Europe Sampler, Part III: Paris

“The trains are never late in Europe,” the gent in the black brimmed-hat had said.

The train to Paris was delayed by 11 minutes, but to cry bad luck would have been unguestlike, considering the absolutely gorgeous weather that Europe had given us so far. We slumbered through a comfortable ride, and exited at Gare Du Nord, a hulk of a train station with a great window view. A French pigeon sauntered down the second floor, proud to observe its suit-wearing peons and the Asian tourists.

The Meridien was in Montparnasse, a ways south of the left bank. W advised me to get food on Rue St.Louis-en-l’ile, known for its homely atmosphere and reasonably-priced food. The thirty-minute walk gave plenty of time for smoke breaks and general banter, despite Y’s hunger-driven orders to change the leisurely walk into a force-march. At times I felt like one of the oxen in Oregon Trail when the player decides to be sadistic.

The Parthenon, one of the landmarks on the walk. We could not see all we wanted in Paris in 3 days, so this was one of the many things we passed on.

G’s ettiquete is unmatched. By that, I mean there cannot be another person alive like him since those two would enter a fight to the death and only one would remain. “I’m a simple farmer, dude,” said the legend himself, walking up the street and scaring the locals with his gait. Despite this pretense, G was responsible for some of the most acute wisdom on the trip, acquired from swimming in life and not from university lectures.

“This is a nice walk, here.”
“Yeah, totally. I’m glad we’re visiting here.”
“I agree – if I lived here, I probably would not enjoy it.”

The oxen were rebellious, so by the time we arrived at the island, we were given a beautiful night view of Notre Dame. Pairs of youths encamped the sides of the river, beer in the hands and romance in the hearts.

Food at the Aux Anysetiers du Roy. Steaks for all, with a light and clean Bordeaux (Chateau Les Morins, 2007). For dessert, we grabbed crepes on the left bank - nutella and banana mean business for the tongue.

The next morning, I woke up to an impeccable skyline. A youth in the distances came onto his balcony, but I knew my view was better – this was my city.

The plan to explore my city would start at Notre Dame, from where we would head west and try to cover as many landmarks as we could, ending at the Eiffel Tower. I stayed inside the great Church for a while, tuning myself with the haunting golden cross while P lit a candle to pay respects.

Outside Notre Dame, the sun was blinding.

Inside Notre Dame. It felt like an eternal (yet spiritually soothing) night, and the cross beckoned to me with its cold glow to take a picture. I gave in.

At a Haagan-Daas we grabbed smoothies to perfect English-speaking waiters (a first in France, as most people don’t like speaking English). I got an immensely refreshing “Red Dream.” Then we passed the Louvre:

The only thing we did at the Louvre was to use the bathroom. L would later give me Hell for doing this, but I am coming back to soak myself in this city several more times, so why do everything now?

West of the Louvre was a park, where the Arc de Triomphe du Carrousel was especially memorable. We coined it the “Arc du Bird* because a pigeon decided that P was a bathroom. Unflappable, P ran to wipe off his shirt on the nearest tree as the rest of us laughed and backed away from the Arc.

After heading west some more through a garden (stopping for a nice beer + Sprite panache), we reached the Avenue des Champs-Elysees, a majestic street full of trees and shopping leading directly to the Arc du Triomphe (not to be confused with the earlier Arc). I fell asleep during a massage at the incredibly sexy Citroen Showroom on the Avenue and lost the guys, though I eventually found them again at the Arc itself. Not having cellphones was actually kind of scary, so I reminded myself not to separate from the group again.

The Arch, from the middle of the Avenue that rises neatly to meet it. There was a nice illusion here - the Arch always looked closer than it actually was.

We went to the Luxembourg Gardens to unwind before the final stop. I was still impressed at how healthy the French seem to be – the only fat creatures there were pigeons. We discussed a range of topics, from weightlifting to the Cultural Revolution to the extremely out-of-place giant head in the Gardens.

The gardens my favorite chill spot on the whole trip. We first wondered if this was someone's home at some point, then wondered if we would just let people play in our front yard if we had owned such a place. I felt it would be too much of a waste if we didn't.

By dark, we finally came to the obligatory landmark – the Eiffel tower! Readers may recall I have a fear of heights (this and this), so I almost died on the way up. But with Y cheering me on, I somehow made it to the second level. The third and final level was closed, though I promised myself that one day I would make it up there.

Euphoric, I talked to everyone there who weren’t making out, which was about 3 people – this really was a city for lovers. I met two more travel virgins from South Carolina and Georgia. The guy was a little wary of me but warmed up to my irresistible charms soon enough. We took pictures, shared drinks, and toasted each other good luck.

A strange thing happened after we got back on the ground involving two Japanese girls and four locals; G and I agreed after analysis that the girls (and us) almost get mugged. Regardless, we ended up in a taxi with the most amazing cabbie ever, spiced by racism, wisdom about life and the streets, and probably illegal alien-smuggling. These stories are off the record.

A peek up the Iron Lady's Skirt from the ground.

The next day was a doozie.

