Suggs

Today's Thoughts, In Others' Words

2011-05-02T09:21:00.001-05:00

As surely as I live, declares the Sovereign LORD, I take no pleasure in the death of the wicked, but rather that they turn from their ways and live.

-Ezekiel 33:11

The world is a fine place and worth the fighting for and I hate very much to leave it.

-Ernest Hemingway

If the people we love are stolen from us, the way to have them live on is to never stop loving them. Buildings burn, people die, but real love is forever.

-The Crow

At some point in my life I decided, rightly or wrongly, that there are many situations in this life that I can't do much about – acts of terrorism, feelings of nationalistic prejudice, cold war, etc. – so what I should do is concentrate on the situations that my energy can affect.

-Jim Henson

No matter what side of the argument you are on, you always find people on your side that you wish were on the other.

- Jascha Heifetz

Believe those who are seeking the truth. Doubt those who find it.

-Andre Gide

Why I Closed My LinkedIn Account

2011-03-24T20:39:00.003-05:00

Today I closed my LinkedIn account. It's something I've thought about doing for months, if not years, but couldn't bring myself to do because of this nagging hope that it would someday become useful to me. I think the best way to explain why I got rid of it is to start with why I joined in the first place...

I love social technology. It's the reason that I can find a friend to go out with that's near me and the best place to meet them as rated by thousands of other people within minutes. I'm always interested in the next big thing in social tech because I love being efficient and staying connected to people.

A few years ago I took a trip to California and visited my good friend Kurtiss in San Francisco. He hipped me in to a new social service that texted multiple friends at once what was essentially a Facebook status update. Seemed cool, but only if your friends were on it, and basically no one east of California or outside New York subscribed (at the time I lived in Ohio). I signed up for the service anyways because Kurtiss was on it, so I would get his updates, but also because he told me that it was growing and likely to be huge. Eventually, the service did get huge and now you all know it as Twitter. (check out Kurtiss at www.twitter.com/kurtiss)

A few years before that, I was one of the first non-college students to get a Facebook account. I had a girlfriend at the time who was in college and hence privileged enough to have an account, so I had a front row seat to everything I wished MySpace was. I couldn't wait to get on Facebook, and once I was on I couldn't wait for everyone else to get over themselves and get on it. These days it's kinda strange to find someone who isn't on Facebook.

All this is to say that I am very glad to be an early adopter of a social service in hopes that it will go somewhere useful eventually. And now we come to LinkedIn...

In 2008 I had 2 different people request a connection with me on LinkedIn, so I researched it a little and it seemed like it could be useful to me professionally. At the time, Facebook wasn't great at being a tool for professional promotion. In fact, it was still seen in a very unprofessional light. So I signed up and immediately was burned by the service. There was a function where you could input your Gmail address and password and supposedly send some of your contacts invites to LinkedIn. I meant to send around 5, and instead LinkedIn sent an invite to everyone in my address book. SHADY. That meant that every member of my church in Ohio that had an email address got an invite. That meant I got tons of confused 40+ year olds asking me what LinkedIn was and why they should join. I had to explain to all of them what it was and that I didn't mean to send them an invite. This went on for months after the incident because LinkedIn kept hounding my contacts with further emails that looked like they were from me. And for months I had to apologize to annoyed people asking why I kept inviting them to join LinkedIn. It was nothing short of infuriating. Granted, this was a bit of a rookie mistake on my part, but it was absolutely intentionally deceptive and unethical on LinkedIn's part. I should have just cancelled the account then and there, but I gave it another chance because I'll take some techno-lumps if the result is being a part of great social technology in the long run.

There are other reasons why I closed the account. I think it's not very user friendly. I think it is feature lacking. I can promote myself on the internet in better ways through Facebook, Craigslist, Monster, Twitter, or my own website. But, today I finally came to the most important conclusion:

I can report that in 3 years I have never, ever gained anything from using LinkedIn. Ever. It has been a giant waste of time.

Dammit.

P.S. I have been itching for a good reason to close my MySpace account. It's utterly useless to me right now. It only lives on for 2 reasons. Nostalgia and a tiny glimmer of hope that MySpace will turn around and become relevant again in any way through some innovation. That glimmer is very quickly fading.

The Katie Thompson Incident

2011-01-17T10:16:00.002-05:00

Something very cool happened to me the other day that I think deserves blogging.

I tweeted this before going to play guitar in the subway:  

@bdebois 
Busking at Columbus Circle 1 train downtown platform from 2 to 4ish with Zach Miko. Come say hello! 
(http://twitter.com/#!/bdebois/status/24534796059283457)

Later, my friend Amiee Collier (who lives in Cleveland) texted to me "Is this you?" and referenced this tweet:

@katiethompsonKT 
There are two guys singin "halleluia" at the 59th street subway platform (1)with a guitar. It was so amazing. I even "woo!-ed" at them:)
(http://twitter.com/#!/katiethompsonKT/status/24552127846162432)

I confirmed to Amiee that it was about us and she said "you got "woo!ed" by one of my idols"  

The amazing coincidence is that Amiee just happens to subscribe to my tweets and Katie Thompson's, read both, and put them together in her head. Pretty awesome. Then I tweeted:  

@bdebois 
Holy crap! Zach and I got tweeted about by Katie Thompson! @katiethompsonkt http://www.twitter.com/katiethompsonkt/status/24552127846162432 
(http://twitter.com/#!/bdebois/status/24569681054535680)

And that's when I got a second and equally awesome shoutout from Katie:

@katiethompsonKT
@bdebois ahahahhahaaaaa:) ! You guys were so good! Broke my heart- so good:) 
(http://twitter.com/#!/katiethompsonKT/status/24586389475557376)

And THAT was a good day.

For more on Katie Thompson (who is a FANTASTIC singer/pianist), check out her website (http://www.katiethompson.com) or youtube (http://www.youtube.com/user/woakate).

And of course, for more on me: (http://www.barrydebois.com)

New York... The First 2 Months

2010-03-18T22:55:00.002-05:00

I wanted to give an update on my goings on since I've moved to New York.

These first 2 months have been really great, and such a change from my life in Ohio. In the first 6 weeks I have worked for a convention staffing company, got headshots taken, got a job with Spirit Cruises as a singing waiter, met so many great people (some famous, some musical theatre famous, and many neither), went to a few auditions (some great, and some not so), did a little modeling, made connections with people I haven't seen in years, and made a lot of new friends too. It has really been quite a ride, and daily I say to myself and to friends how glad I am that I came out here. No matter the outcome, I know I made the right decision for right now. All I can hope for is the clarity of this calling for all my major life decisions.

At my apartment in Astoria, we had an overlap of roommates/subletters so I had to move out for 2 weeks. As it worked out I'm spending these 2 weeks in Brooklyn. I've not quite been here a week yet. The new apartment is so beautiful, but it is a longer ride from the city than my place in Astoria and I'm anxious to get back to the life I was beginning to carve out there. I really can't complain though because through this sublet, I've met more wonderful people and got to be involved in the reading of a new musical being co-authored by the lease holder of this apartment.

For the past 2 days, I have also been doing background work for the show "30 Rock" on NBC. It was so much fun and I got to rub elbows with most of the leads on the show! If you want to catch the episode, it will be the season finale this season. I played a wedding attendee. For most of the scenes it will likely be hard to spot me but there is one quick shot where I walk in front of the very beautiful and talented Julianne Moore. (Amazing!!) It was an awesome experience and I look forward to doing it again.

Spirit Cruises are really great lunch or dinner cruises that take you around the southern tip of Manhattan where you get delicious food, beautiful views of the city, and a breathtaking view of the Statue of Liberty. There is also a DJ who plays dinner and dance music, and the waiters (like myself) perform Pop and R&B songs along the way. In case anyone is interested in seeing me on a Spirit Cruise, here's a link to their website: www.spiritcruises.com When you book the cruise, mention my name and that you'd like to be on a cruise that I'm singing on. There are group rates available too.

While I was looking for a job, I also had time to revamp my website! If you haven't had a chance to look it over yet, give it a look-see now! www.barrydebois.com

Over all the city has been wonderful to me, and please keep sending up good thoughts and prayers as I continue this adventure. I miss my Ohio friends and family very much, and look forward to the next time I can make it there. Keep supporting the arts and Downtown Canton while I'm away! Here are some of my suggestions:

www.artsinstark.com

www.playersguildtheatre.com <-(vote for their "Annie" competition)

www.cantonfirstfriday.com

www.irisdowntown.com

The City That Never Sleeps... yeah, that suits me

2010-01-07T16:33:00.006-05:00

A lot of my friends have asked me what my next project is, or if I'm auditioning for this or that, and I've had to keep skirting the answer with "Oh, I'm just enjoying a break from shows", or "I think I'll be busy". The truth is... and I can finally say it... I'm moving to New York City!

This is completely impractical.

There are better looking, more talented, better connected people that go and don't make it.

I have a good job.

My family and friends are here.

I am building a name for myself here and have lots of opportunities to perform and do good things in Ohio.

I'm 3 years away from 30.

I know. No really, I know. You are reading the words of a person who is at times cripplingly practical. And yet, after years of consideration, I'm ready to try this. I've answered most of these reasons not to do it with a pretty convincing argument. I don't care to list them all here because, frankly, I don't have to convince anyone but myself that it's the right thing to do. But for those of you who care about me and are concerned, it's really going to be OK.

SO... For you who have been so wonderful to me through the years while I've been performing around North East Ohio, thank you so much. I'll keep you posted about my endeavours in the city, and hopefully *knock on wood* I'll get a tour that comes through Ohio and you can see me again! And let's be real, some day I'm probably coming back here. It might even be sooner than I hope, but it certainly won't be with a head held low. For now, this is really what I feel called to do.

Love and Gratitude,
Barry DeBois
www.barrydebois.com

Co-Hosting My101.7 Thursday Nov 12 from 7am to 9am...

2009-11-11T10:28:00.002-05:00

I will be Co-Hosting on MY101.7 with Gary Rivers from 7am to 9am on Thursday, November 12. I'll be chatting with Gary and promoting "An Old Fashioned Canton Christmas" (www.cantonchristmas.org).

If you don't live in the Canton area, you can listen online at www.my1017.com!

If Only In My Dreams

2009-11-04T08:31:00.008-05:00

I'm finally liking Christmas again. I don't think I ever hated it, but I started off loving it, possibly too much, and it's been a bit of a roller coaster since then.

When I was a kid, Christmas was one more magical escape. It was another chance to believe in wishes and elves and flying. I remember feeling my excitement grow as the world became increasingly red, green, and white. People were kinder to each other, and there was always this sense of anticipation. I loved every ceremony. Trimming the tree, wrapping the gifts, Christmas Eve candle light service, waking up way too early at Mom's and seeing what Santa left, breakfast at Grandma's with the fancy plates and silverware, then off to Dad's for more gifts and food.

But as with nearly everything I loved as a child, there was a fall. A disenchantment. An earth-rattling disappointment. Like the moment you realize that all the people you know and look up to, your parents, your minister, your grandparents, your teachers, are completely fallible and flawed. I don't remember what age I was, but I do remember the first Christmas that I no longer loved it. I don't know what hurt more, my loss of "Christmas Spirit", or my knowledge of my loss. Christmas came and went that year and I was emotionally unaffected. I felt robbed. I mourned the loss of an era in my life when I could just enjoy and not question.

When I was a senior in High School I became deeply spiritual. I read the Bible daily and hung out with Christians who weren't afraid to answer my tough questions. More importantly, I wasn't afraid to ask these people tough questions. That was an enormous change from my childhood experience up to that point. Questions were generally not accepted with a welcoming conversation. I became very Christ-centered, and my view of the Christmas season had a new season of it's own in my life. One of deep spiritual connection and holy gratitude. But as I have learned with everything that's shiny and new, the shine eventually fades and you're left with realness again. For better or worse.

Then I became an adult. Christmas became buying shit. Who wants what and hasn't been bought it yet. And with a family my size, that's an expensive and stressful chore. Add a girlfriend into the mix, and you're a broke young professional running around on Christmas Eve with all the other dads at the mall buying useless crap and resenting everyone's importance they've placed on this ritual.

Why why why couldn't Christmas be what it was when I was a kid? You were chauffeured around, the world looked like Disney World, and everyone made such an effort to speak nicely to you and each other. And perhaps most importantly, you weren't socially obligated to give useless crap to every one. When I was growing up, my family could probably have been described as economically lower-class across the board, but by the time I was an adult, everyone was doing just fine financially. We didn't need to buy each other sweaters because we had 7 sweaters in the closet. I wondered how to make it all worth it again. Then I came up with an idea for our family to take all the money that we would spend on each other, and give it to a family that was actually in need. The kids would still get their gifts, but the adults would adopt a family.

Finally! A purpose for the gifts again. We bought for a family what was probably a pretty wonderful Christmas one year, and I felt really great about it. Of course, you can't please everyone. My Grandma, one of the sweetest little ladies you could meet, wasn't happy. She wanted at Christmas to buy things for her family. I learned that year that getting gifts from Grandma was as much a gift to her as it was to me. She loves blessing her family and missed that immensely the year we adopted a family. Right or wrong, we didn't want to break Grandma's heart, so we went back to buying each other gifts.

So where am I headed with this? I think the best moments I've had at Christmas were the times when I was closest to God, the few times when I gave a family member the perfect gift that wasn't just another box on the pile, and when I was helping someone or a cause that truly needed it. Well, those first and second instances, I can't help you with. But the last one, giving to where it is truly needed, I would implore you to do.

The areas to which we are all drawn to give are different, and that's ok. You can't save the world alone, but you can make it better in the ways and areas that you are able to. Personally, I am most drawn to the the needs of kids and the arts. That's why being attached to an organization like An Old Fashioned Canton Christmas is really important to me, and easy for me to pour work into. I believe in the 2 organizations that will benefit from our production. The Stark County Hunger Task Force and The Canton Palace Theatre are time-tested organizations that do great work and are in great need.

Shameless plug, or sincere appeal? I guess all that I care is that you read it and will consider it. I also think you won't be disappointed with this production. It's really packed with entertainment for all ages. If you're interested in the show, which is November 14th at 7:30pm at the Palace Theatre, go to www.cantonchristmas.org for more information, or www.cantonpalacetheatre.org for tickets.

May this season be your favorite yet.

Obama In Yo Face

2009-10-20T07:51:00.002-05:00

Obama™ Tweets about Healthcare

2009-10-19T14:56:00.002-05:00

http://twitter.com/BarackObama/status/4997613990

"Health insurers are trying to mislead you—but their smoke and mirrors won't work this time. Watch: http://bit.ly/1qtBtn #hc09"
from @barackobama

This is a strange tweet to come from a President of the United States. I'm all for new forms of communication, but can we keep a hint of professionalism? This almost sounds like it's snipped from a Cartoon. There's nearly an audible "bwahahaaaa" after it. Evidence that most broad communication panders to morons. Not that what it's saying is necessarily wrong. Or that only morons watch cartoons.

Pumpkin Head

2009-10-07T11:41:00.014-05:00

A lot of people asked me how I made my Facebook profile picture, so I thought I'd give a quick rundown of the process. Both of the programs I used are free and legal downloads, so feel free to take a stab at it yourself:

I put this picture in Inkscape (http://www.inkscape.org/) and traced the bitmap image so I had a single tone vector representation of the picture.

Then I essentially inverted the color (actually I cut the image out of another color so I had just one blob of my face).

Next, I did a Google image search to find a suitable picture of a pumpkin and pumpkin innards.

I used Paint.net (http://www.getpaint.net/) to brighten the inside of the pumpkin and make it glow.

Then I basically punched the face out of the pumpkin innards using Inkscape.

Lastly, I overlaid the face on the pumpkin, added a little shadow with some Inkscape magic and tada!

