Hongkie Town

Saturday night, at Delaney's in Wanchai with friends. Drinking coke (sigh). The bar is busy but not full. It's around midnight and I'm hungry.

I call over a waitress and ask her if the kitchen is still open. She asks someone else and tells me no. I say, okay, in that case, can I go next door and get a slice of pizza and bring it back here? She asks someone else and tells me the kitchen is still open. Funny how that works.

She brings a menu, we order a couple of things from the snack menu, keep it simple and easy, right?

The football starts. Sorry, to me it's just a bunch of men in shorts and knee socks being paid a lot of money to run around and kick a ball while 80,000 people watch, get drunk and beat the shit out of each other to relieve the tedium. Yes, even at the next table, the men there decided to randomly wrestle with each other, repeatedly knocking chairs into our table, forcing us to grab our beverages before they spilled on the floor. No, they never apologized.

The high point of the game for me was when the camera focused in on some fat bald guy in the crowd downing a plastic cup of lager. They held the shot while he drank the entire pint. It got cheers from the crowd in the bar so I suppose it was the high point for a lot of people. It's probably on YouTube by now. Which is good because I think the amateur wrestlers at the next table missed it. One of the men boys managed to get his head under the other man's boy's t-shirt while their girlfriends looked on and laughed. Ah, memories are made of such as these!

The food still hasn't come. I glance up at the game and see they're at the 27 minute mark. I ask a friend if she recalls when I placed my order. "Before the match started," she replies.

So I wave someone over, the manager judging by the way she was dressed. Excuse me, I say, I ordered food 30 minutes ago and I still haven't received it.

"You have to wait. There's only one person in the kitchen!" So much for the customer is always right, so much for "let me check on that for you sir." I didn't see anyone else eating in the bar at that point. Though to be fair, Delaney's is spread over two floors and perhaps 30 people on the other floor had ordered a ricetaffel when I ordered my potato skins.

The food came about 5 minutes later. I think I would have been better off with the lousy pizza from Cul de Sac (the wrong dough and the wrong sauce but at least they sell it by the slice). The potato skins didn't suck but the chili with melted cheese and sour cream served on top of slices of potato was interesting in concept and might have worked had it not been the worst chili I ever had in my life. Yes, I know, serves me freaking right for ordering chili in a faux Irish pub.

Oh, I saw a hot blond woman in the bar, she could have won a Scarlett Johansson look-alike contest. She was sitting at a table with two guys. Both were younger than me. And bigger than me. And at least one of them was presumably happier than me. And I saw a guy wearing a t-shirt that said, "If you like Johnny Depp you'll probably like me."

The game over, my friends departed. I went over to 7-11 to get an iced tea for the road. My crazy taxi driver friend (the bald one who's always parked in front of Joe Banana's) asked if I had my car, asked if I'd been drinking, looked at my eyes, gave me the okay to drive home. And so I did.

Do you get the feeling I'm in a lousy mood?

David Mamet is one of my all time favorites. Of course everyone knows Glengarry Glen Ross, but as a director his films have rarely risen beyond the arthouse circuit, even though he's almost as macho in his approach as John Milius. He loves doing films about con games; they show up prominently in House of Games, Spanish Prisoner and Heist but also figure in some way in almost all of his other films, even his comedies which include Things Change and State & Main. I only just found out that he wrote the screenplay for Ronin (under an assumed name, don't know why), a film that I seem to watch once every couple of months - amazing on every level (check this recent review on Pajiba).

So of course I was eager to see his latest, Redbelt, even if the plot didn't sound too promising. A martial arts instructor who has never been in a competition is forced to enter one. I knew in Mamet's hands it wasn't going to be a Jean Claude Van Damme cartoon, and it isn't. But the set-up to get him there is far too complex and I don't think some of the key points are sufficiently fleshed out. The cast is uniformly excellent, starring Chiwetel Ejiofor (from American Gangster) and Tim Allen in a rare straight role. Lots of Mamet's regulars also appear - wife Rebecca Pidgeon, Ricky Jay, Joe Mantegna, David Paymer. The movie had me for its first two thirds but the final third drops the ball. Again, some of the key questions are explained too fast, the fight scene (I don't want to spoil it but it is not the fight you are expecting to see) is neither well shot nor well edited and the ending too abrupt. I get the feeling I'm going to watch it again but for now I feel let down.

I approached Forgetting Sarah Marshall with exactly zero expectations. After all, how much would you expect from a movie that is written by and stars Jason Segel, the third male lead in sitcom How I Met Your Mother. Director Nicholas Stoller doesn't have much of a track record - the screenplay to the unnecessary Fun With Dick & Jane remake and some sitcom scripts. I did know that it was produced by Judd Apatow but hadn't noticed the 85% score at Rotten Tomatoes.

And I loved it. If there are only about a dozen plots in the world, this one goes down a road we've gone down hundreds of times before. Guy loses girl, guy moans about losing her, guy gets another girl. And plotwise, it goes exactly where you expect it to go. The joy is in getting there. And in this film, it gets there funny and it never has any of the cringe moments so prevalent in romcoms.

Here's the set-up. Segel composes music for a CSI-like TV show that stars his girlfriend, Sarah Marshall, along with Billy Baldwin. When she dumps him, he heads to Hawaii to forget, only to end up in the same hotel as Sarah and her new boyfriend, an obnoxious British rock star.

All of the expected Apatow elements are there - the combination of raunch on the surface with unexpected sweetness and sincerity underneath. Yes, Jason Segel has two full frontal nude scenes. Kristen Bell is okay while Mila Kunis has never been hotter. Apatow regulars Bill Hader, Jonah Hill and Paul Rudd all show up but it's possible that 30 Rock's Jack McBrayer comes close to stealing the film as a very nervous, very Christian newlywed.

I'm gonna have to watch this one again because I know my girlfriend is gonna love it.

Sunday afternoon. I should be doing some work around the house but think I'll put another movie on now.

View A: Sarah Palin is female, which will attract many of the Hillary supporters who are irrationally cheesed off with Obama for beating their woman in the primaries. She is a former beauty show contestant, so she is photogenic. She is anti-abortion and so attracts the far right Christian nutjobs. She is relatively young to balance against McCain's extreme old age. She'll look good on TV and will score highly with those who vote based on image and soundbites. And so she is a good choice for the Republicans.

View B: Sarah Palin has no foreign policy experience, no national experience. She has served half a term as governor of her state. Her major political experience comes from being mayor of a town of 9,000 people and 72 year old McCain wants to put her one heartbeat away from the presidency. She has used the power of her office to have her former brother-in-law, a state trooper, fired because he is divorced from her sister and in the midst of a nasty court battle over custody and visitation of their children. She is anti-abortion and pro-drilling for oil in protected areas of Alaska. And so she is a good choice for Democrats.

In other news,

The BBC reports:

A man who chose "Lloyds is pants" as his telephone banking password said he found it had been changed by a member of staff to "no it's not".

Steve Jetley, from Shrewsbury, said he chose the password after falling out with Lloyds TSB over insurance that came free with an account.

He said he was then banned from changing it back or to another password of "Barclays is better".

I think it's time to change my HSBC password.

Interesting article from The Independent (London) carried on Content Agenda about potential strategy shifts at iTunes:

Here's the fundamental question: what is the point of the iTunes store if music is free?

Rumors are circulating that China Mobile will be the one selling the iPhone in China after all.

Protests in Thailand against the Prime Minister seem to be intensifying. Protesters are still occupying the PM's compound and for awhile managed block airport entrances in Phuket, Krabi and Hat Yai, causing cancellations of some flights. Employees of the train system and Thai air are talking about going on strike.

A. L. Nanik writes in a letter to the SCMP that "there are thousands of foreign domestic helpers who come here with bad intentions." Mr. or Ms. Nanik offers no proof of that assertion. Why does the SCMP continually allow this kind of nonsense to dirty up its pages?

Other stuff that's caught my eye so far today

Four international record companies quit industry trade group in HK - Content Agenda (scmp)

Angry fans threaten to boycott and pirate Fox because of Watchmen - Content Agenda (usa today)

Facebook now a major target for hackers - Content Agenda (iht)

Sugarsync for iPhone - "real over-the-air remote file access"

The reason for iPhone's 3G reception problems uncovered - TechCrunch

Krispy Kreme cheddar bacon cheeseburgers - SlashFood

Waiter Rant's book to be translated into Chinese and published in the Mainland. How will a non-tipping society take to this book?

Another meme. Very Good Eats (via Serious Eats) has a list of 100 foods everyone should taste at least once in their lifetime.

"The list includes fine food, strange food, everyday food and even some pretty bad food - but a good omnivore should really try it all."

Again, an odd list and just one person's opinion. What's not here that you'd put on your list? The first thing that came to mind for me was laksa. Then sushi. Then I thought about beef rendang, satay, korean bbq, tonkatsu, xiao long bao, chocolate egg creams (and malteds and milk shakes), Reese's peanut butter cups, very dark chocolate, California burritos, shepherd's pie, chicken fried steak ....

(I've yet to find chicken fried steak in HK? With white gravy and lumpy mashed potatoes? Has anyone found it?)

1) Copy this list into your blog or journal, including these instructions.
2) Bold all the items you’ve eaten.
3) Cross out any items that you would never consider eating.
4) Optional extra: Post a comment here at www.verygoodtaste.co.uk linking to your results.

1. Venison
2. Nettle tea
3. Huevos rancheros (I don't eat eggs)
4. Steak tartare
5. Crocodile
6. Black pudding
7. Cheese fondue
8. Carp
9. Borscht
10. Baba ghanoush
11. Calamari
12. Pho
13. PB&J sandwich
14. Aloo gobi
15. Hot dog from a street cart (one summer in NYC I actually had this job)
16. Epoisses
17. Black truffle
18. Fruit wine made from something other than grapes
19. Steamed pork buns
20. Pistachio ice cream
21. Heirloom tomatoes
22. Fresh wild berries
23. Foie gras
24. Rice and beans
25. Brawn, or head cheese
26. Raw Scotch Bonnet pepper
27. Dulce de leche
28. Oysters
29. Baklava
30. Bagna cauda
31. Wasabi peas
32. Clam chowder in a sourdough bowl
33. Salted lassi (though I prefer mango lassi)
34. Sauerkraut
35. Root beer float
36. Cognac with a fat cigar
37. Clotted cream tea
38. Vodka jelly/Jell-O
39. Gumbo
40. Oxtail
41. Curried goat
42. Whole insects
43. Phaal
44. Goat’s milk
45. Malt whisky from a bottle worth £60/$120 or more
46. Fugu
47. Chicken tikka masala
48. Eel
49. Krispy Kreme original glazed doughnut
50. Sea urchin
51. Prickly pear
52. Umeboshi
53. Abalone
54. Paneer
55. McDonald’s Big Mac Meal
56. Spaetzle
57. Dirty gin martini
58. Beer above 8% ABV
59. Poutine
60. Carob chips
61. S’mores
62. Sweetbreads
63. Kaolin
64. Currywurst
65. Durian
66. Frogs’ legs
67. Beignets, churros, elephant ears or funnel cake
68. Haggis
69. Fried plantain
70. Chitterlings, or andouillette
71. Gazpacho
72. Caviar and blini
73. Louche absinthe
74. Gjetost, or brunost
75. Roadkill
76. Baijiu
77. Hostess Fruit Pie
78. Snail
79. Lapsang souchong
80. Bellini
81. Tom yum
82. Eggs Benedict (I don't eat eggs)
83. Pocky
84. Tasting menu at a three-Michelin-star restaurant.
85. Kobe beef
86. Hare
87. Goulash
88. Flowers
89. Horse
90. Criollo chocolate
91. Spam
92. Soft shell crab
93. Rose harissa
94. Catfish
95. Mole poblano
96. Bagel and lox
97. Lobster Thermidor
98. Polenta
99. Jamaican Blue Mountain coffee (I don't like coffee)
100. Snake

Full transcript of Obama's nomination acceptance speech here.

Just one of many bits that I liked:

The times are too serious, the stakes are too high for this same partisan playbook. So let us agree that patriotism has no party. I love this country, and so do you, and so does John McCain.

The men and women who serve in our battlefields may be Democrats and Republicans and independents, but they have fought together, and bled together, and some died together under the same proud flag. They have not served a red America or a blue America; they have served the United States of America.

So I've got news for you, John McCain: We all put our country first.

My company sponsors a "volunteer day" each year. Said day being on a Saturday because volunteering is important but not if it interferes with making money.

