Quantcast
Channel: Elyse Sewell
Viewing all 53 articles
Browse latest View live

i woke up early on the fourth of july

0
0
My New Year's Day was perfect.



Even if I have the bare minimum of "work" to do for my agency, it's just not the same as having a whole day off. Even one casting can occupy a huge portion of daylight hours: I have to get ready and apply the excessive makeup that my agency demands, then it's totally normal for it to take an hour to drive to the client's office, and another forty five minutes to wait for the client to arrive, examine my and my colleagues' portfolios, make us try on clothes, etc, then another hour to drive home. Longer if it's rush hour (it's always rush hour). Ah, this holiday rules! I rose with Chanticleer and some 7:00am fireworks outside. My big plan was to take a random bus and walk around trying to find some lion dancers (MY FAVE). The bus dropped me off near a park in the former French Concession, where it was tai chi time.



I walked and walked, and found no lion dancers. I ended up downtown, at People's Square. This area, usually a body-to-body teeming clusterfuck, was eerily deserted. I lamented the reduced opportunities for frottage, but...wait, no I didn't! I was puffing out my chest, breathing deep of the pollution, throwing my arms wide and singing "Edelweiss." I was sashaying. All the attractions were still open, so I went to the Urban Planning Exhibition Hall. They had an awesome "virtual reality pod" with a 360-degree screen inside, showing Shanghai as if you were flying through it in a helicopter. They had a diorama of the whole city!


That big park in the diorama is Century Park. I went there. I was less than enchanted by the "guano-smeared dovecote" attraction.


I ate at a Manchurian restaurant. The menu had English translations, but the jiaozi, dumpling, section was only in Chinese. Bah! Only "fresh vegetable juice jiaozi" was in English, so I got that and was glad I did because look at it! Each color had a different filling. RMB20 = US$2.92.


Finally, I love my Shanghai agency and everything, but they are DROPPIN THE BALL when it comes to getting me the good jobs. Hello? That should be me on that convenience store hot dog warmer.

dud on the tracks

0
0
Could somebody please press the little green button on the stop time machine? I'm not ready for the Chinese New Year holiday to end yet. I need one more week.







One more week to have eight-hour walkabouts. One more week with no makeup. I haven't yet smeared enough eel grease over the pages of The Travels of Marco Polo whilst lounging in distant Hunnanese restaurants. I have more bus routes to pioneer! Another week's worth of laundry to neglect!


Today, I visited a tourist attraction: the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel. I'll let the Ministry of Tourism tell it: "The Bund Sighseeing Tunnel is a river tunnel across the Huangpu river, first combining sightseeing and traffic functions in China. With high-tech of digital audio, laser and electronics, eight sightseeing areas are displaying in the Tunnel...Visitor, who is in bare feet or topless or drunken and trouble making, or suffering from acute infectious or psychiatric diseases...is not permitted to enter the Tunnel."


There was no line, and I thought I was going to have a whole car to myself. Alone on the platform, waiting for the ride to start, I was contemplating whether anything in the history of the world had ever begged more urgently to be mooned than the cars coming through the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel in the opposite direction; alas, at the last minute, a family came ambling down the escalator and boarded with me. Moon mission aborted.


The little car lurched down the tracks into the tunnel, and the noble eightfold multimedia/laser extravaganza began. Y'all. It was just a bunch of wack flashing lightbulbs!


A recorded voice indicated the "eight sightseeing areas" as we passed through them, first in English and then in Mandarin. I scrabbled for a pen and was able to take precise notes: "Shining star! Sea swirl! Fossil variant! Nascent magma! Paradise and hell! Mental waltz! Basalt and blue water! Sea cadence! Meteor shower!" Yes, I count nine too, and can only conclude that I must have hallucinated one. Pictured: "sea swirl" (obviously).