Browser Choice

2009-10-07T08:59:00.006-05:00

There's been a lot of buzz recently about choice in browsers. People seem to come down hard on Microsoft for packaging Internet Explorer with Windows, and I really don't see why. Here's an article describing how Windows 7 will be sold in Europe without a browser:

http://mashable.com/2009/10/07/eu-browserless-windows-7/

I don't agree with this at all. Microsoft has every right to bundle IE with Windows, whatever your opinion of IE may be. Just as they can bundle Paint, Notepad, and anything else they want to give away. They spend millions on the engineering of Internet Explorer, and if they want to hand it out with the OS, more power to them. Actually, if they want to throw in Word and Excel too, I'd be happy as a clam.

Honda isn't legally forced to give you the option of a Chevy radio. They give you their standard sound system and if you want to swap it out for something else, that's your choice.

Now, would I suggest using Internet Explorer as your default browser? Absolutely not. Just as I would not use a factory sound system in a car. The reasons are many and range from safety to taste. If you're happy with IE and you keep up on all your Windows security updates, then knock yourself out and use it.

The problem is, people don't know there are options in browsers. If they do, they don't know why there are options, and what those options are. I think Google did a great job of putting together a website to help explain what browsers are and what the popular options are:

http://www.whatbrowser.org/

It appears to be informative and lacking any bias to Google's own browser (Chrome).

So, Microsoft, feel free to package any free software you want with your operating system, and I'll go ahead and replace anything that sucks on my own.

RENT opens Friday and goes Viral w/ Video Clip

2009-09-08T06:00:00.003-05:00

Once again, RENT at the Players Guild opens this Friday, September 11th! Here is a video of one of the songs taken at our sitzprobe (first rehearsal with the band) this past Sunday:

YouTube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0pVXP2P-a3M
Facebook:
http://www.facebook.com/video/video.php?v=126874498257

Please share this video with your friends!

Performances are:

Fri. Sept 11th - 8pm
Sat. Sept 12th - 8pm
Sun. Sept 13th - 2:30pm
Fri. Sept 18th - 8pm
Sat. Sept 19th - 8pm
Sun. Sept 20th - 2:30pm*
Fri. Sept 25th - 8pm*
Sat. Sept 26th - 8pm
Sun. Sept 27th - 2:30pm

*performances that I am playing Roger, otherwise I'm playing Steve

Box Office: (330) 453-7617 (Tues- Sat. 10am-2pm)
or
http://www.playersguildtheatre.com/ticketing/showdates.php?s_id=34

Order today!

http://www.barrydebois.com/

Leopard, Bloody Leopard

2009-09-02T07:44:00.004-05:00

As many of you know, I am an Apple nut and I'm pretty excited about the new OS I ordered, Snow Leopard (OS X 10.6). Because I'm a big nerd, I downloaded the desktop background of the now fairly recognizable snow leopard used in Apple's marketing for my work PC. I noticed, when the image filled my entire large monitor at work, that the leopard had blood spattered around his mouth. I thought, wow, that's pretty ballsy of Apple to use in their marketing. Then I went back to http://www.apple.com/ and saw that the blood was missing. So for the desktop background, they left the bloody maw of the beast in tact, but for the major promotional image, they "photoshopped" out the gore. Understandably, I'd say. It's all the cooler to know, though, that the image they are using to promote Leopard is not only the formidable looking Snow Leopard, but her just after making a bloody kill. Awesome.

See blown up images side by side
See original desktop background

RENT

2009-08-19T10:19:00.008-05:00

As you've probably heard from me by now in one way or another (i.e. Facebook, Twitter, shouting at you in a bar), I'm in RENT at the Players Guild Theatre! I am playing Steve and understudying Roger.

Performances are:

Fri. Sept 11th - 8pm
Sat. Sept 12th - 8pm
Sun. Sept 13th - 2:30pm
Fri. Sept 18th - 8pm
Sat. Sept 19th - 8pm
Sun. Sept 20th - 2:30pm*
Fri. Sept 25th - 8pm*
Sat. Sept 26th - 8pm
Sun. Sept 27th - 2:30pm

*performances that I am playing Roger

Box Office: (330) 453-7617 (Tues- Sat. 10am-2pm)
or
http://www.playersguildtheatre.com/ticketing/showdates.php?s_id=34

So what can I tell you about this production? Well, it's a spirited and talented cast of people who really GET this show. The messages of love, friendship, and hope in the face of death, pour out from this experienced cast. Some of these songs are really going to blow you away. The band is ROCKIN and air-guitar inducing. The staging is very cool, with a few tips of the hat to the original production, and some inspired new things to see in terms of set design. The set is a big dirty playground of a canvas for the cast to perform on.

Bonus! We're making a cast recording! CD's will be available opening night and at every performance, and what I've heard of the recordings is really fantastic. It was a blast going into the studio with such a talented group of people, under such fine musical direction and production.

If you don't know anything about RENT, here's a synopsis:

Rent is based loosely on Puccini's opera La Bohème. It follows a year in the lives of seven friends living the disappearing Bohemian lifestyle in New York's East Village. AIDS and both its physical and emotional complications pervade the lives of Roger, Mimi, Tom Collins, and Angel; Maureen deals with her chronic infidelity through performance art; her partner, Joanne, wonders if their relationship is worth the trouble; Benjamin has sold out his Bohemian ideals in exchange for a hefty income and is on the outs with his former friends; and Mark, an aspiring filmmaker, feels like an outsider to life in general, always behind the camera recording the events but never playing a part. Rent is easily one of the most touching modern rock musicals ever written.

The musical received accolades such as the Pulitzer Prize for Drama, Tony Award for Best Musical, Tony Award for Best Book, Tony Award for Best Score, Drama Desk for Outstanding Book and Drama Desk’s Outstanding Musical.

And now I take off my salesman's hat and give you an actual blog post...

If you've never seen RENT, and you've lived in NE Ohio all of your life, expect to be taken just slightly out of your comfort zone. In what ways? RENT dives into a world that is very different from one that we often see in Canton. This, to me, is a beautiful thing. I love the relative safety, quaintness, and home-town feel that I grew up in here, but there are real people, with real lives, that live, love, and survive very differently from us. I think that RENT paints a beautiful, honest picture of a lifestyle that is different from what many of us experience here. So often artists, African Americans, homosexuals, and drug addicts, are portrayed as caricatures that are a wacky sidekick or comic relief. In RENT, they are the real people that the story centers around. The masks are off and the humans are shown on stage. I think it's an important production to bring to Canton, as I am personally passionate about opening people's eyes to a world that is earth-sized, not state, or city, or family sized. It's something I work on in my own head, and encourage others to do the same.

Also, the music ranges from rock to pop-rock to gospel in influence. It's at times jumping, crazy, exciting fun, and at times gut-wrenchingly beautiful.

So what are you waiting for?! Go to the Players Guild website, or call the box office (330-453-7617) to reserve your tickets to this groundbreaking production for North East Ohio.

"Let it enfold you" by Charles Bukowski

2009-05-22T09:40:00.002-05:00

This is a poem that struck me; shared by surviving myself, and written by Charles Bukowski

Let it enfold you
by Charles Bukowski

either peace or happiness,
let it enfold you

when i was a young man
I felt these things were
dumb,unsophisticated.
I had bad blood,a twisted
mind, a pecarious
upbringing.

I was hard as granite,I
leered at the
sun.
I trusted no man and
especially no
woman.

I was living a hell in
small rooms, I broke
things, smashed things,
walked through glass,
cursed.
I challenged everything,
was continually being
evicted,jailed,in and
out of fights,in and aout
of my mind.
women were something
to screw and rail
at,i had no male
freinds,

I changed jobs and
cities,I hated holidays,
babies,history,
newspapers, museums,
grandmothers,
marriage, movies,
spiders, garbagemen,
english accents,spain,
france,italy,walnuts and
the color
orange.
algebra angred me,
opera sickened me,
charlie chaplin was a
fake
and flowers were for
pansies.

peace an happiness to me
were signs of
inferiority,
tenants of the weak
an
addled
mind.

but as I went on with
my alley fights,
my suicidal years,
my passage through
any number of
women-it gradually
began to occur to
me
that I wasn't diffrent

from the
others, I was the same,

they were all fulsome
with hatred,
glossed over with petty
greivances,
the men I fought in
alleys had hearts of stone.
everybody was nudging,
inching, cheating for
some insignificant
advantage,
the lie was the
weapon and the
plot was
emptey,
darkness was the
dictator.

cautiously, I allowed
myself to feel good
at times.
I found moments of
peace in cheap
rooms
just staring at the
knobs of some
dresser
or listening to the
rain in the
dark.
the less i needed
the better i
felt.

maybe the other life had worn me
down.
I no longer found
glamour
in topping somebody
in conversation.
or in mounting the
body of some poor
drunken female
whose life had
slipped away into
sorrow.

I could never accept
life as it was,
i could never gobble
down all its
poisons
but there were parts,
tenous magic parts
open for the
asking.

I re formulated
I don't know when,
date,time,all
that
but the change
occured.
something in me
relaxed, smoothed
out.
i no longer had to
prove that i was a
man,

I did'nt have to prove
anything.

I began to see things:
coffe cups lined up
behind a counter in a
cafe.
or a dog walking along
a sidewalk.
or the way the mouse
on my dresser top
stopped there
with its body,
its ears,
its nose,
it was fixed,
a bit of life
caught within itself
and its eyes looked
at me
and they were
beautiful.
then- it was
gone.

I began to feel good,
I began to feel good
in the worst situations
and there were plenty
of those.
like say, the boss
behind his desk,
he is going to have
to fire me.

I've missed too many
days.
he is dressed in a
suit, necktie, glasses,
he says, "i am going
to have to let you go"

"it's all right" i tell
him.

He must do what he
must do, he has a
wife, a house, children.
expenses, most probably
a girlfreind.

I am sorry for him
he is caught.

I walk onto the blazing
sunshine.
the whole day is
mine
temporailiy,
anyhow.

(the whole world is at the
throat of the world,
everybody feels angry,
short-changed, cheated,
everybody is despondent,
dissillusioned)

I welcomed shots of
peace, tattered shards of
happiness.

I embraced that stuff
like the hottest number,
like high heels,breasts,
singing,the
works.

(dont get me wrong,
there is such a thing as cockeyed optimism
that overlooks all
basic problems justr for
the sake of
itself-
this is a sheild and a
sickness.)

The knife got near my
throat again,
I almost turned on the
gas
again
but when the good
moments arrived
again
I did'nt fight them off
like an alley
adversary.
I let them take me,
i luxuriated in them,
I bade them welcome
home.
I even looked into
the mirror
once having thought
myself to be
ugly,
I now liked what
I saw,almost
handsome,yes,
a bit ripped and
ragged,
scares,lumps,
odd turns,
but all in all,
not too bad,
almost handsome,
better at least than
some of those movie
star faces
like the cheeks of
a babys
butt.

and finally I discovered
real feelings fo
others,
unhearleded,
like latley,
like this morning,
as I was leaving,
for the track,
i saw my wif in bed,
just the
shape of
her head there
(not forgetting
centuries of the living
and the dead and
the dying,
the pyarimids,
Mozart dead
but his music still
there in the
room, weeds growing,
the earth turning,
the toteboard waiting for
me)
I saw the shape of my
wife's head,
she so still,
i ached for her life,
just being there
under the
covers.

i kissed her in the,
forehead,
got down the stairway,
got outside,
got into my marvelous
car,
fixed the seatbelt,
backed out the
drive.
feeling warm to
the fingertips,
down to my
foot on the gas
pedal,
I entered the world
once
more,
drove down the
hill
past the houses
full and emptey
of
people,
i saw the mailman,
honked,
he waved
back
at me.

Lost

2009-04-10T17:03:00.001-05:00

Lost,
I love you,
I want to watch you all day,
I can not because of life obligations,
I want to buy you a shamrock shake,
I want to hold your little hand,
I want to kiss you all over,
Lost,
I never want to be found.
Tomato.

Hairspray (the movie) Review (very, very late)

2009-03-11T09:09:00.006-05:00

Allow me to list my grievances and a few good points...

1) Rampant and careless use of Auto-Tune (pitch correction). The soundtrack sounds like Cher's "Believe" and Lil Wayne had a digital, useless baby. It's horrible and would be completely unnecessary if they cast people who can actually f*cking sing. Pitch correction should be used for tweaking a great take with a small flaw, not re-pitching an entire song. grrrrrrrrrrrr

2) Zac Efron (Link). Zac Efron is very good looking and can carry a tune. If that is all the casting criteria for the lead guy in a major movie musical, then he's fine. But it should definitely, definitely not be. There are thousands of more talented kids who should have been cast before him. Also, see grievance #1

3) Amanda Bynes (Penny). Amanda Bynes is cute and has a decent look for the part of Penny. Unfortunately, her comedic timing has not improved much since "All That" and she completely bombed some potentially funny moments. Also, Penny has one of my favorite singing parts in the Broadway cast recording and Amanda crapped all over it. (Incidentally, it's "...and I'm nye-va go-in back". Love it.) See grievance #1.

4) Queen La(f*ckin)tifah (Motormouth Maybelle). Why. WHY?!!!! If a small community theatre was doing Hairspray and they only knew one large black woman and she was The-tifah, then fine. Maybe. But it's the G-damn MOVIE! Find someone, anyone, who can sing! Cast a skinny black woman that can sing! Cast John Travolta in drag and blackface! Motormouth Maybelle needs to be f*cking fierce and own her songs. The-tifah is not and did not. She flubbed a fierce part in Dreamgirls and now she's done it again. See grievance #1.

5) Multiple cut songs. Why?

6) Elijah Kelley (Seaweed). I assume that in real life, this guy could probably sing circles around most of the people in the cast. So why oh why did they digitally alter the shit out of his songs? Otherwise he danced his ass off, and acted it well enough. One thumbs up. And one of the best leads in the movie.

7) Brittany Snow (Amber). She was fine at what she did, but that's because they cut out songs she should have sang that I assume she couldn't.

8) John Travolta (Edna Turnblad). Honestly, this was not the worst casting decision of the movie in my opinion. I am not married to the idea of Harvey Fierstein as Edna. Do I think Harvey should have been Edna in the movie? Probably. Do I think that what they tried to do with Travolta failed? Miserably. But, I honestly kind of liked what they were trying to do. Also, it was ironic when Travolta tells Tracy not to kiss one of those "crooners" which is the role he would have played had this musical been made 30 years earlier. Still, it should not have gotten past screen testing. Also, I was waiting for Travolta to wail on some songs, and instead he sounded like he was quietly singing in a little studio while you could see him dancing all over the stage. Basically, whoever was in charge of all the vocal recordings for this movie should be dragged through the streets. And I mean that in a loving way. The way they turned inspiring and heart-pumping anthems into lethargic snoozers was nothing short of miraculous.

9) Christopher Walken (Wilbur). He was great. I wonder if I would have liked him as much had the rest of the cast been better, but he was a breath of fresh air in an otherwise mediocre cast. He was the only star that was cast because of his name that actually delivered.

10) James Marsden (Corny Collins). I take that back. James was great too. I don't know if more could have been done with the role, but I thought he was pretty solid.

11) Michelle Pfeiffer (Velma Von Tussle). Blah. Not terrible. Not great. See grievance #1.

12) Taylor Parks (Little Inez). Awesome. Kudos.

13) The dancing in the movie was pretty great. There were moments where the cast was dancing in the street that it started to look like an old-fashioned, take-us-or-leave-us, we're not going to apologize for being a musical with people breaking into song and dance, kind of musical. This is an element that most new movie musicals lack. They tend to make excuses for arguably random "musical" moments where a character, or a group of people bust out into dance or song. For the most part, this movie was fearlessly a musical, and I respect that a lot. I do think that Link should have been cast with someone who is almost as good a dancer as Seaweed, but not in the same style. Efron is not that.

14) Nikki Blonsky (Tracy). She was pretty good. I kind of get the very deliberate choice to strip "Tracy" of her character voice, but I missed that voice. I think it added a lot to the show, and was just one more thing about the movie soundtrack that was less exciting than the Broadway version.

Agree or disagree? Let's hear it...

My101.7 Radio Co-Host

2009-01-27T16:28:00.005-05:00

Hey everyone! I just wanted to give the heads up that I'm co-hosting again on the My101.7 morning show with Gary Rivers and Amy Malone this coming Monday, February 2nd from 7am to 9am.

I'll be shooting the proverbial breeze, and also promoting West Side Story at Cassidy Theatre, February 27th - March 15th. Details at www.barrydebois.com or www.cassidytheatre.com

Tune in on Monday morning!!

Living Alone

2009-01-19T19:04:00.002-05:00

I'm pretty sure that it's a common thing for people that live alone to talk to themselves. I've heard that it happens, and I've realized that I do it myself. It's just thinking outloud. I don't know why I do it, but I'm often afraid a camera is on me and someone is watching me look like a raving lunatic. Today I came to the realization that if I were on a desert island for something like 2 years (maybe less) I would definitely end up talking to myself all the time. And then I realized I made that realization outloud.

Elizabeth

2009-01-12T07:30:00.004-05:00

Candy striped through summer shows
Her purple corset streaming
While meadow flows o'er soft skin glows
Her ruby lips are beaming

Her thoughts a-gambol frolicking
May lost in summer be
But dare not break her blissful spell
Her smile of ivory

A sad moss creeps and crawls her trunk
It burns and breaks her bark
So while she blithely disregards
May you leave no remark

In due time she will leave the dews
That glaze the baby's breath
For now let smile be all there is
For fair Elizabeth

What links to the Muppets Website?

2008-12-16T12:40:00.008-05:00

Today I suddenly wondered what was at Kermit.com The answer? It bounces you to Disney's Muppets website. I started trying a few other Muppet names, and it was interesting to see where Disney drew the line on character names that it was worth fighting/paying for the domain names for:

Bounces to the Muppets website:
kermit.com
kermitthefrog.com
misspiggy.com
swedishchef.com
rowlf.com
muppet.com
muppets.com
themuppets.com

Does not:
piggy.com
gonzo.com (porn)
gonzothegreat.com
fozzie.com
fozziebear.com
pepe.com
pepethekingprawn.com
rizzo.com
rizzotherat.com
rowlfthedog.com
themuppet.com
themuppetshow.com (this one was surprising)

Can you find anything that bounces to the Muppets website? Or anything that you think should bounce but doesn't? Let me know and I'll add it to the list.

UPDATE: Angela found that swedishchef.com bounces to the Muppets site. Of all the other characters, that's an interesting one for them to pay for. Thanks for the tip!

UPDATE: Angela found that rowlf.com bounces to the Muppets site.

West Side Story

2008-11-19T12:58:00.001-05:00

BU-DAAAAAAA DUM. badadaaaa. pa-dum, pa-dum, padum padum. pa-dum, pa-dum, padum pa-dum. *snap* - *snap* - *snap*...

Feel free to read that while listening to the first bit of the Prologue to West Side Story, and you will get an idea of what I sound like every time I listen to the album.

I am so excited to announce that I will be playing Tony in West Side Story at Cassidy Theatre in Parma Heights, OH February 27th through March ~~22nd~~ 15th.

West Side Story remains one of the best known, most loved, and most parodied musicals in American Theater. Everyone knows it, most people love it, and almost everyone can laugh with it in a very respectful way. We laugh at the IDEA of gangs dancing and singing while fighting, but the reality is that somehow, someway, West Side Story more than pulls it off.

The music is simply brilliant. It's the kind that is pretty, yet complicated the first time you hear it. The next few times you listen to it, you are trying to figure it all out. Then finally you get to a place where you are comfortable with it and it just never seems to get old.

The story is classic. A Romeo and Juliet type adventure full of forbidden love, social injustice, gang-imposed segregation, and lessons learned at terrible costs. It's a beautiful story that I recall being very skeptical of when I was young. I remember thinking that Tony and Maria fall in love way too fast. I thought that it was a cool show, but unrealistic. But as I've grown, I've learned how quickly people can connect. I've learned that if the right 2 people happen to be at the right dance in the right gym on the right night, it doesn't matter what the rules say, they will fall for each other. And Tony and Maria fall fast. I learned that the story is not unrealistic, it's simply uncommon. But what common story would be worth telling? I believe, and hope to bring to the character of Tony, that had he and Maria lived to the age of 100, they would still light up when the other walked in the room. That if they had run away to a place where they could be free, they would not have given up at the first sign of trouble. They were in it for the long haul, and somehow, they knew that amazingly quickly.

The choreography is out of control. This is an area that I will be the first to concede I have no right to talk about. Luckily, Tony is not usually required to dance much in the show (phew). All I know is this: Traditionally, this show has crazy sweet choreography and I saw some awesome work from the choreographer and the other auditioners. It's going to be hot and Latin-infused and hot and fun and fresh and hot.

On a personal note... If you had asked me 6 months ago what my top 3 roles that I would want to play that I hadn't yet played were, they would have been as follows:

1)Jamie - The Last Five Years

2)Mark (or Roger or anyone) - Rent

3)Tony - West Side Story

If you had told me 6 months ago that I would get to play 2 of those parts in the next year, I would have laughed at you. The fact that I will be able to check off 2 of those parts plus all the other unexpected parts I've gotten to play in that time is something I can't even put words to. I am so incredibly lucky. Yes, I understand they are community theatre shows. But to that I say, screw you, and have you seen some of the community theatre in NE Ohio? It's not all perfect, but there are some serious gems out there if you invest a little time to look for them. And I feel like I've been lucky enough to be a part of a few of those gems. As I discussed recently with a fellow NE Ohio theatre-maker, It doesn't matter if you have a huge budget, a tiny theatre, a rich community, big names, or a soap box in the back yard. Great theatre comes from a group of great individuals with a bit of talent and lot of heart. I have high hopes that we can deliver just that, come February!

Yours,

Barry

The Last Five Years

2008-09-08T10:50:00.001-05:00

I am very excited to say that I will be playing Jamie in The Last Five Years at the Players Guild Theatre in Canton, OH from September 19th to the 28th.

I can honestly say that this role was the highest on my list of wanna-plays. This is a show that has a very close place to my heart. Jamie is a character who, from his good to his bad, I connect with very strongly.

The show is a 2 person musical. It chronicles the relationship of Jamie and Cathy from their first date, to their wedding, and finally to their divorce. The twist is that from scene to scene, Jamie goes forward in time while Cathy goes backward, and the only time we really get to see them in a scene together is at their wedding were they share a beautiful duet.

The Last Five Years is probably not for everyone. Some may call it angsty and long winded. I would suggest that it is a step-by-step analysis of how this particular sort of relationship can fail. It's a relationship where the woman needs the man to define her, and the man needs the woman to worship him, then go away. I think it strikes an especially resounding chord for people who are in the arts and tend to have these seemingly conflicting, but somehow related issues of self-worth and ego. It's no surprise then that few people outside of the musical theatre world have heard of The Last Five Years, while it remains a favorite among angsty and egotistic actors (as I would include myself in this category). The characters are real, flawed, delightful, and stubborn.

And then there is the music.

Jason Robert Brown writes complicated, intentional, haunting music, and The Last Five Years is no exception. The lyrics dance from insightful, to hilarious, to downright heartbreaking at the turn of a verse. I have listened to this music for 4 years and still don't hesitate to put it on my iPod and give it another spin, while I have all but retired most of my albums I've bought just this past year. The orchestra is made up of only strings and a piano. It makes for a unique sound that can be slow and sweet or surprisingly slamming, and takes learned hands to pull it off right which we are lucky to have in the piano masterings of Rob Kovacs. The music is another way this show connects with more than just theatre-geeks. Fans of indie-pop, classical, and piano-rock like Ben Folds fall in love with this music.

So here's my wrap up. If you know me, I'm asking that you come see this show. It has a lot of messages in it that I want to be a part of giving to you through this piece of art. I have never endorsed a show I've been in that way. I might say it's good, come see it if you like. But, in this case, I'm saying that if you want to see a part of me, come see this show. And with the talent I have beside me (Courtney Vignos and Tiffany Stoker) it's going to knock your freaking socks off.

For tickets, contact the Players Guild Theatre:
(330) 453-7617 or
Click Here to order online

For more info on the show, here are a few links:
Wikipedia - The Last Five Years
Jason Robert Brown

ATT Blunderings

2008-08-20T11:07:00.003-05:00

I spent 2 hours talking to something like 10 different people at ATT to figure out how to sign up for Online Billing on my DSL account. Some of my frustrations were:

-I was told by multiple people that I couldn't sign up for online billing because I have what is called a "Dry Loop", which means I only get DSL (no phone service). Not True

-I was inputting the last 7 digits of my Account Number incorrectly. The person on the phone told me not to use the last number. Oh so when you say use the last 7 digits, you actually mean the last 8 digits, but disregard the last digit. Makes Sense.

-I was bounced around from department to department across the country like a bad case of inter-office herpes.

-I was bounced to a number that is no longer in service. By a telephone company.

-Once I FINALLY got signed up, my account showed that I owed $95 dollars that I had paid a week prior. This payment showed up under previous payments, but my account still said I owed the money.

-When I signed up for DSL, the D-Bag who took my order promised me a $50 gift card to reimburse me for my modem. I never received it, and had to complain before I finally just got a $50 credit on my account. This actually was relatively painless except for the fact that I had to do it at all, and the operator said that the sales person was not allowed to do that. I assume crediting me $50 was easier than taking any action to find out who promised me something that they shouldn't. Or perhaps it's all part of their model because a lot of people just would have let it go. Which is shady to the max.

Sometimes companies get too big and merge-y for their own good, and they really need to call their own customer service and try to solve a real-life problem.

You my be interested in reading this article which inspired my post.

An open letter to Jesus

2008-08-12T12:07:00.005-05:00

Hey it's me. This will be brief. Did you hear about Alison Carroll? Yeah, she's the new Lara Croft. Oh you knew? Well, anyways, I know I screw up sometimes, and, like, drink a lot, and swear sometimes, and like, space out in church once in a while, and generally act inappropriately. No excuses here, I do that stuff sometimes. But I was wondering if you could throw me a bone on this one, so to speak. Like, maybe put my name into Alison’s mind and have her inexplicably look me up via the World Wide Web. I guess you could just put my phone number in her head, right? Well, you can work out the details, I don’t want to tell you how to do your job. I just thought that, ya know, maybe she could fly me out to her flat – she’s English right? Yeah, I thought so. So, like, if she could fly me out to her flat and for some reason think I was the sexiest thing she’s ever seen, that would be really great. I’m not asking for a commitment here, Jesus. I mean, if she just wants to have a romantic weekend, that would be fine with me. Maybe even preferable. Now I know you want us to bring even the small stuff to you, and that’s why I thought I’d slip this minor one in. And considering the whole Angelina thing, you really kinda owe this one to me, right? Well, it’s debatable at least. Well, kick it around, and I’ll get back with you this afternoon. Thanks dude. Oo, are these mints? Oh, they’re wax? Gross. Ok, laters.

http://thesuperficial.com/2008/08/alison_carroll_is_the_new_face.php?bfm_index=10&bfm_page=0

Michael McShortson

2008-05-09T12:14:00.004-05:00

Is it me, or is Michael McDonald...

looking more and more like a cross between Brian Wilson...

and Martin Short as Jack Frost?

Soundtrack Better Then/Than HD Space Footage?

2008-05-08T10:05:00.003-05:00

As my readers know, I am by no means a wordsmith. I tend to type like I speak. I am, however one of those people that makes grammatical mistakes once in a while, but can't stand it when they find other people's grammatical mistakes. it may be a flaw of mine, but then again, I don't get paid for my blog. In this article by Loretta Hidalgo about an HD space documentary, the last sentence includes some sketchy English. The following is my email to wired.com

"I was a little shocked to read Loretta Hidalgo's misuse of the word "then" when she meant "than" in the last sentence of this article. Also, she highly recommends watching and HD documentary on space travel because of the soundtrack? hmm."

I'll Fiiiiiind Yoooou

2008-04-18T14:54:00.005-05:00

So there is a new helper on the market at your local grocery store and pharmacy. A computer that tells you exactly which isle and on which shelf certain items that you're looking for reside. This seems like a great idea. I have often wondered why there wasn't a more efficient way of finding things at the grocery store. Scanning through 20 signs with vague descriptions while walking across the entire store is no way to find things, and anyone that doesn't frequent grocery stores will probably agree with me.

I DO, however, have a problem with the character they chose to saddle right above the search screen. Is that really the best they could come up with? That cold, dead stare watching me type is not an appealing thought. I don't go to that guy for finding things in a store. If I want to be molested, I go to that guy. If I want a painting for my wall to poke out the eyes and watch my dinner guests, I look that guy up. If I want my soul sucked out via my eyeballs, he's my guy. I just think that they should have maybe run him through a few test shoppers first, and when they had a few cleanups on isle 9 from people dumping themselves, they'd work on a new character.

P.S. Read this article, his name is Evincii. Looks a lot like Evil to me...

Jason Segel Writing For the Muppets

2008-04-07T13:23:00.002-05:00

http://www.muppetnewsflash.com/2008/04/more-on-segels-muppet-movie.html

All I can say is please please please let this happen.

Online Wordprocessing and Future Web Apps

2008-04-02T06:58:00.002-05:00

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/04/01/AR2008040102198.html

I tend to be very interested in the goings on of Google and particularly their applications like Google Docs that replace costly Microsoft products at no cost to me. So when I was reading this article by the Washington Post, I was struck by a statement that the author made in regards to Google Docs becoming a threat to Microsoft's productivity software dominance.

"Current fans of Google Docs will surely appreciate this new feature, but I still have a hard time seeing how a Web-based application could ever replace traditional word processing software for serious business computing."

Really? Ever? I imagine a journalist 60 some years ago saying,

"I still have a hard time seeing how a computer-based application could ever replace traditional typewriting for serious business typography."

It just seems like one of those statements that journalists quickly make that goes down in history as an "oh man were they ever wrong". I think that it's pretty clear that the internet is not a fad, and more applications are moving to it, and more than likely our entire operating systems will one day be on a server somewhere that we just access via a dummy laptop that's little more than a window to that OS. Now maybe that's looking a little far down the road, but to say you don't believe Word Processing will EVER be Web-based seems a little narrow minded.

Get Hooked!...

2008-03-31T10:04:00.001-05:00

I'm very happy to announce that I have just been cast as Captain Hook/Mr. Darling in Peter Pan at the Player's Guild in Canton, Ohio. This will again be a very challenging role for me for a number of reasons, and I'm very excited because I'm really on board for this challenge. For starters, this will be my first villainous role, and it's a role I've always been interested in.

I have always had an affinity for the story of Peter Pan. I was one of those boys that would stare out the window and wait to be swept away to Neverland. I loved the idea of tricking pirates, swordfighting, and building forts. What more could a boy want, really? I specifically remember watching the film "Hook" when I was just starting to grow up, and I tried very hard to remember if I ever was a lost boy, or perhaps Pan himself, and somewhere along the way found myself in the real world.

The story of Peter Pan is the embodiment of so many things that are important to children, and boys especially. Escape from the torment of real life, father complexes, rejection of love and emotion and what that can do to a person. There are so many underlying psychological things about the story of Peter Pan that I think people latch onto subconsciously, and that is the reason it has such longevity. It's not about a boy who flies through an open window and takes children on adventures. It's about what happens when emotions are rejected and eventually forgotten. It's about the love/hate/fear/trust relationships children often have with their fathers. Although we all would love to be the carefree Peter Pan, we also see the sad, lonely character that he is. That alone tells us amazing things about ourselves. We knowingly idolize a character that gets to live a completely self indulging life at the expense of not experiencing any real love, or touch, or change. All of which can be wonderful things, but all of which carry the risk of immense pain.

