The further adventures of an earthbound alien

Here I am in LA again. And I’m glad to be here.
I just read the pajamacatz blog as I was waiting for “Deadwood” to come on.

I personally am reminded of, not the day I finally arrived in Michigan but, the day I left LA. It felt like the right thing to do. It’s a very long and bizarre story filled with remorse, a final good bye to a very strange bird and a stiff back, that someday I may set to music. For now let’s just say that I saw the animation biz drying up.

The thing I never considered was digging in and fighting, Alamo style. I chose flight. Flight masked in a million little excesses. I guess you never quit struggling. All I ever thought is that if you want something you have to try really hard to get it. I resigned to that type of thinking for a long time. The problem has always been that if you do that you should have a reasonable idea about what you want. Did I? No.
Do I?

Not really, but after six years of deliberating in the wilds of northern Michigan I think I have a better idea. If and when I return to the only thing I really like doing (animation for those who don’t know me) where you have to be if you want to do it (LA) I’ll be armed with a piece of mind that I wouldn’t have unless I did what I’ve done, where I did it.
The other little problem that I left out is that if you fight to get something, you have to fight to keep it. People are animals!

…A little to vague?
Sorry.

I will return with the ability to forgive myself, sort of. I won’t be afraid to make mistakes. Maybe I’ll just not be so hard on me. I will return with a little more tolerance. I’ll forgive the world for being the world. I don’t know if Michigan did that to me or that’s just a residual effect of the hair-graying process.
The truth is (…and here’s something that every single person I have ever met in my entire life will be surprised by) I miss LA.

I’ll give everyone a second to get over that.

When I first came here I had nowhere else to go and no money. All I had was a half-promise of someone who wanted to see my portfolio and a friend who was nice enough to give me a couch to sleep on and a place to put my shit. A long story short, LA was nice enough to me to provide me with a profession, a wife and a kid. But I was programmed to keep looking. Was the animation biz going to keep going? I thought I had better diversify my interest before the animation bubble broke. I call that Detroit paranoia. Whatever job you have, you will loose,that’s just the way it is.

Basically, I grabbed and ran. But to me, life in Michigan was little more than a restless retirement. I freelanced some stuff but if wasn’t blowing my skirt up. I looked into other jobs. I thought a class. I even talked to a woman about the real-estate business. But there is nothing there for me. I began to remember what drove me away from Michigan in the first place. I went east to get that real production groove back. Twice, once to Berlin and a second time to SE Asia. The money was great, but I was away from my family. Why couldn’t I do what I like and go home to my family every night? Certainly, there are people out there who do that.

The real world is a huge mystery to me. I don’t know why people do the things they do. And I’m not going to get into that because, who cares!

Pretty much everyone in LA is from somewhere else. And most of the people that I know have a dream plan to, someday move somewhere else. I don’t know anyone who says, “This is where we’ll live forever. When I come back, boy will I give them an ear full.

Did you ever notice, when people flip out and go on killing sprees they generally head west? They never get here, but this is where they are going.
That’s what I like about LA. Nuts!

Are the people flakey here? A few, I suppose. But there are a few flakes in New York. What about the he/she who wanted to park my car? I wasn’t even in a car! Are Los Angelinos under educated? Are they shallow? Are they opposite of New Yorkers? My answer to that is, Fuck New York! It’s cold and smells like piss most of the time. They are no better, cooler or smarter than the people out here. We have JPL! They build airplanes out here. Do you know how much brainpower it takes to come up with a motion control machine? We invented the squib. Did they do that in NY? No. Johnny Lydon, Eric Idle, John Cleese all live out here. Who lives in New York? Carrot top? No he lives in Vegas… OK forget that last thing. Famous people live everywhere.
Anyway, I’ll admit that LA is a pain. LA is to big for any one person to know all about it. It really should be a bunch of different cities: San Fernando, Palms, LA, and Hollywoods. And it should have elevated trains chris-crossing the city. Enough with the north / south thing. What if someone in Burbank wants to go to the ocean?

LA has its problems. But so does everywhere. There are even problems in northern Michigan. So, why not LA? We find a place with a yard and a driveway, a school and I make some money. There we live here now. ...Someday.

