DATE: sunday november 9th
ENGRISH OF THE DAY:

Tonight's event: SCAT PARADISE.

Yes. The time has come to see about this 'jap scat' hobby that all the movie stars are talking about nowadays. the venue was a bar called LOFT PLUS ONE. It's famous for doing jacked shit like this. It's like this all-purpose underground culture venue. Every night of the week they have some event or speaker talking about something so bizarre that even jaded Tokyo hipsters have to sit up and listen: The only place in Tokyo where you can see sexually extreme stuff, but without going to a sex bar. Sounds like a great concept. But the architecture nearly ruined it. the whole stage was built on this premise: let's make the stage so low that NO ONE besides the first row can see ANYTHING. Let's ALSO make a railing around the stage SO HIGH that if everyone sits down, THEY STILL CAN'T SEE ANYTHING. Let's also have a videocamera pointed at the stage, so we can project the image onto a giant tv screen behind the stage, so people in back can see what's happening. . . . But let's have the VIDEOCAMERA SHOW THE SAME CRAPPY VIEW THE PEOPLE IN BACK SEE ANYWAY. GENIUS.

Anyway, here's 14 observations about Scat Paradise:

1 --- The music: some wise-ass DJ decided that the English word 'scatology' sounds a lot like 'ska.' Thus, for 4 HOURS we were treated to nothing but ska. Ska versions of everything from 'take on me' to 'hawaii five-o'. If I didn't hear the Ska version of the '1812 overture' it's probably because I stopped listening at some point. While it's an awful pun, I give them credit for actually pulling it off with such flair. Plus, it made the whole event EVEN MORE BIZZARRE to see japanese people's pooping set to this laid back, jolly Carribiean soundtrack.

2 --- there was one MC, and 4 performers. All very average looking women in their 20s. first act consisted of the women taking turns peeing in cups and then the audience would drink it. the MC held the microphone by their urethras, the 'pee mic'. I thought this was a nice touch. Then some lucky guy would be designated 'the wiper.'

3 --- the weirdest thing about this, (besides it being SCAT PARADISE), was the atomosphere. With this many naked people running around, and this much beer, you'd expect a lot of hooting and hollering. But there was almost none of that. It totally WASN'T a strip-club atmosphere. Also, I was expecting more of a "DRINK MY FLUIDS, SLAVE!!" "OH YES MISTRESS, THEY ARE LIKE HONEY TO ME!" 'ABSORB MY OFFAL TOO!!' kind of ambience. But there was none of that.

in fact,there was absolutely no hint that this pee-and-poopy play had even come out of the s/m scene. After a while I decided the atmosphere was like . . . A GAME SHOW. It's like 'WHO WANTS TO DRINK SOME URINE?" They'd get some guy to come on stage, 'hey, what's your name? Where are you from! Allright!'. Now, assume the position! The mood was totally like one of those 'fear factor' type let's-see-how-much-you-can-handle shows. And it's no coincidence that 'fear factor' is a rip-off of old Japanese mainstream TV. I mean, you could do a whole phd. thesis on how the super-underground scat shows are totally based in mainstream game shows. Or how the mainstream Japanese game shows are totally rooted in really painful and vulgar s/m. or something.

The only difference was, this 'extreme underground' show was much less mean, because they didn't pit people against each other. tonight, everyone was a winner!! Seriously, the events were structured so that pretty much everyone in the audience, (men and women) got to come up at least once and interact with the performers. If they wanted to. while this was very fair-minded (I'm sure that Ralph Nader would have been proud), it DID make for a very slow evening. In a totally perverted way it was just like my Japanese language class-the teacher asks everyone in class the same question, and we can't move on until everyone's had a turn!!

4 --- each performer wore panties made specifically for this event, with a caricature of themselves on their butt. When they'd take the panties off to pee, the MC would take this giant stick with a small cardboard square taped to it and cover their pudenda with it. it would have been awesome if they'd thought to print out a 'digital mosaic' and paste it on the cardboard square. Or, failing that, some kind of political endorsement. After all, elections are in 3 days!! Can you imagine some one defecating behind a 'VOTE FOR QUIMBY!' sign? Excellent scandal!!! Didn't happen.

5 --- at the end of what I'll call the 'pee bit,' there were lots of half-full glasses of pee. The MC was a quick thinker, and used a sharpie to mark each glass with the name of the donor! The glasses were then taken away. I couldn't follow the Japanese explanation of what happened to the glasses after that, but she DID use the English phrase 'drink tickets' several times.

