I saw Hitchcock’s Vertigo last night for the first time. No, I had never seen what many deem to be Hitchcock’s greatest film before. And you know what? I am a philistine, because I honestly didn’t like it. The portrayal of San Francisco was nice, the music and pacing suitable, but the story was -you film buffs out there will screech in horror when you read this- badly told. Most of the movie was ok in this respect; we understand that Jimmy Stewart is madly in love with Kim Novak’s eyebrows. But after he goes mad, the movie falls apart. If I were watching it in a theater I would have felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there, that the movie had stumbled down an awkward gorge. We lose Stewart’s character altogether, he changes into a grade-A asshole, and then Novak inexplicably jumps out of the bell tower at the sight of a nun. Ok. And this…means something, but I’m not sure what. Critics panned the movie when it first came out, but then it wasn’t available for 30 years and became a classic. What does that tell you?

Filmmaking and audiences have both changed irrevocably in the intervening years, so even the best directors of today would have a hard time emulating Hitchcock’s style, and would probably fail. Were he still alive and making movies, I seriously doubt the man himself would be making that kind of movie any longer. I thought other Hitchcock films, however, were much better than Vertigo, movies like Rear Window and The Man Who Knew Too Much. I was expecting a lot from this film and at first it seemed to be delivering, but the moment Jimmy Stewart’s head came rushing out of the giant spinning lollipop, looking for all the world like a Dee-light album cover from 1987, I knew I couldn’t take the film seriously any longer.

At Graham’s party last weekend, I was talking with a guy who had seen “The Trick” at the Urban Nomad Film Festival and thought it pointless and silly. I happen to agree, but it was another thing to hear someone else tell me to my (admittedly inebriated) face. He didn’t know it was my film, of course, or else he probably wouldn’t have been so honest. No matter. I don’t plan to show it anymore. I will show “The End” and maybe “Coolishness” if pressed, but not “The Trick.” Look for a revision of my film page coming up, as all the links are down at present. They’re all student films anyway, and I need to get started soon filming my next project, hopefully something I can spend more time and effort on, something perhaps to submit to bigger festivals.

The bwg talking about this site, so I went there and, amazingly enough, was able to come up with this sketch of myself. A pretty good likeness, I must say. Perhaps I should reconsider my plans for a life of crime.

I decided to skip sword practice tonight since my sword arm is feeling really sore. I think I pulled something when I was lifting weights yesterday, so I think I need to rest, and the rainy weather, while great news for the farmers affected by the recent droubt, isn’t the best for me tp ride all the way over to the Minsheng District anyway. I wish the classes were still on weeknights, so I could just go after work like I use to.

An acquaintance of mine has suggested that a reporter from the New York Times is interested in coming over here and interviewing me about the Damn Book. I don’t know how likely this is, but if so, they’re certainly welcome. Other than that, not a lot of hoopla about the article today, which is fine with me; all I really want to do today is stay in and enjoy the last few hours of my weekend.

What’s red and white and hung all over?

After lazing around in my room pretty much all day yesterday, writing things, watching Dog Day Afternoon on DVD, etc., I decided that I needed to get out, even though the weather has not improved. Hiding from it wasn’t going to help, so I took advantage of Graham’s invitation to join the James Bong 007-themed party at the 70’s Airport Love Palace.

I got there at 9:00 and was the very first guest, which is always disturbing. I hadn’t been there long when a stylish couple knocked on the door. I let them in as both of the people who actually lived there were taking showers or something. The stylish people and I mixed up some punch with several bottles of vodka and some actual punch for flavor, and people began to arrive. I was the official punch taster, so I got a head start on the drinking. I saw some people who I hadn’t seen in a while, including Mingson, formerly of Taiwan’s largest (state-run) movie production company, and Moses, a really cool guy from Ghana with a beautiful accent. I also met a few interesting people whom I’d never met before, although I’m terrible with names and couldn’t remember all of their names.

It wasn’t a bad party. Not too many people, friendly and laid-back. The fact that there was plenty of hash and alcohol around certainly didn’t hurt. Graham arrived at around midnight dressed as “Q”. We had all been told to dress as someone or something from the 007 movies, but I don’t have anything like that to wear, and most people just came in suits anyway. A good time was had by all, I think.

The Taipei Times article about me came out today. I should probably go buy a few copies later on. I think Max did a good job. It’s hard to fit so much information into such a small space, but he managed, even though from the article it sounds like I’m a pure-white corn farmer from the midwest. Aw,shucks.

