love letters from my 34th summer

If that gun looks plastic, it’s only because it is (I am also holding the gun wrong).

I’m the foreign guy.

There was a time when I updated my weblog more often. My entries were better written. I was funny. I wasn’t trying to write poetry. I may have even been more innocent and less jaded. Anyway, back then I used to get a lot of fan mail. By a lot of fan mail, I mean two or three emails a week from strangers complimenting me on my website and asking me about China. Back then about half that correspondence was people wanting to “get into the Chinese movie business.”

These days I rarely get letters from strangers, but usually when I do, again, it’s asking for tips about how to land that role in a Chinese film.

On a side note, one exception is a recent Email from a reader who wanted a more detailed explanation about some Chinese drinking games. On his way to Beijing, my reader wanted to be prepared for whatever might impede or hasten his libations. It almost brought a tear to my eye seeing someone so dedicated and earnest about the ruination of his liver. Have you ever tried to explain a Chinese drinking game when you aren’t drinking? I hope my explanation was clear, but when I finished my brief missive, I felt like I had been talking about a strange drunken version of Yahtzee.

Anyway, back to the acting requests. Many people don’t take the time to write an Email. Instead, they just post the request in my comment box. Here is an example of a request: “Hey, I saw you were an actor in a Chinese movie. How do I become an actor in a Chinese movie?” Well, here’s how.

1.) Be foreign. No casting director cares how flawlessly and effortlessly you can banter about metaphysics in Chinese. When they are looking fill that role called Goofy Foreign Character 3, they don’t care that you never eat at McDonalds, hand paint your own chopsticks, and have a pair of “indoor slippers” that are pink and two sizes too small. They want you to be foreign. If possible, be a big foreigner. What’s better than a foreigner? A big foreigner. Think about it.

2.) Be an American. Your best bet for landing a role in a movie in China is as a bad guy/girl. No single country in the world today causes more angst, jealousy, hatred, passion, and vitriol than the good ole’ US of A. With most countries, people don’t care one way or the other about them. Take Swedes for instance, they are universally loved unless they suddenly mess with the Volvo design or ruin Tiger’s golf game. But as an American, I always know there is a place for me as a despicable bad guy, internationally.

3.) Don’t be picky about getting paid or safety on the job. If you wanted to get paid every week and have OSHA watching your ass while you nancy about your job, you should have stayed at the make-up counter at Sears. Do you want to be famous? Then sacrifices must be made. I saw an ESL Teacher from Seattle get written out of a script after he started crying because he realized that the “cliff-hanging” scene was actually off of a cliff, and he would actually be hanging without ropes. “Ted” an airline pilot out of Brisbane started going on about getting paid after he had been on the set for fifteen minutes. He was back at his “safe” job flying planes before he could say “Film Actors Guild.”

4.) Learn to accentuate your scars, birthmarks or botched tattoos. What’s a bad guy without a scar or tattoo? Ladies, use those pregnancy stretch marks for a little extra spending money in China. Face it, even in China, nobody is hiring you because you are pretty or hot or handsome or strong (even though that is how every casting agent has recruited me). Nope, they are filming a low budget movie and need somebody to be foreign. That’s right, you are the cheap, easily renewable labor. Enjoy it. Embrace the odd way you look. Either shave your hair completely off, grow it very long, or show your flair by coloring your hair in a ridiculous shade of orange. Leave your Fauxhawk back in the States and wear a real Mohawk.

5.) Chew nails alot. Blow stuff up. Jump out of cars.

Other writing about my Chinese Acting career can be found here (scroll down) and here.

If Becks can’t pull it off, then you can’t.

This is the type of tattoo that would get a lot of work.

Hair coloring like this will cause a great deal of fear. Fear sells.

Words can’t express how disappointed I was not to make it on the cover of my mini-series box set

Even Badasses get seasick on set.

And must needs puke.

Excuse the double negative, but I can’t have nothin’. I would love to pretend that I notice and indeed relish the small pleasures in life, but it has become increasingly apparent that even those small pleasures will always be just out of my reach. “Example please” says you. “Last Wednesday,” says me.

The calendar date was actually December 14, 2005, The Year of Our Lord. I had just paid myself two days early. I am able to do that because among other things, I do our accounting at my job, and writing myself a check a couple of days early is one the perks of being the book keeper at the rather small company that has had the good sense to employ me. Of course nobody else gets paid early, and I do hope this is between you and me, fair reader.

