Stone Cold Pimpin'

Okay, that took a bit of doing, but here we are back with what *looks* like the same blog, but on a different provider. For those who like to hear about these kind of things, here's the tale of the process...

Jeff Kaiser, who I turn to in all matters of internetitude, suggested that I drop my old provider ipowerweb and switch over to GoDaddy.com. I had noticed recently that ipower used to be staffed by Americans and now had switched over to Calcutta, and that tech support was now just people going thru one of those "Choose Your Own Adventure" scripts devoted to getting the rubes off the phone asap.

So, first, I backed up everything off my old server. Then I contacted GoDaddy and set up my plan. The first hurdle: to get both my domain and my hosting over to GoDaddy. And it turned out that www.tedmills.com was owned not by ipowerweb, nor by networksolutions, but by, oh no! onestopnet, a provider I had completely forgotten about. Turned out they were still around, but nobody was at home. No live help, nobody at the 24/7 tech line. I left a message, but then turned back to Network Solutions and said they really should force the issue. I had checked out onestopnet online and the reports were not good. Absent since 2006 or so.

Fortunately, networksolutions got this going for me quickly and in a few days my domain was unlocked so godaddy could get it. Okay, so I uploaded everything to godaddy. The site was there, but I didn't thiink that the blog was working.

Oh! the reason turns out that I needed to back up my MySQL database over at ipowerweb. I had to call Calcutta a few times and finally got that figured out, all 2mb worth downloaded to my desktop. A bit of a worry when it came as an Oracle file and not a .sql or .bak file, but lawdy, GoDaddy took it anyway.

Ok, now...movable type still wouldn't work. I sent off mail to my friend who lent his more experienced eye to the problem...but couldn't fix it.

I called GoDaddy for the 12th time and it turns out no cgi scripts would work because I had signed up for the economy plan and well, economy has no cgi. For fukkksake. Okay, for $60 more for 3 years, I get boosted to Deluxe hosting. Okay, so finally Movable Type is working.

So now I upgrade to 4.2.5 and after a bit...it works! And here we are. Now, I would like to set about getting tags to work on every page. And now I'd like to start reshaping the blog so it incorporates all the social networking I do on other sites, mostly twitter and facebook. So we'll see what we can do.

By the way, this entry is being written at my local coffee shop on my Hackintosh Dell Mini 10v, a concurrent project that took place during the whole provider move story. That's another entry, but here I am writing, publishing, and more. Nice!

Posted by Ted Mills at 3:33 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: computer, godaddy, hosting, internet, ipowerweb, movable type, MySQL, onestop, providers

Sometime next week, I'll be packing my internet bags and moving to a new provider. So this will be my last post for now...but I hope to come back and update this bastard of a blog to MovableType 4.whatever. And then we'll really be cooking with gas.
In the meantime, here a picture of cats, waiting waiting waiting. Just like you!:

Posted by Ted Mills at 5:48 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
Tags: movable type, website

Today I got up at 7 a.m., walked downtown and joined Nik at the Arlington Theater, where they were showing the inauguration on their film screen for free in HD to the general public. Awesome! Much cheering when President Obama appeared and regular booing anytime the MonkeyFascist showed his smirky face. Obama gave a rousing speech that effectively swept clean the last eight years without explicitly mentioning the architects nearby. We walked out after the benediction (another great speech--never heard of that Reverend before) and I walked home in the warm sun.

(BTW, this is a composite of two exposures, because I wanted to show both the screen (important moment!) and the audience. The exposure on the screen was so good I had to dumb it down a bit.)

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I can't believe we actually did this. Back in 2003 or so I started this blog and most of that year's entries were full of anger at the illegal invasion of Iraq. Those were dark days. For eight years the world has grown to hate us, and for eight years we've lived under some of the most evil shit bastards the now-completely discredited "conservative" movement has thrown at us. And the GOP slate for 2008 looked even more horrific with McCain and that absolutely frightening idiot from Alaska, who made Bush look like a statesman.

I've been active, donating money, working phone banks, but some of my friends have put me to shame. My friend Laura traveled to Vegas to GOTV in Nevada. She got 400 people to vote on election today, just herself. She's been tireless. Her and others like her are the real heroes of last night. Back in 2000, before the theft of the election, a lot of us harped on about the lack of difference between two parties. And in some way, we were correct then. But eight years quickly taught us that there are real differences. But on the other hand, the grass roots movement we've seen is a direct result of people like me waking up and realizing we had to change the Democrat party from the inside.

Last night I had to teach class, but as I suspected, most everybody could not concentrate and soon the computers were on checking results. We called it early, and I rushed home to get ready. As I got dressed, my cell started blowing up. My official notice was from my friend Chris:

"OOOOOOOOOAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAOOOOOOOOOAOAOAOA!!! Are you happy? They just called it for Obama! Even Fox called it for Obama!!"

I fielded 10 more calls and text messages and skeedaddled down to Stateside for the Democratic Party...PARTY! The place was crazy and I had a bit of problem getting in, but soon I was jumping up and down and celebrating. I hugged a lot of people. I didn't get drunk...I was too high anyway! At 9 or so I sat at the bar with Sabrina and watched the most awesome, stirring speech I've seen in my lifetime. We were tearing up and whooping it up and cheering and clapping.

I danced with my local Congressperson, Lois Capps, for about 10 seconds. I danced with a whole bunch of people. Nik turned up, post-photography assignment. He had gone to the Republican election night "party," which, appropriately enough, was held at the satellite racing room at the Earl Warren Fairgrounds. Ha! I don't fancy your odds...there were literally three people there. EPIC FAIL!

Later, Nik, Rosminah, and I went down to Fatburger because we were starving. And what did we put on the jukebox? P-Funk's "Chocolate City." Ah yeh, Bootsy Collins, your dream came true, thirty years later!

BTW, the hard work starts in 2009. We have to further crush the evil fuckers in 2010 and gain more congress seats. We have to heighten our political discourse (yes, I know I said "evil fuckers," but that's different.) We have to hold our own representatives to high standards as well. We have to remember all that we did this year and remember that if we want something bad enough we *can* get it, but only if we work together.

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:29 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Just a test post to see if I can blog on somebody else's computer. My computer has been down like a clown since two days after that Obama post. If this works, I'll bring you all up to date.

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I went to Center Stage Theater to review the dance recital "3 Cities: 3 Choreographers" and encountered the choreography of S.B.'s Misa Kelly for I think the first time. What's even cooler (in lieu of my review that I am still writing as on this post) is that a lot of the work is online. Used to be that dance was impossible to see outside the live experience, but YouTube changed that.

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In 1995, I went to Seoul, Korea, with this new friend I'd met in Japan called Jonathan Crow and another English teacher called Katy. The full photoset of all five days (well, three main days) is now up on Flickr for your perusal.

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Men at Work was the first concert I saw back when I was a wee lad. Tonight at SOhO I got to see Colin Hay play solo and I got a photo with him at the end. Cool! In this setting he's very funny and tells a lot of amusing anecdotes. For a sample of what that sounds like, check out this mp3 of a TV interview with him on Andrew Denton's Enough Rope show from ABC Australia.

Set List:
Going Somewhere
What Would Bob Do?
Who Can It Be Now
Melbourne Song
Conversation
Norwegian Wood
Get Over You
Maggie
Death Row Conversation
Beautiful World
Looking for Jack
Down Under
Overkill (yes! my favorite!)
Are You Looking at Me?
Waiting for My Real Life to Begin

Only 15 songs, but understand that with all the storytelling, this was a two hour plus concert. If you get a chance to see him play in this kind of setting, I highly recommend it, even if you're not much of a Men at Work fan.

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At the end of March I visited my friend Olivia in Vancouver, BC. It was my first trip to Canada, and prob not my last.

You can see the full set here.

Then from Vancouver, I flew to Portland, OR and stayed with my friend Chris. This was my first trip to Oregon and also, not my last.

Dig that funky Portland scene here.

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Sure have been gone a long time, folks! And I should keep up with posting, after all I have thousands of devoted fans I can't let down. Well, maybe not thousands, but hundreds. Okay, maybe not hundreds, more like my mom and a few friends. But still I can't let them down!!

I took Spring Break in Vancouver and Portland and the Canada photos are already up. I've been busy writing and teaching.

I'm always nervous to get behind a candidate, but I've come around to Obama over the last months. I've more and more impressed with his speeches and his attitude. The man seems genuine. I've also stood back, impressed, as he's used every negative moment as a chance to go on the offensive. Last night was the unbelievably shitty and moronic travesty of a debate on ABC. But tonight I saw this footage:

Lastly, I went to go see Dengue Fever play SOhO tonight and it was excellent. More photos soon. My friends Sami and Doug were there, along with tons of peeps that I know, so it was a good night out.

Here's my favorite song from the night, the groovy and hypnotic "Seeing Hands," which could have gone on 20 more minutes for my taste.

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Photographed by mills70

For 11 days I covered the festival for the News-Press, attended all the red carpets (except for one, as I was teaching) and got photos with celebs (well, two). I interviewed nearly everybody, although I'm too swamped to post. Best interviewee: Norman Jewison. Worst: Tommy Lee Jones. Check out the damage here.

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This is such a stupid story, I have to share. Yesterday I was slicing a one-day old baguette from Trader Joe's for dunking in soup--it was dinner time. I was sawing away at it--it was a bit hard as you might imagine--and my hand slipped and I actually broke skin on the edge of the bread. Thirty seconds later I was bleeding. What the hell??? I have had paper cuts in my time, but never a baguette cut.

Then tonight I was finishing off the same loaf and again sawing away (that final moment of separating base from loaf is the worst and again I slipped and I banged the edge of my thumb on the bread. It gave me a blood blister and before I could even think, even more blood was coming out, all over the knife and of the cutting board.

This has to be the deadliest bread I have ever come across. I'm glad it's gone.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:45 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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My Canon camera, like most, has a "movie" setting. Half the time I use it intentionally, and half the time I flip it on by mistake. Either way, over the year I have grabbed 5 seconds here and there, sometimes longer (but not that much). The above compilation doesn't make any narrative sense and is completely random. So enjoy!! (Warning: Includes mature language, i.e. swearing).

Bonus! 2006 Year in Review also uploaded: Part One and Part Two.

And!! I have uploaded a Flickr photoset for 2007, one photo representing each month.

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Photographed by mills70

That's right folks, I traveled to Honolulu for five days. I have documented the atrocity for you over at Flickr.

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A photo of Louis Menand all chillin' out 'n' shit. In front of books.
I have kept a diary on and off (but pretty much on, full on) since 1985. Holy Christ! That's pretty much all my formative years and then some. So I'm always interested to read others' diaries, or in this case a lengthy New Yorker article by Louis Menand on diary keeping. Here's some choice passages:

And the superego theory, of course, is the theory that diaries are really written for the eyes of others. They are exercises in self-justification. When we describe the day’s events and our management of them, we have in mind a wise and benevolent reader who will someday see that we played, on the whole, and despite the best efforts of selfish and unworthy colleagues and relations, a creditable game with the hand we were dealt. If we speak frankly about our own missteps and shortcomings, it is only to gain this reader’s trust. We write to appease the father. People abandon their diaries when they realize that the task is hopeless.

Continue reading "Louis Menand (and myself) on Diary Keeping" »

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This Sunday I directed what will be the first video off of AM's new album, Soul Variations. We worked a near 12 hour day, but we all had a great time, and the video will premiere at the end of this month in various locations (more on that later).
Thanks to:
AM for having a rockin' song that, even after playback number 236, still had me tapping my toes. I feel this song!
Heather Carney (not in the photo) for her excellent dancing and solo performance and giving me the chance to finally work with a dancer/choreograper.
Jackie Brubaker for looking absolutely glamorous and never getting tired of my directorial demands.
Karla Shelton for running the show with her velvet whip and keeping us all in line.
Rob Dafoe for shooting and lighting the whole thing and for stepping in when I was about to rush a certain shot.
Tal for the use of his studio and his patience.
Nik, Sami, and Cynthia for once again helping out on their former teacher's projects.
Druyan (not in shot, but taking the photo) for takin' photos and for transporting out reflecting pool for a very cool shot.
My friends Scott and Kat for putting me up overnight so I could have an easy drive to our LA location.
and finally
Mom and Abel for being Mom and Abel! 

Photographed by mills70

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When I was down in La-La-Land last week I picked up a bag of David Lynch coffee. I don't have a coffee maker, but dammit, I wasn't going to pass up a chance to try Lynch's own blend. So I have decided to actually get a proper coffee maker. Trouble is: all the other times I've had a drip coffee maker the resulting brew has sucked big time. And I had washing up just for one cup. AAAAAAannnnnnnd my place is small, with no counter space. So what can I get? I came across this Metafilter discussion on coffee. I love the 'net! Now I have lots of options.
French press or Moka Express (Stainless Steel only, never aluminum!) or--my favorite by the looks of it--the Aerobie Aeropress.
Other tips: use a burr grinder, not a blade grinder. (Damn! That's what I have!)
Correct brewing temp is 195-205 degrees. (What am I supposed to do, take the water's temperature?)
Kona coffee is really good and the real thing is real expensive.
But why not roast your own beans? Hmm, this is starting to get complicated...

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Photographed by mills70

Last weekend I went to New Orleans' French Quarter for Scott's 40th birthday party. NOLA was comparatively quiet compared to Mardis Gras time and also because the city is still rebuilding (or not rebuilding, it seemed to me) after Katrina. But, still, I was able to get my fill of Cajun and Creole cooking and do my share of drinking.

Here's the Flickr photoset

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Yes, so, as some of you know, my main passion is filmmaking, and apart from some music videos, I haven't blogged much about my work. But tomorrow (Friday, July 20), we will be premiering Revenge of the Falcon, my short comedy, which although didn't take too long to do, actually has been brewing in one form or another since October 2005. In fact, we had to remake the film from scratch because...well, just because, all right? Some of you know what I'm talking about.

