the new album by twink is out. there is a regular version and a deluxe toy box version(pictured above). i'm a sucker for packaging so of course i've already ordered the toy box version. i really loved the first twink album which was packaged to look like an old 7" single with story book. besides, how many people use toy instruments without it being just a gimmick? via yip yop.

the journals of john copeland. some amazing work here. makes me want to start a visual journal of my own. of course it'd end up looking nothing like these.

everyday matters(where i found the above link) has some encouraging words to say about visual journals:

I don't think that illustrated journaling is really about doing great drawings. You're not out to make something that you could frame or give as an Xmas present. I'm not really into doing the sort of exercises on perspective and tone that you see in most drawing books, exercises that will move your skills to another level artistically. Not that you shouldn't do them if they are fun or if you have some other goal in mind but I don't think they are essential for the true purpose of illustrated journaling.

That purpose? To celebrate your life. No matter how small or mundane or redundant, each drawing and little essay you write to commemorate an event or an object or a place makes it all the more special.

when i think of visual journals - i simply think of collage. but if i do end up doing one, maybe i should actually try to draw something for a change...

to continue with the book theme from yesterday, i bring you fabulous book covers of the week. i love the style on alot of these old books, and i especially like the variety. maybe it's always been this way, but it seems like today people come up with one good book cover idea and it gets run into the ground for a whole line of unrelated books. it could have been something unique to that one book, or series of books, but instead someone chose the cheap way out. via scrubbles.

danny gregory gives us 25 books of the year from his private collection. these are oddities collected over the years. journals, taxidermy books, etc. if you run your mouse over the pictures they will enlarge. seeing all these great books makes me miss exploring old and dingy used bookstores. danny also has a blog called everyday matters which looks to be rather interesting. via stone cold pimpin'.

yet another documentary to add to my growing list of films i want to see(it must be some year for documentaries with films on the moog, jandek, and klaus nomi coming out). this one's on the electronic pioneer bruce haack(and yes - that's him with mr. rogers demonstrating some sort of electronic instrument. you can see actual footage of it in the trailer on the site). the film is currently touring north america(it'll be playing in austin, seattle, taos, and vancouver in may). i'd heard that there was going to be a biopic coming out on him as well with beck playing haack. but the project has been cancelled. i can't say i'm sad about that, as in general i prefer a real documentary to some half true biopic. via the exoticalist.

i finished bill bryson's mother tongue awhile back, but haven't had the chance to post about it until now. the book basically gives you the run down on how english developed over the years. it's a very interesting read. i learned alot from the book. for example most of the rules we use for english come from latin, which is why a great deal of them don't work or make much sense(latin and english being different languages after all). shakespeare coined something like 20,000 new words - 10,000 of which we still use today. and apparently the word ketchup comes from chinese. i'm a bit puzzled by that one as ketchup sounds nothing like the mandarin word for ketchup - maybe it comes from cantonese or some other dialect. this book made me want to be a linguist, or at least learn more about different languages.

next up on my reading list is bill bryson's made in america(an informal history of english in the united states) which should come in handy when my students ask me where the meaning of certain words come from.

last night peter and i went to see our second film at the taiwan vs east europe festival. last week we saw jan svankmajer's conspirator's of pleasure which was just as wacked and wonderful as i remembered it being. one of the best things about seeing this film, was that for once not a single cell phone went off, and no one spoke during the film. this is a very rare occurance in taipei - as quite a few people here aren't very concerned about how their actions may disturb others(people tend to be better behaved at taipei film house though).

last night we saw jan svankmajer's little otik which i'd not seen before. the film is about an infertile couple who can't have a baby the natural way - but end up "adopting" a tree baby. i think this may be my favourite of the jan svankmajer features. there were quite a few scenes that reminded me of some of his short work. i tend to prefer his shorts to the features, so that may be why i liked this feature a bit more than his other features.

sadly, the audience this time wasn't so great. still no cell phones, but there was a couple behind peter who felt like it was their right to talk throughout the movie. i have very few qualms about shushing people like this. but peter didn't seem up to the task last night.

a lot of the films at this festival had both english and chinese subtitles. the film we saw last night had both. the english subtitles were part of the actual film, but below the screen they had put a small rectangular screen where they projected the chinese subtitles.

