My publisher sent me the rough draft of the edited copy of my book this morning. It’s tiny! Of course, the Chinese is single-space and much denser than the double-space English version, but still…it’s so thin! To be fair, Chinese books do tend to be thinner in general than English books; it’s just the nature of the market here: Taiwanese consumers just aren’t willing to buy thick books to read for pleasure. Perhaps large books remind people here of textbooks, and any other reading should be “light reading”. Or maybe they won’t fit in purses or pockets. In any case, I looked through it and didn’t find too many mistakes, at least nothing that couldn’t be fixed easily. Hopefully it will be out sooner instead of later, but they’re busy with one of their bigger authors, Jimmy the Cartoonist, and so everything else must take a back seat it seems. I’m not going to worry about it, though. I’ve done my bit by writing it, and now it’s up to the publishers to sell it.

From an article in the “Jesus, Look What the Fucktards are Up to Now” section of SFGate: “Mill Valley resident Penny Wright-Mulligan bought her first Hummer in October. She loves the macho frame and 316 horsepower V8 engine. And she doesn’t seem to mind that, on average, her vehicle gets 10 miles to the gallon — particularly when she has to shuttle four children between the ages of 11 and 16, and three dogs.”

“Large SUVs are the worst option, not just for society but for many buyers as well. Big SUVs are allowed to emit up to 5.5 times as much smog-causing nitrogen oxides per mile as a car, are allowed to get much worse gas mileage, are three times as likely as a car to kill the other motorist in a crash and provide no better protection for their occupants than a large car or minivan.”

“‘No nonmilitary vehicle can do what this does,’ said Tiburon resident Scott Tuck. ‘Things like self-inflating tires that keep going when you take a bullet are probably not necessary in Tiburon. But it has safety elements that, as a father of three, I do think about.'”

So these people have needs which require a station wagon or minivan, either of which would be just as safe or safer than a Hummer at a fraction of the cost, both retail and in gasoline/maintenance, but they still buy Hummers? Just what is this asshole, “as a father of three,” thinking about? If he’s that likely to be targeted in an assassination attempt, maybe he should, “as a father of three,” reconsider his profession.

And isn’t just having the name “Penny Wright-Mulligan” ludicrous enough? Do you really need to buy a Hummer for Soccer-mom duties to prove that you’re an idiot?

I’ve driven Hummers before (when I was in the army), and I don’t get it. Driving one of those things feels exactly like driving the 1969 Buick Electra 225 we had when I was growing up. The Buick probably even had more luggage space, as the Hummer is small and awkward inside, the machinery sticking up into the cabin. I don’t really care too much about people performing these acts of idiocy in the states, much less California, however. My biggest concern is that this lunacy will infect Taiwanese people, who love to follow to stupid foreign trends, and before long we’ll start seeing people driving and trying to park Mack Trucks on the narrow, twisty, already crowded roads here. Why am I worried about this? Well, let me put it this way: There’s a lot of new money in this town, a lot of insecure people out to prove, via their new-found wealth, that they’re better than everyone else. The most popular way of doing this at the moment is with a large, black Mercedes, and anyone who has driven or even walked in this city can tell you that those driving the ubiquitous Big Black Benzes are by far the worst, most inconsiderate, most dangerous drivers on the road. But according to the article, “The auto industry’s marketers say that SUV buyers tend to be people who are especially ‘self-oriented,’ meaning they are especially conscious of other people’s opinions of them and of fads in vehicle taste, but are less concerned about the effects on others.” Well, that pretty much sums up half of Taipei. Ironically, you may have to move out of the city to the poorer countryside, where an SUV might actually come in handy, just to get away from the pretentious boors who will probably end up buying them.

So it’s New Year’s Eve. I have no plans, really. I haven’t gotten much done this year. I got my eyes lasered, finished a book and got a Chinese publisher, got a DV camera, made one short film, helped other people make films, moved twice -into and out of the Chungking Mansions Taipei-, found a new sword teacher, a nice new job…so I guess I did do some stuff. 2002 just felt uneventful and slow, though. I’ve forgotten any resolutions I made last year. I doubt I’ve fulfilled them in any case, and I am loathe to make any more. Life is too unpredictable anyway.