A few hours before leaving, I suddenly realized D was in town, so we elected to meet outside Luxembourg gardens and grab some drinks. This involved me separating from the group (mistake #1), but I had everything under control so I took my ticket and left. I was there a bit early, so I waited for the main gate (mistake #2). A few rowdy youths kicked a ball outside the gate, once in a while sending the ball into the knobs with a loud clash. I took the time to introspect and to write in my journal a bit. The clouds were a little gloomy, but no dark omens yet.

A cute brunette jogged by, swinging by the front gate from north-to-south, following an implied rule that nobody jogs south-to-north. I observed the eyes of a wizened gentleman behind her, whose eyes forllowed her butt as she turned. He finally resigned, turned, and spat his gum into the trash can.

A few cops pull up to deal with the kids. The oldest one, wearing a Brazilian soccer jersey, animately talk to the police with impudence. By now it was 30 minutes past the rendezvous time. I curse not having a working cellphone (mistake #0), so I walk back towards the station. Suddenly, I see D reading at the other gate. We laugh and sit down outside a nearby restaurant. I order a gin-and-tonic to accompany our discussion about what is important in life.

A shot of the main building and the pond in the Luxembourg Gardens. A healing salve for weariness.

The most impressive difference about the French (or in general European) rhythm of life can be found in food. The French really take their food slowly – we can have two hour meals here with nobody hurrying us to take the check. The meal is a time to enjoy food, enjoy company, and to rest the soul. The outside seating is another bonus, something I don’t see much Stateside except, say, on Newbury St. in Cambridge. This concept of enjoying each moment as its own reward instead of a stepping point to the next thing on the “queue of important things” offers a stark contrast to the hurried American way of life. I really admire it, and take my time with the food and enjoy D’s company, talking about everything from France to girls in our lives.

In retrospect this was an error (mistake #3), but I do strongly believe in this singletasking, non-hurried lifestyle in general. D asks for a second round of gin. I accept (mistake #4). We part ways, promise to see each other again back in the States next year, and I head down into the Luxembourg subway stop.

The line was quite long, so I waited (mistake #5) for about 5 minutes before I get to the ticket station. I then discovered the only subway station which did not accept cash in Paris. I ran about half a mile to get to the Notre Dame stop. I made the train just in time, and counted seconds to get to Gare du Nord. I quickly realized my arrival time would be exactly 5 minutes late, which wasn’t too bad, unless… oh, the trains were never late in Eruope, were they?

At that point, reality fell on me like it did on P: I was…

…to be continued.
-Y

Europe Sampler, Part II: Brussels

We first sampled Belgium chocolate through a box of Galler in our hotel room. Unfortunately, G and P ate 3/4 the box in about 5 minutes and entered blissful hibernation. However, if not for the sacrifices of my teammates, I would not have survived to write this post, instead, I would be lumbering in chocolate heaven, never to return. The remaining members of the Team, Y and me, would be covering Brussels by ourselves the first day.

Brussels probably had my favorite architecture on the trip, next to some parts of Paris.

Our first goal was Autoworld, a museum of historical cars located in the awesome Parc du Cinquantenaire. The archway was the most breathtaking building I’ve seen up to that point, unapologetically magnificent, from the extremely wide wall paintings on either sides of the horseshoe to the bronzed guardians on the chariot. Brilliant.

Charles Girault was a man among men.

Autoworld was a lot more fun than it should be, given that the only thing I know about cars is how to mooch rides off friends so I don’t have to drive. The most interesting car was the Amphicar, pictured below (runner-up: the 1954 BAT 7 ).

I used my car as a boat too, but that's just because I was a really bad driver.

Alex and Nathan have told me to not miss Delirium Cafe, but even getting to it turned out to be an adventure, as we had to fight through a trecherous gauntlet of outdoor restaurants which I named the Red Food District. Around 10 maitre d’s would block our way and ping us with every language they figured we would speak and attempt to drag us to the tables. We fearlessly fought through the undead horde and arrived at the home of the 2000-long beer list. I am not a big enough beer buff to peruse the full list of 2000 beers, so we just looked at a small list and picked out the Floris berry kriek and the St. Bernadus Abt 12. This was as unholy as beer matrimonies go, but I wasn’t exactly feeling saintly by the 50 or so taps.

The infamous St. Bernadus Abt 12 (10.5% abv). I assure you the monks were not their monkly selves after drinking a liter of this.

Y was starting to see pink elephants at this point, so we willingly offer ourselves to the vices of the Red Food District. I actually got a pretty amazing rumsteak (though the wine was bland) for 17 Euro. Quite full, we sit and take in the town square before going back for sleep.

One of the overseers of this tourist deathtrap would not let me physically pass without saying we would be back. "Good. We have an American promise," he said. What does that mean????

In the morning, we take the bus in the wrong direction and get lost (I blame P’s French, or maybe the nice grandmother on the bus giving him directions really wanted him to be with her longer), but we somehow bumble our way back to the city center, where we ate at the climatically-named Brussels Grill. P reminded us that there was a Belgium specialty we should not be forgetting.

Belgium is not just known for chocolate. This glorified cocaine for the tongue made me melt into it instead of the other way around, for an altogether amazing (yet creepy) experience.