Continue reading "Revenge of the Falcon: My New Film!" »

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Some stizooopid stuff happened with the server this weekend (mostly involving a corrupted mt.cgi file which made me think for a second that I had lost four years of blogging), so I've spent way too much time fixing things. On the other hand I also used the opportunity to tweak a few things on the blog. You may or may not have seen them.

1) Comments now work, but require authentication. I was getting spammed the hell out by doofi unknown and I think this shut down comments for a while. As long as you have an email address and go through TypePad, you can comment now!

2) I added a favicon. It's my bleedin' face! I was tempted to write "OBEY" underneath it. If you don't know what a favicon is, do a Google search.

3) Rotating banners and new pimped out logo. I added that last weekend, but you may have not noticed it. I will start adding more banners soon, at the moment it's just ten photos.

4) Added links to myspace, facebook, amazon, and last.fm on the right. Go on and add me, be my friend and experience the discomfiting silence of social networking. I have nearly 200 friends!! And I spent most of the weekend at home!!!

5) I have added the photo of the Virgin Mary cheese sandwich apropos of nuttin'. Actually, it looks more like Marlene Deitrich than Ms. Magdalene, but still she was delicious!

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Photographed by mills70

Actually, I've already been. I went last week for the first time in my life (!) and I have the photos to prove it. Start here please.

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Photographed by mills70

For some years I've been wanting to get back into drawing + painting, but never found the time (supposedly). But recently I bought a Moleskine pad and have started again. I will try to fill the pad asap and post my work regardly of how good /bad I feel it is.

You can follow the postings here.

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Photographed by mills70

Yep, that's right, I was asked by SBCC (my employer) to hold a seminar on blogging this Friday. I spoke for about 3 hours to a mixed (mostly older) crowd of people. Fun and easy.

For those who attended the seminar, thank you once again. If you click on "Continue Reading" you can see the full entry and a series of links to all the sites I showed. If you would like the "Rules of Blogging", drop me a line and I will send it to you.

Continue reading "I held a blogging seminar! Wha?" »

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Last Thursday night I came home from the Los Lobos concert at USCB to find that while away, the pipe on the toilet had just exploded from being old and for over an hour water had been filling my apartment. My bathroom was two-inches deep, the bedroom was soaked, and water was seeping through the floorboards down into the living room below.
I thought I was going to become homeless! But in the end I was very, very lucky. Only a few thrift store records got damaged (and of course the one CD that got destroyed was a public library CD). But for just under a week I've been living without carpet, and with industrial fans going 24/7 along with a dehumidifier to get rid of the water.
I did well, as I'm not that messy and not much was on the floor to get wet. And all my computer/writing/business/film/art stuff was in another (dry) corner of the place.
Yesterday, they installed new carpet and today all my stuff got moved back in from temp storage. Phew.
It was traumatic, still, I have to tell you.

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Anyone who knows my CD comps knows I have really broad tastes, and love nothing better than to juxtapose, say, DMX with French chanson. So it should be no surprise that my iTunes and iPod are usually in perpetual shuffle play. One reason is that my two favorite radio shows growing up were living shuffle plays: Space Pirate Radio in SB and John Peel's show on Radio One in the UK.
The other reason is that juxtaposition is a way of hearing things differently and sometimes "new" even when they are old. Today I listening to the opening section of The Fall's "Hip Priest" right after The Beatles "Eight Days a Week" and believed I heard the same drums. Does that make The Fall more Beatlish or The Beatles mroe Fall-ish? Or was I hearing something new for 30 seconds before the memory kicks in?
Also, and I'd like to hear feedback on this, I think there is a secret shuffle play algorithm installed in both 'Pod and 'Tunes. I call it:
THE STEELY DAN ALGORITHM
My iTunes holds 100GB of songs, that's 30,000 songs so far. There are at most 50 Steely Dan songs in there. My iPod holds about 5,000 songs, of which maybe 20 are Steely Dan (A Decade Of, and bits of Aja and Can't Buy a Thrill).
Yet every day I get at least one Steely Dan song come up in shuffle. Why is this? The odds are incredible. So I'm thinking that one of the programmers of the shuffle play code has a line in there about Steely Dan. IF "Peg" then PLAY. Or whatever code looks like.
Anybody else have this problem?

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:38 AM | Permalink | Comments (3)
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Photographed by mills70

Bleary and blurry on a Monday morning after the closing night party. 10 days of working, writing, partying, and, well, go check it out!

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Photographed by mills70

Yes, I spent 10 days in the UK and Eire in January. Things, er, didn't exactly go to plan. I uploaded separate sets for Ireland and Liverpool.

(This photo uploader was created by a Flickr member called .CK.

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Yep, days will now get brighter! Fortunately, we're southern enough that even our shortest day is bearable.

Posted by Ted Mills at 9:57 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Well, first of all, we have some semblance of democracy back in this country. Tuesday night I spent with my friend Chris watching films, eating vast quantities of meat, and trying my best to not look the t3h Internets and TV. And then the phone call came from Jon: "Santorum is out of a job." Yes!
Then later a text: "Dems take the house." Damn! I slept better that night than I have in a long time, only to find out that that other fukker Rummy had resigned. Wow!!
I treated myself that afternoon to the Borat movie, which had me in stitches, particularly during a certain wrestling sequence. It is, as Jon says, a movie about tolerance in its own strange way.
And then I have been spending most of this and last week reading (and finishing) John Hodgman's book, "The Areas of My Expertise," which is the funniest thing since the Onion put our their first compilation book. I have been giggling for some time now.
Okay, that's me for now.
I really wish I could be publishing my writing for the Santa Barbara News-Press (I have about four to five articles per week these days, bless 'em), but I can't even access my own stuff with a password. Ack!

UPDATE: I have also been in tears over this Internet meme.
ANOTHER UPDATE: Better cat madness here.
OMG ANOTHER UPDATE LOL: There's now a blog about all this.

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So anyway, last Friday was my last day at my day job. Last Saturday was my birthday party. Kinda a celebration, you might say. I have uploaded the photos to Flickr and the Audio of the birthday party gig is now up in the Audio folder. So you can jump in straight to the embarrassment of hearing me warble, here you go:
SET LIST:
Lust for Life
20th Century Boy
Love Is the Drug
Queen Bitch
Werewolves of London
Laura
Sympathy for the Devil

Yep! Thanks to my band--Jeff Sparks, Mark Getten, Rob Taylor, Zach Madden, my backup vox Diane (see above!), everybody else who went woo-woo at the right moment, and our mystery sax player. Thank you all! You rock!!!

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Hi gang, I just got back from the UK after a well-earned week's holiday. You can check the photos over at Flickr, featuring stops in Liverpool, London, and Essex.

Also, you can see two quick videos from my journey, all in low quality sound and vision. The first is TRAIN, which words better as a loop. The second is CLUBBIN, which details my trip down stairs in a club into an awaiting throng of dancing women, set to an irresistible distorted house beat.

Posted by Ted Mills at 1:48 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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My friend Phil spent his Xmas break in a location I haven't thought about since 1982, Falkland Islands. I have no idea what goes on there--I imagine sheep and puffins shivering in some southern sleet--so I was excited when Phil returned to fill us all in:

Most of all it seems a very sociable place. No doubt social connections in any small town or village are pretty tight, but when it is as cut off from the outside world as Stanley, they must be stronger. It feels like everyone knows everyone else, particularly among those who grew up on the islands. As my dad said after visiting, at times it can be like being in the enclosed social world of a soap opera. On our last night we ate at the Brasserie and it seemed like the place was full of people we’d met over the previous fortnight, much like the limited social hubs (the Queen Vic, the Rovers Return) in any soap.

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I've uploaded to Flickr this last weekend's trip to Las Vegas and the Adult Video News Convention, a calvacade of porn stars and knobbly toys. Warning: may contain photos of me giddy with joy.

UPDATE (1/12/06): As of this morning, only four days after posting, my shot of me and Mika has become the most viewed photo at my Flickr site, blasting out other photos that took a year to garner the same number of views. Sex sells, what can I say?

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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On Saturday, December 3, my bleedin' PowerShot A70 broke. Though I could still view old images, the viewfinder in camera mode showed a blur of black and violet. Balls! This will be a regularly updated entry to see how long Canon takes to fix this problem.

UPDATE! 1/3
FedEx note on my door sez they tried to deliver a package, but maybe this is something else I ordered (shoes). The exciting answer tomorrow!!!

UPDATE! 12/29
A little email (followed by a letter the same day) informs me that the camera has been fixed and shipped. So I will have to borrow a camera to get that New Year's Eve action. Balls.

UPDATE! 12/21
Canon loves me! They really love me! They've officially decided to fix my camera FOC (free of charge). Niiiiice. "You will receive the camera within 7 working days of this date." I put that date at 12/30, just in time to catch a photo of me sicking up too much vodka for New Year's. Excellent.
But we'll see, won't we?

UPDATE! 12/19
UPS delivered the package to Elks Grove, IL this morning. Get to work, dudes.

UPDATE! 12/13
Returned home yesterday to find the letter from Canon containing my UPS sticker. I sent out the camera in the box today. Let the thumb twiddling begin!

December 4
Took the camera down to Russ Camera, just to see if this was a commonly diagnosed problem. It was.
"It's the chip!" the lady there said. "Are you out of warranty?"
Yes, I am!
"Did you buy it with a credit card?"
Yes, I did!
"Ah, well, some credit card companies actually extend any warranty for you. You should give them a call."

December 5
I give my VISA card a call and find out that yes, there is an extra year tacked on to all orders paid. Cool.

December 7
At work, I call Canon and I don't even have to worry about warranties. Because this sounds exactly like a bad chip, and the A70 was known (was it?) for bad chips, they will fix it for free. But they need the camera's serial number.

I rush home after class and in the final five minutes before their customer support goes home for the day, I relay the serial and I'm told that they will send out a packing label for me. Upon receipt, it should take 7 - 10 working days. I imagine a backed up tech lab with piles of faulty A70s. A harried chip-replacer says to himself "Goddamnit! I must be seven to ten days behind. And it only takes a minute to replace!"

December 10
Still no packing slip in mail...hmm...

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It all started with this article over at MSNBC.com, called How to Get That Perfect Shave. I can't remember what I was searching for originally, something about types of aftershave for sensitive skin. No matter.
When I first started shaving back when I was 15, I didn't know anything, and my dad had been using blue disposables and Barbasol for years. My total beardage was a thin whiff of a moustache. If I left it on, I looked like a tool. If I shaved it, I immediately broke out. Great options.
Years later I decided that perhaps electric shaving would be better, so I got one of those three-head whirly-blade things for Xmas, and for about a decade I used that. With sensitive skin, this was better, but still not effective, and there were always sections to go over again and again. Then I got the Gilette Mach3 (for a birthday gift, but used only much later) and after reading the article above, starting using that in conjunction with Aveda's shaving creme and Nivea aftershave balm for sensitive skin.
But I still felt I was missing out of the retro fun of a brush and a safety razor, and sent out a poll to my male friends. Unknown to me, 2/3 of them had already gone back (or had never left) to the traditional, old school method of shaving.
So finally, I invested a little chunk o' change and got me the goods.

Continue reading "The Perfect Shave" »

Posted by Ted Mills at 2:26 PM | Permalink | Comments (3)
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Hey, to the twat-faced coward who dented my driver door sometime early this morning...I hope your shlong drops off. And if you already don't have a shlong, I hope you grow one. Arrrgh.

Posted by Ted Mills at 3:27 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Yeh, so, uh, how long did that take? Four days, people. Four days to get up on a new server, reconfigure my database and my email.

At one point I was running two help desk chats at the same time with two different companies (ipowerweb, my host, and spamarrest, my spam blocker) while being on the phone to Verizon Online (my ISP). Major frustrations included:

1) Not having a reliable FTP program--or server, I dunno. It would drop the upload connection every couple of minutes, making transferring 250mb of info (not a lot, I know) take something like 4 hours.

2)Not understanding that, though my settings stayed the same, I would still have to erase all my accounts and reload them. This took a while to figure out.

3)Following the tutorials for backing up and re-importing a MySQL database to the letter, then finding an error message on upload. "Line 2048: Error: Unclosed quote" or some such malarkey. Holy crap! Ipowerweb techies of the highest level had to step in and figure it out.

4) Worrying that I missed four days of important, business-related email. Seriously.

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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You might not even notice (I hope not), but I am going to move servers on iPowerweb.com to take advantage of their new admin software VDeck. Mostly this means for you people that my email may bounce back to you. If so, you can always send it to my gmail (if you know me, you know this address...). In the meantime, here's a photo of a kitten performing opera.

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:29 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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For breakfast, I have started eating natto on brown rice, with some miso soup on the side. Am I crazy? No, in fact. For one thing, I really am a big fat twat these days, so I have to work on my diet, and that means eating healthier. I love cereal and milk in the morning, but after a while I don't think the combo of dairy and sugar was doing it fr me. And of course I'm influenced by friends Jon and Ruriko, who dabble in the macrobiotics (but not in a doctinaire way, just check the flickr photos of us eating ribs and RibsUSA). But anyway, that's what my mornings are all about.

Continue reading "Makin' Natto" »

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Petracovich - Others (18 mpg)
Alternate Download site
After many months of editing, learning new software, and purchasing a new external harddrive (and not in that order), I can proudly present the music video for the artist Petracovich. "Others" is from the new album "We Are Wyoming." Big thanks out to Michael Long (who provided the artwork seen in the video), everybody at Muddy Waters coffeehouse, producer/cameraman/renaissance man Paul Mathieu, extra camerapeople Jon Crow and Annie, and of course Petracovich herself, Jessica Peters, who graciously allowed us to do the thing in the first place.

The file is big (18mb) so please give it time to load. Enjoy.

UPDATE (9/24/05): We have solved some encoding problems (i.e. missing footage!!) so it's all good to go.

