Halloween 2016

Halloween has always been a strange holiday, but you have not tricked or treated until you have partied with drunk Chinese people in zombie makeup who have no idea why everyone is dressed up. Just tell them it is the tradition and they will go along. I have met plenty of Chinese people who don't understand Chinese traditions, but follow them anyway. “That's just the way we do it” is good enough.

We have had a big Halloween party every year I have been in Hong Kong. More often than not, I have no idea what kind of costume I'm going to come up with until the last minute. They are usually not very good. Probably because I only come up with them at the last minute. Unfortunately, I'm usually not the worst. Fortunately, there is always someone who put some effort into it and does something interesting. This year, I don't have to worry about it.

I was originally supposed to go back to Tel Aviv at the beginning of November, but now I'm going at the end of October. That means I will not only miss the election, but also Halloween. I'm looking forward to the election as seen through Israeli media. I'm guessing Halloween is not going to be the same.

I have been told Halloween is not very popular in Israel. They have Purim in March, which is more giving to charity than begging the neighbors for candy, but they dress up in wild costumes and party, which is pretty much what Halloween is all about if you are not a child.

I will miss Halloween this year, so no zombies, vampires or pirates for me. But if Trump wins the election, it will still be a scary year.

Party All the Time

I don't normally care that much about politics. Politicians say whatever they think will get them elected, and the higher the office, the fewer campaign promises they will ever keep. Everyone knows it, but people pick sides anyway. Party loyalty is more important than common sense in a country like the United States. It is almost like sports, except people pick their sports teams based on where they live, and they have more realistic expectations. I want the Vikings to win the Super Bowl because I am from Minnesota, but I know that is never going to happen. Political parties are handed down from generation to generation.

I did not particularly care who won in 2012. Obama's first term was disappointing and Romney was an elitist career politician completely out of touch with the people. The funny thing is, there is always at least one elitist career politician completely out of touch with the people in each election. When he is a Republican, Democrats say that is bad. When he is a Democrat, Republicans say that is bad.

Therein lies my biggest problem with politics. It is as hypocritical as any billion dollar church. All of the arguments one party uses against another in one election are reversed in another election. Clinton (D) has experience, which is great according to Democrats and bad according to Republicans. But in 2008, Obama (D) had no experience and that was great according to Democrats and bad according to Republicans.

In 2004, Kerry (D) was criticized by Republicans for going to school in Switzerland and knowing French. Those same Republicans had no problem with Romney (R) living in France and knowing French. The voters did not care either way. Or maybe they did. Both candidates lost.

Democrats always criticize rich Republicans, even though Democrats have had plenty of very wealthy candidates of their own. Bush (R) was a rich elitist in 2000 and 2004, even though his opponents were from extremely wealthy families. Gore (D) followed his father into politics just like Bush, and Kerry (D) was the richest person in the senate. Of the top 10 richest presidents, 5 were Democrats (Kennedy, Jackson, Johnson, Roosevelt, Clinton) and 2 were Republicans (Roosevelt and Hoover). The other 3 were before the Democrats or Republicans existed. Ironically, George Washington is the only president that everyone likes, and he was richer than almost all of them combined.

But the thing is, none of that matters. What their parents did, where they went to school, what they did before running is all irrelevant. Democrats will vote for the Democrat, Republicans will vote for the Republican. No matter what. Party loyalty is more important to Americans than anything else. Or at least to the few Americans who actually vote.

I'm not a member of either party. As an independent, I can vote for anyone. The two corporate parties and the media want everyone to think there are only two parties, but there are usually several in each election. I come from a state where independence is considered a good thing. People assume we are all Democrats because we vote for the Democrat in most presidential elections, but that is partly because Mondale and Humphrey were on the ballot for 20 years. Other parties do well in lower offices. We have had independent and Reform governors, independent and Farmer-Labor senators and mayors from every party imaginable.

Democrats need not fear that I'm not voting for their candidate. She will win my state by a mile. Republicans need not care that I never vote for their presidential candidates. As an absentee voter, my vote is never counted. But I vote anyway. I have every right to vote in my country's elections, no matter where I live. And I have just as much right to vote for people who are not members of the two most corrupt corporate parties the country has ever known.

Dancing Across Asia

I'm going to Tel Aviv on Saturday. As much as I would love to stay as long as I can, this will be a short trip. I'm going for a rehearsal and then I have to come back. I always try to sneak in as much time for myself whenever I travel anywhere, but when you juggle different jobs, you can't always look around.

My next trip will be next month. I will be in Tel Aviv during the election. That should be interesting. It will not be the first time I have watched a presidential election from another country, but it will be my first time from Israel. I'm looking forward to their take on everything. Hong Kong did not seem to care whether Obama or Romney won. Israel might have an opinion on Clinton versus Trump.