It cost 40RMB (=US$5.85) to get across the Huangpu river via the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel, and 3RMB (=US$0.45) to get back across on the subway. Conclusion: the charms of the Bund Sightseeing Tunnel are not worth the exorbitant fee! Too much sea cadence, not enough antelope acumen.

far cathay

0
0
I'm still pretty high from Chinese New Year. The prolonged break from the frustrations of ladypose moil, combined with the fact that I'm reading The Travels of Marco Polo, a mostly-true catalog of Marky Marc's impressions of unfamiliar provinces, has my soul incandescing daily with delight at the myriad subtle ways in which the Chinese mode of life differs from the Western. The lady in the street, trotting after me with my dropped glove, shouts, "Big sister! Big sister!"; the grocery store cashier yells to the old lady who abandoned her basket and went back for a bunch of spring onions, "Grandmother! Hurry up!" This pastry, served up alongside peanut and coconut shortbread, was flavored with sugar and ground seaweed, musty and dusty and oceany, unlike anything I'd ever tasted before, but so delicious and perfect. Sorry. I've been sitting here trying to think of how to put my good feelings into words without venturing into Mawksville or the trite latitudes. It's hard! The world is full of people, life is sweet, and my dispo this evening is sunny. I guess that's all.




Anywayz, wanna look at some dogs being publicly humiliated?



Sponsored by Camel.




I'm normally not much of a noodler, but I tried some today at a Muslim restaurant. It was 6RMB (=US$0.88) for that huge mess of miàn, a bowl of mutton broth to wash it down, and at the end, a bowl of hot water (drink it? or wash hands with it? I didn't know; I drank it). Also, every table had a ceramic dish full of garlic; the other diners were all holding toes of garlic in one hand, chopsticks in the other, alternating bites of food with bites of raw garlic. I ate three cloves; I can't smell myself, but I MUST be sporting an invisible aurora of stink lines right now. Cancel my scheduled afternoon makeouts.








Shoyu = soy sauce. Didn't buy (presumed loathsome).

movie time (i made this movie)

0
0
"Shanghai Slice"

The song is "Wètètié Maré by Muluqèn Mèllèssè, from Ethiopiques 1. Hope you like it!

drop her in the water

0
0
"Hey Elyse, where'd you get that unsightly abrasion on your ass?"

"Well, I was balancing on a velour-covered eraser-shaped plywood prism precariously propped on a tripod inside this velour-lined plywood box. I was gripping my shanzhai Gucci handbag under my baby oil-slathered arm whilst attempting to support my weight on one foot without wrinkling the shimmering instep of my golden pleather loafer. I guess the prism must've slipped because the next thing I knew, I was on the floor, with my buttcheek throbbing and the walls of the velour-lined room swaying around me.

"Oh. Oh my god! I...I'm here in my bed. It's morning! It was all a dream.

"BUT THEN WHERE DID I GET THIS UNSIGHTLY ABRASION ON MY ASS?"












BONUS: I uploaded these pics two days ago with a narrative in mind that would've tied them all together. I ran out of time, had to go do a casting, the moment passed, I aborted the story, but the pictures were already uploaded. Here they are, blood:


Michael Qiaodan of the Xicago Bulls, my second-favorite baller (after Shaq).


I ran out of toothpaste, and I went on a mission to a distant hypermarket where I thought I had seen The Only Toothpaste (Crest Vivid White, God's own toothpaste) some weeks ago. I was wrong; they didn't have it; I ended up with this shit. What is that anyway, some lotus flower shit? Some water lily shit? I used it for the first time this morning and I can practically hear my teeth sizzling and rotting in the absence of Crest Vivid White. Henceforth I'll just have to do my chewing with one of my many grillz.




This lady with her sidewalk foot-treadle sewing machine operation cut the atrocious 3/4 length bell sleeves off my white dress and hemmed the stumps for only 4RMB (=US$0.58).


I did castings in that dress with NO COAT because that's how warm it was in Shanghai two days ago.


Lastly, Happy Valentine's Day, baby. I love you. I got you this gross of shots individually packaged in spermatozoon-shaped plastic bottles. What did you get for me?

hola hovelito

0
0
My Hong Kong agency emailed me: "Elyse, we have castings for you, we have jobs for you; we're waiting for you to get your ass down here, thanks." I arrived in Hongers an hour ago; my heart was breaking to leave Shanghai this afternoon, but oh my god, I'd forgotten that Hong Kong has about a million billion charms of its own. I'd been in China for so long, and now...I'm not in China any more. I've got a mild case of the bends. No more anarchic traffic, no more xie xie, no more blatant gawping (both at me and by me), no more lack of cheese, nose picking must now be done furtively. No more manageable hair. No more tiny televisions blaring tinny commercials in taxicabs. No more loogie-slimed sidewalks. No more US$5 massages. Cantopop instead of Mando-pop. No more Mandarin, dammit! This morning in Shanghai I bumped into a dude on the sidewalk; I wheeled around and apologetically bowed my head at him, eyes downcast, hand up at forehead level, palm out, as I backed away. He did the exact same gesture at me, perfectly synchronized, perfectly mirrored, totally, totally Chinese. No more of that. Then on the plane there was a squalling baby; my Honger seatmate and I glanced at each other for just an instant, but long enough for us each to flex a bitchy, sympathetic eyebrow. Now more of that!

