When I first announced plans to move to Hongkie Town, some people said to me, “wow, you must really like sushi!” “Yeah,” I’d answer, “but what does that have to do with it?” I can’t tell you over the years how many bits of mail have come to me addressed to “Hong Kong, Japan.”

So today, watching the Oscars, they have this off-stage announcer reciting trivia pre-written for her to kill time as the winners made their way to stage. And when Departed won the award for adapted screenplay, she cheerfully announced that it was a remake of the “Japanese film Infernal Affairs.” I would have done a spit take only I wasn’t drinking anything at the time.

Aside from that gaffe, the only real “surprises” were Alan Arkin beating Eddie Murphy for supporting actor and some German film beating out Pan’s Labyrinth for foreign language film. With Warner Bros winning for best picture and best animated feature, it would have been a nice trifecta had Pan also won.

The only thing more boring than the Oscar ceremony would have to be the commercials on TVB. For the pre-game shows and the first hour or so of the Oscars, there were tons of ads, but all of them unpaid ones – idiotic public service announcements and promos for other TVB shows. Eventually there were paid ads for a jobs web site and a Brit singer.

The ads that TVB produced for themselves were so godawful that it was beyond belief. The one most often shown was to promote the prime time repeat of the Oscars. First of all, if you’re watching the show, why the hell would you watch the repeat? The ad itself featured some tacky family sitting at a dining table. The maid comes to remove the plates and the husband and wife inform her that she has to leave the food on the table because the Oscars will be re-shown later. I think this ad was written by a seven year old.

They were promoting the fuck outta Ugly Betty but for some reason did not show any footage of the actual show. With the local premiere less than a month away, I can’t imagine that they didn’t have footage to show. Instead they’d spent money to take some local actress, fit her with fake braces, dress her in some approximation of Betty, and have her stand in the street and scream at people that “ugly is the new beautiful.” This looks like it was written and directed by nine year olds.

Most inexplicably, they had multiple ads for Prison Break, and while one featured clips from the show itself, another featured specially shot footage in high contrast, grainy black and white of HK people standing in wet alleys trying to look like they had just broken out of prison. What was the point of spending the money to produce this? This one looked like it was written by an eight year old and shot by an older, somewhat talented sibling.

All of that may pale, however, next to a PSA asking people to drive courteously. The ad featured humans dressed to look like the kind of stuffed toys you might win at a carnival. So there was a mini-bus driven by a giant rabbit and a car driven by a giant dog and so on. This looks like it was written by a four year old.

Another ad featured a bartender handing a beer to an invisible customer and a pregnant woman sitting on a sofa and crying. This turned out to be an ad suggesting people quit smoking. This was nicely shot and cut but the content only a tenuous connection to the message, especially since every bar I go to still allows smoking. (Note that the new Bulldogs in Wanchai is 100% non-smoking. I shall not be returning there.)

It’s one thing for TVB to create stupid ads but these PSAs are examples of my tax dollars “at work” – wasting money creating useless nonsense.

Or is the cultural divide so vast that I don’t understand that this kind of thing will actually attract the attention and engage the interest of local adults?

But, should I be faulting our local officials for creating such stupid content when my fellow countrymen don’t have a fucking clue where Hong Kong is?

No, not quite.

Last night, as mentioned, wanted to go out and get wasted, and debated on awhile on where, what, how. Finally decided that it would be best to compromise, so brought T with me but went to Neptune. Ran into Lost Horizons and someone I knew from my banking days.

Not having been to Neptune in at least a couple of weeks, a lot of old faces and some new ones. One girl in particular “stood out.” Long hair, cute face, and a nose that looked like it had been surgically altered. But that wasn’t it. She was wearing this dress over a see-thru mesh top, and while for most of the night she was keeping that mesh covered, as the night wore on and she remained alone, she adjusted things so that the mesh was uncovered, revealing underneath a very large pair of breasts barely covered by a flowery print lacy bra. I could not help but look, often. I decided that the breasts were most likely also surgically enhanced, but they were lovely to look at.