This year we are offered two choices.

The first choice is "lesson on moon cake & lantern making at XXXXX with mentally challenged youth."

The second is more intriguing. "Enjoy a reminiscent market party at XXXXX with dementia elderly."

I have no idea what a reminiscent market party might be. And if I want to enjoy time with "dementia elderly," then I can just stay home with myself. Or go out with the person who wrote that email.

This was written by the same person who sometimes sets up conference calls and then sends out notices that the "telephonic interview will commence at xxx."

I almost forgot. Today marks the 7th anniversary of my return to Hong Kong. And that means I now qualify for permanent residence. I've sent the first series of papers off in the post today.

Sadly, no plans this evening to mark this momentous occasion. My gf is out of town right now and I've got a deadline tomorrow for a BC column that I haven't started on yet, so unless I wanna get yelled at tomorrow, I'll be home writing tonight.

One might say that I celebrated one night early. Last night was three hours of getting semi-trashed with friends in semi-trashy bars followed by one hour of getting straight before heading home.

This also marks 7 years (and 1 week) with my current company. That's roughly double the length of time I've spent at any previous job. Why did I stick it out so long? Lots of people who know me might offer varying opinions, but many of us who actually work here say the same thing: I love this company, I just hate the people I work with. Which is not entirely true, because I like almost everyone working for the company in the branch offices out here - it's just the folks back in the head office that I despise. But I don't have to deal with them too frequently since Asia represents just 5% of my company's gross revenue.

Of course, there's this temptation to rehash everything that I've been through in the past 7 years. Well, why not succumb to it?

I was married to my second wife when I returned; now I'm not.

I've dated and/or slept with more women than you could shake a stick at (pun not intended)(well, maybe intended). I believe I've been in love with three of them (including the current one).

I've lived in 4 different places in the past 7 years - Sai Kung, Wanchai, Mid Levels and now Sai Kung again.

Still at the same job.

Owned five different cars in 7 years (counting one bought for my ex).

Gained a second dog.

Have taken approximately 120 business trips in the past 7 years, god knows how many personal ones. Finally got to Cambodia and Vietnam and Paris. Have circled the globe three times. Spent a month in Shanghai studying Mandarin, most of which I've now managed to forget.

And, well, I suppose you're waiting for something more introspective, how I've changed internally, how many friends I've made, some life lesson I've learned? Nah, ain't gonna go there.

Wolfgang's Vault has settled the lawsuit by Santana and the Doors, still gotta deal with the Dead and Led Zepp and others. The owner of Wolfgang's Vault paid $6 million for various stuff from Bill Graham's estate and sells memorabilia online ... and streams classic concerts from the 60s and 70s online free. (It's called Wolfgang's because that was Graham's real first name.)

A study reports that very few classic films are available online for legal digital downloading. What's the hold-up? Catalog sales account for more than 40% of major studios' home video revenue. One exception - Casablanca - has remained within iTunes top 100 since its release.

iTunes is accessible in China again, though the page for the Songs for Tibet album is not accessible there. I bought the album just because.

China Unicom is going to spend 100 billion RMB in the next two years to roll out 3G services to the top 50 cities in China. (They're also about to merge with China Netcom.) I'll bet they get the iPhone contract for China.

The new BB King album, One Kind Favor, produced by T-Bone Burnett, live in the studio with Dr John, Jim Keltner, Nathan East, others, is fabulous. Why did he wait till he was 82 years old to start making records like this? Just imagining what the same record 20 years ago would have been like, when his voice was still relatively in its prime. Then again, hearing 82 years of life on these songs isn't a bad thing either.

Criterion is going to start doing Blu-Ray soon, starting with some of the more popular titles in their catalog. Apparently you can upgrade by mailing them back the old discs (discs only, not packaging) and a check for US$25 and in return they'll send you the blu-ray version. Seems expensive to me.

One of the things I like about Alejandro Escovedo, aside from his fabulous new album, is that when it was revealed that one of his songs was found on a playlist on George W Bush's iPod, he stopped performing that song in concert.

Dave Freeman, co-writer of "100 Things to Do Before You Die," died last week at age 47. I hope he got to cross most of those 100 things off his list first.

Everyone else will joke about this so I don't have to: Margaret Thatcher's daughter, Carol, has revealed that her mother has suffered from dementia for "at least" 8 years.

Who made this joke back in 1998:

"Why is Chelsea Clinton so ugly?
Because her father is Janet Reno."

Yep, John McCain. What a sweetheart. Oh, wait, he was a prisoner of war, he's entitled to make crude jokes in public. He was tortured for 5 and a half years, now he intends to torture us for eight years to make up for it.

Via Skippy-san,

From the friendly residents of the People’s Republic of Tung Chung, who live where I wish I was living-a mere 20 minutes by train from one of my two favorite spots on the planet-and very near the world’s best airport.

“The Big Read reckons that the average adult has only read 6 of the top 100 books they’ve printed.”

The problem is, this is an exceedingly weird list, and not merely because #14 is the complete works of William Shakespeare while #98 is Hamlet.

Great books: Da Vinci Code??? Five People You Meet in Heaven??? Bridget Jones???

No Hunter Thompson, no Philip Roth, no Philip K. Dick, no Norman Mailer, no Ethel the Aardvark Goes Quantity Surveying???


But I'll play ....

• Look at the list and embolden those you have read.
• Italicise those you intend to read.
• Underline the books you LOVE.
• Reprint this list in your own blog.

1. Pride and Prejudice - Jane Austen
   
2. The Lord of the Rings - JRR Tolkien
   
3. Jane Eyre - Charlotte Bronte
4. Harry Potter series - JK Rowling
5. To Kill a Mockingbird - Harper Lee
6. The Bible (well some of it)
   
7. Wuthering Heights - Emily Bronte
8. Nineteen Eighty Four - George Orwell
9. His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman
10. Great Expectations - Charles Dickens
    
11. Little Women - Louisa M Alcott
12. Tess of the D'Urbervilles - Thomas Hardy
13. Catch 22 - Joseph Heller
14. Complete works of Shakespeare (well, some of it)
    
15. Rebecca - Daphne Du Maurier
16. The Hobbit - JRR Tolkien
    
17. Birdsong - Sebastian Faulks
18. Catcher in the Rye - J.D. Salinger
    
19. The Time Traveller’s Wife - Audrey Niffenegger
20. Middlemarch - George Eliot
21. Gone With the Wind - Margaret Mitchell
22. The Great Gatsby - F Scott Fitzgerald
    
23. Bleak House - Charles Dickens
24. War and Peace - Leo Tolstoy
25. Hitch Hiker's Guide to the Galaxy - Douglas Adams
26. Brideshead Revisited - Evelyn Waugh
    
27. Crime and Punishment - Fyodor Dostoyevsky
28. Grapes of Wrath - John Steinbeck
29. Alice in Wonderland - Lewis Carroll
30. Wind in the Willows - Kenneth Grahame
    
31. Anna Karenina - Leo Tolstoy
32. David Copperfield - Charles Dickens
33. Chronicles of Narnia - CS Lewis
34. Emma - Jane Austen
35. Persuasion - Jane Austen
36. The Lion, The Witch and The Wardrobe - CS Lewis
37. The Kite Runner - Khaled Hosseini
38. Captain Corelli’s Mandolin - Louis De Bernieres
39. Memoirs of a Geisha - Arthur Golden (started it, got bored)
    
40. Winnie the Pooh - AA Milne
41. Animal Farm - George Orwell
    
42. The Da Vinci Code - Dan Brown
43. One Hundred Years of Solitude - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
44. A Prayer for Owen Meaney - John Irving
45. The Woman in White - Wilkie Collins
46. Anne of Green Gables - LM Montgomery
47. Far From The Madding Crowd - Thomas Hardy
48. The Handmaid's Tale - Margaret Atwood
49. Lord of the Flies - William Golding
    
50. Atonement - Ian McEwan
51. Life of Pi - Yann Martel
52. Dune - Frank Herbert
    
53. Cold Comfort Farm - Stella Gibbons
54. Sense and Sensibility - Jane Austen
55. A Suitable Boy - Vikram Seth
56. The Shadow of the Wind - Carlos Ruiz Zafon
57. A Tale of Two Cities - Charles Dickens
58. Brave New World - Aldous Huxley
    
59. The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-time - Mark Haddon
60. Love in the Time of Cholera - Gabriel Garcia Marquez
61. Of Mice and Men - John Steinbeck
62. Lolita - Vladimir Nabokov
    
63. The Secret History - Donna Tartt
64. The Lovely Bones - Alice Sebold
65. Count of Monte Cristo - Alexandre Dumas
66. On the Road - Jack Kerouac
    
67. Jude the Obscure - Thomas Hardy
68. Bridget Jones’ Diary - Helen Fielding
69. Midnight’s Children - Salman Rushdie
70. Moby Dick - Herman Melville
71. Oliver Twist - Charles Dickens
72. Dracula - Bram Stoker
73. The Secret Garden - Frances Hodgson Burnett
74. Notes From A Small Island - Bill Bryson
75. Ulysses - James Joyce
    
76. The Bell Jar - Sylvia Plath
77. Swallows and Amazons - Arthur Ransome
78. Germinal - Emile Zola
    
79. Vanity Fair - William Makepeace Thackeray
80. Possession - AS Byatt
81. Christmas Carol - Charles Dickens
    
82. Cloud Atlas - David Mitchell
83. The Color Purple - Alice Walker
84. The Remains of the Day - Kazuo Ishiguro
85. Madame Bovary - Gustave Flaubert
86. A Fine Balance - Rohinton Mistry
87. Charlotte’s Web - EB White
88. Five People You Meet in Heaven - Mitch Albom
89. Adventures of Sherlock Holmes - Arthur Conan Doyle
    
90. The Faraway Tree Collection - Enid Blyton
91. Heart of Darkness - Joseph Conrad
    
92. The Little Prince - Antoine De Saint-Exupery
93. The Wasp Factory - Iain Banks
94. Watership Down - Richard Adams
95. A Confederacy of Dunces - John Kennedy Toole
96. A Town Like Alice - Nevil Shute
97. The Three Musketeers - Alexandre Dumas
98. Hamlet - William Shakespeare
    
99. Charlie and the Chocolate Factory - Roald Dahl
100. Les Miserables - Victor Hugo
     

New DVD releases in the US for August 26th as listed on Amazon.

Olympics are over but now the double whammy of the Democratic Convention and the US Open, so the list picks up slightly.

Heroes Season 2 - which redefined the term sophomore slump, whether you blame it on the strike or not. The big extra here is an alternate ending that points towards the direction they would have taken had the writers not walked out. But it was probably too late. Also on blu-ray.

Other TV releases - Entourage 4, One Tree Hill 5, NCIS 5, The Shield 6

The Three Stooges Collection Vol 3 - Sony continues the chronological reissue of the Stooges' shorts. This set includes all time classic A Plumbing We Will Go.

Nightmare Before Christmas - finally the right aspect ratio. Also on blu-ray.

What Happens in Vegas - Ashton Kutcher and Cameron Diaz? If this is your sort of thing, then have a party.

Salo, or the 120 Days of Sodom - Pasolini's final film. The previous Criterion edition had gone out of print and was fetching hundreds on eBay. For whatever reason, Criterion has released it again. Bought it, ain't watched it yet.

Redbelt - something about a martial arts trainer. But it's by David Mamet. So I must see it.

Where in the World is Osama bin Laden - Morgan Spurlock's new film didn't grab people the way his Super Size Me did.

The Chicago Ten - weird, I thought it was just 7. Documentary on the famous trial - narrated news footage; the trial bits are animated with semi-famous actors reading from the transcripts.

Lynch (One) - I think this is a documentary about David Lynch

My Sassy Girl - unnecessary American remake of the hit Korean film, stick with that

Delicatessen - yet another reissue for this early, splendid effort, co-directed by the director of Amelie and worth seeing

a/k/a Tommy Chong - documentary about the Chinese half of the world's only Chinese-Mexican comedy duo

New to Blu-Ray - Heroes season 1, Adventures of Robin Hood (the proper Errol Flynn movie, not the Kevin Costner nonsense), Miami Vice unrated, Afro-Samurai season 1, Pale Rider , End of Days, Dude Where's My Car (one of the greatest films ever made, still no extra features, for shame)

and if none of the above floats your boat, there's always ...

