Oompah Boompah

The malls here near where I work are places of general insanity and strangeness, particularly on the weekends when the droning throngs escalate up and down. But the strangeness can be delightful.

The Grandview Mall, which is next to my office, has the rather ramshackle and scary looking “Indiana Jones Adventure” place, which I am sure lacks the approval of the bearded wonder twins, but has twice the death potential of the mining ride in “Temple of Doom” (and I imagine that somewhere in town you could find monkey’s brains if you wanted). This is on the seventh and ultimate floor of the mall. There is also a log ride that extends outside onto the roof of the mall, it’s blue track sadly caked in the dusty crud of GZ and uselessness. On the fifth floor there is a ¾ NHL sized skating rink.

This seems like the most pointless of things here, but also the most wankiest, like when computer animated movies exaggerate flowing hairs, multitudinous reflections, or lava walls, in an attempt to one upgeekship another company in digital stroking.

Our mall is not quite so lavish and the sixth floor has an arcade. It also has…bumper cars. I couldn’t believe it when I saw the little rectangle filled with colorful egg shaped cars one day coming down after lunch.

I can’t say how much I love bumper cars. I would, in the words of Tracy Jordan, take them behind the school and get them pregnant, I love them so much. There is just something so satisfying in cackling like a maniac while smashing headlong into strangers – or tubby general managers of a company you hate working for and wish that the vice-president was strapped down in such a way that either his head or his crotch were your bumpers.

The last time I had been on bumper cars was in some park on an island in Toronto with the staff of the movie theatre I was managing. Unfortunately, the general manager was pretty good at the bumper cars because he could somehow use his penguinish shape to absorb momentum and unleash it at precisely the moment he struck you, acting as some kind of super Scrabble 3x energy collision. Brutal.

Well, these cars were spiffier. They didn’t have that sparking grid overhead which is a shame, but the whole place had artificial fog and green lasers. If only they were placing some early AC/DC it would have been perfect.

Watching people I learned that the Chinese seem to think of bumper cars as a road test, meaning they drive like idiots as they do on the roads, but generally avoid striking each other somehow. I saw people about to T-Bone someone beautifully veer away at the last second while I screamed “Noooo!!!!” and would have been removed had I not been an old white guy.

So after waiting for a few people to gather, we hit the cars to show them how it was done. I am generally a quiet kinda guy, but once strapped into those little metal pods of destruction, I become a trash talking madman hellbent on wreaking as much rubber bounded havoc as possible.

My greatest moment of the night was reverse ramming a man and his little daughter, and causing her to nearly burst out in tears. I apologized but inside the good, white-angel me and the bad, red-devil me were giving each other high-fives.

It’s okay, because the man jammed me up good later on, driving my knees into the wonderfully unpadded metal of the front of the cockpit, leaving me reminders of the stunningly good fun for nearly a week.

Trainless in Guangzhou

(sung to Gilligan’s Island)

Oh, sit right up and read a tale,
A tale without a prayer
That started in this rainy place,
That’s called the Dragon’s Lair.

It was bitter cold and drizzly
For ‘ere a long, long day
A drearier place ever seen,
No man alive could say.

So into the station we went
To head back to Hong Kong
And snaking lines did greet our eyes,
And heavens they were long

Huddles of people on the floor,
Gathered here and spilling there,
Eating their food and spitting shells
Sweat and cigarettes stain the air.

Snows up north have blocked the lines,
The people they are stuck,
Half a million souls, maybe more,
Are totally sh*t out of luck.

No holiday for these poor folk
All their bags brought for naught
The iron rooster is snowed out
No more the strutting cock.