Then over comes this Filipino girl I know, having drank with her at Galaxy and Laguna. Her deal is either that she’s just working for drink commissions or that she’s got no interest in fucking me, even for money. She was wearing a bikini top, denim shorts cut down to the bare minimum, knee high boots. Since she came over and grabbed me, I did introduce her to T, explaining that I’d drank with her in the past but “never boom boom with her.” T probably didn’t believe me. And then V came by, a Filipino I’ve known in the biblical sense, very large breasts and very short skirt and boots. And others.

I knew another drink or two and temptation might take control of me, make me do something that would lead to either regret or a fight later on. So I figured that the only way out of this, short of leaving the bar, was to retreat to a table in the back where my view would be limited (but where T could easily see me). I ended up talking with an older English guy. T came over, I said “this is my new friend,” and she whispered in my ear that the guy was “disgusting” and that she’d tell me later.

(Today she told me he was a retired HK cop and that back in the day, he’d buy the girls some drinks, take ‘em home and fuck ‘em, and then refuse to give them any money, telling them he was a cop and if they gave him trouble he’d arrest them.)

The rest of the night is kind of a blur. T said we should get some girl and bring her back with us, I told her I was drunk past the point of functioning (or even caring) in that area. I think at one point I told her that she was a lousy drunk. That when I drink, I’m just more “me” but that her personality completely changes when she’s drunk.

We made it home. I think she tried to make some sort of fuss or something but I just fell asleep within minutes. She asked me this morning if she said anything last night and I said I had no idea.

Came home tonight, checked the (snail) mail, and discovered that I am now officially divorced.

A man only gets divorced a few times in his life – generally one less time than number of marriages. I’m hoping that for me this is the last time.

Called my newly ex wife to tell her the news. She said congratulations and that she was going out to celebrate. I suppose I’ll do something along those lines as well.

Yeah, I know, not much posting activity. Back to work, getting back up to speed after the extended weekend.

In the midst of planning a three week long business/vacation trip for March. It seems that Cathay still has this deal where an around the world, multi-stop business class ticket is roughly the same price as a simple business class HK/LA trip. Business schedule will mean a lot of zig zagging. A few days in New York visiting family, a week of business in Los Angeles, a couple of days somewhere in Europe (never been anywhere except various spots in the UK and Amsterdam – what’s a good place for me, on my own, for 2 or 3 days? London which I’ve been to a thousand times, but can spend my time immersed in bookshops and CD stores, or some Wanchai-like Eastern European zone?), and then several days in Mumbai for business before returning home. So I’m a little pre-occupied with the logistics for that.

And finally lots of new music to catch up on. Most recent albums loaded onto the iPod include !!!, Apples in Stereo, Arcade Fire, Beirut, Bloc Party, Bryan Ferry, Dexy’s, Duke Special, Fall Out Boy, Good Bad & Queen, Hours, Jesse Malin, Kaiser Chiefs, Klaxons, Long Blondes, Mika, Scott Matthews, Shins. I hope some of it doesn’t suck.

Thinking about going to the HK Underground thing tonight. Also still debating on going to see Muse. Just noticed that Duke Robillard will be in town in March, but that will be while I’m away.

Trying to watch as many of the Academy Award nominated films as possible before Monday morning. Watched Babel last night. Innaritu is a consummate film maker but I’m convinced that Babel equals less than the sum of its parts. Have also watched Departed and Little Miss Sunshine. Gotta watch Dreamgirls, Queen, Last King of Scotland, Venus, etc. (no good copies of Letters From Iwo Jima floating around for some reason) in the next coupla days … but might detour and watch Christopher Guest’s marvelous For Your Consideration again.

This post being written on my new PC. The build went smoother than any previous one. After I finished the assembly, I plugged it in and everything worked first time out. I suppose it’s possible I’ve gotten better at this as time goes by. Twas not always thus.

I’m sure some people will gladly secondguess my choices, but here’s what I went for:

• Intel Dual Core E6600 chip
• Asus P5B motherboard
• 2 gigs RAM
• Cooler Master Centurion case
• Cooler Master Extreme Power 430 watt power supply
• Asus EN7600 GT video card (since I don’t play any 3D games, I expect this to suffice)
• Lite On 20x dual layer DVD burner

(I already had a spare 500 gig SATA drive lying around and moved my Creative X-Fi sound card over from the old PC.)

