I only sort of love the sushi.

I have concluded that the real reason I always want to go to Little Tokyo instead of ordering in like a normal person is because of my love of craptacular music and their commitment to showcasing it while I consume my tekka maki and miso soup. What I mean to say is, the restaurant never disappoints when it comes to reaching in my head to get the scratchy FM station of my childhood and play it out loud. On Friday, HRH and I had ourselves a little lunch date, and I was treated to a guilty pleasures playlist that even I would never admit to aloud.


Doesn't it seem like playing the drums on a bar of soap might be sort of a risky proposition?


Seriously, this man claims to have slept with thousands of women. Thousands. This guy. Yeah.


This is not from my childhood, but it does play on the radio in my mind. And that hat. Oh, that hat!

Okay, this is the part where Youtube fails us by not allowing embedding. This song is a pivotal piece of instrumentation from my tender years, having formed the basis to a fifth grade talent show dance act complete with neon pink stretch pants and, if I am not not mistaken, headbands and huge sneakers. I could write a whole post just about this song and its attendant video... the sweet falsetto stylings of El DeBarge, the faux calypso keyboard work, the Jheri-curl mullets, the ballet dancers dressed as hookers dancing in front of the malt shop, the fedoras!, the unlikelihood of those boys cruising the strip in THAT CAR... And there's blue screen work at the end. Just go watch it. Go see for yourself.


This man, on the other hand, has never touched a naked woman. I know, weird, right?


Amy Winehouse WISHES.


I always wanted to steam up a man's glasses. I still do.


I had no idea this song was about roller skating.

I really had no idea what would pop up next, unlike Soft Rock Cliche Day, and I was not anxious to find out. If I had my druthers, though, maybe a little Madonna back when she was still fun instead of work?

Plus, MORE HATS!

She really just goes for the tobiko.

Her Royal Highness, Bealicious and I went for sushi for lunch today. We needed to get away from the house because the weather has been thwarting our every attempt to check mail or get fresh air for the past several days, and the cats are going insane because it was Easter! which at our house means Plastic Egg Halves! which according to my cats are More Fun Than Catnip! So we braved the herring weather (imagine if someone shone a 100 watt lightbulb directly into your corneas while simultaneously dousing you with a shower of unflavored Sno-Cone while you were standing in front of one of those industrial wind machines) to slip away for giant steaming bowls of udon and a plate full of tekka maki for me (I like it spicy!). The restaurant was more or less deserted when we got there, despite the fact that it was barely past one o'clock. The sushi chef was berating the kitchen help (apparently) for being an inattentive dumbass, which should have surprised exactly no one, given that the helper dude looked like an extra from a Judd Apatow movie. But here's the thing that really captured my attention: it was Soft Rock Cliche Day at Little Tokyo.

While HRH and I consumed our meal, we heard the following songs:
1)All By Myself, Eric Carmen
2)Without You, Airsupply
3)Open Arms, Journey
4) Tell Laura I Love Her, Ray Peterson (the link is not Ray Peterson, it's Sha Na Na.)
5)Happy Together, The Turtles
6)Whiter Shade of Pale, Annie Lennox - this was a cover, but still.

Miss Thing was done at this point, but I really wanted to stay to see what they would play next. Hard Habit to Break? Missing You? Everything I Do, I Do It For You? I mean, the 60's songs in the second half of the set threw me for a minute, but I give them credit for sticking with the overall tone of the thing. I'd like to think it would be Doin' It All For My Baby or Broken Wings, but have a sneaking suspicion that it would be one of these two gems: