animal poop on it. Another one would only wear Hawaiian shirts. All my favorite teachers enjoyed joking around, and establishing a relationship with their students. The Worst Teacher in the World succeeded in doing neither, and yet still came off as wholly unprofessional. You see, she didn’t believe in building a real rapport with her students. She ran the entire class with an iron fist (more on that in a different post), but she didn’t act professional while doing so. She would often stop what she was doing to give awkward comments to students, such as regularly telling a girl “how cute her blouse was”, and other weird statements. However, lest you take it as a sign of casual and friendly informality, this was often accompanied by an angry snap at another student, before returning to her regular demeanor.

That’s pretty awful on its own, but it’s just one factor that made being a classroom with her uncomfortable. Now, she’s a fairly young teacher, I don’t want to make guesses at her age, but likely somewhere in her early thirties. She shouldn’t have to dress like a nun, or demurely. However, despite her rigid attitude, her style was nothing but uncomfortable. She would wear outfits that appeared to be fairly tame, long skirts, buttoned-up blouses, etc, but they rarely turned out that way. To give an awkward example, one day I glanced up from my paper while working.  She was crouched down in front of her paper bin, situated at the very front of the class. Her jeans had fallen beneath her buttocks, and a teal thong was wedging its way up her back. I quickly looked back to my paper, and tried to forget it entirely. And, no, seeing your teacher exposed like that is not attractive in the least. It’s nothing like Television or movies. It’s just plain awkward. Suffice to say, occasions like that were frequent. Lest you think this is just me being some sort of pervert, I actually had several friends mention it, though they felt it was more ‘laughably pathetic” than awkward. Now, this next section is purely rumor, as I have not seen (nor care to see) it first hand, but people have sworn by it, so I’ll throw it in. Apparently, she occasionally arrived at class without a bra, and underneath her shirt were nipple piercings. Now, as I said, it’s purely rumor, but it fits in entirely with the persona she presented while I was a student in her class.

So, this segment has been a little light on damning information. I’ve established that her class sucked for no other reason than it was extremely uncomfortable in her class. But, this is just the tip of the iceburg. This just brings the rest of her many, many faults into sharp relief.

Stay tuned to see those at a later date. (And, if you choose to leave a comment, please refrain from including her name if you know it. I wanna keep it kinda classy.)

Titters and Guffaws,

-Paul Fimbres

Wu Tang ain't nothing to fuck with. Cash rules everything around me.

Here it is: the grand finale that nobody asked for. That’s right, it’s part three of “Why AlcoholEdu Sucks”. Some may say this is beating a dead horse- I say this is more of taking the tenderized dead horse, and running it through a meat grinder. So, why would I bother to add an extra part to a subject that’s already been explored rather heavily? Because this last part is the most important reason “AlcoholEdu” sucks.

3. This awful, awful program costs money.

Now, I know this sounds obvious, but think about it. AlcoholEdu is the most popular alcohol prevention program in the nation. If you’re a college or university, this is likely the program you employ. Now, I know I’m going to be speculating here, but these numbers are as close to accurate as I can get. First up- my University offers the program free to students, because it is mandatory. However, should the student not complete it during its “Free Period”, it costs the students $35. So, let’s use that price as the price of the program per student, assuming that the college has little to no markup on re-takers.

Next, we look at how many students take the course. Each Freshman student is expected to take it, meaning that including incoming freshmen, 17,500 students have taken this course at my school alone. Now, my school is part of the UC School System, so there are nine other schools also requiring all of their students to take this course. Now, most of these schools also average around 15-17,000 students. However, two of them total near 40,000. So, there’s at least 200,000 students or so in the UC School system alone. The UC system is less than half the size of the Cal State system, which has over 400,000 students. And every single one of these students is subject to sit through the course, at $35 a pop.

Now, here’s the most basic of math problems- what’s $35 times 600,000? The answer is $21,000,000. Twenty million bucks, in the middle of a horrific recession that has raised the unemployment rate to over 11%, and put the state of California into a deficit billions deep. The State-Sponsored school systems such as the UC Schools and the Cal State schools have had their budgets slashed to pieces. To keep up with the rapidly dwindling budgets, the schools have cut classes left and right, let any non-tenured professors go, and have made all sorts of ridiculous cuts left and right. And it’s still not enough. Yet, what’s one program they preserve with, spending $21,000,000 that could go to teachers and classes? The utter piece of trash known as AlcoholEdu.

