I’m back at Ogilvy, for a full day today as I don’…
I’m back at Ogilvy, for a full day today as I don’t usually work on Wednesdays. It’s odd to be back here; I hadn’t expected to ever be here again, but here I am, doing the same job for the same pittance. At least they don’t mind listlessness, as long as the job gets done.
I had the happy fortune to happen across not only Star Wars: Episode II last night at the DVD shop, but the Coen Bros.’ The Man Who Wasn’t There as well, so Mindcrime and I met up at Dean’s for a Good Movie Night to make up for our recent Bad Movie Night, which ended up a bit too literally. The Man Who Wasn’t There consisted of continuously well-crafted scenes, filmed in lucious black and white that almost seemed like it had been filmed in the 40’s. The framing was perfect, but the film was obviously of a higher grade than was available 60 years ago. The composition seemed a bit off, for some reason. Perhaps it was because they filmed it in color before converting it to black-and-white. My friends of course commented on the uncanny similarity between my social character and that of Ed Crane, the main character. Still, for such a slow-paced film, it held me rapt until the gratefully non-twist ending. In this era of the “must see” twist ending popularized by M. Night himself, a relatively normal ending is something of a twist ending, in that nobody expects one anymore.
Episode II still rocks, even on the little screen. Mindcrime had an epileptic fit when R2 flew, of course, and Count Dooku still looks silly riding his “Manboy Jeep-bike” scooter across the desert, but Jango and Obi-wan still kick ass in all the right places.
I went to the local Subway for lunch today and chatted with the Chinese-american dude who works there. I asked him if he’d ever done his month-long military service (he’s too fat for the two-year gig, apparently), and he just took off his cap and showed me the remains of an army buzzcut. He’d spent his month cleaning rifles in Hualian apparently, and now he was back making sandwiches. He seems to like the sandwiches a bit more than he used to. Perhaps he’s got a bit more perspective now. A stint in the army’s good for that.
As I walked back to the office after lunch, I was suprised at how tall the Taipei101 building had gotten since I last worked here a few months ago. The cranes at the top were flickering in and out of the low rainclouds, just like nearby Elephant Mountain. The building is scheduled to reach its world-record-breaking height around this time next year, but the gigantic mall downstairs is supposed to be open earlier, to assuage the shopping needs of the millions of women in this city with too much disposable income (according to all the latest surveys). I’d say it’s going to be an Estrogen Mall on Steroids, but that doesn’t quite work.
A year ago this time I was wandering around Australia, having a wonderful time retrieving bits of my sanity lost over the course of too much time spent in souless offices. Now it’s time for my one-man “Filmmaking for Sanity” drive, lest I slip back into a deep malaise. I’ve already spent the money, so now it’s time to insert a colorful metaphor here to make myself seem interesting in a gritty yet homey way.
