I'm about halfway through watching the Invincible Youth series I mentioned. I started watching the series on Taiwan TV with Chinese subs at around episode 10 and I watched until Taiwan stopped airing it one episode after 3 of the 7 original members left (SNSD's Yuri and Sunny and 4minute's Hyuna). Their replacements were introduced in that episode.

It's really great watching the series with English subs. I remember all of the episodes, and I was pretty good at guessing what was going on, maybe I'm underestimating my ability to catch on to the Chinese subs, but there is also a lot of dialogue that I totally missed.

I remember the final episode with those three members came suddenly, and even more so because it was the second half of an episode, the first half of which was fun and games as usual. The farewell scenes aren't representative of the show, but they do capture what I think is important about human connections.

I've spent my life burning bridges and cutting connections, so it's no wonder the state of my human relations is so negative. It's no wonder that I have no human relations that are playing any role in my wanting to leave.

But that's not to say I don't value human relations and promote good relations between people. If you love someone, tell them you love them. Ozzy said that about his long-lasting marriage with Sharon. He said that he never stopped telling her he loves her and buying her little gifts and doing small things for her. The value of those little things add up to more than big gestures only once in a while.

And yes I'm admitting my human relations are negative, despite my saying that I'm trying to keep a positive spin on everything. I am trying to keep my mindset and outlook positive, or at least not down, but I have to look around me at my life's landscape, and it would be denial for me to say it's not negative.

But despite the negativity of my experience with human relations, I don't want that to be part of my karma. I don't want to be carrying that around like luggage. So again, that's why I'm watching this series through, because it's an expression of what I think is important. It's OK to want such connection. If I can keep the feelings I get out of this show, it's certainly better than what I have now.

Confession time, and more evidence that this next attempt is going to come to naught (even though it has to be a real attempt). Even though a window of opportunity has opened and any day now would be just fine and everyday now has been feeling right for a go, even compelling, I've been putting it off for . . . a TV show.

A Korean TV show.

A Korean variety/reality TV show.

It's called Invincible Youth. The premise of the show is 7 members of the top K-pop girl groups at the time (2009) are sent out to a rural farming village and experience and learn what life is like out there.

Roughly the first half of the show was aired in Taiwan and I got hooked on it, because, well, I'm into K-pop girl groups (Ozzy would not approve).

The important thing for me in watching the show is that, although I might describe the appearance of my living life as having fallen apart, and that I'm not focusing on the negativity, the show has more of the emotional space I'm angling for.

Unlike other Korean variety shows which are solely about self-promotion and entertainment, this show has a lot of heart. On other shows, you don't get to know the celebrities because they're being celebrities on the show.

On this show, they have to be down-to-earth because it's unscripted and very loosely structured. They know they still have to self-promote and entertain and they're constantly poking fun about getting screen time and not being edited out, but their tasks, games and competitions are all impromptu so you get to the heart of their talent and personalities and short-comings. Even their celebrity pretense is presented without pretense.

There are a lot of the warm and fuzzies about the show, tearing up or grinning like an idiot from being touched is common – it's not a show for the cynical and hardened-by-life – but it's also killer funny and they don't hold back when they rip on one another.

The show also uses a still photographer to get the intended effect. The still photographs are notably used during the end credits, and they really capture the feeling and feelings of the show. Really good photography.

I love the show because of the values it presents. It's very resonant to me because it seems to suggest a lot of the meaning of life is about community. Our tribes. You find your tribe and you stick with them through thick and thin to get things done. You work together towards goals and you have fun with it. And winners win and losers lose and it's all good.

It's a lesson I haven't learned and that's why I'm alone in this cave with a plan to abort this life because whatever awaits in my next life, it's gotta be better than this. Ugh, I don't mean that in a negative way, I just don't have the words to express it in the positive way that it's meant. There are plenty of ways my life could be worse than what it is.

There's a lot of love on the show, and even though they were awkward in the beginning, and they're competing, and they rip on each other, you get the sense that lifelong friendships are being formed on the show.

Another aspect of the show that is important to me is the "future life resonance" thing I mentioned before. This recent infatuation with Korean culture is really unexpected and inexplicable. It's not like I've been ignorant about Korea prior, it just never resonated until recently, and now I'm convinced my next life will be in South Korea, inshah'allah.

So I'm filling what I hope will be my last days in this life with indications of where I'm going and what I might strive to learn in my next life.

Again I'm back at the stage where I'm trying to start wrapping things up. I have to decide whether to go back to work or whatever, and before I make that decision, I have to see if I can even stand being here anymore. Perplexed. Not easy.

Again I'm back at this wall. Again I keep stepping back away. But a very loud voice inside me is telling me it's not a choice anymore. I must do this. I have to do this. There is no or. There is no delineating reasons, no justification. I've lived my life, I know my life, and I simply have to do this.

It's my duty, it's my responsibility, it's my sacrifice, it's my destiny, I have to do this, I have to let go, I have to not cling to this ego-perspective by making the ultimate sacrifice for my soul, my karma, and my future.

If I entered the monastery, I could be doing good, improving my karma, but I would still be clinging to this ego-perspective. I would because I would know it. When I was at the monastery before, I could talk the talk and walk the walk; I could fool anyone but myself that I was still clinging to this ego-perspective.

I am really facing it, often staring at the wall and realizing there's no reason why not right now. Right now, shut up, go! And I answer back, "Wait!"

And I know it might as well be right now. I could be making the decision right now. It's a wrap. Wrap up those last few things and go. Wait!

If I don't? Yea, it's bad. Really bad. Everything is bad if I don't do it. It'll be dire if I don't put in a good attempt. I'll have to do something absolutely crazy. If I don't do it, it has to get bad.

Now, or soon, because the time is perfect. It doesn't matter that I still have enough in my bank account to last a bit longer. Part of now is about the unbearable; part is about not wanting to continue languishing, lingering. Mostly it's because the time is perfect. Again. I know I've been here before.

The truly pathetic part of all this is that all of the above, I cut and pasted from what I wrote exactly one year ago :p I haven't moved an inch. I'm in the exact same position as I was a year ago.

I'd like to say there is a difference, that even though the words are still fairly accurate, the feeling isn't. I'd like to say that although it sounds like I was still trying to convince myself, and I maybe still am, it's to a lesser extent. I'd like to say that there's a much more prevalent feeling of conflict back then that doesn't exist now.

But, no, since I can't place myself in the exact space I was in a year ago and make a comparison, it's very possible that everything is exactly the same. Even worse. And not.

This has been a difficulty about writing about these topics lately, because when I say things like "even worse", it sounds negative, but the negative aspect doesn't describe it accurately.

It may be because I've been training my mind to diffuse negativity once it occurs that I don't like describing my reality in negative terms, but the only words available to me to describe my reality are the ones that sound negative.

There must be a psychologist somewhere in the world that wants to study me.

Like, yes, "even worse", but I don't want that understood as being qualitatively worse, just descriptively worse. My view and assessment of reality that I've chosen precludes taking a negative view of it as something real.

However, I can describe aspects of my daily life now that describe "worse than a year ago". Such as back then, I was still able to maintain morning sitting and being active and going for long bike rides. My sitting routine fell apart a couple months ago, and I haven't taken my bike out in weeks. Photography bores me now. I pick up my guitar or bass and I get bored very quickly. No joy there anymore. I stopped going to the drum practice rooms sometime last fall.

My active participation in living life has fallen apart. I only go out once a day to eat, and I don't have much of an appetite anymore and even that one meal a day is sometimes too much. I go out for about 3 or 4 hours, often ending up in the library, and part of my going out is to make a neurotic show that I'm not stuck in my room all day. I usually head out just before my neighbors start coming home. I still routinely buy a bottle of liquor every 2 days, sometimes less.

My isolation is about the same, but now it's been another added year of this isolation. How much of this can I take? On the rare occasion I do meet up with someone, I get antsy very quickly and hastily bail.