Before finally getting on the train to Paris, I stopped by the Tintin Boutique, revisiting my childhood hero (Harry Potter has nothing on the most badass 22-year-old freelance reporter of all time). I settled on a Captain Haddock coffee mug, but I realized it could not be the only souvenir when I saw the Snowy plush. Now I had a lovable and fiercely loyal companion to aid me through the dangers of graduate school. Little did we know that an unexpected storm already awaited me in Paris.

Thousands of blistering barnacles.

-Y

Snowy, curtesy of the Tintin Boutique (store.tintin.com)

P.S. Brussels elevators earn massive points by having a mathematically clean numbering system. The B’s, L’s, and M’s always annoyed me.

This is the kind of things I (and probably that xkcd guy) think about when zoning out.

P.P.S. Y astutely pointed out that having the trunk of the car opening up to be a seat was a pretty sweet feature. I think he is spot on.

Now you can finally (legally) fit 7 Asians into a car.

Europe Sampler, Part I: Amsterdam

The bad luck started early when my Boston-Newark flight was delayed for 2 hours. Anxious idling in a waiting area is not my style, so I struck up a conversation with the businessman to my left, who turned out to be a partner in a bank.

He looked like he was trying to look happier than he was – his smiles sighed and his laughs frowned when we talked about mundane work and life and he gave advice that seemed to have been nailed to his heart: “If you get the big things right – and there are only two big things really: your job and your wife (chuckles, points to ring), you can make all the small mistakes you want. Never make the mistake of working for money. It drives people crazy and doesn’t make you happy. Find a job you love and you will not have to work.”

But there was no mistaking the youthful sparkle in his eyes when he recalled the tonic-like air of Notre Dame and the comfortable drizzle of the streets of London. A naked glee surfaced when he talked about how the best part of 8-AM meetings in Europe was getting to climb mountains and enjoy parks for the rest of the day. I handed the conversation to him at that point, and his hat no longer looked as heavy on him.

“Good meeting you, son. You have a long and exciting life ahead of you. Good luck on your trip.”

“You look like you still have sixty years yourself.” I was not really joking.

Of course, we get another delay taxi-ing in the airport, so by the time I exit the plane,  Y, G, and P were already in the plane to Amsterdam. I started running Olympic-speed (in the event involving flip-flops and two bags). “Final boarding call for Yan Zhang for flight XXX, departure time 5:20″ repeated itself twice, but two Continental workers cheered for me (“Go go go!”) as I Usain Bolted down the final stretch, ending with a long jump into the gate at 5:09. “No need to be so feisty, brother,” said the second worker.

—-

The first thing that caught my attention exiting Amsterdam Centraal was an elegant-looking tween brushing past me, a flurry of camera flashes following her. She had the face of a girl heading to a final exam. Then I saw the bikes.

It's China! With white people!

P, the Amsterdam expert, led the search for coffeeshops (as opposed to coffee shops) of Amsterdam, through the Rijksmuseum, the Dam Square (where we saw a shielded Inca Warrior and.. Batman taking pictures with tourists next to the wonderfully phallic National Monument). It took me quite a while to know what this meant, but I understood soon after entering one. Maybe it was the Rastafarian art on every wall, the sculptures of aliens and UFOs on the ceilings, or the marijuana menu in plain sight catering every strain from Purple Haze to Northern Lights. An elderly couple in their fifties came in after us, grabbed two seats, and started rolling their joints.

We soon come to the I AMSTERDAM sign at Museumplein Park. We sit and breathe in the air, which breezed de-stress and relaxation… or maybe that is just all the secondhand hash in the wind working.

I am sterdam! But where am I? (Solutions at the end of the chapter)

Of the few things I planned ahead for in this trip, the first was the Van Gogh Museum, which was visible in the distance at this time across a green field. The museum was small and unassuming, and all of Van Gogh’s works were collected on one floor in a cycle of rooms with no doors, starting from the darker (shade, not context) works of Dutch influence of Nuenen (early 1880’s), through the colorful works he adapted from French and Japanese art (despite his earlier disdain for them) in Paris, ending with the amazingly varied and mature works in Saint-Remy (including my favorite, cliched yet abrasively efficient in its strokes: “Wheat Field with Crows, 1890″). Considering I have the memory facilities of a peanut, I strained to take down every pixel I could, looking at each piece several times. I was frequently distracted by Y, who at this time (had a little too much coffee?) was hulking around like an iron golem behind me, whom he (it?) took as his adaptive mother. However, I did manage to find a couple of new favorite pieces, including this one:

Tree Trunks with Ivy, 1889. Watching the tesselating strokes somehow form a coherent picture was mesmerizing. (Source: www.vangoghgallery.com)

I gained more admiration for the master’s refusal to be bound to academic tradition (almost entirely self-taught!), and wished I could summon the same genius while being a rebel to tradition. On the way out, G buys a Moleskin to pay respects. The notes from my own,which I bought in Boston before the flight, will eventually become these blog posts.

At this park, a boy in red plaid was throwing balls for two cute white puppies with an instrument that looked like it came from jai alai. "Do dogs instinctively know how to run after balls?" Y asked.

