So i don't know about you but at the Olympics I had a fucking blast! It had exceeded my dreams. I saw Bolt break a world record. i saw tae kwon do fighters knock each other out. I aet drank and was merry. I was introduced to the sport of Handball which is awesome. So much craziness happened I was slack on the postings. I have way too many photos to sort through so I figured I was start at end and work my was back even though i started at the beginning... or something. I am sold on the olympics now need to start looking for employment possibilities for london 2012!
So I am organizing stuff for that gallery show in LA. I need help making a webpage. i bought a domain and now i need to make a simple page with my photo a bio and a few picutres and maybe a separate page with a gallery of some photos. I have no idea how to do this. I also have no idea how to put stuff on the internet once i make this. I was wondering if anyone out there could make a page for me and host it and make use my domain?
I aslo just banged out this bio please let me know what you think and what the grammitcal errors are.
Benjamin Radcliffe was born in Massachusetts in 1975. He graduated from the Savannah College of Art and Design in 1997 with a B.F.A. in Computer Art. Since then he has lived all over the U.S.A. working as a Lighting & Compositing artists for studios like PDI/Dreamworks, Sony Pictures Imageworks, and Walt Disney Feature Animation. In january of 2007 he left Disney and spent the next 18 months traveling to the remote corners of China, Tibet, Xinjiang, Mongolia, India, and Bangladesh. During these travels he documented his adventures using a toy plastic Holga camera shooting 120 film. The artist currently resides in Beijing, P.R.C. working as a Computer Graphics Artist for Technicolor. When the artist isn't in exotic locations getting in adventures with his toy camera he can be found at Huxleys solving the world's problems one beverage at a time.
As for the photos i am still not sure I am just going to print all of these and whichever come out the best is what i will frame. Also not sure if i should do som color and b&W or just all b&w....Would still like to hear opinions.
I just read this on yahoo and thought it was great. As someone who has been here watching china get ready for the olympics. i have seen first hand the broken promises to the olympics the crackdowns and raids and deportations as well as just simple lack of human rights. I was in the tibetean areas pre riots and in the Tibetan exile community during the riots. My friend recently told me he tried to check into a hotel and the policy was no lai wai, tibeteans, or xinjiang people and this was un written govenrment policy. I have also seen them install the handicap access 1940's technology 6 weeks before the games start. China did it their way. Sign the contract first then ignore your obligations later.
I was also present in the stadium to see Bolt break the world record and celebrate it. I sang him happy bday. What might look like showboating via a TV screen out of context definitely wasn't perceived as such at the time. I was there and EVERYONE went crazy and shared the moment. The other sprinters as well were rejoicing no one had ill will everyone was stoked. just look at my photo of him and shawn Crawford down below in my other post. does he look like he feels dissed?
Although i was a non-believer before and am all about the olympics now. Before I was anti because of all the political bull and it is seeing things like bolt that turned my opinion around.
anyways I thought this was worth a read check it out. i would love to hear your thoughts.
BEIJING — Jacques Rogge is so bought, so compromised, the president of the IOC doesn’t have the courage to criticize China for telling a decade of lies to land itself these Olympic Games.
All the promises made to get these Games — on Tibet, Darfur, pollution, worker safety, freedom of expression, dissident rights — turned out to be phony, perhaps as phony as the Chinese gymnasts’ birthdates Rogge was way too slow to investigate.
One of the most powerful men in sports turned the world away from his complicity. Instead, he has flexed his muscles by unloading on a powerless sprinter from a small island nation.
Rogge’s ripping of Usain Bolt’s supposed showboating in two of the most electrifying gold-medal performances of these Games has to be one of the most ill-timed and gutless acts in the modern history of the Olympics.
“That’s not the way we perceive being a champion,” Rogge said of the Jamaican sprinter. “I have no problem with him doing a show. I think he should show more respect for his competitors and shake hands, give a tap on the shoulder to the other ones immediately after the finish and not make gestures like the one he made in the 100 meters.
Oh, this is richer than those bribes and kickbacks the IOC got caught taking.
All the powerful nations — including the United States — have carte blanche at the Games. They can pout and preen, cheat, throw bean balls, file wild complaints, break promises that got them a host bid, whatever they want. They can take turns slapping Rogge and his cronies around like rag dolls as long as the dinner with a good wine list gets paid.
