Absolutely Not Your Monkey
Earlier this week I got a call from Da Shan, who invited me out to hot pot near Ta Ping Ding. He sounded a bit drunk. I took the MRT over and found him, his little brother Xiao Shan, and a not-very-happy-looking Alien sitting at a large table in a corner of the restaurant. There were also several strangers at the table, including a rather boistrous, very drunk fellow with whom I shared two out of three characters in my name. Also at the table was a young women who was obviously trying to look nervous and out of place. I could tell that she was just back from the U.S. even before my friends told me.
Alien went out and bought some ice cream while the drunk guy with 2/3 of my name ranted and raged at the other people at the table. Da Shan told me that they were thinking of filming a comedy series, and they wanted me to be their cameraman.
“Just think, you could be hanging out with this kind of people if you were still working in the TV business, ” Alien told me, offering me some ice cream.
“I can think of worse, ” I replied. “I’d much rather hang out with these guys than go to an Oriented.com Happy Hour, for example. ”
I met a couple of the producers, we exchanged cards, etc., but it was becoming obvious that the drunk fellow wasn’t going to be happy unless he could go sing KTV with someone. Da Shan drove me and another guy who lives in Xindian home in his crappy little van. It was fun; I needed to get out.
Jason, a guy who I met when I was working at the newspaper several years ago, called me the other day. He’s finishing up his military service, and he wanted to tell me how much he appreciated my book. He said it helped him through some “negative” times. I’m glad it did him some good. Another guy in the army told me last night that he was writing his reports like I did in the book, repeating the same character over and over again. I did it out of frustration and boredom, while he did for laughs I guess. Apparently my book is a bigger hit with guys who are actually in the service than it is for the general public. I know, what a surprise.
I was walking around the Guang-hua Market area last night looking at audio cables when I ran into a couple of old co-workers from TVBS. One of them was “Assassin”, with whom I cris-crossed the island several times in the early 90’s filming travel shows. Most of the cameramen I worked with are doing more comfortable studio work these days, leaving the rough fieldwork for the younger guys I guess. I really should go pay them a visit one of these days.
I’m probably going to discontinue the “sound of the moment” and keep the “sight of the moment”. I figure you can find any song you like elsewhere, and I need the space. I will probably go through and clean up some of the older pictures referred to earlier in my blog, to get some more space back. So if you’re really interested in what my cubicle at my old company looked like, or some other historical detria, get it from the archives now, before it’s gone.
Last night I was yelling at my computer as I tried to update my website. Files weren’t loading, every jpg file I tried to save only gave me the bitmap option when I tried to save it from IE, and Windows took forever to just populate a list of files in My Computer. I know, I know, all of my problems can be solved simply by reconfiguring several random .dll files and running a third-level diagnostic, but that’s not the point. The point is that I shouldn’t have to do those things. All I want is a computer that works. That’s it. But for Microsoft, that’s apparently too much to ask.
And then this afternoon I find out that Microsoft fired some guy just for taking a picture of G5s in Redmond. It’s like a sign to all of the disgruntled Windows users out there: These guys are the enemy. They don’t give a rat’s ass about making a decent computer interface. Thanks for the tip, Microsoft. You’ve made me realize the futility of using Windows or anything else coming out of Redmond. Thanks to your actions I think I can confidently say that I will never spend another dime of my money on one of your products. All of my computer-related expenditures from now on will be spent on Apple products.
As far as the whole blogging-about-work thing goes, I don’t talk much about my present job because there’s not much to talk about. I razed my last employer quite a bit because frankly they deserved it, but they never gave me any trouble about my website. My present job, however, is a different story; I like it a lot there and have literally nothing to complain about (just yet). If that changes, of course I’ll let you know, but for now, I’m perfectly happy there. Even if I have to use a PC.
Finally, at long last, I’ve come up with another edition of the Renegade Province News. Enjoy. I’m working on a page about my new digs as well as some new video clips, but no promises as far as posting them goes. Seems like I always do this kind of thing when I have a cold.
I saw a couple of Firefly episodes the other day. I can kind of see what they were going for, but while the acting and story were strong, and the writing excellent, the choppy camerawork and awful editing were too distracting. The little added bits of pseudo-Chinese were uncalled for as well. Most of the time I didn’t understand what they were trying to say, as their accents were way, way off, and when I did figure out what they were saying, half of it didn’t fit the dialogue. In fact, it stopped the dialogue, interrupted any throughline that was there before. Points for trying something fresh, but they sure made a mess out of it. I can see why it didn’t last.