We watched the extended version of Da Fellowship of Da Ring at Dean’s last night, and even though the crap DVD player left us staring at something more like a long succession of stills than a movie, I can honestly say this edit blows the theatrical version out of the water. Just about everything missing from the original version is there, and it works so much better, I can only wonder at the reason the studios decided to go with the theatrical release. The story works better because more is explained, and the new edit actually feels tighter than the shorter version. I didn’t like the theatrical release because it felt rushed and clumsy, but this one is altogether another story. I highly recommend it, but with a real DVD player. It seems to work just fine in my DVD-ROM as well.

I think I’ve just about done all that I can do with Alphadogah, so I’m going to put it in the can and start thinking about my next thing. Problem is, I don’t rightly know what my next thing’s going to be, though I have a few ideas. I suppose I’ll have to settle on one and do it, though. The new camera is a real incentive to get things done simply in order to avoid guilt for having spent so much on it. This time, however, I will need a real boom mic, and hopefully I can coax an even better picture out of the camera now that I’m a bit more familiar with it. I’ve found after much consultation over the phone with Paul AKA Norman that I have a very different editing style than he does. He works with clips spread throughout various tracks in the timeline, whereas I see the desktop as a virtual Steenbeck and cut my clips individually, inserting them and then working with what I have after it’s all put together.

Recently I found that I wasn’t even in the running for a certain well-paying government job, even though I got the highest score on the editing/translation test and am obviously a native English speaker, simply because I don’t hold a foreign passport. I find it truly ironic, though in a fucked-up Alanis Morrissette way, that I can’t work for my own government, no matter how qualified I am, simply because I am not a citizen of another country. It’s gotten me to wondering whether it would be easier to regain US citizenship or just apply for a passport of a country where it’s easy to obtain citizenship. Seems a bit excessive that I should have to do this just to improve my prospects here. It also irks me when I see various foreign-passport holders whinging about any restriction the government places on them. I realize that I do my fair share of complaining, but at least they can whinge all the way to the bank.

I know, I should either just shut up or start driving a taxi.

I spent most of yesterday trying to finish the editing and sound work for Alphadogah. It’s not that big or difficult a project, but I wasted a lot of time just getting familiar with the workings of Adobe Premiere as well as Cool Edit Pro as I tried to clean up the sound and add music and titles. I think it’s pretty much done, however. It’s silly but fun. At one point my landlord came over to collect this month’s rent. There was, of course, yet another loud activity going on downstairs, and when he entered my room he said “Jeez, that’s loud. I never knew it was that loud here!” He went on to apologize for not warning me about the more-or-less constant cacophony and even told me that if I wanted to move out sometime after Chinese New Year he wouldn’t withold my deposit. His reasoning fpr the timing is that it’s considered bad luck to move house before or during Chinese New Year, and there would be a lot more places available then. In any case, it’s nice of him to make the offer. I don’t know what I’m going to do about the noise just yet, but it’s good to know that I could theoretically become known as “Poagao, Man of 1,000 Recent Apartments”.

The weather yesterday was cold and drizzly, good for staying home if your home isn’t being bombarded by aboriginal dance music interspersed by the haranging of vendors. It was so loud I had to turn my stereo up to 3/4 full volume, which is way too loud. The activity wrapped up in the evening and I went to rent a movie after dinner. I was just getting into it when Kirk called. He wanted to go out, and gave me a choice of The Source, Fresh, or the Taiwan Bear Club. I choose the latter even though I didn’t feel like going out (Kirk can be very persuasive, and he also wanted to make up for not joining us for the Christmas party). The Source is mostly empty these days, and I am usually not in the mood for the kind of crowd that hangs out at Fresh. Funky’s another alternative, it’s been around forever but remains relevant, but Kirk doesn’t like it there.

He was late, of course, so I was left milling awkwardly about outside the entrance, a one-man shiftless crowd. When he did show up he gave me a small red plastic bear for my birthday. “Not to seem unappreciative,” I said as I examined the gift, “but it has no eyes, or mouth even.”

“That’s what makes it so cute,” he explained.

“Ah.”

