stop crying over spilled organelles

13 past twelve and yes i am at.. the office. On the weekend. for the umpteen billionth time. i have (still) been lighting, all day, with somewhat satisfactory results. The point is RESULTS, at least it is getting done (enough). See my last post about the wonderful world of lighting.

Really I guess I don't have much else to say right now. The lights are rendering and so I have a few minutes to twiddle my thumbs while i wait for the machine to not-crash, hopefully. It has been doing a lot of that, unfortunately - I sat here for a good hour and a half trying to render lights, and then it crashed (burning that time). Then I figured a much quicker solution, sorta by accident.. UPDATE it just finished rendering the lights, and then I hit the "save" button, and as I did that, it crashed (and ate my work). Wonderful.

I feel like 2008 has sort of slipped past me, unnoticed. This is truly a year where I've been kind of wrapped up in work, mostly, and let everything else kind of take a backseat, in many ways. I did get to have a good few standout moments of irregularity, to different degrees - hey life is never actually "boring" - but it's certainly not been the usual hecticness I was kind of keeping tempo with a couple of years ago. There's only so many hours in the day, and I am just one man.

I eat lunch with a few dudes at work pretty much daily. I suppose it would be wayyy cheaper to bring lunch in, but when I do that I tend to get even more withdrawn and disassociative from my fellow man, and all that entails - basically makes me feel kind of extra-crazy, the point is it is good to get out for a little chunk during the day and out of my work-cave and away from the wretched, wretched computer. Anyway we sit and eat nachos or burgers or pizza or burritos or buffalo wings whatever unhealthy thing we can get our hands on, once in awhile down it with a beer or two (or margarita or two, hmmm, could go for a bit of that right doggamn N-O-W) and we sit and whine about work and whine about women and whine about money and all that other crap that guys do, heh heh. Anyway, it's the good part of the day. So recently one of the guys was talking about all of the horrendous circumstances he'd found himself in, during his tenure living and schooling in and around Hollywood, a lot of the cliched craziness one would assume would happen on moving out here and being an artsy fellow in their early 20s, in this day and age - stories with a humorous bent to be sure, but also quite dark and sort of depressing, overall. Narrowly avoiding running in with colorful characters of ill-repute, to say the least, and finding ways down some dark, dark paths. I don't like to pepper my journal with too many specifics if it is not actually my story and I am not sure how cool other people would be with degrees of incriminating them - I have had issues with this before! - so I will leave it at that. Use your imagination. Dirty living, alright! Anyway, the kinds of stories that you love to hate, and I am no different. So I am listening to this dude spill his guts, and comparing it with my own past (as I'll do) and it really makes me appreciate the crowd I have surrounded myself with, at the end of the day. I guess we do take one another for granted at times - and hell, no one is perfect - and SURE (damned.. thing crashed AGAINNN).. ahem..SURE we do things to piss each other off now and again, to whatever consequences.. but yeah, I am constantly reminded of the fact that I have got a nice group of people around me, and that I am really lucky for that.

autolabs, cacciatore

jeez lots of blog writin' from me lately. that's cause it's a lot of extra late-late-nights in the office for me these days. honestly i can't really remember the last time i was used to gettin' out of here before midnight. i consider getting home before 2am relatively a good thing. so, yeah. anyway, i am lighting now. i spend all this time building stuff, and painting the textures, and testing how it looks while playing thru - the last step of the creation process (before further testing and eventual breaking everything) is applying the nice, nice lighting which makes it all look really sweet or really bland. lighting is a pain, because you set up a bunch of lights as if they were in the real world - set their colors, the brightness, the falloff, directions, etc, all to a --very-- rough approximation of what it would look like onsceen. hey, it is something. a lot of calculation must be done in one's head, a lot of fakey stuff must be setup. there's not a real good "true lighting simulator' out there yet, just tons of tools to help you approach half-decent fakitude. when you do it right, things looks real smooth, real nice. when you don't set it up properly, all your hard work ends up looking sort of flat and chumpy and just not as awesome as it SHOULD (esp. compared to the other stuff!) So it's kind of a big tease really, especially when you are strapped for time. The upswing is that once you get the hang of it, and learn a bunch of shortcuts and things (like anything), you can put out some really nicely-lt looking things with some relative ease. Anyway, this is all very fascinating, I am sure. Hey. It's my freakin' blog alright! You don't like to hear about light attenuation? You don't wanna hear about my turkey sandwich from subway? You don't wanna know about the the fact that I have to dump some stuff in a dumpster illegally and hope not to get caught? Don't read! Yeah! YEAH!!!

Anyway, it's about quarter to two. I have a good 45 min of driving ahead of me yet. I am gonna let this light pass finish rendering, and so long as it's not all ugly when it comes out, I am gonna pack it in and go home.

more pudding for the put-ting

it is getting harder and harder to remember to write the proper month in the tagline up there. it's always my inclination to write MAY or or something. Time has officially stopped passing. It's all just one big endlessly endless month now, sand it just keeps going on. Forrrrrrevvvvvvvvar.

I had a dream that I was in a rough neighborhood last night, and the apartment building i was visiting was occupied solely by black jews. That sounds like something Steven Wright would say.. It is late, 11pm, and I am at the office still. I have been getting in (slightly) earlier these days, but I still seldom leave before midnight.. hell, before 1am. It's kind of a nightmare time of this project right now, a lot of stuff is coming together and as a result lots of arted things are having to be last-minute-fitted together differently. It's a bit of an irritating way to work, on the plus side I do think I have lots of good work in here to show in my portfolio. Still, I am a tired guy, and I have a neglected girlfriend.. and neglected friends. Hi May! Hi Skillz! Edwin! Mong! Jeff!! All you guys... remember me?? Tyler? Tyler Uppercut?

MVG?

Anyway, I suppose I will (at some point) drift back to some more semblance of a normalcy of life and society. I like to say that occasionally because it tricks me into thinking it might be true. The fact of the matter is, I am dyed-in-the-wool workaholic and at this point i need stupid shit to wrap my life and mind around, or I just don't feel right..

Maybe I could just spend more time writing..

I intended to get a regimen of exercise going and lose some weight before my folks came to visit, which is less than a month from now - well guess what, no exercise (and that's WITH having bought Wii Fit!) At least my weight and physique have stayed -relatively- stable. That's not too wonderful, but I guess it's better to maintain some general equilibrium than keep accelerating down that particular bad decline. Still, that is steadily what happens if I keep treating myself so crappily. I don't wanna really think about the mind/body/soul of 43-yr-old Ron very much, at this rate.. it's not a pretty picture.

As I might have mentioned, I am supposed to move onto "the other project" next week, which was supposed to actually have happened this week (and so, I don't know if it's for-sure happening or what). The whole notion is bittersweet, for a few very valid reasons. Anyway change is always a good bit of a headache, so whatever happens, I look forward to getting on with it and moving on with the next stage, whatever that may bring. I fear it usually since it's never "an easy transition" in any of these cases. When I get involved with any kind of project, it completely occupies so many of my waking hours, in many ways - like I said, I cannot exist without having "some stupid shit" to wrap my mind around, but it's usually got some pretty good highs and lows in there.

I went out drinking late last week, I might have mentioned.. I got really drunk, unintentionally but really after all this time I SHOULD GODDAMNED KNOW WHAT TO EXPECT...! I concede, I am an alcoholic, not full-bore but definitely some marked degree. I have been way way better about going out with any frequency/doing dumb shit in general in the past.. well, couple years, really, compared to what I'll call my hayday - but the past few occasions, I have made up for it with some pretty crummy judgement and expensive bartabs. Nothing truly ass-kicking, but enough that should serve as a good warning about "self, get your act together if you don't wanna have some pain-in-the-ass to deal with," which I have a good couple of already lining up to shake muh hands anyway. I don't truly regret such experiences, it's important to get humbled and reminded of ones' limits, fallacy, etc once in awhile, keeps you in check. Even so, good not.. to.. push it.

Anyway the show was fun. I wish I were heading out right now, it's goddamned Wednesday night! I miss the salad days, Man!!!

DEMO CRACK

welcome back to my mind, friends. 1st of all, let me wish a (couple days late) happy bday to my brother, who celebrated that on Friday. He and I are both at the point where we are not too excited to have "another birthday" pass, as it represents a whole lot of crappy things in general (ain't getting any younger!) but in light of what he has been wrestling with, career-wise and all, the past few years - I am sure glad to see he is on a really good path right now, I am very proud of him and glad that things are going more his way now. He took some BS from everyone in that period as well, but he stuck to his guns and did it how he wanted to, and it is working out at last - and that's great!

Also a happy bday to my buddy aaron, we all went out to the bar last night to get the gang together to celebrate. It was good to see everyone, a few faces there who I seldom see (some not for a real long time!) so that's always cool. It was a good time, though I must admit I wasn't really in the mood to be socializing just then, much less getting shittery faceried (I decided to be the DD that night). A bunch of my friends did throw a bunch of drinks down their throats though, and I am sure more than a few of them (who should know better) drove home anyway. Yeah, this is the part where I start proselytizing, but not without good reason, enough people in our group have had a few shitty consequences from that bullshit, just call a cab alright? Whatever, that is how it goes.

Yeah, so my mood is pretty much down in the crapper right about now. I mean, life's not bad, there's a bunch of good things going on overall, lots of things to look forward to as well, but right now some things in life are really kicking my butt - nothing too terrible or life-threatening, not by any stretch of the imagination - but still enough to get my nerves all completely whacked-out and sore. I just need that stuff to settle down. There's some very simple things I have sought in my life for a long time, things which seem like they should be pretty easy to come by - things which seem like almost everyone else I know always have got pretty damned well-patted down. Not EVERYONE I know, but enough of them, that it makes me feel like "well what the hell is wrong with me, what do I have to do to get this part of my life figured out?" The answer, honestly, is pretty easy - do the best you can, the way you know - try to be open-minded, step-up if need be, just don't be brash, don't be stupid. Keep your head up and try to keep the big picture in focus, and don't worry about the shitty little speedbumps, no matter how obnoxious and jarring they are. Okay, this is the part of the journal where I just give myself a pep-talk, don't mind me. The other end of this is, when you go through some shit - especially some cyclical shit - of course it's gonna rattle you, and eventually mold you. Of course it's gonna set you up to act a certain way, and this makes sense too. So if shit is gonna get you down, don't fight it, just wallow, repair, and move on, and no shame in that. I am only human..

I didn't go into the office this weekend. i could have (and in some ways, should have) but honestly I am super-fatigued from work right now, i really need some distance from it. I feel like my career and i are having a little bit of a lover's spat right now-- anyway I will throw myself back into it as soon as the morning gets here, and to be honest I have a mountain of things to tackle this week. In fact I have a huge question mark of mountainous things looming on the horizon, generally. Just keep plowing on...

