Swoosh

So, I suppose most people have heard the brouhaha about Nike stealing the graphics of a legendary Minor Threat album cover for their new ad campaign. Here is the original, and then the Nike ad. We've all gotten used to seeing legendary pop moments reduced to just another sales pitch (Iggy Pop's "The Passenger" comes to mind). The difference here is that Ian and the boys apparently didn't agree to this. Unfortunately, I think Nike will probably win any battle since they can afford the bigger lawyers. And it's the ultimate irony, given Nike's vigorous enforcement of its own intellectual property rights when it comes to the Swoosh.

this sounds cool!

Bonsoir!



We've some excellent late-breaking news to report: Lejeune has been invited to participate in the F ête de la Musique this Friday at La Maison Française—a.k.a. the French Embassy—in Washington, D.C.

Since 1982, the French have celebrated the Summer Solstice, the longest day of the year, with the "Fête de la Musique"—an all-day music festival. Fê te de la Musique has since expanded to include more than 100 countries as a way to expose listeners to a wide variety of musical styles and traditions. To this end, La Maison Française is featuring performances by about 20 local and touring acts, including renowned French group Les Primitifs du Futur (which features legendary cult cartoonist R. Crumb on banjo and mandolin).

Lejeune is slated to play around 9:45pm—directly after Les Primitifs du Futur—in La Maison's main ballroom.

Here are the key details:

* Friday, June 24th, 2005, 7 to 11pm
o Les Primitifs du Futur - 8:30pm
o Lejeune - 9:45pm
* La Maison Française, 4101 Reservoir Road NW, Washington, DC 20007 ( map)
* Tickets are $20 at the door, however a reservation is required.

For complete details, visit the event web site .



Hope to see you there!

Sam
Greg
Matthew
Ody
Lejeune



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Eating cats

I was served something yesterday called "nasi kucing." That means "cat rice." The concern must have registered on my face, because it was then explained to me that it's called that because cats love it (it contains fish.)

the Da Vinci Code

ok, I can see why the Catholic Church banned it!

The Davinci Code

I started reading The DaVinci Code yesterday. I've avoided it forever because I imagined it would be something like Umberto Eco's Focault's Pendulum -- a fascinating but terribly difficult read. But so far it's very engrossing and impossible to put down. I haven't gotten far enough to figure out why the Catholic Church banned it (a motivating factor in my buying it).

heh

So I had dinner tonight at a Japanese bar. A theme bar. What that means is that anytime anyone finished and left, the staff, Indonesians all of them, would yell, in unison, "thank you" in Japanese. "Domo Arigato!" I like to move stealthily, so when it was my time to go, I waited til everyone's back was turned and snuck out.

The economy is weird here. I bought a pair of Reeboks today for 350,000 Rupiah. Now, that's a real bargain at about $40... but compared to everything else here, that's phenomenally expensive. It's probably not that far removed from the average monthly salary.

Oh, here's something else random. A couple of nights ago I had a dream which among other things included one of my parents' cats, Jake, who died about 10 years ago. I have no idea how he made it into my dream, but in the dream I was scratching him behind the ears, and he was loving it, just like he always did.

there's a guy on BBC talking about coelcanths.

Mobile phones

Mobile phones (called "hand phones" here) are a huge deal in Jakarta. Everybody has one. People don't talk on them for the most part, they text message, mainly because it's a lot cheaper. There is also a lot of one-upmanship as far as phone styles and tech.

When I first got here I wondered about the people I saw carrying mobile phones around almost as big as bricks -- you know, like the first ones that came out back in the 1980s. I wondered whether this wasn't some retro fad, but then one day I saw someone open one of them, to reveal an entire little computer inside. Pretty cool!

ok nobody loves me

Last time I shout out to my lurker peeps!

So I tried to walk home from work yesterday instead of taking a cab. Physically, it's not that far, but it meant I had to cross the street. And that means I had to cross a six-lane road of neverending traffic. But it's not six lanes of traffic, it's roughly seven lanes of cars squeezed into six, and between the seven lanes are additional lanes of motorcycles, bicycles, and every imaginable form of smoke-belching transport. After waiting 10 minutes, I finally gave up and hailed a cab.

But that wasn't the end of it, because I managed to hail a cab driven by the only cabbie in Jakarta who's cowed by traffic. He was afraid to do a merge into this neverending metal river, so we wound up going far out of the way and doubling back.

tennis

I decided i'm not getting enough exercise so I signed up for a tennis lesson tonight. 55,000 rupiah for the lesson and a racket. That's around six bucks. Not bad....

Here's something that vexes me. Two months ago I bought some new pairs of "Docker's Premium" pants, which look nothing like Docker's at all, they're very nice dress slacks which you can still machine wash with no wrinkles. At least nice in appearance. But today I noticed that the stitching on one of them was already coming apart. After just two months!

Another thing that vexes me is that someone called me from DC last night at 2:00am! He didn't know it was the middle of the night here. I was so annoyed I couldn't fall asleep again.

ps! Who is reading my blog? I see it gets hits but hardly ever any comments. Shout out to my peeps!

