Days of Being LJ

I’m thinking of laying this blog/site to rest. Twitter is just way too much fun atm and frankly I’m not angsty enough half the time to be bothered writing rants telling the woes of my life.

I remember someone mentioning last year that long form blogging is dead. During that stage I vehemently defended blogging, saying that of course it had a life. Especially for those who actually have something to say, and have an audience.

I still think that is true but since I’ve hardly anything to say anymore, nor an audience, then blogging might as well be dead for me.

Blogging for the layman has gone the way of the geocities/angelfire website once equipped with starfield wallpapers and scrolling marquees…that is the internet graveyard.

As well as this, This host i’m on is slower than a dialup modem, so come november, I’m hopefully moving my domain to another host, recutting my showreel with all the cool shit i’ve done the past 18 months and maybe starting a new blog just filled with infrequent essays rather than angsty bitchery.

so long folks, thanks for the fish and i’ll see you on the other side.

LJK Uncategorized blogging, goodbye, life

- Work is going well and quite contently, I’ve realised lately that holy frakking shit I’m actually writing and producing for television. If my 14 year old self could see me now I think she’d be pretty proud.

- Tennis is progressing slowly but with pleasant results, I will never be a federer/nadal but I’m working my game towards Andy Murray :p

- no photography lately, it’s been raining incessantly for the past month.

- writing for this blog takes a little too long, I’m thinking about podcasting instead…

- I can’t believe it’s June already, my slow crawl towards impending mortality scares me.

- It’s been 15 years since Toy Story was released…seems like yesterday.

LJK life blogging, life, reflection, tennis

Occasionally you get these moments when you suddenly think…shit…I have nothing to do and I still have a good few hours before the pull of sleep lulls me to by unkempt bed. There’s no tennis tournament on, there’s no TV I’d like to watch, I’ve run out of new movies to experience, I’ve read everything I needed to read and watch online, I’ve had enough of talking to my family, none of my friends are online and there’s no partner in the vicinity, or in actual reality to annoy.

So what does one do? I have that pile of scripts and “How to write scripts” articles sitting in a folder on my computer waiting to be engulfed in enthusiastic fervour yet my current feeling is shit! I do have ideas…ideas for films, TV shows, stage plays, radio plays, novels, short stories, but in the end my efforts will get me nowhere and if they do I’ll be screwed over by some corporation which will strip the heart and soul from my work leaving it an empty shell which no one will be able to enjoy and be so derided that I will never set foot in a creative world ever again…

So instead I sit here not bothering to actually do anything. Which is exactly the crux of the issue because when we produce nothing how can we predicate the results, the reception and relative future?

Plans I’ve had in my teens, poof, reality got the better of them. Plans I had in university still linger in the back of my mind waiting, lying dormant, waiting for that extra spark of energy which will seemingly never come as each day becomes more linear and predictable as the next.

Don’t get me wrong, I’m not unhappy, far from it. I have a job I like, I have a home, I don’t go hungry, I have quite a bit of disposable income. Yet why still this feeling of going nowhere, doing nothing, this cycle of almost false emotions dictating whether today I’ll laugh, be angry, cry or be depressed.

Is this my final acceptance of mortality? Of life which exists for most people in the western world? Perhaps as kids we become so accustomed to the quest for “Fortune & Glory”, the goals of fame, money and celebrity. If we don’t reach any of those goals we feel slightly empty because we take a step back and realise that for the rest of our lives it’ll mostly be:

work 5 days a week, go to the gym 3 nights a week, eat out 2 nights a week, consume an exorbitant amount of media, tutor our kids in life, cook dinner 5 nights a week, play tennis on Sundays, get drunk occasionally, have sex infrequently (if even that lucky), travel 2 weeks a year…

rinse and repeat till you die…

okay maybe this is all cause I’m really bored right now, I’ll go watch some Graham Norton to cheer me up…

LJK life boredom, existential ramblings, life, musings

okay, so I completely lied when I said I was going to retrospectively blog about the Australian Open, I’ve just managed to go through ALL 5205 photos I took and turned them into jpegs. I still am planning on listening to the podcasts, however only when I don’t get sick at the sound of my own voice…ahem

So why haven’t I been blogging? Well, there’s nothing really to blog about really, Twitter is taking care of all my tennis needs, work has been brilliant thus far, and I haven’t really had anything to really bitch about.

Of course I say that and by tomorrow something will have gone catastrophically wrong which will make me eat my words.

Life is currently devoid of any long term goals, short term goals are to get fitter, lose some weight so I can lose the joint issues and improve at tennis.

All in all I’m quite content, not resoundingly happy but very comfortable. Currently I’m in my TV rotation, working on a little video game show which is somewhat satiating my creativity and thus I haven’t found the necessary angst to go out and seek some masochistic activity (i.e updating this blog). I adore the people I work with and most of the work I do but knowing that my rotation ends in about 3 weeks will probably kill all this latent joy and send me screaming back to this blog.

But before then, I think I may enjoy what little solace I have left, grab some more sleep and you may not hear from me till mid-year

depending on how my next rotation goes I guess.

