baobabboybboybbaboab

2010-10-18T07:47:00.000-07:00

had a dream last night where i adopted Bea, one of the orphans i met in Chiang Mai this summer. she didn't like living in NY at first so i rented a motorcycle and took her out into the country side. we parked our bike on a dirt road and i carried her down a hill all the way to the ocean. it was the first time she's ever seen the Atlantic.

i woke up feeling sad that she wasn't there. i don't think i'll ever forget her.

2010-10-14T23:35:00.000-07:00

today, drifting from spike's office of tisch, to a surprise chris rock lecture in 1027, meeting up with hye mee to talk about our agnes b commercial edit, rushing to bill reilly's memorial (heartbreaking and inspiring), walking in the rain under umbrellas to a beer and burger spot with film friends, to riding the A train to james' book release party in chinatown, to a subway car ride home to wish jean good night

an epic day, i think, i couldn't believe it.

2010-02-20T20:36:00.000-08:00

dark, unsettling, beautiful story of revenge and redemption. gorgeous movie ... it left me at a loss, feeling somehow both at peace and haunted at the same time.

j and i watched this film tonight on netflix streaming while eating grimaldi's pizza.

2010-02-13T08:11:00.000-08:00

geoff mcfetridge's "does"

i love his work - it reminds me of my youth...

"What we think or what we believe is,

in the end of little consequence.

The only thing of consequence

is what we do"

John Ruskin

2009-11-23T14:09:00.000-08:00

can i just say:

white chocolate. paper boy. girl exterminator. hell-barrel, snowflake, mexican jumping bean (even though this name is racist), dirty sausage, string bean, cable guy, boom gangster, peanut butter and jelly, and bruceberry had an awesome time, playing man-games, running around empty swimming pools, and, oh, making a movie.

best weekend in a long time.

thank you so so so so much. you are amazing.

2008-01-06T20:40:00.000-08:00

A propos de ma rencontre avec la fille cent pour cent parfaite

Par une belle matinée d'avril, j'ai croisé la fille cent pour cent parfaite dans une ruelle passante du quartier de Harajuku. A franchement parler, elle n'étais pas si jolie que ça. Elle n'attirait pas spécialement l'attention. Elle n'était pas habillée à la dernière mode. Sur la nuque, ses cheveux étaient encore tous froissés par le sommeil, et elle n'était même pas dans sa prime jeunesse. Elle devait avoir pas loin de trente ans...Et pourtant, cinquante mètres avant de la croiser je savais déjà. Je savais qu'elle était la fille cent pour cent parfaite pour moi...
D'accord, chacun son type de fille. Certains aiment les filles aux chevilles fines, d'autres les filles aux grands yeux, d'autres n'aiment que celles qui ont de jolies mains, d'autres encore, pour je ne sais quelle raison, celles qui mangent très lentement.Moi aussi, naturellement, j'ai des préférences. Au restaurant par exemple, il m'arrive d'être fasciné par la forme du nez d'une fille assise à la table voisine.
Seulement personne ne peut ranger la fille cent pour cent parfaite dans une catégorie...
J'ai dit à quelqu'un:
_Hier j'ai croisé la fille cent pour cent parfaite .
_ Pfff, dis donc. Elle était belle?
_ Euh, pas tellement.
_ C'était ton genre alors?
_ Je n'arrive pas à me souvenir. Je ne me rappelle pas la forme de ses yeux, ni si elle avait des gros ou des petits seins, je ne me rappelle rien.
_ Bizarre dis donc.
_ Bizarre, hein?
_ Et alors? a dit mon interlocuteur d'un air las.Tu as fait quelque chose, tu lui as parlé, tu l'as suivie?
_ Non, je l'ai juste croisée...
Elle marchait d'est en ouest, et moi d'ouest en est. C'était un agréable matin d'avril.
J'aurais aimé discuter avec elle, ne serait-ce qu'une demi-heure. Je lui aurais posé des questions sur elle, je lui aurais parlé de moi. Et puis surtout j'aurais aimé lui parler des aléas du destins qui nous avait conduit à nous croiser dans une ruelle de Harajuku par un beau matin d'avril 1981...
Après avoir bavardé un moment, nous aurions déjeuné ensemble, puis nous serions allés voir un film de Woody Allen, ensuite nous aurions bu quelques cocktails au bar d'un hôtel. Avec un peu de chance, j'aurais peut-être même couché avec elle...
Nous n'étions plus séparés que par une quinzaine de mètres...
Nous nous sommes croisés à la hauteur d'un magasin de fleurs. J'ai senti une petite masse d'air tiède effleurer ma peau. L'asphalte du trottoir était fraîchement aspergé d'eau, il y avait un parfum de roses. Impossible de lui adresser la parole. Elle portait un pull blanc et tenait dans la main gauche une enveloppe blanche pas encore timbrée.Elle avait écrit une lettre à quelqu'un. Comme elle avait l'air terriblement ensommeillé, je me suis dit quelle avait peut-être passé la nuit à l'écrire, cette lettre. Peut-être que cette enveloppe contenait tous ses secrets.
Je me suis retourné au bout de quelques pas, elle avait déjà disparu dans la foule.

2007-11-23T17:52:00.000-08:00

happy birthday, j :)

2007-11-13T17:06:00.000-08:00

"our defects usually spring, for the most part, from the same sources as our good points."

- longinus, on the sublime, 1st century ad

2007-11-12T23:15:00.000-08:00

david zwirner, circus or caribbean orange

Just some book notes:

Walter Benjamin, in his essay The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction (thanks Cyrus for letting me borrow the book!), discusses the connection between architecture and film. He suggests that the two disciplines are tactile arts. Architecture and film communicate primarily through the tactile realm in contrast to the pure visuality of painting. Benjamin’s idea suggests that, although the situation of watching a film turns us into a bodyless observer, the illusory cinematic space gives us back our body… both architecture and cinema have a hands on approach to discovering space, just as we rely on all our available senses to navigate through a physical space, a film is not just watched with our eyes, we feel it with all our muscles and bones and everything inside us…

Ok, like, duh.

2007-11-11T17:44:00.000-08:00

because, why not?

i love reading john maeda's blog, it's so refreshing. i found this short advice in his archives today, he brought it up in the context of branding vs quality but it can be applied to all aspects of life as well...

Do both. has been a recurring theme in my life just as much as Nike's Do it. Do I do X or Y? Both are extremely hard tasks. You would think that a good mentor would steer you in an efficient manner by telling you which to attack first. Turns out that all of my mentors (at least the ones I would respect) would damn me with the simple recommendation to Do both. Sure does solve a lot of problems. Kind of kills your personal life though ...

follow all things you love. this week i officially have two jobs: one as an interior designer, the other as a film editor.

2007-11-05T01:23:00.001-08:00

photo by lili nguyen

Drove around Los Angeles this weekend with my brother, there was dust on the windshield and I asked “what’s that” and my brother said “it’s ash, don’t you read the news?” I took out my new (old) Leica and snapped some photographs of the fog around my home. If only it were possible to make a movie like that, I thought, the way we sometimes just open our eyes. Just looking, not trying to prove anything…

2007-10-30T00:08:00.000-07:00

let me answer that with a quote by bob dylan, i was so much older then, i'm younger than that now!

2007-10-27T19:34:00.001-07:00

(copy and pasted from j's blog, but i'd just like to remind myself!)

things to do:

- draw a book-labyrinth that is the identical backwards and forwards, except mirrored in some manner

- create a website featuring photos of people on the street, kind of like those street photo blogs, but accompanied by a short interview: what is their favorite memory and favorite scene from a movie

- host a silent film party where everyone converses (silently) with captions that are written as they proceed, possibly to the tune of a pipe organ

- draw a history map, only places and events, between two people

- make a short film about a boy who perpetually wears a helmet

- illustrate a short story or poem written by or for a young child

- make a poster where the past and the future collide spectacularly (details to be worked out later)

- make a short film based on clips taken from footage of friends shot without them knowing, and afterwards, cut in a ridiculous way

- make a stop motion animation with voice-acting done by friends who've unwittingly been recorded in everyday conversation

- ask someone to describe the basic elements of their dream home and then create it in AutoCAD, render it in a 3D rendering program of choice, and present it to them in the manner of a real architectural pitch to a client

- make a three-part book where flipping the pages separately creates multiple landscape-scenario permutations

2007-10-27T14:05:00.000-07:00

david adjaye

Maybe a movie is a room with light, but no view, light not as a bulb, but as a form, a physical plane. It’s like what Walter Murch, editor of films by Francis Ford Coppola, said: the last thing to include in a scene that requires blue lighting is a blue light.

