We have finally let the recording of our boozy evening with Blake Schwarzenbach back in February 2009 out of the archives. Listen to Blake wax poetic about the perils of easy language, the challenges of teaching, the folly of fanboys, and yes… Jawbreaker, Jets to Brazil, and Thorns of Life.

Keep up with future episodes of The Modernist Society podcast by subscribing to our feed.

(On a side note, the above photo is the only known image from that night. That said, we all have memories of a very strong flash blinding us again and again, with the photographer promising to post the photos to Flickr. To date none have appeared. You know who you are… but do you know where the photos are? We’d like to!)

Stay tuned…

Furniture and Naked People is an ongoing project in which we ask our favorite photographers to pair naked people with icons of modern design. Our fifth installment comes to us courtesy of South African photographer and filmmaker, Henrik Purienne.

Productivity skyrockets when employees are seated comfortably in a Vertebra office chair, designed by Emilio Ambasz and Giancarlo Piretti for OpenArk. Produced and distributed by Anonima Castelli.

If you can’t get enough of these photos, check out Mr. Purienne’s magazine, Mirage.

[View with PicLens]

Join us for another installment of your favorite salon, The Modernist Society. This time we’ll sit down with local-legend Kid Congo Powers, who in addition to his own solo work (see the recently released “Dracula Boots”), has played with The Cramps, Nick Cave, and the Gun Club.

An interview and audience Q&A will be followed by the DJ sets by D-Mac and Kid himself

And by the way, this will be the last DC installment of The Modernist society to be hosted by Jason Mojica. He’s relocating to the UK where he will launch The Modernist Society: London. Details to come…

The Modernist Society with Kid Congo Powers
Tuesday, September 15
9pm
Bourbon
2321 18th Street NW
Washington, DC 
21+

A brief look at one of this century’s most underrated designers.
By Jason Mojica

In 1965 when airline industry hot-shot Harding Lawrence resigned from Continental Airlines to kick-start the Texas-based Braniff International, he knew he needed to make dramatic changes. Lawrence called upon advertising maven, Mary Wells. “Listen, Mary, I need a very big idea for this airline, something so big it will make Braniff important news, overnight.”

Mary Wells had flown often enough to be tired of the bleak, military feel of airlines. “Stewardesses, as they were called, were dressed to look like nurses or like pilots who could fly the planes in case the real pilot had a heart attack. There were no interesting ideas, no place for your eyes to rest, nothing smart anywhere. And there was no color.”

Wells knew just what to do, “We searched for Alexander Girard…”

Designer Alexander Girard brought vibrant color to post-war America. Using flamboyant colors and patterns, Girard skillfully fused the seemingly disparate worlds of modernity and folk art. His designs for everything from wallpaper to flatware are infused with an overriding sense of frivolity and joy, which helped to define the style of the 1960s and lent a human touch to mass-produced design.

The international lifestyle of Alexander Girard began in 1907, when his American mother and Italian father travelled from their home in Italy to New York City so that he would be granted U.S. citizenship. Girard was then raised in Florence and educated throughout Europe, attending the Royal Institute of British Architects in London and the Royal School of Architecture in Rome.

Girard was already a practicing architect and interior designer by the late 1920s. In 1932, Girard returned to the U.S., opening an office in New York City. By 1937 he had moved on to Detroit, Michigan where he was really to begin making a name for himself.

In 1949, Girard was selected to design the Detroit Institute of Art’s “For Modern Living.” The show focused on the design of everyday things, which happened to include the first public presentation of the molded plywood chairs of Charles and Ray Eames.

Another regional connection resulted in the body of work for which Alexander Girard is best known. In 1952, Girard became the director of design for Herman Miller’s textile division. While at Herman Miller he designed over 300 different fabrics and wallpapers.While Girard admitted that for most Americans, “a brilliant pink or magenta carried a connotation of double-barreled horror,” Herman Miller was bold in their presentation of Girard’s hot color palette. “People got fainting fits if they saw bright, pure color,” said Girard. It was these radiant fabrics which lent humanity to the mass-produced furniture of Herman Miller. As Herman Miller did a substantial trade to big business, it could be argued that Girard helped to brighten the American workplace.