I think this is the best way I can put it- I don’t need to drink during college if I actually have classes to study for.

Dolla and Bill,

-Paul Fimbres

Official-looking Chart

Okay folks- pop quiz! In your heads, calculate the first twenty Fibonaci Numbers.

Now, here’s a breakdown of the potential responses:

1. What the fuck are Fibonaci Numbers?

2. How would I do that? It’s impossible.

3. Pfftt…you misspelled Fibonacci Numbers, you loser. Anyways, it’s 0,1,1,2,3,5,8,13,21,34,55,89,144,233,377,610,987,1597,2584,4181, and 6765. NOOB!

But, wait. Did I forget to tell you? It’s a multiple choice test. And response three isn’t one of the options allowed. Picked your answer yet? Well, that’s great. I’m not going to tell you what the proper answer is (It might be response three, it might not. I’ll never tell). Instead, I’m going to move straight onto my next blog post.

Welcome to Part Two of “Why AlcoholEdu Sucks”.

2. Teaching with misdirection and lies is worse than not teaching at all.

Now, the above segment wasn’t an utter non sequitur. It was actually an example of how AlcoholEdu tries to teach the people who are signed up for the program. Before you’re given the “lessons” to learn, you’re forced to go through a short twenty question quiz on alcohol, to test what your current knowledge is. Now, regardless of how you score, you’re forced to take the class, making it an exercise at pointlessness, at best.

However, it wouldn’t be AlcoholEdu’s epic levels of suckitude without more than that trite annoyance. No, they decided to go the extra mile with this quiz. Each question in the quiz is a tribute to pointlessness. For example, “When you get drunk to the point of passing out, what part of the brain is affected”? A. Hypothalamus, B. Hippocampus, C. Both, or D. Neither.

Unfortunately, the correct answer, “E. Who cares what part of the brain is affected? You need to get to a doctor immediately, and you probably shouldn’t have drunk that much”, is not an option.  The rest of the quiz focuses on similar nonsensical questions that fail to actually address anything relevant.

At the end of the quiz, which you will inevitably do poorly on (not that it matters), you will be told “You need to know more about alcohol”! The program then continues to go on about alcohol safety, completely disregarding the questions altogether. In fact, save a few small “shout-outs” that give the ridiculously precise answers, you will never learn what those questions were about. Three and a half hours of lesson later, and it’s time for the “Finishing Quiz”.

A brand new Test, the finishing quiz decides whether or not you “learned” from the lesson. However, the now-thirty question test is completely different from the original test. Instead of the obscure and pointless questions from the opening quiz, you can expect questions like “Should you drink and Drive?”.

Naturally, it’s almost impossible to get anything less than a 90% on the test, even if you didn’t take the class at all. Now, why would they do this? The answer is simple. The company who makes this program is paid for results. You have the students take the initial quiz, and fail horribly. It’s “Obvious that college students are ignorant about the effects of alcohol”. Then, at the end of the program, you give them a test they can’t fail. Astonishingly, ALL students show marked improvement in “their knowledge of the effects of alcohol”. They even have their little charts of percentages to back it up. They present this to the colleges, and collect their checks, laughing all the way to the bank.

And you know what? Being dicks in your program just means your program sucks, AlcoholEdu.

Conundrums and Paradoxes,

-Paul Fimbres

The words she writes will change the world. She’s much smarter than me. Inside she writes a side of herself. She won’t let me see.

Such a hateful little girl. Her little book is her whole world. It’s all there in her little book. And I can’t help but wonder, but she says I’ll never understand.

She says there’s no love and everyone’s out to get her. She keeps me shut out and I don’t want to let her.

Such a hateful little girl. Her little book is her whole world. It’s all there in her little book, and I can’t help but wonder what chapter I fit under, yeah.

I’m a stone age male and that’s a fact. There’s so much more to me than that.

Such a hateful little girl. Her little book is her whole world. She’s writing in her little book. She don’t like me, but she’s got me hooked. And I can’t help but wonder what she’s like between the covers.

I haven’t even seen previews yet, but I already know what I’ll hate!

So, over on Fuzakenna!, 21stcenturydigitalboy did a fall preview in which he only talked about what shows he’s looking forward to.

…

What the fuck? That totally isn’t what a real anime blogger does! So to rectify his error, I’m doing a REAL preview… and because it is a REAL preview, I’ll only be talking about what shows I’m gonna hate! And I also made sure I didn’t do something dumb, like check out the manga or watch a preview before making my decision. Real anime bloggers don’t need to do that – they just know by an Engrish’d-out description and a crappy little picture that they’ll hate something.