The next day, we woke up fighting jetlag to see Fernando Torres score a hat trick on New Zealand, and now I have a new favorite soccer player. I became more excited about soccer simply because I was in Europe, a testament to the power of ambient culture, something that will resurface several times. For various reasons we were more chilled-out today, so we spent more time canal-watching. I ordered a pretty mean caprinha (Brazil’s national cocktail) from one of the canal-side bars, and the “frites speciaal” from Fedo (fries, mayo, delicious bad-for-you-goodness). I saw ducklings.

Cute duckies. Like me.

For the day’s walk, we decided to walk down to Sarphal Park south of the city center. We grabbed some coffee at Coffee & Company, chilled a bit in the park, and swung back north to the infamous Red Light District. Coffeeshops galore, this den of legal iniquity featured, at each crimson-framed window, a worker showing her jiggly wares, always impeccably dressed and made up.

It was late and we have an early train to Brussels, so being the ballers we are, we end the day by eating at a high-class restaurant that “you people” can never afford.

This is how we roll

-Yan

P.S. Answer to quiz:

If you still can't find Yan then you need glasses

P.P.S. I mean seriously. Not only can the guy score from anywhere, he is hot too! Check out his official site.

How I Rediscovered Facebook

Cryptic Answer: Nightwish – Nemo is playing in the background, I’m doing a Go problem in my head, and I am typing this blog post. My back is sore from running  intervals this morning.

Explanation: I recently had a good conversation with Christian, who was about to graduate from Harvard, about the role of people in life. One of my biggest regrets is that I neglected people a bit in senior year, especially when I worked furiously on my thesis. When I moved up to Stamford, I made it a personal goal to work on my relationships more seriously.

At college, the less socially talented people (like me) have a temptation to take friends for granted. It is easy to bump into everyone around campus – if you meet someone you do not need to make that connection right away; you’ll see them by the ABP, working in Lamont, or at some drunken Quad party. Both your classroom and your dorms create atmospheres where you can naturally meet people your age with similar interests and situations. At work, there are more artificial barriers – seniority status, age differences, professional nature of the workplace, etc. all make creating personal relationships a bit harder (even though coworkers are still the easiest new friends to make, and I have met/re-met some awesome people at Ellington with whom I will keeping in touch, such as G, J, I, or R). The dorm equivalent – the apartment – is hardly a social scene compared to college dorms, except the walls are still so thin for you to hear people having sex, domestic disputes, or both at the most curious hours. Ironic that in this age when saying a simple “hi” to a neighbor in urban areas is considered more “creepy” than friendly, we are much further apart even though the web creates an illusion that we should be further connected.

Last year, when I was surfing Facebook, I suddenly asked myself: “out of the 500 – 600 friends I have on Facebook, how many do I genuinely interact with?” Even though in general I refuse friend requests from people I don’t know, maybe 300 of my contacts were people I met as a result of a school/club/summer thing with no real connection, or some unmemorable party/nightclub experience where the number/contact exchange was just for fun instead of genuine interest. I have probably only 50 actual “good friends,” as in people who would hang out with me in the same town by one of us *naturally* remembering and contacting the other person. But this means in the middle there are probably at least 100-200 people with whom I’ve had a nontrivial connection, and with whom I can carry on a generally interesting face-to-face conversation if he/she were sitting in front of me.

This was a massive inefficiency – all my warning bells in my brain rang, preparing me for the “aha” moment. It suddenly clicked for me on how much I was missing without being actively social with this “middle group” – the people with whom I can very easily find common ground, because they are actually very similar to the “good friend” group except that one of the parties have to *actively* remember and contact the other person, which is something of very little cost, especially with Facebook! I almost kicked myself at how simple this all was, and how easy this must be for my “naturally social” friends (yes, *those* people). I learned an incredible amount from my work last year, but this was one of the most important observations I made all year. Indeed, this is why I started New York Survivor (a game I made for myself where I go to NY on friday nights, and do as much as possible while trying to stay in the city until Sunday). Now I am in grad school, even though I’m not going out as much (the Boston and New York club scenes are just… uncomparable ;P), I am still trying to do the same thing; this was actually made easier since Boston/Cambridge is a much easier place to just chill due to the ample sitting room and the non-croweded streets. Instead of Central Park, the downtown restaurants, or Soho, I’m typically doing the Miracle of Science Bar, Rangzen, or Cafe Luna (they have really sexy food and smoothies).

With V, the daughter of one of my father’s old friends, I discovered a lot of new music and broadened my playlist. With C, the new boyfriend of a not-so-close friend I had in college, I found many common interests and that he was a dan-level Go player who had a lot to teach me about my game. With A, an old classmate from a writing seminar who made herself run the Boston Marathon “just because” even though she was never a runner in college, I reminded myself of my love for writing and I’m even beginning to run again to complement weightlifting. With K and S, two of the most social people I know, I talked about this exact topic and how rewarding it can be to our happiness.

