Hongkie Town

I think I mentioned this before. Everytime I travel, I forget one thing. If it was the same thing each time, that would be easy, I could come up with a system. But it's a different thing each time. And since I do an average of about 20 trips a year, well, one would think I'd be better at it by now, but I'm not.

I have a packing list and last night I checked off everything against that list. Feeling confident.

Now, the street where I live, you can't get taxis until well after 9:30 in the morning, unless you've called to book one in advance. Every taxi coming up my way has their off duty sign on display - they're on radio calls. And there are lots of people in the streets hoping for that one stray empty taxi. No busses but we have minibusses but they are usually full by the time they get anywhere near me.

And I'm a little late getting out of the house because I decided to do a quick usenet check before leaving. Oh spit, there's a clean copy of Hot Fuzz, which I've been dying to see. So I gotta download it and get it on the PMP before leaving so I can watch it on the plane (which I do - maybe it's not quite as wonderful as Shaun of the Dead but it's still splendid and has some great lines ... one roughly "if we don't crack down on the clowns we'll be up to our balls in jugglers.")

Which is to explain why I decided to drive to the airport. So I'm in the car, get about halfway to the western tunnel, and I realize what I forgot this time - my mobile phone. I've got my blackberry but I don't give that number out. And all my notes and shopping lists for the trip are synced to the phone.

Now I'm in this peculiar maze around Sheung Wan and environs west where there are no U-turns, no right turns, no easy way to get back to my street. From the time I realize I don't have the phone until I can get back to my building is at least 30 minutes. The clock is ticking. Flight time is approaching.

Now it's way past 9:30. I could park and get a taxi. And probably get stuck with some 80 year old guy driving 20 kilometers per hour, stuck on Queens Road heading to the airport express station. That doesn't seem like a plan.

So, drive to airport. 150 kph in 80 kph zones (except for the tunnels). I'm chain smoking, speeding and having a heart attack at the same time. I'm mentally trying to work out options if I should miss the flight (I already know that the other flights today are full, this is the only one).

I haven't driven to the airport in a long time. Signs indicate that the covered car park that's right next to the terminal is now short term only. I have to get to P2 for long term and I miss the turn off and have to come back around. And finally get to the lot where you don't just grab a ticket out the machine, some security measure they have, there's some guard there who first confirms that you want long term and then slowly writes your license plate number on your ticket and on a sheet of paper. Quick grab a spot.

Now I gotta run through the parking lot, through the brand new bullshit terminal 2 (which has no actual gates, just more shops - oh, the CX magazine on the plane has a write-up on this new terminal. They mention that the restaurants feature "authentic Italian food such as New York pizza." Exsqueeze me?)

Well, somehow, I make it to check-in with half an hour to spare. I even have time to go to duty free, the magazine shop and smoke one and a half cigarettes before boarding the plane ... which then sits there for half an hour before we take off.

Well, I'm here now, I'm relaxed now. Thank fucking goodness. And I like Singapore. I don't live here so I don't have to put up the bullshit, I get all of that in HK. Here all I see are the good bits - clean, safe, people speaking English and the women, oh yes, let's not forget those.

Meeting Expat@Large tonight. He's rounding up a couple or few other bloggers and I'm sure I will have a nice evening. Anything will be better than my Saturday night, my Sunday night and my Monday morning.

P.S. Okay, gotta share this with you though it's not the sort of thing I'd normally post any more. I did write about how bad Saturday night was, yes? Now, what about Sunday?

See, there's this Filipino girl, and she's gorgeous but I'm sure she's lying to me about absolutely everything. She seems to have some hidden agenda, something else going on beyond what these girls normally have. And she's been bugging me for days to see her and I've been putting her off, if for no other reason than I don't want to let her get too close and I don't want to start developing any feelings for her. Since I'm not meeting anyone "normal" right now and have the patience of a 5 year old, I'm well aware that I could get into another relationship along the lines of the one with T if I'm not careful.

But she says Sunday is her last night in town, it's my last night, so I tell her I'll meet her. Meet a friend for dinner first. She says she'll wait for me in Laguna. I get there, she's not there. She says she's "leaving now" and then a few minutes later she says she's "walking over." After half an hour I don't see her, I send a message that I'm leaving. She says I should wait, she's there, but I don't see her anywhere. My friend and I leave.

Now especially after Saturday night I'm not in the mood for games, especially from a working girl. And I'm convinced that at one point she was in the bar waiting for me, got grabbed by someone else for a short time, and was hoping to get out of the love hotel and squeeze me in as well. I don't need this in my life and it's a reminder of why I'm happy now that I'm going to Wanchai less and less - it's not completely off the menu yet but it is lower down, believe it or don't.

Monday I have an SMS from her. You ready? "Oh darling, last night the battery on my phone ran out. Have changed my flight to tomorrow because I have to see you before I go."

Now, on top of everything else, she'd told me she only got 4 days when she arrived here, and she said she arrived on Tuesday. Based on that, she should have had to leave on Saturday, no? I don't ask her about this, it just tells me I can't believe a single thing she says and she's stupid enough to think she can play these games with people who live here as opposed to some guy here for the first time for a convention who would be so blinded to her youth and looks (and large breasts, did I mention she had large breasts?) that he'd believe whatever she says. I like to believe everyone is honest. I hate it when they're not. Naive? So fucking what?

Wow, this post is running long, ain't it? I'm one verbose mother fucker. Well, I gotta head out and meet the krewe soon. More on this later, possibly.

Decision made, bookings made, Monday morning off to Singapore. Armed with the video from when Bourdain ate there for Cook's Tour and with a copy of Makansutra to be purchased on arrival, I plan to attempt a good deal of eating, a little bit of shopping, some sitting by a pool and reading and, well, you know me, probably up to no good at night.

Will return on Thursday and hoping to organize some friends for some food/drinks celebrating the day my mother gave birth to me, which was immediately followed by the doctor pointing at me and telling her, "don't do that any more, ok?"

Well, no, it wasn't quite paradise and I didn't go near there for the last 20 years, but doing a big of googling to kill time brought me to this bit of news:

Vinylmania Records Closes Its Doors

Vinylmania was a piece of NYC music history which was also an important spot for me for about a decade. Opened on Carmine Street in Greenwich Village in the late 70s, in the 80s it was known as the shop where all the DJs shopped and at least one guy who worked in the shop, Manny Lehman, used it as a springboard to fame himself.

See, just like every other Greenwich Village record shop, it was getting by on selling promo copies and UK imports. I would stop there every Saturday to shop, bought more than I could afford each week, and got to be friends with owner Charlie Grappone and his staff.

Charlie soon opened a second store down the street selling 12 inch singles. The legendary Larry Levan of the Paradise Garage, which was just around the corner, was a big customer. Every DJ in NY shopped there and their fans followed them there. Madonna did her first in-store appearance there. By 1986 or so, they'd even started their own label.

Around 82 or 83, I ended up driving a taxi cab and not being happy about it. Charlie went partners with another guy to open a video rental shop nearby and asked me if I wanted to work there. It got me out of the taxi, so I did that for the next 2 or 3 years, until I had the idea that a record store selling only CDs might work.

So Charlie and I became partners and in 1985 we opened the Vinylmania CD Shop on Carmine Street, across from his 12 inch store. It was tough going for the first six months but then my import business started to take off, eventually doing so well that I was selling wholesale to shops outside of New York City. I had steady customers coming from as far as 90 miles away on a regular basis. I'd also introduced the notion of buying and selling used CDs. Basically anything I could do to compete with Tower, which was just a few blocks away.

But those were the days of parallel imports and the RIAA got wind of the shop - we always suspected it was via a rival shop owner who didn't have the sources I had and so he couldn't get the imports as quickly or sell them as cheaply. Threatened with legal action that we couldn't afford to defend, we stopped the import trade and business fell overnight by 2/3rds. Without going into any details, the partnership fell apart soon afterwards and I helped start the CD Hotline along with two of my customers.

I wish I had known about this sooner, because the closing came about a week after my most recent NYC trip. Had I known it was coming, I would have stopped down there for a bit of nostalgia and wool gathering.

Anyway, that's what happens when you get older, chunks of your past disappear.

Up until 4 AM, I would have said I'd had better nights, I'd had worse nights. After that, things went rapidly downhill.

I wasn't even sure I wanted to go out tonight. But finally, bored and restless, I set out around midnight. After a stop for some food, I looked around, thought about it for a bit, and went into Neptune although I soon realized I wasn't in a Neptune mood.

I just kinda sat there, looked around, had a drink or two and said, well, maybe I'm in a crappy mood but I'm wide awake, might as well stay here, listen to the music, enjoy the view.

At some point, some guy came up to me and asked if I was Spike. I didn't ask how he recognized me, just said yes. He said he was a reader and occasional commenter and said something about how he liked my taste in music and my lifestyle. Fair enough.

Some other guy admires my Ramones t shirt and says too bad there aren't more people wearing this shirt in HK and I agree with him. But then he adds that it's too bad they're not playing gigs anymore and I say that could be because most of them are dead.

At 3 I went into Joe Bananas, vaguely dying down. At 3:30, I went into Amazonia, but unfortunately it was the last few seconds before the band was taking a break. Amazonia's a weird place but I do like the bands that play there - Filipino cover bands but with a harder edge than in the surrounding clubs.

So after 15 or 20 minutes, I head out and walk down the street towards Fenwick, not sure if I will go in or just get in a taxi. I see this guy and girl walking down the street and all of a sudden the girl starts calling out my name.

She's a local girl, F, she used to work with my ex-wife. I have not seen her in about 10 years, so she doesn't know we've split up. F and I have some history - not exactly what I know you're thinking but in that vein. The fact that she asks me for my number right in front of the guy is not a bad sign, either. And I'm thinking, the fact that we did like each other and we've run into each other after all this time could be meaningful.

The guy she's with has picked her up in Carnegies. I let the two of them drag me into Mes Amis. Now at 4 AM, the guy is telling me his life story and the entire business model of his company. He's someone who has been here for two years and I suppose has swallowed all of the worst aspects of the HK lifestyle.

F is drunk, clearly. She says that she never thought that my wife and I would split up. She asks me what I'm looking for now. She says she's out drinking because she's lonely. She says she wants to get married and have kids - as many as she can and she knows I can afford it because I'm rich. (Yes, clearly drunk.) At some point, F starts talking about god! She says my wife told her I'm not religious and I have to go back to god to find happiness.

When she asks what I'm looking for and I say I'm looking for a girlfriend, she says she doesn't want a one night stand, she wants something permanent. I tell her I'm looking for something permanent too because she is really pretty though the whole god thing is putting me off. There is little doubt in my mind that if I felt like exerting myself, I could pull her away from this guy. And like I said, she is really pretty but the god thing .... well, I decide not to exert myself.

F lives quite far from Wanchai and I tell her, as a joke, that if she wants I can drive her home. But finally after god and business plans and drunk yuppies crashing into me, I've had all I can stand. I ask her if she's okay if I leave her with that guy, she says yes, and I head home.

I'm not home 5 minutes when I get an SMS from her asking if I would come back and get her and drive her home. I reply, asking if she's serious and she replies that she's "begging." So I say okay, 5 minutes, grab the car, drive over, park outside Mes.

I call, tell her I'm outside, she says she will be out in a minute. I don't go in because I don't wanna have a scene with Mr. Businessman. Two minutes later an SMS that she will be out, she promises. Two more minutes, I walk over to the bar. They're closing, they won't let me in.

I call, she doesn't answer. I look in through the window, some guy has his arms around her and is putting the moves on her - hard. I don't see her fighting him off. His arms are around her, his hands on her thighs, pushing her skirt up. Now I'm getting pissed off. I call 2 or 3 more times, finally the phone is answered but by the guy who says, "is this Spike?" I disconnect the call.

I go back to the car. Two minutes later, she comes out of the bar with the guy, his arm around her. And they walk down the street and turn the corner towards Neptune.

Now I'm thoroughly pissed off. Who needs this shit? But I'm not going to go into Neptune, I don't need some confrontation over this dingbat. So I head into Fenwick, take a look around, sit, realize I can't drink because I've got the car, have a smoke, come home.

Now, if I can possibly clear my head, I will go to sleep.

Have not gone out yet. Having trouble getting started. Just that kinda day.

5 days till my birthday.

Last year on my birthday I reached 200,000 hits. (Page hits, not unique visits, of course.) Then I dropped most of the sex stuff from here, readership dropped by around 50%, I stopped looking at the hit counter. Just took a look, seems like I'm closing in on 400,000 now.

Why the fuck am I being so indecisive on this whole vacation thing? Seems like Bintan ain't gonna be what I want, or only partly so, and do I really wanna go to Singapore for a few days just cause I like a bookstore and the food there? There are worse reasons to go somewhere, I suppose. The alternative now seems to be Thailand - a few days Bangkok, a few days elsewhere - I do have an idea for a new tattoo, might have mentioned that before.

Last night watched a movie worth recommending somewhat - Exiled. Directed by Johnny To, it stars one of my HK faves, Anthony Wong Chau-sang, and a few others I like - Francis Ng, Roy Cheung, Simon Yam. Josie Ho looks properly bedraggled as Ho's wife and also nice to see Ellen Chan (and one of her breasts) looking great in the role of Hooker. It was nominated for a Golden Lion award at the Venice Film Festival.

I was a bit nervous at the start because the opening credits didn't include one for a writer. At the end, screenplay was credited to two writers plus "Milkyway Creative Team." Movies written by committee are never a good idea, and Exiled has its share of lapses and poor logic, as one might well expect.

It's set in Macau in 1998, just prior to the handover. But you won't see any casinos or nightclubs here. This is a very different, back streets kind of Macau. As the story opens, two hitmen from Hong Kong knock on a door, looking for a guy named Wo. Then another two hitmen show up, in order to keep the first two from killing Wo. And then Wo shows up. In typical HK movie logic, it turns out that all 5 are childhood friends.

Simply put, the opening 20 minutes is almost pure Sergio Leone, which is not a bad thing. When the action starts, you'll see elements of John Woo and Ringo Lam and the end borrows in many ways from the Wild Bunch. To has breathlessly winked at, cited, homaged, borrowed and stolen from so many directors that the more you know about cinema, the more you'll love it.

I suppose it would be worth spending a bit of time on the political implications here - setting this in Macau in '98, characters who for various reasons have left Hong Kong. But I'm feeling lazy, haven't done that. The film is rated Category III, presumably because of its depiction of triad activities, lots of violence (most of the blood is CGI) and a brief flash of nudity.

Well, that's it, gonna head out, do a spot of shopping, walking, usual Saturday crap.

Kinda thinking now that if I split a trip between Bintan and Singapore, that'll give me both ends of the spectrum - something resort-y plus a chance to spend an afternoon at Borders Books and several meals in Singapore's great hawker centers. Have been to Singapore dozens of times, have never been to Bintan at all. Any tips?

Previously I knocked the SCMP's coverage of that killer cop story.

