Mamba Forever

Little Routines and Deep Breaths

Without places to go and people to see—time has a way of flattening out. It’s important to create little spikes of nowness in your day. Little moments just because. To have some control over something. To fight a vague sense of dread with a specific burst of passion. Even if it’s just for five minutes. It’s important that we reclaim what we can. Reclaim what is ours. To be present and take back now.

Me, I reclaim my creativity with short writing and drawing breaks. I enter these with no goals in mind—no pressure. I just come to a blank page with a desire and willingness to create. That's what gets me going. I lay down some brushstrokes or colored pencil or start flowing sentences from my pen. Sometimes it leads somewhere else. Sometimes it completes itself. The victory lies in actually carving out the time. Reconnecting with your intentions. Taking back what matters to you. The things that make you breathe.



What are you doing to take back your now?

Kyrie

Penny Hardaway

Mamba Up

Kobe rose into our consciousness as I was in the middle of chasing my own athletic potential. And while I played basketball through high school, Kobe’s mentality and work ethic really touched my psyche as a baseball player. From high school to college to having a professional tryout as a pitcher, Kobe's mentality became a template for how I pursued and pushed my craft.  Being a Portland Trailblazer fan, it was a bit of an identity crisis to find myself respecting a Laker so highly—but his passion for training and pursuit of excellence was impossible not to respect. Kobe became my mental standard in how I looked at my preparations as a baseball player.

Watching Kobe and reading articles about his single-mindedness spurred me to compete at every phase of the game. Even in practice. Even in a “walk-through.” Even throwing into a net during an after practice session with no one looking on, I’d find myself thinking, how would Kobe approach this? It drove me to focus and compete for every moment. Every drill. To chase after every morsel of success. To stay hungry about proving myself. I also learned to never be satisfied. Even when the coach says “great job” or your teammates cheer your efforts, Kobe taught me to look inward and ask “was that really your best man?” Because of looking to how Kobe and Michael Jordan competed, I took a daily look at what I was doing.

In recent years, now that my on field days are through, I found myself connecting with Kobe again as a father of daughters. I respected and admired how he was passionate about his girls. How he shared his love of the game with them. And I was just inspired of that immense pride that came through when he would talk about them. Today I mourn the loss of Kobe, Gianna and the others lost. But I celebrate the inspiration, dedication and love that Kobe expressed and so freely shared with the world. The impact and lessons from his life and game will resonate forever.

Tokyo Typhoon Extreme Weather Tourists

The biggest typhoon of the past several decades hit Tokyo last weekend. Living near the center of the city, we were curious what things would be like at ground zero, before the peak of the typhoon arrived.

Before we set out, we looked at a couple of live cams of Shibuya. There were only a handful of people out, toting umbrellas and braving the elements. But the winds didn’t seem to that intense at the moment, so we looked at each other and decided to go check it out first hand.

We rolled over to the bus stop a couple of minutes from our house. Luckily a bus was just pulling up when we arrived so we hopped on. There were only two other riders on the bus. So we could already feel the effects of the evacuation mentality. We rode all the way to Dogenzaka, making no stops on the way as no one was at any of the bus stops.

When we left the bus, it was only raining lightly. It was still sage to use your umbrella and not have it blown apart by high winds. We walked the deserted alleys and streets around Shibuya station. Many of the shops and cafes had fully boarded up windows, giving the whole environment the look of an apocalyptic movie set. We continued on, walking the empty streets and snapping the occasional rare photo of a barren Shibuya.

We were on a scouting mission to see if anything was open. Being around noon, we had lunch on our minds. With the boarded up windows, it didn’t look promising. However as we walked Basketball Street in central Shibuya, we saw a light burning brightly in the distance. As we approached the window, we discovered it was a ramen shop—working at full capacity. Just looking in the window, you wouldn’t guess the circumstances odd at all. Chefs moved in tight choreography. Spinning, draining scoops of noodles, stirring vats of steaming broth. All as happy customers slurped away as on any other day.