So we went to Ikea, the particle-board furniture land of good times, a couple of weeks ago. I bought a new chest of drawers, which has sat unassembled in 2 boxes in my apartment - until yesterday. I bought the same make as my existing one, the one which has slowly and steadily been deteriorating (the result of some shoddy construction on my own part, some years ago). Assembled the new guy yesterday, and pulled the Oldie Olson out of the closet, and the old boy finally just completely fell apart in so doing. It felt like a sad metaphor for some things in my life, I have lots of half-assed ghetto-quality things in my employ, across the board - things which function (mostly) as they should, but are pretty close to completely falling into complete, irreparable collapse. It sounds a little dramatic, as usual I exaggerate, but i can certainly think of a good couple instances which this would completely apply to. the point is, I DID get a fresh new start with this new chest of drawers, a pretty stupid and perfunctory part of life of course, but one that is nice and makes that beginning part of the day slightly less of a pain in the neck to deal with. If only everything else was so easily replaceable.

Also at Ikea, I had my eye on a little side-table to put next to my couch - I have been wanting to do this for awhile now, returning there today I found the usually out-of-stock model that interested me was available in the "defects/floor models" area. A lot of that stuff is usually pretty ugly damaged, this one wasn't bad at all (a little nick on the side) and it was half off the usual $70 pricetag as a result, so why not. I grabbed the sucker and brought it home, slid it appropriately beside my couch. Well - it's alright. Though I am glad to have picked it up (and so cheap, as well!) it definitely does not do much to help the decor of my home. Granted my place is pretty slobby generally (that may be a certain girl's fault) but I do take some pride in having at least a sensible and symmetrical layout to the main centerpiece of my apartment home (please use a gay voice when reading that sentence - thanks). Seriously, it's pretty far down the line of importance, but having less clutter and a decent design of one's home does go a long way in helping to maintain a feeling of calm, of order in one's own head. I am quite a hypocrite when I say these things, I know this is true - refer to the whole paragraph above about all my falling-apart ghetto items and such - but it is nice to make an effort, I think, At least, it does make me feel better.

I don't have the cleanest (or messiest, on the other hand) apartment by a longshot, but someday, whenever I truly have my shit together - and this day WILL COME, one of these years!!!! - I would like to spend some money and actually put a decent little pad together. Just a nice space that is comfortable and looks cool and is all well-organized and neat. I am not too far from it, but I have a lot of levels to pass through before I get close. I definitely am not gonna be able to be concerned with this stuff for some.. years...!!

I guess I bring this all up as it sorta resonates in my brain - I am getting close to 34 years old now. I make a decent salary and have a reasonable residence in one of the most sought-after cities in the world. I have a girlfriend, a job, my car runs, there's health insurance. I don't party THAT much (anymore). I kick my ass to do a good job, at least I think so. So then, when will I quit lingering and get to that next level - or am I just due for some horrible cosmic slap in the face to watch it all unravel in one fell swoop? Or is that due just after I "make it," if even? This is life, right? We are always waiting to get to that level, the plateau where we can relax and look down over all we've traversed, and rest on our laurels, as they say (what a stupid saying, where does that shit even come from anyway...) Am I losing my ability to know when I am "there?" Almost 2am. Perhaps it's a good time to think about wrapping up the night, getting ready for bed.

pARSe

hey, happy planes crashing into buildings day. now that would make quite a cake. wait 34 more years and it will be totally in style for our culture to be truly tacky and tasteless about that particular subject (for real, not out of mere irony, i mean).

it is late and i am looking at a small picture of me drunk, somewhere, yelling at someone and pulling a banner off of a wall, or something. things are weird, the past week has been weird, i always say things are always weird (and they generally kind of are, by default) and that makes me not want to state such things anymore, but it's part of my process to revisit and rerevisit it, so i will continue to do so until my hands and eyes no longer function. Speaking of which, did you know that the venerable Roger Ebert has lost the ability to speak for some time now (stroke i think) and yet he continues to review movies, well at least he can still view and write about them.

yeah i too am getting old. one day the front page of Yahoo! will read "Optimus Prime dead, for real." Honestly, wouldn't it have been somewhat remarkable (though sad) if Peter Cullen passed away in 2005? How come 2005 still sounds very much like the far-off future, though it's getting on 3 and a half years ago already?

There's a lot of kerfludgery flopping through my head right now. Tonight I ducked out of working late to have dinner with my girlfriend and her buddy and her buddy's new husband - they actually got married this morning, which is strange, "whats up - WIFE!" Man it is weird to think about that. My girlfriend and I will mention it every now and again, a real sticking point is that she doesn't want to be May Alpert - she jokes that i should take HER last name. Then my name would be Ron Long. Most people consider such a concept to be emasculating, despite the double-standard, but personally I think it would be sort of amazing if my name really were Ron Long. I look at my driver's license and try to picture that. It would be pretty rad.

So I was being, uh.. intimate, shall we say, in that way a man can be with his computer this evening, and I moved my foot and felt a piece of paper fall off of it. How did a paper fall on my foot, my concentration broke long-enough to wonder, and I looked down. The piece of paper turned out to be a cockroach, and he scuttled away as I observed him.

Man, I hate roaches. I have a thing about the creepy-crawlies. I think bugs look super-cool, design wise, but I still have this primal "ewwwww" response to such things, I know they are all over the place and shitting and peeing and spitting on everything everywhere, and shedding pieces of their little antennae and thoraxes, and I don't care so long as I don't see it (out of sight, out of mind). But yeah I don't like to see them near me, or near my food, or ON me. So when I see a fuckin' cockroach clambering off my goddamned naked foot, my first reaction is "all right now that there is pretty fuckin' gross," and the next reaction, immediately following, is "all right now you are gonna fucking die, you abomination of nature!" Now, roaches move pretty fast in my experience. For such a low form of life, they have a pretty hardy hide, a pretty damn smooooooth command of gliding over damn near any terrain, and a pretty good notion of what is the best escape route from any damn situation. I was expecting this dude to get out clean - but something in my brain was especially-designed to seek out and destroy such vermin, NO MATTER THE COST. He matched me as I moved across the carpet, scurrying in parallel with me, hoping to find a crevice, a hole, anything to get back and out and away - he went for the door, I saw a cardboard box and dropped it on his ass. Expecting him to have whizzed away, i picked it up for a peek and saw him still moving, but definitely fazed - the dude was hurting..

He retreated behind the bookcase, between some old AA batteries which had long since fallen behind there - I lifted the heavy bookcase, my girlfriend's long-ignored LSAT study book in my hand, it's large spine eager to smash some bug pelvis. I brought it down hard, with the full back cover squarely landing on the little bugger. Then I smooshed the book with my foot, a good couple of times - then got a paper towel to grab the messy remains, half-expecting the destroyed creature to somehow leap from my clutches and escape down some unseeable hidden passageway. I flushed the poor dude, cleaned up the book, and got back to my porn - case closed. A busy night indeed.

The internet is a messed up place. It is truly the box of pandora, i hate it, i hate it. it gives, I mean it gives us so much - but it also takes away. i wish it would just leave, like right now. I often see things in there that i wish I could unsee, but can't. i am not talking specifically about the usual primal things one's mind may race too (though those are covered as well, i suppose) but the deeper, more dramatic things that can jostle one's mind. We are too small and simple to deal with the juggernaut this has become. I seriously wanna bring my box to the office and leave it there, so there's no connection when I get home. It makes me feel so trapped.

I found a weird website tonight, not sure how/why. I had a bizarre event in my life with a particular person some years ago, and I found this person's website, and it just made my head go a little sideways with "huh? what?" It's like you have that part of your brain which fills in the gaps "oh this probably happened, or that" and then the stupid internet gives you a fucked-up window into the actual reality, but that window is so limited and out-of-context, so you are just as confused before but differently, and in an unsettling fashion. Anyway, whatever. This always happens.

I am getting off my project at work in 2 days. I have been working on this game for 1.5 years, very very intimately, and now it's over. Well it's not over, but she and I are through, and I am instantly going to start seeing someone new, her name is Eileen. I have seen her around a little, and I don't really know if she is my type - initially, I got in with Ape hoping to find a way to get to Eileen, but Ape sort of grew on me in the way that bad relationships do. She devoured me. God, I hate relationships. Well, now Ape has dumped me but strangely Eileen wants to see how I handle. She's got lots of suitors, and I don't imagine she'll notice me much at first - but we will see. Personally, I have had enough with these women. I just wanna sit on the beach all day and be left alone while they enjoy their stupid drama without me.

I see a cricket cruising by on the floor. He's harder to kill, he hops. I am gonna get my laundry out of the dryer and get ready for bed, adios fools.

go die in hell, pigs!!

yum. they just brought some BBQ in for dinner. that was some tasty food right there. sadly when i am eating dinner at work, it means i am in for (ya guessed it) another late night.. i seldom seem to leave this place before midnight, these days. But all i really wanna do anyway is complain about working long hours, alright?

drunk journal entry - well i went out with my buddy last saturday night. I'd not been out in about a month, and i certainly hadn't seen him in a good bit longer than that. We hit a place that was new to me, which he liked - it wasn't bad, just small and uppity. i like the trashier, homier places myself - that's the kind of guy i am. they're friendlier. They have the type of people arond who actually might be interesting to talk to. i guess it goes to say you could find that similar type, easily, at the more classy places, but i guess i kind of have a permanent chip on my shoulder. i have got over it, but it'll always leave kind of a lasting imprint i suppose - so what, it is still fun to go to different places. You just kind of go with your vibe.... Anyway we drank a bit too much and I ended up with one of those bar bills that makes you cough quite sharply when you surprisedly pull it out of your wallet the next day, but as i said - I had not been out partying for quite a long time, so all told I suppose that will even out. Anyway I am not gonna lose sleep over it, besides I have been mega-grinding at the office lately (have I mentioned this?) so I guess I am allowed a little compensation, of sorts...

i am thinking how nice it would be to get out tonight, as well - it being thursday of course - and I am pretty much pushed to my threshold with thinking about business and life and all the usual stuff right now. Escapism is such a sweet, sweet fruit - however, not without it's consequences. Anyway, I might get a fire under my ass to pack it in and screw it and do it, but i very much doubt it. It would make me happy, but... I doubt it.

I don't know how many of my peers actually read this, and of those who I deal with in my day-to-day, but I wanna apologize if i have been excessively assholish lately. I mean, I am never really that much of a pain in the ass, when I am at my worst - I like to think - but I have been told by more than a few people that i can be a good bit of a drag at times. Though I will always say 'who cares what everyone thinks' well now is now different, but if I am kinda being a pill and you have to deal with it on something of a normal basis, then for whatever it is worth, i do apologize. I do mean to try to turn it down, I just need something to help alleviate - take the edge of. God, I would make such a good stoner, right? Oh well, too late.

The state of affairs in the political world have got me good and riled right about now. I am watching it from the sidelines, feeling a distinctive mixture of fascination and disgust. Seriously, I have such shame that people can be so blind and stupid - I guess it all makes sense, we are still pretty early on in our cultural history, coupled with the fact that there's always gonna be a gulf between the smart, rich minority and the expanses of idiots. As usual I will lay it down that "people are not genuinely stupid, they have so much potential" but the system does a wonderful job of keeping EVERYONE down, and it does so for it's own sustenance. That's the model, and for our society to continue to work this way it must be steadfastly adhered to. It's alright though I like to sit here at my desk and pretend I am a smart fella with valid opinions on all these things, at the end of the day I am still kicking my ass (quite heartily) only to make other people, who don't even SEE or KNOW me, slightly more rich while they sit back and shoot golf balls into little holes. If I could break my program, I sure would - I would run away - but the best I can do is try to erode it, while simultaneously becoming more set in my ways "as the cement continues to harden." Don't you just love equilibrium?