What’s wrong with this picture? Women in Taiwan are obsessed with being as white-skinned as possible, and sometimes the advertising gets just a little silly.

I haven’t been sleeping very well the past couple of nights. The weather has been dark and muggy, like a moldy blanket thrown over the city. Even the sight of the Office Turtle staring raptly at the giant SUV across the way doesn’t do anything to cheer me up. Things should improve when night falls, however. Taipei is the kind of city that comes to life at night, no matter the weather. The careless combination of neon, noise and smoke is repressively irrepressible.

I was thinking of going over to Wanhua to check out the wind ensemble from a couple of weeks ago, maybe play along, but I’m in the sort of mood that would keep me from accurately judging their level and whether I wanted to join them. Or whether they wanted me to join, for that matter. I’d rather go out for drinks, or to a sauna, or drinks at a sauna. I don’t know. It’s 3:45 in the afternoon but it feels like dusk.

The publishers from last night called and asked if I had any further questions this afternoon. Damn, eager bunch, these. Is this good? I hope so. The said last night that the reason they wanted me to translate was because they wanted to keep my own tone in the Chinese. I don’t know if I am as entertaining in Chinese as I am in English, but it’s encouraging that they think I could be, anyway.

I bought Wu Bai and China Blue’s latest album, Meng de Heliu, “Dream River” or something like that. It’s not bad so far, pretty typical Wu Bai stuff, but a little more 70’s lounge act-esque than I would like. Are those temple horns I hear? No, just someone who doesn’t know how to play a trumpet. I personally like it better when he sings in Taiwanese. Some singers, like Lo Da-you and Zhang Zhen-yue, sound better in Mandarin, but singers like Wu Bai and Chen Lei just sound better in Taiwanese. The song Baoyu, or “Heavy Rain” isn’t bad, nor is the title track, but I think my favorite Wu Bai album is still “Lonely Tree Lonely Bird”.

The publishers I visited earlier tonight seemed quite eager and optimistic about publishing the Damn Book. The only thing is that they want me to translate it myself, “For a more authentic feel,” they told me. Hmmm. I guess I could do that, because they do seem very willing to give me a good deal. No major rewriting, they gave me percentage numbers and rights deal information right off the bat, and they had some of their top staff talking with me. It is a rather small office, but I suppose most local publishers here operate like that. I am going to translate one chapter for them to see how it works, and then we’ll take it from there, I guess. I still need to talk more with the other publishers who have expressed interest as well, though, and see what kind of deals I can get with them, if at all.

When I walked out onto the street afterwards, I found that the sky had opened and heavy rain pounding down, so I ditched my bike and hoofed it to the MRT station. Tomorrow I am going to have retrieve it, which is a pain, but at least it’s parked legally this time and I don’t have to worry about it getting towed again. Poor thing’s been through enough already. I slept for the first time this year with the air conditioning on, and I’ve grown unused to the noise. Consequently I didn’t sleep at all well last night. I’ve gone through this every year since I was able to afford a place with air conditioning (my last place).

Speaking of places, I still haven’t been able to find a place for my residency. Everyone’s property taxes would skyrocket if they have anyone else living there, it seems. I may actually be forced to find another place to live, somewhere where I can have my residency at the actual place where I live. These rules are incredibly archaic. Why should someone be punished for renting? At least I don’t have to worry about filing my taxes until May. I think.

Max called and said that the article about me and the Damn Book in the Taipei Times would be on the front page of the features section this Sunday, along with several silly pictures of me in uniform. I am looking forward to seeing it and plan to actually break my long-standing pledge to never actually spend my hard-earned cash on an English-language newspaper here unless one of my articles happens to be in it. I think I’m justified this once, however.

I glanced out one of the windows The Vampires missed today to see a giant SUV parked in the square across the road. Sure, you say, what’s so special about a giant SUV? They’re everywhere these days. But when I say giant, I mean giant, as in Damn. I swear, these things are getting out of hand. Ok, so this one was an actual building, but you know what I mean.

I brought in a glass bowl for Office Turtle today. He seems happier now, and always turns to face the light. He looks out the windows until The Vampires arrive and shut the blinds, after which he turns around and faces the glass door at the end of the office which is the only remaining window to the outside. Misery loves company. Especially in a dark office.