After work, I had some money in my pocket, and I immediately went off to pay bills. I was quite positive I needed to pay my cell phone bill because my phone service had been suspended a few days before. This is how I am always sure that my phone bill is dilatory, and must be paid. Sure, for those friends that need to reach me during the time my phone service is suspended and the time that I pay myself early, it is a bit inconvenient. But for me, brief periods of not being plugged into the grid are therapeutic and restful. Wait, did I just make a Matrix allegory? My geekness is increasing with every web log post, no doubt.

So, off I went to Verizon, and in I walked to pay my phone bill. And there was my friend Bernard paying his bill at the self service kiosk just inside the door. Actually, it wasn’t him at all. But I didn’t realize that until I had said “what’s up man” to the stranger trying to pay his phone bill. He looked at me as if trying to place me, shrugged his shoulders, decided to play along, and said “you know how we do.” This forced but pleasant banter went along for a couple of minutes after that. He even stuck around and chatted when it was my turn. We compared how much money we had shoved into the machine. He had fed the Verizon self-rape machine $160.00, whereas, I had only given it $140.00. We walked outside together shaking our heads at what Verizon was doing to the good hard-working people of Asheville, NC. He said “‘the Verizon self-rape kiosk’, now I gotta remember that,” waved and got into his car.

Despite lightening my wad by $140.00, I was feeling warm inside on this cold, cold day in December. This was actually the coldest day of the season so far, and what I did not know then is that an ice storm would attack Asheville that evening, knock the power out at my place of work, and allow me to sleep in the next morning. I did not know that then, but still I was happy. I had just had one of those interactions with a stranger that could have gone off in an awkward way but did not. It was then that I made my most fateful decision of the day. I would reward myself with Starbucks and more specifically a Venti, Caramel Machiatto.

Now before you gather your anti-globalization friends to firebomb my street and turn over the BMW parked in front of my apartment, please know that I do not usually go to Starbucks. I was making an exception today because it was cold and Starbucks has a drive through, and also because Caramel Machiattos, though evil and exploitive, are delicious. So before you convince Bono and Chris Martin of Coldplay(both faithful readers of this Blog) to hold a benefit concert to encourage the French and the hippies to loot all the Shuggie Otis CD’s and John Coltrane posters from my residence, let me say that I usually only drink coffee made with Fair Trade beans and flavored with Fair Trade yak milk and Fair Trade Bolivian honey bee honey. In fact, I take it a step farther. Fair trade is not enough. I make sure that the people who grew my Arabica beans actually exploited the independent coffee shop that I frequent. I make sure that I pay more for the yak milk than I would normally pay for a yak. But on this day it was cold. I was weak, and again I must insist: Caramel Macchiatos are delicious.

So I paid my four dollars for my Caramel Macchiatos and gave a dollar tip to the cute barista who had taken my order and had not judged me. As I was pulling out of Starbucks and checking traffic both ways for any of my activist friends, I decided that nothing goes better with a Caramel Macchiato than a Nat Sherman cigarette. So I carefully lit one of those skinny, dark brown cancer sticks and made a right turn. I could smell a lot of caramel and some macchiato. I had carefully wedged my venti drink in between my legs. BMWs of my year and model do not come with cup holders. They turn on a dime, but there is nowhere to put your Caramel Macchiato except your lap. Germans try to be funny at the weirdest of times. I am heading down the four lane road when suddenly I do the strangest thing.

I slammed on my brakes to stop at a yellow traffic light. All my life yellow has meant speed up. I have never slowed down or stopped at any yellow light that I can ever remember. Ever. Asheville has notoriously long yellow traffic lights. It embodies Asheville’s very damned-if-you-do, damned-if-you-don’t attitude. Our yellow lights are longer than our green lights. So I never stop at them. But today I did. I was driving along, saw the light was yellow and suddenly this unexplainable fear gripped me. I slammed on my brakes, and my Caramel Macchiato crashed into the foot that was on the brake pedal, and the lid came off, and suddenly my floor had three inches of wonderful, caramel colored liquid sloshing around in it.

Quickly, I grabbed the cup which was now floating on top of the new pond in my floor board and noticed the little bit of froth attached to the bottom. I drank that tiny little sip, and let me tell you something. That was the best freaking coffee drink I have ever had in my life. That little sip was so delicious that my eyes began to swell up with tears. I threw my cigarette at my feet in disgust, and then started to worry about electrical fires. By my quick estimations looking at what was covering the drivers side floor board of a BMW 325i, a Starbucks venti container holds about seven gallons. I never knew it was that much until I saw it all at once out of the container. The light turned green, and as I was contemplating if my feet were safe on the accelerator something almost creepy happened. All the liquid disappeared. One minute I holding my knees up to my chin while I was trying to take off from a traffic light (this is hard because after perusing my backseat I realized that I did not in fact have a large stick with which I could control my gas and brakes), and the next minute I was timidly putting my feet (which were already wet from the initial soaking) back where they belonged.