So yeah, these upcoming election debates and further process will certainly be interesting to watch. It's exploding with kind of a cartoony amount of drama. i have some stuff to say about it, but for now, i will be gettin' back to work...

dave sprouts

and so, another labor day weekend fades away, gore gore gloriously into nonexistence as from whence it crept. And me, being myself, spent it like i have so many other labor days, in the throes of actual labor, toiling away in the mines, for reasons not good enough to list anywhere, but such is what i do, and so it is, and that is then good, and so on, and so forth.

it is crawling up to midnight soon, and i am a little beat - i am still at the office, my editor has jsut crashed again, so i will load it up once more and finagle with my scene just a little longer before saving the business and packing it in to head home for some precious (although brief) hours of shuteye - before hauling ass back to the freeway once again for another day of the battling what i called THIS EVERLOVING LIFE, PRAISE Th" LORD. AND HE SNAPPED HIS FINGERS AND MY COMPUTER CRASHED, AND IT WAS GOOD. AND THE ANGELS SANG AND THE DRUNKS VOMITED ON THEIR GIRLFRIENDS AND HE WAS PLEASED. AND THE DEVILS DANCED AND THE TEXTURE ARTISTS CRIED INTO THEIR TOILETS AND SHRUBS AND THE LORD OUR GOD ALMIGHTY LAUGHED HEARTILY AND BELCHED HORRIFICALLY AND UNDID ALL THAT HE HAD PREVIOUSLY DONE AND MY CAR TURNED INTO A SLINGSHOT AND FLUNG ME UNTO A GIANT FIERCY CHASM (for real) FROM WHICH I'D NEVER RETURN, AND IT WAS.. GREAT. The end.

Meanwhile, religious prepostering aside, I notice the news in the world is all crazy lately. I think the yahooligans who staff yahoo news are on some kind of wonderfully interesting drugs, because in the past few hours I have read about Republican National Convention Riots and men trying to cut their arms off in Denny's'es and a whole bunch of other craziness. And how about the new broiling political scandaliciousness, I can't wait to chew on that for a little while. But then, I wanna wrap up and go home, so - it will have to wait.

the strangenesses of it all, right Don?

1792 - 08-26-08 - Charles T Weil - Sept 08 Rent - 1235
1793 - 08-26-08 - CHASE Card Services - 200
1794 - 08-26-08 - The Gas Company - 12.31
1795 - 08-26-08 - The Gas Company - 23.72
1796 - 08-26-08 - AT+T - 61.87
1797 - 08-26-08 - LA DWP - 105.96
1798 - 08-26-08 - Robert Moreno Insurance Services - 100
1799 - 08-26-08 - HSBC - 100

-----------------------------

--(The following are a couple of emails I found saved on a CDRom from 8 and a half years ago: Not sure who they were written to, but it probably does not matter. Dated January 2000)--


Life's going well. Still working at Sierra, as I mentioned, making video games for all the Nerds of the World. Fortunately, nerds seem to have some $ so our company is doing decent, and I remain employed here! So much for a 'trendy' job. Anyway, despite it all I am sick of this place, feel I have peaked long since last summer and am more than ready to move on. Other office in Boston, or out west, or ???? Time will tell, and hopefully soon. I've began scouting around on the net and through connections for different employment, one where I feel I can be more creative and um HAPPY, as this place has been gettin' on my nerves a bit lately. I reallly enjoy hanging out with the people I work with, a great bunch 'a folks, so it kinda stinks in that regard, but you gotta prioritize I guess. Anyway I am trying to work on my portfolio in my free time, which is very important to getting a better job - show off what I can do, creatively, etc. OK ENOUGH 'A THE BORING STUFF...

I've been living in Brookline for a bit over a year now, nice place and real convenient - hell I LOVE living in the city. Lots to do, plenty of places to hang out. You know how it is. My girlfriend's in Watertown, not too far away so it is convenient too (if you recall, we used to share an ap't in Waltham together briefly, until things kinda blew up.. needless to say they got fixed up a bit.) As for our future, well I love Sarah a lot, we've been dating just about 3 years - creepy! And it is still very fun. Marriage still sounds kind of scary to me right now though, especially since I'm still figuring things out career-wise, you know. One thing at a time.

Hummm what else... uh, guess that's the majority of it. Been drinking too much beer lately (drown my sorrows), who cares it's only my liver. Anyway I enjoy going out to the bars with my friends, a necessary evil I suppose. Just as logn as the dreaded Beer Gut doesn't show up... Or the dreaded Broke Wallet, which also loves to bite me in the ass (is that a pun or something??) time and again...

Parents are ok, getting stranger with age, we get along well but it is often hard to relate as you may know (sighhhhh). No problem, it's not hard to deal with and often sort of amusing, but not really in a good way. BUT WHAT CAN Y'DO...

Neal's still in school, journalism major, hanging out with his stoner friends and trying to get into a band or something - that kid is a guitar ace, born 20 years too late unfortunately. He'll be done in the Spring, flung into which direction I do not know.

Well I guess that'll do for now, Sarah just got back from a business trip so I am off to her place to make some dinner (fondue, yummmm.. yes it's just like the '70's all over again!!)

___________________________________________________________________________________________________

how's things - haven't heard from you in ages! I hope your job/life are treating you well..

Things are okay over here. REAL busy. Always pretty busy, but lately EXCEPTIONALLY so... and I am real sick of this place. It's way past time to move on.. I am trying. hoping to get a web page up in a months' time with a bunch of stills on it, maybe a video clip or two. I see lots and lots of job postings on the web, and I'm really eager to bite. I hope that I get another shot!

Looking local, but my ideal situation is to get hooked up with a job in Europe. Not so much for the job itself, but for the experience - I've never been over there, and it would be great to just go somewhere completely different for a change. Even if it wasn't the best job for my career (so long as it was still relevant - and enjoyable - of course!) I would be game. Just want a change you know, before I wake up someday and notice that I'm married with kids and crap, "where did my life/youth go" sort of thing.

This place is stale. I hate to leave in a way, it's like breaking apart from your family sort of. A lot of good friends here. But, it's just getting me nowhere career-wise, and I've kind of plateaued - don't feel like I have much more to gain by staying here, $$-wise or technically. Not too interested in the products either. Bitch bitch bitch, whine bitch moan. Don't worry about me, though, I am optimistic - there looks like a lot out there. I hope my 2 year's experience and reasonably solid (cough cough - "unspectacular") portfolio are enough to get me a decent job somewhere else. Wish me luck!! And Happy New Year...

--------------------------------------------------------------------

--(This one's called "letter to Evan," written to my former roomate from College - he was in the peace corps in Kenya at the time, and we were super-out-of-touch. This was written a week before I decided to quit my job and move to Los Angeles, February 2000)--

Aaaggh. hello Evan. i just typed a really long and involved email messgae to you, and it crashed. Hope you're @#$*&@#'n happy. It was like 20 minutes long. Then poof, all gone. i wonder how many species died within that period of wasted time..
Anyway, my enthusiasm for lengthy communicationhas been shot, so I will keep this short (probably make you happier anyway!) Thinsg are okay, still fed up with work, looking to try to get out. Housemates have both been laid off last week, they worked at a similar company. They are heading out to LA probably, which is sort of my dream. I am trying to see if I can ride their coattalis and hook up with a job at one of the big studious doing some grunt work or SOMETHING.. for the resume.I don't know, it's so hard and such a pain in the ass to pick one's life up, seeing how Sarah and I have opposing views about moving htat seem to switch polarities every 3 months or so (funny huh?) anyway, given the chance, I'd go in a second, that's the state of mind I've been in for awhile now.. screw it all. I'm ready to go. We'll see what happens with the roomate thing. Anyway, working pretty damn hard (remniscient of those school days, quite a bit!!)
So Jon, Dave and I just turned 25 about a week ago. We got together and hung out at a bar. Also, I got superdrunk with some British Nannies (friends of some friends) and startign making a genuine ass out of my self, much to their amusement (go figure!), but it was all in good fun and the only one who's the worse for it is me, I suppose.. ha ha ha. Oh, British Nannies. Abuse my baby. (don't mention taht one to Sarah okay??? I know how much you guys talk, anyway..)
Scott MacGillivray's Bachelour Party is the next big thing coming up, I guess.. he lives in Florida now, we're flying him up here for some gambling (in CT) and Nudies (in RI) -- God bless America. that's in two weeks, then at the end of March I have to fly out to Ohio with Dante for the wedding (I'm the best man).. Everyone else from around here, pretty much, is skipping out on it (for obvious reasons!).. Oh well.
Sarah got me a ticket to go to France with ehr (she's on a business trip the week before my flight) -- my first trip to Europe, you BET I'm a bit apprehensive about it. Anyway, should be fun and weird. I don't know a lick of French though... yes, REAL interesting (gulp!) Ah, me head's pounding... long day of work, hate them Monday's. Just finished up the days' work, had a few minutes before I was off to meet Joe Rose and his friends for some Buffalo Wings in Waltham, so I thought I'd give you an email. Like usual, the idea to do so was brought on by a dream, you came back for a visit and had really longhair - styled like a member of the Jackson Five for their Reunion Tour in the mid-eighties, or soemthing (yeah, I know.. whatever Ron!) Quite a few REALLY WEIRD dreams lately...
Neal's graduating in the spring, it's getting to be so that there will be no more reasons to go back to Amherst and chill out no' mo'.. Oh well. Although if you EVER do manage to find your way back to this state/country (while I am here, anyways..), I promise to toss you into my car and drive you up there and force you to suffer some Dining Commons indignities with me, one last time. (you know you want to!!) Sniff sniff... hell YES I miss the good old days!!! Ah, well.
Okay Evan. I'm taking off. The evening beckons. As always, I wish you well and hope that you are managing okay. Although you never ANSWER me you bastard, if you tell me if you got the last package I sent you (a little comic called "Parasyte") I will gladly send you more. Also, do you prefer written mail or email? Please answer! ANSWER! YEEEE!!!!

okay, so long..

