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Saturday, November 29, 2003
And then...... you have people coming into this site searching on Yahoo for "Kurt Browning shirtless". I don't know what's more sad: the fact that someone's looking for that turnip half-naked, or that I come up third in the search. Friday, November 28, 2003
I’m in Canada again.Two nights ago, in New York, I came back home and decided it was time to pack. Then I found out that I had misplaced my passport and I-20, my student permit to study in the States. It was nowhere to be found. It’s important for me to explain that this kind of thing happens to me a lot. After the sixteenth time, explaining away such incidences with the excuse that I’ve been fated to be at odds with the cosmos becomes less convincing. Sometimes, it could just be that I'm an idiot. I was just about to cancel my trip when the idea hit me that a birth certificate and a driver’s licence would be enough to get me into Canada. Usually, when going through customs into Canada, they ask you the purpose of your visit and whether or not you want a donut. When entering the States, they want to know the purpose of your visit, your caloric intake since breakfast, the last time you handled garden shears, what your pants stand for, and whether you’ve had any anti-American sentiments ever in your life. So getting back into New York without the proper documentation is the major concern. But I really wanted to go home. My mom and I have been talking about this for weeks. Basically, having prayerfully booked the tickets a month back, I somehow felt it was okay to go ahead with the trip. So I judged the circumstance and prayed that I would be able to get home, and either get back to the States or somehow have the documents, I don’t know, show up. With that, I came anyway. My ride was coming at 3 a.m. I had reserved myself a spot on Super Shuttle, which is a 19 dollar service that insists on getting you to the airport before it opens. My flight was scheduled to depart at seven, and so, by professional and experienced calculation, they concluded that I should get to Newark at 4 a.m. sharp. This is to ensure the traveller a good three hours of sitting after baggage drop-off and the security check; it’s imperative that Super Shuttle travellers acquaint themselves with Newark International Airport’s fantastic features and rich culture. Like, what pattern carpet they have at Gate 70. So I dozed off, under the confident assumption that they would announce the boarding of my flight over the PA system. Little did I know that, in America, it is required by law to board planes in complete silence. The next thing I know, I wake up and it’s ten to eight. Sun is streaming through the windows. The people in the waiting area has increased exponentially. And I missed my flight. The Continental Airline staff confirmed that, to the best of their knowledge, this was the first time anyone has ever missed their flight from falling asleep five metres from the door. I was given a gentle reprimand and they put me on the next flight at nine. I was thinking of maybe plopping back down to take another nap, seeing I now had even more time to kill. As I walked from the counter to sit down, all three of the Continental Airline women took turns saying, one after the another over the PA system, “The next flight is at Gate 113!” “This is Gate 70!” “Don’t fall asleep this time please!” Oh, so that’s when they use the PA system. After forty-five minutes I got into the tiniest airplane I’ve seen in my life. I was exhausted so I promptly fell asleep. After take-off, the stewardess tapped me on the shoulder, and asked me if I wanted coffee. I told her, No, thanks. I went back to sleep. Five minutes later, she poked me and asked if I wanted water or orange juice instead. No, thank you, I said. I closed my eyes. Fifteen minutes passed and she tapped me on the shoulder again. She was holding a tray of muffins. I couldn’t believe it. How can she not see that I’m sleeping? Are my eyes that small? I eyed the spotted muffins sleepily. Seeing how my day was going, there was no way that they could be chocolate chip – it had to be blueberry. No, thank you, I said. And with that and a sigh, I went back to sleep. A little while after, and I am not making this up, she again tapped me on the shoulder. I wondered if she was handing out extra seatbelts now. Where was she when I needed to catch my flight at seven? This time she wanted to give me a SARS questionnaire. I had in my mind to hastily circle “YES” to all the questions regarding fever, nagging coughs, and visiting hospitals with known outbreaks all in her presence in hopes that she’d maybe think twice before waking me up in the name of airline pretzels. I finally arrived in Toronto and I approached Canadian Customs. I purposely walked up to a chipper girl – this girl, I thought, would be an easy pass. My assumption was boostered by her spluttering, “Isn’t Canada great??” I smiled and said yes. She proceeded to ask me standard questions and then, with a charming smile, she put a piercingly flourescent pink swipe across my Customs card and wrote in big letters ‘X R31’. I knew what that meant from the last time I had been interrogated at Immigration for forty-five minutes because my passport was stolen. She smiled at me and said perkily, “Just take this to the man at the end of the hall. Have a nice day!” What bothered me was her smiling like I didn’t know she just caused me a hassle that would delay me unspeakably. I knew what that pink line and scrawled letters meant: it’s a Custom term for “Screw him over.” It was difficult to beam back a sincere smile given the situation – so I didn’t. I trudged down the hall and I walked into Immigration. I’ve been interrogated before. But Canadian Immigration is amazing. Basically, you have several people in important-looking badges asking you such tough questions like “Where do you live?” and “What’s your middle name?” These questions are meted out with careful scrutiny and are almost always punctuated by thoughtful silences – which I find funny. That’s like being painstakingly deliberate with finger-paints. To update, thank God that my boss at the Concert Office found my misplaced documents and FedEx’d them to me the next day. Provided I don’t value sleep more than catching my flight, I don’t get woken up for the sake of baked goods, and I don’t have maliciously disguised wolves as Custom agents, this will help a lot on my trip back. I just can't shake one undeniable fact: somehow, I'm again flying back to New York on a Monday. Thursday, November 27, 2003
Somebody came by my site today from a Yahoo search on “Jay Chou Got Diarrhea”. This begs the question: Even if the assumption is correct, why would anyone in the world to want to know more about the issue?
