The dirty bathroom was covered in water and piss as the men changed into their clothes for the shoot. We were all supposed to be dressed in tuxedos like groomsmen and were to sing as a choir. I waited in a lounge area, snacking and chit chatting with the others whom I had gone to school with as a child. They had hired a professional singer who was a celebrity, and he brought with him his guitarist, whom I alone recognized among the others. But when I asked him if he was so and so he was cold, acknowledging it but warning me not to tell the others. I wondered what difference it made to him since the others didn’t know him anyway. Besides, everyone there had proven that they were capable of speaking to the celebrity as if he were just another guy. If they knew who he was it’s not like they would treat him more reverently than they did the singer he was with. But he just slumped in the background, stony faced.

The time had come to sing and the leader announced that we would be ready to go in 45 seconds. I had to hurry to the bathroom to change yet, and somehow managed to get dressed, sloshing my tux pants in the water and piss as I put them on. I quickly ran out and got on the steps in the middle row where I was assigned with 10 seconds to spare. I asked for my book, like a hymnal, but the leader said there were no books, that we were singing songs that we all knew. When I recall this moment I imagine the leader wearing a white priest’s collar as he spoke to me, but in actuality he wasn’t wearing one. I told him I did not know any words to any songs and needed a book. He shook his head in disbelief and repeated there was no need for a book; that were singing songs we all knew. It angered me that he would assume that I really did somehow know the words, and I stepped down from the stage and told him I wasn’t kidding; that I wasn’t going to go through the motions and put on an act for him and prove that I didn’t know the words. It reminded of the Chinese insisting I sing karaoke for them after I had insisted I did not know the words to any songs as I never paid attention to lyrics being sung while listening to music. The vocals were always like another instrument playing notes, and my mind blocks out the words. They could not understand this and insisted I sing. So finally I did show them how stupid it was for them to ask me, yet they were still incredulous as I stood there not knowing how to sing nor what words to say. The scene vanished like a wisp of smoke as the moment could not continue without my participation at least as a fool

I stood out on the terrace in the cool, early Chengdu afternoon, musing over the differences between Chinese and American culture. Past the dirty concrete steps of the condo and below is a dirty courtyard with weeds growing up through the cracks. Plants sit on window ledges above, alongside hand washed clothes hung out to dry on hangers. I once asked my friends if they weren’t worried birds would shit on them from the rooftop. They just shrugged. “No birds, they said. And when I thought of it, I hadn’t seen many birds in Chengdu.

I looked down at the spot next to the bottom of the steps where I had dumped out my cold coffee in the morning and there was a still slight spot. The woman at the lookout post was furious as she came running at me screaming and spitting her incomprehensible lingo. My friend hurried over to a faucet in the courtyard and got water and dumped it on the coffee. The woman produced a brush from somewhere and gave it to my friend to scrub it up while she stood there with her hands on her hips bitching. My friend had told me to go up to the apartment. He wouldn’t hear of me scrubbing it up. I realized at the state the woman was in that it was a good idea to just get the fuck out of there.

I stood there in the obligatory daily drizzle, looking at the trash being swept around the courtyard by the wind. Pop bottles, cigarette butts and chicken shit on the sidewalk. One building down there was an alley between buildings where the collected garbage from the neighborhood was simply piled and burned late at night, blackening the air.

I stopped on the terrace leading to a second stairwell where there were two apartments that had been abandoned. Inside were about fifty chickens with straw laid out on the floor. The overpowering ammonia fumes of chicken shit singed the nostrils when you walked by. I couldn’t help but look in every morning to see their ranks rapidly dwindling. I felt sorry for them as I would think that their sole purpose for living was to provide food. I had thoughts of myself alone, stranded on the ocean like a world war two fighter pilot who watches in horror as the sharks take one or two of his buddies each day until only I am left.