- Ron

upcoming shows

trans am - 31 Aug 08 Echoplex LA, CA
rival schools - Oct 9 2008 The Echo California
juno reactor - The El Rey Theatre, LOS ANGELES Sep 25 2008
toadies - 09/11 - Los Angeles, CA - Roxy

oh for the love of pies

life is a blur of work and driving to/from work these days.
deadlines are approaching fast. there's tons to do. my assis getting sore from sitting on it for too long. i listen to way too many old episodes of loveline back to back, i think it is disturbing my world-view. my posture is getting worse and my center of gravity is sinking. i need salvation - who will put up with me??

i miss non-fast-food...

shut up just put up

screw august and screw you. why must it be august? you know i have never really liked this month. and now, in my old age, where time doesnt matter so much anymore, i have no reason but nostalgia for my despising of the month of august. not so much a BAD month, really, but it signifies the coming of the end of summer, which (when i was young) was just a morbid thing really. going back to school, well, sucked.

except college. those were good times. i even had my own tree named after me. i can't wait to die and go to college, forever!

anyway, my girlfriend is perched on the couch practicing for the LSATS so i am gonna stop typing so as not to disturb her too much more. i guess i will play some video games, for reference anyway...

secret detections

what's up, you foul-smelling hooligans. You yahooligans. ya-Tool-igans.
It is Tuesday night, and I sit at my desk in my office and fart and only add to the warm stuffiness of the room. It's a hoot I tell ya, a hoot anna half! I was hoping to go see a concert tonight but as I am a bit under the weather the past couple of days, decided to skip it and just take it sleazy. That sucks 'cause I hardly ever go to concerts anymore (well, for bands I actually intend to see) but I suppose I have seen my share.

Things are alright. Like I said, I feel a little yeccchy, nothing debilitating but still enough to want to crawl onto my couch and be left alone by the outside world and the weight of responsibilities and all of that, but hey - too bad! The show must go on. I am super-swamped with work right now, that's going alright but I must admit feeling a good deal of burned out right at the moment. Making stuff gets tiring. I will never give it up, but I could use some kind of a breather (a non-job-losing breather, I mean). I am not sure what my schedule has in store for me, what with wrapping up this project and segueing into the next - so I will just take it in stride, as I often do. Of course my salvation had always been retreating into the more insane and active parts of my personality, but these days I am trying to curtail that madness and just phase through this all. Get some time down, get some bills paid.

My mood is alright. I feel --- cramped lately. I feel like I am getting a little older, like things that would normally not bother me are more easily getting under my skin. I am not sure why this is, nerve damage maybe? Also I just feel like I have this noticeable split with "my inner dialogue" a lot more than I had in the past, it has been germinating the past couple of years - ebbs and flows - but sometimes it swings kind of wildly. I never want to second-guess my decisions, I still want to live for the moment - but I am doing things contrary to both of those. It feels like I am wasting time, or aiming in the wrong direction - fighting my instincts. This usually all comes down to my chaos urge battling my order urge, and I guess many people have those same conflicts. Damn logic.

Yeah, everything feels a little weirdo right now. Living here (and working here) has all had some marked effect on me, and I wonder what ten more years of this would mean. I wonder if it'll get that far... Anyway once in awhile I get these little flashes of this despair, just like being stuck. It all chunks up and I feel like I don't have any freedom for anything, I just have to keep going through the same motions, between everything i do - what I eat, conversations I have, places I go - it's all the same, redundant. Yeah, familiarity and patterns are all well and good, but I feel like such a limited simpleton in some ways that it makes me feel like (noted above) WASTING MY TIME...

I need something to kick my ass back into gear, something to inspire me and draw me out of the funk. It's all around me, it's looking all around, I need to find my eyes again.

watch you on the universe!

Zee blog, zee blog - man. I don't feel much like typing, but times have been juicy, and so i must capture them.

Getting used to being back to normalcy, or mostly that- my girlfriend has been outta town, so I have been living the bachelor lifestyle (well, sitting in my quiet apartment). Actually I have been meaning to go out and party more, for the reason that I don't like to do that too much when she's around - she doesn't give me a tough time about it, but personally I don't like showing up at home at the end of the night in an altered state, and making her deal with it. Not that she even complains about it even, and not that I am some overbearing burdensome drunk or something, but I expect it must be quite a drag. I'll put it this way, when I am sober and others are drunk, it's pretty uncomfortable for ME. Anyway if she's outta town, it's a good excuse for me to get it out of my system then. Last week I didn't do anything all week, as I was still pretty beat down due to adjustment (jet lag and all). I did go out friday night, there was a skating event with free whiskey and then we went dancing after. The whiskey did it's job a bit well and I can't say I remember the dancing part..

Saturday was alright, I ran around town picking up stuff for an impromptu mini-BBQ at my place. We'd had a party last month for May's graduation and there was a ton of booze leftover in my fridge to kill, so I called up some buddies and shelled out for a little korean marinated meat and threw that stuff on the grill, and of course we played some videogames (boom blox is the current party favorite). The night went late, of course it was an extremely mellow party (which was fine!) - a sign that we're all getting older, I suppose.

Sunday wasn't much to speak of. My "first day of nothing to do," really. I ran some errands, ate a philly cheesesteak, picked up my apartment, did some laundry. Spent a lot of time yakking on the phone. Sounds kinda pointless to mention this in here, but it was really my "back to nothing to do" day and as such it was NICE. I didn't get some of the extra maintainence-y things done that I'd've liked....

So yesterday, Monday, it was the crazy day. A buddy of mine accepted a job out of town, so we were gonna have a little send-off for him in Little Tokyo (somewhere I've not really partied before). Exhausted, as it was Monday and I'd not really slept too well all weekend, and hey - it WAS Monday! But hell, you gotta do what you gotta. I jetted home after work and stopped by my favorite schwaerma place to get a sandwich before heading out. Waiting in line and I noticed a woman picking up her food in front of me. Wh..is that? Holy crap, that looks like my ex-girlfriend - who I have not seen, or spoken to, at ALL, in nearly 5 years! I didn't wanna be all weird and just gawk, so I kind of checked it out in the reflection of the window. Yeah, it had been awhile, but it's hard to forget someone you'd dated for a couple of years, lived with, etc. I picked up my food and headed out, looking through the window as I started up my car. It was definitely her, with (I assume) her husband and their kid. Now this was just very weird to me - it was like looking at "what might have been" had things played out differently, like it would be US sitting there with OUR kid. But really it just felt like I didn't belong there, I didn't feel some remorse about it or anything. The weird thing is that I had heard she moved to the east coast some time ago, maybe they were in town for a visit, who knows. This particular restaurant was a favorite of hers (and certainly a favorite of mine!), and was actually quite close to her old house..

As I am sitting watching through the window, I back my car up out of the spot. My parking spot was kind of dubious, unfortunately, and as I am backing up KERRRANG!!! I nearly ripped my poor sideview mirror off the driver's side door (the one I JUST FREAKIN' REPLACED). GAH! Here I am trying to be inconspicuous, I certainly don't wanna be drawing attention to myself now of all times, that sick shitty feeling in my stomach "oh man do I have to replace this expensive shit again?? I just want to LEAVE!" I pull forward and my car, still getting out of this dubious spot, kind of plunks down over the curb, making another loud (and very bad-sounding scraping sound) and I just sort of drag my way out of there "please don't be causing expensive damage!! Fucking car!" Man, it was making me feel all shook up, and at the same time it felt HILARIOUS. Like a scene from a stupid Jim Carrey movie or something. Anyway I scraped outta there without any further incident, got home at and showered and got duded up to go out.

The night was long. It was really weird too, following the already-bizarre setup. Little Tokyo has never been my favorite place, it's really tiny and not very interesting or colorful - just sort of beat up and (dare I say it) slightly pathetic-looking. I mean, if it was a different ethnicity it would be bad enough, but this is freaking TOKYO! It's SUPPOSED to be superkickass! Anyway there are some redeeming things there, some good joints to eat at, I think it just brushes a little close ot some of the gnarlier parts of downtown to ruin it's vibe. Anyway I caught an expensive cab over there (sigh, but what're ya gonna do?) and met up with my small gang of friends. Everybody was pretty loaded by the time I showed up (past 11 in the evening), I threw down a couple of whiskeys to try and catch up - why buck a trend, right? That shit goes down tasting like furniture polish at first, but gets smoother once you follow it a little..

We ended up at a little karaoke-type place up the street. It was pretty dead except for our crew.. I was having a good time, enjoying my buzz and talking with friends, it was alright. Sure enough, a Monday night in LA, and weird shit is bound to go down. I got coerced to go outside on the patio with the others, my friends were hanging out with some hot but extremely slutty looking girls who were evidently very trashed, and talking like it - I mean, cussing up a storm. I don't mind the cussing, but it's a little funny when it's hit-you-over-the-head, especially from the "demure princesses." THese chicks are talking with my buddies, and this real ancient looking Japanese guy, real small, I mean he looked like a caricature of what a little cartoony old asian guy would look like. I think he was bombed as well, arms drapped over my friends, talking in broken english and the guys and chicks were sort of making fun of him, all in good fun though - he was diggin' it. I think he was the dad of one of the owners or something, not sure. Anyway one of the sluts pulls out a pipe and starts loading it up with some green shit, are you kidding me? Man, I gotta give Little Tokyo more credit, this place is lawless. They start hitting that shit, it was kinda giving me the willies "are they gonna call the cops, can you do this? It's not the goddamned 1970s!" Meanwhile the maitre'D is inside watching us, looking very displeased, walking back and forth and crossing and uncrossing his arms, I don't blame the dude. I decided to remove myself from the scene of the crime and go back in to wrap up my drink, last call has come and gone. Back inside, I notice there's a bunch of real drunk-drunk Japanese chicks kinda cavorting with everybody, one of my friends was thinking they were whores - I dunno - it's hard to tell in those situations, I am innocent alright? (right?) Anyway the barkeep took care of us and served us a couple late-night drinks (that never happens) and then we wrapped up and headed out, bade the sluts and whores farewell for the night - yes, it was all very wholesome, I know.

The leftovers of our crew headed out to Denny's, for what turned out to be the weirdest experience I've had in a Denny's in my life, honestly. I won't get into it at the moment, you will have to ask me about that one in person! Finally ended up getting home and knocking out close to four a.m., forgot to turn my cellphone alarm from vibrate to buzz - somehow, miraculously, just the vibration noise woke me up from my precious few hours of slumber. Made it to work, belly a little funny but overall I was able to hang in and do m'business.

Yup, another crazy godforsaken night in the city..

broke toast

wow, hard to consider the fact that I have been back home nearly a week now from my trip. My head is still spinning from everything, my system is still adjusting to "getting back to the normal routine." It's actually been a kind of depressing thing to go through all of that hectic excitement and then plunk back into the same, normal life from before. I think i just want to do something different, is the problem..

I have been feeling kind of gross since the trip home, just kind of out of it - kind of like an old man or something. A few things I won't go into, I talked enough about it last time, but it's been staying with me a bit (though getting back to normal as they days pass, fortunately). I was hoping to get home and sort of launch into a period of just living wild a little, or something, but instead I feel like I must (still) bury myself with work and be a good boy. Sigh..

Yeah, I am pretty sick of working. I do (and always will) enjoy what I do, ad I am always thankful for my job and all, but damn I have been doing this getting on ten years now (not very long, admittedly) and I feel like I am always just sort of scraping by. I feel like I am specialized for something very particular, but instead I have to make do with this big compromise. I guess a lot of people feel that way - to make it big, you've really got to go out on a limb, and I sure do see plenty of opportunities for that. I am just getting older and tired of those prospects. I want to kick back and get repaid some dues. i don't actually expect that, honestly, but that's the feeling i have in my bones.

