A Shadow Grows in Brooklyn

Shadow art; Park Slope, Brooklyn

Click for story. Looks hella cool. I think I'll take a trip out there this week, walk around and see what I can see. One quote from the story:

"'I think that public art is important,' said Mr. DeCastro, who once owned a gallery. 'It expresses what people are feeling in society at the time, and it puts it out there. It's not like a museum, where things are hidden away for 20 years.'"

Fun with Prohibition

So, went with my friend Cassie to Prohibition last night. Cool place, a bit bougie for my taste and not really my crowd (Upper West Siders, bleh) but whatever. Had a cuuuuuute waitress. Asked her what she was doing after, she said she already had plans. Might be a line, might not be. So I ask if I can leave her my number, and she says she'd really like that, brings me a pen and paper pretty quickly. I write the number, but (and this is what has been bugging me) I didn't physically give it to her, cause we ended up leaving soon after. So now I'm stuck worrying that maybe she didn't get it, that the busser grabbed it and threw it out or is going to give me a call in a few days.

Hopefully she got it. I guess if I don't hear from her in a week I can stop in again just to double check, something I might just do because...well...she was CUTE.

I Hate the Leafs

Oddly enough, this blog has remained free of any references to my beloved/hated Toronto Maple Leafs.

Yes, I am Canadian, I do love hockey, and Bobby Orr is the greatest player to ever play the game, just so you know.

As I noted above though, I have a real issue with the Leafs. First of all, let me preface this by saying I grew up in Toronto in the 80s, when the Leafs were a big steaming pile of crap. No prospects, few good players (who would get traded away the instant they fucked with management) and year after year of unremitting failure, the kind that grinds down your spirit and makes you into a baseball or football fan, or makes you start cheering for the Habs because they're the antithesis of the Leafs.

Cue the 90s and some good times (interestingly enough, coinciding with the back-to-back World Serieses of the Jays and the Argos winning a couple Grey Cups). Gilmour, Andreychuk, Potvin and Pat Burns all roll into town and the Leafs have some decent seasons and runs in the playoffs, never quite being good enough to get to the Cup Finals. Cut to the mid-late 90s when Pat Quinn comes in. A couple definite and a couple probable Hall of Famers are also on the teams, and the Leafs continue to be decent but just not quite good enough.

This wouldn't be a problem if you qualify success by making the playoffs. The Leafs have done that for quite some time now. But if you measure success by Cups, or at least Cup Finals, then it sure as hell is a problem. The Leafs aren't good enough to go that far, and the sooner they recognize that, the sooner they can get going blowing up the current team and building again.

Of course, the biggest problem with that is that the Leafs have never drafted well. They've done a decent job with a pick here and there (more luck than anything else, if you ask me), but in terms of being able to draft a team...no. Not since the Original Six era, when teams had a virtual lock on players developing in their backyard (though the Leafs STILL managed to miss players). So even if they did start trading vets away and piling up picks, they'd probably end up with a roster full of Drake Berehowskys and Scott Thorntons.

Hence the love/hate. I'm pretty resigned to the fact that I will die long before the Leafs win another Cup. I just wish I didn't have to put up with all the delusional Leaf fans who think they're just one or two pieces away. Yeah, provided that one of those two pieces is, you know, a GOOD TEAM.

Hanging Santa?

Man, that's just fucking horrible. I don't hope anything bad happens to the guy physically (bad karma, boo), but I hope like...a team of reindeer dance the tango on his car or something. Cause that's just not cool.