2007-10-25T23:17:00.000-07:00

jun nguyen-hatsushiba

"film is a medium with as many pros and cons as any other. it all depends on how it is applied and in what context. for people who think multimedia is the future, i feel a little sad. it should be us and our perception of life that becomes multifaceted and multiflavored. then, everything we see will add something significant to our experience. compare the sound of a single mosquito vibrating its wings to a bass-enhanced hifi personal surround-sound theatre system. it's the imagination in us."

2007-10-25T00:52:00.001-07:00

book designs by willy fleckhaus

bookbook

So, I made one book for my job interviews, now I’d like to make another book… perhaps a children's book? book of poems? or a graphic novella!

Procedure (courtesy of Bruce Mau):

1. Establish form and content.

2. Collect materials (photograph, record, download, ask questions…)

3. Start with the spread (define the page dimensions, the number of pages is unlimited.)

4. Insert the grid (at its largest, follow the golden canon of Jan Tschichold, drawn in 1953: the inner margin is one-ninth the page width; the outer margin is two-ninth the page width; the top margin is one-ninth the page height; and the bottom margin is two-ninths the page height.

5. Select the images

6. Apply the appropriate templates and masks (templates define the position of content, masks control the degree of expression…)

7. Specify typography

8. Create a feedback loop (ask friends, collaborators, peers, and persons off the street, find conflict, amplify content.)

now... go!

2007-10-24T19:06:00.001-07:00

This is my dream job: not a desk but a city, an office physically dispersed across three to four cities at any given moment and constructed on the fly, an office with no center, just consultants and collaborators and fabricators working together from around the world…

2007-10-24T00:14:00.000-07:00

once, we spent a week
in a skyscraper
surrounded by forest

we were waiting for an elevator
and watching the trees

2007-10-23T22:03:00.001-07:00

lost in translation

James, my friend in Hong Kong, had an away message up that read, “gno hei gei ho,” which I thought meant “I’m am doing very well!” in Cantonese. I asked him about that, and he said, “nooo, you mistranslated, gno hei gei ho… I am a gay ho!”

2007-10-23T21:00:00.001-07:00

found in translation

photo from: jake dow-smith

I wonder about a couple, in a coffee shop, sharing steamed milk and tea, and one asking the other, “are you happy with me as the translator of the book of you?” I think we’re all translating someone else, all expressing someone else’s dream and qualities on their behalf.

Translation: moving an idea from one medium to another.

For instance, from sketch to construction, or even, as I hope to do one day, from architecture into film. This process brings into focus each medium’s particular qualities, potentials, and limitations for expression, as well as the structure and technique of the work itself. I think, the trick is to find the heart of the original and produce it in a new way.

2007-07-10T05:43:00.001-07:00

You can't cut a tree in spring.

2007-04-25T12:29:00.000-07:00

I was leaving the No. 1 subway line in Times Square on my way to grab the shuttle to Grand Central. I was already late, and I was deliberately wearing the I-am-a-New-Yorker game face of the would-be anonymous man, distant and apart, eyes carefully lowered, never connecting with anyone else, neither granting nor receiving signals from other humanoids.

As I started to get off the train, the transit cop who had been riding in the same car and who had, I thought, been staring at me, came over. "You're Halberstam, aren't you?" he asked. I said I was. He had been one of my readers, he said, since he came back from Vietnam, where he had served with the First Cav, one of the most famous units to fight there. My books had helped him in that difficult time when he had just returned, and he wanted to thank me for them.

For a brief moment, both of us, all the while moving at the relentless, unfaltering speed of true New Yorkers, closed the gap between writer and reader. We did this on the move, leaving one train, hustling our way to another, never a stop lost because of the social amenity of this new instant friendship; the first law of the shuttle, whether it is the subway or the Washington or Boston shuttle, is that it must not be missed.

rest in peace, david halberstam

2007-04-12T00:34:00.000-07:00

baroquoccoco: infinitely surface, infinitely deep

2007-04-09T00:32:00.003-07:00

perhaps, something along the lines of "the aleph": how one point can contain all points, one room can hold every room, one house can hold all homes, one moment contain every single moment, and how we search and fight and worry and dare to get this one moment, find this one space, and we once we do get it, we can only hold on to it for less then a second because if we had it for any longer it would be too much for us to bear.

2007-03-29T23:15:00.001-07:00

2007-03-28T22:35:00.000-07:00

The Nail House

This thin, slim, thimble stand of land is a home in Chongqing, China, dangling atop a vast excavation. The locals call it the “Nail House,” like a nail that won’t come loose. There are so many stories in China of homeowners who refuse to move out for redevelopment and are arrested and sometimes even beaten. The owner of the “Nail House,” Wu Ping, has somehow managed to survive.

Here is an interview with her.

(more: global voices, nytimes)

2007-03-27T13:24:00.000-07:00

yaji and kita: the midnight pilgrims (dir: kankuro kudo)

I think once I move to San Francisco, I’d like to get a video projector and throw a mini-film festival every once in a while. You know, invite some friends over, open some beers, play some sunny songs, have a potluck, and watch a musical about a pair of gay Japanese biker samurai who journey all across Japan, time, and the heavens in search of peace and love and harmony.

2007-03-13T23:18:00.000-07:00

bring your umbrella

'cause its raining skyscrapers

(let's make more movies for the arch film fest!!!!!!)

2007-03-12T01:04:00.000-07:00

i think

"zodiac" and "the host" are gonna be on my list of fav films of 2007. both so beautiful and creepy. well, creepy is the new beautiful, so you could say they were beautiful beautiful, or creepy creepy.

(fav films of 2006 were "science of sleep" + "a scanner darkly" + "half nelson")

("babel" + "the fountain" were pretty big dissapointments, i still need to see "inland empire" + "volver" + "funky forest" + "the piano tuner of earthquakes" really)

(next, i'm looking forward to "be kind, rewind" + "sunshine" + "blades of glory")

2007-03-09T20:45:00.000-08:00

east beach

(east beach cafe design by thomas heatherwick, in west sussex.)

a little cafe by the sea, sliced into ribbons as if you dance with that girl for the first time, you're nervous and your body falls apart all over the sand. the more you try to pick yourself up, the more you come apart.

2007-03-07T19:43:00.000-08:00

you and me

we made a mountain

(rip curl canyon by ball-nogues studio)

2007-03-07T15:48:00.000-08:00

a map of the real world is no less imaginary than a map of the imaginary world

2007-02-28T23:51:00.000-08:00

j & j

2007-02-27T22:52:00.000-08:00

hotel everland

tiny pre-fab modern hotels, courtesy of artist duo L/B . hotel everland is prefabricated from a wood frame and can be dropped onto potentially any forest, mountain top, wine vineyard, suburban mini-mall, skatepark, piazza, and skyscraper in the world. dope!

2007-02-25T13:11:00.001-08:00

(from the astonishing portfolio of raphael garnier)

‘cause cause cause i remember when we used to hang on the steps of Sproul Plaza. old friends, sorry that i haven’t been keeping in touch so well. among my new years resolutions is write more, as in heart to heart e-mails as in tiny autobiographies as in better scrabble words as in science fiction love stories. maybe we could even write palindromes together. you know, “pop” is a palindrome, as in “pop back into your life.” we’ll hang out soon, either in this city or the next. until then, hello hello hello, first week of lunar new year is passing, happy new year everrrrbody!

ps: i took out the friend links on the side, but don't worry i'm still your friend!

2007-02-22T16:27:00.000-08:00

what nice neighbors: adult swim and stones throw records stopped by today with a bag full of sugar and chrome children vol 2 for free download. what a swell bunch. they even baked us a pretty blueberry pie too!

here are some of my favorite tracks so far:

fourtet and guilty simpson - money motivated movements

clifford nyren - keep running away

2007-02-21T16:54:00.000-08:00

amy bennett's neighbors

(oil paintings of suburbia via richard heller gallery)

2007-02-21T16:13:00.000-08:00

invisible waves (dir: pen-ek ratanaruang, 2006)

if you want to take a trip somewhere, maybe you should see this in bed. it's a gentle ride. if you happen to want to go to sleep during the first hour and a half of the movie, go ahead, you'll dream that you're on a boat in the middle of the ocean with no where to go in particular, the sun bounces off some passing glaciers into halo shaped lights dripping all above you in the sky. you'll wonder where your loved one is and will start to panic. you'll plunge into the cold water and swim for shore just to get to her. you'll swim all night, you'll cramp up several times and will want to give up but you won't. don't worry: by the time you wake up it'll be morning and you'll be lying next to her. but if you watch the whole movie without falling asleep, good for you, the ending is a nice one.