Whatever, I periodically whine about such things, this is no news. I guess when I have weird times of my life such as this, wen I break from my routine for a little, it makes it hard not to put it under a magnifying glass as I have just stepped out of it for a brief moment. I am an analytical guy, I think about the choices I have made and the path I have chosen to follow (for a long time now) and the things which have all led me here, and I have this feeling of unfulfillment that just eats at me. I drive to work feeling like "well what else am I gonna do?" I guess I should consider myself really lucky, my personality is such that I can always find that thing in my work to lose myself in, rather than dwell on this to the point where I become unproductive.

It's not helped either by the things I have read lately. All these little things add up - I am glad they do, because it reminds me that there's still this strong energy in me looking for a way to get expressed, even though it's kind of infuriating to not feel like it is getting aimed properly.

Something I realize which bothers me, is I have really come full circle with my life, my personality in a lot of ways. I feel like i have lost my crowd, my place, in my day-to-day life. I am not any longer "where I belong," or rather, I have forgotten how to make that happen. I have had some periods of my life where that was all figured out, and of course I took it for granted (as people do) but it generally filled me with some proper happiness, even if other things in my life weren't quite so well-lined-up. I feel like it's gone now, in so many respects in my life - it makes me feel cut off, distant, something. Since I was quite a loner growing up, it's kind of a natural place for me to be, and so I can handle it - but I do like to think that someday in the future I could realize how to realign my life that way. It's not something you can plan, exactly, it's something that you find, maybe you are naturally drawn to it - or maybe I am just naturally best at operating on my own, in this way, and that's why I have got here.

The future is odd, a lot of things are kind of up in the air right now. I feel like about a year and a half ago, it had occurred to me that the only way to jar it would be to pack up and start fresh, but that seemed like an extreme measure that I should "know better" than to thrust myself into. The thought of escape is always tempting, but then the notion of stability (though it was always so elusive) seems like the more mature thing to focus on in these times - I already know I will stick with it, but it makes me feel torn more often than I like.

I am glad for these times, these experiences - it is frustrating in that it shakes up my foundations, and can generally put some extra stress on my philosophies "why I do what I do, what's the point" (adding to the everyday stress I already manage) but te thing about being an adult, te important thing, is having your choices and the freedom to do what you will with them, with only yourself to answer to at the end of the day. I guess I feel like I am doing a pretty good job, then.

DATELINE:No more datelines. Back in Los Angeles.

Ok so .. now we wrap up the trip real nice and quick. Because it is very late and i actually haven't slept at all in way over 24 hours.

So let's see. Thursday, I believe, was the second day of our trip in Dong Xing. A bit mellower than the first, it was a hot-gross-hot day. We got up for breakfast of Dim Sum generously paid for by her friends, then we scooted around town with one of them - he owns a store and is one of the "successful guys" of their group. We saw his store being constructed, their town seems to be all about doing lots of retail business with folks from neighboring Vietnam, I believe. They drove us to the beginning of china's highway, which runs up and down the coast - it actually originates right in their town there, by the water, as marked by a one hundred year old plaque put their by the Dynasty in power at the time (Qing?) It was interesting, but so hot and so bright that we were eager to pile back into the car and find some shelter.

Later that day we visited May's old Grandfather, an super old guy who's hard of hearing AND seeing. It was sad, just a little old guy who sits up alone in his room all day! He is cared for by May's family though, which is good. He still has his wits about him, he was a very smart guy - used to be a Principle of a school, I believe. He could remember some English even after not having thought of it for God Knows how many years... His apartment was incredible, I didn't wanna feel rude and take pictures so I just had to try and snap it with my mind. It's not what one would cal luxurious or something like that, but it eked character in that way only very old people's homes can. Very real and very remniscient of a time long since passed. You look out his window and see all the buildings towering over the neighborhoods, the cranes and construction in the distance, and you get the sense that this guy remembers a very different view from a very different world, from the dame vantage point. He had a big picture of himself from.. geez, he must have been in his twenties, thirties, he looked very dapper, handsome young chinese go-getter...

For dinner we at with May's Brother's inlaws. They were very generous to invite us to their home for dinner - I was impressed by their apartment! It's very weird, the way these neighborhoods are setup. Everyone just lives in these up-and down apartments, I am sure there must be some specific name for it. You walk in, remove your shows in this tight corridor, there are a few motorscooters parked right there (indoors) to protect from theft. You walk upstairs... a lounge. Up another level - someone's bedroom. A couple more levels of bedrooms. At the top is the toilet, balcony, and kitchen, So like 6 or seven flights of this continuously tight ascension. It is definitely cool, but strange after what I am used to! Anyway everyone at dinner was very friendly, I was gracious that they were so hospitable, made me feel very comfortable. They keep saying "we wish we could come to US to visit you as well!! (it's very difficult to get a travel visa, for our country... esp from a place like China..)

May's friends wanted to go clubbing with us that night, after the cameraderie of the previous night - but I had an early flight to Shanghi, and we still had a 3 hr bus ride (was it three? Do i remember anymore?) back to the airport, so after dinner we hustled and caught the bus. On the bus, we had to stop at a border checkpoint (as the town we were leaving borders Vietnam, and they don't want any funny business going on). I got the once over from the MP, he made me dig out my passport as I was the only foreign-looking guy around.. fortunately, the hold-up wasn't very long before we were free to be on our way again, but it did kind of put me in my place a little "i am not the norm here, I am the outsider, and as such that means I represent the unknown and possibly trouble when it comes to Johnny Law..."

We arrived in Nanning, local town of the airport, which was hustling and busy and nuts.. but we were exhausted from a busy day, and had an early flight waiting, so just hit the hay in our tiny apartment for the night.

Next day was Friday the 4th - got up, said bye-bye to May, got on my flight to Shanghai, all by my lonesome. It was a couple of hours past noon when I landed, the plans for the day were a little soupy so I checked into my room (stayed at the Galaxy Inn once again, same place I stayed with May -and our tour group- in Shanghai days earlier). It was far from the airport I'd need to depart from the next day, but then I wanted to go out! I showered, and even though exhausted I tidied up and went out for my last night in Shanghai. Told the Taxi "take me to Nanjing!" (shopping area our tour passed by days earlier, seemed like a happening spot).

I was barely out of the cab when some dude comes up and starts talking to me "hello I am a teacher you like like a nice guy have very nice facial features can i practice english with you??" He seemed sort of annoying but it seemed like it might be a good way to start the trek ad maybe he could lead me to a nice little bar or something, and his overweight middle aged-man energy made me laugh, so I said sure, let's go. He led me to some lame coffee shop/bar with the promise of "stunning views" (he pointed to a sign in the elevator that was trumpeting this, and kept repeating it so may times that it became comical to me "stunning view, very stunning view...") Finally I had to level with him. "Look. Okay we are up several flights, and you can see back into the city quite a bit, so technically it IS a view. But it's NOT stunning. You would not show this view to some girl and get her to swoon, it's merely a NICE view. I mean, there's no city lights on yet. There's a bunch of scaffolding up the side of this nearby building, and a couple of disinterested-looking people sitting in front of that huge concert stage over there, by no means is this a STUNNING VIEW. It's an OKAY view."

He kept mentioning famous players from different popular American sports teams and asking about my hobbies and what sports I liked. I tried to get some data out of him but he just looked fat and sweaty and tired as the conversation wore on, being dodgy. I decided to be a nice foreigner when he started pushing it "can i have one dollar of american money for souvenier? shall we drink a glass of wine to celebrate our new friendship?" I finished my beer and we left, he started in "you want me to take you to get some girls?" It's alright pops I do fine by myself thanks!! STUNNING VIEW.

I walked down back to the plaza and them some local girls started chatting me up. We drank tea and they convinced me to eat hotpot with them - it was fun, they were very friendly and just happy to talk to a white guy I guess (I bought them some tea, so they insisted on buying me dinner). they flagged down a cab for me after (the chick actually RUNS ACROSS THE STREET --IN TRAFFIC-- TO GET ME A CAB!) and they wish me farewell as it swallows me up.

I pointed on my taxi card to the driver that I wanted to go to Xi Tan District, or whatever it was called, I dunno, where the nightblub was I'd visited a few nights earlier - it was friday night and I knew it'd be PACKED. I unloaded from the cab, and didn't recognize where I was but figured I'd scout it it a bit, maybe it would turn up (or something would). As soon as I stepped out, some stripper-club-madame freakin' started to let me have it. "You like girls? You like disco? Come! Come with me! Nice disco this way! Nice Girls! We have girls for you! Dance and strip for you!" No, no, I am okay. She keeps on. And on. I just kept walking forward towards I Don't Know Where to half-humor the pushy madame and half hope she'll get the clue and lemme alone. I had a nice little buzz going and I wasn't feeling confrontational. She followed me all the way to the elevator (I found my club!) and then as the doors closed I was free of her.

The club was-a-happening and the girlies was hot. I was happy to be back, the night was young (just past ten), the place was booming, I loved their style, the music was't bad, and i didn't have to wait ages for a beer! I downed a couple whiskey shots to wet my whistle and started for the dance floor. I snapped a few pics of the setup with my camera, I admired it the other night but left too quick to snap any shots - I wanted to do it justice tonight! I got a few really good ones, I am not kidding this place was all Tron for real. My buzz was good, I was no longer having to deal with the Schoolteacher Guy or the Strip Club Madame, I was having fun, then one of the bouncer apes puts his mitts on me, gives me a look like "we don't like you taking pictures in here, wait for one second please.." I didn't know what to expect next - I have been kicked out of clubs by Monkeys before (more than a few times), it's kind of an international vibe. I wasn't doing anything, everybody had cameras, anyway I took the chance and disappeared into the crowd. Then I sought some solace at Our Friend Mister Toilet for a couple of minutes in hopes that they'd forget about it. Well, this place was dark, and really packed, but I was also one of like 5 white people in the whole joint, so I knew comeuppance couldn't be too far behind. A good bit of time had passed, but by now my mode had switched from "good time guy" to "radar detector" so I decided to quite while I was ahead - besides, I needed to be up in a few hours for my flight. Anyway it had ups and downs but it was still a very cool night.

Okay! I am wrapping up now. I swear. So now here's where things get a weird. So.. I woke up today, which was Saturday, July 5 - but, just in China, not for several hours in the West yet. I got up and got my stuff ready, showered, called my girl to say byebye, checked out, hurridly ran out into the HOT THICK SHITTY SHITTY HEAT to the bus parked just outside for my ride back to the (farther away) airport, sat down, okay relax, we got an hour and a half ride in this thing now. Except.. shit, why does my ass hurt? Why does it hurt to sit? Oh what the fuck is it NOW?

