Category: Personal

Last night, meself and my theater-going chum Olivia went to check out The Cherry Orchard at UCSB’s Hatlen Theater, having been assigned it to review. Hopefully, the Voice’s Web site will publish it (they don’t always publish my stuff online if I’m not the lead review or article). I wanted to have a look at some production photos elsewhere so turned to good ol’ Google search. On the way there, I came across this pathetic Cherry Orchard Message Board, full of failed attempts by clueless undergrads to get easy answers over the Internet. How about using yer noodle?

We were relieved today to finally receive our package of goodies from Taiwan. Jessica’s sister had brought them back from Taiwan and mailed them last week from Phoenix. Why did it take a whole week to get here?
Anyway, apart from all the snacks inside, I got a stack of Beatmania Game Music CDs along with the first volume in the Hsiao-hsien Hou DVD box set. This one contains The Boys from Fengkuei (1983), A Summer at Grandpa’s (1984), A Time to Live and a Time to Die (1985), and Dust in the Wind (1986).
My buddy William is to thank for picking these up for me (I paid him, of course). In fact, he liked the look of the set so much that he picked one up himself, and is slowly getting into watching them. Me, I’m waiting until I finish Cowboy Bebop.

Audio goodies in the mail today! I finally upgraded my clapped out Aiwa double-cassette deck and bought myself a refurbished Nakamichi MR-2B single cassette deck from a Seattle-based recording studio for all of $125. I think these things sold for $750 back in the day (1986), and if you know anything about tape decks, you know that Nakamichi is da shiznit, with old decks outperforming modern decks from other companies (face it, nobody cares about cassettes any more). Nakamichi stopped making decks in the 1990s, but there’s still plenty of fans out there.
I did my research at the Naks site, where the entire history of the company’s cassette decks are outlined and worshipped.
So, how’s mine? Well, apart from the fact that all my tapes are currently at my dad’s house apart from one (Philip Glass: Mishima and Koyaanisqatsi OST), and apart from the fact that I’m still trying to sort out the problems with my speaker/receiver set-up at the new place, I would say it’s lovely. The mechanism is quiet as a baby. I mean, really, really, really quiet. Quieter than my CD or my VCR. And the sound is great, but I have yet to put it through its paces.
By the way, they still have plenty of these decks left at the place I got ’em. Check ’em out here, at Realtime.

Well, this post is a few days late, as just after I finished writing it last night (Saturday), Internet Explorer decided to change my history cache at the stroke of midnight into a folder and promptly froze Blogger in the act of publishing. So I lost everything! Balls.
So here we are a day later (as I was busy all day), late Sunday/early Monday, with my report on Saturday. While everybody in the entire world was protesting, I was in a cocktail lounge in Burbank, being an extra in my friend Jon’s film, an engagement I had agreed to long before Iraq was a gleam in Karl Rove’s eye.


The main character meets his lawyer to sign divorce papers.
The film is called Beautiful People and I designed some magazine and book covers seen in the film and a very important wine label. When I get the rest of my site up, you’ll be able to see these in the artwork section. But for now take my word for it.
Anyway, I play a lawyer, to be seen once in wideshot, yabbering away into a cellphone. You can see my “scotch on the rocks,” which is actually ice tea.

As a respected actor, I insist on working with only the top names. You know, Jack Daniels, Glen Fiddich, Jim Beam, and Mr. W. Turkey.
After about 7 takes of this I was let free, and I could just watch the rest of the shoot. I had my camera ready and here’s some of the other things I saw.

The above is my favorite photo of the lot.

Jon’s girlfriend Ruriko (also a filmmaker) looks baffled. With Jon, she usually is.

Between the medium shots and the close-ups, we all took a break near the pool during a very overcast day.

Apparently, this is very bad for the eyes.

Ruriko reacting to the above photo.

“Put more vim in it!” urges Jon to his actors.

I’ve run out of funny captions.
So anyway, it was a nice 4-hour shoot. Assistant Director Mylie (spelling?) kept everybody on their toes and everything movie at a clip. We got done near six, which was when I walked out into the empty bar next door in time to see the evening news and the coverage of the protest marches on each network. It was an amazing moment, as it coincided with my relief of finishing the shoot.

Happy Valentine’s Day, freaky people! Love of my life Jessica bought me some books as a sign of affection, knowing they’ll go down better than a tie or cologne or whatever other rubbishy gifts the plebs buy each other. I got copies of Blue Note: Album Cover Art,
45 rpm, and
1000 Record Covers, all devoted, as you can tell, to album graphics, one of my favorite things to look at (and design). In return, I gave Jessica a dozen roses and a special Flash-animated card that I whipped up in my “spare” time. I think she liked ’em.
And that’s about as personal as I’m gonna get!

Sorry Folks! It was all a false alarm!!! But it sure did help the BushJunta by shutting us up with fear and panic for a few days. I wonder what evil they got up to while everybody was distracted.

ABCNEWS.com : Alert Partly Based on Lies
A key piece of the information leading to recent terror alerts was fabricated, according to two senior law enforcement officials in Washington and New York.
The officials said that a claim made by a captured al Qaeda member that Washington, New York or Florida would be hit by a “dirty bomb” sometime this week had proven to be a product of his imagination.

You mean I did all this for nothing?

Woo-hoo! I done fixed me blog! I don’t know how it got so screwed up in the first place, but after much futzing around I figured it out. The html was all higgledy-piggledy, with chunks of code dropped here and there like so many internal organs at a Tijuana hospital. But it’s all sewn up now, so to speak.

Okay, apparently neither my “Link Me” links nor my “Comment” links work, though they did when I installed them. I haven’t tampered with them since, so…WTF? I’ll look into it and you all can start sending me abuse again in no time.

Finally, I have put up a page detailing the protest march last Saturday. Check out the true story of how I walked up State Street surrounded by 5,000 like-minded people. Here’s a taste of some of the protest signs to be found within:

Since last Saturday, we’ve been watching our wheat grass grow. We bought some seeds at Farmer’s Market and damn if these suckers don’t grow nearly 2cm per day. We don’t plan to make wheat grass juice out of it, but if this continues to grow apace, we may have to.