Girard derived a great deal of inspiration from the folk art he collected while abroad. The floral patterns in his Mikado fabric draw inspiration from Japanese textiles. His Palio pattern is derived from the semi-annual horse race of the same name which is held in Sienna, Italy, which Girard was known to attend with great enthusiasm.

Some might consider Alexander Girard’s use of patterns and color quite riotous and chaotic when, in fact, he had an acute sensitivity to their proper use. One of his most stunning commissions came when he was asked to design La Fonda Del Sol, a restaurant in New York’s Time Life Building. This commission brought about Girard’s first venture into furniture design, a collaboration with Charles and Ray Eames which resulted in the La Fonda Chair. The chair combined an elegant, space-age aluminum base with an upholstered fiberglass shell.

By this time, Alexander and his wife, Susan, had moved to New Mexico where they were amassing one of the largest collections of folk art ever assembled… over 100,000 pieces strong. In 1961, together with Herman Miller, Girard created the Textiles & Objects store in New York City. In a financial sense, the store was a failure, seen by many as an elaborate exhibition rather than a business. However, the store presented an eye-opening bazaar to middle-class America. The Textiles & Objects store sold items that Alexander and Susan brought back in bulk quantities from their extensive travels, as well as products made with his textiles including pillows, dolls, and… upholstered mirrors.

In 1965, Mary Wells was placed in charge of creating a kind of minor revolution at Braniff International. Her first step in in shaking things up at the airline was to hire Italian fashion designer Emilio Pucci to design new uniforms for the stewardesses. While Pucci was hard at work sexualizing the outfits (even throwing in a Braniff bikini, for good measure), Wells was on the hunt for Girard. She was moved primarily by Girard’s work at La Fonda del Sol, “it was a high-octane color montage of Mexican and modern, he worked with Herman Miller designers and was a colleague of Ray and Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen, the people who had created my wedding furniture. He lived in New Mexico and [my art director] and I flew out to see him in his vivid New Mexican house with its art gallery, a riot of folk art. We saw a thousand ideas for Braniff’s terminals, check-in counters and clubs in his house and he had a thousand more when we signed him on as the project designer. I thought it was a good omen when he said he had been brought up in Florence and knew Emilio; it all came together as if preordained.“

In 1965 when airline industry hot-shot Harding Lawrence resigned from Continental Airlines to kick-start the Texas-based Braniff International, he knew he needed to make dramatic changes. Lawrence called upon advertising maven, Mary Wells. “Listen, Mary, I need a very big idea for this airline, something so big it will make Braniff important news, overnight.”

Mary Wells had flown often enough to be tired of the bleak, military feel of airlines. “Stewardesses, as they were called, were dressed to look like nurses or like pilots who could fly the planes in case the real pilot had a heart attack. There were no interesting ideas, no place for your eyes to rest, nothing smart anywhere. And there was no color.”

Wells knew just what to do, “We searched for Alexander Girard…”

Designer Alexander Girard brought vibrant color to post-war America. Using flamboyant colors and patterns, Girard skillfully fused the seemingly disparate worlds of modernity and folk art. His designs for everything from wallpaper to flatware are infused with an overriding sense of frivolity and joy, which helped to define the style of the 1960s and lent a human touch to mass-produced design.

The international lifestyle of Alexander Girard began in 1907, when his American mother and Italian father travelled from their home in Italy to New York City so that he would be granted U.S. citizenship. Girard was then raised in Florence and educated throughout Europe, attending the Royal Institute of British Architects in London and the Royal School of Architecture in Rome.

Girard was already a practicing architect and interior designer by the late 1920s. In 1932, Girard returned to the U.S., opening an office in New York City. By 1937 he had moved on to Detroit, Michigan where he was really to begin making a name for himself.

In 1949, Girard was selected to design the Detroit Institute of Art’s “For Modern Living.” The show focused on the design of everyday things, which happened to include the first public presentation of the molded plywood chairs of Charles and Ray Eames.