Sunday, November 23, 2003
Behind The ScenesYou'll be happy to know that my boy Willy has a website that is very well done. He has joined a cast of misled characters, also known as my high school friends, who think that posing shirtless on their websites is not only cool, but will boost your hit count. Just be thankful I haven't adopted the same game plan. If you like his site, please email him and tell him to delete his insufferable Jay Chou section. Willy has also been incredibly kind and a great friend: He is currently working on a new website for me. This website is still under construction - which William insists you be aware of, what with his endearing compound word "UNDERCONSTRUCTION" - but, as you can already tell, it's going to be hot. Some of you have heard that there might be a solo album coming soon -- the website's layout is a proposition for the CD cover. Let me know what you think. I’d like to welcome the people who came upon my site because they were looking for “Alicia Key in a bodysuit” and a “Wonderwoman pinata”. I’m sure you were a little disappointed. Also I'd like to welcome the guy who found my site through an AOL search titled “dietary fibre makes me fart”. People think I make these up. Friday, November 21, 2003
I remember when Ivan passed me the basketball in the church gymnasium, and somehow, as I was extending my hand to catch the ball, the ball went right through my legs. As I’m an incredible athlete by all counts, we’re still trying to figure out how this happened. One plausible theory is that, in a cosmic glitch in the universe, the ball passed right through my hand. Elijah and Ivan used to ask me, time and time again, to come play basketball with them at the McGill gym. There are several reasons why I wouldn’t go. None of them involved my fragile ego. It’s not that I’m a bad athlete. (I say that a lot.) I’m great at sports. Especially dribbling. It’s really pretty amazing. I’m so good at dribbling, I do it with only one hand. And sometimes, while dribbling, I don’t even need to look at the ball. I’m especially good at this when it’s very quiet and peaceful. You understand, then, how horribly disconcerting and very annoying it is to have underdressed, sweaty guys pawing after my ball. Can’t they see I’m trying to bounce the thing up and down? Can’t they see I’m “dribbling”? Can’t they see what I’m trying to do? That’s why I refused to go to the gym; people just can’t contain themselves there. An ideal world is where everyone has their own basketball. But it's undeniable how good I am. I remember playing that basketball game at Granville Island in Vancouver, where the little net is four feet away. I sank so many shots, I got a surrounding, chanting crowd. Which goes to show two things: I'm simply incredible, and eight-year-old little runts recognize true skill. There’s a bigger reason for why I don’t play basketball anymore – and I’m sure you care. Back in eleventh grade, we had what some of you call ‘gym class’. Gym class, which is made mandatory by the school, is an environment that has shucked social progress and all that we have gained intellectually over the past tens of thousands of years so that we can revisit a time when brute strength and one-dimensional, barbaric ratiocination is the dominant currency. However, seeing that basketball is a ‘non-contact’ sport and that I was a hulking mastodon of Teutonic blood, I knew I’d be okay. And that’s when a two-hundred pound, hairy Turkish guy’s arm literally broke my nose. To this day I’m not too sure how my keen reflexes resulted in my jumping up for a rebound when everyone else was coming back down. Nevertheless, this was yet another recurring incident where the game had to abruptly stop for my nose to bleed. Blood splattered everywhere. I cupped my face with blurred eyes. The ball bounced unnoticed to a corner, relieved from the sudden shift in attention. There was blood on the floor, blood on my shirt, blood on the ball. Vinh, one of my friends given to spells of brilliant observation, put in his two cents, “Whoa. That’s like, blood, man.” After my step-brother, Paul, a doctor, confirmed that it was broken, I've been declining every invitation to play basketball. In order to give full vent to my rippling muscles, I am now the global champion of this. Tuesday, November 18, 2003
I have been sick for the past three straight days -- and it may not totally be gone yet. As a result, I haven't written too much lately since there's nothing much to say about lying in bed. I still found it in myself to laugh out loud, however, when I was searching for a diagnosis via the Internet.I came across a page where they had doctors answer people who wrote them emails. This one guy was hilarious. This is his subject title, verbatim: GUSHING DIARRHEA!!! HELP!! DIARRHEA 5-8 TIMES A DAY!! BURNING ANUS!!!! I mean, tell me that's not funny. The guy is so frantic he's typing in capitals with multiple exclamation points. Imagine going into a walk-in clinic and yelling that exact same string of incomplete sentences at the top of your lungs. I mean, everyone in the room will just stop and stare at you. Eventually, someone's going to tell you to take a seat -- even if it's a porcelain one. See, in real life, this same