Today I clicked over to an article on Asia Sentinel, in part because it's written by someone I met once, in part because of what he wrote about it himself on his own blog, and when reading the article, I learned something important that I did not already know:

Thursday’s lead headline on the front page of the South China Morning Post summed it up: “Jury finds Tsui unlawfully killed three.” But nobody bothered to mention that an inquest jury has no place ‘finding’ such things at all. The purpose of a coroner’s inquest is to determine when, where, and how a person died, and who that person was. What such an inquest cannot do is apportion blame or denote liability. That is the arena of a criminal trial.

The jury’s verdict in this inquest wasn’t just unusual – it was unheard of. This was the first time in Hong Kong that an inquest sought to identify a killer.

Read the entire article here. See if you don't get upset about yet another underhanded game being played in HK by the powers that be.

(And I want to add, Asia Sentinel has been in my RSS reader almost from their inception. There has yet to be an instance where I've clicked over to read the full content of an article and been disappointed. It's a great alternative news source - and it's free!)

So far I have never met Warren Lieberfarb, who was president of Warner Home Video for about 27 years and can be co-credited with coming up for the concept for the DVD. Back then, there were also going to be two competing formats, but such was Lieberfarb's standing within the industry that he was able to get everyone to agree on a single format.

Warren was no longer president of WHV when the Hi-Def battles started. It's hard to say if he would have been successful in avoiding a format war a second time. I'm sure the other studios have had some degree of jealousy watching all of that DVD patent money flowing in to Warner and Toshiba.

Of course now we are stuck in a Blu-Ray vs HD-DVD format war, which only serves to confuse consumers who are already unsure if they should go the High Definition route. Sony/Columbia is only releasing Blu-Ray, Universal is only releasing HD-DVD, the other studios by and large are supporting both formats equally. It's a mess for the studios and for retailers that will not be resolved for some time.

Warren is a visionary in his field and I always find what he has to say worthwhile, so here are some excerpts from a current interview with him in Variety:

In the world according to Warren Lieberfarb, the schism between the two next-generation disc formats shouldn't have happened.

In Lieberfarb's view, the right aggressive moves could've prevented Blu-ray and HD DVD from befuddling consumers when those formats hit store shelves last year with two separate offerings.

"It was clear to me that a cartellike consortium was being created for the purpose of forcing a de facto standard on other manufacturers," Lieberfarb says.

Lieberfarb had hoped that all of the parties working on next-generation DVDs would continue collaborating on standards within the DVD Forum, a group that had been created in 1995 to foster discussions among studios and electronics makers.

Lieberfarb was so concerned about the activities of Sony, Matsushita and Philips that he asked Time Warner's outside antitrust counsel to explore strategies for getting the U.S. Dept. of Justice to launch an inquiry. But Time Warner had other priorities, and at the end of 2002 Lieberfarb was axed.

He says that if the studios had been less focused on creating bulletproof copy-protection and more fixated on getting the discs into the market more quickly, the work being done on HD DVD within the DVD Forum would've proceeded more quickly.

And with that, HD DVD might have beaten Blu-ray to market by an even wider -- and perhaps definitive -- margin. (As it was, HD DVD rolled out in the spring of last year and Blu-ray during the summer.)

"The studios were in denial or ignorant as to when DVD was going to reach maturity and when the growth rates would significantly slow down," Lieberfarb says.

Now that Blu-ray equipment is duking it out with HD DVD equipment in the market, Lieberfarb sees only one potential solution to the conflict: aggressive price discounting.

But consumers' confusion could prevent high-def discs from ever gaining the kind of foothold DVD has enjoyed.

"The longer these guys battle now, the more that Bill Gates, networked media, personal video recorders and satellite become the rival format to high-definition DVD," Doherty says. "Hard disc drives and fast network connections win in that scenario, not HD DVD or Blu-ray."

By the way, while the only Hi Def discs available in HK up till now have been imports, two of the local companies are going to start rolling out local Blu-Ray and HD-DVD discs next month. This will force the local affiliates of Hollywood studios to follow suit. Which should mean we'll start seeing cheaper discs available locally in the very near future.

However, I think analyst Richard Doherty may be on to something in his comment.

I have said many times that the reason CDs succeeded over LPs and cassettes is because when you went in the store, they looked drastically different from those other formats. People would go "what's that?" and you could give them the sales pitch and demo to get their interest.

The same could be said for the victory of DVDs over VHS.

SACD and DVD-Audio both failed in the marketplace because 1) the qualitative difference over CDs was not that drastic, 2) they required the consumer to purchase new hardware to use them, 3) there were no computer drives for these formats, and 4) they did not look any different from regular CDs, so the mass public was never even aware they existed.

HD-DVD and Blu-Ray are doing a bit better. There are computer drives and game machines that play them and a lot of money is being spent on marketing. But the marketplace itself has changed. Downloading from the internet and streaming to your TV as well as over-the-air HD broadcasts (in most civilized countries, but not in HK of course, not until Li Ka-Shing figures out how to get a piece of the action) combined with hard disk recorders could be the consumer choice for the future. Not to mention the fact that DRM is a horrendous invention that is only hurting honest consumers (recent Sony DVD releases such as Casino Royale that featured a new attempt at DRM wouldn't play on a large variety of DVD players in the US - this after Sony infested millions of computers with viruses after putting some vile DRM on some CDs a year or so back - they never learn).

I don't think we'll see a change where the #1 consumer format becomes atoms instead of bytes overnight, but I do expect to see it within what's left of my lifetime.

Wanna know how to take a multi-billion dollar company and make it look tiny and petty? Here's how:

British Airways cut a cameo by Richard Branson from its in-flight version of the latest James Bond film and blurred out the tail fin of a Virgin Atlantic plane seen in the movie. BA's entertainment team cut a cameo appearance by the Virgin Atlantic chairman that appears in the original version of ``Casino Royale,'' a spokesman confirmed Saturday. In the original film, Branson can be seen turning around after walking through a metal detector at Miami Airport.

Are they thinking there's no such thing as bad publicity? Do they feel that the general public is so fed up with Branson that the pledge of a Branson-free flight will increase business?

Does the phrase "shit for brains" come to mind? Why, yes!

You can always tell days when I actually read the SCMP because those are the days when I get pissed off.

#1 - HSBC is the 800 pound gorilla of personal banking around here. They're the ones who have ATMs on almost every corner and a branch in almost every neighborhood (except the poor ones, something other local bloggers have covered quite well).

One popular account they offer is called PowerVantage. It's an integrated series of services including savings, checking, phone and internet banking and other crap. I was a bit behind the curve and found out today that they are raising fees on the PV accounts. How much of a raise?

Currently, if you maintained an average daily balance of HK$100,000, the account is free. If you dip below, there is a monthly service charge of HK$20, roughly US$2.60. That's quite reasonable IMHO.

But now you will need to maintain an average daily balance of HK$200,000. And if you dip below, the monthly fee will be HK$120, roughly US$15.60. That's a huge freaking hit!

So I went to my local branch, went to the customer service desk and asked if this was true. The guy immediately got that look on his face that said, "I've been asked this 100 times today, here comes another one." Tough luck, dude, that's your job.

He gritted his teeth, smiled, and said yes they are raising the fees in order to provide better services. I said, are those services going to be 600% better? So he whipped out a brochure to show me those new services - all of which are ones I think I have today, related to investment advice and stock purchasing. "But I'm an American, you won't let me use those services, so where is the advantage for me?"

He then mentioned that I get to stand on a "special line" when I need to use a teller - which happens about twice a year. I looked over at the counters and said, "There are 3 windows for PowerVantage customers and 5 people on line; there are 7 windows for ordinary customers and 10 people on that line. Please do the math and tell me the difference."

At which point he finally told me about the new SmartVantage account, which is basically everything the old PowerVantage account was, minus the "special line." This account charges HK$60 if your average daily balance falls below HK$10,000.

Now I could switch to another bank altogether. I'd really like to. Except I know that with the lesser ATM coverage and fewer branches that Standard Chartered, Citibank, Bank of China, Dah Sing, DBS, etc. have, I'd end up paying more than $100 a month in ATM fees.

So I guess I'll be switching to a SmartVantage account.

#2 - The lead story, with tons of sidebars, in the SCMP today concerns a posthumous inquest into the actions of some cop who shot three people and then was himself shot (or did he shoot himself? I didn't bother to look at the details). This is the kind of sensationalist story that everyone seems to love even though it has zero impact on the lives of 99.9% of the people who will read it. Ooooo! Guns! Blood! Exciting! Fuck off.

Buried further back, and also buried on the web site, is a more important story. Important in that it sheds a lot of light on the "people" who are running Hong Kong:

Universal suffrage should be introduced "the later, the better" because rushing it would "mess up" the economy, says tycoon Lee Shau-kee (Henderson Land Development's chairman). "If we rush to introduce universal suffrage and mess things up, we will end up even worse than now. I don't dare say [2012] is too soon, but the later, the better." Asked whether electing both the chief executive and all legislators by 2012 would "mess things up", Mr Lee replied: "I don't care. As long as you do not mess up the economy and the market, it is very good. Maintaining the status quo is enough."

See, billionaires like Lee don't give a shit about people, except insofar as those people continue to have enough money to buy their overpriced overvalued services. He enjoys direct access to Donald Tsang and benefits from HK's uniquely non-competitive environment that favors a handful of billionaires over the public at large. If Hong Kong had a democracy, if Hong Kong had leaders who were directly answerable to the public, then we could end up with laws that would actually favor the people.

Lee comes right out and says it. He has a pocketful of cash and a say in how things are run. He does not believe that you or I should have a say. Maintaining the status quo is enough for him because he knows that democracy will lead to an end to the competitive advantages and ludicrous amounts of money that he enjoys today.

The funny thing is, this is exactly the sort of asshole whom Beijing would term a "patriot," even though he is operating from a position of 100% pure self-interest. And probably a good 30-40% of the HK population looks up to this guy and nods their head in agreement when he says, in essence, the public are idiots and will fuck things up and I'll lose money.

And that's why we don't have democracy. Because a good 60-70% of the population probably can see through this person and would do something about him if given the chance.

Which has nothing to do with the rest of this post, just an old Joe Ely song that I enjoy from time to time.

Well, I used to chew 'em off
I was nervous over you.
I missed that clickin', tickin' sound,
Honey, what I'm gonna do,

I keep my fingernails long
So they click when I play the piano
I keep my fingernails long
So they click when I play the piano
I'm gonna keep 'em that way
Till the swallows get back from Alabama.

To answer some of the comments regarding the blogger meet, yes, there will be more. This went well and I can't imagine not trying to build on the little bit of momentum we've got. But future ones will not be publicly announced (at least not on this blog). I currently have a list of 61 English-language HK-based blogs and the email addresses connected to 37 of those. (If this gets big enough and regular enough, perhaps I can ask some bar if they want to "sponsor" us - toss in some free snacks or food in return for being our host?)

Search that led someone to this blog today: on ask.com, "where can I find a video on how to give a hand job?"

I feel like I'm coming down with a cold. Which would render the entire question of where to go this weekend moot. Though at this point I'm ready to give up and just say Samui or Hua Hin or even (gasp) Phuket. But the thought of several days of pure Vietnamese food goodness is still in my mind.

Brit mag Restaurant lists their world's best 50 restaurants 2007. I have not been to any of them, though I did stand outside of one of them and think, "holy fuck that's expensive!" No suprise El Bulli is number 1. Nothing in East Asia at all. 1 from India, 2 from Australia.

Oh I've been to #69 though! No, seriously.

One place from HK in this group, Caprice at the Four Seasons Hotel.

There's something somewhere in the SCMP today that suggests that DVDs of Spiderman 3 are already on sale in China, in advance of the movie's general screening. Sony has gone to the trouble of issuing a press release stating that the DVDs being sold with Spiderman 3 artwork either contain Spiderman 2 or simply don't play once you get them home. Sony also announced that there are no pirate copies available for download on the internet. Of course you can expect this situation to change by next week.

A potentially interesting film opening in September is Across the Universe. Directed by Julie Taymor, the film is said to be a Moulin Rouge-style musical, a love story set in New York City during the Vietnam War, with the soundtrack consisting entirely of Beatles songs. The film stars Evan Rachel Wood and has cameos from Bono, Salma Hayek, Joe Cocker, Eddie Izzard and others. The problem is that there are two versions of the film. The first is a 2 hour 25 minute cut turned in by the talented Ms. Taymor. And there is a second "more commercial" recut done by producer Joe Roth. No one is sure which version will be released.

Johnny To's Election and Election 2 have simultaneously opened in NY, with the second film screening as Triad Election. A.O. Scott reviews the first one in the NY Times, saying, "for about two-thirds of its running time, “Election” is witty, convoluted and impersonal ... By the end, Mr. To has proven himself to be a genre hack of uncommon intelligence and soul."

Election 2 didn't do so well in HK, which could be why there was no Election 3. But Manohla Dargis, reviewing for the NY Times, saying it is "a metaphor about capitalism, men and meat that is perfect in its simplicity and barbarism." She also calls director Johnny To " One of the greatest action directors working in the world and one of the most excitingly prolific."

I do think the first one is better and in no small part because of the way it fools you on first viewing and deepens on subsequent viewings. The second one is under-rated and deserving of a wider audience, but it's not as good as the first.

On the front cover of today's SCMP is an ad for a man's watch with the headline "Often Seen on Stewardesses' Bedside Tables." The inference being, if you wear this ridiculously expensive watch, you can fuck flight attendants. Actually, if you can afford that watch, you probably can score some stews, even if you are otherwise lacking in the personality department, and it will have fuck-all to do with the watch. You'll stand around in Dragon-I in your Ermengedildo suit and your fancy watch and tell girls about your Aston Martin and eventually one of them will be greedy and stupid and drunk enough to go home with you and your expensive watch, suit, car, flat and 2 inch dick. This ad pisses me off.

Stopped by the local branch of Travel Expert today. They are the mega chain for travel agencies here. They never heard of Hoi An. The only way they can get you to Danang is to transit in Singapore. I did not make any purchase from them. And I'm still undecided about where to go and for how long.

Decent turn out. People seemed to enjoy.

Lessons learned for future ones:

1 - Switch to different night not conflicting with Bulldogs quiz night

2 - If I'm going to drink for 6 hours, I should try to ingest some solid food at some stage. Earlier is better.

3 - People from Virginia can drink a lot without the benefit of solid food.

4 - A mobile phone can be handy when you need a flashlight and don't have one, but it only goes so far.

5 - If you're gonna wear your favorite earring and drink for six hours and not eat, expect to have to decide on a new favorite earring the next day.

6 - It's very difficult being humorous, ironic or cryptic the morning after a night like that.

Don't ask me where I find the time ....

I've compiled a list of 56 HK blogs. These are pretty much all of the active, English language blogs that I know about. (If you haven't posted in more than a month, you're not on the list.) This is regardless of if you link to me or not, if I like your blog or not, just that you're out there and I know about you.