Goddamn, I'm having a good Year of the Ox so far. I don't really have anything organized to say, but I just wanted to post something to celebrate my emergence from behind the Great Firewall of China. As I have mentioned before, access to Livejournal.com is blocked within China; I've been updating my blog by using a sluggish proxy server on the already godawfully slow apartment internet connection. It took FOREVER to post something, FOREVER for other people's Livejournals to load, I couldn't preview anything, and it was hard to reply to comments, especially when the comment I wanted to reply to was not the original post in a thread. But now I can access LJ directly and online life is easy again, so if you asked a burning question sometime during the last two months and I never replied, try asking again here. I expect to enjoy a lot of slack-jawed computer slumping in the coming few days, not least because of the fast and free internet connection: my new Hong Kong hovel is fucking PALATIAL and I never want to leave. Not only is it huge compared to my usual HK cribz, but the furnishings obviously predate the arrival of IKEA in Hong Kong, so there are none of the instantly recognizable [*] pieces (The Cheapest Wardrobe in IKEA, The Cheapest Bed in IKEA, The Cheapest Chair in IKEA, Those Cheap IKEA Mugs) with which I am so familiar via models' apartments worldwide. Unlike the claustrophobic shithole I occupied last summer, this one-room manse boasts a place to sit besides the bed (A MINIATURE LOVESEAT!), a place to eat besides the bed (A COFFEE TABLE!), a desk broader than my forearm, and no dimension narrower than my wingspan. There is also a wok and the TV is not mounted on a metal arm over the bed. I am gagging with joy!

[* Is there a word that means "related to furniture"? Analogous to "sartorial"? I feel like there is. Edit: supellectile! Thanks!]

OK, it's bedtime, but not before I upload some China action for your eyeholes. Ah, viva la high-speed connection.








At every intersection on my Shanghai street is a small phalanx of motorcycle taxis. The drivers lounge all day on their bike seats, hammock style, waiting for someone to engage their services. I took pics of a few of them as I walked out of the 'hood this morning, found a photo kiosk, made prints, and distributed them on the way back. So awesome. I wish I'd had that idea weeks ago.

pope papular

0
0
On the personal tip, dear reader, I've been discombobulated. I've been working a lot whilst conquering the most pustulent and cystic breakout of my life. Ugh: clients have looked at my face, grimaced, and asked, "What's happen you?" I'm pretty sure I lost jobs over it. Makeup artists have had to practically embalm me; there are probably photographers in this city right now, up past their bedtimes, laboring over the excessive 'Shopping my recent pictures have required.

And I talk a lot of "vanity" shtick, haha, but my god, when I was all broken out, I was constantly quailing with a self-consciousness way out of proportion to the gravity of my zit sitch. I became weird about even talking to people. I had to remind myself that, no, the 7-11 cashier was not staring at my skin, that I wasn't an ogre, that I could still have a fun conversation. What the fuck, I discovered: I am a va-a-a-ain asshole, for real, in a sick and shitty way. I have not been pleased with myself over this.

Too bad about my idiotic attitude; it spoiled what would have been a fun work week. After the relentless ladypose endurance test of Shanghai, it took me a while to get re-accustomed to the leisurely pace and luxurious clothes of HK jobs. Honestly, I still feel naked if I'm not wearing at least one shanzhai article on my body at all times.







I went hiking on Dragon's Back Trail. I recommend this, Hong Kongers: it's on HK island, you can take the city bus right to the trailhead, it's well strenuous, and after you descend the peak you can find a clean little beach where I have never seen another soul (though I've only been there on weekdays).




