Chewing Bones

Laurel and Hardy: Hong Kong

2012-01-23T00:15:00.000-08:00

Vacations are a funny concept. Growing up middle class, vacations usually consisted of loading up in a car with my entire family (six people in all) and driving to some destination for the purpose of relaxation plus usually some ulterior motive like a business opportunity for my dad. Basically something like Little Miss Sunshine minus the quirkiness and soft lighting, so basically like National Lampoon‘s Family Vacation. Most people go on vacation for the purpose of looking at sights, (often sights that are as fascinating as things in their own city) taking pictures of said sights, eating, drinking and shopping. Families actually save money and set aside time so that once a year they can buy junk and look at things in a different locale than where they usually buy junk and look at things. And we often call this “fun” little journey a “trip.” And it is a trip in the colloquial sense of the word. It’s a stimulating, short-lived experience that messes with your head. I can’t say that my and Laurel’s trip to Hong Kong was life-changing, but it was definitely a trip.

Tune in, turn on, drop out

The night before our journey began my school held a staff party. Staff parties are usually something I try to avoid, but I was actually looking forward to seeing a bunch of people who never go out (the Chinese staff) get hammered. It turned out to be a disappointment. The buffet was ludicrous and the Chinese staff stayed relatively sober, not to mention the fact that I finished second in the beer drinking competition. I left around midnight, pretty drunk from the lack of caloric intake plus eight pints, and went to another bar with some co-workers (none of them were Chinese). By two a.m. I was in my bed. Of course I hadn’t packed yet.

The next morning Laurel and I had our usual difficulty getting out of bed [Ever since winter started, it’s been hell to wake up on time. Our Chinese class ended two weeks ago, so reasons to actually leave the bed are suddenly scarce.]. We left the dormitory at noon to make our two o’clock flight on time. It took thirty minutes to find a taxi and when we did finally locate one, he was carrying a passenger who needed to be driven into the middle of the city. We arrived at the airport at one fifteenish. We made the flight on time, but both of us suffered several near heart attacks.

The plane touched down in Shenzhen [Shenzhen is a popular city to fly into when going to Hong Kong. From there you can get to Hong Kong by bus, subway or ferry. I suggest subway which is the method we used to return to Shenzhen.] at four o’clock. We then caught a bus to Hong Kong and arrived in the city around eight o’clock. We checked into our hostel at Chunking Mansions [Featured in the film Chungking Express, Chunking Mansions is a gigantic building consisting of around twenty or more hostels. There are three “blocks.” We stayed in Block A the first two nights and Block B the last four nights. There is no discernible difference between the blocks. I forgot to mention that the moment you step foot in front of Chunking Mansions you will be offered a suit, a watch and every drug known to man. This is in no way an exaggeration and it's actually quite annoying after the second day when you've been accosted for the four hundredth time.]. We asked the concierge/owner (concierge is obviously a generous title for a hostel owner, but he was a really nice guy), Peter, what to do and he outfitted us with a map, circled the hotspots and warned us to steer clear of the “girl’s bars.” He meant the bars that were gigantic whore houses. We went anyway of course, but we’ll come to that. We said goodnight to Peter and took hold of the city.

Sight-Seeing

I always tell people I’m a bad tourist and usually I take a strange pride in saying this, because I can’t stand when people go to a city and try to experience it by seeing some landmark that all of its residents ignore on a daily basis. Tourism is kind of stupid in that regard. I’ve always been more of a fan of getting drunk and wandering through a city. It’s what I did whenever I went to San Francisco during college, including the time I went with Laurel. So needless to say, we didn’t see to many sights. Luciano lent me his camera before he went to Austria for the holidays, so I snapped some photos. We went to the Hong Kong Arts Center, but it was closed by the time we made it [The journey to get to Hong Kong Arts Center lasted around two hours. We couldn’t find the thing to save our lives and we kept getting turned around. Hong Kong has an amazing subway system, but you still have to walk a lot because each station is like it’s own little city with multiple exits that allow you to choose which area of the district you want to enter. It can be very confusing.].

Laurel had mentioned a gondola ride that I flat out refused to do (I‘m scared of heights), but I told him I would come along with him. We went on the third day. The gondola trip lasts an hour and takes you past some points of interest like the world’s largest iron Buddha and some other novelty sights. At various points during our vacation Laurel and I would ask each other if we were making the most of the trip; shouldn’t we be seeing more tourist attractions? Aren’t we wasting our time sitting in coffee shops and getting drunk every night? I had one of these bouts of guilt/anxiety as I sat at Starbucks reading a book and waiting for Laurel. I had lent him my camera, but I started to think what was the point? Those pictures weren’t my experience. My god, what was wrong with me? Why not just hand the camera over to any Tom, Dick or Harry I might see and ask them to snap photos for a couple days? Then, I could pick it up later. It didn’t help that the entire time I felt like I also needed to pee, but sometimes you’re so worried you can’t use the bathroom. Not to mention that there was a cute girl sitting across from me who was obviously also waiting for someone. I thought of going over and introducing myself, maybe making a joke about both of us waiting for someone, but instead I glanced at her over my book every three minutes. She was into it.

When Laurel finally returned he explained that not only had I not missed anything, but that he had regretted going on the gondola the moment it left the station. He also was unable to figure out the camera, thanks in part to my brief thirty second tutorial, and so my guilt was alleviated, having no pictures for which to feel bad. According to Laurel, the best part of the trip was when an Australian man called his mother from the gondola via Skype and Laurel said hello to her. After that we swore off sight-seeing, although we toyed with the idea of going to Sun Yat-sen Museum and the unfortunately named Repulse Bay, but we managed to come up with excuses for not doing either of those things.

Eating

I tend to regard eating as a bodily function. I’m awfully primal about it in fact. It’s like I have no taste buds. Laurel is man who enjoys a good meal, but is by no means a foodie. At any rate, we both ate like gluttons in Hong Kong. Our first meal in Hong Kong was like the feeling of the come up on whatever drug, when the music starts and suddenly you realize that you can see vibrations. Over the course of six days we had Peking duck, pizza, kebab, burgers, curry, dim sum. I know that in Los Angeles I could drive down almost any street and see all that variety, but Laurel and I hadn’t eaten like that in months. Months! One day we ate five times and none of those times were snacks. The final meal was a mammoth burger and a bucket of fries that I ended up eating myself. We felt a little guilty after that, but we knew what it would be like once we returned to Nanjing [I’ve been here for less than twelve hours and all I’ve eaten is two servings of instant noodles because everything is closed for Chinese New Year. I should have eaten fifteen burgers that night and lived off of the fat for the next week.]. It’s tough to say what the best meal was (I might be partial to the Peking duck we ate the first night), but it’s easy to say what the worst was. We ate a Japanese meal one night with a person Laurel knew through about three or four degrees of separation.

The meal was incredibly expensive and did nothing for us in the way of satisfying our hunger. Instead of a menu there were ten or so cards with different categories of food on them: mostly skewers and ramen. We had to order two or three times and the service was slow, but that wasn’t really the problem. I don’t really care about bad service, I care more about bad company and it was painfully obvious within about ten minutes that Laurel’s “friend” didn’t have too much in common with us. We knew that he worked as a consultant and after spending a couple days in Hong Kong we knew what that meant. Hong Kong is essentially New York minus the culture and most of the grime. It’s just Wall Street. Everyone is flying around at an incredible clip, wearing nice suits and designer heels and talking on blackberrys and iphones and what have you. It’s kind of incredible to watch, especially when these same people get drunk, but it’s nothing I would want to do for a living. So we knew what to expect from the Consultant, but even still it bothered me mainly because there was no reason to dislike him. He was so pleasant and nice and had a nice story for every little thing that you might say and he wasn’t objectionable or disagreeable in any way. Just fucking pleasant. So we spent three hours talking to this suit with a pulse and afterwards I had to sit down, smoke a cigarette and collect my thoughts before I could even think about going anywhere. It was a strangely taxing experience. It’s not a knock on business people, it’s a knock on people who are lacking an indescribable quality. Later in the trip Laurel and I both realized that neither one of us could remember what he looked like. All we could remember was a grin and a bunch of words.

Drinking

We drank every night until four in the morning or later. We had no choice. Also, we thought that it was strange for us to have a vacation because our day-to-day lives are not very stressful. We figured we had to really amp it up a notch in order to truly be on a vacation. Here are some snippets of six days of perpetual drunkenness.

“Sex is everything like money is everything…” - Laurel. This was overheard by some girls who stopped in their tracks. We greeted them and asked them to join in the conversation, but they said they had sex, they didn’t talk about it. It would have been a good burn if they were attractive.

“We’re rockstars” - Hardy. A pep talk I was giving myself and Laurel so that we would do the right thing and get drunk for the third night in a row. This night was the same night we met a guy from Canada named Conrad and a fella from South Carolina named Holden. Both unique names, the latter one all but forcing Laurel to buy Catcher in the Rye the following day and reread it, something he had been meaning to do.

“I had to huff your dick fumes all night long.” I’m not explaining this one.

“Dance you fucking [racial epithet for a Chinese person].” -Anonymous. I was appalled as you are.

There are essentially three areas to drink in Hong Kong according to everyone we asked. There’s an area by Central Subway station called Lan Kwai Fong and an area by Wan Chai Station. Also there are a decent number of bars by Chungking Mansions, but they usually have less tourists and more locals. Laurel and I spent an even number of time at all three locales. Lan Kwai Fong is by far the swankiest in terms of prices, atmosphere and clientele. Lots of European chic and high heels [I don’t care if I never see a pair of high heels again. Sure they look good, but there is a direct, exponential relationship to the height of heels and the amount of bitch in a given person.]. Everybody in Hong Kong is incredibly well-dressed, but they’re all wearing the same thing. If I saw a girl wearing pumps or flats or canvas shoes, I almost went insane. Anyway, our Lan Kwai Fong protocol was to buy a beer or two at a bar that wasn’t in the middle of the storm, and then by tall cans from seven-eleven and watch the parade of idiocy. A lot of middle-aged people awkwardly dancing or guys and girls our own age acting like they were in their thirties. The third time we went there we left and went somewhere else. It was getting depressing.

The area by Wan Chai station was cool except for the whores. [I had gotten all upset about a prostitute over in the other area of the city because I couldn’t understand why she was a working girl. It wasn’t like I had never seen a prostitute before, but this one affected me and I asked her why she was working. She said she needed the money, but I thought she could have landed one of the suits and drained him for a couple months. Better to be a gold-digger I thought. I mention this because once I went to Wan Chai I didn’t feel bad about any one of the girls on that stretch and it‘s a strange contradiction I can‘t explain.] There’s about ten bars on this street, Lockhart St that is, and the women working the door will physically grab you to get you to come inside and when you do, you realize it’s a big mistake. I convinced Laurel to go in one night because I was curious even though he told me it was stupid (He had been to Hong Kong before). He was more than right. We got inside and bought a beer and then they asked us if we would buy the girls a round. We said no and after about thirty seconds, we left, our beers still full. A complete waste of time. The first night in Wan Chai we stood next to a bar drinking tall cans. That was where we met Holden and Conrad. The second night we walked all up and down the area but there wasn’t much going on that night. All in all we had a good time. We talked to some girls, made fun of people, laughed like idiots. The usual.

Shopping

I hate shopping. When I need something I go get it. This is a common trait of most men, but I really hate it. It produces an anxiety in me that didn’t exist when I was younger. I don’t know what changed, but shopping malls make me angry. Hong Kong is the wrong place to be if shopping makes you angry. You’ve never seen malls like these. Malls with seven or eight floors and a couple hotels inside. And there’s like ten of these kinds of malls. They’re massive and crowded and impossible to navigate without asking for help. We didn’t spend too much time in the malls, both Laurel and I are not very good for that kind of thing, but there were a couple purchases we had to make.

Laurel wanted an ipad, so we went to a mall called IFC and found the only Apple store in Hong Kong. It’s two stories and has a view of Repulse Bay, so that while Laurel got his free setup, I enjoyed the most touristy activity of my trip: reading the newspaper and looking out at Repulse Bay from the Apple store window.

A couple days later we went to Mang Kok (HAHA) subway station to buy some Vans at the only Vans store in Hong Kong. This was a Saturday and the mall was packed. The street outside the mall was packed so much so that when we finally did leave the mall we got on the subway because it was too crowded to find a coffee shop. We found the Vans store after going up six escalators and fighting our way through a crowd of people taking their picture with a pink dragon [Okay, so we stopped and took our pictures too.]. And wouldn’t you know it, they only had size eleven. In all of Hong Kong! Size eleven! I had been waiting for months to come here and buy shoes that fit. Laurel and I fantasized about what they do to people who are born with feet bigger than size eleven (“Sorry Larry, but that foot is going to have to be chopped in half”), before realizing that those people just didn’t buy Vans. Poor bastards. We were so flustered that we practically ran downstairs for a cigarette only to discover that there was a movie theater on the eighth floor. We both wanted to see a movie and we knew there was only one way to find out was playing. Of course when we got upstairs, the best movie playing was the new Muppet movie, but neither of us were drunk so we didn’t see it.

Of course most of the shopping Laurel and I did was at bookstores. We even managed to find a used bookstore where Laurel found a book by Alice Munro, an author I had been compulsively searching for all over Hong Kong. I read the entire collection of short stories in two days. Laurel finished Catcher in the Rye as well, so it was a productive trip. There’s that word again.

The Come Down

I don’t think I left anything out. We saw the new Almodovar film. It sucked. He’s great though, but this new one stinked. In my notes I wrote down that sparkling water is nonsense. It is. Hong Kong is a cool place to visit for three days. Don’t go there for six days. You’ll get bored unless you’re the type that enjoys taking photos and spending egregious amounts of money to look at iron Buddhas and the world’s largest pudding pop (To my knowledge this is not actually in Hong Kong). Also, Hong Kong is expensive. Especially if you’re used to Mainland China prices. It was like jumping into a cold pool… if you’re really hot beforehand. Oh, I did forget to mention the entire purpose of the trip. I got a new visa, like a passport visa. I guess I lost track of what was important. The last day we were there was pretty mild by the way. We ate dim sum for lunch and then took two trains to the Shenzhen airport where we luckily found a Costa Coffee that was open so that we didn’t have to go hungry for another four hours. We arrived at our dorm around eleven thirty and we immediately realized how good we had it in Hong Kong. Never mind the expenses and the go-go corporate lifestyle and the dick fumes. Never mind any of it. Hong Kong was nice. But you know, as I type this in a coffee shop were there are only fifteen other people and most of them are also writing, it’s kind of nice to be back in Nanjing. Plus I can smoke indoors again, so take that Hong Kong.

Laurel and Hardy Week 13 or so

2011-12-20T19:48:00.001-08:00

Clippings

Last night I had a dream that I met Method Man on a street in China. I was sitting at a table on a random street with Laurel, drinking beer and conversing; maybe we were with other people. I spotted him walking towards us. Well, not exactly towards us, but he was walking on the sidewalk. He was wearing a fresh white T and walking with a few other guys, but I'm not sure if they were Wu-affiliated. Anyway, I told him that his performance in The Wire was excellent, in particular the episode in which he has to shoot his dog. I became somewhat emotional during the exchange, but Meth was cool; he didn’t call me a bitch or laugh at me. He seemed to be genuinely pleased that I was so moved by his performance. We shook hands and parted ways. Five minutes later, the previously empty street was filled with people sitting at tables. Everyone was dressed in white. Laurel and I decided to leave.

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A few days ago I had dinner with the married couple that I tutor. Afterwards I headed to a bar called Sancho Panza to meet some friends. I got off the subway at zhu jiang subway station and walked down guang zhou lu. I needed to buy some supplies for the evening: a pack of cigarettes and a few bottles of er guo tou (er guo tou is the name of a particularly rough brand of baijiu. It’s kind of like drinking plastic bottle vodka from a super market…but worse). After obtaining said supplies I continued on my way to the bar, but as I walked I suddenly realized that I needed to use the bathroom. And then I realized that I would have to use a squatter. I walked to KFC (because their bathrooms are usually cleaner than other bathrooms in China) and checked the stall for toilet paper. Mei you (It had none), which is what I suspected. I walked across the street to suguo (the name of a chaoshi (supermarket)) and bought a roll of toilet paper. I could have bought a packet, but I remembered that we didn’t have any back at the dorm so it made sense to stock up. By the time I returned to KFC someone was in the stall. I waited. And I waited. And I waited. Thirty minutes! How can anyone squat for thirty minutes?! When I went into the bathroom to check on the person in the stall I smelled cigarette smoke. He must have really been enjoying himself. I left and went to the corner of Shanghai lu and Guangzhou lu where there is a giant building that looked like it may have had a western toilet. I took the elevator to the second floor. No bathroom. Third floor, no bathroom [the second and third floor were shady; completely empty, every door was closed and it looked like it had been that way for a long time.] The fourth floor was a massage parlor. I asked the front desk guy for the bathroom, but he didn’t understand. I said, “Ce suo?” [I tried to say cesuo (pronounced tse sue-o) but I was so flustered who knows what it sounded like. I also said shishoujian (also bathroom), but it took another five minutes to get him to understand.]. He said, “Wu lou” (fifth floor).

By now it was actually an emergency. I couldn't even pretend, when I got to the fifth floor, to have some motive other than relieving myself in that coffee shop bathroom. The employees knew this and they laughed as a I hurried to the men's bathroom. I got into the stall and peeled off all of my clothing, because I still don't know how to use these damn toilets, and as I was removing my pants I heard a PLOP! My first thought was that my wallet full of money and ID's just fell into a toilet. I was scared to look down, but I forced myself and what should be floating in the three inches of water but one bottle of my precious er guo tou. I'm ashamed to admit that my first thought was whether or not I could salvage the fallen bottle; my second thought was that a bottle of er guo tou costs $0.80 and what the hell was the matter with me? My third thought was, "Oh yeah, I still have to shit!" I realized that I couldn't shit on the bottle of baijiu so I got dressed and switched stalls. In the next stall over I carefully removed my clothing and proceeded incident free. I heard someone enter the other stall and express disbelief upon seeing the bottle of baijiu. I felt kind of bad.

I left the coffee shop and on the elevator ride down to the lobby I had a strange conversation with a Chinese person. I don't remember what was said. I finally made it to the bar. I was only an hour late.

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The night after the toilet debacle I was back at Sancho Panza. This time it was Laurel's idea to go. Not too much to report from inside the bar besides the usual. We left around midnight or later and walked down Guangzhou lu because Laurel wanted KFC. As we were walking [here I should point out that I was drunker than Laurel] Laurel spotted a couple of people arguing in the street: a Chinese man and an American girl. He wanted to intervene which is completely out of character for either of us [To wit: About a week after this incident we were walking to a bar to meet friends. A drunken idiot on an electric bike ran into Laurel and then ran into a group of students and then he fell over in the middle of the side street we were on and then he got back up and turned onto Guangzhou lu, not into the designated bike lane but the actual street which is very busy, and stayed in the middle of the street for a number of minutes. Laurel and I just watched and kind of thought about doing something, but we didn't. Maybe we learned our lesson from the previous incident or maybe we're sexist. I don't know.]. I didn't really think there was much trouble. It seemed that two people were arguing as couples sometimes do and sometimes that argument is in public. As we got closer, however, I could see that the girl was crying and he was yanking her around and she was begging him to leave her alone [She, for the record, probably could have kicked this guy's ass. She wasn't huge or anything, but she was cut from American stock and he was definitely a little fella.]. We approached them and asked if everything was okay. He was yelling at us and she was crying and people were walking by and the whole thing was a mess. He quickly hailed a cab and shoved her inside and tried to take off, but I held the door open. I kept asking her if she was okay, but she was crying too much to respond and she kept asking him to leave. I asked if she wanted me to take him out the cab, but between her crying and his threats ("Do you know who I am?" "You'll regret this!" (I'm pretty sure he had seen too many movies)) I couldn't get an answer from her. Finally I grabbed him by his collar and said something (an expletive filled threat) to him that worked in that he stopped talking. Well that's the first time I've done something like that. He shut his mouth and I asked her again what she wanted and she took a while to respond and then finally told Laurel and I that she was okay and so we let her go. I kind of couldn't believe it. We were handing her a get out of jail free card and she didn't take it. I felt like an asshole afterwards; maybe we shouldn't have intervened at all. Maybe it was none of our business. I don't know. Laurel and I went to KFC and let the whole event wash over us.

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The other night Laurel had a hankering for some skewers as we were walking back to our dorm so we stopped at the corner were the Chinese Muslims sell street skewers, lamb only, for 2 kaui apiece. Laurel bought 3 and the Muslim asked us where we were from in Chinese, but I'm pretty sure he was speaking dialect and so it took a while to understand the question, but eventually I responded in Chinese and then he asked if we were from the same place. Again it took a second to register but I caught enough words to understand and respond that I was from California and Laurel was from New Mexico. And then he said "As-Salāmu `Alaykum" and immediately repeated the phrase in Chinese and asked me to repeat it. After a couple seconds of sorting out what he said I got it. Then he uttered another Islamic phrase, one that means praise to Allah and followed it with the Chinese, but as he said it he made the "slit your throat motion." Needless to say Laurel and I found this quite vexing. He seemed like he was being friendly and maybe that motion means something else in China, but he kept saying the words and doing the motion and finally we decided we just didn't know enough Chinese to figure it out, so Laurel took his skewers and we left.

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That's what it is. I'm sitting in class right now watching a film that is supposed to illustrate the differences between Chinese and American culture, but it is actually just a really cheesy movie from the 90's that seems to be hell bent on proving that Americans can't understand other cultures. So far I'm not convinced. Until later, zaijian.

Laurel and Hardy Week 11

2011-11-30T00:02:00.000-08:00

Ni xihuan wo mao mao chong ma?

The above sentence is a very important one in Chinese, at least to me it is. Literally translated it means, “You like my hairy worm?” A hairy worm is a caterpillar, and no, I have not been saying this sentence as a pick up line (you know because a hairy worm could be a euphemism for penis). It’s how I’ve been asking people if they like my mustache. The actual word for mustache is huzi (who-zi), but it’s way funnier to see the confused expression on people’s faces when I ask them about my caterpillar (again, not my penis). The cause of this tomfoolery can be attributed to me catching Movember fever. I thought it was just a passing craze and I was even looking forward to the 30th so that I could finally shave this thing off of my face, but I’ve been getting terrific feedback on the old maomao chong. I think that people were so tired of the old face that they feel like anything is an improvement. I think the best assessment came from my language partner, The Sus (short for Susan), who said that with my gigantic eyebrows my face would look strange if I didn’t have facial hair. The Sus knows what’s good. So it’s settled, the mustaches stays. Editor’s note: My mustache is not a handlebar mustache as stated in a previous post. It is actually a horseshoe mustache ala Hulk Hogan, Shaft and Ken Norton Sr.

It’s officially cold in China. Today I wore my tweed jacket over my hoodie and I felt a twinge of guilt because I had always made fun of people who donned this look in Los Angeles, but that was mainly because it wasn’t cold in Los Angeles. By my standards it’s freezing here. It’s 44 degrees. I have low standards. Keep in mind, however, that I’ve never had a real winter and that it’s only about to get worse. Much worse according to both of my teachers who take some kind of weird pleasure in scaring foreign students by describing in great detail the brutality of a Nanjing winter. I get paid in ten days and the first purchase will be a winter jacket at a store that sells foreigner sizes or so says Elena laoshi (teacher). Last time she told me about a store like this they didn’t have anything bigger than a large. Worst case scenario I get a really nice jacket custom made for $80.

Clippings:

My computer won’t start unless it’s plugged in and I’m starting to realize that eventually I will have to buy another computer. They need to make the lifespan of these machines closer to that of a car. And I mean a Honda, not a Ford.

I’m going to Hong Kong in January on business. And maybe a little pleasure. It should be pretty cool and it will be nice to get out of Nanjing for the first time in three months.

I recently finished a book, on the Rumble in the Jungle, written by Norman Mailer. A few observations:

1) That Mailer really liked himself. Jesus Christ. 2) Joe Frazier died right before I started this book and so I read a piece by Bill Simmons on his website and then I read a piece he recommended which was written by a Sports Illustrated writer the night of the Thrilla in Manilla. I’ve read two or three books on Ali and seen all of his fights, but somehow I never really took into account the awful things he said about Frazier. Nevermind calling him ignorant and a gorilla, that’s just talk, but calling him an Uncle Tom is probably the worst possible thing you could say to a guy who grew up with nothing and literally fought his way to the top. Kind of tainted the way I view Ali. 3) I guess I didn’t realize that George Foreman was essentially Tyson before Tyson. 4) Did you know Don King has killed two people in his lifetime? Look it up. 5) That Norman Mailer really liked himself. I mean really. A lot.

I’m estatic that the NBA is back. At one point, I actually got so worried, I believed that maybe all the NBA players would come to China and find out how much money they could make and maybe they’d never come back. This fear was thrown into hyper drive when I watched a couple CBA (China Basketball Association) games with NBA players. Anyway, crisis averted, and I can set up a fantasy league with my friends. All is right in the world.

I’ve crossed the first threshold in my Chinese education so that I can communicate effectively, but I have to cross the next one which is like being able to express complex thoughts and doing so with minimal thinking time plus comprehending what I’m hearing more effectively without saying “yibian shuo” (repeat that). I think it will probably take the rest of the year to get there and maybe a bit longer, but basically I can pronounce everything and I can talk to a person so long as they take into account my laowai (foreigner) handicap. Which they usually don’t.

Well sir, I think that about does her. I’m sitting in a Café right now as a write this (which is exactly what I’d be doing in LA right now…well not exactly because it’s like midnight there, but you get my point: not much has changed even when I’m thousands of miles away.) and the entire time I’ve been looking over at this Chinese girl who works here. Last night our friend told Laurel and I that in order to get a Chinese girl you have to wait and make eyes with them and then go over and talk to them, but there is no sense in just approaching them. Last night we didn’t listen and sat down at a couple tables and were either ignored or flat out rejected. So today I’m taking his advice, but I’m getting pretty impatient. I might go up and say, “Damn baby, you looking as good as dinner!” Or I might just ask her if she likes my hairy worm.

Laurel and Hardy Week 10

2011-11-18T05:13:00.000-08:00

Hipsterdom in China

If you have three hours to waste and you’re in San Francisco, Los Angeles, New York or some other American city with a Chinatown, make the trip downtown, where I assume all Chinatowns are located, and try to explain No-Shave November to a Chinese person. [By the way, No-Shave November is legitimate: it has its own wiki and it is an actual event to raise awareness for men’s health issues. The last half of that sentence was lifted from the wiki article.] I would explain to a Chinese person that November and No-Shave start with the same letter and so it’s kind of clever to name it that. They would nod. I would say that the mustache served as a reminder for men to get check ups for diseases that only affected males. The person I was talking to would nod their head. And then I would give examples of some of the diseases it represented and they would nod. And then I would light a victory cigarette, proud of myself for crossing the language barrier, and they would ask, “But what is the connection between a mustache and testicular cancer; if you don‘t grow the mustache do you get testicular cancer?” As if it were some kind of superstition. What’s even funnier is that for the first two months here I couldn’t cough on the street without being stared at but as soon as I grew out a mustache nobody notices. I mean when you meet a Chinese person here they will comment on everything: you’re shoe size, hair color, your resemblance to whatever American celebrities are in your ethnic group. Grow out a mustache, specifically a silly handle bar mustache, and nobody says word one. To be fair there are a lot of people here, maybe I’ve started to blend in.

The Great Sweater Search of 2011 is over. I found a green hoodie at H&M that fits, just barely, and it was literally the only XL piece of clothing in the store. I still need to find a winter jacket and it would be nice to find shoes, but that’s totally unrealistic. The largest American size I’ve found so far is 10.5 and the pair of shoes, Vans, cost $80 which raises an interesting question about the price of a product which costs twice as much here, where they make it, as it does in America [Apparently this is because products which are made by American companies, even if it’s not American labor, are heavily taxed so that China comes away with some money.]. I also bought a tie and a belt because my belt broke the previous day and I had to work with a key ring holding together either end of the belt; kind of like a hobo. I bought the tie because I only brought one tie and I’m tired of wearing the same one every Sunday which I’ve designated as “dress-up” day. I also have to dress nicely for presentations [A special class once a session in which the students’ parents observe the last forty-five minutes of class so that they can see that they’re not wasting their money and so that they can hear their kid say the word “apple.”]

I’ve been borrowing Luciano’s bike which is a fixed gear bike as are many bikes in China. It’s a regular hipster paradise. The bike says Flying Pigeon on it which really makes me happy. I also bought a cactus to liven up my room [I wanted a cat, but I don‘t know if they vaccinate the animals here. I‘ve heard they don‘t. Also, the only place I know that sales animals is fuzimiao, but I‘ve heard the animals there only live for two days when you bring them home because they were just clinging to life at the pet shop. Apparently they’re given shots to keep them alive until they’re sold…My friend suggested I talk about cats on my blog if I wanted people to read it. Somehow I don’t think this is what he had in mind.]. I named it Warren [Laurel and I went to dinner with some friends after we finished shopping so we had to carry all of our stuff with us. Our friends saw the cactus and they suggested we name it. We? Why do people feel this is an okay thing to do? I don’t want your suggestions for my cactus’s name. It’s mine. I rejected all of their names.]

KTV

Tuesday night I went to Karaoke with Laurel and some of his students who are in college. Laurel had told me about his KTV experiences and because of that I was hesitant to go, but his students, for some reason, were really anxious to meet me. We played a game with cards in which eight cards are handed out one of which is a joker. Whoever draws the joker is the King (I don’t know why they don’t play with a king) and has to make a rule. For example, if you draw the king you might say, “Whoever has cards five and seven must remove a piece of clothing.” That might be something that Americans would do/say and then with the aide of alcohol the game would devolve, or evolve depending on your perspective, into a bunch of drunk naked people hooking up or at least fondling and what have you. Well sir, no such luck in China. First of all the beer they drink can’t get you drunk and secondly the rules they made in the game were things like doing push ups while someone is underneath you, playing suck and blow [Just in case you never saw Clueless, that’s the game where you hold a card to your mouth by sucking in and then someone takes the card from you with their mouth. I’m not sure where the blow component comes in, but that’s besides the point. You’re suppose to intentionally drop the card and steal a kiss, at least I think every red-blooded American male would do that. Unfortunately my number was not called and I have no international incident to report. Of course none of the Chinese guys pulled that move.], or telling an embarrassing story. By the end of the game we convinced them to actually kiss. My card was called, but it wasn’t an open-lip kiss. Still, it’s the most action I’ve gotten in China besides riding the bus during rush hour.