UPDATE (9/25/05): It seems some people are still having a problem with the video freezing up around 1:16. If so, please try saving the movie to your hardrive and then open it with Quicktime, instead of having the browser play it. No, I have no idea why this should be. Also, make sure you have the latest version of Quicktime for your system.

UPDATE (9/27/05): The video has now been reencoded as a letterboxed mpg. I swear this time y'all can get it to work.

UPDATE (9/29/05): I've talked with my provider and they say there's nothing going on their end. The video loads complete and fast. I tried it here at work on a Windows XP machine. So did another guy at the office. So I really don't know why some people are still getting the "half-video" deal. Dump your cache?

Posted by Ted Mills at 9:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (6)
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Sup, my peoples? After one month of procrastination and two months of Blogger buggering up my entries, I finally knuckled down last night and installed Movable Type 3.2 on my system. With help from Patrick Benny, I got the thing up and running. Then with help from this Flash tutorial I transferred all my Blogger blogs to this one big blog.

I know the site looks very rudimentary right now, but I'll get the graphics going soon. Right now, it's all about the text, baby!

Also! When I first started blogging, the blog was called "Up Among the Golden Spires". I thought that mixing politics and dumb web links wasn't what I wanted, so I split the blogs into five separate pieces (Blogger didn't have categories like MT does). And my main page "Stone Cold Pimpin'" was born.

Question: Should I go back and call this one big blog Up Among the Golden Spires or keep with Stone Cold Pimpin'?

Posted by Ted Mills at 9:18 AM | Permalink | Comments (2)
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I went to lunch yesterday and was about to call the missus, when I noticed a new entry in my cell's phone book. A mysterious "J" had appeared above Jessica's name, above Jeff's name. Who was J?
I took a look at the phone number and it wasn't familiar: a strange area code, 888, and a repetitive number: 448-4444. Curious, I called it.
A woman answered, and before I could say howdy, she was telling me how much she wanted to suck my fleshplunger and fully drain me of my milky lifeforce. Well, she didn't use those words, but you get the idea. Apparently I had called a phone sex line.
Not having lent my phone to anybody, I soon realized that just by chance, and by sitting on my phone in my back pocket, I had entered the number, saved it, and given it a name, all with my clever buttcheek.

Hence the title of this blog entry.

Posted by Ted Mills at 3:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Yesterday I had my first chance to play the cult PS2 game Katamari Damacy. This is the Japanese game where you roll a giant sticky ball (a 'karamari') around a virtual world and pick up various things, from candy to pencils, to cats and humans and beyond, creating a snowball effect until, supposedly, you've rolled up a ball the size of a star. This is a very addicting game and I loved the quirkiness of it. If I had a PS2, this would definitely be on the list. There's a lot of chatter about KD, but for a website, you can check out the KD Desktops found here.

Posted by Ted Mills at 4:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Well, begosh and indeed begorrah, as my best friend Scott and his wife Kat now have a bouncin' baby boy called Shannon. After much labor, he dropped like a big fat funky fresh hiphop album sometime around 3 a.m. this morning. I'm told he weighs 8 lbs., which is like a small racehorse or something. Wow! And look at the photo: eyes open already! Blimey.

Posted by Ted Mills at 1:10 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Phil turned me on to Flickr, so it's appropriate that he's written a little article on it for BBC News Magazine. Check it!

Posted by Ted Mills at 1:49 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Phil Gyford posts on his ten years being on the Internet. I get namedropped, which is always nice.

OK, to be honest it's a couple of weeks until the anniversary of when I first ventured online, as it took that long to get my little Mac LC II talking to the Internet, such was the complexity of the unfamiliar fragments of software required. But, armed with the Internet Starter Kit, I finally made it and began exploring.

Which isn't to claim I was some kind of pioneer; obviously the net was already well past adolescence and the media had probably stopped having to explain what "Internet" was at every mention. But even so, Ted was the only person in the world I knew who was online, so this did feel like an expensive solo mission into the unknown.

That was me, in Japan, having been connected to the 'net since the late spring of '94. I remember spending a long time getting my brain around the concept of email (why not write it out, I wondered) and then, later, trying to imagine what a graphical browser might look like when I started hearing about Netscape. Why would you want to see things? I asked. Answer: porn.
For a long time being on the 'net meant going in using Apple's ZTerm, and keeping the phone line occupied for hours. One of the earliest texts I have (saved somewhere, should go and find it) is a conversation between me and Dan Waldhoff, who was my Mac connection near where I lived in Japan. I'm asking him where the hell I can find simple household bleach. I think it was Dan who was responsible for getting me into the 'net and showing what it could be used for. I also immediately joined the Japanese version of AMUG, and went to them for software and hardware problems. In a country where nobody seemed to own an Apple (biggest brand was NEC) this was essential.
My computer at the time? A Powerbook 145B.
Phil continues:

And now? The next ten years? I must admit to a feeling of exhaustion. There's still plenty to get excited about of course. Even though the fields have long-since been paved over, this place is crammed with people doing wonderful, ingenious things and I'm lucky enough to count many as friends. But at the same time everything I do online these days feels like a chore. A decade ago a new email was a thrill; now it's another item on the todo list. The Internet's now just a job and a vast, rickety structure of never-ending commitments I've built up over ten years, and I'm not sure where to go from here.

Fortunately, I don't feel so despondent. Every new development seems to reinvigorate me, even though the actual time I have to explore these things (Flickr, Blogger, RSS, etc.) is limited. I also too spend way too much time on the web, but not because it's a chore. But that thrill of connecting to "cyberspace" and having words pop up from nowhere is definitely gone, and while I wouldn't say it's a chore, but the web has become that most familiar of things, a necessity.

Posted by Ted Mills at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Ah yeh, my fine furry freaks, I have uploaded something I've had in the wings for a few months: Our almost complete set from my birthday party gig last September. Here me sing the hits of Bowie, the Beatles, Beck, and Byrne, while backed by a crack team of talented musicians. It's not as cringeworthy as you may think!

Posted by Ted Mills at 2:11 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Disturbed halfway through with my purchase of a G5, my uploading of all my Taiwan photos from November has finished. I even arranged them, so you can watch all 250+ as a slideshow. Or you can check out all the photos of food I took, among other tags.

Posted by Ted Mills at 1:59 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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One week later, I'm pretty much set up. The G5 is very stable, and I believe what I've read that some users have left their's on for a month or more. However, I have pushed the machine to its (512mb RAM) limit and frozen it, mostly by using three CPU heavy apps in one go, which I would never do usually. The only other time was using--you guessed it--Toast and Jam. There still seems to be some problems in these apps, one between knowing what to do with an external burner set up, and with burning mp3s straight to CDR, encoding to AIFF on the fly. Much easier, I've found, is to save as a disc image, then burn. This actually turns out to be faster than the former way. Toast/Jam does not take kindly to Force Quit, which I think is the app coding, not the Mac. Is there a good open source burner with the versatility of Jam? Let me know.
I think it only took a day or two to accept OSX as the system of choice over OS9 (duh, no shit, said my friend Gene). Things I love: 10.3's Finder windows, allowing easy dragging and dropping and transferring/copying of files. This is such an obvious way to do an interface it's taken nearly 20 years to come to it. Found that my PCI card won't work because these two top G5 models have PCI-X inputs. D'oh! I also got my IDE-to-USB cable in the mail ($4 plus a ridiculous $12 postage from eBay, but it was the cheapest on the web), so I can hook up my old secondary drive to the computer and back up my files.
I never used to use OS9's assigned folders (Applications, Documents, etc.) but find that in OSX it is the obvious choice. This is probably due to the Finder window meaning I never have to go to my desktop to find things. On OS9, that was where all the action happened. Now it's elsewhere, either in Finder or the Dock. Also: I love F9 (Expose! Woosh!) and F11 (Desktop! NOW!)
I have yet to find a working P2P app or a FTP app that allows connection to some sites I go to. None of the newsreaders I've tried connected, but then again, I don't usually use a newsreader, so I'm most probably doing it wrong.
Finally, .divx, .avi, and those horrid .wmv files work on my computer. Yay! Files come in with the correct filetype/creator. Wow!
I went through my Case-logic books and realized that the 30 or so installation discs inside I will never need or use again. It kind of hit me there. Wow. Time to rearrange some stuff.
Successfully burnt a DVD (fast) though I have had a few coasters. I again suspect this to be Toast stupidity, as it happened when I wasn't lavishing attention on it, and it is a needy little bastard of a program. I also have encoded a DVD from an old VHS of mine. I set the encoding rate high and it took 3.5 hours just to encode the m2v. This was a 98 minute movie of course, but does that seem long?
I've noticed the G5's speed while using Photoshop, which is designed for dual processor use. Very few fingers were drummed here, I tell ye.

Posted by Ted Mills at 4:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Oh mah lordy, the G5 came today (the wife was home, fortunately, when FedEx turned up). I had requested free 5-day ground delivery, and it only took two days to get here, so I saved some money there.
First: It's huge and heavy. My G3 looks like an embarrassed cousin next to it, and I felt a bit sad to let the old thing go after its years of service. But remember all the bad things it wouldn't let you do, I told myself, much like a bereft guy thinks when he starts to long for and romanticize his ex-girlfriend.
I had to go into Virtual PC and grab some files I wouldn't be getting again, then I shut down the G3 and went through the G5 startup. It plays Royksopp's "Eple" when you startup the first time--a nice touch. In a few minutes it was ready to go. I had a quick look around. Ooh! Garage Band! Ooh! Graphic Converter pre-installed? Ooh! Quick Books! Ooh!
I shut down and opened the side panel to have a good look inside. I wanted to transfer my two old drives' worth of stuff over and thought I could just plug 'em in to the secondary drive bay. Oops! Nope--I would learn later that I have IDE drives and these are ATA. Shit.
I backed up my main G3 drive, then, to my LaCie drive after starting up the G3 again. The desktop picture was one of a heartbroken girl crying and playing records, which seemed to suit the mood.
I also discovered that my PCI card (Firewire card with three inputs) doesn't work in the G5--they take a different kind. I wasn't even going to try the memory--I have a feeling that ain't gonna work either.
My only complaint so far--only two Firewire 400 ports kinda sucks. I don't like to chain too much, and at the moment I have one snaking around the front to the port there.
Installed some essential stuff: Office X (which I bought about two years ago when Jessica was at CalPoly expressly for this moment), BBEdit Lite, Firefox. Spent an hour or two transferring my OS9 mailboxes to Entourage X and figuring out how to easily import all my old bookmarks into Firefox (cut and paste the HTML using BBEdit). Realized feeling at home is directly related to having my Inbox and Bookmarks near me.
Got the desktop looking like my old one and I shall be modifying some more. Computer nice and quiet...
Talked to Mom, who is ready to toss out her iMac--maybe the G3 won't be going too far then...

Posted by Ted Mills at 9:01 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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After five and a half years, I am finally upgrading my Mac system. I am going from a Blue'n'White 350Mhz G3 to a 2.0Ghz Dual Processor G5. Yes, I skipped out on the G4 thing entirely, much like I was able to completely miss Laserdiscs between VHS and DVD. I'll also be making the jump from OS9.2.2 to OSX 10.3.7. I do have an earlier version of OSX on a secondary drive on the G3, but I use it mostly to dabble with.

Here's a quick list of things I will be looking forward to leaving behind in the switch:

After 2001, my G3's complete inability to input an audio signal (a problem that no Mac technician, friend, local mechanic, or librarian was ever able to solve).
The G3's inability to make DVDs (in particular, .m2v files).
My system's inability to play any Windows Media Player file, whether standalone or embedded in a web page, and then having it crash IE.
Having no browser that can support GMail.
IE and Toast crashing my system.
Not being able to rip DVDs.
Not being able to use Adobe After Effects without assigning it all my memory and still having it crash my system.

Things I'm not looking forward to:
How am I going to replace all my apps?
Learning UNIX commands--having to rethink my 15+ years of Mac knowledge.
Having to let go of some of my favorite 3rd party share/freeware programs and go looking for OSX versions. For example: SoundJam, SonicWORX (still the best graphic representation of audio signal), Toast Audio Extractor (great for checking levels on homemade CD comps), Track Thief (rips damaged CDs better than any other), BeHierarchic, DiskSurveyor, and UtilityDog). If you know good OSX replacements, please leave a comment!

Things I am looking forward to:
Making DVDs!
Finishing several movie projects!
GarageBand!
Working in Audio!
iPhoto in conjuction with Flickr!
Tons of cool share/freeware I don't even know exists!
Firefox!
BitTorrent!
Limewire!
Soulseek!
Wheeeeeeeeee!

Ahem.

Anyway, I'll be keeping you updated on my progress soon enough...

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:18 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I just bought my fourth burner in the five years I've had my G3. I seem to be eternally cursed by bad burners and bad Firewire cases. The last lump of poo was a Pioneer drive in a very bulky EZ-Quest case which never properly burned DVDs and totally shut down after my year warranty expired. I took it to my friendly, local computer fix-it shop and they had a look at it. First they thought it was the drive, so they swapped out the drive for a new one and...that didn't work either, so they thought it was the case. In came the new case...and the old drive didn't work, so I had to get a new case and drive. Jiminy Christmas.
So, now I have what you see above, a Metal Gear case with a Plextor PX-712 12x DVD burner (48x CD) inside. It doesn't use a fan (great!) and is all lit up with blue LEDs, making it look like a pimpmobile. It makes all sorts of low noises when it starts up (not in a bad way), some sounding like a secret radio transmission. I'm putting it through its paces as we speak.
We'll see how long it lasts. Seeings how much I paid, it better last several years, thank you.