They tried to sell me on getting Vista but no thanks. WinXP Pro will do fine for me until Microsoft releases the first service pack of Vista bug fixes. And this was one of the two things they didn’t have in stock (they had to toss some cash at someone and have him run to some other shop to get it). And it seemed like no open shop had a 4-PC KVM/USB switch in stock. So that’s gotta wait a day.

In the meantime, with most of the software I need installed, certain tasks are definitely moving ahead noticeably faster. And now I’m able to devote the second PC to full time DVD burning, CD ripping, file format conversions, etc.

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Watched The Prestige the other day. I think it’s far more ambitious than the similarly themed The Illusionist, which came out around the same time. Some people preferred the Edward Norton film and I would guess that’s because it has a more traditional story, easier to follow and figure out. Whereas The Prestige comes from Christopher Nolan, who of course did Memento (and the last Batman movie). Note that the great Ricky Jay is credited in both films as a technical advisor but only actually appears onscreen in Prestige.

(Also note that Ricky Jay has a new CD out, a compilation called Ricky Jay Plays Poker. It includes a 21 song CD of poker-inspired songs, a DVD of Jay doing some close-up card magic, a 72 page book and a deck of cards.)

Warning – Potential Spoilers Ahead! The Prestige’s structure is problematic. It’s hard to keep track with flashbacks within flashbacks within flashbacks and I think this should have been fixed a bit – not entirely straightened out but it’s more complex than it needs to be. Or is that purposeful misdirection? The key to the movie, as other reviewers have noted, is the first four words of dialog – are you watching closely? With that in mind, it’s relatively simple to figure out Christian Bale’s secret, and the end of the film flashes back to all of the earlier clues. But the film dispenses too quickly with Hugh Jackman’s secret at the end, probably even more horrific and deserving of a bit more screen time itself. The full extent of what he has done is not completely explained, only hinted at, and yet, it’s the contemplation of his deed that makes the movie stay with me.

Oh, and Bowie acquits himself nicely as Nikola Tesla.

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Lunch today with a friend who said he thinks everyone misses the “old Spike.” I told him I’m not even living the “old Spike” lifestyle anymore – well, not as much anyway.

And in the last couple of days, a couple of heavy things have come my way. One potentially is good news but it’s weeks or months too soon to even begin to discuss it. The other was T opening up to me with more tales of her past and all I’ll say is it’s amazing what people can live through and survive, the way life can mark us and damage us and yet we go on.

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Speaking of movies, a bit of googling has turned up a new DVD release of Devil’s Express, the first film that I worked on (as production assistant and actor). (Fittingly, it’s the bottom part of a double bill on a budget DVD release.) I’ve even found places online selling the poster and lobby cards.

And then, much to my surprise, I found a DVD for the second film I worked on (assistant cameraman and, um, body double), as well as the poster and the press kit.

Of course, the third (and last) feature film that I worked on is readily available …..

Sunday night, I hadn’t slept much, maybe just 4 or 5 hours, and woke up almost hourly. Monday night, dinner party at a friend’s flat. After two glasses of wine and a couple of plates’ worth of food, I was wiped out. Almost everyone was sitting around the table talking. There weren’t enough chairs for everyone and I was sharing a chair with T. There were a couple of people plopped on a sofa in front of the TV watching some terrible movie on Cinemax with the sound off. I joined them and within a few minutes I was asleep. It’s even possible that I was snoring. I didn’t sleep for more than 10 or 15 minutes but still, like, ya know?

My new favorite sign in Hongkie Town:

Oh, just put an ad on Geoexpat for the 29 inch Sony Trinitron TV. I did have a couple of enquiries the last time I mentioned it here but none serious, it would seem. Here’s a photo. In the ad, I’m asking for $3,000 “or best reasonable offer.”