Of those 56, I have the email addresses for 28 bloggers. Do I have yours? Well, you would know if you have an email link on your blog or on your blogger profile page.

I'll maintain a list on some site like evite and then can send out announcements of where/when/what without having to publicly post the details here. As long as there remains some level of interest in this.

If you want to be sure you're included, you can send an email with the relevant info to hongkietown at gmail dot com. And if you want to make sure you're NOT included, you can do the same. I know that at least several bloggers strive to maintain their anonymity, some better than others, and can certainly respect that.

Chinese language bloggers are of course welcome!

I am not going to publish, sell, publicize or in any way share the list with anyone (except if at some point some other blogger either takes over doing this or shares responsibility with me for it).

Following the good response to my earlier post, I'd like to suggest we do it this Tuesday, 24th April, 7:30 PM - I want to get this going now because if we just sit around and dither, we'll never get it going. My suggestion is that we meet at Dublin Jack at Lan Kwai Fong. I recall that DJ is usually calm enough to actually be able to hear people talk. And we can always move onwards from there should the mood or inspiration strike.

Please pass this along to other bloggers you know - I know there are lots of people out there who don't have the time to follow my silly little blog regularly - and perhaps even post a notice yourself or a link back to this post.

I'll be easy enough to recognize. As of now I plan on wearing a black t-shirt that says NY Yankees (though there is some chance I could forget this by then).

Whether it's just a couple of people or 20 showing up, I'm sure a good time will be had. Stories will be told. Beverages will be consumed. And all that stuff ...

A chill out Sunday, starting with late yum cha with a friend at the branch of Tack Hsin in Wanchai. 8 or 10 dishes, nothing remarkable there but they are consistent and everything was decent and the price is cheap.

Relaxed at home and one of my dogs seems ill. He threw up twice - couldn't quite identify the non-food item he'd eaten, it was so shredded, but clearly he picked up something that she shouldn't have. Later, when walking him, there was blood in his stool. If it continues tonight and tomorrow, it's gonna mean a vet visit. My two guys are both celebrating birthdays this week - Spikey will be 7 and Bogey will be 4.

Went with a friend to try Cafe de Paris on Elgin Street for dinner. 27 degrees coupled with 79% humidity and even though the walk there was all downhill, I was sweaty and grateful for air con once we settled on this place and sat down inside.

Now I'm certainly no expert on French cuisine but, my gosh, everything really hit the spot here. I liked the fact that they had a fairly small menu. To me that says they are concentrating on trying to do a few dishes right rather than a lot of things poorly. The food itself bore this theory out.

I had escargots and an angus rib eye with cafe butter, served with a nice salad, steak frites and decent mini-baguettes. My friend went for the onion soup and an entire sole sauteed in butter and lemon. I had a glass of Bordeaux, she went for something white, and everything seemed just right. The place wasn't too busy - the crowds on Elgin on a Sunday night were in the Italian places. I intend to return.

Had some invites out tonight but am just gonna chill, watch some TV, maybe do some writing. Stopped off on the way home to get some Krispy Kreme because if I am gonna write tonight, I'm gonna need the sugar rush to keep going.

In need of some distraction, last night I said the hell with it and went down to Wanchai and plunged into Neptune, except that as soon as I got there I got an SMS from a friend who knew I needed some cheering up. She said she was over at the Captains Bar at the Mandarin with her flatmate and that I should join them there, which I did.

Sitting at the next table was the entertainer that evening, some American guy whose name now escapes me, apparently won some Grammies or nominated for some - he's worked with EWF and some other stuff, sort of a Randy Jackson with talent. He played piano and sang with local guys on bass and drums, some jazz, some pop standards, some old show tunes, very entertaining.

As his set neared an end, a big group came in and the singer said that the legendary Samson family had arrived. Three women, Asian, middle aged, came up and sang some old style close-harmony pop while another member of the group played piano. One of the women sang solo and then all six of them did a slow song with very intricate harmonies. I don't care for this style of pop music but seeing these guys get up, completely impromptu, and sing perfect five part harmony - that was impressive. The only reference to them I can find is a link on Google to a podcast on a web site that's no longer there. This is the cached reference, which says they are "musical greats living in Canadian obscurity." Any old China hands know of them? Some people in the crowd clearly did and were very excited to see them. The camera phones were working overtime while they were singing.

Following that, the girls suggested that we move on to a Wyndham Street bar and I joined them. The conversation in the taxi (between the two of them) seemed to center around using suppositories when having anal sex. Oh, gosh, I think I haven't lived.

Sitting in that bar, the two of them, both in short dresses, got up and started dancing, arms in the air, hips working in ways that are illegal in some countries around the world. But as that bar emptied out, they decided they wanted to head to Drop. I was invited but I decided to head elsewhere because there's only so much a man can stand, ya know?

(Okay, okay, someone is bound to ask why I'm with two gorgeous hot wild girls and leave them on their own and the answer is that they are only interested in me as a friend and I'm not gonna spoil the friendship by trying to push for something that ain't gonna happen.)

May I just say that I'm kind of surprised at the total lack of comments to the last post? Or are you all just so used to me being a drama queen that you've given up?

If Thursday was not an all-time low for me, it definitely ranked near the bottom. Today, nowhere to go but up, even a little is enough.

Last night I fell asleep around 6:30 in the morning. Up at 10, worked a bit, did the necessaries, before a visit to the doctor where he reminded me that the pills he prescribed for me won't work if I don't take them.

After that, visited H&M and HMV because their names are almost the same and they're just two sides of the same coin anyway, ain't they? I found the clothes at H&M to be basically cheap and cheerful but completely unremarkable aside from the cheap price. Nevertheless, I found a couple of shirts that were not too objectionable and a pair of socks with a bunch of skulls & crossbones on 'em that matched both my mood and my t shirt (description several paragraphs down).

HMV just for magazines and the listening station. I do not buy CDs or DVDs there. They are ridiculously overpriced. Mags probably over priced as well but don't know where else to go to get Q, Mojo, Uncut aside from the airport.

Up da hill (not backwards) for a late lunch at Insomnia. I ordered the tandoori chicken salad (misspelled on the menu). As soon as I ordered it, this French woman sitting at the next table asked what the little bowl of sauce was that she had and was told it was mint sauce and she said it was awful and I realized I had just ordered what she was eating but I was okay because she had poured the mint sauce over the salad as if it was salad dressing - yikes! Ya know what? For 60 smackers, it was far from sucky - a really huge and varied salad with like six kinds of lettuce plus spinach and cherry tomato and onion and maybe some sprouts can't really recall with a decent portion of chicken (that obviously wasn't really tandoori but was okay) and some papadums. I was satisfied.

Further up da hill, being lazy took the elevator through the LKF hotel, walked by Pickled Pelican and saw Sunny in there, working early. Always a very reliable ear to bend, so I did.

At one point this couple came in, white guy around my age or so and a seriously beautiful Chinese woman. I looked at her and could swear I had dated her a couple of times three years ago. Her face showed no hint of recognition. And I'm pretty sure she never wore anything like those tight jeans when she showed up to meet me back in the day.

Quickly ran over to 7-Eleven to restock on smokes. Some guy in there was getting his cellphone battery recharged - I didn't know they did that! He noticed my Quentin Tarantino's Death Proof t shirt (see, now you know, just as promised several paragraphs above), asked if I'd seen the movie, we spent 5 minutes discussing it before I returned to PP.

Got a call asking me if I want to go see the Cranberries' lead singer in some kinda showcase here next week and said yes. And then remembered that I'd seen the Cranberries live in HK around 95 or 96 and they really sucked huge chunks of ass at that show. So this time I don't think it could possibly be worse. Then again, haven't heard the new songs yet. If they suck, do I have to linger?

The place started to fill up after 6 - seems like it's a hit. I ended up sitting there for three and a half hours, drinking 5 or 6 whiskey sodas, smoking an entire pack of cigarettes but as the bar filled up with bankers and traders in suits smoking fat cigars and blocking my view of the street, I went home and went to sleep.

A call from friend B woke me up and lured me back out. I joined him and a group at Devils while they ate and watched cricket (a sport that makes no sense to me at all - if they have an over why isn't it over? do they have unders? "well let by" but then again, it did result in a great Roy Harper song) but I was not yet ready for solid food. B left to go back to work and I decided to leave as well. Some SMS's from J, who did not want to hang out, just saying hello, and K, who wanted to hang out but not in Wanchai and I didn't feel like going elsewhere, especially as my clothes were more appropriate for where I was and not Soho or that vicinity.

So I stuck my head (and sundry other parts) into Laguna. Sat there, not drinking, and did not feel in the spirit to join in with the general festivities and frivolities there. Some girl came over to me, sat on my lap without asking, asked why I was alone, and when I told her I was fine and wanted to be alone, she would not leave, so I did.

Some quick food at Cul de Sac. Stuck my head into Neptune. Still not in the mood. Walked over to Fenwick. Not even in the mood to go in. Hopped (not literally, okay?) into a taxi, came home.

No, really, I am in a better mood today. Thanks for asking.

Early today I wrote that I was feeling unsettled. Tonight I feel like home made shit.

(One bright spot, the only bright spot today, is the responses to far to my idea of a bloggers' meeting. This could be very cool and I'm looking forward to it.)

I don't wanna seem overly morose but when I feel this way, usually there's a Dylan song that captures my mood. It's utterly ridiculous that this should happen and the only person I'm pissed off at is myself.

Shadows are falling and I've been here all day
It's too hot to sleep time is running away
Feel like my soul has turned into steel
I've still got the scars that the sun didn't heal
There's not even room enough to be anywhere
It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

Well my sense of humanity has gone down the drain
Behind every beautiful thing there's been some kind of pain
She wrote me a letter and she wrote it so kind
She put down in writing what was in her mind
I just don't see why I should even care
It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

Well, I've been to London and I've been to gay Paree
I've followed the river and I got to the sea
I've been down on the bottom of a world full of lies
I ain't looking for nothing in anyone's eyes
Sometimes my burden seems more than I can bear
It's not dark yet, but it's getting there

I was born here and I'll die here against my will
I know it looks like I'm moving, but I'm standing still
Every nerve in my body is so vacant and numb
I can't even remember what it was I came here to get away from
Don't even hear a murmur of a prayer
It's not dark yet, but it's getting there.

Blame it on Gomes if you wish, this is something that's been in the back of my mind for a long time.

I've probably met more than half a dozen of the HK bloggers listed over on the left in my links section. We seem to get along well enough when we meet in person.

So I'd like to suggest a monthly HK blogger meet. On a weeknight. In some spot in Lan Kwai Fong or Soho which has beverages, some food, and not too noisy so that we can talk for a couple of hours and then those who wish can adjourn elsewhere.

I'll propose the last Tuesday of each month, so we could start next week Tuesday 24th April. If a different night works better for people, that's fine with me.

No agenda, no discussion points, we just get together and see where it goes.

So ... anyone else up for this?

There's this guy I know here in HK. I've known him more than 10 years and consider him to be at the least one of my best friends in town. Younger than me, we met in a professional capacity and then started hanging out. For awhile he led a life that was kind of out there, wild like mine but in a different way. And then he settled down, married someone beautiful and smart, and their first baby will be showing up next month.

I haven't seen him in many months - not at all in 2007 as it turns out. I figured between business, the wife, the baby, he's been busy. But I called him yesterday, just to let him know I was thinking about him and hoping everything was going well. I left a voice mail, he returned the call this morning.

"When's the last time we spoke?" I asked. "I dunno, probably before Christmas, you were going to be living with that Thai woman." "Oh, we broke up." "Good." And several minutes later, he asked if I wanted to meet for lunch next week. And we set a day and time.

It does get one thinking. About a lot of things. Some of them perhaps not immediately obvious.

============================================

Among the things that caught my eye this morning was a bit in Billboard, Costello Revisits Back Catalog With Reissues.

On May 1 his first 11 albums will be reissued, along with two compilations, now on one of the Universal labels. For the first 30 days the albums will only be available on iTunes; after that they'll be in stores. "My Aim Is True" will be re-released in the fall in a "30th anniversary deluxe edition with demos, alternate versions and live tracks."

In 1993, Ryko and Demon reissued My Aim is True with 9 bonus tracks. In 2001 Rhino reissued My Aim Is True as a 2 disc set with the same 9 bonus tracks and 4 additional ones. Now six years later they're doing it again. What else is left to add? How much is too much?

Costello is in my personal pantheon but this is just getting silly.

=============================================

Oh, apropos of nothing, music on my Macau run ended up being Besnard Lakes, Duke Special and a new Dylan playlist I put together. I've got a new column due for BC soon and that means that a lot of the more recent stuff is gonna get deleted after one more listen and some scribbled notes.

My birthday is exactly two weeks away and I wanna be someplace else then but haven't booked anything. I'm having trouble remembering my age now, something that should be fairly simple, but every time I think of it I have to do the math. Clearly I am in denial. The mind is the second thing to go.

Someone who reads this blog whom I know in "real life" has accused me of meandering lately. As you can see, things are not improving yet.

Feeling unsettled today in general.

Just one of those nights. Was going to write this down as soon as I got home but for some reason had trouble sitting up and so ...

Met buddy B at some fish and chips place called Chippies (why not Fishies?) off Wellington St. B, who is more expert on these matters than I, said the combination of frozen fish + fresh batter = soggy instead of crispy. Taste was okay, not objectionable if you're there and you gotta have it, but definitely not worth a special trip. Went out without my glasses last night, first time in a long time, not smart.

Tired. Just wanted to go home after dinner. B insists that we should at least take a stroll down Wellington and see what's what. Not wanting to be rude, I agree. We make it as far as Pickled Pelican. There are people there we know. Someone who manages one of the (vaguely respectable) bars in Wanchai is there drinking with friends. And two members of the staff are people who used to work at Maya. We enter. I figure one drink won't hurt. They buy me five. Or maybe ten.

The view along Wyndham Street is excellent. Much better than on Lockhart Road, or not, but definitely very different and unobjectionable. It simply makes me want to see someone I know but despite or perhaps because of a series of SMS's of decreasing legibility and intelligibility, 'twas not to be.

We close PP, Wagyu is also closed, still something of a crowd by Tivo but we go over to Coconuts. Something happens there, I'm not sure of the details, I didn't see it and have it described to me and it's, well, odd and, actually, well odd.

Round the corner, most places are closing up, the only option is Insomnia. Some guy comes up to me, a bloody tourist from bloody Chile, and tells me that if I'm looking for girls I should go to "George Bar." I tell him I live here, he becomes my friend, or my slave, or something like that.

I start smoking two cigarettes at a time. It seems to make as much sense as anything else. B starts talking to some local girls who are out late, living dangerously and hold no appeal for me whatsoever (and probably vice versa).

Finally I leave B to his own devices and stumble out of the bar and into a taxi around 3. I had some really brilliant thoughts last night and it would have been great if I had been capable of sitting up so that I could write them down.