Straw Fields

I'm sitting on the bench and my breath is misting in the afternoon air. Somewhere in the distance a guitar is playing a paean to a man who left a legacy of love and pain. "You can't stand here," a man tells me. "But I'm sitting down," I say. He moves on. Crowds are milling to say goodbye again to this man they barely knew, that they couldn't know and yet did, because he was magical. Out on the street the brakes of cars squeal, but right now it seems so distant. More people file by, people from countries and worlds I've never seen and never will again. How many of us will be remembered? The people cluster in little groups, trying to hold in their warmth against the invading cold. The wind blows, blows right through me and then picks me up and I'm flying into the sky. A woman floats by offering cookies that read, "Eat me." I take a bite and nothing happens. "What did you expect?" she asks. "More than this," I say. "These are the wrong cookies for that," she says. "She's got the ones you want." I turn and you are there, framed by the sun. Your warmth draws me in, but it melts me before I can reach you and I'm tumbling to land back on the bench in the park, surrounded by knowledge and ignorance. I look up and you're still there, far above me in the afternoon sky. I close my eyes and feel you shining down on me as the page turns. I can't hear the guitar anymore; it's been absorbed by the growing crowd of people who press forward like sheep, each seeking a piece of happiness to take with them, a remembrance of this man who touched them all and left so much undone, and I wonder if that's the way you think of me.

Sketchbookkid

I should have done this a bit ago, but better late than never. A friend met this girl while she was working on a mural in a cafe, and mentioned her site to me. I actually met with her while I was home for US Thanksgiving and bought a couple of her drawings; turns out she's not only quite talented, she's a total sweetie too. I wish her nothing but the best (especially because if she does get successful, those drawings I bought will totally become extra cool and have tons of street cred and be worth lotsa money).

She's got a blog that she doesn't update much and a couple other areas, one for her writing and one for these little comics she draws. I also wanted to reprint one of her poems because I really like it:

Bring your school books outside
i want to tell you about a friend i had.
i want to sit in the damp grass and wring my hands
and say "This is bullshit,
everything anyone ever tells you is going to be bullshit
especially this kind of thing
but
i mean this,
this is true."
and mean it
like i sometimes do.
I want to push the hair from my eyes in a wise way
and have you look upon me in awe
for that gesture
while i pretend not to notice
and maintain a steady level of passionate speech.
I want you to know how honestly i've felt
i want to guide you out back to tell you all the world's Truths;
because i'm too lonely and mean to seduce you with my body
and because maybe this way
you'll never happen to see the truth
about me.

Imagine

Just realized that today (the 7th) is Pearl Harbor Day and tomorrow (the 8th) is the anniversary of John Lennon's death. How sad is that? Hm, might make for an interesting (I had fun typed there and felt like a total jerk) activity though, walking down to Strawberry Fields tomorrow...wish I had a charger for my cam. Oh well, guess I'll make do with my shitty camera phone.

Live-not-so-Strong?

Um, I might be going to hell for thinking this (well, if you can go to hell for stuff like this, I sealed that deal a long time ago), but my friend just messaged me to tell me his LiveStrong bracelet broke. Am I the only one that finds that thought ironic and darkly humorous?

Mel Hussein?

Mel vs Saddam

Anyone else notice these two pics on Drudge Report at the same time? What the hell is THAT? Do they have the same stylist or something?

P.S. Fear my MS Paint skills!

So Tell Me Something I Didn't Know

Click.

A couple highlights:

"We're producing too many people," Mr. Steele said, "many of them poorly trained or moved into the field without the connections or relationships necessary to make their transition to a career possible. It's as if medical school were graduating people without giving them internships at a hospital."

"Twenty years ago, you didn't sense the kind of urgency these kids have now," said Mr. Schlegel, who represents many successful New York theater actors, including Jefferson Mays and Jayne Atkinson. "Now they think if they don't get signed by an agent right away, they've failed. They never think they've got to learn the ropes a bit, get seasoned. They want to know, 'Where's my TV series? Where's my film audition?' It's wrong, of course, but that's what they think, and in a business where we fall all over the young ones, you can't blame them."

Sometimes it's easy to forget that in show business, and in the greater scheme of life, a year is really not a very long amount of time. The other day I was sitting with one of my friends and talking about the fact that it had been 3-4 years since we had graduated, which is both a fair and an insignificant amount of time. Fair in the sense that since then, both of us have done a number of projects, good and bad, and insignificant in the sense that there is still so much potentially ahead of us.