Forklift driver's training obstacle course:




Lastly, HK grannies love a lurid print. I was snickering at these sweaters when I took this picture, but now the more I look at them, the clearer the message from the Universe: I will never be happy unless I buy that giraffe shirt and wear it. (HKD79=US$10.18) This may happen as soon as tomorrow. BEANZ!

prada socklet

0
0
If you're interested in the fashion industry, you may be aware that at Prada's S/S09 runway show back in September, several models stumbled or fell down on the catwalk. The company later explained that the shoes were manageable; the spanners in the models' ambulatory works were the socklets.

"Socklet"? I encountered a pair at my job today. I didn't have to wear them, but I took this picture in case anybody else was curious about the cause of all the modelslips. Prada's treacherous "socklet" is a drawstring pouch of non-elasticized poplin. Behold:


Socklet terror aside, I had an excellent day clopping around in Hong Kong's New Territories district in wigs, frocks, archless platform sandals, and the occasional not-yet-available H&M bikini (about which latter: CUTE, Y'ALL).





i wasn't lookin for a mountain

0
0
Are you guys more into plastrons or carapaces?




I would like to shake hands with the bitch who could wear these impractical shoes for more than an hour without the universe somehow ruining them. Puddles of quicksand and plagues of feral cats would appear in her path; her pustulent bunions would burst. These were designer samples and I was allowed to ruin them; all the pressure was off. Still, the moment I tied those little tassels, I found myself rummaging around the studio looking for wasabi peas I could wash down with some Popov. Don't those feathers seem to say, "Quick! Find a way to puke on us!"?


Out of four versions of this picture, this was the least annoying facial expression. Still annoying. Nice weave though.


This shanzhai masterpiece (on a handbag in the HK subway) reminded me of an ancient lady I saw in Shanghai carrying a huge purse with bedazzled letters that said, "THE STOOGES THE CRAMPS NEW YORK DOLLS." Fuck it, I didn't turn away or even try to stop smirking as the old lady's daughter saw me, looked down at the bag and then back up at me. I smirked off into the sunset savoring the fact that they now knew that something risible was written on the bag, but would probably never find out what.




COMPULSIVE EDIT: I'm adding one more ridic shoe pic to try and cleanse the system. You want to read LJ entries about something besides designer shoes and makeup, you say? Well, you have to wait until something good happens to me besides "I spent the day comfortably, in makeup and designer shoes." I'm not exactly at a fucking zenith of intellectual stimulation right now. I've been in HK so long that the thrillz ain't growin on treez like they used to.

you can't beat solidarity

0
0
Mandarin pop enthusiasts, I have a favor to ask of you: does anyone recognize the first song in this video (it starts at about :20)? Can you hook up the title and artist, or an mp3? Sorry to make you click through, but this is coming from the Chinese Youtube and I can't find the embed code. [Video via ChinaSMACK] EDIT: I got it! Thank you, [info]ic70492.

Dance performance video.

I first heard that song in Shanghai, in the bathroom of a KFC where I was pit stoppin'. By the time I realized what a monster jam it was, it was already over, and I scrambled up to the counter calling my agent to explain to her that I wanted her to explain to the cashier that I wanted to know the name of the song or see the CD they were playing in the store. My heart was already sinking, knowing it wasn't going to work (I know through firsthand experience that, when you can't see the stereo, "Please write down the name of the song that was playing before this one" is almost but not quite impossible to communicate via charades). It didn't work, of course: the guy behind the counter told Juju who told me that he hadn't heard the song and there wasn't a CD player (it was Muzak, I guess). I left, frustrated. But then I heard the song again in this video and now I have a chance to find it and put it in my iPod and rock to it until my heart stops.

And while I'm using my Livejournal to get stuff that I want, gimme revenge on Go Sushi in Causeway Bay, home of the most abominable sushi I've had outside of Boise, ID. I will not apologize for ordering a melted cheese-topped shrimp tempura roll; I have no patience for sushi purists. Wrap some seaweed around some pork floss and birthday cake, sprinkle salmon eggs and glitter on top: you have made legitimate maki. A "cheese-topped shrimp tempura roll" sounds good; this partially-combusted slice of wanksta petroleum loaf was just a carcinogen. It tasted like ashes. And that roe corona you see in the top right corner was a California roll which was dry and did not cohere and fucking blew: Go Sushi, we got BEEF.


