Hongkie Town

Ridley Scott's new "final cut" of Blade Runner is screening in New York and getting lots of press attention in advance of the 5 DVD set coming out in December. Here's an interesting quote from an interview in the NY Times:

He created this world from what he saw around him. “I was spending a lot of time in New York,” he said. “The city back then seemed to be dismantling itself. It was marginally out of control. I’d also shot some commercials in Hong Kong. This was before the skyscrapers. The streets seemed medieval. There were 4,000 junks in the harbor, and the harbor was filthy. You wouldn’t want to fall in; you’d never get out alive. I wanted to film ‘Blade Runner’ in Hong Kong, but couldn’t afford to."

When I knock the republican party or George Bush, conservatives think I am automatically boosting the democratic party. It seems that if they are capable of thought at all, it is only binary.

My father set the example for me: he never missed voting in an election but he almost never voted for either republican or a democrat. For me, the democratic party mostly represents the lesser of two evils. Summed up this picture:

as well as this essay by someone named Stan Goff:

When I suggested that everyone vote in Democrats in 2006, I said at the same time that this was no endorsement. I said that without their minority status to fall back on, they would be exposed as co-imperialists with the Republicans to all who still bore Sisyphean hopes for that agglomeration of political oxygen theft.

They just overwhelmingly authorized a resolution declaring the armed forces of another sovereign nation to be a terrorist group. They have consistently authorized pantopticon surveillance. Now they are in unison saying the war will last for ten, maybe 20 years, and they will not stop it even if they are in power.

Wanna hear the funny part? The Republicans are going to beat their asses in 2008, and a lot of us aren't going to lift a finger to stop it from happening.

I still believe that a Waring blender would have been a better president than George Bush, and that a '64 Chevy Impala could do a better job than either Giuliani or Thompson.

And last for tonight, finally getting around to offloading the memory card onto my PC, so a selection of photos going back several weeks ....

First, Tokyo, Shibuya, standin' on the corner watchin' all the girls go by ....





Taxi TV


Tokyo Tower - 13 years of going to Tokyo an average of 4 times per year and still have not gone to the top.


Next, Seoul, partial view of the room at the Park Hyatt.


I just loved the stone wall in the bathroom.


At Incheon Airport:


Last, Shenzhen, the central interior of the Luo Hu mall is a literal riot of color:


I didn't get a specific shot of this sign but was able to crop this image from a wider shot, hence the soft focus. If you can't see it clearly, it says, "Monopoly: Crystal, Jade Article, Jewelry, Ornament, Pearls & Queer Stone."


And the best sign in the mall, "Mending Bowls With Cramp"

Two minutes ago, I received an email notifying me that my iPod Touch has shipped. Expected delivery date is now October 4th instead of 3rd! Well, if the commenter was right that shops won't be getting their stock till the 2nd, I guess I won't feel that bad. Plus it gives me extra time to try to figure out what I'm going to fit on there.

Right now I've got abot 65 gig sitting in iTunes. I copied my iTunes library to another PC so I could play around with it. After deleting down to something that I considered minimal, I had 25 gigs there. Hmmm. Now down-converting everything to 128 AAC. That's gonna take awhile. Second computer is slow.

Catching up on the news, I see that Apple released updated software for the iPhone on Thursday. The results are as expected - along with new features and bug fixes, it relocks and sometimes even bricks unlocked iPhones. This is now going to be a weekly event. Apple releases new software. The hackers release updated hacks. Apple releases new software. It's not a rat race that I care to take part in. I'll stick with my Sony Ericsson P1i.

It's now 2:30 AM. I seem to recall that Armin "A State of Trance" something or other is at HITEC tonight and the ads say the show runs till 6 AM. Guess I still have time to catch his set. Maybe not. Grandmaster Flash is at Dragon-i on Wednesday night. Guess if I go, that would make two people from Da Bronx in da house.

Things have been hectic as hell in the office. Lots of out of town visitors the next couple of weeks as we proceed to do yet another round of reviews of the 2008 budget.

So it seemed natural for myself and a co-worker to start the long weekend early and relax in Shenzhen. The events of the day ....

12:30 off the train and through immigration. I had to go to the foreigner line, of course, my friend didn't, and coming out on the other side, the usual crap of some guy offering to be my guide. No thanks.

Off to the Luo Hu shopping mall for some dim sum. The place we wanted to go to, Laurel, had a 40 minute wait for a table, so we chose another spot on the top floor - not great but as always, the cost of the food there more than makes up for it. We had a Singapore-style fried noodle, a rice noodle roll with char siu, char siu bau, har gau, some veggies, tea and a coke and the bill came out to RMB 140. A sign on the wall advertised an entire crispy fried chicken with vegetables for 45.

Some quick browsing through the mall after lunch. My friend couldn't resist getting a pirate Tag Heuer watch though he was subsequently quite surprised to find out that it relied on being wound rather than having a battery.

Heading into town, walking past the Shang, fighting through the usual crowd offering cheap hotel rooms, funky massages and worse. Over to the hidden pirate DVD shop. I wasn't really looking for current movies and I know they always have an astonishingly eclectic selection. Stuff I picked up included Agnes' Varda's Cleo From 5 to 7, Herzog's Aguirre The Wrath of God, Bad Lieutenant, a 3 disc collection of 7 Jean Renoir films and some Ayumi Hamasaki because she's so easy on the eyes.

We tried a new (to me) sauna called Peninsula, near the Dongmen area. Huge and clean, two hour massage with tips worked out to around 150 RMB each (actually I went for an oil massage and tipped a bit higher, so my bill was probably around 180 - but how could I not give a good tip after both girls lied so well and said I was so handsome?). We finished at 6 and they offered us dinner at the free buffet but we skipped that and took advantage of their free car service back to the train station since we had a dinner reservation there.

The car dropped us off in a section of the station that I'd never been to before. It's a pick-up drop-off spot for all the saunas in town. They have girls standing there with brochures (only in Chinese of course) and one or two of them even have small store fronts. Some place called Queens Spa seems to be the most deluxe - I was told you pay them a flat rate and that includes massage, dinner and assorted other activities - game room, movie lounge, etc. Anyway, the point is, you get off the train and if you want a sauna, no need to go walking through town, no need to take a taxi anywhere, get free car service to the sauna of your choice.

Back to the top floor of Luo Hu, where this time we only needed to wait 10 minutes for a table at Laurel, the most popular restaurant there. The food is quite nice and the prices are almost silly - an entire Peking duck with all the trimmings for 140 RMB? Well, it didn't make sense for just two people to order that, but everyone around us seemed to be getting it. I watched the server carve up a duck for the table next to us, one of the waitresses saw me watching and happily exclaimed, "Crispy Peking Duck!" Oh, that skin was just glistening and I might have been drooling a little. And there were stacks of pumpkins everywhere - they were doing special Autumn-themed dishes with pumpkin.

We had a plate of steamed prawns. A huge bowl of spicy bean curd. A third dish reminded me of a cowboy/campfire sort of thing - some kind of beans fried up with very fatty chunks of pork and some other vegetables. Some xiao long bao (not great but cheap!), some rice and bean curd dessert. The bill was way under 200.

So many of the staff at that restaurant could speak at least some English, and walking around the mall after dinner we were taking notice of how many of the people in shops could now really talk and joke with me. Yeah, there were still a few of the "DVD! Watch! Bag! DVD Pussy!"

One thing that I never really took note of until today .... there are certain items that I tend to only shop for in Bangkok, usually at MBK. I saw all of those items at Luo Hu and all at cheaper prices - because most of it comes from China, right?

Tons of knock-off ipods everywhere you look (mostly the 2G nano), bushels of cheap memory sticks, of course every sort of designer jean and top. Actually I probably could have spent a few more hours there, covering each floor in more detail, but I didn't want to try my friend's patience too much and my backpack was getting full anyway.

Home by 10 PM. Had every intention of going back out tonight but it's 1:30 and I haven't made it out so far and I think I'm gonna call it a night soon.

I ordered the iPod Touch from the HK Apple online store on September 6th.

Today, September 28, is the release day.

And apparently that means today they will ship mine to Hong Kong from their factory in China by truck. I will not receive it until next Wednesday.

5 days ago, the online status of my order was "prepared for shipment." That means that 5 days ago it was boxed up and sitting on a pallet waiting to go.

Meanwhile, it will probably be in HK stores today.

In return for being one of the first people in HK to order it, I have to wait 5 days longer than anyone else.

I will never order from the HK Apple store again. What's the fucking point?

I may have mis-read the size of Jacky Cheung's apartment (previous post).

Fuser - I have 3 gmail accounts, 3 yahoo mail accounts, and assorted others. Here's a free web app (in beta) that consolidates all your email from multiple accounts (including POP3 as well as web-based) PLUS your messages from MySpace and Facebook. I think I'm gonna love this.

Net Tools - 175 mini apps in a single download. Everything from ping to anonymous emailer to password unmasker to force reboot to cookies analyzer to google page rank analyzer to ... well, like I said, there's 175 things in there.

Amazon's digital music store is online now. 256k downloads with no drm, variable pricing, only for customers with U.S. credit card/billing address.

Along the streets of Wanchai, you will often find a group of well-dressed Filipino women who are ostensibly raising money for charity. They flash these little envelopes at you for donations. I don't know if this is real or if it's a rip-off.

What I do know is it's one thing for them to go up to you on a street corner but an entirely different matter when I'm sitting in a bar, eating dinner, and they walk up to me and stick one of those envelopes in my face just as I'm raising a forkful of food to my mouth.

This happened last night and, without pause, I shouted "NO!" at the woman. She did pause. She gave me a look that said, "I curse thee!" I could not figure out the details of the curse but it might have something to do with my being denied sex and in that case it certainly was effective last night.

The current events in Myanmar are fascinating to watch. How soldiers can fire into a crowd of their own countrymen, monks and nuns peacefully protesting, is beyond my understanding. And while it seems that China seems to be giving support to the dissidents, Russia has shown its true colors by declaring this an internal matter for Myanmar's tyrants to deal with.

The Phil Spector trial has ended in a mis-trial. The district attorney says he intends to re-try the case.

Cantopop star Jacky Cheung has been blacklisted from hiring any more Filipino maids after firing 21 of them within 3 years. One of the fired maids reported that they were expected to work from 6 AM to 1 AM 6 days per week and on Sundays were only given 11 AM to 7 PM off. All this for HK$3,200 per month. Multi-millionaire Cheung lives in a 4 story penthouse measuring over 20,000 square feet.

