(aka “Endlist Shitlist Too”.  I made that up!)

Because it’s hella rainy today and I’m hella bored, I’m doing this 84-song marathon on vocals – Expert of course – which will earn me “Legendary” status and probably gumdrops will rain from the sky and whatnot.

Preparations:

• re-dressed all my characters — hey, i’m going to be staring at them for like 7 hours
• ate a huge okonomiyaki
• made three big pots of tea: pu-erh, goji-ginger-jujube, and white tea
• readied a bunch of podcasts to play during the Talkie songs — it doesn’t matter what you say or “sing” during those, so may as well have my favorite talkers come in as guest-singers.  (I’ll just have to activate the Overdrive parts myself.)

I’m going to keep this blog post updated as I finish each song.  I’m going for the “Bladder of Steel” award too, so I can’t pause it or respond to messages or anything. 

Oh, and as time allows I am inserting pics of my infamous karaoke session with the illustrious Mika-chan when I was in Tokyo.  I’m in the stripy pants.

Click below if you REALLY want a play-by-play of the whole 7.5 hours. Might be useful if you plan on doing the Endless Setlist 2 on expert vocals like I did.

SONGS IN ORDER (with stars awarded / % correct / my comments)

Eye of the Tiger: 6 / 100 / “…for the pill with a skillet of five…!” yeah bring it on!

My Own Worst Enemy: 6 / 98 / nigga please

I Was Wrong: 5 / 93 / Shaky arrow

So Whatcha Want: 6 / 99 / Let Fitness Rocks podcast handle this one. Talkies make good breaks.

E-pro:  3 stars / ?? / freaking shaky arrow!! I didn’t deserve that.

Hungry Like the Wolf: 6 / 99 / How did I miss that one?? I was robbed!!

Pretend that we’re dead: 6 / 99 / Deeeeaaaadd.

Rebel Girl: 6 / 100 / didn’t make best use of overdrive (like i care right now)

Nine in the Afternoon: 5 / 95  / First time I ever sang this one (sightread – SR). Don’t know the verse melodies too well.

Float On: 6 / 98 / SR – that was fun. have to perfect that one sometime.

Drain You: 6 / 100 / had 1/4 bar overdrive left, but no problem.

PDA: 6 / 96 / i don’t know this song all that well, and when I’m singing it, i’m usually thinking, “i wish i were drumming.” well i won’t be thinking that when it gets to Painkiller.  (or will I?)

Man in the Box: 6 / 100 / i like this song better every time I play it.

Cool for Cats: 6 / 98 / i like this song less every time i play it. but as a late-70s new wave and punk fan, i still quite like it.

Hello There: 6 / 97 / I always miss that “WOULD YOU LIKE TA!!” part that’s half-talkie.  *shrug*

Today: 6 / 99 / had 1/4 bar overdrive left.

That’s What You Get: 6 / 97 / just barely got the gold stars (confusion over use of overdrive), but i finally nailed that weird bridge section i could never get before.

Spirit in the Sky:  6 / 99  / ugghghhhhhhghghgh.  SR.  fuck those stupid tambourine sections. i got my gold stars.

We Got The Beat: 6 / 99 / guh.

New Kid in School: 6 / 100 / Yayy Donnas yay.  had 1/4 overdrive left, but it ain’t that bad.

Feel the Pain: 6 / 100 / yeah whatever.

Pump It Up: 6 / 100 / probably my least favorite Costello song, but hey, Costello.

One Step Closer: 6 / 97 / now I wish I were playing drums.

Welcome to the Neighborhood: 6 / 100 / sightread (SR). but i’ve played it on drums lots.  argh that was only song #24 of 84!

White Wedding: 6 / 99 / It’s a nice, rainy day to… NOT start again! I can’t wait to be done this thing.

Psycho Killer: 6 / 99 / Did you know David Byrne has a degree in Medieval French?  I did.  Oh hey – nice long tambourine solo at the end means a nice quick snack break!