A single individual sprinter? Even if you don’t like his manner, that’s whom Rogge deems it necessary to attack, to issue a worldwide condemnation?
“I understand the joy,” Rogge said. “He might have interpreted that in another way, but the way it was perceived was ‘catch me if you can.’ You don’t do that. But he’ll learn. He’s still a young man.”
Perceived by whom? Old fat cats making billions of Olympic dollars on the backs of athletes like Bolt for a century now? They get to define this? They get to lecture about learning?
Bolt is everything the Olympics are supposed to be about. He isn’t the product of some rich country, some elaborate training program that churns out gold medals by any means necessary.
He’s a breath of fresh air, a guy who came out of nowhere to enrapture the world with his athletic performance and colorful personality. This is no dead-eye product of some massive machine.
He was himself, and the world loved him for it.
On his own force of will, Bolt has become the break-out star of these Games. He saved the post-Michael Phelps Olympics. It wasn’t so much his world-record times, but the flair, the fun.
No one at the track had a problem with this guy; they understood he is everything the sport needs to recover from an era of extreme doping. The Lightning Bolt made people care about track again, something that seemed impossible two weeks ago.
“I don’t feel like he’s being disrespectful,” American Shawn Crawford told the Associated Press. “He deserves to dance.”
Apparently, Rogge would prefer 12-year-old gymnasts too frightened to crack a smile.
It got better when, in the same press conference, he pretended to forget all the lies China told him to get this bid, all the troubles, all the challenges, and praised the host nation. Yes, these have been an exceptionally well-run Games from a tactical standpoint, and the Chinese people have displayed otherworldly kindness.
None of which denies the promises broken, the innocent jailed, the freedoms denied — the kind of issues someone with Jacques Rogge’s standing should be talking about.
He has no spine for that. Not for China. Not for any big country. He had to criticize someone, he had to make headlines, he had to show he was a tough guy. So who better than someone from somewhere that can’t ever touch him back?
Yes, Usain Bolt is the problem of the Olympics. He’s the embarrassment. He’s the one who needs to learn.
I would like to announce to everyone that today is a very special day for Mr. Tito Fratt. Today we are celebrating 36 years of his birth. Now for those of you who don't know who Tito Fratt is, he's the very successful, very hairy, very disease free gentleman pictured above. Did I mention he knows Tae Kwon Do? ( sorry ladies he is already taken )
For the record Tito once told me in confidence that Alec Baldwin is the one man so sexy that he could feel comfortable having sex with him and still not feel gay. Please help Me wish tom a happy birthday by emailing him a special happy bday tito alec baldwin photo:
To help wish Tito a happy bday please download this photo and e-mail it to him: HERE
So after my first trip to the birds nest I was hooked. The opportunity arose to go last night for the mens 200m finals. I has seen bolt run in the 200m semis and it was amazing so i jumped at the chance. I cannot tell you how amazing it is to watch olympics athletics live. We had AMAZING seats A level 17th row. Our seats were so good that evander holyfield was like 4 rows behind me. Like I said AMAZING.... and they should be amazing they were $200usd a pop. But cost doesn't matter and the fact that i am eating noodles 3 times a day for the rest of the month doesn't matter when it comes to once in a lifetime opportunities like this. The main events were womens hammer throw the 800m semi's the men's pole vault, womens 400m hurdle finals, the 110m hurdles which would have been amazing if liu xiang didn''t get hurt hurt. and of course the 200m mens finals.
For those not in china i don't think you can ever realize just how HUGE liu xiang is he is not just olympic famous like Mary lou Retton or Brian Boitano! H is coca-cola nike famous like Shaq, Kobe, Gretzky, Bo Jackson, mike tyson, NKOTB, the 2 cory's, the olsen twins, paris hilton, and Jackie Moon all rolled into one. He was it. His face is every where! every magazine, billboard commercial, sides of buses, on tv screens in subway cars. And he didn't compete and the chinese are devastated. There was talk of the chinese imposing a Martial Law enforced Do-Over. There was a brief military buildup aimed at stopping the games taking the medals back and waiting for him to heal but instead they decided they will just erase his injury from the history books like other historical chinese events not legal to type in blogs.
Anyways Bolt was it! This is the second world record i have seen so far and it was amazing. IHe was so f'ing fast. He was like 35 feet in front of everyone else. And after he won they started blairing jamming reggae and he took his shoes off and did a victory dance around the stadium. Then they announced tomorrow was his birthday and EVERYONE in the crowd sang him happy bday. TENS of THOUSANDS sang him happy bday. It was crazy.
