cheng de

I went to cheng de for a wedding. it has the old summer palace there. it is way less cool than the newest summer palace in beijing. The only cool thing is there are deers in the park freely roaming around and chinese people feeding the deers ice cream. They also have a piece of the great wall right there... but I am beginning to realize wherever i go in china there is a piece of the great wall in sight.

here are some boring digital pictures

ages ago

A buddy of mine pat e-mailed me to see if i still had this photo. When I look back to my days at disney and it seems like years not months since i my retirment. I see this picture and think about how much my life has changed and how stresfull and busy i was all the time... which I am sure is obvious from the photo.

some new holgas

just playing around with the holga. on is the bell tower with the beijing skyline in the background the other is tom at the beijing pop festival holding a popcorn tub sized mojito.
I also bought some close up lenses and tried to get a really tight portrait of tom it wasn't what i wanted but its interesting. there are 3 close up lenses stacked up and the depth of field is really shallow. seeing as the holga is kind of a ranger finder without any way of focusing there is no way to compose and focus this close so i of course want to do more close portraits.

Beijing Hooters

Tonight was the grand opening of the Beijing Hooters. I won't bore you with words... it was glorious!

hou hai zou mexican buffet

There is officially a new stop on the leisure train! Huxley is now having a sunday mexican buffet at his other bar the hou hai zoo. Hou hai is a lake surrounded by hutongs. it is way touristy but still very cool an average day for me is to shoot pictures around the hutongs with my holga then cruise over to the zoo and sit on the patio read enjoy a few pijius and take in the sunset.

The food is prepared by a new mexican and is pretty solid. Those of you outside have no idea what it is like to lose all connection with mexican food. the best mexican food in town is the equivalent of the old el paso taco kits you get at piggly wiggly. This definitely takes it up a notch and it was free.

love column update

So I have been disillusioned with the love column lately. They don't quite have a grasp of my sense of humor and tend to remove the magic. On top of that it has been summer vacation an the college students have not been sending the magic my way so i have had few interesting letters to respond to. Anyways just when i thought there was no hope I was able to get this gem published a full page spread and a color photo of me wearing my mostly evil t-shirt.

i have decided just now i am going to publish my articles but i will also post the unedited version i submitted along side it.

Beijing Pop Festival

Saturday was the first day of the beijing pop festival. It was held over in chaoyang park... a park I am particularly intimate with, that is where the public pool is and i tend to go there after a particularly exhausting evening of leisure.

The festival was big but nowhere near the midi music festival. the main acts were public enemy on saturday and nine inch nails on sunday.

The tickets where 250 kuai which is $30 so day started off with us following a sketchy chinese guy in pursuit of discounted tickets. after 30 minutes of meeting more sketchy chinese people and us hanging outside a security gate we decided to persue legitimate tickets until we remembered the fact that even the bottle water in china is bootleg and that further convinced us to buy bootleg media person bracelets for 175 kuai.

We then proceeded to stock up on 4 kuai cans of beer and try and sneak them in. unfortunately i had no ninja chi power and got busted so we had to revert to buying 50 kuai popcorn tub sized mohitos. we then enjoyed the end of some chinese band and watched the new york dolls. I am more of a buster pointdexter fan but the show was good. after we took an hour break and went to the beer garden in the park to meet up with more comrades regroup and eat some beef kabobs.
D rolled on stage to report flavor flav wasn't there and that "He should be here but he is busy filming for MTV" he didn't seem too stoked. Chuck D gave it his all and convinced me he is the heart and soul of PE and flavor flav is a a sideshow.

Then toward the end Marky Ramone who was performing on sunday came on stage as well as the godfather of chinese music Cui Jian to perform blitzkrieg bop. then they finished the show with the a version of the other fight the power from the isly brothers.

we then stopped by a house party then proceeded onto nanjie fo another grand opening party.

all in all a successful day of leisure.

Patrick Party

Patrick had a rocking party last thursday. Lots of creative mixology going on and various punch recipes mixed into a big bowl that was knocked over several times after which the magical recipe was lost forever. The chinese party goers could not handle their punch as well and patrick glass table became a casualty. After wards the party then continued on to sanlitun.

nanjie officially chai'd

So it is the end of an era. The old Nanjie had its official closing down party. of chai party as they are known in beijing. There seems to be a lot of these happening these days. they character up above it the chinese character chai loosely translated means condemed. When a building is set to be demolished this character is spray painted on the building. they are all over the place. it is scary how fast things are being torn apart. damn olympics!

anyways the evening festivities began with our favorite football team's open of the season banquet. As official athletic supporter me, tommy, nad handjob went to show our support. and partake in 150 kuai all you can eat and drink. the dinner was held on the rooftop of poachers at a little place called "the secret garden" it was pretty sweet will a view overlooking all the debauchery of sanlitun. afterwards the entire posse headed for nanjie to pay our final respects.
I also just realized the name nanjie means south street and it is an homage to the old expat hang out called "south bar street" by us lao wai.

nanjie chai'd gallery

chai'd

welcome back tommy

Tommy came back wednesday night. he has been gone like 3 months. me and handjob met him at the airport welcomed him back properly by spraying him down with warm can of yanjing. after some pleasantries back at the casa and a few bottles of nighttime lubricator we introduced tommy to the new nanjie and released him back into the wild. it was just like riding a bicycle again. so much in fact around 4 am we called it quits. the evening so festive that i missed my 9am chinese lessons and barely had the energy to go to chaoyang park with tommy and nick to sleep at the pool. afterwards we hit dairy queen for some cool refreshing blizzards. it dont get more leisurly than that.

I am still digging these instant photos. they have the aesthetic quality of a 1974 pabst blue ribb0n advertisement.

are people digging the instants or the digitals. i have to admit the instants ads the extra step of scanning stuff.

welcome back tommy... di er ge

welcome back tommy... di san ge

welcome back tommy