Something from last week that I missed - and I didn't see references to this in any other English language HK blogs, surely this should have been picked up by Hemlock? It seems that Stanley Ho said, "The state has not yet prepared for universal suffrage [in Hong Kong]; any efforts to set the date at 2012 are useless. Beijing will [give a date] at a suitable time ... when most of you are patriotic and love Hong Kong."

And then he went on to say, "Is democracy good to Taiwan, Malaysia or Indonesia? Universal suffrage may not be a good idea and we should not rush towards that."

For once, I'm speechless.

One of the Big Lies of modern American politics is that Republicans are fiscally conservative while Democrats are "tax and spend." In fact, Republicans have always brought us record deficits due to their combination of unrestrained military spending and tax cuts for the wealthy, whereas the Democrats spend money on social services for the poor and middle classes and then attempt to balance the budget. The Republican party once consisted of fiscally responsible leaders like Eisenhower; now they are merely about helping the rich get richer and keeping the poor poor, but manage to attract the votes of the very people they disenfranchise by playing to the religious right. They are very good at this.

The Big Con: The True Story of How Washington Got Hoodwinked and Hijacked by Economic Crackpots by Jonathan Chait.

Review here:

... what Chait does is to examine the tax cuts on their economic merits. The debate is not new, but Chait’s tale is enlivened by his account of how the G.O.P. evolved from a party of strait-laced budget balancers to extremists who resemble old-time Marxists in their rigid adherence to doctrine ... Chait is particularly good in describing how the press, wary of seeming partisan, simply reported the claims on each side rather than analyzing them. The problem with this approach, he argues, is that the relationship of the two political parties is no longer symmetric ... Chait overlooks that this reflects a weakness of the left. Four decades after the Great Society, liberals have yet to agree on a coherent new economic policy. Conservatives have — even though, as Chait points out, the lucrative favors they dole out to the business lobby undermine their claim to being pure free-marketers. Their real agenda, he writes, is “expanding the wealth of the very rich.” But this is too simplistic; the conservatives I know seem to genuinely believe that tax cuts are good policy ... the rightward revision hardened into dogma and itself badly overreached.

First chapter here:

I have this problem. Whenever I try to explain what's happening in American politics-I mean, what's really happening-I wind up sounding a bit like an unhinged conspiracy theorist. But honestly, I'm not. My politics are actually quite moderate. (Most real lefties, in fact, think I'm a Washington establishment sellout.) So please give let me a chance to explain myself when I tell you the following: American politics has been hijacked by a tiny coterie of right-wing economic extremists, some of them ideological zealots, others merely greedy, a few of them possibly insane. (Stay with me.)

The scope of their triumph is breathtaking. Over the course of the last three decades, they have moved from the right-wing fringe to the commanding heights of the national agenda. Notions that would have been laughed at a generation ago-that cutting taxes for the very rich is the best response to any and every economic circumstance, or that it is perfectly appropriate to turn the most rapacious and self-interested elements of the business lobby into essentially an arm of the federal government-are now so pervasive, they barely attract any notice.

The result has been a slow-motion disaster. Income inequality has approached levels normally associated with Third World oligarchies, not healthy Western democracies. The federal government has grown so encrusted with business lobbyists that it can no longer meet the great public challenges of our time. Not even many conservative voters or intellectuals find the result congenial. Government is no smaller-it is simply more debt-ridden and more beholden to wealthy elites.

.....

Things have gone about as badly as they could have in George W. Bush's second term. A Republican administration started and lost a major war in Iraq; presided over an economy that has failed to deliver higher wages for most Americans; contributed in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina to the near-wipeout of a major American city; launched a failed assault on Social Security, the most popular social program in the history of the United States; and saw its members suffer an almost unprecedented string of sexual and financial scandals. Still, Democrats find themselves holding only the slimmest of majorities in the House and Senate. Even if they hold their majorities in Congress and win the White House in 2008, the structural forces in Washington will make it nearly impossible to roll back any significant chunks of the Bush tax cuts, let alone take on crises like global warming or the forty-five million Americans lacking health insurance.

Marcel Marceau is dead.

I had the great privilege of seeing him perform in London in 1972 at a theatre in the West End. (Yeah, I'm really old and I'm probably going to die soon, too. Bite me.)

While I can't recall the specifics of the performance, what I do remember is that we were sitting in the very last row of the very top section, I think the ticket price was 35p and he was so good that I forgot I was 5 miles from the stage.

And of course, one of his best moments on film came in Mel Brooks' Silent Movie - his one word was the only spoken dialog in the film, a wonderful joke.

There's a million mimes out there, most of them giving mime a bad name, hence the title of this post, which hopefully you recognized as a quote from Spinal Tap. I don't know if there is anyone out there today who approaches this level of artistry.

Read the entire article for the above here.

I was lying in bed watching Transformers. And about halfway through, I said to myself, what exactly am I getting from watching this? And shut it off.

So then I flipped on the DVD for Scott Walker 30 Century Man, Stephen Kijak's remarkable documentary about a man who went from being a teen pop idol to one of our most remarkable avant garde composers (though he himself would probably reject the term). Exec produced by David Bowie, aside from great footage of Scott, there are interviews with Bowie, Brian Eno, Jarvis Cocker, Damon Albarn, Gavin Friday, Johnny Marr, so many who owe such a great debt to Walker's music.

And as I was watching the 2006 interview footage with Walker, it struck me that he looked and sounded almost exactly like someone else. And then it dawned on me who it was. Bob Einstein. AKA Super Dave Osborne. AKA Marty Funkhouser on Curb Your Enthusiasm. Albert Brooks' brother. (Yes, that is correct, Albert Brooks' real name is Albert Einstein.)



And I thought, wouldn't that be so wild. Walker is rarely seen on camera. He never allowed cameras into he recording studio until 2006. What if he hired Bob Einstein to appear as him in his own documentary?

They look similar. They sound similar. They both wear baseball caps a lot.

Nah, of course not. But someone's bound to do something like this one of these days, doncha think?

As some of you know, I've been on various internet dating web sites on and off for about three years. Obviously I haven't met my, ahem, soul mate yet, but I've had enough decent dates to remain listed there.

Of course one has to avoid the stream of scammers that are from Africa and Russia. Profiles of unbelievably beautiful women who write to you and promise you everything. Without mentioning that in reality they are usually 14 year old boys sitting in an internet cafe in Nigeria.

Recently I got a stream of messages from different Chinese women who tried to direct me to some Chinese web site. The story as told was that they didn't know English but if I went to that web site to leave them messages, it would automatically be translated for them, and vice versa. Of course, once at that site, you have to pay to be able to write or read a message.

Five days ago, this email from a 25 year old woman in Shenzhen:

Thank you for your letter, I am glad to know you, I live in shenzhen now, you have happy? What is your interest and love, you can give me talk about it, I want to know you, my dear, I hope we can become good friends and look forward to your letter, I hope you had a pleasant everyday.

Compare that to this letter received today from a 26 year old woman in Guangzhou:

Thank you for your letter, I am glad to know you,my name is jingshu now, I live in guangzhou now, you have happy? What is your interest and love, you can give me talk about it, I want to know you, my dear, I hope we can become good friends and look forward to your letter, I hope you had a pleasant everyday.

The moral of the story is simple. Wherever there is a human desire or weakness, there are hordes of people waiting to exploit it for financial gain.

I finally managed to download and watch the episode of Anthony Bourdain's No Reservation TV series shot in Hong Kong. As you perhaps already know, one of his food guides while he was here was our esteemed local food blogger Cha Xiu Bao. They went to a number of local places on the lower end of the scale, which is Bourdain's focus on this series. None of the higher end, hotel restaurant, Michelin starred joints that attract the hoi polloi. Bourdain is going for the real authentic stuff that normal people eat in the places he visits.

So some dim sum, a noodle joint, some roast meats - and one high end place that I've never visited, Bo Innovation, run by self-proclaimed "Demon Chef" Alvin Leung.

Sometimes Tony will really get rhapsodic about the food he's eating and manage to convey that really well to his audience. Last year's episode called "Why the French Don't Suck" was a major reason for my finally going to Paris. But in this Hong Kong episode, with a few exceptions, that joy wasn't coming across. I never felt the urge to write down an address or try out one of the places he was visiting.

And I have to confess, after ten years here, I'm so completely bored with Cantonese cuisine that I rarely eat it any more. I've almost completely lost my appreciation for it. My favorite cuisines at the moment are, in no special order, Japanese, Indian, French, Italian, Vietnamese. My comfort foods remain hamburger, hot dog, pizza, but also middle eastern dishes (though I've never been there) and the eastern European stuff that I grew up with. BTW, is there any place in HK that does a blueberry blintz? I've yet to find one. Decent pierogi or a nice stuffed cabbage?

To me, Cantonese food breaks down into several different areas, and I emphasize here, to me:

1 - Dim Sum, aka Yum Cha. Okay, this one I still love, but I don't have it more than once a month. And having worked through a large number of the dishes on offer, I tend to go for the same half dozen dishes each time - char siu bao, har gao, siu mai, some stuffed rice noodle roll, some green pepper stuffed with minced fish, radish cake, etc.

The thing with dim sum is that it seems locked in time. I rarely encounter any place trying anything new or different.

2 - The seafood in which very little is done to the dish - e.g. whole fish steamed with some soy sauce, garlic, ginger. This can be quite fine if you're in a place that has good, healthy, fresh fish to choose from.

3 - Old style dai pai dong kinds of places, offering noodle soups with dumplings or brisket, roasted meat shops, congee shops, etc. This stuff is filling, cheap, often quite okay, but I don't see any artistry here, nor do I expect to.

4 - The other cooked dishes. These range from okay to what the hell were they thinking? Have you ever gone to Sai Kung and gotten a lobster in cheese sauce? They take a nice fresh lobster, hack it up, and cover it in this viscous mess that makes Kraft Velveeta seem like gourmet stuff. Or sweet and sour pork? As unhealthy a dish as ever existed, chunks of the cheap cuts of pork, deep fried at a ratio of about 5 inches of breading to one inch of pork, so tough you can barely chew it, and no place ever seems to get the proper balance on the sauce, which is usually so sticky and sweet, not to mention filled with MSG.