Another regional connection resulted in the body of work for which Alexander Girard is best known. In 1952, Girard became the director of design for Herman Miller’s textile division. While at Herman Miller he designed over 300 different fabrics and wallpapers.While Girard admitted that for most Americans, “a brilliant pink or magenta carried a connotation of double-barreled horror,” Herman Miller was bold in their presentation of Girard’s hot color palette. “People got fainting fits if they saw bright, pure color,” said Girard. It was these radiant fabrics which lent humanity to the mass-produced furniture of Herman Miller. As Herman Miller did a substantial trade to big business, it could be argued that Girard helped to brighten the American workplace.

Girard derived a great deal of inspiration from the folk art he collected while abroad. The floral patterns in his Mikado fabric draw inspiration from Japanese textiles. His Palio pattern is derived from the semi-annual horse race of the same name which is held in Sienna, Italy, which Girard was known to attend with great enthusiasm.

Some might consider Alexander Girard’s use of patterns and color quite riotous and chaotic when, in fact, he had an acute sensitivity to their proper use. One of his most stunning commissions came when he was asked to design La Fonda Del Sol, a restaurant in New York’s Time Life Building. This commission brought about Girard’s first venture into furniture design, a collaboration with Charles and Ray Eames which resulted in the La Fonda Chair. The chair combined an elegant, space-age aluminum base with an upholstered fiberglass shell.

By this time, Alexander and his wife, Susan, had moved to New Mexico where they were amassing one of the largest collections of folk art ever assembled… over 100,000 pieces strong. In 1961, together with Herman Miller, Girard created the Textiles & Objects store in New York City. In a financial sense, the store was a failure, seen by many as an elaborate exhibition rather than a business. However, the store presented an eye-opening bazaar to middle-class America. The Textiles & Objects store sold items that Alexander and Susan brought back in bulk quantities from their extensive travels, as well as products made with his textiles including pillows, dolls, and… upholstered mirrors.

In 1965, Mary Wells was placed in charge of creating a kind of minor revolution at Braniff International. Her first step in in shaking things up at the airline was to hire Italian fashion designer Emilio Pucci to design new uniforms for the stewardesses. While Pucci was hard at work sexualizing the outfits (even throwing in a Braniff bikini, for good measure), Wells was on the hunt for Girard. She was moved primarily by Girard’s work at La Fonda del Sol, “it was a high-octane color montage of Mexican and modern, he worked with Herman Miller designers and was a colleague of Ray and Charles Eames and Eero Saarinen, the people who had created my wedding furniture. He lived in New Mexico and [my art director] and I flew out to see him in his vivid New Mexican house with its art gallery, a riot of folk art. We saw a thousand ideas for Braniff’s terminals, check-in counters and clubs in his house and he had a thousand more when we signed him on as the project designer. I thought it was a good omen when he said he had been brought up in Florence and knew Emilio; it all came together as if preordained.“

A Braniff advertising campaign touted Girard as “busy redesigning our airplanes – in fact, tearing them apart… he threw out nearly everything we had, and started from scratch”. Indeed he did. By the time he was finished Girard had designed 17,543 new changes for Braniff. “My concepts for Braniff International come from two primary, and seemingly contradictory, design principles: First, design in depth, to insure variety, interest and lasting excitement. Second, strip beautiful shapes of non-essentials, to permit freest appreciation of the beautiful form”

The airline had become an explosion of color. Braniff’s planes now flew in seven different vibrant colors, including lemon, turquoise, and ochre. The interiors utilized 56 of Girard’s iconoclastic Herman Miller fabrics, many custom-designed for this project. From the Braniff logo, to dishes, luggage tags, blankets, and playing cards, Alexander Girard customized every detail.
With Girard’s warmth applied, a Braniff departure lounge no longer felt like the sort of place which reminded you that you were not yet where you needed to be. If you were a member of Braniff’s VIP club, you were in even better shape.

Braniff’s premier customers were treated to lounges which were furnished with some of the most exciting work of Girard’s career. Together with Herman Miller, Girard created a line of custom furniture. Elegant dining tables of rosewood were accented by streamlined aluminum legs. Seemingly simple chairs took on chameleon-like qualities as fabrics were often varied between the seat cushion, inner and outer upholstery. The aluminum bases of the seating were strongly reminiscent of Girard’s earlier work with the Eamses on the La Fonda Chair.

Girard’s furniture put the final touch on the Braniff project. The airline had become cutting-edge by hiring a designer whose aesthetics were born in the primitive art of times past.