It sounds bad, but I don't want negativity to be a part of my reality. I decide that, not my circumstances. Any sense that any of this is negative, I diffuse it, I deflect it. Denial? Maybe. Would I want things any other way?

See, that's another hard question. Why would I want it to be this way? But if I say I would want it different, then that's admitting dissatisfaction and negativity. There's also the point that I created and drove my current life to be this way. So actually, no, I don't want things to be any other way. I should accept it the way I created it.

I don't want things to be any other way, and a new window of opportunity just opened. I'm dying to know what's going to happen.

In the library, before Ozzy, I found and read another book recommended to me, Tuesdays With Morrie. It's a real-life account of a former college student who learns his former professor is dying of ALS (Lou Gehrig's Disease – the very same disease with which Stephen Hawkings is afflicted).

The book is the account of the months the author would visit him every Tuesday and discuss various topics about life from the point of view of a dying man. The book has been the inspiration to many because of Morrie's positive attitude and affirmation of Life in the face of death.

The book mentions three interviews by Ted Koppel during this period that were aired on U.S. network TV's "Nightline", and Koppel was so impacted by these meetings that he apparently got permission from the network to compile the footage into a separate documentary about him, entitled Lessons on Living.

I guess the book was interesting to me because Morrie was an ordinary person, who lived an ordinary, normative life, and then had to confront his mortality. He was Jewish, but wasn't particularly spiritual.

So my point of view in reading the book was of someone who has taken Tibetan methodology to heart, where understanding, if not pursuit, of death is just as important as an understanding of life. Not "just as important", but central.

On one hand, many of Morrie's reflections and revelations are philosophically old hat. On the other hand, he was actually going through the process in real time, in this lifetime, in a way that I can't identify as having experienced.

With a belief in reincarnation, I can reflect that I've been through this many times before, studied it, processed it, played with it, but I don't know the feeling of actually facing it definitively beyond my own choice.

Hm, my own choice. Actually, that's my key point. I have absolutely no doubt that if faced with death that was not my own choice, I'd have absolutely no problem with it, I'd be happy as a proverbial clam. My own choice is the dilemma in this lifetime, not death itself.

Morrie deals with issues only a person facing mortality can process. The people his story has touched are the multitude of people who wonder and worry about death and mortality, but, I shouldn't wonder, are people who don't have the will or the means to affect change in their own lives based on what are essentially his teachings, but hopefully do.

And the issues Morrie deals with are the same ones I've touched on for myself, and I've come to my own conclusions and made my own peace, and also will not affect any change in my own life because he has actually affirmed my direction to also go there.

With my lifelong striving towards suicide, I've always felt like a dying person. This impulse saying I will commit suicide, I must commit suicide, is arguably not different from a disease. Ergo, I've dealt with the issues that Morrie also confronted. When suicide is your reality, you are confronting your mortality.

There was a time when suicide could be avoided. There was still the possibility of another path. And the analysis could have been broken down between positive (live) and negative (suicide), but it's not that way anymore, and hasn't been for quite some time.

That another path is the negative path now. Finding something to latch onto to continue living is not something positive because it's attachment. It's a fundamental lack of understanding of the foundation of being.

Morrie's story, in my opinion, is presented in a way that shouldn't evoke pity. Sympathy, perhaps. My story, I shouldn't wonder, wouldn't evoke pity or sympathy in anyone. And that's the way it should be in our attitudes about death if we really understand life and death as a part of life, not as an end.

Whether or not you believe in reincarnation, you live on by the impact you have on other people, and you don't impact other people by evoking pity in your passing. Suicide I'm hoping is the way I die, and in following this path, I definitely do not hope to have any impact on anyone else's life, which is why I've worked so hard on making myself a low-impact soul.

No matter how I die, the impact will be very minimal, and if I died of renal failure because of alcoholism or got hit by a bus while riding my bike, the impact would still be more, and more than I would want, than if I simply disappeared in a suicide about which no one had any evidence.

I go to the public library to study, but lately I've instead been reading Ozzy Osbourne's memoir "I Am Ozzy" off the shelves (I know, wtf?). It's perhaps a bit of a respite from the other stuff I've been reading . . .

I like Ozzy Osbourne and Black Sabbath, but I can't say I'm a huge fan of either. I have both in my collection, but hardly extensive collections.

I was introduced to Ozzy Osbourne before Black Sabbath. In sixth grade, our music teacher allowed on one day per week for a student to bring in music from his or her music collection to introduce to the class.

Even though she herself was a big fat opera singer wannabe, I think this was also her way of keeping in touch with what kids were listening to. In retrospect, that, to me, along with my respect for public school teachers, is awesome. She did not get a lot of respect from us as students, but in retrospect, she was awesome.

Anyway, one day a classmate brought in Ozzy Osbourne's first solo album after he was fired from Black Sabbath, "Blizzard of Ozz", and Randy Rhoads' guitar playing on I Don't Know fucking blew me away.

It was the first shredding I ever heard. The term didn't even exist yet I shouldn't wonder, and it was still more or less a school year before I was exposed to Eddie Van Halen, who arguably invented shredding, or at least popularized it and redefined virtuosic lead guitar solos away from their blues roots.

I bought that LP as well as its follow-up "Diary of a Madman", but lost interest after Randy heart-breakingly died. Sounds like I was more of a Randy Rhoads fan, and maybe so. Ozzy never attracted me as a singer, per se, but had other qualities I liked from radio interviews, such as being passionate, anti-establishment and misunderstood by the mainstream.

This memoir should be a lot funnier than it is, considering Ozzy's manic, ironic life. I'm sure the story as he told it would be hilarious, and it's too bad the co-writer wasn't someone who could translate the ridiculousness of the raw material Ozzy went through. I really do wish this blog were funnier. What the fuck happened to my sense of humor?

But it's still a good read to me, just because it's the whole rock 'n' roll thing that is a part of my bedrock. Things you obsess about during childhood and adolescence have a way of staying with you for the rest of your life in a way that other things don't. And when rock music is part of your history, reading stuff like this is like reading . . . history. Except interesting.

07. Diving
The last song! Finally, I can get back to blogging about whatever it is I usually blog about. The entire collection fit on one side of a 60-minute tape. Do you even know what a tape is? Jesus.

And for the big ending, the song itself was a full-on, pants-down confessional. Very simply this song was my suicide note, describing why and how, more or less, and I think I even considered that as a title, but opted for subtlety instead, borrowing the title from Nirvana's song Dive.

The bass part and the guitar part in the intro started as two completely separate snippets. At some point, I think I was like, "Hmm, I wonder..." and tried playing them together and they happened to fit together really well, so I kept it like that.

I think both bass and guitar are going through the Super Phaser in the intro. I was also pleased with myself by how that intro bass motif became a vocal line later in the song, I think that worked rather well, flatter myself not.

The bass part in the verses is a full-on slap bass part and I think I ran it through both Auto-Wah and Super Phaser, which was risky because of the possibility of effects overload, but I think I was going for "bombastic" in regards to sound for this song.

I think the Compression effect also helped keeping those two effects from totally blowing up. I think Auto-Wah and Super Phaser are about frequency sweeps, and if certain frequencies come together and peak at the wrong point, it gets ugly. The Compression keeps everything contained.

The drum part in the B sections I want to comment on, but unfortunately I'm just geeking out and this will probably make no sense to anyone. It was actually a pretty technically tricky part, based on a 16th note hand pattern on the hi-hat with alternate strokes of both left and right hands hitting the ride (right hand) and crash bell (left hand) in a crazy pattern that I was only able to come up with due to practicing steel drum music grooves from my time with the steel drum band in college. The snare drum hits kinda, sorta reveal the latin influence of the pattern.

And oh, also in the B sections, I had trouble coming up with a bass line that I liked, and what I settled for was a direct, conscious rip-off of Paul McCartney's amazing bass line of Hey Bulldog. They're played a little differently and with different roots, but the relative tones and rhythm are directly from "Hey Bulldog".

