love letters from my 34th summer

If we were meant to
Know each other only in China
And our branches
Never again scrape against the same window,
Or even if they do,
I want you to remember
Us floating with the moon on the South China Sea.

While postcards from yourself
When you were young,
Pencil drawings of necks and ear lobes on napkins,
And other varied
And loose papers
Cram into the heavy gray cabinets of your memory,
Don’t let this scrap of a night flutter away.

Don’t lose the five of us making our way outside,
And squeezing past street vendors
Selling lamb on a stick
And past the row of parked mopeds,
And into the muggy tightness of that taxi
At three in the morning and asking for
The beach outside of town.

Of that tiny red taxi bumping to the sea,
Bursting at it bolts and door hinges
With all our knees, elbows, shoulders and shins.

And how the sea, duly impressed with our
Stripped-down boldness,
Made molds of ten feet in the soft sand
Before we three Americans
And two Chinese
Flung ourselves into its salty yawn.

While the rest of Haikou tossed and turned,
The warm tide embraced us
Before carrying us out to a raft
Anchored at dreaming distance from the shore.

Maybe we all met one week before that
So we could reflect the moon together
That night while lying on that raft.
Our eyes were open like traps,
Our bodies dripped with the moonlit sea,
Our breathes were heavy with wonder,
And the air was filled with the names of
Constellations
Whispered in unison
First in English
Then in Chinese.

I took the following pictures several months ago. Because I was busy planting mint, weeding lettuce, and sleeping at my friend’s farm I haven’t had the chance to post them until now. You have all seen pictures of helicopters. I am sure some of you have seen pictures of cheese and crackers. However I am quite confident nobody has seen pictures of helicopters and cheese and crackers together.

Why am I so confident? Because I invented the genre. Go to Flickr. There is no Helicopter/Cheese/Cracker group. One reason these pictures are so rare is because people never have them all together at the same time or the same place. You could Photoshop those things together, but that would pathetic. Photoshop makes my blood boil, so don’t get me started. Anyway, think about it. Lot’s of people have had crackers and helicopters, or cheese and crackers, but never all three at once. And if they did, it wouldn’t occur to them to make a life-changing-word-view-altering-statement via avant guard photography like it did me.

My mom told me once that I had an eye for photography, and I thought she was just being nice because she was my mom. But no, as it turns out, she has an eye for people that have an eye for photography. She’s right, and I’m not just saying that because she’s my mom.

Another person on the boat, who shall be known as The Near-sighted Medic, saw my genius and decided that since cheese and crackers and helicopters was my thing, he would be a pioneer in the world of sliced sausage and helicopters (see picture below). The results were uninspiring. One of my friends did get a picture of me holding up his rainbow-shaped sliced sausage. I look like I am trying to help because I am nice, but really I am thinking: “I am thirty-two years old, I am holding a piece of rainbow-shaped sausage as a helicopter flies away for a Near-sighted Medic, I don’t even have health insurance, and I will die alone.” Later I told The Near-sighted Medic I wouldn’t be able to talk to him anymore because I didn’t support his vision, plus I didn’t like him making light of my new life’s work. I still had two more weeks out there with him. Thankfully it wasn’t awkward because he couldn’t see me unless I was within a two feet radius of his thick glasses.

I have lost a lot of weight since that picture, so I don’t need a lot of people commenting how fat I am now. I saw I had problem and stopped eating so much cheese. I am almost back to my normal/sexy weight. Oh and just so you don’t think I am limited in my cheese and cracker genre, have a look at this fast boat, cheese and cracker picture. Coming soon to a fine gallery near you.

To view the ad go here.

Anheuser-Busch, Inc.
One Busch Place
St. Louis, MO 63118

Dick Rogers, President and CEO
DDB Advertising North America
200 East Randolph
Chicago, IL 60601

Dear Budweiser and Dick,

Please, make it stop. I beg you.

Now, I realize the end of the world is nigh. This is one of several truths that have become apparent to me since the first time I saw your commercial entitled Anthem during week one of the NFL football season. Now the playoffs are here, and I am still seeing and hearing Anthem. So before polar caps melt, seas boil, stars drip with blood, Earth cracks along the Equator, or Jessica Simpson says something smart, I need you to pull this commercial from the air.

Several things about Anthem make me weep for our future, and I will be plain about them with you.

1.) The hook to the song/commercial: “This is Budweiser/This is beer.” DDB North America is a large respectable (as much as ad agencies can be) firm. I’m sure the creative talent you employ (even in Chicago) can do better than this. I am certain the first time this commercial aired during week one of the NFL football season, and the first time millions of happy, football-watching minions heard this commercial, one unanimous response was hurled back at the television. Did you hear us in your offices in Chicago? Did you, Anheuser-Busch, hear us in your grain elevators in St. Louis? You should have. It was two words, but sang like a mini-anthem from Phoenix to Seattle to Green Bay to Buffalo to Charlotte to Tampa Bay. I think I yelled it the loudest.

“No Shit.”

Is there really confusion about the nature of your product? Are people often at a loss when forced to classify the liquid you so meticulously bottle and stamp with Born on Dating? Do grocery stores still mistakenly put your product in the dairy section next to rice milk? Have those silly theories about your product actually coming from Clydesdales begun to hurt your bottom line? Did you think America hasn’t been paying attention? Or maybe you thought we forgot what it was you actually made. More probable is that you believe the demographic you are targeting, football fans, is really that dense. And this is what distresses me most.