Earlier in the night one of the students, Andy was his name I think, asked me a bunch of questions about black people. He professed his love for “black man music”, a genre that I’ve always enjoyed myself. And then he said he loved niggers. Don’t we all. I quickly explained to him to never use that word if and when he makes it to America. He really didn’t understand what was wrong with it, but I set him straight. My good deed for the day. Overall the night was really boring and we eventually went home without even a slight buzz.

Bureaucracy

Like so many young Americans I have to pay student loans. Nothing like getting paid and immediately handing over a couple months worth of work to something that isn’t tangible. I’m paying for the things that were put inside of my head. Anyway, I had to send some money to America so that it could be taken out of my account. For a week I tried everyway possible to send the money. Western Union in China doesn’t allow you to send money to businesses or banks. I tried American Western Union online, but that didn’t work either for several reasons that I’m too tired to explain. I tried to pay with a credit card, but it had to be American. Last Friday I opened a Chinese bank account so that I could send the money to America. It takes two to three days and my payment was due on Monday so I couldn’t risk it not going through because obviously weekends aren’t work days. I was worried that my loan company would do something terrible to me like send an agent to China to publicly flog me. I missed the payment and honestly I felt kind of relieved. At least it was over. I asked my school to have someone come with me to send money to America. As it turned out I really needed them to come because I wouldn’t have been able to send it myself. Something to do with not being Chinese. So I accomplished that task yesterday. And the really bad thing that my loan company did? They raised my payments $7 every month. That was certainly worth inducing a stress related ulcer [I have to point out just how ridiculous all of this is: 1) To send money you have to exchange it for American money, but when I finally did exchange the money they didn’t hand me $700 they just took my Chinese money. It‘s not as if they are physically sending the money to America in an envelope after I leave. [Another aside: the lady tried to charge me 4900 kuai instead of 4500 kuai. I wasn’t sure if she was trying to play me or if she made a mistake. The TA who went with me couldn’t decide either.] 2) My TA had to open an account at that bank in order to send the money even though she didn’t have to deposit the money in her account or anything. She says she has five different accounts for problems such as these. 3) 2-3 days seems like a long time to send a glorified e-mail. I mean wiring money is really just China saying to an American bank, “Some asshole wants $700 sent to his account. We’ll total everything up at the end of the month and then you can pay.” 4) They really have to be kidding with this wujiao thing. I love a nap as much as the next person, but things are getting out of hand. Americans already despise banks for their hours. Imagine if the hours were cut by a third and that third was in the middle of the day and certain functions couldn’t be performed at that bank. Doesn’t that sound like fun? 5) I get that they want to keep it in the family, but maybe let me send money to my account back home. It’s not such a crazy idea.]

Last Night

I went to a German bar last night that I had heard a lot about. I was taken there by a married couple that I tutor [So I got this gig through my language partner. These people want to learn spoken language so every Tuesday and Thursday we meet for two hours. They buy me dinner and pay me 100 kuai an hour. And last night they brought me to the German bar and bought me drinks. They wouldn’t let me pay. I feel bad. It’s like they’re paying me to be their friend. On the other hand, I am teaching them helpful American phrases. I really thought I had rid myself of a conscience, but the old fella still has some life yet.]. After we ate dinner we headed to the German bar. Laurel met us there as did one of their friends who lived in New Zealand for six years. He was to serve as the translator but instead he regularly angered the wife as he was more prone to speak rapid English with me and neglect his duty to his friends. Funny guy. This place, which I forgot the name of, has real beer, none of that Chinese piss water. Like real beer served in real steins. Each stein cost 100 kuai ($15) and probably holds at least three beers. I drank two of those and they ordered a bottle of Johnny Walker of which I drank a considerable amount. Plus some Tsingtao (which should be spelt qing dao and pronounced ching dow). Around midnight they went home and Laurel and I walked to Ellen’s. I remember smoking outside and I think I made it upstairs. I did because I remember talking to Leticia [Leticia is a Chinese girl we met weeks ago who kept saying, “I smoke dat shit” over and over again because she heard it in an American film. Great stuff.] She introduced us to her friends who were unattractive and I’m not sure if it was them or the alcohol, but I told Laurel I had to go home, vomit, or collapse where I was standing. He stayed behind. I don’t remember anything past that. I took a taxi home and I woke up with my door open. I managed to get my shoes of as well, so kind of a success in some ways. Fucking Germans. Nothing ever changes.

Tomorrow I have my first presentation class. The students are three years old so it should be pretty easy and funny. And I get to wear a new tie. Alright, that’s all. I have to go finish my laundry. [Does it ever bother you that when you’re doing laundry you are wearing clothes that are now technically dirty and that you’ll eventually have to wash? It’s like you never actually have all of your clothes clean. I think the only way to obtain this feeling is to do laundry in the nude. And if I combine this idea with my idea for a Laundromat that also serves alcohol, I could host Nude Tuesdays. Other themed nights include Whites Only (white clothing of course), Ladies night (Ladies wash for free) and Colors (black people only). Interested parties can contact me for investment opportunities.] Zaijian.

Laurel and Hardy Week 9

2011-11-07T06:47:00.000-08:00

Holy Scatological Saturday Batman!

[Warning: The following post contains graphic details of my recent bathroom experience in China.]

My back is back. I feel fit as a fiddle, right as rain and such and such. There were, however, other problems on the horizon. Unforeseeable problems. Once my stomach repaired itself, I started to eat and drink normally. Or what I deem to be normal. Laurel has discovered a sandwich shop that he goes to everyday. I’ve started to accompany him on his trips there from time to time and indulge in Western cuisine, specifically a tuna fish sandwich on whole wheat or cibatta bread. Laurel has given up on Chinese cuisine and has taken refuge in Nanjing’s available laowai (lao-why, foreigner) supermarkets. They sell things like cheese, olives, bread and other Western staples. Anyway, I started partaking in some of this cuisine as well as not managing my water intake. Add to this the rapid change in climate here, from humid as hell to pretty cold and dry (like dry enough for my skin and lips to react negatively), plus my affection for noodles (specifically cheean (sic) zai jidan mian, which is handmade noodles, green vegetables and a chicken egg in a broth), and you have a perfect storm of constipation. Cut to last Wednesday when I realized I hadn’t been to the bathroom in two days. I was concerned and also in a considerable amount of pain as I went to my language partner, but I decided not to cancel our meeting as I would have to tell her that I couldn’t meet her because I felt like I was sitting on a pile of sharpened dildos. So we met and I uncomfortably shifted from side to side for two hours before returning home. That was the beginning.

For the next two days I self medicated with fruit and water and tried to cause some movement down there, but every time I would go to the bathroom the result was not unlike my sexual experiences: a lot of grunting and sweating and not much substance. On Friday morning, during class, I asked Elena to verify a word I looked up in the dictionary. The word was laxative. I went to the pharmacy after class to purchase a xieyao (shee-ai-yow). It didn’t work. I want to make sure that I’m expressing just how much pain I was actually in: on Thursday and Friday night I was supposed to go out with Laurel and some Chinese girls, but I refused because I couldn’t sit without feeling like I needed to go the bathroom. I had to spend Thursday and Friday night in the dorm room, laying down and watching movies while receiving mocking text messages from friends which were, admittedly, well-deserved. Who the hell gets that sick from constipation?

I awoke Saturday morning and faced the reality of going to work while feeling like my stomach and asshole might literally explode. The night before I had researched enemas, a word that I knew only from peripheral experiences. I was reminded of the episode of Seinfeld in which Kramer is mugged on his way to the bathroom and subsequently can’t defecate for days. He tries fruit, water, and everything else before turning to the “dreaded apparatus.” I had reached that point. I jotted down the character for enema and painfully rode my bicycle to the pharmacy, taking note of each bump on the road. I had considered calling into work sick, but that seemed silly, or rather I was ashamed to call in for something so stupid. Luckily I woke up early enough to insert said apparatus and be on my way. Except that the pharmacy didn’t have enemas. So I rode to the university clinic. Closed.

I dressed for work and rode my bike to the school, the whole while looking for pharmacies that might offer some relief. I didn’t find any, but I thought that if I went to school, clinched my teeth, ate nothing but fruit and smoked a few cigarettes, I might be alright. My first class on Saturday mornings is preschool-aged children. We run around and sing songs and play silly games. Five minutes into class I realized that I couldn’t do it. There was no way I would last for eight hours. I called Thomas, the foreign teacher director, during the class break. He immediately understood my plight, though he couldn’t relate [Mostly people get the shits while in China, which I also experienced, but almost every teacher at our school got “sick” in some sense of the word within the first two months of being here. I am not a unique and special snowflake.]. He arranged for the TA (teacher’s assistant) from my second class to take me to the hospital, since they would be canceling my class anyway. It should be mentioned that all of the TA’s are young, fairly attractive Chinese girls, so that I had to explain the finer points of my ailment to a pretty girl who best understood when I pointed and used graphic language.

We took the bus (bump, bump, bump) to the hospital. We arrived at 12:30. Right in the midst of wujiao (siesta time). We had to wait an hour before the doctors started to work again. I sat hunched over in the hospital waiting room clutching my stomach. After an hour we registered and ten minutes later I went to see the doctor. She asked me what was wrong. In the interest of not being graphic, specifically not graphically explaining to my TA what was wrong with me, I told her that my stomach hurt and that I hadn’t used the bathroom in five days. She recommended an x-ray; the main reason for the x-ray was to make sure the doctor wouldn’t be held liable for any medicine she prescribed. I completely understood this stance, so I cooperated.

In the x-ray room the nurse told me to take my pants off, but then she locked herself in a room that protected her from the radiation and subsequently there isn’t a steamy hospital sex scene to describe here. Also it would have ended with me shitting on myself. After she took the x-ray she told me, by which I mean the TA [It should be mentioned that when the doctor called my name she read every letter of my name, in lieu of trying to pronounce it, over a loud speaker and the entire hallway of people started laughing as I limped into the x-ray room.], that all we had to do was wait two hours. Two hours! I demanded we go back upstairs to the doctor. I told my TA to tell the doctor that when I sat down it felt like small men were walking on gravel on the inside of my anus and I pointed at my butt. She got the picture. So did the doctor. The TA went downstairs with a prescription while I waited on the second floor [In China you always pay first and take a voucher to the place where the product is. In a mall for instance you pay for a toaster and then take a ticket to the toaster department. At a hospital you pay for the x-ray and then take a voucher to the x-ray department. Ridiculous maybe, but a surefire way of collecting a bill.]. She returned ten minutes later with two bottles of clear liquid that had nozzles on the ends. They looked similar to the bottles that food coloring comes in, but they were twice the size. Apparently I was to insert and squirt and then wait five minutes. If I could.

I waited two minutes. That liquid creates an interesting sensation. The place, by the way, that was designated for me to perform this graceful act, was a Chinese hospital bathroom. Maybe the three most disgusting words in the English language when used in succession. I went into a squatter which is exactly what it sounds like: a toilet in the ground which you squat over [One of my few neuroses (I think I only have a few, really) is bathroom hygiene. I didn’t use the toilet outside of my house until I was fifteen. I never used a school toilet until I was in college. The only exception to my toilet usage before the age of fifteen was if I was at a family member’s, or friend’s, house and the time I went to Mexico when I was twelve. I used the bathroom twice in seven days and the first time was after a four day standoff with my stomach.]. If you needed any more evidence of my pain, this is it; I had vowed to never use a squatter as long as I was in China or on the planet earth. I took off every scrap of clothing and hung them in the squatter because I was scared that I would somehow shit on them. [Also I generally do this whenever I go to the bathroom, but typically I leave the shirt on in public bathrooms.]. After two minutes I relinquished and a little dribble dropped into the toilet. For the next five minutes I pushed like the little engine that could. There was a point where I felt like giving up or asking for more of that magic liquid, but I knew once I put those pants on that I had waved some kind of terrible white flag. Possibly it would be made of toilet paper [Which isn’t stocked in Chinese toilets. Another awkward little thing I had to ask my TA for; awkward for me, but quite normal for her because Chinese people ask for tissue from each other quite often.]. The sweat on my brow built and I hovered over the hole in great consternation. I decided to go for broke. I would put everything into one last push, no matter the pain or consequence. I gritted my teeth and pushed at the walls and grunted. Suddenly a great rumbling was heard. Babies in the maternal ward were awaken and began crying. A car crashed into a fire hydrant shooting a stream fifty feet into the air. I looked down and saw the effort of my labors and for a moment I relaxed. And then came the real ordeal. It took every ounce of my energy and it looked like three butterfingers held together with duct tape. It felt like anally birthing a baseball bat. Relieved, elated, I cleaned up and went into the lobby where my TA was waiting for me. I was whistling.

We went back to the school. By the time we arrived they had canceled another of my classes, but I didn’t care. I was happy to be healthy again. I went to the bathroom and washed my hands [Most Chinese bathrooms don’t provide soap either. Gross.] and listened as my TA told the other TA’s about what happened and they laughed and asked me questions. In some ways it’s embarrassing, but what’s funny is that because so many Westerners experience discomfort in China I really had nothing to be embarrassed about.

So it’s been two days since that happened. When I got home that night there were a few aftershocks and I was a bit tender up until yesterday, but now I’m feeling good. The fridge is stocked with fruits and I’ve been taking care to eat the right things for lunch and dinner. I didn’t go to Chinese class this morning; I’ve designated Monday as my day off. I’ve been relaxing and hanging out and now I’m ready for another week in China. Nothing else to report. Zaijian.

Laurel and Hardy Week 8

2011-10-31T01:29:00.001-07:00

I threw my back out last week. I’m not sure how it happened. I taught my morning class; it’s an hour long and all of the kids are 3-4 years old so there‘s a lot of movement. Then I had a twenty minute break and then my second class began. That class is ninety minutes long and we have a break in the middle. During that break I sat down and when I stood up something popped or snapped or whatever and I instantly realized and verbalized that my back hurt. Maybe I got cold after running around with the little, little kids, I don’t know. I continued teaching, but I could tell as the day wore on that it wasn’t going to be good later. After work I usually tutor, but they cancelled, thank Jebus. I took the bus home, which I’m sure didn’t help my back. I limped up the six flights of stairs and collapsed. Before I go any further, I should explain all of this happened last Sunday. Last Friday Laurel and I and some friends went to the local beer garden and got boozy. The usual. The next morning I was so nauseous that I didn’t eat until eight at night and I had the shits. They didn’t go away on Sunday. So Sunday night I was making trips from my bedroom to the bathroom every twenty minutes and walking like an old man with a hip replacement to the point where it would take me a full minute to walk a distance of twenty-odd feet. For the next three days I didn’t leave the dorm. Laurel and Luciano brought me bread and water and whatever else. I had no appetite and I was also scared to eat anything else. I was even more scared that the back and stomach thing were related, which would have meant that I had a serious intestinal issue. On Wednesday I went to the university clinic and the doctor gave me some antibiotics and assured me the two ailments were unrelated. My stomach had already started to feel better, but the drugs completely cured me.

On Thursday I managed to go to class. I also had to work later. I went in to work and stood the entire time. On Thursdays I go into work a couple hours early to make lesson plans for the week. I stood for four hours and then I went into a spare classroom and I laid down for a while. I got through class and went home to change. Thursday was my birthday and my coworker, whose birthday is the day after mine, organized a party at his house. Laurel and I took a taxi, stayed out all hours of the night, and missed class Friday morning [I only went to one class all last week because of my back]. When I woke up Friday my back felt much better. I think riding my bike to work and then the drinking, somehow loosened something up back there. It’s still stiff but improving. I can’t touch my toes yet, but I can sit down again which is good.

I miss Halloween. Tons of expatriates dressed up for Halloween which they celebrated on the 29th because it was a Saturday. I found this unsatisfactory. Also, it just wasn’t the same as Halloween in the states. Alas. The night consisted of many of the staples of Halloween: drinking, sluts and pictures. Oh God, the pictures. Chinese people would stop out in front of the bar and beg people to take pictures with them. Like a drunken asshole with a beer and a cigarette would get asked to pose with someone’s seven year-old. Kind of strange. That was probably the highlight of the night.

I don’t think I’m going to accept the scholarship to the university here. I’m not sure it’s really up to snuff and I think I’d rather work instead. Seems like the right thing to do.

Alright, I think that’s it. I’m going to a birthday dinner tonight. All you can drink and eat for 160 kuai ($25). Should be a good one.

Laurel and Hardy Week 5

2011-10-18T23:39:00.000-07:00

“Walt Whitman, an American, one of the roughs, a kosmos…”

I’ve started reading Whitman’s Leaves of Grass to make sure I retain a healthy level of patriotism. It’s full of life-affirming prose and romantic language about America.

My school has three different locations in Nanjing. I teach at the location nearest my university three out of four days. It is twenty minutes, walking, from my dorm. Last Saturday was the second time I had to go there and I was a bit confused about exactly where it was, but luckily one of the school secretaries, a native, wrote the address down in hanzi (characters) and English and even provided several bus routes that I could take to get there. Saturday morning, I hopped on the number 56 bus and got off after four stops as per her directions. Right away I knew I was in the wrong area. I walked around for an hour. I had left the dorm around 9:30 AM to arrive at my school by 10:30. I wasn’t teaching the 10:30 class, only observing, but I was getting worried nonetheless and so I flagged down a taxi and showed him the address. He drove me to a bar. I called the school and had a secretary talk to the taxi driver. They argued for a while [I think. For all I know they could have been talking amicably.] and then he drove me back to pretty much the exact location I was at before. I walked around some more and tried to find it. After another hour I decided to eat something. I grabbed some baozi and a coke and kept walking. 12:00. I called the school and asked for someone to meet me at the mall that is a block or three from the school. I waited outside the mall for thirty minutes. My phone died. Tired, sweaty and angry, I walked home. My next class wasn’t until three, but I was having crazy thoughts. I considered quitting and accepting a job at a different school. I fantasized about cursing at the secretary who couldn’t give adequate directions. Finally I made it home, disrobed and slept for thirty minutes while my phone recharged. When I woke up I felt better. I called Thomas, the kiwi in charge of foreign teachers, and he said he would send someone to meet me at the mall. I arrived at the mall at three and they led me to the school which, had I remembered, was very close to where I was walking around all morning. Very frustrating. The day went well besides that.

That night I went to Nanjing Daxue (University) and hung out for a while. The cab ride over, which should have cost 10 kuai, cost thirty kuai because I butchered the pronunciation when I told the cabbie where to take me. We were driving on the freeway and I realized that he had gone way too far. He pulled off of the freeway and into an industrial part of town. People were outside singing karaoke and there were food stands in the middle of the street. It was not a place for a louwei (foreigner) but I was intrigued. I wanted to get out but I realized that if I did I would never get another taxi.

The next morning I woke up late because I accidentally turned my alarm off before bed. I missed my first class, this time at the other location, and had to take a taxi to school. I was once again fortunate that I wasn’t teaching. Tomorrow I start teaching a full load of classes, so I can’t get too drunk tonight. I think.

Laurel and I bought bus passes because it’s a real pain in the ass to get change every time you want to hop on the bus. And you save 8%.

I took my first Chinese bike ride on a bicycle my roommate Luciano let me borrow. The bike is from the Ming Dynasty. It has a mind of its own and often it would try to venture into oncoming traffic. I was able to tame the beast and make it to work safely.

I went to the tailor to have some pants made. I first tried buying pants in China, but even though they had my size, the legs were extremely snug. I then flirted with ordering pants online but ultimately I decided to visit the tailor. Luciano took me. I bought a pair of pants and a pair of jeans for $40 each. I can get a tailored suit for $110. I can’t wait. The pants are ready Wednesday. My only other pair recently sprung a leak and I’m hoping the school doesn’t say anything. I’m also hoping my Johnson doesn’t poke through while I’m teaching little kids.

We went out last night and ended up staying out to late. We missed class this morning or most of class. We showed up with thirty minutes left. But despite all of this, we actually are doing quite well. A few hiccups here and there. The Chinese is going good. I study 2-3 hours a day. It’s completely necessary in order to keep up with the pace of the class. Ummm. I think that’s it. Peace.

Laurel and Hardy Week 4

2011-10-18T23:38:00.001-07:00

October 5, 2011

Up from the 36 chambers! I have been extremely lazy as far as writing journal entries is concerned, so forgive me. I have been busy. I will recount that which I can remember…

…work…

I had to teach a demo course at a different school. In some ways my failure at the first school was a good lesson in what not to do, so I guess I am somewhat grateful for that experience. Also, fuck Rachael. The second demo class went well; they gave me actual kids and a lesson plan and I went in and did my thing. Great stuff. The kids were three years old and very funny. Laurel watched. No homo.

I started work there a week ago. I’m not crazy about all the foreign teachers. Jobs like foreign schools, which have low requirements and good pay, tend to attract random, uninteresting people. Something akin to restaurant work in the states. I feel like an asshole for saying that, but it’s the truth. My first several weeks of work have, and will, consisted of me observing other teachers teach class. It’s been helpful so far and it’s nice to ease into actually teaching. Plus I’m being paid. One of the guys who works there, Jorge, is from Florida. I’ve been calling him Gorgeous George. We run into him a lot at the other university which has an outdoor area where Internationals go to drink and flirt and talk about various unimportant things. Yeah, so work is good. They don’t have shirts that fit me, however, and they struggled to take an adequate photo of me for my bio. It can’t all be perfect. On the bright side there is a great baozi [baozi, pronounced bow (like to take a bow) and zi pronounced like zip minus the p and maybe throw a little t action between bao and zi, is a type of steamed bun filled with meat or veggies. Something like dhim sum (which I don’t know how to spell). Back to the show.] place right outside of the school, so that’s a win.

…food…

I got to admit it’s getting better. We branched out and found some great options that are closer to the dorm. On the west side, where are dorm is, there are several stands during lunch time. There’s this wrap thing that we eat for 3.50 kuai ($0.50ish) that is very filling. This guy cooks them on a grill but that’s misleading. It’s actually a large, flat, round surface that is very hot. With a flat stick he smears on some batter and then cracks an egg and let’s the batter cook and solidify. Then he folds it and adds a piece of lettuce and some stuff that looks like really short noodles and a couple other unidentifiable (not in a bad way) things. And then he adds a piece of crispy, wonton-y type stuff that he breaks in half. At some point he asks if you want some spice and I always say yes, but I have no idea what it is. It takes him about a minute to whip one of these bad-boys up and he’s always sweating (sometimes a drop of flavor is added to your wrap). They’re really good. We got a couple the other day and went to buy a drink. We were walking alongside the lady who is kind of the cook’s assistant [she brings more ingredients and she collects money and (probably) talks shit about us.] and I saw her reach into a bucket of murky, like actually gray) water and extract lettuce. Yay!

The north side of the school is street food heaven. Laurel had been sick and last weekend he stayed at his family friends’ house to recover. I didn’t want to eat alone so I got off of the bus from work, bought a beer and a baozi from the convenience store (Chinese 7-11), and then started walking. I bought a couple rice dumplings [shoumi (show-me), which means literally hand rice] and some mantou [(man-toe), steamed bread. It’s kind of bland.]. That’s not a ton of food, but it was filling. I was standing by a fruit stand eating when I saw a guy buy this sandwich type thing. It was like a pita filled with chopped beef (obviously it was not like this at all, but that’s pretty close to what it was I guess) and you could add an egg if you were so inclined. I was. 5 kuai ($0.90). That whole walk cost me 14 kuai ($2.50) with beer.

Other than that, we figured out how to say kung pao chicken [gung bao ji din (gung bao gee deen) which has more peanuts than chicken] and steamed rice [mifan (me f-AwN)]. And we found a different dumpling shop and a different muslim noodle shop. Still, we manage to fuck up occasionally. One time I was trying to learn how to pronounce a dish and instead of saying the phrase for “how do you say”, I pointed. We ended up with double portions. Another time a lady made fun of us for trying to speak Chinese and everyone in the restaurant laughed [I cursed at her in English for the rest of the meal.]. The other day we were taken to a pizza place that was terrible. Some of the pizzas had bananas on them. Still learning.

…school…

I’m really liking the challenge of learning Chinese. My pronunciation [fayin (fayeen)] is decent and my character [hanzi] recognition is good. I’m actually thinking of staying here and getting a Master’s degree in film theory. Like I already applied for a scholarship that they offered me, so I guess that’s more than just thinking about it. I really want to learn Chinese.

Laurel and I were asked to make a introductory video for a party that they were throwing for the internationals. The video from the year previous was two minutes long. We made a seventeen minute film [The film is titled “A day in the life of a fool.” I shot Laurel doing various activities and we intercut it with interviews of the international students talking about themselves (the best of which are the interviews of the Japanese girls). I sent the video to a friend in the states and hopefully he will throw it up on the web soon]. In English, no subtitles. We had to show it at the “party”, which was four hours long and involved games, food and no alcohol. One of the games was lentil relay, a game in which you dip your face into a bowl of water and then into a bowl of lentils and you try and transport the lentils across the room. The winner is the person with the-- oh yeah, I forgot, there is no winner because they didn’t keep track or tally the lentils. None of the games had winners. And it lasted four hours. Did I mention that there was no alcohol?

The teacher [laoshi (like bao but replace b with l and shi is shhh)] yells at the Japanese guy all the time. It’s pretty funny. The other day, when Laurel was sick, he slid his desk clear across the room, away from Laurel. Also he accidentally called Laurel a Canadian. A beef is brewing. Mar Mar, our other classmate, got a stern warning because she missed a week of class and she’s been coming back to the dorm at odd hours, like seven in the morning. She goes to the clubs several nights a week and turns up in the morning, too tired to go to class [She went one time after doing this and she left halfway through class.]. We’re going to try to guide her a bit. She’s from an island and I think the exposure to a place as wild as China is difficult for her educationally speaking.

Howard has a new name: Zhao shushu [Uncle Zhao (Zhao = jao, and shu-shu is straight forward). He was a bit standoffish at first, but he’s come around. He gave me a Chinese name, but I can’t remember what it was; it meant enormous knowledge. Very nice of him to do that. Shushu is a good guy. He’s got a little kid at home that cries four times a night, requiring him to get up and go to the room, and he is studying for a Phd and working and giving lectures. I think I understand his cynicism a little more now; he’s just tired.

Laurel landed a teaching gig at the school. It’s on the weekends. He’s a bit nervous. I can’t do it with him because I have the other job. I think he’ll be fine. We both found language partners to work with and learn from. I meet my partner next Monday.

…leisure…

We wujiao everyday. It’s pretty sweet. Random days of going out set to commence now…

….Laurel was still sick and I went to the beer garden by myself. I bought a beer and some baijiu [bye-geo] and sat at a table by myself waiting for people to talk to me. Some Chinese kids came up and asked me why I was sad. They invited me over and told me a phrase which means literally “horse spirits are all like flying clouds.” Figuratively it means “this too shall pass”, basically. There‘s a whole back story about the phrase that I‘m not going to get into right now because, as was stated earlier, I‘m lazy. I drank with the kids until around one and then I went home.

…Some Chinese kids invited us to hotpot which is like Korean barbecue except that the food is cooked in a boiling pot of water. It’s decent. We drank beer and they wanted to play truth or dare (we had a private room). It was the most mild game of T&D ever and involved questions like “How many girls have you kissed?” and dares like “Make sexy with the door.” [This, coupled with the International student party, has led Laurel and me to conclude that Chinese youth are somewhat infantilized or puerile, to use one of Laurel’s new favorite words.]

…Went to a bar with some British girls. Stayed there until eight in the morning. Argued about America quite a bit. [At some point I said that time will vindicate our invasion of the Middle East and I compared it to World War II. I’m going to say that the alcohol made that happen. Jebus H. Christ.] Danced. Made fun of the French.

…Talked to some mid-west folk who were pretty bland. Laurel made a joke about a sequel to The Passion of the Christ. He failed to notice that they were carrying a bible.

…general…

We’re pretty settled in with work and what have you. Since Saturday is has been National Day. National day lasts a week. No school and no work. It will be my last break until the semester ends, so we are soaking up the freedom of sleeping late and drinking copious amounts of booze [The eight in the morning evening was had a night ago].

The water in the dorm smelled funny so we told Zhao shushu and they fixed it. Kind of; it still smells a little strange, but we mostly drink bottled water anyway.

Our internet cut off today. Like the electricity, you have to pay upfront.

Tomorrow we are going to IKEA to buy coffee and heavy sheets (Like winter sheets, which I didn’t know existed. I’m from California.)

I think that’s everything. We often play chess now. Luciano’s playing style can best be described as blitzkrieg. I’ve started watching Chinese movies. Very interesting so far. Laurel’s family friend lent us some books and I’ve read a couple of those. Laurel and I are starting a zine, so we’re tirelessly working on that. We’ve got something else in the works that I’m pretty excited about. Alright. I’m tired. Zaijian [zye ge-in, goodbye].

Laurel and Hardy Week 3

2011-10-18T23:37:00.001-07:00

Wednesday September 8, 2011

Another day, another class, another meal at the Muslim noodle shop. Our tiger mother invited us to a wedding when we first arrived in China. Today was the big day. She sent her niece, Nana, to escort us. Nana is tall and pretty and speaks good English. We met her at the Television and Film building. She wanted to see the dorms, but first, she informed us, we had to buy a special envelope for our gift [Chinese weddings require a minimum cash gift. The gift for this wedding was 200 RMB]. After buying the envelopes, we hiked up the stairs to our rooms. She said my room was dirty [the next morning I cleaned it].

We were told that the wedding was a traditional Chinese wedding, so I was expecting a ceremony in an open space with very specific clothing and maybe fireworks or something. I was a little confused when we pulled up to a hotel. Several of the lower levels of the hotel are designated for events. We entered a banquet room on the third floor that hosts two or three weddings a week. The banquet room had thirty round tables that sit eight people. Each table had a Lazy Susan that had various types of pre-meal food, a botte of baiju, a bottle of wine and other non-alcoholic drinks. Apparently there aren’t any traditional weddings in China. Many people get married by going to a judge. People with money will host an event like the one that we attended.

The ceremony was supposed to begin at six. In what has become a de facto tradition, the ceremony didn’t begin until 6:45. By then I was starting to get annoyed. Then the emcee took the stage. Yes, an emcee, as if we were at a bar mitzvah. The emcee announces the bride and groom who come forward and do some kind of weird, fake western ceremony that involves lighting candles while the emcee yells into the microphone presumably about how beautiful the bride or love or both is. I found this to be extremely annoying, but I was glad it was over. We started eating. The food was terrible. Whenever the meal is “traditional”, it’s terrible. The meat they serve you gets weirder and there is no rice and no noodles to fill your stomach. In the middle of biting into a piece of jellyfish [I have no idea why anybody would choose to eat jellyfish. It tastes like what Quentin Tarantino’s penis looked like in Planet Terror] the emcee starts yelling into the microphone again. Apparently there were more games to be played. These games lasted another two hours. Halfway through the festivities I left to go get fresh air and to relieve myself of some jellyfish. I must have been gone for thirty minutes.