I think the lyrics are pretty self-explanatory. As for the narration recitation in the background at the beginning and the end, it's taken from Jeanette Winterson's book Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit. The full passage is as below, the bold sections are what I'm reciting underneath the song:

(excerpt from Oranges Are Not the Only Fruit, Jeanette Winterson, pp. 170-171)
". . . But where was God now, with heaven full of astronoughts, and the Lord overthrown? I miss God. I miss the company of someone utterly loyal. I still don't think of God as my betrayer. The servants of God, yes, but servants by their very nature betray. I miss God who was my friend. I don't even know if God exists, but I do know that if God is your emotional role model, very few human relationships will match up to it. I have an idea that one day it might be possible, I thought once it had become possible, and that glimpse has set me wandering, trying to find the balance between earth and sky. If the servants hadn't rushed in and parted us, I might have been disappointed, might have snatched off the white samite to find a bowl of soup. As it is, I can't settle, I want someone who is fierce and will love me until death and know that love is as strong as death, and be on my side for ever and ever. I want someone who will destroy and be destroyed by me. There are many forms of love and affection, some people can spend their whole lives together without knowing each other's names. Naming is a difficult and time-consuming process; it concerns essences, and it means power. But on the wild nights who can call you home? Only the one who knows your name. Romantic love has been diluted into paperback form and has sold thousands and millions of copies. Somewhere it is still in the original, written on tablets of stone. I would cross seas and suffer sunstroke and give away all I have, but not for a man, because they want to be the destroyer and never the destroyed. That is why they are unfit for romantic love. There are exceptions and I hope they are happy.

The unknownness of my needs frightens me. I do not know how huge they are, or how high they are, I only know that they are not being met. If you want to find out the circumference of an oil drop, you can use lycopodium powder. That's what I'll find. A tub of lycopodium powder, and I will sprinkle it on to my needs and find out how large they are. Then when I meet someone I can write up the experiment and show them what they have to take on. Except they might have a growth rate I can't measure, or they might mutate, or even disappear. One thing I am certain of; I do not want to be betrayed, but that's quite hard to say, casually, at the beginning of a relationship. It's not a word people use very often, which confuses me, because there are different kinds of infidelity, but betrayal is betrayal wherever you find it. By betrayal, I mean promising to be on your side, then being on somebody else's."

Mind you, this passage I had posted elsewhere and had to dig for a while to find. I'm not that narcissistic that I dug this out for this post.

The file is over 5 and a half minutes long, but the song is less than five minutes. The tag at the end is the end of the recording of the Ode to a Sinkhole track. With songs that fade out, do you ever wonder what went on in the studio on the master tape? I think it's something like this. The recording goes on until it falls apart. And apparently there was a finger-snapping part in that song.

Clean the slate, try to clear my mind

Find a way to start over from the star...

The starting line

Leave behind what I've built thus far

Finally resolved to end this game of love charades

Back to the cave

And pull out the plug from the VCR and the TV screen

Leave my socks on the sand below the stars

And look around to see where the fires are

The sound of waves plead for me

The swim that never ends begins here on the beach

Clean the slate, clear my mind

Sound of waves, leave behind

Hold my breath, close my eyes

The shock of the first chill will only last until mourning

Opting out, cash in my dying deed

It's just a simple trade off between distinct realities

Body parts, functions and feelings

Everything reeling and fading out from here and now and I know how

To pull out the plug and watch the water go round and down the drain

Don't look back, don't think of crying now

With a ziplock bag around my neck to weigh me down

All I love is here with me

The stars, the sound, a gun and all my memories

Running start, take a dive

No one here gets out alive

Racing back, my whole life

Flashing before my eyes

For weeks it's been driving me crazy

I want to find some way to trust another lie

Nothing romantic that could be believed and I

Keep in the feeling that's rotting me from inside

She'll rest in peace with the newly deceased and cross my mind

Sometimes I think this is one big joke

And god knows that I've been at the end of my rope

For seven years it took to figure this out

She's laughing at my train of doubt about

Being found and being unidentified

Still concerned with all the details left behind

When I leave to find you

You'll know me when you see me, you'll see the signs

06. Quicksand Box
I actually like this song. In fact, years and years after I completed this tape and had forgotten how the songs went, I was still able to easily figure out the guitar part and played it for a few friends because I like the sound of crickets. The sound of crickets is so much more prevalent after I play a song for people.

I had the chords for the A and B sections and the first verse kicking around for years before I finally decided to try to complete the song for this collection.

And it kinda shows, the first verse is existential angst (with theatrical and angel references) and tries to have some clever (sometimes called 'pretentious') turns of phrase or plays on words, characteristic of influences from Marillion and Genesis (I would maintain that the chameleon reference has nothing to do with the Marillion song "She Chameleon", because it doesn't).

The inspiration for the verse was from the idea that our lives are like plays on a stage, and dying is nothing more than walking off stage and then we change characters and that's reincarnation. Sometimes we're not thrilled by the roles we take.

Then the second A/B section is straight-forward about Amina :p (the "means lead to ends" was not-so-cleverly derived from the sound of her name, believe it or not. It's a hidden MEANing, hahaha! not).

The first of the break verses wasn't targeted at anyone but was supposed to, I suppose, characterize a dichotomy between Amina and me. It started with the "there was a death in the family" line that I think I also had been wanting to use for a long time and once I had the chords, the rest of the verse fell into place. The second break verse reverts to Amina. No mystery there.

The final B verse references an idea I had about reincarnation and how I may have been aiming to be reborn in Japan and ended up in a womb that would within 9 months be taken to the U.S., and also a reference to how my parents used to tell me that I wasn't theirs and they had found me on a rock in Ann Arbor, Michigan. It was a joke. I thought they were serious. I was very disappointed when I found out it was supposed to be a joke. I did not find it very funny.

The main rhythm guitar part was my Takamine run through the Small Clone and with a capo on the 2nd fret. I had a rough relationship with the bass line. The final bass line is the same or very similar to the initial one I came up with, but for a long time I didn't think it was right.

I dunno, it was too distinct? Distracting? After vacillating for a long time and trying other ideas, I decided I liked the original idea. Or I had just gotten used to hearing it like that. These are the pitfalls of working alone. I didn't have anyone else to give me an opinion either way.

The guitar solo was my Peavey run prominently through a Boss Super Phaser (I love that box), and I think was recorded pretty late in the process, and I wasn't trying for anything elaborate or sounding very "solo-ish", so it's a more textural solo with not a lot of notes.

No audition, typecast in doubt

In a strange role-reversal, costume inside-out

Red lights, dead ends, I try to forget my lines again

Step into wings to change what my character has been

Up to my knees, concrete conformity

Chameleon fit to what's surrounding me

And chameleon fit to what I would never dream

Chameleon dropped in a quicksand box

Let my guard down, let you too far in

Didn't know you didn't know me and means lead to ends

I could have laughed at how you tried to sound sincere

Using all the same excuses that I used for years

Your family, models of chemistry

Chameleon fit to what you're supposed to be

And chameleon fit to how people want to see

Chameleon dropped in a quicksand box

There was a death in the family that you never knew about

A crime of principle that you never cared about

A breach of confession that you never told about

A death that no one knew, no one cared, no one came to tell me

I couldn't do a thing that you ask

You ask too much of my limited past

I can't make much sense of what you made us to be

Or how you made it to depend on me

So me I'm faced with what I could never have been

Never have hoped and never could believe in

The ground dissolves, look to the clouds above

Chameleon dragged by its tail across the sea

And chameleon found on a rock right next to me

Chameleon dropped in a quicksand box

05. Track 5
The reason why this song isn't titled is because at some point I thought of the perfect title for it and then forgot what it was. In self-protest, I refused to settle on some other title. Either I remembered that perfect title, or it would remain untitled. Guess what came to pass.

