popmatters wouldn't/didn't review any stuff i've [musicrelated] ever sent [shugo tokumaru, mdde/mmm, pandatone [me] ]..

Well clearly Shugo Tokumaru's work is a postmodern pastiche of J-pop. I mean, he sings in Japanese for Christ's sake!

hell, man, all I know is I found myself humming along at various points...

good enough for me.

you shouldn't pay too much attention to these critics, david

journalists are bored, boring and narrow-minded (i know, i am one) and they don't know how to separate a great postmodern piece of art from a trendy tacky copycat

kyoshu n is bloody brilliant and a real stucker

i remember when i was drunk on cognac and vodka in samara, in russia, trying to get asleep in my bed, i felt i was going crazy, because the hook of "make it through today" wouldn't go away

ok, enough for bootlicking

Given your comments recently on anonymity and blogging, I idly wonder who this Kenneth Yu is. I reckon it's this Kenneth Yu since he links to a Feist review by one Kenneth Yu on Popmatters:

http://ketiak.blogspot.com/

It looks like he's been having his share of existential woes recently. This is one reason good reason for preserving anonymity whilst blogging. Whilst I'd like to know a bit more about Yu's musical tastes, to better gauge the review, I don't really want to know about his inner struggles. This profile is more helpful:

http://www.superfuture.com/city/supertalk/index.cfm?page=userinfo&viewuserid=630

So he seems to write for this JC Report that "delivers need-to-know fashion lifestyle trends and information from style epicenters across the globe".

Does this ability to construct a fuller profile on Yu help me understand the review better? Not sure, but I try to ensure a firm separation of what I write professionally and what I may write here or elsewhere. If he just posted the review as a shukanshi-style Y-san, I'd know less. Sometimes it's better to be working with less information.

I think it's a fairly good review if you take out the few snide quips. I'd give the album a try if I came across it. I'm not sure what a "random" bedroom enthusiast is and that final sentence is the weak search for a bon mot more than anything. No one needs a reviewer to tell them they could do better. Just stick to what you love rather than what you think might warm Yu.

(If those two members of the Panther division really are still hiding out in the Philippines, perhaps you can get them to do a review. They'd make excellent Lance-style guest bloggers.)

Wu's blog reveals him to be horrifically Christian, tense and torn apart by guilt:

"Woe is me. How did I allow everything to come to this? In the times when I'm supposed to soar in the stratosphere, I'm in the pit where my demons reside. In this crucial moments where I should be strong, I'm weaker than weak, the chinks in my armour tearing apart because of my waning virgilance [sic]... when I get naughty and allow myself to slip, all I sense is ennui, that every activity I'm doing now doesn't seem to tally with my God-given destiny. All the future styling gigs, the European contacts, the furious writings don't seem to add up to what I really want to do in His kingdom."

Whatever revenge you might want on the poor guy, it seems he's already in some kind of Hieronymous Bosch-type Christian hell. Perhaps he senses, subliminally, that Marxy is exactly the sort of missionary type who brought Christianity to the Far East in the first place, and is merely exacting revenge for his current sufferings. He should really convert to Buddhism, he'd be much happier.

I appreciate the kind words from Olamm and the background checks from Sarmoung and Momus.

I think the idea of "answering" one's reviews is generally seen as being petty or of poor taste, but the Internet allows us as consumers and artists a chance to review the reviewers. I'd be happy if Prof. Yu reviewed my review of his review... but maybe that would be too "wacky" and "postmodern" and we better leave that to the academy.

Momus: a real conversion to Buddhism would probably kill the instinct to find "cutting edge" styles. This life is all pain and suffering anyway - who needs to look good?

I wrote a column a while ago for a U.S. journalism trade mag in which I argued against newspapers using blogs. The ability of angry bloggers to assemble my life story was pretty spotty, but they did figure out where I went to high school, where I go to college, and some info on my socioeconomic class. They didn't find my blog.

Google could make a killing charging people to manage their online image.