We then proceeded down into the basement-level bar. It was crowded and we had to take a table underneath one of the massive Karaoke speakers. This made conversation difficult and relegated us to sitting, drinking and watching the other parties, most of which consisted of at least five guys sitting around yelling at each other and playing drinking games. The greeters generally avoided us, coming over and sharing a hesitant beer now and then, but never engaging either of us in conversation. Kirk told me about school (he is graduating night school in May even though he’s only a year or so younger than I) and a possible new romance, and I told him that I should have dragged Dean and Mindcrime along in revenge for their inflicting the Hooters Stick-figure Experience on me, not once but several times. Oh well, I thought, there’s always next time. But when it came time to leave, we found to our dismay that the prices had gone up by a third, to almost NT$500 a person, so I doubt I’ll be going back there any time soon. I’ll just drag them to Funky instead. I prefer the Taiwan Bear Club mainly because it’s more purely Taiwanese than any of the other places, and also because you tend to get just normal guys hanging out there. But $500 is just ridiculous.

The noise downstairs continues even as I write this; I’m countering it with a surprisingly good Russian radio station that is doing a splendid job of reminding me exactly how much of that language I’ve forgotten. Right now I’m busy trying to digest a massive amount of Cream of Wheat. I haven’t eaten the real kind, the kind you actually cook instead of just pour hot water into, since I was a kid. Thus I misjudged the amount you’re supposed to put into the boiling water, producing roughly enough to feed a small government agency. I didn’t want to waste it, though; I forced myself to eat it all, so you’ll have to excuse me while I go lie down for a bit. It is verily a nice day, however, and I might take my recently purchased Fellowship of the Ring Extended Version DVD over to Dean’s to watch later.

The cold, wet weather today is perfect for the current post-Christmas/pre-Chinese New Year blue period. Fortunately this period usually lasts for about an hour in Taiwan. Chinese New Year comes early this year, in January rather than February as it usually does, so the period may only last a few minutes.

Azuma was nice enough to help me finish the shooting part of Alphadogah so that I can move on to post production. We filmed two different endings so that I can see which matches up best. There had been calls for Azuma to wear his Jedi costume, which can be seen here. Azuma’s the guy with long hair and glasses in the Mace Windu get-up. Apparently this group of Star Wars fans, including the surprisingly short Darth Vader, has been itching to do a fan film and might want such non-Chinese-appearing personalities as Dean and myself to act in it because, as Azuma puts it, “Face it, there just weren’t that many Chinese Jedi. Some of them were, after all, not Chinese.” Fair enough. I just want to get this project done and begin something else, something a bit more ambitious, a bit more challenging to make. If you have any ideas, don’t hesitate to let me know. As long as it doesn’t involve “this young, handsome American dude who finds himself in Taiwan, and he teaches English and, like, freaks out because it’s Taiwan! But he meets this Taiwanese girl, and she’s, you know, hot, and they get it on, yeah?”

Uh, no. I wouldn’t have a problem doing something all in Chinese either. Involving swords, betelnut-spitting, night markets and scooter chases through vast mountainside graveyards, perhaps. To opera music.

Happy Birthday to Me.

Oh, and that Jesus guy, too, I guess. I’m writing this from Dean‘s house, just to let you know what a thrilling party guest I am. Indeed, we’ve been inhaling eggnog of doubtful quality and wonderful turkey bits thanks to Juke. A host of friends have come and gone, and we stragglers are munching on pudding before we’re kicked out. Merry Christmas.

Lots of slamming going on at Triggerstreet these days. Today, the day after I wrote a rather negative review of a guy’s film, called “The Veteran”, he dragged my film over the coals in none-too-subtle revenge: “Some people try to deliver a message or at least a story with film, apparnetly[sic] Poagao doesn’t feel compelled to do either. The only thing worse than a critic is one who is stuck in film school hell. Poagao needs to learn that if you live in a glass house you should not cast so many stones. Even with the absence of dialogue, the acting was robotic. The hand gestures and shoulder shrugs were a parody of a bad mime. I am going to give this a consider however, because an Arri-S is a good camera”

