Never Loan Books (or DVDs, for that matter)

There was a brief, but poignant moment in the new Battlestar Galactica series where Adama and Roslin are talking about something or another, and in the interest of diplomacy, Adama gives Roslin a novel he thinks she would enjoy. When Roslin begins to demure about returning it, Adama tells her, "It's a gift. Never loan books." Good advice.

Books are easily damageable through normal use, so loaning a book means almost never getting it back in the same shape you loaned it out in. Even when the borrower is careful, accidents happen. My copy of a reference manual is twice its original thickness thanks to a roofing leak at the home of a colleague who had borrowed it for only a few days. Then again, some people are intentionally careless or rough. On getting some books back from a friend that had been thoroughly manhandled, he flippantly replied that the books didn't look used and needed to be broken in. For some reason, my obsessive tendencies shut down and now it's no big deal. Of course, when another friend loaned this guy a book, I secretly reveled in his misery he experienced on getting the creased and beaten copy back.

These days, if I really enjoy a book, I'm likely to pick up a "loaner" copy which I can casually share around to those I think would also appreciate the book. Who knows how many copies of The Poisonwood Bible I've bought?

Anyway, that all brings us to DVDs. At first appearance, DVD loaning is much safer than books. You really have to go out of your way to damage a DVD. The inserts and covers are all protected by plastic, and if the case gets broken, well, DVD cases are easily replaceable. No, the risk of DVD loaning is the most basic risk, that of outright loss. Sometimes its no big deal; DVDs are cheap to start with, and just a couple of months, most mainstream movies drop in price by half.

Among our friends, we've been sharing DVDs left and right, and as long as you can't catch Asian Bird Flu from that, I think it's a great thing. I get to see good movies that have been prescreened by people whose opinions I trust, and in return, I get someone to talk with about movies I like. It all works great, until we begin to forgot who had what and who what belongs to. Lately, things have been going slightly worse than usual, with more lost and misappropriated discs than usual.

Poor Dave has gotten it worse than most of us. In addition to his Galaxy Quest, and Spider-man, he is also short one copy of Hands on a Hardbody, the great documentary about an endurance contest at a truck dealership in Longview, TX. It's a fun movie, and its rarity makes it popular in our circle. Seeing it used to be a rite of passage. Unfortunately one person too many borrowed it, and now it's gone. Just gone. The real tragedy is that the film is out of print, meaning that copies on eBay go for ridiculous prices. (I have difficulty believing that those copies actually sell for the prices they're asking, except possibly on speculation.) And just so you don't think I'm completely blameless, I'm the last person anybody remembers having the disc, though I'm sure I returned it. I promise! To make matters worse, I had his copy of Running Out of Time for nearly two years.

I think I'm doing better than most, though. I went through and organized my DVD collection and found the only major disc I was missing, My Beautiful Girl, Mari. I had loaned it, Tokyo Marigold, Swallowtail Butterfly, and Memento Mori to Dave, and he said that he had returned it, but that he had not returned Memento Mori and still had to watch Swallowtail and Marigold. But the fate of Mari was a mystery up until just last night. I found the disc with some unrelated films, which suggests that I just threw it in the box when I was cleaning up in a hurry a while back. I kind of feel bad that I had been riding Dave about it, when I had it the whole time. Just to show you I don't learn my lesson, it's getting loaned out again when we return to school after spring break.

On the plus side, I'm finding duplicates of movies that must have come back from people I didn't loan them to. Right now, I have two copies of The Iron Giant and The Transporter, only one of each is mine. (Don't ask why I bought The Transporter. I simply didn't know at the time.) One of them came from my sister, I think, so it probably belonged to one of her friends, but nobody in either of our circles has claimed it, so it's probably ours now. The Iron Giant, however, came from a friend of ours who is (a) very organized and (b) takes care of our friends' children, so somebody loaned her this as a kids movie, I'm sure, and somehow it came back to me. I've only just started trying to track this one down, so who knows who it belongs to?

