10.28.2004

annnnd....CUT.

So Kev and I were supposed to film a martial arts/fitness training video for an associate of Sifu Joey's. We were supposed to film on Saturday. This whole thing was kind of set up for failure, but for awhile I really thought we were going to be able to pull it off.

Me: As everyone knows, I'm hard to reach and I really shouldn't be. I'm never at home unless late at night, I only have a cellphone *sometimes*, I'm not at martial arts classes as frequent as I should be, etc. This made it hard for both my instructor and for Kev to reach me, which sucks, because I essentially was playing the middle man between them.

Sifu Joey: Sifu's an even harder person to reach. Given that I haven't been at the club that much, the only other way to reach Sifu is by the phone. Unfortunately, Sifu is never at home and does not own a cellphone. Instead, like a highschool drug dealer, Sifu conducts his business through pager. You can imagine how tedious it is to ask him just one question. Which also sucks, because he was essentially playing the middle man between me and the man behind the project, Steve.

Steve: Steve, being so out of the social loop, had no idea what the fuck was going on. He's the one I feel bad for, because I'm sure this whole time he thought all his business was going down smoothly. Unfortunately, Steve never seemed to have much of a plan, never seemed to mind letting us film without any sort of plan, any sort of info on what type of video he was making, what kinds of shots he needed, what techniques he was demonstrating.

Kev: Kev has all the equipment and all the skill and yet he lives the furthest from all of us. He had such short notice on this project and he couldn't direct his questions straight to the person he needed to talk to: Steve. He would talk to me, who would talk to Joey, who would talk to Steve, who would talk to Joey, who would talk to me, who would then answer Kev. You can imagine how much info was able to flow back-and-forth in the measly two weeks we had to plan this project.

In the end, we found out only a few hours before the day-before-shooting that the project was filming in goddamned Burlington. (Ever been? It might actually be damned by God.) Kev couldn't truck it down there, understandably, and the whole thing fell apart like a loosely tied Jiu-Jitsu gi.

It's Thursday night and, after talking to Kev, I have just cancelled on both Joey and Steve. I feel bad because Joey is my instructor and, even though a good portion of this could be blamed on him, I feel I've let him down.

All in all though, I also feel I've learned some important lessons in business. Which is something I have to do.

I've also learned the true value of producers, and why I should never be one, lol.

peace.

10.26.2004

Fuck You, Pay Me

It's the Goodfellas phrase that encapsulates a big part of the capitalist mentality as well as the hiphop hustlin mindstate. Funny that as a hiphop head living in a capitalist society, it's a philosophy that I've had a lot of trouble espousing.

My girlfriend thinks I'm really bad with money, and she's not far from the truth. I tip extremely well even when faced with mediocre service, I give change to bums even when they aren't putting on puppet shows or carving soap sculptures, I like to buy rounds for my friends when I find the time to go out for beers with them.

Fuck You, Pay Me is hard because I don't think anyone owes me shit. If I do someone a favor it's usually because I wanted to do them a favor, not because I'm tallying up a list of future payback possibilities.

Whem I used to work at MAFA (my martial arts school) I got paid under the table in cash. Some weeks their funds would be low and I would be paid off with t-shirts or meals from Arby's. I really didn't mind. When the school finally shut down and I was left empty-pocketed and still owed hundreds of dollars, I eventually found it in my heart to forgive my boss.

He still comes into Starbucks sometimes and I never remind him that he owes me money. I even hook him up drinks sometimes.

Call me naive or a pushover; but I don't think that's the case. I've forgiven him the money, but will never forget the transgression. I will never see the money, but neither will he ever see my friendship again, or my respect as a (former) student. You could view my free drinks as weakness, but I see it as the ultimate middle finger: I'm The Bigger Person.

In my mind I know that the several hundred dollars he owes me is gone. He won't pay me, even if I asked (just ask Roberto what happened to his money!) More than that, it won't make a difference in my life in the long run. It's much more productive for me to forget the whole thing and move on; lesson learned.

But my anti-money grubbing causes problems in situations like that of this past week. Scrambling around trying to get people's money for the Spookfest part has been way too hella stressful. I notice I feel bad hitting up people for cash, even when it is owed and expected. I also automatically assume people hate me and never want to talk to me because I haven't paid them on time.

I really know nothing about this world: the world of business and money exchange. Not even on a business theory level, I mean on the personal level. I don't connect to money in the same way other people do so situations like these confuse me. I'm not sure if people get mad or annoyed, or whether they don't give a fuck or not.

For me, it's always been more of "Fuck you, pay me back later or something." Which I notice now doesn't really work when other people's money is involved.

peace.