When I returned Laurel was holding a stuffed animal he had won. Two minutes after I sat down they started playing “American Music” [Their idea of American Music, or at least American jazz, is Muzack. I should have mentioned earlier that when the emcee was announcing special guests he announced the three Americans in the crowd. He welcomed us to Nanjing.]. They insisted that we dance. On stage. We weren’t even drunk because we weren’t allowed to open the baiju. But rather than let down a room of 250 people, we went on stage and danced [If we were to make the three Chinese people at an American wedding dance, the UN would have our heads. Well they don’t have any power, but we would be in some kind of trouble.]. Sufficiently humiliated, we sat down. The emcee, however, was not finished. He made Laurel give a name for the newly wedded couple’s baby. Laurel chose the name Rose, very obviously trying to extricate himself from the spotlight. No luck, because five minutes later they requested that one of us sing. Laurel and I tried to pass the buck to one another. He eventually stepped up. I told him to sing “Row, row, row your boat.” It was a smash.

It was pretty much over after that, but I was so worn out from the whole thing that I had to go get more fresh air, not realizing that the wedding was literally ending as I left the room. The whole thing, as I’m writing it, sounds fun and harmless, but it was infuriating and frustrating while it was happening. The only upside was that we were allowed to take home the unopened bottle of baiju. I cracked it open and took a swig every couple of minutes while writing my Chinese characters. Suddenly I could care less about the wedding. And then a fuse blew in my room. Not a huge deal but a little inconvenient. Also the lounge was shut down. Basically someone closed the door and we don’t have a key. It wouldn’t be a big deal, but I was drying my laundry in there. Oy vey.

Thursday September 8, 2011

It turns out that I didn’t blow a fuse in my room, that is how the electricity works. You have to buy it in advance, a minor detail Howard forgot to mention. After class Laurel and I went to the office that Howard sent us to, but they looked at us like we were crazy when we explained that we were there to buy electricity. We returned to the dorm and I ranted and raved about Chinese beauracracy. Eventually Laurel left to run some errands and I took a deep breath and fell asleep. I awoke to a repairman trying to fix the electricity. The people in the office had misunderstood us. They thought there was a physical problem with the electricity. I had to explain for five minutes with various hand gestures that they were wrong.

Friday September 9, 2011

Laurel and I ate lunch inside of an outdoor mall at a coffee shop. Their menu said they had western food which turned out to be a plate with rice and chicken. Soup was served on the side. Chinese soup. Very western. I called Rachel because I didn’t know how close I was to the school. It was inside of the mall, on the third floor. We were introduced to the teachers and then shuffled into a classroom. Five or six teachers acted as my students. What unfolded was five minutes of a grown woman acting like (read: retarded) five year-old. Like full on retarded. I struggled to convey my message. Because they didn’t tell me how old the (pretend) kids were going to be, I made a lesson plan for kids who understood the concept of words. Kids who are old enough to learn. The lesson was how to say “Hello, my name is John. I am from China.” After about five extremely frustrating moments Rachel and her panel critiqued my teaching style. Except most of the critique was about my lesson plan. I was growing angrier and angrier. Eventually we left. She told us that we could come back tomorrow and watch Adam, some fruitcake who works there, teach a demo class to prospective students.

Anyway, four hours and three double glasses of Jameson’s later, I was able to talk again. Laurel and I tried out an American bar that was listed in the expat magazine. It was easily the best western bar we’ve been to so far. They play sports on HDTVs and they have hamburgers, hot dogs and pizza. The name of the place is Jimmy’s, owned by a fella by the name of Jimmy. From Tennessee. He’s been in Nanjing for eleven years. For those keeping track at home, that’s a long time. As we munched down on French fries a little alley cat walked in and sat next to us. I don’t know if cats are good luck in China, but he made me feel better. I left my issues on Jimmy’s table. We called Luciano. Ellen’s bar was the rendezvous spot. Laurel and I arrived first. Ellen’s was packed, not a seat in the house. Luciano arrived in a taxi and we all hopped in and headed to a different part of the city.

[While we were waiting for Luciano, I got a call from a woman, Gloria. Our teacher gave her our number because she’s looking for Americans to voice a cartoon. We are meeting here on Saturday.]

Luciano had a friend with him. Katie is visiting from Beijing. She knows Luciano from Austria, the old country. It makes sense that they’re friends, they’re both very laid back which is a good thing to be when hanging out with two idiots. Luciano took us to a gay bar. We met a guy name Peter immediately. He asked to sit at our table. We never really figured out if he was gay or not. We ordered eight pints of piss-water (2.5% alcohol) and drank through the boredom. The bar was mildly amusing, but we weren’t sure why Luciano brought us there [I don’t know how I feel about going to a gay bar and saying that is was mildly amusing. It seems to smack of bigotry. Or at least some kind of exploitation. To be fair, they later put on a show which was more than mildly amusing.].

And then the show started. At first it was a couple of karaoke singers including a pre-op transvestite [Laurel and I called that she was a man, but Luciano and Katie maintained she was a woman until she stopped singing and spoke. I didn’t have to wait for that, I could tell from the breasts.]. Then two boys got up and danced extremely provocatively. There number lasted a couple minutes. Then it was someone’s birthday. They gave him a cake and made him go to the stage. In standard Chinese form, they yelled into the microphone for ten minutes about the same thing. They spoke in the regional dialect so not even Luciano understood them. That finally ended. The owner of the bar came on stage in a dress, a wig and a terrible make-up job. He was meant to still look like a man. He had drawn lipstick around his lips so that he looked like a clown. He was joined on stage by a more, but not by much, feminine drag queen. She performed a pole dance that was hilarious. She couldn’t jump up high enough to get on the pole so she had to get a stool. Comedy gold. The owner and she started to do shtick, but we were ready for the next bar.

The next bar was castle bar. Very crowded on a Friday night. We ordered a whiskey and a beer and sat down next to a pool table that belonged in a Michel Gondry film. Everything was slightly smaller: the balls, the cues, the table itself, etc. The cue ball was missing so they used the 1-ball, solid yellow. At first glance it looked normal, but once you stared at it for awhile you noticed something was amiss. That’s actually a good microcosm for China. We met a few people in the bar, Luciano’s friends. The girl, Erin, is from South Carolina. She had been in China for five years. Shiraz, her boyfriend, is also a student. We chatted for a bit and then they dispersed. The bar was getting on our nerves so we went upstairs (the bar was downstairs) to buy some baijiu. On a side street, around the corner from the bar, there was a bunch of food carts set up and a few old, rickety tables with rickety benches. There was also a liquor store type thing there. We bought two bottles of baiju, 36% and 56% respectively. We drank and ate and drank and eventually Laurel and I began freestyling. The table next to us took notice, but they said nothing. After an hour of drunken nonsense we returned to the bar in search of McFlurries. There is a McDonald’s right next door to the bar. Laurel ordered a McFlurry, but the manager informed him that it was past the hour for McFlurries.

We went to the curb and reunited with Erin and Shiraz and a few other people from the bar. Laurel and I began making crude jokes. We met a Palestinian who was scared of going to California because of the gays. We began telling him how everyone in California was gay and that we would sodomize him if he ever came to California, as was required by law. [I felt making fun of his homophobia exorcised any demons I had from earlier in the night.] Shiraz had a Native American on his shirt and we made some inappropriate remarks about it. Laurel began spouting nonsense at an unprecedented clip. Everyone was dying of laughter. At some point we got onto the subject of races. The Palestinian guy professed his love for Jews. That was deemed to be too weird. We took a taxi back home and fell asleep.

Saturday, Sunday, Monday September 10 - 12, 2011

I remember volunteering to go get water Saturday morning because Laurel and I were in a bad way. We were sober by the time dinner rolled around. We met Laurel’s family friends at their apartment. We went to dinner at a nearby restaurant. It lasted awhile, and even though we were tired all day long we still called Luciano to see what he was doing. He told us to meet him at the school. Katie was with him when we arrived. The four of us got into a taxi, but before we made it to the first stop sign, we saw an outdoor barbecue and beer drinking event going on across the street. [Laurel and I had met with a woman earlier that day about doing voices for animation and she had mentioned an event like this one. We didn’t know what she was talking about.] We ended up paying for a five second cab ride.

Sunday was another wasted day as far as the morning went. In the evening we celebrated Luciano’s birthday. We met up with him and Katie at a DVD store. This particular DVD store sold tons of art house movies. We geeked out and then headed to a restaurant, one of Luciano’s favorites. Many people we had met were there. There was much drinking and eating; some kind of award winning fish soup was served with rice. We drink bottles of Tsingtao and warm baijiu. Dinner ended and we walked to the always crowded Ellen’s. It was too packed to stay. The group dwindled down to six people. We walked over to a bar near Nanjing University.

The bar was nice enough, a very typical bar for Nanjing: loud music and darkened lights. Like a club and a bar had a baby. We sat around for a long time smoking hooka and bullshitting. I think the weekend was taking a toll on me.

Monday, the day of the moon. I forgot to mention that this whole weekend was a celebration of mid-autumn day [they call it that even though it’s the beginning of fall] when the moon is the biggest it gets all year. Monday can best be described as a “Delicious Chinese Expierence!” I think Laurel and I woke up completely unwilling to eat Chinese food. We were tired of it. We tried to order food online but then we realized that we didn’t know how to say where we lived. So we looked up a route to a local western restaurant, but when we left the dorm we realized we couldn’t make it there. So we went back to the muslim noodle shop.

It was good, as usual, but we’ve been eating the same goddamn thing for two weeks now. After we left, we went to the grocery store to buy western breakfast. You’d be surprised how much happier we are when we get to at least eat cereal for breakfast instead of rice. After shopping Laurel realized he was still hungry, so we went to a dumpling shop. The one, a few weeks ago, where the lady stared at Laurel while he ate. Our plan was to gobble down some dumplings and leave as quickly as we came. We went inside and ordered er liang dumplings. Which is like 10-12 dumplings. What came back was two bowls of transparent noodles in a broth with bladders and kidneys. A common Chinese dish. And we had to eat it. We couldn’t just walk out, it would be rude. I was already full as well. So we sat there for twenty minutes pretending to eat a delicious meal that didn’t make us want to vomit.

We went home and relaxed until it was time for dinner. Our tiger mother invited us to eat with her family to celebrate the moon or whatever. We went to a restaurant on the river. The meal was unequivocally the worst meal I’ve had in China so far. We ate nothing and they kept bringing out dishes that were completely inedible. “Bitter melon”, bean curd sushi, peacock eggs, soup with chicken toes and turnips. Towards the end of the meal they brought out spinach dumplings, thank God, and a turnip cannoli type-thing. Delicious and a saving grace. We finished eating and made tracks back home. Delicious!

Tuesday September 13, 2011

Back to school. Afterwards we had a bunch of paperwork to sort out with Howard. There seems to be a never ending stream of things to do with regards to our residency. Laurel had an appointment at one for acupuncture. One, actually several, of Luciano’s friends studies Chinese medicine. She offered to do acupuncture on both of us, but only Laurel accepted. I brought along the kindle so that I’d have something to read.

She stuck about ten needles into old Laurel, each one causing varying levels of pain, pleasure or sensation. Mostly sensation. At some point a random woman, a friend of the doctor in training, came in and sat with us. I read an e-book, the two women talked and Laurel lay on a ludicrously short bed with needles stuck into his abdomen and legs. A fun time had by all. She kept trying to get me to take treatment. They do something called cupping which somewhat curiously has nothing to do with your testicles. They put hot cups of water on your back and it relieves the stress. I declined, but as I type this, I can feel the cords of my muscles being pulled in my neck. Whatever. Aside from some mild discomfort, Laurel was fine. The doctor stuck a couple things in his ear that he’s supposed to take out tomorrow. Hopefully it’ll work.. We asked for directions to the local market and took off.

Laurel showed interest in a drawing class. Howard offered to let us sit in on one and join if we liked it. The class was completely in Chinese. We sat there for an hour and a half listening and daydreaming and occasionally (like every 15-20 minutes) answering background information about ourselves. He asked me if I played basketball. And then if I sang. And then if I danced. Tomorrow I’m going to do the old soft shoe while juggling mini basketballs. The basketball thing was understandable, I am tall and black. The singing was based off of my pronunciation of the little Chinese I spoke [which had to be complete bullshit because when I asked a girl later on if she spoke English (I asked her in Chinese), she backed away from me in horror. In retrospect this may have had nothing to do with my pronunciation.]. The class mercifully ended. We had to go back to Howard’s office and finish up some business before retiring to the dorm.

Later, as I was making flash cards I received a call from a guy we met at the bar a couple nights ago. He had the drop on a modeling job for Laurel. He asked if he could give my number to a friend of his, a girl. I agreed. She called five minutes later and mentioned that she may need a second model, “so send your pictures along if you think you’re good-looking.” I sent the pictures along anyway. Yes, Laurel and I took the worst pictures of our lives, in our dingy dorm rooms, in the hopes of making some fast money with our good looks. What have we come to?

Wednesday, September 14, 2011

I’ve yet to explain about the sun in China. It hardly exists. Usually the city of Nanjing is cloaked in layers of pollution and clouds that create a type of grimy, overcast quality that is perfect for manic depressives. Coupled with the humidity the effect of the gray sky is exhausting. The last couple days had been cool, as in cool enough to wear pants during the day and not break into disgusting sweating bouts that soak shirts through and sour moods. Today, I kid you not, was the first time Laurel and I had seen the sun since we arrived in China. And the sky was blue. Unfortunately it was hot and the humidity returned, but you can’t always get what you want.

After class we had planned to get our student visas, but we were missing pieces of paperwork [a residency permit that was to be filed within 24 hours of entering the country. (clears throat)] and signatures from Howard. We went to his office after class, but Howard was on his “rest period.” The Chinese have a siesta called wujiao which lasts around three hours, in some cases. It’s pretty much always three hours in Howard’s case. Due to the siesta we couldn’t get the necessary paperwork in order for the visa. We decided to get the residency permit anyway, as that would save us sometime the following day. We arrived at the police station only to find that they too were on wujiao. Upset and sweaty, we went to a coffee shop, running into three people we knew on the way. The coffee shop restored my spirits and when we returned to the police station an hour and a half later, the paper work was already finished.

The importance of getting the paperwork done on time was that we had an audition for an animated television series produced in China. We took an expensive (for China) cab ride to a remote, business-y part of the city. The company we went to does video games and animation all of which require motion graphic technology. The audition was strange in that we were handed three sides (sections of a script) and told to choose only two (which was even weirder because we could choose 1-2 or 2-3, but not 1-3) sides to read. They already had audio recorded for the sides, which they played for me. [We auditioned one at a time. Laurel waited downstairs, on the floor where they produce video games, not that he was allowed to play with anything. He sat practicing Chinese.] I had to read both characters at once, reacting against myself which made it extremely difficult to pace correctly or generate real emotion [Not that I necessarily would have been able to, but reading to myself and the melodramatic script, about a Viking boy who chooses a dragon over his clan, didn’t help.] for the scene. The responses were devoid of abject praise; it was difficult to tell if they were smiling out of politeness, actual pleasure with my reading or because that was an automatic reaction to a foreigner who just willingly acted like a schizoid. I left the room rather dejected. Laurel had much the same experience, but seemed to be more upbeat about the whole thing. We find out in a week.

After dinner we went to the library which is huge. The 2nd-5th levels are substantially longer than the first level and so they protrude out over a Greek amphitheatre [Chinese students were watching a film in the ampitheater tonight. A dubbed, American film. I don’t understand why people watch dubbed films, it’s lazy and it robs the original movie of inherent emotion. What was cool was that it was a film print being played off of a reel projector.] type thing; those levels are supported by cement pillars that makes one pray that he is in Abu Dhabi [the nickname we’ve given the Muslim noodle shop] when/if an earthquake hits. The massive library is brand new, state of the art, and boasts an impressive art book collection in English that will become my new obsession whenever I have free time. Luciano elected to show us his department, calligraphy, so we took a slight detour before heading back to the dorm. Tomorrow I plan to participate in the wujiao. Time to embrace the culture.

Laurel and Hardy Week 2

2011-10-18T23:34:00.000-07:00

This was originally twice as long. I cut it down as best I could, but it was difficult. Also, certain leaps in time may not make sense. Please to ignore.

Wednesday August 31, 2011

After a dinner of steamed dumplings, we walked around the local mall in preparation for our massage, which was to be a gift from our hosts. Apparently a full stomach is not just bad for massage, it is also “unhealthy.” Also making the list of potentially dangerous/unhealthy acts that Laurel and I have committed include, but are not limited to: walking with a pen in our pocket, eating Trix cereal [It should be mentioned that the way in which Trix cereal was shown to be unhealthy was by lighting it on fire thus demonstrating the delicious “trick“ to be full of chemicals. Laurel and I tried to explain that we bought it precisely for those chemicals to no avail.], being negative, drinking cold beverages, laughing too much, and the list continues [not included on the list: smoking every three minutes, driving in a car without seatbelts through a city where lane lines are a suggestion that no one takes seriously, AIDS]. For the last week we’ve had our own personal “tiger mother” which is something like a Jewish mother, an Italian mother and a high school football coach rolled into one.

We made our way out of the mall and into the massage parlor. The last time I got a massage I was in Koreatown in Los Angeles. Different Asians, different continent and a markedly different experience. Laurel warned me that there would be a foot portion of the massage. What he, and I, didn’t know was that the only thing we would be receiving was a foot massage. I snickered at the fact that the massage would be painful but after about two minutes into the process, I suddenly understood why Laurel had described it as “something akin to torture.” Though that is an exaggeration, it actually was very painful. The massage worked, my feet felt better, but I’d almost be more willing to be in a normal amount of pain daily rather than endure forty minutes of Chinese foot massage [Picture two big men, over six feet, squirming every time a tiny Chinese woman “massages“ a different area of their feet. And then picture the Chinese girls laughing at them. And then picture the two men trying to mask their pain by laughing like mental patients.]. Finally the foot massage ended and Laurel and I smoked a victory cigarette. We spent another thirty minutes in the massage room awaiting instructions from our hosts who were enjoying something on CCTV. Eventually it ended and Laurel and I limped back home with our hosts. It had been an eventful day. We said good night and I retired to bed where the bugs fed on me until morning. I currently have over twenty bug bites. It’s good to be popular.

Thursday September 1, 2011

We went to school and met our academic advisor. I’m not really sure if he’s our academic advisor or if he’s simply the guy with the best English skills. He studied abroad in England and I think he adopted their cynicism towards life. It doesn’t help that he’s studying for his PhD. I call him Howard [His name isn’t remotely close to Howard, but I’ve been calling him that this whole time because I think it suits him. So far he hasn’t said anything, but I begin a lot of my sentences like, “So Howard, can we have girls in the dorm room…?”]. We paid Howard a deposit for the room and I remarked that I “didn’t want to see him out at the bars with that.” He laughed in the way that implied that he knew it was a joke but that he was also systematically incapable of feeling humor. After paying Howard we went and got a voucher from the administration office that we had to keep and show him the next day. Instead of updating the computer system with our information. China is big on this voucher system. Alas.

Soon enough we were all paid up and ready to schlep our luggage up the six flights of stairs. I immediately began setting my room up. It is intended for two international students or four domestic students but it is smaller than a normal one bedroom. Or even a normal studio. Nevertheless I was really excited to be moved in.

We left for dinner. If you walk out of our building and turn right you exit the university from the “West door” [I’m not really sure that they call it door on purpose because it is a road, but I didn’t care enough to clarify it in conversation.]. That side of the university is all street food with a certain kind of peasant charm: cracked sidewalks, shirtless men and cats playing in puddles. We walked up and down the sidewalk a little leery of the choices and a little to hungry, lazy and thirsty to walk the five to ten minutes to the East door. We settled on an Americanized fast food establishment. It was about the size of a small kitchen and there was seating for maybe five or six people. On the walls were various nonsensical posters including a Crab poster from SpongeBob that did not inspire confidence in the food. In the corner a lady did needlework. Behind the counter a man watched an American movie. Laurel and I ordered our chicken and sat down. Of course they were very nice and when I asked to smoke after my meal the answer was a non-verbal “of course.” The food was alright. I accidentally ordered fried fish which is something you should probably avoid in a foreign country.

Heading back to the dorm we tried to smoke as much as possible so as not to have to climb down the six flights of stairs or smoke out of our window, which is banned. As luck would have it we ended up climbing the stairs behind ten or so giggling Chinese girls. Laurel said hello in Chinese and they asked us where we were from. When Laurel said America they all, in unison, said “ooooh” in the same way that the green aliens in Toy Story did when the claw appeared. They live on the same floor as us but we are separated by a hallway (boys side, girls side). Laurel and I waved good-bye and burst into our side of the dorm laughing.

Friday September 2, 2011

I was laying down, fully clothed, staring at the wall, when I see Howard scuttle into the room with four strangers. He introduced the first two as our dorm-mates and the latter two were here about a job opportunity. I shook hands with them, but they only seemed interested in Laurel so I went to lay down again. A few minutes later Laurel asked if I was interested in acting in a video. Apparently they needed Americans for a promotional business video that was debuting at the Shanghai Expo, a huge technological event. Laurel and I agreed to the terms, 500 RMB for an hour’s work. We were then chauffeured to an area of the city that is roughly twenty minutes away from our school. The driver pulled into a business park. We took an elevator to the third floor of an office building and then we ushered into a waiting room while the crew dressed the set. Laurel and I couldn’t believe it; twenty minutes ago we were in our rooms thinking about jobs or school or whatever and now we were doing our best Bill Murray impersonations. We smoked a couple cigarettes and drank a couple glasses of boiling hot water and then they were ready for us.

The scene was really simple: Laurel, Ian (the gentleman who came to pick us up) and I were going to be discussing business and gesturing strategically. I was the boss, standing, perched over my underlings. During the scene, which didn’t require sound, we simply improved, saying anything that came to our heads. Ian, who is Chinese but studied in the UK, kept up for the most part, but occasionally he thought Laurel and I were serious. I think at one point the really thought I wanted a cow. Topics ranged from vegetables, penises, peanut butter, the iphone 5 (or, potentially, the iphone 4S) and occasionally business. The company, and Ian who is an engineer, have designed a remote that doesn’t require batteries; the clicking of the switch on the remote generates enough energy to send a radio signal to the device. They also have an app for iphones and droids that allows someone to control lights, radios, televisions and other devices in their home. The service can be installed on the internet. Ian explained all of this, plus he told me where I could get a glass of whiskey in Nanjing, during our scene.

We were tired and we needed to gather our strength because we had sworn to each other that we would go out that night. We hadn’t been out properly since our first night in Nanjing. After about an hour’s rest we walked across campus to the East side and picked the place that looked the cleanest. Of course the menu was completely in Chinese and no one spoke English so we had to point at what other people were eating. We ordered beers as well. One of the cooks mocked us for being American, saying in a thick Chinese accent “Thank you very much please.” I told him to go fuck himself but I don’t think it registered. When the beer came we found out why we hadn’t been able to get drunk from it. It was only three percent alcohol. Luckily I brought my flask along. After the meal we hailed a taxi and killed the contents of the flask before arriving at our destination, an Irish pub aptly named Finnegan’s Wake.

The pub offers steak and burger nights, fifty types of whiskey and beers on tap and by the bottle. It’s the only bar in Nanjing so far as we could tell. Everything else was night clubs or restaurants. We had explained to our tiger mother and her friend a couple nights before this that the concept of the American bar was a simple formula. It did not require a dance floor or music or even ambience. If you simply have a room with liquor in it, Americans will drink. God bless us. So anyway this place was a nice for those reasons, but it wasn’t the kind of fun we were looking for on Friday night. So after a shot and a beer each we taxied over to a “westernized” area that has western-style restaurants and night clubs. On the ride over Laurel and I freestyled for about twenty minutes, back and forth. I don’t think the driver understood anything, but it couldn’t have been fun for him.

We hopped around from club to club for a couple hours getting progressively drunker. We saw people from Turkey and Canada and other places and tried to talk to them, but nothing stuck. Every place was too loud to have conversation. No girls would talk to us for longer than the time it took to say “ni hao.” It was frustrating. The last place we went to had dancing so we got drunk and danced for a while. I tried dancing with one girl but a bald Chinese guy kept cutting in; eventually she left and he danced next to me and kept talking to me as if I could understand a word he was saying. I would yell a response back of whatever nonsense I could think of and then smile. As we were leaving the bar Laurel took a spill and cut his hand. It was a nick, but there was a decent amount of blood. We found a bathroom and then after about ten minutes of deliberation, that included not being able to order whiskey, we decided to head back.

I think we both fell asleep in the taxi. When we got to the dorm we couldn’t open the front door. Eventually the attendant woke up and opened it for us. We thanked her and apologized [we later found out that it’s her job to wake up and open the door for us. What a shitty job.] even though she couldn’t understand us and headed up the six flights to our rooms. When we got there we couldn’t open the door to get to our rooms. The same thing happened the night before but we eventually figured out. Not this night. I kept fooling with it and then Laurel asked to do it. He wanted to go get the lady from downstairs, but I didn’t want to wake her up and make her climb six flights for a couple of drunken assholes. We starting yelling at each other. We had both taken off our shirts because after the climb up the stairs we were hot and tired and sweating. Finally the door opens, without my key, and it’s our dorm-mate, the one we met earlier for all of ten seconds, the one whose name I didn’t even know. We walked in, sweating, half-dressed and angry and tried to thank him, but he’s wasn’t American or Chinese. It didn’t matter. I made a bee line for my room, cut out every light in my room and fell asleep without any trouble like only a drunk person can.

Saturday September 3, 2011

As I knocked on his door, a new student was arriving. The new student introduced himself as Luciano and it turned out that Laurel had met him on the previous trip. Luciano is half-Austrian, half-Venezuelan. He speaks Mandarin and came to China after earning a law degree in Austria. He spent the last 8 months living in a village with peasants. He is one of those people who are preoccupied with living life, everything else (money) is banal. Laurel and Luciano did some catching up and then he invited us to a concert. We, in turn, invited John [we gave Roger a choice of American names and he, to our dismay, chose John]. Luciano’s ability to speak Mandarin bridged the gap between John and me.

The concert was classical music perform by University students. It was good and very stimulating. I felt like it would have been appropriate to have a notepad and write down everything I was thinking, but I didn’t want to be weird(er). Laurel mentioned that he doesn’t think that the conductor does much and I wondered how many times that observation has been made. I think the whole world is doubtful of the necessity of the conductor.

After dinner we went to a Chinese-Muslim noodle shop. Dumb American that I am, I didn’t even know that China had Muslims. According to Luciano they’ve been here for centuries after Islam was spread via the silk trade. The food was the best food I’ve had in China so far. Later when I was chatting with a friend online I mentioned that there were Muslims in China. She, having been to China, immediately blurted out, “I love Chinese-Musilim noodle shops!” Apparently many Westerners prefer their food because it isn’t as greasy and it feels cleaner. I can concur with that. There are two other nice things about the Muslims in China: 1)The place isn’t crowded because most Chinese do not like them. And 2) They are not overly humble so as to make you feel guilty. Whenever you eat at a Chinese restaurant they serve you as if, at any moment, you may smack them for insubordiantion and then light the table on fire. The Muslims treat you like you’ve entered a restaurant, nothing more, nothing less.

Once back home we watched a few episodes of The Wire. Later, I spoke with a few friends on Skype. Around 3 in the morning I drank my first Chinese red bull which was non-carbonated and apparently contained less caffeine than American red bull. I had to stay up until 4 when my fantasy football draft was starting. It went well, but I’m still in need of a bar that will allow me to watch American football. Of course the big problem is that the games will be on at one and four in the morning. I’ll have to make do somehow.

Sunday and Monday September 4th and 5th, 2011

Ellen’s bar resembles an American restaurant. The smoking indoors and full bar is what makes it in expat locale in Nanjing. They also offer hooka. We ordered a round of drinks and waited for Luciano’s friend. As always the flask was with me and I passed it around the table. Eventually Halla showed up; she is a Syrian studying Chinese medicine. She wants to join an international medicine group when she graduates. She sat down and we ordered a hooka and conversations began. Mauritius [The girl we invited from the dorms has a complicated name that only Luciano remembered. From here on out she will be known by her homeland’s name and the abbreviation Mar-Mar.] was hell bent on going to 1912 (clubbing), but nobody else was remotely interested in going. She told me that she didn’t want to go alone because she had hooked up with a guy the night previous who was going to be there tonight and he wanted to [and then she made a grunting noise and a weird hand motion.]. Eventually she left the bar and went to 1912.

On the cab ride home Rob and I freestyled and Luciano laughed the entire way.

Monday morning was our first Mandarin class. There are four students. Laurel and I, Mar-Mar and an old Japanese man. At least we think he’s Japanese. Mandarin has four different tones that must be mastered to speak the language. As far as foreign language goes, I’m usually pretty good at reading, writing and listening, but I have trouble speaking it. Such was the case on Monday morning. I forgot how boring and monotonous class could be. I was frustrated and annoyed, but eventually I began to get excited about learning something new. Our teacher is young and nice and speaks good English. She speaks in Mandarin about ninety percent of the time. Mar-Mar looked near her deathbed this morning. The Japanese guy is a little lost, but I think it has to do with age. It’s difficult to be in an academic setting when you’ve gone through so much life.

Tuesday September 6, 2011

Today we had to get a health check. We were instructed not to eat because of the tests. I threw down some coffee on an empty stomach, something that I regretted as I trotted down the stairs in search of Howard. The rest of the foreign students, most of whom are foreign, accompanied us to a bus. A bag full of croissants and lactose-free milk were passed out as the bus was in transit and we were explicitly warned to save them for after the health check. Ten minutes into the trip Laurel passed out. Five minutes later, I noticed the bus hadn’t moved. We were holding up traffic and as far as I could tell there was no reason for it. I waited awhile before I decided to wake Laurel. Soon we were shuffled off of the bus. Apparently the driver had chosen a street that had been narrowed due to construction and there was no way the bus could make it the rest of the way. As we walked down the street towards the health offices, we saw the driver exit the bus and break into a dead sprint. I’m no sure why.

After a series of forms we went upstairs and underwent a series of tests. We got the most worrisome out of the way early: the blood test. Laurel and I share a healthy fear of needles and of the kind of diseases detected in the blood. Luckily we only have to wait an excruciatingly long four days before the results. Yay! I hate hospitals. The worst part is that had we known, we could have done the test in the states. Not that we would have hated it any less, but there’s something about people grunting at you while running medical test that does not sit well with your person. I know I’m in a foreign country, but this hospital’s sole purpose is to conduct tests for foreigners. Shouldn’t someone speak English? Or if not English, some other language: French, Spanish, etc. Instead we had grumpy Chinese people barking orders at us in a language that none of us understood. The only upside was that I got to take some tests I would never normally take and it will be nice to know that I have a clean bill of health. Fingers crossed.