as we left the venue i picked up the scheldule for the taiwan international animation festival. this starts next week(why do i only find out about these things at the last minute?). there are lots of cool shorts playing from all over the world, as well as some features. i was really excited to see that the triplets of belleville will be playing, until i realized that i'd be in tainan the only day i could see it. their also having a tribute to rene laloux which looks like it could be cool. the only problem is that the scheldule doesn't mention anything about what language any of the films are in or what kind of subtitles they will have. i emailed the festival in english to find out, but i'm not sure if i'll actually get a response. with a short 2 or 3 minute film a language barrier may not be such a problem, but with a feature it would be.

a nice overview of the new zbig rybczynski 3 dvd set that has just come out. i'd love to have this set, but so far i've only seen it at a few places. the cheapest being here for $59.95. it seems like a lot of places aren't carrying it(yet).

if zbig rybczynski isn't a household name to you, chances are you've seen some of his music videos at some time. looking at this filmography i see he has done quite a few music videos i didn't realize were his, or for people that just sort of surprised me(ie mick jagger).

one hundred albums you should remove from your collection immediately. this reminds me of pitchfork, as they usually annoy me in their narrowness of views. of the albums suggested you get rid of, i own the following(on cd at least):

• david bowie - hunky dory
  
  
• stereolab - transient random-noise bursts with announcements
  
  
• echo and the bunnymen - heaven up here
  
  
• einsturzende neubauten - kollaps
  
  
• sinead o'connor - am i not your girl?
  
  
• rem - out of time

funnily they single out bowie's andy warhol as one of his worst tracks and predictably it is one of my favourites as is this album. this stereolab album is what really turned me onto them year's ago. but of course now i rarely listen to them. when people make lists like this i wonder if they do it just to tick people off, or to laugh at people agreeing with them or at a weak attempt at humour? i suspect a little of all three. via the sound-scavengers list.

recent discussions i've had with ted and george have re-ignited my interest in experimental film. ok, so maybe the interest was already there - but it's gotten me interested in doing some lo-fi experiments myself(i.e. using flash, my digital still camera, and photoshop to create work). as a result of this i've discovered flicker - a site with information about various film festivals featuring experimental work as well as information about various filmmakers. they also run a mailing list called frameworks. the description of the list from their site:

All aspects, from filmmaking to criticism, are acceptable in this context, including unipersonal production, techniques, history and esthetics of avant-garde film, critical discussions, new directions, courses and teaching, festivals, announcements of world-wide events in film, retrospectives, exchanges of information, etc. This list is not intended for the discussion of narrative film, nor documentary film, nor video, nor video art.

i'm not exactly sure what they mean by video art. and there's no mention of digital film either. poking around the archives got me curious enough to sign up. i recieved my first digest today - and unfortunately, some people on the list are posting with html mail turned on, which is a big pain in the butt when you are recieving a digest version of a mailing list.

vintage las vegas matchbooks and postcards. nifty. via eye of the goof.

last week i recieved the paperwork back for my work permit. so today i went to the foreign affairs police station to renew my arc(alien resident certificate). eventhough i go through this process every year i always forget certain things. for example, when they say arrival date, is that most recent arrival date or the first time you ever entered the country?(answer: most recent entry). the clerks always get a bit confused by my address as well. it has two numbers in it. instead of living at no. 5 main street i live at no. 5-3. but the important thing is i am all nice and legal for another year now.

photo blink. i'm not exactly sure what this site is all about. in some ways it functions like a visual form of photoblogs.org but a lot of the photography tends to be a bit more, well, normal, for lack of a better term. aside from the photo galleries, the site also has some interesting essays on improving your photography. via what the hell happened last night?

i'd never heard of the robot star before, but if i had one, i think i'd still be taking pictures with real film...via gmtplus9.

i've never paid much attention to the webbies, but this year my friend marco has been nominated for one for his excellent site weirdomusic.com. check out his site, and then go vote for him here.

beatallica. apparently the beatles meet metallica, but i've not downloaded any of it yet to see what it sounds like.

if you're wondering what happened to the comments, here's the scoop.

blogger decided to delete a portion of the template for some unknown reason. this resulted in all the links lower than the tracker on the right side bar disappearing. and the bottom bar disappeared altogether. i wrote blogger asking them to fix it and i sent them a random link from the archives to show how things basically looked before the mess up. unfortunately, the person who fixed it didn't look very closely at that archived version of the blog, and simply pasted most of that template over the damaged one.