I approached this Free Giftwallah on two separate occasions to get the Free Gift I deserve and didn't understand why she wouldn't fork over the Gift (a juice box or a chocolate Hanukkah gelt) or even make eye contact with me. I finally figured it out tonight when I saw other people doing it right: you only get the Gift after you've stepped onto the (up only) escalator. At the summit, surprise surprise, you're trapped in a labyrinth of a mall and must shop your way back to ground level.


fai di

0
0
I can hear my next door neighbors perfectly. They fight a lot but they like to get busy! They're doing it right now. The girl groaned, in Canto, "fai di!" ("hurry up!"). I was like, ooh, harsh, but then the stereo started playing a Cantopop song with the refrain "fai di, fai di-i-i-i, fai di." Please, please let me run into them in the elevator so I can hum it. Even though the dude leaves his foot stink powder-dusted slippers in the hallway, then puts them on and leaves the building, creating a breadcrumb trail of dusty white nuggets, I'd still like to open up talks about a possible glory hole.

So much better to be sharing a wall with them instead of TV-blasting Unknown and Bitch Who Sticks Her Head Out and Stares Every Time She Hears the Hallway Door Open.

good one, hong kong post office

clockin a grippe

0
0
I possess a finite amount of good taste, and I choose to apply it to books, music, snacks, and congee flavors. Crabmeat and roe congee:


Sweet-potato flavored Kit Kat:


I just don't have enough available connoisseuseship in my brain to attempt to be a book snob, snack snob, juk snob AND flick snob. I rarely watch movies, and when I do, I'm alone, usually in a state of psychic desperation. I don't want to watch people shooting guns; I don't like boring shit; I can't stand to be left befuddled by David Lynchian whatthefuckery. I enjoy cheerleading- and gymnastics-centric themes and low-IQ Jennifer Aniston vehicles. So I was watching a shanzhai DVD of He's Just Not That Into You the other day. What're you going to do about it, lose all respect for me?



A cuckolded Jennifer Connelly confesses, "We never have sex anymore. I don't know what I expected him to do."
Subtitles say:



In other news, a guy came down with swine flu in my 'hood and the government quarantined the entire hotel where he was staying. The stories in the South China Morning Post have been excellent: there are about 300 people inside; they're halfway through a seven-day quarantine sentence. They were served SPAM sandwiches and Swiss rolls for breakfast (note that Hong Kong-style Swiss rolls lack icing on the outside and come in wack flavors like cappuccino). They were all summoned to the lobby and then told not to congregate in large groups! Journalists were standing outside the ground-floor windows, holding up signs with their phone numbers so the detainees could call and give interviews; the hotel responded by blocking all the windows in the lobby with sheets. I put on my HAZMAT suit and went to have a gawk this afternoon:




Finally, garish outfits, you say? They think that you're dressed dreadfully drably.

stop having a boring tuna

0
0
I went impulse shopping in the travel agency and came out with a weekend trip to the Republic of China. Greetings from Taipei! Look at all those Japanese cars driving on the right-hand side of the road: it could almost be South Carolina. I haven't felt this at home since I went to the American consulate to get blank pages put in my passport. My passport at this point is a grubby and mutilated libretto indeed; this latest addition was the fourth set of supplementary visa pages to be crammed into it. The newest pages aren't plain blue like the older ones, they're festooned with all manner of inspirational quotations from Honest Abe and lurid unitedwestand images of bald eagles 'n' fruited plains and shit. They're so over-embellished that they don't even look blank; in fact, the Taiwanese passport control officer just flipped right past them and sploshed my Taiwan visa right on top of an old faded (cherished!) one from Milan. Annoying.


Anyway, I'm headed back outside now, but not before I seize this opportunity to increase your guava Slurpee awareness. The Slurpee machine right next to this one was dispensing lemon-lime out of one nozzle and lychee out of the other. I got a 12-oz guava/lychee: delect! O summertime.


World's best Slurpee flavor: Diet Coke, never spotted outside of West Hollywood. World's worst: "Slurpuccino," mercifully discontinued recently in Hong Kong, but its Folgery ghost still adulterates the flavor of its Orange Creme successor at my local 7-11.

I think this was a pocket mirror. Not positive. Does it really matter? Shagbark!

ROC. K?

0
0
As expected, Taipei has yielded up some good gems. We have a lot to talk about.