It always shocks me when I talk to people living back in Toronto about the state of affairs back there; the handful of people I've spoken to make it sound so easy to get a call from an agent, when I've never had so much as a sniff from one here. Not even a, "Quit sending us your shit, we're not interested," note. A part of that is because being on the visa I'm on, I can't really do a whole lot of paying jobs at the moment, so I haven't been able to capitalize on Morty's as much as I might have liked to. Hopefully I'll be able to change that next year, when I FINALLY finish up my BA (9 years after finishing high school, awesome!) and get off a student visa or get deported.

I also find it helpful sometimes to remember a quote I read in this big Julliard book that details the history of the school and is loaded with quotes from alumni. It's a quote from Kevin Kline, and it goes a little something like: "When I graduated from Julliard I knew how much there was that I didn't know, and that's all any school can give you."

In general when it comes to education, the idea that once you're out of school you're "done" learning is the worst thing you can think. You have to always be pushing yourself because if you don't, no-one else will. That's why so many of the people I went to school with have left the city, because they couldn't handle that part of it. It's difficult, because you need to be honest with yourself and evaluate how your career is progressing, but you also need to determine whether or not this is really something you must pursue, if you could not be happy doing anything else in life. Me, I don't really know. Right now, yes, this is what I have to be doing. But a year from now, or 5 years from now that could change. You have to be open to that possibility, just as you have to be open to the opportunities that will come your way.

I have to keep believing that opportunities will come, or I'd probably quit and go home. Hell, I've already had opportunities come my way, and I'm grateful. Now if only I could convince my parents, I'd be set.

Phew

One of the busiest days I've had in a while; up at 9 to be at ImaginAsian for 11, had some time to glance over scripts and sort through some of the stuff Rocawear gave us because a certain someone was late as always. That's so fucking frustrating. I mean, when you work in theater and film/tv you get used to the different schedules; in theater (the good productions I've been involved in, at least) when they give you a call time they actually expect you to be ready to go at that time, meaning you show up 10-15 minutes early. In film/tv you get a call time, you show up, everyone's there but stuff always needs to be done, whether it's setting up lights or talking out the shot or what have you, so you're invariably waiting for an hour or so before anything actually happens. I wonder if, on bigger budget shoots, this trend continues or if, because there's more money and there's more accountability required, they're more stringent. It probably depends on the director.

In any event, the last person arrived at around 12:30; I'm pretty sure we didn't start shooting until 2ish. Knocked out 4 promos in about 4 hours with a short break for lunch. Honestly, wearing all the Roca shit I think I look so ludicrous. First of all, it's not really my style of clothing and second of all it's fucking HUGE on me. Nothing they sent was smaller than a large, and I've got your typical Asian frame, so it's basically like some bastard thought to himself, hey, how can we make him look even smaller onscreen?

Had to run at 6 because I'm doing a reading for a new musical by C. Y. Lee (wrote the original book of Flower Drum Song). First of all, the musical itself is sorta...not the best. Well, I'll be honest, I think it sucks. I mean, the music is ok, the lyrics are decent, there's just no point to the thing. Personally, I don't find there to be much in the way of character development and so many of the songs feel like they're just thrown in so there's a song, instead of developing as a natural extension of the scene. It's nowhere close to Rodgers and Hammerstein, much less Sondheim or Jason Robert Brown, and maybe I'm being overly critical, but there's honestly very little in the world I can think of that's worse than bad musical theater. Maybe bad musical theater starring washed up television or pop stars, but that's a whole other post topic.

The most disappointing thing has been that my voice is shit right now. I never had the strongest voice (got dealt a fair number of Astaire songs while in school, as well as the requisite Asian Rodgers and Hammerstein fare), and the combination of not having worked on any musicals or taking voice lessons in about 3 years and a couple of throat infections/vicious colds I've had in that same period have contributed to make my voice a fucking terror. I needed to beat my ass into some voice lessons, like, YESTERDAY.

Overheard in New York

A couple nuggets before I take off:

Hobo: I need money for food.
Guy: Me too, mind if I borrow some from your cup?

--86th & Lexington

A couple walks by holding hands, a tall man and a short woman.

