I had two tormentors when I was in fifth grade, my last year at Ed White Elementary School in El Lago, Texas. Their names were Steve Smith and Mike Kopfer. Every day they would follow me around all day at school, taunting, making fun and insulting me. I bore it as best I could, even fighting with them, but no matter where I went, they were there. This went on for several months until one day the assistant teacher, Mr. Moran, took the two out of the classroom for a short while.

I have no idea what he told them, but from that day on, Steve and Mike acted like they were my best friends. It was extremely bizarre, but what was I supposed to do, complain? We would hang out after school, sleep over at each others houses, all of that. The next year, our first year at Seabrook Intermediate School, we were practically a gang. This all meant a lot to me as most of the years since we had moved to Texas due to my dad’s working in the aerospace industry had been spent in a rather friendless, fight-ridden state. I was always getting into fights with Craig Puccetti, who lived a couple of doors down, and the trend continued at school. My only friends were Richard Koester, a little guy with asthma who also had no friends who thought my jokes were funny, and sometimes Chris Davis, who, when he wasn’t my friend, was either kicking my ass or getting his ass kicked. Even then I had the unfortunate habit of saying the wrong thing at the wrong time; one time a remark I made to Chris’ friend John Silver about his height resulted in detention for all of us after a mean scrap and chase through the hallways. But Steve, Mike, a middle-eastern kid named Behi and I were always hanging out together.

All of this came to an abrupt yet not unwelcome end in the summer of 1980, when we moved back to Florida, where we had lived before we moved to Texas. I was convinced Florida was paradise after the hell of Texas, and I was ecstatic that we were moving back to a place where everyone had pools and Disney World was only 45 minutes’ drive down Interstate 4. I was expecting a return to what I remembered as a place where I would have friends again without getting into fights all the time, since we ended up living only a few blocks from the house where we had lived before. I even remembered a couple of childhood friends.

Of course, you’re thinking, it couldn’t be as good as I had remembered it. Nothing ever is. Still, it seemed that way after a couple of months of living there. I met some kids in the neighborhood, but it seemed I didn’t fit in any longer. Something during the six years in Texas had changed me somehow, made me distrustful and even petty sometimes. Or perhaps it’s just my nature; I dont know.

It did help that we were all entering 7th grade, and Maitland Junior High School, with its open-air hallways and newly painted tan concrete block walls, was a new school for all of us. Everyone assumed I was from “the other elementary school”, so I wasn’t the new kid. I joined the local scout troop, made first chair in the band. My two best friends were Ben Champion and Bill Moore. We went everywhere together, ate lunch together in some isolated spot far away from the cafeteria, sitting around making sketches for our “Ninja Death Squad”. Ben’s father Jack was the scoutmaster, and they lived on Lake Maitland in a great house with acres of wild forest, perfect for night-time ninja activities such as climbing trees and sneaking around trying to avoid Ben’s older brother Charlie, who was reputed to have vastly superior ninja skills. Ben’s mother seemed the opposite of my own mother; she was always happy and confident and always had a treat on hand for us kids, and she didn’t mind a mess. Their house was lived in, while ours more closely resembled a museum set. Bill’s parents yelled a lot and didn’t care who heard them. We went to Model UN together (representing, ironically enough, China), and were in the same patrol in scouts.

Then one day, everything changed as suddenly as it had for me that day Mr. Moran took Steve and Mike out for a little talk in the hallway. Ben and Bill stopped me in the open hallway out in front of the school and told me they didn’t want to have anything to do with me any longer. I was no longer cool, I was no longer their friend, and they didn’t know me any more. The end.

I was, of course, devasted; this had taken me completely by suprise. But there was nothing I could do. I was at a complete loss as to why it had happened. I was transferred to a different patrol in scouts, one full of guys I didn’t know or didn’t like. The scoutmaster, Ben’s father, played ‘games’ with me, things like “TC, Grant here is going to try to make you angry, so we can see how you react.” Grant, a 16-year-old Eagle Scout, would then proceed to taunt me, step on my tent and carry me around upside down until I was screaming at him in rage in front of the whole troop.

Of course it wasn’t long before I quit scouts, as I have written about on here before. A few years later Bill wrote in my high school year book that he was sorry about what he and Ben had done, but I never understood it, any more than I understood why Steve and Mike had suddenly become my friends back in Texas. I do think these events had an influence on my character and how I deal with people, though. Probably not a good influence, but then again, what do I know? Obviously not a lot.