Home at last. Next week it’s off to Vegas. Looks like the old blog is going into hibernation so check back periodically and maybe I’ll treat you all with more foolishness and wacky photos. For now, behold beautiful Hangzhou:
The lake and the Lotus
the dinner cruise: the food just jumps off the plate and escapes into the lake.

Ben and Joe walk into the sunset.

I'll be back when something happens, in the mean time...
Stay lucky you punks!

Yesterday's farewell lunch:But for today:
Still in the airport! As it turns out there’s a four-hour layover in Detroit. No worries, as much as I’d like to be home, just being back in frightened old America will have to do for now. The customs lady was snotty to me. I won’t go into detail but I think there’s some homeland security incentive to snap at every third person. It’s probably another one of those, “find the terrorist” technique. They give you a dirty look that says, “I hate this frickin job” and if your reply is anything less than, “drop the ‘tude bitch, I hate flying and your job” you get a pass.
There also seem to be a lot more TV’s here at DTW than any of the airports that I’ve visited over the past year. (10 to be exact) And lo and behold the televisions all seem to be tuned to Fox news. Or as I like to call it, “News for retards.” You know what happens if you spin too much? You screw yourself into the ground. I look at Fox news the same way I look at the Home Shopping Channel. They are very good at selling crap that I wouldn’t buy in a million years.

One segment showed a guy, on location at an airport, holding a bottle of water, in case the viewer didn’t know what a bottle of water looked like. “This,” he said. “This is the type of item that you will no longer be allowed to take on an airplane.” Yes, it seems those carefree days of carrying water bottled down the gangway are over. Oh, how I’ll miss them. I remember the good old days when I would carry water on to the plane. One time I carried a whole case of Perrier onto a Cessna. Memories.

For now, view the exotic pictures of the east.
Here's what a student of Sardonics sees:And here it is without the filter:

...My little Lotus blossum.

A full photo tour by Joe is available to view at: http://web.mac.com/josephwalker1/iWeb/Shanghi/Shanghai%20Day%201.html

There is really nothing new to report today. There was some more awkward food. See if you can guess who today’s lucky victim was.

The food here is really starting to freak me out. We’ve been wined and dined by some pretty high rollers. They have been trying to either impress us, or kill us with the exotic cuisine.

I think I’ve done pretty good so far slamming down some things that I wouldn’t even want to pick up. But I think I’ve passed the test. I am now KLINGON!
Tonight we had a of couple beers and a game of pool. I guess the most interesting thing about the game was that the cue was skinnier than the American variety and the balls were smaller. This condition, one might assume, is chronic all over Asia and not restricted to the game of billiards. But, since I have no hard evidence, I’ll just leave it to the imagination of the average blog reader. It did make the discussion during the game a little monotints and at times silly, but we managed.

Tomorrow I fly home. I’ll be glad to be on that plane. I have discovered the button on the business class seats that turns your seat into a bed. It’s very nice! So as you gaze at the China that I have, for the time being, left behind, you can rest assured that I too am resting assured.

By the way, today's mystery animal was:

Pond Snails! Klingon like snale! It make klingon Kladgizxukoux all over!

Stay in shape with sardonics. Tone your abs by waving off reason, strengthen your cardio vascular system by jumping to conclusions! Yes sardonics, at the end of the day you won’t be anywhere but you’ll be tired. …so tired.

Just in general (and again trying not to sound like an old Seinfeld bit) what’s up with pillows on a couch anyway? Does anyone sit on them and not throw them on the floor? I’m just wondering. And for those of you who do sit on them, thanks! From all of us who use them as pillows.

Well, here we go again. Who can guess what this is a plate of?

Need a little help? Here’s what one of them looks like:

I await your guesses.

We left Shanghai yesterday and motored down to a little burg called Hangzhou. There’s a saying that goes something like, “When you die you’ll go to heaven but here on earth there’s Hangzhou and Shangougou”. I think it was made up by the real estate people in Hangzhou and Shangougou to drive up the property prices. So far the production facility that we are visiting and the hotel are in an area that is not completely unlike Troy MI. A little further north there’s a pretty big lake that we may see tomorrow. So far we have been treated like royalty with nice hotels and cars and tours and food. I might get used to this type of treatment.

