Samantha Culp

If you know how to do BitTorrents (and I don’t), you can download Frederick Wiseman’s infamous “Titicut Follies” from something called Grey Lodge Occult Review. Though it was banned shortly upon release in 1967, I was lucky enough to see it in a summer film program at Cal Arts in secondary school, and it has haunted me ever since.
In Life Magazine, Richard Schickel aptly commented:

“TITICUT FOLLIES is a documentary film that tells you more than you could possibly want to know – but no more than you should know – about life behind the walls of one of those institutions where we file and forget the criminal insane…A society’s treatment of the least of its citizens – and surely these are the least of ours – is perhaps the best measure of its civilization. The repulsive reality revealed in it forces us to contemplate our capacity for callousness.”

Though others have mercilessly (and often problematically) ripped it off (Werner Herzog, Harmony Korine), there’s nothing like the original.

My Halloween (uh, three weeks ago) was fun, and involved a spooky trip to Ocean Park’s Halloween Bash (like Knott’s Scary Farm, only in Hong Kong). Lots of haunted houses that were much scarier than I expected– including a “Haunted Chinese Village” that was all tricked-out in Yue Laan Jit (or Hungry Ghost Festival) decorations for extra ghostly verisimilitude (two posts and an article I did last year on YLJ). Here there were park-workers dressed up like Chinese ghosts and “vampires”, who were pretty creepy until they started moving– by hopping. According to Sonia and the other HK-ers, most Chinese ghosts can’t walk, only “hop” along. Of course, my camera battery had already shut down by the time we got here. Some other pics:

But HK blogger 24 Hour Party People seems to have had an even better one than mine.

It’s been too long, as always. But I was finally spurred into action by the exciting announcement of Beijing’s mascots for the 2008 Olympics–The Five Friendlies!!!
Cleverly named after the syllables of the phrase “Beijing Huaning Ni” (Beijing welcomes you”), Beibei the fish, Jingjing the Panda, Huanhuan the flame, Yingying the Tibetan Antelope, and Nini the Swallow “carry a message of friendship and peace–and blessings from China–to children all over the world.” More importantly, they are very, very cute.

Two questions: why does Beibei represent all the slightly violent Olympic sports?

And what the hell is “Modern Pentathlon”?

(Shift, Nov 2005)
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(The Fader, Oct/Nov 2005)
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