Laurel and I grabbed lunch at the Muslim Chinese restaurant. On Tuesdays the word for dumpling [Laurel asked the teacher what the word for dumpling was yesterday. He did it repeatedly and sometimes in the middle of an exercise that was completely unrelated.] changes to something that no one has ever heard before. After much confusion, we found a picture on the door and reverted to order by pointing.

Later in the day I played basketball for the first time in China. Uneventful. I forgot to mention yesterday that John has left us. We’re pretty sure that he wanted to be on a lower floor, but he it’s possible that he didn’t like us. We’ll never know because he hardly talked, or did much of anything else. We successfully converted his room into our entertainment lounge with the help of a few extra mattresses. We will be screening films in there from now on.

Laurel and Hardy Week 1

2011-10-18T23:31:00.000-07:00

It’s hard to believe it has already been a week. I’m sure by now most of you have forgotten who I am. As you should. I do remember a few people who requested updates from the Orient, however, so this blog will have to do the trick since my normal blogspot (chewingbones.blogspot.com) is unavailable. As is twitter. And the good old facebook. But I digress.

We arrived in Nanjing after twenty-odd hours of traveling. We were greeted by a couple family friends of Laurel (Robert Sobel, the thin man to my stocky Hardy) and driven to their apartment in Nanjing. After settling in we went to a traditional Chinese dinner. Traditional Chinese dinners consist of a large round table with a Lazy Susan in the middle which rotates plates of Chinese cuisine around the table for all to share. Most of the food is steamed or sauteed in a light, non-greasy cooking oil. Dumplings, various meets, vegetables, savory soups and seafood (with the head and eyes in tact) make up a vast majority of the food. Chinese shrimp retains the crunchy shell and the eyes. I didn’t even know shrimp had eyes. Several officials, of varying importance, involved in many industries attended the private diner and we drank baijiu or “white lightning” which is a traditional Chinese liquor. It has a little kick, but it is very light and does not cause hangovers. No matter how much of it you drink. And everyone drank a lot. At some point one of the gentlemen there gave me an impromptu karate demonstration; he instructed me to hold my chopsticks with both hands and then he karate chopped them in half. It was like being in America: everyone was drunk and there were displays of physical strength and affection that made one feel uncomfortable. Due to jet lag Laurel and I were a little less than 100%, but we managed to hang in there until the bitter end.

I don’t remember the second day. All I know is that for the first three days in a row I woke up at four AM and barely made it to the bathroom without peeing on myself. I’m sure jet lag was a factor, but I think it might just be the climate. China is unbelievably humid. It’s like walking into a sauna. In the middle of a rain forest. In hell. It has started to cool off a little bit, which is good because the Chinese do not like to drink cold beverages. You can get cold soda and water and sports drinks at the super market, but at restaurants the first thing served to you is a glass of steaming hot water. Delicious! The cuisine and beverages take getting used to, but I think it’s a good experience. I’m trying not to succumb to the Western outlets they have in the city because 1) they are disgusting (KFC, McDonalds) and 2) I’m in China, I should soak it up.

On day three, or maybe day two, we went to Nanjing University of the Arts. We met with an administrator who was happy to be receiving two strapping, young Americans into his institution. We were then shown our dorm room which is on the sixth floor. No elevators. Two unhealthy, smoking, American slobs residing on the top floor of a dorm. With any luck will make it up the stairs daily without cardiac arrest.

The next day Laurel and I went back to school shopping at the Chinese equivalent of Wal-Mart: Carrefour. Or maybe it’s the French equivalent. Either way it is popular here in Nanjing, which also has Wal-Mart. We bought all of the essentials and then we made our way to a pool hall in the business distrcit where we drank beer and smoked cigarettes until our little hearts were contented. Obviously smoking indoors has been one of the highlights of the trip. According to our guide, the policy is to smoke wherever you like until someone asks you to put it out. So far nobody has asked us to put it out.

For the last two days we have been staying in North Nanjing, a former village that is currently a burgeoning consumer area. We drove here. Don’t drive in China. Just hop in a taxi and close your eyes. The closest American equivalent is when we have those mega-after-holiday sales and ten different people are trampled to death because they had to have Fred Claus at the bargain price of $5. That’s what Chinese traffic is like all the time, but for some reason there never seems to be any accidents. It’s really impressive and terrifying.

Today we move into our room on the sixth floor and Monday we start class. Apparently we are going to get to teach English at the University and we might be allowed to give a couple lectures on Hollywood film. I’m pretty excited about that.

I’m excited to get out of our friends’ hair and start to explore the city on my own, with Laurel. Should be pretty fun. Alright, that’s all for now. See you kids next week.

Hardy

P.S. Stay tuned for pictures and other shit

P.P.S. Email at bobbywwilsonjr@gmail.com or skype me at chewingbones

Funemployment: The End of an Era

2010-11-11T10:25:00.000-08:00

Employed at last, employed at last, thank God almighty I’m employed at last. It has been a fun year and change of wandering around with barely enough money to buy cigarettes and coffee, eating whatever was leftover in the refrigerator and being a general drain on my sisters, friends and the economy, but the end is here. Last week I received gainful employment from a restaurant in Santa Monica. To quote the shrewd George Costanza, “Sometimes the Gods smile on you my friends.” Now that it’s over, I’d like to recount some of the “highlights” of the last year including the tumultuous beginning of my unemployment, so without further ado…

September 2009

A few weeks ago a friend sent me a text reminding me that it was our anniversary and since he has a girlfriend and neither of us is gay, I was completely confused. Maybe on some level I’ve subconsciously blocked the event from my memory causing irreparable damage that will come out when I yell at my son for not lacing his shoes up correctly, but I like to think that I was not all that affected by it. The anniversary was commemorating the year that had passed since we were robbed at gunpoint. When I saw this friend later that week he asked if I had ever written anything about that event. I hadn’t, which is why I felt that I ought to put it into writing now and what better time is there than now when I’m recounting my unemployment especially since this robbery was the launching pad.

It was 9:59 pm and our shop closed at 10. I worked up front and my friend in the back of the store. We had been there for 12 hours already and had started packing up early so as to get home as quickly as possible as it took both of us an hour to get to our respective homes. The buzzer rang on the front door and I asked my friend, the proprietor, if we should take the customer. As badly as we wanted to go home, we also wanted to see the business grow, and that meant not turning anyone away. I went up front to see if it was a returning customer.

I went to the front door, careful to close the door that separated the front of the shop and the back of the shop from each other. I unlocked the door, and not recognizing the customer or his girlfriend, told him that we were closed. Resilient, he flashed his recommendation and told me that he had been there before. I went back to my friend and told him the story and we agreed to let him in. Back up front I unlocked the door, held it open for the couple letting them walk past me, and relocked the door with my back turned. The customer was remarking about how ridiculous it was that I did not remember him; as he said this I turned around and he casually reached for the gun in the back of his jeans and pointed it at me.

I cannot tell you the number of day dreams and (night?) dreams I’ve had, and still have, in which I thwart a bank robbery or come home to discover my house ransacked with the thief in it or seek revenge on a criminal after he has brutalized a friend or family member. A byproduct of endless hours of Charles Bronson, Chuck Norris, Van Damme, Segal, Eastwood, etc. Thanks Dad. There is nothing, however, like the real thing. As soon as the gun was pulled my hands shot up as if they were spring-loaded. I did manage to keep my calm partially because the assailant presented himself as LAPD, even flashing a phony badge, and partially because I half expected this kind of thing to happen at the place where I was working. In fact in the preceding weeks, my friend and I had heard about a robbery at other stores in the area, on average, once or twice a week. As he frisked me against the wall, his girlfriend fumbled through the key set, trying to figure out which would open the door and I kept a steady conversation with both of them explaining that my friend was in the back of the store with a regular customer and would they please be careful when they went back there so as not to startle them. The boyfriend asked me to unlock the door but as I walked towards the door, his girlfriend suddenly found the proper key and I was jerked back against the wall. Thirty seconds later I was on the ground, zip-tied with my hands behind my back. Three other men rushed into the shop in ski masks and guns and headed to the back of the shop. Lying face down on the floor I suddenly realized that these were not cops and that I might die.

All I could think of while on the floor was that they were going to execute the two men in the back of the shop and then they were going to come put a bullet in the back of my head. It was not a rational thought, as the thieves had been a pretty cordial bunch, as thieves go, and my cooperation seemed to preclude anything violent happening. My thought cycle was broken when I heard the voice of the co-owner pulling up. I yelled at him to stay away and a few minutes later I heard his car drive off. A minute after that the thieves were gone. The whole thing lasted under ten minutes. I busted out of my zip tie and five minutes later the cops were there as was the co-owner. He had driven away and called the police.

Telling, and retelling to a seemingly endless amount of people, the police our story took around 4-5 hours, not to mention that the thieves inadvertently stole my friend’s keys so that we were stranded and had to be picked up by his girlfriend. At around 3 in the morning, police finally gone, I rolled a joint and we smoked and relaxed at the shop. Almost immediately after the ordeal I had been making jokes, but the joint suddenly launched me into a sudden and serious introspective mindset. I realized that I could have died. I told my friend and the co-owner right then and there that I quit. That was the beginning.

October 2009 - June 2010

He's also pretty good at picking up jobs

Most of this time was spent writing, traveling to and from Orange County, applying for jobs and trying to stave off depression. It’s unbelievable how much our self-worth goes up when we get a job because we feel productive and, conversely, how much it goes down when we can’t seem to get hired. Jobs function the same way girls do, at least they do for me because I happen to not have much luck with either. When you get a girlfriend, you feel confident and reassured because you know that you were capable of getting said girl and you know that she is there to listen to you kvetch about whatever petty crap happened to you at school, work, etc. When you go out, you have a natural indifference to other women because you don’t want or need them, and of course this makes you more attractive. It numbers in the millions: guys and gals who find that they get more attention from the opposite sex when they are in a relationship (and this is whether or not the opposite sex is certain about relationship status, this is a sixth sense type-of-thing that has some evolutionary explanation). The same applies to a job. It’s like the interviewer can sense your desperation and they know that you don’t believe that you deserve the job, so why should they? You can’t sell something unless you believe in the product (And if the product is a lie? Again, the great George Costanza, “It’s not a lie if you believe it.”), so the cheesy, bland moral of the story is to believe in yourself, but how do you do that?

June 2010 - October 2010

Another friend of mine hooked me up with a job at a summer camp he used to attend as a child. I needed the money and it was on the East Coast, somewhere I had never been. I’ve recounted my trip to the East via the Greyhound bus in an earlier post, but I never talked about my experience at the camp. Let’s forget about how great the people there are, the kids and my fellow counselors and the directors. Let’s forget about the beautiful scenery and the change of pace and not seeing billboards literally the moment I step foot outside. Let’s focus instead on one word: routine. In the life of a creative person this might be the most important word to learn. I had spent the previous 8 months with no clear routine; I wrote every day, but I woke up sporadically and in different places all the time. No discipline and no focus. At camp, however, I was forced to wake up everyday at 7:30 AM and I had something to do until 8 or 9 at night. I started playing basketball again (I had forgotten about something that I literally devoted about 8 years of my life to) and I started feeling the need to get up and get moving. By the end of summer I was motivated and I honestly felt better than I had felt since before college. When I got back to Los Angeles after some light traveling, I swore that I would keep myself active. I got an internship and then a little gig writing a blog for some scrill and then some tutoring jobs and by the end of September, I had a little scratch and a growing amount of confidence and the desire to do more.

And now it’s November and I’m finally employed. I went to two interviews last week, both for restaurants. The second place was this awful and trendy sushi bar in downtown Santa Monica that would have pissed me off consistently and that I am so thankful for not getting. The other was the restaurant I am working at now. I’m keeping the internship and the other side gigs, and I’m pretty excited to stay really busy and be forced to find time to write rather than wasting the day and writing after vegetating on the couch for hours at a time.

Now I know it’s just a restaurant job, one of thousands in the city of Los Angeles, but I could not be happier. My two goals when I moved here were to make some money (like enough to live off of, not enough to buy the bar out) and to write. I’ve accomplished that much and now I can concentrate on goal number three: get paid to write. I’ll work on that one, but in the meantime, I’m going to sing that new, employment spiritual (what with the economy and all unemployment is the new black): employed at last, employed at last, thank God all mighty I’m employed at last.

Top 10 Pros and Cons: Rocking the Vote

2010-11-03T19:03:00.000-07:00

Now, I realize last year you folks had another one of those really swell presidential elections you treasure so much. That was nice. I'm sure you had a good time, and I'm sure that everyone's life has now improved. But I'm happy to say that on Election Day I stayed home. And I did essentially what you did. The only difference is when I got finished jerking off I had something to show for it. -George Carlin

By George! My hero. I stayed home again this election at the behest of friends, family members and the rest of those fearless souls, who missed work, to fight for their country by picking one out of two slime balls. Alright, that’s harsh, so lets take a fair and balanced (ha!) look at the positives and negatives of voting because unlike politicians and the people who elect them in our great country, I can see both sides of the issue.

Pro 1: Social change

Grassroots political movement? Yeah right, I have an Xbox 360. Volunteering time to help your party (political party, not the Friday night ritual)? Did I mention that my 360 hooks up to the internet? We, as a nation, affect social change by voting. For the most part this is complete nonsense. The truth is we vote out of a desire to be comfortable, siding with whichever side makes your life more comfortable. In fact, voting is the last, and easiest, leg in this process: a group is being treated unfairly, they raise the issue to national attention (because honestly there is only so much states can do) and then a politician who is “invested” in said issue agrees to fight for it. And I’m sure he or she is not thinking of the thousands of loyal voters they’ve won over by pledging to their cause, I‘m sure they are completely virtuous. On the other hand, ends justify the means and who cares how badly a politician sucks as long as he/she is willing to pass some decent legislation before they rot from the onslaught of favors thrown to them by interest groups via big business and religious radicals, right? I guess, but it seems a little depressing, no?

Con 1: Double Sided Coin

And in the end, you’ve got the same person in charge every time because that person is a politician. Whether they are white (most of them) or black (O-bombs) or catholic (JFK) or poorly educated (Andrew Jackson) is inconsequential, they were bought and sold like the rest of them. They all love war and imperialism (America has had a military presence in a foreign country for the last 100 years), they all have favors to pay to the people who got them elected and to a certain extent their hands are tied. Had I voted for a president in 2008 I would have voted for Obama, but what difference would it make? My life is essentially the exact same as it was under Bush because neither man is able to overcome the gigantic machine they have taken part in perpetuating. At the end of the day someone will occupy the executive office or governor’s chair or senator’s seat, make a few changes to piss off the other side and not be able to do anything to radical because that’s the way the system is set up.

Pro 2: Hard earned right

This is a super guilt-inducing point. It has not always been easy for people to vote in this country or for most places in the world. Men and women fought long and hard to be able to walk up to a box and drop a piece of paper into it. This summer I got into an argument with an Australian who was trying to tell me that for someone like me, an African-American, it was paramount that I vote not only because of my debt to my ancestry but also because I was more well informed than most African-Americans. I’ve managed, while seething with anger, to recount exactly what I found wrong with this statement and others like it. First of all, if African-Americans are disillusioned or un/misinformed it’s because they’ve seen voting not work for them and politicians who they vote into office not work for them. The black vote, like the immigrant voters of the 20s, is important for politicians to secure because it means numbers and that’s all. You’ll notice that once Obama was sworn in the Congressional Black Caucus complained that he didn‘t pay attention to them or the black community at large. I don’t think Obama is a race hater or a liar even, but because a president has all kinds of things to do and people to appease he has to pick and choose the ones that will keep him in office. Where do the blacks fit in? Latinos? Homosexuals? Women? The point is this, I appreciate like hell the people that fought for me before I was on this earth and I believe they were fighting for my overall equality. I am now an equal and as such I respectfully decline to vote and have the freedom to express why whenever I want wherever I want. That’s America.

Con 2: Inevitability

I also respect those who choose to vote, though I don’t see the point. Had I voted in 2008 Obama still would have been president, had I voted in the last election Jerry Brown still would have won. I live in California, most of the time, like 90%, we are going to vote liberal. My vote does not matter. Not to mention that for the last twenty years we’ve been electing democrat/republican/democrat/republican. The country gets fed up after 4 or 8 years and decides that the other guys do it better and they switch over and that party undoes, to the best of their ability, whatever the previous party did. It’s a ridiculous cycle and it’s kept alive by money and power. Occasionally social change is thrown into the mix because it’s a good way to get people to vote. That’s why the Tea Party works and why moderate and money-loving Republicans don’t like them. Coastal Republicans, as I call them, know what it’s about and they don’t want a bunch of radicals coming in and going all overboard, but that doesn’t mean they hate them altogether because there is no such thing as bad publicity. There are people who register with their party and will stay with that party for most of their lives and then there are people who get swayed by a movement, whichever movement that is starting up in opposition of the current status quo. The Obama Hope campaign is the Tea Party. Get people riled up, get them to vote and then make sure they shut up once you’re in power.

Pro 3: Self-esteem

This is not meant to be a complete dig, but the fact is that doing your civic duty makes you feel good, makes you feel like a productive citizen. I understand that, but there are literally thousands of ways for you to contribute to society. I like to think I do things to make myself a somewhat valuable member of this world and I don’t think voting is the only way to achieve that.

Con 3: Stagnation

You can’t make everyone happy therefore the solution is for no one to be happy. I was listening to NPR today and they were talking about the likelihood of ObamaCare (which is a term I really don’t like) being repealed now that Republicans have seized the house. The report said that there would probably be some repeals as far as certain provisions go, but there were other things that Republicans would like about the bill once they got to read it. What a load of crap. Let’s look at this step by step:

1. A gigantic bill, that no one ever really understood gets passed.

2. Apparently people still haven’t read the thing because it’s packed with so much partisan crap to appease both sides that it’s not even worth it not to mention that it won’t be implemented until after the Mayan apocalypse.

3. Clearly the democratic lawmakers knew that only 50%, or whatever arbitrary number, would actually make it through so they stuffed the bill with all kinds of things the way one makes stew out of random vegetables found in the fridge.

4. People cheer on both sides: a victory for it passing and a victory for not letting them get everything they want!

And that’s how things get done in America. We pass monumental legislation that we don’t know the full scope of and that won’t be implemented for several years.

Pro 4: Legitimate excuse for missing work

Enough said here. Blood drives, funerals, weddings, doctor appointments, dentist appointments and election day. It’s a short list.

Con 4: Social pariah

All my liberal friends get mad at me every time election day rolls around. Sorry guys, but it’s pointless and now you’ve driven me to write about it.

Pro 5: Propositions

Alright, I do feel bad about these and I actually don’t have an argument or good reason to say that I don’t vote for these except that I don’t vote for anything else. I felt bad when the Prop 8 didn’t pass and I felt bad, I guess, about Prop 19. I don’t know, that’s a tough one.

Con 5: I’m absolved!

Second, I don't vote, because I firmly believe that if you vote, you have no right to complain. I know some people like to twist that around and say, "If you don't vote, you have no right to complain." But where's the logic in that? Think it through: If you vote, and you elect dishonest, incompetent politicians, and you screw things up, then you're responsible for what they've done. You voted them in. You caused the problem. You have no right to complain.

I, on the other hand, who did not vote—who, in fact, did not even leave the house on Election Day—am in no way responsible for what these politicians have done and have every right to complain about the mess you created. Which I had nothing to do with. Why can't people see that? -George Carlin

On this I must agree with George. I don’t vote therefore I’m not responsible for the people in office. I’m not one of those democrats, and there are tons of you, who jumped off the Obama bandwagon after about 6 months. I was the person saying, he’s still a politician, he’s not Jesus. Alas.

And the final tally is…to not vote. I said after the last election that if Obama proved me wrong I would show up to the polls because if anyone was going to restore my faith in politics…and now it is a giant suck fest. Luckily there are other ways to help the world. Someone should definitely do some of those, whatever they are…

Back in the Game!

2010-10-06T19:00:00.000-07:00

After months of what have you, I have returned to the blogging world. Below you will see, if you actually look, a new post. You will also notice, if you've ever been to this site before, that I have changed the layout. Finally, you should follow this blog because it'll please me in exactly the way you're thinking...That way it's on you if the thought is perverted. Enjoy!

Hope you got yourself a gun!

2010-10-06T18:43:00.000-07:00

Time stands still for no man. The times they are a changing. Go ahead on Mr. Business man, you can't dress like me. And so on. What am I talking about? This:

http://www.aolnews.com/weird-news/article/police-kenneth-bonds-shoots-teen-in-butt-because-of-baggy-pants/19661112

Really? It seems downright outrageous that anybody could possibly be this stupid. And yet…

Sagging has been a problem for a little over twenty years now. It seems to have started in prison where belts are prohibited to cut down on suicides, though that sounds like a PC-rehashing of the truth. Belts are probably prohibited to give inmates one less weapon against each other and prison guards. But I digress. Sagging is something that most males from my generation did. Starting in about sixth grade, I would wait until my parents rounded the corner, after dropping me off at school, and then I would pull my shorts down to an appropriate height. It was not a big deal and once I became older and wiser I stopped doing it. Isn’t that where it should end? It’s a youthful phenomenon like MTV and Justin Beiber and those who continue to subscribe to these fads will be outcast from acceptable society through natural selection. Either pull your pants up or you won’t get a job, a wife, kids, etc….Or we can shoot them.

Everyone probably remembers that Sunscreen song by Baz Luhrrman, right? If not check it out below. At some point during the song, towards the end, he says, “…you too will get old, and when you do you'll fantasize that when you were young prices were reasonable, politicians were noble and children respected their elders.” How come people can’t get this into their heads? You were once a young person doing something stupid, let everyone else be young and stupid for a while, it’s not a crime. And it’s not like it’s a new concept; there is a countless number of writers, artists and philosophers who have pointed out that each generation is merely repeating the previous generation with slight variation.

You also have to wonder what the man hoped to accomplish. The man felt the boys disrespected him. He told them to pull up their pants and they cursed at him (I would have done the same at their age). If my understanding of the dangers of sagging are clear the problem with it is that it leads to amoral behavior in the same way that not addressing your elders with respect leads to AIDS and crack cocaine. In order to save these young men from the slippery slope they were traveling down, one that leads to violence and a life of thuggery, he shoots one of them in the ass (where else?). How’s that for promoting a moral and ethical life? The article said he shot multiple shots, which means he wasn’t merely trying to strike some fear into them, he wanted to make sure they felt it. “I’m worried about your lifestyle so I’m going to shoot you.” I guess that makes sense. It’s a good lesson as well: if someone isn’t listening, go get a gun. They’ll listen after that, as long as you don’t aim too high.

This is the first image when you search "america guns" on google

The man was charged with two counts of aggravated assault. I’m assuming that if he’s convicted he’ll receive jail time. I’m also assuming (if there is a God) that he’ll receive worse things than a bullet in his ass. Sweet sweet poetic justice.

From Here to Eternity...

2010-06-20T21:33:00.000-07:00

Main Entry: grey·hound

Pronunciation: \ˈgrā-ˌhau̇nd\

Function: noun

Etymology: Middle English grehound, from Old English grīghund, from grīg- (akin to Old Norse grey bitch) + hund hound

Date: before 12th century

: any of a breed of tall slender graceful smooth-coated dogs characterized by swiftness and keen sight and used for coursing game and racing; also : any of several related dogs — compare

Greyhound Lines, Inc. was founded in 1914 and perhaps at that moment in time their was still justification for the company adopting the name of the graceful, majestic beasts that are greyhounds. Much has changed in a century and the comfort that one may have experienced on the greyhound even as soon as 25 years ago has all but evaporated. I recently finished a cross-country trip, literally from Los Angeles to Waterville, Maine, via Greyhound buses. In fairness, some of the problems were my fault: the night before I left I had one too many celebratory shots of rum and so I was ill prepared for the ardous journey that lay ahead of me. After one hour of sleep and still plenty drunk, I arrived at the Los Angeles Greyhound station around 7:30 fighting to keep my eyelids open long enough to plop my bag down and pass out in a seat. The rest of my trip proceeded as follows:

6.13.10 - Barstow, CA - 11:49 AM

I came to in a stupor. The bus was stopped and people were climbing on to it. I checked the time and realized I had slept through the first stop. My mouth felt like cotton, my head was pounding and I was wearing an outfit that consisted of a sweater, basketball shorts and shoes without socks. The bus filled up and I realized that I was the only person who was sitting alone. It's not hard to imagine why. Having forgot mostly everything from the night previous I called my friend and got the story...

[feel free to skip this part, but here is the gist: At some point in the night when I was already a bit tipsy I ran across some black kid I had made a comment to in passing earlier at the party. The comment was a remark about his full bottle of rum that he wasn't drinking. The kid asked me, to a certain extent challenged me, to take a shot. For some reason I tilted my head back as he adminstered the shot. He poured 7 shots into my mouth and ran off. The consequences? I fell down in the street 7 times nearly cracking my skull, I removed my shirt and vomited into it, my friend, half my size, was forced to support my body weight until we reached the car, my friend dropped me off and eventually had to return to the party, or the street rather, because I left my shoe there, my sister kept me up the rest of the night for fear of head injury (her methods of keeping me awake included forcing me to watch TV shows that she knows I hate and later forcing me to take a shower which I don't remember). In the morning I remembered nothing, but we did make it to the bus station on time.]

...When I got off the phone I questioned the people surrounding me about our locations, our schedule, etc. A Mexican man across the row offered me some chicken. I told him I really needed it and appreciated it. He told me my face said it all. After the chicken I felt slightly better and I was able to take in my surroundings. The bus seemed nice; good looking people, seats with cushion and plenty of air conditioning. What I failed to realize was that I was leaving from California. All greyhound buses and stations are essentially the same, but leaving from a coastal area means that most of the people you are first in contact with are not unlike you. This proved true once I made it to the East Coast as well, but I didn't realize it until several days into my journey, not that it would have made a difference. As we traveled from Barstow to Las Vegas I took in the scenery of the West: rolling hills, barren fields and the trees of the desert. The clouds cast a black shadow across the desert and despite my pounding headache the beauty of the Western United States set me at ease.

6.13.10 - Las Vegas, NV - 3:01pm

Our second stop was at the Las Vegas greyhound station. I was hoping for food, but everyone had eaten at the last stop. I jumped off the bus and ran (I walked quickly) down a street that looked like it would have food establishments on it. The street proved to be an mirage. There was, however, a gas station which apparerntly only sold cigarettes and gas. I grabbed a pack and headed back to the station, realizing that it was located next to a casino (it is Vegas after all). Inside the casino there was nowhere to buy food [It is funny, to me, to note that I actually had to walk inisde of the casino to smoke because directly outside was the area where the buses were being fueled. Thus making Vegas the only place I know of where you have to go inside to smoke.] except for a McDonalds which, from a waitress's directions, was way on the other side of the casino. I settled for water and a bit of stereotypical bartender talk (complaints, trials, tribulations) before returning to the bus. Once on the bus I experienced my first "Crazy Bus Driver" moment. A handicap woman (in actuallity the woman was just very fat, but she claimed to have a handicap. And when I say fat, I mean lazy fat, not obese or a-problem-with-her-thyroid fat.) wanted to take the front seat. According to the bus driver the route from Vegas to Denver is notoriously riddled with deer and elk. The danger of sitting in the front seat is that deer, and elk as it were, have been known to leap through the front window. I assure you I wept tears at this assertion. At any rate the woman, who had been sitting there from Los Angeles to Las Vegas, moved over to the otherside after a few more minutes of debate. The bus driver, sensing increduilty, went to great lengths to point out deer on the side of the road. Or at least he tried to but was ultimately failed by Nevada and Colorado which provided us with nothing more than a few cows.

6.13.10 - Somewhere in Arizona - 4:27pm

I lost a staring contest to a Mexican toddler. Arizona is around the time I noticed that all of the normal people got off the bus in Las Vegas. They were replaced by a demographic that has neck tattoos, missing teeth and is quite possibly the product of incest. As the bus driver continues to point out things that are slightly noteworthy (there's a bluff over there, there are some cows, etc.), I realized how annoying a job as a bus driver or pilot or stewardess would be. The same sights, the same kinds of people, the same boring observations to make. What scared me more was that I was already tired of it after 8 hours with some 70+ hours of travel time left. I cracked open my book again only to find that I was still too hungover to read.

6. 13. 10 - St. George and Salt Lake City, Utah - 7:25pm

Literally the greatest meal I've ever had and it was at McDonald's. I am, by nature, a fast eater, but I broke records in St. George. For some reason I had visions of Barbara Calhoun: sitting by the washing machine, playing bridge with Maria Wong and eating cucumber and cream cheese sandwiches as the spin cycle comes to an end. My mind was still on Ms. Calhoun as we made our way into Salt Lake City. I am still skeptical that this was actually Salt Lake City, but we did not stop in any other place that could have been Salt Lake and we were scheduled to stop there. The city, if it can be called that, was unimpressive and Utah in general was as strange as I thought it would be. My busmates and I proved to be the only black people for miles and every citizen seemed to have either a buzz cut or a hitler youth haircut. I did see a few beautiful blonde-haired, blue-eyed girls, but one can imagine the reprecussions of cat-calling ('sup girl) in a place like Utah. Alas.

6.13.10 - Grand Junction, CO - 2:02am

If you're ever in Colorado and you want to score some H for you and a friend, stop on by the Grand Junction Bus station. Needing to get on the internet (need = facebook), I asked the homosexual 16 year-old if there was wi-fi in the bus station. I was told that Grand Junction has citywide internet which I promptly tried to connect to without success. The internet would have served as an apt distraction from what would be the beginning of my struggles with finding a suitable bathroom. I do not consider myself a prude, but I flat out refused to use the toilet on the bus and after inspecting the Grand Junction terminal's bathrooms, I decided it would be best to wait for a restaurant or an empty field.

6.14.10 - Denver, CO - 8:45am

The skyline of Denver caught me by surprise. That was the nicest part of the morning. Greyhound has a great scheme worked out: they stop at their terminals for "layovers", even though you get on the same bus most of the time. Of course we have to pick up new passengers, but this shouldn't take half of an hour. The reason it takes 35 minutes is so that you are forced to buy food, which is criminally overpriced considering the quality, [You know when you're in the airport and you are at their mercy? Well at least they have Wendy's or Starbucks or a decent salad bar or something. Greyhound terminal food is as expensive, but has the quality of food you can find only in casinos that exist outside of vegas (i.e. San Manuel, Casino Morongo), movie theaters and elementary school cafeterias. In fact, since I've been at camp where it is popular to bash on the food, and I have been exceedingly pleased with the quality of food in comparison to what I saw at the bus stations I visisted.] knowing that you can't possibly leave the terminal, get food and return in time. My solution was to eat left over trial mix from the night before. I washed it down with a $1.50 can of Dr. Pepper. In my day, and I mean literally 5 years ago, canned soda was always under a buck. What the fuck is the matter with this country? I found myself pondering this question throughout my trip.

