Posts from April 2004
April 29, 2004
Love and other catastrophes...
They should have added one more, "I Wanna Be Your Dog," Iggy Pop.
Mini Bars, zombies, and Iggy Pop
Interesting things of note this week:
I discovered that sleep does not equal rest. A few nights ago, I relived the entire Dawn of the Dead movie. except I was the guy driving the police car to the mall, and I was the guy spashing heads open with a shotgun, and I was the one who sent the poor teenager to go into the dark hallway to make sure the doors were locked. I also managed to hack open a few zombie heads
Then last night I opened up a bar across the street called "The Mini Bar" since it was only 12 feet across, and 6 feet deep. Business was fabulous, but I had to sublease from a stupid wench who couldn't see the value of her property, and left it to rot as a Cantonese kitchen. But when she was away I threw free jazz concerts with musicians who were annoyingly much better than I was.
This nocturnal activity coupled with extraneous conversations with dream strangers, business plan writing, and IRR financial analysis, I wake up annoyed, tired, and ready to get some sleep.
The Chairman of PHS came into the Living Room with his wife Duan Duan the other night to catch our Flamenco and Indonesian night of dance. The robed Balinese dancer even lured him onto the stage to shimmy around. Not bad for a conservative old guy. He sent over a box of Dunhill cigars the next day which was very nice.
I put a few recent VitaSoul bootlegs up in MP3s for any interested parties. Rough live stuff. A lot of overplaying, but what the hell. It's live.
Sky Burial played their last gig. It's always sad to see another local band go their own ways. Here's a great version of Iggy Pop's "I Wanna Be Your Dog" with some crazy saxophone blowing going on. Lance expounds like a true New Yorker.
I got invited somehow to an AIT reception at one of their Director's houses, which should allow me to put foot in mouth many times during the course of the evening, and pirate their snack bar.
I read three pretty good movie scripts, and now I get to write a cartoon series about Rice Balls for a local production company. Fat Albert and the Rice Balls?
I learned how powerful tar -cpzf yourfilename.tar.gz actually is.
I found out that you shouldn't go barefoot at the sauna in the Agora Gardens, unless you want to contract alien chicken feet.
I was reminded over 300 times by various strangers via email to increase the size of my love muscle.
Bai Bing Bing asked me why I stopped playing my "beautiful music."
I was asked to submit my resume to two different listed companies, both needing a creative MD to expand their international exposure. Round peg, square hole. [Guess which one I am?] Might get me a membership to play squash at ACC, or a parking spot near the elevator. Never know. Maybe even a cubicle with glass walls. Better yet, an overworked PA to route all my personal calls through.
I ate 8 pieces of the most disgustingly salty bacon on the face of the planet. It's called PROKER. I assume it's supposed to say PORKER. Anyway, avoid this if you want to live a long healthy life.
April 27, 2004
Chinese wet dream
A classic manisfestation of the Chinese wet dream...
April 19, 2004
Memery
Monday early AM. Cars start to come up the mountain. Birds have stopped chirping. All controllable to-do activities planned for the week. Can't sleep. So I stumble onto a site that tells me to:
Grab the nearest book.
Open the book to page 23.
Find the fifth sentence.
Post the text of the sentence in your journal along with these instructions.
Meekly I follow...Grab, open, find, post:
"When are you going to start thinking about your next move?"
April 16, 2004
The stress is getting heavy when...
It lingers in the back of your neck. A throbbing pain like someone with a big fat hand karate chopped you in a dark alley. It feels like your eyes are being squeezed out of their sockets. It creates an acidic black hole in the middle of your chest, and makes your heart want to explode onto the pavement. It isolates itself in your temples just when you need to concentrate or look at something bright. A passing sound drills into your ear drums. You lose patience for anything. Traffic. The phone. Questions. Extraneous time wasting situations. Especially slow dull nimwitted people standing between you and getting something done. You lose site of all goals. You want to climb 101 and throw yourself off onto a speeding taxi or a satellite dish, splattering brains across a broad swipe of ugly grey buildings. But then the game would be over, so you regroup, take a deep breath, try not to let it get to you. You slowly lower to a simmer, then a stew, then back to a smolder. After a few hours it will pass, you'll get some sleep, dream about vast lands and enchanted places, and things will be better for a while, until you wake up and have to deal with it all over again tomorrow.
April 15, 2004
Rare candor
in a rare moment of candor, Washington insiders discuss the size of their penis sizes...