My friend completed his task and came up to me apologetically and explained that I can’t dump my coffee on the ground in the courtyard. He had a sheepish look on his face because he knew what I was thinking. I pointed to the cigarette wrappers and trash at our feet, the chicken shit in the stairwell, the gum on the sidewalk. I then gestured at the rain falling from the sky, collecting in my palms and sloshing it with my fingers. In another hour there will be no trace of the coffee. He just shrugs his shoulders.

We turned and went up the dirty stairwell, past the small bags filled with remnants of past meals, past the cobwebs and empty food wrappers, over the countless cigarette butts. But before we reach the apartment there is a hen. A beautiful red chicken. Standing still. Looking so surreal in that dank place. It’s feathers are clean as though it were a spoiled pet, and there was a little kerchief around its neck. It was on a short decorative leash attached to a doorknob. I burst out laughing. My friend just looked at me with a blank look then made a cutthroat gesture. “Dinner.”

Quite simply, this is a lame effort. Director Antoine Fuqua and writer David Ayer of “Training Day” should’ve at least been given credit for providing the fecundating material for this film. All of the stock phrases in the poor dialogue from this film come from Training Day.

The street and building scenes and noises, and even the music all seem like they were also taken from Training Day. Then, the scenes sifted a bit, the dialogue reordered, the elements scrambled and a new entity created that is given the name “Dirty”. The plot, as in Training Day involves rogue cops and the unraveling of events of one day, but this movie is written by a different writer and director, Chris Fisher.

The movie includes the stock corrupt upper brass figure, a Tom Berenger look alike. Clifton Collins’ character even mimics Denzel after he pulls the gun on his partner, Cuba Gooding. “My nigger,” he says, reminiscent of the scene in “Training Day” where Denzel pulls his gun on Ethan Hawke and makes him smoke a bowl of pot laced with pcp.

The character Maria crosses a busy boulevard with a gun drawn to shoot Gooding’s character while he sits in a parked car, but she lays the gun down and walks away. It is a poor denouement of her involvement with the plot. It turns the film’s attempt to give a portrayal of police corruption into a bedtime story for good mothers to read to their children so they won’t grow up to be gangsters. Not to mention that she has still pulled a gun on a police officer which is a serious offense regardless of the fairy tale being played out in her head. Of course, all is made right a few seconds later when bad guys drive by and shoot Gooding. It’s okay when the bad guys kill their own, even if the murdered is a police officer. It is puzzling what the viewer is supposed to take away from the experience of sitting through this. Sometimes vigilante justice is okay? We want you to hate this character for 90 minutes so it’ll be cool when he is murdered in the end?

It is astonishing that Cuba Gooding would be associated with such a poor effort. He is far too talented an actor to have this dud on his resume. Unfortunately, the movie is making the current rounds among the premium cable channels so it will be a little while before he will be able to put it behind him.

THC -delta-9 tetrahydrocannabinol- is not the only active ingredient in cannabis. At least five other cannabinoids exhibit biological activity, and so do some terpenes and flavonoids. All these compounds are found in the resin stored in the plant’s glandular trichomes. They are chemically related.

The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration has placed CBD on Schedule I even though CBD has no known adverse effects and doesn’t induce “euphoria.” The most dire effects attributed to marijuana -tachycardia (accelerated heartbeat), panic, confusion, anxiety, even psychosis- are effects of THC that CBD has been shown to mitigate!

By listing CBD as a Schedule 1 substance and denying growers the means to develop high-CBD plant strains, the government is protecting the American people from an immunomodulator with anti-inflammatory, anti-convulsant, anti-psychotic, anti-oxidant, and neuro-protective properties. In whose interests could that possibly be?

Click here to read the full article

Chengdu, Wuhan, Guangzhou, Beijing, all the same spectacle. I would spot the lone American, usually a young woman, absorbed in a book or a meal, averting glances of everyone, especially fellow Americans. Whether in an open market or a McDonald’s, a mall or a restaurant; as soon as Americans see one another they make every effort to disengage from communication.

The ironic twist to this is that I was told by Chinese in all of these cities that the Americans who stay there never come out of their houses. Hmm, not communicative, especially towards their own. No different than when they are in the States. Yet, they are quick to want to teach others with their experiences rather than share. America’s narcissistic culture, obsessed with credentials and paper achievements.