Posted by Ted Mills at 9:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Yaa boo sucks! Do I really have to go back to the United Fundamentalist States of Bush? Nooooooooo!
Apparently so.
Fortunately, the typhoon cleared out today, suddenly veered off east, leaving only drizzle and dark clouds, but no winds. My last breakfast: a McDonalds Sausage McMuffin (not my choice). Boo!
The sisters all came with us in a similar rented bus, and at the airport, at our last lunch, which was some surprisingly good shabu shabu from the food court. By the time I was done with the razor thin slices of pork, the broth was delicious and complex, and the noodles that I emptied into the soup were tender. Yum!
At airports there's not much to do. Either you hang with the people who have come to see you off, and chit chat pointlessly, or you just go through and wait for the flight. We chose something between the two. Lynn and Mike had enough frequent flyer miles on China Airlines, that they bumped their return flight up to business class. Me, I've never been on anything but peasant class.
Jessica and I did get a spare seat between us, but I could never seem to take proper advantage and fall asleep properly. I didn't watch any of the movies on the way back, but I did finish off Days Between Stations, the Kerry issue of the Believer, and the entire BFI book on Eyes Wide Shut, so it was at least productive. We never saw Lynn and Mike the whole flight.
They took off for Phoenix, and we for Santa Barbara, where my Dad picked us up. Home was chilly and fresh and suddenly smelled just like it had been when we moved in two years ago. So we're back and bloody hell, it's like we never left.

Posted by Ted Mills at 4:30 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Well, today I hung out with my friend and Taipei denizen William. We've known each other for a few years after being on the Pizzicato Five mailing list together and trading stuff. Pretty much everybody I've met from the list over the years has turned out to be a decent fellow (and they're usually fellows).
Despite being an intelligent being, anytime I set off on my own into Taipei, the sisters all worry that I'm going to get lost using the MRT. Not to worry, though finding the Starbucks at Taipei Main Station that William told me to meet him took some doing. By the time I did so I was covered with sweat. First, William hooked me up with some CDs of WMFU weirdness, then we set off for a day of art gallery walking and such. The weather by now was dreadful, and trying to turn our umbrellas inside out. First stop was MOCA Taipei, which is housed in something like an old schoolbuilding, all redbrick and classroom sized galleries.
Taiwan is in a national crisis of identity, and this is borne out by so much of the art I saw today and on other visits. Asking "What Is Taiwan" is up there with asking "What is Real" (asked over at the Fine Arts Museum).
At MOCA, many of the rooms were devoted to "The Rumor of China Towns: Chinese Architecture 2004". Not a particularly impressive collection: most of it seemed to be asking the question, "What do we do with these old cardboard architectural models from school?" and rooms full up of interesting junk. Other rooms tried to artify or glamorize photos of awful modernist concrete blocks (Corbu, Bauhaus, damn you). The question I asked William: "Would you actually want to live here?"
A larger room featured stacks of bound newspapers on their side, on top of which we were invited to walk in our stocking feet. I don't know what this actually meant, but it did feel a bit like quicksand. Another room had a full apartment made out of string and wire. In another, molded shapes in styrofoam and plaster suggested we assume yoga postures to then watch respectively aligned monitors. The molded body shapes were obviously not made for this tall, rather bloated Westerner.
So...nothing made much of an impression, all apart from the building itself which had that proper mix of warmth and non-intrusiveness that befits gallery space. Oh, and the bag lockers, which were named after artists and movements, and not numbered. Where else could you store your satchel in "Existentialism"?
Continuing on...we took a train to the Taipei Fine Arts Museum. Most of the museum was devoted to "Do You Believe In Reality?" curated by Barbara Vanderlinden and Amy Huei-hua Cheng.
The theme is so open ended (citizen's rights and the reality offered by each perspective) that pretty much any contemporary artist could be represented here. I didn't feel any grand question being asked.
Therefore it was still down to the art. Ones that stood out:
Jeanne Van Heeswijk/Rolf Engelen/Siebe Thissen/Frans Vermeer/Innbetween's appropriation of postered walls from the streets of Amsterdam, turned into shelters. Mostly I grooved on seeing the two-inch thick layers of years of plastering up concert posters. Like cutting through substrata.
David Claerbout's "Vietnam, 1967, Near Duc Pho" a video manipulation of a still by Hiromishi Mine of a caribou aircraft split in two and falling to earth, where craft and landscape evolve over time differently.
Yang Fu-Dong's "Dai Hao and Man Te", a small labyrinth of white walls and fluorescent bulbs that centers into a room with a projector playing a 12 minute 35mm film of two guys on the beach. Meant to "metaphorically depict the ungraspable nature of experience and the fragmentary state of memory" (raspberries), I liked it for its compact 35mm projector, the likes of which I've never seen.
Raqs Media Collective's "The Wherehouse Project," a series of modern archaeological artefacts (read, interesting objects culled from houses). I liked it for the reason William did: it was like going through a very cool flea market.
Agnes Varda's "Patautopia" a video tryptich of old potatoes, now turned into weird and beautiful tubular flowers.
Anri Sala's "time after time," a slowly metamorphosing video of a horse standing on a bridge? a beach? a housing project? while the camera goes in and out of focus in the low light.
Down below in the very large space, there were three rooms devoted to Ton Yang-tze and Ray Chen's "Realm of Feelings--A Dialogue of Calligraphy and Space", one a large empty room filled with projections of animated Chinese calligraphy (and then once we entered, our distorted shadows); another room containing three large canvases of calligraphy, but only attainable by transvering a small series of paths separated by low tables of black glass (acting as great reflectors of the art); and finally a circular room filled with sand around which a calligraphic poster spiraled out.
William and I took a small lunch-like break in the museum, which boasts a truly paltry selection of hot food. That I chose a hot dog should give you a clue. Regardless, we had a long chat, mostly about film (Tsai Ming Liang's "Goodbye Dragon Inn" being one of them) and what to do with my unfinished experimental film "Gone When Police Got There."
Then we took a MRT to our final location, the Taipei Film House, which is currently showing a Documentary Film Festival. It also features an Eslite bookstore with a film and cinema theme. Joy! I wound up getting two DVDs: one a documentary on Taiwanese music, Viva Tonal, on Willaim's recommendation, and one of the Shaw Brothers reissues, Sex For Sale, which looks to be kooky and campy.
While deciding on buying these, a gentleman approached me, a bit nervous to speak in English. He explained that the end of the year is coming up and he still needs to get "purchase points" on his Eslite(?) credit card or he'll have to pay a large fee. So could he buy these on his card and I just give him the money? I thought at first it was a scam of some kind, but he was on the up and up. If he'd hung around longer, he could have gotten more points for buying the BFI book on "Eyes Wide Shut" and Jonathan Romney's book on Atom Egoyan, which I wound up paying for in cash.
William took one photo of me with the Holga (the excellent toy camera with two manual controls) and then we walked back to the station to bid each other adieu. I called Jessica and they said they were out on the town and to meet them at City Hall station. I did so and all I heard on the way home was the excellent lunch they had and that I had missed. Jessica was trying to make me regretful, I guess, but no dice, despite having a hot dog for lunch.
We spent the rest of the evening back at the sisters', with an occasional run to get food and drink downstairs (more watermelon juice for Mike and me). Not to mention the bloody packing, incorporating all the stuff we bought in Taipei the first couple of days.
And would we be taking off in the middle of a typhoon? It looked like it...

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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All the news today has been about this bloody typhoon that is heading our way and supposedly will be right on top of us on the day we take off from the airport. Lovely. But in anticipation of that, today was pre-typhoon weather. That is, all the crap gets blown out of the air and Chia-yi showed what it looks like on a sunny, scattered clouds day without a haze of carcinogens hovering overhead. It was also bloody hot.
Last night we spent packing, and both Mike and myself were faced with a similar problem: where do we put all this stuff? In one case I have the new water boiler, still in the box (and with socks and fragile teapots packed inside) and everything packed around it.
This morning, the family took us out to the stinky tofu place down the road, the one with the best hot sauce in the area, but blast it all, it was closed. We continued walking, until we came to another former neighbor who had a very popular duck noodle stand. Now she's made enough money to expand that into a bigger shop. The noodles are still lovely and the thick broth is still as multi-layered as I remembered it. Mike and I also sought out some watermelon juice on the way back, probably this trip's most popular drink.
There was some last minute shenanigans over taking gifts back. Mama wanted Jessica to take back some "long life noodles" for a family friend in Santa Barbara, but the noodles weighed a ton, so we halved it. Mother and daughters hid money in each others' bags/beds to help each other out. That's the Chinese way...
We caught a coach up to Taipei and two films played on the way up: Four Chefs and a Feast, one of those slapdash New Year's comedies from Hong Kong about three chefs trying to recreate a famous end-o-WWII banquet (the fourth chef was their mentor); and "Needing You..." starring Andy Lau and Sammi Cheung in some sort of romantic comedy or other. It had no subtitles, so I didn't really know what was going on. Sammi Cheung is cute, tho'. As is Wu Chien-lien, who plays one of the chefs in the first film--she has a Anita Mui thing going on...
By the time we got to Taipei, the weather had soured and was now dark grey and drizzly, while at the same time being oppressive and humid. So on one hand I had to wear my jacket, on the other it was really to hot for such a thing.
We took a taxi, dragged three bloody heavy suitcases up four flights of stairs and waited for the sisters to return home, which they eventually did.
We took a train back out to visit Berry's company, where she is main packaging and grpahics designer. The company is called UCI, and they make USB storage devices, MP3 players, and an upcoming movie player which will probably arrive after iPod movie busts out on the scene. Berry works in at a desk in the corner of the small office, which is two floors away from Rock Records, one of Taiwan's main record publishers. She has all the cool goodies--all the other desks looked rather bland. The boss, a rather unassuming youngish guy, gave us a little tour, and let us play with the movie viewer and even asked us, the two Americans, for input.
We decided then to walk to one of the night markets and saw some nice upmarket areas of Taipei (at least some with architecture that pleased my eye. At the night market (the most popular one, I've forgotten the name, but we've visited once already this trip), I tried a refried donut (a donut thrown back in the deep fryer and then sprinkled with sugar) and it wasn't as horrifically greasy as I'd imagined it would be. I also had some sticky pork rice and some herbal jelly drink.
Taxi back. Called my friend William to arrange tomorrow's day out, and then watched some bad HK movie called The Three Lusketeers, which starred Euro-looking Simon Lui as a lothario trying to scam millions out of one of his father's old Filipino mistresses. Quite unfunny yet compulsively watchable, for some strange reason. Those strange reasons included Gigi Lai...