this resulted in my blog roll and most of my links being changed or just plain out of date and my comment system being replaced with an older out of date non-functioning version. after i discovered the comments not working, i tried to fix it by cutting and pasting some of the old code for that system, but it's still not working.

i went to haloscan to see what the code was originally, so i can figure out what i may be missing. of course i can't remember my password and the email address they have in their system is an old one that i cannot access so i can't simply have the password emailed to me. i emailed someone in charge and explained the situation, and told them they could see my new email address on the blog if they don't believe me. about a day later i discovered that even my email address had been changed in the template fiasco so if they did double check it may have looked like i was just trying to get someone else's password.

if i don't hear from them in a few days, i'll post a message in their forum and see if i can find an answer that way.

i responded to the mail i got from blogger letting me know my template had been "fixed" telling them thanks, but that they should look a little closer before they go pasting an old template over a newer one as sometimes it may cause more problems than the one it fixes.

press your luck. a great story involving an an out of work ice cream man, an american game show, panicking network executives, fleeing the law, and throat cancer. what else do you need? via high masculine tones.

new england ruins. pretty much what you'd expect from the title, photographs of buildings in ruins, or on their way to becoming ruins. these are the kinds of shots i love. no people, just remnants to let you know there were once people there...via geisha asobi.

the loftcube:

Instant penthouse.
Urban rooftops are the real estate of choice for the transportable 40 sq. meter Loftcube, but why stop there? The weight of the cube has been calculated for transport by helicopter. Mountaintops, islands and other remote places...

via geisha asobi.

back in the 80s, the one record label i was obsessed with above all others was 4ad. overtime i lost interest in the label and the artists they had on their roster. when scrubbles posted about the illustrated history of 4ad i thought maybe it wouldn't interest me much, as i had most of the original records and am quite familiar with their covers, but this history includes covers of a lot of the 7" singles which i had read about but never seen before. the only drawback is that the gallery images are so small.

comfort stand records has started a series called swinging singles, sort of like one of those 7" singles clubs only in mp3 format. every month or so new singles are put up for download(for free!). the first one was by messerchups, and there will be more messerchups coming in the future months as well.

comfort stand records also has a new double cd comp out called interplanetary materials(also for download for free as all the comfort stand records releases are). music with a space theme i believe. i recognize some of the people on this from the excellent two zombies later compilation. via the exoticalist.

queer heritage a timeline. some interesting things i learned from this:

• A.D. 1
  
  China: Emperor Ai of the Han Dynasty attempts on his deathbed to name his lover Dong Xian as his successor. Other forces prevail, and Dong Xian is forced to commit suicide. As with Mizi Xia, however, their relationship achieves a kind of immortality: the tale of the Emperor's cutting his sleeve off so as not to disturb Dong Xian, who had fallen asleep on it, inspires subsequent generations to call eroticism between men duanxiu ("cut sleeve") love.
  
  
• 720
  
  One of the first books written in Japan, the Nihon Shoki ("Japanese Chronicles"), includes an account of two male lovers who enraged the gods by sacrilegiously being buried in the same tomb. This is probably the earliest surviving mention of same-sex love in Japan.
  
  
• 1812
  
  Responding to the previous year's controversial trial-and subsequent libel suit-of two Scottish schoolmistresses, Miss Pirie and Miss Woods, for "improper and criminal conduct" with each other and one of their pupils, British legal authorities engage in a debate over whether sex between two women is possible. The consensus: it is not.
  
  
• c. 1930
  
  China: American writer Agnes Smedley visits two women silk spinners who live and work together as lovers. "marriage" between women, she is told, is common in silk-producing areas of the country.
  
