Happy Fat New Year!

Happy Fat New Year! 2008 is a very lucky number so it should be a good one. For everyone in Europe make sure to schedule a 01 June 08 party, those in N. America can do Jan 06 08 party for luck and everyone can have a blast this 08 Aug 08 - 168/888, either way it sure beats 04 April 04 when we were in the early stupidity of the War in Iraq.

Here are some highlights from the end of the year and some random vids, etc. that I remembered seeing this year:

Cute in 2007:

Otters holding hands (MILLIONS of people seem to have watched this clip and one of the otters was apparently saved from the Exxon oil spill ages ago)



The evil eye baby


I know it's like America's Funniest Home Videos stupid, but it still makes me laugh everytime I see it. Reminds me of the 'Whatchoo talkin' about Willis' look. Hooray for Gary Coleman: child star turned security guard turned politician. To think this man coulda been the Governator if the votes had been skewed in California 2003 (he did come in 8th just after Larry Flynt). It renews my faith in American democracy when an Austrian body builder, a disabled porn publisher, a child star, a porn star turned cook named Mary Carey, a game show winner, a Sumo wrestler, and a Socialist all run for public office in order to run an incompetent, lame duck politician out of office. Hooray for California! Making democracy safe for the world.

Standing cat (this is an old one, but who doesn't love a standing cat?!)



Very cool in 2007:

The power of collectivity



Matrix ping-pong

Also quite old, but I was reminded of this when I saw it shamelessly ripped off in a London play earlier this year (Tom Morris and Emma Rice's rather boring A Matter of Life and Death; see, however, Katie Mitchell's excellent Women of Troy if you get a chance):



Very very in 2007:

So today I looked up CHINGLISH after having been sent various images from the site over the year by my brothers and to my shock some over 1,700 photos have been uploaded by 500+ members since I last looked at the site. The one here is my favourite of the... well, first couple of pages (I couldn't make it through page 5). There are many more classics, but this is a pretty ironic one. Thanks to brappy for the upload (see similar at Crappy DVD Covers). Compare with the actual movie poster (for those of you who haven't seen the movie, Bill Murray and not Dustin Hoffman is in the film; it's set in modern day Tokyo and not well, some green park in the past; there are no dogs in the movie, but there is a karaoke bar).

Just in case you are wondering what this movie is about, I will quote the blurb from the DVD cover above:

'the Bill is a television for over spirit star, he much uper the spout year, just connected to clap luckly recently a whisky television advertise, for taking this advertisement, he arrived at Tokyo. Summer with( card benefit with – John) is a photographer( tile – thunder ratio west ) who young wife who husband, busy with the work to always neglect her, so she arrive at the relax by taking stroll of Tokyo.'

No those are not typos, yes it is all lost in translation. When the movie came out people said it was slow, boring, self-indulgent, and racist about the Japanese. I think, however, it perfectly catches that sense of dislocated tourist ennui that overwhelms you when you have overstayed your welcome in a foreign land. As for the 'racist' interpretation - has anyone ever actually seen Asian variety shows?! I think the one in the movie is pretty tame (Sofia nailed that one on the head). It's one of my favourites (good soundtrack, good colour and lighting, great ending) although you really should be a damn good director if your dad made American Graffiti, The Conversation, Apocalypse Now, and the Godfather trilogy.

Very Happy New Year:

The awesome Taipei 101 New Year 2008 fireworks display (you may ignore the excited ooh'ing and ahh'ing of the crowd in the video, but the image is still pretty fantastic):