6.14.10 - ? - 10:45am

Nothing but flat land for miles. You leave the congested streets of Los Angeles and realize that most of the country is unoccupied. The coasts are an unreality compared to what America is actually like. In Denver we picked up a few morons who began straightaway with what can only be described as tomfoolery. The three young men in question had just met, on their bus from wherever they came from, the night before. One of them, a fellow claiming to be in the military (I have my doubts which will be revealed later), got a blow job on the bus the night previous from a girl he himself described as "white trash." Needless to say, his newfound "friend" managed to tell this story in sterling detail and at top volume to everyone on the bus, multiple times until the young cadet told him to stop some hundreds of miles later. I should mention that Moron #1, the guy telling the story of the cadet, went to the bathroom to smoke. I sat right next to the bathroom, so I could smell the cigarette smoke and then the hurried spray of cologne. I said nothing, but rode in silence, waiting for when he would be discovered.

6.14.10 - Burlington, CO - Noonish

The trip had started to get to me. Everyone on the bus seemed to suffer from some form of severe disfunction. I was literally dreaming of switching buses in whatever city I was supposed to switch buses in. I noticed at this rest stop that there was a man, who couldn't possibly afford a ticket, wearing two pairs of pants (one pair of slacks and over that a pair of jeans with 5-10 holes of varying sizes) and a Burger King crown. He was well over 50 and seemed somewhat coherent. I left this puzzle alone and tried to concentrate on reading while still refusing to use the bathroom.

6.14.10 - Kansas - 3:10pm

There is nothing in Kansas except a toilet that refused to flush. What luck.

6.14.10 - Kansas - 5:00pm

It's a big state. I had two strange dreams in that 2 hour period:

1) I was at a table with a girl in my lap (truly a dream) and her brothers were seated with us. It was in a kitchen of some sort. Her brothers were a rowdy bunch and beared resemblances to the Three Stooges and one of the Marxs [another strange coincidence that will come up later]. We were drinking, I think, and I began to chide the girl, much to the delight of her siblings. After several jokes, and apparently one that went too far, she had enough. The girl jolted her body backwards, forcing me to fall back in the chair. She then propelled us, using her legs, backwards into a lighted fireplace. The dream ended there.

2) I dreamt I was at a buffet.

6.14.10 - Kansas - 6:00pm

The bus driver, seeing that Moron #1 went to the bathroom for around the 10th time, says over the loudspeaker that Moron #1 is smoking and will be kicked off at the next stop. Moron #1 protested at the next stop, maintaining that he did nothing wrong, and recieved the mercy of the bus driver. We switched bus drivers at the next stop. The new driver was a woman. I immediately realized that I felt uncomfortable and I immediately felt ashamed for my mysogny, but it is a really big bus. I know, it's terrible.

6.14.10 - Junction City, Kansas - 7:30pm

"'Cause they don't mess around in Junction City," she says to Moron # 1, Moron #2, and the cadet. The excrement hit the fan in Junction City. We stopped at a gas station to apparently drop off a few passengers. The bus driver asked who was supposed to get off and after recieving no reply, promptly threw a fit. She threatened to empty the bus, she threatened to call the police, she yelled and ranted and raved before she decided to go inside and find out just exactly what was going on. Her instructions were for no one to leave the bus. So of course the somewhat hefty lady [I forgot to mention that this lady and her younger friend (again a friend made the night previous) were part of the Three Morons entourage. These two women, far out of the range of attractiveness, went to great lengths to make sure no man sat next to them. Apparently any man would have been overcome with sexual desire and would be forced to have at them right then and there.] in the back stood up defiantly, once the bus driver was indoors, and walked off the bus. I immediately said, "That's a bad idea" to the person in front of me. Beware the ides of March! The Three Morons followed her almost immediately. As they were exiting the bus, the bus driver had already intercepted the hefty lady who played off her defiant act, pretending as though she was trying to find the bus driver to ask permission to smoke. The hefty lady returned with the bus driver to the bus door where the Three Morons had pulled cigarettes from their pockets. This is were hell broke loose. The Morons were told to return to the bus, grab their belongings and get back off the bus: their trip was to end here. [It is important to note that the new driver had been informed about these troublemakers from her colleague at the last stop] The Morons began to argue, the bus driver grew hysteric and threatened to call the police. I suggested to the young men that they should leave before the authorities were called. Too late. As she dialed she yelled the above quote at them. The police were there in 3 minutes. We were delayed for half an hour as we watched the Morons plead their case to no avail. The cadet, and here's where I began to doubt his military background, began to cry. Moments later they were handcuffed and put in the back of squad cars. The hefty lady felt guilty. Most of the passengers were annoyed. I felt a slight pang of empathy, but not much, as I couldn't understand their motives. Throughout the trip I noticed that passengers seemed to have a disproportional amount of scorn for the bus drivers before they ever took the wheel. Once the trip resumed the bus driver delivered a 3-5 minute impromptu monologue about the Three Morons in which she detailed her driving history, philosophy and racial views [Moron #2 was hispanic but she thought he was black and as there were about 10 black passengers, she felt the need to clarify that the other two passengers were "white boys", so there could be no question of prejudice]. I laughed audibly.

6.14.10 - Topeka, KS - 9:00pm

Time in the shadow of the wing of the thing too big to see, rising. (DFW)

6.14.10 - Kansas City, KS - 10:20pm

The Kansas City bus terminal had a potent smell of poverty and death. It was here that I talked to a guy who was headed to St. Louis who shared the same views on the bus driver that I did [she delivered another impromptu monologue about her upbringing and the food she eats: fried okra, collard greens, fried chicken, etc]. This guy grows marijuana in Santa Cruz and he was headed to St. Louis for the birth of his nephew who was to be named after him. His hangup regarding the trip was that he used to score H at the St. Louis bus terminal. But of course. Around this time I noticed that I legitemately could not feel my ass, i.e. my ass was actually numbed from sitting so that it actually fell asleep and would stay asleep (I kid you not) until I arrived at camp. Also I still hadn't found a toilet.

6.15.10 - St. Louis, MO - 3:20AM

37 hours of travel to go and I was dying for a shower, cigarette, toothpaste, food (still running on trail mix) and a toilet. Even worse, I discovered that several of the unsavory characters on the bus would be riding all the way to the coast. In St. Louis we picked up two morons who more than made up for the three we left behind. Moron #4 looked like a 19 year old ex-convict [he spent the trip stealing from rest stops, though he had money, and bragging about it. He also was the brains of the two man operation and would constantly put Moron #5 in check] and his friend was so comical looking that I could not look at him without laughing. You know in gangster movies where they have that one guy, named pee wee or something, who is short and so he overcompensates by being a sociopath? That was this fellow. He was puny and his mustache and eyebrows resembled Graucho Marx's exaggerated grease paint jobs. He had a hilarious speaking voice and would fly into bouts of anger that subsided when Moron #4 would tell him to shut up. These two geniuses were headed to Manhattan of all places to "go from rags to riches." They were from a town of less than twenty thousand in MO and clearly disillusioned about what it takes to make it in the city. Of course I may be wrong, but my gut feeling is that they're probably being raped by a large Puerto Rican in a drunk tank right around now. Also joining the party was a Puerto Rican girl, with accompanying tattoo, who claimed to be from Spanish Harlem. She had no accent and seemed to have less of an idea about New York than anyone I've ever met [when we actually came close to the city, she was unable to point out the skyline, mistaking several minor buildings for the immense New York skyline]. She pumped the Morons full of misinformation and tall tales that were unbelievably annoying to listen to. 36 hours, 55 minutes and 30, 29, 28...

6.15.10 - Illinois - 5:40am

I ate and smoked. All, not really, is right in the world.

6.15.10 - Indiannapolis, IN - 9:30am

I could no longer hold it. 2 days on the bus without a toilet plus a 1 hour layover forced my hand. I went to the bathroom at the bus station, which managed to be worse than the others, but it at least had a working toilet. It was truly the most uncomfortable shit of my life. The less said about it the better. We picked up a couple here and a Grandmother. They proved to be the first and last people I would meet that I didn't hate or want to kill. And they happend to be headed to Maine as well.

6.15.10 - Dayton, OH - 11:30am

Verbatim Journal Entry: Bleh! Humid, smelly, bored and generally exhausted.

6.15.10 - Pittsburgh, PA - 7:50pm

My first taste of an East Coast city. I practically ran outside of the terminal to see the buildings and what not. On the way there I was forced to sit with someone for the first time. Thankfully it was a crazy woman who talked to her dead chidlren out of the window [I thought at first that I imagined this or that she was on a bluetooth, but the male portion of the Indiana couple confirmed my suspicions]. She got off in Pittsburgh and I breathed a sigh of relief.

6.15.10 - Pennsylvania - 9:10pm

I finished Infinite Jest. You should read it. The Puerto Rican girl had sat next to every guy in the back of the bus except for me. I was strangely dissapointed by this fact.

6.16.10 - Harrisburg, PA

The journal begins to thin out here. By this point I was too tired to care about documenting anything. I did, however, come up with the idea of showers at the greyhound terminals. The only problem would be to keep the homeless people away from them. They could at least try it though. Also, I made a list:

Top 10 places to visit

New York

Dublin

Rio

Chicago

Boston

Prague

Paris

Moscow

Africa

Shanghai

6.16.10 - New York, NY - 6:00am

The morons and the Puerto Rican girl began to sing the Alicia Keys/Jay-z song about New York and I don't even mind because I'm about as excited as they are. Within 5 minutes of walking outside of Grand Central Station, I see two black guys and an officer having a very stereotypical New York argument. My heart swelled. Then I had to get back on the bus.

The journal ended there. From New York I went to Boston and then took a greyhound to Maine. The rest was pretty uneventful as I had made it back safely to the coast. I had one typically Boston incident [the Grandmother, who I made good friends with, asked a man in a Red Sox hat and business suit for directions. In a Boston accent he spit them out rapid fire. She was still confused and asked for clarification to which he remarked, "I just told you, listen up." I immediately started laughing as I had to calm the grandmother down before she tried to yell at the gentlemen], but that was all. I arrived in Maine, took a shower, ate dinner and thanked God that I was off of that bus. I think Greyhound may have lost one customer, but it really wasn't all their fault. Sure the food was bad and the seats were unbearable, but the people were almost worse. That's not fair. There were a few bad eggs, but they were rotten and so they made the bus ride smell like...well shit to be exact. Of course there is no pleasure without pain, and my days in Maine are only that much better after the "hardships" I endured. How's that for a silver lining?

S.W.L. #4 - Not Fast Food, Good Food Fast

2010-05-19T19:03:00.000-07:00

Dear American Consumer,

Our beautiful country is the world’s little brother. Not refined enough for the older crowd (Europe) but dragged along anyway because Mom (England) won’t let us stay home alone. Our still developing sense of self results in some interesting cultural phenomena. Like Chili’s for instance. Chili’s is among the most popular of the so-called “mid-culture” restaurants. Others include Outback Steakhouse, TGI Friday’s, Acapulco, BJ’s, Macaroni Grill, Olive Garden, etc. Outback Steakhouse is expensive enough to be considered “a night out” but it is a far cry from culinary art. The best way to determine if a restaurant is mid-culture is to ask yourself, in the immortal words of Willie Stokes, am I going to be able to shit right after this? If you chose one of the places listed above your chances of a normal bowel movement are slim.

"You ain't going to shit right for a week!"

And yet we can do worse. In order for the machine that is America to work, each class must have a carrot to chase, a Jones to keep up with and some level of income to aspire to. In short, there is always more and inevitably there is always less. In the good, or bad, old days there was the aristocracy, the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. If only it were that simple now. We still have upper, middle and lower classes, but we also have upper, middle and lower sections in each class, i.e. the upper-middle class, the lower-middle class, the middle-upper class, etc. And each one of these subdivisions of wealth has to eat out at some point. I mean, don’t you deserve it? After your 40 hour work week, it’s your God-given right as an American to have someone else cook your food! This is Amurika dammit! Ah, but you can’t afford Outback on that measly $30,000/year salary that supports your wife and 2.3 kids, can you? And your not going to eat fast food, that’s for losers and fat people! Fear not children, Uncle Sam provideth options: good food fast.

God Bless America

Enter, stage right, Rubio’s, Chipotle, Baja Fresh, Daphne’s, Fat Burger, etc. For a few dollars more than Carl’s Jr. and a few dollars less than Outback, you can get pseudo-service:

Perky Clerk: Welcome to Corner Bakery!

Customer: Do I seat myself?

Perky Clerk: Yes, but first you order up front!

Customer: Oh, you don’t take my order?

Perky Clerk: No, but we bring your food to you.

Customer: Oh…so do I tip you?

Perky Clerk: Tips are appreciated!

Of course tips are appreciated, they should be because you work at a cleverly disguised McDonald’s with a more expensive menu. Nobody tips fast food employees. Oh, but you bring my food to me. I guess that warrants something. How about a congratulatory pat on the back in the spirit of proportionality.

Sadly there is hardly anything to gain from eating at these restaurants. The quality of food is only slightly better. I have worked at Rubio’s, Little Caesar’s and Chili’s, and I can tell you that whatever you choose, you are not getting a quality product. So we’ve eliminated taste, for the most part, as the reason. How about health? You can get a salad anywhere with the dressing on the side, you can get grilled chicken anywhere, you can get protein-only sandwiches and vegetarian options at 90% of the places you go to. At Subway you can get a foot-long sandwich with 10 grams of fat for $5. Health is not the issue. So if not health or taste, why are you paying 2 extra dollars to eat at a place that doesn’t even refill your drink? America, are we that vain?

Yes we are. You eat at the mid-mid-culture joints because of status. Because you’re too good to be seen at fast food places, because you’re better than the poor people who eat fast food. And what do you get for your troubles? A quarter step up in quality from the low-culture places, a full step down in service from the mid-culture establishments, and a dwindling cash supply as you continue to blow money on Chipotlaway. Is there an end in sight?

Doubtful. Today McDonalds announced that they are losing their Golden Arches and redesigning their interiors. Any newshound should have seen this coming: first McDonald’s begins to promote their coffee, which is cheaper and close to the quality of Starbucks. Slowly but surely they built an entire McCafe line of drinks. Then in January, McDonalds began to offer free wi-fi at most locations. The next step was taken today, big screen televisions and lounge chairs…at McDonalds! What will you do when you walk into McDonalds and mistake it for your neighborhood Starbucks? Only pretension will keep you from sitting down in their pleather chairs and watching World Cup Soccer, unless Starbucks has a plan…and they do.

A few months ago Starbucks disguised a few of it’s Seattle locales as indie coffee shops, hoping to attract the cross section of youngsters who have cast off the corporate shackles. But contrary to what Sarah Palin believes, putting lipstick on a bulldog does not a Soccer mom make. Similarly calling a Starbucks "15th Ave. Coffee and Tea" doesn’t give it indie cred…alcohol does! That’s right, in Seattle a few Starbucks are offering alcohol as an experiment. They’re attempting to climb up the cultural ladder into the realm of mid-mid-culture restaurants where you can get a beer with your $7 burrito and explosive diarrhea. With any luck, a beverage menu that includes alcohol will alleviate the guilt of buying more expensive coffee of very similar quality. I know it will make me feel better.

Usually these strongly worded letters of mine are directed towards the source of my grief, but in this case, I cannot blame these bland corporate restaurants. Instead this letter is directed towards the American consumer who informs corporate America, with their poor food choices, what they would like to eat. If you can afford to eat at Panera bread why not go to the family owned Pita shop just a few blocks over? I wish I had an answer to this question, but I don’t. Instead I have to wrap up this letter because I need to buy some Imodium. I’m feeling a little at bourgeois, so I might head out to Boston Market. I love Amurika!

A Cinema of Questions

2010-05-04T15:39:00.000-07:00

Someone, who I can’t remember but I’m sure is much smarter than me, once said that you shouldn’t write about a film you’ve only seen once. Of course this isn’t applicable to those reviewers who have to meet a deadline on Friday night. Nor is it necessary to watch Billy Madison twice to understand the subtle nuances of Adam Sandler’s comedic genius, but it doesn‘t hurt to watch it multiple times. When discussing the films of Michael Haneke, however, it is evident that a single viewing will not suffice. Haneke prides himself on asking questions and withholding answers, if he had any at all. Following in that tradition, The Piano Teacher, adapted from a novel by Elfriede Jelinek, follows a sexually repressed woman who struggles with relationships of any kind, especially those of a sexual nature.

The first thing I noticed as I watched The Piano Teacher was that I was surprisingly ignorant on what modern French culture looked like. Try as might, I couldn’t tell what era the film was set in. About 15 minutes into the film, I realized that was by design. Haneke immerses the audience in the antiquated and outdated world of Erika. The audience experiences, as Erika has for the last forty years, an over-bearing mother who tries to shut out any hope and ambition that is not related to playing the piano. Only when Erika enters the mall did it become apparent that the film was set in the modern era. Images go from timeless interior design and architecture to jarring modern day consumerism. If that initial shock weren’t enough, Erika walks into a video store and the audience is confronted by pornographic images. For a moment the natural inclination is to be slightly aroused by a quiet woman with a hidden sexual nature, but we quickly learn that her sexual nature is abnormal.

Upon entering the video store, Erika goes to one of the masturbation booths and smells the left over ejaculate of male patrons. The effect on the audience is something like having the toilet flushed while being in the shower. I knew that the water would get hotter, and it did. A short while later we see Erika cut her genitalia, an image that is always difficult to watch, even when the actual act is blocked from our vision. It becomes clear that Erika will not allow herself to feel sexual pleasure. She has given her life, everything she has, to the piano. She will suffer for the piano, mutilate herself for the piano, even commit evil acts for the piano. Knowing that the piano is the only thing that she lives for, she sabotages her star pupil by hiding glass in her jacket. This act of malice compels Walter to confront Erika in the girl’s bathroom, where the two embrace before Erika commands him to stop.

At this point in the film I asked myself, “Do people like this really exist?” I think that’s an important question to ask when watching Haneke’s films. Of the three that I’ve seen, each film explores the darker regions of the human psyche. The next logical question to ask yourself is, “I don’t know anyone like that, do I?” And we assure ourselves that everyone we know, including ourselves, is outside of these human characteristics. But we keep watching the film, and the reason is that we know that somewhere a person like this does exist and somewhere inside of us the capacity to emulate such a character exists. As evil and maladjusted as Erika’s character is, we are rooting for her. She is mean, bitter and crazy, and we can’t help but feel for her. So when Walter and Erika finally make contact in the bathroom, we are hoping that a normal love affair ensues. We are given anything but that.

We soon learn that Erika’s sexual desires haven been mutated by years of repression and informed by negative reinforcement. Instead of pleasure, she craves pain. She writes a letter to Walter, detailing her sexual desires, that disgusts him. He rejects her and she continues to throw herself at him, but that fails and she insults him again by vomiting after trying to perform fellatio. The film ends with Walter “doing her a favor.” He comes over in the middle of the night, locks her mother in the room and beats Erika before having violent sex with her. Walter fulfills her fantasy, but it doesn’t live up to her expectations. The next day she tries to confront him, but he ignores her. She stabs herself and walks into the night.

Erika is a coward. Her life is controlled by fear. Fear of her mother, fear of failing, fear of giving herself to love. Erika is scared to love because she is scared of rejection. Walter’s actions are inexcusable, but they do answer a question that Erika wanted and needed answering. To me, her final act of cowardice is to stab herself. After all that she went through and all that she could have learned, she decided on the easy way out. Of course we don’t know if she actually died, but did we really expect Haneke to tell us that much?

The Piano Teacher was superbly acted and well directed. As with any Haneke film, I’m never quite sure of…anything, but in the end I have a lot of questions. Who could ask for anything more?

In the Beginning

2010-05-04T14:23:00.000-07:00

I recently had the idea of writing something about great opening scenes in films. And then I realized that was quite a task, so I decided to limit myself to the last 10 years of film. Luckily enough the first two films I had chosen happened to be post-year 2000. Once I was done I noticed some other (troublesome?) similarities. All of the films open with violence; four of the five start with an actual murder and the lone exception, Snatch, involves plenty of gun wielding. There are two points to make here: 1) A murder is a great way to open a film. It provides mystery and spectacle immediately. 2) The last three scripts I’ve written have opened up with a murder. We are what we consume.

But enough psycho-analysis, let’s see those movies.

1. 16 or 17 years old, Krikorian Theater

With Kill Bill (Vol. 1), I’m actually talking about two first scenes. The movie starts with heavy breathing and a black screen; maybe it was my adolescent hormones, but I was expecting sex. This was also a side effect of not watching trailers before I went to see movies in those pre-YouTube days. Kill Bill was the first movie to change how I went to the theater. After this movie the theater became a sanctuary. As the breathing intensifies we are suddenly confronted with the image of a battered Uma Thurman just moments before a bullet goes through her head. Tarantino knows exactly how to engage us from the start. As if this weren’t enough, he follows it up with a perfectly executed fight scene, giving Vivica A. Fox her most memorable silver screen role in less than 10 minutes actual time. By the end of the first scene the audience has tons of questions, no answers and a burning desire to watch until their curiosity is quenched.

2. 22 years old, IMAX at the Irvine Spectrum

I can barely explain the hysteria surrounding the Dark Knight. That movie drove everyone wild for several months after its release. My friend and I did impressions at work for the next two months. Heath Ledger was so good he managed to not only make us forget about the plot holes and the atrocious batman voice, he made us see it more than once (I saw it 3 times in theaters). Before Avatar came along as a movie that had to be viewed in IMAX or at least in a theater, The Dark Knight laid claim to the title. Never before had it been so much fun to watch someone be so evil. The brilliance of the first scene in the Dark Knight is that it builds the legend of The Joker in about 5 minutes. The first scene could easily have been a short film by itself or excluded from the movie and replaced with an insert of a newspaper title. Thank God Christopher Nolan left it in. The scene starts and the question is asked: So why do they call him The Joker? By the end of the scene we have our answer. The voice actors are brilliant, the music unsettling and the bank employee/mob guy has just the right amount of outrage. Of course that first scene is really about Ledger, shoulders hunched, holding a clown mask with his back to the camera. Enough can’t be said about his posture in the film; Ledger’s body does over half the work in developing his character. His walk from the bank employee, after stuffing his mouth with a grenade, to the bright yellow school bus establishes all we need to know about The Joker. The Dark Knight’s opening scene was so good it made the rest of the movie better; all I did for the rest of the film was wait to see The Joker on camera again.

3. 23 years old, IMAX at the Irvine Spectrum

Many people did not like Watchmen for a number of reasons: 1) It’s too long 2) Dr. Manhattan is inherently boring 3) They were unable to follow the story because they didn’t read the graphic novel 4) It was not a loyal adaptation. I agree with the first two reasons. Dr. Manhattan is a boring character and the movie is really long. As someone who didn’t read the graphic novel until after I saw the movie, however, I can’t say that it was hard to follow. And after reading the graphic novel, I’d say they were pretty loyal to the author’s vision. At any rate I liked the movie; The Comedian and Rorschach were great, the art direction was perfect and, of course, the opening scene was brilliant. To use every film snob’s favorite word, I loved how the music was juxtaposed (I feel disgusting now) with the violence in that first scene. In fact, despite all the complaints I heard, everyone seemed to like the first scene (and title sequence)…and agree that the movie went downhill from there. I tend to agree with the exception of scenes involving The Comedian or Rorschach, which is enough for me to say I really liked this movie.

4. 19 years old, University of Redlands Dorm Room

Snatch is on the short list of movies I’ve watched over 20 times (Dodgeball, A Clockwork Orange, Full Metal Jacket, The Big Lebowski, Groundhog’s Day and a few others). A perfect blend of action and comedy, no scene exemplifies this more than the opening one. At first it appears that a group of Hasidic Jews are having a friendly argument about the creation myth on their way to the top floor of the building. The audience realizes, as does the proprietor of the Jewelers, that these men are not who we think they are. The scene turns into, as so many Guy Ritchie scenes do, a music video featuring gun wielding Hasidic Jews demanding diamonds. And the audience is immediately invested in the story.

5. 23 years old, ArcLight in Sherman Oaks

I spent the better half of the summer running around saying, “I want my Nazis!” Needless to say I was pumped for Inglorious Basterds. What made it better was that the row of people in front of me, on opening night, were Jews, in yarmulkes, who cheered every time a Nazi got his skull bashed in. Of course we had to wait for that satisfaction. First, Tarantino wanted to remind us just how evil World War II Germany could be. What made Kill Bill so great is the exact opposite of what made Bastards brilliant. Tarantino builds the tension until we can barely stand it, in true Leone fashion he manages to make a 20 minute scene feel like it went by quickly. When the Frenchman finally gives in and Cristoph Waltz’s character calls in his Nazi friends to shoot up the house, you could sense a collective heart drop. The glimmer of hope that is Shoshana runs off into a grass field with a pistol aimed at her back. The audience watches and waits, willing her to freedom. And the filmmaker awards us with her safe escape. At the end of that first scene Tarantino had already run the emotional gamut.

There you have it, five opening scenes that locked me into my chair. Hopefully the next list will be slightly less violent…

Coachella 2010

2010-04-20T18:59:00.000-07:00

In one of the gospels, possibly in more than one, is the oft-referenced story of Jesus’ temptation. He is taken to the wilderness and receives no food or water for 40 days and nights while Satan comes along every once in a while to suggest something obvious (“if you’re God why not make some bread or cheese poppers?”). Perhaps humankind has taken a cue from Jesus and decided the only place to go and be properly tempted is the wilderness, the desert more specifically. The only difference is that we give into the temptation, in every way possible.

Several months ago when my friend thought he might get a house for Coachella, and his 21st birthday, I was excited. As excited as I would be to hear that he had just bought a fifth of Jack Daniels and he wanted to get drunk and play Halo. Over the course of the next couple of months things casually fell into place. The diverse group of people who would help celebrate this 21st birthday made plans and looked at lineups. By March everyone wanted to know what show you were going to see or if you were excited (who pays $300 for a ticket and isn’t excited? You better be excited.). Our plan was to leave Thursday morning, settle into the house and drink before the festival kicked off Friday morning. Wednesday night was another friend’s 21st birthday and had it not been for the drinking that night, I may have killed anyone who mentioned Coachella to me. There was simply no way the hype could possibly be warranted. And then the festival began…

But first, we drank. We arrived at the house around 2, unloaded the car and then went for groceries. Then we stocked the fridge, laid out some snacks and ground rules, decided sleeping arrangements for 8-10 guys in a four bedroom house and from there the rest is history. A typical day consisted of waking up around 11, drinking away your headache, stumbling to the venue by 2, dancing until 1 in the morning, stumbling home, drinking more, repeat. That makes it sound oh so simple, however, so below I will go into much more detail:

Thursday

I’d be lying if I said I remember setting out for the venue on Thursday night. The idea was to see any pre-shows we could and possibly, if the night were to be so kind, find some girls from the camp site. All in all Thursday night was a bust. None of us danced, save one who had the best possible time you can have at a music festival, and after about an hour we turned back and decided that the next three days would have to make up for that night. At the very least we were able to get our wristbands and scope out the enormity of the venue.

Friday

A nice little pool party ensued Friday when a couple of girls came over with a few guy friends who were allowed to come over under the pretense that they were gay. They were very far from gay. Nevertheless, they were nice people and we all had a good time. Sometime around 2 we headed to the venue. About five minutes into said walk everyone decided that they were too drunk/hot/high to not take a ride from one of the dozens of unlicensed “taxis” that clung to concert-goers like flies to feces. Up until this point I was still naïve about the force that is Coachella. I had seen her the night previous, and I had thought she wasn’t much to handle. I chugged my 20 oz water bottle, filled with liquor, as if daring Coachella to punish my indiscretion. She did. Upon entrance I was immediately thrown into a sea of people going all directions. I put my shoes in a locker and followed one of my buddies to meet up with some other friends who had their own house. They were met with a mixture of pure, drug-fueled emotion and the relief that somewhere in this scorching field of debauchery there was at least one familiar face. Our combined group split into two smaller groups that went separate ways.

Now I’m not quite sure what shows we went to; I believe the first two were Proxy and Wolfgang Gartner. Both fun, both good dance music. I slowly started to realize that nobody there was there for the music. 90 percent of people come to Coachella to dance and do drugs, 5 percent come to listen to the music, and the other 5 percent come to see what’s what. I was in the final 5 percent. Them Crooked Vultures was the first show I saw that had any elements of musicianship that impressed me, and that was only because of John Paul Jones who can still shred (I don’t like that word but it’s appropriate). After that we decided to regroup and take a breather before Jay-Z or Deadmau5 or Vampire Weekend or Imogen Heap. There were too many choices. We took a seat and watched LCD Soundsytem who sounded good, but I was so overwhelmed/dehydrated/hanging-on-by-a-thread that I didn’t pay much attention. By this point I was beat. Coachella had officially done a number on me. I borrowed one of the $12, all-weekend water bottles and drank for about 20 minutes. It didn’t help, well it did but not as much as I wanted it too. I wandered for about an hour, unsure of where I left the group. Like a true novice, I had left my phone at the house, assuming I would easily navigate through the maze of people. Something, possibly God or some enlightened e-tard, said turn right and I did and suddenly I was back. And it was time to go see Jay-Z. I was highly skeptical. Usually I will vehemently defend live hip-hop, which gets a bad rap (punny!), but I truly didn’t believe that Jay-Z could get a bunch of cynical, sweaty hipsters to go dumb. Not only did he accomplish that, he was the best show of the weekend.

Jay-Z hit the stage with an unparalleled amount of energy, for a main act, and he kept it there. At no point did he lull or lose the crowd (even when he spent 15 minutes shouting out people), he kept everyone on there feet and moving for 2 hours. He busted out a string of oldies, he brought on an Alicia Keys look-a-like and his wife Beyonce. In short, he pulled no punches and the sold out audience reaped the benefits. I’m literally having chills recounting the experience. Sadly, Coachella didn’t care about my euphoria and a little more than halfway through the set I had to leave. To be fair he played for two hours and I really had to urinate. Once I finished in the bathroom, it made better sense to meet up at the pre-determined checkpoint (lockers) than walk back to the show. It can be assumed that if I had trouble going from my group to a water tent, that was only about 100 feet away, it would have been next to impossible for me to find the lockers without help. Luckily my buddy had a map and we were able to get to the lockers before anyone else. And that’s where I shut down. People walked by, things were shouted, my friends came back and I turned on auto pilot. I literally didn’t talk for the next hour that it took to get home. I walked into the door, made a frozen pizza, drank some Jack Daniels, grunted some one-word/inaudible responses and collapsed into my bed. I was joined shortly thereafter by the guy-who-had-the-best-time-possible-at-a-music-festival. He had taken 2-3 too many of a couple substances. It was our first time at Coachella and we had underestimated her power. It didn’t stop people from coming into the room to mess with us, but that didn’t stop me from dropping off into an extremely deep sleep.