I fidgeted uncomfortably on the bus, shifting my weight continuously back and forth for that next 1.5 hours. I looked out the window into the hot hazy day as Shanghai spread open before me, as we rifled thru traffic and then down the freeway. I had been getting eyefuls of Shanghai before, but today was the first time I could freely and truly see it for what it really was, a giant endless HULK of a thing, just spreading and towering and growing out in every direction, out and up, I mean in LA you see the occasional giant crane here or sandblasted building there, and granted on this China trip I'd seen a good excessive amount of 'em in all the little burgeoning cities we'd hectically drifted through, but today, THIS took the cake, it was like all of that times another 750, plus maybe a few more zeroes.. just big, TONS OF cranes, thousands of them, huge crazy buildings going up everywhere as far as the eye could see into the distance in almost every direction. It was endless, it was madness, it was exciting, it made me want to go and build little endless complicated cities of my own, blinking with little "plane don't crash into me!" blink lights and weird neon ads with confoundingly misused English Characters.. Yeah, Shanghai was something else, I tell ya what.

Got to the terminal on time, checked my bag, tried to take a shit - hmmm nothing doing, sit and wait in the stuff gate with all the other folks. Hurts to sit on this bench, I lay across three seats and was a bit less uncomfortable. Damn when does the freakin' plane BOARD already! Weren't we supposed to be on that thing like 45 min ago? So stuffy in here and that damned Brazilian girl is clanging around on those stupid lighty-rollerskates so I can't relax...

Finally, we board, one hour late. My seat is the very back of the plane, sharing the wall with the bathroom. Everytime someone flushes the toilet, I hear the sound of air rushing in to suck out the waste, ad it makes me cringe with it's sudden loud burst, and I think of the poor little girl in Nebraska or whatever whose poor little intestines got sucked out of her body when she was sitting on top of that pool drain which freak-randomly air suctioned her out (and later she died) and it probably sounded like that WHOOSH in the bathroom, and my ass hurts and maybe my guts are getting sucked out also. Awesome. I sat there in that little tight seat shifting and fidgeting for 11 goddamn hours, because it was too uncomfortable to sit to long without that soreness making me insane, i would be awesome if they would just let me lay down in the aisle! (no chance) and HEY LOOK they are playing a movie.. oh. Oh it is Spider-Man 3. Eastern China Airlines LOVES Spider-Man 3. The shittiest of all the Spider-Man movies, and this was the third time I'd seen it on a plane. Ah well, after that they played some chick movies (at least Spider-Man 3 was watchable). If I had half a brain I would've though to put a bunch of movies on the damn 40GB Ipod.. XXXXXXXX.

Anyway 11 hrs. Not as bad as the flight in, though I didn't sleep a wink with the sore ass, but I did manage to plow through the whole entire "Masters of Doom" book in one day (about the id software guys). It was a little cavemany, but interesting to read nonetheless. Finaly - FINALLY we landed back in the states. The last hour was something else. So this was weird, my flight left at 3pm Saturday and now I had arrived at like... NOON Saturday, the same day, and somehow watched a sunset and sunrise over the course of the in-between time. Whatever. Man I have never been so happy to get off of a plane. I launched through customs, changed the rest of the yuan in my wallet for dollars, tried to poop (nope. nope), then hopped on the bus for a bumpy and still uncomfortable, but still relieving ride back. Bus dropped me Downtown, hopped the metro rail to Hollywood, realized I'd got on the PURPLE instead of the RED by accident (it's actually hard to tell, esp. when you've been awake and spacecamping for umpteen bazillion hours... oh thank Christ I wasn't hungover on top of it. Backtracked the subway, got off Hollywood n Vine, got a schwaerma, walked home, did my laundry, saw my jury duty summons waiting for me, threw out the dead flowers, saw the doc and he told me it was roids, soak your ass in warm water and eat this fibre and put these suppositories up your ass. yep, I am old.

Oh and the icing on the cake, I actually cabbed out to the Dr, cabbed back as well (duh), the driver is watching an Armenian Wedding (low-grade) on a little TV in the middle of his dash as he drives. He zooms through a red light taking me back, a car full of extremely angry black people pull up beside him and start screaming, i mean SCREAMING at the dude "What the hell is wrong with you!! You ran that light!! What the hell!! F You!! Get out of your car right now! You get out right now!" And he's yelling back "Yeah F you alright!!F you! Shut up!! F You!!" Armenian wedding video with the blarey music playing on the dash still "F You!!!" I am trying not to spill my coke on the seat. He pulls forward (behind a cop being yelled at by some random dude in the street) and clicks of the Wedding. We drive to Franklin and Bronson in Silence.

Ah, Hollywood.

-----

by the way, it is now 3:30 in the am. I don't know when the last time I actually slept was. Not since waking up in Shanghai at the hotel. I Guess I should go to sleep now. Yeah.

DATELINE:DONGXING

Yesterday was our first full day in May's hometown. We slept in a little late, went out to get a phonecard, then met her brother and his little group for some lunch (wontons). After that May and I hopped on his motorscooter with him, for a quick ride to the sidewalk beside the river/Vietnam border, where we sat under an umbrella and ate peanuts, pumpkin (i think) seeds, ice cream, lychee, and drank beer and smoked. This was very interesting, as you could see long thin (1-man) barges running up and down the river all the while, bringing all the leftover crap from other countries to sell at local markets in China and Viet Nam. You know all those old CRT monitors and Televisions that everyone in the US got rid of when they wanted to upgrade to flatscreens and LCD? This is where they all go! You'd see barges full of nothing but TVs, not joking. Many barges full of old clothes wrapped up in bags. Barges full of rubber tubes for bicycle tires or bundles of car tires - it's very weird to just see huge piles of them being ferried back and forth. May's brother said he'd seen barges filled with old Playstations once in awhile...

After a couple of hours of that, her bro gave us a ride to visit her childhood friend who'd just recently had a baby. In Chinese tradition, Mother and Child are confined to the home for the entire first month following the baby's birth, so we had to go to her place to visit her. Her Baby's Daddy was at the office, so we just visited with her and some of her in-laws. Then got picked up for another crazy motorscooter ride with May's bro Ken to head back to his place (which is the same apartment May lived in from age 11-19) to gather the troops for dinner.

The motorscooter rides are pretty wild. I had never been on a motorcycle before, I assume it's pretty similar. In China you just hop on in a pile of people and hold on for all you're worth, as the rider slips and slides in and out of traffic (auto traffic and pedestrian traffic, simultanerously). Since I am a white guy in a city where I have not seen a SINGLE OTHER WHITE PERSON, at all, I get a lot of stares, it is pretty weird. A lot of the double-take look "huh, is that..?"

We had dinner, a lot of seafood (jellyfish, shrimp, crab soup and some ocean fish) and some chicken and beef and sweet and sour pork (and more beer, and of course smoking). Man yesterday was just a ton fo drinking beer all day, I didn't know what I was in for. May's little cousin (7 yrs old) was very cute, she loves seafood. She kept clamoring to eat the eyeballs out of the fish... We retired back at the family's house afterwards, then it was off to meet some of May's old buddies from elementary school at a Karaoke bar.

The bar was alright, they cordon you off into individual rooms and have three monitors ("the mommy, the daddy, and the baby monitor") showing pics of supermodels while remixes of USA and Chinese pop music play. There's plates of fruit, spicy cucumbers, nuts and beef sit interspersed with shot glasses and a seemingly endless supply of beercans. The dudes (salarymen) were sitting there, playing rock-paper-scissors (drinking version) and Poker. They have a dice game called "bluffing" which they sucked me in to, i got pretty good at it - but as i drank more, I got shittier at it. The guys were cool but the game made us all get pretty competetive. Man, at that point I was really wishing I had not been drinking booze all day (I had no idea what I was in for!) Fortunately I was able to keep it together, and as it was only beer, I didn't have to worry about getting shitfaced..

DATELINE: DONGXING (May's Hometown)

Well, another day, another hotel room. May swears this one smells kind of gross though. Hell at this point, everything everywhere smells kind of funny to me actually (nah it ain't bad).

Well, yesterday was a long, long day - a day full of travel, and sitting, and waiting. We got up early to catch a flight from Shanghai to Nanning (airport in Guangxi province) - woke up and hopped in a cab, but we messed up and registered for our flight 5 minutes later than we ought to have (7am). Unfortnuately, the next flight to this province wasn't for EIGHT HOURS, so we had to sit in the airport lobby and gate, and just chill till then. Then a 2.5 hour flight (delayed another half hour, also) and then a 3 hr busride - we got to our hotel at LAST just after 11:30pm. So yeah, my butt is sore from sitting - but then, I have gotten quit egood at that, over the years.

This province, Dongxing, is very interesting. Reminds me of Xi'An in some ways - there's TONS of land development going on here. After we first landed and drove to the bus terminal, we'd pass endless rows of construction machinery, all lined up in front of infinite plazas. The skyline was always dotted with cranes erecting buildings, apartment and business. It looks like there's tons of area to fill and CONSTANT DEVELOPMENT. It's pretty amazing. We rushed to eat some dinner at a local joint and then hustle to the bus terminal, didn't wanna miss another trip! We sat and waited once there, a monitor was playing advisory cartoons trying to inspire people to drive safe. The cartoons were of horrible quality, like if some retarded 6th grader got his hands on 3D Studio Max for the first time 3 months ago and was still trying to learn it. I thought it was humorous how we'd see cartoons of buses running off cliffs and crashing into lakes and etc, before having a dangerous bus trip of our own (it was super-late at night, so not much traffic, fortunately).

This leg of the tour is certainly different, markedly, than the previous parts. It's way more rustic, I guess one would say, out here - also I am pretty much the only white person in town, anywhere! I get stared at a lot. May's brother and his group met us at the bus drop-off last night, we deposited our belongings in the hotel and then walked up the street to a little strip of stores. In front of them on the sidewalk, vendors would setup little roofed-off areas filled with little short plastic chairs and tables, right at the curb they'd set up grills and coolers filled with booze. We sat and ate BBQ pork and chicken and calamari and corn-on-the-cob, and drank a bunch of booze while playing the drinking chinese version of "rock paper scissors." The group was very friendly and it was fun to hang out and finally see people in a non-touristy representation. Wish I took my camera and shot some pics, perhaps we'll do the same thing tonight!

It's just past 9am local time, I rolled out of bed a little while ago, we'll meet a bunch of may's other friends in a couple of hours. NO ONE speaks any English at all over here, except hello or thank you, and I am practicing the local dialect versions of the same. It's pretty difficult for a newb like me to speak chinese, the tones are very delicate.. I am practicing though. Tomorrow will be interesting, I gotta get up super-early to repeat all of yesterday's traveling in reverse and return to shanghai (hopefully, without all the extra 8 hours of waiting!) and make my way through a good deal of it on my own, as the lady and I will part company at that point, for the remainder of the trip. Should be interesting!

RANDOM STUFF - if I haven't mentioned it before, (and I know I have), drivers in china are INSANE. Lanes, street signs, that sort of thing seem to be treated more as a suggustion than anyhting else. Automobiles seem to entrust that they can somehow perturb the laws of physics to fit in between one another. Everybody is constantly honking and beeping at one another, and motorscooters, motorcycles, and bicycles (and pedestrians) are constantly squeezing thru all the moving negative space between the traffic - it is a sight to behold. The typical motorscooter will have a dude on the front and his lady sitting side-saddle behind him with her legs just hanging off to one side as he careens through the traffic. In this current province, I notice a lot of motorcycle setups where three (or FOUR) dudes will squeeze onto a single motorcycle seat. I need to take some pics of this stuff - it is just amazing. I try to imagine any of this stuff in the States, the cops would have a field day!!