And somehow at some point I managed to turn on the alarm on my phone. It went off at 7:20 and then every 5 or 10 minutes for the next two hours. I've had better mornings. I don't have a headache and can open my eyes but my stomach isn't too happy with me.

Last night, as Fragrant Harbour already reported, I attended a free dinner held by some PR firm for HK bloggers.

Going there, I was wondering if they were just including us gwailos or if some of HK's many Chinese-language bloggers were there. On showing up, I was pleased to see that they were represented. I sat on their end of the table, hoping to find out more about them and their blogs (which unfortunately I cannot read) but was rapidly instructed by our hosts that they wanted to segregate the Chinese from the westerners "for translation purposes." Which is a shame in my opinion.

But I did finally get to meet Fragrant and Ordinary Gweilo, which was nice because they have two of the better blogs around these parts. Once Roland showed up, our host seemed to devote most of his attention to him. So we just settled in and enjoyed the food at Wooloomooloo, always reliable.

(Do check out Fragrant's post on this topic, including the comments.)

Following that, I went to Jem, a small bar hidden away on a side street to have a couple of drinks and a chat with a friend. We've both been through a lot in the past several, both survived it in good spirits, and it was a nice way to spend an hour before heading home.

Today I took a vacation day and went over to Macau for just a few hours to meet a friend for lunch. In the 90s I used to go to Macau all the time. I stopped once I started going to Shenzhen - quicker and cheaper to get there, cheaper once you're there. I think it's been at least a year since my last Macau visit and as I rode in the taxi, there was so much new stuff I barely could recognize anything or figure out where I was.

I met the friend for lunch at the coffee shop at the old Lisboa. This used to be a tacky, horrible place with bad food and filled with Russian hookers taking a break in between clients. Like the rest of the public areas there, it has been extensively remodeled and upgraded. I went for this dim sum combination - ten items, one each, served in a steamer, for just M$48. Each one was perfect, artistically finished, beautifully arranged in the steamer, and as good as any dim sum I've had anywhere. Quite the pleasant surprise.

Following lunch he gave me a tour of the new Grand Lisboa and yes, it is grand. Stanley Ho followed the examples set by the western-run casinos that have opened and come up with a beautiful ornate temple of gambling, with all the same amenities that you'd expect to find but that never existed in his older places.

I found I had no desire to sit at a table or drop some money in a slot machine - gambling holds no allure for me any more. On the other hand, a weekly poker game with friends, that could be fun.

Oh well, time to watch American Idol. Is this the week Sanjaya will finally be voted off? As bad as he is, there are still one or two others there who annoy me even more. And I think the show, amazingly boring this year (not that it's so great in previous years but, like a train wreck, I cannot turn away), will be even worse without him.

I've been a fan of Bryan Ferry's music for more than 30 years. Not so much a fan of the man though. In a recent interview with a German newspaper, he was quoted as saying "The way that the Nazis staged themselves and presented themselves, my Lord! I'm talking about the films of Leni Riefenstahl and the buildings of Albert Speer and the mass marches and the flags. Just fantastic - really beautiful." He has since apologized but WTF was he thinking when he said that - well cleary he wasn't thinking.

In India, people are now burning Richard Gere in effigy - not because of bad movies or those maudlin Visa ads but because he kissed Shilpa Shetty on the hand and face at an AIDS rally. This is the country that came up with the kama sutra and is famous for its dens of prostitution and yet if you kiss in public or on screen it's practically a hanging offense. WTF, don't these people have anything better to protest against? Like poverty, starvation, religious intolerance, etc.?

And one non-WTF item. The 2007 Pulitzer Prize for Music went to Ornette Coleman and his most recent album, Sound Grammar. “I’m tearing and I’m surprised and happy — and I’m glad I’m an American. And I’m glad to be a human being who’s a part of making American qualities more eternal.”

Last night a friend and I checked out Cecconi's, a new Italian restaurant on Elgin Street. No idea if this is related to the restaurant of the same name in Melbourne. On a scale of 1 to 10 I'd give it perhaps a 6.

My friend is someone who has spent a lot of time in Italy and really knows Italian food. I've never been there and grew up on American Italian food, which is about as authentic as American Chinese food. So I guess it's fair to say that I come in with lower expectations and am more easily satisfied.

Service was oddly haphazard. In an interesting touch, the menu mentions that they offer unlimited bottled still and sparkling water for $38 per person. I had arrived first and asked for some water. First they brought a glass, then the bottle and then later came by and dropped a lemon wedge in. When my friend arrived, they poured a glass of water for her but never delivered lemon. And they also didn't bring a menu over for her until she requested it.

Salt and pepper mills were on the table - when they brought my appetizer, they asked if I wanted pepper and then did the pepper thing for me. When they brought our mains, no similar offer made.

We were amongst the last to leave (the place closes at 11) and as we were sitting there, talking and slowly drinking the last of our wine, a waitress who was clearing nearby tables looked at us and asked, "do you have to be someplace else?" which my friend found strange but I wrote off to the waitress's command of English.

I had carpaccio which was nicely done but nothing unusual, followed by roasted snapper over risotto with chorizo. Quite tasty but the snapper was very dry. My friend also had a fish dish which seemed a little better than mine.

The wine list is both extensive and expensive, a nice selection of wines by the glass, but most of the bottles were over $400, with prices up to a couple of thousand or so. I was hoping for a larger choice of Italian wines - there were a few but the emphasis seemed to be on Australia.

Dinner for two with a bottle of wine (just one starter, no desserts or coffee) came out to around $1,300. I've had better, I've had worse, I don't think it will be a priority for me to return here.

After that we went around the corner to a new place that should fill in a badly needed niche in SoHo, a lounge bar called Peel. Walked in and was greeted by name by the hostess - I couldn't quite make her out in the dim lighting and after half a bottle of wine but soon realized she used to manage Maya before it was sold.

She paid for the first round of drinks for us and even sent over a couple of slices of gourmet pizza, which we didn't touch because we were still quite full from dinner. My friend only wanted the one drink but I felt we couldn't come in there and not buy something after getting the first round on the house, so I drank a bit faster and a bit more, not exactly a hardship.

Very comfortable spot, nice music, relaxing and they're planning on adding a second floor soon. I hope this place is successful because it was exactly right for what we were looking for - a nice quiet place to sit, drink and talk following dinner.

Music notes and mental meanderings ...

Thanks all who responded to the blooz and jazz posts. All of your comments have been noted and will be researched. One issue for me is that I do have a lot of the stuff in one format or another but haven't played it in so long that I forget which tracks stood out for me. Examples - Bill Evans, Art Tatum, Roland Kirk, Lester Young, some others. But I'm working on it.

This morning, went to sync the iPod, add in the new Patti Smith, Gruff Rhys, Feist, some other stuff. And when I popped the thing in, I got a box that said "your iPod is in recovery mode, you will have to restore it." Argh.

So first yanked the iPod out and put it back. No good. So did the restore. And it came back with the same error message. Uninstalled iTunes, rebooted. Panicked. Because I was doing two things at one time, before I did the uninstall I hadn't first exported my playlists or saved the underlying reference files that iTunes uses. Would my playlists be gone, and I'd need to reconstruct hours of work? No, lucky me, iTunes came up, the playlists are still there, the settings are still there, now slowing reloading 8,387 songs into the iPod. Phew!

During the past week, following my break-up with T and the aftermath of that, I did find some time to think about the kind of woman I want to be with next. Some kind of mental checklist, if you will. Age is not a factor, ethnic background is not a factor, religion is only a minor factor (in that, as an atheist, I could not be with someone who wouldn't at least not try to convert me), language skills a factor.

But most importantly, the attempt to find someone who already knows and enjoys the same cultural touchstones and landmarks that I do. Someone who, when we see a movie, the subsequent conversation could be more than just, "I liked it." Someone who reads (and something more than just Stephen King, not that there's anything wrong with him, except as an exclusive diet).

And because of the timing, I was thinking to myself, it would be so great to meet someone who is excited that there's a new Arctic Monkeys album out, as opposed to someone whom I'd need to explain the Arctic Monkeys too.

Well, now I have met someone like that. Excited about the Arctic Monkeys. Impressed that I know who they are and like them. It may "only" turn out that I've made a good friend. Don't wanna be all Little Mary Sunshine but I'm kind of enjoying things right now.

Patti Smith - "Twelve" all covers. Covers albums are generally tricky things, most often a holding pattern in a career, some product to keep your name in the marketplace while you work your way through some creative drought. Now Patti Smith is one of my gods (or goddesses, if you insist). I haven't played this all the way through. With the opening track, Hendrix' Are You Experienced, she truly does make the song her own. But the next track, the odd choice of Tears For Fears' Everybody Wants to Rule the World, she does nothing with it. She should be able to kill with Gimme Shelter, but she doesn't. Soul Kitchen is a great choice for her, and she does an okay Smells Like Teen Spirit. But I think that in the future, when I think of those songs and want to hear them, I'll be cuing up the originals.

Watched the recut version of Bugsy yesterday, about a week after watching the new edit of The Natural. Both of these films work much better for me in the new versions. I can't specifically go back and point out what's changed, just that they each flow better and make more sense. Both were directed by Barry Levinson, who debuted with one of my all time favorite films, Diner.

In the 80s Levinson did Diner, Natural, Young Sherlock Holmes, Good Morning Vietnam, Rain Man. A progression of increasingly less personal films, more commercial, things that connected with a mass audience.

In the 90s, despite Bugsy and Avalon, there were some real stinkers - Toys and Sphere. This decade, even worse with stuff like Bandits, Envy, Man of the Year. How does this happen?

One song I keep going back to on the iPod, Van Morrison from his live A Night in San Francisco set recorded in 1993. A 16 minute medley of Brook Benton's I'll Take Care of You and James Brown's It's a Man's Man's Man's World, with some other stuff thrown in.

I love how this kicks off, with Morrison saying, "I first heard this song by Bobby Bland in 64, then I heard it by Junior Wells later on, so work it out for yourself." He plays around with the James Brown part a bit, changes to the melody and the phrasing. The thing is, when I wanna hear I'll Take Care of You, I'll just as often go to the Morrison version as I will to the Bland version, because Bobby Bland's version is brilliant but Morrison takes the song and owns it.

After this track there's a 14 minute medley of Lonely Avenue and 4 O'Clock in the Morning, with bits of Be Bop a Lula, Family Affair, You Give Me Nothing but the Blues, When Will I Become a Man, Sooner or Later, Down the Line all thrown in.

The album ends up with a kick-ass 11 minutes of Shakin' All Over and Gloria, and John Lee Hooker comes out for Gloria. Morrison is loose, joking, obviously enjoying himself, and you know why he did it. Back in the 70s I worked for a really grumpy very-often-drunk Irish guy, I suspect the personalities are similar.

My ex-wife hated this album, perhaps that's one reason I love it so much. She also hated Exile on Main Street, maybe that's when I shoulda known it wasn't gonna work out.

All of the above is me procrastinating, trying to put off doing actual work, but guess I gotta do some now.

Sometimes simple lyrics are the best, here's the lyrics for I'll Take Care of You:

I know you've been hurt by someone else
I can tell by the way you carry yourself
But if you let me, here's what I'll do,
I'll take care of you

I, I've loved and lost, the same as you,
so you see I know, just what you've been through
But if you'll let me, here's what I'll do
I just got to take care of you

You won't ever have to worry,
you won't ever have to cry
For I'll be there beside you,
to dry your weepin' eyes

So darling tell me that you'll be true
For there is no doubt in my mind,
I know what I want to do
And just as sure as one and one is two,
you know I'll take care of you


And then, just cause I feel like it, here's a bit o' Dylan:

Our conversation was short and sweet
It nearly swept me off-a my feet.
And I'm back in the rain, oh, oh,
And you are on dry land.
You made it there somehow
You're a big girl now.

Bird on the horizon, sittin' on a fence,
He's singin' his song for me at his own expense.
And I'm just like that bird, oh, oh,
Singin' just for you.
I hope that you can hear,
Hear me singin' through these tears.

Time is a jet plane, it moves too fast
Oh, but what a shame if all we've shared can't last.
I can change, I swear, oh, oh,
See what you can do.
I can make it through,
You can make it too.

Love is so simple, to quote a phrase,
You've known it all the time, I'm learnin' it these days.
Oh, I know where I can find you, oh, oh,
In somebody's room.
It's a price I have to pay
You're a big girl all the way.

A change in the weather is known to be extreme
But what's the sense of changing horses in midstream?
I'm going out of my mind, oh, oh,
With a pain that stops and starts
Like a corkscrew to my heart
Ever since we've been apart.

It's 4 AM and I really should be in bed but I'm blogging now because I wanna capture this while it's fresh in my mind and maybe also capture a little bit of my mood right now. This was one of the best nights I've had in ages.

Keep in mind that last night I only had 4 hours of sleep and by all rights should be a zombie today. Nevertheless, I met up with two of my occasional readers, one of them being "anotherego," who'd left a comment offering to be my "wingman" in my hunt for a "normal" girlfriend. The other was a guy I'll refer to as K, a long time resident who really gets things here, understands what it is to live here having done it in a real long time, and inexplicably says he's in a similar situation to me.

K and I met at Pickled Pelican, a new pub on Wyndham Street. We ordered some drinks and he attempted to explain cricket to me. At any rate, eventually we found anotherego next door at Tivo, a new bar and restaurant that was just packed. She'd brought along two female friends who are visiting HK for the weekend.

Now I'll digress for a second. I'm sure a lot of you who read that post and read those comments were wondering about her, someone who'd post that, what she's like, is she for real, etc. I'm not going to go into great detail so suffice to say that she's not only incredibly good looking (and the way she was dressed emphasized that) but also really smart, well educated, good job and could talk for hours on a range of different subjects. Everything I hate because everything was so perfect!

Tivo was quite nice. The place was so busy that the crowd spilled out first to the sidewalk and then even into the street. Wagyu across the street had a similar situation. We talked about this and decided that people who actually live here are sick of Lan Kwai Fong, looking for a different scene, and all of these new places along Hollywood and Wyndham are that scene, at least for the moment. I saw so many good looking women everywhere - Chinese, Indian, white - almost all laid back, relaxed, enjoying the Saturday night.

I got into conversations with anotherego's two friends. This is the important stuff here, okay? These were great conversations. We got into talking about things like American and British politics, Richard Dawkins' new book The God Delusion and the impact of religion on current affairs, 9/11 theories, all over the map. These were true conversations. These women were intelligent and attractive and I wound up pulling out my phone so I could jot down some of their recommendations.

And the point is that while talking with them, for the first time I knew I had done the right thing in breaking up with T. We could never have conversations anywhere even close to these. And despite four hours of sleep and a few glasses of whisky I felt energized because I felt so engaged in what we were talking about.

Jetlagged, those two ladies headed back to their hotel. I found myself saying to them, "I so wish you lived here, I've enjoyed talking with you so much, I want to do it more."

So I now was operating on a double high, first from the people I was with and what we were doing, and second because of this revelation and confidence that I did the right thing.

