Moving Ballads: Midori Karashima and Carrie Underwood

(tags music, Midori Karashima, Japan, USA, country)

This week I swung by the Tower Records Kobe to pick up my anticipated Bouquet Garni (ブーケガルニ) CD by Midori Karashima (辛島美登里). Unfortuately it wasn't prominently displayed in the eye-catch racks. :-/ And yeah, I already like the new track (no. 4) "dakishimite" 「抱きしみて」. And the lovely revised version of "anata no ai ni naritatai" 「あなたの愛になりたい」, is an update of the song from her 1997 album. It totally reminds me of my spelunkering and puttering around Tokyo at the time. Geez, 1997.

While I'm talking about her, I may as well mention that I found the YouTube video of her song for the Yawara! television anime, called "Egao o Sagashite" 「笑顔を探して」. I never watched Yawara! though, even though I got the CD single. 8cm CD! Geez, 1990.

I drifted over to the other half of the store which was foreign music section. I checked out some favorites, but Carrie Underwood's (newest?) CD stood out. I passed on Trisha Yearwood, sorry! I'm now entranced by her rendition of "I Told You So". I first heard this song through Randy Travis, which has to be my favorite from him. Geez, 1988.

Real life is calling, wants you to evacuate

(tags emergency, USA)

Normally I don't talk about "real life" in this blog, but this one hit close to home. The Witch Fire in San Diego County made my family evacuate.

Imagine getting a "reverse 911" call at 4 in the morning and having to vacate the area by 6 AM because authorities are closing the major highways. Crazy. The stats on this fire are horrific: 9.2 million USD damage, 1000+ homes destroyed, etc.

Luckily the worst is over for us and the home was left untouched. Another of my friends also had to evacuate as well but they are fine.

I only got word of the fires through Robert Scoble's blog, which led me to a Google map mashup. Then I did a Google search which gave me an unofficial fire reporting blog, California Fire News. This in turn led me to the official goverment sites, InciWeb and CAL FIRE. So far I have seen only one picture of one of the fires itself, and I won't actively look for more.