I have something like 800 pictures and will take me a while to sort but here are a couple. I got one of julia and evander i was too afraid to get closer than 10 feet to him to get a picture. She said his ears were intacts but might have been bolt-ons.
olympics are still rocking hard. saw basketball saturday if you saw the greece angola game on tv i was the drunk american draped in a chinese flag who got the crowd to do the wave!
I just got back now from the bird's nest stadium where i saw ameica win 4 golds 3 in one event,
the top of the night though was the womens pole vault final. this russian set a olympic record then a world record for the gold. no matter what sport seeing a world record made in the olympics gives you chills.
So last night was my first Olympic ping pong event. Seeing as ping pong is to china what baseball football basketball combined is to america I really wanted to like it. I tried but I failed. The crowd was way into it. The thing is lets face it pong pong is not a sport its something people in ohio play in thier garages and in church functions. I honestly don't think i have ever actually played. And coming to realize that I realize there are a lot of suburban activities i never really got into. I played a fair share of air hockey and skee ball but ping pong alas.
anyways the other thing that was offsetting was all the chinese players just dominated. I dont just mean china or taiwain. I mean hong kong, singapore, and just about every other countries teams had at least one asian person on it. the germans looked asian as did the polish. Anyways the matches were loppsided and other than poland vs romania the all finished 3-0 in a best of 5 series. i imagine the finals would be more like forest gump.
The Ploice came by the casa looking for me and handjob's paperwork to make sure we are legal. They also gave us this. now that I finally got a residence permit and after reading this there doesn't seem like there is any reason to stay.
So Last night I went to the 2008 USA Dream Team vs. China Olympic basketball Match. It was raining outside and there were tons of people trying to score tickets for the match. One american guy was shirtless trying to trade a spurs jersey for tickets. I have heard the going rate for scalped tickets were 3000 yuan ( $450usd I only paid $12 per ticket ) but there was no amount of money that would convince me to sell my tix and give this experience up. Can't really put it into words. The gang was all there me, E.L.S., Kobe, Yao, LeBron, Henry Kissinger, the old George Bush, the new George W. Bush but more importantly the beers were only 72 cents. No event ever will compare to seeing this live. it is expected to be the most widely watched television event in world history with over 1 billion viewers ( china is a big country full of chinese people ). The energy in the stadium cannot be described when Yao hit a 3 pointer for the first points of the game. You cannot even imagine the vibe of 1 billion people in china awestruck with that one shot from the most famous athlete ever in china. At the second half it was clear that yao and his rice eating teamates were no match for kobe, lebron, and wade but it didn't matter the crowd cheered for both teams. The people were all decked out in NBA jerseys and zhong guo jia you kung fu headbands. They cheered at every play for every player it didn't matter who won or lost all the mattered was the game. At the end when china was down everyone was still going nuts every time kobe dunked. This was THE event of the Olympics and I still can't believe I was really there to see it! Sometimes life truly is a gift.
The only negative points were that concessions were geared more to chinese tastes. meaning the hot dogs didn't have buns and instead of nachos they had noodles.
(pictures are coming ) This is me out in the rain wearing my 50th anniversary of the chinese communist party T-shirt and my zhong guo jia you kung fu head band waiting for them to let us into the building.
This is Lebron bringing some thunder during the dream teams warm up!
Here is the dream team during the national anthem.
Here is W. during the national anthem. Here is G.W. his special lady friend his dad and mr kissenger behind them. If you look closely you might find sasquatch in the background.
This is the VIP of the evening. It was her job to make sure me and E.L.S. did not suffer from dehydration during the match.
After lebron leaves china the chinese will be telling their children scary stories for generations to come about the big bad american olympic monster that devoured people during the 2008 olympics. Random photo of basketball.
Random chinese couple that go to school in NY. They were afraid of the drunk americans sitting behind them.
Here is a photo of yao using kung-fu on team america.
Here is a little chinamen who kept giving us dirty looks for cheering on the US in chinese... MEI GUO JIA YOU
Here is yao and LeBron giving some interviews at the end before they went into the locker room to make sweet love to the sweet sounds of Jackie Moon singing "Love Me Sexy".