Trying my best to maintain my digestive prowess. Can't drink anything with ice in it usually, as it's not purified. That means I drink a lot of booze or warm soda. I can't wait to get home and just chug bottles of water! I am not gonna drink any soft drinks for like 4 months after this trip, I guess..

It's amazing, the clash between old and new that one witnesses out here. Lots of little old/poor people will still be carrying buckets of things supported by a stick held on their back (across their shoulders), justlike you'd have pictured them doing hundreds of years ago. You see this everyday, everywhere, no matter how modern the city. There's a constant juxtaposition of old and new everywhere, even in a super-built-up area like Shanghai. Round a corner of a modern shopping plaza, and you'll find a tight back alley filled with dudes drinking and smoking and hanging laundry on the decrepit-looking facades on their apartment buildings, playing mahjhong in little smoke-filled dens. It's quite bizarre.

The trip has been outrageous, though I do look forward to getting home and settling back into my routine - I feel that there's a tremendous backlog of things waiting for me to deal with! I am psyched to get back to "normal food" as well, hahaha... Just a few more days! Anyway, I have a bunch of pics to post, but that won't happen for some time yet. May put a few up on her myspace page, check them out to tide over in the meantime.

DATELINE:SHANGHAI - end of the Official China Tour

Yeah, so today was the final day of our official tour of China. I’ll still be lingering for the rest of the week, as we depart for May’s hometown Dongxing, in Guangxi tomorrow (bright an’ early!! Flight is like 7am) Anyway today we got up, showered and headed out for the day’s duties. After visiting a Silk factory (May and I sat out on the bus, and read our books) our group checked out the Yu Garden, a nice little nature park – more of the same temple-y looking stuff we’d seen, smooshed into the middle of a very modern city. The place was very ornate, very beautiful, with its ponds of fat-looking fish that kept sticking their heads above water in hopes of getting some delectable morsels (they were not too lucky, today). It was a gross, rainy grey day, so not too psyched to be trodding about it in it too much, but it did sort of enhance the mood of the places we visited (made for some cool looking photography, at least!) After this, passed through some crazy bustling marketplace selling all manner of items. Clothes, TShirts, little flashy wheel-things you could put in your shoes, lots of crazy touristy junk and trinkets. We grabbed our final “official tour meal” as a group, it was nothing extraordinary but definitely one of the better we’ve eaten. Then headed out to get a mini-cruise around the river that runs through the town, it kinda stunk since it was raining so it wasn’t very conducive to sitting upstairs in the open-air viewing area, also the city was shrouded in fogginess. Add to this, the general exhaustion we were collectively feeling – the cruise wrapped up and we returned to the hotel, our group dwindled a bit and we bade our tour guide fairwell.

Later that night a few of our group went out for dinner at a local place, we had a very good meal (I got some, err, interesting pictures of the menu items with my camera). We decided to forego eating Worms or Dogmeat, and went for Bees instead. Yep, we ate fried bees! They tasted like Tater Tots. Headed back to the hotel after, i had a couple of drinks at the club inside and tried to chat it up with the locals (their limited English was much better than my severely limited Chinese). I met a girl who told me she was the Devil.. aren't they all though? I got back with my group for a farewell drink, then we said goodbye as we parted ways and headed for bed.

Now it is Tuesday morning, I am sitting at Cheer Way in the airport waiting for our flight outta Shanghai. I am sad to leave this place, Shangha is a cool and interesting place - other than recounting the events "then we did this, then we did that" I have much to say about the people and environment here, more on that later..

DATELINE:SHANGHAI - China's Modern Metropolis

It is currently Sunday night, here’s the recap of the past two days. Saturday, June 28 We awoke at our hotel in Guilin, 2nd day there. Hopped in the bus (a little late!) and motored down to the riverboat tour, Li River – a 4-hour tour (no Gilligan’s Island Jokes please). The boat ride was quite pleasant, very mellow. It was a dinner vessel, not what you’d call fancy of course – they managed to squeeze a good few tour groups per boat, dining hall downstairs and observation deck (open air) upstairs. The weather was considerate, neither rainy nor hot and humid – it was just right, helped on by the breeze. Fortunately not excessively mosquito-y either (though my feet did get a good bit chomped up). We loaded up, sat downstairs for a spot of the tea, then as the tour began we moved upstairs to enjoy the air and the view. Not too too much to look at (more of the same – just a lot of bizarre hill formations and things, which seem to be the main draw) but what there was, was fine. I still do appreciate the surreal landscape – it was nice, and relaxing, though it was nice once the boat ride ended and we got back to land since there was a bit of that waiting feeling sort of permeating the whole thing. For me, the highlight was the “hookers” that would be in the water (no, not those kind of hookers!) on little bamboo rafts, or whatever.. as the tour boats passed by, they’d ride up alongside and literally hook right up to our boat, then the two riders would climb up to the very-thin outer edge of the boat and knock on the windows to get passenger attention and hawk their wares (the usual merch.. little statues of fisherman, lowgrade jewelry boxes, et cetera). It might not sound like much on paper, but it was something to see – those guys are nuts! They’d do their business, then dispatch and head to the next vessel. Their little raft would be tiny (maybe less than 20 feet long, and 4 feet across – and looking like it was always nearly about to collapse and fall in the water anyway, their feet would always be under the water). Nuts, I tell ya.
The ship’s crew would cook our meal at the back of the boat (outside), and after eating and the ride wrapped up, we sleepily exited into the Guilin town of Yangshou (pronounced “yahn-soo”) to check into our next hotel. We walked through a whole downtown tourist district, which was as happening as any we’d seen before (in other words, quite!) to get to the hotel. Checked in, we unloaded our crap, then as my girlfriend passed out I headed back to town (I saw a little local pizza place there, and being a little homesick for American-style grub I couldn’t resist!) They were playing some really chill, mellow music and there was a nice seat right on the sidewalk (AND they were serving some good looking selection of liquors to boot) so I said thanks very much and sat down with my book and ate some ‘za and watched the crowd for a few hours. It was really nice, really relaxing! After a couple of hours of that, and being harassed by the occasional local merchants (no thanks = “boo-ya”) I headed back to the hotel for some dinner (as usual, no big deal) and plans to go out and see what the local flavor enjoy for their Saturday night. Well, I kinda passed out hard on the pillow after my dinner, and we had to be up early the next day for our flight to Shanghai..
That brings us to today. We got up after 6am, shower and etc – something was leaking in the bathroom so as the water ran it got smellier (ewwww) so we kinda hustled. The bus dropped us off at the Guilin Airport, we boarded and flew to Shanghai. Ate lunch on the plane (some beef w/ rice, a couple of veggies, a piece of bread, some warm soda). Disembarked off the plane, walked outside to our waiting bus – we walked by a McD’s, my heart sang (in a gross way, I suppose) but there was no time to sidetrack so we boarded the bus and began our new phase of the journey.. yes, again.
We got over to the Shanghai Ancient History museum, to hang out for a couple of hours, check out the exhibits. Place was packed, mid-day – we waited a good 20 minutes to get in, they ran every entrant thru a metal detector (like entering an airport!) even made us through away liquids. Whatever.. anyway it was pretty hot and gross outside, so it was nice to get in there. But honestly the museum didn’t do much for me, particularly at this point in the trip. I can be a bit of a museum nerd, under certain conditions (well, almost never, I suppose) but the ancient history, while interesting, is not something I care much for browsing in person – I’m happy enough to read about it and scan some images, old-ass vases just get extremely redundant to me. Yeah, I know I sound like an uncultured Philistine (there’s irony in there, see?) but to be fair I did well as an art history (minor) student, I just have my preferences and this period doesn’t do much for me. It’s repetitive. It’s repetitive. Ancient history is repetitive. We looked at some interesting calligraphy and older Chinese brushwork thru the different dynasties, of course that’s way newer than the ancient vases and pots/pans/etc – again, this stuff doesn’t do much for me either. The modern world considers it to be fairly elegant and classy, I suppose, but for me – it’s alright, a lot of it looks rushed and unfinished and redundant. Once in awhile you’ll find a piece that is brilliant with detail, with rhythm, and I can’t argue with that for a second. But a lot of it just feels simple and cluttery. Hey, I am allowed to have an opinion! My impressions are that of a spoiled modern-day student, with exposure to several periods and a hugely vast vantage point. Then again, what I’d call “Art” which comes outta me, most would consider some kind of trendy lackluster boring prostitution. This is another discussion for another time, probably.
We left the museum, ate another dinner (started out alright, got kinda gross) and walked over to a huge shopping area, Nanjing Road. Kind of like the 3rd Street Promenade or Newbury Street of Shanghai, sorrrrt of. Lots of malls and overpriced boutiques and all sorts of crap… lots of cute girls. Didn’t get to hang out too much, but it had a little of that Harajuku feel, I guess, is the closest way to describe it. After this, we caught another theater show, the final of the trip – we were all a little burned out on these by now, but whatever, it’s Shanghai, let’s indulge them I suppose (though I think many of us would have been happy enough to lounge around the shopping district and enjoy the local flavor instead). The “acrobat show” did turn out to be worthwhile after all, they truly threw in “everything but the kitchen sink…” It was remarkable, I wish I could have got some pictures for posterity. We had more of the “folding people” we’d seen the night before (the folks who could contort their bodies into outrageous positions, while balancing atop one another) – then a bunch of fellows dressed in suits and top hats doing crazy juggling/catching stunts.. a couple of body builders doing wild feats of strength and balance – girls spinning plates on poles, while moving around an climbing one another – girls balancing and climbing while bicycle riding – a magician (with birds, sword-through-the-box, sleight-of-hand, etc) – a cheesy laser light show to techno music, and then the finale was one of those giant caged domes with 5 motorcycle stunt riders careening around inside the small enclosed area. Yeah, it was pretty impressive!
After this our group retired to the hotel, a few of us young’uns were itching to investigate the night life of this crazy city however. We got a tip from the concierge to solicit the Xin Tian Di district, hopped in a cab, and then walked around, eventually we followed a German dude who was in turn being led into a disco by some slutty looking Asian chicks on his arm (yeah, very wholesome, I know, what d’ya want). But it worked, we found a cool little spot, the music was booming and the layout of the place was pretty neat. It looked kind of like a lair from Tron or something, very angular and heavy on the shiny black plastic/bright neon panels. It was rather early, on a Sunday night, so not very wild inside, but there was definitely some energy and a couple of maniacs on the dance floor. We had a round of drinks and I got to exert some energy (yeah, I actually had some left!) and did my usual routine, it had been awhile and it felt good to let loose. The drinks were quite expensive, it was fortunate that I was the only boozer in the crew otherwise it would have been damaging on my wallet! Anyway half of our crowd was quite young and not used to such atmosphere, and everybody was generally quite beat from the trip at large, so we just hung out for a spell and then cabbed back home to our hotel for some shuteye. I was happy to find another club right here in our hotel, though the music booming out of it was quite large and invigorating, the interior was the biggest of no-no’s (that is, utterly dead) so I immediately turned around, marched upstairs and passed out in bed, next to my sweetheart.