Chick: What's with the Wookie-Ewok love?
Guy: Dude, that's harsh.

--13th & University

Girl: You know her, she's making stuff up again!
Crazy woman: Hey! Did you just call me Chewbacca?

--1 train

Overheard by: poptart

Girl #1: Look, that policewoman has a seeing-eye dog! Isn't that cool?
Girl #2: Oh yeah, cool, they have them here for that anti-terrorism shit.
Cop lady: ...Is she friggin' kidding me?

--Yankee Stadium

Overheard by: Tara B

That site is possibly the greatest ever.

Wonderland

I wake up and the white rabbit is there, waiting for me with liquid eyes. He beckons me to follow, but when I swing my feet off the bed there's no floor and I'm falling towards a round red door that says, "Please knock." The doorbell rings and the butler opens the door and I'm walking in the garden where I saw you for the first time. I turn and you're standing there in your dress of stars and daisies and smiling your crooked smile. I go blind; my vision blurs and then goes dark. I stumble forward, fumbling towards the ecstasy of your hands, to hold you one last time, but you're gone and in your place is a statue. I hit the statue and it shatters, revealing the white rabbit at its core. "Follow the yellow brick road," he says, so I do. It leads me up into the sky past munchkins and sunflowers. They're singing a song I know but I can't remember the words, and just as I start to remember they stop. "Please," I say, "Don't stop," but they don't respond and I walk on in silence. The castle looms in front of me; I knock and the door opens and I'm in the garden again. I wonder how many times I've done this circle and if I'll ever escape it. "You could," the white rabbit tells me, "But you don't want to."

Random Book Quote

Been working my way through American Gods, by Neil Gaiman, for the past few days:

"It's a tragedy, is it not? The little faces on the milk cartons - although I can't remember the last time I saw a kid on a milk carton - and on the walls of freeway rest areas. 'Have you seen me?' they ask. A deeply existential question at the best of times."

One of the interesting things I've noticed about many of the best kid's books (not that American Gods is a kid's book) is that at the root of it, there's a single question that is asked of the main character over and over. In Alice in Wonderland it's who are you, in Wizard of Oz it's where are you going and in Winnie the Pooh it's what do jagulars do? (They shout halloo and when you look up, they drop on you).

Ok, so I made that last one up, but I just wanted to mention Winnie the Pooh because it's the awesomest ever. (tiddly pom)

I find it interesting that these basic questions, which are obviously the kinds of things kids, going through the developmental stages of their lives, are asking themselves (who am I, where am I going), permeate these stories which have endured all these years, and I would guess that it might be one of the reasons why they do so. Really, they're questions that anyone of any age might find themselves faced with, which is why I found it neat when I read Wizard of Oz and a few of the Alice stories and found the questions repeated over and over.

I remember mentioning this in passing in a conversation to one of my roommates, who responded, "Whoa, deep." Whoa, deep, indeed. I salute you, sir, for your vocabularic prowess.

China Tortures People?

Clicky.

Now, I don't mean to be asinine, but come on...is there anyone out there who's honestly surprised to find out that China continues to torture people? It's like all those Falun Gong/Dafa people who are somehow lining the streets of New York these days (I mean, if China's really THAT bad, how the hell did they get out? You can't exactly innertube across the Pacific), and they're all handing out flyers and stuff about how horrible China is and I just want to say to them, "Really? It sucks living in China? You have no freedom? NO SHIT." But then I don't because karma is a bitch. Um, so instead I type it out in my blog. Well, maybe that's not so bad.

China is not a democracy, and I don't know that it ever will be a democracy; much like the current situation in Iraq, it takes a lot more than "free" elections to create a democracy, whether it's a democratic republic or a parliamentary democracy (which, I believe, are the two more precise definitions of "democracies" currently existing in the world). Certainly in our lifetimes, China isn't going to change all that much, because the people in power have a lot riding on it not changing. From the situations with Tibet and Taiwan to the growing income gap between the new ultra-rich and the continually poor rural masses (sounding like a Marxist here), the powerful in China have never shown even the slightest care for typical liberal democratic niceties, and I don't see any reason to believe one day they'll wake up and suddenly will. It's true that in American politics, some of the biggest reformers (Teddy Roosevelt, FDR) came from monied backgrounds, but here they had a system where they could appeal to the public and couldn't be shoved aside. In China, I'm thinking if you rub the wrong people the wrong way there's still a pretty good chance you can end up in prison, no matter high up you are.