If something doesn’t appear here, don’t assume it means I want to see it – I probably just feel so lukewarm toward it that I can’t muster up the ability to give a shit about it at all.

Battle Spirits: Shounen Gekiha Dan

A sequel to a show that I’ve never heard of that is based on a ‘popular’ trading card game? And that has bizarrely 70’s-esque character designs? Who the fuck would even like this, other than seven year old Japanese brats? The only TCG-based show I’ve ever actually liked was Pokemon, and that was really a video game based show! If you like this and are not a seven year old Japanese brat, then you must be stupid. I’ll hate this!

Queen’s Blade: Throne’s Heir

This got a second season? Why is anyone wasting their money making this? Anyone who watches this is a loser, since you can basically get a similar thing in several of the episodes of Battle Angel Escalayer… and with actual porn content! So why the fuck  bother with this shit? It’s not like you’re going to actually watch people get it on, so why not go full-out creeper and watch some hentai. Watching this is like a twelve year old boy sneaking National Geographic into his room – fine for the twelve year old, but you should just man/woman the fuck up and watch some real junk/buy that Playboy/Playgirl (depending on your tastes!). I’ll hate this!

Kämpfer

Oh, great, another pseudo-yuri harem crapfest. The main character is a guy who just happens to have been changed into a girl… and just happens to have the biggest boobs out of the whole cast! It also has some Sekirei-type battling crap. Fuck this, go watch another generic iteration of this theme, and I’m sure your puny little brain will be thrilled, since this has been done fifty thousand times already, and the upside of those other iterations is that they’re already done! So you won’t have to wait around for a full season to pass to know what happens! Except that if you have any brain matter you’ll know within five minutes of the first episode what’s going to happen in the whole thing. Also – it supports Hitler! I’ll hate this!

Nyankoi

Hmm, just what I wanna watch – an animated rip-off of 100 Deeds for Eddie McDowd (fun fact!: that show was canceled after only forty episodes… so Eddie never became a person again)! Fuck that. I’ll hate this!

To Aru Kagaku no Railgun

This is for people who watched To Aru Majutsu no Index and didn’t think Index was enough of an awesome loli for them. In other words, this show is basically for pedophiles. It also will probably have some fake-y yuri farting around in it. Since I’m not a raging pedophile who enjoys seeing little girls underpants, I’ll hate this!

Shugo Chara Party

Hmm, two seasons stuffed to the gills with crappy filler episodes? And the trap character isn’t even around any more? The only people who’re going to like this are ten year old girls and pedophiles. I am neither. Fuck this, just read the freaking manga. I’ll hate this!

Sora no Otoshimono

Hmm… boat boobs, a loli, a tsundere, some amnesia, and a girl who falls out of the sky. Oh, yeah, and lots of chibis. Also, the lead lives a life of pacifism… which gets screwed up by the angel. What the fuck is this shit? Someone needs to stop letting 14 year old boys design shows. I’m willing to bet that the girl who falls out of the sky has amnesia and can only say some asinine non-word like ‘ufu’ or ‘muwa~’ for the first few episodes. And then if I atually watched it, I’d have to stab myself in the face to save myself by ten minutes into the first episode. I’ll hate this!

Anyamaru Tantei Kirimin Zuu

Great, just what everyone needs – another magical girl show that is actually meant for nasty pedophiles, not the original magical girl audience of seven-to-fourteen year old girls. Basically, this rips off of Hollywood Tokyo Mew Mew, since our uber-moe leads transform into animals (read: animals as envisioned by fifty-five year old Japanese pedophiles), but here we have none of the sledgehammer environmentalism of that particular show. There’ll also be plenty of panty shots and excessive crotch-shots for all the people I’m sure will tune in to watch this and jerk off to it! I’ll hate this!

Inu-Yasha: Final Act

So, lemme guess – there will be 52+ episodes, the characters won’t change at all, and then some half-assed deus-ex-machina will manage to close it all out. Oh, and somehow Naraku won’t actually get defeated, he’ll just lurk around forever and piss us all off by the lack of closure on that point. This’ll be chock full of not-quite-closure, just you wait. Also: does anyone really care any more? I’ll hate this!