Harry part 2

I went out on a second date with Harry. It was nothing special. I don't think there will be a third date. It is not so much that there is anything particularly wrong with him. There was simply no spark. We also have incompatible schedules, so even if we wanted to date, it would be a pain in the butt to find the right times.

Maybe I'm not being fair. I want someone more interesting, more exciting, and yes, more handsome. Maybe that is superficial of me. But none of my ex-boyfriends were the complete package. They had a few good things going for them, but there were always giant red flags that I ignored. Maybe I'm supposed to settle for whoever is available right now, but I don't even like the way that sounds. There is nothing wrong with being single.

We still have the Clear Water Bay house. That means more people coming over. When you have two roommates in an apartment, your friends come over from time to time. When you have a giant house with a swimming pool and hot tub, you are never alone. Through no fault of my own, I have a few phone numbers of eligible young bachelors. There is nothing I like about the idea of dating more than one guy at a time, but I don't see anything wrong with a few phone calls. Maybe having all these other guys around is affecting my decisions about Harry. Most likely.

I thought about inviting Harry to the big house, but he is really hairy. I know how terrible that makes me sound, but we are using that pool like there's no tomorrow. If he went in, it would be clogged for days.

One of my best friends has a cousin with Down syndrome. She loves that pool almost as much as I do. When one of Kevin's coworkers complained that she should not be in the pool for some stupid reason, we kicked the coworker out of the house. Since his boss is also Kevin's boss, there is a pretty good chance that this story might get back to the boss. It is theoretically possible that we might not get to use this house anymore. If that happens, so be it. We will gladly kick out an asshole over someone with Down syndrome any day.

And yet, I don't want Harry in the pool because he is too hairy. Go figure.

Moon Festival 2016

The weather was pretty good over the weekend. Typhoon Meranti was a big one, but it hit nothing until it slammed into Xiamen. By then, it was weaker and did not cause nearly as much damage as it would have if it made landfall earlier. Typhoon Malakas did not come anywhere close to Hong Kong. It curved around Taiwan and headed toward Japan.

Some people in Taiwan had a pretty wet Moon Festival, but skies were clear enough around here to watch all the lanterns set off over the ocean. I have watched countless lanterns float away from Clear Water Bay and Victoria Harbour over the years, but I'm still not used to it. There is no comparable experience where I come from.

The most important part about the Moon Festival, of course, is having a party. This is a big day for family barbecues, but for those of us without family in town, it is a day for friends. We had a party at the big house with friends, friends of friends and people I have never seen before in my life.

One of those people asked me out on a date. I already had a second date with Harry lined up, so I told this new guy to give me his number and I would get back to him. I'm sure he thought I was brushing him off, but I'm not at all comfortable going out with one guy while more or less going out with another.

I have not seen Harry since our first date back in July, but we have talked on the phone a few times. Neither of us is opposed to a second date, but we both seem too busy to really have any kind of dating life. I have only had three dates in the last four months, or last 16 months if you want to get technical. They were all first dates, so they were more like job interviews than spending time with anyone. My second date with Harry will be later this week, if we can both keep our schedules.

Big House 2016

Every year, generally at the end of summer/beginning of autumn, Kevin's boss takes a vacation and leaves town for about a month. He has a beautiful house overlooking the South China Sea at Clear Water Bay. To keep burglars away, water the plants and “not let the maid get tempted”, Kevin looks after the house. His boss might not be the nicest guy in the world, and there is probably more than a little race and/or class prejudice toward the maid, but it is no great hardship to live in a 4 bedroom house on a cliff near the ocean for a month.

Kevin, Lily and I all started staying there when we lived in tiny 1 bedroom box apartments. Now that we live in a decent-size apartment with enough room for everyone, we don't really need to stay at the big house. But we do anyway. It's a really nice house. We don't need the space, but the kitchen has everything and there is a large outdoor deck overlooking the ocean. Best of all, the house has a swimming pool.

Hong Kong has dozens of public swimming pools spread out all over the city. Hongkongers definitely love to swim. They also love to treat their pools like toilets. It is as disgusting as it sounds. The first time I saw a mother hold her young son's penis while he stood on the ledge of the pool and let loose in the water, I was horrified. The first time I saw an adult man do something even worse, I knew I would never go back to a public pool ever again.

The swimming pool at the Clear Water Bay house is entirely private. That means it is clean and will remain clean. I plan on using it every day. I'm sure Lily and Kevin will use it as much as they want. We might invite a few people over to use it as well. I guarantee that none of us will treat it like a toilet.

Today is the beginning of the Moon Festival. Tomorrow is the official holiday. It is also Friday, and we are at the house, so we are having a party. That pool deck is a pretty good place to host a dozen friends. The view is amazing and spilling alcohol outdoors never hurt anyone. There is a typhoon headed our way, but it's not supposed to hit Hong Kong. We will have to wait and see how it affects the lanterns.