Each event was so precarious – without that one conscious click on that “Send Message” button on Facebook I would not have made a connection that would be so easy to pass away otherwise. The opportunity cost was invisible yet incredible. Instead of taking time to do those things I might have just been watching Youtube videos, taking a nap, or reading FML (yes, realistically I would have tried to use that time to do things with higher value, but the point is that each of these particular meetings were pretty amazing), but otherwise I wouldn’t have discovered the PAL soundtrack, I wouldn’t have realized how much crappier my middle game seemed to have become (probably worse than 10k…), and I probably would not have started this long-overdue blog post. I’m sure many of you are wondering why I got so excited over such a simple concept (that you probably already use very efficiently), but when the blind suddenly sees, he is bound to be excited.

Then again, my back hurts like hell.

Ow,

-Yan

Yan (Maybe) Can Cook

The eggplant sacrificed more than any of its comrades. Some slices seemed to have escaped cooking entirely, with minimal damage, while others were zombified. The chicken was alright, just overcooked. At least the sauce was even. In Yan’s kitchen, anything is possible!

While I’m not getting into the Zagat anytime soon, I will learn to salt the eggplant next time and put in the chicken a bit later. And maybe get a real wok.

Like studying for a test, I’ve put off learning to cook for a very long time. Maybe it is because I know I’ll never make it taste, smell, or even look like my mother’s dishes; maybe it is because eating out gives some measure of peace that I am able to, through some process, make a fragrant, hearty serving of Thai crispy chicken goodness appear in front of my plate. I knew the first real dish I cook would be a disaster, so to stall the pain to the ego I had all sorts of excuses to push it back.

The way these things usually go, everyone in the universe conspires against me to make the fated day happen. It was probably the tenth time my roommate J. casually left his chicken stew simmer on the stove, so flavorful that I got hungry while opening the room door, while my conscience kindly poked the back of my brain (with a chef’s knife?) that the last thing I cooked for myself, like the 500 times before it, was either cereal, microwavable oatmeal, or fried eggs when I decide to get fancy. Of course at school, G. suggested in her energetic European way that I simply *must* go watch Ratatouille because it was “so good that it makes you hungry,” only the day before L. wanted to watch a happy film. Ratatouille it was.

The universe conspiring to make me learn to cook.

I tried to go to sleep that night after the film, but my stomach kept me awake, lecturing me in that language that only we both know, a kind of Morse code with rumbles, that I needed to cook. The next day I was somehow in front of the board, chopping onions, defrosting the chicken, and having one of those “huh what am I doing here” moments where I didn’t quite believe I was actually there cooking.

The garlic was somewhat burnt, the onions not so much, combining into barbeque smell with a hint of backyard charcoal. The chicken was overcooked just a little bit thanks to salmonella paranoia and I used too much soy sauce, but it was edible. I recycled the sauce from the pan in the first dish to make a quick omelet, a spark of the upper bound of my cooking genius. A microwaved bag of vegetables completed dinner, and L. approved.

It wasn’t bad. No painstaking work of breathtaking genius (TM), but it wasn’t bad.

Five days later Bittman’s How to Cook Everything arrived in the mail. Now my pantry has a little more than salt, pepper, and canned soup. I have tomatoes in the fridge and chicken in the freezer (in little ziploc bags after learning the hard way not to just put the whole piece in there at once). More than just cooking technique though, Bittman crystallized in one digestible packet the love of cooking I found in Emil (the rat chef from Ratatouille): “cooking is one of the few simple, routine joys of daily life.”

By spending much of my time avoiding learning how to cook and to rationalize it by the time I am saving, I lost time spent in earnest enjoyment in the moment as I smell the tomatoes, chop the onions, wipe my brow and salivate in anticipation at the satisfaction of one of God’s five basic sensations that can be born at my hands. It was jazz for my taste buds.

-YZ

The Dark Knight’s Three-Body Problem

SPOILERS OBVIOUS DUH

————————

It is damn hard to create three interacting characters in a single film who are equally interesting. Some films have shown us it is hard enough to even do two (Iron Man), and for some films, even one (Spiderman III). To be controversial, I will make the absurdly incorrect remark that The Dark Knight accomplishes this feat., solving the (coined by myself) Three-Body Problem of Film. Nobody who watched the film will agree with me (even myself), so I will have to do do some fast talking and redefine “equal,” by analyzing the film through three different foci:

Style: Heath Ledger’s Joker surely gets his cut of the style points, especially with the crossdressing scene, but Christian Bale still stole this one. This film, like Star Wars, is one of those rare films with an intended and expected audience that spans everyone from comic nerds to artsy types to your grandmother, i.e. not just ‘literary’ film critics. To get such attention and to keep it for 2.5 hours, it had to do what an action film does – asskicking, adrenaline, rushes of violent manly frenzy. Christian Bale oozes so much badassness that even though he doesn’t really do anything he didn’t in Batman Begins except being able to turn his head (and having a scene that justifies this), he brings the Keysi Fighting Method into short, visceral, and brutal fighting scenes that made Batman Batman (and not this Batman). The Lau kidnapping scene, serving obviously no plot value, was thus placed to make Bale earn his keep by being the good guy you hate to love, especially when the guy kidnaps an entire ballet troupe and crashes his own party in a helicopter with two gorgeous chicks.