Always willing to take chances on the designers they believed in, Herman Miller introduced The Girard Group in 1967. Based on his designs for Braniff, Girard’s line of seating gave the public the chance to experiment with the juxtaposition of his fabrics, resulting in endless possibilities. Girard’s coffee tables featured a clever innovation; its sculptural aluminum supports were hinged in the center, allowing them to adjust to accommodate either a circular or rectangular table top. The furniture line was rounded off with a variety of playful stools and ottomans, as well as a single hexagonal, polished chrome table- quite industrial in appearance.

Alas, while a maverick airline appreciated Girard’s vision, apparently the rest of America did not. The Girard Group was discontinued in 1968 due to poor sales. Perhaps ahead of its time in 1967, furniture from the Girard Group fits in with the most contemporary of environments and has become an obsession of many design enthusiasts and collectors alike.

Girard’s work with Herman Miller continued into the 1970s when he livened up their Action Office system with a series of Environmental Enrichment Panels. In 1978, the Girard Foundation donated its massive folk art collection to the Santa Fe Museum of International Folk Art. They remain to this day the core of the world’s most important collection of cross-cultural folk art.

Interview by Edgar Barrington
Hear a clip

Aside from being the best band on Earth The Registrators are also the nicest guys on Earth. Singer/guitarist/songwriter Hiroshi Otsuki and manager Takaya Nagashima took me out to an izakaya (one of those places where naked women crawl around with sushi on them) where we drank a lot and did an interview.

If you only know the band for their Rip Off Records debut Terminal Boredom and masterpiece Sixteen Wires, sorry to be snobby, but you are missing out on their best stuff! Released only in Japan, Velocity took everything great about Sixteen Wires to the next level, more pop, more new wave, unbelievable songwriting, ballsy yet perfect effects, and a high budget recording that does the band justice! Next was No Fantasy, a little tougher, a little more lo fi, but essentially 7 more under-3-minute wonders (double 7″/CDEP).

The Modernist: I was wondering about being a band in Japan, where you practice, how often you’re able to practice?

Otsuki: We rent a practice studio for four hours a week. We want more time but the rest of the band, they have jobs. We are always doing new songs, arrangements and things. I wrote many songs and we want to change, so we would like to practice more but now it is difficult.

Do the other guys in the band have jobs?

Yeah they have jobs. Jun, the guitarist works in a hospital…

Oh really? I didn’t know that. What does he do in the hospital?

He is not a doctor! Desk work. Our bass player, Ren, he is a cook. Deira, drummer, works in a record shop, Disk Union. I don’t have a job. I’m a loser. (laughs)

In the US you have an LP of rare stuff as well as a singles collection on Rip Off, and here in Japan you have a complete sessions CD as well as a CD of old demos, why do you release a lot of old stuff?

Each single only 1000 copies were pressed usually, maybe 2000. New people, a new audience, they want to hear older sounds, so we release older stuff. Also, I want money. For a 7″ single we never get money, maybe only 100 copies. Anyway people want it so I do it.

From your older to newer stuff you’ve become a lot more new wave, maybe power pop. Can you tell me about the change in style?

(groans) You know Set Me Free? Kind of pop, our first song. I always loved melodies but I also love punk, aggressive punk, straightforward punk. I love a lot of music, new wave, rock… I want to write original music but I don’t know how but I always change. Maybe the style changes but it’s still basically the same.

About your actual recordings, Velocity was very high quality, high budget, then No Fantasy sounds back to more lo fi. Why?

Before Velocity I didn’t know a high quality recording studio. I wanted to record in a high quality studio, but after I did then I want to try recording myself. I want to have choice in equipment myself, I did record it myself –

You recorded No Fantasy yourself? In your practice space or…

Yeah practice space. Now I have a lot of equipment and next album maybe we’ll use the same equipment. I’ll record it only the skill will be a little higher next time, next time, and next time… I want to buy more basic equipment, better equipment, to make many records in the future.

Where do you get ideas for lyrics? What inspires your lyrics?