April 14, 2004
Case of the upside down telephone
This is pretty interesting. Ah Bien has been shot, the day before the elections. The country is at a standstill. He's laying on the operating table. Doctors are sewing him up. He's making a phone call to the Premier, or Chief of State, or to his wife, an emergency crisis phone call of utmost national importance. But he's speaking into the earpiece of his phone. [Notice the direction of the antennae.] How can he hear? Does anyone hear him? Makes you wonder...
April 10, 2004
Meet Jia-rong
My friends Christofu and Christi just adopted a beautiful Chinese baby!
April 07, 2004
Whose money is it?
A better tomorrow asks...
"If Taiwan really isn't a part of China, then shouldn't Taiwan return all of those Chinese artifacts in the National Palace Museum? I think it would be hilarious if Chen Shuibian were to offer to return those tens of thousands of pieces of ancient Chinese art in the National Palace Museum, as well as all of the currency reserves that the KMT brought over in 1949 (plus interest), because it's the property of the Chinese people and doesn't belong to the Taiwanese people."
This is really funny. "Here you go guys, this money doesn't belong to us. Neither do these treasures. They're Chinese, not Taiwanese."
That's over US$200 billion sitting around in reserve, #3 in the world.
Oh yeah, and what about all that Chinese gold General Chiang lugged over? People seem to forget about that. There's 400+ tons of it sitting around somewhere. Should they give that back as well?
Old Fisherman's Trail
Today was Brett's birthday, and he asked if I wanted to do a hike with him up the Old Fisherman's Trail on the back side of Yangmingshan. [We're now 3 hikes into Richard Saunder's trail book.] So we both played hooky from our morning money slaving rituals, and met up at 8am to absolutely gorgeous Taiwan hiking weather. Cool, mid 70-s, dry, with a light breeze.
Highlights:
-Seeing a restored Taiwanese farmhouse circa 1900 in the middle of nowhere with a thatched roof and a modern green postal address plaque.
-Brett's quip about how his doctor in the '60's stopped by for R&R in Peitou and could get a room with a hot spring, a girl, and a bowl of rice for $100NT.
-Meeting the mini pigdog near the top of the ridge.
-The 8 smoking craters.
-Winding down in the hidden Peter Pan's hideaway natural hotsprings along the cold stream.
-Brett asking Sabrina, if she was forced to choose, what would it be between these two alternatives: a) having unlimited energy, an endless perfectly clear day that never ends, and beautiful trails winding through mother nature, or b) an unlimited credit card, to buy anything at Taipei 101, on a shopping day that never ends.
April 06, 2004
Big speakers, trees, and French food
JP called and asked if Irene and we wanted to drive out in the mountains after a lunch at his place, to meet this interesting guy who builds enormous custom hi-end speakers. He's got this big space nestled up in the hills, with a beautiful little stream running by, and no neighbors you can see. Felt like being in Evergreen, Colorado again. It turns out that I've been listening to his speakers for 16 years, as they are built into most of the major recording studios here. Now he ships them to China and the US, since the Chinese don't want to buy Chinese made speakers, and the US wants a good price. It's kind of mind boggling being in a warehouse filled with double refrigerator sized speakers, in the middle of a forest, with giant concrete dinosaurs lurking around. Only in Taiwan do you run into these hidden unusual entreprenurial craftsmen. It's a family business. Dad overseeing design, son loading trucks, mom filling out orders, and daughter answering the phone. The dinosaurs just lurk.
Mr. Lin and I had a lot to chat about, and I learned some good inside scoop on Taiwan's PA industry, concert production, cone and woofer design, home theaters, surround sound, and OEM manufacturing of high end loudspeakers. Now I know brands like Meyer and JBL are all built here at this guys shop. Looks like I'll be putting some sub-woofers in at the Living Room soon. Cool.
April 03, 2004
They used to call it character
Man oh man oh man...
Another late night. Getting to be habitual. This club owner life is hard sometimes. Even when there's excellent Isaac Hayes playing on the CD, some Jack and Coke in hand, a bunch of musicians sitting back trading stories, you still have to think "Is there a better business model?"
Especially when you have a 9 am wake up call.
I had a long talk today with a friend of mine who is dealing with faith, marriage, and family issues.
I've never figured out whether it's pronounced "Moe's (like owned by one of three stooges) or Moss (like that guy out of Bonanza), but the one down the hill from me is open until 2am most days, which means that if I get out of the club early enough, I can catch the best burger in town, the muo si la bao or the Spicy Mos Burger. They have lots of jalapenos and 