6--- even the most 'bizarre, extreme' Japanese event HAS to have a mascot, and this one was no exception. Tonight's mascot was some chubby drunk girl whose costume was: fake eyeglasses, a SuperMario Red Cap with wings and overalls. She started out totally drunk, and by the second hour had capsized entirely. Daijobu (no problem!)! out came a second performer, WEARING A COPY OF THE FIRST MASCOT'S COSTUME. This was the most bizarre moment of the whole performance.

7--- the next bit went like this: Naked Lady stands on stepladder. Schoolgirl squats under her butt. (noteworthy: NOT Japanese schoolgirl costume. Catholic schoolgirl. (!?!?!?) ). Naked Lady emits several coily pencil thin turds onto catholic schoolgirl's NECK. Schoolgirl eats a good chunk of the poo. Then the Naked Lady got off the ladder and they Snowballed the poo chunk. This means, they kissed and passed it back and forth between their mouths like hillbilly lovers swapping tobackky. It was all downhill from there. There was a lot of rubbing of poo on the body of Naked Lady, after which the stinky nipples were suckled upon. The end. On the one hand, I know this is wrong, and this is the lowest I'll go in my 2 years in Tokyo. But on the other hand, it was totally impressive that they were able to pull it off somehow. Somehow they were so self-assured about it that it didn't seem so degrading. The most degrading moment came afterwards, when Naked Lady's moment was over, and she had to wipe herself down on the side of the stage while the rest of the performers occupied the spotlight. Like, she didn't even have a backstage area to do it in. that was kind of sad.

7.5 --- some other lady had the unenviable job of crawling around picking up the pieces of poopy and collecting them in a little beer glass so that the other performers wouldn't step on anything too nasty. photos weren't allowed but i got permission to snap a picture of the 'soppings':

8 --- I was surprised that they started spraying aerosol to clear the air. I kind of figured they'd have fans to blow the smell further into the audience. Posers!!!

9 - - - at some point, I realized, 'I SHOULD NOT BE HERE'. not because it's reeeeealy nasty, but because I have a test on Wednesday that I haven't even started to study for. So while I'm describing all this, you have to picture me in the middle of this dense crowd, flipping through flash-cards, conjugating verbs, while all this pooping is going on around me.

9 - - - - the next bit was Butthole Shaving. 100 yen per second. Guys would give the MC like 500 yen (or a drink ticket, you know, whatever) and then the performers would give him a razor and five seconds to see how much skin he could shave. . . chanting, '5,4,3,2,1!' and then he was done. This continued until the butthole was shaved.

10 - - - at this point, after 3 hours of ska, the DJ puts on DAVID LEE ROTH. I worship this DJ. Also I should point out that the passed-out mascot is back on her feet once again, and punching the MC with one hand, while holding in her other hand . . . a BOTTLE OF ZIMA. I wish the ZIMA company could have seen that. That's the most wonderful thing about these scat events. . . .anything that they touch, (ska, zima, roth, supermario) they totally ruin for all time. I swear, I'll never think about those 'hand wiping moist towels' in restaraunts the same way again. .

11- - - after that, it was Audience Participation Enema Races. The way this works is, the 5 performers squat on stage, assuming the position of an Olympic Sprinter. (there, Olympic sprinting is now ruined too!) then random audience guys are invited to come up and (on the count of three. . .ready, set, gooo!!) shoot massive syringes full of warm water up the performers' butts. Whoever finishes first wins. .. . . nothing. (I'm afraid this part wasn't too well thorught out). after that, the performers perform a game of 'rock paper scissors'. . .whoever wins gets to quit, but the losers all have to go another round with the Titanic Enema Syringe. At the very end, they all poo into these little buckets. I was convinced that there would be something more to it than that. . . . some kind of Grande Finale that would top the Catholic Schoolgirl bit. Maybe a post-superbowl Gatorade Dunk thing. But the event just kind of sputtered to a halt. Supposedly there was something else after this, but I just went home.

13 - - - here's the lesson: don't go. Not because it's too nasty/extreme/bizarre, but because it's a really dull rip-off. I guess making even poo-eating boring IS a pretty 'bizarre' feat, but not in a cool way. Even if you WERE in the front row and could see anything, maybe a total of 5 minutes like, out of 4 hours, was spent actually pooping. The rest was filler. 'LESS CHAT, MORE SCAT,' i say! I guess this proves my point that ANY event at a bar - from a conservative Friars' Club Meeting to a anarchist poopoofest, is going to be slow and dull. Both because the promoters will be drunk as hell, and because the bar owner has a vested interest in making customers stay longer and thus drink more beer. There's nothing wrong with poo. Everyone poos. But not everyone owns a crappy hipster bar and not everyone has to do a half-assed job of promoting their half-assed event.

14 - - - on the way home I smelled so rank that for once the grandmas working in front of the train station didn't ask me for a massage. Well, at least that part worked out!

tomorrow: The Longest Bath

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