I don’t like to write lyrics but… I’m always angry. (laughs) I’m always angry but also I always have romantic…. something, I don’t know romantic… but — I love girls. (laughs) Many things, I wrote songs, kind of wrote more poppy songs. Usually more poppy songs are about girls, love songs, but I’m very crazy. Our pop songs have angry lyrics.

Cool contrast.

Yeah contrast, right. Next album maybe I won’t do that method though. Maybe pop songs with lyrics about girls. But I hope to be honest about my life anyway. I hope to write honest lyrics. I don’t care about the method, next time I will just try to be honest.

Why did you decide to write lyrics in English?

Remember I told you the kabuki story?

Yeah…

Rock n roll music was born in the United States, also England. United States and England are English countries, they speak the English language. You know Kabuki, Japanese culture, if they spoke in English it would be very strange, very funny — but that is what I do. I don’t know very much English, so Japanese English is very strange to United States people but I don’t care! (laughs)

Well said! What are your favorite bands in Japan?

Firestarter, also Caption, they are a new band from Osaka. They are a really great band. I don’t know other bands, maybe there’s good bands in Japan but I don’t wanna know because I’m an old man. (laughs)

What are some of your favorite bands, old bands, your influences?

In Japan?

Actually I wanted to know, are there late 70′s Japanese punk bands?

Yeah but I don’t like Japanese bands because they sing in Japanese. Very weird I think.

Yeah but people in the US would think that’s cool. I would, anyway. What are your favorite bands from anywhere?

Buzzcocks, many many, too many, but Oasis… too many…

Shout out a few more

Raspberries, Pilot, they’re from England, Clash, Sex Pistols, Damned, New Order! One of my favorites, New Order.

Joy Division?

Yeah, them too.

I wanted to know, how come Rip Off Records did not put out “Velocity” and “No Fantasy?”

(groans again) Greg Lowery is a good friend but I want to get more money. Also I thought that we should sell more records in Japan. We have to play and also release more in Japan. Many reasons, maybe now Greg doesn’t like our style…

My other question is, why is Ren so good?

I don’t know, I think he is a genius.

I agree, he’s unbelievable.

He is a genius but he can’t write songs, he wrote two songs –

Which two?

You know Tell Me?

(I said yes at the time but in fact I don’t)

He can’t write songs but he is a God at his instrument… (laughs) He can only play bass, other things he cannot do. He is an idiot. (much laughter)

Do you do an actual tour of Japan or do you stay in Tokyo, do one show and come back, go away to another show…

Yeah yeah, because we don’t have a van or tour bus. Also the Japanese freeway is very expensive.

Tolls? Why is it expensive?

I don’t know, the government sucks. Also the rest of the guys in the band, they have jobs. It is very difficult to go on tour, so we go somewhere, come back to Tokyo, go somewhere else, usually this style.

Do you think you’re mostly popular in the US or in Japan? Are your records distributed in the UK, rest of Europe, anywhere else in Asia, Korea…

Few, very few in Europe, but 5 years ago we went to Europe. I thought we sold 1000 records because we stayed fucking 2 months, we played 2 months!

Wow, that’s a long tour.

Yeah. We hope everywhere, United States, Europe, Japan… you make the Registrators more popular in the United States!

Do you think people hear your music or think about it differently in the US or in Japan or in different places?

Different. United States people like our more punk, older stuff but now in Japan some people like our new stuff.

What do you think about the future of the band? Where do you see the sound going?

Maybe the next album will be more aggressive… honest lyrics, more popularity I hope. I think more pop, I hope more hi fi, but then next album, next album, next album… I don’t know.

What did you tell me to buy that I was gonna buy? I can’t remember… you said you all love ELO?

Yeah, ELO.

There was another band like that that you told me.

Bay City Rollers?

Yeah! Which album?

I like every album but my favorite song is Rock and Roll Love Letter. Great song.

Thanks, I’ll get it.

–
Edgar Barrington is co-founder of The Modernist.

Order The Registrators “Complete Sessions” CD.

Porochista Khakpour has an op-ed in the New York Times, giving her own take on Barbie’s 50th anniversary. Revisit her 2007 appearance at The Modernist Society in this podcast.

The man behind Jawbreaker, Jets to Brazil, and the newly-formed Thorns of Life joins The Modernist Society for a chat on Wednesday, February 18.