Whoa. Sorry for slagging yer film there, Tex. Nice shootin’, by the way. I completely agree about the acting comments. But something tells me that I could have had The Two Towers up there and he still would have given it a bad review, just for revenge. But you know what? It doesn’t matter, because both of our films suck. Most of the films on the site suck. If you don’t believe me, go check them out for yourselves. I did see one today, however, that I really liked. It is called “Goodbye, Mr. Feingold” and was done by Rolltwenty Films. I really like the work that these guys do, and they shoot on a Canon XL1. I hope I can start producing stuff of similar quality in the not-too-far future. Some of the reviews even hinted at some kind of Triggerstreet mafia that shoots down the films of people they think may endanger their top-ten spots: “Another victim of the assault on comedy: This film, like many other comedies, reared it’s head above the radar of the top ten guardians and the patriot missiles were unleashed. It’s unfortunate that a small, self ordained group of centuries can control the top ten by unfair slamming…” one review said of “Feingold”. Hmm…

Anyway, speaking of things cinematic, I put up a new video clip today. This is just a sweep through the restaurant part of the hot springs complex we drove up to Saturday night. Harry‘s the guy in red staring at the camera and saying “What’s up?” in Chinese. I have another clip of just Harry making stupid faces at the camera. He probably wouldn’t like me to post it, so just say the word.

On my way home from work today I passed by an old military dependents’ village that had recently been torn down, leaving only rubble behind a series of empty doorways along the road. You’d think they’d at least finish the job once they started, but there’s actually a suprising number of halfway torn-down houses and apartments hidden in the various nooks and crannies of this city, many of them still occupied. Talk about waiting until the last minute.

Once I got home the Yuanji Dance Women had started up, so I got out my sword and went up to the roof to practice my forms. A nicely isolated place, our rooftop. Nobody ever goes up there, but the view is quite nice. I took some pictures of it and then, to experiment, took some of myself as I practiced. One of them came out quite nicely so I made a new banner for my About page. I (heart) digital cameras. I also got another Mirror Project picture up. It’s a van, in case you couldn’t tell.

My cooking skills are still progressing. Tonight I dined on not only chicken but spaghetti as well. I think I might even dare take a stab at a vegetable soon, frightening though it may seem.

I’ve been getting some strange reactions from people lately. When yet another horrendously loud activity was being held in the square downstairs on Saturday, this one involving loud kids, entry-level Christmas music and goats in a pen, I spent the afternoon out shopping. At one shop the man behind the register asked me where I learned my Chinese. “Here and there,” I answered after the customary shrugging consternation.

“You must have learned a lot of it here, because you have a really thick Taiwanese accent,” he said. When I got back to my building, the doorman downstairs asked me if I was Muslim. He had assumed I was on account of the unconventional, vaguely Middle Eastern hats I usually wear, but then observed me eating things during Ramadan and became confused about my religious orientation. I had to tell him that most of my hats were actually of Taiwanese aborigine origin.

That night was Bret and Allan’s Christmas Party out in Nangang, so I met Kirk at the Kunyang Station and the two of us caught a ride with Harry over to the deluxe split-level apartment Bret and Allan share in a large complex out there. The food was nice, with a Christmas ham, ambrosia, hot cider and cheesecake, and I met some old acquaintances there as well. I chatted and stuffed myself until almost midnight, when Harry invited me up to the Huayicun Hot Springs with some of his friends. I’d never been up there at night, much less in the winter, so I said ok. It began to rain as we drove one of the friends’ minivan up the mountain, and thick fog met us at the top and followed us down the twisty darkened paths on the other side to the springs. In spite of the hour and the weather, the road leading to the complex was filled with cars. We managed to find a space and rushed inside. It was a lot colder on the mountain than in the city, and the heavy rain didn’t help. Stripping off one’s clothes and running through freezing rain into a semi-warm pool of water wasn’t the most uncomfortable part, however. Getting out of that pool and then running around naked in search of a hotter pool was much, much worse. “Fuck, fuck, fuck a duck it’s cold!” I kept repeating as I made my way to the hotter hot springs, which were crowded with guys seeking shelter from the cold pelting rain. Oh, but that felt good. I pretty much stayed in the hot pools the whole night, especially after a particularly disappointing trip to the mud baths, which turned out to be unheated in addition to full of mud.

