Samantha Culp

Yesterday up at Gulou, I finally got around to buying the new albums by Hedgehog (just released) and Ourself Beside Me (came out in January)… Only to discover a few hours later via the salivating tweets of more media-savvy Beijingren that Google China had just launched its free mp3 service, which, of course, happens to feature both albums.

Oh well – still nice to support an actual music shop, and made an additional purchase of some Cui Zi’en (崔子恩) DVDs I haven’t seen around before. A few years ago at HKIFF, Thai director Pen-ek Ratanaruang described to me his first exposure to Cui’s films as something like this: “I put on the tape, and was watching it until I felt I had to turn it off, but then I couldn’t turn it off… it’s so bad that it’s fascinating, and then it becomes interesting.” Intense paraphrasing going on there, but it sticks in my mind as fairly apt. The weird, self-conscious crappiness in the aesthetic and tone of “Withered in the Blooming Season” is kind of amazing.

The Hedgehog and Ourself Beside Me albums are available for streaming and download below. (Legally! Though the concept of something that is both “digital” and “legal” in China is still confusing to me.) I’m still making my way through them…

Ourself Beside Me “Ourself Beside Me”
(Loving the Rundgren/Barrett-by-way-of-Lisa-Frank cover art; also I’m amazed that they actually did use ‘Ourself Beside Me’ as the official name on it – they had barely decided it while my THEME article on them was going to press)

Hedgehog “Blue Day Dreaming”
(I wish time machines existed just so that Hedgehog could travel back to 1993 to appear on 120 Minutes, and we could now watch it on grainy Youtube VHS capture…)

“No Dabbling.”

[Sign on decorative waterfall/pond, PVG Airport, Shanghai]

“See all this cotton-woolly stuff? That’s the pneumonia,” said the doctor. When I asked her if I could take a picture of my x-ray, she seemed nonplussed and just said, “Sure… do you have a blog or something?”

One of the first days of my trip, my friend Connelly sent me a link to a Bangkok Post story about how the “head of a foreigner” had been found dangling from the Rama VIII bridge. Out of this gruesome tragedy, the line that struck me as somehow blackly funny was: “Investigators do not believe he took his own life.”

I later realized that on a trip in 2007, I had hung out for an entire afternoon under this same bridge while some friends were filming. It was lovely – fried fish from the barbecue stand, little dogs and teen skateboarders zigzagging past each other, and at 6pm sharp, the requisite group aerobics. (more…)

This cough syrup is sold over the counter in every 7-11 and Family Mart in Bangkok.

When I lived in Hong Kong, the flight to Don Muang (and then Suvarnabhumi) was a frequent and familiar one… but since moving up north, far less easy to wrangle. Luckily I got to head back for a bit recently. I didn’t realize how much I had missed it.

Beijing was still covered in snow when I left, and grey when I returned. Just like “The Wizard of Oz,” BKK remains the Technicolor in the middle.

Full photo set here.