THIS BLOG HAS MOVED!!!!

THIS BLOG HAS MOVED TO:

HTTP://DALECOOPERHFRA.TUMBLR.COM

WORD.

IT'S ALIVE!

BACK ON THE STREET! Coffee@thegreatnorthern LIves! It's amazing to be back after such a long unanticipated hiatus. A few months back saw "the emergence of some sort of brain malfunction that lead to the untimely demise of my comps logic board". Or a case i'd like to refer to as " the laptop fell off my lap and now the monitor is screwed". How ever i choose to think of it, i was kept away from regular Internetting of any sort! This unfortunate incident combined with the 2011 salmon canning season meant I was out of the loop for almost 6 months! I feel so behind! In the meantime I moved to ultra hip Portland, Or and finally got a decent MacBook. Now I'm back on the scene shredding it up once again. Stay tuned for regular rants, updates and random nerdery.

On june 16 Martha, Tigris and I left once again for the salmon season in Naknek Alaska along Bristol Bay. This was the second consecutive season as willing slaves in the warehouse for Tigri and I, and after skipping the previous year, Martha came for her third. The cannery work is not nearly as brutal or fishy as it sounds, for us lucky bastards at least. Working in the warehouse means casing up sealed cans of cooked wild alaskan salmon. All the freezing wet processing, the guts and blood have been sprayed long before we ever see the cans. They are wheeled in to us in near thousand pound iron "bussies" layers of gold tin cans separated by metal sheets. They are manually thrown on a small conveyer belt then palletized twenty layers high by a fairly large and intimidating square magnet head. The stack is then boxed up manually and taken to the loading dock on a forklift. Incredible. Our jobs are relatively cushy compared to the poor fools who earn the same 7.75 wage on the slime line or in the freezer. This is because of our boss, the warehouse foreman, Dean. Dean understandably fell in crushy love with martha the first time they met in the warehouse years earlier. I don't mind this at all. Not one bit. Considering that I kinda fell in crushy love with Dean. This makes for an amazing working environment and a very fun summer salmon season. There were enough hangovers and dance parties to show for it at least.

The best part of the whole Naknek experience is getting the opportunity to meet a few amazing individuals amidst such a clamor of utter assholes and people so far from the type that i would like to hang out with normally. But there we all are, stuck for 12 to 16 hours a day with one another. Its very surreal. I also have met some of my favorite people i know in that strange place. Dean and Max, Sean, Jean, are people who i would love to know for the rest of my life. i really didn't realize how much i missed them or the whole AGS routine until I came back to Humboldt for a friends wedding. The wedding and my friends were beautiful. I never want to live in Humboldt again.

I dont know why this song makes me so nostalgic. Its coming into the warehouse on a chilly alaska morning, tired and hungover, its trying to wake up, it just makes me remember how much fun this summer was.

New Studio Ghibli Movie Produced By MIYAZAKI

thats, right all you lovely nerds, the newest Studio Ghibli Movie trailer is out and it looks flippin' sweet. All Miyazaki fans wait with baited breath, although this newest film is written and produced but NOT directed by Miyazaki himself. Its Directed instead by the youngest person ever to direct a Ghibli feature.


I cannot wait to see this....

Billy Bragg: Eisler On The Go...

Billy Bragg and Wilco: Mermaid Ave. Came out some years ago now and somehow, i managed to overlook this version of Woody Guthrie's "Eisler On The Go". Now that I've heard it I cannot stop listening to it. Also, Check out the history of Hanns Eisler and his family...Quite interesting..

RIP Satoshi Kon...

...How it all works out. Just minutes after I posted the Paprika clip in a previous post, I learned of the sudden tragic death of its amazing director, Satoshi Kon. He was just 46 years old and passed because of rapidly spreading pancreatic cancer. This is a huge loss of a really unique talent in the Anime world. Animator/Writer/Director of such classics as PERFECT BLUE, MILLENIUM ACTRESS, PARANOIA AGENT, TOKYO GODFATHERS, and my personal favorite, the film that made me appreciate and really look at Japanese animations and regard them in a new beautiful light, PAPRIKA. He died in the middle of producing his final film, THE DREAM MACHINE, which his animation studio MADHOUSE, will complete soon. I feel fucking terrible. I really cannot believe that there will never be another original movie by Satoshi Kon. This grey and drizzly Humboldt night is now sad and ominous. What can you say...

Walking Dead #13!!!!!! AWWWWW YEA! And A Random But Awesome Anime Clip!

There i was, in clear 28 degree sacramento, basting the cutest little baby Tofurkey loaf with a nice oliveoil/sage soy sauce, when I get one of the best fucking messages I could have hoped for. Maggie the Mechanic -> Dale Cooper: "There is a new walking dead out. We need to get it!" Next Day. Not 5 miles returned to EKA and I was in North Coast Role Playing buying the sweetest black and blue colored #13....

The Walking Dead comic has remained one of the most consistently intriguing and intense books i am currently following. I love other comics but I don't wait for them with the same giddy anticipation as I do with the Dead, and #13 here is a packed "this is why i love this comic" book. I wish i could say the same for the TV show, which me and my friends gathered to watch in a nerdy revelry, but has lost me little by little as each episode airs. No matter how hard I try i cannot separate it from the comic. I cannot forgive the detours, diversions and flat out new story lines that have been developed. Even taken on their own merit, as a TV show it is shaping up to be pretty terrible. There is great Zombie death and gore, yes. There is finally a TV show about Zombies..AND ITS THE WALKING DEAD MADE INTO A TV SHOW! But I find that i cringe at most of it. Maybe Season 2 will hook me back in....

and Now For Something Completely Different:

Just thought i would post a little clip of one of my favorite Anime, Paprika. Oddly enough it was this movie that in some bizzare way, inspired me to create this little blog....Enjoy!

The Walking Dead Episode 1 !!!!

A very special Happy Birthday to my good friend Yellow Chri! A man among men, drinker, lover, founding member of the power trio MIDAIR, currently taking Flagstaff by storm... And Happy Day After Halloween!!! Halloween in Arcata is particularly annoying as all the slutty ghouls and k mart crayons and Marios gather on the plaza to smoke even more weed and climb on the McKinley statue while the damned samba band blasts away. But even that could not ruin the night as my friends and I gathered to watch the Pilot episode of THE WALKING DEAD!!!!!!! Its finally happening!!! This is my new weekly must see. Im a huge fan of the Comic, so going in, I tried to keep my expectations low to spare me any sort of real disappointment. I know that they are going to deviate from the comic in some ways, so I just decided to let go and take it for what it was. I can happily say that it actually exceeded my expectations and was flippin' badass!! Once we got past Shane's cringe inducing speech at the beginning, it was on. The make up on the decaying Zombie by the bike was spectacular, very true to a More/Adlard zombie from the book. I came to really like Rick and even though i don't like Shane much, knowing the comic im not going to have to put up with him for too much longer... Great Choice for a director also. I really love the cinematography of THE SHAWSHANK REDEMPTION and THE GREEN MILE for that matter. Darbont really knows how to capture the color and the feel of the South, making him a perfect candidate for Walking Dead.

It was pretty Brutal!! Nice job on the gore. Im really glad that AMC wasn't afraid to put all the real horror that was necessary for the story, but that being said, I really have no idea how they are going to handle all the crazy violent horrific shit that comes to pass later on in the story... Cannot wait for the next episode!!!