Hello to everyone in 'the Cloud' of cold, dark, and endless sigh-burrr-space:

 

While travelling and videotaping in China for 6 months in 1988 (about 1000 years ago in the Tang dynasty- the Chinese invented 'Tang' didn't you know!), at a particularly noisy and dangerous time at Chinese New Year in Guilin (the karst limestone landscape on which Chinese artists base their brush paintings), I discovered a type of fire cracker called '100 rats running in all directions'.  If you have ever been underneath one of these explosions tossed out of a 2nd story window (as I have been!), you will remember it. Since I never met a 'met-A-4' I didn't like, I will use it in this blog to launch a shot-gun blast of scattershot observations.

- the other day in a super market in Khon Kaen in northeast Thailand, I came across a bag of snacks marked 'Media Food'.  At first I didn't get it, thinking that perhaps the food was made out of recycled circuit boards or something like that from China, but Tomiyo pointed out that it was meant to be eaten while watching pirated DVD's on TV.  How could I have been so blind?  Duh?

 

- the US is hitting the province of Swat in Pakistan on the border with Afghanistan with bombs and rockets fired by drones.   Which reminds me that Babe Ruth, the great New York Yankee hitter was called 'The Sultan of Swat'.  I wonder- is the Babe still lording it over the Taliban in that province?

 

- many Westerners who cannot pay for health care insurance in the the US and elsewhere, are forming a new breed of 'medical tourists' to India, Thailand and elsewhere- at 1/10 the cost of Western hospitalization and treatment. While driving down the street in Bangkok in a taxi recently, I swear to GodI thought I saw a sign on a hospital with the following: 'Whatsa Madda Wit Chiew Hospital'.  Perhaps I was hallucinating. The temperature outside was about 100 degrees Farenheit, the humidity was like the inside of rain forest, and the AC in the pink Toyota taxi was working overtime, trying to protect us from meltdown, so perhaps it was a fantasy on my part.  But then again...

 

- on another taxicab trip thru Bangkok, we passed thru an area of producing religious statues, shrines, etc.  We were caught in traffic right in front of a coffin maker (doc, can you do something about this coughin'?).  We watched thru the wide open store front as the coffin makers fabricated coffins out of 3/4" plywood and then proceeded to gussy them up with gold leaf, plaster ornaments, etc. until the final product looked fit for King Tut.  The taxi driver chuckled and said: 'dead man box'.  Myself?  While crossing streets in southeast Asia where they drive on the English side of the road, I always tell Tomiyo to 'look out and make sure we don't get hit by a Won-Ton truck coming from the opposite direction'.  In America, a simple cardboard box (lined with plastic of course!), will run you about $500.  I'll bet the Thai version is cheaper- and more 'high class'.

 

- one night in the Night Bazaar hotel in Chiang-Mai, I was on the Internet by the front window.  Some of the ladies vending on the street, came inside the lobby to get the advantage of a little air-conditioning since the humidity outside was horrendous.  One of the ladies had a pink 'tennis racket' with a battery operated electrified grid with which to swat.  She started swatting them like mad.  I asked her to swat under the table cuz mosquitoes like dark areas to hide.  She swatted and killed so many, I made a joke that she was playing 'Chiang-Mai' tennis.  Her and the other ladies thought that that was the funniest thing they had ever heard and they reminded me of it every time I stepped outside the hotel.  They understood some English so I told her that her tennis playing was superb but that she made an awful racket.  She laughed. I don't know if she got the joke.  I don't know if I got the joke!

 

- while departing Chiang-Mai for Bangkok by bus, we discovered that the bus station was a combination bus station/laundromat.  In an amongst the luggage to be loaded onto the bus, were sheets and towels washed for various hotels in the area.  This got my mind going.  I began to wonder if the driver of the bus had ever been to Bangkok.  Which reminded me of an old Bob Newhart comedy bit about an 'economy' airline flying to Hawaii- 'The American Sash and Door and Airline Company'.  On this airline, every passenger was given a strap to hang on to and before landing, the pilot would come on the PA system and ask the passengers if Hawaii was kidney shaped or not.

 

- the laundromat image stuck in my mind even further!  I remembered that 'Kim's Video' in the Lower East Side of New York, started out as a laundromat where many

punk/rocker/artist types would come in and do their laundry.  They got bored watching their clothes rotate endlessly, so they asked the Korean owner Kim to throw up some video for them to watch.  He wanted suggestions of the type of films they wanted to see.  The outcome over several years was the WILDEST collection of independent/avant-garde/horror/sci-fi/great director films on the face of the planet.  The laundromat went the way of all flesh, and Kim found himself with a video rental business encompassing about 4 stores throughout Manhattan.  Unfortunately, competition forced Kim out of business, but he put his collection up for sale. A smart little Sicilian female artist living in New York who loved Kim's, approached her town in Sicily, and the whole collection was purchased by the town for a library and WILL BE MADE AVAILABLE FOR FREE ON THE WORLD WIDE WEB!!!  Fantastic!  And it all started from some grungy Lower East Side types deciding it was about time to 'clean up their act'.

 

- I digress even further!  While going to grad school in San Francisco from 1965-69  and living in Haight Ashbury (you had to be there to understand!), my friend Murray Sperber (a member of the Bronfman/Seagrams family who was going to grad school at Berkeley), told me about a group of 'hippies' at Berkeley who would drop LSD, go to a laundromat, crawl inside the dryers, fix the switch so the dryer would rotate with the door open (so that they would not get cooked or covered with 'unsightly' lint), and have themselves a 'psychelelic experience'.  As Jimi Hendrix said: 'Are You Experienced?'

 

- then there is my recently deceased acquaintance Willoughby Sharp, a conceptual artist in New York who started 'Avalanche Magazine'.  Back in the '70's, he too dropped acid, put on a diaper, and crawled inside a laundromat dryer in a videotaped attempt to 're-create' his birth.  Me?  I want a wum with a vu.

 

- while attending the OTOP trade fair of craft items in Bangkok in the center of a sports stadium, we discovered fans dispensing water in a mist  in front of the fan blades.  Other shopping centers outdoors had similar devices with pipes running up above dispensing mist- supposedly to dispel the heat.  Perhaps someone can explain to me the logic of pumping more water into an atmosphere which is already completely saturated.  Is there such a thing as a 'super-saturated' atmosphere?  My degree in bio-chemistry fails me again!

 

- shouldn't the '100 rats running in all directions' metaphor apply to Wall Street?  Except it should be 1000 rats, and unfortunately, they ain't running and seem to want MORE!!!

 

'Girl we gotta get outa this place

If its the last thing we ever do

Girl we gotta get outa this place

Girl there's a better life for me and you

 

(Maybe on 'Tobacco Road') sez:

the Electric Mule

 

Copyright Ernest Gusella 2009