The girl in the restaurant on the outskirts of Chengdu with long strawberry blonde hair, plump and freckled stuck out like a huge turd in a snow drift. She gives me a look of warning to stay away and turns back to her food. She’s come thousands of miles to get away from Americans. Don’t worry, you have nothing to say that would interest me anyway. The girl reading her Chinese history on the bus in Beijing, 20ish, college kid. She’s going to get a kink in her neck with her body contorted to avoid looking in my direction while she reads. Later, she engages in Chinese conversation with the young Chinese couple who had spoken to me in English.

The young girl at the bank in Chengdu doesn’t know Chinese. She is arguing with the teller, talking louder and louder as though her volume will somehow translate her speech. She is trying to tell the bank teller they have the wrong exchange rate. I am at the other end of the bank and she yells “is there anyone here that can help me?” Fuck her. I don’t even look her way.

The skinny middle aged American guy walks into the government office. He sees me and his face gets red, his eyes steely. His is a look of anger. Wants to make sure I don’t engage in conversation with him. Fuck you. Go back to your apartment and watch tv by yourself. You are too self absorbed to be seen in public and be ridiculed. You are weak. You have no character. No matter how hard you try, you are never going to convince anyone that you should mean anything to them with your stupid narcissistic behavior.

“Why are the Americans so angry with each other?” my young friend asked. I found the word “narcissist” in my english/chinese dictionary and pointed to it.

“oh, yes, yes! She laughed. “I know. That’s right.”
“They will talk to you if you tell them they are great,” I said.
“I would rather just talk normal,” she said.
“So would I,” I said.
“You’ve got food on your face,” she said, and wiped it off with her napkin.
I just laughed.

While traveling in Tibet I stayed in a small village near the Sichuan border with a family in a village of primitive tenements much like those seen in the Indian territories of Arizona. The breathtaking view of the snow capped mountain precipices was matched by the colorful attire of some of the women who lived there. It was a step back in time to another place, another culture, deep into an aboriginal past that’s been long forgotten in most parts of the civilized world. I used to be overwhelmed with fascination for the secret ways of the shaman of other cultures. But too much research has a way of shoveling dirt on a fantasy. There is only so much of ancient inheritance that is of use. The culture exists, but the people, no matter how much of an aboriginal past they possess are striving toward a better future.

There was one very small old black and white tv in the community and it was a privilege for others in the village to be invited over to the local doctor’s house to watch it. I felt like a heel because I was accorded the special place in front of the tv set as a guest of the community. The doctor was a smiling individual who was constantly racing off to dispense medication and look after patients. The heat from the fire was blistering, while outside the January cold froze the hair in my nostrils when I breathed.

One by one, members of the community came to say hello to the foreigner who came from far away to visit them. Their friendly warmth embraced my heart and I felt the great calm of forgetfulness. For this was months after the 9/11 attacks on the WTC in New York. But my moment of calm was about to explode. A newscast was on the tv and a man resembling Osama bin Laden was shown, but it was hard to tell if it was actually him. He looked a little different and the snowy picture was blurry. I was a little amazed that even in this far away corner of the world there was no escape from this weasel and the constant news of him.

“Is that bin Laden?” I said, straining my eyes to make out the picture on the little tv.

The doctor’s look suddenly went sour, belying his judgment and contempt for Americans as he was taught to think about them. “That’s not bin Laden,” he said, the look of ridicule turning up his lips like he were sniffing pungent cheese.

Suddenly, his hospitality seemed abhorrent to me. For the next few days I was there we could only share superficialities. There were two very nice young girls who kept me constant company. I was very sad to leave them. Unfortunately, the doctor alone would accompany on the four hour bus trip back to Chengdu.

Zeppelin were notoriously inconsistent on tour, with Jimmy Page, John Paul Jones and John Bonham often exploring extended jams on band classics to varying effect. I’ve talked to people who were lucky enough to have seen them live, and the reactions range from “They didn’t sound like the records” to “best 20-minute drum solo ever.”