So, if I were to be completely honest, my dream role would be Peter Pan. It's easy to identify with a self absorbed careless mess of fun. Also, who wouldn't love to fly? Unfortunately, I've surely surpassed my Pan-Playing age. In fact, the Players Guild has kept in line with the long standing theatre tradition of casting a woman as Peter. Fortunately, in our case, the heavy role will be on the very capable shoulders of the talented Amanda Medley. But there is another long standing theatre tradition for this show that is also being upheld, much to my satisfaction. This tradition being the dual casting of Captain Hook/Mr. Darling. I think that productions that are missing this element miss out on an entire layer of the story and magic of Peter Pan. I don't believe that children need every analogy to be as blindingly obvious as casting Hook and Mr. Darling with the same actor, but I think that in the case of Hook/Darling it just works. It's also very gratifying for the actor to be seen as a stern and almost cold father, then as a monster, and finally as a reformed man.

Personally, I have a lot to spill into this complex mix of characters. I have experienced many pieces of Hook/Mr. Darling in my youth, and am ripe for creative outlet. I am also reaching a point in my life where I am irreversibly a man. There's no being a boy again, and it's a fact that many men my age struggle with. I am also at an age where men start to look in the mirror, and more frighteningly, at their daily actions, and they see their fathers. It's a time where, more than ever, you make conscious decisions, based on the goods and the bads that you've experienced, that make you the kind of man you will be for the rest of your life. I'm very excited to sink my hook into these characters.

And of course, every monster has a weak side. They need to be in constant control, and henceforth often have human punching bags in their closest associations. Mr. Smee is the embodiment of this character type, and I am very pleased to be teaming with the ever-funny Ross Rhodes again as he takes on this role.

The last piece of our production that I will share at this time is on the topic of pirates, and the "color" of our show. Without giving away too much information, I will leave you with these impressions. Pirates are a dirty, nasty, murderous lot, and these are the pirates that you will see in our production of Peter Pan. And pirates don't live in pastel jungles, nor do they wash their clothes and polish their buttons. They live in a dark world of blues, greys, and blood red. This will not be Disney's Peter Pan.

In The Year 2102...

2008-01-02T07:53:00.001-05:00

Good Morning. I'd like to start off the new year by playing editor for DailyTech...

That's quite a projection, DailyTech. Someone, somewhere got fired this happy New Year.

Move On vs. Facebook

2007-11-21T10:35:00.000-05:00

http://www.latimes.com/business/la-fi-facebook21nov21,1,2142037.story?coll=la-headlines-business

This article is kind of interesting, although I am an avid Facebook user and have experienced nothing that the MoveOn organization is complaining about. Furthermore, there is a funny quote in the article that seemed to disqualify the severity of the complaints of the organization.

"MoveOn.org is buying ads, organizing a 'protest group' and circulating an online petition to pressure Facebook to allow its more than 55 million users to change its opt-out method. By early Tuesday evening, the protest group numbered 2,568 with several members threatening to quit Facebook."

Really? Several of the 2,568 people of the 55 million people are threatening to quit? A smaller percentage of that .00004% might quit facebook over it? 1 out of every 25,000 members might quit?

You get my point. If these are the numbers this organization is pulling, I'm guessing it's not an issue I really care about. But I guess time will tell. Either way, way to make your point sound completely useless, L.A. Times.

Deniro Has Really Short Left Leg, Laughs As He Falls

2007-10-29T12:42:00.000-05:00

Apple Envy, In Advertising

2007-10-25T13:57:00.000-05:00

Well, it looks like Apple got a taste of their own medicine. Sony placed this ad. and completely ripped off Apple. I won't even debate this, because the Sony ad is an exact replica of the Apple ad. Apple, of coures is not innocent of the exact same lack of creativity. What I don't understand is how and why companies do this.

I see one of 2 possibilities, and neither have anything to do with coincidence, so don't even try to suggest that crap.

1. The company knowingly rips the other off and just hopes no one notices or cares. What's confusing is, they could have changed the order of the colors of any 2 cameras and you might possibly have somewhat reasonable ground to stand on to almost suggest the slightest chance of this being a coincidence to me, if you caught me right when I woke up, and before I got have a morning pee. The fact is, they blatantly copied every color of product, and placement in the ad. Why? Why not just change 2 colors and you could suddenly give me the slightest pause in thinking you ripped Apple off.

2. Some rookie advertising co-op didn't have any good ideas, so he, without Sony's knowledge, made the ad, ripping off the Apple ad and taking credit for it without the company's knowledge. The reason this scenario is so unlikely is that the cameras come in the EXACT SAME COLORS as the iPods. It would take more than one marketing flunky to have that happen.

The way I see it, Sony just basically rolled the dice and got caught. I just have no idea why they would. It's not like colors flying through the air with a grey background is such an amazing idea, and all the colors were in the PERFECT spot that they had no choice but to copy it exactly.

Sony, please explain why you are so dumb.

Barbie/GTA Basically the Same Game

2007-10-25T09:32:00.000-05:00

I just received an email from Amazon.com that said the following:

"Dear Amazon.com Customer,
As someone who has purchased adventure games at Amazon.com, you may be interested to know that the "Barbie Island Princess" video game is coming soon. Barbie as The Island Princess follows the storyline of the popular DVD in a fun party-style format. You'll play as Rosella the shipwrecked princess who is raised by a family of animal friends and rescued by Prince Antonio from her tropical island.Available for Nintendo DS, Wii, PlayStation 2, PC, and Game Boy Advance."

Last year, I bought Grand Theft Auto, Vice City and San Andreas from Amazon. Something tells me they need to work on their "market targeting" algorithm.

Dear Santa, or Jesus, Grant Me a Flying Suit

2007-10-22T11:55:00.000-05:00

http://www.geekologie.com/2007/10/new_vampire_2_wingsuit_for_sky.php

Follow that link to Geekologie's article on, and more importantly, videos of an amazing flying suit. The second video is way better than the first, but is not a youtube video, and for some reason would not embed properly in my post. Watch how close this crazy bastard flies by a ridge of road on the side of a mountain. Yes please, I'll have 2.

Aida Review

2007-10-16T08:14:00.000-05:00

Ok, people, shameless plug time. My show, Aida, (and I) got a glowing review from the Canton Repository, and I must tell the world.

Read it here:
http://www.cantonrep.com/new/index.php?ID=381527

Aida

2007-10-11T09:58:00.000-05:00

If you live in the Canton/Massillon area, and like musical theatre, and are generally awesome, check out this post...

Trip to China: Part 8

2007-09-27T14:17:00.000-05:00

Well I just had the dream. I guess the nightmare. I woke up in a cold sweat with "Like Father Like Son" stuck in my head, and an inspiration to work on my lines. In my dream I'm coming home from my trip and going straight to the theatre for Aida rehearsal. As I am walking in I realize that the SHOW (not rehearsal) has already started. There is a set, and costumes, and some other guy playing Radames! (For some reason it's not Jon, my actual understudy, or any other current cast member. I think it's one of my old roommates. Back off, it's my nightmare.) Apparently the show is playing to a rehearsal audience, and they are in the middle of "Like Father Like Son". I go running back stage to change and go on in the next scene, but I realize I have no idea what my lines are. I realize I'm essentially not in the show, and have a moment of panic attack as I wake up in a cold sweat. Ok, so I had lots of Indian food and a few beers last night right before I fell asleep. Does that mean I have to have a horrible nightmare? Huh?!

Let's start this blog over with an inhale ... and an exhale. Now I'll open as I planned to since I left the hotel yesterday and was welcomed to the outdoors by clean air and sunshine:

Ahhhh. Yesterday I walked outside and there was a light feeling of cool dampness. It had rained the night before (the first time since we've been here), and I had no idea what the implications of that were until we started to drive down the road and I looked at the sky. CLOUDS! Clouds mixed with one of the most beautiful and appreciated shades of blue my eyes have ever met. Since we have been in Beijing, the sky, and everywhere around us really, was cloaked in a grey vale of smog. But oh, how the rain changes things. I was nearly in tears with thankfulness that I got to see the city in THIS light before I left it. It was so beautiful, I couldn't stop taking pictures of it. It was really almost as if the sky was as grateful to be seen as I was grateful to see it. We passed some mountains that were the foreground to a blue and white background and I longed to go the the Great Wall again and see it all this way. As I type this I am reminded of a poem I wrote and posted to this blog in March. It was the first good day I had had after a few weeks of terribly dark days. To make things even better, it was the first very sunny day of the year, and the culmination of these events made my heart cry with joy of life, and I pulled over while I was driving and frantically scribbled this poem down. When I got home I posted it. Poem-wise it's nothing to write home about (ha I just realized I'm writing home about it), but it holds a very important place in my heart as a landmark for my first good day in a long time.

Ah yes, just to feel
to soak sun and breath life
I trade my sunglasses
for a stinging glare that
warms my soul.
I am overcome with thankfulness,
renewal, and life
tears rim my eyes
and I smile.
Ah yes, just to feel!

This is a similar kind of emotion I had while looking on the beauty of China through a God-sent and much needed cleansing.

Every day as we pass a certain woods on the way to work, I have had another unique pleasure. On the right side of our car, there are fairly small trees (with trunks probably 3 or 4 inches in diameter) and all aligned on neat rows. About 40 feet back from the road there is a dirt trail. Beside the trail, a few of the trees have a piece of wood attached to them horizontally, about the size and shape of a sparing sword, but I really can't tell if that's what they are. Hanging from this wood is a khaki sport coat. Beside the tree is a man, in his early 50's, wearing khaki pants and an undershirt doing some sort of Martial Art dance or work out. It's a really beautiful moment that I'm glad we catch every day on our way to work.

Beijing is teaming with bicycles. I have said this before back home, but I really wish our society embraced bicycles more. I think it would be great to have bike lanes up and down the streets of Canton. I think I need to get myself a bike, but the roads just aren't very conducive for riding in Ohio. When drivers aren't used to watching for a bunch of bikes, you are more likely to get nailed on one. I don't have any statistics to back that up, but I think it's a pretty safe bet. It's totally not weird in Beijing for someone to be riding to work on their bike and another person is riding side-saddle on the rack behind them. At home, you'd look homeless or weird doing that. Stupid! Let's not be so arrogant at home, ok? I'll try if you do to. Deal.

Last night after work I ran around my hotel buying things at the stores in the lobby. Not many things, mind you, so don't get your hopes up, but a few people asked for very specific things, and gave me money for them, so I obliged to buy them. I use commas a lot, deal with it. After this mini shopping spree, I walked around aimlessly wishing really hard that I had a friend in Beijing to eat dinner with. Nothing sounded good, and I really didn't want to go back to my room and order room service like a loser and watch National Geographic again while eating spaghetti in freaking China! I came to a corner on the ground floor of my hotel that I had forgotten was there that had escalators leading up, and promising me some new restaurants. Yay! At least there were new and strange places to eat. I chose an Indian restaurant and as i was seated at a table for two, they quickly grabbed all the silverware and place settings across from me, making it a table for one. Thanks. I ordered my new favorite beer, Tsing tao (I think it's the same as Tsungtao, but it's all really too confusing to even blog about the beer conversation with the female engineers I had). It was my last night, so I ordered an appetizer and a meal. Hopefully I'll get some pictures on here for you to see it, but it was spicy and delicious. And lonely. Did I mention lonely? The manager asked me if I wanted something else with it, implying that I didn't order enough, or that it was strange for me to order the meat without rice or vegetables with it. There were vegetables in my appetizer,so I felt justified in my order, but he was making me feel weird about it, so I ordered some rice and lentil. This was literally after my meat was delivered, which made the whole transaction even more awkward. Then, when he delivered the check, I wanted to make sure that service had been included in the price, as it said in the menu. He said, "No no, just sign". In English land that implied that it was not included, but just sign the check without tipping. I was annoyed with and confused by this guy enough, and I had a few beers in me so I really didn't care, and I took my chances that it was included and just got the hell out of dodge. I got back to my room and abruptly passed out with timezone, full belly, and beer all working in tandem on a deep sleep. Unfortunately they were also working on an abrupt wake up call for this morning via a nasty nightmare.

So that was yesterday! Today I leave work at noon to go to the airport and fly home! It's already Friday here, so I'll be traveling back in time to Friday there. Oh, btw, time travel is a little something I learned while in China. I'd show you how, but back home we don't have the training grounds, nor the magic sand. I'll post one final wrap-up post on Saturday, and hopefully get some pictures up as well. Wish me luck as I fly over the North Pole again! Did I mention the plane flies over the North Pole? Well it does, and I'll tell you about it later.

Trip to China: Part 7

2007-09-26T16:02:00.000-05:00

Let's complain, shall we? Many american websites take a long time to load, and when they do they sometimes load strangely, and some don't load at all. I'm very fortunate that blogger.com works, or else I wouldn't be able to post these blogs, although it's incorrigibly in Chinese for some reason, as I've mentioned previously. While blogger sort of works, for some reason I can't read people's blogs at blogspot.com (where blogger posts). I have a few friends who have posted blogs since I've been here that I haven't been able to read because of this. And they only publish the first few sentences to aggregators like google reader. They also choose not to import the notes into facebook, like I do (although I suspect it would only publish the first few sentences as well). Sorry for the geeky talk, the biggest problem is, I can't even see my own blog once I've posted them unless I wait for it to import to facebook and read it there. Stupid? Yes, very stupid. I also suspect, as I will very cautiously hypothesise, that it has something to do with the gof-erm-ent being comi-you-nest (I wrote that in code in case this blog is being scanned electronically). I am 86% serious, btw. I remember reading something about Ch*na blocking certain websites. Blogs would be an obvious target, where someone could potentially read other people's negative opinions about the gof-erm-ent. So I continue to work around the frustrating roadblocks. I'm like a ninja that way. And other ways, like how I can lift rocks with my mind. Oh, I'm like a Jedi too. Like how I can talk to animals and control fire and my skin is silver. Oh, I'm like captain planet too. Like how I have no eyebrows and dreads of power. Oh, I'm like Whoopie Goldberg too.

-SIDEBAR is Whoopie Goldberg Jewish? This thought popped in my head the other day for the first time in my life, and it flipped my world upside down. All the evidence is there. She hangs out with a bunch of Jews (Billy Crystal), she's a comedian in show business (sort of), and her last name is freaking Goldberg! Think about it!

So I don't have tons more to report because my Chinese "friends" bailed on me for karaoke again. God must know of a man waiting for me at karaoke with a gun poised to strike, because he's making it very unlikely that I'll go. I can see him now... "I kill next irriot who sing stupid Jesse's Girl." All I want is to do the robot while singing Mr. Roboto and grabbing an old Chinese man by the shirt while screaming in his face "Domo Arigato, Mr. Roboto!!". I know it's Japanese, and that's especially why I want to do it! He likely wouldn't know what I was singing and be scared out of his mind! Please God, PLEASE let this happen!! But alas, my Chinese friends have to work 57 hours a week. Well boo-freaking-hoo. Actually that sucks, and I can't imagine how they do that every week, but still! STILL!! DOMO (domo) ... DOMO (domo).

So I'm going to delve into a little bit of funkiness, so miss Jackson, if you're nasty, take a seat, but get the kids out of the room. Are they gone? Ok, the toilets here are a hole in the ground. Literally. I don't completely understand how they are supposed to work. I think it's a squatting sort of situation. You ask how I still don't know on my 7th day here? I have a huge large intestine and a sphincter like a steal trap. Just kidding, and that was really gross. The bathrooms at the hotel are western style. But sometimes at work, nature calls and I must keep nature at bay. I tried once, and if it's not too graphic, nearly pissed all over my pants. I gave up on any further transaction and ran for my life. Chinese people must have thighs of steal and amazing aim. Or they crap all over themselves. Guys, I understand not wanting to become too western, but Jesus, a hole in a log is better than this. I hope the gof-erm-ent is reading this part and drafting a law as we speak. The Constipation Proclamation is what I suggest calling it guys, if you are reading this. Also, please let me leave the country Friday cause I've got a show to do back home. Thanx :)

So that's all I've got for now. I hope you guys are keeping Ohio the same, or better than when I left it. Upon my arrival, I expect trumpets and handmaidens. And someone call a juggler, but if he can't make it on short notice, that's ok too. Those guys are hard to book.