2007-02-19T21:35:00.000-08:00

crazy waves

hurricane photography by clifford ross

beautiful and terrifying how this planet roars. this lab reports that:

The strongest hurricanes in the present climate may be upstaged by even more intense hurricanes over the next century as the earth's climate is warmed by increasing levels of greenhouse gases in the atmosphere. Although we cannot say at present whether more or fewer hurricanes will occur in the future with global warming, the hurricanes that do occur near the end of the 21st century are expected to be stronger and have significantly more intense rainfall than under present day climate conditions.

here are some ways we can stop global warming. oh, and watch "an inconvenient truth." it's like, the best movie ever.

(images via bldgblog)

2007-02-16T12:41:00.000-08:00

what, what, what?

gather crowds, and listen to them. a lonesome smile may be meant for you. go through them:
lightning, rain, thunder, ice-storms.
smile at the sun's temperature. at least. talking about insurrection, and subversion, and strategies, and tactics - the smile's your main concern.
be where you are at, and surrender. invisibilities surround you.
hands up! everything you say can be used for and against you.

scenes de la vie interieure... momentary orbit bow and arrow orgasm tension swells and subsides.
make one wave and multiply the floods. trips for fellow travellers.
smell: here i come. taste: here i go.
pied piper aimed at you. wake up, and realize you're in love.
how beautiful you are. sunset. sunrise. the same one.
we'll see the same things. do we? i'd love to.
i've been talking to you. remember: a piece of my mind, which is yours. a sign of life.
it feels good to be surrounded by friends and lovers.

GO ON!
everything you do is all right.
everything is all right.
MOVE!

- simon vinkenoog

2007-02-15T17:09:00.001-08:00

last night we watched the stars from different parts of the planet (i was on a beach and you were in a forest.) the stars were a faint shy blue, so you sang “if you rescue me, I’ll be your friend forever” to cheer them up (“let me into your world, I’ll keep you warm and amused... oh the things we can do in the rain!”) you trace the sky with your fingertip and point out the big dipper, orion’s belt, the north star. “see how the north star flickers? that’s my reflection waving back at you.” we see a cluster of stars way out west floating just above the Pacific Ocean. we think that a parallel version of us lives out there. they're like us but backwards. they wear matching track suits and all. we don't know how they got there, but they’re hanging out together at this very moment, watching the sky, wondering how we got all the way out here too.

2007-02-14T18:53:00.000-08:00

when we're together, a forest grows everywhere we go. when i'm without you, the forest grows inside me.

2006-12-12T15:46:00.000-08:00

cloud in blouse / cloud in trousers

(by mr. mucho, via no knock room)

it’s not make believe if ...

2006-12-05T02:09:00.000-08:00

the elephant vanishes?

and this one might be norwegian wood!

(paintings by andrew schloutz)

2006-12-02T23:45:00.000-08:00

i feel porous

milligram's nestled house.

2006-12-01T22:11:00.000-08:00

columbia wants to hear my life story, in approx 500 words.

Asian American 98 teaching assistant. Theatre Rice comedy troupe. Poetry for the People student teacher poet. Theatre Rice course coordinator. Regret co-director. Soulstice Art Gallery co-curator. Asian Pacific American Issues Conference co-coordinator. War on 54 concert organizer. Til Our Chests Burn concert organizer. A+ on my paper on Slavoj Zizek, Jean Baudrillard, 9/11, and the War in Iraq.

looking at this now is like finding old clothes that are now too tight (did i really used to wear this?) i need to tear them up and sow it together into something that makes sense. all of that is another life now, back in the day when we were talking about becoming rock stars. i got to pull an Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind and leap through my mind and rescue memories before they fade away. hope it's not too dusty in there.

2006-12-01T18:05:00.000-08:00

beau mot plage

2006-11-30T13:54:00.000-08:00

about two years ago i wrote this in my blog:

i graduate from college the fall of 2004. i move back into my father's house in sherman oaks, los angeles, and i start a small but exciting internship at a big architecture firm. i spend my days making photocopies and my nights playing playstation 2. i live rent free and i put all my income into savings for my own house in the suburbs. i have nothing to worry about so i gain weight. one night i try to finally start working on my book and i realize that i had forgotten how to write. i learn that safety inhibits creativity and that the most daring things only come out of a fear of dying. i pack my bags to travel the world for a year and i learn all sorts of amzing things that i forget within 2 months of returning home. i decide to go to an architecture graduate school that no one has ever heard of. i graduate. i become an architect at 30. i'm bored so i get married. my wife and i move into our own house in san diego. we have a daughter. i forget all my worries and i become all my daughter's worries. i live my life renovating homes and designing parks. i die at 56 by a heart attack.

i graduate from college the fall of 2004 and i move into an apartment in the east bay with two college friends. we're all unemployed. we spend the day looking for jobs and the night painting, writing, and reading poetry. our apartment is an artistic mess. we complete a short film every two months. one of my roommates finishes his play and spends his time to directing it in san francisco. we get invovled in the asian american artistic movement in the bay area. i find a job as a high school teacher. i also volunteer at a city planner's office. i go to film school in new york. i use the resources to make a feature film and i shop it around film festivals. it doesn't work out. i decide to risk it all to make another film. i break even when a distributor buys the rights to release the film. i make more movies but the love becomes a job and i lose the passion for it. i live in a vineyard in the south of france. i marry once but she leaves me. we have no children. when i retire i spend my days swimming in the mediterranean sea, hiding my tears below sea level. i drown at the age of 72.

i graduate from college the fall of 2004. i marry early and we settle in san francisco, where we struggle financially together. my internship at an architecture firm doesn't pay enough so i take a night shift as a security guard at the mall. i have no time for writing. i have no time on my own. i hate my job. she gets pregnant. i leave her one night and i move somewhere far away. she has a daughter named emily who never meets her daddy. i move to hong kong and i feel more lost than ever. i teach english at a chinese school. i visit all the places of my childhood. i write to my ex-wife often, begging forgiveness, but she won't see me. i return to america but i can't stand to write anymore. it hurts too much to pick up a pen. i decide that i want to be a doctor. i work the night shift as a volunteer at the local hospital. i go to med school at the age of thirty three. i become a doctor at thirty eight. i open a practice in chicago. i adopt a daughter. i raise her to be a poet and an activist because i didn't dare be one. i am dreaming of emily when i die in my sleep at the age of 64.

so here's what happened:

i graduate from college the fall of 2004. i am lost. i linger in California for a couple months, feeling like something is missing. i decide to see the world. i visit Vietnam. i write poems. when i pass by Hong Kong i interview for a job in an architecture company. i am offered a job. my desk faces a skyscraper with a swimming pool. at 4 pm my colleagues gather around my desk to watch the girls sunbathe. i travel Asia. i design skyscrapers for people i will never meet. i am the youngest guy at every meeting. i learn how to yell at people on the phone. i am at the office until 2 in the morning. my team and i win awards. i dance it off. i write love letters that i never send. i go to the movies to understand what it is that i am missing. i buy new shoes. maybe what i am looking for i will never find. i leave my job. i come back to California. i am 24 when i see you again.

to be continued.

2006-11-28T01:23:00.000-08:00

drift, drop, dodge, dance, dart, dunk, dive, dash, delve, duel, dress, draw, drive, duck, dump, doubt, dare, dig, dip, do

2006-11-27T02:54:00.000-08:00

(dieter glauser)

You will be born from a dream that is born from another dream.

You will be paper, and you will be ink. You will be a folded airplane, a crumpled note, a scissor cut tree. You will be ballpoint scribbles, riffs of lines, curved scrawls. You will not speak. You will be rhythm. You will be what pulled my pen across this page, what colored the b-flat blue, what made this second stop on a dime.

And I will be ( )

There is a room made out of paper, made out of ink. And somewhere else, there is a planet, a solar system, a forest, just waiting to be drawn, just waiting to be folded into place.

2006-11-14T19:44:00.000-08:00

maybe, storyboards for a short film. it's about a cloud who sprouts legs and moves to new york to be a fashion model. the cloud becomes a "muse," picks up an austrian accent, and is soon the darling of the runway. the cloud is on the cover of "vogue," catfights with kate moss, parties with "panic at the disco," and buys a dozen baby welsh corgies. soon all the other clouds start wearing mini-skirts too. weather reports start predicting mascara rain all day long.

2006-11-10T20:31:00.000-08:00

sometimes, we make music videos into cities, make up a metropolis just for a song - night skyscrapers lit like sequine dresses, freeway overpases cut and paste out of cloth. some images sneak into our heads and never really leave. i wonder if, one day, someone might build a city inspired by a music video he saw a long time ago.