(Actually, there is a precedent for this. On the first collection of songs I recorded, there were two songs that were unrelated and lacking titles. Then I came up with a good title for one and realized it could be applied to the other and so I gave them both the same title, part one and part two. Then I forgot the title and refused to try to come up with alternate titles, but that time I eventually did remember the title I wanted).

It's also the song I like least among this collection. I don't know what I was doing with it or where I was going with it. The music started with the uninspired opening rhythm guitar part, upon which I formed the bass line, which I do like, and then the keyboard melody, which I don't. It's kinda sterile and contrived. The drums, I think, are OK except for the break which sounds awkward and is only there because I couldn't figure out how to get back to the main riff musically. Lame.

The song ostensibly is about memory and its reliability, but is a patchwork of sources and not very successful. A part of the concept was sourced in a coffee table book I had of black and white photos shot by Ansel Adams of the Manzanar Japanese American concentration camp during World War II.

And I'm pretty sure that part of the inspiration was my friend's song about the Japanese American experience in the early 20th century that I posted earlier. I wasn't trying to add anything, but his song was so good and I had these ideas from the Ansel Adams book, that it seemed OK to borrow his basic idea as a starting point.

In his song, the protagonist ends up stuck, unable to leave, perhaps metaphorically, in the desert heat of the concentration camp after being betrayed by his adopted country, after betraying himself and his original country. In my song, the idea is of a former Japanese American concentration camp prisoner decades later looking at pictures of the camps and thinking, "that's not what it was like".

Another source was a pile of 8mm home movies from my childhood that I had no idea existed and found by accident in my brother's room. And curiously, I have absolutely no recollection of when it was that I found them. With incidents such as this, I can usually place somewhere in the timeline of my life, but not this one. Selective memory clearly engaged.

Also curiously, I have no idea where those 8mm reels are now. I'm even doubting their existence or whether my finding them ever really happened, because not only was there the film, but also . . . it wasn't a projector, but a machine that I watched them on where you set up the reels and spooled the film through a mechanism that lit the film onto a screen. Yea, sounds suspicious to me, too.

This is weird because the more I describe it, the more I'm doubting this ever happened. A machine like that just doesn't go missing. The film is real, actually. I do remember my father did have a projector, and when he got back a reel of film from being developed, the family would get together and watch it.

What I remember about finding and watching the film, whether that happened or not, is seeing my parents in a light that I never knew. They were acting as parents. There was footage of my oldest brother's kindergarten graduation. Seeing my parents acting like parents was very conflicting for me, and it was hard for me to reconcile that it happened like that. I think I even actually felt guilty for a while about hating them.

The film is fact, the pictures don't lie, but if our subjective memory and reality are in conflict with them, then what's the truth? Here was physical evidence of my parents acting like parents, but in my memory and reality, my parents were merely a bank. They provided funds, but were uninvolved and emotionally unavailable.

So what I was trying to get at was, whether it's historical or personal, does the documentary evidence contain actual truth. No, it contains a record, but the truth is subjective.

I used to be a pyromaniac when I was a kid and used to light fires in a small set of woods near my elementary school. Nothing major, but at one point the fire department was called. And shit, it seems harmless in retrospect and I never thought anything of it, but that's clear evidence that I was already one fucked up, sociopath of a kid. Or I was trying to get attention. But you have to get caught to get attention. I was 8 or 9 years old.

And then the lyrics get further muddy because I start reflecting on my relationship with Amina and start ranting on about her. Real mature. So many things to dislike about this song. And at 5 minutes long, it was a failure at the short and concise concept (most of the songs from my first collection were ridiculously long, most over 5 minutes).

Force a pause

Pass under lighted tracks of memories hung up in galleries

Desert sand still seems to fall from my hands

Black and white photographs, but it never looked like that

Lost in my thoughts

Lots to be guilty of when history haunts me in home movies

The pictures lie, they can't testify to facts

Childhood reality check, it didn't happen quite like that

Thirty years between being the same age

Through my eyes not much has changed

From the forest fire and the match I found

On the cold barren ground

To decide from a yes to a no

Have to stay, no way that I'm gonna go

Under desert rocks froze in snow

My confession, little forgiveness for the un- or underblessed

Trapped in the mess of burned barracks, government shacks

I recall a last night on the phone

Triggered something from a long time ago

Losing you was really no loss at all

It seemed so much better than it actually was

From a point of view it was nothing new

It should have come as no surprise

And as it goes around, it still comes around

I could have read between the lines

You, your glazed ceramic smile

Made of mud and blazed in fire so cold

The wrong shade of red lipstick

Little too brown, too bright

In the sun it made you look too white-eyed

Burned to brown like a native skin, tattooed Indian

Give me control over what I know

I only doubt what I found when I find none of it sound

I have no memory and no feelings and I'm free to leave

04. Ode to a Sinkhole
I'm pretty sure this song started with the main 4-chord, descending rhythm guitar motif in the intro and verses, and I think I had those chords kicking around for quite a while.

Like years, maybe. I forget if the keyboard melody or the bass line came next, but if it was years in the making, it may well have been a snippet with the keyboard melody laying around for years.

I always had a "snippet" tape ready to go in the 4-track, on which I recorded ideas and then may have put other parts on top of to see if I thought there was any potential. I don't know if any of those snippet tapes are extant, but there can't be too many of them. I wasn't all that prolific. Not that I'm terribly interested in what's on them.

The acoustic rhythm guitar sounds like it's running through a Small Clone chorus box, one of the first stomp boxes I ever bought when I was in high school, and it's the same one Kurt Cobain uses on songs like "Come As You Are". And reverb.

Oh, and reverb! When Boss released its first reverb stomp box, that was a huge thing for me. Almost every vocal and guitar part is going through reverb. And compression. I neglect to mention these effects because they are more subtle; assumed even. All voice, guitar and bass parts are running through a Boss Compression/Sustain pedal.

With the first collection of songs I recorded during college, I remember I ended up re-recording all the vocal parts and some guitar parts one semester, and now I remember why: the reverb pedal came out. As bad as my vocals are, without reverb and compression, they were even more excruciating to listen to.

It may be hard to appreciate now because all these effects are readily available now, included with multi-track recording software, I shouldn't wonder. But back then 4-track tape recorders didn't have built-in effects, digital processors were unheard of, and pro reverb processors were expensive. So it was a godsend when Boss created their reverb stomp box, which I remember was still really expensive at US$300, but worth it.

I think this is the only song whose drum part wasn't recorded with the "Phil Collins" patch. It's similarly big sounding, but the patch I used had a mechanical tinge to it. I think there were multiple tracks for the TD-7 because there's a quica sound in there that I don't think was recorded with the main drum part.

This is also the only song that I didn't record the bass with my solid-body Riverhead, but a hollow-body Washburn AB-40 acoustic-electric. That was a great bass with a Fishman pre-amp/EQ and a piezo pickup mounted under the bridge which picked up the full sound of the wood body which is why it sounds so woof-y. It's going through a Boss Auto-wah in the instrumental sections. I gave that bass away to Meghan during one round of "I'm not gonna be around much longer anyway".

I think the keyboard sound was created with a keyboard controller and a sound module which I bought to replace a Roland Juno-106 analog synthesizer that I foolishly sold around this time. That was an amazing keyboard and one of the last of its kind before digital synthesizers became the rage with the Yamaha DX-7. They're considered vintage now. Part of me regrets selling it, but I also remember it was an exercise in non-attachment and that part of me doesn't regret it.

The song has three instrumental sections, the first being just the background rhythm track, the second time there's an added crunchy guitar part on top – my Takamine run through distortion and no reverb – and the third time has a guitar solo played on the Peavey electric to fade out the song.

I guess the theme behind the lyrics is isolation, sort of feeling like I was at the bottom of a well and the view of the world from there. The "feels like I'm in a well...-kept dungeon cell" is a cheap literary trick, attempting to be clever.