The other day, my friend described electronically-translated, no-sense-making Chinese menus as "poetic." Huh. I always just thought of them as "hilarious," but I guess I can try to see it his way. Lo, the unconscious poetry of dim sum in the night market:




I took this pic because it seems like a term of endearment. Sugar Paste Pie, text me!




It's really hot here and my appetite has been for the birds. The fact that I've consumed approximately 30oz of Slurpee per day is probably not helping. Nevertheless, I valiantly went toe to toe with a classic Taiwanese oyster pancake last night:


It was oysters and eggs in an elastic flour pancake, cooked on a griddle, with a sweet/spicy red gravy on top. I imagine if I'd been freezing and starving, this would have been transcendent. As it was, I was feeling hot and greasy and promptly got the hiccups. NTD40=US$1.21.


Confidential to four-wheelers considering a holiday in a Far Eastern metropolis: there are WAY more people whippin' around Taipei in wheelchairs than I have noticed in any other Asian city. Intending to mention this in my LJ, I asked this family if I could take their picture...


...then turned around and saw this custom wheelchair-accessible scooter parked just a few meters down the street.


Brimming with Slurpee, I could not possibly have drunk this. I didn't buy it. Regret!


Lemon jelly, served in a plastic cup with a fat straw.




I was thoroughly lost and in a blind rage for a good half hour last night. Taipei is short on street signs and long on disparate romanizations of street names (Chongqing on the map, Chungching on the sign, etc). The only thing that made me feel better was stumbling upon a huge Confucian temple with this excellent altar inside:


I have more to show you, more to tell you. But I can't stay out of my posh hotel bed for even one minute longer. The thing is a fucking silken sleep-dreadnought. It makes my hoveland cot feel like a wack undersized manger full of rancid burlap. God!

dear my brother, guess what i sent you in the mail

it was a strange lookin mountain

0
0
Q: Do I have more pics and shit from Taiwan?
A:



On my last day in Taipei, I took the subway to the northern outskirts of the city, where the 'burbs give way to mountains. At the subway station, most people were boarding buses, but there were a couple of different routes and I wasn't sure exactly where I wanted to go, so I decided to just walk uphill and see where I would end up. I got a rhythm going, spaced out, and didn't realize for hours that I'd been speed-hiking up sidewalkless, shadeless, pedestrianless roads without getting anywhere picturesque at all.


Oh yeah, and my sunscreen had been taken away at Hong Kong airport security (RAGE!), so it was an especially florid piece of sweaty hag-gristle that finally gave up and hailed a passing taxi.


Good thing I did. I was still so far away from any kind of summit. It would've taken all day to walk. We passed through a traffic-choked hamlet where a big calla lily sale was going down. There were flower stands lining the roads, and crowds of stamen enthusiasts carrying huge bouquets back to their cars.


At a higher altitude, the heat and oppressive sunshine gave way to cool green tufts of ferns and malodorous mists from the geothermal springs all over the mountain. The taxi driver let me out to trot around the trail for a while.


When I was ready to go back to Taipei, I got in the taxi and said, in my nuanced, precise and gorgeously-accented Mandarin, "OK, I don't want to go to Xinbeitou Station, I want to go to Beitou Station." The taxi driver said OK, and we started the descent. The taxi was unmetered: there had been no timer or odometer totting up how much I owed as we cruised around Yangmingshan, and as we drove, I steeled myself for the inevitable ripoff situation that occurs in unmetered taxis all over the world. I was silently rehearsing Chinese haggling phrases and assorted dismayed and incredulous bitchfaces, ready to go apeshit on that taxi driver the second he tried to overcharge me. O, did I ever feel like a cynical twat when we arrived at the station. I turned to the driver with my wallet out and my lips pursed into a tight little asshole, and he just waved me out with a smile and a Mandarin "'Bye!" Roadside taxi rescue and tour of Yangmingshan, NTD0=US$0.


Anyway.

They forgot the fifth best thing: Gettin' laid. Philatelists lick it and stick it, amirite?







Chiang Kai-shek Memorial Hall.




I still have more to post about this trip (including stinky tofu, do not fret). Another day, another day! Check you later.

unrelenting torrent of pics from Taipei: shopping edition

0
0
Frequently asked question: Did you buy that thing?
Answer: Usually, no. I've been traveling for so long that my acquisitive impulse has been crushed like a hideous Taiwanese bead sculpture in an overstuffed suitcase.