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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All week I've been trying to get everyone to go see a movie while we're here, especially one that probably won't open in the States. Currently, the Japanese movie Quill is the film of choice and today, after much lazing about at home, we went out to see it.
That is, all except Lynn, who a) didn't want to see it, b) was still recovering from a slight cold, and c) was going to be taken out today by Mama to the fortune tellers up in the forest nearby. I know that sounds more interesting than seeing a film, at least blogwise, but I didn't get to go.
We got there at about 3:30, but the ticket counter told us the 3:10 showing hadn't started yet, so we jumped in. This cinema is tiny (maybe 50 seats at most), the screen is poor, and the sound is hollow, but compared to some of the Taiwanese viewing experiences my friend William has had, acceptable. "Quill" is a cute and often sad little movie about a seeing-eye dog, and I'll write more soon about it on my movie blog. (BTW, "Straight! Go!" is one of the commands the Japanese owner uses to control his seeing eye dog.)
Afterwards, we walked a little ways home, and stopped at Barista coffee to just relax and talk about dogs and such. We also stopped at a computer store while Jessica mulled over buying a 17 inch LCD monitor for work. One thing about computer and electronics stores is that unknown or hinky-sounding brands get major shelf space alongside major companies. But with the side-to-side comparisons (all monitors were playing the same HQ slideshow), it was obvious the best monitor was by Samsung.
Later in the evening, Baba took us out to one final night market on the west side of town, and getting a little lost while driving there. How long has he lived here, we joked. I ate some "oya-zen"--an oyster omelet draped in a red sauce. S'good.
Tonight, after packing, I backed up all our photos onto two CDRs, so they wouldn't be trapped on mama's computer. On the TV was a long documentary about the worldwide transvestite beauty contest, and they were following Taiwan's entry, who looked a bit like Namie Amuro, but not in a good way. The cameraman and host soon lost interest and instead pursued Miss Thailand, who looked so much like a cute japanese idol it was disturbing. There were no telltale signs of "Mr. Lady"-ness about her. Mike was rattled. France's entry, however, looked like a stringy old dude in a dress.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:17 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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At last this morning I was able to get something on my wish list: a hairwash at a salon down the road. At salons here you can request a hair wash and only that for something like $4. For 30 minutes a young woman will soap up your hair and give you a long scalp massage, take ages rinsing it, then make a fuss over drying and styling it. Even someone like me, with not much hair to work with, can enjoy the treatment. It's very relaxing, and near the end, two women were working on styling my hair, which for today was spiked all over like a modest punk.
Jessica and I had brekkie at this nearby vegetarian noodle shop, which had plenty of Buddhist posters all around (most vegetarian food here is linked to Buddhism). Mama is pretty vegetarian, and eats here a lot. She still knows how to cook meat for the rest of us, though.
The parents took us out later to a roadside antique stall, where you never know what will be on sale, from the exquisite (a lovely chest of draws in ancient wood) to the utter shite (cheap plastic tchotches)
We had a last minute shopping excursion today, taking in Carrefour, where we bought a new water boiler (exactly the same as the one we're replacing), and then downtown, where I bought tons of cheap, ex-rental DVDs for about a dollar each.
One of these was Stephen Chow's "From Beijing with Love," his parody/appropriation of James Bond. Jessica suggested we watch it when we got home, which we did, with only Mike and Ken really staying around to watch (and Jessica, of course). Mama was in and out of the kitchen, Lynn was sleeping.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Today the family took us all swimming at a pool/spa about a mile away from the house. Mama goes here every other day and does 30 laps in their olympic size pool, as her way of keeping healthy. More on that later. Only recently Baba has decided to occasionally tag along. One day last month, when Mama was out of town, Baba decided to go swim alone, and being slightly cheap, didn't want to pay for a locker key.
When he came back to the locker room, his clothes were gone! He had to walk home in just his swimming trunks, then realized that he'd locked himself out and now had no key. He eventually got in through an upper window, but the story is now "legend" around the family.
None of this happened today down at the pool. The center contains a lap pool right inside the main doors (the olympic butts up against the half-olympic length pool, the former much colder than the latter). Another section contains a large spa, with all sorts of ways to treat the body, from bubbling, submerged chairs, hot whirlpools colored with herbal remedies, and saunas, to steam rooms and a series of punishing hoses meant to massage the muscles. One hose sent a stream shooting out and down 50 ft into the pool. I watched an older man stand in its path, the jet pounding his back, sending a spray arcing out like a peacock's plumage. When it was my turn, I found I could only stand in the way of this jet for two seconds. The pressure was up there with riot hoses--it felt like a knife in my back, and the first attempt knocked me off my feet. Less harsh, but still pouding, was a series of
hoses that blasted straight down onto the person, who was forced to lay on their stomach helplessly and maneuver the body into the most massage-worthy path. Outside there was a water park, but being the off-season, its canals and slides were all dry.
Mama challenged me to a lap in the Olympic pool, but I soon found out how knackering this was, and how out of condition I am. She lapped me before I was even half way. How embarrassing.
Much much later in the evening, Jessica and I went out by ourselves (with the help of Ken, who dropped us off) to the row of coffee shops that line a rather upmarket street to the north of town. We were surprised to see our favorite shop was still there: "Five Cent Driftwood House," designed by a female architect/owner Hsieh Li-shiang from bricks and huge pieces of driftwood she's collected over the years, as well as big blocky wood tables, stone sculptures, and other pieces of ephemera. There are two other versions in Tainan and Taichung, both slightly different.
Apparently made without a blueprint, it has all the warmth and homey feeling that most structures in Taiwan lack. It points a way forward for Taiwan's architects, not that everything should be made out of driftwood. All their coffee pots, mugs, and plates are charming and hand-made too. The coffee was excellent and the free side of mochi (rice cake rolled in peanuts) was the single best mochi I've ever had, seriously. The texture was closer to jellified yogurt than rice. At last by ourselves, Jessica and I had a nice relaxing conversation, mostly about architecture. Ken came and picked us up and getting home I found that the Ali G movie "Ali G Indahouse" was on HBO, so I stayed up for that. Not exactly good, but oh well.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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We all slept in late today, but as it was the sisters' last day here (a Sunday), it was decided to spend this afternoon at the farm, having a barbeque. All except Jessica, who had a lunch date with a high school friend of her's. So off I went with Mike and everybody out to the farm where a makeshift grill was set up over a makeshift bbq made out of a car wheel hub. Baba also had a steamer/griller set up into which we put a chicken. If you want to cook chickens here, you better get ready to dealing with the whole chicken. They come with head and feet intact. Mike suggested we stuff garlic and basil under the skin instead of inside as everybody else was ready to do. I bent back the legs and stuffed them inside the body cavity, which is a yoga postion that a chicken can do only in death. The chicken was then sat upright on a spit and lowered into the pot and cooked very quick. Thirty minutes later I was having some lovely roast chicken.
We didn't stay too long and Ken stopped by to help cook some pork on the grill. He drives the family car now, and drives it three times as fast as Baba. When he took us home, we actually hung about 20 minutes before the rest turned up. After the sisters left, I walked over to Carrefour (the French supermarket chain is big here) with Mike and Lynn to look around. Upon returning, Jessica was finally back from her eternal lunch. But then, bleedin' hell, another friend of hers turned up and we were stuck in the house a little bit longer. We got out finally just in time to get downtown and pick up my new glasses. Woo-hoo! Images coming soon. Unfortunately, this computer I'm doesn't have anything approaching batch processing of images and so things are taking longer than I thought.

Posted by Ted Mills at 7:50 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I had a dream that I was walking near Alameda Park near my home and an old lady was moving out of the large home she had owned for years. She had stacked all her goods in a tower that looked more like a sculpture than something waiting for the moving van. Inside was a working Super 8 Projector [in real life I still need one of these] and I was hoping she was throwing it out.
Not much of a dream, but there was more to it I can't recall well, and the Jenga-like tower of goods was fascinating. There was even a working reel-to-reel inside.
Anyway, we got woken up by family members who had already showered and dressed and were on their way to the hotel's dining room for the complementary breakfast. So we had to rush and get down there half awake. The breakfast buffet was okay, though pretending you are offering sausages when they are Vienna from a can is pushing it.
Jessica and I took a little stroll while waiting for our tourbus to come and get us. There was a path that led up into the hills and for a while all we could hear was the rumble of a nearby hotspring, a bird with a very particular call, and far off sounds of people and farming. Suddenly I was reminded of Spirited Away, mostly because of the steam rising from the buildings all around and the vertiginous nature of the whole village.
We were pretty high up to begin with, but our busdriver took us higher and higher until we got to a place called Chingjing Farm. Being so high up, the surrounding architecture quoted Swiss chalet, and the meadow itself was something that the Taiwanese see little of: rolling hills of green grass (a bit yellow in November's dry season) and sheep. And it was not so quiet, as tourists were spilling all over the hills, fully enjoying the grass. Teenagers sat around in circles, children rolled down it, parents hiked up and down. And inbetween them roamed sheep of all shapes and ages, being fed and sometimes ridden by the humans. At the top of this hill was a sort of assault course for kids--ropes and log bridges and swings and monkey bars--on which Mike and I promptly embarrassed ourselves.
Roaming among the sheep and lambs (awwww!) was a real Australian sheep shearer who told us he'd been working here for seven years. (By choice, I assume.)
We kept walking and came to a honey farm, where eager beekeepers were pulling out the hive slats, smoking off the bees, and then spinning the hive in a centrifuge to extract the honey. I tried some of this honey straight from the spigot and damn if it wasn't the freshest thing I've ever eaten. I bought a bottle right there. I don't usually eat honey, but recently I tried a cup of plain yogurt with honey mixed in and it was slappingly good.
More walking and we reached the top of the hill and, not surprisingly, there was Chiang-Kai-Shek standing there in bronze. Back at the LuShan Hotsprings we had been shown one of his holiday houses (in a Japanese style...some nationalist!) and now here he was on one of his hiking excursions.
Then 500 steps led down, made of a lovely dark mahogany-style wood, to a vegetable stall selling huge fruit--Asian pears over 8 inches in diameter--and something called "honey apples" which contain compacted "golden sections" inside.
Lunchtime and the bus pulled us up into a Swiss style food court where we saw two signs of "civilization": a Starbucks and a 7-11. Lunch was eel and rice and veggies, served from a stall below a sign that said "You Have To Eat It!"--which to me sounds like a future reality game show.
Afterwards much more driving and at last we came to Ao-Wan-Da National Forest. A full hike around this area of grassy plains, deep woods, and a large shale-based river takes about 90 minutes we were told, and what everybody comes to see are the oak trees that are up so high on this tropical island that they change color through the seasons.
We walked for about 30 minutes, and there was great shale cliffs near us, as well a series of aqueducts diverting water from somewhere. In one of the passing river there was still detritus from 921, a series of twisted ribars and concrete. How hard would this be to move? Oh well. Some ways along, returning hikers told us that, dammit, the oaks weren't red yet, so that was used as a reason to turn back. It was nice being up in the mountains here with the air so fresh. Too bad the cities are all smoggy.
A long bus drive back followed and we had only a few stops left. One the "Center of Taiwan" a little marker in Nantou that was decreed to be the geographic center some decades back. The real center is probably somewhere halfway up a cliff, but this'll do.
The other stop was along a road known for its scantily clad Betel nut girls. A few years back, the government tried to clamp down on these betel nut sellers, found near all main service road. For the most part they complied--now they dress in go-go outfits and short skirts. But this road is more like the days before the ban, and the girls wear very small bikinis. So the bus driver set up a contest: he would stop three times, one each for Baba, Mike, and myself, and the rest of the bus could vote on who got the cutest girl. Well my girl was kinda cute and certainly busty, but I think Mike won for getting the girl with the most exposed flesh.
After a stop at a service area, we made our way back to Chia-yi, where the karaoke was busted out again and I wound up singing "The Girl From Ipanema."
When we got back, Ken was there to greet us and soon take us out to the night market at the back of Carrefour, which was now three times as busy as the other night we went.

Posted by Ted Mills at 6:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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When Mama and the daughters came to visit us in Santa Barbara in early January, Mama realized that she had somehow "failed" on all my previous visits to Taiwan to show the country's beauty. So for this visit, Berry (mostly) arranged a two-day trip for all of us to go on to take in the sites. They rented a small bus and a normal-sized bus driver to take us into the mountains north-east of Chia-yi.
So off we went at eight in the morning on a typical gloomy day. When we hit the main motorway, Mama busted out with the karaoke (mandatory equipment on all tourist buses) and Baba entertained us with his particular brand of caterwauling.
First stop was a tea shop a little bit up in the mountains. When the Taiwanese (or, from experience the Japanese) say "countryside" they mean anything that doesn't have a mass transit system. Malibu would be countryside, for example. Anyway, this was "the countryside" even though there were plenty of convenience stores and tons of political posters for the upcoming election (total number of candidates: 11...or more). We were given a little teamaking demo by the co-owner of the shop, and given some shortbread cookies made from green tea (with actual leaves in the middle instead of jam). At first I thought this was going to be a typical Asian road trip, where every stop is some sort of shop. But the co-owner boarded our bus and directed us to a tea farm up in the hills.
The tea plant is not the most amazing thing to see up close, not like seeing an orchard or anything. From a distance they have the orderly look of suburban shrubs, and up close they are bushes of dark leaves. The mountain air is clear, fresh, and free of carbon monoxide, but nothing smells like green tea. A small monorail goes up the side of the mountain to carry buckets of picked tea back and forth. I didn't get to see it in action, though. Today was the workers' days off, so we were the only ones walking through the rows.
Next up was a leftover of the "921" earthquake in 1999, the 7.6 rumble that destroyed quite a lot of Taiwan and changed the landscape a lot. In towns that saw lots of crappy buildings crumble, they have quickly rebuilt and put up newer, still crappy buildings. Here, in the back of an alfalfa farm, they've left the destruction and can take you around with a megaphone-bearing tourguide. The site is a traintrack that was twisted beyond recognition. At one point the earth raised twenty-five feet, leaving the rail hanging in the air. Right nearby a section of rail was bent into a 90 degree angle. Near this iron pretzel is a large electric pylon that is now imitating the Leaning Tower (don't worry it's disconnected from the grid).
Of course, after this tour, they take you to the gift shop to sell you plums. Typically, I found, the gift shop sells nothing related to the actual site. A twisted, unworkable toy train set would be fascinating here, no?
Onward! And off we went further into the woods, stopping at Jiji Station. If you've seen Hou Hsiao Hsien's Dust in the Wind, you've seen this station. Unfortunately, it's now a bit commercialized, trying to look like some Swiss Railway concoction, with the usual plums on sale in the gift shop among other tat. The train station is still working, though. Nearby we saw another victim of the 921 earthquake, a fairly recently built temple that had collapsed on itself. This be would be oh-so-tragic if it weren't for the fact that a) it was completed one year before the quake and b) the collapse was the fault of half-assing the construction (you can bet there were kickbacks involved).
I began to wonder if just leaving shit around and claiming it's a notable evidence of the tragic earthquake is just easier than cleaning it up.
We then arrived at "Sun Moon Lake," one of the major lakes in Taiwan, and one with a horizon that disappears into the mist...and the Taiwanese like it that way. The nearby town offers numerous restaurants and hotels, all quite ugly, and a harbor that is much better looking. We took lunch here in an average restaurant, the defining feature being the owner's daughter's pet: a potbellied pig. No, he wasn't on the menu, and he had the run of the place.
We walked on the harbor for a while, which floats up and down with the tide, then continued on again.
I was told before the trip we'd be visiting a rice winery, but I was very disappointed, as it turned out to be one large gift shop surrounded by other, smaller gift shops. Most of what was available to sample was food, as well. Blimey. Rice wine popsicles. Cakes made of wine. Plums pickled in wine. Even an ointment made of wine, which a helpful assistant sprayed on my neck. My neck was on fire for the following hour. Wine samples were restricted to about a teaspoon and were mostly weak. And no "winery tour," but rest assured there was a remnant of the earthquake outside, a busted storage tank with accompanying concrete girder, now reset in a water-garden display. Actually, you could have passed it off as post-modern sculpture. The place sold good egg tarts, though, creamy and with a lovely puff pastry crust. No wine inside either.
Just as I was thinking the trip was mostly going to be these type of places, we really went into the mountains, taking a winding path until we were thousands of feet up, all that was between us and a sheer cliff sometimes being only a concrete lip less than a foot high. And still there were flags and posters for this election's candidates. Imagine being in the middle of an American National Forest and seeing a Bush/Cheney card on a tree.
As the sun went down, we hit our final destination for the day: Lu-Shan hot springs. The town exists on either side of a steep gorge through which a river rushes. The side where all the hotels and hot springs are can only be reached by a pedestrian bridge that spans the gorge, and it wobbles a bit let me tell you. There are several hotels on this side and food stalls that sell food that is boiled on the spot in various pools being pumped full of sulpherous water.
Our hotel is centered around the many pools it offers which you can use even if you're not staying there (though what you may be doing in the area otherwise is strange). There's a series of whirlpools, a "waterfall" that you can stand under, a series of jet hoses that massage your back with high water pressure. There's a lap pool, a sauna, a steam room, and the usual spa amenities. First thing I did wasn't swim but sign up for a 90 minute full body massage.
This turned out to be quite different from the ones in the States. First of all I didn't have to strip down too much. Instead of tinkly new age music, the window was open, so I could hear the house music from the "activity pool," the drunken karaoke from the lobby area, the constant white noise from the water, and the chattering from the people passing by the window (and looking in).
But the massage was gnarly, all pressure points. I lay on my side first and the masseur (yes, I know, bad luck, eh) started pressing down on my jaw and then my neck. Oh man, it was exquisite pain. First one side, then the other, then my back, then--laying on my back--my stomach. The man was playing with fire there, I tell you.
By the time I was out, most everybody had finished swimming, but Jessica was still waiting for me and so we tried the lap pool, which was excellent fun, especially as I'm still trying to find a foolproof way of teaching Jessica to swim. By the way, Taiwanese swim fashion judging from this visit is based upon outfits your grandma used to wear. In her not so risque but still small two piece, Jessica had the effect that the first bikini must have made in the '50s.
By the end of the night I was pretty exhausted. Our room opened out onto a tributary of the river, leaving us with nothing to do but fall asleep to the sound of falling water.