There's an element in the lyrics that's a reference to Plato's cave and how our lives are like shadows of a reality cast by a divine light coming from outside the cave that we have no concept of. And there's a reference to an analogy between Plato's cave and movie-making. Movies are just light and shadow manipulated upon a screen, but we often ascribe a certain reality to them and let ourselves be drawn into it.

I think this song is the second reference in this collection of the back of my eyes, and the imagery was supposed to evoke looking at the back of my eyeball – my eyes being the view of the world and with eyes being the window to the soul for other people, the real me was actually one step further withdrawn, not engaging or interfacing with the world, but just contemplating what was falling on the back of my eyes.

More reference to angels with the "she with wings" line, and I guess I was getting out some feelings about a previous relationship in college, Luyen. She was from Florida, so I was obviously thinking about her for that line, but that's the extent of what I remember. We had discussed angels in a theoretical, conceptual sense, but she was no angel. And neither was I.

I was living in San Francisco at this point, going to law school in downtown S.F. everyday. I remember having existential problems being in an urban setting and all the concrete and all the people, and for a time I dealt with it by keeping my line of sight over people's heads trying to avoid acknowledging their existence. Pretty pathetic.

I'm scared of heights, or at least I used to be, and I was referencing that in opposition to the metaphor of digging my own grave. Dreamscapes, death states, I think they're fairly envisioned as being above, rather than below, and my lifescapes I was definitely feeling as below.

Actually, I think the concept for the opening line was digging my own grave and then by accident digging too deep and finding myself trapped. Story of my life. And then there are the obligatory references to death and choosing to die.

Dug this hole too deep to find sleep

Just a pinpoint shaft of light out of which I can see

Feels like I'm in a well-kept dungeon cell

Faint rose smell and the sky looks like the back of my eyes

Shadows move on rocks below me

Suspended here in the glare, in the glow of silver screens

I walk while she with wings tugs my puppet strings

Was she from Hollywood, moved to Florida?

With the camera focused far above the heads of the crowd

To avoid them now

From my height I'm deep in a dream

Don't know what they mean, or where they lead

Or where they have been

I'm scared of higher places where I can't see people's faces

No big deal to not know how I feel about my life

If there's something missed, choice to leave

Dismiss the world as it is

Dug this hole too deep under me

Drank myself to sleep, what I really need

Is time to rest in peace

I know that there can be no coincidences

Nothing happens that doesn't show through the cracks

03. Withdrawal
Hm, I thought the title of this song was "Wishlist". Not sure how it got changed. It might be a mistake. Or not. I have no idea.

I'm pretty sure this song started with the opening lyric which then got slapped on top of the bass verse riff, which I'm pretty sure is the origin of the music. The guitar part was just what fit over the bass part and then used to develop the other portions.

Actually, I'm pretty sure that for this collection, the music writing and lyric writing were very separate processes. So while I was developing and recording the music over here, lyric ideas were being scrawled down over there, and the two were mashed together at a later point.

I'm a little embarrassed by both the confessional and meltdown nature of the lyrics. There is little hiding my preoccupation with various ways of dying and self-destruction and my inability to bring anything to fruition in that regard, story of my life. But I did try to have a little fun with it, too. I mean what's death and self-destruction if you're not having at least a little bit of fun? Just morbid. And I am not morbid.

At the time I had recently broken up with the purported "love of my life" Amina, and some reference to her crops up in a few of these songs, and they are immature, snide jabs at her. She's Pakistani and had a Caucasian nose that I always felt was poking me when we kissed. There's more in other songs.

The Simpsons impression in the repeated verse may be related via the South Asia connection, but her mother being English, she spoke with a British Indian accent, and not a full-on Apu Indian accent. It's indirect, but it was conscious.

I forget what all the different "voices" for the repeated verse were supposed to be. Aside from Apu, one of them was "Tom Waits". Another was "meltdown". I think one I wrote down as "about-to-crack". One sounds like it should've been labeled "constipated".

Other lyric elements came from various sources. "Four and twenty bishops" was an expression from my Contracts professor that I liked, used to emphasize the importance of evidence versus innuendo attested to by "four and twenty bishops".

There's a reference to angels which was a thing for me late in college. One of my favorite films at the time was Wim Wenders' "Wings of Desire" and I think I even wrote a paper on angels for a religion seminar. How flaky is that? (not as flaky as the field "angelology"). There's more in other songs.

The internet is an assumed part of modern life now, but back then it was just coming into wider use, being touted in the media with the catchphrase "information superhighway". I was being topical! Imagine how much lamer it would be if I had mentioned Infoseek or Lycos. Or Alta Vista. All pre-Google search engines. All had to be used to find the optimum result.

The line about being allergic to myself was about an elusive skin condition I have. It's nothing major, just an oddity as far as I can tell, and unlike other physical anomalies, this one has never gone away.

My skin is sensitive and if I scratch it even lightly it turns red and leads to more itching. If I scratch it because of itching, it leads to prominent, unsightly welts wherever I scratch it. So the reference was a joke about being allergic to just being myself.

The reference to being "discharged" was simply in my mind about being discharged from mental institutions, which I have been twice in my life, so this was referencing that deranged period of my life.

I don't want to be too harsh against the people who had me committed, nor about how they were just doing their jobs and had no clue what was going on. Looking at the scenes objectively, I think they were justified, but ultimately my case was beyond their psychiatric analysis, and kudos for them for realizing it. Something was clearly "wrong" (from their point of view), but it was beyond their purview of what they could understand, much less treat. So they let me go.

The guitar part was played on my acoustic Takamine running through an auto-wah and the bass line in the verses is slapped on my Riverhead. I'm not a slap bassist, but it's a lot of fun, and at the time I was experimenting with slapping without a lot of popping, or at least not popping in a higher register on a higher string. The electric drums are on the Phil Collins setting and there's also a second distorted guitar part that was done on the Takamine. Meaning this song was likely recorded before I bought the Peavey Predator.

I want to die a bloody, violent death

Smashed against the rocks below the cliffs, amidst the surf
But the hands around my neck keep stopping me

Surf to servant, lifted up by wings that never worked

And I owe my whole likeness to the kindness

Of the winds that blew me kisses from a lotus flower

Stood around me by some four and twenty bishops 

Giving me the finger with a sneer they said, "You wish"

My number one priority

Is finding the only wish I had left

As I'm flipping through my filofax

For that wish I have left

I wish I could find a way to decide

I wish there was a way I could survive

I wish I could be buried alive

I wish everyone would leave me alone

Seems to me to be one more life decision

Every heartbeat murmurs secrets only time can tell me

Met Jesus on my path, nearly stepped on him

Searched for God on the information interstate

She crowned me in a romantic bravado

It's your classic fairy tale scenario we all know

Bring me to a better understanding

Bring me people who would never ever leave me

My number one priority

Is to not stand stupid in some idiot's pose

Kissing ass, distracted by your pointed nose

I don't think I would want to be that wise

I don't want to live just to survive

I don't want to find what's behind my eyes

I don't think I should be thinking these things

Someday I'll drown in my own sense of privacy 

Where no one can help me to be who I want to be

Eggshell exiles scrambled in cups of tea

Porcelain lips kiss my grasp on reality

(repeat 5x)

Why am I allergic to myself?

I get a rash everytime I come down and try to be real

Ask me about my drinking problem

That's one way to get a prime example of denial

I smeared myself with 80 proof holy water

I'm a failure of religious guidance, social science

I'm next in line to be discharged and I feel better

On my way home gotta make it look like an accident

02. Just for the Record (Marillion cover)
This song is on the last studio album that original singer Fish recorded with neo-prog rock band Marillion, "Clutching at Straws" (1987). It is one of my desert island discs – I'll never get sick of listening to this album or stop being amazed at Fish's lyrics.