It is perhaps a chicken-or-the-egg question. Do you give us this excuse for an advertisement because we are drooling Neanderthals? Or. Are we drooling Neanderthals because you give us this excuse for an advertisement? Play it safe. Give us a television spot that isn’t reduced to the most elementary syllogism in logic: A is A, so A is A. Please, give us something harder. If we get it wrong, then we don’t deserve to drink your beer, but at least you’ll know you’ve tried.

You could, if you so choose, even say: “This is Budweiser/This is Good Beer.” See how that small nuance makes the commercial, while still not a strong commercial, a bit more substantial than the present declarative sentence on which you hang your advertising hat? Perhaps, legally, you aren’t allowed to say that because it’s not true. Your beer is not good. Maybe your ad was better before the pesky Legal Department got involved. This is simply the result of the lawyers having their way. If this is the case, please forward my letter on to the suits down in Legal. As it stands, your declaration sounds as convincing as the following slogans:

This is West Virginia/ This is a state to the west of Virginia.

This is Kraft./This is cheese (processed food product).

This is Canada./ This is still a country and has lots of parking.

This is the Church of Christian Science./This is technically a religion too

2.) You call your ad spot Anthem. You make beer, not even very good beer, and you have an anthem? That’s a little, um, insane. Do your employees have to sing it every morning before they pledge allegiance to the Anheuser-Busch flag? Is Budweiser trying to stir up some type of secessionist, beer militia? In your utopist, beer-inspired future, will St. Louis be the new capital? Will the leader of this fledgeling republic be Augustus Busch? Caesar Augustus Busch?

Let me break it down. At the beginning of the ad, the crappy, generic rock starts playing softly, and we see quick shots of a cowboy and his horse (stereotype), an Asian man at his laptop (stereotype much?), an African-American policewoman directing traffic (stereotype), nothing (were there no available images of Hassidic jewelers counting money?), a sunset over a large city, a fly over of a bucolic small town (red state), a mail box (what says beer like the mail?), freshly hung laundry flapping in the breeze, a young man in a white t-shirt and a red hat talking to an old man in a white t-shirt and a red hat over a white fence (I do tear up a bit for .05 seconds), a housetop party, a subway, a garage band, a football team, people tail-gating wearing the same colors as the football team, a bus driver (I couldn’t find her can of Budweiser, but I’m sure it’s hidden in the picture), rail workers, more cops…this time on horseback(cops and firemen make it into more beer commercials than beer, which makes you wonder who needs the breathalyzers), a man in a tie and a dress shirt next to a man in a flannel shirt at a bar (both drinking some type of new wheat and grain based drink that Budweiser has invented), guys sitting on Harley’s (”Drink our beer, then go sit on your bike, but please don’t drive off and terrorize Rolling Stones fans” isn’t as catchy), then we see the city of St. Louis. This ad is so sweet and apple pie that it hurts my teeth. It also hurts my hand, but that’s because I shove sharp objects into the flesh off my hand to distract myself from the pain. Still, I don’t mind a little sappy Americana. But then I hear the words:

“This is what I call mine/This is true/This is Budweiser.”

That’s when the music cranks up, and the proud Die Zeit ohne Beispiel inspired Budweiser images start: grain elevators with the letters B-U-D-W-E-I-S-E-R painted in Budweiser’s national colors (red), Clydesdales, cold draft Bud being emptied out on the ground, and Bud’s poster child, NASCAR driver Dale Earnhardt, Jr. (He is also a spokesperson for Wrangler Jeans. Yep, they still make Wrangler jeans, and they have a spokesperson. Maybe your ad agency could help them out after you get done making a new ad for Budweiser.)

All I wanted to do was watch some football, but instead I am being re-educated by fanatical, conniving brewmeisters. Plus blood is coming from my ears due to a genre of music called “country-rock.”

3.) “This is where I live/This is where I’m from/This is what I believe when the day is done.” This is where I conclude my letter to you. First you dumb it down by stating the obvious, then you try to get us all to drink the Budweiser flavored Kool-Aid, and then you go way out there and equate drinking Budweiser with some type of Kierkegaardian existential leap of faith. “This is what I believe in when the day is done?” You still just make beer, right? Is there something else I should know about? When I contemplate those large questions in life and when I think to myself, “What do I believe in?” I am quite certain Budweiser won’t be one of the top five million or so things that pop into my brain.

In case I have been too negative, let me concede your commercial is catchy. The song sticks in my head. This is not a large accomplishment. I still have Cindi Lauper’s song, True Colors, stuck in my head (and I rarely question my sexuality). That Band-Aid song is still stuck (no pun intended) in my head, but I don’t use Band-Aid Brand (I am a real man, so I use electrical tape and old socks when I get a wound). You also have some gosh-darn nice images in your ad.

But this is the only commercial I have ever seen that manages to shoot too low and too high all at once. This is the only commercial I have ever seen that results immediately in the gnashing of teeth and the putting-on of sack cloth and ashes. Every time I see this commercial, I expect to see in that montage a brief image of fire and Nero playing his violin.

Please, I beg you. Pull this commercial from regular rotation during football games. You could even move it over to Lifetime where nobody will ever see it. Make it stop. You win. It’s beer. I’m not prepared to argue the point. I am at your mercy.

Yours Truly,

Jamie Doom

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.