Anywho, anotherego and K and I went across the street to dragon-i. A famous DJ from the UK (I think) was there spinning tunes, and the three of us found a comfortable place to stand and talk. I have to say I really liked the ambiance there - we stood in the outdoor section, talking and looking at the crowd. The place was busy but not so packed to become uncomfortable.

Around 2 AM, K took off. Anotherego and I stayed there talking. The night flew by and before we realized it, it was almost 4 AM. Again, great conversation on a wide variety of topics and I just felt engaged and energized in a way I haven't felt in a very very long time. I put her in a taxi and then hopped in one myself. The taxi driver berated me for being with such a beautiful woman and not bringing her home with me.

Now, to be completely honest, I could have chosen to go to Wanchai at that point rather than home. I didn't specifically because the thought of going to Fenwick or Neptune seemed so completely antithetical (is that the right word?) to the rest of the evening. It just would have erased everything I'd done up to that point. Does that make sense?

No, a leopard can't change his spots but I'm an old dog ready to learn new tricks. (Ugh. That reads horribly. I'm leaving it there because it's right even if it's tacky.) I wanna spend more nights out with these new friends, and more time around this scene.

I know tonight I did the right thing. I have a better idea tonight of what I want in a companion/lover/friend. That doesn't mean I know how I'm gonna get there but at least now I have this clearer idea of the direction I need to be going in.

Yeah, okay, when reading all of the above, keep in mind that at the moment I'm operating on 4 hours of sleep, 6 glasses of whiskey and 4 glasses of bourbon ....

And so, my droogs, the dogs are asleep on my bed and it's about time for me to join them. Merry April 15th US Tax Day to all, and to all a good night.

A lot of errands and walking around, with my new Sony DSC-T100 in hand. I have to say I am not impressed with this camera. Small and easily pocketed but picture quality varies a lot and it only seems to function well under limited circumstances. I don't think I'm going to be keeping this one a long time.

Stopped into the Oriental 188 Mall on Wanchai Road. Usually notable as a video game center, there is now an explosion of shops selling used goods. Used cellphones, used ipods and accessories, used CDs & DVDs, dozens of shops. One notable used product is the PSP - they are marked with which version of the OS they contain, and older ones go for higher prices because they are more hackable. A used one with version 1.5 sells for $1750, while relatively current ones go for around $1250. There's also a section of one floor selling original locally designed clothes - t-shirts, jeans, sneakers. It's really a fun mall for killing a couple of hours.

A bit of old HK in Wanchai, this sort of thing isn't going to be around much longer:



No exclusive for realtors leads to a plethora of signs nailed to this empty storefront. Which one would you call?



At the Bowrington Road Market, as fresh as you can get it:





Outside Times Square. Almost always a good "view" but this time just a few notables:








Assault and battery by billboard and light:






Fortunately, ran into a friend in Times Square who told me about an appliance shop over at IFC. So popped over there and found the Kitchen Aid mixer. They also had two Kenwood ones but I like the available accessories for the Kitchen Aid - a juicer, a pasta maker - so went with that. Probably try my first bread in it on Monday. Stay tuned.

.no won rof sdrawkcab golb elohw eht gnitirw fo aedi eht htiw gniyot neeb evah I

Nah, fuck dat. Not until someone comes up with a Firefox plug-in that takes anything you write and reverses it. Otherwise it's just too damned hard!

Anyway, this morning, lemme just say that when I went out last night at 11 to get some food, I had no intention of staying out the entire night.

Things just kinda happened. And it all turned out quite okay.

Except that I only had about 4 hours of sleep, I'm supposed to be going out tonight with some people, and if I can't figure out a way to get some sleep today, it ain't gonna be pretty tonight.

Apple Records and EMI have finally settled their long-standing differences over royalty payments. And Neil Aspinall, head of Apple and associated with the Beatles since 1961, is stepping down. This could mean that Beatles' music will be available on online services, which really doesn't matter to me, but I suspect that quite a few people would download those tracks. Some news reports have hinted that this could also mean deluxe editions of the Beatles albums, similar to the 2 disc legacy series reissues from Sony/Columbia/BMG. This would potentially be a nice thing.

In somewhat less earth-shattering news, the Village People are celebrating their 30th anniversary as a group - no idea how many original members are left. One of the original ones used to work for my father in his warehouse. My dad recognized him in a photo in an ad for when they played Madison Square Garden. He said the guy used to always sing in the warehouse, usually show tunes, and had a lovely voice, and then one day came to him and resigned, apologized and said he was going on tour with his band.

From the NY Times review of “The Glamorous Life of Sachiko Hanai”:

One night, a stray bullet lodges in the middle of Sachiko’s forehead, instantly transforming her into a genius — a super-randy, superagreeable genius that is, one who can expound on Kant’s “Critique of Pure Reason” while bouncing about in her birthday suit. You see, the bullet in Sachiko’s noggin — as some crudely rendered cartoons helpfully illustrate — has triggered hitherto untapped mental powers, turning her into a brainiac.

Now able to devour a philosophy tome in a single sitting, her white panties flashing, Sachiko has basically morphed into Superslut, with her amazing powers now located equally above the neck and below the navel. In other words, she is somewhat more human than a blowup doll, though still as hot to trot as a Shetland in the Sahara.

Reports that MissIzzy plans to sue the producers for stealing her life story are, so far, apocryphal.

Via BoingBoing, Lee Iacocca has a new book out, Where Have All the Leaders Gone, and Borders has an excerpt from it online. I won't repeat the bit that BoingBoing used (though it was pretty good), here's another chunk:

So here's where we stand. We're immersed in a bloody war with no plan for winning and no plan for leaving. We're running the biggest deficit in the history of the country. We're losing the manufacturing edge to Asia, while our once-great companies are getting slaughtered by health care costs. Gas prices are skyrocketing, and nobody in power has a coherent energy policy. Our schools are in trouble. Our borders are like sieves. The middle class is being squeezed every which way. These are times that cry out for leadership.

But when you look around, you've got to ask: "Where have all the leaders gone?" Where are the curious, creative communicators? Where are the people of character, courage, conviction, competence, and common sense? I may be a sucker for alliteration, but I think you get the point.

Name me a leader who has a better idea for homeland security than making us take off our shoes in airports and throw away our shampoo? We've spent billions of dollars building a huge new bureaucracy, and all we know how to do is react to things that have already happened.

Name me one leader who emerged from the crisis of Hurricane Katrina. Congress has yet to spend a single day evaluating the response to the hurricane, or demanding accountability for the decisions that were made in the crucial hours after the storm. Everyone's hunkering down, fingers crossed, hoping it doesn't happen again. Now, that's just crazy. Storms happen. Deal with it. Make a plan. Figure out what you're going to do the next time.

Name me an industry leader who is thinking creatively about how we can restore our competitive edge in manufacturing. Who would have believed that there could ever be a time when "the Big Three" referred to Japanese car companies? How did this happen—and more important, what are we going to do about it?

Name me a government leader who can articulate a plan for paying down the debt, or solving the energy crisis, or managing the health care problem. The silence is deafening. But these are the crises that are eating away at our country and milking the middle class dry.

I have news for the gang in Congress. We didn't elect you to sit on your asses and do nothing and remain silent while our democracy is being hijacked and our greatness is being replaced with mediocrity. What is everybody so afraid of? That some bobblehead on Fox News will call them a name? Give me a break. Why don't you guys show some spine for a change?

What I can't figure out are these diehard republicans who are standing by Bush and Cheney. While their numbers have rapidly decreased, the fact that there are any left at all is a puzzlement. And they all seem to be like this:



The one other thing I wanna mention in connection with this is Hilary Clinton. I'm not saying I would vote for her or not but I am bemused by how much people on the "right" love to take potshots at her. And mostly they attack her looks or her personality. Because that's what republicans love to do; they don't want to debate on ideas because these days it seems that their well has gone dry. As is usual in these things, they are attacking a woman for possessing the same personality traits that they find admirable in men. It makes about as much sense as anything else they do.

While it's early days, who can't help but feel uneasy as they watch Mitt Romney turn his back on on every belief he's ever publicly held in what he believes is an attempt to make himself more electable? Or McCain's bizarre attempt to champion the war?

As the Republicans continue to flaunt the law - the "missing" emails, the emerging Wolfowitz scandal - it would seem that 2008 would be a sure thing for the Democrats. Except they seem to have a way of putting the most unelectable people forward. Dukakis? Kerry? Somehow I get the feeling the Dems are going to nominate Sharpton or Farrakhan (sp?) or Imus.

So much more to choose from, all over the map, as it were, more work to be done here, no Louis Armstrong, no Ornette Coleman (aside from the Marsalis cover), no Django, etc. etc. etc.

Complete albums:

Anouar Brahem - Barzahk, Voyage de Sahar
Brad Mehldau - Day is Done
Charles Mingus - Ah Um, Mingus Dynasty, Tijuana Moods
Charlie Haden - Dream Keeper, Haunted Heart, Nocturne
Chet Baker - Jazz Masters
Dimension - Impressions
Duke Ellington, Charles Mingus, Max Roach - Money Jungle
Gato Barbieri - Caliente
Gil Evans - Out of the Cool
John Coltrane - A Love Supreme, Africa Brass
John McLaughlin - Industrial Zen
Keith Jarrett - Carnegie Hall
Mahavishnu Orchestra - Inner Mounting Flame
Maria Schneider - Concert in the Garden
Miles Davis - Bitches Brew, In a Silent Way, Kind of Blue, Sketches of Spain
Oliver Nelson - The Blues & The Abstract Truth
Orquestra Was - Tomorrow's a Long Time
Pat Metheny - As Falls Wichita
Pat Metheny & Brad Mehldau - both albums
Randy Brecker - Some Skunk Funk
Return to Forever - Romantic Warrior
Shakti - Saturday Night in Bombay
Soft Machine - Third
The Quintet - Jazz at Massey Hall
Thelonious Monk & John Coltrane - Complete Riverside Recordings

Compilations:

Antonio Carlos Jobim Songbook
Gilles Peterson Sunday Afternoon at Dingwalls
Verve #1 Jazz Album

Individual tracks:

Billie Holiday - All the Way, God Bless the Child, One for My Baby, Stormy Weather, Strange Fruit

Bob James - Angela (Theme from Taxi)

Branford Marsalis - Lonely Woman

Cab Calloway - Minnie the Moocher

Charlie Parker - Flying Home, Lester Leaps In, Perdido

Chuck Mangione - Feels So Good

Dave Brubeck - Take Five

Dizzy Gillespie - A Night in Tunisia, Blue 'n Boogie, Dizzy Atmosphere, Just One of Those Things, Manteca, Rio Pakistan

Duke Ellington - Diminuendo in Blue, Malletoba Spank, Perdido, Take the A Train, The Mooche

Eumir Deodato - Also Sprach Zarathustra

Grant Green - Sookie Sookie

Horace Silver - Song For My Father

Jimmy Smith - Back at the Chicken Shack, Root Down, The Sermon, Walk on the Wild Side

Jimmy Smith & Wes Montgomery - James & Wes

Lambert Hendricks & Ross - Twisted

Les McCann & Eddie Harris - Compared to What

Maynard Ferguson - Gonna Fly Now

McCoy Tyner - Fly With the Wind

Mongo Santamaria - Watermelon Man

Mose Allison - Back Country Suite, Everybody's Cryin Mercy, Your Mind is On Vacation

Nina Simone - Mississippi Goddamn, Sinnerman

Paul Winter - Icarus

Quincy Jones - Soul Bossa Nova

Sergio Mendes - Mas Que Nada

Slim Gaillard - Opera in Tout, Tip Light, Laughing in Rhythm

Stan Getz - Girl From Ipanema

Thelonious Monk - Straight No Chaser

Tito Puente - Ran Kan Kan

Weather Report - Birdland

Wes Montgomery - Bumpin

P.S. 99% of the stuff on this list and the blues list taken from legal CDs that I own.

60 songs so far. A start. I don't do songs in any order. I just make playlists in alpha order and then set the iPod on shuffle.

Kind of a mainstream selection, yes. Emphasis is on stuff that was later covered by the rock guys. No apology, they picked the right songs.

What's missing? You tell me.

Albert King - Blues Power, Born Under a Bad Sign

BB King - Every Day I Have the Blues, Into the Night (not really blues but I like it, which will also explain several other left field choices below), Lucille, The Thrill is Gone, To Know You is to Love You, Why I Sing the Blues

BB King & Bobby Blue Bland - Let the Good Times Roll

BB King & U2 - When Love Comes To Town

Big Bill Broonzy - Goin' Down The Road Feelin' Bad, This Train

Big Joe Turner - Flip Flop & Fly, Honey Hush, Shake Rattle & Roll

Bobby Blue Bland - Ain't Nothing You Can Do, I'll Take Care of You, I Pity the Fool, Turn on Your Love Light

Howlin Wolf - Back Door Man, I Ain't Superstitious, Moanin' at Midnight, Smokestack Lightnin', Spoonful, Little Red Rooster, Wang Dang Doodle

John Lee Hooker - Boogie Chillun, Boom Boom, Crawlin King Snake, Dimples, I'm Bad Like Jesse James, I Cover the Waterfront, It Serves Me Right to Suffer, One Bourbon One Scotch One Beer

Johnny Otis - Willie & the Hand Jive

Koko Taylor - Wang Dang Doodle

Muddy Waters - Got My Mojo Workin (original single version and live version from Fathers & Sons), Hoochie Coochie Man, I'm Ready, I Just Want to Make Love to You, Mannish Boy, Rollin and Tumblin, Rolling Stone

R.L. Burnside - It's Bad You Know, Rollin Tumblin Remix

Ray Charles - Hit the Road Jack, I Don't Need No Doctor, Unchain My Heart

Robert Cray - Right Next Door

Robert Johnson - Come On in My Kitchen, Cross Road Blues, Stop Breakin' Down, Walking Blues

Slim Harpo - Shake Your Hips

Sonny Boy Williamson - One Way Out

T-Bone Walker - Stormy Monday, T-Bone Shuffle

and last but by no means least

Taj Mahal - You Ain't No Streetwalker Mama Honey But I Sure Love the Way You Strut Your Stuff (live version with four tubas)

Flour (Wessex Mill Mixed Grain Bread Flour), water, milk powder, dry yeast, sugar, salt, butter.

Princess Bread Maker, using program #1, basic standard bread, 3 hours 20 minutes for kneading and baking.

And here's the results. At first I was pleased to see an even loaf instead of something all scrunched up to the side of the pan. Then I noted yellow liquid - butter? - floating on top. Not a good sign.






But this time the loaf slid out of the pan instantly, I didn't need to hack it into bits to remove it. But the whole thing seemed just too "wet."


And here, the awful truth, as I slice it open, to reveal a yucky, gooey interior.



Too much water? Too little something else? A crappy bread machine? A crappy cook (me)?

Taste (from the solid bits along the edges) is not bad, but more muffin-y than bread-y. Very thick, not light, not airy.