10.25.2004

I'm so tired.

I'm not used to being this busy. I'm glad I had a day off today to just laze around the house with the girlfriend. Even so, I spend an inordinate amount of time on the phone trying to track down people and their money for the Spookfest party. I hate planning events; and this isn't even my event.

Did the CN Tower climb this morning and it wasn't as bad as I thought. I had this horrible picture in my mind of climbing for like four hours. Instead, it only took us half-an-hour, and that was with Priscilla stoppping every five minutes or so. If I do it next year I'm gonna go all out and see how fast I can make it to the top. It's not as glamorous or as fun as the other charity events -- the breast cancer spin cycle, the AIDS walk marathon -- you just climb and climb, up a cramped, dingy staircase with no windows and minimal lighting, surrounded by silent, smelly, breathy bags of elevating flesh. After awhile I had to stop using the handrail because it was coated with slimy persperation. It looked like a concentration camp.

Priscilla was done afterwards. She was crouching on the floor and saying that she was gonna yarf, lol. We rewarded ourselves with a nice healthy breakfast of Egg McMuffins and hash browns.

Work has been kind of interesting lately. I finally blew my fuse and went ballistic on Samia. Dumb story, dumb lady, dumb store. I don't even want to go into it. I wonder what's gonna happen from here. They can't fire me, but I sure hope I'm being noticed now. I hope Ron's shook, and I know Samia is. They can think I'm an asshole if they want, but they also can't ignore me. I'm not going anywhere anytime soon either, so they can just forget about hoping for me to quit.

Kev and I came up with a idea for a movie. It sounds really good and we're both really excited. You can follow the progress over at "Coming Soon...", the log of our movie making exploits.

Gotta finish up the next two comic scripts for Gerard, find a Halloween costume for Friday, film the martial arts vid on Saturday, and start my month-long novel writing journey on Sunday.

All the gaps will be filled with coffee-serving time.

I miss blogging, for real.

peace.

10.20.2004

Head Game.

Why can't I just find a decent hat that fits me? I'm a hat whore, love em, need em. They cause me a lot of problems though, pimples, a forehead prone to excessive greasiness when hatted; but that just goes to show how much I love hats. I have one signature Nike hat that I've been wearing for years and will wear for years to come, no matter much it smells or fades in color due to repeated washings. It's the only (non-knitted) cap I've ever bought that fits me perfectly.

My skull is kind of weird, oddly shaped. It's large and warps to the back. I like to think that it's because of my unusually large brain, but the family legend goes that my siblings and cousins used to put pennies on the soft spot of my scalp when I was a newborn because it would make my (unformed) cranium rise and fall like it was breathing. This, of course, though funny, has warped me for life.

It's not that bad, but damn does it make it difficult to find a hat that fits or looks good. Not to mention I have a hard time getting out of headlocks.

Went to Square with G today and passed upon the hat of my dreams, the one I've been picturing late at night with the lights out. I went to try it on, and sure enough the small size was too tight, and the one size up was too large.

Sucks too because I've been seriously keeping an eye out for this hat for years. And now it's trendy and everyone has it except me.

I'm too fresh for this world, and my scalp is too large to accomodate my staggering freshness. I'm a tragic figure, like Forest Gump, or Joshua the Dog-Man from Dark Angel, second season.



peace.

10.16.2004

Vari Hall, holla back.

Go Bussed up to York the other day to "conceptualize" (George's words) with Kev. The campus looks and feels exactly the same and instantly I was reminded of how depressed I was while there. I'm not sure what it is with that place. I was about 30 minutes early for the meeting time, so I spent half-an-hour wandering around and progressively getting downer and downer.

It was cool seeing both Kev and George though, and I really wish now that I had talked to them more during our time in Brenda's class. George especially because we were actually cool with each other and he actually put effort into us chillin and whatnot and I'd always backout.

The session with Kev was really productive even though we didn't come up with anything concrete. This is what we have to do, though, and I think we have to do it often. It'll probably be many more of these before we actually come upon a idea that we both agree is good and that we're both passionate about. This is the long feeling out process. And also, for however long we've known each other, we don't really know each other. It's gonna take awhile for me to get inside of his head. Which I have to do, sorry Kev, lol.

One thing I notice though is that I'm horrible at pitching ideas. I can't verbalize concepts and ideas the way I can feel them. I remember before I made Found and telling people that it was about "this guy who picks up notes and it drives him crazy!", lol. And now, with my new short film project being pitched as "this guy who gets attacked by his computer, and he can't get out of the house!" Horrible.

