philosophical discoveries at the gym

yesterday after work, i was on the treadmill at the gym. yes, that gym and yes, she was there.

but there were no issues with her this time although they called her/my name over the PA system several times and it felt weird.

instead, i was distracted by:
a) the absurd nature of humans driving to a commercial space to run on the spot
b) the self-imposed alienating behaviour everyone exhibits towards each other

which, for me, pointed to thoughts of existentialism.

i find it ridiculous that there 20 of us standing less than a meter apart, running on the spot, and not acknowledging each other.

but here's the worst part, it doesn't matter how fast my treadmill speed is set to, i'm always running as fast as the fastest person around me. in fact, i must consciously run slower by turning off my peripherals and focusing on the treadmill panel.

what the eff is wrong with me?

for our consideration

a new way to distribute your film without going the film fest route.


From Here To Awesome: Why Film Festivals Don’t Work

muscle relaxant + staying up until 4am IS THE NEW drinking too much

rob and i filmed our favorite local comedian, paul bae, at lafflines (new west) on friday and twice on saturday. the shows were hilarious and we had a fun time filming and immersing ourselves into an unfamiliar environment.

here's a still of the club and paul during one of his jokes about asian drivers. it's one of my favourite jokes.





we're planning on putting together a promo for paul to pitch to a broadcaster.

after his first show, my shoulders and knees were in 'level red' pain so i popped a muscle relaxant that, since the last wedding gig, i've learned to bring along to all location filming. it worked wonders and the pain just melted away.

we arrived home at 1:30am and, despite our age, didn't feel tired so we watched the documentary, The Comedians of Comedy; laughing outloud and giggling until 4am!

we woke up around 12:30pm today and rob seemed fine but my head felt tres delicate. feeling like i have a hangover is bullshit; absolutely bullshit when i didn't have the joy of drinking to warrant such pain.

random stuff

.... all taken on my iphone ....


i forced rob to stand infront of this rather large lunar new year display at aberdeen mall. i love making him do shit like that.


a great looking bench at the seabus terminal



at the dean and britta show last thursday


lunch with my family last saturday at lido restaurant - their big draw is the pineapple bun with a slab of butter inside. please note that the pineapple bun doesn't taste at all like a pineapple. it just tastes like a buttery bun.

in the "it's not for me" bin

up the yangtze
:: documentary, canadian, about the economic impact of the 3 gorges dam project in china
:: although i'm rather happy and proud that a 30 year old, chinese canadian from ottawa made it big in the doc world (i.e. the film did really well at sundance this year), i didn't find the film innovative. i thought the film lacked innovation in: cinematography, story development, and editing. but really, i thought the story of economically disadvantaged people (although tragic) was played out in the same manner it's been played out for decades and i find this approach simple.
:: so glad for the director, go canada go! but not inspired by the film, sorry.

Up The Yangtze film website

welcome back to the computer age

not having our skookum mac pro computer for 2 weeks felt like a test on the scale of Job; you know Job from the bible.

for the past 2 weeks, we only had our super slow ibook for email and internetting and let-me-tell-you we'd do about 2 minutes of web surfing and then shut the fucker down cuz it felt like DIAL-UP!

it was painful on par with watching someone use the menu bar instead of using keyboard shortcuts. my iphone was faster than the ibook.

so, our computer finally returned this evening and we're catching up on youtube videos and online trailers and emails... and uploading pictures from last week's party.

i can't believe how wonderful life is right now.

it's all coming up roses

i had an amazing time at our lunar new year party.

here are some reasons:
1/ i didn't turn into a stress case even though 30 mins before the official start of the party i still hadn't started making the pork dumplings yet. my original plan was to make the 300 dumplings the week leading up to the party.
2/ in 2 hours, rob and i turned 3 pounds of pork into a large amount of pork dumplings. i think it was close to 300 but i didn't count them.
3/ i was coming down with a sinus flu but i didn't let it affect my ability to party until 2am.
4/ i finally had a party where i didn't run out of food or drink.
5/ i got to chat with friends i haven't seen in a while.
6/ i had a mild hangover the next day.

pictures will be forthcoming.

... ... ...
in the meantime, we're still playing the waiting game with film festivals. also, we received an email today from ladyhawk's USA pr chick that HARP magazine wants to interview us. hold on, it's not that exciting. the interview consists of 4 questions that we answer via email.

but it's still rather fun.

. . . . . .
in other news, rob and i will celebrating the DAY OF LOVE by attending a dean and britta show at richards on richards. these two were part of a music doc that chronicled the last tour of the band, LUNA. i highly recommend this music doc.

...

we spent a good 24 hours feeling pretty bummed about not getting into SXSW.

we consoled ourselves friday night with a bottle of good, red french wine, watched many episodes of Arrested Development and took turns reminding each other that the doc is a piece we're proud of and that we shouldn't take the decision personally.

our status is a little less than AWESOME but still AWESOME because we have the support of Ladyhawk's record label behind us, we're already rather distracted by our next film project and, most importantly, we have family and friends that we're lucky to have in our lives.

but because we had put all our hopes into SXSW, we had to revisit our strategy and here's what we've come up with for plan b:
1/ submit to more film festivals
2/ release the dvd in the fall with a non-traditional distribution model.

and to support the release, we were thinking of borrowing an idea from the Four Eyed Monsters people by setting up screenings ourselves; possibly showing the movie the night before a Ladyhawk show in that city.

anyways, these are just all ideas.

we're still waiting to hear back from 10 other film festivals that we've submitted to and there'll be 10 more that we'll be submitting to which means there's still more rejections to look forward to.

in the meantime, i have about 300 dumplings to prepare for my lunar new year party this saturday. so really, life is pretty rad.