For all of those interested, the meeting went well. If all goes as both sides plan tomorrow, we’ll have a bit of work to take care of before MIP Com in October. Stay tuned for my report from the sunny south of France. Hopefully I won’t have to eat any weird food there.

Ok, so I did it again. How many times am I going to blunder into a foreign country without the slightest idea of what’s going to happen when I get there?

So the thought strikes me half way to Japan, that I have no idea what to do when I get to China. Joe and Ben had discussed going to a different hotel hours before I left. And with everything I had to think about, I forgot to get the name of the hotel. Joe had taken an earlier flight. How was I to get in touch with Ben or Joe once I landed? What was I supposed to write in the little space on the immigration form where it says, “name of hotel or residence”? Of course my cell phone wouldn’t work until I got the Chinese card installed at the Chinese phone shop when they opened in the morning. All I could do was fudge an address and phone number on the form and hope for the best.

So, it’s 11 PM, I walk along the line of ariport sign holders, after I leave immigration, and there at the very end was my name. What a relief! I met up with Joe at the hotel bar and downed a few with a couple from London. (By the way, the name of the hotel is: the “Regal Shanghai East Asia Hotel”.) So as I looked out over the city from the sky bar I wasn’t impressed. The city looked deserted. There were no lights on in any of the apartments. It was, like midnight and everyone was already asleep. In fact, besides Joe, the couple from London, Bessie the bar tender (No shit, that’s what she called herself) and myself, the bar was deserted. Friday Night in the big city of Shanghai.

This morning I’m woken up at 5am by the sound of a Chinese orchestra being broadcast over a loud speaker in the square outside the hotel. Wonderful stuff, the Chinese orchestra; every instrument is a distant cousin to the American banjo and is played with a bow. Unlike the banjo these instruments don’t have frets. Each musician is in charge of finding their own note in much the same way that each driver is in charge of finding their own parking spot at the mall at Christmas. You know how a western orchestra tunes up before every performance? Well, these guys do it on the fly. So the overall effect is a slidie, skiddie, tinty sort of sound not unlike a bunch of cats fucking over a loud speaker. Then they play it over a loud speaker!

I’m sure there are those who love this type of music. In fact, given that China is so big, and there really are a lot of people here, this “cat fuck orchestra” is statistically, probably the most popular music in the world. But, I’ll tell you what, at 5am after going to sleep at 3am with a gut full of beer, I don’t care if it was Bing Crosby risen from the grave with a heavenly chorus, handing our twenties, they’d still get a resounding, ”Shut the fuck up” from me.

So I stagger to the window and look out, hoping to get a look at the guy who’s in charge of this noise and maybe get a good shot at him with my shoe. And what to my wondering eyes should appear? Outside were about 200 people doing Tai-chi. Cripes! “Whoo-pa! Take that sleep!” These must be the people who all went to bed before midnight!! The fuckers!!!

I guess I was all wrong about Tai-chi. I thought that it was a serine peaceful path toward enlightenment and physical prowess, but this morning’s display pretty much shoots that theory. Now it’s right up there with line dancing or the Hokey-pokey.

In other news:
Sorry about the lack of pictures, readers. My Buletooth is on the fritz. (another sentence my mother wouldn’t understand) My computer is the only device my phone refuses to communicate with. There are devices all over the world that my phone will talk to, but not with my computer. I think they had a fight when I wasn’t looking. I’m hoping that they will make up and maybe I can start to download the 500 pictures stored on my phone.

So to make up for it, here's a picture of the couch Jen is thinking about getting:
More later!

Photos compliments of "P and "L"
Remember when everyone put all that money into those internet companies and we all lost our savings? Wasn’t that a funny time? Pets drugs dot come, head massage dot com, punch in the groin dot com? Ha, ha,hummmmmmmgggggggrrrrr.
Before that we had this fun thing going on. We used the web to send letters, pictures of monkeys pushing strollers and swap Doom wads. Sure it was hard to do, but it was a subversive place free from the repression of the greedy businessman.