And who were all these fools inhaling ramen under these locked down circumstances? Were they all reflections of us? Disaster tourists? Or rugby fans eating off the pain of cancelled games. Or bitcoin miners waiting for the conference to resume.

After a leisurely and dry lunch, we headed back into the streets in search of more nothingness. The rain now more persistent. The drops bigger. But still no wind. We ducked into Don Quixote. The meme-like Japanese super everything store. Whose multi-jingles and enthusiastic staff were on full blast. Ramen and Don Quixote, the two pillars of Tokyo remained unfettered by the weather event outside.

We picked up some batteries and spare lightbulbs because they were on our shopping list. Then we walked on. The rain amping up even more.

At the crossing, cameras and reporters stood in the elements talking to the random handful of folks passing through. We were stopped. They were doing something for British TV, around rugby. But with the games called off, they turned into typhoon chasers. They asked if we were here for the rugby or the bitcoin. Sadly no. They asked if we thought the typhoon was going to be bad. I said something about reports usually being overblown. At which point a gust of wind blew back my umbrella, shattering the skeletal core beyond repair. With any luck, I’m some sort of meme to American ignorance in the UK thanks to the comic timing of a gust from the god of wind.

From the interview on, the weather turned increasingly violent. We turned into the tunnels above and below Shibuya station, and walked their empty halls. Every now and then we’d pass another explorer like us. Earlier we had thought of walking home, but with the winds, we caught a cab. One of a hundred lined up at the station after the buses and trains had stopped. We rode home and looked out the window for the rest of the day as the winds pended. The trust of the typhoon came at night, after the house was asleep. But our photos and videos of a barren Shibuya made our wet excursion to the city center worth it.

Saturday with the National Pastime in Japan

Time was when baseball was the American pastime. It may still be in name, but recently football and basketball have broken away to the top of the American psyche. Baseball is still a major sport, but it no longer holds the urgent, most relevant place in the nation’s heart.

Hop the Pacific Ocean to Japan. Here, baseball has deep roots and a culture unto its own. The major leagues see the fruits of Japan’s baseball culture with the yearly all-world exports that come to America. The culture that is spawning these talented ballplayers runs deep. It’s baseball, but it’s also not an exact copy of the American version. It’s not even called baseball for starters. It’s YAKYU. It has its own rhythm, tradition and strict belief system born out of the Japanese spirit.

Japan has made the game of baseball their own. Transforming it into its national sport on its terms.

Baseball is everywhere. Walk down the streets any day of the week and you’ll notice packs of young ballplayers, in full uniform and helmets traveling around like rabid baseball gangs. With bat bags and gear in tow, they travel in full team packs. They head to and from practice. They stop and take shadow cuts in the alleys. They worship the game. A visual reminder of how pervasive the game is.

On the subways, people of all ages wear the hats of their favorite Japanese league teams. Young school kids hang stuffed team mascots from their backpacks. On game day, people will fully gear up in uniform, hat, holding tenants or plastic team bats. More baseball worship throughout the city.

On Saturdays, working men and women turn out to the local ballparks, in full uniform, to play the game. Here they use a rubber ball and sometimes play double or triple headers. These fully uniformed men and women, looking like pros, glide by on their bikes or scooters, racing to assemble at the fields. Many of them play for corporate, company sponsored teams. They play other companies. Coming together over baseball.

Locals stand and populate the bleachers, watching the hyper local leagues play their games. The talent level is amateur, but it’s full on baseball. Minus the hardball. But they keep at it, weekend after weekend. Holding onto the game in their way. Going through the routines. Swinging bats and limbering up before the game. Watching the previous game finish up. Communing with the gods of baseball. Or Yakyu rather.

In summer, the nation turns its psyche towards Koshien—the all Japan high school baseball tournament that dominates all media. Stars here become legends that endure for decades. Baseball in Japan rewards its followers with immortality.