  
• 1930
  
  Denmark decriminalizes consensual sex acts between men. (Sex between women has never been illegal under Danish law.) The Danish reform is one of the few successes of the early Homophile movement.
  

in related news, jamiel terry, stepson of the homophobic and anti-abortion zealot randall terry comes out. his stepfather seems more concerned with his own reputation, than the well-being of his stepson. metafilter(where i learned about this) has an interesting thread about it as well.

one of the films playing at the film festival i posted about yesterday is jan svankmajer's conspirators of pleasure. when this played in taipei for the first time in '97 or '98 it sold out in something like 15 minutes largely due to the fact that the chinese translation has the word orgasm in it(if i remember correctly). i'm not sure if it's going to sell out quite so quickly this time.

they are also showing his latest feature little otik which i've been wanting to see for a long time. hopefully i'll be able to get tickets for these before they sell out. recently, i've stupidly agreed to teach a lot of afternoon classes, which means my time is much more limited for doing important things like seeing jan svankmajer films.

last week i walked by taipei film house, and noticed a poster for a film festival called taiwan vs. eastern europe which is opening later this month. the line up looks really good, but i was pretty certain that the films would for the most part not have english subtitles. but according to this, it looks like nearly all the films have english and chinese subtitles! now i need to sit down and see what i can fit in around my work scheldule.

i only have vague memories of watching space patrol, but one thing i remember is that it used to freak me out as a kid. looking at these pictures from the show it looks like the demented cousin of thunderbirds or captain scarlet. yet another series to add to my growing list of dvds to buy. via fwak!

red letters. this reminds me a bit of the temporaray museum(speaking of which, i sent something in and they told me it was the first piece they'd recieved from taiwan) as what is sent in appears in their on line gallery for a short time. instructions on what to do from their website:

The Red Letter form consists of twenty words written in red ink, accompanied by a drawing. The letter is to be sent in an envelope by way of the US postal service to us.

• the letter may be of any size, so long as it can easily fit within a business sized envelope. Folds and collapses are allowed.
  
  
• the drawing is to be done with red ink on the same sheet as the twenty words.
  
  
• write the time, day, month, and year onto the letter.
  
  
• only one red letter may be written per page. We ask that if you are to send more than one red letter at a time, that they are individually enveloped (many envelopes may be shipped in one larger package though, if this more cost efficient).
  
  
• the definition of word is an argued one.

i plan on writing a letter tonight.

peter has been working on the server the last couple of days, and it looks like we're still having issues. hence the pictures disappearing again.

update: things seem to be ok now(knock on wood).

earlier i blogged about the lcd monitors they had added to the public buses that show commercials as you travel. george asked me to take a picture, so here are two pictures, not the clearest, but they'll have to do.

when i originally blogged about this they were for the most part only showing commercials, but now i see they've branched out to showing some tv shows. in the lower picture you can see what i believe is a puca cartoon. after this they showed this funny cartoon about a kid trying to kill a fly while urinating. last night i discovered a link(episode one, but it seems to be very slow to load) to that same cartoon on milk and cookies.

one final note, this is not one of the buses that has a monitor by the driver to watch as he drives. i've only seen that on one bus so far. and hopefully it won't spread to the other buses...

yesterday in the mail i got this package from amazon japan. the band of the 20th century: pizzicato five 6 dvd set. it's only being released in japan, and contains a bonus dvd plus lots of nifty stickers, small posters and other fun stuff. it brings me back to the days when every new release from pizzicato five was an event and brought with it all kinds of new discoveries. sadly those days are over. the package even comes with a reproduction of a ticket from the first american tour, and this ticket happens to be for the show in seattle i was at! apparently if you bought the release in japan at hmv or tower you got an 8th bonus dvd, but i think i can live with my 7 discs.

in the package from amazon came this flyer:

now what does ultraman have to do with office?

a few days ago i got a call from eslite letting me know that the icon books i'd had them order for me had arrived. i'm starting to wonder if i'm going to become burned out on these sort of images, or if i'll continue to love them for years and years.

at first i sort of felt that the las vegas book didn't live up to my expectations, but on thumbing through it a few more times, i don't really feel that way anymore. the book is divided into sections: the strip, gambling, lounge acts, etc. there's even a picture of liberace standing next to the wax figure of himself.

the india bazaar book is pretty wonderful. lots of cool posters and advertisements and even some firework packaging. this surprised me, though i don't really know why. i guess i just associate fireworks more with china than india. india bazaar makes me crave this even more.

the hula book surprised me as there were a lot more topless hula dancers in it than i expected. that probably shouldn't surprise me, but it does.

yesterday i came home to see the guts of my computer all over our bed. my motherboard died! luckily peter had one to replace it with temporarily(and the warranty on my old one is still good), so i at least have internet access and a computer that works to access it with.

the pictures on the blog seem to be coming and going. right now they are visible, but i'm not sure if that means whatever problem the server had has been resolved, or if tomorrow i'll wake up and they'll be gone again. it's rather fruststrating.

but not all is bad news, as i managed to burn my first dvd. various films from the prelinger archives:

• lucky strike marching cigarettes
  
• this is prelinger archives
  
• the outsider
  
• are you popular?
  