Saturday

Something clicked Saturday. I woke up excited. I had some weird dream, something to do with cornbread and drugs, that I did not even begin to understand or try to interpret. I started drinking almost immediately. Someone called over a few girls. Another friend had shown up to the house at 5 in the morning, hours after I conked out. 2 more friends drove in the night before, but I was too rude/drunk to have said hello properly. The point is that we had ourselves a serious crew. Everyone drank, got into the pool (which was salt water by the way), and enjoyed themselves. Then it was time to go. Two of the people who had come over had cars and they had enough room to schlep the whole 14 person party to the venue. I saved a couple of things to take (use your imagination) and another water bottle brimming with liquor. With a proper lift, one that took us a little further than the one we paid for the day previous, we hit the ground running. We got into the venue, stashed our stuff at the lockers and headed to a show. The first thing I remember seeing was some guy jumping over the lockers and eluding 3 or 4 horse cops to get into the venue. I was sure it was going to be a good day after that. I could not tell what the first show I saw on Saturday was. There were about four of us still together; my buddy and I met up with the same group from yesterday. I took what I had been waiting to take as we waited for the next show to start. That’s when everything changed, naturally, and I finally started to have fun.

If I had to describe what Coachella looks like, if I had to close my eyes and I was given a word association concerning Coachella, my answer would invariably be “flesh.” Everywhere you looked there were girls, scantily-clad and wanting more than anything to dance in a sea of people. There were shirtless guys, bikini tops, basketball shorts, daisy-dukes, long legs, muscular torsos, petite waists, etc. Everywhere you turned there were body parts and they were all waiting to move along with any beat that they heard. Suddenly I dropped my prejudice against all of the people who came to do nothing but have a good time and before you knew it I was having a good time. And before my mind could take over and launch itself down the rabbit hole, we went to Dirty South where I danced it all out. I had not danced in 3 years. Not properly; I had bobbed my head or bent a knee, but not let loose. Well, I let loose at Dirty South and then Hot Chip. And then we rested because what was to come next required all the energy we could summon.

We went 30 minutes early to the Major Lazer show. We ingested a few things, smoked some and met up with more friends and then we found a nice spot 50 feet away, dead-center, from the stage. I have never felt anything like I felt at that Major Lazer show. Other shows where bigger and had great energy, but this was by far the most fun, adrenaline-pumping show of the weekend. Early on everyone was doing the traditional head bob. Guys stand in a group of 2-3 and bob their heads, waiting, and refusing to dance until they find a female who will dance with them. 5 minutes in, waiting was not an option. If you didn’t want to dance you best leave, because it got ridiculous. The entire crowd became one giant perspiring organism that wanted to rage and rage and rage. Each song sent the crowd into more and more hysterics. Once Pon De Floor came on, and the Major Lazer hype man dove onto his female counterpart from a ladder, everyone had lost it. You couldn’t move an inch without bumping or grinding something. If you kept your shirt on it was covered in sweat, but most had gone shirtless. The set ended and we walked into that sweet desert air, and everyone could not stop talking about Major Lazer. Least of all me. The change in my person was evident. A couple of my friends immediately noticed that I was much happier than usual. I had finally experienced rebirth; I walked into the night with the full-realization of what makes music festivals so special. Words like energy are thrown around far too often, and they begin to weaken and lose meaning, but I felt that energy this weekend. I understood why people can wait a year to go to Coachella, because afterwards they’ve sweated out all anxiety, all pain. They’ve left everything in the desert to die and gone onto a full year of living; living with the awareness that they once felt like they touched the heavens only a few short days/weeks/months earlier. To put it bluntly, I felt alive, gloriously, gloriously alive, and it was nice. Real nice.

The rest of the night was fun. We saw Flying Lotus and 2ManyDJ’s and they were both fun and acceptable. Of course it’s not even fair to ask someone to attend those shows after the time I had at Major Lazer. I had fun at the later shows because I had crossed a certain threshold, but for me nothing was going to match the adrenaline from earlier. Once the music ended, we decided to investigate the campgrounds and see if we couldn’t find a few girls or a campsite or something. It was me, a friend and the guy-who-had-the-best-time-possible-at-a-music-festival. He had really gone for it that night, taking probably double what he had the day before. I had seen him briefly throughout the day, shining his flashlight at random people, jumping into people’s pictures without them noticing, and causing a general ruckus. We lasted at the camp site for a very short time before heading back to the house. Everyone came back from the festival buzzing. Our two friends who had come the night before, ticket-less, had managed to sneak in. Everyone else was amped from the music or the girls or the drugs. A hot tub session was in order. Drinking was in order. The night ended with the sun coming up.

Sunday

We dragged our battered bodies from our collective beds and out to the backyard. The house was in disarray. Someone had lost their cell phone at Coachella, guy-who-had-the-best-time-possible-at-a-music-festival had screamed loud enough for father to grab his child out of fear (we have video evidence to support this, but my question is why bring a child to a music festival? There were so many there and I can understand the reasoning and yes it‘s as safe as an environment as you are going to get at a music festival, but it seems a tad irresponsible) and everyone only wanted to make it to the Gorillaz show. That was our one goal. And then when we got back we would clean up. At least that was the plan. I drank whatever beer I could find, a little whiskey, and then a much too large cup of Red Bull and Vodka. Then I was chided into drinking 151 (I felt guilty because it was my suggestion to get it and I hadn’t drank a sip). By that time it was 4ish and time to go. Once again I brought a water bottle of liquor, but only one person in my walking group was drinking with me. The last thing I remember clearly is not getting into the festival the very first time. It seems my fellow drinker was a bit too intoxicated. We got in 3 minutes later. I guess we went to the lockers. I obviously wasn’t paying attention because for the first time that weekend I kept my shoes on. Probably around 30 minutes later I told my friend I was going to lay down for a while. I woke up 3-4 hours later. I had effectively missed 4 groups that I actually wanted to see, including the beautiful Charlotte Gainsbourg.

When I awoke from my drunken stupor I texted my friends and luckily they were about 20 feet away. I don’t know how they didn’t see me, but I was happy to be reunited and awake. A couple of us went over to see Thom Yourke, but he proved to be uninteresting; I was too woozy to flat out say he was bad, but he certainly didn’t revive me. We left early and went to the Gorillaz show at the main stage. We took up residence at a patch of grass and waited for the show to start. Someone gave me a free pack of cigarettes because, “…you (me) need it more than me.” It is highly unlikely that they saw me passed out, so I’m assuming the look on my face warranted this comment alone. The Gorillaz came on and performed well. It wasn’t spectacular, and as far as headliners go, it was not the best. It was a solid send off, however, and most everyone in our group left the venue fulfilled.

Back at the house, no one made an attempt to clean a single thing. We drank more and attempted to come down. It was clear that a few people were not going to be able to sleep. No one went to sleep before 5. One of the guys hooked up with a ridiculously gorgeous black girl. Everyone was too in awe to be jealous. I shook his hand. Eventually it was 6:30. I passed out until 8. And then everyone was woken up. The house was cleaned. Bags were packed. Good byes were said. And I was honestly sad.

On the road, I realized that I had had more fun than I thought possible. I got caught up in the fever and let loose and surprised myself. The lead up to Coachella had been like a blocked pipe; the obstruction is loosened piece by piece until finally the water bursts through. Coachella was a tsunami that had been repressed for 365 days. It’s full force was realized Saturday, mid-festival, and it left in it’s wake an exhausted populace who was forced to return to reality. The car I rode back in decided that reality could wait. The driver had me take over as he passed out in the passenger seat. We drove to my buddy’s house and waited for him to get back from Coachella. On the way back we saw car after car, filled with beautiful young people returning from Coachella. When we stopped at a gas station, no one said a word. Other passengers in other cars looked at each other; we all shared the same thoughts, the same feelings. Our hearts were left into the desert where we howled into the night. We returned to the land of the living, closing the valve, until another year goes by.

Top 10 Pros and Cons: Pon de Guitar

2010-04-08T14:57:00.000-07:00

The last time I was in a pawn shop I still lived in Redlands, I was 16 and I was merely bored from having played basketball all day long. My friends and I decided to peruse, what appeared to be, a secondhand Wal-Mart, packed to the gills with cheap consumer items from the land of yore. My childhood innocence didn’t allow me to smell the broken dreams and curry, via the pawn shop broker, that every formerly owned possession is soaked in. Today I realized that smell, and contributed to it, for what I deemed a good cause. I traded an instrument, my beloved untouched guitar, so that I can listen to music. To quote the sage Bart Simpson, “The ironing is delicious.” Perhaps because of that ironing, no amount of rationalization can make me feel quite right about it. Nevertheless, I’ve decided to weigh the pros and cons:

Pro 1: Coachella

Coa-fucking-chella. There are certain rules in life. We all know them: Check ALL the rooms before masturbating, Avoid women with tattoos of knives (unless you’re into that kind of thing, but be forewarned), Never trust an Irishman, Never look an ethnic minority in the eye (even if you are one), and if you get a free ticket to Coachella you have to go. That one is a no-brainer. So what you’re funemployed? Everyone is. You can’t scrape together some cash to go rage in the desert for 3 days and nights? Then you’re not an American. Those who know me well, know that I can stomach a lot, but I won’t have my patriotism called into check. I saw it as my duty, as an American, to live outside of my means. I might have mounting debt, an ulcer from worrying about my present and future condition, a stack of books to read and scripts to write, but I also have my American sense of entitlement. God bless this country.

Con 1: Sentimentality

Along with the guitar I pawned two watches. I had three watches, but the third was a present from my father. I’m not that much of a bastard. The other two watches were from my days at T-Mobile when I used to get gift certificates to shop with (was that in this lifetime?). But the guitar, goddamn it the guitar. The guitar was a present from two Christmases ago from my parents. It was the only thing I asked for. At that point I was smoking enough of the old Bob Hope (thank you David Foster Wallace for that bit of East Coast jargon) that I felt it necessary to be one of those jack-ass college losers who has a guitar in the room for the purpose of collecting dust and saying things like, “I really want to learn to play….pass that.” I never learned how to play. On top of that, my father assumed that I pawned it long ago. I decided that I could let go in the name of my own happiness, which is why he gave me the present in the first place, right? Is that a disgusting enough perversion of the truth for you?

Pro 2: It’s a pawn shop stupid!

The upside is I didn’t sell it. I pawned it. I can get it back. And in all likelihood I will, and this will make one of those great stories I tell my children when I’m trying to explain the value of hard work. Any how, it was difficult to get rid of the guitar in the first place. It appears that of all places, Los Angeles has an abundance of guitars! Who would have guessed?! At first I felt conspicuous biking down the street in the middle of the day with a guitar in my hand. Then I realized that I probably looked like so many unsuccessful musicians, gone to cash in their dreams. The beauty of being a writer in the 21st century is that you’re probably not going to pawn your laptop as opposed to the romanticism of pawning a typewriter in the previous decades. It helps when you’re a writer who wishes he were a musician.

Con 2: How do you expect to get any better?

Well wishing won’t make it so! Ah too true. If I wanted to play the guitar so bad, why haven’t I been practicing? I’m certainly not going to get any better without a guitar. Maybe this is a sign from God that I need to switch to bass. That way all my friends ironically racist jokes will all make sense. Call me a team player.

Pro 3: Get rhythm when you get the blues…

Pawning a guitar provides great material for bad, anger-fueled, Bukowski-esque poetry:

I pawned my guitar today

For twenty lousy dollars.

The pawn shop guy didn’t even care

That I was sweating

That I didn’t want to pawn it

He got my name

My guitar

And two of my watches

I didn’t even get his name.

He was a foreigner

With a gun on his hip

And broken English on his tongue

Who didn’t give two shits

About my guitar

That he grabbed with rough hand

And scathing eye

“Full size?”

He asked

Yeah it’s full size

You prick

“sign here”

Thumbprint

And she was gone.

And I was left

To go at it all alone

Con 3: Have Guitar will Travel

In theory, had I learned to play the guitar I could have spent this week on Venice Beach or at Union Station and surely made enough scrilla to dick around with at Coachella. That’s not a guitar, it’s an anti-fascist machine. I could have killed Tea-partiers with that thing! Instead I will spend the money on killing myself (while having the time of my life to be fair).

Pro 4: Starving Artist

I’m going to the Los Angeles Art Walk tonight and pawning my guitar has given me some solid starving artist credibility. I feel like Jack Kerouac…if he were a self-aware idiot. At any rate, it will certainly give me a melancholy demeanor that I’m hoping will go over well with the artsy girls downtown.

Con 4: Admittance…

Which is why I wrote this blog in the first place, so that I could feel a little better by confessing to the world…or the six people that read this thing.

Pro 5: Kicks

I’m going to get some serious kicks in this weekend. If I had to do this, that means I have to make it count, so Orange County and Coachella beware: get some lube and get liquored up, I’m coming in the back door!

Con 5: Guilt

You just can’t make that conscience go away. You can drown it, suffocate it, you can beat it, strangle it, choke it, but it keeps talking to you and talking to you because it, meaning you, knows better. And for better or for worse, that’s what I’m dealing with now. And it’s not even good old-fashioned Christian guilt, that I can live with. This is worse.

There you have it. I still haven’t decided how I feel. I’ll wait until I’m at Coachella to decide if it was a good idea. I’m pretty sure I know the answer….pretty sure.

The Last Great American Hero

2010-03-23T18:25:00.001-07:00

Last name Kowalski, first name too difficult to pronounce. What is to be made of an American hero with an un-American name? Richard C. Sarafian’s Vanishing Point is super charged road film with enough under the surface to leave the audience completely mystified.

Road trips always head West. Since the days of the Oregon trail, the West has become the symbol of the open range, the daring explorer and the final frontier. The last place for men to be men, for nature to rule over societal laws, the only place for American heroes to lament in their final days. Kowalski is, “the last American hero, the electric centaur, the, the demi-god, the super driver of the golden west!” Kowalski leaves Denver on a Friday night to reach San Francisco by the next day at three o’clock because he has made a bet with his drug dealer. At first Kowalski’s reasoning seems that trivial. Then the first two cops arrive, and instead of pulling over, Kowalski runs one off of the road and ditches the other. From then on madness ensues. The viewer, who saw the first scene of the movie and assumed Kowalski had done something to break the law, is left to wonder what is fueling Kowalski. Something, other than Johnny Law, is breathing down his neck.

Through flashbacks Kowalski’s character is revealed. Former police officer, former motorcyclist, former professional driver, former war veteran, formally head over heels in love and able to enjoy life. Every one of his flashbacks end in a crash, a death or in confrontation. Kowalski was once a straight edge that believed in his country, at least enough to fight for it overseas and then on the streets of San Diego. He soon learned that the law had nothing to do with justice. Kowalski once loved; you get the idea that it was a young silly love because the girl was a surfer who actually got Kowalski to smoke marijuana, something he abstains from elsewhere in the film. That part of him is dead now. Gone is the naiveté that allowed him to fall in love with America, with a girl, with himself.

Sarafian populates Kowalski’s world with a perfect ensemble of 1970’s characters. Racists, homosexuals, hippies, bikers, druggies, soulful black men, sage snake charmers and free-love advocates. Kowalski becomes the champion of the counter culture, embraced by a culture that he rejects, but has more in common with than the mainstream. And that’s just it. He’s running from himself. He is a man guided by his own moral compass, he is neither square nor hippie, he is simply Kowalski. He does what is right by him and no one else.

As the film races on, Super Soul provides the commentary. Somehow he and Kowalski are communicating, one of the many mystical aspects of the film. Super Soul is the voice that the man doesn’t want anyone to here. The law does not like his sympathies towards Kowalski and they aim to shut him up, but when they do the change is too noticeable. This is another indication of what it means to conform to a lie, it changes your soul. Kowalski is running to keep his soul alive. They, the law, want to crush the spirit of the man, like they’ve crushed the spirit of so many men before him. Catch Kowalski and you have destroyed the last vestige of hope for an emaciated people.

So Kowalski races on, swallowing speed and revving his engine. At precisely 10:02 AM, as seen in the opening scene of the film, Kowalski’s car disappears. At 10:04 AM his car is speeding towards the barricades put in place by the law. The barricade consists of two tractors, the buckets of which form parallel lines, a reference to the title. Kowalski crashes his car right into the tractors, presumably killing himself. End of the movie. When I saw it I jumped off of the couch. I assumed there were fifteen minutes left of the film. I assumed that something was at work that I hadn’t pieced together, I assumed that the vanishing point was a literal one. The ending, by its nature, has been a source of debate since the beginning of the film. In the UK version, there is a scene before the final one where Kowalski meets up with a girl, that likely represented death, and smokes marijuana for the first time in the film. With that information I developed my own theory:

At 10:02 AM, Kowalski transcends. He resigns himself to fate, and like a truly spiritual being, he is taken to that higher plane of existence. Strengthening this argument is the fact that we never see his corpse at the end of the film. Of course we do see him in the car as he speeds towards the tractors, so maybe he is in the car. Either way, the idea of a vanishing point is an illusion, vanishing points appear when to parallel lines look like they touch, but in fact they do not.What is curious about the buckets of the tractors is that they are lined up in a way that mimics what a vanishing point looks like, but the buckets are not actually parallel. We have to assume that Kowalski knew all of this, but surged forward anyway, allowing himself to believe the illusion: between those tractor lines there was a vanishing point which meant there was a way to get through; a way to save his soul. The outcome didn’t matter because he had already transcended this world, at the very least figuratively, and was finally ready to stop running from himself.

I have to say that I was enthralled by Vanishing Point. It reminded me of Easy Rider and Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas. Roughneck poetry of the United States with a soulful twinge. Super Soul was brilliantly written and brilliantly cast, and the soundtrack was amazing. Tarantino called it one of the best American movies and I can see his point. No matter what anyone thinks of the ending or the meaning of the film, no one can deny the lyrical picture the film paints of not just 1970’s America, but the America of all time. As I watched the film I couldn’t help but be saddened by the true lack of American heroes in modern film where a car and the open road have come to symbolize only that which is negative in our culture. What defines a hero now has definitively changed which means Kowalski was truly the last of a dying breed.

Funemployed Writing: Adventures at Starbucks

2010-03-23T15:53:00.001-07:00

On the strength of some solid facebook feedback, coupled with my eavesdropping tendencies, I've decided to collect a few of the more interesting happenings at my local Starbucks. If you're ever on Pico near Robertson, let's get some coffee. My only request is that you do not do any of the things listed on here:

1. I'd say about twice a week I run into the same old Jewish man at Starbucks. He doesn't seem to be senile, so I'm assuming he remembers me. Literally every time he says, "Hey, me at quarterback, you on the line, and 5 other guys, huh? We take everyone!" Each day it gets less charming. Today he did it twice because there was another big guy around. The big guy and I looked at each other with equal amounts of exasperation. I'm going to pee in his coffee.

2. A foreign guy was reading aloud. It was low enough that I couldn't hear and I was the same distance as some random guy on his laptop who felt obligated to be a dick, "excuse me, I tried to communicate to you last time, but I guess you didn't understand. I don't like it when you read aloud. Have some basic human decency." The foreign guy silently obliged. I wanted to point out that reading aloud was the same as having a conversation or talking on your phone. Starbucks is not a library, that's why God made headphones on the 5th day (it's in Genesis). Of course reading aloud is ridiculous, but to accuse this poor bastard of being inhumane? That's absurd. I love people in public places who tell other people how to behave.

3. A PYT was talking to her boyfriend loudly enough for everyone to hear. It was apparent, from her half of the conversation, that her boyfriend was probably cheating on her. It also appeared that this fact was completely lost on her. She finished and sat typing, forlorn. Moments later she asked some old bald guy to open her water bottle, claiming the ridges in the cap hurt her hands. Why she didn't ask a young strapping gentleman like myself remains a mystery. I digress. He opened the bottle and used the opportunity to ask questions about her relationship. Turns out she only knew the guy for a month, the month directly after his 3 year relationship had ended, in which time they had fallen madly in love. He explained that he was speaking as a "guy" (which is the all time greatest stance: "By human nature, I'm a guy so I can tap into all the terrible things we think and do, but I'm able to overcome it and be a "good guy.") who is in the midst of a 7 year marriage. His unsolicited advice was that she should spy on him, google his name, do whatever it took to find out the truth. She became angry and accused him of hitting on her. They were both right.

4. A homeless, or pretty damn poor, guy bought a pay-as-you-go phone. He needed to use my cell phone in order to activate his. I agreed and sat down next to me and got to work, attracting the attention of the Middle Eastern man directly across from us who seemed annoyed. And he was annoyed until he heard about the bargain that our poor friend got at RadioShack. The phone cost $30 and comes with free activation, a charger, and 300 minutes. This was enough to send both of these gentlemen into hyperbolic rants about the positives and negatives of the cell phone industry. Eventually the poor man resumed his battle with activation. He was unable to figure it out, to the surprise of no one, and spent 30 minutes talking/cursing to me, my phone and the general audience of Starbucks. I felt I deserved a cigarette, so I bummed one from him. That's right, I bummed a cig from a homeless man.

5. I met a homeless guy who found 3 working lighters (which he showed me) and a bong (which he didn't take because he didn't want to be caught with it). He offered me a lighter for a cig, but I was out. 3 seconds later a full cigarette, carried by the wind, presented itself at his feet. He proceeded to tell me that he found 24 half gallons of wild turkey in a trash can last month while rummaging for cans. Needless to say the can expedition was abandoned and he, Carlos and 6 others went to town on the wild turkey because quote, "We can cut out the middle step!" Never before have I been so jealous of a homeless man.

These are but a few of the stories. Three of those happened on one day and all five have happened within the last two weeks. Either there is something special in the roast, I spend too much time there, or I need to mind my business. How can I ignore such gold? A man has to be entertained while traversing the difficult waters of funemployment....maybe it's not too late to play pro football...

Reckless, Abandon

2010-03-22T17:24:00.000-07:00

I started cringing even before the film actually started. I had been warned about Ichi the Killer by a friend, and Takashi Miike fanatic, who said that my previous screening of Gozu would be nothing compared to the twisted Ichi. I found myself able to stomach some of the violence while trying to make sense of the ever-twisting plot and complex sexuality. Amidst the body-splitting violence, a tale of abandonment shines through.

The opening scene of Ichi begins not with Ichi nor Kakihara, but with Kaneko who feels guilty for leaving Boss Anjo unguarded. He is rebuffed and then receives a phone call from his son begging him to not leave him like his mother did. It is in this first scene that the theme of abandonment is established.

A little while later we meet Kakihara, the flamboyantly dressed, menacing, sadomasochistic protagonist. Boss Anjo has gone missing, and Kakihara wants answers. His flamboyant dress, and a few dialogue references, imply that Anjo and Kakihara were romantically involved. It is revealed, however, that Kakihara is desparate to find Anjo because he relishes the pain that only Anjo can inflict. Kakihara is left to fill the void which he tries to again and again, and fails. No matter how much sadistic violence he carries out on the people he believes responsible for Anjo’s disappearance, and himself, he cannot fulfill his desire for masochism. Karen, a multilingual prostitute, tries to satisfy his needs, but she does not enjoy giving the pain as much as he enjoys receiving it. Things seem hopeless until Kakihara discovers that Ichi killed Anjo; he gleans from his handiwork that this Ichi is a psychopath who enjoys doling out pain.

Ichi is a psychopath, a killer who loves with the retractable blades from his shoes. Miike manages to create sympathy for Ichi’s character at the beginning of the film. His sexual perversion is the result of a traumatic childhood in which he was bullied and he witnessed the rape of a girl he knew. He didn’t stop it because he wanted to participate. The truth is that those memories were implanted by Jijii. Ichi killed his parents, for unknown reasons, and was adopted by Jijii. Ichi has a fragile psyche; he often cries before leaping into a bout of homicidal rage. He is scared to be abandoned, a feeling that is echoed by Kaneko’s son Takeshi, so he listens to Jijii’s instructions even if they go against his nature.

As the film progresses Kakihara loses most of his associates. He is kicked out of the syndicate and his soldiers flee after seeing Ichi’s wrath. Kaneko stays out of respect to Anjo, the man that saved Kaneko when he was without anyone else. Kakihara and Kaneko are anxious to find Ichi. Kakihara is both anxious and apprehensive, worried that he’ll be let down by Ichi like he has by so many others. In the end he is. Ichi, believing that Kaneko is his brother, is devastated when Kaneko shoots him. Ichi slices his throat with his shoe-blade and then falls to the ground crying. He has lost his brother, he is alone again. Kakihara is unable to coax him into a fight. Realizing that he will never obtain what he wants, Kakihara commits suicide. As he does so, he hallucinates and envisions the death he wanted at the hands of Ichi. Both characters were looking for each other, Ichi not knowing that Kakihara was the only person that would appreciate the pain he was inflicting, and both characters were disappointed when they found each other.

I would be remiss to talk about the film without mentioning the violence. While it is certainly a graphic film, it is done well. Most of the violence is of the cartoonish variety, with the exception being the violence inflicted on the prostitute, by her pimp, that Ichi spies on. Aside from that, there are blood squirts, CGI-ed cross-sections of bodies, and enough entrails and blood to point an entire room top to bottom. The inevitable question is if the gratuity is justified, or more simply, why do it? The attitudes of the characters are a mirror to the audience. Kakihara and other characters enjoy the violence they inflict in an experimental way. One of the twin, corrupt detectives that helps Kakihara, asks his victim if he believes a human arm can be pulled from the body. It seems that what really drives the characters is a morbid curiosity that they have in common with the viewing audience. Can we really do this? Do I really want to watch this? The answer is not as simple as yanking an arm out of its socket.

Equally as mystifying as the violence, is the character of Jijii, the puppet master who orchestrates most of the slayings in the film. At first he seems average or even below average, but we soon learn that through hypnosis he has implanted memories into Ichi and Karen. Towards the end of the film he rips of his clothes to reveal a bodybuilder’s physique and then proceeds to crush Kakihara’s right hand man into a human pretzel. The question, again, is why? Why would he manipulate Ichi if he is powerful enough, and smart enough, to commit the murders himself? The only answer, short of invented motives, is that Jijii represents the writer of the story. He is responsible for unleashing these characters into a hellish world, creating their back stories and allowing them to destroy each other. Jijii is reckless, his actions serve no purpose, in the same way that the film is reckless and does not seek to answer questions about itself or anything else. The only point is that we’re all a bunch of sadists, creators and consumers alike, who want to see bad things happen to people. There are varying degrees, and Ichi the killer is at the end of the spectrum, but nobody wants to watch a film where good things happen to the characters in an endless cycle.

It would be easy to dismiss the film as a reckless piece of gore-porn. It can be difficult to see a point through the blood-soaked frames, but Miike is too intelligent to be dismissed. His violence is a question posed to the audience: why are we watching this? Perhaps we feel abandonment like the characters in the film. Maybe pain, in this case extreme pain, is the only thing that makes us feel or have a reaction. I can say that like Kakihara, I was anxious and apprehensive for his meeting with Ichi, unsure if I would be let down and scared of what it would mean for my expectations to be met. In the end I was disappointed, but I wasn’t sure why.

The Killer

2010-03-19T14:47:00.001-07:00

A good Western, a good Samurai film and a good crime story all address the same issue: what is right and what is wrong? The characters in these films usually act based on an inner moral code and a sense of honor. This is the case for Chow Yun Fat in John Woo’s The Killer.

Jong, Chow Yun Fat, is an “unusual killer.” He is intense without malice, a determined killer with a sense of pride and honor. When he accidentally blinds Jenny, his guilt leads him back to her. He keeps his identity from her for as long as possible, but soon Jennie leads Jong to Inspector Ying.

Inspector Ying is an “unusual cop.” He has his own methods which are considered dangerous. He values justice over anything else, and he recognizes that the law can only go so far in insuring that justice. Inspector Ying and Jong are cut from the same cloth. Though they are enemies, they admire each other’s work and ethics. When Ying witnesses Jong save an innocent young girl caught in some crossfire, he realizes that Jong is not typical. A great crime story blends the line of good and evil, and John Woo does that masterfully. The film becomes a tale of loyalty and honor. Ying realizes that arresting Jong is not the right thing to do. Instead he offers his friendship, and helps Jong fight the Triads.

The film has a strong theme of redemption. Jong’s friend Fung Sei betrays him, but Jong spares him. Fung Sei gives his life to right his wrong, and in the end Jong kills him to put him out of his misery. Jong’s own story is a quest for a redemption, a quest that comes up short, as he is blinded before he dies. The imagery of the church and the doves reinforce this theme. Jong is bound to a sense of duty, but in the end he is still a killer, not worthy of the innocent Jennie and too full of sin for redemption. He is blinded because he can never stop killing, not even after he makes a promise to Jennie to stop.

John Woo’s fresh take on an old theme also paid homage, by my account, to a couple of crime stories from years past. Jong’s harmonica riffs remind me of Tokyo Drifter and Once Upon A Time in the West, two movies featuring characters who have their own particular moral code. The “one bullet” speech is reminiscent of Dirty Harry, yet another figure who operates right outside of the law. Lastly, I couldn’t help but think of Boondock Saints as I watched this film. I’m sure Troy Duffy had to have seen this movie. The brothers style in the movie is similar to Jong’s and the inspectors both have the same character. They both become obsessed with their subjects, relive their crimes and eventually help the men they are chasing.

John Woo’s The Killer is an action-packed film, but the characters make the film more than a shoot-em-up thrill ride. The audience wants Jong to succeed, they want Fung Sei to be redeemed, and they want Jennie to get a new set of corneas. Things don’t work out in the end, though Jong dies honorably, the old axiom holds true: live by the sword, die by the sword.

Gummo

2010-03-19T13:53:00.001-07:00

The undesirable. The ignored. The forgotten. The grotesque. These are the subjects of Harmony Korine’s Gummo. The film revolves around the citizens of Xenia, Ohio after it was hit by a tornado some twenty years earlier. The scenes form a patchwork quilt that delivers an interesting narrative of an American city.

I have recently become fascinated by the grotesque. In the last two weeks I’ve read Flannery O’Connor’s Wise Blood and watched Twin Peaks and the League of Gentlemen. All three of these works deal with small towns, characters that are taken for granted and the uncanny that is behind everyone‘s character. I had no idea that Gummo would follow this trend, a coincidence that made the viewing all the more special.

The characters in Gummo are characters in real life. Korine said he wanted non-actors because they can offer a piece of themselves. In Gummo each character brings a piece of themselves to the screen, an honest open piece, and allows the audience to make the judgment. Sometimes it’s difficult to watch, most of the time the question is why. Why are these people doing this? What is the reason they are behaving like this? Is it the tornado? Did that implant this nihilistic dread into them?