As I pass by these Saturday games and observe them from the outside of the fence, I tip my cap to their diligent diamond worship. In a country where sport doesn’t hold the same cultural significance as it does in the west, there is something deeply significant with Japan’s connection to baseball. The inspiration and nostalgia moves me. All hail the national pastime. To Yakyu, the vehicle which transports the Japanese spirit. And every weekend, it gains a head of steam, rounds third and heads for home.

The First Rule of Peace Club Is You Don't Stop Talking About Peace Club

I always loved the soap bar graphic from Fight Club. Putting the name of the movie on the bar was such a simple, brilliant bit of visual branding for the film. The movie title was never carved on the soap that appeared in the movie, but only used for marketing purposes. And in that context, it turned into something else entirely. For me, it's one of the things that helped turned the movie into the iconic film that it is. The image of the movie is so strong and solid.

Obviously using the device of carving words into soap has been used over and over again ever since. The other day the bar floated into my mind again, and here I am adding to the endless stream of pop-culture remixes. I guess my mind was reacting to the black and white, us versus them state of the world right now. So I put together a few pixels of art to remind us all to come together, while also referencing one of my favorite films of all time. Peace Club, talk about it, share it--and if you are so inclined, wear it.

Peace and love. Oyl.

Visit the Oyl Shop to see sizes and colors here.

Here Comes Rui Hachimura...

With everyone in NBA circles focused on the hype around Zion Williamson, I think people might be sleeping on Rui Hachimura. While he was a very much heralded lottery draft pick (the first player from Japan to ever go that high) he wasn’t necessarily viewed as a slam dunk. He was seen as athletic, unselfish and pretty much viewed as a defensive specialist. However, this is a guy who has shockingly only been playing basketball for about seven years. And given the leaps he took at Gonzaga in his second and third years, it’s not ridiculous to imagine another leap or two from what we’ve already seen. With his play in the recent FIBA world basketball championships, he showed that he could carry the offensive load, and at times even dominate. This was something he didn’t need to show on a more balanced Gonzaga offense. But now that he has shown the ability to dominate on both ends of the court, I expect his stock to rise even more. There will always be an adjustment period for rookies as their bodies get used to going against much larger and more athletic players. But the flashes Rui has shown could turn into something truly special once he hits his NBA stride.

Tokyo Global Climate Strike

Last week we attended the Tokyo Global Climate Justice Strike in Shibuya. Gathering around 5pm, the square outside of the UN school in Aoyama was filled in with all manner of students and activists carrying with them signs and optimism. As to be expected of large group activities in Tokyo, the march proceeded in a very organized manner. Police oversaw the proceedings and escorted groups of around 100 protesters through the streets, one section at a time. All told there were probably between 2,000 to 4,000 people gathered for the strike.

My wife had signed our family up for the strike and had helped our daughters make their signs for the occasion. My wife has spearheaded the charge in our household to become Zero Waste. And our daughters (and I) have been trained in how to rotely refuse plastic bags and turn down plastic straws whenever they are thrust upon us. This practice is still in the early innings in Tokyo, and usually our refusals are met with blank stares, laughs or downright confusion. Yet, inspired by my wife, we persist.

The crowd in Tokyo was international in nature. With signs in both English and Japanese, the message was paraded through the streets of fashionable Omotesando, Harajuku and Shibuya. As we walked along, we saw people camped on the sides of the street waving signs and banners of their own—increasing the feeling and conviction of an emerging movement.

Environmentalism or “eco” themed subject matter is often used as a shallow trend in Japan. They often pick up on key words like “DIY” or Eco-life” and run with them. Without getting a deep understanding about where they are coming from. The same thing happened with the Japanese appropriation of hip hop in the early 90s. The culture picked up on the aesthetics and didn’t concern itself with the nuance or message behind it. While “eco” matters have been treated in a similarly breezy manner—often triple plastic bagged—one can hope that the efforts and visibility of a movement like Climate Justice can start to make some meaningful gains.