It's not my fave song on the album. In fact, if there were a song I like least, this would be a runner-up, not that there is a song I like least on the album. No, the reason I chose this song to record was that the chords were easy enough to figure out on guitar, and the song itself was short and concise, which is what I was going for on this collection of songs.

I also fancied doing a full-on cover, rather than just acoustic covers of songs I liked, since I hadn't done that since I first owned my first 4-track tape recorder and recorded covers to learn the process of 4-track recording.

The funnest part was coming up with a bass part that was my own. I did away with copying the guitar hook on the original track because I would've sucked trying to do that, and instead incorporated elements of that hook in the bass line.

The bass is the Riverhead run through a Boss Super Phaser and Bass EQ. All the other parts are pro forma, just doing what I could figure out to do. I even changed the meter in the verses from 7 to an even 8, more because it fit the bass line I wanted to play and not that I couldn't play in 7, mind you, but it did make recording the song track-by-track easier.

Aside from the bass, there's an acoustic rhythm guitar track, electronic drumset on the Phil Collins sound, two vocal tracks and I'm pretty sure the solo is recorded with the Peavey electric and not my acoustic run through distortion. Hehe, me playing a "solo". It just sounds funny (and it does sound funny, the first notes of the solo remind me of a baby deer trying to get its legs).

The lyrics, of course, I found very relevant, dealing with alcoholism and derangement. Fish's line "It's only when I'm out of it I make sense of this" probably refers to only being able to make sense when drunk, but in my mind, "out of it" meant out of life, and I sang a future tense "I'll".

Fish obviously uses a pseudonym (you might too if your given name was Derek William Dick), as arguably do I. But I don't consider my name a pseudonym. It's the difference between my "real" name and my "legal" name, and as I consider it my real name, it can't be a pseudonym. But, no, it's not my legal name, which I hold in disdain. Look, I rhymed!

Where he says, "When you say I got a problem, that's a certainty", that resonated for me because in my first collection of songs, I had an opening line, "I guess you got a problem if you're only happy hurting yourself/But who am I to say it's a problem, after all, you're happy". Always people telling us we got a problem.

And of course the classic alcoholic response, "Just for the record, I can stop any day". No, really, I can.

(D. Dick/S. Rothery/M. Kelly/P. Trewavas/I. Mosley)

Many's the time I've been thinking about changing my ways

But when it gets right down to it it's the same drunken haze

I'm serving a sentence to write life sentences

It's only when I'm out of it I make sense of this

Just for the record, I'm gonna put it down

Just for the record, I'm gonna change my life around

Just a revolutionary with a pseudonym

Just a barroom dancer on my final fling

Just another writer paying off my dues

Just finding an inspiration, well, that's my excuse

Just for the record, I'm gonna put it down

Just for the record, I'm gonna change my life around

Just another empty gesture with an empty glass

Just a comic actor behind a tragic mask

But I got no discipline, got no self-control

Just a little less painful here where my back's against the wall

It's too late, I found it's too hard

I'm in two minds, both of them are out of it at the bar

When you say I got a problem, that's a certainty

But I can put it all down to eccentricity

It's just for the record, it's just a passing phase

Just for the record, I can stop any day

And if I haven't geeked out enough, to go full-on maximus geekus, the whole album is full of quotes that resonate for me, including the closing verse of the album:

And if you ever come across us, don't give us your sympathy

You can buy us a drink, and just shake our hands

And you'll recognize by the reflection in our eyes

That deep down inside, we're all one and the same:

We're clutching at straws, we're still drowning

Clutching at straws, we're still drowning

- The Last Straw

And just for the record, I'm so not impressed by Windows 7 as an improvement over XP.

I've found a website that allows me to upload simple sound files, and I've had to decide whether to do what I always wondered whether I would do if given the opportunity: post my own songs from my past. And in what manner?

On one hand, from a music perspective, I don't think it's any good. I don't recall anyone to whom I gave the cassette giving more than a polite positive response. To be fair, I don't recall anyone having the same music tastes as me, either, go fig.

And even though the results sound like a final product, the purpose of the recording was to shop it around through my network of friends to find other musicians to play with. I finally accepted my writing process was too excruciating and results too poor to want to be a primary songwriter, but I was hoping to find people interested in the sound and forming a band. I just wanted to be the bass player.

On the other hand, I am trying to wrap things up and wind things down, and this is a significant part of my past, albeit small and very private and at times embarrassing. This is part of my history and past expression.

I've said before I'm glad I have these recordings because no matter how embarrassing, they are a record of what was going on at the time (actually that was about a previous collection I had recorded during college; this collection I'm personally not so embarrassed about).

It's not out of ego, it's not that I want anyone listening to the stuff, but it's fact, it's record. It's confessional, and that's part of what this blog is supposed to be doing. I keep myself completely hidden from people who know me, but this is the place where it all comes out. Anything anyone ever wondered about me can probably be found somewhere in here.

And I think I'll go full-on confessional here. When someone creates something, they don't know how other people will take it or interpret it. I'm removing that by saying what everything was about. I'm not pretending this is art for a listener to enjoy or interpret or figure out. This is an artifact of expression that I'm explaining for the record.

As for manner, the track order matters to me, so I think I'll post track by track in sequence, but then I'll see about combining it all into one ridiculously long post so it's all in sequence for the archives once I'm done.

01. Son of Solomon
So this first song is obviously inspired by my parents who I hated at the time, putting it mildly. Who woulda thunk?, I just admitted my parents were an inspiration to me. I don't think most individual lyrics meant anything specific. It was just general anger upon which lines were built. Suicide is, of course, alluded to in the song, and I think it's alluded to in every song.

The title doesn't mean anything either. I realized as an afterthought that I had to coax out titles for these songs. This phrase came to me in a quick little flash and stuck.

There is a line referencing when I went to Japan after college to find my way and stayed with a great aunt in Osaka for some months. My parents did arrange that, but beyond that I think every effort was made to discourage anything I was attempting to do, certainly not encouraging or supporting it. In the end, it worked and it was like they scooped a wandering child off its feet and put it back where they wanted it to be.

The song idea started with the bass line which then defined the guitar chords, and probably after I established what the guitar was doing in the verse, that led to the chorus and break sections written on guitar. The bass, a Japanese-made Riverhead Unicorn headless design, sounds like it's going through a Boss Auto-Wah pedal with the lows boosted with a Bass EQ pedal.

I only had an acoustic guitar up to this point since I never took guitar seriously, but I think at this point I decided I needed to include guitar solos and bought a first generation Peavey Predator which was a strat-copy. Later models were a totally different design, but I love the strat-copy version and still have it.

No solos on this song, but I think I used it to get used to playing electric guitar, with two tracks of electric guitar, one clean, one distorted. I think any guitarist will tell you that acoustic and electric are totally different beasts.

All the drums on this collection were played on what was then a state-of-the-art, 2nd generation consumer electronic drumset, a Roland TD-7. Being a huge Phil Collins fan, I gravitated towards the sound that was closest to his sound – very big with lots of reverb.

I was doing the best I could on drums, having worked on keeping a groove while I was in a steel drum band in college. I had a horrible sense of rhythm until then and I spent hours on practicing "groove" with a metronome.

I didn't consider myself a drummer at this point. It wasn't until several years later when I heard Jimmy Chamberlin with the Smashing Pumpkins that I was really inspired about being able to express on drums. Bash the fuck out of those things, I mean.

(Can I ask you something personal?)

Mom and dad could never have a baby

Mom and dad they never had a chance

Though they only needed dope to save me

They traded the hope for circumstance

It was never my responsibility to live past 20

It was never my intention to live through them

The psycho path has been my way out of the halls of plenty

Took my hand to lead me back again

Being pushed was just my way of learning

Pushed to suicide don't make it a crime

Found the agents they were sent as earning

Made me hate and made me do the time, made me survive

It was never my intention to live past 30

It was never my responsibility to be fool-proof

And the only way to pave my grave was to make it dirty

Make it up and make it be the truth

In the guise of a friend she came as a complete surprise

Said there's no worse than the will to live, may it be your curse

In return I wished upon her a real long, long life . . .