Today, like always I tried to get connected at my small local airport. Six Bucks! That’s not a lot but there’s a page and a half of personal information that I have to fill out just to sign up on line. What’s wrong with this picture?
First some facts:
1) Cherry Capitol Airport provides service to over 15 people per day (it may be more but I can’t check my facts because I can’t get to the web without telling some company everything about me first.)
2) Not everyone at the Cherry Capitol Airport uses the web.
Based on these two solid facts, the Cherry Capitol airport stands to make about $12 per day just for providing this inconvenience. Good PR there guys!
Why don’t airports provide free internet service to the people? Most of the people at the airport are waiting. Hands up, Who thinks that it would be in the airport’s best interest to have people sitting quietly typing away or downloading Doom wads? Or is the allure of that $12 just too much for people? Would they look at it as a wasted opportunity to further harass the average passenger. Are the airport and the airlines trying to drive people crazy by shaking them down at every opportunity? Or are they just involved in an elaborate version of “Punked”? This is turning into one of those “what’s up with Airline food” bits worthy of a 1982 Seinfeld routine. (Except for the mention of the internet)

Oh, but today there’s more. Now you’re not allowed to take liquid on the plane. Just the thought of this makes me thirsty. So now there’s no food and now we can’t bring our own water. It’s like a flying “Gitmo” airlines. All coach passengers must lay naked, in a pile and have their picture taken by an eighteen-year –old hard-ass while having electrodes clamped to their “carry-on baggage”.

They are taking everything; toothpaste, sun block, diaper rash cream, formula, you name it. I watched as a security person take a kid’s Playdough away. The kid said, “That’s Ok the red was all dried up anyway.” Before you go feeling sorry for this kid, keep in mind that he was flying business class, and he had plenty of other kid crap to play with. I think his mother was glad to shed the 7oz from the load she was forced to carry.

I wonder if airport security knows that the human body is almost 80% liquid, like a watermelon. I should ask them. Are they going to drain me before the flight? Give it time folks!! I wonder if they’d stop me if I brought a watermelon on the plane. Maybe if I dressed it up as a baby, with a little bonnet I could sure sneak that past the guards. “He has his mother’s green stripie completion and eye.”
I’d be the only one on the plane with a snack big enough to share. How long before someone tries to put a bomb inside one of those. Then we won’t be able to take watermelon on the plane anymore! What is this country coning to when a Doom wad downloader can’t take his watermelon-baby on a plane and share it with his fellow Americans? I’m outraged!

…Since I’m on the verge of a 20 hour trip, maybe I should focus on what I like about air travel. Well, I’m going business class. That’s something. And I have some movies downloaded on my hard drive so I got that going for me. I forgot my book, but I suppose that will be OK. I’ll just visit the bookstore at one of the larger airports along the way. I guess what I like about traveling is how there’s always someone there telling you to sit down. I think a lot of people need this. I know I do. I sit and type up extensive blog entries about pure crap. I type up ideas for cartoons (that’s what I’m hoping to get paid for so that’s good.) I play my Gameboy Micro (which is hard to do at home.) But, best of all, there’s an excuse to take a nap. (Which is hard to do at home) In fact, you can take as many as you want on a 20-hour flight.

OK there, end on a good note. I’ve got to go those strip searches don’t strip search them selves. See you in the air!

As I watch my daughters run backward around an American flag that they’ve made out of poker chips, it all seems to come into perspective. I think I have let people get me all up tight and shit.








































So, yeah. I guess the logical thing to do would be to start another film fest and see who runs off with it. I like the idea of showing just stupid movies. Now there’s something I know about.
Imagine my introduction speech to the movie “Billy Jack” or “Gymkata” featuring Kurt Thomas the famous gymnast in his martial arts debut.

That sounds like a snowed-in winter project. But enough of that movie crap!

So now it’s off to China. Why am I going to China, you ask. I’m not really sure. I know that I’m going to have a meeting with a couple guys from a big animation production house. And I know that we are going to present five potential television series to them. I have a rough idea about where I’m going and when I’ll get there, but that’s about it.

So, let me get this straight, you are going into China with only a rough idea. Is that wise? Should you go anywhere with a rough idea?