All of these events happened at least twenty years ago. Why am I bringing them up now? I can’t say, really. I wish I could leave all this behind me, but some things never change.

I was at a checkout counter in the supermarket under Sogo just before closing last night when a middle-aged male employee wearing a red smock ran up and told the checkout lady, “That old woman is still in produce. She won’t leave!”

“Tell her to bring what she has up here first,” the checkout lady said, but the guy in the smock shook his head, his eyes wide.

“I can’t tell her anything! She won’t listen! She’s old!”

I chuckled a bit at this, and the checkout lady turned to me with a suspicious look on her face. “How do you know what we’re talking about?”

I had just come from seeing Bruce Almighty, which despite its many flaws put me in a good mood. Especially the bit with the monkey flying out of the Latino hoodlum’s ass. Sorry if that’s a spoiler, but it’s a Jim Carrey movie, you really should assume that, at some point, a monkey will fly out of someone’s ass. I didn’t, however, expect it to fly back in, but there you go.

It’s been insanely hot and humid lately. According to the weather, it’s cooler down south in Kaohsiung and Taichung than it is here in Taipei. I would say the weather’s probably better all year round down south than it is here. The only places with worse weather are north of Taipei, in places like Keelung on the north coast. Plus Taipei’s in a basin, which keeps all the heat and pollution swirling around this big bowl for our collective consumption. Global warming isn’t exactly helping either. Yet another reason to move out of the city.

And now, due to popular demand, an excerpt from the letter I sent to the cast and crew of our Lady X Episodes:

I’d like to thank everyone who helped us put this thing together, especially Mindcrime for the original story as well as his work on the script, and of course Dean for just about everything, including the special effects as well as his acting in the main role. The acting of Dolly Deng and Maurice Harrington notch everything up several levels, and the wonderful score Darrell Gallant came up with on incredibly short notice is nothing short of amazing. The fight scene simply wouldn’t have happened without the help of Shirzi, who choreographed it.

-TC

I got tired of staring at the computer screen yesterday afternoon, seeing what kind of reaction the Lady X Episodes were getting. Either people like them or they don’t, so I decided to shut off the damn machine and go watch the sunset in Tamshui instead. It’s been a while since I had an afternoon free to do such things, and I’m still getting used to not having a deadline hanging over me. Granted, without a deadline we never would have finished, but it’s nice to have it done.

As the train passed Beitou, however, I changed my mind about Tamshui and got off at Guandu to have a look around. The neighborhood immediately surrounding the MRT station is rather old and even traditional, full of old people sitting around on sidewalks and watching TVs from outside their houses or just chatting. I walked up the hill to the Arts University, which I’ve never visited before. It’s a nice little campus, isolated on all sides by woods, with a great view of the city below. All of the buildings are brick and concrete, some with ivy covering them, and while this is typical of Taiwanese buildings, you can tell there was some effort put into making the buildings suitable for the artsy crowd. I took some pictures of myself in the mirrored signs. The campus is basically one street that winds along the hillside, first through grassy fields, then campus buildings, and culminating at an enclosed swimming pool and a large track. The pool was closed unfortunately, although I was longing for a dip by that point. Instead I walked up to the ridge of the hill, my progress encouraged by a bee that wouldn’t leave me alone. At the top of the ridge the mouth of the Tamshui came into view. The cidadas were deafening, and in the distance I could see a solitary apartment block, the word “Fountainbleau” inscribed on its side with elaborate script. I walked down along the ridgeline, past a technical college with large tree-covered lawns, its emptiness reminding me again that school was out for the summer, recalling the sumptuous feeling of seeing returned textbooks stacked up along the walls of classrooms. On down the hill was a large military base, and through crowded streets a row of tall buildings. On the other side of the buildings was a cliff facing the river, I knew from riding past on the MRT, but I had never been on the other side of them. The street behind the buildings is like a deep canyon due to the high-rises, no doubt full of extremely rich people, I thought. When I examined the ads on the front of a local realty, however, I found that the places were pretty cheap, no doubt because we were further away from downtown. At the end of one alley, lined with older, two-storey houses with little lawns, one place caught my attention. It was perfectly located, with one side facing the cliff overlooking the river, but it seemed to have been abandoned for quite a long time. An 80′s-era Honda Civic sat rusting away in front, its windows smashed, and the lawn was overgrown. I wondered who had lived there, driven that car, and what had happened to them.