I mean, Facebank, you're cute and all, but you're not coming home with me.







This Korean device is meant to prevent the wearer from engaging in a classic pan-Asian pastime: dozing off in public. I slipped it out of the package, turned it on, and clipped it to my ear; it vibrated vigorously at random intervals and did seem like it would effectively keep me from falling asleep if I were wont to do so [I'm not].






Asian quarter machines are so much more advanced than the bacteria-infested dispensers of matte and sticky Hot Tamales, Bonz and Homies we have in the United States. From the machine on the right, you get a seed, a tiny pot and a ziploc bag of soil for NTD20=US$0.61. An attempt to actually grow the thing would probably result in Sea Monkeys-style failure and death, but I'll never find out for sure because the machine was jammed.


This machine was also jammed.


I bought two keychains. The one on the left is electronic bubble wrap: you push the buttons and it makes a popping sound. It's a good idea, but the sound it makes is too long, the POP too delayed; it's more like "squeakyPOP! squeakyPOP!" than the straight-up, satisfyin' "POP!" of real bubble wrap.


This is the packaging from the other keychain. It's supposed to look like a pull-tab on a cardboard box: you pull on it and hear a ripping sound followed by the noise of whatever you've just unleashed from Pandora's FedEx envelope. I think there's something wrong with mine: once I turn it on, it never shuts up; random ripping sounds are interspersed with screams and trumpets and cuckoo clocks and wolf whistles and a few unidentifiables (sandpaper? garbage trucks?).

watermelon mt.

0
0
I packed up and left Hong Kong about a week ago. It was the least frantic packing-up-and-leaving situation I've enjoyed in a long while: I organized my stuff more than an hour before I had to leave for the airport, I didn't have to wear any extra layers of clothes that wouldn't fit in my suitcase, and my luggage was a mere 100g overweight! I spent my last minutes in my hovel serenely drinking tea and writing emails, the very picture of travel-togetherness, then, like a jackass, I floated downstairs and into a taxicab without my laptop A/C cord.

The machine was dead within an hour, and when I got back home, I balked for several days at the US$80 price tag for a new cord from the Mac store, then telephoned all around the astonishingly bunk-ass Albuquerque Macintosh retail scene looking for a secondhand one, then finally figured out that I should order one from Ebay, then bid on one using my dad's Paypal account (covertly), then had to wait for it to arrive. I've been using my parents' gravestone-sized, pop-up-ad-plagued slabtops for a damn week! I've felt hobbled! Parents just don't understand [how to install Flash players and download Firefox].

So I spent a week without a comp and the access to my iPhoto that I need to write LJs; therefore, I've forgotten about most of the urgent wack flight complaints I wanted to blog about except for this Delta Airlines announcement I transcribed into my notebook: "Relax and unwind with one of Delta's chic signature cocktails, a 'Mile-High Mojito' or a margarita." A minibottle of Jose Cuervo and a third of a can of corn syrup margarita mix in a plastic cup constitutes a "chic signature cocktail"? CHIC. I gnashed my teeth 'n' air-raged (and emphatically declined the barfmaking chic signature cocktails). American airlines, with your incessant testing of human beings' capacity to endure suffering, why don't you and your greezy-dictioned stewardesses all kiss my ass? "Are you okay with sitting by thumurgency exit with your chic signature cocktail?" Get off my jock!

Oh, one more thing: any Minneapolites reading this? I spent my nine-hour layover lurching blearily around Mpls, and would like to know: what's your motivation for actually paying for your light rail tickets? Is it the famed Minnesota Nice that makes you do it? I ended up cursing my impeccable good citizenship after I inserted a $20 into the ticket machine and received 18 Sacajawea dollars (which now bear the image of Martin Van Buren, btw, wtf) in change, then encountered no ticket takers or turnstiles for the rest of the day.

My last few weeks in Hong Kong were less than delightful: I was sick of modeling and having some difficulty getting though days without plunging into a snarling galactic snit. There have certainly been times when I would've just laughed or even relished being slathered in ugly and unhip makeup and ordered into ricockulous poses; I'm laughing now, but when I was in the middle of all this shit it felt degrading like never before:

"Pretend you climbing up rainbow! Pretend you sliding down rainbow! We will add the rainbow later! Big pose! Smiling! Bigger!"