Mom and dad were just imagination

Nothing they could do could make me real

Just as they could make their own creation

They could make their DNA congeal

The nightmare grows like ivy climbing up my body

Year by year I never even noticed it being there

It make me realize somewhere implied I should feel sorry

It's all been wrong and gotten me nowhere

Castaway on the Moon (2009, South Korea):

I haven't rented any DVDs since I got back from the U.S. in early May, so now there are a bunch of South Korean DVDs with English subtitles at Blockbusters that I want to check out. I rented this one because I had seen it on the shelves before, so it's an "older" one.

The English title isn't bad. It seems abstract, but there is a reason for it, kinda sorta. It tries to be more descriptive than "Kim's Island" which I gather is the translation of the Korean title. The Chinese title is alright, I guess, roughly translatable as "Desert Island Love" (荒島之愛).

The Chinese title gives away that at the heart of the film is a romance, but really it's more a quirky, "indie"-style film with funny elements about urban isolation. One character who chooses her isolation and one who finds himself stuck in his situation of isolation, but then gets used to it. Both of them in the middle of the capital city of Seoul.

He's a Robinson Crusoe type character who finds himself stranded, seemingly impossibly, on an island in the middle of the Han River, which runs through the heart of Seoul. His early attempts to get off the island all fail in perhaps a comedy of errors, some predictable and dragged on a bit too long, and as he resigns himself to being stuck there, he finds himself adapting and liking his situation. It's still better than his life he left behind as part of society.

She is a recluse living with her parents, locked inside her room. She has no direct contact with them or the outside world, and lives her life online and with a daily routine that she describes with labels which perhaps allow her to think she's living a "normal" life.

I quite liked the film. It's charming and cute and funny, but these people are in kinda dire situations in their own way. Outcasts, castaways, recluses in the heart of modern society. Needless to say I had no trouble identifying and empathizing with them, maybe a bit too much.

The landscapes of the two characters' worlds may be metaphors for what many people might feel about their own urban lives. His landscape being a junk-laden wilderness that he learns to live off, while hers is a junk-laden urban womb. Many of our landscapes include elements of both.

These two characters, separated by the space between an apartment building window and an island in the middle of the river, find a way to connect, and in connection they find hope and desire. Where do hope and desire lead? It can lead to despair or it can lead to pursuit, which in turn can lead to failure or fulfillment. These things are subtly probed in the film.

The film has problems, it's in no way perfect, probably not meant to be, and plenty of holes can be poked into it. But I found it enjoyable if not compelling, and I do think it's a commentary on modern life and the attractiveness of abandon due to becoming an anonymous smear in it. Fresh 7.5 out of 10 tomatoes.

A Million (2009, South Korea):

Mind you, there's no real method in how I'm choosing these DVDs off Blockbusters shelves. I know nothing about them beforehand. I look at the cover, check for English subtitles, then try to gauge the genre, generally avoiding smarmy melodramas, goofy romantic comedies and horror – although Korean horror films have a reputation for not being stupid like Western horror films, so I'm open to giving them a chance.

That said, I don't know what genres I'm looking for, just what I'm avoiding. This film I pegged as likely a thriller. Thriller and action films are borderline. There is a risk of stupidity in them. I rent them assuming the risk.

We learn with the first bits of dialogue in the film that a "contestant" is involved, and she's flown in on a 747 and is being rushed in an ambulance, and that an Interpol investigation is going on. I was impressed at how that much intriguing information is given us in such a concise fashion.

We then learn through flashback that contestants were recruited to participate in a reality game show with a winning prize of one million US dollars. No other information about the game is given or how the contestants would be chosen.

The eight chosen contestants are flown to Perth, Australia, then driven by the calmly creepy director and his cameraman way, way out into the outback for the games to begin.

Each day, footage of the competition is shot and uploaded to the internet, which is ostensibly why Interpol was already investigating when the final contestant is flown back to South Korea after the week-long competition. If the footage was real, an international criminal investigation was warranted.

The competition turns into a matter of survival, but the director continues to pull strings to keep the competition aspect going.

I'm going to give this film a fresh 7 out of 10 tomato rating. It's a pretty good thriller and kept my interest though the entire movie, but it also has many logic faults and situations that stretch credibility that need to be taken with a grain of salt, which I guess might be said about any thriller or action film, so I'm not sure what my criteria are.

For example when they pass out due to dehydration in the desert, they all pass out in the same area, at the same time, even though there is a wide disparity in physical fitness between the contestants. They're not major "oh, come on" moments, but they're there. And they never have to eat.

The pressing question of why the director character does what he does and what is the connection between these people does get answered in the end as a nice twist, and from the viewers' point of view, perhaps there is a bit of satisfaction in finding out, although not justifying his actions. But from a plot point of view, within the story, it kinda sorta doesn't make sense.

Interestingly, the director in "A Million" describes the part of the Outback they're in as "a desert island on dry land", and all of the contestants are urbanites who become like castaways there. That may be the extent of the similarity between these two films, but it did make me wonder whether there may be themes in the Korean collective consciousness that the directors were channeling.

In "Castaway", the two main characters are both living what might be considered "failed" lives in modern society. Their practicality and usefulness to society have come to an end, and their absence from society is of little consequence.

In "A Million", one of the contestants might be similar to them, basically an anti-social shut-in whose internet service was even cut off months ago. The remainder are comfortably full members of modern society, but looking closely at the personality characteristics of the rest of the contestants, all except one have definable faults:

There's a hot-shot, young stock broker whose motivation is greed ("Who would say no to an extra million?"); an ex-navy hot head bad apple; a self-absorbed, emotionally absent videographer/internet reporter; there's an arrogant, overly-confident athlete; a vain and materialistic bar hostess; and a timid student struggling to pass her civil exams.

The only one I can't say anything bad about, not that I can say anything particularly good about her either, is the contestant who is flown back to Korea at the beginning of the film, a pizza delivery part-timer.

I know, I know, I'm probably looking WAAAAY too far into it and I'm exaggerating the bad qualities of the other contestants because they're not all that unlikable. It's probably just a coincidence. But I wonder how the screenwriters decided she would be the winner.

memory lane/poetry corner

repost: now with sound (and full lyrics)

Back in college, I made the acquaintance of . . . well, several incredible songwriters, each of whom I can gush about, none of whom made it big despite what I consider their more than copious talent. The one brought to my mind now was a personal friend with whom I worked, and his writing struck a chord because he wrote about Asian American issues.

The last I heard, which is actually quite a while ago, he had entered the noble profession of elementary school teaching (I'm not being sarcastic), and has given up music and songwriting altogether, although I'm not sure I believe that 100%. I have a feeling, or I hope, that through the years he has written songs on the sly.

He wrote brilliant lyrics that I analyzed and explicated to the extent that I now wonder whether I scared him, making him question what he was putting out there that he hadn't intended.

He had written a song called "Yellow Yellow Woman" which had gotten some criticism from people who hadn't read the (hilarious and profound) lyrics and were just reacting to the title and the chorus (Someday I'm gonna marry me a yellow, yellow woman and have yellow, yellow babies all with yellow, yellow names), and he was doubting whether it should be included in the collection of songs we were recording.

09 Yellow Yellow Woman (lyrics/music/vocals by k. hung; I'm on all instruments including guitar, bass, drums, cowbell!, roto-toms, and an out of tune Eb on a cello steel drum pan belonging to the Oberlin Can Consortium steel drum band (of which I was a member and was able to record all the percussion in their panyard)).