• perversion for profit
  
• a is for atom
  
• century 21 calling
  
• one got fat
  
• lucky strike square dancing cigarettes

i'm loving all these great films available from the prelinger archives. earlier i had blogged that i thought are you popular? might be the film that was used in one of my favourite cult films, whatever happened to susan jane? it's not, however, the outsider is. century 21 was shot at the 1962 world's fair in seattle. i wasn't alive then, but some of the things they show, remained after the fair, so i have fond memories of them. one thing they show is the exterior to an exhibit called "peep" or "peep show". i wonder if this was the adult puppet show that sid and marty krofft performed at this fair? i would love to see footage from that show if it exists.

for the first time in over 5 years, i've got an english operating system. we were sort of forced to switch to the english version, as we'd recently installed a dvd burner on the computer and the software to burn things automatically installs in the language the computer is in. some programs i can get buy in chinese, but with this i really needed to know what was going on in english. so we were forced to switch to english.

so far things are not running very smoothly, the computer takes forever to start, and i can no longer see the pictures on the blog. i can see them if i cut and paste the source, and then hit the back button(i mean i cut and paste the source of the image, i can see the image then, and if i hit back and go back to the blog, i can see that one picture - if i hit refresh the picture disappears again). peter seems pretty clueless as to why this might be happening. if anyone has any ideas i'd like to hear them.

naughty novels a gallery of old pulp novels including choice excerpts. there was no excerpt for chinese lover(pictured above - is it just me or does she not look very chinese?) though.

kooch-e-koo the art of miles thompson. i can't get enough of this exotica and spaceage inspired art. yet another site that if they had a book for sale, i'd seriously consider purchasing. via fwak!

the art of brett aker. a small site created by my friend garth. i went to college with both garth and brett and have always enjoyed brett's work. i even had one of his "cheap art" pieces(a crucifix print) which unfortunately deteriorated over time.

ever wondered what makes a magic eight ball tick? well, now you can know. secrets of the eight ball revealed. via j-walk.

it's visa renewal time, so today i went to the hospital to pick up my health report. there have been some changes since i did this last year. due to the fact i've been in taiwan for over 3 years i didn't have to do the drug tests, which means no urine sample. but i still have to do the blood tests which i hate as i'm a big scaredy cat and not very fond of needles. i did all that last week, and now the school is applying for my new visa and work permit. if nothing unexpected happens(like last year when they messed up my application) i should have a new arc(alien resident card) in a few weeks and be all set for another year.

recently they've added lcd monitors on a lot of the busses in order to inflict commercials on paying customers. to say i'm unhappy about this would be an understatement. then today i was on a brand new bus(it even had that new bus smell), and they had monitors showing the news. i'm not sure what is more of a torture the news or bad commercials. but the fun doesn't stop there, as right by the driver is a small monitor so the bus driver can watch while he drives!

artificial anatomy. a small gallery of anatomy studies done with papier mache(!). i just wish the pictures were a little bigger. via the eyes have it.

i've read about the internet archive before, but a recent post on the exoticalist reminded me about it again. the archive features books, movies, and live music all available for download legally and for free. they also house the prelinger archive which contains lots of old training and propaganda films. they even have this film called are you popular?, which i'm pretty certain was sampled and used as background in the film whatever happened to susan jane?

photoblogs.org has a whole section devoted to photomemes. one that has caught my attention recently is the 800 X 600 project. from their guidelines:

The Project is open to all! Collages in this project are made up of 64 pictures total. All 64 pictures must be original photographs, taken by the collage's creator. Each individual picture in the collage is 100 pixels wide by 75 pixels high, oriented horizontally. Pictures should be arranged in an eight picture by eight picture grid, forming the final 800 pixel wide by 600 pixel high collage.