Trip to China: Part 6

2007-09-25T15:26:00.001-05:00

Well I expect today's post to be rather short. Comparatively speaking, yesterday was rather unevenful. There were, however, a few points to discuss...

I don't believe I have highlighted this laundry service enough yet, or how it has affected my life in positive and glorious ways. Truly, if real life had a laundry service that was included in the price, it would improve my quality of life ten-fold. Included with the rooms in the Executive Club (hehe) are 140 RMB credits a day for laundry (that works out to about $18.62, don't get too excited). It's enough to get a shirt, a pair of pants, and a t-shirt cleaned without an extra charge. This is plenty though, because I had most of my shirts cleaned before the work week started anyways. While this might not seem exciting to you, laundry is something that plagues my life like a tumor that grows and grows in my room until it's too much to even clean all at once, and the walls around me start to cave in. So I'm a little melodramatic, but it's almost that bad. But oh, if laundry was cleaned for free. To be my own master, such a thing would be greater than all the magic and all the treasures in all the world! (credit: Aladdin Copyright (c) 1992 The Walt Disney Company) So I need to either get a wife, or a team immigrants. Or an immigrant wife. Preferably from Spain. They can cook and are hot. Wild generalizations I make, and offending? It's what tiggers do best. Why have I quoted Disney twice in one paragraph?

Breakfast Yesterday: Amazing. I'm not good at a lot of things, but apparently I have an innate ability to concoct delicious breakfasts out of foods that other people cooked. I know, I know, I'll teach you some day. We ate and were off to work again at 8 o'clock.

Work was draining yesterday. For most of the day, Bill and I hammered away at questions the girls threw at us. Many of them were very good questions that they had every right in being confused about. The biggest cause for confusion on my part of the product is that it was set up to be fabricated by our american shop, but because of schedule (and to be honest probably cost) it was moved to our Chinese shop. Well the Chinese do many things differently than americans. They eat duck feet, they say "s" when they mean "th" (sank you!), and they build throat panel assemblies differently. So the point is, they are trying to figure out how they will build this monstrosity based on drawings that are set up for a different process, written in english, and without all the information on it that they need. To make matters more frustrating, their engineering department has to deal with me, who pronounces Chinese names very well, but that's about the extent of my Chinese. So for the girl who is devoted to my product, who doesn't speak very good English, it is obviously a constant struggle.

We hammered away, trying to understand each other until about 4:30 when we all were getting mentally exhausted and needed a breather. We started rapping about music. One of the girls told me to sing an american song. "Yesterday Once More" I couldn't think of any popular songs by this title. All that kept popping in my head was "Makes Me Wonder" by Maroon 5. They had no clue who Maroon 5, or really any band that I liked was. I jumped on google and typed in Yesterday Once More. It's the freaking Carpenters. "Every Sha la la la, Every Woah-oo-woah-oh" Yeah. They still listen to the Carpenters. I'm all about oldies, and Karen Carpenter has one of the most freakishly soothing and beautiful voices to hit pop music, but really? You expected me to have that one in my back pocket? So I tried not to laugh too hard because this was the same girl that was already pretty frustrated over my drawings. Instead I told her that she could sing it at karaoke (which is not happening until tonight, btw) (in case you still want to come)

Last night Robby and Steve (Two of the American gentlemen from my company that Bill and I met up with out here) said their goodbyes to us because they are going home later today. That leaves Bill and I alone to fend for ourselves in Beijing for 2 days. We finally ate at the Texas Steakhouse last night. The food was pretty great, but everything else was a little disappointing. I expected more ridiculous mock-texas things to happen (like being greeted by "How-dy ye-all" or terrible line dancing) but all I got were funny uniforms and people that could barely speak english well enough to take my order. I ordered a tenderloin, and they bring it to your table raw to show it to you. That's fine I guess, but it's not like I'm going to say, "no, I want a different piece of flesh brought here first". Then they ask you if you want them to cook it now. Um, what are my options here? Seriously, do people say no to this question? When they brought it out, they dished a helping of this hot pepper sauce on it and it was really quite excellent. Overall, though, I kind of wish I hadn't gone to the Texas place, because my hopes of rampant ridiculousness were shattered into a million little buckaroos.

I must say that I really appreciate the feedback on these notes from you all. It makes waking up and typing it all out a lot of fun. Sorry if today's was light on the awesome, and hopefully karaoke tonight will inspire insanity to come into my life. Until then, zai jian!

Trip to China: Part 5

2007-09-24T15:20:00.000-05:00

Wow. Wow wow wow.

Last night was a lil rough, but let me start in chronological order.

So I woke up yesterday way too early because I crashed in the afternoon and slept through dinner, remember? Good. Well I woke up at midnightish, blogged and such, and then went back to bed for 2 hours until 6 when I got up and started getting ready for work. My routine went well again yesterday, save that my laundrin wasn't delivered from the night before because I had put a do not disturb sign on my door for my nap that turned into sleeping all night. I had a groggy 10 minute conversation with 2 front desk ladies about it because laundry services was not yet open but neither girl could speak english to save their lives. Now, I can't speak Chinese, but I don't work at the front desk of a Chinese hotel in America. I wish there were other people hearing the conversation because it was quite humorous, and I don't remember all of it. I know that the first thing I asked her was "What time does laundry services open?" She asked me what I needed, and I explained my sitch as best I could. Then I think she forwarded my call to the receptionist on the Executive Floor. It happened very fast and they sounded the same, so I wasn't sure that I was really talking to a different person. After hesitantly explaining it all to this girl, who may have been the same girl, she kept saying that it would be double charge if I needed laundry done this morning. I kept explaining that it is already done, I just needed it delivered this morning. Finally, she either told me to call laundry services in 10 minutes when they open, or she said that she would call, I couldn't tell. Thanks, so they open in ten minutes, that's all I asked in the first place. And, as expected, the laundry was delivered while I was half naked from showering. Sweet.

So breakfast was another winner, although I must say that had I known the food I was going to eat last night, I would have gone much easier on the breakfast. We were all set to go, and our driver picked us up right on time at 8am. Off we flew down the highway. Holy crap. It's like New York City driving but with less general care for loss of life. I find it's better when I engaged in conversation instead of looking ahead at the road, but the conversation was usually about the road.

-SIDEBAR This trip really makes me appreciate/miss New York. Really, that city is great, for lack of a better descriptor. How they can have all the hustle and bustle without all this air pollution is beyond me. You think New York stinks? Try Beijing. You clear your throat all day long. Best of luck to the Olympians next year. And New York, you have a gorgeous skyline. Look up in Beijing, or out a tall window, and you see a grey fog similar to that in a bad 3D video game that only lets you see so far away. Grossies.

-SIDEBAR 2.0 ick, I keep tasting all the crap I consumed last night. Read on!

So we arrived at BWBC and were literally greeted with a red carpet and many formal greetings and bright smiles. I'd make fun of it, but it was really quite flattering and a wonderful way to start our work day. We sat in a meeting room at a large, dark cherry board table and watched a presentation about the company that was in English. I would give the English an 8.9 out of 10. Then the President made a dramatic entrance and everyone stood until he sat and everyone sat. It felt like a movie, which was cool and annoying for some reason. He was an incredibly gracious and friendly host, so I took a liking to him. He was very much in control, and a bit of a salesman, which are traits that I don't normally like, but for some reason he wore it well and didn't push it too far, so I liked him a lot. He spoke the best English I've heard since I've been here that didn't come from an American.

-SIDEBAR I think I resent people that are controlling because I grew up with a few control freaks, and I have some of those tendencies in me because of it that I try hard not to give in to. It works for some people, and they get a lot done with these traits, but I tend to try doing things different ways. I remember when I was young I would pin my little brother to the ground til he had no way of getting loose and tickle the crap out of him. I thought it was all fun until the first and only time my mom yelled at me for it. I'm getting physically ill recalling this story. I just saw this act for the control trip it was and it made me sick with guilt. So yeah, I've got issues, and I may take the nice guy approach too far sometimes, where I then have to counter it and be more assertive, but I'd rather be a little too much of a push over than a little too much of an ass. I'm not sure where the disdain for rampant salesmanship comes from. I guess the other thing I have come to believe in my travels is that being false is not worth it. You can only sell the fake you for so long until people see what's going on. I try really hard to be the same person to everyone I meet. Probably the most difficult part of that journey is when you realize who you are (which is never who you were when you were growing up), you either continue to act like what you used to be in front of your family, or you slowly let them in to the person you really are. That can be really tough, because you're always going to feel like you're disappointing someone. Especially in my family, we tend to riddle each other with guilt complexes, and it can really be crippling. But I try to show my family the real me, without shoving it in their faces, because I want them to know who they actually love, not their idea of who I am.

Where did this post go? I guess I needed to get that stuff out to the world, because I feel better now.

So we took a car to the back of the property where the Engineering building was located. "Pay up, buddy" is all I kept thinking to myself. Not much got done before lunch, mostly because of IT problems with my laptop, and introductions were still happening. After a simple and rather tasty lunch is when the work really began. It was far less formal in the Engineering building, and I really liked it. The people in the room with Bill and I most of the time were 2 female designers, about my age I'd guess, who's names I can't remember without reading them off the drawing board we used as a cheat sheet. I have gotten many kudos by different Chinese people on my pronunciations though. It makes me especially happy to get those because I go to great efforts not to sound like an american spitting through Chinese words (which is what some of my colleagues rather sound like), but rather a person trying to speak Chinese. There was a third girl and one guy that came in a few times as well. I liked him even though he didn't speak much English. I feel like he's my good friend Kurtiss' Chinese counterpart, and I don't know why. The language barrier was certainly there for everyone (none of them spoke great English, but the girl who spoke it the best translated a lot) but it was only frustrating to me for social reasons (not work reasons). There was point where we all were getting through a lot a problems and I really started to feel a community. I saw little things in their conversations with each other (which I didn't understand) that looked so much like conversations that designers would have back home. We were really similar kinds of people working towards the same goal with this stupid language thing in the way, but I really started to enjoy it. It helped me a lot that everyone on their team is young too, because most of the people I work with at home could at least be my father, if not grandfather. It was the first time I got to work on a design with a whole team of young people and it was really great. It helped my ego that I knew all about the design, and also helped to keep my ego in check when they found an error on one of my drawings. Touche, China, Touche.

The style of this operation was exactly as I would have liked it to be. Bill and I sat next to each other at a large table in a fairly dingy conference room and as people had questions, they would sit on our other side and we would work with them on it. If Bill or I needed to consult each other, or needed help wording something a different way in English, we could just turn to each other, work it out, and then go back to our issue. We got a lot covered, and I felt completely prepared for everything that was thrown at me. More than that, I feel that it would have been very difficult to do over a phone of even video conference. I'm glad someone made this trip in person to answer these questions (and I'm also glad it was me :) )

After work, we packed up and took another excruciatingly long car ride to a restaurant where we were wined and dined by the president and most of the people that I met that day. This restaurant was the nicest I had been to yet, and maybe ever in my life. We took an elevator to a room with a large circular table. There was a large wait staff and no other tables but ours. I wish I could have taken pictures of the dinner, but it was not that type of an event. Throughout dinner, the president would make jokes and keep things lite. He also told me a few times not to feel bad if I didn't like the food and only eat what I wanted. This was relieving to some extent, but it was clearly all very very expensive, so I still felt obligated to eat almost everything. It was something like a 7 course meal consisting of things that were amazing and things that made me want to heave. That's how most of the big meals here are, which leaves you feeling ill and longing to have only eaten a few of the amazing things that were served. There was no lazy susan involved this time though. This was a much bigger circular table and each course was delivered to you. So much for skimping on the stuff you don't like. Let me list the things I remember:
-some sort of cooked pork skin. They were 2 pieces of crispy skin about 1" x 2" x skin thickness. It was pretty gross.
-a plate of 2 spring rolls, tuna (sushi style), some pork thing, and other tasty stuff. It was really good, except for the raw tuna (bottoms up)
-lobster bisque. If you don't know, I'm not huge on seafood. I was hoping the lobster bisque would be good because I love tomato bisque. Unfortunately, it has lobsters instead of tomatoes. It was like cream of fishy flavor - now with chunks!
-the most amazing steak I have ever tasted. Australian beef that was incredibly rare, and so so good. No words. I wish I had just gotten it and a potato and a beer.
-bowl of rice. It was a bowl of rice. It seemed weird as it's own course and after I was so full already.
-fruit and moon cake. The fruit was fruit. The moon cake was something they have for a festival over here of the largest full moon of the year. It was pretty good.

Interwoven between all this food were many shots of some clear, nasty, but probably expensive, alcohol. Every time someone felt moved to drink to someone else (which was about every 15 minutes) everyone took a shot. It was really rough. I'm a beer and wine sort of guy. So that plus a few glasses of wine and I was feeling pretty good. And ill. It was quite a day and after a much shorter ride to the hotel, I went back to my room and crashed immediately.

I'm excited to see what today has in store. Last night the president happened to mention that karaoke is very popular in this town. My ears perked up. He noticed and quickly instructed the designers to take me out karaokeing this week. So, yeah, he's awesome. I have been writing this blog for hours now, and need to ge cleaned up and go to work, so sorry for the abrupt ending. God Bless!

Trip to China: Part 4

2007-09-23T12:02:00.000-05:00

Sunday morning felt great for some reason. After the fears of dying subsided, I just had a great morning. I think it's because I'm getting used to my routine. I hate day one in a hotel because I don't yet have a routine, and EVERYTHING takes so long to do when you're figuring it all out. Especially for me, because I'm the type that will spend a little extra time deciding how to do things the first time so that they are more efficient every subsequent time I do them. For example, brushing my teeth here is a rather labor-intensive task. I don't use the sink water, so I have to find my toothbrush, paste it, dribble bottled water on it, brush, rinse the brush with sink water, pour bottled water in glass, rinse brush again, sip from bottle, rinse mouth, spit. If I'm groggy it would be easy to accidentally suck down some sink water, and while it probably wouldn't really hurt me to drink a little, I would be so mad that I went to such great efforts not to and then accidentally did.

The point of all that rambling is that yesterday morning I got my routine down. I now, wake up way too early, blog, get cleaned up, check my work email, and head down to breakfast. Here's where I really became a pro. The breakfast spread is so big that the first time I went I couldn't possibly have done it right. But sweet sweet yesterday, I ordered eggs from the egg dude, ordered a waffle from the waffle lady, then made some toast for myself all in immediate succession so they all were ready one after the other. I also am strangely intrigued by porridge of late. Grossies? I know, but it's kinda good.

We were met by a new cast of Chinese tour guides from our sister company after breakfast, one with a new fake american name. Zhong Yuming and "Cassy" were waiting for us in the lobby as I came back from a last email check in my room. Off we went to the forbidden city. I must say that most of the forbidden city was not nearly as cool as the Great Wall to me. We saw Tiananmen Square and lots of big red buildings. This place was a palace for the Emperor, and no one but his servants were allowed in it. It was seriously probably a mile long and a quarter mile wide surrounded by a moat. It was ridiculously big and every building in it pretty much looked the same. Even the room with old musical instruments didn't turn my gears too much. The one moment of relief that I had from red, gold, and blue paint on huge buildings was near the back of the palace in the garden. I can't describe the relief I felt walking through the last red wall into a lush green and brown area. I was assaulted with fresh growing smells and twisting old trees, which was so different from the smell of old bricks and dusk. Some of the trees were 300 years old. That's older than the United States for you history buffs. Insano. But just as I was starting to enjoy the Forbidden City, my old colleagues were ready to go. Sigh. The other thing of note were the beggars. These were not New York City beggars that have a quirky sign like "Who am I kidding, I need a drink". These were people with diseased and crying children with obvious physical ailments on display and outstretched hands. It was one of the more horrible things I've seen. Then some guy that was missing a hand started hitting us up for money. Dude, did you see the kid with boils? Get outta here, lots of people have no hands. So yeah, that was all weird.