Unsent

I've been debating whether or not to put this up, as I wrote it...last night? Two nights ago? I forget. Oh well. As the title of this post suggests, this is an unsent letter.

Maybe you're wondering why I haven't called you in a bit. You're probably not, but let's pretend you are for the sake of this letter.
I'm really tired of always being the one to call and always feeling ignored. I'm better than that. I deserve better than that. I think you do too. I think you're not happy where you are right now and maybe I could help, but who am I to say that to you and to tell you how to live your life.
It's not all about you, too. (note: this doesn't really make sense to me now, but hey, I wrote this at like 2 am and I'm just leaving it in for full accuracy) I think you're beautiful. I want you. I respect you. I'm a nice fucking guy and I wish you could see that and want that.
Maybe you do and you're afraid. More likely I'm too nice and you're not attracted. That's fine, but I wish you'd tell me instead of leading me on. Maybe you're not. Maybe you don't even realize you are. I don't care.
I could have loved you, I think. Maybe I still could. But I need to say goodbye right now. I hope this helps. It probably won't. Why the hell do I get so hung up on women? Am I just in love with the idea of being in love? What the fuck is wrong with me?

A Warm Place

The fire was slowly dying, so I reached into it and pulled out its heart. I gave it to you, to keep you warm, but you dropped it on the ground. “That's not enough,” you said. I asked you what you wanted and you said it was nothing I could give, and then you started to cry. Your tears washed me away, down the hills and over the streams until I ended up in a playground where horses rode children and wolves danced around the swings like lost boys. They sang an ancient song of love and loss, and I thought I could understand the words but that was just a coincidence. I asked the wolves how to get home and they pointed towards the slide, so I ran up it. At the top of the slide was the moon, full and pregnant. I jumped on top of it and it rose into the sky as raindrops fell; rain fell all around and made me think of you because whenever I picture you you're always crying. I wish I knew how to make you stop but then I realize I'm crying too and always have been. Maybe that's what love is, looking for the person who can stop the tears, tears of rage and anger and cold and soul. And maybe love is realizing that you can stop them yourself, that you're the only one who really can, and then sharing that knowledge with another and helping them to realize it too. I want to find you to tell you this, but then I remember you left me years ago and aren't coming back.

Random Thought

Just watched Manhattan, a Woody Allen flick from '79. Is there another piece of music that sums up New York better than Rhapsody in Blue? And do I only think that because others have used it in New York montage/movies? But then, in order for it to have been selected, those people must have felt the connection too, right?

All I know is that when I hear Rhapsody in Blue, I think New York and I get a little choked up. Every time. I like that.

More News Linkage Fun

Clicky.

The thing that gets me about that story is where the Dutch contingent is mentioned:

"In the spring, the Netherlands had 1,400 troops in Iraq. Today, there are 19, including a lone Dutch soldier in Baghdad."

One guy? What the hell is that? And what does one lone Dutchman do in Baghdad that's oh so important, anyway? Sell tulips? Operate a windmill? Seriously.

Say It Ain't So

Click.

Was anyone else out there under the impression that that pile of crap (which I suppose I shouldn't call that since I never actually watched it, but seeing as how this is my blog, I'll go ahead and say it anyways) had already been cancelled? Seriously. I've never met anyone who would admit to ever watching a single episode, much less coming BACK and watching a second. And I do feel kinda bad for what's his name...Matt LeBlanc, but not really all that bad, since he had a good run and should have known that the spinoff likely would not go anywhere. I'm sure he'll be crying into his $300 glass of wine and resigning himself to the television purgatory of VH1 reality serieses and whatnot. Sucks to be him, doesn't it?