Doors at 9pm.
Interview w audience Q&A at 10.
DJs D-Mac and Neville C man the decks from 11 til close.
$4 Bourbon specials / 21+
Bourbon:
2321 18th Street NW
Washington DC

Notorious Maximumrocknroll columnist and general provocateur Mykel Board spent a year in Outer Mongolia, then turned it into a book. Interview by Edgar Barrington.

The Modernist: I wanted to know what made you decide to turn your year in Mongolia into a novel?

Mykel Board: It’s not really a novel because a novel has a feeling of something that is made up. Even a Daughter is pretty not made up. When I was there I took email notes, I wrote every day about my adventures and I didn’t have a phone let alone an internet connection where I was. So in order to send email I had to physically take the computer down to the email center, plug it in, upload all my email messages and download them and my cousin collected them for the year. And they became my notes and I figured, “Oh I had all of these cool experiences, I should write them.” And that’s when the book came out.

Oh nice, so the idea to write a book was actually after the fact, retrospectively?

Well I had a vague idea, I didn’t go there to write a book, I went there because that was my main goal in life. I thought I wouldn’t be able to die unless I had been to Mongolia. So that’s why I went there and I guess in the back of my mind was “it might be a book” and as time continued it looked more and more like it was gonna be one.

I see. I wanted to ask you too about your literary influences, authors that you either just enjoy or that you felt had some influence on the way you write.

Oh that’s a good question. Well my favorite author is Celine, and I read just about everything — except a little bit of anti-Semetic screed I passed up. But all the novels and everything I’ve read and his style was a big influence on me. It’s weird because I rarely read travel writing, I’ve read one or two books by Paul Theroux, who’s I guess the most famous travel writer, but most of my reading is things like Celine or maybe more mundanely William Burroughs or those kind of guys. But my writing is much more direct than that. My writing style is, well maybe there’s a little bit of Celine there because it’s kind of rough and nasty sometimes, but my style came out of training, a great writing course I had at Columbia College in Chicago, and most of the style I’ve had has been developed over the years starting on the things I learned in that course.

Cool, how long did you stay in Chicago for that course?

The course was only a year. I had transferred, my first school was Beloit in Wisconsin, then I transferred for my last year to Chicago to concentrate on writing and then I took time off and went to grad school at NYU in New York. But at Columbia College, the structure there was really great and more than just technique and which adverbs to choose, it really showed you how to see what you were writing, how to revisit the scene and see or touch or smell, almost like kind of zen group therapy.

Interesting. Around what year was that?

Columbia College was 1972.

Cool interesting, I lived around Chicago for around 10 years but that’s quite a bit before my time. Anything non-Columbia related about Chicago that you care to mention?

Well my first time in Chicago was the Democratic Convention 1968, that was a riot.

(Laughter)

Then I went to undergrad school in Beloit so I was often back and forth between Chicago and… I like Chicago, Chicago’s like New York with the volume turned down. And it’s got great architecture, I think the best architecture in America, and what else can I say? While I was there at Columbia I really discovered the basis and the joys of rewriting.

To me writing is like taking a shit — getting it out is a drudgery. It’s something you gotta do, you get it all out, then the joy is making a sculpture with the shit – rewrite, revise and revisit the original location and your image and then you focus on it, and the real craft is rewriting and I learned that at Colubmia. Although they did not use the taking a shit metaphor.

I’m glad that’s your own, it’s wonderful. You mentioned in your columns and it said in the back of Even a Daughter that you wrote a bunch of novels under pseudonyms?

Not exactly a pseudonym, there was no author’s name. I wrote 17 porno novels, I would go into the company, get an assignment, like this week it’s young virgin’s book, this week it’s homos in jail, this week it’s fighting girls, and 20 hours later I’d come out with a novel, I’d get $230 and write the next one.

Wow that’s unbelievable.

In the beginning it was a tough job because the pay was so low but after awhile I could write a novel and I had the joy of putting all my friends in my novels.

On the subject of sex there’s one specific question about a section in your book I had. You went to that club, I forget the name of it, and you ended up… briefly sort of having sex with this woman…

Under the staircase

Right right. There was no mention in there of slipping on a condom or anything, I was just curious…

No condom, I was drunk and fortunately in retrospect it was probably stupid but I had no price to pay for that stupidity.

