This would not have happened if it had had a laser beam on its head.

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I was reading this article in the New Yorker about the growing conservative movement among China's youth when I came across this sentence:

He landed on a piece by Vangelis, a Yanni-style pop composer from Greece who is best known for his score for the movie “Chariots of Fire.”

Now I'll grant you that "Chariots of Fire" is a bit over the top, but as a kid I loved the song and the scenes of them running on the beach. The rest of the movie, not so much. It's still one of the few things that I can play on the piano. To judge Vangelis solely on that piece, though, is short sighted. Just listen to his extremely chill music from l'Apocalypse des Animaux from 1973. It sounds like Air circa 1999. It's certainly not whatever the hell this is.

And, just because every post has to reference KU's 2008 national championship, I give you this video.

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Going through current invoices to be paid, I noticed a vanity address that I'd never seen before: 2 Washington Square Village. It's actually a building that I'm familiar with since I use Great Jones/West 3rd to get from Lafayette to 6th Avenue.

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The NYT had a cool story recently about mirrors. One bit caught my attention:

Other researchers have determined that mirrors can subtly affect human behavior, often in surprisingly positive ways. Subjects tested in a room with a mirror have been found to work harder, to be more helpful and to be less inclined to cheat, compared with control groups performing the same exercises in nonmirrored settings.

When I saw this, I wondered whether participants were aware that the mirrors were simply mirrors and not a one-way mirror with observers on the other side. I know that if I were participating in an experiment in a room with a mirror, I would assume observers were on the other side which would alter my behavior.

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Meet the Fuwa, the five cuddly Chinese Olympic mascots who look like plush versions of chest-carving Aztec sacrificial priests:

The freaky little fuckers are everywhere -- stickered to the subway corridors, hanging from rearview mirrors, leering from stages set up around Victoria Park like smiling, fat-legged Gremlins. They are also harbingers of doom.

Now, they are also Defenders of the Universe:

(Image won't link, so click here.)

Yes, Fuwatron, combining the Asian preoccupations with wide-eyed, disturbing cuteness and anthrophomorphic communal battleware. Order yours today!

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Young-at-heart White Owl and just-plain-young Julia have postponed their wedding. Julia told the J-W that media attention was making things too stressful. I wonder if that's a gentle way of saying, "My parents won't pay my tuition if I marry someone older than they are." Whatever the case, I hope y'all saved the receipts for the blenders, toaster ovens and towel sets.

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Nearly everything about Kid Rock repulses me, and unless it's Weird Al working his magic I don't really like it when "musicians" recycle other bands' songs. I also think that Cracked.com was dead on with their 7 Reasons Kid Rock's New Song Might be the Worst Ever. But for some reason, anytime that song comes on the radio, I have to turn it up and rock out.

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I spent the last week in Madison and last weekend was Maxwell Street days, the Madison equivalent of Mass Street's Sidewalk Sale days. On Saturday, I was walking down the street with my friend Jess when we saw a table where you could make buttons. Well, it was our friend Sarah's birthday, so we spelled out Sarah's name and made five buttons for her each with a letter of her name on it.

After we had wrapped that up, and were annoying a bunch of kids by tying up the button maker so long, I thought that we should have buttons too and found two "J"s. For the rest of the weekend we wore the J-buttons and pointed out to people that we had J-buttons and, as a result, how cool we were. On Sunday night, we ran into my friend Scott and pointed out our J-buttons. His response was, "you know the J Song right?" Jess and I exchanged stunned looks. "There's a J-song?" we asked.

This, my friends, is the J song:

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We're thinking about taking lessons. The big debate is Mandarin versus Cantonese. Mandarin is the closest thing China has to a national language. It's spoken by more Chinese people than any other language.

It is, however, rarely spoken here. The area around the province of Guangdong (historically, named for the city the westerners called Canton) is primarily Cantonese. Cantonese and Mandarin are related. Sort of. The Chinese government insists that China has one language -- Chinese -- and that Mandarin and Cantonese are dialects.

Well, this ain't quite the case. Somebody here explained to me that the Chinese language is in some ways similar to Latin in the late 1000s. Latin then was the closest thing to a pan-European language. But years of separation created differing types of Latin. If you went to what is now Spain, or France, or Italy, or Romania, the local people would tell you that they spoke Latin. But to our ears, it would sound like Spanish, French, Italian and Romanian. And in big ways it didn't sound like each other's language. That's Mandarin and Cantonese.

Mandarin is easier, we're told. Cantonese has six tones. You know how your voice might rise to indicate ironical skepticism? ("Dude, you think Missouri can, like, win?") In Chinese, that's the difference between, say, "please pass the soy sauce" and "Russia is launching the nukes in 20 minutes." Those are tones. Mandarin has only four. So it's easy... -er.

Some coworkers are telling me there's no point in trying either. One sent me this: Why Chinese is So Damn Hard. It's filled with wondeful lines like this:

All of this is to say that Chinese is just not very phonetic when compared to English. (English, in turn, is less phonetic than a language like German or Spanish, but Chinese isn't even in the same ballpark.) It is not true, as some people outside the field tend to think, that Chinese is not phonetic at all, though a perfectly intelligent beginning student could go several months without noticing this fact. Just how phonetic the language is a very complex issue. Educated opinions range from 25% (Zhao Yuanren)7 to around 66% (DeFrancis),8 though the latter estimate assumes more knowledge of phonetic components than most learners are likely to have. One could say that Chinese is phonetic in the way that sex is aerobic: technically so, but in practical use not the most salient thing about it.