Leave you guys with a photo from the Aussie Open:

The crowd at any Federer practise is amazing, amassed 5-7 deep alongside the entire court, with spectators also peering from the top of the stands of nearby courts.  People forget about personal space, courtesy or shame just for a glimpse of a living legend. I’ve been at the back of the throng, I’ve also been lucky to be at the front, leaning into the fence, close enough to lean in and almost feel the whoosh of the racquet.

This shot was taken during a warmup hit before his 4th round encounter with Lleyton Hewitt.  I was sandwiched within the throng, finding a precarious balance behind a young boy who was too short to see anything and in between two tall guys. Because Federer was practising on the other side of the court he usually was on, photos had to be carefully taken between a smattering of head, hair, shoulders and armpits all smushed up against the fence in front. But even under the fading afternoon light, framed by the seething mass of humanity, Roger Federer seemed to look into the soul of my camera, almost as if to ask;

“I mean really? Do you think you have a big enough lens? Yeesh, can you leave me alone to practise?”

LJK life blogging, life, musings, photography, roger federer, sport, tennis, work

I watched The Godfather trilogy with my posse over the weekend and words still can’t describe how much I love those films. I guess it’s another one of those bi-decade re-obsessions I have. But every time I watch an old film or TV show I get this incredible sense of mortality when I start realising holy shit:

Pacino and De Niro are both hitting 70, Sean Connery is 80 and even fricking Macgyver is 60.

Soon, these people (who I’ve grown up with through the medium of cinema) are going to start carking it, and then…I’m gonna cark it too.

It’s a weird way of looking at things really. I get these major mortality pangs, as I like to call them, about once every year, usually towards the end of the year when I realise the impending doom of my birthday in January and I come to the realisation that I’m another year closer to death.

Speaking of great actors I was looking up Pacino’s filmography and in a span of 5 years in the early 1970s he made:

• The Godfather
  
• Serpico
  
• The Godfather part II
  
• Dog Day Afternoon

And he didn’t win an Oscar for any of them. I mean those films pretty much defined his career and he would probably never reach that pinnacle again but to think people like Gwyneth Paltrow have an Oscar for a role in Shakespeare In Love (even though I like that film, it’s still drivel), the lack of the award for the role of Michael Corleone just defines bafflement.

When one talks about Pacino, you immediately have to insert De Niro (crude imagery: one is the bun and the other the frankfurter in a classic NYC hotdog). As Brando defined post-war method acting on screen and thus changing the nature of cinema forever, Pacino and De Niro were both his natural successors. Coming out of the method schools of the East coast they both inspired generations of wannabe actors, mobsters and Italians with raspy voices and squinty frowns.

Pacino took rise in the early 70s but the latter half of the decade and much of the 80s where squarely in De Niro’s pocket. Perhaps his solid relationship with Scorsese guaranteed him a slew of well developed roles whilst Pacino retreated back to treading the boards after his screen career slipped into a long cold coma (Scarface the one exception).

Although they consistently shared sentences, it was not until Heat in 1995, did they share some screentime, and even then their one major scene together was shot with on separate days with stand-ins. Therefore Righteous Kill (billed as the first collaborative film) was to be a wet dream for all fanboys and girls.

Alas it was a shit film. And really what could be expected? Pacino’s last good film was Any Given Sunday, Oliver Stone’s ensemble homage to pro-football, and De Niro? Probably Frankenheimer’s Ronin in 1998. Of course people would disagree, heaps of people LOVED Meet the Parents, and obviously Pacino’s Roy Cohn was deservedly lauded (even though it veered a little on the shouty scenery gnawing Pacino).

The only good thing to come as a result of Righteous Kill

But as these great actors get older and come closer and closer to shuffling off this mortal coil, we think, shit when will we ever get actors like these two ever again? Actors who DEFINED cinema.

Like every wannabe director I’ve had lucid dreams where I’ve cast both in a movie. Of course in reality if I was ever in the same room as Pacino and De Niro, I’d wet my pants and cry in the corner. However in my imagination, as brilliant as it is, I see, 5 years from now, my smooth awesome confident self directing these two 75 year old geezers in a romantic comedy.

Just think about it…you know you’d want to pay 18 bucks to see it.

LJK film al pacino, filmmaking, godfather, life, mortality, robert de niro

I’ve been harbouring all this residual rage and I don’t know why. I should be totally happy and content at this time. I have a job, a stable income and creative pathways to pursue…so why am I fucking angry all the time?

This anger and resentment came to a a head tonight, after a particularly frustrating basketball match, where I didn’t play particularly well, armed me with enough rage to turn me into a customer from hell (albeit with good reason).

I got to the parking lot after the game with teamates in tow, bitching about the game and what not, handed over my ticket and a dollar for the fee, thought nothing of it, saw my change and picked it up along with the ticket.

I get to the gate, shoved the ticket in the machine, it tells me with robotic precision:

“You owe $4.00″

AW HELL NO!!!