Brands on the Brain

I have been expanding my wardrobe of late. Going to the area behind the Garden Hotel and its “L” of discount/remaindered clothing stores is seldom an empty-handed visit, and this weekend it featured another suit, another velvet jacket, and another tie.
The clothes have the labels and the right buttons and all, and the suit has this great lining that makes me want to wear it inside out, but who knows the real story. The material is gorgeous and the tailoring seems impeccable. This is what matters and that’s the way it should be.
When people ask about the other suits I have bought recently I will mention the label and they ask if they are real. I say I don’t know and don’t care.
In the same way I like the knock-offs because they level the status of the luxury items and in some way show them for what they really are – moon-on-water deep advertising for poor style – I like these clothes because they force you to look at the substance of the thing to find its value.
I mean it’s nice to see this gorgeous Chloe dress that once flounced down the runway selling here for RMB300, but it matters not that it says Chloe, but that it is well-made with fabric that begs to be stroked. And is Good God! sexy. I would wear it if it would fit. These clothes make me understand the attraction of cross-dressing. I could totally wear one and dance around my apartment singing West Side Story songs.
But that might be seen as being slightly sexually questionable. I could always pretend I was practicing for a roll as Edgar Hoover.
I should just buy a bunch of these slinky things and find someone who can wear them. Or hang them from my wall like art.
But that might be a little creepy.
What else is a poor boy to do?

Knick-Knack, Bric-a-Brac, A dog made out of stone

I spent the weekend – and a frigid one at that in 5 to 6 degrees of steadily drizzling weather – shopping, which wasn’t the intention; it just turned out that way. My friend, Grace, was in town and on Saturday we headed off to the Guangdong Fine Art College to go to their gallery. But on the way we decided to get out at Haizhu Square, which is a curios quasar at bargoon prices.

We went to a nearby plaza with the grandiose title of International Tower of Trump Tchotchkes. Seven Eight floors of shops dedicated to things you never new you could really buy: flashing lasers and LED strands for your den of iniquity, check; statues of Apollo, check; racially offensive life size jazz figurines? check; rococo gilt-edged, marble-topped tables with built in phone for the mafiaoso in you? check; torture sofa in brass peacock feathers? check; anime figures of obscenely disproportionate women in nurses uniforms standing on a base made from a real syringe but filled with lead to keep it from tipping over due to excessive top-heaviness? check; two suits of armor complete with weaponry? check.

Perfect for a arch-hipster retro-swinging pad secretly loved but labeled as satiric. Or if you are looking at (s)tarting up a replica 19th century bordello. It is a dazzling display of not just kitsch, but that Nabokovian “poshlust”It is enough to make any Wallpaper reading designophile sieze and swallow his tongue to protect himself.

There are also some shops with amazing things, too: tiny closets with nice cutlery, great lamps, and all kinds of swelly-designed little goods that take on Alessi. I ended up harnessing my lust for home products and escaping with only a couple of nice plates and two fantastic bowls, and this great little sculpture from a shop that specialized in items from the Miaoli, an ethnic minority

We didn’t cover even half of the place and it took hours. My eyes hurt by the end of it, and my brain was reeling. I have a feeling there were a few more little places of gold or at least gold coloured tinfoil to be found the next time out. I think this is where a group of people armed with walkie-talkies would be useful – some kind of Shopping SEALS.

Justify my Love

It was a week of home purchases as I seem determined to try and settle in here and salve my wounds with more retail therapy. Now, I can spend as well as anybody, but I also rationalize just as well, which is something I need to do really, no matter how small the purchase is, though there is no exact or even approximate correlation between price and length of time needed to make something extraneous seem necessary.

I finally bought an LCD TV, totally justified by the fact that I watch an inordinate amount of movies. And a crap load of DVDs to go with it since I discovered a little bit of heaven near the office that has not only the usual selection of Hollywood fluff, but things like the Maysles’ “Salesman”, and a collection of early avant-garde cinema(Man Ray!). The new screen is useless for those, and a lot of my favourites like“Bringing up Baby” being 1.33 and B&W, but since I can also hook up my computer, it makes watching any downloaded TV shows much easier.