The Best of Penis Massage - "the result of twenty-five years of research by ten internationally recognized sex educators on how to raise personal levels of whole body arousal by stimulating the male genitals." 25 years? I'll bet they could have got the same results with a week in Wanchai.

Didn't sleep well last night. Well, actually, since I have OSA and rarely use my CPAP machine, I never sleep well, but last night was really the pits. Lights out late, fitful dreams, tossing and turning, up before my alarm. I suppose one might say I've gotten really used to having someone sleep next to me and, with my gf away on a trip, my two dogs are not a valid substitute.

Democrat Convention started yesterday but didn't catch any of it. Of course Huffington Post is filled with punditry. One thing that caught my eye so far was this bit:

Speaking at a luncheon hosted by the Denver Press Club at the Denver Athletic Club today, former California state legislator and '60s political activist Tom Hayden predicted that Barack Obama will lose the 2008 Election. "An African-American candidate talking about economics and a white war hero -- it's clear to me who is going to win," Hayden said. When one of the attendees at the small luncheon, attended mostly by Denverites, asked him to be more specific about why he thinks Obama will lose the race, Hayden replied, "You don't think McCain's gonna have a convention about his being an American."

While I remain convinced that a McCain presidency would be disastrous for the country, if not the entire world, while I remain incredulous that anyone with an IQ above 50 would consider voting Republican after the nuclear meltdown called Bush/Cheney, I have a feeling that Hayden is right. I want Obama to win and I will vote for him. But I don't think he will win.

It doesn't matter how many mistakes McCain makes. It doesn't matter that polls on issues, not candidates, show most Americans are closer to Obama's positions than McCain's. I don't think the US is as progressive as many would like us to believe. I think there are too many voters who will not vote for McCain so much as they will vote against Obama. The skin color. The "weird" name. People who won't vote for him because they think he's a Muslim. Americans don't seem to care about actual issues when it comes to casting votes - it's all based on sophisticated marketing, "swift boating," sound bites, packaging and generations of prejudice.

Elsewhere on HuffPo, there's this:

On the other hand, "But-he's-a-Muslim!" does raise the issue of whether people lie to pollsters when they're embarrassed to say what they really think. This argument -- called "the Bradley effect," after the Election Day disappearance of the lead that Los Angeles' African-American mayor, Tom Bradley, had held until then in the gubernatorial campaign -- says that the percentages that black candidates get in polls should be discounted by the reluctance of no small number of white voters to admit that race is a factor in their choice.

Which I believe. Because I know that my parents were racially prejudiced. They were enlightened enough to believe in civil rights and to know that their views were wrong. And it meant that they vehemently denied being prejudiced - the truth would only come out in isolated instances - such as them dealing with me having a Chinese wife, a black girlfriend in college - things where they couldn't help themselves, couldn't hold it in despite knowing it was wrong.

And so a lot of Americans won't vote for Obama because he is black - but they won't admit it to anyone, especially pollsters.

So McCain will win. He will get more Americans killed in foreign lands. He will continue the destruction of the US economy started by Bush. The US's leadership in global politics will continue to slip and China's influence will continue to rise. Environmental initiatives will be non-existent. Health insurance? It is to laugh. The world will watch in astonishment as the American empire comes to an end and ask, incredulously, "Wait a minute, you didn't vote for that guy because of the color of his skin? What the hell does skin pigmentation have to do with leadership?"

I do plan to watch Obama's convention speech. That will be a make or break moment for his candidacy. His last convention speech was the vehicle that brought him to national prominence. Can he be so incredible this time that he can overcome, once and for all, the lies, the smears, the prejudices? I hope so, but I'm not putting any money on it.

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Things are pretty screwed up in Thailand at the moment, eh? Is another coup just around the corner?
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Election in Malaysia today. Is this Anwar's moment? Will be truly be back? Or has the government already pulled the strings to ensure that can't happen. They're so vile, anything is possible.
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Two more days and it will be the 7 year anniversary of my return to Hong Kong. I'll have lived here for a total of 11 years and will be sending in the forms to apply for permanent residence.

It's been an incredibly eventful 7 years for me. Mostly excellent. Almost nothing I'd change, even if I could. And the great thing is, I know the next 7 years will also be mostly excellent, even if I have no idea what's gonna happen or where I'll be 7 years from now.

Got an off-topic thread over here about what records to bring when choosing audio components. I'm so egotistical that I decided I wanted to make my reply to those comments as a full-on post rather than another comment. So here we go:

#1 - It's nice that several people are contributing what they feel are great sounding records for audition purposes. But I think one of the criteria has to be some music that you know by heart, that you know in your heart how it's supposed to sound. No point in bringing along something you've never heard before.

#2 - But if you're gonna go that route, do an advanced search at the Grammy Awards site. Under "genre" select engineer, leave everything else blank. This will give you the full list of every album, classical and non-classical, that won the best engineered album award each year.

#3 - Equally important, some speakers and receivers are better for music, some are better for movies, few excel equally at both. Are you gonna use the system more for listening to CDs or watching DVDs, or both?

(And btw, regardless of what you might think of the film itself, right now the prevailing wisdom is that the Blu-Ray disc of Transformers is the best demo disc there is.)

Philippines English?

Looking at hotel descriptions on asiarooms.com, trying to find something, well, something cheap. Is this description enticing?

All what you need to do is reserve your rooms in advance and you will feel that the Room Facilities at Asian Mansion II in Manila is one of the main reasons as to why the hotel is ranked among the top ones among the Hotels in Manila in Philippines and you will not regret the decision to stay here.
- The hotel has got air conditioning. This adds on to the comfort level as you can adjust the temperature according to yourself.
- The refrigerator form a very important part of the room facilities at Asian Mansion II in Manila. You can keep any food or drink that you want to.
- There are the Televisions as well and have got the satellite connection. You can watch these programs as much as you like and not miss them just because you are away from your home.

The Asian Mansion II in Manila has got immense facilities to make it so very popular that it ranks high among the Hotels in Manila in Philippines. Special mention should be made of the Hotel Amenities and Services at Asian Mansion II in Manila as these are at par with the industry. Besides this there are the amazing Room Facilities at Asian Mansion II in Manila too that have made the place so very popular.

There is no in house eatery but there some fantastic restaurants in the Greenbelt Mall itself and it is just four blocks away from the hotel. So you can might as well come and enjoy the huge variety of cuisines that are offered here.

Thus you can feel that you will not have any problem at all if you have reserved your rooms here in this particular hotel. All what you need to do is reserve your rooms in advance so that you do not face any trouble anytime.

Besides these hotel amenities and services there is the strategic Location of Asian Mansion II in Manila. This is of definite advantage because you will not waste time at all in reaching the place.

Of course, if that place isn't good enough, I could also choose the Royal Bellagio, which appears to be an upgrade from the Bellagio in Las Vegas:

Royal Bellagio Hotel in Manila is a luxury resort. In fact this particular hotel adheres to the standards that should be maintained by a renowned hotel in a gamma global city. Not only will you have nothing to complain about but the facilities in the hotel will leave you in awe.

In awe? How? Perhaps one of the reader reviews from the same site might provide a clue?

The street that the hotel is in is lined with whore houses, the shops have armed guards on the door ( including mcdonalds, burger king ect) and it is VERY VERY unsafe to walk the streets during the day and even more so at night. we were offered many desturbing things buy the harrasing street sellers and beggers including drugs, knifes, battons, sex ect

So it's that kind of resort, eh?

Unless you are at the Royal Bellagio Hotel in Manila in Philippines you will never realize the definition of luxury. All varieties of food from continental to authentic Ibiza dishes are served here. The restaurant has a 50s and 60s aura. At the Filling Station will you can order for some really delicious Filipino cuisine. If you are a sweet tooth then do not miss the desserts at the Soda Fountain. Well when it comes to feasting then this hotel will be your topmost priority among the other hotels in Manila.

Caffé Ibiza and Falling Station Bar & Café serve continental food. 38 table cafes and imagine having provision for seven billiard tables, does that not sound interesting? Hotel Amenities and Services at Royal Bellagio Hotel in Manila are just not good but unique. What if you good have the facility of a disco and a bar and both together? Well the hotel has a combo- the Bronx Basement Disco Bar. Mirrors Bar and Mirrors Bar are the other two bars in the hotel.

I guess it makes sense that the hotel has two bars and they are mirrors of each other?

Actually, I've been to that disco before. As many of my readers know, I'm originally from The Bronx. I went to this place, the girls there asked me where I come from, I answer, "I'm from here!!!!" Odd that they don't believe me.

Or there's this place:

Room Facilities at Makati Palace Hotel in Manila has enabled the hotel to earn laurels from across the globe. The Makati Palace Hotel features beautifully various categories of well appointed guest rooms to catering to the budget of the guests. The rooms of the Makati Palace Hotel offer spectacular view of the surroundings areas. There are 118 rooms in the well furnished Makati Palace Hotel in Manila.

All the rooms of the Makati Palace Hotel in Manila are neat and clean. The house keeping staffs of the hotel cleans the rooms every day. The rooms also boast of impressive décor. Numerous artifacts are used to ornate the rooms in the most chic and fashionable style.

The rooms have been ornated! And they cleans the rooms every day! I wonder if this service will catch on with other hotels?

All of these are the same. They can't just say the room has a TV, they have to say, "Room Facilities at Makati Palace Hotel in Manila also include satellite television. So, the tired guests of the hotel can refresh their minds by watching some programs in the television." Because otherwise you wouldn't know what a television is for, I suppose.

as always, click on the images for larger size

(Via Variety Asia Online)

Richard Li tried to sell off PCCW (formerly HKT) a year or two back but failed. Now he's breaking up the company, selling off all of the telecom and media portions, with the intention of making PCCW purely a real estate company. The "winning" bidders will be announced before the end of the year. This will impact subscribers to Netvigator, NOW-TV, almost all landline phone subscribers, a couple of different mobile companies including One2Free.

From June 07 to June 08, NOW-TV grew its subscriber base by 13%, to 927,000 subscribers. However, only 668,000 of those are paying subscribers, which I guess means that 259,000 households in HK are getting NOW-TV for free?

During the same period, i-Cable managed to grow its subscriber base by 1%, to a total of 892,000 subscribers.

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

Now that the summer "tentpole" movie season is officially over in the US, it was with only mild interest that people wondered which of last week's new releases would come out on top. Would it be House Bunny starring Anna Faris? The remake of Death Race (2000) with Jason Statham? The Rocker, starring Rainn Wilson from The Office (US)?

Nope, #1 was Tropic Thunder, for the second week in a row, only the third picture this year (following Iron Man and Dark Knight) to hold the #1 spot for more than one week.

Hamlet 2, starring Steve Coogan, is on limited release but goes wider this week - Coogan remains a virtual unknown in the US though. Woody Allen's latest, Vicky Cristina Barcelona, also remains on limited release but is on track to be one of the best grossing films of his career, a career now well into its fifth decade.

It shouldn't come as a surprise that the top grossing film in Japan at the moment, the film with the highest local gross of any film in the past four years comes from director Hayao Miyazaki, Ponyo on the Cliff by the Sea. It's the first local film to pass the 10 billion yen mark at the box office since, well, since Miyazaki's last film, Howl's Moving Castle. And the all time top grossing local film in Japan? Also Miyazaki - Spirited Away, which grossed around 30 billion.

The film I want to see most though is titled Religulous. It is directed by former Seinfeld writer and Borat director Larry Charles and it stars Bill Maher. It played for just a single week, in order to qualify for an Oscar nomination for best documentary next year. From the review in Variety:

Maher devotes the first hour to the Christian faith, weighted toward evangelism, with amusing personal recollections of growing up Catholic with a Jewish mom. Not missing a beat, he even interviews his mom, Julie (who died after filming), and sister, Kathy, in the New Jersey church they attended, uncovering exactly why his parents left the church -- their use of birth control.

In a string of frank, often hilarious but always well-considered conversations with various Christians, Maher incisively asks them what skeptics always ponder about religion in general and Christianity in particular. To John Westcott of Exchange Ministries, which tries to “convert” gay men, Maher asks, given that Jesus never once talked about homosexuality, why is it such an issue for New Testament Christians? To churchgoers in Raleigh, N.C., he notes there’s no firm proof that Jesus Christ ever actually lived. Perhaps most profoundly, he asks Sen. Mark Pryor (D-Ark.), a devout evangelical, “Why is faith good?”

