Tonight - it’s raining but you’re coming anyway. Special guests performing live with game boys and vacuum cleaners. Real updates coming real, real soon.
Monthly Archive for September, 2009
didn’t design the flier but did the translation work. hope it sounds cool to the locals. anyway, come dance.
Occasionally, Heatwolves disappears for extended periods of time. Reasons include a sudden aversion to computers, spacing out, or transitioning into a heavy semester at a Chinese university while DJing constantly.
After two years of studying Chinese in taxicabs, morally (but not necessarily otherwise) hygienic massage parlors, and with vendors of sneakers/headphones that break every two weeks/slightly outdated and possibly fake magazines/vegetables, I’m formally studying at Jiaotong University. I shopped around to find the best professors, and along the way met both unstimulating and engaging ones until finally settling on an intermediate class. Five courses: listening, writing, speaking, and two reading classes. Strangely, the workload in the “reading” class dwarves that of “intensive reading.” Monday through Friday, eight in the morning until noon…Luckily, most of my classmates are Japanese or Korean, who love studying/learned to be a good study robot early in youth.
Baijiu Robot keeps killing shows around Shanghai. Big up to Plastidécor from Madrid, who joined us last Saturday for one of the best shows ever. European tour in the works.
Another point about the retarded design of Will’s Gym in Zhongshan Park, which isn’t actually that bad of a gym. They felt compelled to inject some “interest” in the gym by placing random sets of two stairs in the weight area, often requiring a member to walk up and down stairs while holding weights. Lots of Shanghainese sit on the stairs and talk, like teens outside a convenience store.
I’ve dropped this Duck Sauce track at the last couple shows, and it destroys the dancefloor every time. First though, gotta get real funky and travel back to 1979 for the original.
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Final Edition - I Can Do It Anyway You Want It
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Duck Sauce - aNYway (DJ DLG Remix)
Quick post, going swimming soon before my whole neighborhood gets in the pool.
Just jointed Will’s Gym in Zhongshan Park. Some major drawbacks (limited weights, retarded design, tons of locals who come solely to socialize in Shanghainese, staff who range from apathetic to rude…), but probably the best choice in the area.
Unfortunately, the swimming pool traffic mirrors the chaos of Shanghai’s streets. Some people paddle horizontally, potentially colliding with those who prefer to traverse the pool’s vertical axis, while other folk swim in circles around the perimeter. Also, it’s twenty-two meters, with not a single right angle.
Thought about joining the government-run community gym on Anhua Lu, with its antique pictures of competition-era Arnold above the free weight rack. A value at only 900 rmb a year including a squash court, but too spartan.
As per the photo, the “you” probably means “yu,” the Chinese word for fish. I Love Japanese snacks. The Family Mart on my corner stocks tons of them but this one costs almost three dollars American.
Song kinda fits the mood today.
Atlas Sound - Ativan
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I saw this tiger on a side street around my new hood. It’s owner, with many of her belongings on the street, was being relocated, probably to a new suburb away from the city center. She offered to sell me the tiger for twenty rmb (three dollars).
A few thoughts for Sunday…
1) Every time a Western guy carries his Chinese girlfriend’s purse, the collective man feels a little kick in the balls, so please stop.
2) Coffee Bean and Tea Leaf coffee really, really sucks. Almost as bad as their wireless. Best overall coffee could go to 85 Degrees for their eight kuai (a dollar twenty) Americano. They’ve got an interesting sea salt coffee too, and by sea, they mean sea of cream drowning any hint of coffee.
3) I’m living in Zhongshan Park now, a big urban centre with a more chinese feel than Jing An or Huai Huai lu. More motorcycle cabs, cheap restaurants, and chaos. Some marketing spectacle always happens outside the subway station. This weekend a mini golf tournament with Garfield stuffed toy prizes and loud, cheesy house music went down as part of a promotion to sell apartments in a new community. This would never occur in the states. Someone would get robbed/jumped.
4) Chinese beef jerky often comes in packaging that looks identical to that of American after-dinner mints.
5) It’s completely socially acceptable to pass out in a massage chair for any amount of time, until the place closes. My new record - three hours. Almost over the jet lag, shout out to Yang Yang at “70 Minute Body Massage/30 RMB.”
6) There’s never a chill time to shop at Carrefour, hence its designation as a “hypermart.”
7) Some people still don’t realize the brilliance of Prince. They lunchin’.
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Prince - I Wanna Be Your Lover
Once, when I told a clerk at a clothing shop in Chicago that I work in Shanghai, he responded “is that in Tokyo?”
While some may, inexcusably, confuse the two countries, an ocean of differences separates the two. Most important to note, Chinese people hate the Japanese. They often profess this publicly. The loathing stems from, most recently, the Nanjing massacre. Graphically violent film renditions of those events appear in countless tv war dramas and in previews for movies on screens in the subway. Several Chinese told me “I can never forgive the Japanese” the first time I met them.
But that doesn’t stop Chinese people from adopting a taste for swoopy Japanese hairstyles, Doraemon, anime, Japanese foreign investment, and most importantly, convenience store sushi. It’s their 7-11 tacoquitos and nachos.
(I should mention, Shanghai has far more Japanese influence than other Chinese cities I’ve visited, like Chongqing and naturally, Nanjing)
Some of these sushi rolls contain tuna or fish with more dubious identities, while others assume an ambiguous name like “big meat.” Unfortunately, gobs of mayonnaise mar many of them. Family Mart, clearly the king of convenience store sushi, stocks three distinct forms. The names do not come from direct translation.
1) Mystery Fish Triangle (top row) – A pyramid of rice wrapped in seaweed, stuffed with fish. Hopefully tuna. Different cartoon fish appear on different mystery fish triangles. No idea where these fish come from, hopefully not the Chang Jiang. Price - about four kuai (sixty cents)
2) Small Roll Carton - A box of ten or twelve mini, garden-variety cucumber, ham, and tuna (errrr?) rolls goes for about seven kuai (a dollar)
3) Big Roll (middle row) The best call if you can find one without too much mayo. Some also contain ham and lettuce, kind of like a sandwich, but transculturated into a giant piece of sushi. The elusive Kim chi roll, the lone vegetarian option sometimes appears early in the morning for four to five kuai (sixty to seventy cents).
A Family Mart employee immediately stopped me from taking pictures, hence the low quality. Businesses, like my gym, often forbid photography, assumedly for idea protection.
Eating convenience store sushi everyday, while temping, will probably cause organ failure, but it’s still a grand breakfast/”the suns coming up, fuck it” delicacy.