All kinds of guys were there, fat and thin, dark and light-skinned, everyone from students to cab drivers to gangster types covered in Japanese-style tattoos. The pools are spread out open to the elements on a hillside, so whenever the cold wind and rain gusted through you could hear the multiple splashes of guys jumping into the muddy hot water up to their necks. We stayed until after 3am and then drove back to the city. It was 5am before I got to sleep, but I was woken up at 9am sharp by still another cacaphony from downstairs. This is getting extremely annoying. If it weren’t for my lease I would be looking for another place already. I tried sleeping through it but no dice, so I joined Dean and Key on a trip up to Tianmu to forage for Christmas Dinner supplies at Wellman’s Market up on Zhongshan North Road. We managed to find quite a bit of goodies there, though the man who runs it was complaining that business has been falling off over the past few years since more and more western menu items have become commonly available here, and Tianmu is no longer the foreign enclave it once was. Nowadays the defining feature of the area is more spoiled Taipei American School kids than spoiled expat-package wives.

After arranging the turkey for Wednesday’s celebrations and meeting up with Mindcrime during lunch at Juke, we dropped off the groceries at Dean’s place and headed over to Warner Village to see The Two Towers, a very long film. It was very good in spite of its length, however. The only part I didn’t like was the insert with the interaction between Elrond and Arwen, which slowed the pace of the film and felt, well, inserted. Everything else was very good, much better than the first film, especially the first half of the first film. I can’t wait until I can watch them all back to back, an experience that will likely take about a day’s time, stopping for meals (two days for watching the extended versions). I met Dean’s friend Azuma, or “East Wind” (dongfeng in Chinese) at the theater. He just recently got laser eye surgery, will start work at an advertising agency next month, and is really into Star Wars, so needless to say he fit right into our little group. Since Sho has turned out to be No Sho, I might use Azuma for the last remaining scene instead.

After the movie we retired to Dean’s place and enjoyed a nice sit-down meal of spaghetti and sauce, followed by a good Star Trek TNG episode on TV. All in all a very pleasant day in an enjoyable weekend. I know it’s not that interesting to hear about, certainly lacking in conflict and character development, but I enjoyed it, so there. Nyah.

I was late to sword practice last night, but fortunately my teacher and all the other students were even later than I was(my kind of class). It was a good workout; I think I’m getting the new form down, or at least the parts I’ve been taught so far. It’s the 55-step form, longer than the 42- and the 32-step ones I studied before. No contact swordfighting, however. I think I do better with a heavier steel weapon; the lighter practice swords just don’t feel right. Too flippable.

After practice I didn’t feel like getting directly on the MRT at Yuanshan, so I walked down Zhongshan North Road, eventually making my way to the SPOT theater house, formerly the residence of the US ambassador way back when the Republic of China was still recognized by the UN. For years it had sat crumbling, entwined with tree branches and virtually invisible from the road, but the current city government decided to rescue it, so now it’s a hotspot for trendy, vapid people who dress all in black. I’ve had a theory that, the more vapid a Taiwanese person is, the bigger a deal he or she will make of spotting a foreigner. It has nothing to do with education or economic level, as some suggest. As it turns out, SPOT is The place to go for vapid people-watching. I was a hit from the moment I walked in the gate. Points, stares, laughter, the whole bit. The clientel seemed to consist for the most part of serious looking women with glasses, butch dyed hair and somber attire. They all wore somber expressions until the deer-in-the-headlights look resulting from my presence. Perhaps it was just last night, perhaps I was crashing their little party, but I didn’t see any signs saying “No Vagina-hating Man-pigs Allowed After 8pm”, so I assume it was open to all. If I weren’t afraid of bumping into Lesbrianna I would go back another night and see if it’s still like that.

All of the staring was irking me a bit, so I proceeded to the Taipei Railway Station, where I spotted a guy with a guitar slung across his back sketching me on a notepad as I waited for the MRT home. He followed me on the train and continued to sketch me as I sat there. He got off at my stop, but then he went up to the Muzha line, while I exited the station, so I didn’t get a chance to go up to him and say “So, can I see it now?”