I remember also this film Kev was telling me about, where he described wanting to "remix images the way people remix sounds". There's no way I could have known from that statement how cool that would turn out. RawCutMixRap. Kev, send it to Zed, it's a shoe-in.

Anyways, the creative energies are good right now, but the "other" energies are not. I guess that goes hand in hand though.

peace.

10.14.2004

Circle Jerkin

It took awhile but I've finally gotten off my feet with this shit. I'm one page away from completing the first issue of the comic, started up the poetry shit again, am meeting up with Kev tomorrow to begin discussions on a longer-length movie, will soon start writing the script for my short film, have a another issue of the comic on the way...

Funny tho, I seem to have totally forgotten about the articles and film criticism. Oh well, whatever.

I've also entered myself in the annual Write A Novel in a Month Contest (I'd usually link that, but can't find it in my bookmarks). The motto for this contest is "Quantity, Not Quality", lol. Which is smart. Most people talk about writing a book (myself included) but never actually get around to it, never will. This will force me to write one even though it will suck. I'll at least know I'm capable of writing something that length. It's a good way to get myself into the groove of writing everyday, all day.

Kev wrote some nice things about me and my film on his blog, so it's only proper that I answer back. He says I'm the only person he's ever considered collaborating with, and the same goes for me. Kev's film stood out from all the others that year because he was the ONLY dude who had any sense of shot composition. He *directed*, plain and simple. Dude's film was full of shots of pipes and wires, and it looked awesome. Pipes and wires. Kev's film in any other hands would have been more boring than an interview with Mase. It had pipes and narration by a computer. It was composed of still photography. It was black and white. But see, he knows what he's doing. He's the one dude I've met that I'd trust as a director.

And while we're at it, let's talk Gerard. Well, let's not talk, let's see. This comic will rule. Maybe you can't tell from the sketches, but trust. Well of course you can tell from the sketches, cuz they dope as fuck.






peace.

10.12.2004

Ghost Stories

things only made sense in retrospective
looking back in cinescope and suspect video
where hands seemed softer then
the world harsher
and endings seemed to provide more closure

but as he stepped out from the eye socket
where light danced love sequences on darkness
rubbing his unfocus, forgetting the sunlight
he remembered that window pane
where he left his blurred reflections,
the faint impressions of his daydreams

his eye wandering, thinking of wondering
walking into wanderlust with wind waning
breeze down the crane of his neck
he crack steps concrete and hears his own back breaking

he, mother of blank and absence
somewhere his ghost womb doing ghostly things,
haunting dream attics but just wanting to sit in
on the reality of family dinners

he absently fingers his dick through his pocket
and prays hard to god and all that is holy
prays for a movie star's downfall
a 70s poetic performance
a black and white morality dipped
in noir and cigarette smoke,
a fade to black

his name somewhere in the credits,
floating up and flickering.

10.10.2004

The Beautiful Struggle

Had a good day at work, then had a bad day at work, then had an okay day at work. Basically, the night started off hella busy which was more amusing than anything else. The drinks were lined up down the bar, and trailed down the side of the ledge. I haven't seen a lineup like that in years. Tony and Maggy got slammed, I was on cash. Catherine came back on after her break and slid to bar, where she spent her time making crying monkey noises, adding to the night's amusement. Later, she dropped her till on the floor -- also funny.

Later on though Tony starts debating about Jill and Mark and all that shit and tells me that Ron called Jill a "fucking immigrant", and then tries to justify Ron's comments to me. This was the bad part of my day. Me and Tony did our usual shit-slinging and head-knocking, I hit the bar with a canister of whip cream, Maggy did her best to keep the mood light, although I was glad to hear her, as a tall polish white person, show a deep and intelligent understanding of the (angry) non-white position on these issues. (I think I scared her though, or at least weirded her out, with my passionate raving.)

Things calmed down a little later. The "ohman...ijustcamfromdaclubyo..." crazy guy was back tonight. I had to spend a good fifteen minutes uncouraging him to put on his shoes, convincing him he had the strength to stand up, leave the store, and go home. I don't know what drugs he's on, or what kinda crazy lives in his head, but dude has problems.

I was then glad to be gone from both the store and the people who work there (bless their hearts, but I had enough for one night...for a lifetime). Gerard picked me up and we went on to Purificacion's bday party. The only other Sbux employee there was Brian (the small one, not the Sasquatch one). Saw a bunch of flips who I haven't seen since highschool. It was the typical filipino party -- everyone was sitting around playing cards, acting as chill and laidback as humanly possible. I spent the night playing chess with G, some dude named Emannuel, and some chick who's name I've forgotten and thus named (for the purposes of proper blogging) Chess Master Fresh. Won one game (eat it, Fresh), lost the second (eff you Gerard, and your rooks too, beeeyotch).