Acting: After leaving The Dark Knight there is no f***ing way that a viewer, unless asleep or abducted by aliens, would not agree that Heath Ledger needs to have an Oscar placed respectably on his grave. “Why so seriousssss” would be a catchphrase by now if it didn’t have to compete with “my preciousssss” because of the trailing sssses, and that laugh gave me nightmares. If you seriously just woke up or are really still hurting from the cattle prod, go back and watch the scene where The Joker leaves the hospital room, or where Batman plays Bad Cop. Then lick your lips a bit and think about why that innocuous action just made you shudder.

Plot/Character development: …but the movie is not about Batman or the Joker. This was probably a very conscious choice, since if they gave the joker an any more interesting backstory we might as well name the film Why So Serious. The movie’s plot is about Harvey Dent. Nobody else. Even the Joker’s climax, a version of the Prisoner’s Dilemma, was about showing that anyone can change, a 200-people magnified version of what he did to Harvey Dent. When the awe at the movie or the shivers from the Joker blows over after the night wind outside the theater chills you down from bat-shock, you are still sad for Harvey Dent, whose transformation, reminiscent of Anakin’s from Episode III but much more believable in motivation, is one of the most convincing attempts I have seen in cinema recently.

So… I think depending on what you are looking for (a blockbuster, a ‘deep’ movie, a good actor) and how you weight these values in a movie, you come away with a different idea of the main figure of the film. What an accomplishment!

-Y

P.S. … probably the Joker, but I don’t want to undermine my own theory, else all my setup would have been in vain.

Jumper

The vices of being a poker degenerate creep beyond potential bankrupcy when the game habits start to corrupt real-life decisions. In other skills this is (mostly) harmless – the weirdest thing that has happened to me because of foosball was zoning out during the World Cup wondering why the guys weren’t lined up neatly and doing simultaneous stationary back-flips. However, being a complete calling station is much more exploitable, as P cleverly demonstrated by provoking me into agreeing to skydive with a simple comment to my last post:

P: “…blah blah blah. i say you man the f*** up and jump out of a plane or off a bridge.”

Y: “f*** you!” (translation: “okay.”)

Even though they trapped me, my friends were, as always, considerate and wonderful. Knowing my fear of heights, they warmly prepared me with a week of Youtube videos of skydiving incidents gone horrible wrong and inducing three nights of nightmares involving heights and planes. Then it was Saturday.

The tranquil farm-like facility in Ellington, CT was a green field adorned with only a few small propeller planes (from the Wright Brothers’ era, said S) and an ambulance. A gruff-looking gentleman in his fifties (who turned out to be my tandem instructor, Larry) gave me forms to fill. During the wait, we were throwing rocks baseball-style at a trashcan in the distance, when P almost sharked me out of $200 by pretending to be a really bad shot and then offering 20:1 that he couldn’t hit the can. Bastard. My sexily stoic composure hid my ~ 200 heartrate.

Larry spoke nonchalantly about colleges, missing his medicine that morning, and needing to remember to replace the plane’s engine as we went up in one of the shaky Wright’s. His jokes about the ambulance (now just a white dot) being especially busy the past month were lightened by his slip that he has jumped out that wobbling door about 3000 times between his time as an instructor and his service as an army parachutist. The photographer, clad in a totally sweet purple Spongebob Squarepants suit with a pair of Batman-esque glider wings, also seemed totally oblivious to the fact we were about 15000 feet in the air. I forgot all of those comforting signs when the doors opened.

I imagined hitting terminal velocity through very tangible clouds and cursing Newton even though he never did anything wrong. On the railing outside the door, my deceptive weight brought Larry down to his knees. Oops. This meant that instead of a normal jump, he had to do some backflip spin turn so we wouldn’t hit my head on the plane (very thoughtful).

The air screaming by my ears deafened me to any other sound, making the freefall a messy omelet of awe, ecstasy, and fear, garnished with “why isn’t my heart beating?” As such, I couldn’t hear my own voice. This was irrelevant: talking required thought, but my brain was too busy trying to understand how Spongebatman literally swam through the sky, tumbling into different angles for his camera shots. The whole-body jerk was so sudden that I was sure my limbs would be cut off by the parachute harness… but the parachute was open, and we seemed still, and my heart began beating again, and I finally remembered to close my mouth since yes, that too, required thought.

Remembering the purpose of the trip, I tried to spend the rest of the flight looking straight down, straight at the enemy, eyes unwavering (except when Larry amused himself by doing turns and circles, which he luckily only did a couple of times). I did not know before how fast people fell in a parachute, but now I saw that if we landed straight down I would have crushed my lower body. Instead, we had to lift our legs into a horizontal glide before impact with the sweet, sweet green.

The enemy was defeated and I lived to tell the story, but there were no more Hollywood elements. Did I survive death? No. Am I still afraid of heights? Of course, just less than before.

But it was still f***ing awesome.

P naturally asked the pictures and the video to be shipped to his address, something I may regret later. He sadly concluded later “YZ didn’t look too much like a wuss in that video” so my victory is complete. As for the accompanying music (Spongebatman may moonlight as a quite decent amateur videomaker), I went with J and took Third Eye Blind’s Jumper.