i may give this a try myself. some of the entries really explore a single object or theme well, whereas a few feel more like random shots just put together. i've just noticed that there hasn't been any new entries posted since 2003, i wonder if that means this meme is dead?

muffin films. a dozen kooky flash films starring muffins. via eye of the goof.

life of brian has some interesting things to say about the presidential election here, and there's also good information that someone posted in his comments here(for some reason they posted the comments in a post about gay marriage, but they are about the election).

yesterday one of my students asked me what i thought of the election. i told her that i thought the kmt were immature and childish, and if i was taiwanese i'd be embarrassed by their behaviour. we were on the way out when she asked this, so i'm not sure what she thought of my thoughts. this is the first class i've been asked about this, and in general i try to avoid discussing politics in the classroom. but sometimes it can't help but come up.

there's a thread on metafilter about lars von trier's dogville. funny, i never considered it anti-american, nor would i consider lars a terrible filmaker. something i did learn from this thread, that maybe i'd have been better off not knowing, is that the kingdom has been steven kingified for american audiences.

rocket mania a game in which you connect the fuses to set off rockets. it's actually a lot more fun than that description makes it sound. via weblog wannabe.

we are in the process of switching isps, as a result the server with the pictures is down. should hopefully be back up in a couple of days at the latest.

about a week or so ago i blogged about this documentary on french music from the sixties called bardot a-go-go, and now thanks to fwak! i've discovered there's a moog documentary. this looks really cool, in the trailer you can download there's part of a cool interview with robert moog, and even a shot of him playing the theremin. if you are in san francisco there's a live moog event going on. if i lived in san francisco i'd be there for sure.

as a follow up to yesterday's post, the dpp narrowly won the election. i haven't heard or seen if the kmt supporters are crying in the streets and protesting like last year, but they(as well as their canidates) do seem unable to accept the results.

(note: i've since seen the tv news, and the kmt/pfp supporters are acting just as immature, if not more so, as they did last time. if they want to dispute the results then at least follow the legal procedure to do so, trying to run over riot police with their vehicles sure isn't going to help their cause any.)

today is election day here in taiwan. they are deciding who will be president for the next four years.

yesterday the president and vice-president were shot, but luckily only injured. there are lots of rumours as to who may be responsible, but i doubt we'll ever know. i think it's probably not the kmt(opposition party), though their cronies are largely considered responsible for the first lady being in a wheel chair(the result of a hit and run auto "accident" years before she was first lady). one of my colleagues was certain the president did it himself, but i'm starting to think she's a foreigner shy of a full load.

either way, the election continues. during the last election when the kmt lost, their supporters protested and cried in the streets for weeks. ever since then i've seen them as the cry baby party. if they lose again, it'll be intersting to see if their supporters have matured at all since then. if the kmt wins, china will be happy as the kmt tends to be much more pro-china(to put it mildly).

as if seeing wil smith's name above the title for the film version of i,robot with no mention of isaac asimov isn't bad enough, seeing the trailer reveals that the film is full of one liners! is hollywood incapable of making a good sci-fi film without reducing it to a comedy? via quiddity.

in other bad hollywood ideas, someone actually thinks it's a good thing to remake hairspray? i suspect this has to do with the success of the musical. i haven't seen the stage version. judging from what i have heard of the soundtrack i'm probably not missing much. via fwak!

this week's photo friday challenge is clean:

i almost skipped this challenge, as i couldn't think of anything to really shoot that wasn't really cliche. in the end i decided to go with this shot from inside drying clean laundry.

computer programs used on vinyl records:

One strategy that major record companies have been employing lately to deter downloading is adding bonus computer content to new CD releases. I recently discovered that this technique is not unique to CD's, but had in fact been practiced in the vinyl era as well. That's right: there were a handful of records released in the late 70's and early 80's that contained computer programs as part of the audio. This is totally insane, and totally great.

i had no idea some records came with sounds that could be played into a computer and reveal a computer game. i had the pete shelley record they mention, but i don't think i ever realized there was a useable computer program in it. of course, i didn't have a computer at that time so it would have hardly mattered. via scrubbles.

the jandek story:

Compared to "real" pop music, Jandek's songs are terrifyingly ugly; in the context of his decades of persistence, the range and mass of his work, they become intensely beautiful and meaningful. They are absolute, pure self-expression, an unfocused, unlit snapshot of his entire adult life. As he told the Texas Monthly reporter who asked him whether he wanted people to "get" what he was doing, "There's nothing to get."