I’m glad our young daughters could take part in such a march. Their drawings and school work often show recycling bins and plastic bags with lines through them. The simple message has been received by them. They want to save the planet. They want to help animals. It’s natural and normal for them to contribute with their words and art. And last week, they enjoyed the chance to show their signs off for the cameras in central Tokyo. They smiled knowing that people would be seeing what they came up with. And we marched proudly along side of them. One message across multiple generations.

The trickle of a climate justice movement has started flowing in Tokyo.

Below is a shirt I designed inspired by seeing my family come up with their own slogans and signs for the Climate Justice rally. Click here to view.

And Now... Your Yoyogi Crows!

How to Make a DIY Feather Quill Pen

Last weekend we went out to the nearby park hunting for giant crow feathers. The crows of Tokyo are legendary beasts like something flying straight out of the dark recesses of Edgar Allan Poe’s mind. Their fallen feathers became the object of our pursuit, to capture and then hand craft into DIY feather quill pens. I think Poe would approve of the literary nature of our mission.

Once we had secured the best specimens we could find, we took them home and washed them off in the sink. Next, we boiled them for 15 minutes to sterilize and make sure anything that had been living inside, no longer was. Then we let them dry out in front of a fan for several hours until they were fully dried out through and through.

With the feathers dried out, it was time to begin crafting the quills down to precise tips. The first step was to shave off the excess strands at the base of the feather. You want to leave a smooth length of of quill for your fingers to grip the pen. Then it’s time to start crafting the nib. Clip the end of the feather diagonally, leaving a fresh, sharp point at the end of each. With a fine blade, continue to cut shave off bits of the shaft and start streamlining the the point. Then it’s time to engineer a little space to store ink by cutting a slit right down the middle of the point and extending about a centimeter. This channel will hold the ink after each dip.

After carving out seven nib variations, it was time to put the newly crafted feather quill pens to the test. We got out our newly purchased bottle of ink and the finest test paper within an arm’s reach. Our family got to dipping and writing and drawing. Seeing how long the ink could last on a single dip. Testing out different amounts of pressure. Seeing what happened when the end split and you started getting two fine lines.

We soon found that each nib came with its own personality. Some flowed smoothly and freely, as if they had been professionally made. Others produced a scattered, frenetic line that kept you guessing. No matter which pen we tested, it was still an enjoyable sensation. Moving the bird feather across the blank page and leaving an indelible mark of your own.

Here are a few of the scratch pad results of our initial ink test:

Summer Sketchbook Pages #1

Fables of the River

Swallow…

Just one more cover.

I beat through field-dusted artifacts,

To Sun streets gone.

Your blur, free streaming ahead.

River Legends,

Have hidden speeds.

Body behind it perfect nobody.

Sun mountain just can’t picture.

Faltering behind steaming hand writings.

The field,

Where your chairs fall.

I, body, and all time.

Cuts streets.

A Bull’s post.

Free before slight lines.

See plans behind hidden ears.

Below sweet mountain.

Nobody locks all your culture.

Can’t blur that through more ghosts.

The train,

Breathing before the steaming river.

Cross dry, perfect suns.

All speeds of us,

Cut waves wide open.

By Oyl Miller

From the Land of the Rising Heat

Roki Sasaki.

The next monster of one hundred years.

A spindly 16-year old who was born to hurl a baseball. To throw at blinding speeds. All of his long-limbed body folding and unfolding in proper timing and efficiency, to unleash a sonic boom with the snap of his right wrist. Eliciting oohs-and-ahhs with every blaze of glory. Poor high school hitters, trying to make sense of phenomenal warp speeds—fanning blindly at the gust of baseball wind rushing past them. Failing with the futility of trying to drink soup with a single chopstick. No chance in this world or any other.