No answer is given of course. All the audience knows is that these are the people of Xenia, Ohio. Take them or leave them. The structure of the film is non-linear, a series of scenes with recurring characters. The impression is what one might have after spending a weekend in the town. Maybe you wouldn’t know everyone by name, but you would have an idea of what is going on there.

Harmony Korine wanted to present a collage of images and have the narrative create itself. My interpretation of the narrative is summed up in one of the final scenes. Solomon (Jacob Reynolds) sits in murky water in a bathtub. Dinner is brought to him and he eats his spaghetti while soaking in the dirty water. The doorbell rings and his mother answers it. She buys a candy bar from two black boys and then brings it to Solomon. In the midst of the murky water, with a mouthful of half-chewed spaghetti, he begins to devour the chocolate bar after it fell into his water. Never mind the spaghetti, never mind the water, never mind anything, everything is thrown to the wind. Sucked up by the same tornado that ripped through the town and scattered the pieces of its citizens lives.

Up In The Air

2010-03-19T12:54:00.000-07:00

I knew what I was getting myself into with Up in The Air. My expectations were obtainable; I merely wanted a “meh.” After an hour and forty minutes the film generated that exact response from me.

Up in the Air is Fight Club for yuppies. Ryan Bingham (George Clooney) is a man who lives on an airplane and works an undesirable job, like Ed Norton in Fight Club sans the hatred for his work. Ryan’s philosophy is to have no attachments. In an early scene in the film, one of the first scenes featuring Ryan’s motivational talks, he advises his audience to load their possessions into a backpack and light them on fire. Tyler Durden would be proud. The last of the similarities: Ryan has a relationship with Alex, who shares his view of love and its limitations, meaning that all they do is have sex together. And by the end of the film he has developed feelings for her, even though this goes against their agreement.

Now for the differences:

Up in the Air lacks the punch and enthusiasm of Fight Club. That is obvious and intentional. The message in this film isn’t to try to feel alive by whatever means necessary, the message is to settle. And that settling isn’t all that bad. Ryan and Alex both agree that settling isn’t settling when you reach a certain age. Get a job, work until you’re too lonely to notice and then…keep working. The film offers no answer to the riddle of Ryan’s life. Apparently he is to remain satisfied by luxury hotels, scotch on the rocks, sexy bedmates, and an ineffable sense of hollowness.

George Clooney’s character undergoes no change whatsoever. He takes a chance by going after Alex, but what is his response to this? He doesn’t quit his job, he doesn’t seek out a longer relationship, he doesn’t call his siblings or Natalie (Anna Kendrick). The conclusion is that he’ll return to the same life he was learning to pull away from. Fight Club does not have an exceptionally resolute ending, but Ed Norton’s transformation is clear by the end of the film. The only thing that could be considered a change in Ryan’s behavior is the fact that he writes Natalie a letter, but that seems like basic human decency. As charming and professional as Ryan’s character is, I’m guessing he always would have been open to writing Natalie a letter of recommendation.

Nevertheless, George Clooney turned in a solid performance. Not the best of his career or even of this year, that goes to Fantastic Mr. Fox. The supporting cast was solid. Jason Bateman was funny and had a new look (beard). I liked Anna Kendrick, but I really thought her character should have ended differently. Maybe Ryan will live vicariously through her; she leaves the job and, I’m sure, will continue to believe in true love. Vera Farmiga was believable, attractive, and the twist in her character saved the last twenty minutes of the film from being an endless series of montages.

There was nothing wrong with Up in the Air. I understand why people enjoyed it. The demographic probably also enjoyed As Good As It Gets, About Schmidt and Sideways. Thirty-five years old, middle to middle-upper class, and remorseful for a life they’re unwilling to change. Up in the Air is not good enough to like, or bad enough to hate. Meh.

S.W.L. #3 - 3-D Technology

2010-03-08T17:58:00.001-08:00

“I guess my six-year-old daughter will get a much better handle on it. There’s a set of rules that anything that was in the world when you were born is normal and natural. Anything invented between when you were 15 and 35 is new and revolutionary and exciting, and you’ll probably get a career in it. Anything invented after you’re 35 is against the natural order of things.”

“It's important to remember that the relationship between different media tends to be complementary. When new media arrive they don't necessarily replace or eradicate previous types. Though we should perhaps observe a half second silence for the eight-track. - There that's done. What usually happens is that older media have to shuffle about a bit to make space for the new one and its particular advantages. Radio did not kill books and television did not kill radio or movies - what television did kill was cinema newsreel. TV does it much better because it can deliver it instantly. Who wants last week's news?”

-Douglas Adams

Dear 3-D technology,

We do not need you. Alright, maybe a little bit but not in everything. As we waited for KFC, yes KFC, to fill our order yesterday my sister, her roommate and I debated Avatar. One of my complaints was that Avatar is going to spawn a bunch of imitators with even worse plots. I understand this isn’t a fair point against Avatar, but I can’t help but feel that 3-D technology is going to be rammed down our throats, to use the parlance of health care-hating Republicans. Let’s look at the evidence.

Spiderman 4 has been put on the back burner for a variety of reasons. Of course, I have no idea what the exact reason is, but reportedly one of these reasons is that Sam Raimi was so impressed by Avatar, that he couldn’t help but want to use the technology for the new Spiderman. This means production would be pushed back, throw a bad script in the mix, and botta bing botta boom you got a red light. If Spiderman 3 is any indication, 3-D isn’t the problem with the Spiderman franchise. I’m sure, however, that no matter how bad the latest is or will be, if it utilizes James Cameron’s technology people will go in droves. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing, because film certainly needs people to go to the theaters and anyone in (or wishing to get in) to the industry would be stupid to dismiss the technology entirely. The problem is when studios and filmmakers begin to rely on 3-D to solve fundamental problems, namely weak plots and weak characters.

It seems that everyone, however, is ready for 3-D and in the spirit that made America great, they want to move onward and upward. Beauty, aesthetic beauty, is not defined by technological achievement. Avatar is a beautiful piece of filmmaking and it is visually stunning, but I was as impressed with Watchmen, because of the art direction, or Dark Knight, because of the shot selection, or A Zed and Two Noughts and Songs from the Second Floor because of the compostion of each shot. There is beauty to be expressed in film whether or not 3-D technology becomes prevalent, and it appears that it will.

I’m not fool hardy enough to say that 3-D is the death of the motion picture. I don’t believe that any art form dies. For proof you can cite hip-hop as a form of spoken word poetry, something that apparently died a couple thousand years ago. Andre Bazin, in 1942, claimed that widescreen would be the death of beauty in film. I think it’s safe to say that he was wrong. I trust that the viewing public will get over its infatuation with 3-D and understand that 3-D has a place in film, but not a priority. A fear still lingers in the back of my mind, however, and that is the fear that young filmmakers will develop a predilection and a feeling of necessity towards 3-D ignoring the finer parts of film that make a well-rounded work of art. Sadly, the problem with 3-D goes beyond a trend in cinema.

LG, Panasonic, Samsung, and Sony will be introducing 3-D televisions by the end of the year. When HD came out, I was unsure of the purpose, things already looked good enough for me. Then bluray took over for dvds. Everyone ran out and bought an LCD or Plasma screen television and a Playstation 3. Are you ready to re-up? One of the things that lead to the Great Depression was the boom in technology. People bought refrigerators and radios and all sorts of wonders of the modern era. And then technology stalled, companies had surplus products and nobody bought anything because they already had what they needed. And then the stock market crashed. One can’t help but assume that these companies keep rolling out the “next thing” in the hopes that we’ll continue to buy the things we don’t really need. Sure you didn’t need an LCD or Plasma, but 3-D televisions? That’s really pushing it. Just think of the things you’ll be able to watch in 3-D: stand-up comedy, sitcoms, the news and any other banal television program that gains absolutely nothing, aesthetically, from the technology. We are getting closer and closer to dissolving the divide between reality and simulated reality. This is not healthy. The only people I want to enter my 3-D world need to be living breathing organisms. And what 3-D television really means is that there is no savior for the film industry. Once people can buy a 3-D projector they will be able to recreate the experience of watching a 3-D film in theaters. What then is the solution?

The solution is the internet and what it has done to the music industry. The truth is that it’s possible for filmmakers, actors, producers and the like to make a living doing film. Maybe not as much money as they like, but they’ll be able to make a living. The internet, for the music industry, has allowed bands to self-promote and take control of their own careers. It will do the same for film and the film industry’s response ought to be a return to simpler times: more theaters, more films in those theaters and cheaper ticket prices. 3-D technology cannot and will not save film. The answer is to make better films and to concentrate on those areas that have been ignored for far too long in American film.

What then is the solution for a society that wants to be stimulated without leaving the house or talking to other people? In addition to television and film, the world of pornography is joining the ranks of 3-D. For the right amount of money we can have sex (sort of), people (sort of) and movies in our homes without ever leaving and without interacting. This isn’t a new problem, it has been a rising trend for sometime, but amidst the sea of madness everyone shrugs their shoulders. The answer is to be pro-active, to educate the future generation to use technology wisely. It is ignorant and irresponsible to pretend or hope, like so many burnt out hippies, that we are going to go backwards, technologically speaking. It is as ignorant and irresponsible to ignore the problem. We simply have to use technology responsibly and make sure that it coincides with and is beneficial to nature, that is human nature and the environment.

Each human has a little bit of God in him; each human has the capacity to create worlds. That is art, that is child bearing, that is building, that is cooking, that is life. Avatar aims to create a new world, Pandora, and does so with flying colors. A new and different world, not a thinly-veiled disguise of our own world.

Always,

Chewing Bones

Top 10 Pros and Cons: 82nd Annual Academy Awards

2010-03-08T16:18:00.000-08:00

For the first time in my 24 years on this earth, or at least for the first time that I could remember, I watched the Academy Awards last night. There were some bright moments, some low moments, and very few surprises…so why is everyone acting like they were caught with their pants down? Are you surprised that a 3 and a half hour show turned out to be boring? Are you surprised at what movies won? Really? For your viewing pleasure, I have compiled a list of the top 10 pros and cons of the 2010 Oscars:

Pro 1: George Clooney, Avatar panned

I don’t know what it was, but every celebrity who presented or won an award couldn’t help but mention Clooney or Cameron. It was strange to see James Cameron’s underlings pay tribute in true Mafioso fashion, reveling in his awesomeness. Anyone who won an award for Avatar kept calling him “Jim” in an attempt to make him seem more homely. It didn’t work. Ben Stiller dressed up as an Avatar, the winner of the best foreign language film referenced it, Baldwin and Martin did a bit on it. And then they didn’t win for director or best picture. Perfect.

The mock feud between Alec Baldwin and George Clooney was hilarious. I only wish it were real. And I think everyone would like to know why Clooney threw Sandra Bullock in a pool. Or at least see video evidence.

Con 1: “The Oscars are long and boring.”

Thanks for the update. It’s a 210 minute show, of course it’s boring! Every major TV event is boring: the Super Bowl, the opening ceremony of the Olympics, The World Series, The NBA Championship, the Grammys, etc. It would be utterly impossible for any of these events to escape the curse of covering all they have to cover, entertaining and advertising, and not lull a bit. The function of an award show is to honor the people who entertain us all year long. The secondary function is to be entertaining. Every award ceremony I’ve ever been at, in my life, was boring. Why should/would this be different? No matter what happens the Oscars are going to be too long. They can’t cut the so-called “insignificant categories” because these people never get their due in the first place. Stop complaining. If you want to be entertained for three hours, go watch Avatar…

Pro 2: A few great speeches

1. Jeff Bridges because who doesn’t love Jeff Bridges. 5 career nominations, 1 win and the one of the most iconic and certainly immortal roles in film history. There is no other actor, or artist maybe, that I would like to meet and have a drink with. I think I speak for the majority of folks. And his speech was great, heartfelt and made the length of the show not matter one bit.

2. Sandra Bullock gave a great speech. I don’t like Sandra Bullock, that is I don’t like her movies, but her speech was funny and she seems like a genuine person.

3. And of course, the winner of the documentary short, Music by Prudence. Roger Ross Williams was interrupted by Elinor Burkett in true Kanye fashion. Brillaint.

Con 2: “Avatar didn’t win, reinforcing the Academy’s love of indie films and neglect for films that bring in money…”

A list of the top 10 grossing films of last year:

1. Avatar

2. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen

3. Harry Potter and the Half Blood Prince

4. The Twilight Saga: New Moon

5. Up

6. The Hangover

7. Star Trek

8. The Blind Side

9. Alvin and the Chipmunks: The Squeakuel

10. Sherlock Holmes

If we want the only criteria for a good film to be what it does at the box office, why not just take the best picture nominees from the list of top grossing films? Because all these movies do not deserve an Oscar nomination. The Oscars goal, presumably, is to award movies that strove for more than pure entertainment. The first time I saw Avatar I was against it, vehemently. I’ll admit that I enjoyed it more the second time, but at no point did I think it should win an Oscar. The Oscars are known for rewarding the same kind of films each year, ones designed specifically for the Oscars, but this year is the first time I’ve agreed with them. Here is the message the Academy would send by handing a best picture award to Avatar: We don’t care about story-telling and we don’t care about good performances, all we care about is what can keep people entertained for 3 hours. Avatar is an amazing spectacle, but the best movie of the year? No. If the only criteria is what people like, I’d listen to nothing but American Idol music, read John Grisham novels and see Twilight, Avatar, Harry Potter and Alvin and the chipmunks 10 times each. Nothing wrong with enjoying any of these works of art, but it shouldn’t be the only thing people go and see/listen to/read.

And we really need to redefine “indie.” The spirit of “indie” films are films that are made on a small budget like Cassavetes's films, Spike Lee’s first films, Kevin Smith's first films, etc. For these larger films that are independent of studios, but have enough money to blow things up, they should really be called Rogue films. The spirit of the film isn’t low budget or alternative, it could easily be a studio film, but the filmmaker made an attempt, a rogue one, to do it on their own.

Pro 3: First Woman Director to win Best Director Oscar

I’ll admit this is a back-handed compliment at pro 3, because I’m happier that certain films didn’t win. I’m absolutely ecstatic that Avatar lost and I’m even happier that Precious didn’t win. Had Precious won, Lee Daniels would have been the first African-American to win best director for that thing they called a movie. Oscar Micheaux, Mario Van Peebles and Spike Lee would have been pissed. Or they should have been pissed.

Con 3: “The hosts of the Oscars weren’t funny.”

It really doesn’t matter what the Academy does. They get Chris Rock and he’s too edgy, they get Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin and they’re too classy. There are two solutions to this problem: get Billy Crystal or Ricky Gervais. People, for some reason, love Billy Crystal. I don’t get it, but the Oscars ought to cave to the people and beg Mr. Crystal to come back and do his shtick. Or get Gervais. He’s got the Chris Rock edginess that will appeal to a larger crowd, as the Golden Globes proved, and he’s British which means that his foul mouth seems somehow superior to ours. That twinge of an accent allows Gervais’s jabs at American celebrity’s to be charming.

Pro 4: 10 films

I’m for it. It definitely brought attention to films that wouldn’t otherwise get noticed. I’m looking at you District 9. The only problem is that people complain about their film not winning; just be happy it got nominated, that should be a big enough honor.

Con 4: “The clips from the movies are too long, too short, too boring, blah, blah, blah.”

Last year they weren’t long enough, this year they were too long. Again another unfixable problem. I actually thought that some of the short videos this year were better than the movies, Up in the Air for example.

That being said, they should really lose the individual introductions of the best actress and best actor categories. Colin Farrell was the only one who didn’t seem like he was forcing the issue.

Pro 5: Tributes

The tribute to John Hughes was well done, and they had just about everyone there in some capacity. The tribute to the people Hollywood lost was also nice, but they managed to forget Farrah Fawcet, Ed McMahon and Bea Arthur. On a brighter note I really liked James Taylor’s performance.

Con 5: “(insert actress/actor) looked terrible.”

The fashion thing is fun I guess, but honestly these people are gorgeous. They are the glitterati. They could wear sweat pants and a tank top and still be attractive. So it’s pretty funny to hear your friends bash someone’s appearance knowing full well that if one of these people were in the room they’d drop all pretension. Worse yet are the fashion critics, who dream of looking like these people, commenting on a dress that they probably didn’t even pick out. And I have to mention that once again Christina Hendricks looked amazing, ignoring all that backlash from her last award show appearance. Geoffrey Arrend is a lucky bastard.

The Oscars, to me, were a big success. If you were looking for an award show that honors the best in film, than you should look at Sight and Sound's top films of the year, that’s not what the Oscars are about. They are, however, fun for the purpose of watching a bunch of good looking people add even more fuel to their egos while others are openly mocked by their peers. I’m sure the 2011 ceremony will be more of the same.

Cop Out

2010-03-02T18:06:00.000-08:00

Being an avid 30 Rock/Tracy Morgan fan, I was excited to see Cop Out. After convincing my friend that A Prophet didn’t sound interesting, and that anything with Tracy Morgan can’t be that bad, we went to Westwood to watch Kevin Smith’s latest. The theater wasn’t a quarter full…apparently everyone already got the message. I wish I had.

The very first scene spelled trouble. Tracy Morgan’s character, Paul, interrogates a witness while impersonating cop movies and any other movie he can come up with in a scene that is 10 impersonations too long. Adding to the overdone joke, Bruce Willis’s Jimmy names each film that Paul imitates except for Die Hard. Ha ha! Bruce Willis isn’t able to name a movie he was in! What a clever joke! Believe it or not, it’s all downhill from there.

What everyone, including myself, was hoping and praying for was a parody of cop films. A jab at all those bad 80’s and 90’s buddy cop movies. Instead we are given pastiche; the same drab story line in the form of a very poorly done homage. I had my suspicions from the trailer, but I thought Kevin Smith might be able to do something with what he was given. Kevin Smith doesn’t have a very distinctive visual style, so I thought he would focus on humor in order to make the film worth watching. Clearly he gave up or phoned in this movie in hopes that a studio will let him make one of his own pictures after this.

Tracy Morgan manages to give a decent performance, but without good writing, his shtick loses its impact pretty quickly. Not to mention that Bruce Willis fails as the straight man because he is (almost) as goofy as Tracy Morgan. It doesn't help that Paul and Jimmy do not have a conflict between themselves, a staple of buddy cop movies. They never have a fight and they never misread each others intentions even though there were ample moments for it.

The soundtrack was as confusing. It featured the worst hip-hop beats I have ever heard and again I wasn’t sure if it was making fun of 80’s hip-hop or imitating it as best it could. Then you have the quandary of Sean Williams Scott. From the preview, you get the idea that Scott, Willis and Morgan will form some kind of unlikely crime fighting team. No dice. Dave, Sean Williams Scott, steals a baseball card from Jimmy. Paul and Jimmy catch Dave and then he goes to jail. Quite a bit of plot passes before we see him again. Paul and Jimmy bail him out of jail to help them steal back the baseball card from the people he sold it to. Maybe there is a chance for hilarity you say? Nope. Dave tries to break into the house, slips, hits his head and dies. What the hell?! Why not have him taken hostage? Or knocked unconscious only to wake up at the crucial moment? Or any number of alternatives? Instead he dies…or does he? The credits roll, the film is over. And then we are in the morgue watching the coroner perform her duties. We hear Dave’s voice which beckons the coroner to open the bag. She obliges and Dave pops out of the bag! Great, he’s alive! Why? Or how? I don’t know.

There are a few funny moments that can be attributed to Tracy Morgan’s delivery and performance abilities. The only thing that might save the movie is 30 Rock. In the fictional Tracy Jordan’s dressing room, there has been a “Black Cop” movie poster on the wall since the show began. I would be willing to bet that Tina Fey and the other writers have enough sense of the absurd to make a joke about life imitating art or something. They’re smarter than me, I’m sure they’ll figure it out. Poor Tracy Morgan. Lets hope that Death at a Funeral is better (wink).

Precious...

2010-03-02T17:07:00.000-08:00

When I first saw the previews for Precious, I thought, “What a piece of contrived garbage. A clear cut Oscar vehicle designed to prey on the hearts of the disconnected middle-upper class.” Amidst the consistent flow of media support and favorable reviews, I managed to maintain my cynical view of the film. I love to argue, but despite my fervor for confrontation, I love to be proven wrong. Unfortunately, or maybe fortunately, Precious not only met my expectations of mediocrity, it managed to be a little worse than I thought it could be.

A quick breakdown of Precious’s character: a large, unattractive (by Hollywood standards as the film points out) black girl. 16 years old but still in junior high. 2 children, both fathered by her father via rape, one of which is named Mongoloid (officially) and has down syndrome. Seriously. She reads at a 2nd - 3rd grade level. And here is the cruncher: she has AIDS, contracted from her father during one of the incest rape scenes.

I wasn’t going to write this review for Precious, because I couldn’t take the film seriously. It was so obvious in its attempt to emotionally rape me, that I couldn’t help but laugh. Instead of (trying) to pay attention to the message of the film, I developed a solid drinking game to be used if you want to make it through the experience without duct taping your eyelids open:

1. Anytime a stereotype is reinforced take a drink (ex. Precious steals a bucket of chicken and runs down the street eating it. Yes, that actually happens in the movie, and yes, I actually pissed myself laughing afterwards.)

2. Anytime Precious experiences a break from reality take a drink (ex. Precious is hit in the back of the head with an ashtray and dreams that she is a movie star dating a sharp-jawed white or light-skinned black man)

3. Anytime the director, Lee Daniels, does something blatantly “artsy” to pander to the awards circuit without actually considering the story.

4. Anytime the word “nigger” is used, finish your drink!

If you actually follow these rules, you will have alcohol poisoning after the first act. Precious continues a trend in American film that is here to stay for the immediate, annoying future. Each year the Oscars feature a “holocaust” film, a Clint Eastwood movie, and a movie about underprivileged browns/blacks. Last year when I saw Slumdog Millionaire, I walked out angry and was unable to articulate why. After about 10 minutes of reflection, I understood. The film was told beautifully, directed well, and had good performances and good writing. The problem was the ideology. I told my friends that if Slumdog was set in America, nobody would care because we are past the era of “rags-to-riches” stories having an impact. How does Precious circumvent this little problem? They set the movie, for apparently no reason at all, in 1987. They knew that an audience wouldn’t possibly swallow the tripe being shoved down its throat unless they hit the rewind button back to a time before so-called, post-racial America.

I’m sure some people will say, “But this is reality for some black people in America, you are not considering what it’s like for the unfortunate.” First of all, my reaction is no different than India’s after Slumdog Millionaire: that’s not our only story. India is home to the LARGEST film industry in the world and the story America chooses to cover about this vast country concentrates on the slums. The story America wants to hear from black people is also from the slums. Secondly, it may be true that somewhere (perhaps East St. Louis or Flint) this is happening, but let me ask you this: if this film were set in rural Kentucky with an overweight, mentally-inept white trash character and her children created through incest, would people care as much? Or would it have to be just another indie film with a small market and a somewhat cynical tone? Thirdly, I just recently finished Black Boy by Richard Wright. A small controversy of the book, which was excused by critics and authors alike, is that Wright borrowed a few stories from others’ lives to tell his “autobiography.” Wright, however, was setting out to paint a picture of what it was like to be a “black boy” born in the 1920’s Southern United States. His conglomeration of anecdotes serves the purpose of bringing to light, the tribulations of black people 70 years ago. Precious, on the other hand, would be in the same predicament regardless of her race. This country, and Hollywood, has a thing for thin, good-looking people who can read. If you are poor, dumb and unattractive, you do not have much of a chance. Concentrating on race adds an unnecessary, irrelevant layer to the film. Slap white skin on Precious, and she would still be in trouble.

Excusing the race issue, I will say that the film has a somewhat decent message that I had to be informed of, because I was to busy ridiculing the film. That message is that Precious can’t move forward until she accepts herself, until she looks in the mirror and sees Precious and not the skinny (white) girl she wants to be. That message is fine, apart from the race aspect. The only other problem with that message for me is that we are made to feel badly for overweight people. Not lazy overweight people, but people with Thyroid issues and the like. I can’t help but be a little insensitive. If the person had a deformity or a disability, maybe I could conjure up some sympathy, but even then I’m not sure.

God deals a cruel hand to some and who knows why, but I don’t think it makes you a bad person for wanting to look at things that are considered beautiful by the majority of people. Is it fair that some people are born one way and others another way? Absolutely not, but feeling bad for certain people accomplishes nothing. If the film is suggesting that I’m lucky to be what I am, than I can agree, but there is a big difference between gratitude or empathy and sympathy.

Which brings me back to the race issue. I read an article when Precious first came out about how this movie represents the other black America that doesn’t look like Obama. I guess. I’m not saying that Obama speaking in clear, proper English and being good-looking hasn’t helped him, but that’s true of any race in America. Our presidents are generally good-looking men who speak properly. And they have a ton of money. We are never going to have an ugly, poor and poorly-educated president. I guess Lincoln was pretty close, but obviously he was educated. Andrew Jackson was poorly educated, but he looked alright. Point is that as a people we are vain. You have to love yourself, but even after Precious learns in the movie to do so, she doesn’t suddenly believe that she looks like a Hollywood star because she doesn’t. If you look like Barack Obama, you get ahead in life, though you also need talent, drive and passion. If you don’t look good, you have to work harder and you have to learn that your perception of yourself will be reflected in how others see you. The bottom line is that I feel bad for Precious for having AIDS, two kids before 18, and a host of other things, but I’m not going to feel bad because she’s overweight and dark black. Mo’nique, who gives a great performance despite bad writing, is a large black woman that makes it work because she’s charismatic and she does not allow herself to be limited by her race or weight. Not to mention Gabourey Sidibe, who didn't let the projects, money or identity bother her in real life. I think that's the greatest irony of all. The issue isn’t weight and color, it’s education and economics. Maybe that’s the point of the film, but it sure didn’t feel like it or it felt like a very cheap version of that message.

And then there is the note at the end of the movie, “To Precious girls everywhere.” Really? You think "Precious" girls will be inspired by this film? Does Requiem for a Dream inspire drug addicts? She’s going to die at the end! It might scare them into trying to change their lives, but I don't see it inspiring anything. Not only that, but anybody who has a reality that harsh is going to be watching movies for pure escapism and I don’t blame them. That movie isn’t made for "Precious" girls, it’s made for people with a disconnected reality who can’t feel anymore.

There were some good things. Most of the performances, including Gabourey Sidibe even though she talked and wrote like a Neanderthal, were good. Mo‘nique was great and her final monologue, which was put there to save the film from being nothing more than loosely stringed together vignettes of terror, was performed amazingly. Mariah Carey actually made me double take in her second scene of the film when, for the first time, I realized it was her. Other than that, I can’t imagine having a good reaction to this film. I understand while it’ll be talked about all year, which is why I understand what’s wrong with American film.

This review is dedicated to non-Precious girls, as Precious girls won’t be able to read it.

Inverted Earth by The Deluge

2010-02-24T20:56:00.000-08:00

The Story of the Flood

My friend Grant Jordan (God for this analogy), drummer of The Deluge, came to me (Noah) and asked me to write a review (build an ark) about his band’s new album. He also asked me to listen to it first. And so I braved the tempest, a deluge is a flood for those without a dictionary, and sat down to listen to The Deluge’s Inverted Earth.

Knowing the band mates as I do, I was given the inside scoop: the (loose) concept of the album is a flood that wipes out our modern world. While you may have heard a thing or two about floods wiping out the earth, you probably haven’t heard many albums like this one.

The album begins energetically. “Variations” sets the atmosphere of the world. The impression is that of a tragically beautiful world haunted by, if nothing else, the sound of Matthew O'Rane’s viola laid over pulsating drums and ethereal vocals. “Inverted Earth” is the calm before the storm, a slowed down melody that marks the end of the line for the world.

Those opening tracks give way to “The Devil’s Postpile“, a change of pace that is the beginning of the end for modernity. “The Devil’s Postpile", if my facts are correct, will be the single. It is an apt single, displaying exactly what The Deluge has to offer: beautiful instrumentation, a hypnotic and soothing sound, and the ability to switch gears seamlessly. The song leads in with viola as the focal point and then a brief interlude of horns followed by vocals, guitar and then back to viola. The song is anchored by the bass and drums, allowing moments for the other instruments to break through.

“For forty days and forty nights….”

The flood continues on "Raindrop Matrices", "Liquid 7th", and "Undulations", my favorite song on the album. O’Rane’s frantic viola eventually bleeds into a smooth transition. "Undulations" makes use of an up tempo drum section that sounds like something from an Aphex Twin song. The viola raises the song to new heights but Jordan’s electronic-influenced drums, and some handy synth work, keep it centered.

The final two tracks, I hypothesized, represent the growth after the storm, once the water recedes. “Root” builds and builds until the clarinet takes firm hold of the composition, nestling it back into a solid melody that is followed by the final track, "Waterfalls."

I found myself searching for similar music, listening to different progressive rock, jazz rock/fusion and electronica before giving up altogether. The closest I came to finding a similar sound was Weather Report, but they were too jazz-like to be in the exact genre of The Deluge. Giving up, I called Mr. Jordan who was as perplexed as I was to find a name for The Deluge’s sound. He did, however, reinforce a few of the similar bands I mentioned.

Classification aside, the album is a wonderful listen. Though I feel it is an album to be sat and listened to, a practice that has become scarce these days, I found myself playing Devil’s Postpile and Undulations over and over again by themselves. Andrew Mckee, Matthew O’Rane and Grant Jordan wrote all the compositions on the album with Mckee and O’Rane playing several instruments throughout. The album will be available on itunes in the very near future, but in the meantime, you can find the band at http://www.myspace.com/thedelugemusic. Be fruitful and multiply!

Top 10 Pros and Cons: Black History Month

2010-02-04T18:25:00.000-08:00

The groundhog popped out of it’s hole and cupid is on the prowl, so that can only mean one thing….it’s black histry month (applause)! Everyone’s (?) favorite time of the year to remember that black people are cool and now, because of President Obama, we’re friendly and intelligent too! So grab a black friend and read my list!

Pro 1: Black People

Oscar nomination for Invictus? People really must love this guy.

Clearly. What’s not to celebrate? Jazz, Hip-Hop, Morgan Freeman, the list goes on. Black people have long been the trend setters for America because as James Baldwin said, “As the negro goes, so goes America.” And now with Obama in office, black people are truly calling all the shots. So celebrate black history month or Obama will throw you in a political prison.

