sushipanda

I just finished watching Lars and the Real Girl. For those of you who haven’t seen it, it’s about a loner dude named Lars (Ryan Gosling) with some serious issues who takes on a plastic sex doll as a girlfriend, and how the small Midwestern town in which they live play along with it because they care so much about the loner dude with serious issues.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie. Gosling is one of the best young actors around (watch him in Half Nelson, he’s unbelievable), and the story is quirky and heartwarming, the hallmark of a lot of indie comedies about small, red-state towns. The film has a mix of saucy old white women and blue-collar minorities, all of them coalescing around Lars and treating the sex doll like a real person. There’s also a general practitioner who is an expert in psychology (played by the super-hot-for-her-age Patricia Clarkson) that encourages Lars’ brother and sister-in-law to keep the delusion going. So magnanimous are the members of this small Midwestern town that Lars’ fake girlfriend is welcomed into the dynamic of the town’s every day life with only the tiniest hint of mockery and no derision at all. The people of this town in this film make me want to settle down there myself.

So my question is, how come in real life towns like these end up voting for Hillary Clinton in the Democratic primary? And worse off, George W. Bush in the general election? If such a town truly existed we wouldn’t be going through this annoying, pointless dogfight right now.

One word: wow.

With all this talk about elitism, it feels damn good to hear an elite argument against Fox News’ constant and obnoxious moral certitude. It’s thrilling to hear someone of intelligence and faith stand up to the moral elitism of the most simple-minded and vacuous “reporting” network this side of China.

I think my friend Julie said it the best over cold beers at Time Passage last week. She works at Wieden and was talking about how some of her clients’ Olympics projects will not happen now because of all the torch hullabaloo. “It’s just sad for everyone,” she said. “Nobody is happy about anything.”

There really aren’t any winners in this whole tragic saga, and after the supposedly tainted games are over, things are going to pretty much return to how they’ve always been (except for the monks in the disputed region who threw everything on the line and those who suffered losses in the riots, of course). In the meantime though, it’s backlash after backlash, ignorant scorn masquerading as righteousness and wounded pride dressed up as nationalism. For a hint of this, check out the anti-French, I-heart-China movement happening within my MSN messenger list:

Over half of my Chinese-Chinese friends on MSN have put the badge on their contact names, in defiance of all the anti-China bullying that they’re undoubtedly reading about in the Chinese newspapers, watching on the Chinese news, and scouring over on the hundreds of blogs and BBS’s peppering China’s cyberscape and devoted to propping up this country’s national pride. Does anyone actually think a battle this mindless and solipsistic is going to have a clear winner, or even less likely, a clear compromise?

It’s just sad for everyone. Why can’t people just sing karaoke and drink beer like me?

Oh yeah, because the world still sucks.

Lots happening the first few months of 2008; hanging out with party princess Tiffany, her friend Alice visiting, Steve joining in on the fun, and of course Clint coming back after two years so Republic Studios can start kicking some serious ass! Click on the picture above the check out the entire gallery in Flickr.

I love my buddy Steve. It’s a true, unfiltered, pure love. And I’m not afraid to blog about it. (Does that make me an official blogger, now? Oh wait, I think I need readers for that).

Here are some reasons:

1) The morning after he arrived, we were preparing to meet up with Tiff and Alice at Kathleen’s 5 when I asked him if he wanted to shower first or second. I adore my apartment (and may have to give it up soon, sniff snort), but one of its few failings is its serious lack of water pressure. Steve, having crashed here many a time, knows this, so I figured he understood the question.

“You go ahead, I have to do some work first. Let me use the bathroom really quick, but you go ahead and shower first.”

So I did. And of course, halfway through my daily Herbal Essence orgasm, my water pressured dropped and the water got cold. Motherfucker! With shampoo in my eyes I screamed out to Steve, but he couldn’t hear me as he was, naturally, taking a shower!

I sat bitterly sat there as he walked out of the guest bathroom, a huge column of steam following him out.

“Did you notice how the water suddenly got really hot soon after you went in,” I asked.

“Yeah, thanks man.”

2) On Friday night we were shooting pool at Racks with Clint, Mike, Tiff and the girls. It was smoky and everyone was sort of boozed up. I had just completed one of those amazing runs of 7 straight victories, which I attribute to not having my glasses on. Somehow, someway, everything works out better for me when I can’t see shit.

Anyway, as we were chilling by the pool table, I started looking for Steve. Where did I find him but playing at the foosball table…BY HIMSELF. Yes, he had walked out of the bathroom and just decided to play with little rubber men bound together by a metal rod all by himself. I still laugh when I think about that sight.

3) The past few trips Steve has made out to Shanghai, he’s scheduled his flight up to Beijing on Monday morning. The past few trips Steve has made out to Shanghai, he has missed this flight and had to come back. Determined not to make the same mistake again, he purposefully scheduled his flight to leave Sunday night instead. It was on that night (yesterday) that we saw him scrambling to pack his shit so he could grab dinner with Tiff and Alice and then head straight to Hongqiao airport.

“Remember, you HAVE to leave by 8:30 if you want to make your 9:50 flight,” I told him, leaving him with what I believed to be enough buffer to get even Steve safely on board. He agreed.

So it was with great force that I tried to keep myself from spitting out beer at Time Passage last night when I heard the news that Steve was heading back to meet us from the airport, after once again missing his flight. Somehow, he had thought 9:10 and 8:30 pm were pretty much the same thing.

“How’s Beijing,” Clint asked, as Steve dragged his huge suitcase into the bar.

Or maybe he just couldn’t part with us. Either way, come back soon Steve. I’m sure you’ll kick your own ass at foosball one of these days.

Steve is coming in less than 36 hours. Clint will be here Friday night for one week. Then the Norwegian Panda Enthusiast will make his long awaited return to Shanghai, this time with some spending money in his pockets. Then in May, Ham Sap Joe will also be coming. Apparently, the bachelor party he was supposed to attend got canceled, because there were tons of e-mails being exchanged about how decadent the party attendees were going to get once they arrived in Shanghai, and one Judas sold them out and ratted on them to the bride and her mother. But Ham Sap Joe is coming anyway, because…he’s Ham Sap Joe.

This basically means a lot of drinking, right at the time when I was thinking about diversifying my interests. Open mic at La Bella? Paintball on Saturday morning? Writing that great novel about the unexplored themes of disappointment and regret?

Goodbye dreams, hello Johnny Walker.