It is the stuff of anime or manga lore. A Chosen Boy, rising to national prominence. The Japanese Dream. Gracing the nation’s newspapers. Dominating long segments of airtime on nightly primetime. Triggering the tweets of celebrities. A whole country in rapt attention of Sasaki’s mound exploits. If you’ve been following Japanese baseball for any amount of time, you know the cadence and intensity the country’s mainstream fervor burns with. You’ve experienced the hallowed tones used to speak of these myths who emerge from the depths of Japan. Splashing to the surface fully realized, heaven sent from the mountain top, into the spotlight of Japanese media hysteria. First there was Dice-K, then Darvish, then Ma-kun. All moving along the celestial baseball timeline. Now, here stands Roki Sasaki. Number one in your program. Number one trending topic.

There is an obvious innocence when you see Roki standing on the mound. He’s just doing what he’s done every day of his life. It’s impossible for him to know that the very axis of baseball power now spins around him like a tightly wound slider.

It’s impossible for him to know that a single speeding fastball from his fingertips, topping 100 mph cracks the earth to its very core. That it sends a tremor over land and cyber space. A single Sasaki pitch, in less than a second, travels the world. The smack of the catcher’s glove, mass broadcasting a clear message. Announcing a presence. A baseball Spector. A new man-child has awakened in Japan.

Ready your scouts.

Prepare your fanbases.

Notify your coaches. Ping the redditors. The hype is resonating. Empty your pockets and prepare your best offers. Work on your Japanese etiquette. For soon, baseball innocence will be ready for market. This innate ability is available to be bought and sold. This lively arm is ready to join the arms race immemorial between Yankees and would-be-Yankee-killers. Always just one mystical pitching arm away from tipping the balance of power in the baseball universe.

Roki knows not which chalk line he is drawing nearer every day. His moment of crossing is coming. The final inning change. Until then, the redditors are worm-holing deep into a wikipedia frenzy. The American sportswriters are firing up their mobile word processors. We’ve got a live one here boys. Hear that? That’s the sound of a thousand bloggers cueing up lofty think pieces lauding the modernity of American baseball’s reliance on science, and bashing the archaic ways of Japanese ball that would put young pitcher’s arm in danger through stoic, traditional overwork. For in Japan, pitchers throw everyday without mercy. Without rest. (And in the darkest parts of Japanese baseball, without water.) For here, pitch limits don’t exist and taking a starter out of a game is viewed as a sign of weakness.

Young Roki is sparkling culture shock in the sporting world. The presumptuous and stubborn East versus West debate. Old school versus new school. Wrong versus right. Crystalized through the lens of sport. One of the most rooted in tradition sports. Which has yielded vastly different mentalities and ballplayers on two sides of the world.

Young Roki? He’s just trying to climb to the top of Japanese baseball Mt. Everest. He stands now on a Mt. Fuji peak, ruling Japan, and looking to claim legitimate baseball immortality by powering his team all the way to the Koshien title. To win the national high school baseball tournament. For in Japan, this conquest carries a perpetual cultural royalty. It’s a deep sporting honor on par with rising to national fame during March Madness. Even millionaire Japanese MLB stars, like Dice-K and Darvish still speak in reverent tones about their time at Koshien. Considering it the crowning jewel of their careers. For better or worse, it’s all down hill from the cultural highs of Koshien.

Hence the intense burn. Hence the meteoric pitch counts. Hence the literal embrace of giving everything for the good of your team. It’s an iconic sacrifice that echoes the Japanese love of the collective. The country rallies around, imbuing itself with a self-confirmation of their national identity, holding a mirror up top who they really are, all by living vicariously through young sports stars in the national spotlight. Young icons who leave fleeting but indelible impressions on the psyche of a nation.