Oh, The Cleverness Of Me

So Borders is running a great special right now: buy any children's DVD and get 25% off any other DVD in the store. As kids DVDs tend to be affordably priced, it's very easy to find a good combination of worthwhile films. I eventually chose to pick up the Peter Pan adaptation released a couple of years back (only $15!) and All About Lily Chou-Chou. Talk about your different views of the difficult transition from childhood into the adult world! I put off watching Lily Chou-Chou for now because of the depressing subject matter, but I also ordered the import 2-disc version of Hana and Alice, so when it comes in, I'll have some light Iwai to go with the dark.

Anyway, I didn't mean to go on about that. Back to Peter Pan. All anybody really knows of him these days is what they saw in the 1950s Disney version, which, to be honest, I enjoyed. (If you're old enough, you may know who Mary Martin is as well...) But you go back far enough, and you get to J.M. Barrie, who wrote Peter Pan as a play and novel back at the turn of the century. Watching this movie (again) made me wish (again) that I had read the originals. This version of the story features imaginative design and effects. Particularly impressive are the voyage to Neverland and the fight in the Black Castle, though the storybook London in which the Darlings reside is no less spectacular than Neverland.

What works best for me, though is the dramatic tension between the eternally childlike Peter and the soon-to-be adolescent Wendy. Disney makes Peter a hero, Spielburg's Hook tried to imagine Peter as a grown-up, but this version makes it clear that Peter is incapable of either growing up or exhibiting the courage and responsibility to be a real hero. The sexual frustration of Wendy becomes palpable as she recognizes that her new awareness of romance and attraction simply cannot be returned by Peter. Though he becomes the owner of her "secret kiss", Peter cannot understand why that matters. It's not that the film is sexual in any way, but that the film gives Peter and Wendy an opportunity to become aware of all that Peter has lost through his eternal childhood.

The climax of this story can best be seen in the alternate ending included in the DVD's supplemental features which gives insight into the Peter's tragedy. Set about 20 years later, Peter returns to Wendy's bed, but he is surprised to see that the girl sleeping there is not Wendy, but Wendy's daughter. The scene between a confused Peter and a wise Wendy is carried out magnificently. Peter genuinely does not understand the burdens and blessings of the passage of time. As he is pleading with Wendy, we understand that Peter is cursed to live the same moments over and over. The supplemental material points out that J.M. Barrie's older brother died as a child, and the Pan character is in many ways, Barrie's own attempts to both immortalize his brother and deconstruct the tragedy of his unfulfilled life. The dramatic conclusion of this ending is a mess, though, as the story tries to pull off an audience-pleasing happy ending, supporting the decision to go with the ending used in the theatrical version.

Not everything in the film works. The first 15 or 20 minutes rush a bit. I actually feel that the story gets to Neverland too early. The domestic scenes with the Darlings could have used more patience, especially considering how important Mr. and Mrs. Darling's actions are later in the film. Also - and this might be a fault of the source material - cumbersome lines are given to the children to say, lines that might sound good for a Victorian-era playwright. For the most part, the actors gamely pull them off, but sometimes they just can't pull them off, such as when Peter declares, "Oh the cleverness of ME!" Now I don't know about you, but I've got a hunch a boy who never grows up is more likely to declare "I am so great!"

Still, it's a very fun movie with something for the grown-ups to chew on. I think it performed disappointingly at the box office, but with a new low $15 price tag, it's worth checking out, maybe even worth buying.

To Boba Or Not To Boba

So, I have a weakness for pearl tea. I wish I didn't. I have too many other things to take up my time and money. I suppose in the long run it isn't quite as bad as gourmet coffee, vintage wines, and heroin - none of which I'm particularly interested in. However, I really need to find something healthful to enjoy, not just sweet and caffeinated.

There are several places in town that make pearl tea drinks, and considering that I don't really have an excuse to visit them on a regular basis, pearl tea becomes something more of a special event than a habitual practice. Unfortunately, I have made a terrible discovery.