Hong Kong Elections

Hong Kong held elections last week, almost two years after the big umbrella protests. A lot of people were expecting some big changes. The protests brought out huge crowds and pretty much shut down parts of Admiralty for longer than Beijing wanted the world to know. In the end, it never really made much difference.

The pro-Beijing parties lost three seats. But the pro-democracy parties also lost three seats. The smaller anti-establishment parties got a few seats, which some called a great victory, but they mostly never had any before this election, so they had nowhere to go but up. I read an article about how ironic it was that the anti-establishment parties did so well when the pro-democracy candidates who believe in pretty much the same things did poorly. But it was not ironic at all. Beijing forced several pro-independence candidates to drop out while a few prominent pro-democracy candidates dropped out on their own. Without the famous names, it was no surprise that people voted for more unknown, new options.

The largest party, DAB, is pro-Beijing and was the largest before and after the election. They have been in charge for the last decade and don't seem to be going away anytime soon. The Civic Party, the largest pro-democracy party, goes up and down with every election. Maybe if the Umbrella Movement was less than a year before the elections, something might have changed. Two years is plenty of time for people to be distracted by the latest cell phones and TV shows.

9/11

Gotta Act, Gotta Dance

I was originally supposed to go to Jerusalem for the big premiere, which I did, but I also went to Tel Aviv for some rehearsals.

The Jerusalem premiere was just like a big studio Hollywood premiere in front of Grauman's Chinese Theater. Except there were far fewer people, no searchlights, not nearly as many flashing paparazzi lights and the theater looked like a normal building. Israel does not seem to have the paparazzi problem of the United States. They exist, and a couple of the people involved in this movie are well known to the Israeli public, but I never noticed any photographers hell bent on getting the perfect shot at all costs.

There was a red carpet, for some reason, but no giant mob of screaming fans. There were fans, but it was nothing like The Beatles landing at JFK. It was more like a James Taylor concert at the LDS Conference Center in Salt Lake City. Either way, no one was there to see me. Most people probably thought I was someone's guest or personal assistant.

The movie itself was amazing. I can say that without sounding like I'm bragging because I am barely in it. A team of professional artists and filmmakers are responsible for everything good about this movie. Most of it is in Hebrew, and there were no English subtitles at the premiere, but I knew what was going on because I had an English version of the script.

And that is the saddest part about this entire experience. Most of the world will never see this movie because it is not in English. Non-English speaking countries put subtitles on English language movies all the time. Most of the world is used to subtitled movies. In places like China, everything is subtitled, even if the movie is in Chinese. But most of the world only wants to see movies that are either in their language or in English with subtitles in their language. That's a shame. One of the best movies I have ever seen was about the effects of Mao's Cultural Revolution on children. It is a Chinese movie about China, so it is in Chinese. It never played in any American theaters. It was a hit in China, but I don't know if it ever went to any other country.

After my five minutes as a movie star in Jerusalem, I went to Tel Aviv. I will be in a show opening in November, so I went to a few rehearsals. I have every intention of going back for more rehearsals, but it's not like I can be there every day. It is also not like I need to. The rehearsal schedule is pretty open. One of the greatest things about working with people who know their job is that everyone gets on the same page fairly easily. In high school, it took a full semester just to work out a simple sequence. In the world of professional adults, we will be ready for curtain in ten weeks.

Gene Wilder

Gene Wilder died while I was in Jerusalem. The only positive I can think of is that he died while listening to Ella Fitzgerald's version of “Over the Rainbow”.

His work as a director was hit and miss. The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother is underappreciated brilliance. Haunted Honeymoon, not so much. He was more successful as a writer. Young Frankenstein, The World's Greatest Lover, The Woman in Red. But more than anything else, he will always be remembered for his acting. He played Billy Bibbit, John Quincy Adams, John Tyler, Robert Todd Lincoln, Rutherford Hayes on Broadway, and Sid Caesar in London's West End. On screen, he played Leo Bloom, Willy Wonka, Dr Doug Ross, The Waco Kid, Dr Frederick Frankenstein, Sigerson Holmes, Rudy Valentine, Rabbi Avram Belinski.

He was in the Broadway premieres of Grahame Greene's The Complaisant Lover with Sandy Dennis and Michael Redgrave; Bertolt Brecht's Mother Courage and Her Children, directed by Jerome Robbins and starring Anne Bancroft and Barbara Harris; Ken Kesey's One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest, starring Kirk Douglas, Joan Tetzel, William Daniels; AE Hotchner's The White House, starring Helen Hayes and Fritz Weaver; and starred in Murray Schisgal's Luv with Barbara Bel Geddes and Larry Blyden.