it looks like a great deal of jandek's albums have been re-issued on cd, and you can find more information on the guide to jandek site. and there's even a documentary about him. the trailer makes me really want to see the film and hear more.

a jandek track is also featured on the excellent songs in the keys of z cd companion to the book of the same name.

some more details about the trip to taichung. taichung seems to be in worse economic shape than other cities in taiwan. we saw a lot of closed shops, one of which looked like it closed without paying its employees judging by the graffitti left on its windows. i'm not sure if it was our unfamiliarity with the city, but it was hard to find a decent place to eat dinner at(aside from vendor food of course) and there didn't seem to be a whole lot to do. we did see some interesting cafes, one of which was called marihuana(spelt that way with an h) and featured a big pot leaf on its sign.

waiting to be seated

the first place we went to upon arriving was this restaurant(pictured above) that is made to look like an old taiwanese town(we knew about this place because of this book i got in hsinchu). it's filled with old movie posters and other relics from the past. unfortunately you have to eat to see any of the exhibits. we had fried noodles that were a bit too sweet(they have different menus depending on the time of day, we were there for lunch).

the exhibits were interesting. there were some old posters, one telling people to walk a step behind their elders, and one telling people about birth control. unfortunately, my photos of those came out blurry. there were other interesting things too though:

old taiwanese opera records

old matchbooks and film advertisements.

of course, after seeing all this, i really wanted to buy a book with nice photos of everything, but they had none. they did have tin toys. this is where i bought the toy i posted yesterday.

one of the biggest surprises in taichung was running across this giant bob ross advertisement on the side of a building. i knew he was known here, as i'd seen him on tv, but still it's a bit surprising to seem him hanging on the side of a building like this.

we also went to the confucius temple. students often come here to pray. peter commented that every confucius temple looks the same. sometimes we'll see a distant relative of confucius on tv here. it must be odd to use your ancestor's fame like that. maybe he is famous for some other reason, but i doubt it.

on the bus ride back to taipei they were showing two different movies simultaneously. the monitors on the left side of the bus were showing notting hill, and the monitors on the right were showing fraility. i'm not sure if our seats gave volume for both films though, or if you were stuck with what side of the bus you sat on. i spent the ride back listening to goodbye tower volume one and two on my headphones while drifting from one film to the other.

today peter and i took a daytrip down to taichung. i'll blog full details tomorrow, but for now a snapshot to share the new tin toy i picked up there.

WWI and early aviation image archive a large image archive of early photos, postcards, and paintings about early aviation. via ramage.

what does your musical taste say about your personality? an online quiz that tries to tell you about yourself based on your ratings of genres of music.

apparently i really enjoy complex and reflective music, but don't care much for upbeat and energetic music. you can see the rest of my results here. some of the genres that you rate are a bit vague, i mean when they say punk do they mean the sex pistols or linkin park? and there's no section for easy listening either. via j-walk.

yesterday i went to the taipei fine arts museum. they had a few interesting shows. in the basement was a show of australian photography. some of these were interesting. however, i think some photoblogs out there have as good if not better work. i'm thinking in particular of .mused, chromgenic, chromasia, and daily dose of imagery. though those blogs tend to border on proffessional photography(some of them may even be proffessional, sometimes it's hard to tell with a blog).

by far my favourite thing at the museum was this show callled reflections of the seventies - taiwan explores its own reality(if you click the picture in that link you can see selections from the show). the great thing about this show was that they had some outsider art. one of the pieces is pictured above. it really lacks the details you can see in the real painting though. from a pamphlet about the show:

untutored artists of the 1970s taiwan found their support mainly from literary and art critics of the day, who discovered and endorsed self-taught artists as representative figures of the nativist style - and in so doing criticized the prevalent modernism.

the funny thing about this is i always associate naieve and outsider art with modern art movements as it's been such a big influence on many contemporary artists. but i guess in taiwan in the 70s it wasn't seen that way.

this week's photo friday challenge is perspective:

this is a shot of part of the exterior of chiang kai-shek memorial hall. i've been working on some more shots of chiang kai-shek memorial hall over on photo action boy, but we're having server problems so some of the photos aren't showing up unfortunately.