Someday I'm gonna marry me a yellow, yellow woman

And have yellow, yellow babies all with yellow, yellow names

Someday I'm gonna marry me a yellow, yellow woman

And have yellow, yellow babies and they all will look the same

I wanna find a woman, yea, I need to find a woman

But I gotta find a woman who is my species

So I'm gonna take some action, some affirmative action

'Cause this lovin' that I need ain't equal opporunity

My momma keeps on askin', keeps on askin' askin' askin'

When you gonna settle down with some nice Chinese

She had better be from Taiwan or maybe even Fukian

But if not I'll settle for Korean or a Japanese

So here I am at college, at this equal, equal college

With my equal opportunity life

But I never ever thought that at this equal, equal college

I'd be lookin', lookin', lookin' for a wife

So now I'm roaming through the dining halls, scouting out the mailroom

Trying to find my woman in the library

And I'm looking through the phonebook, flipping, marking with a pencil

Every girl whose last name is Wong, Chen, or Lee

And I go to Asian students meetings, take East Asian Studies classes

Hopin', hopin', hopin', hopin' that I'll find her there

And at the very last all-campus Chinese New Year's celebration

Why the hell do you think that I was everywhere

And then I go to campus parties and I hear that Two Live Crew song "Me So Horny"

Oh, me so horny!

And then I laugh at all the Asian women, all dancing to a song that's making fun of them

But then I think:

That same song's being sung by me!

Well my mom wants to keep her traditions, wants to keep her past

Don't want no oranges when there's lemons growing on the family tree

But it's not like I'm already foreign, I was born in North Dakota

When I try to speak Chinese it all sounds Greek to me

So I'll respect my mom's tradition, her need to keep her past

And if she wants to keep on dreaming, well I guess then that is fine

But I think that I'll respect tradition, all the while I break tradition

I will draw as well as keep the family line

So if someday I marry me a yellow, yellow woman

And have yellow, yellow babies all with yellow, yellow names

It will kinda be ironic, 'cause it will not be intentional

'Cause yellow, yellow women, no, they don't all look the same

Yellow, yellow woman

Yellow, yellow woman

Yellow, yellow babies, yellow yellow names

Yellow, yellow woman

Yellow, yellow woman

Yellow, yellow babies, no they don't all look the same

(Well tell me who's to blame)

I had to argue him into including it because it was brilliant and we would make sure that everyone who received the tape would get a copy of the lyrics. I practically went verse by verse, line by line telling him how his song was friggin' brillig. I can see how that can be disturbing.

The lyrics below, which since I can't offer an audio version, I'm offering as a poem, he wrote in response to another brilliant song he wrote which is among my favorites of his.

That previous song was about a Japanese person who immigrated to America in the early 20th century to seek his fortune, only to face racist laws prohibiting him from owning land and then was sent to an internment camp during WWII while his son enlisted in the all Japanese American (and highly decorated) 442nd U.S. army regiment to fight against the Nazis, where he's killed in action. The significance in the title is that he changes his last name from Ohara to O'Hare to sound "more American".

08 The Ballad of Charlie Ohara (lyrics/music/vocals/piano: k. hung; I played guitar and bass; synthesizer by a. hirahara)

I call myself Charlie O'Hare

Though I know that's not the way to pronounce it

'Cause the voices in the postcards and letters

Dating back, back from the time I renounced it

Whisper my name 'cross the sea

Through the barbed wire, the sage brush lashed 'round my memory

For forty odd acres of land

Made a deal, just so the law wouldn't find us

 'Cause the laws in this land they assume

When we come, we leave our pride back behind us

So now I answer to this call

Even though I don't look one bit Irish at all

Our first born was named "Isamu"

"Uncle Sam", that was what everyone called him

He grew into a young man so strapling

Turned the head of even some giddy white woman

The day he became twenty-one

I signed him the deed and I looked toward the setting sun

Then the war came and, well, they lost our trust

So they sent us to a place where we choked in our dreams from the dust

Over a question of our loyalty

I said Look at my name, how much more American must I be?

Sam joined the 442nd

'Cause his actions spoke louder than my words did for him

They sent him to fight against the Nazis

Where he died taking the Gothic Line from them

Soon after that, they let some go

And sent 'em down to Chicago

On orders that we stay from our own

But I'm much too old to leave my home

So now I lie in the desert heat

Postcards and letters scattered at my feet

The voices there tell me of my shame

'Cause it's been so long since I've heard my name

My name

Heard my name

The message it came through the wire

"We regret to inform you of the death of Private Samuel O'Hare"

(Historical note: When the U.S. government started realizing that putting Japanese immigrants and Japanese Americans in concentration camps wasn't helping the war effort at all and wasting a lot of money, they started letting them go, but forbade them from settling back on the West Coast and forced them eastward in places like Chicago and told them not to form communities. Also, while in the concentration camps, loyalty tests were handed out to young men to determine whether they could be used in the war effort. While they were incarcerated without trial, solely due to their national origin, they were asked about their loyalty to the United States and willingness to fight for this government that incarcerated them and their families. Anyone who answered "No" to both question, whatever their reasons, were labeled "No-No Boys", and spent years in prison long after the war ended).

For this song he decided to try to write from a woman's perspective, and he chose the topic of an Asian war bride. I forget if we discussed it, but I think she's supposed to be Korean. That makes the most sense; he didn't want to repeat a Japanese character and I don't think it snows much in Vietnam. Also considering the U.S.'s hasty retreat out of Vietnam.

I do have a recorded version of the song, but I'm far too un-tech savvy to figure out how to upload it somewhere. We even recorded it at a real recording studio at the Oberlin Conservatory for one of our member's final project (who I think actually has become a noted jazz pianist in the New York jazz scene). His final project was to record a live ensemble in one take, which is why the arrangement is so threadbare and since he was engineering, he couldn't contribute any keyboard parts.

On the recording, our guitarist, an Indian American, couldn't figure out a part for the song, so we swapped instruments with me on guitar (his incredibly sweet Stratocaster) and him on bass. I listen to the song now and think of all the things he's doing wrong on the bass, and I'm sure he'd think the same about my guitar playing.

13 Let It Snow (lyrics/music/vocals/piano: k. hung; j. cotelingham: bass; me: guitar)

"Let It Snow"

In the winter's night, by the twilight's last gleaming
When the weatherman says it'll be 20 below
You can hear her voice from the window-ledge singing
"Let it snow, let it snow, please let it snow"

Met him at a dance on the army installation
Where she hung out after work on the assembly row
Above the boiler's din, you can often hear her singing
"Let it snow, let it snow, please let it snow"

So she came over here on the strength of his promise
She had heard it once on Armed Forces Radio
And his voice did sound a little bit like Frank Sinatra's singing
"Let it snow, let it snow, please let it snow"

And after visiting Missouri to meet his parents
They moved on to the base where he was lieutenant
But the blur of America it soon got to her head
So she spent her first days there inside sick in bed

'Cos her English was bad, she spent her days in the apartment
In the evening he'd take her out to see a show
But then he'd come home late for all the work at the office
Piled like snow...

So she would wait for him with his dinner warm and ready
Growing impatient staring out of the window
And all the while the days were growing shorter and shorter
A sign of snow, a sign of snow...

But when the meal was all over and the dishes put away
They discovered that they didn't have much of anything to say
And from her window was all of America she could see
And the gleam in her eye became the glare of the TV

Then late one night around the holiday season
He came back from the bar staggering through the cold
Was so drunk that he slammed the backdoor wide open
And it snowed

He threw her to the floor screaming curses in English
Not once caring if they might be words that she'd know
And the punches came, first a flurry, then a blizzard
And it snowed

And in the midst of it all through the tears through the pain
Remembered hearing once that snow was just frozen rain
And though she knew in two days it would be Christmas Day
She realized that she didn't celebrate anyway

So in the winter's night, by the twilight's last gleaming
When the weatherman says it'll be 20 below
You can hear her voice from the window-ledge singing
"Let it snow, let it snow, please let it snow"