I realize I haven't yet described the air in this city, which has had a huge effect on me physically. Let's put it this way, any car that you walk past that has been parked for more than a day is caked with a layer of god knows what. I've been told it's just pollution. They have little to no regulations on what they put into the air, and it really shows. We drove past a power plant in the middle of the city yesterday. A coal burning power plant, right next to a seafood restaurant. Yum! I have been riddled with sinus issues since I got here, and hack like a smoker a couple times a day. It's pretty awful. It really affects the amount of time it takes for me to be done with outdoor activities. Some people walk around wearing masks on their faces. I don't blame them, and if I were staying for a long time I would probably do the same. I sometimes pretend those people are singers and they are protecting their voices. Sorry, it just make me happy, don't judge.

We went to lunch at a different restaurant next. It was so good. I don't know if it was especially good for me because I better described to our guides what I wanted to eat, or just luck of the draw. Either way it was the best meal I've had in the city. Let me describe restaurants in China as I now understand them from having been to 2. I don't know if they're all like this, but both of ours were. You pull up to the front door, and the building is literally the size of a hotel. There are many rooms on different floors and they each have 1 to 5 circular tables in them with a "lazy susan" type spinny thing in the middle. Your party sits around the table, and the one who sits at the plate with the napkin sticking up is the "host". They are also supposed to pay for the meal. After someone orders in Chinese for a long time, food starts to come out. A plate of food of questionable origins is placed on the spinny thing and spun to be in front of the host. He then dishes for himself and spins to the next person. This goes on and on as more plates of crazy looking food are brought to the table. No exaggeration, yesterday I think we had 15 to 20 different plates of food. Most of which were really good. It's a very different way of eating that lends itself much more to conversation. You only eat a little at a time, and then spin and take a little more, then eat a little more. It's a nice change from the way americans eat, but I wouldn't want every meal to be that way. There was a plate of broccoli, a plate of noodles, and a plate of spicy beef that were all very good. I just didn't understand why they were not all mixed together on my big american plate so I could chow it all down and stop talking so much. Confusing. Oh, and on the way out of the restaurant the leader of our team of servers stopped me and said "Excuse me sir, you speak Chinese?" I said no. She then gave me a card that was in Chinese and said "My name is Liu Jinli" pointing to is as if I could read it. Then she flipped it over and it was English on the other side, or I wouldn't have remembered her name, silly. She then pointed to the number and handed it to me. I think I got my first Chinese digits, but she could have been trying to get me to by her child, I really have no idea. I said "xie xie" (si-eh si-eh) which means thank you and boogied outta there.

We left the restaurant very full and I began my habit of slipping into a comatose state. It gets to be about 3 in the morning Ohio time with a full belly and a few pints of beer in me. This usually means that it's time to crash. But instead we headed to the Pearl Market for some shopping. I was intrigued by the idea of 5 floors of haggling, so I woke up quickly when we got there. Most of the items were pretty forgettable. There were lots of knock-off brands like fake puma shoes and fake iPods. (I really wonder if they work at all) As I walked down the shoe and bag isle, I couldn't keep a straight face. Young girls were yelling from every direction at me and pulling my arms to look at their crappy fake shoes and bags. It was just so weird and funny I literally laughed the entire time. I couldn't even look at anything to consider buying it because of the assault. "HEY! You buy from me, I give you best price. HELLO! What you buy from me?" It was just funny, until I passed a girl that didn't make a sale and she got a very harsh glare from her mother. Sigh, and in comes the downer. All in all I spent probably $20 and bought a T-Shirt and a fake Diesel bag. Not too shabby. I had no interest in the pearls or fake Rolexes, because I have no interest in pearls or real Rolexes. Supposedly the pearls are real though and are very cheap. Bill got some for his wife because that's what men do. They buy things for their wives, even when it doesn't make sense, because it makes them happy. This is a life lesson I really need to swallow, but I've never been good at it.

Off we went to the hotel, and my afternoon nap. We planned to meet at 7:30 again for dinner. The guys called me at 7:45 and woke me up asking if I was coming. Then they said don't worry about it, they weren't that hungry anyways. So, I just kept sleeping. That's why I woke up at about 12:30 and started typing this post. Dammit. I need to fix my sleeping patterns.

So today is the day of reckoning. The day I pay the piper. They day I earn my keep. The day I prove it was worth it for the company to send me here. I must say I'm nervous because I don't really know what the work day will entail entirely. I'm nervous because I'm afraid they will ask me things that I can't easily answer. Most of all, while I'm unloading my insecurities, I'm nervous they will look at me with a face saying, why the hell did you travel thousands of mile to come here if you can't answer my questions. I think these are all irrational fears though, because the truth is, I know a lot about my product. I'm actually very glad for ever time I asked questions back home to the point of annoying my seniors because I wanted to understand something. It's a part of my nature to try and define something entirely in my mind, sometimes to the chagrin of my explain-er. But it's because of that nature that I know a lot about my product and will be able to confidently answer questions. Hopefully.

Anyways, thanks for travelling through my yesterday with me. It wasn't as exciting as the hookers for me either, I know. I've not really gone out drinking since I've been here and hope that after work today some people will want to go out. Then I will have grande stories of great drinkiness. So, pray for me as I earn my keep today, and know I'm fondly looking forward to seeing all your smiling faces again :)

Much Love,
Your Weary Traveler

Trip to China: Part 3

2007-09-22T15:08:00.000-05:00

I wish I hadn't been warned. I wish I had walked into the Pig and Thistle English Pub on my own accord, as it was the only bar in the hotel with any patrons, and bought a beer as I looked around and slowly figured out what was going on. I wish I had suspected nothing as I started to tip back my first swig of Tsungtao and my eyes scanned the room to quickly compile the patterns that made me start to question my surroundings. "There are a lot of 40 and 50 year old men in this room talking to a lot of young and slutty looking Chinese women." I wish I had had that moment, the only moment from the movie Blade that I remember, where the ravers look around the room and suddenly realize they are surrounded by vampires. "Hookers!", I wish I had thought. "This room is full of hookers!!"

It would have made the story so much better. And it would have made me look less creepy for having ventured into the Pig and Thistle at all. The truth is, I was warned. I was sent a light-hearted email by someone from my company that highlighted all the do's and don't's while entering the country. It told us how to get a cab if we needed one, and what to do when we got to the hotel. It also half heartedly warned us to avoid the "Pig and Thistle" bar or the "working girls will get [us]". I had a conversation with the senior guys in my group about the Pig and Thistle and they said I had to go just to experience it. Almost like it was a zoo, or a freak show. In a way it was.

So last night when the old guys went to bed, I blogged my brains out, then headed downstairs to see what troubles I could get into. I had more than the P&T on my mind, but it was certainly on my list of sights to see. I had no interest in leaving the hotel without someone that I knew, so I had 5 places to drink at that I knew of:

1) The Executive Lounge, which was closed when I ventured out of my room at about 11pm. This surprised me a little.

2) The Lobby Bar, which was a fancy looking bar located above the lobby restaurant where we ate breakfast that morning. It's also where I got the coffee drink that day. It also happens to be the bar that had no patrons besides me, and 5 people served me my coffee drink. As I walked by it, from the ground level it sounded and looked dead again.

3) My brightest hope for a good time, the Texas Steakhouse of earlier blogging fame. If this bar was for some reason packed with people, it would have been a hilariously good time, I have no doubt. I passed the P&T on the way, and there were patrons literally spilling out of the bar, including a man and woman of indeterminable national origin, he a European looking and sounding man, and she a dark skinned black or Puerto Rican looking woman, talking "business". She was the fairest of the hookers I saw last night, but you'll hear more on that later. For now I was on my way to the Texas Steakhouse. My biggest disappointment of the evening. The Steakhouse was closed. And all my dreams of Chinese cowboys and cowgirls looking funnier and funnier as i polished off more and more Tsungtao vanished like a tumbleweed across the hotel hallway.

4) The Outside Bar where we ate the first night. "Buffet a la Roach" if you recall. I figured that if I stuck to bottled beers, I was golden. Plus I was there without the company of my older traveling companion who likely would not have taken the joy in mocking the band through enthusiastic singing and dancing and in term start to love the band in a not-mocking way. It was my responsibility, nay, my solemn duty as a member of my team of friends, to go it alone and be the only ass "enjoying" the band. I stiffened my lip and headed out the doors to the bar where a few hours earlier I had seen the same band from the night before butchering some more classics from the great american songbook. What's this?!! There sat the empty stage as the workers packed up the last of the barbecue items. Closed for the evening.

5) It seemed the Pig and Thistle's fate and mine were to be crossed that night by some alignment of the stars or will of the gods. I stepped through the patrons that clogged the doorway, and very quickly looked for a place to sit, grab a beer, and watch the rugby game where I could clearly view the goings on in the room without becoming a part of it. Unfortunately the bar was so packed with customers of the bar and customers of the ladies that there was no such place to be found. "Think quickly my boy, you've been in tougher spots, but you don't want to be spotted in the doorway looking around like your realizing what is going on in the bar and are deciding whether or not to leave. There, a spot at the bar you can squeeze into to buy a beer, then turn and watch the rugby match. Go now!" **see the sidebar below after you read this story** I staked my claim on the nook at the bar, and was within earshot of an entertaining conversation. A German man was actually haggling with a Chinese woman on the cost of her going back to his room, all in bad English from both sides. It was way better than watching Chinese HBO in my room [no porn joke intended because there's not porn in chinese hotels] [only hookers apparently] [I don't know how I know that] On it went. They started off holding hands. She whispered something in his ear. He replied, "No no, I think it cost too much" (I'm not making this up, people) He let go of her hand so she put it on his chest and whispered something else, presumably a lower offer. He seemed vexed with the moral and financial dilemma. If you know me, this is the kind of moment I live to see. I was front and center for one of the most awkward transactions that takes place between humans. It was happening all around me I suppose, but I was now invested in this particular episode. He said he would think about it and come back. As he walked away her sweet and smiling face melted to a cold and longing look. I assume she gave that face to her dad a few times growing up as he walked out the door. Too honest? Sorry, I'm way too deep into this blog to fluff it up with feel goods. I very much wondered if the guy was playing hard ball and was really going to come back with a counter offer. I'll never know. I put down my beer and headed out of the bar. I saw everything I came to see that night.

On my way back to my room, I saw the lights of the Lobby bar were still on, though it still sounded dead. I actually took about 3 steps up the large curved staircase before thinking "What's the point" and headed back to the elevator that would take me to Jackie Chan on TV and my comfy bed. I began rolling around at 3am and was up at 4 again, typing this post. Then I almost died as you'll read below. What a night! And now I am going to start my day. The Forbidden City and the Pearl Market. This trip is sounding more and more like Indiana Jones. What adventures lie ahead today with my fearless tour guide Zhong Yuming (or "Bob" as I dubbed him before I could remember his name). Stay tuned!!

**as I typed this story I heard someone bump into my door. It is 5am now and no one has any good reason to be trying to get in my room right now. And yet, there is my door, shaking with someone on the other side quietly trying to open it. I really had no idea what was about to happen. All I knew was that my room is pitch dark, and I am sitting at the desk typing as my silhouette is highlighted by the computer's glow and I was frozen looking right, waiting for the handle to turn. I'm not a very good fiction writer people, if this is freaking you out, know that it's because it is real and I was rather shitting my pants a moment ago. The quiet shaking of the door stopped and the shadow under the door moved away. I finally breathed. It occurred to me that yesterday morning someone hung a newspaper on everyone's door in the hallway and I was immediately relieved. My startled and tired mind must have exaggerated what I heard into someone trying to open my door. I tip-toed to the door and opened it to find my door handle, and every other door handle, bare of a newspaper. Shit. I closed the door, and a few seconds later my door started to shake again, I shit you not. I'm likely giving you a play-by-play of my murder as I type. Cool! (but I guess not really likely) This time I made my way to it, but the person walked away before I got there. I clearly heard a man say "Damn" as he walked away. When I got to the door, the eye hole had a piece of paper jammed in it from the inside, so with a trembling hand I quickly removed the paper and shoved my eager eye to the hole. No one. I wanted the man to come back so bad so I could, A: see him and B: hit the door loudly to scare the shit out of him and make him go away. There is one irrefutable fact, a second ago some man wanted in my room enough to try it twice. My rational mind is now telling me it may have been some drunk guy trying to find his room. But I'm in fucking China people, and I'm groggy and jet-lagged in a dark room alone. [Boom] I just heard another room door open and shut rather loudly. This tells me he probably just found his room, and if he was looking for a random room to kill someone, he was being very loud about it. {phew} Sorry for those of you who read this before finishing the hooker story. It may now seem boring. Back to that.

Trip to China: Part 2

2007-09-22T08:04:00.000-05:00

I forgot to mention that for some reason, when I view blogger.com, it is entirely in Chinese. Relax, geeks, I checked the language options, I even made sure i was being directed to the English blogger site instead of the Chinese one. No dice. So I'm finding my way around posting these blogs by sense of smell. I sort of remember where all my main buttons are, and if I'm not sure, I can usually tell if I hover over them and read the destination of the link in the lower corner.

Enough nerd talk.

This morning, as you know, I woke up hella-early and blogged. I was on the computer from about 4am until 6am when I started to get ready for the day. We went to the lobby restaurant for breakfast instead of the Executive lounge.

I guess I've not really explained how sweet my set up in the hotel is yet. There are 5 floors to the hotel. I am on the 5th (the Executive Club) and at the end of the hall, we have our own receptionists and a lounge full of free snacks, desserts, and drinks. It's also full of foreign people and a couple TV's with CNN on them but you can't really hear what's going on. I did see a cop taser the hell out of some woman though (check the news, it's harsh but rather funny).

So we have the option of breakfast at the Executive lounge or downstairs in the lobby. The more knowledgeable co-workers that I'm traveling with, that we met up with this morning, said the lobby was a better spread. Boy were they right. They had everything you could think of for breakfast, plus sushi for people who are disgusting and need sushi for breakfast. The guys that Bill and I met up with today are Robby and Steve. They're quite a bit higher up in the company than Bill and myself, so along with my slightly groggy breakfast, I had to put my business face on. They are incredibly down to early guys though, and we had a great breakfast/day with them.

We met up with "Sally" again and another BWBC (Babcock and Wilcox Beijing Company) employee "Maggee" and her 6 year old son "Frank". I almost feel like a jerk using their fake pseudo-american names. If I was them I would likely resent it a little. Steve is around 60 years old and kept making nearly off-color comments about the written language and such (like, "I noticed the license plates are written in regular script"). I would cringe a little and glance to the girls saying in my mind "he means English" but they were not even phased by it. I guess I am the product of one of the most racially and religiously sensitive generations probably to ever walk the earth, so when I hang out with older guys and they start down certain paths in a conversation I sometimes want to climb under the rug when maybe it's not that offensive of a thing to say. It also seems that the Chinese in general have no qualms about acting nearly subordinate to Americans. I just hope a little bit for their own sake that it's an act and they go home and make fun of us for saying things like "regular script". At any rate, Steve meant absolutely nothing offensive by it and the girls didn't seem to notice, so the only one affected at all was sensitive Barry, so who gives a shit.

We arrived at the great wall, and were swarmed by vendors selling useless crap. The funny thing was, from the ground all the way to the cable cars that took us to the wall, there were hundreds of numbered booths, and nearly all of them were selling the exact same products. I just couldn't figure out how so many people could make a living selling the exact same thing next to hundreds of people selling the same shitty T-shirt that said, I've climbed the great wall. One gentleman had an idea of how to "stand out above the crowd" (sited: A Goofy Movie). Now Robby, who is traveling with us is a large man. He probably stands 6'3" at about 230 lbs by my guess. The little Chinese vendor runs up to him with a huge T-shirt saying "I have big big sizes for you. XXXL. You buy from me, big big sizes." He was lucky Robby doesn't seem to be too sensitive about his size because Robby could have probably snapped the guy in half. Being the gentle giant he is, he kindly said no thanks and kept walking. The little guy was not so easily deterred. He followed us much of the way up the hill until he got out a pen and paper and made Robby write his name down for the guy. He signed it "Fred". After a few more yards the guy finally left us alone. To be continued...