Lump: 6 / 99 / Is this lump I’m chewing still in my mouth? I FINK SHO.  yom.. that was funny.

Conventional Lover: 6 / 98 / SR (yes, really).  drumming this one is funner.  funny lyrics… i was giggling at all the puns as i sang it.  heh.  (“nerrd!”)

De-Luxe : 6 / 100 / kinda fun. i bet i could sing and drum this on expert at the same time.

Shooting Star: 6 / 96 / ughghghg. there should be a bylaw in this game that if you reach 6 gold stars before the end of the song, then you’re allowed to just stop singing.  “whoa whoa whoa, nananana”, just not necessary.

Give It Away: 6 / 98 / Guest-sung by Cory Doctorow via his Craphound Podcast.  nicely done, Cory!

The Middle: 6 / 96 / It just takes some time, littabittadittabitta something what…

American Woman: 5 / 94 / Goodbye Canadian jerk. 

[ed - I keep getting reactions of "HEY!" from Canadian guys reading this (that's a large proportion of the guys I play RB2 with, apparently!) so I feel I should point something out: have you ever actually listened to the lyrics of this song???  In addition to it being a catalogue of invectives against Americans in general, the very last line is, "Goodbye American CHICK".  So, uh, yeah.  Yeah!]

Jagged Gorgeous Winter: 5 / 96 / Mmmmf.

Living on a Prayer: 5 / 100 / Whoaaaaa I’m not even halfway theeere…

One Way or Another: 5 / 97 / Starting to lose interest?

Go Your Own Way: 6 / 100 / mmhmm.

Kids in America: 6 / 100 / let’s hear it for songs I don’t have to look at the screen to get 100% on.  now if my headset weren’t all smashed by my foot, i could blog and sing at the same time.  maybe some duct tape…

Girl’s Not Grey: 6 / 100 / SR (really). have drummed it a lot.

Lazy Eye: 4 / 97 / SR. whoops. maybe if i’m going to suck on a song, i should do the tambourine hits.

Come Out and Play: 6 / 100 / Heyyy… don’t pay no mind… been singing this song since 1995…

Mountain Song: 5 / 95 / SR. no fun. wanna cash in now.  but i must press on!

-=-=-=-= HALFWAY DONE!! =-=-=-=-

Where Did You Go?  5 / 98 / bad use of overdrive. meh.

Alex Chilton / 6 / 98 / Hiiii we’re the Replacements… and we’re playing in a Rock [n Roll] Band [2].

Rockin me Baby: 6 / 98 / What is this song about??

Oh Bob Dylan next, time to stuff a Larabar in my mouth!

Tangled Up in Blue: 5 / 96 / heheh this song is much more fun with a mouthful of snack bar.

Alive: 6 / 98 / it’s really satisfying to do well in this song.  should have used tambourine part for a bathroom break though.

Round and Round: 6 / 99 / long meedly guitar solos at the end of a song mean just enough time for a pee break!

You Oughta Know: 6 / 99 / i *ought* to know this song, i was a teen in the 90s. And every time I sing it I can’t help but think of Dave Coulier…

Alabama Getaway: 6 / 98 / SR.  i’m starting to feel icky from spitting into this microphone for 4 hours, and singing hippy songs about total dirtbags sort of intensifies this.

Testify: 6 / 100 / Another flawless talkie victory for Cory Doctorow, and a break for me.

Supreme Girl: 6 / 99 / I love this song! because it’s basically early XTC!  (Remember kids, the secret to creativity is Hiding Your Sources.)

Pinball Wizard: 6 / 99 / glad i took the time to master the melody, but next time, must remember to save 1/2-bar of overdrive and use it just before “he plays my favorite table”.

Our Truth: 5 / 99 / throat… scratchy… need tea!!!  but no time!!!

Uncontrollable Urge: 5 / 96 / SR. wow, not easy.

Bad Reputation: 6 / 100 / “Pedal, boys!” okay.

Night Lies: 6 / 99 / Exploding into giggle fits is becoming a problem.  “Niiight liiiahahahaha”

Any Way You Want It: 6 / 100 / pfft!  i’m a trained singer.

