Halloween post time: I missed it last year, at least an H themed post. So here is some animation relating to comic artist, musician, actress, and all around kook – Dame Darcy. She did the audio montage too.

Also be sure to check out Golden Shoes (embedding disabled).

Caught this animated short on IFC late night a few weeks ago. Interesting animation, cool story and music. Starts out almost in a C. McCarthy zone but then goes much softer, still with it’s own important story to tell. Searching around on youtube (which I don’t recommend, as that title, as you can imagine is well used…) I did find this trailer for a DVD of which it was part. The voice over and black and white animated bits are what is relevant here, though I’d like to see the other work as well. I’ll be looking for more from German Andreas Hykade.

Lots more footage from China to slowly be leaked out. I shot this one day last Summer in People’s Park, Liaocheng. The Chinese really know how to utilize public spaces, and in the park you can see all sorts of card and chess gaming, exercise including martial arts, classical music recitals, kite flying, and occasionally less than usual hobbies like the Yo-yo.

That is the yo-yo making that droning sound. When the woman walks by at the end she points out to the man that I’m filming him and he laughs. Here are some other shots I took earlier in the year of a man doing yo-yo tricks, catching it on his hat platform!

We went up to Minnesota to put my Dad’s ashes in the plot near the “family farm” in Burnsville, MN. A great trip in all, there were some stressful moments as both sides of my family have relatives there we haven’t seen in a long time and they wanted to “entertain us” to the point of overbooking. My sister, bro-in-law and I also wanted to chill and check out the city some.
We stayed the first night in Burnsville. I was so wound up, as sometimes happens to me, I didn’t sleep a wink, despite consuming the better part of a bottle of Jameson. So things were all the more surreal at 11 AM when I was standing there holding my father in a metal urn and people I’d never met (or had no memory of) approached me knowing instantly who I was. I appreciated the turnout – cousins of his, long time family friends etc. They are a tight community in a small town and everyone turns up when there is another death.
Then we rode into Minneapolis, checked into the W in the cool Foshay building, I got a little sleep and we headed out for a great dinner. Then we had one full day to run about and see things. I passed through there 16 years ago on a road trip with some friends and have always had a good feeling for the place, but don’t know how I’d do in the harsh winter. I got to see Big Brain Comics, and this little cutie handing out samples in an upscale grocery told me that night happened to be the 6th Annual Zombie Pub Crawl. Some 8,000 zombies were expected to attend.

I gathered some make-up and was ready to go as Help! era John Lennon zombie, as it also would had been his 70th BDay, but in the end, after reading in the local rag about the spiting of copious amounts of fake blood, decided I didn’t want to risk having my pea coat ruined.

And it was unseasonably warm besides. But we did do some drive-bys for shots – hard to manage from a slowly moving vehicle in traffic, with wasted zombies milling all about. Nerds gone wild, just like Dragoncon – though maybe slightly less nerdy, and seasonally relevant. Looked like too many to get drinks in a reasonable amount of time despite all of the bars involved.

But way to go MPLS! You’re still looking good too St. Paul. I’ll be back.

*I realize the irony of writing about zombies in the same post you are memorializing your deceased father…but that’s the way it happened.*

In early Sept. Dean and I went to Beijing for a culture fix and to celebrate his birthday. In addition to the food and DVD’s we couldn’t get in Liaocheng, we hit the 798 arts district and went to Wodaokou to check out an indie music club I’d heard about called D-22. It was very refreshing. For context, you have to understand the complete lack of decent western music in China. Michael Jackson and Westlife are names dropped when you ask what sort of western music people like. If you are really lucky, someone has heard of the Beatles and have a notion they were influential. So going to a venue in Beijing and liking what we heard was huge. As it was a Tuesday night, there was no actual band playing, but a film. It was a tour film for PK-14, which used their songs during the mundane bits when they were sleeping in the van and such (and to think, bands bitch about being “on the road” in the States) and a crazy ass experimental sound track over the live footage. This was the filmmakers doing and unfortunately I have no info on him. But I bought a PK-4 disc. Imagine my surprise when I got back to L to realize they’d been the global hit on the NPR’s The World the previous day. They is plenty of other press about them out there as well.

I’m trying to get some tracks uploaded to attach to this post but can’t figure it out right now. More later…

Liu Feng ran a massage place near our apt. in Liaocheng. One day she asked me about the school where I taught and I took her on as a private student instead. Just for trade, dinners and cheaper massage. It was fairly far into the Summer before we started but I hope she carries on and will do just fine. She is a married woman and I always kept it professional, though was flirtier with a few of her employees.

And in this Daniel, who was a student all year in my most advanced teenage class, talks a bit about the history of the shopping center I thought of as “downtown” Liaocheng, Baho Dalo. Tom was a newer student of the same age but for only about a month, and doesn’t say much here.