-Y

P.S. I live on the 7th floor of an apartment where the apartment door and the main stairwell are connected by a narrow railing overlooking the parking lot. I tend to walk on the side away from the railing. After this experience, I started walking by the railing. It was still a little woozy, but it wasn’t too bad.

P.S.S. Right after, at Foxwoods, I played the most loose aggressive poker of my life, buttressed by an illusion of invincibility (picture Owen Wilson at the end of “Shanghai Noon.”). Luckily, I was still up ~$500. Take that, Poker Gods.

Vertigo

The Bard Hall gym has a terrace, which is kind of weird, it being in a basement.

The twisted geography of Washington Heights places back side of the gym atop a four-story drop overlooking the river. So while I was listening to blaring workout music, every few seconds a pleasant river breeze splashes me from the direction of the window. I wanted to go out and look down, and stare at the water a bit to cool me off between sets. While I did a little bit of supplements myself, A has been stacking creatine and nitric oxide and protein and magic dust and God-knows what, and I was a little miffed and groggy since I couldn’t keep up. I wanted the water.

But I’m afraid of heights.

I envy normal people. When they are on a bridge they can look over the side, clutching the bars, even bending their upper torso over the edge to look below. When we were at B’s party in Columbus Circle we went out to the patio – and everyone were able to easily just walk to the edge of the 20-story drop and look down to admire New York. So cool that I can’t do it.

Back in high school, I climbed on top of the MIT amphitheater with a couple of friends. Maybe it was because one of them climbs tall buildings for sport, maybe it was because the other one was really cute, or maybe it was because the first friend had the same opinion of the second as I did. At the top, the moon really looked like blue cheese from “up-close,” the girl was cuter in the moonlight, and the hardest part was getting down because I had to look down.

I was thinking and thinking about that moment and why now, six years later, I am so afraid to just walk outside. Then I laughed. A was doing skullcrushers (concentration required) so he didn’t notice . It was obvious, especially because I was in a weight room – muscles atrophy from disuse.

The fear of heights, no matter how genetic or powerful, is mainly a psychological belief. My phobia level, while it did hit the physiological zone, did not go much past faintness, nausea, and headaches. The fact that I can ride airplanes is good testimony. For tame cases like me, it is mostly a limiting belief that creates a self-fulfilling prophecy, since I’m less inclined to look down steep areas and thus less likely to overcome that fear. While the “muscle gain” from my first “set” years ago is all gone, nothing says I can’t start another set.

For the warmup, I just had to look down for 10 seconds. I felt the fainting, I felt the heartbeats, and I felt like I was going to throw up. But my mental ticker hit 10 I backtracked into the weight room, palms were sweating like crazy. The next one was 15, and the last set was 20. My knees felt like they were going to collapse (it is a crazy feeling, but I could feel the muscles go completely limp), I let go and almost fell, but my palms weren’t sweaty anymore. Weightlifting is so weird.

Bobby McFerrin Concert

LW is staying over for a week, and Chen is jealous, so we agree to watch a Bobby McFerrin concert with Chen and her friend Silvia. Getting off work a early, I magically make it to Carnegie Hall on time, despite the train-track suspension, wondering what I should expect beyond the Youtube videos (my one source of knowledge about the musical legend). Of course the jabbering female trio rudely interrupt my thinking, asking me from behind to move because my seat was reserved for their friend “who is probably late. ” I guess I have sexy back. Although I admit that the performance was totally another level back of sexy.

Bobby McFerrin is a tremendous presence. Calling him a “walking instrument” is inaccurate because he is definitely more than one. While singing, he taps both his microphone with his right pinky and drums his chest with his left palm for percussion – to accompany what seems like sometimes two simultaneous vocals from his mouth, a trick that I’ve also seen Wang Li Hom do (though it is still voodoo to me).

The rest of the Voicestra (three members for each of the four ranges) were not merely there for display, either. One of the alto ladies sang a free association which started with fruit baskets and the holes in them; two women comboed up for a tribal/folk -like vocal, which McFerrin transitioned into a haunting, almost primal melody; one of the bass made up a gospel track that filled the whole stadium. Between these improvised “solos,” which weren’t quite solos because the other members of the group would figure out accompaniments and start supporting the main vocal, were repeats of the same formula that worked way too damn well. Bobby would conjure up something with syllables that only he understands and dance up to each of the ranges and hang on his phrase. In two or three measures, they would grok his piece and join, creating a full-fledged “Voicestra” that was somehow able to slow down in a smooth coordination.

I couldn’t help smiling watching all of this because they seemed to have had so much damn fun up there. They chuckled and jabbed each other every time Bobby successfully made up one of this somethings; two of the sopranos spontaneously started teaching each other dance movements while singing, getting the third one to join in (which was tremendously cute because she was about sixty); when they asked for a volunteer to try to lead them in an improvisation and got a ridiculously talented guy who successfully led a whole piece, the Voicestra immediately did a poppy tribute song for him revolving around the phrase “Ben Ben Ben Ben Ben Ben Ben” (the guy’s name was Ben).