Latter section turns to Judaism and Islam, of which Maher is an equal-opportunity critic. Jewish laws around the Sabbath come in for some heavy ribbing, while the current wave of violence by wings of Islam is faced head-on. Chats with Muslims, from rapper Propa-Gandhi to scholars at the holiest Jerusalem sites, expose an internal debate raging among contemporary Muslims.

While he examines the Big Three religions of the West at length (Eastern faiths get a pass in “Religulous”), Maher even gets in some choice stabs at Mormonism (whose tenets may astound those not in the know) and Scientology.

Ending minutes, though, will catch auds up short: Suddenly, the laughs die down, and as in his closing monologues on “Real Time,” Maher turns deadly serious with a final statement that will stir raging arguments in theater lobbies.

Considering he was once a minor comic and a supporting thesp in generally awful film comedies, Maher’s transformation into one of America’s sharpest social critics is remarkable. He takes no script credit, but his periodic monologues to the camera are undeniably written, and written well.

Well, the storm has passed, we're back down to Signal 1.

Last night I was feeling antsy from sitting in the house all day. Turned to my gf and said, "we should go out to eat." She said, "what will be open?" I said, "Anthony's a big enough lunatic to be open tonight." I called and sure enough he was. Matter of fact, they told me the place was packed and that I'd better book a table, so I did.

We got there and one waitress told us the place had been packed solid from lunchtime onwards and that the staff was exhausted. Anthony told me that some of the staff didn't want to come out to work, that he'd had to go around to their homes and almost literally drag them out. Around 9:30, the musicians who had been booked for the evening arrived, so there was Olympics on the big screen TV and live music. I called a couple of friends to come and join us but they couldn't get a taxi, no big surprise.

Insane to go out last night? No, the true mark of insanity was that I had to go outside and stand in the typhoon every time I wanted to smoke .....

These shots taken around 1:15 PM, the winds were just lashing us around here with gusts well over 100 kph.




At 6:15, the HK Observatory reported that the center of the storm was exactly over Sai Kung. It's calm right now, no rain, barely any wind. But in awhile that will change, of course, as the center moves on and we're right underneath.





Going a little stir crazy from sitting in the house all day. Hope at least one Sai Kung bar is open tonight.

Actually, I don't much care that the fireworks at the Olympics opening ceremony were CGI.

The fact that iTunes is now blocked in China because some athletes were downloading a "Free Tibet" album isn't that big a deal, because thousands of web sites are blocked in China. But it does show how foolishly petty and small minded the Communist Party can be. (Hey, what's a party without music anyway?)

I think nothing shows the stupidity of Chinese government more than when, in the opening ceremony, they brought out all those smiling, waving children dressed in the costumes of the various ethnic minorities - but the children were all Han Chinese and not the minorities represented by the costumes? Those groups get their moment to shine in the world spotlight and then have it robbed from them in the same moment. What kind of idiot does that?

But now even that's been surpassed by a new low. The government designated special "protest areas" in Beijing. People needed a police permit to go there to protest. And the police rejected EVERY permit application. Catch 22? Two elderly women didn't give up. They kept going back and reapplying. The police got tired of being bothered. And now the women have been sentenced to a year of hard labor for "rehabilitation." Here's a picture of one of the women just sentenced to a year of hard labor:

Check out Frisko Dude for more photos and coverage.

Gary Glitter is on a plane back to the UK. Hong Kong and Thailand immigration officials teamed up to finally get his pedophile ass back to where he belongs. The Times Online has the whole story.

“I’ve been in jail for nine years. Why can’t I go and do some shopping in Hong Kong,” said Glitter smiling. Everybody smiled back. Some laughed.

Within the hour Glitter was promised a ‘Press Free’ permit to Hong Kong, although he was advised to buy a return ticket anyway.

By 7pm Glitter was in seat 11B, a glass of champagne beside him and happily unaware that he had fallen into a trap. He planned to stay in a luxury hotel in Wanchai and used the phone on his arm rest to summon a friend to collect him at the airport.

But Thai Police informed Hong Kong Immigration that he was coming and they agreed on a plan. He was arrested on arrival.

By 1pm today Gary Glitter was back in Bangkok and, this time, Thai Airways brought the deportation papers they needed - issued by the Hong Kong police.

Last night, the latest edition of BC Unplugged at the Wanch. Even better than last month.

The night kicked off with this young, young kid doing a mix of original and cover songs, acoustic guitar and harmonica in a Bob Dylan style but with a soft smooth voice. How old is he? My gf and my friend's gf were guessing 17. A big group of people were there to check him out, including his mom.

He's using the awkward stage name of "Clementine My Sunshine," Buddha knows why. He's contributed a song to a charity CD of North Korea protest songs. He did two Beatles songs. And then, from god knows where, he pulls out a Big Star cover! How the hell did he get to hear them?

Next came Bambie. This is the kind of guy, if he was doing the exact same set in New York or Los Angeles, he'd be filling up the clubs. He's the real deal, good original songs, very funny in between songs, he deserves to be heard.


His lead guitarist was also worth hearing, someone who could actually play, someone whose playing really fit into and around the songs, a total pleasure.


Sadly I have to confess that after Bambie's set, I was completely knackered, so we didn't stick around to check out Tony Lee or The Joves.

Folks, once again, a great evening of original music by local artists, no cover charge, the beer is cheap, you really owe it to yourself to check out the next one.

This morning of course is Signal 8 and they're saying we could hit a 9 or even a 10 by early evening. So far the winds are not too strong out in Sai Kung. Lots of boats taking shelter in our little "Sai Kung Sea" area. Let's see how the day progresses.

Blue Planet Run: The Race to Provide Safe Drinking Water to the World is a US$45 hardcover book:

The large-format volume features more than 250 photographs by the world’s top photojournalists, illustrations by leading infographic artist Nigel Holmes, and provocative essays by Diane Ackerman (A Natural History of the Senses), environmental leaders Paul Hawken and Bill McKibben, journalists Michael Specter and Jeffrey Rothfeder, Emmy Award-winning TV broadcaster Mike Cerre, Michael Malone, of ABC News and inventor Dean Kamen (the Segway scooter). Advisors and staff include Phillip Moffitt, former editor and owner of Esquire magazine and Stephen Petranek, former editor-in-chief of Discover magazine.

And now it's available for free as a downloadable PDF file. Just go to the Amazon page and look for the link. The pictures are incredible. I think a certain percentage of people who download the file are going to end up buying the book itself.

There's also a photo gallery online at Time Magazine (and also a link here for downloading the book).

New DVD releases in the US for August 19th as listed on the Amazon web site

As the Olympics go on and on and on, again this is a week predominated by TV series. These include House 4, Dexter 2, Terminator: Sarah Connor Chronicles 1, Gossip Girl 1, Married With Children 9

and also ...

Street Kings - a not-awful Keanu Reeves movie with a screenplay based on a James Ellroy story

Recount - made for HBO film starring Kevin Spacey about the 2000 US presidential election

Prom Night - crappy remake of crappy horror film, in rated and unrated editions

John Oliver Terrifying Times - "unrated and uncensored" version of Comedy Central special from the Daily Show correspondent

New to Blu-Ray - Nixon, Monster

And, er, Russian Sexy Fitness Models: Breathtaking Erotic Series Vol. 1, promising you, "Sexy Wild Fitness Babes in Never Seen Before Erotic Action!"

And here's one I missed from two weeks back -

I Got the Feelin' - James Brown in the 60s. When it was announced, I didn't know what was on it. Now I do know, and it's the real muthafuckin' thang.

For starters, it's got the clip of Brown's performance from the concert film TAMI Show (still not on DVD except for some shite quality bootlegs), and that is probably the single greatest performance of anything ever captured on film. Anything. Ever. The collapsing. The cape. The getting back up again. The running back to the mike. This may be the most copied/ripped off/parodied performance ever.

But more than that, you get the recent PBS documentary, The Night James Brown Saved Boston, about the concert he did at the Boston Garden the night after Martin Luther King Jr was assassinated. Disc 2 is that entire concert from Boston. And disc 3 has an entire concert from the Apollo in Harlem from 1968 and other bonus features.

Reportedly Gary Glitter boarded a plane from Bangkok to Hong Kong. Upon arrival in HK, immigration would not let him out of the airport. Is he still sitting in a bar or lounge in the HK airport or boarding a plane for yet another destination that is not the UK? Don't know.

Last weekend we had a note in our mailbox from the police, "A case of 'Burglary' has occurred during the day-time at this location recently." According to my maid, last night someone opened came in through the gate at our house, wandered down into our garden and had a look around. Did she call the police? No, she closed the curtains. Sigh.

Typhoon Nuri killed 7 people in The Philippines and is now headed for a visit here, most likely arriving on Friday. Signal 1 now, Signal 3 expected later this afternoon.

The next BC Unplugged show is tonight at 9 PM at the Wanch. See you there.

Look at this article from the SCMP's web site today on Gary Glitter. Now look at the bottom right, "related stories." Number 3 is titled "Head for Adventure." Some sort of bizarre sexual double entendre alongside a report about a convicted pedophile? Nope, it's an article from April reviewing 10 recently opened restaurants in HK.

Well, Glitter did say that he'd like to move to Hong Kong, perhaps the SCMP was merely being helpful in providing some dining options to him once he arrives here?

Also, what's really freaking odd in that restaurant piece is this paragraph:

While previously hotel food would have been for those staying in the rooms, and provided somewhat predictable buffet fare, increasingly hotels are coming up with original standalone restaurants to entice customers not staying there.

Which might have been appropriate in HK in 1988 but in 2008? Who's writing this stuff?

All Things Digital reports that Apple just got the highest-ever score on the American Consumer Satisfaction Index. Of course the survey would have been conducted several months ago, but who could have predicted several months ago that Apple would be going through the massive public meltdown they're going through now?

• Mobile Me has been a complete disaster
• Global reports of 3G reception on the iPhone sucking, and subsequent software updates have not fixed this
• Each upgrade of the iPhone OS causes more crashes than the one before
• The App Store seems to be filling up with lots of useless Apps that also add to the phone's instability problems

Though I must confess, I still like my iPhone and can't see ever going back to Windows Mobile, Symbian or Palm. But I am waiting to see what Google's Android has to offer.

And there's the problem. If Apple doesn't get its act together fast, Android could eat their lunch.

As many of you know, Gary Glitter served time in prison in Vietnam for being a pedophile. Upon release, he was set to return to the UK, where who knows what might await him. I guess he has some idea, because he is currently in Bangkok. Thai officials are refusing to grant him entry to Thailand and he has refused to board a plane back to England. I don't suppose they could stuff him into a sack and toss him into the cargo area of a plane, but I certainly hope that he gets what he deserves. Oh, he served his time and deserves another chance? Let him prove it. Let him act like a man instead of a pig. I'm kind of picturing Marlon Brando in Godfather, grabbing the Frank Sinatra character by the shoulders, shaking him and yelling, "You can act like a man!" But I think Mr. Glitter intends to keep on sniveling.

BANGKOK (Reuters) - Shamed glam rocker Gary Glitter was stuck at Bangkok airport on Wednesday after refusing to board a flight to Britain following his deportation from Vietnam, where he had spent nearly three years in prison for child sex abuse.

Staff at the Louis Tavern, a small airside transit lounge rest point, said Glitter was still there on Wednesday morning.

Britain's Foreign Office confirmed the 64-year-old Briton's refusal to board the flight, scheduled to leave Thailand around 1 a.m. on Wednesday (2 p.m. EDT on Tuesday).

"The last information we have is that shortly before the flight to the UK departed he declined to board. We were last aware that he remained in transit," a spokesman said.

British newspapers, who had reporters on the plane with Glitter as he left Vietnam, said he had collapsed in a bedroom at the Tavern, complaining of heart problems and demanding to be taken to hospital.

He had a series of confrontations with British embassy officials and Thai immigration police, who refused him entry to Thailand because of his conviction in Vietnam for child sex offences, the newspapers reported.

Glitter, whose real name is Paul Gadd, was released from prison in communist Vietnam on Tuesday.

Sitting here happily in the office, streaming music from my PC at home to my laptop at work, via Simplify Media. This is one of the real reasons I installed the software - even though I'm currently sharing with a couple of people, I basically wanted access to my home music library anywhere, anytime, and this gets me several steps closer. The 20,000 songs I have on iTunes at home are now streamable to my PC at work and my mobile phone.