guy would probably walk in all non-chalant and sit squirming in his seat until a doctor can see him. But, when it comes to a keyboard, he just loses COMPLETE CONTROL. As it turns out, the guy's from Larchmont. Larchmont is in Westchester, NY, which isn't unlike living in the Hamptons. If you live in Larchmont, you have diplomats mowing your lawn. You'd think that he'd opt for a better health consultation than a bunch of strangers on the net. Anyway, so the doctor responds and he's like, "Well, the first thing you may want to do is calm down." I loved it. I mean, I was miserable looking for some kind of remedy of my own, but here I was at a comedy show. I love the Internet. I just hope an ad doesn't suddenly pop up at the top of my site for Remedies for Burning Anuses. Saturday, November 15, 2003
I awoke this morning to the lulling harmony of loud hammering and spluttered Spanish interjections. It would seem that several of these workers believe that productive output is measured only by how much noise you make.BAM. BAM. "What is this thing I'm mindlessly hammering?" BAM. Bam. "I think it's a wall." "No." BAM. "Really?" Whack whack whack BAM. "I hope it's Adrian's wall." Whack-whack. BAM BAM BAM. "Yeah, me too. Let's get started on making that exact replica of Noah's ark when it's not even light out." "Then we can make several bookshelves for no apparent reason, using only our hammers!" "YAY!" BAM BAM BAM WHACK BAM BAM BAM.. Wednesday, November 12, 2003
I'm much more mature now. But I'll get back to that later.I went to see a concert at Zankel Hall in Carnegie Hall last night. The 12 Cellists of the Berlin Philharmonic performed works by Klengel, Piazzolla, Villa-Lobos and several others. And, as I'm sure you care, it was an incredible concert. Each and every one of the cellists is excellent, with spectacular facility and beautiful sound. Not only that, their ensemble playing was clean, tight, and unified in musical intent. At the end, the whole house was on their feet, and the group responded with three encores. I usually hate opera singing. Before I get into too much trouble by saying this, I'd like to clarify that I'm sure opera singing is very, very beautiful, and it's totally my own uncultured ear that is at fault. This is my fault and not opera's fault. With that aside, Ofelia Sala, the soprano who collaborated in Villa-Lobos' Bachiana brasileira No. 5, was simply excellent. The opening Adagio blew.. me.. away. In her voice was the most poignant expression of sorrow; horribly dejected and then breathlessly anxious. I got this chill that ran from the bottom of my spine and up to my scalp, where it proceeded to tingle and move every one of my hairs individually. There was also a jazz musician called Till Bronner, who played the trumpet and the flugelhorn. The cellists would provide lush harmonies and he would weave circles of notes around them. There were some beautiful moments in his playing. The arrangements were great, innovative, and exciting. There were several moments when you'd see a certain accented note passed off within the semi-circle of cellists, which created what baseball fans know as the 'wave'. Of course, we high-class classical music connoisseurs don't call it that -- we prefer 'choreographed undulation'. And my friend Louis-Philippe was able to get us really good seats. Sometimes you're in such a great spot you wonder if someone has made a mistake. Like if there was a typo on the ticket and "Row C" is supposed to be a "Row O". But from our distance, we could catch every detail of the performance, and the energy was magnified since, prior to this, we had seen concerts several rows back. There was such intimacy in the group's communication as well; what struck me most was that they were having the time of their lives doing what they were doing. Sitting so close to the stage has some challenges too. And this is why I'm mature. I'm mature because (and I'm sure that other people who are mature start off their sentences like this) the singer, who was great, at times of desperation, delivered frantically fricative words with such sincere and profound expression that she spat out several globules of flying spit -- and I did not laugh. I was just glad Louis-Philippe didn't get us really, really good seats. Saturday, November 08, 2003
I take it all back. Figure skating is manlier than He-Man on a motorcycle. And only I knit sweaters. Pink sweaters.Halloween was fine. Thanks for asking, my one reader in Idaho. The problem with New York, though, is that you don't know if people are dressing like that because it's Halloween. The CDs are selling like hot cakes!!! (Not really.) A thank you to Trisha from Boston and Lucy in Texas. The Irretrievable 8W has been updated, which talks about the making of the beat behind Hollow. You are all very excited, I'm sure. Tuesday, November 04, 2003