Here’s a mixtape for you, a collection of invisible cities. It begins with a ride across downtown in Futureshock’s “Late at Night” and it ends on an airplane, window seat, looking out at a developing world in Zero 7 and Jose Gonzalez’s “Futures.”

Maybe, one day, we'll live in one of these:

Futureshock – Late at Night (Dir: Ne-O)

Ebb – I’m All Made Out of Music (Dir: Tiny Tim)

Stereogram – Walkie Talkie Man (Dir: Michel Gondry)

Ken Ishii – Visionary World (Dir: Ne-O)

Zero 7 + Jose Gonzalez – Futures (Dir: Robert Seidel)

can anyone recommend anymore urban discoscapes?

2006-11-08T17:39:00.000-08:00

Happy about the elections! Will celebrate by cooking

Banh Khoai (Hue Pancake)

INGREDIENTS:
1 cup rice flour
1-1/2 cups water
1 teaspoon superfine sugar
2 tablespoons cooking oil
4 ounces peeled shrimp (small)
3 strips of thinly sliced cooked lean pork or bacon
1/2 cup finely sliced straw mushrooms
1/2 cup bean sprouts
2 eggs, beaten
pepper
salt
1 cup fragrant leaves (basil, cilantro and mint)
2 medium starfruit, sliced
1 cup fresh mint leaves
1 cup peanut-based sauce

Blend rice flour with water, eggs, salt and sugar, leave to rest for 10 minutes, then strain.

Add one tablespoon of oil to the flying pan, and swirl it around. Turn heat on high. Ladle the rice flour mix into the hot pan, swirl it around quickly, then add the mung beans and mushrooms. Cook covered for 1 minute. Remove the lid. Add the shrimp, pork, bean sprouts and spring onions. Cook uncovered until the pancake is golden brown and crispy.

Serve with fragrant herbs, lettuce and sauce dip.

(I can't seem to find the sauce recipe for that Peanut based sauce they serve with Banh Khoai in Hue... does anyone know it's secret?)

2006-10-31T16:50:00.000-08:00

Set Your Clocks

Worldchanging is putting out an exciting solution/innovation driven book about ways to build a better future, from the massive changes, like eradicating poverty and building greener cities, to the more minute, like how a cell phone or a bicycle can be re-imagined for the better.

But tomorrow, they will try to hack the publishing system. Check it out, and maybe pick a copy up too on Amazon, at 11:11 am, PST?

PS: I've just joined the Worldchanging team as one of their California writers. Will be focusing on sustainable design/mobility and exciting conscious film/media projects. Will put up some articles soon!

2006-10-31T14:26:00.000-08:00

bubbles

city of the hemispheres, superstudio

seaside bubbles, archigram

float, deflate, breathe, exhale, grow, blow up your mind.

2006-10-30T18:02:00.000-08:00

i.

My uncle is having a smoke outside, his third cigar of the evening, he goes through them swiftly, like flipped pages in a magazine. He’s watching the sky. We talk about Vietnam. He hasn’t gone back since he left. Never set foot in Hue, can’t imagine ever seeing Hanoi. But his daughters talk about going. Maybe one day he will go back because of them. His dog, Akai, is nervously running around the backyard. I take a photo of Akai with a flash and it doesn’t scare her.

I meet my cousins for the first time, and we kiss each others’ cheeks. I’ve been wondering when I’d meet them since I was 12. Now they’re that age, and I’m the one who’s grown-up. They think that I look like a bad guy. I think I should have shaved. We introduce ourselves by drawing portraits of each other. I carry one of them on my shoulders, the other in my hand. It’s like we’re pretending to be a tree, I think.

One of them steals my wallet. It takes me a whole morning to get it back. My uncle tells me to make sure they didn’t steal anything else. I think, “maybe they stole my heart.” But I keep it to myself. It’s sort of cheesy.

ii.

Moonlight in the midst of the Mission, Vinh and I lost at poker so we throw on a scarf of cigarette smoke and head up onto a rooftop. From up here, we’re as tall as the streetlamps. I miss San Francisco, I think, especially on nights like this, the streets are quiet, and when we toss our cigarette butts into the air they look a little like shooting stars. It’s been too long.

I ask Jimmy if he’d like to bike riding at 2 in the morning. After an episode of Ali G, he replies. Him and Ben took off one night on bicycles and have ended up all the way in Hanoi.

iii.

I think, maybe someone needs to invent a camera that can take photographs of what we dream about, but maybe it’s better to just make it happen. Ok, that’s pretty cheesy too.

2006-10-16T07:00:00.000-07:00

i couldn’t sleep; so i dreamt that i sent you a postcard of a river, a water threading through the cloth of two continents, this postcard smells like mangos and cut apples since I like to eat while writing, i’m wondering if these sharpie strokes know that your name popped up when i took a polaroid of graffiti outside a museum, and I don’t know if I have enough room in the back to write about the music I heard or the places I visited, I just want to etch in what it means to travel with no real destination except for the direction your black ink pulls me to, or to not have a return address; just this river I’m following to the beach between this dream and the ocean.

2006-09-19T00:32:00.000-07:00

window seat, please.

i like seeing cities slip behind clouds like bed covers, i like reading the shore jag and the rivers bend like graffiti lines, and when i’m so high up, i like staring at the still ocean, trace its waves like the grooves of a 12" vinyl record, and wonder if this record is what's keeping the world spinning.

i live in california again after a year in hong kong. hong kong was beautiful, and coming home was the hardest and the easiest thing to do. i loved my job out there, loved the feeling of building something, and i was part of some great teams on some very cool projects.

but sometimes you have to choose between the form and the formless, between what you can see and what you can’t. when i'm in a situation like that, i've learned to go where i can’t see and trust what i don’t yet know. i don't like to be vague: but that’s why i came back. i was pulled really, but i don’t know by what yet.

not many people know this about me: i studied architecture and city planning at uc berkeley. maybe i was a bit of an outsider in the program (i only have a handful of close friends in the department). i loved architecture academically (ohh... the sketching, the all-nighters, the theory, the flame throwers...), but what i loved in life pulled me towards organizations and student groups like APASD, Theatre Rice, Poetry for the People, Southeast Asian Student Coalition, Students for Hip Hop... i wasn’t joining all the clubs to fill a resume or be mister popular or anything like that, it’s just that in order to accomplish the things i really believed i needed to immerse myself in the people from those student groups, learn and grow with them, and maybe even build something together.

it was a gut instinct, and i found families there, and i am very thankful to all of them. thank you for laughing with me, for trusting and holding me accountable, for listening, for dancing and freestyling and daring me, for staying up all night with me if i needed someone there. really, thank you, whatever i do in this life i don’t want to let you down. some of the people i’m thinking about, i probably might not ever see again, and i’m not trying to be deep or anything, but i guess that’s life, you were there for me and i was there for you for that key moment, and that was that. our back was got and that’s all we need to know.

for the next month or so, we’ll do something different here on this blog. there's going to be a small look-back at some of the work i was part of from 2001 – 2006 (mostly arch/design/film.) it’s just to help me get things together before i begin a new life cycle (grad school in film or architecture next year.) it begins at 2001, when i first started doing theatre and architecture in the Bay Area (really, at the pushing of jimmy and kathy respectively), and it ends at 2006, after a year of experimenting and learning in hong kong.

i sometimes believe that in the things i do, the opposite can also true. any object/building/place has the potential to be something else. break it, stretch it, bend it, snap it, glue it. we just have to find the potential, dig for the metaphor, and keep moving.

2006-09-18T01:23:00.000-07:00

so we're trying out a new look, does this coat look ok on me?

2006-08-03T09:08:00.000-07:00

(wrote this to some friends who left town.)

Sure, let’s talk about dreams.

Books hanging from metal cages, gliding at the slightest movement, like hanging grapes. the room seemed like a big pomegranate, like a fruit containing a hundred seeds.

An igloo shaped room, with compartmentalized shelves, wood veneer and laminate, and dusty records neatly shelved.

A coffee shop with soft walls, made out of paper, curved and free flowing, temporary room. it sits on top of a cliff by the beach, we all had coffee there, all five of us (even though marl + bern have never met), plus freda, one door leads to the ocean (clashing waves, it’s high tide), the other opens into a smoky alleyway in wanchai, caged chickens and all.

You’ve all gone home and i’m sitting alone in our time machine. I had to sleep outside on the balcony because I didn’t want to clean up my room. I guess the next time we see each other, we’ll build an awesomer time machine. No flux capacitor this time, just wee cupcake-shaped chairs to sit on.