I have a meeting tomorrow night with a local publisher. I have no idea what they’re going to offer me, but I am not expecting too much. I suspect that they either have the wrong impression of my book or they want me to indulge them by writing something completely different for them. I guess I’ll find out, but I’m not terribly hopeful about it.

Has anyone noticed how Hotmail has changed their language, so that if you send mail to someone’s non-Hotmail address, it says “your email was sent to xxx”. It’s almost pouting when it says that. But if you send something to a Hotmail address, it will perk up and say something like “your wonderful email has been sent express on a red velvet pillow to your esteemed friend xxx and is already being read by them!” The implication is, of course, that simply ‘sending’ email is inferior service and isn’t worthy of those who aren’t members of tha exclusive club of a billion or so people who use Hotmail. It’s just like that “You’re visiting a site outside of Hotmail. Please close this window to return to Hotmail” crap that makes me believe that the folks at Hotmail think that they’re dealing with a bunch of morons with the intellects of mops. The sad thing is that they probably did market research to come to this conclusion, which means that the majority of Hotmail users probably are not actually more intelligent than most kitchen utensils.

In other news, Brian’s and Dean’s brilliant show of resistance to societal restraints by smoking in the no-smoking section of Buca Buca last night made a real impression on me: It made me wonder why people start smoking at all. Yeah, I know, it looks cool, but so does a nose ring, but you don’t get addicted to a nose ring (or do you? I really have no idea). But the thing that strikes me the most is how people talk of “Understanding the Smokers’ Mind” as if it’s some sort of lifestyle choice, like riding a Harley. It’s an addiction, but several decades of intense marketing have given smokers a mystique-filled defense against any intimation that their addiction is no different from any other addiction. So I don’t understand the Smoker’s Mind. Oh, NO. It’s like not understanding the Jerry Springer Show, Pauline Hanson, or people buy SUVs. There are just some things I don’t want to know.

I finally completed my “100 Things about Poagao” list! Now you can know so much about me it makes me downright uncomfortable. The things I do for you people. Honestly.

Billy called yesterday and said that the Dutch Travel Bureau is going to provide him with their own cameraman, so I won’t be going to Europe any time soon, at least not with someone else footing the bill. There remains the possibility of going to New Zealand later on, or Shanghai or Thailand. However, that does free up time for me to attend a friend’s wedding in Puli, a little town in central Taiwan. Beautiful country, a weekend road trip, getting stuck in freeway traffic…I need to get out of the city more often. Especially since spring is arriving and the weather is more suitable for travel.

Dean, Kay and I watched From Hell last night. Not bad, with wonderful scenes of old London in 1888, the year my great-grandfather was born. Not too exciting, though, and the occasional bits of club music and edgy editing failed to keep me from almost nodding off. I left the theater totally unenlightened as to how black contact lenses imparted superpowers to Ian Holm’s character, however. To cure my discontent, I went home and rented Mystery Men, which turned out to be much more entertaining. Not only does it have Wes Studi and Hank Azaria, but you get a glimpse of Kel Mitchell , AKA “Invisible Boy”, in the buff as well. What more could you possibly want in a movie?

I was feeling a tad lonely at the office, so I went to the pet show on the top floor of the Mitsukoshi Department store today and bought another turtle for the office. I brought him (at least I think it’s a him) back and realized that I don’t have a bowl, so he’s scratching around inside a paper bag for the moment.

Steve is in town for a couple of days, so he is going to meet Dean, Brian and I over at Buca Buca for food and drink after work. Don’t you hate it when bloggers ramble on and on about their uninteresting social lives? Nyah.

Since Shauna has expressed interest in “100 Things About Poagao”, I’ve been working on a list. I have 75 Things, and so far I’m not very interesting. Maybe I’ll just make things up and let you guess which are actually true, to make it more interactive and all that. Let me know if there’s anything specific you want me to include.

So, the festival. Essentially it was a small cocktail party for a group of expatriates in Taipei. Most of the selections there were of dubious quality, I have to say, but ranging from impressive to cringe-inducingly bad. The fratboy contingent was strongly represented. The best thing there was a clever pencil animation called “Ah-qiu”, but most of the films were either sickeningly repetitive abstract exercises in futility or attempts to display to the world how little creativity certain individuals could muster in their films, while at the same time including every single wipe transition in their freeware editing programs. The coolest thing about the event was the venue; I have to say that the whole things is a good idea and definitely has potential. Hopefully by next year, if they continue, they’ll have a lot more to work with. Perhaps I will have something done by then as well, but I also hope to enter more substantial festivals.

