Tuesday, March 29, 2011

Randominations

  • Randominations?  Can I say that? 
  • Well!  I said it! 
  • What is the official Fantasy Major League Baseball team of Wuxi Expats?  That is, of Wuxi Expats of good will?  The Wuxi Jaywalkers!  The team nickname honors the many Wuxiren who ignore traffic signals and rules.  It also makes reference to the fact that the Dodgers, of the real MLB, were nicknamed on account of their fans having to dodge streetcars to get to their baseball stadium.  (I had thought to name my FMLB team the Expats -- a vague reference to the Montreal Expos that I think is probably too vague.)
  • I watched Mr Smith goes to Washington and the Magneficent Ambersons on DVD during my days off (Monday and Tuesday).  My reactions?  Both great movies, which I found the DVDs of on the third floor of the Nanchang Market Bookstore.  Jimmy Stewart is cool!  He played the Mr Smith.  He couldn't possibly be a movie or t.v. star today which just goes to show how the popular culture, in some ways, has sunken to the sewer.  I found it strange, in a way, that I could find such a patriotically American movie, about democracy and a little guy finding entrenched interests, in the People's Republic of China of all places.  The Magneficent Ambersons is the movie Orson Welles made after Citizen Kane.  The story goes that the studios, sick of Welles, decided to ruin his second masterpiece by shortening it.  It may well have happened.  The movie is full of some wonderful scenes but it does seem to have been spliced together.
  • Tony plays with his toys -- doesn't want to go to school.
  • European Street, Ou Feng Jie, used to be one of my favorite streets in Wuxi.  Currently, it is being torn apart and replaced with lord knows what.  Walking on the street last evening, I had to dodge construction barriers and avert my glance from piles of rubble and trash.  What always shocks me is how in the midst of all this rubble, you will see shops and restaurants still open for business.  Last night, I saw a street food vendor who actually set up his stand in the midst of a pile of rubble, so that the stand was surrounded on three sides by rubble.
  • I have uploaded a whole bunch of videos to my youtube channel.  You also can watch them also on my two blogspot sites: AKIC and TKIC.
  • And don't forget about the Wuxi China Expatdom. (Read about it here or here.)  Currently, the Wuxi China Expatdom Contingent is in Manitoba, Canada.  After having gone undercover to win the World Expatdom Vision Song Contest, the contingent and a WCERN task force are set to tighten the noose around the Ayatollah of Mordor -- the former King of Wuxi who is lurking in the general vicinity.  Will they capture him?  What will they do with the KoW when they capture him?  Read these blogs everyday to find out.  (There is also going to be a boxing match between Ayira: the Chosen One and Hilary Clinton.)

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