5. we’re dancing electronica at yumla, the sun starts to break, and we ride a taxi out to a beach I went to when I was a kid, the beach has giant statues of gods, and there’s a young fellow sitting on the shore by himself, looking like he’s about to cry. cops try to stop us, but they can’t. no one can.

4. we’re in Lamma island, chilling. we see four giant spiders, each twice the size of my fist, floating above us.

3. we’re riding taxi back from central, and I think James is talking about this place being a transient city. a girl nods in agreement. me, i try to tell the driver something in Chinese but it comes out in French.

2. I’m in Macau, and the whole city seems to be turned inside-out. There are construction cranes everywhere. My boss tells me that I can’t escape this, that no matter where I am, my future will be tied into China. I don’t know what to say.

1. we’re watching a Japanese movie called Tony Takitani, based on a short story by Haruki Murakmi. We found it at this recently discovered arthouse bootleg dvd store. The movie is very startling, very beautiful, but also very simple. I like these minimal movies with a quiet rhythm. they are refreshing, especially after work. You forget where you are. It’s like taking a slow boat out into the water.

hey there,

2006-07-22T04:07:00.000-07:00

2006-07-14T10:55:00.000-07:00

24, hong kong, days slim as postcards, with words flailing like dancers, like breakers and back-flippers, i think, these letters once knew how to fly, they hopped across continents to get here, like paper airplanes from rooftops, or cigarette ash flying across a highway. me, i’m not so good at writing back.

the night is sometimes a coat hanger, a television left on, and maybe an I-Pod running out of batteries, whatever it is, the night’s not the sky or the passage of time or even boat lights seen from balconies, it’s solid, you can touch it, hold it, and wrap a blanket around it. you can bbq chicken wings and steaks for it, and then wipe sweat off its eyelid. the night will also undress you, whether you like it or not. you can kiss its earlobe, but it won’t listen. that I-Pod will still run out of batteries, and it won’t matter so much anymore.

and me, i’m not so good at the things i think i’m good at, and i’m not quite as bad at the things i don’t particularly enjoy. i’m at the beach at sunrise and two officers are wondering how i got there, i don’t know, it’s july, isn’t it? i don’t have much of a routine this time of year, but i guess i was laughing with my eyes closed and somehow ended up here, want to sing bob marley together?

it’s july, and i scoop some sea water into my mouth, and it tastes like sweat, with tiny little crabs juggling in it. i can’t swim so well, but last night we were underwater, in a bar listening to electronica, head-bobbing, bones popping, eyes wide shut the whole time, and by morning we were washed up on shore on some beach, it’s no metaphor, we passed the time with sand and sweat all around us, with the morning pushing us at our necks, whispering, move, move, want to race to the other side?

2006-07-02T10:34:00.000-07:00

2006-06-06T10:07:00.000-07:00

another day

8:45 am – stumble out of bed, forget to shave, stuff contact lenses in, throw on t-shirt and blazer, soy milk and honey nut brunches of oats for breakfast, rush out the door.

9:15 am – stop by starbucks. buy banana chocolate muffin.

9:25 am – clock in at work. boss-uncle-g stops by my desk, pulls me into a design discussion about project ns – a competition for an I.T. park somewhere in China. present are: boss-uncle-g and teammates ja and vp. aerial photographs (i found them via google earth while listening to the mission impossible soundtrack) are shown and marked-up in white out. we talk about simplifying things. i think about an einstein quote “things should be as simple as possible, but no simpler” and wonder about how to get there. maybe it’s about forgetting all about trying to impress, and just doing it for ourselves.

10:15 am – i decide to spend the next few hours on project mc – a residential tower somewhere in china. boss-bertbert stops by my desk and tells me that i’ll be helping with “contract administration” soon. i wonder what “contract administration” means.

11 am – i e-mail some engineers about suggested changes to a project’s structural grid. i wonder how i'd feel if some 23 year old constantly gave me extra work?

12:00 pm – the client wants to see furniture in the building plans. i draw furniture. all the furniture. in all 45 floors.

1 pm – lunch time. beef melt sandwich, and then a haircut at a spot where you don't have to say anything, they just know what you want. i think the haircut looks cool, but 10 minutes i think it looks a little silly.

2:00 pm – i draw more furniture.

3:30 pm – i get pulled into a design discussion with boss-uncle-g and boss-uncle-g’s boss. i’m surprised he’s not yelling at us. boss-uncle-g’s boss’s boss, the big boss, drops by. i’m surprised he’s not yelling at us. hey, we're cool.

4:30 pm – i do some sketches.

5:00 pm – cigarette break with vp, who just joined the team, so he has fresh eyes. we talk about the façade and bounce off each other a lot, we scatter ideas around like cigarette ash, i tell him i like his style, with this project, we just gotta go where the feeling is good.

5:30 pm – meet up with team for another design discussion. i get called out on the words i use to explain architecture. too vague, and too many metaphors. a bit like this blog.

7:00 pm – dinner at a taiwanese restaurant that’s “elfish forest” themed. there's giant mushrooms, fake trees, and cute little elves everywhere, the food's nice too i had salty fish and minced pork, with a big thick taro milk shake.

8:30 pm – start to do some 3D drawings for project ns.

9:30 pm – avoid boss-bertbert outside the bathroom, don’t want to be guilt tripped about not drawing furniture.

10:00 pm – boss is delighted by some of project ns drawings. i then show him some other ones and he thinks they're so-so, but me, i like the bad drawings more than the nice ones, they're messy, struggling, trying to be something.

11:00 pm - computer crashes. it's a sign.

11:15 pm - boss brings big boss over to my desk to show some drawings. i tell him i can't, that my computer bugged out. i pack my things, throw on my jacket, and put my headphones on. it's time to head home.

2006-06-05T09:50:00.000-07:00

9 months later

i.

i watched a typhoon walk towards me, smiling, with a djarum in its mouth. the weather here in hong kong is a cocky bastard, a humidity with sweaty arm pits, a rain that moves like a prize fighter, like a wrestler, pulling at your ankles, holstering you upside down. it was a mistake to wear my new shoes to work.

ii.

for a year, perhaps, if this cubicle doesn't get to me sooner. i'm an architecture assistant, worker number 272, on floor 22, of number 213 queen's road east street. and i work overtime. and the best part about work is the leaving, the closing of the elevator doors, squeezing between the metal security gate into a closed-up fish market, where families sit outside just to sit outside.or maybe because their apartments are cramped, and they got no place else to go.

iii.

i ran into wing on the subway yesterday. i missed my train to causeway bay so i caught the later one, turned several wrong corners towards several wrong exits, paused to look at a map to get my bearings, made a complete 180, rushed to a random escalator and suddenly i hear "BRUCE!!!!!"

wing is getting off the escalator as i am getting on, so we chat in the middle a crowd rushing in and out.

iv.

duuude. i just had dinner with mom, chiu chao (spelling?) food. dude i ate so much, a lot of taro, but you know you gotta have the taro. taro everywhere in hong kong.

v.

i was an airplane pilot once, and i used to have iggy pop's "passenger" on repeat in my cockpit. one day i flew through an elephant shaped cloud and got a cherub's harp lodged into my propeller. i had to evacuate immediately so i tucked myself into a rubber duck hidden in the cargo bay and leapt off the plane, spinning at the speed of sound, singing but nothing coming out of my mouth. only when i plunged into the south china sea could i hear my own voice catch up with me, audible underwater, a bedtime song dancing through the teeth of a shark about to swallow me whole.

vi.

so i was feeling lonely, and i spent some extra hours at work to keep busy. a work friend scolds me:

"hurry up and learn Cantonese, man!"

i tell him i'm trying, and point to a piece of metal on a table.

"how do you say that in chinese?"

"we call that 'luie' (aluminum.) it should be easy for you to remember, we pronounce it the same say we pronounce 'girl' ... 'luie' (girl!)"