We reached the lifts and hopped in. We got to the top and had just a little more climbing to do past some horrid smelling toilets. Finally we reached the entrance to the great wall. It was a large courtyard area filled with families and tourists (most of them asian with some obvious americans and a few Europeans intermingled). At the far side of the courtyard was a small narrow stairway that led up to an entrance to the wall. The wall stretched for miles in either direction (as you've likely seen in pictures and will likely see in my pictures and videos when I return) and for whatever reason, we decided to turn left and start out along the wall. We might have reached the second guardpost (not sure what they're called) when the older guys decided they had gone far enough. We may have gone a quarter mile at this point. I could have gone many miles along the wall if, again, I was there with some of my friends back home. Unfortunately my friends from back home were back home. Still, the girls and little "Frank" (who the older guys kept calling "Fred" which I thought was amusing because they were screwing up his fake american name) and I went along probably another mile of so. I got lots of cool pictures and some video. I was also amazed that I had cell phone reception, so I made a few calls :) The later it got, the hotter, and more crowded it got, which attracted many many bugs of undetermined species. The real bastards were the gnats which were everywhere, but there were also some awesome looking bugs that didn't bother us at all, including a few praying mantises (praying manti? praying mantiseseses?) Eventually Frank and the girls and I headed back so as not to keep the old guys waiting too long. On the return, the gnats were nearly unbearable, so i was actually glad to get the hell off the wall. On the way down the hill (we actually decended down a different trail than we went up mind you so I don't know how this guy found us) the little Chinese guy came running up to big "Fred" (Robby) and telling him to buy the big big T-shirt. I really have no idea how this guy spotted us and remembered the fake name that Robby gave him. Persistence is apparently the key to sales though, because Robby and Steve, after saying no a few times, ended up buying a few shirts from the guy. I was glad for the guy to have made the sale, and yet disappointed that his obnoxious tactics were being rewarded. I over-analyse, it's what I do.

After the descent, we drove to the site where they're building a huge crazy stadium for the Olympics next year. "Sally" said they called it the bird's nest. I'm not sure if that's because it looks like a bird's nest (you'll see the pictures) or because it is sponsored by Nestle (which she seemed to indicate something about, but our communication was not working too well so I pulled the old smile and nod). At any rate, it was an amazing design with very impressive construction. That being said, it looks like a big bird's nest, which looked kinda stupid.

Then came lunch. Wow. I would rather just post the pictures. There was a "lazy susan" style spiny thing in the middle of the table and everyone sort of grabs what they want and eats it. The specialty at the restaurant was duck, which I'm not at all opposed to, but the manner of serving it, and the things it was served with were enough to make me a light eater. One of the plates on the table had the duck's head severed in two. (enjoy!) Another was literally stacked with duck feet. Duck Feet. It wasn't gross though, because for those they removed the bone. There were also whole shrimp, which some of my readers would not be grossed out by, but I was. Especially when all their curly antennae where hanging off the plate into other plates and their little cooked black eyes were staring at me. ("why I can't see no mo?" they asked me) Thank Jeebus there was beef and chicken that tasted like it would in an american Chinese restaurant minus the vegetables. Oh, and we had a few beers (Tsungtao?) that were REALLY good. Like, I would gladly order it when I got back home. Sort of like a Heineken. After food and beers it was about 3pm (3am back home) and Barry was turning into Narcalarry (that one's for Jen and Lacey). We went back to the hotel, left the girls and "Frank""Fred" and split up saying we'd meet at 7:30 for dinner.

"That's enough time for a nap, a workout, a swim, and a little Aida rehearsal" I said to myself. I was awoken at 7pm by a man walking in my room asking if I wanted him to turn down the bed. I covered my half-nakedness and looked around confusedly while answering "no thanks". I was lucky that he woke me up though or else I would have definitely slept through dinner. I went downstairs to the lobby a little early and hit the bar up for a drink with some espresso in it to kick me up a little. (at the Executive lounge I had asked for Red Bull and they didn't know what it was. Then I asked for Mountain Dew and got an equally blank stare. I then asked for pop and they said "what?". I gritted my teeth and asked for soda and they were baffled by my wordage. I asked for a coke and lights went off all over their face. I ended up leaving the coke for the coffee drink at the downstairs bar.) We all met up and walked down the road to a restaurant for a well-deserved american style burger. They had rugby playing on the big screens and pretty but stinky waitresses. It was like I was back home. Sort of. We enjoyed a few more of my new favorite beer, Tsungtao and quickly were presented with our burgers. I, foolishly ordered mine Medium. The nearly raw patty was a bit like chewing on bubblegum without the fun bubbles or the tastey flavor. I didn't dare send it back to the kitchen, though. I just ate around the outside where it was the most cooked and drank my Tsungtao deeply. After 2 beers, we all headed back to the hotel, and the old guys called it a night. That's why I'm here blogging at 10:34 on a Saturday night.

I suppose it's time to go grab a beer and start some adventures to tell you about in the next post. Until then!

Trip to China: Part 1

2007-09-21T15:03:00.000-05:00

Ug, I'm wide awake at 4 in the morning, so it's probably a good time to blog.

It is Friday, September 21st, Beijing, China and my brain is a little frazzled. Our flight yesterday (2 days ago? I don't know, time zones confuse me) was amazing, let me highlight the entire process.

First let me explain that I am in Beijing on business (how cool is that) so it's expense-paid (how much cooler is that?!!).

Thursday night, Ohio time, I went to Aida rehearsal and got to experience singing "The God's Love Nubia" with our incredibly talented cast about 5 times. While this was a gut-wrenchingly powerful experience, it was also rather throat-wrenching. But what did I care, I was leaving for China in the morning! The end of rehearsal rolled around and unexpectedly, the cast presented me with a card that they had signed, and gifts of Excedrin and Imodium for my trip. I was immensely touched, but they topped it all off with laying their hands on me and praying for me. I don't know if you've ever had this experience (I speak to you, reader, like I know who you are) but I have just a few other times in my life and it is really a moment to take with you forever. I went home and started the arduous process of packing. At this point I had about 3 1/2 hours to pack before I had to get showered and go pick up my co-worker and drive to the airport. Sleep you say? No, no sleep unless i somehow got done in time.

Luckily, I remembered that someone at work had said that laundry service was included in my hotel room. Jackpot! I had all the clean undies and T-shirts I needed, but the dress shirts were questionably clean at best. Did he just imply that he ~~sometimes~~ doesn't clean his shirts between uses? Bwahaha. So I threw my favorite dress shirts on the pile (clean and unclean) and was pretty much ready to go. I did have time for a quick nap before I left, but I set 2 alarms and slept with the light on so as not to be an idiot and sleep through my expense-paid trip to china. [It is at this time that the author went back to the beginning of this blog and explained why/how he is going to china. Note: term "author" used loosely] I woke up, jumped in the shower, and was about to run out the door when I realized that while I was so proud to have packed everything in one bag, my suitcase was stuffed to the brim, with no room for Chinese purchases. IDIOT. I decided I'd rather buy a bag in China to put everything in than ~~repack everything~~ have to carry 2 suitcases and a heavy-ass laptop bag supplied by work through the airport.

I jumped in the car and headed to my co-worker's house to pick him up. I got there annoyingly early. Like, nearly 20 minutes early. In my defense, I was planning on getting Starbucks on the way, but realized it was closed at 3:30am. I then rolled through Taco Bell to get some caffeine, and they told me they closed 5 minutes ago. Confused that I woke up and got to Taco Bell when it closed, I ventured on and sat outside my co-worker's house for about 15 minutes. Just long enough for sleepiness to slither up my back and perch itself comfortably in my brain, with no pesky caffeine to ward it off.

We got to Cleveland over 2 hours before our flight, and sat around forever. They design the chairs in such a way as to not allow any real sleep and so I was hating life at this point. Our flight to Newark, NJ was pleasant enough. I go a few minutes of sleep. We were lucky enough to be seated in first class (flying-for-business perk), and to my best reckoning it was the first time I had flown first class, but I was terribly disappointed as the plane was so small that first class just meant slightly more room for your ass. We had a 3 hour layover in NJ which was pretty awesome thanks to our first-class status and our welcome into the Continental President's Club. Free snacks, drinks, and wireless internet. Basically my idea of heaven. Unfortunately it was 9am with very very little sleep under my belt so drinking didn't sound like the best idea. That's why I only had 3 free drinks.

When we boarded the Boeing 777, I realized that THIS is what first class was all about. Technically we were "Business Class" on this flight, but it was identical to first class which was separated from us by a kitchen. Behind us were the lowly commoners in Economy. I sporadically would throw bits of my table scraps through the doorway, and I would hear them all scurry and fight over them. Seriously though, these seat's were sweet. They had 3 positions; Situp for take-off and landing, Chillax back a bit, and Low-rider for sleeping. Note: I made up the names of the positions. They also had other cool features, but you don't care, just know it was sweet. Were were served lots of free food and booze (which again only made my headache worse, so I only had a lot) and after one of the meals, everyone shut the windows and had nappy-time. It was really rather weird. I woke up at one point and sat up, half expecting to scolded for it. I slept off and on (I'm not a great sleeper) but right in the middle of my last and best sleep I was awoken by a shaking from the flight attendant. She wanted to serve me breakfast. Thanks. Oh, I forgot to mention that I had steak for my first meal. I will post pictures when I get back home, just know it was really bad steak. The rest of the food was surprisingly good though, for plane food.

Bill (this is my co-worker who I will now just call Bill) and I got off the plane, and breazed through customs. (I imagine it will be much harder to get into the USA on the way back) When we walked out the large double doors, we were met by a sea of people behind a rope holding signs. I a little bit felt like a rock star. We made our way down the line until I spotted our names on a sign held by 2 young Chinese people. They looked (and I found out they are) recently out of college. "Sally" is 24 and deals with most of the incoming americans, so she goes by Sally. She is thin and sweet with a welcoming smile. Zhong Yuming (I just had to look up his name again) is also 24 and looks like one of the hip Asian students I've seen around NYU or San Francisco. He carried a murse unabashedly as all sensible men around the world do. Bill, I should mention is 58, very tall, completely bald, and very very light skinned. Needless to say he stuck out in our little group, and basically all of China, as we made our way to the waiting driver.

Sally and Zhong Yuming (and some driver) dropped us off at the Hotel (Holiday Inn Lido Beijing) with a promise from Sally to see us in the morning for our Great Wall tour, and from Zhong Yuming (who I will now call "Bob") to see us Sunday morning for our "Forbidden City" tour. Which apparently is not forbidden anymore. Bill and I were left to our devices at he Hotel. I had every intention of hitting the weight room, swimming, and drinking for free at our Executive Lobby. None of these happened. Bill and I looked around some of the stores in the hotel (including a "Certified Apple Reseller" which looked like a questionable claim at best) and decided on a Barbecue (which was hilariously mock-american) that was happening outside. Points of note at the stores: There was a cool clothing store selling expensive american brands very cheap. I seriously wonder if they were fabricated here or stolen or both and that's why they were cheap. They had lots of stuff, but basically only one of each item, so if it wasn't your size you were screwed. There was a Texas-themed restaurant, which was as ridiculous as it sounds. Chinese servers walking around with sheriff badges, big texas belt buckles, denim skirts, and boots. Feel free to laugh heartily at the mental image, because I could not at the time as much as I wanted to.

The barbecue was lame-o. The serving staff far outnumbered the people eating there. Half the food I dished was the first thing dished out of the pans. It was eerily under-patronized. Then I saw a small roach crall across the buffet table. I stuck to my beer from then on. There was a REALLY lame band playing american songs. I don't say this because I was so proud of the american songs that I couldn't hear them any other way. "How Do I Live Without You" sounded like really bad karaoke, and that's not even including the butchered lyrics. If I was there with my buddies, we would have probably loved it because drinks were free and we would have gotten wasted and sung loudly and horribly, but made the place a lot more fun. Unfortunately Bill and I were in no such company or mood. So my head started to spin after one beer at 8pm, and I headed to bed. Realize I had been up for an amount of hours I'd rather not calculate with only a few hours of plane-sleeping to keep me alive. All in all, the travel was about 23 hours from when I picked up Bill to when we got to the hotel in Beijing. Not to mention the day of work and rehearsal before that and listening to "How Do I Live Without You" after that. OK? So I had every right to be tired! I just realized I was justifying my tiredness.

I went to my room and knew I had to stay up for a half hour so I could let the laundry service in with my first cleaned shirt of the trip. I was awoken by the laundry service knocking on the door a half hour later (I was really tired). I then crashed until about 3am when I started rolling around in bed. That's what I do for about an hour until I realize I'm not going back to sleep, and so I got up and started typing the ramblings you're reading now.

Quite a journey, EH? I hope to keep posting these, but I was never good at keeping to a blogging schedule. As I said, I will post the accompanying pictures to these blogs when I get home. God Bless and I'll see you at the Great Wall...

Basket Mirror Boggles My Mind

2007-09-18T15:57:00.000-05:00

This thing is amazing. I could spend hours playing with it, and yes I would probably be naked most of that time.

Automated Restaurant

2007-08-27T15:06:00.000-05:00

http://www.geekologie.com/2007/08/wolds_first_automated_restaura.php

Today must be the day of childhood dreams for me. Follow the above link to read about a near-completely automated restaurant. I can remember my brother and I drawing such things on the backs of bulletins during church as children. Between praying profusely and such. It's like Sheetz, but the food rolls from kitchens above right to your table!!

At the rate my childhood dreams are coming true it won't be long before Alex Mack proposes to me, and there's a touch screen iPod running OSX and likely featuring WIFI capabilities announced. What's that? OMFG!

Amazing

2007-08-27T11:58:00.000-05:00

I didn't even know how to title this blog it's so amazing. 3-D Monitor? Hologram? You decide. I've seriously been waiting for this invention since I was 10.

Jennya McJamethy

2007-08-27T10:26:00.000-05:00

Well, I'm glad to see that the object of at least one of my childhood fantasies is still really hot. Like smoking hot. I submit for your perusal a link to some pics of Jenny McCarthy of 90's MTV fame in a bikini. Wow. Just wow. And the obvious polar opposite of someone keeping their hotness would be Jenna Jameson. Yeah, she looks real bad. She's supposedly not doing porn anymore. I'm guessing that's because no one WANTS to do a porn with her anymore. Way to go out on top, as it were, Jenna.

Maybe Jenny would be offended that I'm even comparing these two, but let's face it, they both took their clothes off for money. Not that I look down on them for that. I'd do just about anything for a cool, clean $5 bill. One time I attacked a bear cub while covered in honey not 10 feet from it's mother for 5 bucks. Only the cub was more of a human child, and the mother was more of a great-grandmother, and the honey was - well I don't remember why I was covered in honey.

The point is, ladies, sell it while it looks good, because cases like Jenna are much more common than cases like Jenny.

iAnnoyed

2007-08-15T13:17:00.000-05:00

Just a quick rant about this whole "i" everything...

Remember in the late 90's when everything was "X". Generation X, X-Games, etc. I wonder who decided the progression should go from "X" to "i". Either way, it was kind of fun for a while (I do own an iMac, and iPod, and an iHome) but I really hoped the whole thing would go away soon. Unfortunately Google's personal homepage was recently renamed iGoogle, and with the onslaught of the iPhone, I don't think the end of this iCrap is in iSight.

Apple Envy

2007-08-08T09:31:00.000-05:00

Sigh, and so my Apple envy continues. It amazes me how I can look at a product I bought (like my iMac) with such awe and pride, and within a few months quietly and slowly reject it for not being as sleek and wonderful as the new model. This is the first sign of a problem people. I'm aware of it.