Right now I'm listening to some jazz, the boxed set of the complete Miles Davis quintet 1965-68 recordings. Almost all of the tracks are over 5 minutes long. The files are big, because I ripped the box at 320 kbps. Each one takes a few seconds to buffer and then plays through flawlessly.

Sadly, the walls in my office are paper thin, so I don't think I'll be cranking any AC-DC in the office any time soon. But this is really nice.

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

This is a minor thing, but the sort of thing that really bugs me. Here is an article in today's The Standard - Hong Kong's First FREE English Newspaper And Remember You Get What You Pay For: Station flooded by viewer gripes over Olympic TV.

The lead paragraph:

Television Broadcasts has been flooded with complaints by disgruntled viewers complaining that there is too much Olympics on television.

Go down to the 12th (of 16) paragraphs and you will see the following:

"We receive about 30 complaints every day regarding [the professionalism and knowledge] of our Olympic hosts. About 20 every day are about program arrangements," Tsang said.

So most of the complaints aren't that there "is too much Olympics," most of the complaints are that the local commentators are idjits. Funny how there's no further mention of this in this Important Top Local Story.

And if they received 600 complaints in ten days, or 60 complaints per day, less than 3 per hour, how does that qualify as a flood?

Spam phony headlines from the future Pulitzer prize winner keep coming in at a furious pace. More than 200 spam emails over the weekend. Subject headers included:

(all start with "msnbc.com - BREAKING NEWS:")

• 2008 Presidential Election Results Leaked
• [video] Bush Tours America to Survey Damage Caused By His Disastrous Presidency
• Aliens Abducted by Michael Jackson
• Attack of the Zombie Negroes: Dick Cheney
• Britney Spears and Michael Jackson to Write Parenting Book
• Heather to Have Other Leg Removed
• John McCain Kicks Lilly Ledbetter in the Crotch
• Nazi Toddlers Ruined My Birthday
• Paris Hilton Initially Denies Having Inverted Nipples
• Rapper 50 Cent to be John Mccain's Choice for VP
• Teenage Girl Obviously Having Affair With Bat
• Unemployed to be Used for Soup
• White Male Workers Banned in Britain

In related news ... Scamorama, the web site that tracks scam emails and also presents examples of how to drive these scammers nuts, has this series of emails between "Prof. C. Saludo" and Brother Mark Knopfler (yes, the former leader of Dire Straits), representing the Church of the Sultans of Swing, which can be found in Smegaroon, which looks like a very nice place to visit. A prime example of how to strike back at these would-be thieves.

Im sorry that I have not been able to reply before. I have been away on a custard skinning weekend in Bollockshire and during a custard race was thrown from my vehicle and after some roly poly found myself jammed against the edge of the bowl and required some spooning to masticate myself.

Not much going on. Took a walk with the dogs. Sunny, beautiful day, feels quite hot though, not much urge to move.

Decades ago, Brian Eno co-produced my favorite Talking Heads albums. 27 years ago, Eno and David Byrne collaborated on an album, "My Life in the Bush of Ghosts," more on the experimental side than pop but enormously influential - can't imagine Moby or DJ Shadow, amongst others, without it.

Now Eno and Byrne have done their second album. Digital download available Monday, one track available for free download now (at 320k! no drm!) from here. Maybe I'm biased because I'm such a huge Eno fan, but this sounds to my ears like the best thing Byrne's done since that X Press 2 single.

Now, what shall I do with myself for the rest of the day? Let me check my Oblique Strategies cards.

Use 'unqualified' people

Okay, but use them for what?

Jerry Wexler died, aged 91, a titan of the music business. Working at Billboard in the 1940s, he came up with the term "rhythm and blues." He spent most of his professional life at Atlantic Records, where he produced Ray Charles, Aretha Franklin and many others. He signed Led Zeppelin to Atlantic in the US and in later years produced albums by Bob Dylan, George Michael, Dire Straits and others. From the obituary in the NY Times:

Mr. Wexler was something of a paradox. A businessman with tireless energy, a ruthless streak and a volatile temper, he was also a hopeless music fan. A New York Jew and a vehement atheist, he found his musical home in the Deep South, in studios in Memphis and Muscle Shoals, Ala., among Baptists and Methodists, blacks and good old boys.

“He was a bundle of contradictions,” said Tom Thurman, who produced and directed a documentary about Mr. Wexler in 2000. “He was incredibly abrasive and incredibly generous, very abrupt and very, very patient, seemingly a pure, sharklike businessman and also a cerebral and creative genius.”

Elsewhere ...

Warner Bros' decision to push back Harry Potter 6 to next July cuts Electronic Arts' profit outlook for this year by $150 million.

A U.S. Appeals court says that just because software is open source and freely distributed doesn't mean it can't be protected under the law. This is huge for anyone who relies on Creative Commons licensing.

After all these years of waiting, it's finally happening. Neil Young's Archives is set for release on November 3rd, as a 10 disc Blu-Ray or DVD set. September 29th will see another Neil Young release, "Sugar Mountain," no details on this but Uncut thinks it's a concert in L.A. from 1971.

My namesake, Spike from Top Chef, opened his new restaurant in DC, Good Stuff Eatery. The Washington Post rates it good but not great.

That said, the Blazin' Barn burger, with pickled daikon, carrots, mint and Thai basil and cilantro, was about as refreshing as a burger can be. ("Thai McDonald's," my companion said, meaning it as a compliment.) The strawberry milkshake (we got the perfectly sized 16-ounce "Mini Moo") was summer in a plastic cup. That bacon on our Farmhouse Bacon Cheese burger was indeed awesome.

Mark the date September 17. That's one possible date that HTC will launch the first phone powered by Google's new Android operating system. Given all the problems reported with Apple's 3G iPhone, is there a new 800 pound gorilla in the house?

I've installed Simplify Media on my PC and iPhone. Free (for now at least) it's supposed to let me stream everything on my PC's iTunes (and WinAmp and my My Music folder) to my phone via 3G or WiFi anywhere in the world. And you can share with up to 30 friends. I've got 19,927 songs in iTunes at the moment ... anyone want to share?

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

I can often be found having dinner at Dusk Till Dawn. You may not know this but every night they offer a 3 course set dinner for $105 - soup or salad, choice of 3 main courses, dessert, coffee or tea, glass of wine. It ain't gourmet but it's tasty enough and quite reasonable for the price.

On the other hand ... last night there with 3 other people. We place our orders for food and drinks. The waitress stands there, doesn't write anything down. For my gf and I, I order prawns wrapped in bacon, Thai meatballs, Tandoori chicken salad, ice lemon tea for me, Carlsberg for her. And I just know from the look on the waitress' face that we ain't getting what we ordered.

After 15 minutes, the prawns come out. Five minutes later, she brings us a dish of prawns on a skewer. Um, nope, meat balls? She takes the prawns back. Eventually the meat balls show up. "And we've got a third dish coming, right?" "What?" Never mind, cancel it. Because sure enough, a few minutes later, someone else comes out from the kitchen carrying the skewered prawns - "here, have this on the house."

There's this new invention called paper? And pencil? Sheesh.

And now, sigh, two new problems noted with the car last night, off to try to get them taken care of today.

I was thinking about sending this cartoon to a few bloggers I know. But then I realized that I could just as easily send it to myself. And so I did. And so no post today about the something or other that I was going to write about. Except to say, silly fricking me, I saw this yesterday, didn't tag it at the time, spent half the day today until I could find it again.


Theater Hopper

Believe it or not, I find a lot of the stuff I write here gets reposted in spam blogs, aka splogs. Digital Inspiration has some tips on how to deal with that.

What movie had a line about Ethel Merman, saying she was a "woman who learned the art of love at the hands of Ernest Borgnine"? Or maybe it was a stand-up comic.

Well, anyway, Ethel Merman is gone, Ernest Borgnine is 91 years old and in a recent interview on Fox News, when they asked the Academy Award winning actor his secret for looking so good at his age, he told them, "I masturbate a lot." (Via Defamer.)

Seems in the past couple of weeks the amount of spam hitting my business email box has drastically increased. There's been about 150 messages promising debt consolidation plans or loans in the past 3 days alone. And dozens of bogus news alerts from CNN and MSNBC. Some of the message subject headers are seriously creative and a lot more interesting looking than my normal email. These include:

• Breaking News: Bush Finally Reads Job Description
• Breaking News: Cranberries CD Cures Woman's Urinary Tract Infection
• Breaking News: Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse Split, Pestilence to Go Solo
• Breaking News: History Channel Begins Incorporating Product Placements Into History
• Breaking News: John Edwards Admits Fathering Clay Aiken's Baby
• Breaking News: McCain Opposes Gay Adoption of Highways
• Breaking News: McCain Serenades Gramm: '50 Ways to Leave Your Hoover'
• Breaking News: Report: Fate of "Ross and Rachel" Used to Torture Iraqi Prisoners
• Breaking News: South Carolina Sinking - Gov. Implores Obese Citizens to "Exercise For It
• Breaking News: Three Italian College Students Purchase Kansas City Royals for 500 Euros

If Diablo Cody could start out as a stripper and blogger and then win an Oscar for her very first screenplay, I predict that whoever is writing these headlines is a future Pulitzer Prize winner.

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Mike Myers has signed to play a British general in Tarantino's Inglorious Bastards. Ugh.

This seems like a great match though - Steve Carell and Tina Fey to play husband and wife in comedy "Date Night."

Release date on the next Harry Potter film has been pushed back from this November to July 09.

Not much going on but went a bit crazy on Amazon this morning. I belatedly discovered that Hip-O Select has been released limited edition 2-CD compilations of James Brown singles, complete A&B sides. Volume 1 covers 1956-1960, Volume 2 1960-63, Volume 3 1964-65, Volume 4 1966-67, Volume 5 1967-69 and undoubtedly more to come. All 5 of these are available as MP3 downloads from Amazon, but I decided I wanted atoms, not bytes, and ordered them all. (The first two were out of stock so I snagged copies from the Amazon Marketplace.)

Then I discovered that Hip-O select was also doing complete Bo Diddley reissues. The first one covering 1955-58, the second 1959-60. Again, available as downloads, again I decided I wanted the physical discs and booklets, again the first one is already gone but found in the Marketplace.

There's also now ten volumes in Hip-O's series of complete Motown singles, covering 1959 up through 1970 so far, super deluxe packaging on each. But each one of these is a 5, 6 or 7 disc set, and each one is selling for over US$100. At that price, a bit out of reach at the moment, and they're not available as legit downloads. Have managed to find most of the tracks via (cough, cough) alternate sources.

Vaguely related, over at Lifehacker they're doing the Battle of the Media Collection Managers. My movie collection is definitely out of control, split as it is among about 2,000 legal DVDs, lots more purchased (cough, cough) in China and scads more .AVI files. Any readers out there with huge collections using some software to manage/catalog/index the batch? Let me know what you're using.

Got a friend, he doesn't have a blog (how 20th century!), doesn't want one, but keeps sending me items in email, never any comments attached but I get the feeling he thinks they're post-able here. Here's one that caught my attention:

British Man Murdered by His Thai bride and her lover ... just weeks after he predicted his own death

A Brit marries a Thai woman half his age (wonder how they met?), moves to her village, buys land (has to put it in her name, of course), builds a house, finds out she's also got a Thai boyfriend and is selling off everything behind his back. The most seriously horrific part is that the article says it took 7 hours for him to die.

Trouble started just four months ago when Beeston, married nine years to his 42-year-old Thai wife Wacheerawan, nicknamed 'Wanna', discovered that she had cashed in all the property he had bought in Thailand at a local bank.

He had invested all his life savings in over an acre of property and built his marital home, a guesthouse and a restaurant near a village called Suwannaphum, meaning 'Golden Land'.

Thai newspapers this week described him home as "palatial". But under Thai law, as foreigners cannot own property he had put it in his wife's name.

"I thought she loved me but she just wanted my cash," penniless divorcee Beeston, who arrived in Thailand with £350,000 told friends at the time. He then asked his wife to leave the marital home and live in a shack with corrugated iron room nearby.

And he began selling all moveable objects in the house and restaurant piece by piece to survive until he could legally get the funds to return home.

"His wife lived behind the main house with her Thai boyfriend. Every time we went to visit she would come out and scream and order us away. 'This is my house. This is my land.'

"Ian knew that he was going to be murdered. He had already complained that while he was away she had put something inside a beer in his fridge.

"He had felt ill. So he sent the beer away for analysis to a local hospital. He was awaiting the results.

"But it was an open secret in the area that Ian was going to be murdered, but she had a secret police lover."