I am still not completely certain where my Caramel Macchiato went, but later that night as the temperature dropped even more, one of my friends got into the back seat of my car and said something about a brown ice skating rink.

I have a cold now which I blame on that cursed event. That evening I was never able to make it home and change my shoes and socks. So my feet remained cold and wet for most of the night. Everywhere I went I left little caramel footprints. It’s hard to be smooth with the ladies when your feet smell like coffee and whipped cream…or is it?

So if this cold worsens, and I am suddenly taken off of this earth, don’t blame the weather or the rough flu season. Just know that the thing I wanted most in my life killed me, but only after it had let me have a very small taste.

I have been spending a good amount of time at Beantal. John Pasden introduced it to me a week or so ago, and then later he wrote a post about it found here. John is not really stupid, at the time of his post the website was actually called Douban. Now it is called Beantal. I like Beantal better for reasons I can’t explain.

Anyway, the website basically uses something like the Flikr interface. People are able to go online and post which books they have read, want to read, and are in the middle of reading. If you want you may post a review of a book you have read, like at Amazon. You can also do the same with music. I’m a geek. I read a lot, though not as much as I would like. But I do like this website. It was first a Chinese language website until the founder started it in English as well. There are a lot of people (expats and Chinese) on the website who live in China and are quite excited about English books and music. Anywho, I just wrote a review about Umberto Eco’s The Name of the Rose. Good book, twenty years old, recently made into a movie with Sean Connery and Christian Slater. Come over, check out my page, join my group, and find what I’ve found… new books to read.

I have enjoyed looking through what other people are reading. Books stay with you even though you might not remember you have read them, that is, until you see the cover again. Good books make an impression, and as I have have perused other peoples books it is exciting for me when I see a book that I had read a while ago and forgotten about. The story comes back to me. Even some noteworthy scenes appear on the screen of my often abused brain. Yes, books are personal more than any other medium. Music may be more universal, but books leave marks and smudges on the reader.

It also occured to me that most of the authors I have read write or create one of two ways…and only the very good do it both ways. Writers are either great because they paint with long broad strokes or they get in there with a little miniature brush and paint the details. Kerouac, I think, was more bluster, and attitude, and swagger than details. Thomas Wolfe is details upon details. I can remember whole phrases and descriptions in Wolfe’s writing. I have read On the Road three or four times and only remember one phrase…although I can tell you what the books is about and everybody who was in it. Dostoevsky painted both ways at once. That was his genius.

updated 12-23 Beantal has changed their name back to douban

Subversively, we backstroked water that had been
trapped years ago high in the mountains of
Eagle, Colorado–our foreheads
cutting through impossibly clear, cold water while
we murmured just above a whisper about amoebas
and forest rangers.

And we were young then, though even then we
thought our best years has slipped through our
waterlogged fingers like those tiny invisible
creatures living in that lake.Our bodies floated
like empty egg shells. We were still reeling
from our good fortune. Earlier,we had

remembered to drive Kansas at night.

We had been slipping down the road, our necks
illuminated by oncoming interstate traffic,
while straining at the planetarium Kansans call
sky. There was nothing to say until
Mike said, “It’s time.”

Quickly we docked our car in the wet
grass, and plunged into a fallow corn field. Leaving our car
and the road, and the lights we ran straight into the flat night
Finally, coughing and wheezing and cursing our worn bodies,
we threw ourselves down on the rotting land and looked up…

and looked up…

and looked up…

at a faint blonde eyelash of a moon

and a billion lights surrounding it.

This called for silence
And we tried to quiet our breathing. And somewhere

a screen door slammed.

If you have ever heard a screen door slam in the
middle of a Kansas night, while you are on your
back worshipping what you can not fathom and
will never fathom,

then you realize how we bore this solemn sound.

Whether it’s a sound of coming or going, the recoil
of wood and mesh against wood is so lonely that
you promise yourself that you will throw yourself
into every lake you see until all you hear is
water, bubbles,amoebas and the quick quiet
murmur of a friend who has suddenly seen
the ranger and doesn’t want

to get out yet.