Back to the old drawing board ....

This photo, taken by Rahev Segev, accompanying the NY Times review of a Stooges show in NYC this week, is the best rock photo I have seen in years. Iggy told the audience to "invade the stage" and about 100 people took him up on that.

Iggy is 59 years old and by all rights shouldn't even be alive and he's more ripped than I ever was or ever will be. Ben Ratliff writes:

Try to take your eyes off him. How he re-enacts fear, rage, sex, abject boredom, universal love and lethal cynicism, while dancing with originality, remembering lyrics and maintaining the delicate middle-state between having pants on and not having pants on, is why he is he, and you are merely you ... He shoved the microphone into his mouth and bellowed, then rolled on the floor, then butted his torso against a stack of amplifiers. And once standing again, he started a freakish benediction, intoning "I am you."

Sigh.

I got a late night confession for you. Sometimes I actually think to myself that if I could settle down, find the right woman, the one who makes me blind to all others, I'd move back to the US or move to Australia or Paris or someplace like that where I would lead a quiet suburban life, going to work and going about my business, except on weekends when I'd be racing the 20 year olds to the stage when someone like Ron Asheton starts playing his guitar like a buzzsaw and the kids would look at me and go, "aw, look at grampa go, he's so cute" and I'd say, "hey you little asswipes, lemme see you do this when you're my age."

Making my second loaf of bread tonight. I think I know what I did wrong the first time. About an hour to go before it's done and taking a peek, at least this time everything seems evenly distributed, not all bunched up to one side like last time. I am cautiously optimistic. While I'm waiting for it to finish, and wondering if I'll fall asleep before then, these are the things that are on my sleepy mind.

#1 - How to eat? Not as simple as it sounds, or is it? I'm proficient with chopsticks. I can eat Southeast Asian fork-and-spoon style. I can eat Indian with-your-hands style. I know which fork to use with the salad and which spoon to use to gouge out someone's eyeball.

But I was reading a piece in Bourdain's Nasty Bits, the one where he eats at El Bulli, and Adria is sitting with him and not just telling him the order to eat each bit, but also how to eat - fast, slow, this side, that side, and so on.

And I started thinking. Is there a proper, healthy way to eat every dish? Or to put it another way, here's one where I always hear the same complaint. You go to a Cantonese banquet. There are 10 or 12 courses. Me, and every white person I know, is always stuffed by the 6th course. The Chinese are surfing through to course #12 and then going out for a snack afterwards. How do they do it? What are they doing that I don't do?

Is there a proper speed to eat? Surely there must be government funded studies on this. Or is it simply a matter of different metabolisms?

===========================================

#2 - Any readers ever use Paddyfields? Cause I have this list of books that I wanna get, and I've got them sitting in my shopping cart at Amazon. Now, I've checked in some of the usual places - Page One and so on - and they don't have any of these books. All of them show up on Paddyfields site as being available "standard delivery." Their definition of standard delivery is 10 to 14 days. Which says to me that they are waiting to get the orders and then turning around and ordering them from their overseas sources, rather than stocking anything other than sure best-sellers.

The thing is, for this service, they are charging the US or UK list prices on the books, converted to HK dollars. It says it right there on their web site: "Paddyfield.com Ltd. is committed to providing books at publishers' list prices, subject only to conversion to HK$." The web site can't tell you if what you want is in stock and if it really will take just 10 to 14 days, shorter or longer. It's their generic best guess.

So let's figure this out using my real world oddball wishlist:

• R. Crumb's Heroes of Jazz, Blues and Country
• Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Book
• Spy: The Funny Years
• Godel, Escher, Bach
• Bruce Springsteen On Tour 1968-2005

Five books. These are not current top bestsellers, so they are not deeply discounted like a top ten book might be. Total list price US$152.80.

Discounted price at Amazon - US$99.67

Standard international shipping, which would take around 10 days, for this order totals US131.61, which still represents a savings of about $20 off the combined list price. And if my calculations are correct, that works out to roughly HK$1,026, probably a tad more once one factors in what the credit card company will charge for a foreign currency transaction. If we say 4%, that's HK$1,095.

Ordering the same books from Paddyfields would cost HK$1,193. There is no charge for delivery within Hong Kong.

So by ordering from Paddyfields, I would be paying HK$100 more. For delivery in the same timeframe.

So my question is: why would I consider using them?

(Yes, I know, another question is, just how badly do I need any of the books on that list? And that's why I haven't clicked on the "place your order" button.)

Need to rent a mosquito? They've got 'em, and more! (via BoingBoing).

Also, if you really feel the need to rent a pest, I'm usually available.

Brief conclusion to the previous bit - Death Proof, in a somewhat expanded version, probably could stand on its own. It has plenty of Tarantino's great dialogue and wonderful performances. It's pure pulp fiction, to be sure, but pulp fiction of the highest order. Actually, after the overkill (oops, pun?) of Kill Bill Parts 1 & 2, it's nice to seem him working in a shorter, more compact form.

Note that Michael Parks' character in Grindhouse is the same character and name from Kill Bill 1. There is the almost inevitable reference to Big Kahuna Burgers. And probably other examples as well. Too bad he couldn't fit the Vega Brothers into there somewhere.

Quiet evening at home tonight, thank Buddha. I met a friend for dinner in Wanchai, and the scenery on the street was certainly calling me name. Temptation may have tried to take control of me, but it had to contend with a very reasonable quality download of Grindhouse.

Normally I won't watch camcorder copies of movies. I can wait that extra month or so until the good quality boots show up, a vaguely-defensible necessity for a movie junkie such as myself, living in a place when god knows when this will actually appear on our crappy shoebox multiplex screens.

But given the concept of Grindhouse, a camcorder copy actually enhances the experience. Seeing silhouettes of heads moving across the bottom of the screen, hearing audience noises - it fits so well within the overall concept that I'm surprised that Tarantino and Rodriguez didn't think to add that in on purpose.

As it is, I'm taking a break after Planet Terror because as you might already know, Grindhouse is really seriously long. Itching to get back because I hear the Tarantino bit is better. Terror has a great cast - my jaw dropped when I saw Tom Savini, Michael Parks is wonderful, Rose McGowan is so hot she almost set my TV on fire and Marly Shelton ain't that far behind. The three fake trailers by Rob Zombie, Eli Roth and Edgar Wright are all wonderful, but Rodriguez' Machete tops 'em all.

I grew up on Roger Corman, American International, all that kind of stuff, and I think this is wonderful - not a send-up or a pastiche so much as a tribute or an enhancement. It actually works better on screen than it does on paper. (Okay, keep in mind, like I said, I ain't watched the Tarantino segment yet.)

I understand that given the box office failure, the Weinsteins plan to release the two films separately in extended cuts (complete with the "missing reels" restored). I think this is a mistake. The Rodriguez film is fun but I don't think it's strong enough to stand on its own.

I suppose this also means multiple DVD releases, similar to Sin City. Well, considering this cost $53 million to make, and add on another $50 mil at least for marketing and prints, and given a first week gross of just $11 million (and that's gross, not the net that the Weinstein Co will receive), they gotta try to make back the money somehow.

The bigger shame is that if this had succeeded, it would have been a wonderful franchise property. Zombie, Wright, Roth and dozens of others could have had a lot of fun churning out schlocky masterpieces for years to come. I guess we won't get that now.

==========================
One thing I will be getting is the Jawbone bluetooth headset. Doesn't seem to have turned up in shops in HK yet and in the US, the only brick and mortar stores that have it are Cingular. The Jawbone website claims on one page they're in stock, on another they're out of stock, and they wanted US$50 for UPS shipping. I found a slightly better deal through eBay. Click the link, go to the website, try their demo - if that's for real then this is an amazing little gadget indeed.

=============================

At the dinner tonight, mentioned at the top of this post, I told my friend about my break-up with T. This friend, among other things, gets the blame for putting the idea in my head to get T to live with me, at a similar Wanchai dinner just over a year ago. She asked me why I'd broken it off, and as I told her the reasons (and no, I'm not going to detail them here), she sat there smiling. "Why the fuck are you smiling?" And she said that she knew this would happen, that she knew from the start it was a bad idea and would never last. (And actually, when I informed my maid of the news this morning, her reaction was, "you finally broke up with her?" Note the word "finally," as if she knew all along it was coming, too., though I suspect she had different reasons for thinking that.)

Back to dinner with my smirking friend. "Then why did you fucking suggest it to me in the first fucking place?" Because she was tired of hearing me moan and whine and groan about it and figured this was the only way I'd get her out of my system. Should I kiss or her choke her for this? I'm not quite sure which.

T has not been quite as persistent in trying to get me back as she has after past break-ups. That's because this time she's pushed me hard enough that I had to tell her the reasons why, in very plain straightforward English. I'm trying not to hurt her and saying we can still be friends, but I have to be blunt so that she really believes me. She was all over the map, including saying that she thought I'd moved one of her friends in with me in her absence. Nothing could be further from the truth. Because while I am sure I will continue to make many mistakes, I don't think I will ever ask a girl from the bars to live with me again (unless she owns the bar).

===================================

Having reactivated my Asia Friendfinder account again, and browsing through and not really seeing anyone close to what I'm looking for, I came across this bit in the NY Times today:

In this meta-analysis of online dating and speed dating, we propose a corollary to the Flaw-O-Matic theory of romantic revulsion. Current research reveals that the Flaw-O-Matic, a mechanism in the brain that instantly finds fault with any potential mate, can be reoriented positively in certain conditions through a newly identified process, the Sally Field Effect.

When I first identified the Flaw-O-Matic, in a 1995 column, it seemed primarily a mechanism to kill romance. After studying picky daters — like a guy who couldn’t tolerate dirty elbows, and a woman who insisted on men who were at least 5-foot-10 and played polo — I predicted that they would remain permanently single.

Instead of asking people about their mate preferences, scientists can now watch mating rituals in real time. They’ve tracked who asks out whom — and who says yes — at online dating services by watching the customers’ clicks and scanning their messages to look for telephone numbers and phrases like “let’s meet.”

They’ve analyzed the courtship choices of more than 10,000 customers of a commercial speed-dating service. On campuses, they’ve even organized their own speed-dating events, at which you talk for several minutes apiece with perhaps a dozen people, sometimes two dozen. You discreetly mark on your scorecard which partners you’d like to see again, and the organizers match you afterward with any of them who reciprocated your interest.

Just as Darwin could have predicted, the researchers have found that women are pickier than men. While men concentrate mainly on looks and will ask out a lot of women as long as they’re above a certain threshold of attractiveness, women focus on fewer prospects.

Online dating reveals the most exquisite calibrations of the Flaw-O-Matic because the daters fill out questionnaires listing more attributes than could ever fit in a personal ad. They can spend all day finding minute faults in hundreds of potential partners. But that’s also why so many people never make a lasting match.

“When you have all these criteria to consider, and so many people to choose from, you start striving for perfection,” Dr. Ariely says. “You don’t want to settle for someone who’s not ideal in height, age, religion and 45 other dimensions.”

Customers of online dating services typically end up going out with fewer than 1 percent of the people whose profiles they study online. But something very different happens at a speed-dating event. The average participant makes a match with at least 1 in 10 of the people they meet; some studies have found the average is 2 or 3 out of 10. Women are still pickier than men, and in some speed-dating experiments they still prefer affluent, well-educated men, but the preference is less strong — and in some other studies they don’t discriminate at all by income or social status.

What happens to speed daters’ Flaw-O-Matics? The people at these events realize that there aren’t an infinite number of possibilities. If they want to get anything out of the evening, they have to settle for less than perfection. They also can’t help noticing that they have competition, and that their ideal partner just might prefer someone else.

I am fairly certain at this point that I will not meet the woman of my dreams via online dating services. As I described said woman to my dinner companion, she suggested that I would be better off hanging out in places where those sorts of women hang out, rather than seedy Wanchai disco dungeons. A natural suggestion. Except I am completely artless when it comes to picking up women. As I've said in the past, I have no idea how to talk to women I don't know in bars when money is not involved. I know the only way to overcome this is to do it, to get out there and fail and improve and fail and improve and finally get there. It would be helpful if I had a wingman to accompany me on this task, but right now I don't know anyone appropriate for that.

As in, last night I was not intending to drink at all and ended up drinking so frigging much that dying sounds good right now.

In the meantime, from Business Week, an annual poll or survey or something on most livable cities in the world, based on "the quality of life they offer expatriate executives and their families." Clearly one factor they did not consider was the availability of places like Wanchai.

Here are some selected entries from the list:

1 - Zurich
3 - Vancouver
5 - Auckland
9 - Sydney
12 - Wellington
17 - Melbourne
32 - Brisbane
34 - Singapore
35 - Tokyo
38 - Yokohama
40 - Kobe
42 - Osaka
52 - Pittsburgh
54 - Nagoya
55 - Tsukuba
59 - Cleveland
63 - Yokkaichi
69 - Omuta
70 - Hong Kong
73 - Katsuyama
75 - Kuala Lumpur
83 - Taipei
87 - Seoul
100 - Shanghai

That's correct. Pittsburgh and Cleveland are rated better places to live than Hong Kong. HK dropped two places from last year. Next year we'll probably drop below Kuala Lumpur, a city where Malays pretend to be Chinese during Muslim holidays so they can drink in bars.

Places that I used to live all made the list - San Francisco #29, Boston #38, New York #48. So moving from SF to HK, 29 to 70, should seem like a major step down, no? Yet somehow it doesn't.

Philadelphia did not make the list, robbing me of the chance of using lots of W.C. Fields jokes. How rude.

Click on the image to see it larger or click here for the Doonesbury site.

Happy Easter from Microsoft? They've announced they will soon start selling music in the Zune store without DRM. The article isn't clear on when and if this affects everything they sell or just a portion or if they will go to multiple pricing levels like iTunes.

And it looks like T and I are finished. Yes, I know, I've sung this song before. But I think this could really be it. The one thing that's become increasingly clear to me over the last several weeks is how far away she is from what I tell myself I really want. It could be a case of the grass being greener, it could be that when we finally see each other again I'll have a change of heart, it could be anything.

I typed out all the details, the last phone call and the last few emails, but have just wiped that bit out. All I'm going to say is that I've been thinking about this for awhile, had pretty much made up my mind on it, and then tonight events moved in a way that led me to take action.

And I know that the juxtaposition of the first paragraph and the next two paragraphs is exceedingly weird. I did it on purpose.

From a post today at Cinematical:

It's looking like next week's big watercooler subject in Hollywood will be the surprising failure of Grindhouse at the box office. Tracked to bring in about $25 million in its opening weekend, the uber-hyped Tarantino and Rodriguez double feature will almost certainly limp into Monday with a much smaller take; it opened Friday with a paltry $5 million, a total that puts it squarely in fourth-place, behind Will Ferrell's skating movie Blades of Glory, Meet the Robinsons (whatever that is -- sorry, I just can't tell kids movies apart anymore) and the most recent Ice Cube crapfest, Are We Done Yet?, which had already been playing since Wednesday. In fact, it did only marginally better than The Reaping, which opened on Thursday and is so bad that it was called "unreleasable" by many. Let's leave aside for the moment the implications of Grindhouse's flaccid opening for the fledgling Weinstein Co.; I think it's worth considering what kind of ripples this might send through Hollywood.