Olympics - if anyone cares, as of now China has won the most gold medals (14) while the US has won the most overall (26). Kazakhstan has won more than Uzbekistan, which must make Borat happy. Kyrgyzstan has won one bronze medal and is hoping to trade it for some vowels.

Variety reports that Anger Grows Over Olympics Opening. Oh my gosh. If the government lied about who sang on a TV show, is it just possible that they lie about other things too?

Chen said Lin Miaoke was chosen to appear onstage instead of Yang because she was better looking. It was a question of the national interest, he insisted.

Some commentators claimed both girls were heroes, but others were horrified at the message that the ruse sends to children.

“Since this happened, 7-year-old kids all think you should judge a person according to his or her image. They now think that being good looking is better than having a good voice. Shame!” said one comment on a website.

Fernando Lamas and Billy Crystal have known this for years.

I'm fully expecting Hong Kong Phooey to sign up to be a contestant on this show.

A new dating series based on the notion that "boys love their toys" will pit girls against gadgets in an attempt to answer that age-old question: hottie or hot HDTV? In a twist on the reality TV staple For Love or Money, Playboy TV's Gadget or the Girl will make contestants choose between a weekend getaway with a girl of their choice or a surprise high-tech toy.

Some photos of the Beijing Olympics opening ceremonies:

This week Anthony Bourdain returns to Japan. In his blog, he notes:

Utility sushi is suddenly, no longer enough. You will be at least dimly aware that there’s “rice” and then there’s a universe of unknowable varieties and subtly different grades and preparations -- about which neither you nor I have enough time left to learn enough about to even fake a conversation with a skilled sushi chef.

When, for a few days, or hours, your mouth comes to know the taste and feel of fish for which the proprietor paid $300 to $400 wholesale … when you wrap two fingers -- gently -- around slightly warm, crumbly/soft rice -- over which a perfectly cut, slightly dressed piece of mackerel served at just the right temperature has been lovingly draped … when you realize the old man in front of you has spent fifty or more YEARS just getting these seemingly simple things right, you enter a whole new dimension of food appreciation.

(Apologies in advance if some of this, or even all of this, is stuff I've written about before.) In 1994, I was about to make my first trip to Tokyo. I was 40 years old and had never tasted sushi. Where I came from, it just wasn't something people ate, it was something people joked about.

I figured I'd better find out what I was in for before I got there. I was on a project in Atlanta. I found a sushi bar, went in and told them, "I've never eaten this stuff before. Give me an assortment and don't tell me what any of it is!" There were 8 pieces, each different, and I liked them all. I called the waitress over and asked her to tell me, piece by piece, what I had just eaten.

The following week, I arrived in Tokyo, got to my office at lunch time and they said, "We're just about to go out for lunch. Do you eat sushi?" "Of course!" And my education began.

In 1995, I met the woman who'd become my second wife when I was working in Kuala Lumpur. She had lived in Japan. And one of her good friends was the master sushi chef at a Japanese restaurant in a 5 star hotel in KL. This was one of those classically trained, lifetime devoted chefs that you may have only read about. And because she was his good friend and I was her boyfriend, he took me through it, bit by bit. The first time I went there, he learned what I liked. After that, I was never allowed to order. He created each menu for me based on what was fresh, what he knew I liked and didn't like. He showed me how to look at the fish, how to know what was fresh and what wasn't, everything that simply enhanced my sushi experience for probably the rest of my life. I got to accompany my wife on many of her business trips to Japan and go along for business dinners where we were taken to some of the finest sushi places in town.

I've probably been to Tokyo 100 times by now. The guy who manages my team in Tokyo, he told me that everytime his last boss came to visit, he had to take him to Tony Roma. I promised him that I would never ask him to do that.

For each visit, he checks the reviews for the latest and greatest places (well, the ones that fall within our budget), prints out a map, and we go off hunting. He knows me well enough by now to try to make sure that we always have at least one thing I've never had before. And I've learned that when I go with him, when I don't recognize something, I eat it first and ask what it is later. I will not allow myself to lose face by refusing any food put in front of me.

The thing is, the Japanese are so knowledgeable about sushi and there is so much competition there that even the cheap places - the robot belt places, the all night joints around Kabuki-cho, the shops at Narita - are all at least decent quality. Every trip to Tokyo, my last meal is always lunch at Narita, and it's always sushi. I've had guys in those places ask me if I live in Japan - they say I know how to order like a Japanese and the stuff I order is at least somewhat different from the standard tourist fare.

The downside is that I can't eat the cheap shit, and the great majority of HK sushi joints feature the cheap shit. Kids in town love to line up at those conveyor belt joints, because they're cheap and I guess they feel it's something special. But the fish served in those places is pretty tasteless. I've watched people fill up their little dipping bowls with wasabi and then just a dash of soy sauce on top. I realized that in these places, that's not a bad thing because otherwise there's no flavor to the food.

I know there are a bunch of good places in HK for sushi and I want to stress that I haven't begun to find all of them. With the amount of Japanese tourists and expats here, there are plenty of quality spots. The problem is, all the places that I've found that I like are actually more expensive than some of the seriously good places in Japan. My favorite spot is Sushi Hiro in Causeway Bay, where a meal for two always runs me at least HK$1,000, and that's not including the sake. I was also pleasantly surprised by Rei Sushi, over at IFC. Years ago, I also used to enjoy Tomokazu in Causeway Bay, but I thought on my last few visits there they had gone downhill - but that was years ago and they're still there, did they get better again?

I've also had some incredibly fabulous meals at the Japanese restaurant at the Kowloon Shangri-La, where most of the staff is imported from Japan along with most of the ingredients. But each time I've gone for the full-on kaiseki dinner, which rivals what I've had in Japan but costs more than I care to think about.

(By the way, Japanese but not sushi, I've had really good tonkatsu at Tonkichi at World Trade Centre in Causeway Bay. And there's this little two-store chain in CWB called Japanese Curry Bee that does nice Japanese style curry and decent ramen, cheap and cheerful.)

Anyway, of course I'll be downloading and watching the next Bourdain show (as I do every one of them). Anyone have some tips on other good places I should try around here?

Some folks have taken exception to my commentary on the Olympics opening ceremony. No problems there. So thought you might enjoy this from the Kaiju Shakedown blog on Variety, seems like a lot of the mainland Chinese bloggers also hated it, and at least one of the comments is quite funny.

While most people seem very impressed with the Olympic opening ceremony staged by Zhang Yimou this weekend, the Western press has largely missed the fact that a lot of the Chinese internet talk is about how "empty" and "meaningless" the ceremony was. While the New York Times and others praised the lavish spectacle and dwelt on the positive reaction, Chinese netizens took to the internets to review the ceremony like they would one of Zhang's movies and the result was, "First-rate techniques, second-rate performances, no ratings for the content." (Strong Nation Forum)

Another commenter writes:

"Zhang Zimou did not disappoint ss a 'master' of the visual --he is a master who likes everything big and he successfully turned the open ceremony into an exciting temple festival.

We all know that Zhang Yimou likes 'bigness.' In HERO, we saw that he liked the 'big unity.' In CURSE OF THE GOLDEN FLOWER, we saw that he liked 'girls with big tits.' In the Olympics opening ceremony, we saw that he liked 'big scenes.'

Regrettably, these big scenes were empty and spiritless. This is like a mouth with a tongue cut off -- it does not matter how wide the mouth is opened because you can only hear some unclear moaning sounds."

Another reaction: "What does China have except people?" And some Chinese posters speculated that you could never have a ceremony like this in the US because American tax payers would revolt. Words like "empty" and "vacuous" were also bandied about on forums like Bullog.cn and at the forum Those Were the Days one commenter said that it was a mistake to emphasize size and expense and lavishness when the world was moving towards more frugality. Another post, largely supportive of Zhang's work, said that the television commentary on CCTV was amateur and if it had been translated China would be "the butt of jokes."

A lot of Grady Hendrix's info for the above piece comes from this piece at EastSouthWestNorth.

(Song Shinan at Bullog.cn)

When the state leaders entered, the music was actually the march of the athletes. The world must have been stunned. (By the way, when the team from Guinea entered after more than one hour later, the camera focused on Secretary-General Hu with the sub-title "Guinea"). They must be making fun of our handsome leader.

Later on, there were the clay musical instruments being played in a laser light show. This felt like rock n' roll, but actually it was the same thing as the gongs-and-drums show in the opening ceremony of the Asian Games that was held in Beijing. Zhang Yimou loves percussion instruments. But unfortunately, he only likes gongs and drums. Basically, the drums never stopped, not even during the tranquil episode with the Tai'chi exercise. In the end, it makes people want to smash the drums.

Zhang Yimou might have felt great about the big footprints created by electronic fireworks across Beijing. But I found it hilarious, especially when the big footprint rolled over the Mao Zedong memorial hall. How did Mao feel about his head being stepped upon?

The girls who danced on the painting wore black clothes like martial artists. They danced well, and they created a Chinese painting through their dance. But this was disgraceful, because what kind of Chinese painting was that? This was a child's scratchings! Even Crayon Shinchan could draw better than this.

This was followed by a bunch of guy chanting . Actually, they should have been chanting Chu poetry because these people were like priests praying at a funeral. At that moment, I thought that I was watching some ghost movie because the atmosphere was so eerie.

Up to this point, director Zhang had been showing that China is populous. Even he was embarrassed, so he sent out the showboat Lang Lang. I was ready to praise that, but immediately a group of Red Army-like people surrounded the piano -- we can never give up any opportunity to show that China is populous!

When the Taichi boxers showed up, I finally nodded my approval because there was finally an individual performance. But director Zhang quickly slapped me back into reality -- a mass of people ran around and around but they did not know how to form an Eight Diagrams figure. All they did was form one circle, without the Yin versus Yang. Director Zhang, have you seen the South Korean flag? Don't you know about the Eight Diagrams? Perhaps you don't want to give credit to the South Koreans, so you just settled with a circle.

Then we get into the part about presenting Chinese words. This is even more hilarious. Many people were used to form words such as "Huo 和" and "Tea 茶" as if these are the essence of China. But if the Athens Olympics had used lots of people to form words such as "Venus" or "Ancient Greek sculpture," wouldn't you find that hilarious?

In the Silk Road portion, a small girl was being flown like a kite. I was delighted, because Zhang Yimou must be paying tribute to fellow director Chan Kaige for his human kite in . Who can forget that?

The introduction of folk dramas is an even bigger failure. The Beijing opera is not an art with many people involved, but here we are once again treated with a mass scene. The Kunqu opera was better because there were just two people, but the singing of the man was really too terrible. Yes, I don't understand the art of Kunqu, but the majority of the world probably have the same ears that I do. Why push this type of wretched yelling? (The female singer was better, but she sounded more like pop-singing than Kunqu.)

Finally, there is the Olympics song. Objectively speaking, the two singers have first-rate techniques. But Liu Huan was dressed like a peasant standing next to the Moon Goddess. This was like the legendary Wu Gang who chopped down the cassia tree, except that Wu Gang did not have a head as big as Liu Huan. Even more weird was that the Chinese lyrics of the song were pretty lousy. You cannot get something this bad even if you asked Guo Qingming or Wei Minglun to write the lyrics. Besides, the rhythm of the song was too slow and does not excite people. It was more like a choir hymn. When the athletes hear this song during the competition, they will fall asleep. They can play this during the marathon race, but it is unsuitable for other events.

The ignition of the Olympic flame was creative and it was the only bright spot of the opening ceremony. This invokes the ancient story of Kuafu chasing the sun. It was fortunate that the final torchbearer was Li Ning. If it was someone like table tennis player Zhang Yining, the suspension in the air would have just about killed her.

So you guys who hated it, you ain't alone.

Isaac Hayes is dead, just 65 years old. Of course he's known for the soundtrack to Shaft and for a late career resurgence as the voice of Chef on South Park. But aside from that, along with partner David Porter, he co-wrote many of the greatest hits on the Stax/Volt label, songs like Hold On I'm Coming and Soul Man.

Unrelated, Dark Knight is #1 at the box office for the 4th week in a row, this time edging out Pineapple Express. It's been years since any film has held the #1 spot for so long. Dark Knight is now the #3 top grossing film in the US and will definitely hit the #2 spot, though it will not pass Titanic. Yes, it is a comic book movie. Yes, it's not perfect. But it really is that good.