Got home real late, like 5:30 am late. Which is the time that the store opens on weekdays, and baristas like me are ususally getting out of bed, not in. And thus, some semblance of closure on my post, a cyclical structure signifying the mundanity of life, the constant struggle, the relation between all events, raising issues of existential angst and the modern malaise.

peace.

10.05.2004

One More Down (Part I: The Actual Day)

Christianne has this thing called the birthday blues. I'm sure a lot of people experience something along the same lines, whether it be anxiety over getting older, stress from organizing a banging yet under-control party, or what have you. But her Blues are more sci-fi than that. Take this year, for example, where she spent the whole day with her eyes tearing, on the edge of a nervous/emotional breakdown, only to have it all end exactly at the stroke of midnight, feelings of content and happiness washing away the blue, the hands of her clock grasping a sponge dipped in psycho-therapeutical detergent.

My own birthday curse is less Harlan Ellison sci-fi and more Bridget Jones-ish social dumfoolery. (I made that word up. It sounds like something Bridget would say.) Take two years ago: I never actually throw myself parties, in the literal sense, so you can imagine my glee when I discovered that The Princess Bride (my favorite movie) was playing downtown at the Bloor theatre on the same day I sprang from my mother's crotch. Oh, it was so poetic, so appropriate, the perfect birthday idea. I was Inigo Montoya, and I had the six-fingered birthday curse in my sights.

But alas, the Perfect Birthday was not to be had. It's not that I had a bad time at the movie, but it was a let-down that my closest friends failed to show due to previously made engagements with homework, or, in the case of my less geeky friends, things that were decidedly not spending the night watching The Princess Bride. We then went off to the local pub to do some drinking, where I spent the night stomaching the sight of one of my (white!) friends flirting with my girlfriend. Fun.

Take this example, multiply it by twenty-two, and you have a fair psychological assessment of my ambivalence towards birthdays.

On my day this year, yesterday, the fourth of the tenth, I went with my gf downtown. She took me for my customary Sweet Chalet meal, which even for all its blandness (dowtown locations tend to be lacklustre compared to Mississauga joints), was fastastic just for the fact of being Sweet Chalet.

I then went to martial arts for the first time in two months, where I got tossed around the room by Sylvester like a blue rubber ball in a raquet ball court. Sly's one of the fighters in the club, a tall white stalwart made of oak and intimidation. Don't ask me why I asked to train with him. I paid for my decision, his Thai skip knees repeatedly punching holes in my flesh and my pride, three minute intervals (an infinity) at a time. Sifu Joey walked up to me at the end of the set, lightly kicked me in the thigh, and I collapsed in a crumple of bruised appendages and wheezy breaths. "Happy Birthday" said Sifu, dryly.

I had plans to meet up with Suzanne later in the evening, whom I haven't seen in months. Given that my body was having trouble forming coherent movements after martial arts, I would have much more enjoyed spending the night on the couch with a Bagel in my mouth. But naw, I made plans, plus Suzy had trucked it from downtown just to see me.

We made plans to meet at the 10:05pm show of Shaun of the Dead. I got there late at 10:12, which was okay because Suzanne herself was late. I did the wandering, did the staring at the marquee posters, did the riding of the escalators, did the stare-down with the suspicious security guard, did the balancing act on the curb, did the sitting down on the floor with my eyes closed and my head in my knees. All this took about an hour, when I finally faced facts that Suzanne was not showing.

I walked myself home without even a discman to pass the time or distract from the sound of my own sighing. I should have known better. I bought myself a birthday gift -- a bag of Ringolos for the walk home.

Another hour later, post-midnight, I heard a rapping at my window. It was, of course, Suzanne and her sister Jessica. Suzy did her usual song and dance, trying to blame the whole thing on me. They bought my forgiveness and appreciation with gifts, Jessica coming with the food (a cake and some ice cream, nice), Suzanne with the flava (a copy of WildStyle and a graf-art calendar, double nice).

After a trip to Rabba and some time spent ingesting sugar and fat, we went to my basement where they watched Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (props to my sister for the gift, my favorite movie from the past year), while I fell asleep on my couch, passed out, appropriately enough, in the fetal position.

peace.

(part II to come...)

10.02.2004

I vanna kill ninjas.