I forgot where I'm going with this. Sorry. Haven't slept much lately. And not that my own eating habits are anything to boast about either. Yesterday I had a tuna sub at Subway for lunch and a hot dog at Cul de Sac for dinner, so don't go by me.

But if you compare the artistry that you find in Japanese food - the precision that's applied to selection, preparation and presentation, Cantonese food doesn't even begin to approach that, does it?

And what about those company dinners or wedding banquets that we all go to? Always the same 8 or 10 courses, always prepared and taste the same, no matter where you have them.

Of course, one could probably launch equal or greater rants on some other infamous cuisines from around the world. British Sunday roasts - where they include mashed potato, roast potato and Yorkshire pudding on the plate. Some places that serve shepherd's pie do it with french fries on the side for god's sake. Someone somewhere wrote about how the British don't pay any attention to food - and that's why you see so many of them just cram 3 or 4 different things on their fork at once and shove it into their mouth so that they can't taste anything, mainly it's an excuse so they can wash it down with lager anyway. And let's face it, for millions of Americans, they consider it a big advance when they go beyond McDonalds or Taco Bell and eat at TGI Friday, Red Lobster or Olive Garden.

Okay, maybe I'm just being a cranky old man now.

This week, George Bush said:

"I heard somebody say, Where's Mandela? Well, Mandela's dead because Saddam Hussein killed all the Mandelas."

Poor Bush. He's killed over 1.2 million people yet despite his wishful thinking, Mandela is still alive. This from a news report in 2003:

Former South African President Nelson Mandela delivered a fiery speech denouncing the United States and aiming harsh personal criticism at President Bush. ... "What I am condemning is that one power, with a president who has no foresight, who cannot think properly, is now wanting to plunge the world into a holocaust."

Why did I then start to think about the classic film Becket? Oh yeah, the bit where King Henry says, "Will no one rid me of this meddlesome priest?"

1 - Does anyone have hands-on experience with a piece of software called Shrink My Tunes? This is software that claims to use NASA-developed "content sensitive heuristic optimisation algorithms" to shrink MP3 files by up to 75%. There's more explanation of how it works over on their web site. I'm seeing this mentioned all over, they're even advertising it in magazines like Q, but so far I've only come across one actual review (which was positive)(sorry, forgot to bookmark it). At a cost of US$40, I'd like to know more about it before I plunk my cash on the barrelhead (or enter my credit card deets on their website). With my 80 gig ipod almost full, I'm wondering how to fit enough onto the 16 gig ipod touch when it arrives in another week or so. If this stuff does a respectable job, then I might actually be able to fit everything I need onto there. (And hoping I don't get one of the ones with the defective screen.)

2 - One of my cameras is the Canon G7, which I absolutely love. They've now released the G9. Lens is the same 6X optical zoom lens. Resolution bumped up from 10 megapixel to 12. The big changes are it can do RAW and the LCD has been increased from 2.5 inches to 3 inches. Worth the upgrade? What about the Canon S series as opposed to the G series? I have no idea on that. The S is 8 megapixels, 2.5 inch LCD (but hinged) and a 12X optical zoom. Don't know if it does RAW.

This could be useful - Belkin has released a network USB hub, which allows you to share all your USB stuff with all computers on your network - wirelessly, if you have a wireless router.

In the It Ain't Just Me Dept, via Gizmodo, a veteran Mac software developer rips Apple a new one for the way they're trying to lock down the iPod and the iPhone.

But recently, well... the generous view would be that Apple's screwing up, and the non-generous view would be that they are just plain getting greedy.

But why is the iPhone locked to a single carrier, so I can't travel internationally with it? There's really only one viable reason: Apple wanted a share of the carrier's profits, which meant giving AT&T an exclusive deal. Which meant, we get screwed so Apple can make more money. It's that simple.

Then we come to ringtones. Every phone I've owned in the last ten years has allowed to make my own ringtones. I could upload MP3s all I wanted. Many had little tune editors built into the phone.

But since Apple is so close to the record companies, and they are already so grumpy with Apple, Apple did a deal that benefits record companies and Apple. Not artists, certainly not consumers. In order to use a 15-second snippet of some random song, I now must buy it not once, but TWICE. The amazing thing is that I must buy it THREE times if I own the song on CD -- I have to buy a DRM'ed version from the Apple Store, then buy the the ringtone, on TOP of the CD I already bought.

These are EXACTLY the compromises Sony has been making for years -- and because Sony's music and movie arms have been telling the Sony hardware arm to never do anything new or interesting without building in a ton of customer-unfriendly restrictions, Sony is now completely in the toilet.

That sure reminds me of the old, crappy Apple. The one that almost went bankrupt because of its hubris.

Read his entire rant, it's worth it.

Apparently Stephen Fry has launched a blog, and has a rant about smart phones there. It's quoted all over the place but attempts to actually connect to the blog fail, hence no link here. Here's a quote from the blurb on Gizmodo:

Let's look at the WinMob now. The HTC Touch is called (by idiots) an iPhone killer because it comes without a keyboard and makes a brief and rather feeble nod towards the idea of a strokeably operated touch-screen offering a silly cube transformation effect with big buttons. Oh, and the Touch is WinMob 6 rather than 5 (you won't notice the difference - a quite cool coloured line fribble in the agenda which shows you which days of the week are busy is the best addition, otherwise it's virtually indistinguishable from WM5).

While tonight is the start of Yom Kippur, the Jewish day of atonement, as usual I will not be fasting. A mild degree of superstition means that I will not be going out tonight though. After all this is the Big Kahuna of holidays.

But thinking of food, the Today Show in the U.S. as usual covered vital issues of the day by conducting a search for the best sandwich in America. They came up with 5 finalists:

1 - The Muffuleta. Apparently this is the "official sandwich" of New Orleans. Genoa salami, ham, swiss cheese, mortadella, olive salad and "muffuleta bread." I've never had this. I suppose one could do a reasonable approximation via shopping at one of the upscale grocery stores here.

2 - Pastrami on rye, from Katz's Deli in New York, of course. No one does reasonable pastrami here. I haven't tried it everywhere but in enough places to just throw my hands up and say, "I give up." Oh, Katz's Deli. Send a pastrami to your boy in the army. When Harry Met Sally. Oh how I miss this place.

3 - A cheesesteak BLT. Well, lots of places do BLT, but all the places here that attempt to do philly cheesesteak completely blow it. I could do proper ones at home if I wasn't so frigging lazy. Interestingly, the winner is a place in Philadelphia that adds "sriracha mayonnaise," which I assume is a combination of mayo and sriracha sauce ... as longer term readers know, my ex, T, is from Sri Racha.

4 - Lobster roll. Does anyone in HK even attempt lobster roll? I doubt it. Curiously, they picked the one from a spot in Half Moon Bay, California (and one that I've actually been to) rather than someplace in New England.

5 - "Frenchy's fantasy" from a restaurant in Chicago. A triple decker sandwich of roast beef, bacon, swiss cheese, lettuce, tomato and Russian dressing. The drool is already running down my chin.

Return of a popular feature - idiot of the week ...

The cover story on the newly revamped Standard is about how some scenes from the next Batman movie are slated to be filmed in Hong Kong and that we need to be prepared for, ohmigod, someone stop them, CHAOS!

They will bring 80 people over here - staying in hotels, eating in local restaurants, shopping - and provide jobs for 200 local people. Apparently they plan to use a helicopter in one scene and Kam Nai-wai, of the Central and Western District Council, is worried that the noise may "disturb" local residents. Yes, a couple of hours of noise and a traffic jam for a couple of afternoons versus pumping millions of dollars into our economy and bringing Maggie Gyllenhaal into our bars. That makes sense.


Over here is the tale of a fool from the PRC with more money than sense who bought a 70 year old HK mansion, was unhappy to find out that there's a proposal to declare this building a historical monument, so he hired workers to deface the building.

A tiny article in the "World" section notes that Disney has donated US$10 million towards the creation of a hospital in Orlando that will probably bear the Disney name as a result. The entire project is slated to cost $35 million, which is the same price as the laundry bills for the handkerchiefs that Li Ka-shing uses when he hocks up a load of phlegm and says that any attempt to stop him from doing whatever he feels like on any given day of the week and twice on Sunday is bad for the economy. The article notes that Disney designers are working to "develop the patient experience."

I predict long lines in the sun, nurses dressed as Snow White, doctors named "Grumpy" and "Dopey". My dentist in Bangkok has one of those x-ray machines that circle around your head to get a full bite x-ray. Whenever they hit the on button, it plays "It's a Small World" as it twirls around. I guess they'll have one of those in the hospital.

But with $35 million, I don't think they can afford the machine that goes "ping!"

Look here for results of a massive project. Blogger Edward Copeland polled 180 critics, bloggers and fans to compile a list of the top 100 non-English language films of all time.

The top ten holds few surprises

1 - Rules of the Game
2 - The Seven Samurai
3 - M
4 - 8 1/2
5 - The Bicycle Thief (aka Bicycle Thieves)
6 - Persona
7 - Grand Illusion
8 - Aguirre, The Wrath of God
9 - The Battle of Algiers
10 - The 400 Blows

I'm surprised that M and Aguirre (both great films) placed so high and that Grand Illusion is all the way down at #7.

Hong Kong, Taiwan and China movies on the list are:

27 - In the Mood For Love
50 - Raise the Red Lantern
56 - Yi Yi
61 - Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon
63 - Chungking Express

Of course lists like this are always grounds for debate, and the voters had a clear preference for what are termed "arthouse films" in the US over more visceral film experiences. There are dozens of HK films that are not here that probably could have been - and I'm not even as familiar as I should be with HK cinema pre-1990.

I also have a major problem with Crouching Tiger being on this list, a vastly over-rated film that did well in the west because of the novelty, but it was old hat in this part of the world. And, if we're looking at recent productions in that genre, I think Hero was far superior.

At any rate, I've only seen 58 out of the 100, so lots of titles to try to catch up with.

In some ways, Seoul is a lot like Tokyo. By that I mean that it consists of wide, broad, named avenues with smaller lanes behind them. The lanes generally do not have names. Buildings are numbered in the order in which they are built. So finding your way around town is a challenge.

Seoul also has an excellent mass transit system - low priced, efficient subways with signs and announcements in English as well as Korean. And lots of buses. Automobile drivers here mostly obey the traffic regulations carefully.