Oh, that and a used PS2 I picked up, justified by the fact that it was substantially cheaper than an Xbox 360 which I was obsessing over for no particular reason; thus buying it was actually saving me money. You see, I know I would have broken down in Hong Kong one day during the upcoming holiday and dropped a packet of credit down on a system. I could feel it boiling in my blood. It’s an itch, a jones, an uncontrollable urge.

Plus, God of War II looks really cool on it.

It’s all about the justification.

Walking in Skeletons

I went for a walk with a group on Sunday morning.

We wended our way along the streets of Guangzhou, leaving the developed heart for the developing limbs.

Dust and sand crowded in small drifts and waves on stairs; derelict buildings hunched on the edges of the roads, while new ones went up next door.

Posters advertising construction jobs peeled off of bridge ribs:work for 50yuan per day – three months to make my rent.

Awareness comes quickly when you leave the city you know for the city you don’t, for the city crumbling even as it builds itself up, for the city of villages clawed in and joined by roads spilling through.

The children at the side, in clothes filthy with soot, parents in a store with barely stocked shelves.

Then suddenly there are the cell-phone stores and hair salons, bridges over brackish water, and we are in another city again.

Empty of people but filled with vehicles: cars, buses, and primitive tractors swirling up the dust.

Then we are through it, along a narrow road bounded with little gardens, their paths leading into the thick bush, troll restaurants under a bridge, pick your own farms, a statuary park with a silver Bruce Lee, and a long bridge over a river with barges stalled at the shore.

The bridge ends at the university island where all the first-year students go -a island of optimism to relieve the gray depression.

So this is where we leave the group to take the subway, passing under it all on our way back the city which I thought I knew.

Paranoid Android

Marcel Proust – Dangerous Man

Last week, in a strange fit of inspiration after a chat with Linda, I decided to send her a real Christmas present; ie, not a gift certificate for Ikea so she could buy a nice duvet and cover.

So I fired up Amazon, and found three books: How Proust Can Change Your Life, by Alain de Botton, which is great – light and smart like the other books of his I have read; Swann’s Way, the first book of Proust’s In Search of Lost Time, the best novel I have ever read but a hell of a slog and what good is the de Botton without the source; and Documentaries: A Short Introduction, because Linda likes docs and couldn’t remember the name of the Errol Morris documentary on pet cemeteries we had seen – Gates of Heave - which had come up at a party I guess when talking of Herzog and his shoe eating.

Those are presents and I was glad to be sending them off to her.

They were sent regular USPS parcel mail but no worries. I tracked the shipment and it arrived in only a few days; no shit, since it was coming from Jersey as far as I could tell. Probably down the street.

Anyhow, I was chatting with Linda and she didn’t mention the present which was strange since I checked the site and it said the books had been delivered.

So I asked and she replied “what box?” I explained what I had done, and she looked around her office, but still no box.

 

So yesterday morning (I’m trying to get the timeline right, but it’s a bit hard) I guess she started to track the package down. It seems she eventually got to the security tapes where she saw the box come in and a maintenance guy take it away.

 

Now, Mr. Maintenance man is obviously a bookworm because upon seeing a box from Amazon.com which would have felt and sounded like it had books in it, he became suspicious and took the box away. Lord knows we wouldn’t want any books coming into a building. Did he then go up to the fourth floor and find Linda, which wouldn’t have been difficult. Oh, no, that’s too hard and he probably didn’t think of it anyway.

 

No, Mr. Diligent Fcuknut decided to open the box, nevermind the fact that opening other people’s mail is, as I understand it, a felony offense.

 

Now, of course it makes no sense that if someone thought that a box was dangerous he would open it; unless, of course, that person is an utter cretin. But that’s the thing about cretins, they really don’t think about these things – that’s how they end up immolating themselves or chopping parts of their bodies off, before they have had the chance to procreate if the rest of us are lucky.

He found books.

Linda discovered this because the books were sitting on the building manager’s desk. Did that person have the common sense and decency to find the Linda who worked on the fourth floor? No, not at all. Such things seem to be in short supply. I have no idea what Linda did at this point, but she does have a bit of a temper and I hope these two idiots, thinking that their little building in New Jersey in which they spend they mundane little lives could be a target for something, bore the brunt of it.