Posted by Ted Mills at 3:24 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Whaaaaaaaaaat? Well today, Mama took us to the acupuncturist, with Mike saying he wanted to get a check up on his back and other things. This acupuncturist we visited last time, and he cured Jessica's bad arm (tweaked nerve) with two needles. He's so popular that about 50 people were jammed into his waiting room to see him. You better not cherish your privacy too much when going to the Taiwanese doctor here: people are lining up while you're being examined, or are laying down nearby with needles sticking out of them. Plus, if you like the smell of ganja--and who doesn't?--the moxibustion herbs will make you feel right at home. In this way, I got to hear all about Mike's bad back and tweaked leg nerve, and he got to hear all about my...well, I won't tell you, but those that have stayed over my house know what's wrong with me. My problems didn't require needles this time--I was kinda disappointed--and so I was prescribed some herbs instead. Mike got 15 minutes of needles in his gluteous and then, when we went to go see him, a bit of a deep tissue butt massage. Excuse me! I said and immediately started talking about football.
Mama took us to the Chia-yi City God Temple, which is nearly 200 years old (young for a temple here). Mama was had prayed for us before Mike and I came, now we had to return the favor and shake insense at the various dieties inside the blackened temple. Pantheism is pretty cool when there's little houses of the holy to go visit, full of sculptures and no preachers to bother you.
I went to fill my prescription for my lenses downtown and brought with me the one my eye doctor wrote out in June. But when the assistant in the glasses store gave me a sample of it, the lenses were totally wrong, as if I was a farsighted person, not one with a stigmatism. It didn't make sense; surely the doctor's writing wasn't that bad?
No matter, because the guy in the shop took me in the back and reexamined my eyes. When I looked in the machine to check my eyes, I could see a small photo of a hot air balloon above a road. It gave me something to stare at, I guess. The glasses would be ready by 8 p.m. Cost: $15. Blow me, Lenscrafters.
We also checked out Chia-yi's best department store, Idee. Well, it's best because it has a decent bookstore up on floor 10: Eslite. They usually have a good CD listening booth, and indeed I wound up with three CDs of Norwegian triphop: Slowpho's Hotel Sleep, Frost's Melodica, and Subgud's Xpander. I also picked up a copy of The Economist as I'm wont when I'm here--strange if you know me well.
Before the sun went down, we drove out to Baba's farm, which he's been keeping for several years. This season he's had a bumper crop of cherry tomatoes, corn, Chinese string beans, and eggplant, and we went to help pick some for dinner. On the way, Baba stopped the van at one of the many roadside betelnut stands, so we could ogle the barely dressed girls who sell them here. Our girl was a bit homely with died blonde hair, but made up for it by wearing little else except a slip and a purple g-string. But then again, a closer inspection found scabby knees and something like white ointment smeared on her foot. Er...
Tonight we made a quick trip over to "Giraffe supermarket" so called because it is lorded over by a large giraffe head at the top of a thick light pole. We bought food and drink for the trip. I was tempted, I must say, by the asparagus juice I saw in the drinks section.
Then a quick trip to the night market at the back of the Carrefour supermarket, Chia-yi's biggest. I had a cup of fresh watermelon juice for about 30 cents. At 10:30 tonight, the sisters from Taipei (Emi, Berry, and Mei Mei) came in by train, all set for our big family excursion to the East end of the island. My blogging may stop for a few days depending on Internet availability. Who knows. If I have no luck, I'll be back in 3. Keep well, everyone!

Posted by Ted Mills at 6:21 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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That's Chia as in "chai tea" not as in "Chia pet." As in the city where Jessica's parents are and where she grew up.
Before that, Mike and I set out to pick up breakfast from the corner shop while the ladies got ready. We got, um, a bit lost, and when we did find the place, they were closing after the breakfast rush (other places stay open all day).
We returned to the nearby shopping area we went yesterday so Mike could pick up some glasses he'd ordered. Unlike in the States, prescription lenses come free with the frames on purchase. I finally wound up buying some frames of my own, months after snapping mine in half and freaking people out when they didn't recognize me. So soon I'll be updating the website logo. However, I decided to wait on the lenses, as we won't be in Taipei for long.
Emi took us on a long busride across the city, passing the Taipei 101 skyscraper, currently the tallest building in the world...I think. I thought we were going to stop, but instead we continued to this area on the other side of the city...so the women could continue shopping in a wholesale clothes district. Blimey. Mike and I opted to go sit in a park and chat.
We became a bit late, rushed back via a scary taxi ride, then shlepped our cases downstairs to another taxi and rushed over to the bus station to catch a coach down to Chia-yi (one way ticket, luxury seats, 3 hour trip: $8). On the way down we were played two videos against our will: "Kill Me Again" (Selma Blair saved from suicide by handsome bankrobber) and "The Weight of Water" (Katherine Bigelow's little-seen time-jumping tale which hopes that the tale of murder in a fishing village a hundered years ago can compete for our attention with shots of an oily Liz Hurley in a white bikini).
So we turned up around 7:30 and Baba (Dad) picked us up in his mini-van. Currently, Baba tends a family farm as something of a hobby, and Mama volunteers at the hospital down the road. She is also learning sign language to lead karaoke for the deaf (yes, I know that sounds strange. When she practices it looks like a cross between a hula dance and performance art.) Mama did teach me one non-karaoke phrase: "Chen Shui-bien [the president] is an idiot."
Their house is off of one of the main roads in the city, not far from any number of tiny stalls serving food, boba tea, and more. They're also right next to a park, so after we ate dinner, all of us headed over there and strolled around the perimeter several times (Mama's routine.)
(While writing this, I just got bitten by a bloody huge mosquito. Though I was able to kill it, leaving a mess of bug guts and my precious blood on my finger, I still got bit, and now it hurts like a sumbitch. Time to bust out the Chinese red oil medicine.)
Even at around 9:30 the park is bustling (could you imagine this in the States?) A group of ladies are in one paved section practicing ballroom dancing for health. In another a similar large group is doing yoga. All this is organized by the city. Dotting the perimeter are groups of old men playing Chinese chess. Sure, some look a bit, er, drunk, but hey, they're not shooting smack! By one corner, somebody has set up a pickup truck-based stall and is doing a good business selling coffee. When Starbucks opened stores here some years ago, coffee was mostly a) instant or b) already expensive, served in fancy shops desperately trying to look French. Now it has hit the "stall" level of familiarity. Cool.

Posted by Ted Mills at 5:56 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Sleeping from nine until 8 cured my jet lag, I believe. For some reason it took ages for everybody to get ready and get out. We kept making tentative trips outside--to get breakfast, to go to the bank around the corner--until finally getting out proper by 11. Mike and I were laden with the unanswerable question--where do you want to go? How should we know? I did mention the brand new Ferris Wheel they've built along the river here, but we were told that was such a good idea that wouldn't we prefer to go shopping a bit instead?
It seemed that the sisters were thinking of only one thing today: the obligatory trip northeast to Keelung (Taiwan's major port city) and a visit to Dwaiyi (Auntie), Mama's older sister. When Dwaiyi tagged along with Mama when she visited the states last January, Dwaiyi spent most of the time sleeping. We have a good photo album of the numerous and scenic places she slept.
Being Chinese, this was all about obligations. And also being Chinese, this was all about grudging obligations, things you have to do, not even want or like to do. Nobody really wanted to go, and so Lynn and Jessica started strategizing. Could we get out of there in 90 minutes (after a 30 minute trainride from Taipei)? Somebody was under the belief that we could just get them to accept tea and gift giving. (We were going up with two big bags of gifts from the States, as the Chinese tradition goes.)
On the way up, I checked out the surrounding architecture and decided that a)post-war modernism hasn't done any favors to Taiwan and b) bathroom tile isn't exactly best used as an exterior.
Back to Keelung. Anyway, we arrived at the apartment and soon Lynn busted in with her idea--a drink of tea and a (through gritted teeth) friendly chat and we'd be off. But Auntie and her son and daughter-in-law weren't having it. Dinner was in the works, or at least threatened. Lynn tried to put her foot down. No, we had to leave soon. Auntie played her trump card and called her sister, and Mama got on the phone to give Lynn some hassle. It was a saving-face face off! At one point, the duaghter-in-law tried to move my bag into the guest bedroom to force me to stay, but I clutched it to my chest.
Jessica now stepped in as good cop to Lynn's bad. Why not go out to eat nearby--that way we can eat and get away early enough. And so it was. The hostage situation ended a little into hour 2 and we went out to eat. You'll see these photos soon enough but the highlight was a hotpot of blood sausage and intestines in a spicy broth that smelled like marinara sauce. Actually, the sauce was pretty good, and I don't bring it up to say that Chinese food is all freaky.
We took the train home, sitting across from two drunk old men in various stages of leprosy.
Next up was another night market, one of the biggest, at Shulin. Here we met up with Jessica's younger brother (and youngest of the six siblings) Peter, or as he now insists we call him when he's in Taipei, Ken. Last time I was here he was doing his required two years in the army. Now he's out and selling jewelry wholesale and wearing nice suits. I was full, so I didn't grab much to eat at the market, but we did end the evening in a coffee shop nearby.
I fell right asleep when we got home and apparently woke the entire house up with my snoring.

Posted by Ted Mills at 6:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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We spent our first real day in Taipei like we usually do: all getting our hair done by Emi, who has her own salon near Chungzhang Middle School (a stop on the MRT line). Lynn and Jessica got slightly new styles, Mike got a trim (his hair's shot to start with) and I got my finally cut down to a nice short style. Emi has a way of making the two or three things that are possible to do with my hair look brand new.
We had our breakfast there too, brought from one of the thousands of stalls in the streets here: dan-bing with some hot milk tea on the side.
After the hair business which took up the whole morning, lunch was jiro-fan (shredded chicken over rice) from a place across the street. Weather changed during the day until it was very rainy and windy. Yet it was still slightly humid. To the Taiwanese, this is winter, so these people who live in 90 degree/90 percent humidity during the summer months, are wrapped up in thick coats. Mike and I are content with a t-shirt during the day and a light coat at night.
We made our way to Hsimen, one of the large shopping areas, and I have to say I'm kinda disappointed that, two years after my last visit, DVD hasn't really took off as a format here. I don't know the exact reasons, but VCD takes up quite a lot of shelf space. Apart from the usual Hollywood rubbish, there's very little Chinese cinema available in anything other than dodgy looking cheapo versions. That is, except for the Shaw Brothers releases, and I have no idea where to start with those. More on this later--maybe I'm looking in the wrong area.
We met up later with all the sisters and were taken to a Thai restaurant called Patara. This was as empty as customers as one of those restaurants they visit on the "Blind Date" TV show, although it was decorated nicely. Food was so-so, and I'm sure it cost a lot as anything in Taiwan that doesn't open onto the street does.
I was so exhausted with jet lag, that once we got back home I passed out around 9.
Among many dreams that I had was one in which I saw Ernest Borgnine, and debated getting his autograph.
Photos when I get the chance to find a "quiet time" to upload them.

Posted by Ted Mills at 4:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Berry brings the stinky tofu
Originally uploaded by mills70.

The first thing I wanted to eat in Taiwan: stinky tofu.

Posted by Ted Mills at 8:00 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Photos later folks, my cables are packed away in a case. Flight over was marked by heavy turbulence all the way through my viewing of Will Ferrel's "Anchorman" film, and from the drunk Vietnamese man sitting behind me who randomly burst into song every 30 mins. At one point he was singing Guantanamera.
We (me, the missus, Jessica's sister Lynn, and her hubbie Mike) are currently staying in the Taipei apartment of their other three sisters: Emi (hair designer), Berry (graphic designer), and Mei Mei (clothes designer). All designers, eh? Don't ask me what my wife designs...
We just returned from our first trip outside (at 10 p.m. on a Sunday), which was to the Tong-Hua night market where I had some stinky tofu and some boba tea. Ahh yeah. You don't see this business in most of America on a Sunday night.
Posters for The Incredibles are everywhere (as are their McDonalds tie-in), and I just saw my first poster for Stephen Chow's latest film, "Kung Fu Hustle." This isn't out yet, I wonder if it'll be out before we leave. Because I ain't waiting two bloody years again for Mirahax to release a "version".

Posted by Ted Mills at 7:46 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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So anyway, I've been transferring these old tapes of mine from back when I was a kid, recorded with my partner in crime at the time, Gabe. I'm surprised and happy to say that these tapes are still in pretty good condition, at least listenable. I have about 35 or so and hold them very dear to me, as you might expect.

But last night I flipped over a tape and found that one side was completely blank. It somehow had been erased...when? I couldn't figure it out. The tabs were popped out to protect against that sort of thing, so this must have happened years ago. But how? If I had done it, I surely would have remembered my complete stupidity and chastised myself accordingly. But I didn't or haven't.

What can I say? I just lost another 30 minutes of my childhood. Weep! This makes me nervous to go through the rest of the tapes. What other surprises lay in store?

Posted by Ted Mills at 8:36 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I just noticed my friend Jesse Bellinger has a site up on the net. He used to work with me at the Independent, and now he's got a little archive of his writing up. Here's a sample of his work which just so happens to feature an illustration by moi that I'd completely forgotten about. Now all the man needs is a blog.