I have no idea when Grindhouse will even screen theatrically in HK. Possibly not until after the Region 1 DVD gets released, if at all. I would have happily gone to the theater to see it this weekend. Here are the movie choices in HK this weekend, according to online ticketer Cityline: The Reaping, Meet the Robinsons, Mr Bean's Holiday, Sunshine, Arthur and the Minimoys, Happily N'Ever After, Super Fans, Love and Honor, TMNT, Pursuit of Happyness, 300. A truly shitty set of choices for the long holiday weekend.

And now, coupla quick snaps from SZ yesterday:


sign outside a housing complex in SZ:


Not a real ship, just a shopping mall:


Entrance to Beatles Bar in Shekou:

Wait long enough and everything hits DVD.

Variety reports that the T.A.M.I. Show will be released on May 15th. This is a 1964 concert film featuring possibly the best filmed footage of James Brown at his peak. It also features the Rolling Stones, Beach Boys, Supremes, Marvin Gaye, Chuck Berry and others. This was out for a very short time on VHS more than 20 years ago, then pulled as people argued over the rights for 20 years.

Also coming out in May is a boxed set of 3 Alejandro Jodorowsky films, including the uncut version of El Topo. I remember going to see this visionary metaphorical western on a Friday night and coming out feeling as if I'd just done mescaline. The following Monday, at 9 AM, the scheduled film for our film history class hadn't arrived, and since the class was held in the theater that was showing El Topo, it was screened for us again. El Topo. 9 AM Monday morning. If you've ever seen this movie, imagine watching it at that time of day!

And Criterion is releasing If ..., the first part of Lindsay Anderson's brilliant trilogy that went on to O Lucky Man and concluded with Britannia Hospital. This tale of a young boy leading a revolution at his proper English boarding school was Malcolm McDowell's feature film debut.

Question of the day is WTF is up with Amazon's DVD listings? This is a problem they've had for a long time and it's really bugging me today. When you do a search and get the listings screen, they totally mess up on the "stars" in the short description of each title, listing 2nd or 3rd tier actors instead of the stars. Examples below are complete listings as they appear:

WKRP in Cincinatti - Sylvia Sidney

The Odd Couple Season 1 - Janis Hansen, Monica Evans, William Woodson, and Carole Shelley
(no Tony Randall or Jack Klugman)

Alpha Dog (HD) - Shera Danese, Lukas Haas, Alex Kingston, and Vincent Laresca
while
Alpha Dog (Full Screen, SD) - Bruce Willis, Matthew Barry, Emile Hirsch, and Fernando Vargas

That Thing You Do - Obba Babatunde, Bill Cobbs, Paul Feig, and Howie Long

The Road Warrior - Harold Baigent, Tyler Coppin, Dog, and Max Fairchild
(so they'd rather list "Dog" than Mel Gibson these days?)

Donnie Brasco - Gerry Becker, Johnny Depp, Paul Giamatti, and Zach Grenier
(where's Al Pacino?)

Little Britain Live - Matt Lucas, Samantha Power, Paul Putner, and Tom Baker
(Walliams must be thrilled)

Dirty Dancing - Kelly Bishop, Jane Brucker, Max Cantor, and Charles "Honi" Coles

The Waltons seasons 1-5 - Ronnie Claire Edwards, Nora Marlowe, and Richard Gilliland

Pirates of the Caribbean - Christopher Adamson, Lee Arenberg, Josie Dapar, and Johnny Depp

The Rockford Files - Noah Beery Jr., et al.
(goodbye James Garner)

Wings Season 4 - Farrah Forke, et al.

The Third Man (Criterion) - Nelly Arno, Leo Bieber, Hedwig Bleibtreu, and Martin Boddey
(never mind Orson Welles or Joseph Cotton)

Pan's Labyrinth - Doug Jones, Eusebio Lazaro, Federico Luppi, and Lina Mira

If ... - Ben Aris, Robin Askwith, Sean Bury, and Geoffrey Chater

The Frighteners - Trini Alvarado, John Astin, Jake Busey, and Jeffrey Combs

The Fountain - Lorne Brass, Ellen Burstyn, Patricia Dal, and Mark Margolis
(no one knows who Hugh Jackman is)

The Untouchables - Peter Aylward, Mike Bacarella, Patrick Billingsley, and Richard Bradford
(Kevin Costner, Sean Connery and Robert DeNiro ain't such big stars these days)

I'm sure anyone can find thousands of examples like this. But if the point is that you're supposed to click on the listing and view the disc details and order it, are you gonna do it when they say that Trading Places stars Don Ameche, Paul Austin, B. Constance Barry, and Ralph Bellamy instead of Eddie Murphy, Dan Aykroyd and Jamie Lee Curtis?

Oh my gosh. Slept until 2 PM today. Did not drink any alcohol yesterday and yet I feel like I have a hangover.

Around 2 PM, headed up to Shenzhen. Took the train to Lo Wu and weaved through and around the phalanx of beggars and hookers and ripoff artists that congregate around the train station and the Shangri-La and visited my favorite illicit DVD spot, hidden away in an apartment of a nearby building. Filled up on the kinds of stuff that I wanted to have in the collection but would never get at full price and the range of stuff they have there never ceases to amaze me. This included a 6 disc set of Eric Rohmer movies, 3 Fassbinder films, a bizarre looking Italian exploitation film originally titled L'Ultima Orgia del III Reich (but mysteriously retitled in English "Caligula Reincarnated as Hitler"), a video retrospective of the Flaming Lips, loads more oddball stuff ... just the kinds of stuff you definitely don't expect to find in China.

Then over to visit buddy Shenzhen Zen. We sat at his flat and watched the video retrospective I'd just picked up on Rod Stewart and the Faces, and then headed over to Shekou. While I've been to Shenzhen dozens of times, I'd never made it over to the Shekou area and found it to be completely delightful. The main area is this big promenade of restaurants, bars, karaoke, massage parlors. People can rent various bicycles and these weird little ponies on wheels for the kids, and just go from place to place. There's a Beatles bar and a place called Beer Paradise and a place called The Paris French Kiss, lots of international places of (I'm told) varying quality from Italian to TexMex to Japanese to Thai.

We had dinner at Gypsy (last one on page), apparently voted the best western restaurant in Shenzhen by readers of China Expat. Free WiFi and an extensive menu running from Thai salads to fajitas to pizza to steaks, their baby back ribs, accompanied by wasabi mash, wasn't the greatest but didn't suck too hard either.

Following that, a walk on the wild side where we went to this infamous side street filled with hostess bars catering to westerners. Tiny little places with names like Romantic Heaven and Best Choice and Yellow Fever, each had a dozen or so girls working there and lady drinks were 40 RMB, as opposed to the HK350 at the go-go bars along Lockhart Road. The girls were, of course, all friendly, spoke varying degrees of English, and some were actually quite cute.

We left after a short exploration to meet SZ's companion, the famous "C," and went back to the main bar area and a bar called Terrace. They were having a "Single's Party," complete with Filipino band. This bar was packed and there seemed to be a large number of single (non-professional) women at the bar. C kept encouraging me to talk with some of them, but from my perspective, at the most basic levels, the ones that looked approachable didn't look fuckable and the ones that looked fuckable didn't look approachable. Or maybe by this point I was just tired and didn't want to put in the work.

Eventually SZ and C went home and I grabbed a taxi to the bus station and came back to HK, getting home around 2:30 AM. I slept a bit on the bus, so by the time I got home, I discovered I was wide awake, so around 3:30 went back out again.

Finally got to sleep around 6, so little wonder that I slept till 2, eh?

I'm not the world's greatest expert on jazz, but I know what I know, ya know? And there are certain CDs marking certain groupings that, well, I just marvel that these things ever happened.

Right now listening to Money Jungle, a trio recording. The trio is Duke Ellington, Charlie Mingus, Max Roach. Yeah, I've had this a long time, haven't played it in a long time. I normally think of Ellington as just a bandleader; his piano playing here can stand up against anyone else. Should he and Mingus fit together so nicely? Well, actually, yes, they do. Don't forget, Ellington did an album with Coltrane too. Is that a part of his brilliance - that 40 years into his career he was willing to work with the newer guys, meet them on equal footing. I don't know. One of the amazing things about the CD reissue binge of the past 20 years that maybe we don't fully appreciate - when this disc came out in '87, it featured the original 6 tracks from the LP and an additional 7 bonus tracks.

(Speaking of Coltrane, leave us not forget the pairings of Coltrane with Monk - there's a 2 CD of all the session stuff and a live CD. )

Yeah, all this means I've been spending today beefing up the amount of jazz on my iPod. I've got about 300 or so jazz CDs, woefully underrepresented. My fave Miles and 'Trane stuff was always there, some Metheny of course (including both of the collabs with Mehldau), some classic Mingus, some leftfield stuff like Orquestra Was. Now I'm beefing up on Duke, Dizzy, Monk, some others. Vocal stuff later, some Ella & Louis perhaps. Newer guys not yet, but make some room for Slim Gaillard - maybe not Serenade to a Poodle but Laughing in Rhythm, sure.

After this, I'll do a deep electric blues thing - Muddy, Wolf, all the Kings, Hooker, and so on.

Today I did what I always do when I'm bored and feeling like crud. With my annual bonus (which my company now gives out end of March) burning a hole in my bank account, bought a few things to play with.

Starting with the Sony DSC-T100. I had been thinking about the DSC-G1, which I wrote about in one of our local newspapers. With a 3-1/2 inch screen, WiFi and 2 gigs of internal RAM, it certainly looks like an attractive toy. But the T100, without the built in RAM and "only" a 3 inch screen, sports a 5X optical zoom, "face detection" and ISO speeds up to 3200 (the G1 only up to 1000). Thought I had more memory sticks at home, turns out I sold 'em all off when I sold off the last Sony camera, alls I've got right now is a 256 meg one, need to buy something sizable tomorrow.

Joking with the guy in the shop, the T100 comes in black and red, I said to the guy, "this is Hong Kong, everyone wants black, right?" He said he's selling much less of the red one, mostly to guys buying a camera for their girlfriends.

I also bought the Logitech Harmony Universal Remote. Right now next to my bed I have, let's see, TV, NOW-TV, DVD, XBOX, Playstation, Mediaman (hard disk DiVX player). What I like about the Logitech so far is that all the codes for almost all the stuff I've got is online and downloadable. They even had for the NOW-TV box, which is made by "Beijing Golden Yuxing Corp." Naturally it can't do PS3, the remote for that is bluetooth, Sony going their own way again.

Following which, walked down Lockhart thinking about breakfast/lunch/dinner, saw buddy J sitting at Coyote so my choice was made. Some food, a fruity margarita, a glass o' vodka, needed a nap.

I was both saddened and pissed off to read about the death of director Bob Clark. He died on April 4th, driving on the Pacific Coast Highway, when some guy, drunk and no drivers license, hit him head on. Clark's 22 year old son also died in the accident. As nature always seems to have it, the idiot who hit him survived.

Clark directed the perennial classic A Christmas Story ("you'll shoot your eye out kid!") and Porky's and the original Black Christmas. My favorite of his works is a little-seen gem called Murder By Decree, which finds Sherlock Holmes (Christopher Plummer) and Watson (James Mason) on the trail of Jack the Ripper, and finding big secrets in high places. The great cast also included Donald Sutherland, John Gielgud, Anthony Quayle, Genevieve Bujold, Susan Clark.

Was re-watching Dylan, Don't Look Back, the other day. Everyone remembers this scene with a "science student" who has made his way backstage, insisting that Dylan should want to know him because he's a person and might be interesting, and everyone being incredibly patient with him. Turns out this guy is Terry Ellis, who co-founded Chrysalis Records (Billy Idol, Blondie, Rory Gallagher, Gen X, Huey Lewis, Jethro Tull, Leo Kottke, Pat Benatar, Jethro Tull, so many more). And yes, looking at his wikipedia entry, he was indeed a science student in university. But was this scene staged? Was it all just a cosmic coincidence? Does anyone care?

Another 36 Hours in Hong Kong article in the Times. Star Ferry. Lan Kwai Fong. Shanghai Tang, Maxim's City Hall, Peak tram, Stanley Market, toilets at Felix, a $5,400 bottle of wine at Hutong. No mention of Wanchai, good.

Am I going to Wanchai tonight? Dunno yet. Might hit Shenzhen tomorrow. Go the bars in Shekou, break up the monotony.

Current read - Shantaram, an autobiographical novel by Gregory David Roberts. From the back cover ...

In the early 80s, Gregory David Roberts, an armed robber and heroin addict, escaped from an Australian prison to India, where he lived in a Bombay slum. There, he established a free health clinic and also joined the mafia, working as a money launderer, forger and street soldier. He found time to learn Hindi and Marathi, fall in love, and spend time being worked over in an Indian jail. Then, in case anyone thought he was slacking, he acted in Bollywood and fought with the Mujahedeen in Afghanistan ... Amazingly, Roberts wrote Shantaram three times after prison guards trashed the first two versions ..."

Normally I have little patience for these chronic over-achievers. Makes us lazy procrastinators look bad.

Socrates, mine enemy
Mine enemy and yours
Socrates I do defy by walking on all fours
I curse the Age of Reason
I curse it for All Men
I curse my need to curse it
Then I curse it once again

Roman Thought, mine enemy
Mine enemy and thine
Roman Thought I do defy
By walking Serpentine
And through steep-sided valleys
Close to tributaries divine
I beat that Curse-d Roman Thought
That cult of the Straight Line

Dancing -
Ever Singing -
Ever Breathing -
Ever More!

- Julian Cope

because I want to

Actual Reuters headline, found via Gridskipper:

HOOTERS GROWING IN CHINA

(Best Marv Alpert impersonation) YES!

Well, I made my first loaf of bread.

Normally I do well as a cook. I can follow recipes. I understand basic techniques and can make some dishes without recipes. And things generally turn out pretty well, even the first time I try things. But this time, not so much.

I know I made one mistake. Almost every recipe I've seen says add the liquid first and the solids second. But the instruction book with the Princess bread maker reverses that - solids first, pour the liquid in around the sides, and I figured that they ought to know what works best for their machine, right? Except later on, when I went to their web site, there it says liquid first.

I used a very basic recipe - flour, dry yeast, salt, sugar, butter and powdered skim milk (which seemed odd, but that's what the recipe said, and the one my maid picked up said "organic" for whatever that's worth) and water.

The bread wasn't evenly distributed across the pan. Half the pan was okay, the other half had just like a bread thumb stretching into it. I had a loaf that looked gnarled and mutated, but that's okay.