Seitokai no Ichizon

WOW GAIZ ITS SOMETHING TOTALLI NEWWWW!!1 This one is about a student council for a high school… but all the members are girls! Except for this one guy, so he’s the only guy they let into their student council room! I bet he doesn’t end up having harem-ish antics with them at all! And you can see that girls panties! If that’s what I liked about high school girls, that they stay the same age even as I get older, I’m sure I’d love this! But I have enough of a life to not desire a relationship with a 2D rendition of all my favorite fetishes! I also like it better when my student council has sword duels and gets fucked with (mentally and physically!) by an evil guy with purple hair. I’ll hate this!

ugh, today is just one of those days where you REALLY need to go back to bed and start over. can new york PLEASE stop trying to make me cry?

I just lost another media job. Help.

In truth it may not be fair for my to be reviewing RahXephon now, as it seems to be a series that makes very heavy use of foreshadowing, meaning I’d have to watch it again and cackle as stuff happens etc. Yet, whatever, Imma do it anyway, that’s how I roll.

So.. RahXephon, I think it aired at like 2002, but what does that matter? Not much. Well, it’s by BONES so I went into it with fairly high expectations, as I’ve pretty much liked everything from BONES that I’ve seen thus far. So that’s the basic premise of RahXephon? To be perfectly honest I’m not 100% sure as I’m easily confused by DEEP anime such as this, I’ll admit that I prefer when things are somewhat obvious, as I’m not gonna understand the tiniest and subtle reference to X and Y unless somebody else tells me. Besides, I’ll get this out of the way first, RahXephon felt in a way that it was trying to ride off the success of EVA – of course, you can’t really blame it for that, everything copies popular stuff. I’m just saying, it felt like it was trying to be a DEEP mecha series revolving around a kid who wants to find his place in the world or whatever. Yet then again, Ayato (who I won’t refer to as Kamina to save confusion with GIGA DRILL ABAYO BUDDY man) isn’t a useless emo faggot like Shinji. At least.. not for the whole series.

Okay so, RahXephon, I’m told, is styled after 80’s mecha series or something, but again, not important in my eyes. So onto the plot.. the plot.. is.. well. Earth was invaded by some kind of aliens, called Mulians (or MU) who do stuff and in the end, Tokyo ends up in a strange dimensional barrier referenced as “Tokyo Jupiter” by outsiders, as it’s well, a miniture version of Jupiter that surrounds Tokyo (I think it’s all of Japan actually) and inside this “bubble” the year is like 2016 or something, but outside, it’s 2029. I don’t think that’s the exact dates but you get the point, in the bubble time moves slower than outside.

Inside this “Tokyo Jupiter” lives Ayato Kamina or Kamina Ayato, whatever. He’s your somewhat standard main character, he’s not amazingly dumb, nor amazingly smart, just average. He doesn’t seem to have any distinct traits other than liking to paint. Soooo one day a weird vehicle comes tooting on in and blowing crap up, Ayato wanders off ‘cos he’s smart, and is caught by two weird agent-people, then he is saved by a 29(or so) year old woman who I’ll call Haruka. (She made me think of Faye Valentine from Bebop at first) who offers to show him the true world and all that jazz. Ayato doesn’t look impressed by this and sort of waddles off, where more crap happens, and then he meets up with Mishima……..Reika (there’s a good explanation for the MISHIMA……………….REIKA?’ing that he does @ her) and they waddle about, blah blah blah, then he gets in a huge god-like mecha called RahXephon, and blows shit up. Then he decides to go outside with Haruka. From then on he joins an organisation called TERRA, who defend against MU outside of Tokyo Jupiter.  Ayato grumbles and other people mumble, and Haruka spams AYATO-KUUUN constantly. That’s pretty much as good a summary I can give, it’s a show that confused me.

So, was it good? I liked it, more than Scrapped Princess, less than Eureka 7 – again, it’s not really something I can relate to, wondering “what’s my place in life” and crap like that. It also had the somewhat annoying fact that, like many animes, every single female seems to be in love with Ayato in some form or another whilst he turns a blind eye and cackles at his paintings and soars about in RahXephon. Harem or whatever.. yeah, I don’t exactly like it. Whatever, I digress, onto the animation. Animation was goooood. I shall post an example, granted, this is just the OP which somebody extended by inserting clips of episode 1, butttt it gets my point across. As usual, BONES have high production quality from my point of view.