So can anyone explain why the traffic in Seoul is so goddamned fucking awful all the fucking time? Even when it's not raining, it takes an hour just to go half a mile down the same main street. I swear, traffic here is worse than Bangkok, Manila and Mumbai put together.

Tonight, dinner at Bamboo House, a high end Korean barbecue spot near Yeoksam that seems to attract a lot of local celebrities. They have English menus and an English speaking staff. Oh, and some amazing quality beef. I betrayed my lack of knowledge of Korean cuisine by suggesting that we get one plate of marinated beef. My companions looked at me in a combination of pity and horror. Yes, now I know, when you've got the top-grade stuff, you want the taste to be as pure as possible.

We also had two different kinds of Korean pancakes, some soup, some rice and some raw crab in a slightly spicy dressing, along with the usual side dishes of kimchee and other things, mango sorbet for dessert. I saw the wine list - quite pricey here. So dinner for 3, including two bottles of wine, came to about US$500.

I really liked our waitress. One of my companions (Korean) must have too. He tried to offer her a tip when paying the bill. Naturally she refused.

Then sitting in the back of my friend's limo, we settled in for the one-half kilometer one-half hour drive and prank-called a mutual friend in L.A.

Yeah, what can I say, that was about the most exciting event of my trip. Tomorrow back home in the afternoon, looking forward to a peaceful weekend?

Darn it, 12 years of coming to Korea, finally having the free time to do the DMZ tour, and Korea's being hit by a typhoon - not the same one that's slamming into Shanghai, I think. Not that I expect the tour to be such a great thing, but as the concierge at my hotel unenthusiastically put it when I asked, "it's a once in a lifetime thing I guess." Well, next trip, assuming that trip isn't in the middle of the Korean winter. Tonight at least I've been promised barbecue and soju; tomorrow back home.

Every day I check the newspaper to see if there's a verdict in the Phil Spector trial. Not that this really means shit to a tree, but I have been a fan of Spector's work for most of my life and am curious to see how this will play out. Seems like yesterday the jury told the judge they are deadlocked at 7-5 (without saying which verdict gets the 7 and which gets the 5). The judge dismissed the jury for the day. Will there be a mistrial? Will the whole thing start all over again and take another couple of years to play out?

Hey, seems like in his new book, Alan Greenspan says "the Iraq war is largely about oil." Well, sure, there was no WMD, there was no Al Qaeda link, what else could it be about except to enrich Bush, Cheney and their cohorts? Here's a couple of facts for ya. Four years ago, the price of oil was $28 a barrel, now it's over $80. In 2007, this price increase means American consumers are out an additional $400 billion. Of course, even that figure pales in comparison to over one million dead and millions displaced. Way to go, Bushie.

Most played album this week is, unexpectedly, the new Springsteen album. I only like about half of it, but there are some tunes that sound a bit different from what he's done before, in particular You'll Be Coming Down and Girls in Their Summer Clothes. "The girls in their summer clothes pass me by" would seem to fit me, especially this week in Korea, though a cursory example of the lyrics would seem to indicate something quite different. In four days, Springsteen will be (gasp!) 58 years old.

Also playing Faces and Joni Mitchell quite a bit this week, no special reason. Here are some Joni lyrics that have always stood out to me:

Rousseau walks on trumpet paths
Safaris to the heart of all that jazz
Through I-bars and girders - through wires and pipes
The mathematic circuits of the modern nights
Through huts, through Harlem, through jails and gospel pews
Through the class on Park and the trash on Vine
Through Europe and the deep deep heart of Dixie blue
Through savage progress cuts the jungle line

In a low-cut blouse she brings the beer
Rousseau paints a jungle flower behind her ear
Those cannibals of shuck and jive
They'll eat a working girl like her alive
With his hard-edged eye and his steady hand
He paints the cellar full of ferns and orchid vines
And he hangs a moon above a five-piece band
He hangs it up above the jungle line

The jungle line, the jungle line
Screaming in a ritual of sound and time
Floating, drifting on the air-conditioned wind
And drooling for a taste of something smuggled in
Pretty women funneled through valves and smoke
Coy and bitchy, wild and fine
And charging elephants and chanting slaving boats
Charging, chanting down the jungle line

There's a poppy wreath on a soldier's tomb
There's a poppy snake in a dressing room
Poppy poison - poppy tourniquet
It slithers away on brass like mouthpiece spit
And metal skin and ivory birds
Go steaming up to Rousseau's vines
They go steaming up to Brooklyn Bridge
Steaming, steaming, steaming up the jungle line

Apple continues to make mistake after mistake.

The new iPods don't work with Linux.

The iPhone has been announced for the UK - once again no 3G and locked into a single vendor.

The latest update to iTunes disables user hacks to make your own ringtones. Apparently after paying hundreds of dollars for a phone, Apple thinks you have to pay them for ringtones rather than simply use music you already own.

Apple's dropping the price of the iPhone by 33% two months after the launch and then offering a partial rebate to people who bought one at the old price only after an uproar further confirms their contempt for their customers.

I'm in a lousy mood today in case you couldn't guess ....

I know that some people from the SCMP look at this blog from time to time, hope they see this.

The New York Times will stop charging for access to parts of its Web site, effective at midnight Tuesday night, reflecting a growing view in the industry that subscription fees cannot outweigh the potential ad revenue from increased traffic on a free site.

The move comes two years to the day after The Times began the subscription program, TimesSelect, which has charged $49.95 a year, or $7.95 a month, for online access to its columnists’ work and to the newspaper’s archives. TimesSelect has been free to print subscribers to The Times, and to some students and educators.

The newspaper said the TimesSelect project had met expectations, drawing 227,000 paying subscribers — out of 787,000 over all — and generating about $10 million a year in revenue.

What changed, The Times said, was that many more readers started coming to the site from search engines and links on other sites instead of coming directly to NYtimes.com. These indirect readers, unable to gain access to articles behind the pay wall and less likely to pay subscription fees than the more loyal direct users, were seen as opportunities for more page views and increased advertising revenue.

“What wasn’t anticipated was the explosion in how much of our traffic would be generated by Google, by Yahoo and some others,” Ms. Schiller said.

Sunday afternoon, a brief moment of frustration. I'm walking the dogs. A beautiful blonde woman is walking in my direction, with her dog. And it's a real dog, not one of those foofoo underarm fashion accessory dogs. We stop. Our dogs sniff each other. (No, I'm not going there, though I guess some might expect me to.) We chat. She's American. We're comparing tales of dog rearing in the US vs HK. And then, as we're talking, I forget the exact context but she slips in the word "we," as in her and her husband. Denied.

Now I'm in Seoul. Staying at the Park Hyatt, which is simply breathtaking. And a fraction of the price of the Park Hyatt in Tokyo. For whatever that means to anyone.

In one of those oddball coincidences in life, I ran into someone I know from HK, someone I haven't seen in 3 years, not merely staying in the same hotel but on the same floor.

Decided to be lazy and just do room service for dinner, in front of the 42 inch flat screen TV watching last night's Emmy awards broadcast. Serrano ham, imported pamigiano reggiano cheese, melon, followed by Australian lamb chops with roasted eggplant. And an amazing warm loaf of sourdough bread accompanied it - crusty and crunch and dusted with flour on the outside, real bread, you know?

I've been coming to Seoul semi-regularly since 1995 and have yet to do any real touristy stuff - hoping to do the DMZ tour this trip. Otherwise I have little idea of what I will do with my downtime here - no shopping, no bar hopping, just work and rest until I go home on Thursday. And hoping for some decent barbecue before I go.

My mother called me in Tokyo last week to wish me a happy new year. At this point, the Jewish holidays completely elude me unless someone reminds me. I just checked and I see that Yom Kippur starts at sundown Friday. I'm not planning on fasting. I suppose I should at least try to avoid pork and shellfish on Saturday, though if I'm going to hell, no need to get there on half measures. Can anyone tell me if the Torah mentions anything about not going to Wanchai on the holiest day of the Jewish calendar?

Today I was told that a cousin's ex-wife died, after an agonizing long battle with cancer. She had a tough life. The cousin has also been ill for years. And they had a daughter together, a beautiful, sweet girl who has also been ill for most of her adult years. I'd like to do something for her, she's about the closest remaining relative I have on my father's side of the family, but so far cannot come up with any serious ideas.

It's all relative, no pun intended. On my mother's side of the family, I'm the poor relation. On my father's side, I'm the successful one. Doesn't mean much either way, just not in the mood to go to sleep yet.

This has been one of those nights where I sat down to do several things, a lot of file management on my computer, adding missing cover art in iTunes and watching Prince of the City, a three hour Sydney Lumet classic that I hadn't seen since its original release (the DVD includes a nice new making-of documentary).

The end result is that I just noticed it's almost 1:30 in the morning and I haven't eaten since around 2 PM. There's not a lot of food in the house tonight, but I don't think I'm in much of a going out mood at this point.

I've been checking out some of the articles on the new iPod line over at ilounge.com and the news isn't good. Initial impressions of the iPod Touch seem to veer towards the negative side of the tracks (though PC Mag rates it 5 stars out of 5). And worse news for the iPod Classic, which apparently is using a new digital-to-analogue converter chip which is much less accurate than the old one. Just the latest in a line of unexpected mis-steps from Apple.

The announcement of a Led Zeppelin "reunion" concert (is it really Zep without Bonzo?) has caused an unprecedented frenzy in the UK. Just 18,000 tickets are available, and the web site which people are supposed to go to in order to enter the ticket lottery has been inundated - 89.5 million attempts to connect in a 12 hour period.

Another article that caught my attention is a NY Times review of Alan Greenspan's new book, The Age of Turbulence. Some excerpts from the review:

Alan Greenspan, who was chairman of the Federal Reserve for nearly two decades, in a long-awaited memoir, is harshly critical of President Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the Republican-controlled Congress, as abandoning their party’s principles on spending and deficits.

In the 500-page book, “The Age of Turbulence: Adventures in a New World,” Mr. Greenspan describes the Bush administration as so captive to its own political operation that it paid little attention to fiscal discipline, and he described Mr. Bush’s first two Treasury secretaries, Paul H. O’Neill and John W. Snow, as essentially powerless.

Mr. Bush, he writes, was never willing to contain spending or veto bills that drove the country into deeper and deeper deficits, as Congress abandoned rules that required that the cost of tax cuts be offset by savings elsewhere. “The Republicans in Congress lost their way,” writes Mr. Greenspan, a self-described “libertarian Republican.”