So parked my car, pressed the intercom and all I can hear is the attendant’s thoroughly uninteresting phone conversation in Shanghainese. There was no way to reach him, so I bolted up to the ticket office. Of course at this point I really should have reversed my car and let the others behind me go. However I thought it was going to be a relatively short ordeal, I go up, he let’s the gate up, everyone is happy. Obviously it was not so short an ordeal, otherwise I wouldn’t be blogging this.

Anyhoo, I apologise to all those cars waiting behind me (Vero & Seets in particular who watched the start of the proceedings with great amusement)

I get to the office, guy asks…where is your ticket? In the machine I reply, hurriedly also explaining how I paid etc.

“You haven’t paid.”

“Yes I HAVE, I was just here.”

So he hangs up the phone and agrees to come down and once he does, takes my ticket out of the machine and says again,

“You haven’t paid.”

“Yes I have, would you like to see the two 50c coins you gave me as change for my 2 dollars?”

No response….then finally:

“Okay I’ll go check”

So he motions me to reverse out of the way and takes my ticket back to his office. I bid farewell to all the cars behind me and I park my car and wait for him to come back.

What seems like an eternity passes…I’m still sitting in my car. Why is it taking so long?

I decide to trudge back to the ticket office. I walk in and find Mr Dumbfuck counting all his coins for the day. Any better and I’ll be having four and twenty blackbirds baked in my pie.

I was speechless, the scene incredulous. Was he counting all his coins to make sure that he had ONE dollar extra for the day? I inquired, still slightly dumbfounded.

He kept repeating for me to wait, that he has to check. Enraged I spouted a string of phrases trying to censor the obscenities rising to the top:

“What do you mean? I need to leave, I can’t wait for you to finish counting ALL your coins for the day (5c pieces too, mind you), just give me the ticket. Look I’ll give you the extra dollar and just validate the ticket.”

He keeps counting and still tells me to wait.

“No it could be my mistake so I need to check.”

“If it’s your mistake then it’s YOUR problem, fix it in your OWN time.”

“So you can’t wait?”

I look at him like he was the biggest dumbfuck in the entire world

“NO!!!!”

So finally after bouts of half yelling and pleading with exasperation, I get my ticket.

I get in my car absolutely pissed off at the guile of this person. And what is the lesson today? Don’t drive when you’re angry.

Whilst reversing I forget to check behind and I run into a concrete post. big dent on the left corner of the rear bumper, cracked plastic on the tail light.

I knew some sort of shit was going to go down today, I had a pretty shitty day at work too, it was bound to blow into something big and when I heard that BOOM from the bumper, that was it.

So from one Shanghainese to loathe to one to love, I came back home and consoled myself by watching Zhou Li Bo with my parents. A post on him shall follow later, but for now all you need to know is that he is a very good Shanghainese standup comic.

I guess I could have been calmer and more patient in dealing with this situation. But there’s only so much calm and patience one has and my reserves are drying out.

The entire time I just felt like ripping into him in Shanghainese (a brilliant language to rip into people with), but I didn’t cause that could be construed and being a cunt to your own race, and I don’t like doing that, but if I had, it would go like this:

eh, pang you, nong le gaou sa a? non le gei di fen bi? Jiauo ghoo deng le gei, deng nong di wei zen le? non na neng ga 13 di? doo ming zhz nong ce cu eh jiauo ghoo deng. zen jing ming, ba ghoo piao zhi.

mando translation:

哦，朋友，你在搞什么？你在点数硬币， 叫我在等待，等你点完了。你这么那么十三点？他妈的，是你出错还叫我等。神经病， 把票给我！

LJK life anger, basketball, conflict, dumbfuckery, emotion, life

Gah! I’ve been quietly seething with rage these couple of weeks and it’s really coming to a head these few days. I just snapped at my dad just then, not that I actually meant it or that he didn’t deserve it (as much as I love him, he’s really teetering on being a full blown obnoxious geriatric git these days).

Work has been frustrating me greatly. I’m not sure if it’s just my attitude or if the process would frustrate any normal person. Perhaps I just need to chill out more, but I’m wondering how chilled I can be before succumbing to a coma.

I’m having one of those moments when I want to scream into the infinite dark abyss like in Garden State and get it all out and over with.

I’m watching Long Way Round right now on SBS, and it seems at first cool and awesome to travel around the world on a motorbike, but shit the amount of brick walls you hit is amazing. My issues at work pale in comparison. Currently Ewan and Charlie are stuck in the wet mud of Mongolia, tears in their eyes, depression setting in and you can see that the one thing they want to do is go back home into the warmth of their beds.

But in a day, after spending hours and hours moving a couple of meters and then toppling over in mud, they make it over this hill. And on this hill is this brilliant dry grassy landscape, stretching towards the horizon. Was it worth it? totally, but Ewan looks at the camera and almost breaks down.

Is my quarter-life crisis coming back after a 4 month lull? Am I in my own little Mongolia at the moment? Perhaps…

Or perhaps it’s just the hormones and the oncoming monthly bout of PMS…

…but I still want to get over this hill and onto the grassy knoll…quickly…

LJK life emotion, life, tv, work