And so now, in this moment, the world turns to Roki Sasaki. It turns for Roki. For now he unwittingly shoulders the weight and soul of this island nation. Shoulders that are still developing, that are already capable of unusual feats of diamond magic and of turning the world’s head with the snap of a lethal, embarassment-wreaking breaking ball.

Enter Roki Sasaki.

Paranoid Music Box: Thom Yorke's ANIMA Album Reviewed

Thom Yorke’s latest solo offering, ANIMA, sounds like the personal sequel album to Radiohead’s shock and awe masterpiece, Kid A.

Kid A was the national anthem that radically broke the music industry with it’s bold departure. It created a seismic shift that reframed the narrative of not only Radiohead, but it was the singular popular music album that signaled the end of rock and roll as we knew it. It burned the guitars and familiar drum textures in the dumpster out back, and replaced the familiar sonic palette with bloops and bleeps. With cut and paste lyrics that turned humanity into a machine and twisted it so far that the humanity and intention came back out through the speakers. It was a brilliant effort of smoke and mirrors piping directly into our collective ears. Minds were melted. A statement was made. 

And it’s one of the last “rock” albums we all definitely point to. The last hurrah before Napster, before streaming, before we had a million songs in our pocket. Before Steve Jobs changed the world. Kid A was a record of intent of a certain time and place. A shared space.

If Kid A was meant to ironically dominate stadiums filled to max capacity, ANIMA is the same artist, and longtime producer Nigel Godrich, working from hotel rooms and basement studios, intended to go directly and personally out to each of us. Through headphones. Starting intimate conversations and picking up threads. Weaving shared textures.

Call it chill-paranoia. A cousin of the paranoid-android sci-fi branch of rock pioneered by Yorke and Radiohead bandmates. Here, the discomfort in our modern times comes even closer to home. In paired down, minimally backed electronic tracks, Yorke croons and meanders in melodic and sedated tones. He sings of regret, disconnection and the fragility of our so-called shared experience. His lines, sharply written as ever, elucidating truths that we all feel but maybe haven’t articulated for ourselves. Yet when Yorke pulls his lines through the gentle ecosystem of beats and loops, the sentiment hits home.

ANIMA is filled with dream imagery. Upon first listen, it has the sensation of someone waking up from a dream and being forced to deal with a startling new reality. Slowly observing and then reckoning the change in atmosphere from a lost time.

The album’s opening track Traffic, crystalizes this awakening with tonal clarity. The track pulses in as Yorke’s disembodied voice calls out “Yeah.” The first command comes “Submit” followed by “Submerged.” Then comes world play with “Nobody and No body” an incantation to the avatar filled world we anonymously find ourselves drifting through—submerged. We then move immediately into a crystal clear thesis “It’s not good. It’s not right.” And then two more bits of stark imagery “A mirror. A sponge.” In this shattered poetry, Yorke establishes the setting and atmosphere. 90 seconds in, the characters have emerged. 

But then comes a line that straddles hope and irony “But you’re freeeeeeeeee,” Yorke lilts, letting the last syllable roll out and come undone as a chorus of machine-like applause rings out. The bass doubles down.

From here its terse verses and turns of phrase roasting elitist pigs, or apparently “zombies” now. Yorke muses on as the beat sustains. It’s all very dystopian—what else could it be—but there is also a brightness that coarses through the album. It’s as though, three albums into a “side-project” solo career, Yorke has found a sense of mission. A clarity of purpose.

On ANIMA, Yorke and Godrich paint from the same palette they’ve been using since Kid A, however there is a refinement and sophistication here. It suggests that perhaps this is not so much a side project, as it is a alternate project, or a legitimate Thom Yorke vehicle. Worthy of attention, not just as a restless oddity from a creative soul, but as a document of admiration in its own right.

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Below Thom Yorke discusses ANIMA and how his creative process has evolved over the years:

Shibuya Art on the Streets

Paint, air, time and ink on wall. Anonymous. Tokyo 2019

Tokyo Cloud Gazing