HEART STATION


~CURTAIN CLOSING~ WEBCHAT FEAT. CARY PT. 2
September 27, 2009, 8:19 pm
Filed under: About Me

Hello again!

Next Sunday, my best friend, @carytelio and I will be once again hosting a web-chat over at Stickam, her schedule is still a bit hectic because she’s starting to dance professionally so it complicates our lives a bit, but that’s the plan!

We’ll be on air at around 6 p.m. (UTC -3 time) this time, so I hope to see everyone there! There might be some scheduling conflicts, but I’ll be letting you know if something happens, but until then, that’s our schedule!

You can check the link of our web-chat right here because I’ll be publishing it as soon as I go online!

EDIT: I’m Live!

EDIT: Apparently, unregistered users can’t join the chat unless it’s through Twitter, and Cary is the one registered and I don’t want her to get messages from people she doesn’t know, so I decided to cancel it, even though it’s been 10 minutes since it began. I’ll announce the results of the polls with my opinions about them soon!



~11 – 12~ Curtain Call
September 27, 2009, 12:00 am
Filed under: About Me

~12 weeks~ Banner
For the last week of the special I’ll be doing something different, and I want to put the people I want to thank first because the second half might be a bit distracting and I want the focus to be all about them! The last, beautiful, amazing people to be featured here are the following:

cucupan: cucupan is so awesome! He supports me with anything new I try out (Including A2F) and it really means a lot! I use his scans for my reviews (When they’re available) and I’m a huge fan of his! My iTunes library is full of his scans. Cucu is also full of personality and humor so it’s always fun to be reading from him on Twitter, his MySpace or through his website.

I asked for his help before I opened my review blog and asked him for some recommendations because I wasn’t very indulged in J-Pop before, and he suggested some really awesome singers that I featured and really enjoyed, so he helped me a lot, including over at Utada Brasil, where he scanned the Boku Wa Kuma booklet as a request from us, and we’re always really thankful for his positive attitude and disposition!

Thank you for everything! You rock, Cucu!

JunniorKopke: I’ve mentioned him several times here on HEART STATION, how I’ve known him from Twitter and how he began the Top 5 albums MeMe from a while back, but from that time on, we’ve gotten a lot closer and I’ve known him a lot better. He’s hilarious and his love for platypuses is the cutest thing ever! We have a good time talking to each other and it’s impressive how we don’t fight over anything, I think it’s a first for me and I love it.

He certainly changed my perception over people I meet over the internet. Before, I thought Raphael was the only one who cared for what I thought and felt even though we met over the internet, but now I see that there are more special people like him who can make me feel like I’m talking face-to-face with them, and one of these special people is Junnior! Our little divo (In training)!

@latinramen: Latinramen is a really cute Hawaiian I got to know from Twitter, and you can check out her website here. She’s learning how to speak Portuguese so every now and then we start tweeting each other in Portuguese and I’m so happy for her because she’s nearly perfect with her Portuguese! It’s always fun to tweet with her, she’s always really sweet.

I’d like to thank every one of you who have followed me through this special because I made it with lots of love, and even though I wasn’t able to follow with its initial plan, I hope you enjoyed getting to know me better and the dedications I made. Some people seemed to be very ungrateful and intolerant so that made me really upset, but overall it was a good project which a learned a lot from.

Now, to the distracting part! Drumroll, please!

Curtain Call

Curtain Call

This will be one of the last posts to be published here on HEART STATION.

For these 2 years, I grew a lot, in many aspects, my writing, my interests, everything is renewed from when I started writing back in On Our Way, and lately, I’ve been engaged in some new ideas regarding this blog, like the STRIPPER COUNTDOWN with .nodame, the Albums MeMe, ~12 weeks~, and they’ve all been really fun experiences that I want to have more of, with a fresh new beginning, to start full throttle once again.

I want to kind of become ‘anonymous’ again. I’ll be changing all my usernames and probably restart with a brand new URL (If I do begin another blog). It’ll be a way to filter all the negativity I acquired through these 2 years and begin with everything fresh.

Now, what if you don’t want me to restart and still want to be with me? Well, lovers, you can comment on this post with your true e-mail (Even if it’s something really short) and I’ll send y’all e-mail updates with everything I’m working on and when everything is ready, I’ll send you the date where everything will go online! If you have twitter, you can also direct message me or @reply me: @alvycunha so I can send you messages from there too. I might still go after some of you who I really want to bring on to this new phase, but the people who message me are guaranteed! Like my little VIPs!

Like always, I’ll need your help, so I posted up some polls that I’d really like you to answer about my (Possible) future blog!

The results are in! Please make sure to check out the results! (Os resultados já estão contados! Por favor, dê uma olhada neles!)

At the same time that it’s a great thing that I’ll be planning everything out better this time, I’ll miss everything over here, I just hope I can make it longer than 2 years this time! My 50,000 views, HEART STATION’s 65th position on the Top Growing Blogs page for the 30th of March . . . I’ll miss all of this, I hope I’m able to start everything correctly so I won’t have to miss it all so much! So I hope you’re all patient with my restarting and help me out with anything you feel like doing!