I also recently got, along with millions of other people, the Indiana Jones trilogy on DVD. It’s about freakin’ time. Not only have the images been cleaned up, and Lucas/Spielberg even resisted changing it so that the sword-waving guy shot first. After watching the movies again, I am still of the opinion that Raiders was by far the best of the three. Temple of Doom was awful, and while the Last Crusade was inspired, it felt as if they were trying too hard to re-do the first movie. I have my doubts about a fourth movie. I’d see it, of course, but I am not hopeful that they could come up with anything nearly as good as Raiders.
Taiwan’s been going Referendum-crazy recently. It’s like some sort of new religion adopted by an administration who knows its days are numbered. People seem to think that referendums will resolve every single issue or debate in existance, and really, who needs a government anyway? Let the people decide everything! That’s democracy, dammit, just like in the good ol’ U.S. of A. It all has the feel of a bad used-car commercial.
George Washington spoke of the need for an enlightened populace for democracy to truly work, and the U.S. isn’t a true democracy in any case, but a representative one. Otherwise Al Gore would be president. But democracy is perceived here as much as part of American culture as McDonalds and HBO, meaning it doesn’t have to actually have any reason behind its popularity. Chen Shui-bian has spent his term trying to be all things to all people, ending of being nothing to noone because he didn’t want to offend anyone, but now his hand is being forced as the election approaches, and we’re catching more and more glimpses of what he would do if he did anything. It’s not a pretty picture. Comments about a whole new constitution, mutterings about referendums, the Mystery of The Vice Presidential Candidate, etc. have made me actually glad he spent so much time being afraid to do anything. I wish he’d keep it up, at least until he’s voted out of office and we get someone with some real cojones to back up their convictions in there. Referendums won’t solve public issues because people are 1) fickle, in that a referendum on one issue might be favorable one week and unfavorable the next, and 2) selfish, i.e. they’ll choose whatever they think might benefit them personally in the short term but damage the nation in the long term. Government by referendum, especially with a relatively unenlightened populace (and is there even such a thing as an enlightened populace?) is merely a polite term for anarchy.
Ok, enough with the ranting. I’m just cranky because I have a cold. At least I get a vote in whatever referendums they throw at us, as well as the elections next year. It could be that I’m full of shit and everything works out just peachy.
Congrats to Randall for his spot on CNN, brief though it was. Man, he’s lost a lot of weight.
Lots of stuff has been going on, but the past few days have all been Those Days. You know what I mean if you’ve ever had one of Those Days, and I’m sure you have. You’re just about to leave your house for work when Nature calls and makes you 10 minutes late. Then the subway trains at each station have all just left or are too crowded to enter. And of course on one of Those Days, your boss is always waiting for you with an urgent job and wondering why you’re late. Then, just as you’ve gotton on the subway home and are thanking some random deity that you can go home and rest because you’ve got a cold and you feel like shit, your boss will call with another emergency that requires your immediate presence as well as working late into the night and coming in on your days off.
But rest assured, Those Days can always be muddled through, and they can’t last forever, so I should have some interesting new material up soon.
This seems like a really cool idea, but it would mean more if they could construct them in more disparate locations, i.e. a little portal in, say, Calcutta, located in a place like Times Square or Manhattan Beach in LA. If they made it 3D it would be even better.
Yesterday was another gorgeous day, and after enjoying a delicious turkey sandwich while sitting in Da-an Park reading my newly purchased copy of A Storm of Swords, I took Gendouyun in to the Bike Farm, a shop owned and operated by a foreign mechanic named Jeremy who comes highly recommended. He initially forgot about our appointment until he looked at his appointment book and saw my name on the list. Then he proceeded with a general check-up of the motorcycle. After fiddling with it and taking it for a spin around the block, he gave me a long list of things that were dangerously wrong with the bike, a list that would cost me several thousand dollars to rectify. In short, my bike is pretty fucked.
I had to make a decision then: I could either write off the motorcycle, sell it for scrap and start saving up for a new bike, or I could fix it up enough to last me another couple of years. The thing is, I hate scooters, and I can’t justify buying one of the 150cc four-stroke models out there on the market right now either. The only bike I’d want to replace this one with would be at least 250cc, and all of the larger bikes out there right now are too new and expensive to even consider, even on a payment plan, so that wasn’t an option. Instead I decided to just fix my current bike for now instead of getting a new one. This means I’ll be without a motorcycle for a few weeks though, as the place is booked solid. I’d rather save up for a G5 than a new motorcycle. Plus I can actually use a G5 to make money, as I would be using it for editing and other creative efforts, whereas a larger, newer motorcycle would just consume more of my resources and become one more thing to worry about finding a secure parking space for, lest it get stolen or dinged.