But the bottom crust was so thick and hard that it had cemented itself around and under the two dough hooks, making the bread impossible to remove without basically destroying it. Rather than remove a loaf from the pan, I had to pull it out in several chunks. Which is why no photos.

The taste of the bread itself was quite okay - not perfect, but a rich flavor that says I'm at least part of the way there. The smell was, of course, wonderful, and the crust on the top and sides has a very satisfying color and texture. I know I have to experiment some more, fine tuning the amounts of salt, yeast, etc.

Right now for argument's sake I'll say this came out screwy because I put the solids in first, rather than thinking that the machine is crap. Next time I'll try liquid first.

If you didn't already come across this elsewhere, then you came across it here. The video for Alanis Morrissette's cover of My Humps. For real.

Not quite as sublime but still good, whether you liked the movie 300 or not, here's the trailer for It's Raining 300 Men.

Unusually heavy traffic this morning. Turns out that the left two lanes on Garden Road were closed, right in front of the US consulate. A bunch of busses parked there, a lot of cops, couldn't see if there had been an accident because I was paying attention to traffic as four lanes merged into two.

I've noticed a good percentage of HKers have never been schooled in the theory of alternate merge. Doesn't matter what the circumstance is, their attitude is one of, "I'm in this lane, you're not, screw you."

Such is the case with haughty dowager "CL 101," driving a putrid pale green BMW, who cut me off when it was my turn to merge into the lane, and also failed to make room for another car to enter at the subsequent merge another 10 yards ahead.

Rest assured, should I ever note this car parked in the vicinity, I will let the air out of all of the tires. (Or tyres, as our funny British friends insist on misspelling the word.)

======================================

Quick note that Wanchai has indeed returned to normal. Out for dinner last night with a friend at our usual Monday night spot, one that affords a clear view of the entrance to Fenwick and Dreams II and a "good enough" view of the entrance to Laguna. There were some beauties on parade too.

But I'm still in this "go to sleep at 11 and wake up at 7" mode, and as we finished dinner at 10:30, all I could do was jump in a taxi and head home to bed.

Up early enough this morning that I was going to make my first loaf of bread, only to realize that things would go better with a kitchen scale, something that I do not possess. UNY near my office is closed for renovations so will have to try some alternate spots during lunch.

I did watch Sopranos this morning. New episodes start in the US this Sunday - the final 9! - but as it sometimes happens, someone who received a DVD screener ripped it and uploaded it. And all I can say is, wow, this 50 minute kick-off to the final cycle has all the elements that have made this series one of the greats. The ending of this episode ... with Bobby standing by the lake, holding his infant daughter, while "This Magic Moment" plays, works on so many different levels.

=================================================

I guess anyone who cares is rather happy about the EMI/Apple news and I think it's a good deal all around. And while some might object, I think that a multi-tier pricing system (99 cents for a 128k aac drm'ed file or 1.29 for a 256k aac no drm'ed file, 30 cents to upgrade your previous drm file to a non-drm one) is exactly the way to go.

I remain convinced that DRM is going to be a short-lived phenomena. Media companies will have to provide content to consumers in the way that they want it, and will have to develop business plans that take this into account. Simple as that.

With that in mind, if you didn't already find this in boingboing, allow me to link to this truly astonishing white paper written by an NZ university researcher, A Cost Analysis of Windows Vista Content Protection. Two key quotes:

• The Vista Content Protection specification could very well constitute the longest suicide note in history.
• No one has been able to identify any Windows system that will actually play HD content in HD quality.

I happen to work for a company that is "in bed" with Microsoft to some extent. And I happen to know the person in charge of developing DRM for our company. And I've sent him this paper. And he's promised to read it. So I've done my part.

Now if you'll excuse me, I need to go delete my Vista partition.

I'm still in this mode of living like a vaguely normal person. That is every night I'm going to bed between 11 and 12, every morning waking up between 6 and 7. I hate it.

Plus a massive failure on my part on Saturday still has me bothered. I'm almost too embarrassed to go public on this one.

Saturday afternoon. Causeway Bay. Stop into Japanese Curry Bee, one of my regular spots for a decade, for lunch. The place is busy and I have to sit at a table for four that's occupied by a young local lady, 20-something, cute, busy on her mobile phone.

I order, another table opens up, and I move to it. Then a large group comes in, space needs to be made, and this young lady ends up moving to the table I've just moved to. "Hello again!" I say and she returns the greeting. We get to talking. She tells me her name. I tell her mine. She says I have the same name as her boss. I ask if he's a good boss, she says yes, I say "of course, everyone named 'x' is a nice guy!" She laughs.

She tells me where she lives. I tell her where I live. She tells me she's come to CWB for some shopping. I tell her I'm going to Sogo. She tells me she's going to Sogo too and maybe she'll see me there.

She finishes her meal and her bill arrives as my food arrives. She gets up to leave. For some reason, I am too completely fucking stupid to say, "why don't you wait a bit and we'll go to Sogo together?" Instead I say, "have a nice day."

Now, some may argue that I shouldn't be out on the prowl because I have a relationship of sorts. And perhaps I can use that thought to comfort myself. But the fact is, the world is much better off because I've never allowed myself to reproduce.

========================================

Sometimes the posts that I think are the most boring are the ones that generate the most comments. Like my stuff about bread.

Anyway, over to Times Square tonight. Checking around, I see only the same two brands and models that I saw at Sogo. Kenwood and Princess. It seems that Panasonic's bakers aren't available in the SAR.

I did get an email from Zojirushi telling me they will introduce a new bread baker to HK in the fall. That's too far off.

I reason that buying something from the US or UK makes little sense because what if it need s servicing?

And so I buy the "Princess." Apparently it's from Holland. I like the look of it more because it has two paddles, much like the Zojirushi. And it's sleeker looking. And cheap enough that if it sucks, I won't kill myself over it.

Down to City Super. Almost all their flour comes from the UK, which strikes me as odd. But the American stuff that I see is all big label brands. While some of the UK stuff seems vaguely natural. So I buy some flour, some yeast, the other stuff is all at home. I get a bread cookbook from City Super.

I'm going to bed now. Too tired to deal with the machine. Will wake up early and get something started before I head to the office.

Stay tuned.

Something I never thought about - the corporatization of rock concerts. No, I'm not talking corporate sponsorship of shows or tours, that's old news. This is one I didn't know about.

See, there's this company called Live Nation. And they own the rights to the names "Fillmore" and "House of Blues." And they're stretching both of those names into national (and possibly someday international) chains.

To me, the Fillmore was two concert halls managed by Bill Graham. The first in San Francisco, the second in New York. House of Blues was a restaurant and music venue started in Cambridge by Dan Aykroyd and some of his friends.

And then there's Live Nation. Started 25 years ago as a division of a company called Pace Management, which was bought in 1997 by SFX Entertainment, and then bought by Clear Channel and then spun off from Clear Channel as a separate company.

Live Nation is divesting itself of it's theater business - national road tours, theaters, performing centers - and will just focus on its music concert business.

I know this is the way of the world and the way things go but the Fillmore as a franchise run by a corporation just seems so very wrong. New York is now going to have "The Fillmore at Irving Plaza" and, coupled with the recent closure of CBGBs (and it's projected reopening in Las Vegas), I just gotta ask, "what the hell is going on out there?"

(Though actually, if someone was to tell Li Ka-Shing that there's money to be made in The Rock Business, maybe our live music choices here would improve?)

================================================

T has now been back home in Thailand for almost a month and I let her know, not too harshly, that I am extremely unhappy about how she reports she is spending her time. Rather than do anything actually productive, she just lies around the house all day, sometimes helps out at her aunt's roadside restaurant, and probably goes out drinking godknowshowmany nights per week. I told her she needs to use her time to actually accomplish something worthwhile.

Her first suggestion was that she should go to massage school. For 8,000 baht, she can take two courses and get pieces of paper certifying that she can do body and foot massage. I told her that was a bad idea. Yes, it's a fantasy of mine to live with someone who knows that stuff. But she can't legally work in HK, so what practical use would it be?

I told her to find someone or place giving English lessons so that she can work on that. She's found a school in her home town and I told her to sign up for a 20 hour course and see how it goes.

=============================================

Went to the doctor today. As he looked at my chart, he looked up at me and asked, "do you write for the South China Morning Post?" When you think about it ... 200 measly words a week, buried in the middle of nowhere, and somehow this guy has not only spotted it on a regular basis but also remembered my name from it? And ... he says he's not even that into the kind of stuff I write about, that the things I write about look fantastic but he never buys them because he thinks he'd need to spend too much time with the instruction manuals.

So ... infer from all of that what you will. To me it's a heaping mass of contradictions that would lead to both pause and praise.

================================================

Walking down Des Voeux road today, passed a shop called Gilman and they had a bread maker in the window by some company called Morphy Richards. And remembered of course that Wing On has a big kitchen appliance section. But now, after some comments and thoughts, am thinking that a bread machine may not be the way to go. Kitchen Aid mixer + the oven I already have might equal some tasty results.

================================================

This afternoon, a torrential downpour, as those of you who live in HK already know. The timing is perfect, washing the city clean of the mountains of mess left behind by those who came to watch our Rugby 7's, drink our beers, screw our hookers and blow chunks in our streets.

They'll return next year. Until then we have an entire year of our premium visitors - mainlanders clothed in Mickey Mouse sweatshirts shouting into rhinestone studded Hello Kitty phones cutting ahead on lines, staring at white people sitting in Lan Kwai Fong and dropping their kids' pants so they can pee in the street whenever the urge should strike. But at least they leave the hookers alone.

(Oh, wait, the Hello Kitty phone shouters are locals.)

================================================

Last but not least, for now, yesterday the one movie I chose to watch was a little number called Confession of Pain. I had every reason to believe it might be okay. A credible cast - Tony Leung Chiu Wai, Takeshi Kaneshiro, Shu Qi, Chapman To. And co-directed by Andrew Lau and Alan Mak, the guys responsible for the Infernal Affairs series and other notable HK flicks.

In a town that finds no plot too far fetched or stupid, this one might be a prize winner. Yeah, fucking spoiler ahead because none of you are gonna watch this. You know relatively early on that Tony Leung brutally murders his wife's father. You gotta sit through the whole 2 hours to find out why. If you sit through the entire movie, you will discover that as a boy in Macau, Tony Leung sees his entire family killed by gangsters. So he changes his name, moves to Hong Kong, becomes a cop, stalks the daughter of one of the gangsters and marries her ... all so that one night he can bust into the guy's place and bludgeon him to death with a buddha statue. He then tries to kill his wife, almost succeeds, and as she lies in a coma, decides he's in love with her and wants her to live.

Oh, and for sideplot, get this ... private detective and ex-cop Kaneshiro, despondent over the suicide of his pregnant girlfriend, becomes an alcoholic and spends every night visiting this guy in a coma who turns out to have been the real father of his girlfriend's child.

As with too many HK movies, it's a bad story, and ineptly told. One might have thought that after all of Lau's bitching and moaning about Scorsese's remake of Infernal Affairs, he might have tried to come back with a "here's how it should be done" kind of effort. This is just nicely shot hack work. Mr. Lau, you owe me two hours.

Last but not least, what the fuck is it with Shu Qi? In this movie, she plays a San Mig beer promotion girl who apparently works as a hooker on the side.

(Sidebar - I've always joked that being a Chinese beer promotion girl in a bar filled with Thai and Filipino hookers and drunk white guys must be one of the worst jobs in town. I have to confess it never occurred to me that some of these beer promo girls might have been inspired by their surroundings to try to make a little extra cash in this fashion themselves.)

A truly beautiful woman, it seems Shu Qi is only capable of playing giggly stupid hookers or morose depressing junkies. No wonder her once hot career seems to have been reduced to kibbles 'n bits. Is it too much to hope that she'll one day return to the nude modeling and soft core porn that gave her career its original kickstart?

According to this report, PS3 prices around the world (in Euros):

• London 627
• Europe 600
• NYC 487
• Tokyo 381
• HK 363

Or are there other reasons?

Another question that will probably remain forever unanswered: Girls in Wanchai always tell me they think I have a good heart. I know this is just a sales pitch. I always respond by saying I have no heart. Why should this be a point of pride for me?

My mother always ends every phone conversation with me by saying "I love you." My answer used to be one I stole from Albert Brooks, "I know you think you do." She remains either unaware or is in denial of how the psychic damage she inadvertently inflicted on me during childhood has completely twisted me. However, at this point, she is old, and there are, I suppose, very few people left to whom she can say those three words. And, compared to a great number of others in my extended family, I have turned out, if not "well," at least "better." So now I either respond in kind or just remain silent, depending on my mood.

At the age of 14, the Beatles' "You've Got to Hide Your Love Away" became my credo. Decades later, it's so well ingrained that I wonder if I have any love left to hide.

============================================

Check this excerpt from an entry (last one on the page) on life in HK during the 7s by Hemlock:

Those with a taste for greater carnage will make their way to Wanchai, where Mainland and Thai hookers lie in wait. Some Sevens attendees will emerge with five-figure credit card bills they can’t remember signing for. Others will simply come out of it with no credit cards – the plastic will have been put through one last mega-transaction in an all-night jewellery store. Some of the ladies of the night specialize in peering over the shoulder of drunk male clients as they punch their PIN number into an ATM and memorizing the number without writing it down for however long it takes to go to a cheap hotel, put baby to sleep and sneak out with his wallet. My idea of fun is to observe the battlefield after the smoke has cleared and the gore dribbled into the gutter.

Hemlock always likes to appear to be holding the world at arm's length. And he seems to hold particular contempt or amusement for the goings on at Wanchai. Any reference to bar activities in Wanchai always refer to "wild American friend Odell." And yet, he seems to be so knowledgeable about the range of choices and activities. Could it be he has more firsthand experiences than he cares to admit? His older entries are more explicit:

I am developing quite a taste for working class women, possibly as a result of my dalliance with one of the cleaners on the Mid-Levels escalator last month. Passing a construction site this morning, my eyes met with those of an extremely fetching Thai lady who was guiding trucks out onto the road with a red flag. Within a minute we were urgently at it behind a yellow metal hut next to the site. She was very grateful, and it was a delightful start to the day.

or this one:

Wake up in my bed next to a Chinese lady who may, I suspect, be older than me. Nothing odd or wrong with that, of course, but this one, in the cold light of day, seems to be older by a significant margin. (By about a third, it later emerges.) She mounts me, pins me down and has her way with me with great vigor, not to mention a lot of fearsome noise that brings back vague memories of the same thing happening several hours earlier.

and:

On the subject of migrant workers - wake up next to one. Selly, by name. A nice girl, who sympathises when I explain that the secret nature of my work forbids me to reveal my telephone number to anyone.

Those entries are from 2002. I started reading him in 2005 and never went back to the older stuff. With little to do today and little desire to do the things I actually need to do, perhaps I'll read more of his older stuff.

I'm home with the dogs today, literally. Have some cleaning up to do and a deadline tomorrow. I expect to get out for meals but not much else.