There was no doubt, however, that when the band was on they were like nothing else on earth. Zeppelin was doing three-hour-plus shows complete with acoustic sets when Bruce Springsteen was still playing bars in Asbury Park. And unlike contemporaries The Who and Pink Floyd, Zeppelin never used backing tapes or additional musicians, relying instead on sheer audacity, volume and Jones’ underrated multi-instrumentalism (the man played everything from the Mellotron to the mandolin to a triple-necked acoustic monstrosity, often while performing the bass lines with his feet on custom bass pedals!).

Click here to read the full article

I was in a government office in Chengdu and there was this fat guy sitting there with a sort of vacant look of self importance. The kind of chickenshit look that is used to show others contempt. But if asked what his problem is the guy will feign knowledge of anything and question you why you would think such a thing. Anyway, this guy stood out like a sore thumb there in Chengdu as he was about 6 ft. 4 inches tall and around 250 lbs. Perhaps he was amusing himself with juvenile thoughts of going on a rampage and dealing deathblows to all of the tiny Chinese.

Anyway, it had been quite some time since I had spoken English with anyone and was even willing to initiate a conversation with this guy.
“What state are you from,” I asked.
The guy gives me a look of contempt. “I’m from Canada state,” he says and scoffs.
Since this is just your normal every day asshole it didn’t bother me.
Without allowing any facial expression to register any sort of look that this ass wipe would be amused by, I quickly followed up.
“Cool, cool. I’m from Michigan, myself. What area are you from?” All you need to do with a narcissist is ask him about himself and he temporarily forgets his contempt for others.
“Ontario,” he replied.
I remained quiet. The ball was in his court. He thought with as much power as his brain could muster and came up with a question of his own. “Are you a Red Wing fan?” he asked.
Before I could make a reply his brain had been slipping and spinning. Since he himself would find it a stupid question, he figured I would so he projected his own ignorance unto me. “The reason why I ask that is that I am a Red Wing fan and I figured since you were from Michigan…”
“No, it’s all right man. I am a Red Wings fan. At least I used to watch hockey when I was younger. Now I cannot bring myself to watch sports at all.”

And that was the end of the conversation. There was nothing in common I could share with this guy. So I just observed him as the little Chinese girl that was with him talked to the government people and translated for him. He made some remark about her dowry getting more and more costly. So that was it. Stupid sucker. Couldn’t happen to a better guy, I thought. Chinese girl gets a ticket out of that filthy city to Canada at his expense.

The fat guy gets up with a weaze, his fat neck bulging below his chin. The little Chinese girl walks along beside him with a facile look. She has known her whole life what is expected of her and how to act as though she hadn’t a mind of her own. But the schemer in her is brimming at the thought that things are falling into place for her.

As they walk away a teenage Chinese girl speaks to me in English.
“Is he a friend of yours?” she asks.
I was tempted to say yes, because the stupid fuck was so pathetic it was amusing. “No,” I don’t know him,” I said stifling my laughter.
The teenagee girl looks at him walking away and an extreme look of ridicule comes over her face. “He’s very fat” she says with disgust.

In 2000, filmmaker Ken Russell was out of work and lonely, so he posted an online personal ad. “Unbankable film director Ken Russell seeks soul mate,” it read. “Mad about movies, music, and Mo

“Compass” topped the box office charts, making $25.8 million in domestic receipts during the three-day period from Friday to Sunday, but it was considerably shy of where analysts thought it needed to be: anywhere from $30 million to $50 million.

The Catholic League, an activist organization, staged a boycott of the film over purported atheistic views in the trilogy of books by Philip Pullman called “His Dark Materials.” “Compass” is the first of three books in the trilogy; the others are “The Subtle Knife” and “The Amber Spyglass.”

Did the league’s efforts take a toll on the film’s bottom line? New Line, a division of Time Warner Inc. says no.

Click here to read the full article