Friday night, our first dinner party. Four people over for dinner and T cooked enough for ten. Let’s see, there was soup, a couple of fried fish, fried beef, morning glory, crab and prawn fried rice, clams and some other stuff I’ve forgotten as well as some store-bought Thai desserts and fruit. To be honest, I think she’s done better in the past, but our company claims to have enjoyed it. And I came to the realization that we’re okay to have two people over but more than that and it’s a real stretch in terms of dishes, cutlery, serving bowls, glasses and so on. Oh sure, we have, as long as no one notices that nothing matches.

Saturday night, we went out separately, late, and I ran into someone I didn’t expect to see in HK. Bounced back and forth between Wanchai and Lan Kwai Fong (which was the busier spot). Bulldog’s Wanchai branch is now open. Insomnia wasn’t letting anyone into the back room to see the band unless they bought a drink at the front bar first – the back was packed tight anyway.

Sunday afternoon, watched the standard DVD version of 2001 on the 40 inch LCD TV. Wow. Even though I know this movie shot-by-shot by heart, it felt like I was watching it for the first time in 30 years. Then off to the dog run in Happy Valley for awhile. (Vaguely funny note: lots of taxis park around this area, the drivers getting ready to start their shifts. And T knew one of the taxi drivers, said he goes to Neptune all the time.)

Dinner time, we went down to Lan Kwai Fong. As I expected, more than half the places were closed. And since it was early, most of the open places were pretty vacant. We settled into Post 97 for dinner and T announced that of all the fereng food places I’ve brought her to in HK, this was by far the best. And I gotta say, there’s a reason they’ve lasted so long when so many other places have come and gone. Two courses plus a glass of house wine for $250 is a pretty good deal. T had seared tuna with angel hair pasta followed by fried halibut with steamed crawfish and risotto. I went for parma ham with marinated artichokes and rocket and then grilled king prawns and scallops with mashed potatoes, which may not sound that exciting but the sauce was fabulous.

Posters up around LKF for a Gatecrasher night at Western Market tomorrow night, star is Matt Darey. Tempting but not sure I can do an all-nighter these days.

Back home, fell asleep watching the Chinese New Year Night Parade on TVB. Two things struck me about Donald Tsang’s Henry Tang’s opening speech. (thanks to anon commenter who set me straight on this one. my bad.)

The first is when he said he hoped everyone would enjoy this “world class event.” Note that when an event is truly “world class,” there is usually no need to announce it as such. “Welcome to the Olympics! We hope you enjoy this world class event!” I don’t think so.

The second maybe isn’t fair, but I’ll say it anyway. The man has a really funny voice. Definitely not the voice of a “world class” leader. Would be interesting to see him interviewed by Borat or Ali G.

Monday or Tuesday, planning to build a new PC. I think.

Crank. Starring Jason Statham. This movie is horrific in so many ways, none of them good, and yet the entire thing adds up to a really enjoyable bit of Grade Z mindless movie fun.

This film, directed and written by the team of Mark Neveldine and Brian Taylor is going to land near the top of my guilty pleasures list. I suppose, based on their style, that they direct music videos. And I also suppose, based on their style, that Tony Scott is their film-making god. The plot has hitman Statham injected with some “synthetic Chinese shit” that will kill him in an hour. There is no antidote and the only way to extend his life is for him to keep his adrenaline level cranked.

In the extras, there’s a bit where someone says that they are trying to show stuff that no one’s showed onscreen before. And in that sense, I believe they succeed. Statham finds several unique ways to pump up his adrenaline while hunting down the man who killed him. These include:

1 – Fucking his girlfriend on the street in front of a huge crowd (including a tour bus filled with Asian schoolgirls) in L.A.’s Chinatown.

2 – Apparently, being chased by two cars with machine-gun-firing baddies isn’t exciting enough for him so his girlfriend leans over and gives him a blowjob while he’s driving and shooting. Most considerately, she brings him almost to the point and then stops, saying, “what, and have you fall asleep after like you always do?”

Actually my favorite bit is when this bad guy is about to shoot his friend, he cuts off the guy’s hand with a meat cleaver, and then, his own gun out of ammo, picks up the hand so he can shoot the bad guy.

