Tuesday, 10 November 2009

  • Chris Chang vs. Julian Park

    Round 1
    Chris: They fired that guy from BioShock.
    Julian: Juan Carlos whatever?
    Chris: Yeah and they got the original director back.
    Julian: Finally some good news.
    < 2 minutes later >
    Chris: Oh Julian, btw I was lying about that BioShock thing.
    Julian: FREAKING CHRIS!!@$@@#$#@

    Round 2
    < "Aerodynamic" is playing >
    Ryan: Is that Daft Punk?
    Chris: (sigh) Yeah.
    < "No Woman, No Cry" is playing >
    Julian: Bob Marley.
    Chris: Okay, Captain Obvious.
    Julian: What?!
    Chris: SHUT THE...
    < raises pillow to throw >
    Chris: Just kidding :)

Friday, 30 October 2009

Sunday, 25 October 2009

  • Classic Simpsons Moment

    Homer: There, there. Shut up boy. We'll just get you a new dog.
    Bart: I don't want a new dog, I want Santa's Little Helper!
    Homer: Well crying isn't going to bring him back. Unless your tears smell like dog food. So you can either sit there, eating can after can of dog food, until your tears smell enough like dog food to make your dog come back. Or you can go out there and find your dog!
    Bart: You're right! I'll do it!
    (Bart leaves the room)
    Homer: Rats! I almost had him eating dog food.


    sigh...I miss this kind of writing.

Monday, 12 October 2009

Saturday, 29 August 2009

  • Like Father, Like Son

    FADE IN:

    INT. JULIAN'S BEDROOM - EVENING
    JULIAN lays down on his bed and shuts his eyes to rest for a moment. ANNA appears in the doorway and is puzzled by what she sees.

    ANNA
    Why is Ap-ba sleeping on Julian's bed?

    JULIAN busts up laughing with his eyes still closed.

    JULIAN
    HAHAHAHAHAAH

    UHM-MA comes to the door to see.

    UMH-MA
    HAHAHAHAH

    FADE OUT:

Tuesday, 25 August 2009

Monday, 20 July 2009

Saturday, 27 June 2009

  • (1958-2009)



    With the busyness of VBS I've only had a few spurts of rest over the last two days so I haven't been able to fully deal with the death of Michael Jackson. In the small breaks that I got in my car driving from one place to another, I was tuned to 102.3 KJLH (They've been playing nothing but his songs since his death was announced).

    I haven't read any details or watched any news stories. I just know he's gone. Now here I am, just trying to gather my thoughts.



    I grew up during his 90's era stuff. I caught on the tail end of Bad and was mainly exposed to Dangerous. Some of my fondest childhood memories were rollerblading around with my Walkman listening to the Bad album over and over. Of the numerous hits he had, my favorite song has always been Man in the Mirror. To this day, when I hear it I get chills. It injects me with a huge dose of nostalgia everytime and it's that really good nostalgia that clears the knots in your chest.


    Yes, I'm quite a fan of Michael. I'm always surprised by how negatively he's still looked upon. Can we move past the external? His talent and legacy transcends that. So stop cracking those immature jokes. He was not a pedophile. Get your facts straight please. He was a lost child himself. With continued success throughout his entire life he was never allowed to grow up and we watched his life unfold as a beautiful tragedy. His godlike status cost him his humanity and perhaps sanity.

    In high school junior year, every student was required to write a big thesis paper on any topic of their choosing. I remember Jony's brother Alex wrote on D-Day. In retrospect, I probably should have written about WWII because I was so passionate about it but instead I wrote my paper on Michael Jackson. My thesis? - He was the greatest entertainer of all time. LOL. That might not be the case, but for sure he's the greatest of our time. We'll never see another entertainer with that kind of universal reach.

    He was a man full of compassion. He had a heart especially for children although he was always a child himself. When Johnny Grant allowed Michael to choose where to place his star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame, he chose to be next to Mickey Mouse.

    I think after all his efforts to help make the world a better place, he was disappointed by how people really are and how many treated him. He was a beautiful human being but a tortured and lost soul. The moment I heard of his death that's all I kept thinking.