I hope to be hearing from many of you because I’d love to update you through e-mail and bring as many of you as you’d like onto this new ‘era’! Remember, all you need to do is comment, @reply me or send me a direct message!

P.S. – Please don’t stalk me if you don’t have the courage to comment, or I’ll have to keep everything private.

Hope to hear from you! See you next week for the results! (And I’ll also let you know who the people I’m keeping contact with are)

Lots of love,

Alvy.

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SWEET BLACK [FIRST PRESS]
September 22, 2009, 8:32 pm
Filed under: About Me, Maki Goto, Pop Culture

My copy of SWEET BLACK just arrived this morning. It’s really cute how it arrived one day (Or a few hours [Because of Japan time]) before Maki’s birthday. Last year I ordered Utada’s discography/videography and it arrived one day before the release of HEART STATION. I’m full of stories when it comes to my international orders.

Here it is! The beautiful, wonderful, marvelous, SWEET BLACK [FIRST PRESS]!

SWEET BLACK [FIRST PRESS]

SWEET BLACK [FIRST PRESS]

SWEET BLACK [BACK]

SWEET BLACK [BACK]

SWEET BLACK [BOOKLET-LESS COVER]

SWEET BLACK [FRONT]

I fell even more in love with the album once I saw it live and in color! At first I was concerned with the cover of the first press edition, but it’s only the booklet cover and it’s still amazing. The picture is very beautiful, actually, and it’s very unique and contains a distinct style of drawing, I really loved it.

The booklet does contain some explicit content, though… Which is very surprising because it looks so harmless, but I don’t understand much of the story-line since it’s all in Japanese, so to me it’s just explicit content, but there must be a very interesting story-line behind it that I’d love to understand! It looks like a very interesting 64 pages to read!

I fell in love with it all over again, especially for Candy. The PVs take a whole other atmosphere when watched from the TV screen and made me fall in love completely with the CD+DVD!

The full review will come out later, and you’ll understand why, when and where this Sunday, as ~12 weeks~ comes to an end!



~9 – 10~ SWEET BLACK
September 13, 2009, 12:00 am
Filed under: About Me

~12 weeks~ Banner
SWEET BLACK [Promo]I’m really excited for Maki Goto’s debut mini-album under the avex label, and I just read some more information about the SWEET BLACK project, and I was surprised to see it goes beyond Maki (She’s the artist responsible for the music of SWEET BLACK, though) and there’s a book and a graphic novel under the SWEET BLACK project, centered around women with who have a SWEET side (Positive hopes), and yet, a BLACK side (cynical mind). The motto is all about living by your favorite things, which I think is how everyone should live by. Even though it’s a project centered around women, I really liked the concept and the coverage of so many areas, so I’m mixing two weeks into one to let you know about my own SWEET BLACK side but still give it a HEART STATION twist.

The Music

Like I’ve mentioned before, it’s really hard for me to characterize something through music because each piece of music is special on its own, and if not for the labels that genres create, there would be no other way to classify music, let alone an artist, but here are 3 songs that represent the past and present of HEART STATION and that I think symbolize the different faces of HEART STATION very well.

Ayumi Hamasaki – HONEY

I think this song characterizes HEART STATION really well because it’s such a bright song, but after you listen to it for a while, you sense a very subtle melancholy in Ayumi’s voice. Then it becomes very clear, that it’s a sad song, even though it’s very upbeat, it’s very bittersweet and I love it because of that. I don’t write too many sad posts, but sometimes I write with a saddened state of mind and it doesn’t show through my writing, but every now and then, you can sense it. Maybe that’s how I can relate to this song.

Koda Kumi – feel

feel is one of my favorite ~12 weeks~ singles by Koda Kumi. There’s so much feeling put into the song, the beautiful R&B instrumentals are just the kind I like in an R&B ballad, and the title says it all, it’s a song to feel for, not in a sad nor in a happy way, just in its own special way. I remember I started to listen to this song a lot some months before the 1st anniversary and I love it since then, it’s been the faithful soundtrack to many of my posts.

Maki Goto – Fly away

HEART STATION just feels like Fly away, I think. It’s a dark song, but something you feel good listening to. Sometimes I feel like there’s a similar bipolar effect here, and I think it comes from the help I get from so many of you. Even though I go through hardships, I still have people to watch out for me.

The Books

To completely give in to the ero-kawaii label, the books that represent HEART STATION are the following:

CLAMP – Cardcaptor Sakura [Any volume]

I’ve published my interest in Cardcaptor Sakura several times here and it’s a great graphic novel. My Sakura posts are able to get quite popular, so this manga collection couldn’t miss out.

Tila Tequila – Hooking Up With Tila Tequila

There’s no way this book would miss out! I was very excited for its release and it was certainly a very interesting read. I was writing a lot about Tila for some time and I was eagerly waiting for her book and her debut album to come out, but the book was first (and so far, the only one to be released), so I quenched my curiosity for Tila with it. I don’t recommend it unless you don’t take this reading seriously and read it more for your enjoyment. It’s certainly a fun read.