Teenage Riot: 6 / 99 / YOU’RE IT!

Shackler’s Revenge: 6 / 97 / I don’t believe there’s a reason this song should have been written, much less been included in this game.

Let There Be Rock: 5 / 96 / and you could hear the fingers pickin’, and this is what they had to say: “ow! quit it with the tambourine!”  alright, i’ll whack the mic against a pile of change in my pocket from now on. wait that makes too much sense…

The Trees: 6 / 100 / Alright, you go, Neil Peart! while I go to the bathroom and pick up another Youbar and drink tea!

Aqualung: 6 / 100 / see mom? [cassette] taping classic rock marathons off the radio and listening to it incessantly every day for a year has paid off.

Down With the Sickness: 6 / 99 / my throat hurts.  It’s not what you think!!

Chop Suey: 5 / 96 / mmf.

Everlong: 6 / 100 / yay. been singing that song since it emerged in 1997. maybe that’s why i’m losing my functional vocal range… oh wait, no, it’s just that i’ve been singing for 5 hours straight.  glad this game allows octave changes at will.

Master Exploder: 5 / 92 / It turns out I do need a microphone.

Give It All: 5 / 96 / Shaky Arrow strikes again!

Carry On My Wayward Son: 6 / 100 / gold stars at the 75% mark, that’s what I like to see.  (can’t sing that song w/o thinking about South Park heheh)

Rob the Prez-o-dent: 5 / 90 / shaky arrow!! plus, first time i ever sang it! good thing it’s mostly talkie!

Spoonman: 4 / 89 / Shaky Arrow!!! not fair! that song is hard enough!!!

Ace of Spades: 5 / 99 / injudicial use of overdrive

-=-=-=-= THREE QUARTERS DONE!!! =-=-=-=-

Almost Easy: 6 / 99 / “I’m not, not insane”?  Wait, does that mean you ARe insane?

Rambling Man: 6 / 100 / Wait a second, don’t play the freaking tambourine solo, you’ve got the gold stars, make a run for the bathroom!!!

Get Clean: 5 / 96 / SR, and I probably have never played this song on the drums either, which means I’ve never heard this song in full before.  just scraped by with the 5 stars.

Peace Sells: 6 / 98 / Wow now I know how to sound like Dave Mustaine… sing for 6 hours straight and then try to hit high notes.

Colony of Birchmen: 6 / 98 / best I ever did on that one.  (why do I suddenly feel like cracking open my old DM notes?)

Souls of Black: 6 / 100 / SR.  wow, that was easy. and kind on the vocal chords.

YEAH, Boddhisatva! Snack break!!

Boddhisatva: 6 / 100 / Advice: ignore cowbell solos at your peril if you are not good at singing this one.  they’re worth 1.5 stars or so.

-=-=-=-= FIVE SONGS LEFT!!! =-=-=-=-  and this is the good stuff *bouncebounce*

Shoulder to the Plow: 5 / 94 / SR.  ugh.

Battery: 6 / 100 /  boy, missing cowbell hits in a Metallica song sure makes me feel like a retard.  that was a good score though.

Visions: 6 / 100 / is this really actually a song? huh.

Panic Attack: 6 / 100 / Boy good thing I’ve been listening to Dream Theatre lately!  (wait what?!?!)

Painkiller: 6 / 99 / yay Judas Priest!  time… for… A Pain Killerrrr… or maybe a glass of wine.

“KEEP SINGING” ???  it’s telling me this. no way MFer. gimme my cutscreeenz!

YEAH! DONE!!!

416 / 420 stars

Trophies achieved:

Vinyl Artist

Gold Artist

Platinum Artist

Bladder of Steel

Technorati Tags: endless setlist 2, okonomiyaki, podcasts, rock band 2, tea

He advocates sprouting seeds for greater nutritional benefit. He’s also apparently a proponent of raw dairy, including raw butter (I wonder what he thinks of raw eggs), and he’s evidently chosen all the ingredients in this porridge with respect not to their total protein content but to their amino acid ratios.  All of this tells me that he’s on the forefront of dietary research and takes nutrient content and absorbability issues seriously.