Kirk and I went to Danshui today and walked around some of the old school campuses there. As always, we spent a few minutes drooling over what Kirk calls “our house“, a beautiful white house with a full veranda on a hill overlooking the river. It seems that Danshui is finally realizing that it has quite a bit of potential. They’ve cleaned up a lot of the streets and have reconfigured the waterfront into a pedestrian walk rather than a road for cars. It should be rather nice when it’s done. We watched the sunset and then had dinner at a restaurant on the waterfront. The view was great, but the food was mediocre and the people at the other tables were the typical obnoxious “Oh, let’s speak English and try to appear fashionable” types. I almost felt that I was back at the office.

Afterwards we took the MRT to the last night of the film festival, but they didn’t bother showing any of my films, so I retrieved my tape and we left. On the crowded subway home, Kirk took the only empty seat in the car next to a guy bent over his bookbag. I looked down and noticed that the book bag not only contained various books and papers, but was filled nearly to the brim with what looked like hot and sour soup. As I watched the guy heaved, and the level of what I realized was not actually soup rose and began to spill onto the subway floor. I moved to the other end of the car and canceled any thought of a late-night snack.

I’ve finally created a page for the Damn Book and included a sample chapter for all of you desperate publishers out there.

The Urban Nomad Film Festival’s first night was more of a dress rehearsal. They showed a couple of my films, first Coolishness and then The End. It’s located at the old Wine & Tobacco factory where Ba-de Road sprouts from Zhongxiao E. Road, next to the beginning of the Xinsheng overpass there. It’s a spooky old place, built by the Japanese, I believe, and the festival is being held in a warehouse at the very back. I’ll upload the cool pictures I took of it last night later, because I’m off to give Dean a hat for their play’s photo shoot.

If you like, come on down to the festival. It’s more like a party with films than a festival, really. It’s at the Hua-shan Arts center, No.1, Ba–de Road, section one, from about 8pm until midnight or so. There should be a lot more people there tonight.

The newest trend, it seems, is the “100 Things about Me” meme. It’s sort of like the old “One of These Ten Things Isn’t True” meme from a while back.

Are you really interested in knowing 100 things about Poagao? Let me know, and I’ll think about it. Also tell me if you want me to make stuff up.

I wanted to eat outside in the nice weather today for lunch, so I went to the Au Bon Pain sandwich shop on the side of the New York, New York shopping center today. It was filled with people who, for some reason, really annoyed me. It was bizarre. They weren’t doing anything particularly annoying, like rubbing my head or saying things like “total solutions”. It was just the aura. I got my sandwich, sat down outside and tried to figure out what it was that was annoying me. The crowd was about half pretentious white businessmen and half pretentious Taiwanese girls, pretty much evenly paired off. Perhaps they were all from nearby high-powered corporations, because they all had Powersuits with Powerties and Powerhair. They were all carrying the various accoutrements of a Powerjob, like PDAs and black leather suitcases, and they were all speaking English, even those who couldn’t really manage it.

I felt like I was a million miles away. It occurred to me that I could have been having lunch in downtown San Francisco. It would have been exactly the same. And while that would have been fine for San Francisco, but here in Taipei, it just feels like a desecration. But why should it? These are obviously well-off, sucessful, ostensibly happy people. Is this a remnant of my first decade here, when I knew a total of at most two foreigners in Taiwan and spent 95% of my time speaking, eating, -I guess you could say living- in Chinese? Or is this just the way Taiwan is changing, becoming more international in a McWorld sort of way?

I know that this is a mere pocket of Westerners in Taiwan, but working here every day, and seeing more and more Taiwanese equating “Western” with superiorty and “Chinese” with inferiority, looking down on themselves and throwing themselves away in an attempt to gain social standing by affecting the Western McLifestyle, gives me the impression that the ocean of things I love about this place, this island, this culture, is slowly but steadily retreating from my sunburnt feet.

But I digress. The Taiwan Urban Nomad Film Festival is set to start tonight. It looks like it will pretty much be the same program every night, so I assume they are thinking that people will just come for one night. Hopefully there will be some good stuff there. If not, at least I’ll see some people I know, and the weather is nice enough. If it keeps it up on the weekend, I might want to ride up into the mountains and visit a hot springs or something. Mmmmmm….hot springs…