Yeah.. Uhhh.. Music, was good. It varied greatly (like E7, for example) and I liked that, on a whole the music was enjoyable. Which is fitting as the whole show pretty much revolves around music.

So, lastly, what is there that makes RahXephon stand out? Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.

Like E7, it doesn’t have a huge emphasis on the actual mecha-fightings.. and uh, they aren’t actually mechs, Dolems (the enemies) are made out of clay, like golems, get it? Also a reference to Do-le-me-so-far-to-toot or whatever that tomfoolery music thing is, I think. RahXephon itself, has one “omg power up” moment, which is inline with the story thus tolerable. Oh, the relationship between Ayato and Haruka was also pretty interesting at times, ranging from Ayato being, well, straight out mean to Haruka, with the scene that confused me no matter how many times I rewatched it.

Ayato is miffed at Haruka for some reason and says something which I forget, but the TL notes pop up saying like “Ayato says ‘anata’ here, which is like saying ‘dear’” or something. So he was referring to her as somebody close to him but.. saying something mean at the same time? I don’t know. I wonder how they translated that into English in the dub, interesting. It’s also interesting to note that Haruka is like 12 years the senior of Ayato, but still the main “love interest” so to speak. Yeeah.

Uhhhh.. also, Gainax did animation on eps 6 and 26, which is never a bad thing.

Score? 7/10.

It nears 8 though.

So yeah, I think that’s about everything. Nothing else I can really think to ramble on about. Muslims suck, etc. Fable 2 is out in like 6 days, too. Children aside, life’s not bad right now.

If any swedish people are reading this, I would like to take this chance to say.

I am master of every language on this green Earth.

Edit: Wtf that’s like the first time I’ve actually watched the OP, why is Ayato naked so much, that’s worrying.

Perhaps Ted Leo said it best.

But what happened to ska? It was such a big musical influence on me when I was growing up. I remember my first foray into the genre with a mixtape given to me (or taken from a friend, I don’t remember) by the name of California Ska Quake Vol. I. This tape had a collection of songs by bands that I didn’t know, but would soon come to love (notables including Dance Hall Crashers, Skankin’ Pickle, Hepcat, Let’s Go Bowling, and, of course, early No Doubt). I didn’t know what ska was. My brother at one point tried to convince me that when you translated ska into English (from what language?) it turned out to literally mean “Devil Music.” I was 7 or 8 years old, and I believed everything my brother told me (including the time he told me Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles were hiding in the woods behind our house and that if I set and cleared the table for him, he’d take me down there to meet them). Anyways, this misconception of the term gave the genre perfect legitimacy in my eyes.

By the time I reached 6th grade I was perfectly ready for Reel Big Fish and Less Than Jake to take my world by storm.

Many bands from the 90s ska/punk scene were soon to follow (Mustard Plug, The Suicide Machines, Against All Authority, The Mighty Mighty Bosstones, Mephiskapheles… really, too many to name). I became so enamored with the scene that I started going to shows whenever they came to town (when you’re in 7th and 8th grade, concerts cost a lot of money!) and started to become acquainted with the local Cincinnati ska scene. I became an avid follower of The Magnets (formerly Lee Harvey Skaswald), OB1, Scallywagon, Short Millie, and many others.

Then came the internet.

In the mid-90s, I only knew about the bands that toured around the Cincinnati area. I knew a lot about the current scene, as a result. Pop-punk and Ska was prevalent at this time. However, I had little to no knowledge of the backlog of music that went into forming the genre. I knew that The Specials were important, that Operation Ivy was to be bowed down to, and that The Mighty Mighty Bosstones were older than anybody gave them credit for.

Now that the internet and filesharing were commonplace, I had easy access to music information from older generations. I learned all about Desmond Dekker, The Skatalites, and really got to know The Specials on a much more personal level.

It was a good time to start working backwards, as the ska scene of the 90s began to deteriorate and the bands that stuck around started putting out worse and worse music, essentially becoming rock bands with horns (or sometimes forgoing horns all together). The upbeat was dead.

This, unfortunately, is the answer to the title question. The ska bands that survived sold out, and the jubilant nature of the scene was reduced to ashes, easily paving the way for the dreaded post-millenium emo scene. Some bands keep chugging along (The Slackers, for example), but the majority of those old 3rd wave mainstays have cashed in, sold out, or dropped off.

“This town is coming like a ghost town.”

Everything Sucks Reel Big Fish music video clip

Video Clip : Everything Sucks

Singer : Reel Big Fish