Of course, you’re thinking, why do I need a motorcycle at all, especially in this day and age of the MRT? Don’t get me wrong, the MRT’s great, but I’ve always had some kind of motorcycle ever since I moved to Taipei, and it feels wrong somehow to not have my own transportation. I want to be able to take off on a trip whenever I like, especially now that I live on Wulai’s doorstep. Surely a couple of weeks and a few thousand NT isn’t too much to pay for such a thing.
A few thousand NT, however, is a little too much to pay for a poster. That said, I really, really like this one for the first Huang Fei-hong movie by Tsui Hark, called “Once Upon a Time in China” in English. I saw a thumbnail for it at a HK poster store a long time ago and tried to find it, but I couldn’t. In contrast to all of the other posters for that movie, which show people fighting and doing all sorts of violent things, this one depicts all of the main characters at a quiet afternoon picnic on the beach, something which doesn’t have anything to do with anything that happens in the movie. It’s just so random and surreal that I have to have it.
But not for US$120. Jesus. Maybe I’ll get this one instead, even though it’s no picnic at the beach.
最近天氣非常的好, 很涼快, 有點風, 也有點太陽. 每天回家時把所有的窗戶打開, 邊透氣邊後面山上的聽鳥叫聲. 薪水入帳了, 公寓都整理了差不多. 我應該再開始計劃下一部短片. 我們 Lady X DVD 要等一快軟體, 沒有這個 dvd studio pro 2 軟體就不能做dvd 了. 真麻煩.
昨晚去附近的國賓戲院找舊電影海
In my search for stuff to decorate some of the many blank white walls of my apartment, I went to the second-run movie theater up the street last night to look for old movie posters. From the outside you wouldn’t suspect there’s a real theater inside, and I had assumed that it was one of those home theater systems someone set up, but it turns out that the theater’s been there for four decades and has two full-size screens. There used to be just one large theater with a big balcony, but the owners split it in two to make more money. Food stalls line the small lobby, decorated with fake hanging firepot lamps, but the doors to the theater sport the original sequined leather coverings.
The projectionist was named Liu, a skinny man of about four decades as well, with long hair in a style popular in Taiwan in the 80’s. Mr. Liu inherited his position from his father, who was the original projectionist at the theater. He took me upstairs to the attic where he kept stacks of old movie posters because “the owner thinks people might want them someday.”
Mr. Liu used to be in charge of painting the huge banners, assiduously (or sometimes haphazardly, from what I recall) copied from the smaller posters, to cover the front of the theater. Those days are gone now, as theaters realized that it was too much work for too little monetary gain, and now he just paints the Chinese names of the movies on black boards to put out front. He also designs movie coupons.
I looked through the stacks of posters and talked with him about movies, why he thought a certain movie worked or didn’t. He said he was a huge fan of the original Star Wars movies, but not the prequels. Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon was too long and not well-paced. Snatch was amazing. Tomb Raider suffered from a bad storyline. Audiences are blase about special effects. I didn’t have to think of the Chinese names of the movies as they were right there in front of me, on the posters. He told me that many of the posters and even some of the trailers were collected by a cinema scholar from Hong Kong who lives in Xindian part-time.
I realized that two movies were showing at the moment and asked Mr. Liu who was running the projectors. “My nephew, he’s studying to be a projectionist.” I met the 21-year-old nephew later as we drank Oolong in the lounge next to the lobby. Having some mental issues, the nephew couldn’t find work anywhere else, but he seemed happy enough to be working the projector and selling tickets. I also got to see the projection room and the big electric projector that seemed like an antique but was much newer and nicer than the projector I remember from the army, the one that was lit by a glowing rod of burning coal instead of a light bulb. The handful of patrons began exiting the theater several minutes before the last movie of the day, “Bad Boys 2”, was actually over. Many Taiwanese head for the exit the moment all of the plot points are resolved in a manner that suggests that they are actually afraid of catching even a glimpse of the credits. Only one man, an older portly fellow with thick glasses, stayed to watch the credits, but the nephew shut the machine off before they were done.
I asked Mr. Liu if he was feeling the pressure from bigger, nicer theaters like Warner Village and the Estrogen Mall theaters, but he said no. “They’re not making any money either. It’s the economy, and cable TV. People just watch movies at home, they don’t really care what they’re watching, just that they can.”
我最近耳朵有一點紅腫, 應該利用我的新發的健保ic卡拿去看病. 今日天氣變化很大, 天變涼時, 我心裡想出去探索. 好久沒有下南部玩.
我的新地方越來越舒服, 現在只缺乏窗簾, 海