Yeah, you’re right. Pretty weird.

I met the owner of this production facility in Singapore. We talked about their shows and about what it would take to bring them to the States. This is nothing new. This is kind of what I did in Berlin and what I was attempting to do in Singapore. And now they’ve invited me (us, Lincoln Butterfield) to Shanghai to talk further about what was proposed. I could be more specific but, once again, the details of my professional life would send the average reader reaching for a pillow. Let’s just say, I make cartoon, they buy cartoon. (hopefully)

I’ve briefly looked at the map of where we’ll be and I don’t think we’ll get to see the things the average person thinks of when they think of China. The Forbidden City is in Beijing, to the north, and the great wall is up there too, somewhere. I guess if the average person thinks of Chinese people when they think of China, we might be in luck there. There’s no way we won’t be seeing those. I hear there are lots of them.

There is also that Chinese food thing. I think I might know a little about that stuff having eaten it for five months in Singapore. I know that Chinese people get hungry every hour and hey say that when they eat American food they get hungry twelve hours later. I wonder if they have American take away…
I guess we’ll see.

I made a promise early on, that I wouldn't use this blog forum to complain. But my disappointment in this years film fest is so profound I don't know who else to turn to. So, please allow me this one time.

Almost everything I do is my way. From the way I play the guitar to the way I swim. I know I don’t take direction well. I’d rather fuck it all up on my own than let anyone be smarter than me. I think about these things a lot. And I often find myself saying if I'd only followed the rules or read the directions I wouldn't be in this spot as I rub my broken butt or pick up the pieces of some artistic disaster. I guess I have to build my own ballpark if I'm going to be batting from left field.
This is what I thought I had done with the Traverse City Film Fest.

The Traverse City Film Festival:
Three guys sat around and thought about a film festival for six years. One day Joe and I were invited to lunch with them and 4 months later we showed some movies. I’m not saying I did it all, not by a long shot. But, I was there when the fuse was finally lit. I can say, with confidence that if I weren’t there, it wouldn’t have been the same. What we had was a wild, fun festival teetering on the edge of disaster. Movies showed, people made mistakes, and everyone clapped.

Joe and I had work to do of our own and we couldn’t really get involved in this thing. But it started rolling and before I could let go we were on our way. Picture that Navy guy who didn’t let go if the blimp rope. Hours later, just before he let go from exhaustion, his last thought probably wasn’t about his love of blimps. It was probably something like, “How the fuck did I get in this position?”

Why? I couldn’t figure this out for a long time. It wasn’t that I liked movies, particularly. Or that I felt like my little town needed culturing. It wasn’t that I wanted to live in the shadow of a great man, or that I wanted him to live in mine. I guess I just naturally go where the noise is coming from.

This year one of the five laid claim to the fest as all his own. Let’s see if you can guess which one? I’ll wait. I’ll give you a hint, he’s also the largest one. The rest of us were demoted to being his employees. We each reacted in different ways. My specialty was to take him on and wrestle my little portion out of his hands. But, I was out gunned and my plan of attack wasn’t really very logical. Let’s just say I came on like Sheriff Bullock without a gun.
If I might continue with the western town analogy, we just got our first school. From now on, the reckless fun that we have enjoyed in the past is going to have to be a little tamer, and sensitive to our sponsors and all the other people who have volunteered. The last thing you want to do when something is doing well is make waves.

I still feel that if you can shake it and it doesn’t fall in, it’s solid. I have confidence in the Festival and of the community’s ability to take the shaking but this new batch of volunteers doesn’t.

So what’s the solution? Fight or flight? Do I keep pushing or go home and pout into a bucket of ice cream? Move west and find another lawless boomtown?

Do I learn from this? Do what you are told and everything will work out well. Then I sit in front of every book that I’ve read and every movie that I’ve seen and all of those TV shows from the 70’s that said, “Be yourself and you’ll be happy.” Maybe their right! Most authors are happy. What ever happened to Hemmingway anyway?

But the big questions are:
Do I sound pissed? I should. I am!
What am I going to do about it?
What do I do next year? …

My overall dissapointment is profound.