Danny ChaiHenry has the most loose definition of “wit” on the planet.
It is a difficult thing being “friends” with David and Henry. By the way, it’s interesting to me how putting “quotes” around words changes the feelings of things. I think I’ll put it around “words” randomly. Anyway, it’s tough being acquaintances with David and Henry because they both have the youngest child mentality – well first of all, they’re spoiled, which has caused them to be lazy, but beyond that, the thought that most dominates their consciousness is how they can maximally annoy the people around them.
There was this old TV show called Edge TV that no one besides myself saw on Fox. But if I recall correctly, Tracy Ullman and Jennifer Aniston were on it. Anyway, there was this one sketch called Life of a Fly that just killed me. It was just a camera moving around erratically like a fly flying, a buzzing sound and a voice repeating “Where’s the feces? Where’s the feces? Where’s the feces?” Amusing. And in the tradition of Letterman, they played it 3 times in half an hour.
Anyway, David and Henry, if you could hear their thought process, it would be like “what actions could I take to maximize my annoyingness / second throughput?” I would give examples, but it’s easiest just to look here. The point is, never tell either of them what annoys you because, like Silas, they will never forget and make a point to do that daily. Even if you’re not around. They’ll do it just for the practice. Argh. Anyway, to be frank, sometimes they don’t know when to quit and it just pisses me off proper.
5 years of Stanford and Henry still can’t spell “exaggerate.”
Anyway, I live with two of the huffiest people I know. It’s great. Incidentally, both are improving remarkably at Bust A Move. I no longer win every single time, and have actually lost entire games (not just individual rounds).
David wrote:
Maybe danny, you can try to find a band here at Stanford, or people
that share your passion for music. I know it's gay and trite and so
overdone, but why not? And since there are no good drummers and
electric guitarists at Stanford maybe start a band with what ya
got--maybe the All Campus Praise 1998 Wo Team? You can take out anyone
who you think sucks.
But that means no one would be left. (Ouch) OK, here’s the thing (David’s friend who thinks we’re all prideful should prolly scroll down a couple pages), maybe this is bad, but it’s just I have pretty high standards in regards to musicianship. Anyone who’s heard me spew about how music should be played understand this. Anyway, I’ve met very few people in my life who meet my perhaps unreasonable standards. If I were to form a band, I would have 2 criteria – 1) They have to play their respective instruments better than I can play that instrument 2) In the case of an instrument I don’t play, such as drums, they have to be able to play their instrument better than I can understand that instrument.
Point 2 may need some clarification. What I mean is, say in the case of drums, I know enough drums to be able to program it on a drum machine, even if I can’t physically play it. A drum player up to my standards needs to be better at playing than I am at imagining, if that makes sense.
The problem is, at Stanford, among the Christians, I don’t know anyone who meets criteria 1 (including the drums). I’m slipping into seriously arrogant mode so if that bothers you, you should stop here. But anyway, if I were to play in a band, that’s the second thing, what the heck would I play? Piano? I would probably have to be better at guitar or even bass and be like Sting or Perry Farrell. At any rate, I don’t expect anyone to be better than me at piano because I’ve been playing it my whole life. But in my mind, I’m just a guitar / bass hack, and not particularly good at either. So in my mind, if they’re not better than me, they’re not good enough, since I’m just a hack.
Hmm. I may be offending some people here. There actually several good bassists at Stanford, most notably George and Paul Taylor. It’s just, in my view, they’re not sufficiently better than me. Does this make sense? They’re better, just not enough better. Maybe, like I said, my standards are too high.
Wait, I should add a 3rd criteria – they have to have a strong sense of musicality, which is a separate thing from skill. This is kind of vague, but I know what I’m talking about. So it disqualifies everyone from that Los Altos church except their drummer. He rocks. Not many people have this musicality. The ones from Stanford are Henry and Michele Chung. Not coincidentally, I handpicked them to be on the All Campus Retreat praise team a couple years ago. But anyway.
So I’ve known very few people in my life who fit my criteria. Definitely Kris Song does. The man is incredible. From what I hear, Paul Lee (Walter’s brother), the old old KCPC electric guitarist was the same way, as was I think Chuckie, the old KCPC bassist/electric guitarist who’s at Berklee College of Music in Boston. These are the only people I know who fit my criteria. So I guess there’s my band. Me on keys, Kris on drums, Paul on guitar, and Chuckie on bass. That is a seriously rocking band.
Alas, realistically, in my current sphere, there’s really no one I could form a band with. I just have too high standards.
And for David’s benefit, in regards to everything I just wrote, I’m right and I think I’m right.