Last thing .... since I don't have any TV antenna, I can't get TVB or ATV at home. I downloaded the opening ceremonies of the Olympics and watched them yesterday afternoon. I think you know that I'm one of those people who is upset with China's conduct leading up to the Olympics. And I've read plenty of bloggers who have said they didn't like the opening ceremonies for a variety of mostly nonsensical reasons. It was artistic, it was beautifully done, if you couldn't appreciate it for its own sake, you're merely showing off your own limitations.

A rather slow, lazy weekend. Saturday night, revisited an old favorite for dinner, Under Bridge Spicy Crab, on Lockhart Road in Causeway Bay. This place (actually four separate shops along Lockhart and Canal Roads) has been around for more than 20 years, a lifetime by Hong Kong standards.

Look at the celebrity photos on the wall and the largest picture is Anthony Bourdain - who didn't actually eat there, the owner cooked him their signature typhoon shelter crab dish while on a junk in the harbor.

Hadn't actually been there in a few years and was happy that the food was as tasty as ever though the prices had definitely increased. The crab that we shared, a big sucker (450 grams, I think? I suck at metric weights) cost $780.

Anyway, the pictures below are from the restaurant's web site (Chinese language only) and are 2 of the 3 dishes we had (the third was a simply stir-fried noodle). All that brown stuff? Garlic. Lots of it. And the red stuff is chili - tell the waiter if you want it mild, medium, or death-defying and they'll gladly oblige.

The plates themselves were not as artfully arranged as in these photos but we survived. It was goooooooooood. One tip if you've never been there and intend to go - dress down, you're gonna get messy.

New DVD releases in the US on August 12, as listed on Amazon.

With the Olympics in full swing, the studios aren't going to be releasing anything major. So it's lots of TV series and drips and drabs .....

CJ7 - Stephen Chow's family friendly sci fi comedy gets a US release with a lot more extras than the HK release (also on Blu-Ray)

The Secret - a David Duchovny film that I haven't seen

Smart People - a Dennis Quaid film that I haven't seen

Bra Boys - a Russell Crowe film that I haven't seen

Felon - a Val Kilmer film that I haven't seen (but a friend recommended)

TV on DVD - The Wire season 5, Prison Break season 3, South Park season 11, Love Boat "season 1 volume 2", That Girl season 4, Caroline in the City season 1, Dave's World season 1

New on Blu-Ray - The Doors, Kiss of the Spider Woman

And let's not forget:
starring Michael Pare, Max Perlich, George Takei and, um, Beverly Hotsprings as Detective Foxey, written and directed by the video assistant operator on Hannah Montana: The Movie. So at least we have that to look forward to.

This year's Comedy Central roastee is Bob Saget, clean wholesome Full House and, what was it, America's Lamest Home Videos and trying to live it all down by using more 4 letter words in his stand-up act than Lenny Bruce and George Carlin combined.

View some preview clips here: I especially liked Cloris Leachman saying "I am not here to roast Bob Saget. I came here to fuck John Stamos .... for the love of god, will someone please punch me in the face so I can see some stars?" Yes, lots of dirty jokes about the Olsen twins. If this one from Gilbert Gottfried made it in, you can only guess at what they cut out.
==================================

Olympic swimmer Amanda Beard's poster for PETA:
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Summertime. When faded stars vacation in Europe, charter boats and sunbathe topless. Heidi Klum and Cindy Crawford, to name but two.

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Did you ever notice that almost every bar in Wanchai has a sign in front advertising for staff and almost everyone of these signs specifies they are searching specifically for Filipino waitresses? I thought that sort of thing was illegal even here.

Which job would be worse: beer promotion girl in a whorehouse Wanchai disco or laundering the flop sweat and other assorted stains out of Donald Tsang's shorts?

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Questions about the iTunes Apps Store that I'm not the first to ask but feel like asking anyway:

Do we need 14 different applications for calculating how much of a tip to leave in a restaurant? If you're so fucking stupid that you can't work out what 15 or 20% of $200 is, there is a freaking calculator already on the phone.

I was happy to download I Need More Cowbell because it's free and cute if you've seen the SNL sketch. Who is paying 2 bucks to download Cowbell Plus?

Do we need 30 different Sudoku games?

I'll trade you 25 Sudoku games for something that lets me fucking cut and paste.

If you like SF films, especially Matrix and Blade Runner, then you need to see the director's cut of Dark City. It's based on an original story from director Alex Proyas (The Crow, I Robot) and stars Rufus Sewell, Kiefer Sutherland, William Hurt and Jennifer Connelly plus Richard "Rocky Horror Show" O'Brien and Bruce Spence (Mad Max 2 & 3). The movie came out in 1998 and has some similar themes to The Matrix, which appeared a year later. The new director's cut restores 10 minutes of footage and removes the narration. I've read that some of the CGI was "improved" for the new edition as well.

This movie flew completely under my personal radar when it was first released. Watched it last night and positively loved it. Though I have to say that the climatic fight between Sewell and O'Brien reminded me a bit too much of the cheesy wizards' battle between Boris Karloff and Vincent Price in The Raven (which is really a lot of fun and you should see it if you haven't already, especially for a wacky Peter Lorre and a very young Jack Nicholson - what, you didn't know that there was a movie that has Karloff, Price, Lorre AND Jack Nicholson in the same film?). (Kiefer Sutherland is definitely channeling Peter Lorre in this.)

As for the plot ... because it's not entirely explained until 2/3rds of the way through the film, let's consider this a SPOILER and please skip if you don't want to know, though I'm not going to say anything at all about the ending .....













Okay, still here? Here's some (but not all) of the set-up for the film. A race of people are kind of like Borg, with a group mind and group memories. They are dying out and they are studying humans to find out what makes them individual, secretly controlling everything going on in an unnamed city. Every night at midnight, they freeze time, everyone falls asleep and they rebuild the city and swap peoples' personalities and memories. Today you're a factory worker living in a dump, tomorrow you're a millionaire in a mansion with a completely different set of memories and a different wife. We are not told how long this has been going on. We have no idea how many times people have had their memories wiped and refilled. Every now and then someone wakes up before they should and gets a glimpse of what's going on ......

A neat concept and nice visual effects to go with it and more than a little reminiscent of The Matrix, eh? Especially because these "strangers" all dress alike and can float around. No "bullet time" or HK influenced action sequences - the influence here is more film noir crossed with Blade Runner - but stylish and entertaining nonetheless.

Winds are still increasing. The satellite dish on my roof blew over. (It was non-functional, just left behind by the previous tenants.)

The No. 8 Southeast Gale or Storm Signal is in force.

This means that winds with mean speeds of 63 kilometres per
hour or more are expected from the southeast quarter.

At 10 a.m., Severe Tropical Storm Kammuri was centred about
140 kilometres south-southwest of Hong Kong (near 21.1
degrees north 113.8 degrees east) and is forecast to move
west-northwest at about 14 kilometres per hour, edging
closer to Hong Kong.

Gale force winds are affecting the territory with storm
force winds over offshore waters and high grounds. Local
wind is changing from northeast to southeast. Areas
previously sheltered from the winds will become exposed.
Members of the public should beware of the change in wind
direction and take precautions as soon as possible.

According to the present track, the Gale or Storm Signal
No.8 is expected to remain in force during most part of the
day today.

In the past hour, the maximum sustained winds recorded at
Waglan Island, Sai Kung and Cheung Chau were 83, 66 and 87
kilometres per hour respectively.

Speaking of disasters in the making, last night I was driving to pick up my gf and the car started vibrating noticeably. I switched off the air con and that improved things slightly but not 100%. It occurred to me that if the car broke down on the road at night, I wouldn't have the vaguest idea of whom to call. I don't have the number of any tow truck drivers and the repair shop I use closes around 7 PM.

Anyway, picked her up, we had dinner, headed home, and the engine started knocking any time I accelerated and just hoped the car would make it all the way. When we hit the roundabout by Clearwater Bay, there was a car stranded off to the side, a female driver standing alongside the car, a look of frustration on her face. A police van had stopped and now they were driving off. Had they given her a number to call for road service? Or just said sorry, not our job?

Tomorrow I'll have to ask my mechanic what to do. Perhaps I need to join the HKAA, which does offer a 24 hour roadside assistance hotline number.

From the iTunes store, for real.

"You don't need a weatherman to know which way the wind blows," and I didn't need the Weather Underground site to tell me that we're at Signal 8, though it's certainly nice to have the full details.

(By the way, as a child of the American 60s, I always thought this was a strange name for a weather site - makes me think of the Weathermen, the 60s radicals slyly alluded to in the Dylan song quoted above.)

The winds (outside, not, um, internal) had me up since about 4 AM, and we went to Signal 8 shortly before 6 AM. The storm is still getting closer to HK, forecast to be closest around noon. That likely means an entire day off from work - though it also means I need to reschedule this morning's appointment to bring my slowly dying car to the mechanic and this afternoon's dentist appointment as well.

And since we went through most of the leftovers in the fridge last night for dinner, I'm already wondering what's for lunch ....

Now that Apple has the App Store for the iPhone, I find myself spending more time on iTunes. I'm spending more time browsing music there and actually buying quite a bit more than in the past. I wonder how widespread this might be?

As a record and CD collector, I was always into amassing atoms and unsure about buying bytes, especially given the number of hard drive failures I've experienced both personally and professionally. Well, I keep my iTunes library on RAID now, hoping that will do the trick.

One album I bought last night, something I found by accident, "Nudge It Up a Notch" by Steve Cropper and Felix Cavaliere. Yes, that's right. Steve Cropper, legendary guitarist from every Stax/Volt session, Booker T & the MGs and even the Blues Brothers. Felix Cavaliere, that amazing voice from the Rascals. They did an album together, just out last month. I couldn't resist. (The fact that one of the reviews on iTunes was written by Al Kooper didn't hurt.) I won't say that it's an amazing, 5 star bit of work. But it's at least 3-1/2 star - Cavaliere's voice has stood up well and Cropper is still a six string master. Yes, I'm bummed that this was only available at 128 kbps, but at least it came with a PDF of the entire bookle.

Another album bought last night, Dr. John's The City That Care Forgot, his ode to post-Katrina New Orleans, with guests Terence Blanchard, Eric Clapton, Willie Nelson and Ani DiFranco. Available as an "iTunes plus" download at 256, no booklet, one bonus track not available at the Amazon MP3 store. Nice stuff.

Today, aside from listening to my engine knocking and pinging (sigh), I was also listening to Harps and Angels, Randy Newman's first album of new songs in 9 years. Splendid. Everything you expect from Mr. Newman and more. Gotta share these lyrics with you, from a song titled, "A Few Words in Defense of Our Country."

I'd like to say a few words
In defense of our country
Whose people aren't bad
Nor are they mean
Now the leaders we have
While they're the worst that we've had
Are hardly the worst
This poor world has seen

Take the Caesars for example
Within the first few of them
They were sleeping with their sister
Stashing little boys in swimming pools
And burning down the city
And one of 'em, one of 'em
Appointed his own horse to be Consul of the Empire
That's like vice president or something
Wait a minute, that's not a very good example is it?
But wait, here's one
The Spanish Inquisition
It put people in a terrible position
I don't even like to think about it
Well sometimes I like to think about it

Just a few words in defense of our country
Whose time at the top
Could be coming to an end
We don't want your love
And respect at this point is pretty much out of the question
But times like these
We sure could use a friend

Hitler
Stalin
Men who need no introduction
King Leopold of Belgium, that's right
Everyone thinks he's so great
Well he owned The Congo and he tore it up too
He took the diamonds
He took the silver
He took the gold
You know what he left them with?
Malaria

A President once said,
"The only thing we have to fear is fear itself"
Now, we're supposed to be afraid
It's patriotic in fact and color-coded
And what are we supposed to be afraid of?
Why of being afraid
That's what terror means, doesn't it?
That's what it used to mean

You know it kind of pisses me off
That this Supreme Court is going to outlive me
A couple of young Italian fellas and a brother on the Court now too
But I defy you, anywhere in the world,
To find me two Italians as tight-assed as the two Italians we got
And as for the brother, well
Pluto's not a planet anymore either

The end of an Empire is messy at best
And this Empire is ending
Like all the rest
Like the Spanish Armada adrift on the sea
We're adrift in the land of the brave and the home of the free

Goodbye
Goodbye
Goodbye

Yes, Randy Newman is angry. Here's an excerpt from "A Piece of the Pie"

Jesus Christ it stinks here high and low
The rich are getting richer
I should know
While we're going up
You're going down
And no one gives a shit but Jackson Browne

Maybe tomorrow I'll share the lyrics for "Korean Parents."