"mm, perfect, because they can both be so cool sometimes. "

"no. girls aren't cool. they're quite warm."

vii.

do you still want a cockroach tattoo? because today i saw a giant cockroach. an saw it too, and she got scared. brian played it cool.

viii.

so wonderful that you and my aunt fell in love. i only got to spend a night and a day with her in new york, so you probably know her better than i do by now!

new york felt like a kiss on the cheek at every street corner, man, it was love, sometimes strutting around feeling cocky sometimes walking at half-steps, feeling so small in face of it all. hearing about my aunt brings me back there, her living room, so warm and lush, the street she works on, snow white in the springtime, but a sly smell of pizza and honey roasted nuts.

that button room, maybe that's how i imagine your future home, and by then you're old, and tired of photographs, and you just keep buttons on you walls, and each button a story, a person you fell in love with on a subway ride somewhere, an eight year old who told you a secret in a garden while eating popcorn.

my architecture job here in hong kong is a fistfight, no gloves, just bare knuckles, and a lot of black eyes. a fleet of 100+ sailors, each divided into their own ship, tackling its own monster project, a stadium for the 2008 olympics, a mixed use neighborhood that will replace a historical district of central hong kong, a high-tech college in the country side of china. me, i'm in a small ship, just the 3 of us, so i get to do a lot of different things. like design a façade of louvers for a sports club by lunch, layout plans for a fine dining restaurant by dinner, and figure out where escalators go in a shopping mall during overtime… it's like learning the tango, the breakdance, and the shuffle at the time, three records playing at full volume all around you, and you're not wearing any pants.

but hey, it’s fucking fun.

ix.

the other day i walked into a small corner take-out restaurant and wondered if faye wong would pop up and sing hotel california. maybe i watch too many movies. head in the clouds, i'm gonna get hit by a car one day, i think.

today it was "sunflowers," set in inner mongolia, in what could be the biggest sunflower field in the world. after the film i sat down with the director and a few other audience members in a library and we talked about music and road trips

x.

these days… i've been wondering about my future a lot, pick-pocketing my childhood for clues about what to do, two of my favorite people at work are a pair of pilipino architects i eat fried chicken and nuts with it every other week, they are in their forties, former punk rockers now domesticated and corporate. one likes to talk about pilipino poetry (the balagtasan), and his 8-year old who is writing a war novel. the other likes to talk about toy cars, and his father-in-law, who's in a hospital in the Philippines. i tell them that i like poems too, and that (trying to over-compensate for my age) i think death is a bit like going home, for the deceased, and the people who loved her.

they just nod, like they've heard it all before, and continue eating, one of them wonders out loud about the guitar, and mentions that he never had a talent for it. i think, i feel the same way about architecture, about writing. i take another bite and wonder about that city on the horizon, blinking at me, just a nap away, and about that record shop, just around the corner.

xi.

missed opportunities, the last trip i regret not taking was a flight to Vietnam last October to see my friend Lisa from Orange County, she was in town for a medical mission and invited me to come along with her, visit towns around Saigon, I said, yes, at first, but balked when I found out I was broke.

the first trip i regret not taking was a flight to Paris, Spring semester, Junior year. It was for a funeral, my mom and all her sisters (two from Torrance, two from NY, one already in Paris) and brothers (one Swiss, one Parisian) and extended family (almost all continents) went. I didn't because I had midterms.

when i drop out of something i absolutely feel like doing, i hear Jimmy in the back of my head whisper, "you'll regret it." the next morning, i see his face in the mirror, he's shaking his head: "i told you."

i'm adding Harbin to the list.

xii.

i hope your life feels like you've survived a 5-lane car wreck on the 405 freeway, shattered glass, twisted metal, and oil picking up the shine of the sun all along the tarnished concrete, and somewhere in the distance, you can hear a car radio rock an ibrahim ferrer song.

glad to hear that you're journeying to europe soon. i hope you get lost out there, and end up in some gas station in the countryside, drinking coffee out of styrofoam cup, you don't know where you are, but you're having a nice conversation with some stranger. one of those chance friendships that make this life worth living. just two people, in the middle of nowhere, both coming from somewhere far away, and going someplace else entirely.

and wear aviator sunglasses. you'll thank me later.

xiii.

so i was watching a video today about toyo ito, and he was talking about how the space he is sometimes most interested in is the void between two words, and i thought, yes, mmm, i like that.

2006-06-05T09:21:00.000-07:00

Vietnam and back, Hue and Saigon, caphe and vegetarian meals (why does fake meat taste better than real meat?), cemetery skipping, family seeing, laughing in elevators, talking Milan Kundera and Buddhism over dinner, my mom’s “they’re goose liver, we’re chopped liver” line, looking for an orphanage lost in a jungle, climbing down a mountain while telling children’s stories, watching the sky undress herself and her clothes turning into motorcycle headlights all around us, “it’s like they’re stars looking for some grounding,” smoking cheap cigarettes, praying, dreaming about turning into a tree, my grand cousin tells me love stories as another sings “one day my prince will come,” I speak in French with all of them, except the kids my age, we talk through cell phone videos (he plays me a breakdancing video), I fall in love with a fried pancake in Hue so I throw a chair onto a table and draw our faces onto the ceiling (the food is that good,) one day we’ll all come back, we’ll build homes too, homes all over the place.

A pair of photos, for now:

Marie-Paule asked me if I wanted to go with her to find her grandfather’s grave, I said sure, and we cross by foot a river, a train track, a sea of bicycles/motorcycles and rusted toppled gate into a cemetery. There are a dozen or so kids playing soccer between the tombstones. Some of them eye us curiously. She finds her grandfather’s grave, and is totally upset to see it overrun by weeds and snails. I help her clean it up. Two kids come by and offer us a brush. They halt the soccer game to watch us clean the grave. On our way back, we wonder if the kids are talking about us. “Of course,” Marie-Paule says. And we stop for cigarettes.

The fam, at our family home in Hue. Aunts and uncles and cousins from all over the world came out to Vietnam that week. The woman on the left is Bac Ma, my godmother in Paris, the one in the middle is Bac Ang, my mom’s oldest sister, from Torrance, and the woman with the back turned to us is Bac Mi, the cool aunt in New York. They’re checking out flying plants, and will soon tell us good stories.

2006-05-11T09:07:00.000-07:00

r & sie

psychotic, by the fantastic r & sie, more here.

who knows, maybe we'll live in one of those one day. or at least make movies of us living in one of those.

2006-05-07T10:48:00.000-07:00

on a rooftop in causeway bay, watching clouds passby, there's only one star out, and it looks like the last cornflake in a bowl of milk, my throat is a little worn from some cigarettes, and i tap my ashes into a san miguel beer bottle lying next to me, my friend is taking some pictures, and she says that they look sort of wong kar wai. someone else asks a question about things we regret not doing, and i don't feel like answering, i got my arm under my neck and i'm just lying around, looking up, watching the sky move, and my mind's not here, of course, it's somewhere else, in another city, another place, another time, i'm not so sure.

i think about different places - berkeley, san francisco, los angeles, shanghai, hong kong - and can feel all sorts of streets, neighborhoods, cities, build and unbuild inside my skull in the span of seconds. i've wondered into many places this past year, a lot by accident, and this summer... i can't even imagine... and after that... after that, who knows.

when will i see you again, i wonder?

2006-05-06T13:14:00.000-07:00

angelina gualdoni

some wonderful kaleidoscopes of a cityscape, these paintings are simultaneously scary and wonderful, like los angeles parking lots at midnight, or patches of grass underneath freeway overpasses in shanghai, like those long walks from oakland all the way back to downtown berkeley, or like hong kong, wanchai, 3 am, dusty alleyways and closed antique shops, cats meowing by a temple, and the only thing open is 7-11.

ahh yeah.

2006-05-04T10:23:00.000-07:00

just talked to andinh on the phone, who was chatting with lili on the internet at the same time, and i was telling him that i feel like we're back in berkeley, at andinh's old apartment, and we're all eating mackarel and tomato sauce out of a can, chilling on a couch that stretches from hong kong to california, with new york in the middle, and i guess the atlantic ocean is a coke stain, and we're watching a television shaped like the sky, and maybe these clouds are a godard film, the one with the coffee shop, with the small time thieves dancing...

2006-05-02T08:17:00.000-07:00

bye shanghai

shanghai and i, not exactly love at first sight. first few hours in town and i borrowed a bicycle and went as far south as i could, passed some freeways and stumbled onto a crumbling neighborhood - buildings blown wide-open, some of them had no solid walls, just laundry lines and some corners. there was a line of fruit stands, and i strolled through, bought a watermelon, and watched kids smoke cigarettes. some dude was chilling on a hammock in the middle of some rubble, and he looked cozy. in the background, there were ugly residential skyscrapers, all standing their with the same blank faces, making their way throughout the city.

more soon...

2006-05-01T10:31:00.000-07:00

The man with the mustache reveals the three aces
Briefcases open to expose sheet music
The thief hears the piece performed and weeps to it
Master violinist plays the solo one handed
The notes on the page become ants that run frantic
Slowly the symphony dissolves into noise
The phantom with the glass eye sweats and loses poise
A scene is made, the cheese brigade is summoned
The man in the mask walks fast and starts running
An officer fires a pistol in black apparel
But instead of lead, records grow from out the barrel
The criminal escapes through a disappearing door marked beauty
Exiting the world forevermore

- edan

2006-04-22T09:08:00.000-07:00

music for godard

(from estevan carlos benson.)

very fucking surreaaaaal.

someone out there stitched a scene from jean luc godard's "vivre sa vie" onto his own staticky, twitching composition and it's like... watching an astronaut adrift with ballet shoes on.

i love it when anna karina maws.

i wanna go out dancing now.