So Andrew’s latest bizarro entry reminded me of these movies I saw on the place to and from East Asia. We flew on China Eastern. I don’t know. I think in the future, I won’t fly with a China based airline. All the food is Chinese-Western and they only show Chinese movies the entire flight. Do you know what I mean by Chinese-Western? It’s basically what Chinese people think Western food is like. You know, how like Koreans put ketchup and mayo on their salads. I once had a “cheeseburger” that consisted of a bun, meat, and a fried egg. Chinese-Western.
At any rate, they only showed Chinese films the entire flight. The thing about many Chinese films is that they have both English and Chinese subtitles. I don’t know why. But a whole bunch of them do. And every one on the flight did. So most of the time, I wasn’t really interested, but a couple of the films, for whatever reason, were really interesting to me. So I’m gonna describe them, even though like Andrew’s entry, it will be absolutely interest-free to all of you.
The first one I saw (they showed many but most of them were incredibly boring. Only 2 stuck out) was about this Japanese woman who for some reason gets stuck in China during some war. She doesn’t speak Chinese, and I guess her husband got killed or something like that. Anyway, one of the Chinese decides to marry her, and he gets persecuted for that and everything, as does she. But eventually she fits in. Much later in her life, she gets to return to Japan. And it’s weird for her, because all she remembers of Japan is from her early childhood. She can’t even speak Japanese well; it takes a while for her to remember.
I can’t remember why exactly the Chinese officer marries the chick but it struck me as random, much like how Jet Li marries that Japanese chick in Fist of Legend (co-starring FiCS’ own James Kim) for no apparent reason.
At any rate, the reason the movie intrigued me is because she’s so conflicted at the end. I can’t remember the details, but in the end she faces a choice – whether to stay in Japan, with her family, or go back to China, and rejoin her husband. It’s a question of what her identity is. It’s a little more complicated, like how she manages to go to Japan, and stuff like that, but in essence, it’s a conflict about who she is. Interesting movie.
The second movie was even more interesting. I was thoroughly entertained by this movie, and I hope I can somehow find it. It’s this story about this bookseller in Beijing whose girlfriend dumps him. So he goes crazy. He starts by hiring people to yell really loudly outside her apartment complex, you know, about how much he loves her and stuff. It was actually a really funny movie – you have to see how he interacts with the yellers and how the neighbors all get pissed off.
Anyway, essentially he’s a stalking ex-boyfriend psycho maniac, and he’s constantly following her, trying to find out where she is, and so forth. In the course of his stalking, he runs into some guy, and breaks the guy’s laptop.
Anyway, later, the guy finds out where the bookseller lives and stalks him, trying to get money for the broken laptop. He could ask for more, but he just wants justice. Anyway, the bookseller doesn’t want to give money to him, but the guy keeps stalking him.
He eventually sets up a meeting with his ex’s new boyfriend, and wants money from him for some reason – he stole something from him or broke something of his or something like that, and the computer guy comes along so he can collect. Actually what happens is this – the psycho guy wants to kill, well not kill, but maim the new boyfriend. But the computer guy is a big believer that people are reasonable if you just talk to them. For example, he talked to the psycho bookseller, and reasoned with him, and got him to agree. So what happens is the computer guy sets up the meeting so they can reasonably discuss everything like rational men.
When they get to the restaurant, the computer guy gets a new laptop from the psycho guy. But he finds that the psycho guy has brought like a machete and plans to cut off the new boyfriend’s hand. And when he finds this out, the computer guy freaks and thinks he has to stop him. So eventually, the psycho guy has to tie him up to a chair upstairs.
Anyway, as Andrew would say, chaos ensues. This movie was absolutely fascinating to me. One, because it was thoroughly entertaining. Just a lot of humor, good situations and plot twists, and just an interesting movie. It was just a funny movie.
But more than that, it was fascinating to me because it presented life in China as being much different from what I had learned. Really, the movie was like a Gen-X movie, which really surprised me, because as far as I know, it was made in China, not the West. So the characters (all mid 20s or so) were not married, their families weren’t really a part of the story, they were pretty materialistic (actually very), into sex, and they had this consumer attitude. The guy spent RMB like it was nothing.
This of course, was mixed in with the realities of life in China, meaning they lived in pretty shabby apartments, his shop is just a little booth in a big market, they all ride bikes, stuff like that. You know, you’re always told (at least I was) how the Chinese are so poor, and how life there is so different, much more collectivist and family oriented, but this movie was really very Gen-Xist, just in China. It was really weird for me.
I guess what I realized is that there is no one type of life in China. I think the kind of life I was exposed to was unique, i.e. the starving student. But there are plenty of relatively rich people there, with their cell phones, consumer electronics, and stuff like that. Plenty of poor people also, but it’s a lot more varied than I had realized.
And there (apparently) is like a Gen-X class in China, who live like they did in this movie. That was enlightening to me.
At any rate, this movie was fascinating, and really interesting. And entertaining. I hope someone can find it for me. Maybe Andrew has it. But I highly recommend it. Even if I don’t know the name of the movie.