my friend george clued me into this page: bardot a go-go. a film in the making on the french music scene of the 60s. there's a quicktime clip of the film that makes me wish the film was finished now and available.

yesterday i watched the hk film sex for sale. this is a shaw brothers production from 1974. the film is often compared to midnight cowboy. it's been a long time since i've seen midnight cowboy, but i don't think the comparison is quite accurate(midnight cowboy meets valley of the dolls might be a better comparison).

sex for sale deals with a young man that can't really wear a mask(the chinese title of the film is mask) to hide his true feelings. he ends up answering a modelling ad which leads to him sleeping with various people in order to get jobs or have somewhere to stay. an interesting thing about this film is that most of the positions of power are held by women. and it is the women that go after the man not the other way around. there is lots of sex in the film, and i was quite surprised to see that they actually showed women's breasts(no mosaic, which is the norm here). how did hk films go from this to the prudish films of today? maybe this was just an exception?

another surprising thing was that there was a self-hating gay character in the film. and not a minor character used simply for a joke, but one that gets considerable screen time. towards the end of the film there's a funny scene where the main character asks of the gay man "why do i love women? why can't i love men like you do? can't you show me how?!" or something along those lines. eventhough the gay character is a bit of a stereotype, it was interesting that in the end the main character realized he was his only true friend. i wonder if audiences in 1974 were shocked by such a character?

since the film was made in 1974, there are scenes of various apartments which are not without their charms, but even better than the apartments is the music. certain scenes had this groovy hippie freakout music. i had no idea music like this existed in old hk movies. i'd really like to know if this music was written for the film or lifted from other sources. there are songs sung in some of the club scenes, but they seem to have more to do with ballads than freaky rock music.

i'm curious if the other shaw brothers' movies have great music too. i already have my eye on a few more of their dvds that i want to pick up, so i guess i'll soon find out.

you can find a review of the film here along with some stills from the film.

an interesting article on blogs:

"What we're finding is that the important people on the Web are not necessarily the people with the most explicit links (back to their sites), but the people who cause epidemics in blog networks," said researcher Eytan Adar.

These infectious people can be hard to find because they do not always receive attribution for being the first to point to an interesting idea or news item.

Indeed, the team at HP Labs found that when an idea infected at least 10 blogs, 70 percent of the blogs did not provide links back to another blog that had previously mentioned the idea.


this is something i've noticed quite a bit, people not giving credit to where they found a link or article, or even cases of people stealing images from a web page and making it look like the idea originated with them. the article goes on to talk about a program they have developed to decipher a blog rank. of course when i put in my blog, i get no results found. hmm. i guess i'm really under the radar then. via j-walk.

beta-lactam records have put up a concert from 1986 by edward ka-spel for download(you have to scroll down a bit). there are even a few legendary pink dots songs performed as well. the 80s is my favourite period for ka-spel and legendary pink dots releases, so i'm very happy about this.

there are some drawbacks though. the mp3 is one long file(but it is at a high bit rate), and the artwork they provide requires that you use this program called stuff it to open the file. i hate it when i have to download a program just to open something(especially when i have no real interest in the program itself). i'm not very happy with this program as it decided to change all the zip file associations on my computer without asking to do so. another drawback is it doesn't seem to come with any information on uninstalling. it's only a trial version, but i'd still like a simple way to uninstall it. if i'd been interested in buying it, this would cement the fact that i wouldn't do so. via the cloud-zero list.

a page of mp3s of the music from space 1999. not all of them are ones used in the final show, and there are a few covers thrown in as well. there's even one by ennio morricone! via destiny-land.

dance crazes of the sixties. a nifty site about dance crazes from 60s. i wish there were more pictures, but still pretty cool. via fwak!

it's no secret that i'm a sucker for these record cover galleries, and here's yet another one: cover heaven. the only problem with the site is the pictures are kind of small(you can see them bigger by hitting the detail button but still...) and for me at least, the page loaded a bit slow when you'd go to the next page. via the exoticalist.

what could be better for the year of the monkey than the 50 coolest apes of all time? sometimes i feel like i'm the only one that remembers bj and the bear. good to see it up there with the other heavyweights. via j-walk.

this week's photo friday challenge is industrial:

some vents outside taipei main station.