“They swapped principle for power. They ended up with neither. They deserved to lose” in the 2006 election, when they lost control of the House and Senate.

He praises President Bush for letting the Fed stay independent of political pressure, saying he was scrupulous in not trying to interfere with monetary policy — which he contrasts sharply with the pressure exerted by his father, George H. W. Bush, in the early 1990s. For years, the first President Bush has blamed Mr. Greenspan for contributing to his defeat in 1992 by failing to prevent a recession by cutting interest rates.

Of the presidents he worked with, Mr. Greenspan reserves his highest praise for Bill Clinton, whom he described in his book as a sponge for economic data who maintained “a consistent, disciplined focus on long-term economic growth.”

By contrast, Mr. Greenspan paints a picture of Mr. Bush as a man driven more by ideology and the desire to fulfill campaign promises made in 2000, incurious about the effects of his economic policy, and an administration incapable of executing policy.

Mr. Greenspan has critics as well, and they are likely to weigh in as soon as the book is published. Though he publicly disagreed with Mr. Bush’s supply-side approach to tax cuts, urging Congress to offset the cost with savings elsewhere, he refrained from public criticism that could have shifted the debate. His willingness to criticize now, 18 months after leaving office, may open him to the accusation of failing to speak out when it could have affected policy.

My opinion is that one hundred years from now, when historians are writing the history of the early years of the 21st century (assuming mankind survives that long), one thing that they will leave them stumped will be why more people in a position of authority did not speak up against Bush, Cheney, Rumsfeld sooner. Why was Bush allowed to waste billions of dollars, enrich his friends, radically increase the deficit, illegally wiretap, torture, lie and, oh, yeah, kill a million people? But better late than never and the flow of criticism is rapidly turning into a flood:

In October 2003 Jack Goldsmith, a legal scholar with sterling conservative credentials, was hired to head the Justice Department’s Office of Legal Counsel, which advises the president and the attorney general about the legality of presidential actions. As he was briefed on counterterrorism measures the Bush administration had adopted in the wake of 9/11, Mr. Goldsmith says he was alarmed to discover that many of those policies “rested on severely damaged legal foundations,” that the legal opinions that supported these counterterrorism operations were, in his view, “sloppily reasoned, overbroad, and incautious in asserting extraordinary constitutional authorities on behalf of the president.”

As Mr. Goldsmith recounts in his chilling new book, “The Terror Presidency,” he and his Justice Department colleagues (in consultation with lawyers from the State Department, the Defense Department, the C.I.A. and the National Security Council) reached a consensus in 2003 that the Fourth Geneva Convention (which governs the duties of an occupying power and the treatment of civilians) affords protection to all Iraqis, including those who are terrorists. When he delivered this decision to the White House, he recalls, Mr. Addington exploded: “ ‘The president has already decided that terrorists do not receive Geneva Convention protections,’ he barked. ‘You cannot question his decision.’ ”

The portrait of the Bush administration that Mr. Goldsmith — who resigned from the Office of Legal Counsel in June 2004, only nine months after assuming the post — draws in this book is a devastating one. It is a portrait of a highly insular White House obsessively focused on expanding presidential power and loathe to consult with Congress, a White House that frequently made up its mind about a course of action before consulting with experts, a White House that sidelined Congress in its policymaking and willfully pursued a “go-it-alone approach” based on “minimal deliberation, unilateral action, and legalistic defense.”

Similar portraits, of course, have been drawn by reporters and other former administration insiders, but Mr. Goldsmith’s account stands out by virtue that he was privy to internal White House debates about explosive matters like secret surveillance, coercive interrogation and the detention and trial of enemy combatants. It is also distinguished by Mr. Goldsmith’s writing from the point of view of a conservative who shared many of the Bush White House’s objectives (and who was an ideological ally of John Yoo, one of the main architects of the administration’s legal responses to a post-9/11 world and the author of some of the very opinions Mr. Goldsmith would later call into question). But he found himself alarmed by the Bush White House’s obsession with expanding presidential power, its arrogant unilateralism and its willingness to use what he regarded as careless and overly expansive legal arguments in an effort to buttress its policies.

And this is why the Democrats are in trouble in 2008. They have squandered the mandate from the 2006 election through squabbling and inaction.

On the lighter side, BoingBoing notes that a number of magazines are following in National Geographic's steps by releasing their full back issue archives on DVD-ROM. These include National Lampoon, Rolling Stone, The New Yorker - the latter can also be purchased pre-installed on an 80 gig portable hard drive.

I missed Nine Inch Nails when they played in HK but I see Reznor has done an interesting interview in Beijing. He claims that once his current contract is up, he will release his albums on his own via the internet. He also urges Chinese fans who cannot find legal copies of his albums to download them via the internet for free rather than pay money to pirates for them. "If you cannot find it, I think that downloading from the Internet is a more acceptable option than buying pirated CDs. Our music is easy to find on the Internet, and you might not need to spend much effort to find most of our songs. If you like our songs after you’ve heard them, please feel free to share it with your friends."

Does this surprise anyone?

Workers at a Chinese factory making Disney toys are overworked, underpaid, exposed to dangerous toxins and forced to live in filthy conditions, a labour rights group said in a report Wednesday.

The study, released on the second anniversary of the opening of Hong Kong Disneyland, said factory workers complained they were forced to work 28 days a month and up to 15 hours a day.

Last but not least, I came across a "democracy index" somewhere, I thought Newsweek, in which it said that in the past year the US had fallen from #23 to #35. Can't seem to find it tonight. But in this press freedom index for 2006 in Reporters Without Borders, the US ranks #53. (China is #163, no big shock there. Singapore 146. Hong Kong 58. #1 is a tie between Finland, Iceland, Ireland and Netherlands.) And the Economist recently did their annual "democracy index" - #1 is Sweden, the US is #17, Hong Kong ranks 78, China 138.

Well, it's almost 2:30 AM now, I'm definitely not going out. Time to rummage through the cupboards - could be frozen mac and cheese or a pb&j sandwich at this point.

This afternoon, over to Shibuya again, this time to HMV, then got some quasi-wacky earrings at Silver Angel or Angel Heart or whatever the heck that place is called, and some clothes from some of the small shops around Centa-gai, but ran out of time.

Dinner at a restaurant on the top floor of the NHK building. A mixture of odd things including a little bit of sashimi, largy gloopy bits of tofu and some veggies, finally followed by something that I think was called houba-yaki, larger pieces of grilled meats, done over a charcoal fire, served sliced on a plate with some special salt - they pointed to some huge red rocks that they said were salt rocks imported from Malaysia that they grind down in-house. Tasted like salt to me, sorry.

Had a hefty chunk of Iberian pork and some chicken. And just enough scotch to stay awake and thinking, which was a necessity because my friend had brought me there to discuss a business venture idea. It will probably take six months to a year to bring to fruition but if it happens and I go along with it, it could mean some interesting changes.

Even though this is my last night in town and I have not hit any Roppongi bars, still not in the mood. Tomorrow night I'm home and, well, I'll be doing what I do when I'm at home. Until Monday, when I head to Seoul for a few days.

This has been an okay trip, have had better, have had worse. Not sure if I can make it back here before the end of the year but sometimes it works out that way.

Had literally mountains of sashimi tonight. There was some other stuff, too, and it seemed like every time I was ready to pass out and fall under the table, the waitress would come by with another platter of fish. This was at a place in Ginza, with a line stretching all the way down the block. Luckily we had a reservation - I noted that the one white guy I spotted waiting on line was seated about an hour after we were. The reason for this seems to be the classic combination of high quality and low price.

The table was already laid out with a variety of dishes for us when we sat down. Let's see, a cup with a couple of prawns and some asparagus and sauce. Some crabmeat covered with some goopy green sauce. A boiled snail, still snug in his shell. Pumpkin puree with fish roe covering two scallops. One more, I forget. Plus individual small grills with a couple of pieces of beef, fish, assorted veggies. All of that was just for starters! Then a mountain of sashimi, about ten kinds, all done exactly right. Then there was a plate of cooked fish cheeks in heavy sauce. Then a huge platter of sushi - and along with the usual suspects there was raw crab legs, oh god was that good. Miso soup. Ice cream. I think I'm leaving something out. There was enough food to feed an army. Then, as we were ready to leave, we were each handed a plastic bag with some cooked eel inside, perhaps to eat on the train ride home or as a midnight snack? Add on beer, sake, wine and the bill for 5 came out to around US$300 - amazing for this quality and in Ginza to boot.

I was so bloated after dinner that, after saying goodnight to my companions, I wandered around for a bit, some air to walk the dinner off. I found myself standing in front of Bic Camera, one of the mega electronics stores. It was still open, with an iPod and iPod accessories display out on the street. I was tempted to go in, but in this shop they play their "theme song" every 60 seconds on the PA. "Bic a bic a bic a bic camera." I knew I couldn't deal with that.

So, just back to the hotel, where I've been flipping over to the NY Times and CNN, wondering when a verdict will come down in the Phil Spector trial.

13 years ago, when I first came to Tokyo, I wanted to live here more than anything. And, as it often happens, that dream did not come true. Over the years, across at least 50 return visits, I came to appreciate that Hong Kong was, if nothing else, a far easier place for westerners to live, and started to be grateful that I could maintain my idealized version of Tokyo all these years - staying in 5 star hotels, eating at the most interesting restaurants, traveling everywhere by taxi.

Taxi. One thing that stands out to me is that all of a sudden, for the first time, I'm encountering a lot of taxi drivers who speak at least basic English. Combined with my basic Japanese, this makes the short, expensive trips a lot more pleasant. In Hong Kong, taxi drivers are sitting there in shorts and a t-shirt, with the radio blasting, the two way radio blasting, and them screaming into their mobile phones, every bump in the road proving that their shock absorbers have seen better days. In Tokyo, the taxi is silent and the driver wears a tie and gloves. I suppose the flip side of this equation is that taxi rides here cost about 4 times more than HK taxi rides.

One of my Tokyo staff will be making his first ever visit to Hong Kong next week. I tried to explain the differences in a nutshell and it came down to the very structured external Tokyo vs. the chaotic and anarchic life in Hong Kong.

At this stage, if I was offered a move to Tokyo, I might opt to remain in HK. But Tokyo offers a lot, at least on the consumer level, that HK does not offer.