Here is Me and E.L.S. with the guy who by far had the most spirit in our section. He had the entire crowd chanting "ZHONG GUO JIA YOU!" I think i saw W. give him the stink eye on one occasion.
Its crazy here... obviously. We had friday off from work because it was impossible to do anything. I spent the day wandering around the city tiananmen was closed to the public. Th worlds largest public square was closed.... uh yeah...brilliant idea. So ther were uncountable number of people on the sidewalks around the square.
We also hit wangfujing and the very first thing we walked by were uncountable number of plus sized white people eating cheeseburgers and ice cream at the mcdonalds.
Other than that every one was decked out in china apparel. wearing headbands and tshirts that said i love china. people were carrying flagc and had heart shaped chinese flag stickers on their faces.
Me and 2 friends were wearing zhon guo jia you "go china" kung-fu headbands and some one asked to have their picture taken with us and the seal was broken and tons of people kept coming up and having their picture taken with us. Then a camera crew from HK television came up and had us yell zhong guo jia you into the camera. then at least a hundred people crowded around us and watched us and EVEN MORE people flooded to have pictures taken with us. it was getting a little overwhelming and scary. we had to readjust our seats so our backs faced the crowd and it slowed down. i also got lots of enjoyment freaking the chinese out with the fact that i spoke chinese they would be talking about us like for example saying "i wonder where they are from" to each other and i would respond that were were from america in chinese and they would have that intial moment of embaressment they would then use the genereic chinese response saying in chinese that "your chinese is quite good" ( which it is not ) they would then ask where i learned to speak chinese thinking i was a lao wai in beijing for the games. I always tell them in chinese "in america EVERYONE can speak chinese" this really freaks them out!
That night we hit ditan park sneeking as many cans of warm beer as we could hide on our bodies. Ditan park has 2 massive stadium like flat screens so we watched it with the locals and it was a very cool experience to be there for the live countdown with thousands of chinese people counting down shi... jiu... ba... chi... liu... wu... si.. san.. er... yi... but also a tad bit creepy. I literally got chills when the opening ceremony started and the soldiers marched with a flag in the begining. A friend of mine commented there was a lot of RED in the performance.
The ceremony was a bit wierd especially with li ning running around the edge lighting the torch. Does anyone outside of china even know who he is? he is chinas most famous gold medalist in the 1984 olympics which was a big one for china opposing russia and atending and he is also owner of li-ning sports apparel company which is the Nike of china. In fact Lining is only behind nike and adidas in the market and has a 5 year deal with Shaq. I never heard of li ning before living in china and i doubt any of you have heard of it either but because the population is so huge its a MAssive company. And for the record the sneakers and clothes are not very cool. lots of pink and pastels.
Anyways after the peformance and they atarted intrucing the countries most of which i had never heard of we decided to change lcoatons to a bar in hou hai with a screen on the roof so we could see the fireworks. 3 hours later america appeared and the whole world cheered for Kobe... is it just me or didn't he rape a girl???
Afterwards we looked into the sky towards the stadium to see the fireworks. Unfortunately behing all the sm/fog all we could see was a glow.
we then crashe a privte bday party and ate all his food and drank his booze. I took the subway home about 2am and there were only a few people on the train one girl was clutching here opening ceremony ticket stub. she was in awe and said it was amazing.
Tickets for the event were going for about $3000-$4000 usd. which is more than the average annual income in china.
Tonight I have basketball tickets for Australia vs. Croatia then the big one TEAM USA vs. CHINA and i have tix in the 3rd row. OH YEAH!
Tuesday, August 5, 2008
Olympic fever is in the air. took me over an hour to get to work today. they blocked all the major roads and had caravans of buses and sponser vehicles going by while the locals just sat there.
Last night was cinco de drinco at the saddle cantina. Its funny this place is SWANKY! i remember when chris opened the first saddle then he open cox chicken wings. both were hole in the wall dives. then he opened the rickshaw and that became the "it" place. it was a little swankier and pricier but still not bad. Now they re-opend the saddle and this place is like a resturant at the grove in LA. its huge has a enormous outdoor patio actual mexican food and 7 nights a week its packed full of people. the downside is beers are 35 yuan and margaritas are 50. thats roughly $5.50 for a beer and who knows the math on the margarita. ( luckily everything is half price on the 5th of every month )
The thing is thats expensive even by LA standards. I usually eat lunch for 9 yuan. so in a new math kind of way in america if lunch is $5 usd think of 9 yuan as the same. would anyone pay $5 for a beer... most likely but would they pay 4 times the cost of what they pay for lunch for a bottle of beer. would anyone pay $20 for a beer? no f'ing way. especially when at the place i eat lunch a beer is 3 yuan for a da ping. so this place charges ten times the amount.