2006-04-22T08:19:00.000-07:00

lazysaturday

just around kowloon, tai po, hong kong.

2006-04-22T07:21:00.000-07:00

jeana sohn

so i guess in the last painting, the boy and the girl are wearing moustaches made out of bird wings?

2006-04-21T09:39:00.000-07:00

razzle dazzle

apparently a true story.

"During World War I, the British and Americans faced a serious threat from German U-boats, which were sinking allied shipping at a dangerous rate. All attempts to camouflage ships at sea had failed, as the appearance of the sea and sky are always changing. Any color scheme that was concealing in one situation was conspicuous in others. A British artist and naval officer, Norman Wilkinson, promoted a new camouflage scheme that was derived from the artistic fashions of the time, particularly cubism. Instead of trying to conceal the ship, it simply broke up its lines and made it more difficult for the U-boat captain to determine the ship's course. The British called this camouflage scheme "Dazzle Painting." The Americans called it "Razzle Dazzle."

2006-04-20T09:10:00.000-07:00

after shoe shopping with my brother

1: so, are those shoes still popular now, the checkered vans?

2: the spicollis. man, we started that shit! we saw fast times at ridgemond high, drove to the mall, copped two shoes on a buy 1 get 1 half off sale (which they don't do anymore for classic shoes at vans), rocked them, and now everyone wears them!

1: yeah!

2: everyone's biting us.

1: you know what else we started? the red-white-blue wristbands!

2: yeah! i got them initially because i needed them for when i play tennis, and i was, like, "cool, french colors." and then afterwards, everyone started wearing them too. johnny knoxville, justin timberlake, avril lavigne on rolling stone magazine! now i can't wear them anymore.

1: ridiculous.

2: we run this, man, asian kids run this!

2's girlfriend: can you take me home?

ps:

"you are so young, so before all beginning, and i want to beg you, as much as i can, dear sir, to be patient toward all that is unsolved in your heart and to try to love the questions like locked rooms and like books that are written in a very foreign tongue. do not now seek the answers which cannot be given to you because you would not be able to live them. and the point is, to live everything. live the questions now. perhaps you will them gradually, without noticing it, live along some distant day into the answer."

- by ramier rilke, "letters to a young poet."

were scribbled on a letter i received recently, the letter, i think, grew from a patch of earth, like a garden planted fifty years ago and only now sprouting, verbs red as tomatos, commas curled like roots.

got lots to do now... showed to work on wednesday jetlagged and mohawked, and my boss assigns a list of impossible things to do with a smile.

"you want... new skyscraper apartment plans, sections, and area calculations... all by the end of the day?"

"yes."

"wait... all of it???"

"everything."

2006-04-16T03:20:00.000-07:00

andinh and denise first meet, 2002?

2006-04-16T03:09:00.000-07:00

brian, berkeley, 2001

2006-04-15T01:39:00.000-07:00

brick

"coffee & pie."

"'coffee & pie, oh my'?"

it's duck soup for you, vegs. whatta cool movie.

2006-04-13T23:27:00.000-07:00

[leah beeferman]

come take a look at Leah Beeferman's gowanus,
"a map of history, fact & fantasy" about the gowanus canal neighborhood in brooklyn.

it’s a lovely map, full of cool details, her site has a larger, downloaded version that you can print out and imagine the place with. “Washington Park, formerly located at roughly 3rd Ave, between 1st and 3rd Streets, was the home of the Brooklyn Dodgers (then called the Superbas) from 1898 – 1912, the Dodgers then moved to their famous next stadium, Ebbets Field, before relocating to Los Angeles. All that remains of Washington Park is the wall, which – although it has been painted over – still stands along 3rd Avenue.”

this map feels like a many things at one time - a sketchbook, an afternoon of coffee and wandering around with a friend, and visual/anecdotal history of a place, it feels, you know, real...

[sam flores]

there are so many layers to a place, hard and soft layers, who lived here, what used to be here, things come in, things vanish without a trace, all the time, you really have to literally read the sidewalk to learn about a place’s history – different textures, for example, indicate the original size of a street, give clues about what kind of place a neighborhood once was.

and the softness a city, not buildings nor bones but the spaces in between, the morsels made for us, living in rhythm, losing our breaths. between the stanzas of telephone lines... a calligraphy of pigeons swirling above us in fading ink, the breakbeats of the marketplace, earrings, beads, and butchers, twinkling and cleaving in synch, the ghost stories we hear about... “that blue building, with the balconies, they say it’s haunted, you know... think about it... why else would there be a temple nearby?” and, of course, under all this, concrete, gravel, piping, electrical lines, and deeper still, infill. all of this was water once.

2006-04-10T08:16:00.000-07:00

APRIL 10, 1999

The enemies proliferate
by air
by land
they bomb the cities
they burn the earth
they force the families into miles and miles of violent exile

30 or 40 or 80,000 refugees
just before this
check-point
or who knows where
they disappear

the woman cannot find her brother
the man cannot recall the point of all
the papers somebody took
away from him
the rains fall to purify the river
the darkness does not slow the trembling
message of the tanks

Hundreds of houses on fire and still
the enemies do not seek and find
the enemies

only the ones without water
only the ones without bread
only the ones without guns

There is international TV
There is no news

The enemies proliferate
The homeless multiply
And I
I watch I wait

I am already far
and away
too late

too late

- june jordan

2006-04-09T10:33:00.000-07:00

great. just fucking great.

this post will be deleted within 48 hours because of utter embarassment.

(see junichi's blog for details.)

2006-04-09T10:21:00.000-07:00

10 reminders for better ( anything )

1
i n v e n t n o t h i n g

2
m i x e v e r y t h i n g

3
c o n s u l t a r t i s t s

4
r e f i n e s i m p l y

5
t a k e i t f u r t h e r

6
r e m a i n e n i g m a t i c

7
e m b r a c e t h e o l d

8
s e p a r a t e s h e l l f r o m c o n t e n t s

9
b e b o l d

10
l e a r n i n g b y n u m b e r s

(slightly adjusted from ortner and ortner bankust)

2006-04-09T00:54:00.000-07:00

like globe trotting, back-packing, jet-setting without leaving your seat, like sand under your feet, snow on your lips, and you haven’t moved an inch... freda hooked us arch-nerds up with some spectacular seats at the show, we were so close it was like jonsi was singing to us while cooking spaghetti in the kitchen.

felt home-sick after the show, and remembered that concert in oakland a few years ago, jean, dom, sheng, andinh, chen... i slept through the opening act, but when sigur ros started i was set on fire, third degree burns all over my heart. after the show, on the ride home, i wasn’t feeling anything, i was just sitting there in a daze, wondering where i was... after a concert like that it takes some time getting used to being yourself again.

after last friday’s show, i took a walk around kowloon and the way the yellow street lamps hung over the highway... i felt like i was in Oakland again (was i 19 back then?) i told s a few weeks ago on the phone that no matter where she goes from now, she’ll bring berkeley and london with her. it was just something to say to make someone feel less sad about moving on, and i wasn’t sure i really believed in it myself. but out of nowhere, oakland crept out of my bones, the way the buses moved, buildings looked, i don't know how to say it, it was just an oakland night, you know? i swung around lamp pole and tried to sneak into a warehouse when i got a phone call.

“hey, where are you?,” she asks.

“i’m… not so sure.”

2006-04-06T07:28:00.000-07:00

FLORENCE MANLIK

“it’s really cool that she’s doing that…”

“yeah, there’s so much about diana that we don’t know.”

“that girl is getting her master’s in audiology. she’s catch, you know, you should go out with her. move to seattle."

"but it rains in seattle."

"but you just said you liked the rain! rain on wet concrete!"

“mm. maybe… but you have to go out Luca.”

“FO SHO!”

(apologies to luca and diana.)

2006-04-06T06:27:00.000-07:00

HIROKI TSUKADA
(orginally spooted on mintcar)

"i have the biggest crush on darth vader. dude, the cape, the boots. he's so intimidating... and hot. half-machine, half-man... everything a woman could dream of."

"oh... um, whoa."