There is no doubt in my mind that if she were to complain to the police about the whole mail opening thing, nothing would happen, and the police would probably applaud the manager and maintenance dorks, saying “We need more people like them.” Because that’s the environment still, over six years later – paranoia.

What’s more, is that not only did they discard the box, they threw out the little gift cards that came with each book. Gift cards upon which I had tried to summarize why I had picked each book for her, explaining that gifts are not really generic but specific, particularly books.

We need less people like these. We really have no need of people like these. Think about how much easily the world would run.

The good thing is I have no doubt that neither the Fcuknut nor the Manager Douche had ever heard of Proust, or would ever read a book of more than 200 pages that didn’t have pictures of naked women in it let along the meanderings of a bed-ridden asthmatic.

Fortunately, I found out before I had ordered the replacements. What’re you going to do when you need to send a present, talk about it?

RE:Mediated Experiences

I like the Guangdong Museum of Art but I don’t like the people who generally go there.

This past Sunday when I was there to see a contemporary Japanese art exhibit, flashes were going off everywhere, people were walking right up past barriers to take shots, or posing in front of work. One guy, pictured above, even stood and recorded an entire ten minute video.

It’s part of my general dislike of the pathological need people have to photograph and record every mundane aspect of their lives, every place they go, every poster they see they could stand in front of. I am honestly baffled by people who take hundred if not thousands of snapshots of anything and everything, usually with someone in the photo, rendering everything else mere background. I wonder if they ever look at these photos again. I wonder about their computers, cluttered to the rafters with digital bric-a-brac, a million self-portraits and pictures of insignificant events piled in to remind them of events they never really saw for the first time.

Visual art is about seeing and experiencing, but this doesn’t prevent people from only perceiving the art through the subtly shifting screens of their digital cameras. There is no now in the mediated experience; there is only a manufactured and pixellated then stripped of relevance. We have forgotten the art of memory and the wondrous dissolution of events into shadowy fringes, mixed with emotions.

Worse are the people who pose in front of the art stating that they are more important, turning something into background filler, visual muzak. I wonder if they do this with David or the Mona Lisa, as if getting their picture with something somehow makes the experience real, as if their memory of the event is not enough. But the focus on those pictures is the person, not the art which becomes a prop.

I love photography for its mendacity, despite the fact that some of my favourite stuff is documentary like that of James Nachtwey (see War Photographer if you can, it’s amazing). I love it because it lies, because it pretends towards an objective reality. That’s where a lot of its power lies. It may be clearer in these days of Photoshop, but that kind of manipulation has always existed. I like it just as I like the strange games that documentary films play, or reality TV (which I generally don’t watch except for Project Runway. Reality TV is less real than fictional TV because it’s dishonest).

I wonder what they do with all the photos of past lovers and friends. Do they reprogram phones, call lists, screen savers and erase all the traces as if all that the relationship was was contained in the blips and bleeps?

So what of memory and experience? I share it here at times, other times I definitely try to record some kind of impression of it, but I trust my memory over the ephemera though I know it will fade. It’s meant to. It gets entwined with everything else that produces us. What you get, if you are lucky, is In Search of Lost Time. If you are unlucky, you just have terrabytes of birthday parties, karaoke nights, walks through airports, and endless repetitions of days.

The Craning Game

Several times I have mentioned the rancid air of the Lair. A few months ago, during a respite from the schmutz, I developed my own measurement: I counted construction cranes.

I have always liked construction cranes and their skeletal elegance. They were not a staple in Edmonton, Alberta. They are here. I had never seen so many in one place, perched like prehistoric flamingoes on the erupting building tops.

Everywhere there is construction. It’s a grinding, banging, hammering and pouring place. A few buildings stand unfinished – relics of bad dreams, cranes still waiting. There are three fanfare projects going on right now: an exo-skeletoned TV tower on the south bank of the Pearl; an opera house by Zaha Hadid; a museum like a lacquered box. But those are the image projects.