But with all of that, the oddest bit is this: every time he’s going from one location to another, the film zooms out to a satellite view, complete with a copyright notice for the satellite image on the bottom center of the screen and the Google logo in the bottom right corner. This may well be the single oddest bit of product placement I’ve ever seen in a feature film.

I shelled out for the Blu-Ray version of this disc. The 1080p resolution is very nice for all the different film stocks and all of the computer- and film-lab-assisted visual tricks.

And Jason Statham, once so promising in Lock, Stock and now doing all these low grade, low budget grinders? At least so far he’s consistently picking entertaining ones to do.

And once again, home.

Useless observation of the day:

Whenever I fly, I always find myself hoping as I board the plane that I will find myself seated next to a beautiful young woman. Or a beautiful older woman. Or a woman who is still breathing and not yet at the adult diaper stage of life.

Generally I get seated next to a man and often it’s a man who does not speak English. The last time I got seated next to an attractive woman capable of carrying on a decent conversation in English (and who gave me her phone number) was around 1998.

This fantasy especially comes to mind on days like today, when the Seoul airport seemed to be filled with women of eastern European extraction, most of them bottle blonds wearing jeans several sizes too small.

Now I’ll also note that since I’m a Marco Polo gold member, I get to board the plane on the business class line even though I’m usually flying economy. And that means I’m usually one of the first people to reach my seat in that section.

Today, a chatty stewardess greeted me and I was friendly in return. And then, lo and behold, a young female comes and claims the seat next to me. Not beautiful, but far from horrendous.
She appeared to be Filipino. She appeared to be pleased to find me in the seat next to hers.

And then, prior to take-off, the afore-mentioned chatty stewardess came by to do me a “favor.” She told me there are empty rows further back and that I can move now and stretch out across several seats.

Moment of crisis. Since I hadn’t really started talking with my seat-mate yet, it seemed like too obvious a ploy to tell the stewardess, “no thanks, I’ll stay scrunched up here so I can annoy the stranger next to me.” And so I gathered up my stuff and moved. I turned to the lady next to me and said, “I’m going to move further back to stretch out, so you can stretch out too.” Call me nuckin’ futs but I could swear I saw a look of disappointment on her face.

I moved to the row the stewardess indicated. Across the row from me was a Korean man who insisted on yelling at the guy in the row in front of me for most of the flight. The stewardess never came over to see how I was doing and chat some more.

So that was that. I watched the latest episodes of Lost and American Idol, took a nap, read a bit of a book I recently bought that I don’t think I will finish.

My life is just one long series of self-contrived tragedies, innit?

Sometimes I’ll book a limo to take me home from the airport. This time, with a 6:15 PM landing, I went for the train + taxi combo. On arrival at IFC, there were long queues and no taxis.

So I went upstairs, had a smoke and then looked to flag down a taxi dropping off passengers for the train. Many others had the same idea, so I crossed the street to the mall entrance, joined the queue there, and had a taxi after about a 20 minute wait.

The driver informed me that because Chinese New Year is near, the locals are all out shopping tonight for new clothes to wear and traffic is horrible everywhere. Causeway Bay is mobbed, he said, and he didn’t want to go anywhere near CWB, Happy Valley, TST, Yau Ma Tei or Mong Kok tonight.

Then he started talking about the 1980s for some reason. How back then there were less taxis and drivers could pick and choose their passengers. Drivers would refuse short trips, just 5 bucks on the meter back then. The Japanese figured out what to do … they’d stand in the street and wave $20 or $100 bills to get the taxis to stop for them. Now there are too many taxis and some “evil men” are offering discounts on the meter and he hopes the government puts a stop to that.

In other news, looks like India trip postponed to April. My company’s got a global meeting coming up in L.A. in March. Everyone is telling me they have seen my name on the list, but so far no one has actually told me I need to go. Let’s see, one afternoon at Amoeba Records, a coupla hours at Book Soup, a half-decent pastrami on rye and a decent burrito and In N Out Burger … plus 5 days of torturous meetings followed by a swing over to Da Bronx to see my mother. Is it worth it? Oh horse poo.

Ah well, not every post can be gold.