---

let’s make a dream out of ink and bank statements, pull a pen out of your pocket and start with a circle, just keep on swirling, don’t lift your hand, just twirl, it’s a dance floor, freshman year, and the girl you like has just grabbed your hand, don’t let go, just move, move, until the circle is no longer a circle but a spiral in a oval in a womb like a Charles Bukowski poem carved out in binary code ( 0000110000010000 ), if it looks like the sky, or your mother’s cooking, you may be getting it, now loosen your grip, draw with your elbows, remember that you can bring back to life what’s already dead, or what was never there, and that drawing is for those that feel like the world is not yet enough, carve it, use your tongue, spit, make up a map to a city that you promised you’ll meet that someone at, it’s a house, no, it’s a room, no it’s just a line, and you haven’t even lifted your pen yet…

---

music download: edan and mr. lif - making planets (sorry, m4a format... you'll need i-tunes, but you'll getchoo galactus on.)

2006-04-02T10:50:00.000-07:00

been building buildings for too long. maybe it’s time to build a boat.

2006-04-01T22:18:00.000-08:00

"If you are a poet, you will see clearly that there is a cloud floating in this sheet of paper. Without a cloud, there will be no rain; without rain, the trees cannot grow, and without trees we cannot make paper. The cloud is essential for the paper to exist. If the cloud is not here, the sheet of paper cannot be here either….

If we look into this sheet of paper even more deeply, we can see the sunshine in it. If the sunshine is not there, the tree cannot grow. In fact, nothing can grow. Even we cannot grow without sunshine. And so, we know that the sunshine is also in this sheet of paper. Thepaper and the sunshine inter-are. And if wecontinue to look, we can see the logger who cut the tree and brought it to the mill to be transformed into paper. And we see the wheat. We know that the logger cannot exist without his daily bread, and therefore the wheat that became his bread is also in this sheet of paper. And the logger’s father and mother are in it too

You cannot point out one thing that is not here–time, space, the earth, the rain, the minerals in the soil, the sunshine, the cloud, the river, the heat. Everything co-exists with this sheet of paper…. As thin as this sheet of paper is, it contains everything in the universe in it."

- Thich Nhat Hanh, Vietnamese Zen Master

2006-02-03T11:03:00.000-08:00

came for the poetry, stayed for the conversations, i was the only one who had poems to spit at the open mic, i guess everyone else just showed up for the beer. nice spot too: a rooftop over a street that smells like dried fish. finally read some new poems, felt hellaaaa good. haven’t emptied myself out in public since… i can’t remember. been meeting some filmmakers, graphic designers, musicians, basically, good looking cats who want to collaborate. i gotta get off my ass.

“hi, um, let’s hang out. bring your drum set.”

2006-02-01T07:07:00.000-08:00

hi

do you ever feel like you are trapped in a cube inside a cubicle inside a building within a block of a billion boxes, with no sunshine, no cicadas, no mango trees, no sea shells scrambling on the sea shore, and the only sound you hear is the beeeeep beeeep of a photo-copier, and the thump, thump, thump, baseline of your own heart?

uh-huh.

2006-01-31T08:18:00.000-08:00

I think maybe we are both winds, one of us slides through a wooden flute, the other is dancing between buildings, gliding against underwear hung outside apartment windows. The sea is singing, and we can name every fish in the sea – that’s Charlie Parker, there’s Ibrahim Ferrer, the chubby one is James Brown. You think the ocean is a dot, and we are just looking at from the wrong dimension, like maybe all this blue is just one note lost in a longer song that neither of us remembers the words to, but just knows. I kind of think the sea is more like a straight line, you know, like a guitar string... six seas, six strings. And if you sit on a beach at night, and dip your fingers into the tide, you can make this world sing.

But there are seven seas, you say, the first time I met you you had your eyes closed... and you still aren’t seeing things!

2006-01-22T08:35:00.000-08:00

(photo from suitman)

suitman's good peoples.

(photo from wooster)

giant space invader. totally kickass too.

(photo from wooster)

by dan witz. awesome. totally awesome.

2006-01-21T09:35:00.000-08:00

no nuts

sometimes, i wear a helmet at work. we also play YMCA off our little stereo, and dance on a steel beam as a crane swirls us around.

the space i was in in the last two pictures is pretty psychotic - a gigantic room made out of a bamboo matrix, all to create a work space 12 meters up in the air so that workers can paint the ceiling.

"construction inspires me to play. it's like asking a very serious young lady to dance and whilst we are dancing she becomes very lighthearted." - h. henselmann.

2006-01-19T06:08:00.000-08:00

post work wonders:

- in architecture, i think the opposite is also true. a home on stilts, a home underwater, either way, we’ll be ok, we’ll be ok.

- crumpled paper is fantastic, with its jagged edges and cruel wrinkles, it’s like holding an asteroid… a meteor shower, in between your fingertips.

- the smell of streets after a rain, a crowd of assorted colognes and perfumes, and a cart of slow coal-cooked potatoes… great way to exit the office.

- when i feel creatively broke and can no longer sketch, i slip into our office’s material room, a giant closet with overcrowded shelves of granite, limestone, fake marble, woods, carpets, glass. i spend a few minutes picking up random samples and smelling them, running my fingers along its grooves. it’s my balance in the office, that and cigarette shit-talking breaks in the stairwell.

- the corporate office culture is surprisingly a lot like studio, only a lot faster, and no more buildings made out of pantyhose. clarity is important, and always going back to your original design intent when you’re stuck, otherwise you just end up drawing everything and getting nowhere.

2006-01-19T05:25:00.000-08:00

look out

(more pictures from around wanchai.)

2006-01-15T09:37:00.000-08:00

the history of hong kong is carved at night clubs, between 4/4 counts and breakbeats. “my humps,” the dj always spins, along with “don’t cha,” “yeah,” and “get low.” the grind is the new handshake, and we sneak outside to get some fresh air. we sit on a street curb and exchange cigarettes, names, life stories. “we’re from korea, she’s from beijing.” “me, california.” “me too. irvine.” “he’s from newcastle.” “we grew up here, in hong kong.” who’s who are told in three or four languages, and things are translated, again, and again. we’re all drunk, and will mispronounce and forget each other’s names, won't see each other again after tonight. a beijing aspiring filmmaker, first weekend in town, is talking to an exchange student from cal, last weekend in town, and me, i’m thrashing with an engineering student in an alleyway, eyes closed, rocking out to a Swedish electro song.

at 3, we rush into another club, juke past the bouncer, the bouncer manages to grab me by the neck and throws me out. the bouncer then feels guilty and lets me back in.

the bar plays mc punjabi, and we’ll dance, hold, and laugh with each other til it’s time for breakfast (pork fried noodles and fish ball ramen.) a hong konger tries to tell a joke in english, and while none of us understands him, we laugh anyway. someone teaches me how to say “i’ll never forget you” in cantonese, i reply “daehan minguk manse!” a girl in marketing asks an exchange student on a bus what he’s looking for in his travels, and he says that the globe is just a big circle, and he’s on his way home.

i go outside to answer the cell phone, “what are you up to” “dancing in lan kwai fong!” “oh, good music?” “nah...”

2006-01-15T06:45:00.000-08:00

here before

(around causeway bay and wanchai, hong kong)

2006-01-09T08:27:00.000-08:00

a kiggass christopher doyle interview, herre’s a snippet:

If Martin Scorsese can make a piece of shit called The Aviator and then go on to remake a Hong Kong film, don't you think he's lost the plot? Think it through. “I need my Oscar, I need my fucking Oscar!” Are you crazy? There’s not a single person in the Oscar voting department who's under 65 years old. They don't even know how to get online. They have no idea what the real world is about. They have no visual experience anymore. They have preoccupations. So why the fuck would a great filmmaker need to suck the dick of the Academy with a piece of shit called The Aviator? And now he has to remake our film? I mean this is bullshit. This is total bullshit. I love Marty, I think he's a great person. And the other one is Tarantino. Oh yeah, let's appropriate everything.

oh, i just saw part of wong kar wai's fallen angels tonight... whatta fuckin nice movie.

2006-01-08T07:07:00.000-08:00

tonight, give me watercolors and a holga camera, a blown kiss tipping off the wing of a jumbo jet, india ink and a lover’s lower back, a sketch scrawled with writing lips, eyelashes, and fingernails, i want hesitation, uncertainty, a rusty fish hook in my chest and strings spun out of spit and sweat, muscles muddied, shadows of sparrows shaped with entangled hands, grant me the clumsiness of not knowing, the terror of being lost, let me fight with every ounce in me, lose terribly, and want what i haven't got.

and tomorrow, i will wake up at 8. take a shower. put on a tie. go to mcdonalds for breakfast, and go to work.