Chernobyl

So a while back I was enthralled by this site about a sexy Russian biker chick who roams around the lonely wastes surrounding Chernobyl, with memorable quotes about why Chernobyl is a good place for a biker, such as it is "a town where one can ride fast, with no stoplights, no police, no danger to hit some cage or some dog."

Anyway, there's a fascinating article in today's New York Times about tourism at Chernobyl, which also mentions this website.

In other news, a friend proposed an idea that is brilliant in its simplicity: instead of counting on the Democrats to save us from the frothing-mouthed religious right -- something the Dems appear incapable of doing -- why not just give up on them, and focus on taking over the GOP? Everyone should register Republican in the next election and vote en masse for whatever moderate Republicans are left.

Aceh's coast from the air

I haven't said much about this, but this is what Aceh looks like as you're flying down the coast in a helicopter.  The most dramatic thing is to see the (formerly) populated areas that were wiped out by the tsunami.  There is only a little evidence of what was there before -- vague outlines of streets, a lot of foundations with no houses left, and here and there a part of a building that for some reason withstood the force.   Now, in June, you are starting to see tiny little settlements of tents and shacks springing up in these places, as well as some evidence of commerce re-starting as people set up little kiosks and other small businesses.   But it must be very lonely at night, living in a tent in a tiny community on large plains that were once entire neighborhoods and now are almost nothing.

One notices dramatic things, like a coal barge still connected to a tug boat, and both of them now on dry land, straddling a road.  One notices the coastal road, completely gone in some places, and in other places, steel bridges that once crossed rivers and valleys, and have been twisted like pretzels and deposited randomly further inland.

The first time I saw all of this in early February, I also noticed how wet the coastal land looked, witrh lots of areas that were obviously once dry land (as indicated by trees and skeletal remains of buildings) now under shallow lagoons of water.  I thought that would dry up, but now in June, it still looks like that.   The reason is that the entire coastline has changed; the island of Sumatra actually sunk with the earthquake that accompanied the tsunami.   It is obvious now that many of these areas will eventually be swallowed up by the sea; as the waves continue to lap at the edges of soggy land covered with vegetation that is now dying all over the place.   In places where the tsunami didn't rip trees right out by the roots or snap them like twigs, the large dose of salt water has now caused them all to die, and so dying trees are everywhere.

It will take a long time for the coast to adapt to its new shape, and for now the land, covered with dead and dying vegetation and pools of murky water, just looks damaged.

Fwd: Rock Out with Federal City Five this Wed. at Polly's!

I recommend this band. If I were in town, I'd go see them. They rock out
often enough to be worthwhile. And they're OK people, and local. What's
not to like? Go squeeze into Polly's and see them!

---------------------------- Original Message ----------------------------
Summer's finally here! And what better way to celebrate than with the
ladies of Federal City Five, this Wednesday, June 8th at Polly's Cafe on U
Street (1342 U, to be exact!).

The lovely Kristen Forbes will be playing too, starting around 8. It's free!

We'll have copies of our CD/Demo "5" for sale, for 5 bucks (of course!)

See you there!

Carmen, Coburn, Elaine and Tina

I'm back in Aceh for a while

tomorrow I'm going on a helicopter ride down the coast.  Nothing to report beyond that...

 

... except that dolphins have learned to use sponges as tools.

 

 

Recent movies

They don't have Netflix here, but they do have something just as good: DVDs that cost about 50 cents a piece. How do they do that? Piracy! But the quality's good, and, I tell myself, I wouldn't have bought the original at full price anyway, so they're not losing anything. (It's true, I never bought a DVD before coming here.)

Anyway, here are my latest purchases, waiting for me to find the necessary cable to hook my laptop up to a TV, so I don't have to watch them on a 10" screen.

* The Motorcycle Diaries -- Che Guevara goes on a road trip
* The Hitchiker's Guide to the Galaxy -- you're a geek, I don't need to explain this one
* The Interpreter -- drama involving Nicole Kidman as an interpreter at the UN, and Sean Penn as a federal agent. I got this one mainly because they filmed it right outside my door while I was working at the UN last year.

A full report will be forthcoming, once I find that cable!

Puppy Nose and Tongue

this is my girlfriend's brother's new puppy. How adorable is this picture?

New book

I popped into a Jakarta bookstore last night to find a new book. The first interesting thing was that although there was a substantial collection of English books, the selection they chose to display up front was slightly different from what you'd find in the US. Most prominent were a bunch of "how to get ahead" books; a biography of Donald Trump, and a book debunking the Da Vinci code.

More importantly, there was a collection of Tom Wolfe (of "Bonfire of the Vanities" fame) books. One of my favorite authors, and they had books by him, really old and near-forgotten, that you just don't see in the US. I picked up "Radical Chic," written in 1970 and set in 1966, which opens with a posh party at Leonard Bernstein's Manhattan apartment in which Black Panthers have been invited and are mingling amongst the elite. Good stuff!

Later that evening a colleague and I had dinner on plastic stools at a streetside satay vendor (little kebabs drenched in spicy peanut sauce). Yumm.