Con 1: Encourages segregation

that's because he didn't

An oldie but a goodie. Tell me you’ve heard this: Black History month is American History, we should be celebrating year around. It’s a nice thought, but we’ll probably never acheieve that. There is a certain narrative that is pushed in K-12 education and it involves four things: American Revolution, Civil War, WWI and WWII. Black people provide a nice subplot to the Civil War that makes the North more likable and easier to relate to, but we all know that the Civil War was fought to preserve the union and only later to free the slaves. At any rate, blacks, Asians, and Latins are not important to the basc storyline of America. Or so schools would have you believe. And so we have a month to fill the void. And what of other minorities? I know that March is Women’s history month but after that it gets fuzzy...

Pro 2: Ironic jokes about black history month

“He’s a black guy living in West Los Angeles, of course he’s a hipster.”

-Brian Mosko

It used to be enough just being black to avoid the label of hipster, but those days are gone. Welcome to post-racial America (thanks a lot O-Bombs). This generation is fully aware of the racial sterotypes and they love to ironically poke fun at them, feigning apathy (maybe it's heartfelt apathy). With the creation of “blipsters”, so called black hipsters, the difference between black and youth culture is becoming indiscernible. There are still people who care about black history month, though I don’t know any, but mostly it’s fun to say things like:

“I’m riding in the back of the bus in honor of black history month.”

"Of course it's the shortest month of the year."

"There's a black history month?"

Con 2: Unintentional blunders

This is the reason I wrote this article. What happens when steretypes come true? Black people like fried chicken and collard greens. That’s a fact. They also like other things, but they definitely like fried chicken and collard greens. The woman who posted the sign should know, she’s black. As Jerry Seinfeld said, “If someone asks me which way is Israel, I don’t fly off the handle!” Maybe we’re a little to sensitive. Yeah, stereotypes suck, but ask yourself if they’re true. How about this for a foot-in-the-mouth statement: generalizations are generally true but we have to evaluate everything on a case-by-case basis.

Pro 3: The occasional discovery of an (in)significant black hero

“Don’t ever be the first Black person to do anything.”

-Dave Chapelle

Chappelle's Show

Profiles in Courage - Toilet Pioneer

www.comedycentral.com

Buy Chappelle's Show DVDs

Black Comedy

True Hollywood Story

Probably my favorite thing about the month next to the ironic humor. Every black history month affords time for us to learn about someone who did something that we hardly care about. Here’s a list of some of our heroes:

L.C. Bailey - inveneted folding beds

Marie Brown - invented video home security

James Bauer - invented the coin changer

Charles L. Reason - first black college professor

William Cooper Nell - first U.S. federal government civil servant

Con 4: A severe lack of blaxploitation marathons

The only blaxploitation marathon I know of was on IFC when I was 16. That was a decade ago! Come on. The Silent Movie Theater in Los Angeles had a theme month for October, but no blaxploitation marathons? I’m just saying, it practically markets itself.

Pro 4: Once You Go Black...

Black people make great lovers. Or so we've come to believe. This is about the only thing I have going for me right now, so I need it. The mystique of black love is a time honored tradition that probably has its roots (yes, like the minseries) in our ability to dance (hip work helps). At any rate, whether you make the conscious connection or not, valentine’s day is right smack dab in the middle of the month. It helps perpetuate the myth.

Con 4: No days off from work or school

Who cares what month or day it is if I have to go to work? Alright, I'm funemployed, but if I did have a job I'd be there right now. I don’t get to dress up, there’s no candy or special drink. It’s bullshit. From now on for black history month we pick the second Tuesday of February to dress like our favorite dance hall Jamaican, drink a 40 or Hennessey and go door to door to have sex with whoever answers when we knock.

Pro 5: O-bombs

At least this year I don’t have to think of Sharpton or Jesse Jackson. My God that's nice. Can someone please make a drink called an O-Bomb in honor of this guy? I need to order that somewhere soon.

Con 5: Perpetuating white guilt

You can stop feeling guilty now. We don’t need this month. It’s cool, but it’s not a big deal. It doesn’t help that everyone chose the shortest month, it’s like you want to feel bad. If you want to feel better, throw some black people in the history books and call it a day. And add the Asians, Latinos and women as well. Then we can just be Americans. That would be nice for everybody.

At the end of the day, I guess it's an alright idea. I'll take it for now, but I'd gladly trade it in for some accurate textbooks and a holiday that allows me to sit at home and interview General Wang. Until then, a toast to all my brothers and sisters...and aunts, uncles, cousins, friends, acquaintances, consiglieres.....

Jelly!

2010-02-01T18:59:00.000-08:00

Americans love escapism. We love to sit in a theater or sit down with a book and forget exactly what is wrong with our country, our universe and our lives. If you want proof check out the immense popularity of Twilight, Avatar and Harry Potter. It is perhaps because of this skewed world view that our development is arrested. Half of our lives we are convinced, as Tyler Durden preaches, that we will become rock stars and movie stars and, most absurdly of all, we will fall in love. In the bleak landscape of the 1980’s, amidst crack and Regeanomics, an American voice told us that everything would be alright in the end. That voice came from John Hughes. Sarah Wilson, my multi-talented sister, was a 70’s baby. She grew up watching 16 Candles, Pretty in Pink, The Breakfast Club and Some Kind of Wonderful, and it was from these movies that she constructed her ideal of love. And once that ideal was shaped by the realities of life, she turned her sour grapes into a film, Jelly.

I had the pleasure of working on Sarah’s first feature film three summers ago, and yesterday it premiered, long overdue, at the San Diego Black Film Festival. Jelly is the story of a young woman, in Los Angeles, no Hollywood, well actually, North Hollywood, learning that what love is and what it seems to be are quite different.

The eponymous Jelly, played by Sarah Wilson who also wrote and produced the film, is a voluptuous woman dealing with her recent breakup from Luke. She relies on a support system of family and her two friends Mona and Floyd. Floyd is the tragically overlooked nice guy, the perfect guy, who listens to the barrage of self-deprecating remarks that flow from Jelly routinely. Of course he is secretly, or not so secretly, in love with Jelly.

Having already seen the film, I was able to watch the audience’s reaction and pay attention to aspects of the film previously lost on me. From the beginning, the audience was engaged by a clear and different voice that sought to tell a unique story. Jelly tries everything to get over Luke: giving away her eggs (thinking that Luke will be furious she can never have his children), a one night stand with a new guy, the Broken Hearts therapy group, the closure clinic ran by Ed McMahon, and finally befriending the sensual, Latin beauty Sandy Lopez for advice on how to attract men. Floyd and Mona are there every step of the way, despite battling their own problems, to listen to Jelly complain about how life isn’t like a John Hughes movie. And indeed it is not.

Jelly’s world is filled with characters from a surreal, nightmarish existence. She is accosted at the gym by an old lady who kicks her off the machine and interrupts her daydreaming. At the egg clinic everyone laughs at her as she tries to get a refund. At the closure clinic a self aware Ed McMahon shows Jelly their closure simulations in which an actor takes the place of the unrequited lover. And it’s not just restricted to Jelly. Mona meets a mysterious woman in her diner that leaves behind a love potion to be used on her married boss. Floyd is verbally abused by a literary agent who is hell bent on shattering his ego. The world is a combative war zone that is attempting to beat the last drop of optimism out of Jelly and her friends.

And yet they persevere. In the end Jelly finally realizes that the fairy tale has been right in front of her the whole time. Floyd, despite an ill-advised sexual encounter with Mona, has been waiting for Jelly to open her eyes and come to her senses which she finally does. Relieved of her crazy notion of what life is, she puts on her fancy dress and prepares to face Luke, at his wedding, in all of her glory. She never gets there. Outside waiting for her, a la the late great John Hughes, is Floyd in a tuxedo. She never makes it to the wedding, but she finds true love.

The audience at the San Diego Black Film Festival ate the movie up. There was big laughter as Jelly tries her unsuccessful foray into the world of casual sex and when Jelly’s father Joe Woods, played by Reginald VelJohnson, gives the performance of a lifetime at a Baptist passion play. The audience, impressed by all the performances, was clearly invested in the chemistry between Floyd and Jelly. Floyd was played brilliantly by John Boyd who was the right amount of depressed writer and charismatic friend. Mona, played by Natasha Leon, received praise as the cynical realist. Jelly is an audience movie, one that makes you laugh and makes you cry and doesn’t fail at making a point: true love is hard to find, try not to miss it when it’s there.

The Q & A session found the audience reveling in the filmmakers’, Mercedes Leanza (who also played Sandy Lopez) and Sarah Wilson, ability to pull off a well-produced and professional independent film. One audience member called into question the validity of a movie that surrounds an interracial couple at a black film festival. The question was answered honestly and truthfully, “We set out to make a film about love, not about race.” We should hope that love is more important in the long run.

Jelly is awaiting release on Netflix, itunes and other media sources. Clicking save on Netflix will expediate the process, so go forth and do! Stella Bella Productions, founded and owned by Ms. Wilson and Ms Leanza, wrapped production on another film in November (The Accidental Death of Joey by Sue) and is in pre-production for The Scarlet Ibis. Expect more films in the very near future from these young and ambitious filmmakers.

Funemployed House Sitting

2010-01-27T17:24:00.000-08:00

There are few things in the world better than an empty house and a stocked fridge for the funemployed. Way back in November 2009, I was house sitting for my sister and enjoying all that her cozy duplex had to offer. I had no choice, democratically speaking, but to watch my other sister’s place while she vacationed in Miami with her boyfriend.

The week of freedom and unabashed domestic nudity began poorly. I had to drive my sister to the airport at 5:30 in the morning after one of my good friend’s 21st birthday party. The party was fun aside from a 45 minute drunk coma that involved me rocking back and forth and trying to not vomit in my shoes. I made a full recovery and stumbled home around 3 and passed out for 2 hours before my sister awoke in full travel mode. After dropping her off I drove her mammoth truck back to her house, only somewhat certain that I was going the right way. I made it home and parked in the exact spot that the truck had been in because nobody was awake to steal my spot besides the homeless and the criminally insane. I fell asleep soundly, confident that I had done my good deed for the day.

When I woke up a couple hours later, I already knew that the truck had a ticket. Somewhere in my brain a sensor had picked up a faint signal, however late, from the windshield of the Dodge Ram and alerted me to the $50 fine that was waiting downstairs. It may as well have been $1000.

When you are funemployed, $50 represents a month’s worth of spending. And that’s living good. How could I possibly pay back my sister? I had already eaten half of the contents of the fridge, and now a ticket to boot. There was only one solution: Craigslist ad:

Male gigolo (no homo) - Los Angeles

Hi, I’m a young, energetic (eyebrow raise) love-making machine here to mold your desires and dreams into one fantasy at an affordable rate:

Hotties - $1

Fat chicks - $5

Homos - No homo! Or $200

Preggers - $2.50

Elderly (40 - 59) - $1.50

Elderly (60+) - $1.75

It seemed like a full proof plan. At the very least I could bag 10 fatties and make a cool $50. I was almost angry that I hadn’t thought of it sooner. In the end, however, it wasn’t to be. My listing was flagged for removal and I was forced to search the want ads for an honest buck. I found a café in need of a barista, and immediately offered my services. Much to my surprise, I received an e-mail a few hours later requesting an interview. Since funemployment began, this was the first interview I’d booked. Yikes.

The interview was yesterday. Needless to say, it went swimmingly. My interviewer complimented my vibes, no doubt a nod to my recently groomed facial hair, and the job is everything I could want. Outdoors, inside of an apartment complex, byo music and a relaxed boss. To good to be true…to good to be true.

So of course I’m worried. Funemployment hasn’t been good to me, and now I see the light at the end of the tunnel. Is it an illusion or will my nights of writing and watching 30 Rock into the wee hours finally end? The suspense is killing me.

Meanwhile, in another part of town, our hero has an interview at a hostel. Jobs are like relationships, as soon as you are in one, everybody wants you. It’s as if they could smell the job on me through my electronic resume. I mean two interviews in the same week for a funemployed male that hasn’t gotten a call back in several months are like toys for orphans.

With my week of house sitting drawing to a close, I took some time to pause and reflect. I had the pleasure of watching the first two seasons of 30 rock and several movies and the misfortune of looking after my sister’s dog. My sister’s dog, rescued from an abusive family, has battered woman’s syndrome. She relentlessly begs for attention and affection by thrusting herself at anyone and everyone in a desperate play for affection. She spent most of last night staring at me while I wrote. Finally, in a bout of clinical insanity, I pleaded with her to leave me alone, all I wanted was peace. It doesn’t matter how many walks I take her on, how many treats I give her or how many times I passively ignore her, she keeps crawling back. It’s the most consistent relationship that I’ve ever had.

So things are looking up for Chewing Bones, a job potentially on the way, a stable if unhealthy relationship and a couple more days of an empty house with a depleted food supply. Not to mention the third season of 30 rock on Netflix instant play. What more can I ask for?

American Splendor

2010-01-27T17:08:00.001-08:00

I don’t believe in swine flu, global terrorism, meteors colliding with the earth or a black hole that will suck us through a portal and transplant us into a different dimension. I try my best not to listen to scientists, religious fanatics, social critics and fatalists. According to everyone the world is in crisis, partially a natural occurrence and partially a spiritual disconnect. People like Mark Bauerlein think that we’re the dumbest generation ever. They think we won’t amount to much. These are also the people who think that we peaked in the 1960s. The previous generations job is always to decry the next generation, but the condition is worsening. We’ve been struck by shortsightedness and a lost perspective on the big picture: The world has always been going to shit for thousands of years, and always will be. The ones who understand this fact are the only people I truly enjoy. People like Harvey Pekar.

Harvey Pekar understands life in that he understands that it is inherently frustrating, that every single day is a battle of the wills. Inspired by his buddy Robert Crumb, and an overbearing sense of futility, Pekar turned his mundane existence into a commentary on the human condition. He turned his frustrating experiences into common identifiable feelings. In short, he created art. Like any great artist, Pekar couldn't understand fully what he was doing; all he really understood was that he was doing something different.

Several months ago, I was perusing the internet in the never-ending task of finding “interesting stuff”, when I stumbled across a list of movies that creative types should watch. Considering myself to be one of these so called creators, I took note. When I saw that UCLA’s Hammer Museum was offering a free screening of one of the films, American Splendor, I marked my calendar.

From the onset, the film caught me off guard. It immediately and consistently broke the fourth wall; the opening scene brought to mind the beginning of Andy Kaufmann’s biopic, Man on the Moon. It took a full fifteen minutes to realize the importance of that similarity. What do Andy Kaufmann, Harvey Pekar, Hunter S. Thompson and Robert Crumb, among others, have in common? They used themselves as the subject until it became impossible to distinguish the artist from the art they were creating. American Splendor doesn’t present Harvey Pekar as if he is a detached writer dreaming up fantasy in Cleveland, instead it uses Pekar as Pekar would use himself to create his unique take on life and his attitude towards the world. The film combines archival footage, animation, reenacted scenes and faux behind-the-scenes footage to not only recreate Pekar’s life, but his process. The two facets eventually became one indistinguishable pairing. At one point Giamatti’s Pekar wakes in the middle of the night and in a drug and exhaustion induced state-of-mind, asks his wife if his character will live on without him. They will, but only in our memories, because his life and that of his characters are inseparable. The film, a biopic, could have been given an issue number and sold as an installment of his comic book series.

Pekar and the men listed above, took self expression to the limit, sacrificing their day-to-day existence in exchange for the connection and accomplishment that came with creating relatable work. The 60s and 70s spawned Gonzo journalism and performance art and in doing so, continued a progression of self-awareness that started post-WWII and ends with….reality television and daily blogs (ouch!)? It seems, according to many cultural experts, that we have reached a limit, that our creativity has leveled off….

And yet, I am believer. Or a non-believer, which ever you wish. I don’t believe we are washed up and ruined. I don’t believe that there is nothing left to accomplish in the arts. I don’t believe that any of these people can predict the future or calculate the unforeseen possibilities. I don’t know how things are going to turn out over the next 10, 20, 30, 100 years, but nobody ever has. There is a sudden presumption in the world that anyone ever knew what was going on. As far as I know, life has always been a struggle and will continue to be just that, even if tomorrow we were each handed one million dollars. It certainly didn’t change Harvey Pekar’s understanding of his surroundings. Maybe he became slightly more grateful, maybe he smiled a little more, but he never forgot the underlying truth.

When American Splendor ended, and the intermission was over, we were treated to a 60 minute documentary about Robert Crumb. Crumb is a genius and disturbed personality in his own right, but both he and Pekar pack a message to go along with their strange personas. Of course they are subversive and ground breaking and a load of other terms that pay tribute to their subtle genius. More importantly, however, they did it. They ignored, or cultivated, their disenchantment long enough to create something to help people deal with life. At the end of Crumb’s documentary he makes the point that it is becoming increasingly difficult for the artist to possess the self-control and concentration necessary to create art in the modern world. It may be difficult to concentrate, but it is not impossible. Everyday brings it struggles and when times are at their worst, we manage to find our way. You just gotta believe. Or not.

We're Never Going to Grow Up

2010-01-27T16:54:00.000-08:00

I remember High school, and if I think back far enough, I can remember my childhood….vaguely. I remember riding a pony at the fair, wearing a Pittsburgh Steelers costume to my 2nd grade class and a trip on the BART subway to San Francisco for some outstanding achievement in elementary school (perfect attendance). I remember I had goals. I wanted to play professional basketball, but by the time high school hit, I accepted that this may mean professional European basketball (later it meant playing in junior college). I wanted to go to school back East and live like Henry Miller. I wanted to convince a woman to…well you get the picture (it eventually happened, but my memory gets fuzzy). And then suddenly, I was an adult with different goals and a different personality and everything was different. My Dad used to say that you have eighteen years to be a kid and the rest of your life to be an adult. It never made sense until I was eighteen. And I was lucky. There are kids who grow up before their time or watch their parents grow up with them. Such is the case for Walt.

Walt worships his father, the narcissistic Bernard played to perfection by Jeff Daniels. He wants so badly to believe everything his father says, heeding his advice on women, books and life. Walt projects his fathers unearned confidence with even less credentials, posing as an intellectual to attract Sophie, but knowing nothing of the literary figures he pretends to worship. Walt’s entire life is a pose; he has no idea what he is or what he wants to be, and with his father constantly in his ear, he won’t be able to figure it out.

Walt might be perfectly happy with Sophie, but he isn’t sure. He is constantly evaluating the situation, taking it in from afar, never living the experience. He has to know exactly what it means to be with Sophie. How will other people see him? How will his father see him? It doesn’t help that Bernard dodges the question of her suitability by saying that he thinks it’s important for a young man to experience as much as possible. Walt cannot possibly be happy when there is so much out there for him, there are so many limitless possibilities and he, like his father, is full of untapped potential. Walt’s triumphant performance of “Hey You” swells his ego; he unwittingly breaks things off with Sophie in anticipation of the better catch: Lili, the rising literary star and grad student living in his father’s house. Walt, fresh from shunning Sophie, finds himself in Lili’s room and unable to control his wandering eye. The awkward interaction ends with a bloody nose for Lizzie and a frustrated Walt retreating to his bedroom only to watch his father try with the same girl.

His parents soon find out that Walt ripped off a Pink Floyd song and that the seemingly studious Walt has not been doing his work. Adopting Bernard’s ability to blame everyone but himself, Walt reasons that he “could have written” the Roger Waters ballad. Like Bernard, he is setting himself up for a life of could haves, but something changes Walt. The Squid and the Whale.

You can stare at something for a long time before you realize what it is. Walt, like everyone else, has been staring at his life for seventeen years before he realizes what it actually is, not how he perceives it to be. It takes a run-in with a psychiatrist, the cathartic release of seeing his father fondling a college student and the words of his mother for him to realize what he is. Or at the very least what he is not. When Walt tells his mom, “That’s not how I see myself” she simply replies, “that’s how it is.” It didn’t matter what illusion he was under. What illusion any of us are under. For so many years he had accepted, at face value, all of his father’s observations. From thoughts on Dickens and Fitzgerald to ideas about women to problems with his mother and their relationship. Like the exhibit at the natural history museum, Walt had been scared to look at the beasts for what they actually were. It is a scary moment in life when you finally realize that those two, towering despots are only people. Their authority and assurance created by smoke and mirrors. It can be a refreshing experience or a jarring experience, particularly in adolescence.

Freed from his father’s mind control, Walt is free to experience the world and make his own decisions. He can finally see Bernard as he is, selfish and self-important, incapable of love because he hates himself and his station in life. Walt can empathize with his mother, who is no saint, but deserves more from life than having to nurture a damaged ego. Joan’s need to date a “philistine” is obvious; she needs a break from the tortured artistic soul that never got its recognition.

The Squid and the Whale captures that shift from boyhood to manhood, from innocence to reason. In this case the transformation was accelerated by parents still trapped in perpetual adolescence. I looked up Noah Baumbach’s other films and discovered an old IFC favorite of mine, from my teenage days of looking for free nudity, Mr. Jealousy. Mr Baumbach also helped pen the fantastic (Ha!) script for Fantastic Mr Fox. You can see the link between Wes Anderson and Baumbach in their understanding of the adolescent experience. The uncertainty, the identity issues, and the steadfast beliefs that will inevitably be beaten into submission by the facts of life.

Jesse Eisenberg was brilliant. I hardly recognized the kid who was disguised as a Michael Cera clone for Zombieland and probably, though I didn’t see it, Adventureland as well. Though he certainly retained the awkwardness of an unsure teenage boy that has defined Cera’s career, he traded in quirkiness for heartfelt confusion and developmental issues. Jeff Daniels turns in a great performance as Bernard. It would be criminal to not mention Frank, played by Owen Cline, who represents a new, emerging archetype that was also in Me, You and Everyone We Know. A young boy, neglected by his divorced parents lashes out in adult ways long before adulthood. Frank’s sexual deviancy and alcoholism are considerably serious issues that get very little attention from his parents. Frank is growing up quicker than he should. The illusion failed him, and he is forced to watch his mother try to find herself and his father behave like a juvenile.

The film ends before we know what happens to Walt. Before finding out if his father lives, if his mother remarries, if his brother develops a serious drinking problem. All we know is that Walt has his blinders off and can finally see. He is one step closer to knowing that he knows nothing at all and probably never will. The least you can do is hope to be happy during that time, something Bernard has never accomplished. To accomplish that feat, one must be brave. One must look at the beast that is before them, swallow the truth and their pride and try to live one day at a time.

"He is just a man..."

2010-01-21T22:02:00.000-08:00

I was reading up on blaxploitation for a script I’m writing when I discovered that the post-1970s, PC term for the genre is “urban” film. Which led me to John Singleton and the Hughes Brothers. The Book of Eli marked the Hughes Brothers second attempt at making a film that is set outside of the “hood.” From the previews I went in with low expectations, but my friend had already seen Broken Embraces and the small Isla Vista theater offered nothing else of note. I wish it had.

The film begins slowly. The audience watches a masked man stalk a cat before killing it with a bow and arrow. From the onset the Hughes Brothers create a wonderfully barren and desolate post-apocalyptic nightmare of a world. Eli’s first encounter with another (living) human does not go so well. He is the target of a highway ambush that he thwarts with a display of lightning quick reaction and precise movement. Nobody is left standing. The Hughes Brothers chose to show this display in silhouette, adding to the mysterious nature of the wanderer Eli.

For the next 45 minutes or better, we are treated to several scenes that display Eli’s ability to kill anything and everything that stands in his way. If I liked one thing about this movie, it was the action. In the bar, run by Carnegie and his gang, Eli slays twenty men before Solara’s shrill cry stops him. Not only does Eli dispose of twenty men, he does so without a scratch to his own person. Which makes the twist all the more unbelievable.

(Spoiler Alert)

He’s blind. Eli is blind. And we, the audience, are led to believe that Eli was able to do this because of faith. Not God exactly, because the film is careful not to make mention of a specific God, but faith. Eli explains his quest to carry the book “west” to a skeptical Solara. He tells her that he heard a voice and traveled west. Presumably his faith had protected him ever since. In some kind of reverse deus ex machina fashion, we are supposed to swallow his supernatural abilities because of faith. Not because he’s a prophet or an angel and not even because God was protecting him. Nope, the Hughes Brothers made sure to trivialize his entire journey with one shot.

The key, as my sister has told me time and time again, to creating a successful story is stakes. What is on the line? The question any filmmaker must ask their self is why is this character risking everything? The answer in the Book of Eli is simply because a voice told him to do it. That is not a good enough reason in and of itself, but the payoff at the end of the film could save everything, right? Wrong. Eli has carried this book, which is just a bible, all the way to Alcatraz for thirty years so that….Malcolm McDowell (who looks suspiciously like Einstein) can copy it down and put it on a shelf next to all the other religious texts. The shot in which the book is placed next to the Qur’an solidifies that Eli’s journey was pointless. It could have been any book, apparently the point of the whole film is preservation. His thirty year journey did not save lives or end a war, it just preserved an ancient tradition.

And yet, I could not help but feel that the film did have one overt message: THE BIBLE IS IMPORTANT. After the film, one friend denounced it as a Christian film and the other thought the shot of the other holy books made it a non-Christian film. I agreed with both. What the Hughes Brothers did exactly was make a Christian film that pacifies everyone else. The fact is they chose the bible (I was really hoping that the eponymous book would be a fictitious one) and not any other book. Carnegie’s character is after the Bible and not any other book, even though he wants to use religion to control people. Any religion would work, but he is after the bible specifically. This book was the one that was worth killing people for, destroying towns for and walking thirty years for. The shot of the other books makes Eli’s Christian pilgrimage more acceptable, but it does not erase the fact that the bible is the book that protected him on his journey. They even killed poor Eli in the end, despite arriving at Alcatraz where they’re working on rebuilding society. He was there long enough to recite the entire Bible, but they were unable, in all that time, to remove a bullet from his stomach. The reason? God loves a martyr. Dressed in a saintly white, Eli could finally be canonized.

Problems with the story aside, Denzel turns in another solid performance. Solara suffered from bad writing and a silly character arc. The fact that the film ends with her dressed as a post-apocalyptic warrior, an Eli clone, is laughable (The Book of Solara?). Gary Oldman’s performance seemed to be a poor impersonation of Daniel Day Lewis. And of course they shot him in the knee, because limping is all the rage for antiheros and bad guys these days (see There Will Be Blood).

Something should be said of the Hughes Brothers’ visual ability. The film looked amazing and the action sequences almost make the entire experience worthwhile. Almost. Unfortunately, you will find it difficult to leave the theater without feeling that you’ve been duped. Or at the very least fed a backhanded Christian message. The whole time I watched the film I was interested to see what was so special about this Eli, and the answer was nothing. Another way to view the film could be that it is a positive message of self-assurance and dedication to a particular belief. That would require ignoring the obvious overtones.

Let’s hope that Edge of Darkness and From Paris With Love (both previewed before the Book of Eli) will provide the gratuitous action porn minus the convoluted twist.

The Truth Shall Set You Free

2010-01-20T15:41:00.000-08:00

It feels good to laugh. It feels even better when we shouldn’t be laughing. After reading about World’s Greatest Dad on Kim Carter’s blog, which made mention of John Waters’ stamp of approval, I was anxious and curious to see what Bobcat Goldthwait had cooked up. Yes, the Bobcat Goldthwait. What followed was a brilliantly dark comedy and satire of American life.

The film begins with Robin Williams character, the timid, people-pleasing Lance, stating that he wanted to provide people with something that explained the human condition and aided them along the chaotic journey of life. Soon we are introduced to the cavalcade of superficial students and simple-minded co-workers who Lance encounters daily at his high school teaching job. They’re all a bunch of zombies (coincidentally Lance enjoys movies about the brain-feeding automatons) except for one: his obnoxious, free-wheeling son Kyle.

Kyle, outside of Andrew, has no friends. He has no hobbies, aside from autoerotic asphyxiation and various types of taboo pornography. He is a terrible son to a loving father and bad friend to a loyal companion, Andrew. He is rude, obscene and crass. The only quality Kyle has going for him is his integrity. It may be a stretch to say that someone who takes crotch shots of his father’s girlfriend during dinner has integrity, but it will have to do for lack of a better word.

Kyle might not be perfect, but he is honest. OK, maybe he lies to manipulate his father into buying him things or to get out of trouble, but he makes no apologies for what he is. Kyle is not ashamed that he is a pervert, a sexual deviant, an irritant or an obnoxious jack ass. He is very nearly proud of these achievements, a fact his father would rather ignore.

Lance tries to cover up Kyle’s death, and life as it were, by adding layer and depth to someone who was, as put by Lance in a brilliant climactic scene, “a douche bag.” Bobcat makes use of the montage in three scenes that represent the genesis of Kyle’s posthumous celebrity and Lance’s rise to unbridled and undeserved fame. The three montages show Kyle’s staged suicide, the publishing of his forged suicide note and the subsequent flurry of emotions, and finally the arrival of his fictitious journal on school grounds. Each montage heightens the frenzy surrounding the deceased and Lance while displaying the latter’s uncomfortably with his new found fame.

World’s Greatest Dad is an exploration of moral crisis. Bobcat places Lance in a situation so precarious that anyone could understand his actions. His intentions were to present Kyle, in death, as a decent human being. Later he used Kyle to gain much deserved fame and love from his non-committal girlfriend, using the meaning he brought to Kyle’s life and the potential suicides he stopped as justification. In the end Lance learned that it was all secondary, that the highest principle, above all else, is the truth. At the end of the film Lance is able to flip Kyle’s picture up, no longer too ashamed to have his son’s eyes stare back at him.

The film is filled with wonderful satire and great moments that are beautiful blends of drama and comedy. Perhaps the best example is Robin Williams’ Lance staring at the porno magazines at a newsstand and breaking out in tears in memory of his son. Only after accepting Kyle’s true behavior was Lance able to purge himself. In a climactic scene he confesses his crimes, strips off his clothes, liberated, and jumps into the school pool.

Robin Williams is brilliant as an angst ridden father, ignored by the world; he learns that he is better of with the world ignoring him. A world that started a veritable cult based on a kid everyone hated. The film begs the question, is it worth being worshipped by these people? Isn’t anonymity better than acceptance by people you do not respect? Kyle is a mirror for society. He is too angry to know why he’s angry, but he can smell superficiality a mile away and it sickens him.

In the end Lance, his elderly neighbor, and Andrew end up watching zombie movies together. They are the only sincere people left, unscathed by society’s want to bend them into the single-mindedness that plagues nearly everyone. Bobcat’s film shows the difficulty of being yourself, in the most un-cliché way, in a world that would have you be someone else. The tragedy of Lance’s life is that no one will care about his feelings until he is dead. He always felt the way he did, but no one cared until it was combined with sensationalism.

It is only fitting that Bobcat’s effort is overlooked by so many. He is Lance and his film Kyle, a mirror for the rest of the world to see themselves in. Of course most audiences don’t want to be confronted with the truth about their situations. We can only hope that Bobcat will continue to use his unique (artistic) voice to create powerful films. I plan to watch it happen.