One of my favorite restaurants is discontinuing pearl tea. (No, that isn't the terrible discovery, though the restaurant has gone downhill tremendously since I was last in there, and no, that isn't the terrible discovery either, although that is pretty terrible - more on the restaurant biz later.) I noticed that they still had boxes of those oversized straws you use to suck the boba (the little tapioca pearls) out of your drink with. I pointed this out to my friend and said that he should make an offer to take all those straws off their hands. He asked why he would want to do that. I started to think of all the things you could do with a fat, pointed straw, when he added that they already had lots of them at home. He informed me that one of our friends that he shares a house with (technically, I guess she's his landlady, though now that I hear that word, I keep thinking of Yuen Qiu from Kung Fu Hustle, which just isn't right) makes her own pearl tea at home and has bought all the fixins herself.

Now, for some of you, this comes as no surprise, but it blew my mind. For some reason, I had always assumed that pearl tea was exclusively the bailiwick of the specialty restaurant. I don't know. I guess I thought that there was a special machine that you needed, like you need a cappuccino machine to make, well, cappuccino. Sure, I guess you could buy one for home, but I don't have a lot of space in my apartment and owning such a thing would be pure madness. Now, at this point, I had a mental image of brewing tea, steaming milk, adding flavor syrups, etc., and finally either making or cooking the boba. The next time I was at the Asian market, I did find boba on the shelves (appropriately located near the tapioca starch.) I looked up the boba recipe online to discover that you need to boil them for around an hour to get them soft enough for the drink. Ah-HAH!

Talking with our friend about how to prepare the tea (specifically, I was interested in taro milk tea, but the process should be pretty general) I learned that the tea is prepared from a powder containing instant tea and non-dairy creamer. Just add water? Why nothing could be easier. I also learned that these pearl tea shops have pre-mixed powders for many flavors and add syrups as needed, all of which are pretty much readily available. She did mention that she had had difficulty getting the boba right, and that for home use, she dispenses with the boba.

So it was back to the Asian market. I found the powder mix (they didn't have a big selection, but there are places on the Internet that carry a wider variety) and the boba. The boba were marked as "Ready in 5 minutes". This was promising, so for $4 and change (only a few cents more than buying a prepared drink at the pearl tea place across the street) I went home armed with the items I needed to satiate my pearl tea craving.

I will say that everything came out pretty much okay. The standard milk tea packet was pretty tasty, if plain, though I could really taste the non-dairy creamer. I wonder if they make a powdered milk version. The boba came out aces. I pretty much just followed the directions on the back and they came out much as I remembered from my last professionally-prepared drink. One problem, though, is I neglected to buy any of those oversized straws, so I had to fish the boba out of the drink with a spoon. (I suppose I should make that restaurant an offer for their bulk straws.)

So now we come down to the dilemma. Are the boba worth making? At the store, I just can't see buying a milk tea without the pearls. They're just too much fun. But even at 5 minutes to prepare, are boba at home too much trouble? With my electric kettle, I can have a cup of tea ready in about a minute, which means that the boba have added 400% to the preparation time. Also, they go bad really quickly, so you kind of have to use them once you've made them. I have no idea how long the uncooked ones stay good in a ziptop bag in the fridge. Plus, I don't have any of those fun cups and straws you get at the pearl tea shop. All of this gives the at home boba a sense of obligation, rather than the spontineity I'm looking for when satisfying my pearl tea craving.

I made another cup without pearl and enjoyed it just fine. I'll probably use up the boba I have on hand and call it good. I'm looking forward to trying out different flavor packets and syrups for my milk tea. And when I'm out at the pearl tea shop, I'll definitely get the pearls. But at home, pearls, at least for now, are not to be.

Eighty-Nine Percent Pure Junk

So I have completely disconnected my new WiFi router. It just continued to give me nothing but trouble. After rebates (which probably won't show up for another 6 to 8 weeks) the whole experiment will have cost me around $60. I suppose I should chalk this up as a life lesson, but some part of me wants to call "Shenanigans!" on the folks at Netgear.