Ok good, I guess there was no sense of remorse brought up in the book so I was curious if outside of the book there was.

Yeah and if you remember in the beginning of the book I brought all those condoms with me expecting to use them and when push came to push I didn’t have one, or at least didn’t consider it.

And as a result of that, I think you said, you ended up breaking up with your girlfriend. But I was kind of surprised that – just through having read your columns and never having met you I was not surprised by your behavior or I guess intended promiscuity, so I wondered how that… why your girlfriend was.

Me too! It’s amazing she thought she could change me or something. I don’t know. I think to be fair it was more the fact that I wrote about it than that I did it. So you know it’s like “oh Mykel’s girlfriend and look what he’s written about in Mongolia.” I think that upset her more.

I see and then of course for myself living in Japan, you called the company Logos but I was wondering if you’d tell me… I assume that was not the real name of the company you worked for here?

The name of the company I worked for in Japan was The Tokyo Center for Language and Culture. It’s not a real school, it’s kind of, I don’t know how to describe it, it’s an agency where they send you to various companies and teach. I taught for the Taiyo Company, Taiyo Fishery, who at that time owned the Taiyo Whales which eventually became the Yokohama BayStars, and I got free tickets for the Taiyo Whales actually and I think I am probably the only American Yokohama BayStars fan in the world. I worked for a contracting company, they just sent you all over the place. They were based in Shibuya.

And how long did you live in Japan?

2 years. A really good 2 years except for the train.

What about them? What’s the downside?

Well I lived on the Odakyu line which is the most crowded and I don’t mind being pushed up close against an attractive person for awhile, but not so tight that you can’t breathe, and that’s how it was on the Odakyu line. Where are you?

In Tokyo, Gotanda is about 7 minutes from here, which is about 7 minutes from Shibuya.

Oh you’re lucky. I was way the hell out for most of my time there in Sobudai near Sagami-Ono on the Odakyu line.

I was curious about the trains because what drives me nuts more than them being crowded is that they don’t run at all after midnight.

That’s the 2nd point, unlike New York where the subways never stop, trains in Japan stop at midnight and it’s really nasty, what do you do? You can stay in a capsule hotel or you can pay a fortune for a taxi, or you can sleep in the train station or something and that’s really nasty, that’s the 2nd reason I don’t like the trains in Japan.

And further off the subject of your novel, I wanted to ask a music question, any of your either recent favorite bands, or have always been your favorite bands…

My recent favorite bands, actually a great band who used to be in New York, a Japanese band just returned to Tokyo so you might have a chance to see them. They’re called the Stackers. They had to leave because the drummer got deported. I don’t know why but the drummer got deported so they all went back to Japan and they’re in Tokyo now so keep an eye out for them.

And what sort of general style do they play?

They call themselves an Oi! Band… I don’t think they’re an Oi! Band they’re kind of like a fun punk band. And then another band from New York called Pee Lander Z. I like to call them the Japanese Butthole Surfers. They are a wild performance band and a lot of fun. And another band with a great named called World War 9 is a sort of loud sloppy garage punk band and they do GG Allin covers so it makes me happy.

Excellent and I have one more question, I wanted to know your newest adventure or what’s next for Mykel Board?

Actually it’s kind of mundane compared to what I usually do but I’m doing it to help promote the book and because I’ve never been there before, it’s another continent. In March I’ll be doing Australia and New Zealand and I will be in Japan for one day, 24 hours.

Doing a reading or signing or what will you be doing?

Japan?

Both.

In Australia I’ll be reading up and down the east coast. I’m working on the specifics. In Japan it’s kind of complicated. I do this thing called “drink club” in New York so every week we go to a different bar and there are a lot of Japanese members because it started with me and some students. So when I’m in Japan one of my friends is gonna be setting up Drink Club Tokyo. Originally it was going to be Kabukicho but he said he’s got better contacts in Asakusa. If you wanna check you can check www.drinkclubnyc.org and that’ll be up to date.

Great thanks I’ll definitely do everything I can do to get there, that’d be really fun.

And bring as many people as possible.