10tonfunk

Actually, what I suspect happened is that an editor walked into a meeting at the beginning of September and said, “Alrighty: the dudes of the week, improbably enough, are Jimmy Carter, Sly Stallone, and Kim Jong-il. One of you lucky suckers is going to get to write a cover story that somehow links the three together.”

Zhang Yue (张悦) got the job, and did an admirable job of uniting this terrible trinity in an article entitled: “Kim Jong-il, Carter, Stallone: Old Men Who Haven’t Yet Responded to Their Curtain Call” (金正日，卡特，史泰龙：老男人未到谢幕时). Opening with a commentary on Hollywood (“Be careful, we’re being haunted by old guys”), the intro gives several examples of the staying power, so to speak, of old men in Hollywood, Cantopop, and global politics.

In addition to the aforementioned “old warhorses that cherish further exploits” (老骥伏枥), the author points out that Deng Xiaoping was already way past retirement age (mid-70s) when he launched reform and opening. When Deng became the first Chinese leader to visit the US in 1979, Prez Jimmy Carter ...read more

Loyal reader: since you check this space daily, you’ve probably already noticed that I haven’t been blogging up a storm lately. In fact you can keep that umbrella for drizzle, because, since I usually get home and pass out before any profundity can be recorded and posted on the interwebs, the window of blogportunity (TM) is narrower than Snoop’s eyes. I’m tired because I spend 13 or so hours a day on the set of a kungfu TV show. It’s a long story but I’m documenting it, when not busy trying to steal swords from the prop guys, in mercifully brief pomes. Like Danny DeVito, the poems are short, pop up at weird times, and are lacking polish. They’re called Songs of Song because the show is set in that dynasty, and because Jesus, or one of his crew, said so.

I’m doing a lot of reading and posting a lot of the links on Tumblr. I am managing to post Tracks o the Day on Beats Royale fairly frequently. If ...read more

Standing in the freezing courtyard of a Daoist temple
listening to Jay Z
mean muggin young peasant extras and feeling bad
drinking Italian coffee out of a tupperware cup covered in stickers
breath hanging in the air like the bags under actresses eyes
Can no longer tell what’s a set and what’s history

Dark sides of meat hanging off the ribs of a panel truck
A corner electronics store offering a shiny display of rice cookers
to a dead street and a bend in the highway
Jackie Chan ad smiling down upon the folly
One child slogans painted on brick walls and houses
mixed with ads for car repair, cell phone stores
Life with one baby is so much better

Those that can afford to have built their own houses
studded with bizarre tile patterns, motley assortments of columns and balconies
a decorator’s catalog thrown into the air
scraped off the floor and shuffled into a floor plan
ample meterage for an Evita-style serenade

The countryside still wriggling in Deng’s embrace
a short man with a long reach ...read more