(Notable DVD releases in the US, as listed on Amazon.)

Not the most exciting of weeks but that means I save some money ....

Get Smart Season 1 - The recent movie version did well, now watch the original Mel Brooks version.

The Counterfeiters - won the Oscar for best foreign language film, ain't seen it

Wild China - sadly not a look into hostess bars in Shanghai, this is a very nice BBC natural history series, available standard def and Blu Ray

Pete Seeger: The Power of Song - documentary on a seminal figure in American folk music history

Anthony Bourdain No Reservations Collection 3 - WTF is up with these "collections?" Instead of releasing season by season, they're putting out these collections of random episodes. And then you know they'll just turn around in another year and release complete season editions with new bonus features. So I'll wait.

Masters of Science Fiction The Complete Series - Only four episodes aired, this box contains those plus two that never made it. Based on the one episode I watched almost all the way through, I'm surprised they were able to get 4 on the air.

WWE Summerslam - The Complete Anthology - 20 discs of phony wrestling sure to please the 5 year old in all of us.

The Heavy Metal Movie - Not sure why this is being reissued again but if you never saw it, now's as good a time as any to catch up with this uneven but occasional splendid animated anthology.

Love Story - Not the Ryan O'Neal/Al Gore movie but a documentary on Los Angeles psychedelic band Love. Only 50 minutes but said to contain some worthwhile clips.

Better Off Dead - 2 disc edition of the 80s John Cusack high school comedy that was a bit better than the rest but nowhere near as good as Risky Business or Ferris Bueller.

and let's not forget

Hollywood Chainsaw Hookers 20th Anniversary Widescreen Edition - I'm getting one for my mom.

New on Blu-Ray - Starship Troopers, Lonesome Dove

This weekend's spam emails:

Bush to Reporters: Fuck the Constitution
Tiger Woods Will Call Next Son Monkey
Blair: I'm Not Gay, Thats Just My Accent
Sarah Jessica Parker Arrested for Gross Negligee
Bush 'Troubled' By Gay Marriages, Declares San Francisco Part of 'Axis of Evil'
Astronauts Pose With the U.S. Snoopy
I Liked the Part When the French Got Their Asses Busted - G.W. Bush

Guaranteed - all of the above actual headers on spam emails. Who needs The Onion when you got this stuff?

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

I've been scooped. In connection with the Disneyland visa mess, was going to link to this article on Variety Asia Online about the theme park's refinancing woes.

Walt Disney and the Hong Kong government are fighting over the ongoing finance of the Hong Kong Disneyland theme park.

The park, which is 57% owned by Hong Kong and has been open nearly three years, is due to repay HK$2.5billion ($325 million) of loans in September. But the two sides cannot agree on how it should be refinanced.

He who hesitates is lunch and Stephen Vines, writing for Asia Sentinel, has done a much better job than I could have.

No where else in the world is there an immigration regulation that permits entry to a territory exclusively for the purpose of visiting a single commercial tourist attraction.

It is becoming increasingly clear why such an extreme measure was introduced. The park has never met its attendance or revenue targets and is now embroiled in negotiations to reschedule the massive debt incurred by the park’s operating company. The bulk of this debt comes from a HK$5.6 billion ($718 million) loan granted by the Hong Kong government prior to the park’s opening. The US-based Walt Disney Company is meanwhile seeking to renegotiate commercial loans totaling HK$2.6 billion, which were acquired in addition to the government grant.

Although the Hong Kong government holds 57 percent of the theme park’s equity, with options to increase this holding through debt-for-equity swaps, the government refuses to disclose details about the financial status of what is effectively a state-controlled company. The only available information arises from its partner, the US Disney company, which needs to file periodic reports to the US Securities and Exchange Commission.

Its latest filing to the SEC, made last month, reveals that Disney has failed to make progress in debt refinancing talks with the government and that the park is continuing to operate at a loss and is failing to meet its attendance targets although details of these figures have not been disclosed.

...

At the time of the park’s launch the government ridiculed suggestions that the venture’s Achilles’ heel was its small size – the smallest Disney theme park in the world – which could discourage visitors and kill off the kind of repeat business that has been the key to success for Disney elsewhere. It is now widely recognized that size does matter and that Hong Kong is suffering as a result.

Moreover, whereas Disney signed non-competition agreements with its joint venture theme park partners in both Paris and Tokyo, it appears that the Hong Kong government negotiators either forgot or were unsuccessful in obtaining such a pledge for the SAR version. As a result talks are well underway with the Shanghai municipal government for the establishment of a park that is likely to draw visitors from the Hong Kong park’s principal catchment area – mainland China.

It is not too soon to say that this venture has entered the realms of debacle and it still begs the question of why a government that prides itself on leaving businesspeople to get on with business should have thought it was smart enough to step in where real business feared to tread.

Big Mummy, via Variety Asia Online:

"The Mummy: The Tomb of the Dragon Emperor" scared up boffo numbers on its opening day in Hong Kong.

Initial reports put Thursday's gross at HK$3,484,488 ($467,000,) but numbers were later revised upwards when the territory's largest multiplex The Grand Cinema belatedly reported its numbers. When midnight sneak previews were added in total hit HK$3.9 million ($500,000) from 39 complexes in Hong Kong and Macau.

According to distributor Edko, total is the biggest opening day of 2008 in the territory, the biggest Thursday opening on record for a non-holiday weekend and the biggest opening day for a Universal title since U slate began to be handled by Edko.

The Mummy is one of the worst reviewed films of the year, scoring even lower than Love Guru. I guess no one gives a shit about reviews.

Unrelated to anything else, just, well, because I wanna, some of you will thank me for this

The HK Observatory says the temp in Sai Kung right now is 31.5 degrees. My car says it's 33.5. I believe my car. Humidity is at 69% and the heat index is 38.6 and I definitely believe that. It's fricking hot out in the open ground, walking under the sun. But it's also a beautiful clear blue sky day, one of those rare glorious HK summer days - especially rare because it's a Sunday and not one of those weeks where it was clear and hot all week and then raining on the weekend. Heat be damned, if every summer time day was like this I'd be doing the Ferris Bueller "How could I possibly be expected to go to school on a day like this" thing.

The flip side is that everyone and their grandmother has decided to come up here today. The 8 story Wilson car park in town was full, with a line of cars waiting outside. Out by the town swimming pool, not only were the car parks full, people were parking on whatever stretch of sidewalk or grass they could get at.

We thought about turning around and heading home but managed to get a spot at Pak Sha Wan/Kau Sai San and so a long leisurely lunch at Hebe 101. If you've never been there, this is one of my regular spots. A 2 story village house converted into a restaurant, the ground floor is open and filled with overstuffed leather sofas. Dining room on first floor, rooftop bar. From the roof there's a view of the marina across the road, from the ground floor it's just the traffic along the main road. Even so, the food is certainly good enough, there's a stack of newspapers and magazines, sit back under the ceiling fans and let the day go by.

I could have sat there all afternoon, unfortunately I have chores that need doing around the house. Especially that last night, my computer decided not to be able to mount the 1 terabyte drive (2 tb, raid 1) that houses a big chunk of my MP3 collection. Somehow I managed to not obsess over this last night but today is another story.

Speaking of MP3s, lemme give another plug to Singapore's Big O webzine. Among other things, they put up a different series of what they term ROIO (Recordings Of Indeterminate Origin) with new ones each week. This weekend sees two complete Miles Davis concerts from the Fillmore East, Nigel Kennedy with Jeff Beck, Aretha's sister Erma Franklin backed up by Electric Flag in San Francisco in 1968, as well as stuff from Nick Lowe, Yo La Tengo, Led Zeppelin, The Who and, wait for it, The Clash live in Hong Kong in 1982.

Okay, got work to do. But maybe there is time to stretch out in the sun for a quick nap?

Do you read Waiter Rant? He's out of the closet, in a manner of speaking, now that his book is out. Here's a photo, here's an interview in New York Magazine, here's a review of the book in WSJ.

Unrelated, Wired takes a look at statistics on Radiohead's In Rainbows album. Even though it was available to download for free from Radiohead's web site, 2.3 million copies were traded via various P2P software. And the album was still number one on the sales charts in the US and UK once it was available in stores.

... people tend to develop habits around the acquisition of music; once they find something that works, they tend to keep using it. As the paper mentions, "The Pirate Bay is a powerful brand with a sterling reputation in the minds of millions of young music fans."

The hard lesson to the music business here is that it must license venues for music acquisition that fans prefer to file sharing networks or otherwise make the toleration of file sharing part of their business plans. If even Radiohead's freely available album was torrented 2.3 million times in the first three and a half weeks, how can more traditional offerings successfully clamp-down on file sharing? They can't, pure and simple.
...
Applying economic principles to digital music, Garland and Page found that "the challenge of achieving popularity (or attention) when the old rules of scarcity and excludability don't apply (to information goods) the way they used to, changes the monetization game completely." And Radiohead clearly won that game, regardless of how many times its album was traded online.

Garland and Page came to the undeniable conclusion that the music industry needs to stop thinking of shared files as lost sales, and start treating them as an aspect of reality upon which they can build part of their businesses.

I was considering going to the new Mummy movie this weekend. I liked the first one, the second one sucked and the Scorpion King sucked hard. I figured if they were reviving the franchise (and adding in Jet Li and Michelle Yeoh) maybe there would be some improvement? A 10% score on Rotten Tomatoes would seem to suggest otherwise. And in the NY Times review, Stephen Holden writes, "In the movie’s futile drive to conjure visceral excitement, the action sequences are edited into an incoherent jumble that makes you feel trapped on a rickety airplane sitting in a pool of yak vomit." Guess I'll pass.

I'd go for Wall-E, except that most theaters are showing the Cantonese version. And the few that have the English version seem to have shoved it into shoe boxes that only have six or eight rows of seats - and are mostly sold out for night time shows this weekend. If it's going to be such a freaking small screen, might as well just wait for the DVD.

I'd happily go see this:

But it's still almost a year away! Them viral marketing campaigns are starting earlier and earlier.

The incompetence of the current administration in charge of HK just seems to grow daily.

The latest kerfuffle was when the government proudly announced striking a deal with the mother ship land to allow tour groups from Guangdong to visit Disneyland without the requirement of a visa. "Look how China loves us!" "Look how smart we are to negotiate such a splendid arrangement!" "Love us! Please?"

And then from his lofty perch, Allan Zeman delivered his opinion. "Er, uh, what the fuck? Why this preferential treatment for Disneyland? What about Ocean Park? What about Ngong Ping cable cars?"

And our government stepped back, took a deep breath and said, "Oh, er, ah, no, we didn't make any mistakes and this isn't preferential treatment. It's a pilot scheme, you see. And if it works we'll extend it to other Hong Kong attractions as well."

One day later they've announced they're extending it to other attractions. Some pilot scheme, eh? Announce its success and expand it before it even starts?

I mean, come on. We pay these government ministers some of the highest salaries in the world. They're chosen by the wise men that the wise men in China chose to lead us. And they're completely fucking incapable of figuring out the impact of their actions? They're so fucking dense and inexperienced that they don't know that every action has a reaction and their little think tanks can't figure out what those reactions are likely to be? What happened to those new appointed and highly paid group of numbskulls that Tsang so proudly unveiled a couple of months ago? Are they all off on their summer holidays already?

All this flip flopping on the maid tax is another example. They announced a two year suspension of the maid tax, starting two months in the future. The maids complained that their employers would fire them so that they could reap the HK$400 per month benefit. "Oh no, that will never happen," said the geniuses in charge. And then it started happening.

And then they said, "Oh, okay, we'll move up the start date." And people complained. And now they've come up with some scheme that says that you can do an advance renewal of the contract, but you have to pay in advance for things like the helper's home leave. And it represents a windfall for the agencies that do the maid visa thing. (I do it myself, I don't use an agency.)

Why not simply abolish the tax altogether? No one in the government has EVER explained what slush fund this money is going towards.

This is what you get when you have an appointed government. People who do what they want, who operate on whims and notions that come to them after their third bottle of expense account Chivas and have a staff of yes-men who tell their boss that every lamebrain scheme is a great idea! and who have no fear of losing their jobs because they don't have to stand for election or re-election.

Latest BC column is online now. Some times I have a hard time coming up with a topic for the column. This one was easy and the thanks for that go to Fumier.