Mineko Iwasaki – Geisha, A Life

The one and only book review on HEART STATION! (Which .nodame and I highly recommend!) The author wrote it because Arthur Golden lied to her (He promised he wouldn’t publish her identity in his fictitious book about geishas), and she wanted to clear up the image of geishas and her own as well. I think this book is far better than Memoirs of a Geisha and I highly recommend it!

What about your perspective of HEART STATION? I’d like to know other favorite things of yours that you think characterize HEART STATION! Be creative, and I’ll write a new post with your points of view! Anything counts, foods, books, music, music videos!

Now, lets leave the SWEET BLACK life style behind and appreciate the hottest people around, the boys and girls of HEART STATION!

Tuned To The Frequency

Tuned To The Frequency

The Boys

Nippon444: I first had contact with Julian after I uploaded all the Utada @ Sephora videos I had and he told me he really liked them and sent me a direct message asking me for my MSN e-mail address. I was hesitant at first because I never met anyone through YouTube before, but I gave it to him anyway and we struck a friendship!

He’s a bit crazy, but I take crazy over submissive anytime. This makes for very funny conversations and a good time. He’s been by my side for many of the things I try out here on HEART STATION and his enthusiasm always kept me excited about my own blog, which makes everything a lot more enjoyable! He’s currently fighting against a J-Pop consumption addiction . . . No, not really, he’s fine! I’m glad I trusted him with my e-mail, he’s very entertaining. (HEART STATION is on his favorites list! That’s the best!)

HeyCameron: HeyCameron has always been so friendly! Ever since he started to follow me on Twitter, he’s been of a lot of help for me. We have really fun times (Like you might’ve read in my ‘best of twitter’ post), and he’s also shown a lot of support, and of course, been very patient. Nothing of this goes for granted to me, and I’m so thankful he didn’t lose his patience with me! Thank you, I know it’s not easy dealing with me!

Josh: Shuffle And Repeat is like a celebrity J-Pop review blog, so I was very flattered when Josh wanted to exchange links with me because he liked HEART STATION. And even more that he was a year younger than me and yet wrote so well and had such a popular blog. This boy’s got talent, y’all! He even featured my (neglected) review blog on Shuffle And Repeat because our common interest on Shiina Ringo.

He couldn’t be left out because he’s very friendly and I really like his comments!

Crispy: Crispy is good friends with Carole, Lorraine and Bhavya and was always very friendly when he started to read my blogs. I appreciate his support a lot whenever I write poetry or try something different, he always comments supporting me, so I’m really thankful for that! It means so much when people have my back, and Crispy always lifts up my spirits when I’m down. Thank you so much!

The Girls

EmpressOfDrac: Empress was the first blog-writer I had contact with, through a poem she had posted up on her blog and I thought it was really good, and we exchanged links and it started from there. She’s a really fun gothic enthusiast and we happen to share the same birthdate! She’s always really sweet and has quite uncommon tastes, making her blog really interesting to check out.

.nodame: .nodame is my lover girl. We had such a great time putting together our STRIPPER COUNTDOWN, and she’s always been so sweet and friendly, through her posts and her comments! (Her blog is amazing, by the way) She’s really intelligent, but is still hella fun and knows how to put a stripper songs countdown together! It’s always a joy when she stops by and comments, and she couldn’t miss out on ~12 weeks~ because her spirit is too contagious!

Hyperballad: Hyperballad (also known as Hypy) is the sweetest little reader ever. She’s always there when I write a review on my (neglected) review blog and everything that she writes brings a smile to my face, be it as a comment or a post, it’s always a pleasure to read from her. Her personality and her humor are something really special and her wonderful musical taste too! She’s also really humble and that’s so endearing! You rock, Hypy! Keep up with your positivity and your awesome reviews!

aikorin: Also a super sweet reader! Her comments bring a smile to my face, and she always keeps her blog fresh and the way she writes is so cute and amusing, I love it! Just the title of her blog is awesome on its own! (Disco-munication: fangirl meets blog), and I’m glad she stops by every once in a while! And I also thank her so much for all the support! Rock on, lover girl! ♥

Renaye: Renaye is really cute. She’s really intelligent too, and I also really appreciate her comments! I love them! Her blog is filled with insight and I’m happy that I can make an interesting read for her because it seems like her standards are set high. Thank you for stopping by, I love your writing!

It means so much I have all these wonderful readers with me! Because I’m in the SWEET BLACK state of mind, here is QUEEN BEE, the fiercest music video for the fiercest readers on the face of the Earth!

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Shout-out To Haruka
September 1, 2009, 4:35 pm
Filed under: Friends and Family

I’d like to shout-out to Haruka, my newest reader! She’s an Utada fan just like me and we have many interests in common, so I hope she’s enjoying my blog as much as I’m enjoying her company here!

She’s the sweetest, so I’m really happy she checks HEART STATION out every once in a while, I hope you keep coming back, Ruka! You’re always welcome! ♥

You’re a rocker!

Lots of care!

Alvy