And in my experience, HK remains sadly unique in the way that the greedy donkey fucking ass raping shit eating real estate developers have taken over the city since the British left, with the rubber stamped approval of what passes in HK for government and the tacit approval of the public at large. Everyone complains but no one does anything because there is no system for anyone to do anything.

The greed of the real estate developers infuses almost every minute of life in HK. The horrendous rents they charge affect the price of everything from a candy bar to a visit to the doctor to a phone call. The hold they have over the retail sector places severe limits on personal choice. And the expensive rents prevent artists from gaining any sort of proper foothold. When your rent is a thousand a month, you take chances. When it's 200,000 a month, you play it safe.
It carries through, too. Everyone kills themself to buy some over priced, poorly constructed rabbit hutch. And then take advantage of the current irrational exuberance of the stock market to rent out their cubbyholes as if they were renting Malibu beachfront property instead of 500 square feet with a view of the carpark next door.

So I guess you can tell that I'm in one of those moods where every place I travel to strikes me as a more human place to live than HK, whatever the faults are of those particular places.

I got into a similar deep funk at the end of 1998, for different reasons. I ended up leaving HK in 99, returning to the US, but soon feeling as though that was a huge mistake and coming back to HK 2 years later.

I do expect this mood will pass. But not tonight.

Of course there are problems all over the world. The news today about wheat prices being at an all time high can't be good news for the majority of the population. The combination of the high price of oil plus the oil companies all announcing record profits doesn't seem to spur anyone to action. Genocide. Disease. Terrorism. Celine Dion announcing a new album.

HK blogger 962 decided to stop blogging and deleted his blog and account. Someone else noticed this and registered the URL. The stuff that's there now is not from the 962 many people have been reading these past several months.

In Japan, Prime Minister Abe "the nationalist leader whose vision of an unapologetically strong Japan sank amid scandals, incompetence and gaffes, said he would step down." Too bad another "the nationalist leader whose vision of an unapologetically strong [country] sank amid scandals, incompetence and gaffes" does not follow that example.

In the Philippines, former President Estrada has been sentenced to life in prison.

In the U.S., Kanye West is upset for not winning any meaningless awards at the MTV Video Music Awards on Sunday. So now he is exploiting Britney Spears for publicity by saying that MTV exploited her by having her open the show instead of him. Way to go, big guy.

Deeply influential jazz keyboardist Joe Zawinul died. He co-led Weather Report and composed In a Silent Way, among other achievements.

Me, I'm off to have sashimi for dinner, possibly followed by some drinks at a favorite watering hole.

This evening went over to the new Tokyo Midtown mega complex in Roppongi. It makes HK's IFC Mall look like smegma. I got a kick out of a pet shop with a "spa" - drop your pooch off for 1,000 yen while you shop till you drop. My eyes popped out of my head when I saw both a Dean & Deluca market and a D&D cafe. Why can't Hong Kong offer this? And my mouth watered even more when we passed this Italian restaurant with an incredibly tempting array of artisinal breads in the window.

We went for dinner at Hal Yamashita, the new Tokyo branch from the Kobe-based chef of the same name.

I believe it is difficult to artificially restrict my culinary style by trying to place it in a specific standard category. Probably the best way to describe the Hal Yamashita culinary style is to say that it does not belong to any of the standard categories but is in a unique category by itself - the Hal Yamashita style. A key underlying element to my style is the use of Japanese culinary aspects and ingredients. For example, I use 8 different soy sauces,10 different salts (mainly sea salt) and 6 different misos. Of course I also use many different vinegars and sakes to enhance dishes. Furthermore, I place an emphasis on the use of organic vegetables from specially contracted farms of which the total farmland area is 120,000 ha.

Other ingredients I use includes organic rice from the Tanba area(which is also located in Hyogo prefecture), herbs from the Bizen Okayama Sasatake Farm (in neighboring Okayama prefecture), special types of tomato from a specially contracted farm in Kobe, Kobe beef,Tajima beef and Awaji beef.

Also I use Harima chicken and Awaji chicken which I sourced by myself and are rare in the market. Whatever the ingredients, they must meet my very strict and high tests to ensure that they are of the finest quality for your benefit and enjoyment.

Despite the above hoohah on the web site, I would say that Yamashita-san does not respect his ingredients. So many of the courses were needlessly fussy and poorly prepared to boot. I knew I was in for a rough time when the first dish of small bites included a seriously overcooked prawn and a small piece of octopus that seemed to require about 15 minutes of chewing to get through. The only dish I appreciated was a small piece of raw kobe beef wrapped around uni and topped with a few bits of caviar. I kept my mouth shut out of politeness but afterwards found out that none of my four companions were at all impressed.

After dinner, with the rain pouring down, decided to just go back to the hotel and chill.

Gary Hart:

Six years ago three thousand Americans lost their lives. They need not have. Their deaths could have been prevented. Their lives could have been saved.

The Bush administration was warned months before 9/11 that terrorists were going to attack America. They did nothing. They have yet to be held accountable for the preventable loss of American lives. Yet the administration blames its critics for not understanding the terrorist threat.

The perpetrator of those American deaths is still at large and the war to eliminate those who harbored him threatens to drag on inconclusively for many years. Instead, administration operatives, with the approval of their masters, find it convenient to use him to create fear, and therefore justify their positions of power.

The United States has suffered more than 30,000 casualties in another war that had nothing to do with those attacks. This folly is producing more haters of America than it can ever possibly eliminate.

Naomi Wolf:

Why am I writing this warning to you right now, in 2007? After all, we have had a Congressional election giving control of the House and the Senate to Democrats. The new leaders are at work. Surely, Americans who have been worried about erosions of civil liberties, and the destruction of our system of checks and balances, can relax now: see, the system corrects itself. It is tempting to believe that the basic machinery of democracy still works fine and that any emergency threatening it has passed -- or, worst case, can be corrected in the upcoming presidential election.

But the dangers are not gone; they are regrouping. In some ways they are rapidly gaining force. The big picture reveals that 10 classic pressures -- pressures that have been used in various times and places in the past to close down pluralistic societies -- were set in motion by the Bush administration to close down our own open society. These pressures have never been put in place before in this way in this nation.

A breather is unearned; we can't simply relax now. The laws that drive these pressures are still on the books. The people who have a vested interest in a less open society may be in a moment of formal political regrouping; but their funds are just as massive as before, their strategic thinking unchanged, and their strategy now is to regroup so that next time their majority will be permanent.

Just watched the Britney clip from MTV. A under-rehearsed fat girl stuffed into a bikini stumbling around on stage looking very stoned.

And now, apropos of nothing, on his recent album, At My Age, Nick Lowe proves he's still capable of very black humor indeed on the song I Trained Her To Love Me. How many guys do you know like this? (No points for suggesting me.)

Do you see the way she lights up when I walk in the room
That's good!
And the skip in her step when we're both out
Walking in the neighborhood
This one's almost done
Now to watch her fall apart
I trained her to love me so I can go ahead and break her heart

If you think that it's depraved and I should be ashamed
So what?
I'm only paying back womankind for all the grief I got
I've got the latest believing forever I'll be true
I trained her to love me now excuse me, I've got work to do

I trained her to love me
And I'm gonna start working on another after this
And when I get that one in a state of bliss
Betray her with a kiss

Well one time one caught up rough
And told me I only do this 'cause I can
And I'm bound to wind up one lonely twisted old man
But look out, here comes a prime contender for my agenda
If ever there was one
And I'm gonna train her to love me
Until it's time to do what must be done

Trained her to love me
And I'm gonna start working on another after this
And when I get that one in a state of bliss
Betray her with a kiss

I trained her to love me
Too late to stop now

Oh, so far, the only new album I've heard in the months since the Nick Lowe one came out that I can say I really, really like (and that's including the new Springsteen album, albeit just one listen so far) is the new one from Rilo Kiley.

Watching the UK version of Hell's Kitchen, season 3. Thankfully it does not have the astonishingly over-exposed Gordon Ramsay and his manufactured tantrums. Has the far more interesting Marco Pierre White, billed here as "the only man to make Gordon Ramsay cry." ("I did not make him cry, it was his choice to cry.") Ramsay of course was one of White's proteges and infamously ripped him off on his departure. After watching White in action, I think I now want to read his recent bio.

The deal here is that instead of chefs, the contestants are 10 very minor celebrities. The only ones I recognize are former model/actress Kelly LeBrock and blue eyed soul singer Paul Young. The contestants can barely cook an egg and are given a single day to learn how to prepare all the dshes. Apparently the winner is decided by audience vote. No idea what the prize is.

Apparently Britney's comeback appearance on last night's MTV Awards was a total disaster. After her poor attempts at lip syncing and disspirited dancing, hostess Sarah Silverman commented, "She is amazing! I mean, she is 25 years old and she’s already accomplished ... everything she’s going to accomplish in life."

So I'm in Tokyo. If this isn't the girl watching capitol of the world, then it's some place I've never been. There are some prime girl watching spots in Hong Kong, to be sure. But Tokyo wins in terms of both quantity AND quality. After awhile, it's not as much fun as you might think.

My usual first night in town. Over to Shibuya and Tower Records. Didn't really come up with many CDs, I guess I'm mostly caught up in that area. Did get the new edition of Kerouac "On the Road" the original scroll manuscript.

Then over to my usual first night dinner, yakitori at Nan Ban Tei. Sitting near me at the counter were two vaguely cute girls sloshing down sake and staring and smiling in my direction. Naturally neither of them spoke any English. They waved goodbye as they left and their seats were quickly filled by two of the only non-cute girls in Shibuya. My cue to pay the bill, return to the hotel and take a bath.

The rest of the week? Work, work, work, work, work.

Go over hear if you wanna hear Norah Jones cover Arcade Fire. Not bad at all.

And go over here to watch Amy Winehouse's simply amazing performance at the Mercury Prize Ceremony.

Here's the tracklist for a DVD of Bob Dylan's Newport Appearances to be released on October 30th, via Billboard Magazine. "The film includes Dylan's rehearsal with his electric band Mike Bloomfield (guitar), Sam Lay (drums), Jerome Arnold (bass), Al Kooper (organ) and Barry Goldberg (piano), plus two of the three songs they performed during their set ("Maggie's Farm" and "Like a Rolling Stone"; "It Takes a Lot to Laugh, it Takes a Train to Cry" is omitted). Dylan then returned to the stage for solo versions of "Mr. Tambourine Man" and "It's All Over Now, Baby Blue."