Have I mentioned I hate and love Steve Jobs? Because I do. He's like a shoe salesman that makes really cool shows that lots of people want. He retains all of his annoying salesmanship, even when the product is good enough that it doesn't need a mega-salesman to sell it. Notice how many times he tells you in his address yesterday how wonderful, useful, amazing, simple everything is. It's to be expected to some degree when selling a product, but I think he goes overboard to the point where I start to say, "this salesman might be full of crap". The product is awesome, just tone down the salesman. He's also an arrogant ass. Some would say he has the right to be. I wouldn't say anyone does. For example:

"Somebody asked me, you guys are so far ahead of everyone else, why are you obsoleting your own products?" (quoted by Engaget)

My paraphrase:
"Somebody was blowing me the other day, and they said, dude, you're so much more awesome than everyone else. Why awesome-ify yourself further when already your awesomeness is so much more awesome than everyone else's lack of awesome! [slurp slurp slurp]"

And yet, who wouldn't love to have all of Jobs' jobs. From Pixar to Apple. I just feel like I would handle it all with less douche-itude. But maybe a Douche is what it takes to run such companies.

Ok, I've made up enough words for one blog.

Kitten Eating Corn

2007-07-24T15:44:00.000-05:00

Kitten Eating Corn

Add to My Profile More Videos

This is so cute I need to go punch an old woman to feel like a man again.

My New Submarine Goal

2007-07-19T15:30:00.000-05:00

http://crave.cnet.com/8301-1_105-9747159-1.html?part=rss&tag=feed&subj=Crave

I finally have a good reason for becoming insanely wealthy. Follow the link.

Perpetual Liar

2007-07-09T09:27:00.000-05:00

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/technology/6283374.stm

This inventor is a lying liar. Or a genius. But the odds are clearly not in his favor.

“I invented a perpetual motion machine, but yeah I suddenly can’t show it to anyone because I just found out that when light hits it, it doesn’t work.”

“I have a magical frog in my hand but you can’t see him cause he’s invisible.”
-Joey Gilmore, 5th grade

"My perpetual motion machine would work if it wasn't for outside forces screwing it up."

"Yeah, that's pretty much the problem with the whole concept. That and creating energy."
-me

94.1 WHBC Radio Spot

2007-05-13T22:52:00.000-05:00

Rather exciting news: I just finished recording and editing a radio spot that will air on 94.1 WHBC in Canton all this week in regards to the Canton Cabaret opening next weekend, May 18th. I recorded 5 songs (I sang on 2) and compiled them with a voice over read by director Jon Tisevich. Sooo, listen to 94.1 this week to hear it, or just listen to it here:

http://www.box.net/shared/gdl2kmh74i

blogggggggg

2007-05-13T17:04:00.000-05:00

I just thought I'd mention that I hate it when people are typing things internet-style, and they want to extend the word as if to hold it out (eg. yum, beeeeer), but instead of extending the vowel they just extend the last letter (eg. yum, beerrrrrr). It just doesn't make sense, guys. That's all.

WTF?!

2007-05-03T15:29:00.000-05:00

http://homepage.mac.com/jaygarbose/iMovieTheater42.html

This thing was recently caught on tape and is as yet undefined. It's some sort of 7 foot long sea worm. Watch the video, because it's unreal.

Preservation of Future Memories

2007-04-30T21:16:00.000-05:00

On it's way. Everything is falling into place. Bwahahahahaaaaa...

Kelsey

2007-04-29T14:27:00.000-05:00

This is the beginning of a series of sketches i plan on doing of my friends. Let me know if you'd like me to draw you!

From Kelsey

Passive Aggression/Gone

2007-04-24T07:32:00.000-05:00

Gone
by Ben Folds

I thought I'd write, I thought I'd let you know
In the year since you've been gone I've finally let you go
And I hope you find some time to drop a note
But if you won't
Then you won't
And I will consider you gone

I know that you went straight to someone else
While I worked through all this shit here by myself
And I think that you should spend some time alone
But if you won't
Then you won't
And I will consider you gone

I wake up in the night
All alone and it's alright
The chemicals are wearing off
Since you've gone

The days go on, the lights go off and on
And nothing really matters when you're gone
If you think that you feel nothing at all
If you don't (If you don't)
Then you don't (No, you won't)
If you won't
Then you won't
And I will
Then I will
Yeah, and I will consider you gone...

http://www.afn.org/~afn57628/Ben%20Folds%20Live%20@%20Enmore/11%20Gone.mp3

Barry by Barry

2007-04-20T08:47:00.000-05:00

Here was project #2 on my Wacom board. I'm medium satisfied. I'm really just learning all the tools. Used Adobe Photoshop Elements 4 for this and TnS.

From Barry by Barry

Tito n Slim

2007-04-20T08:39:00.000-05:00

These guys were a staple of my high school years. The reinvention is coming, but here's a teaser drawn on my new Wacom Intuos3!

From Tito n Slim

(click the "From Tito n Slim" to see how it was drawn)

Throw Down

2007-04-10T11:44:00.000-05:00

At first I was angry that the adults let this go on, but by the end I was peeing myself with laughter.

Wacom Intuos3 4x6

2007-04-09T12:50:00.000-05:00

My next likely geek/artist purchase. Very excited.

UPDATE!!:

Calvin

2007-04-06T11:10:00.000-05:00

You can call the boy many things, but uncommitted isn't one of them.

Spring Awakening

2007-04-02T15:54:00.000-05:00

Not much to say other than, if you're in the New York area, go see this show. If you're in the Amazon area, buy this album.

That is all.

Suggs

2007-03-30T18:00:00.000-05:00

I decided it was time to change the name of my blog. Suggs is more than ridiculous blogs (although you'll still get those from time to time). It gives me the ability to be reflective. I felt like my blog title was too silly for some of my recent realness. So from now on, it's Suggs. If you're reading this on my facebook feed, this could be confusing, but I just wanted to document the name change of my blog.

Ah yes, just to feel

2007-03-30T17:55:00.000-05:00

Ah yes, just to feel
to soak sun and breath life
I trade my sunglasses
for a stinging glare that
warms my soul.
I am overcome with thankfulness,
renewal, and life
tears rim my eyes
and I smile.
Ah yes, just to feel!

Advertising in English for Dummies

2007-03-29T10:33:00.000-05:00

Ever sit at your computer and feel all warm and cozy, but your feet are freezing? Well according to the latest Japanese engineering "It is due to warm air goes up leaving your feet still cold". Read more about the far-eastern answer to online-coldfeet (and not the kind where you're afraid to reply to that creepy guy from eHarmony). It's always been my opinion that if you're going to advertise in a language, you should probably learn that language. But I've often been labeled as an over-achiever.

John Mayer/Ben Folds

2007-03-26T22:04:00.000-05:00

In preparation for the John Mayer/Ben Folds concert I'm going to on July 1st, and for personal therapy, I post these songs:

Die Moritat von Mackie Messer

2007-03-24T09:43:00.000-05:00

I am in a group called the Canton Cabaret, and am singing the standard "Mack the Knife". While I was looking online for lyrics to print, I came across the Wikipedia entry for this song, and found out some fascinating information on it. Follow the link and read up. I especially enjoyed the litteral translation of the lyrics from German. They must have been a little too dark for 1954 America.

We did it!!

2007-03-21T13:18:00.000-05:00

Scientists spent 4 years solving a math problem that they admit has no practical applications! The question on every person's mind that has ever felt raped by taxes: "Who the F funded this?!" Well, I could give them the benefit of the doubt and say it was crazy rich people. I could also assume it was based on government grants and/or college funding. Both organizations have taken more money out of my pockets than I feel I've gotten back from them in services.

Impressive? Yes. But while climbing Mount Everest might get you famous or laid, solving this math problem will just get you wedgies. Gigantic wedgies.

Fresh Air

2007-03-20T17:18:00.000-05:00

Beautiful weather, new day emerging.

Even Worse

2007-03-19T22:29:00.000-05:00

Ever get the feeling things are going to get even worse before they get better?

Hot News! What Do Uma and Suggs Have In Common?!

2007-03-19T10:26:00.000-05:00

Uma Thurman is reportedly recently single again, as is your favorite sometimes blogger. Thurman and Suggs were unreportedly spotted together battling to the death. Suggs won.

Keith Urban (the singer) is a bully

2007-02-07T12:40:00.000-05:00

So Keith Urban, the country singer of whom I could not name a single song but for some reason I know is married to Nicole Kidman, is suing the owner of www.keithurban.com for using his name to try to promote the owner's oil paintings. That sounds like a great idea except the owner of the website is a man named Keith Urban. So apparently the country singer hasn't moved past the 8th grade thinking that just because you're slightly more popular/well known you matter more. What an enormous douche. I looked at the website owner's paintings and they're VERY good. I see more talent and hard work in one of those paintings than the tight pants wearing, alcohol binging, woman faced Keith Urban has shown in his entire career. Yet, the country singer is trying to steal an artist's website because more girls want to blow him. I'm obviously offended for all of nerd-kind, so maybe I'm taking it a bit far, but Jesus, what a cocky shit. I wonder if the singer would feel better if the artist's website was www.KeithUrbanThePainterWhoDoesn'tMakeAsMuchMoneyAsTheSinger.com

I'll end this post by calling the singer one more immature word, because I assume that's the only level of communication he can comprehend.

Keith Urban (singer) is a Dickcheese.

Holy Crazy Space People, Batman!

2007-02-06T07:38:00.000-05:00

http://news.scotsman.com/international.cfm?id=195652007

Apparently astronauts are not exempt from the human genome Hilius Bilius.

Are you serious?! I always assumed NASA had one of the most stringent weed-out-the-crazies tests. Maybe that's because they're entrusted with BILLIONS of dollars of equipment, not to mention many people's lives, careers, and life's works.

I also always wondered if anyone has ever had sex in the International Space Station. I now assume it's like the most exclusive frat party anyone could be invited to (minus attractive people), including such classic games as Spin the Astronaut, Naked Twister, Seven Minutes in Heavens (def. 5), and insert joke about Tang here.

The Muppet Matrix

2007-01-26T10:32:00.000-05:00

This is one of the most amazing things I've ever seen. If the embeded video doesn't work, follow this link:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XQrotZDDsTE

Rosie & Donald

2007-01-11T11:04:00.000-05:00

I hate to even validate this situation enough to post about it, but I got a lil' fired up and replied to this post on The Superficial. Mine is #30. Thanks to Mrs. Bickerson for the love.

JRB Lays It Down

2007-01-05T16:02:00.000-05:00

http://www.jasonrobertbrown.com/contact/question.php?faqID=39

The above link is a response to an email questioning Jason Robert Brown on the use of explitives in songs. His reaction is smart and funny. Read and agree with it. Fuckhead.

Superseniors

2007-01-04T13:19:00.000-05:00

Sorry, this ones just for Facebookers. I started a discussion in a group on Facebook, and it turned into a sort of blog. Here's the link:

http://www.facebook.com/topic.php?uid=2212041198&topic=1811

New Years Resolution

2006-12-22T10:06:00.000-05:00

I have only ever made one New Years resolution that I can remember. In 2002, I resolved to stop drinking pop. I worked at Chi Chi's in Canton as a server, and I had access to free pop from the fountains for hours a day. Running around a restaurant keeps you in decent shape, but I had no good reason for sucking down sugar all day long. I've kept that resolution pretty well even until today. I very rarely drink pop at a restaurant. I've probably saved a few hundred dollars in the last 5 years, and I've drank a lot of water.

I mention all this to say that I don't take resolutions lightly. That being said I'm going to make one now. My resolution is to blog more often. At least twice a month. When I set up this blog, I knew very little about blogging in general, or blogger.com, but I've since learned enough to hang at least, and plan to use this medium more often. I feel like an impostor reading and commenting on other people's blogs without maintaining my own. Follow the links on the right to some blogs of my friends that I respect a lot, and come here often to read my own ramblings.

Website!

2006-10-10T10:05:00.000-05:00

Check out my new website powered by Google. Those guys are swell.

http://bdebois.googlepages.com

K-Fed-Spears

2006-08-23T12:37:00.000-05:00

Funny Article about B. Spears-Fed. If you saw the performance of Kevin at the Kids Choice awards show, you shared my pain and glee as I giggled with bubbling schadenfreude at the site of K-Fed looking like Vanilla Ice on the Mickey Mouse club.

Oh, let me also say that if ANYONE I know buys his album, you are completely ex-communicated. How does he not get the joke that he is?

{Link Removed}

Hey, let's make a movie about it!!! Well, at least the popular parts!!!

2005-12-08T10:04:00.000-05:00

http://www.suntimes.com/output/movies/sho-sunday-narnia04.html
(If this link stops working, the article is "Creating the magic of 'Narnia'" from www.suntimes.com December 4, 2005 BY CINDY PEARLMAN)

The most troubling article I’ve read about The Lion the Witch and the Wardrobe. Some of the things the director and the producer said about the original books are simply not true.

EG:
{"We felt the girls should have a more active role in the movie," says producer Mark Johnson. "For example, the girls had no weapons in the books. C.S. thought it was ugly when girls fight.}

False. One of the 3 gifts given to the children by Father Christmas (who I’m sure they’ll write out of the movie) is a bow and arrows for Susan. Lucy is the youngest and is given a healing potion. Why is it bad to be a medic? Queef on the producer making C.S. Lewis out to be a prick.

{"We said, 'That's not the world we live in today.' Our girls have bows and arrows."}

Congratulations!! 1940 is not the world we live in today! Boys and girls would have been raised very differently in the time of these books. Let alone, Susan- no matter her sex- is the nurturing character, and Lucy is a very little girl. And again, Susan has a bow and arrows

{"It is violent, but a medieval battle is a medieval battle. Everyone is wearing armor and waving around swords. That's the story."}

That’s the story? So because violence is widely tolerated in cinema, your defense of leaving it in the movie is, “That’s the story.” But christian metaphors are less than accepted in movies, so we’ll go ahead and cut those out. If this book had Islamic metaphors in it, I would want them in the movie, because, “That’s the story.” Don’t make a movie from a beloved book and change key undertones, or at least study the book very closely, which based on the producer’s quotes, he did not. I’ll also go so far as to say that if the book had Islamic metaphors, I guarantee they would have made the movie. Yeah, I said it!

{"In the book, [Aslan]'s described as the size of an elephant, but I thought that would be really weird and difficult to shoot,"}

It is widely understood that Aslan is not usually seen as the size of an elephant. Also, the narrations in the original story do not depict Aslan as being much bigger than a regular lion. He is also mistaken for normal lions in other books at times. Aslan also says that he doesn’t appear the same to you every time you see him. My point is, this was a misguiding and misinformed quote. From what I’ve seen, I have no problem with the size of Aslan in the movies, but I don’t like this justification.

{"To me, religion was never an issue with this film. I think we've adapted the book for people of all belief systems."}

Fucking stupid. If you don’t want Aslan to mirror a Christ character- don’t make Narnia movies.

Ok, that’s my rant.

Testies 1, 2 ... 3?

2005-10-28T16:56:00.000-05:00

Ah, it never gets old. This is Marvin Suggs, also known as Kermit the Blog as a feature on the Guy Behind the Guy Podcast. Just testing my blogging skills before I write anything for-real-style. I will mention that whoever has the Kermit the Blog website already is a punkass, because they forced me to choose another blogging name, and they haven't posted a blog since APRIL OF 2004!!! So from now on I'll be Marvin Suggs, wtf. Can you cuss in blogs? I need to learn the eddicate, and how to spell etiquette. Also, blogger.com should probably add the word 'blog' to their spelling dictionary, or maybe I'm just crazy. Or maybe I need to learn when to start new paragraphs, I never was very good at that. Let's try it now.

That was refreshing, huh? Ok, more later.

2005-10-28T14:45:00.000-05:00

Marvin Suggs