Bonnie and Clyde
directed by Arthur Penn
written by Robert Benton & David Newman
produced by Warren Beatty
starring Warren Beatty, Faye Dunaway, Michael J Pollard, Gene Hackman, Estelle Parsons, Gene Wilder

The Producers
Directed & written by Mel Brooks
Music by John Morris
Starring Zero Mostel, Gene Wilder, Dick Shawn, Estelle Winwood, Christopher Hewett, Kenneth Mars, Lee Meredith, Andreas Voutsinas

Start the Revolution Without Me
directed by Bud Yorkin
starring Gene Wilder, Donald Sutherland, Rosalind Knight, Orson Welles

Quackser Fortune Has a Cousin in the Bronx
directed by Waris Hussein
starring Gene Wilder, Margot Kidder

Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory
directed by Mel Stuart
written by Roald Dahl
starring Gene Wilder, Jack Albertson, Peter Ostrum, Julie Dawn Cole, Roy Kinnear

Everything You Always Wanted to Know About Sex (But Were Afraid to Ask)
directed & written by Woody Allen
“What Is Sodomy?” starring Gene Wilder

Rhinoceros
directed by Tom O'Horgan
starring Gene Wilder, Zero Mostel, Karen Black

Blazing Saddles
Directed by Mel Brooks
Written by Andrew Bergman, Mel Brooks, Richard Pryor, Norman Steinberg
Music by John Morris
Starring Cleavon Little, Gene Wilder, Harvey Korman, Madeline Kahn, Slim Pickens, Mel Brooks, Burton Gilliam, Alex Karras, David Huddleston, Liam Dunn, John Hillerman, George Furth, Jack Starrett, Carol Arthur, Dom DeLuise, Robert Ridgely

The Little Prince
directed & produced by Stanley Donen
written by Alan Jay Lerner
music by Alan Jay Lerner & Frederick Loewe
starring Steven Warner, Richard Kiley, Bob Fosse, Gene Wilder

Young Frankenstein
Directed by Mel Brooks
Written by Gene Wilder & Mel Brooks
Music by John Morris
Starring Gene Wilder, Peter Boyle, Marty Feldman, Cloris Leachman, Teri Garr, Madeline Kahn, Kenneth Mars, Gene Hackman, Liam Dunn, Mel Brooks

The Adventure of Sherlock Holmes' Smarter Brother
Directed & written by Gene Wilder
Music by John Morris
Starring Gene Wilder, Madeline Kahn, Marty Feldman, Dom DeLuise, Leo McKern, Douglas Wilmer, Thorley Walters, Mel Brooks, Albert Finney

Silver Streak
directed by Arthur Hiller
written by Colin Higgins
produced by Thomas Miller & Edward Milkis
starring Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Jill Clayburgh, Ned Beatty, Patrick McGoohan, Ray Walston, Scatman Crothers

The World's Greatest Lover
directed, written & produced by Gene Wilder
starring Gene Wilder, Carol Kane, Dom DeLuise, Danny DeVito, Fritz Feld, Ronny Graham

The Frisco Kid
directed by Robert Aldrich
starring Gene Wilder, Harrison Ford, Val Bisoglio, Penny Peyser, Frank De Vol, Vincent Schiavelli

Sunday Lovers
“Skippy” directed & written by Gene Wilder
starring Gene Wilder, Kathleen Quinlan, Luis Ávalos

Stir Crazy
directed by Sidney Poitier
written by Bruce Jay Friedman
starring Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Georg Stanford Brown, JoBeth Williams, Craig T Nelson, Luis Ávalos

Hanky Panky
directed by Sidney Poitier
starring Gene Wilder, Gilda Radner, Richard Widmark, Kathleen Quinlan

The Woman in Red
directed & written by Gene Wilder
soundtrack by Stevie Wonder
starring Gene Wilder, Gilda Radner, Kelly LeBrock, Charles Grodin, Joseph Bologna, Judith Ivey

Haunted Honeymoon
directed by Gene Wilder
written by Gene Wilder & Terence Marsh
starring Gene Wilder, Gilda Radner, Dom DeLuise, Jonathan Pryce

See No Evil, Hear No Evil
directed by Arthur Hiller
written by Gene Wilder, Eliot Wald, Andrew Kurtzman, Earl Barret, Arne Sultan
music by Stewart Copeland
starring Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Joan Severance, Kevin Spacey

Funny About Love
directed by Leonard Nimoy
written by David Frankel & Norman Steinberg
starring Gene Wilder, Christine Lahti, Mary Stuart Masterson, Wendie Malick, Anne Jackson

Another You
directed by Maurice Phillips
written & produced by Ziggy Steinberg
starring Gene Wilder, Richard Pryor, Mercedes Ruehl, Kevin Pollak