Went out for the traditional birthday family luncheon. Seeing as we've hit all the major local restaurants for the past few occasions, I wanted to try something new. We ended up at some cheap roadside Asian-fusion buffet. I was expecting a cheaper Mandarin type setup, like China Buffet. How to describe it. It was like a truck stop diner by way of a Chinese restaurant housed in a former Dairy Queen. A diner in the mood of Mandarin. I felt like we were on vacation in one of those rural hidden areas of the States, and we pulled off the road to grab some food at a random restaurant. It was one of those places people go to at the whim of an arbitrary decision, usually dicated by its close proximity your workplace or your house, and the realization you only have a couple of toonies in your wallet.

Nonetheless, I had a good time. Slumming it for your birthday is kinda interesting. The lemon chicken was cold and the green tea ice cream didn't taste like green tea. The huge fat people were hassling the owners about the bill. My parents and sister looked uncomfortable, and I laughed it off in my head. It's funny, because at the core, that is what my family is: uncomfortable with their surroundings. In all truth we could have been at any place in the world and our table would have nonetheless been filled with the same awkward silences.

This sounds bad but it's not. I love my family, and I loved them today. In that respect, I loved my meal. Happy birthday to me.

Chris' dad came back yesterday; he'll be home from now on. This is both good and bad for my gf, as although her family is now back together and under the same roof (good), I know that she and her dad will be arguing just like old times (bad). Still, I think the good will outweight the bad here. Lol, which reminds me of the great article I found in the paper today, about "mushy bagels". My gf would understand.

After work yesterday I went out to eat with two of the Sbux/KATA alliance. We saw this dude who works security at the mall and trains at KATA. He also used to go to school with Chris, where, as I know, he used to have a thing for her. He's asked her out in the past and all that bullshit, used to drop by at her workplace to visit her. So here I meet him again for the second time, and he goes "oh right, you're dating that girl from Starbucks, right? Uh....Christina?" lol. What a loser. Why even pretend that you don't know her name, like you only have a vague recollection of her? In trying to stay cool, dude layed out all his cards for me to see. I played it off tho. I like to keep my cards to myself for the most part.

It's funny how you can do this. Z was talking about how she wants to stay away from the store drama and gossip. And it's true, I've forgotten the value of this mindset. Keeping quiet and distant from things, you see where everyone stands. You know what hands people are holding, whereas same people don't even know that you're in the game. The Art of War, don't start a war.

Can you tell I've been watching a bit too much of The Apprentice? Man, business-minded people live in a totally different world. I just read the previous paragraph over again, and I'm laughing at myself.

Speaking of the Apprentice, this women's team is horrible. It's embarassing how bad they are. They make me embarassed to be a woman. And I'm not even a woman. They're setting the women's movement back one stereotype at a time -- catty, crybaby, emotionally unstable, and so on, a new one each week. I still vouch for Ivana tho, because at least she fulfills the stereotype of "really hot". Yum.

peace.

"There's a little Imelda in all of us."

It's been a good week for canadiasian (peace, kev) arts. Caught a screening of Imelda on Tuesday and enjoyed it thoroughly. I don't know much about filipino politics, other than very shallow basic facts, so this was somewhat of a watershed moment of mine. I knew the name since I was a puppy, but I never knew her story. Fascinating. Not just the movie, but the woman herself. So charasmatic, so smart, so beautiful, so insane. Like my wonderfully witty brother would say, "she crazy".

Apparently the filmmakers had only scheduled a 15 minute interview with her...and she ended up talking for four hours. Imagine the luck. I was wondering how they got so much access to her, how they got her to agree to this. And the answer...she didn't agree. She just crazy.

This is playing downtown now, at the Carlton I believe, and I recommend it to everyone. Not just flips.

And then on Thursday my gf took me out to see the fu-GEN production of Bananna Boys, which I can't even begin to describe. It was without a doubt the best stage production I have ever seen. Granted, I've only seen about (...counts hands on fingers...) six other plays in my whole life. But still, BBoys (grin) blew them all out of the water. The story, the performances, the use of the stage, the sound design, the choreography, the props and design....everything.

I connected to this play in so many ways. Both with the subject matter, but also with the creative energy running through it, the obvious pride of being both an Asian production and this tiny indie one at that. You could not tell that this was the playwright's first full-length work. I've seen plays by established, respected writers (hi, Judith Thompson) that really just sucked compared to this.

I could feel the energy, and it felt damned good. I need to be around this more often. I need to stay immersed in it. I spend too much time politickin with the haters, the doubters, the just plain confused. I'm always at a loss explaining to people what I'm doing with my life, with my time off from school. I should stop doing that. I need to surround myself with a different type of energy.

Funny, Kev is talking to me right now about the exact same shit. I told you. Energy. Something's in the air. I'm hungry.

peace.