Anyway, I am not very raw at the moment (eating okonomiyaki two to three times a day has that effect on one’s ratios), still coasting off of the 80% rice diet I ate in Japan.  So I may end up trying this.  I already have most of those ingredients on hand, and it looks delish.

Technorati Tags: fruit, nutrition, okonomiyaki, porridge, raw dairy

However, the use of white flour, the main ingredient in the batter of one of these savory pancakes, strikes me as an unnecessary evil, a pain in the gut I could do without.  Besides, why not turn a taste craving into an opportunity for dietary enhancement?  Not to mention make a few advancements in the field of gluten-free cookery.

Thus I have spent several hours over the past 2 weeks in pursuit of a savory pancake batter based on a healthy, unrefined, preferably glutenless grain, which could be used in the same fashion as a traditional okonomiyaki batter.  After many abortive attempts involving pure rice pancakes that wouldn’t stick and oat flour pancakes that wouldn’t flip, I am pleased to report that I’ve invented a whole-grain, multi-grain batter that performs perfectly for okonomiyaki, tastes wonderful, and…

It’s purple.

My long-winded recipe for making Murasaki Okonomiyaki . . .

Ingredients for the batter:

• 1/2 cup black rice (aka forbidden rice)
• 1/2 cup red rice
• 1/4 cup flax seeds (whole)
• 2-3 Tb sesame seeds, finely ground
• 1/4 Tb nice salt (e.g. himalayan, celtic, etc)

For the filling:

• 1 egg
• leafy greens of any kind
• ginger, pickled or fresh (pickled is very authentic-tasting)
• anything else you like!  Japanese are fond of having bits of squid in theirs.

(WARNING: You need to start at least 12 hours in advance, because the first step is to soak the rice for that long.)

In a large sealable container of some kind, put all of the rice.  There should be enough room in this container for the rice to fill only halfway, because the next thing you need to do is add water to the rice in this container until it is nearly full.  Give it a good stir, and then leave it to soak for at least 12 hours.

Has it been soaking a good long time?  The water atop the rice should now be a dark misty purple, and the rice grains themselves should appear to take up much more volume in the container — they’ve soaked up quite a bit of water.

Hold a sieve over the sink and pour the water and rice out into it.  Casually rinse the rice and then dump it back into the container.  Fill the container with water again, quite a bit less than last time — most likely about 1.5 cups, though I can’t really say exactly.

Put the rice and water into a high-speed blender.  (I use a Vitamix and you should too!)  Blend it all up to a fine paste with a viscosity about the same as crepe batter.  If it seems too thick, just add more water.  Transfer this mixture back into the container.

Next, stir in the flax seeds.

Now the mixture needs to rest at least 20 minutes, because the flax seeds are going to take up water and then put out a sticky substance — this is what will hold the pancake together.

When you next see the mixture, you’ll have to make a judgement call about the thickness of the batter.  It should have thickened from “crepe batter” to “pancake batter”, or somewhere in between.  This is what the ground sesame seeds are for — to add dry bulk if needed.  You could also add ground flax seeds, or ground buckwheat, or maybe oat flour.  I like sesame seeds for the calcium and iron content, and because they don’t have gluey proteins (like oats) or volatile oils (like flax) that might chemically change the operational characteristics of the pancakes.

Take a look at the pictures to get a sense of how the batter ought to look.

Now you are ready to cook.  Take the nonstickiest pan you can find (I’m using a teflex frying pan) and put the droppiest drop of oil in there.  Sesame oil and peanut oil are both good choices for taste and for withstanding heat.  Trust me, you won’t need much of it, and if you use too much, you’ll end up with more of a crispy deep-fried-rice thing rather than a healthy spongey pancake.

Turn the stove to a LOW heat — not super low, but pretty low — and let the pan warm for about a minute.  Then, depending on the size of the pancake you want, spread the batter into the pan to about a 1/4-inch thickness.