That decal covered my entire arm. When the job was over, I was instructed to remove it by peeling. So much epidermis came off with it that I think the whole mess might've been a pretext to obtain a DNA sample. (I am not the father!)


On this day, the makeup artist shoveled some powdered shit into my eyes, they started to sting and swelled up into labia majora-lookin' slits. There was no mirror in the makeup room, so I trundled off to the bathroom for an inspection and, surprise!, discovered the horror that the hairstylist had wrought upon my head. (PS Nice mustache, bitch.)


I went to bed like this. Makeup and all.


I got a lot of inspiration from President Obama. When he has to do a crappy modeling job, like his campaign for Pink Wedding, he just smiles and tries to maintain a pleasant attitude.



Anyway, I eventually made it out alive, wounded in vanity alone. ¡Albuquerque! Viva el hogar familiar.



Speaking of which, confidential to my fellow Q-denizens: vayan ahorita mismo a Pro's Ranch Market on Central and Atrisco. Es un awesome Mexican supermercado con food court adentro: se puede comprar "street" tacos, pescado fresco, y todo tipo de licuado. Hoy probé licuado de mamey (the only flavor I'd never heard of) y coctél de pescado, pulpo, y camarón. Riquísimos. While you're in there you can get all the Bimbuñuelos, Jarritos, tortillas frescas (y blandísimas), nopales, ceviche preparado, and other Mexcessories that you need to get you out of bed al NM amanecer. And if you're going to sell elotes on the corner of Zuni and Wyoming (like the abuelito my mom chattily asked, "¿Qué vas a hacer con cinco libres de cotija?"), you can buy your cheese, chile and mantequilla there too.

If you're not from Albuquerque, you suck, but I'll show you a couple of Pro's Ranch Market pics anyway.








The green stuff is nopal, cactus leaves.




what's golden

0
0
My brother took me on a raft flotilla down the Rio Grande yesterday.



Bro is about to finish engineering school, and he perceives the world in such an interesting, engineery way. Quoth Everest as we floated through the warm breeze, "Air is a fluid just like water. We're on a fluid boundary." "What if the atmosphere were helium?" "Well," he said, referring to the ripples on the surface of the river, "there'd be fewer boundary effects, for one." Ah, nothin' enhances an experience like a shrewd observation and a bit of light vernacular.

Ev and his friend Matthew fixed a popped raft with a scrap of rope and a driftwood tourniquet.


When I marveled at their airtight solution, Ev told me, "This is not engineering. This is just figuring shit out."


Pretty sure this was engineering though.


We were the only people on the river (love you, sparse population), and we surprised a few catfishermen dangling their lines along the brushy banks. The desert air is so thin that it's easy, practically obligatory, to call out a ship-to-shore conversation. Maybe it was the countrified accents and sparse grammar, or maybe I'm so recently back from Asia that I'm still unduly charmed by the sheer facility of casual chat with my countrymen, but this exchange struck me as so sweetly and typically American that I repeated it in my head all day so I would remember it:
Fisherman: "Where'd ya git in?"
Everest: "Socorro!"
Fisherman: "Where ya goin'?"
Everest: "San Antonio! Catch anything?"
Fisherman: "Got two earlier!"
Everest: "You usin' worms?"
Fisherman: "Shrimp!"


On a kind-of related note, I got this email from my German friend: "What're you doing back at home? Are you eating Pop Tarts and drinking orange juice out of gallon-sized containers?" I laughed about that for days, but anyone who thinks that Pop Tarts are still the States' national gross-out food obviously hasn't been here in the past ten years. Have you heard of this Wonka Wazoo sickness? I impulse-bought one yesterday. It's purple-flavored paraffin with foamed diabeetus inside, sprinkled with "candy crunchies" that the wrapper informs us were made in Thailand. I have a preternatural tolerance for sweetness and tend to enjoy any psychedelic perversion of sugar that Wonka throws on the shelves; I was titillated and pleased, but I'm not necessarily recommending this extraterrestrial acid bar to you, dear reader. This picture should tell you everything you need to know about whether this is the kind of thing you want to invite into your intestines for the next ten years.
Viewing all 53 articles
Browse latest View live




Latest Images