(Brian May, on the other hand, has become a hairy Enkidu-like folk deity.)

... by me!

Today is Freddie Mercury's meinichi (命日), which means "life day" kanji-to-word and refers to the anniversary of the day on which somebody died. Not coincidentally, I am sure, We Will Rock You closes in Tokyo tonight, and the Tokyo International CineCity Festival showed Queen in Budapest on the big screen.

Not that they had a special long-lost decent print of it or anything. No, they just projected the video and ran the crappy sound through the cinema speakers. Static-tastic! But it was still Queen. And we all enjoyed the outlaw thrill of seeing the FBI warning against exhibiting the video in public and/or for a profit when we were party to that very crime.

Bonus language-and-Queen-related fact: although that recent "50 Worst Video Game Names of All Time" article found itself unable to explick the title Tactics Ogre: Let Us Cling Together, it's an obvious reference to the Japan-only single from Day at the Races, "Teo Torriatte". The lyrics te wo toriatte, literally "holding [each other's] hands", were poetically translated "Let us cling together" for the English chorus. And if you think it's strange that a Japanese game designer should love Queen that much, you clearly don't understand nerds or Freddie Mercury. (Yeah, yeah, Brian May wrote that particular song.)