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It features an ancient washing machine, a big, rattling air conditioner, a shiny linoleum floor and glass light fixtures my Nana would love:

Everybody in chintz.

And tiny, tiny, Dr. No-sized kitchen. No oven, but we bought a little convection oven that does rotisserie and a bunch of other French things:

One's a crowd.

And we're tolerating it all for the view:

That pool costs HK$19, or a little over two bucks, per visit, but is free during the Olympics. If I didn't work such late nights I'd be swimming every morning. All that leafy stuff is Victoria Park.

The body of water is Victoria Harbour (yes, I'm adopting local spelling), which is the whole reason this place is here. Well, that and opium.

I work in the building with the needle top, so it's close enough to walk:

But the most important thing I've seen since moving in here is the restroom signs in our local Thai place.

I posed for this.

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I was riding my bicycle down 5th Avenue last night, heading home from working Vin Rouge's first anniversary party. At 17th street, I noticed a guy leaning on the driver's side door of a car service car yelling something about the crosswalk. Right as I pass them, the driver is able to get out of the car and starts throwing punches. "Aw jeez," I thought, "I'm going to have to get involved in this."

So I swung to the other side of the street and separated them. It wasn't too bad, or at least I didn't get punched in the face like I did the last time I broke up a fight that was none of my business. Once I got them separated and no longer throwing punches, I said, "OK let's calm down here. It's late. I have no idea what started this. He pissed you off (talking to the driver) by fucking with your car but you landed a couple good punches. The way I see it, everything's even right now. You'll go home pissed off at him, he'll go home pissed off at you and I'll just get to go home. OK?"

Whaddaya know, it worked.

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The New York State Theater is going to be renamed the David H. Koch Theater as the result of a $100 million gift from Mr. Koch. The gift will be used for a much needed renovation of the theater. When I first saw the interior of the theater, I was appalled. There are gigantic faux gems on the balconies and it looks horribly dated. So I try to entertain myself by imagining what it was like to attend the theater in the late 1960s when it was new and modern. The greatest asset of the theater, though, is the terrace on the second floor, It's great to stand out there on performance nights and watch the well-dressed crowds heading to and fro.

David H. Koch is the brother of Charles G. Koch of Wichita and Bill Koch, the vino vigilante and 1992 America's Cup winning skipper. I'm familiar with David H. Koch because, as a messenger, one of my regular jobs was to pick up mail at his old apartment and deliver it to his office. I hit it off with the doorman from the start simply because I pronounced Koch's name correctly instead of pronouncing it like Ed Koch's name.

One day we were just standing around shooting the shit, when this group of tourists came up and started taking pictures of the building. The doorman then went into a rant about tourists asking questions and expecting him to entertain them with stories. He said, "maybe if they ever thought about tipping me twenty bucks, I'd do it, but not for free." I was like, "stories about what?" "Oh," he responded, "Jackie O. used to live in this building, so that's why we get the tourists. As a matter of fact, Mr. Koch used to live in her old apartment."

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So we got a place -- at least sorta. It's called Viking Garden. I like to think it's a karmic reward for befriending a cuddly Nord.

Valhalla

It's on the 10th floor in a high rise by Victoria Park, just across the street from the parks' swimming pool complex.

Swimming there costs HK$19, or about a $2.20 or so. It opens at 6 am and closes and 10 pm. There's also a Brazilian charrascura buffet next to the pool, and a big open-air bar with disco lights. As they say on the Intarwebs, FTW.

It's old -- 1950s, I vaguely remember. It's got the traditional Chinese locked-away, closeted kitchen -- a way to keep the heat out of the rest of the apartment. No oven. Ancient washing machine. It's even smaller than our place in Brooklyn.

It does, however, have an amazing view of the harbor.

We don't have the keys yet, so no photo. Speaking of which, we live in a world where you can send a document from one side of the planet to another in a day and dial up any weird kind of donkey porn you like, yet it still takes up to 14 days to wire money from one modern bank to another. If we don't get the rest of the deposit money soon, we lose both the first part of the deposit and the place.

Meanwhile, to tide you over, here's the view from my cubicle.

Hello, little bug

That curvy, Sydney Opera House-like structure is the Hong Kong Convention Center.

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Fog. Quiet, drippy, foggy night.
It's weird.

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2-3 times a week I have lunch with 3 guys from my orientation class at work. Today I found out one of them, Bruce, is a Lyleman. No, not THAT Bruce. He had a great story about a flaming recliner flying off the fire escape.

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If you're cooking rice, and you accidentally burn it, and that sets off the fire alarm, the Hong Kong police department will show up. As in fire engine, with lights flashing, pulling up to your door.

They're very nice, I hear. And hot.

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New York Magazine lists the five songs most likely to be the "Umbrella" of 2008.

Of course, that's if you think "Umbrella" was the song of summer 2007.

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Billy Idol:

Men Without Hats

Judas Priest:

Ratt (live):

Kiss:

Sweet

Motley Crüe

And, finally, a karaoke version of MC Hammer in Japan:

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A handy guide to Madonna's love life from Us Magazine.

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