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:37 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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That standup chap William sent me a Gmail invite and now I'm seriously into it. After years of using the naff naff naff Yahoo mail interface, the Gmail system offers many answer-to-my-prayers features. The interface is simple and graphics-free, like the main Google web site. Yes, it does have text ads running down the right-hand side, but it took me several days to even notice them. And after I did notice them, I went back to ignoring them. My second favorite feature is its ability to remember frequently used addresses just like a regular email app. finally, it can collapse and expand back-and-forth exchanges, allowing for a continual thread on one screen.
I still have six invitations left. If any reader of this blog would like one, please drop me a line.

Posted by Ted Mills at 2:01 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Jessica had the day free, so we made an impromptu trip to Los Angeles. First stop, IKEA, to buy a mattress for the new Lillehammer bed we got a few weeks ago. The bed replaced this fall-apart-voodoo-kenny futon bed we've been sleeping on for ages, the joints of which had fallen out. Sleeping on this old bed sounded like the creaky deck of the Flying Dutchman. So first I bought the frame, and for a stopgap measure, we had been using the old futon mattress. Now that at last is gone and our bed is dead comfortable. Like the Poang chair, just lying on it for a few seconds sucks the energy out of you.
Next stop: the Chinese mall off of Del Mar down in San Gabriel. Here we saw many ladies wearing these ridiculous sun-visors, called the Sunee, or something like that. Imagine a plastic sun visor, six inches long, and with the ability to tilt downward and cover the face. Hey, ladies, excuse me. This doesn't look cool, it looks like you are wearing a welder's mask. I tried to get a photo while we were there, but no luck. It seems like when it comes to rich Chinese women, irony and taste are X, the unknown value.
We didn't come to see masks, we came to eat Dim Sum, which we did, at Sam Woo's Seafood, a regular hangout of ours when we're in the area.
Then a trip to Pasadena and the Norton Simon Museum. The latest exhibit was Rajput Paintings from the Ramesh and Urmil Kapoor Collection, amazing Indian paintings of scenes from epic poems like the Bhagavatapurana. All the paintings were watercolors and about the size of a 8x10 piece of paper. But what detail! You really needed a magnifying glass to appreciate it all. Neither the exhibition walls, nor the accompanying book (from what I could see) explained how these were created. The brushes must have been like those modelers use, two hairs thick. We were disappointed to see that, though the museum store sold to-scale digital prints of some of these, the quality was dreadful.
Also on display was some prints by Ynez Johnston, which the curator wanted to juxtapose with the Rajput paintings nextdoor. Listen to this malarkey: "Johnston's unique style is characterized by recurring figures and shapes derived from both Eastern and Western cultures and ancient and modern times. As with miniature Rajput paintings, illuminated manuscripts and Chinese scrolls, Johnston's art is intended for intimate viewing and affords an endless voyage of discovery."
Load of old blunt pencil scrawls to me. Talk about suffering by comparison.
Back in Santa Barbara, we went into Montecito and ate at the Italian restaurant VaiVai. Good pizza. In a rare celebrity sighting for me, Michael Richards ("Seinfeld"'s Kramer) sat at the table next to us along with who I took to be his daughter.

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:23 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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...but we got up again. Over the weekend, the tedmills.com domain got suspended because I hadn't supposedly paid my renewal fee from old providers onestop.net, who apparently still own the domain registration. Unlike my new hosts, www.ipower.web, onestop doesn't open on the weekends, so I had to wait a few days and then call Monday morning. Even that took a long time: three hours of being told things were being sorted out, then finally, after I called back the third time, I was told I would now have to wait a minimum of 16 hours for service to be switched back on. Why, nobody could tell me. But back we are. There should be some new photo essays coming soon, so please look for them, as I had a great trip to SF to tell you about and Jessica went to Shanghai, land of public spitting.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:27 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Long-time friend Phil Gyfordgot himself profiled in the Guardian today, as "one of the few people in this industry who produces much more than he promises; the complete opposite of the loud new media bullshitter." That is: he plans things and gets them done. (I should study him!) Anyway, he's a standup chap and has always been a help to me when I'm stuck on coding my sites. Cheers!

Posted by Ted Mills at 8:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Can you frickin' believe this? I was cleaning my glasses yesterday and the frames broke at the nose! I've had these glasses since 1997--they're almost a part of my body. (Plus they were the only Armani I owned...) Now I've got to go through the expense of new frames, new lenses, and a trip to the eye doctor (the last one, fortunately, is insured...)
Again: F**K!!!!

Posted by Ted Mills at 9:16 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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At last! Another page has been added, and another link to the left comes alive in all its blue-unvisited, purple-visited glory! I've uploaded a selection of my comic art, with more to come. Compare these nib-pen and ink "masterpieces" with the economy-class editorial cartoons and you can see what having a little time on my side does for me.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:39 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I came across a cool little Javascript photo gallery thingy over at CodeLifter.com, which I have modified and tweaked to bring you a gallery of recent shots from my weekend foray into L.A. to visit Jon. Now I've figured and configured this system (including batch processing of images and such), I will be bringing you more photo fun in the future...

Posted by Ted Mills at 1:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I borrowed a scanner the other day and scanned whatever I had handy at the time, which was a file of some of my old illustrations for the Santa Barbara Independent. I've made a page of them, with a few more to come...

Posted by Ted Mills at 1:55 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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So hot during the daytime, lovely and cool at night. And these blossoms are right outside our door. They smell lovely. I'm not so good with plants, so I don't know what they are!

Posted by Ted Mills at 5:47 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Or rather, her perfume does. Jessica and I were out doing some late night shopping and stopped in Longs Drugs to get some contact lens cleaner. We had spent the day in and out of a few department stores and Body Shop-type places, so I was no stranger to sampling aromas. Jessica had a short spritz of this new perfume from the Screeching Queen of Chest Pounding herself, Celine Dion, and it took one second to realize that this is ONE OF THE WORST PERFUMES I'VE EVER CLAPPED NOSTRILS ON. Seriously. It's up there with patchouli, a monkey house, and a truck-stop bathroom, as my least favorite pongs. Cloying, sweet, more like an air-freshener from a 99 Cent store than perfume. We couldn't believe it. Worse,we couldn't get it off Jessica's wrist and we drove home in pure suffering. When we got to San Andreas Street, there was the unmistakable smell of a skunk, and you know what? It was better than the smell in the car. When we got home Jessica scrubbed her arm like she was going in to operate on someone, and, because she had wiped some of her arm off on me in the initial panic, I had to throw my shirt in the wash and jump in the shower. Brutal.
However, I did come up with a slogan for the perfume. Celine Dion: "My Fart Will Go On."

If you think I'm exaggerating, go to your local drugstore and try it.

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:23 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Hi gang,
Long time no post. However, I've just updated all the pages to feature RSS feeds.
The reason why is that my friend Phil was here last week, spending a little time with me before the big EtCon conference in San Diego. He turned me on to a whole bunch of web sites, primarily being BlogLines, which I now use exclusively. Turns out that Blogger now has RSS available for free, so I updated. Now you'll never have to come here...unless you really need to.
Cool, eh?

Posted by Ted Mills at 1:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Hey folks, apparently somebody chatted to actor Bob Lesser, who starred in the commercial I shot with Jon Crow for the MoveOn.org "Bush in 30 Seconds" commercial before Thanksgiving. My friend Maury called me this morning to tell me I was in the News-Press. "I'm always in the News-Press," I told him, "I write for 'em!" No, he said, I was in "The Dish" section:

"EQUAL TIME: Robert Lesser, Ensemble Theatre Company star and journalist Annie Bardach's hubby, just completed a commercial for MoveOn.org, the Web site committed to unseating George W. Bush. Ted Mills (free-lance writer for the News-Press) directed the commercial, shot at the Pepper Tree Inn, in which Robert plays a dysfunctional CEO. The 30-second spot competes against hundreds of others -- the winner will air around Bush's January State of the Union address. ... "

Posted by Ted Mills at 1:03 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Today was such a particular day, a particular mood. We got up to find, nicely enough, that the clocks had gone back an hour, so that extra lay-in wasn't as long as we thought. Stepped outside onto the patio and was enveloped by the heat and something else: the smell of smoke. Those two, combined with the golden hazy sunshine took me back in a Proustian moment to Japan 1995. I realised only today that a majority of my time in Japan was under a cloud of perpetual smoke.
Then I felt a bit strange, because while I was off in madeline-biscuit land, I was actually inhaling the remains of somebody's Rancho Cucamonga/Lake Piru house.
Tonight I took part in a press conference for Michael Moore's visit to Santa Barbara. The man filled the Arlington to the bursting point. He came late to the pre-show green room conf, but was a gracious guest, though the answers he gave to the questions mostly turned up in his lecture, line for line, joke for joke. The only thing he didn't use was a little sneak preview of his upcoming 2004 film, "Fahrenheit 911": I asked him about black box voting, and though he did later tell the audience about Diebold--eliciting a huge gasp from them (I guess this story is not mainstream enough yet)--he told the press that in the upcoming film, he visits the house of Diebold's CEO.
I'm possibly going to write this up as a news feature for the Voice. We'll see.
Finally, the air is cool and crisp tonight and is making a refreshing atmosphere for late night typing. I'm in the zone, baby! I'm ready to zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:58 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Well, I ain't been to London to visit the queen, I tell ya that. Actually, I've been busy writing as usual, but also switching providers (then servers). At the end of September, I was furiously trying to get some writing in on a Friday, trying to make deadline, and that's exactly when my email went down for the fourth time in a month, all due to my former provider, who shall remain nameless.

I need stable email to do my job, and after another visit to their online help service, where the befuddled tech support guy apologized but said "It's a big problem, lots of people have been complaining." It was then I called my good friend Jeff and had him remind me of the success with his most recent provider (who shall also remain nameless in this traditional period, just because I don't want to jinx it.) So I moved.

Moving was a bit of a hassle, primarily because I didn't have a whole day to devote to it, and so had to do a little bit here and there. Meanwhile, all my blogs backed up. You will probably see a whole bunch of entries soon. I just sorted out Blogger too, so hopefully everything will be ready soon.

Moving providers also hopefully means I can do a bit more complex web design, including putting up all my writing in a searchable and updatable database, and updating and reconstructing the Konishi discography. Stay tuned.

Posted by Ted Mills at 7:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Well, I've nearly got all the archives up and running, thanks in part to Blogger themselves, who had to fix their code, which wants to dump all archives outside the folder it needs to be in. This front page may be the last one to be fixed.

I also have added BlogOut comments to all entries. Now you can finally praise or harass me--the choice is yours! I am looking into adding a stats tracker for all pages, but for now, until I can figure out why I can't sign in to my virtual server, that's on hold.

Last job: fixing the CSS so blockquotes don't come in all big 'n' funky.

Posted by Ted Mills at 8:41 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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You may have noticed a few things changing around the blogs on this site. If not, I'll point them out anyway. Each blog will have its appropriate links: Spires will feature political links, Stone Cold Pimpin' will feature links to other blogs of note, including my friends, Recordshelf will have music links, and so on.

I'm also getting all the archives in place, setting up talkbacks and counters for all, and will be throwing out the links page (for obvious reasons). Lastly, I want to get the "writing" page up and running, getting all my writing up online. If only I made enough money from said writing where I could pay someone else to do it!

Stay tuned for changes and possible news of me investigating the white slavery underground, where I may discover some cheap temp workers.

Posted by Ted Mills at 1:34 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I experienced a mini-blackout of my own this past weekend, when on Friday evening my email and web page packed up. It was too late to call my provider, so I had to do so Saturday morning. I discovered that I hadn't renewed www.tedmills.com. But why hadn't I been informed? Apparently, my provider had been sending me emails, but at my old domain address. Baka. The mistake was rectified, but I had to wait nearly 24 hours to use email again. Difference: I seem to have been dropped from several mailing lists, I guess because the mailbot kept getting bounced back mails. Crapola.

Posted by Ted Mills at 8:13 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Tonight I hung out with Ari Rosenzweig and his crew at my favorite Japanese restaurant Edomasa. Not only did I write the article on Ari's company for the News-Press, but I wrote a review of their Thursday night performance for the same paper. It's exceedingly rare that I get to meet the artists that I review, but Ari had many nice things to say about my writing, all of which I'm too modest to repeat here.

I'm more than happy to feed these hungry people who have been in America for over a week and have yet to find the sushi they crave. Sushi, man? They're mad for it, 'as it 'appens. Tagging along was fellow performer Fernanda, and their lighting guy Michael, who I hadn't met before as, well, he'd been in a booth working on lights. While eating we talked about...food! And some of my travels in Asia...and more food! I like people who like food, yes indeed. And beer.

Talking about food, and because Ari and co. are from Denmark, I should have mentioned my love of Havarti cheese. Mmmm, Havarti.

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:13 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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On Thursday night, some loonball (rumor has it a disgruntled white-trash ex-tenant) set fire to the clubhouse/swimming pool/billiard room of my mom's mobile home park. Who knows if the woman wanted to burn down the whole place, or just cause some inconvenience, but she managed to destroy the whole building.

I spent many a day here in my 20s, having a swim, relaxing in the jacuzzi, and sometimes bringing girls over to see what they looked like in bikinis. So yes, happy days there. Who knows how long it will take for the place to be rebuilt. Just in time for summer! I went down on Friday afternoon to have a look and took these snaps. The entire area smelled like Kragen's Auto Parts.