I called up Sho to see if he would help me finish up the last scene in Alphadogah. He said he was free tomorrow afternoon, so hopefully the weather won’t be too bad. I’m itching to get this thing done and start on another piece. Using Sho will change the ending from the way it originally was, but I think it will still work. The other day I was walking around when I spotted a DV camera shop sign on a store on the corner of Jianguo and Zhongxiao E Roads. I went in and was confronted with a children’s toy shop. I asked the fellow behind the desk and he told me that the DV shop wasn’t open yet, per se, but they would have stuff in there soon. We talked about cameras; he was really pushing the Sony VX2000, even over the Panasonic AG-DVX100 I’ve been drooling over lately. He opened a Japanese magazine showing small screenshots he felt displayed the superiority of the Sony picture. I personally didn’t see it, and both were using auto white balance in any case. I told him I just wanted to get my hands on a Panasonic and check it out for myself, and he said he might have some later. We’ll see. I don’t think I’ll be buying one, but I’d just like to play around with it and reassure myself that my purchase of the GL2 wasn’t too far in error. From what I’ve seen on Triggerstreet, though, the camera isn’t the biggest problem with most of these films. Most of the camerawork is just fine; most of the fatal flaws lie with the story, the directing and the editing, or lack thereof. I need to do more stuff myself, though, as the only way to get to the good films inside you is to work your way through all of the bad ones that everyone’s got hidden inside them, just waiting to shock people with their badness. I’ve only done a handful so far, so I’m sure there’s plenty that still need to be made so that I can get on to making halfway-decent stuff.

Last night I was woken by what sounded like huge explosions. I pulled back my curtains half expecting to see PLA missiles raining down on the city. It turned out to be a thunderstorm. Well, that works, too.

I just got back from TV night at Dean’s, and in addition to our normal fare of Drew Carey and Whose Line is it Anyway?, we watched two episodes of Six Feet Under, which I’d never seen before. At first I was completely and utterly lost; without a reference to put things in perspective the characters all seemed insane. As I watched, however, things began to come together and I started to enjoy it. It’s no Band of Brothers by any stretch of the imagination, but it’s not too bad.

Speaking of things cinematic, I’ve still got only seven reviews of The End on Triggerstreet. Four of those are not entirely negative, which ain’t bad. If you fancy having a look yourself and perhaps even writing a review (hint hint), you’ll have to register and declare your top-five favorite movies of all time, but if you’re up to that challenge, there’s quite a few actually good films available for viewing inside.

This afternoon after belatedly sending off some Christmas cards to the States, I took advantage of the nice weather and walked down to the new BMW store on Jinshan S. Road. I went inside and asked the salesman what the smallest sized bike they had for sale was. After rooting through a dusty drawer for some related literature, he finally replied that they had two 600cc ones, but both were dirt bikes. The smallest regular street bike they had was over 1000cc. “But that’s useless in this city,” I said. “You’d never get anywhere, and where would you park it?”

“True,” the salesman admitted. “But it’s the way things are set up.”

“Brilliant,” I told him as I walked out the door. Not that I was originally planning to buy any new motorcycle, much less a huge BMW, but the pure idiocy of their sales strategy boggles the mind.

In other news, Mindcrime has added a TC-esque character to his list of superheroes on his site. It all sounds strangely familiar. I for one had no idea I was that…round. The reference to “Assassin” comes from a guy with that nickname, whom I worked with back in ancient times at TVBS.

Tall Paul clued me into Triggerstreet.com, a place for short films to be raked over the coals in front of everyone, so I spent most of last night fiddling around formatting and uploading The End to their site. It’s garnered seven reviews so far, a couple of them pretty damning, but that’s ok as I have many of the same complaints about it. Their website is interesting ; there’s quite a few good films up there to choose from. Perhaps by the latter portion of the contest I will have done something a bit better. I also have one other student film, The Trick, that I suppose I could put up there, just to see what happens. Coolishness is over two minutes too long, although I suppose I could cut it down easy enough, and I should have Alphadogah done soon as well. We’ll see what happens in the next couple of months.

I cooked my first meal in my kitchenette last night. It wasn’t as bad as I expected, i.e., I could eat it. It consisted of a couple of eggs and some chicken meat. The egg was sprinkled with what I suspect were teflon shavings from when I was manhandling the egg goop in the skillet with the steel spatula. Also, the chicken had no particular flavor, but all in all it wasn’t… well, it wasn’t quite inedible. I still have no idea what I’m doing, but it’s kind of cool to have a kitchenette; I guess I should use it now and then.