Thursday, 14 May 2009

  • A Harmonious Duet

    "Do not proffer sympathy to the mentally ill; it is a bottomless pit."
    -William S. Burroughs



    Homeless man. Los Angeles. Schizophrenia. Three topics that are of particular interest to me.
    When I first saw the trailer for The Soloist many months ago, I was excited. It looked like one of those uplifting, Academy Award winning stories that explored the beauty of music and reaffirmed the "enduring power of the human spirit". That's definitely how they were selling it - boasting the credits of director Joe Wright and lead actors Jamie Foxx and Robert Downey Jr. But I was soon disgusted with my excitement over such a Hollywoodized presentation of a true story. I wanted to know the real people and events behind the movie. Maybe it was because this was such a local story that I felt personally invested in it. So last year, I looked up Steve Lopez on LA Times.com and read the original articles that sparked this whole thing:

    April 17, 2005 - Violinist Has the World on 2 Strings
    May 8, 2005 - A Cello Backdrop for Voices Inside
    May 29, 2005 - A Twilight Concerto for Rats and Cello
    June 26, 2005 - A New Stage for Homeless Musician
    August 7, 2005 - Vicious Circle of Hope, Despair
    September 25, 2005 - A Ray of Hope for Future Nathaniels
    October 9, 2005 - From Skid Row to Disney Hall
    December 4, 2005 - Man of the Streets, in Three Suites
    December 18, 2005 - The Best Present for Nathaniel: a Future

    So I saw the movie with my family a few weeks ago when it came out. And I was pleased to see that they treated the story seriously. The movie has a strong sense of reality. Through our protagnist Steve Lopez's eyes, we see a hellish environment crowded with junkies and intimidating figures (which is simply skid row in real life). When Steve tries to help Nathaniel Anthony Ayers, the homeless, mentally ill, musician he meets under a statue of Beethoven, he approaches the problem in a way most people would - with a solution in mind. The problem with schizophrenia and most mental illness is that there is no solution. It's a constant, moment by moment presence that has to be dealth with. Steve's frustration by this revelation can be best expressed by that William S. Burroughs quote.

    In one of those articles, Lopez spoke with a Yale professor who described schizophrenia as "one of the worst disorders known to man" - which I instantly agreed with. Life is seemingly pointless with this illness. In a way, it puts all life into perspective. All of us are just distracting ourselves from the futility - tricking ourselves into thinking we're doing something worthwhile. For Nathaniel, his illness is a part of who he is. The label of "schizophrenia" and a suppressant medicine will not take it away. Steve realizes by the end of the movie that all he can simply do is be there for Nathaniel - to love him and to offer an occasional helping hand. These two characters that were painted as soloists in their own lives, come together and form a harmonious friendship.

    My parents read in the paper that they used actual homeless and mentally ill people as some of the minor characters which really brought a texture of authenticity to the film. Being so realistic, the story arc doesn't lend itself to dramatic cinema - there are no gradiose, climactic scenes, which is great. There is no ending yet for Nathaniel. He's still struggling with this illness right now. With such a journalistic sensibility, the director could have taken a straight forward approach to the entire production, but he didn't. He still made room for some bold, creative choices which I appreciated. There was a brilliant sequence of colored lights that expressed how Nathaniel experienced music (kind of like how Remy experienced taste in Ratatouille) and it's a couple of minutes long so we can actually enjoy it and share in the experience. LA was shot beautifully. The camera fully captured the concrete jungle and jumbled freeways.

    The movie is not great. It's worth watching because it makes the situation with the homeless that much more real by projecting it on the big screen where we can't turn away. The movie ends with some facts about the homeless population in LA. Recently, homelessness has been increasing and evolving.

    Subscribe to LA Homeless Blog. It's a solid source of stories, issues and ideas regarding homelessness.

    The new face of homelessness

Tuesday, 24 March 2009

  • 'Spider-Man' rescues autistic Thai boy from third-floor ledge

    A Thai fireman turned superhero when he dressed up as comic-book character Spider-Man to coax a frightened eight-year-old from a balcony

    Teachers at a special needs school in Bangkok alerted authorities on Monday when an autistic pupil, who was frightened on his first day at school, walked out on to the third-floor ledge and refused to come inside, a police sergeant told.

    Despite teachers' efforts to beckon the boy inside, he refused to budge until his mother mentioned her son's love of superheroes, prompting fireman Sonchai Yoosabai to take a novel approach to the problem.  

    The rescuer dashed back to his fire station and made a quick change into a Spider-Man costume before returning to the boy, he said.

    "I told him Spider-Man is here to rescue you, no monsters are going to attack you and I told him to walk slowly towards me as running could be dangerous," Mr Somchai told local television.

    The young boy immediately stood up and walked into his rescuer's arms, police said.

    Mr Somchai said he keeps the Spider-Man costume and an outfit of Japanese television character Ultraman at the station in order to liven up school fire drills.

    article from Telegraph

    Coolest fireman ever?

Name: Julian
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Member Since: 7/16/2006