"All I Really Want To Do" (7/24/1965 - afternoon workshop)

1963:
"North Country Blues" (7/26 afternoon workshop)
"With God on Our Side" (with Joan Baez - 7/26 afternoon workshop and 7/28 night performance)
"Talkin' World War III Blues" (7/26 night performance)
"Who Killed Davey Moore?" (7/27 afternoon workshop)
"Only a Pawn in Their Game" (7/26 night performance)
"Blowin' in the Wind" (with the Freedom Singers, Joan Baez and Peter, Paul and Mary - 7/26 night performance)

1964:
"Mr. Tambourine Man" (7/24 afternoon workshop)
Johnny Cash sings "Don't Think Twice, It's All Right" (night performance)
Joan Baez sings "Mary Hamilton" as Bob Dylan (7/24 night performance)
"It Ain't Me, Babe" (with Joan Baez - 7/24 night performance)
Joan Baez interview
"With God on Our Side" (with Joan Baez - 7/26 night performance)
"Chimes of Freedom" (7/26 night performance)

1965
"If You Gotta Go, Go Now" (7/24 afternoon workshop)
"Love Minus Zero/No Limit" (7/24 afternoon workshop)
Daytime rehearsal with Dylan's electric band
"Maggie's Farm" (with electric band - 7/25 night performance)
"Like a Rolling Stone" (with electric band - 7/25 night performance)
"Mr. Tambourine Man" (7/25 night performance)
"It's All Over Now, Baby Blue" (7/25 night performance)

Excellent interview here with William Gibson, who says that Deadwood is the greatest television America has ever produced.

From the review of a book called The Warhol Economy by Elizabeth Currid, reviewed by Christine B. Whelan. I want to emphasize one line here first, "she argues that cities should actively support nightclubs as a breeding ground for creativity and a net positive to the city's economy and livability."

The take-away message of this doctoral-dissertation turned semi-popular book is that art and culture—and the nightclubs, catwalks and gallery openings that are so much a part of those industries—are an integral part of a city's growth and vitality. Put simply, in The Warhol Economy, Currid seeks out to prove the economic and social importance of New York City's amorphous cultural pursuits.

The Warhol Economy—with a nod to Andy Warhol's ability to encourage the intersection between art and commerce—encourages urban planners and policymakers to take notice of the creative industries: Fashion, art and cultural industries combined are the fourth largest employer in New York City, just behind management, professional services and finance. Fashion shows bring out-of-towners to the city. Broadway attracts millions. And in this hip world, deals are not only made in the boardroom—they are also made on the dance floor, argues Currid, so nightlife and vibrant social networks are crucial for these industries to flourish.

First, encourage a happening night life and don't crack down on nightclubs: Nightclubs like Lotus and Bungalow 8—or whatever the cooler club-of-the-moment is any instant—are the new sites of business, where creative minds set the trends over cosmopolitans at 4 a.m., just as hedge fund partners might close a deal over lunch at the 21 Club. As in all industries, people you meet socially become the people you do business with. And in this business, it just so happens that networking happens very late at night, where some or all of the interested parties are drunk or on drugs.

Currid takes a sympathetic view of nightclubs, brushing off complaints about the noise, litter and disorderly behavior surrounding many of these establishments in the wee hours of the morning. Indeed, she argues that cities should actively support nightclubs as a breeding ground for creativity and a net positive to the city's economy and livability. While her thesis is sound—the cultural economy is taste-driven, not performance driven, so social dynamics play a determining role—a larger discussion of the social ills of alternative business venues would make her argument even more persuasive.

Second, offer formal art and cultural accreditation programs: Artists need a stamp of approval so they can sell their art on the mass market. And the cultural world Currid describes is not for starving artists. Martinis are $15 and cover charges and table service can make an evening out a several-hundred-dollar proposition. This is the commercial art and culture scene, the fashionistas who have "made it" enough to party alongside models and wealthy investment bankers. By the time you’ve finished with her book, you might think Currid wants the state to pick up bar tabs for aspiring nightlife mavens.

Third, understand that cities that make room for art and culture also increase tourism: According to economists Joseph Pine and James Gilmore, ours is now an “experience economy,” where goods and services are sold by wrapping them in the package of memories—concerts, fashion shows, trendy restaurants or music festivals. The art and culture industry of New York City understands how to combine the fungibility of commodities and the memorable nature of experiences to make even the least cool among us feel a part of the city's trends.

Hong Kong is so busy trying to reinvent itself for the 21st century, to find some new way to live in the ever-lengthening shadow of Big Mama China.

So their ideas give us useless things like Cyberport and the world's smallest Disneyland (so cute, you can fit it in your pocket and take it home with you) and a cable car ride that never works, all while destroying anything related to history or legacy. The problem is that the people in charge don't have any idea of how to do anything properly and end up doing everything ass backwards.

I was shocked that an article in The Standard, a sidebar to the Pavarotti obit, was headlined "Hong Kong Opera Fans Stunned By Pavarotti's Death" (or something like that). (Now, given that the guy was 71 years old and had been ill for awhile, how would anyone find this news stunning? And oddly enough, in the article itself, they are unable to quote anyone saying, "I was stunned by the news.") I was shocked because who knew there are opera fans in Hong Kong?

New York, London, Paris, Munich, everybody's talkin' 'bout pop muzik. Singapore has WOMAD and Zouk Out. Japan has the Fuji Rock Festival. Hong Kong gets Glen Campbell and Andy Williams, rolled out on a wheelchair, in an oxygen tent, singing songs that remind my great-grandmother about the good old days.

But we will save Hong Kong by rebranding it and repositioning it as the epicenter of 21st century cool.

After tearing down every structure that is more than 10 minutes old, we must remove all final traces of the past by changing the name, a bitter reminder of colonization and oppression. No longer to be called Hong Kong, there will be a new destination for the world's movers and shakers, called something like Gadzookz! or Picklefeather or Rumpty Tumptyland.

Fill in the harbor and create an entire zone under a sparkling iridescent dome devoted to entertainment and hedonism, a place filled with museums, concert halls, night clubs, discos. A place where recreational drugs will not only be legal, they will be compulsory. To be built via a contract secretly awarded to Li Ka-Shing or Sun Hung Kai - there's no time to evaluate competitive bids, we must move now!

More later. All of this frenzied brain activity - need a nap.

If you want decent sashimi in Hong Kong, you gotta be prepared to pay for it. I'm sure there are a dozen or more decent places to go but I only know two.

Even though I'm going to Tokyo next week, where I will consume the world's finest sashimi (and on an expense account, no less), I've had this hankering for some decent fish for weeks now. My friend tonight was also in the mood for sashimi and rather than say, "Oh, I'm going to Japan next week, can you choose something else?" I simply said, "I know a good place nearby."

So I steered us to Rei Sushi at the IFC. It's one of those places that receives daily shipments from Tokyo, so you're paying for that. And you're paying for them paying IFC rent, surely not a bargain.

Normally you have to book in advance to get a table here. Walk-ins can generally get a seat at the sushi bar. So I was surprised that at 8 PM we were able to walk in and get a table.

Rather than deal with ordering piece by piece, I went for a platter - 6 kinds of fish, 3 pieces each, HK$540. There was maguro, toro, aji tataki, yellowtail, ark shell, some kind of prawn (raw but bigger than the one used for ama ebi). Still hungry after that, went for a couple of their specials. Saury tataki (I loves the tataki style). Tuna cheek slices (had never tried this).

I'm not sure I could select a favorite from the above, it was all really nice. Fresh, good color, good taste, classically presented.

But like I said, the good stuff ain't cheap here. Accompanied by a small bottle of sake and some green tea, the bill came out to $1,200.

(The other place I like is, of course, Sushi Hiro in Causeway Bay.)

I've previously mentioned upcoming film Shoot 'Em Up. Here's a full scene from the upcoming release. It's quite NSFW - Clive Owen having sex with Monica Bellucci, gun men enter the room, massive gunplay ensues, all while Owen and Bellucci continue to make love.

It certainly looks like this movie is trying to redefine "over the top" or at least outdo my previous trash fave Crank.

As I expected, people who paid $599 for an iPhone are pissed off that the price has been cut by $200. The new price, $400, is roughly HK$3,200 (same as the iTouch). I wonder if that Wanchai security guard still feels his iPhone was worth the HK$12,000 he paid?

The above-linked article also mentions that Apple is dumping remaining stock on the 4 gig iPhones for $299.

In the idiotic battle between NBC/Universal and Apple, Universal has announced that the upcoming NBC TV shows will be available on Amazon's new digital store. Question 1 - what will the pricing be? Question 2 - enough with this anti-consumer bullshit of heavily DRM-ed material only available through single outlets. Oops, that's not a question.

Hell, I know I want the iPod Touch, why agonize over it? I can wait until it's actually released and in short supply and every shop in the computer centers marking it up by an extra 10% or go online and order it now and get it engraved as well.

And so I did just that.

Just kept hitting refresh still the store came back online and placed the order. You can probably guess the engraving I selected. First line "Spike" second line "Hongkie Town".

Judging from how slow the web site is, either it's hosted on servers in the US or everyone else in Hong Kong also stayed up late and is placing their order now.

Ship date is given at Friday, 28 September. Monday's a holiday, means I'll have it Tuesday, 2 October. Maybe a couple of days after they start appearing in stores, but at least I won't be paying more than list price and can sleep soundly knowing that there's one with my name on it (literally) heading my way.

Wonder if I'm gonna need a headphone adapter like the ones the iPhone seems to need?

Being the nerd I am, I stayed home tonight clicking on refresh every minute on both Gizmodo and Engadget as they each liveblogged the new Apple product announcments. In case you haven't seen it in 27 other places already, here's what's new:

iPhone - roll your own ringtones. But with some gotchas. It appears that this is limited to working with songs you've purchased on iTunes and you've gotta pay an extra 99 cents for the privilege of taking a song you've already purchased and turning it into a ringtone. Still, I suspect this will be successful.