Just remember, folks. Once you cut the UPC off the box, you can't take a defective piece of equipment back to the store for a refund. I wish that the problems with the router started the second I got it home, instead of working fine for a few days and suckering me into keeping it.

If anybody has had any luck getting a Netgear WGR614 (v5) to stay working for more than an hour at a time, I'd love to hear from you.

I've Never Trusted Neatness

So I'm learning that I don't keep a very neat house. My sister is coming to town this week for SXSW, and I'm really excited about it, but there are a thousand things to take care of before she gets here. And I'm making absolutely no progress on it. Heck, I even started a blog instead of vacuuming!

Anyway, it will all be fine. We'll have a great time. And it really won't matter if I dust the window blinds. What will matter is getting into the shows we want to see. I am really hoping to get into Japan Nite, which is actually a misnomer this year, as there are two Japan Nites. Friday, the big name is the pillows. Their moment in the limelight came when director Kazuya Tsurumaki chose to use Pillows tunes as the primary soundtrack for his aliens and adolescence anime series, FLCL. All of a sudden, the pillows were widely known on this side of the Pacific. This was probably the first (and only) time in history that otaku were cooler than rock hipsters. I've been listening to Runners High and Happy Bivouac a lot lately, getting ready for the show, and all I can say is that if these songs were in English, we wouldn't have needed Franz Ferdinand and The Killers and the like to save Rock and Roll. It wouldn't have needed saving in the first place. I really hope they play "Kim Deal" during their show, but I suspect they'll probably limit their set to stuff from their most recent album, Good Dreams, and FLCL standards like "Ride on Shooting Star" and "Little Busters" (not that there's one damn thing wrong with that!)

Saturday night comes Bonnie Pink, who is probably my favoritest Japanese singer ever. Of course, I found out about her from another anime. ("It's Gonna Rain" was the memorable closing theme during the second season of Rurouni Kenshin.) However, quality songwriting, tremendous musicianship and her clear, inviting voice have kept me along for the long haul. I'm a bit conflicted about her latest album, Even So, which feels like a throwback to her best album, Let Go, and is every bit as good as Present, which apparently was a big-seller for Bonnie. I enjoy listening to it every time I put it in the CD player (which is frequently) but it doesn't have the memorable standout tracks of previous releases.

One pleasant surprise is that I've been rediscovering Just a Girl, a wonderfully diverse album with a solid line-up of songs. Some of the best ones on the disc, "Communication" and "Just a Girl" are completely in English, so just because you're reading this, don't think there's nothing for you at the show. (In fact, I'd argue that many of her English lyrics are better than some of the stuff passing as songwriting on American radio these days.) I hope she doesn't lock herself into only singing English songs for the audience, though. We'll need to hear some old standbys like "It's Gonna Rain", "Thinking of You", "Inu to Tsuki", "Nemuarenai Yoru" and "Tonight, the Night", as well as the English songs. (I'm hoping for "Forget Me Not" and "Wildflower".)

Anyway, as SXSW will be taking up a big part of the next week for me, I'm sure I'll post more on this later.

'Ere I Am, J.H.

So, my buddy talked me into setting myself up here. Actually, he accidentally set up his blog to only accept comments from registered members, so when he included me in a post, I discovered I had to create an account here just to make sure my side of the story got told. I decided I'd not just register at BlogSpot, but go whole hog and set myself up some space here. I've wanted to start a blog for a couple of months now and had been playing around with WordPress. Unfortunately, I was taking a long time to pick a host to run it and was getting behind the curve.

So what is manbun? Well, from WWWJDIC, it's "漫文 【まんぶん】 (n) random jottings; rambling essays", which about sums up blogging. And if you know me, you know I have a propensity to ramble randomly. So hooray for me.

More later. Oh, you're all in for it now!