SOUNDTRACK: GWAR-“Carry on My Wayward Son” (A.V. Undercover, October 8, 2012).
If I thought Reggie Watt’s cover of Van Halen’s “Panama” was absurd, imagine my surprise when GWAR’s version of “Carry on My Wayward Son” proves to not only be not absurd but actually rather faithful. Well, I mean Oderus Urungus is certainly not serious, but the band sounds amazingly tight–who knew they could play their instruments so well?
The opening is played very faithfully–solos and all–it’s quite impressive under all that foam. The verses are played at breakneck speed (with Oderus barely singing and improving at times). The chorus is fascinating though as they slow it down quite a lot–with a different singer this might bring an extra gravitas to it, although this version assuredly does not.
I never knew Oderus’ mask fit so poorly before. And I don’t believe I’ve ever really noticed the large green item hanging down between his legs. See for yourself:
[READ: September 6, 2013] “Sleeping Together”
The final article of this forum about sleep is set in Tokyo. Lewis-Kraus has gone to the first co-sleeping cafe. For about $30 for a membership and $30 for 40 minutes you can sleep with a woman. Not sex–indeed, nothing sexual is allowed to happen. You just sleep. Or more specifically, you lie next to a woman (seems unlikely that you could actually sleep). You can also get options like staring into each other’s eyes, being petted on the head, spooning and resting your head on her lap.
There are, of course sexual cafes, as well. The kayabakura is a bit more explicit than the sleeping cafe–the women are all made up and act servile, but this is different.
The woman who the author sleeps with is Yukiko. Yukiko admits that most men don’t sleep, they talk. She says that in their culture shame is very big, so men seek comfort and encouragement from women.
Yukiko is new to this–it’s only her second job and she admits she doesn’t really like it. Yukiko is a normal-seeming girl, who goes to college and has a picture of Blair from Gossip Girl on her phone’s screensaver. She speaks fairly good English but keeps a translator open on her phone for this American customer. She hopes to make enough money to go to Belgium. She would never admit to her family that she was doing this.
Although this article seemed like it might be creepy, in the end it was kind of sweet with the two of them simply talking about the experience (she knew that Lewis-Kraus was a reporter who was writing about the cafes, and that seemed to put her at ease). At the end of their time, she asks if he has read any Japanese novels. He mentions one that she had never heard of called The Makioka Sisters (細雪). It was written in the forties by Tanizaki Jun’ichirō. I enjoyed that he pulled up the Wikipedia entry for the book (on her phone) and then switched the text to Japanese so she could read about the book–technology is pretty cool. She concludes “I think I really like this book,” and I agree that it sounds pretty interesting.
Japanese culture is fascinating, and I always like hearing about places like this.
[…] section on Sleep discusses what was also in a recent article by Gideon Lewis-Kraus—that there were two sleep times at night. With no electricity there was no artificial light to […]
[…] as strange as Maid Cafes. I recently wrote about a “co-sleeping” cafe in Japan in which men literally sleep next to women for […]