Bobby, who does this all in a blue T-shirt and jeans, didn’t waste much time talking. When he entered he immediately began his first piece; he only resigned to sit on the edge of the stage with the rest of the Voicestra to chat with the fans for a while after it was clear that the applauding fans weren’t leaving. After answering a few singing requests and politely declining further ones, McFerrin answered the questions with a mix of simplicity and wit. After the audience laughed when he claimed that improvisation is “not hard,” he explained that “all you needed to do” was to “always sing” and to “never stop”: “You never get stuck… the most stuck you are is if you are hanging on a phrase. Then just keep hanging. You just keep singing until you get that next note, and then you are unstuck.”

“It is like talking,” LW says. She is right as always – it really is like talking. You have to be confident, skirting the boring old small talk, and keep moving the conversation into more interesting directions. If you find one of those rare but joyful moments where all conversationalists present fall in love with the subject, you’ll not only forget the time, you will forget you’re talking.

Bobby also talked about his simple home, which apparently comes from the same fantasy where his soothing notes live before he plucks them out for us: a house in the woods so quiet that “you can hear the snow fall,” where he can go out for a walk every day with his dogs, and sing. Everyday. “Of course I’m not going to tell you where it is, so you can’t find me,” he jokes, but seriously – quietness is the most hard-to-find and undervalued commodity in Manhattan, something I’ve personally been continuously seeking in the City for the last six months or so.

In defiance of my horrible musical skills (I am, without doubt, the least musically gifted/experienced Asian I know, a miracle given the way Asian parents think), I improvised four songs on the walk back from work, ignoring the traffic, the wind, or the time. One sounded like really bad pop, and the other three resembled cliched video game music. But they were bearable, since I never stopped. And I was happy.

-YZ

I’m not too Different from George Bush

I read a damn good article about a week ago titled The Illustrated President from Harper’s Magazine. The subject is the following painting:

Cliff’s Notes: Our eminent president is moved by the above painting of a fearless missionary determined to uphold American values in the Godless West. He takes the painting’s heroic name, A Charge to Keep, for his autobiography. A little research tells us that the painting was an illustration for a short story depicting a horse thief running away from his persecutors, blessed with the caption “Had His Start Been Fifteen Minutes Longer He Would Not Have Been Caught.” Scott Horton ends his bitter analysis of President Bush with:

So Bush’s inspiring, proselytizing Methodist is in fact a horse thief fleeing from a lynch mob. It seems a fitting marker for the Bush presidency. Bush has consistently exhibited what psychologists call the “Tolstoy syndrome.” That is, he is completely convinced he knows what things are, so he shuts down all avenues of inquiry about them and disregards the information that is offered to him. This is the hallmark of a tragically bad executive. But in this case, it couldn’t be more precious. The president of the United States has identified closely with a man he sees as a mythic, heroic figure. In fact that man is a wily criminal one step out in front of justice. It perfectly reflects Bush the man . . . and Bush the president.

It’s a delightfully safe fad to poke fun at Bush. However, after I laughed, I thought about the painting a little more seriously and began to wonder if I really should be laughing at myself for all of my similarities to the President.

I think art has two parts: one of the artist creating the product and one of the viewer experiencing it. A hamster in front of Mona Lisa will not experience the painting as one of the most celebrated paintings in history – it will probably be just a big piece of wood, maybe even something to chew on or even pee on. Thus, Mona Lisa is not art to the hamster. I would have a “better appreciation” of the piece than the hamster, but honestly probably not by much. While part of the value of the piece comes from the artist, the experience changes so much with the viewer that two different viewers may get two very different and legitimate responses after viewing the same piece of art. Thus, they have part of the right to saying what that art “is” – at least for themselves. While the artist did create the product, I do not think he or she has complete domination over what the art *is* or *is not.* Suppose a scientist creates the Death Ray in pursuit of scientific knowledge – I doubt the scientist has the complete right in saying that the Death Ray is not a weapon if the rest of the world sees it as a weapon and uses it as a weapon.

What about baseball? To some it is a slow, painful-to-watch game involving a bat, a ball, and some running. To some it is the best game invented on earth that involves a bat, a ball, and some running. To some it is a symbol of America and all that is great about it. To some it is a symbol of corporate America and all that is evil about it. I don’t think any of these parties would really care anymore what the original creator of baseball made it to be, such that if they were going back in time to visit the creator only to realize he made it as a way to get some exercise for his drinking buddies and there happened to have been a broken stick sitting around the pub, they would probably tell the creator he was wrong. It is surprising how embittered and personal these arguments can get for more “serious” things, especially when it comes to modern art or the Bible. Many people, Christians or not, would probably agree that Jesus himself might have been very surprised at the state of Christianity in the present times and what different people think it “means.”

So maybe Bush was right in his own way, minus the research he really should have taken on the painting. Tolstoy syndrome or not, Bush let this painting mean something to him and forged a system of beliefs surrounding it, regardless of the artist’s original intentions, which I do not think should be the final word of what the painting *is* or *is not.* Now, whether those beliefs were used for good or for bad I do not know enough to comment, but I do not think it is really different from anything I do in my own life.

-YZ

P.S. image source: wikipedia