I thought that I had a long walk ahead of me back to the MRT station, but it turned out to be just a short way back down the hill, through the old neighborhoods. Crowds of people getting off work were streaming out of the station as I approached, making me glad I had the day off even if most of them make more money than I do. With all of those high-rises, I wonder how many people crowd that station every morning? It must be a madhouse. Unless most of them have cars, in which case the traffic must be horrible. It’s entirely likely, however, that both situations exist simultaneously.

Later, at sword practice, one of the students had brought his 4-year-old daughter with him. She played with a little dog one of the other students had brought along while we practiced, but periodically she would nearly get stepped on by getting too close to her father, who was usually busy grappling Tui-shou with another student. The little girl would only answer to Taiwanese, and even then only with hand signals. “She’ll learn enough Mandarin in school,” her father said. “Her big brother only speaks Mandarin now.”

The heat and humidity made for tough going, though, and by 10pm I was beat. Not having had dinner yet after my hike was probably also to blame. Still, while it was no real vacation, I was glad to have gotten out for a bit.

I’ve exchanged the Sight and Sound of the Moment for the first time in a long, long time. The sight is just me getting my tire fixed, I’m afraid. Nothing special there. The sound is “The Wandering Song”, a lovely 40′s Chinese song.

Unfortunately, Blogger has tried to “fix” what wasn’t broken by upgrading to a much more buggy and unstable version, my Chinese blog is all ???ù, and Blogger Control is completely useless as no one ever answers problems. I wish we had the choice of staying with the old version, i.e. the one that worked just fine.

Episode 5 is now up, though there’s a small glitch that will soon be fixed. I’ve done another webpage with production details for it. After we do the DVD version I will probably combine Episodes 4 and 5 into one page, as it will just be one movie after that. In any case, go watch it and remember: if you can’t vote something nice, then don’t vote anything at all. Of course most of the criticism has to do with the car chase, just like the fight scene in the first part. It’s natural, though, that people are going to find the most problems with the parts where we went out on a limb and took risks on. I’d rather take the chance than shrink away from doing it because it might be over our heads, since by doing it we can learn and improve upon our methods in later projects. It’s also good to learn what you’re good and and what you’re not so good at, and the only way to do that is by giving it a shot. In this case, lots of shots and an explosion. But you know what I mean.

Another cool thing is that, while Taiwan is represented on this project, flag and all, China’s nowhere to be seen. Heh.

Another day of rushing about, trying to get a valid copy of Episode 5 to Tokyo. We’ve officially missed the originally scheduled air date. I went through the whole portable-hard-drive-borrowing ritual, going back and forth to Milifilm. When I was there waiting for the DHL people to figure out that the hell they were doing, I saw the headshots they took of me the other day at the casting agency. Alongside them were pictures of other candidates for the part, and I have to say, those guys look a hell of a lot better than I do. They were model types, the kinds of guys you’d see in a fashion magazine. I looked like, well, me, i.e. a guy who should probably stay behind the camera. Humbling experience, that. You know you’re ugly when even professional studio lighting can’t help you.

I finally got both versions of the DVD-ROM off to Japan, and then dropped off a copy at The Brass Monkey for Dean and Mindcrime to examine, in case they could find out exactly what the problem was. It worked fine on Mindcrime’s Powerbook, though. Then, as I was riding home, my front tire went flat. I knew it had a slow leak and was rather worn, but now I had no choice but to fork over enough New Taiwan Dollars to get a new tire that is not only worth more than I could sell the bike for, but will probably last longer than the vehicle it’s attached to. Still, one thing you can’t skimp on is tired, especially in the traffic conditions here.

I’m tired, but also a bit on edge as well. I want to make sure everything’s ok with the episode, make sure it’s done, and then move on to the next stage, but all of these niggling details keep grabbing me and throwing me back into a kind of limbo. You realize that all of this springs from my predilection as a child to eat my meals dish-by-dish rather than mix things up. Even then I was multitasking-resistant. And that was fine in great-grandfather’s day, but nowadays it’s a necessary skill….I’ll just shut up now, as I’m rambling and it’s obviously time for bed.