A word about thickness: you will see for yourself what happens when the batter is spread either too thin or too thick.  Unlike traditional okonomiyaki, you can’t really get away with a super-thin batter — it’ll fall apart.  And if too thick, it’ll be pretty hard to flip, and it won’t ever achieve a chewy pancake consistency, having lots of goo in the center.  But maybe you like goo, I don’t know!  Just saying.

As the batter sets, start filling in whatever fillings you want.  This is “as you like it” after all!  The okonomiyaki in my pictures is filled with rainbow chard, green onions, and a few shreds of pickled ginger, all chopped coarsely.

Next, crack an egg into the middle of all of this.  I tend to just use the whites and save the egg yolk for later. Mmm, raw egg yolk.  But traditionally, you would put the yolk in, too.  Drag the egg around so that it covers all of the veggies.

Let the veggies set into the egg — about 2-3 minutes worth of cooking.

Now you need to seal the topside of the okonomiyaki by dropping globs of batter all over it.  Try to achieve the same 1/4-inch thickness.  Take a look at the picture in the collage to see what it should look like.

When you are satisfied with the batter coverage, and when the bottom layer comes away from the pan quite easily (it should be nearly crispy), take a wide spatula and FLIP that bitch.

With the right proportions of batter, the flipping shouldn’t be a problem.  Should you find it too heavy and seeming like it’s going to bust apart if you lift it, a good trick is to find another frying pan and then dump it from one pan to the other.  Then resolve for next time not to use so much batter!

On the other side it’ll need at least 6 to 8 minutes to cook.  The insides will get all soft and mushy, held together by the egg.

That’s it — now you have a very savory, possibly purple pancake, suitable for covering with okonomi sauce and mayonnaise just like they do it in Japan.

Extra credit if you have bonito flakes and aonori to top it with!  I used kim chee, hijiki, and more green onions, with my reserved egg yolk on the side.

YOM!

Technorati Tags: japan, okonomiyaki, purple pancake, recipe

I’ve discovered the secret to the taste of okonomiyaki, and it’s of course unimpressive and icky.  Basically, take any egg-and-starch combination you like (rice, flour, etc), and then smother it in mayonnaise and this peculiar soy-and-veggie-based dressing from Kagome.  Voila, that’s the taste.  You’ll swear you’re in Ueno Park or Osaka or wherever.

You could add some fish flakes (bonito) for real authenticity, but it’s not really necessary.  As for the cabbage inside, can you actually taste it when you’re eating okonomiyaki?  My guess is the answer is “no” — it’s all about the Kagome and mayo.

That said… I do like okonomiyaki.  It’s one of the few flour-based concoctions I will deign to eat here, because the total mass of flour used is relatively low, due to the vegetable and egg content.  Plus, the egg itself is very delicately added — not homogenously beaten-in as in American pancakes — which results in a layered-texture food.

So far, the best okonomiyaki I’ve had was at Ueno Park in Tokyo, right in front of the main shrine next to the water.  There’s a guy there slinging these things, looks like he’s been doing it the same way for 30 years, total assembly-line processes executed in a deliberate, zen-like fashion.  Occasionally sloppy but strangely accurate in portion control, nonetheless.

I stood in a line with about 20 other people, all of us united both in our hunger and in our wonderment at this man who could seemingly ignore the line-up of hungry masses desperate to give him their 200 yen, staying massively focused on his vocation, and lackadaisically answering his mobile at the same time.  Even the phone-inured Japanese in line with me were amused.

That okonomiyaki was greedily consumed along with a can of African Fire, the vending machine coffee that is allegedly “lightly sweetened” but is still way too sweet.  The perfect combination of too-sweet and too-salty, with a heavy dose of umami, very Japanese.  Quite enjoyable on that late November afternoon in the park.

This blog post was brought you by KIRIN FIRE CANNED COFFEE BEVERAGES.

Technorati Tags: canned coffee, japan, okonomiyaki, street food