The dust on my balcony, brownish gray, the sloughed skin of progress, attests to the rest of the work: the apartment buildings and office towers that remind me of the magic rocks I had as a kid.

As do the record 23 cranes I counted one sparkling summer day in a 180 degree view from the old office.

It’s not quite so good viewing here at the new one. Today it’s a 15 crane day. Visibility is to a few km. Two weeks before it would have been a five or six crane day. I suspect that a super clear day would garner a few more in the graying distance.

My friend in Beijing wrote that a few days ago the sky there was black. Black like Dickensian London. I will settle for concrete over coal any day of any week.

Cant o Congee Can

It could be about Dante with that title – and the photo – but it’s not about hell – well, not until the end.No, it’s about my first Canto-pop concert.

Last Saturday my friend had a ticket left for the huge Jacky Cheung concert here in GZ. I knew of him from Wong Kar Wai movies – ­Days of Being Wild (do see it, just for the opening clacking of shoes, the pop and hiss of the coke bottle, and Leslie as he seduces Maggie in a few sentences. I am going to My Blueberry Nights this week. Jude Law is a second-rate Tony Leung and there’s no way that Norah Jones can match Faye Wong in Chungking Express but it’s still Wong, this time shot by Darius Khondji of Seven and Before the Rain fame, not the drunken master, Chris Doyle) – but I had never heard his music, or not that I really noticed.

My impression of most Canto, Mando, K and J pop is that it is producer driven drivel of the most obvious kind. Good god, in Taiwan they had a “band” of women names after their cup size – F5 or something, I think. Well, you might at least say they are honest about it. See my friend Shelley’s blog for a more thorough rundown on such bands.

So I went in with less than stellar expectations. Jacky easily shattered them. It was great. Part Vegas, part Broadway, all spectacle, he belted out stuff for about 3.5 hours. I didn’t want to miss anything so I even ignored my pressing bladder, something I came to regret later.

I expected lip-synching and canned music. Nope. The live band hit me soon into the night with a great little funk number that managed to appropriate both Tom Jones and Parliament – good running bass and cracking drums. I think Tom Jones, but a clean, family oriented Tom Jones is the right comparison here. Jacky isn’t called the “King of Song” for nothing I found out.

So a full night of music later, we found ourselves meeting up with other friends and heading for food, which, is, of course, what Chinese people do at midnight. I have no idea what gives New York the right to call itself the city that never sleeps. Pshaw. Any street in GZ, not just the centre, will have restaurants going full fry at all hours of the night.

We ended up at a congee place. Now, I have mentioned the other types of Chinese food, but I had no idea that congee could be so different. Our huge stew pot arrived, not fully mushed rice at the bottom, but the rest along with fish and some vegetables floating above. It was nutty and fantastic.

Now, onto the hellish part of this and the reason why I should always avail myself of proper bathrooms when I have the chance.

I was full to bursting, so before the congee I needed to go, and asked about the washrooms since the tiny restaurant obviously had none inside. I was waved in that Chinese offhand way out and to the left.

Out I went. As I went left I looked for a door somewhere. Nope. I was called back. A woman pointed to a tiny metal cubicle, standing alone on the pavement outside, next to their makeshift kitchen. The open door revealed a red bucket standing in the corner. It reminded me of childhood camping trips and the gallon ice-cream pail labeled “pee bucket” that stood outside of the tent. I didn’t like it then, and I certainly didn’t like it that night.

I wondered what women did since the bucket was rather tall and many women would be unable to go down to parallel. I wondered many things as I stood there filling the bucket. I wondered who emptied this thing and where. I wondered why the lack of safety laws that enable us to enjoy hot pot on propane elements with the bottle standing inside next to the table also allow pee buckets.

But I stopped wondering once I had the congee.
Thankfully I didn’t wonder about having the stall so close to the cooking area.

Now that I just did, I am feeling a bit queasy.