A good test for whether something is manly is if you could picture a rapper proudly bragging about how: good he is at it, how many he has of it, how much he can get of it. For instance, pushing weights. That’s very manly and many rappers will gladly inform you that they can, at no exagerration, shift tectonic plates if they so wished. This is vitally important to rap, because lifting big things, which produces big muscles, goes a long way to help lip articulation, breath control, and lyrical thought.Another manly thing would be basketball. For some reason, basketball is the most masculine sport for rappers, even though shooting the ball correctly requires an excess of effeminate wrist-bending. No matter. They make up for this by sweating, trash-talking, and acquiring big muscles, all the while allowing their wrists to hang floppily like a valleygirl dressed in pink. Essentially, what I’m saying is that if something is seen as universely manly, rappers will probably rap about it. But being manly is not simply a question of astronimical power, at least, not to rappers. To illustrate: Fast cars are cool; somehow, rocketships are not. Now, Amos (who I think, by this post, has become the most referred to person on my site, much to the annoyance of Linda, who is the second runner-up) is hip hop fashion savvy. Not only that, he can also rap, whenever his confidence, oscillating from the size of a skin pore to a green pea, allows him to do so. But Amos is cool because his pants easily drape the Petronas Towers (which is a privilege he exercises on the occasion they need to dry), and because, now this is the important part, he wears Air Force Ones. Why does he wear these? Because of the manliest rapper of all, who, knowing he is the manliest, chose himself the very manly name of ‘Nelly’. (Which is Latin for, “Whoa, nelly! That guy is manly.”) Nelly, being a deeply brooding poet, graced all hip hop charts with his then-new song called “Air Force Ones”. This happened at a time when many would have thought, given Nelly’s prior lyrical genius, that the song was an expression of patriotism, proudly supporting his country in a war in which he, being a profound scholar, is familiar with all the dynamics and nuances. But after 3 minutes into the music video, which is situated entirely in a shoe store, and was, as is often the case, packed with hot girls, a noted fact since Nelly is also a degree-carrying social scientist, you begin to realize that the song is founded on the very noble and mature inspiration of having an expensive, brand-name shoe. This is truly art in its highest form: superficiality and high-school greed. I don't remember the last time I was so inspired by a basketball shoe that I was driven to dedicate several lines of poetry to it. Which leads me to the central point of this post, which needs a disclaimer. Before I get in trouble with the Email Vigilantes, I'd like to point out that I am not saying being manly is cool or more desirable. If I think something isn't manly, it does not mean that you cannot think differently. And, if, say, figure skating is a sensitive issue with you, and you vehemently adhere to the belief that it is a manly sport which roars with testosterone, please discontinue reading. Some of my friends, who I think I should point out are girls, think figure skating is manly. They argued, in a lengthy debate, “Look, you have to have incredible quads to jump around on skates like that. That’s art, man. You have to be so strong.” Yes, yes, that’s all fine and good, but the question is: “Will anyone rap about it?” There is a crucial moment when you realize something is devastingly effeminate (I believe I’m the first to couple ‘devastingly’ and ‘effeminate’ together) if rapping about it will destroy your career indefinitely. Which is why, to this very day, no one has made a song based entirely on figure skating. To paraphrase Jonathan in New Zealand, my little cousin, who I hear isn't so little anymore, there is something manly about guys on skates -- but that's called ice hockey. There’s only so much you can do in rap with figure skating references. “Watch me spin this vinyl faster than Kurt Browning in a triple axel.” “I’ll keep all of you on your toes like Josee Chouinard in her ballet set.” One of the reasons why this doesn't work is because figure skating a) isn’t manly, and b) boasts such image-representing stars as Toronto’s Emmanuel Sandhu and Kurt Browning, both of whom look like they’re about to start knitting me a sweater. The valiant Elvis Stojko tried his best to boost world appeal for figure skating by doing ridiculous sets based on tae-kwon-do themes. What was that about? He'd grunt, kick and punch, all the while completing sweaty lunges with delicate little pirouettes. If you ask me, that's a really good way to show people you're trying too hard. Figure skating is a "sport". But I can't think of any other sports that require you to wear make-up. If you're beginning to think I'm belittling figure skating at its core because I say it's not manly, then maybe you're putting the universal idea of manliness on a pedestal. I'm just saying it's not manly; I'm not saying it's stupid. So to those two friends of mine, who requested to go unnamed, (though it's funny because, for two people who are so convinced it's manly, they can't possibly be embarassed to have their names attached to their opinions, can they?) I'd like to cap off the debate by saying: Figure skating is not manly. I mean, grace and elegance has never made the short-list of ‘Things To Be Conveyed’ in a rap song. 
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