DATELINE:GUILIN

Well okay, so I have skipped a day of typing, it’s been some busy times for me! Here is the rundown of the events of the past two days for Ron and May in China.

Thurs, June 26 – day #2 in Xi’an, and so we got up and headed out, the group saw a famous religious area “Yan Pagoda.” I wasn’t paying too much attention to the particulars, it was an area with a large golden Buddha statue that people would prey to, and burn candles and light incense in front of. For me, it was a good spot to get a ton of photo reference, and so I did exactly that. Afterwards, we were due to visit the "ninth wonder of the world" (or was it eighth?), the Terracotta Warriors. An Ancient Chinese Ruler had an army of close to 10,000 statues built, I believe the count was, to defend his underground tomb. This dated back a good several hundred years BC, I think around the same time as the construction of the Great Wall. Hell if you want the details, go to Wikipedia! Anyway, first they brought us to a factory where they create souvenier warrior statues in their likeness, so you can bring some of your own home. Then the usual spiel of all the gaudy things you could buy. Then off to another place (in a ghost-town feeling area) to eat lunch, another tourist restaurant of course - while we ate, they would unroll enormous wall scrolls and try to get us to buy them. After this our bus headed to the pits where the actual Terracotta Warriors were (still) being unearthed, they were originally discovered in 1974. Though a lot of people generally seem interested in this topic, I must say it didn't really do too much for me compared to many other things I have seen - I mean, it doesn't rank up there with something like the pyramids or the grand canyon (i haven't actually seen the latter in person, but you get my drift). Still I can appreciate the awesome size of the exhibit, and the weirdness that it was just discovered barely 30 yrs ago - and is still undergoing excavation and reconstruction.

Following all of that, we chilled out in a tea house and I kicked back a couple of beers while we waited for the remainder of our crew to wrap up. Then of course, back to the hotel for dinner, though May and I decided to journey into the town and seek out some local bite to eat rather than another subpar "meal for tourists" (note that the food isn't "bad," per se, just boring and really the same fare over and over again). Anyway we headed downtown in Xi'an and found a place with some pretty damned tasty spicy beef, if I do say so myself. A couple of college art professors from our group joined us, and we all shared the food - they also ordered trip ad Ox Tails, which weren't bad. A little bartering with the locals, and then back to the hotel - disappointing, as we were in a hustle and bustle area and I wanted to get a chance to chill out with the locals for an evening. Instead I just relaxed in the hotel lounge and drank a few glasses of whiskey (not enough to do much damage, as they were quite small and the atmosphere was ubelievably mellow).

Last night I slept pretty horribly, I had some dream about answering a knock at my door and some kid riding his bike up to it and pointing a gun at my face, I woke up with a real jump. I fell back asleep and dreamt about losing my apartment ("my prized possession!") and I was in some relationship with some random girl, we always fought - eventually she left me for some other guy, but they lived with me and wouldn't leave me alone (they were always reminding me how I was a failure in love + career + etc) Of course I got pretty bitter and started saying disparaging things about the both of them, a lot of my friends started to get offended by this and would send me angry emails and answering machine messages. I woke up once more and felt exhausted from this stress, obviously I did not want to sleep anymore! I went to the bathroom feeling quite queasy - at last the dreaded upset stomach of the chinese vacation had caught up with me! (For the record I'd been noticeably bound up much of the past week). Wonderful things to read, I am sure, but certainly worth mentioning. I had fears of it hitting me in the middle of a Death March somewhere, or long bus ride - fortunately, it's been easygoing as those things go, and I have been trying to take it easy on the ol' digestive tract today.

Anyway, on with the tour recount - after spending some quality time with Mr Toilet, and being the last one to file onto the tour bus, we rocketed out of our hotel and towards the airport, then flew without incident towards the next stop on our destination, the somewhat tropical region of Giulin. A quick flight over (maybe 1:30?) and we piled into the next bus. This area has an interesting look to it, compared to our last stops - much, much more rural, bizarre and interesting landscape. Crazy surreal mountainous region, the likes of which I have never seen before. While much of the rest of China (that I have seen) feels like a dry dusty desert which had urban elements plopped into it, this region feels like it was until recently quite wild and...well, like I was saying, Tropical! It feels like the roads are barely freshly paved, and that's not to say they look neat and tidy - just that there probably wasn't much in the way of paving going on here 30-odd yrs ago, possibly. Lots of poverty around, lots of tiny hovels, the first 30 min we cruised through town in our bus I noticed nary an actual traffic light. As we got further in, the town built up somewhat, like the other cities in China we have visited it's just endless and always bustling, plenty of people traveling back and forth all over the place, slipping and sliding past one another. More than Xi'an, this place was even more humid and warm, fortunately it cooled as the day grew later. Also to note, it had a lot of the rice paddy field-things you read about in elementary school, the ones that look so clean and perfect, like they would be fun to run through or something..

We stopped in this weird huge cave, a big tourist trap - they've done up the inside with colorful neon lights hidden in it's crevices, giving everything this bizarre otherworldly look that's party feeling like a fake-movie set, almost. You knock on the cave walls and expect it to feel like plaster! Walking inside the cave was really a treat though, as it was so misty and cool compared to the draining gross heat outside. Also it was just a surreal and comfortable, I guess, experience, that it made me sad that we kind of poured in and out of there so fast - I could have hapily spent a couple of hours zoning out in there. It was hard to get "normal" pics in there due to the crazy lighting, but it was wonderful to generate plenty of abstract photography for the same reasons - experimenting with motion and prolonged exposure produced a lot of wild and interesting results. It was a lot of fun! Almost all my pics I shot in there look like a crazy rave..

After this, our group bussed over to some famous hill (I forget the name, bah!) and hiked up a bunch of stairs to get to the top. The heat made it a little annoying, but the climb was much more bearable than the Great Wall of just a few days earlier (by a longshot!) We got up there and shot some pics of the great 360 degree view. It was pretty cool, and I was probably a little too beat to appreciate it - you could really see a lot of interesting terrain and (rundown) cityscape from up there. That is the problem with this trip, I should say - we do see a LOT of interesting things, but it's gotten to the point where we're all so overstimulated from constant running around all over the place that there's not really any chance to "stop and smell the roses." That's the thing about taking an organized tour, you just gotta go with the flow, stay on your toes, and process it all later on. One of the reasons I am trying to keep this vacation journal at such a (relatively) hectic pace is so that I can keep track of Up and Down, since my whole sense of perspective is slippery at best, after this madness...!

Tonight we ate -- yeah, guess it, come on, another subpar chinese dinner at a tourist-serving spot! Then it was off to a local theater to see a show (I think 1.5 hrs) showcasing the traditional costume and dance of some of the local ethnicities. Like many of the shows we've seen on this trip, it was quite ghetto, though it's the first one I didn't find myself nodding off during. The previous one was easily the most lavish, though this show had some outrageous gymnastics going on. You know, those people with the unbelievably limber bodies who could lie on their chests and bend their legs all the way around and pretty much scratch their heads with them, as they were balancing on a couple of other LAYERS of people. It's amazing the amount of control some people can exert over their physique, absolutely amazing (if not also somewhat grotesque!) The show was enjoyable, but it was a long day and I think we were happy to wrap it up and head to hotel number three. We passed through Downtown in our bus, it was completely bustling with throngs of people everywhere, looking like a great time. Like I mentioned, everybody seemed completely exhausted and so I've no idea if anyone was gonna venture out into that madness - already 10pm and another day coming up of more running around to look forward to, as I type these words my drive to spite them and go out alone is diminishing. Also I am kinda colored by the night I had out by myself in Xi'an, it was cool but I felt way out of place and ill-equipped of the nerves to go out and cause a ruckus. I might just have to save my energy a little for Shanghai and May's hometown, I mean -- hell, we still have another WEEK of this trip to contend with!!

Anyway, so that's where things stand. A four hour boat tour tomorrow, followed by I dunno what else, then we'll stay in a different hotel tomorrow night, then fly to Shanghai the following day. Whew.

Some odds and ends are in order. Firstly, May wanted to point out that the post office (in the Beijing airport) ripped her off the other day when they made her mail out her Zippo Lighters, they cost US$30 to send out the US$80 set.

In Beijing, we passed by something creepy called Disney Gardens, a more-than-proposed Disney Theme Park which actually seems to have got a fair bit of the way under construction before the whole thing got shitcanned. I mean, you drive by and see cartoon buildings and cinderella-castle looking things before you notice it's something which never got completed and possibly (?) never will. The tour guide was mentioning "take a lesson, you should plan something out properly before getting far into it!" But considering it's Disney, and China, I am sure some hairy politics must have been it's undoing. A day or two later we passed another unfinished amusement park in a strange out-of-the-way place, I mean it's nothing but creepy to see those rollercoaster tracks that just abruptly stop, in the middle of a ghost town.

I know my girlfriend, and parents, etc will love reading this, but I noticed that one can not view porn on the internet over here. I dunno if it's the firewall of the hotels we are staying at, or some blocker program on my girlfriend's computer, or what, but my personality is such that when I can't access something I start to kinda dig into it and try to find a way around it, just for spite if nothing else (hell, I am a problem solver!) I did find, I think maybe ONE quality picture of a vagina. And there wasn't even any foreign objects trying to violate it, for crying out loud! Regardless, for my efforts I keep waiting for some crack military assault squad to arrive with helicopters, bust through the walls, confiscate the laptop and arrest the entire tour group, and of course do something horrible to all of my entrails to set an example for others. Hmm, something like that. Anyway, mental note, next time bring own porn. While on topic, I should note I don't believe I have seen any whores/weird sex things yet. I think we passed by a massage parlour but it looked legit.

Hanging out in Beijing was bad enough but Xi'an was worse, in regards to traffic behavior. Obeying traffic lights and such seems like more of a suggestion than anything else - the way people drive her is absolutely crazy retarded. It's just - I don't know, organic. Survival of the Fittest. Call it what you will. Being on a bus is one thing, but cabbing it is another universe altogether. You see pedesstrians (even.. little kids! Like LITTLE KIDS BY THEMSELVES!) stranded in the middle of the street while cars and trucks just whiz by them, nonchalantly. It makes one feel like traffic back home is incredibly tame, by comparison. It's quite a rush to watch, and more than anything - well, one tends to look at the faces of the pedestrians while they are INCHES FROM BEING POSSIBLY SIDESWIPED BY A BUS, and their look is just nothing, business as usual. "Oh, I almost met my maker. So, who cares." I wonder how people like that can adapt to driving in the states. It's so remarkable.

Sigh. Almost midnight. Need to be up by 7. It looked like a really good time out in the city tonight, and it's just up the road, but Lorda Mercy I think i am gonna cheese out (awww!) and give my depleted constitution a bit of the brief respite. I know, I will regret this...!