Posted by Ted Mills at 2:31 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Phew. After much futzing with the intricacies of Data Rescue X, I was able to pull everything off the damaged drive I needed. I think the corruption of the MDB occurred because of some event back in August 2001, as I had a lot of mysterious ghost files from that time popping up in duplicate or triplicate (my first attempt at rescuing data garnered me 6.6 GB of files from a 3.1GB HD that was only 1.3GB full). I then used Disk Format in OSX, which allowed me to erase the volume and install a OS9 driver. That done, I used a trial version of Prosoft's Data Backup to shift all the rescued files over.
I punched my fist in the air like a monkey in a too-tight flightsuit when I booted up off the new disk and the happy Mac face came up, then loaded, then Entourage loaded up where I had left off. Nice. A few minor things don't work--I lost registration codes for some third party software, and some of my aliases don't go to where they should--but it's as if nothing happened. Of course, I just lost a day of work, so time did pass. On the other hand, I didn't have to take it to the shop to get it fixed. Phew.

Posted by Ted Mills at 1:07 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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As you may know if you've visited Jon's site recently, the durned fool has upped and graduated from CalArts. And I was there to videotape it all! The best moment I will share with you. CalArts graduations are unlike any other. Being artists, there are no cap'n'gowns, no Pomp 'n' Circumstance. There is, however, a lot of weirdness. Take for example the goings on of this fellow right here. I don't know him, by the way.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:37 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Senator, is that you?
I've had some disturbing search queries find my site in the last few days. Here are two:
"Man boy masturbate technique"
"my blog masturbated ass"

I don't want to know what these Internet users look like.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:55 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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On the way home today, I stopped at a light behind a row of cars, and who should cross in front of me but Joyce DeWitt, i.e. Janet of Three's Company. She's 54 now, and she hopped out of a large SUV (brand new, no plates). I looked, thinking, is that really Joyce DeWitt? But after she gave me a look that said, sheepishly, "Yes, I am Joyce DeWitt, and I do drive a brand new SUV and wear a sort of pinkish track-suit thingy," I knew it was her.

Thought you'd all like to know this. My friend Scott, upon hearing this news, reminded me of four years ago when I saw Gillian Anderson ("Scully") in Borders. I'd forgotten all about that. True.

Posted by Ted Mills at 1:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I got a bit behind on everything last night when I made the mistake of drinking two appletinis, and then with a friend who was over for a visit continuing with two "short spicy brunettes," a concoction made of 1 shot vodka, 2 shots peppermint Schnapps, and 2 shots Baileys. Yes, they taste good. Yes, I got completely knotted. There went the evening. My friend fared much worse than me, drinking on an empty stomach. We blamed our condition and the puking that followed forthwith on Bush and the war, the sensible thing to do.

I spent today recovering and writing. More posts tomorrow when things return to normal.

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Yo my peeps, I just got back from today's protest march. Not as many people as last week, so I hear, but still about 2 blocks' worth of people. And for some reason I didn't see the usual suspects there today. It seemed to be all new faces. I did run into a few friends: Duncan, Candace, Jim. I heard my dad would be there, but I didn't see him. We did two die-ins along Street, which gave me a chance to rest my feet, ho ho ho.

Seriously though, where are all the black and Latino protestors? Seeings a lot of their sons and daughters are dying in Bush's empire-building slaughter, you'd think they'd be equally represented here, as they are in the general population. The question for us is why they aren't turning up and how we can get them to. There's passing references to "the racism of the anti-war movement" on KPFK, but I've never heard anyone lay out the case for that. So, what's up?

It's a nice sunny day today too, and there's birds savaging the bird feeder: blue jays and little tits. (That should increase the Google hits).

Posted by Ted Mills at 1:32 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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This weekend I'm in Los Angeles, hanging out with me friend Scott. I'm currently typing this on the big fancy computer he uses at his very very very big videogame company that will remain nameless.

On the way down here last night I listened to KPFK broadcasting various bits from the protest that was happening at that moment on Sepulveda in Westwood. That was interspersed with people calling in to vent on the war, most of it making sense (being KPFK) but with one guy mentioning the Illuminati (also being KPFK). Unbeknownst to me, there were protests in Santa Barbara on Thursday and Friday, the former being completely chaotic with people crossing the freeway, trying to stop it. I guess all seemed quiet where I was.

Anyroad, today's a sunny day, and we are off to Hurry Curry to get some Japanese curry for lunch. Then maybe a pop nextdoor to Giant Robot.

Later!

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Out of despair, rage, and screaming impotence, comes my friend Jon's blog, called, for now, Broad Spectrum Antibiotics. (Don't ask why). That's two people I've got to start blogging this week--my karma is being polished somehow.

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:43 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Meanwhile, I love to see how people access this blog. While a lot of come here looking for news and war and news and - did we forget - war, one person found my site by searching for "Real Golden Fuck". I'll let you puzzle that one out yourselves.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:36 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I swear I didn't force her to, but my missus Jessica has started her own blog.

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:45 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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To try and escape the thought of the world's impending destruction, we went for a shop'n'eat trip to L.A. today. Took in Ranch 99, bought lots of Taiwanese snacks and groceries. Went and saw my friend Gene and his fiancee Alicia, and took them on a triple-whammy along one block of Venice Blvd.: Indian food at a "India Sweets and Spices" which made my nostrils sweat, and a trip next door (kind of) to the Museum of Jurassic Technology and its small partner, the Center for Land Use Interpretation. I believe I like the Museum of JT more for its layout and mood than the still-fascinating exhibits within. Their bookshop is always well-stocked with strangeness (it's where I got the book on sleep that I'm still reading), and I came away today with another to add to my stack: Desperate Journeys, Abandoned Souls by Edward E. Leslie, a compendium of true stories about castaways, maroons, and survivors throughout history.
After a short drive, we checked out the scabby remains of a Wherehouse chain in Culver City that was going through its death throes at 25% off. Any place that assigns a special section to "Urban Cinema" (i.e. movies with black folks in), and squeezes the "furrinner" section in between the above "subcategory" and the gay porn DVDs deserves to go under.
I did manage to snag the Remaster of the Rolling Stones Through the Past, Darkly for something like $15. Even on the car stereo the sound is astonishing. This is not a tiny improvement like most remasters; this demands a total reassesment of what the songs sound like. So...when are they ever going to remaster the shameful Beatles CDs?
Despite this, and Jessica getting a job (surely this is an aberration in this economy), I came home to despair again over this simple point:

GEORGE BUSH WILL BE THE DEATH OF US ALL.
No more, no less.

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:04 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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I installed OSX 10.2 today. Of course, I did this on a separate partition so I can play around with it first.

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:52 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Recently, I've been taking classes in Flash MX. I know it's not much, but if you click here, you'll be able to see what I made for my "animation" assignment. Play loud!

Posted by Ted Mills at 9:38 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Last night, meself and my theater-going chum Olivia went to check out The Cherry Orchard at UCSB's Hatlen Theater, having been assigned it to review. Hopefully, the Voice's Web site will publish it (they don't always publish my stuff online if I'm not the lead review or article). I wanted to have a look at some production photos elsewhere so turned to good ol' Google search. On the way there, I came across this pathetic Cherry Orchard Message Board, full of failed attempts by clueless undergrads to get easy answers over the Internet. How about using yer noodle?

Posted by Ted Mills at 5:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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We were relieved today to finally receive our package of goodies from Taiwan. Jessica's sister had brought them back from Taiwan and mailed them last week from Phoenix. Why did it take a whole week to get here?
Anyway, apart from all the snacks inside, I got a stack of Beatmania Game Music CDs along with the first volume in the Hsiao-hsien Hou DVD box set. This one contains The Boys from Fengkuei (1983), A Summer at Grandpa's (1984), A Time to Live and a Time to Die (1985), and Dust in the Wind (1986).

My buddy William is to thank for picking these up for me (I paid him, of course). In fact, he liked the look of the set so much that he picked one up himself, and is slowly getting into watching them. Me, I'm waiting until I finish Cowboy Bebop.

Posted by Ted Mills at 1:25 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Audio goodies in the mail today! I finally upgraded my clapped out Aiwa double-cassette deck and bought myself a refurbished Nakamichi MR-2B single cassette deck from a Seattle-based recording studio for all of $125. I think these things sold for $750 back in the day (1986), and if you know anything about tape decks, you know that Nakamichi is da shiznit, with old decks outperforming modern decks from other companies (face it, nobody cares about cassettes any more). Nakamichi stopped making decks in the 1990s, but there's still plenty of fans out there.

I did my research at the Naks site, where the entire history of the company's cassette decks are outlined and worshipped.

So, how's mine? Well, apart from the fact that all my tapes are currently at my dad's house apart from one (Philip Glass: Mishima and Koyaanisqatsi OST), and apart from the fact that I'm still trying to sort out the problems with my speaker/receiver set-up at the new place, I would say it's lovely. The mechanism is quiet as a baby. I mean, really, really, really quiet. Quieter than my CD or my VCR. And the sound is great, but I have yet to put it through its paces.

By the way, they still have plenty of these decks left at the place I got 'em. Check 'em out here, at Realtime.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:54 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Well, this post is a few days late, as just after I finished writing it last night (Saturday), Internet Explorer decided to change my history cache at the stroke of midnight into a folder and promptly froze Blogger in the act of publishing. So I lost everything! Balls.

So here we are a day later (as I was busy all day), late Sunday/early Monday, with my report on Saturday. While everybody in the entire world was protesting, I was in a cocktail lounge in Burbank, being an extra in my friend Jon's film, an engagement I had agreed to long before Iraq was a gleam in Karl Rove's eye.




The main character meets his lawyer to sign divorce papers.

The film is called Beautiful People and I designed some magazine and book covers seen in the film and a very important wine label. When I get the rest of my site up, you'll be able to see these in the artwork section. But for now take my word for it.

Anyway, I play a lawyer, to be seen once in wideshot, yabbering away into a cellphone. You can see my "scotch on the rocks," which is actually ice tea.

As a respected actor, I insist on working with only the top names. You know, Jack Daniels, Glen Fiddich, Jim Beam, and Mr. W. Turkey.

After about 7 takes of this I was let free, and I could just watch the rest of the shoot. I had my camera ready and here's some of the other things I saw.

The above is my favorite photo of the lot.

Jon's girlfriend Ruriko (also a filmmaker) looks baffled. With Jon, she usually is.

Between the medium shots and the close-ups, we all took a break near the pool during a very overcast day.

Apparently, this is very bad for the eyes.

Ruriko reacting to the above photo.

"Put more vim in it!" urges Jon to his actors.

I've run out of funny captions.

So anyway, it was a nice 4-hour shoot. Assistant Director Mylie (spelling?) kept everybody on their toes and everything movie at a clip. We got done near six, which was when I walked out into the empty bar next door in time to see the evening news and the coverage of the protest marches on each network. It was an amazing moment, as it coincided with my relief of finishing the shoot.

Posted by Ted Mills at 2:30 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Happy Valentine's Day, freaky people! Love of my life Jessica bought me some books as a sign of affection, knowing they'll go down better than a tie or cologne or whatever other rubbishy gifts the plebs buy each other. I got copies of Blue Note: Album Cover Art,
45 rpm, and
1000 Record Covers, all devoted, as you can tell, to album graphics, one of my favorite things to look at (and design). In return, I gave Jessica a dozen roses and a special Flash-animated card that I whipped up in my "spare" time. I think she liked 'em.
And that's about as personal as I'm gonna get!

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:14 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Sorry Folks! It was all a false alarm!!! But it sure did help the BushJunta by shutting us up with fear and panic for a few days. I wonder what evil they got up to while everybody was distracted.

ABCNEWS.com : Alert Partly Based on Lies

A key piece of the information leading to recent terror alerts was fabricated, according to two senior law enforcement officials in Washington and New York.

The officials said that a claim made by a captured al Qaeda member that Washington, New York or Florida would be hit by a "dirty bomb" sometime this week had proven to be a product of his imagination.

Posted by Ted Mills at 10:42 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Woo-hoo! I done fixed me blog! I don't know how it got so screwed up in the first place, but after much futzing around I figured it out. The html was all higgledy-piggledy, with chunks of code dropped here and there like so many internal organs at a Tijuana hospital. But it's all sewn up now, so to speak.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:11 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Okay, apparently neither my "Link Me" links nor my "Comment" links work, though they did when I installed them. I haven't tampered with them since, so...WTF? I'll look into it and you all can start sending me abuse again in no time.

Posted by Ted Mills at 11:10 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Finally, I have put up a page detailing the protest march last Saturday. Check out the true story of how I walked up State Street surrounded by 5,000 like-minded people. Here's a taste of some of the protest signs to be found within:

Posted by Ted Mills at 5:20 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Since last Saturday, we've been watching our wheat grass grow. We bought some seeds at Farmer's Market and damn if these suckers don't grow nearly 2cm per day. We don't plan to make wheat grass juice out of it, but if this continues to grow apace, we may have to.

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:54 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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The IKEA Poang chair is one of the comfiest chairs I've ever sat in. So comfy, that I often feel quite decadent relaxing in one. And ever since my friend Jon got one, I've been waiting to get my own.
And so today was the day!


It's their most popular chair for good reason, and every couple of months they lower the price. I got mine for $79 (plus $40 stool, essential for really zonking out). I think it originally came out priced near $175. And as with most Ikea product, it was easy to put together for Jessica and I, though I don't know how long it would have taken me alone.

Not everybody likes Ikea. Take this Salon.com article for instance, which mentions lots of reasons to distrust the brand, the store, the concept. I bet the author never sat in a Poang...

Finally, I did a Google image search on "Poang" and got this:


Photo from Swedish Skating Association
It's the Swedish female skating team! More difficult to assemble, but very comfortable to sit on.

Posted by Ted Mills at 1:06 AM | Permalink | Comments (1)
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I got a mystery package in the mail from my friend and fellow blogger William from Taiwan, and lo and behold it was a mighty Afro Ken inflatable soccer ball. Gaze upon its pinkness and wonder...

Posted by Ted Mills at 7:06 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Another exciting test post.

Posted by Ted Mills at 12:53 PM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Good morning! I wonder why I am posting anything seeings I haven't even got the splash page of tedmills.com up yet. But here we are. I'm tired. Much more later.

Posted by Ted Mills at 2:15 AM | Permalink | Comments (0)
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