Oh, and they're dropping the price of the 8 gig model from $599 to $399. It appears the 4 gig model is being discontinued. Bet all those people who stood in line for days to pay $599 (or more on eBay) are feeling great right now.

iPod Shuffle - all that's new here are some new colors.

iPod Nano - major revamp to the form factor. Now a 2 inch screen capable of showing video at the same resolution as the full size iPod. A new UI that includes coverflow plus built-in games including Sudoku. Battery life 24 hours for music, 5 hours for video. 4 gig version for $149, 8 gig version for $199. In stores by this weekend (at least in the US).

iPod Classic - the original iPod slightly rebranded. Metal case. The new UI. $249 for the 80 gig and $349 for a new 160 gig version. Battery life? 40 hours audio, 7 hours video. Also in stores this weekend.

iPod Touch - basically this is the iPhone without phone capabilities. The same size but thinner. 3.5 inch widescreen, multi-touch, WiFi, Safari browser built in. I was hoping to see an 80 gig iPod with that big screen, but the iPhone touch has an 8 gig version for $299 and a 16 gig version for $399. Shipping by the end of the month.

Along with the WiFi features of the Touch, there will now be a WiFi iTunes store - meaningless to most people in HK of course.

And one more bizarre feature on the Touch. If you're in a Starbucks and hear a song you like, you can tap the icon to buy the song even if you don't know what it is. Rolled out to Starbucks locations in the US first, of course. Snore.

So now .... being an iPodholic, the question is ... do I go for the 160 gig classic, with its increased storage space and battery life? Perhaps I'll keep my 80 gig for travel and get the Touch, hoping that 16 gig of music will be enough for me when I'm just walking around locally. The WiFi + Safari is nice, but WiFi is nowhere near as ubiquitous in HK as it should be yet.

I belong to the "if it's brown, flush it down; if it's yellow, then it's mellow" school of thought. (Obviously I don't live in Singapore.) And being a single guy, I almost never put the seat down.

Now, of my two dogs, the golden retriever sometimes seems so smart that I halfway expect him to start talking to me in English.

And then there are other times .... he likes to drink from the toilet. He knows where his water bowl is. It's a huge bowl. I make sure there is always clean water there. From where he often stretches out, the toilet is about 5 feet closer than the water bowl and I suppose he's getting old and lazy. So he likes to drink from the toilet.

This afternoon, I didn't flush. And he was just lapping it up like a tasty treat.

So, yeah, sometimes I remember he's just a dog.

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

As previously mentioned, sometimes I miss American style Chinese food. I'd heard there was this delivery place called Chopsticks, a branch of some local Cantonese restaurant, that was delivering what they call "Chinatown food" along with standard Cantonese fare.

I checked out the menu (on Cuisine Courier) and ordered three dishes tonight. Okay, they did put fortune cookies in there, I'll give 'em credit for that. But the food itself was weird. Just like American Chinese food is a bizarre approximation of real Chinese food, this was a bizarre approximation of American Chinese food. As if someone had described it to them or they'd read about it in a book but never actually had the "real fake" thing. So an approximation of an approximation. And judging from how my jaw has felt all evening, loaded with MSG. So that part's authentic anyway.

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

Monday night, one of the security guards at one of the bars in Wanchai was sitting in front of the bar playing with his iPhone. Yes, it's the first one I've actually seen "in the flesh." He said it was fully unlocked and he could make and receive calls with a local SIM card. I asked him how much it cost. He said $12,000 (US$1,550). (I don't even want to think about what this guy's monthly salary must be and how he probably spent 2 or 3 or even 4 weeks wages on a phone.)

Yes, it's a lovely thing. I'm gonna wait.

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

Doesn't it strike anyone as strange that Steve Jobs gets on his high horse and lectures the world about how DRM is bad and how it's not his fault, it's the fault of the big bad record companies, and then he does this exclusive rights, DRM-like deal with AT&T on one of his products?

What also really bothers me is that here is someone who always touts the superiority of his products. And he comes out with something that is heavily dependent on the internet for usage. And then he goes an locks it in with the company that offers the slowest crappiest internet connections of any mobile phone company in the US?

At any rate, in another day we'll know the results of the latest Apple product announcements and what we'll be waiting in line to buy.

Yes, like so many others, I do worship daily at the Church of the Ipod. But sometimes enough is enough.

Next week, 4 nights in Tokyo. 3 of those nights already booked for business dinners (including one night with the inventor of the DVD; have tons of HD questions to ask him). 4th night probably to be spent in Tower Records.

Following week, Seoul. Gotta be there for 6 days even though I only need to be there for 3 because return flights all full. So I will be there through the weekend. Seoul is not one of my favorite cities and no idea what I will do on the weekend. I suppose try to take the DMZ tour or walk around Dongdaemun or something along those lines. Need to find a bulgoki place with English menu. Will be staying at the new-ish Park Hyatt, their web site says they have live jazz in their bar.

The SCMP today tells us that:

Upstairs rooms in many cafes in the city's entertainment districts are being turned into illicit smoking dens in defiance of anti-smoking laws that took effect in January.

Guided to venues in Mong Kok, Causeway Bay and Tsim Sha Tsui by internet forums, smokers are able to indulge their habit over food and drink away from the public gaze.

A South China Morning Post reporter who visited one such upstairs retreat posing as a customer saw people lighting up and being offered ashtrays despite the walls being plastered with "no smoking" signs.

Ten to 15 customers were smoking during the reporter's visit.

The smokers carried their packets of cigarettes into the room and lit up before placing their orders, seeming to know beforehand that they were allowed to do so.

Asked if smoking was allowed in the cafe, a waiter replied cautiously, "Yes, secretly", and then he asked if an ashtray was needed.

Sadly, they do not give the names and addresses of any of these establishments, many of which I'm sure I would want to patronize. I am guessing that the internet forums - none of which are named in the article - are probably all Chinese language ones.

And, sorry, just gotta ask, what the hell do they mean, "posing as a customer"????? Was he or she wearing a disguise? A long trench coat and a huge fake mustache, an accent and a big sign saying, "I'm not a reporter, I'm a customer!" "Hey mister man, I am a customer. Please give me an ashtray so that I can pretend to be smoking in your fine and reputable establishment. And when you give me the bill, I will pay you with the funny money that gets burned at funerals. No, I am not a reporter! I am an architect!"

A sidebar to this story offers the following - that the number of summonses given out has been increasing, though the reason is not given - more inspectors doing more inspections or more people sick of this law.


The article notes something important:

However, under the anti-smoking ordinance the venue manager could not be prosecuted for allowing people to smoke, the office said.

So if the "venue manager" cannot be prosecuted and all of the risks lie with the smoker, the manager has no need to try to get them to stop.

I have no desire to force my smoke in the direction of non-smokers and I agree that the previous situation where almost every place allowed smoking and few had truly separate smoking sections was not a good thing. But I think that as long as cigarettes themselves remain legal we should have a selection of venues that allow smoking. Yes, I know, today we have that, but that option will be gone in less than two years.

If you were in Wanchai Saturday or Sunday night, you might have noticed something of an increased police presence, even though there's no US Navy or major convention in town.

The reason is that some idiot or idiots has been making death threats to the security staff at Heat and Dreams II - and threatening their families as well.

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

Spicy Fingers - from the people who brought you Sticky Fingers in TST - should be opening soon in Wanchai at the site of the former Chinatown/Rick's.

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

Have you tried the new 2nd branch of Ebeneezer in Wanchai? Next to White Stag. It has more seats and tables and more menu items - pizza, more Indian dishes - and bottled beers are $15 all the time.

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

Canny Man has some sort of whiskey tasting evening coming up soon, complete with an expert from Scotland. Could be interesting. I don't see the info on their web site but check the latest issue of BC for the deets. I see lately they're advertising themselves as a Premier League Free Zone and I don't quite get why they would advertise that they're not showing football. I suppose for some people that's a plus?

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

Wish I had some other Wanchai news to share but that seems to be it for now ....

Larry Craig served as a senator for 16 years. During that time he voted against any law that proposed equal rights for homosexuals. According to Wikipedia, he was an outspoken critic of Bill Clinton and his affair with Monica Lewinsky. A real "family values" kind of guy, as long as your idea of family values conformed to his.

Then he was arrested for soliciting gay sex in a public toilet. Then he pled guilty. Then he claimed that he wasn't gay and that he thought that by pleading guilty the whole thing would go away. Yesterday he resigned.

Aside from the hypocrisy of the above - that this gay basher might actually be gay, that he has been lying every time his lips move, that a married man who condemned other married men for having affairs has himself been caught soliciting sex, an elected representative in the public eye for 20 years who thought that a guilty plea wouldn't be noticed by the press or his peers - let's step back and look at the act itself. What did he plead guilty to?

He went into a toilet. He made some motions with his hands. He tapped his foot. He tapped the side of another guy's foot with his. That really seems to be the sum total of what he did.

He did not use lewd language. He did not expose his private parts. He did not touch someone else (aside from the shoe tap). He did not solicit a minor.

Now, go to the same state, go to some bar on a Saturday night, and I'll bet there are thousands of guys who get drunk, go up to some girl, touch her somewhere with their hands, and say something along the lines of "hey baby let's fuck." Had Larry Craig gone up to some woman in a bar and said, "hey baby, I'm a Senator with a 12 inch cock, let's get it on," he might have been seen as sleazy but would not have been hauled before a judge.

So some are probably rejoicing that this bad guy has been brought down and publicly shamed. But there's another issue here - the primitive and illogical demonization of homosexuality that needs to be addressed.

Not that Hong Kong is any shining light in terms of equal rights ....

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

The internet, especially the blogosphere, seems to foster a mob mentality. There are examples of this everywhere.

A recent case in point is the 17 year old girl competing in a beauty pageant who completely flubbed an answer to a question. The Youtube video of this has been linked everywhere. I assume anyone who is interested has seen it by now.

In her defense, she claims she couldn't hear the question. This may be true. And, she's 17 years old and on national television, of course she's going to be nervous.

Now she's in demand, appearing on talk shows. Bikini photos all over the internet. Capitalizing on her 15 minutes of fame.

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


Take a look at the above photo. A homeless person? A serial killer?

No, it's Rick Rubin, producer extraordinaire and president of Columbia Records.

"Columbia is stuck in the dark ages. I have great confidence that we will have the best record company in the industry, but the reality is, in today's world, we might have the best dinosaur. Until a new model is agreed upon and rolling, we can be the best at the existing paradigm, but until the paradigm shifts, it's going to be a declining business. This model is done."

Read an extremely long but also quite interesting story about him here.