I know this is confusing but its is just a crazy thing you see in beijing. THERE IS NO MIDDLE.
either someone is driving a 30 year old bicycle or driving a bentley! a beer is either 3 -15 yuan or 45+... the mid ranged places are few and far between.
A new bar that just opened up for the olympics a tsing tao a domestic beer that is usually 3 yuan in a resturant or shop or 10 yuan in a bar is now 45 and ils are 120. so beers are $7 and cocktails are almost $20.
I know this is a rant and i sound cheap but bear with me. the thing is chinese people WANT to pay more they have this whole concept of saving face where its a way to impress people and gain business contacts. if they take a client there the more money they spend makes them look better. so they WANT to go and pay for overpriced things. And they think everyone who arrived feels the same. I think people are going to be shocked when they realize we dont have the same culture and think differently.
A chinese guy cant look at a menu and say wow this place is crazy expensive lets go someplace else because they would lose "face"... they would in fact buy a $100 bottle of chivas drink one glass and leave the rest to impress people. And chinese bar owners capitalize on this. this is their main business strategy especially during the olympics.
I am pretty sure when a 300 pound retired school teacher from ohio is in town for the olympics and goes to get a cocktail they are not going to want to pay $20 for a mint julip or $7 for a tsing tao or worse $10 for a budweiser.
anyways we shall see. and if none of this makes sense its because i drank 10 margaritas last night and i am feeling rough typing this as i am pretending to work
either way the socail calender is booked solid ELS arries tinight and there is talk of a thai dinner followed by shennanigans. then tomorrow is a bday party then friday is the opening ceremony!
I got my first paychek which is nice! it about a third of what i made in the usa but proportionately to the cost of living i am making 3 times what i usually spend to live here so in a way i am making way more money. I am sure i will find a way to squander every penny. so the first thing i did is got my laptop is fixed and now i can blog again. In the end the apple service center wanted 6000 yuan ( around $900 usd ) to replace the LCD. the shady chinaman with the soldering gun at the computer market wanted 1300 yuan. i let the shady chinaman do it but i cringed watching him fix it.... and btw i will not disclose how the laptop broke but pornography was involved.
so not much else exciting has been going on i turned 33 last week and i am getting progressively older. I was recently contacted regarding my 15th high school reunion so that really made me feel old. most of the people i went to highschool have children and families and i have a pair of checkerboard vans just like their children wear. ( actually i have 6 pairs )
then someone sent me this... uh. BINGO! ( serendipitously the grandpa square put me over the top and i cut my curls of so i no longer have the white boy fro... actually it was a afro jagger haircut hybrid)
Anyways the olympic fever is happening the truckloads of white people have descended upon china and the week started big last night at huxleys. tomorrow is a cool book lecture about the "lost beijing" written by a guy who spent 2 years living in a hutong studying traditional beijing life and how in the face modernization and things like the olympics things changing quickly. should be interesting.
after that is cinco de drinko. half price everything at the saddle cantina. ( 25 kuai margaritas ) AYE CARAMBA!
Then later this week E.L.S. is rolling to town. thursday is the olympics opening ceromonies which i will be watching from a place with festive beverage in hand then sunday night I have tickets to china vs. team USA basketball! Me and E.L.S. get to watch kobe, labron, and garnett take turns raping yao ming in front of his 5'2" tall teamates.
Then jenny from the block is also rolling in from hong kong for olympic festivities. She was the one who introduced us all to the magic and wonderment that is huxleys.
Other that than I have tickets for another round of basketball, tae kwon do, wrestling, and the big score was Ping Pong. Oh yes! you haven't seen ping pong until you've seen it played in its natural habitat. i am expecting that scene in forest gump to pale in comparison to seeing china vs china in a life or death struggle to see who takes home olympic gold fame and fortune and who gets sent of to the rice patties for years of hard labor to "re-adjust" their thinking.
On january 26th 2007 I decided to change careers and quit my job at walt disney feature animation. I sold everything i owned and moved to beijing to pursue my life long dream of becoming a professional man of leisure.
